Summary
I think that a key issue is that the "fact of life" is different than the "right to life". It doesn't matter that the fetus is a life. In a self-defense situation the aggressor loses the right to life. Fetuses are naturally aggressors within a woman's body, so it doesn't make sense to legally grant them the right to life, especially when it conflicts with the mother's right to life. One the fetus is born, they are no longer an aggressor, so it seems reasonable to bestow the right to life to them at that point.
I think most people will agree that the wellbeing of "sentient creatures" has moral value - which is why they think a highly developed fetus will have more moral value than a lowly developed fetus - due to its increased sentience.
Luckily, most "minor wellbeing issues" (like "reduced convenience", "reduced opportunities") are paired with "minor wellbeing costs" in aborting lowly developed fetuses. Most "major wellbeing issues" (like the survival of the mother) are paired with "major wellbeing costs" in the abortion of highly developed fetuses. After birth, most "major wellbeing issues" for health disappear, so birth seems like the perfect threshold for the conferment of the right to life, both legally and in terms of wellbeing.
Thread 1:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/xirtus/posts/888550952542430
Interlocutor:
Here's my question. What's the latest period ethically that you can abort?
Me:
I view morality through the lens of maximizing wellbeing. Most "minor wellbeing issues" (like "reduced convenience") are paired with "minor wellbeing costs" in aborting low-development fetuses. Most "major wellbeing issues" (like the survival of the mother) are paired with "major wellbeing costs" in the abortion of highly developed fetuses. After birth, most "major wellbeing issues" for health disappear, so birth seems like the perfect threshold for the conferment of the right to life.
Rights are just social constructs anyway - we just pick thresholds that seem optimal for society. Why is age 16 the threshold for the right to drive? Merely because it seems like the benefits of 16 year olds driving (ability to work) outweighs the costs (reckless driving). Age 15 isn't the right threshold because they aren't developed enough for the cost benefit to work in their favor. Similarly, post-birth the benefits of the right to life exceed the costs, so that is the best time to confer it.
Interlocutor:
Hypothetically, if a birth was expected within a 2 week period. Would the ethical abortion line still be at birth?
Me:
It's ethical if the wellbeing issues resolved thereby outweigh the wellbeing costs. Legality and ethicality can be different. Legally, we might not want to micromanage all the complex issues involving fetuses, and leave the judgement up to the parents. Ethically, it is possible to be unethical and still within the law. The benefit of legal flexibility outweighs the costs of legal rigidity, since the number of malicious abortions a rigid law would prevent provides less wellbeing than the wellbeing cost to mothers and families a rigid law would damage by failing to appreciate the complex nuances involved.
Interlocutor2:
"Rights are just social constructs anyway - we just pick thresholds that seem optimal for society." - Within the framework of this argument it can be argued that it's ok to terminate the life of the local deranged homeless person who terrorizes everybody. If that person is a problem to everybody including him- or herself and the benefits exceed the costs of the life-terminating procedure, than it is totally moral.
I think that it looks problematic at least, which means that there should be more to you argument, as it simply doesn't appear to be sufficient. Something more is necessary.
Me:
For post-birth issues, we have other options - like mental institutions. Killing a homeless person involves an unnecessary cost to wellbeing.
Thread 2:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/xirtus/posts/888236775907181
Interlocutor:
I'm not religious, however... Is it possible to be both pro-choice and pro-life? I think it is.
I'm pro-choice up to 6 months pregnant (Max), after that you've waited too long and I officially become Pro-life. You don't have to be religious to be pro-life. You don't have to be atheist to be pro-choice. Life and rights in unison. Where do you draw the line?
Me:
I'm pro-wellbeing. If a 5 month fetus seems safe for the mother, but a 7 month fetus suddenly becomes dangerous for the mother, the wellbeing of the mother overrides the wellbeing of the fetus all day long.
The wellbeing of an adult is exponentially more potent than the wellbeing of the fetus due to the exponential gap in development.
Not only is the mother's physical wellbeing on the line, but the quality of life for her family is at stake.
Social wellbeing factors (increased crime, teen motherhood, reduced education, reduced two parent households, increased poverty) are an even higher order magnitude of import than the fetus's wellbeing.
Interlocutor 2:
that depends on what you mean by "well-being". Purple-Hairs will argue that raising a child is "detrimental to my financial wellbeing".
Me:
Financial wellbeing is more important than a fetus's physical wellbeing, especially since financial damage potently harms the quality of life of the soon to be born fetus. Quality of life for the child is much more important than the fact of life.
