Arguing About Abortion

[Servant31]

No, I also maintain that life begins at conception. But you’re not entitled to most of your liberties and freedoms until you’re born. And you’re entitled to more when you turn 18.

We know this because when my sister had a still-born, there was no investigation by police to ensure no wrong-doing. It wasn’t yet a “person” in the same way as the man found dead in his apartment - which does necessitate investigation.

Oh ok my apologies I assumed you believed in life begins later. That’s true that your not entitled to some your liberties, except at certain milestones. However life isn’t one of those liberties that may be revoked or removed.

But this is the difference between a God given right and a human determined right. As Catholics we believe life is a God given right, and as such cannot be removed.

I’m sorry to hear about your sister, my condolences, and a few prayers.

However this isnt the way to know something. The civil authority may or may not respect the God given rights of people, they enforce the law. But that is also the distinction between legal rights and God given rights. Legal rights are supposed to operate with respect to God given rights. That doesn’t always happen. African Americans always had rights, God given rights, even if the law didn’t recognize or respect those rights for a time. The rights still existed, but the legal authority wasn’t respecting them. German Jews did as well, despite a legal fiasco of authority. That’s how many view the unborn currently with abortion, a legal tragedy. But the child’s right is God given, not necessarily legally endowed.

 

[VanitasVanitatum]

Exceptions do not invalidate the rule.

You said all societies and since not all of them follow it then what you say is false. Moral relativism would then mean that what you say has no binding power either.

 

[HarryStotle]

I doesn’t. It’s just at that point the fetus is no longer dependent on the body of it’s mother. It’s rights are no longer fully overshadowed by hers.

Except that the child is fully dependent on the bodies of other human beings (perhaps including the mother and father) once they are born.

Does that imply, according to your " don’t make me or anyone else submit to it against their will " principle that the child need not be taken care of by anyone even after their birth?

Why would the “glorious beauty of liberty” only permit the mother to abandon and terminate her child’s life before birth, but not after? Seems to me that if this principle of liberty is the “starting point” in your moral system there is nothing that would compel anyone to look after their children after birth, nor any moral compulsion for society to do so, precisely because no one’s freedom ought to be impinged by a child needing care if no one in the “society” around them voluntarily chose to look after them

No moral compulsion or obligation could be invoked if your “principle of liberty” is the null or axiomatic starting point in the moral debate.

 

[HarryStotle]

jofa:

Yet we know that even the best contraceptives fail sometimes (and if people don’t, then the answer is better education on the matter). So you are always facing that possibility. And as I said, everyone knows where babies come from.

Sure, but it doesn’t change the reality that when most folks jump in the sack, they’re usually not consenting to reproduction on any conscious level.

Given that the sex act is the normative biological means to produce offspring, it seems quite a denial of reality to claim they “are not consenting to reproduction” on any “conscious” level.

Admittedly, they might be in denial or not intentionally considering the possibility, but it seems a stretch to claim a kind of complete ignorance (i.e., “on any conscious level.”)

Think of a similar kind of “non-consent” and see if “not consenting” is sufficient to absolve the couple of all responsibility for the child, merely because they weren’t intending to produce a child…

Someone who gets into a vehicle and drives 100 kmh (60 mph) in a school zone might not be “consenting to” or “intending” to kill children, but it would seem ludicrous to claim the driver wasn’t “consenting to killing children on any conscious level.”

Consent to do wrong isn’t required where negligence or some other motivation overwhelms the rational faculty. If the driver was driven by some overwhelming impulse to drive fast, does that imply his actions were not on “any conscious level” and therefore he wasn’t “consenting” to killing?

 

[Hume]

Except that the child is fully dependent on the bodies of other human beings (perhaps including the mother and father) once they are born.

2 thoughts;

One, a delivered baby is not bodily dependent on anyone, particularly in a way that could endanger them. At birth, all that ends. Any dangers have presented themselves. Any seeds of long-term damage have already been sewn. In the word’s of Jesus of Nazareth at the moment of his death; “It is finished”.

Second, those folks can walk away too, if they so choose. Babies are easy to adopt off. It’s older children that are much more difficult to find homes for.

Does that imply, according to your " don’t make me or anyone else submit to it against their will " principle that the child need not be taken care of by anyone even after their birth?

