I rarely respond to that poster. We are so far apart politically it hardly seems worth it.
What exactly are you looking for? I’ve stated that it is a situation where it is impossible to make an exact, precise moral or technical classification. Then you ask me for a more precise classification. I really don’t understand what else you want me to say.
Here is the set of criteria as they lay out in my opinion:
1- The physical health of the mother
2- The mother not being put through psychological trauma*
3- The sanctity of life of the unborn child
4- Having an abortion because the timing/conditions are not right for carrying to term/birth
*Surviving a rape attack and carrying a child from that event will cause psychological trauma. Getting pregnant at the wrong time does not. Inconvenience, yes, hardship yes, but not trauma like a rape. I feel… odd that I even have to point that out. It is not a subject that I would want to dwell upon.
Is unwillingly carrying a pregnancy to term is traumatic only in the wake of being raped? Suppose someone says that unwillingly carrying a consensually conceived pregnancy to term (while less traumatic than carrying to term a pregnancy conceived by rape) would be traumatic enough to outweigh concerns about the sanctity of life of the unborn child. Do you agree or disagree with them?
In 99% of the cases I would disagree. If they had a documented anxiety disorder, it might cause them trauma. If they had lost children in some process of childbirth before it might cause them trauma. I am sure there are other examples. I am also sure those other examples will be quite rare.
I ask you again, what are you trying to accomplish? If you have a point to make, please make it. I grow tired of you asking questions to prove your point. It seems as if you want to prove me wrong about something. If you disagree with me please do so in the form of a statement and not a question.
The least bad anti-abortion argument I’ve seen goes like this: in the distant past certain barbaric practices like leaving infants in the woods and euthanizing the elderly were necessary to survive in a harsh, resource scarce world. Back then, bleeding heart sentiments would get you killed. But there’s no excuse to continue those practices into modern times. There’s plenty to go around.
Plenty of problems with that argument, but I think it’s better than asserting zygote souls.
If you think abortion is murder and there’s been a genocide of 50 million American babies I’m not sure why there should be an exemption for rape. Seems like caving in just to appease the other side somehow. Rape is bad, why do another bad thing to an innocent third party? Because the mother will feel bad? So her feelings matter more than the baby’s life? Feels over reals?
The Bible certainly has some interesting things to say about abortion. I think my favorite part is if you think your wife is cheating you can get a priest to give her a magic potion. If she’s innocent, nothing happens. If she’s guilty, her pregnancy is aborted and she becomes infertile. I can see why so many use it as a moral guide.
Just as a counterpoint, I am like your opposite Robert163. I have always believed that abortion is unethical and still do. I never bought into the mother’s choice argument either because I believe it an ad-hoc justification for a practical problem that depends on so many twists of rationalization that it is philosophically untenable. I can’t see an ethical or philosophical justification that allows for a parent to end the life of a fetus (at least in later development) that also doesn’t allow the same parent to end the life of a newborn or dependent young child.
That said, I have come to understand that not all dilemmas are about ethics primarily. I read Freakonomics where the authors argued quite persuasively that the sharp drop in crime that started in the mid to late 1990’s was a direct result of abortion becoming legal again through Roe versus Wade a couple of decades prior. In other words, potentially unfit mothers that were destined to give birth to future criminals gave them the pre-emptive death penalty voluntarily instead. Those conclusions have been criticized since then but they are undoubtedly true on some scale. Combine that with a general world population problem and I think that the practical considerations start to outweigh the ethical ones.
In other words, some groups are disproportionately selecting an abortion when they know they can’t give the child a decent environment to grow up in and it is saving all of us lots of expense and crime in the future. Most people claim that no one is ‘pro-abortion’ and the correct term is ‘pro-choice’. That isn’t true. I am actually ‘pro-abortion’ now for the people that don’t have the means or lifestyle to raise kids responsibly. The best option overall is to kill it early if there is no probable way to raise the child well.
The morning after pill doesn’t “end a pregnancy” (or more specifically, it doesn’t inhibit implantation, as far as we can tell). It inhibits fertilization. I last looked into the studies a few years ago, so it’s possible that new studies have come out since then disputing that, but I doubt it.
I’m as much in the “personhood begins at conception / ban abortion except in cases of health threats to the mother” camp as the next person, but there’s no evidence that the morning after pill harms already conceived persons. (If it did, I think I’d still favour it based on arguments about double effect and the like, but since it doesn’t, it’s moot).
That’s why I stressed the importance of (open) adoption…
Do you have evidence that the morning after pill prevents implantation and, if so, how high the rate is?
See marshmallow’s post at #65. Making an exception for rape is inconsistent with anti-abortion arguments based around the sanctity of life.
It appears to me (and please correct me if I’m wrong) that you oppose abortion because of considerations for the sanctity of life. But you feel that opposing abortion even in the case of rape will make you seem like a monster, so you agree that there should be an exception for rape.
In post #61 you say “…it is a situation where it is impossible to make an exact, precise moral or technical classification.”, but then in the very next post make a list ranking the importance of the sanctity of life somewhere between psychological trauma and convenience. When pressed, you rank some trauma as more important than the sanctity of life, and some trauma as less important than the sanctity of life. That’s getting pretty damned precise. What changed in the nine minutes between making posts #61 and #62?
