Anti abortion should = pro birth control. One GOPer gets it.

[Bronzeage]

[

We both agree that being outside the mother is necessary for personhood, but I maintain it is not sufficient. Personhood, and the moral rights usually ascribed to it, happens gradually over a period of time after birth.

What would be the deciding evidence that a small human has attained the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?

 

[PyramidHead]

[

We both agree that being outside the mother is necessary for personhood, but I maintain it is not sufficient. Personhood, and the moral rights usually ascribed to it, happens gradually over a period of time after birth.

What would be the deciding evidence that a small human has attained the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?

I have no idea. I just disagree with the pro-life people who say it happens at the moment of conception and the pro-choice people who say it happens at the moment of birth. Both estimates place importance on beings with little resemblance to persons. Innocent though they may be, newborns are not all that distinct from small animals, nor are they even very distinct from one another. They don't even have a genetic signature that makes them hard to replace, since their DNA is randomly recombined from their immediate ancestors. I realize this sounds harsh, because most people are wired to treat babies as precious resources, rather than renewable ones, and infanticide as a particularly heinous crime. Beyond appealing our parental instincts as evolved mammals, I don't see why that should be the case, compared to killing a fully developed adult. From a societal standpoint, adults are more valuable and harder to replace than babies. Potential value is simple to create; actual value is the result of hard work on the part of both the individual and the community, and intuitively should be more morally protected due to its relative scarcity, but the reverse is usually the case.

 

[Shadowy Man]

I have no idea. I just disagree with the pro-life people who say it happens at the moment of conception and the pro-choice people who say it happens at the moment of birth. Both estimates place importance on beings with little resemblance to persons. Innocent though they may be, newborns are not all that distinct from small animals, nor are they even very distinct from one another. They don't even have a genetic signature that makes them hard to replace, since their DNA is randomly recombined from their immediate ancestors. I realize this sounds harsh, because most people are wired to treat babies as precious resources, rather than renewable ones, and infanticide as a particularly heinous crime. Beyond appealing our parental instincts as evolved mammals, I don't see why that should be the case, compared to killing a fully developed adult. From a societal standpoint, adults are more valuable and harder to replace than babies. Potential value is simple to create; actual value is the result of hard work on the part of both the individual and the community, and intuitively should be more morally protected due to its relative scarcity, but the reverse is usually the case.

Do you have your own children?

 

[PyramidHead]

Not biologically, no, but I have two through marriage and I love them both very much. They are 8 and 12. Why do you ask?

 

[Shadowy Man]

Not biologically, no, but I have two through marriage and I love them both very much. They are 8 and 12. Why do you ask?

Just thinking about your comment about babies as "renewable" resources rather than "precious" ones. It seems to devalue the process it takes to make a baby, carry a baby, give birth to the baby, and care for it as a baby. This can be a vastly significant effort that consumes many hours and years of one's life that can't be gotten back. The implication that one could simply do it all over again came across as very condescending and indicated a lack of understanding of how taxing the whole process can be.

A baby *is* a precious thing, because it takes so much to make it happen and bring it to life. The stresses about whether one can conceive, the fears of all the risks that can happen to the fetus in utero, the risks to the mother, the impact on one's work, family and love live, etc. etc. It is not simply some kind of "hard-wired" response to treat them preciously. I felt that your comments devalues all of these concerns.

 

[PyramidHead]

Not biologically, no, but I have two through marriage and I love them both very much. They are 8 and 12. Why do you ask?

Just thinking about your comment about babies as "renewable" resources rather than "precious" ones. It seems to devalue the process it takes to make a baby, carry a baby, give birth to the baby, and care for it as a baby. This can be a vastly significant effort that consumes many hours and years of one's life that can't be gotten back. The implication that one could simply do it all over again came across as very condescending and indicated a lack of understanding of how taxing the whole process can be.

A baby *is* a precious thing, because it takes so much to make it happen and bring it to life. The stresses about whether one can conceive, the fears of all the risks that can happen to the fetus in utero, the risks to the mother, the impact on one's work, family and love live, etc. etc. It is not simply some kind of "hard-wired" response to treat them preciously. I felt that your comments devalues all of these concerns.

But every adult, by definition, was once a baby. Therefore, any statement about how difficult it is to have a baby (and I apologize if my comments made it sound more trivial than it actually is) automatically apply with the same force to an adult, in addition to the difficulties of bridging the gap between baby and adult. So, whatever preciousness a baby may be imbued with as a result of parental and community investment is necessarily less than that of an adult. By this metric, persons become less replaceable the further they are from being babies, and are the most replaceable--in relative terms--when they are just born. I phrased this point in a deliberately provocative way because the opposite opinion is so widespread, and I realize now that in doing so I implied that bearing children is easy per se, which I know it isnt.

