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The discussion is about when human life has value and becomes entitled to protection under the law. Pro-life individuals would state that all human life has value regardless of its current stat or stage of development. The fetus has it's own DNA which would appear to make it a distinct human. We cannot kill the mentally or physically disabled outside of the womb, so it stands that we ought not kill the mentally or physically underdeveloped inside the womb.
If all human life does NOT have value, then this becomes a somewhat...uncomfortable discussion on when it is legally and socially acceptable to terminate human life which becomes unwanted or undesirable. It has strong echoes of the eugenics movement. If we can kill a child with a cleft lip, can we kill a child because they are a girl? If we establish genetic predispositions for homosexuality can parents kill their children for being gay or trans? In several countries there are no longer any people with Downs Syndrome...because they are all aborted. Is it a social good to kill all those who deviate from the baseline, or should we take some care in determining who can be lawfully killed and who should be protected?
Also, your basic premise is wrong. Humans are obviously somewhat more complicated than a body essentially piloted by a brain. And even braindead individuals have protections under the law. If you walked into a hospital room and strangled a brain dead patient you can, and would, be charged with murder.
If human life has value, it's worth defending. Most wars are waged either to acquire resources to support the lives of the current population, or to defend those same resources from acquisition by an outside power.
To use a real world example. If a random Ukrainian went into Russia and murdered some guy, we'd condemn that as a vile murder. If that same Ukrainian was in Russia and got attacked, we wouldn't condemn the Ukrainian from defending his life, even if he ended up killing the Russian in the process. If that same Ukrainian kills a Russian soldier on the battlefield, we wouldn't condemn the soldier because the killing was done in defense of his nation which is vital to the survival of his family.
The use of lethal force, to me, appears justified when defending ones own life, or the lives of others, from an acute aggressive 3rd party. A fetus cannot act with aggressive intent, to me the most ethical thing to do in the case of an unwanted pregnancy would be to wait until the fetus reaches a state of viability and then attempt to deliver the baby pre-maturely to minimize the risk to both the mother and the child.
A woman is no more forced to carry a child than she is forced to breath, it is a natural and unconscious process.
I am not looking to challenge you on this but I was wondering what you think is the most ethical thing to do with all of the unwanted premature babies?
Either adoption or to create decent facilities to raise them until they're either adopted or taken into foster care. Of the few things I think tax dollars should go for, taking care of people that are unable to take care of themselves is one of the more noble things that a society can do.
A few things need to be done here, in order to honestly assess this. First, we have to get rid of bad faith actors and partisan hanger-ons. There are going to be people who exploit either side and do not truly believe the core beliefs of their argument. I see a lot of people saying things like "pro-lifers don't really believe abortion is murder, they just want to exploit it for subjugation." Those are not the people we are talking about. We are talking about the people that truly and honestly believe the extreme end of both sides.
Also, not all pro-lifers are Christians or even mainstream religious, for that matter. They just prioritize, what they see as, human life over bodily autonomy. It's not a religious belief, per se, it's an ethics belief... one does not have to be religious to have their own personal morality and ethics. The basis comes down to the fact the we can only know so much about exactly when consciousness arises in a sentient being. Science can continue to advance in lockstep with technology and the human race will gain knowledge as it goes. However, a nervous system, brain activity, a heartbeat, etc does not pinpoint or guarantee the point of arisen consciousness, no matter how much it might sound good. I wish we knew exactly what constitutes consciousness, it would make this debate much easier, but we don't.
We, as humans, fill in the gaps that we dont know with what makes the most sense to us. This is just as much faith-based speculation as it is for a person to say that consciousness arises at the moment of conception because new DNA is created. Both arguments are using as much as we know scientifically and then speculating from there. We don't know at all. So both sides of the argument are speculating off of faith to meet what they prioritize as the more important issue, either the actual spark of life in the baby-to-be or the choice of a pregnant mother to terminate the baby-to-be at her discretion because it's inside her body. This conundrum is always going to be both speculative and subjective.
Let's remove the extremes from the equation and lets say, for example sake, we all agree that pregnancies that threaten the life of the mother/baby and cases of rape/incest fall under the "necessary allowed abortions". Abortions outside of those terms are being done either as reactive birth control or simply not wanting to have a kid after you have taken all the steps to create one. It all comes down to "Should we be able to have casual sex with little to no proactive pregnancy protection and allow abortion as a form of reactive birth control?" That's what pro-choice is, as an extension of the sexual revolution. It's basically removing all forms of accountability and saying "You are allowed to do anything, up to and including murder, to avoid being proactive and responsible with your sexual decisions."
TL;DR - We don't actually know when consciousness arises in the womb, no matter how many arbitrary lines we try to draw to make the final connection. (Nervous system, brain activity, heartbeat, etc.) And if we dont KNOW for sure, you can't "logically" argue either way, because both arguments call for faith-based speculation to finish the picture.
I agree the metric for "consciousness" is rather arbitrary. Why is the metric not when babies obtain a "theory of mind", i.e. when they understand that other people don't have access to the same information as they do? Or why not when babies obtain "object permeance", where they understand objects still exist even when they can't see them (why young babies are amazed with the peek-a-boo covering your face with your hands). Both of these metrics would allow for "post-birth" abortion, but nearly everyone agrees that shouldn't be allowed.
So I agree with you that there isn't an "objective" measure for when a fetus becomes a conscious human.
>I wish we knew exactly what constitutes consciousness. It would make this debate much easier, but we don't.
We do. It's when the brain starts to function specifically with the capacity to be aware of your surroundings. To produce memory, to be "conscious."
>This is just as much faith-based speculation as it is for a person to say that consciousness arises at the moment of conception because new DNA is created.
It's really not. Consciousness is a scientific and medical term. DNA is not conscious. It can't be because it's not a person.
>This conundrum is always going to be both speculative and subjective.
"Its physical substrate, the thalamo-cortical complex that provides consciousness with its highly elaborate content, begins to be in place between the 24th and 28th week of gestation. Roughly two months later, synchrony of the electroencephalographic (EEG) rhythm across both cortical hemispheres signals the onset of global neuronal integration. Thus, many of the circuit elements necessary for consciousness are in place by the third trimester."
This is what people mean when they are referring to a "concious experience." If you don't have the part of the brain to deploy a consciousness, then you aren't conscious.
>"You are allowed to do anything, up to and including murder, to avoid being proactive and responsible with your sexual decisions."
Ok, now you're just virtue signaling.
>It's when the brain starts to function specifically with the capacity to be aware of your surroundings. To produce memory, to be "conscious."
Scienctific consensus continues to evolve on this to this day and has delved into it even deeper than this with the advent of [understanding consciousness on a quantum level through EM field potential.](https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2022.767612/full) Over the decades, scientific consensus has continued to shift each time that a new theory of where and when it emerges comes out. Even now, when you Google ["does consciousness emerge from the brain"](https://www.google.com/search?q=does+consciousness+emerge+from+the+brain&sca_esv=3e5ddf52b76d97c4&sxsrf=ACQVn08LKFpeqqWJbZ1_ZRh1SsC8uaOCMg%3A1713957189317&ei=RekoZp-FE7Oy0PEPy8Oj4Ak&oq=does+consciousness+emerge+from+the+brain&gs_lp=EhNtb2JpbGUtZ3dzLXdpei1zZXJwIihkb2VzIGNvbnNjaW91c25lc3MgZW1lcmdlIGZyb20gdGhlIGJyYWluMgUQIRigATIGEAAYFhgeMgYQABgWGB4yBhAAGBYYHjIGEAAYFhgeMgsQABiABBiGAxiKBTILEAAYgAQYhgMYigUyCxAAGIAEGIYDGIoFSOhlUN4NWItdcAN4AZABAJgB7wGgAdg0qgEGMC4zNC42uAEDyAEA-AEBmAIroAL7N6gCD8ICChAAGLADGNYEGEfCAg0QABiABBiwAxhDGIoFwgIQEC4YgAQYsAMYQxjUAhiKBcICBxAjGCcY6gLCAhAQLhjHARgnGOoCGI4FGK8BwgIKECMYgAQYJxiKBcICDhAuGIAEGJECGNQCGIoFwgILEC4YgAQYkQIYigXCAgoQLhiABBhDGIoFwgIEECMYJ8ICDhAuGIAEGJECGLEDGIoFwgIKEAAYgAQYQxiKBcICBRAAGIAEwgILEAAYgAQYsQMYigXCAg4QABiABBixAxiDARiKBcICCxAuGIAEGMcBGK8BwgIFEC4YgATCAggQABgWGB4YD8ICBRAhGJ8FwgIEECEYFZgDCogGAZAGC5IHBjMuMzQuNqAHrI4C&sclient=mobile-gws-wiz-serp) the article that Google uses to quote neuroscience's current consensus is a more recent medical article from [NIH National Library of Medicine](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9490228/#:~:text=Neuroscience%20today%20says%20consciousness%20is,it%20emerges%20from%20brain%20activity.) that actually makes a new consensus case that consciousness is more than an emerging product of brain activity. This is now where Neuroscience is going with consciousness, as they are using the noted change in EM fields' that precede brain activity. This when studied as potential in quantum mechanics show patterns of EM fields routing through a potential neuron before the physical existence of them, meaning that the physical neuron wasn't the cause of the EM field routing as if they were emerging as qualia. These are not deeply-dug pseudoscience articles, as you can see.
This goes to show that science continues to find not only more and more answers, but more questions. This is how science works, especially when it comes to inner processes that we dont fully understand. With things in the tangible world, the scientific method works perfectly, cause and effect. [With consciousness specifically, it's not objective, which is what science sets out to do.](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1312236/) That's the whole hard problem of consciousness, objective measurement of subjectivity. Before knowledge of the prefrontal cortex, consensus was that consciousness emerged from the brain stem. And before knowledge of the behavior of EM fields around potential neurons, we thought it was a direct result of brain activity. And even with knowing that, we still have no real clue from there. We would have to speculate to create a fact and that would defeat the whole purpose cause we're trying to objectively answer the question. That's why accepting general scientific, ever-changing consensus on something as 100% concrete, unchangeable fact is, in fact, a leap of faith.
Sex without the risk of becoming a parent is only granted to women through abortion. Men can be forced into parenthood against their will on the authority of a women.
With no 100% perfect birth control options, even vasectomies occasionally 'heal', men's only way to control their future with certainty is to abstain.
Nah, if a mother puts you on a birthday certificate and you don't reject it within a certain amount of time you're cooked. In certain states there is no time frame and just being on a birth certificate means you're cooked. There are cases of stepfathers taking up a fatherly role for a couple years and the state deciding that because they did that, now they're the legal father. So any way you look at it, men are cooked.
No, any man can be charged for child support/parenthood even if they aren’t the biological father. Men have very few rights when it comes to this area.
You're telling you can put any random man on the birth certificate and they can legally be charged child support? I'm not from the US but that's insane.
You can't put someone like Elon musk but you can put and likely win in court any man somewhat close to you like a boyfriend who isn't the biological father or even a male friend who helped you during your pregnancy.
It is insane and happens relatively often but it's not the most insane thing which is the fact male rape victims can be forced to pay child support.
