Mr. Hume: The salience of abortion as a social-conservative issue has at least three components:
(1) As an aspect of the culture of permissiveness that persons of a conservative temperament deplore. Abortion “travels” by association with promiscuity, homosexuality, pot smoking, and the rest.
(2) Roe v. Wade as a judicial-usurpation issue.
(3) RC metaphysics (with Evangelicals tagging along for the ride) based on the concept of ensoulment. RC intellectuals throw up big clouds of squid ink here, but the underlying belief is plainly metaphysical. “God ensouled this creature. Abortion thwarts God’s will.”
Number 2 obviously wasn’t in play until 1973. Number 3 only really pushed to the front when RC intellectuals got to critical mass among conservative propagandists, which I think was ca. late 1980s. (I don’t have Damon Linker’s book to hand.) Prior to that, number 1 was pretty much it.
I don’t know how things were in the USA, but the abortion debate in Britain in the 1960s, which I followed closely, was all about class. Middle- and upper-class women could get comfortable abortions with little trouble, everyone knew that. Poor women couldn’t. This was unfair. The counter-view was Nixonian, based on antipathy to “permisiveness.”
The distaste for “permissiveness” in general was not dogmatic or ideological, and conservatives of Nixon’s generation were free to take any legislative position. Margaret Thatcher, for example, voted pro-choice.
And setting aside racial issues, abortion probably does have a eugenic aspect. If intelligence is considerably heritable — and the evidence seems to be that it is — and if it’s disproportionately the left-hand side of the bell curve that’s getting abortions — which seems likely — then abortion is eugenic. That logic seems to account for at least some of the enthusiasm for abortion among the authorities in Communist China, where wellnigh everybody takes eugenic ideas for granted.
It sounds awfully funny to say that abortion travels by association with homosexuality, since one thing sexually active (exclusive) homosexuals never have to worry about is unwanted pregnancy. I know what you’re getting at, but still … the dissonance is jarring.
I’m not so sure about what you’re getting at with it’s “the left-hand side of the bell curve that’s getting abortions.” As you mention, middle- and upper-class women could get abortions with little trouble in Britain. The same was true in the US, in most places where abortion was prohibited. Generally speaking, these are not the people on the left-hand side — generally, the latter were the women who had the most trouble getting abortions, and were the most likely to suffer the consequences of abortions gone wrong. At this point, the many relatively effective means of birth control available to middle- and upper-class women often obviates the need for an abortion, while the latter is more often a last-resort means of birth control for lower-class women who lack reliable access to the others, or lack the education to use them effectively. I don’t see how that implies a eugenic aspect specifically to abortion.
How do you not see it? If no abortions were being performed on poor women, they’d be having more babies. In a meritocracy, low intelligence and behavioral dysfunction are concentrated disproportionately among the poor. If those things are to any degree heritable, the effect of allowing abortion is eugenic. How is it not eugenic?
According to Dysgenics on Wikinfo:
Among a sample of women using a reliable form of birth control, success rates were related to IQ, with the percentages of high, medium and low IQ women having unwanted births during a three-year interval being 3%, 8% and 11%, respectively.[Urdry, Richard (1978). “Differential fertility by intelligence: the role of birth planning”. Social Biology 25: 10-14] Another study found that after an unwanted pregnancy has occurred, higher IQ couples are more likely to obtain abortions [Cohen, Joel (1971). “Legal abortions, socioeconomic status and measured intelligence in the United States”. Social Biology 18(1): 55-63]; and unmarried teenage girls who become pregnant are found to be more likely to carry their babies to term if they are doing poorly in school.[Olson, Lucy (1980). “Social and psychological correlates of pregnancy resolution among adolescent women: a review”. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry 50(3): 432-445]
From this data, it seems that high IQ people are more likely to have an abortion, so it might even be dysgenic from an IQ standpoint.
This could be true, but it doesn’t necessarily follow from the premises. Even if the left side of the bell curve is getting more abortions than the right, this still doesn’t strictly imply that the net decrease in fertility on the left side due to the availability of abortion is larger than the decrease on the right side. Suppose for example (just for the sake of the argument) that low IQ women who have abortions tend to eventually have nearly as many kids that they would have had anyway, while a smaller number of high IQ women abort accidental pregnancies that happen after they’ve already had their planned number of kids. The sum effect of these two patterns of behavior would be dysgenic, even though it would involve more abortions by low IQ than high IQ women, because removing the abortion option would increase the fertility of the latter more.
Of course, this is just a simple artificial counterexample that may or may not reflect any real-world trends. Still, I think that such scenarios are not entirely implausible, so without more data, it’s impossible to tell with certainty what the net effect is. It’s definitely very hard to make a reliable estimate of what the fertility without abortion would be ceteris paribus in different social categories. Just adding the present abortion rate to the birth rate is obviously not reliably accurate.
@Bradlaugh
A change toward more abortion among the low end certainly can be called eugenic, but I usually think of eugenic/dysgenic in terms of what’s happening at the top relative to the bottom. If high-end women were able to resort to abortion more often than low-end women before 1973, then that period would be called dysgenic in terms of abortion.
