Curtis LeMay, I think the expression you’re looking for is: 'Kill 'em all and let God sort ‘em out.’
Discomfort and long term health & cosmetic problems. Not to mention the pain of childbirth, which by all accounts is a bit more than “discomfort”.
In keeping with Curtis’s comparison:
It is convenient for to not live in constant fear of being arrested by the Secret Police.
Therefore, constantly living in fear of being arrested by the Secret Police would be an inconvenience for me.
It can be argued that a Secret Police agency will combat crime and terrorism and thus keep some children from being killed.
Compared to children being killed, my inconvenience is trivial, therefore we must create a Secret Police agency.
I meant by the lack of advanced technology in the present. Let’s push ourselves to the limits of current technology and once it advances change the laws. Also animals and plants are not sapient nor will they ever be human.
As I’ve said, push to the limits of available technology to determine if someone is alive, if you are in say Ethiopia, than I’m sorry but too bad you have died.
Humans are sapient and fetuses will be humans. No other creatures can ever be human or sapient (by that I don’t mean the species which theoretically CAN evolve but an indvidual animal).
So is a woman (who may or may not be pregnant) human and sapient?
The problem I see with that is that it is saying that what is worth protecting is not essential to humanity, or persons, or whatever characteristic you think is worth protecting. It’s saying, basically, that something is worth saving simply because we are able to save it. If we can’t, it’s not. Which is certainly a very simple line to draw, but i’m honestly surprised that you would think it acceptable.
As i’ve said, sapience isn’t a yes or no question. You can’t sort all things into “sapient” and “non-sapient” categories, those two alone, and be perfectly correct. There are degrees of sapience. Animals may well be less sapient than us, but to say they are not at all (and to put them, mind-wise, in the same category as plants) seems a really bad way of doing things. And not all humans are sapient to the same degree.
So you are, in fact, saying that the worth of a person depends on their geographical location? That’s really quite horrifying. What extent, would you say, is the difference in worth? If I kill an Ethiopian, for example, have I committed a less bad act than if I kill a fellow Briton? Since their lives are worth less than yours and mine, are we morally justified in, say, taking their organs to prolong our own lives? Again, i’m honestly astonished.
Fetuses will also be dead, so let’s treat them like that. Human corpses are not sapient, so let’s treat humans as nonsapient. Why is that idea foolish - and it certainly is foolish - and yet yours is perfectly acceptable? Why should we treat things as what they are, admittedly, not yet?
Would you be comfortable with a medical student operating on you? A legal student representing you in court? Flying in a plane designed by students, built by students? Would you entrust your money to a person who claims intent to open a bank? I certainly wouldn’t.
You didn’t answer the Why? part of the question. Why would you support a ban on abortion if that ban caused more women to die than abortions it prevented?
It applies only to human beings, but otherwise yes humans are worth saving because they’re humans.
I mean by this because although we should determine life by the most advanced technology possible if someone dies in Ethiopia than it is unfortunate but it has happened.
No, it’s different. Bad analogy.
That is a logical impossiblitly.
How is it different?
How so?
It’s really not. Not unless you have an exception for the life/health of the mother. Or consider that many women will resort to illegal abortions – ever hear of the phrase, “SAFE, legal, and rare?” Safe, being the key word. The whole “coathanger” isn’t just a metaphor. Many women have died due to back alley abortions. Pregnancy can be dangerous to a great many women.
And when I mentioned rape and incest, if we’re talking young adolescent girls – there was one case we mentioned here in, oh, Central America? The girl was nine, she was raped by her stepfather, and ended up pregnant with twins. She had to have an abortion – otherwise, she most likely would have ended up dying.
So some research on the history of “back alley” abortions, and abortion before Roe v. Wade. It’s quite frightening.
Actually, the beating heart isn’t always used to determine death. Hearts stop beating all the time. It’s relatively easy to fix although sometimes you need mechanical resources. If you get it going again soon enough the patient can go on to live for years.
The line for the determining death is the cessation of brain activity. This is why organ donor patients’ bodies are kept functioning with beating hearts and breathing lungs. As long as the plumbing works, the rest of the system can be kept pumping for years. A body isn’t declared dead until the brain stops.
