The right has been obsessed with putting up pointless obstacles to getting an abortion: waiting periods, ultrasounds, vaginal ultrasounds, etc. Their entire purpose is to punish and increase the suffering and anxiety of women trying to get a legal and necessary procedure done, because they sure as heck have nothing to do with actually dissuading women from getting abortions.
Researchers analyzed over 15,575 visits to a large, urban abortion provider in 2011. All of the patients received an ultrasound before continuing with the abortion procedure, and all of them were given the opportunity to look at the image. Most patients chose not to look at it. Women did opt to view the ultrasound about 42 percent of the time — and among those women, about 98 percent of them went on to have an abortion anyway. Looking an the ultrasound only had an impact among the seven percent of women who reported they didn’t feel very certain about ending the pregnancy. “Such viewing does not alter decisions of the large majority of women who are certain that abortion is the right decision,” the researchers concluded.
That aligns with previous, smaller studies into this area. In 2012, after reviewing the data from two separate studies on the impact of ultrasounds, University of California researchers concluded that women’s emotional responses to seeing an ultrasound can vary, but those emotions ultimately don’t lead them to cancel their abortion appointment. Other studies have reported that 87 percent of women are “highly confident” about their decision to have an abortion, and state requirements that are intended to give them time to change their minds — like forced waiting periods, mandatory counseling sessions, and ultrasounds — don’t change their mind. Furthermore, a full 90 percent of women say their primary reaction to ending a pregnancy is “relief” and report they don’t regret their decision, suggesting that further invention wouldn’t have changed that reality.
The whole idea that ultrasounds might have a persuasive effect is built on the infantilization of women: if I show you a picture of your big-eyed placid fetus, you’ll break down in tears, fall in love with that grainy image (because you’re a woman, and that’s what you do, coo over baby pictures), and abort the abortion.
What the data actually show, though, is that women think seriously about the consequences of their decisions and make choices confidently — and that maybe significant life-changing decisions will not be lightly swayed by a jebus-lovin’ state senator telling doctors to make pregnant women stare at flickering gray images.
From the title I thought this was going to be about Gov. Christie.
Was there ever any question? This movement has never been about saving “babies”. They’re opposed to everything that might actually make a woman feel better about continuing a pregnancy (little things like decent day care, social support for women with children, mandatory maternity leave, WIC, etc).
And does anyone else have the urge to quote Nina Hagen?
And that, right there, is the sticking point for the authoritarian religious right. The idea that a mere woman can actually make a decision such as this is anathema.
I don’t really see how confidence in the decision needs to be a requirement anyway. If someone doesn’t know whether they want to have a baby, surely it’s better they don’t. Childbirth, not abortion, is the irreversibly life-changing option.
A friend of mine is a scientist, but also a Catholic. She’s said that she flat out doesn’t believe any research about birth control reducing abortion rates, etc. It must be wrong, because she knows that birth control increases the number of abortions. I imagine that she knows that women will definitely change their minds about abortion after looking at a shrimp on an ultrasound too and this study is just lies.
My hope is for a President, Congress & Supreme Court that actually starts enforcing Roe v. Wade again. It doesn’t do much good to have the right to an abortion, if any legislator & their kid brother can load it up with bullshit unrelated and medically unnecessary hurdles.
It all boils down to the religious right’s rationalization that women who go for abortions are victims in some way. The ultrasound is meant to wake the women up from the brainwashing they have been supposedly subjected to from those evil liberal satan-worshippers. Abortion is murder, they say, yet they will not hold the women responsible for their supposed crime.
I bet most women know before they’re even pregnant if they would get an abortion under [whatever circumstances]. Many of us think about this in hypothetical terms long before it becomes a real-life question.
It’s a roadblock to prevent those who aren’t as easily capable of obtaining an abortion from getting them, pure and simple.
Yes, but since teabaggers are incapable of this type of mental activity, they couldn’t possibly imagine someone else doing it. Same reason why they can so confidently conclude that climate scientists don’t understand their own profession – it’s because the teabaggers don’t understand it and they can’t imagine anyone smarter than themselves.
PZ beat me to it.
I bet most women know before they’re even pregnant if they would get an abortion under [whatever circumstances].
I’ve had a plan for what to do in case of an unwanted pregnancy since I hit puberty. I’ve kept enough money around to travel to a place where abortion was available and to pay for the abortion since I was 18 (TMI note: this is going back to before I’d had sex–but after the first time a man had aggressively propositioned me and suggested that he only “let” me say no because he was “nice”). It’s always there for a fertile woman. Even the 2 of 3 who do not have an abortion before age 45.
Even if they would accept the validity of the study, it seems strong pro-lifers would be likely to consider the ~0.8% prevention rate worth the inconvenience to 100% of women seeking abortions.
The infantilization of women. That’s exactly what I think of when the fundies talk about throwing up these kinds of roadblocks. As best I could imagine it, I put myself in a woman’s place, and it all sounded horribly insulting to my intelligence. It was like they were speaking to me as if I were a little child, not even a teenager.
I only needed to do the mental exercise once to understand the nature of the insult. I can’t imagine how degrading it is to regularly experience it.
abb3w #13 wrote:
I was going to point that out also. Religion is story telling and the religious tend to think in anecdotes. If they can weave a single salvation tale out of the program, then it will be considered in the same classification as saving only one child from drowning. And the women who looked and did not blink? They hardened their hearts at that moment and have even less excuse on the Day of Reckoning.
Artor @6
Not going to happen any time soon. Whatever the current Presidents views are he’s impotent in face of a Congress controlled by his bitterest enemies. The current Supreme court is owned by the Catholic Church.
It’s punitive harassment via medical gatekeeping, straight up.
This wastes time and money from our healthcare industry, not to mention the time and money of the women involved.
More importantly, I have no idea when the government got the right to mandate a medical procedure. What the hell kind of precedent is that? That seems like a violation of 4th Amendment in of itself, without the need for Roe vs. Wade.
If a “girl” (woman < 60) gets pregnant, she just, on a whim, pick an abortion as an easy way out, and not pay the consequences of fooling around with that nice boy, and not rope him into paternity. If only she were “educated” that the growth in her tummy was a BABY, she will change her mind and take responsibility for her sinful actions. All he need to do is show her pictures of the baby inside her and she will breakdown and yield to our goodwill. We’re just trying to prevent her from committing the sin of killing her baby. Showing pictures is not a roadblock, we’re not forbidding the abortion, just letting her make a fully informed decision. She was just ignorant (not stupid) before, we just want to enlighten her of the reality behind her initial decision that was all just fantasy and whim before.
[pffft, blech, I can’t channel this attitude anymore] I do think that is their attitude, that women don’t think about [anything] and need education [pictures, not words]. Paternalistic indeed, women are just girls, who don’t think, just want to have fun with men. That women don’t want to take responsibility, they want to force men to pay for everything. I’m heading down the Bronze Dog path (@14), take it away Bronzey.
Frankly, I doubt it has ever been about persuasion, and instead always been about punishing women who dare to want an abortion with various inconveniences.
As an ancillary effect it puts an additional burden on abortion providers, one more thing they have to do and devote resources and time in the doing of, making it that much harder for them to continue to provide the service.
You guys just don’t get it. If they can even just save one little soul for Jebus, it’s well worth the trouble other women have to go through.
… further invention wouldn’t have changed that reality.
What if they invented an artificial uterus, or maybe a perpetual-motion machine, or a post-partum peaches-&-chocolate latté? That would change every reality!
From the title I thought this was going to be about Gov. Christie.
So did I, but it’s the same mindset at work in both issues: punish people who don’t agree with you by denying them basic public services.
Be fair; that’s only the short term plan. In the long term, they want to deny everyone basic public services.
Why don’t we just genetically alter the species so that humans laid eggs?
But, but, but aborted fetuses go straight to heaven, while babies grow up to sin, and many will go to hell! If they really believed their nonsense, the religious would be promoting abortion wherever possible.
barbarienne:
Yep. I certainly did.
Yes, the religious must “save the souls” of a blastocyst or embryo but don’t care about the “souls” of abortion Doctors they murder – and what about all those killed by the death penalty, didn’t they have souls? Yes, us Women are too stupid to make decisions about our own bodies which is why celibate men in funny costumes have to do thinking for us.
I often wish Pharyngula didn’t have the “godless liberal” things right up there and the atheism markers…I mean, don’t get me wrong, I get why – obviously, it makes perfect sense to show what your blog is about on your blog. That’s Blogging 101. I just sometimes wish I could share the posts I see with people on Facebook who aren’t in our ideological camp, without as much of a risk of dealing with real life consequences stemming from that aggravating perception that to be an atheist is to be a member of an angry, confrontational, intolerant, cybermob.
