Would you abort a fetus if it had Downs Syndrome?

[doubtingt]

Neither do the fertilized egg: it requires a womb to develop.

Which requires no action on the part of anyone for that to happen. It's a causal chain of events already set in motion that will typically lead to a person, unless deliberately interfered with. An unfertilized egg has zero probability of developing into a human being or ever becoming a legal person. Thus, in terms of causal similarities and the state of each living organism if not deliberately killed, a developing fetus is closer to being a human being (if not already) and a legal person than it is to being an unfertilized egg.
Thus, it is rational and required for moral coherence to view the killing of a fetus as morally somewhere in between killing a newborn and killing an unfertilized egg.

In addition, there is no valid scientific basis for defining a human being based upon which side of the birth canal it is on.

True. That is why nobody believes that. Why bring up such a strawman?

Because many people's arguments, including Rheas, rest on that assumption, whether they acknowledge it or not.
Rhea denied that a fetus is even a "being", let alone a human being, and thus nothing can be done to it that would have any moral implications.
The ethical position that killing a newborn is extremely immoral but killing a 9 month fetus is completely devoid of moral implications is untenable and lacks any coherent basis, unless one assumes that the fetus is a mere thing and only magically becomes a human being after passing through the birth canal.
That thinking does apply to its status as a person and to whether the killing is crime or not, because the idea of what is a person and what is illegal are not a claims of facts or of morality, but a purely pragmatic legal choice and mental distinctions we make to protect individual rights over one's own body.

Once again, if you hold that a fetus has zero moral status and thus abortion is as ethically neutral as killing a fly, then you must also hold that it ethically neutral to cause a newborn to have defects whether by not aborting or by directly and deliberately causing those defects while it was a fetus.

This is not a disagreement about legality, but about morality, and the two have little to do with each other. I am just seeking some modicum of internal consistency and principled values that create a coherent moral view about abortion, rather than the intellectually dishonest pretense that many pro-choicers engage in when they conflate the notions of legal personhood with human being and the notion of legal abortion with ethics-free abortion.

I am an unqualified pro-choicer who thinks that until a human being is no longer inside of and thus physically tied to and endangering the mother, that its rights, if they exist at all, are trumped by the rights of the mother to rid her body of that danger.

I understand and recognize the distinction between legal, moral, and factual questions. Thus, I have no problem, and it is not a contradiction to view aborting a fetus as something that should be legal, yet it is factually killing a human being and can be ethically questionable.
Thus, I don't feel compelled to engage in the intellectual repressions and delusions required to view the legality of abortion as supported by it being ethically neutral, and this moral neutrally being factually based.

My views about killing a fetus are coherent with my views about killing an adult chimp, and with causing deformities in a fetus though reckless acts that eventually lead to deformities in a born child with full personhood legal status.
Many if not most pro-choicers try to deflect any moral implications of abortion in a way that makes their view unprincipled and internally contradictory when applied across these different situations involving the deliberate killing of a living being that is not a legal person but is quite close to if not actually a human being.
To rationalize their incoherence, they wind just ignoring the realities of the being they are killing or speaking and thinking as though it an inanimate thing.

 

[PyramidHead]

Once again, if you hold that a fetus has zero moral status and thus abortion is as ethically neutral as killing a fly, then you must also hold that it ethically neutral to cause a newborn to have defects whether by not aborting or by directly and deliberately causing those defects while it was a fetus.

Do you seriously not see how somebody could believe that causing tangible harm is different from an act that causes no tangible harm?

Your views rest on some questionable assumptions about which properties of a situation are morally relevant. To say that your opinions are coherent with those assumptions is not a point in their favor.

 

[Juma]

Which requires no action on the part of anyone for that to happen.

It is obvious that you have never been pregnant. You see: being pregnant is heluva of an investment and costs the bearer a lot. Not to mentionen the risks taken.

Because many people's arguments, including Rheas, rest on that assumption, whether they acknowledge it or not.

No, it doesnt. There are two actual limits used: 1) when the feåtus could survive on itself outside the womb and 2) when the nervous system is avanced enough that we could talk about it as a person.

