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abortion morally acceptable ?

Odin
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Posted 10/25/09 - 12:04 AM:	#91
The difference is that the fetus is dependent on the mother. Society has no access to the fetus except through the mother's body. In all the other cases, a baby or someone in an iron lung are both establishing a relationship with its society. A baby or iron lung patient can be cared for by a society. A society has no moral responsibility for babies or iron lung patients outside its jurisdiction, (in foreign countries), except for altruism. Well first of all a baby outside the mother is more dependent than a fetus within the mother. Secondly, not even the mother had access to the fetus either, until abortion came along. And abortion was an invention of society and not of the mother. For a mother to have an abortion she has to involve society as well, by going to an abortion clinic or hiring a doctor. Thirdly, a society has no moral responsiblity towards anyone, because a society is not a conscious entity, only individuals within the society have moral obligations toward each other.

Simon JM
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Posted 10/25/09 - 02:19 AM:	#92
swstephe wrote: I don't agree. Society in general has already made the decision that rights are granted purely by relationship of the individual to the society. A criminal isn't granted the same rights as a law-abiding citizen and a child doesn't have the same rights as an adult, regardless of them all being human beings and having the same capacities. Society's assignments of rights and its basis for moral values are arbitrarily assigned based on any conditions that seem sufficient for the majority of its members. To prevent abortions based on membership to a species would be an unprecedented and unique moral statement. The societies making the rules make clear distinction on rights based on citizenship and jurisdiction. Swstephe I've gotta ask have you done any units related to this debate or read any of the academic literature Thompson, Tooley, Warren, Overall, Peter Singer, Don Marquis et al? Any of the basics at all? Anything on Identity or Personal Identity, maybe even introductory ethics or philosophy units in general?

Harbinger
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Posted 11/01/09 - 03:42 PM:	#93
Postmodern Beatnik wrote: In the United States, a fetus is not considered a person until it has been developing for 24 weeks. Prior to that, anyone who attacks a woman and causes a miscarriage is guilty of assault, but not homicide. After 24 weeks, however, the crime changes. And this seems logical: if the law doesn't recognize something as a person capable of being the victim of homicide, it wouldn't make sense to charge someone who destroyed such a thing with homicide. This is not to say that reasonable people cannot disagree over what the proper time to count a fetus as a person is, but only to say that the law is consistent and sensible in that regard. 24 weeks is roughly the time I would expect an unborn baby to become conscious. Is consciousness all that defines a human being? Seems incorrect to me. A more sensible law would define any organism, or cell capable of developing into an organism, with a unique DNA profile of 23 chromosomes as a human being. It doesn't have to be conscious. swstephe wrote: Is anything morally obligatory? Yes. The right to consent obligates us to obtain consent. If someone attempts to exploit your body in any way without your consent, they forfeits their right to consent. They also put their right to life in jeopardy because you then have the right to retaliate in self defense using whatever force is necessary to make them stop exploiting you. It also allows everyone else to come to your aid. An unborn baby, being a human being, is obligated to obtain it's mother's consent before exploiting her body. Without that consent, the pregnancy is not innocent, it is a criminal violation of the mother's person and that gives her the right to use whatever means necessary to make it stop. If it's morally acceptable for a fireman to rescue a women from a burning house, or for a police officer to rescue a woman from a rapist, it should be just as morally acceptable for abortion doctors to aid women in ending their unwanted pregnancies.
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DustyFoot
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Posted 11/01/09 - 06:30 PM:	#94
there is nothing morally wrong with abortions, if something is not aware of there existence then really there should be no problem taking that existence away from them. science has discovered that a baby does not become self aware until infancy. So morally there would be nothing wrong with aborting a baby up until to be safe i would say 6 months old.

