Yeah I know. Both sides are equally perplexing I’m sure. I think the death penalty is inhumane and support the right to abortion.
Here is why. Anyone aborted has lived a few short weeks in water world. They have bugger all cognitive ability. They have NO sense of who they are as a person.
Someone recieving the death penalty is fully aware of who they are and what is happening to them. They also (PROBABLY) have family who know them and may even like or love them. The death of that person effects many people…maybe it is a good thing for some. My child is the grandchild of one of the last few people hung in Britain. To date it hasn’t effected him at all (hell grandparents are just old people anyway) but it had a HUGE impact on his father.
It is possible and maybe even very possible that only one person knows the zygote was ever even a glimmer in the eye. The only person affected by it’s “death” is the would-be-mother. The zygote was never a person.
Maybe I’m unusual for my generation and location but having felt the fallout from both the death penalty and abortion, I honestly believe the death penalty is more destructive.
Yes I understand the anger of victims of those who get the death penalty but as I said those deaths affect many. Abortion is is something that is between a woman and her own morality.
No they have not: what you’re talking about is utter fantasy. There have been situations in which PARTS of a person’s personality have been destroyed by brain injury, but there’s never been a situation in which a person’s entire personality has been destroyed. I do not see the point in entertaining your fantasies in such a serious discussion.
Again with the fantasies. No, nothing was lost, but you sure did a shitty thing to that artist.
Cite that an insect can experience these things in any meaningful sense? Neurological cites would be helpful–for example, that insects have a nervous system sufficiently similar to an infant’s, or that your robot would.
What you believe about my advocacy of infanticide is, at this point, less than meaningless to me.
Unfortunately, cw, thereby hangs the entire argument.
I personally don’t find that “If you don’t believe in abortion, don’t do it; but don’t prevent me from doing it” flies any better than the same sentiment would if you substituted “beating your wife” for “abortion”. But we’re many, many pages into this trainwreck and there is no more sign of either side listening to the other than there usually is, and I’ve not much heart for it in any case.
Oh, please. I listened to Muad plenty. I don’t agree with his position. And I think he is a sanctimonous prig to boot. But I did indeed listen, as he advocated to put women in camps etc. I gave him more time and attention than he deserves, frankly.
LeftHand I don’t want to go find the post, but I would say about the personality being lost etc–that is what happened (among other things) to Terri Schiavo and other PVS sufferers. So I am confused by your "
but there’s never been a situation in which a person’s entire personality has been destroyed."
His fantasy was about a situation where a person’s entire personality had been destroyed, but “he will wake up and he will be restored to healthfullness and full mental faculty.” It’s the combination of these two that makes it a fantasy.
I’m sorry you don’t have the heart for it beause I suddenly got “your” position. My position does sound hypocritical except for the fact that if you beat your wife she is an actual life human being with years of “being”. The aborted “person” has had a few weeks swimming in water world and has no idea of what or who they are.
Thanks, calm kiwi, and in that case I’ll venture one more reply: Another significant difference is that my wife will likely get better if I beat her and, assuming I get my just deserts, can look forward to the remainder of her natural life; whereas the aborted “person” (and thereby hangs a whole 'nother debate) is rubbed out for sure and permanently. We rightly despise wife-beating; I merely point out that privacy is no defence.
I do not believe, in the vast majority of cases, that anyone’s better off for being killed before birth. I also don’t believe that the vast majority of abortions are carried out on “people” who are better off for it even by such a definition.
Take a fertilized ovum, that has already started to divide. If implanted into a uterus, given a steady stream of nutrition, etc. it will eventually be born as a healthy baby. (Yes, that’s a big etc. Work with me here.)
Now, tease one of those newly-divided cells off of the ovum. You now have twins. Re-insert it into the ovum. Back to an only child. You can do a little cha-cha of creation and destruction with the cell if you like. In fact, since each of these cells has the potential to become a person, one could argue that you are morally obligated to remove each dividing cell as it forms, to prevent the other cells from keeping it from reaching its true potential. Of course, this line of thinking would prevent you from having any of these cells develop into an embryo.
