[RD] Abortion is either murder or not. You can't have it both ways.

[Akka]

1. In a world where genders and identities are fluid, why can't ones humanhood be a matter of identification?
2. If a creature doesn't yet have a concious mind, can't his identity be determing by his surrounding?

Identity is a matter of definition, not of how someone wants it to be. You can't decide that your dog is a human and as such someone killing it is commiting murder - though you can perfectly feel he's more important to you and more part of your family than an actual human who is a stranger.

What is, has no relationship to what one wants. I certainly wants to be wealthy, but my bank account says otherwise and has reality backing it up

 

[Absolution]

Are you supporting granting personhood to elephants, dolphins, parrots and crows?

I don't know if I support any of the following but let's play:

We can agree that a person claiming an identity that is different from his/her physicality is becoming more and more acceptable.

It is just a matter of society agreeing on a different way to address a somebody.
Why can't society agree that one elephant should be addressed as a monkey?
As long as it does not harm the elephant? And if society somehow gains something from it, then why not?

Back to where we've been - addressing the fetus as a person (or a lizard, whatever they wish) doesn't harm the fetus, and thus it should be completely ok for the family to do so.

The outer surrounding might find it lunatic.
But so they did just a few decades ago towards people who agreed to address transgenders by their new gender.
Interesting?

 

[Angst]

Are you supporting granting personhood to elephants, dolphins, parrots and crows?

not sure we want the thread to go there, but

so absolution brought up the possibility of something unconscious being recognized as a person. this wouldn't apply to elephants, dolphins, parrots and crows, since they are most probably conscious (the direction of the sciences are increasingly believing that). so in the particular construction, can something unconscious be considered a person, it does not include these; in the presupposition.

however the "yet" in the unconscious construction of absolution matters. a braindead person on life support is still considered a person. is a cell clump person-to-be a person then? the braindead person has gained the personhood over a lifetime. what if someone is born brain dead?

regardless if a clump of cells is considered a person, creatures as intelligent as those outlined there - this would probably include pigs btw - could indeed be considered a person. i get that to be a person you need to be part of the human dna pool, but if consciousness is the sole prerequisite... the argument could support that

also, absolution did note that he's not supportive of his presuppositions, he just put out some questions for us to ponder

 

[João III]

"Pro-choice" is specifically about abortion (it wasn't, for example, about whether you were allowed to refuse nanolipids in your ovaries).

Only because of a decades-long campaign to make it so. Nothing about the phrase "pro-choice" alludes to abortion unless you already know

"Pro-abortion" doesn't capture the sentiment, either. In fact "choice" is a better word.

People say this and then only talk about abortion

You find, similarly, "pro-life" is an unclear description.

I think pro-life should revise to pro-right-to-life, personally

But, I think that we have to remember that these words were invented by the same people who said "the post-moderinst era" is something that's now in the past. So, they're just not very good at words.

Agreed, "post-modernist era" is just silly. I'm waiting for someone to suggest "post-contemporary era" next

If I steal your credit card and use it to sponsor a child (who'll die without that sponsorship), are you allowed to cancel your card?

Does this child happen to be a violinist as well, by chance?

 

[El_Machinae]

Sorry, I should have typed another sentence. "Pro-abortion" doesn't work, because of the "pro".

The position is in favor of access and choice, not necessarily in favor of abortions. Many pro-choice people would happily arrange society so that there were fewer abortions.

But yes, "choice" is about reproductive control. To make it a better label would require more words. I'm uncertain you could get more accuracy with the same number of syllables.

The problem with 'postmodern' is because they're the wrong words. "Pro-choice" is about choice. One is the wrong words, the other is insufficient words.

Someone is deciding that they want you to become a person. They aren't the ones deciding if you're a person or not - though you might already be one in their eyes. But how they view you has no bearing on what you actually are.

There's actual personhood and legal personhood. With legal personhood, it's someone else making the definitional decision

 

[Lohrenswald]

... But I am consistently taking that position. I've noticed Eve Ensler (as one example but many other feminists) is hypocritical about this. They say they agree with me that they are pro-choice. If you are pro-choice I would like to assume you agree that abortion is not murder because a fetus isn't a person. Otherwise, you are comfortable with murder.

If it's legal it's by definition not murder but that's semantics, so just assume switching out murder with killing:
I'm unfourtunately at the moment thinking that abortion is killing, but that I'm fine with that

 

[sophie]

If murder means killing a human, and a fetus is, in my opinion, a kind-of-human, or almost-human - than abortion can be almost murder.

Well that's where you're going wrong, because murder does not mean "killing a human."

"Abortion is wrong because it is murder" is the single worst argument in the abortion discourse, because murder means "wrongful or unlawful killing," and so "abortion is wrong because it is murder" is just a giant round of question-begging.

If it's legal it's by definition not murder but that's semantics, so just assume switching out murder with killing:
I'm unfourtunately at the moment thinking that abortion is killing, but that I'm fine with that

Precisely this. I don't think there are many who would deny that a fetus is a "life" in the sense that it is "alive" (ectopic pregnancies notwithstanding), and performing an abortion would be causing the fetus to no longer be alive. But even if we were to define a fetus as a "human life" that doesn't get us an answer, because I also think there are very very few people who wouldn't accept the position that sometimes it is permitted, or even moral, to kill a human. So arguing over whether or not a fetus is a human life is, in my view, rather silly, because you aren't actually getting any closer to answering the question.

