The Woeful State of Modern Debate

_{William Murray

March 18, 2017

Intelligent Design}

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In debate after debate I’m sure we’ve all noticed that some people continually recycle the same statements over and over as if those statements represent something more than emotion-laden rhetoric that hasn’t already been factually and logically refuted or otherwise sufficiently responded to. While this is hardly surprising, what has piqued my interest are discussions involving the election of Donald J. Trump and abortion, I suppose because those subjects carry a great deal of emotional weight for many people. I think the reaction to these subjects reveals something extremely interesting and dangerous to society.

I’m not just talking about atheists/materialists here, but people in general. In every single discussion I had with anyone not supporting Trump, their reaction to Trump was not one of cool political discourse, but of outright hate. They hated Trump. However, not a single one of them could give me even a single policy position of the candidate. Not a single one of them could tell me anything whatsoever about his history other than that he was a rich businessman and star of The Apprentice. None of them had ever even watched a single, whole Trump rally video. Having a discussion with them brought out all the negative characterizations of Trump you find/found everywhere in various media outlets, including comments about his “orange” skin and comb-over hair.

Similarly, when having a “debate” about abortion, the same emotion-laden polemic is used over and over. Recently, on this blog, some commenters offer supposed “righteous indignation” about how pro-life advocates act (or rather, in their eyes, refuse to act appropriately) in response to what they refer to as a “holocaust” – the mass-murder of the unborn. Others react with emotional, “shaming” and “virtue-signalling” talking points about “reproductive rights” and “patriarchical oppression”. Ignoring the scientific fact that human life is known to begin at conception, they talk about other points of the growth of a human from conception that they personally feel would be better marks for granting human right protections – like where they think the fetus might be self-aware, or feel pain, or upon birth. While birth, unlike the other points, is not a vague marker, it suffers from other, logical problems as far as being the best marker fo application of human rights, rendering it simply an arbitrary point after conception with respect to application of human rights.

Now, what do these rhetorical responses and positions have in common? They are all based on subjective feelings and arbitrary points of factual reference that support those arbitrary feelings. In other words, it is the personal, subjective feeling that grounds many views, not relevant facts, grounded principles and logical examination.

For example, attacks on Trump and protests against him are not based upon substantive principles, relevant facts and logical examination; if they were, one would realize that unless they have known a person for many years, they are not likely to have a good understanding of that person’s character or views. Certainly, there is no logical or principled basis for taking a few minutes of snippets of what anyone says – especially in private in certain situations – and using those snippets to form a supposedly valid opinion of a person’s entire history or character. Also, ignoring the relevant facts – the actual entire history of that person in word and deed, and their official statements and policy points unfiltered by perhaps biased interpretation – is at best an unconscious effort to protect one’s negative feelings about that person.

In our other example, some here have made the claim that making abortion illegal might not, in the long term, reduce the number of abortions. If we assume it is a fact (and it is hardly that), it is an irrelevant one with respect to the arguments actually being made about abortion – that accepting and promoting the killing of innocent human life is corrosive to a decent culture based on unalienable human rights. Pointing out that they themselves would act violently to stop the killing of an innocent and so pro-lifers cannot actually consider abortion the killing of an innocent because they are not reacting violently is nothing more than emotional, self-righteous rhetoric and a false comparison.

There is a principle involved here: that all humans have unalienable rights. Defenders of abortion make the claim that there are some situations where humans should not have such rights. This reasoning necessarily opens the door to the subjective view that this group of humans or that group of humans are not protected by human rights. One might say that a human without apparent self-awareness doesn’t deserve that right; but what is the “self-awareness” marker other than an arbitrarily-assigned category? Post-birth humans – another arbitrarily assigned category. How about the comatose? Severely autistic? Deformed? One can make the case that if you are missing a limb, then you aren’t “fully” human. Who gets to define what is “human” enough to be deserving of human rights? Whatever government is in power? Whatever the majority decides?

If we go down that path of reasoning, then the holocaust is – according to that line of reasoning – no different than abortion; government and society defining a category of human life as “not human enough to deserve the basic protection of their right to life” and thus creating the legal and moral freedom to exterminate that class of human life. Moral subjectivism only exacerbates the hypocrisy of the abortionist argument; if it is society that decides what is and is not human life, then abortion is exactly like the holocaust.

