A Message To the “Pro-life” Movement: Keep Your Faith Off My Lawn

[tanthrix]

Each year the so-called “pro-life” movement further encroaches on what I believe should be an irrefutable right to all women: the right to have an abortion. It's either an egregious attempt to inject faith-based ideology into law which has no place in any nation that takes the separation of church and state seriously, or it’s an exercise in poor

Comments

[nomadraven]

I ramble

[tanthrix]

The conclusion I came to is that newborns aren't people either, and if it's ok to abort fetuses, it's ok to kill newborns.
You've hit the nail on the head: there really is no well defined point in time at which an infant will transition into consciousness. Ultimately though I don't think that it is a major problem. We simply need to pick a semi-arbitrary cut off point that makes as much sense as possible. In my opinion, that point should be the time at which, even in the best circumstances, a fetus cannot survive birth without medical intervention. It's not as fool proof as I would like for the reasons you stated, but it will do nicely as the right to have an abortion is not nearly as important as the length of time you can have it for

[natowelch]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prenatal_development#Fetal_period... )

[half]

I tend to be pretty happy with drawing the line at the ability to suffer. That would put the abortion line right around the end of the first trimester, as the nervous system begins to operate.

Eh, but what about the fully grown pregnant woman's ability to suffer? Making her go through pregnancy and childbirth will cause her to suffer more than the fetus will.

Pro-lifers don't get to use ugly partial-birth abortion photos anymore, which are rare and extreme cases anyhow.

They'd still use the pictures they already have, and claim they are from first-trimester abortions. Oh wait, they already do that.

Women need to be able to have abortions after the first trimester. Sometimes it is discovered that the fetus has a birth defect that will be fatal shortly after they are born. Sometimes the woman doesn't know she's pregnant until that point. Sometimes she is unable to get an abortion until that point. And regardless of the reason, it's her body. So... it's her choice.

[tanthrix]

My good friend's wife miscarried, then resumed her period for a month or two. Then one Saturday afternoon she started feeling extremely sick and began bleeding. He took her immediately to the ER and low and behold, she was pregnant. They performed an emergency cesarean section a few hours later for their 13 week insanely premature baby girl.

And I've heard of tons of people who even carried to full term and didn't know they were pregnant.

Absolutely terrifying stuff.

[tanthrix]

But that doesn't mean that I feel the need to somehow rationalize it as morally acceptable; I can admit my failings.

You say that as if it makes you better (though I may misinterpret your meaning.) How is "I know this is wrong, but I do it anyway" better than "I do not believe this is wrong and act accordingly"? In my opinion the more enlightened thinker is the person that acts according to their (considered) beliefs, not the person that believes one thing and then does another. Actions speak louder than words and all that. The only conclusion that I can reach is that you do not, deep down, truly believe that harming animals is wrong, since if you did you would stop eating meat at the very least, especially considering what an amazingly easy and relatively insignificant thing it is to do in this day and age.

How can you say that pain is not self-awareness? The entire POINT of pain is make a system aware of something about itself.

I was referring to self-awareness in the sense of, well, what self-awareness actually means. The simple

[natowelch]

You say that as if it makes you better.

I'm not proud of this by any stretch. Do you think I'd really be better off trying to rationalize what I end up doing instead of confronting the issue?

why would we need to care about something that has no thought?
are they self-aware enough, conscious enough, for us to care if they do?I see caring as a choice of the subject, more than a quality of object

[tanthrix]

I'm not proud of this by any stretch. Do you think I'd really be better off trying to rationalize what I end up doing instead of confronting the issue?

Well, I was more suggesting the better alternative was to consider then act accordingly, not act then rationalize whatever you did to make yourself feel better. The latter is, as you've said, just as bad as saying one thing and doing another.

I see caring as a choice of the subject, more than a quality of object

[natowelch]

I'm a moral subjectivist. Morals are simply desires, recast in certain ways into declarative language.

[tanthrix]

With all due respect, assuming that is actually true, you ought to stay out of conversations about morality then. In the mean time I highly recommend you give this excerpt from James Rachels' "The Elements of Moral Philosophy" about moral relativism a read, as well as this one (PDF warning) about ethical subjectivism. (They are two different things) James Rachels is a very well known and influential philosopher, and he has a brilliant way of expressing philosophical theory in plain, modern, easy to understand language. (He actually talks about real issues - what a concept! I swear, a lot of people become philosophers because they don't want to deal with the real world, ironic given the purpose of philosophy) Definately worth printing out and reading. [Raven, you ought to give these a read as well - they might help you clear up your thoughts about a lack of absolute morals. Rachels certainly helped me get it figured out.]

I also read this article a while back that was a somewhat nice piece as well, though if you're going to read any

[zer]

I do like the making the argument against radical subjectivism by bring up how people actually function in the world. Like one might say that reality cannot be known, but will actually operate on the assumption that the sun will rise tomorrow, that gravity will operate, that people will respond in particular ways, that they need to eat to live, etc. which implies a "operational worldview" that is (and must be!) very much grounded in some assumption of an objective and shared reality

[tanthrix]

You're right about Dolhenty's examples. I sort of skipped over those and just focused on his valid argument, not his biased examples, and I probably should have mentioned that when I posted it, but it was a while back that I had read the whole thing.

On a side note, I am still perplexed at how extremely enraged political correctness can make people. What's so damn bad about being *too* tolerant (at least with words)? Better than the alternative, I think. With regards to moral relativism, Rachels touches briefly on what we can learn from it, and why though it is misguided, the intent from its supporters is usually a genuine desire for tolerance.

". . . but one must recognize that it is a very, very difficult question to know just what actions that actually will promote and guarantee the most happiness/well being for all people."

Indeed it is, and for the better! What else would we spend hours debating on LJ entries and crazy political forums? (Oh, right. Why BSG sucks so much, but we can't stop watching!)

[zer]

Ahhh! Don't get me started on BSG, I'm going to flip my lid

[tanthrix]

Angry white man syndrome is a good term for it, I'd say.

"Man, whenever I talk to you it turns into some kind of ranting."

I choose to take that as a compliment!

[half]

Tanthrix, that RadicalAcademy website is so so so so horrible. I need to scrub my brain out with a brillo pad now. lol

[tanthrix]

C'mon, crack pot geocities style "philosophy" websites are where it's at!

[You guys are never going to let me live this down are you...]