"Pro-life" and "pro-choice" are both stupid expressions

Great Debates
161

Here we are on the fourth page of the debate and I honestly think I’m the only one left who is still discussing the OP. Ordinarily, I would just drop out and let this run its course as a pro/anti abortion debate, but Bryan Ekers and lowbrass have asked a few pertinent questions to which I have not adequately responded. So, I will attempt that now, with the benefit of a full day’s reflection.

Recall that the subject of the OP was whether the terms pro-life and pro-choice are “stupid expressions,” self-serving and designed for propaganda purposes. I argued upthread that I have no problem with the pro-life label, but I do with pro-choice. All this, I note again, from the perspective of a pro-abortion advocate.

To clarify, what I am arguing, and no more than this, is that necessarily implicit in the pro-choice position is that abortion is okay. No one would say, “I take no position on whether infanticide is right or wrong; I leave that to the choice of the parents.” So too with abortion. IMHO, one cannot be pro-choice without having made (and be ready to defend) a value judgment that abortion is an accepable choice.

162

Well, regarding the OP, the two camps have chosen labels that are short and easy to remember. If you want to analyze them with a microscope in one hand and the OED in the other, I guess you could find fault with both, but they serve their purpose.

The “Toronto Maple Leafs”, though, makes no sense. It’s leaves, dammit!

163

[QUOTE=Cat Fight]
But you’d still have a situation in which the woman is confronted with someone who will ultimately decide at what point her life is worth saving (or worth saving more than the potential yet unwanted child). God forbid, hippocratic oath aside, she get a particularly religious doctor, the type who won’t dispense EC, who believes saving anf baptizing the baby is priority number one. If Bryan is indeed from Montreal, Quebec, then he may have learned that this is precisely why certain Catholic women chose to give birth at the Jewish General Hospital a few decades ago.
[/QUOTE]

None of which refutes my point… namely, that the physician’s duty is to save both the mother and the child. You obviously hold pro-life doctors in serious disdain, but your complaint has absolutely no bearing on that matter.

As you know full well, I explictly acknowledged that you can probably find some pro-lifers who will hold that extreme stance. So what? You can also find pro-choicers like Peter Singer who also advocate infanticide. Should we take Dr. Singer’s extremist stance to be reflective of the pro-choice community? (Heck, unlike Mitt Romney, Singer even makes the abortion issue a focus of his philosophy, his writings, and his speeches.)

164

[QUOTE=Bryan Ekers]
Out of curiosity, does the physician have a greater responsibility to the mother or the fetus, or neither? If he has to choose one to give preferential treatment to at the expense of the other, who should his first choice be?
[/QUOTE]

I already answered that question… quite explicitly, in fact. His duty is to save BOTH, if at all possible.

Now, there may be situations where he can only save one – when the fetus is non-viable, for example. You can call that “preferential treatment” if you wish. As far as I’m concerned though, it’s simply a matter of trying to save whichever one has the best chance of surivival. That’s just plain common sense.

BTW, in the majority of cases, it’s the mother who stands the best chance of survival, and so the physician will usually decide in her favor (example: ectopic pregnancies). I hasten to emphasize this, since I’ve learned the hard way that such comments are often greeted with cries of “You hypocrite! You don’t care if the woman dies, don’t you!?!?!?!” That’s what happens when people are looking for reasons to criticize instead of trying to grasp the other person’s perspective.

165

[QUOTE=JThunder]
I already answered that question… quite explicitly, in fact. His duty is to save BOTH, if at all possible.

Now, there may be situations where he can only save one – when the fetus is non-viable, for example. You can call that “preferential treatment” if you wish. As far as I’m concerned though, it’s simply a matter of trying to save whichever one has the best chance of surivival. That’s just plain common sense.

