Abortion

[Jimmy Higgins]

Maybe you can discuss whether James and Pete can swap their "sole possible donor" status between them with respect to their victims?

Is that an available function of this justice?

I considered getting involved with your bizarrely convoluted hypothetical.

I decided against doing so. There were lots of reasons for that. One big reason was your demand for a simple, yes or no, answer.

So the answer to your post is:
Bless Your Heart!
Tom

So, you refuse to engage with the extension of your logic! Fantastic.

If you won't engage with the concepts that might speak to why your logic is flawed, maybe I'll answer for all the other folks so that they can see where your failure of logic leads:

In the case of "no, not fungible" you would have to provide a reason outside of special pleading why they are not. You won't do that because we both know that such a reason does not exist: if James and Pete both victimized the perfect match and we're the only possible donor for each of their own victims, the same ethical setup remains in the cross-victim scenario.

In the case of "yes", the exclusivity "only perfect match of victims" then goes right out the window as a ridiculous restriction on the logic, as special pleading!

The problem of special pleading breaks down all the walls at this point. Why this victim immediately, and why not any other person?

Why not any criminal accused of any thing as grievous as an organ failure?

Why not temporary "nonlethal tetherings"?

Why not blood?

Why not part out the whole body on the death penalty following a murder trial?

The fungibility problem of that special case causes the whole thing to fall apart in a shower of smelly, opaque, brown "gumdrops"; hard, sharp "toothpicks"; and failure.

Is it really that important? Ultimately it boils down to when does society have the right to intervene in the internal goings on in a woman. Parallels and analogies are distractions.

I think the parallels and analogies are rather important given how legal precedent for and around acknowledgements of rights or the absence to them as pertains forced use, transfer, or using-up of organs and bodily function might be applied.

I do not want to open a philosophical can of worms that creates a justification for where the fungibility problem leads.

There must be a private right to withhold use of organs to anyone.

Yes and no. The trouble is, the anti-abortion arguments are typically not about the fetus. It is about the sex.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

I think another interesting side of this is that there is virtually no consideration for the woman post conception.

Why would you think this?
Tom

Why are you asking questions you are going to just ignore the answers to?

 

[Jarhyn]

Maybe you can discuss whether James and Pete can swap their "sole possible donor" status between them with respect to their victims?

Is that an available function of this justice?

I considered getting involved with your bizarrely convoluted hypothetical.

I decided against doing so. There were lots of reasons for that. One big reason was your demand for a simple, yes or no, answer.

So the answer to your post is:
Bless Your Heart!
Tom

So, you refuse to engage with the extension of your logic! Fantastic.

If you won't engage with the concepts that might speak to why your logic is flawed, maybe I'll answer for all the other folks so that they can see where your failure of logic leads:

In the case of "no, not fungible" you would have to provide a reason outside of special pleading why they are not. You won't do that because we both know that such a reason does not exist: if James and Pete both victimized the perfect match and we're the only possible donor for each of their own victims, the same ethical setup remains in the cross-victim scenario.

In the case of "yes", the exclusivity "only perfect match of victims" then goes right out the window as a ridiculous restriction on the logic, as special pleading!

The problem of special pleading breaks down all the walls at this point. Why this victim immediately, and why not any other person?

Why not any criminal accused of any thing as grievous as an organ failure?

Why not temporary "nonlethal tetherings"?

Why not blood?

Why not part out the whole body on the death penalty following a murder trial?

The fungibility problem of that special case causes the whole thing to fall apart in a shower of smelly, opaque, brown "gumdrops"; hard, sharp "toothpicks"; and failure.

Is it really that important? Ultimately it boils down to when does society have the right to intervene in the internal goings on in a woman. Parallels and analogies are distractions.

I think the parallels and analogies are rather important given how legal precedent for and around acknowledgements of rights or the absence to them as pertains forced use, transfer, or using-up of organs and bodily function might be applied.

I do not want to open a philosophical can of worms that creates a justification for where the fungibility problem leads.

There must be a private right to withhold use of organs to anyone.

