Puck

long winded fool writes:
Since my argument is that abortion is unlawful and therefore should be illegal, my position must be in discussing the laws and not morality.

But, aren't our laws based on what morals we wish to enact in order to make a safer, more stable society? We have speed limits so we don't run about selfishly killing each other, we can't steal from each other, murder each other, etc. The universe doesn't give a rats ass what we do to each other, laws are merely a tool we humans use to keep some kind of order among ourselves. Unlike a religous belief where something says it must be so, laws are fluid to suit the morals a society desires. We like to think of laws as objective, but they are based on subjective ideals. (damn, I'm in over my head here. I promised myself I wouldn't quibble with you any more, and here I am, rising to the bait! You're gonna set me to banging my head on the desk yet, LOL) Quit making me think so damned hard!

long winded fool

You are right. Laws are based on subjective morality, but they also make the morality that they're based on objective. Though all morality might be subjective from a certain point of view, not all morality is logical or practical. The belief that there is nothing wrong with mass murder is an illogical and impractical belief, therefore it is wrong. It is logical to be intolerant of illogical morality in a society. That is what all laws are based on: Intolerance. And without laws there is anarchy. All humans are intolerant, and the vast majority through common instincts seem able to agree to a certain extent on what is right and wrong. Which kind of morality is logical, and which is not. The not logical morality is "morally wrong" no matter how subjective it is to the universe. In order for civilization to begin and survive, the majority of the members of the civilization must agree on what to tolerate and what not to. In other words, the laws have to make sense. Without common agreement on subjective morality, the civilization is destined for civil war and eventual death. While some things can be tolerated such as different religious faiths and different cultural traditions, the actual laws must be agreed upon by all. When they aren't agreed on by a large segment of the society, the laws must either be changed or repealed (forcibly if needed) if the civilization has any hope for survival. In the event that illogical morality is made law and agreed upon my the majority, natural selection will weed out these illogical humans and their illogical civilization will not survive. Despite what anarchists may tell you, a community without agreed upon laws, or at least agreed upon "absolute" morality, cannot survive. A civilization with agreed upon morality CAN survive with a little luck and a lot of logic and reason.

Bringing myself back to our argument, subjective ideals are either logical or illogical. Theists think that God is logical. Atheists think that no God is logical. Both can't be right, therefore one or both have an illogical belief, but since there is no law that prohibits either, then both beliefs must be tolerated by all. Since there is no law against the killing of a human embryo, pro-lifers must tolerate abortion, but there is another law which allows murderers to be tried on two counts of murder in the event that they kill a pregnant woman, which shows that it is against the law to kill an unborn embryo. Pro-choicers must tolerate embryos with human rights. The only rational conclusion is that one portion of this society (pregnant females) have the authority to change absolute laws so that their rights supercede another human's rights. Similar to slavery, we have an unjust law based on illogical morality. Slavery eventually resulted in civil war, as Americans became more enlightened as to the true nature of humanity. Race has no bearing on whether or not a homo sapiens has humanity. Had the laws not been changed by humans being convinced of the illogic of their beliefs, I believe there eventually would have been another civil war which would have resulted in the agreement of the majority and the passing of a law that declares that gender has no bearing on humanity. We avoided this war by listening to reason. Now, it would seem that our next step is to realize that age and level of development have no bearing on humanity. Every time we try to draw a line of humanity through the species of homo sapiens, we turn out to be wrong. The logical response is to make a law that grants all homo sapiens equal humanity. To allow the discomfort and trauma of a portion of women stand in the way of protecting human life is not rational and certainly not kind. Feeling sorry for the murderer doesn't change the fact that he's a murderer. His victim's right to life supercedes his right to personal comfort. It is unkind to allow a female to dodge life's hardships by taking away the life of another person simply because the person currently has no cognitive capacity. Taking away the "personhood" of said person does not solve the problem, it delays the inevitable. This same argument can be used against cloning. When you discriminate personhood among humans, you are sowing the seeds of disparity and unrest, which are the first symptoms of the dangerous disease called rebellion. The abortion issue is an amazingly profound proof of this, since even discriminating against humans who can't directly cause civil unrest, (being totally ignorant and completely dependent) still causes civil unrest. No matter how benign, invisible, and useless the human, someone is going to have a problem with it and draw a huge following. The responsible thing to do is change the laws to make them rational and able to once again be agreed upon by the majority.

