Pro-Choice argument targeted at Pro-Life atheists

[Kitsune]

I quite well realize that this argument will not work on religious pro-life but there are some non religious pro life and wondering if this argument might work

It is not like in the 1950s there were not plenty of illegal abortions.
I have read numbers such as one million abortions a year with about one thousand women a year dying from those abortions.
Assuming this figure is correct, when compared to about one and a half million a year today, the rate of abortion was actually higher in the 1950s than today.
I believe that the US had a population of around one hundred and fifty million compared to around three hundred million today.

I don't think we are prepared to lock up one million and a half women a year (and be more with most of the religious pro-life organizations also being anti-contraceptive)
Stopping doctors from doing it will just drive it underground
Even if you hate abortion, simple practicality argues that it is better being legal.
The sam argument can be used to legalize drugs, alcohol, and prostitution.
Keeps all of the above as safer.

[Grumman]

There is no part of your argument that is not wrong. But the worst of your errors is that your argument is founded on the axiom that the deliberate killing of an unborn child is a victimless crime. From the viewpoint of someone who believes a fetus has any right to not be killed, you have started your proof with the assumption that 2+2=3, and that renders all your conclusions invalid.

[Kitsune]

There is a victim in drinking too much. . . .You
Potentially others if you convince others that drinking is cool
By making drinking illegal though, it created far more problems than it solved

[Alyrium Denryle]

Here is the problem. Pro-life atheists typically start from the same premise that religious people do, they just come at it from a secular point of view. Said premise--that a fetus is a human, and humans have intrinsic moral value--needs to be addressed. You either have to demonstrate that simply being human is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition to possessing intrinsic moral worth, or that the moral worth of the mother outweighs any such worth that the fetus might have.

You have done neither of these things.

There is another set they will sometimes use, which is the argument that the fetus is a potential person, and we have moral duties toward potential people. IE. It may not be a person now, but it will be someday. This argument however is dealt with trivially, because it logically reduces to absurdity. Arguments from individual potential have no natural stopping point, so such arguments reduce to it being unethical to refuse heterosexual unprotected intercourse because it denies existence to a potential person.

[Thanas]

I somewhat disagree with the last part of your statement, Alyrium, as I think you take it a bit too far. I doubt anybody is arguing that a fetus will grow up to be the next Salieri or what have you, but people will argue that it is reasonable to assume that a fetus in today's age with our medicine etc. will grow up to be a healthy child. That same argument is used all the time in criminal and hereditary law and nobody thinks it absurd there.

[Kitsune]

The non religious anti-abortion people who I have heard interviews with do not seem to be anti-birth control and are not against medically necessary abortions. They also support better care for women who are pregnant. There is also a case where an atheist anti-abortion offered help in a religious anti-abortion center and was told that they do not want her.

One thing with conservative religious anti-abortion groups are that most are also anti contraceptive. They want to, if anything, cut care for poor pregnant mothers. There motivations are also quite different. There is a lot of slut shaming. In addition, they believe that the Bible is anti-abortion and that the bible makes fetus to be humans. Both are false of course. But still, they are working form an authoritarian basis.

[Alyrium Denryle]

I somewhat disagree with the last part of your statement, Alyrium, as I think you take it a bit too far. I doubt anybody is arguing that a fetus will grow up to be the next Salieri or what have you, but people will argue that it is reasonable to assume that a fetus in today's age with our medicine etc. will grow up to be a healthy child. That same argument is used all the time in criminal and hereditary law and nobody thinks it absurd there.

It is not really analogous to those conditions. You are accidentally equivocating two separate arguments.

1)
A fetus is a future person
a future person is extensionally equivalent to a person, and people have a right to live
ergo: we are obliged to ensure that fetuses go to term, because the fetus/person has a right to live.

vs


2)
A fetus could be the next Salieri
Having another Salieri would be good and we are obliged to do good
therefore, we are obliged to ensure that a fetus goes to term.

The argument usually made is 1. The problem is that once you accept the proposition that a future person and its rights are extensionally equivalent to an actual person and its rights, there is no stopping point. There is no point farther up the causal chain at which that future person ceases to be extensionally equivalent to an actual person.

