I gave you a definition: Providers of abortions would be in violation of the abortion ban. I also said, without obscuring the thought at all, that this was in no small part a matter of political expediency.
If that makes me a hypocrite, fine. You seem to be fixated on the thought of some perfect, divinely just system of punishment and control in re: abortions, though–again–you seemingly demand this requirement of no other law. My objective is to make the number of abortions as small as possible. Do you see the difference?
The primary concern for me is the number of human beings that have been killed since Roe v. Wade. I wouldn’t say “abortion ban at any cost.” But I would accept a less-than-perfect solution that significantly reduced the number of abortions. And this especially when the “imperfections” are no more than those you see in countless other laws.
You, OTOH, seem to like to think of yourself as pro-life, say that you believe that killing the unborn is wrong, but won’t support an abortion ban unless it’s codified with perfect logic and it satisfies some sense of justice that ignores the rights of the unborn. We don’t need to get into this again, but frankly, I can’t understand your core beliefs at all. I can’t get any two tenets to agree. Hey, I’m sure that’s my own confusion. But since I thought we had shut down our exchange, only to see that you have resurrected it to indirectly call me a hypocrite and/or self-contradictory, I felt compelled to respond.
Anyway, given my objective, I see nothing hypocritical in what I have proposed and in how I have explained it. YMMV. Whatever.
Not everyone can afford to purchase a plane ticket to some random location every few days. Not everyone can afford to skip work and abandon their family for weeks at a time.
No, even though the world is more accessible than it used to be, it’s still much more practical to act locally.
Also, you’re missing the point (although probably not intentionally). The anti-abortion crowd equates abortion with the murder of a child. Now, do you think that those who feel this way would continue to take the same level of action if we suddenly replaced every instance of abortion with the mother murdering a six-month-old baby instead?
The point is that those who believe that abortion is murder do not act as they would be expected to if somehow all abortions were replaced with murders.
Are anti war folks on these boards “acting as they would be expected to” with regards to the daily killings in Iraq, all as a result (they believe) of U.S. policy…or are they all talk and no action?
[quote]
Apos (and other posters) is doing the same thing here…using a “test” to measure the sincerity of pro lifers beliefs…a test that convienently doesn’t get applied to plenty of other areas of public policy.[/qote]
But that misses the point. The test is framed specifically in terms of what one would do if something like this happened within ones own community. Bringing in the question of whether we are responsible for other horrors in the world is irrelevant, because it raises all sorts of other issues and questions without warrant. It’s irrelevant because maybe we are and maybe we aren’t, but that makes little difference to the question of what we would do here. If such kilings began here, it would be such a violation of our society as to clal off all bets.
To put it another way: few people run around condemning the mayor of stuckyville USA for not doing more about human rights abuses in China. Maybe people should complain, and maybe they shouldn’t, but the fact is, most people’s common sense morality does not require them to make any such extreme claims. However, those same people WOULD find much to complain about if that mayor was actually mayor of Stuckyville, Turkey, and he wasn’t doing anything to oppose the practice of people taking away Armenians to be shot in large groups.
In other words, your objection to my hypothetical fails on the grounds that it violates the common sense view, whether it be right or wrong, that horrors in distant lands and communities are just not as important as those in the here and now. You can argue against that view all you want, but that belongs to anoter discussion: the impotrant question is not what is ultimately correct, but why there is an inconsistency in the common sense moral view of most people when it comes to what they say is going on, and their actual reactions to the situation are.
Stratocaster: I specifically avoided addressing the question of whether a fetus “is” a human being – what I said is what I said: whatever it may be, it is not a person capable of life on its own without support. Does this place an onus on the woman whose uterus is providing that support? IMO, yes. Does it equate the termination of a pregnancy with murder? IMO, no.
Beagledave: It’s my policy to avoid judging the morality of another to the extent that I can possibly do so. You may recall comments our mutual Lord made on the subject – and though a fallible human being, I try to follow what He commanded. Not being personally possessed of the requisite babymaking apparatus, I have never had to make that decision for myself. I will say that two young ladies of my close acquaintance, pregnant out of wedlock (not by me), decided to carry their babies to term, and I supported their choice with everything I had to give. But it’s not my province to judge the morality of a woman who is faced with this difficult decision, and I refuse to try to second-guess her.
