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Good day,
I apologize for the delay in my post I am always busy with work and school! I will go back to the OP. That the innocent killing of human being is morally wrong. I believe we all would agree on that front and if not than, well, all ethical conversations are unfortunately meaningless.
There are two ways to argue against my position of, (fetus' are innocent human beings and should not be killed) they are either
A: Deny the fetus' humanity or
B: Establish that even if the fetus is human womans bodily rights hold precedence
Many of you, for the sake of argument (or by conceding the point) chose not to argue against the humanity of a fetus, but rather establish that even if a fetus is human the woman still has the right to abort. Since most of you have rebutted using B, I shall for the most part be referencing those arguments in this post. This argument is established via a womans bodily rights. The argument many of you have been referencing dates back to Judith Jarvis Thomsons 1971 article, "A Defense of Abortion," published in Philosophy and Public affairs. Specifically, you have been using a variation of the sickly violinist argument. In this argument a women wakes up to find a man who is dying of kidney trouble hooked up to your own body in order to survive. Thomson reasons a woman has the ability or right to simply opt out of such a venture because of her autonomy in regards to her own body. This analogy is often used to support the idea that abortion, to is like the sickly violinist situation and thus should be morally and legally permissable. An analogy is successful if the situation can be shown to have a one-to-one correspondence with the relevant situation. I will attempt to show Thomson's analogy to be a false analogy, and not at all like the act of abortion or having any bearing on the discussion.
To begin with, in the sickly violinist example, the man intentionally violates her body in order to survive. This muddles the situation that is abortion in that in the violinists case we are only concerned with her violation which in abortion if carried out, also violates the fetus' rights. It also gives the fetus no choice or control of the situation while the mother willfully forces the fetus to cease to exist. Since in both situations bodily rights are being violated somethings got to give. Not only is the woman violating the fetus' rights it is also killing an innocent human therefore, ethically abortion is immoral.
Furthermore, in the sickly violinist case, the man is the intruder. The intentional agressor who off his own volition is using the womans body who she has no connection or moral obligation towards. However, we can see that this situation is vastly different! Intentional or not, heterosexual sex often can lead to pregnancy. Some philosophers have likened pregnancy to, a woman who knowingly signs up for a social experiment where she may or may not be trapped in a cabin for nine months with an infant and the infant would need her body to survive for this time. Lets say she is picked, is she now knowing full well she is responsible for bringing about the situation and the dependance of the fetus, should she not be morally and legally held responsible for the child? I believe the answer is a resounding yes. Similarly, in the violinist example, the woman has no responsibility nor connection to the sick man who is hooked up to her body. He is hooked up there because he, (or in her paper she uses "The Society for Music Lovers,") intentionally hooks himself up to her. But why is the fetus hooked up to the woman in the first place? Ninety-nice percent of the time, it is because she engaged in an action (sexual intercourse) that is known to create dependant people(unborn children). The analogy false and misconstrued indeed, in the case of pregnancy the mother and father resemble "The Society of Music Lovers," more than the kidnapped kidney donor in causing an innocent child and using that child to be dependant on a womans body to live. If I am responsible, or freely engaged in an activity that I knew had the possibility of creating a dependent, helpless human life, than I owe that human whatever assistance she needs to survive. A further analogy, shows this in a car-crash scenario. Comparing unwanted pregnancy to that of a car crash. Here, a car crashes into one car propelling it into another car. Now we find out that the owner of the third car also was the driver and instigator of the first car and started the chain reaction. Since she is the owner of both cars, she can only fault herself and indeed the car in the middle can fault her too. Now lets call a pregnant woman A(the father was also involved) the child B and the womans body C. A conceives B thus causing B to inhabit C. Plainly put, C is A, the mother. The child B, the one caught in the middle is innocent. Therefore, the mother has no no reason to evict or indeed kill her child. The metaphysical principle in all of this is,
"If one puts another in a situation without their consent, that situation can not be worse than they would have been in otherwise, and that consent to put someone in a dependent situation, includes the responsibility of caring for that person.
This means that:
If causing someone to exist and then killing that person, does more harm than not causing such a person to exist, abortion is not permissible.
Also,
If one consents to a situation where another is dependent upon them, and that it would have been otherwise true that the person was not dependent upon them, the person consenting is obligated to provide for the other."