Interlocutor 2:
Abortion at 8 months and two weeks is okay if she realizes the cost of a baby would cut into her scratcher and energy drink budget? Gotcha. Just checking.
Me:
Interesting how you think financial wellbeing issues are limited to energy drink budgets....
Interlocutor 2:
I didn't say they were, I'm just making sure your logic still applies.
Me:
It's a wellbeing calculation. Obviously if you reduce the financial damage to something minimal and increase the physical wellbeing damage to something maximal, the correct answer becomes less clear. In these complex situations the best thing to do is allow the mother to do the calculation and not have the audacity to do the calculation for her.
Interlocutor 2:
At what point does the wellbeing of the baby take precedent? When the head's out? When it's delivered? A week later? A month later?
Me:
Birth is a good threshold since the baby is no longer dependent on the mother's body.
Thread 3:
https://www.facebook.com/seth.garrett3/posts/10113969618898641
Me:
Yeah, that was an excellent response. If I am understanding you correctly, you feel justified in using religious logic for your own life, but you don't feel fully justified in using religious logic to regulate other people's lives right? I think that's fair.
As to your arguments, they seem to remind me of Ben Shapiro's arguments against abortion. In my opinion, the fundamental flaw of this analysis is the false equivalence fallacy - the idea that we can compare fetuses to humans as if they are the same thing: 1) a dependent fetus is not the same as a dependent human, 2) a disabled fetus is not the same as a disabled human, 3) a fetus without a sense of identity is not the same as a child without a sense of identity, 4) a fetus without a heart that can function on its own is not the same as an elderly individual with a pacemaker, 5) a fetus without a fully functioning brain is not the same as a human in a coma.
A fetus is on a spectrum of development. It does not become equivalent to a human at conception. Initially, fetuses are less developed than insects (which we regularly slaughter without thought). In fact they are closer in resemblance to germs which we both intentionally and accidentally destroy. As the fetus develops it would increase in sentience and value along the spectrum of human potential. There is absolutely nothing wrong with parents valuing the human potential of their fetuses and considering that potential sacred and beautiful. But trying to force that perspective on others doesn't seem justified to me.
I think there are fair and powerful arguments that we should respect fetuses especially in accordance with their scientifically verified ability to suffer. A utilitarian ethic would want to minimize suffering, and holding other things constant, we would warrant a moral argument against abortion. But suffering is not limited to the fetus. There is an entire world of suffering outside of the womb that is relevant to the abortion decision. Only the parents themselves understand the full utilitarian calculation of how birthing a child will affect the wellbeing of all considered. There could be health problems that increase the suffering of the mother. There could be sexual abuse, rape, and emotional trauma part and parcel to the pregnancy that increase the suffering of those involved. The fetus could have detectable anomalies in their development that might cause them to incur large amounts of suffering do to disease and disability. There could be socioeconomic problems that increase the suffering of the family's future by denying educational opportunities to the mother, cultural pressure that reduced the single mother's ability to date and marry, poverty that awaits the child to be birthed, the potential to incur suffering due to the abuse of step-parents, and an increased propensity for crime and creating another generation of single mothers - perpetuating generational suffering. There could be religious pressures that force a couple to stay together over a fetus, even though their personalities are not compatible and they create a hostile environment and damaged wellbeing for all involved.
Since a fetus is not fully developed (not fully able to suffer), not viably autonomous (hasn't yet earned the right to life), and hasn't fully generated social emotional bonds with others (emotional suffering potential for others), it seems like in many situations the parents might be making the world a better place by sparing the fetus from the suffering caused by having to enter a world that is not ready for them. I think at the level of the fetus, this moral calculus is best handled by the parents and not the government. Once a fetus has been born, I feel that it is fair to say that it has earned the right to life by surviving that brutal process of becoming viably autonomous and now deserves legal protections from abuse and termination.
If, perchance, the parents are so immoral that they want to abort a fetus without a reasonably proper moral justification, then perhaps the parents are not morally competent enough to raise children, and perhaps the fetus is better of not having to be raised by parents who don't really value life or children.
Thread 4:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/xirtus/posts/408277097236487/
Me:
Nobody:
Absolutely nobody:
Christians: "AboRtiOn iS mUrdEr!"
Also Christians: "For God so loved the world that he [murdered] his only begotten son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life."
