Abortion

Here specifically, here they blog about the abortion process, here are all their posts tagged abortion.

Huh. Well I feel happy for hir(?). If she's cool with it, and feels absolutely nothing for the child, then good on her.
Still fucking cold, though.

But it's not a child. It's a fetus.

I'm sorry, but I think of them as children. Not foetuses.

Saith said:

I'm sorry, but I think of them as children. Not foetuses.

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That's you. Your opinion is valid and interesting, and your experience really really sad, but please understand that we are all permitted to feel completely different to you and that is just that! And it would be nice if you kept personal judgements out of this thread.

Hiikaru ♥;556896 said:

Saying souls exist therefore you can't abort is a thing, but... why are people saying that a fetus definitely has a soul, assuming souls exist? An egg doesn't have a soul, and a sperm doesn't have a soul (presumably, anyway, because if anyone believed that they'd presumably be pro-having-as-many-babies-as-possible to save as many souls as possible), so when does a soul happen? Does it happen when the sperm and egg get united? Why? What makes someone have a belief about when a soul appears?

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For me, if souls exist, I'd think it should be deemed the point at which the neural circuits are powered up, because presumably at that point something can think and feel, at least to a degree.

And anyone should read the rest of that article, because it's really interesting and no one read it before when opal linked to it for some reason.

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It was a freaking novel, but I finally got around to it. (I didn't want to respond until I had.) And it was interesting all the way through. I think anyone arguing pro-life should respond to the points raised in that article. It'd be interesting to see what different people think, after a run through that moral rat maze.

Why wouldn't you care about the legal yes or no question? If you believe it's morally wrong to force a female-bodied person to carry eir baby to term when there's a good reason ey doesn't want to, then surely you think it's important that abortion be made legal. If you believe it's the same thing as killing a child or an adult person, surely you believe it's important that it stay or be made illegal! One way involves someone being really miserable for a long time or dying, and one option involves killing, so that kind of seems like a thing that most people would feel strongly about.

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Well, my reasons were
1) I have had a passionate hatred apathy for politics ever since about 8th grade
2) I generally hate "lesser of two evils" questions
3) closely related to 1, I think it is subjective to a degree, and people can get really upset when other people don't share their views, and
4) even if abortion was definitely wrong, outlawing it might present its own problems.

Politics is for those who don't have faith in humanity, after all!


Prior to reading this article, I was unaware women sometimes have to stay in bed for 9 months surrounding their pregnancy. I mean I knew they might have to take a couple weeks off for maternity leave, but that is a different thing entirely. So that made me stop and reconsider what I deem right.

I think this is a really good article. It's really fair, I think. And polite *cough cough viki cough cough*. Also it was interesting how exploring what it would mean if a fetus was a living person brings forward certain cases in which aborting it is in fact wrong.

There is room for yet another argument here, however. We surely must all grant that there may be cases in which it would be morally indecent to detach a person from your body at the cost of his life. Suppose you learn that what the violinist needs is not nine years of your life, but only one hour: all you need do to save his life is to spend one hour in that bed with him. Suppose also that letting him use your kidneys for that one hour would not affect your health in the slightest. Admittedly you were kidnapped. Admittedly you did not give anyone permission to plug him into you. Nevertheless it seems to me plain you ought to allow him to use your kidneys for that hour--it would be indecent to refuse.

Again, suppose pregnancy lasted only an hour, and constituted no threat to life or health. And suppose that a woman becomes pregnant as a result of rape. Admittedly she did not voluntarily do anything to bring about the existence of a child. Admittedly she did nothing at all which would give the unborn person a right to the use of her body. All the same it might well be said, as in the newly amended violinist story, that she ought to allow it to remain for that hour--that it would be indecent of her to refuse.

A further objection to so using the term "right" that from the fact that A ought to do a thing for B it follows that R has a right against A that A do it for him, is that it is going to make the question of whether or not a man has a right to a thing turn on how easy it is to provide him with it; and this seems not merely unfortunate, but morally unacceptable. Take the case of Henry Fonda again. I said earlier that I had no right to the touch of his cool hand on my fevered brow even though I needed it to save my life. I said it would be frightfully nice of him to fly in from the West Coast to provide me with it, but that I had no right against him that he should do so. But suppose he isn't on the West Coast. Suppose he has only to walk across the room, place a hand briefly on my brow--and lo, my life is saved. Then surely he ought to do it-it would be indecent to refuse. Is it to be said, "Ah, well, it follows that in this case she has a right to the touch of his hand on her brow, and so it would be an injustice in him to refuse"? So that I have a right to it when it is easy for him to provide it, though no right when it's hard? It's rather a shocking idea that anyone's rights should fade away and disappear as it gets harder and harder to accord them to him.

