Roe v Wade is about PRIVACY!

[Noradin]

Saying abortion is privacy is about as effective as calling illegals "undocumented". Just a way to make a horrible act sound pillowy and acceptable.

Bribery by companies is apparently a form of Free Speech, so this wouldn't be so far off, logic-wise.

[Spectral]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Due_Process_Clause

Procedural due process requires government officials to follow fair procedures before depriving a person of life, liberty, or property. When the government seeks to deprive a person of one of those interests, procedural due process minimally requires for the government to afford the person notice, an opportunity to be heard, and a decision made by a neutral decisionmaker.

Roe v Wade was that due process, and the decision that came from that due process was that women have a right to privacy before their pregnancies are viable because the state's interest only extends to pregnancies they have the ability to protect, viable ones. The state doesn't have the ability to protect non-viable pregnancies.

Right, which is obviously an absurd reading of the actual Constitution - nothing in the text remotely implies that this would be the case. Not even close. Again, this is what a "brilliant legal mind" looks like in practice - concocting an elaborate framework to justify an end goal that has nothing at all to do with what's actually written down.

[kail]

The discussion on whether a fetus is a separate human is and has been settled for a very long time, as any thinking person knows. It is now up to the pro-abortion crowd to explain when a human life has worth. If "err on the side of life" is not the standard, then what is, and why?

Simple, the right to life does not outweigh the right to bodily autonomy. I have every right to deny any procedure or donation from my body, even if it would cost you you're life.

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Stop bringing back month-old threads.

I am surprised that the necro didn't get caught. Thought this would be closed some days ago.

[Mormolyce]

Privacy in the legal sense refers to the principle that the government must demonstrate a legitimate interest in order to invade the private lives of its citizens. It isn't "privacy" in the narrow sense you're thinking.

Now back to your regularly scheduled programming of 15 pages of ignorant shitposting.

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Anyone who denies that a "non-viable fetus" is not a separate human is, at best, completely clueless. Best-case scenario rarely applies.

Science easily proves that, regardless of the stage of life, the zygote/embryo/fetus is not akin to a woman's tooth or liver or middle toe. It is a separate entity, provable by a simple DNA test. Provable by a miniscule amount of thinking, really, but science seals the deal.

The discussion on whether a fetus is a separate human is and has been settled for a very long time, as any thinking person knows. It is now up to the pro-abortion crowd to explain when a human life has worth. If "err on the side of life" is not the standard, then what is, and why?

You're intensely begging the question here. Are you talking about viable, separate or "life"? Three entirely different standards.

[Total Crica]

Privacy in the legal sense refers to the principle that the government must demonstrate a legitimate interest in order to invade the private lives of its citizens. It isn't "privacy" in the narrow sense you're thinking.

Exactly. Some random Joe Blow doesn't have the right to invade a woman's privacy anymore then the government does when it comes to pregnancy before viability because some random Joe Blow nor the government has a legitimate interest in any non-viable pregnancy, as the due process had via Roe v Wade determined - a non-viable pregnancy can not live seperate from the mother.

[Krigaren]

Right, which is obviously an absurd reading of the actual Constitution - nothing in the text remotely implies that this would be the case. Not even close. Again, this is what a "brilliant legal mind" looks like in practice - concocting an elaborate framework to justify an end goal that has nothing at all to do with what's actually written down.

The constitution and the founding fathers couldn't have possibly predicted abortion practices.

That said, they wrote the constitution in a purposeful way so that what rights it DOES explicitly protect can be interpreted or extended to situations that they couldn't have predicted. In this case, the LIBERTY part of the due process clause is what's triggered.

Let's break it down:

lib·er·ty
ˈlibərdē/
noun

1. the state of being free within society from oppressive restrictions imposed by authority on one's way of life, behavior, or political views.
"compulsory retirement would interfere with individual liberty"
synonyms: independence, freedom, autonomy, sovereignty, self-government, self-rule, self-determination; More
civil liberties, human rights


2. the power or scope to act as one pleases.
"individuals should enjoy the liberty to pursue their own interests and preferences"
synonyms: freedom, independence, free rein, license, self-determination, free will, latitude
"personal liberty"

When it comes to your own body, the state can not, and should not dictate what you can and cannot do. The only acceptable reason to do so would be in the cases where your activities have a negative or detrimental impact on society. A woman aborting her non-viable fetus does not fall within the government's purview, and the only reason people get involved is due to their own self-righteous attitudes - which have zero legal standing.

[Total Crica]

The constitution and the founding fathers couldn't have possibly predicted abortion practices.

