Just to be clear about this. There is no law that the issue of possible hypocrisy among pro-lifers could invalidate. The law in place is one they want to change.
The only thing that could be invalidated is thier argument for change. I agree that the hypocrisy of some does not invalidate thier argument. I think the facts and the moral reasoning behind them do.
The difference is that people who oppose the murder of the elderly are not out to tyrannize and torment the elderly. The purpose of opposing abortion is to tyrannize, oppress and kill women, and any anti-abortion laws will be written and enforced with that goal in mind.
And if the woman was found to be deficient in some important nutrients or had caffeine or alcohol in her blood, all hell would break loose.
“If you’re against abortion, don’t have one” means that my morality may be different from yours. I don’t impose mine on you; don’t impose yours on me.
There may be a consensus about some morality, like stealing or fraud, which justifies universal laws, but there isn’t about abortion, so it shouldn’t be made into law.
Wait a minute. Their morality says that they must oppose abortion. Your morality says that they should not. By telling them to shut up and stop opposing abortion, are you not imposing your own morality on them?
Yes, just like the Iranian protesters and the Iranian government were the same as each other, because each was trying to impose its morality. And just like the people who marched for civil rights in the US were just the same as the bigots and segregationists, because they were all trying to impose their morality on each other. Blacks/women/people have rights is the same as blacks/women/people shouldn’t have rights, because that’s just different moralities.
There’s a difference between “I want your rights infringed” and “I don’t want my rights infringed.” Isn’t there?
No, I am not imposing my morality on them, as I don’t care if they have an abortion or not. I wouldn’t encourage nor discourage it for them; it’s their choice to make, and neither action affects me or is any of my business.
Perhaps it could be said that your morality ends where mine begins.
Do you realize that you are imposing your do not pick pockets moral on other people? There is a world of thieves out there who just want to live their lives as they see fit–sneaking up on people or sweet-talking them, then taking their wallets–and you are imposing your own conception of morality on them?
How evil and imposing of you! You are also imposing your do not stab other people to death moral on other people. Don’t you feel bad, preventing other people from living how they want to live? What if I want to kill people for fun–shouldn’t I have the right to do that?
Double Post
I think that’s a good point but there is an important difference.
One is making a personal choice about their own lives and body and would not oppose anyone else claiming that right. One is trying to deny them the right to make that choice.
I do get your point and I don’t fault anyone for taking a stand on what they think is right. It’s just the methods sometimes used and the spreading of false information that bothers me.
I also think that if people are going to oppose abrotion they need to do something to fianancially support women and children who are affected. If you want to change the laws to make all abortion illegal {even though it wouldn’t stop abortions} then you’d better have some resources to offer those in need. What happens to these children after they are born?
Do you realize you have ignored what I wrote in post #104, and you are equating ALL morality? Did I say that abortion was the same as pickpocketing? Do you think that there is as much controversy about pickpocketing being wrong compared with abortion? How many thieves run for office (no jokes about politicians, pls) campaigning that they will make burglary legal? Not all morality is controversal.
Besides, Your rights end where mine begin applies pretty well to pickpocketing, but that’s just my opinion. YMMV.
I read it, and it seemed like you were embracing a sort of “majority rule” notion of justice, which is that if most people think it’s alright, it’s alright. This implies that it’s alright to punish women who are raped for being licentious, as long as most people in the given society think its alright. Would you embrace all the implications of this sort of principle? I doubt it.
I didn’t imply that you were equating abortion with pickpocketing. I was making a point about morality: the notion that moral views must stop at one’s doorway is untenable. You can’t believe that thousands of people around you in your own country are killing people and not want to stop that.
That is indeed a difference. It’s also irrelevant.
The whole notion of saying “Don’t impose your morality on others!” is self-refuting. It is itself an act of imposing one’s morality. Some people believe that they occasionally have an obligation to enforce their morality. Your morality may say otherwise, but whenever you insist that others should stop imposing their moral viewpoint, then you yourself are imposing your own moral worldview on them.
Your rebuttal assumes that this “personal choice” is a legitimate one – that everybody should have this particular freedom. That is the real gist of the matter, and it’s where pro-lifers and pro-choicers disagree. All this outrage over “imposing morality” is a colossal red herring, and a self-contradictory one to boot.
You are, however, imposing your moral principle that it is wrong to oppose abortion. That is the moral tenet under discussion. I didn’t say that you were trying to force people to have an abortion or not; however, you are insisting that people should stop opposing abortion.
That’s what your morality says, and mine says otherwise. If it is indeed wrong to impose one’s morality on others, then why are insisting that pro-lifers should give up their moral principle on this issue and follow yours?
I agree with JThunder. The idea that personal freedoms should be respected, that moral circles and boundaries should be respected, or that laws should be based on majority consent, are all specific moral views themselves, and ones that one might conceivably dissent from.
But I would like to add that my argument still holds even if social liberalism, as advocated in texts like Mill’s On Liberty, are accepted as fundamentally correct. This is because the issue of debate in pro-life vs. pro-choice is whether or not fetuses are beings with rights. If they were beings with rights, it would be rational to legally protect them in socially liberal societies. This does not mean that they do have rights–it just means that objecting to abortion is not fundamentally anti-liberal (in the philosophical sense of “liberal” ala Mill) if it is true that fetuses have rights.
