abortion classic or dud?

This is obviously not a pro-choice argument, and I never said it was - I was just pointing out that "how would you like it if you had been aborted?" doesnt work as an argument.

(I am pro-choice as it happens for the simple reason that I think the mother has a right to decide whether or not a pregnancy should be brought to term. I think this does, morally, involve classification of foetuses as 'not-alive', and I'm willing to do that.)

"it has life = it is sacred" is not a position most christians adhere to: the get-out clause is of course the exchange of the "soul" (unquantifiable argument-winner) for "consciousness"

Kiwi's definition of a "human being," above, would include the hangy bit of skin I just picked off of my pinky and flicked into the trash.

El Catracho doesn't get at what Gareth is pointing to, how purpose-laden the Catholic idea of sex is: i.e., if two people are going to copulate, they're not to do anything at all to try and prevent a live birth from resulting. (I'm still not certain where the great "rhythm"-type loopholes come from, as they seems to violate the overarching spirit of the doctrine.)

I think this issue comes down even more to religion than people like to think -- which is to say, I don't think it's so much a matter of asking at what point a fertilized cell becomes a murderable "person" as it is about a lot of people who have a sort of non-biological idea of "souls" lurking behind their thinking. (See El Catracho's questions to Tom.)

IIRC, the most important factor affecting a woman's attitude after an abortion is the nature of support she receives (if any) from her family and friends, and most women report feeling relieved afterwards.

1. the character of the debate around it, as Alex in SF says.

2. because they were pressured by partner, parents, or work environment into making the decision

3. because they do actually think that pro-lifers' arguments have a genuine moral force. I dont think its 'natural' to view a baby you're carrying as a separate individual but I've certainly known women who do feel that - and if you do think that then abortion surely will be traumatic, propaganda or no propaganda.

With 1 and 2 the trauma is the by-product of other people's misguided or evil actions. With 3 the trauma is the by-product of a difficult ethical choice. A compound problem with 2 and 3 I'd think is that women are then SOMETIMES told AFTERWARDS very AGGRESSIVELY that abortion is something NOBODY should feel ANY GUILT about it so ARE they some kind of WHINER whose parents wouldnt get them a TOOTHBRUSH?

"Very often"? No. That it happens? Yes. It happened to someone I know quite well actually: a kind of angry resentment from friends and family that she did feel bad and didnt 'get over it'. I wasn't trying to be funny, Alex, and no I don't think it happens often at all and yes I think the general rhetorical climate/automatic assumptions around abortion is much worse which is why I put it as point #1 agreeing with you in my list.

Look, from my p.o.v. it's simple. Hand in hand with the absolute right a woman has to determine what happens in her pregnancy is an absolute right to feel however the hell she likes about it and not be told how she should or should not feel. Your uncharacteristically super-aggressive tone seemed to me (and maybe I overreacted cos I'm sensitive on this point too, see para above) to be suggesting that women who do feel traumatised are dismissable or suffering from some kind of false consciousness or irritating hindrances to the righteous pro-choice cause. Apologies if I misrepresented you on that.

You write:

"El Catracho doesn't get at what Gareth is pointing to..."

Nabisco, I do get what Gareth is "pointing to." I was simply answering his question that "pointed to" something else. He had a misconception. I addressed his misconception. I'm not going to pretend I know what he is thinking. I just kept it simple and answered his question.

Alan responds to me:

" it is not that people are connecting personhood with consciousness (however you like to think about that word), but I think most people here (unlike yourself) would not identify a grown person with the earlier fetus/embryo/egg that they developed from. at some point most people would say, OK, they are not the same person."

Alan, I wouldn't be able to identify close friends in their childhood pictures. Does this mean that they are "not the same person?" And if so, who were they back then? Is this more pro-choice wisdom: the fetus/child is an entirely distinct person? The fetus that developed into "Alan Trewartha": was that someone else? The logic is dizzying.

Back to Nabisco who writes:

"I think this issue comes down even more to religion than people like to think -- which is to say, I don't think it's so much a matter of asking at what point a fertilized cell becomes a murderable "person" as it is about a lot of people who have a sort of non-biological idea of "souls" lurking behind their thinking. (See El Catracho's questions to Tom.)"

