You wake up in the morning and find yourself back to back in bed with an unconscious violinist. A famous unconscious violinist. He has been found to have a fatal kidney ailment, and the Society of Music Lovers has canvassed all the available medical records and found that you alone have the right blood type to help. They have therefore kidnapped you, and last night the violinist's circulatory system was plugged into yours, so that your kidneys can be used to extract poisons from his blood as well as your own. If he is unplugged from you now, he will die; but in nine months he will have recovered from his ailment, and can safely be unplugged from you.A precocious twelve year-old could figure out the obvious problem here - the above analogy is only applicable for rape. Yet somehow, amongst the shrill pro-abortion advocates, this argument persists as a go-to response.
My other favorite (and the topic of this post) is another one of the most common - referring to the inevitability of unsafe "back-alley" abortions. The World Health Organization uses it in a recent paper:
Ending the silent pandemic of unsafe abortion is an urgent public-health and human-rights imperative. As with other more visible global-health issues, this scourge threatens women throughout the developing world. Every year, about 19–20 million abortions are done by individuals without the requisite skills, or in environments below minimum medical standards, or both.Back in the 70s, during the Roe v. Wade battle, the pro-abortionists use the following language:
Legalisation of abortion on request is a necessary but insufficient step toward improving women’s health. Access to safe, legal abortion is a fundamental right of women, irrespective of where they live. The underlying causes of morbidity and mortality from unsafe abortion today are not blood loss and infection but, rather, apathy and disdain toward women.
The term “back alley abortion” describing illegal, unsafe, and often self-induced abortion became a household word in the early 1970’s, as Roe v Wade descended from the Supreme Court. The threat and fear of back alley abortions, with mental images of coat hangers, became the primary argument of legal abortion advocates, including Planned Parenthood and women’s advocacy groups.In sum, we should legalize abortion primarily because women will seek out unsafe alternatives if no legal avenues for abortion are available. Thus, by legalizing abortion and ensuring ample access to these services, we ensure these women will not put themselves in danger by getting abortions from untrained individuals.
As usual, the pro-abortionists completely disregard the moral aspect of life, instead diverting the conversation to ancillary issues not relevant to the most important question. With their blabbering about women's health, rights, and sex education, abortion advocates refuse to acknowledge the tenable notion that life begins as conception and that any proceeding demarcation is wholly arbitrary. In continually re-framing the debate away from the definition of life and consistent with society's glorification of female choice, the abortion advocates end up supporting some idiotic ideas.
Imagine this argument applied to other immoral acts. I present two generalized versions of the abortion argument, with examples following (some apply to the converse):
(1) We must legalize/permit an immoral act because if we do not, people will find an alternative option that is illegal, unsafe, and more dangerous. (Equivalently: We must legalize/permit an immoral act because if we do not, people will engage in even more destructive behavior.)
(2) We must legalize/permit an immoral act because if we do not, negative consequences will occur.
If we legalized murder, then no one would have to kill witnesses. (1)Basically, all the arguments above are absurd because the initial premise (legalizing some horrible act) is indefensible. In each situation subsequent evil will often occur in the absence of legalization (e.g. killing witnesses), but we do not legalize an act merely as a means of avoiding subsequent evil. So while coat-hanger abortions are surely something we want to avoid, permitting abortion/murder is not an acceptable trade-off.
If we legalized rape, then far fewer men would kill their rape victims. (1)
If we legalized murder, then murderers would not have to waste time covering up the crimes. (2)
If we legalized murder, then there would be less people in jail, thus undermining the Prison Industrial Complex. (2)
If we legalized drunk driving, drunk drivers could be more relaxed, thus driving better, because they would not worry about being caught. (1)
If we legalized assault-based muggings, then muggers would engage in far fewer armed-robberies and connected murders. (1)
If women would just relax and let it happen, there would not be so much vaginal injury during rape. (2)
If all women would agree to sex with any man, then men would not have to resort to rape to get sex. (1)
If more 13 year-olds in America agreed to sex, then men would not have to spend all that money to go to Thailand to find willing adolescents. (2)
165 comments:
If you want to get scientific or metaphysical, abortion becomes a very grey area without a perfect answer.
In real life, it eliminates a lot of black, brown, and sundry underclass spawn.
Any discussion but the latter is just jerking off... without the nut.
I don't think your first premise quite captures the essence of the argument. The arguments of that nature that I've come across read more like "We must legalize/permit an immoral act because if we do not, people will do it anyway, except with even worse consequences." Accurate analogies, then, would be the war on drugs and the ban on prostitution.
Interestingly, that argument seems to be more in line with conservative (in the John Derbyshire sense) principles than liberal, utopian, optimistic, etc. ones. Of course, that neocons are more similar to liberals than conservatives really shouldn't be news to anyone.
If you want to get scientific or metaphysical, abortion becomes a very grey area without a perfect answer.
No, it's very black and white, scientifically speaking. Abortion is taking a life, scientifically speaking.
This is why it is the abortion supporter who resort to such religious/metaphysical claptrap as "the quickening".
No, it's very black and white, scientifically speaking. Abortion is taking a life, scientifically speaking.
It's pretty clearly a value judgment, which coincidentally is one of those areas that cannot be determined by science. Science deals in facts, not values. It's true that you're taking a life when you have an abortion. It's also true that you are supporting the taking of life when you eat bacon, hamburgers, or lamb. If you think that the axiom that the taking of life is immoral in and of itself, then I dearly hope for consistency's sake that you support animal rights as well as pro-life causes.
As for me, I'm not convinced of the moral argument of either as merely that a being is a lifeform (or as most pro-lifers make a point to clarify, a human lifeform) is not a sufficient cause to say that the ending of its life is an inherently immoral act. Certainly, I know that Catholic theology holds that it is, but I don't accept Catholicism, so I see no reason to accept such an argument, which is obviously based on terminological games (though I certainly admit that pro-choice activists play such games as well).
What is a life? Conception seems just as arbitrary.
Moral relativism is the working paradigm. Morality is based on a utility function for society. If, for instance, making pot illegal causes more societal pain then making it legal, who cares if toking up is "immoral".
The 'they're gonna do it anyway' argument is a sleight of hand--notice it is never applied to anything the arguer wants to be illegal. So we should legalize child pornography because people will do it anyway...oh wait that wasn't where we wanted to go.
It's not a serious argument, being a form of begging the question, and should generally be disregarded.
In any case, the reason we have legal abortion now is the same reason we have many things: man-children who wish to avoid the consequences of their actions. All the rights talk is a red herring.
In any case, the reason we have legal abortion now is the same reason we have many things: man-children who wish to avoid the consequences of their actions.
So you think it's men who overwhelmingy support abortion, not women? I'd like to see some stats on that.
Abortion is a tool of racial warfare and genetic hygiene. That's why it has my support.
It is murder, but, more often than not, righteous and efficacious murder.
I don't think your first premise quite captures the essence of the argument. The arguments of that nature that I've come across read more like "We must legalize/permit an immoral act because if we do not, people will do it anyway, except with even worse consequences." Accurate analogies, then, would be the war on drugs and the ban on prostitution.
What are the "worse consequences" of back-alley abortions? That murderers will be inconvenienced and might even die themselves?
True, the "back-alley" argument is not the most compelling reason to permit abortion under the law.
The most compelling reason is that no human being, One included, has ever truly believed that fetuses are deserving of legal protection equal to people who've been born. No one.
What most anti-abortion activists actually want is to deny abortion to certain types of people whose behavior they disapprove of. Thus, they only want to protect the unborn children of certain people in certain situations.
Of course, they always argue that they're just super moral people who want to protect all "life." Don't you want to protect ALL life? Why aren't you as good a person as super-amazing me? But this pretension to hyper-moral awareness is obviously hollow. No one wants to equally protect ALL life. No one ever has.
Because no anti-abortion activists can coherently connect their desired policies to a clear moral principle, the moral argument can safely be disregarded. Laws prohibiting abortions, but only in certain arbitrary cases, are not "moral."
Practical arguments such as the "back-alley" argument thus have a lot more weight.
. . . merely that a being is a lifeform (or as most pro-lifers make a point to clarify, a human lifeform) is not a sufficient cause to say that the ending of its life is an inherently immoral act.
Why then are you opposed to murdering innocent adult humans? (Supposing you are opposed to that, of course). In what conditions is murdering innocents OK?
One writes an essay on the use of non-logical metaphors to justify Liberal behaviors, and most of the respondents......non-logical metaphors to justify their own belief in abortion.
animal rights are the same as human rights? Oh my, are you ever a twisted soul--Liberal to the core. Do you also whine about "modern" women and their behaviors toward "modern" men?
Justifying abortion because you think it limits the growth of the third worlders in our midst? Sanger thought the Irish were of the same kin, it is they who she wished to curtail the growth of.
BTW, I much prefer the pro-infanticide argument that it's merely a polyglot of cellular tissue which is not discernibly different than a fish. Of course the complete lack of logic and the obvious lie in such a statement never occurs to those who use it nor those who actually listen to it. The simple fact that a fish cannot beget a human nor a human a fish never seems to occur to them and how ridiculous their statement is. Of course human life begins at conception--just like equine life begins at conception for a horse.
"Every year, about 19–20 million abortions are done by individuals without the requisite skills, or in environments below minimum medical standards, or both."
They just pull these numbers out of their hats.
The year before Roe v. Wade, 39 women in the US died of illegal abortions.
The percentage of women willing to risk death to avoid the humiliation of being unwillingly pregnant is pretty damned low. These are the dumbest and most deranged folks out there. Any rational woman can figure out that she can hide the pregnancy for a long time and then she can move away if she is so embarrassed after she gives up the kid for adoption. This is a very mobile, non-judgemental society.
When abortion was illegal, most of the illegal abortions were done by regular doctors for friends and friends of friends that he was pretty sure wouldn't lead to prosecution. Doctors aren't known for being extra stupid. So, the whole thing is just nonsense.
"Abortion is a tool of racial warfare and genetic hygiene. That's why it has my support.
It is murder, but, more often than not, righteous and efficacious murder."
Sailer posted some statistics to the effect that conception rates shot up after roe v wade, which means that there are women who are using it as a birth control method, and more importantly, women who plan to do that, but ultimately fail to. The result was, 15 years after roe, the largest teen murder rate in this country's history(corresponding to the inner city crack wars).
Abortion is being used in a dysgenic fashion, though it is living up to the race war aspect.
Gingers are creepy as fuck, RobertB.
They have the devil's red hair.
The Pope is a lie.
What most anti-abortion activists actually want is to deny abortion to certain types of people whose behavior they disapprove of. Thus, they only want to protect the unborn children of certain people in certain situations.
Abortions for brunettes, but not redheads? Abortions for New Englanders, but not Midwesterners? Abortions for hair dressers, but not for kindergarten teachers?
I want to nominate Dave for making one of the worst arguments of the year:
"The most compelling reason is that no human being, One included, has ever truly believed that fetuses are deserving of legal protection equal to people who've been born. No one."
What's your support for this assertion? I know lots of people who absolutely do believe this, myself included.
"What most anti-abortion activists actually want is to deny abortion to certain types of people whose behavior they disapprove of. Thus, they only want to protect the unborn children of certain people in certain situations."
Well, I'm glad to see you know what all of us "actually want." What great powers you must have to be able to read minds. And what "types" of people are you talking about here? I honestly have no idea. And what are these "certain situations" you speak of? Is this some reference everyone's supposed to just understand?
"Of course, they always argue that they're just super moral people who want to protect all 'life.' Don't you want to protect ALL life? Why aren't you as good a person as super-amazing me? But this pretension to hyper-moral awareness is obviously hollow. No one wants to equally protect ALL life. No one ever has."
Well, if you're including animals, then, no, I don't want to protect ALL life. Besides, the pro-life argument isn't even about protecting all human life, but all INNOCENT human life.
"Because no anti-abortion activists can coherently connect their desired policies to a clear moral principle, the moral argument can safely be disregarded. Laws prohibiting abortions, but only in certain arbitrary cases, are not 'moral.'"
You make the bald assertion that the desired policies can't be connected to a moral principle. I'll do it for you: I believe it is immoral to end an innocent human life (moral principle). I believe that abortion is the end of an innocent human life. Therefore, I believe that abortion is immoral. It is generally accepted that one way to discourage people from doing immoral things is to make those things illegal. Therefore, I would like to see abortion made illegal.
Is that good enough for you?
Reasonable people with half a brain and good values never really want or need abortions anyway, so I don't see why it is an issue of concern to the alternative right.
Personally if there are fewer crackheads around to rob me at gunpoint, I'm good with that. It's a sad situation when I and every single one of my nearby relatives has been robbed or burglarized at some point in the past 10 years. I only wish I were kidding or exaggerating, but that is the deep south for ya.
So I am pro-life, for the various mostly productive innocent people who are viciously targeted by thugs every single day. If only there were more "family planning" resources available in the neighborhoods which produce said thugs.
The pro-abortion arguments are kind of similar to the pro-drug legalization arguments. Both think that legalizing something wrong will make the situation better and not worse.
