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this post was submitted on 24 Nov 2023
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Not really what your criteria is being that I'm a pro life libertarian as far as ideals I align with most on what you're looking for.
Even though I am religious, my argument against abortion is firstly a scientific one then on moral principal second. On the science side it's a human from the moment of conception. On the moral side it's that I believe all humans deserve human rights no matter at what stage of development there are. Just as soon as you make exceptions to kill for one type or subset of humankind you open the door to others. Usually this is done by labeling a certain group as not human to justify oppression of said group. Terms usually used to justify acts of violence against other humans are property, subhuman, animals, savages, clump of cells, parasite, etc. Usually for libertarians it boils down to having a code called the non-aggression principal which is essentially don't fuck with other people. This is also why I'm anti capital punishment.
I hope that helps. Also, good luck at your family get togethers, lol. It feels like you're looking for ammunition for debates.
Citation needed
This basically underpins the whole thing and is pretty hand waved away
Personally I think the whole 'life/humanity begins at conception' thing is a smoke screen. Life began a long, long time ago, and the cell line you belong to became human deep in prehistory.
The actual question is "does the state have the right to use one person's living body to support the life of another?" It applies to organ transplants as much as it applies to the unborn.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33620844/
I’m not seeing how this in anyway even really touches on this issue at hand. A paper on human development to show that “science says” we have a “human” at the moment of conception?
At the end of the day this is going to just be about what your definition of a “human” is rather than anything “science” has to say.
This one goes to the embryo
https://www.britannica.com/science/human-body/Basic-form-and-development
But at far as from conception goes, it has DNA distinct from both parents and starts developing until stopped. Even if not developed to whatever your standard is, it's like a picture developed from film. The picture (or in this case, the human) is still there, it just needs to be developed.
I see justifying violence on certain humans as opening the door for society to justify violence on other humans. We look back on times when slavery or genocide was condoned and abhor that time and the humans that gave their approval to it. I truly believe that will be the way humanity will see society as it is now when medical technology advances enough to not need a human womb to develop a human to birth. That in and of itself begs the question, when a human is viable outside of the womb from no matter what stage of development, does that change how you view its rights from the earliest stages of its life?
Imagine the 'Trolley Problem" where there is a toddler on one track, and on the other track there is a cooler containing 100 in-vitro embryos. Which would you save, and why?
Derail the trolley.
https://youtu.be/aBS51qz0uYg
Oh no! There were 2 toddlers and 200 frozen embryos on the trolley. Derailing it has destroyed them all.
You already have my answer: try to derail tram in order to save both. If I fail, I fail. Knowing that I tried to save 101 people is all that matters because in the end the tram operator will be the one sued to make the family(ies) whole.
Then there is no real answer.
Instead of focusing on who to save with a magic lever, I would instead focus on how to save both groups. I'm not sorry you don't like that answer.
It wouldn’t because I have criteria, most specifically the ability to suffer, that underpins how I feel about abortion. This is independent of wombs or even DNA potentially.
I mean, I understand not wanting to allow violence on humans. But this still tied back to the definition of human. And, for me, if we take it back to ability to suffer, it makes a direct case for the way I feel about any entity’s (human or non human) rights
As far as I can tell you see abortion as an “exception” that allows killing of a specific type of human.
While I am not really concerned with humanness. But of the underlying phenomenon that make protecting humans something we should want to do.
If you think about why we want to protect humans and tie to to consciousness and ability to suffer. There’s no exception and we can use our knowledge of human fetus development to inform abortion policy to prevent abortions that would infringe on those conditions.
Not that you're asking for an argument, but I do want you to know why I, and many like me, find this whole life-from-conception argument totally ethically unpersuasive. And it's not the usual nonsense of "it's just cells" because, as you well know, that's an unimpressive and pointless debate. Whether a fetus is a human or not is fundamentally subjective. And so I'll grant that it is, because I have total confidence in my pro-choice position even then.
The issue with the pro-life position is not that it asserts that abortion is bad. Frankly, I don't give a crap if you or anyone else thinks it is bad. Again, that is subjective. A personal preference. The issue with the pro-life position is that it always seems to assert that abortion must be banned and even criminalized. That's what pro-life is. It doesn't mean "I think abortion is bad", it means "I think abortion should not be allowed."
My position isn't that abortion is good. Mine is that the pregnant person has a right to choose. I think the moral calculus on when and whether it is good or bad is FAR too complicated to form a rule, and so we must leave it up to the biggest stakeholders to figure that out privately.