It is unwise to draw a line through the human species with the intent of withholding inalienable rights from certain members, whether said members can defend themselves or not, because there will always be those who rush to their defense no matter how much disparity they cause to their government and neighbors. Revolution is caused by the government being revolted against, not the people rebelling, which means that it can be stopped solely by changing the laws to pacify the people and restore order. While we're in no imminent danger of revolution over the abortion debate, if the laws aren't changed soon, they one day will be come hell or high water. History is not so easily changed. We've had thousands of years to realize where this path of discrimination takes us. Someone will always be discriminated against and someone will always battle for their equality, and the pro-equality people always eventually win. That is the nature of humanity. As for America's latest foray into line-drawing, while I wish it would be fixed early to avoid the unnecessary controversy and division down the road, people don't give up their perceived rights so easily, even in the face of reason. While I don't expect to convince everyone, if I can show even one person the logic and necessity of making abortion illegal, I'll have advanced this process and contributed to an earlier resolution of a potentially dangerous controversy than there otherwise would have been. This is why I argue for anti-abortion.

hinduwoman

Elaborate:
Why? A human being is a human being and according to your reasoning a zygote is a human being who is innocent of any crime. So why does the mother's life have more value now?


You mean USA is so safe no nutcase would ever kidnap a woman who has no one to inquire after her and be able to keep her?

Marcopolo:
Ah yes. This kind of argument is fashinable in India for allowing to have large families, for many eminent personalities like Tagore were youngest of 9 or 11 children. So population control is BAD.

What about third world women? There would be women exhausted from bearing children or with money problems, and no access to reliable birthcontrols, but she should bear children anyway?

In ancient India when population was very low and infant mortality high, the Hindu Scriptures set down that not making love in fertile season is equal to destroying embryos, because not making love destroys the chance of a potential child from forming. That is where the argument of zygote= full human leads you, as even they got it, though you deny it, stopping at a certain point that suits you.

Ultimately, the pro-lifer's argument boils down to this: It is completely upto the woman to be responsible about sex but when it comes to reproduction/increase of population, a bunch of other people will decide she must sacrifice herself for the sake of a higher good, and she be punished for having sex without approval.
A woman's body in sexual matters is her own because it gives advantage to men, but not her own at other times.

LordSnooty

It doesn't. It shows that it is against the law to kill an unborn embryo against the wishes of the mother. An embryo that is wanted must have more value than one which is not.
I really don't think you could convince a single person. Your argument is essentially this:

1) Murder of humans is illegal
2) A fetus is a human
3) Therefore abortion is murder

You're making false assumptions. A fetus is only a human by certain technical definitions. It does not posess humanity. Can't you see that other people define humanity differently to you? At the very least, this means your argument does not rely solely on logic. It relies partly on a flawed and incomplete interpretation of the term 'human'.

Paul

MarcoPolo

Yes, if a couple wants to have a child, there should be no restrictions on that.

Here's a little something I learned from science books. You can't get pregnant unless you have sex or can afford some other manual fertilization. If they would be exhasted from bearing children and can't afford birth control, they shouldn't be having sex which has been scientifically proven to produce children occasionally.

Uh. We had a nice discussion here until you had to go and bring up religion.

I certainly don't feel that way.

What in the world did you just say?

Queen of Swords

Originally posted by MarcoPolo:
<strong>If they would be exhasted from bearing children and can't afford birth control, they shouldn't be having sex which has been scientifically proven to produce children occasionally.</strong>

And you'd think that men, especially husbands, would understand this, and refrain from having sex. Unfortunately, it doesn't always work out this way.

Another interesting point Elaborate made which I didn't tackle before is why a woman should be allowed to have an abortion if her life is danger. Let's say that due to certain physical conditions, she has a 90% chance of dying in labor. However, if she has an abortion, there is a 100% chance that the embryo will die. Elaborate, if you're still around, could you tell me why we couldn't go with the lower chance of death (90%) and force the woman to risk that chance, seeing that she has a tiny chance to survive with pregnancy but the innocent unborn baby would have none with the alternative? I mean, whether it's putting her life on the line or not, it's still an innocent child who didn't ask to be conceived or born, right? So why would you permit abortion at all?

MarcoPolo

Yes. I didn't mean to imply the men shouldn't be responsible. I agree with you definitely.

Good point which I agree with. I think we should let nature run it's course during the birth process.

stryder2112

...therefore performing a Caesarian section when the birth process goes horribly wrong is immoral.



I've always had a hard time understanding the reasoning behind a hard pro-life stance.

It seems to me that the pro-life stance is derived from either one of the following or a mixture of the following two arguments.

-1-
1) Intentionally killing another human being is
wrong.
2) Unborn babys are human beings
3) Therefore abortion is wrong.

or

-2-
1) Conception is a natural consequence of sex
2) Abortion disconnects the consequences of sex
from the act itself.
3) Disconnecting consequences from actions is a
Very Bad Thing (tm)
4) Therefore abortion is wrong.

