Post No.: 0138
Furrywisepuppy says:
We’re going to talk together about a very tricky subject now – abortion.
Fluffystealthkitten says:
Yep. It’s a fluffy dilemma that usually generates a lot of heated debate and leaves both sides thinking that the other side is evil or stupid. So we’re going to see if we can have a more sensible discussion about it.
Furrywisepuppy says:
Okay let’s start here… Is there a problem with pre-natal genetic screening, which could lead to the abortion of foetuses that’ll be born with foreseeable diseases? Is this morally wrong – or should it actually be morally mandatory?!
Fluffystealthkitten says:
The ‘paradox of harm’ concerns not being able to harm someone who doesn’t exist, yet being able to harm them nonetheless by virtue of denying their existence, even if they’ll be born disabled. So is it better to be born disabled (as long as it won’t be so bad that it won’t be a life worth living) than not born at all?
Furrywisepuppy says:
Some people will alternatively argue that existence is worse than non-existence full-stop because while you won’t feel the joys of life, you won’t feel the pains and ultimately the fear of death either, which is arguably worse. So is existence better than no existence in all cases (e.g. severe depression can lead to such great pain that suicide feels like the better option than living, hence one may feel that it would’ve been better to never have been born)?
Fluffystealthkitten says:
I can think of battery chickens as an example – some people may say that all these chickens would never have had a life at all if it weren’t for this kind of farming, but many others would argue that it would’ve been better for them not to have been born at all than to enter such a miserable life.
Furrywisepuppy says:
And what about what’s given up i.e. denying the pregnancy and life of another, possibly healthy, baby that could be gestating inside a womb during this time? In other words, if one (‘imperfect’) embryo isn’t chosen then another (‘arguably less imperfect’) one would likely be chosen instead, that should also have an equal right to exist, and they both can’t be gestated at the same time.
Fluffystealthkitten says:
The issues regarding pro-choice (the right to abort, sometimes for any reason) and pro-life (the right for the embryo to live and grow) include the would-be-mother’s voice versus trying to give a voice to a potential baby when she/he/it doesn’t have a voice for her/him/itself; and pragmatism versus principles. Hence the abortion debate can be framed as ‘against female reproductive rights’ or as ‘against the rights of an innocent baby-to-be who has no voice to defend her/himself with and didn’t put her/himself in this situation but was forced by the would-be-parents’ own choices or actions’. Notice that the doctrines of a formal religion don’t necessarily have to enter into the arguments at all.
Furrywisepuppy says:
Yes, pro-choice is like the woman saying, “Stop controlling how I want to control my baby-to-be’s genetic material” – if only the baby-to-be could decide for him/herself, but obviously he/she cannot so someone else must control the baby-to-be’s fate, so who? It can’t be the case that the mother or parents can always automatically dictate whatever they want for their child (e.g. social services and taking children away from abusive or neglectful parents have their moral function in society). It may be the woman’s body but a child is his/her own being with inherent dignity – not someone’s ‘property’, even to his/her parents.
Fluffystealthkitten says:
Pro-life assumes the baby-to-be would say, “Yes, I would like to be born regardless of my prognosis, prospects or being abandoned” but this is an assumption – as is the assumption when pro-choice assumes the baby-to-be would say, “No”, or that the mother’s choice as sole decision-maker of the situation is final.
Furrywisepuppy says:
So there’s no objective right or wrong moral side to this debate – each side has its points and problems – hence the evidential perennial disagreements. A wise person therefore listens to and understands both sides. Woof.
Fluffystealthkitten says:
Yet a stance must ultimately be chosen when a clock is ticking – even those who believe that abortion is acceptable will agree that it gets progressively more immoral to abort a foetus the longer it goes.
Now science might be able to answer when something is ‘alive’ or ‘conscious’ (I’ll leave aside that there are nonetheless debates in science about what these answers are e.g. regarding whether viruses are truly alive or not) but why choose one point and not the other (or some other point) as the point when it becomes too late to abort? One can be ‘alive’ but not ‘conscious’ (e.g. in a coma) – so which definition shall we choose? Should the point when abortion becomes too late alternatively be when the baby-to-be has e.g. independent movement, an independent pulse, a defined face or a defined heart? The definitions we choose will therefore inevitably be arbitrary. It’s a tough one that science cannot give a truly unfettered objective answer to without basing some fuzzy assumptions or definitions on ultimately subjectively selected measures.
Furrywisepuppy says:
I think I see what you’re saying. What is the moral status of early human life, and at what point do the rights of an early human life override the rights of the pregnant female? Both sides of the debate believe in rights for the female and rights for the child or child-to-be but argue at what point during the development of the zygote, embryo, foetus or baby the latter’s rights start to supersede the former’s when they conflict.