Christians: "AbOrTiOn iS eViL"
God: *awkwardly brushes away intelligent design plans that include a 25% miscarriage rate*
Utilitarian philosophers: "Sometimes it may be moral to sacrifice a fetus's life for the greater good"
Christians: "YoU sAtanIc MorAl relaTiviStic sCum!"
Abraham: *proceeds to awkwardly hide his knife behind his back while holding Issac*
Social Scientists: "We found that teen pregnancy and single motherhood contribute to almost every bad statistic we can imagine."
Society: "Let's fix it!"
Rational People: "Lets do sex education to proliferate awareness and access to contraception"
Christians: "YoU aRenT braInwAshIng MY KIDS wiTh tHat saTanic cRap?!"
Society: "Well it looks like they didn't use contraception...what do we do now? Abortion?"
Christians: "DeVil WorsHippErs everywHere! MaKe it aLL iLleGal!"
Teen Moms: *working as a stripper to feed her kid that Christians forced her to bear*
Christians: "EviL sLut!"
Kid: Grows up in drugs and crime because he doesn't have a role model.
Christians: "He deserves to be shot dead by the police"
Teen mom: *commits suicide*
Utilitarian Philosophers: "So at what point do we realize that maximizing suffering is not moral?"
Me:
For the pro-lifers, which of these abortionist classifications do you want to call murderers and lock up in jail for life?
Thread 5:
https://www.facebook.com/andrew.lebaron/posts/10224790235922364
Me:
1) a fetus is different from a grown human, it takes a certain amount of irrational religiousity to equate the two, for example a fetus is a much inferior lifeform to an elephant, but because of religon, killing the elephant is fine, even though it also feels pain and has a higher level of development than the fetus...
2) organizing an ideology of hate for all jews without any justification and applying torture and death to them purely for the sake of maximizing suffering is in a completely whole different moral universe than a mother struggling over all the complex variables involved in producing a child and trying to figure out how to minimize suffering by her decision, sometimes abortion being the path of minimizing suffering and sometimes life being the correct path.
The LDS church agrees that there are some complex variables that may justify abortion, so it is a worthy issue to think about.
Perhaps the value of the fetus scales as it develops and we need to consider the complex variables more carefully as it develops. To assume the act is evil implies you understand the mind and the heart of the mother making the decision. Do you really think mothers enjoy killing 9 month old fetuses for no reason?
This doesn't answer the question properly. Evil is found in intentions. When abortion is performed with the goal of saving the fetus from a life of poverty, starvation, fatherlessness, abuse, criminality, drug abuse, disease, disability, and suffering, the abortion is performed for the greater good and is along the spectrum of morally justified behavior. When an abortion is performed out of pure selfishness and disrespect for the value of life then it is immoral. The failure to distinguish between these is a failure in pursuing the greater good.
"Rights" must be earned. You usually earn your rights by 1) having the developmental capability of being responsible for your rights and 2) using your rights properly. A 13 year old doesn't have the right to drive because they haven't developed enough to be able to be responsible for that right. A 17 year old has not earned the right to vote yet. A 20 year old has not earned the right to drink alcohol yet. A 34 year old doesn't have the right to become president. We set many semi-arbitratary standards for when rights are earned. Requiring fetuses to successfully leave their mother's body is a perfectly clear and reasonable threshold for earning the right to life. How can a fetus dare to claim the right to life when they have zero ability to be responsible for that right inside the mothers womb because of a total lack of independence? Not even God's design of the womb respects a fetuses right to life, in that 25% of fetuses are naturally miscarried.
Your argument relies on a spurious assumption that "all men" refers to the inclusion of fetuses. Morality is important regardless of whether or not God exists, because we know that suffering exists and we know that it is bad because it communicates that message to our souls that we should minimize suffering. We can be logical in our morality or illogical. Maximizing suffering by birthing every possible diseased and disabled fetus is not necessarily the most moral thing to do.