Only in the sense that they never imagined women would be considered free persons alongside men that enjoy the constitutional right to liberty since in their day women were the property of men.

Abortion itself was practiced by women back then and even before then.

[Krigaren]

Only in the sense that they never imagined women would be considered free persons alongside men that enjoy the constitutional right to liberty since in their day women were the property of men.

Abortion itself was practiced by women back then and even before then.

This is much more accurate, yes.

[Cts53]

Simple, the right to life does not outweigh the right to bodily autonomy. I have every right to deny any procedure or donation from my body, even if it would cost you you're life.

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I am surprised that the necro didn't get caught. Thought this would be closed some days ago.

Not entirely true. The argument you are making does not equate to the argument here for or against abortion.

With your scenario, there are other people who could and most likely would donate or allow that procure to be done to allow somebody else to live. You're descision is not the end of the road for that person.

It is not the case here with this current argument in this thread. Now not entirely sure if this has been stated before, as I have not read all 15 pages, but the child is alive BECAUSE of the mother. Until the child is far enough along where they are able to live outside of the uterus, that child relies on the mother for it's life.

Now, the argument for right to bodily autonomy boils down to your body your choice. However, it's not really your body. The child is living and growing inside your body, but it's an entirely separate body, with it's own DNA, Blood type, and hormones. So it's not really your body your choice.

What this all comes down to, is, essentially people have given the mother the ultimate power when it comes to their pregnancy. Essentially, they have the power to determine life. This is why when a pregnant woman is killed, it is considered a double homicide, not just one homicide. Because two lives were lost. However, when a woman gets an abortion, it's considered a "procedure" or the even more fluffy-nice term, healthcare. If the woman decides that she does not want the child, suddenly in the eyes of many there is no new life. But if she does, suddenly there is life there?

That is way to abstract of a definition of life of an unborn child, simply because the mother says.

Also, to the point of this thread, abortion is hardly about "privacy" when you start using a portion of my taxes to pay for it. Any healthcare procedure isn't really privacy, hence why a procedure could be denied by your insurer or they could not pay.

The only way an abortion could be private, would be if the woman preformed one on herself, without telling anybody. But that is not how it is done. You go to a clinic, or a hospital, and you get the procedure, having your health insurance cover the cost, whether that be Obamacare, Medicaid, Medicare, or any of the private insurances. Therefore it is not private in any sense.

[tankbug]

Funny how people in here have so much hate or indifference for everything living on this planet, EXCEPT for a parasitic lump growing inside a woman's womb.
Ah, they just hate women having a sex with few or no consequences. Better keep em clean and dependent on a man's support!

[Raelbo]

Funny how people in here have so much hate or indifference for everything living on this planet, EXCEPT for a parasitic lump growing inside a woman's womb.

Yeah, totally ridiculous that we should place any value whatsoever on a foetus before it is born. Spoken like a true sociopath!

Ah, they just hate women having a sex with few or no consequences. Better keep em clean and dependent on a man's support!

While I don't doubt that some pro-lifers are motivated as such, it's rather disingenuous to generalise this to everyone with any anti-abortion views. It is a convenient strawman for those who lack the ability to construct a rational argument though.

[hakujinbakasama]

I don't answer any stranger's questions about my healthcare choices, I am asking why any woman would when she has the right to privacy and can simply tell people it's none of their business.

I agree, just like it is none of the woman's business how much money I make and can provide to the production of the babies.

[tankbug]

Yeah, totally ridiculous that we should place any value whatsoever on a foetus before it is born. Spoken like a true sociopath!

Quite the contrary! I care about human lives, and I focus on the quality of life for the pregnant woman, and her right to choose. Nobody sheds a tear for eggs or sperm becoming nothing, so there is no reason to ruin someone's life just if they happened to merge.

While I don't doubt that some pro-lifers are motivated as such, it's rather disingenuous to generalise this to everyone with any anti-abortion views. It is a convenient strawman for those who lack the ability to construct a rational argument though.

It's not a strawman because I can't discuss this in a rational matter. It's a somewhat generalized view used to attack and cut through a lot of the bullshit arguments that so many conservatives have for making sure that thing grows into a baby.
But just to be sure you mean well, what's your stance on:

-Prison being a place of rehabilitation vs isolation and punishment.
-Death sentence.
-Right to own and carry firearms .
-Immigration from "shitholes" (as defined by Trump)
-Excessive use of force by the police.
-Equal pay for women.
-Street/work/school harassment of women.

