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In most cases if the mother to be wishes to terminate the pregnancy she will do so either within the safe environment of a hospital where professional medical staff will be available, or by a back street butcher who will cause her great physical damage and lasting psychological trauma.
Those sanctimonious 'do-gooders' continue to squawk on parrot like about the immorality of abortions but turn a blind eye to the 1000s of women who suffer the deeply distressing experience of the back street butchers.
Personally, I and my wife will be choosing to not have abortions. But we do not think we or anyone else has the right to make that decision on behalf of all women everywhere.
But why does it end up being the women's right, it's another human being why does she get to end the baby's life. Why does any person for that matter decide wether a human lives or dies.
You disgust me , and what you said cannot be considered an argument.Do you think a 2 year old can think for itself? No thats why we have to look over it all the time ,and killing it is murder . And since a foetus is alive it cannot be a possession ( unless you miss the good old days of slavery)
I agree totally . Opponents of abortion seem to think they have the right to tell women what she can do with her body and whether they can abort or not , this is a form of tyranny .
I've gone on record as being pro choice and already sparred with the pro lifers in here.
What I'll add this time to what has already been said many many times is it is a serious tactical error of the right to keep coming after what has now been a woman's right for half a century. There are more women than men in the USA, and if the two choices for President in the last election hadn't both been abysmal you would have seen a more cohesive voting message from women. Your constant sniping to have their self determination taken away by old rich white men will ultimately bite you in your @sses. You don't believe me now. But go ahead, keep rolling those dice.
I'm 'pro-choice' but I disagree with this line of reasoning as a starting point. First it must be established whether or not fetuses' lives are worth protecting in the same way a fully grown human's life is. If the answer is yes then the mother's wants don't really figure into it much, the fetuses' rights would come first. It's kind of begging the question to talk about mothers' rights, when what matters first is whether the fetuses deserve rights. To talk about the mother's rights is to assume the fetus has no rights.
Once it is established that the fetus doesn't deserve rights then you can talk about the mother's rights. I don't think the fetus deserves rights, so after that It seems it should be the mother's decision, but I need to determine what the fetuses' rights are before worrying about what the mother's rights are.
I don't know, and you can read further down to the discussion about newborns below. I hope it will help to answer your question? I don't think it's a sudden jump though, rather a gradual increase in value of life. I think value of life is still relatively low as a newborn, but rises rapidly when their brain starts to develop. Also, I don't think true 'rights' exist, just legal ones, which you can ask a lawyer about.
It's common for pro-choicers to avoid saying, or considering when a life should hold value or have legal protection. Pro-lifers draw a line that their opposition considered too early. Pro-choicers tend to draw the line so late that it applies to the killing of babies and sometimes even young kids.
Rights are a philosophical concept upon which our legal structure is based, including our legal rights. You don't have the latter without the former.
If we were to use your conception of value of life, killing a newborn isn't as bad as killing a 10 year old, which in turn is not as bad as killing a 21 year old. If that view was widely adopted and applied, the results would be tragic.
Legal rights are determined by lawmakers, and don't depend on whether 'moral' rights exist. What determines non-legal rights?
"the results would be tragic."
Tragic doesn't mean wrong. And the difference in consciousness between a 10 yr old and a 21 yr old is much smaller than between a 10 yr old and a newborn. And something being 'not as bad' doesn't mean it's okay, so people still wouldn't kill people with less developed consciousness. I for example don't kill newborns. Read my response to WinstonC.
Legal rights are determined by lawmakers, and don't depend on whether 'moral' rights exist
Your statement implies they just make shit up on a whim. They don't. What do you suppose lawmakers base their laws on? How do they argue for them? Those are hypothetical. Lawmakers argue for laws on the basis of moral rights, which are then debated. Rights are a moral concept, the truth of which depends on nature, specifically human nature. Moral rights are the concept upon which legal rights are based.
Tragic doesn't mean wrong
In this case it does. You are wrong to think that killing a child is less of a wrong than killing an adult. It is tragic that I have to argue this.
If you are going to sit there and tell me a viable baby weeks from birth is any less deserving of rights than it is after traveling a few inches down that birth canal, then you are a complete moron!
The Democrat Party supports No Restriction abortions of all babies up to birth for any reason! When you vote for them, you are supporting the same because you are responsible for keeping it legal. Please don't insult our intelligence and claim you don't support late term abortions of viable babies if you vote for the Democrat Party.
If you care the least bit, call your Congress people and tell them you refuse to vote for them until they compromise with the GOP 20 week abortion limits (unless extreme cases).