(Hint: when logic + premises = insanity, and the logic checks out, it’s time to re-examine your premises.)
Also, is anyone else rather sadly amused that Muad’Dib is openly admitting that his standard of life is what is (to him) clear and unambiguous, rather than what is, you know, actually a good standard, or even admitting that there isn’t one? If nothing else, I think I’ve done a good job of showing why trying to claim that applying human standards of morality to individual cells is silly.
I agree with prolifers on one point: for me, a tremendous amount hinges on whether a fetus is a moral subject (that is, a being with intrinsic rights).
If so, then we have a very delicate balancing act we gotta engage in. An infant is wholly dependant on an adult’s attention for survival: without almost constant effort from this adult (whether mother, father, or other person–I’ll say"parent" from here on), the infant will die. The infant thus restricts the freedom of the parent. Yet we do not, as a society, say that the parent is free to stop paying this attention to the infant, that the parent’s freedom is the only issue. If the parent wants to be rid of the responsibility, then the parent must take certain measures (differing states have differing rules) to transfer the responsibility. At no point may the parent take measures that endanger the health of the infant, and virtually nobody objects to laws preventing the parent from doing so.
So what’s the difference between the infant and the fetus? For me, the difference is that the infant has more rights, based on the infant’s nervous system, identity, capacity for pleasure and pain, for desire, etc. The more the infant has of these characteristics, the more interested I am in protecting the infant.
Yes, Daniel. I find it hard to be very exercised over the rights of the fertilised ovum. I am much more interested in the creature once it’s reached the point of development where, if born prematurely, it could survive with proper medical care (which puts it way back beyond the 30-week point). Future potential gets weighed in somewhere, but it’s not the whole thing. Unfortunately, we are routinely aborting foeti that are, among other things, fully capable of exploring their limited environment with the limited tools at their disposal, and may even be developing a sense of curiosity.
And the mystery that is life means neither of us will ever know.
I have admitted this here before and I will again. I have had 2 abortions. I am not proud or ashamed of this fact.
In the first I was young, poor and millions of miles from home. Yes I could have carried that would-be-child to term. The chances of me being able to get home EVER would have decreased lots (check the UK-NZ airfares!). I was on the pill.
The second was only a couple of years ago.
I hear you! Yes I should have known better. Yes I was using protection! Yes I was using more then one kind of protection! No, I don’t know how it happened.
Abortion was the obvious, logical and sensible choice. Do I have twinges of regret? Yes. Do I know I did the right thing? Yes!
I know this sounds abhorrent to those opposed to abortion but I aborted a collection of cells. Yes it was a collection of cells that would have become a person but it wasn’t a person.
I think you would, with a suitable thought-experiment not related to abortion, and then we could factor that into the reasoning.
I don’t know how common late-term (beyond, say, 22 weeks) abortions are. I accept that they are by no means the majority, but I’m not sure about “exceedingly rare”. I need data…
Okay, makes sense on 1.
2) I weigh existing people’s hopes and desires and fears about the future, but only because they exist now. I also weigh the hopes and desires and fears that I have reason to believe will exist in the future (not may exist, will): if a woman decides to carry a child to term, I can see an argument preventing her from taking thalidomide during her pregnancy, because that is likely to thwart the desires of the child that WILL probably be born. What I don’t consider is desires that WILL NOT ever exist, even when we’re talking about a situation where they’ll not exist because of a decision that someone makes.
3) Okay, so I’ll consider “routinely” retracted, at least temporarily.
Not so much retracted as more clearly defined. I do not and did not mean to imply that late-term abortions are the most representative examples, but that though rare they are carried out on a fairly regular basis.
No, they most assuredly are not. Aside from being illegal in several states that allow abortion, physicians are reluctant to perform abortions past 18 weeks and will turn women away if they feel she has past a point where it’s a danger that the fetus has developed too far into a pregnancy to be aborted.
So. Please provide a cite in which they are performed “regularly.”