It’s our brains that provide everything you’re classifying as ‘human’ - the sapience, the consciousness. The personality and self-awareness, the part of us that thinks and there for is, vanishes only when the brain activity stops. It cannot exist without a fully functioning brain and full brain activity. (And by fully functioning, I mean when the full brain development is complete, not the earliest that activity can be detected. It’s entirely possible to detect partial activity even in obviously damaged specimans.)
Aborting a fetus before the brain has reached final gestational development is no different than taking a body off life support.
I’m sure you could answer the hypothetical though.
Would you support a ban on abortion if it caused more women to die than abortions it prevented? Why or why not?
What about “humans” is worth saving? Is it the DNA? Because that would mean we’d have to save disembodied limbs as well as the person they’ve been removed from. Is it the existence of an entire human body? Then we have problems with what constitutes “entire”, since a fetus at various stages of development doesn’t have all the parts an adult human does (even babies, at point, have both more and less parts than an adult).
But more than that, i’m uncomfortable saying that only humans are worth saving in this way. For one thing it prompts questions about at what part of human history did we become human enough to be worth saving; are Neanderthals human or not human enough? But moreover, it would mean that we could have beings who we might recognise as persons but who aren’t considered worth saving. If some species of animal in the future evolves to the point that it walks up to you and you have a pleasant conversation about the weather, or aliens land and mention how nice your shoes are, they aren’t human, and so aren’t worthy of protection.
I do hope that i’ve just misunderstood you on this. What about a person dying in Ethopia being unfortunate but having happened makes it different to someone in the US? I mean, if someone dies in the US then it’s unforunate but it has happened. What is the difference? Are we judging human life by the most advanced techonology, even if it does not happen to be avaliable in all cases, or are we judging human life by the most advanced technology that particular people have access to?
In what way is it a bad analogy?
They are all examples of treating things that are not yet something as though they are that something now. I’m trying to point out that, in general, it’s not something we do, or even would think is a good idea. I wouldn’t want a student doctor operating on me because, although in the future they may well be a doctor and entirely qualified, at the moment - the moment of the operation - they aren’t yet.
It’s an odd argument you’re making, especially in comparison to you also saying that we shouldn’t worry about the future, that we should decide by things that are happening now, moral and practical implications that are happening now. That we shouldn’t concern ourselves about what implications future technology or future advances have in defining what it is to be a human or worth saving. And then, on the other hand, that when it comes to fetuses we must define them by what they will be in the future, that we have to treat them with respect to the moral and practical implications of what they’ll be in the future.
How is it you justify on one hand considering what happens in the future to be of no importance and not something we need to consider, but on the other hand it is of great, even primary, importance, and something that must be taken into account? It seems contradictory.
I don’t see how. It’s in fact a possible outcome of a draconian abortion law. A million American women a year aren’t going to magically stop wanting abortions just because it is banned. If the ban is toothless, it won’t matter, but if law-enforcement officers start arresting OB/GYNs and then any medical professional thought or suspected to participate in providing abortions, and putting restrictions on international travel preventing pregnant women from leaving the country (because they might come back not-pregnant), and shutting down all import or production of drugs that cause or might cause abortion… I mean, that’s a pro-lifer’s wet dream, isn’t it?
I admit it’s unlikely that huge numbers of women will end up dying. Many will. Some will merely be injured while attempting improvised abortions. More likely, they’ll just kill or abandon their newborns. And won’t that be lovely?
Curtis,
All this talk of fetuses ignores the first two months of a preganancy (prior to the fetal stage). What of abortions then? If you oppose these early abortions, then on what baisis? Do you place your argument on potential? Then what of the fact that, by some estimates, one in four pregancies results in a miscarriage prior to the sixth week? And your criteria for “life” appears to be a heartbeat. Why not brain activity? You are no doubt aware that a person’s heart may be kep pumping by mechanical means well after brain death. In fact, I believe it is in most organ donations.
One last nitpick: then and than are not synonyms.
FWIW, I too have some moral problems with late term “convenience”* abortions, but I think those a relatively rare to begin with. I have no problem with first term abortions.
*this necessarily excludes situations where the mother’s life is in danger.
No. It’s not.