"If you are going to sit there and tell me a viable baby weeks from birth is any less deserving of rights than it is after traveling a few inches down that birth canal, then you are a complete moron!"
I'm not saying that. I don't think that a newborn baby deserves rights anymore than a fetus, that is to say, neither of them deserve rights in my opinion. I'll ask you again; what is wrong with killing a newborn?
I'm going to abort all babies named Mack "just cause". It's a part of the new Brontoraptor cult. Well crap. Guess who doesn't get to be born. Pro choice means let me pick who I kill and why.*
Who cares if someone doesn't get to be born, they won't know about it. It doesn't matter if it's based on discrimination, who does it really affect other than the unborn, who doesn't care? So I ask again; what's wrong with that?
Thanks for answering the question using logic and reason (!)
FromWithin: "Logic and reason are the Devil!!!!! I much prefer frightening small children into submission with stories about how they are gong to hell if they don't do as I tell them!!"
Why, in your opinion, is it OK to kill a newborn baby and not OK to kill a fully grown human? This of course assumes that you think it isn't OK to kill an adult.
Obviously newborns are conscious lifeforms and therefore are equally deserving of life relative to any other lifeform.
Why, in your opinion, is it OK to kill a newborn baby and not OK to kill a fully grown human?
Stop being silly Winston. Firstly, a fetus is not a newborn baby. Secondly, as Bill Hicks once famously pointed out, "pro-life" Conservatives have no problem cutting your welfare as soon as you turn 18 and letting you starve.
You should probably read the context of a discussion before replying, we are talking about newborn babies, not foetuses.
"I'm not saying that. I don't think that a newborn baby deserves rights anymore than a fetus, that is to say, neither of them deserve rights in my opinion. I'll ask you again; what is wrong with killing a newborn?"
You should probably read the context of a discussion before replying
You stupid hypocritical moron. The title of the debate is "The decision to abort a baby should be made by the mother". Fetuses are aborted, not babies.
You're an idiot, Winston. It isn't my fault that you can't stick to a topic.
""I'm not saying that. I don't think that a newborn baby deserves rights anymore than a fetus, that is to say, neither of them deserve rights in my opinion. I'll ask you again; what is wrong with killing a newborn?""
Talking about newborn's rights to life in regards to this paragraph was clearly off topic. Quantumhead, you usually come with at least a few fallacies that are fun to debunk rather than just spewing your rage around, please return to this format.
I remember your smear campaign and persistent efforts to have Quantumhead's account banned very well. It's why I lost all respect for you, given that you have several alt accounts (eg. MarcusMoon) and are here complaining about his alleged use of alt accounts. Nobody should take you seriously after that thread. You demonstrate yourself to be a vicious, nasty little hypocrite who fabricates his own "evidence" against people who beat him in debates.
"Why, in your opinion, is it OK to kill a newborn baby and not OK to kill a fully grown human? This of course assumes that you think it isn't OK to kill an adult."
(Let's first assume that the killing of the newborn has no negative effects on anybody other than the newborn; nobody will miss them, etc)
A newborn baby seems to have very low levels of consciousness compared to a child or adult. They do have some consciousness, but it doesn't seem much different from many other non-human animals, say, my cat, and there's not necessarily very much wrong with killing an animal, provided you have a good reason. I think you would need a good reason to kill a newborn, same as with an animal - what that reason might be I'm not sure, would depend on the situation. I'll say something more about the reason here.
"Obviously newborns are conscious lifeforms and therefore are equally deserving of life relative to any other life form."
I'll dispute this, for reasons above. You might cite my earlier agreeing with you in the debate "Is it wrong to kill a spider or fly when you don't have to, and why?" but I think that my agreeing was more due to irrational empathy, projecting my level of consciousness on to things that don't have my level of consciousness, a spider for example. It explains why I would not want to kill a newborn myself, but doesn't show it to be morally wrong.
So why value things with higher levels of consciousness?
It's important to point out here that I am to a degree a moral nihilist, and don't actually think the act of killing an adult is objectively wrong (let's not debate that now though), so when I'm talking about what's 'right' or 'wrong' I'm going off of what others think those are defined as. I like the definition you used another time about causing net negative or net positive effects on conscious entities, so am kind of using this definition.
I would assign a weighting system to different levels of consciousness in beings. Then, going back to what a good reason for killing a newborn would be, I'd say that (taking weighting systems into account) the net positive effects on conscious entities would have to be higher then the net negative one. The thing is, with the weighting system, the net positive effect wouldn't have to be as high as if the entity being killed was an adult human, compared to if it was a newborn. In other words, it would be less wrong to kill a newborn.
I still have to answer my own question though: "So why value things with higher levels of consciousness?"