 

[doubtingt]

You place undue importance on DNA, in my opinion. I think we have much more of a moral duty to an adult chimp than to any fetus. My morality is based around the consequences to (and interests of) the parties involved, and I don't see how any moral system can fail to take those into account. Why is a conscious creature with the ability to feel pain, experience complex emotions, form social bonds, and express desires less deserving of moral consideration than a fetal human, which has none of these traits?

It is definitively false that a fetus has none of these traits. Depending upon gestation period, they have all of them just as much as a newborn and will have them equally with an adult human, whereas a chimp will never have them equal to an adult human. Nothing happens during the moment of birth that notably alters these capacities.

Obviously the answer will be subjective, but I cannot understood why DNA is such a special feature in your morality.

Do you think that killing a human is more immoral than killing a chimp? That is nothing but your bias in favor of human DNA.
Do you think killing a chimp is more immoral than killing a chimp? That is nothing but self serving bias in favor of things that seem more like you due to nothing but DNA, despite any rationalizations you want to cling to about chimps being more "conscious", etc..
I am just more honest about recognizing the self-centered bias all people have (likely because its highly adaptive) in assignment moral standing to organisms.

Just like with a fetus, killing a chimp is not killing a person and thus it is not murder, but doing it for reasons other than those seen as vital for human life would be widely viewed as unethical.

What is widely viewed may not be well-reasoned.

Viewing the killing of a chimp as unethical is well-reasoned, and the same reasons logically apply to a 5 month old fetus. Only by ignoring the objective causal impact of the acts on the existence of a person could one find the former unethical and the latter ethically neutral. Which is precisely what you admit to doing below, when you dismiss the importance of the causal realities that relate to actions/inactions and their impact upon potentiality becoming actuality.

Ordinarily, the prevailing opinion in matters of morality is that inflicting great harm is less permissible than inflicting little harm.

Stopping a human being from being a person is the most harmful thing you can do to a human being. More harmful than making them a person with Downs'. The fact that the human fetus wasn't a legal person yet, does not change the fact that your actions were the neccessary and sufficient cause of a being not being a person in the future. When you kill someone at age 29, you prevent them from being a person in their 30's, 40's, etc.. They were never those things already, but we hold you morally responsible for them never being that, because your action alone prevented it. We also hold you morally responsible for harming the 29 year old person they were and that is were the crime of murder comes in, when you harm an actual person. But ethically, the future existence as a person that they would have had without your actions plays a huge role in the degree of moral judgment people feel about the act. It makes no sense that it wouldn't matter for such moral judgments.

You have to add extra considerations, such as the potential person argument, the action vs. inaction distinction, and so on, to claim otherwise. Those considerations are not widely agreed upon.

Assumptions about causality are a (if not THE) defining feature of nearly every moral position. Nothing is more important than causality in any ethical system, including the positive or negative nature of the outcome in question. Even a positive outcome can be deemed immoral if caused by deliberate acts that violated another person's will. Take any outcome and alter the causal role and the action vs inaction and you can reliably transform an act that 99% find extremely immoral into one that almost no one finds immoral. Both the action/inaction issue and the "potential" person issues center upon causality and whether an specific action is taken to kill a potential person (and already a human being), where that act is the neccessary and sufficient cause of that potential person not becoming an actual person.

In addition, for your argument to be valid, it must also treat drinking and doing drugs while pregnant as at least as morally neutral if not more so than abortion.

Drinking and doing drugs while pregnant is morally neutral if the person knows that the fetus will be killed before it becomes a person. That is almost impossible to know, so in practice, those acts are usually not morally neutral;

No, by your own assumptions, it is morally neutral to do anything to a fetus because it is only a potential person and nothing done to it has moral connection to what it becomes or does not become when its a newborn. You have denied the relevance of causality between the fetus and the newborn person as though they are wholly unrelated entities. Thus, if I kill a fetus, I am doing nothing to a person. If I deform a fetus, then I have done nothing to a person because the causal chain is magically severed or at least of no relevance to the moral chain.

it is precisely because they may have some effect on the PERSON that is born with a debilitating condition that I feel that way.

Sorry but what "may" happen is all about mere "potential", which you dismiss as irrelevant.

