Abortion

I agree that there's definitely a lot of questions raised.

Personally, I don't draw the line at killing humans. For example, if there was a permanently brain-dead human that somebody killed, I would have zero moral problems with it, because there's nobody home, nobody's suffering. I draw the line when a being has a capacity to suffer, because only then can you truly say that "someone" is being harmed. This includes most humans, but not all, and certainly a fair share of animals.

It doesn't make sense to me to talk about what the fetus consents to there's nobody there to consent, the same as a tree or insect.

I prefer to say that she acknowledges the possibility of getting pregnant, as an undesirable, unintended consequence. "Agreeing" to the possibility makes it sound like she's entered a contract. Pregnancy isn't the only point of having sex, of course.

 

This is a good point. In the example of the brain-dead human, it's a known dead end. The difference is, fetuses are not a dead end. In fact, it's the necessary beginning to all human life. If we put ourselves in the shoes of a a 10 year coma patient, we can imagine that we would want to be unplugged. If we put ourselves in the shoes of the fetus, we can't really imagine that we would want to be scrambled and vaccuumed out.

That's where my argument of "The fetus does everything it can to survive" comes in. The fetus doesn't have to verbally say "Hey, don't kill me", but if you start damaging it, it will react to survive against outside stimuli even if it isn't developed enough yet to feel pain.

People are responsible for the consequences of their actions regardless of their intent. Sex is the ONLY action that causes pregnancy, it is the main purpose of sex, the only way you could legitimately not consent to possible pregnancy is if you were raped.

 

But we can't put ourselves in either position. In the case of the brain-dead coma patient, and the fetus, there's no consciousness. Killing a fetus, from the perspective of the fetus, is the same as the parents never having sex, since it doesn't destroy any consciousness.

That's a purely mechanical reaction, then, the same way a single-celled organism moves away from danger, or the way a flower grows towards sunlight. If it's purely mechanical, and there's nobody suffering, I don't see that it makes a difference whether the fetus struggles or not.

I agree, everybody is responsible for the consequences of their actions. If a man and woman have sex, and fertilization occurs, they are responsible for creating the fetus. That doesn't imply that they're responsible for the fetus, in the sense that they have to care for it, just that they're responsible for creating it.

I disagree that procreation is the main purpose of sex. Biologically, that's true, but in the context of human relationships, I'd argue that more often, the purpose of sex is for fun.

The bigger issue, in my opinion, is bodily autonomy. Even the woman who intentionally gets pregnant should have the ability to have an abortion, because you can't force somebody to do something against their will. There is always an "opt-out".

 

I can see no logical reason to give a fetus rights at any stage of pregnancy (even the moments immediately prior to birth). The best reason that could be given is that the fetus is a member of our species. This however, is a speciesist argument that has no logical justification.

Though I agree we all care for our own species more than other species - we also care for our own kin more than other peoples even as part of the same species, yet it would be nonsensical to say members of our own kin have more rights than our non-kin. Merely declaring that x is part of y species is a statement of fact. From that, you cannot derive an ought without more. Why is the human species special? Eventually you arrive at the answer of rationality. A fetus does not possess rationality. Therefore, if the basis for humans being special is rationality, and fetuses do not have rationality, then they cannot have rights until they obtain that rationality.

You might want to say fetuses have the potential to be rational. I would agree, for the most part (recognizing the fact that some die). Though I would also like to point out that fetuses born in certain countries have a higher potential to attain rationality that fetuses born in other countries. That potential argument does not really stand - we would not say x has the right to vote because they have the potential to be of the voting age in the future. Though legal rights are different from 'natural rights', the potential argument doesn't have much bite in my opinion.

To circle back however, even if a fetus does have rights, I still don't think it would make a difference in the case of abortion. The mother too also has rights. The question then becomes, whose rights win? I would assert that if you have a natural right, you probably have a duty to, at a base level, respect those who have the same natural right as you. You have a right to own property? So do I, we both have a 'duty' not to steal one anothers' property, or kill in the case of a 'right to life'. On that view, clearly the mother is saying I do not want the fetus to exist inside of me. The fetus by not respecting the mothers rights, is then committing trespass. One can be given the right to enjoy another's property, but on the revocation of that right, the failure to cease enjoyment of another's property constitutes trespass. Now clearly the fetus has no ability to avoid trespassing, but they nevertheless would be trespassing on the view that them having rights attaches with it a duty. That is one reason for the mother's rights superseding the fetuses.

Another reason, if you don't like that argument is bodily autonomy which I won't go into detail. Another reason still, is that the fetus is initiating force on the mother (when the mother no longer consents to wanting to carry the fetus), and so the mother is engaging in self-defense. This is a re framing of the first argument without the duty part.

So, even if the fetus has rights, the mother's rights win. If the fetus does not have rights, then we respect the mother's rights. The issue that most people don't touch on in my opinion, is that even if a mother has the right to abort the fetus, that does not necessarily mean that it should. Depending on your moral standard, the mother's actions must conform with their moral standard. If the moral standard is to maximize their own self-interest, then in some circumstances abortion may be the correct course of action, and in other circumstances, abortion may be the incorrect course of action. Cutting the abortion argument short at the rights approach isn't particularly helpful. If someone asks you, what university should I go to, your answer will not be, you have the right to go to university. That answer is NOT HELPFUL. Your answer might be, you should go to X university since you live close to it so it will be cheaper, but Y university is better if you are willing to spend more money on a better education, etc. Rights tells you what you can and cannot do, not what you should or should not do (though the former informs the latter, it does not determine it).