No. It illustrates factors that you are blithely ignoring. The fact is, you could get to Mars, if you realy, really tried. It would cost billions of dollars and take years, but it could be done. It would be, of course very difficult and implausible. Which is exactly the point: I have defeated, now by your own admission, your proposed principle that distance makes no difference, and now we are just haggling about how much difference it makes. It’s like that old W.C. Fields joke where he asks a woman if she would sleep with him for ten million dollars, and she says, sure, she would. Then he asks her “Well, would you sleep with me for five dollars?” She responds “No! What sort of a girl do you think I am?!” And Fields quips: “Ah my dear, we’ve already determined that: now we just haggling over the price.”
You are again simply ignoring key points I’ve already made. It isn’t necessarily proximity itself that makes a difference, but a whole host of other factors that fall under things like social, political, and financial difficulty that are usually associated with proximity and social context and so on.
For instance, consider Bill Gates. Let’s say that according to your caricature of my view, he is obligated to travel to Africa and help end the AIDS crisis. But of course Bill Gates has little expertise in directly doing so, cannot speak the necessary languages: would be nearly useless. But what Bill Gates can do is make tons and tons of money. And, in fact, when he does so, he makes enough to contribute so much to charity that it by far outweighs the good the could have done if he had gone personally. So in fact, he does more to end AIDS by staying here and running Microsoft than he would if he volunteered for the Peace Core. In fact, Bill Gates, as much as I dislike his business, does far more good in the world than I will probably ever be able to do (mostly because I am the sort of person Gates would support to go help, as opposed to producing so much money that I could afford to pay twenty more people to go to help).
That’s just ONE example of the sort of issues yo are waving under the rug wiht your glib dismissal.
However, as I posted previously, none of this is really an important issue. I’ve already pointed out that my view stands solidly in the realm of what is known as “moral common sense,” while your objection stands well outside it (because it demands a duty that MCS does not recognize, while the charge I am bringing against the pro-life camp IS a duty that MCS does recognize). I would be happy to debate the issue of distance with you elsewhere, and indeed we might have little to debate, because I am coming around to the view that distance makes far less of a difference than MCS says it should.
However, the outcome of that debate makes little difference, because the question here is to pointedly expose an inconsistency in the claimed moral view of pro-life. All one has to do to refute my claim is to argue something like “if mothers were bringing in their 6 month olds to hospitls to be killed en masse, then I wouldn’t do much about that either.” That would be akin to making my point about distance: it is a further explaination that shows why their is not, in fact, a gaping inconsistency.
Now, I would be welcome to scoff at the moral view that there is no duty to act in the 6month old situaiton, just as you scoff at distance, but the original point would be lost to both of us, because our claimed inconsistency was defeated (remember, it is not the legitimacy of the defeating principle that is immediately at stake, just whether there IS one at all).
Remember, the issue is not what you or I think is a wrong moral principle. Sure, I might object to the “tolerance of 6month old slaughter” principle, but for goodness sakes, I ALREADY reject the view that zygotes have any inherent moral status. We already KNOW that I disagree with many pro-life assertions, so what is one more? So the immediate point is not whether I agree with their claims or even the principles they use to counter those claims (as you do not agree with distance). The point is whether they can for themselves truly resolve the quandry. I have already noted that I sincerely think that distance does to some extent resolve the Singer/Unger quandry, though it is a view I am actively questioning. So your objection to that principle is moot, EVEN IF YOU ARE RIGHT. All that remains is to see if various representatives of the pro-life camp can make similar moves to resolve the ambiguity.
And, if you’ll note, Polycarp has already outlined one. I’ve objected to parts of it, but he met the basic burden of sowing that he himself could resolve in a way satisfactory to himself (though he met it in a way that most pro-life people would never accept)
And anyway, as I have explained, if were to continue the discussion from that point, I still think that my excuse of distance (which fits comfortably within MCS) would have quite an advantage over the toleration of mass murder in ones community (which does not fit very comfortably within MCS).
In conclusion, I seem to have trounced your objection quite soundly.
With all due respect, Poly…it was you who introduced the notion of “moral responsibility” ino this thread. (I’m not saying that I or other posters don’t take a similar position…but that “pro choice” Polycarp said that women have a "moral responsibility (in general) to do what they can to deliver a child to term.)
