Texas v abortion

[TheMysteriousGX]

I mean A. a one-off incest child is very unlikely to be some horrible mutant child, and B. those with genetic disorders aren't forbidden from having children. The post-birth life of the child isn't considered when it comes to the abortion debate, legally speaking.
European royalty all being a little fucked up comes from almost 1,000 years of inbreeding.

1) Abortion being available is not abortion being mandated.
2) Laws are blunt instruments. Unless you want to figure out exactly the number of times you should allow people to inbreed before it becomes illegal, on top of the moral and ethical fucked-upedness, it's probably better to ban the whole thing. Otherwise you get ye' ol Japanese rape laws where incestual sex between parents/aunts/uncles and kids was perfectly legal as long as violence wasn't (proven to be) used. They only changed that, like, a decade ago. Probably not coincidentally, that was also where most of the world's child porn was coming from at the time.

 

[McElroy]

Except incest as a sex crime can not be consented to, so its non-consensual sex and we have a word for that.

That's ridiculous. It's completely possible to have consensual incest. Maybe I don't get where you're going with this, but consensual incest is a no-brainer.

 

[Trunkage]

That's ridiculous. It's completely possible to have consensual incest. Maybe I don't get where you're going with this, but consensual incest is a no-brainer.

If Pornhub has taught me anything its the fact that brother and sister are screwing all the time.... in front of a camera

 

[Agema]

European royalty all being a little fucked up comes from almost 1,000 years of inbreeding.

No, mostly they were fucked up because that's what happens to people in such a weird-ass and abnormal setting as a royal family. Forms of power without accountability yet also stifling control and routine; fear, pressure and stress; etc.

I remember reading about the Ottomans - it was common when the Sultan died for the sons to kill all the others, or at least imprison or otherwise render them harmless. Apparently, once when one sultan died, they hauled his brother out of de facto house arrest, terrified and gibbering as he was expecting death, and instead plonked him on the throne as the next sultan. He was, understandably, completely useless at being sultan after decades of being shut away and expecting that any minute he could be executed.

There certainly were some badly inbred lines such as the Hapsburgs. Of course there was cousin marriage or equivalent here and there, and sustained intermixing of a limited pool of related people can sum up to worse than marrying a first cousin or even a sibling. But this is with a context that up to 5% of the population in that time and place married their first cousin and in practice, most royal families got enough fresh blood in.

 

[Gergar12]

I argued this law will succeed in the short-medium term. For one thing, SCOTUS is majority hard right. Also, Texas is hard to boycott. Third other states including likely mine will follow through. And the fake calls will stop as soon as the momentum, attention, and public awareness goes to the next issue. (likely the 2022 elections)

As for the long term maybe the democrats could stop it with a liberals SCOTUS in the far future. IDK it's hard to say.

Even the Portland Mayor backed down.

Portland walks back Texas boycott as response to abortion ban

The city has ditched the two meatiest parts of the proposal — a boycott on city business with Texas and a ban on employee travel to the Lone Star state.

www.opb.org

 

[Phoenixmgs]

A person can still do what they want with one kidney..

I mean, firstly, don't be silly. Pregnancy is a relatively extreme medical condition. It affects a huge range of bodily functions. I don't know if you've ever spoken to someone who has been in the later stages of pregnancy, but it's incredibly debilitating. A person cannot do whatever they want when pregnant. Often they will struggle to do much at all, which is one reason why maternity leave exists. Historically, pregnancy and childbirth was also a major cause of death in women. Pretending its in any way unreasonable to not want to go through pregnancy isn't fair.

Secondly, the foetus doesn't control its mothers body, but it does impinge on its mother's medical control over her own body. It literally lives inside that body, it forces that body to change and adapt to its presence without consent, it may ultimately kill that body. The issue, fundamentally, is that the body is a person who possesses intrinsic value and rights. They are not an incubator, or a vehicle, or a tool. They are a living human being.

Pregnancy is a normal biological thing for a woman. Yes, historically, childbirth was a major cause of death, but it isn't now. And what percentage of people would find that getting an abortion for just not wanting to go through it is a valid reason? I'm pretty sure that percentage is gonna be pretty low. Shouldn't the fetus possess rights too? Does the fetus just get rights the second they are out of the womb and have 0 rights a second beforehand? Again, I'm not against abortion at all, just that on it's own without any context, killing a fetus is bad and I think just about anyone would say that, and that's why the discussion is so heated. And, regulations for abortion would just be a waste of time and resources because it's not like there's any way to have regulations that would allow for only "proper" abortions assuming if you could even get everyone to agree on those. In the end, it's always gonna come down to others forcing beliefs on others.