The Geek Husband What Rules and I have had exactly one pregnancy scare, and my immediate thought was, “Where the fuck do I get $400 (the going rate at the time)?” There was no, “Oh, I wonder if we can do this…” or “Will it have my eyes?”
Nope. Just an immediate, “I have to get this thing out of me, and where am I going to find the money to do it?”
Thankfully, it was just a scare, as I was a starving grad student at the time. But I still remember standing in my kitchen, clutching the edge of the counter when I realized I was over two weeks late (which had never happened before while on the pill), and the terror I felt wash over me.
Yup, I have thought long and hard about what I’d do if I ever got pregnant, and not for one second has the response been, “Maybe I should raise it.”
geekgirlsrule:
I was fortunate enough to have in-laws at the time who put up the money. The relief I felt was overwhelming.
Yes, I completely had a backup plan since puberty of what to do in case of unexpected pregnancy. Then when it did become necessary later, all I felt was overwhelming relief too. I would have done literally anything, including risking my own life, to get un-pregnant.
What good is heaven if everyone gets in? The problem with abortion is it doesn’t give all those poor little souls a chance to go to hell.
@8 barbarienne
Exactly. I’ve had such conversations with my partners in past and present relationships. I’d think most sexually active woman know what their decision would be in their current situation (and I can only go off my own experience, so that could be totally wrong). My response is always “I would support whatever decisions you would make, and only offer my opinion if asked”.
The only person I have met who changed her mind on the subject, did the exact opposite. She was a hardcore Catholic and Conservative (she was in the young Republicans club at the time). When she had an unexpected pregnancy, and realized it would be a huge hurtle for where she was in her life, she shed her Catholicism. Last I head she had turned to liberal living in SF.
Gen:
Yes, me too. The deadly problem there is that the anti-lifers are perfectly okay with women dying in the attempt to abort, just one less willful, uppity slut in the world.
So true. Pro LIFE my ass. Pro suffering, pro violation, pro death is more like it.
The deadly problem there is that the anti-lifers are perfectly okay with women dying in the attempt to abort, just one less willful, uppity slut in the world.
Well, if abortion’s murder and they’re pro-death penalty…but actually, it’s very hard to find a “pro-life” person who is ok with calling for executions or long prison sentences for women who get abortions. Most will say that the doctors who perform them should be the ones who are executed or imprisoned. I suppose this should make me feel better, but somehow it seems like just another form of denying agency and humanity: they can’t even acknowledge that women are human enough to be guilty of murder.
Dianne:
Once on a discussion board, a bunch of us pinned a “pro-lifer” down, insisting on an answer as to how much prison time would be given to a woman who aborted a pregnancy. The answer was 10 years if the woman was repentant, life with no possibility of parole if she wasn’t.
These folks may hem and haw around the question, however, if they had the power, it would be very ugly indeed.
@ Nepenthe, 5
Just curious, but how does your colleague deal with Western European countries like Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands? Countries that have no-nonsense sex-education and that have the lowest abortion rates (<10 per 1,000 women per year) in the world for countries where abortion is legal?
Do they really think that there are so many more illegal abortions even though the legally available abortions are paid back (minus a few Euro's "personal risk") by the health insurance; are strictly kept between patient and doctor; have no age-restriction (if you can get pregnant, you can decide to have an abortion) and are done in freely accessible centers (no protestors here)? Or do they think the doctors under-report them even though they depend on these reports to get paid for their work?
I’m a woman who has actually had an abortion, and I want to clarify one thing: abortion is NOT a “life-changing decision.” A life-changing decision is deciding to have a baby. You have an abortion to keep your life the way it is without changing it.
brendanelson:
Word.
they know almost instinctively that any real punishment of the women involved is a complete game changer. They have to know that there is an unacknowledged contradiction implied in there judgement of abortion as murder. They go right up to it and them begin wiggling and squirming.
The biggest problem in this debate I see is they are allowed to just avoid that part. Why are they allowed to determine how the debate is framed?
In fact why are the reactionary conservatives allowed to do the framing of the debate all the time anyway?
How is it that liberal progressive politics seem to be so passive and defensive while the conservatives portray themselves as benevolent? We know that the policies that they do advocate just foster repression and exploitation!
uncle frogy
I wouldn’t be surprised if pre-abortion ultrasounds in some cases actually make women decide to abort. For some it will be their first look at what an actual fetus looks like at 10 weeks or whatever, and they’ll see it isn’t just a baby that’s tinier than a newborn.
Timguegen:
It’s actually much more to do with what barbarienne pointed out upthread, that the majority of women already know what they will do in the case of a pregnancy. The anti-lifers think that seeing a grainy image will turn all women into what they are supposed to be, cooing, mindless uterii, when nothing could be farther from the truth.
This assumes we’re dealing with rational actors. Their purpose might be to decrease the number of abortions, even though their policies are failing utterly to do so. This is from the same people that brought us abstinence only sex ed. Critical thinking and science are obviously not their strong suits, and this is especially true when the evidence contradicts their strongly held beliefs.
5. Nepenthe
No, she isn’t.
EnlightenmentLiberal:
No, that’s not their purpose, you libertarian twit. It’s very easy to reduce the number of abortions: provide education, contraception, and a social safety net. Ta da! This is not what is happening. Anti-lifers are not concerned with potential babies, they are ferociously against women having easy, inexpensive access to contraception, they support the religious right to denial on the part of pharmacists, corporations, and medical personnel. They are successfully closing down on clinic after another, and setting up fake clinics. They *love* and push abstinence only “education”, because they don’t want all those young women to have the slightest idea they are full human beings with the right to bodily autonomy.
It’s about punishing women, full stop. They aren’t idiots, you know, (unlike you) and are happily encroaching on Roe in every way possible.
Blondin @#1
Yes, you can almost see the Democrat campaign videos now: lines of bumper-to-bumper traffic in Ft. Lee. Voice over about Republican road blocks…for political reasons. Works for the campaign against Christie. Also works for the upcoming congressional elections.
Blondin and Robro, oh, by all means, let’s chat about Christie, because really, who cares about women having their rights stripped, and continual legal mandates to remove our autonomy?
Another one might be Christie’s “I am not a bully” line…juxtaposed with Nixon’s “I am not a crook.” Might work with us older voters.
Caine — I’m sorry. I very much care about that. Didn’t mean to hijack the discussion.
Once on a discussion board, a bunch of us pinned a “pro-lifer” down, insisting on an answer as to how much prison time would be given to a woman who aborted a pregnancy. The answer was 10 years if the woman was repentant, life with no possibility of parole if she wasn’t.
There’s not much else they can say if you manage to really pin them down to it: If they don’t say 10 years to life, they acknowledge that they don’t really believe it’s murder.
If I lived in a country or state that had such a law and I was pregnant I’d have an abortion. Whether I’d otherwise want a baby or not. Because the risk of having a girl and forcing her to face that kind of crap would simply be too high to make reproduction worth it.
When I got fixed several years back just before Bush got elected to a second term, and I told my gyn that one of the reasons was, I couldn’t face the threat of getting pregnant in a country where Abortion rights were being steadily eroded, and that facing pregnancy with no recourse to safe abortion was about the most terrifying thing I could think of, she agreed with me.
The fact that this shit is still going on just depresses the hell out of me.
Dianne:
Yeah. It’s all too easy to imagine the absolute horror of living as a woman in such a case. The death toll would be very, very high.
Caine, while I agree with your assessment of enlightenmentliberal, and while your point in #47 is excellent, “…you libertarian twit…”strikes me as dragging in stuff from other threads. Mind you, I have no idea how the boundary between that and accepting that this is a rude blog is determined.
<blockquote cite="I bet most women know before they’re even pregnant if they would get an abortion under [whatever circumstances]. Many of us think about this in hypothetical terms long before it becomes a real-life question."
I certainly always have. For most of my adult life the answer was “keep the pregnancy, raise the baby” even though it would have been financially difficult. It changed to “have an abortion as quickly as humanly possible” three hours after I gave birth to my last child. Ever since then I keep very close track of the facilities nearest me, what conditions are like there*, what the cost is, etc., etc.. It is vaguely possible that someone could have talked me into an abortion at an earlier time. There is no way on Earth anyone could talk me out of one if I got pregnant now.
But I’m just a silly woman. I don’t know what I want, or what’s going on with my body, despite having grown two human beings in there. And abortion is horrible, and causes way more damage to the body than pregnancy and childbirth – never mind the scars and the pains and the permanent metabolic damage – look! Over there! Breast cancer connections!!!!!
*The clinic nearest me has been rated a few times as having the worst gauntlet of harassment in the US.
Bleh – borked the HTML. Sorry.
