Abortion is morally wrong

[Rampant.A.I.]

I do not have, nor will I have, children.

[fr0d0]

I do not have, nor will I have, children.

Best news all day!

[bennyboy]

I have 3 children...

Ages 19, 20, and 22 Y.O.

Sounds like you're a couple years out from a bunch of grandchildren, too.

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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.

I don't think Jenny A's intent was to demonize late term abortion or the people who find it medically necessary. She certainly didn't start ranting or raving about it, or make a big deal IMO.

In general, I think it's fair to say that as a fetus develops, it gets harder and harder to justify ending its development. A late-term fetus can feel pain. I has limited communication with the mother and even with the environment beyond. This is very different than a newly-fertilized egg, which is really only a couple vodkas and a broken condom away from non-existence anyway.

But none of that means that killing a fetus late-term is intrinsically immoral. You could perhaps argue that even AFTER birth, it could sometimes be better to kill a young infant than to allow it to live. For example, if a child is born with a severe birth defect in a society which will neither provide care for it nor give it a chance to find beauty in its limited circumstances, a loving mother could conceivably decide that walking into the ocean with babe in arms would be better than living on in hell.

[Jenny A]

How one defines murder is also crucial. Contrary to many "pro-lifers," I believe war, the death penalty, and certain forms of animal cruelty are tantamount to murder, yet killing in self-defense, assisted suicide, and abortion are not.

Interesting mix. I'm sure you've already hashed these out more than once in other threads here and elsewhere. I with you about self defense (to which I'd add the defense of others) assisted suicide, and suicide itself. They are not murder. Where the mother's life or even long term health are at risk, late term abortions can be a form of self defense.

[fr0d0]

If you were schizophrenic and killed your "other self" would that be murder?

[Rampant.A.I.]

I do not have, nor will I have, children.

Best news all day! ;)

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[fr0d0]

Best news all day!

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[Thumpalumpacus]

Forcing a woman to carry her fetus to term against her will is, maybe too literally, 'forced labor'. It reduces her to an object. In theory, you would have to be willing to confine her and strap her down to make sure she delivers. This is what the 'pro-life' position is about, ultimately: forcing women to deliver against their will.

... and it represents the enlistment of biology in their war to keep women subservient.

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I don't believe I am. How exactly am I equivocating? Furthermore, just because someone disagrees with you or perhaps sees your points as invalid does nothing to merit personal attacks.
Kindest regards,

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By the way, I love to learn in the pursuit of truth. I am an undergrad philosophy student who hopes to obtain his PhD one day. Nothing makes me happier than hearing what other people have to say and hopefully, learning something new.
Kindest regards,

You should do him the favor of answering his objections rather than pointing back to your OP. It is, after all, a fallacy in your OP to which he objects. Directing him back there is the functional equivalent of not addressing him at all, and shows insincere intentions, in my opinion.

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If I was a fetus and I am a human than it follows that a fetus, to, is a human.

A caterpillar is not a butterfly. It is a potential butterfly.

[Clueless Morgan]

Wow, did this thread ever get away from me...

So I don't have to repeat myself, all bolding in this post is by me.

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.

What about the situation where a woman opts out of the social experiment (opting out would be equivalent to using birth control) and yet is forced into the cabin and handed a baby regardless of her choice to not take part?

You're simplifying the scenario to absurdity and not recognizing that there are women out there who don't consent to being a part of this social experiment at all, and yet are being forced to take part against their will. Should a woman who doesn't consent to your social experiment be forced to care for a child she never consented to having in the first place?

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.

If I'm understanding you correctly, you're saying that because pregnancy is a known risk-factor of having sex then if you get pregnant then you are obligated to carry to term and birth the child regardless of whether you want to or not. Do I have that right?

Lung cancer is a known risk-factor of smoking and yet we don't force smokers that contract lung cancer to not treat their cancer. We don't tell them "hey, you knew smoking could give you cancer, and now you have cancer so you're just going to have to die now" we allow them to enter treatment.

How is pregnancy, a known risk-factor of having sex, different?

Consent to smoking is not consent to getting lung cancer in the same way consent to sex is not consent to pregnancy.

Why do you allow smokers to treat their cancer, but not women to abort a pregnancy they never consented to?

Homo-sapien is the biological nomenclature for a human. Homo is the genus which we share with many other extinct animals H. Sapien is the only living hominid left.

If you're going to cite the biological nomenclature, then get it right:

It's Homo sapiens
http://grammarist.com/usage/homo-sapiens/

Homo sapiens, Latin for wise man or knowing man, is a singular phrasal noun. Like all Latin taxonomic names, Homo sapiens is italicized. The genus name (Homo) is capitalized, and the species name (sapiens) is not. After the first mention, it is often abbreviated H. sapiens.

The s at the end of sapiens is deceptive to English speakers because it makes the term sound plural, even though it’s not.

There is no hyphen in Homo sapiens, sapiens is not capitalized, and there is an "s" at the end of the species name. I could personally care less about italicizing Homo sapiens in an internet forum, but for fuck's sake at least spell the damn words right.

Six or seven months is plenty of time to treat pregnancy with abortion before there's another human life involved.

