Roe v Wade is on deck

[Emily Lake]

Being born is not the same as being unborn. Or as you seem to reintrepret 'Geography matters".

Being tall is not the same as being short.

Why does geography matter to you? Why is it okay to kill a 28 week baby as long as you kill it while it's inside a womb, rather than outside? Is it somehow less developed, less able to feel and respond to stimuli, less able to survive and thrive?

We’ve been over this. A fetus is not a baby, so it is not a person. A woman is a person. People matter more than beings who are not people.

I think the being born standard is easy to understand, observe and confirm. It requires no intrusion on the part of state in the birth process, and the very personal and private decisions.

Your position holds true for 27 week old fetuses. With improving technology, the threshold will diminish further. No matter where it is drawn, the same arguments crop up.

What magical rite confers personhood on a fetus as it leaves the womb?

Vaginas aren’t the Pearly Gates granting spiritual status to those who pass through them.

So far as I can glean, you have a belief where if a human is inside a magic location, they can be killed without consequence.

Coming from someone who believes the magical rite that confers personhood is a magical number determined by you, that is rich.

I gave my rational. It conflicts with your religious beliefs.

I don’t think there’s anything magical about recognizing that a human at 28 weeks development has a 90% chance of survival outside the womb with low risk of complications, and then deciding that location is not a material factor for deciding which 28 week human can be killed on desire alone.

Your sole argument for why one 28 week human cannot be killed without it being considered murder, but another 28 week human cannot be killed with no consequence is that inside a womb is not the same as outside the womb. So… where the baby is located when it gets killed.

I find the moral appeal to location to be unconvincing.

That is not my sole argument. I don’t think the state should interfere with a woman’s medical decisions. If a healthy pregnant woman decides an abortion is her best medical option and her physician agrees to perform one, then neither you nor I anyone else should be able to interfere.

I kind of think the state can and should intervene in murder.

I think once the fetus is delivered is a demarcation that is easy to observe and maintain.

You think 28 weeks (which cannot be measured exactly) is the demarcation even though there is substantively little between 27 snd 28 weeks. You’re fine with murdering 27 week babies in utero. Once medical technology improves, your magic number will fall.

I don’t think it’s a magic number, and I’ve gone through a lot of effort to provide my reasoning. I think it’s an appropriate and reasonable number. There’s no way to make it absolutely perfect, but 28 weeks is one week more than what most doctors consider viable.

My entire approach is based on finding the point where most people will mostly agree, then adding a smidge to be safe.

It might not be perfect, but it’s a hell of a lot better than no line at all.

 

[Elixir]

Didn't you know that people have third trimester abortions just for fun and there's no other reason besides that?

Even if that was true, it’s none of your (or Emily’s) business.
Third party handwringing never seems to improve things for fetuses or pregnant women.

Yeah but didn't you know they get to pry into peoples' personal lives for (unspecified reasons)?

The reasons are specific and spelled out!
They are morally obligated to pry into people’s personal lives, because those people might be doing - or thinking of doing- something of which they disapprove.

 

[Toni]

Once a fetus exits a woman’s body, it is an inference t being who dies not necessarily directly get its nutrition from her. Its heart beat is no dependent upon hers. It is no longer dependent upon her lunches, her kidneys, her liver, her nervous system. If she becomes ill, the disease or its treatment t will not affect the baby. Nor will the baby’s medical status affect the mother’s health status, aside from postpartum recovery. Another person adequately can provide for the baby’s needs as happens fairly often.

Of course for a fetus born at 28 weeks gestational age, that will involve a neonatal medical team and 7-10 weeks inside a NICU, assuming all goes well.

 

[Bomb#20]

Why should I have a preconception that someone who is pro-choice would be OK with killing a premature baby, when it's obviously outside of the womb?

So who the heck said you should have any such preconception?

You can stop feigning confusion. Laughing dog quoted you doing exactly what I said. There is the suggestion that we should agree with what you said, this is literally basic argumentation. It's almost like there's some bad faith stuff going on.