Well, the current period is ALSO dysgenic. Let me add two more sources I have to John’s showing that high-end women are currently more likely to turn to abortion, given a pregnancy:
1. “The most striking differences were that women who had an abortion were much more likely than others to have been rated good students at age 9-11 and to have well-educated mothers (odds ratios, 2.0 and 1.7, respectively).” (Early predictors of nonmarital first pregnancy and abortion. By: Udry JR, Kovenock J, Morris NM, Family Planning) Perspectives, 0014-7354, 1996 May-Jun, Vol. 28, Issue 3)
2. http://inductivist.blogspot.com/2009/02/abortion-is-dysgenic-national.html
By the way, birth control is also currently dysgenic.
I argue that genetic testing for desired offspring characteristics will make eugenic abortion widespread. I predict that at some point in the future most abortions will be for eugenic purposes – unless we just shift to IVF combined with pre-implantation genetic testing.
So the debate over abortion is going to shift. The shift will happen in less than 10 years due to advances in gene chips and genetic sequencing tech.
“3) RC metaphysics (with Evangelicals tagging along for the ride) based on the concept of ensoulment. RC intellectuals throw up big clouds of squid ink here, but the underlying belief is plainly metaphysical. ”God ensouled this creature. Abortion thwarts God’s will.”
A more accurate description of the argument would be as follows: The deliberate termination of the life of innocent human beings is always intrinsically evil. A conceptus (that is, a product of conception) is an innocent human being. Procured abortion destroys a conceptus. Therefore, procured abortion is always intrinsically evil and is not acceptable under any circumstances.
This is a deontological claim. I agree with Mr. Hume, who commented on an earlier thread of his that the pro-life movement at times uses consequentialist arguments to advance its’ claims. I posit that this is a tactical move, and that most members of the pro-life movement (certainly all Roman Catholic intellectuals) oppose it on fundamentally deontological grounds, even if they may employ consequentialist rhetoric/arguments in support of their viewpoint. This is simply due to the fact that in this day and age one is more likely to find sympathy from a wider range of people when arguing against abortion on consequentialist, rather than deontological grounds.
Bradlaugh – I take it you would agree that the murder of an adult human being is wrong. Since you deny the concept of ensoulment – you assert that ensoulment is some sort of oogedy-boogedy “metaphysical” claim, and furthermore that these mystical “metaphysical” claims are prima facie suspect/inadmissible in legal arguments (I would add moral arguments, but haven’t you said before that you view moral claims as meaningless and devoid of content?), then on what grounds would you claim that the murder of an adult member of the species homo sapiens is wrong?
For the record, I agree with Bradlaugh on the link between the homosexualists and the abortion lobby. See this NR article: Unnatural Alliance: Abortion and gay-marriage advocates share a basic goal.
“On the surface it is an unlikely coalition, but upon closer examination there is common ground. While the two groups are very different in their particular circumstances, the common denominator between the two agendas is sexual license. Homosexuals are often strong advocates of abortion not because they need access to it but because homosexual activists are driven by the same philosophy that drives abortion rights: sex without restrictions or consequences. The two groups share the same foundation and it is in an effort to fortify this foundation that the two are committed to each other.”
It doesn’t seem to me to be possible to sustain the American experiment while allowing the oxymoron of legal murder every aspect of society is becoming corrupted. And a culture that seeks economic vitality and is committed to global leadership requires citizens who can distinguish responsible, ordered liberty from the murderous consequences of anomic desire. The historical pattern points to something even more monstrous as we speak ‘slouching toward Bethlehem to be born’.
The only authentically unifying principle – the equal dignity of all human beings [John Locke Second Treatise on Government 1690
Chapter II: ‘Of the State of Nature’ Section 6.] is being exchanged for volunterism. But the debate isn’t had at the level of the wisdom of The Declaration of Independence. “created equal” “endowed with unalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”.
Do we extend the legal rights to unborn humans like we did to black humans as the Declaration insists? Have no illusions the question must be resolved in the affirmative or . . . well lets just say the legacy we leave will be nightmarish.
#3: Thanks for that. Also to Ron Guhname, who has a cross-post on this over at The Inductivist. I’d still bet that abortion is net-net eugenic, not dysgenic, but with nothing like so much confidence. There are plainly a lot of numbers to be crunched here, and I have no time to crunch them.
#6: I’m sure you’re right, Randall, and that there is a lot of voluntary eugenics in our future. How much headway it will make against state-sponsored dysgenics (i.e. via unfiltered mass immigration from regions of low-to-negative historical accomplishment), I would not venture to speculate.
#7: As you yourself noted — thereby answering your own question — I don’t use the word “wrong” with any meaning other than the consensual. Murder is a criminal offense, and I very much hope it will remain so.
