Is abortion wrong?

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LuckyR
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Re: Is abortion wrong?

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Socrates_2 wrote: January 15th, 2019, 7:35 pm
Yet the curious fact remains that even though me and my partner knew that this process of combining our genetic material had already occured in all eight of our fertilised embryos, there really was not the slightest sense in which we yet saw them as human beings. That sense of humanity grew gradually as the two surviving embryos developed into what are now our two children. It didn't happen suddenly. It happened by degrees. Obviously it eventually reached the point where death of or harm to either of our children would be utterly devastating to us. I suspect this is generally the way of things. For example, I have observed and experienced that when a miscarriage occurs the would-be mother feels a greater sense of loss and trauma the later the stage of embryonic/foetal development. In general, very early stage miscarriages don't often cause lasting emotional distress.
I would expect that, as a pregnant woman spends more and more time with the baby in her womb, it gains more value and meaning as it comes to resemble a human baby. Spending every hour of every day with its presence would likely make a woman care more and feel more attached to her child. In an earlier post I mentioned how the name of a person becomes central part of their identity after they have accomplished and done things that become unique to their name (relative to the people around them and those who matter to them). It is a similar situation in the case of fertilized genetic material. You stated that, when your genetic material was amalgamated, you did not feel in the slightest sense a human connection to the embryo. Although this makes sense, given it resembles nothing remotely similar to a human being, the same reasoning applies. While in its present state it is only a miniscule egg cell with both parents genetic material, it is, at the same time so much more. It will become, in only 9 months, a baby human being. You could say what is valued is not the fertilized cell itself, but the process it plays a contingent part in, the process that grows it to the baby valued so greatly by the parents.
Had you aborted the child you have today years ago, they would never have existed. Never have been a real, important part of your lives. That is what is killed during an abortion. Although you do not feel a strong, deep connection with the early embryo, given all goes well in 9 months you will have a living, breathing, cared for baby in your hands.
Yes, the connection you may feel early on will be minute, but that doesn't mean that what is lost in an abortion is any less human. Just delayed 9 months.
I have tried to see whether the conclusions that flow from this axiom appear to match the actual moral behaviours of real people. I don't think that they generally do.
I would agree that people don't generally go around condemning abortion to be murder. I think that, more often than we might think, some people's moral axioms come from a basis of personal convenience or interest. This is purely conjecture, but I would say that, more often than not, an abortion will happen because of a problem of convenience as opposed to life or death or for the greater good. Perhaps a condom fails, and neither parent wants the extreme complication of a baby in their lives. Naturally, most people would feel the same. So it is easier for them to get an abortion than see the pregnancy through, and because as humans we need to understand each other, many will sympathize with and support them. So yes, I would agree that it is not a popular opinion.
the problem of explaining why it doesn't intuitively feel that way to the vast majority of people. Are the vast majority of people simply wrong on this issue? Ought we to conclude that the vast majority of people are cold, psychopathic monsters, as we would of a person who killed a child without emotion?

That would surely be an odd conclusion.
In a way, my conjecture above answers this quote. It is a very good question indeed. If abortion is akin to killing, than why are so many okay with it? Well, I would begin by saying that as humans, we typically prefer to take the easier course of action as opposed to the more difficult and yet more proper route. This is why procrastination is so relatable and universal, because so many people and such a majority of the population (at least in the west) can sympathize with the urge to avoid trial, tribulation, work and effort. When an unwanted pregnancy occurs, like a condom fails, for example, the parents will typically rather this extreme complication (a baby) not be a part of their lives. Abortion is the easiest way to escape this, and naturally most people would feel the same in their position. So we sympathize, and as they say "put yourself in his/her shoes" we imagine how difficult it would be to take care of a unexpected baby and manage all your other aspects of life.
From this, we can extrapolate that we are not cold blooded killers, nor psychopathic monsters who murder babies, because it is not out of malice that we perform and support abortions. It is out of kindness, and sympathy for our fellow man. Perhaps, we simply fail to look at the bigger picture, in the face of sadness and difficulty for friends and loved ones.
An understandable and somewhat predictable commentary. But back to my query, what in your personal opinion should determine the fate of frozen embryos?
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204
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Re: Is abortion wrong?