 

[Bronzeage]

What would be the deciding evidence that a small human has attained the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?

I have no idea. I just disagree with the pro-life people who say it happens at the moment of conception and the pro-choice people who say it happens at the moment of birth. Both estimates place importance on beings with little resemblance to persons. Innocent though they may be, newborns are not all that distinct from small animals, nor are they even very distinct from one another. They don't even have a genetic signature that makes them hard to replace, since their DNA is randomly recombined from their immediate ancestors. I realize this sounds harsh, because most people are wired to treat babies as precious resources, rather than renewable ones, and infanticide as a particularly heinous crime. Beyond appealing our parental instincts as evolved mammals, I don't see why that should be the case, compared to killing a fully developed adult. From a societal standpoint, adults are more valuable and harder to replace than babies. Potential value is simple to create; actual value is the result of hard work on the part of both the individual and the community, and intuitively should be more morally protected due to its relative scarcity, but the reverse is usually the case.

It's comes down to a fairly simple problem, since most people in this kind of discussion all concede that life is sacred and should be preserved. This leaves them to argue over a working definition of "life", instead of the value of life.

It's a silly semantic argument. The breathing and thinking human begins at conception. The breathing and thinking comes later, but if those first steps are interrupted, there is no thinking or breathing. To soothe feelings, we can pretend the early steps don't qualify as "life," and thus preserve our good feelings about ourselves. No one really wants to condone murder, or be a murderer, so we created special definitions for some actions which end the life of a human being, which spare the killer from social sanctions. We even have a legal verdict of "justifiable homocide," which is legal talk for, "Don't worry about it, he needed to be killed."

If we can justify the killing of a living breathing human, given the proper circumstances, it's plain we can do the same for the breathing human. We simply pull the line a little to the left, and it's okay. If not justifiable, at least excusable.

The rest is just the same emotional response we feel for kitten and puppy videos.

 

[PyramidHead]

I have no idea. I just disagree with the pro-life people who say it happens at the moment of conception and the pro-choice people who say it happens at the moment of birth. Both estimates place importance on beings with little resemblance to persons. Innocent though they may be, newborns are not all that distinct from small animals, nor are they even very distinct from one another. They don't even have a genetic signature that makes them hard to replace, since their DNA is randomly recombined from their immediate ancestors. I realize this sounds harsh, because most people are wired to treat babies as precious resources, rather than renewable ones, and infanticide as a particularly heinous crime. Beyond appealing our parental instincts as evolved mammals, I don't see why that should be the case, compared to killing a fully developed adult. From a societal standpoint, adults are more valuable and harder to replace than babies. Potential value is simple to create; actual value is the result of hard work on the part of both the individual and the community, and intuitively should be more morally protected due to its relative scarcity, but the reverse is usually the case.

It's comes down to a fairly simple problem, since most people in this kind of discussion all concede that life is sacred and should be preserved. This leaves them to argue over a working definition of "life", instead of the value of life.

It's a silly semantic argument. The breathing and thinking human begins at conception. The breathing and thinking comes later, but if those first steps are interrupted, there is no thinking or breathing. To soothe feelings, we can pretend the early steps don't qualify as "life," and thus preserve our good feelings about ourselves. No one really wants to condone murder, or be a murderer, so we created special definitions for some actions which end the life of a human being, which spare the killer from social sanctions. We even have a legal verdict of "justifiable homocide," which is legal talk for, "Don't worry about it, he needed to be killed."

If we can justify the killing of a living breathing human, given the proper circumstances, it's plain we can do the same for the breathing human. We simply pull the line a little to the left, and it's okay. If not justifiable, at least excusable.

The rest is just the same emotional response we feel for kitten and puppy videos.

Killing is not something we want to do too much of as a society, but I doubt anybody would argue that it can never be justified under the proper circumstances. There is nothing sacred about life.

 

[Bronzeage]

It's comes down to a fairly simple problem, since most people in this kind of discussion all concede that life is sacred and should be preserved. This leaves them to argue over a working definition of "life", instead of the value of life.