I might agree with you that this can be seen as a "religious question." I think that there's a blurry line between fields like law, philosophy and religion--they all overlap one-another. To me, every attempt to impose temporal power is a morality issue. Every law, right down to speed limits, is an attempt to impose one person's beliefs on another. Every law is a "restriction of choice"--a imposition of "anti-choice" beliefs. I guess some die-hard pro-choice people will try to argue away this statement; but I leave it for everyone to consider on his/her own.

Mystery writes:

"I don't want your opinion of me or what I've done, the only opinions that matter to me are those of the people I love, but I feel some of you are looking only at the moral question and not the reality of what you would do should it happen to you."

Mystery, I respect your wishes and won't comment on your story. Separate from your personal experiences, I will say that you should not presume to know what is going on in another persons mind and judge them based on your "feelings." I know what choices I have made in my life, and I don't need someone chiding me as if this is all hypothetical to me.

All my best,

"clearer way to put it: it takes time and work to make a person, it doesn't happen in a magical mystical instant"

OK, Mark...so is there a point at which you were 1/2 a "person"? Or is there a "magical mystical instant" when you transform from "blob of tissue" into "legal person" at birth. Is that the instant you're talking about? I'd better take a few deep breaths...

if person [x] dies, are you entitled to back-argue from their corpse nature that since they were always going to be dead, being dead is part of their personhood so it doesn't matter when it occurs (some strands of martyr-friendly xtianity — arguing from the eternal nature of the soul i spose — have argued something not unlike this btw)?

I'm afraid you'll only be getting insight into my position. To me, the material loss would be equal. One life lost. Emotionally, I'd be affected by the relationship I had to the loss. If my wife and I had lost a child due to miscarriage, we would most certainly be affected by the loss, even more than the pain of the loss of life due to 9/11 (I'm trying to give something more contrasting than the child who dies of leukemia). Does that mean that roughly 3000 people are less important than the life of the fetus that was lost due to miscarriage? One of my co-workers is going through the emotional impact of his wife's miscarriage--I wouldn't wish that on anyone. It's a terrible loss.

Now, may I get some insight into your position: would you get more, less, or equally upset if your mother had died from colon cancer when you had a strong bond with her, versus when you had little or no relationship with her? In this case (as most), the emotional effects don't determine the value of the life.

Is an unknown homeless person's life "less valuable" than a rich person's? This reflects something truly American: "All men are created equal." Plenty of people have argued that economic classes determine the value of life, or that race determines the value of life, or that gender determines the value of life. I'm sure there were plenty of emotions backing up their arguments, too. But emotions can mislead.

Enjoy,

"erm the instant i'm "talking about" i'm saying doesn't exist, that's what the word "doesn't" is doing in that thread"

OK, Mark, so you're trying to demonstrate the absurdity of the pro-choice position? Now I get it...that's what "'doesn't' is doing in that thread." 8^)

No, one person's subjective emotional response to a death is not a good guide to morality (though I wonder whether that if you aggregate/draw patterns from these responses, it is ultimately what all these matters rest on, for the non-religious) and I don't mean that if you say 'yes, obviously I'd be more upset by a child dying than a foetus' your argument is undermined. It was just of interest, that's all.

In answer to your question, yes, obviously it would make a huge difference how strong my mother bond was.

personhood is a social manifestation of biology: but so is death, so rather, so it ought to be => one of the deep problems in this particular debate is that it's actually a face-off between two completely different (possibly incommensurable) versions of a refusal to believe in the existence of death

(v.loosely speaking, xtians — and/or kantian universalists — say it's just a bodily thing, but there's this eternal monad whose status remains unchanged; "secular humanists" think of it as condition which can be deferred, meliorated, somehow technologically or culturally dissolved, which is to say shuffled equably into a calculus abt general quality of life...)

The discussion about trauma resulting from abortion has mostly been contributed to by guys - and despite having covered many logical reasons why some women may feel trauma one very important reason was missed: Hormones.