The problem with -1- is that reductio absurdum arguments easily show that equating a potential condition with an actual condition leads to all sorts of patently absurd conclusions in other lines of argument. The whole acorn/oak line of argument demonstrated as much.

Somehow, many pro-lifers simply cannot grasp that fundamental flaw in premise 2). It also seems that the moral ambiguity presented by the progessive development of these acutal conditions of what we might all be able to collectively call "humanity" over the course of human development is completely ignored. A line is simply drawn in the sand, somewhat arbitrarialy at the moment of conception, in order to render these nuanced grays into a simple black/white problem.

Additionally, the moral dilema that results since there are really at least two moral agents in the situation (the mother and the zygote/fetus) is often ignored. That's really the root of the "what about if the mother's life is endangered" argument tries to address. I've yet to see any pro-life argument that attempts to address the resolution of this dilema with a rational argument. Either the mother's life is given priority (with no rationale) or the fetus' life is given priority (also with no rationale).

Argument -2- is fatally flawed because premise 3) isn't necesarrily true. It ignores the fact that there is a lot more to sex than simply procreation and fails to address the issue of contraception (for non-Catholic pro-lifer arguments) which also disconnects the "consequences" of sex from the act itself.

Often times this line of argument degenerates into making sure that unwanted pregnancy remains a punishment for promiscuous women. Because, afterall, promiscuous women are Bad (tm) and the root of all societial ills.

Stryder

MarcoPolo

I'd say there's a difference to helping nature and killing the process. But hey, I'm sure you'll come up with lots of 'what ifs' for that one too.

Actually, that line of argument demonstrated very little of anything.

The moment of conception is a pretty easy line to draw don't you think? I mean, I don't think anyone is arguing that it isn't where a new human life actually starts. (Or are you saying it starts somewhere else?)

The line of ambiguity is where do we draw the line for abortions to be legal/illegal. That line is drawn based on the womans value on the fetus. If the fetus is wanted, value begins at conception, if it's not wanted, value begins much later.

Same thing with conjoined twins where they can only save one if they separate. Who makes that choice? I don't have an answer to that one. I can only speak for myself with what I would do in that situation. So, if I magically turned into a pregnant woman and I might die during the birth process, and I valued the child, I'd probably take my chances and have the baby. (Again, all hypothetical since I'm not a woman nor am I pregnant. So save any 'you're not a woman' argument, please.)

I agree!

Finally someone sees the light!!! Oh wait, you were being sarcastic...

I don't think I have any huge problems with what you're saying. Ultimately it's a personal morals argument. And since we've all got our own set, this debate will go on forever.

long winded fool

Yes, we've gone over this. People have different definitions of humanity. This is wrong. You think that your definition is right, but you think that the pro-slavery definition is wrong. You think that you've finally drawn a logical line, but my point is that it is not logical to draw such a line. Humanity comes from being human. According to the dictionary, a human is a member of the family hominidae of the group "homo." Human fetuses are homo sapiens from conception. When you add qualifications to this definition, you are redefining humanity to suit your own needs. Your assumptions are the false ones because there is no basis for them. Humanity isn't scientifically determined by cognitive capacity or level of development any more than by race or gender. A life form that is of the family homonidae and of the species homo sapiens sapiens is human. Humanity is obviously the quality of being human; despite other fanciful definitions people like to imagine which are false. Therefore the fetus is human. The murder of humans is illegal except in the case of self-defense, so abortion for any reason other than life-threatening complications should be illegal. If it isn't, then the humans in power who make the laws have redefined humanity to suit their convenience. They don't have a problem with this as long as their definition is always the one that's used, but when someone who disagrees with their personal definition and decides to narrow it further to exclude anyone under the age of 3 and over the age of 80, thereby removing those humans' rights, they will have a problem. Why not use the original scientific definition that all homo sapiens are humans? The only reason not to is the desire to destroy some homo sapiens without fear of legal consequences. This is errant and dangerous thinking. No matter how much trouble they are, no innocent human can surrender its right to life to another. And the only way to have a "guilty" fetus is in the case of the fetus threatening the mother's life. No matter how it got there, if a human can be born without killing another human, it has human rights.

Abortion is unlawful, yet legal. Certainly you see that wanting by another doesn't determine human value, (a transient bum with no friends or family is still human with human rights.) Fetuses either aren't human even if the mother wants them, or they are human even if the mother doesn't. Women can declare that certain humans have no rights and others do. It is absurd to grant women this power over another human being, (or to grant them the power to declare an inhuman life-form to be human, thus eliminating the rights of the killer of that life-form.) All fetuses are human by definition and therefore have humanity and no one ought to have the right to revoke their rights while living under the constitution of the United States. The fact that some do (and not others especially) is unlawful and needs to be changed.