In religions that believe in hell based on life choices, the ultimate smart move would be all fetuses aborted. The chance of heaven is 100% that way. What chance of heaven do we get if we are actually born? Maybe 10% at most? Billions are being condemned to eternal damnation if the fetuses are allowed to be born and live a life for at most about 100 years. That seems incredibly selfish and silly and short-sighted. We are talking eternity in heaven here. 100 years on this rock is nothing compared to the risk of losing the correct eternity.
So I don’t ever understand the viewpoint of fundamentalists on abortion. It seems like a failure to believe strongly enough in their religious views. Sure maybe the abortion doctor goes to hell, but he is really a dark Jesus figure that has sent multitudes straight to heaven.
Seems like a rather strange thing to believe, given that they're essentially worshipping a being that would send an unborn person (in their belief) to suffer for eternity for the transgression of not being able to prove their worthiness of salvation (faith).
But in religions that believe in original sin and potentially heaven with life choices as well as conception being the moment of a soul's existence? Because that's the one we're actually dealing with.
Yeah, this is a good point. I still have a lot of friends from my youth that are pretty serious southern baptists/calvinists, and many of them genuinely believe that aborted babies may actually go to hell. They understand it's a strange thing to say, often admitting they could be wrong, but I suppose it's a more logically sealed version of their beliefs, even if it seems strange.
Some branches of Christianity argue about this based on baptism or lack of it along the lines of "an unbaptised soul can not go to heaven".
This raises the question, instead of performing baptism soon after birth (and therefore disregarding the child's choice, because of course it wants to be baptized) why not perform baptism immediately after conception?
Also let us remember that the description of heaven resembles the description of a Borg cube. Do we really want to send our children to become part of the Borg?
This sounds like a Stargate episode. A planet with only very old religious fundamentalists. They accept their eternity in hell but see it as a worthy sacrifice since all aborted souls go to heaven and when their species ceases to exist they know all sin will be gone. The arrival of SG-1 threatens their plan, so they try to wage war against humans in the whole galaxy.
Never underestimate the logical contortions of religions. For centuries the Catholic Church stance was, dead non-baptized, children and babies, would be denied Heaven.
If you think all fates are fixed and invariant, then some are meant to die in birth, some are meant to die before and some are meant to live. Their actions and those of their parents are fixed before they occur. Thus, no penalties are incurred or even possible.
If, however, free will exists, then the aggregate sum of good and evil will be weighed and your fate determined. Essentially all humans will live an ambiguous life and end up relying on forgiveness.
Or, it might be that this world is all there is and so behaviour that maximizes the situation of the most people is the optimum choice.
Edit: imagine how things would have been different if the ruling followed the guidelines on a different Xtian religion. Jehovah Witnesses forbid transfusions - lose the right of both abortions and transfusions going forward.
The thing that gets me about this is that evangelicals considered this whole area to be an issue for catholics, and nothing to do with them and nothing of interest.
But it was made a wedge issue, and became an artifact of the culture wars, and now here we are.
Opposition to abortion by the american evangelical protestant polity was a deliberate political choice, and it’s younger than the happy meal.
from a 1979 issue of Christianity Today on contraception and abortion — in Billy Graham’s magazine for editor Harold “the battle for the bible” Lindsell:
God does not regard the fetus as a soul, no matter how far gestation has progressed. The Law plainly exacts: “If a man kills any human life he will be put to death” (Lev. 24:17). But according to Exodus 21:22-24, the destruction of the fetus is not a capital offense. … Clearly, then, in contrast to the mother, the fetus is not reckoned as a soul.
10 years later, everyone acted like it was never said.
Inerrancy and plain meaning for me, but not for thee, indeed.
Not only "They" think it's murder, we as a society tend to think it's murder too.
Here's my argument: in most jurisdictions, a killing of a pregnant woman brings harsher sentence than a killing of non-pregnant woman. In some, it just doubles the crime (double homicide, double manslaughter, etc.) Judging from this, we as a society see at least some value in the life of a foetus.
The issue is a complicated one. We seem to believe fetuses have the right to be born. We also seem to believe that women have the right to their bodies. In the case of abortions, these two rights cannot be achieved at the same time. These are "competing" rights. And while the question of "which right shall prevail" is a classic one for the courts to decide on, people will always go with what they "believe" is right, and disregard the opposing opinion.
This is really the core of it and ultimately the decision to overturn is going to force legislators to finally codify exactly what the rules are. It’s been avoided to this point because both political sides preferred to fund raise off of the issue.
In the meantime, whilst there's debate on legislation, women will die from ectopic pregnancies and other women's health issues that require the termination of a non viable pregnancy. It's very grim.
Ectopic pregnancies and other medical emergencies are usually excluded from abortion laws. Law makers could always do something dumb though, there's lots of precedent for that.
Yes, this is one of the new “talking point” but it literally assumes that entire medical teams are going to sit on their hands all across the country and let women die.
Let me make my prediction right now that this will never happen.
It's already happened in Poland in basically the same situation (a miscarrying woman was left to die from sepsis because the doctors didn't want to risk being accused of aborting). Many doctors would prefer to not go to jail, even if it means risking a woman's life.
Do you think American doctors would be more willing to go to prison over an abortion? I don't see much difference in the two countries in that regard, if anything American doctors also have to think about their student loans and are probably going to be more religious (Poland has a big Catholic problem but in the US having a religion is basically the norm)
I am saying that no state’s attorney would ever choose prosecute such a case because no US jury would ever convict a doctor that saved a woman’s life by correcting an ectopic pregnancy. Prosecutors have discretion and would take in to account the circumstances. There is not a medical expert in the country who would testify that a ectopic pregnancy is a viable pregnancy that should be left alone to allow nature to take its course…so a conviction would be impossible.
Additionally, because the doctor and the patient are in an established doctor/patient relationship at that point, the doctor has a duty to act to provide the care that they are able to provide to save the mother. Failure to do so could make them legally liable for the mothers death.
Perhaps that is the difference between Poland and the US. Perhaps over in Poland there is not this duty to act and it is legally acceptable to let a patient die that you can save and juries and judges would accept that condition. Wouldn’t happen over here.
This happened to my wife when she was travelling in Utah, she had an ectopic pregnancy at the point where she was already in a decent amount of pain and they wouldn't give her the pill to eliminate it because they wanted to monitor more to see if it's maybe viable/not ectopic. They told her she can try a difference hospital... she flew back to CA the same day and got it taken care of there.
Today I learned that there are actually six provisions in the Code of Hammurabi for that, covering different effects to the mother and (according that system) standing of the mother!
209. If a man has struck a free woman with child, and has caused
her to miscarry, he shall pay ten shekels for her miscarriage.
210. If that woman die, his daughter shall be killed.
211. If by a blow he has caused a plebian's daughter to have a
miscarriage, he shall pay five shekels of silver.
212. If that woman has died, he shall pay one-half mina of silver.
213. If he struck a freeman's female slave and has caused her to
have a miscarriage, he shall pay two shekels of silver.
214. If that female slave has died, he shall pay one-third mina of
silver.
Also, does that mean that according to the Code of Hammurabi, a man without any daughter, can kill as many free women as he pleases without any consequence?
I don't think too many people tried that "crazy amazing loophole that the government doesn't want you to know about but can make you rich".
Looking at the rest of the code, it seems this sort of action is doomed by the adage, "an eye for an eye" - where a blind man might lost a hand instead of an eye.
Another complication - most of the recent laws against abortion place punishment on the abortion providers, not the women themselves, so they don't seem to think that the woman is culpable in ordering a murder.
I'm going to wade in on this against my better interests.
To me, the debate seems to have a paradox that can't be resolved using the logic we've inherited from the Enlightenment (mostly). Namely: People have rights to their bodies.
Yes, it's super-duper more complicated than just that, I know. But, to my brain, it seems to boil mostly down to that.
We have to define rights, people, bodies, what 'have' means, etc. Sure, yeah, I know.
But Nature, she don't care about the Enlightenment and all our attempts at reasoning. Nature cares about making babies.
We're mammals. This is how we reproduce, how all mammals do it. We raise our young inside of our bodies until a time comes that they can survive. Then (most) mammals feed our young with our bodies for a while more. Mammals take a long time to get to be totally self-sufficient. We're not fish or crickets. This is the 'tech-debt' that Nature gave us.
