Supreme Court strikes down Texas's restrictive abortion requirements

[Senethro]

Most people don't knowingly advocate murder. So I'm slightly skeeved out by Mouthwash wanting to knowingly commit murder, and in particular on the disabled.

Let's just be absolutely crystal clear here. Pro-choice advocates do not think abortion is murder so the "no murdering" rule is upheld from their perspective.

Mouthwash thinks abortion is murder but wants special permission in one circumstance.

I wonder if we can resolve this apparent inconsistency without resorting to ALLCAPs.

 

[Lexicus]

I would also like to quickly point out it's possible to believe abortion is unethical without believing it is murder.

 

[warpus]

People who say that abortion is murder are resorting to an appeal to emotion. And it doesn't even work.

 

[metalhead]

The view that abortion is equivalent to murder is not something that can be contained simply as a private value. Believing in that requires political action. I would call anybody who accepted the conclusion, and felt it was a matter of personal choice, as evil.

What I don't understand is why you seem to think there is room for compromise; that the human ego should trump everything else. No, people should not have the freedom to kill babies! The notion that someone can be personally 'pro-life' while allowing the choice to others cannot be upheld at any rational level whatsoever.

But surely you recognize that well-meaning people can legitimately disagree with you on whether or not abortion is murder? I mean, once a fetus gets to the point of viability, I think you get pretty dicey on finding anyone willing to say that killing it is not murder. Once the fetus is born, everyone in recorded history has agreed it is murder. There is room for compromise because we are trying to have a society. Social norms exist to govern our behavior. In the case of abortion, it's difficult to call either position normative, so there is no real moral high ground for anyone to stand on.

Abortion is not murder, quite simply, because society doesn't believe it to be murder. Murder is not a concept one can simply decide the meaning of. It's something that is codified in law, based on thousands of years of historical human social tradition. So holding the belief that abortion is murder, in effect, is to thumb ones nose at rationality, at society, and invent one's own definitions for concepts that are defined based on collective morality.

Quite simply, it isn't up to you. It's in fact a massive expression of ego to think that your view on what is or is not human life, or what actions are murder, should supplant that which human society has determined is proper. You don't get to decide those things.

 

[FriendlyFire]

"Eugenics is a set of beliefs and practices that aims at improving the genetic quality of the human population." -Wikipedia

Or you could have read the next line and paragraph ?

The exact definition of eugenics has been a matter of debate since the term was coined.

Such programs often included both "positive" measures, such as encouraging individuals deemed particularly "fit" to reproduce, and "negative" measures such as marriage prohibitions and forced sterilization of people deemed unfit for reproduction. People deemed unfit to reproduce often included people with mental or physical disabilities, people who scored in the low ranges of different IQ tests, criminals and deviants, and members of disfavored minority groups

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

 

[Lexicus]

Once the fetus is born, everyone in recorded history has agreed it is murder.

Actually not entirely accurate; we know that infanticide was widely practiced in many premodern societies and is still practiced in some places today. In Rome it was even legal for a father to kill his children (elsewhere in history it may be illegal but winked at, or just permitted by custom and not law).
I'm going off your own definition of murder here, btw.

You don't get to decide those things.

In part he does, if he's a citizen of a country with electoral politics. But he has to play ball like everyone else.

 

[FriendlyFire]

Actually not entirely accurate; we know that infanticide was widely practiced in many premodern societies and is still practiced in some places today. In Rome it was even legal for a father to kill his children (elsewhere in history it may be illegal but winked at, or just permitted by custom and not law).
I'm going off your own definition of murder here, btw.

Historically due to the "limited" medical understanding
A Fetus was classified as property and life began with the infants first breath. As codified as Gods law in the Bible and practiced by the Hebrews.
Of course the infant mortality rate in ancient times was high due to the primitive nature of medicine.

For example: Ancient Greeks carried out abortions using herbs, or induce miscarriages with physical activities
Was there any laws regarding Deformed babies ? Or would they simply die soon afterwards ?

The only verses I know that address the legal status of “seed” in the womb come in a brief section of case law.

Exodus 21:22-25 describes a case where a pregnant woman jumps into a fight between her husband and another man and suffers injuries that cause her to miscarry. Injuries to the woman prompt the normal penalties for harming another human being: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a life for a life. Killing the woman is murder, a capital crime.

The miscarriage is treated differently, however — as property loss, not murder. The assailant must pay a fine to the husband. The law of a life for a life does not apply. The fetus is important, but it’s not human life in the same way the pregnant woman is.

My impression is that most Americans have a more nuanced and conservative view than the Bible does on this, though we’re getting at the same idea: an important moral and legal line is crossed when the fetus can survive outside the womb.

For the Bible, that’s when a child is born and starts breathing.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rick-...-the-bible-says-and-doesnt-say_b_1856049.html

 

[choxorn]

It's worth noting that whether a fetus would be "viable" at a certain point in its gestation depends heavily on what medical technology is available. Today, one prematurely born as early as 22-24 weeks can be kept alive, but even 100 years ago trying to keep alive a 34 week old premature birth would have been nearly impossible.

 

[Mouthwash]

What is a horrific life? Is condemning a child to a lifetime of squalor not itself a horrific life? What about one of hunger, of an inability to get proper education or support in educational pursuits? A childhood spent bouncing from foster home to foster home; a near inevitable condemnation to a prison sentence.

All these are contingencies of the modern US and some various failed states. I see plenty of abortions going on in Denmark.

