This is Thunderdome, the unmoderated open thread on Pharyngula. Say what you want, how you want.
Status: UNMODERATED; Previous thread
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
This is Thunderdome, the unmoderated open thread on Pharyngula. Say what you want, how you want.
Status: UNMODERATED; Previous thread
WMDKitty
I took a swing, and disqus says I got a response, but the comments seems to be deleted. I dunno what happened.
To Everyone
Cracked has been putting out a series of great “personal experience” articles recently. The latest one is about transgender representations.
@Ogvorbis
1) I did try to adress questions and present evidence in the last thread but I’m kind of tired of it now. I’ll only respond to those bring up valid points
I see you haven’t been able to undertsand teh points I made about epistemology and justified belief
2) I never said anything about the scientific method being a failure. I think the scientific method has been success. I linked to scientific papers in this thread.
3) I believe we can trust our senses. That claim was being advanced by some other idiots in the thread with incoherent epistemologies and no idea how to justify beliefs. I tried addressing them
4)Unless you found some magical way to psychically beam the scientific information straight into your mind , your ability to perform science and understand it relies on your senses in the first place . For all you know all this sense information could be false and you’re a brain in a vat.
No, you haven’t answered my questions in the least. Why should I answer yours since you’ve been dodging mine?
No one is talking about poisoning or dismembering a child except for you. Abortion has *nothing* to do with “poisoning”, “dismembering”, OR children– you’ve fallen for idiotic anti-choice propaganda. And I find it telling that you would allow a real, born child to die an agonizing death due to inaction (a parent surely knows that their child has cancer if they’re asked to donate). Outlawing abortion isn’t about saving precious babies, otherwise you would compell parents to donate organs and tissue to their already born children. So, bodily integrity is important in some (one where it could potentially impact the father) but not others (a pregnancy). I wonder why that is.
You want an answer about my views on autonomy? It should be absolute– no one has any right to use my body without my permission (including any possible lurking fetuses and my born child). I should have complete control over what goes into my body at all times. You want to make me into some sort of monster? During the first trimester of pregnancy, I drank (to excess), smoked (I was at a pack a day at that point), took cold medicine and painkillers, and regularly lifted 100+ pounds for work. During my last trimester (week 39, to be precise), I once again drank in excess.
What should happen to me, Kroos? What punishments should I face for risking the life of my fetus? I’ve answered your question, answer mine directly. I left a couple of lists of things I remember being told to avoid while pregnant, maybe you could give then a quick look over and tell me what the punishments a woman should face for engaging in each one.
One last point before I’m off to run errands today: If I found out I was pregnant this morning, I’d be on the phone with Planned Parenthood this afternoon scheduling an abortion. I have a variety of reasons for doing so, but top on my list is that I hated every goddamned minute of pregnancy, even though I was blessed with a “low risk” pregnancy with almost no complications (the biggest health risk I personally dealt with was a reoccurring UTI). So, you can write me off as some floozy who wants an abortion for fun
Kroos Control:
No. You have not answered my question asking you to provide actual evidence of the existence of any god or gods, doesn’t even have to be the Abrahamic one. You have handwaved it away as being impossible to answer because WLC claimed something.
You have also not answered Alexandra’s questions. Or anyones.
I can understand you are tired. Evading questions is quite difficult.
But, before you go for a lie down, could you please provide actual evidence of the existence of any god or gods, doesn’t even have to be the Abrahamic one.
What points? You sophistry is not and never will be evidence. Just how YOU arrived at your idiocy. Which is why it is dismissed.
That would be you. Like reading your own prose?
@Kroos:
Trigger warning for use of rape to determine Kroos’ limits on the rights of bodily integrity and autonomy.
You seem to place a lower value on the rights to bodily autonomy/integrity than on the right to life.
This brings up a scenario that others have mentioned and to which you have not responded. Think of the times a person is being raped and, in struggling against the rapist kills that rapist, despite the rapist having had no intent whatsoever to kill, only to violate bodily autonomy and integrity.
Setting aside the status of the fetus as a person (I note that you utterly failed to respond to Tony!s documentation of your misuse of the word), do you then believe, as would be consistent, that the killer should be held legally responsible for murder for violating someone else’s right to life? You have said, I remind, that rights to bodily integrity/autonomy do not justify killing.
So, in your view, are these very real killings justified or even justifiable? If yes, why do you consider the right to life to be sometimes less important than bodily integrity/autonomy and sometimes more?
If no, I thank you for another datum on the (im-)morality of far too many persons.
Yep, with about the same chance of you actually answering those questions you avoid like the plague, because they do demolish your attempt at sophistries.
@Alexandra
usually people make a difference between causing death due to action or inaction.
Eg I see a person fall onto the tracks of a train and get run over. You should argue that I should have pushed him out of the way. Or I deliberately push someone into a train to die.
Can’t you distinguish between the 2 cases?
if you want to argue death by inaction=deliberate killing , someone is deliberately killing poor children in Africa if they don’t donate.
I said that I think a strong case could be made if the parent was the only match. But even if I denied this , what relevance does it have to the right of someone to deliberately kill a foetus/unborn person. death by inaction is not equal to deliberate killing.
I won’t comment on your personal story.
@Ogvorbis
I did present evidence from morality and the existence of teh universe and I directly responded to a number of questions and objection (many of them several times) . It seems you missed that.
@ Alexandra
I honestly don’t know
Remember, guys, when you talk really loudly and at length about your ideas, and everybody in the room is either baffled or horrified, it’s because they just can’t understand you. Probably because of their limited intellectual capacity. It means nothing at all about either your ideas or your ability to communicate them.
You either didn’t try very hard, or you are incredibly incompetent.
Your point about “epistemology” was to simply declare “that counts as epistemology so I don’t need to talk about it, nyah nyah”.
You said empiricism is a failure, though. The same logic applies….
Still projecting I see…
Usually they do, but there is no logical reason why they should. The relevant factor, evident even in your example, isn’t action vs. inaction, it is direct vs. indirect.
Translation: “I presented bad arguments and repeated myself over and over again! Where is my much deserved praise!?”
Kroos
You don’t have an honest bone in your body, Kroos, Though it is obvious that you don’t know! Maybe if you just realized that and admitted it for more subjects, we wouldn’t be where we are right now.
Kroos Control:
I pointed out that morality has changed as society evolved. I even gave concrete examples (you know, evidence?). Including examples from your holy book. And then I asked how morality could change if it is objective, and you never answered.
The existence of the universe is not evidence of a creator. That has been dismantled numerous times but you keep claiming WLC, WLC, WLC!
So, Kroos Control, since you claim to have already answered my questions, please refresh my memory (since you already answered them, it should be easy for you):
1. could you please provide actual evidence of the existence of any god or gods, doesn’t even have to be the Abrahamic one.
2. since morality has changed as society has evolved, how can morality be objective?
Kroos Control
What, in your opinion, is the purpose of debate?
Is it:
(A) To win.
(B) To reach a better understanding of the issue at hand.
(C) Other. (please specify)
2) You are begging the question by assuming that morality has changed.
As humans have gained more knowledge they’ve gained a better understanding and awareness of certain moral principles , just as we gain a better understanding about other objective facts (like the shape of the earth). Moral realism is compatible with situational ethics , as I said and people would share similar moral principles would also apply them in different situations and contexts.
I also pointed out that even though there is some disagreement , principles like “its wrong to KBFF” are universally perceived as wrong.
I’ve said this all before in the previous thread.
@Daz
depends on who I’m debating at what topic and what their level of competence is . For example I don’t think Bill Nye was debating Ken ham to get a better understanding of science.
Usually people are idiots and assholes who are not the least interested in actual suffering of actual people but intellectual wankery about hypothetical problems on railtracks.
@Alexandra: Are you really saying that your right to control over your body should be completely absolute and unconditional? Even to the point of potentially having an abortion at 8 months and 28 days? That seems pretty extreme to me. Seems to me a fetus should be considered a person when the fetus achieves something recognizable as sentience (as opposed to viability outside the womb, which is what the Supreme Court seems to have used in the past).
As to what your punishment should be for smoking and drinking, etc. – well, none legally, but if you were planning on taking the pregnancy to term I think you should be at least a bit ashamed of yourself.
Why did moral principles exist before creation?
Did all those underwear designs exist before creation, too?
oh goody
another 8monthsand28days argument
how original
They do not answer his question. Sophistry/theology is NOT and never will be evidence. That requires conclusive physical evidence.
…but, wait, are you saying we were never wrong about the shape of the earth, and that our ideas about the shape of the earth haven’t changed?
You just said that, didn’t you?
FFS, that’s called BIRTH. Unless something has gone horribly, terribly wrong where the mother’s life is in danger and she decides to save herself. Then if she lives, she gets to morn the loss of her wanted child.
Stop turning a tragedy into a failed ‘gotcha’, asswipe.
Except you are a proven liar and bullshitter, and you saying something is meaningless without a link to real evidence, not sophistry/theology, to back it up.
Yet more pathetic dishonesty from KC, I see.
YOU, KC, are the one begging the question by assuming morality has NOT changed.
This is particularly telling from KC, given how much effort he has put into the “perceptions must reflect objective reality” line of argument. He was oh so adamant on this point.
But the ONLY thing we as human beings can perceive about morality and its history in our species is that it HAS changed.
Perceptions, apparently, to KC, are reliable, so long as what is perceived matches with his own presupposed positions. If they differ, then pointing that out is “begging the question.”
What pitiful intellectual hypocrisy.
She did say absolute.
OK, KC, I’ll take that as being as close to an answer as you’re going to give.
So, a) you’re still making the mistake/committing the deliberate attempt at deception of trying to pretend that babies and foetuses are one and the same thing or that they are interchangeable (hint: the baby is the one outside you, not drawing oxygen and nutrients directly from your bloodstream; the foetus is the one inside you, that is drawing oxygen and nutrients directly from your bloodstream. It’s quite easy to remember which is which, you know).
And b) even my born children don’t have the right to make use of my organs against my will (the fact that I’d willingly donate a kidney to either of them is beside the point; it would be my choice whether or not to do so. No-one could compel me to do so, even if my child would die otherwise. And these are actual people – they have thoughts, hopes, dreams, relationships and everything! They even have preferences in ice-cream flavours, original ideas, senses of humour … you know, people stuff). There is no such thing as the right to make use of someone’s organs against their will. And I agree with you as far as that first sentence goes – foetuses don’t have any extra rights.
No, of course not. The scientifically established cut-off line is 8 months 27 days.
Kroos Control:
So you are denying that morality has changed? Show me that morals have not changed. Give me evidence (just as I have you evidence that morality has changed through time).
and this struck me as odd:
from the one claiming that empiricism is a failure. That’s rich.
Way to entirely miss the point; you might want to think about adding ‘opacity’ to your snark, sarcasm, and bitterness.
But fine: How about 30 weeks? How about 35 weeks? Again, the OP stated that she should have absolute control, which implies to me that she thinks she should be able to terminate a pregnancy at any point up until birth.
A PROPERLY performed abortion procedure at 8 months and 28 days is called an induced birth, and results in a live baby if the fetus was healthy.
This was discussed AT LENGTH in the last abortion thread. (And the one before that. And the one before that.)
The woman’s bodily autonomy remains complete and uncompromised. Induced birth satisfies that bodily autonomy fully, as it terminates the pregnancy and removes the products of conception from her body. The fetus, if viable, will survive and become a baby. If the fetus is not viable, then the “dilemma” is moot.
Fetal viability/duration of gestation is not a valid condition for restricting a woman’s bodily autonomy, because induced birth is available as an option.
Kroos:
So, death due to inaction is okay? Are you honestly saying that if I stopped feeding my child (which would be an “inaction”) that would he more acceptable than abortion?
Somehow I knew you’d worm out of the question of what should happen to pregnant woman who do things that could potenyially harm a fetus. You called abortion murder– that’s pretty loaded terminology which brings to mind certain punishments, but now you’re backing off because you’re too scared to tell a woman to her face what you think of her situation. Coward.
Honestly, keeping a pregnancy healthy takes a LOT of “action”. Pregnancy isn’t some static state; it’s a lot of work. Inaction may lead to miscarriage, but if we can’t compell parents to donate tissue, why can we compell pregnant people to completely change their lifestyle? If she miscarries due to “inaction” (continuing to take certain medications that she took prior to pregnancy, for instance) how can she be held accountable when a parent can deny their child a needed organ?
KC:
But that is not evidence of an objective morality. As I pointed out in the last thread, it’s evidence that someone who kills babies for fun is bad for all societies.
Further, your claim that objective morality comes from God, and then that objective morality proves God exists, is pretty much a textbook case of question-begging.
Are you really saying that it shouldn’t be?
They usually call that “inducing labor”. And usually when you are having an abortion that late, it is because something has gone seriously awry.
So, again: Let Women Choose. Abortion and pregnancy are serious medical choices. Fauxlosphers wringing their hands over general principles, and legislators issuing ham-handed restrictions on the matter should not be allowed into the discussion. They have had their say, they have shown what they have to contribute to the “debate”. and has all resulted in diminshing the agency of women, dismissing the severity of pregnancy, ignoring bodily autonomy, and conflating a fetus with a full, independent, conscious human being.
Extreme doesn’t mean it isn’t right.
And when does that happen? Sentience is a fuzzy concept.
You should be ashamed of yourself for having no regard for women’s control of their own body and leaving no margin for error for what they are permitted, in your mind, to do during pregnancy.
At 30 week and 35 weeks, induced birth remains the option of choice, and there is no autonomy dilemma, since 30 weeks, roughly, is considered the point of viability.
Also, this is STILL the same kind of pathetic “gotcha”, because the vast majority of pregnancies that get to 30 and 35 weeks ARE indeed wanted pregnancies, and if they are lost the woman will mourn her lost wanted child.
She DOES. What she doesn’t have is the sole right to choose the PROCEDURE by which the pregnancy is terminated, just as you or I do not have the right to demand an orthopedic surgeon to amputate a healthy limb, if that surgeon does not agree that it is medically indicated. If the indicated procedure is induced birth, she doesn’t have the right to demand a fetal-destructive abortion procedure instead.
But she still gets the complete right to terminate her pregnancy whenever she wants up until birth.
Because birth IS the termination of a pregnancy, induced or otherwise.
Oh, here we go with the mythical 11th hour decision to have an elective abortion. That would be a birth, fuckwit. Nobody goes through 30+ weeks of pregnancy and just wakes up one morning tired of not being able to fit into their favorite jeans and decides to have an abortion, not even slutty sluts who have sex without being forced. Anything other than a birth occurring at that point is out of medical necessity. Take your red herring and insert it in the orifice of your choosing.
I know a woman who did this. She didn’t want to be pregnant for another day. She demanded that the doctors end the pregnancy. They delivered the baby.
So yes, absolute bodily autonomy is not remotely in conflict here.
Can we all get something clear? 1) I said “absolute”. I mean what I say.
Did you know that many, many women schedule c-sections and schedule a day to induce labor? Would you deny them the right to choose the end date of their pregnancies?
You are not sentient. You are a sophisticated robot that mimics sentience just enough to appear sentient on an internet forum. It is all instinctive programming hardwired into whatever you use in lieu of a brain.
Now, prove me wrong.
(A fetus doesn’t achieve anything remotely close to even the fuzziest commonly agreed upon definitions of sentience until well past 6 months AFTER birth, you know. And oxygen tension in the fetal bloodstream is below the threshold known to be required for conscious awareness in all humans of other developmental stages until after birth and the blood gets oxygenated by the first breath.)
So it is highly unlikely that we will EVER be able to reliably recognize or measure anything remotely similar to “sentience” in a fetus, even if it actually existed.
Apologies for having missed the previous threads, so I’m missing a bit of the context.
But calling it an assisted birth, given that third trimester abortions exist in which the fetus is euthanized, is just ducking the ethical issue. In fact, you almost seem to be arguing that that sort of abortion should be illegal!
Rephrasing the question: to your mind, is there a point in the development of the fetus after which it should be considered to have human rights, and after which the biological parents should have some legal responsibilities?
Derek Vandivere
Hey I have another scenario for you:
So, a woman is pregnant and the fetus presents in breech position plus has bad vital signs.
It is pretty clear that should this woman deliver vaginally that the resulting baby would be stillborn or severely damaged due to lack of oxygen during birth.
What’s your solution?
So no punishment for smoking and drinking, but I should be ashamed? Why? I have a lovely, wanted daughter. What do I have to be ashamed of?
Have you ever been pregnant, Kroos? Had an abortion?
What responsibilities? What human rights, which are given to born humans? Still arguing for “special” rights for the poor fetus.
Alexandra #43
The “you should be ashamed” comment was by Derek Vandivere.
Third trimester elective abortions do not exist. An abortion at that stage resulting in the death of the fetus happens only when there is no other option. This a red herring and doesn’t become less of one with repetition.
Yes. Birth.
Derek Vandivere:
No. That is not a given. Show us some citations of a viable fetus aborted in the third trimester (which generally means c-section or induced birth) and then euthanized — killed outside of the woman’s body. And no, the case from Philadelphia, which involved breaking laws and disregarding medical ethics, does not count.
No; assisted birth, induced birth, etc, are all abortions.
1) Entirely irrelevant to a woman’s bodily autonomy;
2) See point [1];
You are begging the question by assuming it hasn’t. Especially since we actually can see that the moral standards WE CAN ACTUALLY OBSERVE have actually changed, but all you can do is handwave and say that it doesn’t matter, because MAGIC PLATONIC MORALS FROM GAWD.
How and Why. You said you can perceive it directly. That shouldn’t change over the course of generations.\
Your analogy doesn’t hold because that increased understanding involved finding additonal objective facts that we were unaware of because we could not directly perceive them . We cannot directly perceive the Earth going around the sun. We cannot directly perceive that the World is close to spherical. We cannot directly perceive that we are composed of atoms. We cannot directly perceive the scope of the universe. We cannot directly perceive how the brain works. All of which is why we needed science. All of which is why our better understanding came so slowly. So, again:
HOW did our understanding of morality improve? What was the method? This is “super relevant” as a genius like yourself might put it.
Yes, you keep using that as your example. And the phrasing puzzles me. Because it prompts the questions:
-Is killing itself objectively wrong?
-Is killing for fun objectively wrong?
-Is killing humans for fun objectively wrong?
-Is killing babies objectively wrong?
Sadly, I’m sure you have answers for these, but the answers would only be a combination of your intuition, your cultural biases, and what you think you tell us while minimizing how hard we will pounce on you for your idiocy.
Baloney. Having the right to do something doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do.
Heck, in France they decide on what day your baby will be born, you report to the hospital, and they induce labor. At least that’s what happened with my daughter.
For all future comments, assume that I wrote “terminate the pregnancy in a way that kills the fetus” – I’d have thought it was clear that’s more what I meant.
I didn’t know that! I guess that explains why they’ve used viability as the legal threshhold up to now. Which is why I do think it should be left up to the mother as much as possible.
Daz:
Thank you. Keeping up on this thread while on my phone with a crying toddler in my lap is tough. Please direct my last comment to Derek.
At the begining of my ninth month of pregnancy (full term pregnancies last 40 weeks, remember), I scheduled a c-section for two days before my due date. Was this immoral?
(I did actually end up giving birtg vaginally, but it wasn’t clear that I would be able to do so until the week of thr surgery.)
Derek:
No, that’s just entering a new ethical issue: euthanasia.
[1]: Easy. Birth.
[2]:What legal responsibilities do you specifically refer to? Because at least American culture doesn’t legally force a parent to ever take care of their children.
The point is birth.
Birth is the moment when the fetus empirically proves, beyond a shadow of doubt, that it is capable of surviving and existing as an independent human being. It is the point where “potential” person becomes ACTUAL person. That is the moment human rights begin to exist and when parents assume the legal responsibilities of parents.
The vast majority of times when an euthanizing third trimester abortion is performed is when the fetus is non-viable. It is unhealthy and damaged to the point where it cannot survive on its own outside the uterus, and letting it be born alive is merely forcing it to suffer from however few minutes or hours it can linger before inevitably dying. Not euthanizing the fetus in this situation is simply unnecessary cruelty.
Doing an euthanizing third trimester abortion for a VIABLE and healthy fetus is already prohibited through the regulations of the professional associations that regulation medical practitioners. It is, quite simply malpractice. In many jurisdictions it already is illegal. THAT, for example, is what Gosnell got in trouble for.
(And women aren’t stupid. Do you really think that a large proportion will carry an unwanted pregnancy all the way to the third trimester if there was any way of terminating it earlier? You want to reduce the number of third trimester abortions, already vanishingly rare? Make earlier abortion access easier!)
There is NO ethical issue, because the ethics are obvious and settled. The fact that it occurs in PRACTICE is not an ethical issue at all. It is simply a practical issue of enforcement of existing laws and regulations.
This will probably come as quite a shock to you, but your opinions on “the right thing to do” are only relevant to your own body.
Nope. Nothing limits bodily autonomy. Every time it’s come before a court, bodily autonomy has trumped the right to life. Fetal personhood is a red herring.
Derek:
Such profound stupidity. The world is not perfect. People do not have perfect knowledge of when pregnancy begins. They do not magically have the ability to put their habits on hold just because they are pregnant. They do not have the privilege to spend every second of every day for nine months making sure that every last action they do has no possible negative consequences for the fetus inside of them. They cannot reasonably be expected to become a monk or a saint in the Holy Name of the Perfect Fetus. They do not have the scope of knowledge nor the power nor the freedom to mitigate every fucking possible negative factor that might affect the fetus.
Welcome to reality. Stop shaming people for being a part of it.
So what limits a man’s bodily autonomy?
So your argument has moved from “You shouldn’t have the right to a mythical 11th hour abortion” to “You can have the right to an abortions but they are morally wrong”?
Oh so you aren’t talking about ultra-late abortions at all? An abortion, BY DEFINITION, is the termination of the pregnancy. So no it wasn’t clear at all because you’re buying into pro-life malarkey.
Also if you’re morally against late-term abortions that kill the fetus shouldn’t you be relieved? I mean we’ve just told you that they don’t exist and the proper way to terminate a very late pregnancy is birth. Will you though? Time will tell, and indeed be telling.