Whether a woman is going to feel emotions of guilt, regret, relief, pleasure, or whatever from an abortion, she is definitly going to suffer from major hormonal upheaval when her body discovers it is not pregnant any more. She is also going suffer pain, lots of bleeding, perhaps some side effects from anaesthetics & antibiotics, and maybe skin changes, breast changes, hair-loss and depression from the hormonal changes. This means that a woman who feels not guilt/regret/social disapproval can still be quite traumatised.

The "child's 5th birthday" thing strikes me as something far more likely to be healthy reflection (of the this is where I am now, this is where I might have been, let's keep life in perspective and make judgements about what I where I want to be in the future variety) than guilt inducing regret.

It was me who said earlier that a woman should not be allowed to carry a foetus to full term if the father does not want the baby born. Some people may argue that if a man doesn't want his baby born then he shouldn't go around porking women. I don't have any objection to women having sex and deciding that they want the resulting foetus aborted and I consider men to have the right. I don't believe that anyone has the right to take another persons genes/gametes/whatever and use them to reproduce with against that persons will. Obviously forcing women to have abortions is a pretty horrendous thing to do but so is using someone else's genes to make a baby against their will. I doubt (I hope, I could be wrong) that many men would go this far if options such as having no financial or other responsibility for the child were available.

The tragedy in "losing a life" through abortion, miscarriage, childhood leukemia etc. is not the tragedy of losing a life, it's the tragedy of losing hope. For those who have invested all their hope in a maybe-potential life, then it's loss is a horrible thing.

"If the loss of a loved one would be equal to the loss of potential loved one"

Plinky, I don't know exactly what you mean here when you say potential. Do you mean that the fetus has a potential for a relationship with me, or do you mean that the fetus has a potential for life?

You've given an interesting hypothetical. I'm sure there are plenty of variables like the month of pregnancy, etc. I'll try to be general.

1) I'd get a second opinion! This assumes that she doesn't need surgery immediately. That's a natural response to any serious diagnosis from a doctor. I'm here to tell you: doctors make mistakes.

2) If the second opinion confirmed a high risk to my wife's health, we would protect both lives while not actively killing either life. I would guess that this often results in premature, induced deliveries. The hospitals' NICUs work miracles each day. Chances are, some premie-babies will die, and others will live.

If you're so inclined, feel free to read this document regarding the ethics of your hypothetical. I'm sure that many others on the web will argue the details of this commonly discussed hypothetical better than I.

--------------------------

Nick writes:

"I thought the 'all other things being equal' was assumed."

Well, I may sound callous, but I'm not all that bothered that each day thousands of people whom I don't know die around the world. I just don't think about it...I don't see the point. Death is part of nature. Is there a difference between death and murder? Yes. Is there a difference between my emotional reaction to the death of a loved-one versus my reaction to the death of a stranger? Yes.

The fact that we don't "see" the preborn babies might take away some of the feeling of loss. The same thing happened to the Jews in Germany. Enough Germans didn't like Jewish people that they started killing them. And the deaths were hidden from view of the general public. One thing that the Allies did at the end of the war was get images out to show the atrocity. The images spoke for themselves. We don't need philosophers to explain to us that the concentration camps were immoral. Similarly, we don't need to ponder the minutiae of philosophical arguments to see the injustice.

Toraneko writes:

"The tragedy in "losing a life" through abortion, miscarriage, childhood leukemia etc. is not the tragedy of losing a life, it's the tragedy of losing hope. For those who have invested all their hope in a maybe-potential life, then it's loss is a horrible thing."

I'm sorry; I just want you to run this by me again. You believe that children who die from leukemia are not alive, but merely potential lives? Wow. When do we become "alive"? Is it when we get our driver's license? I know I was alive then!

Enjoy.

"el catracho why are so you much more concerned with the feelings of the dead than the living?"

Mark, are you feeling left out because I didn't respond to you? I'm so sorry! I promise I'll pay more attention to you in the future! LOL.

It's like when two good-looking, 18 yr old, footy-playing guys die in a car crash. Everyone considers it such a tragedy because of their "potential". Not their potential to be wife-beating rapists though. Their potential to live out other people's fantasy lives. I suspect many people don't gain this potential until they have died.

Who do you rely on to "invest in you" and what would happen if they all closed their accounts? Do you cease to exist? :-)

"The hope is invested in the imagined potential, not in the life.