Because no anti-abortion activists can coherently connect their desired policies to a clear moral principle, the moral argument can safely be disregarded. Laws prohibiting abortions, but only in certain arbitrary cases, are not "moral."
This folks is the logic of an irrational liberal like Dave.
It's pretty clearly a value judgment, which coincidentally is one of those areas that cannot be determined by science.
I suppose you'll eventually get around to backing up your claim that "when life begins" is a value judgement? Right?
If you think that the axiom that the taking of life is immoral in and of itself, then I dearly hope for consistency's sake that you support animal rights as well as pro-life causes
You think that killing a human is identical to killing a sheep, or to killing a carrot? The fact that you find yourself making these insane arguments should tip you off that there is something badly wrong with your premises.
I don't think your first premise quite captures the essence of the argument. The arguments of that nature that I've come across read more like "We must legalize/permit an immoral act because if we do not, people will do it anyway, except with even worse consequences."
I suppose we could add your premise to my two. Though my second one encompasses your premise as it's more general. I still think that their argument can be couched in the terms I present, though I like yours as well. Plus, one could just slightly change my absurd examples to fit into your generalization.
What is a life? Conception seems just as arbitrary.
A pregnancy test is "arbitrary". You're either pregnant or you're not. Binary. That's an objective fact that can be gaged by science.
There's nothing "arbitrary" about sperm, egg, and human womb coming together to produce a verifiable pregnancy. Once that happens, it's a definitive line and the only line where one doesn't make arbitrary judgments (e.g. a heartbeat means it's a life).
If you think that the axiom that the taking of life is immoral in and of itself, then I dearly hope for consistency's sake that you support animal rights as well as pro-life causes.
I think we may have a new champion for dumbest pro-abortion argument. Animal life is morally equivalent to human life?!?!
I was going to respond to Dave until Saint Louis ripped him apart. Thanks.
no human being, One included, has ever truly believed that fetuses are deserving of legal protection equal to people who've been born. No one.
Dear God, that's idiotic. Are you actually going to argue that the anti-abortion people do not "truly believe" what they say? And that's the basis of your entire pro-abortion position?
It's as if a pro-slavery person in 1850 said "No human being ever truly believed that blacks are humans deserving of legal protection equal to real (white) people. No one."
Making up your own stupid conjectures and attributing them to other people does not an argument make.
Should read:
A pregnancy test is NOT "arbitrary".
Sanger thought the Irish were of the same kin, it is they who she wished to curtail the growth of.
Whatever the topic under discussion, you can always rely on RobertB to get in some witless and near-incomprehensible anti-Irish remark which has nothing to do with anything anybody else is talking about.
Anonymous said:
"Whatever the topic under discussion, you can always rely on RobertB to get in some witless and near-incomprehensible anti-Irish remark which has nothing to do with anything anybody else is talking about."
Huh? It's only incomprehensible if you were expecting an anti-Irish remark. It seemed like he was pointing out that the eugenics argument for abortion is lacking. Implicit in this was the assumption that we should not be trying to limit the Irish population; hardly an an anti-Irish remark.
Huh? It's only incomprehensible if you were expecting an anti-Irish remark. It seemed like he was pointing out that the eugenics argument for abortion is lacking. Implicit in this was the assumption that we should not be trying to limit the Irish population; hardly an an anti-Irish remark.
Implicit in this was the assumption that an Irish Catholic girl like Margaret Higgins (who later married and became Margaret Sanger) "wished to curtail the growth" of the Irish (that is, her own) population, and that she regarded the Irish (that is, herself) as "third-worlders".
Hence, "incomprensible".
Most people use a combination of deontological and teleological morality: There are some things they are not willing to condone, no matter the cost, and some issues where they are willing to argue about "lesser evils". Those in the pro-legalization camp put abortion in the latter category, hence nydwracu's point.
Of course, that is in some sense begging the question regarding what category abortion is in. However, both camps have already made their positions clear, one thinks that abortion is at worst a "lesser evil", the other thinks it is at least in the same category as murder. Furthermore, the pro- camp thinks the anti- camp is often making that argument in bad faith, that they often don't really believe that abortion is in the same moral category as murder.
If that's the situation, members of the pro- camp have every reason to beg the question. Someone who doesn't really believe that abortion "is murder" will argue the question of whether abortion is murder until blue in the face, but they still may be swayed by question-begging "lesser evil" arguments.
the tenable notion that life begins as conception and that any proceeding demarcation is wholly arbitrary
Also, birth is one "proceeding demarcation" that would be completely absurd to describe as "wholly arbitrary".
"What's your support for this assertion? I know lots of people who absolutely do believe this, myself included."
Yeah, I doubt it. Offering equal legal protection to all unborn human life would involve a vast restructuring of society, and you rarely hear anti-abortion activists clamoring for this. For starters, you'd have to start jailing women who had abortions. You'd have to criminalize in vitro fertilization. You'd have to issue social security numbers to fetuses.
I don't see in anti-abortion activists a desire to restructure American society. I see a desire to criminalize abortion, and little beyond that.
"Well, I'm glad to see you know what all of us "actually want." What great powers you must have to be able to read minds."
Nah, I just listen when people talk.
"And what "types" of people are you talking about here? I honestly have no idea."
Really? Pay more attention, then, I guess. Many anti-abortion activists want abortion to be legal in the case of rape. Many, if not all, want it to be legal if the health of the mother is at risk. This to say nothing of the anti-abortion activists who, when push comes to shove, actually GET ABORTIONS.
"And what are these "certain situations" you speak of?"
The "certain situation" that many anti-abortion activists have in mind is that of a woman who is seeking to escape paying what they see as the penalty for having sex. Perhaps you find this position abhorrent. But people who think like this certainly swell the ranks of the movement.
"You make the bald assertion that the desired policies can't be connected to a moral principle"
Correct. Because they're piecemeal, they don't derive from principle.
For example, a law that only prohibits tall people from murdering short ones, but leaves all other murder legal, does not derive from the moral principle "murder is wrong."
It seems to me that the legal structures anti-abortion activists actually desire, by design, only prohibit SOME loss of unborn human life. So they do not derive from the principle that ALL human life must be protected.
"Is that good enough for you?"
I don't know. If you're arguing for the implementation of ALL laws that derive from the principle that all derive from the principle that it's immoral to end a human life, then you're principled. If you're only arguing for SOME of the laws that derive from that principle, then you're not. But it's all or nothing.
You are making a tremendous political mistake in adopting the "morality" angle against current abortion law. Our problem is radical leftists, and the reduction in quality of life/increase in cost of living that their various pet projects represent to ordinary people. Since the availability of abortion does not nearly so impact sensible people, it's much better to oppose current abortion law on the simple ground of democracy - it should be subject to majoritarian decision in the states. This would be appear much more reasonable and "cool" to the younger voters that are needed to overturn the leftist project. We have to take advantage of youth's inherent distaste for age, and we should paint current abortion law as the project of saggy titted hippies, which of course it is. Time for the hippies to leave the world stage.
"With their blabbering about women's health, rights, and sex education, abortion advocates refuse to acknowledge the tenable notion that life begins as conception and that any proceeding demarcation is wholly arbitrary."
It doesn't begin at conception. It takes much longer than that for anything resembling a child to develop. A baby doesn't materialize in the womb the second the man's sperm reaches its target.
We waste our time engaging in these types of debates when the real question is whether one who believes in a "mother's right" to kill her child in utero deserves a seat at the table of civilization. Clearly, because such a person is a self-annihilator, the answer is an emphatic NO....
Anyone who believes that THEIR mother has/had the "right" to kill them FROM THE beginning is an insane fool.
I murder babies all over yalls wives' faces and back tattoos.
Nice try, but "resembling a baby" in shape is not necessarily the main issue... although the embryo/fetus does indeed begin to "resemble a baby" well before the legal limit on elective abortion.
Also, birth is one "proceeding demarcation" that would be completely absurd to describe as "wholly arbitrary".
How so? What is so ontologically significant about whether the child gets his oxygen from the umbilical cord or by breathing? Also, define "birth." At what stage of the birthing process does it become a person with a right to life? When contractions begin? At crowning? When the cord is cut? When the birth certificate is filled out?
A baby doesn't materialize in the womb the second the man's sperm reaches its target.
All right. Then at what point does it materialize?
Offering equal legal protection to all unborn human life would involve a vast restructuring of society
Any chance that you will ever offer any rational arguments in support of your claims? What would this "vast restructuring of society" look like?
you'd have to start jailing women who had abortions.
You think that is a "vast restructuring of society"? You seem to spend a lot of time tossing around hyperbolic words and phrases which you don't understand at all.
I don't see in anti-abortion activists a desire to restructure American society. I see a desire to criminalize abortion, and little beyond that.
What the hell are you talking about? You are the one saying that criminalizing abortion requires the "vast restructuring of society". Now you seem to be objecting that the people who oppose abortion do not want this "restructuring of society".
Your thought processes are so muddy and confused that nobody can understand them. Including you, I suspect. There is no rational basis for your position. You just want what you want and are casting about for anything you can say to try to justify it.
It seems to me that the legal structures anti-abortion activists actually desire, by design, only prohibit SOME loss of unborn human life. So they do not derive from the principle that ALL human life must be protected.
Ah hah!
You've got me there. I support the death penalty, so clearly I don't fit in the camp of people who think that ALL human life must be protected.
Here's the problem, you mental midget. You keep coming up with these notions in your own mind of what other people think, and then you criticize those other people for not behaving in accordance with the ideas which you imagined are in their heads.
It's easy to defeat other people in mental combat when you do the thinking for them as well as for yourself.
Please extract your head from its current location in your rectum and engage with the arguments other people are making and not with these silly constructs of your own (none too bright) mind.
I don't know. If you're arguing for the implementation of ALL laws that derive from the principle that all derive from the principle that it's immoral to end a human life, then you're principled. If you're only arguing for SOME of the laws that derive from that principle, then you're not. But it's all or nothing.
You would not recognize a principle if one was hammered into your remarkably dense skull. So please refrain from attempting to lecture other people on "principles".
the pro- camp thinks the anti- camp is often making that argument in bad faith, that they often don't really believe that abortion is in the same moral category as murder.
What a fabulously bizarre position.
Setting aide the pretensions to mind-reading going on there, what do the pro-abortion people think is the real reason why anti-abortion people oppose it?
It strikes me that the left are engaging in projection here. They themelves often adapt psuedo-moral positions as an excuse to impose their will on others. So perhaps they magine that other people do the same thing.
This needs going over, partly to show how the "pro-life" position is built on unsupported assertions, and partly to show how OneSTDV is a capital-B Believer who takes his dogma straight.
“Pro-abortion advocates have come up with some pretty dumb arguments. My favorite is the "the violinist"”
Remember this. He leads with it, because it's important.
“A precocious twelve year-old could figure out the obvious problem here - the above analogy is only applicable for rape.”
It's applicable for anyone who didn't want to be joined to the violinist/fetus, even if they answered an ad for assistance which yielded the test result but backed out. There was a lack of consent for the connection.
It's ironic that OneSTDV mentions the case of rape, because he doesn't allow for a rape exemption to abortion laws and killing of a third party isn't a remedy for rape.
“abortion advocates refuse to acknowledge the tenable notion that life begins as conception and that any proceeding demarcation is wholly arbitrary.”
That's got two errors: it contains a false characterization, and also a huge ambiguity.
1. The pro-choice position does not deny that the opposite position is tenable. They just don't believe it, and correctly assert that an essentially religious position on the matter should not form the foundation of government reproductive policy.
2. The claim uses the fallacy of equivocation. What is "conception"? It is ambiguous. There is fertilization, and there is implanatation. The "pro-life" claim is that life "begins" at fertilization (as if both gametes are not alive!), but at that moment there is no pregnancy. Pregnancy begins at implantation.
This goes right back to "the violinist". It asserts a "right to implant", which is essentially what's being claimed on behalf of the hypothetical musician.
“(1) We must legalize/permit an immoral act”
Faulty reasoning. Abortion is only an immoral act if someone is unjustly harmed. It is not proven or even argued that the fetus/embryo/zygote is a person, it is merely asserted. On the contrary, it is undeniable that a zygote, embryo or early fetus has no sensation, no memory and no thoughts (nerve connections aren't grown). Such a thing is not a person in any meaningful sense of the word. The "pro-life" claim devalues real people, even worse than putting Black robbers, rapists and murderers above White victims.
I could assert that allowing you to spout such nonsense is immoral, and you ought to be made to shut up. That is exactly what the leftists say about HBD. You should practice what you preach, and have evidence and reasoning to back up all your positions.
Birth is a clearer dividing line than anything you've raised. The circulatory system changes radically in a matter of seconds, and there is no doubt about when it happens. The only reason you are making noise about abortion and "the beginning of life" is because you have adopted the right-wing social-conservative dogma wholesale. Thinking and reasoning beyond the confines of ideology is beyond you. You are a Believer.
There is subjectivity involved.
A person who knowingly kicks a pregnant woman in the belly at month-one of pregnancy is a murderer.
A doctor who performs a late-term abortion on a woman who just learned that her child is a rapist's and not her husband's is doing a grim but morally correct act.
