Abortion
Abortion. There, I’ve said it. That’s another 100 extra hits on the statcounter today, fellow Sharpeners. There’s nothing the political world likes more than a contentious moral issue, and this particular issue is one of the daddies. This post was going to be a collaborative effort between me and Katie, but alas she is too busy, so you lucky souls just get my bit. That’s nice for me, of course, because it means I’m the de facto winner. King of the debate, if you will. Lord of the argument. Duke of disagreement. Enough…
What I’d like to do is to try to avoid a lot of the emotive language that goes with the abortion debate. It would make for an interesting study in politics to examine the words that people use to inject emotion into the debate (pro-life vs. pro-choice, embryo vs. foetus vs. unborn child vs. parasite, etc…), but I don’t think it helps. I’ll try to be scientific where possible, although my biology training stopped at the tender age of 16, so bear with me if I confuse foetuses for embryo’s, and cerebral cortexes (cortices?) for frontal lobes, or something like that.
That said, so that we can get some nice ranty comments going, I’m going to characterise myself as a pro-lifer. I’m not religious; in fact, I am an agnostic bordering on atheist, so please avoid comments about my invisible friend telling me to save the babies, as I’m not biting on that little chestnut. Nonetheless, I believe abortion should be illegal in all forms in Britain, except in truly exceptional circumstances, which I’ll define later. When it comes to commenting, can we please try to keep away from silly ‘if you take that argument to the extreme, you’d be condoning x’, where x is some ludicrous nonsensical proposition, or analogy with the Iraq war/Hitler/etc…, as that’s just plain dull. Still, if you feel the need to compare me to extremist, fundamentalist, Christian, bible-bashing, Texan-cowboy, imperialist, creationism-believing, abortion-clinic-bombing, KKK-supporting whackjobs, go right ahead. I can take it – I have the wikipedia link to Godwin’s law close to hand.
My objections to abortion are these:
Firstly, the science. I believe that the potential for life begins at conception. I hope that isn’t contentious, as it seems to me to be just a statement of fact. All other things being equal, and the world being a kind place, conception leads to birth. At some points in the 9 months, embryo becomes foetus becomes baby, and we can characterise the changes in a variety of ways. The foetus develops rudimentary organs and a brain by 8 weeks, and is able to respond to stimuli at the same point. The brain becomes capable of rational thought somewhere between 8-20 weeks, as far as I can tell – I’m not a biologist, and I’m a pretty lazy researcher. The current UK limit for abortion is at 24 weeks. Birth is somewhere around 38 weeks from fertilisation. The current legal limit for abortion seems arbitrary, and arguments that the foetus is capable of survival outside the womb with sufficient medical care at 24 weeks, albeit at a fairly low (but increasing) probability, would seem to suggest that the limit should at least be cut. That said, it seems likely that at some point between 8-20 weeks
at least, the foetus becomes capable of feeling pain and of some kind of understanding and rationality. Perhaps that implies a case for cutting the limit to 8 weeks? Of course, this is fairly contentious, because many people believe that the rights of the mother are paramount, and that the ‘pain’ or ‘consciousness’ arguments are
spurious. They have a point on the latter, and I’ll come back to the former later. I’d go further. The potential for life, which I identified earlier, is paramount. If you conceive, you should carry the embryo and then foetus to term. To deny the potential for life is, at least in my own opinion, morally equivalent to murder. To stretch
this point somewhat, but not beyond the realm of credibility, it isn’t hard to imagine that medical technology will exist in the (near) future that will allow a fertilised egg to be brought to term outside of the womb. What will the citizens of the future think of our civilisation now, as we so brutally butchered those they would
consider equal in their present?
The second point is more ethereal, and concerns the balance between rights and responsibilities. Some people on the other side of the argument believe that a woman has the right to do whatever she likes with her own body. I wouldn’t really argue with that, except in that it isn’t entirely her own body after she conceives. There is another body inside it, and although it is dependent on her for everything in those first 9 months, it is still a life, and it has rights. We can argue about the extent of those rights, but it has rights, nonetheless. To argue otherwise would create a precedent for a hierarchy of humanity, where different groups have rights according to their group classification. That’s a dangerous idea, and I’ll say no more about it, not wanting to Godwin-ise myself. This is often just summarised using the emotive terms of right-to-life and right-to-choose, but I think it’s more subtle than that. Having an extreme right to choose what you do with your own body, to the exclusion of the rights of others, however diminished those rights may be, seems to me to be a dangerous fundamental principle. To take an excessively emotive and extreme example, should I have the right to have sex with anyone I choose, regardless of how they feel about it? Of course not, but the equivalence is pretty
close, unless you deny that the foetus has any rights at all. Either way, I don’t think that these spurious, invented rights are very helpful. Everyone has a fundamental right to life, liberty and property, foetus included. Other rights either derive from that set, or are invented to prop up a cause celebre du jour (apologies to Orwell’s memory for that abuse of our language). Plus, there’s the practical argument
that if you can’t use contraception properly, abortion shouldn’t be the last line of defence. That’s what contraception is for. Yes, it can go wrong, but there’s risk in everything. If you want to take a
chance, you have to take responsibility for the outcome.
Thirdly, and finally, I am concerned with the effect that liberalised abortion law has on society. The original intention for the law in the UK was that abortion should be limited to cases where bringing the baby to term would subject the mother to undue physical or mental stress, effectively to neutralise the public health problem created by illegal abortions being carried out (and we can argue over how much of a problem really existed if you like). Legislation allowed for abortion if 2 doctors would agree to it, in cases where the mother’s, or existing children’s, physical or mental health was at risk, the mother’s life was in actual danger, or the child would be born severely handicapped. Current legislation puts a limit of 24 weeks on abortion. In practice, now more than ever before, abortion is available effectively on demand before 24 weeks, as doctors are quite willing to interpret mental or physical health problems in terms of not being able to go on holiday this year. Life’s a bitch. Stats in this section relate to England and Wales. The vast majority of abortions in 2003
(94% – 171,000 abortions) were carried out to protect the mother’s physical or mental health. The spread is remarkably even across age, marital status and race, although singletons tend to abort much more than married women do, and under 30’s more than over 30’s, for obvious reasons. 87% of abortions occur before week 12. Over 181,000 abortions were performed in 2003 (just under 50,000 in 1969, the first full year
after abortion was effectively legalised). As a comparison, just over 621,000 live births happened in 2003 (797,000 in 1969). That means a quarter of all pregnancies now end in abortion (6% in 1969). How can
that, in any way, be healthy for society as a whole, that we treat pregnancy and childbirth with such casual disdain? To compare with what is, in my view, our closest cultural comparative, the Republic of Ireland, which obviously has much stricter laws on abortion: in 2002, there were about 60,000 births, and 6,500 abortions – 1 in 10, much lower than our 1 in 4.
Finally, I don’t want to preclude the possibility of providing help and support for women who find themselves pregnant and don’t want the child. I also think abortion should be available on a limited basis, for cases where the mother’s life is genuinely at risk, or in cases of extreme emotional distress, such as after a rape. But I would go no further than that. We should provide a safety net to cover that, but it shouldn’t involve killing the foetus. People argue that this amounts to turning the woman into a human incubator, a machine, for 9 months. Well, if you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime. Wear a condom, or a femidom, take the pill, get a coil inserted, have your tubes tied, turn lesbian, but whatever you choose to do, go safely. And thus endeth the lesson. Over to you, commenters.
-“What I’d like to do is to try to avoid a lot of the emotive language that goes with the abortion debate.”
-“What will the citizens of the future think of our civilisation now, as we so brutally butchered those they would
consider equal in their present?”
Oooh, so close.
Hey, I did say ‘would like to’. I didn’t say ‘will do’. Besides which, that part was written from the point of view of the hypothesised future observer. Perhaps it isn’t clear.
Any constructive comments?
Yes. It seems to me that, amongst other things, you slide from the ‘potential for life’ to the rights of the unborn ‘body’ almost invisibly. Though you suggest that a foetus’ right to life should take precedence over a women’s control of her own body, does that right to life extend to cells with the potential for life in week two? Is the pin-head cluster of cells in week two as important to protect as the foetus in week twenty, or the almost-baby in week forty-five?
I suppose I’m asking exactly how you think abortion law should be ammended, if at all.
oh dear, taking the easy way out …
I also think abortion should be available on a limited basis, for cases where the mother’s life is genuinely at risk, or in cases of extreme emotional distress, such as after a rape
What other kinds of murder ought people (or possibly just women) to be allowed to get away with in cases of extreme emotional distress? Being prepared to allow this exception surely completely undermines your general principle.
bookdrunk: I suppose I’m asking exactly how you think abortion law should be ammended, if at all.
I thought I made that clear – it should be banned, except under exceptional circumstances.
dsquared: Being prepared to allow this exception surely completely undermines your general principle.
Yes, you’re right. It was a half-hearted attempt to prevent comments along the lines of “what? You’d expect a woman who was raped to carry the baby to term? You heartless right-wing bastard.” It doesn’t fit the rest of my argument particularly well.
I belive there are some sub arctic communities where the children are not named until they have survived for one winter as they are not considered viable until that stage.
I throw that in as, although I am not quite that extreem, I do not agree that a potential life is the same as an actual life.
My personal belief being that life starts once the baby is no longer relying on the mother – in most cases once the baby is not receiving blood throught the umbilicus.
I would challenge you to say whether you believe a life has been created as soon as the egg is fertilised or is it not until the egg has implaned in the uterus? if the former then the coil is a form of abortion.
If potential life is sacred how can preventing a sperm reaching an egg be justified? You appear to believe that contraception is acceptable but I cannot see how contraception is acceptable and abortion is not.
I consider the idea of forcing a woman who has been raped to bare a child then give it up to the state to be cruel (that is the least emotive word I can find for it, plenty of others were typed and deleted)
Lastly on a practical level I would say that abortion will always occur legally or illegally, at least the current system allows an upper time limit to be placed on abortions. I suspect that there were illegal abortions in ireland that were not included in your stats (not to mention the irish women who travel to the UK for abortions)
Apologies for any ranting that occured
The Ireland stats are, I assume, all people who travel to the UK. It is illegal over there, after all.
I would challenge you to say whether you believe a life has been created as soon as the egg is fertilised or is it not until the egg has implaned in the uterus?
Tricky, as I hate appealing to nature, but it is certainly true that many eggs are fertilised but fail to implant for whatever reason. I’d say that as implantation is a prerequisite for life, then life is only created at that point, although I recognise that as a wholly arbitrary distinction.
If potential life is sacred how can preventing a sperm reaching an egg be justified?
Again, tricky, but there are degrees of potential, of course. I recognise this as arbitrary, as well. Pragmatically, contraception isn’t going away, and I don’t see prevention of pregnancy as being inherently wrong. Basically, once conception has occurred, it is murder. Before that, it isn’t.
Lastly on a practical level I would say that abortion will always occur legally or illegally, at least the current system allows an upper time limit to be placed on abortions.
I’m not sure that’s relevant. Murder will always occur legally or illegally. As with rape. As with theft. Should we legalise them because we can’t stop them happening?
I’m not going to express this very well but here goes … I suspect that our moral codes are not wholly logically consistent, and break down at the margins. By which I mean that if you take a handful of premises that we hold be true, and start reasoning out from one, you can arrive at a contradiciton with another. I think you’ll have to take a pretty generous interpretation of these last sentences, not to consider it utter rubbish. However, abortion looks to me like a good example of what I’m trying to get at. Both sides can say “but if you say X, the logical consquence of that is Y, which is absurd”. You can go round and round on this one forever. I’m not sure we ought to expect this kind of problem to be solvable. I’m not sure that any amount of reasoning by unbaised perceptive smart people is ever going to arrive at a consistent, satisfactory answer to all aspects of this question. Perhaps, therefore, a more fruitful approach would be to abandon analytical reasoning and look at the question as a trade off between a number of desired but I(when taken to logical extent) incompatible goals (like the right to life, women’s rights, and so forth). This means accepting an outcome that is going to be wrong on some grounds or other, but moving the debate onto chosing which principles we want to compromise, and to what extent.
Well done for trying at least to make this a rational debate. I don’t have time to go into a full rebuttal, but I will take up the last point above:
“Lastly on a practical level I would say that abortion will always occur legally or illegally, at least the current system allows an upper time limit to be placed on abortions.
I’m not sure that’s relevant. Murder will always occur legally or illegally. As with rape. As with theft. Should we legalise them because we can’t stop them happening?”
Difference being that considerable numbers of women were seriously injured or even died because of botched back street abortions. There was genuine harm and horror going on – this wasn’t something that suddenly started occurring in 1969.
And as for potential for life, surely this is a sliding scale, rather than a black and white. A quarter of all pregnancies end in miscarriage, mostly before 12 weeks, but generally women do not hold funerals for them all. Most often they are flushed, quite frankly. It is our instinctive reaction to mourn more for late miscarriages than early ones, and even more for still births or premature babies that don’t make it. ‘Life’ is not as black and white as that, nor is consciousness or awareness of pain.
And ‘rights’ must be balanced – the right for a potential life to become a fully fledged life against the right of a woman to decide her own destiny and the right of a woman to control her own body – for me, that balance tips when the foetus/baby becomes capable of survival outside the womb, and of course there is a sliding scale there too. But to immediately forfeit the rights of a woman to the rights of a bundle of 4, then 8, then 12 cells – to see the world of human emotions, bodily integrity and social consequences in such black and white, right and wrong terms seems simplistic.
And may I say, without wishing to make this emotive, a simplistic approach that comes from someone who will never have to make such a judgement about themselves and their own body or live with the consequences.
Paddy: Actually, I think that’s very well expressed, and is exactly why this debate is problematic – it comes down to differences of opinion on fundamental axioms, and at that point, there is no argument, just polite (or not) disagreement.
Katherine: Difference being that considerable numbers of women were seriously injured or even died because of botched back street abortions.
I’d love to see some stats on this – as I said above, I’m a lazy researcher… – I seem to recall reading that this argument is overstated, but I really have nothing to back that up.
It is our instinctive reaction to mourn more for late miscarriages than early ones, and even more for still births or premature babies that don’t make it. ‘Life’ is not as black and white as that, nor is consciousness or awareness of pain.
Well, also without wanting to make it emotive, try standing outside an early pregnancy unit, waiting for the husband of a woman who has miscarried before 12 weeks, and say that to him, and see how he reacts. For someone who wants the pregnancy, life is exactly that black and white.
the right for a potential life to become a fully fledged life against the right of a woman to decide her own destiny and the right of a woman to control her own body
That’s really one of my points. I see the first as a real right, and the second as a question primarily of having a convenient life.
a simplistic approach that comes from someone who will never have to make such a judgement about themselves and their own body or live with the consequences.
The old “I’m a man, so I couldn’t possibly understand” argument? I’m not sure how that’s relevant to the issue – you assume I am not capable of empathy. I’m not black, but I still don’t think racism is a good thing. Should I be precluded from having an opinion?
Thank you Andrew.
But, if I’ve understood your position correctly, I’d be surprised if you are entirely in agreement with me – because your position looks to me like on made on the basis of premises (right to life) and reasoning out from there.
Surely if you accept the idea of a trade off, then you have to consider what you are prepared to trade off in return for a woman’s right to be in control of her own destiny? And if you start looking at it like that, then denying the right to life to (killing) an early stage foetus starts to look like a potentially acceptable trade. It might sound ugly, but that is what the pro-choice position comes down to isn’t it? It doesn’t look to me like your position is based on having weighed up that trade off.
Or, perhaps it is. Your use of the phrase “convenient life” (which I think might raise of few hackles) suggests that perhaps even if you did think in terms of a trade off, you might end up in the same pro-life position, because you don’t seem to attach much weight to the ‘right to choose’ end.
I think most women I know who have had abortions after getting pregnant by the wrong man at the wrong time felt it was more than convenience at stake. It would have meant their life turned upside down, and a child born without a father. That could conceivably be called ‘convenience’ but I think it’s stretching the term.
Is it relevant that also most of the woman I know that have had abortions, did so hoping to have a child when the time was right, and that they were expecting to have only one or two children in their lives, and wanted to do so when they felt the conditions for that child were above a certain threshold. So that, on some interpretations, it was not so much a life destroyed as a potential life deferred until such a time when the actual life has an improved chances of being a happy one? I’m not sure where this line of reasoning leads.
For my money, if a woman has a real sense that they are ending a potential life and all that entails (and I think most do, although I have no evidence for this supposition, other than the limited sample of my experience) then they’re not going to make that trade off lightly – and if having the baby would only mean inconvenience, most women I think would bear the child and the inconvenience.
So my solution is to impose a deadline that looks safely towards the right end of the potential to actual life sliding scale (perhaps 16 weeks?) and leave it up to the woman.
You may object that you can’t legislate for any women who do take the decision lightly. That, though, is the cost of leaving decisions in the hands of individuals.
oh f*ck it, this approach is no better than any other – re-reading what I’ve written, it just looks like I don’t attach much weight to the right to life for 16 week old foetuses. Just a arbitrary. So where do we end up? Put it to a vote, then accept the outcome and shut up.
Paddy: That’s what I meant. The argument when you analyse it basically boils down to a question of aesthetics – what aspect of abortion is the least distasteful for you, as an individual? As that is a question with purely relative answers, there is no real position on abortion that will satisfy everyone. Simplistically, for the pro-lifers, it is less of an issue that a woman is inconvenienced than for a foetus to die. For the pro-choicers, it is less of an issue for the foetus to die than for a woman to lose control of her life. (Forgive the choice of terms, but I’m struggling for appropriate words – the meaning is hopefully clear even if my semantics are a bit emotive)
Those positions are fundamental. They are axiomatic. There is no argument over them, as they won’t change. That’s why it is such an emotional subject.
Your solution is, of course, perfectly correct – we put it to the vote and the majority rules. Aint democracy wonderful? ;)
That said, I’ll challenge some of your points:
Surely if you accept the idea of a trade off, then you have to consider what you are prepared to trade off in return for a woman’s right to be in control of her own destiny?
I don’t accept the idea of a trade off here, because I don’t see that the woman has anything of value to trade – the foetus, for me, holds all the rights. The woman is just looking for an easier life. Of course, that’s just my view – I know that many people think the total opposite.
I think most women I know who have had abortions after getting pregnant by the wrong man at the wrong time felt it was more than convenience at stake. It would have meant their life turned upside down, and a child born without a father.
Well, that’s precisely what I mean. That’s a choice to have an easier life. It is pure convenience. I don’t see that anyone has a right to an easy life. If only we did…
Is it relevant that also most of the woman I know that have had abortions, did so hoping to have a child when the time was right, and that they were expecting to have only one or two children in their lives, and wanted to do so when they felt the conditions for that child were above a certain threshold.
Again, that’s another choice for an easier life. It might be possible to mentally justify that choice to oneself as doing the right thing for the future children in terms of giving them the very best you can, but it does very little for the foetus that doesn’t fit in at that moment in time. Let’s take a ridiculous example. My next door neighbour plays heavy metal music at maximum volume at all hours of the night. It affects my whole neighbourhood, as none of us gets enough sleep. The world would be indisputably a better place for the majority if I took him out with a shotgun one dark night. Does that make it right? After all, I have a fundamental human right to undisturbed sleep.
Andrew, good post (though I would say that, right?!), but I think you’ve slipped in language when you say “I believe that the potential for life begins at conception.” My guess is that you mean that, biologically, life (actual, not potential) starts at conception – to plagiarise from a recent article (it’s pro-life, but academic – Lee and George in First Things):
“Human development begins at fertilization when a male gamete or sperm (spermatozoon) unites with a female gamete or oocyte (ovum) to form a single cellâ€â€a zygote. This highly specialized, totipotent cell marked the beginning of each of us as a unique individual.†(Keith L. Moore and T. V. N. Persaud, The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology, 5th edition; see also William J. Larsen, Essentials of Human Embryology; Scott F. Gilbert, Developmental Biology, 7th edition; and Ronan O’Rahilly and Fabiola Muller, Human Embryology and Teratology, 3rd edition)
Basically, there is no coherent point of distinction between a human being and the fertilised egg. So, if that’s ‘not a life’ or ‘potential life’, then we could well be too. This means that most forms of contraception, which prevent fertilisation from taking place, are substantively different – a sperm or egg alone cannot become a human; their fusion can. (The coil would remain problematic, yes.)
Now, I’m with Andrew on this, so when Katherine says:
“And as for potential for life, surely this is a sliding scale, rather than a black and white. A quarter of all pregnancies end in miscarriage, mostly before 12 weeks, but generally women do not hold funerals for them all. Most often they are flushed, quite frankly.”
… then, obviously I’ll disagree, but it’s important to clarify why and how. Yes, many embryos will not make it to term; but then, many 80-year-olds won’t make it through the next fortnight – if life exists but has a low probability of survival, it doesn’t mean we treat it as throwaway… In fact, we might consider it all the more precious.
Yes, a large number of miscarriages happen than we typically think (ditto for abortions, though), and that it’s significant that we often don’t grieve for them as much as we might somebody who had lived. But as Andrew hints at, those I know who’ve suffered them (as mother or father) have certainly not treated it as a casual occurence in their life; their feelings run far deeper than those of disappointed expectations.
Incidentally, re the backstreet abortions argument – I’ve heard it was overstated too, and might try and track it down later… but one argument that’s inconvenient for both sides in this debate (Paddy’ll be ok, then!) is that there’d be fewer deaths these days, because medical advances – specifically, pharmaceuticals – allow for cheaper, safer abortions. Inconvenient for pro-lifers, because our argument hangs on saying “it won’t be as bad as it was before.” Inconvenient for pro-choicers, because the most convincing argument against restrictions isn’t quite as powerful. So nobody talks about it.
Blimpish: I used the word potential precisely to mitigate against the “but what about miscarriages?” argument. I wanted that statement to be absolutely uncontroversial. Now, I would personally go further, and say that actual life begins at conception, but that certainly isn’t an uncontroversial statement of fact to all parties.
Your backstreet abortions point is pretty powerful, thinking about it – most early abortions are done chemically I believe, rather than by suction aspiration, so would be much safer… I’ll try to dig out the actual stats.
Incidentally, the Catholic Church treats the coil as abortion, rather than contraceptive. Not convincing for many on the opposite side of this fence, but it holds some authority on mine, at least.
Sorry – our connection went dead so I had to wait to post that one.
Following on from Paddy and Andrew’s discussion there, Andrew says:
“Your solution is, of course, perfectly correct – we put it to the vote and the majority rules. Aint democracy wonderful?”
Now, I’m in agreement with this – but remember that democracy only works by us continuing with that debate, and taking sides (moderately, we hope) on it. It should be said that, except a few nutjobs in the US, pro-lifers have accepted majority rule – even though we often find the law abominable (less so here than in the US, where it wasn’t even majority rule).
Aside from that niggle, both points are well made. Pro-lifers (me being one) have to face up to the fact that abortion is pretty much part and parcel of today’s society and how we all live in it. We can seek to limit it, but if we want to really see its end, then we’ll have to get to a pretty radically different society first. (Don’t ask me what and how about this society; I don’t bloody know.)
“You’d expect a woman who was raped to carry the baby to term?” The classic response to that is to enquire why it is reasonable to execute a child just because her father is a criminal. How about an appeal to tradition? Doesn’t Blackstone, or some other ancient legal sage, draw a distinction concerning when life quickens in what we now call the foetus. Could one get a usefully wide agreement on such lines?
To be honest all this talk of principled reasons for or against abortion leaves me somewhat cold, because we live in a messy world with few (moral or otherwise) blacks and whites just different shades of grey. So I would ask: In practical terms what are the effects of various laws on abortion?
It seems to me that in practical terms, the law should stay roughly as it is, because:
1. banning abortion is likely to lead to an increase in crime years later, as people get born and brought up in deprived backgrounds who wouldn’t otherwise be born. (The Steven Levitt argument on the connection between abortion and crime).
2. if you ban abortion except where the woman’s been raped, you’ll get women falsely claiming to have been raped in order to get asn abortion. This will lead to miscarriages of justice and wasting police time.
3. you cannot enforce a ban on abortion anyway unless you have monthly gynecological checks on all women of fertile age and ban them from overseas travel while pregnant.
Andrew: grant your attempt to be consensual, but a fertilised egg’s ‘potential’ for life is materially different from that of a sperm (or a pebble, for that matter). And there is no clear cut-off point from conception until death where we can say that it becomes ‘human life’.
Walker Percy (yes, yes, a pro-lifer) once made the point that the typical pro-choice position on this question – that a fertilised egg is not a life – might’ve been intellectually respectable a hundred years ago, but since the growth in biological understanding, is left looking like a bizarre assertion in the face of fact. (This isn’t an argument against being pro-choice; only an appeal for better arguments. It might be that this form of killing is less bad.)
