# A Very Long Analysis of the Arguments Related to the Abortion Debate **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [July 4, 2019, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-very-long-analysis-of-the-arguments-related-to-the-abortion-debate/836527 "2019-07-04T18:01:47Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 8
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2019, 9:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-very-long-analysis-of-the-arguments-related-to-the-abortion-debate/836527/141 "2019-07-07T21:38:30Z")
> [@Scylla](#): > > To grossly oversimplify your argument to the point of deniability How about we try not to do that sort of thing? > [@Scylla](#): > > Also, I think the pro life argument would likely be that you can’t tell the future. It is not a given that either life would be harmed. Perhaps the mother’s life would be helped by being forced to be a mother and undergoing the miracle of birth. Perhaps both lives would be wonderful where otherwise neither would be if one were terminated. If we sent all the babies once born out into traffic to play in the middle of the main highway, it’s not a given that any specific baby would be harmed, either. And perhaps the person who makes this argument’s life would be helped by forcing that person to donate a kidney; or to do hard labor in bad weather at a risky job which they hate, are terrible at, and may well lose their health or life trying to do anyway; or to leave wherever they live and do volunteer work somewhere on the far side of the planet where they have no resistance to any of the prevalent diseases and won’t be given medical treatment if they contract them. Maybe sixty years from now some percentage of people who you did that to would say they were grateful for it; I wouldn’t be surprised; they’re all things that some people do willingly and consider their lives improved by. But I’d be very surprised if the people who are so sure a woman’s life will be improved by a forced pregnancy would be happy to have any of the above be forced upon them. You really do seem to me to be flailing around trying to find some argument, any argument, that will work to turn pro-choice people into people opposed to any abortion whatsoever except in cases where otherwise mother and zygote/blastula/embryo/fetus will die together. And when your arguments don’t work, you just come up with more of them; but your arguments are getting worse, not better, though even the ones you started with seemed to me to have some big holes in them. > [@UltraVires](#): > > I think talking about pregnancy as if the fetus is a squatter or trespasser is a non-sequitur. Laws are human constructs and we have laws against trespassing for property rights purposes because we expect each person to make his own way and stay on his own property Somewhat sideways: no, we have laws against trespassing because we expect people to be able to be reasonably in control of, and not to be invaded in, their private quarters. I think that analogy works a whole lot better in the other direction. > [@UltraVires](#): > > Pregnancy is sui generis, a wholly different beast, because it is a necessary condition for every human being to live. A status like a trespasser or squatter implies aberrant behavior against the norms of society that must be punished, curtailed, or dissuaded. You cannot say that fetuses are squatters because then every one of us was a squatter. It would be like passing a law that everyone, rich or poor, must break for their very existence. Pregnancy is sui generis, you’re right about that one. But no, not every one of us was a squatter. Quite a lot of us were actually invited. > [@UltraVires](#): > > Even if we apply the trespassing law, there is the necessity doctrine in common law. If you find a trespasser on your property, you cannot eject him when there is a blizzard outside which would cause him to freeze to death. Two things: one, in current law in some USA states you can shoot the person out of hand. Two: How long does a blizzard last? a day or two, maybe three or four at the outside? Even if there is a law saying you can’t put a trespasser out in a blizzard, do you know of any law which requires people to house, in their most private quarters, that trespasser for nine months? Oh, and add to that adjusting their normal lives in major ways, potentially seriously affecting their future as well as current capabilities, and risking their health and lives in order to do so? > [@UltraVires](#): > > And there is also the consent argument. If you have sex, you know that there is a possibility of pregnancy. You have the parts to make a baby, and you invite the other part into your body. Of course, the argument is for consequence free recreational sex If you get in a car and drive to the store – or for that matter if you walk to the store – you know that there’s a chance somebody will run a red light (or maybe just skid on ice or oil), crash into you, and land you in the hospital for months and a wheelchair for life. Does that mean that when you left the house you consented to having that happen? A person consenting to sex isn’t even consenting to additional sex acts, whether of a type they don’t want or at a time when they don’t want them, let alone with a person they didn’t agree to have them with. They are most certainly not consenting to surrender the rest of their lives. And I notice that people making this sort of argument always talk about ‘consequence free recreational sex’ as if the only