 

[Lexicus]

If I steal your credit card and use it to sponsor a child (who'll die without that sponsorship), are you allowed to cancel your card?

The answer of a person who describes themselves as "pro-life" should be no

 

[RobAnybody]

If I steal your credit card and use it to sponsor a child (who'll die without that sponsorship), are you allowed to cancel your card?

My personal answer is "Yes, of course." But I agree with @Lexicus that the logically consistent "pro-life" answer should be "No".

However, if a hypothetical "pro-life" person (who believes abortion=murder) makes an exception for rape & incest, then I should be able to kill that child to relieve my undue burden that you caused me without my consent. But we're getting into absurd hypotheticals. Either abortion is murder or it's not. As the thread title says: "You can't have it both ways."

 

[João III]

My personal answer is "Yes, of course." But I agree with @Lexicus that the logically consistent "pro-life" answer should be "No".

Not necessarily. The right to life is the right to not be killed, it is not the "right to not die". If the child was already dying, perhaps from a terrible accident involving a violin, then taking back the kidney credit card would merely return the child to their original dying state. As you are not responsible for their dying state, you are not obligated to them. It would, however, be generous of you to help

 

[Senethro]

Blah blah blah, some things are conventional and natural, therefore I may do them without any real examination of what's actually occurring.

If returning things to their natural state is a thing, then you can pretty much do anything you want for any reason, so long as you set your zero point carefully.

 

[Samson]

Are we getting to "We must kill all humans to save the planet?"

 

[Angst]

Not necessarily. The right to life is the right to not be killed, it is not the "right to not die". If the child was already dying, perhaps from a terrible accident involving a violin, then taking back the kidney credit card would merely return the child to their original dying state. As you are not responsible for their dying state, you are not obligated to them. It would, however, be generous of you to help

just wanted to say that while i know our conclusions are different (iirc), i appreciate you taking the violinist argument into account. <3

 

[Narz]

Someone is deciding that they want you to become a person. They aren't the ones deciding if you're a person or not - though you might already be one in their eyes. But how they view you has no bearing on what you actually are.

Your parents decision is what makes you a human. Everyone is here because their parents make a choice. Had they chose to abort you (or be more careful about sex) you wouldn't be.

 

[Lexicus]

Not necessarily. The right to life is the right to not be killed, it is not the "right to not die". If the child was already dying, perhaps from a terrible accident involving a violin, then taking back the kidney credit card would merely return the child to their original dying state. As you are not responsible for their dying state, you are not obligated to them. It would, however, be generous of you to help

Nonsensical reasoning worthy of the conservative supreme court! But funny because of course this logic allows any and all killing as everyone, without exception, is naturally dying and naturally will end up dead.

 

[El_Machinae]

The answer of a person who describes themselves as "pro-life" should be no

I won't agree, because I don't think the self-descriptions are not that binary. It isn't hypocritical to think of rape as an exception, it's just an acknowledgment that the world is complicated with balancing factors. I don't really buy into the violinist argument as convincing. Oh, it's internally sound, it just doesn't describe properly the situation for most people. But with my Visa example, which is similar to the violinist example, the idea of unwilling enslavement is brought forward much more aggressively than what most people imagine consensual sex is. In other words, the argument is persuasive to others, but we weight changes to the analogies differently. The enslavement argument changes around perceived difficulty and level of complicity.

Never mind that some of the pro-choice crowd is purely in it for the anti misogyny angle, but they make the other arguments out of convenience, not belief.

I make it no secret that the pro-choice crowd has let me down. I hold abortion rights as important due to a very different framework, the obligation to only make wanted children. So when people were so willing to abandon medical privacy and bodily integrity last year, because I don't actually understand that framewor (apparently), it seemed very hypocritical when it didn't need to be.

Part of being outside of a framework is not really understanding it. Like any group psychology, we tend to be very disappointed in the moral choices of other people.

 

[Remorseless1]

At a pro-choice demonstration in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Saturday, a man drove his pickup into a crowd of marchers sending one person to the hospital and injuring three others.

Nothing says pro-life like trying to kill people.

 

[Bamspeedy]

As an aside : does it means that in US, killing an pregnant woman is considered double murder ?

Yes, a killer can be charged with double murder for killing a pregnant woman. I'm fine with that in pre-meditated, first degree murder cases. I feel less comfortable when it's double charges related to an accident (as an example, a driver was reckless, but didn't set out with a purpose to kill people)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unborn_Victims_of_Violence_Act

Note, it specifically excludes abortion.

 

[Lexicus]

I won't agree,

And this simply provides me with more evidence that "pro-life" people simply don't give a **** about life, what they really care about is controlling and devaluing women \

Or to put it slightly differently: the admittance of valid "balancing factors" means that pro-life people do not consider women's health, autonomy, etc. as "balancing factors." Why wouldn't they consider those things to be balancing factors?

 

[El_Machinae]

And this simply provides me with more evidence that "pro-life" people simply don't give a **** about life, what they really care about is controlling and devaluing women

Fascinating. Do you think maybe you're on a confirmation bias spiral? I mean, I won't convince you in real time.

There are many motives to be pro-life. But the misogyny angle is a pretty important one. In my private life, where you can actually convince somebody, I'm trying to work on blaming the ejaculation rather than the open legs whenever possible.

I won't sway a pro-lifer to become pro-choice. But we can trim out the misogynistic language, which is a generational battle.