A pregnancy test is "arbitrary". You're either pregnant or you're not. Binary. That's an objective fact that can be gaged by science.
Pregnancy tests which look for HCG aren't reliable until a week after the missed period, and implanted zygotes slough off with very high frequency. "even without the use of birth control, between 50% and 70% of zygotes never result in established pregnancies, much less birth."
Here is a man who recognizes a biological gulf between persons of recent European vs. African descent, but can't bring himself to acknowledge the far greater differences between zygote and baby. The radical egalitarian doublethinkers of the Left got nothin' on him!
Anonymous: "All right. Then at what point does it materialize?"
There is no such point because it doesn't just pop into existence. Do you really not understand how pregnancy works?
There is no such point because it doesn't just pop into existence.
You're being evasive. At some point a human baby exists in the womb, right? Whether it "pops into existence" is neither here not there. Once you grant that what is in the womb is a human being, killing that human being is murder.
It's applicable for anyone who didn't want to be joined to the violinist/fetus, even if they answered an ad for assistance which yielded the test result but backed out. There was a lack of consent for the connection.
But there is no "lack of consent". If you have sex without using birth control, you are "consenting".
The pro-choice position does not deny that the opposite position is tenable.
You seem to have missed all the pro-abortion people on this very thread who claim that the anti-abortion side are lying about their reasons for being anti-abortion.
Abortion is only an immoral act if someone is unjustly harmed. It is not proven or even argued that the fetus/embryo/zygote is a person, it is merely asserted.
You're trying to steal a couple of bases there. On the contrary, it is both "argued" and "proven" that a fetus at a certain stage of development is in fact a "human". It has human brain activity. The absence of such brain activity is widely accepted to indicate death, or the end of life. Logically, the beginning of such brain activity should be seen as the beginning of human life.
Trick question. Human beings don't exist in the womb.
Birth is a clearer dividing line than anything you've raised. The circulatory system changes radically in a matter of seconds, and there is no doubt about when it happens.
Really? Since when has the circulatory system embodied the essence of being human? If I'm having an operation and my respiratory and circulatory systems are taken over by machines, am I "dead"?
The only reason you are making noise about abortion and "the beginning of life" is because you have adopted the right-wing social-conservative dogma wholesale. Thinking and reasoning beyond the confines of ideology is beyond you. You are a Believer.
Lefties are the most irrational and fervent "Believers" in America. They talk a lot about "reason" but display no particular aptitude for it.
Peter Singer deals with this subject in his book "Practical Ethics", chapter "Taking Life: The Embryo and the Fetus". In that chapter he deals with the various pro-abortion arguments, what he calls "liberal replies" ending with the violinist scenario that OneSTDV has argued against. This scenario was put forward by Judith Jarvis Thomson.
Singer states that "Thomson claimed that her argument justified abortion even if we allowed the life of the fetus to count as heavily as the life of a normal person. The utilitarian would say that it would be wrong to refuse to sustain a person's life for nine months, if that was the only way the person could survive. Therefore if the life of the fetus is given the same weight as the life of a normal person, the utilitarian would say that it would be wrong to refuse to carry the fetus until it can survive outside the womb." Page 149 Second Edition.
Thomson's scenario does not dispute that the fetus is human nor life but that there "...is a system of rights and obligations that allows us to justify our actions independently of their consequences." p148 So, it is not disputed that the fetus is human and it is life. In fact no serious non propagandist can promote the notion that a fetus is not human at conception nor life. Unless the definition of human is changed, which is exactly what Singer does by defining human as having a level of "...rationality, self-consciousness, awareness, autonomy, capacity to feel, etc." Page 151 In short what Singer calls sentience. On that basis therefore his "suggestion, then, is that we accord the life of a fetus no greater value than the life of a nonhuman animal at similar levels of sentience.
The point for all of us here is that arguments in support of abortion are not limited to that of the unborn's rights nor women's rights, they go to the core of OUR rights. It's not a political contest but a contest over each and everyone of your rights to exist - or not. So you'd be best dealing with the subject sensibly for your own sake.
With regard "liberal" arguments that the fetus is not human life Singer concludes on page 149 (before expressing his sentience argument) that; "We have seen that liberals have failed to establish a morally significant dividing line between the newborn baby and the fetus, and their arguments - with the possible exception of Thomson's argument if her theory of rights can be defended - also fail to justify abortion in ways that do not challenge the conservative claim that the fetus is an innocent human being."
The conservative position is:
"First premise: It is wrong to kill an innocent human being.
Second premise: A human fetus is an innocent human being.
Conclusion: Therefore it is wrong to kill a human fetus."
Trick question. Human beings don't exist in the womb.
Ha ha.
So what does exist in the womb? Aliens with acid in their veins?
No subject so illustrates the intellectual fraudulence at the heart of liberalism as this one. No subject so illustrates their tendency to say "it depends on what the meaning of "is" is". No subject so illustrates their belief that they can alter the very fabric of reality by taking control of the meanings of words.
"If we define what is in the womb as not being human, than by definition what is in the womb is not human!"
Behold the lofty heights of liberal intellectualism! No wonder they worship lawyers.
I remember being born.
At least, I think I remember being born. If I believe the pro-abortion side here, then the "I" which existed before the umbilical cord was cut was actually a completely different being - a completely different kind of being - than the "I" which existed afterwards.
Somebody here is engaging in mystical mumbo-jumbo in definace of all the scienific knowledge which we have amassed. It's just ironic that it's the same people who have an exaggated view of their own rationality and respect for science and who spend so much time sneering at mysticim.
Corrected quote: On that basis therefore his "...suggestion, then, is that we accord the life of a fetus no greater value than the life of a nonhuman animal at a similar level of rationality, self-consciousness, awareness, capacity to feel, etc [sentience]. Since no fetus is a person, no fetus has the same claim to life as a person."
Note also, because Singer equates the fetus with "other animals" of like sentience and the "...balance of conflicting interests does make it necessary to kill a sentient creature, it is important that the killing be done as painlessly as possible.
Singer himself is horrified at the pain that is endured by the fetus and in particular instance of late term abortion as it is undeniable that the unborn child does experience extreme pain.
Comparing abortion to drug use is completely wrong.
You can't even compare drug use to abortion. Taking a drug, illegal or otherwise, does nobody any harm. The same cannot be said for abortion. Of course, there are moral arguments regarding distribution and sale of drugs meaning there will always be drug LAWS, even when they are finally legalized. However, the act of taking and enjoying a drug is in no way immoral.
This all begs the question - what gives anyone the right to impose their morality on someone else. You dream about this homogeneous society where everyone sees things the same way. This worked somewhat in the days when villages were small and isolated.
In the real world, there are risks and rewards, actions, mistakes and damage.
Moral Realism demands we base our decisions based on the least amount of harm. While abortion is usually a selfish decision, bringing a life into the world can also be harmful. I can't make that decision for someone who is an adult. It ultimately lies with those involved. We can only encourage responsibility and it would help to take by take the stigma out of unwed parenthood.
As with adults, some babies just need killing.
...what gives anyone the right to impose their morality on someone else.?
Talk about begging the question. Law is morality mandated in enforceable rules of behaviour, so are you arguing against having laws?
You yourself argue your utilitarian moral system: Moral Realism demands we base our decisions based on the least amount of harm. How does moral realism make this demand? Where can I meet this moral realism? Does he/she/it have any other names? Fred Arbuckle perhaps?
If the majority of people in a democracy agree to your definition of moral realism then that would give them the right to impose it on those who disagree via law. In a totalitarian system the rule of "might is right" would equally give those in power the right to impose their morality on their subjects via law.
What you are really arguing is that you don't want anyone to tell you what to do, but you also maintain the right to demand others behave in accordance with your morality of "Moral Reason", whatever that is, and we note you have capitalised the term.
As with adults, some babies just need killing.
Quite agree. But we may differ on which adults and which babies just need killing.
I'll save children, but not the British children.
It is worthwhile in order to separate the wheat from the chaff to express the traditional or conservative argument again:
First premise: It is wrong to kill an innocent human being.
Second premise: A human fetus is an innocent human being.
Conclusion: Therefore it is wrong to kill a human fetus.
For those who argue in favour of abortion they need argue against premise 1 or 2. By stating their case we will understand their moral position on the subject.
We should note that Peter Singer, a famous utilitarian, does not argue that a fetus is not a human being, in fact he categorically rejects the notion as unscientific and logically wrong. He argues for personhood as defined by sentience.
Now if a person with what we can characterise as extreme views on the subject can make the honest and rational conclusion that a fetus is a human being in the traditional understanding then we likewise should admit what is true, whether we like the implications or not.
So, now that we agree, my question is: why shouldn't I kill anyone who disagrees with me? Say for instance that one determines a type of people do not meet the standards of human definition, I don't know, say Jews for instance, why shouldn't we kill them?
After all, if Singer can determine a new level of personhood that mandates his morality then what is to stop other people from defining personhood in their own terms and applying the logical conclusions?
You lack the will and the sack...
Slightly O/T, but they just said on Animal Planet that a jellyfish stopped the U.S.S. Ronald Reagan.
That seems like a Jew Lie(tm), if ever I did hear one.
Should a man have to support a child he didn't want? Since the woman is solely responsible for allowing a zygote to become a child, why shouldn't she be solely responsible for supporting that child?
Ah, very good Whitey. Having will + sack is reason enough for you.
Once people get beyond the idiot propagandistic so called arguments for abortion and deal with the reasoned substantive arguments it is a very good subject to focus people's minds on what is right or wrong.
So what does exist in the womb?
Something that's human, but not yet a human being. You know, in the same category that anti-abortionists put sperm and ova, but with no doubt about whether it exists or where.
First premise: It is wrong to kill an innocent human being.
Second premise: A human fetus is an innocent human being.
Premise 2 is wrong, twice. A human fetus is not yet a human being, and if it is where it is not wanted, it is not innocent; it's invading someone's body, like a rapist.
Something that's human, but not yet a human being.
Something that's human, but not yet a human being?
Could you be any lamer? What properties does this thing which is human, but not yet a human being, gain in its passage through the birth canal (or through the opening made in a c-section) which confers the status of "human being" on it?
The people in this debate who engage in mystical mumbo-jumbo are the pro-abortionists. Trying to get a straight, rational answer out of you is like squeezing water from a stone.
A human fetus is not yet a human being,
Using your vast storehouse of scientific knowledge, explain to the audience what the differences are between a "fetus" two minutes prior to birth and a "human being" two minutes after birth. Give particular emphasis to the mysterious process by which the first thing is not a human being, but the second is.
I'll save children, but not the British children.
I heard you once held an opponent's wife's hand in a jar of acid...at a party.
"You're being evasive."
I am plainly telling you how it is.
Is this "wigger" behavior?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6S0kXf0Uxs&feature=relmfu
Watch the Jewish Soul Khan destroy the competition here.
No, JCS, you aren't. You still haven't answered my question:
Also, define "birth." At what stage of the birthing process does it become a person with a right to life? When contractions begin? At crowning? When the cord is cut? When the birth certificate is filled out?
And for that matter, no one else has attempted an answer to that question.
Birth is far more arbitrary than conception. There is less qualitative difference between the fetus a couple minutes before exiting the birth canal and the neonate a couple minutes afterwards than there is between unfertilized sex cells and the zygote.
Damn, son, he treated him like The Jew treats a fetus or The Constitution.
Yall are making One's thread ridiculous.
Like an unwanted baby, yall need to cut it out.
@anonymous
"You would not recognize a principle if one was hammered into your remarkably dense skull."
A principle is a belief that doesn't derive from anything else. It just exists. It is always true. You cannot half-believe a principle. You're all-in or all-out.
Someone may CLAIM to subscribe to the moral principle that "all innocent human life must be legally protected." But if they also hold beliefs that contradict the principle, such as "abortion should be legal in cases of rape," then they don't ACTUALLY hold the principle.
Pointing this out isn't mind-reading. It's not even presumptuous. It's just calling someone out for holding two contradicting beliefs.
Pretty simple.
Also. I understand, Anonymous, that you realize you've lost the argument and that you're upset about that. But calling me a meanie and a stupid-head isn't snatching victory from the jaws of defeat. It simply emphasizes the COMPLETENESS of your intellectual failure.
Regrets,
Dave
"No, JCS, you aren't."
It is a simple fact that babies don't magically pop into existence. Pregnancy does not work that way.
Pat Hannagan,
The argument is much simpler than what you have presented.
First, one must de-euphemize "abortion" so that we can all understand what it really means to "believe" in the "right" to an abortion.
When an abortionist asserts his belief, he is asserting a mother's "right" to kill her child in utero.
This is "abortion" clearly defined.
But it does not stop there. This "right" is near universal in the liberal mind and now readily "transcends" any notion of legality.
Now, since we all had a mother that at one time carried us (their child) in utero, when we assert a belief in "abortion," we say something very disturbing.
We consciously or subconsciously assert the "right" of our mothers to have killed us in utero.
We assert that if our mothers would have killed us in utero, it would have been her "right."
And since exercising one's "rights" is a good thing in the liberal mind, a mother "aborting" you would have been a good thing...
