An Argument Against Abortion

[HJCarden]

I disagree with the argument that abortion is violating "the conscious will of a person". Your argument stems from the idea that eventually, later in life, the fetus would possibly want to stay alive. However, that will does not exist at the time that the mother is contemplating abortion. Although that will may exist in a conscious person at some point, it does not currently exist. A fetus would not be able to desire something that it does not know. The analogy used to compare someone with certain desires after death, i.e. organ donation, does not parallel the idea of abortion. In the organ donation scenario, that person was able to make an informed decision that they then formalized through a legal avenue. It is not the same thing, it is not even similar. Your desire to stay alive and your gratefulness that you were not aborted as a fetus is through experiences and knowledge that a fetus does not have.

My argument is that barring an abortion or a miscarriage/medical emergency of some sorts, that WILL will exist. If I told my spouse that I will cheat on her, but I haven't yet, is she justified in divorcing me? My analogy to wishes after death is meant to show that we can conceive of respecting a person's wishes when they are not conscious or present with us. The last line of your post is exactly my argument, that although the fetus does not have those desires yet, barring an abortion or miscarriage they almost certainly WILL have those desires, and this is why abortion violates their will.

[HJCarden]

I have often heard the idea that a fetus is not conscious brought up in arguments concerning abortion, with this being used to justify the fetus as a "parasite" or not having a will of its own.

I'm pretty sure most arguments concerning the consciousness of a fetus have very little to do with "having a will" and other abstract notions of autonomy, and more to do with the level of suffering inflicted on the fetus, since it is the consciousness of pain that serves as a measure that triggers our empathic responses.

I agree that some arguments do deal with this, however I believe that the more stable grounding for my convictions is not in producing an empathetic response but rather a logical one, so I will not argue against points made counter to those that rely on ethos.

While I do allow that there is a large portion of a pregnancy in which the fetus is not conscious, I do not think this matters, as I believe that at conception is the moment where the conscious will of a person begins.

Besides your personal belief about this, what else can you offer that should be taken into account for the belief of others? I personally don't believe that there's a conscious will at the moment of conception, simply because I associate consciousness to the function of certain systems that are not yet developed in that initial stage. This latter assertion of yours is also at odds with your first assertion that the moment when the fetus is conscious is irrelevant to the moral issue.

To clarify my point, I believe that the moment that the systems that "come online" that we associate with consciousness are irrelevant to this argument.

From the moment an egg is fertilized, barring any mishaps, there is not confusion as to what it will become. That is the process by which life is created, so while it might be "just a clump of cells" for a while, if the pregnancy continues without any problems, a child will be produced at the end. This child is born, hopefully lives a good full life and dies.

And so? It is questionable to assert that "there is not confusion as to what it will become". From a purely biological perspective, a small clump of cells called embryo will become a bigger clump of cells called fetus and later a much bigger clump of cells called a child. Nothing here gives a particular insight into what this life will become outside the womb. All value is inserted in the context of social life, which includes the mother and the whole cultural environment. It is there where "what one will become" obtains significance, but that includes the possibility of not becoming anything.

My point is that this clump of cells, uninhibited, will become a person like you and I who has wants and desires, feels pleasure and pain. I do not believe that the context of which this child is born into changes these fundamental aspects of personhood.

The crux of my argument stems from how we treat people after death. Why do people write wills, why do we ask whether people want to be organ donors or not? Since this person is unconscious, does it matter what their conscious will was? I believe our treatment of the dead hints that we know a person's conscious will can extend beyond their consciousness.

People can pay respect to their dead ones without having any belief about their consciousness being active after death. That may be your religious belief, and certainly the religious belief of many, but that doesn't make it an innate belief. Also, you are referring only to how some people treat some of the dead sometimes. And since the argument against abortion is always concerned with the value of life, perhaps it should be more important to see how people treat the living ones, which I'm afraid often doesn't make a good argument.

My point is meant to illustrate that we can conceive that our conscious will extends beyond our consciousness.

Therefore, I believe it is correct to assume that from the moment a person's life becomes possible (fertilization/conception/what have you) there is incredibly small reason to believe that person would will their life to be ended, which makes abortion a violation of their conscious will, despite it pre-dating consciousness.

There's no good reason to attribute "conscious will" to an embryo.