 

[bluegate]

Shouldn't the fetus possess rights too?

No.

 

[McElroy]

on it's own without any context, killing a fetus is bad and I think just about anyone would say that, and that's why the discussion is so heated.

What I'm getting from this is that it causes internal conflicts in people that see the benefits (of any kind) of having safe and available abortion, but because the do find some wrong in terminating the fetus, some of the pro-life arguments will get them to sympathize with them. And if you give them an inch, they will have a mile.

"Just about anyone" is a tall order. It's far from impossible to come to the conclusion abortions as an act are neutral. But of course the view of it as a "necessary evil" is a very popular one.

 

[Silvanus]

And what percentage of people would find that getting an abortion for just not wanting to go through it is a valid reason? I'm pretty sure that percentage is gonna be pretty low.

You'd be wrong, in the developed world. Most people have recognised that if someone does not wish to raise a child, they shouldn't have to. Forcing them to do so is a recipe for disaster.

 

[Silvanus]

Shouldn't the fetus possess rights too?

Which rights? The right to life, you mean?

As a society we already do not afford that right to most animals-- and animals have more awareness, more intelligence, and more capacity to feel pain than a fetus does. I do not believe that a fetus at an early stage of development should have more rights than an aware animal.

 

[McElroy]

As a society we already do not afford that right to most animals-- and animals have more awareness, more intelligence, and more capacity to feel pain than a fetus does. I do not believe that a fetus at an early stage of development should have more rights than an aware animal.

C'mon. We don't base the right to life on awareness. Moreover, with that line of thinking vegetarians ought to be against abortions.

someone does not wish to raise a child, they shouldn't have to. Forcing them to do so is a recipe for disaster.

On its own this is just wrong. It only applies to expecting mothers regarding the unborn. You know this, of course, but inb4 someone comes in and makes a bad argument about it.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

Pregnancy is a normal biological thing for a woman. Yes, historically, childbirth was a major cause of death, but it isn't now. And what percentage of people would find that getting an abortion for just not wanting to go through it is a valid reason? I'm pretty sure that percentage is gonna be pretty low. Shouldn't the fetus possess rights too? Does the fetus just get rights the second they are out of the womb and have 0 rights a second beforehand?

They have the same rights as anybody else, including not having the right to somebody else's body.

That's a right they have in common with everybody outside the womb and if not having that means they die, then they get to join everybody who died needing a tissue transplant or bone marrow or what have you.

And that's taking two positions that I don't necessarily hold for granted: that fetuses are people and that it's inherently bad to "kill" one

 

[Silvanus]

C'mon. We don't base the right to life on awareness. Moreover, with that line of thinking vegetarians ought to be against abortions.

We don't legally base it on awareness, no, but this is primarily a conversation about morality. And I'd certainly say awareness, intelligence, & the capacity to feel pain are all far less arbitrary criteria than whether or not the entity belongs to the same species as us.

And no, the line of thinking would only indicate vegetarians should be against abortions if we were to accept that fetuses have the same or greater levels of awareness than animals.

On its own this is just wrong. It only applies to expecting mothers regarding the unborn. You know this, of course, but inb4 someone comes in and makes a bad argument about it.

What only applies to expecting mothers? Are you making the point that forcing people to bring children to term doesn't necessarily mean forcing them to raise them?

 

[McElroy]

snip

I'm just completely alright being speciesist in this context, because bringing in animals gets to an uncomfortable area where we must acknowledge there are animals smarter than 1 week old babies and so on. Just like people own animals and can thus kill them or breed them, people own their bodies and can thus terminate a fetus they might be carrying.

It's only pregnant women that can decide to get rid of their offspring because they want to. Neglecting your child is legally and morally wrong.

 

[Silvanus]

I'm just completely alright being speciesist in this context, because bringing in animals gets to an uncomfortable area where we must acknowledge there are animals smarter than 1 week old babies and so on. Just like people own animals and can thus kill them or breed them, people own their bodies and can thus terminate a fetus they might be carrying.

Here's the thing: I don't find that an uncomfortable area at all, because I believe animals should not be killed or hurt. There's no cognitive dissonance involved. A creature has a significant amount of awareness/intelligence/capacity for pain --> it should not be killed or hurt.

