If a doctor in good conscience believes that the life of a fetus is infinitely more important than the life of its mother, then I guess he can't perform abortions, can he?

That's a strawman argument, Jimmy. The NPR article clearly describes women who desire abortions at will, not medically necessary ones. The true distinction here is women who place little to no value on the life of an early fetus vs. doctors who value them equally.

1. Isn't the medical necessity for an abortion something for the mother and a doctor to figure out?  Clearly, as the person who has to carry the fetus to term, the mother ought to be given extra weight in the decision shouldn't she?

2. If you were to ask Dr. DeCook, he would likely say there is no such thing as a medical necessity which could justify an abortion.  So, for those women (even those whose physical wellbeing is threatened by a pregnancy) are sort of out of luck according to Dr. DeCook.

3. There is a good and valid reason why this business of where life begins is a medical question rather than a matter of religious faith in the context of abortions.  An ob/gyn is a medical doctor with a patient.  The primary patient is the woman, not the fetus.  If the woman wishes to carry the fetus to term, then the medical doctor is duty bound to protect the health of both fetus and mother.  But, if the woman comes to the doctor and expresses a desire to terminate the pregnancy, the medical doctor's first responsibility is to serve the woman and not the fetus.  If he or she can't bring themselves to perform the necessary operation themselves, it really is a matter of ethics that he put the patient in the hands of someone licensed and prepared to perform it safely.

Illegitimi non carborundum.

Clearly, as the person who has to carry the fetus to term, the mother ought to be given extra weight in the decision shouldn't she?

The whole point of a doctor's opinion is to have a recommendation from an unbiased expert. "Medically necessary" in this case means "the life of the mother and/or child is at risk," which should generally be clear to someone with the appropriate training and experience.

If you were to ask Dr. DeCook, he would likely say there is no such thing as a medical necessity which could justify an abortion.

I disagree. Medical history is filled with examples of pregnancies where the strain has overburdened the woman's health. I don't think we can answer what Dr. DeCook would say in those cases without asking him.

But, if the woman comes to the doctor and expresses a desire to terminate the pregnancy, the medical doctor's first responsibility is to serve the woman and not the fetus.

Here also, I disagree with your assessment of the doctor's responsibility. The doctor's medical commitment need extend no further than to say, "You appear to be in fine health; I see no reason why this procedure is medically necessary." Take the corollary example of someone who wishes to have an open prescription to opiates, but the doctor recommends drug counseling instead. That the doctor is not acting as the patient desires is not necessarily at odds with the doctor fulfilling medical obligations.

Mulling it over, medical necessity is besides the point.  Therapeutic abortion is a completely legal procedure, therefore there is no need to prove medical necessity to receive an abortion.  And, based upon the way Dr. DeCook phrases his opposition to simply referring a woman for an abortion, I think I'm safe in assuming that he would never be able to see the need for an abortion.

Illegitimi non carborundum.

Therapeutic abortion is a completely legal procedure, therefore there is no need to prove medical necessity to receive an abortion.

You're absolutely right -- and the women who want one have the complete freedom to turn to any medical directory in order to find someone who will provide an abortion. None of that translates to a requirement that a doctor provide references for a procedure he won't perform, nor should it.

The whole point of a doctor's opinion is to have a recommendation from an unbiased expert.

Obviously, the doctors in question are not unbiased.  McDonalds' is still hiring.

The NPR article clearly describes women who desire abortions at will, not medically necessary ones. The true distinction here is women who place little to no value on the life of an early fetus

Very loaded terms you're using here. If I didn't know better, I'd infer  that women are cavalier in their choice to end a pregnancy.

Strawman, indeed.

Very loaded terms you're using here.

I apologize, ms_sue. I was trying to be precise, but that shouldn't have led me to impugn the motives of the women concerned.

I appreciate the clarification, gerrymander.

The NPR article clearly describes women who desire abortions at will

Foolish women, trying to decide for themselves.  We were warned letting them vote would lead to this.

The true distinction here is women who place little to no value on the life of an early fetus vs. doctors who value them equally.

