Personhood and Abortion.
1) For the purpose of a clear argument I will (for the time being) separate being biologically human from any concept of personhood. In doing so it is undeniable to say that biological human life begins at conception.
And even if you dispute my scientific claim, I can reprove the fact through metaphysics. In metaphysics there are accidental and substantial changes. Accidental changes are changes to the subject which does not change the essence of the subject. Hair for example can be bleached or colored, however the underlying essence of “hair-ness” does not change. It is still the same hair before and after the hair color was altered. The change being made to the hair does not change the overall essence of the hair. A substantial change, on the other hand, does change the essence of the subject making it something completely different than before. Thus the subject becomes a new subject.
Take the sperm and the egg. The sperm and egg alone cannot grow a fully functional human body. It is not until the sperm and egg meet that a substantial change happens and a human life begins. There is no other point in the development of the human body after conception that can be proven as the substantial change other than conception itself. Birth cannot be the substantial change that grants humanness because there is no difference between a baby one second before birth and one second after birth which could prove that a substantial change had happened. The same can be said for any other arbitrary milestone of development such as first steps or age 18 or age 21. All of those are accidental changes in which the overall essence of humanness is not changed. The only point where you can point to a visible and provable substantial change is conception. The sperm and the egg are not simply the sperm and the egg after the moment of conception and thanks to modern scientific equipment; you can see it happen before your very eyes.
Therefore, it is philosophically impossible to claim that any group after conception is less than metaphysically human.
THEREFORE: Biological Human life begins at conceptions the same as all other mammals
2) Now we come to those who try and separate biological life from personhood. The problem with that line or argumentation is anytime you draw any line other than the inception of the child (at conception) you end up drawing a false line that can also be applied to people who are adults so either human life has intrinsic value or it doesn't....there is no in between. I will go through the most used false lines and show how each one is false.
For these I use the acronym SLED
Size
Level of Development
Environment
dependency
SIZE
We will start with size: The unborn is clearly smaller than a born human. It’s hard to reason how a difference in size, though, disqualifies someone from being a person. A four year-old is smaller than a fourteen year-old. Can we kill her because she’s not as big as a teenager? No, because a human being’s value is not based on their size. She’s still equally a person even though she differs in that characteristic. In the same way, the unborn is smaller than a four year-old. If we can’t kill the four-year old because she’s smaller, then we can’t kill the unborn because she’s smaller either.
You say that A is big and B is small. It is size then: The larger having the right to kill the smaller. Take care. By this rule you are to be victim to the first person you meet with a larger body than your own.
LEVEL OF DEVELOPMENT
The unborn is also less developed than a born human being. How does this fact, though, disqualify the unborn from personhood? A four year-old girl can’t bear children because her reproductive system is less developed than a fourteen year-old girl. That doesn’t disqualify her from personhood. She is still as equally valuable as a child-bearing teen. The unborn is also less developed than the four year-old. Therefore, we can’t disqualify her from personhood for the same reason we can’t disqualify the four year-old. Both are merely less developed than older human beings.
You do not mean size exactly? -You mean that born human persons are developmentally the superiors of the pre-born and therefore have the right to kill the pre-born? Take care again. By this rule you are to be victim to the first person you meet who is more developed in his mind and body than your own.
ENVIRONMENT
The unborn is located in a different environment than a born human. How does your location, though, affect your value? Can changing your environment alter your status as a person? Where you are has no bearing on who you are. An astronaut who spacewalks in orbit is in a radically different environment than a person on the planet. No one could reasonably deny his personhood simply because he’s in a different location. Scuba divers who swim under water and spelunkers who crawl through caves are equally as valuable as humans who ride in hot-air balloons. If changing your environment can’t change your fundamental status, then being inside or outside a uterus can’t be relevant either. How could a 7-inch journey through the birth canal magically transform a value-less human into a valuable person? Nothing has changed except their location.
The problem is that you cannot metaphysically show how traveling out the birth canal of a woman magically bestows personhood. There is no substantial change between 1 second before birth and 1 second after birth. This is also appealing to the false line of "ENVIRONMENT" because whether inside or outside the womb, the essence of being a human being has not changed and thus it is logically false to claim that being outside the womb magically bestows more rights than someone inside the womb.
While birth does not violate its own definitions or expand beyond the definitions, birth is an arbitrary point. There is no objective change just before birth to just after birth that can be used as a significant reason to have personhood bestowed upon you that was not present before. It is no more arbitrary than using age 18 or age 21. Being such, I could easily argue that personhood begins at age 18 or 21 thus changing infanticide, homicide against children and overall child abuse legal.
DEGREE OF DEPENDENCY
The unborn is dependent upon the mother’s body for nutrition and a proper environment. It’s hard to see, though, how depending upon another person disqualifies you from being a person. Newborns and toddlers still depend upon their parents to provide nutrition and a safe environment. Indeed, some third-world countries require children to be breast fed because formula is not available. Can a mother kill her newborn son because he depends on her body for nutrition? Or, imagine you alone witnessed a toddler fall into a swimming pool. Would you be justified in declaring him not valuable simply because he depended on you for his survival? Of course not! Since the unborn depends on his mother in the same way, it’s not reasonable to disqualify his value either. Notice that although toddler and teens differ from each other in the four SLED categories, we don’t disqualify toddlers from personhood. Since born and unborn humans differ in exactly the same ways, we can’t disqualify the unborn from personhood either. You could do the same for (First Breath) by asking the person if I could kill him/her when he/she is holding his/her breath........or mental ability to think/be aware by asking the person if I can kill him/her when he/she is not thinking or asleep. In each instance, I can take their definition and apply it to a born human being thus showing the weakness of the argument (or lack thereof).
You do not mean environment/location exactly? -You mean that the pre-born are not as viable because they are still dependent on the mother and the womb and therefore have the right to kill the pre-born? Take care even still. By this rule you are to be victim to the first person whose independence is higher than your own.
THEREFORE: There is no other place other than conception that can be the metaphysical beginning of personhood
AUTONOMY?
If the baby is biologically and metaphysically a unique and separate human being from the mother (which is scientifically and metaphysically proven), therefore, it is the killing of another human being by definition. If that is true, then how can one morally excuse the killing of another human being outside of reasonable self defense?
One way would be to claim that abortion was an act of “self defense” against an invasive baby. I will show however, why such a claim is ridiculous and philosophically/intellectually dishonest. Any attempt to claim that the woman’s autonomy is being “violated by the presence of the baby in the womb blatantly ignores the causality of how that baby got there.
THE BABY DID NOT;
a) Suddenly or magically pop into existence. That is metaphysically impossible
Or
b) The baby did not of his/her own free will choose to enter the womb and thus violate the bodily autonomy of the mother. That is also impossible and a denial of how we know that conception and pregnancy occurs.
The mother cannot claim that her autonomy was violated when it was her own freely chosen action of having sex that that caused pregnancy. It would be like throwing a rock at a glass window and then claiming that the rock was violating your house by breaking the window. I threw the rock and that is why the rock broke the window. Such an argument denies basic causality and thus is intellectually dishonest.
BUT WHAT ABOUT RAPE YOU SAY?
Yes……I cannot make the same causality argument in rape because the woman was not a willing participant in the sex which caused the pregnancy. Even so…there is still a logical problem with making this objection to my argument…..
Rape only makes up 1% or less of all cases of abortion. To bring up rape as an argument for abortion when rape/incest only makes up 1% or less of all abortions is the logical fallacy of composition (aka using what is true about a http://part….in this case 1% of 60 million abortions…..in order to make the same statement about the whole……..99% of abortions that are not rape/incest related). The only way to NOT fall into the intellectually dishonest contradiction and fallacy of using the extreme minority of rape/incest in order to justify abortion as a whole is to admit that abortion cannot be justified with the autonomy argument outside of rape and incest.
So let's talk about autonomy, abortion and rape/incest
They would use the objection of the “Famous Violinist” analogy where a person finds themselves hooked up to a famous violinist (against your will) in order to save the life of said violinist. This argument highlights that regardless of whether or not it saves the life of the violinist, it violates my rights to refuse. The problem with this argument is that even though the woman was violated by the rapist, the argument is still misappropriating the violation of the rapist on the woman to the baby who is innocent regardless of how he/she was conceived. Plus, any attempt to say that the woman has a right to remove the baby (even if the intention is not to kill the baby) is like saying that I have a right to eject a stowaway in my plane after I have taken off. Yes that action alone does not directly kill the person, but if I threw that stowaway out of my plane at 30,000 feet, I would be in denial if I said that I did not know that the fall would kill him. The same goes with babies. Saying that a woman has a right to eject the baby from the womb at younger than 20-24 weeks would most assuredly kill the baby and even after 25 weeks, it is not a sure thing that a prematurely born baby would survive even with our new and updated technology in NICU wards.
A better analogy to use would “The Alpine Hut” analogy which goes something like this………
A woman wakes up trapped in a hut in the alps. It is not the fault of the woman that she is there and it is not the choice of the woman to be there. In the hut she finds that there is a newborn who needs to be fed and cared for. In searching the house, you find that there is an ample supply of food and the woman happens to be lactating anyway. It would be wrong for the woman just to ignore the baby despite the fact that caring for the baby does not lessen her ability to survive until the police finally come and rescue her along with the baby. What person upon finding the alpine hut along with the living woman and a dead baby would not fault the woman for refusing to take care of the baby despite the fact that there was plenty of food and nursing the baby does not diminish the amount of food available for the mother? Even though the woman was violated by the rapist, the argument is still misappropriating the violation of the rapist on the woman to the baby who is innocent regardless of how he/she was conceived AND it is flawed to argue for a woman’s right to eject the baby while ignoring the death sentence that it would give much like ejecting my stowaway at 30,000 feet or the woman in the alpine hut refusing to feed the child at no person harm to herself (other than slight inconvenience).
THEREFORE the argument is logically flawed.
THEREFORE It is impossible to not give humans from conception the same basic rights of personhood as all other human beings first of most is the right to life.
And even if you dispute my scientific claim, I can reprove the fact through metaphysics. In metaphysics there are accidental and substantial changes. Accidental changes are changes to the subject which does not change the essence of the subject. Hair for example can be bleached or colored, however the underlying essence of “hair-ness” does not change. It is still the same hair before and after the hair color was altered. The change being made to the hair does not change the overall essence of the hair. A substantial change, on the other hand, does change the essence of the subject making it something completely different than before. Thus the subject becomes a new subject.
Take the sperm and the egg. The sperm and egg alone cannot grow a fully functional human body. It is not until the sperm and egg meet that a substantial change happens and a human life begins. There is no other point in the development of the human body after conception that can be proven as the substantial change other than conception itself. Birth cannot be the substantial change that grants humanness because there is no difference between a baby one second before birth and one second after birth which could prove that a substantial change had happened. The same can be said for any other arbitrary milestone of development such as first steps or age 18 or age 21. All of those are accidental changes in which the overall essence of humanness is not changed. The only point where you can point to a visible and provable substantial change is conception. The sperm and the egg are not simply the sperm and the egg after the moment of conception and thanks to modern scientific equipment; you can see it happen before your very eyes.
Therefore, it is philosophically impossible to claim that any group after conception is less than metaphysically human.
THEREFORE: Biological Human life begins at conceptions the same as all other mammals
2) Now we come to those who try and separate biological life from personhood. The problem with that line or argumentation is anytime you draw any line other than the inception of the child (at conception) you end up drawing a false line that can also be applied to people who are adults so either human life has intrinsic value or it doesn't....there is no in between. I will go through the most used false lines and show how each one is false.