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I feel abortion is wrong because it's an attack on human life for selfish purposes, and more importantly, there is an abundance of alternatives to abortion, chief among them is simply not having sex. That's what I do anyway lol; I don't want kids, so I don't have sex; just not willing to risk it. Masturbation works perfectly fine for me lmao.
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LuckyR
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Re: Is abortion wrong?

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204 wrote: February 22nd, 2019, 7:08 pm I feel abortion is wrong because it's an attack on human life for selfish purposes, and more importantly, there is an abundance of alternatives to abortion, chief among them is simply not having sex. That's what I do anyway lol; I don't want kids, so I don't have sex; just not willing to risk it. Masturbation works perfectly fine for me lmao.
Interesting sense of humor. You are certainly entitled to live your life as you see fit, but you may be aware that your perspective is a very uncommon one, thus it impacts very few individuals.
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Re: Is abortion wrong?

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The perspective that abortion is wrong is an uncommon one?

Really? ...How do you know? o.O

I thought baby-killing was fairly universally, erm, "frowned upon" at the least.

Plus, it goes against the Hypocratic Oath that doctors are sworn to abide by: Do no harm.
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LuckyR
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Re: Is abortion wrong?

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204 wrote: February 26th, 2019, 2:35 pm The perspective that abortion is wrong is an uncommon one?

Really? ...How do you know? o.O

I thought baby-killing was fairly universally, erm, "frowned upon" at the least.

Plus, it goes against the Hypocratic Oath that doctors are sworn to abide by: Do no harm.
No, sorry for confusing you. What's uncommon is choosing abstinence for the purpose of avoiding abortion (instead of the vastly more popular method called contraception).
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Re: Is abortion wrong?

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204 wrote: February 22nd, 2019, 7:08 pm I feel abortion is wrong because it's an attack on human life for selfish purposes, and more importantly, there is an abundance of alternatives to abortion, chief among them is simply not having sex. That's what I do anyway lol; I don't want kids, so I don't have sex; just not willing to risk it. Masturbation works perfectly fine for me lmao.
I find these kind of comments humours yet inappropriate. Sexual intercourse is a lot more than mere physical release, and/or physical pleasure. Intimacy is what makes it nothing any automated technique can replace.

The common view is that abortion is necessary. I would say that it is often not taken too seriously until pregnancy occurs due to naivety or wishful thinking. Even so, the choice to abort is a difficult one on soem level.

The MAIN area of contention is the cut-off point for abortions. I am certainly not in favour of abortions laet into pregnancies. It is here that the extreme end of the “pro-choice” camp simply go too far with their view of human life being defined ONLY at first breath and birth - that is too much of a stretch for me even though I understand the reasons behind the arguments from that position.
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Re: Is abortion wrong?

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Just to emphasize, by way of hyperbole, the next step would be for people to start talking about “aborting” children up to the age of 4 if they’ve failed to become adequently socialised - there are studies in child develop that outline a very dull future for anyone who reaches this age without basic social skills.

Of course I a beign silly here, but the point is it is possible to argue to any extreme. The question we constantly struggle with is exactly where the middle ground is. I certainly don’t believe a human life begins at birth because we’re talking about a fully functioning human being. When ti comes to the choice of saving the mother’s life or the child’s, then it is the mother’s choice (and I won’t pretend to know how such s decision can be made in any rational sense given the extreme circumstances this would involve biochemically, logically and emotionally.)
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LuckyR
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Re: Is abortion wrong?

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Burning ghost wrote: February 27th, 2019, 4:32 am
204 wrote: February 22nd, 2019, 7:08 pm I feel abortion is wrong because it's an attack on human life for selfish purposes, and more importantly, there is an abundance of alternatives to abortion, chief among them is simply not having sex. That's what I do anyway lol; I don't want kids, so I don't have sex; just not willing to risk it. Masturbation works perfectly fine for me lmao.
I find these kind of comments humours yet inappropriate. Sexual intercourse is a lot more than mere physical release, and/or physical pleasure. Intimacy is what makes it nothing any automated technique can replace.