I’m responding to your earlier assertion, that (in general) women have a “moral responsibility” to
If you say that person A has a “moral responsibility” to do action x, what do we say about person A if they deliberately do not do action X? Notice of course, that my question was not whether the woman was immoral, or whether the woman was a sinner, or whether the woman was going to hell etc…My only question was whether the woman “acted morally irresponsibly”
If we say President Bush has a “moral responsibility” to take steps to address social problem X or has a “moral responsibility” to treat group Y (gay couples, Bears fans…whatever) with dignity…and he fails to do so, we are not to say he is acting morally irresponsibly?
We are not to say the polluters of the air and water are acting morally irresponsibly?
We can not say that Fred Phelps is acting morally irresponsibly? (FTR, I’m not comparing Fred Phelps with a woman who is getting an abortion…I certainly am curious why you think someone has a “moral responsibility” to do something…yet if she fails to do that very thing…you wouldn’t feel she acted morally irresponsibly)
You actually shut down our exchange because you could not get me to see reason, yours. I did at first go away and examine whether or not you had a point about my inconsistencies and your accusation that I was really pro-choice. I concluded that on the surface, you did have a point. Not that I was pro-choice, because you are actually wrong about that; but that my unwillingness to embrace a poor solution did make it look like I was, if not in the pro-choice camp, at least gave the appearance somehow of being less concerned for the babies, than you are. Hopefully your concern is active beyond this forum. My “core belief” is that abortion is wrong under any circumstance. Abortion is a sad, horrible thing.
My only real point in my last post was not to call you a hypocrite or any other name. It was just to see if you recognized that your “core beliefs” did not fit with your actions any better than mine did. I was actually admitting that you had good reason to criticize my stand, since it is weak. I am not here on this forum to solve the abortion problem. That can’t be done here. I’m here to get other people’s ideas and test what I believe and see if it holds up.
So now I echo your sentiment. Yes, it has become my own. Stratocaster, it’s clear we’re talking past each other, and I don’t think it would serve any purpose, as far as our exchange goes, for either of us to restate our positions again. We’ve already done several circuits on this merry-go-round, and that’s enough for me. YMMV. Whatever. This I do agree with you on.
Well, except for the YMMV. I don’t know what that means, but hey, I threw it in anyway.:rolleyes:
So, you are for euthanasia, for Malthus solution for finite quantities of food and habitat and ever-growing population issue and for selective breeding? For the Nazis who killed crippled and gays and little-people? For a Sparta here and now? For partial abortion, in which the brain of the foetus is sucked out and then discarded?
To hear it from another human, is scarry and monstrous.
Anti-abortion proponents often equate abortion with murder. They say that abortion is equivalent to the murder of a baby. However, if somehow every abortion were replaced with the woman giving birth, and then murdering the baby a six months of age, the anti-abortion folks’ reaction would be much different then it currently is for abortions.
My point being, anti-abortion proponents who claim that abortion is murder, yet do not treat it like State-sanctioned murder, are being dishonest. They obviously believe that abortion is a Bad Thing, but not as bad as killing actual babies (which is what they claim).
What point am I missing? You say that because people are not leaping into certain types of action because of abortions (I guess storming clinics etc…) …that they obviously don’t think of it as a really bad thing or “murder” (otherwise they would actually do something instead of “just” discussing it).
I noticed that you declined to answer my question about war protesters…a question that is relevant to this discussion. Over four hundred american soldiers have been killed (murdered?) in Iraq since the “end” of the “war” in March. Countless hundreds/thousands of Iraqi civilians have also died. Most of the people in opposition to the war apparently ain’t too bummed by that…maybe hundreds of American casualties (so far) and thousands of Iraqi deaths (so far) …and yet all we see is discussion.
I’m still hoping that you will answer the question I asked earlier.
To respond to your point in another way…if the overall goal of pro life folks is to reduce (drastically…it’ll never be zero, but then neither is any behavior that society may choose to “ban”) the number of abortions being performed…does committing acts of violence against clinics…stalking doctors…yelling “baby killer”…(and other ways of actively equating abortions with killing toddlers) etc really accomplish that goal in the long run?
For most pro life folks, they have come to the conclusion that the answer is no. We can read polls just as well as anyone. While there may be fringe members of the pro life community that choose violent acts out of a belief that abortion is “murder”…the vast majority recognize the political shakiness of such a tactic.