The true distinction here is doctors who respect the decisions of their patients vs. doctors who consider themselves to be the voice of God.

How many of those doctors who value feti are adopting the ones they refuse to abort?

Foolish women, trying to decide for themselves.

Perhaps those foolish women could decide to open a phone book and inquire "do you perform abortions?" instead of trying to make someone else do their work.

Referrals are part of a doctor's work.  If he won't do his work, McDonalds' is always hiring.

Then maybe he or she needs to find a new job. You don't see too many Muslim pig farmers, no?

That's an irrelevant example, port1080. Eating pork is forbidden by Islam, so pig farming would be somewhat at odds with those edicts. Obstetrics is intended to care for and assist with the health and well-being of women and developing children during pregnancy -- bringing children to term safely and healthily is the entire point of the discipline.

The way I see the analogy, raising pigs is part of being a pig farmer, and giving women the care they want is part of being an ob/gyn. Doctors should be held to a higher standard, pure and simple. How would you feel if your doctor suddenly converted to Christian Science and decided that you didn't need any medications - either God would heal you or he wouldn't. Would you want him to disclose up front that he didn't believe in prescribing medicine anymore, and want him to give you a referral to another doctor? Or would you feel that since your doctor couldn't "in good conscience" give you medicine, that's cool, you'll just wait and see what happens and hope that God comes through for you?

There's actually a lot more to Christian Science than simply praying to god. Learning a healthy diet is an often forgotten part of the religion--strict Christian Scientists tend to have diets not too far off from vegans plus a little of certain meats thrown in--ie no/low dairy, carb, etc. Organic and whole foods also tend to be important to them. It's an interesting part of the religion considering they're not exactly dying off like shakers.

It is easy to buy small plaster models of what you think life is like.

Organic and whole foods also tend to be important to them. It's an interesting part of the religion considering they're not exactly dying off like shakers. Umm, Shakers took a vow of celibacy and don't have sex or children of their own. For a while they took in orphans to replenish their ranks, but eventually they decided that was immoral, so they quit doing that too. That's why they're dying off. It doesn't have anything to do with belief or medical treatment or refusal thereof.

And while they apparently weren't Christian Scientists, here's a sick case of some parents who did "just pray to Jesus" and didn't exactly get the results they wanted:

Police are investigating an 11-year-old girl's death from an undiagnosed, treatable form of diabetes after her parents chose to pray for her rather than take her to a doctor...

She had probably been ill for about a month, suffering symptoms such as nausea, vomiting, excessive thirst, loss of appetite and weakness...

Family members elsewhere called authorities to seek help for the girl.

"My sister-in-law, she's very religious, she believes in faith instead of doctors ...," the girl's aunt told a sheriff's dispatcher Sunday afternoon in a call from California. "And she called my mother-in-law today ... and she explained to us that she believes her daughter's in a coma now and she's relying on faith."

The dispatcher got more information from the caller and asked whether an ambulance should be sent.

"Please," the woman replied. "I mean, she's refusing. She's going to fight it. ... We've been trying to get her to take her to the hospital for a week, a few days now."

The aunt called back with more information on the family's location, emergency logs show. Family friends also made a 911 call from the home. Police and paramedics arrived within minutes and immediately called for an ambulance that took her to a hospital.

But less than an hour after authorities reached the home, Madeline -- a bright student who left public school for home schooling this semester -- was declared dead.

That's such a shame considering that a non-processed food diet has been clinically shown to be even more effective at combating diabetes than the one proscribed by the ADA.

It is easy to buy small plaster models of what you think life is like.

The type of diabetes this girl had - I'm guessing type 1, since type 2 is more common in overweight children and from the photo that goes with the article she looks pretty skinny - probably wouldn't have responded to just a change in diet. Type 1 is an autoimmune disorder, as opposed to type 2 which is caused by poor eating habits. If she had just gone on your non-processed foods diet she'd probably be just as dead (indeed, the article you linked to acknowledges that - they only used people with non-insulin-dependent diabetes - i.e. fairly mild cases, usually of type 2 - in the study).

