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I consider the baby becoming a person once they're born. Once they take that first breath on their own. Killing after birth is just murder. That principle of mine goes for partial-birth and trimester.
Your view has absurd implications. Partial birth is so called because the kid isn't exactly "born" yet, and in these abortions only enough of the body is exposed to kill it. Does this mean you consider it partially murder? Moreover, you're OK with killing a viable fetus (because it's not yet born) but if the mother has it removed from her uterus first, then killing that same fetus is murder? Why should birth have such moral significance?
Us liberal folk have the bad habit of dismissing that otherwise good point with "who in their right mind gets an abortion at the third trimester?!"
The point where the fetus could survive induced birth. That is the point where the reasons that abortion are justifiable trickle away - if the woman wants the child out of her, they could just induce birth, get it out of her alive, and call it a day.
For the progression and survival of the human race, it is probably better we jail/execute the murderer/murderers. It is counter productive to the human race to support murder.
Here's Wikipedia:
I consider a conscious human body to be meaningful. If the human's brain hasn't developed enough to attain full consciousness, then abortion is fine as far as I'm concerned.
This is exactly how I see it. People should be taking responsibility for their actions, not getting away with poor choices.
I think this is fallacious reasoning. Assuming the action in question has no external consequences (so as to disqualify things that can actually hurt other people), what's wrong with getting away with a poor decision in and of itself? In situations like this, the consequence itself is the entire reason it's considered a poor decision, but if we have a way to safeguard people from such consequences, the actions themselves become effectively neutral (so to speak) and so what reason is there then to want to discourage those actions?
Well written response, you have a way with words.
But if we use that reasoning and apply it to a fetus, doesn't that mean we could also apply to ANY for of potential life? As in each individual sperm or egg
Meaning contraception is murder? Yep welcome to Catholic dogma. (I wasn't necessarily advocating the position just putting it out there.)
This is an interesting point that I don't think anyone has brought up before, but I think that the problem with this is that you're trying to conflate what we are biologically, and who we are individually.
A baby is fully developed by 24 weeks, and abortion is illegal by week 24. What differentiates a non fully formed (by non fully formed I mean they're fully developed in the womb) and a fully formed baby is just that, that one's completely formed and one isn't. If we were to say that a non fully formed baby is a potential life and that it should be treated equal as an actual life, then you could say that each individual sperm and egg are a potential life deserving of the chance to live.
This isn't always the case, in some cases condoms break, or they didn't even agree to having sex. I'm referencing when someone forces someone to have sex without permission not saying the actual word since smashboards censors it.
It's not just that though. In a lot of cases it leads to people having horrible lives because a lot of people getting abortions are people who can't afford to take care of the baby or don't have a person around to take care of it for them. So it leads to parents struggling to support their kids, and sometimes unsuccessfully, and it also leads to a lot of people getting on welfare and putting pressure on the government to take of them.
The reason is that we have autonomy and we can make decisions for ourselves. There are also a lot of scientific studies that our conciousness could (partly) be a byproduct of our senses which is where we get this confidence, you can understand you own reasoning you don't just come up with things. This is also where we get secularism and morality on a societal level. Also, in a lot of religions it is said that God gave us the ability to choose what we become and free-will to think for ourselves.
Are you suggesting individuals exist apart from their biology?
Fully developed according to what standard? Their lungs, teeth, taste buds, eyes, hair, fingernails, fat stores and virtually every vital organ are underdeveloped by week 24. Without the assistance of extremely advanced neonatal technology, they would surely die outside of the womb within 24 hours and if they don't die, they are far more likely to experience cognitive and physical developmental issues that otherwise would not have plagued them had they been carried through the full term of their mother's pregnancy.
See above.
Fortunately, this isn't my argument. Rather, my contention is that the moment of conception is the moment a human life is born, not a potential human life, an actual human life. Individual sperm and eggs cells are missing vital genetic information that distinguishes an individual human being from a mere gamete.