FossilFishy @ 55, you’re right. That was wrong of me and I should not have done it. My apologies.
geekgirlsrule @53
Is it tone trolling to say, “…got fixed…” is a little off-putting? Fixed implies there was something wrong with you in the first place. Seems to me you made a very rational decision based on your personal desires and the dog-awful circumstances of the society in which you live.
OTOH, I too got fixed some years back. The difference is that there was something wrong: I’m a man.
Cheers!
Sorry! Should have added, that my opinion isn’t worth the electrons it’s written with to anybody but me.
@Alex the Pretty Good, 39
I can only imagine she’d say that the studies were obviously biased and she can’t believe any studies done by biased organizations (ie non-Catholic ones). I’m too much a reserved person in real life to say what I was thinking, which was “What the fuck is wrong with you? Do you do the same thing with your field? Sorry, I don’t believe that this alloy has these properties and no I’m not going to look at your data you baby-killer?” So I can’t say for sure.
@Sili
True. Engineer. My mistake.
eoraptor:
No, however, I think you’re wrong here. It’s fixed as in sterilised, the same way it’s used when you might say “got the cat fixed yesterday.” I was looking to get fixed when I was 17.
“Sir… could I see your drivers license, registration, insurance card and condoms?”
“uhhh condoms?”
“Are you married?”
“Uhhh… no….”
“Sir are you aware that as an owner of a penis, in this state you are required to be within five feet of a condom unless you are legally married?”
“But I’m just driving through to the next state.”
“Sir that is unacceptable, that un-restricted penis could cause a pregnancy.”
“Uhhh…”
“I’m afraid we are going to have restrict your genitals during your visit with us.”
* Pulls out a lockable male chastity belt*
“You’ll have to return this to a State Trooper before crossing the State line. There will be a small handling and refurbishment fee.”
My husband and I were both undergrads, living on scholarships and his GI Bill benefits, when I accidentally (we used contraception without exception) and unexpectedly became pregnant. We already had a baby–despite our circumstances and the also accidental nature of her conception, we very much wanted to have her–so two kids, close together and while we were both in school, was untenable. My parents came through with the money we needed. (My dad even gave money to my sister’s best friend to go to Wisconsin, where abortion was legal before it was in Michigan). I have never, ever regretted it. I know several women who have told me about their abortions, and not one regretted it or had a lot of emotions about it. I know there are women who do have regrets and feel sad or guilty, but you know what? Sometimes we do make choices in life that we regret. That’s life. And @brendanelson40, so right! An abortion is not life-changing, but keeps your life as it is. By the way, we went on to have a second child when we were ready and could afford it.
Two IUD failures, two abortions (free of charge), felt nothing but HUGE relief and joy at getting my body and life back, and I have never had a moment of regret.
Actually, yes, one regret – I regret that I didn’t tear a strip off the nurse who assumed, without checking or asking me, that I had had unprotected sex, and was extremely judgemental about it at a time when I was too stunned and upset to have my wits about me. I surely do regret not taking that person to task VERY LOUDLY. Years later, I have two wanted kids now in/about to start uni – who would never have existed if I’d been forced to have kids earlier, when I didn’t want any.
And all those years you bet I made damn sure I knew where I could go for an abortion if necessary. And I make sure my kids know I’d support them if they needed one.
No One #63, sounds like a very good idea to me … :-D
@Caine, Fleur du mal
How did you come to the conclusion that they are not “idiots”? Personal experience and anecdotal evidence? If you saw some surveys with good analyses that support your conclusions, I would be curious. I don’t doubt that the motivations you purport have some part of their decision making process. However, I think it’s not accurate to dismiss the motivation “they want to lower the amount of unplanned pregnancies” out of hand.
I think that ascribing your personal beliefs of evidence and science to others who openly discount evidence and science is not particularly rational. Religious people like the people we’re talking about are those who let their own kids die horribly rather than give them basic medicine, such as for Christian scientists and various faith healers. They’re not the most scientifically minded bunch. I don’t think that it’s quite as obvious as you make it out to be. Although of course I fully agree with you about the results of their policies.
PS: This is going to derail the thread, but I’d rather not let that bit of false, malicious slander stand. Hopefully this can be the end of it, and no thread-derail.
I am not a libertarian. A libertarian generally says that it is wrong to compel people by force to act for the benefit of others. I think that position is selfish, evil, and unjustifiable. I generally hold libertarianism in contempt. Protip: the writers of the European Enlightenment were not modern-day libertarians. For example, JS Mill did not expound libertarianism in “On Liberty”. He very clearly said the opposite. I can provide citations if needed. This is true of most of the thinkers, including even Adam Smith, who was for progressive taxation.
What I am is someone who is dead-set opposed to the evils that result from people who think that human values and morality is relative to the cultural, and that there never ever is a situation where we can say that some other culture is doing badly. This pacifism and/or moral nihilism is an even greater evil than libertarianism. At least libertarianism is compatible with giving a damn about your fellow human beings and (personally) working towards bettering their lives.
eoraptor:
I can understand why it might be off-putting but I like that term for sterilisation. You “fix” a problem, and in a free and rational society the individual should be allowed to decide that fertility is indeed a problem.
If we want to keep abortion safe and legal, we need to redesign the procedure to require the firing of a firearm, ideally by patient. I’m not a doctor, so I can’t quite work this out. Perhaps a few shots fired into the D&C fluid container, suitably buffered by bullet catching padding would do the trick. I wish I were joking here, but I’m completely serious. If girls were taught how to use an “abortion gun” along with tampons, they’d have the right wing gun nuts at their back when they locked and loaded and got ready to deal with an unwanted pregnancy. Even better, the caring medical profession has to make sure everyone understands that firing the gun is critical to the procedure. That way, any politician who tried to restrict abortion would have people with loaded “abortion guns” threatening to deal with him or her, and since this is pro-gun political action, threats with firearms would be considered good old American political protest, not terrorism or the like.
What about the moral implication of getting an abortion? Is is good or bad?
Danny C
There aren’t any. Any other stupid questions?
Well I am new to this, how do I directly reply firstly?
I think you are gravely mistaken, the act of abortion must be taken into various accounts.
1. Moral responsibility.
2. Autonomy of all beings.
3. Societal welfare.
So these very general aspects need to be addressed firstly, now if no obivous moral objection is given, then we say that the arguments X, Y and X are inadequate. A dialogue needs to be mature, dismissing a genuine question as PZ Myers has written ‘is never stupid’. So again I look to mature people for mature responses.
This blog turns off nested comments. In your post contents, just include the name or post number of the post or person you’re addressing.
I much prefer this format. In this format, I don’t have to run around the whole thread to see new posts, and with nested comments it’s quite difficult to determine the post order which can make reconstructing and following conversations hard.
EnlightenmentLiberal
Like that?
Like how exactly do I quote you? Thanks for the patience, I am 20 years old and suck at social medias.
Whose morality? Yours or the woman’s? Yours doesn’t count.
The woman is the only autonomous person in the decision. Next inane question.
Irrelevant. Society has no demands on an individual medical decision. Still irrelvant
<blockquote>material to be quoted</blockquote> gives:
Danny C
<blockquote> text </blockquote>
makes
What about it?
Is exactly why there is no moral question. Women are autonomous beings, what they choose to do with their bodies is their own concern. The end.
Is enhanced when all pregnancies and all babies are wanted ones, yes. Did you have a point somewhere?
Well firstly, thank you for helping me. Secondly, my morality does count, if I take an objective view on the relationship of certain events then I can rationally critic the actions beings take on said events. So if my morality does not count, then who’se morality does? Yours, well I state yours does not count. See how this becomes redundant?
So let us move on, yes the morality of the objective action of aborting a fetus.
So let us look at the autonomy of ‘beings’. By definition and biological knowledge a fetus can be considered part of the Homo Sapien species. A human fetus therefore is a fetus belonging to the species homo sapien, otherwise what could a fetus in a women be? A non-conformist specieless being? If that is true then we really must be wowed by the fact all female humans who are pregnant hold in them non-conformist fetus’ which throuhg incredible probabilities all become ‘humans’ later on. The probability lowers when we count in factors like all other mammals which contain the ability to hold fetus’. So we see this logical fails very soon, and does not get very far. So the conclusion a fetus is a human being, by defualt of just being born, it is innocent of crime. Unless of course you believe in original sin, I don’t but then you could say it is ‘guilty’.
Well for me general societal needs are important, if widespread actions seriously harm overall societial law and order in the sense more innocent persons will be seriously harmed than helped, then the act should not be allowed, not in that society anyway.