The closest to a scientific distinction would be some kind of test of sentience. But, aside from the thought of mind and body as wholly separate being highly controversial (and uncomfortable for pro-choicers to take, given the ‘body sovereignty’ argument), it’s likely that such a test would allow the ‘abortion’ of newborns too, a la Peter Singer.
The brain becomes capable of rational thought somewhere between 8-20 weeks, as far as I can tell
Ha! 8 to 20 years more like.
On a more serious note, I would put the start of rational thought around 2-4 years.
Phil: On 1, While the Levitt argument appeals to my amateur economist side, I think that pre-emptive capital punishment for future crimes isn’t a morally acceptable way to reduce the crime rate. At what point do we move from abortion to just rounding up the chavs and putting them into the electric chair?
On 2, without wanting to sound callous, there would have to be forensic evidence of the rape, or at least a very prompt report of the incident to the police.
Can’t really argue with 3, although I think the lower rates in Ireland are sufficient motivation for me to ban it here as well. We ban cannabis here, but people still fly to Amsterdam to try it out. Doesn’t mean in itself that the ban is worthless (although, for different reasons, I think it is).
Perhaps ‘rational’ is the wrong word – ‘conscious’ would be better, I think.
Blimpish: I agree, but I think you’d agree that abortion is largely permitted because we aesthetically distinguish it from murder, rather than rationally do so. The scientific difference, as you say, is largely one of defining consciousness.
It doesn’t fit the rest of my argument particularly well
Well yes, and the fact that in order to protect your argument from looking horrendously authoritarian and heartless you had to include a couple of things that didn’t fit very well, suggests that there might be something wrong with the argument.
My view on this has always been that you don’t have to be an out-and-out libertarian to think that there should be some boundaries to the state, and the cervix seems like as good a start as any.
Blimpish: Walker Percy (yes, yes, a pro-lifer) once made the point that the typical pro-choice position on this question – that a fertilised egg is not a life – might’ve been intellectually respectable a hundred years ago, but since the growth in biological understanding, is left looking like a bizarre assertion in the face of fact.
Yes a fertilised egg is alive. So is an unfertilised egg or a sperm. They are all alive. Asking when does life begin is irrelevant, because it doesn’t; life began, once, billions of years ago and has continued being a chain of life since then.
I’m also reminded of the recent controversy over stem cells. It seems we might not need to used embyronic stem cells in research because ones taken from the umbilical cord will do just as well. It seems to me that that’s an argument over nothing, because it’s saying that one clump of cells you can only see under a microscope has rights, but another, very similar set of cells you can only see under a microscope doedsn’t have rights. That seems bizarre to me, like arguing about how many angels can stand on the head of a pin.
Phil: leaving aside whether these things should simply be a question of utility, and the questions over evidence that are still being debated, Levitt’s argument is amusing because of what he leaves out. As James Q Wilson (hardly a militant pro-lifer, IIRC) put it:
“Levitt conspicuously refrains from saying so, but a very large fraction of these poor, single, teenage mothers would have been African American: over 60 percent of all black children are born out of wedlock, and the abortion rate is roughly three times greater among black than among white women.”
For most of us, a policy argument that prioritises slowing black people from reproducing is only a tiny wee bit worrying. Wilson goes on (it was in Commentary) to point out some research by Akerlof, Yellen, and Katz that “argued that legalized abortion actually increased the number of out-of-wedlock first birthsâ€â€because the availability of abortion, along with the advent of new contraceptive devices, rendered sex “cost-free†for men but not necessarily for the women they impregnated.”
Dsquared: My view on this has always been that you don’t have to be an out-and-out libertarian to think that there should be some boundaries to the state, and the cervix seems like as good a start as any.
While I think that states have some uses, I too think they should be limited in power. And I think that one limit should be on the integrity of a person’s body.
Phil: I don’t like to think of people as an overgrown sperm. It gets… awkward.
dsquared: My view on this has always been that you don’t have to be an out-and-out libertarian to think that there should be some boundaries to the state, and the cervix seems like as good a start as any.
Perhaps, but that’s totally arbitrary as well.
I don’t really have any problem with sounding like a heartless authoritarian, but I didn’t think it would make for a good discussion if I came out with all guns blazing like that.
Blimpish: leaving aside whether these things should simply be a question of utility
I don’t think you can ever leave utility aside. You got to be practical; it’s simply impractical not to be. That’s not to say that utility will ever be (or should ever be) the only consideration, but any socirty where it isn’t a very big one isn’t going to be a nice place to live (e.g. theocrats praying all day while the population diew of hunger and disease).
For most of us, a policy argument that prioritises slowing black people from reproducing is only a tiny wee bit worrying.
I dare say it is the case that in the USA a higher proportion of abortions happen to black women. But I think that’s irrelevant. I think black babies are neither more nor less valuable than white ones, they are im moral terms and in terms of what societies priorities are, just the same. Therefore if a policy has a different effect on the number of black babies born than the effect it has on the number of white babies born, that’s irrelevant, it’s totally unimportant just as it would be totally unimportant if a policy inadvertantly changed the relative frequency of alleles for blue and brown eyes.
You also say that legalised abortion makes sex “cost-free” to men. I suspect any men being chased by the Child Support Agency might disagree with you on that point!
Andrew: in the spirit of that arbitrariness… my view on this has always been that you don’t have to be an out-and-out authoritarian to think that there should be some boundaries to peoples’ power over those weaker than themselves, and the cervix seems like as good a start as any.
Re your point above – yes, aesthetics, very much so.
Phil:
1. I didn’t say to leave utility aside, only whether it should be “simply a question of utility.” Huge difference.
2. On differential effects, I’d agree, and I was being slightly tongue-in-cheek. I assume, though, that you’ve never worried about golf clubs which happen to have no black or Jewish members either.
3. “legalised abortion makes sex “cost-free†to men” – was quoting Wilson quoting Akerlof et al, as some evidence contra Levitt… but ah yes, I see your point.
My, there’s nuthin’ like abortion to get the comments flowing, is there?
Just a quickie – I do not personally consider the right to control over ones body a matter of convenience or a matter of a convenient life – it is a matter of great importance. Bodily integrity is not something to be written off – whether it is control over something going into it or something coming out of it.
And whether or not the statistics on back street abortions are exaggerated or not, does it not strike you that women have been prepared to take this risk, both of injury and of imprisonment – and for what, for convenience?
And my reference to miscarriages was not to treat this casually – but to point out the simple fact that we do emotionally and instinctively treat unborn babies on a sliding scales – these are shades of grey, not black and white. Let’s keep emotive pictures of people who desperately want children out of this debate shall we?
And by flushing I was referring to the fact that many miscarriages occur without the woman even being aware of it. Foetuses die. Frequently. For many reasons. Life in the womb is not the same as life outside it, both by nature and by our own emotions.
And yes, I do think that a man will have difficulty empathising with a woman who has something growing inside her that she desperately does not want; similarly, although I can empathise with a victim of racism, I would not have the arrogance to assume that as a white person who has never experienced such a thing that I would really know how it would feel.
Blimpish: I didn’t say to leave utility aside, only whether it should be “simply a question of utility.†Huge difference.
Ah; misuderstanding there.
On differential effects, I’d agree, and I was being slightly tongue-in-cheek.
Yes i thought you might have been.
I assume, though, that you’ve never worried about golf clubs which happen to have no black or Jewish members either.
My understanding is that many golf clubs are run by frustrated middle managers who enjoy imposing silly rules on people. It wouldn’t surprise me if some of those people are bigots too. If a golf club is run by small-minded bigots, should that be legal? I suppose so, but I wouldn’t want to be a member of any such club (I expect I’d probably get kicked out!)
Andrew,
Have you perhaps misunderstood the concept of a trade off? (or rather, have you a different understanding of it to me, which is of course the same thing as being wrong).
It is not the point that the woman has no rights to trade, it is that ‘we’ as a society would like to fix things so that human beings of all ages (and stages) have a right to life, and we would like to fix things so that woman have the right to determine their own destiny, but we can’t do both, so we have to decide which to trade off against the other, and how.
And, briefly, on this point:
It might be possible to mentally justify that choice to oneself as doing the right thing for the future children in terms of giving them the very best you can, but it does very little for the foetus that doesn’t fit in at that moment in time.
It’s a bit more than a mental rationalisation of a selfish decision isn’t it? It’s a real choice with real consequences in the world: 1) have child now in bad circumstances 2) have child in future better circumstances. Choice 1) is curtains for potential life 2) although in that case the potential is theoretical, rather than a bundle of growing cells.
and what the heck, while I’m here …
Surely the debate over when life begins is utterly redundant, because even if you accept the premise that life begins at the point where sperm fertilises egg, you then have to persuade me that I ought to care about killing a fertilised egg, while it is still in the very early stages of its life. Just because you can say:
1) sanctity of life
2) fertislise egg is life, therefore
3) sanctity of fertilised egg
is not going to cut any ice with me, because I can just ask whether/how much we should care about killing ALIVE fertilised eggs, foetuses, and in what circumstances it is permissible. So even if you reach consensus on when life begins – so what?
bugger, when talking about trade offs, I shouldn’t have used the word rights, which is precisely what you dispute, I should have just said “would to fix things so that …”
Perhaps, but that’s totally arbitrary as well.
I don’t think it is at all. It’s the distinction between “inside” and “outside” the human body. Even white blood cells recognise it.
Interesting post – and comments. My own view of abortion is similar to your own, coming as it does from a non-religious perspective. I don’t, however, think the language of rights helps the debate particularly; being absolute, this conception of the abortion issue results in two sides basically having a competition to see who can scream the loudest. I don’t think this does justice to what those of us who are uneasy about the scale of abortion in our society today feel is wrong with it. The balance isn’t really one of rights and responsibilities but rather whether, to what extent, and at what stage the unborn child becomes a separate entity from the mother. The idea that in aborting a foetus that may be over six months old is a woman exercising control over her own body is an idea I find grotesque. On the other hand, the notion that abortion in the very early stages carries the same moral weight as the cold-blooded murder of an adult doesn’t seem credible.
Katherine:
I do not personally consider the right to control over ones body a matter of convenience or a matter of a convenient life – it is a matter of great importance. Bodily integrity is not something to be written off – whether it is control over something going into it or something coming out of it.
Andrew’s position seems to be, in effect, that when you’re pregnant it’s different – your bodily integrity’s gone down the drain, and you just need to get used to it (“it isn’t entirely her own body after she conceives”). Andrew obviously doesn’t share my reluctance (as a man) to say anything at all about this subject, but on the basis of his own argument I really think he should. I mean, is that what it’s like to be pregnant? Who would know? Not me or Andrew.
I do think that a man will have difficulty empathising with a woman who has something growing inside her that she desperately does not want
I find it hard to begin to imagine (not without thinking of Alien, anyway).
I think there are strawmen in the underbrush. Do we approve of women terminating pregnancies for reasons of personal convenience, and thinking no more of it than if they’d had a wart removed? Not really – but I don’t think a lot of casual and unthinking terminations are going on out there. The question is not whether women should be able to terminate pregnancies casually, but whether a woman has the right – after considering all that it means to be pregnant, to be carrying within you the beginning of a new human life – to terminate that pregnancy. Either the final say rests with the woman (in which case the anti-abortion side is free to use persuasion, but not to constrain her) or it rests with the state (in which case pregnant women forfeit their bodily integrity by law).
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Andrew says: “The argument when you analyse it basically boils down to a question of aesthetics – what aspect of abortion is the least distasteful for you, as an individual? As that is a question with purely relative answers, there is no real position on abortion that will satisfy everyone.”
I wonder whether that insight might help to explain why many people would like to prioritise the views of pregnant women – people who actually have to make the decision – over everyone else, including of course foetuses who are incapable of making decisions. And why the “men can’t understand” argument is a badly phrased way of articulating something quite important.
It’s one reason why I’m in favour of devolving the moral choice over abortion to the lowest possible level – the individual, who in this case will always necessarily be a woman, as it happens – rather than letting the (aesthetic?) preferences of others dictate her decision.
Katherine: And my reference to miscarriages was not to treat this casually – but to point out the simple fact that we do emotionally and instinctively treat unborn babies on a sliding scales – these are shades of grey, not black and white.
But that’s not a simple fact. It’s just your opinion. Mine is the opposite – it is absolutely black and white. So your use of ‘we’ is misleading.
Bodily integrity is not something to be written off – whether it is control over something going into it or something coming out of it.
Indeed not. I just don’t think it outweighs the possibility of life.
Paddy: It is not the point that the woman has no rights to trade, it is that ‘we’ as a society would like to fix things so that human beings of all ages (and stages) have a right to life, and we would like to fix things so that woman have the right to determine their own destiny, but we can’t do both, so we have to decide which to trade off against the other, and how.
Again, no – you make the same mistake as Katherine – using ‘we’ when you mean ‘I’. I note you retract the word ‘right’, but then what would you call it? I think the foetus has a right to life, as with every other human. I don’t think the mother, when pregnant, has an absolute right to determine her own destiny any more, having (hopefully) consciously forfeited some of this ‘right’ when taking the risk that she could become pregnant. I guess this is why I see rape as different – that conscious risk decision was never made.
So even if you reach consensus on when life begins – so what?
Well, then the link with murder would be far clearer.
Shuggy: I don’t think this does justice to what those of us who are uneasy about the scale of abortion in our society today feel is wrong with it.
Yes, and I feel most strongly about my third point – the effects of the, frankly, huge number of abortions in today’s society, but I find it hard to articulate exactly what I find so wrong about it. Will have a think about that.
Andrew obviously doesn’t share my reluctance (as a man) to say anything at all about this subject, but on the basis of his own argument I really think he should. I mean, is that what it’s like to be pregnant? Who would know? Not me or Andrew.
No, I don’t share that reluctance. If we had to have experienced something to be able to cast an opinion on it, the world of politics would be an extremely dull place (or maybe not…). On this specific topic – should we restrict the debate to women who have been pregnant? Plenty of feminists would get upset at that. Should infertile women be unable to talk about it? Perhaps we should only let women who have actually had an abortion decide what society’s view should be. After all, they know best what the issues are.
Either the final say rests with the woman (in which case the anti-abortion side is free to use persuasion, but not to constrain her) or it rests with the state (in which case pregnant women forfeit their bodily integrity by law).
Yes, powerfully put. Of course, when you say state, I would say society. We take all sorts of moral decisions at the level of the state by legislating on them. I don’t see that this one is any different. Should we devolve all decisions involving the taking of another life down to the individual level? I think your argument is really just a cop out from making a difficult decision.
I also recommend that everyone clicks through to Owen’s post on this (see trackback above) – it’s very good.
Andrew, looks like everyone’s made the relevent points in the comments already. I had a couple of other things though.
If you don’t think that “doctors are quite willing to to interpret mental or physical health problems in terms of not being able to go on holiday this year. Life’s a bitch.” is emotive language, try reading the Daily Express. Maybe you already do, in which case perhaps you should consider writing for them, putting this story right beside the one about young women getting pregnant solely to acquire a council house.
As you believe that abortion is “morally equivalent to murder” I can provide a list of Marie Stopes clinics, which you might want to protest outside, or perhaps attack. After all – what right minded person wouldn’t want to prevent mass murder?
I think you know – as most reasonable pro-lifers realise eventually – that abortion is not even close to murder.
Paul: If only HTML provided a ‘this is a joke’ tag, we could avoid all this unpleasant sniping.
As you believe that abortion is “morally equivalent to murder†I can provide a list of Marie Stopes clinics, which you might want to protest outside, or perhaps attack.
Well done. You get the prize for being the first person to compare me to an abortion clinic bomber. I’m surprised it took 40 comments before my prediction came true. If it would make you feel better, you can call me a Nazi in your next comment. It would certainly make me look like some kind of clairvoyant genius.
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This seems to me totally, utterly wrong. Your warning of scanty knowledge of biology is graciously given, but it makes all the more bizarre that you would make statements like this.
Firstly, nociception – the biological correlates of a noxious insult – needs to be distinguished from the experience of pain. Pain is necessarily a subjective experience and must be underpinned by, if not consciousness proper, some kind of conscious-like state. Read sea slugs responding to shocks, read pain experience under anaesthetic (i.e., none). The foetus may show responses of one form or other relatively early – that is neither here nor there, and we must take care not to anthropomorphise (as scientists; as a parent it’s perfectly healthy to begin to think of the little person becoming part of our family). Serious scientists do disagree on the stage at which foetuses can feel pain, and I’ve idly followed a little of the controversy in the pages of Bioethics. Stuart Derbyshire argues for experience of pain very late, whereas David and Michael Benatar strongly (vehemently, according to Derbyshire) disagree, putting the experience far earlier.
(For those interested, the particular articles I am talking about in my folder:
The bottom line is, the lower limit Benetar^2 are going for is around 28-30 weeks. Derbyshire argues that pain experience doesn’t develop until 12 months of age, although it will develop along a continuum of increasingly pain-like experience to get there (NB his article arguing so begins with a claim he objects to – that consciousness emerges at 30-35 weeks).
I happen to think Derbyshire has got legs. But even if not? Your estimate of 8-20 weeks falls well below all the assessments made by the experts. So right from the off you’ve lost me a little. I should go back and read the rest but I can’t imagine that this won’t have a knock-on effect on the rest of the argument.
Bugger. Sorry. Some text was lost in the making of this cockup. The opening paragraph (in blockquote) should be (from Andrew)
The brain becomes capable of rational thought somewhere between 8-20 weeks, as far as I can tell…(in comments) Perhaps “rational” the wrong word – “conscious” would be better, I think.
Alex – Fixed it for you – let me know if I missed anything.
Andrew, point taken and apologies – I can see what it looks like, but I wasn’t intending the comparison to a bomber. I actually had in mind attacking the patients and staff at the clinic verbally, if you can believe that.
I am interested to know what you are doing to help stop this mass murder (c200,000 in the UK per year), though. If I believed that scale of preventable killing of innocent life was going on in my own country, I’d be out there marching at least.
And – What joke?
Paul: Making abortion illegal would be a good start – hence the comparison with Ireland, where the rates are lower. And I thought the piece was littered with jokes, but maybe I have a high opinion of how funny I am. The bit I was referring to specifically was the “going on holiday. Life’s a bitch” part – I thought it was pretty clearly hyperbole. Obviously, I don’t really think many women have abortions because they’ve booked a summer break.
Apology accepted, by the way, but on your own blog you do directly compare me to an abortion clinic bomber.
Well done. You get the prize for being the first person to compare me to an abortion clinic bomber.
but it’s a serious point and brushing it off won’t make it go away. If you believed that thousands of murders were taking place at the end of your street every year, then this would normally demand some action from you. The fact that you regard this as a matter for civilised debate between people who can otherwise remain friends strongly suggests that you in fact /don’t/ regard abortion as morally equivalent to murder. I don’t think it’s unfair at all to point out that your claims are undermined by your actions.
dsquared: Or maybe I think it is more appropriate to persuade others to make it illegal, rather than taking direct violent action. I’m sure I’ve argued before and elsewhere that terrorism is wrong. I don’t see why I should be exempt from that just this once.
Still, although you can’t admit it for some reason, you are treating this issue differently to murder. I’m guessing (and if I’m wrong you can stop reading) that at least one person you consider a friend is in favour of legal abortion even if it is only in the most extreme cases (such as rape, to use your example). Most people will know someone who has been a supportive party in an actual abortion. If I found out a friend supported a policy, law or belief system which directly caused the murder of 200,000 innocent people, who are absolutely unable to defend themselves, I think that one thing would mean the end of our friendship. I don’t want to compare you to a “whackjob”, but, aside from their violence, I can’t see much difference between their and your (professed) beliefs.
Thanks Andrew, that’s it in a nutshell.
I wonder if anyone has read the issue as covered on Left2Right, where a liberal academic argues for abandoning Roe vs Wade? Here and here. Interesting stuff – Prof Velleman has a very nuanced take on the whole children/new life issue. (For example, his cogent post arguing that embryo donation is immoral under a liberal framework) – Here.
As others have here, I’d like to query whether we really treat life, or even the potential to be a person, in the same way as we treat someone who has attained personhood. Take this scenario.
Imagine someone takes a piece of your skin (sloughed off your foot and thrown in the trash, it’s in the public domain), and puts it in a special cloning device. This device will then work to generate from your skin a person weaved from the same cloth – similar to you but not exactly the same (the device is a beta version). Let’s assume that the clone is created from the bottom up, and would feel nothing until the last minute, where the brain is switched on. You are incenced, and want it to stop. Does the entity being created have rights? Would you expect to have any say in the eventual outcome?
Note that in this version you have weaker claims than a mother does – it isn’t taking your bodily resources, there is no associated risk of death and disfigurement, you won’t need to give up your job, and you won’t need to look after a baby.
Now, although I don’t claim that this would be entirely unproblematic, I anticipate we would agree that terminating the foot would be ok – if not on your say-so (perhaps you have no proprietary claim) on the basis of society, perhaps in the form of pitchfork-wielding townsfolk, demanding that the experiment be stopped. Once the process finishes and the thing is switched on, I would argue that a different set of moral conditions exist. An actual person demands rights, a potential person doesn’t. (A part-person, such as an entity with limited but real conscious experience, would perhaps have certain protections, like great apes, but not rights, or, if they had passed a certain milestone, such as birth as an independent being, could be granted rights as a matter of simple convenience).
Oh bloody hell. I’ve been using the html detailed in the “Leave a comment” spot – i.e., using sharp brackets: [a href=”www.etc” title=”whatever”]
– but should I stick to the normal one – i.e., in sharp brackets: [a href=”www.etc]whatever[/a]
? Don’t want to be doing this all day….
Weighing in a little late here.
dsqaured’s right, we need to talk a little bit about what it means to be pro-life, that is, if one believes that the government should at least place further restrictions on, if not outright ban, abortion.
It is mentioned earlier that the Catholic church considers the coil abortion, and therefore wrong. I would add that based on the definition of life beginning with fertilisation, andrew and blimpish also consider the morning after pill abortion.
In the States, debate is currently raging over the way that some pharmacists are taking matters into their own hands about these fine lines between contraception and abortion. It appears that christian, right-wing pharmacists are protesting their right to refuse a woman, with a prescription from her medical professional, contraception (including the pill) or in less extreme cases, the morning after pill.
In some cases, the pharmacist has taken the prescription and refused to relinquish it so that the woman can go elsewhere and get it filled. When the morning after pill requires 72 hours to be effective, and you need to make another appointment, and find another pharmacy, this matters.
Now, it goes without saying, surely, that people who become pharmacists have to accept their professional responsibility to defer their personal feelings before a doctor’s judgement. But we have provision for conscientious objectors in the army. And pharmacists are allowed to withhold drugs from patients if they suspect she came by them nefariously. And doctors in the states are already allowed to refuse to prescribe contraception or the pill.
All this means that it is likely that pharmacists will continue to be allowed to do this. Walmart, for example, has stipulated that pharmacists must decalre their leanings upon appointment and that whenever he or she is on duty, a second pharmacist must be too.
Not criminal behavior, certainly. But think about the kind of people who these pharmacists are turning away who don’t have the knowledge or the confidence to overcome the hurdle of a medical professional condemning you and withholding your unfilled prescription.
This takes us back neatly to the discussion of levitt: what levitt argues, quite specifically, is that the people most likely to not have access to abortions, teenage mothers or ones from disadvantaged backgrounds who can’t afford expensive, secret procedures (because they will, indeed happen if the law is changed) fit the profile of the environment that current thinking on crime considers creates ‘criminals’ out of children.
If we are to eradicate that kind of environment, allowing abortion must be part of it. Having a baby has real, devastating consequences for those kinds of women.
I don’t believe that the figures for abortion in this country are that high because of these kinds of mothers-to-be. It is almost certainly because of women like me, young, underpaid ‘educated professionals’ who don’t feel ‘ready’ for children, when what they really mean is they want to keep partying into their late thirties and then, when they’re practically infertile, make the NHS pay for treatment. Selfishness should never be an excuse for murder.
Yes, that’s what I think abortion is. I think to have one, in all moral clarity, you have to confront that fact. And I don’t think enough people do.
But I don’t know if, knowing that, I would still be able to go through with it. I’ve never had to make that choice and hope I won’t have to. But if I do, I’ll do it with my eyes open. And if I do, I want it to be available. As a last resort. So that my kid doesn’t have the start in life that sets him up for a life os disadvantage and possibly crime.
I’m with Hilary: safe, legal, and rare.
As I said in a comment above, aside from a few bombing nutjobs, almost all pro-lifers tend to accept majority rule and argue against it. This probably owes a lot to the fact that we’re more likely quite conservative types who value order. I don’t believe there’s a ‘right’ to civil disobedience, for example; as Andrew points out, it’d be a bit rum to say “except where I want there to be.”