You have a serious reading comprehension problem, dude. I pointed out to Toni that she needed to reread Emily’s question. The preconception you were supposed to have, the preconception Emily and I had, was that Toni was not a lunatic along the lines of Peter Singer who was okay with infanticide. Emily asked this question in order to confirm the preconception we all share, so she could use our common rejection of infanticide as a shared premise on which further inferences can be based, so we can finally move this discussion forward instead of just endlessly talking past one another.

 

[Bomb#20]

Nope, only Bomb#20 (well, and certain others) are allowed to make wild assumptions about other posters, that could easily be refuted because no pro-choice person believes what he's claiming in the first place, and never argues for that for specific reasons he can easily just look up. But if you make a wild assumption about them, then it's unfair.

I didn’t make wild assumptions; you did; I didn’t claim Toni believes the crazy thing in question; and some pro-choice people do, most famously, the Australian philosopher Peter Singer.

 

[Elixir]

Singer also values the life of a happy cat over that of a miserable baby (human).
While I viscerally disagree, it is actually an argument by preference and hardly amenable to rational, objective qualitative judgment. It is mostly useful as a tool for dividing people and maintaining division. Philosophy is rarely useful IMO. It is mostly grade school common sense dressed up in a fancy verbal suit.

 

[Tigers!]

I didn’t make wild assumptions; you did; I didn’t claim Toni believes the crazy thing in question; and some pro-choice people do, most famously, the Australian philosopher Peter Singer.

Probably Australia's worst ever export to the world.

 

[Tigers!]

Didn't you know that people have third trimester abortions just for fun and there's no other reason besides that?

Even if that was true, it’s none of your (or Emily’s) business.
Third party handwringing never seems to improve things for fetuses or pregnant women.

Yeah but didn't you know they get to pry into peoples' personal lives for (unspecified reasons)?

The reasons are specific and spelled out!
They are morally obligated to pry into people’s personal lives, because those people might be doing - or thinking of doing- something of which they disapprove.

Which strangely enough applies to most of the human population.

 

[Tigers!]

That is not my sole argument. I don’t think the state should interfere with a woman’s medical decisions. If a healthy pregnant woman decides an abortion is her best medical option and her physician agrees to perform one, then neither you nor I anyone else should be able to interfere.

I think once the fetus is delivered is a demarcation that is easy to observe and maintain.

You think 28 weeks (which cannot be measured exactly) is the demarcation even though there is substantively little between 27 snd 28 weeks. You’re fine with murdering 27 week babies in utero.

You are both fine with murdering 27 week babies in utero.

Once medical technology improves, your magic number will fall.

Hope that will be true.

 

[Toni]

Singer also values the life of a happy cat over that of a miserable baby (human).
While I viscerally disagree, it is actually an argument by preference and hardly amenable to rational, objective qualitative judgment. It is mostly useful as a tool for dividing people and maintaining division. Philosophy is rarely useful IMO. It is mostly grade school common sense dressed up in a fancy verbal suit.

Philosophy is really applied logic

Singer seems like a malevolent middle schooler whose resentment of younger sibling for taking mommy’s attention is dressed up in a fancy verbal suit and peddled as …something more.

 

[Toni]

That is not my sole argument. I don’t think the state should interfere with a woman’s medical decisions. If a healthy pregnant woman decides an abortion is her best medical option and her physician agrees to perform one, then neither you nor I anyone else should be able to interfere.

I think once the fetus is delivered is a demarcation that is easy to observe and maintain.

You think 28 weeks (which cannot be measured exactly) is the demarcation even though there is substantively little between 27 snd 28 weeks. You’re fine with murdering 27 week babies in utero.

You are both fine with murdering 27 week babies in utero.

Once medical technology improves, your magic number will fall.

Hope that will be true.

Weirdly, I do not.

 

[GenesisNemesis]

Ohhh, I haven't read Singer.

 

[laughing dog]

That is not my sole argument. I don’t think the state should interfere with a woman’s medical decisions. If a healthy pregnant woman decides an abortion is her best medical option and her physician agrees to perform one, then neither you nor I anyone else should be able to interfere.

I think once the fetus is delivered is a demarcation that is easy to observe and maintain.

You think 28 weeks (which cannot be measured exactly) is the demarcation even though there is substantively little between 27 snd 28 weeks. You’re fine with murdering 27 week babies in utero.

