I am not sure where to start. This is my first post. I listened to this podcast and was so incensed that I had to post.
The logical argument against abortion comes down to whether children are people or not. This is due to the arbitrary choice of where to call a fetus human. Except for conception and birth any other choice is arbitrary. I will err on the side of caution.
If you look at countries where gay marriage is legal you will see that the meaning of marriage is diluted. This cannot be a good thing.
I think I trust the trust the conservatives more than the liberals.
BTW, I am an conservative atheist.
Well if you think the argument against abortion is whether children are people or not,then somebody is spinning their wheels.Of course children are people.The argument should center around population control.Like you said “...this cannot be a good thing” and “I will err on the side of caution”.Exactly right!Surely thousands more of unwanted,unplanned children cannot be a good thing for society.
The argument should also center around who has the right to kill which people,arbitrarily or otherwise.I can tell you that it is much more humane to stop an unknown,unseen and unwanted life form,than it is to drop bombs on innocent people who have already started their lives,and are actually loved by people.Lots of children are dying from bombs and hunger and disease.
Abortion is a proven technique for birth control,and it works just fine until people can find better,more effective methods of controlling unwanted pregnancies.Obviously condoms and pills aren’t 100% effective,or there would be no abortions.Oh!They would be if people used them?Right!But they don’t all the time,therefore they aren’t effective all the time.
As a conservative,I know you want the right to choose.The right to choose who lives and who dies!
I am not sure where to start. This is my first post. I listened to this podcast and was so incensed that I had to post.
The logical argument against abortion comes down to whether children are people or not. This is due to the arbitrary choice of where to call a fetus human. Except for conception and birth any other choice is arbitrary. I will err on the side of caution.
If you look at countries where gay marriage is legal you will see that the meaning of marriage is diluted. This cannot be a good thing.
I think I trust the trust the conservatives more than the liberals.
BTW, I am an conservative atheist.
Conservatives all want the right to choose.Choose who lives and who dies!The fact that you’re an atheist carries absolutely no weight.So what…you’re an atheist.Define atheism.
How do you feel about all the children who have left the womb,and are actually loved by people?The innocent children and adults who are killed by bombs and hunger.How about people being killed on death row?You want to decide where a person becomes a person in the womb.It’s arbitrary right?What about the arbitrary justice system we have?Shouldn’t we err on the side of caution there too?What about bombing population centers?Shouldn’t we err on the side of caution there too?
If you look at countries where gay marriage is legal you will see that the meaning of marriage is diluted. This cannot be a good thing.
Oh,gosh darn, I’m so glad that Brittany Spears drunken 57 hour marriage and Elizabeth Taylor’s 9 ostentatious weddings did so much to strengthen the meaning and sacredness of marriage. Having your wedding performed (literally) by an Elvis impersonator helps too! People have been married in clown suits, underwater in swim suits and while parachuting. The lists are endless, and you worry about two (wo)men committed to each other that want to have the dignity of a simple ceremony?
Two CONSENTING adults????
Except for conception and birth any other choice is arbitrary. I will err on the side of caution.
You could hardly know all of the circumstances involved when a woman decides to have an abortion. Your position is both demeaning and insulting to women.
Except for conception and birth any other choice is arbitrary. I will err on the side of caution.
You could hardly know all of the circumstances involved when a woman decides to have an abortion. Your position is both demeaning and insulting to women.
I agree with asanta that it has to be the choice of the woman.
However, I don’t think the entire discussion is simply black&white;—there are heartbreaking areas of grey. Infanticide is abhorrent and terminating a viable fetus (as medical science progresses from the early 21st century) is not desirable. Neither is an abortion because the child would be female.
But overall it has to be the decision of the woman.
But you can be a conservative atheist and agree with abortion rights. Actuallly you can be a conservative atheist and agree with gay rights as well. They both follow from a secular “do onto others as you would have them do unto you” sort of thing.
But you can be a conservative atheist and agree with abortion rights.
Agreed. I have always viewed the controversy as an attempt to convert a fraction into a boolean “yes or no”. The fertilized egg is some tiny, tiny fraction of a ‘complete human being’. With the passage of time, the developing creature inside the womb gains more and more ‘humanhood’ until at birth it is 100% human. Since we have no methodology for assigning partial human dignity, we end up asking “Do we treat 70% human as full human? 50%? 30%? 0.001%?” And of course there’s no objective answer to this question. So we all yell and scream at each other, protest, demonstrate, bomb abortion clinics, and so forth. That methodology has also failed to produce an answer.