BTW, in the majority of cases, it’s the mother who stands the best chance of survival, and so the physician will usually decide in her favor (example: ectopic pregnancies). I hasten to emphasize this, since I’ve learned the hard way that such comments are often greeted with cries of “You hypocrite! You don’t care if the woman dies, don’t you!?!?!?!” That’s what happens when people are looking for reasons to criticize instead of trying to grasp the other person’s perspective.
[/QUOTE]
Well, I’m not going to call you a hypocrite, but I think you’re limiting yourself to comfortably clear-cut survival situations, when in most cases the woman’s physical health isn’t at risk at all, particularly at the first-trimester stage most abortions occur. I didn’t ask who the doctor should save, though, I asked where his greater responsibilities rested, i.e. who he should serve. He has before him a patient who quite definitely does not want to undergo the considerable stresses of a multi-month pregnancy followed by a multi-year child-rearing. It’s unclear to me the value of denying the safe, simple treatment that will avoid this, to her immediate benefit, just for a shot at the considerably less definite benefit of making the pregnancy continue against the patient’s wishes. The doctor, of course, is not required to treat anyone (unless bound by a contract of some kind to his employer, in which case a penalty of some kind will likely come into play, if not termination), and if he or she won’t offer an abortion, the patient should be free to find one who will.

I realize the idea of a purely elective abortion is uncomfortable for you, but it’s been practiced for untold thousands of years. Hippocrates (~460-370 BCE) tried to get doctors out of the practice, so it’s a safe bet it had been common for quite some time, and hasn’t lost its utility since. I suppose pro-lifers are idealists, imagining all pregnant women either want their pregnancies or will come to want them even if they suffer some short-term doubts. I’m sorry - this isn’t so, and it never has been and, barring some future time where fetuses are gestated in artificial wombs (and maybe not even then), it never will be. I don’t relish this, but I don’t refuse its existence, either.

166

[QUOTE=Polerius]

Again we are coming up against the fundamental issue of whether a fetus is a human being.

Because, if it is, then, all this talk about “I’m not trying to force other people to have an abortion, while you’re desirous of preventing them from having one; therefore you are violating my rights, and I’m doing nothing to yours;” is useless.

[/QUOTE]

So what you’re saying is, you know you’re wasting everybody’s time here? You’re discussing abortion when you know full well that the two stances are irreconcilable not because of stubbornness, but because of different philosophical stances towards the question of when life begins?

Shouldn’t you be arguing for the fetus’s being a human, rather than pro or con abortion, then?

167

[QUOTE=Bryan Ekers]
Well, it would have to be an ugly kid…

Ahem, I never said or implied “lawn”. I only said “spaceship”. Unless you think I have a lawn on my spaceship, Silent Running-style, your point is irrelevant and a blatant strawman.
[/QUOTE]
How is it irrelevant? Not trying to craft a strawman, and that’s why I asked earlier if you were serious. Is it your position that an unwanted intrusion on your “space” warrants any expulsion you deem appropriate or not? Why is a spaceship–where your only “inconvenience” is that you have a toddler with the wrong-colored eyes–different than your lawn?

168

[QUOTE=JThunder]

[quote=Siege
Actually, I’d like to differ with you on that. There are people who call themselves “pro-life” who would like abortion to be illegal even when carrying a pregnancy to term would endanger the life of the mother.[/quote]

Cite, please? Every single pro-life organization that I know (NRLC, Focus on the Family, and so forth) makes an exception for those rare situations where the mother’s life is placed in serious danger. They consistently argue that the physician should make every effort to save both the mother and the unborn, and that abortion should only be used as a last resort.

Now, it’s possible that you’ll find some pro-lifers who’ll say that abortion should not be allowed even to save a mother’s life. By the same token though, you’ll find pro-choicers who believe that mothers have the right to kill their children even after they have been born. (Remember Peter Singer?) Citing these rare and extreme individuals ultimately proves nothing, unless one chooses to let extreme pro-choicers characterize the pro-choice stance as well.
[/QUOTE]

Cite. A law was passed by our own Congress banning partial birth abortions and found to be constitutional by the Supreme Court. This happened in February 2006. According to this article on CNN,

Cite. In New Hampshire in January 2006 the Supreme Court refused to strike down a law requiring parental notification when minors wanted an abortion. They ruled that
[quote = boston.com]
an appeals court should not have nullified the entire law in 2004 simply because it did not contain an exception for cases in which a girl’s health was at risk.
[/quote]

Cite. Virginia also passed a law banning partial birth abortions which was appealed.