#9: Since murder is illegal, “legal murder” is indeed an oxymoron, and has no referent in the actual world. This vitiates its rhetorical power, in my opinion (though not, I suppose, in yours). And if the Founders had intended embryos and fetuses to be included in the “created equal” business, they ought to have said so plainly. Since they did not, we must work out the legal status of e’s and f’s by consensus. As I think we have pretty much done.
Hmm, voluntary eugenics. Sounds like my neighbor. Gorgeous tall, thin redhead, hs class valedictorian, went to Rice and married a lawyer. She is going to have her fifth son in about a week. I doubt he will be her last. Old fashioned low tech eugenics.
“And if the Founders had intended embryos and fetuses to be included in the “created equal” business, they ought to have said so plainly. Since they did not, we must work out the legal status of e’s and f’s by consensus. As I think we have pretty much done.”
Uh, what consensus? Regardless of your position, the continuing discussion clearly demonstrates the profound lack of consensus. Sure you can argue as to what fraction are dissenters, but there is no consensus.
@Mike I.
What are “homosexualists”?
I think an interesting aspect of the gay rights movement (as it used to be known, or LGBTQ…XYZ movement, as it’s known in various configurations today) is how it has morphed from being closely aligned with the sexual revolution, which certainly included the abortion rights movement, to being almost monomaniacly focused on marriage and family today. The constant, unchanging undercurrent is the push for ending discrimination, but the emphasis has shifted radically, to the point where the connection between abortion rights and issues that motivate the most urgent and popular gay rights advocacy today is tenuous. It’s certainly not severed, but it is no where near as tight as it was 30 years ago, nor is it necessarily obvious to younger people. A few years ago, I was talking to a friend who is at least 15 years younger than me after he had been at the Gay Pride parade (in Portland, OR). He commented that some pro-choice group was marching and wondered, what on earth were they doing there? Granted, a woman probably would not have asked that question, but still …
Bradlaugh: All ‘men’ implies all individuals within the species homosapien. What else do you think the Founders intended?
‘Fetus’ and ’embryo’ like ‘elderly’ or ‘middle aged’ or ‘female’ are descriptive terms that don’t change the being’s ontological status. A person’s humaneness continues throughout all stages of development.
The abortion debate is over (thepublicdiscourse.com) it would be a good idea for conservative politics to show some leadership and accept the generations of moral legitimacy the party for life and human rights stands to gain on this – like the Democratic Party and the Civil Rights movement.
It is a no-brainer. The abortion regime is destined to fall or the US will fall.
The term homosexualist was, I believe, coined by Bradlaugh:
“A homosexualist is a type of ideologue — which means, someone who divides the human race into two fundamentally opposed categories, the Elect and the Damned, Lenin’s “Who” and “Whom.” For a homosexualist, the Elect are homosexuals and those who “celebrate” them, the Damned are homophobes like me, who, for various reasons, and with various intensities of feeling about the matter, decline to join in the celebrations.
As usual with ideologues, homosexualists make no distinctions among the Damned. Differences of degree cannot — must not! — be admitted. That would open up cracks in the ideological edifice, through which might seep the deadly poisons of charity, understanding, compassion, compromise, and the three dreaded h-words that act on the ideologue like garlic on a vampire: humanity, humility, and humor.”
As for your point about the switch between focusing its’ energies on furthering the ideology of the sexual revolution to pushing for an end to “discrimination,” that would largely be because the sexual revolution is basically over and victory has been achieved. Respect for traditional sexual ethics is at an all time low, and the number of individuals attempting seriously to live by it is even lower. So there really wouldn’t be much point for gay activists to spend much energy here.
Much as they may clamor for same-sex marriage and talk about wanting to start families, I’m frankly not buying it. In Denmark (which is extremely secular and, shall we say, un-homophobic), where gay marriage has been legal for several years now, the number of gays (as a percentage of the gay population) choosing to get married is extremely low – most of them don’t show any interest in it, and continue to be sexually promiscuous at staggeringly, breathtakingly high levels. Don’t expect the situation to be any different here in America.
“All men created equal”
Yeah, it was a long time ago, but the men who wrote that were not idiots. They knew people are not “created” at birth. They knew when and how a person is created. Interestingly, they avoided religious entanglement by referring to a “creator” in the document itself. That way nature and natural rights are asserted. It is a secular statement of universal rights.
My vague impression from news stories is that homosexual marriage is mainly a lesbian enthusiasm, in line with that cynical joke I’m sure we all know.**
On the “consensus” business: “consensus” is not “unanimity.” For 30 years now, any woman who wants an abortion in the USA has been able to get one without much difficulty. This will continue for the next 30 years. We’re at equilibrium — “consensus.”
(In fact over the next 30 yrs it will likely get even easier, as the eugenic considerations noted by Randall Parker kick in, and as the blatant eugenics of the Chinese, with their civilizationally-competitive implications, become more widely known.)
——
**In case anyone doesn’t:
Q. What does a lesbian bring to a second date?
A. A U-Haul.
Q. What does a gay guy bring to a second date?
A. Second date?
Dear Bradlaugh ! Dear participants of the discussion !