For these I use the acronym SLED
Size
Level of Development
Environment
dependency
SIZE
We will start with size: The unborn is clearly smaller than a born human. It’s hard to reason how a difference in size, though, disqualifies someone from being a person. A four year-old is smaller than a fourteen year-old. Can we kill her because she’s not as big as a teenager? No, because a human being’s value is not based on their size. She’s still equally a person even though she differs in that characteristic. In the same way, the unborn is smaller than a four year-old. If we can’t kill the four-year old because she’s smaller, then we can’t kill the unborn because she’s smaller either.
You say that A is big and B is small. It is size then: The larger having the right to kill the smaller. Take care. By this rule you are to be victim to the first person you meet with a larger body than your own.
LEVEL OF DEVELOPMENT
The unborn is also less developed than a born human being. How does this fact, though, disqualify the unborn from personhood? A four year-old girl can’t bear children because her reproductive system is less developed than a fourteen year-old girl. That doesn’t disqualify her from personhood. She is still as equally valuable as a child-bearing teen. The unborn is also less developed than the four year-old. Therefore, we can’t disqualify her from personhood for the same reason we can’t disqualify the four year-old. Both are merely less developed than older human beings.
You do not mean size exactly? -You mean that born human persons are developmentally the superiors of the pre-born and therefore have the right to kill the pre-born? Take care again. By this rule you are to be victim to the first person you meet who is more developed in his mind and body than your own.
ENVIRONMENT
The unborn is located in a different environment than a born human. How does your location, though, affect your value? Can changing your environment alter your status as a person? Where you are has no bearing on who you are. An astronaut who spacewalks in orbit is in a radically different environment than a person on the planet. No one could reasonably deny his personhood simply because he’s in a different location. Scuba divers who swim under water and spelunkers who crawl through caves are equally as valuable as humans who ride in hot-air balloons. If changing your environment can’t change your fundamental status, then being inside or outside a uterus can’t be relevant either. How could a 7-inch journey through the birth canal magically transform a value-less human into a valuable person? Nothing has changed except their location.
The problem is that you cannot metaphysically show how traveling out the birth canal of a woman magically bestows personhood. There is no substantial change between 1 second before birth and 1 second after birth. This is also appealing to the false line of "ENVIRONMENT" because whether inside or outside the womb, the essence of being a human being has not changed and thus it is logically false to claim that being outside the womb magically bestows more rights than someone inside the womb.
While birth does not violate its own definitions or expand beyond the definitions, birth is an arbitrary point. There is no objective change just before birth to just after birth that can be used as a significant reason to have personhood bestowed upon you that was not present before. It is no more arbitrary than using age 18 or age 21. Being such, I could easily argue that personhood begins at age 18 or 21 thus changing infanticide, homicide against children and overall child abuse legal.
DEGREE OF DEPENDENCY
The unborn is dependent upon the mother’s body for nutrition and a proper environment. It’s hard to see, though, how depending upon another person disqualifies you from being a person. Newborns and toddlers still depend upon their parents to provide nutrition and a safe environment. Indeed, some third-world countries require children to be breast fed because formula is not available. Can a mother kill her newborn son because he depends on her body for nutrition? Or, imagine you alone witnessed a toddler fall into a swimming pool. Would you be justified in declaring him not valuable simply because he depended on you for his survival? Of course not! Since the unborn depends on his mother in the same way, it’s not reasonable to disqualify his value either. Notice that although toddler and teens differ from each other in the four SLED categories, we don’t disqualify toddlers from personhood. Since born and unborn humans differ in exactly the same ways, we can’t disqualify the unborn from personhood either. You could do the same for (First Breath) by asking the person if I could kill him/her when he/she is holding his/her breath........or mental ability to think/be aware by asking the person if I can kill him/her when he/she is not thinking or asleep. In each instance, I can take their definition and apply it to a born human being thus showing the weakness of the argument (or lack thereof).
You do not mean environment/location exactly? -You mean that the pre-born are not as viable because they are still dependent on the mother and the womb and therefore have the right to kill the pre-born? Take care even still. By this rule you are to be victim to the first person whose independence is higher than your own.
THEREFORE: There is no other place other than conception that can be the metaphysical beginning of personhood
AUTONOMY?
If the baby is biologically and metaphysically a unique and separate human being from the mother (which is scientifically and metaphysically proven), therefore, it is the killing of another human being by definition. If that is true, then how can one morally excuse the killing of another human being outside of reasonable self defense?
One way would be to claim that abortion was an act of “self defense” against an invasive baby. I will show however, why such a claim is ridiculous and philosophically/intellectually dishonest. Any attempt to claim that the woman’s autonomy is being “violated by the presence of the baby in the womb blatantly ignores the causality of how that baby got there.
THE BABY DID NOT;
a) Suddenly or magically pop into existence. That is metaphysically impossible
Or
b) The baby did not of his/her own free will choose to enter the womb and thus violate the bodily autonomy of the mother. That is also impossible and a denial of how we know that conception and pregnancy occurs.
The mother cannot claim that her autonomy was violated when it was her own freely chosen action of having sex that that caused pregnancy. It would be like throwing a rock at a glass window and then claiming that the rock was violating your house by breaking the window. I threw the rock and that is why the rock broke the window. Such an argument denies basic causality and thus is intellectually dishonest.
BUT WHAT ABOUT RAPE YOU SAY?
Yes……I cannot make the same causality argument in rape because the woman was not a willing participant in the sex which caused the pregnancy. Even so…there is still a logical problem with making this objection to my argument…..
Rape only makes up 1% or less of all cases of abortion. To bring up rape as an argument for abortion when rape/incest only makes up 1% or less of all abortions is the logical fallacy of composition (aka using what is true about a http://part….in this case 1% of 60 million abortions…..in order to make the same statement about the whole……..99% of abortions that are not rape/incest related). The only way to NOT fall into the intellectually dishonest contradiction and fallacy of using the extreme minority of rape/incest in order to justify abortion as a whole is to admit that abortion cannot be justified with the autonomy argument outside of rape and incest.
So let's talk about autonomy, abortion and rape/incest
They would use the objection of the “Famous Violinist” analogy where a person finds themselves hooked up to a famous violinist (against your will) in order to save the life of said violinist. This argument highlights that regardless of whether or not it saves the life of the violinist, it violates my rights to refuse. The problem with this argument is that even though the woman was violated by the rapist, the argument is still misappropriating the violation of the rapist on the woman to the baby who is innocent regardless of how he/she was conceived. Plus, any attempt to say that the woman has a right to remove the baby (even if the intention is not to kill the baby) is like saying that I have a right to eject a stowaway in my plane after I have taken off. Yes that action alone does not directly kill the person, but if I threw that stowaway out of my plane at 30,000 feet, I would be in denial if I said that I did not know that the fall would kill him. The same goes with babies. Saying that a woman has a right to eject the baby from the womb at younger than 20-24 weeks would most assuredly kill the baby and even after 25 weeks, it is not a sure thing that a prematurely born baby would survive even with our new and updated technology in NICU wards.
A better analogy to use would “The Alpine Hut” analogy which goes something like this………
A woman wakes up trapped in a hut in the alps. It is not the fault of the woman that she is there and it is not the choice of the woman to be there. In the hut she finds that there is a newborn who needs to be fed and cared for. In searching the house, you find that there is an ample supply of food and the woman happens to be lactating anyway. It would be wrong for the woman just to ignore the baby despite the fact that caring for the baby does not lessen her ability to survive until the police finally come and rescue her along with the baby. What person upon finding the alpine hut along with the living woman and a dead baby would not fault the woman for refusing to take care of the baby despite the fact that there was plenty of food and nursing the baby does not diminish the amount of food available for the mother? Even though the woman was violated by the rapist, the argument is still misappropriating the violation of the rapist on the woman to the baby who is innocent regardless of how he/she was conceived AND it is flawed to argue for a woman’s right to eject the baby while ignoring the death sentence that it would give much like ejecting my stowaway at 30,000 feet or the woman in the alpine hut refusing to feed the child at no person harm to herself (other than slight inconvenience).
THEREFORE the argument is logically flawed.
THEREFORE It is impossible to not give humans from conception the same basic rights of personhood as all other human beings first of most is the right to life.
Comments (261)
That's a paddling.
Have you ever read other works of the philosophers?
Here I might add that two wrongs don't make a right. If abortion is intrinsically immoral, then rape is not a legitimate exception. To punish the innocent for crimes it never committed (in this case, rape, but the same logic would apply to incest) is unjust.
The only possibly legitimate exception is when the life of the mother is threatened. There, the principle of double effect becomes relevant, so that if the child is killed in an attempt to save the life of the mother without intending to harm the child, the abortion in that case is morally permissible.
I guess it would depend on what you mean by "life of the mother being threatened" since that phrase has been used rather loosely.
I would bring a few things to mind on that question......
1) An abortion especially if it is late term would take 3 days in preparation just to dilate the cervix enough for the procedure.
If a woman did have complications during a pregnancy that caused her to fall ill or have an impending health risk that could or is turning deadly, would a woman really wait 3 days to have an abortion in an abortion “clinic” or would she go to the emergency room of a hospital? ………of course she would.
2) Except for ectopic pregnancies, most medical problems for the mother during her pregnancy happen in the third trimester and are usually after the baby is able to be taken out of the womb by C-section and in many cases survive. And even in the case of ectopic pregnancies, you would never go to an abortion clinic to resolve that. An abortion would not change the ectopic pregnancy.
For such a problem, you would have to go to a hospital where they would remove the entire fallopian tube. Also, in those medical cases where there was an issue that threatened the health of the mother, having a D&E abortion would be equally as dangerous because it would not remove the true threat to the mother and the true cause of her symptoms.
Quite the contrary, having an abortion would worsen symptoms because it would exacerbate the true cause of her symptoms (which is NOT the baby in the womb but rather another issue for which pregnancy triggers the symptoms).
In cases of TRUE health risks to the mother (and I mean true health risks not just saying “health risks” as a catch all loophole) I would use the double effect rule. What I mean by “double effect” is that the intention has to be to save the mother and NOT to directly end the life of the baby. So what does that look like? Use the example of an ectopic pregnancy.
In such a case, the intention of the doctor would be to remove the philopian tube in which the newly conceived baby (fertilized egg) is attached. If the goal of the operation was to scrape out the newly conceived baby (fertilized egg itself, it would be immoral because the direct intention is to kill the newly conceived baby.
The other example I would use (courtesy of Ben Shapiro) would be the pregnant woman who has cancer. In her case the intention of the course of treatment (in this case chemotherapy) is to treat the cancer…….of which an indirect result is a miscarriage. I the direct reason was to cause a miscarriage, it would not be acceptable. Now how many babies do you think are able to survive outside the womb in the known cases where a health risk happened in a pregnancy?
The success rate of the hospital to save both the baby and the mother is extremely high. Most of all, complications in pregnancies are rare and many of them arise later in pregnancy. PLUS, the percentage where there is a medical complication in a pregnancy is so low in the United States that it would not even reach 1 percent.
Thus by using this example as a case for not making abortion illegal is bad logic. You are using a VERY obscure exemption that does not affect the main topic because the example is so rare. Such an argument is logically flawed and and fails to address an argument for the much larger case for abortion outside of extremely rare medical emergencies.
How does you first premise connect to your second one? You begin by saying
Quoting LostThomist
And then move into your metaphysical argument. But the metaphysical argument isn't connected to this beginning or your end. It doesn't argue that biological human life begins at conception.
