In the Canada Winter Games, athletes were allowed to compete as the gender they “identify as,” no need for surgery or hormone therapy.
Sure, but not everything is about legislation. Plenty of things are about societal attitudes, and there can be a right/wrong side to history in public opinion.
Yes. If it’s the mother’s body, it’s hers to do with as she decides and sees fit - that’s the logically consistent trend the movement would be heading towards. There’s no reason why a fetus at 5 months is fit for abortion but one at 9 months isn’t, by that logic, if it’s all within the mother’s body. It’s still her uterus. It may still be considered beyond the pale today, but twenty years from now likely won’t.
Velocity, I’m curios what your position is on these things, not what you think other peoples’ opinions ultimately will be. Those future people aren’t here to engage in debate, after all.
This is pretty divided (currently), but I certainly don’t think that siding with the CCP is going to be seen as ‘the right side of history’. I think that history will see even what we’ve done wrt appeasement with the CCP was on par with someone like Chamberlain and the factions that appeased Hitler. Of course, this presupposes that the CCP and China don’t win. If they do, then history will be basically as the CCP wants it to be. It will be like Tiananmen Square on Chinese social media or web search…basically nothing to see here, and if you persist, well, we have a nice re-education camp for you. Oh, and how healthy are you? What’s your blood type? Interesting…yes, we definitely need to see you right away…
I disagree, because the woman’s right to an abortion is centered on her right to control what is and isn’t in her body. As in “Please remove this fetus from my body.”
I dispute that this right extends to deciding what happens to the fetus in terms of having an inherent right to say “Please kill this fetus and remove it from my body.”
It might be inevitable that at-will abortion during the third trimester will be legal (although I have my doubts) but I do not believe that third trimester abortions will ever be considered moral and acceptable except in the extremely few circumstances where the reason for the abortion did not exist earlier in the pregnancy.
So, is it that once the baby is one millimeter outside the uterus, it’s now a real live baby. Or is it more like, does the entire head have to be outside? Or maybe up to the armpits? Where is the line drawn?
I disagree that the pro-choice movement will be seen as the right or moral side of the debate decades or centuries in the future. I know this is all guesswork about a future that’s uncertain, but I genuinely believe that the pro-choice movement will one day be seen for the abomination it is, similar to how we now view slavery or the treatment of Native Americans. If I were to try to help (many of) you understand my perspective on this: many Dopers view President Trump as this weird, unfortunate anomaly, and once he’s gone we can get things back on track. I view Roe v Wade in similar terms.
Although I’m pro-choice, objectively I agree that this is less clear cut than some issues, because it’s weighing the rights of the mother against the rights of the fetus. Although, as I’ve said, I think it will ultimately be resolved not by deciding one side is definitely right, but by technology absolving us from the need to sacrifice one in favor of the other. Social issues that are about granting rights and respect are not ethical tradeoffs and are far more clear-cut (slavery, women’s rights, LGBT rights, animal rights, etc).
I don’t really see how that’s possible.
Like, if me and my SO had sex with no intentions (and no financial means) to have a child whatsoever but she still got pregnant ; there being a magic artificial womb jar out there to incubate the fetus in her stead is not really relevant, or at least merely leads to further issues and questions. Are we supposed to take care of the child regardless ? Is there a moral or societal imperative to put our regrettably fertilized egg in the magic jar against our stated wishes ? Who’ll take care of the kid since we won’t ? Does that mean right now there’s a moral crime in e.g. fertility treatments implanting a dozen fertilized eggs into a woman’s uterus to increase the chances of one taking hold ?
And so on, and so forth. “Tech will take care of this problem, no worry” is just handwaving the ethics away.
I’d think it be the same ethics as adoption, no?
Which is already problematic today, both in terms of financial realities (i.e. CPS perenially underfunded) and life experiences for those who either won’t be adopted at all or will be adopted by truly horrible people for horrible reasons.
With a mandatory magic jar you’re creating orders of magnitudes more to-be-adopted children without increasing the supply of families willing (or able) to adopt. New problem to fix.
At the risk of being unpopular, maybe people who claim climate change will end civilization.
On one hand they raise awareness of a serious issue.
On another, they seem to push people into despair and despondency rather than productive action, and they underestimate future generations abilities to cope with problems.
They may go down as Malthusians, depending on how the whole climate change thing works out. They may be seen as heroes bringing awareness, they may be seen as people promoting excessive despair about an issue that will be resolved by technology.
And I know we are both just promoting our own pre-existing philosophies on this issue.
But…
to a lot of us on the left, the pro-life movement is largely just a proxy for religious fundamentalism and misogyny. Controlling and infantilizing women by proxy by pretending a collection of cells is sentient so people can control women’s decisions and lives.