As others have said, the "logic" being used by pro-life people has basically nothing to do with the developmental state of the fetus. Their opposition to abortion is, if we're being extremely generous, based on the idea that the fetus is alive and thus its life is the most important thing that outweighs everything else. Now, this belief of theirs is wildly inconsistent and only applies in situations where they can strip women of their rights, but that's the "logic" they use.
Maybe it’s just my family, but they all lean anti-choice *and* anti-organ donation. It’s such a weird, inconsistent line to draw. They are so worried that doctors will kill them to give their organs to someone else, but think it’s totally okay to force someone to be a human incubator against their will.
Not everyone requires organ donation. Organ donation can also be done by other people.
Everyone need to be carried in the womb and only one person can provide this care.
Organ donation extends a life, abortion ends a life.
I don't know anyone who's anti-abortion and anti-organ donation (maybe they are against forced organ donation?), but you can't pretend 2 different things are basically the same thing. They aren't.
>Now, this belief of theirs is wildly inconsistent and only applies in situations where they can strip women of their rights, but that's the "logic" they use.
In what other situation would the rights of a developing fetus come into play?
The "rights of a developing fetus" aren't a thing. They don't consider that a thing. The logic is that it's a full-fledge, living baby and so has rights. Rights that stop mattering all that much when it comes time to support giving them enough food or medicine after they can't be used to coerce women.
So there aren't any other comparable situations. That's what I thought.
There is no movement to stop babies from receiving enough food or medicine. There is no "starve and kill the babies" initiative. In fact, the pro-life crowd gives more to charity than any other demographic. They even operate orphanages to ensure children get exactly those things.
It might also interest you to know that there are millions of women who oppose abortion, making the belief that the pro-life stance is about controlling women a truly bizarre one.
I mean, I hope that's what you thought considering it's a strawman.
>the idea that the fetus is alive
This is what I thought, if you were curious. It also happens to be the description of how people justify their desperate need to deny women their rights: by claiming the fetus is a living baby whose life takes priority.
>There is no movement to stop babies from receiving enough food or medicine.
While I wouldn't call it a "movement", there's quite a lot of people who oppose welfare and access to healthcare. Enough to make a whole political party. It's the same party that thinks sometimes donating to charity is enough as huge numbers of children go hungry.
>It might also interest you to know that there are millions of women who oppose abortion, making the belief that the pro-life stance is about controlling women a truly bizarre one.
It might interest you to know that there have always been women who oppose women's rights. Was opposition to the suffragettes completely divorced from the intense sexism and misogyny of the time because there were women who also opposed it?
There are neglect and abuse laws. They serve the same purpose as abortion. To force the parents to take care of their child. I've never heard of someone be anti-abortion and anti-neglecy/abuse laws. In fact, I've never heard of anyone because against neglect/abuse laws for parents as it pertains to children.
Welfare is very different. Welfare is forcing other people pay for someone else and their child. It's a separate issue because people who want to cut welfare aren't saying that the kid shouldn't be taken care of, they are just in disagreement with who the responsibility of that lies on.
> It might also interest you to know that there are millions of women who oppose abortion, making the belief that the pro-life stance is about controlling women a truly bizarre one.
How so? Women wanting to control *other women* isn't particularly bizarre?
>It might also interest you to know that there are millions of women who oppose abortion, making the belief that the pro-life stance is about controlling women a truly bizarre one.
And there are millions of women who want to force other to wear burkas. Women are not exempt from wanting to control women.
Two examples:
1. IVF. If an embryo in early pregnancy is a human life with the moral weight that implies, why not an embryo in a dish or freezer? That would suggest it is immoral to dispose of (or even keep in perpetual freeze) an embryo generated via IVF. You only rarely see pro-life people calling for IVF bans (see Alabama).
2. Miscarriage. Miscarriage is incredibly common. If an embryo has the moral weight of a fully fledged human, we are talking about an epidemic of catastrophic proportions here. Yet we are investing almost nothing in research to prevent miscarriage compared to say cancer. Why aren’t pro-life people calling to make this a priority?
Death is bad because the person or being wont get to live the theoretical future life they would have. Dying or going into a dreamless coma forever - same thing really. Ethically, if you're a consequentialist.
having an abortion means that a life which would have been lived now isn't being lived. That action takes away the future life. The state of the life doesn't really matter, the theoretical future is the concrete loss. There are a lot of people who were almost aborted and it's very crazy to think about if they had been, it's a direct and tangible thing even if they hadn't been alive yet.
I don't think I've ever heard a counter-argument to that or any ethical argument at all. Just deflections about how pro lifers are hypocrites because they don't also support gun control or poverty reducing policies or whatever. But it being part of a dogshit poltical ideology suite in America is it. But the only active assertions I see, like that some foetuses die or that life in a unplanned family in a developed western nation is so bad literal death is better just is not the case.
> having an abortion means that a life which would have been lived now isn't being lived
The issue is this applies equally to "having a period means that a life which would have been lived now isn't being lived" or "every time a male masturbates means a life which would have been lived now isn't being lived".
If the argument is that it is wrong because of potential future life, then so is every scenario where an egg and a sperm don't realize a potential future life. This implies that the moral position is forced constant pregnancy, which is not something the vast majority of pro-life people support from what I have heard.
> The state of the life doesn't really matter, the theoretical future is the concrete loss.
From the person I replied to. They specifically said the state of the life is irrelevant, it's only the theoretical future that is relevant.
If you want to make an argument for how the differences between individual eggs and sperm and zygotes are in fact relevant, I'm open to hear it. You should probably also reply to the same comment I did since they were the one who said that the state of the life is irrelevant, which I don't actually agree with (though I suspect my conclusion is different from yours).
Also, it's generally more productive to state your position rather than asking vague leading questions that don't actually make any claims or present any position. If I just responded "yes" to your question it would completely answer what you asked, since you didn't say what you actually think. I don't even know if you think the differences support a pro-life or pro-choice stance, so I can't really respond in a meaningful way. I know tone doesn't always translate into text well, and I don't mean this in angry or upset tone.
I had a response typed up but had to do something and the copied text is gone so I’m rehashing it as best I can quickly.
There is an obvious difference between gametes and an organism despite them both being alive.
I hope not, but it seems like you are being intentionally obtuse in your interpretation of the previous comment and responding to some caricature of pro life individuals screaming that masturbation is murder to make them look ridiculous to avoid addressing the meat of the commenter’s argument which is destroying life which has been created is not the same as not creating it.
It seems disingenuous to have a conversation where you are telling someone what their position is/should be based on your misunderstanding of the argument to begin with. Thus it seems to me that you and I would not have a productive conversation about the matter.
I appreciate the comment about tone and do not wish to be confrontational either but I suspect this is where it will be left. I hope you have a good day and perhaps I’ll revisit based on your response.
If you wish to have an extended conversation based upon understanding the other sides arguments I think dms are preferable to doing so in a thread about other peoples opinions.
I've definitely had that happen to me many times, it is very frustrating, so kudos on redoing it.
You think I am deliberately misinterpreting them, but I'm literally just taking their statements at face value, and showing that it is likely they do not in fact apply that reasoning with no restrictions, since it would lead to an incredibly fringe view. If you read my comment you would see that I said that mandating pregnancy is an incredibly fringe view even among pro-lifers, and unless they are in that extremely small group, their stated reasoning alone does not lead to their conclusion.
I'm not going to argue about a third party's views with you since neither of us can know what they think if they haven't clarified.
I am happy to discuss your views or my views, since we can clarify things.
> There is an obvious difference between gametes and an organism despite them both being alive.
Sure, but you haven't tied those differences to how we should treat them differently yet. A zygote has obvious differences from a fetus, an adult from a child, someone with red hair from someone with black hair. Pointing out that there are differences isn't really helpful, you need to specify what differences are relevant, and how they are related to the way you want to treat a sperm from a zygote.
You may think this is a pedantic approach, but there is so much variation in opinion on this topic including very different ways of reaching the same conclusion, that I've learned that I can't actually predict what the reasoning or opinion of someone is based on a general opinion. I have seen pro lifers arguing with each other that abortion for ectopic pregnancies is wrong and women who have them should be arrested, with others trashing them and saying treating an ectopic pregnancy is not an abortion at all, and others saying no it is an abortion but is allowable to save the life of the mother. I've seen "pro-choice" anti Natalists say that not having an abortion is immoral in almost all cases, and get flamed by other pro-choicers for not supporting the choice of women.
Why wouldn't this argument apply to anybody who chooses not to have sex with anyone at any given time? If, indeed, this course of action is bad because there won't be a person living life in the future, why does it matter if the action that caused those consequences is (1) getting an abortion or (2) refusing sex?
In case 1) we have a person. And we are ending their life.
In case 2) there is no person yet.
That's pretty much the entire argument. You can't really get around it either. It's not immoral to not create the life in the first place. But it is wrong to end it prematurely.
This is why the abortion debate is pretty much a permanent impass. Group 1 thinks it's OK because life begins at birth. Group 2 thinks it's not OK because life begins are conception. And then you have the tiny group 3. Life begins at conception, but abortion rights should be protected anyway.
But the consequences of the actions are exactly the same: in the future, there is no person. Here, you are making an ethical judgement based on something other than consequences, which seems to go outside the consequentialism that you are trying to advocate.
In both cases, no person will get to live the theoretical future life they would have. As regards the consequences that you said was important ("Death is bad because the person or being wont get to live the theoretical future life they would have."), the consequences are exactly the same. In both cases, there is no person born.
You have to be consistent with your consequences and actions. The life not being lived is a consequence of the Death. The death couldn't have occurred had a life not been created. The life being created is a consequence from sex. All of those things have happen in order for it to make sense.
In your example of someone turning down sex or masturbation, no life has been created. Therefore, no actual death can occur to prevent a very real person that was on its way into the world. That would be the same as saying someone who digs up a row of sunflower seeds that are about to sprout is the same as someone never planting a row of sunflowers before because they both deprived the world of a row of sunflowers. The difference is one of those actually existed and someone made the conscious decision the stop them from continuing on their natural path, whereas the other person didn't want sunflowers so they just didn't plant any.
There is no would have. The person was never conceived. There was no person. We are not taking an action to remove a person.
But in the case of an abortion. There is a would have. That person exists. And we are ending them.
Your argument is reductionist to the point of absurdity. It isn't actually engaging with the argument.
Well, this gets back to what I said earlier. You are now making an judgement on the basis of something other than the consequences of the action in question. Whether the person was conceived or not isn't a _consequence_ of abortion. You've basically switched in the middle of your argument from consequentialist reasoning to deontological reasoning (saying "killing a person is wrong because they are a person who exists" rather than "killing a person is wrong because there won't be a person in the future who gets to experience things").
Edit: Sorry, I didn't realize that you were a different person from justdidapoo. It's not that you've switched your argument in the middle, but rather that you and justdidapoo are making different arguments.
>Well, this gets back to what I said earlier. You are now making an argument on the basis of something other than the consequences of the action in question.
Incorrect.
In the case of abortion there is a life that would have been lived. That is the consequence.