You are both fine with murdering 27 week babies in utero.[

Once medical technology improves, your magic number will fall.

Hope that will be true.

How thoughtful of you to hope more women will be forced to give birth against their will.

 

[Tigers!]

That is not my sole argument. I don’t think the state should interfere with a woman’s medical decisions. If a healthy pregnant woman decides an abortion is her best medical option and her physician agrees to perform one, then neither you nor I anyone else should be able to interfere.

I think once the fetus is delivered is a demarcation that is easy to observe and maintain.

You think 28 weeks (which cannot be measured exactly) is the demarcation even though there is substantively little between 27 snd 28 weeks. You’re fine with murdering 27 week babies in utero.

You are both fine with murdering 27 week babies in utero.[

Once medical technology improves, your magic number will fall.

Hope that will be true.

How thoughtful of you to hope more women will be forced to give birth against their will.

I am thinking of all those babies who were killed. They had no say in their fate.
You would not accept that fate for any other person so why the unborn?

 

[Toni]

That is not my sole argument. I don’t think the state should interfere with a woman’s medical decisions. If a healthy pregnant woman decides an abortion is her best medical option and her physician agrees to perform one, then neither you nor I anyone else should be able to interfere.

I think once the fetus is delivered is a demarcation that is easy to observe and maintain.

You think 28 weeks (which cannot be measured exactly) is the demarcation even though there is substantively little between 27 snd 28 weeks. You’re fine with murdering 27 week babies in utero.

You are both fine with murdering 27 week babies in utero.[

Once medical technology improves, your magic number will fall.

Hope that will be true.

How thoughtful of you to hope more women will be forced to give birth against their will.

I am thinking of all those babies who were killed. They had no say in their fate.
You would not accept that fate for any other person so why the unborn?

Why should women not have a say in their fate?

A baby, once born, has little or no say in anything in its life first some time. And it appears to people who think like you, none at all if they be female and become pregnant.

 

[Tigers!]

That is not my sole argument. I don’t think the state should interfere with a woman’s medical decisions. If a healthy pregnant woman decides an abortion is her best medical option and her physician agrees to perform one, then neither you nor I anyone else should be able to interfere.

I think once the fetus is delivered is a demarcation that is easy to observe and maintain.

You think 28 weeks (which cannot be measured exactly) is the demarcation even though there is substantively little between 27 snd 28 weeks. You’re fine with murdering 27 week babies in utero.

You are both fine with murdering 27 week babies in utero.[

Once medical technology improves, your magic number will fall.

Hope that will be true.

How thoughtful of you to hope more women will be forced to give birth against their will.

I am thinking of all those babies who were killed. They had no say in their fate.
You would not accept that fate for any other person so why the unborn?

Why should women not have a say in their fate?

There are 2 people involved. The unborn and the mother. It's not just their fate, rather them and their child.

A baby, once born, has little or no say in anything in its life first some time. And it appears to people who think like you, none at all if they be female and become pregnant.

It is very good that we consider the child worthy of being looked after once born. Why does the geospatial location of the child i.e. inside the womb mean it is not looked after but rather subject to being killed?

 

[Toni]

That is not my sole argument. I don’t think the state should interfere with a woman’s medical decisions. If a healthy pregnant woman decides an abortion is her best medical option and her physician agrees to perform one, then neither you nor I anyone else should be able to interfere.

I think once the fetus is delivered is a demarcation that is easy to observe and maintain.

You think 28 weeks (which cannot be measured exactly) is the demarcation even though there is substantively little between 27 snd 28 weeks. You’re fine with murdering 27 week babies in utero.

You are both fine with murdering 27 week babies in utero.[

Once medical technology improves, your magic number will fall.

Hope that will be true.

How thoughtful of you to hope more women will be forced to give birth against their will.

I am thinking of all those babies who were killed. They had no say in their fate.
You would not accept that fate for any other person so why the unborn?

Why should women not have a say in their fate?

There are 2 people involved. The unborn and the mother. It's not just their fate, rather them and their child.

A baby, once born, has little or no say in anything in its life first some time. And it appears to people who think like you, none at all if they be female and become pregnant.