This post-modernist moral relativism renders all “social justice” positions inherently absurd and hypocritical; if I can identify as anything and expect acceptance and tolerance for my position, how then does one justify spewing hate and intolerance for those who self-identify even as racists, misogynists and homophobes? If they can hate Trump, I can hate Clinton. If they can hate patriarchy, I can hate equality. If they can hate homophobes, then by post-modernist moral subjectivism I am certainly entitled to hate homosexuals.

If there are no fundamental principles or relevant facts from we all agree to submit to and from which we agree to draw rational conclusions, all one is left with is the whim of subjective feelings and arbitrarily organized references to support those feelings. What that ends up looking like is reliance upon rhetoric, invective, intimidation and, ultimately, violence. It also ends up looking like what we have on this site – a plethora of people utterly incapable of making a rational argument based upon logical inference derived from principle and relevant fact, ending up in self-conflicting absurdities and hypocrisies.

I’m at a loss at how to begin debating those who have absolutely no understanding of critical reasoning; it’s not like you can educate them in such skill during the debate; they have no idea what you are objecting to. They don’t comprehend arguments based on principle. They think any fact that feels like it supports their view actually helps their argument or actually rebuts the other person’s. They think a comparison of feelings and hypothetical personal reactions is a valid argument. They think mockery and personal insult is a valid form of debate. They think shaming and virtue-signalling is the be-all and end-all of public discourse. They think some ideas should not be discussed and actually think free speech is “hate” speech. IOW, as soon as you argue for Trump, or against abortion, you are automatically beyond the realm of civil discourse and the only appropriate response is shaming and ridiculing.

It’s bizarre. At times, the responses are so orthogonal to rational debate that it requires a massive effort just to explain how their point is entirely irrelevant, but doing so makes no difference because their position is entirely rooted in subjective feelings and arbitrary associations.

Armand Jacks and RVB8 don’t even understand that they have just shown, by their own reasoning, under their own worldview, and according to their own subjective, post-conception, arbitrary ideas about the application of human rights, that the Holocaust and abortion are morally, ethically and legally the same exact thing, even while insisting (because of their feelings) that they are not. This is the woeful state of modern debate.

