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

[The Grand Nudger]

Thought experiment.  Consider a fetus which, in your mind, would be better off aborted. Suppose we forgo the abortion. Now wind the clock forward 20 years.  Are you going to advise this person to commit suicide?  Because they are impoverished or severely disabled or deformed, would your sincere and most helpful form of advice be that they kill themselves? Because if that's not what you would advise, then you would have to agree that their state of life, however suboptimal, is better than nonexistence.  Which again funnels back to my point which you disagreed with: that abortion is (obviously) the worst case scenario for the fetus.

What I would or wouldn't advise a person to do often hinges on my own biases rather than whether or not that thing can be morally justified.  In abortion or suicide, that either can be morally justified doesn't amount to me thinking that it's a good idea, or thinking that it's a good idea to tell someone else to do them, or that it's any of my business to advise a person in either case.  If someone sought my opinion, and the reasons they gave for either weren't lucid, I'd pipe up and say as much, but if they were...I'd have to tell them that I understood, and that it was clearly a difficult decision - that..maybe, they should seek advise from someone more qualified than myself.  OFC I could tell them what I would or wouldn't do...but that's just me, there's always that caveat.  

Then again, maybe you would advise suicide. I don't know. To be consistent you'd pretty much have to. But I'm not the kind of person who would walk into a school for the disabled and blurt out something like, "Y'all shoulda been aborted, and y'all should kill yourselves."

I've found myself in situations where I definitely thought that a person should commit suicide while they still had the chance, situations where I would toy with the idea... but that's not the sort of thing I tell people even when I think it.  

As for me, I find self preservation to be a compelling drive. Maybe not everyone here feels the same way.  Preservation of offspring is certainly not a priority. I get the feeling some people here would be like, "Oh, what's that, doc? My baby has a wart on its face? K, let's just abort and start over."

Self preservation is certainly a compelling drive, as is the preservation of offspring, but that doesn't certify the drive as moral or rational.  I'm not really sure that a baby having warts is something that many expecting mothers lose sleep over and consider an abortion for.   

I'll give you an example of real life decisions.  My wife and I both love kids.  We wanted to have eight kids.  Unfortunately for us both, we didn't meet when she was 16.  She was in her late thirties, and had a family history of complications.  Every pregnancy was going to be high risk.  The first, our big girl...went south hard at delivery, the nerves in her right arm were severed from the spinal cord, and my wife nearly died in the process.  My daughter had to be resuscitated at delivery.  It was horrifying.  The OBGYN later described it as the worst delivery she'd ever been a part of.  

Thing is, we knew the risks going in.  We were made aware many months beforehand that something like this could happen if it even went to term, that every indicator was present.  We had to have the abortion conversation..and we even had to have the "if it goes south and it's me or her, what do we want" convo.  Can you imagine me responding to my wife with any of the prissy shit that you seem to think is relevant?  Both of us have ideological disagreements with abortion..but reality has a way of challenging prior commitments.  The sort of despair and uncertainty it took to get my wife to consider it and bring it up to me doesn't take a mind reader to work out - and it wouldn't be done with her after she had the baby.   

Our second went off without a hitch.  Our third was a gestational diabetes shitshow - but my first son!  Then we had two failures.  We considered calling it quits.  Three, however, is not eight...so we decided to give it another go.  Another boy...but this time, she was in her forties, with a family history of complications, one disabled child, gestational diabetes,  and a less than pristine body wrecked by three full pregnancies in 5 years and two miscarriages.  Nothing went right.  Again we knew months beforehand, and better than we realized the first time, how bad things could get.  We had to have the convo again, we went through with it again.  He spent the first month or so of his life under a hood, on a ventilator, ivs,  tube fed.  Couldn't even touch him.  We had to go back and forth to the hospital to visit him.  So..you know, we got fixed after that, couldn't take it anymore.