@Danny C
Abortion is an ethical good. It prevents a human being from being born without causing suffering to any beings. There are already too many human beings and additional human beings are damaging to the environment and often to each other. It prevents a sapient being from coming into existence, therefore preventing all the suffering that must come along with sapience. It may prevent a sentient being from coming into existence who will have virtually no experience but suffering; these are abortions of severely malformed fetuses or those who will have genetic diseases like Tay-Sachs.
@Danny C
I’m sure the others won’t give you a remedial on the arguments and instead just call you stupid, but I will give that remedial, because I’m masochist like that.
We care about the happiness, safety, material wealth, freedom, and well-being of conscious creatures, and especially humans, along with the other values of humanism. If you think something other than human happiness, well-being, etc., matter, then we have a basic difference over our starting values, and we should start there.
Most people here do not accept as true that there are souls. I would personally go so far as to say that we have good evidence against souls. So, when I look at a woman who has an abortion on an early term embryo, I see just one mind. The early term fetus has no brain, and thus it has no mind, and thus I don’t care about it. As I said above, I care about the well-being of conscious creatures, and this creature does not have a mind, and so I do not care about it. I care about it as much as I do for a dead human body. After clinical death, some cells of the human body still live on, but because the brain is no longer working, I can be assured that there is no mind, and thus it does not matter to me what happens to the “dead” human body.
That should settle the problem for at least the first trimester. Maybe second trimester. It depends on what the science says about the formation of the brain.
For abortions after that, we need to adopt different reasoning. The basic reasoning is that not allowing a woman to have an abortion is morally equivalent to walking up to a random stranger on the street and demanding a kidney donation because another citizen of society will die without that kidney transplant. The kidney example violates our intuitive sense of fairness and right and wrong. Generally it is held that we have rights to bodily integrity, even if another person dies because of our refusal to share our body or donate parts of our body.
Of course, there are counters, and counters to those counters, but that is the basic position AFAIK.
I encourage you to look up identical twins and human chimeras, and the spontaneous natural abortion rate. Identical twins and human chimeras convincingly show that human souls – even if they exist – do not enter the body at conception. The huge rate of spontaneous natural abortions should make you question your god’s design – a huge natural “genocide” is happening right now and all according to your god’s design.
You do realize that fetuses, by definition, have not been born, right? Columbia University has a handy glossary that you may want to check out if you did not already know that. It would probably be helpful to know some of the basic terminology regarding pregnancy and female reproduction before you continue to make an ass of yourself.
Danny C:
There isn’t any. Whatever equivocation you do does not matter, because what you will be doing in the end is saying that a blastocyst is more important than a woman. Now, if you’d like to know the morality of people doing that, easy peasy – it’s fucking evil.
The only thing one can say with a fetus is that is has the potential to be an infant. That’s it. Nothing more.
I’m a woman. I’ve had an abortion. What takes place in my body is my business, full stop. You have no business sticking your nose in, nor does anyone else. I’ll save you a bit of pontificating here: in the case of a relationship, it’s still the woman’s business, and it’s definitely her decision, full stop. It’s also up to the woman to decide whether or not to inform her partner or the person who was involved with the pregnancy taking place, and it’s her decision as to how much their wishes and thoughts weigh into things. It’s the person who is pregnant who will be responsible. It’s the person who is pregnant who will have their life irrevocably changed. Relationships may or may not last, being someone’s parent remains.
The moment you equivocate over a woman having autonomy, you have baldly stated that you think that women are not full human beings with full rights to autonomy.
Well, firstly thank you, secondly I tend to play devil’s advocate. I am pro-choice but I really like testing the arguments of my side. There is no serious harm in that, I’ll elaborate my view if you like, but let us look in detail at yours.
So firstly are human in anyway more morally important than an animal in terms of suffering?
As I said above, I care about the well-being of conscious creatures, and this creature does not have a mind, and so I do not care about it. I care about it as much as I do for a dead human body. After clinical death, some cells of the human body still live on, but because the brain is no longer working, I can be assured that there is no mind, and thus it does not matter to me what happens to the “dead” human body.
That is fine, I do not accept that proposition either.
That should settle the problem for at least the first trimester. Maybe second trimester. It depends on what the science says about the formation of the brain.
Alright, so we have a progressive criterion of ‘physical brain development’. I ask you more importantly the question above, also is importance of the human based on brain size reductionist?
This would be true, if we establish the rights of a fetus, many agree that human rights apply to humans, therefore is a fetus is a human is has a right. I do not agree with that but do you? And why?
You do not need to mention God or souls, you are talking to the wrong person if that is the kind of argument you want.
Yes, I meant by conception of the sperm and egg, the being is human i.e. a mammal which belongs to the species Homo Sapien. Apart from that aspect, everything else should follow logically.
Oh FFS, NO. A fetus is a potential human being. An abortion is the termination of a pregnancy, there is no godsdamned birth involved anywhere, nor is there a human being (infant) involved anywhere. This is not about crime either, as a woman has the right to terminate a pregnancy.
Danny C:
You flatter yourself. Don’t. You haven’t demonstrated any logic whatsoever. A sperm and ovum meeting results in a fertilized ovum. A fertilized ovum is not a human being.
Yes, I have corrected that point, no potential is false, an egg and sperm have the possible potential of being a human being by combination of both. A fetus requires no new biological entity to be human, it now needs as all mammals need, protection and food. So yes abortion is the termination of pregnancy, it is also the termination of a human, going through a first stage development. So when we look at a child, it is in a developmental stage of growth, at no stage is it ‘non-human’. Refer to my earlier argument, it seems many people are nit-picking my typo instead of my overall argument.
Refer to my probability argument and response for adequate retorts.
No this is simply false, I want you to quote where I wrote a woman is not a human being, whatever ‘full’ means. Please quote where I wrote a woman is not a full human being, otherwise retract that statement.
@Danny C
There is a “preview” button. I suggest you make use of it. I am able to follow that despite the quote errors.
Are humans more important than other animals? Maybe. That’s an interesting side discussion, which is largely irrelevant to this one. My short answer is: To some degree, yes, because of the different experiences and possibilities. Ants don’t have much of a mind, if any, and I value the well-being of human minds more than any ant mind.
What about brain damaged people? Again a tricky subject, and again something that doesn’t really relate to this subject. Clearly people who are clinically brain dead but whose bodies are kept functioning on life support should not be given equal consideration, or IMHO any consideration. But to assign different rights to people of different capabilities, whether by brain damage, accidents of birth and genetics, and so on, violate my value of fairness, and I’m probably against that.
As for a brain in a jar? Of course it would have the same rights and considerations. Perhaps we’re all brains in jars in The Matrix. Doesn’t change how I value my well-being and your well-being.
Come again? I don’t understand. Please try to rephrase.
The kidney analogy argument is what we call a hypothetical argument. The form of it is “granting for the purpose of argument that the fetus has legal rights”. I did not mean to imply that fetuses should be given equal consideration, although what I’ve said thus far is consistent with that approach. I don’t need to go there to answer the questions at hand, and I’d rather stay out of that one right now.
Also, sorry. I take it as granted that people can only be against abortion because of religious reasons.
Also:
I reject to this phrasing. It’s begging the question that the fetus has a mind and has moral value and consideration. “Innocent” is something we do not apply to dead people. You wouldn’t say that a dead person is innocent of stuff after its death any more than you would say that a rock is innocent of all crimes. To say that a fetus is innocent is implicitly assuming moral worth and a mind, which is a huge part of the contention, which makes it begging the question. This is just like when a creationist asks “who created the universe?” because the phrasing implies with the word “who” that there is such a creature.
@EnlightenmentLiberal 90
Well, you’re right, if by “religious” you also mean supernatural beliefs like the some of the ideas expressed in 78, which I like to call “DNA magic”. In these arguments, human DNA takes the place of a soul, but serves the same purpose.
@Danny C 87
Yes, that’s true. And a tadpole is a frog. Tell me why anyone should give a damn. Please don’t say anything about DNA or species; there’s already a dent in this desk.
Well, if a criterion of rights is based on the brain does it follow anyone who does not have a brain or functionality is therefore taken of their right to life? Okay so we have a standard of ethical treatment beyond the criterion of the size or functionality of the brain, I associate functionality with you, as a token of what I think you are trying to say, I doubt you will argue against that point. There we have a problem, levels of ability for you do not notate levels of rights. Interesting.
Yes, I know a hypothetical argument, I simply say it is not valid. It is not valid for a few reasons
(a) the function of the brain is not the like the functions of the kidney
(b) You have not said it is the function of the brain that is important
(c) if your argument is just a physical brain with no functions, then a dead brain should have rights.
As you see your argument if not specified leads to very silly conclusions, but if you say ‘no! It is the functions of the brain’ then we can happily reject the kidney hypothesis, because they share different functions. Do you see where I am going with this?
