Life Begins at Conception - Arguments against?

Great Debates
121

[QUOTE=cmyk]
Sorry RT, I never mean to offend. I mostly speak rhetorically or hypothetically. I wouldn’t label myself as either “pro-life” or “pro-choice”. It’s one of those things I maintain agnosticism on, out of sheer lack of data. Nothing personal intended!
[/QUOTE]
No problem then! I’m sorry to have assumed intended offense where none was offered.

I’m afraid i’m not really sure what you’re saying. If it’s that generally our own premises tend to lead to conclusions that fall in line with our own moral ideas, whatever those may be, then sure, that makes sense, given that our premises are usually based on those ideals in the first place. But it depends; in some cases it may be felt that something is wrong, but that nevertheless is acceptable for one reason or another, and in other cases something is wrong enough that it is never acceptable. In the latter case that a moral dilemma may be led to is enough for some to reject it as a reasonable conclusion.

Of course, this is assuming i’m understanding you right. :wink:

122

[QUOTE=Voyager]
The good thing about the pro-choice position is that it shouldn’t matter whether or not I or anyone else agree with you about the time of ensoulment or even if the soul exists. So long as you’re not trying to enforce your view on anyone else, you get to act according to your beliefs and no one elses.

Doesn’t that make life simpler for everyone?
[/QUOTE]
While i’m on your side in this, I don’t really think that letting everyone decide for themselves is all that good an argument. There are people that think legal abortion is, literally, institutionally accepted murder on a massive scale. If I were put myself in their shoes, I don’t think that I would consider the fact that people may decide for themselves whether or not to participate in murder to be enough to tip the scales the other way.

123

[QUOTE=Revenant Threshold]
I’m afraid i’m not really sure what you’re saying. If it’s that generally our own premises tend to lead to conclusions that fall in line with our own moral ideas, whatever those may be, then sure, that makes sense, given that our premises are usually based on those ideals in the first place. But it depends; in some cases it may be felt that something is wrong, but that nevertheless is acceptable for one reason or another, and in other cases something is wrong enough that it is never acceptable. In the latter case that a moral dilemma may be led to is enough for some to reject it as a reasonable conclusion.

Of course, this is assuming i’m understanding you right. :wink:
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There are two issues here:

  1. The choice of when on the continnum between conception and birth a fetus becomes a “child” and thus deserving of (legal) protection; and

  2. Whether abortion is thereby made (legally) possible.

The second is not, in my case, driving the first.

In short, were I to be convinced by cogent arguments that a fetus is a “child” at the moment of conception, I’d have no choice but to be anti-abortion in principle, in spite of the fact that this would cause hardship to many - which would be I think a real moral dilemma.

Thankfully, I am convinced that, on the contrary, a fetus is not a “child” until it has developed capacity for conciousness. Thus no moral dilemma develops.

124

Why is it necessary to dictionary your way into a comfort zone? Just acknowledge the existence of the woman, and no moral dilemma develops.

125

[QUOTE=Bryan Ekers]
Why is it necessary to dictionary your way into a comfort zone? Just acknowledge the existence of the woman, and no moral dilemma develops.
[/QUOTE]

Doesn’t follow.

What if a woman strangles a babe right after it is born? Do you just “acknowledge her existence” and consider it a non-issue?

126

[QUOTE=Tastes of Chocolate]
First, my stance. A fetus is not a person. They do not have the rights that we give to sentient humans. I am strongly pro-choice, although I really wish no one ever had to make that choice.

For those that argue that abortions should only be allowed in cases of rape, incest and/or if the mother’s life is in jeopardy:

If a fetus has rights, including the right to live, why do those rights go away in the above circumstances? I can’t think of any situation, involving 2 or more people where, where you would walk up to one who isn’t actively threatening another and say “Your being here puts the life of that other person at risk, so we’re going to kill you to save them.”

In other words, how do you justify saying “I accord you the rights of a human, including the right to be born, 99.8% of the time (or what ever percentage is correct). The other few cases, I’ve given that other person priority over you.” Or is it all a sop, to try to make an abortion ban more palatable to a person leaning towards pro-choice?

Being mostly anti-abortion seems like being a little bit pregnant.
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Excellent post. Questions I have often asked and have not heard answers to from the anti-abortion people.

127

[QUOTE=cmyk]
You again assume that the fetus is nothing more than a lump of cells.
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Because early on, that IS all that it is. It’s not an assumption; that’s what all the evidence shows.

[QUOTE=cmyk]
I, on the other hand, take the opposite view and assume the fetus should have some amount of rights too. It becomes a matter of circumstance as to which right should outweigh the other. I have absolutely zero interest in oppression or denigration, and I think those words are a tad overblown in the context of my arguments. You’re in favor of nothing but the mother, here… I’m saying there’s another life in the mix, and to ignore that is devaluation of humanity.
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First, regardless of your intent, oppression is what you’d get. And second, equating a lump of flesh with people denigrates actual people; there’s no way around that. A tumor is also life; are you going to insist that doctors no longer remove them ? And it undercuts the whole concept of rights, by undercutting the idea that there’s any reason for them.

