kirisutogomen (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
kirisutogomen) wrote2011-09-28 03:03 am
kirisutogomen) wrote2011-09-28 03:03 am
Entry tags:
Chinese advertisements
The answer is the tag, rot13'd, but to save you the trouble, I'll tell you. First, the original ad before I mucked with it. (Yes, it was left-right mirrored like most people guessed. I'm still curious as to why among people who are entirely illiterate in Han characters the mirroring was blatantly obvious to some and not at all to others.)
And another for the same service from a competing provider:
These are ads for abortion clinics. Chinese abortion clinics advertise on prime-time television. They offer student discounts. Not sure if they have special holiday sales, nor if you get abortion coupons with your newspaper.
Now, unless you take the position that a fetus at any stage has the moral standing of a lintball but that magically at the moment the head crowns it suddenly becomes a full human person endowed with a complete set of inalienable rights plus a stylish carrying case, there's got to be a point at which you say, "Hrm. My liberal sensibilities tell me that I should advocate fiercely for a woman's right to choose, but I don't actually want people to treat abortion like a trip to the hair salon. What does my victory condition actually look like?"
And then there's the issue of sex selection, which really kicks over a Pandora's hornets' nest of other issues.
And another for the same service from a competing provider:
These are ads for abortion clinics. Chinese abortion clinics advertise on prime-time television. They offer student discounts. Not sure if they have special holiday sales, nor if you get abortion coupons with your newspaper.
Now, unless you take the position that a fetus at any stage has the moral standing of a lintball but that magically at the moment the head crowns it suddenly becomes a full human person endowed with a complete set of inalienable rights plus a stylish carrying case, there's got to be a point at which you say, "Hrm. My liberal sensibilities tell me that I should advocate fiercely for a woman's right to choose, but I don't actually want people to treat abortion like a trip to the hair salon. What does my victory condition actually look like?"
And then there's the issue of sex selection, which really kicks over a Pandora's hornets' nest of other issues.
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So, I think this rule breaks down when you consider, say, teratogens. While I'm somewhat close to the "women should have a right to have an abortion on a whim" end of the spectrum (doesn't mean I approve of the choice, but I think they should have the right), I strongly disagree with "women should have a right to ingest teratogens while carrying a baby".
Generally, my theory is that humans are mainly valued above animals for the complexity of their thinkings, feelings, and connections to other humans*. I think it is fairly clear that for thinkings and feelings, an 8 month fetus is not superior to animals that we are willing to butcher for food. So, to the extent that an 8 month fetus should have rights under my philosophy, its rights derive from the attachment that others have to it. The mother is pretty clearly the most important person here... other family members have a lesser attachment, and society at large may also have weak attachments. So, for abortions, I weigh the "women should have control over their own body" against these secondary attachments, and find that it would be hard for me to see a case where it would be clear that the mother's rights to control her body should be over-ridden because someone else thinks she should be required to keep nurturing the fetus inside of her.**
However, if the woman is planning on carrying the baby to term, then we have to consider a future being with its own set of thinking, feeling, and societal attachments, and that being, in my thought system, should have some rights, and I think that it should have a right not to be born deformed which can, in some circumstances, be weighed against the woman's right to control her body. So I would argue that taking thalidomide for a sleeping problem (or other strongly teratogenic agents) should not be allowed for a pregnant woman.
*This can explain why smarter animals - dolphins and chimps - should have more rights than dumber animals, and why animals with more attachments to humans - eg, pets and charismatic megafauna - should have more rights than animals without those attachments...
**There is some room here to think that "a whim" shouldn't outweigh, say, the father's wishes: but, I don't see a practical way to test whether the woman's desire to abort is a "whim" or a "strongly felt desire", and so I would err on the side of a stronger right to abort.
(this philosophy can also be applied to cases like Terri Schiavo or assisted suicides... in the former, brain death means that the person's value rests in their attachments, in the latter, one is weighing the person's right to do what they want with their body against, again, the attachments to other humans)
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I don't think "drinking alcohol while pregnant" should be a criminal offense. Shunned, taboo? Sure. Criminal? No. ... Nrrr, I'm using "criminal" in the sense that there's a law against that; I may be using legal terminology incorrectly here.
See above reply to rif about "what is good for society". In that vein: I think smoking in the presence of non-smokers should be taboo, because second-hand smoking is a valid danger. I think no-smoking regs get it right: it's not that you can't smoke, it's that your smoking cannot impede others in certain areas.