Quoting LostThomist
And, furthermore, you beg the question here by saying conception is the substantial change that happens where human life begins, even within your metaphysical argument. You go on to posit other possible places or reasons in order to argue against them -- but you don't argue for this.
Importantly: The sperm and the egg cannot grow a fully functional human body (not sure what free will has to do with this) without the mother. That's just a fact. It's not like conception is any more magical than any of the other points which you argue against.
I'd say that none of them magically make a human being -- that there simply is no point along the chain of events that magically makes a human being human.
1) The point of mentioning the metaphysical argument for biologically human life beginning at conception is to disprove any future argument which denies the humanity as a basis for abortion being moral.
Then.....I go on to argue against those who separate biological humanness from personhood
2) The free will part was a typo....you are right to say that free will has nothing to do with it. Some parts of this I wrote at odd hours and may have been less coherent than I would have liked to be.
I think what I meant to say.........is that the egg alone or the sperm alone cannot on their own produce a human being.
Ok............I will give that to you. I mostly used that example because I could not think of another good example of substantial change. If I used another example other than the one I was trying to prove, it would tighten up the argument.
I use the word "magically" somewhat sarcastically........but what I mean by that is that...........the other places to use as the starting point for life would make it seem like a baby just popped into existence, whereas with conception you can see how it came about and thus proves itself more valid as an explanation.
Differentiating "hand waving" as an explanation for things from being able to show the causality
You can cut down the pedant's speech. Philosophy doesn't require that we speak through a chicken's anus (now I doubt this idiom is going to translate). And it's traditional to introduce oneself before launching into an endless moralizing tirade. That was all I meant to convey.
"Read other works of the philosophers"...? Are you often this condescending.
Then I would be accused of not defining my terms properly.
I would rather take the former accusation than the latter.
Not my intention..........My point being that every other philosophical work is long, requires things to be defined and is seldom brief.............especially Heidegger.
1) Hello. I am Lost Thomist
2) That is rather condescending yourself and insulting to a work of philosophical thought for which I have worked hard to create. I demand an apology.
Unfortunately, you did not address the arguments made by Singer and others that we cannot reasonably call an embryo a person. Their argument is essentially that it is a much less significant harm to kill an organism that has no well-developed consciousness, self-awareness, sense of purpose or of the future, than one that does. The section labelled 'LEVEL OF DEVELOPMENT' could have addressed this, but did not do so. The only part that comes close to it is the bit about the super-intelligent aliens killing us. But that would not apply if the threshold for personhood were to be set at some absolute minimum level rather than at a level that is relative to the sophistication of the being that is thinking of doing the killing. I believe the usual utilitarian arguments for permissibility of abortion are based on setting absolute minimum levels for personhood, not relative levels.
But having said that, I do not necessarily disagree that, if super-intelligent aliens were to come to Earth, it would be fair enough for them to kill and eat us. It seems only fair, given how ready humans are to kill and eat other mammals just because they are not as sophisticated as we are.
Exactly.
Quoting LostThomist
Right. I don't use it as a case for making abortion legal. I'm assuming the "you" here is meant generally and is not directed at me.
1) I would hardly call Singer a philosopher much less sophisticated.
2)
So if you are in a coma from which you may awake........can I stab you?
Sorry yes.....I wrote this all out before hand (in fact I have been working on this for years).......The "You" is not talking to you personally but rather talking to my imaginary opponent who disagrees with me.
3) Even Singer's argument does not explain my question of how there could possibly be a "partly person" with only partial rights.
Either there the baby in the womb is a person with rights or he/she is not. To say that somehow it would be moral to kill the baby in the womb because of lesser intelligence or intellect or awareness would (by the same logic) excuse the murder of the mentally handicapped, physically handicapped or anyone of lesser intelligence than the speaker.
Singer lacks any true argument other than to argue that some humans are morally superior to other and thus deserve to live over them.
*cue to short man with a small black mustache raising his arm out straight and slightly raised in front of him*
Welcome to the forum. In order to hang around here, especially if you plan to support unpopular ideas, it's best if you prepare to be treated un-civilly. Actually, prepare to be treated un-civilly no matter what ideas you support. It's a good forum and fairly aggressive moderation keeps things from getting crazy, but a lot of leeway is given for personal expression.
Bullshit. I treated him with professional respect and I expect the same........in fact the forum rules as they are written expect the same.
Well, no. It's not undeniable. I don't consider eight cells human life. I think abortion is a bad method of birth control. It should be avoided, but I believe the pregnant women should make the decision. What you call your "scientific claim" is nothing more than a restatement of the common claim that life begins at conception. It's a definition, not a fact. It's your definition, not mine.
Quoting LostThomist
No.
Do you propose making abortion illegal? If so, the question I always ask is whether you believe in allowing free access to non-abortive birth control. If not, you have no credibility in my opinion.
Nonetheless, that's the way things work here. As I said, the forum rules are enforced with a lot of leeway. I endorse that, although I try, with reasonable but not perfect success, to be respectful.
EXCEPT......as I point out.......there is a difference between 8 random cells and the 8 cells not long after conception. Such a comparison is ignoring the epistemological difference between the parts and the whole.
There is an epistemological difference between a human baby in the womb and a finger that I lost in a workshop accident.
Even if John lose that finger to a buzz-saw, John still retain my John-ness.....likewise just because the finger was a part of john does not make the finger a whole person.
Or
Just because I take a branch from a tree, does not mean that the branch becomes a tree
Likewise, just because I took away one branch from the tree, does not mean that the tree looses its tree-ness
Ok........so you deny my scientific claim (much like denying the earth is round)
But no matter......I also showed using metaphysics that human life (putting aside the question of personhood) begins at conception.
Are you going to also deny metaphysics?
That leaves you with no platform to stand on other than claiming that my reality is different than your reality.....a claim that is neither philosophical, scientific or based on objective facts.
And, as I said, in my opinion eight cells is not a tree.
A theme I come back to in a lot of my posts - metaphysics is not a matter of true or false, it is a matter of useful or not useful. I don't find your way of looking at this useful or convincing.
You completely missed the point.
To simply compare any 8 cells with the 8 cells in a developing human is an illogical comparison because any 8 skin cells cannot develop into a whole human body.
Quoting LostThomist
Hey - no fair. You respond so fast I don't get a chance to keep up.
Anyway - The accidental vs. substantial change distinction is Aristotle, right? So, it's not metaphysics, it's Aristotle's metaphysics. It's not true. It's not logical. It's just your way of looking at things.
Actually.......that is Thomas Aquinas who was building on Aristotle to create "Metaphysics".
[quote=Thomist]I would hardly call Singer a philosopher much less sophisticated.[/quote]
What anybody calls him (and some people - mostly those that have never read his work - call him some very horrible things) is of no consequence. What matters is whether they can engage with his ideas - whether to try to rebut them or something else.
[quote=Thomist]So if you are in a coma from which you may awake........can I stab you?[/quote] As long as you make a clean job of it and finish me off, I would have no complaint to make. In working out whether you feel it is morally permissible however, you would need to take account of the feelings of those that have come to care about me. Even though I am not nearly as widely beloved as Taylor Smith or Beyoncé Noakes, I expect there would be enough people that would be quite upset about it that you would decide that the morally preferable path is to not stab me.
That is a false dichotomy right there. I would much rather hear that someone stabbed Beyoncé in her coma than hear someone did the same to you.
See, I too can do good philosophy! :wink:
The hormone in some birth control pills changes the lining of a women's uterus so that implantation of a fertilized egg is much less likely to occur. Whether abortion by means of birth control pill at zero-day or at week 22, the logic applied seems fairly similar. One might argue though that the common birth control pill has resulted in a negative natural replacement rate of people, which could be argued as societal suicide and a biological sin; far more damaging than the results of week 20 abortions.
Death is a common symptom of life though, as is natural selection, so I don't look at death as being overtly bad or good. What I understand though is that as this society we have determined that individuality has been deemed more important than the group. Whether for good or bad, an individual's rights takes precedent so long as it does not infringe on the rights of others. One may not inflict harm on another unless it's in self defense.
After week 24, my understanding is that since a fetus *could* live independently of the mother's womb, hence the womb is then both considered technically alive and a person with rights. The mother can not do harm to the unborn child at this point unless it threatens the rights (life) of the mother. Although removing the baby at this point may not lead to the child's successful birth, lets consider the classical Schrodinger's cat experiment. We do not know if the cat inside the poisoned trapped box is alive or dead until we open the box, but until we do, the cat must be considered both alive and dead. If alive, it must be treated with rights.
An added note, but it would seem justifiable to kill the baby if it threatened the life of the mother, although I chuckle that it may be just as justifiable to kill the mother to save the baby in such a case. As for pre-week 24 abortions, I suspect that any time a man has sex with a women who is on the pill, they are likely accomplices to abortions they may not even be aware of.
So after all that, let's say, for the sake of argument, you have proven that a foetus, at any age is a human being. Now prove to me that killing an innocent human being is immoral in all circumstances. If someone was in terminal pain but could not speak to express their wishes, would killing them be immoral? If someone was in a complete vegetative state from which they were unlikely to revive, would turning off the life support be immoral? You may have your own moral ideas formed by your religion, but these are relatively modern by human standards. Tribal cultures have been practising infanticide for thousands of years on babies they know they cannot care for, and although demonstrably traumatic for the whole tribe, it is justified (by them) on the basis that the life the child could expect would be one of suffering which, if the child could express a wish, they would not want. The fact that modern medicine can offer abortion is massive improvement on the same principle.
You still have some work to do if you want to offer a complete argument against abortion, form a utilitarian perspective, you have to balance the harms, from a virtue ethic you need to show what virtue is being cultivated by bringing a life into the world which is more likely than not to suffer, in deontology, universalizing a principle that all humans must be kept alive whilst it is possible to do so would cause massive problems for the permanently comatose.
So let's have the rest of your argument - the part where you show how, once we've concluded that a foetus is actually a human, that it follows automatically that we cannot terminate it.
Are you a human? Can I terminate you?
Yes, any time I'm in permanent pain, any time my life would almost certainly be one of suffering, any time I'm in a state where there is no-one to care for me and I have no sense of what the world is, no hopes or feelings, then yes, you may terminate me. 6,000 people a year in the UK unfortunately make that decision for themselves, it's a perfectly normal decision to make.
Normal? What's normal about it? This is great; we suddenly arrive at a purely emotional argument when we get here.
Normal - "usual, typical or expected". What part of the definition are you not getting?
:lol:
Btw, I was laughing at your comment that 6,000 people in the UK decide to end their own lives is "normal".
Yes, the decision to end a life in the face of interminable suffering is unfortunately normal (in the sense that it is typical or to be expected). I fully 'expect' that another 6,000 people will make a similar decision next year.
Is there something about that you find funny?
Why would you assume I find that funny? To the contrary, I find your expression of that situation horrifying.
That reality is only normal within a modern world in which these things are possible. I couldn't give a rat's ass about that "normal" modern world. The ability doesn't suggest the moral.
No, infanticide is unfortunately considered necessary in many tribal cultures and paleoanthropological evidence seems to suggest it has been since human culture began, so yes the decision to end a life in the face of interminable suffering is, unfortunately 'normal'.
Quoting Noble Dust
I haven't in any of my posts suggested it does. I've merely pointed out that it cannot be taken as given that because a foetus can be considered a human being, it automatically follows that it is immoral to terminate it.
This doesn't follow.
Sure, maybe that was my mistake, then; but to call infanticide "normal"? Normal has an ontological and epistemological connotation beyond simple cultural acceptance. Normal against what?