Will that do? I’m sure most pro-lifers may at least want to consider an exception to save the life of the mother. However, the fact remains that laws have been passed and upheld in the United States which do not contain exceptions for the health of the mother. By the way, this information was obtained by typing “abortion law exception” into Google. I did this so I couldn’t be accused of using biased cites.

169

[QUOTE=Polerius]
I’m not sure everyone on the pro-choice side agrees with you, if the fetus is demonstrated to be sentient and fully aware of its circumstances. It would be interesting to find out what percent of people have this opinion.
[/QUOTE]

I do.

170

[QUOTE=Stratocaster]
Why is a spaceship–where your only “inconvenience” is that you have a toddler with the wrong-colored eyes–different than your lawn?
[/QUOTE]

Because it’s in, I dunno, space? Shooing a kid off my lawn is somewhat different than shooing him out an airlock because the lawn is on earth and the airlock (along with the spaceship) is in space. Breathing oxygen while standing on my lawn (where I have pretty all of Earth’s atmosphere to choose from) is somewhat different from having to breathe from whatever I have stored in the onboard tanks, and eating isn’t a problem because I can walk from my lawn to the corner store, whereas, y’know, space doesn’t have a whole lot of conveniently-placed Seven-Elevens. Given the difficulties of living in SPACE, intrusions that would be trivial WHEN YOU ARE STANDING ON YOUR LAWN ON EARTH AND NOT IN SPACE suddenly become gravely serious. Whether or not I could keep the kid around for my nine-month voyage to Saturn doesn’t matter - I figure I’m not obliged to, given the stakes, and if I want the kid out by whatever criteria I feel appropriate, then out he goes.

How is space different from my lawn? Are you for real? That is arguably the stupidest question I’ve yet seen in this thread.

171

[QUOTE=MrDibble]

I do.
[/QUOTE]

I don’t think I agree with this. If a fetus were sentient and fully aware of its circumstances, wouldn’t there be more anecdotal evidence of babies interacting with their mothers and their surrounding circumstances before they’re born? Also, giving birth is far from an easy or pleasant thing for the mother in most cases; I doubt being born would be a pleasant process, and switching over to breathing air, while instinctive, doesn’t strike me as pleasant either. Going from a safe, warm, comfortable environment to a radically different one isn’t pleasant under any circumstances. I don’t think I’d want my child to be fully aware of those circumstances.

On the other hand, while this really could be a fascinating discussion for another thread, I don’t want to hijack this one any further.

(Spaceship? What spaceship? I don’t see any spaceships!)

172

[QUOTE=lowbrass]
Der Trihs doesn’t speak for my side.
[/QUOTE]
I don’t know why…he basically advances the same argument.

It’s funny in the sense of being an unusual definition of dishonest. A statement is usually not considered “dishonest” if the person say it believes it to be true.

173

[QUOTE=Bryan Ekers]
Because it’s in, I dunno, space? Shooing a kid off my lawn is somewhat different than shooing him out an airlock because the lawn is on earth and the airlock (along with the spaceship) is in space. Breathing oxygen while standing on my lawn (where I have pretty all of Earth’s atmosphere to choose from) is somewhat different from having to breathe from whatever I have stored in the onboard tanks, and eating isn’t a problem because I can walk from my lawn to the corner store, whereas, y’know, space doesn’t have a whole lot of conveniently-placed Seven-Elevens. Given the difficulties of living in SPACE, intrusions that would be trivial WHEN YOU ARE STANDING ON YOUR LAWN ON EARTH AND NOT IN SPACE suddenly become gravely serious. Whether or not I could keep the kid around for my nine-month voyage to Saturn doesn’t matter - I figure I’m not obliged to, given the stakes, and if I want the kid out by whatever criteria I feel appropriate, then out he goes.

How is space different from my lawn? Are you for real? That is arguably the stupidest question I’ve yet seen in this thread.
[/QUOTE]
This is arguably the stupidest response in any thread I’ve ever seen. Your position–not mine–yours, was that it was sufficient cause to dispatch our toddler pal, not because he was using up the oxygen, not because he was diminishing the food supply (though clearly these would be sufficient as well), not because he was in space, SPACE, SPACE, but because you didn’t like the color of his eyes. Your justification? It’s your ship, you need no other justification.