You are circling around an important point: pro-choicers often try to act as though they’re not advocating a moral position at all. But this is false; indeed, to advocating anything is to say that that is the right choice, and pro-choicers believe the right choice is to keep abortion legal. To avoid the actual staking of moral claims is not possible in this territory unless you want to advocate a position of pure nihilism.
In a broadly related issue, I really hate that I am forced to brand my position (I think I think that abortion is OK), ‘pro-choice’. I’m not pro-choice, I’m pro-abortion.
Now, this doesn’t mean that I want there to be as many abortions as possible, but this notion that “since you don’t want abortions, but only the right to choose, you are pro-choice not pro-abortion” is prevalent, if ridiculous.
I am pro-choice (about abortion) because I think that abortion is a morally ok choice to make. I’m anti-choice (about murder) because I think murder is a seriously morally wrong choice to make.
Just like I’m pro-smoking, because I think people should be able to smoke if they wish and if it doesn’t harm others, even though I don’t personally want to smoke and prefer it if noone does.
JJ Thomson has a very intelligent defence of abortion, which does not hinge on thinking that a foetus is not a person.
pdts
Whoa.
Stealing private property or murder is universally accepted as inappropriate in pretty much all human societies (with exceptions like war). Abortion is not even remotely universally accepted as inappropriate enough to be outlawed in the US. Can we please stop with these analogies?
Some people are insisting on downplaying the mother’s body in this. (Otherwise, why would some nonsensical analogies like pickpocketing be introduced?). Someone earlier even said that rights are what society gives them. But what’s a more fundamental right (for someone we know for sure is a human being-the mother) in a modern democratic republic than the right to control their own damn body (unless they lose that right as a criminal, etc)? There should be no rational reason to expect a fetus (especially early on) to be any sort of individual whatsoever that has rights that trumps a woman’s right to her own body. Squids have more right to not be killed, fried and eaten than a fertilized egg or early fetus.
And yes, I have a moral position as a liberal. Women get to control their own fucking bodies. Period. Families have a right to control the amount of children they have so that those children are raised as best as possible. This is what alleviates suffering which is the only moral code I try to follow. I’m sick of hearing about anti-choice people having any legitimate argument here. My right to my own body and my family planning trumps their right to impose their superstitions on me.
As an advanced society, we have to continue to make choices on how we progress. Do we at least try to make decisions based on rational deliberation and pragmatism or do we start falling backward and make decisions based on supernatural beliefs? For example, I suppose that creationists should have a right to teach their stuff to their own children, but sometimes you have to take a stand and insist that public schools teach something that is closer to reality. Saying a fertilized egg or early embryo is a human being with rights that trump the mother’s is not remotely close to reality in the rational world.
One comment on liberalism. Liberalism started it’s heyday during the Enlightenment which was also called the Age of Reason. So, being anti-choice is not only anti-liberal because it encroaches on a woman’s fundamental freedom but it is anti-liberal because it is anti-reason.
Came right after but not directed at pdts, BTW.
Even though I agree with your ultimate position I’m going to disagree with you about quite a lot.
I think you are missing the point here. The aim of the analogies is to draw out the morally relevant parts of the situation. Something like, ‘well X is wrong, and X is like abortion in all morally relevant respects, so isn’t abortion wrong too?’ The other differences between them (like their current legal status) are irrelevant, unless you can show some moral import.
And abortion is illegal in some countries. Would your point stand if this were a website based in Saudi or Ireland?
Well, you are begging several questions here. Here is what I might say, if I were anti-abortion: you do entirely have the right to control what happens to your body, except insofar as you seriously impact the rights of others. And just as you don’t have the right to ‘control your body’ into pointing a gun at me and pulling the trigger, you don’t have the right to pay someone to kill me when I’m inside your womb.
And about your squid point… says who? If we have the right to kill fetuses, why don’t we have the right to smash the heads in of newborn babies … with our bodies?
But what is your argument for that, besides ranting? Can you give me a criterion of what makes someone a ‘human being with rights’ that includes all people (including newborn babies and the very old) but doesn’t include the unborn? After all, if your position is so rational you must have it based on a sound principle … right?
That might be the stupidest fucking thing I have ever heard. Did you know that modern American torture started after 9/11 which also included the PATRIOT act, so being anti-torture is also anti-American because it is anti-patriot?
pdts
You’re gonna need a bigger bumper.
Incidentally, the reason that we don’t investigate every time a senior citizen dies is that all senior citizens die, so there’s no reason to begin with the assumption that someone killed them. Not all fetuses miscarry, and it isn’t so common that it’s an expected outcome.
If a woman takes mifepristone and gemeprost during her second trimester, and subsequently miscarries, isn’t she as much a “murderer” as an abortionist is, in the eyes of a pro-lier? I don’t see how outlawing abortion would lead anywhere else than either having law enforcement investigate miscarriages, or creating a law so massively hypocritical as to be meaningless.