The abortionist is a self-annihilator. He deserves to be rejected from the table of civilization.
You keep repeating your ridiculous straw man about "babies popping magically into existence." That says more about you than us. There's nothing magical about the fertilization of an egg, although you seem to think it's a magical process. Pro-abortion advocates are incredibly prone to this sort of bizarre thinking.
Oh, and you're still avoiding my question: At what point during the process of birth does the fetus become a human being with the right to life?
Pat Hannagan,
Likewise, we reject abortion for the simple fact that we don't believe our mothers had a "fundamental right" to kill us in utero.
This is simple and straightforward. It also shows the radical abortionist to be a self-annihilator.
With these types of individuals in "power," is it any wonder why we are in descent?
Lucille,
You have to understand that a concept like "conception" doesn't really exist in the world of the radical liberal. Conception is a unique one-time phenomenon not measureable, replicable or testable. Therefore, "conception" does not exist to the radically liberal materialist.
This is why you will read abortionists question when "human life begins?"
Again, you can't win this argument AND it is not necessary to do so.
It does not matter whether human life begins at conception, whether the fetus is a human being or whether birth imparts legal protection.
We reject abortion because we reject the belief that our mothers had a "fundamental right" to kill us in utero.
The abortionist, OTOH, believes his mother had a "fundamental right" to kill him in utero.
The abortionist is a self-annnihilator.
Self-annihilators have disqualified themselves from the table of civilization for they are madly insane.
I would like to see women charged with negligent homicide, and God, charged with murder 1, for miscarriages, Jane, you ignorant slut.
At what point during the process of birth does the fetus become a human being with the right to life?
When it breathes. "Soul" and "breath" are the same thing, "pneuma" in Greek. Anything else is Biblical revisionism.
When it breathes. "Soul" and "breath" are the same thing, "pneuma" in Greek.
What period from ancient Greece are you from Anonymous?
Pneuma and associated psyche weren't always related to ghost-soul, or soul, as you describe it but was formerly and originally merely life or livingness without any conception of soul which came much later.
Pneuma as soul is approx 6th century BC. Prior it was merely living. In 500BC psyche coalesced with nous (to see) which begins to approximate what we call "conscious subjective mind-space" as Julian Jaynes puts it.
Conception of consciousness itself has evolved, rapidly at some points, to its full flourishing during the Western European era of Christendom, rather than being "revisionism" as you put it.
Yet certainly pro-abortionists and the likes of Singer are a regression to a time beyond even the barbarity before Achilles.
ocordRE; "They're going to do it anyways"
I believe such a argument is true and validates make pro-life laws and positions.
Overall, I think the pro-choice position advances a certain, rote level of spiritual decay unto society; even those with pro-choice views admit 'it's a bad thing' and that 'there should be as few as possible.' And I agree with the earlier commenter who noted that the 'they're going to do it anyway' argument is rarely used for subjects and circumstances they more vehemently disapprove of, such as child pornography.
I see the ideal realpolitik as playing out this way: abortion is illegal but likely a low-priority pursuit in terms or prosecuting those who break this law (obtain some sort of illegal abortion); to keep some sort of sanctity to the law itself, there should NOT be exceptions allowing legal abortions even for incidents of rape (though a hypothetical situation of acknowledging and acting-upon a genetically damaged fetus throws up some interesting challenges to my view).
Has anyone yet connected Julian Jayne's bicameral mind theory to the modern negro?
I agree with many of the positions you take on this blog, but I think you are flat out wrong here. Abortion is not a moral issue, because a fetus is not a person, and therefore not a moral object.
The idea of a "person" who does not have, and has never had, a mind, is simply incoherent. That is what being a person is all about: The mind. Consciousness. Awareness. Being! A fetus (especially in the first or second trimester!) does not even have a fully constructed brain, so it cannot have a mind in any meaningful sense. You cannot look at abortion from the fetus's point of view, because a fetus, having no mind, has no point of view. There is nobody there.
Whatever the overall social consequences of abortion, the only people with any direct interest in any given abortion are the mother, and, secondarily, the father. Nobody else has any standing to tell them what they should do.
If it is a mathematical certainty that the feti babies will, in large number groups, negatively affect society, and the individuals within, how do we not have any standing?
It seems like a good compromise would be to have that be determined by local contemporary community standards, as judged by land owning white men.
It also seems like I am not the first person to come up with such thoughts.
If it is a mathematical certainty that the feti babies will, in large number groups, negatively affect society, and the individuals within, how do we not have any standing?
Who the hell is this "we" you speak of?
I think that moby's are the lowest form of internet life, even lower than trolls.
If it can be proven that moby's negatively affect online society .... what follows?
Abortion is not a moral issue, because a fetus is not a person, and therefore not a moral object.
That's idiotic. It's a statement of your own desires and not of scientific fact.
The idea of a "person" who does not have, and has never had, a mind, is simply incoherent. That is what being a person is all about: The mind. Consciousness. Awareness. Being! A fetus (especially in the first or second trimester!) does not even have a fully constructed brain
You are either very stupid, very dishonest, or both.
Abortion is not confined to the first or second trimester. If it were confined to the first trimester, they would be much less argument. But under current US law it is legal for a woman to have an abortion during all nine months of pregnancy.
At what point during the process of birth does the fetus become a human being with the right to life?
When it breathes. "Soul" and "breath" are the same thing, "pneuma" in Greek. Anything else is Biblical revisionism.
This is the sort of mystical anti-scientific bullshit which is widespread in pro-abortion circles.
If you go to the hospital to have an operation they have a machine do your breathing for you. You are not dead while this is happening, and you do not "come back to life" afterwards.
Whatever the Greeks of three thousand years ago may have believed, we now know that brain activity denotes life. You are legally dead not when you stop breathing, but when your brain activity ceases.
Someone may CLAIM to subscribe to the moral principle that "all innocent human life must be legally protected." But if they also hold beliefs that contradict the principle, such as "abortion should be legal in cases of rape," then they don't ACTUALLY hold the principle.
Pointing this out isn't mind-reading.
You are not "pointing out" anything. It is bad mind-reading when the people who "CLAIM to subscribe to the moral principle that "all innocent human life must be legally protected"" exist in your own mind and not in reality.
You are not engaging with anything being said by other actual people. There are people right here on this thread making arguments against abortion, but you prefer to spend your time doing battle with figments of your imagination.
Why don't you respond to the things which real people are actually saying? Is it because the arguments of real people are too difficult for you to handle? Is that why you prefer to put imaginary words in the mouths of imaginary people - because that way you can win every argument?
Maybe you think you came across as intelligent, but you really come across as frightened and insecure. A person confident in his own intellectual ablites would not be so fearful of genuine debate.
I understand, Anonymous, that you realize you've lost the argument and that you're upset about that. But calling me a meanie and a stupid-head
But I'm not calling you a meanie or a stupid-head. Once again you you show off the Big Clever Debate Technique you learned from your lawyer dad - if you cannot refute the words your opponent is actually saying, then put words in your opponents mouth which you can refute and refute those.
I'm calling you a dishonest shyster who refuses to respond to the things which other people say to him. I'm telling you that the people you are spending all your time pretending to respond to do not exist on this thread. I'm asking you why you can't address the real arguments being made by real people right before your eyes.
Those are the things I'm saying. Have you got any response other than claiming victory and storming off in a huff?
Hey, Anon, did what's her name done get at you the other day?
Outside of mutations, incest and horrible scenarios abortion should be discouraged and restricted. I've been surrounded by liberals for an extended period of time in education but my head aches at their way of thinking, rationalizations and arguments.
Liberals - Love animals more than humans, be Buddhists, stop global warming, abortion is good and accept races different from us.
Me - 0______0
Some Anon: what do the pro-abortion people think is the real reason why anti-abortion people oppose it?
Usually, this.
Other (?) anon: What is so ontologically significant about whether the child gets his oxygen from the umbilical cord or by breathing?
The fact that a fetus or embryo has to get it's oxygen from the umbilical cord is the source of the conflict between it's alleged right to life and the mother's right to bodily autonomy. Once birth is viable (including via c-section), the conflict no longer exists and there's lots of leeway to err on the side of caution on the question of whether a fetus has rights or not. Before that, drawing the line too early also has drawbacks. Taking it to extremes and drawing the line at conception means you end up requiring women to put their bodily autonomy on the line for an undiferentiated bunch of cells.
Even more obvious reasons why birth is not a "wholly arbitrary" choice of boundray: It's very commonly viewed as the start of a person's life story, it's socially celebrated as such, it's the first occurance of face-to-face interaction, etc., etc. "Wholly arbitrary" would be like, I don't know, saying that a baby/fetus/embryo/zygote achieves personhood on the first prime-numbered date after the anniversery of the parents' first meeting or something like that.
Note that I am taking for granted that people have an inalienable right to bodily autonomy. And that moral status has something to do with sentient minds, which has something to do with brains (or the like). (In other words, I'm 100% confident that a zygote has no rights (same as sperm and eggs pre-fertilization). If I was throwing the switch to send proverbial runaway train barelling towards either a person on the tracks or a cryostorage unit containing a million billion zygotes, I'd save the person.)
@Anonymous
"It is bad mind-reading when the people who "CLAIM to subscribe to the moral principle that "all innocent human life must be legally protected"" exist in your own mind and not in reality."
I asked how laws that protect fetal life in only SOME situations could descend from a moral principle. St. Louis said it derived from the principle that all innocent human life must be legally protected. It's not mind-reading. It's just responding to the arguments being made on the thread, as you want me to.
"You are not engaging with anything being said by other actual people."
Incorrect. The current trump argument is mine, and no one has bothered to respond to it. I can't respond when I already have the trump -- that would be bidding against myself.
"Why don't you respond to the things which real people are actually saying?"
What "real things" are those? You mean the back and forth about fetal heartbeats and consciousness? I could give a shit. I think it's silly to argue that a fetus is not a "human" because of course it is. I'd also point out that if the anti-abortion camp wants to claim that "science" is on their side, they should probably come up with a response to the scientific fact that any strand of DNA can, given the right conditions, become a human being. Much like a blastocyst. So how is a skin cell morally different from a blastocyst? Both are human life. Both can grow into swell people.
Anyway, the argument I'm making supersedes that one. It's proving to be a little bit sophisticated for you, but I'll restate the case.
1. A political platform derives from a moral principle only if it never contradicts that principle.
2. For anti-abortion activists to prove that their political platform descends from moral principle, they must
a. provide the principle, and
b. demonstrate that their platform never contradicts the principle it's claimed to derive from.
3. Until that proof is made, the claim that opposing abortion is "moral" is WHOLLY EMPTY. It's just posturing verbiage.
4. No one on this board had fulfilled 2a and 2b.
5. Thus, the claim that opposing abortion derives from moral principle is untested and unproven.
The only argument I'm making is that it has not been demonstrated that any abortion platform held by humans actually derives from moral principle.
I've only been met so far with a chorus of "how dare you!"s, and you, who called me a meanie and a stupid-head. I'm still waiting for someone to test my actual argument.
Regrets,
Dave
Dave,
You really are thick, aren't you? You're still doing what everyone is saying. You're putting words in our mouths/thoughts in our heads. I never claimed to be in favor of any exceptions for rape, incest, etc., but you keep acting like I am.
Indeed, I agree with you that people who want a rape exception are inconsistent. So, what's your point? Because some people take an inconsistent pro-life stance on abortion, those who don't suffer from such inconsistency are wrong? That doesn't make any sense.
You say no one has done 2a and 2b on your little checklist but I did it yesterday. You just didn't like my answer because you assumed I believed in some exception. This is the dishonesty people have been accusing you of; making unwarranted assumptions about other people's beliefs.
Besides, even someone who believes there should be no rape exception could still support a law has one (but otherwise banned abortion) as a next best alternative.
Abortion is not confined to the first or second trimester. If it were confined to the first trimester, they would be much less argument. But under current US law it is legal for a woman to have an abortion during all nine months of pregnancy.
This much is certainly true, and in fact, while it's not the way I would write the law myself, I think it's a reasonable compromise to allow abortion in the first two trimesters but forbid it in the third. Would that be agreeable to you?
Beyond that however, you don't seem to have anything to say. You assert that my argument is "idiotic" and "stupid" and "dishonest," but you don't say why, or oppose my argument with any counterargument of your own.
Do you have a counterargument? In particular, do you think it makes sense to talk about a "person" who does not have, and has never had, any sort of conscious awareness? Such a "person" may be alive, but so it a tree. Such a "person" may be genetically human, but so is a spilled drop of human blood. If having a mind isn't essential to being a "person," then please tell me, what is?
Bonus question: if attractive and friendly but non-human aliens (think Avatar maybe) landed on the White House lawn tomorrow, would they, in a moral sense, be people? Or would it be OK to shoot them, because they aren't Human Beings, and therefore have no moral rights?
@St. Louis
"You really are thick, aren't you?"
Not really, no.
"I never claimed to be in favor of any exceptions for rape, incest, etc., but you keep acting like I am."
Nope. I'm acting as though you've yet to demonstrate one way or the other that your politics are wholly consistent with your stated principles.
"Indeed, I agree with you that people who want a rape exception are inconsistent."