swstephe
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Posted 11/01/09 - 06:31 PM:	#95
Simon JM wrote: Swstephe I've gotta ask have you done any units related to this debate or read any of the academic literature Thompson, Tooley, Warren, Overall, Peter Singer, Don Marquis et al? Any of the basics at all? Anything on Identity or Personal Identity, maybe even introductory ethics or philosophy units in general? I haven't done any units on this debate in particular. I minored in general philosophy as it interested me. I've read a lot of literature, but I don't follow or make an appeal to any particular authority. I merely point out what seems obvious to me from personal experience. I think if I presented someone else's argument, it would infringe or possibly misrepresent their positions, then I would be committing "strawman" or "poisoning the well", etc.
Ethics is the measuring of morality. Morality is the measuring of good. Good is the measuring of benefit. Benefit is the measure of values.

swstephe
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Posted 11/01/09 - 07:22 PM:	#96
Harbinger wrote: Yes. The right to consent obligates us to obtain consent. If someone attempts to exploit your body in any way without your consent, they forfeits their right to consent. They also put their right to life in jeopardy because you then have the right to retaliate in self defense using whatever force is necessary to make them stop exploiting you. It also allows everyone else to come to your aid. An unborn baby, being a human being, is obligated to obtain it's mother's consent before exploiting her body. Without that consent, the pregnancy is not innocent, it is a criminal violation of the mother's person and that gives her the right to use whatever means necessary to make it stop. If it's morally acceptable for a fireman to rescue a women from a burning house, or for a police officer to rescue a woman from a rapist, it should be just as morally acceptable for abortion doctors to aid women in ending their unwanted pregnancies. While I support the right to choose abortion, I am not sure if this would be a valid approach. Imagine you are in a plane crash. You and another passenger are the only survivors, both unconscious, (a coma), and both just coincidentally having the same rare blood type, (you can't accept blood from any other blood type, too -- like in the movies). You are relatively unscathed, but the other passenger is severely injured and desperately requires a transfusion to survive. I think the majority would claim that the life of the injured passenger is of higher importance than your right to give consent first. Perhaps based on the presumption that most people would give consent if they were able. I think most doctors would appeal to the obligation to save lives whenever possible as a higher goal. So perhaps a bit of a rewrite here -- now you are conscious and alert. The doctors ask for your consent and you refuse to give it for some strong reason. If you had a right to consent, but refused, the doctors would have no choice but to allow the injured passenger to die because you refused to consent. I think in most situations you would be questioned about your reasons and society would try to determine if your reasons were of higher value than saving lives in that decision. The injured passenger's identity and fitness would come into question. Let's say there are 2 injured passengers, (you were all on your way to your blood group's special interest group meeting, I guess). One is a promising college student, the other a 96-year-old ex-con. You can only save one of them. I note that society tends to create unequal values for individuals, based on their value to society. Therefore, it seems that it is arbitrarily decided who has value and the level of our obligation to those individuals.
Ethics is the measuring of morality. Morality is the measuring of good. Good is the measuring of benefit. Benefit is the measure of values.

Postmodern Beatnik
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Posted 11/01/09 - 07:41 PM:	#97
Caldwell wrote: [T]he decision to have a child and raise this child and love this child starts when it is still a speck in the womb, and, often, before it is conceived. This, I think, is an important point that explains why appeals to emotion are so common in abortion debates. When one desperately wants a child, the very idea becomes an attachment. Take the idea of a possible child away from some people -- for example, would-be parents who discover they are infertile after years of trying to conceive -- and you may witness as much suffering as can be found in the aftermath of a miscarriage. It is the idea of a child, and the future one might have with it, that is emotionally compelling. Most humans are at least somewhat goal-oriented creatures; and in order to reach a goal, we typically need to think about the future. This will typically involve a transfer of value from the desired results to the preceding actions. It is not irrational to do so: if you want a child in the future, it makes sense to value and plan the stages leading up to it (which thereby gain an extrinsic value). But if you do not want a child, that projection of value does not necessarily make sense. Moreover, our ability to impose extrinsic value upon something due to our goals in no way entails that what we are imposing value upon has any intrinsic worth. But of course, it is easy to make the equivocal slide from "that's valuable to me" to "that's valuable (full-stop)." In short: people mistakenly believe that things like zygotes and blastulas are intrinsically valuable due to the extrinsic value projected upon them. And that, of course, [b]is[/i] irrational. yebiga wrote: Has anyone ever been criminally charged for conspiring to obtain an illegal abortion? Yes. yegiba wrote: Does the right to life lobby believe such a female should be charged or even imprisoned? This is a question that opponents of legalized abortion refuse to answer, at least in my experience. Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK), however, supports the death penalty for those who perform abortions. mway wrote: As the late great Bill Hicks said, "I have wiped entire civilizations off of my chest, with a grey gym sock." You cannot draw a black and white line between alive and dead, so I suggest that the only way to be consistent is to either ban abortion (which would include masturbation, sex with contraceptives, in fact any intercourse that was without the intent to create children), or do the practical thing and say "Who gives a fuck," and let people do what ever they want. If they don't like their two year old kid, then just take it down to the shelter and get it put down. While you may be against my view, I assure you that yours is inconsistent. You are assuming the issue is life. Very often it is not. Indeed, many would insist that it is personhood. This is, of course, a rather complicated issue -- but it completely sidesteps your objection.
"The key to being a good manager is keeping the people who hate me away from those who are still undecided." --Casey Stengel