Sure. If someone decides to go through pregnancy for a child they don’t want, I sincerely hope they adopt it off to someone that does want it - for both the material and emotional welfare of the child.

Why would the “glorious beauty of liberty” only permit…

Hand-waving sufficiently covered above.

No moral compulsion or obligation could be invoked if your “principle of liberty” is the null or axiomatic starting point in the moral debate.

Sure. We need to be very careful about compelling and obligating people to do things they do not want to do.

Even when they “see it through”, the lack of desire usually manifest less than optimal results.

It’s why it’s so important that the people who have kids should be people who want them.

Wild idea, right?

 

[Hume]

Given that the sex act is the normative biological means to produce offspring, it seems quite a denial of reality to claim they “are not consenting to reproduction” on any “conscious” level.

Given the wild success of contraceptives, even among Catholics, it strains imagination to think that these people are consenting to reproduction.

Consent to do wrong isn’t required where negligence or some other motivation overwhelms the rational faculty.

Oh, like our hormone-fueled sex-drives often do, particularly when we’re young?

How often do you think these 18 year old boys in the backs of cars with 18 year old girls whisper “Let’s make a baby…”

Lol, probably not very often.

 

[HarryStotle]

HarryStotle:

You really don’t understand my faith, nor do you properly comprehend the auspices of God to create and maintain.

Well, in fairness, no one does, right? Divine mysteries and all…

Point is, you don’t have access to some secret information that I don’t have access to.

You just believe what you want, and I’m fine with that. Really.

Just don’t try to govern my actions with your religious views. Convert me to your religion first , then we can talk.

Let me try a different tact in terms of dismantling the liberty principle of yours.

In order to establish liberty as the basic principle justifying human behaviour you would need to present a clear depiction of what liberty is precisely and why it can form a starting point for morality. if you cannot do that, then we have no reason to think liberty has the warrant you might think it does.

There are two conceptions at play here: a materialistic one and a theistic or transcendent one.

If your materialistic metaphysic is true then human behaviour is purely a biochemical process where “decisions” or “choices” are actually the effects of biochemical causes. Liberty, in that depiction, isn’t a matter of deliberation or choosing in any free sense precisely because choices are caused and not chosen.

The only possible way that choices could be free from causal antecedents is if, in CS Lewis’ view, the process of deliberation and choice is based upon reasoning rather than causality.

Lewis differentiates between 1) cause → effect and 2) grounds → consequences processes.

The first is entirely determinative by the physical order. It would be contradictory to the process of causality to insist actions are “free” of the process unless you can demonstrate how that could be the case. You haven’t done so.

In the second instance, the process of intellection or rationality offers an explication for how choices can be free from causality. The process of thought, intellection or reasoning is, according to Lewis, one very different from causality because choices would be grounded in thought — a consideration of the grounds for thinking something to be true and then using foresight, anticipation, and a transcendent “rising above” the causal process to initiate novel causal sequences.

The only possible way for “freedom” to be operative in the world — and therefore function as a fundamental principle of morality — is if human thought, rationality and will can rise above the causal order and make choices independent of it. Absent that there is no defence to be mustered for your “principle of liberty.”

Continued…

 

[HarryStotle]

Now here is where you run into trouble.

You have to make the case that that freedom to make choices completely independent of all external influences is the supremely valuable trait.

Unfortunately, however, the question asked by the fundamental process of reasoning that enables transcendence of the causal order to begin with, is “WHY should I choose X rather than Y?” The reasons for acting are crucial and not incidental to the act of choosing.

What you appear to be imposing as a fundamental principle of morality or liberty is that it doesn’t matter whether you choose X or Y but it ONLY matters that you have the choice to begin with.

That, however, is an irrational rather that rational approach. Rationality would insist that the capacity to choose is only valuable if that capacity allows you to choose well.

You are insisting that the capacity to choose is valuable in itself whether or not you choose well or ill. That just seems bizarre from where I stand. It is also a justification for the precedence of immorality (or, at least, amorality) over morality.

If liberty, per se, takes precedence over morality and moral obligation, then there can be no defence for constraining liberty owing to immoral actions on the part of the agent. Liberty would trump obligation, so constraints on liberty justified by the imposition of moral principles would be untenable, in principle. Liberty would always trump morality.

