Mothers day and abortion

[fskimospy]

I've addressed it on numerous occasions and will do so again here.

The moral answer to the situation is to let the fertilized eggs burn. However, that doesn't mean the fertilized eggs weren't human beings. It means that in a situation demanding someone die, the fertilized eggs are the best candidate because they feel no pain, aren't self-aware, etc. But we only create these distinctions because we are forced to kill someone in your scenario. And that's not analogous to an abortion, where no one has to die.

Yes, the entire point is to make you make a choice. In this case you think it is preferable to let 1,000 embryos die as opposed to one baby. My guess is that would hold true regardless of the number of embryos. 10,000. 10 million. You, and basically every person on earth would likely allow more "people" to die than Hitler killed in the Holocaust in order to save one baby.

That tells you, inescapably, that you do not view both entities as equally deserving of protection and equally deserving of life. If you did, you wouldn't allow 1,000 people to die to save one.

As for whether it's analogous to abortion, the thought experiment isn't about abortion, it's about how absurd the idea is that life begins at conception. Clearly life at conception is not worth even 1/1,000th that of life outside the womb, so let's stop pretending we should treat them the same.

Question: What would it mean if I decided to save the fertilized embryos and leave the 1 day old baby to die? Would it meant that I didn't really believe the 1 day old baby was a human being? No. It would mean that I came up with some rationale that placed the value of 1000 embryos higher than the baby. Whether you would consider that moral or not is irrelevant: I didn't choose one over the other because I thought one was a human being and the other wasn't.

It would imply that you thought saving the 'lives' of 1,000 embryos was more valuable than of one baby. The conclusion there isn't nearly as stark as the other way around because then you would have to do some more digging to find out what that relative valuation was.

Literally the only way that the argument that life begins at conception and is entitled to all the rights that we have as full people is an accurate description of someone's true preference is if you saw a baby right next to a single embryo and said you were equally likely to save both. Literally nobody actually thinks that way, because that's fucking crazy. Hence, we should stop with the 'they have full rights as people at conception' nonsense.

 

[Atomic Playboy]

Being opposed to murder need not be a religious position. As stated earlier there are plenty of atheists who are anti-abortion.

Then they shouldn't get abortions. That's simple enough.

Liberty should be restrained to the extent that its exercise means harming someone else. Criminalizing theft, rape, or murder is a restraint on liberty to steal, rape, or murder.

The difference is that those crimes all involve harm befalling other people. But there are millions of doctors, biologists, scientists and experts who believe that there is an inherent difference between a fetus and a born human. Based on that belief, it is not unreasonable for people to believe that fetuses should not be afforded all the same rights as born humans; they are biologically distinct. So while we can all agree that you shouldn't harm another human being, we can differ in our definition of when the concept of "human being" actually begins. And this isn't just crazy ladies making up definitions because they don't want to be pregnant so they swear up and down their religion allows them to murder a fetus; this is millions of experts in the fields of medicine and biology. You can feel free to discount their opinions, but the fact those opinions exist makes a strong case for leaving abortion legal for people who do believe in the distinction between a fetus and a born human. Let them make the choice for themselves.

 

[Atreus21]

Yes, the entire point is to make you make a choice. In this case you think it is preferable to let 1,000 embryos die as opposed to one baby. My guess is that would hold true regardless of the number of embryos. 10,000. 10 million. You, and basically every person on earth would likely allow more "people" to die than Hitler killed in the Holocaust in order to save one baby.

That tells you, inescapably, that you do not view both entities as equally deserving of protection and equally deserving of life. If you did, you wouldn't allow 1,000 people to die to save one.

Of course they're not equally deserving of protection under these circumstances.

As for whether it's analogous to abortion, the thought experiment isn't about abortion, it's about how absurd the idea is that life begins at conception. Clearly life at conception is not worth even 1/1,000th that of life outside the womb, so let's stop pretending we should treat them the same.

It would imply that you thought saving the 'lives' of 1,000 embryos was more valuable than of one baby. The conclusion there isn't nearly as stark as the other way around because then you would have to do some more digging to find out what that relative valuation was.

If I showed you two people, one of whom was your friend, and you were forced to kill one of your choice, who would you kill? More to the point, what would your choice about which to kill say about the humanity of the person who got killed?