Further more, I don't care about paleoanthropomorphicaloligal evidence (typo on purpose). I can't be bothered to give a shit.
Well I'd agree, but the only contender might be biological, which is also evidenced by study of ancient remains. How were you imagining we might approach a view of what's 'normal'? Random guesswork, we all have a shout about what we 'reckon' and the most popular one wins?
Quoting Noble Dust
No, we can't let evidence get in the way of a good reckon.
But I wonder, I really wonder why so much time is spent on this issue. Why are there no philosophers and no threads arguing that when a homeless person freezes to death while there are warm places locked up all around him, that is murder; that refusing your spare bedroom to a refugee is murder.
If it wrong for a woman to refuse to sustain and house someone in her body who has need, then it is wrong to refuse to sustain and house any person who has need. People are being neglected, suffering and dying all around you, but men like to focus on the one issue where their own innocence is assured.
Very insightful comment. I hadn't thought of it like that.
Quoting LostThomist
Wouldn't the zygote have to be a human life in order for it to be considered human life, though?
What about conception makes that point preferable and not "hand waving" to be human life and better than other points?
There isn't much significant difference, from my perspective, before and after. In fact I don't think you're likely to find any one point where there is going to be a significant difference, before and after.
Especially if you're just talking about biological life, from a scientific perspective.
For these examples to be parallel with abortion, one would have to set them up so that a homeless man or a refugee has his neck snapped by a doctor and is sucked into a giant vacuum cleaner, otherwise, they bear no resemblance to abortion.
Also, these examples you've given are ironically emotional appeals.
Unlike your post? What a ridiculous claim to make. The resemblance is that humans are suffering and dying through no fault of their own, and it can be greatly reduced by moralists doing something about it that will inconvenience them; that is they can take responsibility for another life. But the same people who fulminate against abortion do not want to take responsibility for any of the many unwanted children languishing in care homes, let alone people whose lives they could save.
A very large, unwarranted assumption. It's actually false: https://www.conservativebookclub.com/book/who-really-cares-americas-charity-divide-who-gives-who-doesnt-and-why-it-matters-2
Very simple - I could give my couch to a refugee to sleep, but how do I know that he won't turn around and rob me, or harm my family, etc.? I have no such guarantee, hence I'm not willing to take the risk. In addition, I am not directly responsible for his plight and suffering, the way the woman would be with regards to her child (in most circumstances).
Quoting unenlightened
Except that the woman most of the time (excluding cases of rape) is partly responsible for the child who is there, whereas I am not, in any direct way, responsible for the refugee or any random person who has need.
Well now you have said both.............no double talk.....yes or no?
That review doesn't explain which charities are being supported and what volunteer work is being done (except for a mention of "the arts and the environment"). Is there some other source that shows that pro-life advocates (rather than "conservatives", as "conservatives" can include pro-choice fiscal conservatives) provide for child (or adult) welfare specifically?
YES if they did not ask you to do it
Quoting Pseudonym
YES unless that was their expressly written wish to do so
So you don't believe in objective standards of morality? If that is true.....then why should I not go down to a store and shoot it up because I want to?
Here's an article that reviews Brooks' book, and highlights the issue I raised above.
Ah then you are arguing D is SLED for Degree of Dependency
The unborn is dependent upon the mother’s body for nutrition and a proper environment. It’s hard to see, though, how depending upon another person disqualifies you from being a person. Newborns and toddlers still depend upon their parents to provide nutrition and a safe environment. Indeed, some third-world countries require children to be breast fed because formula is not available. Can a mother kill her newborn son because he depends on her body for nutrition? Or, imagine you alone witnessed a toddler fall into a swimming pool. Would you be justified in declaring him not valuable simply because he depended on you for his survival? Of course not! Since the unborn depends on his mother in the same way, it’s not reasonable to disqualify his value either. Notice that although toddler and teens differ from each other in the four SLED categories, we don’t disqualify toddlers from personhood. Since born and unborn humans differ in exactly the same ways, we can’t disqualify the unborn from personhood either. You could do the same for (First Breath) by asking the person if I could kill him/her when he/she is holding his/her breath........or mental ability to think/be aware by asking the person if I can kill him/her when he/she is not thinking or asleep. In each instance, I can take their definition and apply it to a born human being thus showing the weakness of the argument (or lack thereof).
No, I absolutely agree with objective morality, but you have not demonstrated objectively that once a thing has been identified as a human being it is automatically a moral duty to keep it alive.
Schrodinger's baby?............Give me a break
There is a moral duty not to murder it once alive.
That is a FALSE dichotomy. Abortion (like the definition of 'murder' requires intention). Miscarriage, stillbirth or biological failure to implant in the uterus by natural causes is not the same thing. That is a retarded argument to make.
Utilitarians are morally decrepit......NEXT!
That is a false dichotomy.
Comparing "me giving money to someone who is homeless or poor" to abortion is basically making the following argument.........
The problem is that comparing "giving people free crap" to "NOT KILLING A HUMAN BEING IN COLD BLOOD" is logically fallacious.
Again, assume for a moment that pro-lifers really don’t care about what happens after birth. Would that make killing an unborn child defensible? Of course not. It’s a logical fallacy (an ad hominem attack, more specifically) to answer pro-life arguments by saying that you think pro-lifers are nasty people
In short..........your argument boils down to melodramatically shouting....."UNLESS YOU WANT PEOPLE TO DIE!" when someone doesn't agree with forcing me to pay for other people's stuff.
But that is not the charge. The charge is that people who want to dictate to women what responsibilities they should take not only with their bodies but for years thereafter, are less willing to take the same responsibilities in their own homes and lives. "I dictate to you your morality, but my morality is voluntary".
Quoting LostThomist
That is not the comparison. You giving money is cheap. I am asking you actually to take responsibility for the lives of others, as you expect women to take responsibility for the life of another. Your home, your care over years, not your mere money. Think you can buy your way into heaven?
What's that got to do with it? No one's talking about murder.
And to think I wasted so much time in long ethical debates in my career. I wish I'd just come and asked you first.
:brow:
Murder is an unlawful killing. Given the legality of abortion, abortion isn't murder.
And if murder were legal, that would make it okay? Surely not. Murder is intrinsically immoral. Laws don't make it so.
Murder is illegal by definition. Your question doesn't make any sense.
So is euthanasia murder?
I didn't say it's merely illegal. I said that it's illegal by definition.
Yes, and?
And abortion isn't illegal, and so therefore not murder.
I haven't quite made up my mind on that issue, but I tend to think so, yes.
Murder is defined as "unlawful killing". Abortion isn't a form of unlawful killing. Therefore, abortion isn't a form of murder.
I'm not equivocating. I'm using it in the sense of "not legal" throughout.
So your claim is that if something is not morally right then it ought be made illegal?
I got that already....
Mhmm.
Right, so it is either untrue to say that all killing of another person is automatically murder, or untrue to say that all murder is automatically morally wrong (if, for some reason, you want to define murder other than by its legal definition).
Either way, there are circumstances in which the killing of a completely innocent person is not automatically morally wrong.
Which means that, if you want to make an argument that abortion is morally wrong, it is not sufficient to demonstrate that the foetus is a person, you must go on to say why it is that killing that particular person, in those circumstances, is wrong (like murder) and not ambiguous (like euthanasia).
Yes, it is untrue to say this. Killing someone unintentionally and/or in self-defense isn't murder. Killing a heinous criminal wouldn't be murder but capital punishment. Abortion is murder because it intentionally kills an innocent life.
Quoting Pseudonym
No there aren't, and it is for this reason that I lean toward believing euthanasia is murder. My indecision is due primarily to certain grey areas involving non-physician-assisted "suicide." I'm not sure if someone deliberately refusing to take their medications, for example, would count as suicide (and thus euthanasia), and I'm not sure if suicide counts as murder. But my indecision in these areas doesn't affect my claim with respect to abortion.
Wrong! You have stumbled at the first hurdle. There is no point trying to get this rather clumsy straw man into the thread.
Of course it does. We've agreed that there are circumstances under which the morality of killing of an innocent person needs to be justified. The very fact that you are undecided about euthanasia, no matter what your 'leaning' demonstrates that other factors need to be considered. Were that not the case, there would be no deliberation necessary, euthanasia would be automatically morally wrong, end of discussion. But there is a discussion, you have taken other factors into consideration, so let's discuss those factors, rather than ignore them in favour of some moral absolutism that isn't really there.
Arbitrary. The fertilised egg, and the foetus that it evolves toward is a property of the body that contains it, and it is only through her effort and permission that a "human life" can be born of it.
Any attempt to try to characterise the foetus ( a thing completely dependant on the body of a woman) as a 'human life" or "person" is an attempt to deny the bodily rights of women.
If you want to act like a Victorian, find yourself a time machine.
I qualified what I was undecided about with respect to euthanasia, which you have ignored. I'm not undecided about one person taking the innocent life of another. If that's what euthanasia is, then I'm totally opposed to it.
Appeal to authority. That is a logical fallacy.
Then by the same logic, the holocaust was also ok because it was lawfully passed by the recognized German Parliament, Slavery was only because it was legal along with segregation.
Murder: The killing of another human being with intent
Abortion: The killing of a fetus
Fetus: A developing human
But I sincerely doubt that the mere presence of a unique strand of DNA is enough to qualify anything as life. DNA, after all, can and has been synthesized, one amino acid at a time. We do not think of these products as life, period, much less human life.
Potentiality is another criteria often brought up. But potentiality belongs to the gametes as much as the zygote. Is the menstrual cycle murder? I think not. Nocturnal emission? No.
Further, if we are relying upon biology I'd say we're actually looking at the problem from the wrong angle. Biology is the study of life as a whole. It's definition of life is largely differentiating what is alive from what is inanimate. It's not really looking at what is alive vs. what is dead. It's looking at species and ecologies, not individuals.
Also, if we're strictly scientific, there is no moral property you can ascertain from scientific observation. An individual does not become morally worthy at some point because it is alive in the eyes of science. So while we may reference this or that fact we will, very obviously, also have to introduce some sort of moral criteria and not pass our argument off as somehow scientific.
Lastly, given all that, I think the conception of time which this argument generally presupposes is entirely off. Organisms are alive in a continuum. They need to meet many criteria before they are definitively so, or before they are definitely dead. There are no necessary or sufficient conditions which are clear cut -- and certainly no singular event or point along the timeline of an individual life where something becomes morally worthy or not. The closest we might come to defining death comes from the medical field, but it's a bit hazy too. Life? There really just isn't a good point to pick where something becomes important, and before which it is not because the facts of the matter -- how life works -- doesn't easily fit into our desired legal framework.
There's no appeal to authority. Murder is defined as unlawful killing, and so if abortion is lawful then it isn't murder.
That's not the same logic at all. I didn't say that abortion is OK. I said that abortion isn't murder.
Murder is the unlawful killing of another human being with intent. This contrasts with something like capital punishment, which although the killing of another human being with intent, isn't murder because it's lawful.
But you again missed my point. My point was that simply saying it is morally acceptable because it is legal is a fallacious appeal to authority. The same is true tor trying to excuse abortion simply because it is currently legal.
I'm afraid that line makes no sense to me at all.
If you have an argument to make, please make it and I'll do my best to respond respectfully.
I will try again.
If you are in a coma from which you may awake......would it be moral for me to kill you?
I didn't say that.
Quoting LostThomist
I didn't do that.
My argument is that murder is unlawful killing, that abortion isn't unlawful, and so therefore that abortion isn't murder.
You are appealing to the authority of the law to determine what is moral........but there are laws that were and are immoral.
your argument is invalid and fallacious
That's not the question you asked. You asked 'can I stab you?', and I answered that question by saying that I would not mind, as long as you succeeded in killing me.
