Abortion: 10 years as an atheist and I still don't get it

[Losty]

I guess I’m insane

Being pro choice doesn't mean pro abortion. I mean why do you think contraception exists if not a measure against the abortion?

You don’t speak for me, though. You may very well be against abortion. I think contraception exists to prevent pregnancy. Do I think we should take every measure possible to prevent unplanned unwanted pregnancy? Of course I do. But it’s not because I’m anti-abortion. It’s because I’m pro-women. Do I think it’s better for women to prevent pregnancy than to abort? Yes. But no matter what we do, how much we educate, how safe we are there will always exist circumstances where unwanted or unsupportable pregnancies can and will happen. Always.

You may think me insane, but I am not against abortion. Abortion isn’t about what we’ve done to prevent a pregnancy. It’s about when there already is a pregnancy. It’s about what we do to prevent unwanted, unloved children. It’s about what we do to ensure the stability and security of the children we already have or will have one day. It’s about what we do to save our own lives so that our families will not have to lose a mother/daughter/sister/wife. It’s about what we do to protect or own bodies and minds because we have a right to value ourselves first.

[no one]

Life is brutal, get used to it! You have no lines in the play that is someone else's life.

[Athene]

I don't necessarily regard abortion as morally acceptable. I simply consider allowing an unborn, potential human life's rights to supersede it's existing, fully-fledged human host's right to self-determination in exercising autonomy over her own body to be LESS morally acceptable than terminating a pregnancy.

Personally, I do regard any fetus growing within me as my child, so abortion isn't something I'd consider outside of the most dire/tragic of circumstances.

However, everyone doesn't share my perception, and I in no way feel that everyone should. The determination of when or whether to give birth is a profoundly personal matter. People's bodies are their business, and I honestly don't see any "morality" in forcing women to bear children if they don't want to.

[robvalue]

I’ve always seen this as a harsh reality and a choice between two undesirable positions. The rights must ultimately be given to the mother or the unborn. Compromise is pretty much impossible. I then consider the consequences of each side, and personally conclude that giving the rights to the mother is less harmful overall.

I suppose as far as morality is concerned, I find the idea of restraining a woman and forcing her to come to term against her will, possibly over a period of months, to be hideously immoral. (This would be if a woman is found to be attempting to get an abortion.) So it’s not so much about being moral, but rather avoiding the most immorality. I think that if you don’t enforce this totalitarian measure, but set administering abortions to be illegal, you’ll end up with at least as many abortions still taking place in secret but with more injury and death to the mothers.

It annoys me when people on either side of this debate try to trivialise the other side, as if there is nothing to consider. We live in times where polarisation has become the norm, and so debate is difficult because people get hysterical about things and try to just shout the other side down.

---

PS: Even with the restraint scenario in action, I suspect secret abortions would still happen at the same rate but women would just become totally secretive about their intentions.

[Nihilist Virus]

You said it yourself - a foetus doesn't have the status of personhood.  Morality is only applicable to persons.

Insects have no personality or personhood. Does morality not apply to them?  Would it be morally acceptable if I dismembered them for my own amusement?

I view abortion as no more morally wrong than burning off a wart, removing an appendix, or pulling a tooth.

Why? Also, weird comparison. A fetus would be more comparable to a parasite. It's a different organism. Warts and teeth are part of the organism that is you.

Furthermore, I'm having more than a little trouble with your stricture that it is wrong to kill anything that is alive.

If you were a deity, would you construct a world wherein living things must kill one another to survive?  I'd hope not, because any such deity would be either stupid or evil.

Does this include disease vectors?

Oh. So you skimmed. Sigh.

"It is justified to take a life if that living being poses a direct and immediate threat to your own life (at least in my opinion it is)..."

Celery stalks?

Do you feel threatened by celery?

Suppose the police shoot and kill a man who is holding a classroom of  children hostage.  Is killing this man immoral if it prevents the deaths of 30 children?

Obviously the police are intervening on behalf of the children. Try to interpret my position with just a little charity for fuck sake.

While I understand that appeal to consequence is a fallacy, it is a very subjective and variable one.