If you're leaning left on all of these, I guess you're just a true friend of humanity!

[Raelbo]

Quite the contrary! I care about human lives, and I focus on the quality of life for the pregnant woman, and her right to choose. Nobody sheds a tear for eggs or sperm becoming nothing, so there is no reason to ruin someone's life just if they happened to merge.

Like I said, spoken like a true sociopath, without empathy or understanding of what it means to be fully human because of the way you feel nothing for completely dehumanising a foetus. I mean you're basically defining pregnancy as a life-ruining experience.

Yes, no one sheds a tear for lost eggs or sperm. And I am even fine with extending that to a zygote or embryo. But you want to apply that to a foetus as well, presumably right through pregnancy. Someone with empathy should be able to understand that once the foetus has a heartbeat it is something more than simply an egg and sperm that happened to merge. Something significantly more that over a few months will become a human being. To dismiss that as nothing is IMO bordering on sociopathy.

It's not a strawman because I can't discuss this in a rational matter.

It's a strawman because you're replacing "is anti-abortion" with "hates women".

It's a somewhat generalized view used to attack and cut through a lot of the bullshit arguments that so many conservatives have for making sure that thing grows into a baby.

Yes, but you don't have to be a conservative to have some issues with abortion. It is possible to accept that a foetus is more than just a simple collection of cells without being a conservative. It makes the whole right to abortion debate rather difficult because you have to weigh the right of the pregnant woman agains the rights of the unborn foetus. (For a conservative it is an easy choice - since the woman's rights are not particularly important)

My personal view is that I would not abort if I ever fell pregnant (hypothetically, since I am a man). I would accept responsibility for the life I had created. At the same time, as a man, I would petition my wife not to abort an unwanted pregnancy if she ever entertained that notion, but at the same time I would accept that it's her decision at the end of the day and I would respect her right to make that decision.

Regarding how I believe society and law should treat the issue, it depends on how advanced the pregnancy is. For first trimester termination, I am fine with it. For third trimester I am totally opposed to it. Second trimester is a grey area. Being a father who was involved during my wife's pregnancy I would find it hard, as a human being with empathy, to not view a foetus as a human life worth protecting, just as we as society place a very high value on protecting the lives of babies. Yes I get it. A twelve week foetus =/= a newborn baby. But it is partially one. And as the foetus grows, it becomes closer and closer to being a baby.

I guess you could say I am both pro-life and pro-choice. Many people will struggle with this dichotomy because they equate pro-life with anti-choice, which really, it isn't. You can be both as long as you're not absolutist.

But just to be sure you mean well, what's your stance on:

Not really sure of the relevance, but I guess I'll entertain your questions

-Prison being a place of rehabilitation vs isolation and punishment.

Prison is not a place for punishment, it's place for consequences. For most that means a place of rehabilitation. However not everyone can be rehabilitated (eg convicted psychopaths/sociopaths). In that case it should serve as a place to store such people so that they cannot harm society.

-Death sentence.

I am opposed to it. Not because I believe no one deserves the death penalty, but because by becoming executioners it turns us, society into monsters.

-Right to own and carry firearms.

I believe that society should, ideally, be free of guns.

-Immigration from "shitholes" (as defined by Trump)

As someone who lives in one of those "shitholes" I obviously take exception to Trump's comment. That being said I do see where his comment comes from, especially since here in SA we are generally orders of magnitude better off than some of our neighbours. No one wants to accept immigrants into your country if they don't bring a good offering to the table. They are going to be a burden, and in more ways than one. However I also believe that it is the responsibility of those of us who are better off to help those who, (especially if through no fault of their own), are in dire need.

That is what makes Trump's comment so puerile. Being a responsible human being is more than about just doing what is convenient for ourselves.

-Excessive use of force by the police.

Well, by definition, excessive force is never ok. The real question is what constitutes excessive force, and that is dependent on the context of what they are having to deal with. What is important is to understand that it is the job of the police to serve and protect everyone equally and without prejudice, and that includes those they may be trying to apprehend. Excessive force tends to happen when the police forget that.

-Equal pay for women.

Yes, women should be paid the same as men. And while some MRA types will argue that they already are, the reality is that we're not there yet in most of the world.

-Street/work/school harassment of women.

Not ok.

[Toogoodman]

All that needs to be said abortion is this, and my 70 year old father agrees (surprisingly):

Abortion is an extremely personal, and hard decision made by a couple or a family, and even sometimes strictly by an individual. Its something that weighs heavily on their minds, and is not an easy decision.