There are certainly some objections to the rationality criterion of human rights / personhood. I have not seen a substantially better criterion however.

 

This is where the "loss of future" argument comes in. Everyone holds the moral principle that they want to die naturally at the end of their future, not violently at the hands of another before their future ends. If I were to drug you and kill you so that you were completely unaware and unfeeling during your death, we would still say killing you is wrong. That's because human death isn't solely immoral due to pain and suffering, but because of the loss of future for the victim.

If the parents who created the baby aren't responsible for it, who is?

There is a logical justification for killing other humans being wrong. We cannot hold the principle that killing humans is acceptable if we are also a human who does not want to be killed.

I'm not following this line of reasoning. Suggesting the right not to be killed is dependent on how "rational" the person is would imply some arbitrary cutoff.

Voting age requirements are arbitrary and set by the state.

I would say the mother consented to the pregnancy assuming the wasn't raped, so the fetus is not trespassing, it was invited. However, abortions aren't just removal of trespassers, it is the deliberate destruction of them. The mother would not accept if the fetus were just removed from the womb and 9 months later the mother must now feed it, abortion is a deliberate killing of the new person. You are using the fetus as a means to an end - Killing the fetus is the goal and motivation, not removal of trespassers.

 

Why is killing human beings wrong? If someone comes into your house with a knife and lunges at you, are you saying that killing them is wrong? No one holds the position that killing humans is absolutely wrong, they hold the position that killing humans in most circumstnaces is wrong with X, Y, Z exceptions. This is an exception to that general principle (ie in this circumstnace killing a human being (fetus) is ok). Self-defense is another.

Not how 'rational' a person is, but that they have rationality. I also do not think people have the 'right not to be killed' per se, but rather that they own their bodies/life, and that ownership stems from rationality.

Though I acknowledged legal rights are different from natural rights, your response is a strawman. If in order to have X, you must have Y, and you do not presently have Y, then you cannot argue that you presently have X because in future you will have Y.

You can remove that invitation, ie the license. For example, telling a bouncer at 1:01AM you are not trespassing because you were allowed in the club at 11PM does you no good after the owner wants you out as at 1:00AM.

Do you suggest an alternative way of removing the trespassers? If your argument is that the way in which the trespassers were removed is the problem, then you implicitly accept that the argument that removing trespassers is ok (otherwise you wouldn't need to consider the 'deliberate destruction' point).

You say killing the fetus is the goal and motivation, not the removal of trespassers. I vehemently disagree, but this concerns the intention of the mother. Ask yourself, if hypothetically the fetus could be removed without killing it, but it is nonetheless removed from the mothers body as if an abortion has taken place (and the fetus now exists somewhere else, and will grow normally, etc). What would the mother select? To go through with regular abortion resulting in the death of the fetus, or pressing this magic button to remove the fetus (while keeping it alive)?

If you accept that pressing the magic button is morally acceptable, then you accept the notion that the mother has a right to remove the fetus, and that the fetus is a trespasser. The question you have is then a proportionality one - is the mother's method of enforcing her right to remove the trespasser a proportionate response? I ask you, what alternative less destructive means of removing the trespasser do you have in mind?

EDIT: the mother can also put the baby up for adoption if hypothetically is was removed, then 9 months later given to her.

 

If we value not being killed, we can defend ourselves while still holding the principle that we should not kill others. Valuing not being killed includes killing another to avoid not being killed ourselves. This is the case for self defense.

Fetuses are not killing the mother 99% of the time. In the <1% of the time they are, they can be aborted moral-free because they are legitimately aggressing against the mother.

Fair enough.

Again, this would imply an arbitrary cutoff. What age do babies become rational? As you mentioned before, this can vary depending even on country (aka population/local factors).

The bouncer can't kill you.

I argue that the fetus isn't trespassing at all. The woman invited the fetus when she had sex. You can't invite someone on your boat and then say they are trespassing and demand they get off after you pilot the boat to the middle of the ocean.

Again, killing the fetus is the end trying to be achieved. It's not like the mothers just don't want to go through the discomfort of pregnancy, they are deliberately killing the fetus in order to free themselves of the responsibility of parenthood that they consented to when they had sex.

 

Valuing not being killed, and the statement that: "killing human beings is wrong" are two different things. They overlap, but are still different.

The propositions:
Killing human beings is wrong.
Killing a human beings in self-defence is not wrong.

Are logically incompatible. Since we know the latter is true, the former must therefore be false. Remember you said: "We cannot hold the principle that killing humans is acceptable if we are also a human who does not want to be killed." But we do in the case of self-defense, and as you point out, we are still a human who does not want to be killed.

Technically you don't have to be killing someone to be aggressing on someone.

This is an empirical question, but the difficulty in answering it does not invalidate it. I agree it is incredibly difficult to answer however. Edit: I'll skip this point for now, but suffice to say, it would be fallacious to say that because we do not know at what point X has attained rationality such that they have natural rights, that therefore rationality doesn't exist, or that X does not have rationality, or that rationality does not grant natural rights. At best you could say it's not a useful tool.

Only because the bouncer has available to him a non-lethal response. Is there such a non-lethal response in the case of a fetus? My example is to illustrate that a prior license cannot justify trespass after that prior license has been revoked.