[Thanas]

The argument usually made is 1. The problem is that once you accept the proposition that a future person and its rights are extensionally equivalent to an actual person and its rights, there is no stopping point. There is no point farther up the causal chain at which that future person ceases to be extensionally equivalent to an actual person.

So...in case of a person dieing with his wife being pregnant with their child, do you think the child should not count as an heir? If someone kicks a pregnant woman in the stomach and causes the fetus to die, should this not be murder?

I think the argument in itself is perfectly valid past a certain gestation point and I think it would be more honest to argue that the rights of the mother can outweigh the rights of the fetus because we cannot force one person to sacrifice herself for the sake of another.

[Alyrium Denryle]

So...in case of a person dieing with his wife being pregnant with their child, do you think the child should not count as an heir?

Wouldn't the wife count as heir, and subsequently any offspring, or are we using male-only primogeniture?

In either case, once the offspring is born it is a natural born child of that person, and thus would be considered an heir. Prior to that? Not directly.

If someone kicks a pregnant woman in the stomach and causes the fetus to die, should this not be murder?

No. Because until veeeeery late in development, there is zero chance whatsoever that any rational system of ethics would assign more ethical value to a human fetus than we do to a chicken embryo. No capacity to feel pain. No consciousness--not even the notional capacity to have consciousness. No thoughts, desires, hopes, dreams etc. It is a non-entity as far as Utilitarianism, Kantian deontology, or Ethical Pragmatism are concerned. Even Rights Ethics (even though they are not actually rational as a system of ethics, but useful as legal shorthand) dont work, because the fetus is not self aware and thus the concept of self-ownership cannot by definition apply.

[Thanas]

So...in case of a person dieing with his wife being pregnant with their child, do you think the child should not count as an heir?

Wouldn't the wife count as heir, and subsequently any offspring, or are we using male-only primogeniture?

Maybe. What about girlfriends?

In either case, once the offspring is born it is a natural born child of that person, and thus would be considered an heir. Prior to that? Not directly.

But we do use that legal construct to justify giving such children inheritance rights. We already do legally recognize that they will in normal circumstances grow to be healthy and mentally competent people. It strikes me as hypocritical to deny this for all other factors except the inheritance issues.

[energiewende]

I think the argument in itself is perfectly valid past a certain gestation point and I think it would be more honest to argue that the rights of the mother can outweigh the rights of the fetus because we cannot force one person to sacrifice herself for the sake of another.

But we can and do - how do you justify the welfare system, or conscription otherwise? Unless there's a very bad likely consequence of carrying the baby to term (eg. death in childbirth) it seems rather out of step with society's views on distributional justice to say that one person must die so that another person can enjoy 9 months in greater comfort and avoid a few hours of (medically alleviated) pain.

[Kitsune]

I think the argument in itself is perfectly valid past a certain gestation point and I think it would be more honest to argue that the rights of the mother can outweigh the rights of the fetus because we cannot force one person to sacrifice herself for the sake of another.

But we can and do - how do you justify the welfare system, or conscription otherwise? Unless there's a very bad likely consequence of carrying the baby to term (eg. death in childbirth) it seems rather out of step with society's views on distributional justice to say that one person must die so that another person can enjoy 9 months in greater comfort and avoid a few hours of (medically alleviated) pain.

There are two arguments here against this

The first is do you advocate for forced organ donation? If you can force a woman to carry a child to term, can you force organ, tissue, and blood donation? If you do, at least your argument is consistent.

The second, which is more of a concern, is that those who are pro life in the religious arena are also against boosting support for pregnant mothers. Basically, tehy want to force the mothers to carry teh child and then "fuck you bitch."

[Thanas]

But we can and do - how do you justify the welfare system, or conscription otherwise?

Social contract.

Unless there's a very bad likely consequence of carrying the baby to term (eg. death in childbirth) it seems rather out of step with society's views on distributional justice to say that one person must die so that another person can enjoy 9 months in greater comfort and avoid a few hours of (medically alleviated) pain.

Like I said, I can easily justify it on the specific situation involved, which is why I am against making abortion illegal per se.

[Metahive]

energiewende, let's say I'm in dire need of a kidney and it turns out you are the perfect donor. Would you be in favor of laws that forced you to give your kidney up to me? If not, then why are you in favor of forcing women to give up their bodily autonomy to pay life support for someone else?

