""Brainwashed" may sound diminishing or condescending but when it comes to religion I think the definition is soundly met."
😄I agree (my atheism kicked in at around twelve). Though, of course, society brainwashes us all in a variety of ways. But I don't think you need to be religious to be pro-life. I have no problem understanding and ev…
""Brainwashed" may sound diminishing or condescending but when it comes to religion I think the definition is soundly met."
😄I agree (my atheism kicked in at around twelve). Though, of course, society brainwashes us all in a variety of ways. But I don't think you need to be religious to be pro-life. I have no problem understanding and even sympathising with secular pro-life arguments. My pro-choice position is based on the fact that, on balance, I think it's the best solution to this impossible ethical dilemma. Not that I think the pro-life position is all religious quackery.
A foetus will, in almost all cases, develop into a human being if left undisturbed in its mothers womb. There is unarguably a point, somewhere after conception but before birth, where we're talking about a real, viable human being. Nobody knows where that point is, which means all decisions about abortion are kind of groping in the dark. Groping in the dark, unfortunately, is the best we can do on most issues. We're not smart enough creatures to do better. So it's not surprising if some people come to different conclusions.
Because it is "groping in the dark" as you put it, and because there are so many opinions on this and we can't all agree, why not leave the choice to the persons involved? Why do strangers get to decide the course of my life simply because I have sex that results in a pregnancy? Why do they get to impose an arbitrary morality? Reducing the rights of women simply because they can bear children is just patently unfair. It reduces us to our biological essentials. I am not a walking womb. I am a human being and I deserve the same rights and freedoms as men (I know you agree on this).
The saddest part of this whole thing is that most of those who posture on the side of pro-life, don't truly care about the kids being born. They only care in the abstract. As Thomas Sowell says - abstract people in an abstract world. Most unwanted children end up in the foster care system, dead, or have to survive some greater or lesser level of abuse. Some are adopted for better or worse. Not all adoptions are idyllic. I was an unwanted child and I was abused by bio, foster, and adoptive parents. I know what it is to be that child that falls between the cracks and who is kicked around because no one truly wants to bear the weight of raising you and your very existence is inconvenient. My life has been hell for the most part. No one seems to care about the quality of life for the children born into the world. Wild animals in nature have more care and rationality on dealing with the survival of progeny in limited-resource environments.
I'll be damned if I call my life sacred. It's not. It never was and it never will be. It would have been better for all concerned had I never been born. I am here and am making the best of it. But I know full well the weight of not being wanted and what it does to your life. I would not wish this journey on my worst enemy. Just being alive is not enough. If there is no love, but only duty, life is a desert.
This is an excellent post and comes from an unexpected angle. All this gush about the awesome sacredness of life ignores the Quiet Desperation aspect. Forty-odd thousand American commit suicide every year, a level of misery severe enough to end one's own life for every one of these there are probably millions whose lives are at best a matter of coping.
I had a friend in Seattle who had grown up in an orphanage and never adopted. He was a mess. I know him on Facebook now and he's still a mess.
I just want to acknowledge the courage of your candor.
"Because it is "groping in the dark" as you put it, and because there are so many opinions on this and we can't all agree, why not leave the choice to the persons involved? Why do strangers get to decide the course of my life simply because I have sex that results in a pregnancy?"
This is a fabulous question that, to be honest, I'm not sure I have an answer for. I'm struggling to figure out if this is the same as the many other laws that decide the course of our lives, but I feel like it is and it isn't.
The closest comparison I can think is age of consent laws. Nobody knows when a child becomes an adult. There's no clear before and after. In fact, for some, it's undoubtedly *after* they're legal and adult. But we treat children differently under the law in ways that both advantage them and restrict them. We don't allow them to decide for themselves, even though it's their life that's affected.
Women don't need to be protected in the same way as children, of course. But wouldn't you agree that there's a point where the baby does? Where it's a real human being who will bleed if you prick it and laugh if you tickle it and die if you poison it. And that this point comes *before* it's out of the mother's stomach.