I agree the women invited the possibility of a fetus forming in her body by consenting to unprotected sex (she didn't invite the fetus per se as the fetus doesn't exist).

You are right with the boat, but you can throw them off at the next location when we dock (a proportionate response), as opposed the middle of the sea (a disproportionate response) - depending on the license. You are arguing that by having consensual sex there is an implied license that the mother will allow the fetus to remain in her body until pregnancy. I am arguing that, that is not the case. Here's why.

If I go jab myself with a needle containing an virus, you would agree that I've implicitly consented to potentially having that virus infect my body (or an alternative, if I eat raw chicken, implicitly accepting that I may be infected with salmonella). Likewise, by having unprotected sex, a fetus. In the first two cases, you would agree that removing those life forms is not unacceptable, and is in fact desirable. In the case of a fetus, you would say it is unacceptable (bar certain circumstances). What is the difference? You would say that the difference is that is because the fetus is human. As I argued earlier, this is a speciesist argument. Why does an implied license not extend to Bacteria, but to a fetus? Remember not all bacteria are lethal, many bacteria are less troublesome than the burdens of pregnancy. Why not let some of these bacteria remain in our bodies until they depart? We invited them in after all?

The only way you can differentiate between allowing a fetus to stay until birth, and a bacteria, is on a speciesist ground. Your argument here is ultimately rooted in a speciesist premise, and you have to defend that attack first.

I just want to clarify, you are saying that:

Means = kill fetus.
For
End = no responsibility.

If that is the case, then this statement: "killing the fetus is the end trying to be achieved" is false, so I'm assuming you mean means to an end? I would also like to point out that, if that is what you mean, then I think this is a better representation, because you can achieve the end of no responsibility by putting the baby up for adoption, so by clearing electing to abort over that, you, on some level, are also trying to avoid the perils of pregnancy.

Means = kill fetus.
For
End = no responsibility + no pregnancy consequences (pain, 9 months etc).

Let me ask, why is using a fetus as a means to an end wrong? We use thing as means to an end all the time. A fetus is a thing. What is so special about it? Clearly using things as means to an end isn't always wrong.

 

It's amusing that you are pursuing that self defense somehow shatters moral principles.

When someone else is a clear and present danger and threatening your life, it does not break the moral principle of "We cannot hold the principle that killing humans is acceptable if we are also a human who does not want to be killed", because in an event where every outcome is a human being killed (you, or the person trying to kill you ((or both))), universally, everyone will ALWAYS pick the outcome where they are not the ones killed.

The principle of self defense is the most tried and true question in morality. Every man who has ever killed someone in self defense ponders it, it is the most robust argument for allowing killing of another human in philosophy.

"I throw up in the morning" is not a decent reason to apply the death penalty to someone else. It's not like the fetus is getting due process.

I'm would never claim rationality doesn't exist. My claim is rationality is something that is possessed by essentially all humans. In fact, it is something that we currently know to ONLY be possessed by humans. Regardless - the argument that killing humans is okay as long as it's BEFORE they become rational is quite the chilling starting point for morality.

Again, my ship example blows this away. An even more fitting analogy is if you invited someone to your house and locked all the doors. Then you killed them for trespassing when they have no ability to leave, and the only reason they were there in the first place is because you invited them.

Killing billions of bacteria and viruses is completely unavoidable in everyday life. Killing a fetus requires that you do a surgical or chemical procedure. We do not hold bacteria and viruses to the same value as a baby, because bacteria and viruses will never become anything more than a single celled organism. It's death implies no loss, and even a benefit if that virus or bacteria is harmful.

What's wrong with the speciesist argument? Self defence does not defeat the speciesist argument. If you are killing the fetus on the grounds that it isn't rational, that leaves the door open to killing people based on their rational abilities, which is an absolutely twisted justification that you can't even forward a definite cutoff point for.

Causing the death of someone as a means to an end is the pinnacle of immorality.

 

You think moral principles can be logically incompatible? You cannot say that the moral principle is both absolute, and simultaneously qualified by self-defense.

What about it really really really hurts?

Yes, it's one of the criticisms of the view. People don't take take the next step though. Rationality being a starting point for granting things the right to own themselves would indeed exclude very young children. From a natural rights perspective, this would mean these children are property, and probably owned by their parents. To reiterate, the child does not have natural rights. Therefore, prima facie, killing it is not always morally unacceptable. I emphasize the word always - killing a fellow person would always be unacceptable as they have those natural rights (unless there are vitiating circumstances, self-defense, etc). Remember however, this is from a rights analysis.

The reason this isn't so bad is as follows: First, by an overwhelming majority, the parents of that new baby would love and, and not want to harm it, ever. Thus, although the baby, for a time, would not have those natural rights, no harm would come to it from anyone else (since any harm done to a baby without the parents consent would be trespass to property), and in almost all situations, the parents do not want to harm their own child. So, practically, this 'chilling' starting point, actually does not change much.

The question is, what about those parents who say fuck it, and stir-fry their baby. Since it is their property, surely they can do as they wish. The thing is, what keeps them from doing it is almost every person in the world would severely sanction them. No one would want to associate with people that salt and pepper their 4 month old before serving. From an egoist perspective, it is thus, morally wrong for anyone to do that to their child (unless doing such a thing would be in ones rational self-interest). Additionally, since it is essentially a universal view, it can be condemned that way.