During all of this, for years.. we had been driving to and fro to Cinci to a research outfit for our first girl.  Huge arrays of needles prodding and sending charges into her not because there was anything they could do for her, or anything they would promise us, but because the data might one day help some kid.  Then there was the PT.  She never crawled, because she couldn't.  We didn't sleep for fear that she would roll over, and, unable to use her arm to right herself..suffocate beside us.  Our first physical therapist tried for about 6 months....then quit, in tears.  My wife lost her job for missed time.  Then we lost our car because we had to choose between paying medical bills and a note.  Then we couldn't pay rent.  We had to move in with friends in a different state, now we were both unemployed.  We went to food banks.  Eventually we couldn't burden her friend in good conscience and we moved 1k miles back down south to live with her family..but they're on a fixed income.  Then my family.   We were on foodstamps.  My brother loaned me his car.  I worked for minimum wage.  I couldn't pay my child support.  We'd lost everything we had between moves and sudden poverty. I was redeeming cds and I sold a gerber insurance policy that had been taken out when I was born just to stay above water and keep our kids clothed and fed. I sold property at firesale prices in a climate where no one had the money to buy and values had already tanked. The strain on our relationship is impossible to overstate.  My wife floated the idea of divorce, an incident that she still feels shame and cries about years later.  It took us years to dig our way back up and out of that hole...and it took the misery of others - I was constantly hovering over foreclosures. We became the worst and most predatory versions of ourselves, lol. I spent most of my time, even my free time, away from my family. The good ole bad days, I supplemented our income with less than legal™ activities. As you read all of the above, note that we started in a much more privileged place than the average pregnant couple. We could afford to make those trips, we could afford elective testing, pt, we had investments, we owned real estate, we had friends with big houses, we had family with big hearts, we possessed marketable skills, the safety net in florida is impressive compared to other states...it's hard to find a real cracker in florida to arrest for failure to pay in mass, and all of my friends and peers were well off enough to be more the blow types than the rock types. More dro than dirt. Pills, not meth.

-and all for the birth of children.  Or, you know, warts and shit.  So..what I'm trying to say, is shut the fuck up, lol.

Like I said, a warzone is a place where human wellbeing is hardly a consideration. So the wellbeing of a fetus is not a priority. In a situation where hundreds of people might die brutally in a span of 30 seconds, what the hell does an abortion matter?

Trailer parks and projects aren't exactly places where human wellbeing is given pride of place, either.  Why abortion would matter on a battlefield, or in a trailer park, or in a project..is something you'd have to ask those people to ascertain, and you'll have to give it actual consideration..rather than address any of these things with the sole intention to dismiss them in the silliest of ways.

Abortions are not a moral good in a warzone.  War is hell. Morality kindly fucks off when we're in war.  It's purely tactics. This is why we developed rules of war - because historically it has been so unspeakably terrible.

The only morally good option when it comes to war is to refuse to participate. Because just think about it. What would happen if everyone did that?

If you say so, nevertheless, a lucid and compelling case can be made in spite of your lazy absolutism in either regard.

You started this by asking how an abortion could be morally justified.  Is that actually what you wanted?

It's very often the case that an argument for both sides of any given coin, and many coins, exists - real world moral considerations are rarely binary. It's okay for you to be on one side of one coin, it's entirely another thing for you to insist that the coin only has the one side and is the only coin.

[tackattack]

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

Was genocide moral when Joshua perpetrated it on the people in the holy land?  Is homicide moral if we are killing a person who has gathered some twigs on the Sabbath?

Ok so  Genocide, patricide, and homicide all find legal and morally justifiable manifestations in our world but these connotations are reserved for the bad versions of each. Again, why can't I add feoticide to that list? I agree that person-hood isn't the trick, but did you have any comment on my example of justifiable feoticide?

