[RD] Thoughts on Abortion (split off from Very Many Questions XXXII)

[Akka]

"You don't have a right to kill another person for your personal convenience" is a rather easy case to make, don't you think?

Except it doesn't apply, as there is no killing of another person.

 

[Yeekim]

Except it doesn't apply, as there is no killing of another person.

Indeed early on there isn't.

 

[Cutlass]

"You don't have a right to kill another person for your personal convenience" is a rather easy case to make, don't you think?

First of all, is it a person? If someone doesn't believe it is, then your argument fails. Second, the "convenience" argument is an extremely unethical one since again, you abandon any pretense that you intend to have the moral high ground when you go down that road of pretending that it is some trivial decision on the part of the woman making the choice. When you are so quick to announce that the moral high ground is of no concern to you, how can we think that you have any moral interest in the subject at all?

 

[Yeekim]

First of all, is it a person? If someone doesn't believe it is, then your argument fails. Second, the "convenience" argument is an extremely unethical one since again, you abandon any pretense that you intend to have the moral high ground when you go down that road of pretending that it is some trivial decision on the part of the woman making the choice. When you are so quick to announce that the moral high ground is of no concern to you, how can we think that you have any moral interest in the subject at all?

Depending on when the procedure happens, it might or might not be a person. Its capacity to feel and suffer is critical here.
Once it develops that capacity and thereby becomes a person, every other consideration (except actual danger to mother's life) does indees become trivial.
Don't you agree?

 

[Ryika]

It's not eugenics if it's done at a level involving personal choice. I mean, it's semantics, and a women is obviously making choices due to the framing imposed upon her by society, but it's not eugenics. If we live in a world with an easy Huntington's cure, then the personal decision a mother must make about her Huntington's gene will be different than a world where we've not created such a cure.

But, we now live a world where we have partial control of what type of embryos we force to become people. We don't have to play the same lottery we used to, and (as such) the moral obligations around such decisions will also change.

There are systems of Eugenics that involve choice. For example, if you pay people for having babies if they're shown to have "good genes" (whatever that means), or pay people with "bad genes" (whatever that means) every year that they don't make babies, paying them for undergoing sterilization etc. Hell, even just supporting "good genes" monetarily would already be a step up, if we were able to have a clear picture of what are "good genes" and "good traits". That's really the thing that would make these decisions very questionable right now, but in the future an AI might do that job for us, or we might be able to do simulations that give us a picture of what arrives at a good point, and is not just arbitrary discrimination.

 

[Mouthwash]

I've already provided the argument about why there is no moral problem to abort embryo. Maybe you should first point at how it could be possible for such moral problem to exist.

I'm afraid I missed it. Can you link to it?

I almost think this merits its own thread, but... Eugenics are a good thing, and probably the best chance for humanity to get rid of the baggage that we were left with due to the evolutionary processes that we went through, if (if!) it happens on a voluntary basis. No doubt it will lead to troubling times, but the possible end product is likely worth the hustle.

Thank you for your opinion.

It's not eugenics if it's done at a level involving personal choice.

The policymakers are explicitly saying they are eliminating undesirable traits. So it's pretty much de facto eugenics.

(Your tune will change when we develop better ways to predict sexual orientation.)

I mean, it's semantics, and a women is obviously making choices due to the framing imposed upon her by society, but it's not eugenics. If we live in a world with an easy Huntington's cure, then the personal decision a mother must make about her Huntington's gene will be different than a world where we've not created such a cure.

Is it okay to euthanize babies with Huntington's to spare them the suffering they'll endure in middle age?

Except it doesn't apply, as there is no killing of another person.

The point is that you can't assume that in an argument, because it's what the issue is about.

Second, the "convenience" argument is an extremely unethical one since again, you abandon any pretense that you intend to have the moral high ground when you go down that road of pretending that it is some trivial decision on the part of the woman making the choice. When you are so quick to announce that the moral high ground is of no concern to you, how can we think that you have any moral interest in the subject at all?

It's still not okay to kill someone even if your life is miserable and their death will bring you great joy.

 

[Yeekim]

The point is that you can't assume that in an argument, because it's what the issue is about.