Of course not!
Child abandonment laws exist. And I’d mention legally required child support, but you’d think I’m one of those mens’ rights jerks.
See, this is assumed. You assert it, and expect me to agree.
I can’t think of any legal precedent where a parent is forced to relinquish bodily autonomy.
Alexandra
NOTHING*.
Duh.
*Except men of color – or really any other marginalized person that happens to be a man. The limits on their bodily autonomy are obviously also justified.
Alexandra:
Nothing. Ergo, bodily autonomy isn’t a thing, so fuck y’all, no abortions for anybody! #secular #fetalposition #wombfolk
What does that have to do with the price of tea in China? A fetus is not a child as evidenced by the fact that it is INSIDE SOMEONE’S BODY.
But that person just had a late-term abortion! I thought you were morally outraged by late-term abortions.
Derek Vandevere:
You did not answer my question. I asked you to us some citations of a viable fetus aborted in the third trimester (which generally means c-section or induced birth) and then euthanized. . . . (I dropped the last part off as your citation did use that term. I disagree with that term in this instance, but that is only slightly relevant — the relevant part is viable fetus).
Nym of person being replied to #comment-number of same
Reply
</request for clarity>
You do realize that money is not a body, right? And that monetary support only goes as far as the parent is able? Its little more than a tax.
Derek Vandivere
Did you actually read what you wrote?
The process that actually happens, killing a fetus inside the womb and then inducing birth happens, to women who would very much love to remain pregnant and have a child.
It happens becuase things have gone horribly wrong.
Hey, I skidded one such abortion. For a few weeks it was not clear if my daughter had kidney (she has, yay, healthy child) or no kidneys (Potter syndrome, not viable), or .
Would you rather have a thisrd trimester abortion at week 28, or 30, or would you rather force the woman to carry a doomed fetus for another 10 or 12 weeks, knowing every single minute that her child will NOT live, that she will never nurse that child, go for walks with that child, bring that child to bed? Will you make her take the increasing personal risk with every additional day of pregnancy just to deliver a fully grown baby at 40 weeks she can then watch dying an agonizing death?
Those women, the women who have third trimester abortions, they suffer enough. They don’t need assholes using them as examples of horribly women who kill their children in utero.
Derek Vandivere, quoting omnicrom
See, there’s this thing, it’s call relinquishment of rights. You can surrender your right to your child. This typically has the effect of terminating your financial obligations.* As to child abandonment laws, well, a child is a person under the law currently. You don’t have to provide care for them personally. As has been pointed out before, other adults can step in and provide care for born children. That option is not available in the case of a pre-viability fetus.
*Of course, this is yet another misogynist dog whistle whether you intend it or not. Because money/property≠bodily autonomy. Cut that shit out right now.
Derek cites an article in 54.
This article.
These are the “third-trimester abortions” that Derek thinks supports his case. Derek is a fucking scumbag.
Geez, 7, read a bit more closely:
It wasn’t an assumption, it was a tautology. IF there is a legal responsibility to the unborn fetus, THEN there’s by definition not 100% bodily autonomy. I’m not saying there should be, I’m really trying to understand people’s positions to clarify my own.
Again, turn off the ragetyping and capslock. I was replying to an assertion that (at least in the States) there are no laws that force parents to take care of their children.
You’re making a hell of a lot of assumptions. The only opinion I’ve stated so far is that I think sentience or self-consciousness would make a better border than viability outside the womb. Again, I’m trying to find out what rights people think they should have and why, in order to sharpen my opinion (I’m pro-choice, you doofus).
What point? Without a citation your fuckwitted attitude and theory is dismissed.
54
Derek Vandivere
So…..I call you an asswipe for turning a tragedy into a gotcha, then you to cite THIS? And you dare call me dense? WTF is wrong with you?
No, wait I don’t want to know. Fuck you, just fuck you.
Sorry, you sound anti-choice. If you are pro-choice, lose the attitude. Nobody has to discuss what you want the way you want.
So, I can terminate my pregnancy at the end of the third trimester, except in cases where I can’t?
The mind truly boggles.
Not quite. A parent can call social services and “give up” their child. A parent does have the duty to make sure that their child is cared for, but it is not necessarily their responsibility to be the person caring for the child until the child turns 18.
One last time: there currently exist laws that give fetuses legal rights (the right not to be terminated after 20-odd weeks). By definition, those limit the mother’s bodily autonomy.
But yeah, never mind. Keep jerking those knees.
Derek @79
That’s just not true. As pointed out above, ad nauseum, childbirth is termination of pregnancy. Your words don’t mean what you want them to mean.
Derek Vandivere:
Any luck coming up with citations of viable 30+ week fetuses being aborted (other than forced labor or c-section)?
Derek Vandivere #73
It’s quite simple. Your IF is incorrect, as many people have told you. What more do you need, in order to understand?
Please remember that while you are discussing this oh-so-objectively, what you are doing is “objectively” debating whether women are fully-human, autonomous beings, with all the rights pertaining to fully-human people. Oddly enough, people tend to get a mite pissed off about their humanity being treated as a subject which is open to debate.
Derek:
QFT
Derek:
At what point during a pregnancy does a woman cease to be a human being?
It might, but there are several problems with that.
1) Sentience does not mean viability outside the womb; sure, the feotus might be sentient, but forcing the mother to give birth is forcing the mother to give birth to a dead baby in waiting.
2) Pregnancy complications have nothing to do with sentience. By placing limitations on a woman’s bodily autonomy because of “sentience,” you run into situations where women will be harmed by the pregnancy.
Leave the decision between the doctor (the one whose actually trained in these scenario’s) and the woman (the one whose bodily autonomy you’re discussing).
What is up for debate is how far the bodily autonomy extends. No-one has absolute bodily autonomy.
I’m my country (and a lot of others) its illegal to commit suicide or abuse certain drugs. From what I’ve seen of American laws the US Supreme Court does not recognize an absolute right to bodily autonomy, there are certain medications that can’t be given to pregnant women and there are some state laws that don’t allow substance abuse during preganancy.
So there are limits on bodily autonomy. What he is trying to debate is where the right to bodily autonomy includes the right to terminate the life of a foetus/unborn child. You are framing the debate in a way to distort his position.
You got it Daz. I am really really REALLY tired of my human rights being used as an interesting point for debate.
No, I do NOT have full bodily autonomy– there’s nowhere in in upstate New York (that I know of) that will perform elective abortions past 20 weeks (although obtaining a medically necessary late abortion is possible) and before a fetus is truly viable* (36 or so weeks). This does not mean that I think this is good or right. Like I said, I believe that all people deserve to decide what happens to/what goes into their bodies absolutely.
*”Viability” is usually pegged somewhere between 20 and 30 weeks, but unless something with the pregnancy has gone sideways and the pregnancy needs to be ended immediately, a doctor will not induce before the beginning of the 9th month.
I’m a strong believer in reproductive freedom (no one should have any moral or legal obligation to have a child), but I have to admit I don’t understand the absolutist bodily autonomy argument.
The US restricts bodily autonomy (freedom to do what I want with my body) and bodily integrity (freedom to control what is done to my body) in all sort of ways (imprisoning violent criminals violates their autonomy, and medical regulations and drug laws infringe bodily integrity) that I’m fine with. I also believe there are moral obligations to get vaccinated, donate blood and donate one’s organs at the end of life if possible and practical.
Because there are legal restrictions doesn’t mean that it is morally correct to place those restrictions on bodily autonomy. And yes, it’s great to give blood, but unless you’re arguing for forced donations, there’s not conflict with bodily autonomy.
@Portia
I’m going to have to steal this picture for another debate. You’d be surprised how often this comes up.
KC@90
Use it when someone asks what you have to support your bullshit opinions.
Your IF is a red herring. Fetal personhood is completely irrelevant to the discussion. Bodily autonomy is never trumped by someone’s right to life. I don’t care if someone wants to date personhood to the moment of conception. It has no place in a conversation about abortion.
How about you just don’t trouble yourself over whether I used caps, k? While you’re at it, how about you refrain ascribing emotions to me based on my ratio of capital to lowercase letters?
Hey Kroos: I responded to you at comment 33. Specifically about your claim of “inaction”.
Because I can’t resist.
1. I think it may have been you who posted that already – it’s additionally complicated by the fact that someone posted earlier that most definitions of sentience are achieved after birth.
2. Oh, absolutely. I was taking it as a given that in cases where the mother’s life is in danger that the actual human life takes priority over potential human life.
Alexandra, thanks for your clear and direct answer.
Derek Vandivere
Just stop. Your pathetic excuses for ‘arguments’ have been addressed already, you have nothing new to bring, and you’re being an asshole. Stop it.
Kroos Control
Wow, you can’t resist being a cherry-picking asshole no matter what you’re referencing, can you? The 1984 convention on torture says
Relevant portion that Kroos omitted in bold.
Kroos Control #86
Yep, and I disagree with those laws too. Human beings should be free to do what they want with their own bodies. And if that includes putting those bodies in danger (contact-sports, sliding down mountains on planks, drugs, whatever), that is their choice.
So? Those drugs are prohibited in those situations to help women who want to be pregnant, to be sure that they aren’t being given drugs which will lead to a bad outcome. They are not there to limit her autonomy, but rather to help her achieve her aim to give birth to a healthy baby.
As a question worth discussing and debating in a public forum, such as this one, inasmuch as its relevance and importance as a public rather than a private deliberation, the need to have a right to do something protected is far more important than the hypothetical question of whether it is the right thing to do.
For example, in the issue of abortion, afford to women the consideration that they are fully human, adult, independent moral agents, fully capable of making their own personal decisions with respect to what is right or not right for them to do, and then LET THEM BE FREE TO SO CHOOSE.
But I think that some things can justify violating bodily autonomy. Our current prison system is a disgrace, but I still believe that someone who murders another should be put in prison, and I think it’s morally correct that the government regulates medical care and drugs.
I also think that, unlike blood or organ donation, a woman has absolutely no moral obligation whatsoever to continue a pregnancy she doesn’t wish to for any reason. Even if a viable fetus’s existence has a moral significance, I trust the pregnant woman’s judgment of that far more than my own or anyone else’s.
Sorry, but you are not entitled to tell other people how they should type.
1) Nope; just repeating for emphasis.
2) I was taking sentience as a given for the sake of argument, but yes, sentence is a newborn isn’t well established.
3) This isn’t much of a given in abortion debates, since many coutries still don’t allow that, and countries that do tend to have some serious limitations. Also, the point you’re trying to argue directly affects these scenarios.
Derek @41:
Oh, FFS!
Please go re-read my comment in the last Thunderdome about fetal personhood. Then tell me what qualities of personhood a fetus has. Then tell me why any of that matters when no one can make use of another person’s body without their consent (I also addressed the essential right to bodily autonomy and why it is important).
Kroos Control, you need to read my comment as well. You know so little about this topic, yet you ramble on and on. Goddamned fuckwit.
Imprisoning someone is a restriction of freedom of movement and association. It is not a limitation on bodily autonomy.
Bodily autonomy is about what goes in and out of a person’s body. We do not, for example, condone the forcible harvesting of organs from prisoners. Nor is it supportable to surgically castrate sex offenders.
The existing laws regulation drugs are also not about bodily autonomy. They are all about possession of, sale or, or transport of those drugs. They do not actually prohibit the act of ingesting the drug. (Notwithstanding the ethical issues of bodily autonomy, laws prohibiting what people can or cannot ingest are actually unenforceable.)
Heh.
“You perceive a problem with ALL CAPS, [Derek]? For single words and phrases, I just use it for emphasis, where others might bold or italicize.“
@Dalillama
I just quote a summary from the telegraph. This is exactly what I said. Unless your foetus was elected as a public official its really illogical to claim he was torturing you.
@Alexandra
That would be child negligence. It would be bad.
Did I call it murder? I remember using killing. Many abortion advocates admit abortion is killing a foetus. The thing we disagree about is whether its a person who is killed.
We do compell parents to change their lifestyle for their children.
Maybe we should compell them to donate tissue for their children if they’re the only donor availible.
A miscarriage due to inaction would be a normal miscarriage where the woman didn’t intend to have the baby die. If she knew the medication would lead to a substantial chance of her miscarriage , it would be different.
Maybe we have a definition issue here, because I just don’t get what you’re saying. By ‘bodily autonomy,’ I mean someone’s *legal* right do whatever they want with their body, which is why it’s a tautology. Just like dry counties restrict their citizen’s bodily autonomy, so do laws restricting abortion.
Derek, you’re getting a warm reception because you have jumped into the middle of a discussion which has been done to death over many threads AND in which there is a constant trickle of anti-choice scumbags who really want to come up with a gotcha (ignoring the reality of actual dead women, dead because they were denied access to the abortion they needed) AND you came in sounding exactly like another such scumbag.
However.
If this was just a combination of bad timing, unlucky choice of words and a failure to check out the blog before jumping in and you are actually a pro-choice person, then there’s every possibility for engaging in conversation.
Bearing in mind that
“Vulcan”-style intellectualising over my actual bodily autonomy and right to full personhood, and those of a lot of other people here, is unlikely to go down well.
That said,
you mentioned that you have a daughter. You probably love her like anything and would gladly donate blood/bone-marrow/a kidney etc. if she were dying for want of same. You cannot be compelled to donate any such thing; it is quite rightly your choice to donate or not.
The same goes for a person who is pregnant. It’s their choice.
Kroos Control:
There’s only a debate insofar as you fuckers keep trying to find reasons to treat women as less than human.
The rest of us think of women as fully human, hence their right to bodily autonomy.
You fuckin’ shitstain.
@Kroos:
When debating the limits of bodily autonomy and integrity rights, especially when asserting that the right to life overrides BAIRs, you might want to actually respond to specific questions about the consequences of your position.
I’m not the only one you’ve ignored, but damn if you aren’t determined to evade when I make questions highly specific, and therefore most probably useful.
Since it’s the most specific and useful questions you avoid, your insistence that this is a “debate” is quite dubious.
Derek:
You’re a fucking moron.
Counties that prohibit the sale of alcohol do not in any way infringe upon anyone’s bodily autonomy.
I do forget sometimes that living in a civilized country means I have a somewhat different baseline than most Americans (the world’s first legal same sex marriage happened about four blocks from my house)…although even Amsterdam is getting more conservative these days.
Amphiox @103
I thinks it useful to distinguish between control and integrity, but your use of the term is the accepted one here.
That’s a distinction without a difference. Anti-choice laws that precluded abortion without actually mandating a woman stay pregnant are just as bad as a literal forced birth law. See, for example, the travesty the legislature recently passed in my state that seeks to ban abortion by shutting down all the abortion clinics.
qwints #99
Imprisonment isn’t actually a bodily autonomy thing in this sense. It’s a freedom of movement/action thing, a freedom of association thing, but not a bodily autonomy thing, as restraining your body doesn’t involve putting anything into or taking anything out of your body, with or without consent.
I still don’t understand the claim that bodily autonomy is absolute (i.e. that no other interest can justify violating it), but this probably isn’t the time and place for that discussion.
Kroos, states enforcing your opinion are killing people all around the world right now.
Tony, are you really going to split hairs so much? Fine: countries that make consumption of alcohol illegal (or states that make public intoxication illegal) restrict their citizen’s bodily autonomy. My only point is that laws restricting abortion rights also restrict women’s bodily autonomy by definition, and that other laws in place in both the US and elsewhere in the world restrict their citizens’ bodily autonomy. As far as I’m aware, there is not a legal human right to 100% bodily autonomy, pretty much in any country.
From your post in the previous thread, it’s pretty clear that you think there should be. Fine.
Kroos 105
A) If you’re going to cite something, cite from the source.
B) If you’re going to cite something, know the context of what you’re citing
C) Public officials compelling people to be pregnant against their will= torture, you disingenuous shitstain.
@Crip Dyke
I didn’t reply because it was a mind-bogglingly awful and illogical argument.
“So, in your view, are these very real killings justified or even justifiable? If yes, why do you consider the right to life to be sometimes less important than bodily integrity/autonomy and sometimes more?”
They are justified but the second question is wrongg headed.
Trigger warning for violence:
Imagine you’re in your house. a burglar comes in and tries to steal some of your property. You get in a struggle and you kill him. Is your right to property greater than than the burglar’s right to life?
A property owner is about to demolish a building he owns. He is about to press a button , but looks inside and sees a little vagrant child sleeping inside. He is a heartless bastard and pushes the demolition button anyway and kills the child under rubble.. Is his right to property greater than teh child’s right to life?
In different situations rules are applied differently. Sometimes the property rights come out on top and sometimes the right to life.
Crip Dyke@7:
Ha! Your trigger warning is silly and unnecessary! Anyway…did you guys see the latest episode of Game of Thrones? The Red We…wait a minute, before I proceed: SPOILER WARNING! Gosh, without that spoiler warning I very well may have triggered some anger by spilling plot details, and I would NOT want to be insensitive or anything.
Derek Vandivere @73
Oh good. I’m just so glad you’re on our side. The vast majority of the time, people claiming to be playing Devil’s Advocate are actually just liars using “devil’s advocate” as a shield against criticism of their real beliefs.
Assuming you’re not just a liar, you’re still an asshole.
By playing Devil’s Advocate, you’re turning real personal issues which affect real people into your own personal playground. You’re turning another person’s suffering – and in many cases, their tragedy – into an abstraction so you can play games with it.
And then you have the nerve to insult people who take that personally.
Fuck you. If you have a legitimate desire to learn more about this stuff, try reading more and attacking people less.
Almost every pro-life advocate allows for certain exceptions for certain medical conditions of the woman that could lead to death
Things that Kroos does not know about number Infinity: The Catholic Church.
Or are they the massive and powerful organization you’re trying to weasel out of acknowledging when you say “almost every”?
Kroos Control:
That’s not the only point of disagreement.
The biggest disagreement is that you support limiting the human rights of women because you think fetii are special. You want to grant fetii a special right–the right to commandeer the body of a woman against her wishes–which is not possessed by anyone else. This has been pointed out many fucking times but you refuse to address this. To you *and* Derek:
NO ONE HAS THE RIGHT TO USE ANOTHER HUMAN BEINGS’ BODY AGAINST THEIR WISHES.
You cannot be forced to donate blood even if it will save someone’s life (even if that someone is your child).
You cannot be forced to donate organs even if it will save someone’s life (even if that someone is your child).
Because of the right to bodily autonomy-the right to decide what happens TO and WITH your body-women have the right to have an abortion.
As for your belief that fetii are people, again, what are the qualities of personhood that fetuses possess?
From my comment in the last Dome which Dishonest Kroos apparently hasn’t read:
Not seeing that.
Derek and Kroos Control:
At what moment during a pregnancy is a woman no longer a full human being?
@Opposable: Oh, I’ve been reading PZ for several years, but only rarely commenting. I found his dismissal of Silverman’s statement that there’s a valid non-religious argument against full abortion rights a bit startling, so the first comment jumped out at me.
However, I don’t buy the equivalence of restricting someone’s complete 100% bodily autonomy and calling them less human – I understand that’s how it feels to you, but I think that’s also predicated on what you think about whatever rights a fetus has.
And I do think you’re missing a few modifiers in your two examples: I think you’re saying that I *should* not be forced to donate a kidney to my kid, and that it *should* be the woman’s choice, right?
(Wow – I just looked up the law here and it’s generally illegal after 24 weeks – they use the viability argument here, too. Holland surprises me sometimes).
@Tony
We’ve addressed this before. And there are other definitions of persons. By some of teh definitions you cite it would be permissible to kill newborns and mentally challenged individuals (in fact the Singer you cited advocates)
Question from other thread
qwints:
You’re right. The entire abortion “debate” treats women’s human rights as if they’re up for discussion. There is no debate about the human rights of men.
If someone wants to have that discussion, it should be done elsewhere, and in a way that applies to all people (i.e. are there justifications for denying humans their rights, not just women).
Another aspect the highlights the ridiculousness of those hypothetical 39.99 weeks or whatever abortions has to do with the practical reality of timing in medical practice.
Again, it is established that when it comes to procedures that one requires a second party (ie a physician, etc) to perform on you, the timing of the procedure is not one where you have carte blanche to demand at will. If you go to your doctor and he recommends an elective surgery for you to be done within 3 months, you cannot go to the nearest hospital and demand to have it done that night. Timing is triaged by need, which falls to the clinical judgment of the professional involved.
If a woman goes to her doctor and asks for a pregnancy termination at 8 months and 28 days, for example, if this is a normal, healthy pregnancy, that doctor will most likely respond with “my recommendation for the best medical way to terminate your pregnancy is for you to wait 2 days and deliver naturally, or by induced labor” And the same could apply for just about any point in the third trimester, given the details of the specific cases, since in many instances the safest way (for the woman) to terminate a third trimester pregnancy is normal labor and delivery.
The only times a woman would need to get an abortion “right now” in the third trimester are in cases of medical emergency. Those are the ones where the woman’s life is threatened.
As has been discussed time and time again, the spectre of third trimester abortion is very much a dishonest hypothetical that the so-called pro-lifers love to abuse. The reality of it is that it is vanishingly rare, is done for emergent life-saving reasons in nearly all cases, needs to be immediately available without restriction for the sake of those emergency cases to afford the decision-making flexibility that emergent care needs to be most effective, and almost never involves that hypothetical situation of an elective pregnancy termination for “convenience” or “birth control”, except when an earlier abortion was sought but could not be had due to existing restrictions of earlier abortions already in place.
And that is why it is not honest to use “personhood” as a criteria in these kinds of discussions at all.
That is why viability, and not personhood, is the criteria that matters.
It is equivalent when the discussion centers around an issue that affects only a subset of humans, and not all humans equally. By asserting a restriction in this subset, you in effect say that the affected subset is less human than the unaffected subset, who will not be subject to that restriction.
Llamaherder, I’m sure you’re a fine person and a warm, caring human being.
I’m really not playing devil’s advocate or attacking anyone. I started off just trying to clarify Alexandra’s position, which seemed a bit extreme to me (e.g., to say that it’s ethically fine to get tanked in your third trimester). People made a whole hell of a lot of assumptions about my motivations, and the worst I’ve said is doofus.