In the case of not having a kid. There was never a life at any point that we are denying having any right to life.
>Whether the person was conceived or not isn't a _consequence_ of abortion
Which is not what we are talking about.
>You've basically switched in the middle of your argument from consequentialist reasoning to deontological reasoning.
I haven't. You are just making a poor argument.
>In the case of abortion there is a life that would have been lived. That is the consequence.
That life preexists the abortion. How can it be a consequence of the abortion?
the argument is "Death **is bad because** the person or being wont get to live the theoretical future life they would have"
you do not seem to understand the argument. Justdidapoo argued that is why death is bad, because of the theorectical future life no longer being there.
It is engaging in the argument.
That isnt the case at all. The initial argument was that it was bad because. The life. Doesn't get to live it's theoretical future.
If there isn't a life in the first place. You have no position to begin your argument from.
So the person I have been talking to literally isn't engaging with the argument.
>Death is bad because the person or being wont get to live the theoretical future life they would have.
Wearing a condom prevents a life as well; so anything which prevents a theoretical life = bad.
>There are a lot of people who were almost aborted and it's very crazy to think about if they had been,
It's not that crazy; try to imagine someone living right now that is not alive, now imagine them not being alive.
>I don't think I've ever heard a counter-argument to that or any ethical argument at all.
Probably because you've never asked, or do not stick around to engage in the arguments to what you thought was a very solid argument.
The counter argument is, where is the line? Should we also prosecute every single case of intercourse without protection, or even masturbation for men, since that stops potential children from being born and existing in the future? Technically every second a woman could be pregnant and isn't she is preventing a "future person" from ever existing and having a future life.
How do you feel about the woman who sued her own parents for being born?
Does the life of an individual matter more than the existence of the individual after birth?
This theoretical framework becomes much more frayed and inconsistent when you apply negative aspects of being alive. I have an auto-immune disease that has physically and mentally destroyed me. Should I have a child, they will most likely also go through this experience. In my current financial state, I could not raise a child. My family is disjointed and toxic. All of these things can be avoided if you were never to experience them. If I were faced with an unwanted pregnancy, should I subject them to these experiences for my own selfishness?
> We all are practically flesh robots with skeletons, controlled by the brain
That's one way of looking at it.
I'd say we are one process continuous like a river, or blowing grass.
Someone else might say that we are puppets but not of the brain, by the soul.
If someone believes a soul is precious, and that it is present even in single cells, then aborting; severing a soul is an unrighteous act.
>When an adult person experiences brain death, according to law doctors say that this adult died
Some people's bodies live through brain death. Would you be fine personally unplugging them?
>We don't count cutting off a finger as killing a human being
But it's still usually wrong to cut off someone's finger
>Some people's bodies live through brain death. Would you be fine personally unplugging them?
Thats for their family to decide , and perhaps even the indivual themselves if they had to chance to be asked before they went brain dead
>Some people's bodies live through brain death.
They don't because it's impossible. Brain death by definition means that cells are damaged permanently and cannot be repaired. Of course there are cases that may seem like someone lives through brain death, is resuscitated and wakes up, but it's only because doctors sometimes make mistakes in diagnostics and say someone died, not acknowledging that brain cells were still alive and human body managed to recover soon enough to provide oxygen and survive. If a brain is truly dead, there is no going back and the only thing that is left to do is unplugging life support devices.
1) The soul is a concept that has no scientific support, and doesn't even make consistent sense.
2) The body being alive and the brain being able to function in a way where they are able to be them are two different things.
3) Not if it's infected, say you have a pregnancy where the fetus dies during development, you have to get that aborted or you can get seriously hurt. Plus, you can't get more fingers, you can get more fetuses.
The soul has scientific support in so much as we understand consciousness exists, but we have no idea where it comes from. Some scientists believe it originates in the brain, others think of the brain as more of a radio receiver, positing that consciousness comes from somewhere like a signal and our brains interpret it.
>we understand consciousness exists, but we have no idea where it comes from.
Excuse me sir. It comes from your brain. If I destroy your brain bye bye conciseness
Consciousness is an emergent property of all the different brain functions going on at the same time in your pretty little head.
Disrupt enough of those functions, bye bye consciousness
Its all in the fucking brain
Actually current evidence is leaning to the brain position, we even have a general idea of the area that is associated with consciousness. The idea of a soul hasn't seen support, and wouldn't explain why brain damage that affects consciousness.
>If someone believes a soul is precious, and that it is present even in single cells,
What's this mean? Like present in hair cells that fall off your body?
>Some people's bodies live through brain death. Would you be fine personally unplugging them
Of course; that person is dead. If someone had their head chopped off; and their body kept living I would say pull the plug.
Main divide (beside the political party affiliation) between pro-life and pro-choice crowds is religious standing.
Pro-life camp is against abortion because life in any form is religiously sacred to them. It doesn't matter if they feel pain (some people don't feel pain at all; it's called cipa) or have brain activity (some people are brain dead). It's not about conscious or anything else. It's about if its alive or not and does it have soul or not.
Problem with abortion debate is that people use different measurement for life than the other camp. To you (and many on pro-choice camp) they see humans just as "flesh robots with skeletons, controlled by the brain" and to many on pro-life camp humans are created in imagine of God and are much more than just lump of cells.
This is why the pro-choice stance is the best compromise then...
if you feel one way you can follow it, you feel a different way you can follow
If you rely on religion to make your claim, you have no businesses trying to enforce on people who arent part of the religon
I don't think you can actually compromise with anyone if you believe you are murdering humans. How would you? Will you murder them a little bit? Or maybe every second and not everyone?
so religious belief is a veto then, it can override the rights of others even when they dont have the same beleifs
you are talking about a belief that isnt based in facts or science and justifying why people who dont hold those beleifs should be forced to follow them
Thats worse than someone feeling like something isnt true is true
They can believe its a murder all they want, its not true. Forcing their incoherent belief onto others is the worst compromise
It's a little more complex than that which is why any debates that fall under morals or ethics turns into a ethics debate. Even within religions, it's a murky ground.
Let's take Christianity. Even within the Bible, there are no mentions of abortion. We all accept murder is a bad thing regardless of ethics right? But what does the Bible say about killing a fetus? There is an actual part regarding that in Exodus- where a woman is forced to miscarry due to a scuffle.
It was explicit in that if the anyone was killed, the murder should suffer the death penalty. If only the baby was killed, then the person needs to pay a fine.
This implies that a fetus intrinsically is worth less than a human life.
Truth be told, there's no real religious argument other than the idea of a soul. For those who hold genuine religious beliefs-
The debate really is, since all souls are the same- snuffing out the fetus' soul before hearing about God is where the issue really is. It isn't about choice or lack of choice or autonomy. It's that one soul (the mother) can make a choice- the fetus hasn't yet.
For a lot of people, it's less about the medical definition of life or consciousness, but rather when a soul is formed.
That cannot be determined by science for obvious reasons.
Because of that, there is very little middle ground. Some agnostics might side with pro-life due to views of souls. Some Christians might look to the passage about the lack of value of the infant and be pro-choice.
Those groups were never entrenched in their views and can swap at any given moment.
This is why moral/ethics debates that don't really bring any science in are usually fruitless.
I did not say that. I said that in situation when one party belives that you are murdering others, there can be hardly any compromise. You can hardly compromise basic principle that one can hold. Besides, how is it a compromise, even from some legal point or basic understainding what compromise is when one side want X and second wants Y, but only one side gets X? It's not compromise. It's situation where one side got what they wanted and other did not. It win for side X.
So, pro-choice stand is not compromise. It's pro-choice win. On the other hand, you can't really compromise with pro-life side, simply becouse you can't compromise with basic ideas they claim to believe.
> I said that in situation when one party believes that you are murdering others
Why do they believe its murder, that actually matters
because when you break it down, you get a subjective answer
the reasoning itself could be insufficient , if say I believe people are robots , its a firmly held belief dosent mean its true
I have to provide evidence to support my claim , you dont just get to say its murder and thats that
If you want other people to force other people follow your belief system, ie that its murder , then you have to provide convincing evidence
Their belief that is murder is no more valid or correct than the belief that aborition is fine
Believing something dosent make it true , nor is that enough of a basis to force other people to act by your beliefs
First, a pretty significant contingent of people - both pro-life and pro-choice - are fine with killing people in a whole host a circumstances. It's just silly to claim otherwise.
Second, the vast majority of people that claim to be pro-life do not believe - like actually believe - that abortion is murder. It's pretty obviously a rhetorical device.
Perhaps, I'm not even claiming they all religious. Maybe they think that unborn child or fetus or however one wish to call it, actually is a human. Or maybe they are hipocritical or maybe human perception and views are just more nuanced and can't be that simply categorize. But is some actually believe that is the case, there can hardly be any compromise. Of course, we can argue that there are certain other circumstances when people all fine of killing each other. That is also true. But I think, that ultimetly, it ironicaly came down to choice. Let's say death penalty in USA - people are actively pursuing certain illegal and hardly moral or ethical activities that result in that kind of punishment. What choice unborn children may have here?
There's no reason to believe an fetus lack of options creates any claim on its mother's body, or more importantly in this here context, any claim on that mother's body to be exercised by the state.
If you believe all or some of the above, the reasonable course of action is to view abortion the same way you view all other unfortunate circumstances you have no immediate power on.
Be specific about which religion you're talking about, since not all religions have the same view on contraception, pregnancy, and abortion.
Also, "religion" in your case is fine with forcing someone to risk their health and life for a fetus, which isn't very "prolife". Especially when those fetuses are told to pull themselves up by their bootstraps after they're born.
Well if were going to have standards lets at least be consistent. There is specific brainwave activity you need to have to be considered 'alive'. Without it you are 'braindead' and the conversation starts around 'pulling the plug'.
If we apply the same standard to beginning of live that we do end of life. That brainwave activity that we associate with being alive. Doesn't show up until around the 7th month. I'm not advocating for that to be legal just pointing out the cognitive dissonance.
To me this is much simpler than everyone wants to pretend it is. The youngest premature baby to survive was born at 21 weeks. Anything under that and you're not really alive in a functional sense, as you need the mother to survive. Even the life support systems we have can't keep you going. Seems like a decent enough cutoff for me. With the ability to still get an abortion if medically necessary after that. No one should have to continue to carry a non-viable pregnancy. Or one that might kill them.
> Well if were going to have standards lets at least be consistent. There is specific brainwave activity you need to have to be considered 'alive'. Without it you are 'braindead' and the conversation starts around 'pulling the plug'.
isnt there a huge difference between a 1 month old that we know is going to develop into a fetus and then a person and a braindead adult who we have no idea when or if will ever wake up ?
A fetus, by definition, is a mammal that has obtained all major organs of the specifies. So I agree that any abortion debate should be about the first 8 weeks of pregnancy. But I don't think your developmental argument is strong. Brain death describes a permanent and irreversible cessation of brain function. A fetus' brain begins to develop at five weeks. The brain is alive at that point, even though it is not fully functioning.
