Abortion vs Your Religious Beliefs

[Mr Skeptic]

I think you'll find that the probability of a young girl becoming pregnant can be increased drastically by encouraging her to do so. And she can create several new humans, whereas an embryo will at most grow to one. Regardless, why is it that in one case people defend the potential new life but in the other do their best to prevent it? No, this only makes sense from the premise that the embryo itself is already a life.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

Hmm. Agreed. We have to grant embryos special status as "humans" for the probability argument to work.

[Mr Skeptic]

Indeed. Whereas for abortion to be anything but a horrible thing, only works from the premise that the embryo is not a human person.

[Sisyphus]

No, this only makes sense from the premise that the embryo itself is already a life.

 

Indeed. Whereas for abortion to be anything but a horrible thing, only works from the premise that the embryo is not a human person.

 

Exactly. This is what it comes down to. The problem is of choosing at what point in the cycle a new "person" has arrived. And so you have to define what a "person" is, and decide what attributes of a person make it worth protecting, and decide when those attributes have emerged.

 

I say "decide" rather than "discover" intentionally, because this isn't something for which there is going to be an objectively correct answer. Because of the cyclical and gradual nature of the process, any single cutoff point is necessarily going to be arbitrary.

[jryan]

Exactly. This is what it comes down to. The problem is of choosing at what point in the cycle a new "person" has arrived. And so you have to define what a "person" is, and decide what attributes of a person make it worth protecting, and decide when those attributes have emerged.

 

I say "decide" rather than "discover" intentionally, because this isn't something for which there is going to be an objectively correct answer. Because of the cyclical and gradual nature of the process, any single cutoff point is necessarily going to be arbitrary.

 

But that is the whole point. There is an obvious in-concrete starting point pre-made for you to use (conception), imposing a more arbitrary starting point does not increase the fidelity of the decision and any attempt to dehumanize the subject of the abortion in order to fit an arbitrary moral structure is still incredibly disturbing to many people.

[Mr Skeptic]

But conception obviously can't be the starting point, because of identical twins.

[npts2020]

Exactly. This is what it comes down to. The problem is of choosing at what point in the cycle a new "person" has arrived. And so you have to define what a "person" is, and decide what attributes of a person make it worth protecting, and decide when those attributes have emerged.

 

I say "decide" rather than "discover" intentionally, because this isn't something for which there is going to be an objectively correct answer. Because of the cyclical and gradual nature of the process, any single cutoff point is necessarily going to be arbitrary.

 

Isn't this the reason you allow the woman to decide at what point that is?

[Sisyphus]

But that is the whole point. There is an obvious in-concrete starting point pre-made for you to use (conception), imposing a more arbitrary starting point does not increase the fidelity of the decision and any attempt to dehumanize the subject of the abortion in order to fit an arbitrary moral structure is still incredibly disturbing to many people.

 

I'd say birth would be far more obvious than fertilization. I wouldn't pick it, though, because a newborn is "obviously" a person, and a just-about-to-be-born has so much in common with a newborn in terms of their physical attributes if not their circumstances. Some cultures would disagree. In fact, some don't even consider newborns to be "people."

 

Similarly, I wouldn't pick fertilization, either, because sperm/egg and zygote both "obviously" don't possess personhood. If what you value about human life can include a single-celled organism, you're doing it wrong. (But hey, that's just my opinion.)

 

Just because there are clearly defined stages doesn't mean that picking one isn't arbitrary.

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Isn't this the reason you allow the woman to decide at what point that is?

 

Yes, indeed it is. Unfortunately it's not quite as simple as that, either. I'm not willing to let her decide that her five year old isn't a person yet. I am willing to let her decide that having her period, and thus wasting a chance at a potential life, is murder - I'll just think she's a crazy person.

Edited March 3, 2010 by Sisyphus
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[ecoli]

Equating that person with a bug may absolve you of personal guilt but would not absolve you of the killing. Might does not equal right beyond inconsequential selfish ideals.

 

Excuse me, but why do I need to seek absolution? You're framing this in religious terms, which I don't agree with

 

Throughout human history the mass culling of human beings has been preceeded by a dehumanizing of the group to be exterminated.

And we think this is wrong because cultures that approve of genocide haven't survived.

 

The fact that I approve of this doesn't mean civilization couldn't have turned out much differently if a few wars hadn't gone a different way. Nor does it let us pretend that genocide/ ethnic cleansing is universally morally wrong.

 

I'm happy, and I think it's a productive/positive thing that it's subjectively wrong, but that's not true for every person and species.

[Sisyphus]

I wiped out a group of roaches living in my apartment recently. It is true that I didn't think of them as people, and that it would have made it unacceptable for me to kill them if I did. I guess in that sense I'm similar to those dehumanizing genocide perpetrators, though associating me with them on those grounds seems like a fallacious emotional appeal.

[waitforufo]

Abortion ends a human life. Perhaps that life is not yet a person. If it is a person, then ending that life is murder. Abortion is an elective choice. It is a choice that perhaps commits murder. To what extent should such a choice be avoided? When does such a choice become immoral.