Abortion laws are about that very healthy instinct society has to protect children. That instinct should have as little impact on women as possible. But the facts of biology mean it's very difficult for it to have none at all.
"But I don't think you need to be religious to be pro-life."
Perhaps, but take religious views out of the argument and it becomes very fragile.
We have to be irrational about breeding. Otherwise only people with nothing interesting in their lives would have children and we would be on our way to CM Kornbluth's "Marching Morons" world. Lactating mammals feel an intense protectionism toward their young that is known to be hormonal.
And, again, most fetuses are not viable. Only 30% implant and many miscarriages come later.
"Perhaps, but take religious views out of the argument and it becomes very fragile."
*All* the philosophical arguments are fragile.
Abortions should be legal until the third trimester? Why? Because miscarriages are most common during that time? What does that have to do with the millions of foetuses that doesn't miscarry? Life begins at conception? How do you make that claim without invoking God or faith? Where is your evidence that this is life in a more meaningful sense than the life of an amoeba, say? Abortion should be legal until the baby is born? How is that any different from murdering a newborn baby? What changes between the moment the baby is inside the body and the next moment when it's outside?
The only argument that has any real weight, at least as far as I can see, is that banning abortion outright will undoubtedly lead to the anguish and death of some number of women. Women who have already been born, women who are definitely conscious and able to survive outside their mother's wombs, women whose rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are already fully enshrined in law.
I don't really see any other argument that can't be "whatabouted" into oblivion.
I would add as well that sex isn't always rationally chosen. People have sex when inebriated. when excited or turned on, and even with contraception freely available people will forget. I'm lucky to have never gotten HIV.
Until we are willing to make infertility the rule and every pregnancy the outcome of a consciously chosen plan there are going to be unplanned ones, so abortion needs to remain legal.
"Abortion should be legal until the baby is born? How is that any different from murdering a newborn baby? What changes between the moment the baby is inside the body and the next moment when it's outside?"
The same difference between having sex with a teenager eighteen years old minus a day and the same teenager eighteen plus one day.
That, and cutting the umbilical. And the baby using its own lungs.
So to be clear - are you arguing that abortion on demand should be legal up to one day before childbirth? You do appear to be so arguing.
However that would be out of step with the law in all developed countries (and of course nearly all underdeveloped ones), and out of step with the overwhelming majority of Americans (a clear majority approve of abortion with limitations on timing, but a substantially larger majority oppose abortion without limitations).
I think that the argument for a cutoff date for abortion mostly pertains to the fact that at some point in the pregnancy the fetus is undeniably human. It looks like a little human and reacts to external stimulus in ways that indicate it can feel pain. That happens disturbingly early in the pregnancy which supplies pressure for early cutoff dates. Certainly, only the disingenuous could deny that at the 3rd trimester. https://www.onhealth.com/content/1/fetal_development_stages
Invertebrates react to stimuli and feel pain too. Nobody is arguing to protect nematodes for that reason.
An orangutan fetus probably looks every bit as human until shortly before birth. Yet we are sending them to extinction for palm oil.
How far back do you want to push these cutoff dates because fetuses start to resemble babies? The fact that these protections apply to mindless fetuses but not to self-aware beasts with minds and emotional lives is invalidating. For me, anyway.
My comment pointed to the idea that much of the anti-abortion policy position is an appeal to emotion. We humans are emotional creatures and often less logical than we wish to believe. I wasn't arguing a position, I was describing one that was high on the list of the path to revoking Roe v. Wade.
But the point about "less logical than we wish to believe" is ripe for expansion, it's one topic I'm in the middle of a longer than usual writing project about; We The Educated tend to forget that logic and even rationality are not built into our wetware, they are retrofits and even when people try to live by them they still compartmentalize and self-deceive.
Like the expectation that people will vote in their self-interest, which, astonishingly, many still believe.
When predators are overpopulated the females ovulate less, sometimes not at all. Even when prey is abundant. The same is not true of omnivores.
In a candidly mystical moment I predicted long ago that irrational attacks on children would increase with human population, and that the attacks would not be correlated with population density.