I really hate Godwin's Law because it tends to derail threads when a Nazi reference is actually relevant (or force me to waste paragraphs defending the reference), but here goes anyway: The defense "he was only obeying orders" is well known from Nazi days, and the moral bankruptcy of that is also well known.

If you're being ordered to do something wrong, and you do it, it's your responsibility.  This responsibility can't be foisted on any others, especially on the person who gave you the orders.  Just because we call the person who gives the orders a "patient" rather than a "Nazi officer" or a "Milgram experiment scientist" doesn't change this.  It's not so much that we're giving the doctor's the authority to decide right and wrong, but rather that we can't take away the doctor's responsibility to decide right and wrong.  A patient can't say "do what's in my best interests, and ignore any implications this may have for other people".  If the doctor refers the patient to someone who kills others for their organs, the doctor himself is being evil; he can't say he only has responsibilities to his patient, because as a human being, he has responsibilities to everyone.

It seems strange in the abortion example because the belief itself is strange, so it has strange consequences.  Anyone who truly believes abortion is murder would be morally obliged to treat it just like killing strangers to get their organs for the patient.

I'll cheerfully continue the discussion in defiance of Godwin's law in the belief that there is more here to chew on. As long as we don't end up calling each other jew killers I suspect good intent can be assumed all around.

The first point I'd like to make is that we're talking about two different things. Patients don't give orders to doctors -- patients elect/decide on which procedures are appropriate for them. The doctors ethical responsibility is to layout all valid legal treatment options but its the patient who must then decides which course of treatment to take - because the patient most directly bears the risk.

A doctor might say 'look this leg infection can be treated with a course of antibiotics with success rates of 95%, or we can just saw off the leg for 100% elimination of the infection'..the patient must be the one who decides which option works for him. If you let the doctor decide based on his own criteria (all men should have their legs cut off, antibiotics are the devils brew, patient is a criminal and doesn't deserve valuable antibiotics which could be used to save innocent children), then you are creating a healthcare program in which arbitrary factors plays a role in treatment.

Now going back to the Nazi idea -- there are a host of things associated with medical care which people have moral objections to. Stem cell research, transgendered people having babies [btw, I consider myself opened minded but that picture of the guy/woman kinda threw me], plastic surgery, blood transfusions and of course abortion.

Depending on the moral philosophy you choose to follow, all or none of these might be ethically wrong in an individuals mind. I agree with you that everyone needs to follow their own conscience - no arguments from this libertarian on that count -- but being a doctor (to me) is very similar to being lawyer -- it means you have taken an oath which promises to serve your patient and refrain from harming him/her. If you can't meet the requirements of that oath, then a service profession  is not the right job for you -- certain self-imposed obligations DO constrain the choices you can take. Doctors accept an explicit duty of care to their patients - allowing them to shirk it because they feel an additional duty to society/conscience is an ethical non-starter.

Memory is a strange bell, jubilee and knell.

Someone is telling the doctor that it is okay for him to ignore his personal ethics for the sake of acting in his patient's best interests.  It's true that the patient isn't giving orders about each specific medical procedure, but the exact details aren't important.  Basically, you have someone excusing the doctor from following his ethical code in order to do a job.

And the lesson of the Nazis is that nobody can excuse you from following your ethical code in order to do a job.

If you can't meet the requirements of that oath, then a service profession  is not the right job for you -- certain self-imposed obligations DO constrain the choices you can take.

Doctors have a legal monopoly.  The ethical code isn't self-imposed, it's government-imposed.  If it really was self-imposed, you'd have doctors who don't perform abortions the same way you have butchers who don't sell pork.

I haven't discussed the value of life of the fetus, which I presume is the other half of the equation to which you refer.  I did deliberately omit it since my discussion was long enough as it was, and I never really have time to explore every aspect of a given issue, short of writing an actual book.  