reason other than pregnancy that people have sex is because they think it’s fun for five minutes, or even five hours, and expecting them to give it up were no more of a big deal than expecting them to give up, say, eating potato chips. Sex in humans serves many purposes. Probably the most major one in most people’s lives is as a binding mechanism within relationships. Remove that binding factor, and the relationships are likely to be seriously damaged, and/or made more vulnerable to damage from other forces which they might otherwise have withstood. (Yes, I know many people have sex with people they don’t give a damn about at some point in their lives, and I’ll defend the right to do that also as long as that’s what they’re both/all into and nobody’s lying. But most people want, at least at some stages of their lives, to have sex in lasting relationships. And I know that some celibate relationships last. But talking about sex as if it were never actual making of love is still nonsense.) ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2019, 9:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-very-long-analysis-of-the-arguments-related-to-the-abortion-debate/836527/142 "2019-07-07T21:58:53Z")
I’m not sure how “consequence free” got into this. Of course there are consequences, consequences that can be resolved by a trip to the clinic. Are those insufficiently “consequential” by some arbitrary metric? ---
**Author:** ![Scylla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a5b964/32.png) [@Scylla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scylla)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2019, 2:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-very-long-analysis-of-the-arguments-related-to-the-abortion-debate/836527/143 "2019-07-08T02:26:31Z")
Bryan: Sorry. I haven’t had a chance to post. It appears I misunderstood your position and flailed at a straw man. I understand that your argument now is basically that one’s body is one’s person and what goes on in one’s body is a sovereign choice, even if it should involve the death of another person. You believe wether or not a fetus is a person is moot. We’ve discussed stowaways and property laws. Other’s have made the argument that the body is one’s person not one’s property, and therefore those issues don’t apply. The law appears to agree with this interpretation. Personally I think this is wrong. If we could transplant one’s brain into a robot, your old body would not be your person. Therefore a body is property. I appear to be a minority of one in this. Ok. I still see one other issue in your stance that appears problematic. Legally you lose body autonomy if you are considered a danger to yourself and/or other persons. If the fetus is a person, clearly a women seeking an abortion is a danger to the person of the fetus. It seems to me that the personhood of the fetus is not moot to your argument. Thorny: This is not a “is abortion good or bad, should it be legal or not” thread. This is just the thread where we evaluate arguments, and try to understand whether they are good or arguments, what holes can be poked in them, are the consistent, what are their dependent values, etc. As I mentioned in the OP, if you want to argue pro choice or pro life this is not the thread for you. So no, I am not trying to convince anybody one way or another, and in fact, if you read the OP, I come down on the pro choice side of things. ---
**Author:** ![SamuelA](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c77e96/32.png) [@SamuelA](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SamuelA)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2019, 2:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-very-long-analysis-of-the-arguments-related-to-the-abortion-debate/836527/144 "2019-07-08T02:49:37Z")
> [@Scylla](#): > > Behind this argument is the concept that when somebody is “brain dead” they are considered dead almost universally. Politicians, doctors, most religious authorities all agree that there is no human life to protect. Terminating the remaining life to harvest organs or save resources is considered not only acceptable and appropriate, but encouraged. If there is no longer a human mind to protect because that mind has died, there is no human life. If that is how we define the ending point than it would seem logical to define the beginning point the same way. > > That was about 10-15 years ago, and thanks to Gaudere, I considered the matter reasonably solved. I had a logical and ethical framework, that was consistent and made sense for which to think about abortion. For me, the issue was resolved. I was pro choice up to the 16th month. > > I am in the habit of turning issues over in my head during long runs to distract myself, and I would occasionally think about Gaudere’s arguments during these. I found a couple of problems. A person is declared brain dead when there is no hope for recovery or improvement. Given a normal gestation, a fetus will attain the capacity for human thought. That was one problem. Another problem, is that if a person is in a coma, their brain is not capable of human thought. You just don’t get to kill somebody because they are not capable of human thought. What about people with severe developmental disabilities? The problem is, that I can think of no test that you could apply to a fetus to demonstrate that it is not human, for which there is an analogue that would also disqualify a living human being. > > A fetus is a human/life/individual/person