So I would argue that taking thalidomide for a sleeping problem (or other strongly teratogenic agents) should not be allowed for a pregnant woman.
So I'll ask you to divide the question. There's a lot of perspectives here: should it be criminal for the doctor to prescribe thalidomide for a pregnant woman? Should it be illegal for a pregnant woman to ask for such? Or only if she ingests it? (My answers are Neglect, No, and No. The "neglect" answer is that if there's willful and repeated neglect, that's criminal behaviour, but if there's a lack of evidence to support that, then I think it's not criminal behaviour -- but the doc should probably lose their certification, which is a civil matter.)
Hmm. I wonder if I'm leaning too heavily on my smokers/second-hand smoke analogy too much.
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Smoking the presence of others should be discouraged, but secondhand smoke is a weak carcinogen. Smoking anthrax-spore sticks, on the other hand, should be very much illegal.
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Carry on.
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The former is, in that specific case, also easy - no, it shouldn't be illegal either - the risk isn't that large. (my own mom had me after age 40). However, see my answer to firstfrost below about there not being a clear bright line - as the probability of a behavior causes defects increases, and the severity of the defect increases, the justification for intervention becomes higher. I realize that some might argue that even behavior with 100% of causing a severe defect should be allowed, either because of right over your own body arguments or libertarian arguments, but my opinion differs...
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A woman has condition X for which she takes Y, which treats her condition very well. Y is well-known to cause severe birth defects. Should it be illegal for her to take Y during pregnancy?
My answer is No, It's Not A Legal Issue. Now, am I going to shun her? Quite probably, knowing me. (This makes me go off on a tangent: maybe I should have a helluva lot more compassion for her condition than to judge her so harshly.) But to me, it's not a legal issue, because if she is not competent to not take this action, then Pandora's Box is now open: clearly, if she's not competent enough to make proper decisions about her baby, then she can't be trusted to drive or vote.
Put bluntly, I'd rather most women have complete agency over their bodies if the cost is that there are a few preventable birth defects. I think this -- the chances that a drink of wine will cause problems for a fetus (and therefore, future person) are so small as to be possibly non-existent -- highlights it really well. Where does that line get drawn? Are you okay with a 0.001% risk? 1%? 40%? It's not for anyone to make that decision for you.
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And yeah, if there was a saffron epidemic among fathers-to-be, it would be worth investigating, because it would be a problem. But I don't think anyone *wants* to ingest teratogens, except in cases like
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http://www.drugs.com/accutane.html
Apparently there are pretty ridiculous restrictions on "women of childbearing potential" using Accutane - it seems unlikely that there is a punishment for certifying the use of birth control and then deliberately not using it, or for taking someone else's Accutane while pregnant, but here is a case of a well-known teratogen where hypothetically someone could decide to use it for prevention of acne, and where the state has at least made an attempt to limit its use by pregnant women.
Obviously, as laid out, my "rules" don't create a bright line: where is the line between alcohol and thalidomide/accutane where the state should intervene? Certainly, I could believe that medical treatments for the health of the mother outweigh any risk to the fetus... the question is, is there ever a case where the state can come in and say "no, stop doing X".
The other case might be illegal, addictive drugs with teratogenic effects: can/should the state put an expecting mother into custody if they are known to be taking crack?
This might be something like state intervention in child-raising, only with an even more onerous line: ie, the state generally defers to parents on how to raise a kid (feed it McDonald's food every day - fine. sit it in front of a TV for 14 hours a day - fine. Lock it in a closet while you go out to party - the state comes in and takes custody), and would similarly defer to a mother on how to treat her own body except in really extreme circumstances...
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I do accept that there are people with very poor decision-making abilities, and addiction probably plays a large role in that. And we do, at some points, take people's control of their own bodies away from them when they seem really likely to damage themselves. We don't lock up smokers for their own good, but we do commit people to psychiatric care when they start making obvious suicide attempts. So I accept that there's a line of "a danger to yourself and others" that can be crossed, where a deliberate danger to a future kid you plan to give birth to can count as "others", but it seems like it would be a pretty high bar, and also it would include a lot of non-pregnant people of both sexes.
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It seems to me that in principle, the more ethically sound solution is to accept that any baby subsequently born from the pregnancy may have a cause of action against its mother. The standards could be the same as for any normal civil suit.
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