If we were dinosaur-people that laid eggs, we would not have these issues between rights and bodies and mammalian reproduction.
We'll see what this debate is like in the future when we have babies born from artificial wombs.
I'm not very well studied in this area, so bear with.
I'd say it would be a good idea for people with certain diseases, those with high risks of miscarriage, in high risk professions or environments, or other situations where the development of the baby would be hindered or impacted. The only environment I can think of is somewhere that is not Earth though.
In the somewhat far future, I could see it being routine. You'd all but stop miscarriages, accidents, and have a much greater window into development and how to correct things along the way. That said, you'd strip women of an incredible and deeply human/mammalian (?) experience. Also, there's no telling that it would ever actually work. I imagine something so central to species survival has a lot of things that may make artificial wombs functionally impossible.
Humour is a good mechanism of coping with harsh reality that we as individuals have very little influence over. Dramatizing the (already dramatic) situation even more helps no one.
Lots of examples in nature where mothers kill their newborns (and sometimes eat them). They do this for a variety of reasons. Nature does care about making babies, but it also gives a fair bit of leeway to moms.
If there is a period between the fetus cells being created and it being old enough to be covered by personhood, it seems obvious to me that harming the natural growth of the fetus should carry a punishment, at least on behalf of the mother who wanted to raise the child. That doesn't mean its murder.
We as a society see some value in the success of a wanted pregnancy.
Once you consider the intentions of the pregnant person, it’s easier to resolve these “competing rights”.
When you only consider a woman to be an incubator for your children (and not an actual person in their own right), yes the issue can appear murky and confusing.
> Once you consider the intentions of the pregnant person
So a homicide of a pregnant woman that has an unwanted pregnancy should be single homicide, not double homicide?
> When you only consider a woman to be an incubator for your children (and not an actual person in their own right)
Implying inferior motives for the opposing side makes it easy to dismiss their argument. But this is not about women being "an incubator for your children" — this is about fetuses being "an actual person in their own right".
"Human development begins after the union of male and female gametes or germ cells during a process known as fertilization (conception)."
"Fertilization is a sequence of events that begins with the contact of a sperm (spermatozoon) with a secondary oocyte (ovum) and ends with the fusion of their pronuclei (the haploid nuclei of the sperm and ovum) and the mingling of their chromosomes to form a new cell. This fertilized ovum, known as a zygote, is a large diploid cell that is the beginning, or primordium, of a human being."
What science thinks is that life began a little less than 4 billion years ago, as a kind of self-organizing chemical process in the early Earth's oceans, and from that point, life has never stopped. Cells are alive and give rise to other cells. There's a continuity of cellular life from the very nerve cells in your brain that allow you to interpret symbols, going back to your parent's cells, to their parent's cells, and right on back to the dawn of life on earth in one unbroken continuum.
I agree with that point of view, but I think you need to distinguish between "life" and a "human being". "Life" in general is notoriously tricky to define precisely.
It is, for example, perfectly possible to amputate someone's hand an keep it alive by feeding it some type of artificial blood; not sure if it's currently possible with the state of technology, but there is nothing stopping this in principle. I think it would be accurate to say that this hand is "alive", but is it also a human being worthy of the same protections that you or I have? I don't think many people would argue for this.
You don't need to think of exotic experiments either; we shed all sort of living biological material all the time, and no one is concerned with the rights of this.
So when does a "human being" begin? I don't have any clear answer; that question is even more difficult than trying to define "life". But I do think it's important to think of it in these terms.
The source does mention the beginning of a "human being"
"Fertilization is a sequence of events that begins with the contact of a sperm with a secondary oocyte and ends with the fusion of their pronuclei and the mingling of their chromosomes to form a new cell. This fertilized ovum, known as a zygote, is a large diploid cell that is the beginning, or primordium, of a human being."
At the risk of being overly pedantic and engaging on semantics, it does say "the beginning of a human being", rather than "human being". i.e. a piece of metal might be the beginning of a sword, but is not actually a sword.
This is a very tricky discussion because definitions and semantics are so important, and not everyone agrees on them. The main point I attempted to make in my previous post is that it would advance the debate to move away from these type of semantics, and rather engage on more fundamental – and harder – questions like "when are rights conferred to a (human) being?"
The argument is made easier by the way we consider the end of human being.
Which is why we tend to not keep former people without higher brain functions alive with technology forever/until end of natural lifespan.
Applying the same rule to beginning of human life arrives at the standard in Roe v Wade of around 12 weeks, which is to the best of our knowledge when higher brain functions can appear in a fetus, becoming potentially sentient human being.
Shouldn't we consider at least sperm to be alive? At least it can move semi-autonomously. Which to me kinda look like being alive. By at least some level of definition of life. Thus life exist before fertilization.
If movement is considered a criterion, do we consider a completely paralyzed person to be not-alive? Do we consider filter feeding animals like sponges to be not-alive? Do we consider plants to be not-alive unless they are carnivorous and capable of movement?
What I am trying to highlight is that life is very broad and it is fuzzily defined.
Both sperm (male gametes) and eggs (female gametes) are alive. Thinking one is more alive than the other due to it's ability to move may or may not reveal a bias you may or may not hold.
The same bias people who use agriculture (planting seed) as an analogy or euphemism for human reproduction may hold.
Looking through that collection of quotes, Ithink it would be more accurate to say "Science thinks development begins at fertilization." Which is true! Life is a polysemous concept - by many valid definitions the gametes are alive prior to fertilization. Whether the zygote represents an individual human life is a question that "Science" definitely does not hold a monolithic opinion on.
From 20 years working in a field proximal to developmental biology, my impression is that most individual scientists in relevant fields have a gradualist understanding of the emergence of individual life, involving key milestones such as implantation, gastrulation, neurulation, subsequent CNS development and "viability" (ability of the fetus to live independently of the mother's body).
It is murder, simple as that. The moment a sperm fertilizes an egg, a new unique genetic material is formed, which is damn near the closest thing we have to an objective standard of when a new human life is started.
Embryo is a stage of development in a human being (and many other life forms on this planet). Maybe it's not synonymous with baby, I could grant that, and allow for baby to represent a different and later stage of development (possibly after birth), but even if I grant this, I'll still say killing that embryo is akin to murder. (Calling it a baby or child regardless of being inside the womb is still fairly natural and common in everyday speech.)
There's a grave fallacy in the article where it tries to compare an acorn to an oak tree. No, the acorn is not an oak tree. No more than a baby is an adult. But where the acorn is still oak, a baby is still human. Further fallacies are made as it tries to compare (and maybe equate?) human embryos with that of pigs and cows. Yeah... no. A woman is not going to give birth to a cow. That doesn't happen.
The article doesn't really do anything to establish anything new. It's only trying to dehumanize human development before birth.
Four ethical alternatives to abortion:
* Abstinence
* Contraception
* Adoption
* Motherhood
The last of these is the most preferential, and none of them involve murdering other humans.
You don't get to play the fallacy card when you start off stating your premises is irrefutable. All you've manage to argue here is "it's murder because I say so."
Copyright infringement by definition is not theft.
And high seas piracy is an issue to be dealt with by the military, not law enforcement, especially if a letter of marque is involved. Same as pillaging by an invading army.
The article completely fails to mention that religious people tend to believe that humans have a "soul" and animals don't, which seems to me to be a massive oversight. Of course Dawkins doesn't believe in the soul, but it's hard to see how his arguments are going to move anyone who does believe.
The other problem with the argument is that, on the other side, many vegans believe that killing animals for food is wrong.
And furthermore is the soul eternal? If the soul is present at conception and then the corporeal body is aborted, is the soul re-used in another child, or does it go to eternal judgement directly? How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?
I think the main argument that Dawkins wanted to make is that many pro-choice arguments are completely missing the point and don't engage with the pro-life arguments at all, rather than try to engage with all pro-life arguments, and do a full exploration of them.
> I think the main argument that Dawkins wanted to make is that many pro-choice arguments are completely missing the point and don't engage with the pro-life arguments at all
I agree, but I think Dawkins fell prey to the exact same problem. He ignored the religion behind the pro-life movement and tried to break it down into biological terms. Is that really engaging?
