Pro-life Atheists: An Argument to Oppose Abortion

Great Debates
81

I don’t think there’s just one “line” in this situation. It’s “OK”, in the sense of “ought to be legal”, to kill a fetus at many different stages of gestation, for different reasons. Arbitrary lines are drawn because we need them for purposes of legal consistency, not because they are logical or sensible in terms of biology.

This means, by your own frequently expressed claims of moral conviction, that you are okay with occasionally murdering fully human persons as long as the murder is just a backup plan instead of the primary intention.

Morally speaking, that’s really no different from saying that to prevent pedestrians from walking down a particular street you should put up barriers at the intersections and also lay landmines to blow up the occasional pedestrians who happen to go past the barriers. Although the primary intent is not to murder human beings, the strategy is deliberately chosen in the full knowledge that it will sometimes murder human beings.

The fact that you would never consent to such an approach to traffic control, but are fine with birth control methods that occasionally kill fertilized eggs, is just one more demonstration that you don’t really consider fertilized eggs to be fully human persons, no matter how much you want to believe you do.

But as this birth-control discussion and many previous points in the thread illustrate, your logical reasoning pretty much sucks. It is simply not logical to claim that you consider a fertilized egg is a fully human person and also to condone sometimes killing fertilized eggs for no other reason than that their existence inconveniences you.

The same objection applies, in spades, to your earlier and equally illogical assertion that you have no problem with killing “fertilized eggs in test tubes”, because “non implanted eggs are non-potentials”. If a fertilized egg is a fully human person, then a viable fertilized egg in a test tube is no more “non-potential” than a human being in an airplane or an elevator or any other artificial environment where they couldn’t survive for a prolonged period without support services. If you wouldn’t condone killing people in an airplane but you don’t mind killing viable fertilized eggs in a test tube, then logically speaking you do not sincerely consider that fertilized eggs are equivalent to fully human persons. No matter how much you may want to believe that you do.

It may be obvious to you, and as I said, there’s no reason you can’t maintain that as your personal belief if that’s how you feel about it. But if you want to actually convince anybody else that it’s objectively an obvious or logical or sensible position to take, you will have to make some way better arguments than you’ve produced so far.

Well, of course it’s not logical: as I’ve been saying all along, it’s intrinsically illogical to assign arbitrary cutoff points to a continuous developmental process. We as a society assign such arbitrary cutoff points because we have to in order to maintain an artificially consistent way of dealing with human gestation in our legal system. Not because it makes logical or biological sense to do so.

Your own position, with all your wobbly thinking on whether or not fertilized eggs are actually equivalent to human persons and your arbitrary chopping and changing on when and how it’s okay to kill them, is no more logical than this one. The difference is that I’m perfectly willing to acknowledge the fundamentally illogical nature of trying to assign a single instantaneous “starting moment” for human personhood, whereas you’re heavily invested in not acknowledging it.

82

I really wish the discussion of blood and organ donations in the OP had not been crowded out.

I really want state lawmakers to start introducing laws mandating blood and organ donation. Even something as simple and non-invasive as making it illegal for a parent to refuse to donate blood or bone marrow to a child who needs a transfusion/transplant. Every single argument on the pro-life side would apply to that, but I think we’d have a lot of people suddenly saying "of course a parent should help their child, but the state can’t force . . . "

83

Kimstu, we are talking past each other apparently. I’m not claiming that the reproductive process is not a continuous process. I’m claiming that, in today’s society with the knowledge we currently have, we have the ability to pick a point in the gestation process that a non-human organism turns into a human, with all the rights that come with it. Not as part of biology, but morally, lawfully. The most logical point of this, I maintain, is when the egg is fertilized. I haven’t seen anything from you to dispute this. Just some form of “it’s continuous, so it doesn’t make sense to pick any point”. Of course it is continuous, but that doesn’t prevent us from picking out discrete moments in that process.

84

But if you are okay with killing any pre-implanted fertilized eggs, then you are not actually considering a fertilized egg as “a human, with all the rights that come with it”. So you are not being logical when you say that that’s the “point” you’ve “picked” for assigning full human personhood.