It's a silly semantic argument. The breathing and thinking human begins at conception. The breathing and thinking comes later, but if those first steps are interrupted, there is no thinking or breathing. To soothe feelings, we can pretend the early steps don't qualify as "life," and thus preserve our good feelings about ourselves. No one really wants to condone murder, or be a murderer, so we created special definitions for some actions which end the life of a human being, which spare the killer from social sanctions. We even have a legal verdict of "justifiable homocide," which is legal talk for, "Don't worry about it, he needed to be killed."

If we can justify the killing of a living breathing human, given the proper circumstances, it's plain we can do the same for the breathing human. We simply pull the line a little to the left, and it's okay. If not justifiable, at least excusable.

The rest is just the same emotional response we feel for kitten and puppy videos.

Killing is not something we want to do too much of as a society, but I doubt anybody would argue that it can never be justified under the proper circumstances. There is nothing sacred about life.

The Unified Code of Socially Sanctioned Murder is summarized by the Trouble Rule, which states, "If you cause enough trouble, we will kill you." Trouble is a very subject and elastic term and the person who causes the trouble may have no control over the situation. Often, as is the case with an unborn person, it is their existence which causes the trouble.

What this leads to is quite different from the "life is sacred" principle. What is truly sacred is calmness and order.

 

[Rhea]

What would be the deciding evidence that a small human has attained the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?

I have no idea. I just disagree with the pro-life people who say it happens at the moment of conception and the pro-choice people who say it happens at the moment of birth. Both estimates place importance on beings with little resemblance to persons. Innocent though they may be, newborns are not all that distinct from small animals, nor are they even very distinct from one another. They don't even have a genetic signature that makes them hard to replace, since their DNA is randomly recombined from their immediate ancestors. I realize this sounds harsh, because most people are wired to treat babies as precious resources, rather than renewable ones, and infanticide as a particularly heinous crime. Beyond appealing our parental instincts as evolved mammals, I don't see why that should be the case, compared to killing a fully developed adult. From a societal standpoint, adults are more valuable and harder to replace than babies. Potential value is simple to create; actual value is the result of hard work on the part of both the individual and the community, and intuitively should be more morally protected due to its relative scarcity, but the reverse is usually the case.

I agree with this, for the most part. And yes I have children that I carried and bore myself. And even with my intense love for them, I agree that the truth is, in infancy their personness was pretty hard to differentiate from any other infant. This makes them life=yes but honestly person=not-yet. But that was fine with me because I was happy to love them and protect them until they became actual little people, and if I had not been, at least once birth happened, someone else could have volunteered.

 

[Toni]

I have no idea. I just disagree with the pro-life people who say it happens at the moment of conception and the pro-choice people who say it happens at the moment of birth. Both estimates place importance on beings with little resemblance to persons. Innocent though they may be, newborns are not all that distinct from small animals, nor are they even very distinct from one another. They don't even have a genetic signature that makes them hard to replace, since their DNA is randomly recombined from their immediate ancestors. I realize this sounds harsh, because most people are wired to treat babies as precious resources, rather than renewable ones, and infanticide as a particularly heinous crime. Beyond appealing our parental instincts as evolved mammals, I don't see why that should be the case, compared to killing a fully developed adult. From a societal standpoint, adults are more valuable and harder to replace than babies. Potential value is simple to create; actual value is the result of hard work on the part of both the individual and the community, and intuitively should be more morally protected due to its relative scarcity, but the reverse is usually the case.

I agree with this, for the most part. And yes I have children that I carried and bore myself. And even with my intense love for them, I agree that the truth is, in infancy their personness was pretty hard to differentiate from any other infant. This makes them life=yes but honestly person=not-yet. But that was fine with me because I was happy to love them and protect them until they became actual little people, and if I had not been, at least once birth happened, someone else could have volunteered.

My experience with very young babies was different: I am not sure I would have picked the correct baby out of the hospital nursery but the truth is that each of my children was different, with a different personality, even as a newborn. Two slept quite a lot and slept well but behaved differently from each other when they were awake. One really, really, really loved to be in the middle of the action from the very beginning and one really needed quiet, down time, away from the noise and bustle of the household. One was very patient while waiting to be changed/fed and another completely the opposite. Two really loved being naked and another seemed to hate it. One hated being sung to, another loved it, and loved being danced around the room. I thought of them as little persons from the beginning. One would eat anything and another was the complete opposite: very picky from the beginning. They were definitely persons, little people. Not necessarily persons who were easy to communicate with or to understand but definitely persons. Some of those traits endured throughout childhood and into adulthood and others have sort of 'flipped' personalities, with the one who needed the most quiet and was most easily overstimulated and made cranky by it now is quite sociable and enjoys the hustle/bustle, at least up to a point. And so on.

