That’s the point of a debate. Did you expect that you could start a debate in this forum (Great Debates) and no one would be intent on proving you wrong?
Let me say first that I think your points are excellent and that I agree with them wholeheartedly. Although I had already had those beliefs before you mentioned them, they are very important concepts and I am glad you mentioned them, they needed to be brought into this conversation.
I am not trying to evade. I am not, really. I am going to clarify. When I said moral I meant in terms of right and wrong, not free moral agent.
As to why I designate a heartbeat and a frontal lobe that is an attempt to bring an empirical component to a hard to define topic. In even simpler terms I am trying to qualify what is fully human or as close to fully human as we can get.
I’m not trying to go against your comments or objections here because I think you are making some good points. I am simply going to clarify one step further. I am thinking of this from the point of view, with the mental picture of parents proudly and joyfully holding a new born baby. I am thinking of that happy and small child a few years later laughing and dancing in a rain storm. I am thinking of that child one day as an adult inventing the iphone or a new sting of revolutionary computer code. I am thinking of that child one day as an adult rushing into a burning building a as a firefighter to save someone. I am thinking of that child who grows up to be an adult and teaches in public school for 46 years before they retire.
I know my comments are emotional and hard to quantify or qualify with logic and hard fact. Maybe that is due to my lack of ability in logic and persuasion. I don’t expect you to fully agree with my comments but I hope you can see the merit they hold, at least as a concept.
No, I just don’t see the point in mentioning it over and over again after I have already made a concession.
Just enforce existing child support laws, the father is always financially responsible … the OP is great for men … make the government deal with their irresponsibility … it’s always the woman’s fault.
Those are all very good points. I mean it, they actually really are. I might change my mind back to being more in support of pro choice than I am in support of pro life. I realize that for some people these are deeply deeply personal beliefs. For me it is more of a moral question I am trying to find an answer to. But I doubt that I will ever have a definitive answer because I do not think there is a definitive answer. And, I don’t know if it worth mentioning but I am not religious. But a lot of pro life people are so I make that clarification to prevent confusion.
This is all fine – you’re perfectly free to feel this way. The more important question is this: do you think that it should be illegal for women to make the choice to end their pregnancies, and for doctors to perform these procedures if they and their patients feel it is necessary? Do you believe that doctors and/or women should go to jail if they do this?
In my view, people should have ultimate control over what and who goes into their bodies, and what and who is allowed to stay inside their bodies. This includes sexual penetration, various forms of violence, and impregnation and pregnancy.
Let’s just cut to the chase and get the facts out there:
Morning-after pills are high doses of birth control pills that prevent ovulation, which is how birth control pills work. People who say that morning-after pills are taken to interrupt the implantation of a fertilized egg (i.e., taking a very very young life) are incorrect. That’s all there is to it.
Well, upon reading over the thread I have swapped back to being slightly more pro choice, simply due to the fact that it is a complex and ambiguous issue combined with the desire to avoid the dictatorial issues you speak of.
You’ve said repeatedly that the financial factor, no matter where it falls on a scale of significance, is what finally tilted the balance to no abortion, period. (I’m disregarding the rape issue for now.) Then you say this:
But financial independence is very clearly quantifiable. There’s just no way, not even “emotional and hard to quantify,” from pro- to anti-choice here.
Admit that you’ve always been anti-abortion - which is fine with me for your own decisions - but you needed a marginally logical reason to justify turning your personal beliefs into law.
Atheists aren’t necessarily nihilists.
Moral stances by their very nature are subjective opinions and not empirical, so declaring opposition to abortion unempirical doesn’t mean much. Saying it’s OK to kill a fetus because it isn’t conscious isn’t empirical either. About the best you can say is if you want goal X, we should undertake activities A, B, and C. Those are at least testable propositions, in theory.
I am a bit confused. I think the lest objectionable of all of my comments would be the idea that women today, in 2015, have a much greater degree of independence, in child rearing and in almost every other category, than they did in 1965 or 1837.
If you think I am just using this as an excuse to “justify” enforcing my opinion, well, you would be wrong. My opinions, a select few, change as I gain new data or insight. Some opinions I doubt I will ever change, But, who knows, that is for the future to hold.
I understand that it is easy to think the “other side” is going to be dictatorial, sneaky and unreasonable/irrational. However, since I conclude my initial post with the following statement and repeated similar comments many times in the thread, I am not sure why you would say “but you needed a marginally logical reason to justify turning your personal beliefs into law.” My closing remark in the OP:
These are my comments/opinions. My comments/opinions are not meant to blame or judge anyone. I am open minded to other opinions and after discussion may change my position.
I think this is the crucial mistake you’re making, though: you’re confusing “empirical” and “arbitrary”. If you can’t explain why these specific empirical measures are important, then they’re arbitrary measures. You shouldn’t use arbitrary criteria for whom you grant rights to.
Well, the merit they hold is emotional. They are not logical nor persuasive. Which brings us to another question: do you believe that illogical, emotional arguments suffice for writing laws that criminalize behavior?
