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.Dd July 26, 2022
.Dt abortion socpol
.Os Runxi Yu
.Sh NAME
.Nm abortion
.Nd Something I wrote about abortion two years back
.Sh DESCRIPTION
.Pp
In 1973 the Supreme Court of the United States of America ruled
seven-to-two in favor of Roe's rights to abortion against a healthcare
official of the state of Texas. Roe argued for abortion with
"privacy", derived from the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment of the US
Constitution. As the U.S. is a common law jurisdiction, this effectively
legalizes abortion across the country.
.Pp
However, as Roe's case was argued for based on privacy rather than body
autonomy or similar rights, it left a question into if abortion is
indeed a right that women should have. After all, if someone is accused
of murder, the suspect's privacy is not a reason to not investigate the
case further. Those against abortion often believe that abortion is
murder, and thus the privacy argument wouldn't stand long.
.Pp
In 2022, the Supreme Court overturned this
precedent,
and now the abortion rights of women in the united states are in a void.
This memo focuses on discussing the notion of abortion itself, and
briefly comments on the decision of the Court.
.Pp
Some people believe that because fetus is human life, and abortion is
nonvoluntary (as in nonvoluntary by the life terminated) termination of
human life, thus abortion is murder and is unacceptable.
.Pp
This reasoning is flawed---nonvoluntary termination of human life, even
when the decision-maker understands the consequence of their action, may
or not be murder.
.Pp
Involuntary termination of life isn't always murder. Consider yourself
an average person in the United States. You live on paychecks and
you're living an average life in a comfortable house. You noticed a
poor person, without food, proper clothes, or shelter, sleeping in the
street, almost frozen to death. You took them home, giving them food,
clothes and shelter. But one day, out of whatever reason you decided to
stop supporting that person and remove them from the house back onto the
street. You understanded that they will have a hard time finding foot,
shelter and clothes. They deceased because of the cold.
.Pp
The poor person was life, and your decision did cause their decession.
But is this murder? Man-slaughter? Any kind of statutory offense? No,
not really, it's merely termination of voluntary support that you
provided for another person.
.Pp
There is a subtle, but eventually significant difference between helping
a person down the street and voluntary pregnency. (Involuntary pregnency
is basically "alright, here comes a person at your doorstep, you MUST
help them and keep them alive", there's not much to discuss there in
my opinion.)
.Pp
In the last example, the ethicalness of terminating support would be
different if you and the person receiving help signed an explicit
contract giving you the responsibility to help them but you terminate
the support when the contract is still valid.
.Pp
Indeed, the fetus did not sign a contract with the mother that obligates
the mother to carry to term. But similarly, children don't sign
contracts with their parents to take care of them, but we consider
parents who don't take care of their children and such to be child
abuse. But they are different.
.Pp
A scientific definition of life which includes bacteria, fungi,
parasites, plants, animals and many other forms of life doesn't seem
inherently valuable to us---almost all of us don't feel bad killing
bacteria with an ultraviolet lamp, don't feel bad killing plants for
consumption, and don't feel bad stepping on a mosquito. Many of us
don't feel bad consuming animals for food. We value human life because
it allows us to pursue what we want and live a life. But a fetus cannot
do that: though the fetus is biologically a human, it doesn't have the
very characteristics that make the life valuable: It doesn't have
meaningful brain activity and cannot pursue what it wants.
.Pp
Abortion is just okay before the cerebrum (the part of the brain
responsible for thinking) develops, which is usually at the end of the
second trimester. Abortion after meaningful cerebrum activity is
detected should be considered with care because at that time the
fetus's life would be considered valuable.
.Sh SEE ALSO
.Pp
.Lk https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/19-1392_6j37.pdf Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, No. 19-1392, 597 U.S. ___
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