Your new question is more relevant to the topic, so let's look at that. My answer is that, based on my moral framework, which is principally preference utilitarian, and almost certainly different from yours, that would depend on how much emotional harm such an act would cause. You don't need to worry about emotional harm to me, because I won't even know what happened. But you do need to consider the emotional harm to those that care about me. You would need to make the evaluation yourself but I would be surprised if you did not reach the conclusion that such an act would cause significant emotional harm to those that know me as a person and who have come to care for me, and thus that it would be immoral.
Such an evaluation would not apply in the case of an embryo or foetus, as nobody has come to know it as a person. The only possible exception to that is the mother who, for an advanced foetus, may feel a relationship arising from the movements she detects. But since she has the right of veto over abortion (otherwise it will be immoral on everybody's evaluation), that makes it hard to imagine that a voluntary abortion would be immoral on that count.
It's nothing to do with you, what a woman does with her own body. Forcing her to carry a foetus is a right you do not have.
False analogy. We are talking about abusing the rights of a woman who may not wish to carry a foetus just because YOU decide she should. The legal killing or enslaving of people are different cases.
("Contest" I think you mean)
But you have no grounds. A woman's body is not yours to violate with your personal moral stance.
That isn't an appeal of authority, it's the correction of a category mistake. "Murder" is a legal term. It defines "unlawful killing". Tautologically, abortion isn't murder, because it is not unlawful.
Of course that's a very trite argument. Obviously Thorongil refered to a moral acceptation of the terms "murder", and not the legal one.
No I'm not.
How so? It seems straightforward to me:
1. Murder is unlawful killing
2. Abortion is not unlawful killing
3. Therefore, abortion is not murder
If it helps, consider this argument which uses the same reasoning:
1. A bachelor is an unmarried man
2. John is not an unmarried man
3. Therefore, John is not a bachelor
In virology class, I recall the definition of life being a talking point. Is a Prion or Virus a life form? The general scientific consensus seemed to be that viruses were not alive, as they were dependent on the host; I believe they are dependent on reproduction and metabolism. It becomes fairly easy then to see how an unborn fetus could be seen as perhaps nothing more than a cancerous tumor, triggered by foreign DNA entering the body.
A retrovirus for example will inject itself into a human's genome, reproducing itself, and potentially leading to cancerous cell growth. We don't necessarily call that new corrupted lump of tissue a new life form -- it's just a tumor.
Based on the principals of our society, the rights of the individual, on some level this is indeed the case. I do not legally need to donate blood, nor do I need to legally donate a kidney to someone who might otherwise die. Thankfully for unwanted infants, the child can be dropped off for rescue at a firestation or such zones without question. Since there is a viable option for mothers in a situation, choosing an action that would lead to the death of their child is negligence. Of course, deciding to keep the child as well binds you to a contract of responsibility, where failure to live up to those obligations is also seen as negligence.
That said, I find abortion morally reprehensible and revolting on about every level. The most abortion can ever be is a necessary evil, an evil I don't want my tax dollars funding, by the way. In the end I think it'll be more worthwhile if society addresses the underlying problem of promiscuous sex so that abortions are not as appallingly common as they are now. Abortion being used not as an emergency procedure but a form of birth control is what requires cultural and societal pressure.
You're playing with words here. You know what Thorongil is saying. If it's not murder, what is it? What is the word for immoral killing of another human, whether or not it's illegal?
Really? Everything that's not morally right should be illegal?
I believe that calling out someone else for committing a logical fallacy is a logical fallacy. An appeal to jargon. We can call it T Clark's fallacy if we want to.
Anyway, people who call others out on a fallacy are often wrong, as you are here.
This is a disturbing and, in my opinion, silly metaphor. Really - an embryo is like cancer?
I might add that you are usually someone who on this forum talks of trade-offs and compromise - well, do you not admit to needing to make compromises and trade-offs with regard to what is or is not acceptable in civilized society or will you bludgeon anyone who disagrees with your appeals to absolute morality? For me the compromise I am willing to make is to champion pro-life and cautious attitudes with regard to sex and procreation, as well as being against publicly funded abortions. And while I get to clamor for these views in the public square, I realize that I'm not going to get everything that I want, which is why I'm willing to allow for privately performed abortions in most cases.
I can't tell, are you fer birth control or agin it? I have no problem supporting non-coercive programs that try to reduce promiscuous sex, but I put more faith in those that promote use of birth control. And when all that fails, programs to support women during pregnancy and helping them find a good home for their child - either with their biological family or another. If you want to stop abortion, do what works, not what makes you feel good.
Is fornication immoral? I checked and it's not illegal in the US. Homosexuality? Masturbation? Pornography? Predatory business practices?
A very nuanced and convincing approach. Your commitment to practicality without giving up on moral vision is admirable.
Technically the most effective "birth" control is not having sex in the first place. But of course people will have sex, protected or no, which is why I do support non-abortion methods of birth control, such that prevent conception, which is really what birth control is. Abortion, rather than blocking conception, blocks birth. That is, something that blocks conception keeps a life from being made, whereas abortion keeps a life made from living. The former I find no issue with, the latter I'm personally opposed to.
So I'm for conception control, I guess, but not post-conception birth control. Once that life is goin, and you don't want it, you dun already fucked up. If you want to compound your mistake and vacuum cleaner it out as Thorongil funnily worded it, then fine. Just don't make me get the blood on my hands for helping to pay for it.
As I said previously, a very humane and practical approach.
Thank you for the kind words, grandpa. Wait, heyheyheyheyhey, don't kick me off your knee! :cry: :snicker:
Here we ought to distinguish between an intrinsically immoral act and a circumstantially immoral act. I also believe that eating animals is wrong in certain circumstances (such as ours as Westerners in the 21st century), but not intrinsically so. That is to say, I admit that there are situations in which it can be justified. Because of this, it needn't be made illegal. However, I view abortion as intrinsically evil (and to anticipate a possible objection, I agree with LT that cases of saving the life of the mother don't technically count as exceptions). Because of this, I maintain that it ought to be illegal. Do you view it this way? If so, then you have no reason not to support abortion being made illegal.
Quoting Buxtebuddha
We have been speaking in theoretical, not practical terms. On a practical and political level, I absolutely believe in trade-offs and compromises. I was in favor of the recent bill to ban abortions of fetuses that can feel pain. That's obviously better than the status quo. I would also be in favor of a political compromise that banned all abortions except in cases of rape and incest, for example. This doesn't mean I must abandon my principles, however, or cease supporting the goal of making all abortions illegal. This is not either/or but both/and.
To hell with that!
I not only practiced homosexuality back when it was both immoral and illegal, I was also promiscuous. It was great. I have no regrets, morally or legally.
Quoting Buxtebuddha
Well, Buxtebudd, how common do you think abortions are? It would appear that they are at a 45 year low. This from the Guttmacher Institute:
Quoting LostThomist
Civil government has the authority to decide what is legal and what is not. This is a principle we all live by, including they (you) who think legality is an appeal to authority. The Pope has authority, and so does the State. Deal with it.
Not all religions consider that life begins at conception. Some religious believe that a newborn becomes a person when it draws its first breath. Some religious believe that personhood does not begin for days after birth--but while breathing. Every body begins at conception. Life comes later. Personhood comes later still.
Legally -- and legality matters -- in most jurisdictions personhood begins with one's live birth. Dead fetuses were not persons. Unborn but healthy fetuses are not persons either in many jurisdictions. I will grant that a 8 month old healthy fetus is at least 5 months past being "tissue" and will probably survive as a person, even if born prematurely,
If you have 3 fertilized eggs just laid by a hen, do you think you are killing chickens when you make an omelette?
It is actually, in several states, including liberal ones like Massachusetts. I would need to think about and determine whether all the items you list are proscribed by the natural law to adequately answer your question. I take it, though, that you consider such examples as reductios of my position. If so, I must sadly admit to you, if your head will not explode in doing so, that I don't find that they are. If they are proscribed by the natural law, then I have no problem admitting that such acts ought to be illegal. I have no special loyalty to the unconsciously imbibed pieties of modern social liberalism. You are talking to someone who made a thread in the old forum considering whether sex itself, not merely its occurrence outside of wedlock, was immoral. The sexual impulse I regard as the most potent and dangerous of human drives and so not something to treat lightly or frivolously.
Yes, fornication, masturbation, and homosexual acts are notoriously difficult to prosecute, for obvious reasons.
The almost 700,000 abortions per year, in the U.S. alone, is not a small figure, no matter how much it has statistically declined. The 32,000 gun deaths per year in the U.S. is couched as a nightmarish figure according to my interlocutors in the gun control thread, so I don't think Buxte is being hyperbolic if one accepts our premise that abortion is murder.
Well, there are differences of course.
Cancer generally will continue to spread, often killing the host. An embryo however usually becomes independent and leaves the host, with the exception of some Millennials I suppose. In the past, mothers often died during pregnancy or delivery, so historically for some mothers there wasn't much difference from that or cancer. Both cancer and pregnancies have lower fatality rates these days mind you, so an excised cancer and an early abortion still share a lot in common.
Fortunately these days, most 20-week pregnancies these days are wanted, while cancer isn't generally wanted, but in the past and as per this discussion, that isn't always still the case. Sometimes a pregnancy is wanted about as much as cancer. Morbid as it is, abortions by coat hangers are a real thing. It's quite possible some one would prefer cancer to an unwanted pregnancy.
Technically, some fetuses will actually end up being exactly that, just tumors; "fetal tumor" is the actual name. Still births also are quite interesting, as should they be considered alive, dead, or just passive tissue?
That is why the pill, IUDs, diaphragms, and condoms are called contraception.
Quoting Buxtebuddha
Abortion ends the pregnancy, disrupts the tissue, ends the fetus. A fetus is live tissue, but at say 18 weeks, it isn't anywhere close to being "alive".
I suppose you are opposed to "the morning after pill"--like Plan B, which buzz-bombs the egg with birth-control hormones like levonorgestrel. levonorgestrel may prevent the ovary from releasing the egg, may prevent sperm from fertilizing the egg, or prevent the egg from digging in for the duration, some, or all of the above. The morning after pill actually works for a couple of mornings after, but not much longer than that.
From CDC:
In 2009, most (64.0%) abortions were performed at ?8 weeks' gestation, and 91.7% were performed at ?13 weeks' gestation. Few abortions (7.0%) were performed at 14–20 weeks' gestation, and even fewer (1.3%) were performed at ?21 weeks' gestation. From 2000 to 2009, the percentage of all abortions performed at ?8 weeks' gestation increased 12%, whereas the percentage performed at >13 weeks' decreased 12%. Moreover, among abortions performed at ?13 weeks' gestation, the distribution shifted toward earlier gestational ages, with the percentage of these abortions performed at ?6 weeks' gestation increasing 47%.
1.3% were performed at 21 weeks. 24 weeks is the earliest that enough of the nervous system is present for a fetus to actually register pain. Prior to 24 weeks, too little of the cerebral cortex has developed.
Don't approve of abortions? Then don't have one.
And if one doesn't think that abortion is murder, then preventing 700,000 unwanted children is a most desirable outcome. (Are you on the Pay4Care4 700,000 Unwanted Children A Year committee?) The simple concept behind birth control, including abortion, is that one should have children IF and WHEN one desires to have them. Bearing children merely because sperm met egg is not a sufficient reason.
We have more than a sufficient number of our species. 7.6+ billion people is more than too many.
And one should!