I am surprised that at this (supposedly secular) website nobody has yet mentioned the book by Steven Pinker “The Blank Slate. The modern denial of human nature”. That author discusses there (and disproves !, on the basis of secular positions) in detailed fashion, the three doctrines of the official Standard Social Science Model (SSSM). Those are: “the Blank Slate”, “the Noble Savage”, and “the Ghost in the Machine”, respectively. In particular, “the Ghost in the Machine” doctrine is exactly about the time moment of “ensoulment”, after which moment society is supposed to consider embryo as a person with “unalienable Rights”.
Dear participants of the discussion ! Why don’t you try to pursue here your polemics with Pinker ?
To the best of my understanding, esteemed Bradlaugh more or less agrees with Pinker, albeit may express his opinions in slightly different words *).
Anybody with a bit of mathematical culture understands: one can not operate with the notion of “infinite value” of anything, human life including. For example, a military commander has to make a decision: go this way and loose one soldier, or go that way and loose twenty soldiers. “Infinite value” of a life of that one soldier may be higher, as any infinity can, or may be lower, than other infinities **).
===============================
*) This reminds me a phrase ascribed to Woody Allen:
-I told him “Be fruitful and multiply”, but did it in slightly different words.
———————————————————
**) Dear Bradlaugh ! I leave it to you – to deal with transfinite numbers; those are above my pay grade.
It is less about rights for children before they are born than about women’s exaggerated sense of entitlement to special privilege and special rights. A friend once said to me that as soon as women got their rights, they set out to take away the rights of others. Women want all kinds of special consideration in hiring, in time off, recruitment, lower requirements in certain jobs, yet still want equal pay. It’s not that a baby’s right to live is infinite, but that women’s rights should be finite. As for rape, why does the kid get death penalty instead of the rapist? How is that justice? As for consensus, while it may not be the same as unanimity, it certainly requires more support than is currently evident. Just because dissenters are effectively thwarted does not mean you have consensus.
Dear “sg” ! Apparently you start with “The Blank Slate” assumption: whateveer genes the kid (child of rapist) has got, everything will be overritten by subsequent proper nurturing. I (being a married male with grown-up kids) would claim the right of a woman to make the decision, if she, on moral or whatever other grounds, wants or does not want such a child.
Respectfully yours, Florida resident.
Sorry for the typo: sould be “overwritten”.
Dear “sg” !
I personally disagree with the statement “All men created equal”, with all my deep respect to the founding document of our great country. For example, I was not created equal to Mozart, or to Einstein, or to James Watson (of DNA fame), or to Richard Feynman, or to my favorite, Isaac Newton, even accounting for me having probably more caring parents, than those great people had. I am OK, I am inspired that there were, and will be more of, such giants. I would agree with the formula “All men created with equal rights”.
YOur truly, F.r.
Manliness can be defined as the willingness to protect those who are in need or protection; so as I see it soldiers obeying a commander are defending their nation and its inhabitants, who without them would be defenseless. They choose to do their duty and may be killed and win their souls we would hope.
An unborn child, on the other hand, as in need of protection as a human can get, is more in the situation of unwanted untermensch (parasite, clump of cells, and other dehumanizing language). The vast majority occur because a woman has taken a blow to her self understanding and identity (plans, dreams, hopes etc) and believes things will go back to normal if she destroys her child.
Men have a duty to protect women and their children at this particularly vulnerable time, not pepper the country with outlets staffed with ghouls who profit from the killing.
Anyway there is no escape from the moral law, not many consider the wisdom of creating a generation of callous men and women who will soon have to make ‘decisions’ about the elderly – the ones responsible for promulgating this novel moral philosophy of ‘kill when convenient, but only in private and only the weak and defenseless’. Its not the end of the moral law its just the end of them.
As for inherent worth Florida resident our tradition teaches that we are equal in dignity before God but not equal in abilities. If we didn’t have inferior or superior abilities there would be no such thing as admiration. We have been given the understanding that we have duties towards God and others to make the most of our gifts; for our good and the good of other and to glorify God for the sake of others who don’t yet know Him or trust Him.
Dear Martin !
I respect wholeheartedly your beliefs and feelings. My only question is what goal are you pursuing by posting on a “secular” website ? Is this a goal of proselytizing ? I am OK with you having this goal; I mostly want you to give the account of it to yourself (not to me, I am OK with it).
Respectfully, Florida resident.
Florida is not ashamed of God like most parts of the world I understand. I’m from a place where His name is never mentioned. So your post was interesting from that respect.
I’m concerned about how to order our common life together, in our conversation you’ll find I take my premises seriously – the truth is a person, which can be known through reason alone. In my arguments I’ve argued from texts secularists should take as authoritative – if the arguments is poorly reasoned, show me. You may, but you musn’t expect me, to treat God as the mere conclusion to a syllogism. What you ask otherwise is that I leave my identity at the door.
Now as to my latest post; does the argument work?
Dear Martin !