Do these themselves not constitute a horrific life?

Perhaps, but those aren't things which can be determined in the womb. I'm talking about people with severe deformities, such that they can never hope to live without suffering.

Most people don't knowingly advocate murder. So I'm slightly skeeved out by Mouthwash wanting to knowingly commit murder, and in particular on the disabled.

Let's just be absolutely crystal clear here. Pro-choice advocates do not think abortion is murder so the "no murdering" rule is upheld from their perspective.

Mouthwash thinks abortion is murder but wants special permission in one circumstance.

I don't think abortion is murder. Murder is a legal term. I don't see how sparing someone from a life of suffering is equivalent to preventing someone from living what would probably be a decent or good life because you don't like how it would affect your own.

Or you could have read the next line and paragraph ?

The point of eugenics is the remove inferior genes from the population. My goal is that I would like to prevent suffering. A eugenics advocate would abort a child with Down Syndrome. I would abort a child with Tay-Sachs Disease. We have different criteria.

 

[Flying Pig]

Perhaps, but those aren't things which can be determined in the womb. I'm talking about people with severe deformities, such that they can never hope to live without suffering.

Nobody can ever hope to live without suffering, and plenty of people with tremendous disabilities consider themselves, at least in general, happy. There's good evidence from psychology that happiness essentially finds a level - that there's not a lot of difference between how happy the reasonably fortunate and the reasonably unfortunate feel on an average day, but that happiness depends on how much better or worse your situation is relative to normal.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

The word "rape" often gets used in place of the term "sexual assault" outside of the courtroom when there are aggravating circumstances (like the use of force, coercion or inability to consent). Language. It changes. As this forum is not a courtroom, why is this point of vernacular so important to you? What does changing the words we're using do to the points we're making?

Not a problem for me, I'll just remember this the next time there's an "abortion = murder" thread and the same people make exactly the opposite argument and insist on legal definitions only.

Abortion is not murder, quite simply, because society doesn't believe it to be murder. Murder is not a concept one can simply decide the meaning of. It's something that is codified in law...

Well that didn't take long did it. One week.

 

[Mouthwash]

Nobody can ever hope to live without suffering, and plenty of people with tremendous disabilities consider themselves, at least in general, happy. There's good evidence from psychology that happiness essentially finds a level - that there's not a lot of difference between how happy the reasonably fortunate and the reasonably unfortunate feel on an average day, but that happiness depends on how much better or worse your situation is relative to normal.

And a child whose muscles are wasting away, who gets weaker by the month and will almost certainly be dead before age ten?

 

[Flying Pig]

You'll have to ask them. At best, it's a difficult question, and we should at least be uneasy about giving that directly to the parents. You quite regularly hear the 'for their own good' line brought out for Downs Syndrome and even autism, and in those cases it's quite obviously wrong. Things are muddied even further when the people deciding whether a life is worth living are also those who will have to change their own lives massively in order to do much more for their child than they had imagined.

 

[Farm Boy]

Yes. I don't think that our position on child birth can be created from first principles. But there's a certain ... insistence ... upon subpar lives that I don't agree with from the prolife side. To me "he'll have a bad life" is a perfectly good reason to have an abortion.

Perfectly good.

I am so sick of ideologies trying to selectively kill thier way towards perfection.

 

[warpus]

I am sick of people forcing 16 year olds to give birth and raise children, ruining 2 lives with one stone

 

[Senethro]

I don't think abortion is murder. Murder is a legal term. I don't see how sparing someone from a life of suffering is equivalent to preventing someone from living what would probably be a decent or good life because you don't like how it would affect your own.

Ok, so abortion is not murder. What is it then? What crime or action would you call it? Who is the injured party and what harm is enacted on them? What are the consequences of that harm?

 

[El_Machinae]

Oh, excuse me, they're excising tumors. By crushing the tumor's developing brain.

They're not tumors. They're not babies. They're fetuses. There's a quantum difference between a fetus and a baby.

Perfectly good.

I am so sick of ideologies trying to selectively kill thier way towards perfection.

We both acknowledge the moral onus to make a sentient's life a good one. We just don't agree on the moral onus to force any specific sentience into existence.

 

[Mouthwash]

I am sick of people forcing 16 year olds to give birth and raise children, ruining 2 lives with one stone

I agree that teenagers shouldn't be forced to raise their children, or even pay child support.

Ok, so abortion is not murder. What is it then? What crime or action would you call it? Who is the injured party and what harm is enacted on them? What are the consequences of that harm?

I don't know and don't care. I'm discussing ethics, not law. I don't think the penalty should be equivalent to murder, though.

 

[Lexicus]

I don't know and don't care. I'm discussing ethics, not law. I don't think the penalty should be equivalent to murder, though.

Sorry but you can't burn the baby-killing bridge, which you've already crossed. You've referred to abortion as baby-killing, said people shouldn't have the 'freedom to kill babies,' claimed that it's understandable when terrorists attack abortion providers (which only makes sense if you think abortion is a grave crime, rather like, I dunno, murder or something).

Even if you're now backpedaling from saying you think abortion is murder it's clear that you do.

 

[Senethro]

I don't know if anything is clear anymore.

What Mouthwash seems to be saying is that abortion is bad enough that it overrides any rights of the women involved, but insufficiently bad that it should prevent us aborting the disabled for their own good.

So either he considers the good of the women insignificant, or the goodness of eugenic/welfare based abortion paramount.

Messed up.