Rape, Abortion, Murder, and Other General Nasty Ambiguities...

So, I'm bored, and browsing Opposing Views and I come across this not so heartwarming story:

First-Time Mom Katiya Rowe Rejects Abortion After Seeing 3D Ultrasound Of Disabled Fetus

Now some of you may see this as an "awww, how good of them to give that baby life".  I disagree.  More, obviously, after the jump.

Now, before you go all, "HOW DARE YOU DAT BABBY WAS ALIVE!!1!1!!one!1!1!eleventyone!" on me, hear me out.

This baby (yes, it was a baby once it popped out, you'll get no argument from me there) lived for a grand total of NINE hours.  If I'm reading things correctly, it couldn't breathe without assistance, and it would definitely have been a very painful nine hours, assuming it could feel that pain considering it didn't have a functional fucking brain.  If I were in her shoes (which, considering that I'm a male makes this a completely hypothetical thing since I will never be pregnant) I would abort, especially since I would have known, like she did, that this was going to be the most likely result.

Obviously, she DIDN'T do that.  At first I'm thinking "OK, whatever.  Really that's your choice. I would have made a diffferent one, but again that's just me."  But then I heard her reasoning.  No, it wasn't religious (you'd know that if you actually clicked that link like you should have instead of just trusting me), which would have barely scratched my radar until she started screeching that nobody should have an abortion because that's what these religious fuckwits tend to do in this situation.  Instead, it's because she "saw him smile" in the ultrasound.  Really, bitch?  Really?  Here's the ultrasound:

Can any of you see the "smile" here?  I'm asking because I have Asperger's and it's kind of hard for me to read facial expressions, and I don't see no shit-eating grin on this kid.  I don't even see "mild bemusement".  I see what my grandmother's face looked like in the casket at her funeral:  a completely neutral, don't-give-half-a-shit (in her case, cuz she's dead) line across the face.  To me, this is one of the most bullshit reasons to force anyone to go through ANY amount of pain.  But that's just the intro.

Down in the comments (don't bother adding to them: you'll just be giving shitfacebook more money) There's an argument -  mostly consisting of "nuh-uh" and "yuh-huh" - on how abortion is murder.  However, there's this one, single, solitary piece of intelligence that I feel like highlighting and responding to.  It comes from someone named Jason Overholser, who says (after grammatical correction for easier reading and removal of names):

"[some dickbag] Murder is the the UNLAWFUL premeditated killing of one human being by another; however, technically the death penalty is not considered murder. I am very torn about both subjects, abortion and the death penalty: does anybody have the right to kill another human being for any reason? If the answer is yes, who makes that decision and what constitutes a human being? Is an embryo 3 weeks into development a human being? How about 3 days after conception? I honestly don't know what's right and wrong in this case. I'm not religious but something feels really wrong about abortion. My gut feeling tells me that it's not right. It could be because I'm a dad though."

You'll notice I put that in something other than Courier New or...whatever the hell the default font is for blogger.  That's because this guy doesn't appear to be an idiot, and even better seems to recognize the nuance that exists and the thought that absolutely, positively must go into these bastards of subjects.  Let me go through this sentence by sentence in order to more easily expound on his thoughts.

"Murder is the the UNLAWFUL premeditated killing of one human being by another; however, technically the death penalty is not considered murder."

Both of these are correct.  The issue here, however, is that there are people who equate abortion, which is entirely legal, with an illegal act.  There are people who think that abortion should be murder.  It's not exactly the best starting point for conversation, because it immediately assumes an all-or-nothing situation which, as I plan on expanding on below, simply cannot exist in this discussion.

"I am very torn about both subjects, abortion and the death penalty: does anybody have the right to kill another human being for any reason?  If the answer is yes, who makes that decision and what constitutes a human being?"