 

[doubtingt]

Once again, if you hold that a fetus has zero moral status and thus abortion is as ethically neutral as killing a fly, then you must also hold that it ethically neutral to cause a newborn to have defects whether by not aborting or by directly and deliberately causing those defects while it was a fetus.

Do you seriously not see how somebody could believe that causing tangible harm is different from an act that causes no tangible harm?

When a fetus is made to have Downs', then there is no harm done to any person or anything with moral status (that is your position).
You have denied the relevance that the causality determinism means your actions will eventually cause harm to a potential person. Thus, any harm you cause a fetus is effectively not harm you caused any person, regardless of whether that fetus with the mere potential of being a person winds up becoming one.
By your logic, it is the universes fault that a fetus with Downs' becomes a person with Downs', because the mother is not responsible for anything but the impact she has on the fetus and that has no moral status, so it isn't unethical.

Your views rest on some questionable assumptions about which properties of a situation are morally relevant. To say that your opinions are coherent with those assumptions is not a point in their favor.

I am starting with your assumptions and showing that your various positions are entirely arbitrary and internally incoherent, with no basis in any core ethical principles. To create seeming coherence you are force to assertion blatant falsehoods that equate all fetuses to having the biology and mental status of bug larva.

 

[doubtingt]

It is obvious that you have never been pregnant. You see: being pregnant is heluva of an investment and costs the bearer a lot. Not to mentionen the risks taken.

It is obvious you don't understand the difference between cause and effect. The fact that mothers are burdened by the naturally unfolding causal processes of pregnancy is an effect. Whereas my comment referred to the causes of a fetus in the womb continuing to develop, which does not require going to the doctor or even most of what doctor's recommend, but in any developed nation just requires that the mother do what she was doing before she got pregnant to keep herself alive.

Because many people's arguments, including Rheas, rest on that assumption, whether they acknowledge it or not.

No, it doesnt. There are two actual limits used: 1) when the feåtus could survive on itself outside the womb and 2) when the nervous system is avanced enough that we could talk about it as a person.

Rhea, referred to fetuses as not even qualifying as a "being", so your efforts to find a point prior to natural birth at which the fetus is a person with legal status does not support anything I am arguing against, and in fact supports my position that at least at some point prior to birth, fetuses have moral status under any coherent moral system rooted in the value of human existence, and the causal role of actions in preventing the future existence of persons.

 

[PyramidHead]

It is definitively false that a fetus has none of these traits. Depending upon gestation period, they have all of them just as much as a newborn and will have them equally with an adult human, whereas a chimp will never have them equal to an adult human. Nothing happens during the moment of birth that notably alters these capacities.

Then my statement only applies to the gestation period before which these capacities take effect. I'll ask again: Why is a conscious creature with the ability to feel pain, experience complex emotions, form social bonds, and express desires less deserving of moral consideration than a fetal human at a very early gestation period, which has none of these traits?

Do you think that killing a human is more immoral than killing a chimp? That is nothing but your bias in favor of human DNA.
Do you think killing a chimp is more immoral than killing a chimp? That is nothing but self serving bias in favor of things that seem more like you due to nothing but DNA, despite any rationalizations you want to cling to about chimps being more "conscious", etc..
I am just more honest about recognizing the self-centered bias all people have (likely because its highly adaptive) in assignment moral standing to organisms.

I cannot parse your statements as they appear to contain some typos. The bottom line is that certain features make an organism more vulnerable to pronounced forms of conscious suffering, and I don't think it's controversial to say a mature chimp has these features to some extent, while a blastocyst does not.

Stopping a human being from being a person is the most harmful thing you can do to a human being. More harmful than making them a person with Downs'.

Just not in any way that you can demonstrate. Please give an example of a tangible way, experienced by the person through the senses or emotions, that an aborted fetus is worse off as a result of being aborted (again, assume the abortion is early in the pregnancy; I'll concede to the 5 month window).

When you kill someone at age 29, you prevent them from being a person in their 30's, 40's, etc.. They were never those things already, but we hold you morally responsible for them never being that, because your action alone prevented it.

I dealt with this distinction in an earlier post, but I'll reiterate that a 29 year-old has several ethically relevant interests that are not captured by your analysis. A fetus at week 3 has no interests.