This comment misses the entire point of my argument that I was making. I readily admit that the embryo has no conscious will in it yet, but my argument is meant to show that this should be irrelevant.

[HJCarden]

Perhaps an idle question, and you obviously don't have to answer: are you traditionally male, traditionally female or LGBTQ?

I believe this is an entirely idle question. I am a male. If you think that this invalidates my arguments concerning abortion, I will then assert that I identify as a fully biological female, so lets spare ourselves this song and dance.

As for your assertion that certain concepts can't provide "satisfying results beyond those intended to produce an emotional response" and therefore must be abandoned, since you're the one making a case, the burden is on you to show that the concept that you rely on (the "conscious will") doesn't have the same defect. I don't see anywhere in your message that you've even tried to do that.

I believe it is immoral to violate another person's conscious will. I would think it wrong for me to harm you (in one sense) because you will yourself to not be harmed. Any sort of harm can evoke an emotional response, but I believe that this notion of violating somoene's will is as far from an emotional argument as I can construct.

I think that if abortion is wrong, it must be wrong from the moment of conception, otherwise the argument becomes stuck in a quagmire of medical terminology and arguments about subjective conscious experiences.

All right, you've told us what to avoid: terminology and possible facts concerning consciousness. Aside from whether anyone cares to agree with that, tell us what you think we should consider. I warn you that if you posit an incoherent concept of a "conscious will that pre-dates consciousness," you'll have big trouble convincing many people. And I suspect that you won't convince anyone who doesn't already take marching orders on the subject from a particular religion.

If you believe that I am saying that should be avoided entirely, I must have been potentially misleading in my original post. I am not saying that we should ignore these facts, I am claiming that certain facts take precedence. I think that the fact that from the moment of conception the fertilized egg is on its way to becoming a person who will have a will is important. If you believe that I wont convince anyone but people who march lock-step with religion, I think that is more reflective of your own personal biases against religion. However, I do believe that I can convince non religious people that we can conceive that a person's conscious will exists beyond their consciousness.

From the moment an egg is fertilized, barring any mishaps, there is not confusion as to what it will become. That is the process by which life is created, so while it might be "just a clump of cells" for a while, if the pregnancy continues without any problems, a child will be produced at the end. This child is born, hopefully lives a good full life and dies.

All of this seems quite mundane. I don't see how it sheds any light on your claim, especially since you've already rejected the relevance of matters such as the fact that a fetus is "alive."

I am stating that the causal chain that brings about consciousness and conscious will has been created. This provides a point at which I can reasonably say that the conscious will can start at. In contrast, I do not believe that the will extends to the parent's decision to have a child or to engage in sexual intercourse.

I think its safe to assume (referencing statistics on teen suicide, which is probably around the age where a person can first start contemplating their will to live) that most people prefer to be alive as early in their life as they can grasp that their life is something they can will to exist or to not exist. In the same way that I hope people will respect the wishes of my will, I would expect that they respect with an even higher standard my wishes for my own life.

Therefore, I believe it is correct to assume that from the moment a person's life becomes possible (fertilization/conception/what have you) there is incredibly small reason to believe that person would will their life to be ended, which makes abortion a violation of their conscious will, despite it pre-dating consciousness.

Well, you've already said that you "do allow that there is a large portion of a pregnancy in which the fetus is not conscious." Once you've made that concession, no talk of a "conscious will" is going to help. Your undefined concept of a "conscious will that pre-dates consciousness" simply makes no sense, because the very use of the word "conscious" in the phrase "conscious will" entails that consciousness must already have been established.

Also, your assertion that "there is incredibly small reason to believe that person would will their life to be ended" begs the question. For a fetus¹ to will its life to be ended (or not ended) presupposes that it's capable of having thoughts on the issue, the thing that you're claiming, but not demonstrating, exists from the moment of conception. I'll go you a step further, and say that there's no reason, not just small reason, to believe that at the moment of conception a fetus would will anything regarding the ending of its life. But the reason is that it simply doesn't have a will.

Finally, even ignoring the logical connection between consciousness and the conscious will, given your rejection of consciousness as a consideration that's relevant to the morality of abortion, perhaps you could explain why your idea of a conscious will that pre-dates consciousness doesn't fail to be relevant for the same reason.

The focus of your arguments against mine is this notion that the conscious will cannot predate consciousness, and that if might even only begin a while after consciousness is established, but I will attempt to convince you otherwise.