Literally the only way that the argument that life begins at conception and is entitled to all the rights that we have as full people is an accurate description of someone's true preference is if you saw a baby right next to a single embryo and said you were equally likely to save both.

Not all the rights. Just the single most basic one.

 

[Atreus21]

The difference is that those crimes all involve harm befalling other people. But there are millions of doctors, biologists, scientists and experts who believe that there is an inherent difference between a fetus and a born human.

I defy you or anyone else to find a single scientist, biologist, expert, or doctor, to say with a straight face that there is a fundamental difference between the two children pictured in my earlier post.

 

[Atomic Playboy]

I defy you or anyone else to find a single scientist, biologist, expert, or doctor, to say with a straight face that there is a fundamental difference between the two children pictured in my earlier post.

You mean the one who was still receiving blood, oxygen, food and water through an umbilical cord attached to a placenta while physically immersed in amniotic fluid in the womb versus the one that was breathing on its own with no more physical bond to the mother? You don't think I could find any experts to say that those two are fundamentally different? Do you even science?

 

[Atreus21]

You mean the one who was still receiving blood, oxygen, food and water through an umbilical cord attached to a placenta while physically immersed in amniotic fluid in the womb versus the one that was breathing on its own with no more physical bond to the mother? You don't think I could find any experts to say that those two are fundamentally different?

Fundamentally different?

...No, I don't think you could.

 

[bshole]

Fundamentally different?

...No, I don't think you could.

So what? Is that proving something? Not sure where you are going with that.

 

[fskimospy]

Of course they're not equally deserving of protection under these circumstances.

Since when does our fundamental right to life depend on what building we are in? If you truly believed they had the same right to life as that baby then it would be insane not to choose 1,000 lives over one.

This explicitly shows you don't actually believe it.

If I showed you two people, one of whom was your friend, and you were forced to kill one of your choice, who would you kill? More to the point, what would your choice about which to kill say about the humanity of the person who got killed?

Not sure why you keep asking this. I don't care about what the 'humanity' of something is, we're talking about the idea that an embryo has the same right to life as a fully born human. It clearly does not.

Not all the rights. Just the single most basic one.

Clearly not, as you already admitted.

 

[Atreus21]

Since when does our fundamental right to life depend on what building we are in? If you truly believed they had the same right to life as that baby then it would be insane not to choose 1,000 lives over one.

This explicitly shows you don't actually believe it.

It doesn't depend on what building we're in, but the right to life can be abridged under certain circumstances, such as in your thought experiment.

Of course I actually believe it. I wouldn't kill anyone unless I was somehow forced to.

Not sure why you keep asking this. I don't care about what the 'humanity' of something is, we're talking about the idea that an embryo has the same right to life as a fully born human. It clearly does not.

If you decided to kill the stranger and let your friend live, would that mean that the stranger didn't have the same right to life as your friend?

 

[John Connor]

From that 'progressive' Ayn Rand:


And thanks for agreeing with me that classical law forbade abortion only after the quickening, which usually occurs in the 2nd trimester.

You forgot this.

America’s Founding Fathers would have condemned such an opinion as madness. Because both life and liberty are “endowments” or “gifts” from God, the proper exercise of liberty requires that man adhere to the “laws of God and Nature’s God” in the use of his freedom. When James Wilson stated that life begins with the infant’s “quickening,” he was not making an “arbitrary” decision as to who is human and who is not. Wilson’s opinion was based upon a reasonable assessment of the best scientific, legal and philosophical opinions available at the time.
Had Wilson and the Founders had access to the discoveries of modern biology, they certainly would have agreed that life begins at conception. Medical discoveries in the years following the American Revolution increasingly encouraged American and English lawmakers to come to this conclusion.

 

[Atomic Playboy]

<thought experiment>

This thought experiment doesn't really work because it relies on humans making a rational choice when deciding on the importance of life. But you could run through the same scenario with a baby and a small group of adults, and some people are still instinctively going to choose to save the baby. It may not be the "logical" choice from a numbers perspective, but people don't always make the logical choice. It doesn't indicate that people inherently think babies are more important than adults; there's the added complexity of human emotion as it relates to defending an infant that can't defend itself.