Our confidence in our rationality leads us to not see things right before our eyes.
""Brainwashed" may sound diminishing or condescending but when it comes to religion I think the definition is soundly met."
😄I agree (my atheism kicked in at around twelve). Though, of course, society brainwashes us all in a variety of ways. But I don't think you need to be religious to be pro-life. I have no problem understanding and even sympathising with secular pro-life arguments. My pro-choice position is based on the fact that, on balance, I think it's the best solution to this impossible ethical dilemma. Not that I think the pro-life position is all religious quackery.
A foetus will, in almost all cases, develop into a human being if left undisturbed in its mothers womb. There is unarguably a point, somewhere after conception but before birth, where we're talking about a real, viable human being. Nobody knows where that point is, which means all decisions about abortion are kind of groping in the dark. Groping in the dark, unfortunately, is the best we can do on most issues. We're not smart enough creatures to do better. So it's not surprising if some people come to different conclusions.
Because it is "groping in the dark" as you put it, and because there are so many opinions on this and we can't all agree, why not leave the choice to the persons involved? Why do strangers get to decide the course of my life simply because I have sex that results in a pregnancy? Why do they get to impose an arbitrary morality? Reducing the rights of women simply because they can bear children is just patently unfair. It reduces us to our biological essentials. I am not a walking womb. I am a human being and I deserve the same rights and freedoms as men (I know you agree on this).
The saddest part of this whole thing is that most of those who posture on the side of pro-life, don't truly care about the kids being born. They only care in the abstract. As Thomas Sowell says - abstract people in an abstract world. Most unwanted children end up in the foster care system, dead, or have to survive some greater or lesser level of abuse. Some are adopted for better or worse. Not all adoptions are idyllic. I was an unwanted child and I was abused by bio, foster, and adoptive parents. I know what it is to be that child that falls between the cracks and who is kicked around because no one truly wants to bear the weight of raising you and your very existence is inconvenient. My life has been hell for the most part. No one seems to care about the quality of life for the children born into the world. Wild animals in nature have more care and rationality on dealing with the survival of progeny in limited-resource environments.
I'll be damned if I call my life sacred. It's not. It never was and it never will be. It would have been better for all concerned had I never been born. I am here and am making the best of it. But I know full well the weight of not being wanted and what it does to your life. I would not wish this journey on my worst enemy. Just being alive is not enough. If there is no love, but only duty, life is a desert.
This is an excellent post and comes from an unexpected angle. All this gush about the awesome sacredness of life ignores the Quiet Desperation aspect. Forty-odd thousand American commit suicide every year, a level of misery severe enough to end one's own life for every one of these there are probably millions whose lives are at best a matter of coping.
I had a friend in Seattle who had grown up in an orphanage and never adopted. He was a mess. I know him on Facebook now and he's still a mess.
I just want to acknowledge the courage of your candor.
"Because it is "groping in the dark" as you put it, and because there are so many opinions on this and we can't all agree, why not leave the choice to the persons involved? Why do strangers get to decide the course of my life simply because I have sex that results in a pregnancy?"
This is a fabulous question that, to be honest, I'm not sure I have an answer for. I'm struggling to figure out if this is the same as the many other laws that decide the course of our lives, but I feel like it is and it isn't.
The closest comparison I can think is age of consent laws. Nobody knows when a child becomes an adult. There's no clear before and after. In fact, for some, it's undoubtedly *after* they're legal and adult. But we treat children differently under the law in ways that both advantage them and restrict them. We don't allow them to decide for themselves, even though it's their life that's affected.
Women don't need to be protected in the same way as children, of course. But wouldn't you agree that there's a point where the baby does? Where it's a real human being who will bleed if you prick it and laugh if you tickle it and die if you poison it. And that this point comes *before* it's out of the mother's stomach.
Abortion laws are about that very healthy instinct society has to protect children. That instinct should have as little impact on women as possible. But the facts of biology mean it's very difficult for it to have none at all.