Yeah, it is if you're lucky enough to live in an area with ready access to a clinic that can schedule one before it becomes "another human life." Repubs are doing a fantastic job of making this harder and harder by closing clinics, thus over loading the few left and forcing women who want to abort in their first term to wait until viability to have the abortion performed.

Abortion is not morally wrong, a fetus is no more a person than an egg is a chicken.

I disagree with this: A fetus (or zygote or blastocyst or whatever you want to call it) is a fertilized human egg undergoing cell division which, if left alone, will eventually become a fully formed, birthed human. An egg you buy at the grocery store to put in your fridge and eat for breakfast is not fertilized, it doesn't undergo cell division, and will never become a fully formed, hatched chicken until it's fertilized.

BIG Difference.

But I digress.

How one defines murder is also crucial. Contrary to many "pro-lifers," I believe war, the death penalty, and certain forms of animal cruelty are tantamount to murder, yet killing in self-defense, assisted suicide, and abortion are not.

Interesting mix. I'm sure you've already hashed these out more than once in other threads here and elsewhere. I with you about self defense (to which I'd add the defense of others) assisted suicide, and suicide itself. They are not murder. Where the mother's life or even long term health are at risk, late term abortions can be a form of self defense.

All abortions can be a form of self defense. Quoting myself from a previous abortion thread:
http://atheistforums.org/post-565112.html#pid565112

Do you support a person's right to defend themselves if they come under an attack?

The best analogy I've heard on the bodily rights argument is this: You choose to work in a psychiatric hospital knowing that there are patients in that hospital that suffer from violent tendencies and that you might become the target of their violent aggressions. One day a patient attacks you. Do you have a right to defend yourself from that attack? Or do you have to curl up in a ball and let them kick the shit out of you because you consented to working in an environment knowing that being the victim of a violent assault was a possibility?

Consenting to working in the psychiatric hospital is equivalent to consenting to sex. Being attacked by the patient is equivalent to getting pregnant.

No woman should be forced to endure the risks of pregnancy against her will (getting the shit beaten out of her by the patient) because she consented to having sex (or working in that hospital).

And pregnancy is very risky. It is inherently risky. You cannot divorce the medical repercussions of pregnancy from the argument because every pregnancy, EVERY SINGLE PREGNANCY, puts the mother's life and health at risk:

Refer to the link to the original post of the list of pregnancy risks, which is why I wholly disagree with your assertion that pregnancy is a temporary inconvenience:

But, I think it a false analogy. After all the fetus didn't demand the mother take it in at gun point. A better analogy might be this. You are clutching a rope in danger of falling into an abyss and certain death. You caught the rope. Someone else caught your ankles. You can't support both of you. Is it moral to kick them loose. I would say yes.

But suppose someone has grasped your hands and will not let got and you are now both sure to be saved. Is it moral to kick the person clutching your ankles loose now? I would say not. Sure, your arms might hurt more and it might even dislocate your shoulders but the inconvenience is temporary.

A fetus will take up more time than it will take to be pulled up off the rope, but while you might suffer from some bodily changes, it's a temporary inconvenience and nothing like having your shoulders dislocated.

Go to that post link I provided above and read the risk-factors of pregnancy. They are no joke. The symptoms and risks of your pregnancy may have been temporarily inconvenient to you, or at least not so fraught with repercussions as to infringe upon your life, but they are not all temporary. Death is not temporary and no one should be forced to endure risks they do not consent to.

In any case, I think your analogy of the rope and the cliff overlooks an important thing: The role of consent.

In your first example you say that you're clutching a rope in danger of falling into an abyss and someone is hanging off your ankle. To me, this is analogous to two things: (1) an unwanted pregnancy, (2) a wanted pregnancy where the mother is suffering major complications which put her own life at risk. In the first case (of the unwanted pregnancy) you are morally permitted to kick the hanger-on off your ankle so that you can climb to safety yourself. In the second case of the wanted, risky pregnancy, you're morally permitted to kick the hanger-on off your ankle to save yourself as well. This includes late term abortion, because the longer this person is hanging off your ankle the harder it is to keep your grip, the riskier it becomes for both of you on that rope. You might do your best to save this person, but in the end you might have to let them fall.

In your second example, you say (if I'm reading it right) that you're basically safe at the top of the cliff keeping someone else from falling to their death by clutching their hands. In this case, you're consenting to saving that person, it's not like you both just happen to find yourself hanging off a cliff on a rope, you intervened to keep this person alive. That's a wanted pregnancy there. And just as in the second interpretation of your first example, if the person whose hand you're clutch begins to drag you over the edge, too, you are absolutely permitted to let that person go in order to keep yourself from harm. Yes, you consented to helping that person, but that person was about to be the death of you both, a direct analogy to wanted pregnancies which aren't terminated unless something catastrophic occurs. And just like a wanted pregnancy that is regrettably terminated due to risks to the mother or the fetus, the person on the cliff will mourn the loss of the one that fell.

[Ryantology]

If you were schizophrenic and killed your "other self" would that be murder?

I doubt it. Schizophrenia doesn't involve having multiple personalities.