Stephen_BostonMA

It all comes down to the nature of the sacrifice. Unwanted pregnancy is a very unique intrusion, and therefore it warrants special consideration under the law. Again, the uniqueness of pregnancy warrants special consideration. Nobody would ever be in a situation where he had to listen to his neighbor's loud music 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for 9 months straight, and pay for it, without any means of escape. How about refusing to go through nine months of pregnancy? Or, in your opinion, should a woman get more leniency under the law if, instead of going to an abortion clinic, she simply refuses to take proper care of herself during pregnancy (i.e., refusing to eat nutritious food, not getting adequate rest, not getting regular medical checkups, etc.) There’s no direct action to kill the fetus, but the refusal to take proper steps during pregnancy could very well harm or kill the fetus. She would in essence be refusing to take action to keep the fetus alive.

Columbus

Using words like intrusion is the spin here. Pregnancy is the result of choices made by the parents. Everyone knows where babies come from and there are absolutely fail-safe methods of preventing pregnancy. The intrusion, if you want to call it that, is when the penis enters the vagina. The parents are in control of that, not the fetus.

It is very difficult to converse with someone who either doesn't know what the words they use mean, or deliberately redefine them without mentioning what they mean in the context. You are your own person, individual, etc., but you are not your own species.
Most people don't have any trouble distinguishing between elephants and humans. I don't understand why you have this difficulty. Your rationale for justifying abortion is based on a carefully protected ignorance about the difference between humans and everything else.
The statement I made that got edited wasn't meant to be an ad hom. I was trying to take your moral statement about the relative value of great apes and small children out to it's logical conclusion, in a way that made it apply to you.

Tom

Columbus

Yygdrasill
I'm curious. Does anyone else agree with Y's assessment of the relative value of apes and children? I personally find it extremely evil. Does anyone else have an opinion about this?

Tom

Stephen_BostonMA

Not necessarily. LWF has argued on other threads that rape victims should not be allowed to abort.

Contraception is not always 100% effective.

Yggdrasill

My point was that all the "species" are poorly defined, here, the definition of "species" is "a set of animals or plants in which the members have similar characteristics to each other and can breed with each other", but how similar do they have to be? The first part of the definition ("a set of animals or plants in which the members have similar characteristics to each other") is really devoid of meaning, as that depends on the subjective definition of "similar", you really only have two objective definitions of "similar" in this context, "all organisms are similar" and "all organisms are dissimilar", and both lead to the definition being pointless. That only leaves the second part ("a set of animals or plants in which the members can breed with each other"); by that definition donkeys and horses would be the same species. As they are not considered the same species, the definition is lacking. And impotent organisims wouldn't be considered part of the species. And if all men or women died, the survivors would not be considered a species. And children wouldn'd be considered human. etc.

I'll repeat myself; if you can't come up with objective universal requirements, that just goes to show that "humans" are too diverse to be defined. And it shows that judging one thing as human and another not is arbitrary, because there isn't any boundary to base it on.

I wasn't aware that it had been edited.

And that is not the logical conclusion, I am more intelligent than great apes and children, so I am not the same as a child.

Yggdrasill

I though I should mention that I don't mean like 5 year olds here, I mean babies plus some months of age. If the child and the adult ape were about equal in terms of mental faculties, I think it would be more wrong to kill the child, as it has potential the ape doesn't.

Columbus

Rape victims present a whole different moral challenge. The risk posed a female victim is part of the reason that rape is so harshly sanctioned, as well it should be. I would be inclined to see the abortion a rape victim might be entitled to as making the perp guilty of the murder, in addition to the rape.

Abstinence is 100% effective and safe. I believe the prevalence of abortion has contributed to the sense of entitlement people feel about sex. People need certain things, but sex is not one of them. Correct use of contraceptives reduces the risk of an unplanned pregnancy way below 1%, but any time you have sex you are taking a chance and everyone knows it. Anyone who has sex against their will has been raped, but that doesn't have much to do with the overwhelming majority of abortions.

Tom

Columbus

I still think it is flat out evil. You are putting my new nephew Ethan in the category "less valuable than an ape".

I don't think this is evil because of some predetermined code of behaviour or because God said so. I think categorizing some humans as dispensable creates huge suffering in some subtle and indirect ways, as well as the obvious ones. Most of the human race's biggest moral disasters were a result of someone with power deciding that something was more valuable than a certain category of people and acting upon it. The world and all of us in it are worse off because of Hitler, and 17th century slave traders, and the Mongols, etc. Either we will choose a pararadigm that values all life in general, and all humans in particular, or we will destroy ourselves in the foreseeable future.

Tom

Yggdrasill

It's probably true that I'm putting your nephew Ethan in the category "less valuable than an ape", but you're assuming that being less valuable than an ape is a very bad thing, which it isn't, apes are intelligent, self-aware organisms, capable of learning sign language, mathematics, etc., not unlike humans. If hyper-intelligent aliens came to earth, I'd think that humans were less valuable than them, but that doesn't mean humans aren't valuable, merely less valuable.Fetuses aren't very intelligent, and as I view value as linked to intelligence, not "humanity", I view the intelligent mother as more valuable. As such, when the mothers ability to have a happy life conflicts with the ability of the fetus to have a happy life, the mother should be prioritized.

Boro Nut

I hate this sort of emotive claptrap. There is simply no comparison. The inquisition stuck knitting needles in your ears, not up your fanny.

Boro Nut