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.
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.