as much or more so than many others we consider persons There is a workable model here for deciding if a fetus is a person or not. A person is a person if the _information_ contained in their skull is sufficiently complex to be a person. Yes, this means a human brain sized lump of disorganized neural tissue in a laboratory is not a person. Nor are catatonic individuals so disabled from birth they can never move or sense anything. The reason you abandoned this model was you didn’t like the idea that there is no clear dividing line, that some people are borderline and there is no way to tell. Except that’s not what you need to do. A fetus has a tiny brain and no unique information inputs. You can say from this that while we may not yet have a complete neural model for which entities we consider persons, or an effective way to determine if a particular coma patient is still a person or not, we _can_ say that a fetus is _not_ a person now. That is, instead of risking committing murder by terminating borderline patients, we can keep them alive, but a fetus is nowhere near the border. And only the now matters. The difference between a person with a full brain and previous life experiences who may wake up in the future, and a fetus who may develop into a person in the future, is the former’s brain has the information in it that makes them a person **now**. If the future state matters, then why isn’t a fertile couple who decide not to have sex that night guilty of murder? It seems rather arbitrary. Or if scientists built a fully automated fertilization machine and artificial womb, and hypothetically you pressed the button the start the fully automated process. A sperm and egg have not yet combined, but the robotic arm is reaching for the storage freezers where each are kept. You then hit the cancel button. How have you not committed murder, if a fetus is a person? What is the difference between a single living human cell that’s been fertilized and 2 cells that are about to be made in one by a piece of robotic machinery? Had you not pressed cancel, a fetus and later a baby would have been generated. As a side note, by my definition, a cryo-preserved brain absolutely is a person, despite them being inanimate, while a fetus still is not. ---
**Author:** ![elbows](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/b3f665/32.png) [@elbows](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elbows)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2019, 3:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-very-long-analysis-of-the-arguments-related-to-the-abortion-debate/836527/145 "2019-07-08T03:06:20Z")
But if you’re unwilling to break Bob’s body autonomy to save his twin’s life, you have no standing to break a woman’s body autonomy because it’s ‘to save a life.’ It’s not about if it’s a life, all lives are equally worth saving surely. If ‘saving a life’ is a valid reason in the case of abortion, then logical consistency means it must be a valid reason to force Bob to donate a kidney. If the state is unwilling to break the body autonomy of a corpse to possibly save NUMEROUS lives I can’t see how they can justify doing so to women. Bob’s ability to allow his brother to die without a kidney has zero to do with his brother’s standing, worthiness, or the value of his life. And everything to do with Bob’s ROCK SOLID body autonomy. If women are indeed equal under the law they should not be compelled to save a life either. They either have full agency over their bodies or they don’t, which is it? ---
**Author:** ![Scylla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a5b964/32.png) [@Scylla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scylla)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2019, 3:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-very-long-analysis-of-the-arguments-related-to-the-abortion-debate/836527/146 "2019-07-08T03:15:52Z")
> [@elbows](#): > > But if you’re unwilling to break Bob’s body autonomy to save his twin’s life, you have no standing to break a woman’s body autonomy because it’s ‘to save a life.’ > > It’s not about if it’s a life, all lives are equally worth saving surely. If ‘saving a life’ is a valid reason in the case of abortion, then logical consistency means it must be a valid reason to force Bob to donate a kidney. > > If the state is unwilling to break the body autonomy of a corpse to possibly save NUMEROUS lives I can’t see how they can justify doing so to women. > > Bob’s ability to allow his brother to die without a kidney has zero to do with his brother’s standing, worthiness, or the value of his life. And everything to do with Bob’s ROCK SOLID body autonomy. If women are indeed equal under the law they should not be compelled to save a life either. They either have full agency over their bodies or they don’t, which is it? There is a big difference between doing nothing and doing something, I think. By not saving somebody I haven’t killed them. Actively killing a person is a different act. These two things are not equivalent. I do not think that not donating a kidney to person and then allowing them to die is equivalent to the act of terminating a life. I don’t think this a valid line of reasoning you are engaged in. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2019, 3:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-very-long-analysis-of-the-arguments-related-to-the-abortion-debate/836527/147 "2019-07-08T03:16:37Z")