[energiewende]

I think the argument in itself is perfectly valid past a certain gestation point and I think it would be more honest to argue that the rights of the mother can outweigh the rights of the fetus because we cannot force one person to sacrifice herself for the sake of another.

But we can and do - how do you justify the welfare system, or conscription otherwise? Unless there's a very bad likely consequence of carrying the baby to term (eg. death in childbirth) it seems rather out of step with society's views on distributional justice to say that one person must die so that another person can enjoy 9 months in greater comfort and avoid a few hours of (medically alleviated) pain.

There are two arguments here against this

The first is do you advocate for forced organ donation? If you can force a woman to carry a child to term, can you force organ, tissue, and blood donation? If you do, at least your argument is consistent.

The second, which is more of a concern, is that those who are pro life in the religious arena are also against boosting support for pregnant mothers. Basically, tehy want to force the mothers to carry teh child and then "fuck you bitch."

Please be clear that I am not advocating a position here, rather I am examining the consequences of Thanas's position. In that context:

1. Most forced organ donations would kill the donor which is not a distributional trade-off that is generally accepted. I think forced blood donations and organ donation after death would be quite easy to morally defend extending the basic logic of other redistributional property transfer policies.

2. They probably suggest adoption. But Thanas's position wasn't based in religion and nor was my response, so, whatever I guess.

Social contract.

Like I said, I can easily justify it on the specific situation involved, which is why I am against making abortion illegal per se.

I may be misinterpreting this, but are you saying that you support abortion because you think in a lot of situations death of a person is a reasonable trade-off as against the harm caused to the mother? If so, in which situations?

energiewende, let's say I'm in dire need of a kidney and it turns out you are the perfect donor. Would you be in favor of laws that forced you to give your kidney up to me? If not, then why are you in favor of forcing women to give up their bodily autonomy to pay life support for someone else?

Noting again that I am not necessarily advocating Thanas's position, I think that a law that forced people to give up kidneys would be quite easy to morally defend provided it were limited to cases where the expected life years gained - life years lost were positive. Obamacare already does this, in a much weaker form, by taxing 'Cadillac plans' (ie. reducing life expectancy of upper middle class people) to give increased subsidies for the uninsured and people with pre-existing conditions. It's reasoned that the net change in expected life years will be positive.

[Thanas]

I may be misinterpreting this, but are you saying that you support abortion because you think in a lot of situations death of a person is a reasonable trade-off as against the harm caused to the mother?

Yes. The death of a potential person, mind you.

If so, in which situations?

I am not going to list all the specific situations which I find acceptable because it is impossible to do so and I can think of at least one person who would view that as a gotcha situation. I also think society has the right to define what is and what is not acceptable and thus enlightened women should have the option to do the same with regards to their bodies.

[energiewende]

I may be misinterpreting this, but are you saying that you support abortion because you think in a lot of situations death of a person is a reasonable trade-off as against the harm caused to the mother?

Yes. The death of a potential person, mind you.

Do you discount the value somehow, and if so, to what degree? Just chance that the fetus will die before becoming a full person, or something more?

If so, in which situations?

As for situations, I am not going to list all the specific situations which I find acceptable because it is impossible to do so and I can think of at least one person who would view that as a gotcha situation. I also think society has the right to define what is and what is not acceptable and thus enlightened women should have the option to do the same with regards to their bodies.

Well hang on, that last line is just silly. No one would seriously argue, "Society has a right to define in what circumstances seizing peoples' property is acceptable [true], therefore enlightened crowbar owners should have the option to do the same with regard to their local parking lot [???]". Saying that society decides something means precisely not putting the decision in the hands of a clique of people with a vested interest in one particular answer that happens to favour them.

Now it's reasonable for society to decide that they want to permit abortion in many or all circumstances because, for instance, they do not regard fetuses as persons or potential persons, and therefore think fetuses carry no moral value. But you seem to be arguing that fetuses carry comparable moral value to a living person, so isn't a society that decides it's ok to kill them on par with a society that decides it's ok to gun down ethnic minorities in the street, or something of that nature? To avoid that comparison, your view would seem to require abortion be almost never legal - really only allowed in case of medical emergencies, and possibly (but by no means certainly) in the case of pregnancy due to rape.

[Thanas]

I may be misinterpreting this, but are you saying that you support abortion because you think in a lot of situations death of a person is a reasonable trade-off as against the harm caused to the mother?