The common view is that abortion is necessary. I would say that it is often not taken too seriously until pregnancy occurs due to naivety or wishful thinking. Even so, the choice to abort is a difficult one on soem level.

The MAIN area of contention is the cut-off point for abortions. I am certainly not in favour of abortions laet into pregnancies. It is here that the extreme end of the “pro-choice” camp simply go too far with their view of human life being defined ONLY at first breath and birth - that is too much of a stretch for me even though I understand the reasons behind the arguments from that position.
I believe the folks you describing are more commonly found in the anti-choice imagination/rhetoric than here on planet Earth.
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Burning ghost
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Re: Is abortion wrong?

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I agree. But nutters exist at both ends of the spectrum and given unlimited access to a world of nutters (via the internet) practically any argument can be put forwards.

I think you’ll actually find that there are some who wish to push forward the cut-off point. Why? No idea. Seems strange to me, but people can be extremely strange.
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Re: Is abortion wrong?

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Burning ghost wrote: February 27th, 2019, 1:16 pm I agree. But nutters exist at both ends of the spectrum and given unlimited access to a world of nutters (via the internet) practically any argument can be put forwards.

I think you’ll actually find that there are some who wish to push forward the cut-off point. Why? No idea. Seems strange to me, but people can be extremely strange.
While technically true, the reality is that Pro-Life extreme opinions are making headway in certain state houses and are only frequently being kept off the books by the courts, whereas extremes on the other side have no legislative quorum and as mentioned, exist in a practical sense in the opposite side's scare tactic literature.
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Re: Is abortion wrong?

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Admittedly it is probably more of a sensitive topic in the US. I’m not American so a lot of the rhetoric falls on deaf ears. I do think it is a serious subject though and one that should be under constant consideration.
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Re: Is abortion wrong?

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No abortion isn't murder.
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Re: Is abortion wrong?

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Kaz_1983 wrote: September 6th, 2019, 3:58 am No abortion isn't murder.
A simplistic, though true statement.
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Re: Is abortion wrong?

Post by Gnosis »

cynicallyinsane wrote: April 20th, 2007, 6:45 pm Is abortion wrong? Is it okay? Why?
I think this discussion is nested in a deeper discussion of what is consciousness, what is life, is it okay to needlessly destroy a conscious being, does a fetus have consciousness or not? I think that if we were clear on what consciousness is and when it begins then we wouldn't have an issue with abortion, since murder is not the killing of a bundle of cells but the killing of a conscious being. If a fetus does not have a consciousness or if consciousness is nothing unique in itself but is only an arrangement of atoms then there should be no problem with abortion, but that would bring further problems, why would murder of a newborn or adult be wrong then? If on the other hand there was a unique consciousness in us, something akin to the soul, and a fetus has that consciousness then what right do we have to kill it? As I said this question is embedded in a much deeper question of what is it that makes us human, what is it that makes human life valuable. I think it is consciousness and I have a clear idea of what that is and when it begins, as do most other pro-lifers, I think it is really the pro-choice people who have no idea what makes human life valuable and causing all the confusion.
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Re: Is abortion wrong?

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Why favour an unthinking and unfeeling human foetus over intelligent and aware large mammals, who have personalities, relationships and a social place, whom we slaughter without much care?

It's the same reason that a dog pack favours its own members over outsiders. Humans simply tend to favour their own, an evolutionary tendency. There are all manner of non-credible ideas put forward post-hoc by so called "pro-lifers" to justify their inherent biases.

"Pro-life" my fat aunt! How many of these so-called pro-lifers worry similarly about rampant gun murders in the US or the waging of needless warfare in the middle east, or who are concerned for the welfare of Mexican children in camps? A small percentage would be my guess. You can't worry about everyone - the world is full of death and disaster. I personally will favour the interests of an adult over that of a non-viable foetus every day of the week.

It's a simple equation. Is the foetus viable? If not, then abortion is a reasonable option, if need be.
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