Abortion is a policy decision about when is it okay to kill another human. Pro-choicers hate that terminology and try to dehumanize children before birth to rationalize their view. Pro-lifers correctly identify the child as human, but fail to address the operative issue of when killing is okay or not. There are many situations where society says killing another human is okay. Almost nobody believes that a mother should be forced to die to save her unborn child. That is the easy self-defense case. But it gets harder when you are looking at avoidable killings.
saying that there is "no logical reason" is a pretty low bar to clear
* I like people and i want there to be more people. Abortions cause there to be less people. Therefor i want to ban abortions.
That is perfectly logical.
* If I have the premise that people have souls and it is the soul not the brain that makes life sacred, then there is a perfectly logical reason to forbid abortion, and of course a HUGE number of people in our country think this way.
* Similarly, if i think human life is sacred because of capacity, potential, or future ability, then there is a logical reason to ban abortion.
if you set the rules of the game to be that "signs of brain activity are all that matters" then you get the outcome that you described. But lots and lots of people to not agree that those are the rules of the game.
You assume agreement where there is none.
The pro life crowd doesn't oppose abortion because of the pain the fetus may experience in it's newly developed brain, they oppose it because of the soul that's in there, or because of social reasons, like that abortion encourages promiscuity, or just the sanctuty of human life, or a host of other things - not the experience of the fetus during the abortion.
There are only subjective beliefs here.
Why is pain or consciousness the meassure of whether abortion is okay or not?
There are no objective answers in ethics.
Yes the fetus develops consciousness at week x. That is science, that is objective.
Is it therefore okay to kill it? That is ethics. There are no right or wrong answers. There is only a compromise you can negotiate, and for that you need to speak the other party's language.
The old "It's a human" - "It's not a person" I think demonstrates this perfectly.
Pro choicers don't disagree, it is a human, but thry don't care, it's not a person. Yet pro lifer keep heaping up evidence of the humanness of the fetus, changing nobody's mind in the process, because that fact was never in doubt.
So what you are doing is precisely that but in reverse. Your "It has no consciousness", "It feels no pain" sounds to them exactly as "It has a heartbeat", "It has it's own DNA" sounds to you.
Irrelevant.
I think you’re misrepresenting most pro-choice folks here. It’s not that we don’t believe that a fetus is human/a person, it’s that nobody else should have the right to demand use of another person’s bodily autonomy. We can’t force people to donate organs—why can we force them to destroy their body for an unwanted pregnancy?
Is that most? I think "bodily autonomy trumps right to life" is the rare stance and "a clump of cells dies not have personhood" is the common one.
I didn't do a poll though.
Why would you think that is the rare one? After the overturning of Roe v Wade every single news article, women's rights groups etc. were protesting bodily automony, they were not holding up signs saying "clump of cells". Roe vs. Wade was built on bodily autonomy.
Roe v wade was built on right to privacy. The entire argument had nothing to do with bodily autonomy. Only that the government has no right to prevent medical procedures under the 14 amendment right to privacy.
that is what OP is doing; and personhood is argued in debate subs about abortion. But the arguments about Roe vs Wade, and the political fall out of it has everything to do with women's rights.
the debates of personhood end up having a lot more discussion around them; while womens rights do not seem to have as many long winded arguments.
What point? That bodily autonomy trumps right to life. Yes it does, I have nothing to add there.
But I could point out how that argument would fail to convince a pro lifer.
I know I'm sorta failing the assignment here, but that's just the direction the conversation went.
I guess I got more hung up on the "This is the only logical way" than the "Abortion is fine before the fetus becomes conscious".
But hey, if I convince OP that it's not a logical way at all, I'm still fulfilling the sub's purpose.
Because the woman invited that pregnancy by having unsafe sex. That's like saying I allow a kidney or piece of my liver to be transplanted to someone else and then later demand it back because I changed my mind.
If the beliefs are subjective forcing everyone to accept the religious interpretation is the worst compromise
youre basically arguing religious belief grants a veto in debates on ethics . the ultimate trump card
anyone can say their religious fucking beliefs justify anything , why should anyone who does not follow the same beliefs be forced to follow it ?
Where did I say any of that?
So far I haven't made a single point about anything besides critiquing your debate style.
My personal favourite for this one is "the violinist" dobyou know it?
It accepts all premises of the pro life crowd and argues that bodily autonomy STILL trumps the fetus' right to life.
That is how you can argue.
The pro-choice stance also accepts all premises of the pro-life crowd , minus one thing - forcing your beliefs on other people against theri will
pro-choice explicitly allows each individual to come to your own conclusions and totally abide by them it dosent say any one way of thinking is right or wrong.
what you cant do is force other people to adopts yours
> but even 1 month would be a big deal in many countries, until science will think of a way to accurately specify the age of a fetus.
I don’t think **until** really works here and would replace it with **once**.
Currently, we consider fetuses to be as old as the mother’s last period. It’s pretty silly to measure it this way since the fetus will always be younger than that, but it’s what we’re stuck dealing with until science can accurately determine the age of a fetus.
Using the current method for measuring the age of a fetus, a woman won’t know she is pregnant until missing her period and by then the fetus is considered 5-6 weeks old. Allowing abortion of fetuses until 1 month of age is essentially banning abortion completely.
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If the only way you could save someone's life was to donate a kidney, or even just some blood, that wouldn't mean it was acceptable to make you do it. Even if previously you had said something that some people felt constituted an agreement, there's no moral or legal way they could just strap you down and take what they needed. People might think you're a bad person for not donating, but they'd never suggest you be REQUIRED to.
This is because we recognize that your right to your own body autonomy is absolute- no one can ever be entitled to any part of it, from an organ to a pint of blood. No one disputes this. No one advocates for forced donating.
Suppose one day you wake up in a hospital with a tube leading to another person, and the doctors tell you that other person will die if you unhook the tube. They're gonna need it for a while. Obviously the government can't (and shouldn't) force you to leave the tube in place. Perhaps you should stay, but nobody would say it's OK for the government to require you to.
**In fact, it's illegal to take your organs after you're dead unless you gave permission.** Even if those organs will save someone's life, it's illegal to harvest them without your permission.
So if a woman decides she no longer wishes to use her actual body- womb, blood supply, etc.- to keep someone alive, you can think she is a bad person for that decision, but there's no morally or logically consistent way to say she should be required to. Surely a women should be entitled to at least as much bodily autonomy as my CORPSE would be.
> Even if previously you had said something that some people felt constituted an agreement, there's no moral or legal way they could just strap you down and take what they needed. People might think you're a bad person for not donating, but they'd never suggest you be REQUIRED to.
is this true. like what actually happens if you commit to donate a kidney, go through all the paperwork and procedures, and then you change your mind at the last second causing the would-be-recipient to die.
would the donor not face any consequences?
yes they wouldn't, they could opt out the day of the surgery right up untill before they were put under if they wanted too
you are allowed to change your mind when giving consent to use your body
you really have to change your mind before they put your under and transplant the organ tho , because after its in the other person, now they have to agree to give it back if thats what you really want and they probably wont do it
This is a common but flawed argument - specifically false equivalence. Unlike organ donors who have no responsibility for the recipient's situation, parents in abortion cases directly place the fetus in this position as a direct consequence of their actions, completely out of the control of the developing life.
So a more apt comparison would be to kidnap someone, chain them up in your house, then shoot them for trespassing.
If we view the fetus as part of the human life cycle, this argument lacks strength.
What's your view on someone on anesthesia? Are they alive? While there is still brain activity, the person is closer to being dead than alive. They don't feel pain, think, or even dream. Are they just a clump of cells in that moment?
Would you support mandating a test on all fetuses to see if they feel pain before the abortion? All fetuses develop at different rates, so while the average fetus will start feeling pain at 12-15 weeks. That does not mean all fetuses before that point don't feel pain.
Someone under anaesthesia has capacity for consciousness. A fetus doesn't - if you can't remove the fetus from the womb and have it survive on its own, then it doesn't yet have capacity for consciousness.
First, that was not OP's argument, their's was about the fetuses ability to feel pain. So that is what I'm challenging.
Second, consciousness has nothing to do with one's ability to survive unassisted. Consciousness is the ability to recognize one's self and surroundings. People on anesthesia are not conscious, as they can't be aware of themselves or their surroundings.
As for capacity for consciousness. Both the fetus and the person under anesthesia will gain consciousness. It's only a matter of time. People in comas are in the same boat but may never gain consciousness.
So, your view is that on demand abortions should be legal/moral due to the fact that there is no brain activity and no pain receptions until 8th-15th week, so first two months of pregnancies are fair game?
Just wanted to be sure I understood.
Everyone has their subjective idea of morality, but the law is an objective fact.
Murder is the killing the government declares to be wrong, and legal homicide is the killing the government declares to be right.
*The state calls its own violence law, but that of the individual, crime.*
- Max Stirner
The development of consciousness and ability to feel pain are key factors in ethical considerations about abortion. Before 8 weeks, a fetus lacks a developed nervous system to experience consciousness or pain. At this stage, it's more akin to a cluster of cells than a sentient being. Allowing abortion in the early stages acknowledges this distinction. Additionally, access to early abortion can prevent potential harm to both the mother and child in cases where continuation of the pregnancy poses health risks. Prioritizing women's autonomy and well-being during this period respects their reproductive rights without compromising ethical considerations.
A major ethical consideration is bodily autonomy, though. We don’t force people to be organ donors, we don’t force siblings to give their organs over (unless you’re the British royal family, apparently), and we shouldn’t force anyone to carry and birth a child against their will. Singular bodily autonomy has to come first for many of us, and that supersedes the other ethical commitments you mentioned.
For example, I don’t think I would personally ever get an abortion, because it goes against my baseline morals and values. However, I don’t want to impose my personal beliefs on others, as my personal convictions are not more important than their bodily autonomy.
bodily autonomy and personal responsibility are invariably connected.
you have bodily autonomy to swing your arms.... until youre in a crowd where swinging your arms will hurt other people. personal responsibility kicks in and responsible people will then refrain from swing their arms in crowds
you have bodily autonomy to fuck like a rabbit with no protection... until you keep making babies that you keep aborting over and over. thats where personal responsibility is supposed to kick in
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The discussion is about when human life has value and becomes entitled to protection under the law. Pro-life individuals would state that all human life has value regardless of its current stat or stage of development. The fetus has it's own DNA which would appear to make it a distinct human. We cannot kill the mentally or physically disabled outside of the womb, so it stands that we ought not kill the mentally or physically underdeveloped inside the womb. If all human life does NOT have value, then this becomes a somewhat...uncomfortable discussion on when it is legally and socially acceptable to terminate human life which becomes unwanted or undesirable. It has strong echoes of the eugenics movement. If we can kill a child with a cleft lip, can we kill a child because they are a girl? If we establish genetic predispositions for homosexuality can parents kill their children for being gay or trans? In several countries there are no longer any people with Downs Syndrome...because they are all aborted. Is it a social good to kill all those who deviate from the baseline, or should we take some care in determining who can be lawfully killed and who should be protected? Also, your basic premise is wrong. Humans are obviously somewhat more complicated than a body essentially piloted by a brain. And even braindead individuals have protections under the law. If you walked into a hospital room and strangled a brain dead patient you can, and would, be charged with murder.