It's like when two good-looking, 18 yr old, footy-playing guys die in a car crash. Everyone considers it such a tragedy because of their "potential". Not their potential to be wife-beating rapists though. Their potential to live out other people's fantasy lives. I suspect many people don't gain this potential until they have died."

Reflecting on your thoughts, I'd say this is a bit of a self-centered way to mourn others. Are we mourning that lost benefit that we could receive from the dead person had he/she lived? If so, does life have inherent value outside of the value that other people give it?

The equations for this stuff become confusing fast: let's say I live comfortably on a small island with my beautiful wife. We have everything we need to live long lives. I value her; therefore her life has value. She values me; therefore I have value. But, if I had no value before she "gave" me my value, what is the "value" of my value for her?!?!? OK, I'm making myself dizzy... OK, so what happens if I stop valuing her? Does her life cease being valuable?

Well, Christians (or as Mark says, xtians :-) ) believe that life is inherently valuable. The US Declaration of Independence states:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

Without arguing about the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, our government is saying that none of us need another person to "invest hope" in order to be valuable. No investment of hope for potential...life is unalienable right that no one else can give or take from us.

Enjoy.

That's ridiculous, right? But can you find a way to tell me it's ridiculous without acknowledging that there's a very close interplay of dependency involved there, a period during which this "potential life" is in fact not a separate entity but rather very much a body's work-in-progress (on which work can be suspended)?

Value means value to someone (sing or plur). This can include value to one's self obv (so does the self continue after death, cz if YES then why is death treated as a social problem?) or value to He Who Died for Us All or other deity (if you decide you need a super-being to ground inherent-value-for-no one-living). Erm there's a whole LOTTA dizzying stuff in this. The condition of possibility of either framework, to establish "inherent value", ends up valorising the unbiddable but also unreadable opinions of the non-living (also known as the ever-living) over the living, unfortunately: ppl who will die turn out to be second-calss citizens in this Eternal Polity.

Work from your assumption that a cell cluster is in fact a viable individual human being: what obligates the first human being -- the mother -- to have it in her body without her consent?

Work from your assumption that non-"viable individual human beings" don't have rights. Why can't I just run around intensive care units and pull the plugs of all the patients? Why can't I argue for my government to kill all those terminally ill (mentally or physically) who are draining our tax dollars for their medical treatment? Many people aren't "viable." If we could reduce the tax burden (ie. give citizens more "freedom of choice" with their money), why shouldn't we do this? Even more extreme: what if we could just kill ~10% of the least productive members of society? Despite the "graphically ridiculous" arguments, these ideas have all been championed at one time or another.

If society doesn't "consent" to these burdens (elderly, mentally ill, sick), is it still morally bound to care for them, or may it kill them? I think the situation is the same for both the mother and society.

For what it's worth, both the law and society often reprimand parents who fail to fulfill their obligation to protect and care for their children. What happened with the young mother who slapped her child under the watch of Big Brother? Maybe this mother didn't want to accept the responsibility of being a mother. Yet despite her daily problems, society sees it as her responsibility to care for her child.

Nabisco writes:

"El Catracho let me put the question this sort of graphically ridiculous-sounding way. (If it's really an "individal" what makes this not rape?)"

Are you really convinced that an unwanted baby is "raping" its mother? That's pretty weird. Well, OK it's ridiculous too. :-)

Mark writes:

"In order to say yes to this, you have to argue that there's this big person-who-isn't-a-person outside time and history, in whom the recognition of value can reside."

Actually, there's a big "person-who-isn't-a-human." A "person-who-isn't-a-person" would not be a person.

Well, there's a bunch of questions that science hasn't the slightest idea of how to answer. All the big questions of the Universe are pretty interesting to me. Theists and atheists come from different starting points; but I'm always interested in hearing the views on these questions from diverse points of view.

Enjoy.

The new Christian strategy, though, is to pretend that their ridiculous claims would still be true in the absence of God. They wouldn't, though, and no amount of slumming down here with the godless intellectuals will change that.

[mandatory self-outing: I am in fact religious though not Christian]

ie it's not *my* contradiction