We just need a reasonable definition of personhood, don't we?

 

[Akka]

I'm afraid I missed it. Can you link to it?

The point is that you can't assume that in an argument, because it's what the issue is about.

Well, here is the reasoning :
=>

Wow, an abortion thread. Must have been several years since I hadn't seen one, it was all the rage in the days.

The "debate" is really simple, though.
A fertilized egg is called an "embryo" up to about 12 weeks, at which point it becomes a fetus.
An embryo has no neural system. At such it's not only nonsentient, but even nonthinking and nonfeeling.
As such it's not a being, just a blob of cells.
Blob of cells have (and shouldn't have) rights.
As such abortion is morally acceptable.

That's it, nothing can be argued about it unless one enters into religious argument and start to bring the "soul" in the equation.

 

[Mouthwash]

We just need a reasonable definition of personhood, don't we?

I'm not really sure how useful personhood is as a measure of determining value.

Well, here is the reasoning :

Excellent. Here is a thread I made which addresses your arguments.

 

[Yeekim]

I'm not really sure how useful personhood is as a measure of determining value.

Value to whom?

 

[Valka D'Ur]

The disagreement is over the legality of abortion. In a political context, having a position on "abortion" just tells you whether or not you think it should be allowed to happen.

Oh. Well, in that case... it used to be illegal in Canada, and now it isn't. Catholic hospitals still get a boatload of excuses as to why they don't have to perform one, Catholic doctors are supposed to refer patients to doctors willing to perform the procedure (but some refuse), some nurses stick their noses in the stratosphere and say they won't do so much as fetch a glass of water for a woman who is an abortion patient, no matter the reason why she had one (even if it's a life-threatening reason such as an ectopic pregnancy), and it's just fine and hunky-dory for a group of sign-waving protesters to stand across the street (terrorists in my view, since their real purpose is to intimidate and harass), chanting bible passages, telling them god hates them, and all kinds of other reprehensible acts.

Yes, I'm aware of freedom of expression, but there has to be a limit when one group's freedom of expression actively promotes terror toward a group of medically vulnerable women.

Oh, sorry. Thread wasn't created by me, remember. I just want to debate what I consider to be unfair terminology.

Terminology is something that can easily be twisted to mean its opposite, or it can come to mean its opposite, depending on how its proponents apply the terms.

Mere inconvenience often seems sufficient to deter suicides and mass shootings. So the emotional impact of watching a film or ultrasound, or hearing a religious perspective may stop an abortion.

Do you not realize how insulting and even cruel it is to force women to do these things, as if their minds are not already made up and time is of the essence? The purpose of these extra rules is not only to guilt-trip her into reversing her decision, but also to force her to jump through hoops that will make her ineligible for the abortion because she'll have had to waste days or weeks on this bureaucratic claptrap instead of getting everything over and done with. Then they'll tell her that too much time has passed and she has to continue the pregnancy whether she wants to or not.

As for mere information, it's overrated. Imagine that the government was rounding up the mentally incapacitated to execute. Would believers in this policy be more likely to turn over their neighbors/family after hearing words like "termination of undesirables" or "killing the helpless?" If the victims were drugged and had masks so you couldn't see their faces, or if they struggled and cried on the way to the chair?

This appeal to my heartstrings is not working, and is off-topic anyway. This thread is not about the mentally incapacitated. Information, if it consists of the facts for the purpose to inform the patient of her physical condition, her available options, and what risks she would incur depending on her decision - given honestly, mind you, not deliberate lies intended to scare the patient into following the doctor's or hospital's preferred religious stance - is not overrated.

But that is not relevant. The same thing applies to everyone, no matter what they do.

You're saying it's irrelevant that I say my opinion of another woman's pregnancy is irrelevant?

Not providing them with help doesn't automatically mean they're scorning them. And if they act to save lives, then don't offer financial assistance to the people they saved as they grow up, it doesn't mean they were wrong to save them in the first place.

