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@AtlasFreeman So as someone who would never be a hypocrite I presume you are adamantly against both the death penalty and abortion?
Because our legal system is such a mess, I mostly agree. No death penalty.
Philosophically, I believe every human has a right to life, #liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. If one human tries to impede on one of those natural rights, there are consequences. The consequence of intentionally and maliciously taking another's life is justification for the death penalty.
So you see, there is no hypocrisy, as an unborn child cannot murder..
@AtlasFreeman Not my legal system, yourself. I got myself a house in the netherlands and got the fuck out of dodge.
Not sure of the relevance of if an unborn child can murder or not though. Your original post pointed out hypocrisy in opposing a death penalty and supporting abortion. Obviously the inverse of that is equally hypocritical.
@freemo @AtlasFreeman It may or may not be hypocritical.
Taking the life of an innocent and taking the life of the guilty aren't moral equivalents.
I think both have to be thought through. Obviously taking the life of a "criminal " as in the meme isn't right, there's lots of crimes and the meme's big fault, I think, is that it implies there's people out there saying all criminals should have their lives aborted. No one says that that I've heard.
When it comes to mass murderer or serial killer, there's other opinions,and if we value human life and human rights, should we treat the innocent differently than one who goes around repeatedly taking away people's rights and lives by murdering them. Those are the only death row considerations I'm aware of.
But if someone supports taking the life of only those guilty of the most serious crime, of repeatedly murdering others, yet they think we should protect the lives of the innocent, I don't see hypocrisy there.
@SecondJon
Neither is taking the life of something that , depending on when, may not even have a brain.
the very fact that the two aren't equivalent on any level points out why your original post was poorly thought out.
Either way your logic seems selective and failed.
@freemo @SecondJon @AtlasFreeman I feel like either life is valuable or it isn't.
At the same time, there are questions of personhood. At what point does a fetus become a person? At what point do we consider it a human being with rights?
In the first few weeks, surely not- it's just a bundle of cells that certainly can't survive on its own, right?
After birth, absolutely- not a fully, mentally developed person but a person none the less.
That in between time, though. That, for me, is where the ultimate question lies.
It only gets more complicated when you start talking medically necessary abortions. Do the rights of the existing life to continue living trump the rights of the potential life to begin living?
As for the Death Penalty, I'm mostly against it except in the most heinous of cases. It should be a punishment of very last resort, rarely if ever used. In an ideal world it never be used- but it's always nice to have it in your back pocket in case someone comes along that really needs to be removed from the population.
I feel like this is a super complicated thing that can't be easily put through a meme.
@Surasanji @freemo @AtlasFreeman
I don't think being able to survive on one's own is a good measure of whether one life should be protected. Babies, kids, anyone with any kind of medical issue, etc., would not survive on their own. That risks making the standard of protection of life on whether you can protect yourself. It would mean we only help those who aren't helpless.
Objectivity is helpful for me. I value life, not personhood. I think of I argue that life is disposable but personhood is not, then I (out anyone else) get to arbitrarily pick the criteria on who lives and dies. Any subjective standard seems problematic to me.
Medically necessary isn't a thing, I think. The consideration would be health of the mother (subjective and problematic) or life of the mother VS life of the child. In that case, by what I'm positing, there's a question to answer about whether you preserve the life half lived who can defend itself or the life with a whole life ahead that can't. But these incredibly rare situations don't have a clear answer, I think.
@SecondJon
I agree on the point that ones ability to survive on their own is not a good argument
What are the justifications in aborting someone at all then?
@MOTT If the fetus doesnt even have a brain yet you dont need to justify it. If it does then im not sure you can justify it unless your life is at risk
@freemo So a brain makes someone human or not? Should we change abortion laws to ensure that? Or do they work the way they are?
@MOTT @freemo @SecondJon @AtlasFreeman I can certainly understand the statement about not surviving on one's own.
I meant more that at that point of development, the fetus is more a part of the mother's body than it's own actual individual. It's just a bundle of cells, and thus, has no rights and is certainly not far along enough to be considered a person by any measure of the word.
The concept of what, exactly, makes someone human- that personhood- is a big philosophical thing.
In Judaism, for instance, a fetus isn't really a person until after it is born. The act of being born is what makes you a human being, religiously speaking as far as I'm aware.
That being said, most religious Jews are largely anti-abortion, except where the Mother's life is at risk. The life already existing, in that case, takes precedence. In a situation where you could only save the Mother or the Baby, you're supposed to save the mother.
Then again, you're also dealing with a group of people who don't even name a baby until about a week after birth. It's a cultural thing, that.
Moving back to the philosophical aspect of it, there are a great number of ideas and concepts at play there.
What are the rights of the mother vs the rights of the fetus, for instance? Who's rights are more important?
Where do we define personhood? Is it from the potentiality of a unicelluar zygote, or does it come later?
There are a lot of aspects to the abortion discussion that need to be understood before one could make a truly ethical, moral, and logically sound decision.
@Surasanji @MOTT @freemo @AtlasFreeman I think you and I are just larger bundles of cells, I don't think that is a particularly useful phrase. We are bundles of cells that if left to normal circumstances will continue to grow and learn and develop. That's true of all human life at any stage.
What makes us humans isn't arbitrary or philosophical, but scientific. Humans have human DNA. Different humans have different human DNA.
It seems very straightforward to me as this level. A unique human life is fairly easily defined by science.
Deciding that killing humans is okay or not is not a scientific argument, because science doesn't teach morality. But I think the definitive of human life is pretty easily settled.
It's true that we can come up with interesting hypotheticals, like whose life and rights are more important, baby or mother, Jew or Gentile, man or woman, black or white. I tend to want to see this objectively and they're all objectively human, so I think we would be better off not trying to decide who is not human than whom, which human life is worth preserving, and instead value human life, and also life in general.