If you are not conscious when you are in a coma, does that mean that you can have no will to keep living? Or why would people carry DNR identifications if they did not want their will, while unconscious, to be violated? Say that in your sleep, someone stole your car. You were not conscious at the time, but you certainly still have a will for your car not to be stolen.

I started by asking myself the question, "Would I have liked to have been aborted?" My lack of suicidal urges, and the fact that I look both ways before crossing the street show me that I value my life, and my love of philosophy, sports, my friends and family show me that I enjoy my life. So then I asked myself, at what point should I have no say in my life? Certainly not when I was too young to contemplate mortality, and certainly not as a small helpless baby. And what was the process that made me a baby, and when did that process start? I think I have a fair claim to say that at the moment of my conception is when I could will myself to exist from then onwards until my natural death.

This is the barest form of my argument. Ask yourself the same questions, and if we have different answers, then we will most likely never agree on this subject.

[HJCarden]

I have often heard the idea that a fetus is not conscious brought up in arguments concerning abortion, with this being used to justify the fetus as a "parasite" or not having a will of its own. I also think that deciding at what point in a pregnancy a fetus is conscious, alive, a real person or whatever is never going to provide satisfying results beyond those intended to produce an emotional response. I think that if abortion is wrong, it must be wrong from the moment of conception, otherwise the argument becomes stuck in a quagmire of medical terminology and arguments about subjective conscious experiences.

It's already a quagmire of people with no skin in the game pronouncing what's moral and what isn't, without considering practical conditions or the rationale of their various righteous stands on various issues.

If you can lay out a coherent plan for which life is to be preserved by what means for what reasons, and empower every conscious living being to choose their own course, and level the field so that all women have equal opportunity to decide whether and when to become pregnant, and all pregnancies carried to term are safe and all babies born are properly supported and loved, then you get a say.
Just a say, mind, not the deciding vote.

Firstly, I think that I had a lot of skin in the game when I was a fetus myself, and I'm assuming you as well were once a fetus. My argument against abortion was part of a coherent plan to preserve life for certain reasons: A fetus should not be aborted because it would most likely, in the future, violate their will to live. I am working backwards from the assumption that I would not like to be killed at this moment. As for pregnancy and women, the issue of rape is admittedly an idea that is outside the scope of this argument. However, beyond that, women do have a pretty well defined pathway to getting pregnant, one that I believe most of us are aware of (sex). As for pregnancies being unsafe for a woman, this too is outside the scope of this argument. I am not saying that all babies will be properly cared for, but I am also going to state that it is the morally correct action for babies to be cared for properly, and my initial argument was arguing for something that I see as morally correct, so I don't think it is incoherent for me to wish for something else that I see as morally correct.

As for your last comment, it appears that you do not understand the point of putting out a philosophical argument into a sphere of debate. I never claimed to have the FINAL say. If I wanted the final say, I would be working to enact legislation and force pregnant women to keep their babies. I think that by matter of me being a person I get a say. You can chose to value it or not, but silencing your opponents only hurts your own intellectual development in the long run.

[HJCarden]

I think that if abortion is wrong, it must be wrong from the moment of conception, otherwise the argument becomes stuck in a quagmire of medical terminology and arguments about subjective conscious experiences.

I think whether we like it or not life is messy and we often have to make decisions based on what might seem like arbitrary dividing lines. Abortion is a classic example of a situation like that. I think you're effectively saying "I'm going to rush to one of the extremes because I don't like the mess". Some other people, for similar reasons, rush to the other extreme. I disagree with both. I don't think we can ignore the mess.

I do not believe that I have rushed to an extreme, I believe that I have laid out good reasoning to state that if one were to believe that abortion is wrong, then they are best served to argue that it is wrong from the moment of conception, as I believe that has the best grounding in solid moral principles.

Therefore, I believe it is correct to assume that from the moment a person's life becomes possible (fertilization/conception/what have you) there is incredibly small reason to believe that person would will their life to be ended, which makes abortion a violation of their conscious will, despite it pre-dating consciousness.

The possibility of future sentient life exists before that. Your argument could also be used to conclude that contraception and masturbation should also be regarded as immoral and/or illegal.

