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Opinion To Be or Not To Be (An Abortion Thread)

I mean, basically a nonviable fetus seems less sympathetic than a pig. And I ate a pig...
checks notes
...last night. Anyway, that makes it pretty hard for me to worry about other people killing fetuses.

But I'd also draw another line at what's called quickening at roughly sixteen weeks. It's when the fetus starts moving, and in some old legal systems it was the point at which a fetus was considered alive. Generally, this corresponds to the ability of the brain to activate the peripheral nervous system, something we would normally consider essential for an organism to be alive, since it would die almost instantly otherwise. I find it hard to believe that killing something which has never been capable of centrally activated movement would be worse than killing, say, an insect. If a baby was born like that, we'd probably have to let it go unless we could repair the problem.

Nonetheless, I find the argument in A Defense of Abortion pretty convincing. You can't be forced to render care for someone who is human and alive, and gestating a fetus is rendering care.

And yet even that isn't the real problem with anti-abortion laws. The problem is that in practice abortion bans are a huge disaster every time they've been tried, and inevitably lead to either draconian consequences for women suspected of getting an illegal abortion or widespread, dangerous illegal abortions, often both, and also a great deal of poorly cared-for newborns crowding orphanages and generally making life miserable for every child without parents, plus widespread actual infanticide, both of which always happen. It's always seemed insane to me that people want to bring this back, because instead "people" who have never known life will miss out. Like, a person briefly exists, experiences nothing, and then dies -- this is worse than a world where women regularly die from botched back-alley operations, children starve, poverty spreads, etc?
 
I am spiritual but not religious.

It's complicated, there isn't one defining reason why I believe life essentially begins at conception.

I feel like life begins at conception for many reasons, many of them in and of themselves I don't think are sufficient justification, but added together, I find it to be enough.

I adhere somewhat to the potential person argument I'm sure many here are familiar with. That if unimpeded a fetus will become a specific human, it already has specific DNA, and by terminating it you are destroying that specific person's life.

I already have something of an unusual perspective of time in general.

I also believe in the existence of a soul for various reasons.

I believe that it's nearly impossible to establish exactly when personhood begins, and so to play it safe I tend to go with the one concrete point of delineation that we have, conception.

You could argue that birth is another concrete point of delineation, which brings me to another issue I have.

Obviously killing a born baby is wrong, I don't think this is controversial so I won't bother going into why it's wrong.

But assuming killing a born baby is wrong, why is it OK to kill it a week before it's born? It can survive on its own if removed by that point. It can feel pain and has a degree of sentience, although not sapience (but then neither does a baby). So I must conclude a late term unborn fetus has these rights too.

So where is the point where the fetus goes from being just cells to having human rights like a late term unborn fetus? All the points I can see seem very arbitrary. The development process is just so gradual.

Usually the law solves this, or attempts to by setting an early cutoff well before this becomes a problem. But there are still the other problems I've mentioned. You are still preventing the existence of what would have been a specific human life.

Pro choicers tend to come back on this by arguing why it's not the same case if someone say, decides not to have sex today, when if they had the woman may have gotten pregnant. But before conception there's not even a single DNA structure, just eggs and sperm that could be matched in any numbers of ways.

This is difficult I know, but human life is so precious, I'm not one of those people who think humans should die our or there's too many of us and some random life doesn't matter. In spite of how much humans frustrate me, deep down I have great respect for human life. And if I can't conclusively feel certain that terminating a pregnancy is not essentially killing a real person, I feel like I have to assume that that's a possibility and fight to give that life a chance.

Sorry if this posts a bit rambling, I started writing it then I stopped and when and got something to eat then I came back and am a bit distracted, so try not to consider this an exhaustive all encompassing explanation of my feelings on the subject.
 
I will say this anybody that aborts a fetus after 40 days will gain very negative karma for the next rebirth they go through. at 40 days the human soul is fully within the fetus.
 
Nonetheless, I find the argument in A Defense of Abortion pretty convincing. You can't be forced to render care for someone who is human and alive, and gestating a fetus is rendering care.

Except having an abortion is an active decision, it's not the result of inaction.

You can't be forced to render aid to someone drowning (at least in most American jurisprudence, there are other countries with different views), but you can be held responsible if you pushed them in the water to start with.

If you simply do nothing, most likely the pregnancy will come to term. Sustaining your own life essentially sustains the other anyway. Then you have all the problems again that you could apply this to a born child. Which again requires already assuming a pro choice stance to argue why that's different.
 
I will say this anybody that aborts a fetus after 40 days will gain very negative karma for the next rebirth they go through. at 40 days the human soul is fully within the fetus.
What about hedgehogs? Do they have souls? Do they get karma?
 
I mean, this is what everyone does to form their own opinions to some degree.

Where in your opinion do you weigh that sometimes bringing a human life into this world is the worse of the two options?

Well, yeah, of course we all do this. That's my point. You are assuming or have otherwise come to the conclusion that the fetus doesn't have human rights. From that you conclude that a woman's right to control her body has priority and other people don't have a right to tell her what to do with it because she's the only one impacted because you don't consider the fetus alive.

