Lexicus
Deity
All fine and dandy but fact is a great proportion of the 'pro life crowd' are also pro abstinence and anti-birth control.
How about this?
The state is obliged to protect the lives of those under its care. (I think this is generally accepted)
This care extends to unborn lives as well. (As demonstrated by social output for neonatal care and the acceptance of legal causes of action and crimes related to harm against an unborn child)
Private autonomy interests of a person do not extend to permit physical harm against another (in other words, you right to act stops where my nose begins. Another generally accepted rule of liberal government and personal rights that has very few exceptions.)
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Abortion is always justified by one of two reasons:
#1: That sapience determines moral value. This makes fetuses, being nonsapient, morally equivalent to a rock or other inanimate object. They're just some flesh, after all.
The problem here is that if we take nonsapience to mean absence of value, it applies to other things which we do value. It is considered acceptable to kill animals, but it is not considered acceptable to kill children below two years of age, although their mental state isn't advanced much beyond than a chimp's. To assert otherwise would be considered abhorrent.
Another problem is that even if sapience were the basis for value, it doesn't follow that a nonsapient object would be valueless. Fetuses have the ability to develop sapience, an inherent capacity which is part of their nature. They may not be able to immediately exercise sapience, but this also applies to someone who is under general anesthesia, or in a coma. It clearly isn't acceptable to kill them!
Finally, even fully-grown humans have varying degrees of sapience. The lives of those with Down Syndrome or other mental disabilities would therefore not be as valuable as those of healthy people.
None of those are good arguments, a good argument would be something like 'abortion being legal causes more harm than its being illegal' and then would adduce evidence to that effect.
As well, a coma victim is functionally different from a fetus in that it certainly was sentient. It's qualitatively different, in the 'having had sentience' is a feature a fetus does not have.
its still an argument based on emotion,
As I'm pretty sure both you and mouthwash don't work in a Central African refugee camp, saving children's lives as you value other things above children's lives which is the same choice a women makes when she chooses to have an abortion. It is a subjective decision that your and mouthwashes arguments fail to address
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I'm not sure what you're getting at here but a state's obligation to others in the care of another state is less than its obligation to its own subjects. not sure if that address what you mean or not though.
Sure.If we are going to rest out arguments upon qualifying words than I think you mean "a feature the fetus might not develop."
So is the child born in a coma like state, that is lacking sentience, a person?
There. Can we all agree that abortion is wrong now, and get on with our lives?
You might respond that all these things need outside intervention to achieve that potential. So does the fetus. Specifically, the fetus need the outside intervention of a human mother to nurture and nourish it. Without that intervention, the fetus will, most certainly, fail to realize its potential.
That was only a joke, but...really? Your obsession with forcing women to give birth actually would make you demand a woman bring a pregnancy to term, even if you knew the baby would die of starvation within a year or two?
What use is speaking about morality then if it can't stop anything or affect anything?
Democratic laws are the system through which the people express their moral preferences. They are a good starting point for examining what people find moral.
No. We value humans because they're human to us. Fetuses are not.
We're pretty safe in the assumption that people will know the relevant properties of what make fetuses non-human, and what make coma patients and down syndrome patients genuine human beings deserving of rights.
If the political system begins to justify killings, it's probably not going to cite the legality of abortion and suddenly categorize living human groups as fetuses.
Well they're not babies. A nut isn't a little tree, it's just a nut.
What? Like, how did you miss the word "palatable". I mean, it's right there in my post.
A fetus becomes sentient in the 3rd trimester, certainly. But the phrase 'a fetus is sentient', as a catchall, is false. You'll note that my statement was if the fetus never becomes sentient.
As well, a coma victim is functionally different from a fetus in that it certainly was sentient. It's qualitatively different, in the 'having had sentience' is a feature a fetus does not have.
Once sentience occurs, there's a manifest shifting in the nature of the organism. The body now belongs to the sentient organism, and this ownership extends back in time to his constituents. No one thinks a sperm is morally significant, but if you were to poison the sperm that created me, it's clearly an assault on me. The ownership extends forwards and backwards, but only once my status as a person is actualized. You may poison sperm all you want, if they're disposed of.
So, the coma patient's body belongs to the coma patient, triggered when that patient had originally become sentient. We let people announce whether they will be DNRed, and we let them give commands on the disposal of their corpse.
A fetus cannot be compared to a coma patient, they're qualitatively different.
The potential status of a class of objects is a less important consideration, as it leads to all sorts of complications. That's why people bring up the examples of sperm and, with current technology, skin cells - as these things have, under the right conditions (just like a fetus), the potential to become sapient organisms. If the potential status of a class of objects should be a primary consideration, then you would have to agree that any object with the potential to become sapient should be protected, which makes the rule much more difficult to follow to the point of compromising human well-being.
Mouthwash said:If you state it as "force women to give birth," than it sounds horrible.
Mouthwash said:Since I don't believe in rights-based ethics,
Mouthwash said:Your scenario is a bit like the "what if you had totally accurate information about a bomb exploding soon and were 500% sure that the terrorist had information on it" that torture advocates use, completely missing the point that this is extremely unlikely to ever occur.
BvBPL said:You hide behind consequentialist morality
I guess. Though that is a bit of a non-starter. You're talking about a specific level of damage to a baby.
But I don't see how to completely deny that the capacity of a fetus (or a nut or seed) to become mature organisms doesn't in some way impact their worth.
It can't develop any sapience by itself. Neither can an egg. That's like saying that food ought to have moral value since humans would die without consuming it.
I'm not talking about the mere potential for any object to become sentient. I'm saying that, if an object is actively geared towards sentience, than it takes a whole or part of the moral worth assigned to that sentience (or sapience). Sperm and skin cells only acquire this capacity with major tampering and alteration.
Yes, but that nourishment and protection isn't a part of the fetus's capacity for intelligence, regardless of how necessary they are.
. A kid who had the intelligence to someday be a doctor before being crippled by a drunk driver won't get as much compensation as someone who actually had their doctor degree - because there is no certainty they would have some day become a doctor, and so we cannot assume their lost revenue (from working) would actually have been those of a doctor.
Rights and morality.Abortion is always justified by one of two reasons:
#2: That women have an absolute right to complete control over their bodies. Therefore, since the fetus resides within her body, she has control over it, and may kill it if she desires.
This simply ignores the rights of the fetus. Yes, women are generally accepted to have rights over their bodies, but fetuses, being young human beings, also have a right to life. A woman's right to her body doesn't trump a human's right to their life. This is demonstrated by supposing that the atmosphere has developed sapience, and decides to suffocate all humans within itself, though they pose no threat to it. I think it is pretty clear that the atmosphere is not acting morally here.
A final point for those who think the right to bodily integrity is stronger than the right to life. Yes, women do, under your logic, have the right to kill their unborn child, and no one has the right to stop them, but this doesn't mean it is any less monstrous. You aren't doing it because the fetus poses a threat or hindrance to your body, you're doing it because you don't want the fetus to grow up and for you to be forced into an obligation. It's the same as the government rounding up and shooting homeless people on the grounds that productive citizens will not longer have to support them.
There. Can we all agree that abortion is wrong now, and get on with our lives?