Fair enough, honest error. I have questioned you on your views now, would you like to know mine or not? If so, what exactly? I am surprised, I have only been on here for what? 1 hour and already gotten into debate.
@Nepenthe
Yep yep. I don’t know why anyone would value human DNA “magic” as you put it over the well being of an actual human mind. I have rights and value by virtue of having a mind. That’s why if you cut off my hand, my head and body have rights, and my hand has zero rights, and I hope that you would reattach my hand if possible.
Yeah, I corrected it. No I never wrote a fetus had a mind, be careful. Moral worth is different. A fetus by definiton of being inside a human and containing human chromosomes from human parents becomes a human fetus, refer to my probability argument for that. A live human being exists, this human being has done nothing lawfully wrong, therefore it is innocent of crimes or actions any of which it did not make consciously, therefore a fetus is an inncoent human being. I do not agree with some conclusions, but this is rock solid. Only the moral worth is arguable, but as I have said, I am pro-choice, I have my own arguments, I am testing the waters on others.
@Danny C
Uh, yeah. We bury dead people. We declare people dead according to clinical brain death. This is a very silly question. Are you saying that we need to consider the well-being of a headless body? Or a body whose brain has very clearly stopped? What is your criteria for when it’s ok to bury a human body? What is your criteria for when it’s ok to declare someone dead?
That’s not the comparison being made. The comparison being made is that no one has the right to demand the body of someone else for life support. You cannot demand my kidney because your kidneys are failing, and a fetus cannot demand the body of the mother because the fetus would die without it. At least, that’s the argument.
No, I didn’t that is my point, people are very quick to jump down my neck on this, nowhere have I written, humans are more important because they are humans or that a fetus has moral worth. Please do not assume I believe that, I am testing the arguments I do not hold, which ‘support’ my position.
Also, I contend a fetus is an innocent human being so often because apart from you and one other, most reject that claim.
And a veliger is an innocent clam. So?
No, see the problem is you never specified your point, that is what I was picking up on firstly. So it could have been (a) just having a brain or (b) having functionality.
Now we know it is (b) like I wrote earlier I ‘granted’ this point to you because I did not get much detail. Therefore if it is functionality and functionality as you expounded on in detail leads to conclusion like ‘people being officially dead’, your analogy either over simplifies or misses the mark of the debate by comparing a kidney with a brain. I come back full circle and conclude therefore your kidney analogy has no bearing of this conversation.
That’s not the comparison being made. The comparison being made is that no one has the right to demand the body of someone else for life support. You cannot demand my kidney because your kidneys are failing, and a fetus cannot demand the body of the mother because the fetus would die without it. At least, that’s the argument.
Yes, but that argument does not work for a few very obvious reasons, the implication of the idea that a stranger announces you must give a significant part of your body to another for survival, leads to the conclusion that to allow someone to live, you give a small part of yourself to them. Secondly more importantly, I do not have a right to do whatever I want to my body. There exists reasonable and coherent laws to stop me from inflicting or harming my own body, if I deny that, I risk what I call ‘overall societal harm’ and also ‘individual harm’ by refusing to obey this rule. I know this argument, it is not that valid, not for a few more detailed reasons. So again, I do not think you have strong reasons for abortion.
I agree, I am just testing their arguments against some more obvious claims. You are right though and I agree with you, like I explained I am pro-choice, I jsut do not accept these arguments they give.
Cute. Have you read the thread? There are people here for whom abortion is not an amusing topic to dabble in on a Saturday evening. It’s an actual life-altering/life-saving medical service which is currently under siege because some people believe that fetuses/embryos are “innocent human beings” and that women are not. Consider spending your time on a different argument. Why, I heard someone say the other day that 1000 angels can dance on the head of a pin, when everyone knows it’s only a hundred.
In short, fuck off with your devil’s advocacy; Satan is plenty well represented already.
Well, this is a very silly and immature remark, I have never heard that ‘if you agree with a side of a serious debate you should never question their arguments or refine their beliefs on said topic’. To actually insist that people remain silent on topics just because they question the value of certain arguments is beyond belief the epitome of encouraging people to not dissent from populist opinions. I am certaintly shocked I would ever see something like that spouted on a serious issue like this. So let us look at two things. 1. I attempted to refute arguments I felt misrepresented the real issues and problems of abortions, in doing that I challenged arguments largely used to defend a position I hold very dear and importantly, 2. You believe that anyone who believes that they have a right to question arguments they believe are false, especially when it has to do with serious issues should be encouraged to ‘fuck off’. Well, I can say now, I hope never to hold that sort of view on very serious issues like this.
not
I do believe they are innocent human beings, fetus’ definitely. Most woman maybe, who knows.
I do not think bringing such silly talk into a serious conversation is helpful to anyone.
Danny C,
Calling forced birth and ignoring the bodily autonomy of half of humanity something to do with “moral worth” is repulsive double speak. Using my actual rights and my actual body as a hostage in your thought exercise is equally disgusting. You are not speaking from the moral high ground. You’re speaking from the position that I, my mother and my daughters are nothing more than walking wombs who belong to the state and will be used as we are told. You are comparing abortion to suicide when no human being is harmed by abortion whereas humans are definitely harmed by forced birth. They are even killed by it.
BTW, I support the right to die. Are you suggesting that terminally ill people should be forced to cling painfully to life against their will too? Is this another one of your “moral” positions?
Danny C is one of those men who don’t consider women to be anything more than an incubator for the babbez he so desperate cares about. The point that the women are more than potential life is a such a minor point that Danny C dismisses it as inconsequential. But BABBEZ!!
Danny @102
Oh, you’re shocked and think that’s silly? Well that’s different.
Fuck off.
You believe fetuses are innocent humans? Well, reality disagrees with you. You don’t get to invent facts, Danny. Take to your fainting couch and keep your erroneous beliefs away from my right to be treated as fully human.
Well I am pro-choice, how does that square with your summary?
Sorry, show me with empirical evidence where you belong in the room where the decision is made. Only the doctor and patient need be present. Your OPINION can and will be dismissed.
Al Dente,
I wonder how many kids he’s adopted? The foster system is overflowing. Group homes are full. If he cared about seeing children loved and thriving, he do something about the impoverished and orphaned children that actually exist rather than pretending that his desire to see women forced to continue pregnancies against their will has anything to do with morality or compassion.
Who gives a fuck about your OPINION. Nobody, Get over yourself. Your OPINION should be dismissed as you don’t belong in the decision.
“comparing a kidney with a brain”
Again, I never made that comparison. Please stop saying I made that comparison. I explained this in great detail. Please try to read what I wrote. Again:
However, at least you responded to this. (Yet you still say I made that comparison, which is confusing.) (Also, you had another quote fail. Use the preview button.)
You respond:
Uhh, what? Could you rephrase this please? I don’t understand what you’re saying. Yes, my hypothetical situation is where someone is experiencing kidney failure. Such a person will die unless they get a new kidney. This is a demonstrably true material factual statement. Similarly, a fetus will die if removed from the mother’s womb. This is another demonstrably true material factual statement. The argument is that in neither case should one person have the right to use the body of another person for life support because it violates our values of fairness, personal autonomy, and right to bodily integrity.
Note that this is a completely new argument. Before, you were making the argument that abortion should not be allowed because it’s bad for the fetus. This is an argument that abortion should not be allowed because it’s bad for the mother. Understand that his is moving the goalposts, or at least bringing up a new argument. So do not pretend that you have been making this argument the entire time, and allow me the opportunity to address it.
First, the idea that having an abortion hurts the mother is bullshit. It’s Christian propaganda without any basis in fact.
Second, I agree with you that you do not have the full right to your body in any and every case. I think that you can be rightly compelled to labor for the benefit of others, such as being forced to pay taxes, forced to provide testimony in court, and so on. However, I am close to absolute in saying that you have the full right to decide for yourself what is “best” for you. I think very much that you have the right to hurt yourself, and I have no right to stop you, as long as it concerns only yourself. I have the right to talk to you, try and persuade you, but not to use force against you. Your thinking is completely wrong-headed IMHO.
This kind of thinking is that you know better than someone else what is good for them. It is you saying that you are going to be their parent. Frankly, you are not my parent, and I do not need a parent. I am grown up, and I get to decide what to do with my life. Your kind of thinking is extremely patronizing and arrogant.
Furthermore, this kind of thinking is incredibly dangerous w.r.t. governmental tyranny.
For a full treatment of my beliefs on this subject, I suggest you read JS Mill’s “On Liberty”.
Danny C,
You keep using that word. I do not think you know what it means.
Again, you cannot have read my arguments to believe I believe that.
