> and they’re hopefully more sophisticated than the usual religious tripe you’ve heard before...
He's missed the point. The boundary line between human and embryo is largely arbitrary. It could be reasonably drawn anywhere from conception through to birth, and speculative arguments could be made outside those boundaries.
It isn't 'religious tripe' for a group of people to decide to draw an arbitrary line arbitrarily. It is very good strategy though, religions rely on high birth rates to sustain themselves. The Catholic church did not get where it is today by discouraging the birth of more Catholics.
It’s strange to me that so many intellectuals talk about this position as if it’s something difficult to defend. Or the territory of religious fanatics. Personal feelings aside, most of the pro-choice arguments seem like weak equivocation, and even some of the stronger ones don’t hold up very well because they would apply to babies as much as foetuses.
Pro-choice argument has merit, but only when it's applied carefully.
When you can choose is critical, and stops reduction of abortion to euthanasia.
E.g. simple definition like "until specific phase of development" closes this problem legally, ethically and for most people, morally. Much like with clinical human death, have definition of clinical human life.
Pro-lifers then have a problem if they eat, esp. eat animals. Animals are raised and conceived therefore have a right to live according to this "tenancy" argument, but we kill them anyway.
How therefore is killing specific not-yet-humans under some conditions not justified?
(Buddhists need not apply.)
Heck, killing people is allowed in many states under certain conditions. (Warfare, insurrection, criminal justice.)
Argument ad sympathy is not a valid legal argument, therefore cannot be used to block anything legally.
In the USA for example you're perfectly allowed to make cat meat or dog meat or horse meat products, as long as they're properly labeled and pass norms.
It's a legal question not how you feel question.
Ultimately, the pro-life arguments were used to rile and rule against contraception before, esp. emergency contraception. What is the difference? What makes conception special?
If the answer is "potential to be human" then it is eugenic argument that could boil down to defining a human narrowly. What if humans become different species in the future? Are fetuses with immediately lethal flaws potential humans? (If not, abortion of fetuses with lethal flaws should be allowed.) What defines the potential to be human or being human?
Bigger problem that few pro-choice partisans fail to bring up is that you cannot easily choose to no longer have a child - foster care is quite terrible, there's a big social stigma attached to the decision.
Similar problem with mothers not carrying to term for any reason. There's a social reaction that most of the time is terrible.
I think the best pro-choice argument is something along Bill Clinton's "Safe, Legal and Rare." It's power lies in the idea that you wouldn't want people getting hurt. That you wouldn't want anyone going to jail over abortion. And that no one really likes it.
Of course the argument tends to fall apart (for me at least) on the "rare" part. Why should it be rare? Well - to make the argument you need to concede that it's wrong and at base a large number of Pro-Choice people - even those who agree on some level that there's something wrong with abortion - won't concede that.
If you truly believe abortion is wrong but is better than the alternative of bringing unwanted children into the world, then you should also support fathers having the right to opt out from supporting a child they didn't want.
This would act as a strong incentive for women to think twice before bringing a child into the world by themselves, with a father who resents them. Fatherlessness and a lack of positive male role models is a real issue in certain communities (cough black America).
Funnily enough, this argument never flies, because "the interests of the child" is the excuse for why "the interests of the mother" take precedence.
This person should have had a discussion with my former mother-in-law, she could have told him how back in Ceausescu's time she had to ride the train back to her home town (returning from Bucharest) with a piece of cotton wool between her legs, which piece of cotton wool had become all red because of the blood once she had reached her destination. All that because she had just had an illegal abortion in Bucharest, her home town was too small for that and everybody knew everybody, she could have gone to jail if word had come out.
Or I could tell this person my story from approximately 25 years ago, I was going through my parents' papers/files for whatever reason (as bored adolescents do from time to time) only to find a paper signed by the former Communist Police (I was doing all that in the '90s, after Ceausescu's fall) which was informing my mother that the official police inquiry about her having had a possible abortion was stopped. Yey! No risk of my mum going to jail! Of course that my mother had never told me about that (she still hasn't, in the meantime), I tried to put one and one together and connect that time when she was interned in the local hospital supposedly with pneumonia with maybe her having had an abortion then, I guess I'll never know for sure.