Yes and no. The trouble is, the anti-abortion arguments are typically not about the fetus. It is about the sex.

More, about control, using sex as a convenient excuse.

I see as particularly problematic any motion towards control over someone else's organs, specifically.

I don't imagine that once folks have such a philosophical "justification" for such that "women" are the last such victim of that logic.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

That would certainly go to the Supreme Court.

It did, it has. Roe v Wade decided she should not be forced to donate her organs against her will to a fetus.

s/donate/loan/

You guys just don’t seem to get his. At all.

Due to my (relatively healthy) pregnancies, MY IMMUNE SYSTEM IS GONE FOREVER. (Not to mention the scars that change the function and reliability of my abdomen)

It wasn’t a fucking “loan,” it is damaged for good. For the rest of my life I deal with allergies and asthma that were created during pregnancy. Expensive meds - for the rest of my life. Hacking cough every year, twice a year. The fear during covid of the asthma I have that was caused by my relatively healthy! pregnancy.


I get so disgusted by your privileged declarations that pregnancy is no big deal.
This is why I don’t think you men should even be allowed to vote on it. You have NO IDEA what you are even talking about, and you have this assholish arrogance that you think you do.

The callous disregard for the health and well being of women that the pro-forced birthers show is just disgusting.

I objected to the word "donate". I don't approve of forced loaning, though.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

You cannot explain what “water” means*. But somehow, you are a moral authority. You can explain life.

At least to your satisfaction.

Thought here: What exactly is "water" anyway? Dihydrogen oxide?

At the nuclear level there are 27 possible structures that a chemist would class as dihydrogen oxide. O16, O17, and O18 do not appear to be biologically relevant, thus leaving 9 relevant combinations. Of these only one is safe for large scale consumption, 3 more do not appear harmful in reasonably small quantity (relative to body mass) and 5 are radioactive and thus not a good idea to consume.

Is it still water if it's not safe to consume? Just because we have a concept of "water" that everyone will recognize doesn't mean we actually have a precise definition--it's just outside the laboratory we only encounter meaningful quantities of the one that's safe.

 

[Jarhyn]

You cannot explain what “water” means*. But somehow, you are a moral authority. You can explain life.

At least to your satisfaction.

Thought here: What exactly is "water" anyway? Dihydrogen oxide?

At the nuclear level there are 27 possible structures that a chemist would class as dihydrogen oxide. O16, O17, and O18 do not appear to be biologically relevant, thus leaving 9 relevant combinations. Of these only one is safe for large scale consumption, 3 more do not appear harmful in reasonably small quantity (relative to body mass) and 5 are radioactive and thus not a good idea to consume.

Is it still water if it's not safe to consume? Just because we have a concept of "water" that everyone will recognize doesn't mean we actually have a precise definition--it's just outside the laboratory we only encounter meaningful quantities of the one that's safe.

To that end, is the "NASA" definition of life even very good?

Why would we rule out Lamarckian or Neo-Lamarckian evolvers as life?

Such things have a number of models that don't/wouldn't even properly experience death the way we do. It would be akin to taking on a whole species!

But still such things as self-sustaining AI and drone swarm groups and the like are/would clearly be life, even if they don't evolve in a Darwinian fashion.

 

[Bomb#20]

Thought here: What exactly is "water" anyway? Dihydrogen oxide?

At the nuclear level there are 27 possible structures that a chemist would class as dihydrogen oxide. O16, O17, and O18 do not appear to be biologically relevant, thus leaving 9 relevant combinations. Of these only one is safe for large scale consumption, 3 more do not appear harmful in reasonably small quantity (relative to body mass) and 5 are radioactive and thus not a good idea to consume.

Is it still water if it's not safe to consume? Just because we have a concept of "water" that everyone will recognize doesn't mean we actually have a precise definition--it's just outside the laboratory we only encounter meaningful quantities of the one that's safe.

Now you've given me a flashback to when Colonel Klink got tricked into believing a barrel of Norwegian heavy-water the Germans stole for their nuclear experiments was mineral water from a health spa, and drank some of it. On being informed of his error...