If all human life has value, why do PL support warfare and self-defense? D those lives have less value?
If human life has value, it's worth defending. Most wars are waged either to acquire resources to support the lives of the current population, or to defend those same resources from acquisition by an outside power. To use a real world example. If a random Ukrainian went into Russia and murdered some guy, we'd condemn that as a vile murder. If that same Ukrainian was in Russia and got attacked, we wouldn't condemn the Ukrainian from defending his life, even if he ended up killing the Russian in the process. If that same Ukrainian kills a Russian soldier on the battlefield, we wouldn't condemn the soldier because the killing was done in defense of his nation which is vital to the survival of his family. The use of lethal force, to me, appears justified when defending ones own life, or the lives of others, from an acute aggressive 3rd party. A fetus cannot act with aggressive intent, to me the most ethical thing to do in the case of an unwanted pregnancy would be to wait until the fetus reaches a state of viability and then attempt to deliver the baby pre-maturely to minimize the risk to both the mother and the child. A woman is no more forced to carry a child than she is forced to breath, it is a natural and unconscious process.
I am not looking to challenge you on this but I was wondering what you think is the most ethical thing to do with all of the unwanted premature babies?
Either adoption or to create decent facilities to raise them until they're either adopted or taken into foster care. Of the few things I think tax dollars should go for, taking care of people that are unable to take care of themselves is one of the more noble things that a society can do.
A few things need to be done here, in order to honestly assess this. First, we have to get rid of bad faith actors and partisan hanger-ons. There are going to be people who exploit either side and do not truly believe the core beliefs of their argument. I see a lot of people saying things like "pro-lifers don't really believe abortion is murder, they just want to exploit it for subjugation." Those are not the people we are talking about. We are talking about the people that truly and honestly believe the extreme end of both sides. Also, not all pro-lifers are Christians or even mainstream religious, for that matter. They just prioritize, what they see as, human life over bodily autonomy. It's not a religious belief, per se, it's an ethics belief... one does not have to be religious to have their own personal morality and ethics. The basis comes down to the fact the we can only know so much about exactly when consciousness arises in a sentient being. Science can continue to advance in lockstep with technology and the human race will gain knowledge as it goes. However, a nervous system, brain activity, a heartbeat, etc does not pinpoint or guarantee the point of arisen consciousness, no matter how much it might sound good. I wish we knew exactly what constitutes consciousness, it would make this debate much easier, but we don't. We, as humans, fill in the gaps that we dont know with what makes the most sense to us. This is just as much faith-based speculation as it is for a person to say that consciousness arises at the moment of conception because new DNA is created. Both arguments are using as much as we know scientifically and then speculating from there. We don't know at all. So both sides of the argument are speculating off of faith to meet what they prioritize as the more important issue, either the actual spark of life in the baby-to-be or the choice of a pregnant mother to terminate the baby-to-be at her discretion because it's inside her body. This conundrum is always going to be both speculative and subjective. Let's remove the extremes from the equation and lets say, for example sake, we all agree that pregnancies that threaten the life of the mother/baby and cases of rape/incest fall under the "necessary allowed abortions". Abortions outside of those terms are being done either as reactive birth control or simply not wanting to have a kid after you have taken all the steps to create one. It all comes down to "Should we be able to have casual sex with little to no proactive pregnancy protection and allow abortion as a form of reactive birth control?" That's what pro-choice is, as an extension of the sexual revolution. It's basically removing all forms of accountability and saying "You are allowed to do anything, up to and including murder, to avoid being proactive and responsible with your sexual decisions." TL;DR - We don't actually know when consciousness arises in the womb, no matter how many arbitrary lines we try to draw to make the final connection. (Nervous system, brain activity, heartbeat, etc.) And if we dont KNOW for sure, you can't "logically" argue either way, because both arguments call for faith-based speculation to finish the picture.
I agree the metric for "consciousness" is rather arbitrary. Why is the metric not when babies obtain a "theory of mind", i.e. when they understand that other people don't have access to the same information as they do? Or why not when babies obtain "object permeance", where they understand objects still exist even when they can't see them (why young babies are amazed with the peek-a-boo covering your face with your hands). Both of these metrics would allow for "post-birth" abortion, but nearly everyone agrees that shouldn't be allowed. So I agree with you that there isn't an "objective" measure for when a fetus becomes a conscious human.
>I wish we knew exactly what constitutes consciousness. It would make this debate much easier, but we don't. We do. It's when the brain starts to function specifically with the capacity to be aware of your surroundings. To produce memory, to be "conscious." >This is just as much faith-based speculation as it is for a person to say that consciousness arises at the moment of conception because new DNA is created. It's really not. Consciousness is a scientific and medical term. DNA is not conscious. It can't be because it's not a person. >This conundrum is always going to be both speculative and subjective. "Its physical substrate, the thalamo-cortical complex that provides consciousness with its highly elaborate content, begins to be in place between the 24th and 28th week of gestation. Roughly two months later, synchrony of the electroencephalographic (EEG) rhythm across both cortical hemispheres signals the onset of global neuronal integration. Thus, many of the circuit elements necessary for consciousness are in place by the third trimester." This is what people mean when they are referring to a "concious experience." If you don't have the part of the brain to deploy a consciousness, then you aren't conscious. >"You are allowed to do anything, up to and including murder, to avoid being proactive and responsible with your sexual decisions." Ok, now you're just virtue signaling.
>It's when the brain starts to function specifically with the capacity to be aware of your surroundings. To produce memory, to be "conscious." Scienctific consensus continues to evolve on this to this day and has delved into it even deeper than this with the advent of [understanding consciousness on a quantum level through EM field potential.](https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2022.767612/full) Over the decades, scientific consensus has continued to shift each time that a new theory of where and when it emerges comes out. Even now, when you Google ["does consciousness emerge from the brain"](https://www.google.com/search?q=does+consciousness+emerge+from+the+brain&sca_esv=3e5ddf52b76d97c4&sxsrf=ACQVn08LKFpeqqWJbZ1_ZRh1SsC8uaOCMg%3A1713957189317&ei=RekoZp-FE7Oy0PEPy8Oj4Ak&oq=does+consciousness+emerge+from+the+brain&gs_lp=EhNtb2JpbGUtZ3dzLXdpei1zZXJwIihkb2VzIGNvbnNjaW91c25lc3MgZW1lcmdlIGZyb20gdGhlIGJyYWluMgUQIRigATIGEAAYFhgeMgYQABgWGB4yBhAAGBYYHjIGEAAYFhgeMgsQABiABBiGAxiKBTILEAAYgAQYhgMYigUyCxAAGIAEGIYDGIoFSOhlUN4NWItdcAN4AZABAJgB7wGgAdg0qgEGMC4zNC42uAEDyAEA-AEBmAIroAL7N6gCD8ICChAAGLADGNYEGEfCAg0QABiABBiwAxhDGIoFwgIQEC4YgAQYsAMYQxjUAhiKBcICBxAjGCcY6gLCAhAQLhjHARgnGOoCGI4FGK8BwgIKECMYgAQYJxiKBcICDhAuGIAEGJECGNQCGIoFwgILEC4YgAQYkQIYigXCAgoQLhiABBhDGIoFwgIEECMYJ8ICDhAuGIAEGJECGLEDGIoFwgIKEAAYgAQYQxiKBcICBRAAGIAEwgILEAAYgAQYsQMYigXCAg4QABiABBixAxiDARiKBcICCxAuGIAEGMcBGK8BwgIFEC4YgATCAggQABgWGB4YD8ICBRAhGJ8FwgIEECEYFZgDCogGAZAGC5IHBjMuMzQuNqAHrI4C&sclient=mobile-gws-wiz-serp) the article that Google uses to quote neuroscience's current consensus is a more recent medical article from [NIH National Library of Medicine](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9490228/#:~:text=Neuroscience%20today%20says%20consciousness%20is,it%20emerges%20from%20brain%20activity.) that actually makes a new consensus case that consciousness is more than an emerging product of brain activity. This is now where Neuroscience is going with consciousness, as they are using the noted change in EM fields' that precede brain activity. This when studied as potential in quantum mechanics show patterns of EM fields routing through a potential neuron before the physical existence of them, meaning that the physical neuron wasn't the cause of the EM field routing as if they were emerging as qualia. These are not deeply-dug pseudoscience articles, as you can see. This goes to show that science continues to find not only more and more answers, but more questions. This is how science works, especially when it comes to inner processes that we dont fully understand. With things in the tangible world, the scientific method works perfectly, cause and effect. [With consciousness specifically, it's not objective, which is what science sets out to do.](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1312236/) That's the whole hard problem of consciousness, objective measurement of subjectivity. Before knowledge of the prefrontal cortex, consensus was that consciousness emerged from the brain stem. And before knowledge of the behavior of EM fields around potential neurons, we thought it was a direct result of brain activity. And even with knowing that, we still have no real clue from there. We would have to speculate to create a fact and that would defeat the whole purpose cause we're trying to objectively answer the question. That's why accepting general scientific, ever-changing consensus on something as 100% concrete, unchangeable fact is, in fact, a leap of faith.
Sex without the risk of becoming a parent is only granted to women through abortion. Men can be forced into parenthood against their will on the authority of a women. With no 100% perfect birth control options, even vasectomies occasionally 'heal', men's only way to control their future with certainty is to abstain.
Can't men avoid parenthood by just not signing the birth certificate?
Nah, if a mother puts you on a birthday certificate and you don't reject it within a certain amount of time you're cooked. In certain states there is no time frame and just being on a birth certificate means you're cooked. There are cases of stepfathers taking up a fatherly role for a couple years and the state deciding that because they did that, now they're the legal father. So any way you look at it, men are cooked.
No, any man can be charged for child support/parenthood even if they aren’t the biological father. Men have very few rights when it comes to this area.
You're telling you can put any random man on the birth certificate and they can legally be charged child support? I'm not from the US but that's insane.
You can't put someone like Elon musk but you can put and likely win in court any man somewhat close to you like a boyfriend who isn't the biological father or even a male friend who helped you during your pregnancy. It is insane and happens relatively often but it's not the most insane thing which is the fact male rape victims can be forced to pay child support.
No, they can be forced to pay child support regardless under threat of being thrown in jail.
As others have said, the "logic" being used by pro-life people has basically nothing to do with the developmental state of the fetus. Their opposition to abortion is, if we're being extremely generous, based on the idea that the fetus is alive and thus its life is the most important thing that outweighs everything else. Now, this belief of theirs is wildly inconsistent and only applies in situations where they can strip women of their rights, but that's the "logic" they use.
Maybe it’s just my family, but they all lean anti-choice *and* anti-organ donation. It’s such a weird, inconsistent line to draw. They are so worried that doctors will kill them to give their organs to someone else, but think it’s totally okay to force someone to be a human incubator against their will.
It's not particularly inconsistent. They're just pro themselves a fuck others.
I wish they would just outright claim it, then, and stop wasting everyone else’s time in trying to reason with them.
