Non-Religious Argument Against Abortion

[Steven Howard]

Uh, no. You've presented a strawman. That's not the argument at all!

Really? Okay, try this one:

1. It's wrong to kill members of Class X, which includes but is not limited to people;

and

2. At some point between* conception and birth, a fetus becomes a member of Class X. (*Inclusive between: includes the end points.)

 

[Stone Island]

Really? Okay, try this one:

1. It's wrong to kill members of Class X, which includes but is not limited to people;

and

2. At some point between* conception and birth, a fetus becomes a member of Class X. (*Inclusive between: includes the end points.)

Wait, wait. What if I don't want them, or they are going to grow up poor, or they're living in my body parasitically? Is it still wrong then?

 

[sthomson]

Wait, wait. What if I don't want them, or they are going to grow up poor, or they're living in my body parasitically? Is it still wrong then?

Oh come now, at least Steve is trying to be serious, unlike the rest of us jakes.

Edited to add: I'm glad steve cleared up some of the confusion. I personally can't argue too much with the point defined by US law. Stone Island has so far declined to name his point, although I infer that he wants it to be as early as possible--meaning, I suppose, that if women consume alcoholic beverages directly before or after having sexual intercourse, they could be guilty of child abuse!

 

[Stone Island]

dual post.

 

[Stone Island]

Really? Okay, try this one:

1. It's wrong to kill members of Class X, which includes but is not limited to people;

and

2. At some point between* conception and birth, a fetus becomes a member of Class X. (*Inclusive between: includes the end points.)

Peter Signer, who may be wrong but is not an idiot, puts the point at which a thing becomes a person some time after birth. His argument is strong, well thought out, and very, very horrifying. So, all reasonable people don't necessarily agree.

 

[Big Les]

Who behaves as if their future doesn't have a value while knowing that it does?

Depressed people. Melancholics (i.e. me).

Who behaves as if their future does have a value while thinking that it does not?

Me. A lot of the time. The rest of the time I think my future has some value, if only to me and a very few people, but I recognise that with relatively few changes to my past, it could well lack value to me, and everybody else - there are countless scenarios in which any given person's future would become of relatively low value, the most glaring being the old run-over-by-a-bus point, a more subtle one being the otherwise rational individual who has decided that life has no intrinsic meaning or value, has no surviving friends or family, and whose personal financial, employment, recreation and domestic situations are all poor by accepted standards.

Getting as far as foetus-hood is no guarantee of a "valuable" future. Personally, if I could cease to exist, painlessly, without causing serious upset to other people, at the flick of a switch, I would. Call me lazy, but I'm looking forward to non-existence, and I seriously doubt the world would miss me in the scheme of things. Not as much as Mozart, and "so?" would be my answer re him as well. The whole argument makes no sense, since the logical conclusion would be for all of us to shag like rabbits 24/7 to avoid any wasted eggs and sperm. You wouldn't want to waste any opportunity or raw biological material, no matter how limited in viability. See Monty Python and/or Catholic dogma for your PoV taken somewhat toward its logical conclusion. Actually, without religious objection to cloning, you'd want to start trying to perfect that too; after all, if you don't, you're denying a valuable future to a hypothetical batch of nipple-necks.

Someone expressed this whole mess well in another thread - it's down to squeamishness and what we, as a majority of society, are comfortable with. By my estimation, if you haven't begun experiencing anything and have no kind of bond or influence upon the world beyond being an amusing bump in a lady's tummy, you're fair game. And as skeptigirl, who as a rule talks lots of sense, says; until the baby is at least a viable autonomous humanoid, it's part of the the mother. In fact, I would go as far as to say that until that thing is out, it's still part of her and could still be bumped off. But by that point it would be recognisably human, and few people would feel comfortable with killing the child/parasite/build-yourself-a-person-kit. That's fine, I understand that completely. But it isn't objectively morally wrong to end its life as far as I can see.

 

[billydkid]

I'm actively non religious and somewhat anti-abortion, at least late term. The argument really comes down to when life begins to me. I don't for a moment accept that it is at conception, but I do think it is before birth.

Stop sounding sensible. It's very irritating. What good are hot button issues if you can't get all irrational and hysterical about them?

 

[skeptifem]

Sorry about the wrong attribution. But it is an argument used by many anti-abortionists: "Mozart wouldn't have been born if his mother had had an abortion!"
To which there is no possibly reply beyond "So?"

i saw something like that except it was the opposite argument. there were bunches of pictures of hitler and dahmer and such and it said "unaborted" underneath. I lol'd

 

[skeptifem]

You a morally responsible for your actions and for the consequences of your actions. Your desire to un-ring the bell, as it were, does not justify the destruction of a fetus's future, especially because it is you, not the fetus, which is responsible for the fetus's coming into being.

children should NOT be a punishment for anyones behavior. its completely unfair to the child. kids should be wanted and welcomed not born unwanted and unloved because it was the 'right' thing to do. **** that.

 

[Ron_Tomkins]

Keep this in mind: We might all be considered mass murderers every time we masturbate and floss all of our potential children down the toilet.