Using any type of contraception is always a measured risk, as no method guarantees 100% success. Thus, my statement holds true as they are consenting in full knowledge that their actions can lead to pregnancy. If this weren't the case, they wouldn't take premeditated measures to decrease the risk.
While I agree that this is a categorical exception, it seems somewhat ironic to use it as a defense for abortion. If a woman conceives after being overpowered and violated against her will, unable to defend herself or alter the reality of the violation, is her decision to terminate the life she carries any more ethical when she is violating the will of the child thriving in her womb? In saying, "What I want comes first, no matter the cost, no matter the toll it takes on another human's life" is she not adopting the same philosophy as the person who violated her? Is a human's inability to come to their own defense a genuine criterion for their disqualification as a person and subsequent termination?
According to the nation-wide Finland study I cited earlier, women who had abortions were three times more likely to commit suicide compared to the general population and six times more likely than women who gave birth, so arguing that abortions somehow contribute to a greater quality of life is verifiably false when the freedom promised through the abortion procedure frequently acts as the very snare that exacerbates and ultimately destroys a person's life completely.
If people are unable to raise their children properly while simultaneously being unwilling to place them into an adoptive family that can provide for basic necessities, the ethical choice is to remain celibate and/or undergo sterilization, not to destroy their offspring to maintain a hedonistic lifestyle free of responsibility.
We have autonomy by degrees, from conception to death. None of us are ever fully autonomous, none of us ever make decisions in a vacuum outside of external influencing factors. So, even the smallest measure of autonomy or decision making ability is sufficient in distinguishing a clump of cells from a human being. Thus, when a zygote continually demonstrates its will to live by independently (that is, apart from any conscious decision making of the mother or father) replicating, absorbing nutrients and rendering increasingly complex sequences of genetic code into proteins, lipids and other basic building blocks that directly impact its cognitive and physical development, trying to strip it of its autonomy makes no sense.
Yes, but our senses are derived from genetic precursors which are derived from chemical precursors which are derived from atomic precursors which are derived from natural laws. The $64,000 question is this: did those natural laws spontaneously emerge from NOTHING, as some seem to suggest, or were they the product of intelligent, conscious, willful effort to create a universe that generated and sustained life?
You cannot invoke God as the source of our existence or consciousness without also invoking him as the source of our morality. If God exists, then only His determination of whether or not abortion is a ethical matters and any attempt to answer this question independent of God's wisdom is obsolete.
Assuming of course god even knows what he's talking about. Many would contend he doesn't, but that's neither here nor there.
I'm interested in exploring defensible arguments, not emotionally charged opinions. If a person contends that God doesn't know what he's talking about, the burden is on them to demonstrate the incoherence of His divine character.
The majority of my arguments have nothing to do with theism, focusing instead on the porous and/or unsubstantiated premises undergirding the pro-choice arguments, stretching them to their logical conclusions and highlighting the inconsistencies and contradictions that organically arise from maintaining those positions.
This has absolutely nothing to do with the veracity of my arguments. Rather, it is a reflection of the entrenched anti-theistic bias permeating the hearts and minds of those who claim to follow the evidence. Even the arguments I've made that hinge on God's existence are propositional in nature, qualifying their claims with "if/then" statements that account for the potential for God's non-existence multiple times and point to the ethical dilemmas that arise as a result of secularism being true.
Because it's an issue of assigning value, something science doesn't necessarily deal in. The overwhelming majority of your argument can be outright dismissed with the simple admission that the life of the fetus is simply valued less than that of the mother's.
Selling your mule to buy a plow, I see. If value is in the eye of the beholder and has no objective, transcendent quality to it, is not every competing worldview equally valuable?
This is literally the exact same reasoning used by jihadists who justify beheading infidels, whose lives they consider as valuable as an animal being butchered for its meat. Simply replace "life of the fetus" with "life of the infidel" and "that of the mother's" with "that of the believer."
Indeed. Nazis considered Jews distinct entities from their so-called master Aryan race. Does this justify the Holocaust in your mind?
What makes any of those criteria genuine measures of value?