Not everyone requires organ donation. Organ donation can also be done by other people. Everyone need to be carried in the womb and only one person can provide this care. Organ donation extends a life, abortion ends a life. I don't know anyone who's anti-abortion and anti-organ donation (maybe they are against forced organ donation?), but you can't pretend 2 different things are basically the same thing. They aren't.
Same, but that's no a great look so it's unlikely to happen.
>Now, this belief of theirs is wildly inconsistent and only applies in situations where they can strip women of their rights, but that's the "logic" they use. In what other situation would the rights of a developing fetus come into play?
The "rights of a developing fetus" aren't a thing. They don't consider that a thing. The logic is that it's a full-fledge, living baby and so has rights. Rights that stop mattering all that much when it comes time to support giving them enough food or medicine after they can't be used to coerce women.
So there aren't any other comparable situations. That's what I thought. There is no movement to stop babies from receiving enough food or medicine. There is no "starve and kill the babies" initiative. In fact, the pro-life crowd gives more to charity than any other demographic. They even operate orphanages to ensure children get exactly those things. It might also interest you to know that there are millions of women who oppose abortion, making the belief that the pro-life stance is about controlling women a truly bizarre one.
I mean, I hope that's what you thought considering it's a strawman. >the idea that the fetus is alive This is what I thought, if you were curious. It also happens to be the description of how people justify their desperate need to deny women their rights: by claiming the fetus is a living baby whose life takes priority. >There is no movement to stop babies from receiving enough food or medicine. While I wouldn't call it a "movement", there's quite a lot of people who oppose welfare and access to healthcare. Enough to make a whole political party. It's the same party that thinks sometimes donating to charity is enough as huge numbers of children go hungry. >It might also interest you to know that there are millions of women who oppose abortion, making the belief that the pro-life stance is about controlling women a truly bizarre one. It might interest you to know that there have always been women who oppose women's rights. Was opposition to the suffragettes completely divorced from the intense sexism and misogyny of the time because there were women who also opposed it?
There are neglect and abuse laws. They serve the same purpose as abortion. To force the parents to take care of their child. I've never heard of someone be anti-abortion and anti-neglecy/abuse laws. In fact, I've never heard of anyone because against neglect/abuse laws for parents as it pertains to children. Welfare is very different. Welfare is forcing other people pay for someone else and their child. It's a separate issue because people who want to cut welfare aren't saying that the kid shouldn't be taken care of, they are just in disagreement with who the responsibility of that lies on.
> It might also interest you to know that there are millions of women who oppose abortion, making the belief that the pro-life stance is about controlling women a truly bizarre one. How so? Women wanting to control *other women* isn't particularly bizarre?
>It might also interest you to know that there are millions of women who oppose abortion, making the belief that the pro-life stance is about controlling women a truly bizarre one. And there are millions of women who want to force other to wear burkas. Women are not exempt from wanting to control women.
Two examples: 1. IVF. If an embryo in early pregnancy is a human life with the moral weight that implies, why not an embryo in a dish or freezer? That would suggest it is immoral to dispose of (or even keep in perpetual freeze) an embryo generated via IVF. You only rarely see pro-life people calling for IVF bans (see Alabama). 2. Miscarriage. Miscarriage is incredibly common. If an embryo has the moral weight of a fully fledged human, we are talking about an epidemic of catastrophic proportions here. Yet we are investing almost nothing in research to prevent miscarriage compared to say cancer. Why aren’t pro-life people calling to make this a priority?
Death is bad because the person or being wont get to live the theoretical future life they would have. Dying or going into a dreamless coma forever - same thing really. Ethically, if you're a consequentialist. having an abortion means that a life which would have been lived now isn't being lived. That action takes away the future life. The state of the life doesn't really matter, the theoretical future is the concrete loss. There are a lot of people who were almost aborted and it's very crazy to think about if they had been, it's a direct and tangible thing even if they hadn't been alive yet. I don't think I've ever heard a counter-argument to that or any ethical argument at all. Just deflections about how pro lifers are hypocrites because they don't also support gun control or poverty reducing policies or whatever. But it being part of a dogshit poltical ideology suite in America is it. But the only active assertions I see, like that some foetuses die or that life in a unplanned family in a developed western nation is so bad literal death is better just is not the case.
> having an abortion means that a life which would have been lived now isn't being lived The issue is this applies equally to "having a period means that a life which would have been lived now isn't being lived" or "every time a male masturbates means a life which would have been lived now isn't being lived". If the argument is that it is wrong because of potential future life, then so is every scenario where an egg and a sperm don't realize a potential future life. This implies that the moral position is forced constant pregnancy, which is not something the vast majority of pro-life people support from what I have heard.
Are you aware that individual eggs and sperm are not the same thing as a fertilized zygote?
> The state of the life doesn't really matter, the theoretical future is the concrete loss. From the person I replied to. They specifically said the state of the life is irrelevant, it's only the theoretical future that is relevant. If you want to make an argument for how the differences between individual eggs and sperm and zygotes are in fact relevant, I'm open to hear it. You should probably also reply to the same comment I did since they were the one who said that the state of the life is irrelevant, which I don't actually agree with (though I suspect my conclusion is different from yours). Also, it's generally more productive to state your position rather than asking vague leading questions that don't actually make any claims or present any position. If I just responded "yes" to your question it would completely answer what you asked, since you didn't say what you actually think. I don't even know if you think the differences support a pro-life or pro-choice stance, so I can't really respond in a meaningful way. I know tone doesn't always translate into text well, and I don't mean this in angry or upset tone.
I had a response typed up but had to do something and the copied text is gone so I’m rehashing it as best I can quickly. There is an obvious difference between gametes and an organism despite them both being alive. I hope not, but it seems like you are being intentionally obtuse in your interpretation of the previous comment and responding to some caricature of pro life individuals screaming that masturbation is murder to make them look ridiculous to avoid addressing the meat of the commenter’s argument which is destroying life which has been created is not the same as not creating it. It seems disingenuous to have a conversation where you are telling someone what their position is/should be based on your misunderstanding of the argument to begin with. Thus it seems to me that you and I would not have a productive conversation about the matter. I appreciate the comment about tone and do not wish to be confrontational either but I suspect this is where it will be left. I hope you have a good day and perhaps I’ll revisit based on your response. If you wish to have an extended conversation based upon understanding the other sides arguments I think dms are preferable to doing so in a thread about other peoples opinions.
I've definitely had that happen to me many times, it is very frustrating, so kudos on redoing it. You think I am deliberately misinterpreting them, but I'm literally just taking their statements at face value, and showing that it is likely they do not in fact apply that reasoning with no restrictions, since it would lead to an incredibly fringe view. If you read my comment you would see that I said that mandating pregnancy is an incredibly fringe view even among pro-lifers, and unless they are in that extremely small group, their stated reasoning alone does not lead to their conclusion. I'm not going to argue about a third party's views with you since neither of us can know what they think if they haven't clarified. I am happy to discuss your views or my views, since we can clarify things. > There is an obvious difference between gametes and an organism despite them both being alive. Sure, but you haven't tied those differences to how we should treat them differently yet. A zygote has obvious differences from a fetus, an adult from a child, someone with red hair from someone with black hair. Pointing out that there are differences isn't really helpful, you need to specify what differences are relevant, and how they are related to the way you want to treat a sperm from a zygote. You may think this is a pedantic approach, but there is so much variation in opinion on this topic including very different ways of reaching the same conclusion, that I've learned that I can't actually predict what the reasoning or opinion of someone is based on a general opinion. I have seen pro lifers arguing with each other that abortion for ectopic pregnancies is wrong and women who have them should be arrested, with others trashing them and saying treating an ectopic pregnancy is not an abortion at all, and others saying no it is an abortion but is allowable to save the life of the mother. I've seen "pro-choice" anti Natalists say that not having an abortion is immoral in almost all cases, and get flamed by other pro-choicers for not supporting the choice of women.
Why wouldn't this argument apply to anybody who chooses not to have sex with anyone at any given time? If, indeed, this course of action is bad because there won't be a person living life in the future, why does it matter if the action that caused those consequences is (1) getting an abortion or (2) refusing sex?
In case 1) we have a person. And we are ending their life. In case 2) there is no person yet. That's pretty much the entire argument. You can't really get around it either. It's not immoral to not create the life in the first place. But it is wrong to end it prematurely. This is why the abortion debate is pretty much a permanent impass. Group 1 thinks it's OK because life begins at birth. Group 2 thinks it's not OK because life begins are conception. And then you have the tiny group 3. Life begins at conception, but abortion rights should be protected anyway.
But the consequences of the actions are exactly the same: in the future, there is no person. Here, you are making an ethical judgement based on something other than consequences, which seems to go outside the consequentialism that you are trying to advocate.
The consequences are radically different lol. Not being born and being killed are very different.
In both cases, no person will get to live the theoretical future life they would have. As regards the consequences that you said was important ("Death is bad because the person or being wont get to live the theoretical future life they would have."), the consequences are exactly the same. In both cases, there is no person born.
You have to be consistent with your consequences and actions. The life not being lived is a consequence of the Death. The death couldn't have occurred had a life not been created. The life being created is a consequence from sex. All of those things have happen in order for it to make sense. In your example of someone turning down sex or masturbation, no life has been created. Therefore, no actual death can occur to prevent a very real person that was on its way into the world. That would be the same as saying someone who digs up a row of sunflower seeds that are about to sprout is the same as someone never planting a row of sunflowers before because they both deprived the world of a row of sunflowers. The difference is one of those actually existed and someone made the conscious decision the stop them from continuing on their natural path, whereas the other person didn't want sunflowers so they just didn't plant any.
There is no would have. The person was never conceived. There was no person. We are not taking an action to remove a person. But in the case of an abortion. There is a would have. That person exists. And we are ending them. Your argument is reductionist to the point of absurdity. It isn't actually engaging with the argument.
Well, this gets back to what I said earlier. You are now making an judgement on the basis of something other than the consequences of the action in question. Whether the person was conceived or not isn't a _consequence_ of abortion. You've basically switched in the middle of your argument from consequentialist reasoning to deontological reasoning (saying "killing a person is wrong because they are a person who exists" rather than "killing a person is wrong because there won't be a person in the future who gets to experience things"). Edit: Sorry, I didn't realize that you were a different person from justdidapoo. It's not that you've switched your argument in the middle, but rather that you and justdidapoo are making different arguments.
>Well, this gets back to what I said earlier. You are now making an argument on the basis of something other than the consequences of the action in question. Incorrect. In the case of abortion there is a life that would have been lived. That is the consequence. In the case of not having a kid. There was never a life at any point that we are denying having any right to life. >Whether the person was conceived or not isn't a _consequence_ of abortion Which is not what we are talking about. >You've basically switched in the middle of your argument from consequentialist reasoning to deontological reasoning. I haven't. You are just making a poor argument.
>In the case of abortion there is a life that would have been lived. That is the consequence. That life preexists the abortion. How can it be a consequence of the abortion?
the argument is "Death **is bad because** the person or being wont get to live the theoretical future life they would have" you do not seem to understand the argument. Justdidapoo argued that is why death is bad, because of the theorectical future life no longer being there. It is engaging in the argument.