Col. Klink: Will I die?
Burkhalter: Only if Berlin finds out.

 

[Jarhyn]

That our life comes to a couple small things that mix back into a big thing does not mean it "starts". @Bomb#20 has it spot on that a circle has no start, and a spiral might have but one, even if it branches along it's path, and the many threads have since lost the visible structure back to the origin of what then would be a continuous graph of chemical cause and effect.

We can recognize that this leads, as @Bronzeage notes to the occasional troublesome thing.

I disagree insofar as I think that even if something is troublesome, if you can stop the trouble without stopping the thing from living, it is better to merely stop the trouble and coexist as best as may.

The zygote cannot be stopped from being troublesome without ending it's existence wholesale. It is easier to let a gnat outside than a zygote.

And the only person it is trouble to, and OH MY FANCY STICK is it trouble for them, is the one pregnant with it.

They get to decide if the trouble is worth it or not, at least until someone else can decide it's worth their own trouble in their stead.

To put it in the language of trouble.

It's the same as the language I use at least to this extent.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

No, by that standard we recognize exactly that no human EVER gets to take the tissues of another beyond their consent.

Non-replaceable tissues.

We don't have a problem with mandated blood draws for DUI suspects.

 

[Bomb#20]

If you won't engage with the concepts that might speak to why your logic is flawed, maybe I'll answer for all the other folks so that they can see where your failure of logic leads: ...

Is it really that important? Ultimately it boils down to when does society have the right to intervene in the internal goings on in a woman. Parallels and analogies are distractions.

If we intend to decide when society has the right to intervene in the internal goings on in a woman by shouting at one another, then they're a distraction. But if people are going to try to persuade one another with arguments, those arguments will appeal to general moral principles. There are basically just two ways to decide whether a proposed general moral principle is worth the paper it's printed on. We can judge it directly, which means applying what are ultimately aesthetic criteria. Or we can test it, on parallel and analogous situations, to see whether in those other cases it leads to reasonable moral judgments, or crazy ones. A moral principle that leads to a crazy judgment in situation B is a poor argument for whatever it purports to imply about situation A.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

It is you who has created the category of potential person and promptly removed them from the protected species category. It's a convenient bit of sophistry which relieves you advocating unjustifiable homicide.

Flip side: It is you who have lumped some not-yet-people with the category "people". Why do zygotes count but not ova?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Could you explain how this is relevant to anything Rhea or I said?
I'm not a mind reader.
Tom

There's been a post in this thread about lasting damage from pregnancy.

 

[Tigers!]

I think another interesting side of this is that there is virtually no consideration for the woman post conception. There is all the care in the world about the fetus... a moral obligation! But there is no implied interest in the woman, when society is morally forcing her to endure pregnancy and birth and post-birth related issues. Funding, comfort, assistance aren't mentioned at all. If one were forcing a woman to remain pregnant and give birth, it would seem logical that there would be a moral role a moral obligation on society to provide needs to the woman in doing so.

If help is needed by the mother after birth then it should be available. Whether it be medical, help with supplies, be shown what to do, mentoring etc. This is where the father has his role to play.
We haven't really been discussing that. Far more attention, or inattention, has been given to pre-birth rather than post-birth.

 

[Jarhyn]

No, by that standard we recognize exactly that no human EVER gets to take the tissues of another beyond their consent.

Non-replaceable tissues.

We don't have a problem with mandated blood draws for DUI suspects.

But not even then "for their own body". Even then there are generally options, and even that much has grave legal arguments over whether it is justified to be forcibly taken.

 

[Jarhyn]

I think another interesting side of this is that there is virtually no consideration for the woman post conception. There is all the care in the world about the fetus... a moral obligation! But there is no implied interest in the woman, when society is morally forcing her to endure pregnancy and birth and post-birth related issues. Funding, comfort, assistance aren't mentioned at all. If one were forcing a woman to remain pregnant and give birth, it would seem logical that there would be a moral role a moral obligation on society to provide needs to the woman in doing so.