 

Let’s say a woman chooses to become pregnant. A few weeks after missing her period she takes a pregnancy test which turns out positive. The same day she finds out she has been unexpectedly accepted to participate in an archeological dig in Egypt. The fact that she was passed over for this opportunity in part lead her to make the choice to become pregnant. She doesn’t see how her pregnancy would be compatible with this unexpected carrier opportunity. Would it be moral for her to now choose to abort?

 

So again, at what point does a choice that is perhaps murder become an immoral choice?

[Sisyphus]

Abortion ends a human life. Perhaps that life is not yet a person. If it is a person, then ending that life is murder. Abortion is an elective choice. It is a choice that perhaps commits murder.

 

It seems like implicit in your "perhaps" is that there is an objectively correct answer that we just aren't aware of. Blindly firing a gun into a darkened room is "perhaps" murder, depending on whether or not there is someone there for me to hit. But abortion is a different situation. We know what will happen. We just have to decide whether what will happen is acceptable. "Person" is human-defined. A bullet hitting or not hitting someone is objective reality.

[mooeypoo]

The statement 'abortion ends a human life' (as opposed to 'prevents the creation of human life' or anything closer to that) already assumes that human life starts from conception. Not only is the bunch of cells in a zygote *life*, they're already *human* life.

 

It would be nice if it was anywhere at all supported by reason, though. If you consider the zygote life, then you have a problem with twins. And with about a billion different things that might happen to the pack of cells before they might turn into a fetus, and then into a human life.

 

You can't just assume that it's life without supporting this assumption and making sure the logic sticks to other definitions as well.

 

~moo

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

Wait. What's wrong with twins?

[Syntho-sis]

I'm so very confused about the pro-choice standpoint.

 

When do you think life begins? At birth?

 

Hmmm...Well think about this for a minute. Say I build a time machine. I decide to go back in time 6 months before the birth of Hitler..

 

I don't think I need to go any further do I?

 

Or do I?

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

Yes.

[ecoli]

Wait. What's wrong with twins?

 

Does one life begin at conception or two? (if the embryo splits after fertilization)

[Sisyphus]

Wait. What's wrong with twins?

 

Identical twins form from a single zygote that divides. So if the human life is created at conception, then twins have to share one life.

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I'm so very confused about the pro-choice standpoint.

 

When do you think life begins? At birth?

 

Did you read the rest of the thread? There have been a number of views expressed on that point.

 

 

Or do I?

 

Yeah, I think you do.

[Phi for All]

I'm so very confused about the pro-choice standpoint.

 

When do you think life begins? At birth?

Morally, I think the life of a child begins when its mother decides it should live to be born. This gives the mother the right to do what she deems best with her own body. The unborn child is completely dependent on its mother and her choices by definition anyway.

 

Politically, legally, I think a certain time limit for abortions must be agreed upon, since we're talking about a definition of life in a democratic society. Life can't begin at conception for legal purposes, for many reasons. Sometime before the first trimester ends seems a good compromise place to set the limit.

[Mr Skeptic]

Incidentally, if we have an embryo at some point in its development before we consider it a person, what happens if someone terminates it without or against the will of the mother?

[Sisyphus]

Incidentally, if we have an embryo at some point in its development before we consider it a person, what happens if someone terminates it without or against the will of the mother?

 

I'd say that performing invasive medical procedures on people against their will is immoral, as a rule of thumb. I would also think the moral ramifications depend further on whether the person doing the terminating thinks of it as a person. If you destroy what you think is a person but isn't, are you a murderer? Not in the eyes of the law, but perhaps morally.

[Phi for All]

Incidentally, if we have an embryo at some point in its development before we consider it a person, what happens if someone terminates it without or against the will of the mother?

You mean like someone beats up a woman in her first trimester with the intent to cause a miscarriage? To me, morally, if the mother wanted that baby, this would be murder. Any further response is more a political one, but I would again defer to the mother as to what charges need to be pressed beyond assault and battery, if the legal limit for abortion was within the first trimester. A forced abortion without the mother's consent should always be grounds for murder.

[CharonY]

Another thought experiment. In the early blastula phase you take out a single cell. Do you have one or two humans now (under the right conditions the single cells would start proliferating)? You put it back. Did you just kill one?

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

Another thought experiment. In the early blastula phase you take out a single cell. Do you have one or two humans now (under the right conditions the single cells would start proliferating)? You put it back. Did you just kill one?

 

Go further. Suppose I perfect an amazing technology that lets me extract a cell from an adult, turn it into a stem cell, then an egg cell, all while preserving the original DNA and encouraging it to grow. It doesn't even have to be fertilized, since it keeps the original DNA. It's a clone, basically.

 

At what point in the procedure is destroying my miracle cell murder?

[mooeypoo]

At what point in the procedure is destroying my miracle cell murder?

When it becomes sentient.