@Derek
First Jacob Schmidt #69 responding to you:
Then Portia addressing the same child support comment:
See, you don’t have to do any specific thing with your body. There are requirements on a legal guardian, and parents are presumptively legal guardians but get to **opt out at any time**.
Then you, Derek:
and finally:
Rights of bodily autonomy and integrity are an actual thing, with which your last two statements demonstrate you are entirely unfamiliar.
So your condescending effort to erroneously define any right of the fetus – especially, but *not only* the non-existent right not to have a pregnancy terminated (which would legally prevent all induced or c-section births, ever) – was done in either a deliberate attempt at deception or obfuscation and/or knowing you were ignorant of these legal concepts but condesplaining them anyway?
Kel sue-preez’.
Your ignorance of the meaning of these terms does not make your arguments accurate via Retroactive Dumptyism. Try not making things up for a change.
You and that article can just fuck right off.
And yet, here you are reciting pro-life talking points.
Kroos Control @126:
(bodling mine)
This is from your link.
You’re the one arguing that fetuses have personhood, not me. I’m not arguing about the permissibility of killing newborns or people with disabilities (incidentally, I’m opposed to both because both groups of people possess the right to bodily autonomy).
And I hope you haven’t forgotten that the personhood status of a fetus is irrelevant to whether or not pregnant women should lose their human rights.
One of the definitions of ‘person’ discussed at my @122:
That you thought your link had a definition of ‘person’ that differs from those offered in my link shows you haven’t even read what you’re linking to. God you’re dishonest.
@Kroos, #120:
This is disingenuous at best. I know of **no** pro-life advocate that allows for exceptions for **any** medical condition that could lead to death…like, say, pregnancy.
Since they pick and choose which “medical conditions of the woman that could lead to death” qualify for their exceptions, and since they never pick “all”, they are inevitably choosing, statistically, to kill some women while hiding behind the statistical uncertainty of which individual women will die to avoid accountability.
Kroos:
So you don’t want women dead, you just want to diminish their humanity.
Bless your heart.
@Tony!
Cherry picking much? They go on to show the problems with the definition in the next line
That article is silly and unnecessary.
Honestly, it warms my heart when people trot out silly arguments to attack simple things like warnings about possible hurtful content.
Derek:
You don’t buy it? Why?
Whine all you want to, but bodily autonomy *is* a human right. Restricting someone’s bodily autonomy necessarily places restrictions on this right. Resticting someone’s bodily autonomy is saying your basic human rights are context dependent. Human rights are not up for debate.
(also, if you think fetii have rights, please list the qualities of personhood that they possess, as well as why fetii should have the special right to use a pregnant woman’s body when no other human being has the right to use anothers’ body against their wishes; this point has not been addressed by any of you forced birthers)
Kroos Control:
I have no interest in discussing hypotheticals with you or anyone else. This isn’t an exercise in phauxlisophical masturbation.
Kroos#117
Property =!= person, you piece of rancid dogshit.
Kroos Control:
If I squint just hard enough, I might concede you have a [pointless] point. However
it takes more than potential to be a person. You (and that forced birthers you link to) are looking for any justification to limit the human rights of women. Now the argument is even though fetuses don’t have rights bc they aren’t persons, they could be one day, so we should go ahead and deny women their human right to bodily autonomy now. Not a convincing argument. Women’s rights are not up for debate. BTW, are you wearing your MRA badge?
@Tony!
Hypotheticals are an important part of ethics in cases involving rights or crimes, so it not unusual to use them. But I’ll leave you.
(I think the view that people have inalienable rights is at odds with the moral views you expressed in the other thread. You should probably re-examine them.)
@Crip Dyke 132
Do you have better links for that? The first two seem to simply reporting legal protections for the rights (FWIW, the US has none). The third briefly defines what it is but doesn’t seek to justify it or discuss how to handle conflicting rights. The fourth seems to define bodily integrity as freedom from physical harm, not control over what happens to ones body.
Thalidomide is prescription only. How is she getting it against the advisement of her doctor?
It seems to me like current drug laws handle this just fine: the doctor cannot prescribe it without justification, and possession of a controlled substance is already illegal. There’s no reason to restrict the woman’s bodily autonomy, and no way to enforce such a law short of locking her up.
@Tony!
Are newborn infants persons with intrinsic worth? M. Flanagan just showed that they don’t meet your definition of person.
Funny story:
As I said above, I did get tanked during the 3rd trimester of my pregnancy– two days before I delivered, in fact. I had been having contractions that were only 5 minute for over 24 hours with little other progress at that point and was willing to do just about anything to help me relax. So I got bombed on cheap white wine.
Should I “feel ashamed” that I put my own comfort ahead of the fetus I was carrying?
Kroos:
The suffering that women endure because of assholes like you is more important to me that discussing hypotheticals that bear little relation to reality.
That would possibly be a worthwhile endeavour if I thought you were correct. Of course given that you don’t provide a link, nor do you mention what these “moral views you expressed” are, not only do I have no clue what views I should revisit, you’ve provided insufficient reason for me to revisit any of my views.
Kroos Control @147:
Wow, you can’t read for shit.
I never defined person. I haven’t attempted to. I’ve been trying to get YOU to define ‘person’. That’s the purpose behind my links to articles about personhood. I’ve given you a list of several qualities that others associate with personhood and asked you to list which of these qualities (if any) are possessed by fetii. Thus far you have failed to do so.
Also, I don’t believe any humans have *instrinsic* worth. We are granted rights as members of the human race, and that is what is under discussion. Infants have human rights (such as bodily autonomy–look the baby is not residing within a pregnant woman, so xe has rights).
Alexandra:
It took me longer to read this sentence than it took for me to say “no, you shouldn’t feel ashamed”.
Hypotheticals without reality checks are mental masturbation. Which means they aren’t meaningful in real life.
@qwints:
The links were sufficient for my purpose of showing that rights of bodily autonomy and integrity don’t encompass our ability to do and/or choose anything. otherwise we would need no other rights: freedom of speech, freedom from search and/or seizure, pre-trial rights, these would all be issues that affect one’s ability to do and/or choose anything.
Derek seems to think that “bodily autonomy” and “autonomy” are the same thing, as if people simply randomly stuck the word “bodily” in there.
As for better links – all rights are legal. All rights have political and social dimensions. Thus you get the best and most detailed discussions of these concepts in law journals and texts written for graduate students in law, poli-sci, or sociology/anthro.
Kant gives an early account of bodily integrity, but for him it is bound up with “dignity” and thus certain moral rights and rights of conscience that are not, speaking in the contemporary frame, rights of bodily autonomy and integrity. But the discussion frequently flows from Kant’s meta-ethics.
If I wanted to come up with sources with which I am satisfied, it would be a book.
Unfortunately, nearly every law journal article is about these rights in a specific context (abortion, say).
Are you just asking for a definition? Because then I would have to ask you what you mean.
A right isn’t a right unless there is a corresponding duty. These can only be created in law. So the definition would change from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.
If you want to know what’s encompassed in the theory of RoBAaI, there is significant disagreement (see, for example, Kroos). The best way to get a sense of that is to read different people advocating around the boundaries for what should be within (or without) RoBAaI. For that, reading multiple coherent perspectives is the only solution. Link 3 and 4 were that.
as for:
The first two were simply to make the point that rights are specific legal things, and that Derek is being an ass by thinking he can just unilaterally, and in ignorance, define things that have been through thousands of people to achieve the best definition possible (for that culture).
As for the US, it actually does have RoBAaI. It simply has no **positive constitutional on point**. RoBAaI in the US are codified through constitutional jurisprudence and through tort law.
The risk fetal alcohol syndrome arises from exposure in the first trimester.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-01/ace-rqt010812.php
It is quite unlikely that a pregnant woman “getting tanked” once or twice in the third trimester (or even more than that) recreationally would do anything of substantial harm or permanence to her fetus.
And since alcoholism is a disease, and an alcoholic woman actually isn’t able to choose not to drink in the same manner that a non-alcoholic person can, it is not ethically appropriate to the ethicality of “getting tanked” in that context at all. One could perhaps talk about the ethicality of refusing treatment for alcoholism (assuming such treatment is even available to be chosen). Ethical judgment can only be made on behaviour freely chosen without constraint. An alcoholic woman drinking during pregnancy deserves no more blame than a non-alcoholic woman forced to drink during pregnancy at gunpoint.
Bloviating asshat sez:
Look up the case of Savita Halappanavar.
I fucking dare you to repeat that lie.
1. Hypotheticals are only valid when they are constructed such that they actually can apply back to reality. Hypotheticals that cannot be tied back to reality are useless.
2. When hypotheticals are used in a group discussion, all participants in said discussion must consent to the use of the hypotheticals and agree on the baseline concept of their utility. When such agreement does not exist, then bringing up hypotheticals unilaterally is a waste of time, and also an act of jerkwad aggression. Particularly when the view has already been expressed that others participating in the discussion do NOT see the utility or want to discuss those hypotheticals.
3. A dishonestly constructed hypothetical, such as pretty much all of the ones you seem capable of thinking up, is still a dishonest and invalid line of argument irrespective of whether hypotheticals in general are considered admissible.
CERTAIN exceptions. CERTAIN medical conditions.
By implication then that means there are other cases and medical exceptions that are NOT exceptions even when they could lead to death.
And in the bureaucratic fubar that delinates which conditions are exceptional and which are not, time is lost and wasted on the determination. Time which would be better used actually dealing with those medical situations as they arrive.
Time in which Savita Halappanavar’s situation changed from one where it was not, apparently, a certain exception, to one where it was, except by the time that happened it was too late to do anything for her.
And she is not by any means alone.
And therein lies the gross immorality and wanton cruelty of having “certain” exceptions imposed by external authority.
No exceptions beyond that which the expert opinion of the medical professionals involved determines to be appropriate, in conjunction with the patient’s exercise of her right to informed consent, is the only ethically acceptable scenario here.
Derek:
No, you aren’t pro-choice. You’re yet another doucheweasel, dragging in a constantly debunked chestnut, aimed at making women feel less than human, in subservience to an embryo for daring to have sex, why it’s awful, being slutty and having the ability to suffer no consequence! Oh me oh my.
Everything you’ve dropped into this thread is bullshit based on your own personal ickometer. There’s a way to deal with oh, icky! syndrome, Derek – if you get pregnant, don’t get an abortion. There, that’s all settled. Of course, you can’t get pregnant, which is mighty convenient for you, isn’t it?
If you were an honest interlocutor, you’d simply go and read the previous abortion threads, which go over every stupid bit of shit you’ve dropped, in agonizing detail. Then perhaps you’d figure out that living, breathing women with lives, loves, relationships and responsibilities should be accorded full human status, and any medical decision a woman might make is simply none of your fucking business, in spite of your personal ickometer readings.
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2014/03/08/theres-a-secular-argument-for-wearing-underpants-on-your-head-so/ (1,038 comments)
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2014/03/12/an-atheist-can-be-pro-life-only-by-lying-about-the-science/ (394 comments)
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2014/03/14/dont-tell-people-how-to-feel-about-abortion/ (207 comments)
Now, please shut the fuck up, stop telling women they should have a sense of shame, and go read. You might actually learn something, like, oh, us women do think we are actual, full human beings with the same rights you get to enjoy.
No they don’t. They take absolute glee in denying a woman’s right to autonomy, all the way to death. Right next door to me, in SD, a bill to provide an exemption for abortion in the case of the woman’s health or threat to life was not passed. The message was crystal clear: we don’t give a shit if you die, you’re just an incubator, no one cares about you.
Derek and Kroos Control:
At what point during a pregnancy is a woman no longer a full human being entitled to human rights?
Ogvorbis
Was she ever a full human being entitled to human rights?
@Crip Dyke, 153. Thanks!
@Tony!
People were putting all kinds of hypotheticals to me about violinists and organ donations in the other threads. Its like only one side is allowed to use hypotheticals.
Kroos, you do not get to use lies.
Except our hypotheticals were to the point. Yours aren’t. They are like your questions, leading toward your presuppositional fuckwittery.
If you were honest with your hypotheticals, and not thalidomide wanking fuckwittery, you might not be reviled for using them.
Stick to facts. But then, reality has a liberal bias.
“It seems to me like current drug laws handle this just fine: the doctor cannot prescribe it without justification, and possession of a controlled substance is already illegal.”
Your hypothetical is rejected (by me at least) because your hypothetical has no bearing on the actual discussion.
So many wasted words and electrons.
There is one absolute fact: a person’s body is theirs to do with as they see fit, regardless of gender or condition, and theirs alone. No one else gets a vote.
Ahhhh, for a perfect world with no second class citizens.
Hearty thanks to all the good people arguing on the side of absolute autonomy. However, sigh, those with perceived privilege will never ever give up. It has to do with power and nothing else, especially not ethics.
Be well.
More dishonesty from pathetic liar KC.
All hypotheticals posed to KC were made in DIRECT response to his own dishonest hypotheticals. Their primary intent was to demonstrate the level of dishonesty and wrongheaded thinking in KC’s hypotheticals.
If KC had not started with dishonest hypotheticals, there would have been no need or impetus to bring up honest hypotheticals to counter them.
Just like with every other dishonest ploy he has tried, he introduces it, and when it is turned back on him, he cries like the intellectual coward that he is.
And KC, since you appear to feel oh so persecuted and put upon here, you may leave and not come back at any time.
We will neither miss nor note your absence.
Of course this isn’t relevant. Any more than the fact that no doctor would hook me up to a violinist suddenly defeats the violinist analogy. Replace the drug with any other drug that can cause birth defects if you con’t wrap your head around it. The question is the same.
Wonder why Kroos is bothering to even argue because his side (in the US) has slowly been winning. Through the use of terrorism, murders and trap laws; access to abortions have been limited.
Only in your delusional mind. Drugs have nothing to do with bodily autonomy, unless one is forced to take said drug. And since a fetus is isn’t truly human, it doesn’t count in your fuckwittery either. Until you show the fetus has more rights with solid and conclusive real evidence, not theological wanking. Which we have been waiting for….
Kroos Control: organ donations are not hypotheticals. They happen in real life. The point in bringing them up is to point out that you and the rest of your ilk fail to recognize that forcing women to keep fetuses against their wishes is no different wrt to bodily autonomy than forcing someone to provide life support for the violinist. You would not (I assume) force anyone to save the life of the violinist so why are you forcing women to save the lives of fetuses?
A better version of that analogy
@Tony!
There was a point to my analogy too if you’d answer it.
People don’t get hooked up to violinists in real life either.
I was illustrating the hypochrisy of you rejection.
Kroos Control:
There are other drugs available to prevent nausea and vomiting. Quite effective drugs.
At what point during a pregnancy does a woman cease to be a full human being entitled to all human rights?
@Kroos Control #175
I deny the possibility of a woman who wants to give birth to a child EVER doing such a thing. Show us an actual woman who did this, otherwise take your goddam straw-woman and FUCK OFF AND DIE!
I present you with the crux of the anti-choice argument in template form:
Bodily autonomy is already limited because $(reasons), therefore abortion should be restricted because $(bullshit_justifications).
I see that Kroos would rather deal with hypothetical cases instead of dealing with the reality that women face.
Typical and predictable.
Does not want to acknowledge how terrorists like The Army Of God and murderers like Scott Roeder have curtailed access to abortion. Much rather look at the imagined bad behavior of women.
Kroos Control:
You believe women should be forced to carry a pregnancy to term. That violates her bodily autonomy. This belief gives fetii rights no other person has.
The violinist analogy is used to show that no one can be compelled to use their body to save the life of another.
Neither you nor any of your links has addressed the fact that no human being has the right to the use of anothers’ body. When are you going to address this point (and Ogvorbis’ question too)?
Kroos Control
Please answer Ogvorbis’s question.
At what point during a pregnancy does a woman cease to be a full human being entitled to all human rights?
Which brings up the question of whether or not such substances should be controlled, not whether pregnant woman should be punished for taking them.
1) No.
2) Yes.
Interestingly, this isn’t an argument against abortion; its an argument for self sacrifice during a pregnancy one intends to carry to term.
Well, sex can lead to pregnancy. People (women) that engage in sexual activity should be prepared to bear the responsibility (child).
@Kroos Control:
I haven’t been following you too closely (wouldn’t want to step in any of the shit you continually cough up), but I’m still unaware as to whether or not you’ve answered my question:
What is to be done if multiple methods of contraception have failed? Is it right to force a woman to carry a fetus to term if she and her partner made every effort to prevent conception and implantation?
Which, incidentally, is another reason this hypothetical does not apply.
Kroos: you do get that falsely equating abortion with murder has repeatedly been a justification for murder and assault, right? Do you think Dr. Tiller’s killer was justified?
KC the pathetic sinks ever deeper into his fetid hole of intellectual dishonesty.
IF a qualified MD actually recommended thalidomide as a option for the woman, then she DOES have the right to choose to take it.
Thalidomide, incidentally, is a legitimate chemotherapy for some kinds of tumors. If a pregnant woman had that kind of tumor, it is entirely possible that thalidomide would be presented to her as one option of treatment she could choose. (It is likely that a therapeutic abortion would also be recommended in that situation since not just thalidomide, but all forms of chemotherapy are pretty terrible for fetuses. This would fall squarely into the ‘preserving the life of the woman’ box.)
For simple nausea, however, there are many, many therapeutic options aside from Thalidomide. So NO QUALIFIED MEDICAL PROFESSIONAL would ever recommend it for that indication. And WE HAVE ALREADY DISCUSSED IN DETAIL analogous situations. The right to bodily autonomy when concerning medical procedures does not grant ANYONE the right to choose therapies not recommended by a health professional if such therapy requires administration by a health professional. You cannot walk into a clinic and demand an orthopedic surgeon amputate your leg. This is directly analogous to the question of induced birth for healthy late third trimester pregnancy termination. Just as in that case a medical professional would recommend induced birth and not make available as an option a destructive abortion, and thus the woman would not have the opportunity to even choose that abortion, so it is here.
This is yet another dishonest ridiculous hypothetical with no bearing on the practical reality on the ground.
Ogvorbis – On a completely different topic, can you recommend any books or websites that would have information on trains and train stations in Switzerland and Germany during the 1920s and 1930s? (It’s for one of my husband’s novels.) Thank you.
If the physician who refused to provide it did so for LEGITIMATE medical reasons, then she is in the wrong. If there were in fact legitimate medical reasons to administer thalidomide (ie it is one of those cancer situations where thalidomide is a proper treatment) and the physician refused because of his or her own personal beliefs about the sanctity of fetuses, then the woman would NOT be in the wrong.
Whether she is or is not in the wrong thus has NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with the actual taking of the thalidomide itself, or the birth defects that might be caused by it. It has EVERYTHING to do with whether or not the thalidomide was MEDICALLY INDICATED or not.
Incidentally, if a woman has a condition that requires taking thalidomide, she is usually given the option to therapeutically abort. If she chose not to do that, and to carry her WANTED pregnancy to term, on the grounds that at life for a WANTED child with no arms, if provided a loving family home and appropriate medical care to manage the disability, is in fact a life worth living and a life worth giving to a child, then she is perfectly entitled to make that choice.
And I suspect your pathetic hypocritical ass would applaud any woman who made that choice.
It is little different from women choosing to keep rather than abort Down Syndrome fetuses.
And Amphiox’s points aren’t hypotheticals. Health professionals HAVE place their personal beliefs over patient’s rights and safety when it comes to abortion because of pro-life nonsense.
And the answer would also be the same regardless of the drug.
And the level of dishonesty of the hypothetical would also be the same.
For the vast majority of ALL of these drugs, a legitimate medical need to use them is considered one of the INDICATIONS FOR RECOMMENDING A THERAPEUTIC ABORTION.
Why even choose the emotionally loaded, historically encumbered example of thalidomide? The deliberate dishonest association made between obtaining and abortion and medical malpractice/criminal activity is noted, and deemed typical of KC’s pathetically transparent MO.
An HONEST and INFORMED debater would not have used thalidomide as a “hypothetical”. He or she would have used something emotionally neutral, like accutane.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isotretinoin
Accutane is actually the example used right after thalidomide in Kroos’ source.
@ Daz, #97
I find the legal prohibitions against suicide odd. You can’t punish a successful suicide. And if someone is so ill or unhappy or desperate that they actually make a suicide attempt, what would be the point of punishing them? Criminalization seems bizarre to me, and I don’t understand how it could help anything. The only thing I’d be worried about, in terms of legal regulation of suicide attempts, is how the society should determine the best means of bearing the costs of an attempt that results in catastrophic failure — a failed attempt that results in severe and perhaps permanent injury. In a universal health care system, the costs of caring for disabled people is shared society-wide. Nothing further in terms of regulation of suicide attempts would be necessary, would it?
As to using drugs or other subtances, or participating in dangerous activities, I can see imposing some regulations about doing so carefully, i.e., in such a way that it doesn’t hurt OTHER people. That is, you have the bodily autonomy to decide to drink alcohol or use drugs, but if you do, then don’t drive (you can hurt others) or use dangerous machinery (you can hurt others) or do an activity where all your faculties are required, such as perform medical surgery or something (you could hurt others).
@ Daz continuing, #97
Well said. It’s congruent with her bodily autonomy, not opposed to it.
If you want the source of those laws, just ask KC and his good old divine command theory.
So then ignorance of accutane cannot be KC’s excuse for not using it in his hypothetical?
@ Kroos Control #126
The woman taking a substance during pregnance IS an exercise of bodily autonomy. I’m not sure what you mean by a “valid” exercise of bodily autonomy. What makes a particular exercise of bodily autonomy “valid” or “invalid” in your view? i.e., please define “valid” and what it adds, if anything, to your question.
Further:
What “restrictions” do you think should be put in place?
And:
What is it that you envision should happen, to the woman and to the baby born with some injury/disability/defect? N.B., in your hypothetical, birth has happened and there are, after the birth, two separate persons. There is no longer a fetus. What do you think should happen to each of these born persons?
Hekuni Cat:
I will do some research and get back to you. Nothing off the top of my head, sorry.
@Kroos Control
Why is “greatest” synonymous with “good”? Why is “greatest” not synonymous with “evil”? How about neither? The ontological argument is complete, utter bullshit.