(FWIW, I myself don’t refer to abortion as “murder”…the word “murder” is a legal term…not an ethical term. Currently abortion (for the most part) is “legal” in the U.S. so it’s not accurate IMHO to refer to it as murder…and it doesn’t really seem to accomplish much in the way of my goal anyway. Other pro life folks may feel differently.
I suspect it’s the same rationale that distinguishes folks like PETA from mainstream vegetarians …or environmentalists like Earth First from the mainstream of environmentalism. So yeah…the majority of pro lifers make the same kind of political calculation that majority of folks in other “movements” do when it comes to the actions that they choose.
If you choose to equate that with an insincere opinion of pro lifers about what abortion is (but you don’t choose to apply that same kind of standard to other public policy debates)…what can I say.
Like Stratocaster and I have pointed out…it’s another inconsistency in expectations.
Wrong wrong wrong. That’s not what I’m saying at all. I’m saying that anti-abortion proponents react differently to abortion then they would to regular, state-sanctioned murder of infants. I really don’t care about the degree to which they react in general, only that the degree to which they react to abortions is different that the degree to which they would react to state-sanctioned infanticide. This comparison is aimed squarely at those who call women who have abortion “baby killers”.
Relevant to the discussion in general, possibly, but not to my little slice of it. I have made no claims that people non-reacting to abortion means that they think it’s okay. My claim is that people who equate two actions (e.g. abortion is murdering babies), but react to those two actions to wildly different degrees, are being dishonest, and must not truly equate those two actions.
I believe that they think that it’s wrong, but I don’t believe that they think it’s as wrong as murder, despite what they say.
Talk about blithely ignoring the point. I am posing the question to you. You do not believe that there are people being killed with impunity here in your own community. Therefore there is no decision to be made for you as to whether you should concentrate on local evils or those more remote, a decision that might more logically lead you to focus on what is near. For you, the adults being evilly killed are, presumably, only in foreign lands. I assume it’s not occurring in your community.
So. I’m not asking you why you’re not flying to foreign lands when you could be storming abortion clinics. I’m asking you why you don’t simply get on a plane and interfere for good where your help is needed and where you see an obvious need.
Obviously, according to your philosophy, it must be because you don’t really think the people being tortured and killed are people with rights. Otherwise you would behave differently. And, BTW, assigning your beliefs pseudo-official names like “MCS” won’t give them a weight they don’t otherwise have.
And for someone who has hijacked the term common sense to hold that it is within my power to go to Mars–well, I’ll leave that to others to deem ridiculous or not. BTW, can you describe the actual evil I need to eliminate on Mars, or can we abandon that line of silliness? You actually inferred a concession on my part in saying I can’t go to Mars to do–to do what, exactly? You seem to have ignored that point I raised in your rush to infer an “admission.” Not good darts for someone so quick to charge others with ignoring the point.
And if you equate the difficulty of your getting a plane ticket for another country with someone getting to Mars, you have stretched your position to the point of breaking. You can go to another country today, and all you have to do is buy a plane ticket. I posit, using the Apos philosophy, that this means that you don’t actually think the adults being tortured and killed in the world today are human beings deserving of rights and protection. I can come to no other conclusion, or surely you would interfere for good.
And if the state currently allowed six month old babies to be killed with impunity, if there were facilities where it could legally take place, if the acts had legal protection, I do not at all know what I would do in reaction to this circumstance. It’s possible that I would not storm the facilities, not if I believed it would not serve ultimately to end the practice, not if the only thing it would do is get people hurt and me imprisoned, and the acts would continue effectively unimpeded. Is that cowardly or practical? I don’t know. Perhaps it is just as cowardly, or just as practical, as someone who won’t fly to another country today to save real people from being tortured and killed.
My point, though, is that it’s interesting how you and Joe Random seem absolutely certain what pro-life folks would do in this hypothetical. It must be nice to be a mind reader.
But surely some people can. And if you are such a person, and see no such egregious evil locally (say, for example, you see nothing wrong with abortion), but DO see it in foreign lands, what should we infer from your inaction?
If you do nothing, but say that you believe that it is wrong for adults in foreign lands to be torured and killed by tyrants, what should we infer? Should we infer that you don’t really believe this? That you don’t think those adults exist, or that they aren’t really “persons”?