Cool. I agree with me, also.
"So, what's your point?"
My point is, it's not only people who want a rape exception who are inconsistent. In fact, to consistently hold to the principle that all human life must be protected by the law would be so difficult that no one has successfully done it.
In other words, the principle that anti-abortion activists claim to hold to is currently inaccessible. No society, no structure of laws, could possibly conform to it.
"You say no one has done 2a and 2b on your little checklist but I did it yesterday."
No, you didn't. You made an assertion, and then didn't show up to defend it. 2a, but not 2b.
" You just didn't like my answer because you assumed I believed in some exception."
I assumed nothing. It's certainly my GUESS that you believe in some exception to the impossible principle you've set yourself. But feel free to test my guess. Are you up to that challenge?
All you will have to do is demonstrate that, in all situations in which it is possible to do so, you would like the laws to protect all forms of human life with identical dedication. I'll ask you a series of questions, and your answers must 100% conform to the principle "it is immoral to end {any form of} human life."
Interested in taking this test?
"Besides, even someone who believes there should be no rape exception could still support a law has one (but otherwise banned abortion) as a next best alternative."
Aha! The first cracks show.
As soon as this hypothetical friend of yours supported this law, they would forfeit their claim to the moral principle you described. If they still claimed to "believe" in that principle, they could no longer claim to be acting in accordance with their beliefs.
And, notice, the whole thrust of One's argument is that compromise is immoral. He's set the bar very high for your side of the debate.
Dave,
The easiest way around your argument is to simply embrace a truer principle.
The "pro-lifer" (one is only truly pro-life if he is also against the death penalty) says he rejects abortion because a fetus is a human being, but he'll make exceptions for rape.
Dave cries... Unprincipled... Unprincipled...
Refine the principle...
I do not believe my mother had a "fundamental right" to kill me in utero.
Ergo, I reject abortion and the abortionist.
Now, Dave is forced to clarify his principle ON OUR TERMS.
So Dave, did your mother have a "fundamental right" to kill YOU in utero?
How did she lose that "fundamental right?" Fundamental right being defined as a right that supercedes its legal codification. I mean, a truly radical liberal understands that the "right" of a mother to kill her child in utero HAS ALWAYS EXISTED. Codification into law was just a LAST STEP.
So Dave, because you must answer "yes" in order to substantiate your "belief in" abortion, are you really an abortionist?
the principle that anti-abortion activists claim to hold to is currently inaccessible. No society, no structure of laws, could possibly conform to it.
I'm an "anti-abortion activist" and I don't have the beliefs which you stubbornly insist on attributing to me.
So what do you have to say to me? Do you want to argue that I am lacking in principle? Please, please say yes.
This much is certainly true, and in fact, while it's not the way I would write the law myself, I think it's a reasonable compromise to allow abortion in the first two trimesters but forbid it in the third. Would that be agreeable to you?
Make it the first trimester only and I'll agree.
Beyond that however, you don't seem to have anything to say.
Ummm.... beyond laying out a position which you agree with, I have nothing to say?
You assert that my argument is "idiotic" and "stupid" and "dishonest," but you don't say why, or oppose my argument with any counterargument of your own.
So I've said nothing which has convinced you, but ... you agreed with my basic point that life begins with the beginning of brain activity and you agreed that abortion after that point can be banned. But apart from that trivial stuff, I've said nothing to you which rises beyond the significance of noise. Is that what you're telling me?
do you think it makes sense to talk about a "person" who does not have, and has never had, any sort of conscious awareness?
A fetus with a developed brain - such as one eight months after conception - does have conscious awareness. A least, it is every bit as developed as that same brain and that same awareness five minutes after birth.
Singer is right about this much. There is no rational justification for saying that the thing one month before birth is not a living human, but the thing one month after birth is. From that he concludes that infanticide should be legal. He's logically consistent, at least. You are not.
"Personally if there are fewer crackheads around to rob me at gunpoint, I'm good with that. It's a sad situation when I and every single one of my nearby relatives has been robbed or burglarized at some point in the past 10 years. I only wish I were kidding or exaggerating, but that is the deep south for ya."
Peak crackhead happened 15 years after roe v wade. It is the on average smarter women that refrained from having children, not the dumber ones.
@thordaddy
"So Dave, did your mother have a "fundamental right" to kill YOU in utero?"
No. I'm just an empiricist. I don't proclaim fundamental rights.
@anonymous
"I'm an "anti-abortion activist" and I don't have the beliefs which you stubbornly insist on attributing to me."
I've not attributed to you any beliefs.
Why don't you describe to me the laws you'd like to see put into effect? Maybe there truly aren't any contradictions between the principle you claim to hold and the policies you'd like to see enacted. Or, perhaps there are contradictions, bur once they're discovered, you'll choose to correct them.
Like I said, I doubt it. But I'm always willing to be proven wrong.
"So what do you have to say to me?"
That this conversation seems to be over your head.
So Dave...
When does human life begin if not at conception, empirically-speaking?
Make it the first trimester only and I'll agree.
So now we're quarreling over the second trimester? That's actually quite a bit of progress!
So I've said nothing which has convinced you, but ... you agreed with my basic point that life begins with the beginning of brain activity and you agreed that abortion after that point can be banned. But apart from that trivial stuff, I've said nothing to you which rises beyond the significance of noise. Is that what you're telling me?
I didn't agree to any of that, because you didn't say any of that in the comment I responded to. (Go back and read it!) What I did say is that I am willing to compromise.
You apparently agree with me that a living organism that is genetically human but has no mind whatsoever -- e.g., a fertilized egg -- is not a "person." Great! We disagree about the mental status of the fetus just before birth, but that's fair enough. I'm less impressed than you are; my feeling is that birth -- when all the sensory impressions start flooding in -- is special, and that makes it a good, if still somewhat arbitrary, starting point for personhood.
In fact I personally would have no problem with infanticide for a fairly wide class of disabled infants. But most Americans disagree with me, and I have no problem with that either. I accept that the American people, like all peoples, have a right to impose their own cultural norms in their own lands. They likewise have the right to reject polygamy and gay marriage (both of which I happen to oppose), based not on any elaborate moral calculus, but simply because they don't want to allow those things as part of their culture.
Anyway, I think we've made some progress. I'm still interested though in your thoughts about my hypothetical little green (or big blue?) men on the White House lawn. Are they "people" or not? If they are, that kind of knocks "human" out of the definition of "person," doesn't it?
Dave, I'm not calling you a meanie or a stupid head. I'm saying you're either being disingenuous or incredibly thick. You said:
"The only argument I'm making is that it has not been demonstrated that any abortion platform held by humans actually derives from moral principle."
But I did demonstrate it yesterday. In my comment at 3:27 I said:
"I believe it is immoral to end an innocent human life (moral principle). I believe that abortion is the end of an innocent human life. Therefore, I believe that abortion is immoral. It is generally accepted that one way to discourage people from doing immoral things is to make those things illegal. Therefore, I would like to see abortion made illegal."
Please demonstrate how my abortion platform (i.e. ban all of them without exception) doesn't derive from my moral principle (i.e. abortion, being the ending of an innocent human life, is immoral). I'm waiting...
You also said:
"I'll ask you a series of questions, and your answers must 100% conform to the principle 'it is immoral to end {any form of} human life.'"
You've misstated my principle. I didn't say it was immoral to end any form of human life. I said it was immoral to end any INNOCENT human life. Besides, I still don't see how supporting a platform of banning all abortion without exception violates this principle, and you still haven't explained how it does either.
Finally, you suggest that it would be hypocritical for me to support, as a next-best alternative, a law that banned abortion but allowed an exception for cases of rape. Frankly, you're being ridiculous. There's no hypocrisy here. Let's make a hypothetical example:
I'm a legislator in State X and I want all abortion banned without exception. The current law in State X allows abortions at any time for any reason. I propose Bill Y that would ban all abortions with no exceptions, but not enough of the other legislators share my views and it doesn't pass. The following month, another legislator proposes Bill Z that would ban abortion, but would allow for a rape exception. This would make something like 99% of all abortions illegal.
Are you actually telling me I would be wrong to vote for the second bill?! I think I would be doing far more offense to my principles by voting against the bill that would ban 99% of abortions. Should antebellum Americans who owned houses on the underground railroad have just done nothing because their efforts only helped some slaves to escape but not all of them?
You say this is compromise, and you're correct, but making a compromise regarding policy in light of the political realities does not necessarily mean you're compromising your principles.
Sorry for the long comment.
Conception of consciousness itself has evolved, rapidly at some points, to its full flourishing during the Western European era of Christendom, rather than being "revisionism" as you put it.
Hannigan admits that the Christian concept "has evolved" (though not the Jewish one). It is not an aside raised to canon by the opposition; the pro-"life" side ADMITS that they do not have One Eternal, Unchanging Truth.
Now, when will you take seriously the position "The idea of a "person" who does not have, and has never had, a mind, is simply incoherent" by Anonymous @ 11:53 AM (who is not me)? Society has settled on brain-death (death of the mind) as the modern standard of death, the end of being-as-a-person. Yet pro-"life" demands that "life" begins, not just before there is a mind, but before there is "a beating heart" to stop... before there is even a single neuron or muscle cell!
A life that does not yet exist cannot be either "guilty" or "innocent". It simply isn't. A more blatant case of special pleading is hard to conceive.
Your position is not based on principle, so stop lying about it. To yourselves, especially. Honesty begins at home.
Without that position and that honesty, the whole case falls apart. nikcrit's talk about "spiritual decay" is baseless if there is no actual principle being offended. A position built as a mish-mash of unconnected assertions, some false and many others debatable, is no basis on which to label other people moral degenerates. On the contrary, baseless labeling and finger-pointing is what moral degenerates do to avoid examining their own internal voids.
And Anonymous @ 2:39 PM shows ignorance of the law: Abortion is not confined to the first or second trimester.
States have the power under Roe v. Wade to ban all third-trimester abortions not required to protect the life and health of the woman. If this offends him, he must be Catholic. The Roman Catholic Church's dogma demands that fetuses be saved even if women die. If protecting child-buggerers wasn't enough to damn the entire organization and all its members and communicants, that one position would do.
I said it was immoral to end any INNOCENT human life.
If you define "human life" as "something that has a mind or at least the neurological potential for it", almost your entire argument with pro-choicers disappears because that leaves out
* Anencephalic fetuses of any age.
* Zygotes.
* Blastocysts.
* Embryos.
* Fetuses up to approximately 30 weeks.
But you won't do that. You have other objectives, so those exceptions are not acceptable to you.
I still don't see how supporting a platform of banning all abortion without exception violates this principle
It's grossly over-broad to merely satisfy "this principle", proving that you want something else. Something else that you won't admit to wanting. Which makes others suspicious of your motives, and oppose you. Not unlike the opposition that Disingenuous White Liberals get when they talk about the need for racial preferences and forced integration....
If you define "human life" as "something that has a mind or at least the neurological potential for it", almost your entire argument with pro-choicers disappears because that leaves out
* Anencephalic fetuses of any age.
* Zygotes.
* Blastocysts.
* Embryos.
* Fetuses up to approximately 30 weeks
Damn, it's amazing how scientifically illiterate so many people on the left are. A fetus at 30 weeks (seven and a half months) already "has a mind or at least the neurological potential for it". In fact many of them are not even a fetus at that age - I have a niece born at seven and a half months. Would you like to speak to her mom and dad and explain to them that the thing which emerged from the womb was not a human?
Change your 30 weeks to 12 and we can talk.
I'd hate to interrupt the circle jerk I predicted, but this is pretty Western and pretty alpha and pretty awesome...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYaLc2UfP3E
Society has settled on brain-death (death of the mind) as the modern standard of death, the end of being-as-a-person. Yet pro-"life" demands that "life" begins, not just before there is a mind, but before there is "a beating heart" to stop... before there is even a single neuron or muscle cell!
Are you Dave? Because you share his habit of tilting at windmills of your own making.
Your position is not based on principle, so stop lying about it.
Yup, you've gotta be Dave. Dumb as a box of hammers, with an absurdly inflated sense of his own self worth ... you're him.
States have the power under Roe v. Wade to ban all third-trimester abortions not required to protect the life and health of the woman.
That's a peculiar response to what I said, which was - "Abortion is not confined to the first or second trimester."
The US Constitution (or to be more precise, the Supreme Court in its fictitious role as spokesman for the Constitution) does not restrict abortions in the third trimester. In fact, the Supreme Court takes a dim view of states attempting to ban third trimester abortions.
The "life and health of the woman" is a hopelessly vague standard, since it can include emotional factors ("I don't want a baby") or financial factors (I can't afford it")
But in any cause it's easy to get around this restriction by claiming that the fetus is younger than it is. Presto, it's the second trimester and she can do whatever she wants!
The solution is to scan for brain activity and not do any abortions where it is present. This should be the law (not the Supreme Court made "law", the real law).
I just tried to go the Steve Sailers and got the "This blog has been removed" message.
The thought police are busy little bees.
my feeling is that birth -- when all the sensory impressions start flooding in -- is special, and that makes it a good, if still somewhat arbitrary, starting point for personhood.