The intended audience for this article is pro-choice people, not the pro-life people. It's trying to start a "strategy discussion" on how to better enact certain goals. In short, he's not trying to convince any pro-lifer of anything here, he's trying to convince pro-choice people to use better arguments.
And in general, I actually avoid the "soul argument" as well, even when engaging with pro-life people. First, I know several pro-life people who are not religious or even atheists, secondly I have no good arguments to counter a faith-based belief, and thirdly I think that for many religious pro-life people it's not even that important of an argument (for example many – though not all – pro-life advocates will allow room for nuance in cases of medical issues or rape).
He knows that as an evolutionary atheist, he has no attack against the "soul" or "man is made in the image of God" argument that would be persuasive to a believer so he avoids it.
I strongly agree with one of Dawkins’s most important points, the effectiveness of the reductio ad absurdum as a rhetorical strategy.
If you want to persuade people, then you need to meet them where they are and adopt their way of thinking. Accept their premises and worldview, and show that it leads to bizarre, false consequnces.
You think the average Glenn Beck viewer is going to sit still while you "show" this, or "show" anything, and then change their views based on what you have "shown"?
If so, you have been asleep since the Reagan Administration while this fascism has slowly taken hold.
> You think the average Glenn Beck viewer is going to sit still while you "show" this, or "show" anything, and then change their views based on what you have "shown"?
From a rationalist point of view, this observation can seem mere provocation rather than an objective assertion.
From first-hand experience, at least one “Glenn beck viewer” refused to meet rational argument even halfway.
I analyzed one of Tucker Carlson’s assertions step by step, coming to an obviously absurd conclusion. My interlocutor responded that she didn’t appreciate my using “tricks” when I talked with her.
To the irrational, rationality is a repertoire of tricks.
If you don't know, or can't prove, when personhood establishes, then there's at least some chance you are, in fact, killing a person. In my estimation the abortionist doesn't care about the possibility of killing a person because there are no consequences for it.
I don't think it's wise to say something is majority or minority view. I'm not talking about this issue specifically, but social/political issues in general.
Certain biases are amplified while other biases are kept hidden. There is the bias of the main stream media to promote a certain agenda, there is a bias in the social media algorithms that tend to promote certain view points and hide others. There is the issue where corporations pander to what they believe will get them social credits, or at least stop them from getting canceled. There is the issue where a group of people with certain viewpoints are extremely vocal compared to the opposing group.
There was/is a giant shitshow with the whole thing surrounding Elon buying Twitter. A bunch of people came out and said that social media needs to be regulated, that free speech is under attack...just from the simple fact that Elon was going to buy Twitter. This alone tells me that one side controls the allowed narrative on these platforms. It's not that free speech was under attack, it's that THEIR speech was under attack, because they hold the monopoly on controlling the narrative.
You have to toe the line, or face social excommunication.
This all gives the impression that something is a majority view, when in fact the view is just amplified to make it seem like the majority view. This is a brilliant strategy for a group that wants to push an agenda, because social proof is a powerful way to get people to agree with you. Group consensus is a powerful tool. People don't want to be in the "outcast group" they want to be with all the cool kids.
It's really a rights issue. A woman's right to body autonomy vs the right to life of a fertilized egg.
Majority rule doesn't work if 51% think slavery is okay. =(
These extremists don't want exceptions for rape and incest. And make it a felony to seek an abortion. The fucking Taliban are nodding and taking notes.
And Iowa only recently patched the loop hole that gave a rapist parental rights.
My only issue with the staunch anti-abortion stance is that there have been women who have died because the doctors couldn't decide quickly enough whether an abortion was medically necessary, or outright refused anyway. There have been politicians who have espoused the opinion that ectopic pregnancies also have a "right to life" even though it is physically impossible for them to be viable, and cannot be implanted into the uterus to the best of my knowledge. It also opens the possibility that women who have a legitimate miscarriage may be scrutinized as if they were criminals, adding to their trauma.
There is no easy answer there. I will say this - in no other situation is it even tenable to force a person to use a part of their body to keep another person alive. Even corpses have autonomy - if the person decides when they're alive that they don't want to be an organ donor, we cannot in good conscience then take their organs anyway. Should pregnant women have less autonomy than a dead body?
> It also opens the possibility that women who have a legitimate miscarriage may be scrutinized as if they were criminals, adding to their trauma.
That has literally never been a thing considered by anyone outside the pro-abortion circles.
Miscarriages are clearly not the intention of anybody. It may be ending a life, but without the intent and without any act of killing it, it definitionally cannot be murder (the deliberate and unjustified killing of another human).
What is the drug designed for and why was it taken?
There are drugs designed to cause a miscarriage and commonly called "abortion pills." That would be intentful.
But, say, a woman takes ibuprofen for a headache and it happens to have nasty side effects. That would not be intentful. (I don't know if ibuprofen can do this, but feel free to slot in nearly any other drug.)
This is my concern. With abortion being a crime, the only way to determine whether a miscarriage happened in this fashion is to intrude into the woman's personal life, unless there is other clear and obvious evidence. This is where search history and other communication will be inspected.
Yeah, I think things are going to get weird here. Where I live, South Texas, I can actually get to a more abortion friendly country more quickly than I can get to an abortion friendly state now. I can also order drugs online paid for with cryptocurrency (which I actually do already because I take a DIY approach to medicine). But I doubt the pro-lifers will be happy with this situation and that frustration is going to find an outlet.
Based on the historical behavior of the US government, I honestly don't trust that it won't happen. Every woman might not be targeted, but some will, and that is deplorable.
They were talking about being scrutinized as a criminal. You seem to be talking about being tried as a criminal under the law, which is a very different thing.
People with miscarriages are already scrutinized as potential criminals.
Some examples:
* Several pharmacies in Texas refused to fill misoprostol prescriptions because they weren't sure whethet it was being prescribed for a legal abortion or an illegal one. You may think that sounds rational, but how often does a pharmacist reduse to fill, say, oxycodone, even though it is a drug that is often used illegally. How often are people who pick up oxycodone asked about what they plan do do with it? There is seems to be a different standard being applied here.
* There is at least one pharmacy in Texas that has refused to fill misoprostol for ectopic pregnancies as a matter of policy.
* Even in states where elective abortions are still legal, just go go to any planned parenthood. The protestors outside won't ask if you're there for a completion D&C before they shout "baby killer" at you.
I am well aware that pharmacists can and do refuse to fill opioid prescriptions. The difference is that they refuse to fill opioid prescriptions based on fill patterns that are suspicious for criminal activity: If one person came in with an oxycodone prescription from Dr. A last month and Dr. B last week and from Dr. C today, that triggers some alarm bells and the pharmacist may refuse to fill the prescription. If Dr. A is writing 10x more opioid prescriptions than any other physician, that may also raise suspicion.
What a pharmacist does NOT do is refuse to fill an opioid because they think the prescriber or the patient is being dishonest about the prescribing reason even though they don't have any specific evidence to support that. What a pharmacist does NOT do is refuse to fill an opioid because in their opinion it is unethical to take opioids for any reason, even reasons that are considered medical standard of care. But that is exactly what happens with misoprostol.
Some examples:
Refusing to prescribe due to ethical beliefs:
> A Walgreens pharmacist refused to provide an Arizona woman with miscarriage medication, citing his ethical beliefs.... Several days before going to Walgreens to pick up the medicine, Arteaga’s doctor told her that there was no fetal heartbeat and she would have a miscarriage.... Walgreens said in a statement that the company had contacted Arteaga and apologized for the handling of the situation. However, the pharmacy chain noted that the pharmacist had not violated its policy with his refusal.
Side note - This is a miscarriage. What ethical beliefs apply when the fetus is already dead?
Refusing to prescribe due to not believing the patient and/or prescriber:
> A Michigan woman says a pharmacist for a regional supermarket chain denied her medication prescribed to treat her miscarriage because it was against his religious beliefs.... He could not “in good conscience fill the prescription” because he thought she wanted to use it to end her pregnancy, the letter states.... Peterson explained to Kalkman that her doctor said the fetus was not viable, but he responded “that was just [her] word," the letter says.