No, I wasn’t calling into question your approach. Just pointing out how people ARE allowed to get away with disobedience.
Katie: Medical staff and pharmacists in the UK can ethically opt out of either giving abortions, or dispensing the morning after pill, but I believe there is an obligation to refer patients to someone who will do the job. I think that’s the right approach for now.
Alex: You need to close the tags – I’ve edited your other comment to do so – the text in the Leave a comment section isn’t that clear. It’s just standard HTML.
Regarding your first point, Andrew. (BTW I wish the comment system did threads).
On 1, While the Levitt argument appeals to my amateur economist side, I think that pre-emptive capital punishment for future crimes isn’t a morally acceptable way to reduce the crime rate. At what point do we move from abortion to just rounding up the chavs and putting them into the electric chair?
I suppose I basically find abortion morally acceptable because I don’t think of fetuses as people. (I don’t really young humans as fully people either, until they learn to speak and communicate. To me, human rights begin when a person is capable of signaling “I have rights! I don’t want to be killed!”. Of course, this point of view implies a downgrading of the rights of the severely mentally handicapped, but as Paddy Carter pointed out above, any set of moral propositions taken to their logical conclusions, will produce something nasty).
Regarding rounding up chavs, etc. I think that once babies are born they are part of the national community and it is up to society (parents backed up by the state) to ensure that they are brought up in a way that they become productive and happy members of that society, and not criminals. But that doesn’t mean you can’t do some pre-emptive quality control on who gets born in the first place.
On the subject of quality control, it seems to me right that the state continues to encourage the abortion of severely disabled fetuses, because these people if born will be an economic drain on society.
Society should also continue and expand screening for genetic diseases, in order to increase the future health of society. Where possible, we should also encourage the propagation of good genetic traits (as far as their genetic basis can be determined) such as health and intelligence. (Now everyone will think I’m a Nazi :-) )
Andrew: On 2, without wanting to sound callous, there would have to be forensic evidence of the rape, or at least a very prompt report of the incident to the police.
Some women who’ve been raped are traumatised and don’t report it promptly. Or at all. Should these women be forced to carry the baby?
Phil: Without wanting to sound too authoritarian, a change in the law might have the consequence that more women report rapes that were previously unreported, because the consequences are possibly ‘worse’ than before in some sense. And now everyone thinks I’m a Nazi. :)
Katie: yes, you’re quite right that under our definitions, the morning-after pill would count as an abortion method (and, it is). Here I confess: under my dictatorship – and believe me, the planning is now quite advanced – I’d hope to cleave to a hypocritical blind-eye policy, where such methods were freely, cheaply, easily, but not openly, available.
Hypocritical, yes – but then so is every attempt to maintain some moral standard in law. (And don’t even dare suggest the law should have no moral standard – there is no neutrality here.)
And anyway, we’re hypocrites together – your argument is that “it’s murder but we should allow it in these cases, so we’ll keep it legal but hope people will keep it minimal;” whereas I say “it’s murder so it should be illegal, but it’s better that we don’t enforce it too far.”
My hypocrisy, I think, works better – law has a massive educational role, and to set a framework which allows (in practice, as of right) one of the most heinous crimes to go unpunished is sending some awful signals about duty and justice.
Phil H: Nazis have feelings too, right?
Andrew: I always knew you were one anyway.
A couple of comments for ye.
Firstly, although the potential for life may occur at conception, it often doesn’t happen. Many pregnancies (estimates are at about 40%, I believe) spontaneously abort, either through miscarriage or even before the mother is aware that she was pregnant. This is believed to be because the genes were so defective that the child is utterly unviable.
Secondly, I read a report on the Beeb site yesterday (link here) which stated that scientists now believe that babies are incapable of feeling pain until at least week 28. This is because the neural networks required have not yet formed. In fact, the peripheral nervous system does not develop fully until some years after birth (which is why babies’ coordination is not very good).
(Not relevant, but also the soft palate does not recede until about 18 months, which is why babies (and monkeys) cannot talk properly until that point.)
Just thought I’d lob those in.
DK
I find the pro-life arguments quite strange. The essence is that once pregnant, a woman becomes little more than a repository for this precious new life. For a ‘pro-lifer’, this little clump of gestating human cells must now take precedence over the mental, emotional, social and financial well-being of their sentient, fully formed host.
Those who come to an anti stance from an aetheist viewpoint confuse me even more. Surely the sanctity of a developing foetus is based on religious notions of a divine soul. For supposedly dogma-free aetheists, the notion of a divine human soul is ultimately unworkable. Ipso facto, the so-far unquestionned (on this thread anyway) logic of the sanctity of human life also becomes a matter for debate.
Andrew, and other commenters have unconsciously framed the terms of this debate on estblished religious morality. If anyone wants to justify the sanctity of human life itself from an aetheistic viewpoint, I would be interested to debate it.
Andrew,
Presumably if a foetus is granted the same rights as a post-birth human and termination of that life is illegal, a murder investigation will have to be conducted into every miscarriage? Or at least a coroner’s report?
Tim: Not necessarily – I think the last comment that Blimpish left expresses my view of practical side of the law quite well.
Kate: It might be convenient for you to lump us atheist anti’s in with the religious anti’s, but it isn’t correct. I don’t believe that life is sacred because of religious notions of a divine soul. I simply believe that everyone has a right to life, foetus included. Your straw man looks like it might need more stuffing. I don’t think you have to be religious to believe that killing people is wrong. From an aesthetic stance, just think of all that wasted potential. What if I aborted the next Orwell, or Einstein, or Mozart, etc?
The essence is that once pregnant, a woman becomes little more than a repository for this precious new life. For a ‘pro-lifer’, this little clump of gestating human cells must now take precedence over the mental, emotional, social and financial well-being of their sentient, fully formed host.
Yes, because none of those things are more important than the right to life. Only an incredibly selfish person could possibly include things like social and financial considerations above the right of someone to live. After all, I’d be considerably wealthier if I killed my parents – should that be an acceptable defense at my murder trial?
DK: On your first point, that’s why I used the word ‘potential’. I am painfully aware that about 1 in 3 pregnancies ends in miscarriage, most likely due to genetic defects in the developing foetus. I’m not sure that this adds anything to the debate about abortion though. There’s a huge difference between, for example, murder and accidental death. Debating them in the same context just confuses the distinction.
On the point about pain and consciousness, I’m not sure it matters. I used to know a guy who had a degenerative condition of the nervous system, one of the effects of which was that he couldn’t feel pain (or later on, temperature). If I had murdered him, would that be an acceptable defense in court? “Sorry, m’lud, but he couldn’t feel any pain. That means he wasn’t human, right?”
Andrew: I believe that killing people is wrong. For the same reason that I believe stealing is wrong, or bullying is wrong. This is a result of the human capacity for compassion and empathy, useful social tools in an evolutionary sense (it stops us all killing each other). I do not attach any value to life itself, after all a bacterium is alive in the pure sense. I feel very little empathy for basic multi-cellular structures and far more for fully cognisant humans.
I think we need to make a clear distinction between life that is self-conscious, and that which is not. And a 12 week foetus most definitely isn’t.
I don’t get what is so intrinsically valuable about human existence that every fertilized egg deserves a go?
Tim: following on, a bit of prudence goes a long way here. 100 years ago, investigations into deaths during childhood were a lot more casual than now, because of high infant mortality. Given that (according to varying estimates cited above) between a third and two-fifths of fertilised eggs don’t make it to term, there’d be no reason to go to those lengths, just as there wasn’t when abortion remained almost wholly illegal. (A point so far missed is that, in England, abortion remains illegal unless licensed; and was allowable before the Abortion Act, under certain circumstances, as tested in case law in the 1920s, I believe.)
Kate: well, I’m not an atheist, but since you ask…
Why do you believe that killing people is wrong? From your answer, it’s on a combination of utilitarian reasoning and your own sentiment – so ‘wrong’ is not so much the right word as ‘inefficient’ and/or ‘ghastly’. Here, we come back to Andrew’s point about aesthetics – that your non-objection to abortion becomes a matter of “what I can’t see, doesn’t matter.”
Indeed. You say that this is because you’re (and, by implication, we’re) evolutionarily programmed not to do so, and these are “useful social tools (it stops us all killing each other).” Well, aside from the valiant attempts of many to disprove your rule (ahem, Hitler, Stalin, etc), why are they useful? Maybe a more cut-throat attitude to life, a sort of living application of Social Darwinism, where the strong are encouraged to kill the weak, might lead to a more efficient society?
This is in keeping with the logic of your position: “I feel very little empathy for basic multi-cellular structures and far more for fully cognisant humans.” So, you’re setting up a scale of value for human lives, along which there is a threshold where they’re worth being protected, but beneath which is more questionable. Now, I guess you’re a charitable sort, so you probably draw that line generously – but your only difference with a more aggressive type is one of degree, not type. (Humanitarianism is great, until somebody decides to start making distinctions over quite who counts as ‘human’.)
Leaving all that aside, your argument about religion and atheism misses the point wholly. Religious arguments, even in the West, have taken a range of positions over the start of human life and personhood. Within Christianity, for example, Tertullian took the current view (body=soul=person=not for killing), but later St Augustine distinguished the embryo informatus (abortion punished with a fine) from the embryo formatus (punished with death, as murder).
This was pretty much taken as the rule right into the nineteenth century, with ‘ensoulment’ not seen to be taking place for some time into pregnancy (the traditional rule being 40 days for a boy, 90 for a girl). Before ensoulment, the foetus was seen as an actual life, potential person, but afterwards, as an actual human person. (I believe Islam takes a similar view of ensoulment taking place after conception.)
Now, if I were an atheist (and I used to be), I would still be against abortion (and I was). Let’s think about it in materialist terms – body and mind rather than body and soul. On a purely materialist view, ‘mind’ is simply an extension of body – our personality is purely the result of our biochemistry. Given that that biochemistry starts to happen at conception, what basis have you (other than arbitrary judgements as to ‘lives worth living’) for declaring that that person doesn’t exist.
Now, most Christian thinking takes a similar view, because it is felt that, scientifically, we can’t say what the soul is or how it is manifest, and therefore judgements of when the foetus is ensoulled are just as arbitrary. But at least the idea of ensoulment would allow for a moral boundary of the sort you seek. An atheist-materialist view of the same is simply a condemnation of some human beings as worthless. But if you can do it to a voiceless foetus, who else can you do that to?
“I don’t get what is so intrinsically valuable about human existence that every fertilized egg deserves a go?” If human existence is without value, then anything that depends on it is without value. So, if human existence is without value, then so is the discussion that it allows, and so, therefore, is that question.
Blimpish:
So, if human existence is without value, then so is the discussion that it allows, and so, therefore, is that question.
I suppose that’s really my point. I always find the moral certitude of the anti-abortionist slightly suspect. You can put it down to quasi-nihilist tendencies if you must.
I also wonder how much the abortion debate is distorted by a curious sort of societal mysogyny that says women should naturally put the needs of others before their own. But I would guess that’s a debate for another day.
Kate: Your continued ad hominem arguments (anti-abortionism is just religious fundamentalism, then our slightly suspect nature, then just social misogyny) betray an unwillingness to confront the issues raised. The irritating thing for those of us on the anti side of the argument is this sort of group smearing by association. It isn’t convincing, by any stretch of the imagination, unlike many of the other pro-abortion comments.
Andrew: worse than that; Kate’s accusations don’t even give us the respect of ad hominem attacks; they’re attempts at psychological reduction (“unconsciously framed the terms of this debate”) or sociological reduction (“debate is distorted by a curious sort of societal mysogyny”). Luckily, we have Kate here to show us what dupes we are.
Or, we would, except that Kate admits to nihilist tendencies (being ‘quasi-nihilist’ is a bit like being ‘half-pregnant’) and so nothing she says means anything, really. So, what we say has at the very least some meaning as reflections of our twisted, misogynistic psychological or sociological backgrounds, as compared to whatever Kate says, which is, by her own admission, meaningless chatter.
Ho hum, Kate brought up the point that I was going to investigate more fully.
Essentially, if you are an atheist, you cannot believe that any human has an intrinsic right to life, for who confers that right? Only a higher being than ourselves could possibly confer an objective human right to life and, if you do not believe in a higher being, then how can that right be guaranteed?
Personally, I don’t believe that any animal on this earth has a right to live. Since humans are no more than highly evolved animals, then they have no intrinsic right to live. In fact, of course, if you are an atheist, you cannot believe that humans are intrinsically different from animals and thus, if a human has a right to live, then so does every animal on earth, which is patently silly. Every animal could be said, I suppose, to have the right to attempt to survive to the best of their ability. However, even that is dodgy, because rights are an artificial human construct.
When writing on a subject that has a large scientific dimension, it might be an idea to go and look at some of the science before writing: not so to do implies, at best, a certain amount of laziness; at worst it destroys credibility. If you are ignorant of the science, and you aren’t arguing from a religiously dogmatic point of view, then what are the strengths of your argument exactly? Essentially, you are arguing a vague personal aestheticism, and why should I take seriously your personal morality?
DK
On a purely materialist view, ‘mind’ is simply an extension of body – our personality is purely the result of our biochemistry. Given that that biochemistry starts to happen at conception, what basis have you (other than arbitrary judgements as to ‘lives worth living’) for declaring that that person doesn’t exist.
And this is just rubbish. Mind could be said, I suppose to belong to a certain part of the body, i.e. the brain. This is certainly not present at conception, or indeed for a reasonable amount of time after. I take it that you don’t believe that bacteria, amoebae or viruses have “minds”? And yet they have biochemical interactions.
Do algae, corals, fungi or any other simple multicellular organisms have minds? And yet they too have inter- and intra-cellular biochemical processes.
(As a matter of fact, the human central nervous system (which includes the brain) is not fully formed physically until the end of the human growth period (roughly speaking, at about 20 years of age). This is because once the CNS is fully grown, the fluid surrounding it is then flooded which enzymes which prevent any further growth (which is why broken backs, etc. do not repair themselves).)
Kate: Of course, your interpretation of ‘atheist’ assumes that believing there is no higher being automatically means that an atheist considers all humans nothing but an animalistic cluster of cells. In which case, you are naturally pro-choice. But, to be morally consistent, you couldn’t then object philosophically to, say, cannibalism. It’s just cells, after all, and plenty of other animals eat their own species, especially miscarried foetuses.
DK: “Essentially, you are arguing a vague personal aestheticism, and why should I take seriously your personal morality?”
Because we have one and you (by the position you state), don’t. I assume you’re willing to follow through your ‘moral’ position which lapses to a survival of the fittest. Go ahead and kill a disabled person, to prove your consistency. (Incidentally, I think you’re right about the implications of atheism. That’s part of why I’m not: but that’s not really what we’re discussing.)
Re the mind and body stuff – yes, fair point that ‘mind’ doesn’t exist until the brain is fully formed. But a foetus has the same genetic make-up, and is in process, of forming a brain. There is no external event after conception that ‘switches on’ a foetus. (Unless you’re going to posit that maintaining the mother’s physical support is an external event, but then you’re rather prejudging the morality of abortion by assuming it’s a choice.)
By contrast, bacteria, amoebae, viruses, algae, coals, fungi, etc, are not going to form minds. Unless I’ve missed something? The biochemical processes in a foetus will, all being well, to lead to the formation of a brain that allows for the formation of a ‘mind’, i.e., ‘consciousness’. The biochemical processes in the other organisms you refer to, will not.
Incidentally, are you saying that there is no moral protection for life (1) at all; or (2) until a person is 20, assuming that they are not mentally deficient? Bloody hell: I hope you don’t babysit on those terms.
Blimpish, yes, you’re right, we’re probably both hypocrites, but I’d rather be a hypocrite that doesn’t criminalise people.
And I never thought I’d say this, but your argument falls down on the grounds of social exclusion (sorry, I have to read the guardian for work). The world you propose makes abortion a privilege and a luxury for those who can best afford it, (who can ironically, also best afford a child). I say again, those most likely to not have access to a nice safe secret clinic or a plane to france are those for whom the ‘need’ of an abortion is strongest.
You’re right, the law doesn’t currently acknowledge the moral enormity of an abortion, leading to the ‘just an abortion’ mentality some people may have. I’d love to get rid of that, (as I said, safe legal and RARE) but not at the price you propose.
Because we have one and you (by the position you state), don’t. I assume you’re willing to follow through your ‘moral’ position which lapses to a survival of the fittest. Go ahead and kill a disabled person, to prove your consistency.
It doesn’t work like that, Blimpish. It may be survival of the fittest when looked at on a macro scale, but on the micro scale it’s the survival of me.
To go and kill a disabled person would, under the society in which we live, jeopardise my survival, or at least the prosperity and liberty which could ensure that I am best able to survive to pass on my genes (which is the ultimate aim of survival).
And this applies in abortion. The kind of casual abortion that you and Andrew were really attacking could be said to be justified under this idea; the idea that the abortion is because it jeopardises – at the current time – the adult’s ability to survive in the most fit state possible.
(BTW, I, too, actually find these casual abortions aesthetically displeasing (wasteful, plus it encourages other undesirable behaviour); I would normally advocate adoption. Unfortunately, a number of recent laws have made this a less desirable option for many.
I do feel that I should argue against Andrew’s ultimate conclusion, mainly because I think that it is wrong. Maybe we should make it harder to get an abortion, but I do not think that we should ban it outright. And, should it be banned outright, then there should be no exceptions; no, not even for rape victims. Either it’s murder, or it’s not: you cannot invent special circumstances.)
DK
I haven’t read all the comments here, but has anyone mentioned this yet.
Isn’t male opposition to abortion just another way to reasert control over females.
It’s easy for us men to criticise women who choose abortion since we never have to make the decision between an abortion or childbirth ourselves, despite being equally culpable in creating the pregnancy. I notice a distinct lack of female comments here.
I believe in rational argument, since most of the anti-choice people are irrational religious nuts, thats the clincher for me!
What I find amazing about this subject is how anti-choice people can still keep a straight face when arguing for capital punishment, legalised guns, animal experiments, or all the exceptions to the abortion rule (like rape and risk to mother’s life). At least be consistent and argue against all these things as well. Oh! but then you’d be going against your right wing views wouldn’t you, and thats the real reason you want abortion stopped! Lets stop these uppity women having to much freedom!
Katie: mention of social exclusion alone invalidates your argument, obviously.
Your point would be fair if it were twenty or thirty years ago, but the truth is (as I said many, many comments ago) that medical technology makes illegal abortion safe and cheap. Funnily enough, this brings us fall circle – in the pre-scientific era, apparently, there were well known abortifacent potions widely used, especially amongst prostitutes, and for the most part without hassle (standards were lower then, admittedly). Obviously, these were stamped out by the rise of modern medicine, which left surgical options – which meant either expensive or cheap’n’nasty.
So, in my light-touch environment – and as I say, this is pure hypocrisy – abortions wouldn’t be just accessible to the rich and powerful.
Now, that aside, to the rest of the argument here. Murder is such a heinous act that allowing exceptions to the rule seems to be a pretty bad path to start down. My hypocrisy might mean some private tragedies, but at least it’s sustainable – I don’t see how you can really say “people, we know it’s murder, but please don’t do it, ok?” with a straight face.
Back in the nineteenth century US, there were apologists for slavery who accepted the institution was evil, but said that it was better to let it die out than criminalise people with it. Emancipation didn’t end injustice in the US, but it did bring that one step closer, and was a symbol that the the wider pattern was simply beyond the pale.
Incidentally, you mentioned Hilary’s endorsement of “safe, legal and rare.” If she were to assume the Presidency in 2009, are we to assume that there’d be a public health advertisement effort to discourage abortion even a tenth as much as there is to discourage smoking..? Forgive my cynicism, but my guess is that HRC’s a bit of a convenient convert here.
DK: On the survival of the fittest thing – forgive me a metaphorical raised eyebrow here. I doubt you really do relate to the world on quite those terms – that the only reason you don’t kill a disabled person is simply because Leviathan makes it too costly. Whether you want to write it off to your own mental tics, I imagine you’re quite a bit different to that. (And rightly so, IMO!)
At any rate, if you follow a purely atheist-materialist worldview, why should survival and passing on of your genes be your aim? Just because that’s what natural instincts drive you towards, doesn’t mean that you can’t choose against them (indeed, many people do). If life is futile, why just follow it along that path, anyway? We’re in is-ought territory here, surely?
Re the legal points at the end – as far as I’m aware, abortion is still counted as murder (or some related charge) unless it is licensed under the Abortion Act, so it is banned. We’re really just talking about the line at which the exception is allowed. Paddy’s point earlier in this thread about trade-offs and compromises holds; and yes, that would leave most of us as hypocrites. Such is life.
(The rape exception is, though, compatible on a ‘benefit of the doubt’ basis. My position and I think Andrew’s position rests in part on the mother’s agency in becoming pregnant; that’s why we reject the choice argument and find for the foetus’s claim of necessity. In the case of a rape, there’s obviously no agency.)
Neil: “I believe in rational argument,” you say.
Can I ask that you prove it, by apologising for that pathetic comment and actually making an argument that’s worth a damn?
Blimpish, like I say I believe in rational arguments. Here is the evidence to support that most anti-choice people are religious.
As religion is an irrational belief based on faith not evidence, the vast majority of rational people have come to the conclusion that women’s right to choose is correct.
Tell me your views on fox hunting, animal experiments, capital punishment, legalised guns. I suspect you are probably in favour of most, if not all. Explain how this is consistent with your anti-choice views?
As for your comment;
“that medical technology makes illegal abortion safe and cheap.”
How rational is that? If you are accepting that everyone including the poor will still have access to abortion, what is the point of banning it?
Personally, I think a lot of women might still end up with unscrupulous or incompetent backstreet abortionists. The cost of going abroad to have the operation would run into many thousands of pounds that would be out of reach of some of the poor!
Please prove you are rational by replying to this and answering my questions rather than just being abusive.
Neil: Read the whole comments thread before throwing straw men about – we’ve already been through most of your lazy assumptions. Or, you could make one more stupid comment, and get yourself IP banned. Your choice.
DK: On the difference between animals and humans, I think that the development of sentience/self-awareness/consciousness sets us apart, and that partly from this is derived the right to life, even when that development is just potential, rather than definite, so I disagree with your point. And by the by, any sentence that starts “Essentilly, if you are an x, you cannot believe y” is pretty much guaranteed to strengthen my belief in y, just to be bloody minded.
On adoption, Unfortunately, a number of recent laws have made this a less desirable option for many.
Well, that’s an argument to repeal recent law, not against abortion.
Katie: Put that Guardian down. And I never thought I’d say this, but your argument falls down on the grounds of social exclusion.
Hmmm. If there were a right to abortion, that might be true, but in Blimpish’s semi-benign dictatorship (in which I expect to assume some quite high rank…), that right wouldn’t officially exist. By analogy, I wouldn’t say now that the government’s policy on class A drugs is an assault on the poor.
I’ve now read through all the comments and although the religious issue has been touched on, no-one has discussed the point I make (from the link I provide), that religion plays a large part in most of the anti-choicers decision and religion is not a rational argument to oppose abortion.
I apologise if I was a bit direct (straw man?) with my argument and I apologise for retreading the back-street abortion point but I think I make some other legitimate points.
Blimpish says that when he was an atheist he was also against abortion. But no-where does he say his views on capital punishment, fox hunting, animal rights, legalised guns etc.
This is relevant because if any supporters of banning abortion, believe in any of these other things then their argument is lost.
Where is the consistency in believing that a few cells is life and sacred, but not any animal. Also capital punishment and legalising guns are not compatible with the sanctity of life argument that anti-choice people follow.
This is surely a legitimate point. If you need to ban someone for making a legitimate point that you don’t agree with then that is very sad.
Neil: You ask me to address your arguments, and yet dismiss me as an irrational bigot. (Though far from pious, I am religious. Your ‘argument’ is pretty insulting to me.)
You assert that all religious people are irrational. Yes, religious faith does start from assertions of faith. So does every belief system. For example, the belief in human equality (a Christian idea, originally, btw) is far from proven fact, isn’t it?
Fox hunting and animal experiments – I’m not “in favour” of either, but I wouldn’t see them criminalised. That’s completely compatible with being pro-life, because I think humans are distinct from and superior to animals – don’t you? After all, to treat them the same means being a vegetarian Dr Dolittle wannabe, who wouldn’t be averse to some bestiality. Forgive me…
Capital punishment – very much “in favour,” yes. Again though, there’s a fairly simple distinction. An unborn child is innocent – as the rest of us have discussed, it isn’t even meaningfully conscious for some time. A murderer or traitor sent to the rope is guilty of the most heinous crimes. If you can’t see the difference…
On the one hand, you refuse to allow such obvious distinctions as animal/man or innocent/guilty – perhaps because you think them exclusive. But then you discuss this subject on the basis of dismissing anybody who disagrees with you as ‘irrational’.