My point is that you can't say you don't think the fetus being a life or not is relevant, because regardless of if you realize it its virtually certain that you are basing your moral beliefs off that underlying opinion.

When is bringing a life into the world worse than not bringing the life into the world? imo only when to do so poses an unacceptable risk of harming the mother, using the rough ballpark definition I gave earlier and keeping in mind that I'm not fighting to ban abortion, just expressing my ethical views.
 
What about hedgehogs? Do they have souls? Do they get karma?

Karma is such bullshit. Essentially a system that says if bad things happen to you it's your fault. Victim blaming bs by people who refuse to accept that the world is not just or fair. :P
 
^ Maybe it's paradise to be a hedgehog. Maybe being a human is the result of negative karma. Maybe it's just blatant arrogance to think that humans are the crux of desirability for life forms.

For the record, I too dislike killing things. Maybe has something to do with having a shit mom, but I just hate to think of kids growing up with nothing, and having unloving or unfit parents.

For the record, so do I. I don't make a habit of killing mosquitos, but I'm just saying, I instinctually slap at something biting me. I'm sure we've all killed mosquitos. I always capture spiders and put them outside, and I go out of my way to avoid stepping on bugs when I notice I am about to.
 
There are different interpretations of karma. From what I understand, it isn't really the same as heaven/hell and good/bad people. I think people tend to project the western template for right and wrong onto it.

JessFR said:
Essentially a system that says if bad things happen to you it's your fault.

Doing wrong harms the person who errs. They might benefit monetarily, but there is still spiritual harm. Something that I like about karma is that it offers a more comprehensive explanation of justice and fairness in the cosmos. Life seems unfair. People do terrible things and live full luxurious lives. Karma answers this by saying just because you cannot see the harm doesn't mean there is none. Your actions continue to impact others long after you are gone from this physical realm. Since life is eternal and infinite - and you are part of that infinity - you are hurting yourself.

The afterlife concept is individualistic. You are expected to be good for selfish reasons. You will be rewarded for being good and punished for being bad.

Karma blurs the lines between individuals.

We are all one.
 
Xorkoth said:
For the record, so do I. I don't make a habit of killing mosquitos, but I'm just saying, I instinctually slap at something biting me. I'm sure we've all killed mosquitos. I always capture spiders and put them outside, and I go out of my way to avoid stepping on bugs when I notice I am about to.

You don't like killing insects.
I don't like killing babies.
 
I don't like killing babies either. I just recognize that sometimes abortion is the best course of action for those who are already living. I'd rather people got abortions than there be countless babies born into lives of suffering. It would be one thing if there were enough people willing to adopt every one of those children, but sadly, there aren't.
 
Xorkoth said:
I just recognize that sometimes abortion is the best course of action for those who are already living.

What percent of abortions?

Xorkoth said:
I'd rather people got abortions than there be countless babies born into lives of suffering.

It depends on the degree of suffering. In some areas of Africa I've visited, this makes more sense to me. If the child is literally going to starve to death, then sure... but - honestly - what percentage of people in the Western world would rather have been aborted?

I know lot's of people that emerged from a really fucked up childhood and they're happy and stable. I've never asked any of them if they'd prefer to not be alive, but I'm pretty sure the answer is no.

It's not up to me to decide that a person who has never been given the chance to breathe would prefer to die.
 
JessFR said:
Except having an abortion is an active decision, it's not the result of inaction.

You can't be forced to render aid to someone drowning (at least in most American jurisprudence, there are other countries with different views), but you can be held responsible if you pushed them in the water to start with.

If you simply do nothing, most likely the pregnancy will come to term. Sustaining your own life essentially sustains the other anyway. Then you have all the problems again that you could apply this to a born child. Which again requires already assuming a pro choice stance to argue why that's different.

One of my favourite posts of yours of all time, Jess.
 
I think most people would agree that I had a pretty fucked up childhood if they knew what it was like. I am most definitely not happy and stable.

Still, I would not want someone to say I'd been better off aborted.
 
The irony is that Islam acutally provides the best appoarch to abortion been fully legal for certain reasons but unless the women is going to die they won';t perform one 120 days after conception. But before 120 days its totally fine in islam. They struck the best balance with a clear guideline to when and why and when it is not.
 
The irony is that Islam acutally provides the best appoarch to abortion been fully legal for certain reasons but unless the women is going to die they won';t perform one 120 days after conception. But before 120 days its totally fine in islam. They struck the best balance with a clear guideline to when and why and when it is not.
Doesn't matter. A mother should have the right to eat her babies (if the environment is stressful, just like the way God encoded in a hedgehogs DNA) cooked up with green onions and cilantro.

(Sorry this is going nowhere)

Although this is the first I've heard this of Islam. Pretty sure in Saudi arabia abortion is probably illegal, though id have to look it up.
 
I couldn't care less what Islam's position is. :P

Doesn't matter. A mother should have the right to eat her babies (if the environment is stressful, just like the way God encoded in a hedgehogs DNA) cooked up with green onions and cilantro.

(Sorry this is going nowhere)

Although this is the first I've heard this of Islam. Pretty sure in Saudi arabia abortion is probably illegal, though id have to look it up.

Awesome, people have long eaten the placenta, eating the baby does seem like the natural next step.
 
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