These choices should be made by the individual, while consulting their spouse/partner, parents, best friend, and their religious leader (if applicable), and not by the government.

[hakujinbakasama]

All that needs to be said abortion is this, and my 70 year old father agrees (surprisingly):

Abortion is an extremely personal, and hard decision made by a couple or a family, and even sometimes strictly by an individual. Its something that weighs heavily on their minds, and is not an easy decision.

These choices should be made by the individual, while consulting their spouse/partner, parents, best friend, and their religious leader (if applicable), and not by the government.

To an extent I agree with you. However, unless the equality exists I don't support the power of choice residing with only 1 of the sexes.

[tankbug]

Like I said, spoken like a true sociopath, without empathy or understanding of what it means to be fully human because of the way you feel nothing for completely dehumanising a foetus. I mean you're basically defining pregnancy as a life-ruining experience.

Yes, no one sheds a tear for lost eggs or sperm. And I am even fine with extending that to a zygote or embryo. But you want to apply that to a foetus as well, presumably right through pregnancy. Someone with empathy should be able to understand that once the foetus has a heartbeat it is something more than simply an egg and sperm that happened to merge. Something significantly more that over a few months will become a human being. To dismiss that as nothing is IMO bordering on sociopathy.

When you don't want to have a baby, pregnancy is a life-ruining experience for both the woman and the child-to-be. It's so bad that women will go to extreme lengths to get it out of them. Still people of who aren't religious nuts still have this "all life is sacred" attitude, which is very convenient because they don't have to face the consequences. There is a sacrifice in this, there is no perfect outcome, and for me the choice would have been simple. But calling someone who don't put much value into the life of a fertilized egg a sociopath is kinda like calling a bug exterminator a genocidal maniac. No, I don't think a baby's life is worthless until it's born, but as with most other things there is a reasonable middle way where things change, it's not either a human at conception, or just worthless biomass until it sticks its head out.

It's a strawman because you're replacing "is anti-abortion" with "hates women".

I think it's pretty naive to think that there is no overlap between "anti-abortion" and "a woman's place.."
Even though your reasons are a little different, most of the people you share side with conservative, religious zealots, who are more concerned with a woman's sexuality than they are with the life of a fetus. The people outside the abortion clinics aren't life-worshiping hippies.

Yes, but you don't have to be a conservative to have some issues with abortion. It is possible to accept that a foetus is more than just a simple collection of cells without being a conservative. It makes the whole right to abortion debate rather difficult because you have to weigh the right of the pregnant woman agains the rights of the unborn foetus. (For a conservative it is an easy choice - since the woman's rights are not particularly important)

My personal view is that I would not abort if I ever fell pregnant (hypothetically, since I am a man). I would accept responsibility for the life I had created. At the same time, as a man, I would petition my wife not to abort an unwanted pregnancy if she ever entertained that notion, but at the same time I would accept that it's her decision at the end of the day and I would respect her right to make that decision.

Regarding how I believe society and law should treat the issue, it depends on how advanced the pregnancy is. For first trimester termination, I am fine with it. For third trimester I am totally opposed to it. Second trimester is a grey area. Being a father who was involved during my wife's pregnancy I would find it hard, as a human being with empathy, to not view a foetus as a human life worth protecting, just as we as society place a very high value on protecting the lives of babies. Yes I get it. A twelve week foetus =/= a newborn baby. But it is partially one. And as the foetus grows, it becomes closer and closer to being a baby.

I guess you could say I am both pro-life and pro-choice. Many people will struggle with this dichotomy because they equate pro-life with anti-choice, which really, it isn't. You can be both as long as you're not absolutist.

Well, then I wouldn't call you anti-abortion at all, you're just a little more concerned about the life of the fetus than I am.

Not really sure of the relevance, but I guess I'll entertain your questions
*SNIP*

Ok, I belive you to be a rare case of "friend of all life".

[Cts53]

Quite the contrary! I care about human lives, and I focus on the quality of life for the pregnant woman, and her right to choose. Nobody sheds a tear for eggs or sperm becoming nothing, so there is no reason to ruin someone's life just if they happened to merge.



It's not a strawman because I can't discuss this in a rational matter. It's a somewhat generalized view used to attack and cut through a lot of the bullshit arguments that so many conservatives have for making sure that thing grows into a baby.
But just to be sure you mean well, what's your stance on:

-Prison being a place of rehabilitation vs isolation and punishment.
-Death sentence.
-Right to own and carry firearms .
-Immigration from "shitholes" (as defined by Trump)
-Excessive use of force by the police.
-Equal pay for women.
-Street/work/school harassment of women.

