Hardly irrelevant in terms of real consequences for the particular choice we’re talking about. When you insist someone is morally , and try to make it legally as well, obligated to have a child you are insisting on very real consequences , for them, a new life, and society in general. That hardly compares.
An interesting philosophical point with major differences in real world consequences.
“Don’t impose your morality on others” comes with certain understood implications. Don’t harm others, and don’t let them harm you. Our laws are filled with moral judgments about where personal rights meet societal welfare. I can drink, but I can’t drink and drive public streets. We come together as citizens and decide where those lines are drawn and when they need to be changed.
I understand that for pro-lifers they sincerely feel they are defending the defensless, and people are being harmed as well as society, but to date, they don’t have anything to back their attirude up except feelings and religious beliefs.
They cannot demonstrate that people and society as a whole are being harmed. OTOH, the “moral choice” they want to make into law has very real world consequences for the people involved.
Well, it is a legitimate one and currently a legal one. The burdon is on the pro-lifers to show otherwise.
No it isn’t. We can rephrase it if you like to describe it more accurately. We as a society do impose our generally agreed upon morality on others with our system of laws. The question is where the lines are drawn and what personal choices an individual should have. You can nit pick a philosophical point if you like but it doesn’t change the real world consequences that are at the crux of the matter.
We’re not imposing population limits on anyone and insisting they have an abortion. We’re defending a woman’s right to make a personal chooice , even the rights of pro-lifers to make the choice for themselves, rather than for others.
Surely it could be like when young children die, at present? Where there is no reason to suspect anything, like in most cases, we don’t investigate. Where we suspect negligence or foul play, we investigate. Of course, this might turn out to be one of those crimes where real evidence is hard to come by.
Often? Show me an example of this because I completely disagree. Pro-choicers are claiming that being able to choose in whether to terminate or carry to term is a choice that the woman, who must bear the physical burdon, should make for themselves. Her right to make that choice is their moral position.
Obviously it’s that small children have individual agency, and contribute to their own deaths (in the case of accident), or else exhibit symptoms of a disease prior to their deaths. Their deaths are explicable, and some contrary evidence would be needed to arouse suspicion. With a fetus, there is no way observe symptoms, except perhaps for ten minutes every couple weeks, and no action that could lead to death. A miscarriage would have no evidence either way, so there’s no reason to make an assumption.
Perhaps every miscarriage would not be investigated. Perhaps the hypocrisy of banning and prosecuting surgical abortions, in the name of saving the fetus’ life, while permitting chemical ones would be okay with the society at large. And we can all be comforted to know that there aren’t any zealous prosecutors out there who will investigate and attempt to prosecute right up to the limit of what the law will allow.
Exercising that right, though, violates another human’s right.
This is one of the sillier assertions that regularly gets trotted out in these threads. Must I abandon my opposition to child abuse unless I am willing to provide resources to house the abused children? Besides, I am fine with public resources for children in need, for either scenario, so no problem there.
Unless of course you work at Birthright, or some other such organization, where you convince young women not to have abortions with the promise of financial help, the exact nature of which which is left unspecified and which turne out to be $300 & a box of Huggies.
By that logic if I’m hungry enough I have the right to tie you down and drink your blood to sustain myself. Maybe gnaw off some of the less vital bits.
And yes, I do regard forbidding a woman an abortion as bad as that doing that to her, or worse.
Of course it is; the elderly and children are people, a fetus isn’t. Personhood is a matter of brain function. Which is why disassembling the brain dead and killing a fetus are both ethical; neither are people.
Your analogy fails. When a baby is born there is an obligation on the part of it’s parents primarily and then society as a whole to provide care. An anti abortion law would force that financial responsibility on parents, some of whom are ill equiped to handle it. If you’re going to insst that someone assume a major financial and emotional responsibility and insist they can’t choose to not assume it then walking away with a “good luck do your best” is hardly aqequate. Then there’s the matter of the children. If you’re going to insist that that it’s morally correct for more children come into the world, who are not able to care for themselves, then you are at least partially ethiclally responsible for caring for that child.
How would it be if a partner or parent pressured a girl into not having an abortion because it’s morally wrong, and then abandoned her and the child to fend for themselves. We’d think that person was kind of a dick wouldn’t we?
Kinda my point. Holding the opinion that abortion is wrong is one thing but there are many who spend their time and money to oppose it. I have no objection to them standing up for what they believe in but if you’re not spending time and money giving real alternatives and aide to women and children in need you’re ethically compromised IMHO.
OTOH I know there are people who do help provide alternatives, which I think is the best answer to preventing abortions.