Even if you mean to be sincere and consistent, you are inadvertently cheating when you declare that you consider a fertilized egg to be a full human person but at the same time shrug off certain circumstances where you condone the choice of killing a fertilized egg.
The problem is not with your acknowledgement that in general a continuous process is not logically the same as a binary on/off switch. The problem is that you want to believe that you’ve made the most logical choice of a “switch point”, but you haven’t really committed to it because you’re willing to allow arbitrary exceptions to it.

If a fertilized egg is to be consistently considered a fully human person from the moment of fertilization onward, then deliberately killing it for any reason, except in immediate defense of one’s own life, must be regarded as murder. Period. If you are willing to condone the deliberate destruction of viable fertilized eggs, whether pre-implanted, in test tubes or in any other circumstances, then you don’t really sincerely believe that fertilized eggs are equivalent to human persons with full human rights.

85

Right, but you’re erring on the extreme side of caution. It’s not any more logical than many other points–it’s just the most conservative, in the non-political sense.

But it’s really easy to be cautious, to mandate that women accept significant damage to their health just in case when it’s not your body and there’s no chance of it ever being your body.

In a much more trivial sense, you’re like a boss mandating everyone use four redundant systems to complete a task just in case the world ends and three get undone. From the point of view of the person making the order, it’s satisfying to be so careful, to make damn sure. But that satisfaction wouldn’t hold if you were being asked to actually do the work.

86

You’re still not giving me your alternative. When should a potential human receive human rights?

87

I’m not sure a potential human ever has an absolute legal right to live inside me. I’m comfortable with the idea that a viable human can’t be killed–it has to be removed. I’m even comfortable with the idea that the minute you do that, that viable human has a mom (and dad) and those parents are legally responsible for it unless and until the state allows them to surrender custody.

But yeah, as long as you can’t take organs from my dead body without my consent AND the consent of my next of kin, as long as I can die for lack of a blood transfusion while a room full of people qualified to save me have the right to say no, fuck, as long as I can die of a treatable chronic disease because I don’t have means to pay and no one can be compelled to give up a minute of their time to treat me, don’t suggest that the law should be able to compel me to stay pregnant.

88

Agreed. But I’m not really all that comfortable with the state mandating blood/marrow/tissue donation (well, it’s not really donation if it’s mandatory) because I do strongly believe in bodily autonomy for all, not just pregnant women. I’d be okay with requiring health insurance companies to discount plans for those who donate regularly or creating a tax incentive to do so, but I still believe it should be a voluntary choice. I can’t think of instance in which I’m ever okay with the state violating bodily autonomy. Forcible medication, forcible sterilization, execution…all reprehensible.

I am completely fine with the state mandating tissue donation of deceased individuals and that’s where I think we should start. I have no problem ending the right to bodily integrity at death. Actually, we already do in the instance of mandating autopsies for suspicious deaths.

89

When do you think that a potential human should receive human rights, in a logically consistent manner? If you say “at fertilization”, then you need to address your abovementioned logical inconsistencies about being willing to deny human rights to fertilized eggs in certain circumstances.

90

The moment the potential becomes a reality. That is, upon leaving the womb. We don’t grant legal rights associated with marriage until marriage occurs. We don’t grant legal rights of parenthood until there is a birth certificate.

ETA: Well, you don’t receive human rights, per se. Your rights are recognized by the state.

91

Why won’t you answer my question?

92

So a fully healthy viable baby inside the womb can be killed and that’s perfectly OK according to the way you wish the law to work, but if that same baby is delivered instead and killed, that would be murder?

93

I’m happy to go on answering your questions, as I have done throughout the thread. I didn’t realize your most recent question was directed to me, because of a post from MandaJO that appeared above it. So, you said:

And I repeat:

So, what part of your question, if any, do you feel requires a fuller answer than I already gave? Ask away.

And in the meantime, how do you defend your logically inconsistent argument about considering human personhood to start at fertilization but allowing the destruction of fertilized eggs in some circumstances?

94

Note, by the way, that this position isn’t intrinsically any more unrealistic or arbitrary than your own preference for considering a microscopic sperm or egg cell entirely nonhuman and disposable until the moment the two combine, at which point you choose to regard the equally microscopic zygote as a fully human person with full human rights.

