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16th May 2019, 03:59 PM | #361 |
Penultimate Amazing
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Nobody claimed the choices would be considered satisfactory to her. But they are still choices.
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I know why people in that situation would want an abortion. But that doesn't mean it will necessarily help, at all. |
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"As long as it is admitted that the law may be diverted from its true purpose -- that it may violate property instead of protecting it -- then everyone will want to participate in making the law, either to protect himself against plunder or to use it for plunder. Political questions will always be prejudicial, dominant, and all-absorbing. There will be fighting at the door of the Legislative Palace, and the struggle within will be no less furious." - Bastiat, The Law |
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16th May 2019, 04:15 PM | #362 |
Penultimate Amazing
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SATISFACTORY? These kinds of 'choices' have a name: Sophie's Choice.
Quote:
An abortion isn't meant to PROTECT anyone from rape. And if she'd given birth to that child and given it up for adoption, do you think her father wouldn't have continued to rape her? And she would likely still have committed suicide.
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16th May 2019, 04:17 PM | #363 |
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There is no Antimemetics Division. |
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16th May 2019, 04:21 PM | #364 |
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16th May 2019, 04:25 PM | #365 |
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16th May 2019, 04:27 PM | #366 |
Penultimate Amazing
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Of course you get to do that. I don't know of any public-safety advice that says you should ignore considerations of your own safety in trying to rescue someone else.
Can you cite where women getting abortions are texting "lol" to their friends? Perhaps that's a literary flourish you allowed yourself. So what if they're idiots? OK, I'll bite: what's the right answer? |
16th May 2019, 04:34 PM | #367 |
Penultimate Amazing
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"Hey I don't care if a Woman's basic rights are taken away as long as I get my Tax cuts".
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16th May 2019, 04:50 PM | #368 |
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Murder
Quote:
But hey, what if the 'presence of a soul' was the criteria for murder? Could be tricky since the prosecution would have to prove that the victim had one! And it would be open season on Atheists and liberals (aka Communists) since we all know they don't have souls. |
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16th May 2019, 04:50 PM | #369 |
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I think your posts do a great job of capturing the essence of the debate and the difficulty in determining a point at which to consider it alive.
I disregard any religious arguments because of the obvious problem with laws being predicated on religious beliefs. I'm not a fan of the argument that it counts as life at conception just because it has the potential to become a person. It still requires many steps before it becomes a person and in vitro fertilized eggs or even sperm has the same potential it just takes an extra step or two. I can understand the argument, but I don't feel it's a strong one. Pleading humans as a special case separate from animals because of self-awareness or intelligence doesn't really work for me either. It feels too similar to the religious soul argument and to various extents it can be argued that animals display self-awareness and intelligence. Even if we don't plead a special case for humans and were to base it off of something like the ability to feel pain or self-awareness, what is the argument for why it is okay to kill animals whether for sport or food or we deem them an annoyance. Nimble, the poster I originally responded to said (paraphrase) abortions are usually killing for the sake of convenience. That's why I asked if they were vegan. Killing for sport or for food or because they are deemed an annoyance is also killing for the sake of convenience. As you put it, the abortion question is a tough nut. It's hard to find arguments whether for or against that have consistency when applied to other facets of life. There doesn't seem to be an absolute answer as to where the line should be drawn. The pain argument makes the most sense to me. From what I've read fetuses can feel pain sometime between 8-16 weeks after conception and so after that there would be restrictions on abortions except in special cases. |
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16th May 2019, 05:02 PM | #370 |
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"As long as it is admitted that the law may be diverted from its true purpose -- that it may violate property instead of protecting it -- then everyone will want to participate in making the law, either to protect himself against plunder or to use it for plunder. Political questions will always be prejudicial, dominant, and all-absorbing. There will be fighting at the door of the Legislative Palace, and the struggle within will be no less furious." - Bastiat, The Law |
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16th May 2019, 05:06 PM | #371 |
Penultimate Amazing
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I would say that the right to life is basic.
I would say that the right to choose whether some other life continues is not basic at all, but rather complex and debatable. And of course neither has anything to do with tax cuts. Do you have an honest argument about life and human rights? |
16th May 2019, 05:10 PM | #372 |
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Wow. I'm actually adding "A 12 year old rape victim being forced to carry to term is a BAD THING" to the list of things I've managed to find people to be contrarian over.
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16th May 2019, 05:18 PM | #373 |
Penultimate Amazing
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I don't want to defend Marquis, but I have an idea how he would respond. He actually explicitly responds to the potentiality objection you raise, but I'd just as soon skip that as a bit abstruse.