> [@Scylla](#): > > If we could transplant one’s brain into a robot, your old body would not be your person. Therefore a body is property. The brain is part of the body, and only part of the person. So that argument makes no sense whatsoever. > [@Scylla](#): > > I still see one other issue in your stance that appears problematic. Legally you lose body autonomy if you are considered a danger to yourself and/or other persons. If the fetus is a person, clearly a women seeking an abortion is a danger to the person of the fetus. > . I asked you before whether you were a total pacifist, and were opposed to killing in self-defense, in defense of others, and in all cases of war. You dodged that question. In all of those cases the defender becomes a danger to the attacker the moment the defender tries to fight back. Does the act of intending to fight back against an attacker, by that very intention, remove all of one’s right to do so – even though one had the right before one attempted to use it? What sense does that make? > [@Scylla](#): > > Thorny: > > This is not a “is abortion good or bad, should it be legal or not” thread. > > This is just the thread where we evaluate arguments, and try to understand whether they are good or arguments, what holes can be poked in them, are the consistent, what are their dependent values, etc. > > As I mentioned in the OP, if you want to argue pro choice or pro life this is not the thread for you. So no, I am not trying to convince anybody one way or another, and in fact, if you read the OP, I come down on the pro choice side of things. Yes, I read the OP, and I know that you said that. But every objection you’ve made has been to a pro-choice argument. Where is your list of vehement objections to the anti-choice arguments? Where in this thread have you exerted yourself to attempt to poke holes in those? ---
**Author:** ![Scylla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a5b964/32.png) [@Scylla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scylla)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2019, 3:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-very-long-analysis-of-the-arguments-related-to-the-abortion-debate/836527/148 "2019-07-08T03:28:46Z")
Elbows: We need to be clear here: You say “I am unwilling,” as if I am advocating a point of view in the real world when in fact I am just examining an argument to see if it holds water. I think the whole body autonomy argument is a little weak, because people are restrained from doing whatever they want with their bodies under a wide variety of circumstance. The actual stance that society seems to hold on this is that you generally have body autonomy unless society has what it considers a good reason to interrupt it. It is by no means an absolute. You can lose body autonomy by being drafted, imprisoned, or, most commonly a danger to yourself or other persons. If a fetus is a person, than seeking an abortion is a danger to that person. Therefore Bryan’s argument is dependent upon whether or not a fetus is a person. It is not the moot point that he argues. This is of course assuming that I have not screwed up and misunderstood his argument again. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2019, 3:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-very-long-analysis-of-the-arguments-related-to-the-abortion-debate/836527/149 "2019-07-08T03:45:36Z")
> [@Scylla](#): > > If we could transplant one’s brain into a robot, your old body would not be your person. Therefore a body is property. I don’t think it’s valid to speculate on science-fiction hypotheticals as part of one’s argument. I don’t doubt that advancing technology will require humanity to rethink a great many moral, ethical and legal principles, but using what _might be_ in the future to try to decide what _should be_ in the present is problematic at best. I can accept that one’s body is effectively the carrying case for one’s brain, where one’s true personality resides, but trying to separate brain and body for legal purposes such that the latter becomes “property” and not “person” strikes me as unworkable. > [@](#): > > I still see one other issue in your stance that appears problematic. Legally you lose body autonomy if you are considered a danger to yourself and/or other persons. If the fetus is a person, clearly a women seeking an abortion is a danger to the person of the fetus. > > It seems to me that the personhood of the fetus is not moot to your argument. You can call the fetus a person all you like, but I wouldn’t give _anyone or anything_ license to do what a fetus does to the woman hosting it, in defiance of the woman’s consent. If a fully-formed adult (undeniably a person by any existing legal standard) was going to inflict pain and discomfort comparable to a pregnancy on someone else for months, I would not tell that someone that they are obliged to just take it. If a fully-formed adult person doesn’t get that right, why does a fetus, be it a person or not? Further, the analogy of “danger to others” has a major flaw, in that even if one is imprisoned or committed for violent actions, the state doesn’t get the power to decide “Well, you’re not going to be doing anything for a few years, so why not inseminate you so you can have a baby that a nice couple can adopt? After all, you’ve lost your bodily autonomy, so why let it go to waste?” It wouldn’t even have to be for violence - any woman who loses her autonomy because someone else has decided on her behalf could be so used. This is not a science-fiction hypothetical, by the way. _Genesis_ 30:3-5. ---
