Discussion Club: Abortion - A Fetus Being a Person Doesn't Justify Banning Abortion

[ondma]

So you've given up on the so called "personhood" thing? If so at least a discussion can move forward.

You certainly are mis-interpreting or deliberately distorting a lot of what I said. I never said the fetus was a person, and I never said I oppose birth control or abortion categorically. I said the fetus was different than the mother's body, and I stand by that.

 

[dank69]

You certainly are mis-interpreting or deliberately distorting a lot of what I said. I never said the fetus was a person, and I never said I oppose birth control or abortion categorically. I said the fetus was different than the mother's body, and I stand by that.

Yeah but you won an argument nobody was having.

 

[Dr. Zaus]

No dude, it's way more than that. You're also on the hook to raise the child as your own the way every child deserves to be raised. Including higher education costs. You move the baby to an artificial womb, adopt it as your own, promise to never reveal that the kid is not yours and raise it to adulthood and pay for its college if it chooses college, and then maybe I'll consider outlawing abortion, also assuming overpopulation isn't an issue at that point.

Actually it only makes sense to provide the same level of services that are provided for any other baby given up for adoption.

The fact that denying a uterus to a fetus kills the fetus is, presently, an unfortunate consequence of a woman’s right to choose what she does with her body.

 

[pmv]

2) That people who claim they are pro-life are hypocrites because they show little concern for the health or well being of the child after it is born. Pro-birth is a more accurate description of their priorities as the life of the child after birth is mostly irrelevant.

While that is frequently the case, there are a few who oppose abortion while being in favour of a strong welfare-state. The two traits you mention don't _have_ to go together, it's just a political accident that they almost always do in the US.

"Pro-life" is a stupid term, though, because it rarely implies an opposition to the death penalty, war, or meat-eating. And few people are "pro-abortion". There's "pro-(reproductive)-choice" and "anti-(reproductive)-choice"

 

[pmv]

No dude, it's way more than that. You're also on the hook to raise the child as your own the way every child deserves to be raised. Including higher education costs. You move the baby to an artificial womb, adopt it as your own, promise to never reveal that the kid is not yours and raise it to adulthood and pay for its college if it chooses college, and then maybe I'll consider outlawing abortion, also assuming overpopulation isn't an issue at that point.

That wouldn't be hard to address. We already do with adoption and there are many fathers who do exactly that, unilaterally, regardless of what the law supposedly says.

The bigger problems are (a) the emotional connection that may still exist for a child that began in one's body, and (b) that, it seems to me, you'd need some sort of magic teleportation device or at least the process for removal would have to be no different from that of a traditional abortion or you'd still have the issue of intrusion in someone's body. Oh, and (c) that it's science fiction.

 

[Dr. Zaus]

That wouldn't be hard to address. We already do with adoption and there are many fathers who do exactly that, unilaterally, regardless of what the law supposedly says.

The bigger problems are (a) the emotional connection that may still exist for a child that began in one's body, and (b) that, it seems to me, you'd need some sort of magic teleportation device or at least the process for removal would have to be no different from that of a traditional abortion or you'd still have the issue of intrusion in someone's body. Oh, and (c) that it's science fiction.

Since fiction often helps reveal our underlying assumptions and principles.

 

[pmv]

Since fiction often helps reveal our underlying assumptions and principles.

Agree up to a point, but at the same time, I feel for something so contentious about which people feel so strongly, I'm not sure I'd want to debate it beyond the practicalities of what happens now. I'd save that further argument for when the foetus teleporter and artifical womb are actually invented.

 

[Dr. Zaus]

Agree up to a point, but at the same time, I feel for something so contentious about which people feel so strongly, I'm not sure I'd want to debate it beyond the practicalities of what happens now. I'd save that further argument for when the foetus teleporter and artifical womb are actually invented.

Right - because isn’t fetal teleportation really destroying the fetus and then re-building another one? Like a fax machine that shreds anything put into it?

 

[ivwshane]

Right - because isn’t fetal teleportation really destroying the fetus and then re-building another one? Like a fax machine that shreds anything put into it?

Pretty much. Its just a Replicator that destroys the original object.

 

[pmv]

Pretty much. Its just a Replicator that destroys the original object.

Looked at that way it makes Star Trek rather horrifying.

 

[Dr. Zaus]

No