First of all, I wish you and your loved ones the best. If “loved ones” for you include all humans, even better.
Second, I remember the discussion with a priest, who told me (aspiring scientist at the time): “You, scientists, you are studying the laws of Nature. It is OK. But do you know, Who gives these laws ?” I was very much satisfied with such a position of that priest. To the extent He, who gives the laws, and His priests, do not put limitations of the scientific questions I am asking about His laws of Nature, and on the answers I will find in the process of honest research, I am happy to work in science and have friendly relationships with His followers.
Your truly, Florida resident.
Florida resident,
Actually, I am not a “blank slatist”. Sure the kid has a greater genetic risk for criminality since his dad was a criminal. However in punishment for crimes, it is the perpetrator who should be punished, not the victim. I would be fine with your wife choosing the death penalty for the rapist. That would keep even more of his genes out of the gene pool and protect other men’s wives and daughters from being victims of rape. The kid is a victim in such a case. “All created equal” only refers to equality before the law. My point is that plenty of folks don’t want equality before the law. They want special privileges.
Dear “sg” ! I agree with your “that plenty of folks don’t want equality before the law. They want special privileges.”
Your F.r.
A common argument made in favor of legal abortion is that the mother does not have a responsibility to take care of the fetus. The fetus is using resources of the mother, and the mother is entitled to cut those resources off. (For some reason, though, this responsibility magically appears at birth.)
The counterargument is that the fetus implicitly has the mother’s consent. The two ways to become a parent today are to have sex and to adopt a child. In the future it will be possible to genetically engineer a child. In all three cases, the child is the product of a conscious choice of the woman. Therefore, by this argument, the mother really is responsible for the fetus, and may not kill it (assuming the fetus is a person, which I am not sure of).
However, with rape the situation is different. The woman did not choose to have a child, and therefore does not bear responsibility. In a very important sense, the child is not hers. Another reason to allow abortion in the case of rape is that you are rewarding the rapist in a Darwinian sense if you don’t allow it.
John abortion is the killing of an entirely innocent human being. The child should not be executed.
If a child is abandoned on the side of the road and passing by we are the only ones who can save her from a lonely death we are obligated to pick her up and take her to safety.
Similarly we must not abandon a child to execution in the womb. A quick google shows great men and women who are products of rape who will tell you to your face on youtube ‘look at me, I am the product of rape. Did I deserve to die?’
I repeat. All the public arguments have been made we either choose the right or the wrong side of history.
It seems everyone would like to make resolution of the abortion issue absolute one way or another. While that may be perfectly fine for any individual’s personal moral stance, it is not perfectly fine to make it a law.
Personally, I could have never had an abortion even if I had become pregnant through rape, as I agree that the child is also a victim. If I felt I could not emotionally give the child the love it deserved because of the circumstances of its conception, I would give it up for adoption.
That’s my personal moral decision for myself, but I do not have the right to impose my morals on others.
By making abortion legal, our society says there will not be legal penalties for the doctor providing the abortion. As far as I know in this country there has not been an outcry to penalize anyone other than the doctors.
Donna B. the State most definitely has an interest in the control of private application of lethal violence. Mafia hitmen would be delighted if the government were to adopt your moral reasoning. Your sentiments are found in that slogan ‘don’t like abortion? don’t have one’ we don’t find ‘don’t like slavery? don’t own one’ slogans persuasive today. The former slogan will seem as morally vicious soon.
Abortion corrupts everything it touches. If attitude determines whether a mother can mete out lethal violence on her unborn child, that same principle can be applied to toddlers when they become a nuisance. We find child abuse rising sharply. The same principle of autonomy of the will corrupts financial, political and legal decision making. Alexis De Tocqueville described the corrosive effect slavery had on all the virtues of the people of the south – it was dramatic.
Abortion is a central plank in the sexual revolution that has destroyed families especially the most vulnerable ones who are less able to withstand the chaotic effects of sexual license. Fatherlessness is endemic – and welfare costs have skyrocketed. Easy access to abortion has been horrific for women who now are routinely coerced to kill the evidence of sexual exploitation from dominant men. I could go on and on.
The bottom line is private sins have public effects and the State most certainly has an interest in the integrity of the nation’s social life, and the public confidence in its judicial arm.
Legal abortion in effect is the imposition by the State of an alien moral stance, one that was not in the mind of the Framers of the US or State Constitutions.
You should vigorously oppose the grave evil that abortion is – privately and publicly; just as you should oppose privately and publicly a moral stance that sought to privatize the morality of adult-child sexual acts.
@Martin
Abortion is a central plank in the sexual revolution that has destroyed families especially the most vulnerable ones who are less able to withstand the chaotic effects of sexual license. Fatherlessness is endemic – and welfare costs have skyrocketed. Easy access to abortion has been horrific for women who now are routinely coerced to kill the evidence of sexual exploitation from dominant men.
This is self-refuting, obviously fatherlessness is about live children not aborted fetuses.
The weird “transcendental” (*) logic of religitards strikes everywhere.