A fetus does not have the same value as a person, it is merely a potential person.  All the time and effort which is invested in the process of maturation, both by the individual as he or she progresses from a zygote to an embryo, a  fetus, a child, and eventually an adult, and also by the parents and society in general in helping the individual with that maturation process, adds value.  A mere clump of cells hasn't learned anything, has no memories, no skills, no inter-personal connections other than an umbilical cord, no accomplishments, and so forth.  It is silly to value such a clump of cells to the same extent as we would value an adult person.

Even so, as a mere potential person, there is SOME value to that fetus.

I haven't discussed the value of life of the fetus, which I presume is the other half of the equation to which you refer.

No. Sorry. I was referring to men, after reading this:

One of the moral complexities of the whole abortion debate (much as I personally am a staunch defender of a woman's right to choose) is that in a great many cases, it is sheer carelessness on the part of women who fail to use contraceptives, even when they are readily available, which leads to the demand for abortion....

Women should use contraceptives to avoid unwanted pregnancies and hence abortions, which are always worth avoiding when possible....

But even if all women were meticulously careful in using contraceptives to avoid unwanted pregnancies...

Yes, certainly, men share responsibility with their female partners, for any needed contraception.  I also think that since it is the women who will become pregnant in the event of a failure of contraception, women have a more pressing motive to either use, or require their male partners to use, whatever form of contraception that they think is most appropriate.  (Although one could argue that men also have a pressing motive, because even though they will not get pregnant, they may still be sued for child support.)  Women have every right to ask a lover to use contraception, and men must respect such requests (or if men do not wish to do so, their other option is to end the relationship and seek some other woman whose wishes are more in line with their own).  Sex should always be a cooperative venture, and both partners must agree about how it is going to take place, and about whether pregnancy is or is not a desired outcome.  

What about teenagers?  They are  potential people too!

It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine

Ho ho!  Teenagers as a category come very close to being adults, and certainly, we would not be too quick to get rid of them on the grounds that their parents are too busy to raise them.  They are usually viable in other social contexts, even if they cannot get along with their parents.

Of course, the degree of maturation is only one of several variables which affect the value of an individual.  Even among zygotes, not all are of the same quality in terms of genetics.  A genetically defective zygote is not as valuable as a genetically normal zygote, and doubtlessly there is such a thing as a genetically superior zygote as well, although we don't really know enough about genetics to sort them out in advance of the later stages of development, when their quality will become more apparent.

Merely because someone has gone through the full maturation process to become an adult, does not in itself mean that such a person necessarily has value.  There are adults whose lives are entirely parasitical and who contribute nothing of any value to the society in which they live.  Some adults devote themselves to actively harming their fellow human beings, and we would be much better off without them.

There are many kinds of teenagers.  Some would be in the category of being too immature to contribute in any meaningful way to human society, yet they still have the capacity for further maturation and for eventually becoming valuable members of society.  Others have already ruined their lives beyond repair.  And still others are already valuable members of society, at an early age.

All of this is, of course, contrary to the American ideal that "all men are created equal".  I personally see that ideal as being applicable to the design of laws, which should treat people impartially.  But in reality, people are far from equal.  And certainly, a fetus is not equal to a child.  There is a significant difference.  

Merely because someone has gone through the full maturation process to become an adult, does not in itself mean that such a person necessarily has value.  There are adults whose lives are entirely parasitical and who contribute nothing of any value to the society in which they live.  Some adults devote themselves to actively harming their fellow human beings, and we would be much better off without them.

That judgment should be reserved for their mothers.  If your mother says you aren't worth saving, then capital punishment should be OK.

That is certainly an innovative idea for the legal system, that capital punishment should only be permitted with the approval of the mother of the criminal in question.  The biggest problem that I can see with this strategy is that not everybody has a living mother to deliver such an opinion, and it hardly seems fair that the accidental circumstance of outliving your mother should in itself confer legal immunity to capital punishment, while others whose mothers are still living remain eligible for execution.  And what if a man deliberately murders his own mother, just to ensure that she will never sentence him to death?  You could be encouraging a whole wave of matricide with this new policy.

