Just learned that today is National Sanctity of Human Life Day, designated by Ronald Reagan to be the closest Sunday to the anniversary of Rowe vs Wade.
As a vegan and someone who cares about suffering, I can understand why this is a subject people feel strongly about. However, I believe that a baby who is born unwanted will suffer immensely throughout their life.
Life can be enjoyable, but it can also be tragic. Birthing people into tragedy is inhumane, as there will be few opportunities to escape that tragedy. Unwanted children will struggle to survive, and many will turn to a life of crime and ultimately be another body count in our overflowing corrupt prison system.
Because I care about suffering, I believe in euthanasia. Euthanasia is tricky because emotionally it always feels very, very wrong. But when viewed from a utilitarian standpoint, it can often be better to end the suffering. This is a subject I believe we have to be very real about.
Before someone mentions it, yes, I think there's a decent argument in favor of us ALL being euthanized (just, without discrimination). I'm too optimistic to dwell on this very much, but euthanization can at least be agreed upon in the most severe cases. I believe that unwanted babies are a severe case.
(I intentionally left out feminist arguments from this post because I wanted to say something different, but I understand and very much agree with them.)
Conservative: think of the baby!
Feminist: think of the mother!
me: euthanize the baby for the baby's own good
🔵
@alex I disagree that killing somebody does them any good.
@Hierophant @realcaseyrollins @alex The 2 fetuses that my wife had a few years ago would beg to differ.
@ned @Hierophant @alex Why do you say that?
@realcaseyrollins @ned @Hierophant @alex
The point is that the 1st Trimester abortions, which are by far the most common (~94% in Florida, according to the stats the state releases every year, and most states are probably similar) isn't even a fetus usually. Until week 10 it's an embryo, and doesn't even remotely resemble something you could call a baby.
I forget the exact week, but it's not until the second trimester that it develops the capacity to feel pain. So in most cases you're talking about something with no consciousness, no capacity to feel pain, no emotions, etc. Yes, it may eventually turn into a human, but when abortions usually happen, it isn't.
@dsteele713 @realcaseyrollins @Hierophant @alex Why do you care if it's called fetus/embryo/baby? Are you trying to justify the idea of abortion to yourself? I'm not against it. I'n fact I'm all for people getting an abortion as soon as possible if that is what they want to do.
But I am against people trying to pretend that something that has potential to be human, isn't human. But I guess we all do what we need to do to give ourselves moral self-licencing.
@ned @realcaseyrollins @Hierophant @alex I "care" because calling the clump of cells that is an embryo a baby, or implying that it's at all morally comparable to killing an actual baby, is something pro-lifers do quite frequently. I don't think it's as common anymore, but you also used to see them showing pictures of a fetus much further along in development and claiming that's what it looks like at 2-3 months.
And it's obnoxious and wrong. It's not about "convincing myself", it's about being objective with regards to the impact that the different stages of development have on the ethics of abortion.
@dsteele713 @ned @Hierophant @alex
If it's just a clump of cells, why does it have completely different DNA from the mother?
@dsteele713 @ned @Hierophant @alex
Why is it fine to kill a human with unique DNA?
@realcaseyrollins @ned @Hierophant @alex
Every living organism has unique DNA (or RNA for the simpler ones), regardless of how sentient the organism is, or isn't. The thousands of insects that get splattered every time you go on a road trip all had unique DNA. Why aren't we shedding tears for them? Why do you think having "unique DNA" is supposed to make something special?
@dsteele713 @ned @Hierophant @alex
That life isn't human. I value human life over non-human life.
@realcaseyrollins @ned @Hierophant @alex
Cool, so do I, which is why I give the abortion debate more thought than I would for other things.
But part of that means valuing the life of the parents that are gonna be raising that kid for the next 18+ years. An unwanted kid is miserable for the parents, and the kid that's more likely to be neglected, more likely to grow up in poverty given how financial circumstances are a large part of the motivation for many abortions, more likely to grow up with a single mother since the father leaving is another one of the motivations for abortion, etc.
With one option, you've got the termination of an embryo or fetus that, in the vast majority of cases, has no capacity to feel it and doesn't even suffer. In the cases where the fetus is developed enough to feel it, abortions at that stage are usually only authorized in the case of a developmental abnormality or threat to the health of the mother.
With the other option, you've got a kid that the parent(s) don't want or can't afford. This option leads to more suffering.
@dsteele713 @ned @Hierophant @alex
"This person is going to be a nuisance" or "this person's gonna have a sad life" isn't a viable reason to kill someone.
That would never hold up in court.
@realcaseyrollins
What part of the "a fetus doesn't suffer" do you not get? Murder is wrong because it causes pain and suffering for the victim and anyone close to them. The two situations aren't even remotely comparable from a moral/ethics perspective, because in the vast majority of cases you're talking about something that isn't sentient and doesn't suffer.
@dsteele713 Okay so I guess if I numb and paralyze somebody it's fine to kill them?
"Pain and suffering" isn't the reason why murder is wrong. Otherwise, killing somebody in their sleep should be legal.
@realcaseyrollins No, it wouldn't be legal. Killing someone hurts the people around them, too. Families go bankrupt, people fall into depression, etc.
More importantly, pain and suffering may not be the *only* reason, but it is a large part of the reason. And the reasons we assign value to human life, and punish the act of killing, don't apply to a fetus.
This conversation is getting tedious, and going nowhere, so I'm bowing out.
@dsteele713 @realcaseyrollins I think it's still up for debate whether the fetus suffers and at what point. I've seen some sources say 12 weeks but it's possibly fewer. In general I'm agreeing with David but I chose to assume the fetus suffers in my original post.
@alex @dsteele713 From what I have heard, it's after 20 weeks. I've heard it said by some that it's before that, but haven't had time to verify that.
Still, I don't think painful murder is ethical.
@dsteele713 @realcaseyrollins Agreed, but I think even the insects have moral value. Trees are a better comparison, they're not sentient at all.
@realcaseyrollins @dsteele713 At first I read this as "why does the child have different DNA than the father?" and I was about to go full Maury.
@realcaseyrollins @ned @Hierophant @alex
I'm not sure if you think there's supposed to be some deeper meaning here, or if you never learned from any of your biology classes that when a sperm fertilizes an egg, each parent contributes 13 chromosomes to create the 26 that the kid has.