The proportional response is for the homeowner to unlock the door, additionally, the 'trespasser' would be actively trying to get out. There is no door to unlock in a pregnancy, hence the lethal result of abortion. The fetus is not saying please let me out, the door is locked - it is in fact probably in the same place, still unaware of its own existence.

So avoidability is the criterion? I think you've skirted around my point without addressing its essence. Clearly the jabbing of a needle with a virus into your skin is avoidable, so to is eating chicken that is obviously raw avoidable. Abstracting to a general level (bacteria and viruses generally are unavoidable [TRUE]), to conclude at a specific level (therefore these specific instances are also unavoidable [FALSE]) would be falsely analogising.

Also you are using the potential argument which I addressed earlier.

Some say it is arbitrary, analogizing to racism. It is also just a statement of fact. Killing a fetus is wrong because they are human. Why? Because they are human... It is not very helpful - you do not derive an ought from an is. Additionally, as I've argued previously, in my view it fits under self-defense / eviction of a trespasser. That argument is only beaten by an argument that killing humans is absolutely wrong (which would mean self-defense is not allowed, and since that is clearly not the case, therefore no argument can beat what i have stated, unless you can demonstrate abortion is not self-defence / eviction of a fetus, which you want to do elsewhere).

Self-defence and the speciesist argument are not relevant, so I'm not sure what you mean. Speciesism is placing a premium on the value of human life relative to non-human life simply, and only because they are human. Self-defence is not that, and doesn't intersect with that.

You are confusing whether the fetus has rights, from whether an individual mother should, or should not kill a fetus. They are different questions. The fetus is not being killed on the grounds that it isn't rational, but rather because the fetus is not rational, it has no rights, and thus it is not necessarily wrong to kill a fetus because it has no rights. Whether a mother should kill the fetus is a different question.

So I would say killing a fetus is not unjustifiable as they are not rational/have no rights. From that, I am not advocating the purchasing of knives in order to slice vegetables - that is not in anyone's rational self-interest, unless we're talking about cucumbers.

You sir, that is lunging at me with a knife, I am going to kill you, as a means to my surviving, the end. That it is wrong to use someone as a means to an end cannot be an absolute statement if you hold that self-defense is justified.

 

In an event where all outcomes lead to human death, self defense is the utility backup when avoidable death is not a possible outcome. This is universal.

Consider the displeasure of childbirth offset by the really really pleasurable experience of sex. Just because you want to take one end of the deal doesn't mean you get to kill someone because you don't like the consequences that occur 9 months later.

You are advocating child slavery, and it's disgusting.

This would fit your warped view where children are property.

I'm assuming you mean this to say that people will arbitrarily decide what is human depending on their race (in particular their rational abilities)? We've already moved past the point where people of less intelligent races were treated as property because slavery is barbaric. The treatment of children as property just because they are less intelligent (and most often the case, completely defenseless) is barbaric as well.

No. That circular reasoning you provided is not the argument I provided. You cannot hold that killing a human is morally acceptable if you are a human that doesn't want to be killed. You cannot hold that killing a fetus is morally acceptable since you were a fetus who was not killed.

Abortion isn't self defense. Ship. Locking someone in your house. You can't entrap someone then kill them.

Both are valid arguments that are relevant to abortion, they don't have to be relevant to each other.

Again, your view of children as property is disgusting. It allows for atrocities such as infanticide, child sexual abuse etc. When your moral code blatantly allows for child slavery, you know you have made an error in reasoning.

The end of "Human survival" is upheld. One of the two lives emerges in all outcomes. You die or he dies. You prefer that you survive instead of him killing you and he survives.

It is morally universal to want to survive rather than your attacker surviving and killing you, when the only outcomes are you dying or him dying.

 

You're aruging that self-defence is justifiable, and killing a human is absolutely wrong. That is a contradiction... I agree with you that self-defence is justifiable, I am just pointing out the contradiction.

Reverts to the trespass argument, etc.

2 month olds are treated like property nowaday anyway, I am just recognizing reality. Also, I am not advocating for child slavery at all. For an abundance of clarity: my points do not advocate for child slavery.

Racism as in, it is used arbitrarily as justification for a given conclusion purely on the basis of race. So, Jamal is dumb because he's black. Some people analogize speciesism to that line of reasoning - a human > non-human because a human is a human and a non-human is not a human. You need something more - since you purport to have something more below, your argument then won't be speciesism, unless of course your point doesn't hold up.

I'm a human that doesn't want to be killed (unless death has more value than life, eg. I would rather be killed painlessly than be burnt alive), and I think that killing a human is morally acceptable if they are trying to kill me.

What evidence do you have that I was a fetus that did not consciously want to be killed? Also, one wouldn't say you cannot hold that spanking a child is morally acceptable, since you were a child who was not spanked.

All false analogies as I've pointed out. Also your argument relies upon an implied license, and I'm still waiting for you to distinguish between my 3 examples, we got to avoidability.

Also, other points you may have overlooked, locking someone in your house then killing them is a disproportionate response. You invite someone in. You say, now it is time for you to leave. You open the door, they leave. There are ways for you to deal with the situation non-lethally. A fetus is different. There are no ways for you to deal with the fetus non-lethally, and it does not have an implied license that supersedes the mothers rights.

Do you have an alternative suggestion where the mother can remove the trespasser where lethality is not involved?