I think a lot of things are bad, but having a preference against something is different than justifying use of the state's violence to prohibit it.
A Defense of Abortion by Judith Jarvis Thomson, PDF - 1971. Hardly new, and I doubt you've never seen it, but ultimately it is still the line of argument that I do not think has been convincingly rebutted. This essay is still probably the most sound and straightforward work of philosophy that shows that banning abortion is impermissible in an ethical society, and it presumes life from the moment of conception just as you do.
My extreme summary of the point it is making: at the end of the day, you have two competing human rights. You have the right to autonomy of your own body against another's right to life. Both are undeniably rights a person has -- and highly related ones, at that. When these rights are in tension, we need to make a choice as to which is supreme. And the consequences of giving life supremacy over autonomy are disastrous compared to the consequences of giving autonomy supremacy over life.
Rather than empower the state to take any and all actions necessary to protect life, we instead must impose a limit on the power of the state -- it may not violate someone's ability to make choices about their own body functions, even if to protect the life of another.
I'd prefer to be in a world that has no abortions at all. Just as I'd prefer to be in a world without contagious disease. One way to get rid of all contagious disease is to systematically euthanize every sick person at their first sniffle. Problem solved! Such is an abortion ban.
We get rid of disease by investing in research and healthcare and doing our best to use it maximize efficacy with fair triage, vaccination programs, etc.. We get rid of abortion by preventing unwanted pregnancies from the get and by creating a world so supportive and safe for pregnant people that they do not want to terminate it.
So don't fuck with other people, unless they're fully grown women making decisions about their own bodies, or underage victims of rape.
There no caveat or exception. Don't fuck with other people.
But my hand is tired.
/jk
I won't mention the rest of the text because I'm not interested enough on the discussion to do so. I'll focus on a single thing.
What should be considered a human being or not is prescriptive in nature, because it involves ethics. Science - i.e. the scientific method - does not give a shit to prescriptive matters; science is descriptive, it's worried about what happens/doesn't happen. For science it doesn't really matter if you call it a human, a tissue, a wug or a colourless green thing sleeping furiously, as long as you're unambiguously and accurately describing the phenomenon being studied.
As such, no, science itself doesn't really tell you "when it becomes a human being".
The only thing that it "proves" is that the author (not "science") is referring to foetuses (from nine weeks after conception [not zero] to 16 weeks) as "children". And it certainly does not back up your claim that [ipsis litteris] "On the science side it’s a human from the moment of conception."
And no, "The growth and development are positively influenced by factors, like parental health and genetic composition, even before conception." does not prove it either, given that the author is solely mentioning conception as a time of reference.
Sorry to be blunt but the way that you referred to science sounds a lot like "I'm ignorant on science but I want to leech off its prestige for the sake of my argument". If you don't want to do this, here's a better approach:
It's also a nice way to avoid a fallacy/stupidity called appeal to nature (TL;DR: "[event/thing] is natural, so it's good lol lmao"), that often plagues discussions about moral matters like abortion.
All very well put and saved me leaving a comment.
I think the responses from the conservatives in this thread have demonstrated what I'd expected, and hopefully what OP was looking for: abandonment of Christian dogma does not always result in abandonment of dogmatic values.
People who are happy to declare that the definition of something like science is anything other than what the vast majority of those accredited in scientific fields consider it to be are just as dishonest as hard-line Christians, and will vote against their own interests just as readily.
I like how you call out some terms used to dehumanization. Fetus, baby, and child also fit into that bucket imo.
So ,to clarify, you want the government to restrict and punish abortion? I thought libertarians were for less government.
Why should the government have a monopoly on violence and force in this case? Instead shouldn't the enforcement of moral law like the NAP be up to their peers or free market hired private contractors?
Some libertarians are minarchist meaning as little government as possible, some are anarcho-capitalists. Pro-life minarchists would be fine having punishment of abortion be treated like any other killing of a human. Anarcho-capitalists would rather not have government have a monopoly on violence.
If the NAP could be easily dismissed by just reclassifying who is and isn't a human, then yes some form of law setting clarifying what a human is would be necessary. You bring up THE most interesting debate though in libertarian circles IMHO. Tom Woods did an interview with Gerard Casey about this topic. I highly recommend listening to the interview and giving Casey's book a read.
https://tomwoods.com/libertarian-anarchy-against-the-state-2/
This is true…literally everyone knows the instant a piece of pollen lands in the flower of an oak tree, a fully formed oak tree is created in that moment. Literally, no other steps between those things even worth defining with their own special words or meanings like book people use to try to sound special(smart).