Why do you engage with him on these issues but ignore me when I asked you?  :/

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Sorry NV, it wasn't intentional to not engage, just missed in the scroll. I was attempting to navigate the topic without religiosity being thrown in. Homicide/genocide/killing is not moral, IMO , but can be justified or unjustified. Ie. I would kill to eat and feed my family. I would kill to prevent anaphylactic shock. I would kill to make a safer community. I would kill to defend myself or an individual unable to defend themselves. I would kill in war for an ideal. I would would have the moral weight of those killings on my conscience and the weights would differ based on my ideals and to the perceived value of the victim.

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

In modern times in developed countries, infanticide is illegal. The circumstances where an infant cant' be fed or cared for by someone are very rare in the world of people with easy internet access, so infanticide isn't different.

The obvious difference with foeticide is that a fetus is inside of a person and can't live outside of that particular person. That is a big and obvious difference from the other cases. Do we have a right to use force of law to compel someone to provide life support for the fetus and bring it to term? Should we imprison them to prevent them from obtaining the means of abortion? If we equate abortion with murder, do we investigate miscarriages as possible homicides? Do we treat the woman who has an abortion as a murderer and the abortion provider as a contract killer?

And all of those questions precede any question about whether a fetus is somehow a person with equal rights to the mother. Those are questions we have to access even if the fetus is considered a person.

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You may not like the connotation, but abortion is murder/killing/ending a life if we deem that fetus qualifies as a life, whether able to be independent or not. Someone compared a fetus to a leech. If you burn off a leech and kill it, is it dead. That is some flavor of denoted murder. I think abortions and miscarriages are investigated as some form of killing. It's usually done by medical professions, not lawyers, and usually doesn't fall into the realm of ethics, nor is it usually more than a shallow causal finding. Would it be so much worse if that were seen as potentially criminal and at least taken more seriously than a check on a clipboard? What's the harm in investigating the reasons behind an abortion or miscarriage to ensure irresponsible behavior wasn't a factor, and holding people more accountable. If I punch a pregnant woman in the belly and kill her fetus I should be punished with murder of the fetus and assault on the mother. If she uses a coat hanger or a chair why shouldn't she at least be looked at for self-harm and murder?

What to compel is the question you bring up. It's the difference between not doing something and doing something harmful. I don't think law should compel people to do something against their will. I don't think science should do something harmful to someone without their consent as well. I see the difference in euthanasia more clearly. Why is it OK to pull the plug on someone but not to inject them with morphine till they die? I would answer, because one is NOT doing something to sustain life and the other IS doing something to harm life. I feel the same moral impetus on abortion. If you're pregnant and you want to kill it, it's on you to do the killing. I'm glad there are safer methods in science now for women to support that choice, but I don't morally agree with them.

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Again, why can't I add feoticide to that list? I agree that person-hood isn't the trick, but did you have any comment on my example of justifiable feoticide?

Here's a hypothetical for you.

Let's say that there is a newborn baby whose mother died, that for some medical reason, needs to have a further 7 months of life support from an adult. The infant could be connected to this person's body, who would then be their life support.

Let's further say, that you are a perfect genetic match, and are the only person available to keep this baby alive for 7 months, so it could then live a full and normal life. Without you, the baby will not survive.

Would you be okay with the government mandating, by law, that you be connected to this infant for 7 months? Why, or why not?

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No I would not be ok with being compelled to do something, I am however a donor and after I'm dead they can have the parts. Reason stated above.

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I am, but why can't it be resolved?

How about this, abortions are illegal after fetus has reached X. Once X has been reached person may be charged with feoticide. If said person can not prove it was in justifiable self defense then penalty Y. That makes abortion legal, gives women their choice and makes killing a viable fetus illegal. If people would have to prove there was self-defense as with the case of varying degrees of homicide that seems to make the lines a little clearer at least, no?? Now whether it's constitutional to limit the freedoms of an individual, or control a person's private self is another subject altogether.

You have the legal killing of fully adult humans in your country don't you?

Shouldn't that be actual murder?

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Yes I do and yes it does qualify as killing. It's justifiable, but there is legal and moral weight to that decision. With abortion I feel it should have the same moral and legal weight.