(Well, except for your previously mentioned doublethink about sometimes considering a fertilized egg a fully human person and sometimes not, but that’s just a flaw in your logic that I hope you will resolve at some point in the discussion.)

95

Yes, but that doesn’t happen for no good reason, so I see no reason to be concerned about that.

However, I think I could be convinced to accept legislation that protects a viable fetus while protecting a woman’s right to end a pregnancy by allowing for an abortion that intends to preserve the life of the fetus. Say, induced premature labor. Sure, it’s not ideal because the womb is a safer incubator, but if we’re that concerned with preserving life, it’s better than nothing, right? Further, inducing labor for the intent of aborting pregnancy will also terminate all parental rights and responsibilities permanently, thereby making the premature infant a ward of the state. It’s not ideal, but it accomplishes your concerns while addressing mine.

96

I’m not either, but if someone proposed the legislation, we could have the discussion.

Why would that terminate a person’s legal responsibilities? You have a right not to have your child inside you, but once it’s born, you’re just as responsible for it’s medical care (and other care) as any other parent. And certainly the father shouldn’t lose his rights in this case.

97

All the rest of your argument seems reasonable and consistent to me, but this bit not so much. I think if we’re operating with the two principles “Fetal life should be protected except where such protection conflicts with the right to terminate an unwanted pregnancy” and “The primary responsibility for supporting children, wanted or unwanted, rests with their biological parents”, then a living premature infant remains the responsibility of its biological mother and father unless they both agree to surrender the child for adoption.

AFAICT, abortion rights are about the right of a woman to terminate a pregnancy in her own body, not about her right to relinquish responsibility for an unwanted existing child. If a pregnancy termination procedure results in a living child instead of a dead fetus, the woman has successfully exercised her right to terminate her pregnancy, but she now has a living child.

That child consequently should remain its mother’s and father’s responsibility unless they both decide to transfer that responsibility elsewhere by adopting out the child. Just as a child born from a non-terminated pregnancy is its mother’s and father’s responsibility unless they both relinquish parental rights, whether or not either or both of them wanted the child.

ETA: As MandaJO said in her ninja way.

98

I feel like I’m repeating myself, but I’ll say it again. Fertilized egg = human. Some have no chance of implantation, whether due to never being in the womb or for some reason the environment is hostile to implantation (from hormonal birth control’s rare case where egg fertilization occurs). The part you seem so hung on is me accepting this sort of birth control as being fine even though there is a small chance of egg fertilization occurring. Well, it’s not fine, but it does help minimize abortions due to the overwhelming primary mechanism of preventing fertilization in the first place.

99

But why is “fertilized egg = human” logical, but “viable = human” is not, nor is “brain waves = human” nor is “nervous system = human” nor is “sperm or egg = human” nor is “breathing = human” nor is “heart beat = human”.

You’re picking an arbitrary point as being the threshold. Why that point? What makes it more authentic than any of the others?

100

Because abortion terminates a parent’s legal responsibilities. If a woman desires not to be a parent for whatever reason, I believe she should have that option before she becomes one. It gets tricky when you factor in the father. If the father chooses to accept legal responsibility for the infant, then I see no reason for the state to not grant it as a default. There is still the problem of when fathers do not want to be parents but become one against their will because the pregnancy is brought to term. They do not have the option of aborting the pregnancy to avoid parenthood. I think the only solution is to allow both parents to relinquish all rights and responsibilities at the time of birth. If the father is unnamed at the time of birth, he shall not be obligated at a later time if he doesn’t wish to have parental rights. I’m still working this problem out, though and I’m open to consideration of where my solutions fail.

Ideally, we would expect women to decide they don’t want to be a parent long before viability, but I can envision situations in which a change in circumstance may change her mind. Illness is perhaps one of those situations; a change in living arrangements or financial insecurity may be others. There are infinite reasons to decide becoming a parent is not desired. At that point, we are faced with either terminating the pregnancy or bringing into the world an unwanted child. If it’s imperative we create situations in which unwanted children exist, we as a society must accept responsibility for them and we must use all the resources at our disposal to ensure the child is well cared for, not just alive for the sake of being alive. The alternative usually means a pretty shitty life for the child and, quite often, serious ramifications for society as that child becomes an adult (i.e., drug addiction, crime, mental instability, etc).