How did you determine that Jesus and Jesus’s father of the Christian bible is the good one, and Satan is the evil one?
…
@Kroos Control
Sorry. I invented it myself. It seems pretty straightforward to someone rules-lawyering about first causes, beginning, and infinite lengths of time, but allowing infinite divisibility of finite lengths of time. (Of course, time itself might be quantized. I don’t know.)
Also, you have a very curious definition of “began to exist” if something can “begin to exist” without having a “beginning”. Alternatively, you have a very curious definition of “beginning” if it’s not a precise moment of time, and instead it’s an interval of time. In short, I think this still destroys your arguments.
…
@Kroos Control
First, I think you tried to say as much, but still me note explicitly that this quote is not you. This is from a book, “The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology”, edited by William Lane Craig (and others). Just want to make that clear.
About PSR. I assume the quote is referencing this:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/sufficient-reason/
I suspect we’ll be arguing about the specifics later. At first glance, it looks to be entirely bullshit. See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%BCnchhausen_trilemma
All you need to grant me is the use of basic logic and math, and that we should formalize our beliefs and justifications in such a way that allows us to model our beliefs and justifications as nodes and edges in a directed graph. Once I have that, Münchhausen trilemma follows trivially, and thus the Principle Of Sufficient Reason is bullshit. (Or you allow circular justifications which is bullshit. Or you allow endless regresses of justifications which is bullshit.) There is no fourth option. PSR on this straightforward reading is simply wrong.
However, I think that Craig has a different understanding of PSR. I notice that the above quote of William Lane Craig uses an interesting phrase: “Hence, if the PSR is false of some contingent fact […]”. It seems as if Craig understands PSR to not apply to “necessary” propositions. That fundamentally changes things.
What is a “necessary” proposition? A proposition which lacks a “sufficient reason”. Sounds like an axiom to me. As soon as you weaken PSR as Craig does, the Münchhausen trilemma no longer applies. It seems that Craig has taken the axiomatic option of the Münchhausen trilemma. I also take the axiomatic option of the Münchhausen trilemma.
PS: Let me take a moment to note that this approach doesn’t really fit the “spirit” of PSR as I understand it, and it’s borderline dishonest, or at least confusing, to use PSR to describe this philosophy. Rather than use the term “PSR” with a seemingly purposefully obfuscated addendum that there are some “necessary” propositions (e.g. axioms) and PSR does not apply to those “necessary” propositions, it is far more clear – and thus more honest – to use the terms “axiom” and “axiomatic framework”.
So, with this understanding in place, let’s start taking the quote apart piece by piece.
The critical sentence is:
“Thus, we cannot even say that violations of the PSR are improbable if the PSR is false.”
First, let’s talk Bayesian vs Frequentist terminology. As far as I can tell, Frequentists prefer to use the term “confidence” when describing how … confident … they feel that a particular belief is true, and Bayesianists like to use the term “probability” to describe the same thing. (It’s a rather silly argument IMHO.) Funnily enough, I think “improbable” here is neither Frequentist nor Bayesian. I think its intended meaning is a third option: “rare”. I think the intended reading is:
Thus, if there is some ‘contingent’ fact without explanation or cause (e.g. if PSR is false), then we cannot have confidence about the relative population of facts with explanations and causes vs the population of facts without explanations or causes.
This is a mighty big claim.
It’s trying to do a reductio ad absurdum. It assumes that we should have confidence that most things in our everyday life shuold have explanations and causes, and thus anything that contradicts that is an absurd conclusion. It then tries to show that throwing out the PSR leads to that absurd conclusion. That’s what the sentence (and whole quote) is trying to do.
I don’t know if that conclusion is absurd in the sense that I cannot imagine a world where it is true. However, I do think that it is false, and thus I recognize it as absurd for the purpose of a reductio ad absurdum. I do happen to think that science works quite well on everything in our everyday life.
That sentence has the word “thus”. Thus the sentence purports that it follows logically from what was just said, so let’s look at that previous sentence:
“Hence, if the PSR is false of some contingent fact, no objective probability attaches to the fact.”
Let’s do a quick rewrite:
If there is some ‘contingent’ fact without explanation or cause, then no objective probability attaches to the fact.
Now we can see that this sentence is nonsensical. It refers to “contingent facts without explanation or cause”, which is a contradiction of terms. The premise of the if-statement can never be true, and thus this statement is vacuously true. It is empty of meaning. Thus I have taken down your entire quote.
I’d like to go further, but the text is too confused and ambiguous to make further sense of. Trust me – I’ve tried.
What I can do is respond to the spirit as best I can determine:
Science is about finding causes and explanations. Those are just equivalent words for patterns and models. It’s all about that. I do not need that everything has a cause to discover that something has a cause, and what that something is.
I don’t need a justication for using science. If you don’t like that answer, tough. This is the same move that Craig makes whenever he posits that something is a necessary fact. It’s different terminology for the same philosophical concepts. I also don’t like some things which Craig tries to put into the “necessary” category, such as a timeless cause. My only response to that is “I do not accept your axiom.” You can also play that card on me, that you do not accept my axiom of science. If so, we’re simply at a standstill. I take rationality itself (including science) as properly basic. You take the explanation of rationality (e.g. god) as properly basic. That is our standstill.
All I can do is persuasion under the assumption that you actually already agree with me, but are confused. To that end, I will note that your god hypothesis seems like an extra assumption which you purport does a whole lot more. It’s quite inelegant, unparsimonious, falls afoul of Occam’s Razor, and so forth.
@consciousness razor in 746 of previous Thunderdome
So, you’re not going to engage with me honestly? All you did was score some cheap rhetorical points rather than address any of the several substantive point I actually made.
Oh wait, you made another post.
Yes, Richard Carrier is. In the exchange I had with him on his blog, that is exactly what he is promoting, without ambiguity. It is exceedingly clear. Do I need a link to it?
It’s just that he believes that a properly selfish person who takes into account all of his own personal desires will also do good by other people in every situation, even really contrived ones. Really. That’s Richard Carrier’s position. I think it’s stupid, and evil, but meh. I hope he’s just confused rather than evil.
I hoped it was clear from context. With regards to morality, I do hold to Sam Harris’s position. I fail to see what “realism” has to do with this. Could you be more specific please as to a point which I hold which you think Sam Harris does not? I’m not sure what you’re talking about.
And yet again, you do not make any substantive points, and instead merely give a blanket “nope, you’re wrong”. Can you please engage honestly and constructively and actually make some actual goddamn points? I ask again, how does “hypothetical imperative” bridge the is-ought gap? What is an example of a “hypothetical imperative”? Could you give me a concrete specific example of bridging the is-ought gap please? Could you also respond to my observation that Foot (whom Richard Carrier cites) seems to be all about arguing that morality is not justifiable (e.g. not categorical imperatives), and that we should focus on persuasion for voluntary cooperation for morality (e.g. hypothetical imperatives).
Still so eager to dream up hypotheticals that single out women for special restrictions. Disgusting.
Hypothetically lets say you decided to work late against the advisement of your doctor. Then in your sleep deprived state you caused a traffic accident, in which you were not injured, but in which a pregnant women sustained an injury that resulted in her baby being born with some defect. Would that have been a valid exercise of YOUR bodily autonomy? Or should there have been some restriction on when you are allowed to sleep/stay awake when it can affect the life of a born child. (I note again the dishonest wording of “unborn child”)
(When you actually look at the relative risks of most teratogenic substances to cause harm to fetuses on a per exposure basis, you will realize that the sleep deprivation-accident-fetal injury chain is roughly equivalent in analogous probability)
Now, again hypothetically, let us posit that we have a regime that DOES wish to directly restrict pregnant women’s autonomy in ingesting potentially harmful substances. How, hypothetically, shall they enforce this prohibition? Shall they put all pregnant women in house arrest, with all substances going in and out monitored? Shall they institute mandatory random blood, urine, and stomach content tests to ensure compliance? What potentially harmful substances shall they put on their prohibited list? Shall pregnant women have a daily water ration limit since water intoxication is possibly harmful to the fetus?
Suppose, hypothetically, this regime instead decides to just institute punitive measures against women rather than try active enforcement. Suppose this is not a police state and they remain bound by rule of law. If a woman gives birth to a baby with a defect, how would they PROVE legally that the defect was caused by a substance ingested by the mother rather than an unfortunate stochastic event? Given that the dose/exposure/effects of these things are all probabilistic? Shall you also be prosecuting miscarriages?
When it comes to regulations that are in practice unenforceable, hypotheticals about restrictions are nothing but pointless wankery. One might as well discuss applying a tax to air.
(These same considerations apply to any form of regulation. Even things which some might consider clearlt beneficial, like mandatory vaccination. There is nothing to discuss unless you can first demonstrate that the regulation is enforceable. Otherwise all you do is institute oppressive measures and potentially alienate the very people whose voluntary compliance you need and could have gotten with persuasion instead of force, and do no good whatsoever.)
@Amphiox
As for mandatory vaccinations, it’s my understanding that at least 1 US state does have mandatory vaccinations for all children. It’s done as a tag-along with the schooling requirement, and home schooling does not get out of it, and there isn’t a religious waiver either. Again, IIRC.
@EnlightenmentLiberal
It seems innately plausible to me that it is greater to be morally perfect than morally imperfect.
I’m not really making an ontological argument , I’m just giving an ontology of God , the way we can give an ontology of any object that might exist. To be more detailed I’ll go with Plantiga’s ontology that maximal excellence to entails such excellent-making properties as omniscience, omnipotence, and moral perfection.
This just say that IF God exists he would be those things. It doesn’t prove he actually exists.
To make our intuitions regarding this clearer , change the function so it starts by t >2 (and it describes the existence of some other object).We can’t pinpoint teh beginning , but would you say it began?
If we were standing around watching the thing at t=1 it would be not there one second and there the other. Couldn’t we plausible say it began since there is a first finite interval.
Sorry. I should have explained my quotation more. It is from the Blackwell companion to natural theology (excellent book though its difficult to read sometimes). Its not by Craig though. Its from this chapter by Alexander Pruss , where he defends a version of Leibiniz’s PSR and Leibiniz’s Cosmological argument. he gives a couple good arguments for the PSR. I thought it was a really neat argument so I quoted it . (Pruss’ whole paper is on his Baylor university page I think)
Its against your affirmation that something can come from nothing.
If we accept that some states or things can come about from nothing and with no explanation, then it is possible false perceptual states would come about from nothing and with no explanation. We can attack probabilities to certain events (like radioactive decay) , because they are explained by certain physical laws and states/conditions. These properties allow us to say that eg there’s a 50% chance the atom will decay within its half life. However if certain states can’t be explained there’s no probability regarding whether it will bring false perceptual states . All your perceptual states could be false and you could not even say that it was improbable all your perceptual states are false.
If this was true , we would have to say we cannot know any empirical truths. However we do know empirical truths , so we have to affirm the PSR.
According to wikipedia, all states allow medical exemptions, and all states but West Virginia and Mississippi allow for some form of conscientious exemptions (i.e. exemptions for those strongly opposed, or forbidden by religion).
I remember almost getting kicked out of school for not having my vaccines in order. I’ve been told Ontario allows conscientious objections, but I just went ahead and got mine. It was easier and free, after all.
Since we were debating morality I might post this here.
You guys ever heard of a series call “Why intellectuals laugh at atheists”? Its basically a series where the editor takes clips of prominent atheist speakers saying absurd and illogical things so we can laugh at them Its a really funny concept.
In the latest on some atheist named David Silverman gets owned by Christian Intellectual Dr. Frank Turek in debate about morality. He ends up admitting there is no way to morally condemn Nazis objectively.
Here. lololol
You mean the Nazi’s who were objectively right per their moral perception?
Links broken.
1) True.
2) True.
3) Depends on how one defines “know”; I suspect you’re conflating it with certainty.* That’s a valid definition, but not the only one.
4) Do you really not see the problem here? Accepting that our perceptions may be false, empiricism cannot produce certainty.* Thus, empirical “truths” is a contradiction.
*Note: if you don’t mean certainty, your argument has no merit.
@EnlightenedLiberal
if you say , this your whole argument about the universe coming to be with no cause and no explanation falls flat on its face. The universe would have to have some kind of cause/explanation.
Sorry. Here’s the link to why intellectuals laugh at atheists
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19y2YJMa_NA&list=PLcuzrJ8ODJOjTIT6ROkjh9i4kEoUl_ToA&index=20
lol
@ Kroos Control #205
Not sure I trust your description of who gets “owned” by whom in a debate, but what you’ve said is just semantics, and not a laughable mistake. You haven’t established that there IS any such thing as “objective” morality. In the absence of any “objective” morality, it’s not possible to say anything “objectively” about morals. That’s not a mistake, that’s just a fact. But that doesn’t mean that Nazis can’t be condemned inter-subjectively. You refuse to acknowledge any state of human morality beyond “absolute” and inaccessible “objective” morals versus moral chaos.
When we recognize that we are all human beings, and all included in the “in-group” of humanity, and that we all have interconnections and interdependence, and we understand cooperation, solidarity, empathy, kindness, etc., then it’s perfectly possible to condemn Nazism even if there aren’t any “objective” morals.
Under the kind of “objective” morals you propose, which come from outside humanity and which we have difficulty discerning, literally ANYTHING can be “objectively” moral. Remember, it’s the God of the Bible (and the Bible’s authors) and William Lane Craig — YOUR heroes — who say that it is “objectively” moral to commit genocide (i.e., act like Nazis). You are the one defending the idea that, if God says so, it’s “objectively” moral, no matter what it is, even if it’s genocide or Nazism. So you have no basis to point and laugh at anyone.
In addition, your description of the site, “Why intellectuals laugh at atheists,” as consisting of “taking clips of prominent atheists” strongly suggests that the clips may be edited to make what’s being said *look* silly, when in fact, in context, what was said wasn’t silly at all. I.e., quotemining. Mind you, no one is immune from saying silly things.
For those who don’t feel like watching that video, the argument put forth is nothing but an argument from consequences: “If there is no objective morality, we cannot objectively condemn the Nazi’s.” Despite how much people want the Nazi’s to be objectively condemnable, that want does not establish objective morality.
@jacob Schmidt
You would not have certainty , but its more radical that that.
I don’t have certainty , but I can at least say its is highly probable that X is true.
If there no explanation , there’s no probability , so you can’t even claim you think it is probable that X is true
@Kroos
Why is good morally perfect? Why is evil not morally perfect?
Is blue perfect? Or is red perfect? Neither?
The christian god has a name, Jesus. Why not Bob? Is Jesus a perfect name and Bob is not a perfect name? Why can’t Bob be the perfect name?
So, it seems that god’s favorite color and god’s name are not constrained by “perfection”. I fail to see why good vs evil is any different. No argument has yet to be presented besides “because I say so”.
Ah, I see. It’s attacking human reason. Thank you for the clarification. It’s almost like Plantinga’s retarded arguments. The key phrase is here: “If we accept that some states or things can come about from nothing and with no explanation, then it is possible false perceptual states would come about from nothing and with no explanation.” This is wrong. It rests on a confusion over terms and a “plausible, thus likely” fallacy.
The first problem is on the word “possible”. There are (at least?) two distinct meanings of possible in this context. The first meaning of “possible” is what we might call epistemic possibility. It’s the idea that I can entertain the idea that the world might be like that, although I do not know if the world is like that. The second meaning of “possible” is a measure of the confidence that we have about a particular belief (Frequentist terminology). For example, I can entertain the idea that gravity operates according to a inverse-cube law at planetary differences. Ther’s nothing illogical nor incoherent about that. It is epistemically possible. However, it’s also impossible in the sense that I have a very high degree of confidence that the world is not like that (due to the available evidence).
I accept as epistemically possible that some states or things can come about from nothing and with no explanation. I also accept as epistemically possible that human perceptions can come about uncaused. I can even accept as plausible or likely that universe itself came about uncaused. (I do not go that far in practice.) However, even then, it does not follow that I must accept that it’s possible that human perceptions can come about uncaused in the sense that it’s possible to roll a six-sided die (d6) and get a 7. According to the known evidence and known accurate models of reality, I have a very high degree of confidence that it’s impossible to roll a 7 on a d6. It may well also be impossible for human perceptions to come about uncaused while the universe is uncaused.
In other words, accepting that some things may be uncaused does not force me to accept that some of my perception may be uncaused.
What justification do I have that my perception is mostly caused? That I’m not at the mercy of a malicious demon who manipulates my senses in order to thwart my rationality? I suppose I have to fiat my way out of this one with an axiom. It’s closely related to my other axiom of “no Last Thursdayism”.
Note that I do not go so far as to deny the brain in a vat scenario, aka The Matrix. Whether I’m in The Matrix or not does not change the fact that I tomorrow I must acquire (virtual) food in order to sate my very-real hunger. I just need to go far enough that I may rationally employ science to achieve my desired goals, and for that, whether I’m in The Matrix is irrelevant. I just need to be guaranteed that there isn’t a demon who will purposefully change the rules in order to thwart every expectation that I form. (Assuming such a possibility is even coherent. Approximations are, but I don’t know if “thwarting every expectation” is logically possible. I might eventually form an expectation that my other expectations will be thwarted. I haven’t thought about this enough.)
The thing is, PSR doesn’t help you here. You’re stuck in a similar situation to me. Even with PSR, you also may be vulnerable to a malicious demon who messes with your senses. So, I have to fiat axiom my way out of this, and I don’t see how you can do any better.
PS: So, you’re in IT? Not a fan of Jenkins? I’m indifferent there, but man do I hate Maven which seems to be the new thing of the last few years.
@ Amphiox #200
your quoted matter is my edited restatement of Kroos Control’s hypothetical, not a new statement by him/her. I forgot to catch the “fetus/unborn child” part, or I would have made my editorial revision simply say “born child” — because the end result of his hypothetical is that there is an eventual birth. I want to ask KC about the hypothetical, i.e., what he thinks should happen or be the consequence for the woman and the born child, or what “restrictions” he thinks should be put in place, and to what end.
We aren’t debating. You are preaching fuckwittery, and being refuted with real evidence. You lose.
You’re confused, deary. Are you certain of that probability? If not, then possible sources of error are not a problem. If possible error is not a problem, then PSR need to be affirmed.
Hypothetically? In the real world, a 16-year-old girl (who is black, natch) is being prosecuted for “depraved heart murder” because her fetus was stillborn. Doctors said it was likely because of the umbilical cord being wrapped around her fetus’ neck, but when the medical examiner found traces of cocaine in the woman’s blood, authorities decided to prosecute.
http://www.alternet.org/gender/terrifying-precedent-woman-be-tried-murder-giving-birth-stillborn-when-she-was-16
Fuck each and every one of you useless pontificators.
KC, in a debate, the possibility you are wrong is there. Provide evidence you will recant your imaginary deity if real and conclusive physical evidence isn’t found for it. That only requires honesty and integrity on your part to admit you have no evidence, and need to change your thinking…..
The “hypothetically” I was referring to was in Amphiox’s #201, and the previous line of questioning about ingested substances during pregnancy.
@Kroos
Also, meh. I realize that you probably won’t like my choice of words and arguments. I was implicitly begging the question I think at several points. Let me try it this way. I think it’s better.
You fiat the principle of sufficient reason, and then try to argue that science and the rest follows.
I simply fiat that I should be rationality, that I should use science, that I will be rational, and that will use science. I fiat that science works (itself a dubious phrasing). It’s not quite a value and it’s not quite a factual claim. It’s laying out a framework wherein I can talk about facts and values. Without this framework, I don’t understand facts and values.
You are trying to argue that by default its epistemically possible that my perceptions are random and uncaused and that science “will not work”. You say that PSR solves this problem. It does. I think it’s too strong. I think that your fiat axiom of PSR is too strong. I’d prefer a weaker fiat axiom, like “rationality works – most of the time”, or “science works – most of the time”. I don’t see the need to go all the way to “everything is in principle has a cause”. That seems far too extreme for my starting fiat axiom. Maybe I’ll conclude that from the evidence, but I won’t assume that.
Further @ Amphiox #200
In my mind, that doesn’t have much to do with a person’s exercise of bodily autonomy. People who behave unreasonably, and who then cause injury to other people, may be liable for that injury. Driving drunk, or while too tired, or too fast, or with lapses of attention, may cause traffic accidents which injure others. In this hypothetical, the driver owed the duty to the woman to take due care for others, and to behave reasonably; breach of that duty is “negligence” and may result in liability to pay for medical treatment, pain and suffering, lost wages, or other elements of damage to the injured victim. In this hypo, the damage includes injury to an eventually-born child. So the negligent driver is liable also for the injury caused to that victim too.
@ Jacob Schmidt #210
I suspected as much.
Its not. Its affirming the fact that contingent things is a fundamental part of reason. You are attacking reason when you say you believe things could come to be from nothing without an explanation or cause.
What basis do you make the arbitrary distinction that some contingent facts/states have an explanation and some do not? This is very ad hoc.
Pruss never makes this fallacy . He says if there’s no explanation , there’s no probability. So you can’t possibly affirm it is improbable or probable.
correction : the fact that contingent things have an explanation is a fundamental part of reason
I’m not in IT. I’m an engineering student.
“Now we can see that this sentence is nonsensical. It refers to “contingent facts without explanation or cause”, which is a contradiction of terms.”
This was addressed, and clearly.
@Amphiox
I’m all for restrictions to prevent inattentive driving or drunk driving
@maddog1129
Wait isn’t the foetus just a cluster of cells with no personhood in your view? Why would we care if this nonsentient bundle of cells was damaged?
I addressed this as well. Its inconsistent with his other positions.
Ah, that explains 1) the conservatism, and 2), the lack of knowledge of the scientific method to realize you belief in phantasms, and not evidence.,… I know some engineers. A few are smart enough to realize their limitations, and that they need to listen to experts, not their guts. That doesn’t include you.
1) No you didn’t;
2) No it isn’t;
I would take it as a kindness if you didn’t insult me, Nerd.
@Jacob Schmidt
Its not an argument from consequences. He did not appeal to any consequences.