Refusing to prescribe with no explanation at all, even when the indication is universally uncontroversial:
> One Austin pharmacy chain sent a letter to doctors in December saying it would no longer provide methotrexate, even for ectopic pregnancies.... “I have interviewed 20 practicing OB-GYNs, and almost all of them have said they had a patient who could not get a prescription filled at a pharmacy when they had an ectopic pregnancy,” said Dr. Charles Brown, the Texas representative on the board of directors for the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.
The article notably does not use the word 'fetus' - only 'embryo' is used. That's one technique to avoid addressing the strongest pro-life arguments.
Intellectual honesty demands that we address the strongest versions of our opponent's argument, not just the one that makes us feel the most enlightened and makes 'them' look stupid.
I take the liberal position that pro choice fades into a right to life, especially around viability but the fade is still ongoing even then (takes more and more extreme circumstances to abort an embryo that is less dependent)
That said, the late-term and even post-term abortions that are happening now mean that if I am forced to choose between complete restriction and late/post, I will support whatever laws restrict late/post even if it’s overly restrictive. It is insane that these things are being conflated under the same term and that is shifting liberals such as myself farther from leftists just because the extreme position is so abhorrent.
Elon’s meme with the left running further left and then calling everyone else bigots is relevant here.
Yes I really think the no compromise, extremist positions are the minorities, but they get all the attention and mask the fact that Americans would largely agree on middle grounds, similar to European laws.
Ah Richard Dawkins... there's no such thing as a soul, but all human life has value, but not until they exit the birth canal. At some point the secular humanists are going to realize that without any metaphysical / religious justification the notions of human equality and their moral and ethical framework become completely arbitrary. The "cut flower thesis" that we're basically just running on steam as we've severed the roots and foundations of our beliefs (in the West this would be the Bible) isn't just a thought experiment, you can plainly see it in the world around you.
So those "backwards regressives" who cling to the old ways... oh, they're the only ones reproducing at replacement rates... perhaps because they don't kill their unborn, put off family until they're beyond their health fertility window, sterilize their kids with hormone treatments, or any other countless self-destructive practices promoted by the modern "intellectuals." Turns out if we judge ideologies through meme theory, where those that are symbiotic rather than parasitic to their host (aka believer), are superior... traditional religion beats out all this modern BS. By purely Darwinian metrics "God's wisdom" is better than "institutional science" (which is little more than a corrupt cult claiming to be about empiricism at this point).
So now your days are growing short Dawkins, both for you personally and for your ideology. Yes, they think it's murder because they believe in God and a soul, which makes a lot more sense than believing that "human rights" are sacred when "human life" is not.
Given that the early Ancient Greeks were not Jews or Christians, and that most medieval theology heavily rehashes Plato and Epictetus, I'm not sure why anyone would suggest the Bible, rather than classical Greek thought, is the foundation of the West's beliefs.
Furthermore, even if there are no serious defenses of moral realism without a mystical metaphysics, that doesn't entail anything. These values were around in humanity long before monotheism and its predecessors.
Do you speak Greek? Do you agree with slavery, child soldiers, an ethno-nationalist expansionist navy? What's your view on diddling little kids? Also, have you thanked Apollo for this morning's sun rise? Modern secular humanists trying to claim the Ancient Greeks for themselves? Hilarious... well, accept that the little kid diddling appears to be making a comeback, so perhaps you have me there.
Let's grant for the sake of this argument and this alone that fertilization signals the beginning of all rights.
You cannot be forced to donate a kidney to save someone else's life: they have no claim on your body. You cannot be forced to donate blood, for the same reason.
You cannot be forced into surgery. You have the right to refuse medicine. And, in general, you have the right to ingest whatever substances you want, even though the substances may be illegal to possess or sell.
Nevertheless, all of the above is useless, because the people who want to ban abortion are not, in general, sincere about saving humans life being their primary desire. Their primary desire is to have a subclass of humans who can be controlled and punished. Arguing with them about this is approximately useless; there are a few who are willing to discuss evidence and logic, but most are only displaying their allegiance to their tribe.
When in college taking 'Women in History' there were (for obvious reasons) all women, save me and two other men.
Professor asked 'Who thinks men and women should have equal rights?' Everyone raised their hands.
'Who is willing to be drafted to protect those rights?' All 3 men, a handful of women raised their hands.
The women in general didn't seem to think it was 'fair'.
Professor continued- 'What about abortion rights? Should they be equal? Parental rights?'
That set the room off. Made all of us uncomfortable, which was her point.
There are double standards all aground, and we clearly as a society haven't figured these things out.
And to be fair, it's a very difficult position for me- as a man, wanting equality for women but also being raised to be a 'gentleman', put women and children first.
I think we should celebrate our differences, and try to iron out the rest.
>There are double standards all aground, and we clearly as a society haven't figured these things out.
We (or at least most people) cannot _ever_ figure it out, is more accurate. From an evolutionary perspective the genders evolved as a division of labor of sorts. And with that came trade offs, so in the simplistic form equality cannot exist, without equality of responsibility.
>it's a very difficult position for me- as a man, wanting equality for women but also being raised to be a 'gentleman', put women and children first.
We are on the same page. Let start of by taking away the right of women and other imbeciles (which includes most men) to vote, lol.
(sarcasm of course, I believe the whole voting/democracy as is normally practiced is a charade to placate the potentially mobbing nature of the masses)
I think it's completely unremarkable that I can tell you [random HN person] that an argument is useless because people aren't interested in changing their minds, and you attempt to counter the argument.
> Nevertheless, all of the above is useless, because the people who want to ban abortion are not, in general, sincere about saving humans life being their primary desire. Their primary desire is to have a subclass of humans who can be controlled and punished. Arguing with them about this is approximately useless; there are a few who are willing to discuss evidence and logic, but most are only displaying their allegiance to their tribe.
All I did was accept your invitation to discuss evidence and logic - there is no value judgement on whether or not these rules are good - I personally don’t care what people do - but I do want people to be kind. The evidence is the selective service requirement - I’m not sure what else you asked for?
Selective service is a direct example, objective to the ultimate degree, of a government using biological sex (go check the transgender section [0]) to make laws about risk of health / life and death decisions.
Perhaps one should think who really is religious and incapable of logic and objectivity.
I think for many of them they direct themselves to the subject passionately because it is easy to advicate for an unborn person.
The unborn don't have flaws that make their lives unworthy of advocacy- unlike the unhoused, migrants, felons, etc. whose deaths at the hands of others so-called "pro-life" advocates are silent about.
Notably, I've also heard those who are fervently anti-abortion respond to the issue of women dying from abortion with almost a sense of glee- as though women who die for lack of proper safe options deserved to lose their life.
This is a silly argument that I've only seen made recently. If I invite someone onto my airplane, am I justified in rescinding consent to them being on the plane, and chucking them out at 15000 feet? Of course not. Even in the case of never having given consent in the first place (e.g. stowaway) that would still be considered murder. To me, it all boils down to when a fetus has rights as a human, and this so called "forced" use of someone's body is a red herring.
> women have less right to their body than a corpse.
I don't think it's a fair argument: someone who needs a kidney may receive it from this dead body or from another one, but a fetus cannot be magically transplanted into a different womb. Choice vs. no choice.
> Hell, even a dead body is not forced to give up a kidney if its previous inhabitant did not sign an organ donor consent form.
It may be worth discussing why this is the case.
It is certainly possible to convince of a hypothetical society where the bodies of the dead are the property of someone, be they: family, inheritors by testament, society at large, the government, etc.
Why is it that a dead body is effectively it's own owner, at least when it comes to organ donation?
> Their primary desire is to have a subclass of humans who can be controlled and punished. Arguing with them about this is approximately useless
If this is truly your belief, then you and the pro-lifer are actually closer to each other than you realize. They tend to believe their arguments are lost on you because they think your primary desire is simply to kill people you feel are undesirable and unworthy of life.
I don’t see any value in demonizing the other side like this, it just increases the chasm
Dawkins is not a stupid man, yet he does not make arguments that the embryo isn't a human life in all his erudite prose. Who will he convince?
Our early-modern ancestors, and even those only a few generations ago were more than aware that most babies did not survive. Whether miscarried, birthed still, or died in infancy. Our ancestors never imagined these things weren't deaths, and that those who cause them intentionally, wicked.