If you can’t see how my follow-up question applies, asked in an attempt to clarify what is clearly a ridiculous position, IMO offered up by you only to show how realistically “consistent” your philosophy is–oh well, I can live with your inabilities just fine. ::shrug::

174

[QUOTE=Siege]
Cite. A law was passed by our own Congress banning partial birth abortions and found to be constitutional by the Supreme Court. This happened in February 2006.
[/QUOTE]

That is NOT the same as saying that they believe that women should die rather than have an abortion, and you know it. They are outlawing this particular procedure, not abortion itself. It does not preclude early-term abortions, for example; merely this particular late-term procedure. (And FTR, there are a great many pro-choicers who likewise object to late-term abortions, so the pro-lifers are by no means alone in this regard.)

Besides which, if the unborn truly does endanger the mother’s life, then they should induce premature delivery instead–by C-section, if necessary.

Not by a long shot. Not even close.

175

[QUOTE=Bryan Ekers]
Because it’s in, I dunno, space? Shooing a kid off my lawn is somewhat different than shooing him out an airlock because the lawn is on earth and the airlock (along with the spaceship) is in space. Breathing oxygen while standing on my lawn (where I have pretty all of Earth’s atmosphere to choose from) is somewhat different from having to breathe from whatever I have stored in the onboard tanks, and eating isn’t a problem because I can walk from my lawn to the corner store, whereas, y’know, space doesn’t have a whole lot of conveniently-placed Seven-Elevens. Given the difficulties of living in SPACE, intrusions that would be trivial WHEN YOU ARE STANDING ON YOUR LAWN ON EARTH AND NOT IN SPACE suddenly become gravely serious. ** Whether or not I could keep the kid around for my nine-month voyage to Saturn doesn’t matter - I figure I’m not obliged to, given the stakes**, and if I want the kid out by whatever criteria I feel appropriate, then out he goes.

[/QUOTE]
If I understand your argument, the idea is that if the toddler’s presence creates a risk, you then gain the right to decide if he lives or dies, even if you base that decision on factors other than the risk.

IOW, if a toddler on the lawn created a risk at the same level as he would on a trip to Saturn, then you would be justified in arbitrarily killing him, even for reasons unrelated to that risk. Is that correct?

Or is it only if the toddler creates a risk that is “gravely serious”?

I think that is the problem. As John Mace’s chart seems to show, very few abortions in the US are done because of any “gravely serious” risk to the life of the mother. So if you are going to say that the spaceship analogy works in cases of “gravely serious” risks to the mother, it doesn’t work very well in the case of most abortions in the US.

So the analogy, to be applicable, would have to be more like -

You are on a trip to Saturn. Someone puts a two year old into the hold, hiding him well enough that you don’t discover his presence until it is too late to return to earth.

His presence is inconvenient, of course - someone has to feed him and care for him, but he doesn’t raise the risk level of the mission very much. Voyages to Saturn are dangerous anyway, so your chances of death or serious injury are increased from, say, one percent (depending on the stage of the mission) to, say, two percent*. Would you say that a one-percent increase in risk would be a good justification for killing the toddler for reasons unrelated to risk? (Assume that you are a white bigot, and the toddler is African-American. :slight_smile: )

Regards,
Shodan

*Obviously Der Trihs will assume this site is lying. But unless he can come up with more than another foam-flecked, cretinous rant, we will all have to live with that.

176

[QUOTE=Shodan]
If I understand your argument, the idea is that if the toddler’s presence creates a risk, you then gain the right to decide if he lives or dies, even if you base that decision on factors other than the risk.
[/QUOTE]
This is what he said:

I don’t see any way to interpret this other than the risk to the mission could make the decision easier, but it needn’t enter the discussion at all. He can get rid of the toddler for any reason or none at all.

I don’t think Bryan was arguing what you suggest at all, unless he wants to revise history at this point.

177

As I understand Bryan’s position, I have the right to kick a kid off of my property for any reason.

