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I think I am very unusual in the sense that I believe abortions should be tax-paid, free to everyone, and pregnancy tests should also be free.... BUT I also think abortion should be very limited, to something around the first **10 weeks** at most.
I've had both right and left leaning folks loose their shit over that. Always entertaining
@jbschirtzinger Yea there is a fair argument against such a cost to tax payers... generally I would agree with you here. But its the only ethical alternative I can think of that doesnt violate the rights of the mother or fetus.
@jbschirtzinger Thats exactly why a 10 week period was picked, since the fetus has no neurons yet it doesnt have rights. Once there are neurons forming (which happens around that time period) it has all the protections and rights... thats the point.
@jbschirtzinger – instead, focus on whether active agreement/disagreement is interesting and relevant (it isn't) – e.g. suppose you're in a coma and can't agree or disagree to anything. Is killing you at that point murder? What if you're likely to wake up soon?
@freemo
@freemo @jbschirtzinger Hmm, I thought it was useful, since it's an example of someone without a currently-functioning brain that we don't kill.
But maybe I'm not understanding exactly why not having neurons is significant for you.
The reason its not useful is that their brain may only be temporarily not functioning. It both stands a chance of recovering, and retaining previous expiernce.. A person without a brain is never waking up in their current state, and if they manage to grow a brain only once the brain is grown can it have any sort of thought or sensse of self or anything that makes a person a person in any meaningful sense (even if its a glimmer of it)
@freemo @jbschirtzinger "their brain may only be temporarily not functioning" And fetuses just temporarily don't have brains?
"A person without a brain is never waking up in their current state" Unless their brain starts growing. Like what happens usually with a fetus.
etc...
Right, not having a brain at all, and being able to grow one, is vastly different than having a brain, personality, memories, expiernces, and it is temporarily turned off.. not remotely comparable.. one exists and is in a domant state, one doesnt exist at all but may be able to be grown.
@freemo @jbschirtzinger "memories" – Whoa if we knew the coma guy was going to have total amnesia then would it be ok to murder him?
@ech Why do you take long lists of things that collectively prove a point, single out a single thing and think that if that one thing in the list is an exception it invalidates the whole list?
No, memories is one of many things I listed that having any combination of those has value, having absolutely none of those (or even a brain) does not... I do think you are trying to argue in good faith, but sometimes it doesnt feel like it.
@freemo I'd encourage you to be a little more flexible about what form an argument takes. Yes: I'm not doing a comprehensive take-down of your post with every post I write. That's ok, right? (There's a few reasons why I might not be doing that, not least of which is that we are basically just repeating ourselves over and over here in this thread. Memories was like the main *new* thing I noticed in your reply.) Or... do you want me to address something specifically?
I'm just trying to make a point about how the way you are arguing about fetuses isn't really consistent with how most people think about the idea of "killing is wrong". In this case, for example, nobody really thinks "killing is wrong" (or "murder should be illegal" or whatever) *because* the victim has *memories*. Not even "memories in combination with a list of other qualities".
@ech
Since we are talking about if killing is ethical if something doesnt have a brain im not sure your analogy is useful here.
@jbschirtzinger