I'm not entirely sure, and need to think a little more. It might be arbitrary to value level of consciousness... I think you need to answer the same question though... Either all conscious entities are equally valuable, or they aren't. You said just before: "Obviously newborns are conscious lifeforms and therefore are equally deserving of life relative to any other life form."
But, in conflict with this, you've said before, in a few other arguments: "Eating meat is (at least in my view) necessary to a balanced diet, as such the humane slaughter of animals may not be morally wrong." (I realize you emphasized "may," but I think the question still stands) This implies you value human life more than animal life?
I don't know, it's getting confusing.
If this whole question interests you, feel free to look at my earlier debate: "Why is it wrong to kill a newborn baby? (If it is)," I don't think you participated in that one.
Phew! That was a long response to a short question.
I won't rehash old points about the relative significance of conscious experience (own experience relative to others experience) since we've discussed it extensively already.
I'm not entirely sure what you mean by levels of consciousness. I assume you mean greater self-awareness but I don't see how this changes the relative significance of their experiences. In actual fact I wouldn't be surprised if having lesser self-awareness made conscious experience more powerful (for both positive and negative experiences). The reason I postulate this is because when one is deep in thought they take themselves out of the moment. Further, if lower levels of consciousness don't allow for an understanding of the future as a concept, any suffering or pleasure may be interpreted as permanent in the moment.
I personally would grade conscious entities (as long as they are actually conscious) equally in regards to the significance of their experience. When one harms an ant or similar insect we can see it panic and flee erratically. They also seem to writhe in agony if the injury is severe. Now, this may indeed be solely instinct but I think we would have said the same thing about dogs if we didn't understand their brains as well as we do. I'm not 100% sure about insects as conscious beings though.
"So why value things with higher levels of consciousness?"
I personally believe we do this because humans are most defined by their intelligence and it is far easier to empathize with similar creatures. I feel that as people get older they become more thick skinned in regards to their own suffering, much like how skin becomes calloused over time. As such, I actually think that the suffering of a newborn may be greater than that of an adult when killed in the same way.
"But, in conflict with this, you've said before, in a few other arguments: "Eating meat is (at least in my view) necessary to a balanced diet, as such the humane slaughter of animals may not be morally wrong." (I realize you emphasized "may," but I think the question still stands) This implies you value human life more than animal life?"
You raise an interesting point, I don't think it's that I devalue animal life, it's more that I believe some amount of evil is necessary. I personally only eat free-range organic animal products and thus I feel I'm actually helping these animals that would otherwise be in factory farms. Also in some regards we do provide a quality of life that wouldn't be found in the wild, where these animals would be constantly at the mercy of predators. Perhaps I'm just trying to rationalize my actions but I've tried being vegetarian and it's just so hard to have a balanced diet, let alone keep fit.
I didn't quote you much because there seemed to be several overlapping themes and I didn't want to repeat myself but I did read everything. It's definitely a very confusing subject, there is just so much we as a species don't know in this domain.
Maybe an entity with higher levels of consciousness values it self more than one with lower levels of consciousness, which might increase its value? I value myself to a higher degree than a spider values himself, right?
Also, (I think we may have discussed this bit before, but...) the act of killing just ends all good and bad experiences of that entity, and isn't necessarily a negative or positive thing in and of itself - the killed entity doesn't care anymore, they're dead. This might mean that the only negative effect of killing is on those still alive, which changes things up a lot.
"Maybe an entity with higher levels of consciousness values it self more than one with lower levels of consciousness, which might increase its value? I value myself to a higher degree than a spider values himself, right?"
I don't know what value a spider places on itself though. In addition, does the spider have to be aware of the value of it's life for it's life to have value to itself? Like how one might not appreciate something until it's gone, they weren't aware of the value but it was still there.
"the act of killing just ends all good and bad experiences of that entity, and isn't necessarily a negative or positive thing in and of itself - the killed entity doesn't care anymore, they're dead. This might mean that the only negative effect of killing is on those still alive, which changes things up a lot."
As long as it's painless this is true, though I think existence itself has value. I'd rather exist than not exist, and I think this holds true for most beings. While killing them is alleviating whatever future suffering they might experience you are also robbing them of whatever future pleasures they would experience. Also, if the person would have had a positive impact on others it would be robbing these people of this too. I think we can all agree that when an entity has good reason to want to die (e.g. perpetual suffering with no possible recourse) this is a good thing to do. The same goes for an entity such as a serial killer who would provide net-harm. As such, I think the morality of killing depends on the situation. I personally think that the good generally outweighs the bad (and therefore killing generally will be an evil act). Further I believe that negative experience serves to punctuate positive experience in addition to providing problems to solve and opportunities for growth. However interestingly we do often see serial killers who resent life itself that think they are doing their victims a service by killing them.