Quoting René Descartes
It IS murder. But let's give credit where credit is due: Some states give the death row resident a choice about how they would like to be executed. In addition to lethal injection which comes standard, one can opt for...
Electrocution in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Kentucky, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia.
Gas inhalation in Arizona and California.
Firing squad in Utah.
Hanging in Washington.
I don't know... Firing squad is probably effective, and it's traditional, to boot. So many cartoons feature a firing squad. The last person executed by Firing Squad in Utah was in 2010.
Hanging has a fairly long history of being kind of botchy -- heads ripping off, rope giving way, trap door not opening properly, person not dropping far enough to die quickly, etc. Gas isn't quick enough, and electrocution goes haywire sometimes too.
There is a difference (you and Buxte will readily agree) between being a squishy little 6 week old fetus and a 6 year old child learning arithmetic when some well armed angry male decides to wipe out a batch of people. It's gunning down people who made it all the way to personhood, a name, preferences, friends, lovers, etc. that outrages people.
Some people think that murder is just problem resolution by another name, like war is diplomacy conducted by other means.
No, it isn't fine to murder people who are all hatched out and busy leading interesting, productive, philosophically well-informed interesting lives, or whatever the hell they are doing, even if it's cursing the day they were born.
Semi-related trivia factoid time!
The spark that lit the fires of the Red River Rebellion, one of the three major rebellious efforts against the British rule of Canada, was the (supposedly botched) execution of Thomas Scott, an Orangist adventurer, by the Métis government of Louis Riel. Scott was a horrible individual who had burned a couple of Métis houses down and, during the lenght of his trial, kept hurling racist insults and death threats at the judge and higher officials of the Métis Provisionnal Government...
There is one report on the execution which says that the firing squad shot once Scott and missed every major organs. They reloaded and shot him again, hitting him once in the chest but not killing him. Then, Riel's general walked up to him and shot him in the face, but apparently only managed to blow away his jaw. They then buried him alive.
Its likely that report is entirely false, tho, and was only cooked up to rile up the anglo-canadian population against the Métis while at the same time showcasing the Métis as idiots that wouldn't really put up a fight.
On some dark days at work I've thought about that myself.
"This has been one hell of a bad day" he said, as the shovels full of dirt started hitting the top of the coffin.
Tourism is good for their economies.
That there is the clincher, though.
There's certainly more being imported into assertions here than mere scientific fact. The similarity isn't completely out there. But if we believe in more than mere facts, like most people, then.... maybe it is. But it is also not quite right to then claim that you're being "purely scientific" or "biological"
Wrongful killing?
The problem here is that the claim I was responding to was this:
Quoting Thorongil
If we are to understand the word "murder" as meaning "wrongfully kill" then he is claiming that there is a moral duty not to wrongfully kill it once alive, which is trivially true, but also question-begging in context, as the argument is over whether or not abortion is wrongful killing, and so doesn't satisfactorily answer the accusation it was responding to ("you have not demonstrated objectively that once a thing has been identified as a human being it is automatically a moral duty to keep it alive").
This is why words matter. I'm not playing here, but clearing up the ambiguity caused by loaded language.
WTF! Who put you in charge of what things are proscribed by natural law?
Quoting Bitter Crank
Nature did not give me the power to have one :rofl:
Quoting Thorongil
No, you probably don't think that. Do you think gluttony should be illegal? Not everything immoral ought to be illegal because not everything immoral has harmful consequences on third-parties. We only make those immoral actions which have harmful consequences on third-parties illegal. If an immoral action harms just the doer, then there are no grounds for it to be outlawed.
No.
That might be true, but misses the point of the pro-life argument, which is that the unborn child is said to have a right to live, and that this right to live is more important than the woman's right to choose.
And you believe in God?
Are you OK with voluntary euthanasia, then?
It's almost as if religious people are just making this stuff up.
Not sure.
There is absolutely NO contradiction here. Abortion, infanticide and abandonment of unwanted children was common in Jesus' time. He made NO pronouncements against these practices
.
He absolutely did. That you would think that the Jews would approve of infanticide is idiocy. Have you read the second book of the Torah, the Exodus?
[quote=1 Samuel 15]And Samuel said to Saul, “The Lord sent me to anoint you king over his people Israel; now therefore listen to the words of the Lord. Thus says the Lord of hosts, ‘I have noted what Amalek did to Israel in opposing them on the way when they came up out of Egypt. Now go and strike Amalek and devote to destruction, all that they have. Do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.’”[/quote]
And as you mentioned Exodus, remember the tenth plague?
Please quote your sources anytime you feel able.
Despite infanticide and abortion being permitted under the law, Jesus was COMPLETELY mute on the topic.
No it wasn't.
Nope.
Yes. It's right there in the quotes. God killed the firstborn of Egypt. God told Saul to kill children and infants.
So what? That doesn't mean He approves of infanticide. Just like someone doesn't approve of murder if they kill another person in self-defence.
Infanticide is the intentional killing of infants. God intentionally killed infants. He told Saul to intentionally kill infants.
Right, and you'll do a sophistry and define murder as the unlawful killing of someone. Sure. *shakes head* :confused:
What do you mean by "murder" and "infanticide"?
"infanticide" = killing babies or children.
Right. Which is what God did and what he told Saul to do.
Quoting Agustino
So self-defence is murder?
Sure.
Who said anything about approving of it in itself (whatever that means)? There are times where murder isn't wrong (assuming your definition), such as in self-defence. Therefore even if abortion is murder, it doesn't necessarily follow that it's wrong. Abortion, like self-defence, might be one of those occasions where murder is justified. And there are times where God approved of killing infants. Therefore there's room to believe that abortion is one of those occassions where God might approve (or at least not disapprove) of killing infants, and so a pro-choice Christian isn't an oxymoron.
That's exactly what I've been saying.
But you seemed to question @René Descartes believing in God if he believed in a woman's right to choose, and then took issue with @charleton pointing out that there's no contradiction here.
So now I'm not entirely clear what you've been trying to say.
Yes, because abortion in-itself is wrong. There are circumstances when it may be acceptable - I listed a few.
Quoting Agustino
But what does that have to do with believing (or not believing) in God? Clearly it's not simply the case that believing in God entails believing that all life is sacred (or whatever), given that God seemed to think it acceptable to kill children and infants because their parents didn't believe in him (or whatever the reason was)?
1) Judea was a ROMAN province and hence was under the lex Romana.
2) Jesus said NOTHING against either abortion or infanticide.
3) Run along now please!
Murder is not justified. I think you mean justified homicide.
Quoting charleton
The Jews had their own law.
I was using Agustino's definition, which is simply "intentionally killing a human". It's not a definition I agree with.
This isn't answering my question. What does this have to do with God? You seem to think that believing in God requires believing that women don't have a right to choose to abort their pregnancy.
And the example I'm using from the Bible isn't a case of self-defence. Was it self-defence when God killed the firstborn of Egypt? Was it self-defence when Saul was ordered to kill the children and infants of Amalek?
Clearly there are occasions outside of self-defence where killing children is acceptable to God. Therefore it's not impossible to believe in God and to believe that abortion is always acceptable.
You are talking nonsense. Jesus and all his followers were under the Lex Romana.
Jesus' silence speaks volumes.
Beware of false definitions; A Gusty is full of them.
Irrelevant. They were forms of divine punishment.
There isn't a moral difference. Both are wrong. And abortion outrages people, too....
I had a feeling this comment would come up. Taking a principled stance always offends certain sensibilities. I make no apologies for not having my mind made up and for attempting to base my position with respect to a variety of complicated issues on what I have hitherto determined to be true.
Push, or push not?
sounds good. I would love to see that.
Most of your arrangements stem from a false, non-commensurable analogy, i.e. comparing post-natal children with post-natal newborns, and extending that argument to pre-natal fetuses. Interestingly, nowhere in your opening post do you lay the foundations, the criteria, for what does or does not count as personhood. Implicitly, you believe that any and all human life, starting from conception, entails personhood, enabling you to easily assume your own conclusion. I would contest, however, that a fetus, prior to viability (the ability to live outside the mother's womb), and prior to CNS development (enabling one to feel pain), constituent, at minimum, the criteria for personhood. The vast majority of abortions - 98% - occur prior to these developments fully taking place. Afterall, we extend the concept of personhood to other sentient forms of life, do we not? Including dolphins, apes, elephants, etc.
Fertilization may be a necessary condition for personhood, but it is not a sufficient condition. It's is potential, but not actual. An important, and necessary distinction. Your claim is essentially that a gamete, or a collection of cells, is isomorphic to a conscious, thinking, feeling, and viable being is ludicrous. Otherwise, there is little difference between a collection of cells that potentially form a human life, and a collection of cells that potentially form the life of, say, another mammal.
Lots of Roman provinces were "occupied territories" from the POV of the natives, and they had various religions, coinages, laws, traditions, gods, and so forth. There was a very strong financial incentive behind Roman expansion, and as long as a given province produced sufficient income, fine -- believe in whatever worthless gods you want, follow your own stupid laws, use your own coins (but pay us in Roman coinage), and follow your own ways, only as long as it doesn't inconvenience Rome.
The Romans said, "Cultural diversity and inclusive sensitivity is all fine and dandy, but we're here for the greater glory of Rome, not yours, so sell us your grain, wine, dried fish, olive oil, and so forth at an attractive price, pay your taxes on time and in the right currency, and you can continue to live."
Yes, the Jews were under the Lex Romana, and they were also under their own law -- a situation which was not unusual in the empire, but problematic. Jews and later, Christians were expected to live within the legal system of Rome, but could maintain their own religious and cultural traditions -- as long as Roman taxes got paid, markets were open to Roman buyers, and there were no insurrections. So, when presented with a trap, Jesus said to the Pharisees, "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and render unto God the things that are God's."
Jesus' answer was both a dodge to avoid the legalistic traps pharisees liked to set, and a reflection of necessary common practice. Rome's Internal Revenue Service could be quite aggressive.
Jesus didn't have secretaries following him around jotting down his every utterance. What the Gospels report him saying was a combination of edited oral accounts and invented dialogue inserted to address needs that didn't exist when Jesus was alive--like the Lord's Prayer, a formulaic prayer that may have developed in very early Christian worship. There are a lot of things Jesus is not reported saying anything about -- like homosexuality, why lobster is not kosher, whether beer is better than wine, abortion, birth control methods, and other such burning issues.
You're right. He wasn't answering your question, but you were being unnecessarily formalistic. I think his point is that abortion is wrongful killing, not illegal killing. I think that is clear from what he has written. He is not begging the question, he is making an argument.
@Pseudonym was asking @LostThomist to show that killing an unborn person is wrong. To respond by asserting that killing it is wrong is begging the question.
The problem is that he avoided phrasing it this way by using the term "murder", hiding this fallacy.
What's your point?
Christians are not Jews and there is nothing to suggest per se, that abortion is wrong. God does it all the time; we call that a miscarriage.
Jesus could have said something against infanticide and abortion but failed to do so. Both practices were extremely common throughout the ancient world. They were a practical response in a world where rape and poverty were common, and the chance for adoption or child services was nil. Carrying a foetus to full term could have meant selling the child into slavery.
Quoting René Descartes
And god is the biggest murderer of all.
Miscarriage is his choice of abortion, and the plagues and diseases of the world are his games.
Sure, why not? And its logical consequences do affect third parties. It drives up the cost of health care, for one, and an obese pregnant woman puts their baby at various kinds of risk.
Specific case, not universal.
