by hellojesus | 2025-04-23 17:27:07+00:00
> 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.