You could probably use the data from this to make a bell curve of how willing people would be to save a human at various stages of the life cycle; it would be really low for fetuses and old people, but there'd be a big spike for babies, dropping off as they went through childhood. It would probably actually go negative through the teenage years, indicating that most people would actually drag a teenager into a burning building. Still, babies seem to trump all, which is not indicative of babies being more important, but rather emotion trumping logic when evaluating the worth of a human life.

 

[John Connor]

Yeah and I bet if grains could talk they would say "farmer, please don't harvest me."

Let's keep talking about what things would do if they were completely different things.

The harvest is coming pretty soon I'm afraid. Thanks for bringing that up. But in your infinite logical wisdom you probably have no idea what I'm talking about.

 

[fskimospy]

It doesn't depend on what building we're in, but the right to life can be abridged under certain circumstances, such as in your thought experiment.

So seriously, your argument is that thousands of embryos lose their right to life because a building caught fire but a single baby retains its right to life regardless of the status of the building. Again, the inescapable conclusion from this is that you do not view the two equally. We should stop pretending that you do.

Of course I actually believe it. I wouldn't kill anyone unless I was somehow forced to.

It's hard to see how you can claim that. Again, you're willing to abridge the right to life for a thousand people you claim to hold as equally valuable.

Think about this in economics terms. You say you think apples and oranges are equally valuable. Assuming all other circumstances are equal I offer you 1,000 oranges for your apple. You refuse the trade. You then say you are willing to offer me 1,000 oranges for my one apple. Logic dictates that you do not actually value apples and oranges equally.

That is exactly what you are doing here. There is no way to logically conclude that you hold two things to be of equal value when you are willing to sacrifice one for the other at the scale of thousands or even millions.

If you decided to kill the stranger and let your friend live, would that mean that the stranger didn't have the same right to life as your friend?

No, it would mean that when forced to make a choice between two people with an equal right to life, I chose the person who I preferred for other reasons outside of that.

If I chose to save my friend instead of saving 1,000, 10,000, or a million other people, it's pretty hard to argue that I view them all as having an equal right to life that I should protect, just as it is in this case.

 

[fskimospy]

This thought experiment doesn't really work because it relies on humans making a rational choice when deciding on the importance of life. But you could run through the same scenario with a baby and a small group of adults, and some people are still instinctively going to choose to save the baby. It may not be the "logical" choice from a numbers perspective, but people don't always make the logical choice. It doesn't indicate that people inherently think babies are more important than adults; there's the added complexity of human emotion as it relates to defending an infant that can't defend itself.

None of that is relevant. It doesn't matter WHY you think one is more important than the other, be it instinct, rational assessment, or anything else. The only thing that matters is that you DO.

I think your example pretty clearly shows that those people value the life of an infant more than they value the life of an adult. If they didn't, they wouldn't make that choice. Sure in the case of an actual burning building people might not have time to think their answer through and could reasonably make a choice they later regret due to time pressure, but that's obviously not present here.

You could probably use the data from this to make a bell curve of how willing people would be to save a human at various stages of the life cycle; it would be really low for fetuses and old people, but there'd be a big spike for babies, dropping off as they went through childhood. It would probably actually go negative through the teenage years, indicating that most people would actually drag a teenager into a burning building. Still, babies seem to trump all, which is not indicative of babies being more important, but rather emotion trumping logic when evaluating the worth of a human life.

If that were the case, babies trumping everything else would explicitly show that people find babies to be more valuable. Again, it doesn't matter what is driving that preference, only that the preference exists.

 

[tynopik]

That isn't the necessary burden to meet. Any and all force necessary to stop the violations to the person's bodily integrity are justified. It's a simple case of self defense.

The law disagrees with you there.

No, it doesn't. What the fuck would you know about it?

http://criminal.findlaw.com/criminal-law-basics/self-defense-overview.html

Proportional Response

The use of self-defense must also match the level of the threat in question. In other words, a person can only employ as much force as required to remove the threat. If the threat involves deadly force, the person defending themselves can use deadly force to counteract the threat. If, however, the threat involves only minor force and the person claiming self-defense uses force that could cause grievous bodily harm or death, the claim of self-defense will fail.

 

[tynopik]

Being opposed to murder need not be a religious position. As stated earlier there are plenty of atheists who are anti-abortion.