That’s a lovely mental picture you have. What about the mental picture of the teenage girl who has to drop out of high school to care for her infant–a girl who otherwise would have been that adult who invented a new string of revolutionary computer code? What about that boy who leaves college to support his baby, instead of becoming a public school teacher for 46 years before he retires? What about the kid born to people not ready to be parents and who suffers abuse and resentment for all her life? What about the picture of the kid who doesn’t grow up to write good computer code, but instead grows up to become a rapist? What about the collage of the lives shattered because you threatened prison time to people who sought abortions?
The problem with going for emotional pictures is that there are plenty of them.
This is right. Again, I’m strongly pro-life (i.e. in the “ban all abortions except for serious health reasons”), but beside the fact I don’t have a problem with contraception, I think that spreading lies and scientific errors in the service of the pro-life cause is both morally and pragmatically a bad idea.
Ok, but let me say… let me say, I know on this message forum it will not sound good but I think there are some cases where something can be wrong/bad and you can’t allways prove it/quantify it/qualify it. In this particular case I have reversed my position because there have been a good amount of quality rebuttals to my initial position.
I know this board frowns upon tangents but I really have a serious question here. Is there no value to subjectivity in morality? I know that sounds bad but let me clarify.
In our current capitalist system a person is penalized to a life of probable poverty if they make the wrong decisions between ages 15 and ages 25. Some of those mistakes will be their fault, some will be random chance. But to be penalized for the next 50 years because you made the wrong choices? I can’t logically tear down that idea but when I put myself in the shoes of a person who has had a combination of bad choices and bad circumstances, when I think subjectively, what if that were me??? I do not like the answer.
I can’t defend it logically but from a “subjective perspective” it seems quite clear.
Sorry to go on a tangent and if my example is not perfect, disregard it, look at the main concept, does subjective analysis have no strong value in setting policy?
Yeah, I hadn’t thought of any of that those are all excellent points.
EDIT: would an (open) adoption help lessen the impact of any of the problems you mentioned? Or support to help keep and raise the child? I’m not reversing my opinion again, I am just asking what you think.
If by “subjectivity” you mean “illogical and emotional,” I don’t really think so–but if you want a subjective moral system for yourself, knock yourself out. That’s, and I’m being serious, perfectly fine.
But you’re not just talking about any old moral system: you’re talking about one that you want to codify into law, and that you want to punish people for not obeying, punish them by removing their freedom via prison time.
If we change your question slightly in order to make it relevant to this situation, it becomes, “Is it acceptable to base criminal law on emotional, illogical, subjective reasons?” I believe the question, once framed properly, has a clear answer.
Do you disagree with this rephrasing? If so, why? I’m trying to use only words that you have applied to your own arguments.
If there is, it would have to be objective (subjective value in subjective points on morality being possible but fairly useless). Which means that whatever the “unit” of subjective taste is, you would have to grant it value in each and every example of it. It’s not just your personal subjective points that have value; everyone’s would have.
The other big issue I can think of right now is that it would mean that value can be added or subtracted artificially. If there’s a subjective value to a distaste for abortion, and I through donations and a clever marketing campaign raise that distaste in the public higher, does that increase in value mean that abortion is more morally wrong?
Or if no-one had any distaste for abortion at all, would that make it more moral?
Well, first of all, I would of never went as far as to imprison either doctors or patients for having an abortion but there are some cases where if I were given free reign, in other categories, I’d over react if you gave me to much authority. To avoid distractions I won’t clarify but simply admit I value you warning against over reacting.
As to the other point, the need for a defense that is not illogical and not emotional… let me try another tactic, try expressing it a different way.
What if someone, the circumstances do not matter per se, what if someone is being taken advantage of or oppressed or suppressed but they are not able to logically and rationally defend their position. Are we supposed to say, “Sorry Fred, your complaints are not logical and rational, you will have to continue being oppressed until you come up with a more articulate response.”
From my response to Left Hand OF Dorkness:
What if someone, the circumstances do not matter per se, what if someone is being taken advantage of or oppressed or suppressed but they are not able to logically and rationally defend their position. Are we supposed to say, “Sorry Fred, your complaints are not logical and rational, you will have to continue being oppressed until you come up with a more articulate response.”
We do that all the time. That’s one of the reasons we have a justice system, rather than allowing families of victims to simply choose a punishment personally. Juries and judges are - theoretically - neutral observers who make decisions based on logical and rational arguments. A grieving family does not (or at least should not) add weight to the punishment a criminal gets - nor is a murder against a friendless victim with no family a lesser crime because they have no subjective-value-holding people sitting in the courtroom.
Of course not. You’re confusing the victim’s ability to articulate reasons with the reasons themselves.
There are, under most ethical systems, perfectly rational reasons for not murdering toddlers. These reasons derive from first principles in a logical fashion. The toddlers’ inability to articulate them has nothing to do with anything.
This objection of yours comes to nothing. The question isn’t whether a fetus, for god’s sake, can explain the logic behind keeping the fetus alive. The question is whether there’s any logical reason that anyone can show me for threatening the mother/doctor with prison if the fetus is aborted.
Which brings us to a second point:
If you’re not talking about outlawing abortion, what exactly do you mean when you talk about being pro-life? Do you mean that you won’t have sex with women who might have abortions? Do you mean you’d try to persuade your sister not to have one? Do you mean that you personally don’t like the idea of abortions, no sirree bob? Because ALL OF THAT IS FINE.