A plane designed by a student engineer is not a matter of life and death for the student but abortion is for the fetus
First of all a large portion of women will stop having abortions for fear of punishment. Secondly, the vast majority of women will not die from back-alley abortions. Back in the pre-Roe days technology and knowledge was far worse than to-day. Finally I do support abortion if it threatens the life of the mother like the case you cited.
But there’s a difference; a dead person cannot (for now) be revived but a fetus will be a person.
I will not answer hypotheticals unless you agree to answer my hypothetical: would you still be pro-choice if aliens came to Earth and threatened to destroy humanity unless we banned abortion? Two get play at this game.
No because limbs do not grow into humans; however fetuses do. My doctrine of determining human life is it’s current or future sapience.
I judge human life by the most advanced technology available to all humanity but in many places it’s not available so yes it’s unfortunate but it happens. As for determing human life I determine it at sapience so yes if a new species became sapient I’d approve of full pro-life protections on them.
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I mean in the immediate, inevitable , forseeable future. A fetus becomes a human, that is fact but we cannot be sure of whether in a hundred years there will be regeneration techniques.
See above.
See my above arguments, namely that brain-dead people can’t be revived but fetuses will be humans. Also a lot of pregnanices do end in miscarrigies, but than do humans have no value as we will all die someday?
Doubtful. Even in countries where the punishments are severe, women seek abortions. What might stop “a large portion” of them is a ban denying them access to the safe abortions now available, i.e. all the clinics in town are shut down, mifepristone is banned, sympathetic doctors who would safely perform the now-illegal procedure getting arrested, etc. I don’t see any indication that the desire for abortion will drop, and I anticipate more newborns abandoned in dumpsters and such. Infanticide of this type has a long and ugly history but in recent decades has mostly disappeared. Under your wise guidance, it can be restored to its former glory.
You’re still ignoring the effects of the ban, assuming that its mere existence will solve the perceived problem. Why did women stop dying from abortions? Was it because the human race evolved into something more robust, or because of antibiotics and better medical instruments? If the latter, what do you think will happen when these are taken away?
The standard instruments for an abortion include curettes, cannulae, possibly a vaccuum-suction device (depending on the exact procedure used), and they’re all quite safe when used by a trained medical professional, who is also equipped to handle complications or emergencies. What happens, post-ban, when possession of these instruments is akin to possession of burglary tools? These safe instruments will be replaced by less-safe alternatives. The well-trained medical professional will be replaced by someone with less training in both how to do the procedure safely and in how to handle problems that are now more likely to occur.
Why does that doctor write so many prescriptions for antibiotics for his/her female patients? Could that doctor be performing abortions on the sly? Send in an undercover officer and find out, and then shut down the doctor’s practice. No more improperly prescribed medications from there!
If you’re at all serious about banning abortion, you plan to make it a felony to possess the instruments of abortion, right? Without those modern instruments, you will indeed recapture the glory of the 1930s, and all the carnage that entails. Congratulations.
What of abortion in Ireland? There it is sevrely restricted yet I don’t here of any of the horror stories about abortion. Even if everything does become terrible i excepect 90 to 95% of the women who undergo abortion to surivive.
As I understand, they make little or no effort to keep women from travelling to England for the procedure (they tried to block one woman - “Miss D” - from travelling in 2007, but their High Court ruled in her favour). The net effect is that women of wealth suffer a minor inconvenience while women of poverty are stuck. Laws that disproportionately affect the poor are so lovely, aren’t they?
Why would you promote something that might make things “terrible”? Assuming half of the women in American who now get abortions still seek them after a ban, why are you okay with 5 to 10% of half a million women (i.e 25,000 to 50,000) not surviving? That’s more than the number of murders.
You haven’t thought this through at all, have you?
Yes.
The difference between my question and yours is that mine is actually relevant to the discussion. You’ve made it clear you think I’m a disgusting human being because I consider the net effects of enforcing laws significant enough in some cases to waive arbitrary moral considerations - i.e. the consequences of carrying out a ban on abortion would affect society in such a way that any moral considerations about the act itself can be ignored.
What I’m interested in knowing is if there is any point at which you would find the consequences of banning abortion to be enough of a detriment to society that you would forgo upholding your moral opinions and find it permissible for abortion to be legal.
Again - if an abortion ban was proven to result in more deaths of pregnant women than abortions it prevented, would you support such a ban?