**Author:** ![Scylla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a5b964/32.png) [@Scylla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scylla)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2019, 3:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-very-long-analysis-of-the-arguments-related-to-the-abortion-debate/836527/150 "2019-07-08T03:52:49Z")
> [@SamuelA](#): > > Except that’s not what you need to do. A fetus has a tiny brain and no unique information inputs. You can say from this that while we may not yet have a complete neural model for which entities we consider persons, or an effective way to determine if a particular coma patient is still a person or not, we _can_ say that a fetus is _not_ a person now. That is, instead of risking committing murder by terminating borderline patients, we can keep them alive, but a fetus is nowhere near the border. > > And only the now matters. The difference between a person with a full brain and previous life experiences who may wake up in the future, and a fetus who may develop into a person in the future, is the former’s brain has the information in it that makes them a person **now**. A fetus does get inputs from it’s mother. Some of these are chemical, apparently they can hear noises at some point while in the womb. Can you define what this information is that makes one a person? Does a one week old newborn have it? > [@](#): > > If the future state matters, then why isn’t a fertile couple who decide not to have sex that night guilty of murder? It seems rather arbitrary. > > Or if scientists built a fully automated fertilization machine and artificial womb, and hypothetically you pressed the button the start the fully automated process. A sperm and egg have not yet combined, but the robotic arm is reaching for the storage freezers where each are kept. You then hit the cancel button. How have you not committed murder, if a fetus is a person? What is the difference between a single living human cell that’s been fertilized and 2 cells that are about to be made in one by a piece of robotic machinery? Had you not pressed cancel, a fetus and later a baby would have been generated. . At the moment of conception dna from two different donors has combined and created a new human life. Before that moment there is no new human life, so it can’t be harmed. After that moment it can be. There is no potential because there is no human life to have a potential. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2019, 3:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-very-long-analysis-of-the-arguments-related-to-the-abortion-debate/836527/151 "2019-07-08T03:54:04Z")
> [@Scylla](#): > > If a fetus is a person, than seeking an abortion is a danger to that person. If a fetus is growing inside a person, the fetus poses a danger to that person. Read up on pregnancy-related risks, which have been greatly reduced but not eliminated by modern medicine. Why should the “danger to others” argument only work in one direction? ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2019, 3:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-very-long-analysis-of-the-arguments-related-to-the-abortion-debate/836527/152 "2019-07-08T03:58:39Z")
> [@Scylla](#): > > At the moment of conception dna from two different donors has combined and created a new human life. Before that moment there is no new human life, so it can’t be harmed. After that moment it can be. You’re right, it _can_ be harmed. The conditions are comparable to what can be considered justifiable self-defense in which human lives can and do get harmed quite a bit. ---
**Author:** ![SamuelA](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c77e96/32.png) [@SamuelA](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SamuelA)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2019, 4:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-very-long-analysis-of-the-arguments-related-to-the-abortion-debate/836527/153 "2019-07-08T04:00:14Z")
> [@Scylla](#): > > A fetus does get inputs from it’s mother. Some of these are chemical, apparently they can hear noises at some point while in the womb. Can you define what this information is that makes one a person? Does a one week old newborn have it? > > At the moment of conception dna from two different donors has combined and created a new human life. Before that moment there is no new human life, so it can’t be harmed. After that moment it can be. There is no potential because there is no human life to have a potential. 1. Not more sophisticated that even the simplest animal that we hunt for food. And remember, only the present at the time of abortion matters, not some future state. 2. The newborn likely doesn’t have it, but it’s borderline. Also, let’s suppose that we find an effective way to determine if a particular brain is sophisticated enough to be considered a person. With a huge margin allowed to be on the safe side. And let’s suppose we discover that newborns and small children aren’t really people. (this might be what we find, since neither appear to be able to code up long term memories). It wouldn’t be murder to kill one, then, but small children have a high emotional value to parents, caretakers, even distant strangers. So we as a society, if this came up, could simply define killing a small child as being a crime punished as much as murder, even if it really isn’t. How does a robotic machine that is going to create human life not have potential? What makes it magically different? What if the machine were composed of living tissue? You’re just accidentally injecting religion into your argument again. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2019, 4:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-very-long-analysis-of-the-arguments-related-to-the-abortion-debate/836527/154 "2019-07-08T04:13:55Z")
