Why is abortion harmful?

[Formon]

Are you serious?

 

[ciros2]

If you find someone who would honestly not make any distinction, then you will have found someone who actually thinks that personhood begins even before pregnancy commences. That a zygote, for example, is a person.

1. What difference does it make when a person appears? The only important thing is to be a biological species(Homo sapiens).
2. You can ask the same question about who to save: old people in death or young and healthy. If this question was concluded that abortion is acceptable, you should allow the killing of old people at death.

 

[ciros2]

P1. If the murder (of a person) is immoral, then abortion is immoral, if it is murder

P2. Murder is the intentional killing of an innocent man.

P3. Zygote is a human being.

P4. Zygote cannot be blamed

P5. Abortion is the intentional killing of a zygote (human)

P6. Abortion is a murder.

C. Abortion amoralen

The attack on this argument will probably be on point P3. They will say something like “the zygote does not have X (e.g. feelings) so the zygote - not a human” to which you notice that people Y (e.g. sleeping) also do not have X. So either you can kill them too, or you can not kill the zygote.

P.S. If possible, translate the subtitles into your language

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(video in Russian, but with subtitles)

 

[mary77]

to turn against the most innocent of humans in the womb is to turn against oneself. It goes down hill from there. Abortions get out, children in the family hear of it, its impact hurts them more then the most horrific movie they will ever see…abortions legalized were done so to harvest fetal tissue for research making many investors rich to this day with all the experimental drugs that have been developed over the last 40 yrs. The cover up was a manufactured womens liberation movement that spurred women to turn against their own fetus and have too many sexual partners. Abortion is the fruit of many sins.

 

[Fauken]

Are you serious?

Nevermind, I found it myself.

In either event, blacks wouldn’t have to be mentioned by name. Slavery and race was practically synonymous.

 

[Formon]

That’s totally beside the point. The 3/5 compromise only applied to slaves, not blacks. Show me where it says otherwise.

 

[Fauken]

That’s totally beside the point. The 3/5 compromise only applied to slaves, not blacks. Show me where it says otherwise.

What were the vast majority of slaves in the United States throughout history? If you asked 18th or 19th century Americans to describe what a slave looked like, what do you imagine would be the one unifying feature in their descriptions?

 

[bruisedreed]

With all respect to @Formon and @Fauken, don’t you think that your current topic of discussion has derailed the conversation? It started out in a relevant way but its devolved into something else. This topic is about providing arguments for the harmfulness of abortion. A number of people have given interesting arguments interspersed with your discussion, and its hard to sift through it for those who are looking for answers.

 

[Fauken]

Ah, sorry!

 

[Freddy]

Freddy:

If you find someone who would honestly not make any distinction, then you will have found someone who actually thinks that personhood begins even before pregnancy commences. That a zygote, for example, is a person.

1. What difference does it make when a person appears?

All the difference in the world. And you should look up the word ‘triage’. It’s a system whereby someone makes a decision who to save if there are limited resources. So yes, the elderly patient may well be denied the life saving procedure over the child. So you choose one over the other.

Didn’t you know about this?

 

[ciros2]

Didn’t you know about this?

I do not understand how it follows that someone can be murdered…
Yes, I can sort lives by value, beautiful is more valuable than ugly, healthy is better than sick, rich is better than poor. However, this does not imply that the second can kill frivolously, so I do not understand why it works with zygotes.

 

[Freddy]

Freddy:

Didn’t you know about this?

I do not understand how it follows that someone can be murdered…
Yes, I can sort lives by value, beautiful is more valuable than ugly, healthy is better than sick, rich is better than poor. However, this does not imply that the second can kill frivolously, so I do not understand why it works with zygotes.

You must know that if you use terms like ‘murdered’ then anyone on the other side of the discussion will immediately turn off. But to continue anyway…

A young life is worth more than an old one. You can argue this until kingdom come but this is the way that triage works when the rubber hits the road. If there is access to only one life saving procedure then the five year old gets it and the ninety five year old doesn’t. Which doesn’t mean we don’t value the old guy. We do. But we consider the girl’s life to be more valuable all things considered.

Similarly, if the five year old is in a burning building and there is a flask of frozen embryos also at risk and you can only save one, then the young girl gets saved every time.

And if you ask anyone what they consider to be worse: having an abortion a day before birth or a day after conceiving then you wouldn’t need to poll a thousand people to know what the answer would be.

Do you see something in common in all these cases? I’d like to think that you see that value changes depending on the circumstances. And for someone who considers all life to be sacred, it’s a very difficult concept with which to come to terms. And I appreciate that. But it doesn’t change the fact that people feel this way.

Consequently, a woman who decides to terminate a pregnancy, or even take a morning after pill to prevent a pregnancy following a possible conception, doesn’t consider what she is carrying a person. It’s considered to be nothing more than a small group of cells. Hard for you to accept, I know. But that’s the situation.

