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this post was submitted on 24 Nov 2023
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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.