Society couldn’t justify detentions and arrest because your principle of liberty always supersedes moral obligation, which is bizarre given that you want to impose a kind of ad hoc “unless your liberty infringes on the liberty of others.” On the surface, you throw that out as a kind of overarching principle for arbitration, but I doubt that it works very well at all.

 

[HarryStotle]

HarryStotle:

Except that the child is fully dependent on the bodies of other human beings (perhaps including the mother and father) once they are born.

2 thoughts;

One, a delivered baby is not bodily dependent on anyone, particularly in a way that could endanger them. At birth, all that ends. Any dangers have presented themselves. Any seeds of long-term damage have already been sewn. In the word’s of Jesus of Nazareth at the moment of his death; “It is finished”.

No, actually, “all that” DOES NOT end. The newborn is as dependent on the mother as in the womb, in fact even more so because the child in the womb merely went along “for the ride” so to speak. Outside of the womb, the child is making far more demands on the mother in terms of time, attention, nursing, care, etc., often stressing the mother far more than the pregnancy did and making her less “free” to express her “glorious beauty of liberty.”

Which takes us to your second point…

Second, those folks can walk away too, if they so choose. Babies are easy to adopt off. It’s older children that are much more difficult to find homes for.

Except that “those folks” are offloading their responsibility onto society, which begs the question of whether society has a responsibility to care for the child once they do abandon it.

Your principle of liberty defends the right of everyone in society to wash their hands of the child just as the parents have, on the grounds that if the parents who created the child can abandon the child mere bystanders have no moral obligation to provide care.

Essentially that means whether or not “babies are easy to adopt” your principle allows that parents can walk away regardless of whether the child is or can be adopted because the child cannot infringe on the liberty of the parents to do so.

 

[VanitasVanitatum]

Sure. We need to be very careful about compelling and obligating people to do things they do not want to do.

Even when they “see it through”, the lack of desire usually manifest less than optimal results.

It’s why it’s so important that the people who have kids should be people who want them.

Wild idea, right?

The other alternative is getting rid of their entire existence which sounds worse to me.

 

[MamaJewel]

A fetus is a separate, developing human being that’s biologically part of a woman’s body.

“Separate” can have different meanings. A fetus is its own unique genetic entity, just like the woman pregnant with the fetus is her own unique genetic entity. So, that makes the fetus separate genetically (semi-allogenic tissue) from the pregnant woman.

However, in pregnancy, the fetus uses the pregnant woman’s body to survive until birth. The placenta interferes with the woman’s immune response to the fetus as a foreign body within her body. Without a properly functioning placental response to make the fetus appear as a “none-self” to the pregnant woman’s body, her body would reject the fetus as a foreign tissue within her.

The complaint pro-choicers have about unwanted pregnancy is that it violates the woman’s right to autonomy and subjects her to be a body donor to keep the fetus alive. In the US, a person cannot be legally compelled to give the direct use of his or her body (tissue, blood, bone, etc) to another person. With pregnancy, iron will be clipped right off of the woman’s red blood cells for fetal use and calcium leeched from her bones to directly aid the growing fetus. And, a pregnant woman’s body faces additional challenges maintaining homeostasis in order to support and maintain the pregnancy/ growing fetus. So, in many ways, pregnancy is a direct form of life support for another human being.

So, yes, the fetus and the pregnant woman are two separate human beings with a (hopefully) strong-willed placenta between the two of them. But the fetus can’t live separately from the pregnant woman until viability. However, the woman can live separately from the fetus and that is why pro-choice individuals feel so strongly about abortion and unwanted pregnancy.

Again, she does not owe the fetus her breath. Her food. Her water. She grants them willingly and may choose to refuse the grant.

Hmmm, I just have to ask this…
If a woman made the bodily sacrifices to bring a human being into the world so that it can be granted personhood when it takes its first breath, why does she owe one more moment of her existence to it?

Certainly, if she went through all of the sacrifices to get that little bugger here to begin with, she shouldn’t owe it one more bit of her breath, food, water, labor, sleep, yada, yada. But society expects so, so much more out of a women toward the very person who was her former fetus. Why???

Seriously?
Why?

Or do we human beings actually owe a level of dignity to our fellow human beings?