All this to say that trying to ban abortions (supposedly by criminalising it, I don't see any other way) is worse than criminal, it's inhuman. And if people like the person who wrote this blog-post would have bothered to actual ask the women themselves what they think (I mean, the women who actually had abortions in the first place) he might have learned what my ex-MIL told me and my former wife numerous times, i.e. that she constantly had nightmares about having done them.
You haven't read the article. The author clearly states they do not hold that position, and that they wanted to highlight that the other side has some valid arguments too.
7 comments
[ 2.1 ms ] story [ 29.2 ms ] threadHe's missed the point. The boundary line between human and embryo is largely arbitrary. It could be reasonably drawn anywhere from conception through to birth, and speculative arguments could be made outside those boundaries.
It isn't 'religious tripe' for a group of people to decide to draw an arbitrary line arbitrarily. It is very good strategy though, religions rely on high birth rates to sustain themselves. The Catholic church did not get where it is today by discouraging the birth of more Catholics.
When you can choose is critical, and stops reduction of abortion to euthanasia. E.g. simple definition like "until specific phase of development" closes this problem legally, ethically and for most people, morally. Much like with clinical human death, have definition of clinical human life.
Pro-lifers then have a problem if they eat, esp. eat animals. Animals are raised and conceived therefore have a right to live according to this "tenancy" argument, but we kill them anyway. How therefore is killing specific not-yet-humans under some conditions not justified? (Buddhists need not apply.) Heck, killing people is allowed in many states under certain conditions. (Warfare, insurrection, criminal justice.)
Argument ad sympathy is not a valid legal argument, therefore cannot be used to block anything legally. In the USA for example you're perfectly allowed to make cat meat or dog meat or horse meat products, as long as they're properly labeled and pass norms. It's a legal question not how you feel question.
Ultimately, the pro-life arguments were used to rile and rule against contraception before, esp. emergency contraception. What is the difference? What makes conception special?
If the answer is "potential to be human" then it is eugenic argument that could boil down to defining a human narrowly. What if humans become different species in the future? Are fetuses with immediately lethal flaws potential humans? (If not, abortion of fetuses with lethal flaws should be allowed.) What defines the potential to be human or being human?
Bigger problem that few pro-choice partisans fail to bring up is that you cannot easily choose to no longer have a child - foster care is quite terrible, there's a big social stigma attached to the decision.
Similar problem with mothers not carrying to term for any reason. There's a social reaction that most of the time is terrible.
Of course the argument tends to fall apart (for me at least) on the "rare" part. Why should it be rare? Well - to make the argument you need to concede that it's wrong and at base a large number of Pro-Choice people - even those who agree on some level that there's something wrong with abortion - won't concede that.
This would act as a strong incentive for women to think twice before bringing a child into the world by themselves, with a father who resents them. Fatherlessness and a lack of positive male role models is a real issue in certain communities (cough black America).
Funnily enough, this argument never flies, because "the interests of the child" is the excuse for why "the interests of the mother" take precedence.
Or I could tell this person my story from approximately 25 years ago, I was going through my parents' papers/files for whatever reason (as bored adolescents do from time to time) only to find a paper signed by the former Communist Police (I was doing all that in the '90s, after Ceausescu's fall) which was informing my mother that the official police inquiry about her having had a possible abortion was stopped. Yey! No risk of my mum going to jail! Of course that my mother had never told me about that (she still hasn't, in the meantime), I tried to put one and one together and connect that time when she was interned in the local hospital supposedly with pneumonia with maybe her having had an abortion then, I guess I'll never know for sure.
All this to say that trying to ban abortions (supposedly by criminalising it, I don't see any other way) is worse than criminal, it's inhuman. And if people like the person who wrote this blog-post would have bothered to actual ask the women themselves what they think (I mean, the women who actually had abortions in the first place) he might have learned what my ex-MIL told me and my former wife numerous times, i.e. that she constantly had nightmares about having done them.
It's in the title!