> [@Scylla](#): > > At the moment of conception dna from two different donors has combined and created a new human life. Before that moment there is no new human life, so it can’t be harmed. After that moment it can be. There is no potential because there is no human life to have a potential. Already answered. > [@thorny\_locust](#): > > Any egg cell or sperm cell is alive, human, distinct, and unique. Why should combining the two create a bright line? > [@thorny\_locust](#): > > It is unique. Every egg and sperm cell contains a unique combination of genes. The genes of the person whose body produced them contain a different combination, not only because the germ cells don’t contain the full set but also due to the recombination process during meiosis. ---
**Author:** ![Scylla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a5b964/32.png) [@Scylla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scylla)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2019, 4:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-very-long-analysis-of-the-arguments-related-to-the-abortion-debate/836527/155 "2019-07-08T04:17:16Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > I don’t think it’s valid to speculate on science-fiction hypotheticals as part of one’s argument. I think it’s perfectly fine to do so, so did Albert Einstein. > [@](#): > > I don’t doubt that advancing technology will require humanity to rethink a great many moral, ethical and legal principles, but using what _might be_ in the future to try to decide what _should be_ in the present is problematic at best. It has nothing to do with sci-if or the future. It has to with defining what constitutes a person and what constitutes their property. > [@](#): > > I can accept that one’s body is effectively the carrying case for one’s brain, where one’s true personality resides, but trying to separate brain and body for legal purposes such that the latter becomes “property” and not “person” strikes me as unworkable. I agree it’s a problem. You can take actions that can cause me distress, psychologically and/or physically. Generally speaking i don’t have carte Blanche to terminate your existence simply because of this fact. > [@](#): > > You can call the fetus a person all you like, but I wouldn’t give _anyone or anything_ license to do what a fetus does to the woman hosting it, in defiance of the woman’s consent. If a fully-formed adult (undeniably a person by any existing legal standard) was going to inflict pain and discomfort comparable to a pregnancy on someone else for months, I would not tell that someone that they are obliged to just take it. If a fully-formed adult person doesn’t get that right, why does a fetus, be it a person or not? Generally speaking you don’t get to kill people just because you personally find that their existence causes you genuine distress. That a fetus is perpetrating a crime by causing distress in it’s mother is by no means an uncontroversial statement > [@](#): > > Further, the analogy of “danger to others” has a major flaw, in that even if one is imprisoned or committed for violent actions, the state doesn’t get the power to decide “Well, you’re not going to be doing anything for a few years, so why not inseminate you so you can have a baby that a nice couple can adopt? After all, you’ve lost your bodily autonomy, so why let it go to waste?” It wouldn’t even have to be for violence - any woman who loses her autonomy because someone else has decided on her behalf could be so used. > > This is not a science-fiction hypothetical, by the way. _Genesis_ 30:3-5. [/quote] This is a completely different argument. Nobody is arguing that the state or any other entity has the right to force someone to become pregnant against their will. That is a completely different argument from the abortion/pro life one. You didn’t correct my last post. I hope this means I finally have your position straight. Again, very sorry for my mistakes there. ---
**Author:** ![Scylla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a5b964/32.png) [@Scylla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scylla)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2019, 4:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-very-long-analysis-of-the-arguments-related-to-the-abortion-debate/836527/156 "2019-07-08T04:27:40Z")
> [@SamuelA](#): > > 1. Not more sophisticated that even the simplest animal that we hunt for food. And remember, only the present at the time of abortion matters, not some future state. > > 2. The newborn likely doesn’t have it, but it’s borderline. > > Also, let’s suppose that we find an effective way to determine if a particular brain is sophisticated enough to be considered a person. With a huge margin allowed to be on the safe side. And let’s suppose we discover that newborns and small children aren’t really people. (this might be what we find, since neither appear to be able to code up long term memories). > > It wouldn’t be murder to kill one, then, but small children have a high emotional value to parents, caretakers, even distant strangers. So we as a society, if this came up, could simply define killing a small