If help is needed by the mother after birth then it should be available. Whether it be medical, help with supplies, be shown what to do, mentoring etc. This is where the father has his role to play.
We haven't really been discussing that. Far more attention, or inattention, has been given to pre-birth rather than post-birth.

Yes. This is exactly the problem.

Before you discuss this, you have a responsibility to focus on resolving that.

You could step across the aisle, work tirelessly in walking the same direction as us towards all of those things and then once the thing you are asking for is SO MUCH LESS of a burden, maybe then you can ask us whether we are willing to make that lesser, much reduced burden compulsory.

I am going to be clear insofar as this is not going to happen, but at least then you would have an argument.

 

[Elixir]

"I just LOOoooove human life, it's SOOOOoooo precious. But actual people who are female and pregnant can fuck off and die."

- RW hypocrites

 

[Jarhyn]

If you won't engage with the concepts that might speak to why your logic is flawed, maybe I'll answer for all the other folks so that they can see where your failure of logic leads: ...

Is it really that important? Ultimately it boils down to when does society have the right to intervene in the internal goings on in a woman. Parallels and analogies are distractions.

If we intend to decide when society has the right to intervene in the internal goings on in a woman by shouting at one another, then they're a distraction. But if people are going to try to persuade one another with arguments, those arguments will appeal to general moral principles. There are basically just two ways to decide whether a proposed general moral principle is worth the paper it's printed on. We can judge it directly, which means applying what are ultimately aesthetic criteria. Or we can test it, on parallel and analogous situations, to see whether in those other cases it leads to reasonable moral judgments, or crazy ones. A moral principle that leads to a crazy judgment in situation B is a poor argument for whatever it purports to imply about situation A.

Yes.

Absolutely, unequivocally yes.

This is exactly why when people claim to be applying some unseen moral principle, I dig at them to find what that principle might be, as annoying as it is.

Because while it's usually  apparent what that principle is, usually it is the principle of moral solipsism once it is picked up and thoroughly examined, and whenever I find one of those I toss it in the bucket of trivializing axiomatic systems: the bucket of nonsense language where true is false and up is down in the same way at the same time.

 

[Bronzeage]

It is you who has created the category of potential person and promptly removed them from the protected species category. It's a convenient bit of sophistry which relieves you advocating unjustifiable homicide.

Flip side: It is you who have lumped some not-yet-people with the category "people". Why do zygotes count but not ova?

For the same reason flour is not a cake.

 

[Bronzeage]

There's really nothing reasonable about killing something which given time will be a person, and claiming you have not killed the person it would eventually be.

Why have you lumped justifiable homicide for self defense, assisted suicide, and abortion in the same category? What do they have in common?

A zygote, embryo or first-trimester fetus are indeed potential persons. A potential person is not a person.

I have not lumped homicide for self defense, assisted suicice, and abortion in the same category. Just the opposite. Self-defense homicides and assisted sucide are examples of killing someone, i.e., a person. My point is that abortion is not taking the life of someone, i.e., a person, so manifestly I have not lumped abortion in the same category as the other two.

There is no such thing as causing harm to a potential person (via abortion, in this case). You can’t harm a nonexistent person.

It is you who has created the category of potential person and promptly removed them from the protected species category. It's a convenient bit of sophistry which relieves you advocating unjustifiable homicide.

The common element our midnight attacker, elderly friend, and not yet a person share, is if they make enough trouble, the normal protection for sacred life is forfeit. There is no need for the fiction they are not a life, which might one day have blue eyes, smoke cigars and have this conversation.

As for the billions of half-not yet a persons lost down the drain everyday, if you opened your pantry to see the flour missing, you would not say, "What happened to my cake?" anymore than finding the oven open and empty would elicit, "What happened to my batter?"

Let’s back up a bit.

It was you who posed the question, “when is it OK to kill someone?” Now just lay your cards on the table: According to you, is a zygote someone? An embryo? A first-trimester fetus? Are they also “someones?” If you think so, prove it.

A “someone” is a person.

I said it’s OK to kill in self-defense and maybe assisted suicide, depending on the circumstances. However, since I do not believe that a zygote, embryo or first-trimester fetus is a someone, I obviously do not thinking that abortion is taking the life of someone.