I find this very strange, I doubt you read my posts? I am pro-choice. Also, there are tons of laws that limit our uses of our own bodies, we cannot for instance severe our limbs in public, this is a personal experience and act our laws have banned, for extremely good reason. If your argument is X is a body choice of the the person, then all bodily choices are allowed, we know good reasons that is not true, so in retort, you need a new arguments.
No, I do not hold that position, you are angry and flustered and have not read my arguments, sorry but until you do, I will not respond to such general and factually incorrect remarks.
Fuck off.
I explained why I hold those positions, I recommend not quote-mining me.
Well if we take the last part as a silly insult, let us focus on the first. I do believe they are innocent human beings. How reality disagree with me? Can you reference my probability argument?
Again, (early term) fetuses are not innocent human beings. Nor are they guilty human beings. What you said is not right. It is also not even wrong. We lack the proper framework which to judge it right or wrong. Guilty and innocent are properties of humans with minds. An (early term) fetus does not have a mind, and consequently it makes no sense to talk about it being innocent or guilty. What are you are doing is implicitly inserting the claim that (early term) fetuses have minds. it’s a fallacious variant of begging the question.
You certainly hide it well.
@Jackie
I think it’s perfectly plausible that Danny is one of those high-school-debate-champion types who sees nothing oppressive, or even just plain rude, about using forced birth as a stimulating intellectual exercise. I’m sure that “are Black people inferior” and “should the Middle East be turned into a glass parking lot” are next up on the docket of civilized discussion topics.
Who gives a shit what you think egotist? I don’t. Your thinking is irrelevant to me and my family. You don’t belong at any point where medical decisions are made whatsoever. Get over yourself and your ego.
@Me
I realize I wasn’t clear enough. Let me try this.
A fetus without a mind has as much moral capability and free will as a rock. A rock cannot be held morally responsible when used to bludgeon someone, and a fetus without a mind cannot be held morally responsible for anything either. Moral responsibility is a property of minds.
We accept they are
(a) inncoent human beings.
Yes, so long as minds exist, they can title entities, a rock does not have to have a mind to be called a rock, all that is needed is minds. A very poor argument even from you.
Regardless, I refuted that above, but secondly if it was ‘innocent’ would that to you mean it should not be aborted?
Quote where I wrote fetus’ have minds.
Yeah so by that logic it is innocent of responsibility of any crime commited, therefore a rock is innocent of a crime, because the rock failed to commit the crime, by your own logic the fetus is ‘innocent’ of all crimes commited. It is not defaulted to nothing, it is innocent because no circumstance could it be guilty, therefore it cannot even be claimed to be questionable neturality. You have failed here.
@Danny C
I fail to see any inconsistency in my position, nor backpedaling. In short, I hold to more or less all of “On Liberty”. The thesis of “On Liberty” is that no one is your parent, and you get to decide what is best for you. No one else gets to decide that for you. So, you cannot be forced to action or inaction for your benefit, but you can be forced to action or inaction for the benefit of others.
Outlawing or restricting abortions of early term fetuses is a violation of this principle. Only one human mind is involved in this problem. I fail to see any noteworthy harm to others by allowing women to have abortions of early term fetuses. I see great harm to women by disallowing abortions of early term fetuses. Thus it’s a slam dunk.
For later term fetuses, outlawing abortions is morally equivalent to having a government program of forced kidney donations to save lives. I reject the goodness of the government program of forced kidney donations, and I reject the government program of forced “womb” “donations”.
I made the comparison between “kidneys” and “wombs”, not “kidneys” and “brains”. Brains determine which collections of meat deserve value and consideration, vs which don’t. After that determination is made, I then conclude that in both scenarios that the forced donation of kidneys and wombs is unjustifiable. There’s no forced brain donations going on in either scenario.
I said morality is about the well-being of conscious minds. You think it logically follows that “bigger” or “better” minds deserve more value or consideration. This does not logically follow. However, I did say that I think that human minds generally deserve more consideration than the “minds” (if any) of ants. But again, it does not follow that stupid humans or brain-damaged humans deserve less value or consideration than an average human. There is no inconsistency in my position. Now you might ask “why?”, and I can try to give some answers, but honestly this is completely irrelevant to the question of abortion.
But we are having a discussion about basic values, and thus it is an argument. Your position that you want to be my parent and tell me what to do about my own life and well-being is horrid. And precisely because it’s horrid, I reject it.
Please identify the harm which happens from abortions of early term fetuses. Please identify the harm which happens from late term abortions except to the fetus. I fail to see any.
@Danny C
In your post at 78, you are clearly referring to harm against the fetus. So, either you think that fetuses have minds, or you think that things without minds can deserve moral value and consideration. The first is materially false (for early term fetuses). The second is morally false.
Not only are you an asshole for playing devil’s advocate, you’re a fucking terrible lawyer.
EnlightenmentLiberal wrote as clearly as I think is possible that you did not write the statement “fetuses have minds” but that your argument requires that fetuses have minds, since only beings with minds can be guilty or innocent.
My cat is neither guilty or innocent, as she does not have a mind capable of making moral judgements. She can do bad things – like vomiting on my face in the middle of the night – but she is not morally culpable for them. Not even born humans are universally capable of being innocent or guilty.
Satan should choose better council, since this councillor appears to have basic reading comprehension problems.
Others, other what? You have failed to be specific now on two occasions, that is two occasions in which you have been vague to cover all possibilities, and twice where you lied about my position. So in this view others can mean human beings. You concede they are human beings now we have to look what we should do, you literally made a null point. We now deal with the concept of two humans intrenched in a conflict, the woman and the fetus. You gave no reason to assume priority over the woman.
No, you are usually wrong and are using Mill’s view so poorly I am surprised. You fail to talk about ‘others’, you make no argument why minds are important, you violate the usual right of self preservation of the body of the fetus, basically you ignore all arguments and simply hold your argument valid, as usual a failure of intelligence to actually string a coherent argument together. PZ does make interesting comments on the life of fetus’ though.
Already we note a failure of comparison, my argument against this was detailed to the point you couldn’t even give an adequate response, just back peddled your points.
Cite where you did that. Also I already refuted this, you are recycling refuted arguments as per usual.
abortion.
You never said morality is about ‘well-being of conscious beings’ you just bring in new arguments to satisify the gap left due to my refutations. No it does not logically follow bigger minds deserve more value, does your mind lessen in value to Hawkings? You already said you do not want to do that. You literally wrote I do not want to apply values to brain size etc, you have completely ruined your own position, so badly here I cannot see any salvage.
Of course it does, by your latest argument it does, by your first argument is doesn’t a total and utter contradiction of ideas. Hilarious.
Because you have thought this view up on the spot.
You take the position that life should be based on size of brain, and cited above, so fetus do not count, even though you contradicted your earlier self and then back peddled it, now you want to claim it doesn’t logically follow there, seriously though I am no confused on your position.
Please identify the harm which happens from abortions of early term fetuses. Please identify the harm which happens from late term abortions except to the fetus. I fail to see any.
I never said harm, you assumed it, you cannot quote me either because I never wrote ‘harm’. So as usual you apply false views on simply statements of mine. So I think we have exhausted all your arguments, I am confused by them, not that they are complicated but that they deny the conclusions, ignore previous attempts to state certain things, either way we are not going to progress much more on this, I think we can leave it there.
Because I thought that was a given. If you disagree here, then there is no reason to talk about anything else, because all of my positions are predicated on this basic value.
I am no longer interested in this discussion. Maybe some other time. You want a defense of this position, read the work of Sam Harris, or watch his videos.
In short, if you disagree with my thing abut minds, then I find your “morality” to be offensive and wrong. Sam Harris’s work is persuasion that you already agree with this.
No, in context, you did not detail what a mind was nor did you detail why a mind is important. If a mind is important because it is a mind, then why? No arguments
If a mind is important because of what it can do then name what it can that it so important. Appealing to a mind without saying what a mind is, is basically saying a kidney is valuable because it is a kidney, also assuming you never said what a kidney was. I picked up on inonsistancies, if you said ‘minds’ allow for X and X is important because it provides this, that and the other, then we would have meaningful conversation. Either way, we both have concluded this conversation is now over.
@Danny C
You are asking me a why question.
See:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMFPe-DwULM
In order to answer a “why” question, we must be in a framework where you allow something to be true. In order to answer “why” should you value something, we must have already agreed upon some basic values. I cannot explain why you should value the well-being of conscious creatures in terms of something else, because I do not hold that value as a consequence of other values.