Re your last: if you bothered to read above, you’d see my acceptance that that position makes me a hypocrite. Like many on this thread, I can see that no side has a perfect argument. Maybe it’s because I’m ‘irrational’. But then, who’s the one making assertions of faith the basis of their position here?
Andrew: “quite high rank”? Right at the top, my good man; right at the top.
I’ve just noticed the comments on animals, so I apologise for that as well. I think you are wrong to say animals are different. Apes are self aware. We are just animals ourselves, do you accept that.
Innocent people have died because of capital punishment. Doesn’t this totally undermine your ‘innocence’ argument?
Science is open to change. Religion is irrational because you have to believe something through faith rather than evidence. Although religious people contort the scriptures to scientific discovery, they don’t like doing it. Religion is dangerous because it encourages blind acceptance of fixed ideas whether they fit the facts or not!
Oh dear, I seem to have come across as a man. This is why I have trouble getting dates…second ones anyway.
It infuriates me when people say men have no right to comment on abortion. Of course they do, sperm doesn’t materialise magically inside the womb.
I might say that Neil’s quite correct that only irrational people hold a checklist of positions on the grounds that they have to in order to be ‘right-wing’ but to assume that anyone who self-identifies as right wing automatically holds them, or that holding them automatically means you haven’t considered the issues is just rude, frankly.
This is why I broadly disapprove of the terms ‘left’ and ‘right’ and why I also dislike ‘pro-choice’ and ‘pro-life': people treat these words like a manifesto adherents have signed onto lock stock and barrell with no room for nuance of opinion or considered debate.
There are people like that, but one of the great virtues of the sharpener is that we all come to the table with our labels removed and have to ask each other what we think and why we think it.
Of course there is no perfect argument on this issue, but I certainly think I understand an intelligent argument for banning abortion more than I do a dumb one for keeping it legal.
You’re right Blimpish, that is indeed why she is doing it. But that doesn’t mean the belief that she’s wearing this week isn’t something worth believing in.
I’m entering this debate rather late – so I won’t go into the pro- and anti- arguments that others have put forward better than I can.
But there remains the nasty issue of politics. The real problems facing those that want to outlaw abortion is that the issue doesn’t really excite the population, and hence the politicians. The only Western country that I’m aware of where abortion is a huge political issue is the US – and even here, despite what you might read in the European press, solid majorities continue to support legalised abortion.
In the UK, the Tory party at the last election made an attempt to get abortion on the radar, only to see the issue disappear completely in what seemed a matter of hours.
The debate centres around the time limit for legal abortion, and no doubt this time limit will change as technology changes, but it does not address the central moral issue for many: ie, is abortion morally equivalent to murder?
Legal abortion, rightly or wrongly, seems to have become pretty much the ‘settled will’ of most developed countries. I find it difficult to see how anti-abortionists can change this.
Neil: In turn…
1. No, I don’t accept we’re just animals. Not for a moment – self-awareness is one thing; do apes understand the consequences of their own morality? Is there ape philosophy? It might make you feel intellectual to think that we are only animals, but my guess is that your practice will tell a very different story – do you treat animals as you do humans? Really? (DK is closer to coherence here – a reserved belief in survival of the fittest, which can justify his differential treatment of animals.)
2. The death of innocents through capital punishment doesn’t affect this argument. Morality must look at intentions as well as consequences; and the intention of the death penalty is to punish the guilty. Like all institutions, it is imperfect and so, yes, sometimes the innocent will be mistakenly punished – just as the Police mistakenly kill Brazilians on the tube; but we don’t foreswear all use of lethal force, do we? The argument is one of practice, not principle: at what point are we willing to allow for the downside? Your preference may be stricter than mine, but that’s a difference of degree. (You might have another in-principle objection, but not one that undermines the logical coherence of supporting the rope and opposing abortion.)
3. The third comment starts from a category mistake. Science is not an alternative to religion – it is a means that can be used for religious ends as it can for materialistic ends, or any other. Many of the greatest scientists in history were also people of deep religious faith – Newton was a bit of a loon, in fact. I think Einstein said something like “religion without science, is lame; science, without religion, is blind.”
So, you compare the ‘scientific’ people (clever, rational, like you) who work from facts and have open minds, to the ‘religious’ people (prejudiced, irrational, like me) who start from fixed ideas. But in reality, you are no more scientific than any religious person might be.
Your religion – or ideology, as it’s secular – might not be spelt out, and you might not think of it consciously, but it is there all the same. You’re every bit as fixed in your ideas as most formally religious people are, it’s just that you don’t even realise it – which is worse, in my book.
And, to prove my point, who’s the one who has come to this thread with an absolutely black-and-white, my-side-good, their-side-bad view of abortion? Was it the irrational, close-minded religious Blimpish? Or was it the rational, open-minded atheist Neil?
Hmm…
Katie: Yes, I wasn’t meaning to suggest the argument wasn’t wrong because HRC is using it cynically. Although I would say that most of the times I have heard it, it’s been longer on rhetoric than positive proposals for action.
3A: On the whole, yes, but a couple of points back.
1. In the UK, we have a very utilitarian discussion of abortion, which is much less polarised than in the US. But in my experience, the proverbial man and woman on the Clapham omnibus tend to take a position closest to Katie’s – that it is murder and therefore wrong, but they’re not convinced about criminalising it. (To be fair, at this very moment, I wouldn’t just ban it.)
2. In the US, those ‘solid majorities’ are pretty weak if the question isn’t polarised. An outright ban? No way. But when the questions are asked in terms of particular restrictions that would have the cumulative consequence of outlawing the large majority of abortion cases, there’s strong (and growing) support. And that’s why abortion turned from a major GOP negative in 1992 to a small-but-significant Democrat negative in 2004 – and why HRC has suddenly got so very, very concerned about the high levels of abortion.
Blimpish.
1. We are animals, to deny this is to deny fact. We might not be the SAME as animals, but we are animals. NO scientist would say any different. There ‘might’ not be ‘ape philosophy’, nobody knows, but there is ‘ape culture’ and ‘ape self awareness’ and animals dream. What they dream of we don’t know!
So a group of cells inside a woman is worth more than a fox, a cow, a dog, a cat or a chimpanzee?
I’m sorry but this theoretical, it will BECOME a human, so it is a human, just doesn’t wash! The fact is, it isn’t a human, not yet!
If you are willing to kill fully grown animals but think a few cells need protecting, your logic is floored!
2. When you advocate capital punishment you have accepted that innocent people will die as a result. If there were no capital punishment, these innocent people would not die. Therefore, you have chosen to kill innocent people deliberately. How does this square with your abortion views?
3. The point is, scientific theory changes, religious texts are not supposed to change. Religion has changed by bending its interpretation of these texts, that is how it has managed to survive.
Your religion is probably based on the idea of a supreme being speaking to you personally inside your head and this supreme being also having written some texts thousands of years ago, on which you should live your life by.
Science is based on trying to understand the world through observational evidence and constantly adapting these theories to fit the evidence.
Which sounds the more reasonable and rational?
Katie,
Men can comment on abortion and childbirth safe in the knowledge they will NEVER have to go through it! This makes it much easier to be anti-choice and their views of less value!
It is quite clear why the right wing is more prone to be anti-choice; (pro-life, is a disgusting term, because it implies those who oppose them are anti-life which is not the case, because nobody is pro-abortion).
Firstly, statistically they are more religious, and more religious people tend to be more anti-choice.
Secondly, statistically they are more likely to be chauvinistic and banning abortion is a way of re-asserting control over women.
Neil:
1. Pay attention. I said “No, I don’t accept we’re just animals.” ‘Just’, notice? My question about ape philosophy isn’t so dismissable as you might think – do apes ponder what right and wrong are, or do they interpret them by survival instinct? As far as we know, the latter; and that touches on what makes humans unique.
Dealing with your sidestep: I do think that human life is of more moral weight in any form than animal life. I don’t believe in categorising human life as ‘subhuman’ in some way. In the founding-era US, slaves were counted as three-fifths human. That was wrong.
If you’d like to draw a stable line as to where a foetus becomes ‘human’, then please be my guest. But you can’t, can you?
(And yes, killing fully grown animals poses no issue for me providing it is done humanely – am I to assume you’re a vegetarian? Your loss.)
2. I’ve discussed the death penalty many times, and you’re not exactly the strongest opponent.
The use of state force always carries risks of collateral damage. From the streets of Dresden to Stockwell tube station, the use of force typically reaches the innocent as well as the guilty. In prison today, there are people rotting away for life, with no hope of getting out – but still innocent. By your standards, all of this is morally bankrupt – any unintended consequences are ‘deliberate’. That’s an invitation to quietism. For a political person, you’ve got a kindergarten-like conception of political choices.
So, again, this squares absolutely fine with my abortion views. I believe that the state is charged with advancing justice, by punishing the guilty as best as it can. I believe that we as citizens have an obligation to uphold the law – natural and political – and that this starts with a defence of the innocent and the weak. This isn’t difficult, Neil.
How do you square endorsing the private murder of children while allowing those guilty of murder often to walk the streets, probably responsible for killing more people than are thought to have died innocently in the last thirty years of the gallows? Do you not believe in justice?
3. That comment about “speaking… personally inside your head” was wonderfully condescending, thanks. I can see you’ve really got a very deep understanding of religious experience (even less than me, and that’s saying something).
Once again, let me take you through this. Religion and science are not equivalents. Religion and philosophy are. Science is an understanding of cause and effect whereas religion and philosophy focus on right and wrong. Science can and does inform the religious and philosophical understanding, and vice versa. Science is about power; it does not make our choices about how best to use it.
Case in point: “Science is based on trying to understand the world through observational evidence and constantly adapting these theories to fit the evidence.” Lies, damned lies, and… Unfortunately, with regard to social and moral issues, evidence can always cut more than one way.
Take our argument here – for most of it, if you bothered to read it or are able to follow it, there’s little disagreement on the facts of the case; it’s the values we assign to those facts that matter. Now, where do those value judgements come from? Ultimately, they rest in our intuitions about right and wrong, and/or ideas about right and wrong that we buy into. Christians like me include the Bible in that; unthinking vulgar atheists like yourself probably do, too, having grown up in a primarily Christian culture – it’s just that you probably think it’s all pure intuition.
And that’s why your pose of neutrality with respect to evidence, aside from being laughable on the basis of the comments you’ve made here, is frankly a bit quaint and nineteenth century, you know. It hasn’t been philosophically respectable since then to think like you do. But then, I’m sure you know that, right?
Neil, re your comment to Katie:
“Men can comment on abortion and childbirth safe in the knowledge they will NEVER have to go through it!”
I’ll never go through a lot of things. I’ll never be raped. I’ll never be a concentration camp guard. I’ll never read a good comment from you. Etc. But I’m a human being, so I have at least some common experience. Ever heard the word ’empathy’?
“Secondly, statistically [Right-wingers] are more likely to be chauvinistic.”
Ok, Mr Science: show us your evidence for this. And don’t even dare mention Adorno’s Authoritarian Personality, because I’ll tear you limb from limb; rhetorically, but the pain will be similar. (If you can’t provide solid evidence for this assertion, it should be withdrawn and you should balance it by admitting that Left-wingers are more likely to have Oedipal issues. Or something like that.)
Incidentally, Katie says above that abortion does involve the killing of human life, but differs with me on the policy response. As she’s a woman, and you think mens’ opinions are all worthless…
No, I don’t accept we’re just animals. Not for a moment – self-awareness is one thing; do apes understand the consequences of their own morality? . . . (DK is closer to coherence here – a reserved belief in survival of the fittest, which can justify his differential treatment of animals.)
I consider myself flattered! However, I think that you and I have reached our sticking point, my dear Blimpish. I’m equating your religious views slightly with my father’s here, but I am assume that, without being a raving religious loony, you nevertheless firmly believe in a god. Can I also assume that you believe that there is something in humans which makes us quintessentially different from animals, something that we could call a “soul”?
If so, it is always going to be a problem in this debate, since I don’t believe in that little piece of a god in all of us. I believe that we are very much higher than most animals, rather than being “just animals” (I may have overstated my case out of devilment!), and are special for that reason. However, I still don’t believe that we have something in us that justifies our dominion. If there evolved a species more intelligent or better equipped to survive than humans wiped us out, then where would our right to life be?
I shall look for your answer but, unless your beliefs are radically different than I have postulated, I shall retire gracefully from this debate; I believe that I have identified a point at which personal belief is an issue, and there is no point in our arguing in circles.
DK
DK: Yup, that’s about the size of it – well, except for ‘God’, rather than ‘a god’, but then I would say that, wouldn’t I?
I didn’t want to jump to any conclusions!
It’s entirly fair enough, but I think that demonstrates how our personal beliefs (mine, as well as yours) bring us, personally, to an impasse in this debate.
Chin chin!
DK
1. None of what you say was the point I was making. It’s you who has to prove that a few cells in a woman’s body is of more value than a sentient animal, if you can’t do that, your argument falls down!
2. You’ve not surprisingly not answered this point either! You accept that innocent people will be killed by a policy of capital punishment. How then is this consistent with your ‘abortion’ argument that all ‘innocent life’ is sacred? Please answer this point?
3. So in your religion, God does not ‘talk’ to you inside your head? Just answer yes or no?
Finally, men’s empathy is not equivalent to women’s experience. How can it be?
DK: quite so – has been fun though.
Neil: oh dear. Fun of a different sort with you, isn’t it?
1. Human life is not just animal, it is something more; therefore we make a presumption in favour of its preservation and against its ownership. That’s why we have farming but not slavery – in case you hadn’t noticed?
Now, I, like many people believe that this rule applies to all humans as a starting assumption – that they are entitled to be protected in life unless, by some action, they forfeit that right. (Of which, more in (2) below.)
Further, when I say all humans, I don’t say that some people are inferior because they are not fully functioning at that point of time. I don’t believe the mentally handicapped should be euthanised; I don’t believe the comatose can be killed with abandon. Because we have no objective measure of the human factor that we all (except you) recognise exists, it seems prudent to draw the line where it is clear – that is, when the biological form known as ‘human’ is created. That moment is conception. Please, enlighten me as to a different point – I’ve asked once, but this time maybe you’ll bother to come up with an answer.
Basically, Neil, I don’t believe in treating humans – any humans – like animals. I assume you do.
2. “You’ve not surprisingly not answered this point either!” You’ve not surprisingly not bothered to read the answer either!
Did I say, anywhere in the foregoing, that innocent life is “sacred”? Once? At all? No. Because I don’t believe that it is; I do though think that it is more valuable than non-innocent life. I also draw a distinction between private and public uses of force. But in the meantime, I’ll thank you for addressing my arguments, rather than the strawmen you seem to be confusing me with.
From what you say, I guess you don’t believe that innocent lives have greater value, and therefore should be treated the same as the lives of the guilty; i.e., criminals. So you don’t believe in right and wrong, then? Good. Leave your address, I’ll be round to burgle your house later. Thanks.
3. I’d think my previous dismissal of the very idea gives a clear enough answer. Do animals talk to you? Just answer, yes or no?
I note you haven’t offered any evidence to back your statistical claim about us Right-wingers being nasty nasty chauvinists…
Blimpish, Ok. I’m going to answer the questions for you, as you seem unable to utter the words! This is because you know how ridiculous your views will sound.
This is what you are saying!
1. A zygote has more rights than a chimpanzee.
2. The life of a zygote is more important than the innocent life of a human, as long as that human is wrongly convicted of a crime!
3. God can do anything (including talking in my head), don’t ask how I know this.
4. Men’s views on abortion and childbirth are as important as women’s experience of abortion and childbirth.
Just look at how absurd your views are!
Heres your link for chauvinism and right-wingers!
There are also many more links I can give you on the Conservative Party and their ageing voters and how ageing voters are more chauvinistic!
Neil: One last time, and having read your last few comments, I’m going to try to keep this to words of very few syllables (although you might need a dictionary for that one…). The Sharpener is a weblog designed to provoke adult, intelligent debate, across party lines, without reference to tired dogma, creed and groupthink. If you insist on repeatedly, irrationally smearing your opponents in any debate on this site, I will ban you and you can go back to your dull little world where no-one ever disagrees with your accepted opinion. Final warning. Play the ball, not the man.
Neil, I vote Conservative and I’m a sprightly (if raddled) 28; not that old methinks.
As regards “dogma”, Blimpish and I have identified where our beliefs would interfere with amicable argument and agreed to disagree. Since Blimpish has said that he was, at one point in his life, not religious I am sure he is entirely aware of any God-bashing arguments. However, personal faith is a stumbling block to argument in this case. Why not accept that, Neil? I don’t come down on you, just because you are a Labour supporter (though I’m not exactly surprised. In terms of stupid, entrenched dogma that is a proven failure, Socialism has to be the apeothis).
You also post this on your blog:
“I believe that what a woman wants to do with her body is her business and nothing to do with anyone else, especially men!”
Unfortunately, that’s not true; if only on the practical basis that the CSA are so demanding these days. One cannot evaluate purely on morality on this one.
DK
Neil: As much as I hate shovelling coal into the fire, I’m a bit of a glutton for punishment, so I thought I’d help you along your inevitable awakening as a thinking being by questioning one of your little assumptions. I do patronising with the best of them, as well.
Your “I believe that what a woman wants to do with her body is her business and nothing to do with anyone else, especially men!” comment is presumably made because you assume that women are more lenient towards legalised abortion than men. In fact, the reverse is true. In a fairly recent YouGov poll, more women than men agreed that legislation should be tightened, and also that abortion was being used effectively as a means of contraception. A plurality (again, look it up…) of men thought the legal limit should be increased.
Tell me which of the four points I make is incorrect?
FACTS:
You are arguing that a zygote has more rights than a chimpanzee.
Blimpish, by supporting capital punishment but wanting to ban abortion, does have an obvious inconsistency in his argument. He thinks its acceptable to kill innocent people on one hand but not on the other (even if you accept that a few cells is a human life, which I don’t).
Are you telling me that religious people don’t believe God can do anything, including talk to them directly in their head?
And how can empathy be equivalent to experience?
These are all undeniable facts.
This may sound crude and simple, but I believe in getting to the crux of the argument. If you ban me for this, it will be a sad reflection on you. At least tell me how any of the above are wrong. If you can’t, well that tells me a lot about why you want to ban me.
Neil: Your four points are irrelevant. That’s the problem. You are determined to turn this into a slanging match based on broad (and inaccurate) group classifications. There are plenty of blogs that would be happy to cater for that sort of tiresome nonsense. This isn’t one of them. If you’re happy to engage constructively with the points made, stick around. If not, enjoy the rest of the blogosphere. May I suggest something of the form:
‘I cordially disagree with your argument x, because I don’t feel it is supported by your assumptions y. Argument z would be more appropriate.’
Fill in the details at your leisure.
‘Arguments’ of the form:
“Uuuurrghhhh. You’re a right-winger. Hey, look everyone. A religious right-winger! Freak! FREAK!”
are not suitable for this forum.
That is not what I’m saying, leaving the religious right wing part out of it. How can you defend the obvious inconsistency of Blimpish’s arguments?
Neil: It is really quite easy. Firstly, I don’t see any inconsistency. Secondly, Blimpish has eloquently explained in further detail the points where inconsistency could be assumed to exist by omission.
Now, I realise that membership of the Labour party conveys a requirement on its members to redefine debate in terms of the ability to shout the loudest, and with attempts to associate opponents with ‘extremism’. Here though, we stick to the traditional method of discussing our assumptions and the logical progressions through to our conclusions, to try to tease apart the crux of an issue. We also try, where possible, to leave our membership cards at the door. It’s so much more interesting arguing with what people actually say and think, rather than what your party forces you to assume people think.
You still haven’t said which of the four points are incorrect?
And you still haven’t managed to string together a coherent argument. Perhaps if you explained why Blimpish’s position is littered with ‘obvious inconsistency’, that would be a good start?
A complete ban on abortion is supported by 6% of the population (Telegraph 29th September). When you argue an extreme viewpoint as you have, you have got to expect to be criticised.
Blimpish, by supporting capital punishment but wanting to ban abortion, does have an obvious inconsistency in his argument. He thinks its acceptable to kill innocent people on one hand but not on the other (even if you accept that a few cells is a human life, which I don’t).
The difference though – if I may possibly be bold enough to extrapolate Blimpish’s thinking – is this: when you abort a foetus/embryo/baby/whatever, you are deliberately targeting an innocent individual. This is morally different to accidentally hanging the wrong man.
Accidents happen, that’s life; it’s unfortunate, but in the majority of cases – especially with more reliable methods such as DNA profiling – you will hang the right man. who otherwise would waste space, money and matter languishing in a jail cell.
DK
Capital punishment means killing innocent people. Why is this acceptable but not for abortion? How is this not inconsistent?
But statistically we know that innocent people will die under capital punishment. Blimpish accepts this.
If you did not have capital punishment these innocent people would not die. By having capital punishment you are making a deliberate decision to kill innocent people.
You could also argue that the right to choose does not necessarily mean their would be any abortions. So where is the difference?
Neil: Criticism would be welcome. That’s why I post my views on an open forum. I invite criticism. I revel in it. I use it to firm up my opinions, and to reveal where I am right and wrong, sure and unsure. What you were doing was not criticism, it was lazy smearing by association.
If you did not have capital punishment these innocent people would not die. By having capital punishment you are making a deliberate decision to kill innocent people.
If we did have capital punishment, murderers would be killed. Murderers who, in the absence of capital punishment, would go on to repeat offend and murder innocent people. By not having capital punishment you are making a deliberate decision to kill innocent people.
You could also argue that the right to choose does not necessarily mean their would be any abortions. So where is the difference?
We live in the real world. The right to have an abortion exists (let’s not mince words with this ‘right to choose’ propaganda – as I explained in my post, the terms in this debate are too loaded – say what you actually mean please), and abortions are numerous and increasing. The difference is in degree, and practicality.
Or, to take an issue you’d no doubt find offensive:
You could also argue that the right to bear arms does not necessarily mean there would be any gun crime. So where is the difference?
It’s not a sensible argument, is it?
By banning abortion, women will die in backstreet illegal abortions. If you want to talk practicalities, most liberal societies have accepted that ‘pro-choice’ is the option that causes least damage to society.
I’ve seen the terms ‘pro-life’ used here. You did not pull that up. That is a ‘loaded’ term if ever I heard one, because it implies those who oppose them are ‘anti-life’, which is ridiculous!
That is my point. I’m just arguing the inconsistency not which is right or wrong.
It is consistent to be pro-choice and pro-capital punishment and pro-guns.
It is also consistent to be anti-choice, anti-capital punishment and anti-guns.
Yes, I characterised myself as ‘pro-life’, after an appeal to people not to take it as an emotive term. I thought it would be an easy hook into the debate for most people. I made the mistake of assuming they’d read the read of my post. If you’d prefer, I’ll use the term ‘pro-abortion-ban/restriction’ from now on, although it’s a bit clunky.
By banning abortion, women will die in backstreet illegal abortions.
Possibly, but it’s unlikely. As per the comments above, the increasing use of chemical abortions means that people are unlikely to die in backstreet clinics. The vast majority of abortions occur pre-12 weeks.
If you want to talk practicalities, most liberal societies have accepted that ‘pro-choice’ is the option that causes least damage to society.
And in the 18th century, most civilised societies had accepted that ‘pro-slavery’ was the option that caused least damage to society.
Just because something is the status quo, or fashionable, or new, or old, it doesn’t mean it’s right or wrong.
It is consistent to be pro-choice and pro-capital punishment and pro-guns.
It is also consistent to be anti-choice, anti-capital punishment and anti-guns.
Okay, so consistency is important to you? Then which of those two sets of views do you hold?
The right to choose does not necessarily mean abortions will happen but statistically they will.
Capital Punishment does not necessarily mean innocent people will be killed but statistically they will.
If you want to argue that capital punishment doesn’t deliberately target these innocent people, you can equally argue that the right to choose does not deliberately target fetuses for abortion.
Nobody wants abortion, neither side do. But we know from experience it is better safe and legal than unsafe and illegal.
Education is the best way to reduce the number of abortions.
If you want to argue that capital punishment doesn’t deliberately target these innocent people, you can equally argue that the right to choose does not deliberately target fetuses for abortion.
You could, but you’d be wrong. Capital punishment is aimed at guilty criminals. A possible consequence is that innocent men are executed. It is more unlikely with modern forensics, I’d imagine, but I’ll grant, possible. By contrast, legal provision of abortion is aimed at the foetus.
You could perhaps make an analogy between innocent men who die as a result of capital punishment and women who die after elective surgery as a result of abortion.