It could be, but I do not think it is fair the extend it that far. Contraception like condoms prevents fertilization, masturbation involves no fertilization. I think it would only be fair for me to have a will regarding my life the moment that it was made biologically possible. I do realize that there is a clumsy asymmetry in my argument potentially forming here, so let me clear that up. I think that once fertilization happens, then and only then a person is truly possible to exist. Once this possibility exists, from then on the person has a right to will their life to exist. After their death is a mucky area as to what I believe a person has the right to will, but certainly at every point leading up to death they are within their moral rights to will their life. One cannot will an egg or a sperm, as those individually do not constitute their own life, rather the life of their parents.

[Alias]

[If you can lay out a coherent plan for which life is to be preserved by what means for what reasons, and empower every conscious living being to choose their own course, and level the field so that all women have equal opportunity to decide whether and when to become pregnant, and all pregnancies carried to term are safe and all babies born are properly supported and loved, then you get a say.]
Firstly, I think that I had a lot of skin in the game when I was a fetus myself, and I'm assuming you as well were once a fetus.

Indeed. We were lucky enough to still be here, relatively whole. Millions of other human foetuses did not fare so well in being brought into the world. Today, if you you were asked whether you want to spend the next 70 years in a Nigerian prison, would you say Yes? At the time of conceptions, you don't know what fate awaits you. If it's one of the very many terrible fates, you might choose oblivion instead.
You cannot speak for all the foetuses. But if you wanted them kept alive, with a chance at happiness, for their own sakes, you'd be far more worried about making the world safe for babies than prohibiting abortion.

I am working backwards from the assumption that I would not like to be killed at this moment.

Your moment - not theirs. Your assumption - based on - what? Do you know how many people in the world, at this moment, are wishing they'd never been born?

As for pregnancy and women, the issue of rape is admittedly an idea that is outside the scope of this argument.

Why? Millions of women get pregnant from being raped, coerced, forced into marriage and having to submit to their husband's will, forced into prostitution by poverty and addiction. It's all sex, and all those women are "having sex". Why don't they get a mention in this argument, which all about their bodies and their reproductive function and their future life?

As for pregnancies being unsafe for a woman, this too is outside the scope of this argument.

300,000 in 2015. Outside the argument - they don't count.

I am not saying that all babies will be properly cared for, but I am also going to state that it is the morally correct action for babies to be cared for properly, and my initial argument was arguing for something that I see as morally correct, so I don't think it is incoherent for me to wish for something else that I see as morally correct.

Wishing and legislation are very different concepts, with very different outcomes.
I understand that your argument is a moral one, with no reference to reality.
In an ideal world, this should not happen.
You're right.
But, then, in an ideal world, it wouldn't be an issue. Nobody wants to have an abortion. They do it because circumstances make it their least worst option.

As for your last comment, it appears that you do not understand the point of putting out a philosophical argument into a sphere of debate. I never claimed to have the FINAL say.

It appears that you missed the contextual meaning of that final comment.
Pregnancy isn't theoretical or philosophical. It's physical and practical. You can have an opinion about another person's pregnancy - anyone can have an opinion, and no attempt was made to silence yours. I merely cautioned that, even if all other conditions are met, the final decision remains with the woman whose body is the subject of debate.

[Alias]

WILL will exist.

That will might exist - barring all the things that might prevent it existing - except that all those things are not actually barred. In fact, it does not exist at the time the decision is made whether or not to terminate the pregnancy.

If I told my spouse that I will cheat on her, but I haven't yet, is she justified in divorcing me?

Yes. Not for the cheating that might happen, but for the cruelty of stating the intention.

My analogy to wishes after death is meant to show that we can conceive of respecting a person's wishes when they are not conscious or present with us.

The wishes of a dead person do exist, usually in written and witnessed form. If we respect those wishes, it's either because we respected the person in life (which can't happen with an unborn foetus) or they had some legal power to force our respect (which the foetus doesn't.) In any case, we most certainly, demonstrably and obviously do not respect the wishes of a great many people who are alive and express their wishes very clearly - a circumstance you continue to ignore.

[BobS]

Perhaps an idle question, and you obviously don't have to answer: are you traditionally male, traditionally female or LGBTQ?

I believe this is an entirely idle question. I am a male. If you think that this invalidates my arguments concerning abortion, I will then assert that I identify as a fully biological female, so lets spare ourselves this song and dance.