For the second, yes, certainly, the single mother has lost some of the future enjoyable experiences she otherwise would have had. The fetus (or the victim of a murder) would lose not merely some of their future like ours, but its entirety. This is worse. Hence, one cannot defend abortion on the grounds that it preserves the woman's future since the cost to the other party is much worse. By the way, Marquis chickens out at the beginning of the article and explicitly omits pregnancy due to rape from the discussion. I think this is intellectual cowardice on his part, since his argument applies equally well to that case. If he had the courage of his convictions, he would say that abortion is wrong even in that case, seems to me. |
16th May 2019, 05:22 PM | #374 |
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Leaving logic cleanly behind I find that forcing a girl/woman to carry a fetus to term is more horrifying to me than allowing women the right to end their pregnancies.
On the one hand: A right that has been legal for decades, is legal in other advanced countries, was legal under common law for hundreds of years and is not rigorously proscribed by many religions can continue to exist. The state does not have a compelling enough case to justify such a step backward. And not to hold the woman criminally liable? Makes no sense whatsoever. Punish the hit man, but not who ordered the hit. Horrible legislation. |
16th May 2019, 05:26 PM | #375 |
Penultimate Amazing
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The pain argument (ability to feel pleasure and pain is called sentience in philosophical circles, a bit different than the usual definition of sentience) is famously defended by Singer. I don't know if he ever applied it explicitly to the abortion debate and he regarded the question of whether it's okay to kill animals more difficult than the question of whether it's okay to hurt them. I've read the article a few times and still find his conclusion on killing hard to pin down.
One article he wrote on this is called "All Animals Are Equal". (If it's really an excerpt rather than an article, you might not find it under that name. Let me know.) It's an easy read. The biggest annoyance is the amount of time he spends on arguing that animals can feel pain, something that seems obvious to me. Perhaps that was less widely accepted at the time he wrote that article, but I kinda find that hard to believe. Thanks for your kind remarks. |
16th May 2019, 05:31 PM | #376 |
Penultimate Amazing
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I believe I agree. If abortion is like murder, then surely the woman ought to be prosecuted as well as the doctor, at least if it's an elective abortion of a pregnancy due to consensual intercourse and the woman was in a position to make a competent and informed decision. This inconsistency is surely motivated by political considerations.
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16th May 2019, 05:44 PM | #377 |
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16th May 2019, 06:04 PM | #378 |
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Reducing the entire moral equation down to hypothetical possible futures ignores too many other reasons why murder is wrong. If you murder an adult human, that person is already an actual fully formed human being, not a fertilized egg that is programmed to grow into one in the future. The human being almost certainly has a family, friends, perhaps dependent children and/or colleagues, all of whom will be impacted by their loss. Nobody is going to miss that zygote in the same way or have their life altered because some person who hadn't been born yet in any case isn't born. Certainly not more than its mother.
So murder is not wrong solely because it deprives a person of "a future like ours" but for many other reasons as well that do not apply to a fetus. |
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16th May 2019, 06:30 PM | #379 |
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For the pro choice side...
Do you have an argument that the "abortion is murder" side hasn't heard yet? If not, why even discuss the subject with them? |
16th May 2019, 06:37 PM | #380 |
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I had another thought about this:
Getting into an argument about this was probably a mistake because "whether abortion is right or wrong" isn't actually the right question to ask. At least it isn't the primary question that I'm concerned with. It's "whether abortion should be illegal or legal and under what circumstances". Even if, for the sake of argument, Marquis is correct that "Abortion is Wrong" as a metaphysical matter, the question remains as a separate legitimate question of public and social policy. Because there are other wrongs and considerations to balance it against. What is in the overall best interest of society as a whole? |
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A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool. William Shakespeare |
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16th May 2019, 06:49 PM | #381 |
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16th May 2019, 07:01 PM | #382 |
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16th May 2019, 07:18 PM | #383 |
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A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool. William Shakespeare |
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16th May 2019, 07:25 PM | #384 |
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16th May 2019, 08:23 PM | #385 |
Penultimate Amazing
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Sure, but blame my presentation, not Marquis's writing. He makes clear that murder is wrong for many reasons, but the primary victim is clearly the person murdered, not his loved ones, and the primary reason is the loss of a future like ours.
Abortion doesn't share all the factors that make murder wrong, but it shares the most significant factor. At least that's Marquis's argument. If you're concerned that I'm not accurately conveying Marquis's argument clearly enough (and honestly, you probably should be), I can email you a scan of his article. It's a brief read. Of course, if not, that's fine too. |
16th May 2019, 08:30 PM | #386 |
Penultimate Amazing
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I think that if abortion is just as bad as murder, then abortion ought to be illegal. If somehow we determined that making murder legal would reduce murder rates and make it safer for killers (don't ask how, I got no story for that), it would still be the wrong public policy. There is simply something wrong about saying that the state regards murder as acceptable, since legalized murder provides benefits lacking in illegal murder.