For your ship, the person can get off at the next stop (subject to the licenses, etc). For the locked house, you can unlock the door. For a fetus?

It doesn't allow for that.

So you used him as an end.

Yes, I have never disputed that in this thread.

 

It's not a contradiction because no action is performed that doesn't agree with the original values the person holds.

You can't kill someone you invited onto your property.

Owning children as property is the definition child slavery.

Human is objectively defined. Your basis of granting people rights based on how rational they are is not defined at all. This is why your measure fails and the speciesism argument is valid.

Fetuses act in such a way that they do everything they can to survive in the womb. They exhibit no signs of preferring death to life when they are a fetus, and once they become rational, people don't kill themselves 99% of the time because they still prefer life to death.

Those aren't false. Entrapping someone on your own property to kill them is still murder, not trespass.

Again, inviting someone onto your property does not give you the right to kill them.

Yes, you wait until you return to shore to kick the person off the boat so you don't murder them.

The fetus gets born.

Owning a person as property is slavery. Since they are your property, you have property rights over them.

DEAD WRONG. I do not gain anything by killing a person in self defense. I cannot use self defense as a means to achieve anything I already didn't have.

Spanking a child is morally unacceptable. Why would it be acceptable?

 

The original values are contradictory... by definition the actions performed a contradicitory. Please read each word:

Killing humans is absolutely wrong.
Self-Defense - the killing of humans that are trying to kill me is right/acceptable.

Just because something is objectively defined does not follow that it is the correct metric. You also cannot conclude that therefore speciesism is valid (I don't think you understand speciesism entirely if you hold that factors other than just because they're human are relevant).

Also, since I don't have much knowledge on biology, correct me if I'm wrong here. Homo sapiens evolved from Homo heidelbergensis (or something similar). Can you define the precise point in time, or DNA code, etc, when an organism was no longer part of Homo heidelbergensis, and so now is Homo sapien? It's the same concept here.

It is a continuum fallacy / fallacy of the beard to assert my measure fails because it is too vague. That is a weakness of it from it, no doubt, but it is not invalid for those reasons.

Fetuses respond to the environment, as do all living organisms.

You are oversimplifying, here is the fundamental difference. You will agree the person isn't a trespasser because they are manifesting an intention to get off the property correct? But the property owner intentionally kept them in. The property owner either intended to keep them in from the beginning, or he formed that intention after he gave the permission.

In the former case, that does not help you, since you would be compelled to conclude that all those women who had unprotected sex, but did not plan to abort, therefore can abort (since they did not have the intention to 'entrap' before sex).

The latter case is the relevant one. But note the sentence prior: "the property owner intentionally kept them in". We cannot say this is true in the case of abortion. The mother is not intentionally keeping the fetus inside of her - that is manifestly untrue since she is trying to abort the fetus and remove it from her body. The mother just wants the fetus out. There is no way to do that other than abortion. You saying below that she wait until birth makes no sense, as it is not an enforcement of your rights by allowing the aggressor to go from infringing them to not infringing them. It is an enforcement by you redirecting the infringer to a course of action that does not involve infringing. You cannot rely on the premise that the fetus' rights > the mother's rights when the whole debate is that very point.

I literally said that posts' ago.

So, a mother says they do not want to endure pregnancy, and wants an abortion. You say but it is immoral to kill the fetus. They say, well how do I not endure pregnancy without killing the fetus. You say well how about you carry the birth to term. See above 2. You are only satisfying the second part of the AND clause, which is why your response is not an alternative solution to the problem of how do we respect both parties' rights.

Let us not equivocate slavery with the brutal treatment of slaves historically.

They are different concepts even if they are subsumed under one word and definition. Just because you have property rights over x does not should do with x what you wish. A moral theory that only talks about can and can't - ie rights-based, is ineffective. It does not tell you what you should/ought to do. As an example, I know you think drugs should be decriminalised/legalised for example. It does not follow that therefore we should all do drugs. Only that we can do drugs - even for drugs that we have property rights over. Nevertheless, one still shouldn't do quite a lot of drugs since, put bluntly, it's a dumb thing to do.

You didn't have certainty of life in that moment. Now you do (at least for a longer period/to the same extent as before).

Reread what I say - I'm trying to point out how the argument is structured invalidly, it's an ad hominem. What if I was spanked? Does that invalidate your conclusion? No, because the argument is invalid. It doesn't make sense to say what if you died as a fetus since that is an impossibility, so I analogise to a situation where it makes sense to demonstrate the flawed structure.

 

Interesting that you keep repeating the world absolutely as if I said it or ever made the claim that killing is absolutely wrong. I never used the word absolutely. Anyways, I've already proven you wrong here that self defense doesn't violate the nonaggression principle, I'm not going to discuss it further:

You do not gain the right to life from the attacker. You already had the right to life.

All factors are accounted for in morality by applying universality. You cannot claim killing fetuses is morally acceptable because universally, you can only make that claim if you were not killed as a fetus. Universality is the basis of morality.

Are there any Homo Heidis being aborted? No. We currently only know of one rational species on earth. If there were more rational species, we would not enslave or kill them either.

Your measure fails because it is child slavery which is evil. You cannot wish child slavery on other children because you would not want to be a child slave yourself. Again, you are failing basic universality, the fact that your argument is incomplete is just more failure on your part.