To conclude, an analogy is useful if it can be shown to have a one to one corespondance with the sitatuion in reference. I have argued, I believe successful that these situations do not have a one to one correspondance with one another and are indeed a false analogy and a gross misinterprataion of the abortion phenomena. And since abortion is still the intententional killing of an innocent human being it is not only immoral, but should be illegal.
Kindest Regards,
Arty,
Tell you what. I'll consider your opinion as valid once you spend a couple years volunteering in a hospital ward that specializes in treating crack babies, babies suffering fetal alcohol syndrome and other various conditions caused exclusively by the unfit mother of an unwanted pregnancy disregarding her health and the health of her fetus. Alternatively, you could spend a couple of years volunteering to help your local child protective service clean up the messes made by violent, unfit parents.
Making abortion illegal would increase the amount of suffering in the world, yet you claim to hold the moral high ground. I challenge you to investigate the consequences of your proposal to make abortion illegal.
You claim abortion is immoral. Go and do either of the volunteer bits as described. You have no fucking clue what real immorality is.
Thief and assassin for hire. Member in good standing of the Rogues Guild.
June 18, 2014 at 9:16 pm (This post was last modified: June 18, 2014 at 9:36 pm by Jenny A.)
(June 18, 2014 at 9:03 am)Esquilax Wrote: And I'm so goddamn tired of hearing these arguments too, which, I'm sorry, are no different from "well, the little slut should have kept her legs together if she didn't want to get pregnant!" except that the phrasing is nicer. We don't take this attitude with any other situation, and yet now I'm suddenly supposed to accept this "there are never any mistakes, and you have no right to mitigate the consequences on yourself now," attitude when it comes to abortion?
We don't leave drunk drivers dying on the side of the road near their crashed cars, we don't just not accept police reports from mugging victims if they were flashing their cash around dark alleys, we don't refuse to treat self inflicted wounds, we don't go with this "now you must face the worst case scenario for your actions no matter what!" nonsense anywhere else, so why does the argument suddenly become valid with abortion?
Nonsense. There are people, lots of them, who think pregnancy is the righteous punishment for sex. But such people define the fetus as human from the moment of conception. That they make exceptions in the case of rape belies those who consider pregnancy a punishment for premarital sex. Otherwise why would rape matter in equation at all. But calling all those who do not condone late abortions as puritans out to punish promescuity is just as inflammatory as saying, oooo! see the pictures it looks like a baby, it's murder.
So back to the analogy wars . . . A woman in her first couple trimesters who doesn't want a baby is a little like the drunk driver who hurts himself or the depressed person who cuts himself. And I see no problem with her choosing to end the pregnancy. There's only one person involved and that's the pregnant woman.
But should she continue the pregnancy until it's late term, she has allowed the situation to involve two people, herself and a baby. I've heard it argued that allowing a baby to continue unwanted in her mother gives it more rights than when give born people. That's true. We don't give born people the right to life off someone elses biological system. But we also give more rights to born babies and children than, than we do to grown-ups. We give them the right to their parent's care and in lieu of their parents, the state's care. Child abuse and neglect are crimes. Adult neglect is not a crime. We should give the unborn human the use of a uterus for the same reasons we should feed, house, and educate children.
Six or seven months is plenty of time to treat pregnancy with abortion before there's another human life involved.
(June 18, 2014 at 6:28 pm)Arthur123 Wrote: I defined human being in the OP and no, Boru, I do not believe that at all. In fertilization the genetic information from both the man and woman meet and the formation of a new, living human being is formed. Sperm and oocytes do not meet this requirement but a unicellular zygote that genetically directs its own development does.
Cthulhu, I have been kind and charitable in my responses what have I done to deserve such snark? Or perhaps I have read you all wrong in that case....
I don't think you have been personally attacked. As a pro-late-term life, pro-early-choice, atheist, I'm in the minority. Only about 20 % of atheists are pro-choice. People disagree with me. They do so vehemently. But I don't feel personally attacked. And you shouldn't either. Grow up and respond to the arguments and not to feeling hurt because not everyone agrees.
If there is a god, I want to believe that there is a god. If there is not a god, I want to believe that there is no god.