Postmodern Beatnik
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Posted 11/01/09 - 07:43 PM:	#98
Odin wrote: Postmodern Beatnik wrote: What is the purpose of my toes? For what function did they evolve? The function of your toes is to make you better at certain physical activities like running, balancing, and climbing, so that you have a better chance of surviving, so that you have a better chance of reproducing and propagating the human species. Excellent. Given your functional account of ethics, then, may I presume that you find it immoral to use your toes to scratch the back of your leg should it itch? After all, that's not their purpose. Or, if you need a case where the act is contrary to the supposed function, is it immoral for an actor to use his toes to accomplish a stage fall, since toes are meant to keep one balanced? Odin wrote: First, what if everyone who had a child had an abortion, or if everyone became infertile? Having an abortion is not inconsistent with having a child at a later date or having already had a child at an earlier date. If everyone had an abortion, there would simply be more abortions. If everyone became infertile, life would die out. We have evolved to not like this possibility, so we'd probably be distressed and seek to reverse it. If nothing else, the pain it would cause to all those who want to be parents would prompt many to look into what happened. But it doesn't follow that there's anything wrong with abortion. Now here's an anti-Kantian point: what if no one wanted to be a farmer? We'd all die. Does that mean we should all be farmers? But wait! What if everyone was a farmer? We'd all die. Without carpenters, clothiers, and doctors, the human race wouldn't last long at all. Odin wrote: There's also a logical point to be made too, somewhat in relation to good old Kant. For you to will your existence, you have to will that the past that led to your existence happened as it did. So you would have to will that your own parents didn't choose to have an abortion. In having an abortion yourself you would be acting on contradictory maxims. Since they weren't your parents before you existed, you would have to will that no humans engage in abortion. So those who desire life, which is everyone who is alive, must also will that abortion never have existed. To act against their own will is irrational and thus immoral. Cuthbert once made a brilliant reply to this sort of sophistry: Somewhere in my ancestry is a child born due to an act of rape. Ergo, the argument above requires me to affirm that act of rape. Ergo, I must affirm all acts of rape (or at least all acts of rape that result in conception). Odin wrote: Well first of all a baby outside the mother is more dependent than a fetus within the mother. Not at all. An infant can be cared for by many people. Adoption, wet nurses, and nannies all attest to this fact. Odin wrote: Secondly, not even the mother had access to the fetus either, until abortion came along. The thing is, abortion came along a very, very long time ago. We have written evidence of abortion going back to around 3000 BCE, physical evidence of it going back even farther, and no one can say how long it was part of pre-literate human society. Odin wrote: And abortion was an invention of society and not of the mother. For a mother to have an abortion she has to involve society as well, by going to an abortion clinic or hiring a doctor. For most of history, abortions were performed by the pregnant woman herself or a midwife. Harbinger wrote: 24 weeks is roughly the time I would expect an unborn baby to become conscious. In fact, it takes about 30 weeks for consciousness to develop. It does vary, however, so we will need to take advantage of emerging technology -- such as the ability to perform fetal EEG scans -- if we decide to make consciousness central to a cut-off date for abortion. Harbinger wrote: Is consciousness all that defines a human being? Of course not, but it may be a key element of personhood -- a necessary, though perhaps not sufficient, condition. Harbinger wrote: Seems incorrect to me. A more sensible law would define any organism, or cell capable of developing into an organism, with a unique DNA profile of 23 chromosomes as a human being. It doesn't have to be conscious. First, you'll note that I was only talking about consistency in the law: the law says a conceptus becomes a person at week 24, and at week 24 we can charge someone with murder for terminating it. That's consistent, regardless of whatever else we may think about it. Second, defining something as a human being doesn't necessarily make it a person, and it is personhood which is necessarily the issue (a "person" being defined in ethics as "any entity deserving moral rights and/or considerations"). Moreover, your definition commits the ad hoc fallacy. The bit about unique DNA profiles (I assume you meant 23 pairs of chromosomes) makes sense: that's one way that we can distinguish human corpses from, say, horse corpses. But note that with corpses, we are already distinguishing humans from non-humans. Thus, the teleological element of your definition is ad hoc when it comes to defining a human being (by which I understand an instance of the type Homo sapiens). Indeed, once this is revealed, your entire argument appears to rest on the fallacious "argument from potential" (already refuted in post #40).
"The key to being a good manager is keeping the people who hate me away from those who are still undecided." --Casey Stengel