Danny C:
I started this comment thinking I might try and debate with you, but after looking at the way you’ve treated EnlightenmentLiberal and others who did so I found I really couldn’t be bothered. I will say this, however, and I will state it very plainly in the hope that you will understand:
This is not a high school debate with nothing much at stake except a little pride. These issues are intensely personal to many of us, either because we have had to deal with them ourselves or we have supported someone who has. You have no right to lecture us, judge us for the decisions we’ve had to make or patronize us because you don’t understand what people are telling you. We have dealt with every single one of the “arguments” you present a thousand times and most of us do not have the patience to go through it again, especially when you admit that this little episode is simply an exercise in intellectual vanity on your part.
Holy crap, Danny C, you’re an ignorant ass.
First, there are all the tell-tales of someone who’s never studied biology at all. Our species is Homo sapiens: italicized, genus capitalized, species not capitalized, an “s” at the end of sapiens. Also, a “specieless being” would be one without any money.
So you go on babbling about biology after establishing your bona fides as a walking talking paragon of the Dunning-Krueger effect. And then you get everything wrong. How do you define a species? Do you use a morphological definition, an ecotype definition, the biological species concept? Because species concepts apply to populations, not individuals, and if you misapply them to individuals, you’ll find there are lots of adult people walking around who wouldn’t belong to our species. Also, the fetus fails on all of them.
You should be ashamed. Such ignorance.
Maude save us all from the “Devil’s Advocate”. What a waste of space and time kind of thing to do.
By definition and biological knowledge a fetus can be considered part of the Homo Sapien species.
Umm…no. Medically, a living person is defined as one who has brain activity. Brain dead = dead. A fetus has no working brain until very late in pregnancy and an embryo doesn’t even have stationary neurons so it clearly is not a living human. In addition, it is well established that the next of kin or medical power of attorney has the legal and ethical right to withdraw life support from a person whose brain activity is compromised to the extent that a fetus’ is. Few people have ethical issues with withdrawal of care from, for example, an anencephalic infant. Why should there be ethical issues about withdrawal of support before birth if there are none after birth?
You know, at the bottom of it, regardless of all the philosphical wanking done, the morality of abortion boils down to:
Is it better to let a fully sentient human being suffer (by not getting an abortion) or alowing a non-sentient potential human who is not even aware of existence or anything else, die to avoid said suffering.
Is it better to let a fully sentient human being suffer (by not getting an abortion) or alowing a non-sentient potential human who is not even aware of existence or anything else, die to avoid said suffering.
Yep. But I think it goes even further. If the point is to prevent suffering and death for fetuses, zygotes, and embryos (the majority of abortions being in the embryonic period), why concentrate on abortion? The most common reason that a conception doesn’t lead to a birth is not abortion but miscarriage/failed implantation. Are the “babies” who die “naturally” not worth trying to save? Infant mortality is way down compared with, say, 1914, partly because we, as a society, tend to think that babies dying is bad and that we want to do everything we can to avoid that. Yet “pro-lifers”, who say that they believe that an embryo is a baby, show no interest whatsoever in saving these “babies”, except maybe in trying to get “snowflake babies” implanted in unwilling women.
In short, it’s not just that the non-exist suffering of the fetus is valued over the real suffering of the woman who is pregnant, the suffering of the woman is critical to keep the interest of the “pro-life” movement. A situation where fetuses are saved and women don’t suffer interests them not at all.
Oh, good. I like that game.
So, Danny, what are your arguments against the proposition that you should be stripped of property, imprisoned and forced to work? I’m pro-liberty, I’m just testing your arguments.
(Now imagine that any time you try to discuss the details of the philosophy of liberty, some ignorant muppet asks you the same question and expect you to take it seriously. That’s what you’re doing here.)
So you go on babbling about biology after establishing your bona fides as a walking talking paragon of the Dunning-Krueger effect. And then you get everything wrong. How do you define a species? Do you use a morphological definition, an ecotype definition, the biological species concept? Because species concepts apply to populations, not individuals, and if you misapply them to individuals, you’ll find there are lots of adult people walking around who wouldn’t belong to our species. Also, the fetus fails on all of them.
You should be ashamed. Such ignorance.
My whole point was based on is there a morally dividing line between a fetus and a child. Can one give a concrete point in which the entity becomes human? So I have no heard of a morally significant dividing line between the point of conception until post-birth. Unless you are aware of
(a) A developmental phase in the womb which undeniably confirms its ‘humanness’
(b) Why is this developmental line morally significant.
For me, I am pro-choice. I wrote this three times now. An argument whether it agrees with your side or not needs to be addressed. It is not my fault that a community who attempts to satisfy an debate with poor arguments gets angry when I point out some obvious flaws in said argument. It appears to me most of the responses are simply emotional, they hold no weight not to mention they themselves are epitomising a concept of ‘dismiss dissenters’. I have been told ‘you cannot criticise our arguments because you are still pro-choice’, that is like saying you cannot criticise my blueprints of this skyscraper because you build them yourself, even if the criticisms in both examples are accurate and objective.
So for a blog that calls itself ‘FreethoughtBlogs’ it seems happy to not accept arguments or criticisms. Applying the factor that ‘abortion is a serious issue’ as some sort of refutation seems non-sensical, surely the more important the matter, the more important the objective criticisms become? I believe that we have many people to set in their views over a serious issue, which also mirrors many religious dogmatists which you deal with, surprisingly though I watched your debates and your talks. Insults seem to be your thing. I am not sure about that though, I remember you did a debate with an apologist, you didn’t really address his points but accused him of calling you ill-names. Which you have now spun around and done here. So when you said in a Q and A in Glasgow ‘If it is a genuine question, it cannot be stupid’, which I thought quite admirable, you obviously have recanted that position, and now feel genuine people with genuine criticisms are stupid simply because they failed to point out exactly the references and quotas of an argument.
So we could ask what arguments convince me of being pro-choice, but people prefer to get the pitchforks.
My point was to address weak arguments and then provide a sound base for the pro-choice, instead I got a jumble of arguments and insults thrown about, if that is the attitude of this blog, I will happily move along and not bother anyone, if not then I would like to elaborate, I will leave the response up to you.
That’s because you bear an uncanny resemblance to the aforementioned ignorant muppets who ask the same stupid questions over and over again.
Which you have not yet done, instead preferring to whine for nearly four hundred words about people not being willing to play along with your self-appointed Socratic pedagogy. If you think your arguments are so amazing, why didn’t you just present them straight up? “Hey, I’ve got this really cool pro-choice argument, what do you think?” strikes me as a reasonable way to start the conversation without this pseudo-antagonistic behaviour.
Climb down off your cross, you’re blocking my sun.
And for the record…
Abortion rights are not an interesting mental exercise. They aren’t an abstract philosophical argument. They are a matter of life and death to real human beings, some of whom post on this blog. They are rights that are under serious attack from large chunks of the ruling class of the United States and other nations. If you are unable to understand why people, many of whom could die without ready access to abortion, get passionate about the issue, then you need to work on your empathy.
Yeah, I’m just going to leave that there for you to stare at in wonder.
So Danny, are you trying to convince yourself that you are pro-choice, or us?
Birth. That’s the dividing line.
Also, it is you that are making the piss-poor arguments, arguments most of us have already heard thousands of times before, and these have already been addressed thousands of time before. It is not up to us to educate every single ignoramus who wanders in.
There isn’t one. That’s the whole point. There’s a continuum, a gradual transition from non-human single-celled organism to autonomous multicellular organism.
And you deserve every fucking insult you’ve received when you waltz in, start pontificating as a semi-authority on the biological question, and from practically your first sentence expose yourself as a scientific illiterate. “Devil’s advocate,” my ass — you’re more of an idiot’s advocate. Now stop it. DEFEND WHAT YOU ACTUALLY BELIEVE, goddamnit, instead of playing your petty rhetorical games with women’s lives.
I quoth this for the verity of the statements contained therein. Well said.
Danny, in case you don’t birth is a potential dividing line, real scientific evidence:
Irreversible changes at birth
Much better than mental wanking about irrelevancies and devaluing women.
135
Danny C
It’s called birth, dumbass, birth. Once born their life and body are not hijacking another person. Care can be transferred to those that want to and able to care for it. Not to mention all the biological differences that they undergo. There are significant differences between a fetus minutes from birth (the favorites of Pro-death camp) and a newborn.
Dumbfuck, you have not been told you can criticize us. You’ve been told you’re acting like an asshole because you are refusing to understand, and stop, this ridiculous farce. Our arguments are not poor, you’re just poor of understanding.
And fuck you for that ‘oh, you womens are just so emotional’ bullshit. I’m guessing you also tell black people to stop being so angry over racism too.
Oh, gods. This shit again? My bingo card is full, where do I collect my prize?
So you didn’t realize this was a rude blog? You didn’t fucking read anything here before jumping into the fire? How stupid are you? You should do your research. Try reading the commenting rules.
