Wendy, iambiguous and [for now] abortion

What I believe is that what I believe about abortion is embodied existentially in this particular sequence in this particular life:

What I then suggest is that this is applicable to you in turn. But you won’t go there.

Unless you can provide me with an argument able to demonstrate that in being against abortion your points are not merely embedded in political prejudices but, instead, in thinking that makes all the points raised by those who are in favor of abortion go away, I just chalk it up to you not getting me more than I’m not getting you.

In being against abortion, what would you do, force all pregnant women to give birth [regardless of the circumstances]? And if they abort the baby instead, arrest them for premeditated first degree murder which if convicted may send them to prison…to death row?

I now recognize the reasoning behind the arguments raised by both sides. I then take my own existential leap to “moderation, negotiation and compromise” in regard to laws that will either reward or punish particular behaviors in particular contexts. But only in recognizing that this part…

…doesn’t go away. I am no less “fractured and fragmented”.

No, from my frame of mind, there is still only one. Your objectivist belief that in regard to aborting the unborn, one can reconfigure one’s political prejudices into just another manifestation of the either/or world; and my belief [no less an existential contraption] that “I” here is the subjective/subjunctive embodiment of dasein, conflicting goods and political economy.

And, then, historically, culturally and experientially, the intersubjective/intersubjunctive embodiment of dasein out in a particular world.

There are plenty of contexts in which homicide is morally justifiable, so just calling abortion homicide doesn’t close the entailment: why is it the kind of homicide that we should punish?

A similar argument goes for the “life begins at conception” framing. Tadpoles are alive. Skin cells are alive. Why is a fertilized egg the kind of life we care about such that we should that we should treat its destruction as morally significant?

Do all agree that there is no god and no souls? I’d be curious to know the life-begins-at-conception argument against abortion if you don’t believe in an immortal soul and a omniscient god who values souls above all else.

Yes, but most of those on either side of this conflagration are able to convince themselves there is a moral perspective to be had. Their own in particular. They might argue with those who hold an opposite point of view, but they are both of the conviction that they embody one or another rendition of the real me in sync with one or another rendition of the right thing to do.

That’s the part I no longer have access to myself. Instead “I” am fractured and fragmented given the manner in which I have thought myself into believing that value judgments of this sort are derived existentially from daseins confronting conflicting goods out in a No God world where what ultimately counts is who has the actual political power to enforce one rather than another set of behaviors.

Yes, I think the same thing. But I believe this because of how I view human interactions [in the is/ought world] based on my signature thread arguments.

I come here looking for those who think other than I do.

Homicide: “the deliberate and unlawful killing of one person by another; murder.”

And, in any particular human community, down through the ages historically and culturally, the circumstances around which folks deemed specific situations involving the killing of another unlawful varied considerably. But it would seem that one way or another something was made illegal because it was thought to be the wrong thing to do. And, in particular, by those with the economic and political clout to sustain what they perceived to be in their best-interests.

Abortion as murder or abortion as a woman’s right to choose gets all tangled up in any number of vast and varied sets of circumstances viewed in conflicting ways out in a particular world.

Of course my own rendition of this is well known by many here. And, thus, with respect to my own reaction to abortion [either morally or legally] “I” am “fractured and fragmented” in a way that others are not. All I can do is react to the arguments of those who are not nearly as drawn and quartered as I am.

Exactly. One set of assumptions yields one set of conclusions, another set yields a different set. I merely include in turn such imponderables as a universe either wholly determined or not going back to the comprehensive understanding of existence itself.

And then this part:

A God world or a No God world. And, in a No God world, what of the arguments of narcissists, sociopaths and, yes, particular moral nihilists, who view abortion as they do everything else: what’s in it for me?

I agree, life is full of hard choices, moral dilemmas, trade-offs, ambiguity.
If it weren’t, there’d be no need for philosophy, nor religion, in their differing ways, to attempt to make sense out of what appears to be senseless, or at least beyond our present collective capacity to comprehend, everything would be simple, self-evident, and easy.