But now, according to you, abortion is not just killing someone, it’s unjustifiable homicide, no less! Homicide, unjustifiable or not, can only be committed against a person. So you think zygotes, embryos and first-trimester fetuses are persons? What about spermatozoa, are they people too? Is masturbation or using a rubber during sex examples of mass unjustifiable homicide? If not, why not, under the terms that you yourself have set up?

Please refrain from slurring those of us who don’t share your religious hallucinations that in advocating the right of a woman to have an abortion we are condoning or supporting “unjustifiable homicide.” That delusion is entirely your own.

I also love how the pro-forced birth crowed loves to bombinate about Life, O Sacred Life! — yet the vast majority of themn don’t give a shit about the life of the woman whom they would force to bear a child, nor do they give a shit about the life of the child that they would force her to bear.

Let's go forward a bit. I don't have to prove anything. I point out the inconsistencies in your statements for my own amusement. I have never had the intention of changing your mind.

My original statement was that abortion ends a life, but it's not a big deal, since we end lives all the time. I expected to hear arguments about when life begins, ignoring any discussion about why we kill people and I find that very amusing.

 

[Bronzeage]

There's really nothing reasonable about killing something which given time will be a person, and claiming you have not killed the person it would eventually be.

Why have you lumped justifiable homicide for self defense, assisted suicide, and abortion in the same category? What do they have in common?

A zygote, embryo or first-trimester fetus are indeed potential persons. A potential person is not a person.

I have not lumped homicide for self defense, assisted suicice, and abortion in the same category. Just the opposite. Self-defense homicides and assisted sucide are examples of killing someone, i.e., a person. My point is that abortion is not taking the life of someone, i.e., a person, so manifestly I have not lumped abortion in the same category as the other two.

There is no such thing as causing harm to a potential person (via abortion, in this case). You can’t harm a nonexistent person.

It is you who has created the category of potential person and promptly removed them from the protected species category. It's a convenient bit of sophistry which relieves you advocating unjustifiable homicide.

The common element our midnight attacker, elderly friend, and not yet a person share, is if they make enough trouble, the normal protection for sacred life is forfeit. There is no need for the fiction they are not a life, which might one day have blue eyes, smoke cigars and have this conversation.

As for the billions of half-not yet a persons lost down the drain everyday, if you opened your pantry to see the flour missing, you would not say, "What happened to my cake?" anymore than finding the oven open and empty would elicit, "What happened to my batter?"

Let’s back up a bit.

It was you who posed the question, “when is it OK to kill someone?” Now just lay your cards on the table: According to you, is a zygote someone? An embryo? A first-trimester fetus? Are they also “someones?” If you think so, prove it.

A “someone” is a person.

I said it’s OK to kill in self-defense and maybe assisted suicide, depending on the circumstances. However, since I do not believe that a zygote, embryo or first-trimester fetus is a someone, I obviously do not thinking that abortion is taking the life of someone.

But now, according to you, abortion is not just killing someone, it’s unjustifiable homicide, no less! Homicide, unjustifiable or not, can only be committed against a person. So you think zygotes, embryos and first-trimester fetuses are persons? What about spermatozoa, are they people too? Is masturbation or using a rubber during sex examples of mass unjustifiable homicide? If not, why not, under the terms that you yourself have set up?

Please refrain from slurring those of us who don’t share your religious hallucinations that in advocating the right of a woman to have an abortion we are condoning or supporting “unjustifiable homicide.” That delusion is entirely your own.

I also love how the pro-forced birth crowed loves to bombinate about Life, O Sacred Life! — yet the vast majority of themn don’t give a shit about the life of the woman whom they would force to bear a child, nor do they give a shit about the life of the child that they would force her to bear.

Let's go forward a bit. I don't have to prove anything. I point out the inconsistencies in your statements for my own amusement. I have never had the intention of changing your mind.

My original statement was that abortion ends a life, but it's not a big deal, since we end lives all the time. I expected to hear arguments about when life begins, ignoring any discussion about why we kill people and I find that very amusing.