Education is the best way to reduce the number of abortions.
I assume you have some statistics to back that up. From the comparison I posted above between Britain and Ireland, it looks more convincing to me as if legal restriction is the best way to reduce the number of abortions. You’re just repeating tired dogma without any basis in fact. You may want that to be true, but the steadily increasing numbers of abortions suggests that it isn’t.
It is the ‘innocent life’ point that Blimpish makes that makes his argument inconsistent with being both for capital punishment and for an abortion ban.
If capital punishment acted as a deterrent, I would be for it. But looking at places that have capital punishment, we can see that there is no evidence for it being a deterent. Would capital punishment be MORE of a deterrent to a murderer than life imprisonment?
When people commit these crimes in the vast majority of cases, it is not something they consider. Look at Harold Shipman, Fred West, Ian Huntley etc. All of them either committed suicide or attempted it. To them life imprisonment was MORE of a punishment and therefore probably MORE of a potential detterent.
How would capital punishment detere suicide bombers?
I have no theoretical objection to capital punishment, I just don’t think it would work!
As for legalising handguns, ditto. If handguns reduced the number of deaths in society, I would be in favour, but they don’t, they increase the number of deaths, so I’m against.
Education is the best way to reduce the number of abortions.
That’s just rubbish. There is more sex education in schools now than there ever has been, yet both abortions and teenage (and below) pregnancies are on the rise.
You see, this is the same old socialist bollocks, trotted out again. It is easy to say that education is the solution, because it’s the easy option. You don’t have to actually do anything except that make sure that yet more stuff about the birds and the bees is on the curriculum.
“Dear teachers,
Please can you teach more stuff about sex.
Love (but in a sensible and precautionary way),
Neil.”
There you are: you’re absolved of doing anything practical. You’ve increased education, passed the buck to teachers and now it’s all OK. The fact that you’ve completely failed to address any of the social or moral problems that actually contribute far more to these problems is ignored, because to remedy these would mean making hard, and compicated, decisions.
It would mean admitting that people aren’t all the same; that some are stupider, or more reckless or whatever. You are an idiot, and not even a useful idiot at that.
DK
Neil: To put DK’s comment slightly differently, does it not disturb you just a little bit that a quality you find so repellant in others (religious fundamentalism) is something you exhibit so clearly yourself? The constant dogmatic repetition of these mantras of your political belief is presumably as comforting to you as the voices you hypothesise exist in Blimpish’s head are to him.
If capital punishment acted as a deterrent, I would be for it. But looking at places that have capital punishment, we can see that there is no evidence for it being a deterent. Would capital punishment be MORE of a deterrent to a murderer than life imprisonment?
Who cares? We’d save a lot of money, and the chances of them re-offending is, let’s face it, pretty low.
DK
If we look at countries that have legal abortion, there is wide variation in the abortion rates.
Countries that have sensible sex education and encourage contraception from an earlier age, they have a lower abortion rate than the UK and US. They also have lower teenage pregnancy rates.
A good example is Holland.
Andrew, Blimpish: tempting though it is to keep arguing with Neil (believe me, I’ve been there), in the end it leads to the same empty feeling I imagine you’d get if you came top in a “who’s the tallest?” competition with a class of five-year-olds. If I were you I’d take pleasure in the fact that he disagrees with you, and leave it at that.
I don’t agree with either of you on abortion, but anything I say will now be tainted by association, so I’ll leave it.
I think life imprisonment is a more fitting punishment for convicted murderers, with the added bonus that if they are found to be innocent they can be released.
The costs of imprisoning the few hundred people who would be eligible for capital punishment is miniscule for a population of 60 million people. I think stopping innocent people being put to death is worth this economic cost.
Neil, DK: Capital punishment is off topic – can you wrap it up?
Tom: I think you’re probably right. Depressing, isn’t it?
Andrew, the reason I have repeated myself is because you won’t answer the question.
1. You believe a zygote has more rights than a chimpanzee.
2. You believe a life of a zygote is more important than the innocent life of a human, as long as that human is wrongly convicted of a crime!
3. Religious people believe God can do anything (including talking in their head).
4. You believe men’s views on abortion and childbirth are as important as women’s experience of abortion and childbirth.
Are the 4 points I make (however condescending you think they are) incorrect?
Yes or no?
Andrew, duly wrapped.
DK
duly wrapped here as well, I was asked a question so I answered.
Neil: If it will make you happy:
1. Yes, a human zygote, in my opinion, has more rights than a chimpanzee.
2. No, I don’t believe that. It’s self-evidently ridiculous, and it ignores the questions of morality that have already been answered at some length surrounding capital punishment. Intention is everything here, Neil. The intent, in capital punishment, is to punish the guilty. The intent, in abortion, is not. They are quite different things.
3. Well, I’m an atheist, so it’s hard to comment on the religious experience, given that I neither share nor understand it. However, my simplistic understanding of Christianity at least is that God is all-powerful, but that He chooses, for the most part, not to exercise that power. I really don’t see how this relates to the legality of abortion.
4. No, actually, I don’t. I believe that men are capable of empathy, but that women will naturally understand the emotions and the process better.
I still don’t see how any of that is relevant to the points I, or others, have made on abortion.
Just to open things up again: 3A talks about public support, a report today (in the telegraph) points to new evidence that the public want a reduction from 24 weeks: only 25 % wanted to keep it there, with a further 30% wanting it cut to 20 weeks and 19% wanting it cut to 12 weeks. A Lib dem MP has asked the science committees of the commons and the lords to look into an issue ‘long overdue’
Katie: Yes, Anthony Wells has more at the quite excellent UK Polling Report.
Neil: to answer your four questions:
1. Hell yes. Do you believe in treating human beings as inferior to animals?
2. If you want to ask such a retarded question: no. Let me spell out, once again for the slow children, why there’s a difference. Compare: (A) Abortion law allows people to make private decisions to destroy foetuses, even though they are (necessarily) innocent. That is, on my own terms, it allows the murder of innocent human beings. (B) Death penalty laws allow the state to use lethal force where, through the judicial process, people have been found guilty of the most heinous acts.
Compare intent: (A) kill innocent human beings; (B) kill human beings guilty of the most evil acts we can contemplate.
Compare outcomes: (A) lots of human beings dead, all of them innocent; (B) a small number of human beings dead, most of them guilty.
Yet again, I will ask you to provide evidence that my argument is such that innocent life is sacred, as you continue to infer. It isn’t, and it hasn’t been. I can only assume you’re challenged in some way, and for that you have my sympathy.
3. I do indeed believe God can do anything; he is after all, the cause of all existence. Strangely though, he doesn’t tie my shoelaces, let alone talk to me regularly. Now, I ask again, do animals talk to you?
4. No, I don’t believe that men’s lack of direct experience of abortion invalidates their contribution to the discussion. It makes it different; but not invalid. And anyway, as Andrew pointed out, if we left it for the women, the pro-life argument would gain some ground.
Incidentally, Neil, I accept ‘pro-life’ is a loaded term; but so too is ‘pro-choice’. After all, the unborn child has no ‘choice’, does it?
Andrew, thank you for answering.
1. We can agree to disagree on this point.
2. Whatever the intentions are, the result is that innocent people will die and zygotes will be saved. Which death would cause more distress?
3. So you do agree, but you couldn’t quite bring youself to write it. We can now forget about this point, because it was related to my argument with Blimpish of how irrational religion is and how it distorts people’s views on abortion. I think I have proved my point.
4. If you don’t agree with this point, then you agree that women who have experienced abortion are in a better position than men to judge whether abortion should be legal.
Of women who have experienced abortion, 92% of them say abortion should be legal. Blimpish thinks men’s empathy is equivalent to women’s experience that is how the subject came up.
Neil: Mr Science, your ‘evidence’ of Right-wingers-as-chauvinists (in the sexist sense) is pathetic. The only polling evidence it states, which would allow such a generalisation, is about the devoutly religious in the United States, of which, a large number tend to be conservative. Aside from the geographic irrelevance, and the lack of solid sourcing, this is so shot through with inferences from correlation that your claim to be ‘scientific’ is absolutely laughable.
(Before you start, polling evidence that age makes us more Right-wing faces exactly the same issues of correlation not evidencing causation. Old people might or might not be more sexist than young; but many Left-wing old people might be too. Plus, like DK, I’m 28. So your caricature is blown away there, as everywhere else.)
Neil:
1. Sure.
2. As things currently stand, hundreds of thousands of innocent lives are lost in this country alone. That causes me more distress than the potential for innocent lives to be lost through capital punishment. Your idealistic sanctification of the ‘one innocent life lost’ is really a prescription to do nothing.
3. No, I don’t agree. You seem to purposefully ignore nuance when it suits you. I fail to understand why.
4. No, because understanding something better emotionally does not give you more votes.
Of women who have experienced abortion, 92% of them say abortion should be legal.
Really? And 92% of all serial house-burglars believe that theft should be punishable by a small fine. That isn’t how democracy works, Neil. We don’t sub-select the most likely group to agree with a position to vote on it.
And for the record, I’m 26, and I vote Tory.
Blimpish, thank you for answering as well, see my comment to Andrew above for answers to your points (as they are similar).
As you well know (i hope), animals do not talk to me, thankfully!!
I’d be more worried that an outside mystical higher being could talk to me in my head, like you have admitted could happen to you.
Neil, re your reply to Andrew:
1. Finally!
2. There were 181,000 abortions in 2003, Neil. In the 13 years before abolition of the death penalty in the UK (before the arrival of current standards of forensic evidence), ‘serious doubts’ were entertained in 3 main cases, one of whom was James Hanratty, since proven to be guilty. Let’s be generous, and say that 2 innocent people were wrongly hung. 181,000 compared to 2. The present distress in those 2 cases is equivalent to the loss of even 10,000 people who will never live, laugh, love, and (maybe even) be happy. Yep, thanks. I note you’ve conveniently moved off the grounds of inconsistency in principle, and are now arguing on the principle of “more valuable lives.”
3. I’m not sure what point you’ve proven. Please, enlighten me. No, really.
4. Again, backsliding here. Your earlier argument was that men have no right to comment; now you agree with me and Andrew that men do have a right to comment, although you would (as we would) grant some extra weight to women’s opinions on some points.
Please, once again, respect somebody’s argument when replaying it: I never said that “empathy” is “equivalent” to experience, because that would be untrue.
Neil: I like the phrasing “experienced abortion;” as Andrew makes clear, there’s usually some degree of agency involved. (Incidentally, plenty of those women also regret it afterwards.)
“I’d be more worried that an outside mystical higher being could talk to me in my head, like you have admitted could happen to you.”
Surely, as a good and open-minded follower of science, you see that this could happen? You don’t have to be religious to believe that. Science in itself doesn’t and cannot disprove the existence of God, by the way – which is why many scientists are believers. Believe in the possibility of a ‘divine intervention’ of the sort you speak of there doesn’t even require belief in God in the normal sense; you could equally be referring to some alien intelligence with such power. Can you say, Mr Science, that that is impossible? Can you refute it categorically?
Thanks for the condescension though. As DK was ‘subtle’ enough to notice from the discussion, I used to be an atheist. Strangely though, I passed through most of the childish arguments you make when I was about 17 or 18. Funny that.
Blimpish, the facts are, right-wing voters are likely to be older and older people are more chauvinistic. Left wing chauvinistic older voters are less numerous, therefore right-wing voters are more chauvinistic.
Its obvious really. Are you saying I would find the same amount of chauvinists in the Greens than I would find in the BNP?
3. Andrew, so you don’t agree (like Blimpish does) that Religious people believe its possible to hear God in their heads? Well you must be in a very small minority of people who think that! You say I don’t understand the ‘nuances’ of your argument, but it is a simple question that you are giving a very ‘politician like’ answer to, i.e. refusing to answer yes or no! I could say more on this, but it is off topic, so I won’t!
4. Andrew, how can you compare women who have abortions to burglars?
I never said anything about votes, I just said that women who had experienced abortion, had views that were more relevant. This is something both you and Blimpish now agree with. As 92% of these women say abortion should be legal…perhaps we should listen to them.
Who would you rather trust to fly a plane, a qualified pilot or someone who said he never had any experience but had watched a pilot fly a plane?
Blimpish, ‘pro-choice’ seems far less loaded than the ‘pro-life’ term you use. In fact it seems completely accurate. It is a woman’s body, she gets to choose, the ‘anti-choice’ people want to take this choice away.
Neil: On 3, it’s really very simple. The fact that something can happen, doesn’t mean it will happen. That’s the nuance. Nothing political about it – I disagree with Blimpish on the existence of God, so I think the question of voices-in-people’s heads is both academic and frankly insulting.
On 4, I consider both acts to be immoral – hence the comparison. I’d like both to be illegal. That makes it stronger still. Of course, this is just my opinion. I wouldn’t expect you to find the comparison particularly pleasant.
Who would you rather trust to fly a plane, a qualified pilot or someone who said he never had any experience but had watched a pilot fly a plane?
Who would you rather trust to legislate on rape? Rapists, or democratically elected representatives of the British public? In our society, no one person’s views on morality in the law are ‘more relevant’, despite their experience.
I just said that women who had experienced abortion, had views that were more relevant. This is something both you and Blimpish now agree with. As 92% of these women say abortion should be legal…perhaps we should listen to them.
The plurality of women think abortion should be more restricted than at present. Perhaps we should listen to them.
Neil, “the facts are” that you can’t evidence you claim. Thanks, Mr Science.
3. As I said above, you don’t have to be religious to “believe [it’s] possible to hear God in your heads.” After all, the argument assumes the existence of God. Welcome to the party, Neil.
4. “I just said that women who had experienced abortion, had views that were more relevant. This is something both you and Blimpish now agree with.”
Ah, yes. I believe, Neil, that you started here with the suggestion that: “Isn’t male opposition to abortion just another way to reasert control over females”? In other words, dismissing any man’s argument against as invalid. Andrew and I have never said that a man’s argument was precisely equivalent to a woman’s argument – you, though, ‘now agree’ that mens’ arguments are valid. Thanks, Neil. You learn slow, but you do learn a little.
“Blimpish, ‘pro-choice’ seems far less loaded than the ‘pro-life’ term you use. In fact it seems completely accurate. It is a woman’s body, she gets to choose, the ‘anti-choice’ people want to take this choice away.”
I take it back, you don’t learn at all. The ‘choice’ term assumes that it’s a valid choice, and therefore assumes away the debate. If you don’t understand this as a basic of rational argument, your claim to be scientific is looking so tattered as to be laughable.
Blimpish, I can’t refute categorically that Santa Claus really does deliver all the presents on Christmas Eve, but I wouldn’t go around telling people it’s likely! (I know how cheated I felt, when I found out my parents had been lying!!)
I used to be religious and I also used to be a Tory, so what? What does it mean? It doesn’t strengthen an argument one way or the other as far as I’m concerned.
I used to be religious and I also used to be a Tory, so what? What does it mean? It doesn’t strengthen an argument one way or the other as far as I’m concerned.
Odd thing to say, given that earlier, you said:
I believe in rational argument, since most of the anti-choice people are irrational religious nuts, thats the clincher for me!
and
What I find amazing about this subject is how anti-choice people can still keep a straight face when arguing for capital punishment, legalised guns, animal experiments, or all the exceptions to the abortion rule (like rape and risk to mother’s life). At least be consistent and argue against all these things as well. Oh! but then you’d be going against your right wing views wouldn’t you, and thats the real reason you want abortion stopped!
“I can’t refute categorically that Santa Claus really does deliver all the presents on Christmas Eve.” I can. He didn’t deliver the ones I gave to everybody I’m related to. That’s a pathetic reply.
“I used to be religious and I also used to be a Tory.” Respectively, your loss and your lapse.
Ah! but Blimpish, did you just imagine that you gave those presents, just like you imagine there’s a god?
Andrew, read my comment again.
“I used to be religious and I also used to be a Tory, so what? What does it mean? It doesn’t strengthen an argument one way or the other as far as I’m concerned.”
The fact I ‘was’ religious and ‘was’ a Tory doesn’t affect my argument ‘now’! That was in the past!
No, Neil, because I’m fairly able to distinguish between physical questions and metaphysical questions. Your theophobic condescensions would be charming if they were spoken by a child (one that hadn’t been aborted, obviously).
Neil: the fact that you strayed from Toryism is evidence to a very high degree that you are not fully in control of your mind, and therefore invalidates anything you say. (Not that logic hadn’t already done that anyway, but it’s better to back it up.)
I want you to prove to me that Santa Claus didn’t deliver your presents like you say you can? I mean ‘its possible’ he delived them isn’t it? I mean this is what you argue when you argue for the existence of a god.
Blimpish said,
“Neil: the fact that you strayed from Toryism is evidence to a very high degree that you are not fully in control of your mind”
So you believe that anyone who strays from Toryism is insane?
And this is from someone who accuses ME of having fixed views!
Neil, darling, we’ve already established that everything you say is the product of a disturbed mind, so really I shouldn’t encourage you.
(To humour you just a little because you seem to be so uneducated as to not even know this Philosophy 101 stuff: the delivery of presents exists wholly in the physical world. The question of God exists wholly in the metaphysical world, of which we know nothing except that we know nothing. But, science posits that there is cause and effect. So there is something prior to the physical world, that caused it. You might think that’s another scientific process, but you have no more evidence for that than I do of God. Come back when you’ve got a good argument, please. You’re such easy meat.)
Irony, darling. Although the more you talk, the more your mental state is a worry.
Neil: You’d need a well developed sense of irony to spot Blimpish’s sense of humour there. Although having spent the afternoon arguing with you, I’m beginning to think I’m insane. Partly, for arguing with an obvious idiot. Partly, because I was warned repeatedly that you’re an idiot. But mainly, because in spite of all that, I did it anyway.
“The question of God exists wholly in the metaphysical world”
Maybe you have got me there!
But the argument still follows if I say;
Blimpish, I can’t refute categorically that a magical teapot isn’t floating on the edge of the solar system, but I wouldn’t go around telling people it’s likely!
Look by constantly insulting me and saying that anyone who leaves the Tory viewpoint is insane, you are not helping your argument, no matter how cleverly you word it.
I have made valid points you have been unable to answer. What more do I need to do?
You are right about one thing though, you are not going to accept anything but ‘abortion should be banned’ because you have made your mind up no matter what the evidence.
Of course I meant this!
Blimpish, I can’t refute categorically that a magical teapot is floating on the edge of the solar system, but I wouldn’t go around telling people it’s likely!
Its the fact the whole argument surrounding God is absurd that this discussion has degenerated like this.
Each comment in turn:
1. The magical teapot floating on the edge of the solar system would exist in the physical world (or, more properly, universe), Neil. So yes, I have got you there.
2. “Insulting”? Who was the one accusing me of having voices in my head, and comparing being religious to a belief in Santa Claus? You brought the malice to this thread; we’ve been gentle with you, sweetheart.
“I have made valid points you have been unable to answer.” Where? Name one?
And Neil, we’ve long since established that your relationship to evidence is sketchy bordering on useless. But at any rate, this is mostly conceptual argument, not empirical. Your grasp of science is quite poor, really. (And that from a believer, eh?)
3. See (1). With knobs on.
4. Your inability to discuss a central question of human existence, that has been pondered fruitfully from Socrates to Heidegger, says nothing about the status of that question; only about your intellectual powers.
Blimpish
Its a magical teapot that we can’t observe? (This God topic leads to insane stuff like this being said because we are arguing about the absurd).
You’re the one who admits that having voices in your head would not be a problem, as it would be God speaking to you. Calling me ‘an idiot’ and ‘insane’ are direct insults, something I have not done.
We are going round in circles here, you have admitted the inconsistencies in your argument, they are discussed in previous comments above.
I know why you feel the need to insult me so much because you know the points I make are correct. If you can be bothered, re-read my points and come up with some better arguments, otherwise I’ll probably leave it at that, as I think we probably both agree we are not getting anywhere with this.
Neil, in the name of all that is holy (but that I don’t personally believe exist though Blimpish does), this really isn’t helpful.
If Blimpish and I can agree to disagree, why can’t you? Philosophically, you cannot prove that a God doesn’t exist, nor can you prove He exists. It’s all a matter of personal belief.
Since Blimpish believes that there is a God, he therefore believes that the value of a human being is above all other creatures because humans carry a little piece of God in them: he therefore sees things entirely differently from, for instance, myself. Since we can neither prove nor disprove that humans have this “soul”, it is down to personal belief.
It is not what I believe, and evidently neither do you; however, I can bow out of the argument because I recognise that while we hold our respective beliefs we can never agree on this abortion question, simply because the value of a human life, or even potential life, is a the core of the argument.
However, I’m pretty sure that I can categorically prove that Socialism doesn’t work…
DK
Heres a summary of our positions.
I said;
“women who had experienced abortion, had views that were more relevant.”
Andrew eventually admitted;
“I believe that men are capable of empathy, but that women will naturally understand the emotions and the process better”
I said;
“You are arguing that a zygote has more rights than a chimpanzee.”
Andrew reluctantly (after being asked several times) said;
“Yes, a human zygote, in my opinion, has more rights than a chimpanzee.
I said;
“You are arguing that the life of a zygote is more important than the innocent life of a human, as long as that human is wrongly convicted of a crime!”
Andrew said;
“The intent, in capital punishment, is to punish the guilty.”
“Whatever the intentions are, the result is that innocent people will die and zygotes will be saved.”
(which is self evidently true!)
I said;
“Religious people believe God can do anything (including talking [to them] in their head)”.
Blimpish said;
“I do indeed believe God can do anything”
I forgot to insert ‘I Said;’ between ‘the intent’ comment and ‘whatever the intentions’ comment.
DK,
I’m obviously a bit more optimistic than you, than when confronted with the evidence people will change their mind.
The problem is their argument is not based on evidence, so I’m at a loss.
But Blimpish has already done so once: from atheism to religion.
DK
DK
I believe in the market economy, as do most Labour supporters.
I don’t know what he based his atheism on?
I used to be religious. So what?
Anyway, the reason I raised religion, was because I argued it was not a rational argument for banning abortion!
Neil: None of those ‘admissions’ refute any of my points about abortion. They’re all statements relating to different policies. You have yet to provide any evidence relating to abortion. Selectively quoting me will just hasten your rapidly-becoming-inevitable banning.
Neil, once again, one by one. You put ’em up and we’ll knock ’em down and down:
1. “Its a magical teapot that we can’t observe?” First, your argument has moved. Second, although we can’t observe, I assume it still exists? If so, it’s still a physical object (visibility is not the only proof of existence). If you mean it doesn’t exist in this universe, then what reason do you have for believing it is there? None whatsoever. Belief in God is so categorically different that any religious belief you did have was fairly simple-minded. I tire of rehearsing basic arguments about the existence or otherwise of God with someone who can’t grasp a basic point.
Did I call you an ‘idiot’? Did I call you ‘insane’? Not me, guv. Did call you sweetheart, though.
“We are going round in circles here, you have admitted the inconsistencies in your argument, they are discussed in previous comments above.”
Neil, sweetheart, I’ve ‘admitted’ inconsistencies throughout this discussion because I realise that consistency isn’t as great a virtue of subtlety. None of those inconsistencies have been ‘admitted’ because of arguments advanced by you. The problem is that you persist in ignoring the manifestly pathetic logical bases of your arguments.
“I know why you feel the need to insult me so much because you know the points I make are correct.” (cf. Mt 13:57) Any ‘insults’ are less to do with our running out of arguments against your rhetorical and logical insight, than getting bored of repeating the same points and you completely ignoring them.
2. As Andrew said, the ‘admissions’ are taken wholly out of context. The first one, for example, picks up at the very end of the discussion we had about the validity of male opinion, after you’d sidestepped from your original, absurd, position that men had no right to argue against abortion.
Your last one, about the power of God, is also taken out of context. At the start you, with the kind of condescension you seem to think normal, accused me of listening to God’s voice in my head; when I made clear how stupid a suggestion this was, you asked if I thought that that was possible. I did, and I do. There was no change in my position; it was just you changing yours.
3. “I’m obviously a bit more optimistic than you, than when confronted with the evidence people will change their mind.”
You congratulate yourself on being rational, evidence-driven, open-minded. I’m sorry, but that’s total bullshit. You have been, again and again, completely bested by all of us in this discussion; this is marked out by the way you’ve dropped arguments, and moved on to others. You’re completely incapable of holding a reasoned discussion: you ignore what the other person says; you take things out of context; and you assert without evidence, and do not back it up; then, when found out, you shift your argument and hope that nobody notices. We do. (More worryingly, I think maybe you don’t.)
4. “The reason I raised religion, was because I argued it was not a rational argument for banning abortion.”
Fine, you can think that. You might notice from all of this discussion that our argument did not depend on any particular religious position. But as I said, you don’t like to listen before you put your rather ludicrous arguments in.