I introduced the question by saying it was perhaps an idle one, in order to spare your thinking that I wanted to start a song and dance. I guess I misjudged.

In any case, I asked only because I find it interesting that every time I've seen or heard someone publicly present an argument against abortion, that person has been a male. Just my personal experience, but I find it interesting. I couldn't tell in your case, since you go by initials, so I asked out of idle curiosity. No offense was intended.

As for your assertion that certain concepts can't provide "satisfying results beyond those intended to produce an emotional response" and therefore must be abandoned, since you're the one making a case, the burden is on you to show that the concept that you rely on (the "conscious will") doesn't have the same defect. I don't see anywhere in your message that you've even tried to do that.

I believe it is immoral to violate another person's conscious will. I would think it wrong for me to harm you (in one sense) because you will yourself to not be harmed. Any sort of harm can evoke an emotional response, but I believe that this notion of violating somoene's will is as far from an emotional argument as I can construct.

I think that you misunderstood the question, because you've merely repeated your argument. I asked you to justify the validity of the concept you chose to use, not how you used it, since you had already attempted to do the latter (and have now attempted to do so again).

Specifically, in the introductory statement immediately preceding your assertion that what you call the "conscious will" is the relevant concept, you expressly rejected other, similar concepts. You stated: "I also think that deciding at what point in a pregnancy a fetus is conscious, alive, a real person or whatever is never going to provide satisfying results beyond those intended to produce an emotional response." Thus my question essentially was this: having accepted that the concepts of consciousness, life and real personhood can't provide "satisfying results beyond those intended to produce an emotional response," what was the basis for your claiming that the concept of "conscious will" was any different?

You still haven't tried to show that there is such a difference.

I think that if abortion is wrong, it must be wrong from the moment of conception, otherwise the argument becomes stuck in a quagmire of medical terminology and arguments about subjective conscious experiences.

All right, you've told us what to avoid: terminology and possible facts concerning consciousness. Aside from whether anyone cares to agree with that, tell us what you think we should consider. I warn you that if you posit an incoherent concept of a 'conscious will that pre-dates consciousness,' you'll have big trouble convincing many people. And I suspect that you won't convince anyone who doesn't already take marching orders on the subject from a particular religion.

If you believe that I am saying that should be avoided entirely, I must have been potentially misleading in my original post. I am not saying that we should ignore these facts, I am claiming that certain facts take precedence.

I accept that for the present purpose of argument.

I think that the fact that from the moment of conception the fertilized egg is on its way to becoming a person who will have a will is important. If you believe that I wont convince anyone but people who march lock-step with religion, I think that is more reflective of your own personal biases against religion. However, I do believe that I can convince non religious people that we can conceive that a person's conscious will exists beyond their consciousness.

You need to take a closer look at what I said: "I warn you that if you posit an incoherent concept of a "conscious will that pre-dates consciousness," you'll have big trouble convincing many people" (emphasis supplied).

My point remains: in relying on an incoherent concept, you're not going to persuade anyone by your purported "logic", because an argument that relies on a self-contradictory (i.e., incoherent) concept simply isn't logical; it's gibberish. Hence the reason for my repeatedly asking you to explain how the idea of a "conscious will that pre-dates consciousness" isn't contradictory.

As for my supposed bias, what I have a "bias" against is incoherent arguments. I'd have had the same reaction to an incoherent argument that abortion is just terrific. I in fact live in a fairly "liberal" area, where virtually everyone (except a born-again friend and some of the people that he associates with) is pro-choice, and while I don't encourage discussions on the topic, I can't count the number of times that I've had to listen to cringe-inducing arguments on their end. Both ends of the spectrum do that; it just so happens that the present thread concerns your end of the spectrum.

By way of illustration, religious people are constantly offering pathetically infantile arguments to "prove" that there's a god: the ontological argument, the argument from design, the cosmological argument, and so on. With so many religious people willing to go that far off the logical deep end on the god issue, it makes perfect sense to me that they'd also buy an incoherent concept of "conscious will that pre-dates consciousness" as well, not because it's logical, but because they've already bought the conclusion that "abortion is bad," and thus find almost any kind of supporting argument, however bad, emotionally satisfying. That sort of thing just seems to be a fact of human nature. Some humans' natures, anyway.