Comments

CR- Please give your definition of moral and how you know this definition is correct.Marfin_{March 21, 2017
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I'd point out that this entire issue is a concrete moral problem to be solved. Again, knowledge would play an important role in such a solution. If something is not prohibited by the laws of physics, then it is merely a matter of knowing how. This includes transferring unwanted pregnancies to artificial wombs or woman who want to have children. Yet, I'm not sure everyone here thinks the problem of unwanted pregnancies is really a problem to solve, as opposed to a demand to be followed.critical rationalist_{March 21, 2017
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@KF
you could label a worldview foundationalist and suggest that there are ever so many who reject it, as though that answers. Such, however, is little more than dismissive rhetoric that is selectively hyperskeptical instead of addressing comparative difficulties on the relevant set of worldview core issues.
The topic of the OP is The Woful State of Modern Debate. I’m pointing out the woeful absence of your argument for a need to “root” things and the philosophical assumption that there can be no knowledge - moral or otherwise - without it. Yes. That is what the theory says. No foundation, no knowledge. But you are projecting that assumption on everyone else. From the review:
Evidence and Inquiry, Towards Reconstruction in Epistemology, by Susan Haack, is the kind of book that is sorely needed in an age when principles of scepticism and the rejection of the possibility of knowledge have become all but truisms to many people, both inside philosophy and outside.
I’m not a skeptic. In that we have no way to select from theories. Nor do I claim there can be no knowledge. I’m suggesting truth exists, just not in the form you think it does. Nor have you addressed the criticisms leveled at it. We must accept it, despite all of it’s problems, because that’s all we supposedly have, is not an argument.
But on this thread’s focal matters the issue is that we do actually need an ontological root of the world or reality.
The question of why there is something instead of nothing could just as well be asked in the inverse: Why would there be nothing instead of something? The Big Bang could have been the result of a Big Crunch. We simply do not know. Yet you have build an entire “argument” about a necessary being to “ground” it. This is another example of the woeful state of debate. Let’s not forget that God - a supposedly all powerful being with a near infinite number of options at his disposal - supposedly decided that his people should kill women and children with the sword. Including those that were pregnant. Yet, today, we know the impact of war on those that wage it. Difficulty re-integrating with families and communities. Desensitization to violence agains others, etc. And when civilians are killed the impact can be devastating. When faced with that moral problem, why would a maximally great, all powerful being demand that particular solution given the options he had? Did God lack the moral knowledge we have today? The best explanation is that moral knowledge genuinely grows. At the time, gods rewarded their people with victory in battle and the spoils of war, such as land and even women. When later faced with defeat, the Israelites creatively decided that Yahweh had used other gods to punish them, rather than assume the loss was not intentional. It is thought that this decisions is where monotheism started to take hold. If maximal goodness is just whatever God happens to do, because that is his maximally good nature, then what does it mean to say that God is good? IOW, what you’re doing right now can be distilled down to conjecture and criticism. In this case, the criticism is woefully bad philosophy, but the OP is lamenting the kind of criticism being leveled. That’s my point. The idea of how to avoid the two horns of the dilemma of God’s moral role is the result of such a process, regardless of how poorly implemented. Knowing how to make progress is moral knowledge which we can make progress on. Denying progress can be made in this sphere is immoral.critical rationalist_{March 21, 2017
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TA, you have wrenched what WJM has said: a child in the womb is a human being with his or her own right to life, which needs to be taken very seriously on pain of the sort of havoc we see all around. And BTW, such a child is genetically distinct from his or her mother, indeed half the time the child is not even the same sex as his mother. Men obviously do not have wombs, but men -- just as women -- were once nurtured in the wombs of their mothers, too, so we all have a vested interest in protecting posterity in utero. Men are also the fathers of our in-utero posterity [doesn't s/he look just like daddy?], and I think we should all be very concerned about alienating men from their children while putting the state in a substitute parental role. (In case you miss my point, historically that was one of the things routinely done to slave fathers on the plantation; the consequences of which haunt us down to today.) The perverse thinking and acting we have gone through over this past generation to sustain what is going on under false colours of law and rights is having telling consequences, consequences that point to a serious breakdown of our civilisation. KFkairosfocus_{March 21, 2017
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So, let me understand WJM's thinking. First he wants the law to force unwilling pregnant women to have babies. Then later, he wants the law to force non-pregnant women who want to have babies not to have babies. Sorry for the tortuous prose, but as far as I can understand what he says, it means that he wants a government to regulate women's biology. Fact 1: WJM is a man and can't have babies. That might be a clue to the construction of what might loosely be called his thought. As my women comrades used to say: "Get your laws off my body".timothya_{March 21, 2017
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F/N: For those not locked into the sort of truly dysfunctional thought on display above, it is probably worth the while to clip some of my earlier remarks above which have been wrenched into a strawman caricature, then brushed aside:
4: >>It seems I need to pause and point you [AJ] to exactly why I have long held that our civilisation is following a march of folly to ruin, one that if we do not turn from, will take its due effect. Democracy, historically is an unstable form of government and has a history of telling failures, with Athens and the Peloponnesian war as case study number 1. So much is this the case that the US founders and framers carefully distinguished their work and their intent from democracy. There are democratic elements but they carefully erected many stabilising buttresses, and plainly stated that the character of a people was absolutely critical. And on the whole they made it plain that the Judaeo-Christian, scriptural, gospel-based tradition was a linch-pin to the system. In time, the success of that experiment made “democracy” popular, even as across the world the underpinnings of a sober culture were being undermined. Often, by evolutionary materialism and its fellow travellers, dressed up in the lab coat. That snowball has now reached avalanche proportions and our civilisation is in collapse on many fronts, showing the sort of manipulated march of folly I discussed here. (Which has been pointed out to you, but which in haste to form turnabout projections, to snip remarks out of context, to sneer, to dismiss and to otherwise push your rhetorical talking points, you have plainly paid not the slightest heed.) As we look around now, our state is one of peril, demographic collapse, indebtedness to a horrific level, gross miseducation, mobs roaming the streets, laws twisted this way and that to suit power agendas, and more. With a holocaust of posterity eating out our souls and minds with blood guilt. Meanwhile, geostrategic perils stare us in the face which we refuse to heed. We are in a state that reminds me all too much of Horne’s summary of France across the twenty years leading up to May 10, 1940. You may not like to hear such words or may hate the concept that our civilisation is marching off a cliff, but that does not mean that such a view is merely empty noise to be used in turnabout accusation rhetoric. Indeed, you have managed to substantiate why WJM’s OP is very timely.>> 33: >>Wilberforce is a key exemplar (as BTW was Ep. Philemon — source of the anti-slavery society’s key motto), where we now recognise that the kidnapping-based chattel slave trade was a major, holocaust level, crime against humanity. But at that time civilisation was in the grip of delusions manipulated by powerful interests — e.g. Wilberforce et al were among other things characterised as attacking the recruitment pool of the Royal Navy (when death rates for sailors on those ships of horror may have been up to 25% IIRC from my history books). Reformation opens the way to moral growth of the community through its return to sanity. One step of the current process is that we are going to eventually need an international truth and reconciliation commission on the mass abortion civilisational kulturkampf, which should be associated with tribunals capable of censure and recommendation of loss of credibility for cases of gross ethical violations of the same natural laws that answered to the defendant’s claims to be acting under lawful orders at Nuremburg. But no, I see no reason to bring back the hangman; let our shame as a civilisation and let our shame on record as key enablers, promoters and practitioners be enough — though some may need to be held in protective custody on long term suicide watch. The judgement of history against our era will be grim.>> 47: >>societal agreement can be manipulated or coerced or simply delusional, as I noted with respect to the slave trade as a key relevant example. Notice, we now recognise that this trade was a holocaust-level crime against humanity (complete with a shockingly similar death toll, through it is even harder to pin down). At the time, it took great courage to stand up and cry foul, then endure the counter-attacks and keep going until a critical mass woke up and then the jig was up. So, appeal to society is little more than appeal to subjectivism in a cultural relativism context. Which was already answered in the thread, but I suppose some were too busy trying to imagine how Wilberforce could not provide a relevant exemplar.>>
See if you find above a cogent response on the substantial merits, and if not, ask yourself if that does not tend to underscore the point from the OP on. KF PS: I am in part highlighting that many are acting in a delusional state, not fully realising what they are doing with their enabling of or involvement with abortions, and the very involvement and enabling lead to benumbing the conscience, which undercuts our ability to think straight. But eventually, patient exposure of the truth will tell, which is exactly why this is being ridiculed, distorted and dismissed, denigrating those who refuse to play the part of clinic bombers. In the end, those who will be held most responsible are those who have put up the agit prop and shadow shows that are necessary to sustain the delusion and the resulting war on posterity leading to the worst holocaust in history, 800+ million victims, growing at another million every week. No wonder, those caught up in this do not want to hear such a hard truth, but just what is it that is being killed in the womb still lies unanswered, with a Planned parenthood Vice President being publicly exposed as unable to frankly face the question publicly only a few days ago -- and notice how the enablers reacted when this was posted here at UD complete with the video. And, a day of reckoning is coming.kairosfocus_{March 21, 2017
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To rvb8, AJ,Pindi.How do you guy know if abortion is right or wrong, good or evil , is there some scientific test you did or read about which explains why it is right or wrong. If you say what is in the womb is not yet a person the same question apply`s what test in science says what a person is who devised this test, is this test absolute in its findings. I await your science based response.Marfin_{March 21, 2017