And this statement is curious: “Not everyone can afford to skip work and abandon their family for weeks at a time.” Are you like Apos, who thinks a true-believer in the pro-life philosophy would be violently storming abortion clinics? How long do you think people taking that action will be away from their families? Does that only matter for others, or can it be a practical issue for pro-lifers too?
If that’s the standard you hold pro-lifers to, what is undue in expecting you to hop on a plane and get the job done as best you can in some foreign land, if you can afford a plane ticket? You’re being inconsistent. The type of active interference you describe is either a practical matter for all people, or it is for no one. It doesn’t simply affect a certain camp.
I already explained this to you, which is more than a diversionary hijack deserves. Of course, my intereference where I am is probably doing more good than if I went personally.
I already explained what MCS is. If you are unfamiliar with the concept, I suggest you try an elementary textbook on moral philosophy before deriding it or my usage of it.
Do you understand the concept of principle vs. degree? If not, as is apparently the case, then understand that you have entirely missed the point.
Your desperate flailing about cannot serve to confuse the issue. I explained why people may not have as great an obligation to help those who are distant (in a multitude of ways), regardless of their status. I explained that, for better or worse, that is the common sense view. The “distance makes no difference” view would radically alter just about everyone’s lives and conceptions of moral obligation.
Also solidly within the common sense view is the idea that the people who tolerated genocide in their communities were doing something horrid that people who live their lives in distant lands doing little to help far away suffering are not. You may or may not agree with this view, but it is most certainly a widespread one, and the one most relevant for posing a sticky question.
I also explained how the dilemna can be resolved. You could raise an objection akin to the objection of distance to your demands. You could raise the issue, like Poly, of autonomy being a greater good. You could even say, as you have, that in a “wolf at the door” situaiton, you would do little to resist it, though I may find it highly implausible from someone with such strong rhetoric on behalf of the protection of life.
I don’t claim to see exactly what a pro-life person would do in a hypothetical. The question is meant to pose a sticky question in your mind rather than strictly in the confines of the debate alone.
Is a zygote really the moral equivalent of a formed human being? Is a form of state sanctioned mass murder really going on in your hometown? Or is that really hyperbole on stilts?
I don’t really think that a true believer would necessarily be storming clinics, or using violence, or even being so busy at their task that they wouldn’t have time for messageboard debates. But I do think its worthwhile to pause and think “am I really a true believer, and is the killing of fetuses REALLY as bad as it would be if 6 year olds were being thrown into government protected incinerators at the discretion of their mothers?” I do have great incredulity at people who claim that it is just as bad, and not only because I don’t think it can be rationally justified. Also because I don’t get the sense that it can be emotionally justified either. Because I’ve been there, and I tried, and I couldn’t fool myself all of the time.
Nonsense! You have posited that someone who believed that human beings were being murdered would interfere to stop those murders, if they actually believed such acts were taking place. Whatever you are doing to intercede with local problems, you are ignoring the murders and torture that you concede are taking place elsewhere in the world. Whatever is occupying your attention locally, it is not the murder and torture of human beings. Do you deny this?
You can dance around this as much as you like, and toss insulting comments out, and it won’t make it any less obvious that you refuse to directly address this. You have found fault with the combination of pro-life beliefs and inaction that you have perceived, when that combination supposedly deals with the murder of “real” human beings. You attached no qualifiers to this (e.g., that a pro-lifer’s efforts might create more real good directed at other things, if there is no real hope of violently causing abortions to cease). You have effectively asserted in an unqualified manner that this combination is a de facto contradiction.
OTOH, you find the same combination in yourself just fine. This is indisputable, no matter how much you attempt to obscure the matter with phrases like “desperate flailing” and “MCS,” no matter how much you try to frame the discussion around “hypothical average people,” no matter how many irrelevant names or terms you drop.
You build syllogisms that justify why you wouldn’t travel to another country, without recognizing that this could justify why a pro-lifer wouldn’t want to cross the street to stop evil. You do understand the difference between principle and degree, don’t you?
From you:
**Yet in this same thread, you responded “yes” to this comment from me:
**Which is it? Were you lying before to elicit a response? We have a name for that here. Or did you just forget what you really meant? Bud, you’re all over the place, and frankly you’re not a very good dancer.