There were of course exceptions to this judgement, but there is the rub; they were exceptions.
Did people of the time you mention or of the present, consider those who caused the intentional death of their own children through rejection of vaccination to be wicked?
I would guess antivaxxers both then and now would consider those deaths to be just deaths or the will of the supernatural or maybe even that it was the children who were wicked.
It's too bad HN shut down the parent article. But you asked a good question about what early modern persons thought about early modern vaccine analogues.
Prior to the smallpox vaccine in the late 18th century, there was a smallpox inoculation. This was a risky, though effective, procedure where a doctor would take pustules from an infected person and give a small amount of the substance to an uninfected person.
Smallpox mortality was about 3/10. I don't know what the pre-vaccine strategy's mortality rate was, but it was probably marginally lower, but still a significant risk. Did it outweigh the risk of smallpox? Should parents have done this to their children? Many did, and a proportionate number of people died. Perhaps they made a good risk/reward calculus, but it was always a risk/reward profile they were analyzing, making a decision based on their situation and the best interest of them or their children.
These days iatrogenic harm from vaccines is low, but it still exists. The VAERS program tracks vaccine adverse effects. Typically vaccine adverse effects are related to tainted batches of vaccine doses. But this is a risk the system, patients, and doctors tolerate as it tends to be outweighed by the rewards.
Medicine and medical interventions today are lower risk than their historical analogues, but no medical intervention, even the occasional ibuprofen or aspirin, is without risk. These risks must be weighed by patient and doctor and ultimatley the patient provides informed consent, or rejects the treatment.
I think most important is considering the 1A. I don't think it's likely to persuade people on this topic, change their minds about what they believe in regards to the subject. But surely we can agree the 1A should be respected? Not everyone agrees life begins at conception/implantation/etc. Opening the door to one religion dominating the laws seems to lead to outlawing contraceptives (preventing implantation of a fertilized egg) on the basis of enforcing the belief that life begins at fertilization of the egg.
I don't fully understand anti-choice advocates and most of the ones I know refuse to discuss the subject, of those who do their reasoning most often comes down to their religious beliefs- and if the basis of outlawing a medical procedure is one specific religious belief, is it not a violation of the free expression of other people's beliefs to deny them the ability to make decisions because of one specific belief system?
Opinions aside, it looks like a fundamental disregard for other religions and beliefs is at play here.
I don't think most pro-choice people are anti-natalists nor would they advocate for the death of people who have been born... the main reasoning seems to be women's access to healthcare, privacy, not criminalizing the decision of people seeking a procedure based on moral judgements built on spiritual beliefs, protecting people from collateral criminalization relating to miscarriages, and preventing needless mortality in pregnancy-related issues.
Persuading religious fundamentalists that their core ideology is fundamentally flawed by reasoned argument is about as likely of persuading Richard Dawkins and other New Atheists that their core ideology - their certainty about the nature of the universe - is similarly flawed.
Let's try, however. Questions about metaphysical notions, I'm afraid, cannot be addressed by the scientific method. Let's contemplate the simulation hypothesis, the notion that we live in a perfect virtual world running on some computational substrate 'somewhere else'. As it is a perfect simulation, no scientific test can reveal it to be a simulation, correct? Hence we cannot rule out a not-so-supernatural entity having built this simulation and turned it on (we could call that the Big Bang moment if we like). This philosophical notion can be extended to any religion on the planet, any fantasy story. All we can say to be logically consistent is that no one religion is any more supportable than another, from this viewpoint.
So, have we convinced the New Atheists to recant? I doubt it.
Now, as far as the abortion issue, to be diplomatic in these affairs we must seek common ground, and ignore the grinding of teeth and shouting on all sides. We should be able to agree that if the only time a woman became pregnant was by her deliberate choice to do so with the planned intention of raising a child, and there were no negative outcomes, like severe developmental defects that risked the life of the mother, then it would simply not be an issue, would it?
That's about as far as common ground goes, however. Personally I think the religious right are grotesque hypocrites as they refuse to back rational public health policy, quality childhood education for all, social support networks for children and mothers, or environmental policies that reduce exposure to teratogenic substances. They seem like blinkered religious fanatics and the notion that such people are susceptible to rational discussion is frankly ridiculous. These are the types of people who, if they had nuclear weapons, would likely set them off to achieve their fantasy of Armageddon and the Second Coming. The religious organizations they adhere to run brainwashing and mind control programs that target children, as a means of enforcing political and social control, and they've been at it for thousands of years. That's my view anyway.
Whether you agree with Richard Dawkins or not, I think he articulates really well the root source of disagreement between people who see and portray themselves as "pro-life," on one hand, and people who see and portray themselves as "pro-choice," on the other:
The two groups disagree as to when a human life begins.
People who call themselves "pro-life" sincerely believe life begins at the moment of conception. For example, most people in this camp believe the cells at all stages of human embryonic development constitute a human life.[a] Alas, there is a large subgroup of people in this camp whose rationale for these beliefs is religious and absolutist, and therefore non-negotiable.
People who call themselves "pro-choice" have differing views as to when a human life begins. Most people in this camp think that cells at all stages of human embryonic development are just... cells, incapable of suffering because they lack a brain.[a] However, as an embryo gradually starts becoming a fetus, people in this camp often disagree with each other as to when those cells start becoming a human being. And then there's a large subgroup of people in this camp whose rationale is ideological and absolutist, and therefore non-negotiable.
IMHO the religious and ideological people on both sides are unlikely ever to come to agreement.
If you really want to convince pro-life people that you don't think ending the life of a 27 week old fetus is murder; Allow it. Legalize infanticide under (28? 30?) weeks from conception.
Killing a viable child (somewhere towards the end of the second trimester I think?) is ethically murder. Before that point, it’s a religious issue. And what happens when we can clone stem cells? Are identical twins one or two souls as they came from a single embryo/fertilized cell)?
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[ 23.0 ms ] story [ 485 ms ] threadSo I don’t ever understand the viewpoint of fundamentalists on abortion. It seems like a failure to believe strongly enough in their religious views. Sure maybe the abortion doctor goes to hell, but he is really a dark Jesus figure that has sent multitudes straight to heaven.
-Steven Weinberg
This raises the question, instead of performing baptism soon after birth (and therefore disregarding the child's choice, because of course it wants to be baptized) why not perform baptism immediately after conception?
Also let us remember that the description of heaven resembles the description of a Borg cube. Do we really want to send our children to become part of the Borg?
"Catholic Church buries limbo after centuries": https://www.reuters.com/article/us-pope-limbo-idUSL202872162...
If, however, free will exists, then the aggregate sum of good and evil will be weighed and your fate determined. Essentially all humans will live an ambiguous life and end up relying on forgiveness.
Or, it might be that this world is all there is and so behaviour that maximizes the situation of the most people is the optimum choice.
Edit: imagine how things would have been different if the ruling followed the guidelines on a different Xtian religion. Jehovah Witnesses forbid transfusions - lose the right of both abortions and transfusions going forward.
But it was made a wedge issue, and became an artifact of the culture wars, and now here we are.
from a 1979 issue of Christianity Today on contraception and abortion — in Billy Graham’s magazine for editor Harold “the battle for the bible” Lindsell:
God does not regard the fetus as a soul, no matter how far gestation has progressed. The Law plainly exacts: “If a man kills any human life he will be put to death” (Lev. 24:17). But according to Exodus 21:22-24, the destruction of the fetus is not a capital offense. … Clearly, then, in contrast to the mother, the fetus is not reckoned as a soul.
10 years later, everyone acted like it was never said.
Inerrancy and plain meaning for me, but not for thee, indeed.
Here's my argument: in most jurisdictions, a killing of a pregnant woman brings harsher sentence than a killing of non-pregnant woman. In some, it just doubles the crime (double homicide, double manslaughter, etc.) Judging from this, we as a society see at least some value in the life of a foetus.
The issue is a complicated one. We seem to believe fetuses have the right to be born. We also seem to believe that women have the right to their bodies. In the case of abortions, these two rights cannot be achieved at the same time. These are "competing" rights. And while the question of "which right shall prevail" is a classic one for the courts to decide on, people will always go with what they "believe" is right, and disregard the opposing opinion.
Long overdue.