June 18, 2014 at 9:29 pm (This post was last modified: June 18, 2014 at 9:33 pm by bennyboy.)
(June 18, 2014 at 7:02 pm)Arthur123 Wrote: Cthulhu, I have defined a human being as someone belonging to the species homo-sapien. I believe this to be the default view and indeed, the only coherant definition. Indeed, the zygote to the fetus, fetus to the child, child to adult. Are all just stages of their development. Since the fetus is informationally complete in its human informationit can be said it is a human being. Or similarly, as Alexander Pruss PhD in both mathematics and philosophy who holds a professorship at Baylor University states, if something exists and never ceases to exist than it can be said that thing is still alive. I am a fetus, I was a fetus just as I was a child and to say a fetus is any less human than a child is completely arbitrary.
Careful, now. What is the semantic difference between "human" and "human being?" What kind of existential statement does the extra word carry with it? I think it carries connotations of subjective existence: a personality, the ability to experience pleasure and pain, the ability to have perceptions about the outer world and to interact with the world. And for most of a fetus' development, it does not have these things.
As for the "informationally complete," this is true. The fetus has a unique genetic identity, separate from either the mother or the father. An abortion means not ever getting to find out what that new identity could grow into-- and for me, this is no trivial philosophical question. However, equating the destruction of a potential human with the destruction of an existent human being is kind of like equating the destruction of a dictionary with the destruction of the works of Shakespeare. Time matters.
(June 18, 2014 at 9:16 pm)Jenny A Wrote: I don't think you have been personally attacked. As a pro-late-term life, pro-early-choice, atheist, I'm in the minority. Only about 20 % of atheists are pro-choice.
Is this a real number? It seems to me almost every non-religious person is likely to be pro-early-choice and pro-late-term-life. Who are these 80% of atheists who are anti-abortion?
June 18, 2014 at 9:56 pm (This post was last modified: June 18, 2014 at 10:00 pm by Jenny A.)
(June 18, 2014 at 9:29 pm)bennyboy Wrote:
(June 18, 2014 at 7:02 pm)Arthur123 Wrote: [quote='Jenny A' pid='691569' dateline='1403140609']
I don't think you have been personally attacked. As a pro-late-term life, pro-early-choice, atheist, I'm in the minority. Only about 20 % of atheists are pro-choice.
Is this a real number? It seems to me almost every non-religious person is likely to be pro-early-choice and pro-late-term-life. Who are these 80% of atheists who are anti-abortion?
No it's a typo. I corrected above. Only 20% of atheists are pro-life.
Sorry.
The statistics are odd though, because the choice is pro-life or pro-choice. Those of us like me who are pro early and mid term choice and pro-life late term have to choose one or the other in most polls. I usually choose pro-choice in polls and at the voting booth, because the question is usually early to mid-term abortions.
If there is a god, I want to believe that there is a god. If there is not a god, I want to believe that there is no god.
June 18, 2014 at 10:09 pm (This post was last modified: June 18, 2014 at 10:13 pm by bennyboy.)
(June 18, 2014 at 9:56 pm)Jenny A Wrote: The statistics are odd though, because the choice is pro-life or pro-choice. Those of us like me who are pro early and mid term choice and pro-life late term have to choose one or the other in most polls. I usually choose pro-choice in polls and at the voting booth, because the question is usually early to mid-term abortions.
I think we're all pro-life. The only real issue is where we draw the line between organic material and a protected entity.
I think nobody cares about the physical existence. If we did, it would be illegal to pull the plug on an obviously brain-dead hospital patient; or we'd dig up corpses and hook them up to IV drips and lung machines. The fact that plugs may be pulled means that it is the potential for a human to think and feel that we cherish. And while a fetus has that potential, it hasn't achieved that potential any more than individual sperm or egg have.
(June 18, 2014 at 9:56 pm)Jenny A Wrote: The statistics are odd though, because the choice is pro-life or pro-choice. Those of us like me who are pro early and mid term choice and pro-life late term have to choose one or the other in most polls. I usually choose pro-choice in polls and at the voting booth, because the question is usually early to mid-term abortions.
I think we're all pro-life. The only real issue is where we draw the line between organic material and a protected entity.