Then they shouldn't get abortions. That's simple enough.

If you're opposed to discriminating against gays then you shouldn't discriminate against gays. That's simple enough.

 

[Atomic Playboy]

http://criminal.findlaw.com/criminal-law-basics/self-defense-overview.html

Proportional Response

The use of self-defense must also match the level of the threat in question. In other words, a person can only employ as much force as required to remove the threat. If the threat involves deadly force, the person defending themselves can use deadly force to counteract the threat. If, however, the threat involves only minor force and the person claiming self-defense uses force that could cause grievous bodily harm or death, the claim of self-defense will fail.

Are you implying that there is a way to remove a fetus from a uterus and have it survive before the age of viability?

 

[fskimospy]

Are you implying that there is a way to remove a fetus from a uterus and have it survive before the age of viability?

It's odd that he would quote something saying that it is legal to use 'as much force as necessary to remove the threat' and not realize that destroys his own position.

 

[tynopik]

And I would argue that you don't actually believe it's a human at conception, as evidenced by the thought experiment you refuse to address.

I addressed it, you just didn't like my answer.

My response to these 'trolley' quesions is always that they're illogical. This isn't some new position of mine. A few years back someone here posted a link to series of questions for a research project. They had questions along the lines of "You're in a boat and one injured person is hanging on and you see 2 people drowning further away. You know that if you don't knock the guy off, you won't reach the 2 drowning people in time, but if you do knock the guy off, he'll drown instead."

I refused to answer them and instead wrote in the comments section below each question explaining the multitude of ways their questions were nonsensical. I eventually gave up when when one of the questions complained that my comment was too long.

 

[tynopik]

Are you implying that there is a way to remove a fetus from a uterus and have it survive before the age of viability?

I'm saying that the harm of pregnancy isn't great enough to justify killing someone, ie the response is not proportional.

 

[Cerpin Taxt]

Reason is not his ally.

 

[Cerpin Taxt]

I'm saying that the harm of pregnancy isn't great enough to justify killing someone, ie the response is not proportional.

It is the minimumally necessary action to halt the violation. You don't really understand how rights work, do you?

 

[Atomic Playboy]

I'm saying that the harm of pregnancy isn't great enough to justify killing someone, ie the response is not proportional.

The law disagrees with you, specifically in relation to defining a fetus as "someone." And before you go back and say the law should be changed to grant personhood at conception, you were the one who started arguing legal semantics and posting legal findings that invalidated your own argument. A person has the right to sovereignty over her own body, a fetus housed inside her womb violates that sovereignty and there is no possible way to remove that fetus without killing it; the law comes down on the side of the woman.

 

[tynopik]

It is the minimumally necessary action to halt the violation. You don't really understand how rights work, do you?

And you completely ignore the second part of the quote.

 

[Atreus21]

So seriously, your argument is that thousands of embryos lose their right to life because a building caught fire but a single baby retains its right to life regardless of the status of the building. Again, the inescapable conclusion from this is that you do not view the two equally. We should stop pretending that you do.

My argument is that this scenario doesn't prove anything about a right to life, or lack of it. It forces us to kill someone, in which case a right to life is irrelevant.

It's hard to see how you can claim that. Again, you're willing to abridge the right to life for a thousand people you claim to hold as equally valuable.

No, I'm willing to kill a thousand embryos on rational grounds so that a born child doesn't die a painful agonizing death. If the choice were between a thousand embryos on one side and a dying invalid on the other, I'd save the embryos. If the choice were between a thousand Justin Biebers and one Carrot Top, I'd save Carrot Top.

I could change the scenario only slightly and reasonably justify the saving of those embryos. But whatever my choice is, it has nothing whatsoever to do with the right to life of the parties involved.

No, it would mean that when forced to make a choice between two people with an equal right to life, I chose the person who I preferred for other reasons outside of that.

Exactly.

If I chose to save my friend instead of saving 1,000, 10,000, or a million other people, it's pretty hard to argue that I view them all as having an equal right to life that I should protect, just as it is in this case.

For a million other adults, I agree. For a million embryos who can neither suffer nor understand what's been done to them, I can understand that choice.

In either case, that doesn't mean either group lacked a right to life.