Yes, if someone's mother is not alive to decide, then they would be immune from capital punishment.  If you are eager to have the state kill people, then that is a problem.  If you want to be careful that the state doesn't kill someone unjustifiably, then it's not as much of a problem, since you can always lock those people up for life.

I can see the point of your argument.  If mothers are to be allowed to kill an unborn fetus at will, simply because they do not wish to carry it to term, then why not also grant them the power to condemn their adult children to death as well?  But still, my initial comments pointing out that there is a meaningful difference between the value of the human organism at different stages of life, due to the various kinds of investment which have been made over time, from the zygote, the creation of which is generally considered to be fun, rather than work, to all the later stages which have ever-increasing amounts of time and effort invested in them both by other people and by the maturing organism itself, have already explained why I would favor the right of mothers to exercise the God-like power of life and death over a fetus, whereas once a baby is born, it enters into a different category, and it is deserving of greater legal protection.  

Also, since mothers of unwanted babies can always give them up for adoption, there is no worthy purpose served by killing them, only the unworthy purpose of mothers who are embarrassed to have given birth out of wedlock, or who have other purely psychological problems such as post-partum psychosis.  Those are not good reasons for a baby to have to die.  But terminating an unwanted pregnancy by abortion is still a reasonable procedure.  A fetus is, in my view, only a potential person, not an actual person.  Others, of course, think differently.  Even those who think that life begins with conception can find at least some common ground with me; as I have previously said, it is always better to avoid pregnancy in the first place than to have to abort a pregnancy after it has occurred.  But I will not agree that the rights of an unborn fetus take precedence over those of the mother.  As for an unruly teenager, by that stage we have to weigh the rights of both parent and child, since both have rights that cannot lightly be violated.  If a child simply cannot get along with its parents, it is time to find some other guardian.  

why not also grant them the power to condemn their adult children to death as well?

Adult (or even young) children have the capacity to decide for themselves.  Unborn children do not, and their mothers are the people best able to decide for them. Society at large has demonstrated often enough that it is not.

I do not see abortion as being a decision of the fetus, whether to live or not to live, that is made on behalf of the fetus by the mother, due to the inability of the fetus to make its own decisions.  That would place abortion in the category of assisted suicide, which is not what abortion really is.  Abortion is, rather, a decision purely by the mother, on behalf of herself only, that she does not wish to bear a child.  I support the right of women to make such decisions.  To inflict unwanted pregnancies and unwanted children upon women, is not good for the women in question, not good for the unwanted children, and not good for society.  Child rearing should be a voluntary process.  It is difficult enough even for those who have willingly chosen to do it.

I cannot decipher your concluding sentence, "Society at large has demonstrated often enough that it is not."  I do not know what "it" refers to, neither do I know what it is that "it" is not.  Very mysterious.  

Society has often enough demonstrated that society is not best able to decide for individuals.  E.g., victimless crime legislation.

I agree with you that society has often proved to be incompetent at making decisions for individuals.  At the same time, we recognize that there are some circumstances in which society does need to make decisions for individuals.  Your example of laws about victimless crimes is interesting, because that also bears on the whole abortion debate.  Is abortion a victimless crime, insofar as the mother is merely making a choice about her own body, or is there a victim, in the person of the fetus who is aborted?  That depends upon when the status of human being is conferred upon the new organism as it develops in its various stages.  Personally, as I have mentioned, I don't believe that a mere clump of cells, at such an early phase of development that it is not capable of thought, should be given the same status as a person, even though it potentially can become a person.  If an embryo, or even a zygote can be considered to be a person on the basis that it has the potential to become a person, then we could also conclude that every ovum in a woman's ovaries is also a person, since it can potentially be fertilized and become a zygote, and failure to perform such fertilization would therefore be yet another form of murder, much as the pro-life fanatics claim that abortion is murder.  This would obviously be a ridiculous conclusion.  