1)If objective morality does not exist , the Nazis were not objectively wrong
2) The Nazis were objectively wrong*
3)Objective morality does exist
Its logically valid and not fallacious
* we all perceive that they were wrong , aside from those dumb atheists we’re laughing at.
Why should I insult you, if you show the ability to think beyond a narrow range of presuppositions, and that you do listen to scientists on how the science behind your job should go, or other experts? Not all engineers are arrogant folks who think they know everything. I listen to PZ on biology, and the chemical engineers at work on processes need to operate at scale. But I do check that the chemistry is right. Trust, but verify….
@maddog1129
No there’s no quotemining. The atheists just make really bad arguments.
Other than “If objective morality exists, we can’t objectively condemn the Nazis.”
Bahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahhaha
You forgot about, y’know, the literal millions of Nazis and Nazi supporters, both past and present.
Amusingly, your argument here is nothing more than David Silverman’s argument.
Just a light-hearted way of saying I’m an engineering student; I meant no harshness behind it.
@ Kroos Control #225
What kinds of “restrictions” do you have in mind?
I’m not sure you remember the hypothetical correctly. Here’s what the hypothetical states:
Note the part where the baby is born. That baby was injured by the inattentive/tired negligent driver too. That’s quite different from a “cluster of cells.” No “cluster of cells” was injured (how could you tell, if it were?); a born baby was injured.
Now, as to YOUR hypothetical, you will note that yours also includes a born baby
Can you enlighten me, please?
Kroos:
Yes Christian Intellectual Frank Turek . The word “oxymoron” comes to mind.
I would be concerned if that criticism was coming from someone who wasn’t such a demonstrable failure.
@maddog1129
So if someone damages a foetus in utero , are you saying they’re liable for the damages when its born.
@Enlightenment Liberal, re: Kroos:
You won’t get anywhere with Kroos. We already know that he’s a WLC fan, who argues that genocide is good when god commands it, b/c god is good: duh.
This is someone who doesn’t even **understand** Euthyphro’s dilemma. There’s no dilemma. God is morally perfect because Anselm. Moral perfection is goodness. Goodness is commanding genocide upon people that aren’t your chosen people because they aren’t your chosen people and, as a result, haven’t been exposed to your message. Goodness is committing genocide against all but 8 human beings on the planet because you really, really love them so much that you want them to spend eternity in paradise with you, but you just can’t because, y’know, people found out sex is fun and some of the drink and some of them swear and some of them are women, and goddammit all of them break one rule or other during a lifetime. And if they haven’t because they’re too young and can’t speak or understand language and they haven’t heard your *Word*, well fucking kill all them too, b/c even if you did make your magic voice ring in every human’s ear at the same time and explain exactly what you wanted of people in a way that human minds would be magically unable to forget, well, some of them would probably fuck up anyway. So kill the babies for love and call it Good. The greatest good. Moral perfection!
Kroos will continue to say “God is Great” and continue to call it moral perfection and continue to call moral perfection “good” but that tells us nothing about what this god would do. Kroos will be among the first to say that it’s impossible to say whether or not the god of the bible will command another genocide tomorrow. That tells you far more about the “nature” of Kroos’ “god” than any label Kroos slaps on that god.
@Kroos, 236:
Yes. That’s what maddog1129 is saying. Maddog1129 is explaining the law to your sorry brain. The fact that you seem surprised this is the law or that Maddog1129 might accurately explain the law rather than lie about facts says quite a bit about you.
@ Kroos Control #236
In third party cases, yes. In Amphiox’s hypothetical, a third party (negligent driver) injured both the pregnant woman and the born baby.
What about your hypothetical?
Can you answer these, please?
Enlightenmentliberal, just as a reminder calling something “Retarded” is frowned upon as it’s ableist. Meanwhile Kroos is moronic.
Kroos you will never ever make any headway ever here until you appreciate a couple of simple facts. For one we don’t believe in your god or any other. You can put forth as many ontological justifications as you like, the old chestnut about evidence that can get past scientists, magicians, and professional debunkers stands. You can define your god as much as you like, but it’s only convincing to you. If you want to convince people who don’t believe in god you’re going to have to do much more than just assigning attributes to god and saying that proves it. If I played your ontological game I could just as easily justify worshiping the Nashim Ganedan or Kaname Madoka or any number of other gods. If the argument is entirely ontological they have as much justification as your god.
Another thing that makes you look very foolish indeed is when you try dance around being vague and indistinct. “Almost Every every pro-life advocate allows for certain exceptions” you say without providing examples of either an advocate or which certain exceptions those are. “I’m all for restrictions to prevent inattentive driving or drunk driving ” you say without ever suggesting a restriction. “It seems innately plausible to me that it is greater to be morally perfect than morally imperfect” you say without going into what is so innate about your position. And you got called on every single one of these cases. People pointed and asked and prodded at your empty rhetoric, and you had nothing to respond with. Protip: before an argument can be Cogent and Devastating it must at least be specific.
@enlightenedliberal
Just read your post again. This is nothing like Plantigas epistemological argument.
You seem to somehow affirm that contingent facts have an explanation and then deny it elsewhere. It shows empirical knowledge is possible due to the psr and the fact that these states have explanations and probabilities.
No, that’s not how you do this. You’re supposed to say, “This is nothing like Plantigas [sic] epistemological argument, because Plantinga says X, while this is saying Y.”
Refer to omnicrom’s comment to you, #240.
@ Kroos Control #229
But that’s not the proper syllogism. What you have written IS invalid, and IS fallacious, because you have misrepresented or equivocated on your terms.
1) If objective morality does not exist, [then] the Nazis were not objectively wrong. [wrong about what? it would help if you were more specific]
2) Most people say that the Nazis were wrong (e.g., to commit genocide, to torture, imprison, starve, murder people en masse, to invade other countries, & do other things). N.B., not everyone says, and in fact it would be hard to say, that the Nazis were “objectively” wrong, because we don’t (at least, *I* certainly don’t, and many other atheists have explicitly said they don’t) have access to any God or what any God thinks, or what any God “objectively” prescribes as “morality,” according to YOUR definition of what “objective” morality is. However, I CAN say the Nazis were wrong, based on our now much broader and better reasoning, and inter-subjective analysis, and our improved understanding about what humanity entails, and human rights, and our common experiences of empathy, and fairness, and interdependence, and cooperation, and solidarity, and kindness, and creating the most good for the most people and avoiding harm and pain for the most people as possible, etc. You are putting words into people’s mouths that aren’t there. Your second premise is false. That’s not what people are saying.
3) Even if we inter-subjectively agree that it is morally wrong for the Nazis to commit genocide, for example, that does not affect the issue of the existence of “objective” morals in any way. The “objectivity” of morality has not been established or proven.
As to “we all perceive that they were wrong” — that’s not true.
There are plenty of human beings, both then and now, who did/do not “perceive” (using what faculty or mechanism of perception? you still have not described or identified this) that what the Nazis did was wrong. AND, according to YOU, morality is “objective” only if it comes from God (the God of the Bible, presumably? you really should specify), but the God of the Bible and its apologists, like William Lane Craig and you, are the ONLY ones justifying that it is “objectively moral” to commit genocide, just like the Nazis. If God commanded it, it is “objectively moral” according to you, and regardless of what all other human beings think of it. How do you know that God did not command the Nazis to do what they did? You don’t know what undisclosed purpose your God may have had for doing so. YOU are the only one participating here who CANNOT say for sure that what the Nazis did was wrong, “objectively” or otherwise. You may be laughing at the “dumb atheists,” but (1) you can only do so because you have misrepresented what atheists actually say, and (2) you are the ONLY one here justifying the morality of genocide.
Thank you very much, Ogvorbis!
Kroos Control, I see you have no response to anything I’ve said about some of the problematic assumptions of ex nihilo nihil fit. Maybe it’s better that way. I’m nearing my limit of bullshit already.
——
EnlightenmentLiberal, #198:
That’s false. We’re not all stuck in Rationalism Land.
Consider the Duhem-Quine thesis. How could you even make sense of that? Or is it senseless? What do you think it’s saying? If you take an axiomatic approach, you’re simply failing to recognize that any “axioms” you invent should not have priority over empirical facts, and (more specific to the DQ) neither can or should be considered in isolation from all other facts and principles which you believe to be true. You can’t of course be absolutely certain that some fact must be true, even after being tested and after you’ve established your other relevant knowledge is probably true. Perhaps you are being tricked by an evil demon after all, or perhaps you are a brain in a vat, or perhaps both — who could be absolutely certain about that sort of thing? (More importantly, who cares?) But you do get to say that facts are probably true or probably false, in light of all of the other probably true or false statements you can say about the world. You seem to be saying here that Rationalism provides the only epistemological options, which simply isn’t the case. Even during the Enlightenment, empiricism would’ve offered you alternatives to this “trilemma,” but things didn’t actually come to a halt then either.
But, sure the trilemma is a neat little trick you can pull out on unsuspecting theists, and probably any other opponent on any topic. Have lots of fun with it, or whatever it is you think you’re doing.
We were talking about objective morality: whether or not there are moral facts. Harris is one of the loudest (and least cogent) voices in favor of it. You might know that he wrote a whole book about it, which has been much discussed for several years. You’ve been arguing against the central idea of the book this entire time. Indeed, I’m having a hard time seeing how you wouldn’t know exactly what I’m talking about.
She made no claim that only categorical imperatives are justifiable. That’s some nonsense of your own invention. I don’t think you understand that categorical imperatives are a form of hypothetical imperative. They are equivalent to a hypothetical counterpart. If you don’t at least get that much, don’t tell us what Foot is or isn’t saying, what follows from her work, etc. And it’s not my job to read with comprehension for you, so all I can really say is “read again” and don’t insert your own views where they don’t belong. Because doing more than that is probably going to be a waste of my time.
@Kroos
First, you did name yourself after the Cruise Control software? Or just a coincidence?
Onto this:
You misunderstand. Let me make it simple and adopt your terminology: I agree that there is a divide between necessary facts and contingent facts. Totally on board. I prefer the terms axiom and conclusion, but hey – whatever floats your boat. What’s the difference between a necessary fact and a fact without an explanation? As far as I can tell, a necessary fact is merely some fact without an explanation. So, if I adopt your formalism, I would not say that there exists some contingent facts without explanation. Instead, I would say that some facts which you say are contingent are instead necessary. For example – you say that the universe is contingent. I say that’s unjustified. It might also be necessary.
We both hold that some facts lack explanation. Equivalently, we both hold that some facts are necessary. Equivalently, we both hold that some facts are axiomatic, are self-evident, etc. When you appeal to the Principle Of Sufficient Reason, you are being dishonest, because you recognize that it only applies to “contingent” facts. Contingent facts are by definition those facts which have a “sufficient reason”, making it circular. In essence, the following formulations are equivalent, and equivalently vacuous:
* If the Principle Of Sufficient reason is true, then all contingent facts have a “sufficient reason”.
* If the Principle Of Sufficient reason is true, then all facts with a “sufficient reason” have a “sufficient reason”.
The Principle Of Sufficient Reason itself is vacuous. It adds nothing to the conversion. At best, this is the useful bit of PSR that we can salvage: “You should have justifications for all of your beliefs except your axioms, and you should try to keep your axioms as weak and few as ‘reasonable’.”
…
@omnicrom
Serious question. So, moronic is ok, but retarded is not? What about the other terms which used to be in the DSM, such as idiot, special needs, handicapped, etc.? I know that some “people” think that the word handicapped is offensive and ableist. I’m sorry that I’m not going to put much mental energy into the politically correct game to determine which former clinical diagnoses from the DSM are currently offensive and which are not, especially when the disadvantaged community is split on which words are offensive and which words are not. So, I ask, which former diagnosis from the DSM are ok and which are not for insulting someone’s intelligence?
Is a phrase used as a broad brush diminutive label of a specific group of people? It’s probably best to avoid to avoid using it. Retard and Retarded are still used to refer diminutively to people who have handicaps. Ergo Pharyngula tends to frown on calling people and things Retards or Retarded. If you have a question about how the community thinks of a term I suggest you ask rather than get defensive.
Kroos Control @229
maddog1129 said plenty on this just now, but I think that the logical failure here is even more obvious and simple. While I’m no logician, it looks like an clear example of circular reasoning:
3) “Objective morality does exist” is the conclusion. Thus, no statement that requires this conclusion to be true can be used to support that conclusion. 2) “The Nazis were objectively wrong” clearly cannot be true unless there is, in fact, objective morality. We basically have to throw out 2), since it relies on the truth of the conclusion. That just leaves you with: If objective morality does not exist, then the Nazis were not objectively wrong, therefore objective morality exists. Which would be an appeal to consequences, just as originally suggested.
(As maddog1129 points out, it would be helpful to point out specifically what the Nazis were “wrong” about, but I think most would infer that KC is referring to the holocaust, which generally would top the list of what the Nazis were ‘wrong’ about for those that do think they were wrong about anything.)
EnlightenmentLiberal:
Please do not use mental disability as an insult.
This isn’t about political correctness (and now I’m worried about what other views you have; I’ve found many people who use the term PC to be empathy deficient assholes). It is about not causing splash damage. There are people who have mental disabilties and using any of those disabilities as insults implies that there is something wrong with them. Just as saying “that’s gay” carries the implication that there is something wrong with being gay.
On a similar note, at work tonight, in the midst of assigning familial roles (mother, father, sister, etc) to other employees, one guy-T-referred to me as the mother. He repeated it, possibly because he thought I hadn’t heard him. I told him it didn’t bother me because there’s nothing wrong with being a woman. His “joke” only works if I thought there was something shameful or embarrasing about being a woman. I don’t.
*hugs* for Tony!
@consciousness razor
I don’t understand what you’re saying. You’re talking nonsense. Not incoherent nonsense, but patently wrong nonsense. I am going to form models to inform my expectations of future sensory experience based on past sensory experience, and based on inductive / parsimony / Bayesian reasoning / whatever. This is absolutely, completely, undoubtably true. There is absolutely nothing you can ever say or do to make me doubt this fact / value / whatever. It’s just not going to happen. It takes priority over absolutely everything else in a completely absolute way. Furthermore, these models are going to be logically consistent. Again, there is absolutely nothing you can say or do that is going to make me doubt this fact / value / whatever.
I don’t need absolute certainty. I’m going to dismiss it out of hand, and there is absolutely nothing you can do otherwise to make me doubt dismissing it out of hand.
It’s not a matter of absolute certainty. Certainty, confidence (Frequentist terminology), probability of true belief (Bayesian terminology) are terms which only make sense in the scientific rational framework. Their meaning derives from my use of logic, evidence, science, etc. IMHO, it’s inappropriate to even say that I have any level of confidence in logic and science. Confidence is a property of things in the framework of beliefs, not the framework itself. I don’t have confidence in my framework. I use this framework, and nothing you can say or do will change that.
As I explained above, you can reason with me to show that I’m in The Matrix, but you will never be able to reason with to abandon reason. That is incoherent.
The terms are insufficiently precise, or you are under a misapprehension of Sam Harris’s position. “Moral facts” != “moral realism (whatever that means)”. As I understand the term “moral realism”, it’s the idea that there is a substance in our shared reality which informs our morality. For example, the idea that we could build a machine with a red and blue light, and if the red light lit up, then it’s immoral. IMHO, the idea of such a machine is incoherent. Sam Harris agrees. Now, I suspect he would say he doesn’t, and I explained why in detail above, but after having watched many of his talks and read his books, I see him “slipping up” from time to time on his usual course.
This is my position, and Sam Harris’s position: Values come before material, scientific facts. You cannot have scientific facts without values. In order for there to be scientific facts, you first have to be in a framework where you can distinguish scientific truth from scientific falsehood. That framework is necessarily a value framework. For example, in order to do science, you have to have the value of valuing evidence and reason, valuing honesty at least with yourself, valuing critical thinking, valuing logical consistency. You have to value the methods of science to use science and to talk about and use scientific facts.
There is a dichotomy that is quickly established, that between descriptive statements and other statements. However, as we just showed, descriptive statements are themselves a kind of proscriptive statement. The statement “the cat is yellow” only makes sense if you accept the proscriptive statements “I should be honest with myself”, “I should base my beliefs on the evidence and reason”, “I should have logically consistent beliefs”, and so on. Still, this establishes a dichotomy between descriptive statements, and other statements.
Sam Harris’s point is that values are required as the base for science. However, there are other values which we hold other than the values which support science. The value that we shouldn’t murder, steal, etc., or more specifically valuing human well-being, is not one of values underlying science.
Now, this is where Sam is acting unwisely IMHO. He feel strongly that people think that the values underlying science are more objective, or more “justified”, or more reasonable, or more “self-evident” than the values of humanism. He is right that most people feel this way, probably as a result of the indoctrination in the bullshit western ideas of cultural relativism. Then, where IMHO he makes a wrong tactical turn is that he doesn’t like talking about the “fact – value” dichotomy because to most people it seems to elevate facts to a privileged position compared to values. I don’t think this is a good tactical move. (I’ve talked with Sam a little over email. I think this is a fair and honest reading of his position, but I think he may disagree on some of the specifics.)
Neither of us are advocating moral realism. You miss the point. I’m not advocating moral realism nor scientific realism. I don’t even know what those terms mean. I am saying that I am going to use logic, reason, and science, and there isn’t a damn thing you can do about it. I am also saying that I am going to be a humanism, and there isn’t a damn thing you can do about it. These beliefs / facts / values are simply beyond question. Finally, I also advocate on their behalf on the hopes that more people will be like me and hold these values, because I want to make the world a better place, because I am a humanist.
tl;dr Neither Sam nor I say that there can ever be a measuring device for morality (although Sam uses slightly different formalisms). Obviously not. That’s what I understand “moral realism” to mean. However, Sam and I both hold that valuing human reason is just as self-evident and obvious and “true” as valuing intellectual honesty, logical consistency, and the scientific method, and in that sense, we can have moral facts which are just as true as any neutral material scientific fact. Sam doesn’t like phrasing it this way, because he thinks that it’s giving too much rhetorical ground to say that valuing well-being is an axiom, which makes it seem dirty compared to science. Again, this is all quite clear from watching his talks.
…
As for Foot. I’ll see if I can find the paper itself. I think I found it but behind a paywall, and I’m not quite ready to pay out at the moment. I still see that you are utterly unwilling or unable to present even a simple example of an argument which bridges the is-ought gap. I give you something stupidly easy, like Nazis, or rape, or putting out the eyes of every third child at the hospital because an obscure religious text tells the society to do so. Surely you can do some of these obvious and trivial cases. If you can’t even do that in a few sentences, then I am quite dubious of your ability to bridge that gap. This is where I call shenanigans on you.
@ Tony! The Fucking Queer Shoop!
I do not plan to discriminate in the workplace based on gender, sex, sexual orientation, age, etc. However, I do very much plan to discriminate against those with less intelligence when hiring. This is what you do when hiring. Now, I have no intent to discriminate against specific conditions which might also affect intelligence, but if someone is incapable of doing the job, then someone is incapable of doing the job.
The person above said that “moronic” is ok and “retarded” is not. As far as I know, in the past both were once clinical diagnoses for the exact same disability. I also know some groups of people who think that “disabled” is offensive like you think “retarded” is offensive, and “special needs” is offensive like you think “retarded” is offensive. I’m sure there was a time when “idiot” was offensive. I said that I am not willing to spend much time figuring out where we are on the euphemism treadmill. Tell me what insults I can use to insult someone’s intelligence, which ones I can’t, and I’ll try to stick to the list.
Let’s try to clean it up, so it isn’t obviously circular.
-The consensus that what some Nazis did was unambiguously wrong is evidence that there are some unambiguous moral facts, about which rational people are capable of mutually understanding and making conclusions and appropriately following its predictions/consequences.
-Something cannot both be wrong and not in fact wrong, since to be something is to be that thing in fact. To claim it is X, yet not in fact X, is either contradictory or vacuous.
-If there are such facts, morality can be (at least in part) objective.
@consciousness razor in 253
Is that directed at me? You’re doing an appeal to popularity as evidence of “objective moral facts”? Really? Surely you know the counter-rebuttals, and I won’t even waste time typing them out.
What’s did I say that’s wrong? It isn’t clear from the rest of your comment what you’re disagreeing with.
That’s what I’m saying.
Then you don’t understand moral realism. Let’s be clear that there is no other “substance” to talk about, besides the ordinary physical stuff everything is made of. There is no particular substance (it is not “a substance”) being proposed anywhere in moral realism. So if you’re trying to assume some Medieval concept of “substances,” then you’re very confused about what realism means.
Why couldn’t there could be such a machine? I don’t see the problem with it. What are human beings except biological machines? Can’t they make correct moral decisions?
You’re doing an appeal to popularity as evidence of “objective moral facts”?
Nope, I’m not appealing to the popularity of it (although KC’s choice of Nazis probably revolves around that). I’m appealing to the rationality of it. People can and do understand what’s wrong with the Nazis actions, and they can also understand what types of other things follow from it. They do logic with morality. And it is based on empirical facts, like what kinds of experiences people had due to the Nazis actions. So showing what’s rational and empirical and objective about it is fairly easy to do.
this is a very odd episode of the Thunderdome
FYI
≠
yields
≠
neat, tidy, easy
=!=
=/=
meh
≠
@ 229 Kroos Control
Ya know, even William Lane Craig, charlatan that he is, can construct a syllogism that requires at least a little consideration to be found fallacious. Good grief.
Sorry. I had to correct this. This analogy is simply incorrect. There is something wrong with handicapped, disabled, etc., in the following sense.
Imagine a pregnant woman, and a doctor doing an exam. Suddenly, the doctor discovers that contrary to the parent’s earlier expectation, the baby is not going to be X, but going to be Y. For the following X and Y pairs, consider if it would be immoral or unethical for the doctor to not say anything about a possible “treatment”, and if it would be immoral or unethical for the doctor to say something about a possible “treatment”.
* The parent’s expect a boy, but it’s actually a girl.
* The parent’s expect a straight child, but it will grow up to be homosexual.
* The parent’s expect a male-sex male-gender child, but it will grow up to be transsexual.
* The parent’s expect a child with 2 arms and 2 legs, but it will be missing a leg.
