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

[downbeatplumb]

I have a problem with how people draft their moral views. In particular, moral rationalization.

I'm a carnivore and I have been my whole life.  As a Christian I thought nothing of it, but when I dropped that stupid religion I began to understand that humans are absolutely brutal to nonhuman animals. The fact that I eat meat does not change this.  I will not rationalize my consumption of meat and conclude it is good or benign simply out of convenience. I acknowledge that it is wrong to eat meat, and then I proceed to eat meat.

My position is that it is wrong to kill anything that is alive. This is my a priori belief. The fact that we must kill things to survive is the secondary issue.  To say that it is morally acceptable to kill living things simply because we must is an appeal to consequences logical fallacy.  If we had Star Trek levels of technology, then it would be more obvious that it is wrong to kill anything.  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), but we should never kill our own offspring. Particularly given that we are mammals and not reptiles.

Now, I understand that the law has nothing to do with morality. For example, adultery simply cannot be illegal, but adultery is definitely morally wrong. You are causing real harm in someone's life by committing adultery. (Open relationships and swinging are not things I'm lumping in with adultery.)

And I understand that as far as the law and even perhaps even morality is concerned, an unborn child is not a person.  It is a human being, but not a person.  A dolphin has more personhood than an unborn human.

I also understand that while it is my opinion that we should not ever sacrifice our offspring to save ourselves, there is no legal obligation for a parent to sacrifice himself/herself to save the child. Nor could this law ever exist.  If, for instance, a mother found herself in an odd situation where she had to choose between her left arm and her five year old son, she is not legally obligated to give up her arm.

So I think at this point I've laid out the case for why abortion should be legal.  A civilian should not be compelled to suffer great bodily harm or risk of death (which birth often is) for anyone else, particularly if that other human being does not even have personhood.

Yet the pro-choice crowd does not seem to stop at legality. Most of them, as far as I understand, think that abortion is morally justifiable. But my understanding is that inasmuch as a man is morally obligated to stand his ground and fight to the death to protect his family (despite having the legal right to flee and save his own life), a woman is morally obligated to protect her child while it is growing inside her.  So please explain to me why abortion is morally acceptable or what I might be missing.

I don't think anyone is arguing that abortion is a "good" thing. Just that legal abortion is the least harmful solution to something that otherwise would have large reaching effects.

Without legal abortions there would be illegal abortions and more deaths of young desperate ladies.

[tackattack]

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You;d be wrong.  You employed the terms we use to denote instances of killing which -aren;t- legal or moral, but ofc there are instances of killing that would fit any of those that we do consider justifiable and can be legal.

Honestly, I'd say that a person who just "can't get" what sort of moral justifications there are for abortion isn't really unaware of there being such justifications..they just don't agree with them.

Broadly speaking, if having the child is worse than not having the child - then we consider not having the child the moral option..just like we do in any other example of an endless list of similar situations. If we can acknowledge that it;s possible for this situation to present itself, then wev'e acknowledged the moral defensibility and justification for abortion. We might still, for our own personal reasons, reject that option. To roll the dice and do the worse of the two..hope that things turn out better. That;s okay, obviously, as a decision a person makes for themselves.

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The only difference between the ones I listed is the questionable personhood of the fetus, it was not an incorrect statement. Homicide is legally and morally wrong. It can be justified, but perhaps I was just injecting my opinion in a way to switch to that topic.

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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?

I'm sure you already understand why. There is a fundamental disagreement on terminology and the status of a fetus before/after X amount of weeks that will most likely never be resolved.

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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.

[The Grand Nudger]

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You;d be wrong.  You employed the terms we use to denote instances of killing which -aren;t- legal or moral, but ofc there are instances of killing that would fit any of those that we do consider justifiable and can be legal.

Honestly, I'd say that a person who just "can't get" what sort of moral justifications there are for abortion isn't really unaware of there being such justifications..they just don't agree with them.

Broadly speaking, if having the child is worse than not having the child - then we consider not having the child the moral option..just like we do in any other example of an endless list of similar situations.  If we can acknowledge that it;s possible for this situation to present itself, then wev'e acknowledged the moral defensibility and justification for abortion.  We might still, for our own personal reasons, reject that option.  To roll the dice and do the worse of the two..hope that things turn out better.  That;s okay, obviously, as a decision a person makes for themselves.

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The only difference between the ones I listed is the questionable personhood of the fetus, it was not an incorrect statement. Homicide is legally and morally wrong. It can be justified, but perhaps I was just injecting my opinion in a way to switch to that topic.

Not even remotely. Genocide patricide and homocide all find legal and morally justifiable manifestations in our world, regardless of the personhood of a fetus or, indeed, the personhood of the people discussed under any of those headers.

We just don't like to -call- them genocide, matricide, and homocide, we reserve those terms for the bad versions of each.