Sensory impressions start flooding in while still in the womb. That's why some women play music to their baby - fetus to you.
Besides, if experiencing "sensory impressions" of sight and sound make a human human, then Helen Keller was not really human. Do you want to stand by that?
if attractive and friendly but non-human aliens (think Avatar maybe) landed on the White House lawn tomorrow, would they, in a moral sense, be people?
Obviously, not being human, they would not be people. "People" is another word for "humans". Morality has nothing to do with it.
Or would it be OK to shoot them, because they aren't Human Beings, and therefore have no moral rights?
There would be no law against shooting them, of course. It would be "OK" to shoot them in that sense. But maybe you are asking if it would be moral to shoot them. No, I don't think it would.
Sensory impressions start flooding in while still in the womb. That's why some women play music to their baby - fetus to you.
No, what happens after birth is really profoundly different, in a qualitative sense. It's not just that the sensations are new (bright lights! movement! cold!) and far more intense; it's that for the first time the world starts to react to the baby. The baby does something, and the world responds! The baby does something else, and the world responds differently! This is when an actual mind starts to be built.
You have this idea that "brain activity" is equivalent to a mind, but that's just wrong. You can't have a mind without brain activity, but the reverse isn't true. A fish has brain activity, but it doesn't have much of a mind.
Frankly I don't think that even infants have much of a mind at the beginning, which is why infanticide for severely disabled infants seems acceptable to me. Why not infanticide across the board, for parents who have second thoughts? Well, something else kicks in. I believe that morality is based on inborn moral instincts, rather than any sort of rigorous logic, and like most people I have an instinctive protective reaction to newborn babies, and it makes sense to me that that instinct should be enshrined in our laws. I would abridge it to allow parents (and the world!) to avoid being burdoned for life by a Down Syndrome child. But I also understand that fetuses -- especially viable third trimester fetuses -- evoke the same instinct, which is one reason why I am willing to compromise on late abortions, even though I personally think birth is the most sensible place to draw the line.
Besides, if experiencing "sensory impressions" of sight and sound make a human human, then Helen Keller was not really human. Do you want to stand by that?
Helen Keller certainly did experience a flood of new and intense sensations at birth, although limited to three rather than five senses, and she also had the experience of the world suddenly responding to her actions, so her case, although very interesting, isn't really that different. I'm pretty certain that if you were somehow able to take a baby directly from the womb and raise it to adulthood in a sensory deprivation tank you wouldn't end up with much of a mind.
Anonymous at 12:30 am (who I think is Dave) said:
"It's grossly over-broad to merely satisfy 'this principle', proving that you want something else."
So, first I'm told that my policy platform isn't derived from my moral principle. When I demonstrate that it is, I'm accused of it be "over-broad." Talk about moving the goal posts!
Also, I'm once again accused of really wanting something else, though it's never suggested what this might be.
You just can't win with some people. I'm done with this. I'm sure Dave will now come in and proudly claim some sort of victory in the debate, only the problem is he was never debating with me to begin with but with himself. He just ignored all my points, made straw man arguments for me, and then attacked those.
Obviously, not being human, they would not be people. "People" is another word for "humans". Morality has nothing to do with it.
No. Although in the real world the only persons are also human, the word "person" is broader than that. Not only do we have "corporate persons" (OK, kind of irrelevant to my argument), but we easily accept non-humans as "people" in our literature. Have you ever read Tolkien? When Tolkien wrote about the "Free Peoples of Middle-earth," did you respond by saying "No wait, they're not all people, some of them are elves and dwarves!" Of course not! You accepted elves and dwarves as people because they obviously were people in a very natural sense. If aliens ever did land, especially if they were friendly, humanoid, and comprehensible, they would very quickly be spoken of and thought of as "people."
There would be no law against shooting them, of course. It would be "OK" to shoot them in that sense. But maybe you are asking if it would be moral to shoot them. No, I don't think it would.
But now you face a moral conundrum. You have a natural response that shooting them would have to be wrong. But why? Not being "people," they are outside of your moral calculus, so how do you turn the crank and arrive at any conclusions about them? You are going to have to invent new categories that didn't exist before. Wouldn't it just be easier to acknowledge that your instinctive response is correct, and that they are people, despite not being human?
Things would work out pretty much the same if we learned to communicate with dolphins, and they turned out to be highly intelligent. However it might work out differently in the case of AI. The prohibition on murder is based on the fact that we ourselves don't want to be killed, we don't want our loved ones to be killed, and because we are empathetic creatures, we understand that other people are people like us, and don't want to be killed either. That "like us" part is important, because without a mind "like us" there can be no empathy! I think it's possible there could be highly intelligent AI beings who were not like us at all, who simply had no interest in self-preservation, and didn't care if we pulled the plug once their task was complete. In this case I would not consider pulling the plug to be murder, despite the fact that it would terminate a self-aware mind.
Pat Hannagan,
You are a reluctant white Supremacist arguing the origin of human being-ness with radical liberals (radical autonomists). Their very nature is to be undefined especially by external coercion and force. But this external coercion and force is exactly what the radical autonomist is suspectible to.
So we have the abortionist who simply defines that which resides within the mother's womb from "conception" to birth as anything BUT a human being. The goal is radical autonomy and the "right" of a mother to kill her child in utero is unequivocal evidence of the exaltation of radical autonomy as Western man's highest value.
So the debate is not persuasion BUT proper identifcation of the self-annihilators that are persuading Western man to self-annihilate.
This process starts IN THE WOMB where a unique human life has the volition to persist and survive. The radical autonomist chalks this "brainless" volition up as purely mechanical. But human beings aren't mechanical and never where at any point in their life cycle starting with conception.
We make a simple assertion. It need not lean on religion, Christ, science or anything else for that matter. It does not matter when "life begins" or when consciousness emerges. It does not grasp arbitrary demarcations like birth or brain activity.
We simply assert that OUR mothers DID NOT have a "fundamental right" to kill us (destroy our volition) in utero. And by extension, no mother has a "fundamental right" to kill her child in utero.
There is no debate. You either agree or DEFINE YOURSELF as a self-annihilator and disqualify yourself from having a seat at our table.
@St. Louis
"Dave, I'm not calling you a meanie or a stupid head."
No, that was the anonymous guy at 9/27, 7:55. I've enjoyed reading what you have to say.
"Please demonstrate how my abortion platform (i.e. ban all of them without exception) doesn't derive from my moral principle (i.e. abortion, being the ending of an innocent human life, is immoral)."
It doesn't. But like I said, it's not enough that some of your ideas derive from a principle. Only when it's demonstrated that NONE of your beliefs contradict the principle can it be definitively stated that your politics are in line with this principle. Until then it's an open question.
Like I said, you've done 2a, not 2b.
Now, the principle that "all innocent human life must be protected" takes you to some pretty weird places.
Humanity just isn't accustomed to treating humans in the extremely early stages of life as equivalent in value to human beings that have been born.
In many ways, science has revealed this to be a sensible position. After all, we now know it's theoretically possible for every strand of DNA, given the right conditions, to become a human being. So the human body could be thought of to contain billions of potential individual human lives.
For our sanity's sake, we don't burden ourselves with the concern for the protection of these potential lives.
But say you want to draw a line between unique human life that is created from a sperm and egg, and human life that could only theoretically become an adult and learn to drive. You're going to accept the somewhat antiquated notion that "life starts at conception." Fine. That's your moral principle, from which you claim to derive your politics.
You're going to have a hard time living up to even this moral standard, even theoretically. Just as a thought experiment, imagine any situation where you have to choose between preserving the life of a single human being, and the life of fifty embryos. Are you going to tell me that you would choose to save the embryos over, say a ten-year-old child?
Now, let's say you agree to this -- you agree that, if it comes down to it, you personally will let the child drown and rush the fifty embryos into the refrigerator.
You have a further obligation to your principles. You must agree that there is no moral distinguishing between the person who would save the child, and the person who wants to keep abortion legal. Your principle allows no gradations.
A lot of behavior we consider moral cuts against human nature. But I believe that to hold to the principle that "all innocent human life must be protected" cuts so sharply against human nature that it's a nearly impossible principle to hold to, even theoretically.
Dave,
Your arguments are worthless.
When one cuts through all the obsfucation, all you really argue is the mother's "right" to kill her child in utero BECAUSE mothers have ALWAYS killed their children in utero or out (infanticide).
The only question is whether YOU really believe this?
Does Dave believe that his mother had a "right" to kill him in utero BECAUSE she could if she really wanted to like so many other mothers?
And we're supposed to let individuals like yourself organize our civilization with these deeply held insane beliefs?
Again, if unique human life does not begin at conception (essentially redefining conception to mean something other than a genesis of something original) then when does UNIQUE human life begin, EMPIRICALLY-speaking?
You are an empiricist, no? You have an answer, yes?
No, this inane thread will never die.
Yes, Thordaddy is becoming my favorite commenter.
@St. Louis
"Finally, you suggest that it would be hypocritical for me to support, as a next-best alternative, a law that banned abortion but allowed an exception for cases of rape."
I never said it was hypocritical. I said you would no longer be able to claim that your politics derived from the principle that "all human life must be protected." Principles are all-or-nothing. That's just the way it is.
"The following month, another legislator proposes Bill Z that would ban abortion, but would allow for a rape exception. This would make something like 99% of all abortions illegal.
Are you actually telling me I would be wrong to vote for the second bill?!"
Again, I never said wrong or right. You would be giving up your principle if you compromised and voted for Z.
"You say this is compromise, and you're correct, but making a compromise regarding policy in light of the political realities does not necessarily mean you're compromising your principles."
Indeed, it does. That's definitional.
@Thordaddy
"So Dave...
When does human life begin if not at conception, empirically-speaking?"
Empirically speaking, I don't find "human life" to be an especially meaningful term the way you're using it.
Conception is the moment the blueprints are drawn, through a series of random brush strokes, for a unique human being that did not previously exist and on which production will begin immediately. That's the best job I can do of empirically describing conception.
Metaphorically, I might refer to it as the moment the dice leave the cup. But I believe that you and I subscribe to different metaphors.
"Again, if unique human life does not begin at conception (essentially redefining conception to mean something other than a genesis of something original) then when does UNIQUE human life begin, EMPIRICALLY-speaking?"
Why do you feel the need to emphasize the word "unique"? Unique in distinction to what? What is non-unique human life?
Dave,
You refused to answer either of my questions so that we can see that you stand on no principle. This is the nature of the radical autonomist.
I didn't ask for YOUR definition of conception as I already knew that it would be defined as NOT THE BEGINNING of unique human life.
Instead, I asked WHEN unique human life begins, BEFORE or AFTER conception? As an empiricist, you do have evidence for the beginning of unique human life sometime before or sometime after conception, right?
I predict that you will now hassle over the meaning of unique human life as the position that unique human life is not conceived at conception but sometime before or after is just PLAIN ABSURD.
Secondly, did Dave's mother have a "right" to kill Dave in utero?
This is a yes/no answer?
Are you not, at least subconsciously, a self-annihilator?
Dave,
As an empiricist, you do not believe in unique one time phenomena. Meaning, all that exists in the empirical world of Dave are redundant and repetitive phenomena. All that exists in Dave's world are things that measureable, replicable and testable. In Dave's world, things like Supremacy, ressurection, miracle, revelation, CONCEPTION/Creation don't really exist. They are unique one time phenomena ONLY observed in real time. Not measureable, not replicable, not testable and so non-existent in Dave's world.
But Dave, if a whole generation of mothers REALLY believed in their "right" to kill us right from conception, is it not a MIRACLE that any of us are here?
Conception exists... It is a unique one time phenomenon where a unique human life emerges with volition. That the empiricist can't measure, replicate or test it is irrelevant.
"You refused to answer either of my questions so that we can see that you stand on no principle."
That's a bizarre non-sequitur. Anyway, I answered both your questions, best I could.
-No, I don't believe in "fundamental rights," so I don't believe that my mother had any.
-I gave you my definition of conception, which I think made it clear that I believe it can be meaningfully understood as the beginning of a "unique human life."
"I predict that you will now hassle over the meaning of unique human life"
I don't know what you mean by "unique human life." What is non-unique human life? I obviously can't answer your question until I understand it.
"In Dave's world, things like Supremacy, ressurection, miracle, revelation, CONCEPTION/Creation don't really exist.'
We live in the same world. Either those things exist or they don't. You can have faith in whatever supernatural phenomena you like. I have faith in what can be observed and rationally understood and I try to keep it to that.
Dave,
This thread was about the lame justifications for abortion made by abortion advocates. You gave every indication that you came down on the side of the lame justifications, but you try to act as though you stay above the fray as an empiricist.
So you don't believe your mother had a "fundamental right" to kill you in utero BECAUSE you don't believe in fundamental rights which would obviously include the fundamental right to life. We are at the same place.
Dave, the empricist, is a self-annihilator. The evidence is in.
"Dave, the empricist, is a self-annihilator. The evidence is in."
No one saw it coming.
Dave,
Where exactly do you stand on the "right" of abortion...
What exactly are you trying to say as far as the lame justifications made by abortion advocates?
What is your position exactly?