I hope I explained by perspective well enough, also thank you for making me think about these things.
So maybe there's only something wrong with killing a conscious entity if the killed entity or some other conscious entity suffers in some way because of the killing, be it through direct pain or knowledge of impending doom to the victim, or some sort of suffering to others as a result of the killing, in other words a net negative experience to conscious entities (or reduces a net positive impact?). In these circumstances, painlessly killing a fetus (whether it's conscious or not) or killing a newborn, or a spider, or even an adult human is fine.
You say you'd rather exist than not exist, but that is only in this moment while you exist. While not existing you would no longer prefer to exist than not exist, as you would be incapable of having a preference.
"So maybe there's only something wrong with killing a conscious entity if the killed entity or some other conscious entity suffers in some way because of the killing, be it through direct pain or knowledge of impending doom to the victim, or some sort of suffering to others as a result of the killing, in other words a net negative experience to conscious entities (or reduces a net positive impact?)."
Since I believe that in general the positives of existence outweigh the negatives, for the reasons outlined above, this isn't the case. Existence itself generally appears to bestow a net positive effect on conscious entities.
"You say you'd rather exist than not exist, but that is only in this moment while you exist. While not existing you would no longer prefer to exist than not exist, as you would be incapable of having a preference."
This was part of the point I went on to: that existence seems to be balanced towards positivity rather than negativity or neutrality. While there are beings resentful of existence itself these are the vast minority. Everything else desires to exist, presumably because like me they perceive existence as balanced to the positive.
Interestingly you've raised a point I hadn't thought of because I believe it to be immoral to unnecessarily steal even a neutral existence from an unwilling subject. If the other conscious entity desires to live and experience it should be permitted to. As such, forcefully taking away a conscious entities ability to experience (in and of itself) is a net negative impact on that conscious entity.
To kill somebody free of suffering to them isn't a negative effect to their level of enjoyment of life. I picture it as if a moving car immediately comes to a stop, and the distance traveled is total positive or negative experience. Stopping the car has no effect on distance traveled - before the instant stop and after the instant stop the distance traveled remains unchanged, only velocity and acceleration (and some other things) have changed. Velocity here would be current level of enjoyment/suffering. Especially since they don't know or care that they are dead, you're only taking away future positive experiences, and sure they wouldn't like the idea of that before death, but after death it doesn't matter to them, so what's wrong with it?
It doesn't matter that they don't want to die, because as soon as they die, they no longer 'don't want to die.' A net negative experience would require something bad happening to them that they experience. If they don't 'experience' their death then it's not negative to them in any way. You have to be alive to have a net negative experience.
"If the other conscious entity desires to live and experience it should be permitted to. As such, forcefully taking away a conscious entities ability to experience (in and of itself) is a net negative impact on that conscious entity."
I don't mean a net negative solely in terms of experience, but a net negative impact in general. I think we can both agree that forcibly taking away a conscious entity's consciousness has a negative impact on that conscious entity (viewed in isolation). It desired to continue to exist, yet we forced it to cease to exist. Now, if that entity was going to live a life of horrific suffering I can see some justification but in and of itself forcefully taking away another entities consciousness is a negative effect on that entity.
"What's wrong with killing a newborn" what's wrong with it is that it is a human. Why does any person decide wether it should live or die. Any human deserves the same right as another we are all equal, it doesnt matter how old you are how smart you are or even the color of your skin you are a human being and you have the right to live as any other, and no one should have the right to take living away from you.
Those are all just assertions. What I find interesting is that the google definition for human being (not that google's definitions are an authority or anything) is as follows:
"a man, woman, or child of the species Homo sapiens, distinguished from other animals by superior mental development, power of articulate speech, and upright stance."
Neither a newborn nor a fetus matches this description, they aren't distinguished from other animals.
Thank you for demonstrating a more complex (and less hysterical) way to approach the problem.
I think the worst part of the whole question is the use of the terms pro-choice and pro-life, as if we all do not value both life and choice.
This false dichotomy sets the tone for everything that comes after, with all the yelling about rights. The problem is that there is so much more to it all than rights.
Problematically, too many people seem to think all "bad" things should be illegal and all good things should be required, as if people are incapable of making moral/ethical choices independent of a legal system.
I am not in favor of making abortion illegal, largely because people should own our own meat for purely practical reasons. Whenever the government gets involved in personal choices about drugs, health, etc., it makes complex mess of something it is not equipped to control. It can only punish after the fact, and that is ineffective, as anyone knows who has raised a teenager.
