“While you may think that creating several different rights structures depending on fetal development is unprecedented, this does not equate to making it wrong.”

It doesn’t make it wrong, but once you have the infinite variance of rights structures in front of you, it becomes clear that the pro-life movement’s actual goals have nothing to do with “expanding personhood”, but in fact just with the creation of niggling regulations and some new class of not-persons that they can use to control the behavior and life choices of other people. Of course, this desire to create legally recognized fractional people is presented in the most self-aggrandizing terms. So, getting people to admit that their desire to restrict abortion is both morally neutral and irrational is a worthwhile rhetorical goal of its own.

“That effect alone could be deemed punishment enough”

Punishment? What about deterrence? Is it part of the new “right’s structure” that fetuses are not entitled to deterrence?

“Perhaps we should not expect the law to make those exceptions”

Agreed.

For example, I don’t think that The State ought to have the power to do anything that I (Jaybird) do not have The Right to do.

So if I do not have the right to force a woman to carry a child to term, I don’t think that The State should even if I find the murder of an unborn child morally problematic.

If the argument comes “if you find an issue morally problematic, you have THE MORAL RESPONSIBILITY TO RESOLVE THE MORAL PROBLEM AS SOON AS FRICKIN POSSIBLE USING ANY MEANS NECESSARY”, well…

I’m just going to have to disagree.

It is, in fact, possible to put stuff like “free will” higher than “making sure we get the right outcome every gol-danged time”.

I believe that enough to allow you time to let it sink in (because I am just that confident that it will eventually make more sense to people willing to vigorously intervene once they start seeing how vigorous intervention tends to end up).

But that’s a guest post waiting to happen. Let me give the inanutshell version:

“Fuck the full coercive power of the state.”

I don’t have a problem with your reasoning, especially in that you seem to have dropped the notion of a fetal right to life. Is that a deliberate acknowledgment that it’s a bad route to take if one wants to resolve the complexities of abortion?

I don’t have a problem conceding that the fetus is a human form of life. I have problem conceding that it’s a human person with legal rights. I don’t have a problem conceding that it’s difficult to regulate these things, and emotional frustrating.

However, the notion that the emotional state of the woman getting an abortion is punishment enough is not very credible. I’m sure its very emotionally stressful to hire an assassin to kill your wife also, but that doesn’t make it sufficient as a punishment for the crime. And of course many people get abortions without much emotional stress. Comparing this to accidently or negligently being responsible for killing one’s own child is absurd. Abortion doesn’t happen by accident or due to negligence. If one accepts that the fetus has a right to life, is a person with legal rights, you can’t backpeddle and say that deliberately killing that fetus is acceptable and we don’t need to punish anyone for it. Our opposition to prosecuting the woman only shows that we don’t actually believe that the fetus is a person with rights. Somehow, on the way to court, we drop all that, and suddenly have only empathy for the poor woman and the terrible choice she felt she had to make. This makes no sense logically, legally, or morally. It only makes sense in the shifting framework of one’s internal emotional sympathies.

As for “foolish consistencies”, I agree, but that phrase only points out that the argument itself is inconsistent. You wouldn’t use that phrase if I said that murdering a black man was okay, since they don’t have the same right to life that white people have. You wouldn’t call it a “foolish consistency” to prosecute a white man for murdering a black man, when everyone ought to know that it’s clearly a lesser crime, or no crime at all, and the poor white man has suffered enough already. The law is supposed to be consistent in its application. That’s what prevents us from hypocrisy. What these kinds of partial right-to-life advocates seem to want to do is retain an internal hypocrisy, and transfer it to the legal system, without anyone noticing.

And the whole point of this “fetal rights” business is that it can’t be sensibly applied only to that 1% of abortions that occur in the last trimester. It naturally applies at every step of the way, or it isn’t actually a right at all, just a sign of our empathy for the fetus emerging at a certain point.

If your stated reason for wanting to restrict reproductive rights is that you want to protect the right to live of a fetus, yet you have no desire to use the full coercive power of the state to protect that right, then how are not a hypocrite?

1. There are, frankly, a number of places where one can draw the line as to what constitutes human life; and indeed I don’t see a problem with arguing that there are several forms of human life of varying degrees. In addition to viability, one could also draw a line at sentience, beating heart, etc. Ultimately, though, it’s a moral/philosophical question. Although where that line is can shift based on scientific understanding and knowledge, if you subscribe to one of these beliefs, this shift is perfectly acceptable, because it is shifting closer to where it should have been all along. While you may think that creating several different rights structures depending on fetal development is unprecedented, this does not equate to making it wrong.

2. In terms of the demand that consistency requires punishment of mothers who undergo late-term abortions, I’d note that we as a society can recognize that the choice to do so is likely to be a difficult and stressful decision that, once taken, is likely to have a lasting effect upon the mother. That effect alone could be deemed punishment enough, and I don’t think there’s anything inherently hypocritical about making such a concession. I hate to bring this up, because as a parent it’s a uniquely horrifying thought for me, but a few months back there was a Washington Post story on parents who simply forgot that their child was in the back seat of their car (often thanks to our rear-facing child seat laws, although I’ll concede those laws probably save more lives than they indirectly cause deaths), resulting in the child dying from the heat. These were not neglectful parents with a history of abuse or anything else, but doting, loving parents who simply suffered from a perfect storm of events that momentarily destroyed their short-term memory, and this type of thing happens about 20-30 times a year. Reading the article nearly brought me to tears thinking how I would be affected by being responsible for something like that; reading about several of these parents getting prosecuted made me actively angry – hadn’t they been punished enough? I suspect many people had similar reactions (indeed, many of those prosecuted are acquitted). I think a lot of people, myself included, would respond similarly to the idea of severely prosecuting women who undergo late-term abortions.

3. Finally, for purposes of this discussion, it may be worth keeping in mind that what we’re talking about here is a tiny fraction of all abortions – probably less than 1 percent: http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/06/what-we-are-debating.html

Finally, to quote my favorite essayist, it’s worth remembering that “a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds.” It’s good to have rules; but it’s even better to recognize that sometimes you have to make exceptions to those rules as a concession to reality. Perhaps we should not expect the law to make those exceptions, but I see little wrong, and much good, about individuals who are prepared to make those exceptions.

If you believe the fetus has a legal right to life, yes. Murder is what we call it when you kill a person with a legal right to life.

Is there anything inherently hypocritical about *NOT* charging her with murder for aborting her child?