> Can you help me understand how criminalizing abortion makes women less free than men?
Imagine there would be a law that disallows men to cut their hair, but allows it for women. Who would be less free here?
> It sounds like your premise is that women have less freedom in personal choice than men when abortion is not available. Presumably this is because men can walk away from a child while women are physically bound to them. Do I have that correct?
Your presumption is partially correct.
> If so, women are really only physically bound to the child through the pregnancy. Once the child is born, the woman can give it up for adoption and be done with it forever.
They are also less free because such a law -- even if only for the time of pregnancy -- prescribes a lifestyle with very limited choices. Ignoring that the physique of a pregnant woman makes some things mostly impossible, thus making the woman less free, I also guess anti-abortionists are not in the habit of applauding pregnant women who drink and smoke while stage-diving on a heavy metal concert. And while this is hyperbole I assume you get my drift.
> I would also contest that men aren't totally free of sexual consequence. If they do happen to impregnate a woman, they can be forced to pay child support while the child is a minor.
But would you accept that men are mostly free? For example, where's the woman in child support? Do the men have to pay the woman 9 month+ for pain, puking, limited lifestyle choices, and possible health consequences, too? Or how about strapping an additional 100g of weight to the man's belly for each week of the 40+ weeks of pregnancy? While we are at it, let's give him a good kick in the stomach once or twice a day for that time. What about the misery you feel when you are forced to do something you don't want to every waking and sleeping minute? You know, its not like a job where you are done and go home at 5 p.m. These arguments about money treat women as unfeeling delivery machines, nothing but cattle really, which in itself not only makes them less free, it makes them less than men.
> The "abortion is murder" argument also doesn't totally meet the GGP's premise necessitating A and B. That is, if society is unwilling to provide a safety net for born, unwanted children, no contradiction exists if society also refuses to allow abortion. This just means society does not allow murder. After all, a society that does not provide a safety net does not explicity allow the murder of poor people. Just as a society that disallows murder does not necessarily have to provide nourishment via the government.
Leaving aside the question if the removal of a lump of cells that can not be sustained outside of a woman's womb is homicide, let alone murder, in any meaningful sense, I am happy to engage with your premises.
So, the society you paint does not care about the child or the woman, it cares about murder. That's technically fine (the best kind of fine) if you are honest about it. Opponents to abortion in that society do not claim they care for children or women. Because, again according to your premises they don't, they just want that no murders happen. So nobody cares about the children, thus there is no inconsistency, which is great. It follows that this society should be fine with the woman, or anybody really, leaving the unwanted newborn on a park bench where is dies from starvation or weather, because that's not murder.
Frankly, I would be shocked if anybody would think that would be fine, but the premises and line of argument you offer would allow just that.
> It follows that this society should be fine with the woman, or anybody really, leaving the unwanted newborn on a park bench where is dies from starvation or weather, because that's not murder.
I addressed this in the child of a sibling to your comment, "True, babies will die if not cared for, and that would be seen as a child abuse murder."
If society wanted to define exposure to be non-murder, then there are no inconsistencies, as I think we both agree, just a strange society.
That said, I do not think a contradiction is introduced if the same society treated exposure as murder. In fact, it is similar to removing a clump of cells that cannot live outside the womb: purposeful death through exposure. It seems similar to murder if person A locks person B in a room and provides no food or water. Eventually person B starves, which would likely be seen as murder.
> Imagine there would be a law that disallows men to cut their hair, but allows it for women. Who would be less free here?
I think our main clash is in how we treat fairness. Of course your proposed hair-cutting law would be unfair. Both men and women exist such that it can be applied. Abortion is inherently asymmetric: men cannot get pregnant. [1]
As such, the law has two options: write it in such a way that 1. outcomes can be completely fair (or as close as possible given the biological differences) or 2. write laws that are tailored to the asymmetry of sexes.
(1) Provides a solution where abortion is allowed. The outcome must satisify the condition that both men and women can walk away from a pregnancy without burden.
(2) Recognizes that men, being incapable of bearing children, must be held accountable for their actions somehow, and monetary damages are probably the most fair way to provide compensation. Maybe the damages need to be increased when compared to current US society, but alternative solutions like forced marriage or forcing the man to be in proximity to help a women through pregnancy probably lead to less free outcomes.
Given the two choices, constrained by a society that equates abortion to murder, (2) is the only valid choice. Yes, there is an enormous burden physically, mentally, financially for the women. Given a deadbeat father, the only way to help the woman is by penalizing him enough financially to try and relieve these burdens as much as possible.