What's the point of forcing a woman to carry to term if she can't support the baby, doesn't want to give it up for adoption, and then society basically makes it impossible for her to care for the baby properly because she can't get a job (due to most employers frowning on women taking their babies to work with them) or because she had to drop out of school or college to have the baby and therefore has no qualifications, and with childcare as expensive as it is, she'd never get ahead anyway? And then the same people who point and judge her for getting pregnant in the first place then proceed to remove as many of the services and funding as possible that could actually help her raise the kid in a safe and responsible way... supposedly because she doesn't "deserve" them. After all, it must be totally 100% her fault for getting pregnant at all, right? Even if it was due to incest or rape or birth control that failed.

As I said: Too many judgmental people are pro-pregnancy, but once that baby is born, they simply don't care.

How many of these same judgmental people are the ones who raise a self-righteous hue and cry over age-appropriate sex education in schools? There was actually some dumbfool man on CBC.ca ranting that 12 was too young to teach his precious princess about sex - wait until she's older, like at least 14. Newsflash, grandpa-to-be: Some girls can get pregnant as young as 9. Mind you, the 9-year-olds who get pregnant are more likely to be rape victims than merely irresponsible junior-high-school students - some of whom may also be rape victims, or who wanted to have safe sex but couldn't access what they needed.

Of course I'm sympathetic. Why does that have to mean I'm okay with it? Are they one and the same to you?

Sympathetic, to me, means trying to make things easier - or at the very least, not trying to make things harder.

IMHO "pro-choice" simply means that a woman has the right to seek an abortion for any reason without interference from society or the government. "Pro-abortion" can loosely be defined as the same thing. It's simply a matter of linguistic juggling, except with this emotionally charged topic, you're juggling chainsaws. I prefer to call the "pro-life" people "anti-abortionists", because that is really what they are. It's an "If the shoe fits, wear it" sort of thing.

Far too many are really "pro-pregnancy." They're only too happy to support laws to cut social supports, health programs, educational funding, and screech about the impoverished new mothers' need to get a job... and then after failing to support programs or funding for adequate childcare, they'll climb on a pedestal and smugly berate the women for becoming pregnant in the first place (even though they might have tried to access birth control, or they might have been raped).

And actually, if you read any Canadian based opinion on the subject, you'll find that the way that I use the term is very similar to the pro-choice movement here in Canada.

I'm reminded of a current argument going on on CBC.ca: http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/scheer-summer-grant-jobs-abortion-1.4484588

The Reformacon leader, Andrew Scheer, is upset that the federal government refuses to issue grant money to religious organizations to hire students for summer jobs if one of the organization's purposes is to deter or prohibit women accessing abortion services:

Opposition leader Andrew Scheer is accusing the Liberal government of "imposing" the prime minister's views on faith groups that fear they will be denied funding for summer jobs due to their positions on abortion.

On Wednesday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told a town hall in Hamilton that groups are welcome to apply for the Canada Summer Jobs program, but if those groups infringe upon a woman's right to choose, "that's where … we draw the line as a country."

Of course there is plenty of bleating in the comments that the Prime Minister is punishing faith organizations for their opinions, but they miss the point that while people are free to think whatever they want, they are not free to interfere with women accessing legal reproductive health services.

I think if the abortion crowd used half the energy they expend on making the killing of fetuses acceptable to campaign for better birth control, this entire debate would be marginalized due to lack of interest. (I'm strongly against birth control, but it's a better option than abortion.)

What makes you think we don't campaign for better birth control? And how is that even a coherent argument on your part, given that you say you're "strongly against birth control"?

It looks like you just want babies, more babies, more babies after that, and yeah, let's have some MOAR BABIEZ!!!. Who cares if the mother is financially able to care for them, who cares if she was raped, who cares if she's a 9-year-old incest victim who will be at risk of dying herself because 9-year-old bodies aren't usually physically developed enough to go through the processes of pregnancy and labor, who cares if the pregnancy will kill the mother? (and keep in mind that in many of these cases, if the mother dies, the baby will die as well)

I am definitely in favor of age-appropriate sex education and explanations of how the human body really works. Thank goodness the schools in this province make some effort. Neither my mother nor grandmother bothered. There are actually people who think it's "sinful" to explain all this stuff because somehow the knowledge of what's going on and how to stay safe and responsible will confer a license and encouragement to put on an orgy, or something.