Quoting Thorongil
Hmmm no. That's already taken into account - either the person pays out of their own wallet, or their insurance company pays for them - rest assured that if they are obese the insurance company will take this into account in their risk profile, and hence the amount of money they pay for insurance.
Quoting Thorongil
Because it's absurd. For one, it cannot be enforced (too expensive). And the costs to third-parties are basically non-existent.
I agree, but I am arguing on principled grounds here, not practical ones. The fact that it would be difficult to enforce doesn't say anything about whether it ought to be illegal in principle.
I think an Aristotelian natural law objection to this would be that as soon as an egg is fertilized, or perhaps even before then (such as when the sperm is travelling through the woman's vaginal tunnel), the person exists in the same way an apple tree exists in the form of a seed. Unless the telos of the apple tree seed is frustrated, the seed will nurture into a fully developed tree. The same with a fertilized egg, or a pre-CNS fetus. An abortion, then, prevents the fetus from developing into a mature human and fulfilling its telos.
With the marginalization of teleology in modern metaphysics, what we define to be a person ends up being, from a natural law perspective, a qualitative distinction rather than a substantial distinction. But from a modern perspective, I'd say the natural law theory ends up being an arbitrary distinction between intentional and accidental action - does the human come into being when the sperm penetrates the egg, or when the man ejaculates, or when one or both partners decide to have a baby? And from a modern sensibility - what does it truly matter if a telos is frustrated? Really, what's the big deal?
It is difficult to peaceably agree with some people around here.
I was merely explicating how there were conflicts between Roman Law and local law -- Christian, Jewish, or what have you. There were no Christians when Jesus was alive. Jesus was Jewish and was preaching to Jews.
I have no doubt that women regularly aborted unwanted fetuses in the ancient world. It is, however, difficult to build a case on what Jesus didn't say. Jesus didn't say anything about homosexuality, either -- who knows, maybe Jesus was gay. There was, for instance, the belovéd disciple.
I am strictly pro-choice and support Planned Parenthood.
So, stop snarling.
Well DUH.
Quoting Bitter Crank
You wonder why people take issue with you? Christianity is not built on "what he said", It is built on what he is reported to have said. FFS. I think you need to tone down the patronising pedanticism, wake up and realise that people are smarter than you think; even smarter than you.
Quoting Bitter Crank
So the point I was making; that you can be Christian AND be pro-abortion goes for supporting gay rights too.
It's still too common, in my opinion.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Yes, I realize that, but contraceptives are still termed as birth control, even though that's not really what they are. In other words, mental illness suggests an illness of the mind, even though what really is sick is the brain. Yet, we still use mental illness as the terminology. I'm okay with that, but my point was to expose what really is going on beneath the labeling.
Quoting Bitter Crank
A living thing isn't "alive"? Dafuq? I'm sure you mean to suggest that being "alive" means being conscious, but biologically speaking, that's not what constitutes being alive. I am a living thing just as a tree is. Do we possess different qualities of being alive? Sure, but differing qualities doesn't make a tree more or less alive than I am.
Quoting Bitter Crank
No. Have you not carefully read what I have written here in this thread? Morning after pills control conception. Abortion controls birth.
Quoting Bitter Crank
I've not really stated my moral position on abortion, but for what it's worth, I don't consider pain the most important determining factor in the morality or immorality of an action.
By "alive" I meant "an independently living being". At 4 or 5 months, the fetus isn't an independently living being. A 100 pound person is 100 pounds of living tissue; any single pound of their tissue, removed from the body, ceases to live because it can't live on it's own, cut off from the rest of the body. At 4 or 5 months, the fetus is in the same situation, not able to live on its own (to breathe, for instance, or swallow).
I agree, consciousness isn't a requirement for "aliveness".
Quoting Buxtebuddha
Some anti-abortion groups suggest that the process of abortion (before 24 weeks) would be painful for the fetus. That's why I brought up pain.
Whether pain in any situation would be a determining factor in the morality of an action would, for me, depend on the severity and duration of the pain. Causing severe long-lasting pain might make an act immoral. If injuring someone to some degree in the act of defending property was moral, causing long-lasting and severe pain in the defense of property wouldn't be.
Of course, severity of pain is somewhat subjective, but I suspect that many injuries that one person finds extremely painful, most other people will also find extremely painful.
I'm not so sure. Perhaps we're talking past each other, but a fetus and you/me both need the same things in order to live. We're both dependent upon food, oxygen, water, etc. The difference, however, is how the requirements of life are taken in. For the fetus, it's through the mother. For you and me, it's through the greater world. The principle that roots both cases, though, is that both of us aren't absolutely self-sufficient. So, the fetus depends on the same things that you and I do, even though the means of that dependence are manifested in different ways.
Quoting Bitter Crank
And some "pro-choice" people assert that the human fetus isn't human. *shrug* You're gonna get at best questionable opinions if you dig deep enough.
Quoting Bitter Crank
I'd agree I think, but I still take issue with the killing of a life. I don't care if it's an ant or a human fetus. Killing something ought to give someone great pause. Abortion, I have found, has become such a routine and thoughtless action that I think we've lost sight of what is actually going on. Anecdotally, for some of my childhood I grew up in South Florida and I used to be appalled and distraught when a kid would kick an ant hill and scatter the ants and destroy their home. Why the fuck would they do that? Even now, I try not to kill little living things unless they're fucking with me. I ran over a bird once when driving and I was pissed off the rest of the day. Aborting a human fetus is as repulsive to me as the examples I just mentioned, and I think it's wrong, whether necessary or not, to kill any living thing.
Also, I've heard the argument that abortion is actually self-defense - that the "mother" is defending herself against the intruding fetus. What do you think of that madness? I dunno, the lengths people go to justify themselves when I think they know they've fucked up and did wrong...
I think it's nonsense.
Quoting Buxtebuddha
And finding abortions repulsive strikes me as a perfectly normal reaction. It's an invasive bloody procedure. However, lots of medical procedures are at least repulsive, some are ghastly. Some are perfectly horrible by any stretch of the meaning of repulsive, ghastly, and horrible.
I find the "pro-life" and "pro-choice" positions on abortion about equally convincing. To take a position is to decide whether the fetus takes priority over the mother's wishes and needs. Before that decision one has to decide what the existential reality of a fetus is. When does it become a viable life, a person? Does a non-viable fetus have an existential condition yet? Maybe one has to decide whether the existential condition of a woman changes when she becomes pregnant. Does pregnancy require the woman to exist as a vessel for the developing fetus?
Those who oppose abortion in all circumstances clearly decided that a woman is a vessel in service to the fetus and has a subordinate position. If a woman can be forced to be pregnant (by rape or consensual marital sex) then the woman is also subordinate to the man -- any man, really. The woman has never seen the rapist before, he rapes her, she becomes pregnant, and then is required to bear the child he fathered.
The opposite extreme position is that a woman has zero responsibility to the father or to the fetus. If she feels like it, she may abort without mentioning it to the father. If she prefers to drink heavily during pregnancy, that's the fetus's problem. Smoke crack, shoot up heroin, do the latest pain killer to hit the streets, fine. "Hey it's my life, my body; I'll do what I want with it."
Bothe the extremophile pro-life and the extremophile pro-choice positions are kind of repulsive to me. Are there too many abortions? 700,000 abortions is 700,000 couples who couldn't be bothered to manage relatively simple contraception. One pill a day too complicated? Put the condom on first too complex? Get a vasectomy if you don't want to father children too difficult? Get an implant if you can't manage one pill every day too difficult? Get your tubes tied if you don't like taking medication?
Apparently.
I acknowledge that a fertilized egg is different from separated sperm and egg cells, but as I've said previously, to me, eight cells is not a human being. So, where do we draw the line. I was thinking that one possible milestone is when the fetus can be differentiated from the fetus of other animals without doing a DNA test. Visually. I've tried to find that out on the web without success. Does anyone know? I'm not saying this would give a definitive answer, but it would be interesting to know.
Of course there are questions about how this criteria would be applied. Who decides - an embryologist, a comparative zoologist, an untrained person? What animal would it be compared to? Any animal? Any mammal? Any primate? The animal closest to human? I think that's a chimpanzee.
The developing mammalian fetus seems to recapitulate some aspects of mammalian evolution. For instance, mammalian fetuses form gill slits at one point. Why do they do this? See Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin. It's a good book. Mammals evolved from fish. The fish body plan is pretty much the standard vertebrate model, and it goes beyond bones. The cranial nerves coming out of a shark brain are organized pretty much the way our own cranial nerves are organized. Our inner ear bones were once parts of the fish jaw.
Mammalian fetuses also follow the same course of development from fertilized egg to the first breath of air whether they are whales, walruses or Windsors. At some point a Windsor fetus is distinct from a whale fetus. The Windsor blow hole is in the front of its face, rather than on top of its head, for instance. You can see this feature clearly on Queen Elizabeth II's face.
see below
Chicken, Fish, Human, Dolphin, Alien, and Cat
Don't be absurd. As god is the designer, every death is his responsibility.
Tearing into this a bit more, 28 weeks of pregnancy seems like more than enough time to make a choice on whether to keep a child or not. Not aborting by around this time is sort of an acceptance of responsibility, and failing in responsibilities come consequences. Arguably having sex seems like a choice and responsibility on its own already, so I suspect that argument won't hold up.
Either way, with the introduction of late stage information of the fetus being determined to have serious health issues, I could see how late stage abortions would be acceptable. But based on that logic, if you learn of these birth defects only at time of birth, would it then be acceptable to kill the child immediately after birth? I suppose not, given that adoption would be an option, but adoption is an option for late-stage pregnant mothers as well, is it not?
Overall, I have no strong opinion either way, as people do what they can get away with and I hold beliefs that nothing ultimately really matters.
You have achieved a great feat in this post..
At once you make a non sequitur, and a contradiction in the same moment. You assert that humans have free will but deny it to god!
If god has no control of his actions then no one is responsible.
If god is all powerful then only he is responsible.
If God is not all powerful then why call him god?
The only safe conclusion is that there is no god.
The OP argues against various positions, but never argues for theirs.
Not in the least.
There simply is no point-like time which you'll find in the continuum of development where some life will be significantly different before, and after.
But we desire such a time -- we often desire to be able to say that this is right, and that is wrong.
But the facts don't fit our desires. And as such any point chosen will be a line in the sand based upon vague notions of rightness and wrongness -- in discussions like these, from the abstract, and in the moment of decision, the various factors of concern.
Seems like a lot of wasted tax dollars, as those first 18 years of child care services aren't cheap. Do adopted parents get to make that choice, or only the biological parents? Mom or father?
Obviously the vote with the caveat is the only reasonable one. Whilst it is definitively impossible to do a post-birth abortion, since abortion actually implies an aborted 'birth'; without ANY caveat we could abort at 8 months, 3 weeks and 6 days!!
There was a whole branch of biology devoted to this fallacy, now fully discredited.
Is there any reason it is 18? I would of suspected any age would still be valid.
What if the teenager had a child before turning 18; would that child then still be in reach of the grandparents? And which grandparent gets to make the decision? One or all?
No more than an infant being potentially an adult or a 16 year old kid being a potential adult
So by that logic you are arguing for infanticide and overall genocide of anyone under 18.
But now you've shifted the goalposts from "personhood" to "adulthood".
Fallacy of false analogy.
But what motivates the point you've chosen? How is it not arbitrary?
FWIW, I'm comfortable with abortion being legal up to the point of birth. But I don't pretend that my comfort level is somehow superior based upon either biological facts or metaphysical argument. It, too, is a line in the sand arrived at by weighing the various arguments and positions.
A 16 years-old is fully "alive and viable" in the eyes of the Law.