Uh, no. Value ≠ worldview. Those are different words. Extremely different words.
Two things:
It's not that they're "genuine" measures of value - it's that we're being asked to make a value judgement predicated on eliminating or minimizing suffering. My criteria do a better job of that.
How can one establish what is objectively valid or correct with regard to ethics without first establishing what is objectively valuable?
Harm and benefit are no less subjective than good, bad, ethical or unethical.
Down the rabbit hole we go. You seem to be missing the point, despite repeatedly having to shift the goal posts of your argument. If value is subjective then it logically follows that assigning value is also subjective. One cannot assign value without first believing in the subjective value of their value-designation scheme.
Wrong, we're being asked to make a value judgment predicated on whether abortion is ethical. Not only is your contention that ethical decisions necessarily eliminate or minimize suffering completely subjective, but suffering itself is completely subjective.
"Objectively valuable" literally doesn't make sense - it's an incoherent concept. Something only is valuable if someone external values it. "Value" is not an intrinsic property of something.
No they're not. You have a central nervous system, no? Pain and pleasure, emotional and physical, are tangibly felt and to an extent can be measured. They may vary from person to person, but they're not subjective.
You have it backwards. The point is to attempt to start from somewhere objective and make value judgments thusly.
So if your ethics aren't built on maximizing human well being, what are they based on? This is a genuine question by the way, not some dumb, rhetorical "gotcha" question.
Well for starters, how about you demonstrate a direct causal link between abortion in a vacuum (lolpun) and suicide. Because your link only remarked on the association but never identified the cause. There are a number of different potential factors. Not to mention, for what it's worth, the results were taken from a sample population in the late 80's-late 90's. Something more modern might be in order.
Funnily enough I was actually gonna include this in my previous post.
This is my point. In the same way, something is only considered valid if someone externally validates it. In both instances, the object requires participation of the subject to arrive at any meaningful conclusion about its existence.
Only something outside of the system can ever prove its consistency, or in the case of our discussion, its value. Thus, only the creator of the system itself can say whether or not it's intrinsically valuable. Since you are neither the author nor creator of humanity, your determination of whether human life is intrinsically valuable is null and void. If God is the source of objective reality than His determination of something's value is, by definition, objective as His omniscience requires no external reference point.
Pain and pleasure are not interchangeable with harm and benefit, so your point is moot. For example, the famous Vietnamese monk who self-immolated not only subjectively experienced pain in a much different way than the vast majority of human beings due to his immense mental toughness, but even if we allow for an excruciating amount of pain, the fact remains that he still considered it more beneficial to burn himself alive regardless of the suffering he would have to endure.
I grasp this point just fine. My issue is with your repeated failure/refusal to demonstrate how one can ever determine an objective starting point.
Sacrificial love.
You're avoiding the question. Attempting to pick apart my one example (I could provide many more, if you'd like) does nothing to substantiate your claim.
You have to first prove it's "their own" body. As I pointed out in my initial post, the sum and substance of who they are precedes their existence, so trying to claim ownership of atoms, cells and genetic material that preexist you makes little sense. We are the intellectual property of whatever created us.
This assumes that the unborn child isn't a person, when you've already indicated it is. Their physical development is irrelevant to their categorical distinction as a human being. Thus, according to your own criteria, abortion is a moral issue.
At least you're consistent.
While I agree in principle, it's worth pointing out that this "ludicrous" idea was compelling enough to lead an entire nation into war with the world. The fact of the matter is that Nazism was the political manifestation of Nihilism, which embraced wholeheartedly the notion that strength is the ultimate good and weakness the ultimate evil that must be purged. "Strength" and "weakness" can't be proven false because the very definition of what is weak or strong is completely subjective. Unless you are able to anchor your values in something objectively true, you can't refute their arguments, you can only reject them as a violation of your own subjective principles.
In order for a pragmatist's arguments not be steeped in relativism, they must know that which is objectively true in all realms of knowledge otherwise there is no objective basis by which to measure success, let alone define what constitutes practicality.