Finally, the article demonstrates that abortion or fetucide is not considered either murder or even killing of another human by most traditions, and that the penal status of abortion as sin, rather than crime, should be left to religions determination rather than governmental intervention.
In other words stick your God wherever you like and don’t impinge on other peoples freedom.
* – Or is it Neanderthal?
“Another reason to allow abortion in the case of rape is that you are rewarding the rapist in a Darwinian sense if you don’t allow it.”
Letting the rapist live gives him the opportunity to father even more children and win even bigger in the Darwinian sense.
If anyone deserves to die, it is the rapist.
Sure would be interesting to know the average number of children rapists father after their convictions. Just guessing but probably rapists collectively father more children after their convictions than they did as an act of rape. So the real impact on the gene pool isn’t kids fathered as a result of the crime of rape, rather as a result of the rapist fathering more children later.
Martin, women have been getting abortions for thousands of years. The procedure is much more efficient and less likely to kill the woman now, but it’s not new.
“If anyone deserves to die, it is the rapist.”
I would have no problem executing a serial rapist. For a single rape, I would favor a long jail term, which would have the side benefit of preventing him from having a kid during that time.
Currently, about 1% of the population is in jail. I wonder if there is any eugenic effect.
The abortion issue is particularly entertaining. Roe vs Wade is unlikely to be overturned before 2030 or 2040. The reason is that Obama will get at least 2, possibly 3 bites at the Apple. He will be replacing aging liberal justices (appointed during the 70’s) with younger liberal justices. His successor (assuming he is conservative as a result of the rotten economy, Obama being Carter II) will appoint younger conservatives who will replace the existing, aging conservatives. Thus, the current liberal/conservative balance in the Supreme Court is likely to remain unchanged for the next 20 years or so. Hence, Roe vs Wade is unlikely to be overturned.
In the very unlikely event that Roe vs. Wade is overturned, the issue simply becomes a state-level issue. Remember when the 55 MPH speed law was repealed in ’95? Same thing. Liberal states will keep abortion legal, conservative states will place more restrictions on it or even ban it in some cases (except for rape or incest), and California will make it mandatory. In reality, abortion will always be an option even in the most conservative states for women who have the means of interstate transportation.
As you can see, endless debates about abortion are rather silly.
@kurt9
Kurt9 it is important to recognise political impediments agreed, but equally important is to not use them as pretexts for doing nothing. The culture is moving inexorably toward the pro-life position because people are speaking out. You should too.
@Donna B.
DonnaB: individuals will continue to murder but we do not make it legal for this reason. People run red lights but we do not rescind traffic laws for this reason. The law is a moral teacher, many more abortions occur because it is legal. We owe it to mothers and fathers to build a preventative in the law for times when the temptation is their to take the seemingly easy but murderous route.
@Kevembuangga
Fatherlessness: A woman to herself “I didn’t intend conceiving, I don’t want the child I will have an abortion.”. The father to himself “I didn’t intend conceiving, I don’t want the child, she keeps the child against my wishes let her deal with it.”
The sexual ethic that relies on disposing and incinerating innocent victims of its application in the world may be glitter for a few who can indulge their appetites as if they were the French Aristocracy, but its trash for the majority. So I would ask you to refrain from making me and my people a mere means to your depravity. If you were serious about liberty you would want it for all humans. You seem to believe we are at liberty to kill innocent children – an horrific belief that is impinging on the freedoms of countless millions.
A religitard it seems to me might refer to someone who accepts a metaphysical position and, though it offends reason, insists others accommodate it. Lets look at abortion then:
The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology (6th Ed.)
(Keith Moore and T. V. N. Persaud, W. B. Sanders Company, Philadelphia, PA, 1998), which asserts:
“Human development is a continuous process that begins when an oocyte is fertilized by a sperm.” (page 2)
More to the point, the authors write:
“Human development begins at fertilization [with the joining of egg and sperm, which] form a single cell called a zygote. This highly specialized…cell marks the beginning of each of us as a unique individual.” (page 10)
The authors of another embryology textbook:
Human Embryology and Teratology (Third Ed.)
(Ronan O’Ramilly and Fabiola Muller (Willey-Liss, New York, NY, 2001), also state on page 8 that upon the completion of fertilization:
“a new, genetically distinct human organism is formed.”
So the pro-abortion position that a fetus is not human is anti-science; pro-abortionists maintain that a fetus at some arbitrary stage of development magically becomes human – this is a metaphysical claim, in principle unobservable and clearly against the empirical evidence. This position, therefore, does not reveal when a fetus becomes human but a personal preference for when we want to ACCEPT the child’s humanity. Abortion is therefore also anti-reason – it is the support of the killing of an innocent human and this is the absolute test case for rationality. If you do not know why it is wrong to take innocent human life then there is nothing I can say to you.
Consequently if anyone is worthy of the epithet – “religitard” it is the pro-abortion individual who holds irrational metaphysical beliefs about the unborn.