From the moment an egg is fertilized, barring any mishaps, there is not confusion as to what it will become. That is the process by which life is created, so while it might be "just a clump of cells" for a while, if the pregnancy continues without any problems, a child will be produced at the end. This child is born, hopefully lives a good full life and dies.

All of this seems quite mundane. I don't see how it sheds any light on your claim, especially since you've already rejected the relevance of matters such as the fact that a fetus is "alive."

I am stating that the causal chain that brings about consciousness and conscious will has been created. This provides a point at which I can reasonably say that the conscious will can start at. In contrast, I do not believe that the will extends to the parent's decision to have a child or to engage in sexual intercourse.

OK, I understand that you're saying that conception provides a useful starting point.

The point yet to be established is that it's in fact useful, that "conscious will" starts there. Given your concession elsewhere that "consciousness" doesn't begin at conception, you're treading heavy water on this point. For now, you've addressed only why you made that choice, and not whether that choice is actually valid.

I think its safe to assume (referencing statistics on teen suicide, which is probably around the age where a person can first start contemplating their will to live) that most people prefer to be alive as early in their life as they can grasp that their life is something they can will to exist or to not exist. In the same way that I hope people will respect the wishes of my will, I would expect that they respect with an even higher standard my wishes for my own life.

Therefore, I believe it is correct to assume that from the moment a person's life becomes possible (fertilization/conception/what have you) there is incredibly small reason to believe that person would will their life to be ended, which makes abortion a violation of their conscious will, despite it pre-dating consciousness.

Well, you've already said that you "do allow that there is a large portion of a pregnancy in which the fetus is not conscious." Once you've made that concession, no talk of a "conscious will" is going to help. Your undefined concept of a "conscious will that pre-dates consciousness" simply makes no sense, because the very use of the word "conscious" in the phrase "conscious will" entails that consciousness must already have been established.

Also, your assertion that "there is incredibly small reason to believe that person would will their life to be ended" begs the question. For a fetus¹ to will its life to be ended (or not ended) presupposes that it's capable of having thoughts on the issue, the thing that you're claiming, but not demonstrating, exists from the moment of conception. I'll go you a step further, and say that there's no reason, not just small reason, to believe that at the moment of conception a fetus would will anything regarding the ending of its life. But the reason is that it simply doesn't have a will.

Finally, even ignoring the logical connection between consciousness and the conscious will, given your rejection of consciousness as a consideration that's relevant to the morality of abortion, perhaps you could explain why your idea of a conscious will that pre-dates consciousness doesn't fail to be relevant for the same reason.

The focus of your arguments against mine is this notion that the conscious will cannot predate consciousness, and that if might even only begin a while after consciousness is established, but I will attempt to convince you otherwise.

This is indeed the crucial point.

If you are not conscious when you are in a coma, does that mean that you can have no will to keep living?

Well, I have to question whether someone in a brain-dead coma has a "will." The question in that respect strikes me as rather fanciful and not enlightening.

Now, when people have left instructions on how they wish to be treated if they ever fall into a coma, there are several aspects. One is the possibility of recovering against expectations. Another is sentiment: the notion that many people have that "life is sacred," a useful shorthand for a variety of viewpoints. But I seriously doubt that anyone thinks that someone who is brain-dead nevertheless is lying there consciously willing something. If he is, then he's not brain-dead.

As to any coma short of that, the question is the same as whether one has a "will" when one is asleep (a point that you make below). I'd have to say that one does, because "will" generally refers to one's ability to make choices from among one's desires. When one is asleep, or in a temporary coma, one has that ability, regardless of whether it's actively functioning at the moment.

None of which sheds any light on whether it's coherent to speak of a fetus having any sort of will at the moment of conception or for quite some time thereafter. No ability; no wilful activity. The potential to develop that ability sometime in the distant future is another matter entirely.

Or why would people carry DNR identifications if they did not want their will, while unconscious, to be violated? Say that in your sleep, someone stole your car. You were not conscious at the time, but you certainly still have a will for your car not to be stolen.

Already covered in the preceding paragraph.

I started by asking myself the question, "Would I have liked to have been aborted?"

What would you have answered had you been asked the question two days after you were conceived?

My lack of suicidal urges, and the fact that I look both ways before crossing the street show me that I value my life, and my love of philosophy, sports, my friends and family show me that I enjoy my life.

