Chinese advertisements

[kirisutogomen]

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.

Comments

[rifmeister.livejournal.com]

I don't understand your response at all.

In the last paragraph, it seems as if you're arguing against mythical eugenicist opponents who want to force abortions on young women to avoiding burdening society with the costs of their children? Most of the debate in the US today is over allowing abortions, not over whether to force abortions.

To rephrase a sentence from your first paragraph: "Preventing a woman from having a late-term abortion isn't done for her benefit, it's done for the benefit of the unborn baby." So no wedge there.

So I guess I don't understand your point. I think you could construct a coherent argument, but it will involve being more careful and probably accepting additional premises beyond "X always gets to decide what to do with X's body."

[dcltdw]

Lemme try this again. I missed something earlier that's key:

What's the wedge that lets you accept quarantining people with infectious diseases but not accept preventing very late-term abortions? They are both instances of someone other than X having a say with what X does to their body with the purported goal of protecting Y.

I'm confused on a few things, so let me resort to bullet points.

1. Stupid question #1: what do you mean by "wedge"? :)

2. I think quarantines are necessary, are fine, are legal, are a good thing. (Okay, devil in the detail with regards to implementation, but I'll gloss over that.)

3. I think late-term abortion should be legal. I may disagree with the reasons a woman chooses to have one; I might shun her because of that decision. But I think it should be legal. (Actually, I'm pretty certain I have absolutely no idea why a woman would choose to have a late-term abortion, so mostly I think I should first discreetly learn why this option was taken and try to understand that.)

---

I think earlier this morning, I thought you were asking a different question, which is why you got a response that doesn't really make sense to either of us now. :)

[rifmeister.livejournal.com]

1. The word "wedge" is just my fancy way of saying "It seems like under your principle, A and B are equivalent. Tell me why they're actually different."

2. A quarantine is a situation where someone other than person X gets a say over what happens to their body.

3. A rule against late-term abortions would also be a situation where someone other than person X gets a say over what happens to their body.

What makes 2 (quarantines) morally acceptable while keeping 3 (rules against late-term abortions) morally unacceptable?

[dcltdw]

Got it, thanks.

First, I see what you did there:
What makes 2 (quarantines) morally acceptable while keeping 3 (rules against late-term abortions) morally unacceptable?

I'm not talking about what I think should or shouldn't be morally acceptable; I'm talking about what should/shouldn't be legally acceptable.

The quarantine is to protect other people; the abortion (to me) is only about the pregnant woman. I don't subscribe to "the unborn baby has rights the same as people", which I think many others do. And to anticipate a question, I draw a sharp bright line at "birth", which I realize gets fuzzy as late-term babies are viable outside the womb in the ICU.

I'll have to think about this a bit more, but I don't see a problem with "we had a medical operation, and now the fetus is aborted" and "we had a medical operation, and now the pre-term baby is in the ICU". Mostly because what I'm really comparing that to is "did we preserve the self-determination agency of a person?", to which the answer in both cases is Yes, and that Yes trumps the earlier questions.

---

I feel like I have a quibble here as well with your quarantine analogy. A quarantine limits where I can go, but not what I can do with my body. I don't think it makes your analogy invalid, but I think it limits how far the analogy can be taken.

[rifmeister.livejournal.com]

So what's the basis for the sharp bright line? Why is the baby ten minutes before birth an unperson, and ten minutes after has full rights? I find the sharp bright line extremely puzzling --- you yourself "realize it gets fuzzy" --- and it seems like that's the fundamental difference between our positions. You seem to be saying, "You don't think any unborn baby, no matter how close to term, has any rights at all." I'm curious why you feel that way.

[dcltdw]

Separability of people. Pre-birth, the baby is inside; post-birth, the baby is outside. So the rule of "you get to decide for yourself", to me, becomes easy to distinguish at the moment of birth.

[twe.livejournal.com]

Except, it's not like a newborn yet has the mental capacity to decide anything for itself. Plus babies born even many weeks early are usually viable...