As for your article on tradition, faithful continuity with the Christian tradition includes using whatever resources are available to arrive at the truth, which includes modern embryology. You on the other hand find yourself in the position of supporting a hidebound traditionalism with respect to an abortion ruling that a large majority of legal scholars know was wrongly decided.
*Neanderthal? Scarily apt but your judgment is wholly inverted. An anti-science, anti-reason, and magical thinking pro-abortion position if generalized across the country would usher in a neo-stone age barbarism. (see demographicwinter.com)
Martin –
Briefly, you’re using ‘human’ and ‘humanity’ ambiguously when you argue that abortion is “anti-reason”. No pro-choicer denies that a fetus is biologically human, nor that it is (in most cases) genetically distinct. If we’re using ‘human’ in the biological sense, then it just is that pro-choicers “do not know why it is wrong to take innocent human life”. You’re relying on the metaphysical/moral meaning of ‘human’ in order to give this accusation rhetorical force, but this is the first time that you’ve used ‘human’ in this way in the argument. And obviously that’s the kind of humanity that we care about here – no one cares about biological humanity as such.
@Gotchaye
Human being is an intrinsically valuable because of the sort of thing it is and it remains the sort of thing it is as long as it exists. Even if it is not presently exhibiting functions, behaving in ways, or currently able to immediately exercise the activities we typically attribute to active and mature moral agents.
You seem to reject this equality throughout time of this intrinsic value. If you subscribe to the idea that intrinsic value can be acquired you encounter the problem that a person can be more or less intrinsically valuable – which is oxymoronic. You open yourself up to numerous reductios too. That is to say, guessing the functions and capabilities that would fulfill your criteria of intrinsic value creates in principle cases of the murder of adults. The coma example comes to mind and to preempt any objections, include varying levels of brain injury. This is enough to account for virtually all of the capacities and functions that would ground your belief of what constitutes ‘humanity’.
Being cheated out of an inheritance that I didn’t know I had whether I learned later or not, harms me.
Cheating a child out of life harms them.
Gotchaye: just pretend my post was literate. I was in a hurry.
To be clearer about our differing metaphysical positions:
A horse has the nature of horseyness, a cat catness. A foal has the capacity because of its inner nature to develop an ability to gallop at 30 mph, a kitten – to purr. They may both die before develop this ability but they remain a horse and cat respectively because they possess a particular nature. Similarly with us. When we were very young we lacked an ability to exercise the capacities inherent in our nature. Yet we were still human; and we remain now that same particular human we were in the womb.
Francis Beckwith puts it another way: a human being is ontologically prior to our parts, if you take away a part of what makes us up we are still human.
So if we are intrinsically valuable now, then we were intrinsically valuable in the womb.
Adopting a metaphysical position, however, that accepts humans have intrinsic value but that it is acquired, is contradictory. Adopting a purely materialist metaphysic leads to incoherence as the reductio ad absurdum of the comatose patient shows. That is, if a human deserves certain protections against Government, and against other people doing things to him against his will, and this desert is grounded in functions and abilities (like locomotion, desiring, reasoning, independence/autonomy etc) then a comatose patient will lose this protection when he loses these abilities – which is clearly unjust.
@Martin
There is nothing substantive that will happen on the abortion issue. Abortion will always be legal in the more liberal states. This will never change. The more conservative states will place restrictions on it, but will keep it legal for rape or incest even in the most conservative states in the union. For practical purposes, abortion will always be an option.
If you truly want to eliminate abortion, I believe the only way to go about doing this is to allow science to complete the separation of sex from reproduction. Except for vasectomy (males) and tubal ligation (females), which involve surgery, there is no 100% effective method of contraception. Free of any kind of regulatory or political interference, there is no doubt that technology will accomplish this. After such time, the abortion rate will drop to near zero.
There is no question that my wife would abort if she were raped and ended up pregnant as a result of that rape. We are happy with our lives as we live them now (no kids). It is inconceivable that we would allow the result of a violent, unwanted act to change our lives for the next 18-20 years. In any case, Plan B is the option in the event of a rape and it is available over the counter.
Why is a developed intrinsic value oxymoronic? You, I assume, believe that a sperm-egg system develops intrinsic value when the two begin to occupy the same space. We have a term for this sperm-egg-plus-locality system – it’s a (biological) human. But you’re still only granting intrinsic value to a system when it comes to meet certain requirements and not before, unless you’re going to defend “every sperm is sacred” or similar.
It’s also quite possible, if one is so inclined, to come up with a definition of personhood that includes coma patients but not fetuses. You seem to be assuming that pro-choicers are committed to determining personhood solely on the basis of facts about the present. Personhood doesn’t necessarily have to turn on and off like a light bulb on a pro-choice account – one could stipulate that a person is an object which (1) has at least some properties and (2) at one point had some larger set of properties. So a fetus might become a person when it achieves some moderate level of awareness and might later lose its personhood upon going brain-dead. There’s no need to require that the loss of the features that bestow personhood must cause personhood to be lost. This also keeps personhood binary, but, incidentally, I don’t see why differing levels of intrinsic value among individuals is oxymoronic.