 

[Elf01]

Take a look at the Covid-19 world around you at the moment Hume.
There’s an entire planet full of people being told what they can and do - with their body .

Sure, for good, rational reason.

So my right to do what I want with my body does not supercede another persons right to life?

I’m not obeying the spirit of the COVID-19 laws precisly because of people not seeing that if I shouldn’t go out because I might have a disease that I might pass on to someone who might die that I shouldn’t be ablr to take actions that will 100% result in a death.

 

[Neithan]

But society expects so, so much more out of a women toward the very person who was her former fetus. Why???

That’s not absolutely necessary though. If she gives birth in a hospital she does not have to give the baby anything else, it could be removed from her presence immediately after cutting the umbilical cord; however there is still required time for her to recover from and there may be long term or permanent consequences to her health.

There is not a conscious choice to offer breath, food, water, that can be revoked at any time. That’s a confusing metaphor. Our bodies operate automatically without requiring constant exercise of free will. This is a natural process. The choice is to forcefully terminate the pregnancy, and there is no natural right to do so, and so there is no requirement for a state to legitimize the forceful application by someone on a woman’s body to kill the embryo or fetus. The legal argument is smoke and mirrors, sustained by sentiment.

 

[Lion_IRC]

Sure, for good, rational reason.

“Because Allah told me” doesn’t cut the mustard. I don’t believe in Allah. I bet you don’t either.

That’s the end of the argument.

You just conceded ‘bodily autonomy’ does not trump one’s moral duty of care when it comes to matters of life and death.

I am currently being denied my supposed ‘right’ to bodily autonomy in the interests saving the lives of vulnerable human beings. (The elderly, the very young, cancer patients…) And you just correctly agreed that my bodily autonomy is not a sufficient reason to endanger - let alone terminate - another human life.

And let’s get real here. The vast majority of abortions are not carried out because women feel some overwhelming sense of trauma or outrage at having their body invaded. We’re not defending the Magna Carta here pal.

Please don’t try to camouflage abortions done for financial convenience as being akin to a Patrick Henry speech during the War Of Independence.

As to your red herring derail about my views on Allah and Islam - start a new thread.

 

[MamaJewel]

That’s not absolutely necessary though.

Seriously?
Are we on the same planet?
It isn’t as simple as having a baby at a hospital and never seeing it again.
Women get a lot of pressure by family and society to be that forever, sacrificing go to person when they give birth.
That’s why we have the Daddy Bonus and Mommy Penalty in the workplace.

We know that we shame, blame, pressure, lift-up, encourage, and extol women to fulfill the "caregiver’ role. (Yep, that whole entire gamut, depending on the woman’s personal circumstances).

There is not a conscious choice to offer breath, food, water, that can be revoked at any time. That’s a confusing metaphor. Our bodies operate automatically without requiring constant exercise of free will. This is a natural process.

That natural process can also become quite deadly for the woman, fetus, or both should the woman’s body struggle to stay within homeostasis while supporting the pregnancy. A placenta will kill a healthy woman and fetus just to keep a pregnancy going.

The choice is to forcefully terminate the pregnancy, and there is no natural right to do so

Not necessarily. There are abortifacient products that interfere with the hormonal function of pregnancy by directly attacking the placental lining, not the embryo. Catholics have issue with these products because it results in pregnancy loss. However, pro-choicers will say it is not a direct attack on the embryo, because the hormones supposedly do not directly harm the fetus. So therefore, since it is aimed at terminating the pregnancy, the embryo is free to go live on its own. Go figure

You just conceded ‘bodily autonomy’ does not trump one’s moral duty of care when it comes to matters of life and death.

I am currently being denied my supposed ‘right’ to bodily autonomy in the interests saving the lives of vulnerable human beings.

Bada Bing. Red Hot!!!
Yet, so many people don’t want to stay home nor practice social distancing if they must go out.
I’ve been coughed on or closely flanked by a handful of people now when I ventured out to get supplies for my family. The disrespect is aggravating.

 

[MamaJewel]

So my right to do what I want with my body does not supercede another persons right to life?

This^^ was the very reason we had so many Spring Break parties on the sunny beaches of Florida until Gov. DeSantis said the party is over, go home, and stay home. People got woke real quick that there is a duty to help preserve the life of another human being.