Right. You have consciousness, are viable, and have the ability to value your life. Not relevant to what goes on in the first days, weeks and months after conception.

So then I asked myself, at what point should I have no say in my life? Certainly not when I was too young to contemplate mortality, and certainly not as a small helpless baby.

Well, people can debate when the cutoff time for having an abortion should be. The question is important to many, but it doesn't interest me terribly. There can be enough debate about it, and then continued debate and then more debate, that my feeling is for cripes sake, pick a cut-off date and get on with life. So, the debate for most (non-Catholics and non-fundamentalists) is this: you can't kill babies, and there's back and forth on whether late term abortions should be OK. I'll go with anything reasonable -- a concept that doesn't include barring abortions early on.

And what was the process that made me a baby, and when did that process start?

When your mom first smiled at your dad? Foreplay?

I think I have a fair claim to say that at the moment of my conception is when I could will myself to exist from then onwards until my natural death.

Well, that conclusion just arrived out of the blue. With no relevant groundwork, you're now asserting that from the moment of conception you had a specific, mental property, the present ability (not a potential, how ever many weeks or months down the road ability) to make choices from among your desires. But, as I've repeatedly observed, you've conceded that fetuses have no consciousness for a considerable period of time. They don't have a choice-making ability, because they don't have consciousness. That, all by its lonesome, is a concession that you could not "will yourself to exist" for a considerable period of time after conception.

Thus we've returned to the problem that the concept of "conscious will that pre-dates consciousness" is self-contradictory," and you really and truly haven't made a credible effort to give it meaning.

This is the barest form of my argument. Ask yourself the same questions, and if we have different answers, then we will most likely never agree on this subject.

Although I suspect that you're really against abortion because your religion says so, and that makes you inclined to seek out logical reasons, however weak, with which to convince the heathens, I also don't doubt that you believe what you say. I'm afraid we'll just have to agree to agree to never agree on this subject.

I close with just one last thought. Even had you made some kind of showing that a fetus may have a "conscious" will from the time of conception, you still would not have proven your case. The quality or degree of that will, whether it was of such a significance as to matter, would remain to be seen. But with your concept of a "conscious will" not being coherent, there was never any need to explore that issue.

[LuckyR]

?......analyze.....?

Yes, to dive deeper than the placard quote of Fetuses Are Sacred.

[LuckyR]

I have often heard the idea that a fetus is not conscious brought up in arguments concerning abortion, with this being used to justify the fetus as a "parasite" or not having a will of its own. I also think that deciding at what point in a pregnancy a fetus is conscious, alive, a real person or whatever is never going to provide satisfying results beyond those intended to produce an emotional response. I think that if abortion is wrong, it must be wrong from the moment of conception, otherwise the argument becomes stuck in a quagmire of medical terminology and arguments about subjective conscious experiences.

It's already a quagmire of people with no skin in the game pronouncing what's moral and what isn't, without considering practical conditions or the rationale of their various righteous stands on various issues.

If you can lay out a coherent plan for which life is to be preserved by what means for what reasons, and empower every conscious living being to choose their own course, and level the field so that all women have equal opportunity to decide whether and when to become pregnant, and all pregnancies carried to term are safe and all babies born are properly supported and loved, then you get a say.
Just a say, mind, not the deciding vote.

Firstly, I think that I had a lot of skin in the game when I was a fetus myself, and I'm assuming you as well were once a fetus. My argument against abortion was part of a coherent plan to preserve life for certain reasons: A fetus should not be aborted because it would most likely, in the future, violate their will to live. I am working backwards from the assumption that I would not like to be killed at this moment. As for pregnancy and women, the issue of rape is admittedly an idea that is outside the scope of this argument. However, beyond that, women do have a pretty well defined pathway to getting pregnant, one that I believe most of us are aware of (sex). As for pregnancies being unsafe for a woman, this too is outside the scope of this argument. I am not saying that all babies will be properly cared for, but I am also going to state that it is the morally correct action for babies to be cared for properly, and my initial argument was arguing for something that I see as morally correct, so I don't think it is incoherent for me to wish for something else that I see as morally correct.

As for your last comment, it appears that you do not understand the point of putting out a philosophical argument into a sphere of debate. I never claimed to have the FINAL say. If I wanted the final say, I would be working to enact legislation and force pregnant women to keep their babies. I think that by matter of me being a person I get a say. You can chose to value it or not, but silencing your opponents only hurts your own intellectual development in the long run.