This shows a level of maturity I don't usually expect from shitfacebook users.  Since I expect you (despite you probably never even seeing this) will be able to understand the levels of nuance that I can provide on this topic (in other words, I will not be giving you a simple fucking yes or no),  allow me to divulge my own understanding.  Before we begin, please note that in my opinion the choice of the woman that is pregnant is paramount, because it is her body that this is happening to, and she would have far more information on her specific case than I would.  These are simply general cases:

In general, no, we don't give somebody the right to kill somebody else.  There are, however, certain time when we do, as a society, permit it.  You bring up one situation in the death penalty:  you commit these certain acts, such as the premeditated killing of multiple people, then we will make sure you do not get the chance to do so to anyone else, and we will even protect other criminals from you.  We also allow for the killing in both self-defense and the defense of third parties.  This, actually, is part of where my own stance on abortion comes from:  there is a case to be made that the fetus is effectively a parasite in the woman's body - one I do not necessarily agree with in all cases.

While a fully healthy pregnancy can - in some views - be considered a parasite that can ethically and morally be removed, this view is a minority.  I only bring it up to introduce a more germane situation:  there are issues with pregnancy that can result in direct harm - even death - of the woman bearing the child.  There was a recent case in Ireland of just this happening.  Some of these cases allow the baby to survive the death of the mother, while others do not.  My personal view on this one (which I'll explain when we get to "when is it a human?" below) is that the mother's life should be more important than the potential baby's.  There are also cases where, while the mother's health is in little to no danger (as is the case in the topic article), the fetus' viability - or the child's survivability is slim to none.

There are multiple things that can go wrong in the course of a pregnancy, and there are many birth defects that greatly affect both the survivability and quality of life of said child.  Tay-sachs, Harlequin-type Ichthyosis, Anencephaly, CHARGE syndrome, and Cyclopia, among others.  In general, I think that whether or not an abortion should be had should be decided by the OB/GYN and the mother, based primarily on how survivable the condition is, followed by the quality of life the child will have, the ability of the family to care for such a child (No, Rick Santorum, not everyone has $250,000 per year to drop on a kid who needs a nurse to breathe.), and the ease (and speed) a child with the condition could be adopted by someone with the resources needed to care for the child should the parents not have such resources, in that order, with that last one being entirely optional since the odds of it being feasible are functionally zero - and in some cases I would liken it to the merciful euthanization of a dog with severe arthritis.  As you can see, it's not exactly a yes-or-no question.

"Is an embryo 3 weeks into development a human being? How about 3 days after conception?"

The short answer (and best) is "we don't know".  This really is up for debate, and as you can probably guess it's pretty heated.  My own thoughts are that, because there is just so much that can go wrong (as I've highlighted briefly above) during a pregnancy, it shouldn't be considered an actual "baby" until it's out of the womb, crying and kicking.  Now, there are cures for some of these pre-natal conditions and some of the defects, it's still just SOME, and not everyone has the resources to actually get those right now (which will hopefully be partially solved by the PPACA, but the jury's still out on that one.), so a blanket ban actually causes more harm than good, both to the mother and the (potential) child.  

Now, you may ask "What if we can guarantee a heathy birth 100% of the time?"  Things still remain nuanced.  Remember when I mentioned resources above?  Even raising a healthy child takes those.  Not everyone HAS those resources, and the way that the GOP has been trying to reduce government help to those people, they aren't going to be GETTING those resources when they need them.  Combine this with the teen-pregnancy : abstinence-only-education correlation, instances of rape, how full orphanages are, and the general "fuck you" of life that can be thrown at people, I'm of the opinion that, while abortion should be legal in most every circumstance, the farther along the pregnancy and the more healthy the potential child will be, the more hoops the person should have to go through in order to get the abortion, with a few exceptions (like rape).  These hoops, however, should be both reasonable and secular:  you should not have to go get raped (again) by a doctor shoving an ultrasound wand up your twat, or be preached at and chastised and told to "come to JAYZUZ" at a "crisis pregnancy center" where they don't care about you and only care about the lump of cells growing in your stomach (until of course you expel that lump and then they suddenly couldn't give two shits if you don't have the money to feed it).

"I honestly don't know what's right and wrong in this case. I'm not religious but something feels really wrong about abortion. My gut feeling tells me that it's not right. It could be because I'm a dad though."

Possibly.  It's not an easy question, and anyone who tells you it is most likely doesn't have the brain cells to work out "2+x=4".  You having kids of your own may indeed be coloring your perspective, but you have to remember it is just your perspective: not everyone has the life you do, and we have to write laws for everyone, which isn't easy.  We can't let our emotions sway us, especially in life-or-death situations which pregnancy, by its very nature, is.