Recognising animals are often more intelligent/ more aware than babies, yet at the same time believing that it's okay to kill animals, involves cognitive dissonance. There's a heap of cognitive dissonance involved in how humans rationalise their cruelty & lack of care towards other creatures. Speciesism is introduced solely to avoid facing that cognitive dissonance; it's an arbitrary distinction.

It's only pregnant women that can decide to get rid of their offspring because they want to. Neglecting your child is legally and morally wrong.

I don't think anybody here is arguing anything else vis-a-vis neglecting children.

 

[McElroy]

snip

Your own species always comes first. Now obviously you don't disagree with that and would rather argue that most animal products are unnecessary. Well, we care more about that than the lives of animals. How much you care is subjective and based on feelings. Animals live an animal life and humans a human life. That by itself is enough to own the former and slaughter them, because me, you, or anyone else can't make the definitive claim that my enjoyment of animal products isn't infinitely more valuable than the lives of a billion cows. Categorical imperative doesn't apply to animals, because it doesn't emerge in their brains regardless of patience. Emergent properties are the key distinction vs animals, while the emotional work done for the pregnancy determines the fate of the unborn.

Why I argued awareness to begin with is just that it illustrates a problem that you can make pro-choice people argue about abortion, because there are so many that hope nobody needed it. I'd prefer to turn it around and hope it simply gets done when needed.

 

[Silvanus]

Your own species always comes first. Now obviously you don't disagree with that and would rather argue that most animal products are unnecessary. Well, we care more about that than the lives of animals. How much you care is subjective and based on feelings. Animals live an animal life and humans a human life. That by itself is enough to own the former and slaughter them, because me, you, or anyone else can't make the definitive claim that my enjoyment of animal products isn't infinitely more valuable than the lives of a billion cows.

Uhrm... there's a hell of a lot of logic here that I don't share in the slightest.

"Animals live an animal life and humans a human life"... what does that even mean? It's a meaningless statement. Humans are a species of animal. What's the meaningful differentiating factor that sets us so fundamentally apart, exactly? And why is that differentiating factor so enormous as to render their lives utterly insignificant even in comparison with mere human convenience?

Categorical imperative doesn't apply to animals, because it doesn't emerge in their brains regardless of patience. Emergent properties are the key distinction vs animals, while the emotional work done for the pregnancy determines the fate of the unborn.

What doesn't "emerge in their brains"? What "emergent properties"? Are you merely saying that because a human has the potential to develop to a more intelligent, more aware state, then we must confer on it additional protections in line with what they might become, rather than just what they are at the time?

Because if so, there's a hell of a lot of problems with that rationale.

Why I argued awareness to begin with is just that it illustrates a problem that you can make pro-choice people argue about abortion, because there are so many that hope nobody needed it. I'd prefer to turn it around and hope it simply gets done when needed.

I don't follow this.

 

[McElroy]

"Animals live an animal life and humans a human life"... what does that even mean? It's a meaningless statement. Humans are a species of animal. What's the meaningful differentiating factor that sets us so fundamentally apart, exactly? And why is that differentiating factor so enormous as to render their lives utterly insignificant even in comparison with mere human convenience?

An animal's life might end in the slaughterhouse and a human's in a graveyard. That's the way the cookie crumbles. We make decisions based on a lot of things, convenience included. We decide the purpose of cattle while the rules are looser for people. There is no objective spiritual price for the animal industry; it's just a matter of opinions, and "enormous" feelings. Feelings, experiences, qualia don't operate on a measurable level so it doesn't matter.

What doesn't "emerge in their brains"? What "emergent properties"? Are you merely saying that because a human has the potential to develop to a more intelligent, more aware state, then we must confer on it additional protections in line with what they might become, rather than just what they are at the time?

Because if so, there's a hell of a lot of problems with that rationale.

The emergent properties, higher cognitive functions that humans develop, are the basis for a hierarchy among species. Therefore we are above animals at any point in time. The past and the future included.

I don't follow this.

I wish people would consider abortion neutral. Who knows, maybe I'm the only one? Logistically I think it can be neutral (Done early enough there should be no long term health effects and what have you. edit: Like against any "if you're not having this one you can kiss your fertility good-bye").