Quoting René Descartes
Perhaps you remember Marguerite Duras? Her piece on the Affaire Gregory, "Sublime, forcément sublime Christiane V" , where she seriously (although, didn't do much of a good job) defended the right of a mother to murder her child. "Who are you to tell someone who gave life that she can't take that life back?" or some such insanities.
She was publicly destroyed as a result. All of a sudden it became acceptable to call Duras absolutely monstrous things in the european press.
As I very clearly stated in my original post, you are presenting a false analogy by comparing post-natal life (i.e. children) with inchoate, pre-natal life. Development-wise, they are not remotely isomorphic (the latter, for example, lacking a developed CNS, fetal viability, etc.)
Try again without resorting to fallacious thinking.
And what is wrong with this arbitrariness? Just look at the word itself! Of course the Law is 'arbitrary'. How else could it be? Personhood is, once a legal term, after all!
So then you are arguing for level of development.
Take care again: By this rule you are to be ended by the first man you meet whose development and self-awareness is superior to your own.
But that's not how the Law works, nor how rights are granted! Your outlook on rights is completely dystopian!
Indeed, so could you please stop? Thanks. :hearts:
Personally I am against abortion, I think it is wrong. I find it repugnant. I think it is an abuse. Arguments about what counts as a person seem largely irrelevant, and there seems to me to be no hard line to be drawn.
But there are many things that I find abusive and repugnant; that rich countries let people freeze to death on their streets, that bankrupt companies pay bonuses and pensions to directors while worker's pensions fall into a void and subcontractors go unpaid.
But while society does not value motherhood, childcare, and the life of every person in society, (when I say value, I mean with bonuses and pensions, with status and income,) I do not see it as reasonable to pretend that every fertilised egg is sacred and has full human rights to starve in the gutter.
How do you square this with:
Quoting unenlightened
Here, for example is what one might call "social abortion". Shall we argue the toss about whether or not he counts as human? Shall we make it a littering offence or murder to discharge anyone to the streets?
Now, in this country there are too many women in the same state of homelessness, and yet we expect the to care for another life when their own life needs some care from others? It is shameful; the whole premise of this thread is shameful. Show your own care first folks, before you legislate the care that others owe.
If, you want to protect the helpless, If you want to uphold a universal right to life, to protection, If you are a closet socialist who thinks we have unconditional obligations to help, sustain, and protect each other, why do you pick on the on this one obscure issue, that just happens, if you are a man, to be the one that requires nothing from you personally?
So in other words...........if I support life when it comes to abortion why don't I also agree on socialist issues? Is that what you are arguing?
Quoting LostThomist
Yes. If the old, the sick, the pathetic, the insane, the unborn, all have the same right to life, then you have the same duty to support them as you seek to impose on mothers to be. And that is socialism, distinguished from individualism.
1) Even if the argument were true, it would be ridiculous
Even if the charge that pro-lifers are only focused on birth were true, it would be a ridiculous argument. Imagine that you saw a woman save a drowning child. Are you really going to object, “Well, are you going to pay for his college education?”
She’s done an amazing thing, saving the life of a stranger. Criticizing her for not doing other good things is absurd. So sure, ensuring that children can’t be legally murdered for the first nine months of their lives isn’t the only moral issue, but it’s a darn good start. And if the choices are “I’ll protect you for the first nine months of your life, but then you’re on your own” and “I think it should be legal to kill you for the first nine months of your life,” that’s an easy choice.
2) The argument is logically fallacious
Again, assume for a moment that pro-lifers really don’t care about what happens after birth. Would that make killing an unborn child defensible? Of course not. It’s a logical fallacy (an ad hominem attack, more specifically) to answer pro-life arguments by saying that you think pro-lifers are nasty people.
3) The argument is unspeakably melodramatic
Think about what this objection is really saying. Usually, it’s that pro-lifers aren’t really pro-life because they don’t support this or that social program. That amounts to saying “you won’t give me money for this program? Do you just wish I was dead?” It’s closer to a teenage emotional meltdown than an actual political stance.
After all, in most of the cases we’re talking about, life and death are just not on the line. Wanting the education of your neighbor is a good thing. But not caring about your neighbor’s education or not caring if your neighbor gets murdered aren’t even in the same ballpark. So even if it were true that pro-lifers were just apathetic to your quality of life after birth, the argument still would be melodramatic and emotionally manipulative.
4) The argument is hypocritical
To the person making the argument that if pro-lifers won’t fund x program, they must want people to die: right now, on Kickstarter, there are people trying to crowdsource money to pay for cancer treatments.
Whether or not you’ve personally contributed to any (much less all) of these people, surely we can agree that you could do more. You could find a way to give a few dollars more, even if it means working a bit more or spending less on yourself. But you haven’t. Does that mean that you want those poor people to die? I certainly hope not. More likely, it means that you recognize in your own life that there’s a difference between not paying for someone else’s medical care and not wanting that person to live.
5) The argument is more than a little condescending
Bear in mind that the argument generally consists of telling people that, unless they’re willing to support this or that social program, they aren’t truly pro-life.
But it’s not like pro-lifers are somehow exempted from poverty, disease, and old age. It’s condescending to say to these people (in effect), “I know what’s best for you, and if you disagree, it can only be because you wish you and everyone like you was dead.”
6) The argument is demonstrably false
As I said, even if the arguments about pro-lifers not caring about what happens after birth were true, it would be a bad argument. But the argument just isn’t true. This whole “pro-lifers don’t care about anything after birth” is a gross slander of a huge group of people, and appears to be rooted in exactly no empirical data.
If you look at the actual data, a very different story emerges. I know of no comprehensive data comparing the giving rates of pro-lifers v. pro-choicers, since most places don’t ask about that when you give. But we can get some strong clues by looking at Republican v. Democratic giving, and at red state v. blue state giving. (Now, I realize that not all pro-lifers are fiscal conservatives or Republicans; but that’s the underlying assumption of this argument. But even that assumption was true, the argument would be false.)
So here’s what we do know. Of the top seventeen most generous states for charitable contributions, all seventeen of them voted for Romney in the 2012 election [while true, this fact is slightly misleading, in that D.C. would have made it on that list if it were a state]. And of the seven least charitable states, all seven of them voted for Obama. (You can see the data for yourself)
And that’s just one measure. Huffington Post, hardly a bastion of moral conservatism, points out that Republicans (54%) are more likely than Democrats (45%) to donate money to charity, and far more likely to personally volunteer for a cause (33% to 24%). They’ve also assembled charts showing that people living in “red states” volunteer more than those living in “blue states.”
So it’s not just a matter of writing a check: the sort of people who are most likely to be pro-life are also the sort of people who are most likely to personally lend a hand. And anyone actually familiar with the pro-life movement already knows this. Pro-lifers are frequently the first to sacrifice personally: adopting kids, counseling women in crisis, helping struggling families out of their own pocketbooks. And if you actually were to listen to the speakers at the March for Life, you’d discover that this is exactly what the pro-life movement, as a movement, encourages.
So the argument gets it entirely backwards. It’s precisely the sanctimonious “you don’t care about people after they’re born” crowd who are least likely to help born or unborn people in any demonstrable way.
7) The real debate is about the means, not the ends
While they may not be as likely to personally help out, it’s nevertheless true that most liberals, like most conservatives, care about the elderly, the infirm, the poor, and the disabled. Are there selfish people who don’t care about others, or are content to use disadvantaged peoples as political props? Of course, and that’s true on both sides of the abortion debate and on both sides of the political divide. But for the most part, there’s genuine concern for human life on both sides. If you can’t recognize that, you’ve let partisanship totally cloud your ability to understand or empathize with people who disagree with you.
Vice President Mike Pence, in his remarks at the March for Life, said
“You know, life is winning in America. And today is a celebration of that progress that we have made in this cause. You know I’ve long believed that a society can be judged by how we care for its most vulnerable, the aged, the infirm, the disabled, and the unborn.”
That’s a beautiful articulation of both the pro-life movement and political liberalism at their best: advocacy on behalf of those too disadvantaged to advocate for themselves. (One might add “immigrants” to the list of those for whom society needs to care, but the statement is still powerful as it stands.)
So the question isn’t “should old people be allowed to live?” — unless we’re debating euthanasia, in which pro-lifers are once again the ones on the side of life. The question isn’t even really “is it my responsibility for ensuring that you have a good quality of life?” Usually, the question is “how best do we ensure that the most vulnerable among us are protected?”
And the answers to that problem are often tricky. Social Security does a lot of good, but there are legitimate reasons to believe that our spending is unsustainable. Virtually everyone recognizes that healthcare is important, and that there are major flaws in our healthcare system, but most of the proposed solutions are expensive, untested, and complicated. Education is important, but pouring more money into public education doesn’t always correlate to demonstrate improvements. To demand, “you must support my particular plan or else you want people to dieeeeee” is ridiculous.
This is why the quotation from Sr. Chittister above is fatuous: she openly assumes that if “you don’t want any tax money to go there,” then you don’t want children to be fed, clothed, etc. This assumes a particular solution to these problems (taxpayer-funded governmental programs), and with it a political ideology. It evinces a grave lack of charity towards those who don’t share her views on the size and scope of federal authority.
Pro-choicers tend to be more liberal, and tend to be more trusting of the government as a solution to these problems. Pro-lifers tend (although there are numerous exceptions) to be less trusting of the government to fix these things — which may be part of the reason that they show more of a proclivity towards volunteering and working towards solutions on their own. But that’s a question about how trusting we should be of big government, or how much we think throwing tax money at a problem solves it, not of how much we love our neighbor.
That’s not to say that the fiscally conservative answer is the right one to any of these questions. It’s only to say that these are the sorts of issue that we should be able to disagree upon civilly, without accusing the other side of not caring about human life. Virtually all of us that we would like (amongst other things) a well-educated, healthy society in which the most vulnerable are taken care of. We just don’t always agree upon how best to get there.
So instead of saying “pro-lifers only care about babies until they’re born,” a more accurate statement might be something like, “although pro-lifers disproportionately give more of their time and money, I don’t see eye-to-eye with many of them on the solutions to certain social ills.”
But that argument would require nuance, and to view your political opponent as human, and as basically decent.
You, me and Mike are of one mind in these beautiful sentiments. But this is not what you have been arguing in this thread. You can correct me if I'm wrong, but I understand you to have been saying that abortion ought to be treated as murder. Now I perhaps need to point out to you that this is an ad hom against women who have abortions and doctors who perform them. It is rather the nature of moral arguments to have this character; to say that X is wrong is to say that people who do X are doing wrong. So you are arguing that a bunch of people are murderers. But in my own view, that it is an ad hom is not a valid criticism of your argument or of mine, that's the way the morality cookie crumbles.
I agree with you that there is a vast difference between advocating what we as a society ought to do and not do, and mandating every individual on pain of imprisonment or worse to do and not do these things.
So I quite like that I have the right not to let the homeless man into my house and feed and nurture him for nine months, and I am not seriously suggesting that I should be guilty of murder if he wanders in and I boot him out with the assistance of my bouncer pal and then he dies of exposure. But neither do I think much of your argument that a woman who ejects a foetus from her body with the assistance of a doctor is guilty of murder.
So on the one side we have beautiful sentiments that we can assent to in a vague way, without being mandated to act on them personally unless we freely decide ourselves to make that commitment, and on the other, we have onerous duties that you seek to impose by law, and I do not.
Clearly you see the cases as being very different, but the difference is not in the right to life of the individual in each case. I hope you can put aside your outrage for the purposes of having a think about what the difference is.