This is, ultimately, why forced birther activism has failed. They've imagined that personhood is the magic trick. It isn't. Compelling interest is compelling interest even when both parties are people. Just as in any consideration of some legally compelling interest, there are many ways that cross purpose moral interests can present themselves to us. Complicated opinions on these subjects manifest themselves in religious sensibilities all the same, but get condensed in the fullness of time to simple deontology wholly unrepresentative of the factors that lead to it's creation.

[tackattack]

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?

[The Grand Nudger]

You can?   Pretty sure you do?

We could posit that killing a fetus for fun should be illegal and is not morally justifiable. In fact we do posit that. Kick a pregnant girl in the stomach for shits and giggles and see what happens, lol.

Time limits are a self serving arbitrarity that ignores both the legal -and- moral justifications for killing a fetus.

[tackattack]

K so Genocide, patricide, and homicide, and feoticide all find legal and morally justifiable manifestations in our world but these connotations are reserved for the bad versions of each. At what point is it that a personal matter such as killing/homicide becomes open to public restrictions and discourse? what about pulling-the-plug/matricide? self-defense/murder? abortion/feoticide? I would guess they're all in the same place in the action phase of causality. What would distinguish the connotative basis of each of the pairs: serverity, personal impact, social impact, greatest harm done, biggest evil, etc.?

[The Grand Nudger]

If we were looking to make a full and measured assessment, alot of things would have to be considered. People spend time doing just that when they consider an abortion.

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Take a moment to apply an outsider test, here,  Tack.  

You've proposed a time limit, as though a legal or moral reason to abort could only present itself on a schedule convenient to..who the hell knows.

Self defense?  Like what, it keeps kicking her in the stomach or it's trying to steal her tv?  Perhaps it's attempted (or succeeded) to take her hostage? We -do- allow people to kill other people for those reasons.

Are these actually solid restricting factors or factors that you think might serve as decent proxies for your underlying motivations and biases? Would you accept parity in this and other things..a womb based castle doctrine, for example?

No, ofc not. They're proxies, just as personhood is a proxy.

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Worse for whom? Society, the mother, or the fetus? Or some kind of "average" of all three?

Any and all of the above, sure.

An abortion is obviously the worst case scenario for the fetus so that would skew the average quite a bit.  And if we aren't considering the well being of the fetus then that's just avoiding the conversation because I think the pro-lifers very much want to discuss the well being of the fetus.

You say obviously, but that isn't true, obviously or otherwise.  A huge number of abortions are predicated specifically on the state of the child. Be that some terrible birth defect, crippling and miserable poverty, or run of the mill abuse and neglect.

You mentioned a warzone abortion earlier so how bizarre of situations are you considering?  I mean... we could come up with a bizarre scenario where rape is the moral thing to do. That doesn't mean we should just legalize rape.

The warzone example is just one of many that present a persons own notions of duty bowling over any consideration of the wellbeing of the child.  It could be extended to include a third party, where you believe it's your duty to force a female to give birth in a warzone.  Now a persons individual duty is bowling over mother and child.  Or where a group of people believe that it;s their collective duty to enforce childbirth, as they all..including all of the already born bay-bees...starve. Perhaps, since you like nazi examples...these bay-bees are all starving in a concentration camp. What good is served, what consideration for the as yet unborn child is happening here?

Warzones aren't the only place where the wellbeing of an unwanted child or the wellbeing of an uncooperative mother, or the general wellbeing of every motherfucker apply.

Take a look around the world, though, and you'll see the warzone example being carried out daily. Alot of our favorite "Thanks Jesus!" posters are a product of this sort of unhinged moralizing. It may be easier to see in those examples, but the operative bits of the example aren't limited to the most apparent manifestations of the same. The circumstance that make abortion a potential moral good in a warzone or concentration camp don't need a warzone or a concentration camp to be present.

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I think I've shared this one before, but it seems as good a time as any.  When europeans first began to really interact with inuit tribes in an effort to study their culture...it was found that they practiced infanticide.  Not abortion..(which our society was a-okay with at the time)..infanticide. This horrified the observers, proof, if one needed more..that the inuit were cruel savages.  They didn;t even give a shit about babies!

Except this wasn't even close to the case.  With much consideration and care for children and others, and the child involved, and with as much trepidation and sorrow as any other mother, lacking reliable abortifacients and giving chance as much time to operate and change circumstances as possible....inuits would leave children in the snow to freeze rather than starve that child, other children, members of the group, and the mother. It was understood that regardless of the imperative of the act..a mother may not want to do it, may be physically unable....in which case, others would do it for her. The profound harm that the birth of a child could cause was their practical and moral justification.

[Mister Agenda]

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.

[The Grand Nudger]

Would a poor diet or a drug habit that leads to miscarriage be the fetal equivalent of manslaughter?

Just wondering exactly how shitty we're willing to get as we pretend to be moral crusaders.

[Simon Moon]

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?