Now, it's a silly hypothetical, but I hope you get my point. The failure to recognize fundamental human rights as essential is, first, wrong morally speaking and, second, probably produces strongly negative effects that are hard to predict. Back to abortion, those who think that abortion is like murder would say that legalizing abortion is dehumanizing, leading to generations who fail to value human life in an appropriate way and, yes, of course, wrong. |
16th May 2019, 08:33 PM | #387 |
Penultimate Amazing
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Ah, that explains your previous post.
Well, if you take a utilitarian view, the whole discussion of moral rights is pretty difficult to take seriously. They don't particularly fit into your moral theory. And, of course, in that case, the only question that matters is the one you just asked: what is the outcome of legalized abortion compared to illegal abortion? Hard question to answer, obviously, but I'd think a plausible case could be made that legalized abortion would produce a better outcome than the alternative. |
16th May 2019, 08:56 PM | #388 |
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Alabama lawmakers explicitly don't worry about IVF.
Why would a fertilized egg in the lab not count, but a just fertilized one in the womb does? |
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16th May 2019, 09:26 PM | #389 |
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Your grandchildren will be brown, trans, and Islamo-Communist. |
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16th May 2019, 10:09 PM | #390 |
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"... when people thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the Earth was spherical they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the Earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together." Isaac Asimov |
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16th May 2019, 10:23 PM | #391 |
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Looks like a feature of the federal system to me. States which want to ban abortions can do so (subject to those laws being ratified by SCOTUS - something that appears more likely right now), those which want the right to choice can have it.
There are some things where the country has decided that a certain right is fundamental enough to be determined at a national level. The civil rights and womens rights movements over the last 60 years or so have expanded that list. It seems that the backlash against it, the election of Trump is a symptom of this, is trying put some or all of those rights back in play. |
16th May 2019, 10:36 PM | #392 |
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"... when people thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the Earth was spherical they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the Earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together." Isaac Asimov |
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16th May 2019, 11:36 PM | #393 |
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'States' want to control abortion laws in the country. If you think all they want is states' rights to have their little religious islands amongst the bigger sinful country, you don't have your eyes open. This isn't about states' rights. This is about religious extremists and the people promoting them because they are one issue voters who will vote for their right wing policies.
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16th May 2019, 11:42 PM | #394 |
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This whole matter of the morality of abortion, I fear, will ever remain an intractable problem. Simply because it involves the clash in rights of a fully developed human carrying inside her an absolutely dependent, developing human-to-be. In such a conundrum, I lean toward the woman herself as the most competent authority on what is best for her (along with her doctor.)
As a man, I get really steamed by other men moralizing against women on matters completely outside their own direct experience. It's bad enough when some women engage thus. But men, please; STFU. |
17th May 2019, 12:00 AM | #395 |
Penultimate Amazing
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Because it's not in a pregnant woman. There's some who think test-tube babies don't count because God said (paraphrase) I knew you in your mother's womb. So fertilized eggs are not yet in their mother's womb.
There's also a verse about the damages a man can claim if someone causes his wife to miscarry. It's a financial penalty. Not life in prison. |
17th May 2019, 12:27 AM | #396 |
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A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool. William Shakespeare |
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17th May 2019, 12:39 AM | #397 |
Penultimate Amazing
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The people not winning are the same people pushing to make abortions illegal. It's evangelical men who are used to be in charge over women, and who feel that their God gave them the role as the leader of the household. They think women who end up pregnant outside of wedlock are sluts that ought to be punished, and that having an abortion while married is an affront to God who told them to procreate.
They are simultaneously worried about being outbred by "inferior races" which would result in whites being in the minority. In short, the losers in your scenario are white supremacist Christian men. |
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Before you say something stupid about climate change, check this list. "If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. " Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies Vol. 1 |
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17th May 2019, 12:58 AM | #398 |
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My new blog: Recent Reads. 1960s Comic Book Nostalgia Visit the Screw Loose Change blog. |
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17th May 2019, 01:04 AM | #399 |
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"... when people thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the Earth was spherical they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the Earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together." Isaac Asimov |
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17th May 2019, 01:04 AM | #400 |
Penultimate Amazing
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Before you say something stupid about climate change, check this list. "If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. " Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies Vol. 1 |
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