 

[Neithan]

We’re on the same planet. Just like the government can prohibit abortion procedures as an illicit use of force, it can prohibit abortifacient drugs as an illicit substance. There is no inalienable right to deliberately terminate a pregnancy. It’s a sophisticated attachment to other rights, like liberty and privacy, that has developed over the decades since Roe. It remains legal only because the unborn, who we know are unique human beings in the earliest stages of development, are denied a right to life. This is entirely based on power: “might makes right.” Planned Parenthood v Casey held that a woman can decide what is good, true and real for herself. The unborn girl cannot.

 

[MamaJewel]

There is no inalienable right to deliberately terminate a pregnancy.

and

It remains legal only because the unborn, who we know are unique human beings in the earliest stages of development, are denied a right to life. This is entirely based on power: “might makes right.” Planned Parenthood v Casey held that a woman can decide what is good, true and real for herself. The unborn girl cannot.

The unborn girl cannot, regardless, because of her delicate predicament of existing within a pregnancy. The unborn girl could be the healthy twin in a TRAP sequence pregnancy where her acardiac/acephalic sibling takes her nutrients and slowly kills her. Pregnancy is very dangerous for all humans involved in it. The placenta will kill a healthy human to maintain a pregnancy that doesn’t have a chance of bringing a new human into existence, btw.

I was very pro-choice for a stint. I am now pro-life. But I don’t believe we can carte blanche state that one human being must be a body donor for another human being under all circumstances.

When we speak of pregnancy, one human being is utilizing the body of another human being for its literal existence. The mother, in the most practical sense, must breathe, eat, and excrete for two because the developing fetus is totally dependent on maternal organs for respiration, nourishment, and excretion.

Mother’s body-
Respiration: increased respiration rate and increased tidal volume.
Circulatory: increased blood volume, up to almost 50% at end of pregnancy
Nutrition: increased need for nutrients by 10 to 30%. If the mother’s dietary intake doesn’t meet these needs, the pregnancy will take the calcium and other vital nutrients directly from the mother’s body tissues.
Excretion/waste removal: increased blood volume and additional metabolic wastes from fetus requires kidney filtration rate to increase by 50%

In other words, the woman’s body is taking on an extra serious workload to maintain homeostasis for herself and the fetus as she gestates that growing human and eventually delivers it to humanity.

We pro-lifers have to be very respectful of this fact, lest we deny the dignity of women and strip them to nothing but “baby factory” status.

What we have to do is show the inherent dignity of human beings, regardless of their age or stage of existence.

 

[HarryStotle]

I was very pro-choice for a stint. I am now pro-life. But I don’t believe we can carte blanche state that one human being must be a body donor for another human being under all circumstances.

Doesn’t this assume that “we” are the authors of morality?

Shouldn’t the question more properly be considered in terms of what God, who is the appropriate arbiter of morality, wills to be proper morality?

In the end, a human being deciding what proper morality is supposed to look like doesn’t have the capacity to determine moral ends and goods, in any case.

Ergo, a human being stating whether one human being ought to be or not be a “body donor” can make no actual or ultimate determination of what results from being a body donor or not. God, presumably has the capacity to appropriately and justly “rewarding” good moral actions while holding accountable less good or immoral actions.

 

[MamaJewel]

Doesn’t this assume that “we” are the authors of morality?

No.
It assumes that Mama Jewel had multiple experiences staring down the barrel of a loaded pregnancy. One of my worst bleeds came from a pregnancy where the little developing human (embryo) wasn’t going to ever make it to birth. I probably needed accept my OB’s plan of care and terminate the pregnancy in a hospital setting, rather than let things proceed naturally over the course of a week. Since we weren’t 100% sure if demise had occurred, I decided to wait it out. Needless to say, I hemorrhaged so badly my children, niece, and nephews thought I was going to die right in front of them.

I wish God had willed my embryo to personhood. RIP Noel Rafael

Not everything is black and white, especially where pregnancy is concerned.

Doctors should have stayed to their principles and ethics.
First, do no harm.
Do good.
If this had been the case, abortion would only be done out of medical necessity and women that needed the procedure to save their life or the life of their child wouldn’t be at risk due to laws that block the procedure to in order to prevent elective abortion.