[The Grand Nudger]

Then let's give it the same legal and moral weight as the castle doctrine.  If I can shoot a man for trying to get into my car or my house, we should be able to shoot a fetus for trying to enter a uterus.

Keep in mind, I'm not faulting you for having your own opinion, just imploring you to engage in a little introspection about what that opinion is, and isn't. It;s not actually the case that you want it to have the same legal and moral weight, you're not going to find a uterine castle doctrine amenable to your position. You and I both know this, and that's okay - it's just an issue of truth in advertising, lol.

[Silver]

The more abortions the better, is all I'm saying.

[tackattack]

@Gae Bolga I am engaging in introspection and conversation. I, like you, would advise someone, only if asked and acknowledging my own biases. So let's give it the same weight as the castle doctrine. If it's being done to you, then you have the right to defend your body. If it is for your own self-defense then it is justifiable. If it was entirely uncontrollable circumstance, then it was accidental. If it was accidental, then legally and morally, if you had preventable ways to prevent the death you have an obligation to or it was reckless/negligent. If it was intentional, and didn't fall in the above, then it was murder.

[Mister Agenda]

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In modern times in developed countries, infanticide is illegal. The circumstances where an infant cant' be fed or cared for by someone are very rare in the world of people with easy internet access, so infanticide isn't different.

The obvious difference with foeticide is that a fetus is inside of a person and can't live outside of that particular person. That is a big and obvious difference from the other cases. Do we have a right to use force of law to compel someone to provide life support for the fetus and bring it to term? Should we imprison them to prevent them from obtaining the means of abortion? If we equate abortion with murder, do we investigate miscarriages as possible homicides? Do we treat the woman who has an abortion as a murderer and the abortion provider as a contract killer?

And all of those questions precede any question about whether a fetus is somehow a person with equal rights to the mother. Those are questions we have to access even if the fetus is considered a person.

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You may not like the connotation, but abortion is murder/killing/ending a life if we deem that fetus qualifies as a life, whether able to be independent or not. Someone compared a fetus to a leech. If you burn off a leech and kill it, is it dead. That is some flavor of denoted murder. I think abortions and miscarriages are investigated as some form of killing. It's usually done by medical professions, not lawyers, and usually doesn't fall into the realm of ethics, nor is it usually more than a shallow causal finding. Would it be so much worse if that were seen as potentially criminal and at least taken more seriously than a check on a clipboard? What's the harm in investigating the reasons behind an abortion or miscarriage to ensure irresponsible behavior wasn't a factor, and holding people more accountable. If I punch a pregnant woman in the belly and kill her fetus I should be punished with murder of the fetus and assault on the mother. If she uses a coat hanger or a chair why shouldn't she at least be looked at for self-harm and murder?

What to compel is the question you bring up. It's the difference between not doing something and doing something harmful. I don't think law should compel people to do something against their will. I don't think science should do something harmful to someone without their consent as well. I see the difference in euthanasia more clearly. Why is it OK to pull the plug on someone but not to inject them with morphine till they die? I would answer, because one is NOT doing something to sustain life and the other IS doing something to harm life. I feel the same moral impetus on abortion. If you're pregnant and you want to kill it, it's on you to do the killing. I'm glad there are safer methods in science now for women to support that choice, but I don't morally agree with them.

You seem to be using an idiosyncratic definition of 'murder', usually it's the 'unlawful killing of a human being'. It's never murder to kill things that aren't human beings, so 'life' is way too big a category and I don't think you really intend to include rabbits and paramecium in your category, you're just using language very, very loosely. If you really consider leeches to be murder, you're off the deep end and there's no point in having a conversation with you. If you don't really think killing leeches is murder, you're being so hyperbolic that I wonder if there's any point in having a conversation with you.

That's as far as I read, someone tell me if it got any better after the leech murdering thing.

