the philosophy of Abortion..

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
1

can we seek out answers about abortion by using
the tools of philosophy? let us question abortion using
the tool of philosophy… which are,

Epistemology: the understanding of knowledge, the scope
and limits of knowledge.

Metaphysics: the branch of philosophy that studies the
fundamental nature of reality, the first principles of being,
identity and change, space and time, causality, necessity,
and possibilities…

Aesthetics: concern with beauty or the appreciation of beauty…

Logic: is the study of correct reasoning or good arguments…
Logic investigates the philosophical problems raised by
logic, such as the presuppositions often implicitly at work
in theories of logic and their application…

Ontology: the branch of metaphysics dealing with the nature
of being…

and perhaps the most important branch in this regards,

Ethics: a set of moral principles, especially ones relating
to or affirming a specific group, field, or form of conduct…

so there are our tools…

let us begin with Epistemology:

the understanding, scope and limits of knowledge in
regard to Abortion.

Kropotkin

2

how do we separate out justified beliefs from opinion?

what would an opinion look like? All abortions are wrong…
so how would we justify such an opinion? what facts or
knowledge can we bring to the argument that makes sense?

one such opinion is: all life is sacred thus we cannot allow
abortions.

to say “life is sacred” is to suggest a religious conviction
and specifically, a Christian or Islamic religion… take a look at a map
of countries that have banned abortions…
you can tell that those countries are extremely religious
countries, for example, Mexico, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, the
Philippines, Malaysia… the countries in question are either
heavily Catholic or they are Muslim… so it seems quite clear
that these countries have banned abortion based upon
religious convictions… not legal or philosophical convictions…

religious convictions are by their very nature, nothing more
then opinions… because there are no facts present that
suggest religious belief is anything but opinion…
show me the facts that god exists? there aren’t any…
to hold religious beliefs are a matter of faith…
and religions themselves admit this…

so outside of religious beliefs/opinions,
on what grounds, legally, ethical, logically,
even historically, can we justify a ban on abortions?

Kropotkin

3

so let approach abortions via ethics/morality…

abortion is murder and murder is wrong…

and yet the state itself practices murder all the time…

Capital punishment is murder… organized, legal murder…
and allowing soldiers to murder in the name of the state is
still murder…and allowing the police to murder innocent
civilians is still murder…for example, Saudi Arabia recently, March 12, 2022,
executed/murdered 81 men for various crimes… and how is that
different than abortions? several of the men who were executed weren’t
even Saudi’s… 7 Yemenis and one Syrian and the Saudi’s had no
problem with the murder of 81 men… the murder of 81 people…
5 of the 41 Shia men were tortured and ill treated to the point
that they were willing to confess to anything… in other words,
the basis of their convictions were in violations of basic due process
of the law… even Islamic law…to say the unborn aren’t given due process
has no meaning if the murder of people can be done without any
due process…or was George Floyd given due process before he
was murder? or were any of these people killed by the police given
due process? Manuel Ellis, Breonna Taylor, Andre Hill, Daunte Wright,
Lindani Myeni, Jason Walker, Stephon Clark, Dontre Hamilton,
Eric Garner, John Crawford 3, Michael Brown? you ask for due process for
the unborn and yet refuse it to those killed by the police…

to allow murder in some situations and refuse it in others is
called situational ethics… the situation dictates the ethics…

you might say, they are two different things, apples to oranges,
but recall, the explanation of Ethics… A set of moral principles,
especially one relating to affirming a specific group, field
or form of conduct… a unified set of principles… how is
having one set of principles for civilians being killed by the
police and another set of principles regarding abortion,
a unified set of principles?

which leads us to another problem with anti-abortion people…
they hold abortion to being a single, without reference to anything
else problem… they hold abortion in isolation without connecting
it to any other problem…abortion doesn’t exists in isolation, apart
or separate from other aspects of our lives…

abortion is deeply connected to race, income, our social-economic
place in society, religion… it cannot be, as anti-abortion believes
it to be, an isolated, separate incident… you have to place abortion
within the context of the society, the state, the civilization in which
it takes place…now given the fact that families and abortions exists
within a societal context, to offer up the advice as OBserve did,
to prevent abortions is to avoid having sex, is telling people what
they must do… in other words, by what right does Observe have
to tell us or anyone not to have sex? what gives him the right to
dictate what I can or cannot do? If I were to try to tell him he must
become gay, he would scream bloody murder for days on end,
but he has no problems telling us what to do, how do live our lives…
and where does it legally say, individuals like Observe can tell me or
anyone what we can or cannot do?