Well, those 4 categories are relatively easy (for me) to rank. Trying to decide if a human embryo that has gills and a notocord is human is an example of a complex, hard to define classification. It is not a human, not yet, not by strict classification. But it is the exact same organism that will become human. Both sides have a lot of mileage with each position. There is no easy answer and there is no one answer to all situations.
I am looking at things on a pragmatic or utilitarian case by case basis. I am looking at the totality of the overall components. Suppose someone was struck in an auto accident and left incapacitated verbally, physically, mentally, emotionally, and psychologically to the point that they had no quality of life at all. I would support euthanasia at that point.It gets a bit tricky if they can not give consent, if they are so incapacitated that they can not even respond. But in general, I would support euthanasia or the possibility of it in that situation.
I do not think there is a one rule fits all situations sanctity of life ruling. If you have more questions or comments I will be glad to answer but the overall point is, it is going to be a case by case basis.
In addition, I am just a guy talking on the internet. If you want a real answer to this situation, a legal answer, a definitive moral answer, we need to consult experts, MDs and Phds with the proper training, and get a consensus opinion. Trying to find an expert without a bias may be difficult however.
For the government to forbid something, you need to demonstrate that there is some reason for forbidding it. "I don’t like it’ is not a good reason. If no one is harmed, if there is no overriding societal problem created, then no, you should not make something illegal.
Who cares whether women, as a group. are more capable of supporting themselves today than they were 50 years ago? Establish the harm caused by abortion, and then make a case for why it should be illegal. So far, the OP has only established that he thinks it’s unethical to have an abortion, not that it should be illegal.
How much longer are you going to continue to discuss a point that I have specifically said is not the main point of my argument???
Wow
A “fetus” that has a heartbeat and a fully formed frontal lobe is going to be harmed if you um… take it out of its mothers body and it is not alive.
So, are you completely disavowing it as having any bearing whatsoever on the issue?
Not so fast. Are you now saying it’s OK to abort a fetus (technically it would be an embryo) that doesn’t have a heart beat and/or a frontal lobe?
I have said repeatedly that it is one factor in the overall equation. Apparently, you disagree that it is a significant factor. OK.
I don’t know if it would be ok but it would be less wrong to abort an embryo than a fetus with a heart beat and a frontal lobe. One is closer to being fully human than the other.
Is this what I can expect from your next several posts, for you to continue to ask me “tough questions” about a topic which I have specifically stated is complex and has no definitive answer?
This is a quality of life issue. A sanctity of life issue. Those, by definition, will have components that are not strictly empirical.
No, I expect that you will continue to dance around the subject and defend the position you staked out without regard to reason or logic, which is what you’ve done in this entire thread. You start out your OP with the statement that “A large part of this thinking was historical, that in the past women were dependent on men financially and otherwise”, but when challenged and you can’t defend it, it becomes a “minor issue”.
If you want to invoke the “sanctity of life”, then go ahead. That is not an argument that can be debated, since it’s purely subjective. Just don’t go invoking “heartbeats” and “frontal lobes” when what you really mean is any pregnancy at any time.
I see no reason to continue this dance.
Re: rape, it’s worth pointing out that if you restrict access to abortions to women who’ve been raped, you’re creating a perverse incentive for women to falsely accuse men of rape.
Sanctity of Life is a religious belief; that is why it has unempirical components. It is not the place of the government to impose religious beliefs. Your personal religious ideas, unsupported by empirical science or medical fact, are not the proper basis for laws in the US.
The frontal lobe only really takes off in development at about the twenty-fifth week. It doesn’t finish development until the child is about 25 years old. There is no “child” before the frontal lobe develops, just like there is no “person” when brain function ceases. We take people off life support all the time once they are declared brain dead, even if their heart is still beating.
All of the above is irrelevant. Your personal beliefs about religion, personhood, responibility are purely your own, unempirical, personal beliefs. Women are not obligated to run their lives according to your - again, unempirical - personal beliefs. In particular, women are not obligated to let other persons take up long term residence inside their very bodies.
Hell, you wouldn’t let a homeless man help himself to nine months residence in your spare bed room, even in the middle of winter, but you think women are required to let a third party bore its way into their blood stream and then overwhelm the women’s immune system with foreign hormones so that the women’s body won’t fight back. And then you want to tell us that the women doesn’t have any rights that matter in this scenario. It is to laugh.
This gets to some very basic moral questions here. Let me define a couple of terms for you:
You seem to suggest that it is sufficient for an entity to be a moral subject if it has a heartbeat and a fully formed frontal lobe. Is this correct?
If so, why? These traits seem to be highly arbitrary to me.
I think I understand now. You are intent upon proving me wrong.
I’m not really sure on a scale of 1 to 10 how important the non dependence issue is but it’s in the top half of the 1 to 10 scale not the bottom half. Since it is one of many factors then a quantification becomes even more difficult. I think this is like probably the 5th time at least I have specifically stated this to you.
If you want to disagree with me, fine. If you want to try to disqualify my comments, which, I have stated do not have a specific quantifiable empirical number/score, ok, go ahead I guess but that seems to be a poor way to win a debate. What I do take particular exception to is your claim that I am dancing around an issue. I take exception to the assertion that I am not using reason or logic. It is a logical statement to claim that if an organism has a notocord and gills and has no heartbeat or frontal lobe but that that same organism will have all the components of a full human being, that we need to take this linear progression into account, that - is - using logic and reason.
But since you disagree with me you want to label my comments lacking logic and reason and to assert that I am evading your comments.