And whatever answers one gives – if one is to be morally consistent – could also have implications regarding when one accepts when artificial intelligences or robots e.g. gain a sense of sentience or a future worth existing, and therefore have a right to life or ‘life’ too! And again to be morally consistent, if a lack of consciousness makes the abortion of someone/something morally acceptable then the switching off of life support for coma victims should never be classed as murder too. The coma patient might become conscious one day, but so will the embryo!
Fluffystealthkitten says:
Indeed. So where does one draw the line as to when life begins? One could keep going earlier and earlier and say that one has always existed since the beginning of this universe and will continue to exist as long as this universe still exists if one argues that life stems from the most elementary building blocks of life, because energy or mass, which matter is made from, including the matter that makes us right now, only transfers and is never destroyed due to the conservation of energy or the first law of thermodynamics(!) It’s not like you’ve always existed in the form (the age and precise atoms) you are today.
Just about everyone accepts that the baby stage is far too late to abort, so the sides are essentially trying to draw a line between two states, of not living and living, of not being conscious and being conscious, or whatever measure we select, to decide when abortion should be counted as murder.
Furrywisepuppy says:
To rewind a little – yet-born children-to-be have no abilities or powers to make choices for their own furry destinies, but pro-life supporters assume that they’d choose to live (or must choose to live if they think suicide is always an unacceptable option), when they might actually not. Hence the assumptions that a child would want to live, or be aborted, arguably cancel each other out – thus leaving the would-be-mother’s choice to take primacy; unless third-parties try to intervene to somehow speak for the child.
But we could arguably work out the probability of a child-to-be choosing life or abortion by asking what proportion of unwanted children who weren’t aborted are happy to be alive today, with their now benefit-of-hindsight and ability to answer for themselves? Would most of them say they were glad they weren’t aborted or would most of them say they wished they were? This solution would still be debateable though because it’d be like giving popular decisions primacy over the rights of individual decisions, but I guess it’s the only practical solution since the child-to-be cannot express his/her/its individual choice at all.
Fluffystealthkitten says:
Hmm. Since there’s no clear answer as to whether abortion is moral or not, maybe accepting the democratic answer of the present culture – the consensus of a current time and place – is the only way to move on in a pragmatic sense? This may mean the consensus will be different in different cultures and places (hence we arguably shouldn’t be so judgemental what other cultures decide for their own places on this matter), and this consensus may even change over time in any place, but at least a society can clarify its laws and its citizens can exist on the same page in the meantime.
Furrywisepuppy says:
Alright, so we’ll pick a side, and the important finer details, today, but be mindful of reviewing the issue again periodically to see if it still fits with the possibly changing cultures, technologies and findings of the future. (I suppose this really applies to most laws that exist!)
Fluffystealthkitten says:
We now understand that there’s no simple, straightforward moral answer. But for today and in ‘developed’ countries then – from a practical perspective – I’m personally leaning slightly more towards pro-choice because there’s probably nothing worse than having a child being born and bred in an environment with parents who never really wanted the child or won’t invest the time, effort and love. Such a child is likely (although not guaranteed) to live a horrible life. It would be perfect to have every such unwanted child be adopted by couples who really want a child and will put in the time, effort and love, but there probably won’t be enough of them if abortion wasn’t permitted.
Not allowing abortion only pushes abortion procedures underground too so they’ll still happen. Although this isn’t always a good argument (e.g. just because paedophilic material still manages to surface underground, we wouldn’t say we should therefore legalise it, the government shouldn’t interfere and should let the market decide supply and demand… yet the government should come in to tax it and regulate its quality for consumers, because great efforts to enforce a ban on that stuff constantly fails(!)) There’s also the would-be-mother’s health to consider.
Furrywisepuppy says:
But there’s still the issue of the line-drawing problem of when it’s considered too late to have an abortion – some say once a sperm enters an egg, others say even in the third trimester is fine. Most say somewhere inbetween, but when? As mentioned, science cannot objectively answer this i.e. do not think that ‘what science or scientists say’ is always objective and indisputable – in many areas, there are still human choices of choosing operational definitions (e.g. of what the measure for ‘alive’, ‘fit’ or ‘intelligent’ is? The same kinds of questions should be posed for synthetic machines too) and also human interpretations of results (e.g. how much is too much or too little?) It’s not like deciding whether to define a distance in meters or feet because these can be easily converted into the other without any loss of information – it’s about trying to define when something becomes someone.
Fluffystealthkitten says:
Well really – we should be looking into improving contraception usage for both males and females, or other methods of birth control i.e. prevent it ever getting to the point of deciding on whether to abort a zygote/embryo/foetus or not!
So it’s solved. Yes! Fluffystealthkitten is outta here!
Furrywisepuppy says:
I totally agree… but that’ll still leave some rape victims though.
Fluffystealthkitten says:
****! Why can’t humans just behave(!)
Furrywisepuppy says:
Woof!
Fluffystealthkitten says:
Meow.
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