* The parent’s expect that the child will have normal intellectual capacity, but instead will have diminished capacity and will be unable to care for itself for its entire life.
If you really think there’s nothing wrong about being disabled, would you say that to a veteran in a wheelchair missing their legs? If you do so, I hope they slap you silly.
If you really think there’s nothing wrong with having Down syndrome, would you say that to the parents of such a child? If you do, I hope they slap you silly.
There is something wrong with being disabled. That’s why we’re spending lots of money on prevention, treatment, cures, etc. Being mentally handicapped is a bad thing, and so is missing a leg – quite unlike my other examples of gender, sex, gender-identify, etc.
Having said that, I agree that we should not antagonize disabled people. We should not stigmatize disabled people. Instead, they deserve our sympathy, empathy, and respect, for they are human beings too, and they are going through such misfortunate that I cannot even comprehend because I was lucky enough to be born able-bodied and able-minded. Thus, if the word “retarded” is stigmatizing, then I will not use it, and I am thankful for you pointing out that the word is stigmatizing. So, thank you.
@consciousness razor
This is what we call “hand-waiving” rather than putting up. Do you care to actually present an argument other than appeal to popularity? I’m waiting.
My apologies for my impreciseness.
I agree that we can make a machine which answers moral questions. Some human beings are very good such machines. I meant to illustrate through example – apparently quite badly – that a sort of substance dualism is retarded, and I am not defending that position. Morality is not a substance.
Unfortunately, I reject many of the terms in this conversation, such as “objective morality”, “absolute morality”, “moral realism”, as both underspecified, ambiguous, and sometimes even meaningless.
I am defending the notion that it’s generally wrong to rape is just as true, just as justifiable, just as worthy of consideration, as the notion that I’m sitting on a couch. I don’t think “realism” means that, but if I’m mistaken about the words, then my apologies, and Sam and I are defending moral realism. However again, I think that moral realism carries some baggage with it which I do not hold nor defend.
Completely out of context. In context, I was making the point that certainty is not something that applies to my belief / value that I will use science, logic, and I will operate according to humanism. I don’t want to admit to absolute certainty on those values / facts because of the rhetorical consequences that comes with. I want to say that those are above certainty altogether and completely beyond all doubt and consideration. I ask you to reread what I wrote there.
“retarded”
Ack, sorry. Force of habit. If there was an edit button, I would use it.
You don’t just get to assert that my argument hinges on popularity, or is fallacious in any other way, while providing no analysis of it whatsoever. Suppose there’s no “consensus” about the Nazis, yet everything remains exactly the same. There’s just one lonely rational person who is doing this: they are understanding and making conclusions and appropriately following the predictions/consequences of the facts they’ve ascertained.
Would everybody else (or most people, or any number of people) know about this one special person? Maybe not. That’s why I didn’t use some single person as an example. I used an example which (1) was given by another commenter, and (2) one which relates events nearly all people today are familiar with and have already reasoned about. It’s also the case that they all agree, but it doesn’t matter, because I don’t claim they need to agree (or most of them agree), or that (all/most) know all the facts, or that they are (all/mostly) right about the facts. I don’t even need person to know and be correct about any of that. That one hypothetical person from above does not even need to exist. I only need to show that there are such facts.
So come back when you’re not so utterly confused about the topic. I’m waiting.
hand-waiving
interesting
I’ll waive my hands … when you pry them from my cold, dead hands!
That is waaay too meta…
Valid and non-fallacious logic does not need to be qualified with an “*” you pitiful specimen.
The interesting thing about logic is that it works on garbage in, garbage out.
Dishonest presuppositional premise in, useless, incoherent, dishonest conclusion out.
The worthless, refuted arguments you attempted and failed to make in prior threads do not suddenly become valid again just because you repeat them like a spoiled brat in another thread.
Once more dishonestly ignoring the whole point of the counter-hypothetical to try and distract with an irrelevant tangent.
The point once again, is bodily autonomy. Saying you’re for “restrictions” in general is nothing more than dishonest obfuscating.
There are restrictions that can aim to prevent these things that violate bodily autonomy, and there are restrictions that do not. The equivalent restrictions to your own dishonest hypothetical about ingesting harmful substances in pregnancy would be those that violate bodily autonomy.
These would include things like:
1) Mandatory caffeine treatment for all potentially tired drivers, enforced with IV injection as necessary.
2) Absolute prohibition of alcohol consumption for all licensed motor-vehicle operators.
3) Stomach pumping all inebriated persons caught operating a motor vehicle.
4) Mandatory blood transfusion to dilute blood alcohol in all persons caught operating a motor vehicle while inebriated.
So, which of these restrictions, specifically, do you support?
If you do not like these examples, then go ahead and name ONE restriction that prevents inattentive or drunk driving that is ALSO a violation of BODILY AUTONOMY, justifying your assertion that there are valid reasons to violate bodily autonomy. Also describe how such a restriction would be ENFORCED. Hypothetical restrictions that cannot be enforced are useless and will be ignored.
#3 Alexandra said:
#10 Kroos Control replied:
If there really were such a thing as “objective” morality, which was easily and accurately perceptible to you (who claims to have direct perception of such obvious “objective” morality), then it should be quite simple for you to know. God says what’s “objectively” right, immutably and in all cases, and you have a direct pipeline to God’s pronouncements, because you claim to “perceive” them with intuitive precision. You are “Exhibit A” for the failure of “objective,” external, perfect, immutable, God-given morality to inform human beings of how to select the right action in every moral situation. “Objective” morality does not solve moral questions any more easily for the God-believers than for anyone else.
Okay, I’ll bite. I believe that every woman has the absolute right to have a fetus evacuated from her womb at any stage during pregnancy. To me, that’s a pretty black-and-white case. Either the fetus dies, or it gets born and lives, in which case it becomes a Person.
But alcohol consumption is a different question. It has repercussions for the child the fetus will become, if born. FAS, fetal alcohol syndrome, is real.
What if your child sued you for damages due to FAS? Would they have a case?
Enlightenmentliberal, are you trying to say you were diagnosing Kroos with an intellectual impairment? That because it is still used in the DSM-whatever version, it is okay for you to use?
Try reading for meaning. You were told that labelling someone who is writing like a jerk as retarded is not acceptable to the commenters here. That it can be hurtful. That to use a clinical diagnoses for a condition as an INSULT is insulting.
To clarify, it is insulting to the people who have actually been diagnosed as such, not to the people you were trying to insult.
Yes.
That.
@geraldo: Welcome to the Thunderdome.
That didn’t happen, although it easily could have.
What did happen, was Geert Wilders asking his followers, at a post election party, whether they wanted more, or less Moroccans, to which the room erupted with “Less! Less!”
I fear history repeating itself.
Testimony is evidence.
geraldo 277
Oh jesus christ, here we go.
SQB 278
False. I rarely ever use testimony in a trial to prove my case, and certainly never by itself. Nope. Wait…
Oh look, it’s the regular morning slyme delivery.
Alert sent.
Well, we just had nationwide municipal elections yesterday – the only municipality his party won any seats was Den Haag, and they went from 8 to 7. I expect that as he continues to lose popularity, Wilders will get more extreme in his statements, which should speed up his decline. I hope, anyway. There’s signs of hope here – the fact that a lot of Dutch people are finally able to see the problem with Zwarte Piet, for example.
Geez, the discussion got Godwined last night? Glad I stopped following and went for dinner.
@Tony, I think this might be the place where we differ. I don’t think there is a set of platonically ideal human rights that every human has – there’s certainly a list that I think every human SHOULD have, but the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is an aspirational document, not the law. From a practical perspective, people have the rights that their society decides they have, either through formal or informal law. Obvious enough, I guess, but if you’re starting from bodily autonomy is a nonnegotiable human right, and that a fetus is not a human, then your position is 100% understandable.
Granted, pretty much nobody is having an abortion at 8 months (I assume), but my gut feel is that it would be morally wrong to do so (or pick whatever extremely late time that gives an acceptable boundary condition). And I have no gut feel that it’s morally wrong to abort at, say, 8 weeks, so there’s clearly a line somewhere where I think a fetus should be designated some rights. Viability outside the womb seems too bounded to technology to me, and it seems my idea that sentience or self-awareness doesn’t work either, so to be honest I don’t know where that leaves me in terms of defining where I think that borderline is. I do suspect it’s later than viability outside the womb, though, not sooner.
Why should this be a problem? Technology has modified every other part of life.
I was going to ask “Why shouldn’t it modify morals, too?” but it would be more correct to state that our morals have to be modified in face of those changes.
Oh jeez. I won’t waste my energy giving a hearsay lesson or a lesson about what does and does not constitute a courtroom. Wait, that second one is short. This is not a courtroom. There, I feel better.
Sorry, my previous was @Derek Vandivere #282.
geraldo #283
You’re not dissenting. You’re trolling for a reaction. And this is the last you’ll get from me.
@281 geraldo
And this blog is totally 100% exactly like a court of law.
@282 Derek
First, stop talking about your gut feelings wrt morality as if they matter. They don’t. Secondly, fetal personhood does not become less of a red herring with repetition. You would have to assign a fetus rights that born people don’t have in order to justify abortion restrictions. Why would you do that? Kroos has yet to be able to answer that question. Can you?
That’s an interesting point, Daz, given that extensive use of technology is part of what it is to be human. I think that might make these moral questions even more context-sensitive – is it the existence of that technology, its availability, or its affordability that makes it a factor in a moral decision? Making a counter example (again with the gut feel test), if it were possible to remove the fetus at 13 weeks and artificially incubate it, I don’t think that would be a good reason to restrict abortion to 13 weeks or less, if you see what I mean.
I think not. Your though is refuted. Stop repeating yourself when you can’t advance and aren’t being listened to because it is refuted by something else.
@Seven – I disagree; I think gut feelings are a pretty good place to start in figuring out what one thinks is moral and why one does so. And I really don’t get your bit about rights – current, existing abortion restrictions that kick in in week 2x in the States and week 24 in the Netherlands mean that fetuses are assigned a right that humans have – the right not to be killed. Are you saying that’s an incorrect statement, or is it that as a result they’re restricting the choices of the mother?
Derek Vandivere #288
It would be a moot point, just as discussion of late-term abortions is under present circumstances is. Any abortion past the point (technologically-extended or not) of viability, is a live birth.
@Daz – again, what you’re saying seems at face so obviously wrong that I must be not understanding you. Intact dilation and extraction by definition involves the death of the fetus and can be performed after fetal viability even without my imaginary machine, right? Are you saying that under current American legal conditions, because they’ve chosen fetal viability as the borderline, it’s moot?
Geraldo, please don’t feel you need to defend me.
@290 Derek
Your gut feelings are relevant only to what you do with your own body. If having an abortion past X weeks pings your ick-meter, by all means, feel free to make sure all your abortions happen before that point.
Bodily. Autonomy.
Bodily. Autonomy.
Bodily. Autonomy.
Do I need to say it again?
No born person has the right to be inside my body if I don’t want them there, even if getting them out results in their death.
Terrible place to start. Which is why you are being ignored and dismissed.
Example, there might be a squick factor thinking about say homosexual acts. That leads you to think homosexuality is bad. Versus looking at the facts, people are born with a sexual orientation. They should be allowed to explore that orientation voluntarily with others of the same orientation.
Lose the gut feeling argument. It’s a no starter.
DV, stop with the feelings, and look at the facts of post viability abortion. ARE they performed on a whim to kill the fetus? The answer is no, it happens only when medically indicated.
Derek Vandivere #294
What? You’re the person who said “Viability outside the womb seems too bounded to technology.” (Which, it seems to me, means that if anyone’s quibbling that legal point, it’s you.) I made no judgement on the legal borderline. I just pointed out that all the discussion of late term abortion is moot*, because (non-emergency, I should add) abortions at that point are births.
*i.e., a red-herring, a boondoggle, discussion of a hypothetical extreme; usually in order to tar all abortions with the same emotive brush.
I hope so too, but the latest polls still show the PVV as the biggest party in the (virtual) House of Representatives.
@Derek Vandivere:
Well, my gut feeling is that a woman’s right to bodily autonomy trumps the right to live of a fetus, even at 8+ months. Why? Because, as you say, very few late abortions are carried out, and if they are, they’re almost always for medical reasons. So laws banning late abortions would have very little influence in that respect.
However, defining any other cut off point other than birth, puts us on a slippery slope as medicine and technology advance. Babies born at 25 or even 24 weeks can survive, so should we ban abortions after 25 weeks? After 23 weeks, when technology advances?
No. Women have the right to have a fetus evacuated from their womb at any point during pregnancy.
Of course, if you want to engage in what-ifs, if Star Trek like transporter technology should evolve and should in vitro gestation become possible from conception to birth, then you might have a point by saying that a woman has the right to evacuate her womb but not to kill the fetus, and so it should be beamed out of her and finish gestating(?) in vitro, but other than that, no.
Geraldo, there is no umlaut in Herr.
One of these days, someone is going to explain to me how “This happened to me” is 3rd party hearsay.
Derek and Kroos Control:
At what point, during a pregnancy, does a woman cease to be a human being and have full human rights?
Seven, as with Tony, I don’t care how often you repeat the ‘bodily autonomy’ mantra, it’s not going to magically make it the law of the land where you live or anywhere else on the planet. I understand that you’re asserting that you (rather, one) *should* have that right, but I don’t think that’s the legal reality pretty much anywhere.
Ogvorbis: At what point will you ask a meaningful question?
SQB: I especially liked when they called out Wilders at the Carre debate – “It’s appropriate that we’re debating in a building that used to house a circus, given that you’re a clown.” This after Wilders said something about Thatcher having had more balls than all the rest of them put together….
Again, you say “No. Women have the right to have a fetus evacuated from their womb at any point during pregnancy.” Again, that’s certainly not practically true everywhere…
Derek
At what point, during a pregnancy, does a woman cease to be a human being and have full human rights?
Yep, that is a meaningful question. If you claim that there is a point during pregnancy when a women should lose the right to do what she wants to with her own body, then you are, quite obviously, saying that she will then have fewer human rights than are given to other human beings.
Bwahahahahahahahah!
For the lurkers:
Every single person here is trusted to deal with dissent: one can change one’s mind to agree with the “dissenter” (relative to one’s own opinion), one can argue that someone “dissenting” is wrong for X reasons, one can mock the “dissent”, one can choose not to read comments, once can choose not to read certain comments, one can spend some time thinking about the positions of others who hold differing views, or one can simply roll one’s eyes when seeing a ‘nym whose comments deserve nothing more.
Any member of the Horde can do these things or choose from a thousand options not mentioned. And we do.
Honestly, this chew toy doesn’t even squeak entertainingly.
Kroos Control , persona non grata @ 203:
Now, for what you said to even begin to make sense, you have to demonstrate why good (and by that I don’t mean what you think of as good, but what god thinks of as good… might wanna start by defining that) is “perfect” and evil (see previous note) is “imperfect”.
To put it another way, if it’s possible to be perfectly evil, your argument falls apart.
Then, once you’ve done that, you merely have to demonstrate why god must (not may, not might) be maximally great.
Please don’t fall back on “That’s the definition of god” – my definition of ‘alligator’ might be “the world’s only microscopic aerial mammal” but that doesn’t mean that’s what alligators actually are. Plenty of cultures define god(s) as limited, or flawed. Why must your definition be correct?
Also – and this may come as a shock you you, being an engineer and all – what “seems innately plausible” to you… might not always be 100% correct. You might not wanna assume saying that is going to convince thinking people.
@Derek Vandivere:
I read a tweet that read
307
Derek Vandivere
Canada.
Daz, I say it’s not meaningful (maybe I should have said not relevant) because it presupposes answers to the moral questions I’m trying to figure out an answer to. Namely, it assumes that all people should have 100% full body autonomy, and that any rights a fetus might have are outweighed by that.
Which is fine if it’s your assertion of what should be, but rhetorically it’s pretty much equivalent to ‘Have you stopped beating your wife?”
Dude. It is. Virtually every time someone’s right to bodily autonomy has come into conflict with someone else’s right to life, courts have ruled in favor of bodily autonomy. Custodial parents have on occasion attempted to sue a non-custodial parent to attempt to force them to donate tissue to a child and they always get denied. The right to self defense is derivative of bodily autonomy. Roe v Wade is essentially a bodily autonomy case. The restriction it does place is viability but that’s when birth becomes the medically indicated means of ending a pregnancy (apart from emergency) so it’s a moot point.
Show at what point an why the fetus becomes more a human with more human rights than the woman carrying it, who is fully human with full human rights. Focus on the woman. You cannot diminish her in any fashion. Which you do, with the attitude they don’t have full bodily autonomy all the time.
Man it seems like everyone misses the point of a hypothetical.
Let me ‘refute’ the violinist analogy this way.
No medical doctor would actually hook you up to someone else without consent . Current laws treat this situation fine.
In such a situation there are kidney treatments available for the violinist , so this would never happen.
Why you have to choose such a charged example ? Nobody like classical music.. You should choose a person like Mother Teresa.
Why are we discussing hypotheticals with violins while ignoring real fetuses that are dying!
No real violinist would be treated this way.
You need to address the hypothetical on its own terms.
@Seven of mine
Which country and which courts are you referring to?
What case are you referring to? I’m interesting in seeing it
And why is that, Kroos?
(Bodily autonomy; bodily autonomy is why)
Name for me one circumstance under which it would be acceptable for someone to violate a man’s bodily autonomy, keeping in mind that bodily autonomy is not your right to do whateverthefuck you want. If you stab your child in the kidneys, nobody is going to show up and take one of yours from you. Even if you coincidentally have a heart attack and die in the neighboring hospital room, they won’t take your kidney from your corpse unless you consented while alive. That is a situation where you’ve brought this person into the world and caused the condition resulting in their need for a transplant and nobody is going to tell you you can’t keep both your damn kidneys. If you want it to be different for pregnant people, you are denying those people rights that everyone else has.
@Seven – ok, so it’s a mostly accepted *American* legal principle, and presumably you think it should apply everywhere, right? I think that’s been most of the miscommunication in this thread – geographic scope, but also scope of what the law is vs. what it should be and conflating what’s legal with what’s moral or ethical.
‘nym-o-the-day:
Still taking the high road I see.
Derek:
It is a valid question. If abortion is legal, ethical, moral up to a certain point and then illegal, unethical, immoral after that point, then that point is the one at which a woman ceases to have full human rights. What, to you, is the point at which a pregnant woman ceases to have full human rights? What is the point when the rights of the fetus outweigh the rights of an adult woman? These are questions that, because women are not seen as rational adults with full human rights, kill women. Dead.
Third trimester abortions are rare. Generally, if a woman has carried a fetus into the third trimester in the United States, it is because she wants it to become a baby. When something goes radically wrong, either with the health of the pregnant woman or with the fetus, aborting the pregnancy is the right option. But the laws that are being passed in state legislatures — often with identical wording in different states (text supplied by conservative think-tanks) — either make no allowance for things going radically wrong or put in enough confusing language that doctors and hospitals do not know when a therapeutic abortion would be legal. Which is intentional. Rather than allowing women to make a decision, with her doctor, regarding the best course to pursue, that choice is being taken out of their hands — a decision made with no other medical procedure — the legislature decides, in the case of women, that they cannot be trusted with the right of bodily autonomy and must be treated as incompetent with regards to what is done, and, in the case of the doctors, specify which procedures may, or may not, be used to accomplish a specific goal.
So, Derek (and Kroos Control):
At what point, during a pregnancy, does a woman cease to be a human being and have full human rights? And why?
Derek Vandivere #316
No, it’s s simple question.
• All humans in a society are given X number of rights regarding bodily autonomy.
• Until point-A, a pregnant woman has X number of those rights.
• After point-A, you say she should have < X number of those rights.
Please define point A, giving reasons for your choice.
(Please note, X does not have to be, as you claim, “100% full body autonomy.” The point is that until point-A, all humans are treated equally.)
It’s so adorable how non-uterus-havers just assume these things without bothering to verify. The information is out there, you know.
Well golly gee, I, a person with a uterus, have an extremely squicky gut feeling about the idea that if I were to choose to carry a pregnancy into its 7th or 8th month, someone like you would try to legislate what me or my doctor’s options are based on their own gut feeling. Seriously. Makes me quite sick to the stomach. It’s terrifying, actually. Your gut feelings are part of what causes pregnant people like Savita Halappanavar to die needlessly. And their fetuses too. Great job, collective dude-gut-judgment!
How nice. Pondering when specifically I may or may not have the right to determine what organisms exist inside my body. As has been pointed out before, many of the anti-choice arguments mustered can be used with equal validity as a justification for rape.
Canada, douchebag. It’s the law of the land in Canada. Fascinatingly, the late term abortion rate there is almost exactly the same as in the USA, where permission for late term abortions is legally restricted to situations where the health of the mother or fetus is in danger. This strongly suggests that people with uteruses aren’t depraved amoral monsters, by and large. I suggest you a.) check your assumptions about uterus havers and b.) inform yourself about the reality of abortion.
@323 Derek
Of course we’re talking about what the law should be and you and Kroos are the only ones trying to use your personal squick thresholds to measure when fetuses should be granted rights at the expense of the rights of pregnant people.
KC:
Wow. For someone who likes to bring up philosophy at the drop of WLC’s hat, you don’t seem to really grasp philosophy.
I’ll give you a hint: philosophical hypotheticals really aren’t about law, but in increasing understanding of ourselves. Your bringing up of law is a non sequitur, and a non-response. You’re basically dodging the issue.
@EnlightenedLiberal
My username comes from a German footballer , also. He might be the best midfielder in the world. (so basically the William Lane Craig of football)
To teh second part , you seem to have dropped the thing about how time can begin without a first moment. Did you accept my analogy where the function starts at t>2?
It seems to me that axiom and conclusion seem more epistemological things , while talking about things like causes and necessarily existing things is more metaphysical
Pruss allows for the idea that some necessary facts can be explained by their own necessity.
But things that are necessary are things that cannot fail to exist.
If you hold the laws of logic are necessary , they cannot stop being true and there is no state of affairs where they aren’t true and don’t exist.
for example its obvious my perceptual states are contingent , because there are states of affairs in the actual world where I have different perceptual states. There are metaphysically possible states of affairs where certain perceptual states don’t exist.