Yes, haven’t I already conceded this? And the analogy is perfectly sound; why couldn’t the same parental and societal protections apply to the unborn? And I can ethically oppose the murder of toddlers, as another example, even if I choose to take no financial responsibility for any of the little SOBs who will now survive as a result of my saintly beneficence. And whether or not the toddler is a large financial burden is irrelevant to the central question as to whether or not it’s ethical to knock him off. It’s wrong, and it doesn’t matter (as to the question of “wrong”) how much of a life-changing hardship that creates.
I would. But that still wouldn’t mean that the abortion itself would have been a moral act. Just means Dad is a dickhead.
X is obviously not like abortion which is why I thought the analogy sucks. The examples in X are thought to be inappropriate in a society (you may call that ‘morally wrong’). Abortion is not universally thought to be inappropriate or ‘morally wrong’. So I understood the point completely and did not bring legal status into it. Why you are suggesting I am, is beyond me.
Also, your examples of Ireland and Saudi Arabia more than make my point. Clearly, they base their abortion laws on Roman Catholicism and Fundamentalist Islam. Precisely the thing I ‘ranted’ against in my post.
My point is, if something is in my womb, particularly if it is a fertilized egg or early fetus, there.is.no.you. There is no rational basis to equate you or a newborn baby to something that is either a single cell, clump of undifferentiated cells or a developing organism with only a rudimentary central nervous system (as** Der Trihs** points out). I gave the squid example because at least it has a pretty complex nervous system and some learning and communication capacity. Maybe it has a capacity for pain. I don’t know but I do know that it has a hell of a lot more capacity than a fertilized egg. If you say that’s debatable and I’m being irrational than you’d have to convince me that basing my identification of a person on reasonable biology is wrong.
Yes, my position is rational based on what we know. I define a human being or person as something much more than the presence of human DNA. I don’t believe in souls or a special sauce that makes a human being at the moment of conception. I don’t see any reason to value a human manifest destiny where we must hold sacred the ‘potential’ to become a human being. Where I draw the line of a human being or person is much more ambiguous but I think a very conservative cut-off is some time after initiating the development of higher brain functions. We require that to feel all the things that make us human. We require it to fear and feel pain. Older fetuses likely don’t have that yet but they may suffer so I’m willing to make a compromise. But the moment of conception or first few months? No reason to think that any of that is there. My position is not unusual in secular countries.
Many of our liberal ideals (social liberalism, not the neoliberal economic stuff) came out of the Enlightenment. Before then, monarchies and feudalism did not support the notion of the rights of man. They’re not something that simply ‘started after’ as your trying to imply with your American torture false argument. Liberal ideals and how to implement them were furthered during the age of reason which promoted science and mathematics to view the world.
Do you believe that moral value exists in gradations in proportion to the level of cognitive function, or is there some plateau that one rises to upon achieving a certain level of cognitive function? If I’m noticeably smarter than someone else, all other things being equal, do I have more moral value than them?
Does this apply to inter-species comparisons? If bears have twice as much sensory experience as raccoons, do bears have twice as much moral value? ie, should one sacrifice one raccoon to save one bear’s life, but not three?
I’m just trying to understand your exact views on the relationship between cognitive function and moral value.
Fella, for years I have worked with various pro-life agencies that provided housing and material support to pregnant women. This support continued well after they had given birth. For a six-month period, I even served one of these agencies on a nearly full-time basis, completely without pay. So in my case, at least, your objection holds no merit.
I would like to point out, however, that the same exact moral stance can be held by two individuals – one who sacrificially invests time and money to this cause, and one who (for whatever reason) does not. Perhaps the second person is negligent, or perhaps that person simply does not have any time or money to spare. Why should this same exact moral stance be valid for Person A, but not for Person B? That’s simply daft thinking.
Besides, I’d say that Stratocaster’s point remains. Are you personally investing your time and monetary resources to prevent child abuse? If not, does this mean that you have no business objecting the next time you hear your neighbor beating his children with a two-by-four? For the love of humanity, I sincerely hope not!
Not significantly. We aren’t talking about the difference between, say, me and Einstein. We are talking about the difference between people like me & Einstein; and a dog or a frog or insect. A very large difference in cognitive ability, and greater emotional/psychological complexity as well.
More or less, although measuring it that finely and numerically isn’t practical. But I certainly regard bears or raccoons as being morally more significant than lizards or amphibians, and lizards and amphibians as being more morally significant than insects.
A fetus is somewhere on the insect-to-lizard range, depending on how far along it is.
This is a fine and dandy cite for the pro-choice side to pull out, but why are we convinced that it’s based on reality, and not a work of pro-choice fiction? I doubt its veracity has ever been vetted.
No conditions. It was purely volunteer work, with no perks whatsoever. I didn’t even claim any mileage reimbursement from them, though I would have been within my rights to do so.
But even if any conditions were imposed (which they were not), my point remains. It is foolish to insist that people can only voice objection to an injustice if they are personally willing to devote time and money to that cause. Truth is truth, even when people fail to live up to these ideals.