US lawmakers continue to surprise me!
Let me make my prediction right now that this will never happen.
Additionally, because the doctor and the patient are in an established doctor/patient relationship at that point, the doctor has a duty to act to provide the care that they are able to provide to save the mother. Failure to do so could make them legally liable for the mothers death.
Perhaps that is the difference between Poland and the US. Perhaps over in Poland there is not this duty to act and it is legally acceptable to let a patient die that you can save and juries and judges would accept that condition. Wouldn’t happen over here.
Also if you beat a woman causing her to misscarry, then we look upon that quite a lot harsher than if no miscarriage occured.
In general we don't tend to value human life or rights when it is inconvenient to do so though.
An interesting note: even in the Code of Hammurabi there's a provision for that, and that's from about 4,000 years ago.
> If that woman die, his daughter shall be killed.
You damaged my property — your property will be equally damaged. Justice!
Women wouldn't be treated as equal to men for another 3,500 years or so.
Looking at the rest of the code, it seems this sort of action is doomed by the adage, "an eye for an eye" - where a blind man might lost a hand instead of an eye.
To me, the debate seems to have a paradox that can't be resolved using the logic we've inherited from the Enlightenment (mostly). Namely: People have rights to their bodies.
Yes, it's super-duper more complicated than just that, I know. But, to my brain, it seems to boil mostly down to that.
We have to define rights, people, bodies, what 'have' means, etc. Sure, yeah, I know.
But Nature, she don't care about the Enlightenment and all our attempts at reasoning. Nature cares about making babies.
We're mammals. This is how we reproduce, how all mammals do it. We raise our young inside of our bodies until a time comes that they can survive. Then (most) mammals feed our young with our bodies for a while more. Mammals take a long time to get to be totally self-sufficient. We're not fish or crickets. This is the 'tech-debt' that Nature gave us.
If we were dinosaur-people that laid eggs, we would not have these issues between rights and bodies and mammalian reproduction.
We'll see what this debate is like in the future when we have babies born from artificial wombs.
At some point, when they're fully developed to sustain animals, we'll have to move on to human experimentation there.
Care to expand on this? I am not aware of any opinion on this other than general undefined revulsion. Has anyone articulated an actual argument?
I'd say it would be a good idea for people with certain diseases, those with high risks of miscarriage, in high risk professions or environments, or other situations where the development of the baby would be hindered or impacted. The only environment I can think of is somewhere that is not Earth though.
In the somewhat far future, I could see it being routine. You'd all but stop miscarriages, accidents, and have a much greater window into development and how to correct things along the way. That said, you'd strip women of an incredible and deeply human/mammalian (?) experience. Also, there's no telling that it would ever actually work. I imagine something so central to species survival has a lot of things that may make artificial wombs functionally impossible.
I'm going to roe out then.
(I'll see myself out.)
Once you consider the intentions of the pregnant person, it’s easier to resolve these “competing rights”.
When you only consider a woman to be an incubator for your children (and not an actual person in their own right), yes the issue can appear murky and confusing.
So a homicide of a pregnant woman that has an unwanted pregnancy should be single homicide, not double homicide?
> When you only consider a woman to be an incubator for your children (and not an actual person in their own right)
Implying inferior motives for the opposing side makes it easy to dismiss their argument. But this is not about women being "an incubator for your children" — this is about fetuses being "an actual person in their own right".
https://www.princeton.edu/~prolife/articles/embryoquotes2.ht...
"Human development begins after the union of male and female gametes or germ cells during a process known as fertilization (conception)."
"Fertilization is a sequence of events that begins with the contact of a sperm (spermatozoon) with a secondary oocyte (ovum) and ends with the fusion of their pronuclei (the haploid nuclei of the sperm and ovum) and the mingling of their chromosomes to form a new cell. This fertilized ovum, known as a zygote, is a large diploid cell that is the beginning, or primordium, of a human being."
Moore, Keith L. Essentials of Human Embryology.
It is, for example, perfectly possible to amputate someone's hand an keep it alive by feeding it some type of artificial blood; not sure if it's currently possible with the state of technology, but there is nothing stopping this in principle. I think it would be accurate to say that this hand is "alive", but is it also a human being worthy of the same protections that you or I have? I don't think many people would argue for this.
You don't need to think of exotic experiments either; we shed all sort of living biological material all the time, and no one is concerned with the rights of this.
So when does a "human being" begin? I don't have any clear answer; that question is even more difficult than trying to define "life". But I do think it's important to think of it in these terms.
"Fertilization is a sequence of events that begins with the contact of a sperm with a secondary oocyte and ends with the fusion of their pronuclei and the mingling of their chromosomes to form a new cell. This fertilized ovum, known as a zygote, is a large diploid cell that is the beginning, or primordium, of a human being."
This is a very tricky discussion because definitions and semantics are so important, and not everyone agrees on them. The main point I attempted to make in my previous post is that it would advance the debate to move away from these type of semantics, and rather engage on more fundamental – and harder – questions like "when are rights conferred to a (human) being?"
Applying the same rule to beginning of human life arrives at the standard in Roe v Wade of around 12 weeks, which is to the best of our knowledge when higher brain functions can appear in a fetus, becoming potentially sentient human being.
Is there a well defined reason for this or is it actually a question of limited resources?
Would we keep people without higher brain functions alive with technology forever/until end of natural lifespan if the cost was 0? Why or why not?
A pragmatic viewpoint probably gives a quick answer but a ideological viewpoint could go eitherway.
What I am trying to highlight is that life is very broad and it is fuzzily defined.
Both sperm (male gametes) and eggs (female gametes) are alive. Thinking one is more alive than the other due to it's ability to move may or may not reveal a bias you may or may not hold.
The same bias people who use agriculture (planting seed) as an analogy or euphemism for human reproduction may hold.
From 20 years working in a field proximal to developmental biology, my impression is that most individual scientists in relevant fields have a gradualist understanding of the emergence of individual life, involving key milestones such as implantation, gastrulation, neurulation, subsequent CNS development and "viability" (ability of the fetus to live independently of the mother's body).
Human zygotes do reproduce asexuality resulting in twins.
(1) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternation_of_generations
Embryo is a stage of development in a human being (and many other life forms on this planet). Maybe it's not synonymous with baby, I could grant that, and allow for baby to represent a different and later stage of development (possibly after birth), but even if I grant this, I'll still say killing that embryo is akin to murder. (Calling it a baby or child regardless of being inside the womb is still fairly natural and common in everyday speech.)
There's a grave fallacy in the article where it tries to compare an acorn to an oak tree. No, the acorn is not an oak tree. No more than a baby is an adult. But where the acorn is still oak, a baby is still human. Further fallacies are made as it tries to compare (and maybe equate?) human embryos with that of pigs and cows. Yeah... no. A woman is not going to give birth to a cow. That doesn't happen.
The article doesn't really do anything to establish anything new. It's only trying to dehumanize human development before birth.
Four ethical alternatives to abortion:
* Abstinence
* Contraception
* Adoption
* Motherhood
The last of these is the most preferential, and none of them involve murdering other humans.
A brief look at maternal health outcomes, especially in the United States, should suffice to disabuse you of this notion.
You don't get to play the fallacy card when you start off stating your premises is irrefutable. All you've manage to argue here is "it's murder because I say so."
Human life begins at conception. Deliberately killing other humans is murder. Killing a human being in the womb is thus murder.
Either way, it's irrelevant to the topic at hand.
Copyright infringement by definition is not theft.
And high seas piracy is an issue to be dealt with by the military, not law enforcement, especially if a letter of marque is involved. Same as pillaging by an invading army.
The other problem with the argument is that, on the other side, many vegans believe that killing animals for food is wrong.
How does it work with twins from one egg? Does it split?
An egg split into twins because it had too much soulfulness for one person.
I agree, but I think Dawkins fell prey to the exact same problem. He ignored the religion behind the pro-life movement and tried to break it down into biological terms. Is that really engaging?
And in general, I actually avoid the "soul argument" as well, even when engaging with pro-life people. First, I know several pro-life people who are not religious or even atheists, secondly I have no good arguments to counter a faith-based belief, and thirdly I think that for many religious pro-life people it's not even that important of an argument (for example many – though not all – pro-life advocates will allow room for nuance in cases of medical issues or rape).