Yes. The death of a potential person, mind you.

Do you discount the value somehow, and if so, to what degree? Just chance that the fetus will die before becoming a full person, or something more?

That and also the gestation period, different periods of brain development etc.

Well hang on, that last line is just silly. No one would seriously argue, "Society has a right to define in what circumstances seizing peoples' property is acceptable [true], therefore enlightened crowbar owners should have the option to do the same with regard to their local parking lot [???]". Saying that society decides something means precisely not putting the decision in the hands of a clique of people with a vested interest in one particular answer that happens to favour them.

I am not responsible for you gloriously misunderstanding me so I don't feel like elaborating.

Now it's reasonable for society to decide that they want to permit abortion in many or all circumstances because, for instance, they do not regard fetuses as persons or potential persons, and therefore think fetuses carry no moral value. But you seem to be arguing that fetuses carry comparable moral value to a living person, so isn't a society that decides it's ok to kill them on par with a society that decides it's ok to gun down ethnic minorities in the street, or something of that nature? To avoid that comparison, your view would seem to require abortion be almost never legal - really only allowed in case of medical emergencies, and possibly (but by no means certainly) in the case of pregnancy due to rape.

No, it would not. Again, your failure to understand is not my problem.

[Grumman]

energiewende, let's say I'm in dire need of a kidney and it turns out you are the perfect donor. Would you be in favor of laws that forced you to give your kidney up to me? If not, then why are you in favor of forcing women to give up their bodily autonomy to pay life support for someone else?

A better analogy: you've already offered to donate the kidney, and the recipient has already been taken off dialysis in preparation for the surgery and for some reason can't be put back on: it's a transplant or bust now.

Should you be able to remove consent for the operation?

[Alyrium Denryle]

Maybe. What about girlfriends?

In this case, the fetus itself has no rights. Potential, not actual person. The person is notional. If however you stipulate that the fetus WILL be a person, you still have a duty of care toward the person who will be born. In the sense that should they be born, they ought not have conditions set up such that they suffer or are otherwise subject to various forms of privation. Sort of like how this duty of care exists on a larger scale toward the future population of the earth.

To use another sort of example. Say I have a property. I can do what I want with it by and large (lets say zoning is very very lax here, or this land is in a rural area and less regulated than something urban). Say I decide I want to build a bed and breakfast in the scenic environment. I will have customers in the future. Because of this, I have to abide by certain building codes to make sure the resulting building is well-constructed and safe to inhabit. However, I have no obligation, up until the building is finished and occupied, to refrain from changing my mind. I could, at any point provided non-occupancy, tear down the entire edifice and instead decide to let the land grow wild as a miniature nature preserve or somesuch.

The same thing should be true of inheritance. While the heir is under construction (so to speak), whatever inheritance there may be should be held in probate or whatever regional equivalent until such time as the pregnancy is either terminated, or the notional person stops being notional. Not because the fetus has any rights necessarily, but because a duty of care exists toward the person the fetus might become and inheritance materially impacts their life.

So the inheritance issue would work the same way it does for many things. If you abort the pregnancy, no problem. Whatever. Nothing of value is lost. If however you DONT abort the pregnancy and proceed to smoke crack cocaine, you are doing something that sets up deleterious conditions for a person who it is stipulated will exist and who has a right to not come into existence addicted to crack cocaine.

It strikes me as hypocritical to deny this for all other factors except the inheritance issues.

Well, I am talking ethics here. Not the law per se. Or rather, I am postulating a way to construct the law so as to be consistent with a given ethical system's premises. You and I both know that the law tends to be fairly idiosyncratic and does not necessarily follow any sort of fixed set of principles or even internal consistency.

[Kitsune]

1. Most forced organ donations would kill the donor which is not a distributional trade-off that is generally accepted. I think forced blood donations and organ donation after death would be quite easy to morally defend extending the basic logic of other redistributional property transfer policies.

Err, not so much thinking about a heart or something like that
What I am arguing though is that forcing people to donate skin grafts, bone marrow, and blood are not life threatening in the vast majority of cases. Bone marrow I understand is especially painful however. If you argue that life is above all, these should be mandatory.