This is why I would suggest that, in such a society, both men and women make sexual decisions with careful forethought and premeditation. One should ask themself if they are prepared to birth or financially compensate their tango partner before getting on the dance floor.
[1] The asymmetry cuts both ways. Under prochoice laws, men cannot choose to have a child; all a man can do is impregnate a woman. Women get the only say in whether a child will be born, fairness be damned.
> I addressed this in the child of a sibling to your comment, "True, babies will die if not cared for, and that would be seen as a child abuse murder."
> If society wanted to define exposure to be non-murder, then there are no inconsistencies, as I think we both agree, just a strange society.
I think, the concept you are looking for is "negligent homicide", which is not murder. You can look it up. But this is just the same territory of discussion where we argue how many cells in a womb make a human being. It is pointless. You apparently have a loser understanding of murder and what makes a human being than I do and just as you will not convince me that a blastocyste is in any shape or form something that can be murdered, I will not be able to convince you that I'm right. So let's agree to disagree on this topic.
But since we have to live together in this society and being civilized and educated people, we can have a fruitful discussion on the topic of justice and fairness anyway. I happen to think your options do not exhaust the solution space, for example we could also reverse the responsibilities. We could make the "enormous burden" you mentioned the man's burden by law, while the woman after birht washes her hands of the issue and lives a life of her choice. You want to hold your wiener into a woman and you accidentally make a baby, someone said you you have brought it upon yourself and you just have to deal with. So it's "tough beat hombre", look forward to be a single dad the next 20 years. This would not be more suppressive than making abortion illegal, or what do you think?
Maybe this would even soften the bondage and misery women suffer with being forced to birth a child in a sense of cosmic justice or whatever. I'm not a big believer in cosmic justice so let's ask, how do we deal with 9 month of involuntary bondage and misery? How do we create a society where we do respect the women's liberty and rights and not force them to birth children through suppression by law, but make it the sensible and voluntary choice?
> We could make the "enormous burden" you mentioned the man's burden by law, while the woman after birht washes her hands of the issue and lives a life of her choice.
I think this would be a completely satisfactory outcome in a world where abortion is considered murder. And regardless of cosmic justice, it would be a more fair outcome in some sense as the burden of child rearing is at least nonzero for both parties.
> How do we create a society where we do respect the women's liberty and rights and not force them to birth children through suppression by law, but make it the sensible and voluntary choice?
This is the tough question. Your proposed solution of legally burdening the man with the child post birth seems fine. Or any other division along the line between man and women.
I think the major issue I am internally trying to resolve is where does humanity start? I'm not much a fan of laws that are time or tech variant, meaning that laws enacted today that say a fetus is human when it can survive outside the womb have the potential to be walked back to the moment the egg accepts the sperm, as at some point in the future it's probable we'll have tech to non-invasively extract the fertilized egg and grow it to maturity artifically.
But if the law makes a hard cutoff, what is it? Is there a difference between a 1 day fetus and a 10 day or 100 day or 270 day? If so, what is it materially?
I think the US has some places where heartbeats are the defining factor, which is something like 6 weeks. Seems kind of sensible from the outside, but considering the week counting is based on the last missed period, that basically gives only about two weeks to get an abortion done after being able to confirm one is pregnant if one is being vigilant. That's a tough timeline. This also excludes the complicatiom of how such laws would be applied to IVF or other involuntarily fertilizations.
Personally, I think I fall along the lines of "I probably would not personally get an abortion but also don't quite think the government should be able to step in and disallow others from doing so." I'm a big fan of negative rights, so that seems pretty aligned to me. It also seems to satisify your goal of allowing us to meet in the middle in what I would hope is both a respectible and satisfactory way for an educated society that tries to maximize individual liberty.
My solution violates the "treat abortionists as murderers" ideal for which I was arguing, but I was arguing from the viewpoint of a society in which that is the concensus. I fully recognize that such a society is not necessarily one in which I would prefer to dwell.
Edit: I did kind of veer away from my congruence of abortion and murder. To specifically answer your question under such a pretense:
> How do we create a society where we do respect the women's liberty and rights and not force them to birth children through suppression by law, but make it the sensible and voluntary choice?"
The answer here is likely abstinence. No woman is forced to bring a child to term in the absence of a child. Therefore the only fair solution would be for people to abstain from sex unless the outcome of a child was acceptable. This applies fairly to both men and women regardless of whom must raise a child that is conceived.