Which, from my frame of mind, can only be explored, examined and judged realistically when the philosophical or scientific or theological insights of any particular one of us are embedded in actual situations we experience given the lives that we live.

And, here, what is of interest to me is not that which we can all seem to agree upon in regard to an issue like abortion, but those things that we can’t.

Is this because the most rational manner in which to think about it has not yet pinned down, even though it does exist? Maybe through God, maybe through something else. Or, in a No God world, is it possible that the philosophical and scientific insights of mere mortals are only able to be articulated up to a point. Beyond which none of us can go?

youtu.be/1Nacl6reKis

This is precisely the sort of argument that many atheists will make in order to take down the arguments of religionists in regard to abortion and stem cell research.

But, from my point of view, it is just another intellectual contraption in which conclusions are drawn from a particular set of assumptions.

Here that the three day old embryo is not really a human being at all, but just a small clump of cells.

Okay, but who among us here and now was not in turn just a clump of cells in our mother’s womb? From the moment of conception until the day you are born is all of one continuous biological process. As though here any particular one of us can actually pick a point and say “here not human”, “there human”.

It’s like Ayn Rand making her distinction between the acorn and the mighty oak tree. As though any oak tree on earth was not once an acorn.

This is precisely why to me “I” here is “fractured and fragmented”. A part of me believes that human life begins at conception. So, whether deemed legally to be murder or not, abortion is the taking of an innocent human life. But another part of me believes that in order to attain and then sustain political equality, women must be granted the right to abort their babies.

Thus, ever drawn and quartered in my thinking here.

Now, leaving God out of it entirely how on earth does Sam Harris the scientist demonstrate that only his own narrative here reflects the optimal or the only rational assessmernt of this particular conflicting good?

His is bullshit science to me.

That definition is a little narrower than the one I intended. Wikipedia’s is closer to what I mean:

But I think you get at the same point later on, and I agree with you that, “down through the ages historically and culturally, the circumstances around which folks deemed specific situations involving the killing of another unlawful varied considerably.” Your definition bakes in the notion of “unlawful”, and under that definition I think we all have to agree that most abortion is not homicide, at least not in the United States (where it is beyond lawful, it is a constitutional right).

But my point was that even if we take as a premise that a fetus is a human, and even a human person, it doesn’t follow from that fact alone that abortion is immoral or that it should be illegal. We recognize many cases in which one person may morally or legally kill another.

Any effective defense of abortion should fall into that category, at least legally. And so I find the strongest defense to be as follows: a woman has a right to control her body, and that right trumps whatever right the fetus has. Just as we can’t commandeer a kidney from an unwilling donor to save another person’s life, we cannot commandeer an unwilling woman’s body to incubate a child.

There are really two questions, alluded two above: one is moral, the other is legal. It may be that abortion is immoral but also that it should not be illegal (e.g. immoral because babies are good so the harm outweighs the good, but should be legal because the law should recognize bodily autonomy and personal agency over local harms).

And for the latter question, “what’s in it for me” is a very promising foundation. We can justify quite a lot of law on the basis that it produces outcomes that benefit everyone (or at least most people): a strong presumption of control over ones own body has positive outcomes for everyone, so defending someone else’s bodily autonomy benefits you to the extent you want to use recreational drugs or experimental medical procedures.

But the god/no god question complicates things. The existence of a god (or at least certain common interpretations of that claim) collapses the question, because there’s no greater good to appeal to in finding compromise positions in the law. Even if permitting abortion creates a better society, a god-based morality can make it preferable to break the law and kill abortion doctors if that prevents even a few abortions.

More generally, to your ‘fractured I’, is that compatible with an objective morality that is deeply contingent, so that individual actions have true moral values, but those values may differ based on personal history? It might also be the case that X is objectively moral, and yet simultaneously objectively moral for some person is to argue that X is immoral. That’s a weird outcome, but it no longer seems nihilist.

It may not be as weird as all that… The correspondence is nothing else but the explication with the naturalistic fallacy: what is the ethical basis versus the moral equivalent of an action and visa versa.

