Republicans succeed in ploy to increase unsafe abortions

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Not necessarily, utilitarianism is based on the assertion 'the greatest good for the greatest number'. There is a formulation of utilitarianism that is hedonistic and focuses on creating pleasure or joy but presuppose that we are discussing hedonism is fallacious.



Utilitarianism is Consequentialism; they are not separate, one is a subset of the other. Good and bad are emotional states but they are also ethical concepts, to equivocate between the two is also fallacious. A morally correct outcome does not equal an emotional outcome.

Societies goal (from my observations) for the past little while has been to end the worldwide debt crisis, the War on Terror, find more oil, etc. (I tend to focus on world issues like that)

Politically, it's much harder to say.

May I ask why you completely dismiss logics in politics? Logic doesn't always need a goal, logic can also lead you to what your goal should be. In your scenario, with multiplication, it can go one of two ways:

I want to end up with negative 8 from 2, I must therefore multiply 2 by negative 4.
OR
I want to multiply 2 by negative 4, this gives me -8.

In the second case, my only goal was to multiply the numbers, the result of the multiplication (the end goal) didn't factor in to it. Logic lead me to the final result, I did not set out with final result in mind.

And please, stop telling me I'm a whining seven year old. It doesn't help your argument any, if anything it makes it less likely for me to accept your argument because you phrase it as a personal attack

Whoah whoah whoah there cowboy! First, I didn't specify it being negative four, just four
Second, you're saying societies goal is the war on terror, oil, etc. That's your opinion! Who gave you the divine wisdom to tell society what its goals are? Perhaps society's goal is to train an army of dancing circus monkeys, I have no more evidence than you that it is true because when you say 'society' that is a collective term that represents everybody. You don't speak on the behalf of the people, THEY DO. And right now, many of the people are saying STOP ABORTION.

My multiplication example was just a modification of yours. You said it would be illogical to multiply 2 by 4 to get negative 8, I just came up with two scenarios based on that

I did say that. It's the gist I get reading the papers, poking about politics forums on a few sites, etc. Those are the world issues. You asked for what societies goals are, that includes the entire planet.

Some people are saying stop abortion, a nearly equal amount are saying don't stop abortion. If no one wanted abortions to happen, there wouldn't be abortion clinics. They would have no customers, or doctors to perform the abortions. Even then, even if 90% of the worlds population said "no abortion", why does that give them the right to tell the 10% what they can do with their bodies? If the majority of Americans decide tomorrow they want slavery to come back (hypothetically, I'm not saying it's going to happen)does this mean that slavery should come back?

First off, I didn't specify modifications -.-

Second, those are the global issues, not the goals. Society might a goal for peace, or wealth for everyone, or saving the environment. Society's goal is most certainly not to start war in the middle east, or be in a debt crisis. Those are the PROBLEMS.

Third, we have thousands of laws that tell people what to do! If you want to kill people with a steak knife, we will force you by law to NOT kill people with a steak knife. We're telling you what you cannot do with your body - you cannot kill people with steak knives, or any weapon for that matter. What makes abortion so different? You're killing a human being in both scenarios!

I must have made a typo. I meant to say that societies goals were to *solve* those problems. My bad, you're correct there.

The big difference? The dude I stab with a steak knife is an active human being. He is not entirely dependent on me to survive. A fetus can't survive outside of it's mothers womb. It requires it's mother consent to live.

Either way, somehow I don't see us ever resolving this argument

What, you couldn't tell?

I thought he was either young or very hyperactive. Could be either.

I also only just noticed he's in Canada... I'm not sure if he really knows this but the only province in this country that abortions AREN'T legal is P.E.I. as far as I know

@91: Parts of speech are divided and defined for a purpose, that being because they have different meanings representing different parts of reality. You might not like the distinction, but that does not change the fact that it exists. Of course zefs are human (adj.). So are ova and spermatozoa. Likewise, as I have already said, they are all alive. What they are not are individual humans, or persons. They are not individuals until they are not physically attached to another human.

That is a classically misogynistic observation. 'Hysterical' is an insult dreamed up by men: 'womanlike.' It is based on the assumption that women are inherently incapable of logic and reason, are inherently emotional, irrational, and weak. Prior to this I would have though that you were above such frank bigotry; I am sad to see that is not the case.

US protections apply to persons and citizens, not to the unborn. The UNDHR does not hold water in the US. Even if it did, it starts out, "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights." Every reference to children is clearly referencing those already born.


On the contrary, I have argued against any supernatural source of universal human rights in several other threads (and other fora) which have nothing to do with abortion. I simply do not accept that we have any rights other than what we give each other, as that is what all of the evidence of the world shows. There might be rights that we all want, and that we should all give each other because we all want them, but there is no evidence that any part of nature besides human societies respect those rights even minutely.


On the contrary: I respect human rights. I simply deny that they have some supernatural source outside of humanity itself. I have found that atheists (myself included) respect people's lives far more than theists do, as we cannot fall back on the, 'oh, well, at least she's in a better place,' excuse when someone has died out of turn. In contrast to theists, we are fully aware that this life is all that we have. I find it a little telling that you consider sentience, or lack therof, a minute point not worth considering; one wonders if you would ignore someone torturing a dog on the sidewalk outside of your house on the grounds that it was not human and therefore had no 'natural rights.' As for the benefit of the doubt, I suggest to you as I have suggested to others over many of these arguments that you study up on neurology. Allowing a cutoff at the 3rd trimester IS giving the fetus the benefit of the doubt.