If you want to persuade people, then you need to meet them where they are and adopt their way of thinking. Accept their premises and worldview, and show that it leads to bizarre, false consequnces.
If so, you have been asleep since the Reagan Administration while this fascism has slowly taken hold.
From a rationalist point of view, this observation can seem mere provocation rather than an objective assertion.
From first-hand experience, at least one “Glenn beck viewer” refused to meet rational argument even halfway.
I analyzed one of Tucker Carlson’s assertions step by step, coming to an obviously absurd conclusion. My interlocutor responded that she didn’t appreciate my using “tricks” when I talked with her.
To the irrational, rationality is a repertoire of tricks.
How many so-called "abortionists" did you interview? How did you gather your data on what they "care" about?
Did you interview condom manufacturers, too?
But he's wrong. We're the majority. They managed to change the law, even though they are a minority. This cannot stand.
If they want to change the law, then THEY need to persuade US. That's supposed to be how it works.
Are you talking about now or in 1973?
Certain biases are amplified while other biases are kept hidden. There is the bias of the main stream media to promote a certain agenda, there is a bias in the social media algorithms that tend to promote certain view points and hide others. There is the issue where corporations pander to what they believe will get them social credits, or at least stop them from getting canceled. There is the issue where a group of people with certain viewpoints are extremely vocal compared to the opposing group.
There was/is a giant shitshow with the whole thing surrounding Elon buying Twitter. A bunch of people came out and said that social media needs to be regulated, that free speech is under attack...just from the simple fact that Elon was going to buy Twitter. This alone tells me that one side controls the allowed narrative on these platforms. It's not that free speech was under attack, it's that THEIR speech was under attack, because they hold the monopoly on controlling the narrative.
You have to toe the line, or face social excommunication.
This all gives the impression that something is a majority view, when in fact the view is just amplified to make it seem like the majority view. This is a brilliant strategy for a group that wants to push an agenda, because social proof is a powerful way to get people to agree with you. Group consensus is a powerful tool. People don't want to be in the "outcast group" they want to be with all the cool kids.
Majority rule doesn't work if 51% think slavery is okay. =(
These extremists don't want exceptions for rape and incest. And make it a felony to seek an abortion. The fucking Taliban are nodding and taking notes.
And Iowa only recently patched the loop hole that gave a rapist parental rights.
There is no easy answer there. I will say this - in no other situation is it even tenable to force a person to use a part of their body to keep another person alive. Even corpses have autonomy - if the person decides when they're alive that they don't want to be an organ donor, we cannot in good conscience then take their organs anyway. Should pregnant women have less autonomy than a dead body?
That has literally never been a thing considered by anyone outside the pro-abortion circles.
Miscarriages are clearly not the intention of anybody. It may be ending a life, but without the intent and without any act of killing it, it definitionally cannot be murder (the deliberate and unjustified killing of another human).
There are drugs designed to cause a miscarriage and commonly called "abortion pills." That would be intentful.
But, say, a woman takes ibuprofen for a headache and it happens to have nasty side effects. That would not be intentful. (I don't know if ibuprofen can do this, but feel free to slot in nearly any other drug.)
There are women in prison right now because they had miscarriages that they could not "prove" were not their fault.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-59214544
People with miscarriages are already scrutinized as potential criminals.
Some examples:
* Several pharmacies in Texas refused to fill misoprostol prescriptions because they weren't sure whethet it was being prescribed for a legal abortion or an illegal one. You may think that sounds rational, but how often does a pharmacist reduse to fill, say, oxycodone, even though it is a drug that is often used illegally. How often are people who pick up oxycodone asked about what they plan do do with it? There is seems to be a different standard being applied here.
* There is at least one pharmacy in Texas that has refused to fill misoprostol for ectopic pregnancies as a matter of policy.
* Even in states where elective abortions are still legal, just go go to any planned parenthood. The protestors outside won't ask if you're there for a completion D&C before they shout "baby killer" at you.
Walmart is proud that their pharmacists refuse to fill prescriptions: https://corporate.walmart.com/newsroom/2020/12/22/a-misguide...
> Walmart has blocked thousands of questionable doctors from having their opioid prescriptions filled by any of our pharmacists
What a pharmacist does NOT do is refuse to fill an opioid because they think the prescriber or the patient is being dishonest about the prescribing reason even though they don't have any specific evidence to support that. What a pharmacist does NOT do is refuse to fill an opioid because in their opinion it is unethical to take opioids for any reason, even reasons that are considered medical standard of care. But that is exactly what happens with misoprostol.
Some examples:
Refusing to prescribe due to ethical beliefs:
> A Walgreens pharmacist refused to provide an Arizona woman with miscarriage medication, citing his ethical beliefs.... Several days before going to Walgreens to pick up the medicine, Arteaga’s doctor told her that there was no fetal heartbeat and she would have a miscarriage.... Walgreens said in a statement that the company had contacted Arteaga and apologized for the handling of the situation. However, the pharmacy chain noted that the pharmacist had not violated its policy with his refusal.
Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/25/walgreens-pharmacist-refused...
Side note - This is a miscarriage. What ethical beliefs apply when the fetus is already dead?
Refusing to prescribe due to not believing the patient and/or prescriber:
> A Michigan woman says a pharmacist for a regional supermarket chain denied her medication prescribed to treat her miscarriage because it was against his religious beliefs.... He could not “in good conscience fill the prescription” because he thought she wanted to use it to end her pregnancy, the letter states.... Peterson explained to Kalkman that her doctor said the fetus was not viable, but he responded “that was just [her] word," the letter says.
Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/meijer-pharmacist-denie...
Refusing to prescribe with no explanation at all, even when the indication is universally uncontroversial:
> One Austin pharmacy chain sent a letter to doctors in December saying it would no longer provide methotrexate, even for ectopic pregnancies.... “I have interviewed 20 practicing OB-GYNs, and almost all of them have said they had a patient who could not get a prescription filled at a pharmacy when they had an ectopic pregnancy,” said Dr. Charles Brown, the Texas representative on the board of directors for the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.
Source: https://archive.ph/UWtgu
Intellectual honesty demands that we address the strongest versions of our opponent's argument, not just the one that makes us feel the most enlightened and makes 'them' look stupid.
That said, the late-term and even post-term abortions that are happening now mean that if I am forced to choose between complete restriction and late/post, I will support whatever laws restrict late/post even if it’s overly restrictive. It is insane that these things are being conflated under the same term and that is shifting liberals such as myself farther from leftists just because the extreme position is so abhorrent.
Elon’s meme with the left running further left and then calling everyone else bigots is relevant here.
So those "backwards regressives" who cling to the old ways... oh, they're the only ones reproducing at replacement rates... perhaps because they don't kill their unborn, put off family until they're beyond their health fertility window, sterilize their kids with hormone treatments, or any other countless self-destructive practices promoted by the modern "intellectuals." Turns out if we judge ideologies through meme theory, where those that are symbiotic rather than parasitic to their host (aka believer), are superior... traditional religion beats out all this modern BS. By purely Darwinian metrics "God's wisdom" is better than "institutional science" (which is little more than a corrupt cult claiming to be about empiricism at this point).
So now your days are growing short Dawkins, both for you personally and for your ideology. Yes, they think it's murder because they believe in God and a soul, which makes a lot more sense than believing that "human rights" are sacred when "human life" is not.
Furthermore, even if there are no serious defenses of moral realism without a mystical metaphysics, that doesn't entail anything. These values were around in humanity long before monotheism and its predecessors.
The cut flower thesis is hilariously ignorant. The flowers of empiricism have finally grown too widely for the ignorant to stamp them out.
You cannot be forced to donate a kidney to save someone else's life: they have no claim on your body. You cannot be forced to donate blood, for the same reason.
You cannot be forced into surgery. You have the right to refuse medicine. And, in general, you have the right to ingest whatever substances you want, even though the substances may be illegal to possess or sell.
Nevertheless, all of the above is useless, because the people who want to ban abortion are not, in general, sincere about saving humans life being their primary desire. Their primary desire is to have a subclass of humans who can be controlled and punished. Arguing with them about this is approximately useless; there are a few who are willing to discuss evidence and logic, but most are only displaying their allegiance to their tribe.
