Dr. Tiller, Twilight and abortion.

So, I found this hilarious re-edit of the New Moon (sequel to Twilight) film. It addresses half human, half vampire babies, werewolves, sex and abortion. Which leads me to my next point.

I read in the news recently that some guy killed the only doctor in the States that performed 2nd and 3rd trimester abortions. My first reaction was what sort of situation requires that late an abortion? Then I read this article: http://www.salon.com/mwt/broadsheet/feature/2009/06/01/late_term_abortion/
Then my other reaction was Bill O'Reilly, and the people that killed Dr Tiller were jerks.

Here's some evidence of Bill O'Reilly being a jerk, and Fox News unbiased and fair coverage:


Some of the cases Dr Tiller had to deal with were quite tragic. He was a pretty brave doctor, considering the politcal and legal climate in the states regarding abortion, in the first trimester alone.

Then that reminded me of Crushedbyingsoc's post on abortion: http://crushedwithkisses.blogspot.com/2009/03/contraception-abortion-and.html. His arguments seem to be a mix between what R. Dworkin defines as the derivative and detached views.

Derivative view: Foetuses are human from the moment of conception, and hence they have rights and interests that must be protected. Hence abortion is bad because it violates basic human rights.

Detached view: Human life is intrinsically valuable or sacred, and abortion is bad because it's a cosmic shame to waste life.

Crushed explains why certain religions found contraception to be murder: before we had scientific knowledge of what life was, we thought that spermatozoa were miniature humans. Now we know that's not true.

From a biological point of view, spermatozoa and ovum are not single celled organisms. They are cells of the human body. Think of them like skin cells. You don't make a huge fuss about killing skin cells yeah? So human sex cells are not lifeforms.

Erm... I guess I wanted to prove why Dr Tiller shouldn't have died.

From the pro-life view, even if Dr. Tiller was a murderer (murder: the intent to kill a human being), it does not mean that someone has the right to murder him. According to the law, if an individual violates the rights of another person, it is legitimate to restrict the rights of that individual. But the people who have the right to restrict rights are officers of the law, not offended citizens. In my view, the murderer of Dr. Tiller should go to jail.

In the article, Dr Tiller has performed abortions for women who "included women diagnosed with cancer who needed abortions to qualify for chemotherapy, women who learned late in their pregnancies that their wanted babies had fatal illnesses, and rape victims so young they didn't realize they were pregnant for months."

So the first thing the article listed was pregnant cancer patients. Lets assume that these cancer patients would die before childbirth. So if the woman didn't qualify for chemotherapy, she would die before giving birth, or before carrying the child long enough for it to survive in intensive care. Which would kill both mother and baby. Now from a derivative view, some would say that it is better to let the mother die, than to actively kill the baby. But in this case, lets say that doing nothing kills them both. Then, we've lost 2 lives, rather than one. Which is bad, no matter which view you look at it from. So I guess it's legitimate to carry out late term abortions in this case.

The second thing that the article mentioned was that Dr Tiller performed abortions for "women who learned late in their pregnancies that their wanted babies had fatal illnesses." In this case, if we assume that these fatal illness would cause enough pain to the child once it is born to amount to torture, we could say that giving birth to the child would violate the right to bodily dignity (ie the right not to be tortured). So to give birth a child that will suffer tremendous pain is cruel, so perhaps an abortion here would also be considered legitimate (from both the derivative and detached view).

In the third case mentioned: "rape victims so young they didn't realize they were pregnant for months", I think that we have to talk about the rights of the mother over that of the child. It's pretty obvious that an pregnant 11 year old rape victim would be further traumatised by the birth of a child right? The process of childbirth could probably amount to a form of mental and physical torture.

The pro-life camp would argue that a child in the late second trimester has reached viability (ie that it can survive through care in an incubator if taken out via surgery), and hence it counts legally as a person, and has the right to life.

How can you balance the rights of the mother and the rights of the child? Currently, there doesn't seem to be a legal answer to this, so I'll discuss this on a theoretical level. J.J. Thomson