The measure of validity - of corresponding weight as regards any configured opinion, per application of such measures, may or may not rise to an objective level , with or without introducing changed areas of logical belief. Areas corresponding to topical, optical modes of opinionated belief structures may require essential modification of unchanged premises that tend to color argument.

Is there two, instead of a single logical argument, one, a theistic, the other , a nihilistic one , in regards to abortion ?

I think a presumption need not conform to either, in absolute terms, contingent arguments may include a god who is inherently responsible for his creation, within perimeters that include , or exclude the one from the other.

I think the addage ‘god works in mysterious ways’ would not necessarily be rejected by any judgement, at least not in the modern sense of interpretation of biblical , or darwinian references.

Such would at least demystify the acts of man, but not that of god.
There appears a convergence that does tend to fill in the prior vacuous image that nihilism has meant heretofore.

If not now, then certainly with the new duplicity coming our way, between the real and the artificial mind of man & god.

Setting aside rape and such, the woman’s autonomy concerning her body was lost when she didn’t protect herself against pregnancy, she surrendered her body to a males sperm so it’s no longer just her body, her DNA, but his DNA and genes too and he should have a say in the life of the child he has created and an inconvenience is not a legitimate reason to kill another being.

The theistic argument seems boring to me, at least for any revealed theism: God said X, so we are limited in our moral search to interpreting X (though David Friedman has interesting thoughts on this in his book, Legal Systems Very Different from Ours, on how governments constrained to apply revealed divine commandments have interpreted them to avoid inconvenient outcomes – and how that also relates to US constitutional law).

Why? If “an inconvenience is not a legitimate reason to kill another being”, that seems to apply in the case of rape as well.

Returning again to my moral/legal distinction, I think this (and the possible rape exception) is already sufficient to justify legal abortion. If it’s the case that a woman can abort an unwanted pregnancy that the woman took steps to avoid, and which steps failed through no fault of her own, then we would have a case where we require the woman to sacrifice bodily autonomy (e.g. to invasive examination) in order to prove that she should be able to keep her bodily autonomy. The effect is to deprive her of bodily autonomy without proof that she has willingly surrendered it.

This is a radical proposition. Can a woman have an ectopic pregnancy removed without her spouse’s consent? I take as a given that 1) the pregnancy was due to the woman not “protect[ing] herself” from male sperm, 2) the ectopic pregnancy includes the man’s DNA, and 3) we can’t force a person to undergo a surgery that they don’t want to undergo. If her body is not her own when it includes male DNA, why doesn’t the man have a say on whether or not she dies from the ectopic pregnancy she failed to protect herself from?

It’s also worth noting that the father’s DNA is permanently incorporated into a woman’s body after a pregnancy; do men own the mothers of their children in perpetuity? After all, the father’s DNA may be affected by a mother going out in the sun, etc. etc. etc. parade-of-horribles.

Sorry Carleas, to repeat the same argument for a fourth time on ILP, I hope others read yours as well!

Walk across the globe and ask people this question:

“Do you love your mother enough to consent to your abortion (time travel) if she wanted one?”

Most humans would answer “yes” to their abortion.

So where does that leave us?

People who don’t give a shit about their mothers (or even fathers)

Now, who do we really want populating the earth?

People who care about their mothers or people who want to be born so desperately that they don’t care about anyone but themselves?

Anti-abortionists are so desperate to consider the fetus a consensual being… if you want to treat them like that, ask them as adults!

Adults will most likely say “I’d sacrifice my life for my mother whom I love”

Do we really WANT anti-abortionists (as adults) on this earth?

No. We don’t.

All the ethics are for pro-choice, not anti-abortion.

Rape and such includes life threatening scenarios for the mother. A women who tried to protect herself from a pregnancy should have to prove it and once proven, the product that failed should pay dearly for her inconveniences. There is no choice in foregoing pregnancy in a rape that causes pregnancy so your argument makes no sense to me. Deny it’s not about an inconvenience and deny it’s not about being too lazy to ensure that you don’t get pregnant. Planned parenthood gives out free condoms and cheap pills so it’s not a cost or access thing since planned parenthood is all over our country.