Not applicable. You don't intend to get off the boat when it is in the middle of the water. You intend to get off the boat at shore.

Wrong. She intentionally allowed the fetus in when she had sex.

Again, wrong. The mother wants to kill the fetus. She wants to use the death of the fetus as a means to an end. Abortion advocates don't want the fetus to be removed and put in some artificial amniotic fluid and be still responsible as the parent. They want the new person dead to absolve them of the responsibility of raising a child that they agreed to when having sex. Even if the mother just wants the fetus to stop trespassing, again, your argument is WRONG. You cannot throw someone you invite on your boat off in the middle of the ocean just because you say they are trespassing. The fetus does not get any due process, in the trespassing case, no one would ever advocate the death penalty for trespassing unless that trespasser was threatening the life of the property owner.

Again, you are still wrong. You can't throw someone off of the boat in the middle of the ocean when you invited them on a fishing trip just because you suddenly decided that they are infringing on your boat.

You have to dock the boat, sorry. You can't just kill people after you invite them on your boat.

What? Let's absolutely equivocate slavery with brutal treatment. That's what slavery is. Don't try to soften the term slavery.

That is the definition of property rights. If something is your property, you are the master of it.

You derive what you should/ought to do from the understanding of rights.

Saying "we shouldn't murder people for doing LSD" is not saying "EVERYONE SHOULD DO LSD". The moral principle of "don't kill people" doesn't affirm these random strawmen you keep tying to it.

That's not a flawed structure. Everyone who is killing a fetus is only able to do so from the benefit of not being killed as a fetus. If you universalize the position of the fetus, you would realize that killing fetuses cannot be universalized. I don't know what sort of doublethink you are adopting when you say say "dying as a fetus is an impossibility" while we are discussing the killing of fetuses.

 

I never said self-defence doesn't violate the nonaggression principle. The only point I was trying to make is that the principle that 'killing humans is [not] acceptable' is incorrect, as it is an absolute statement.

You retained your ability to enjoy that right.

Please answer the question. So the common denominator is rationality? Sounds familiar.

I was effectively owned by my parents when I was 1 day old. Whether you want to massage definitions is up to you. I have never heard of a 1 day old child that has the capacity to comprehend their own existence.

Implied license enforceable against the property owner. Not the case for the fetus. The rights of the licensee supersede the licensors rights. More precisely, the licensor takes their rights subject to the licensees.

Please refer make to my 3 examples. We got to avoidability. Let me try another approach. One view of when implied licenses arise is as follows. You hypothetically go back to the time before you stepped on the boat, and you ask yourself, if boat owner had the right to throw me off in the middle of the sea, would I go on? The answer is no. Hence, there is an implied license. As an aside that is very loosely the test for implied rights in contract law.

So let us try this with the fetus. If we go back to the time when the mother had unprotected sex, would the fetus agree to be fertilized in the mother's body? You can see this is a nonsensical question to ask. The fetus doesn't exist - it has no choice. There can be no implied license. Thus the boat owner takes their rights subject to the passengers implied license but the fetus has no implied rights which the mother must take subject to.

The mother wants both. If the fetus is out, she can put it up for adoption. The problem is, she also doesn't want to go through pregnancy. I am sure that if a person could press a magic button and remove the fetus from their body without killing it, then they would press that button. If the intent was to kill the fetus, then that button would not be pressed.

Implied license.

Owning x, and owning x and committing atrocities against x are two separate things.
For example, two scenarios. I own a book. I own a book and burn it. They are clearly different. Slavery is defined as the former, yet you are superimposing the latter onto the former by equivocation.

I am the master over this bag of weed. It does not follow that I should therefore smoke it.

Saying "we shouldn't murder people for doing LSD" is not saying "EVERYONE SHOULD DO LSD" That is what i'm saying. But see below, you seem to make the same mistake.

Also, what strawmen were you referring too specifically?

Ok, I understand what you're saying here now.

It is actually not a contradiction because it is a rights statement, and so does not follow, without more, that therefore every fetus should be aborted. Killing fetuses is morally acceptable is saying you can kill fetuses. It does not mean you should kill fetuses. Whether you should depends on the circumstances, for example, do you want to raise a child?

If killing fetuses is ok, and my mum decided she wanted to not kill me when I was a fetus, there is no contradiction.

 

Humans are the only rational animals, which is why we hold the principle that you can't kill other humans if we are a human who doesn't want to be killed. If there's a "Human 2" genome that also has rationality, the premises and results don't change.

I'm sorry you were a child slave, that doesn't allow you to impose child slavery on others.

No it doesn't. Right to life supersedes the right to tell someone to get off your boat. Your right to tell someone to get off your boat does not allow you to kill them before you reach shore. If you give the trespasser due process, he would never receive the death penalty unless he was a clear and present threat to another's life.

The boat captain doesn't have the right to throw you off in the middle of the sea.** Again, this example is unassailable because it's clearly murder to throw someone off of your boat in the middle of the sea after you invited them. You can't just call it "Trespassing" and kill the person you invited.

Fuck off slaveowner, we can't keep rewinding the discussion back to you claiming that slavery is morally acceptable when you can't even forward a guess as to where they lose slavery/property status and gains human rights status. I can only repeat myself so much. You do not lose the right to life when the person who invited you on the boat says you are trespassing in the middle of the ocean.

She has to hold up her end of the contract. You can't kill the recipient of the contract just because you don't want to hold up your end of the deal.