*snort*
when did I ever suggest that I expected you to 'bow to my judgment'?

If they were intrinsic and 'natural,' they would be respected by all of nature - not just the humans who share them with each other.

If it is based on utilitarianism, it makes the false assumption that 1) quantity is more important than quality, and 2)carrying an unwanted zef to term now will not limit a woman's ability to have more and/or healthier children in the future.

@ aitrean:
I am curious, given your '9 months of "inconvenience" vs. 80 years of entirely blissful life (except for the enforced pregnancies of the females, I suppose): do you think that all adults should be legally required to donate blood, sections of liver, marrow, and/or individual kidneys if they are found to be compatible with people who would die without those parts of their body? After all, the procedures to remove these things are only minor inconveniences and will save people's lives. Should a woman, for example, be forced to donate a chunk of liver to her rapist, after his drunkenness results in end-stage liver failure? It could, after all, result in another 40 years of life for him, compared to a momentary inconvenience for her! Or should you, for example, be forced to donate a lobe of your lung to the innocent child of a chain-smoker who has developed an incurable lung condition through no fault of her own? It might give her decades more of life, and the only cost to you would be a quick procedure and the minor inconvenience of some shortness of breath for the rest of your life. No biggie, because extending an innocent's life is more important, right?
What about blood, which can be donated about every 2 months, or marrow? Sure, donating marrow is said to be excruciatingly painful, but it can save the life of some innocent child with leukemia! I think we should all be required register on the marrow transplant list and to show up at the blood bank at least 3 times a year to donate (totally incidental and not at all important to this argument, I would be exempt from this requirement for about another year because I had a dirty needle stick at the hospital last year), because it's such a minor inconvenience and literally saves lives.

Just popped in to catch up on the discussion. I honestly don't have much left to say on the whole thing, but this is worth commenting on...

While I do maintain that in the case of rape I personally feel the woman should have a choice, our 16-year-old friend has a point here. I've also said that the circumstances of a baby's conception is not the fault of the baby. It's not right to punish a child for a parent's indiscretion. It's just a fact of life that children often fall victim to the misdeeds of their parents. A blatant poor decision on the job, for instance, can cost you not only your job but your reputation. Reputations tend to follow people they belong to. And a poor rep can cost you your livelihood. And without that, you can't support your family, and that costs your children opportunities that they should have had.

One of two things seem to typically happen: Either kids suffer from the poor choices of their parents from indirect effects of consequences, or the kids imitate the example the parents put forth and thus perpetuate the behavior. Something to think about next time you say "it doesn't affect anybody but me..."

If a man gets life in prison for murder, he forces his kids to live a life without him in it. But the kids themselves don't get sent to prison for a crime their parent commits.

So just because a woman is raped, it doesn't mean the child she conceives through rape deserves to be put to death for the crimes of the biological father.

It is not my purpose to be insensitive towards rape victims, btw. But the fact that an innocent life is made to pay for a crime it did not commit and for events it had no control over should be taken into account when that person is faced with the decision to terminate that pregnancy. It is a tough and unfair decision to have to make, but I think it's also unjust for the mother to be left with no options at all. There's no "moral higher ground" here that I can see. All I can say is that choosing life in the worst of circumstances is certainly more noble than taking the easy way out. I don't believe in punishing someone for choosing a less noble or less-than-noble path.

We seem to ignore that there are a number of rape victims who choose to give birth. I can't imagine what that must be like. All I can say is that if I was a woman and I was faced with that decision, I'm not sure I'd have the emotional strength to bring the baby to term. Those who make higher decisions than I feel I ever could have my admiration.

Before the third trimester a fetus is not a life. It has the potential to become life.

And frankly, I have no problem with banning third trimester abortions except in cases where it is dangerous to the mother to deliver or have a c-section.

It's a life before the third trimester. "Potential" has nothing to do with it. Either it is alive or it is not. And even as I've said before, "life" occurs before conception since sperm and eggs are living cells. The difference is that reproductive cells are not individual or distinct from the human beings they belong to (though they are unique in that they lack a complete set of genetic information on the respective parent). A zygote has a combination of both that starts the growth of a new, individual human being. At no point in the process do any of the living cells involved cease to be living cells. They just change from one form of living cell into another form of living cell.

If you stop one from combining with the other, you done nothing more destructive than you would by bathing and shedding dead skin cells. Once those living cells combine, something new and unique appears, and it is a separate and individual human being.

Human males and females have the potential to produce offspring. What they make in the process is not the "potential" for life--it IS life.

I accept your premise--but not the logical process that leads to your conclusion.

A fetus clearly is a living, human being. But why does that necessarily lead to your conclusion. When I balance the interests of a fetus that is incapable of independent existence (note, I put my limit at the threshhold of viability) against the interests of a woman who is independently alive and capable of independent existence, I am not led to an inevitable conclusion that the fetus' interests should prevail. That is what I believe to be the deficiency in your argument.

Usually when I see sexist being called out it's just because someone has an essential view when it comes to differences between the sexes but that was so blatant there's no other way to put it.