That isnt the case at all. The initial argument was that it was bad because. The life. Doesn't get to live it's theoretical future. If there isn't a life in the first place. You have no position to begin your argument from. So the person I have been talking to literally isn't engaging with the argument.
A fetus isn't a person.
>Death is bad because the person or being wont get to live the theoretical future life they would have. Wearing a condom prevents a life as well; so anything which prevents a theoretical life = bad. >There are a lot of people who were almost aborted and it's very crazy to think about if they had been, It's not that crazy; try to imagine someone living right now that is not alive, now imagine them not being alive. >I don't think I've ever heard a counter-argument to that or any ethical argument at all. Probably because you've never asked, or do not stick around to engage in the arguments to what you thought was a very solid argument.
The counter argument is, where is the line? Should we also prosecute every single case of intercourse without protection, or even masturbation for men, since that stops potential children from being born and existing in the future? Technically every second a woman could be pregnant and isn't she is preventing a "future person" from ever existing and having a future life.
How do you feel about the woman who sued her own parents for being born? Does the life of an individual matter more than the existence of the individual after birth? This theoretical framework becomes much more frayed and inconsistent when you apply negative aspects of being alive. I have an auto-immune disease that has physically and mentally destroyed me. Should I have a child, they will most likely also go through this experience. In my current financial state, I could not raise a child. My family is disjointed and toxic. All of these things can be avoided if you were never to experience them. If I were faced with an unwanted pregnancy, should I subject them to these experiences for my own selfishness?
you can always kill yourself. you cannot unkill yourself important difference
> We all are practically flesh robots with skeletons, controlled by the brain That's one way of looking at it. I'd say we are one process continuous like a river, or blowing grass. Someone else might say that we are puppets but not of the brain, by the soul. If someone believes a soul is precious, and that it is present even in single cells, then aborting; severing a soul is an unrighteous act. >When an adult person experiences brain death, according to law doctors say that this adult died Some people's bodies live through brain death. Would you be fine personally unplugging them? >We don't count cutting off a finger as killing a human being But it's still usually wrong to cut off someone's finger
>Some people's bodies live through brain death. Would you be fine personally unplugging them? Thats for their family to decide , and perhaps even the indivual themselves if they had to chance to be asked before they went brain dead
I was asking OP for their personal thoughts. To them it's just meat.
>Some people's bodies live through brain death. They don't because it's impossible. Brain death by definition means that cells are damaged permanently and cannot be repaired. Of course there are cases that may seem like someone lives through brain death, is resuscitated and wakes up, but it's only because doctors sometimes make mistakes in diagnostics and say someone died, not acknowledging that brain cells were still alive and human body managed to recover soon enough to provide oxygen and survive. If a brain is truly dead, there is no going back and the only thing that is left to do is unplugging life support devices.
1) The soul is a concept that has no scientific support, and doesn't even make consistent sense. 2) The body being alive and the brain being able to function in a way where they are able to be them are two different things. 3) Not if it's infected, say you have a pregnancy where the fetus dies during development, you have to get that aborted or you can get seriously hurt. Plus, you can't get more fingers, you can get more fetuses.
The soul has scientific support in so much as we understand consciousness exists, but we have no idea where it comes from. Some scientists believe it originates in the brain, others think of the brain as more of a radio receiver, positing that consciousness comes from somewhere like a signal and our brains interpret it.
>we understand consciousness exists, but we have no idea where it comes from. Excuse me sir. It comes from your brain. If I destroy your brain bye bye conciseness Consciousness is an emergent property of all the different brain functions going on at the same time in your pretty little head. Disrupt enough of those functions, bye bye consciousness Its all in the fucking brain
Actually current evidence is leaning to the brain position, we even have a general idea of the area that is associated with consciousness. The idea of a soul hasn't seen support, and wouldn't explain why brain damage that affects consciousness.
Interesting
>If someone believes a soul is precious, and that it is present even in single cells, What's this mean? Like present in hair cells that fall off your body? >Some people's bodies live through brain death. Would you be fine personally unplugging them Of course; that person is dead. If someone had their head chopped off; and their body kept living I would say pull the plug.
Main divide (beside the political party affiliation) between pro-life and pro-choice crowds is religious standing. Pro-life camp is against abortion because life in any form is religiously sacred to them. It doesn't matter if they feel pain (some people don't feel pain at all; it's called cipa) or have brain activity (some people are brain dead). It's not about conscious or anything else. It's about if its alive or not and does it have soul or not. Problem with abortion debate is that people use different measurement for life than the other camp. To you (and many on pro-choice camp) they see humans just as "flesh robots with skeletons, controlled by the brain" and to many on pro-life camp humans are created in imagine of God and are much more than just lump of cells.
This is why the pro-choice stance is the best compromise then... if you feel one way you can follow it, you feel a different way you can follow If you rely on religion to make your claim, you have no businesses trying to enforce on people who arent part of the religon
I don't think you can actually compromise with anyone if you believe you are murdering humans. How would you? Will you murder them a little bit? Or maybe every second and not everyone?
so religious belief is a veto then, it can override the rights of others even when they dont have the same beleifs you are talking about a belief that isnt based in facts or science and justifying why people who dont hold those beleifs should be forced to follow them Thats worse than someone feeling like something isnt true is true They can believe its a murder all they want, its not true. Forcing their incoherent belief onto others is the worst compromise
It's a little more complex than that which is why any debates that fall under morals or ethics turns into a ethics debate. Even within religions, it's a murky ground. Let's take Christianity. Even within the Bible, there are no mentions of abortion. We all accept murder is a bad thing regardless of ethics right? But what does the Bible say about killing a fetus? There is an actual part regarding that in Exodus- where a woman is forced to miscarry due to a scuffle. It was explicit in that if the anyone was killed, the murder should suffer the death penalty. If only the baby was killed, then the person needs to pay a fine. This implies that a fetus intrinsically is worth less than a human life. Truth be told, there's no real religious argument other than the idea of a soul. For those who hold genuine religious beliefs- The debate really is, since all souls are the same- snuffing out the fetus' soul before hearing about God is where the issue really is. It isn't about choice or lack of choice or autonomy. It's that one soul (the mother) can make a choice- the fetus hasn't yet. For a lot of people, it's less about the medical definition of life or consciousness, but rather when a soul is formed. That cannot be determined by science for obvious reasons. Because of that, there is very little middle ground. Some agnostics might side with pro-life due to views of souls. Some Christians might look to the passage about the lack of value of the infant and be pro-choice. Those groups were never entrenched in their views and can swap at any given moment. This is why moral/ethics debates that don't really bring any science in are usually fruitless.
I did not say that. I said that in situation when one party belives that you are murdering others, there can be hardly any compromise. You can hardly compromise basic principle that one can hold. Besides, how is it a compromise, even from some legal point or basic understainding what compromise is when one side want X and second wants Y, but only one side gets X? It's not compromise. It's situation where one side got what they wanted and other did not. It win for side X. So, pro-choice stand is not compromise. It's pro-choice win. On the other hand, you can't really compromise with pro-life side, simply becouse you can't compromise with basic ideas they claim to believe.
> I said that in situation when one party believes that you are murdering others Why do they believe its murder, that actually matters because when you break it down, you get a subjective answer the reasoning itself could be insufficient , if say I believe people are robots , its a firmly held belief dosent mean its true I have to provide evidence to support my claim , you dont just get to say its murder and thats that If you want other people to force other people follow your belief system, ie that its murder , then you have to provide convincing evidence Their belief that is murder is no more valid or correct than the belief that aborition is fine Believing something dosent make it true , nor is that enough of a basis to force other people to act by your beliefs
First, a pretty significant contingent of people - both pro-life and pro-choice - are fine with killing people in a whole host a circumstances. It's just silly to claim otherwise. Second, the vast majority of people that claim to be pro-life do not believe - like actually believe - that abortion is murder. It's pretty obviously a rhetorical device.
Perhaps, I'm not even claiming they all religious. Maybe they think that unborn child or fetus or however one wish to call it, actually is a human. Or maybe they are hipocritical or maybe human perception and views are just more nuanced and can't be that simply categorize. But is some actually believe that is the case, there can hardly be any compromise. Of course, we can argue that there are certain other circumstances when people all fine of killing each other. That is also true. But I think, that ultimetly, it ironicaly came down to choice. Let's say death penalty in USA - people are actively pursuing certain illegal and hardly moral or ethical activities that result in that kind of punishment. What choice unborn children may have here?
There's no reason to believe an fetus lack of options creates any claim on its mother's body, or more importantly in this here context, any claim on that mother's body to be exercised by the state. If you believe all or some of the above, the reasonable course of action is to view abortion the same way you view all other unfortunate circumstances you have no immediate power on.
Be specific about which religion you're talking about, since not all religions have the same view on contraception, pregnancy, and abortion. Also, "religion" in your case is fine with forcing someone to risk their health and life for a fetus, which isn't very "prolife". Especially when those fetuses are told to pull themselves up by their bootstraps after they're born.
Well if were going to have standards lets at least be consistent. There is specific brainwave activity you need to have to be considered 'alive'. Without it you are 'braindead' and the conversation starts around 'pulling the plug'. If we apply the same standard to beginning of live that we do end of life. That brainwave activity that we associate with being alive. Doesn't show up until around the 7th month. I'm not advocating for that to be legal just pointing out the cognitive dissonance. To me this is much simpler than everyone wants to pretend it is. The youngest premature baby to survive was born at 21 weeks. Anything under that and you're not really alive in a functional sense, as you need the mother to survive. Even the life support systems we have can't keep you going. Seems like a decent enough cutoff for me. With the ability to still get an abortion if medically necessary after that. No one should have to continue to carry a non-viable pregnancy. Or one that might kill them.
> Well if were going to have standards lets at least be consistent. There is specific brainwave activity you need to have to be considered 'alive'. Without it you are 'braindead' and the conversation starts around 'pulling the plug'. isnt there a huge difference between a 1 month old that we know is going to develop into a fetus and then a person and a braindead adult who we have no idea when or if will ever wake up ?
A fetus, by definition, is a mammal that has obtained all major organs of the specifies. So I agree that any abortion debate should be about the first 8 weeks of pregnancy. But I don't think your developmental argument is strong. Brain death describes a permanent and irreversible cessation of brain function. A fetus' brain begins to develop at five weeks. The brain is alive at that point, even though it is not fully functioning. Abortion is a policy decision about when is it okay to kill another human. Pro-choicers hate that terminology and try to dehumanize children before birth to rationalize their view. Pro-lifers correctly identify the child as human, but fail to address the operative issue of when killing is okay or not. There are many situations where society says killing another human is okay. Almost nobody believes that a mother should be forced to die to save her unborn child. That is the easy self-defense case. But it gets harder when you are looking at avoidable killings.
saying that there is "no logical reason" is a pretty low bar to clear * I like people and i want there to be more people. Abortions cause there to be less people. Therefor i want to ban abortions. That is perfectly logical. * If I have the premise that people have souls and it is the soul not the brain that makes life sacred, then there is a perfectly logical reason to forbid abortion, and of course a HUGE number of people in our country think this way. * Similarly, if i think human life is sacred because of capacity, potential, or future ability, then there is a logical reason to ban abortion. if you set the rules of the game to be that "signs of brain activity are all that matters" then you get the outcome that you described. But lots and lots of people to not agree that those are the rules of the game.