So since you're not lobbying to make abortion illegal, is your point that when considering the issue of abortion from the fetal perspective, that it starts being a moral concern at conception, but that you choose not to consider the maternal view in this debate format, although you realize it too is an important issue (just one you choose to not address here?)

[HJCarden]

Given that there are 8,000,000,000 of us, our world does NOT neeed any more, especially if they are unwanted. So I beleive, pragmatically, that an unwanted child may be terminated. Yes, the child is killed. Yes, in an ideal world, this would be avoidable and avoided. But in the real world, our choices are rarely simple. So I believe that the parents - and no-one else, individual or corporate - may decide not to have their baby; to kill it. But, to repeat, I agree that it would have been better if they didn't make a baby in the first place, if they didn't want it or were unable to care properly for it.

Ideal-world pronouncements are unhelpful in this difficult matter. I recommend pragmatism. And (human) population-reduction (no, not mass execution!).

The genocide argument in favor of abortion is not one that I am inclined to accept. If we are truly interested in culling the world population (which is set to plummet due to women not wanting to be pregnant in the first place) then we should let COVID run rampant, encourage armed conflict, do nothing for the starving and sick. I don' think its "pragmatic" to justify murder. I do not believe that you would be inclined to think of abortion as murder, but if you are looking for methods to actually limit the population growth, abortion has done a poor job of slowing global population growth, so you might want to look elsewhere.

[HJCarden]

So since you're not lobbying to make abortion illegal, is your point that when considering the issue of abortion from the fetal perspective, that it starts being a moral concern at conception, but that you choose not to consider the maternal view in this debate format, although you realize it too is an important issue (just one you choose to not address here?)

My argument implied that I believe the right of the fetus begins at conception, because that is a fair moment, from whence onwards, that one can will their existence and their life. I think that the maternal view is relevant up until that very moment. Discounting cases of rape or when a mother is not educated enough to know the results of unprotected sex, then the mother's view takes precedence. After conception, she is then exerting her will OVER the will of another being that has the right to will their existence from that point onwards.

[HJCarden]

Although I suspect that you're really against abortion because your religion says so, and that makes you inclined to seek out logical reasons, however weak, with which to convince the heathens, I also don't doubt that you believe what you say. I'm afraid we'll just have to agree to agree to never agree on this subject.

I close with just one last thought. Even had you made some kind of showing that a fetus may have a "conscious" will from the time of conception, you still would not have proven your case. The quality or degree of that will, whether it was of such a significance as to matter, would remain to be seen. But with your concept of a "conscious will" not being coherent, there was never any need to explore that issue.

I do not understand how the concept of willing something before you have a consciousness of it is incoherent. Say that your friends and family planned a surprise birthday party. You, being a humble person, chose not to celebrate your birthday lavishly, instead only opting for a small celebration with your close family. However, unbeknownst to you, a large gathering is being planned in your honor. Somewhat weirdly, one of your friends has been asking you things in the weeks preceding, such as what type of cake and beverages you most enjoy. At this point you have NO CONSCIOUSNESS of this gathering, but its fair that IF this gathering were to take place, you'd want chocolate cake and fine whiskey. Upon return home from work on your birthday, you are greeted by a big surprise gathering, with all of your favorite foods and drinks. Had you known of this, your preferences would not have been different.

This of course can only be loosely analogous to my original argument, but I hope it offers some enlightenment.

[Terrapin Station]

I believe that abortion is morally wrong for a multitude of reasons, but in this post I will be arguing that abortion is wrong because it violates the conscious will of a person.

"Violating the conscious will of a person" wouldn't be my trump card in this issue. The will of the mother, who is serving as a container, where someone else is wholly contained within them, is the trump card on my view.

[Alias]

I still haven't seen HJCarden's logical argument for violating the conscious will of so many living, breathing, articulate persons who express their conscious will very clearly, in favour of respecting the perhaps eventual will of potential someday persons. Nor have I received an acknowledgment, let alone anything like an explanation, for violating the conscious will to live of so many billions of of non-human entities. It seems that HJCarden considers the maybe someday desire of a zygote the only worthy recipient of respect.

The genocide argument in favor of abortion is not one that I am inclined to accept.

I'd like to point out that no such argument has been presented. Or exists.