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Incidentally, I was thinking about this precisely, long before it was discussed. The last sentence contains a logical fallacy: it is an appeal to consequences. If all someone needs is the touch of someone's hand to live, and that person is standing across the room, I think ey absolutely has a right to it. I think if a thing is deemed to be overly cruel and heartless, then people have the right to outlaw it. I think the same thing goes if it is found that that person happens to be in the same city when the touch is needed. But I think if the person is on the other side of the country, they do not have a duty to fly in and deliver a touch of their hand. It's simply economics: The person who's hand is needed has a right to make what he wants of his own life, and the person in the hospital has a right to live. As it gets harder and harder to accord for the patient's right to life, it intrudes more and more on the other person's right for freedom. After all, what is life worth if there is no freedom? If it takes $50 to give Joe the medicine he needs to live, Joe needs to be given the medicine, but if it takes $100,000 to keep him alive, and Joe cannot pay himself and will never be able to repay, unfortunately there is not enough money in the world for every average Joe who needs $100,000 to stay alive. It's the economics of human rights. So if having a baby is going to seriously impact the mother's life for an extended period of time, I would not be opposed to abortion in that case. (Of course that only includes cases where the mother's life is impacted for long periods of time due to the pregnancy itself; children can be put up for adoption.)

Why is murder, fundamentally, bad? Primarily, three reasons:

1. Generally, it causes great (physical) pain to the individual. A fetus, to the best of our knowledge, is not aware enough to seriously feel pain, making this mostly moot for abortion; furthermore, carrying the child to term would in all likelihood result in far more pain to the mother than is inflicted on the fetus. Furthermore, murder also often involves inflicting great emotional stress and panic on the victim prior to their death, but this is also completely moot for a fetus, which has no ability to consciously anticipate pain or death or feel distress about it.

2. It causes great emotional pain to those who knew the dead, due to their memories of who the murdered was and the knowledge they can never meet them again. However, a fetus has never socialized with anyone; you can't miss someone who's lived their whole life in a womb in any meaningful sense except potentially if you're the mother, and seeing as in that case you're the one who's deciding to get an abortion, well...

3. You are removing the person's ability to subsequently do anything with their life. They had plans, dreams, disagreements that might have been resolved, books they wanted to read, people they wanted to meet, and just simple anticipation of tomorrow (this, to me, is the most important aspect of death). But, while a fetus has the potential to do things with its life in the future, it has no plans, it anticipates nothing, and it would have no regrets if it died, simply because it isn't capable of that. It has potential, but no realization of that potential that makes it cruel to snatch it away.

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1 is completely moot for a child under the age of 3, assuming a quick and painless death. 2 could or could not be true for a fetus, as Saith has made clear, and likewise could or could not be true for a newborn child. 3 might also not apply for an infant or toddler, and, I think, is a bit incomplete. Death is bad because, as far as we know, it cuts off the qualia stream, that which makes the universe a thing to someone. Without a self there cannot be anything else. This is why I think the point at which the brain is fired up is such an important time. Even if the brain does not have the vivid experiences that we have yet, what it does have must be unbelievably better than nothingness! I don't think we have a right to take that away from it on a whim.

Saith said:

So when I see people acting like abortion ain't no thang, when I see them acting like a baby is just like porn on the pc - something you can get rid of with a push of a button and never look back on, when I see them trying to explain and moralise it without knowing what it feels like. Well. It hurts.
It feels just like how it feels to think back on the memories. It really fucking hurts.

There are people - in this thread even - who say things like 'if I miscarried I wouldn't give two shits'. and it's like no. No. You would care. You really would. You would be torn apart. And if you wouldn't, you're just too fucking cold, and I'd prefer to believe it's just your naivety and lack of experience that's talking.

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"I had this experience, therefore anyone who claims they wouldn't feel the same way in this situation is just being naive" is a horrendously narrow-minded argument.

Your feelings are not everyone's. Not everyone thinks of fetuses as children. Not everyone assigns any value to a fetus whatsoever. No matter how much raw emotion you felt when your girlfriend had an abortion, you simply cannot declare that anyone who doesn't think they would feel your way is either wrong or emotionally stunted. This applies especially when, by your own admission, your feelings are irrational - i.e. not based on what you believe to be facts about fetuses, but on the emotional value that you yourself have ascribed to the fetus. That doesn't make your feelings less real - feelings are feelings, no matter their source - but it does mean you honestly cannot expect your feelings to reflect what anyone, or anyone who isn't "just too fucking cold", would feel in your situation.

The idea of caring about a fetus, especially about one particular fetus as opposed to merely the idea of being about to have a child in general, is alien to me. That doesn't mean I don't think you can care deeply about a fetus, but it does mean that yes, I'm pretty damn confident I wouldn't feel the way you do about abortion. And without a rational argument for why I positively ought to feel like you do about it, you cannot tell me the way I feel is wrong.

For the record:

2. It causes great emotional pain to those who knew the dead, due to their memories of who the murdered was and the knowledge they can never meet them again. However, a fetus has never socialized with anyone; you can't miss someone who's lived their whole life in a womb in any meaningful sense except potentially if you're the mother, and seeing as in that case you're the one who's deciding to get an abortion, well...

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What I meant by this is that the only people in a position to ascribe value to this particular fetus (the parents; I only said 'mother' but yeah, I suppose the father can feel that way too) are the people deciding to get an abortion. Of course they can weigh that however they like, but if they do decide to get it, there isn't some outside moral principle that says it's wrong anyway.