I think I understand. As you said initially it is a 3 type argument, one of utility. The same thing as “it’s worth killing these people in this war because this greater evil is prevented” or a “its wirth having this many people die building skyscrapers because skyscrapers are so useful.”
I.E. those deaths either prevent something worse or give us something worth more so they are acceptable.
Thanks. I had not thought of it that example (or heard it argued) before. I’m glad that it seems to fit within the framework of thought I wrote.
FWIW: I would call it a “good argument” as I’ve defined such for this thread, in that it is logical, consistent and tends to fit within a framework of values most people would identify with.
I hope my thoughts helped you further define your argument in some way.
I think you misread my intentions. If you accept the premise that items 1-4 are strong valid values than the pro-life argument is strong and “good.” If you don’t than that’s what you have to overcome. You can overcome them by denying they are true. You don’t Have to accept them. But if you do accept them, than the pro life argument is strong.
In your example, it doesn’t look like you accept the premise that the soul flies into a baby at birth. If you are seeking to convince him than you need to overcome this belief. If he is seeking to convince you than he has to get you to accept.
It’s a good argument in the sense, that if you accept all the values and premises it works. It’s a bad argument in that o e of its premises is presented without any underlying rationale or evidence to accept it.
Surely the hallmark of a good argument is that is has actual evidence, not that it’s internally consistent within some arbitrary belief system. But so often it’s presented without evidence. How many times do you have to have the conversation about there being no evidence for the “soul”, etc…? It’s Groundhog Day, every time. It’s fucking exhausting.
Turning the abortion debate into a question of whether a fetus is a human being or not is just playing into the anti choice hands. It doesn’t matter one tiny bit whether a fetus is human or not, it has no right to use another person’s body against their will. The pro choice argument is body autonomy: a woman has a right to decide what happens to her body. Everything else is an attempt by the anti choice side as a matter of opinion instead of the absolute facts of the pro choice side.
I submit that standing on the shore and not saving a life when you easily could, is a deliberate act. Since no one can or should force you to save a fully formed life. By the same token, no one can or should force you to support a nascent life. It’s a choice.
Here is one more point and I’ll shut up for a while and let other people talk.
If that’s your kid drowning, you’re far more likely to jump in the water to save her. Because the cost/benefit analysis is very simple to you. You are so vested in that child’s well being, that you would give your own life to save her.
Now, if it’s someone else’s kid, you might hesitate. You might drown trying to save someone else’s kid and as a result your family will suffer for your heroics. Better be damn sure you’re a good swimmer before you go in the water. Right?
With a nascent life, one that you’re not feeling very vested in, you might decide that the cost is not worth the benefit.
Now, a pro-life person on the shore will damn well do the same calculation in that very situation, i.e. their own kid vs. some stranger’s kid. As well they should, right?
But they will, and do, deny a complete stranger any choice in the matter based on their own dogmatic conviction with no regard to the risk/benefit analysis of the person on whose behalf they make that decision.
If i Don’t rescue you because i can’t swim and have a heart condition that’s not a deliberate act, right? We can go down the list from there starting with very good reasons not to do it, all the way down to the flimsiest of pretexts. As long as their is any pretext whatsoever for inaction there is no deliberate intent.
Doesn’t mean such a one isn’t a shitty person, though.
I think your argument is especially interesting as it let’s you hold the core values in common with a pro-lifer. To me, this is the hallmark of something that can be used to change minds. The key for me understanding your position was when you pointed out you were talking about the aggregate.
Most pro lifers understand the greater good/lesser evil argument and that those things can and do cost human lives every day.
I see two hurdles:
Is it reasonably true that the suffering and loss of human life that would occur without abortion is significantly different and greater that what would occur with it and if so, is there an alternative to abortion that could accomplish the same thing.
I haven’t thought about this but from what I do know, I think that a pretty strong case can be made here.
While everyone understands sacrificing soldiers to war and workers to industry and people dying for the greater good, I’m not sure people are ok with the idea of killing the helpless. They tend to be traditionally exempt from being sacrificial lambs. We don’t send babies and school kids to fight Hitler, et al.
I understand the values behind #2 and I think they exist for a good reason. This might be something you are able to overcome, but a little thinking suggests that this might boomerang back and wreck your argument. That is if a life is to be sacrificed or a hardship endured, it falls to the able bodied, not the helpless.
I need to think about this some more, but hiopefully you see my gist.