I think nobody cares about the physical existence. If we did, it would be illegal to pull the plug on an obviously brain-dead hospital patient. The fact that plugs may be pulled means that it is the potential for a human to think and feel that we cherish. And while a fetus has that potential, it hasn't achieved that potential any more than individual sperm or egg have.
I agree, the question is where we draw the line in the sand. I draw it earlier than most atheists, but much later than most Christians.
In Biblical times and earlier many cultures didn't draw the line until after a child turned between two and five. Many more didn't draw the line until after the first year of life. Thus the practice of exposing babies as a method of birth control.
If there is a god, I want to believe that there is a god. If there is not a god, I want to believe that there is no god.
(June 18, 2014 at 9:29 pm)bennyboy Wrote: Is this a real number? It seems to me almost every non-religious person is likely to be pro-early-choice and pro-late-term-life. Who are these 80% of atheists who are anti-abortion?
No it's a typo. I corrected above. Only 20% of atheists are pro-life.
Sorry.
The statistics are odd though, because the choice is pro-life or pro-choice. Those of us like me who are pro early and mid term choice and pro-life late term have to choose one or the other in most polls. I usually choose pro-choice in polls and at the voting booth, because the question is usually early to mid-term abortions.
I'm not sure why you're making such a thing out of late-term abortions. They're not really a concern, IMO, especially since the vast majority are done when a life is threatened, which makes late-term abortion a good thing.
Quote:Women do not have late abortions cavalierly. The vast majority of abortions—98.5 percent, according to the Guttmacher Institute—are done before 20 weeks. There’s not very much research about the 1.5 percent of abortions that happen after 20 weeks, but a significant number are done when a wanted pregnancy goes horribly awry. If my 20-week ultrasound had revealed a baby without prospects for a tolerable life, I would have joined the sad sorority of women for whom a late abortion is hardly a choice at all. You can read their stories on websites like A Heartbreaking Choice.
(June 18, 2014 at 9:56 pm)Jenny A Wrote: No it's a typo. I corrected above. Only 20% of atheists are pro-life.
Sorry.
The statistics are odd though, because the choice is pro-life or pro-choice. Those of us like me who are pro early and mid term choice and pro-life late term have to choose one or the other in most polls. I usually choose pro-choice in polls and at the voting booth, because the question is usually early to mid-term abortions.
I'm not sure why you're making such a thing out of late-term abortions. They're not really a concern, IMO, especially since the vast majority are done when a life is threatened, which makes late-term abortion a good thing.
Quote:Women do not have late abortions cavalierly. The vast majority of abortions—98.5 percent, according to the Guttmacher Institute—are done before 20 weeks. There’s not very much research about the 1.5 percent of abortions that happen after 20 weeks, but a significant number are done when a wanted pregnancy goes horribly awry. If my 20-week ultrasound had revealed a baby without prospects for a tolerable life, I would have joined the sad sorority of women for whom a late abortion is hardly a choice at all. You can read their stories on websites like A Heartbreaking Choice.
When the woman's life is in danger I agree a late term abortion is just fine. Heartbreaking, but just fine ethically.
Late term abortions just cus, aren't common. But then neither is murder. So what's wrong with requiring a reason for late term abortions?
If there is a god, I want to believe that there is a god. If there is not a god, I want to believe that there is no god.
(June 18, 2014 at 10:18 pm)rexbeccarox Wrote: I'm not sure why you're making such a thing out of late-term abortions. They're not really a concern, IMO, especially since the vast majority are done when a life is threatened, which makes late-term abortion a good thing.
When the woman's life is in danger I agree a late term abortion is just fine. Heartbreaking, but just fine ethically.
Late term abortions just cus, aren't common. But then neither is murder. So what's wrong with requiring a reason for late term abortions?
Because it comes down to "my body, my choice". As long as I have something invading my body, I'll do with it as I please. I can't see myself making a choice like that, but I don't presume to have a say in what anyone else does.
(June 18, 2014 at 10:22 pm)Jenny A Wrote: When the woman's life is in danger I agree a late term abortion is just fine. Heartbreaking, but just fine ethically.
Late term abortions just cus, aren't common. But then neither is murder. So what's wrong with requiring a reason for late term abortions?
This is where I am at personally - though in terms of politics, I vote pro-choice. I can neither become pregnant, not father any more children, and it is not my place to substitute my judgment for anyone else's.