It's still not okay to kill someone even if your life is miserable and their death will bring you great joy.

Are you seriously suggesting that having an abortion brings women "great joy"?

It might bring relief, depending on the situation, but I sincerely doubt it would bring "great joy."

Here's an anecdote from 30+ years ago (it has to do with one of my cats, not a human, but does involve abortion): In the summer of 1986 a stray cat had 2 kittens under the back porch. When they were old enough we took those kittens to the SPCA. During the time when we were trying to tame the mother cat to adopt her, she became pregnant again - this time she had 5 kittens (born October 14, 1986). We found homes for 2, another 2 went to the SPCA, and we kept the runt. During this pregnancy she decided to move into the house. Later on, after this last kitten was weaned, we decided to have the cat spayed.

What I didn't know was that at the time I took her in to be spayed, she was already pregnant - again. The vet didn't bother to call and ask me for a decision about it - to postpone the spaying until the kittens were born and weaned. He went ahead and aborted them. I've felt guilty about that for 30 years, although of course I hadn't known (it was too early in the pregnancy for anyone to know). The only way I can forgive myself at all is the rationalization that it would have been her third litter within a year (domestic cats have gestation periods of approximately 9 weeks) and she'd already had 7 kittens. Expecting more of her would have been difficult, and of course there would have been yet more kittens to find homes for; we couldn't keep all of them.

That's the closest I've ever come to abortion. I did not celebrate it. It did not bring me "great joy." I don't know how my cat felt about it. I suspect that had I been able to explain it to her, she might have been relieved that she wouldn't have to have yet more babies in such a short time (2 months' worth of pregnancy and another 6-8 weeks to nurse and wean them).

 

[Akka]

Excellent. Here is a thread I made which addresses your arguments.

Sorry, it doesn't. You try to counter an argument about sapience, while mine is about the lack of a nervous system, which is far more basic than sapience (it's even far more basic than sentience).

 

[Cutlass]

Depending on when the procedure happens, it might or might not be a person. Its capacity to feel and suffer is critical here.
Once it develops that capacity and thereby becomes a person, every other consideration (except actual danger to mother's life) does indees become trivial.
Don't you agree?

It's still not okay to kill someone even if your life is miserable and their death will bring you great joy.

Political forces came up with this new and improved talking point, and did so actually very recently in the debate. And I'm supposed to just accept your terminology why?

Again, if the anti-choice forces insist on not having the moral high ground in the way that they present their arguments, how can we believe that they have the moral high ground with the arguments that they are presenting?

In American politics there is not more unethical or immoral political movement than anti-choice. They are the worst of the worst, the bottom of the bottom. If you want to win your argument, if you want to convince people of your rightness, you don't do so by proving through your methods that your goals could not possibly be good ones.

 

[NinjaCow64]

It doesn’t matter if fetuses are human or not, I support safe and legal access to abortion.

Lets assume that fetuses are people for the sake of argument. I don’t believe that the should state force someone into or force them to continue to be in a dehabilitating, painful and dangerous medical condition against their will. Pregnancy meets that definition. Therefore the state shouldn’t force women to be pregnant against their consent.

If we assume that fetuses aren’t human then I honestly can’t think of an argument against legalised abortion so it works there too.

 

[Ryika]

state force someone into a dehabilitating, painful and dangerous medical condition against their will

What? The state has not made them pregnant, they and, presumably, another human being have gotten her into that condition.

 

[Yeekim]

@Cutlass What do I have to do with some political movement in US?

 

[NinjaCow64]

What? The state has not made them pregnant, they and, presumably, another human being have gotten her into that condition.

Okay that was poorly worded.

Force them into or force them to continue to be in a dehabilitating, painful and dangerous medical condition against their will.

Is probably a better way of putting it.

 

[Cutlass]

@Cutlass What do I have to do with some political movement in US?

If you're going to use their rhetoric, you are going to have the same problem that they have in not being accepted as a moral movement.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

Therefore the state should force women to be pregnant against their consent.

Shouldn't?

 

[NinjaCow64]

Shouldn't?

That’s an extremely embarrassing typo. Fixed.