[QUOTE=cmyk]
I do respect your thoughts on nothing but pure science should inform the play here, but there are still certain mysteries surrounding the human condition where we don’t know what the score is yet.
[/quote]
But whether or not an early term fetus has a mind isn’t one of them.

[QUOTE=cmyk]
I don’t believe in anything metaphysical about the mind, or sentience in general, but we are more than just a lump of cells.
[/quote]
WE are. A fetus isn’t.

[QUOTE=cmyk]
If your argument is that the mind is the only thing that matters when placing rights, I’m cool with that. But I have little confidence in the ability of science being able to ever really tell us when a brain eventually does harbor a mind, in a black and white, definitive way.
[/quote]
So ? As pointed out, the existence of grey areas just means that you leave a margin for error, not that you pretend that black and white don’t exist.

[QUOTE=cmyk]
And to Reverent Threshold’s scale, I can see basing the sentience of a mind on that scale, and saying “Well, the mind doesn’t even begin to develop until the baby has been born and is at least a year into development, so therefore, we’re good with aborting a pregnancy up to the 2nd trimester to be safe.” But what if we did find out, a baby is not really what we would consider a full human until it’s over a year old. Why not kill it in the third trimester? Or even after it’s born. After all, we’re not basing this off of feelings or ethics… but science.
[/QUOTE]
And in the near-impossible scenario where it happened, it would be ethical to do so. Just as it would be ethical to kill adult humans if you could prove they were mindless automatons that just faked sentience really well. Neither is a situation I ever expect to see in the real world.

128

[QUOTE=Malthus]
Doesn’t follow.

What if a woman strangles a babe right after it is born? Do you just “acknowledge her existence” and consider it a non-issue?
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Definitely doesn’t follow. Once born, the baby has an independent existence of its own. Prior to birth, it doesn’t.

129

Human life certainly exists at conception.

A human being arguably does not.

130

[QUOTE=Malthus]
There are two issues here:

  1. The choice of when on the continnum between conception and birth a fetus becomes a “child” and thus deserving of (legal) protection; and

  2. Whether abortion is thereby made (legally) possible.

The second is not, in my case, driving the first.

In short, were I to be convinced by cogent arguments that a fetus is a “child” at the moment of conception, I’d have no choice but to be anti-abortion in principle, in spite of the fact that this would cause hardship to many - which would be I think a real moral dilemma.

Thankfully, I am convinced that, on the contrary, a fetus is not a “child” until it has developed capacity for conciousness. Thus no moral dilemma develops.
[/QUOTE]
Ah, fair enough then. I suppose i’m in the somewhat uncommon position of actually not even considering there to be any age at which a human is/should be guaranteed rights, but that’s kind of a tricky thing to get into. But I do understand where you’re coming from on that (I think :)).

131

[QUOTE=spazattak]
The argument shouldn’t be whether or not abortion is killing a human, it should be whether or not the activity damages society. Can those opposed to it give an explanation of how abortion degrades our social compact? Does it create disorder? Does it lead to other bad things? Since opponents always bring up the murder aspect, let’s start with that as an example. If we allowed murder, bad things happen - vendettas, family disputes, revenge killing - society devolves or falls apart - it’s pretty cut and dry. Lets take that walk with abortion now.
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If abortion was freely permitted with no stigma against it, it would take upon itself the role of an expensive form of contraception. This would inevitably lead to people being more casual about having sex (if that’s humanly possible), though they’d still want to use normal contraception as it’s easier and cheaper.

It would reduce the population growth of developed societies slightly…but not much, and even less among people old who are actually responsible enough to raise a child.

There would be some small number of men who are oppressed by the idea that the woman is “killing their boy”. It’d be hard to have much sympathy for them, though.

And, err, people would have to think up other ways to meddle in other people’s business?

132

[QUOTE=nd_n8]
However I have difficulty understanding an unwanted pregnancy (with exceptions given for rape or molestation of the mentally or physically challenged) in today’s society. Condoms are cheap (free from some services) and available, non-latex alternatives exist for latex allergies, there are a wide variety of shots and other treatments to facillitate birth control. IMHO any woman who “accidently” gets pregnant should also “accidently” lose her exclusivity to the right to choose. Responsibility for birth control is not just the man’s job.
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Forgive me if I’ve overlooked something, but I’m not sure you’ve addressed the concept that no method of birth control is 100% effective, and possibly least of all abstinence; after all, abstinence, like any other method of birth control, is only effective so long as it’s used correctly and consistently 100% of the time. Speaking as a Planned Parenthood employee conducting pregnancy testing and options counseling for many, many women who reported “abstinence” as their chosen method of birth control, abstinence is most definitely not used correctly and consistently 100% of the time, and due to the completely functionally useless “abstinence-only education programs” often practically guarantees a pregnancy scare. Teenagers who have never been taught about, or have no access to condoms or birth control pills have no way to protect against pregnancy when hormones take control. This is a system that’s been working successfully for, what, 65 million years? You best believe that no matter how hard they try to avoid it, women following all the rules sure do sometimes find themselves facing positive pregnancy tests and, tangentially, you can’t condemn people who have never been taught comprehensively how to prevent pregnancy for… not being able to prevent pregnancy.