“I believe in the market economy, as do most Labour supporters.”
He wasn’t talking about most Labour supporters; only bigoted ones who can’t sustain an argument.
(Incidentally, I assume you think the Prime Minister’s an irrational religious freak too?)
Andrew,
For someone who seems to believe that 200,000 murders of utterly innocent, completely defenceless humans occur in Britain each year, two posts on the subject, out of 250+ total, seems a little lax. In that March post you were “not really in favour of legislating on what should be an issue of conscience”. I was wondering, although it’s you business, what you are actually doing (or, rather, have done since the recent modification of your beliefs) to combat what must be in your mind one of the most heinous crimes against humanity being committed anywhere in the world today.
Other than write a single blog post, of course (although I’m looking forward to the many which will no doubt follow this one).
The alternative view might be that you don’t actually believe that abortion is “morally equivalent to murder”. In which case, could you run your argument by me again?
Apologies if I’ve missed a further change of mind – I lost track of the comments at about number 65, but I will read them when I get a chance.
Collecting my thoughts, Paul, and them putting them into this post. That’s what I’ve been doing. Changing people’s minds, one doctrinaire lefty at a time, with a bit of luck.
Is it necessary to take physical action on every opinion I hold to make it valid?
I guess the debate stops there for me. No, it isn’t necessary to take action. More of a duty, in my opinion, but not yours, so fair enough.
I simply can’t appreciate that, in the face of infanticide on the scale of that going on in Sudan (does that qualify as a Godwinism?), but government sanctioned and happening in your local NHS hospital and funded by your taxes, your response is to collect your thoughts and put them in a blog post.
It’s pointless for me to argue against a mindset of “I recognise the law isn’t likely to change. Why waste the effort?” I can think of numerous historical figures who would applaud that attitude – mainly the ones who were eventually defeated by strong will from those with righteousness on their side.
If only you’d have had this attitude on May 5th – you could have saved yourself the trouble of voting Conservative. You must have recognised that the government was unlikely to change… why waste the effort?
Or maybe you don’t really equate abortion with murder, but realise that leaves your argument needing a huge rethink.
Paul: I see from your site that you opposed the Iraq war. What exactly have you done to prevent the killing of all the innocents over there, besides write a couple of blog posts? Maybe you’ve been on a couple of demos, or lobbied your local MP, or even the wider Labour party itself? Hasn’t done you much good, has it?
Yes, I opposed the manner in which we invaded Iraq, and the ideology behind that invasion. However, I didn’t oppose removing Saddam and am under no illusion that we could have done it without some loss of life, innocent or otherwise. I can confidently say that my actions have been appropriate for my level of opposition, and most would agree with me. You say it hasn’t done much good, but we’d probably find, for example, that any future British government would ensure that the case for war was properly made, maybe that post-war planning was infinitely better. Claire Short’s bill about parliament having a chance to vote on sending British troops to war may become law.
I don’t think your actions are appropriate for someone who believes the government is sanctioning hundreds of thousands of murders with the only result being an easier life for adults who should have been more careful in the first place. You do, it seems. This becomes a matter of opinion, so there is no point discussing it.
Indeed not, and yet you persist. There are three things to consider, in my opinion, here:
i) how strongly I feel on the issue
ii) what actions I could take that may change things
iii) the relative probabilities of the success of those actions.
You seem to discount iii) as irrelevant. That’s fine for you to do, but my time is valuable (this thread being the obvious rebuttal to that assertion) and I’d rather spend it on issues that I think have a reasonable chance of success. I find this issue interesting, but I’m realistic about the prospects of an outright ban. I might have spent all afternoon yesterday arguing with Neil, but I’m really no idiot.
Incidentally, iii) is one of the reasons why bombing abortion clinics is stupid. The extremely low chance of this changing anyone’s mind renders the action pointless, putting aside all of the obvious moral objections to such a course.
That said, as several people have noted above, the majority opinion in Britain is now for a tightening of existing abortion law, and all it took were a few pictures in the newspapers of new ultrasound technology, with a few well-placed words about the viability of premature babies at 23 weeks. One step at a time, Paul. One step at a time. So, to:
I can confidently say that my actions have been appropriate for my level of opposition, and most would agree with me.
I can confidently say: Me too.
my time is valuable (this thread being the obvious rebuttal to that assertion)
Ha! Good stuff.
Cheers Andrew. Looking forward to your next post.
http://bitchphd.blogspot.com/2005/04/do-you-trust-women.html Andrew, I couldn’t be bothered to read all the 100+ ‘he said/she said’ comments, but this post on Bitch Phd sums up why abortion should be safe and legal, and why every woman has the right (yes, the right) to decide what to do with her own (yes, her own) body. And no one has the right to curtail that or take it away, full stop.
Ilona: I don’t blame you for not reading the he said/she said comments. It’s not very enlightening.
The link you provide says that women should have the right to abortion because it is their body, and that we should trust women to do the moral thing, whatever they individually decide that to be. That would be fine if no other party was involved, which is why I don’t much care if anyone wants to undergo elective surgery at their own expense. That’s their life, their call. The problem is, and I doubt you’ll agree, that there is another person involved. I have repeatedly pointed out above that this is a matter of opinion. I know many people disagree strongly. That’s their choice, and if they can live with it, more power to them. I can’t. So that argument linked to, read by someone like me, is entirely analogous to something along the lines of:
Men should have the right to have sex with women whenever and wherever they want, regardless of the woman’s wishes. After all, it’s the man’s body, and we should trust him to make the right moral decision in his individual circumstances. (Insert lengthy and predictable rant about sexism against men here). Argument over.
Of course, I think that argument is nonsense, but I can see how to a serial rapist who doesn’t much care about women, it might seem perfectly logical. That doesn’t make it right.
I said above that I think everyone comes to this debate with their own fundamentals, and that no amount of arguing will change those moral absolutes. Some people see foetuses as human beings, potential people, etc. Some people see them just as balls of cells.
The main point the Bitch Phd post is making is that really, there ISN’T another person involved. Yes, there is a man. But the man is not carrying a fetus in his body for 9 months; a fetus that is dependent on his body and (until about 28 weeks) cannot survive outside it unaided. The crux of the matter is this: do you give priority – in rights, protection under law, and choices – to a grown woman, or to an unborn fetus? If you are anti-choice, you care more about unborn children than grown women. But seeing as you compared women who have made the tough, often heartbreaking decision to have an abortion to burglars, I doubt you much care what they think or feel.
Ilona: Actually, the person I was referring to was the foetus, which rather proves the last point I made. I view it as a person. You don’t. There really is no resolution to this point.
But seeing as you compared women who have made the tough, often heartbreaking decision to have an abortion to burglars, I doubt you much care what they think or feel.
Actually, I drew an analogy between the two, noting that there are similarities in my view. If you read the last comment I made, I also drew an analogy between women who abort and rapists. That will probably upset you more. Nonetheless, an analogy is not a direct comparison.
The crux of the matter is this: do you give priority – in rights, protection under law, and choices – to a grown woman, or to an unborn fetus?
But it is what is being prioritised that is important. For the foetus, it is the right to be born and to live. For the woman, it is the right to a more convenient life. I’m sorry, but I see the right to life as more important.
If you are anti-choice, you care more about unborn children than grown women.
No. I care more about life than I do about convenience. And I’m not anti-choice. I think there should be more choice in the world. There’s nowhere near enough of it.
You’re a glib bastard, aren’t you? :) Abortions are carried out for dozens of reasons, not merely for convenience. A fetus does not have the same rights as a person, because it is not a person. I agree with you on one thing – that there is no resolution to this point. But whether a fetus is a person or not (and we could debate this all day and never agree), a woman IS a person – we can all agree on that (can’t we? It seems you think women are baby-carrying creatures, with a sideline in being humans). This argument is getting ridiculous, and I’m sure you won’t let me have the last word. But as someone who will never have an abortion, and will never have to make that choice, I’m afraid your argument is weakened.
Glib, sarcastic, arrogant, patronising, offensive. Yes, I am. I’m a right winger. It comes with the territory. We’re eeeevil. :)
Abortions are carried out for dozens of reasons, not merely for convenience.
Indeed they are, and I cited exceptions where I’d be prepared to let them happen (essentially, where the mother has no agency in the pregnancy decision, or where her life would be genuinely at risk). There is a breakdown of abortion figures from National Statistics by age, but not by occupation/social class, so it’s hard to tell the extent to which convenience plays a role. I’d expect a high relative rate of abortions amongst educated professionals in their 20’s to suggest that convenience is the main factor. Unfortunately, I have no data to back it up.
It seems you think women are baby-carrying creatures, with a sideline in being humans.
Of course not. That’s ridiculous. Please don’t project opinions onto me. What I think is that when people make choices, they should take responsibility for the consequences of those choices.
But as someone who will never have an abortion, and will never have to make that choice, I’m afraid your argument is weakened.
I hope to never see you arguing on something you haven’t experienced then. You might be ‘afraid’ that my argument is weakened (personally, I’d say you’re ‘hopeful’), but I doubt you could explain why, in terms that don’t boil down to:
“You’re just a man. You don’t get it.”
‘Please don’t project opinions onto me.’ When did I do that? I said ‘it SEEMS you see women…’ And when did I call you a right-winger? Please don’t put words into my mouth, Andrew, it’s partonising.
“You’re just a man. You don’t get it.†Precisely!
You didn’t call me a right-winger. I called myself that. I also called myself evil, arrogant, sarcastic and patronising.
‘Please don’t project opinions onto me.’ When did I do that? I said ‘it SEEMS you see women…’
Yes, exactly when you wrote that. That would be you guessing at what my opinion is, and missing the mark by some way.
“You’re just a man. You don’t get it.†Precisely!
That would be: Precisely, I can’t explain it in any other terms, least of all any that are rational, then, would it?
Wow, low blow, Andrew. I’m a woman, therefore I’m irrational. Maybe I’m hysterical, too.
I didn’t say that you were irrational because you’re a woman. I said that your argument that I couldn’t understand abortion because I’m a man is irrational.
Incidentally, do you not see anything wrong with downgrading the importance of people’s opinions on the basis of their gender?
Tee hee. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t bait the right-winger. I just find it hard to have a reasoned discussion with someone whose opinion I find so crazy. When you (or Blimpish, can’t remember) start adding criteria to the ‘who can and who cannot be eligible for an abortion’ you’re playing God. When you say a rape victim can have one (oh, but only if she can prove she was raped, cos you know, loads of women lie about that shit*), but a woman who was drunk and dumb can’t, you’re passing judgement. And you don’t have the right to do that. No one does.
* before you hit me with all the made-up rape allegations the red tops love to scream about, rape convictions in the UK are falling, and stand at around 5.6%, an all-time low.
I just find it hard to have a reasoned discussion with someone whose opinion I find so crazy.
Fine, but that’s really your loss. I prefer to keep an open mind. I might learn something. Maybe you should try it?
On passing judgement: And you don’t have the right to do that. No one does.
Yes I do. It might not mean anything, but I can judge all I want. All you have to worry about is if the majority start to come around to my way of thinking, and the majority start deciding to pass collective judgement. According to the latest opinion polls on the subject, it looks like the majority are doing just that. 20 weeks first, but we’ll see how we go from there.
“If you mean it doesn’t exist in this universe, then what reason do you have for believing it is there? None whatsoever.”
You said it Blimpish, what reason do you have for believing in God? None whatsoever!
How can we trust anyone’s opinion on abortion when they are so deluded? Especially as religion is at least partly why you think a zygote is a human being!
If I heard voices in my head I’d go to the doctor whereas if you heard voices in your head, you would think they were instructions from God. This is why religion is dangerous because it obliterates rational argument.
You mention Blair and yes, I do think he is deluded to believe in God. Where religion has affected his judgement it has usually been detrimental!
The ironic part is, I don’t actually believe you and a lot of other Christians even believe their own argument about the existence of God.
For example, if I ‘seriously’ thought I was going to be judged by God in this life and rewarded with eternal paradise, I wouldn’t be concerned about material possessions at all. I would be out there devoting my life tirelessly, to doing good deeds, not complaining that my taxes were too high!
Andrew, you really don’t like your arguments being thrown back in your face, do you? This is why you keep continually threatening to ban me. This reflects the insecurity you have with your argument! As Paul mentioned, your views on abortion change with the weather!
Ilona, you are so right! Thanks for pointing out even more holes in their argument! It was getting pretty scary being outnumbered by people telling me ‘black is white’!
Andrew, you really don’t like your arguments being thrown back in your face, do you?
Neil, if you were genuinely capable of arguing, I’m sure you’d have done it by now.
Andrew, you keep an open mind? Wow, really? As in, ‘live and let live’? Seems not.
‘We’ll see how we go from there’. Oohh, you got me scared. FYI, late term abortions (defined as 20 weeks or later) make up 1.6% of all abortions. Although, naturally, the late term ones are exactly what anti-choice folks like to focus on. About 90% of abortions are carried out at 12 weeks or less. When a ‘fetus’ (if you can even call it that) is about the size of a thumbnail. Curtailing women’s access to abortion won’t stop it, it’ll drive it underground, but as you like to prioritise the unborn child, I guess you don’t lose sleep over the danger and mental trauma of a backstreet abortion.
Andrew, you never explained your inconsistency in believing abortion was wrong because zygotes die (as you consider them human beings) but innocent people dying through capital punishment was ok by you.
You said it was an unintentional part of capital punishment, but you also accept it was inevitable, therefore, if you didn’t support capital punishment, these innocents wouldn’t have to die?
And don’t go on about convicted murderers being able to kill again, because that is an argument for ‘life meaning life’ not capital punishment!
If you can’t square this inconsistency, your whole abortion argument falls down.
Ilona: As in, ‘live and let live’?
No, as in ‘continuing to discuss this with you sensibly, hoping it might bear fruit’.
FYI, late term abortions (defined as 20 weeks or later) make up 1.6% of all abortions.
which reminds me of the old joke about 10,000 lawyers at the bottom of the ocean. It’s a good start.
About 90% of abortions are carried out at 12 weeks or less.
I’d rather it were 100%
When a ‘fetus’ (if you can even call it that) is about the size of a thumbnail.
If you’re going to follow this line, why pick the foetus’ size as the defining feature? Wouldn’t it be more difficult for me to counter the ‘capable of rational thought’ argument?
Curtailing women’s access to abortion won’t stop it, it’ll drive it underground, but as you like to prioritise the unborn child, I guess you don’t lose sleep over the danger and mental trauma of a backstreet abortion.
Prioritise the life of the unborn child over the convenience of the mother, yes. And if 90% of abortions are pre 12 weeks, where it can be carried out chemically, backstreet abortions aren’t a problem, are they?
Neil: Andrew, you never explained your inconsistency in believing abortion was wrong because zygotes die (as you consider them human beings) but innocent people dying through capital punishment was ok by you.
Innocent people dying through capital punishment isn’t okay by me. I think it’s extremely unlikely to happen. But as I and others have explained at some length, the question is one of intent. Abortion targets the innocent. Capital punishment targets the guilty. There is therefore, in my view, no inconsistency. If you repeatedly fail to acknowledge this point that I am making, I struggle to see how I can explain it any more clearly.
Read my comment again Andrew, you are going all politician on me again.
“You said it was an unintentional part of capital punishment, but you also accept it was inevitable, therefore, if you didn’t support capital punishment, these innocents wouldn’t have to die?”
In other words you CAN stop these innocent people dying if you want to, but you CHOOSE not to!
How is this consistent with your abortion argument that ALL human life (including zygotes, which is an hilarious viewpoint) should be saved if possible!
Neil: The more abortions we have, the more innocent women will die as a result of surgical error. It’s an inevitable consequence of elective surgery. Shouldn’t we choose to prevent these terrible deaths by ending abortion forever?
Thats not my point, please answer the question I asked, if you can’t well thats it then. Checkmate. Game, Set and Match, goodbye!
What do you define as ‘bearing fruit’? I won’t change your mind, and you won’t change mine.
Abortion targeting the ‘innocent’… gimme a break. So I guess the woman chosing her life over a fetus’s is ‘guilty’. Her crime? Being selfish enough to control her fertility.
Ilona: I don’t know. I’ve mellowed from wanting an outright ban to being happy to settle for further restriction in the time limit. Call it a moral victory for your team if you like.
So I guess the woman chosing her life over a fetus’s is ‘guilty’.
She isn’t choosing her life over a foetus’ life. She’s choosing an easier life over a foetus’ life. There is a huge difference.
Her crime? Being selfish enough to control her fertility.
No. Her crime would be murder.
Neil: The point is that consistency leads to all sorts of logical dead-ends. It doesn’t alter the strength of an argument.
On your specific point, there is a trade off. When faced with two choices, one of which leads to the deaths of more innocent people than the other, I’ll take the one which leads to less innocent death. I think the number of innocent people who die as a result of capital punishment being in place would be lower than the number who would die as a result of it not being in place. I also think the number of innocent people who die as a result of abortion being in place would be higher than the number who would die if it were banned. Therefore, capital punishment = good, abortion = bad. Simple.
I’m not going to start commenting on the ethics or anything like that, just about your last few sentences. Would you also suggest that men turn gay to avoid being an reluctant father (as optioned by bookdrunk)? It is the perfect way to enjoy guilt and abortion-free sex for guys.
It is also men’s part responsibilty to either bring protection, or ask if she has protection, and then if neither of those are possible, not have sex. Just like she should. So really, if he has also done ‘the crime’ as you put it, of neglectful unprotective sex, should he not also pay the price? I don’t know what it would be, but I’m sure we could find an invasive, painful medical procedure that is equal to the abortion process that would fit the bill.
Also, sometimes condoms break, or the morning after pill fails. While human nature/stupidity/feelings of invincbility/ignorance are often the reasons behind an abortion, there is also a good percentage that are just unlucky.
I sincerely hope that was simple enough for you. I really don’t think I can dumb it down much further.
“I’ve mellowed from wanting an outright ban to being happy to settle for further restriction in the time limit. Call it a moral victory for your team if you like.”
Andrew, Its fantastic to see you’ve moved from a outright ban and arguing that a zygote was more important than a chimpanzee, but..
If you think abortion is murder, why have you changed your position to say that it is now acceptable up to 20 weeks?
WEll DONE for finally seeing SOME sense, we still have some way to go, but there is light at the end of the tunnel!
On your other point;
“I think the number of innocent people who die as a result of capital punishment being in place would be lower than the number who would die as a result of it not being in place.”
Oh really, where’s your proof?
By the way, do you still think I’m an idiot?
Queenspanky: The last few sentences were intended in jest. Given my poor knowledge of biology, this may be incorrect, but my understanding is that the evidence suggests people are born gay, rather than turning gay. Still, if people are happy to use that as a contraceptive, that’s their choice. It wouldn’t be mine, admittedly.
It is also men’s part responsibility to either bring protection, or ask if she has protection, and then if neither of those are possible, not have sex. Just like she should. So really, if he has also done ‘the crime’ as you put it, of neglectful unprotective sex, should he not also pay the price.
Quite agree. I’d be more ruthless in hunting down absentee fathers than the state currently is. It’s a blight on our society.
Also, sometimes condoms break, or the morning after pill fails. While human nature/stupidity/feelings of invincbility/ignorance are often the reasons behind an abortion, there is also a good percentage that are just unlucky.
Well, let’s not argue over degree, but that’s the choice you make when you have sex. There’s a risk of pregnancy. If you don’t accept that risk, the choice is obvious.
Andrew, Its fantastic to see you’ve moved from a outright ban and arguing that a zygote was more important than a chimpanzee, but..
If you think abortion is murder, why have you changed your position to say that it is now acceptable up to 20 weeks?
Neil: I still think a zygote is more important than a chimp, and I don’t think that abortion is acceptable up to 20 weeks. I think the pragmatic solution is to criminalise it after 20 weeks, and then work towards an outright ban. If you took the time to read what I write, you’d know that. Once again, selectively quoting me just makes you look like an idiot.
“I think the number of innocent people who die as a result of capital punishment being in place would be lower than the number who would die as a result of it not being in place.â€Â
Oh really, where’s your proof?
Blimpish estimated the rate of innocent deaths from capital punishment as 2 in 13 years. Let’s call it 2 in 10 years to be charitable. From the period 1988-1997, the reconviction rate for homicide was 41 in 11 years. Let’s be charitable and take the murder rate – 30 in 11 years. Let’s be more charitable still and assume each murderer had only 1 victim. Let’s also ignore all the people who reoffended, but weren’t caught, or convicted. That means that capital punishment is approximately 15 times less dangerous to innocent lives than the lack of capital punishment, I’d say. Being charitable to you.
I’m a bit reluctant to get in as it’s turned into a bit of a free-for-all (alright as far as it goes, but the thread promised something a bit more measured and telling). But I am curious to hear the fleshed out atheistic argument for banning abortion. I’ve been chasing this across message boards for years and never got one that really satisfies me. I’m genuinely interested in finding an argument that has legs, or that at least could shift my opinions somewhat.
The case seems to turn on the idea that abortion leads to “people who will never live, laugh, love, and (maybe even) be happy” (Blimpish’s words, but I will assume that Andrew is in agreement with this). A potential person is snuffed, and every potential life should be given a wack at living, laughing and all the rest of it. I want to consider this against a way I approached, and then rejected, looking at the world.
When I was younger and use to think myself into knots about many, many things, I did for a time nearly come unstuck on the realisation that every action had huge and far-reaching consequences, not just on real people but on potential people. After my little sister was born, I found myself wondering, what if I had been ill the week my parents gave life to her, and they had spent their time tending to me instead? What if I had asked to go to the zoo and it tired them out so they were too pooped to do anything that night? My sister wouldn’t be here at all.
From that vantage point, the yet more horrible ramification pops up: perhaps I did displace someone after all. Perhaps my little brother should have been conceived one day, but I stayed up too late to watch tv so they made a baby the next night, and it was her instead, a different potential being. And what about the baby that would have been born if they had gone half an hour later? Or earlier? Or finished a second earlier, perhaps because they hadn’t frozen at the sound of my footsteps creaking on the bathroom floor? What about all those potential, potentially fruitful lives, dashed forever?
Honestly, it could drive you mad. I ended up realising this, and since then I haven’t cared too much about potential people, and only worried about real people, with their real aspirations, actual dreams, existing feelings.
So I ask you: why should I change my position and start worrying about potential people, and how would I do that and not falling into the trap of perpetual despair about countless non-realised potentialities?
Alex: I guess it depends on the chance of that potential being realised. The distinction I would make between the foetus and the sort of examples you suggest is that the foetus has already been created, and all other things being well, will eventually be born and will live it’s life as a ‘real person’. It is the moment of conception that distinguishes it from the baby that never made it because you kept your parents up all night with your toothache. There are, pretty clearly, degrees of potential.
Incidentally, I’ve gone much the other way – I used to believe unconditionally in a woman’s right to choose, until I actually thought through what that meant. It’s a personal choice.
Sure. I appreciate the time you and Blimpish (and others, I think) have put into articulating your pro-life position(s). I can’t help but feel that without a religiously based sanctification of conception (i.e., ensoulment), there is no fine line dividing pre-conception and post-conception potential life, so its a pretty subjective, and hence, personal decision. (Why I’m pro-choice without being pro-abortion.) The fact that conception has biological significance doesn’t carry much weight, if you follow Hume (and Moore, apparently, according to Wiki) and want to avoid the naturalistic fallacy.
Andrew: in the 1994 debate, Michael Howard (the Home Secretary, opposing the motion) conceded that 76 people had been murdered by people previously convicted of murder since abolition.
Neil: I’m not done with your tired arguments quite yet. I didn’t figure you for a masochist; I thought plain vanilla. But there you go…
“You said it Blimpish, what reason do you have for believing in God? None whatsoever!”
The idea of God, in the philosophical monotheistic sense, is so pared down that it provides one explanation for the existence of the physical universe, without additional trimmings like magic teapots (I can’t believe I’m having to explain this – your ignorance is almost enchanting… almost). There are others; none have any evidence behind them – including mine. But I’ll take my absurdity over yours, for a variety of reasons.
“How can we trust anyone’s opinion on abortion when they are so deluded? Especially as religion is at least partly why you think a zygote is a human being!”
On the contrary, my original argument in the thread here was entirely secular. You were the one who dismissed arguments against on the basis that the people holding them were religious. In other words, playing the man, not the ball – before you continue your long whine about being insulted.
I’ll hold my delusions to yours every single day of the week. Even if they’re less correct, let’s face it love, I can argue ’em better.
I could recite the secular position Andrew and I put forward above, but you seem incapable of reading properly or respecting others’ opinions enough to criticise them on their own terms.
“If I heard voices in my head I’d go to the doctor whereas if you heard voices in your head, you would think they were instructions from God. This is why religion is dangerous because it obliterates rational argument.”