Boru

Nope, it's objective.

---

1) Morality is subjective. 

Therefore...?

2) A fetus cannot survive without my body. My body is my body, and nobody else's, even the fetus'. It's private. I don't have to explain why I find it moral or immoral because it's nobody else's beeswax. I don't think it's moral or immoral for someone else to have an abortion simply because it's not my body and none of my business. I don't get an opinion about that any more than I get an opinion on what my neighbor has for lunch.

By this logic jurors should just shrug and say, "Well the incident in question didn't involve me so it's none of my beeswax."

When the Nazis were gassing Jews, well, we were out of line to intervene because they can do with their citizens as they please.

Or do you see a problem there?

3) How is a man morally obligated to protect his family more than a woman is?

Generally, men are physically stronger.

---

For NV - doesn't have much to do with atheism, I'm not sure why you'd think that ten years of atheism would impact your opinion here.

It seems to have impacted others. That's why I'm asking what I'm missing.

In a field of exclusively suboptimal choices, we seek to do the thing that would amount to the least objectionable.  This isn't a rule of humanity, mind you, just a rough description of what Good People™ do when they find themselves confronted with Bad Choices™, lol.  In deciding the final moral value of any given one of those choices as an act and how that yields a moral conclusion on the person we are considering moral desert.  

Would you deliver a child in a warzone?  If you thought that this was your duty, to carry a child in your womb and deliver it no matter the circumstances of that childs life, have you accomplished some good, or sought your own self interested satisfaction in being dutiful?  What kind of person does that, do you think?

Would I deliver a child in a warzone? What a wild question. I assume you're asking if there's any scenario in which an abortion would be the best course of action. In the context of war, human life has very little value, so I reckon there would be a scenario where an abortion is the tactical thing to do.

---

You don’t have to get it. There’s nothing wrong with thinking abortion is morally unacceptable. Don’t have one. The problem comes when you try to force your moral views on a woman at the cost of her bodily autonomy.

Let me know if you get around to reading the OP.

---

OP: I'm lost. Why is a male trying to make a morality judgement on a strictly female issue. 

Flirting with the ad hominem logical fallacy I see. Are you going to just come out and say that my argument is invalid because of who I am or are you going to just let the flirtatious tension linger?

Unless it's your breeding partner/fetus, why do you care? You should care more about the abortion option being taken from/never offered to women.

I'm asking what I'm missing. What the good argument is for abortion being morally acceptable. What I'm seeing is everyone blathering on about how inconvenient a child is, which is an appeal to consequences logical fallacy. If I wanted to sunbathe in logical fallacies I'd try to get unbanned from the Christian forums.

Feels like you're only a couple of steps away from pro-birther.

Lol, and to top it off you don't seem to have even looked at the OP.

---

So please explain to me why abortion is morally acceptable or what I might be missing.

Most women who have abortions have children at other times, children they may not have had if they had not aborted the earlier fetus.  In other words, many women who have abortions are pregnant in the wrong circumstances for them to take care of a child.  You can't judge such cases in isolation.

But the real issue is awareness.  We are morally obligated to minimize suffering, but fetuses are typically not developed enough to feel pain.  Life itself is trivial without consciousness, which is why we don't feel much compunction about cutting down trees and killing bugs.

If I had the ability to annihilate planet earth in an instant, I would minimize suffering. But that would be immoral. So I think your approach is wrong.

Or... classic example. We have an emergency room with a brilliant engineer who needs a heart transplant, two billionaire philanthropists who each need a new kidney, and a homeless person with no friends or family who is a compatible donor to all three. So... we just give him happy drugs and take his organs. He feels no pain, and wonderful people survive. Suffering minimized. Is that the moral way to go about it?

---

I suppose as far as morality is concerned, I find the idea of restraining a woman and forcing her to come to term against her will, possibly over a period of months, to be hideously immoral. (This would be if a woman is found to be attempting to get an abortion.) So it’s not so much about being moral, but rather avoiding the most immorality. I think that if you don’t enforce this totalitarian measure, but set administering abortions to be illegal, you’ll end up with at least as many abortions still taking place in secret but with more injury and death to the mothers.