If you're leaning left on all of these, I guess you're just a true friend of humanity!

Prison is where you go when you have broken the law. Plain and simple. It is a punishment for breaking the law, and it's not mean to be easy. Of course Prison's should also provide some sort of rehabilitation into society, but that should occur closer to the end of a person's sentence.

Death sentence should be used only on those individuals who have committed heinous and terrible crimes, and alot of those crimes. It should not be thrown out left and right, nor should it be banned completely.

It's 2nd amendment, whether you agree with it or not, every USA citizen has the right to bear arms and protect themselves.

Well I personally think when it comes to immigration, we should be strict on who gets in, but I dont personally care what country they come from. As long as they show no harmful motives towards the USA or it's citizens.

Non-issue.

Welcome to the Equal Pay Act of 1963, the law that makes it completely illegal to pay a woman less than a man based on her gender.

Everybody gets harassed in the street, school, or at work at some point in their lives. Why focus only on women? Why not also focus on how men are, in all categories besides rape, over 50% more likely to be the victim of a violent crime than women?

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When you don't want to have a baby, pregnancy is a life-ruining experience for both the woman and the child-to-be. It's so bad that women will go to extreme lengths to get it out of them. Still people of who aren't religious nuts still have this "all life is sacred" attitude, which is very convenient because they don't have to face the consequences. There is a sacrifice in this, there is no perfect outcome, and for me the choice would have been simple. But calling someone who don't put much value into the life of a fertilized egg a sociopath is kinda like calling a bug exterminator a genocidal maniac. No, I don't think a baby's life is worthless until it's born, but as with most other things there is a reasonable middle way where things change, it's not either a human at conception, or just worthless biomass until it sticks its head out.

You know, there is this wonderful thing for people who don't wish to have a child but get pregnant anyway, and it's called adoption. I'm not sure how aware you are of the infertility problem that affects thousands of american couples alone who are dying to have a child they can call their own. Being anti-abortion =/= hating women. There are thousands of women who are anti-abortion, it would be extremely dumb to believe that they are also hating themselves.

To conflate the two shows exactly how skewed your view of the issue is. Abortion does not only affect the women, it just affects her the most. Anti-abortion boils down to, you are trying to protect life, including the life of the unborn child.

I think it's pretty naive to think that there is no overlap between "anti-abortion" and "a woman's place.."
Even though your reasons are a little different, most of the people you share side with conservative, religious zealots, who are more concerned with a woman's sexuality than they are with the life of a fetus. The people outside the abortion clinics aren't life-worshiping hippies.

Fun fact, the Catholic Church (the primary opponents against abortion) is also the worlds largest charity organization, having multiple free schools, hopsitals, and places of housing across the world.

[Raelbo]

When you don't want to have a baby, pregnancy is a life-ruining experience for both the woman and the child-to-be. It's so bad that women will go to extreme lengths to get it out of them.

I totally accept that in some cases, the prospect of a having a baby is genuinely life-ruining. But I do think that in the vast majority of cases, even where the parents' initial reaction to being pregnant was negative, that having a child is the most human experience any of us will have. It's part of how we're built (the exception being sociopaths).

But calling someone who don't put much value into the life of a fertilized egg a sociopath is kinda like calling a bug exterminator a genocidal maniac. No, I don't think a baby's life is worthless until it's born, but as with most other things there is a reasonable middle way where things change, it's not either a human at conception, or just worthless biomass until it sticks its head out.

In my defense, calling you sociopathic wasn't on the basis of not putting much value a fertilised egg. It was based on your generalised description of a foetus as "a parasitic lump growing inside a woman's womb". Fair enough, given your elaboration I see that's not really an accurate reflection of your view, so I'll happily take back what I said.

I think it's pretty naive to think that there is no overlap between "anti-abortion" and "a woman's place.."

Agreed. I think there is a massive overlap. However one should be careful not to generalise.

Even though your reasons are a little different, most of the people you share side with conservative, religious zealots, who are more concerned with a woman's sexuality than they are with the life of a fetus.

I hear you. Truth be told though, I don't side with those people. I think they're quite appalling actually, and if I had to "pick a side" I would definitely go with pro-choice. I just think that the issue is more complex than being either pro-life or pro-choice and I think that understanding the nature of the issue is far more important than just picking a side.

Well, then I wouldn't call you anti-abortion at all, you're just a little more concerned about the life of the fetus than I am.