That’s why I’m glad we’ve got the REAL science of Jesus and the almighty.
Appreciate the honest and (somewhat) applicable answer!
I also DO NOT appreciate the downvotes … we really need to get rid of those. Don’t agree, fine, move on or respond civilly. A downvote is a manifestly uncivil action sanctioned by the interface.
Otherwise … to respond to the abortion argument … where this falls down for me is the complete lack of any mention of the mother or woman in your reasoning.
Scientifically, this challenges the “humanness” of a foetus in the way it is tightly coupled and dependent on another human to live. Morally, it raises much of your reasoning in relation to not fucking with people once you consider what is effectively done to women by forcing them to carry any foetus to birth which is a massive, very active and obviously risky undertaking.
Whether these are convincing for you or others, the lack of any weight given for these considerations indicates that the act of birthing is presumed as a duty of all women. A presumption that IMO undermines the completeness of your scientific and moral arguments.
To take that a little further … should people be legally compelled to secure and save the lives of babies? As it is now, that’s not the case anywhere I know of. Causing harm would be criminal, obviously, but failing to save a baby or anyone else from harm is not.
In debating the legality of abortion you enter into similar territory. Only by presuming birth as a duty can you think otherwise.
While aborting a foetus is a positive act, there’s the complication that it’s purpose is to avoid the onus of pregnancy and birth, which can be easily seen as tantamount to “simply not doing the thing that would save the foetus’s like”, ie all the work of pregnancy and birth which is probably all too easily presumed by men (which I’m guessing you are) as a more passive and natural event than an act of effort, toil and cost.
The more fundamental issue is tying it to “humanness” at all. And I don’t think dependence on the mother really comes into play in terms of if it deserves protection. There’s really no reason you couldn’t have a concious parasite.
All of the highlights why it’s important to define what specific qualities we are looking for in determining the degree of rights an entity would have.
Your last paragraph is why I want nothing to do with killing humans just for convenience. Also look at my last comment with wantd. I posed a question about when a human is viable outside of the womb at any stage of development. Would it change how you view its rights?
Although I don't agree with expanding government, I do agree with extending rights and protections to humans at all stages of development. I do consider that a different debate though mostly in line with who should pave roads, how police should work, and who should deliver mail (once again libertarian, not authoritarian Republican)
Also don't worry about down votes. This topic is highly contentious and both sides generally see it the other side as a direct assault on their beliefs.
Abortion should be legal until the offspring is 18. "Son, this isn't working out. Let's go for a ride.".
Not original replier, but personally viably outside the womb changes the entire game. A strong major of my support for abortion is "I'm a man, I can't possibly imagine getting pregnant and birthing another human". So much of the onus of birth is the woman, a human that we also have to consider the feelings and health of. If viably was possible outside the womb, I could probably be argued into agreeing to ban abortion with some key exceptions because the world isn't black and white.
However, I am curious on your thoughts on medical euthanasia.
So do you currently think abortion should only be allowed in instances that are about the mother’s health?
Not OP but I think women are people, so yeah they should have basic bodily autonomy. Might not jive that well with the folk that view women as nothing more than property though.
I know it’s contentious, but the downvotes don’t help anything.
To your first para: viability outside the womb doesn’t, I think, affect my initial argument. If it’s viable outside of the womb, then so be it. Actively harming it would be illegal, but being legally compelled to care for it would be problematic.
Viability would alter abortion laws though, I think. In that it would make sense at some point to prohibit the mother from electing to terminate rather than submit the foetus to whatever the extra-womb viability state is. What happens then would mostly put the foetus in the same position it is now in that the onus of providing the viability of its life wouldn’t be something others are compelled to do, unless of course it’s trivial and withholding is tantamount to actively killing.
On the issue of convenience, I think that’s a misrepresentation. The thrust of the argument is consistency with the rest of social norms where the “convenience” is the freedom for a whole gender to not undertake 9 months of drastic bodily transformation and work and the remaining parental duties. If the rest of society were so committed to life and prosperity as ensuring every foetus gets taken care of, then that’s a different conversation, in large part because the mothers would be taken care of too. But consigning a whole gender’s major life experiences and burdens to a matter of “convenience”, I think, marks the dissonance that a libertarian outlook encounters when it tries to compel or outlaw actions. It’s not just convenience (in principle at least), and that this onus needs to be considered trivial indicates IMO the biases against women involved treating the issue as legally black and white.
Nonetheless, I agree with your general reasoning about not facilitating the depreciation of life. I personally extend the same reasoning to animals in my arguments in favour of veganism.