I'm not even talking about that. Sure, give the woman the "free will" choice to do whatever she wants. Don't restrict her choice.

Now when she makes her choice, we can examine it and gauge the morality of it. In the case that she decides to abort, her actions are morally acceptable because...?

[Fake Messiah]

Being pro choice doesn't mean pro abortion. I mean why do you think contraception exists if not a measure against the abortion?

You don’t speak for me, though. You may very well be against abortion. I think contraception exists to prevent pregnancy. Do I think we should take every measure possible to prevent unplanned unwanted pregnancy? Of course I do. But it’s not because I’m anti-abortion. It’s because I’m pro-women. Do I think it’s better for women to prevent pregnancy than to abort? Yes. But no matter what we do, how much we educate, how safe we are there will always exist circumstances where unwanted or unsupportable pregnancies can and will happen. Always.

You may think me insane, but I am not against abortion. Abortion isn’t about what we’ve done to prevent a pregnancy. It’s about when there already is a pregnancy. It’s about what we do to prevent unwanted, unloved children. It’s about what we do to ensure the stability and security of the children we already have or will have one day. It’s about what we do to save our own lives so that our families will not have to lose a mother/daughter/sister/wife. It’s about what we do to protect or own bodies and minds because we have a right to value ourselves first.

Sure, but what do you think then when you see those self proclaimed "anti abortion" politicians like VP Mike Pence?

Like, few days ago Pence promoted on his VP twitter account that new movie by Pure Flix that is supposedly against the abortion with him proclaiming that he is in line with this movie and thus against abortion. But when you look at his policies it seems he is doing everything he can to force people to do abortions like not regulating rent prices which then skyrocket so many young people are forced to live with their parents, many roommates, in their car, homeless; not to mention stuff like student loan debt, weak medicare, against birth control, sex ed...

I mean when you look at these videos can you honestly say they are the result of people who are against the abortion? (they claim they are)













Again, is this the result of policies by politicians who are against the abortion? Shouldn't someone hold Pence to scrutiny when he says that he is against the abortion that he should be ashamed of himself for saying that?

Or maybe I am crazy and this has nothing to do with abortions? I mean trying to physically stop abortions, like some politician want to, is perhaps a very sick joke because it can't be forbidden, and if a woman who has to live in her childhood room impregnated by a guy who is smuggling cocaine so he can pay his student debt doesn't want to have the baby she is going to do it no matter if it's physically legal or not (throw herself down stairs, lift something heavy, drink something, go the the back alley), so the only way to stop them is to make a society baby/ human friendly.

And I'm just going to end this post with this strip

[Losty]

You don’t speak for me, though. You may very well be against abortion. I think contraception exists to prevent pregnancy. Do I think we should take every measure possible to prevent unplanned unwanted pregnancy? Of course I do. But it’s not because I’m anti-abortion. It’s because I’m pro-women. Do I think it’s better for women to prevent pregnancy than to abort? Yes. But no matter what we do, how much we educate, how safe we are there will always exist circumstances where unwanted or unsupportable pregnancies can and will happen. Always.

You may think me insane, but I am not against abortion. Abortion isn’t about what we’ve done to prevent a pregnancy. It’s about when there already is a pregnancy. It’s about what we do to prevent unwanted, unloved children. It’s about what we do to ensure the stability and security of the children we already have or will have one day. It’s about what we do to save our own lives so that our families will not have to lose a mother/daughter/sister/wife. It’s about what we do to protect or own bodies and minds because we have a right to value ourselves first.

Sure, but what do you think then when you see those self proclaimed "anti abortion" politicians like VP Mike Pence?

Like, few days ago Pence promoted on his VP twitter account that new movie by Pure Flix that is supposedly against the abortion with him proclaiming that he is in line with this movie and thus against abortion. But when you look at his policies it seems he is doing everything he can to force people to do abortions like not regulating rent prices which then skyrocket so many young people are forced to live with their parents, many roommates, in their car, homeless; not to mention stuff like student loan debt, weak medicare, against birth control, sex ed...