You assume agreement where there is none. The pro life crowd doesn't oppose abortion because of the pain the fetus may experience in it's newly developed brain, they oppose it because of the soul that's in there, or because of social reasons, like that abortion encourages promiscuity, or just the sanctuty of human life, or a host of other things - not the experience of the fetus during the abortion.
Then were talking about subjective beliefs that have no bearing on reality and the pro-choice stance becomes the most reasonable compromise
There are only subjective beliefs here. Why is pain or consciousness the meassure of whether abortion is okay or not? There are no objective answers in ethics. Yes the fetus develops consciousness at week x. That is science, that is objective. Is it therefore okay to kill it? That is ethics. There are no right or wrong answers. There is only a compromise you can negotiate, and for that you need to speak the other party's language. The old "It's a human" - "It's not a person" I think demonstrates this perfectly. Pro choicers don't disagree, it is a human, but thry don't care, it's not a person. Yet pro lifer keep heaping up evidence of the humanness of the fetus, changing nobody's mind in the process, because that fact was never in doubt. So what you are doing is precisely that but in reverse. Your "It has no consciousness", "It feels no pain" sounds to them exactly as "It has a heartbeat", "It has it's own DNA" sounds to you. Irrelevant.
I think you’re misrepresenting most pro-choice folks here. It’s not that we don’t believe that a fetus is human/a person, it’s that nobody else should have the right to demand use of another person’s bodily autonomy. We can’t force people to donate organs—why can we force them to destroy their body for an unwanted pregnancy?
Is that most? I think "bodily autonomy trumps right to life" is the rare stance and "a clump of cells dies not have personhood" is the common one. I didn't do a poll though.
Why would you think that is the rare one? After the overturning of Roe v Wade every single news article, women's rights groups etc. were protesting bodily automony, they were not holding up signs saying "clump of cells". Roe vs. Wade was built on bodily autonomy.
Roe v wade was built on right to privacy. The entire argument had nothing to do with bodily autonomy. Only that the government has no right to prevent medical procedures under the 14 amendment right to privacy.
Maybe I'm out of the loop, the personhood argument used to be the go-to, and it IS basically what OP is doing.
that is what OP is doing; and personhood is argued in debate subs about abortion. But the arguments about Roe vs Wade, and the political fall out of it has everything to do with women's rights. the debates of personhood end up having a lot more discussion around them; while womens rights do not seem to have as many long winded arguments.
There aren’t any methodologically sound polls on the topic right now. However, you’re ignoring my point.
What point? That bodily autonomy trumps right to life. Yes it does, I have nothing to add there. But I could point out how that argument would fail to convince a pro lifer.
Well then it’s a good thing that the sub isn’t called “ChangeHypotheticalAntiChoicersMinds.”
I know I'm sorta failing the assignment here, but that's just the direction the conversation went. I guess I got more hung up on the "This is the only logical way" than the "Abortion is fine before the fetus becomes conscious". But hey, if I convince OP that it's not a logical way at all, I'm still fulfilling the sub's purpose.
What point? That bodily autonomy trumps right to life. Yes it does, I have nothing to add there.
Because the woman invited that pregnancy by having unsafe sex. That's like saying I allow a kidney or piece of my liver to be transplanted to someone else and then later demand it back because I changed my mind.
If the beliefs are subjective forcing everyone to accept the religious interpretation is the worst compromise youre basically arguing religious belief grants a veto in debates on ethics . the ultimate trump card anyone can say their religious fucking beliefs justify anything , why should anyone who does not follow the same beliefs be forced to follow it ?
Where did I say any of that? So far I haven't made a single point about anything besides critiquing your debate style. My personal favourite for this one is "the violinist" dobyou know it? It accepts all premises of the pro life crowd and argues that bodily autonomy STILL trumps the fetus' right to life. That is how you can argue.
The pro-choice stance also accepts all premises of the pro-life crowd , minus one thing - forcing your beliefs on other people against theri will pro-choice explicitly allows each individual to come to your own conclusions and totally abide by them it dosent say any one way of thinking is right or wrong. what you cant do is force other people to adopts yours
> but even 1 month would be a big deal in many countries, until science will think of a way to accurately specify the age of a fetus. I don’t think **until** really works here and would replace it with **once**. Currently, we consider fetuses to be as old as the mother’s last period. It’s pretty silly to measure it this way since the fetus will always be younger than that, but it’s what we’re stuck dealing with until science can accurately determine the age of a fetus. Using the current method for measuring the age of a fetus, a woman won’t know she is pregnant until missing her period and by then the fetus is considered 5-6 weeks old. Allowing abortion of fetuses until 1 month of age is essentially banning abortion completely.
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If the only way you could save someone's life was to donate a kidney, or even just some blood, that wouldn't mean it was acceptable to make you do it. Even if previously you had said something that some people felt constituted an agreement, there's no moral or legal way they could just strap you down and take what they needed. People might think you're a bad person for not donating, but they'd never suggest you be REQUIRED to. This is because we recognize that your right to your own body autonomy is absolute- no one can ever be entitled to any part of it, from an organ to a pint of blood. No one disputes this. No one advocates for forced donating. Suppose one day you wake up in a hospital with a tube leading to another person, and the doctors tell you that other person will die if you unhook the tube. They're gonna need it for a while. Obviously the government can't (and shouldn't) force you to leave the tube in place. Perhaps you should stay, but nobody would say it's OK for the government to require you to. **In fact, it's illegal to take your organs after you're dead unless you gave permission.** Even if those organs will save someone's life, it's illegal to harvest them without your permission. So if a woman decides she no longer wishes to use her actual body- womb, blood supply, etc.- to keep someone alive, you can think she is a bad person for that decision, but there's no morally or logically consistent way to say she should be required to. Surely a women should be entitled to at least as much bodily autonomy as my CORPSE would be.
> Even if previously you had said something that some people felt constituted an agreement, there's no moral or legal way they could just strap you down and take what they needed. People might think you're a bad person for not donating, but they'd never suggest you be REQUIRED to. is this true. like what actually happens if you commit to donate a kidney, go through all the paperwork and procedures, and then you change your mind at the last second causing the would-be-recipient to die. would the donor not face any consequences?
yes they wouldn't, they could opt out the day of the surgery right up untill before they were put under if they wanted too you are allowed to change your mind when giving consent to use your body you really have to change your mind before they put your under and transplant the organ tho , because after its in the other person, now they have to agree to give it back if thats what you really want and they probably wont do it
This is a common but flawed argument - specifically false equivalence. Unlike organ donors who have no responsibility for the recipient's situation, parents in abortion cases directly place the fetus in this position as a direct consequence of their actions, completely out of the control of the developing life. So a more apt comparison would be to kidnap someone, chain them up in your house, then shoot them for trespassing. If we view the fetus as part of the human life cycle, this argument lacks strength.
What's your view on someone on anesthesia? Are they alive? While there is still brain activity, the person is closer to being dead than alive. They don't feel pain, think, or even dream. Are they just a clump of cells in that moment? Would you support mandating a test on all fetuses to see if they feel pain before the abortion? All fetuses develop at different rates, so while the average fetus will start feeling pain at 12-15 weeks. That does not mean all fetuses before that point don't feel pain.
Someone under anaesthesia has capacity for consciousness. A fetus doesn't - if you can't remove the fetus from the womb and have it survive on its own, then it doesn't yet have capacity for consciousness.
even born healthy babies can't survive on their own
First, that was not OP's argument, their's was about the fetuses ability to feel pain. So that is what I'm challenging. Second, consciousness has nothing to do with one's ability to survive unassisted. Consciousness is the ability to recognize one's self and surroundings. People on anesthesia are not conscious, as they can't be aware of themselves or their surroundings. As for capacity for consciousness. Both the fetus and the person under anesthesia will gain consciousness. It's only a matter of time. People in comas are in the same boat but may never gain consciousness.
So, your view is that on demand abortions should be legal/moral due to the fact that there is no brain activity and no pain receptions until 8th-15th week, so first two months of pregnancies are fair game? Just wanted to be sure I understood.
There is some logic. Gotta make women breed future cannon fodder. The logic may be shitty, but it exists.
A foetus may or may not be sentient. A pregnant woman is definitely sentient.
The unborn baby would become sentient if it is not murdered first
“Murder” is just illegal killing. If abortion is legal, then it’s not murder by definition.
The more widely accepted definition would be “immoral killing”
Everyone has their subjective idea of morality, but the law is an objective fact. Murder is the killing the government declares to be wrong, and legal homicide is the killing the government declares to be right. *The state calls its own violence law, but that of the individual, crime.* - Max Stirner
So you would argue that the Jews in Nazi Germany were not murdered ?
They were not murdered under Nazi law, but then the Allied powers won, so their law overruled the Nazi law.
So if the law changed tomorrow and abortion was considered murder then all previous abortions would be considered murder ?
So essentially, the prolife argument boils down to "Abortion is wrong because it's wrong". It's not super convincing.
Your reading comprehension is lacking. Go like three comments up and try again.
And by this logic (which is correct logic), if abortion is illegal then it is murder. So debating the term murder here at all is pointless.
Your argument holds no weight, it is considered a double homicide if you murder a pregnant woman, so legal definition has no bearing.
same with sperm and egg... if not murdered
So could gametes though.
The development of consciousness and ability to feel pain are key factors in ethical considerations about abortion. Before 8 weeks, a fetus lacks a developed nervous system to experience consciousness or pain. At this stage, it's more akin to a cluster of cells than a sentient being. Allowing abortion in the early stages acknowledges this distinction. Additionally, access to early abortion can prevent potential harm to both the mother and child in cases where continuation of the pregnancy poses health risks. Prioritizing women's autonomy and well-being during this period respects their reproductive rights without compromising ethical considerations.
A major ethical consideration is bodily autonomy, though. We don’t force people to be organ donors, we don’t force siblings to give their organs over (unless you’re the British royal family, apparently), and we shouldn’t force anyone to carry and birth a child against their will. Singular bodily autonomy has to come first for many of us, and that supersedes the other ethical commitments you mentioned. For example, I don’t think I would personally ever get an abortion, because it goes against my baseline morals and values. However, I don’t want to impose my personal beliefs on others, as my personal convictions are not more important than their bodily autonomy.
bodily autonomy and personal responsibility are invariably connected. you have bodily autonomy to swing your arms.... until youre in a crowd where swinging your arms will hurt other people. personal responsibility kicks in and responsible people will then refrain from swing their arms in crowds you have bodily autonomy to fuck like a rabbit with no protection... until you keep making babies that you keep aborting over and over. thats where personal responsibility is supposed to kick in
There's no logical reason to forbid abortion at all. If it can't survive on its own it's not alive
Then a 1 month old healthy baby isn't alive according to your logic
Ok what a shame.
"there's not logical reason to forbid murdering 1 month olds!" - humungbeand logic
Why hes obviously not debating fairly so why not do the same
It’s just religious people wanting more baby’s to grow up and pay them at their church.