I stamped all over this nasty piece of bullshit at your blog.
“You mention Blair and yes, I do think he is deluded to believe in God. Where religion has affected his judgement it has usually been detrimental!”
Frankly Neil, I looked at your non-blog website today. You’re in no position to question others’ judgement on anything.
“The ironic part is, I don’t actually believe you and a lot of other Christians even believe their own argument about the existence of God.”
Horrors! I’m sure we’ll sleep less easily tonight knowing that!
“For example, if I ’seriously’ thought I was going to be judged by God in this life and rewarded with eternal paradise, I wouldn’t be concerned about material possessions at all. I would be out there devoting my life tirelessly, to doing good deeds, not complaining that my taxes were too high!”
Considering you say you used to be religious, you seem to know absolutely fuck all theology.
I have two questions: do you then think that all people should be celibate until they intend to have kids? And my second question is personal, so please feel free to tell me where to go: have you remained celibate until you planned on having kids? Mainly I’m just curious to see whether your views apply to you as well as other people.
Alex: if I could attempt to spell out the distinction… we know, scientifically, that any question of ‘ensoulment’ is unprovable, and that the idea of ‘sufficient’ consciousness or personhood is (as you suggest) a very slippery, subjective concept.
For me and Andrew, this subjectivity forces us to look for some objective ground on which to set a rule. We’re horrified at the prospect of killing human beings (with souls/consciousness/etc) and so we look for the next logical line that we can solidly draw. Conception’s that line, but we worry that we’re erring on the safe side, and that’s not cost-free for the women involved. (Was always thus: hence those ancient discussions over the point of ensoulment.)
For you and some of the others here, the subjectivity means that the best solution is to allow everybody to find their own way – to accept that there’s no objective solution, and that the question is intractable. But then you also know, at the back of your mind, that the stakes are high if people get it wrong, and so you worry that that range of subjective choice isn’t interpreted too liberally.
So, we’re both erring to either side of the perfect answer. It’s just that we don’t know (and probably never will know) what that perfect answer is. And so we’ll go on discussing it, trying to get as close as possible.
Queenspanky: do you then think that all people should be celibate until they intend to have kids?
No, of course not. I think that if they choose to have sex, they should be aware of what the consequences could be, and they should be aware that certain responsibilities may follow.
have you remained celibate until you planned on having kids?
No. But I guess my previous answer invalidates that? I’m not some ‘abstinence is the only way’ nutter, you know. I just think that actions come with responsibilities, and that too much responsibility taken away from people infantilises them.
Neil: If you continue to be childish, and refuse to answer the points put to you, insisting instead on attacking other commenters, I’m just going to delete your comments.
Neil:
I don’t believe Andrew has endorsed capital punishment on this thread. Last I heard, he was a bit squeamish on the point. That argument has long ago been resolved in favour of me, DK, and the entire Western philosophic and theological tradition over the question. Why you keep picking up such a lost cause is beyond me, though a touching spectacle.
Re your second point – a perusal of the said page of comments will reveal a satisfactory dismissal of your rather bizarre notions, as all others have been. Again and again.
I don’t mean to shake such a confident debater, but have you noticed the number of pro-choice commenters that haven’t joined your campaign here? I guess it could be that they think you’re doing such a good job. But I’m doubtful.
Mind you, I’d like to thank you for providing such good target practice here these past few days.
Blimpish: I agree almost entirely, except that I don’t want to leave “everybody to find their own way”; after birth I believe a baby should have full rights (infanticide == killing an adult) and I’d be prepared to limit abortion on the basis of evidence that gives enough weight to the case against. I don’t see that evidence, keeping me pro-choice, but I don’t think abortion is a trivial issue and don’t think it should be seen as trivial. If only for the fact that even though I don’t consider a foetus a person, I think we send the wrong signals if we treat trivially what seems like a person to many.
Alex: yes, all points taken there. I guess we agree on the critical questions (if not on the current answers), and some idea of the rules of evidence to move the compromise one way or the other, and maybe that’s the best we can hope for for the time being.
Good discussing with you.
You too. This blog has the makings of something special, I think; a UK Obsidian Wings, say (let me preemptively apologise for the likely botched link). More new threads would be nice, though (this one is full!).
Alex: the link worked! Better than I normally do with ’em, that’s for sure.
Neil: I’m sure Andrew can give the Royal answer, but I’d guess… bored of hearing the same ill-informed and ill-reasoned arguments?
You know, I like this debate. It really does show that my deeply horribly pragmatic vuew of the world causes far less heartache and guilt than anyone else’s. I think that this may be the first time that I have been glad that I believe what I do…
DK
DK, check the comments on your immigration post as I have answered your argument.
I have replied to your slightly inept fisking. You are still wrong, but don’t worry; it’s a talent.
DK
I have been trying to keep out of this discussion, partly because I have already had my say, at some length, arguing the case for the right to choose abortion; and partly because I have no wish to associate myself with some of the arguments used here by others who have argued the pro-choice case, nor with the disrespect they have shown to the deeply held convictions of other people.
But the discussion has touched on an issue which, to my mind, is right at the knuckle of the disagreement, and appears to be about to move on leaving it tantalizingly unresolved. I feel obliged to see if we can make some progress on a critical point.
The moment came when Alex asked, rather poetically, whether she should be concerned about the lost life of her potential future little brother, who was never born because she distracted her parents on the night he might have been conceived.
This is important because the pro-life argument depends on attaching importance to potential future lives, but only after conception. To sustain this view, something has to happen at conception which changes the importance we attach to the potential future life.
If you are religious and you believe that there is some supernatural event at conception – such as the creation of human soul – then the next point will not interest you. Feel free to skip ahead to the paragraph that begins “We are now rejoined …â€Â.
If you are not religious, then some explanation is needed of why we have regard to potential future human beings after conception, but not before.
Andrew answered Alex with this: I guess it depends on the chance of that potential being realised. The distinction I would make between the foetus and the sort of examples you suggest is that the foetus has already been created, and all other things being well, will eventually be born and will live it’s life as a ‘real person’. It is the moment of conception that distinguishes it from the baby that never made it because you kept your parents up all night with your toothache. There are, pretty clearly, degrees of potential.
Now I realise that a comment in a long thread is not necessarily a fully thought out position, nor necessarily the most carefully expression of it. I have no wish to score points at others’ expense, and I hope Andrew will forgive me if I am putting more weight on these words than they were intended to bear. I think – and Andrew will correct me if I have this wrong – that he is arguing that there is a threshold level of probability of becoming a human being; and that once a potential future human has reached that threshold probability, it would be wrong to deny that potential.
Unfortunately, I don’t think that view works. Suppose that science advances in the coming years that increases our success rate in in vitro fertilization to 95 percent. And suppose that science advances so that we are able artificially to incubate an embryo from conception all the way to a normal, independent baby after 9 months, and that we can also do this with a success rate of 95 percent. (Both of these advances seem likely within my lifetime, so this is not completely hypothetical.) Now imagine you are a lab assistant in a hospital. You find yourself one weekend in the fertility clinic, with a freezer full of sperm in one corner, and a freezer full of eggs in the other, both preserved there on behalf of men and women undergoing cancer therapies. You know that each egg can be combined with sperm to produce a human being, and incubated to medical independence. Right there in that room, you have the ingredients necessary to turn each egg into a future human being, with a probability of success of more than 90 percent. (This is much higher than the probability today of a one-day old foetus in the womb surviving to birth.) Do you conclude that it is a denial of future human potential, morally equivalent to murder, not to make a reality of all those potential future human lives? If medical science reaches that happy position, should it become a legal requirement that all women have all the eggs in their ovaries extracted when they reach puberty (this is already a
simple and safe operation) so that every egg can be combined with sperm, so that no potential future human is denied his or her potential life by a reckless act of menstruation?
It seems to me unlikely that you would support this view of potential future human beings; and it follows that it is not merely “the chance of that potential being realised†that determines whether a potential future human merits our moral attention.
I’ve made this point at some length, because I don’t think there is an intellectually defensible atheist case against abortion based on attaching value to potential future human beings – at least, not one that wouldn’t also require us to oppose contraception and celibacy.
***
We are now rejoined by our religious friends. Thank you for your patience. While you’ve been away, we’ve failed to come up with a non-religious account of
what happens at conception that would lead us to give additional weight to the potential future human being after conception but not before.
If you do have a religious conviction that the soul begins at conception, then it would be patronising and disrespectful for me to try to persuade you otherwise, as well as a waste of your time and mine. I respect your right to believe whatever you choose. But I hope you will agree with me that society has no basis making legislation on the basis of such personal beliefs – otherwise we would also find ourselves banning the eating of pork, forbidding women to drive, and making illegal marriage between Libras and Virgos.
Owen: It’s certainly the shakiest part of my argument, but the distinction I made was that the foetus had already been created at the point when abortion is being considered. For your lab technician example (I agree it’s pretty likely in the near future), no foetus has yet been created. I don’t see that as a denial of potential. Again, I must stress, I realise that this is an entirely arbitrary personal view of the world, and I don’t expect others who don’t think in the same way about this issue to find it convincing. Nonetheless, it is what I think. The appropriate analogy for my position would be if the lab technician was sitting there one lonely night and decided to fuse all those sperm and eggs for kicks, and then in the morning realised that it wasn’t such a great idea after all, and decided to flush them. I’d see that act as morally indefensible, given technology exists (in our thought world) to give those potential future humans life.
Incidentally, we have plenty of legislation based on religious faith, that has found a post-fact secular liberal justification for sticking around – ‘Thou shalt not kill’ being an obvious example. To invoke the deus ex machina once more, my own view is that the abortion question will become obsolete as technology advances to the point where we can bring a newly fertilised egg to term in a totally artificial environment, outside the womb.
I hope you don’t delete this, Andrew. I will try to put this as neutrally as possible, so as not to offend your sensibilities.
In the debate about the inconsistency of your abortion views and capital punishment you said;
“The more abortions we have, the more innocent women will die as a result of surgical error. It’s an inevitable consequence of elective surgery. Shouldn’t we choose to prevent these terrible deaths by ending abortion forever?”
Except you don’t consider these women innocent do you? Also, I’m not arguing against capital punishment on these grounds, so for me there is no inconsistency.
You however, argue that zygotes are innocent human life which must be protected if possible, but you also argue that innocent life killed by capital punishment is unintentional and unfortunate. Yet, if you didn’t support capital punishment, this innocent life would be saved.
You try to get around this by saying that more innocent lives will be lost by not having capital punishment because of murderers re-offending. But life imprisonment would stop this re-offending.
So this leaves you in the inconsistent position of sanctioning the loss of innocent lives through capital punishment but arguing that innocent lives are paramount when they are zygotes. This is the inconsistency I have been highlighting all along.
Yet, you still repeatedly deny this inconsistency in your argument despite having said this;
“Neil: The point is that consistency leads to all sorts of logical dead-ends. It doesn’t alter the strength of an argument.”
Why would you say this if you wasn’t admitting the inconsistency?
You have criticised me for repeating my questions, but I only did that because you weren’t answering the points I made.
I hope you are not offended by this. I apologise for coming into this debate like a bull in a china shop, it wasn’t the best first impression. Which I accept was probably not the best way to get calm responses from you.
I have to say though that the arguments you were making about abortion, (are in mine and others opinions), at least as offensive as you thought my comments on religion were. You have to accept that is provocative, it certainly provoked me and a few others. I think this was inevitable.
Neil: No, I won’t delete that comment, because you managed to get through it without abusing me, and you made some sensible comments. Congratulations. Gold star for you.
Except you don’t consider these women innocent do you?
No, but you do, and the comment was to highlight that inconsistency goes both ways, and it isn’t the making or breaking of an argument. My guess is that you hold very inconsistent views on choice, although I wouldn’t want to ascribe views to you. For example, do you support the right of parents to choose to send their children to a faith school?
You try to get around this by saying that more innocent lives will be lost by not having capital punishment because of murderers re-offending. But life imprisonment would stop this re-offending.
It might, but only if life imprisonment were guaranteed to remain policy for the whole length of a prisoner’s life. Next time a Labour government gets in, it’ll be back to the revolving door. Capital punishment doesn’t give you that problem. But you’re repeatedly, and perhaps willfully, failing to understand my point, which is that the scale and intent are important.
So this leaves you in the inconsistent position of sanctioning the loss of innocent lives through capital punishment but arguing that innocent lives are paramount when they are zygotes.
No, it doesn’t, because the scale is important. The risk of losing a couple of innocent lives a decade through capital punishment is worth the benefits it brings to society. The risk of saving hundreds of thousands of lives a year through banning abortion is worth the social costs and higher welfare that would be necessary to support the women who go through those births. Put it this way – do you think I’d be able to argue a case against abortion and get people to listen if there were only 2 a decade? People would dismiss me as a fanatic, talking about something almost completely theoretical.
You have criticised me for repeating my questions, but I only did that because you weren’t answering the points I made.
Neil – several of us have made points to you that you’ve ignored. We don’t keep pressing you on them. If you’d care to read back over the comments, you’ll see that. I also think we’ve answered your questions repeatedly, although certainly not in the way you want. Your problem is that you ask a question that you want a ‘yes or no’ answer to, when that question cannot reasonably be answered without some detailed explanation. You then choose to ignore the explanation, just taking the ‘yes or no’ as some kind of admission of defeat. It’s incredibly rude, and I must say, unconvincing. Several people, on your side of the debate, have pointed this out to you. Doesn’t that tell you something?
I have admitted that my argument has flaws. I have admitted a certain hypocrisy. I have admitted that a lot of my argument rests on aesthetics, and arbitrary distinctions. The other commenters, on your side of the debate, have been polite enough to recognise this, to respect it, and to agree to disagree. You seem not to understand that.
I apologise for coming into this debate like a bull in a china shop, it wasn’t the best first impression. Which I accept was probably not the best way to get calm responses from you.
And I apologise for having to delete some of your comments, but after all else had failed, and I think we displayed admirable patience here, it was really the only way to get you to listen.
I have to say though that the arguments you were making about abortion, (are in mine and others opinions), at least as offensive as you thought my comments on religion were.
Now that’s an interesting comment. You find an argument offensive? Could you explain why? What exactly about my opinion offends you? What other forms of free speech do you find offensive?
You have to accept that is provocative, it certainly provoked me and a few others. I think this was inevitable.
Provocative, yes. It was written that way. Inevitable that this should happen? No. You will notice that (almost) everyone else on the ‘pro-choice’ side of the debate was unfailingly polite. Only you really transgressed beyond the rules and spirit of this forum and of intelligent debate.
We are now rejoined by our religious friends.
Owen, as the only person who ‘fessed up to any religious belief on this entire thread, can you point out where I argued that the soul was created at the point of conception? I didn’t; because I don’t know.
My argument didn’t and doesn’t rest on that notion; all that it does say is that I believe in the human soul, and that I don’t know when it starts, but that a soul only appears in a human being, and the nearest objective point for the creation of a human being is conception.
Incidentally, from your blog, I assume you’re an egalitarian. Why?
Andrew
You have drawn an important distinction for our hypothetical lab technician. In one case, he first creates the embryos and then destroys them; in the other, he does not create them in the first place. You say that the first is reprehensible, the second not.
If these are different, it is not because the potential for future human life has changed. The potential number of future human beings in the room is no different. If, as you say, you think there is a moral difference between these cases, then that suggests that you do not think that the moral worth of the foetus stems from it having the potential for future human life.
The fact that you do think there is a difference suggests that you are attaching moral value to the foetus because of what it is rather than what it has the potential to become. That is a separate, and quite different argument.
On your point about legislation, rules against murder are not necessarily based on religious faith – non-religious people are also generally opposed to murder, and all societies need such an rule to function. You are right: we do have some legislation based on religious faith; but that this is so does not mean that it is a good thing.
Blimpish: I am sorry, I didn’t mean to make presumptions about the details of your belief in the soul; but rather to recognise that if this is the basis for your belief in the moral worth of a foetus, then there is little point in arguing about it.
As for your question, I don’t think it furthers the debate about abortion to have an argument about whether I am an egalitarian. I am sticking to the issues, not attacking the people advancing the arguments on the basis of their belief system more generally.
I’m sceptical about arguments against abortion based upon the moral rule that it is “wrong to kill someone”. It isn’t wrong to kill someone. Killing people (even inoccent people) is entirely lawful in a wide variety of circumstances. Abortion should be one of those circumstances.
People often agree with the exception that abortion should be allowed where there is a “risk to the mothers life”. There is always a risk to the mother’s life – it’s just that people deem in to be acceptable. Even “normal” childbirths go wrong and result in death. The current rate is 1 in 6000, there are much higher rates of serious injury. If it is legitimate to kill someone you find in your house in self defence, it should be legitimate to have a abortion for the same reason.
The fact that you do think there is a difference suggests that you are attaching moral value to the foetus because of what it is rather than what it has the potential to become. That is a separate, and quite different argument.
I really don’t think so. I am attaching moral value to it because of what it is and what it has the potential to become. In my view, the two are interlinked.
we do have some legislation based on religious faith; but that this is so does not mean that it is a good thing.
My point is that the source of the legislation doesn’t invalidate it, as long as it reflects current society’s wishes in some sense. Rules against murder initially came from religious faith (at least, I assume they did – my knowledge of the law thousands of years ago is hazy at best). The fact that they find post-fact secular justification is handy, of course, but it doesn’t diminish their worth that the source was through relgion. Most legislation comes from some form of personal belief – it would be difficult to point to a law that doesn’t have some, perhaps unspoken, moral justification.
Nik: Under what circumstances is it legal to kill an innocent person?
Interesting argument on self-defense though, although if you had to go to a court of law and argue in front of a jury of your peers that the foetus was going to kill the mother, beyond reasonable doubt, I think you’d fail to get her exonerated. Even on the balance of probabilities, you’d be struggling, I think.
On the risk to a mother’s life – yes, I phrased my exception badly. I should have quantified the risk. Let’s say: abortion may be granted if the probability of the mother dying or being critically injured (yes, I know – define critically…) as a result of bringing the child to term is greater than x%, with y% confidence. Now I just need a reasonable value for x and y.
Andrew;
“Under what circumstances is it legal to kill an innocent person?”
I wake up in the middle of the night. I hear movement downstairs. I pick up a golf club. See someone make a sudden movement towards me. Hit them. Split their skull open and kill them. It’s legitimate to use force in this manner in self-defence if I reasonable believe myself (or someone else) to be in danger.
The dead person may be entirely innocent (I may have left my front door open, they may have been drunk and wanderered into the wrong house). There’s isn’t any untilitarian “how many lives saved” calculation involved. The person doesn’t have to be guilty of anything. You don’t have to prove “beyond reasonable doubt” that they were going to kill you. None of this comes into it: you’re entitled to use force in self-defence if you believe you’re at risk of harm. I can’t see why pregnant women should be denied this.
I’d be interested in hearing your values for acceptable probabilities of harm.
You don’t have to prove “beyond reasonable doubt†that they were going to kill you.
you’re entitled to use force in self-defence if you believe you’re at risk of harm.
No, you aren’t. You’re entitled to use reasonable force in self-defence if you believe, beyond reasonable doubt, that you’re at risk of harm. As a pregnant woman has only a 1 in 6000 chance of coming to harm, it fails the reasonable doubt test. I’d also argue it fails the reasonable force test, but that’s a bit flimsier. Given that abortion is also premeditated, my guess is that a jury would throw it out for that as well. But it’s a novel argument, and I quite like it. I might steal it next time I find myself arguing this one the other way round.
I’d be interested in hearing your values for acceptable probabilities of harm.
Yes, I’d be interested in working out a methodology to come up with them. On this one, I’m going to take the politician’s exit, and wave you away with vague promises to set up a special committee/inquiry, stacked with obstetricians, to look into the matter.
Scrolled from this comment to here, apologies if I’m convering something already written about.
“Education is the best way to reduce the number of abortions.”
That’s just rubbish. There is more sex education in schools now than there ever has been, yet both abortions and teenage (and below) pregnancies are on the rise.
You see, this is the same old socialist bollocks, trotted out again. It is easy to say that education is the solution, because it’s the easy option. You don’t have to actually do anything except that make sure that yet more stuff about the birds and the bees is on the curriculum.
I work with young people, and I have to agree the best way to reduce abortion involves education. Education, safe and free access to contraception and legal, accessible abortion produce the lowest rates of abortion; compare USA (hard to access) to Sweden (easy to access, excellent education). Education is crucial, and our sex education, whilst better than ever, fails because it is too little too late. Children should be taught the biology of sex from a very young age, 12+ is a key time for relationship and contraceptive education, not first time lessons in what sex is, they already know it all (usually full of myths) from the playground.
As for advocating education being a passive thing, that’s not necessarily true. I believe in education, I went and got involved with it. I’m not qualified, I’m a student, I work with vulnerable young people and it’s work.
I work with young people, and I have to agree the best way to reduce abortion involves education.
Can you provide some evidence for that? I’d probably agree that one way to reduce abortion involves education, but I think the best way to reduce it is to restrict or ban it. That is, if your sole goal is to reduce the numbers of abortions.
Comparing across countries might give some idea, but I’m not sure how valid it is statistically – how do you correct for cultural differences? The Netherlands has a massively different attitude towards sex than the US, for example.
Having said all that, I’m not sure how good education is once people get out of their teens. Given that 79% of abortions in 2004 happened to people who were 20+, I doubt it would do much for the rates in total. Teenage pregnancy isn’t the problem here.
I guess that the reason DK said that advocating education is the easy way out is because it’s very difficult to show what the effect of education is. To test it scientifically, you’d need to take identical groups of people, educate one set, leave the others, and see what happens. Unfortunately, seeing what happens could involve waiting for many years, because people don’t generally become pregnant straight after their sex education class. So it’s always easy to say ‘if only people were better educated, abortion would go away’, but in the face of steadily rising numbers of abortions, and steadily rising levels of sex education, it’s hard to do that with a straight face.
Andrew
You say
I am attaching moral value to it because of what it is and what it has the potential to become. In my view, the two are interlinked.
It seems to me that this is the intellectual sleight of hand at the heart of the pro-life argument.
When we focus on the question of whether the foetus deserves moral recognition because of the potential for human life, abortion opponents generally say that foetus has moral worth because of what it already is. When we focus on the question of whether the foetus deserves moral recognition because of what it already is, abortion opponents tell us that it has moral worth because of what it has potential to become.
It seems clear that neither argument is satisfactory on its own: each only makes sense by recourse to the other. And so once we have run round the circle a few times, the pro-life argument concludes that we cannot separate the two arguments.
And yet it seems very difficult to articulate a meaningful way in which the two arguments are linked.
I understand the concern for potential future humans to be based on the idea that, if there is a reasonable chance that there will be a person who laughs and loves and can be happy, then we have a moral duty to do what we can to allow that potential to be fulfilled. But that account of our concern for future humans seems to depend solely on whether there is a reasonable chance of them existing in the future; as expressed it does not seem to be conditional on them having reached a particular level of existence before their potential should be taken into account. If our concern is for lives that could be lived, then it should not depend on whether the process of beginning those lives has begun.
So, is there an account of why we should have concern for future humans that only applies to future humans that have reached a particular stage of development?
Comparing across countries might give some idea, but I’m not sure how valid it is statistically – how do you correct for cultural differences? The Netherlands has a massively different attitude towards sex than the US, for example.
I think you’ve answered your own question there; cultural differences that stem from attitudes to sex that can be educated in young people. I was brought up in the Netherlands, and we got taught about sex in the same lesson we were taught to blow up a bicycle tire.
Sex education is crucial, and it has to be followed with the right attitude and the right kind of teaching; chucking condoms at 14 year olds isn’t working, and sex education as it stands may be a big operation, but it’s rubbish.
Owen: I think we’re going to end up going round in circles here if we aren’t careful. I think that the potential argument, and the ‘what-the-foetus-is-now’ arguments are linked because the foetus has already been created. For me, the issue seems to boil down to the nature of causality. A follows B follows C is necessarily different from A follows C follows B.
So, is there an account of why we should have concern for future humans that only applies to future humans that have reached a particular stage of development?
Only by reference to an arbitrary distinction between those stages of development. I think the moment of conception is as good a line as any to draw.
Ms b.: But that’s an even easier cop out than saying education is the answer. Now you’re saying it has to be the right kind of education. Presumably all of the educating we’ve been doing for the last few decades was the wrong kind?
Seriously, do you have any evidence either that culture can be changed so radically through education, or even that abortion rates can be affected by education? If not, you’re relying on doctrine and faith as much as any Christian fundamentalist.
By the way, how do you link sex and blowing up a bicycle tire? ;-)
I’d say it was far far more rational to suggest that education can change abortion rates than to say Jesus was born of a virgin, but hey, lots of bad comparisons in this thread already.