Theres no telling which side will win in the long run. But generally, societies movement globally seems to be towards pro-choice. Pro-choice is the default position of most wealthy, developed nations.
Pretty much all OECD nations have legalized abortion. The anti-abortion nations are mostly located in Africa, the middle east, south asia & latin America. Not areas that are going to lead the future culturally or economically. Nations with the highest HDI all tend to be pro choice.
Technowombs. Solving the ethics of abortion while complicating ethics of adoption. Get yours today!
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I didn’t say “no worry”. For the forseeable future, it’s an important ethical issue. The level of prosperity and technology that’s required to make the ethical issue moot is a long way off.
But I don’t think there will ever be an overwhelming ethical consensus on the abortion issue in the same way that there is on slavery, or like I think there will be on many current issues like LGBT rights. With current technology, any view on the abortion issue is based on choosing the lesser of two evils. So to the extent that this is a debate about how history will look back on us, the technology of a long way in the future is relevant.
We need artificial wombs. In a couple of hundred years we may incubate most fetuses, not just the unwanted ones, in artificial wombs. And we need to be sufficiently far along the road to post-scarcity that unwanted fetuses can be cared for without placing any demands on biological parents who may not be interested in raising a child.
And to reiterate: this is not a debate about what we think are the right answers to ethical issues today. It’s about how history will look back on us. That’s should go a bit deeper than just saying: I know I’m right, and I’m sure everyone will agree with me in a couple of years if they just think long and hard about it. Changes in technology may completely change the possibilities and the way everyone thinks about some ethical issues.
OK, I think I see what you’re saying, but I don’t think future technology is any reason or standpoint to look differently on present ethical decisions.
Slavery was wrong and is wrong and will keep being morally wrong till the end of time regardless of whether or not mechanization or robotization or matter-replicators exist. Or whether slavery itself is still a factual concern in the far future (it still is today, btw. And not just in *those *countries all the way over there). It’d be reaaaally problematic to say that slavery was a thorny ethical quandary but thankfully technology has made the issue moot, to put it another way. Or, to slightly twist your words, that with then-current technology any view on the slavery issue was based on choosing between the lesser of two evils (where one of the two had a specific value of “none”).
If it’s thorny now, it’ll be recognizable as thorny then. If it’s not thorny then, they won’t think it really was all that thorny now.
That’s a bit more than “slightly twisting” my words, it’s completely ignoring my words.
I want to expound on the parallel because I think it’s really interesting, and because the question of “which was the right side of history ?” is exceedingly settled today when it comes the US chattel slavery. Well, it is here at any rate, Stormfront might have a more nuanced take on this issue, admittedly.
We view it, and every single aspect of it, as repugnant be it in terms of factual realities, of principles and ethics and rights, it just shouldn’t have happened period, right ? That much is crystal clear to us.
But back then, and without adressing any concern of whether the arguments were made in good or bad faith, I don’t think it was universally crystal.
Some people came at it to justify it from a religious standpoint because it’s in the Bible and that proves Og is OK with it. Some people came at it to reject it from a religious standpoint based on teachings on neighbourly love and so on.
Some people came at it from a “biological” standpoint to justify it because black people were not the same as white people and that made it ok. Some people came at it from a biological standpoint to say that black people fell somewhere on the humanity spectrum (
) and thus condemned it.
Some people came at it from a materialistic standpoint to support it as a fantastic economic boon that outweighed any ickiness ; others opined that wealth didn’t necessitate any slavery.
Some people came at it from a utilitarian standpoint and expressed support because the suffering of a minority advanced a majority and thus slavery was ultimately a greater good ; others said that’s cool as long as you’re not that minority.
Some people employed jus ad baculum or white man’s burden or historical inescapabilities or nationalism to justify it because it’s natural law that the strong and advanced should profit from the weak and barbaric and anyway if we don’t do it our enemies will/not using it will weaken us.
Some people said “it’s the law” as if that has ever been an argument for anything. Others countered with “fuck your laws, I’m going to free some slaves”.
The arguments for or against abortion fall under those exact same lines : what does god say about it ? is a fetus alive and is it really human and if not at which point does it become human ? Is the unquestionable socio-economic good brought about by legalized abortion a thing that can justify it as a greater good/lesser of two evils or is it abominable to even think that way ? Do we have any right to end life just because we can, don’t we need more babies to pull Social Security out of debt before the Chinese economy eats the world, and so on.
If you can think of any historically used argument for or against slavery that cannot be hammered into an argument we could use for or against abortion, I’m all ears.