What would you say to a woman who was using her method of birth control correctly with absolute, 100% compliance, used emergency contraception within minutes when a failure was suspected (well before conception), then sought an abortion the very day her hCG levels were high enough to confirm a conception had occurred, despite every possible effort at avoidance? At that point, her quivering mass of cells wasn’t even visible on ultrasound. Leaving aside her reasons for not choosing to continue the pregnancy, would you still call her pregnancy intentional, or purposeful–assuming your use of quotes with the word “accidentally” is intended to suggest that no pregnancy is truly accidental?
What about a couple where both partners are surgically sterilized, and still manage to conceive? Would you claim they secretly intended to get pregnant or that she should also “accidentally” lose her right to choice in the matter?

Neither of those scenarios are hypothetical, if that matters to you.

133

[QUOTE=begbert2]
And, err, people would have to think up other ways to meddle in other people’s business?
[/QUOTE]

Maybe they could be pacified with miniature American flags.

134

Something else to think about: those of you who are arguing the “life begins at conception” stance, please don’t ever even begin to think that a “pro-life” or “anti-abortion” or “life begins at conception” or “every conception is sacred” mentality precludes having an abortion. I myself have counseled not a few women who “don’t believe in abortion” but are still willing to make the choice to have one when it’s her uterus that’s occupied. And you know what? That’s okay with me; I’m happy the option is available for her when she needs it.

I’m not saying any of you would choose to have an abortion, or calling you hypocrites, I’m only saying that the belief that “conception”=“human” doesn’t necessarily preclude the believer from choosing to terminate that “human” for reasons of their own.

135

[QUOTE=WhyNot]
People certainly have the right to give up custody and parental rights of their children if they think they’re too much of a burden to be worth it.
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Say that one day, while camping in the wilderness (3 day journey by backpack)with my infant son, I suddenly decide that parenthood is too much of a burden to be worth it. I don’t want to care for this “parasitic” organism one second longer. I abandon my child there in the wild to fend for himself. My child later dies on his own.

Obviously, I’d (justly) get charged with reckless endangerment or much worse. Even though the child was now an unwanted burden, it was still my responsibility to safely see the child the 3-day journey home, to give to someone who would be able to care for him.

How is 3 days really all that different than 9 months?

If pregnancy only lasted a month to get to full-term, would we really be having this conversation? How about a week?

136

[QUOTE=YamatoTwinkie]
How is 3 days really all that different than 9 months?
[/quote]
Well, here’s the tricky part. It’s a little hard to explain so read carefully:

One is three days.
The other is nine months.

When the time comes when we have sufficiently advanced genetic engineering that we can effectively reduce gestation time, I invite you to raise the point again.

137

[QUOTE=YamatoTwinkie]
How is 3 days really all that different than 9 months?
[/QUOTE]
Because during much of the 9 months, it’s a mindless fetus, and not a baby. And because carrying a child inside you for months is a lot harder on the body than backpacking. And because it’s roughly 90 times as long.

138

[QUOTE=Bryan Ekers]
Definitely doesn’t follow. Once born, the baby has an independent existence of its own. Prior to birth, it doesn’t.
[/QUOTE]

So to you, abortion is perfectly okay one second before birth, and infanticide is totally wrong and worthy of condemnation one second after birth?

Seems sort of arbitrary to me.

139

[QUOTE=Malthus]
So to you, abortion is perfectly okay one second before birth, and infanticide is totally wrong and worthy of condemnation one second after birth?

Seems sort of arbitrary to me.
[/QUOTE]

This isn’t like picking out colour swatches. In one state, you’re inside another human body and in another, you’re not. I leave it to others to debate what can or should happen during the transition phase.

And yes, I’m pretty sanguine about there being no restrictions on abortion, simply because the idea of a nine-month purely elective abortion is so ridiculously unlikely that trying to ban it would be like banning people from flapping their arms and flying. It’s far more common for the mother to kill the child after birth then seek to do so immediately beforehand.

Canada is completely without an abortion law, yet we haven’t experienced these “one second” situations. It’s a pointless argument, used to justify bad laws because if one second is considered shocking, why not one day? Or one week? Or one month? Or three months? Or the whole nine? There’s your arbitrary standard.

140

[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
And because it’s roughly 90 times as long.
[/QUOTE]

It seems a lot of these arguments boil down to “arbitrary points”. How long do you believe a parent is obligated to care for an unwanted child before being legally/morally absolved of the consequences of abandonment?

What if I was snowed in all winter in a remote cabin with no outside communication (phone lines down, etc)? Enough food/water for the both of us, but only barely ?