Assumptions about causality are a (if not THE) defining feature of nearly every moral position. Nothing is more important than causality in any ethical system, including the positive or negative nature of the outcome in question. Even a positive outcome can be deemed immoral if caused by deliberate acts that violated another person's will. Take any outcome and alter the causal role and the action vs inaction and you can reliably transform an act that 99% find extremely immoral into one that almost no one finds immoral. Both the action/inaction issue and the "potential" person issues center upon causality and whether an specific action is taken to kill a potential person (and already a human being), where that act is the neccessary and sufficient cause of that potential person not becoming an actual person.

I'm sorry, but we disagree. Obviously causality is a component, but outcome and intention are also factors. Anyway, causality plays very little role in what we are talking about (abortion prior to 5 months), because the outcome is the prevention of suffering without causing any further suffering nor violating anybody's interests: early abortion is always a good thing.

No, by your own assumptions, it is morally neutral to do anything to a fetus because it is only a potential person and nothing done to it has moral connection to what it becomes or does not become when its a newborn. You have denied the relevance of causality between the fetus and the newborn person as though they are wholly unrelated entities. Thus, if I kill a fetus, I am doing nothing to a person. If I deform a fetus, then I have done nothing to a person because the causal chain is magically severed or at least of no relevance to the moral chain.

I see now: you have not bothered to read my posts. Okay, have a good one then.

 

[credoconsolans]

A fetus is a living think with full human dna that unless we interfere, will become a person with full moral standing who wants to live. There is no rationally denying this fact and whatever ethical implications they hold. Killing a fetus is acting to cause a person's non-existence, which is also true of murder. The difference is that since we decide (reasonably IMO) that the fetus is not a person yet and thus has no rights to live, it is not murder or at all illegal. But ethically, its about as close to harming as you get, without really qualifying (closer than killing an adult chimp).

Eggs and sperm are living things with human DNA and the potential to become a person should the right conditions be provided. The argument you outline is the same one used by the quiverfull folks to say that failing to have sex when you are ovulating deprives a potential human of life and is immoral. There's no difference in the argument. In neither case is an actual "person" already present, just the potential.


I denied life to many humans by taking birth control. I made choices what kind of DNA my kids would have by choosing their father. Having amniocentesis was no different than deciding to have a child with this sperm contributor rather than another. And one of my kids is directly a result of another human not being carried to term - a miscarriage that resulted in a different pregnancy 3 months later. That second pregnancy would never have happened if not for the demise of the first. Some people would have me mourn for the loss of one while the other needed that loss in order to exist.

It's a cycle of applying personhood to things that are not persons and it's not logical or consistent.

If the person has not yet developed, any choices in deciding to get to that point of personhood do not affect any person who exists. Choosing to be a biological parent when you know you have a certain debilitating disease is choosing to give that disease to a child. And one could argue reasonably, I think, that it would be immoral to knowingly choose to give a child Down Syndrome or any other dibilitating disease.

I think sometimes people romanticize the idea that a "soul" exists with a "fate" and if you do something to prevent that pregnancy or person from getting "their" chance at life you have done something wrong to an actual being. But I agree with teh argument that there is no being to be done to, therefore it is not possible to do anything to "her/him" before "s/he" exists.

Well said.

I agree.

I have sat in meetings at the hospital, where doctors rhetorically wonder why mother and father who are both carriers of a fatal neurological disease, and know it, continue to have children. If you want to discuss morality, it is immoral for them to continue to bring forth children that will be afflicted and die slow agonizing deaths at a young age with no hope of a cure, and for what? Because of the parents' selfish desire to have a 'normal' child, so that they keep trying - no matter how many children pay the price for their selfishness.

So it is true. Parents choose to inflict their children with these diseases by continuing the pregnancy to term just for the child to suffer and that is immoral.

 

[Unbeatable]

If most people want to live, then the harm to that person for being alive is countered by the gains.

Why is "most people" relevant? And why does the desire to live mean the harm is countered by the gains? Staying alive is difficult in the short-medium term, and impossible in the long term. I would say that the desire to live is itself a harm.

For that matter, when you speak of people wanting to live, are you referring to the net motivation to live, comprised of a combination of push(i.e. fear of death) and pull(i.e. anticipation of positive experiences) factors, or are you referring only to the pull factors?