The brain development is pretty constant and things like the circulatory system having been working for a while, it's more than at birth, the respiratory and digestive systems "go live."

[dcltdw]

Sure, and critical analysis doesn't come fully online until 23 or 25, I think.

I'm not seeing the final point you're building up to, though. (Put another way, I see a bunch of interesting facts, but not how they tie together.)

[twe.livejournal.com]

Thus I do not think a bright line at birth makes sense. Clearer?

I mean, just because they haven't separated yet, doesn't mean they aren't separable.

[dcltdw]

Not yet.

How does this tie into whether what a person does with their own body is or isn't legal?

I think you're discussing when legal oversight of a child begins and ends (or perhaps, what kinds of legal autonomy a child should have until the age of majority, whenever that is), which is important, but a different matter.

[twe.livejournal.com]

No, I'm saying there's no good reason to draw a bright line between first inhalation of outside air when weighing "person" A's rights versus person B's right [to do whatever they want to their own body]. I mean, if I go punch someone in the nose, I'm controlling what I do with my own body, and yet I think we'd both agree that's not within my rights.

So I'm back to repeating rifmeister's question. What's your basis for this sharp bright line? The people are separable well before they typically separate.

[dcltdw]

I mean, if I go punch someone in the nose, I'm controlling what I do with my own body, and yet I think we'd both agree that's not within my rights.

This is just a variant of the quarantine or smoking examples: you can do whatever you want with your body, so long as it doesn't affect anyone else.

What's your basis for this sharp bright line? The people are separable well before they typically separate.

One is completely dependent on the other before birth, and not afterwards. We-ll, actually, that's not strictly true: see astra_nomer's point about saving the life of the mother.

I also still don't see the connection to the legal issue. I see a moral issue here, certainly, but not a legal connection.

[twe.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm totally not following your arguments here. (Legal issue?)

First breathe of air is an arbitrary point to award a baby/fetus status as "anyone else" ("so long as it doesn't affect anyone else"), especially in a day and age when such a thing (birth) can be scheduled and preemies regularly live to adulthood.

Plus they're pretty dependent after they take that first breathe too.

[dcltdw]

Yeah, I'm totally not following your arguments here. (Legal issue?)

From the original post:

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?"

The legal issue is: what degree of self-determination does a person have over their own body?

You're bringing up interesting biological questions, but I don't see how they relate to the legal issue. They are quite interesting from a philosophical standpoint, or a biological standpoint, or a moral standpoint.

[twe.livejournal.com]

I see, so you're saying (in answer to rif's question of why you _feel_ there should be a bright sharp line between person and un-person at the moment of birth) if because legally that's the way it is.

I wasn't actually debating the legal issue, though I do think that things are complicated enough that boiling it down do a bright line and a one sentence slogan misses a lot of important stuff.

As to what degree of self-determination *does* a person have over their own body, my guess is that legally the answer is currently quite a lot, but less than 100%. (Though I think Cael was pondering replacing "does" with "should.")

[psychohist.livejournal.com]

I think it's more that legally, bright lines are needed; legal grey areas tend to get abused by whoever has more power.

By the way, there are also substantial biological changes that happen in a short period at birth, particularly with vaginal births. Those changes may or may not define what is or isn't human, but it's far from a smooth, continuous change.

[astra-nomer.livejournal.com]

Actually, I'm pretty certain I have absolutely no idea why a woman would choose to have a late-term abortion

The vast majority of late-term abortions happen when either
1) a horrible defect is discovered in the fetus
2) the health and/or life of the mother becomes at risk

This is why I am opposed to any bans on late-term abortion.

[dcltdw]

Thanks for the info! Yay, learned something today.

[twe.livejournal.com]

Okay, I really don't get why anyone opposes abortions when the mother's life is at risk. I feel that ought to fall under "self-defense."

[psychohist.livejournal.com]

The mother's life is at risk to some degree in any birth, even if it is a fraction of a percent in normal cases. I think those that oppose it generally feel it will be, in their view, abused to permit what is effectively abortion on demand.