 

[Silvanus]

An animal's life might end in the slaughterhouse and a human's in a graveyard. That's the way the cookie crumbles. We make decisions based on a lot of things, convenience included. We decide the purpose of cattle while the rules are looser for people. There is no objective spiritual price for the animal industry; it's just a matter of opinions, and "enormous" feelings. Feelings, experiences, qualia don't operate on a measurable level so it doesn't matter.

Nothing here provides any rationale, or metric, or basis for morality at all.

The first half of this paragraph boils down to "that's the way it is", which is a complete non-argument. Yes, I know it is. Are we supposed to base our morality around how stuff currently is? War currently happens, so war must be morally fine! Let's start more wars!

In the second half, you're saying that because there's no objective spiritual "price", we should be able to do whatever the fuck we want. Uhrm, no morality is objective. There's no "objective spiritual price" to the murder of a human being, either. But a reasonable, functional, moral person should be able to come up with a coherent moral philosophy nonetheless.

The emergent properties, higher cognitive functions that humans develop, are the basis for a hierarchy among species. Therefore we are above animals at any point in time. The past and the future included.

So, you're basing it on intelligence, then. But you also seem to have bizarrely concluded that the potential for future intelligence is more important than current intelligence. Let's see how far that logic takes you: a human egg & sperm have the potential to develop into a being with these "higher cognitive functions". Are we now in Monty Python "every sperm is sacred" territory, then?

I don't believe non-realised potential should somehow be deserving of greater protection than actual, current intelligence. I think that's kind of grotesque.

On a side-note, these cognitive functions are hardly a binary. Animals do have sophisticated cognitive functions, just not as highly developed as (most) humans. Animals can use tools, they can grieve, they can remember over the course of decades, they can form complex social structures, they can form long-term committed loving bonds. And yet you seem to believe that the gulf between us and other animals is so great that despite all of these clear cognitive abilities, our mere momentary convenience is more worthy than their lives?

Your moral system isn't valuing cognitive functions at all. That's a window-dressing rationalisation.

I wish people would consider abortion neutral. Who knows, maybe I'm the only one? Logistically I think it can be neutral (Done early enough there should be no long term health effects and what have you. edit: Like against any "if you're not having this one you can kiss your fertility good-bye").

Yet you've outlined a moral system above which would convey enormous value onto "potential", which seems clearly at odds with the idea that it's "neutral".

 

[McElroy]

Nothing here provides any rationale, or metric, or basis for morality at all.

The first half of this paragraph boils down to "that's the way it is", which is a complete non-argument. Yes, I know it is. Are we supposed to base our morality around how stuff currently is? War currently happens, so war must be morally fine! Let's start more wars!

In the second half, you're saying that because there's no objective spiritual "price", we should be able to do whatever the fuck we want. Uhrm, no morality is objective. There's no "objective spiritual price" to the murder of a human being, either. But a reasonable, functional, moral person should be able to come up with a coherent moral philosophy nonetheless.

You're off the walls, mate. Following, say, the categorical imperative gets us that murder is wrong. Can't do the same for animals.

Anyway, I'll try to address the cognitive dissonance supposedly in speciesism. I'll take a rule that works for the whole species. I don't look at a human individual at a point in time, or I'll take a glance just to say that they are where they should be: on top of the pyramid. For something like 1 week old babies that hierarchy is similarly true, but to recognize them as human we need other people's confirmation. For a fetus the relationship between it and the pregnant woman is so different that the protections are based on emotional work -- and other things based on where she's currently living (Texas, Lapland, somewhere in between).

"Fine", you might say, "but why? Why this?"

And yet you seem to believe that the gulf between us and other animals is so great that despite all of these clear cognitive abilities, our mere momentary convenience is more worthy than their lives?

Any gulf is great enough and no amount of convenience is too little. Sure there is an utilitarian threshold somewhere, but these feelings can't be measured in a meaningful way. Do you think there can be people who genuinely care about their livestock or their co-performing circus animals? Equestrian events, dolphinariums... If aliens did the same to us I wouldn't complain, because I wouldn't know how to.

And I don't give a damn about potential. The Sun rising tomorrow as it did today is not potential. See the difference? The emergent properties in the human species are as set as celestial bodies, figuratively speaking. If the animal industry is a threat to that, then it must be dealt with but logistically instead of forcing subjective moral standards onto everybody. However, I approve of guilt tripping. Do what you must if it's important to you just like I occasionally ""convert"" other omnivores into thinking my way. Only occasionally because it's not that important.