You should have also searched for other abortion threads here if you want to ‘exercise your mental muscles’ on such an issue and brought anything up in the Thunderdome, instead of turning a current thread into an all about you, you stupid ‘Devil’s Advocate’.
Honesty, you expect to take down our arguments, without even stating your own, and you couldn’t even understand a summary of The Violinist analogy? Try doing basic fucking research. This isn’t happy fun times for some of us. This is a personal issue and if you expect us to kiss your feet for coming to condescend to us poor irrational females, you can get the fuck lost.
Ugh.
Let me start by positing a trio of statements that are absolutely false. To wit:
(1) It has been conclusively proven that fetuses are self-aware and sapient.
(2) It has been conclusively proven that the process of abortion is agonizingly painful for the fetus.
(3) It has been conclusively proven that having an abortion is devastating to a woman’s health, but pregnancy and childbirth are perfectly safe.
Even if those statements were true (they aren’t), then I would still stand firmly behind the notion that a woman should be free, without anyone else tossing roadblocks in her way, to decide the manner and time at which she has children. Meaning that women should be allowed to terminate pregnancies if they so choose.
Because no person is allowed to use another person’s body without consent. Even if that use is life-sustaining.
Women are not walking wombs. Women were not put on this Earth to have sperm deposited in them, gestate fetuses, and care for babies.
Women are people.
DannyC @ just in general:
As is always required with this sort of commenter, who has trouble telling the difference between pre-birth and post-birth, I suggest the Post Test.
Find a fencepost. Preferably a 4×4, but a standard galvanized post will do.
Stand next to it. Press your cheek against it. It is currently outside of your body.
Now, remove trou & etc, and straddle the post, lowering yourself until the post is undeniably inside of your body.
Unless you are willing to argue that you cannot tell the difference between these two states, you understand birth as a clear dividing line.
Please stop pretending you don’t.
Hey, Danny C, why shouldn’t you – not the general any-person “you” but you personally – be taken right now, today, to the nearest hospital, be strapped down, have a needle stuck in your arm and have half a litre or so of blood removed in order to save the live of some stranger or other?
Irrespective of your own wishes in the matter? Even if you are desperate not to have this procedure inflicted on you? Even if you happen to have health issues such that giving blood is a danger to your health or even your life?
Just tell me why I shouldn’t have someone stick a needle in your arm, ignoring your fear and pain and the fact that you do not consent to the procedure, and take a pint of your blood right now? Some stranger needs that blood, you know. What right do you have to decide whether or not to consent to donating it?
Oddly enough, I think you do have the right to decide whether or not to give blood. Or a kidney. Or some bone marrow. So tell me why you don’t have that right.
I should perhaps add (since you have amply demonstrated upthread that you are pitifully poor at reading for comprehension) that you, personally, Danny C, have the sole right to decide whether or not to donate part of your body without which some stranger will die. And in exactly the same way, any pregnant woman has the sole right to decide whether or not to continue with a pregnancy.
Danny C,
When people are angry at being told that it is moral to force them to continue pregnancies and give birth against their will you think it’s OK to just ignore them. You think you’re superior because you don’t mind at all what horrors befall women. After all, it doesn’t harm you and that’s what really matters. We ladies shouldn’t worry our emotional little heads about our rights. You’ll tell us what we need to think and feel about our right to be free from the threat of forced gestation and birth, right?
Another day, another misogynist telling me I don’t have any say about how my body is used.
…but I shouldn’t be angry.
Hey let’s talk about this because it’s way more interesting than hearing Danny pontificate dispassionately about a social ill as though he was in a high school debate team arguing for Skub. Not like it matters, I have it on good authority that actually only 6 angels can dance on the head of a pin.
This is why we need more forceful and more strident pro-choice speech, and maybe some billboards while we’re at it. Making nice and accommodating has resulted in not only the many aforementioned roadblocks to getting an abortion, but now the pro-choice side is infested with devil’s advocates. Seriously, I can’t think of any other issue where one side has to face such constant assault not only from the other side but from their nominal “allies”.
NO SKUB!
JFC, so much THIS. Like, what made our little Devil’s Advocate so very, very sure that our arguments need refining?
“Look we all agree abortion is the worst thing ever and must be stopped…”~Mainstream Prochoice Democrats.
That’s how effective the constant wailing propaganda has been. Everyone, evvvveryone, is scared to death of seeming to support the wanton murder of teh babby, and of the legions of women getting pregnant and having last-minute abortions for fun.
Leaving aside all the fractal wrongness in all your various comments, which lots of commenters have already pointed out, often at length and in great detail, and which I have skim-read, because life is too short…
I want to suggest you look really hard at this statement, and your comments. Take out the protestations of your pro-choice-ness every so often, and what do you have? You have comments that could have come straight from the mouth of an uninformed pro-lifer. Every argument has been covered somewhere else, or at some other time. But they’re the favourite talking points of the pro-life movement (at least, those sections of it that like to debate it at length and in detail rather than just standing around shouting slogans and showing pictures of fetuses with misleading or just plain wrong captions).
Is the best way of testing the Horde’s debating ability to throw out the same old cliches of the other side?
Hint: no.
I admit, I’m also suspicious of the way this protestation of pro-choice-ness *first* appeared after your first few posts were torn apart.
In summary, you’ve proven to be abysmal at Devil’s Advocate, so maybe just stop and start discussing it from your professed side and what you personally and the ‘side’ as a whole could be doing to (a) improve access to abortion for all women, and (b) how to stop further legislative etc roadblocks from occurring in the future?
PZ makes the point above, (good job) but I want to make it stronger.
@Danny C
This is the problem: You need to read better. I’ve already explained this to you if you read for comprehension.
Let me use your language to make it clear:
My whole point is based on: Is there a moral dividing line between a living aware adult human being and a dead human being? Can you give a concrete point at which the adult human being becomes dead? So far, I have heard no such morally significant clear-cut bright dividing line between an adult human being and a dead human being.
When do we declare adult human beings to be dead and bury them, or cremate them, etc.? At clinical brain death. Is there a bright dividing line? No. I argue we should use the exact same criteria of death for determining when “life” beings, specifically when moral rights and value begins.
You want absolutes. Sometimes life doesn’t work in absolutes. Deal with it.
PS: That of course completely ignoring the comparison to a government program of forced kidney donations. I brought up two arguments. You haven’t really addressed the forced kidney donation program at all.
148, Rey Fox
To be quite fair, the chances of our dear pro-choice ally actually being a forced birther is about equal than that he really is pro-choice. His tactic has (regularly) been used before.
Very true, zenlike. And the fact that Danny C has shown such abysmal reading comprehension suggests that he has no idea what the pro-choice arguments actually are. Not conclusive, of course, but suggestive.
EnlightenmentLiberal:
Sure he did… It was something about kidneys not being brains, therefore you’re wrong.
(Wow… I went back and read what he said and yeah… that is it. Actually I think he just misunderstood what you were saying and then decided he refuted it. After that, he just says he refuted it over and over.).
Looking over his responses, he just completely misunderstands what people are saying or focuses on the wrong thing completely and runs with it.
@Galactic Fork
I’ve never heard such an excellent encapsulation of high school debate before. Well done!
~a former varsity debater
To the abortion debate, the question is irrelevant.
The RELEVANT question is this:
“Is there a morally dividing line between a woman and a beast of burden? Can one give a concrete point in which a woman CEASES TO BE HUMAN anymore?”
Because when it comes to abortion, so long as the WOMAN is human, the fetus’ status DOESN’T MATTER.
FossilFishy @67
Now that you’ve said it, I’ve had one of those smack my head moments. Of course, the individual should be able to decide does, or does not, need “fixing” for themselves. I initially responded to an inference that something was wrong with the person. But, it’s not my place to decide what that person thinks is good or bad. In any event, I have absolutely no problem with a man, or a woman, getting fixed because it’s the right thing for them.
As usual, should have just kept my mouth shut… or stepped away from the keyboard.
FossilFishy @67
Now that you’ve said it, I’ve had one of those smack my head moments. Of course, the individual should be able to decide does, or does not, need “fixing” for themselves. I initially responded to an inference that something was wrong with the person. But, it’s not my place to decide what that person thinks is good or bad. In any event, I have absolutely no problem with a man, or a woman, getting fixed because it’s the right thing for them.
As usual, should have just kept my mouth shut… or stepped away from the keyboard.
Interesting: I keep getting a duplicate message error, even though this hasn’t posted.
Frak!
So… is Danny C going to be the third human failure this week to Declare Great Overwhelming Victory while running away/being banned?
*sigh* Kids these days… no stamina. Back in my day, we’d have trolls and idiots who would last for years (/grumpyoldfart)