child as being a crime punished as much as murder, even if it really isn’t. > > How does a robotic machine that is going to create human life not have potential? What makes it magically different? What if the machine were composed of living tissue? You’re just accidentally injecting religion into your argument again. I think you need to define what this “information” that is contained in the brain that makes one a person is before you can go any further with your argument. It remains very vague. You say a fetus doesn’t have it, and a one week old newborn probably doesn’t either, so it’s borderline. How much information and what kind. You said a frozen brain could be a person. How about a DVD? Could I put enough of the right kind of information onto a DVD to make it a person? I think you are going to find that it is impossible to get a workable definition of personhood by this route. ---
**Author:** ![SamuelA](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c77e96/32.png) [@SamuelA](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SamuelA)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2019, 4:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-very-long-analysis-of-the-arguments-related-to-the-abortion-debate/836527/157 "2019-07-08T04:35:12Z")
> [@Scylla](#): > > I think you need to define what this “information” that is contained in the brain that makes one a person is before you can go any further with your argument. It remains very vague. You say a fetus doesn’t have it, and a one week old newborn probably doesn’t either, so it’s borderline. > > How much information and what kind. You said a frozen brain could be a person. How about a DVD? Could I put enough of the right kind of information onto a DVD to make it a person? > > I think you are going to find that it is impossible to get a workable definition of personhood by this route. It’s vague because it requires future technology, capable of scanning preserved human brains and building a functioning emulation, to know what “information” actually matters and which is just noise. However, a being that hasn’t been able to see, just react to sounds, but has no way to manipulate it’s environment, is far less sophisticated than, again, animals we kill for food. So while I don’t have an answer for you, I’m laying out the boundaries. A rabbit has more information than a fetus. So does a cat, a mouse, basically any large scale mammal. I don’t have to define for you what it is to show you from the complexity of these creature’s behaviors and their mapping abilities that they are far, far more sophisticated than a fetus is. Unless we decide that killing these animals is _also_ murder - which you might note becomes very, very impractical - we’re being irrational if we decide that killing a fetus is murder. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2019, 4:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-very-long-analysis-of-the-arguments-related-to-the-abortion-debate/836527/158 "2019-07-08T04:50:10Z")
> [@Scylla](#): > > I think it’s perfectly fine to do so, so did Albert Einstein. Argument from authority, and without even a relevant quote in support your claim. What did Einstein say about abortion or putting human brains in robot bodies or how “personhood” should be legally defined? This is not a good way to advance a discussion ostensibly dedicated to the rational analysis of a controversial issue. > [@](#): > > You can take actions that can cause me distress, psychologically and/or physically. Generally speaking i don’t have carte Blanche to terminate your existence simply because of this fact. But you _can_ seek to end the distress, right? You are not operating under a legal obligation to let it continue, I assume. > [@](#): > > Generally speaking you don’t get to kill people just because you personally find that their existence causes you genuine distress. But you _can_ seek to end the distress, right? You are not operating under a legal obligation to let it continue, I assume. I gather you included the “personally find” thing to suggest a grey area, where it’s just my _opinion_ that I’m being distressed. Pregnancy doesn’t really lend itself to mere opinion, though. I don’t know if you intended to suggest that pregnant women should just toughen up, grow a thicker skin, to not be so _emotional_ about things, but that’s how it sounds to me. > [@](#): > > That a fetus is perpetrating a crime by causing distress in it’s mother is by no means an uncontroversial statement I didn’t say “crime” and wouldn’t consider it a crime, but will you acknowledge the distress is real? > [@](#): > > This is a completely different argument. Nobody is arguing that the state or any other entity has the right to force someone to become pregnant against their will. That is a completely different argument from the abortion/pro life one. It is more on point than speculating on human brains in robot bodies, especially if attempts to restrict abortion end up affecting rape victims. “Sorry you got pregnant against your will, but we will not allow you to remedy this. We’re not glad about the cause, but we will force you to live with the effect.” > [@](#): > > You didn’t correct my last post. I hope this means I finally have your position straight. Your degree of misinterpretation has varied quite a bit. It has never been zero. You should not assume that if I skip over some things that you have written, it means I agree with them or accept them as correct. ---