Well, except that anything without a functioning nervous system and brain is not a person.
OK, so you draw the line at, what, about 40%? Other people draw the line elsewhere, and there’s no way for anybody to prove that their line is better than anybody else’s (I hope I’m not starting to sound like a broken record). That’s our problem.
OK, so you draw the line at, what, about 40%? Other people draw the line elsewhere, and there’s no way for anybody to prove that their line is better than anybody else’s (I hope I’m not starting to sound like a broken record). That’s our problem.
On current best evidence, there is no way to reasonably argue that something without a functioning brain is a person. One may argue that it is “human” in the same sense that my skin cells are human, but it is not a person.
The only way to get to the argument that a thing without a brain is a person is to argue for an explicitly supernatural notion of “ensoulment”, and then I’m afraid that the onus is on them to demonstrate the existence of the ghost in the machine. And further, what then of the universal claim that one is dead when one’s brain ceases to function?
So yes, there is a way to prove (that is, rationally demonstrate) that certain ways of drawing the line are nonstarters. This doesn’t end every debate, for sure, but it does end some of them.
Doug, I personally find your criterion agreeable, but there are a whole bunch of people who believe that life begins at conception—that 0.00001% human is the same as human. But I’ll play devil’s advocate (actually, I think I find the devil more respectable than these right-to-life people, but what the hey). They don’t need to insist on a soul. They can argue that the fertilized egg is human because, in the normal course of events, it will become a human. Now, this argument does have a serious flaw: it argues that something is what it isn’t, but could be. But I think that claiming that potential defines actuality has some merit. Suppose I found and start building a new company. The company buys founder’s insurance on my life. Just before the company is ready to go, I’m killed in a car accident. The insurance company argues that the company is worth zero and refuses to pay anything. The investors argue that the company did not have any sales, but that it did have the potential to make enormous profits, and they should be compensated for the loss of those potential profits. Who’s right?
They don’t need to insist on a soul. They can argue that the fertilized egg is human because, in the normal course of events, it will become a human. Now, this argument does have a serious flaw: it argues that something is what it isn’t, but could be. But I think that claiming that potential defines actuality has some merit.
We are in agreement that it is human; it isn’t a dog, after all. But so too are my skin cells, and it’s not a crime to kill a skin cell. The question is whether or not it is a person, and to argue that it is a person without having a functioning nervous system is simply impossible, unless persons are to be identified with supernatural souls.
As for the issue of potential, I started an interesting thread about that argument HERE. Under present (or near-future) technologies, skin cells also have the potential to become embryonic stem cells. So even on that argument, we’d have it be that skin cells are persons, which is a reductio.
So no, there is no viable argument along these lines.
I should add that the mere fact that people are willing to argue X doesn’t mean that there is actually a good argument for X.
I should add that the mere fact that people are willing to argue X doesn’t mean that there is actually a good argument for X.
Absolutely! And I suppose I should not have played devil’s advocate, because I don’t accept even the arguments I offered. So I agree with you both on your reasoning and your conclusion. Our problem with abortion is not a logical problem, it’s strictly a political problem.
I should add that the mere fact that people are willing to argue X doesn’t mean that there is actually a good argument for X.
Absolutely! And I suppose I should not have played devil’s advocate, because I don’t accept even the arguments I offered. So I agree with you both on your reasoning and your conclusion. Our problem with abortion is not a logical problem, it’s strictly a political problem.
I find it curious that none of the people in the ‘life begins at conception’ camp want criminalization of fertility clinics as much as of abortion. Surely, fertility clinics are responsible for many many times more murder. Perhaps the newcomer has an answer on that.
Chris, are there any more interesting positions you don’t believe in you’d like to share? Feel free to make something up on the spot. Forum wranglin’ is 42% creativity, 27% punctuation and 19% “unsure”.
Our problem with abortion is not a logical problem, it’s strictly a political problem.
No, actually, it is a VERY personal matter, between a woman, her conscience and her doctor. Politics needs to stay out of this.
The only reason there is no legislation to outlaw fertility clinics,on the grounds that the unused fertilized embryos are discarded, is that everyone knows someone who is having difficulty with fertility, and even those who don’t have a snowballs chance in hell to afford such a clinic can hope and empathize with these couples. I also fail to see the distinction between throwing the fertilized eggs down the drain vs using them for stem cell research. How is one treatment ‘dignified’ and the other abhorrent?