If that property is my lawn, kicking the kid off my lawn is unlikely to result in death.
If that property is my body, kicking the kid out of my body is likely to result in death.
If that property is my spaceship, kicking the kid out of my spaceship is likely to result in death.

The relevant moral point in all three cases isn’t what happens to the kid once out of my property. The relevant moral point in all three cases isn’t my reason for kicking the kid out of my property. The relevant moral point in all three cases is that the kid is on my property, and I can kick him off of my property.

Is this an accurate summation of your position, Bryan?

If so, I strenuously disagree with the analysis, based in large degree on my rejection of property rights as absolute. A moral subject’s right to life always trumps a moral subject’s right to property, when these are the only two rights entering into conflict.

I also, however, reject analysis of right to control over one’s body as a property right. I’m not sure how to analyze that right, but it ain’t a property right. As such, the question of whether abortion is acceptable if the fetus is sentient is a harder question for me: I tend toward respecting the fetus’s right in such a scenario, but I’m not sure that it’s a scenario that reflects reality.

Daniel

178

[QUOTE=lowbrass]
Originally Posted by AHunter3

Really? You don’t see the right to control your own destiny and not be forced to do something against your will as a more general statement of the idea, and the right to have an abortion as a subset of that idea? It seems pretty obvious to me that it is such.
[/QUOTE]

No. Such a right could be extended to the fetus or embryo (although I’m not clear on how an embryo goes about choosing or controlling its destiny). Such a right could be curtailed or measured against the autonomy-rights of others anywhere it seems to come into conflict with someone else’s right to control their destiny and not be forced to do something against their will, if the fetus / embryo is considered a community resource or a person unto itself or a protected person under the joint custody of the father as well as the mother, etc etc.

I suppose if you really want to derive it from somewhere, you could work from the right to one’s own body, but again we’re dealing with a special unique case here. Discarding an unwanted 8-day embryo can be seen as different from clipping one’s fingernails. The fetus / embryo is definable as a separate lifeform even as it is simultaneously a part of the mother’s body.

Yes, it’s akin to other self-determination clauses, and yes it’s akin to other aspects of what is one’s personal proprietary interests, but ultimately her right to make (and implement) the death decision when she deems it appropriate and necessary stems from her capacity to provide the life opportunity.

179

[ Moderating ]

I know that this is a contentious issue, but there have been too many remarks, recently, that are expressing more hostility than necessary.

So far, the remarks about the lack of intelligence in the arguments presented have stayed behind the “do not attack the poster” line, but they have been expressed with enough venom that it is clear that we are not far from making these comments personal.

Back off.

If you wish to demonstrate that your opponent has demonstrated bad logic or false premises, do it civilly. Anyone who makes the attack personal will be Warned. In addition, following this post, I am liable to issue a Warning to anyone who posts sufficiently hostile language to provoke an actionable response on the grounds that having seen this post, they have continued to push the envelope.

No one has to agree with anyone, but you will disagree civilly.

[ /Moderating ]

180

[QUOTE=Stratocaster]
This is what he said:I don’t see any way to interpret this other than the risk to the mission could make the decision easier, but it needn’t enter the discussion at all. He can get rid of the toddler for any reason or none at all.

I don’t think Bryan was arguing what you suggest at all, unless he wants to revise history at this point.
[/QUOTE]

I was basing it mostly on his amended position.

Although you are correct - he says that it “doesn’t matter” if I could keep the kid around, which I thought meant “if I didn’t incur any serious risk by keeping him around”.

Maybe he will clear it up, but if he is really alleging that trespassing means you forfeit the right to life, then your analogy of the toddler on the lawn is right on point.

I’m guessing that the pro-life side sees it more as a matter of consent than property rights. By having intercourse (given that no method of contraception is foolproof) one is giving implied consent to a pregnancy. You cannot then retroactively withdraw that consent (if the fetus is an independent moral agent).

It’s analogous to the idea of a soldier volunteering for the military and then backing out upon learning that he is being sent to Afghanistan where people might shoot at him. “You knew the job was dangerous when you took it”, as Super Chicken used to say.

Regards,
Shodan

PS - please note the location where the hypothetical soldier got sent. If you think the word contains a ‘q’, please don’t waste the electrons.