I am generally against abortions because they are wasteful in the worst way, and they are too often used as a substitute for conscious and careful life-planning. We all benefit when those around us live examined and purposeful lives.
This is what pro abortion supporters do to deceive the pubic and hide the inhumanity of their policies.
1) Steer the abortion conversation to life of mother and rape pregnancies. Talk about a red hearing yet this is the first thing these pro choice people will do. The GOP has allowed these exceptions since abortion was legalized yet we still hear every day from the talking heads in the Democrat party about these extreme rare cases. Lie, deceive, exaggerate, etc. all to condition the electorate to think the GOP will deny these extreme case abortions.(by the way, rape pregnancies can be prevented from day after pills that prevent conception)
2) The next thing they do is talk about the medical name of an unborn Baby..... Fetus. By using the name Fetus, they somehow believe it changes the status of the life growing inside the mother. Somehow in their twisted thinking, a Baby that has not yet traveled through the birth canal is somehow different than it is after it is has moved down that canal. WOW, TALK ABOUT DENIAL!
3) Next they will talk about how a decision to take another innocent life is the right of a mother. They refuse to admt there are TWO lives involved, not just the mothers.
They say law makers should not make laws to protect the life of even viable babies. These Pro abortion hypocrites love it when law makers create laws protecting their selfish lives.
But when it comes to supporting an innocent baby that you created by choosing to have unprotected sex, you scream, keep it legal to kill the baby so I don't have to be inconvienenced by my own choices!
4) When people vote for those on the Left, they are supporting late term abortions of viable babies where the baby most definitely feels pain. The GOP has tried a number of times to prevent abortions past 20 weeks(unless extreme cases) only to have the Democrat party stop them each time. The Left has deemed that viable special needs babies(Down Syndrome) do not deserve the same rights as we so called "normal" people.
5) The next thing they do is talk about the supposed hard life these unwanted children will have if we allow them to live. So in all their God like powers, they know the future of every Baby aborted? How many great people have come from poverty or foster homes, etc.? To be so arrogant to allow the deaths of innocent life because of some perceived hard life is beyond diabolical. That's like the Nazi mentality where we only want blond haired blue eyed people being born in Germany. In all their arrogance, they will deem who is deservng of life. To all the special needs kids? Your lives are not as valuable to many pro abortion people.
6) The next thing some pro choice people say is that they do not personally believe in abortion, but would afford other's the choice to end the lives of their unborn Babies. Gee, how nice of them. I always wonder how a person who personally believes that aborting his own Baby is wrong because it is ending a human life, can support allowing other babies to be killed. HYPOCRITE PHONEY!
7) After all the scare tactics and deceptions, their next step is to lie and say they do not support late term abortions for any reason. But when you show them that the Democrat party has become so radical to even support allowing a late term Baby born alive from a botched abortion to die, they are finally silent because even they can not come up with an excuse for such inhumanity and the fact that they elect these people.
I am not here trying to judge any woman who has had an abortion. I am speaking for the millons of future lives that the Left will continue to sacrifice, all under the notion they are burdens to society. I've heard many people (racists) who bring up the great many Black Babies that would be born were it not for abortions. WOW! I think the support of abortions quite often has racist over tones.
There can be no excuse for taking an innocent life other than rare extreme cases. Our culture is dieing from such little respect for innocent human life. There are absolutely millions of parents waiting to adopt these unwanted babies.
Name one thing you think the government has done right. Why do you think the government won't screw up the extreme case part of the restriction that you propose?
The Left has already slid into the gutter whereby ALL babies up to birth can be killed for any reason. So therefore with their own laws today, yes, if Gays were born that way, they could be eliminated on any basis they choose.
I wonder if Gay people would keep voting for Democrats who supported killing them for being different.
In some cultures, females are disproportionately aborted because females are less valued.
Bronto is providing a hypothetical wherein the genetic predisposition to homosexuality can be detected. In this case, is it ok to abort a child who is highly likely to be gay, for the reason that they will be gay?
The decision to abort a baby should be made by the mother. Not male lawmakers.
This is just to rich you Leftist don't want lawmakers making a decision about abortion but you want lawmakers to control your healthcare. So where do you stand on any situation ?
Leftist are conflicted and confused on any and all issues.
I'm fascinated that the left tells us there are no genders and/or you can change genders, and then use the term "male lawmakers". If they all got a sex change, the left's vision of reality would explode.
The foetus is a seperate human being , it is not like some parasite who just decided to grow in a womans stomach. It is alive , so killing it is murder and should be pinished