“I easily could, except my watch isn’t waterproof and if I take this strap off it is almost impossible to get it to adjust and fit right, so I want comfortable reaching out to save them and risking my hand getting wet. Plus that chair was really comfortable and my gin and tonic was getting warm… so, they drowned. It makes me very sad.”
I’d like to thank you Scylla for a thought provoking OP. I don’t post much here but let me say that surprisingly, reading this thread has resulted in me reflecting on many of my views around abortion.
My first thoughts upon finishing reading this thread is the agree with AHunter3 and others that abortion should be acceptable primarily for pragmatic reasons, not because there is any inherent sanctity to human life. The problem with the argument of “lesser evils” is that it really doesn’t feel like as strong of an argument, as, say denying premise #1 - if you argue that it is a greater evil to force people to carry children against their will than to allow them to kill them, why doesn’t this apply after birth as well? Shouldn’t a mother who really doesn’t want its child be allow to allow its newborn baby to either be taken care of by others or die, if it would just otherwise grow up to a life of misery and despair?
I’m not sure I really buy the “bodily autonomy above all else” argument as well. Obviously, society is willing to limit the autonomy of people all the time - ie. criminals. People can be arrested for all sorts of relatively minor offenses, so society obviously is OK with restricting bodily autonomy for practical reasons (ie. enforcing societal rules to ensure that it operates smoothly). If the 4 premises in the OP held true, I don’t consider it reasonable to say “but bodily autonomy trumps other human life” when bodily autonomy is surrendered for any situation where you can be arrested. Yes, being arrested and carrying a child are very different forms of restrictions on bodily autonomy, but if society agrees that you forfeit your bodily autonomy when you commit certain crimes, they could also agree that you forfeit your bodily autonomy when you become responsible for sustaining a human life. To me, it only seems possible for you to hold bodily autonomy higher than human life if you reject one of the first 3 premises in the OP, otherwise you should also be OK with a Siamese twin jettisoning their non-viable half (maybe some people are OK with that, but that seems cruel to me).
At the end of the day, I feel like rejecting premise #1 is still the most defensible pro-choice argument, even if it means having to draw a relatively arbitrary line. A zygote, and subsequently fetus may certainly be on the trajectory to becoming a full-fledged person, but it isn’t one yet. There is a distinct difference between, say, a person in a vegetative state and a fetus - the person in a vegetative state has fully functional organs, and if their brain were to start working again in an instant they would be fully recognizable as a person. I don’t think the same is true of a zygote.
I do generally agree that abortion should be legal primarily because of practical matters - namely, that there is no substitute possible for the mother as a caretaker in the early stages of a pregnancy. The difference between the “30-year old body in a box” and a fetus is that the former is not tied to any one person for its wellbeing - any other person could theoretically step up and take care of the body-in-a-box, while that is not the case with a fetus.
I don’t accept premise #1 either; but I do want to point out that we most certainly do allow a mother who really doesn’t want a newborn – or for that matter an older child – to allow that infant/child to be taken care of by others. Parents can not only allow such care temporarily and/or informally, but can formally renounce parental rights and turn the child over for adoption or state/societal care.
It’s because this is possible that it’s reasonable to say that we don’t allow the parents to kill the child – they don’t have to kill it in order to not have to be responsible for it. That’s why abortion choice arguments don’t apply after birth.
This might get me in trouble, but this is why I can’t get excited about global warming. Some moron is going to deliberately do a gene push and fuck us all up, release an engineered supervirus, make killer AI, and if not that, every two bit crackpot country will have Nukes.
So, the apocalypse will a little warmer. ::shrug::
When you say you don’t buy #1, are you saying that you deny it because you honestly believe it is not true, or fo you deny it because you are not sure whether it is true, but that to grant it has unacceptable consequences.
I am pretty sure it’s the former, but the way you discussed this made me double check.
Well, then what difference does abortion make? My post #2 “rebuttal” was not flippant, Canada stands as a clear example of a first-world post-industrial country that has no laws against abortion and clearly is not descending into chaos or cannibalism or infanticide or indeed any other obvious social ill as a result, which I take as clear refutation of any claims that abortion will harm a society. If you’re being a tad flippant in your embrace of long-term nihilism, that’s fine. If you’re serious, then why care about abortion? If anything, the slowing of population growth might delay the disasters to come.
Yes actually! Enjoyed this thread.