[Silver]

You seem to be using an idiosyncratic definition of 'murder', usually it's the 'unlawful killing of a human being'. It's never murder to kill things that aren't human beings, so 'life' is way too big a category and I don't think you really intend to include rabbits and paramecium in your category, you're just using language very, very loosely. If you really consider leeches to be murder, you're off the deep end and there's no point in having a conversation with you. If you don't really think killing leeches is murder, you're being so hyperbolic that I wonder if there's any point in having a conversation with you.

That's as far as I read, someone tell me if it got any better after the leech murdering thing.

"Potential human" seems to be the most prolific (non)reasoning for pro-life arguments.

As far as I am concerned, the host decides what happens to her body.

[Divinity]

Oh, calm your tits. I'm not judging anyone. I went to great pains to say that I eat meat and I think it's morally wrong to do so.  So I'm not judging anyone. Abortion is immoral, but no one is being shamed or judged.

Maybe not intentionally.  You may very well have good intentions.  But as they say, the path to hell is paved with good intentions.  I've seen girls who are told that abortion is immoral, who've had to struggle with the decision.  Hell, I've been one of those girls.  When I got pregnant for the first time, I was reminded of how 'immoral' the decision of abortion was.  How it was 'killing my baby'. And despite being pro-choice at the time, because of that--I wasn't able to make the decision that was best for me at the time.  Because people kept reminding me how 'immoral' the choice was.  "Personally, I'd never have an abortion" they reminded me.  Nagging me (purposely or not) into not making the right decision.  

Telling people "MEAT IS IMMORAL!" is way different than saying "ABORTION IS IMMORAL!"  There are millions and millions of meat eaters.  In fact, it's a minority of people that don't eat meat.  It's the difference between saying "Same Sex Marriage is Immoral" and "Traditional Marriage is Immoral".  One carries a stigma, the other doesn't.    There's no stigma for eating meat.  Nobody's going to go around and think "Oh my god, I'm a terrible person for making this decision to eat a delicious steak."  Most people don't even empathize with animals enough to give a shit.  But with abortion?  There's a HUGE fucking stigma to the whole thing.  One created by society, and propagated by those who find it 'immoral'.

[tackattack]

@Mister Agenda I was speaking of murder as ending life. If you'd prefer I user unlawful ending of human life then I could rephrase. As fetus' aren't universally agreed upon when they are a human life, and the legality f killing them is in question in some areas; If a fetus is a life and if it is legal to kill them it is state sanctioned murder equivalent to the death penalty and should have just as much legal inquisition as to the cause and moral weight.

@Divinity The stigma and majority issues aside, shouldn't people struggle with the decision? It would be those that don't struggle (fetus are like a wart) with the decision I would be concerned with.

[The Grand Nudger]

@Gae Bolga I am engaging in introspection and conversation. I, like you, would advise someone, only if asked and acknowledging my own biases. So let's give it the same weight as the castle doctrine. If it's being done to you, then you have the right to defend your body. If it is for your own self-defense then it is justifiable. If it was entirely uncontrollable circumstance, then it was accidental.  If it was accidental, then legally and morally, if you had preventable ways to prevent the death you have an obligation to or it was reckless/negligent. If it was intentional, and didn't fall in the above, then it was murder.

Then there we have it, any and every abortion finds equal legal and moral justification under the uterine castle doctrine.

The castle doctrine doesn't state that you can only kill the fucker if you run out of other options. It doesn't require that you -know- anything about the person or their intentions, and it doesn't matter whether or not the person was "accidentally" trying to gain entry. It doesn't even state that the only time you can employ the doctrine is the very moment of entrance, or some set amount of time afterward.

Even as you claim to accept this parity, you seek to add restrictions to the one not imposed on the other. Tack..you don't want parity here. It's okay to want what you want, it's okay to have the opinion that you do. It;s another thing entirely to sell that as something that it's not. The first and most convincing lies are the ones we tell ourselves.