Save baby from pain:
3 moms reduce suffering with abortion:
Pregnancy is too complicated for such a simple analysis like that. Overly strict rules are going to cause more suffering than they reduce. You don't earn the right to vote until you are 18 and you shouldn't have the right to life until you are born and more than 0 years old. There is a spectrum of issues affecting a pregnancy - life of the mother in danger, rape, incest, disease, disability, medical complication, impact on financial future, impact on emotional future, and impact on child's future. Any of these issues may justify an abortion unless you think it is okay for children to be born into homes with no father, the mom is poor, the child starves, step dad abuses them, they turn to drugs to hide their scars, then turn to crime to fuel their addiction, and then are eventually killed by the police anyway... Your insistence on life creates a lot of suffering that you are failing to consider yet you are responsible for it with your ideology. Many countries around the world sell their daughters, age 8 -16 into marriage with old men because they need the money. Do you think evil parents have a right to birth children if they plan on abusing them for money? They quality of life for the child is more important than the pain involved in a quick abortion. We should do everything we can to make sure every kid has a wholesome environment to grow up in and flourish. If a parent has a low sense of morality and wants to kill their fetus for no reason, isn't that a sign that the parent isn't morally qualified to be a parent? Why force immoral people to have kids? If they are willing to kill them for no reason they will also abuse them for no reason. Aren't you destining the children to a life of suffering because of your ideological stubbornness?
Thread 6:
Me:
Average adult is 42 years old. Average child is 8 years old. Children have less rights that adults. Rights increase as you age. When you are a child, you can't be alone without a parent, can't make many decisions for yourself, can't leave home, cant drive, etc. As you get older, more rights are obtained. Vote at 18. Drink alcohol at 21. Become a president at 35. It could be said that a child is 19% of an adult and therefore they have 19% if an adults rights (8/42 = 19%). The average age of a fetus is a negative number since we guage age by birth. But if we wanted to recalibrate age by conception, the average age of a fetus would be 4.5 months or 0.375 years. Adding 9 months back to adults would make their average 42.75 years. So a fetus would be 0.87% of an adult. If rights scale with age, they would have less than 1% of the rights of an adult. They only have an 0.87% investments of time into this life. They have no social connections, emotional connections, financial connections, and zero self-dependence. Their own ability to process feelings and meaning is less than a matured adult animal. To say that they have the same rights as any other human life ignores the fact that rights as designed to be given at a time when the benefits of giving the right outweigh the societal costs if that right. Children don't have the right to drive until they are old enough to have the benefits of then driving less that the risk of them wrecking and hurting society. Giving fetuses the undeniable right to life has a greater societal cost that the benefit of it.
If your argument is that fetuses process feelings and therefore should not be aborted, then animals should not be killed under the same logic.
If your argument is that fetuses have full human potential and therefore should not be killed, then what about sperm and eggs? They have potential as well.
Thread 7:
Me:
This argument offers good categorical moral reasoning against abortion, but it doesn't address a more utilitarian approach, nor does it address nuances in approaches to value, and rights. First of all, no life is of infinite worth. Of course, metaphysically, yes, life is of infinite worth, but when it comes down to sacrificing the economy to save lives due to the coronovirus, it's obvious that people don't view life as of infinite value. The way I see it is, over time a human life grows in value, gains ability to take on responsibility, and therefore gains rights. Value, ability, and rights scale together upwards over time. Children cannot make money, they can't vote, nor can they purchase a gun. They need to grow in order to be worthy of those rights. So when a human is in its fetus state, it is in a state of its lowest value, ability, and rights. Since these things grow exponentially, an early fetus may be close to zero and a baby that is born may pass the threshold of value into personhood. Just like you need to be 18 to earn your right to vote, I think it's fair to say that you have to be born to earn your right to life. Now, that being said, a fetus is not of zero value, so it would not be good to carelessly dispose of it. You would need a good reason. Are you not financially ready, and therefore you and the baby are doomed to suffer from economic distress? Are you not emotionally ready, in that you are unable to give the baby an environment that has a father, and therefore greatly increase the chance that you, the baby and society will suffer due to lacking that essential role in the home? Is the circumstance of the pregnancy due to horrific trama and crime that will increase suffering due to PTSD? Will the birth harm or kill the mother? Is the baby destined to have a horrific disability or disease that will increase the suffering of itself and those around it? If birthing the baby will create more damage that the value it adds, perhaps an abortion is justified.
Thread 8:
Me:
There is a difference between morality and rights. You have the right to vote, but that doesn't mean that each vote is equally moral. Similarly having the right to abort for bad reasons does not mean that it is moral to abort for bad reasons. Rights are a social rule. Social rules can never fully control morality since morality is way too complex to be managed that way. We much rely on individuals to make moral choices with the rights we give them, since only they understand the moral complexity of their own lives. Christians believe that people are naturally evil, so they are afraid of giving so much moral power to evil women, but Christians are wrong. People are naturally good and they don't want to abort for bad reasons. So this fear of the right to abort is unfounded.