Harbinger
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Posted 11/02/09 - 06:38 AM:	#99
swstephe wrote: While I support the right to choose abortion, I am not sure if this would be a valid approach. Imagine you are in a plane crash. You and another passenger are the only survivors, both unconscious, (a coma), and both just coincidentally having the same rare blood type, (you can't accept blood from any other blood type, too -- like in the movies). You are relatively unscathed, but the other passenger is severely injured and desperately requires a transfusion to survive. Wait a second. If I'm unscathed, why would I be in a coma? swstephe wrote: I think the majority would claim that the life of the injured passenger is of higher importance than your right to give consent first. Perhaps based on the presumption that most people would give consent if they were able. I think most doctors would appeal to the obligation to save lives whenever possible as a higher goal. What if the other passenger needs an organ transplant? How much of my body should they be allowed to pillage before I end up in critical condition myself? What if I have HIV or something and the other passenger ends up infected? The ends do not justify the means. Nothing, not even the life of a human being, can justify the nonconsensual violation of another human being. swstephe wrote: So perhaps a bit of a rewrite here -- now you are conscious and alert. The doctors ask for your consent and you refuse to give it for some strong reason. If you had a right to consent, but refused, the doctors would have no choice but to allow the injured passenger to die because you refused to consent. I think in most situations you would be questioned about your reasons and society would try to determine if your reasons were of higher value than saving lives in that decision. The injured passenger's identity and fitness would come into question. So I would be obligated to help the other passenger unless I have a socially acceptable excuse? But then society would be depriving me of my right to consent which is immoral. What a bunch of hypocrites! swstephe wrote: Let's say there are 2 injured passengers, (you were all on your way to your blood group's special interest group meeting, I guess). One is a promising college student, the other a 96-year-old ex-con. You can only save one of them. I note that society tends to create unequal values for individuals, based on their value to society. Therefore, it seems that it is arbitrarily decided who has value and the level of our obligation to those individuals. Interesting you would distinguish them by age because I would most likely try to save the younger person precisely because they would be more promising to the future of society.
I know not what I am, only that I am.

Postmodern Beatnik
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Posted 11/02/09 - 07:03 AM:	#100
Harbinger wrote: swstephe wrote: Imagine you are in a plane crash. You and another passenger are the only survivors, both unconscious, (a coma), and both just coincidentally having the same rare blood type, (you can't accept blood from any other blood type, too -- like in the movies). You are relatively unscathed, but the other passenger is severely injured and desperately requires a transfusion to survive. Wait a second. If I'm unscathed, why would I be in a coma? While swstephe can speak for himself, it seems to me that the word in bold may have something to do with it. It seems that a person whose sole affliction following a plane crash is a coma has emerged relatively unscathed -- almost everyone else is dead after all.
"The key to being a good manager is keeping the people who hate me away from those who are still undecided." --Casey Stengel

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