Arguing About Abortion

[Hume]

Hume:

As an aside, stop forcing “all or none” dichotomies where there are none.

absence of “risk free enterprise” as justification for killing was your words, not mine.

you can’t get more “all or none” than absence of “risk free enterprise” as justification to kill

Because you apparently don’t understand the difference between “pro-choice” and “pro-abortion”.

If there’s risk, we should have the choice to avoid the risk.

Not the obligation to avoid the risk. Not the mandate to face the risk.

Choice.

 

[Aquinas11]

If there’s risk, we should have the choice to avoid the risk.

Right hence “level of imminence” being irrelevant. Its simply (a) risk or (b) no risk.

Your criteria justify anyone killing anyone “if there’s risk” (which there frequently is in most every human interaction). Heck someone could use that criteria to kill anyone they see in public who may give them coronavirus.

 

[Elf01]

If there’s risk, we should have the choice to avoid the risk.

There are options to avoid the risk. Abstinance and immoral options that guarentee a woman won’t get pregnant.

 

[Hume]

Hume:

If there’s risk, we should have the choice to avoid the risk.

Right hence “level of imminence” being irrelevant. Its simply (a) risk or (b) no risk.

Your criteria justify anyone killing anyone “if there’s risk” (which there frequently is in most every human interaction). Heck someone could use that criteria to kill anyone they see in public who may give them coronavirus.

No, we covered this. You’re just handwaving at this point.

The law pretty much everywhere gives you the right to relieve yourself of bodily risk using the least force necessary.

For unwanted pregnancy, that force is “abortion”. For a home invasion, you can use your shotgun. For someone being pushy at a bar, you can simply leave.

 

[Hume]

Hume:

If there’s risk, we should have the choice to avoid the risk.

There are options to avoid the risk. Abstinance and immoral options that guarentee a woman won’t get pregnant.

We agree here in that we should do anything and everything to avoid unwanted pregnancy so as to preemptively stop the decision as to whether she wants to abort or not.

And in fairness, we’ve been very successful here. Teenage pregnancy and abortion rates are all way down and were near historic lows last time I checked the data - which ill admit has been a few years.

 

[Stephen168]

If there is a .0007% chance the mother could die, then it is moral for her to risk a .0002% chance of death to murder the baby 100%. This doesn’t seem like a pro-life position. It is a free to murder position.

 

[Aquinas11]

The law pretty much everywhere gives you the right to relieve yourself of bodily risk using the least force necessary

No , again your criteria for killing was absence of “risk free enterprise” (any risk justifies killing)

Now you’re saying your criteria for killing is the legal standard of risk of great bodily harm

 

[Hume]

This is not the standard you (or any reasonable person) would have in any circumstance other than abortion.

Sure, given the unique situation where the fetus is actually attached to- and using the mothers body.

It’s a fairly unique scenario that analogues like “The ship captain” don’t fully capture.

However, we don’t let everyone determine what level of risk is appropriate.

In the case of home defense, we actually kinda do… The homeowner is “the trigger-man”. But I agree in that if the blood from the dead assailant is in your yard rather than your house and the wounds are in their back, you’ve got some tough questions coming and possible jail time.

There must be a legal and moral standard that is enforced. Otherwise, the State is legalizing some murder.

It already exists. Property rights and rights of self preservation give a woman all the legal ground she needs to remove an unwanted fetus.

Her body is hers, not the fetus’s. And avoiding unwanted pregnancy is extremely self-preserving.

As stated above, only fools consider pregnancy a risk-free enterprise.

 

[Stephen168]

The key to justifiable homicide is that it was reasonable for the subject to believe that there was an imminent and otherwise unavoidable danger of death or grave bodily harm to the innocent by the deceased when he or she committed the homicide.

In general, deadly force can be employed in self-defense when a reasonable person feels threatened with imminent death, serious bodily injury, and, in some jurisdictions, a serious felony.

Imminent means the attack is immediate and not something that will occur in the future.

 

[Hume]

Oh goodness, you don’t just have the right to alleviate risk when you’re in mortal peril.

When posed with a bodily threat, you always have the right to act to remove it.

Now, these actions must be proportionate to the threat. They aren’t carte blanche, but in the case of unwanted pregnancy, abortion is the only way to evict the unwanted visitor from the body of the woman. It has no right to stay there that overrides a woman’s autonomy over her body.

 

[Hume]

Because the creation of a baby (fetus) is consensual in 9 cases out of 10, any idea of bodily autonomy doesn’t truly affect the abortion issue in any significant way.

And here’s where you’re demonstrably wrong. The fact that abortion exists, the fact that the contraception industry exists, these evidence that the consent to sex and the consent to pregnancy are not the same thing.

And in keeping with your house example - the home owner has the right to evict you whenever they want. It’s their house.
A mother has that same right over her body.

Secondly, the argument for abortion is essentially the same as the argument for slavery.

I agree. In order to be pro-life, you must willingly enslave women.

Thirdly, abortion is not truly about bodily autonomy.

Not, that’s exactly what it’s about. Your list is of people exercising that autonomy.

Given that he is on my property (and on my property I am autonomous) and given that he poses some sort of a risk, I promptly roll over him with my car? Ethical?

No, because you can do a number of things much less severe than killing him to remove him from your property.

-But make no mistake - if you don’t want him there, he’s gotta go!

Same with a woman. If there was a way to remove the fetus from her body without killing it, I’d probably support outlawing abortion. But until then… Your house is your house. Her body is her body.

We can discuss that later if you do not believe in the personhood of a fetus.

They have some personhood, but not as much as mom.

Personhood is progressive. Until birth, mom speaks for you, completely. After birth, basic legal protections. Turn 18, get more rights. Turn 21, get more rights. Then 25, 30, 35 (congress/presidency) and so on.