If you take your model , at t=0 , there was a state of affairs with no universe and there was a timeless state of affairs with no universe as well. So the universe is contingent and needs an explanation.
(I probably picked too strong a claim to try to defend the causal principle)
That’s been you and KC, who think your morality should be legislated. It shouldn’t, because your morality isn’t my morality, or any other horde member’s morality.
@CR
Missed that. Could you repost?
@aVO
I understand that. I was parodying some of the arguments against hypotheticals people made earlier in teh thread in response to my hypothetical at @ 126.
Seven, that’s the starting point for investigating what I think about it. I don’t think it’s a valid reason to draw a conclusion, but it’s a valid place to start thinking about it. Parallel example: one of the reasons I’m a vegetarian is the gut feel that it’s better not to kill things if you don’t have to (maaaybe that’s feeding into what I think about preganant womens’ ethical responsibilities, come to think of it, but that really isn’t the point of this example) – I still haven’t reduced that to first principles, but thinking about that gut feeling has certainly refined how I think about humanity’s relationship to other species.
Sally, thank you for your insults and for pointing out that Canada is the sum total of the planet outside the US. I guess I must be sitting in New Brunswick.
@DAz 325
Your formulation is confusing.
To use an analogy, many countries recognize squatter’s rights.
All humans in a society are given X rights regarding property
Do you believe that people have less property rights if there’s a squatter?
Just trying to clear up terms.
No problem. It was totally worth it to point out how intellectually bankrupt you are. If you were doing anything but philosijizzing on our collective face, you’d read for content rather than tone.
Again, I’ve continually been saying I’m trying to figure out what I think is right, not what should or shouldn’t be legal.
Out of curiosity, would you describe yourself as an anarchist? If not, and you think there should be some laws (and assuming they shouldn’t be religiously driven), on what basis should they be selected? Although that’s another massively long conversation, and I should get at least some work done today…
Kroos Control #334
Your analogy to squatters’ rights:
If a squatter moves into an occupied house, then yeah, the occupant has the right to evict the squatter. Thanks for conceding the point.
Just because you think your method worked there, doesn’t mean it will work here. Until it is tempered by reality, and the understanding women are not and will not be considered second class citizens, you cannot say anything cogent about reproductive rights, no matter what your gut says. Guts do lie.
@Daz
I don’t know what country you live in , but that’s not always the case in many countries
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverse_possession
@Derek
What? Then why are you talking about rights at all?
Deliberate obfuscation?
The argument was about law, and how laws should reflect human rights (i.e. abortion, forced medical procedures, and bodily autonomy).
@Kroos, but first quoting Daz:
Now Kroos:
Please see the bolded portion of Daz’s statement.
Do you have any clue that people on this blog can read and understand two-word phrases? I can’t imagine you recognizing this capacity amongst the Horde: otherwise you wouldn’t lie so baldly about adverse possession.
Did you read anything in the link you posted? Cuz if you finished the first sentence, perhaps you can tell me how you managed to believe that *we* would believe it supported your point.
Kroos Control #340
I am not going to get into a meta-debate about the fine detail of your analogy. If you move into my house—not a holiday home or such that’s unoccupied eleven months of the year or such, but the house I’m actually living in—then any just system of law will allow me to evict you.
Stop philosowanking. You made the analogy; live with it.
So you’re trying to figure out when it would be right for you to have some say about whether I get to determine what organisms exist inside my body.
Do go on…
@Derek Vandivere:
Regarding your
Perhaps I should’ve made more clear that this is my “gut feeling”.
Kroos Control
Further to my #344
Because you do realise, I assume that in your “squatter” analogy, the house is already under occupation, right? There’s a woman living there.
You are talking about granting rights to fetuses.
Mother Teresa?
Mother fuckingTeresa?
If is also not practically true everywhere that women have the right to vote.
“Not practically true everywhere” has no relevance to this debate.
@Daz
I wasn’t analogizing anything to pregnancy. You’re saying women lose rights with pregnancy , which is a really wierd notion.
Do I ‘lose’ rights to free speech if I step out of the free speech zone at a parade? Or did my rights never extend that far anyway?
@chigau, 349:
Yeah, I noticed that too.
It is possible that Kroos was displaying some facetiousness, but I tend not to believe Kroos’ brain of that much wit.
Kroos Control:
In the United States of America, women do lose rights. She loses the right to make informed medical decisions with her doctor regarding what happens inside her body. A right that I, as a male, never lose.
A person who is “trying” to figure out what is right, as opposed to what should or shouldn’t be legal would do such thinking in private, on his own, not in a public forum.
If a person does choose to bring the dilemma that he is “trying” to figure out into a public forum, he or she would lead with QUESTIONS, not assertions, statements, or debating points.
What broader relevance does an individual’s personal attempt to figure out what he or she thinks is right have to the rest of us? Why should the rest of us, who have all done our own deep thinking and internal debates to figure out what WE think is right on this subject already, waste our time with you, if that is all that you are doing?
The only part of the abortion debate that is important in the social context is whether or not access should be legal. What individuals personally think about it is trivial. Anyone can think whatever the hell they want about it so long as they do not act or give support to those who do wish to act in a way that restricts the liberty of those who think otherwise.
So, if that is all that you were trying to, something so personal and trivial, then why did you come here and waste OUR time?
OFFS, blockquote fail. Everything from “See? …” on is my sarcastic / cynical interpretation.
Another dishonest hypothetical, since that restrict applies equally to all people (and is not even an actual restriction on free speech at all….)
Now, if you said, do WOMEN lose rights to free speech when they step out of a free speech zone, when it is already establish that men would not, THEN you have a slightly more honest hypothetical.
You lost them when someone created free speech zones.
Now please explain adverse possession to us and how your statement in #340 can reasonably be said to be true.
Kroos Control #351
Bullshit. I’m saying that if you say that at a certain point during her pregnancy, a woman should lose the right to do as she wishes with her own body then you are, quite fucking obviously, saying that she loses one or more rights.
You have been asked, and asked, and asked again, to clarify and justify that position, you disingenuous little shit.
Another more honest way of using that free speech analogy would be to compare it with women seeking abortion not from a trained medical professional, but from a witch doctor, or at a football stadium instead of a clinic.
It is not a limitation on bodily autonomy to regulate who may provide the service or where the service is provided, so long as access to those providers and locations is ensured for all.
That is effectively what happens if they lose full bodily autonomy. As a full human being, with full human rights, that can never happen.
You see, you only have full bodily autonomy within the designated ‘bodily autonomy’ zones at the parade. But when you become pregnant, you step outside of them…
Alternatively you could use a genetic disorder or something.
How about people with bad eyesight? Shouldn’t there be restrictions on wether they are allowed to procreate, because there’s a high probability they’ll inflict this on their children.
If I’d had a son he would have had a 50% chance of being colourblind with me being a carrier. Shouldn’t there be restrictions on what kind of people are allowed to pass on their DNA?
And it’s clearly my husband’s genes that caused a malformation in my youngest child. Shouldn’t he be prosecuted? And if that single kidney failed, should he be forced to donate one?
Gumby!!!
SQB @ 270:
From what I understand, fetal alcohol syndrome isn’t a clear cut case of “this child exhibits traits A, B, & C and they wouldn’t if it weren’t for exposure to alcohol in the womb”. Couple that with the fact that no one seems to know why alcohol damages some fetuses and not others and the fact that plenty of women drink (more than is recommended) before they know that they’re pregnant and I think that it would be a tough sell.
Which is besides the fact that by allowing a person to sue their (biological) mother for drinking during pregnancy basically holds all fertile women hostage. Because you don’t know if you’re pregnant ’til (minimum) 6 or 7 weeks in, any woman that could potentially become pregnant– even if she using reliable birth control– would have to curtail all drinking/smoking/painkillers and (to save her own ass) take prenatal vitamins, regardless if she intends to become pregnant or not.
I’m not willing to do that to over half of the population, but lord knows plenty of other people think that would be just dandy because BAYBEEZ.
The only attempted forced tissue donation case I’m aware of:
McFall v. Shimp, 10 Pa. D. & C. 3d 90 – Pa: Court of Common Pleas 1978
See generally Calabresi, Guido, “Do we own our bodies?” (1991) 1 Health Matrix 5 1991
@Daz
I did explain my position.
from the other thread
I’ll explain again so I won’t get misrepresented.
I’ve never heard any pro-life advocate say that women should lose rights. Women’s rights are very important to pro-life people.
However as with all rights , they have to take into consideration other people. I have the right to free speech , but I cannot run into a crowded theatre and shout “fire!” because it affects the freedom and safety of the others in the theatre. My right is not absolute and it takes into consideration other people who are affected by it . Parents with a child have rights to freedom of movement, but they cannot abandon or endanger their children. They have to ensure their children receive an appropriate level of care relative to their age (even if it means putting them up for adoption) or they can be charged with abandonment and negligence.
I would say that the fetus/unborn child at some stage has the right to an appropriate level of care , relative to his/her developmental stage from their parents that other children do.
We recognize this in other ways. This physician points out that the government will deny certain medications to pregnant women because of their effects on the foetus , even if they insist on continuing to take them.
(btw this is an interesting post for those who were arguing about consciousness and moral relativism)
@Giliell 363
Interesting case.
i’d say if he was responsible for ingesting the substance and knew the substance would lead to malformed children he would be responsible.
He’s not responsible for the fact he might have a genetic defect or inherited disease , so he wouldn’t be liable in that case.
Perhaps an analogy might be made to the anti-STD laws? If he’s knowingly spreading them , he’s responsible.
@Kroos 367
For at least the millionth time, ‘unborn child’ is an oxymoron. Access to the parent’s body for use as life support does not fall under the heading of appropriate care for born children. Why is a fetus different?
Alexandra @365: suing is probably not the best example.
But if you, as you say, (it sounds as if knowingly) drank to excess during your first trimester of pregnancy, and if your child were to turn out having FAS, would you feel responsible?
I know my mother feels guilty for having smoked during pregnancy.
Thomathy
Regarding the MOBO conversation in the Wow thread.
The whole argument is absurd. Disliking one subset of MOBO, purely on grounds of not liking the musical stylings, verse-form etc, is not—as Sally implied—expressing dislike of MOBO or black culture or black people. It is merely expressing dislike of that one particular art-form. I cannot express it any more clearly than that.
@Kroos 367
Bullshit. Abortion bans cause women to lose rights by definition.
So Kroos, at what point in pregnancy does a women stop being able to exercise her bodily autonomy and becomes a second class citizen and slave to a fetus?
Kroos Control #367
That’s not what I asked, Kroos.
You claim that women should lose some amount of their right to bodily autonomy at some point during pregnancy. That they should, after that point, have less right to bodily autonomy than other human beings.
Where do you place that point, and how do you justify (a) that there should be such a point and (b) the time you place it at?
@Daz
So do you have a favorite black artist?
mine is Seu Jorge
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sQpVsFsHAA
One of my favourite all time songs.
@Daz
women don’t lose their bodily autonomy , any more than I lose my free speech when I step into a crowded theatre.
Yeah, pregnant women are like a crowded theater. See, you’ve got a fetus in there, which leaves no room for the woman. Simple.
Kroos Control
I’m a harmonica player: There can only be one choice. Not just my favourite black musician, but my favourite musician, full stop.
You’re a disingenuous little shit aren’t you Kroos? Is not being able to yell fire in a theater equivalent to the possibility of suffering permanent damage and even death from pregnancy?
You barefaced, shameless fucking liar. The so-called “pro-life” brigade do not give one flying fuck for women’s rights. Apart from the obvious contradiction, if they had even a shred of concern for women’s rights then even if they continued to be 100% anti-abortion, at the very least they would throw all their financially considerable weight behind genuine, science-based sex-ed for all (i.e. none of that abstinence only bullshit) and free access to the whole range of reliable methods of contraception, both of which measures are known and proven to reduce the incidence of unwanted pregnancy.
Were you laughing while you typed that, Kroos? Did you laugh when you read the news about Savita Halappanavar? You utter shit.
Kroos Control #376
Wut? If you say that women, at some point, lose their right to abort, then you are saying it is justified that they lose some amount of their bodily autonomy.
Words: they mean things.
@opposable thumbs
They’re the ones fighting to stop sex-selective abortion , to prevent people from killing unborn women.
And absitinance is the only 100% sure way to avoid making babies. As people here admitted , sometimes contraception can fail sometimes. If they all abstained there’d be no more unwanted babies.
What happened to Savita Halappanavar was a tragedy. However the fact that she did not get the needed medical attention was due to systems failures and communications shortcomings. The medical council guidelines made it clear she should have received the necessary attention to save her life.
So Kroos, do women even have equal rights to men? Or are they supposed to be second class citizens with fewer rights? Men dont seem to lose any rights to bodily autonomy when it concerns pregnancy, so why should women? In your little world of horrors, maybe men should be forced by the government to provide for the personal health and safety of women who are pregnant. They should be the personal
slaveindentured servant of the women they have made pregnant. That would even things out quite nicely. Its a fair trade.But he’s responsible for fathering children. He’s responsible for not using condoms. He’s responsible for not getting a vasectomy. He’s responsible for having sex. Oh, wait, I remember, guys aren’t to be held responsible for their reproductive choices. And it’s also not about objective harm suffered by actual children. It’s only women who need to be reduced to the status of broodmares, no matter the outcomes as long as they pass the Kroos Control test of good behaviour.
@opposable thumbs
The full report cites many failures at the clinic.
Up is down etc.
SQB:
Feeling responsible and being criminally &/or civilly liable are two completely different things. I mean, not even the same ballpark. Hell, not even the same planet.
To be clear: I drank during the first trimester before I knew I was pregnant. I attended a dinner party (at the Spokegay’s, no less) during my kiddo’s 3rd week of gestation. However, I am not using this as some sort excuse or “out”, I just don’t want to be and never intended to be misleading.
Like I said before, FAS isn’t (necessarily) a clear cut diagnosis. I’m not going to beat myself up if it turns out that DarkToddler has some sort of learning disorder, because at this point it wouldn’t be clear if it was due to me being drunk during my first trimester, genetics (I’m dyslexic, as is my father, so I could have simply “passed it along”) or some other environmental factor. Or a combination of the three. Or something else entirely.
Really, the heart of the issue is that we simply don’t know what causes many learning disorders or low IQ. There is evidence that drinking and smoking and certain drugs while pregnant might lead to various problems, but it’s not true in all cases.
AND we’ve got to take into account that everything pregnant women do is highly scrutinized. The lists of “don’ts” I received from my docs was pages and pages long and the pregnancy hand book I used (Your Pregnancy Week by Week) was even worse. Did you know that pregnant women are (erroneously) told not to sleep on their backs? Or that there’s a sweet spot for weight gain (single fetus: 25-30 lbs) and more or less than that is considered problematic? There is literally nothing that a pregnant woman can do that she won’t be shamed for.
All that being said, I’m not about to tell other women how they should feel about how they handled their pregnancies. If they feel guilty about something that they did that they think hurt their fetus/child, I feel bad for them. When you’re pregnant with a wanted child, it is very hard to balance what is good for you and what will be good for your pregnancy (and, if all goes well, child).
Kroos Control has now answered my question (in a roundabout way). KC thinks that pregnancy does not change the human rights of women. They are, apparently, subhuman at all times.
Kroos Control, you are a liar, a misogynist, and are actively supporting laws that kill women. Please leave.
Wow , You just misinterpeted what I said.
Women who have genetic defects aren’t punished either.
It is about harm to children. If a guy harmed a fetus he would be responsible.
Daz, #381,
I CAN HTML!!!!!!
{Shithead}
Louis
* hospital in previous post 2 posts ago
But that supposedly didn’t work for Mary. And there are some other virgin births we should count while we’re at it. Lying just comes naturally to you, doesn’t it, KC?
That’s just stupid. Since they’re against ALL abortion (except their own), it being sex-selective has no importance besides being a rhetorical weapon.
Hey Kroos! Since I engaged in risky behavior while pregnant that could have harmed DarkToddler, what do you think should happen to me? How should I be held responsible?
(I’m not totally caught up, so if you’ve answered, please just let me know which comment.)
KC @ 319
You’re the one who keeps inventing bullshit hypotheticals to take away my rights. Yer precious uterus-occupying-human-DNA-carrying entities* are dying all the time:
Source
*funny, that also describes cervical cancer. Funny, that.
(Notice how I supported the factual claim I made?)
@vaiyt
It is still a horrible sexist practice. Pro-lifers are against sexism. Same with race-selective abortions.We’re against racism.
@Alexandra
I answered. I said I didn’t know.
Why not? You seem to “know” everything else, Kroos.
Besides, isn’t your morality handed down to you from God? What does He say about abortion and pregnancy? What punishment would God like?
Why don’t you just say “falsehood, sophistry, falsehood, trolling, sophistry, sophistry, sophistry” and we’ll fill in the rest? It would save a lot of time.
What does the bible say about abortion, Kroos?
Kroos Control:
You are supporting laws and ideas that actually kill women. Why?
Kroos #367
Of course not. You never actually say it. You just push for laws that would necessarily require it.
That implies either that you’re too stupid to realize the implication of what you’re doing or that you’re dishonestly hiding your motivations.
This implies that a fetus should have a right (the right to use another person’s body without their permission, in order to sustain its own life) that no born human being has.
Are you going to face up to that fact or will you dodge and derail once again?
Except that no patient (pregnant or not) has the right to demand a specific drug (thalidomide or any other). That’s not a right that anybody has, so pregnant women aren’t losing an existing right.
However, if a pregnant woman requires a medication that, as a side effect cause damage to the fetus, the woman is in fact not denied the use of that medication. It’s clearly recognized that the woman takes priority over the fetus.
The fact that a patient (any patient) doesn’t get to demand specific drugs is a red herring. We don’t hand over morphine to anyone who asks for it, either. We give it only to patients where a doctor has judged that it’s the proper drug for their condition.
The situation here isn’t actually that the fetus is taking priority over the woman, whose right to demand specific drugs is then restricted. Rather, the woman never had that right to begin with.
@Alexandra
I only use secular arguments. I won’t cite the bible here.
You idiot (or, of course, disingenuous liar). There is no such thing as an “unborn woman”. If you want to stop sex-selective abortion of female foetuses, try removing the need for it. The need for it arises out of the fact that women are forced to cope with the fucked-up situation where they will be looked down on or actually punished for having a female child, and where that female child will be despised, deprived of education and often of food, and treated like an inferior non-citizen merely by virtue of being female.
Oh, of course. It’s all so simple! Women are such silly creatures! Kroos, if you’re going to pontificate you should actually think about this and consider reality, instead of solemnly intoning your script.
The following was written by someone who used to be, quite genuinely and sincerely, a pro-lifer – until they looked at the evidence. You could click through and check the maths for yourself – it won’t take you long.
abstinence-a-birth-control-method-that-is-100-effective
We are now in the Twilight Zone.
So, a genetic disease is NOT harm to children?
It’s preventable harm to children. Don’t make them. But that way you can’t control women’s behaviour, because you would have to establish the same rules for men, which is why you won’t go there.
Ah, the cognitive dissonance of getting all these abusive replies, and one row lower in my inbox there’s an invitation to a NARAL rally. If any of you guys are in the DC area (and aren’t on the same mailing lists I am), it’s the morning of 25 March at the Supreme Court. They say 8:30 – 9:30’s the most important time, and here’s a link: http://www.prochoiceamerica.org/get-involved/actions/325-rally-signup-credo.html
Sure, like the ontological argument, ex nihilo nihil fit, and the argument from morality. You know: secular arguments.
Not that it matters, but I doubt you’ve read it.
So, harming a foetus levies a fine, as the father demands and the courts allow. Harming a woman seriously invokes the code of Hammurabi. As far as I can tell, the bible places far greater importance on women than it does on the foetus; the foetus is treated as little more than property. Per the DCT, it has been established that it is objectively moral to treat foetus as little more than property.
Derek 408
By what measure? Even so, misogyny deserves no better. You’re free to leave if being called out on your bullshit is too tough for you.
@CR
obviously I was talking about against abortion. And those arguments are secular anyway because they’re not tied to any religion.
Kroos Control:
Objective morality, according to you, comes from god(s). Are abortions objectively moral, or immoral?
Unborn women don’t exist. Female fetus exists. At what point does your fuckwitted and idiotic sloganeering going to stop, and you start calling it what it really is, not what you delusionally and wrongly pretend it to be.
They’re arguments for theistic religion. They are therefore (1) not secular, and they are also (2) tied to some religions and not others.
If you thought that being non-secular meant it had to be arguing specifically for something like The Third Reformed Church of Asinine Sophistry, or The Holy Life Church of Christ the Bullshitter, then you thought wrong.
And it had absolutely nothing to do with the way the RCC worked and used all their power and influence to have the laws framed, oh no, no connection at all.
Liar.
.
QFT
A fetus isn’t and child, and won’t be until born. Stop confusing very, very simple, and very, very basic definitions. Doing so makes you and your attitudes look stupid.
By the number of occurrences of the word shit and fuck, mostly. It would only be tough on me if people were actually engaging in arguments vs. starting with a conclusion and making circular arguments based on that. Or if the abuse were a bit more scatalogically creative, for instance.
I just think it’s amusing – but if you’re near DC, it’s probably worth going to that rally. It’s pretty important that the ACA cover contraception, I think.
Except your arguments are what you believe your imaginary deity wants. There is no secular reason to ban abortion. There is only fuckwitted religious based reasons to do so.
If you want to be secular, admit your deity doesn’t exist. Otherwise, it is in the back of your mind.
Derek @418
You’re not worth the fucking energy to muster creativity, ya piece of shit.
Love you too.
@Portia
I’m against that too!
Sorry fuckwitted amoral idjit. The evidence says religious based organizations us those arguments and terminology. Ergo, they ARE religious based. Trying to say otherwise if simply a lying liar lying. And you, like all religious folk, lie so easily, and believe your own lies.
@CR
Strictly speaking they’re arguments for theism.
KC, that was opposablethumbs who made that very cogent point that you are going to ignore. Not me.
You mean that you *can’t* cite the bible, because the bible says next-to-nothing about abortion.
