41–50 of 98 posts
We need to regulate these large, ubiquitous platforms as we would the town square or any other public infrastructure.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The saddest part to me is that two women are going to face prison time, effectively ruining their lives. Could the fetus have survived? Who could say. Would the fetus have had a good quality of life? Who could say. I can say for sure that two humans are experiencing something truly, truly awful and may be forced into enduring the awfulness for years to come.
> Could the fetus have survived? Who could say. Can someone ELI5 why this is the standard? Shouldn't it be something more reasonable like "has a relatively developed brain", "can experience pain", "shows early signs of consciousness", "has major organs", "is a recognizably bipedal/human lifeform", etc? Every cutoff I've encountered seems to be entirely subjective and like it reduces down to "whatever I find political…
Humans are somewhat unique in that they can't. Our fetuses are parasitic, and attempt to force the mother to carry them to term through endocrinological trucks. Except... We can now disrupt that parasitism and join every other mammalian species in giving mothers the authority over whether their bodies supply resources to a developing clump of cells within them.
We choose, however, in some parts of the world to not give women control of the resources in their body and instead tell them, "this fetus could become a human, so you are required to use your resources to make it so."
Until the fetus is viable on its own, it's literally in a parasitic relationship with the mother. It might have human-like traits, but until it's capable of surviving outside of that parasitic relationship, I'm inclined to give the mother the authority to say whether they want to play host.
>In this case, Burgess was 28 weeks pregnant, which is later in pregnancy than mifepristone and misoprostol are recommended for use. 28 weeks is, of course, 7 months. Third trimester elective abortion is illegal in the UK, Spain, France, Germany...
(I'll probably get down voted for this because whenever I bring this kind of thing up people seem to get personally offended. Even though it's not your talking point, you picked up somewhere recently)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The saddest part to me is that two women are going to face prison time, effectively ruining their lives. Could the fetus have survived? Who could say. Would the fetus have had a good quality of life? Who could say. I can say for sure that two humans are experiencing something truly, truly awful and may be forced into enduring the awfulness for years to come.
> Could the fetus have survived? Who could say. Can someone ELI5 why this is the standard? Shouldn't it be something more reasonable like "has a relatively developed brain", "can experience pain", "shows early signs of consciousness", "has major organs", "is a recognizably bipedal/human lifeform", etc? Every cutoff I've encountered seems to be entirely subjective and like it reduces down to "whatever I find political…
Morally, arguments are just as strong in terms of the fetus putting the mother at risk, or the obligations on society to force the mother to behave in ways that care for the fetus and later for the child itself, with limited support or assistance.
Similarly, you can claim that life is life even if it obligates others to sacrifices of their own.
Both arguments also have their equal share of counterpoints.
The thing is, it's a decision, similar to deciding that suicide is a crime. You believe what you want, and choose what you'd prefer the rules to be, but society must kind of all agree to those decisions so we can coexist in harmony, find some compromise amongst ourselves.
For a lot of things, people tend to agree more easily on what they'd prefer. Would you rather have the right to kill others, but it means you could in turn be killed by others, or would you rather lose your right to kill and similarly have others prevented from killing you?
What if something lives inside you, drains you of energy, blood, minerals, food, could cause health complications, and will require lifelong time and financial support and commitment. What if you didn't consent to this thing living in you, maybe it was rape or accidental? Would you rather be allowed to choose to care for it or not? Or would you rather that had it been you living inside a host, you'd have the right to live no matter the choice of your carrier and to their sacrifice or to the circumstances of your conception?
Some people feel at that point, little would be lost to them, so they'd rather get to choose to carry or not. Others feel differently. Everyone might have their own reasons.
There are other options as well, often not discussed, because people are just trying to get their way most of the time.
Men don't have this problem at all, so it is less surprising when they think that the carrier should be forced to carry, since they will never be the one in the "being forced to carry" position themselves. Complicating the matter even more, since we're not all as impacted by the issue itself.
So often a compromise has to be found in practice. A middle ground looks like allowing it but not past some time, gives you enough time to decide what you want, but wait too long and the choice is made for you. Exceptions can be made for special cases, those can be listed.
You'll find people unwilling to compromise as well on both sides.
It's how it goes.
The point being, there is no science to draw on for the cutoff, unless you contextualize it with other arbitrary criteria, and even then, a lot of those criteria are subjective, like "consciousness", that's not a scientific concept, we cannot observe, prove or disprove it, understand nothing of it's mechanisms if it exists, etc.
This gives a different reason why "They're a private company, they can implement any policies they want", is a horrible argument. Even for the cases where you happen to agree with the outcome. We need to regulate these large, ubiquitous platforms as we would the town square or any other public infrastructure.
This is an incredibly sad story all around. The saddest part, to me, was that for whatever reason they chose to wait rather than legally ending the pregnancy much earlier. The fetus aborted was 28 weeks, or 7 months, and almost certainly viable.
This is an incredibly sad story all around. The saddest part, to me, was that for whatever reason they chose to wait rather than legally ending the pregnancy much earlier. The fetus aborted was 28 weeks, or 7 months, and almost certainly viable.
> The fetus aborted was 28 weeks, or 7 months, and almost certainly viable Never surprises me that HN is full of world-class doctors who can provide a medical conclusion based simply on a news story.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
My understanding is that a court order is not an immediate, absolute command with zero recourse or ability to have one's lawyers respond? Surely Facebook could have done something , even if it wasn't ultimately successful?
I fully believe abortion should be reasonably legal, and if it were more accessible it may have prevented a lot of the tragedy of this case. But given the details in this article, it seems like this case would be criminal even in that hypothetical world.
This is an incredibly sad story all around. The saddest part, to me, was that for whatever reason they chose to wait rather than legally ending the pregnancy much earlier. The fetus aborted was 28 weeks, or 7 months, and almost certainly viable.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Could the fetus have survived? Much more likely than not at 28 weeks. ~50% viability is like a month earlier than that. > Would the fetus have had a good quality of life? Roughly even or better chances of lasting complications. Of course, some percentage of babies delivered at every stage of pregnancy have a chance of lasting complications. You could throw a "who could say" after anything you want.
And you have sufficient information about the parents in this case to say there were no complications factors or social challenges that may have caused those numbers to deviate from "normal"? My point is you cannot apply the average case to each individual case. You don't have enough data to confidently say "more likely than not" for this case.
I'm working with the same information you are. All we know is that it was 28 weeks. That gives it a > 50% survival chance if delivered in a hospital in the US. You might come to a different number if you used different sources, or if you had more information. But "we can't know for certain" is just a truism; nobody's saying we know anything for certain. We're just estimating the probability based on what we do know.