"But I don't think you need to be religious to be pro-life."
Perhaps, but take religious views out of the argument and it becomes very fragile.
We have to be irrational about breeding. Otherwise only people with nothing interesting in their lives would have children and we would be on our way to CM Kornbluth's "Marching Morons" world. Lactating mammals feel an intense protectionism toward their young that is known to be hormonal.
And, again, most fetuses are not viable. Only 30% implant and many miscarriages come later.
"Perhaps, but take religious views out of the argument and it becomes very fragile."
*All* the philosophical arguments are fragile.
Abortions should be legal until the third trimester? Why? Because miscarriages are most common during that time? What does that have to do with the millions of foetuses that doesn't miscarry? Life begins at conception? How do you make that claim without invoking God or faith? Where is your evidence that this is life in a more meaningful sense than the life of an amoeba, say? Abortion should be legal until the baby is born? How is that any different from murdering a newborn baby? What changes between the moment the baby is inside the body and the next moment when it's outside?
The only argument that has any real weight, at least as far as I can see, is that banning abortion outright will undoubtedly lead to the anguish and death of some number of women. Women who have already been born, women who are definitely conscious and able to survive outside their mother's wombs, women whose rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are already fully enshrined in law.
I don't really see any other argument that can't be "whatabouted" into oblivion.
That's clearer.
I would add as well that sex isn't always rationally chosen. People have sex when inebriated. when excited or turned on, and even with contraception freely available people will forget. I'm lucky to have never gotten HIV.
Until we are willing to make infertility the rule and every pregnancy the outcome of a consciously chosen plan there are going to be unplanned ones, so abortion needs to remain legal.
"Abortion should be legal until the baby is born? How is that any different from murdering a newborn baby? What changes between the moment the baby is inside the body and the next moment when it's outside?"
The same difference between having sex with a teenager eighteen years old minus a day and the same teenager eighteen plus one day.
That, and cutting the umbilical. And the baby using its own lungs.
So to be clear - are you arguing that abortion on demand should be legal up to one day before childbirth? You do appear to be so arguing.
However that would be out of step with the law in all developed countries (and of course nearly all underdeveloped ones), and out of step with the overwhelming majority of Americans (a clear majority approve of abortion with limitations on timing, but a substantially larger majority oppose abortion without limitations).
I think that the argument for a cutoff date for abortion mostly pertains to the fact that at some point in the pregnancy the fetus is undeniably human. It looks like a little human and reacts to external stimulus in ways that indicate it can feel pain. That happens disturbingly early in the pregnancy which supplies pressure for early cutoff dates. Certainly, only the disingenuous could deny that at the 3rd trimester. https://www.onhealth.com/content/1/fetal_development_stages
Invertebrates react to stimuli and feel pain too. Nobody is arguing to protect nematodes for that reason.
An orangutan fetus probably looks every bit as human until shortly before birth. Yet we are sending them to extinction for palm oil.
How far back do you want to push these cutoff dates because fetuses start to resemble babies? The fact that these protections apply to mindless fetuses but not to self-aware beasts with minds and emotional lives is invalidating. For me, anyway.
My comment pointed to the idea that much of the anti-abortion policy position is an appeal to emotion. We humans are emotional creatures and often less logical than we wish to believe. I wasn't arguing a position, I was describing one that was high on the list of the path to revoking Roe v. Wade.
That's what I was hoping you were saying.
But the point about "less logical than we wish to believe" is ripe for expansion, it's one topic I'm in the middle of a longer than usual writing project about; We The Educated tend to forget that logic and even rationality are not built into our wetware, they are retrofits and even when people try to live by them they still compartmentalize and self-deceive.
Like the expectation that people will vote in their self-interest, which, astonishingly, many still believe.
When predators are overpopulated the females ovulate less, sometimes not at all. Even when prey is abundant. The same is not true of omnivores.
In a candidly mystical moment I predicted long ago that irrational attacks on children would increase with human population, and that the attacks would not be correlated with population density.
Our confidence in our rationality leads us to not see things right before our eyes.