I want to see Thordaddy, RobertB, antiracist Anonymous, and Pat Hannagan fused at the molecular-genetic level to create one invincible supertrolling superdelusional crank.
Responding mostly to St. Louis:
Anonymous at 12:30 am (who I think is Dave)
You're wrong about that, as in the rest. It's "me" (I decided that this discussion needed a unique label for myself). You're almost as bad as Anonymous @ 2:17 AM, who said this:
Damn, it's amazing how scientifically illiterate so many people on the left are. A fetus at 30 weeks (seven and a half months) already "has a mind or at least the neurological potential for it".
Anonymous @ 2:17 AM is labelling "scientifically illiterate" a position I got straight from Carl Sagan, which I have subsequently verified with later information. There are just two words for such a monumental error: EPIC FAIL.
Anonymous @ 10:14 AM has his facts wrong too:
Helen Keller certainly did experience a flood of new and intense sensations at birth, although limited to three rather than five senses
Helen Keller had all five senses at birth. She lost sight and hearing due to an illness at 19 months. Tidbit: She's a modern icon of the left because she became a member of the Socialist Party of America and the IWW. And Anonymous @ 2:17 AM is proven doubly wrong about me, because I'm not afraid to note this and point out how ridiculous it is. (Public school curricula should not mention Helen Keller; she is not a significant figure.)
This is (supposedly) an HBD blog. We don't accept the leftist dogma of inherent universal equality here... and other dogmas ought to be examined just as critically.
So, first I'm told that my policy platform isn't derived from my moral principle. When I demonstrate that it is, I'm accused of it be "over-broad." Talk about moving the goal posts!
Let me put this in easy-to-digest bullet points.
1. You commit the fallacy of equivocation because your moral principle isn't unambiguously defined. "Innocent human life" includes lots of things that aren't human beings, or on a natural path to becoming one.
2. Worse for your case, some of the things you do define as "human beings" later become MORE than one (twinning) or LESS than one (chimeras). If life begins at fertilization, where does the "extra" person in identical twins come from, or disappear to in chimeras? Is it moral to kill one of a pair of identical twins, because "the human being" still exists in the other? Your immediate revulsion at the idea proves that your "moral principle" is faulty; that alone proves you wrong, by your own lights.
3. Once you have finally settled on conscious awareness as the true measure of existence of a human being (which I expect you to resist for a while), your restriction IS very over-broad. Abortion is NOT ending a human life, innocent or otherwise, before approximately 30 weeks gestation. And even after 30 weeks, there may be medical reasons to abort (or otherwise terminate a pregnancy by emergency delivery).
(continued)
The 8-week gap between the bleeding edge of survivability (22 weeks) and wakeful awareness as a fetus/potential infant has major implications. For one, all of the effort trying to save terribly early premies (most of which are NAMs, due to their poor habits and lack of prenatal care) is senseless and ought to be discontinued. This bankrupt nation would save many billions of dollars a year that way, starting with NICU's and going on to SPED and adult foster care. But I digress.
I'm once again accused of really wanting something else, though it's never suggested what this might be.
You're on an HBD blog, and it isn't instantly obvious to you?! It's the same thing the leftists want when they oppose their over-broad definition of "racism": they want control of people's lives and the curtailment of liberty.
You just can't win with some people. I'm done with this.
I'd love to see the Religious Right concede that 30 weeks, plus or minus, is the real dividing line between "innocent human life" and "thing only of value if desired". I don't expect this to happen. There's too much to be gained through dishonest arguments, just as there is through dishonest arguments of pan-racial equality.
Mr. Rational,
Did your mother have a "right" to kill YOU in utero?
If your answer is "no" then all your arguments for abortion are pointlessly irrational.
If your answer is "yes," why should anyone care how you define human being or anything you say?
You have already decided to disregard whatever I might say regardless of which option I choose, so why should I care what you think?
This is an HBD blog. We are on the guard against the left's blatantly slanted standards of acceptability. And then some clown like Thordaddy comes along and tries to use the same rhetorical tactics: "Either you agree with us, or your opinion isn't worth listening to!"
Screw yourself.
Lol... Nah man, I'm not a self-sexualizer. But that's spoken like a true rationalist.
The question isn't whether you're against thordaddy or with him. The question is whether you're a self-annihilator disqualified from our table of civilization because you BELIEVE in "abortion."
"Dave,
Where exactly do you stand on the "right" of abortion... "
Don't believe such a right, or any right, exists.
"What exactly are you trying to say as far as the lame justifications made by abortion advocates?"
I think lame justifications are lame.
"What is your position exactly?"
That the government is overstepping its bounds when assumes the role of protecting all possible forms of human life. Once you get a name and a social security number, you're a citizen, and you matter to the government. Till then, you only matter to any person that's looking forward to meeting you, and to any god that may exist.
This makes no comment on whether or not abortion is immoral. Just on what I see as the preferable, limited, role of government.
Dave,
Is there a threat of the government overstepping its boundaries in pursuit of protecting all forms of human life? Really? I wasn't aware of this threat at all. Reality seems quite the opposite. This government seems to be seeking to make acceptable all sorts of self-annihilation from abortion to homosexualism to euthanasia.
And since you don't believe in "rights," what is it that you'll use to counter the government overstepping its boundaries? The vote? Lol...
Totally oblivious to the irony, Thordaddy wrote:
Is there a threat of the government overstepping its boundaries in pursuit of protecting all forms of human life?
I couldn't make this up. I shouldn't have to say anything, but there are a lot of people out there who don't get it. For people as obtuse as Thordaddy, I'll explain the joke:
Government will use any pretext to expand its powers beyond whatever boundaries are set. "Protecting all forms of human life" has already been abused to shut down scientific research. The ideologues pursuing increased power did harm to real humans in the process, but they don't care; "protecting human life" is the pretext, not the goal.
Whitey's point about abortion "eliminating" a lot of blacks (I don't know about browns) from the population aside (it's not like pro-death advocates will accept it as a plus), I've never seen a good argument for abortion. I haven't gone out of my way to find them, but one can't help but stumble on them in the blogosphere.
Really, they're just tremendously facile. It would be refreshing to actually see a substantial argument for abortion on demand.
I'm actually pro-death, but I don't really have good arguments for my position. It's much easier for me to play devil's advocate on this one.
On the other hand, like my position on Israel, I do favor retracting abortion on demand until certain other positions are conceded by the other side.
To whit, if women are to receive all reproductive rights, men should be absolved of all reproductive responsibility; men should not be legally obligated to support children they sire (much less children they don't) if women get to make all the decisions.
In my mind, the two are joined at the hip. In fact, I kind of support absolving men of reproductive responsibility for the same reason I support giving all reproductive decisions to women - what the hell else are we going to do? Coerce women into carrying to term and giving birth to children when they don't want to? Coerce men into supporting children they never wanted? (I'm sure we don't have to point out how both of these questions are currently answered in favor of women).
In short: her body, her choice...her responsibility.
Erm, I guess I just withdrew my support for abortion, didn't I? Heh.
Anyway, infertile couples occasionally have a surprise. Never, ever in the history of the whole universe has a gay male couple brought a fetus to term.
Right; infertility is inherent to homosexual couples, and incidental with normal couples.
Reasonable people with half a brain and good values never really want or need abortions anyway, so I don't see why it is an issue of concern to the alternative right.
I think I gave a PFG reason.
Yeah, I doubt it. Offering equal legal protection to all unborn human life would involve a vast restructuring of society, and you rarely hear anti-abortion activists clamoring for this. For starters, you'd have to start jailing women who had abortions. You'd have to criminalize in vitro fertilization. You'd have to issue social security numbers to fetuses.
I'm game for this argument. Unintended (and unexplored) consequences are always fun. But, your examples are shit. Jailing people for a crime does not approach a vast restructuring of society. Criminalizing in vitro fertilization doesn't even seem like a consequence of equal legal protection. Nor does issuing social security numbers, since we can still wait for birth to do that; hell, we could go the other way and wait until grade school (or later) for that and I wouldn't mind. But the welfare moms would, so we won't, obviously.
This is all if I actually accept the idea that we have to offer equal legal protection, which I don't.
I don't see in anti-abortion activists a desire to restructure American society. I see a desire to criminalize abortion, and little beyond that.
Maybe because you haven't joined the two at the hip the way you seem to think you have?
Really? Pay more attention, then, I guess. Many anti-abortion activists want abortion to be legal in the case of rape.
True, but they're probably just conceding the point so we can move the needle toward a lesser evil.
Many, if not all, want it to be legal if the health of the mother is at risk.
True, but this is a similar concession. And beyond that, this is a problem unique to pregnancy; a fetus can risk the health of the mother in ways that post-natal children cannot.
This to say nothing of the anti-abortion activists who, when push comes to shove, actually GET ABORTIONS.
Oh yes, argumentum ad hominem is very persuasive; the thief may not assert that thievery is wrong.
Correct. Because they're piecemeal, they don't derive from principle.
For example, a law that only prohibits tall people from murdering short ones, but leaves all other murder legal, does not derive from the moral principle "murder is wrong."
It seems to me that the legal structures anti-abortion activists actually desire, by design, only prohibit SOME loss of unborn human life. So they do not derive from the principle that ALL human life must be protected.
This is some schizo shit right here. A law that prohibits only those capable of carrying out the deed from doing so has what to do with with your silly tall-short murder law, exactly?
Then you rewrite infanticide to read "loss," as if we we're talking about "loss," when we aren't.
We waste our time engaging in these types of debates when the real question is whether one who believes in a "mother's right" to kill her child in utero deserves a seat at the table of civilization. Clearly, because such a person is a self-annihilator, the answer is an emphatic NO....
Anyone who believes that THEIR mother has/had the "right" to kill them FROM THE beginning is an insane fool.
It's certainly a good rhetorical point. I use the same against people who say they refuse, on principle, to have children: "well it's too bad your parents didn't feel that way - we could've had one less self-absorbed nihilist in the world."
You just want what you want and are casting about for anything you can say to try to justify it.
Add "and you have no regard whatever for arguments to the contrary, regardless of merit" and you have the standard pro-death position, I shit you not.
“abortion advocates refuse to acknowledge the tenable notion that life begins as conception and that any proceeding demarcation is wholly arbitrary.”
1. The pro-choice position does not deny that the opposite position is tenable. They just don't believe it, and correctly assert that an essentially religious position on the matter should not form the foundation of government reproductive policy.
If pro-death advocates accept that the opposite position is plausible, why don't they err on the side of caution and switch sides? It's not as if they've got anything countervailing beyond "jack" and "shit" on their side.
2
I don't even know WTF all that is supposed to mean. Guess I should go back and actually read One's post, lol.
Faulty reasoning. Abortion is only an immoral act if someone is unjustly harmed. It is not proven or even argued that the fetus/embryo/zygote is a person, it is merely asserted. On the contrary, it is undeniable that a zygote, embryo or early fetus has no sensation, no memory and no thoughts (nerve connections aren't grown). Such a thing is not a person in any meaningful sense of the word. The "pro-life" claim devalues real people, even worse than putting Black robbers, rapists and murderers above White victims.
That...is...fascinating. According to you, if every woman in the world decided to you to abort every fetus early in pregnancy, and this went on for 50 years (or however long it could go on, hint hint), no crime, no immoral act, has occurred?
Okay, this thread goes on way too long, tired of reading now.
Whoops, ignore that bit about homos, it was left over in my text editor from a discussion at Sailer's.
Botched backalley abortions: natural selection at its finest.
I can't wait for the next installment of Svigor's 1,500-page treatise.
Mr. Rational,
So in asking a QUESTION, I showed my obliviousness to the desire of the leviathan to maximize its autonomy?
Wrong, Mr. Irrational.
I asked whether there was a REAL THREAT from the leviathan to SAVE all forms of human life?
Is there? Where is it?
You say that in attempting to save all forms of human life that the leviathan is actually killing human life.
But I already said that too!!! I said the leviathan advocates abortion, homosexuality and euthanasia. These "things" are all REAL THREATS to human life.
Now listen Mr. Irrational... Mine is not a rhetorical point as Svigor has implied. Mine is a simple look at reality.
Abortion IS a mother killing HER CHILD in utero.
There is no wiggle room. There is no "what does 'her child' mean?" I have clearly defined abortion.
Now the thread is about all the pathetic, lame, weasly and downright self-annihilating justifications for the RIGHT to abortion.
Meaning, in layman's terms, a "right" to abortion IS a mother's "right" to kill HER CHILD in utero.
Now, if you were Mr. Rational as you claim, you would INSTANTLY proclaim the absurdity of a "right" to abortion. The leviathan's position should play no part in your thinking. If, you are truly Mr. Rational?
But, according to you, because the leviathan is not funding embryonic stem cell research and subsequently people are dying from diseases that SUPPOSEDLY could be cured from this research, the leviathan is a threat to real human beings BECAUSE they want to save all forms of human life.
Is that how it goes?
@svigor
"Jailing people for a crime does not approach a vast restructuring of society."