so anyway, how does the state justify murder in one instance
and bans it in another instance? the State like conservatives
are practicing situational ethics… which is not a coherent
set of principles meant to offer us a guide to what actions we
or the state can take…

Kropotkin

4

Peter says:

“so anyway, how does the state justify murder in one instance
and bans it in another instance?”

Meno says:

“economic misopportunity”

5

ok, Epistemology: what facts do the conservative bring to the
table to support their arguments?

they hold that life is life at conception…but the fact is that
a fetus isn’t viable until, at the earliest, 20 weeks… and that
is according to medical professional… so if we hold that, as
the anti-abortion types do, that life begins at conception,
that is to say cells are to considered to be separate life
and it is on this basis that conservatives are going after
birth control… for these radicals, even Masturbation is
the killing of life… but if you take this into context,
any time any skin is damaged, “killed” then you have
taken life… thus, I had ankle surgery a couple of weeks ago,
when the surgeon broke skin to repair my ankle, he,
according to their theories, killed life and as such,
if you hold to this logic, the fact is you can’t even
have surgeries because those surgeries do kill life,
and the breaking of skin, can be considered to be
killing of life… thus if you fall down and break your arm,
that can be considered to be killing of life because
your cells were damaged, killed by your falling down…
thus if you damage any skin, you have killed, under the
logic of life begins at conception… thus you can put
people into jail and even execute them because they
have taken life/cells… even Masturbation can be considered
to be murder if we consider cells as independent life…
as the radical right does when they call the beginning of life,
at conception… the reason we don’t see this is because
they isolate and separate every aspect of their thinking
and beliefs and you don’t see the logic of their beliefs
within context…

so what other facts can they bring to the table?

none that I can see… but considering life to be cells
means that any damage of the cells can be considered to be murder…
and that is the extremism that the radical right brings to the table…

Kropotkin

6

Peter says: “so anyway, how does the state justify murder in one instance
and bans it in another instance?”

Meno says: “economic misopportunity”

K: I was coming to this point, but let us go there now…
the fact is abortion is very much an aspect of, at least
in America, part and parcel of racism and hatred of minorities…
for abortion laws are geared toward an attack on the poor
and minorities…for the wealthy, even what’s left of the middle
class can easily escape any laws toward abortions…
they simply have abortions, called it a “procedure” and they
need not worry about any sort of laws threatening to send them
to jail… anti-abortions laws are simply racist attacks meant to
prevent minorities from being free to act… it is an blatant
attack upon the rights and freedoms of women…
just another white male attempt to keep women
“barefoot and pregnant” in the kitchen…

I wasn’t going to go there until later but sure why not…

Kropotkin

7

It is a question which conservatives base on statistical outputs, that build in the usual excuses for the de-facto prejudices; pointing to the existence of de-jure rehabilitative efforts.

As to the resultant negative results of narrowing that gap, they can only throw up their hands and blame liberals for misuse of their power in the representative.

While this tension is outstanding, the executive throws them off by finding blame on external, and at critical times international influence on the media.

8

a conservative might say, I know abortion is murder…
but that requires facts and facts is the one thing
they don’t have, so conservatives say,
I believe abortion is murder…

the entire idea of murder or abortion is, for the conservative,
dependent on the viability of life…to say, life exists at conception
leads to the nonsense I wrote about earlier…

so, at what age of the fetus is life viable? Modern science
suggest at 20 weeks which is about 4.5 months…or
roughly a little more than halfway through a pregnancy…

so it makes no sense to ban abortions before 20 weeks because
science/medicine deems 20 weeks as the point of the viability of
a fetus…but Kropotkin, a fetus is life before 20 weeks…
and that leaves us trying to decide what life is?
can you offer me a good working definition of life that
will satisfy your definition of a fetus being life before
20 weeks?

Kropotkin