You’re a coward, Kroos. If a woman is supposed to give up her right to bodily autonomy to provide the “appropriate level of care” (insert big fucking eyeroll here) for the fetus, shouldn’t she face some penalty for engaging risky behaviors? You yourself correctly said that if I refused to feed my child, that would be neglect* and at the very least I would lose parental rights. Why can’t you say the same for a woman who “neglects” her fetus?
Also, you never responded to the fact that pregnancy isn’t some static state– it’s VERY difficult to carry a healthy pregnancy to term (as I implied in 387). I was in the doctor’s office (for a low-risk, healthy pregnancy) about once every other month, until the end of the 9th month, when I went once a week (not including delivery and recovery). Why won’t you recognize that abortion is in fact less action than a pregnancy?
*Although how it doesn’t also fall into the “inaction” category is beyond me.
@418 Derek
Oh, cry me a fucking river. Your argument against abortion rights is “ick.” That doesn’t deserve anything but ridicule.
@Portia
sorry. Wrong person
@ Alexandra #395
S/he didn’t answer yet that I saw.
I’ll repeat my question, same as Alexandra’s:
4th time now:
I would really like to see what your answers are, Kroos Control, to these questions.
Derek, speaking only for myself, obviously, I was giving you all the benefits of every doubt when you first showed up and my earliest post to you was genuinely kindly meant (if you recall, I tried to explain why you were getting a warmer welcome than you expected or thought was reasonable. I offered you an ultra-quick run-down on history and context).
Tone trolling is not going to do your argument (such as it is) any favours. You’re only making yourself look petty. Feel free to take your wisdom elsewhere.
Derek @418:
Try actually reading the ideas presented rather than focusing on the angry language. I know this may come as a surprise to you, but when people like you and Kroos Control show up and start making arguments in support of laws and ideas that actually kill women, people get angry (and yes, KC, women are people, not just mobile incubators).
She wasn’t the only one.
http://freethoughtblogs.com/butterfliesandwheels/2014/03/abandoned-by-all-medical-staff/
And in the US:
http://freethoughtblogs.com/butterfliesandwheels/2012/11/its-not-just-ireland/
The system didn’t fail. Denial of care due to religious interference is built into the system, so that women suffering or dying can be excused as mere breakdowns in communication.
No, you blindered ideologue. It was a trigger to start thinking about what I think about abortion rights; I’d bet you a USD 50 donation to NARAL right now that you couldn’t accurately portray my opinion what abortion law should be.
Which is not condemned by pro-lifers because it’s sexist, but only because it is abortion.
The “pro-life” position necessarily entails that women don’t have full personhood and are required to become walking incubators once they become pregnant. It is sexist by design.
Kroos Control #404
Wait, YOU are the one who is saying that morality is “objective” because it comes from God. WTHeck do you mean you’re making secular arguments? Your entire premise that there is any morality at all — which underlies your argument that there should be laws regulating abortion or that abortion is “objectively” immoral — is a religious one. YOU are the one using the Bible or the God of the Bible as your source for morality. That’s not a “secular” argument at all.
@Alexandra
@435 Derek
I’m sorry…what justification did you give for wanting to grant fetuses rights other than being squicked by the idea of non-existent late term elective abortions? Refresh my memory.
UNBORN BABIES AREN’T A THING!
Offering to Typos and all that
I was going based on secular arguments. You don’t need to bible to see that humans have intrinsic worth.
Why don’t you tell us, then?
Kroos Control:
I have utterly failed, in my mind, to be a decent human being. Are you claiming that I have intrinsic worth? Based on what?
And their intrinsic worth vanishes whenever they are pregnant with a fetus. The fetus gobbles it all up, from the inside.
@Alexandra
But wikitionary
Because it’s too much fun to play “gotcha” games, apparently.
@ Kroos Control #397
But YOU are the one with the spidey-sense pipeline to direct perception of God’s “objective” morality. Why don’t you know?
1) Except for women, apparently.
2) That from the guy who believes Biblegod is self-evident.
Alexandra
Like walking down the stairs.
I fell down the stairs while pregnant with #1. Could have killed her. And maybe then some “pro-lifers” who are so much “pro-woman” would think it fit to have prosecuted me, because since women have thrown themselves down stairs to induce a miscarriage, it would be reasonable to investigate and prosecute women who have accidents. Because that’s already happening fucking right now
@maddog1129
I can perceive certain things are objectively wrong just like you can . You’re misrepresenting me
Kroos:
Don’t be an ass. Your ilk uses “unborn baby” to inspire a certain type of thinking– “fetus” implies something undeveloped, not human looking, whereas “unborn baby” aims to make the opposition think of round, chubby cheeked children. It’s a terrible transparent emotional ploy.
Why won’t you answer any of my questions, Kroos? I answered yours and this a quid pro quo type of deal you demanded. “I don’t know” isn’t good enough for someone who has spent multiple threads arguing about “objective morality”.
Geez, Seven, it feels like I’ve tried to explain this a whole bunch of times. I *feel* moral revulsion at the hypothetical thought of someone having a voluntary, non-medical abortion that kills the fetus at 8 1/2 months, say, in a way that I don’t about it happening at 12 or 20 weeks. Similarly (and yes, a fetus is not a baby) I feel moral revulsion at the thought of someone killing an actual out-of-the-womb baby, which I guess most people would share. Anyway, that’s a trigger for me to figure out what I *think* the ethics of the situation are, and what the legality should be.
Giliell #449
My google-fu fails me, but wasn’t there a case a year or so back of some fuckwits trying to prosecute a women for reckless endangerment or some such, for jaywalking while pregnant?
Derek @282:
I do start from that position.
Without that right, we have no right to defend ourselves. There is no basis for saying “this is my body, I don’t want you to punch/kick/stab/shoot me.”
That said, the humanity of the fetus is not the deciding factor for me in my support for women’s rights. The fetus could be fully human and possess all the qualities of personhood and that still wouldn’t change my opinion bc fetuses reside in the body of pregnant women. They are making use of the woman’s body. I feel like a broken record at this point but it apparently still needs to be said: no human being has the right to make use of anyone else’s body without their consent.
If you and Kroos Control are going to argue that fetii have special rights to override the wishes of pregnant women, you’re going to have to provide a great amount of justification for that. Thus far, many of the anti-choice arguments center around special pleading for the fetus, without explaining why the fetus is so damn special, but the pregnant woman is not. I feel that the anti-choice/forced birth arguments are rooted in religious beliefs. Whether expressed in that manner or not, the arguments I’ve seen boil down to “the fetus is special, bc reasons”.
I’ll also point out that it is *only* the fetus that is this special, as parents cannot be forced to provide blood or organs even if it is to save the life of their children. So if infants, toddlers, children, or teens do not have the right to use the body of another human-even their parent, and even if it will save their life-why does a fucking fetus?
Dictionaries follow usage. If enough dumbfucks like you use a word or phrase a certain way, that dumbfuckery can find its way into a dictionary somewhere, no matter how that relates to reality.
Kroos Control
For pity’s sake, stop playing with the “creationist” tag. If anyone’s a troll here it’s you, not the people you’re quoting.
@Alexandra
But I have seen pictures of aborted ‘foetuses’. They do look human . You can see their tiny body parts.
Also , just because there’s an objective standard , it doesn’t mean I know everything. I’m honest when I don’t know something.
Giliell:
My mom walked into a wall when she was pregnant with my older sister (it was dark in the room, they had just moved, so she wasn’t used to the layout, and she had taken a sleeping pill). At the time, she went to her doctor and was checked out, no worries beyond concern for her pregnancy. If that happened now, she could very well face charges for endangering her fetus like that.
Don’t lose sleep. Because it’s something that doesn’t happen. But you must think that women are horrible monsters who would do such things the minute the restrictions alss the manly men impose were lifted. Just look at Canada! An Abortionplex in every small town with special offers for non medically necessary late third trimester abortions
And I gotta take off for band practice, so I’ll donate 25 bucks if you will.
In short, my opinion on American abortion law:
– Abortions should be covered in the ACA
– Parental consent laws are crap
– Transvaginal probes, mandatory waiting periods and the like, are crap
– If there should be a legal upper limit for voluntary abortions (e.g., not affecting the health of the mother and fetus), they should probably be higher than they are now.
Which, I suspect, deviates quite a bit from Kroos…
Derek:
WTF?
You think gut feelings have a place in a discussion on human rights?
I’m glad gut feelings haven’t been at play in the fight for marriage equality.
I massively disagree that *your* gut feelings should have any bearing on the rights of anyone else.
Oh, Kroos’ co-religionists really respect women’s rights. They fight for women’s rights to be enshrined in law – in the US, in Ireland, in Argentina, Italy and Spain … practically all of christendom (with a few honourable exceptions) is singing Kroos’ tune.
If you keep your eyes shut while you pray you’ll never have to see the blood on your hands.
The laws you and those like you support kill women, Kroos. Not even counting the lives you help to blight – the living toddlers and teenagers who suffer greater deprivation than before or who lose their mother, the fathers who lose their co-parent, the women whose health is harmed – those are real people who die because of these laws. I’m sure you’d never think so, or at least never admit to it even to yourself, but it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that that’s what people like you actually want.
Kroos:
Bullshit. You obviously haven’t seen a real picture of an aborted fetus– 7 week old fetuses look like lima beans. I know this because I had my first ultra sound when I was pregnant halfway through the 7th week of gestation. I am not exaggerating in the least about how they look. They do not look human.
I was giving you the benefit of the doubt that you could just be an idiot, but no, you’re definitely a liar and an idiot. Good show!
@460:
How magnanimous of you, to let women be people for more time than a empty-headed God-botherer! Not.
Congratulations.
They’re human fetuses. Did you expect tentacles? But “looking human” has nothing whatsoever to do with the use of “baby” vs. “fetus.” Again: human fetuses. Human fetuses are human. Dumbass.
You’re dishonest when you’re claiming to know numerous things you don’t.
Kroos Control @319:
Correct. The doctor wouldn’t do that without the consent of the individual in question. You seem to understand consent in this case, but fail to understand it with regard to pregnant women.
You have to give consent to a doctor before they can hook you up to the violinist.
You have to give consent to allow a fetus to continue using your body.
In both cases, it is an issue of consent.
Do I consent to this being using my body?
CR@444
Here, have an internet, you won it fair and square.
I would like you to meet these two guys. This one is called Dunning, and the other one is Kruger…
Tony – again with the misinterpreting what I’m typing. The *feeling* is the trigger to start thinking about what I think. That’s also why it’s irrelevant that nobody’s actually out there getting voluntary abortions that kill the fetus at 8 1/2 months.
Anyway, I made my NARAL donation so put up or shut up, or I’ll have done more than you today to support American abortion rights. And I sincerely hope for NARAL’s sake that you feel moral revulsion at *that* concept.
Derek:
There is a time and place for using gut feelings to determine a course of action. When discussing issues of ethics and morality, there is no place for gut feelings. That’s the time for using logic, reason, and evidence (where applicable). Toss the gut feelings out of the window.
Derek@469
[emphasis added]
Hey, fuckwit, there’s more to supporting abortion rights than $$$. Don’t be an asshole. Tony has done more than you to actually support and listen to and advocate for women and other people-with-a-uterus than you have because he lives his life listening, adjusting, and actually having concern for his fellow human beings. You have spent your time here pontificating about bullshit and wanting brownie points for not being as much of an asshole as Kroos.
Also: “it looks like people!” is a piss poor excuse to do anything. I mean, Dark Toddler has a doll that has an uncanny resemblance to a real baby (it even giggles!), but does that mean we should never throw it out?
If that wasn’t creative enough for you, just pretend I called you all of these. Except maybe #9, because…ack.
Kroos Control
So, do you think that this has the same status as a baby or a woman?
And tomorrow, you’d do a whole lot more to infringe abortion rights. Probably, it will all even out somehow.
Alexandra@472
Well, of course not, there are child abandonment laws, you know. At the very least, DarkToddler should only drop it off at a manned fire station or an emergency room.
Kroos Control:
And the smarmy assclam becomes just a bit more dishonest (didn’t think that were possible). You’re right, it really is a weird notion for women to lose rights when they’re pregnant, so why are you in support of that? You support the fucking stupid idea that a fetus’ right to life trumps a woman’s bodily autonomy, which elevates the right of a fetus to levels greater than any human being (born or dead) and the pregnant woman loses her bodily autonomy. *YOU* are arguing in favor of that. *YOU* want women to lose their rights. *YOU* want to grant fetus’ special rights.
Own it you fucking shithead.
@ Kroos Control #450
Au contraire, Pierre, YOU are misrepresenting ME. I’ve told you over and over, I CAN’T and DON’T “perceive” that certain things are “objectively” wrong. What faculty or mechanism of “perception” do you mean? Please identify and describe it, and please also elucidate how to gain access to it. If such a thing is real, then people need to know how to do/achieve it.
I learned about morality from history and from reason, and from common human experiences based, intially, upon sensory perceptions, which led to experiences of pleasure and pain, which then developed into a reasoned understanding of empathy, kindness, cooperation, solidarity, interconnectedness and interdependence, and what constitutes harm and what constitutes wellbeing for human beings. Any such thing as knowledge as I might have about morality is hard-won, and may change with application of reason. It’s not something I “perceive” intuitively via some unexplained mechanism.
AND what I understand of morality most definitely is NOT “objective” in the sense that YOU use the word “objective,” as God-given, completely external to human beings, absolute and unalterable. I have no faculty or means of perception of any God(s)/Goddess(es). I simply cannot apprehend any such thing; all the definitions given to me by theists describe something incoherent, self-contradictory, imperceptible, unaccessible, and indistinguishable from nonexistent. So, for you to ascribe to me YOUR claim that I must be ” perceiv[ing that] certain things are objectively wrong” is flat-out untrue. Stop projecting that onto me. YOU are the one who is misrepresenting ME, and who refuses to acknowledge that there could possibly be anything other than (1) external, God-given, “objective” immutable unchanging moral rules and values or (2) moral chaos. You refuse to see, what has been shown to you over and over and over, that there can be inter-subjective agreement on moral values, and that such values have changed over time, as we have gained better knowledge and understanding about how large or small our social group really is, and how many are included in the “in-group” to whom mutual obligations and duties (morality) are owed.
OTOH, it is YOU who claimed to simply “perceive” God’s “objective” moral principles. You claim to have a faculty that I, at least, don’t have, which gives you access to the right answers to moral questions. If you truly do have this ability to “perceive” what is “objectively” moral, then it should be a simple matter for you to know what is right and wrong in every instance, not merely the super easy cases at the extremes. If I have misUNDERSTOOD (NOT “misrepresented”) what you are claiming, then please clarify.
Alexandra @365:
A meatspace friend of mine-J-called me up several years ago to tell me she had just given birth to a baby girl.
She had *no* idea she was pregnant*. During her pregnancy, J continued to smoke and drink. J likes to party. She would go out on weekends and party. Sometimes she would get really drunk. I recall her mentioning a few times prior to the birth of her child that she wanted to have children one day. To my mind (though I haven’t asked her), if she knew she was pregnant, I strongly suspect she would have curbed (if not halted) her alcohol consumption.
Today, she has a healthy baby girl who AFAIK never had any issues related to J’s alcohol consumption.
*J is a plus size woman. She didn’t gain a significant amount of weight during her pregnancy and she also continued to have her period. She literally didn’t know she was pregnant until her water broke.
Oh, and while we’re at it, how about banning women from eating medium steaks, smoked salmon, sushi, any kind of lettuce or uncooked vegetables, certain types of cheese, parsley, cinnamon, ginger…?
I guess Kroos Control never knew that all these things can cause severe harm to the fetus, cause miscarriages or induce premature birth..
They can have my cinnamon tea when they pry it from my cold dead fingers… wait, me being dead from pregnancy is a feature, not a bug, huh?
@ Kroos Control #457
If you really do not have access to what the supposedly “objectively moral” position is, then you don’t have any reason or basis to legislate anything w/r/t that issue. If you “don’t know,” then legislating about it should be “hands off.”
Religious anti woman bigot: I think abortion should be stopped because god told me so. Also: icky.
Effective anti woman bigot claiming to be pro-woman: I think abortion should be stopped when it makes me feel icky.
“We’ve already established what you are, now we’re just haggling over the price.”
Louis
P.S. Call me an old extremist, but I have this crazy notion that women are actually people too. No amount of foetus changes that. Gawrsh! Such intransigent extremity!
P.P.S. “BUT I DONE A DONASHUN!” does not equal “I am not an effective anti woman bigot”, it just means cognitive dissonance is alive and well in the human species.
For those that do not know about Savita Hallapanavar:
I fucking despise anti-choice/forced birthers because they support this shit. They want *no* abortion access. Whether they say so or not, the end result of their agenda would be more dead women. That’s a fucking massive loss of rights.
Fuck you Kroos Control and anyone else denying women their rights.
There is no objective standard that includes your gut feelings, or your imaginary deity and what you think its amorality is.
You don’t know your deity really exists, as there is no evidence whatsoever, and that includes your presuppositional wankery, to show that it does exist.
Tony:
J’s situation is my worst nightmare. I literally have nightmares about not knowing that I’m pregnant until it’s far too late to do anything about it.
I hope everything worked out for J and her kid!
Ladies, your instructions. Please read, absorb, and heed them. The second you find out you are inhabited by a Darling Little Foetus, stop whatever you are doing. Report right away to the nearest padded pregnancy-house, where you will be strapped into a padded pregnancy-chair for the duration of your Beautiful Pregnancy Experience (except for periods of officially approved light exercise). You will stay there, consuming nothing but sterilised water and officially approved food, until the Darling Little Foetus becomes a baby.
Then you will be thrown out of the door and be refused anything in the manner of government help to feed and clothe the baby. Because that would be Big Government.
That’s not something to be proud of, fella.
Kroos Control:
At this point, I am convinced you haven’t thought through the implications of *anything* you claim to believe.
First off, I question how much you’ve though through your supposed “pro-life” position. I don’t use that phrase bc it was dishonestly crafted by people like you to make their cause seem more righteous. But a great many of those so-called “pro lifers” aren’t opposed to the death penalty. For people who supposedly value human life, that respect goes out the window when the discussion turns away from fetuses.
No, you and your vile allies are forced birthers. You want to force women to carry fetuses to term. You want to turn women into chattel.
Well I’m here to tell you I abhore that and I oppose any efforts to reduce the humanity of women.
You’d be better off going elsewhere Kroos. You’re impervious to logic and reason. You’re staggeringly incapable of debate. You have no idea how to argue a point. You actively support efforts to reduce the humanity of half the population of the planet. You’re a disgrace to the human race.
Kroos Control:
I must have blinked and missed these secular arguments. Of course that was a looooong blink, given that I’ve read the vast majority of your output here (as in ‘Pharyngula’, not just the Thunderdome).
Derek:
You’re choosing to come here and whining that people are being rude to you. How on earth is that abuse?
Derek @418:
That’s not abuse by any reasonable definition of the word you dishonest fucker.
Tony@492
Not that it matters, but I did google the dictionary definition, which includes “offensive or insulting” …so by the weakest possible dictionary definition, absent the normal connotations, we could be being abusive.
Do you see how troubled I am by the possibility? ;)
Derek:
You are willing to kill women to prevent non-existent cases. That is not pro-choice.
But it is relevant. When late-term abortions are banned, or restricted, women die when things go wrong during a pregnancy. Why do you think that women dying is irrelevant?
Tony:
I must have blinked and missed these secular arguments. Of course that was a looooong blink, given that I’ve read the vast majority of your output here (as in ‘Pharyngula’, not just the Thunderdome).
C’mon, Tony. Kroos Control’s secular argument is that there is an objective morality (handed down by god(s)) which says that women are not entitled to the rights of a real human (that is, male penis-having heterosexual human). See? Doesn’t even mention the bible. So it must be secular.
Kroos Control:
You continue to assert this yet offer no evidence to support it.
You assume objective morals exist.
You feel, for some reason that is not at all apparent, that you can perceive these morals, yet you offer no explanation for how you perceive these morals. You offer no mechanism for how the human brain can discover these objective morals. You haven’t mentioned what these objective morals are (aside from “killing babies for fun”, which is *not* universally recognized). You haven’t explained how anyone else can detect these objective morals. You’re a lying, dishonest shitstain.
Portia:
Gosh, I see you’re troubled by that. Yup.
I think I am too. I’ve seen the error of my ways. All those ‘fucks’ and ‘shitstains’ I’ve been lobbing. They’re just so abusive. Peoples’ lives have been devastated. I should express my views in a polite civil tone so no one suffers…
Nah.
Fuck that noise.
(btw, thank you for your @471)
Portia:
She will never willingly give up her baby doll. No matter how often she laughs and throws it on the floor, or at a dog, or out of her crib, or steps on it, or chews on its face, she really REALLY loves that baby doll.
My baby just isn’t a very good care-giver. Since the baby doll looks so much like a real baby, maybe I should be more concerned for its welfare.
Ogvorbis @ 494
This is key. Even if you believe that there is a moral obligation to protect the life of a fetus at some stage of development, you should trust women to decide. Attempts to legislate morality interfere with medical care when doctors and hospitals refuse to preserve life saving care. Doctors should not have to worry that an anti-choice prosecutor might decide a woman wasn’t in enough danger to warrant protecting her health.
In addition, legal and extralegal restrictions on late-term abortions dramatically decrease the quality and availability of the ones that remain available. Monsters like Gosnell are able to exist because women don’t have better options.
486
Alexandra (née Audley)
Ditto. It happened to a girl in my child development class (modern home ec, basically). She stopped getting her period in her 7th month so that’s when she found out. 16 years old. It was in the fall/winter so she was always wearing her jacket and was heavy set. Absolutely terrifying.
Even with the IUD I worry about it. Hell, I haven’t had sex in years and the days of waiting for my period are still panic inducing. Because it would royal fuck us over completely. I can’t even begin to list the ways getting pregnant again would ruin everything. We’re barely surviving now…I just can’t even…
I wish people actually understood the issue and how it effects people instead of playing this “objective morality” or “it’s icky” shit. If you wanna play that game, being pregnant is icky. Makes me sick just to think of it.