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

[Divinity]

Spare me the sanctimonious bullshit. Abortion is not immoral. Shaming women who've had abortions, however, IS immoral. One is a woman making a reproductive choice for herself, and the other is a human being trying to make another human being feel guilty for making that choice. It's just pure bullshit.

[chimp3]

Texas is considering the death penalty for women getting abortions. Because they are pro-life.

[Mermaid]

Texas is considering the death penalty for women getting abortions. Because they are pro-life.

Wait......what?

[The Grand Nudger]

Bunch of states are passing or considering laws they know aren't legal...they figure that the current squatter stacked the supreme court hard enough to overturn roe. They're probably right.

[Nihilist Virus]

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? :/

[The Grand Nudger]

Perhaps he didn't see how an exposition on joshua's battlefield ethics or the moral permissibility of killing twig gatherers would help to answer your question.

[Nihilist Virus]

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.

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.

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."

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."

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?

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?

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.

Do you mean "don't 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.

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?

---

Spare me the sanctimonious bullshit.  Abortion is not immoral.  Shaming women who've had abortions, however, IS immoral.  One is a woman making a reproductive choice for herself, and the other is a human being trying to make another human being feel guilty for making that choice.  It's just pure bullshit.

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.

---

Perhaps he didn't see how an exposition on joshua's battlefield ethics or the moral permissibility of killing twig gatherers would help to answer your question.

Or he's just a spineless apologist like the rest of those lousy fucks.

[downbeatplumb]

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?

[Amarok]

Forcing a women to carry the fetus to term against her will is equivalent to rape in my opinion and weather the fetus is human or not is aside the point as even if it were it has no right to inhabit another being against their will or use elements of their body against their will ,And no we allow parenthood to be a choice if abortion were illegally pregnancy would not be a choice so that comparison will fail , And no the fetus is neither innocent or guilty I don't believe such terms can be used on a fetus .

[Little lunch]

I'm not against abortion, but I think it would be morally wrong of me to suggest it to a person I got pregnant, because I think of the fetus as something that's going to be a person and that I would love and care for under any circumstances.
I would be disappointed if someone I got pregnant had an abortion, but I would get over it completely.

What I don't like is the idea that as men we are not allowed to have an opinion or care about it.