You think abortion is bad. Agreed. I also happen to think bans are bad, state-enforced pregnancy is bad and disregarding women’s autonomy is bad. That said, I don’t understand why those who are anti-abortion aren’t backing educational measures to the hilt; better educated kids and better sexual health services means less conceptions in the first place.
On your point about the education line being a cop out, of course there are right and wrong kinds of education if you want results. American states with abstinence only education have higher rates of teen pregnancy than states without (mainly a red vs. blue divide, see this graph; http://www.itaffectsyou.org/blog/images/teenpreg-pr.jpg). On the whole, teaching people how not to get into bad situations, and how not to do bad things to their bodies, works.
I’d say it was far far more rational to suggest that education can change abortion rates than to say Jesus was born of a virgin, but hey, lots of bad comparisons in this thread already.
Well, me too, but we’re both (I assume) atheists, so it’s unfair to sneer. There aren’t really degrees of rationality though – something either is, or it isn’t. Just like pregnancy. And there’s another bad comparison for you. It would help though if readers distinguished between comparisons and analogies. There is a big difference.
That said, I don’t understand why those who are anti-abortion aren’t backing educational measures to the hilt; better educated kids and better sexual health services means less conceptions in the first place.
I am backing those things. I think they’re good things in their own right, regardless of the abortion question. All I’ve asked you to do is to provide evidence that those things reduce abortion. Just one statistical peer-reviewed study will satisfy me.
On the whole, teaching people how not to get into bad situations, and how not to do bad things to their bodies, works.
Fine. That all makes lovely logical rational common sense. So prove it. Common sense means sweet FA when it comes to the implications and consequences of policy decisions.
Gosh, what a high standard of proof for something that makes logical sense (you learn, you don’t make the same mistakes…)
“New figures from the Office for National Statistics show that the under-18 conception rate in England in 2003 was 42.1/1000, compared to 42.6/1000 in 2002. This represents an overall drop of 9.8% since the teenage pregnancy strategy was launched in 1998.”
http://www.brook.org.uk/content/M7_2005_24_2.asp
There is little or no research into education reducing abortion, but plenty on the Brook site about contraceptive use working in the US, more effectively than abstinence only. Why do kids use contraceptives well? Because they are taught.
“the best strategy for continuing the declines in teenage pregnancy levels is a multifaceted approach […] sexuality education and information should also prepare them to adequately prevent pregnancy and sexually transmitted infection if and when they do have sex. Services should be in place that will help them to behave responsibly–to ensure that they use contraceptives and to help them improve the effectiveness with which they practice contraception. That means providing adequate education and information about sexual behavior and its consequences, as well as confidential, affordable and accessible sources of contraceptive services and supplies, and support for research and development of new contraceptive methods that young people will find acceptable and easy to use effectively.”
http://www.alanguttmacherinstitute.org/pubs/or_teen_preg_decline.html
Also, as I said above, the issue isn’t teenage pregnancy. Only 21% of abortions happen to teenagers. The issue is how to cut the adult abortion rate. Teenage pregnancy is a red herring.
You wanna try Googling for research about pregnancy being reduced by education? I have, there’s little if anything (Probably because most people don’t care what grown women do with their own bodies).
I maintain the adult abortion rate will be cut by education. Kids become adults, teena who know how to use condoms, access services and conduct negotiations in sexual relationships (so so important for teenage girls) will become adults who can do all these things. Slow, yes, but banning abortion will do nothing but hurt women, or make it effectively a middle-class woman’s privilege (see Ireland; no stats to speak of, but it goes on. For those who can afford to come here that is).
I’m sorry Andrew. If you are going to go around calling people who don’t agree with you about this “murderers” then you owe them a somewhat more comprehensible explanation of your position.
I’ve read, and re-read, your point:
I think that the potential argument, and the ‘what-the-foetus-is-now’ arguments are linked because the foetus has already been created. For me, the issue seems to boil down to the nature of causality. A follows B follows C is necessarily different from A follows C follows B.
I’m sorry that I am being dense, but I can’t make sense of this. Could you help me by setting it out in a little more detail to help me follow it? For example, what is ‘because’ the foetus has already been created? What is the relevance of the nature of causality?
Ideally, I’d like to see a sentence that begins:
“The reason that a potential future human life has a claim on our moral attention once a foetus exists, but not before, is …”
I think the moment of conception is as good a line as any to draw.
That is no basis on which to base calling someone is a murderer; to make abortion illegal or hard to obtain and so remove choices from people to manage their bodies and their lives, forced to bring up unwanted children; to risk the lives of women in back-street-abortions; and to impose the suffering of a lifetime of guilt on those who have an abortion. All because it is “as good a line as any”? It is not as good a line as any: it is a terrible place to draw a line, one that causes immense, unnecessary suffering and pain and which has no basis in rational argument. If we have to draw the line there because it is the only morally defensible place to put it, then so be it. But only a man could put it there as a matter of convenience.
Thinking about it, teen pregnancy is only a red herring if your goal is total ending of all abortion. That’s a pretty fairytale goal, seeing as women are currently unable to manage their own fertility using contraception alone, all contraceptives have accepted failure rates. Teen pregnancy, which is pretty likely to be unwanted, is a good place to start prevention, but total prevention is unattainable unless you expect all women to be abstinent or accept becoming mothers.
Andrew;
“You’re entitled to use reasonable force in self-defence if you believe, beyond reasonable doubt, that you’re at risk of harm.”
The “beyond reasonable doubt” test applies to the prosecution, not the defence. They have to prove “beyond reasonable doubt” that a reasonable person – given the facts as you honestly believed then to be – would not believe that they were at risk of harm.
As a pregnant woman has only a 1 in 6000 chance of coming to harm, it fails the reasonable doubt test.
A pregnant woman has a 1 in 6000 chance of *dying* (in the UK, the chances elsewhere are even more distubing). This isn’t the same as coming to harm, which happens to a far greater number of women. Under some plausible definitions it happens to all women.
Bluntly; if trauma akin to that of childbirth was inflicted upon a random woman in the street by an attacker, this would be a very serious crime. I think it is uncontroversial that this would warrant the use of lethal force in self defence. Why doesn’t childbirth?
I’ve dealt with the issue of innocence or guilt above, it is immaterial, the question is one of harm and self-defence. The only other issue I can see is one of implicit consent. You would have to maintain that having sex implies consent to carrying a birth to term (which is difficult). You would also have to argue that you cannot change your mind in the 9 months afterwards. I can’t see any parallel situation where this could be argued: no-one would argue that people can’t agree to sex and later change their mind, or can’t agree to surgery and later change their mind, or so on.
If you are going to go around calling people who don’t agree with you about this “murderers†then you owe them a somewhat more comprehensible explanation of your position.
I’m not sure I’ve directly called people who disagree with me murderers. If I have, it was unintentional. Even people who abort aren’t murderers, under the law. I think that they’re morally equivalent to murderers, but that’s a personal judgement. It carries no weight.
The reason that a potential future human life has a claim on our moral attention once a foetus exists, but not before, is because a potential human life is brought into existence, and will survive to become an actual human being, acknowledging the risks of miscarriage, all else being well, at the point that a foetus is created. I don’t see that two separate sex cells constitutes a potential human life, unless, as you mentioned before, the technology exists to make them so. At that point, this part of my argument is buggered.
That is no basis on which to base calling someone is a murderer; to make abortion illegal or hard to obtain and so remove choices from people to manage their bodies and their lives, forced to bring up unwanted children; to risk the lives of women in back-street-abortions; and to impose the suffering of a lifetime of guilt on those who have an abortion.
Come on Owen – that’s speculative and unnecessarily emotive – don’t play to the gallery. You have no idea what the effects of a ban on abortion would be. Looking back to the sixties isn’t realistic – the world has moved on. I have no problem with people not being forced to bring up unwanted children – let’s increase welfare, and promote adoption. I don’t think back street abortions would be as risky as they were 40 years ago. If I can buy Valium illegally from India for virtually nothing, a pregnant woman can buy abortifactants.
If we have to draw the line there because it is the only morally defensible place to put it, then so be it.
But, as I’ve said above, it isn’t the only morally defensible place to put it. It’s arbitrary.
But only a man could put it there as a matter of convenience.
Nice. But irrelevant. And easily refutable if I can find just one female atheist in favour of a complete ban on abortion. Care to chance those odds?
Ms. B: The stats for Ireland show a lower rate of abortion than in the UK. And I’m not aware of a great outcry over backstreet abortionists over there. There’s a good link on education and pregnancy rates over at Antonia Bance’s website, on the late term abortion thread – basically, the evidence is conclusive that education leads to a decrease in teen pregnancy rates. That still doesn’t tell me much about abortion.
I maintain the adult abortion rate will be cut by education. Kids become adults, teena who know how to use condoms, access services and conduct negotiations in sexual relationships (so so important for teenage girls) will become adults who can do all these things.
As I said, I can’t argue with your logic. I’d just like to see some evidence.
Nik: All fair points. I await the trial with some interest.
Owen: I didn’t answer your causality question. I see a distinct difference between these two chains of events:
sex cells produced -> conception -> abortion
sex cells produced -> sex cells discarded
because at conception, the foetus’ only chance of survival, at present, is inside the mother. I expect that sufficient technology will render this point irrelevant, when we can grow foetuses in artificial wombs. Then there will be a whole different set of ethical questions.
Even people who abort aren’t murderers, under the law. I think that they’re morally equivalent to murderers, but that’s a personal judgement.
Do you know how many women you’ve just basically lablled killers?
Nice work. As I said on my site, this thread has started to turn my stomach.
Thought I’d dip back in again.
The reason that a potential future human life has a claim on our moral attention once a foetus exists, but not before, is because a potential human life is brought into existence, and will survive to become an actual human being, acknowledging the risks of miscarriage, all else being well, at the point that a foetus is created. I don’t see that two separate sex cells constitutes a potential human life, unless, as you mentioned before, the technology exists to make them so. At that point, this part of my argument is buggered.
So it seems that your definition of potential human being is that its current state is linked to its final state by an unbroken series of natural events, rather than social events. Is that a fair rendering of your position?
because a potential human life is brought into existence … at the point that a foetus is created.
Here is the root of the confusion.
What you say is not right. It is not the case that a potential human life “is brought into existence at the point a foetus is created.” A potential human life existed before then.
It may be true that an actual (not potential) life is brought into existence at point the foetus is created (provided you use a suitable definition of “life”). It also may be true that this actual life has potential for becoming a human being.
But bringing a life into existence which has potential to become a human being is not the same thing as bringing into existence a potential human life; and your argument depends on these two distinct ideas being equivalent when they are not.
The distinction between these concepts may look trivial at first, but it is of importance to this debate.
Why does the difference matter?
It is possible to make a case for the moral value of “a potential human life”. But if you do so, you will be making a case against celibacy and contraception.
You would need to make a different argument for the moral value of “a life which has the potential to become a human being”. To do this, you need to either (a) make the case for the moral value of the life (as defined in this context); and/or (b) make the case for the moral value of things generally which have the potential to become a human being (which is the same as the case for “a potential human life” as above).
What you seem to be trying to do is arbitrarily declare that embryos that have the potential to become a future human being have moral value, by virtue of the fact that they have the potential to become a future human being; but that other things which also have the potential to become a future human being do not have the same moral value. And that is what you can’t get away with without explanation.
I would also note that if we agree that one thing ought to follow from another, and can offer no plausible counterfactual why this would turn out not to be the case, the onus to provide evidence is really not on the person presenting the reasoned argument to give evidence.
Example:
Alex: flamewars tend to create more heat than light.
Bob: sounds reasonable. but where’s the peer-reviewed study?
Alex: erm, what?
Bob: exactly!
Alex: Well, there is this study, showing that moderated newsgroups are judged more informative than non-moderated. That do?
Bob: no. we’re not interested in moderation, that’s a red herring. evidence, please.
Alex: ok I’m leaving now bye bye!!
Bob: *cackles*
Ms. B:Do you know how many women you’ve just basically lablled killers?
Last year, just under 200,000 in England and Wales.
Alex: On your last point, I contend that the best way to cut abortion rates is to restrict or ban abortion. Ms. B contends that education will work better. I have provided some evidence that I believe supports my case – the rates in Ireland are much lower than in Britain. Ms B. has yet to provide evidence to support her case. So your little dialogue doesn’t quite fit.
Owen: What you seem to be trying to do is arbitrarily declare that embryos that have the potential to become a future human being have moral value, by virtue of the fact that they have the potential to become a future human being; but that other things which also have the potential to become a future human being do not have the same moral value. And that is what you can’t get away with without explanation.
Not quite. I am declaring that embryos have moral virtue, by virtue of the fact that they exist already and that they have the potential to become a future human being. Other things, which do not yet exist, but which also have the potential to become a future human being do not have the same moral value.
I think the confusion is sort of as you suggest – I see the foetus as an actual human being. Others see it as a potential human being.
Alex: So it seems that your definition of potential human being is that its current state is linked to its final state by an unbroken series of natural events, rather than social events. Is that a fair rendering of your position?
Not really – I don’t think that the events being ‘natural’ give them any weight. At present, there is only one way to bring a foetus from its state at conception to its state at birth. That it happens to be ‘natural’ is an unhappy coincidence.
Andrew
Other things, which do not yet exist, but which also have the potential to become a future human being do not have the same moral value.
But they do exist – think of the freezer full of sperm and eggs. They exist. They are potential future human beings. They seem to fit exactly your definition of why embryos have moral virtue: “the fact that they exist already and that they have the potential to become a future human being”.
And even if they did not exist, that would not explain why being a potential future human being only matters for things that exist. If we are going to value things according to their potential future status, then why would we be concerned with what they currently are?
I see the foetus as an actual human being. Others see it as a potential human being.
Really? Are you ready to give up arguing the case based on the potential future of the embryo, and focus instead on the claim that it is already an actual human being? I’m certainly happy to go there, once we’ve agreed that there is no convincing argument for the moral status of the foetus based on it being a potential future human being.
Sure.
Andrew, I’m reading you from statements like
“All I’ve asked you to do is to provide evidence that those things reduce abortion. Just one statistical peer-reviewed study will satisfy me.”
It appears you don’t doubt that it does, but want evidence of the relative degree, which does require some evidence. Fair enough. I don’t have any evidence on education and abortion.
I do have some evidence on banning abortion and effects on abortion rates.
This post details how abortion, in decline over the Clinton era, began to rise under Bush. Their take: “the policies pursued by pro-life politicians are associated with higher abortion rates.”
Internationally, those countries that ban abortion do not have a low abortion rate, but high rates of illegal abortion (link). I take your point that the same might not apply in England. Still, it’s not encouraging evidence for your stance.
I’ll let Owen deal with the nitty gritty of the status of embryos and foetuses. I’m not really convinced by the “it exists” position. My toe exists, and I imagine within my lifetime someone will be able to take cells from it that could be used to clone another person. Despite this, there is absolutely no onus on me to allow that to happen, and I could prevent it without anyone considering me “morally equivalent to a murderer”, or some such.
Andrew
OK. We are agreed, then, that we have not been convinced by arguments for the moral status of the foetus based on what it has the potential to become. (Please, hold this thought at the back of your mind in the discussion that follows, because you may be tempted to come back to this argument later).
So the argument for the moral status of the foetus is based on what the foetus already is.
What might that argument look like? Here are some candidates.
1. If you are religious, you might believe that at conception, the foetus is endowed with a soul, or some other supernatural characteristic which demands our moral attention. If that is your view, then I have no argument to offer.
2. The foetus has characteristics of a sentient being – such as consciousness, self awareness or the ability to feel pain – which m demand our moral attention. This would be persuasive if a foetus did have these characteristics, but it doesn’t. A foetus does not have sufficient brain development to feel pain until week 29 – so on this measure of moral status, they reach about the status of a mouse.
3. Anything that is (a) alive and (b) human deserves our moral attention, irrespective of its other characteristics, in a way that other living creatures do not. (I would guess from your previous contribution that this is something like your view.)
The problem with this argument is that it just shifts the debate, to a discussion of why we are abitrarily allocating moral value to living humans and not other living creatures. Suppose I say that we should attach moral worth to something that is (a) alive, (b) human and (c) Caucasion, but not to other living creatures. You would probably demand to know why I had arbitrarily limited moral concern to Caucasians. I might reply that this is my belief; and I might even say that it is the belief of many people in my community. But that would not be convincing to you. I would need to explain what it is about Caucasians that gives them moral worth that does not also apply to black people. So the question is, why does something that is living and human have more moral status than something living but non-human?
The answer cannot be that a foetus can feel more pain, or has more consciousness, than an animal; because that is not true: a foetus is not more sentient than a cow.
The answer cannot be that, unlike a mouse, a foetus has the potential to become a sentient being, because we have agreed from the outset to eschew any argument based on what a foetus has the potential to become.
The answer cannot be that being human has an intrinsic moral value, because that is a purely arbitrary claim that could equally be made about men, or white people, or heterosexuals, as a reason to give them a higher moral status than women, black people or gays. You have to say why.
So once we eschew the argument based on what the foetus has the potential to become, we have instead to explain what characteristics a foetus has that should cause us to pay moral attention. And that turns out to be very hard to do.
Owen
Alex: It appears you don’t doubt that it does, but want evidence of the relative degree, which does require some evidence. Fair enough. I don’t have any evidence on education and abortion.
Yes, that’s what I was asking for.
To speak more broadly about this issue, I think the problem with discussing abortion is that there are really two things we are discussing. The first, and certainly most contentious, is the moral dimension. Clearly, we’re never going to agree on this, which is why this thread has generated some heated comments on both sides. I sicken the stomach of the pro-choice people with my views, and if truth be told, I don’t find their views that palatable either. But these are fundamentals of our individual beliefs, and they aren’t going to change (at least not overnight). I do think it is interesting to discuss why people have come to the moral views that they hold, and I think it’s a shame when people can’t discuss that openly without fear of being labelled (on my side) a misogynist (or worse) and (on the other side) the equivalent of a murderer. To this, I plead as guilty as some of those above. I have written in a deliberately provocative way, to try to generate discussion – in retrospect, I should probably have been less abrasive.
The second point, and that on which I find it difficult to understand why it can’t be discussed rationally, is policy. It seems that most people agree, on both sides, that the numbers of abortions are high and that we should seek to reduce them. The statistics show, for Britain at least, steadily rising numbers since abortion was legalised. I thought that it would be possible to have a proper discussion about the best way to go about reducing those numbers, but it does seem that ‘education’ has become an article of faith amongst the pro-choice side. I don’t really dispute that it could work – the common sense argument is obviously that if we teach enough kids about the ‘right way’ to go about their sex lives, early enough, they won’t have unwanted pregnancies (at least in as large numbers as before), and that as they grow up the numbers of abortions will therefore steadily decrease as a whole generation of more sophisticated adults emerges. The problem is that common sense has very little place in making decisions about policy, because it could be wrong. Just because I can propose a logical process by which abortion could reduce, it doesn’t mean it will translate well into real life. And often, let’s be honest, a lot of common sense in politics is just wishful thinking to back up our priors and prejudices. I’d love to see some research on the effects of programmes to reduce abortion, but it seems to be almost a taboo subject. I think that’s a shame, particularly when almost everyone seems to agree that reducing the numbers of abortions is a good thing to do.
This post details how abortion, in decline over the Clinton era, began to rise under Bush. Their take: “the policies pursued by pro-life politicians are associated with higher abortion rates.â€Â
Sure, but I think you’re conflating two issues here, which I why I don’t really like the pro-life label. Pro-life is associated with religion and things like abstinence-only programmes, and all sorts of other baggage. I don’t subscribe to a lot of that. As I hope I’ve expressed above, I have no problem with sex education – I think it’s vital that we teach kids well. The evidence is pretty conclusive that abstinence-only programmes lead to higher sexual activity, higher unwanted pregnancies and then higher abortions. I’m not disputing that, but it doesn’t tell you anything scientifically about abortion restrictions in isolation.
Internationally, those countries that ban abortion do not have a low abortion rate, but high rates of illegal abortion (link). I take your point that the same might not apply in England. Still, it’s not encouraging evidence for your stance.
The link talks exclusively about Latin American countries. So it doesn’t follow that, those countries that ban abortion do not have a low abortion rate, but high rates of illegal abortion. It simply says that a carefully selected group of countries with abortion bans have high rates of illegal abortion. I’ve already provided one counter-example (Ireland) where the abortion rate is relatively low. I’m happy to hunt around for more, but I’m not sure what it will tell us – I’d guess, that the combination of developed world + abortion ban leads to low rates, but without doing the research, I have nothing to back that up. That combination is also pretty rare.
Owen: Yes, of those I’d go with 3. I don’t think that your counter-argument about there being no distinction between attaching moral worth to something that is (a) alive, (b) human and (c) Caucasian and attaching moral worth to something that is (a) alive and (b) human is correct.
I think that there is no problem with granting rights as widely as possible, subject to those two categories (alive, and human). To subcategorise, you would have to provide a compelling reason to remove that right from the other subcategories. The best example I can think of is with slavery. We no longer distinguish between people who are (a) alive, (b) human and (c) Caucasian and those who are (a) alive, (b) human and (c) Black because there is no rational justification for doing so, and because we consider it immoral to do so. I don’t think that distinction is arbitrary, as you suggest it is. The fact is that we do treat human beings as having intrinsic moral value, and we don’t see it as acceptable to subcategorise them and assign different scales of rights. Could you explain why you think otherwise?
I’ve already provided one counter-example (Ireland) where the abortion rate is relatively low
Hasn’t it already been explained that people go from Ireland to other places to obtain abortions (thus not showing on stats) and also are very careful to conceal procedures which could get them arrested?
Ms. B: I’d like to close this off, in the interests of not causing further antagonism between the two camps (see post above). But the stats for Ireland are mainly for abortions where women have travelled abroad. It isn’t illegal to do this, as far as I am aware. So they do show up on the stats. I really don’t want to go through each country in the world, study by study, providing a critique of the reporting methodologies. Suffice it to say that no study of illegal abortion rates is accurate, for all sorts of reasons.
Babies don’t ask for life! Who says they want to live, how do you know? If you want to get philosophical, you’re merely imposing the objective consciousness onto it. Something that isn’t aware of reality, something that just “is”.
Why is it okay to be allowed to create a life without its permission, but not to exterminate it? You can’t ask it either way anyway, therefore it is and always will be the womans right to decide. Period. (and if you ask me, women who abort their children are doing them a huge favour anyway).
“The first, and certainly most contentious, is the moral dimension. Clearly, we’re never going to agree on this”
Sorry, Andrew, but that’s a bit of a get-out. I’ve already expressed my interest in finding an atheistic, principled pro-life position that stands on its own two feet, and I think Owen the same. We’re both asking what gives the embryo special status.
I contest that it can be “human, existing with a potential to be a person” (which I will call HEPP) because given the right cloning technology, so is my toe – yet we’d never feel obliged to take that toe to term. My feeling is that in that case we’re happy to say the toe has no rights, and we do it on the basis of its lack of sentience and consciousness.
I am wondering whether the criteria you are using is something like this:
we must treat with special sanctity (not in a religious sense, simply in a “special, protected” sense) anything that can progress from its current state to a thinking, feeling person by a chain of events that do not involve human agency.
That is, my toe is still not a person because someone would have to take a sample, clone it and put it in a (human created machine), whereas an embryo just develops naturally. If human agency must be invoked to join two events together, then we can’t say one leads to another. I think this is a much stronger argument than the HEPP argument, as we do considder human agency to change moral actions: a boulder rolling down a hill onto a car is an act of god (or, in secular terms, an accident of nature) – unless someone started it rolling or diverted its course on the way, where it is murder.
Is this anywhere close to your position, or are you sticking with HEPP?
Alex: we must treat with special sanctity (not in a religious sense, simply in a “special, protected†sense) anything that can progress from its current state to a thinking, feeling person by a chain of events that do not involve human agency.
I think that’s a decent summary of my position, yes. I am thinking through some of these issues in detail for the first time, and that statement I can agree with. That would mean that if someone had already put your toe into an fully automated cloning machine, and switched it on, I’d be opposed to you destroying the clone. I think that’s reasonable.
I’ve already expressed my interest in finding an atheistic, principled pro-life position that stands on its own two feet, and I think Owen the same.
Yes, I’d like to explore it further as well, but I think this thread perhaps isn’t the place to do it, as it has generated a significant amount of heat and distraction. If we can separate a serious discussion of this specific point from the emotional nature of the wider issue of abortion, I think it would be very valuable. That was what my previous post was trying to say. I’m happy to continue by email, or elsewhere on a separate post, but if no-one has any final word, I’m happy to concede any open points and close the comments thread here.
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