[Ahriman238]

I quite well realize that this argument will not work on religious pro-life but there are some non religious pro life and wondering if this argument might work

It is not like in the 1950s there were not plenty of illegal abortions.
I have read numbers such as one million abortions a year with about one thousand women a year dying from those abortions.
Assuming this figure is correct, when compared to about one and a half million a year today, the rate of abortion was actually higher in the 1950s than today.
I believe that the US had a population of around one hundred and fifty million compared to around three hundred million today.

I don't think we are prepared to lock up one million and a half women a year (and be more with most of the religious pro-life organizations also being anti-contraceptive)
Stopping doctors from doing it will just drive it underground
Even if you hate abortion, simple practicality argues that it is better being legal.
The sam argument can be used to legalize drugs, alcohol, and prostitution.
Keeps all of the above as safer.

OK, Kit? This is not a novel argument, it dates back to at least Roe v. Wade, maybe longer. We usually just call it the safety argument, and it has a long track record of convincing almost no one. It IS, however, almost the default state for American Pro-Choice Conservatives "Of course I think abortion is terrible. Now imagine how much worse it would be with coat-hangar operations in dark alleys again. Babies would still die, and so would mothers." sort of thing.

[Kitsune]

I quite well realize that this argument will not work on religious pro-life but there are some non religious pro life and wondering if this argument might work

It is not like in the 1950s there were not plenty of illegal abortions.
I have read numbers such as one million abortions a year with about one thousand women a year dying from those abortions.
Assuming this figure is correct, when compared to about one and a half million a year today, the rate of abortion was actually higher in the 1950s than today.
I believe that the US had a population of around one hundred and fifty million compared to around three hundred million today.

I don't think we are prepared to lock up one million and a half women a year (and be more with most of the religious pro-life organizations also being anti-contraceptive)
Stopping doctors from doing it will just drive it underground
Even if you hate abortion, simple practicality argues that it is better being legal.
The sam argument can be used to legalize drugs, alcohol, and prostitution.
Keeps all of the above as safer.

OK, Kit? This is not a novel argument, it dates back to at least Roe v. Wade, maybe longer. We usually just call it the safety argument, and it has a long track record of convincing almost no one. It IS, however, almost the default state for American Pro-Choice Conservatives "Of course I think abortion is terrible. Now imagine how much worse it would be with coat-hangar operations in dark alleys again. Babies would still die, and so would mothers." sort of thing.

What I am trying to figure out is what exactly will be non religious anti-abortion arguments against this be.

[Thanas]

If however you stipulate that the fetus WILL be a person, you still have a duty of care toward the person who will be born. In the sense that should they be born, they ought not have conditions set up such that they suffer or are otherwise subject to various forms of privation. Sort of like how this duty of care exists on a larger scale toward the future population of the earth.

Yeah, I don't think this is in any dispute.

To use another sort of example. Say I have a property. I can do what I want with it by and large (lets say zoning is very very lax here, or this land is in a rural area and less regulated than something urban). Say I decide I want to build a bed and breakfast in the scenic environment. I will have customers in the future. Because of this, I have to abide by certain building codes to make sure the resulting building is well-constructed and safe to inhabit. However, I have no obligation, up until the building is finished and occupied, to refrain from changing my mind. I could, at any point provided non-occupancy, tear down the entire edifice and instead decide to let the land grow wild as a miniature nature preserve or somesuch.

However, this does not convince me because a person is not a building and will develop in almost all cases. We are at a stage of medicine where miscarriages are not the norm, but rather the very striking exception.

The same thing should be true of inheritance. While the heir is under construction (so to speak), whatever inheritance there may be should be held in probate or whatever regional equivalent until such time as the pregnancy is either terminated, or the notional person stops being notional. Not because the fetus has any rights necessarily, but because a duty of care exists toward the person the fetus might become and inheritance materially impacts their life.

Sure, but why does this duty not apply here as well? The duty arises out of the theory the fetus will become a person. The same should be true here. A person's value is intrinsic.

For me, as soon as the brain is developed to a certain point, it should be protected.

[energiewende]

I am not responsible for you gloriously misunderstanding me so I don't feel like elaborating.

No, it would not. Again, your failure to understand is not my problem.

I apologise if my misunderstanding has been so grievous as all that, but I still do not see it. I really would appreciate it if you pointed out to me in painfully simple terms how I am mischaracterizing your position.