**Author:** ![Scylla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a5b964/32.png) [@Scylla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scylla)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2019, 11:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-very-long-analysis-of-the-arguments-related-to-the-abortion-debate/836527/159 "2019-07-08T11:41:24Z")
> [@SamuelA](#): > > It’s vague because it requires future technology, capable of scanning preserved human brains and building a functioning emulation, to know what “information” actually matters and which is just noise. However, a being that hasn’t been able to see, just react to sounds, but has no way to manipulate it’s environment, is far less sophisticated than, again, animals we kill for food. > > So while I don’t have an answer for you, I’m laying out the boundaries. A rabbit has more information than a fetus. So does a cat, a mouse, basically any large scale mammal. I don’t have to define for you what it is to show you from the complexity of these creature’s behaviors and their mapping abilities that they are far, far more sophisticated than a fetus is. > > Unless we decide that killing these animals is _also_ murder - which you might note becomes very, very impractical - we’re being irrational if we decide that killing a fetus is murder. This is only a problem if we use receiving information as a criteria for personhood. A few pages ago someone talked about a pro choice argument that said abortion was ok up until birth because that was when the soul entered the body. This argument is not that far away. I’m going to have to say that if you can’t define your criteria for personhood, it’s not a useful concept. ---
**Author:** ![Scylla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a5b964/32.png) [@Scylla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scylla)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2019, 12:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-very-long-analysis-of-the-arguments-related-to-the-abortion-debate/836527/160 "2019-07-08T12:13:00Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > Argument from authority, and without even a relevant quote in support your claim. What did Einstein say about abortion or putting human brains in robot bodies or how “personhood” should be legally defined? This is not a good way to advance a discussion ostensibly dedicated to the rational analysis of a controversial issue. No. It’s not an argument from authority. I had thought evoking Einstein, would remind you about the fanciful thought experiments he used to demonstrate relativity, like riding a bike at and approaching the speed of light, or the dancing giant who was several light years tall. Anyhow you have made nothing more than an argument by assertion to suggest that using sci fi examples is impermissible, so you are hardly in a position to criticize my rebuttal. > [@](#): > > But you _can_ seek to end the distress, right? You are not operating under a legal obligation to let it continue, I assume. Well sure, but there are limits. A wanted pregnancy is often a source of joy and happiness. You can’t say that pregnancy itself is an intrinsically or objectively horrible thing. Fred might dislike his old girlfriend or former business partner so much that their mere existence causes him physical distress, depression, etc. He is not allowed to murder them in order to relieve it. In order to make your position tenable and consistent, you need to argue that a fetus is not a person, or that it’s personhood is worth less than the inconvenience it causes it’s mother because not all persons have the same value, or something Ali g those lines, but it’s personhood is not an issue you can dodge. [quite]But you _can_ seek to end the distress, right? You are not operating under a legal obligation to let it continue, I assume. I gather you included the “personally find” thing to suggest a grey area, where it’s just my _opinion_ that I’m being distressed. Pregnancy doesn’t really lend itself to mere opinion, though. I don’t know if you intended to suggest that pregnant women should just toughen up, grow a thicker skin, to not be so _emotional_ about things, but that’s how it sounds to me. [/quote] No. I addressed it above. Pregnancy is not automatically a terrible discomfort or burden. > [@](#): > > I didn’t say “crime” and wouldn’t consider it a crime, but will you acknowledge the distress is real? I would absolutely agree that the distress and discomfort of an unwanted pregnancy is real. Would you agree that a wanted pregnancy can be a source of joy? If so, pregnancy itself is not objectively bad. It depends on one values the pregnancy, right? > [@](#): > > It is more on point than speculating on human brains in robot bodies, especially if attempts to restrict abortion end up affecting rape victims. “Sorry you got pregnant against your will, but we will not allow you to remedy this. We’re not glad about the cause, but we will force you to live with the effect.” As I mention in the OP, if you happen to be pro life but believe in an exception to rape, you don’t have a consistent stance. A fetus has no blame for the rape that brought it into existence. How it came to be is a moot point as to whether or not it has a right to life. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-very-long-analysis-of-the-arguments-related-to-the-abortion-debate/836527.md?page=7) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-very-long-analysis-of-the-arguments-related-to-the-abortion-debate/836527.md?page=9)