It is universal to prefer liberty to slavery. The scenarios we can apply to your moral code that children are property allow child rape in all cases and child murder in all cases and circumcision in all cases. This is why your moral code failed.

No one claimed you SHOULD smoke it. Again, you are trying to dispel strawmen of claims I never made because you refuse to apply universality.

The strawman that I am claiming you ought/should do things. All principles I've forwarded are "We cannot hold X is acceptable for us and X is also not acceptable for others"

Again, universality. I may not want to earn my own money, but I can't kill you and take yours just because my circumstances show I would be better off by killing you and taking your money.

Again, you can't claim killing fetuses is "OK" when the universal necessary condition to make that claim is that you must not be killed as a fetus.




**Except in the case where death is an outcome in all circumstances (e.g. there are not enough rations on the boat to keep all the crew members alive before they reach shore, we would universally prefer that the trespasser starve than the boat captain starving)

 

Please answer my question on the dividing line between species.

All kids, including yourself were. I am also imposing nothing, just recognizing reality. Also, you are likely equivocating.

You keep using the same analogy when I clearly demonstrate the critical differences, and you don't address them. There is an implied license in this situation. The right to life is simply ownership of your own body.

If I ask you to fix my car for me, and you agree to, but you tell me that you will explode my car, and I agree to it, then that person has a right to explode my car. Likewise, if the boat owner tells you, I am going to throw you into a great whites mouth, and you accept, then the boat owner has a right to throw you into the great whites mouth. In the absence of any explicit agreement about whether I can or cannot be thrown into a great whites mouth, an implied license arises to deny him of that right, because at the time the 'contract' (to use your words) was formed, you would not have agreed to such a condition.

No implied license can arise in the case of the fetus, because they don't exist during unprotected sex. The question then becomes whose right to ownership of their own body wins (and again, there is no implied license that the mother is subject to). The answer is the mother's, and since you have not come up with any alternative way for her to enjoy her right to do as she wishes with her body (abortion), without affecting the fetuses right to own its own body, abortion is the most proportionate response. Per my hypothetical as well, pressing a magic button would be an even more proportional response, and a women's willingness to do so demonstrates that she has a desire other than to relieve herself of responsibility (which she could do by adoption anyway...).

Because there is an implied license...

Again, because of an implied license. Which cannot exist for a fetus, because it does not exist at the time. Also, even if my argument for rationaltiy being the basis is incorrect, this does not exonerate you, because you still have to demonstrate that there is an implied right for the then non-existing fetus to supersede the mothers ownership of her own body, because, you know, the mother has rights too!

You cannot enter into a contract with an entity that does not exist. Thus, there is no deal to hold up. Also, that was in response to the mothers ends, which are, as I have just demonstrated, not just to rid herself of responsibility. Your response does not detract from that.

A moral code helps us decide what we should and should not do. My moral code would not permit any of the aforementioned, because it would not be in anyone's interests to do any of the aforementioned.

"We cannot hold killing fetuses [as] acceptable for us and killing fetuses [as also] not acceptable for others." As far as I know, that is not what you're arguing - it would be something like this?
We cannot hold X is acceptable universally and non-X is acceptable universally?

Because I don't have a right to do so, therefore circumstances are irrelevant. But if I gave you permission to take 1 item out of my bag, your circumstances would inform you on what you should take. Again your analogy is false.

Circumstances inform us over how we should exercise our enjoyment over a right we have. For example, I own this $100 bill. Should I spend it on X, or give it to charity? Circumstances however have no bearing on informing us over rights we do not have. Your analogy is a right we do not have, my argument presupposed that we had the right to abort, and so circumstances would inform us over whether we should or should not do it. If we don't have the right to abort, then circumstances become irrelevant.

Just because killing a fetus is ok does not necessarily mean I wouldn't have been alive to tell the tale. There is no logical incompatibility between the two.

What is the level of certainty required for this conclusion (that there are insufficient rations).

Also, I'm interested to see what you think should happen here. Let us say that the mother does not have the right to abort, for the reasons you have mentioned. To what extent can she partake in risky activities? Can she go bungee jumping? Can she go diving? Can she eat lots of seafood? Can she hang herself?

Another question. Though I may be wrong here, as far as I know, some contraceptives operate after fertilization. Is use of these contraceptives immoral?

Another. What if a girl, knowing aborting is immoral, ensures the guy both wears a condom, and she is on the pill. Or one of the two. Let us assume the probability of conception after unprotected sex is 0.8. What probability is required in order for an abortion, if fertilization occurs, to be morally justifiable in your view? Is it 0?

 

What dividing line? Chromosomes? Breeding ability? Again, your example here is the same as asking if we should respect the right to life of extraterrestrials, and the answer is yes if they have the rationality to hold the same values in all cases.

Your caveman of undefined rational ability isn't relevant to the case of aborting a modern human.

You haven't forwarded an alternative of your own and you haven't addressed any of the universal basics I've given you. Ownership of your body means that someone killing you - AS IN THE CASE OF ABORTION - is a violation of the ownership of your body.

This is a blatant contradiction. Come up with an example where you do not use contradictory contracts where someone agrees that blowing up your car falls under the agreement of fixing the car.

WRONG. This is the same reason you can't kill someone while they are sleeping. Just because they DON'T say you shouldn't feed them to sharks doesn't mean that you CAN throw them into sharks. It is a violation of someone's ownership of their body to destroy their body without their consent.