Such an obstinate refusal to answer a question directly! Unfortunately, your attempt to obscure the weakness of your comments with diversionary statements, a pseudo-intellectual tone, backpedaling and weak insults is all too common in this forum. Whatever. I won’t lose any sleep over it, I can assure you, bub.
Well so far you have your way. The cheery, bluntness of your opinions always make me smile. My sense of humor seems to have been perverted by too much exposure to the “dark side.”:eek: At least we seem to have made it to the name calling right on schedule, as expected. These debates almost always seem to break down into nothing but a fight about whatever comparisons each side has brought up. It becomes a tedious refusal of each side to agree that the other side has a valid comparison. I remain a “pro-lifer”, but when I give it honest thought, there is a huge difference between killing a child and terminating a pregnancy. A child has cognitive thought, life experiences and pain responses. An embryo only has the potential for these things and will not be aware of never having them. I still hate abortion because I put high value on potential, but it’s tough to make laws around, since many don’t agree. I would still like to see laws that make early abortion a requirement, since a five month fetus already has some limited awareness and response. It’s kind of a sad compromise, to a problem without a good solution.
**I agree, though I have had constructive, thought-provoking debates with pro-choice folks in this forum. Unfortunately, there are certain tired old cliches that get my goat and effectively make real debate impossible. The current canard is one–i.e., the old, “But you really don’t even believe what you say you do” dismissal.
How do you move beyond that? How can there possibly be productive discussion when someone offers this as a given? We have actually had posters in this forum state that any true believer in a pro-life philosophy would be out killing doctors. How do you have discussion with this as a foundation for the debate?
“You can’t have your pro-life opinion unless you adopt all unwanted children” is another proud tradition on these boards. As is, “The law has no business trying to regulate morality.”
I (and some others) generally try to point out why these flat statements, by themselves, are logically fallacious. It’s usually not fruitful. There is an abundance of people on this board who who will make not the smallest concession, who will never say that they may have overstated their position even slightly. ::shrug:: What are you gonna do?
I do understand what you are saying. I’m just not sure these debates do anything more than make pro-choicers more determined. I could be wrong. Maybe someone hears you. I have tried to put myself in the place of someone who is pro-choice and truly see’s nothing wrong with it. You have to get really honest with yourself to do that. **So there I am standing in pro-choice shoes and along comes PL, who depending on his level of belief that abortion is wrong, tells me I’m immoral or mistaken or wrong, whatever. I don’t see a connection between an embryo and this person’s view, that it is already a baby. I even know what an embryo at say, six weeks looks like. It’s not a baby. At that point to me, abortion is a medical procedure to prevent the embryo from becoming a baby. PL has a slightly upset, or rabid look in his eye when he’s trying to tell me what I’m doing wrong. I don’t see how he can tell me what I’m doing with my own body is wrong. Telling me how many other women get this procedure done per year does not horrify me. Why would it? It’s not a baby yet. It’s not that far removed from birth control, although it is uncomfortable and inconvenient, so I would always try to avoid it. What PL doesn’t seem to realize is for the last month I’ve done nothing but think about this. I’ve even pictured what it would be like, me having a baby. But I can barely support myself or I really should never have gotten involved with that guy. It would be disasterous to have a baby with him. What about school, my parents are so proud of me doing so well or I can barely handle the two kids I already have. Even, I don’t want children, I would not be a good mother, I don’t have those kind of feelings. PL makes me feel defensive and he has no right to try and tell me how I should feel or how I should handle my own life. PL needs to mind his own business.**Okay, stepping out of PC’s shoes.
Don’t misunderstand me Stratocaster, I think abortion is wrong. I would like to stop abortion. I’m not sure I have the right to, but I still want to. The only thing I can do is make sure there are options, programs and help in place for those who don’t choose abortion. The other thing I feel strongly about and you didn’t seem to agree is the viability issue. Making sure that medicine understands where the unborn baby is, as far as what is humane to them. I do feel like I have a right to legislate a standard that regulates abortion. I don’t think it is generally necessary, because women in spite of what it seems like in this issue, are compassionate and responsible as far as not physically hurting anyone goes, but the law is necessary for the minority that are not as moral.
I know you think my stand makes me pro-choice, but I still maintain that I’m not, at least emotionally. I do feel compassion though. But since I can’t force someone else to think and feel like I do; that’s the best I can do.