Consistence. It's important to have consistence within extremist claims.

 

[Jekyll]

Allen Stairs writes,

1. the sperm cell
2. the ovum
3. the sperm-ovum pair considered separately
4. the sperm-ovum combination

Neither 1) not 2) is satisfactory. A sperm alone does not determine a being. Neither does an ovum.

Argument fails here.
I alone do not determine what being I will be next week.
I could be hit by a bus as soon as I step outside.

 

[Big Les]

Keep this in mind: We might all be considered mass murderers every time we masturbate and floss all of our potential children down the toilet.

Consistence. It's important to have consistence within extremist claims.

Or any other form of sex than vaginal. Hence my link to the classic "Every Sperm is Sacred".

 

[Stone Island]

I think now would be a good moment to restate the argument:

1. According to our considered judgments, what people fear the most about death is the loss of future experience.
2. If 1, then, according to our considered judgments, it is the loss of future experience that fully constitutes death as a grave misfortune to people.
3. Therefore, according to our considered judgments, it is the loss of future experience that fully constitutes death as a grave misfortune to people.
4. The fetus is equally capable of sustaining a loss of future experience.
5. Therefore, death is an equally grave misfortune for the fetus.
6. It is wrong to deliberately inflict a misfortune on a fetus that is as grave as death to people.
7. Therefore, it is wrong to deliberately inflict death on the fetus.

 

[Stone Island]

I don't think that a sperm or ovum alone are equally capable of sustaining a loss of future experience.

A loss of future experience is a grave misfortune, more grave than carrying an unwanted pregnancy.

 

[sthomson]

A loss of future experience is a grave misfortune, more grave than carrying an unwanted pregnancy.

That's easy to say for the people who will never have to carry an unwanted pregnancy.

SI, you never answered my questions about practicalities. If abortion is the worst kind of murder, then should we put women and men who perform or agree to abortions in jail?

 

[rocketdodger]

I think now would be a good moment to restate the argument:

1. According to our considered judgments, what people fear the most about death is the loss of future experience.
2. If 1, then, according to our considered judgments, it is the loss of future experience that fully constitutes death as a grave misfortune to people.
3. Therefore, according to our considered judgments, it is the loss of future experience that fully constitutes death as a grave misfortune to people.
4. The fetus is equally capable of sustaining a loss of future experience.
5. Therefore, death is an equally grave misfortune for the fetus.
6. It is wrong to deliberately inflict a misfortune on a fetus that is as grave as death to people.
7. Therefore, it is wrong to deliberately inflict death on the fetus.

And I think now would be a good moment to restate my counter-argument.

1) Regardless of the universe model you choose to accept (multiverse or singleverse with probabalistic randomness), everything you do has an effect on the future.
2) It is inescapable that as many of these effects will be bad as good, including preventing the future existence of countless individuals throughout the universe.
3) Therefore it is impossible to measure the future net good or bad of any decision.
4) The effects of a decision on those living now can be measured.
5) Thus, these are the only effects that should be factored into a decision about abortion.

 

[Steven Howard]

Oh come now, at least Steve is trying to be serious, unlike the rest of us jakes.

He's right, you know. I mean, I passed up a straight line like this:

I'm not so concerned about being right

 

[Steven Howard]

Peter Signer, who may be wrong but is not an idiot, puts the point at which a thing becomes a person some time after birth. His argument is strong, well thought out, and very, very horrifying. So, all reasonable people don't necessarily agree.

I don't who Peter Signer is, other than a person I probably shouldn't hire as a babysitter. But that's neither here nor there. You objected to my post that included the word person, so in the post that you actually quoted here I didn't talk about people, only about things that you shouldn't kill. So Signer's opinion of what a person is is a complete non-sequitur, unless you mean to imply that he also thinks a newborn baby is not a thing that you shouldn't kill. In which case he is, in fact, a crazy person and not to be included among "all reasonable people."

 

[Belz...]

I didn't say 'self-sufficient'. Your interpretation is precisely why I made the distinction here: "can't survive without drawing on resources from the human body of tkingdoll".

Just to play devil's advocate, here, one could argue that the kid will be, one way or another, dependent upon your "body" for about eighteeen years.

 

[Steven Howard]

I think now would be a good moment to restate the argument:

1. According to our considered judgments, what people fear the most about death is the loss of future experience.
2. If 1, then, according to our considered judgments, it is the loss of future experience that fully constitutes death as a grave misfortune to people.
3. Therefore, according to our considered judgments, it is the loss of future experience that fully constitutes death as a grave misfortune to people.
4. The fetus is equally capable of sustaining a loss of future experience.
5. Therefore, death is an equally grave misfortune for the fetus.
6. It is wrong to deliberately inflict a misfortune on a fetus that is as grave as death to people.
7. Therefore, it is wrong to deliberately inflict death on the fetus.

You left out 7b:

[M]orally permissible abortions will be rare indeed unless, perhaps, they occur so early in pregnancy that a fetus is not yet definitely an individual.

Which is where your entire [rule10]ing argument falls to the [rule10]ing floor and flops around like a dead [rule10]ing fish.