 

[umamibella]

At four weeks gestation a fetus already has a beating heart.The neural tubes of the brain have already started developing.

That argument unfortunately gives us a 'human vacancy/bunch of cells ’ argument when talking to pro choicers with a less then one month old fetus.
The fertilized chicken egg red spot argument.

 

[umamibella]

Yes dumb question I know but still some people truly believe a fetus is not a human organism.

That is the hurdle we have to jump to get too much further in this fight if demonstrating its harmfulness/ wrongness to those who are not swayed by Religious reasons.

 

[blackforest]

Which is: If there is a fire in a building and you could save a frozen embryo or a baby, which would you choose?

I’m not really sure why pro-choicers think this cliche is a big “gotcha.” Our subjective opinion shouldn’t get to determine who lives or who dies. If there is a fire and you could save your daughter or another little girl, which would you choose? If there is a fire and could save one stranger or another, which would you choose? If you can only choose one, it doesn’t mean that burning up the other isn’t a bad thing.

That a zygote, for example, is a person.

Women don’t abort zygotes.

And you should look up the word ‘triage’.

It doesn’t apply. The vast majority of abortions aren’t performed to save the life of the mother. Equating psychosocial circumstances to medical fragility seems disingenuous.

 

[Freddy]

Freddy:

Which is: If there is a fire in a building and you could save a frozen embryo or a baby, which would you choose?

I’m not really sure why pro-choicers think this cliche is a big “gotcha.” Our subjective opinion shouldn’t get to determine who lives or who dies. If there is a fire and you could save your daughter or another little girl, which would you choose? If there is a fire and could save one stranger or another, which would you choose? If you can only choose one, it doesn’t mean that burning up the other isn’t a bad thing.

That a zygote, for example, is a person.

Women don’t abort zygotes.

And you should look up the word ‘triage’.

It doesn’t apply. The vast majority of abortions aren’t performed to save the life of the mother. Equating psychosocial circumstances to medical fragility seems disingenuous.

I’ve explained my point as well as I can. I’m sorry that you don’t understand it. I’d say the fault is mine in not explaining it in a way that makes sense to you.

 

[bruisedreed]

I think this isn’t right. Or, rather, it’s not the complete story. People opposed to abortion tend to focus on the nature of the child (person/human being/tissue, etc.) but I don’t believe this is the crux of the matter for those in favor of its legalization, even when the status/nature point is brought up first.

I think the exclusive focus in this discussion on the personhood/human nature of the unborn is probably a result of the needs of @Eaglejet23, who asked “why is abortion harmful?” I think this question assumes that if abortion is shown to be harmful in some important way, then we will be armed with a persuasive argument against abortion.

The issue is that people in favor of abortion are wondering whether it is always unjust to intentionally kill the innocent. That’s the main issue, but we hardly talk about this.

 

[whatistrue]

I’ve explained my point as well as I can. I’m sorry that you don’t understand it.

I would say, based on my reading of the relevant posts, that @blackforest understands your argument (or explanation if you prefer) rather well. It just isn’t as good an argument as you think it is.

 

[umamibella]

The issue is that people in favor of abortion are wondering whether it is always unjust to intentionally kill the innocent. That’s the main issue, but we hardly talk about this.

To reach the question of justness of killing, an unborn baby, first a person had to understand the fetus is a baby at zero days gestation. Thats the position of so many.
How do we show it is harmful to abort what is in their mind, a bunch of cells. Especially where it is legal to have an abortion and even culturally acceptable.

 

[bruisedreed]

I appreciate this comment a lot, thank you.

I used to think like this @umamibella, but I’ve changed my mind. I actually think that very, very many people are actually quite comfortable agreeing that the unborn is a human of some kind. Or they would be comfortable admitting it, if they believed their opponent were comfortable speaking about issues related to the intentional killing of innocents.

There is a philosopher named Judith Jarvis Thomson who argued in a seminal paper on abortion that we should for the time take for granted that the unborn fetus is a human being. She then turned all her attention to arguing that in certain circumstances it can be allowable to kill an innocent human being.

I tried to make this point earlier in this topic but no one seemed interested in the argument. I’ll try to make it one more time in case anyone missed it. One of the most outspoken among Catholics in the intellectually conservative sphere is George Weigel. I respect him very much. He wrote this article regarding the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He concluded:

“It was a terrible choice, what Secretary of War Henry Stimson called “our least abhorrent choice.” Given the available options, it was the correct choice.”

Now try to imagine what it would be like to be in support of abortion and hearing a Catholic say that the intentional killing of the unborn is evil, and then reading something like this quoted passage. Do you see the problem? Catholics are not consistent when it comes to the topic of the intentional killing of innocents.