Who wants a mother who only thinks of herself? It’s the same argument in reverse EC. Also I disagree that most people want to die or be killed.

For the latter I take your point, there the harm on the other side is more than “inconvenience”, so that exception makes sense. Though, there’s still a conflict with the notion that “it’s no longer just her body”. If that’s so, why do her interests trump in the case of life-threatening scenarios? If I have the right to refuse surgery that would save my life, don’t I have the right to deny surgery on a body to which I am co-owner?

And for rape I still don’t see it. Yes, she was raped. Yes, she had no choice. Still, what more than inconvenience motivates her choice (and more particularly, what that can never be found in an unwanted pregnancy resulting from consensual sex)?

Look, I think abortion is bad, in that it’s a social and/or personal failure that everyone involved with would in hindsight prefer to have avoided, and a negative metric by which to measure society. But that doesn’t entail that we should ban it, any more than we should ban nose-blowing to improve health.

It doesn’t really matter how people end up in a situation where they are being asked to incubate an unwanted parasite for the better part of a year. We should do what we can to help people avoid that, but the situation is already very unpleasant and so people are already strongly incentivized to avoid it. The outcomes of forcing someone to go through it are bad for everyone, for the mother (pregnancy is physically costly), the unborn child (moms who are forced to remain pregnant against their will aren’t eating right, avoiding stress, avoiding alcohol and drugs, etc.), the born child (moms who are forced to have kids they don’t want and/or aren’t prepared to care for generally suck at caring for their kids), and the community that picks up the slack.

But still worse is the premise that the government gets to decide who owns your body, and who has a right to say to what use it will be put. Neither the father, nor the parasitic life, nor the state should make that call.

[EDIT: nuanced some language]

I actually question this. I don’t think my mom would want me to say yes. And I know I wouldn’t want my kids to die to save my life, their lives are easily more valuable to me than mine.

So, while I agree with the conclusion, I don’t think the chain of reasoning works. Besides, a person’s stance on the subject depends mostly cultural upbringing, so it’s mostly good and kind people who love their moms who nonetheless oppose abortion.

The chain of reasoning is that if at any point, your mother could go back in time to abort you, would you consent to it ? Your mothers opinion is already factored into this hypothetical scenario.

Wendy made a point that wasn’t factored into the scenario, that a mother who wants an abortion is selfish.

Is she though? People have a good sense of when they are “ready”. Who wants to bring an unwanted child into the world? How many would be potential parents really trust people to raise their own children besides themselves? Not many by my estimation.

What hypothetical adult doesn’t understand this?

I mean fuck! We could throw women in prison for not having 52 children each per lifetime if you want to crawl down the “selfishness” rabbit hole for mothers and hypothetical adults

You have absolutely no idea how many would answer yes absolutely none at all
You are assuming it to support your argument but you have no evidence for it so it does not have to be accepted

I would say that what determines someones answer to the question depends on the type of life they have had
And so someone with a good life would say no to abortion while someone with a bad life would say yes to one

Your argument would only be true if most people had such a bad life that they would want an abortion
But there is zero evidence for this otherwise the global suicide rate would be higher than it actually is

It’s not about a good or bad life.

The thought experiment assumes the mother would abort. What true loss is there if you are aborted? There’s always someone to come along who’s better or smarter. No loss at all. The gain is that you’ve improved your mothers quality of life.

People go through MUCH worse than abortion as a sacrifice for others…

So I put it to you again …

Which type of being do you want on earth … someone who loves their mother, and the reproductive rights of all possible mothers on earth, or someone who doesn’t give a fuck about anyone but themselves?

There is no guarantee that if you are aborted your mothers quality of life will be improved for it could actually be worse
Also human beings dont really conform to binary positions - human nature exists on a spectrum - it is not black and white

So you need to think this through a lot better than you have because unfortunately it is not very realistic as it stands
And also is every woman going to have to keep on having abortions until they produce absolutely perfect children ?

My last question was the most important part and you threw it off as “binary”, apparently a “scare word” for you. You threw some of it off by stating that mothers would only keep perfect children

1.) that’s demonstrably false
2.) there is no perfection except for margin of error