It is very good that we consider the child worthy of being looked after once born. Why does the geospatial location of the child i.e. inside the womb mean it is not looked after but rather subject to being killed?

Why is the fetus, completely dependent on t upon the woman, considered to have its life presumed to take precedence over hers?

Why are women not worthy of bodily autonomy?

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Being born is not the same as being unborn. Or as you seem to reintrepret 'Geography matters".

Being tall is not the same as being short.

Why does geography matter to you? Why is it okay to kill a 28 week baby as long as you kill it while it's inside a womb, rather than outside? Is it somehow less developed, less able to feel and respond to stimuli, less able to survive and thrive?

We’ve been over this. A fetus is not a baby, so it is not a person. A woman is a person. People matter more than beings who are not people.

I think the being born standard is easy to understand, observe and confirm. It requires no intrusion on the part of state in the birth process, and the very personal and private decisions.

Your position holds true for 27 week old fetuses. With improving technology, the threshold will diminish further. No matter where it is drawn, the same arguments crop up.

What magical rite confers personhood on a fetus as it leaves the womb?

Vaginas aren’t the Pearly Gates granting spiritual status to those who pass through them.

Let's talk zombies!

In an essay for The New York Times last year, University of California, Irvine, professor Amy Wilentz called zombies a "very logical offspring of New World slavery." According to Wilentz, because slavery in colonial Haiti was so viciously brutal, death was the only real escape and seen as a way to return to Africa or lan Guinée (which translated means Guinea). As she writes:

"Suicide was the slave's only way to take control over his or her own body ... And yet, the fear of becoming a zombie might stop them from doing so ... This final rest — in green, leafy, heavenly Africa, with no sugarcane to cut and no master to appease or serve — is unavailable to the zombie. To become a zombie was the slave's worst nightmare: to be dead and still a slave, an eternal field hand."

What in the world does this have to do with fetuses? Well, slaves were born. People that perform forced labor today were born. This magical idea that exiting the womb provides certain blessed status is delirious.

In Haiti, slaves were so brutally treated, the slaves became husks of people.

Today, we aren't as friendly to the idea of slavery. That really does imply that these rights and sacredness are extraordinarily arbitrary. Conception, viability (TBD), birth, never... There is a misguided idea here that there is a right/objective answer.

 

[Elixir]

Which strangely enough applies to most of the human population.

If I believed that I’d have knocked myself off years ago. “Most” of the human population deeply resents authoritarians because authoritarians feel (or assert that they are) morally obligated to pry into people’s personal lives. People whom I consider normal do not do that.
YMMV - right wingers tend to cleave unto authoritarians.

You are both fine with murdering 27 week babies in utero.

Those are fetuses not babies. Emotionally loaded, deceptive wording noted.

 

[Tigers!]

That is not my sole argument. I don’t think the state should interfere with a woman’s medical decisions. If a healthy pregnant woman decides an abortion is her best medical option and her physician agrees to perform one, then neither you nor I anyone else should be able to interfere.

I think once the fetus is delivered is a demarcation that is easy to observe and maintain.

You think 28 weeks (which cannot be measured exactly) is the demarcation even though there is substantively little between 27 snd 28 weeks. You’re fine with murdering 27 week babies in utero.

You are both fine with murdering 27 week babies in utero.[

Once medical technology improves, your magic number will fall.

Hope that will be true.

How thoughtful of you to hope more women will be forced to give birth against their will.

I am thinking of all those babies who were killed. They had no say in their fate.
You would not accept that fate for any other person so why the unborn?

Why should women not have a say in their fate?

There are 2 people involved. The unborn and the mother. It's not just their fate, rather them and their child.

A baby, once born, has little or no say in anything in its life first some time. And it appears to people who think like you, none at all if they be female and become pregnant.

It is very good that we consider the child worthy of being looked after once born. Why does the geospatial location of the child i.e. inside the womb mean it is not looked after but rather subject to being killed?

Why is the fetus, completely dependent on t upon the woman, considered to have its life presumed to take precedence over hers?

Why are women not worthy of bodily autonomy?

Why is the unborn human not considered worthy of living? Or body autonomy?

We, as humans, also have a most wonderful habit of looking after the helpless or those who cannot look after themselves.