Thanks for the dialogue.

 

[JimG]

The bottom line is that if people want to have sex while positively excluding the possibility of children, then they must be willing to kill unborn children or hire someone to do it for them.
As Peter Singer has proposed, there is no compelling reason why this option must end at birth. It could be extended for some months or years, as the law may may be written.

 

[Stephen168]

I sure would not want to try and be smarter than God.

Which one?

Because @Casakimavan asked for a bible reference and is using reason, Csakimavan seems to be referring to the rational Judeo-Christian God. That is the assumption I was working with.

While reproduction might not be the only purpose it is the only purpose unique to copulation. After 44 years of marriage, reproduction is the only thing I have NEEDED copulation for.

Not at all. It has multiple purposes and you’ve biologically evolved to need all of them.

When my kids were little, I remember them NEEDING to visit their friends. Just for fun I would ask then why they NEEDED to go. We knew they didn’t NEED to, they just WANTED to.

And copulation is made possible by the design of the reproductive organs; male and female. Second guessing God would be to use artificial means to eliminate reproduction from a reproductive act and then claim its designed purpose is no longer unique.

My god said it’s totally “ok”.

In fact, my god told me that human beings are so overly successful as a species that they’ve overpopulated the earth to the point that they’re affecting global climate and causing an extinction event of other species that’s so large that it has it’s own name - the Anthropocene Extinction.

Cool, You do what your god tells you to do. Even though it doesn’t address what I said at all.

During copulation, male and female are signing a contract to raise the creation they may be producing.

Where can I find a copy of this contract? My wife and I enjoyed “congress” last night and I don’t recall us signing anything.

It is the same contract signed by the sea Captain.

The exchange that took place denoted a tort, a common law contract, even if nothing was signed.

If a human being, with its own sex and unique genetic code, is produced as God designed it, I would not want to second guess God by murdering it. Yes, I would not want to try and be smarter than God.

 

[Stephen168]

Secondly, the argument for abortion is essentially the same as the argument for slavery. It doesn’t matter if black folks (or for abortion, a fetus) are people, they are on my land (or in my body) and I am autonomous so I should be able to do whatever I want with them. Of course, neither of these arguments holds. Even if I am autonomous in respect to my body or my land, that doesn’t abrogate the fact that persons have individual rights which it is always unethical to violate.

I also believe the argument for abortion is the same as slavery, but in a different way.

They have some personhood, but not as much as mom.

They are human but just not human enough to be given full human rights.

 

[Hume]

Because @Casakimavan asked for a bible reference and is using reason, Csakimavan seems to be referring to the rational Judeo-Christian God. That is the assumption I was working with.

The god of the Jews and the god of the Christians certainly doesn’t act any more rational than any of the others I’ve read about. But as you wish.

When my kids were little, I remember them NEEDING to visit their friends. Just for fun I would ask then why they NEEDED to go. We knew they didn’t NEED to, they just WANTED to.

The “need” I refer to is a physiological drive. It’s in your genes and much older than any god you or I have ever heard of.

Cool, You do what your god tells you to do. Even though it doesn’t address what I said at all.

Sure it does. Your god said thus, my god said something different.

At this point, the best solution is that you and those like you should follow your god and I and those like me should follow my god.

Choice.

It is the same contract signed by the sea Captain.

Ah, so it’s in the statute of torts for some state then, which covers general contracts.

Where can I find this codified tort so I may know whether I’m subject to it or not?

If a human being, with its own sex and unique genetic code, is produced as God designed it, I would not want to second guess God by murdering it. Yes, I would not want to try and be smarter than God.

Ah, so we come to a circle - which god? Mine or yours?

 

[Hume]

Hume:

They have some personhood, but not as much as mom.

They are human but just not human enough to be given full human rights.

In a way that override’s mom’s human rights? Nope.

 

[Stephen168]

Sure it does. Your god said thus, my god said something different.

I never said my God said anything, but you responded as if that is what I said.

And copulation is made possible by the design of the reproductive organs; male and female. Second guessing God would be [for you] to use artificial means to eliminate reproduction from a reproductive act and then [for you to ] claim its designed purpose is no longer unique.

My god said it’s totally “ok”.

Therefore your response was snarky, and meaningless; like many of your responses the last couple of days.

 

[Hume]

Hume:

Sure it does. Your god said thus, my god said something different.

I never said my God said anything, but you responded as if that is what I said. Therefore your response was snarky, and meaningless; like many of your responses the last couple of days.

No, I’m just taking the same liberty as you.

Scroll up and read, I’m literally matching theistic reference to theistic reference.

You get your god, sure. But I get mine, too.

 

[Hume]

The bottom line is that if people want to have sex while positively excluding the possibility of children, then they must be willing to kill unborn children or hire someone to do it for them.
As Peter Singer has proposed, there is no compelling reason why this option must end at birth. It could be extended for some months or years, as the law may may be written.

Where Peter is woefully wrong is that the fetus’s dependence on it’s mother’s person ends at birth. Ergo, her ability to abort it in the name of self-preservation ends.

Someone else can care for the child after that.

That’s a very compelling reason, which is why Mr. Singer is wrong.

 

[Stephen168]

No, I’m just taking the same liberty as you.

Scroll up and read, I’m literally matching theistic reference to theistic reference.

I don’t think you are

While reproduction might not be the only purpose it is the only purpose unique to copulation. After 44 years of marriage, reproduction is the only thing I have NEEDED copulation for.

Not at all. It has multiple purposes and you’ve biologically evolved to need all of them.

When my kids were little, I remember them NEEDING to visit their friends. Just for fun I would ask then why they NEEDED to go. We knew they didn’t NEED to, they just WANTED to.