I would say that the basis of my viewpoint is that a foetus starts as nothing more than a fairly arbitrary collection of cells but ends up being a baby. In exactly the same way that pro-lifers will overstate the value of a human zygote, there are pro-choicers who will understate the value of a more developed foetus. On the one hand you have a group of people trying to humanise something that is less than a human being in order to straw man the argument (by killing a 2 week old foetus you're killing a baby) and on the hand you have a group of people trying to de-humanise something that is very much human (an abortion is no different from removing a parasitic growth).

If you look at the boundary conditions of what defines a foetus, then it's clear that both parties are partially correct and partially wrong. At one boundary (moment of conception) the foetus really isn't anything more than a fertilised egg cell. At the other boundary (moment of birth) the foetus is a baby. The value of a foetus is a function of how developed it is relative to a newborn baby, with a newly fertilised egg having approximately 0% of the value of a baby and a 40 week old having 99.99999999% of the value of a baby.

And while I think most pro-choicers wouldn't argue with that assessment or that it's ok to terminate at 39.6 weeks of pregnancy, I do think that a lot are too quick to dismiss the value of slightly less developed foetuses (eg 24, 20, 16 or 12 weeks). They do so by dehumanising the foetus, constructing arguments for why it doesn't have value while ignoring the very obvious (to anyone with empathy) signs of its humanity because they're overly focussed on a person's right to choose - and as this thread proposes, their right to privacy.

My answer to that is that human rights cannot exist in a vacuum - not if they are to have any real, practical, realisable meaning. They have to be accompanied by responsibilities. The basis of this is that our rights only exist because other people adhere to their responsibilities and vice versa. The responsibility that accompanies the right to abort is that of ensuring that it is done timeously.

Hence my disagreement with the assertion a woman's choice to abort is none of the state's (ie the rest of society's) business. The fact is that as a society we are happy to accept that we make it our responsibility to protect children. It is not a parent's right to kill their child. And while it might be more convenient for pro-choicers to argue that this only starts after birth, I simply cannot accept that argument on the basis of logic, reason and human empathy. It's very clear to me that a human life deserves some measure of protection even before it is born, and while I certainly wouldn't go near advocating that this should extend even close to the point of conception (as pro-lifers would) I do think that many pro-choicers are somewhat disingenuous about how late this should extend. A mother's right to privacy and choice only extends so far because at some point a pregnancy is no longer just about her, it's about her unborn child whose life also has sufficient value to warrant consideration in the decisions she makes.


TL;DR: Women should absolutely have the right to privacy over her choice to abort, but only until the foetus reaches an age at which society deems its life to have sufficient value to warrant giving it human rights (in most countries, typically around 20 weeks).

[Magicpot]

Tota absolutely destroyed you. This isn't about legal terms, this is about science. A fetus CANNOT survive if it isn't viable. Viability means the lungs are formed, the heart is formed, everything that a normal human being is formed. Which the EARLIEST that happens is around 22 or so weeks. Which most of the abortions happen long before that. The only reason that an abortion happens after 20+ weeks, is either the health of the mother, the fetus has some sort of terminal illness or both.

And it isn't murder. When you stated that, you lost what little credibility and argument you had.

I think the discussion is less about rationally defining terms and more about the fact that a lot of people's religion is actively against abortion. At this point and at any point before in history, enough people wanting something (for however irrational reasons) has been enough to impose it. So the argument that needs to be won here isn't about rational definitions - almost everybody with a brain is already on your side here. The problem is that for most opponents to abortion the twists and turns they take to justify their position in a logical discourse isn't the point or the origin of their disagreement - it has simply become somewhat unpopular to just say "because my religion demands your obedience in this", even though that is exactly what it is.

Now the actual problem here is when you define viability. Every non religious zealot in here has already determined that it's not an entirely black and white issue, and the problem is more along the lines of how long is it allowable. Personally, I'd say the point where a baby could reasonably live outside of the mother, which is typically pretty late. Medical reasonings nonwithstanding, of course.

Fun fact, the Catholic Church (the primary opponents against abortion) is also the worlds largest charity organization, having multiple free schools, hopsitals, and places of housing across the world.

Mind, this charity is by it's stated purpose not primarily to help people, but to spread the faith. It's a recruiting mechanism. The catholic church is also the largest pedophile ring in the entire world by far, if you want to play that game. Every single good deed of the catholic church and its members isn't because it's the church, but despite it. You should really look into the history of that organization and then re-think if you can justify anything but condemning it in the strongest terms to yourself. Sane people can't.