Why is the mother allowed to kill other people who aren't a clear and present danger?

Abortion doesn't affect her body, it is deliberately killing of the other body which she does not own.

Having the alternative of not killing your child (adoption) is not proof that killing your child is morally acceptable.

The moral principle of not killing other people and violating the ownership of their body is not license dependent.

I have. The ship example proves this. The right of the ship captain to allow only the people he chooses on his boat DOES NOT SUPERSEDE the right to life of someone he invited on his boat.

Fetuses do exist. There wouldn't be anything being killed if it didn't.

Morality is determined by universality, not the best interests of the person taking the action.

We can't say fetus killing is acceptable because the only way we can make that claim is if we weren't killed as a fetus. You haven't given a reason why the right to life should discriminate against people who are younger, when you say the right to life stems from rationality, and being a fetus is the necessary requirement to being a rational older being.

Universality doesn't mean "Killing is OKAY as long as you are lucky enough to be the one killing instead of the one killed"

Reasonably certain of course.

She can't violate the fetus's right to its ownership of its body by poisoning or assaulting just like she can't go around poisoning or assaulting any other person.

No. The woman is inserting something in her own body prior to the fetus ever inhabiting it, which is fully within her property rights to do.

Is consenting to a 10% chance of pregnancy any philosophically different than consenting to a 1% chance? No.

 

No, between species. As in we evolved from x to homo sapiens. I'm just trying to show that vagueness does not of itself invalidate an argument.

The mother not being able to take a tablet is also a violation of her right to do as she wishes with her own body. I've also been addressing them below.

You can fix a car, then blow it up.

There was consent.

Because she wants to do as she wishes with her own body, and she wants to get rid of the parasite growing inside of her?

Abortion does affect the mother's body. It may require an incision for one.

Your argument was that the mothers end was to rid herself of the responsibility. I demonstrated that that was not the only end. Remember you said killing, not the removal of trespassers was the goal. But in fact, the goal was the removal of trespassers and the desire to avoid responsibility, and that could only be satisfied by abortion.

It can be affected by licenses. If I asked you to kill me because I was in agonizing pain at the end of my life, that seems acceptable to me, even though it is killing another person because it is not a violation of their ownership of body.

On the contrary, it is permission dependent.

They don't during unprotected sex, which is when the hypothetical to grant an implied license occurred. A fetus obviously exists after unprotected sex, but the hypothetical occurs before the doing of the act, since the doing of the act is the one which you claims constitutes consent from the mother (to harbour a potential fetus).

Here's $100. Should you donate it to X charity or Y charity. What universality principle applies in that situation?

For the record, I do not accept that morality is determined by universality per se. As an egoist, the standard is, is x action in your rational self-interest. What is in a persons rational self-interest differs from circumstance to circumstance, yet nevertheless that standard is objective, and applies universally. That is why circumstances are relevant in my view. Yet I temper that with rights, that forbid certain actions.

No contradiction to me. Spell it out for me. There are two claims. The second claim attached to any other claim is fine. For example. Eating hotdogs is acceptable can only be made if we weren't killed as a fetus. Clearly that does not have any bearing on the acceptability of eating hotdogs. But you claim it disallows saying fetus killing is acceptable. Why?

Technically I don't discriminate. You either have the right, or you do not. Age is irrelevant. It just so happens those younger homo sapiens do not have the right - because they do not satisfy the preconditions for having the right (rationality). It is not discriminating against them per se, by saying they have a lesser right, they have no right at all.

As for a fetus part of the human life cycle (I assume you mean that since technically carbon is a precondition to being a rational older being, yet carbon obviously has no rights). If in order to graduate from Harvard, you must pass 24 units, and you have not passed 24 units, but you have been accepted into Harvard, you are not a Harvard graduate. Sure, in future you may be. But you are not. The potential argument implicitly recognises that the fetus doesn't meet the benchmark - otherwise it wouldn't be called the potential argument.

How do you define universality?

You used one of the most legally ambiguous concepts to justify killing someone. Really...

So the mother is not allowed to drink alcohol? Or smoke? So the fetus can violate the mothers right to own her own body, but the mother can't violate the fetuses?

Here's a very real example. Roaccutane is a known, and highly effective drug for reducing acne, even severe acne. It is also known for having devastating side effects. One of the side effects is that if a woman takes it while pregnant, the fetus has a very high chance of being defected (I heard they literally pregnancy test women while they're on the drug). If a woman's self-esteem is borderline suicidal because of their severe acne, and they are pregnant, can they take Roaccutane?

I thought the morning after pill could operate to stop the pregnancy after fertilisation had occurred?

What about P(0.00001)? That might be the probability of getting raped. From memory you said rape was an exemption. Is that because the probability is too small?

O and by the way, last I recall, you said the killing of salmonella after you eat raw chicken was acceptable because of the 'unavoidability' of bacteria infecting you (which is, as I pointed out then, fallacious as you are concluding from a general view, then applying it to a specific circumstance which contradicts that, namely eating obviously raw chicken). Yet here you seem to be implying that the avoidability of pregnancy is not philosophically relevant to the morality of abortion. Accordingly, you really do have to respond my 3 examples a few posts ago. Otherwise your view would not permit you to take antibiotics for consuming obviously raw chicken, as you invited the salmonella in.