I mean when you look at these videos can you honestly say they are the result of people who are against the abortion? (they claim they are)













Again, is this the result of policies by politicians who are against the abortion? Shouldn't someone hold Pence to scrutiny when he says that he is against the abortion that he should be ashamed of himself for saying that?

Or maybe I am crazy and this has nothing to do with abortions? I mean trying to physically stop abortions, like some politician want to, is perhaps a very sick joke because it can't be forbidden, and if a woman who has to live in her childhood room impregnated by a guy who is smuggling cocaine so he can pay his student debt doesn't want to have the baby she is going to do it no matter if it's physically legal or not (throw herself down stairs, lift something heavy, drink something, go the the back alley), so the only way to stop them is to make a society baby/ human friendly.

And I'm just going to end this post with this strip

I think we’re mostly on the same page here and it seems like our disagreement is semantics.
It does seem to me that most “pro-life” people are not actually against abortion at all. It’s also true that most pro-choice people are not pro-abortion. I think the people who do the most for lowering abortion rates, are almost always the pro-choice people. And yes, it’s because this was never really about abortion. This was always about keeping the poor poor and putting women in their place, for the “pro-life” side.
Again, I’m all for sex-ed, safe and affordable birth control (for women and men), and all other true methods for preventing unwanted pregnancies. But it’s not because I’m against abortion, it’s because I’m for empowering women. All women should, regardless of their financial situation, be able to choose what they do with their own bodies. I’m talking about safe consensual sex here. No matter what we do, where we stand now with science and technology, there will always be a risk of pregnancy no matter what precautions you take. And when those pregnancies occur and are unwanted I am 100% for abortion. I think it’s morally wrong to bring a child into the world unwanted. Then there is the case of abortions that are necessary to save the mothers life. While it is always ok for a woman to choose to sacrifice her life, it is never ok for anyone to demand (or even request imo) that a woman value anyone’s life over her own.

[Alan V]

Most women who have abortions have children at other times, children they may not have had if they had not aborted the earlier fetus.  In other words, many women who have abortions are pregnant in the wrong circumstances for them to take care of a child.  You can't judge such cases in isolation.

But the real issue is awareness.  We are morally obligated to minimize suffering, but fetuses are typically not developed enough to feel pain.  Life itself is trivial without consciousness, which is why we don't feel much compunction about cutting down trees and killing bugs.

If I had the ability to annihilate planet earth in an instant, I would minimize suffering. But that would be immoral. So I think your approach is wrong.

Or... classic example. We have an emergency room with a brilliant engineer who needs a heart transplant, two billionaire philanthropists who each need a new kidney, and a homeless person with no friends or family who is a compatible donor to all three.  So... we just give him happy drugs and take his organs.  He feels no pain, and wonderful people survive. Suffering minimized. Is that the moral way to go about it?

Good points. Yes, there are other issues involved in deciding moral questions. I was adding a couple. I liked Robvalue's post about not trivializing the debate.

Many of our moral choices are between bad and worse. Imposing a one-size-fits-all rule because of a religious idea is the problem at the heart of the debate. It's far too over-simplified.

[Mister Agenda]

I think we sometimes confuse our rights with morality. I have a right to shoot you if you try to cut me, even if I know you're only going to cut me once, not very deep, and I'll not only survive, I won't even be terribly inconvenienced. You don't have the right to cut me against my will and I do have the right to shoot someone who is trying to cut me against my will. But 'the right thing to do' ™ is to not shoot you and avoid being cut in some way that doesn't involve killing you, or even let you cut me. But my right to resist being cut is absolute, even if allowing you to cut me would save your life.

What I'm saying is that even if an abortion is not 'the right thing to do' ™, it should still be legal under a rights system, certainly if it's one where I can shoot someone trying to get a pint of my blood against my will to (for instance) save an innocent child's life, which is the regime most of us live under. If we don't allow abortion, maybe doctors should be allowed to seize my blood to help someone else who needs it more. Or one of my kidneys. And make organ donation compulsory.

[tackattack]

I still don't think genocide, matricide or homicide is considered moral or legal. What makes infanticide or feoticide any different?