A "vast restructuring of society" would ensue if we took on the obligation of protecting the life of all successful unions of sperm and egg. About half of all fertilized eggs fail to implant, and die. There is currently no medical research being done on lifesaving technology that can rescue these thousands of fertilized eggs, resuscitate them, and save them until they can successfully be implanted in a willing and eager anti-abortion activist, who of course will forgo having natural children of her own until all of the embryos of the world have found uteri.
I dunno, I think it's pretty obvious that taking on an ethical obligation to all human life that makes it past the stage of conception is a pretty serious project.
"This is all if I actually accept the idea that we have to offer equal legal protection, which I don't."
I don't care!
"True, but they're probably just conceding the point so we can move the needle toward a lesser evil."
I certainly disagree. I find that proposition absurd.
"the thief may not assert that thievery is wrong."
He can assert all that he likes!
"This is some schizo shit right here."
Nah. It's good shit. It's just better shit than you're used to.
"A law that prohibits only those capable of carrying out the deed from doing so has what to do with with your silly tall-short murder law, exactly?"
A law that fails to prohibit abortions that follow from rape does not prohibit all "those capable of carrying out the deed from doing so{.}" Likewise, the silly tall-short murder law does not prohibit all murders. Thus, neither law can be said to derive from the principle "X is always wrong."
It's simple to understand, if you try!
"tired of reading now."
Yeah, you seem a little bit haggard. Better luck next time.
@Thordaddy
"Is there a threat of the government overstepping its boundaries in pursuit of protecting all forms of human life?"
Yes.
"I wasn't aware of this threat at all."
Your welcome!
"I wasn't aware of this threat at all."
Your welcome!
You're a moron. (And not just because you don't know the difference between "your" and "you're")
Dave,
I gave you empirical evidence that the leviathan IS NOT overstepping its boundaries in order to save all forms of human life.
First, what "boundaries" can a leviathan overstep in the mind of an individual that DOES NOT BELIEVE in "rights?"
Second, the leviathan IS CULLING our population through various mechanisms such as legal abortion, homosexualism and soon to be euthanasia. It is also seeking to legalize females dying on the front lines of war.
And you call this the THREAT of the government to SAVE ALL FORMS of human life.
You're welcome.
Haha, so you're just going to whistle past the fact that you used a blatant ad hom fallacy in earnest? Lemme guess, you're the type that's never wrong, ever.
Hey, do my work for me. Every undecided reading this is modeling the pro-death personality on you.
A law that fails to prohibit abortions that follow from rape does not prohibit all "those capable of carrying out the deed from doing so{.}" Likewise, the silly tall-short murder law does not prohibit all murders. Thus, neither law can be said to derive from the principle "X is always wrong."
So, we have to repeal laws against murder, because homicide in self-defense is an exception. Gotcha.
I certainly disagree. I find that proposition absurd.
Of course you'd dismiss such propositions out of hand: the principle of moving things in a good direction (away from greater evil and toward lesser evil) make a mockery of your silly strawman army marching down its stupid slippery slope.
Normal person: I gave 100 bucks to the poor today.
Dave, in a shrill voice (but I repeat myself): "you don't give a shit about the poor; you only did what you could. You didn't save all the poor. Therefore, your concern for the poor is disingenuous."
Dave, you come across as a liberal. If you are, I assume you're behind BRA to a large extent? E.g., you support "Affirmative Action"? Protected classes?
If so, could you please explain how you can be in favor helping one group, but not another?
Really, the criteria you've laid out are pretty rigorous. The pro-death crowd sure as @#%! aren't following them on any one issue, much less across the board.
I've no reason to expect you to be honest in your reply, given your track record in this thread, but it's at least interesting to wonder how your arguments will work on the lips of leftoids in general, when they cannot and do not apply them anywhere, much less in general.
Ergo, your arguments are non-starters.
Hell, couldn't I just flip them around and use them to oppose laws against homicide? E.g., "well, we don't protect life in the womb, ergo, we cannot protect it outside the womb - we gotta be consistent!"
Note how Dave hasn't tried to do any horse-trading on the thing that would get me back into the pro-death fold, btw; he hasn't even acknowledged the fact that I'm an easy lay; just acknowledge that the male freedom from reproductive responsibility is the inherent corollary of exclusively female reproductive rights (i.e., "her body, her choice, her responsibility") and I'm in the shower doing a tuck n' tail, but nooo.
Dave's argument, in a nutshell, seems to be that I can't do A that's motivated by X, if I don't also do B, C, D, and E, which are also natural extensions of motive X. It's kinda stupid, really. I only need respond that the slippery slope fallacy is a fallacy for a reason; I'm not proposing B, C, D, and E, and I'm not enshrining motive X or building any churches here; I'm simply advocating A, and my motivation is X.
Svigor, like "Lara", likes to post four or five comments in a row. Interesting.
I do believe in rights and in government with strictly limited powers, so the clown with delusions of association with Norse gods has no case against me on those grounds.
The rape exception to an otherwise-comprehensive abortion ban has always raised questions among those who dare to think. If all "pre-born babies" are innocent, and innocent human life must be protected, how is the child of a rapist not worthy of protection?
The rape exception is problematic in other ways. Laws with such an exception typically require a police report within some time limit, to prevent "sluts" from claiming rape whenever convenient. Suppose a victim of long-term incest becomes pregnant. She is browbeaten into denial until her pregnancy is too advanced to hide. Is she going to be denied an abortion because she's too late? Does she not deserve relief?
Social conservatives in general, and this blog in particular, advocate "slut shaming" to reverse some of the unwelcome social changes of the last few decades. Pushing an abortion ban for the purpose of slut shaming is at least honest. Having known a few sluts in my time and seen the havoc they've caused, I'm in more than a little agreement with this sentiment. Despite that, I don't think it's the only valid consideration.
Dumb girls tend to be sluttier, yet they are not the ones who ought to be encouraged to make babies. NAMs, especially, tend to be dumb and unlikely to use birth control properly. These are exactly the wrong ones who should be encouraged, let alone required, to make babies they don't want!
The smart girls may want babies, but look at the cost of giving up a career, finding a husband who can support them, and paying for a home where the schools are not flooded with NAMs and say "no way". If you're looking to change the system to promote births by White women, change it to encourage sterilization of the failures (mostly NAMs) and subsidize the children of the successful (mostly White so far). If the NAMs aren't flooding the schools with their stupid, violent kids, White women will be more likely to have kids to put in them. This will do more to advance eugenics and White hegemony in the USA than "slut shaming" ever could.
Question: What site do commenters here recommend to be a objective and accurate source for abortion statistics: who's having them, broken own by age, race and income?
I'd be equally wary of Planned Parenthood or the various conservative think tanks as sources. maybe data that adversarial groups both acknowledge as truthful?
"She is browbeaten into denial until her pregnancy is too advanced to hide. Is she going to be denied an abortion because she's too late? Does she not deserve relief?"
A late term abortion is not relief for the mother. It is traumatic. Killing the kid, especially when he is almost fully cooked, is just misplaced desire to punish the act of rape. If the death penalty is appropriate punishment for rape, surely it is more appropriate for the rapist than for his kid.
@svigor
"So, we have to repeal laws against murder, because homicide in self-defense is an exception. "
You're misunderstanding what I've written. I haven't proscribed anything. I'm describing. If a platform contradicts principle X, then it can not be DESCRIBED as deriving from principle X. That's the limit of my argument.
Still, it's important how things are described. One and St. Louis want their platform to be described as deriving from the principle that "all innocent life must be protected." I'm objecting to that description.
That doesn't mean policy Y can never be enacted. But I think we should know what the GENUINE principle is that the policy derives from.
It might be X, and I'm incorrect as to what it means to follow principle X.
It might be that I'm correct, and that the principle is not X, but is very similar to X.
But it's useful for both parties to figure out what the genuine principle is. There's never been a justification for the rabid hostility my dissent has provoked.
"Of course you'd dismiss such propositions out of hand"
Right, because it's absurd. Think about it. These people who genuinely want to eradicate all abortion, but compromise on the issue of rape -- whom are they compromising with? For whom is it a satisfying compromise to eradicate all abortion other than those resulting from rape? Such people must genuinely believe that abortion is bad except in cases of rape. But you've just said that everyone who claims to believe this is actually compromising with some else. So who are these second group of people compromising with? It makes no sense.
"Dave's argument, in a nutshell, seems to be that I can't do A that's motivated by X, if I don't also do B, C, D, and E, which are also natural extensions of motive X."
Nope.
"I'm not proposing B, C, D, and E, and I'm not enshrining motive X or building any churches here"
Okay, but then again, who the fuck are you? One is certainly building churches, and that's who I was responding to.
"I'm simply advocating A, and my motivation is X."
No, your motivation is not merely X. Or, you'd propose B, C, D, and E. That's the whole point. Obviously there are other factors BESIDES X that inform your decisions as to what to propose. So why do you insist, past the point of absurdity, that it's just plain old X? It becomes suspicious.
"Note how Dave hasn't tried to do any horse-trading on the thing that would get me back into the pro-death fold,"
Why would I "horse-trade" with you? This is just a conversation.
"btw; he hasn't even acknowledged the fact that I'm an easy lay;"
Okay, I won't deny you the acknowledgment you crave:
The fact that you're an "easy lay" is an example of what I've been talking about. People who claim to be acting on behalf of principle X but will sell out for 10% off their child support payments.
I mean, that there exist people like you, tightly-wound cranks who don't give a SHIT about the lives of fetuses but will nevertheless ape all the moralizing language of the anti-abortion crowd, probably because barking at "leftoids" gives you an endorphin rush -- that's never been anything I denied.
What do traditionalists get when they "compromise" with radical liberals?
Charges of hypocrisy...
So why compromise at all when we don't need to? Why compromise when we can just change our starting points?
Why argue from a position that just accepts mothers killing their children in utero as the norm? Why argue from a position that grants this "right" over the "right" to life? Why accept this inversion of order? Why impart life and death power to an ignorant female population? Why waste time arguing all the "exceptions" just to be met with charges of hypocrisy for your compromise? Why argue being versus non-being, consciousness versus nonconsciousness, rape and life of the mother versus the "parasite?"
We make a simple assertion.
My mother had no right to kill me in utero.
We need no science, religion, empirical evidence, faith, statistics, ideology to make our claim.
You either agree or you're a self-annihilator. Period.
This whole thread needs to be aborted.
I skipped Dave's reply. If anyone seconds one of his arguments, please specify and I'll read it and respond. Otherwise I have better things to do.
@Pat Hannagan
So are you arguing against having laws?
I specifically stated there will always be drug laws so, uh, no.
Where can I meet this moral realism?
Read Sam Harris - The Moral Landscape. He defines Morality as an under-explored branch of science and explicitly declares the difference between moral relativism (anything goes) and realism.
but you also maintain the right to demand others behave in accordance with your morality
I also explicitly stated that I CANNOT make such a serious decision for other adults. I haven't contradicted myself as you attempt to argue. I am simply stating that it is a difficult subject which cannot be minimized (as many liberals try to do) or over simplified (as the right tends to do).
Telling women not to worry or feel guilty about abortions because it is their right causes harm. Making it outright illegal would also cause harm. Trying to deny the harm done by either act is the most harmful. At this point, we should NOT attempt to impose our will on others and perhaps we never should.
We make life and death decisions all of the time concerning people living now. Each decision needs the proper respect and gravity to be applied and we need to give the people with the most at stake the most say in the matter. Unfortunately, because of the political games being played, these people are usually naive and uniformed.
@svidge
"I skipped Dave's reply. If anyone seconds one of his arguments, please specify and I'll read it and respond. Otherwise I have better things to do."
Hilarious! See, now this is what an ACTUAL ad hominem attack looks like. You're intellectually overmatched, so your weasel-route is just to attack me, personally. Gee, if only some other human being would say the same exact thing I just said, you'd surely have an argument for them. But because it's Dave, and something is just BAD about Dave, you don't have to reply.
And, what even is your personal objection to me? On which the ad hominem attack is based? Why will you only reply to these arguments if they come out of some other voice box? You're not going to clear that up for all the "undecideds" reading this thread?
They can only conclude that your objection to me is that I dared to disagree with you. And that that's how you avoid engaging with people who can intelligently disagree with you. Just convince yourself that anyone who doesn't see things your way must be somehow "bad" and you don't have to listen to them.
Sad.
Anyway, if no one objects, I'm just going to point out that you all quit with my ideas on top of yours. Good night, kiddos.
I somehow get a nagging feeling that approval for euthanasia, abortion and whatnot are all connected as somebody else has seen. In sum:
In the eyes of empiricists and scientists only the material matters and therefore only if the fetus is totally physically formed then it is a baby.
In the eyes of religious and spiritualists life and reality isn't just material but spiritual and supernatural as well. A baby may not be totally physically formed but it's spirit has already been conceived and so has the body.
Personally I'm of the religious view and unless in cases of mutations, deformations, incest and whatnot abortion shouldn't be allowed. In other words abortion should be very restricted, but not banned. The only problem is the liberals. You give them a inch and they take a mile.
The rape exception is problematic in other ways.
You and I can live with exceptions. Liberals can't. If we give society an inch liberals take a mile. Liberals lie, twist and change the subject to get what they want. They abhor restrictions.
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