Alternatively, depending on one’s views on time and obligation, you could go ahead and say that coma patients (or even people who are sleeping) aren’t actually persons, but that we’re obliged to the person who actually did exist before they went into a coma or fell asleep to treat their body with respect until such time as they “return” to it, and that, as conversational shorthand, we refer to the body as identical to the person. It’s not necessarily inconsistent to hold that we’re only obliged to respect the bodies of persons who have existed in the past, whereas fetuses will only exist as persons in the future.
Finally, I object to the identity of a fetus with a later individual. Yes, the fertilized egg developed into the later individual, but that later individual wasn’t determined by present facts about the fertilized egg. There’s the obvious point that, in the natural course of things, a fertilized egg (a genetically distinct human individual) can split and end up developing into two independent human beings. But in a deeper sense there are a multiplicity of possible individuals that any given fetus could develop into. Genes matter, but so does environment. I also don’t understand how you (if you) conclude that the same analysis doesn’t apply to eggs. Just like fetuses and foals, they have the capacity to develop into a particular sort of thing. Why is needing genetic input disqualifying for personhood but needing scads of material and environmental input not?
I have no problem with “person-hood” concepts of human identity.
@Gotchaye
An intrinsic property of a fertilized ovum is that it grows into something like you and me. Ova and sperm lack this intrinsic property. Sperm and egg don’t remain parts of the ‘system’ a new organic unity is formed, modern embryology affirms this. Something new has come into being, it hasn’t developed intrinsic value just as an object that has mass has not ‘developed’ that intrinsic property. The fertilized ovum is capable of self direction, acquiring nutrients from its surroundings is genetically distinct and has a independent nature. This seems to me to be a classic case of a meaningful distinction.
But I’m prepared to be dismantled at this point, a good place to start would be by showing me a meaningful distinction, in terms of morally relevant properties, that distinguish a newborn from a preborn.
Abortion advocate and philosopher Dean Stretton writes, “Any plausible pro-choice theory will have to deny newborns a full right to life. That’s counterintuitive”. Peter Singer also admits the arguments used to justify abortion work equally well to justify infanticide.
And if you resolutely wish to retain the idea that intrinsic value is acquired then, as Prof. Robert George writes, you “relegate ‘all men are created equal’ to the ash heap of history”.
The coma patient in our example cannot “return” to their prior identity because brain damage has destroyed memory and certain aspects of personality.
If an early embryo splits into two distinct humans how does that ground a claim that it is not a distinct whole living organism? If we cut two flatworms in two we get two flatworms. Two new people isn’t that great? All the more reason to look after it in the days prior to the seperation.
I’ve explained that genetic and cellular machinery constitute a meaningful difference between species and between the haploid cells that lead to its creation. To argue contingent geographical or historical conditions (environmental input) have a morally relevant effect on a child’s worth seems, to put it as charitably as possible, ad hoc.
You haven’t provided good reasons why we should adopt your metaphysical suppositions, but we have good historical and metaphysical reasons to retain our natural human rights traditions, and therefore we should work to ensure they are extended to the unborn.
Kurt9 your post took the form of typical apologia for slavery in the 19th century.
I don’t want to minimize the horror of rape, but what ought to exercise your thinking is if some other terrible misfortune were to occur, if you both are not disposed to charity then it may end up coming between you. An horrific event could in the end bring two people closer together because in crisis we see what the other is made of deep down. I don’t pretend that this habit of thought can just be given. Charity is the foundation of all the virtues and it exposes us to negative effects of life’s vicissitudes when we, out of a lack of charity, don’t give the benefit of the doubt to life.
It may seem like wisdom to kill a child that was the result of rape but you stand to lose unimaginable gifts http://johncwright.livejournal.com/180695.html?thread=5082071#t5082071
and the child herself could go on to greatness.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKrW7vP8W00&feature=PlayList&p=1798EB3818185481&index=2
It is not her fault, and we have duties towards her.
Anyway, abortion in cases of rape are a minuscule minority. And these hard cases are not reason to stop working for restriction on these procedures http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trP-52LQDTU&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.abort73.com%2Findex.php%3F%2Fabortion%2Fabortion_pictures&feature=player_embedded
@Martin
Your first paragraph is completely incoherent.
If my wife got pregnant as a result of a rape, we abort, period. We would never even consider having a kid as a result of rape. As it is, we don’t have kids and are perfectly happy with our lives. Since we don’t have kids by choice, there is no friggin way we are about to change the next 20 years of our plans and our lives to accommodate something we never wanted in the first place.
You’re simply unbelievable.
The person-hood concept of human identity make logical sense. People have memories, dreams, feelings, and goals. Such traits of personhood are what makes us special and unique. Other concepts of human life are just plain silly.
Anyways, I pro-choice. So, I don’t care what you think about the abortion issue.
Second paragraph you mean, yeah I could have edited that after my coffee, something to think about anyway. Gotta run best wishes.