 

[PyramidHead]

I agree with this, for the most part. And yes I have children that I carried and bore myself. And even with my intense love for them, I agree that the truth is, in infancy their personness was pretty hard to differentiate from any other infant. This makes them life=yes but honestly person=not-yet. But that was fine with me because I was happy to love them and protect them until they became actual little people, and if I had not been, at least once birth happened, someone else could have volunteered.

And of course, there are other reasons why people may want to treat babies as particularly morally-protected. I was just saying that by one commonly used moral standard, they are not as valuable as it seems. But if your moral compass says to protect the innocent foremost, then babies may indeed be worthy of more protection than adults (whether they are fully 'persons' or not).

 

[Shadowy Man]

But if your moral compass says to protect the innocent foremost, then babies may indeed be worthy of more protection than adults (whether they are fully 'persons' or not).

Not just that, but most grown persons can protect themselves to some degree.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

Potential value is simple to create; actual value is the result of hard work on the part of both the individual and the community, and intuitively should be more morally protected due to its relative scarcity, but the reverse is usually the case.

This logic is more than a little alarming. By this logic, are the elderly and disabled lesser people than productive 30 year olds? Should it be open season for hunting humans in old folks homes? They are a drain on society, after all. And nursery schools, same thing?

 

[PyramidHead]

Potential value is simple to create; actual value is the result of hard work on the part of both the individual and the community, and intuitively should be more morally protected due to its relative scarcity, but the reverse is usually the case.

This logic is more than a little alarming. By this logic, are the elderly and disabled lesser people than productive 30 year olds? Should it be open season for hunting humans in old folks homes? They are a drain on society, after all. And nursery schools, same thing?

That line of reasoning was intended to be separate from the personhood argument, and I should have clarified that. Personhood is one concept, parental/societal investment is another. I didn't say it was the only criterion, but you can't deny it's a consideration. The thought experiments practically write themselves: in a burning building, would you save a scientist whose research is on the verge of a breakthrough cancer therapy, or a newborn baby from an affluent family, if you could only save one? Depending on what's more important to you, it might be reasoned that the scientist is the outcome of a million circumstances that steered her toward inventing something beneficial to society, so losing her would be more of a tragedy than losing the newborn, who has been the recipient of comparatively less community input. Others would say that the newborn has his whole life ahead of him, while the scientist might not, so it's better to save the newborn. Or it could be noted that the newborn couldn't have done anything to 'deserve' dying in a fire, etc. etc. It's one of many justifications to put forward when a life hangs in the balance. My point was that the abortion debate is not as simple as: before X months = you can kill it, after X months = don't kill it. So, I also disagree with your framing of anything less than full personhood as "open season for hunting humans." It's a spectrum, not a binary condition.

 

[J842P]

This makes one minor error. The idea that the objection to abortion has anything to do with the fetus. In general, the Pro-Life movement wants to eliminate birth control.

Isn't it mainly Catholics who get worked up about birth control?

I thought protestants could wear whatever they want on their John Thomas. Not just condoms but sheaths that are designed not only to protect but also to enhance the stimulation of sexual congress.

Source:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDBjsFAyiwA

"Protestants" as a group, especially in contrast to Catholics, are simply those that don't accept the primacy of the Roman Pontiff. Essentially, "Protestant" means not Catholic and not Orthodox.

In terms of actual view, "Protestants" run the gamut from extremely liberal to extremely conservative in social terms.

 

[J842P]

That depends on your point of view. I know and understand yours, but I don't think you know and understand those who may speak against you.

.

Jolly, I think you have missed the whole entire point of the OP.

That is, anyone who is actually "Pro-Life," that is, wants to reduce abortions, MUST BE in favor of reducing abortions, even if it means creating a system whereby increases in non-procreative recreational sex are a side effect.

If they are willing to continue having abortions for even one more day because of a refusal to employ free and available long term birth control, then they are not actually pro-life-for-fetus because they have decided (decided!!) to create a situation where more abortions happen.

I disagree. For example, let us say that I am anti-rape. Someone proposes a bill to put chemical castration drugs in the water supply. I oppose that bill. But just because I oppose that bill, which would very likely decrease the incidence of rape in society at large, doesn't not mean that I am not anti-rape.

The rest of what you say is true, however, in the sense that it forces them to answer which is a higher priority for them. However, just because they prioritize one thing over the other doesn't mean they necessarily don't support the other, as the sentence I quoted seems to imply.