Human morality should not be designed to generate the maximum possible number of births, despite the fact that every person potentially has something good, perhaps even something wonderful, that he or she might contribute to the human race (although at the same time, there is never any guarantee that any given person will ever contribute anything to the human race).  Who knows, it could be some woman's twentieth child, rather than her first, which is destined to grow up to be a great scientist, a great composer, a great writer, a great political leader, etc.  We don't know.  Does this mean that every woman therefore should have twenty children?  Obviously not.  We would very rapidly reach the point at which most people would be dying of starvation, because the world simply cannot produce enough food for such a vast population, and no amount of brilliant musical compositions (etc.) is going to compensate for that.  

So reproduction, like most things, is best done in moderation.

Is abortion a victimless crime, insofar as the mother is merely making a choice about her own body, or is there a victim, in the person of the fetus who is aborted?  

Is not having an abortion a victimless crime, if the child is born into a situation where he cannot get the care he needs to grow into a functional member of society?

It is recognized that children do not have the same rights as adults, and that those rights are abdicated to their parents.  As children become older and more able to decide for themselves, fewer and fewer of those rights are abdicated, until they reach majority.

A zygote or a fetus is at a stage where it is unable to decide whether the situation it will be born into is satisfactory, therefore the right to make that decision is abdicated to its mother, since she (rather than a judge, the Pope, or a doctor) is in the best position to make the judgment.  If she does not feel capable of providing the child what it needs to grow to adulthood, then she has the responsibility to that child not to allow it to be born into that situation.  Yes, she could give the child up for adoption, but that means she still has to raise it for nine months within the inadequate vessel of her body.

There are people who have attributed the recent drops in violent crime to the responsible decisions made by the mothers of children who decided that they could not raise them adequately and therefore decided to abort them.

Your point is quite valid.  It is indeed a crime to bring children into the world if those children will be born into circumstances of inadequate care and parenting, with the likely result of unhappy childhoods and dysfunctional lives even as adults.  This is the most compelling argument (and one which I have also made, in other discussions) for the pro-choice faction.  The pro-life faction imagines itself to be the great champion of the rights of the unborn, yet they seem to be quite indifferent to the fate of children after they are born.  It makes no sense to care so deeply about the survival or a fetus, and to be indifferent to the quality of life that it will experience after being born.

One could also argue that some women, perhaps quite a lot of them, are more concerned about their own personal convenience when they get an abortion, because they just don't want to do all the work that is involved in raising a child, rather than having any concern about the happiness of the child or the consequences of an unhappy childhood upon the later success or failure of that person as an adult.  But even so, the argument remains valid.  Women who don't want children, whatever their motives may be, are likely to be bad mothers if anti-abortion laws or activists succeed in forcing them to have children anyway.  It is not in our interest as a society to create dysfunctional families.

That judgment should be reserved for their mothers.  If your mother says you aren't worth saving, then capital punishment should be OK.

Lest anyone think you're joking, I remember your going on about this at great length on Plastic. Of course, you still could be joking...I hope.

But back then, you seemed to be seriously arguing that a mother should have the right to decide whether her child should live or die (We're not talking about a terminally ill child, btw).

I didn't understand it or think it was funny then, and I don't now. I've read some bizarre train of thoughts around here, but this one takes the cake.

Well, Sue, some people are Just Plain Bad, no sense keeping them around.  However, the only person I would trust to make this judgment is that person's mother.  I certainly wouldn't let a prosecutor or a random assortment of people off the voting rolls (same thing, really) do it.

Your only argument against it that I recall was "that's ridiculous."  Cogent, but it lacks logical support.

Jimmy Havok, your mom's on the phone. :-)

But seriously, just because you propose something doesn't mean that it warrants a serious response. Some propositions are so patently absurd and illogical that they deserve only ridicule. Your idea that a mother should be able to murder her child at any age and for whatever reason she deems appropriate is one such proposition.

Your idea that a mother should be able to murder her child at any age and for whatever reason she deems appropriate is one such proposition.

You haven't even bothered to follow my argument.  I don't feel like wasting my time with you.

I remember this tangent of yours quite well. And frankly, you haven't posed much of an "argument" at all.

Modest proposals are not for amateurs.

Teenagers are old enough to dodge, and therefore qualify as people.