I’d agree with Martin that everything is ultimately ‘moral’ insofar as it has consequences for the well-being and liberty of an organism capable of suffering.
A child subject to abuse is such an organism. A foetus is not.
Conception is just as arbitrary a threshold of ‘personhood’ as, say, 18 weeks since 2 cells each being life and having 100% human DNA (sperm and ovum) meet, then split leaving 2 other cells each being life and having 100% human DNA (daughter nuclei after meiosis). Both pairs of cells are potential people.
Where did you get this exactly? I don’t have any argument that I rely on to beat every other argument.
I’m not relying on a one-pronged attack at all. And you’re in no position to judge what kind of attack I use since we’re not even arguing the freaking issue. When we actually do argue abortion, I prefer to use scientific and legal grounds instead of privacy precisely because of what you say in the OP. People never butt out when they feel they have a moral obligation to butt in, so it’s no use telling them to mind their own business.
Seems we’ve wandered into an Advice Column.
So my saying that something is “none of their business” infringes on their right to make it their business? Tough. And show me where anybody is guaranteed that right. In any case your comments make no sense. I’m not infringing on anybody’s rights, I’m stating my opinion. Have whatever opinion you want, that doesn’t mean the law should reflect your opinion. How is your stance any less dogmatic? If anything, I’m trying to take a position not based on any individual or group dogma.
For some people, living in a society where evil gay sex happens is wrong and a basic moral issue. Or masturbation. So what? They absolutely have the right to have an opinion about it and I’m not taking that away. But I don’t think it’s any of their business, and I feel pretty sure that if a given action does not affect anyone else in any way, it’s not society’s business. “We’re all connected” sells telephones.
As I said earlier, I think morality alone is a crappy basis for the law. Just because somebody - including me - decides that a particular behavior is wrong does not grant me a compelling interest in getting rid of it, nor does it make banning it the right or sensible thing to do. (Look at the War on Drugs.)
I think people’s impulse is to try and get rid of anything they don’t like. Since we all dislike different things, this ends up with a majority-morality situation and everyone is always campaigning to ban something someone else does. Everybody has fun voicing their outrage, but I think it’s a waste of time. So I think harm to other people is a much more sensible criterion, and I think it might lead to more stability in the law. Anybody can claim something is wrong and should be banned. To me, that makes it pretty useless.
Obviously harm is not totally ironclad. I do think a standard of actual harm it’s better than “this harms me because it violates my moral code.” If you can give me some convincing argument that some thing I think is a private matter and not society’s business is in fact dangerous and harmful to others, you can change my mind. I’m not immune to arguments despite what you say. I do think that society needs a good reason to horn in on people’s privacy.
The argument that the unborn should be treated (at least in some ways) as a person with rights that the state has a prerogative or even obligation to defend is a legitimate one. I don’t buy it for the early (pre cerebral cortex) stages of pregnancy, but I don’t dismiss it out of hand.
Your foggy generalized communitarianism, on the other hand, I do reject out of hand.
By framing your argument in terms of “it happens in the society in which I live; therefore, it is my business”, you are laying the groundwork for totalitarianism. This argument leaves no principled basis for placing any sphere of life outside the scope of government control – at most, one might defend the existence of private life on the pragmatic basis that it’s too difficult for the government to control everything (at least today – tomorrow is another day with other economic, technological, etc circumstances).
On the contrary, it is a way to stick to principles.
I automatically pay my mortgage each month, not because I want to “avoid thinking” about my budget, but because I have assumed an obligation to do so and reject “thinking” up some way to weasel out of it. Similarly, rejection out of hand of unwarranted* government intrusion is a matter of conscience, not intellectual laziness.
*As I noted earlier, those who disagree with the position that it is unwarranted have a legitimate argument (the personhood of the fetus) with which to support their view.
I think to clear things up you should be aware of the following issue:
You likened abortion to child molestation, an act that is unarguably wrong. When you make that comparison its easy to reject the “none of your business” idea because society needs to protect that child. Abusive parents cannot assume a right to privacy when they are hurting their children.
The problem with your OP is that some people see the abortion issue as state-sponsored slavery/torture of the MOTHER.
Try for just a second to view the abortion issue that way–from the mother’s perspective. Such that in your society, when a woman becomes pregnant the Government steps in and assumes control of her body, turning her into an incubator for your society. Is this what you consider to be moral? Do your morals extend to pregnant women, or are they some how left out of your society?
When this view point is used it becomes society’s moral imperative to protect the mother from enslavement.
Surely you’re against slavery…
To protect women from a society that would enslave them, we say that being pregnant is their business and what they choose to do with that pregnancy is also their business, not the government’s business, or your business. It HAS to be kept private to protect women.
And to back up as bit, the ethical principle I see is that when there is no society-wide consensus, then the right of the individual should be paramount. There is a society wide consensus that a five year old is a person, so the right of the family is trumped by the right of society to protect the child (which has not always been true - consider the spare the rod faction.)
There is no such consensus that the fetus is a person: if there was, there would be no issue, and abortion would be very rare.
Martin, some think animals have ethical rights, and they feel as strongly as some anti-abortionists do. Do you feel that their opinion should be enforced as required vegetarianism? I don’t hold this position myself, but I could probably argue for it, but please consider it as an example of a greater principle.
No, because even atheists can adopt that view. One such notable example was Dr. Bernard Nathanson, one of the founders of NARAL. At the time that he abandoned the pro-choice view and denounced NARAL’s lies, he was an atheist.
You misunderstand the meaning of the word “anti-social.” Anti-social does NOT equal immoral or unethical. Anti-social means going against the mores of society. These mores are not necessarily going to be enlightened mores. And I don’t think comparing abortion to slavery is particularly accurate or compassionate.
DtC:Conversely. Martin’s analogy only works if you are operating under a purely faith-based belief that a fetus is a “person” who can suffer or deserves rights.
JT:No, because even atheists can adopt that view.
I think that in this case “faith-based” doesn’t necessarily mean “based on religious faith”. It just means that, as other posters have pointed out, deciding whether or when a fetus counts as a person is an arbitrary choice based on one’s individual beliefs, not on some unambiguous scientifically established definition of “personhood”.
im:Ever notice that the most vehement, prone-to-violence anti-abortionists are almost all males who have never fathered children of their own?
Well, I can’t say that I have, actually. I’d be willing to believe that the most prone-to-violence anti-abortionists are males, but I’m not sure it has anything to do with abortion; the most prone-to-violence anybodys tend to be males, after all. Hormones 'n socialization 'n all that.