So this, too, is a tough rub on logic
Coincidentally, 1973, the year Roe v. Wade was decided, was the last year anyone was drafted into the military.
Professor asked 'Who thinks men and women should have equal rights?' Everyone raised their hands.
'Who is willing to be drafted to protect those rights?' All 3 men, a handful of women raised their hands.
The women in general didn't seem to think it was 'fair'.
Professor continued- 'What about abortion rights? Should they be equal? Parental rights?'
That set the room off. Made all of us uncomfortable, which was her point.
There are double standards all aground, and we clearly as a society haven't figured these things out.
And to be fair, it's a very difficult position for me- as a man, wanting equality for women but also being raised to be a 'gentleman', put women and children first.
I think we should celebrate our differences, and try to iron out the rest.
We (or at least most people) cannot _ever_ figure it out, is more accurate. From an evolutionary perspective the genders evolved as a division of labor of sorts. And with that came trade offs, so in the simplistic form equality cannot exist, without equality of responsibility.
>it's a very difficult position for me- as a man, wanting equality for women but also being raised to be a 'gentleman', put women and children first.
We are on the same page. Let start of by taking away the right of women and other imbeciles (which includes most men) to vote, lol.
(sarcasm of course, I believe the whole voting/democracy as is normally practiced is a charade to placate the potentially mobbing nature of the masses)
> Nevertheless, all of the above is useless, because the people who want to ban abortion are not, in general, sincere about saving humans life being their primary desire. Their primary desire is to have a subclass of humans who can be controlled and punished. Arguing with them about this is approximately useless; there are a few who are willing to discuss evidence and logic, but most are only displaying their allegiance to their tribe.
All I did was accept your invitation to discuss evidence and logic - there is no value judgement on whether or not these rules are good - I personally don’t care what people do - but I do want people to be kind. The evidence is the selective service requirement - I’m not sure what else you asked for?
Selective service is a direct example, objective to the ultimate degree, of a government using biological sex (go check the transgender section [0]) to make laws about risk of health / life and death decisions.
Perhaps one should think who really is religious and incapable of logic and objectivity.
[0] https://www.sss.gov/register/who-needs-to-register/
The unborn don't have flaws that make their lives unworthy of advocacy- unlike the unhoused, migrants, felons, etc. whose deaths at the hands of others so-called "pro-life" advocates are silent about.
Notably, I've also heard those who are fervently anti-abortion respond to the issue of women dying from abortion with almost a sense of glee- as though women who die for lack of proper safe options deserved to lose their life.
Hell, even a dead body is not forced to give up a kidney if its previous inhabitant did not sign an organ donor consent form.
In America, women have less right to their body than a corpse.
I don't think it's a fair argument: someone who needs a kidney may receive it from this dead body or from another one, but a fetus cannot be magically transplanted into a different womb. Choice vs. no choice.
It also completely misses the important bit: American women have less autonomy over their body than the dead. Justify that, pal.
It may be worth discussing why this is the case.
It is certainly possible to convince of a hypothetical society where the bodies of the dead are the property of someone, be they: family, inheritors by testament, society at large, the government, etc.
Why is it that a dead body is effectively it's own owner, at least when it comes to organ donation?
If this is truly your belief, then you and the pro-lifer are actually closer to each other than you realize. They tend to believe their arguments are lost on you because they think your primary desire is simply to kill people you feel are undesirable and unworthy of life.
I don’t see any value in demonizing the other side like this, it just increases the chasm
Our early-modern ancestors, and even those only a few generations ago were more than aware that most babies did not survive. Whether miscarried, birthed still, or died in infancy. Our ancestors never imagined these things weren't deaths, and that those who cause them intentionally, wicked.
There were of course exceptions to this judgement, but there is the rub; they were exceptions.
I would guess antivaxxers both then and now would consider those deaths to be just deaths or the will of the supernatural or maybe even that it was the children who were wicked.
Prior to the smallpox vaccine in the late 18th century, there was a smallpox inoculation. This was a risky, though effective, procedure where a doctor would take pustules from an infected person and give a small amount of the substance to an uninfected person.
Smallpox mortality was about 3/10. I don't know what the pre-vaccine strategy's mortality rate was, but it was probably marginally lower, but still a significant risk. Did it outweigh the risk of smallpox? Should parents have done this to their children? Many did, and a proportionate number of people died. Perhaps they made a good risk/reward calculus, but it was always a risk/reward profile they were analyzing, making a decision based on their situation and the best interest of them or their children.
These days iatrogenic harm from vaccines is low, but it still exists. The VAERS program tracks vaccine adverse effects. Typically vaccine adverse effects are related to tainted batches of vaccine doses. But this is a risk the system, patients, and doctors tolerate as it tends to be outweighed by the rewards.
Medicine and medical interventions today are lower risk than their historical analogues, but no medical intervention, even the occasional ibuprofen or aspirin, is without risk. These risks must be weighed by patient and doctor and ultimatley the patient provides informed consent, or rejects the treatment.
I don't fully understand anti-choice advocates and most of the ones I know refuse to discuss the subject, of those who do their reasoning most often comes down to their religious beliefs- and if the basis of outlawing a medical procedure is one specific religious belief, is it not a violation of the free expression of other people's beliefs to deny them the ability to make decisions because of one specific belief system?
Opinions aside, it looks like a fundamental disregard for other religions and beliefs is at play here.
I don't think most pro-choice people are anti-natalists nor would they advocate for the death of people who have been born... the main reasoning seems to be women's access to healthcare, privacy, not criminalizing the decision of people seeking a procedure based on moral judgements built on spiritual beliefs, protecting people from collateral criminalization relating to miscarriages, and preventing needless mortality in pregnancy-related issues.
(Shinto not included)
Let's try, however. Questions about metaphysical notions, I'm afraid, cannot be addressed by the scientific method. Let's contemplate the simulation hypothesis, the notion that we live in a perfect virtual world running on some computational substrate 'somewhere else'. As it is a perfect simulation, no scientific test can reveal it to be a simulation, correct? Hence we cannot rule out a not-so-supernatural entity having built this simulation and turned it on (we could call that the Big Bang moment if we like). This philosophical notion can be extended to any religion on the planet, any fantasy story. All we can say to be logically consistent is that no one religion is any more supportable than another, from this viewpoint.
So, have we convinced the New Atheists to recant? I doubt it.
Now, as far as the abortion issue, to be diplomatic in these affairs we must seek common ground, and ignore the grinding of teeth and shouting on all sides. We should be able to agree that if the only time a woman became pregnant was by her deliberate choice to do so with the planned intention of raising a child, and there were no negative outcomes, like severe developmental defects that risked the life of the mother, then it would simply not be an issue, would it?
That's about as far as common ground goes, however. Personally I think the religious right are grotesque hypocrites as they refuse to back rational public health policy, quality childhood education for all, social support networks for children and mothers, or environmental policies that reduce exposure to teratogenic substances. They seem like blinkered religious fanatics and the notion that such people are susceptible to rational discussion is frankly ridiculous. These are the types of people who, if they had nuclear weapons, would likely set them off to achieve their fantasy of Armageddon and the Second Coming. The religious organizations they adhere to run brainwashing and mind control programs that target children, as a means of enforcing political and social control, and they've been at it for thousands of years. That's my view anyway.
The two groups disagree as to when a human life begins.
People who call themselves "pro-life" sincerely believe life begins at the moment of conception. For example, most people in this camp believe the cells at all stages of human embryonic development constitute a human life.[a] Alas, there is a large subgroup of people in this camp whose rationale for these beliefs is religious and absolutist, and therefore non-negotiable.
People who call themselves "pro-choice" have differing views as to when a human life begins. Most people in this camp think that cells at all stages of human embryonic development are just... cells, incapable of suffering because they lack a brain.[a] However, as an embryo gradually starts becoming a fetus, people in this camp often disagree with each other as to when those cells start becoming a human being. And then there's a large subgroup of people in this camp whose rationale is ideological and absolutist, and therefore non-negotiable.
IMHO the religious and ideological people on both sides are unlikely ever to come to agreement.
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[a] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_embryonic_development#/m...
If a person seeks to block an abortion they must agree to adopt and raise the child until age 18.