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And one more practical objection to anti-abortionists: Who pays? These unwanted children don't just pop into the world fully formed. They need rearing, affection, human contact, schooling, housing, feeding, medical care; who pays? A new 'unwed mother's children tax.' The mother doesn't want the child, nor do the ashamed relatives, therefore it falls to the state. Tax payers should pay this colossal bill. I assume most posters here are 'small government Republicans'. How does this new tax, so that the state can give genuine care to this unwanted, unplanned for huamanity,sit with you? And if we can give all the unplanned for children a good life in the US (fat chance, as it fails massively here already), what about the millions upon millions of miserable unwanted children world wide? Abortion should be avoided, but thankfully in modern enlightened soceties it is easily available and free. You have to go to the deepest darkest Middle East and Africa to find the blissful lands where it is illegal; because of religion of course.rvb8_{March 20, 2017
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The title of this piece is 'The Woeful State of Modern Debate', catchy and it rhymes. The only rational arguments have been put by the pro-abortionists, 'the right to lifer's' arguments are indeed 'woeful'. Mired as they are in emotion, fervor, passion, and religion. If, as you argue, the fetus is a full member of the human race then any action taken against it must bring to bare the same laws that protect you; another full member of humanity. Taking that argument to its logcal conclusion means, at least, jailing women and doctrs complicit in this, 'crime'. harry says @62, "The real question is, why am I letting myself be interrogated by a murderous barbarian? I don't have to answer to a savage killer." Wow! I am a 'murderous barbarian', and a 'savage killer'? News to me and my family. 'The Woeful State of Modern Debate.' Indeed! But why is it always the religious, and IDers, that lose their rag? Also harry, getting locked up for intimidating young women is not something I would bandy about, at least not in my country, we tend to sympathise with the young women, not the religious zealots terrorising them.rvb8_{March 20, 2017
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EricMH, many people commit murder under duress. And ignorance of the law is never a defence or a mitigating factor. Does that fact that you apply a different standard of law to this scenario not suggest that perhaps abortion is not really murder?Pindi_{March 20, 2017
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EricMH:
AJ, there are multiple components to an action’s morality. Since you are morally confused regarding the issue, you do not have the same culpability as, say, an abortionist who unmistakably knows he is dismembering a little child. However, that does not negate that you are an unwitting accomplice to murder and abuse of women.
So, a woman who voluntarily and willingly seeks an abortion is an abused woman? Do you really have such a low opinion of women?Armand Jacks_{March 20, 2017
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This conversation has become pathetic.Upright BiPed_{March 20, 2017
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@Pindi, the same criteria apply as I mentioned to AJ. The act itself is murder, but the individual's culpability depends on other factors. Many women procure abortion under duress and in ignorance about what they are truly doing. The punishment must be accordingly lenient towards them. The weight of the law should rather fall on the man who is often responsible for pressuring the woman for sex and then failing to take responsibility for his actions, or even forcing her to have an abortion. However, women who become pregnant and kill their child with full volition and knowledge of what they are doing, and under no duress, should be tried for murder.EricMH_{March 20, 2017
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Harry, we used to have unwed teenage pregnant girls staying with us when I was a kid growing up. The reason is that it was regarded as shameful and humiliating to her family for a young unwed women to get pregnant. They had to go and hide with some strangers in another town. Luckily that's not the case anymore. EricMH, given your graphic and emotive language, surely you would put your hand up and say that women who have abortions should be charged with murder and sentenced accordingly?Pindi_{March 20, 2017
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@AJ, there are multiple components to an action's morality. Since you are morally confused regarding the issue, you do not have the same culpability as, say, an abortionist who unmistakably knows he is dismembering a little child. However, that does not negate that you are an unwitting accomplice to murder and abuse of women.EricMH_{March 20, 2017
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@rvb8 it is interesting that you counter the stats from CDC and Planned Parenthood you claim are anecdotal and speculative with your own speculative anecdote. Be that as it may, if you have substantive counter evidence I am interested to see it. Even though raised a Christian, I used to be ambivalent regarding abortion myself until my conscience couldn't take it anymore.EricMH_{March 20, 2017
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Harry:
My wife and I took in unwed, pregnant teenage girls who needed a place to stay while carrying their baby. Just to mention a few items.
As have my wife and I. And we probably will again. But I have also accompanied a woman to an abortion clinic because that is what she decided. Does that make me an evil person? Does that make me a murderous barbarian?Armand Jacks_{March 20, 2017
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@Harry, bravo sir! You are indeed a hero.EricMH_{March 20, 2017
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Pindi:
You shy away from applying the usual laws around murder to the women who committing these brutal, diabolical murders. Why is that? You don’t think women should be subject to the same legal sanctions as men?
If you will forgive my terseness, DUH!Armand Jacks_{March 20, 2017
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I don't know about the woeful state of modern debate, but this thread does illustrate the inconsistencies at the heart of the pro life position. On the one hand you have a holocaust involving the slaughter of millions (a "brutal, diabolical, murder of children" in Harry's words), on the other hand you don't really want to do anything practical about it. You shy away from applying the usual laws around murder to the women who committing these brutal, diabolical murders. Why is that? You don't think women should be subject to the same legal sanctions as men?Pindi_{March 20, 2017
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Andrew:
What if you hold it for less?
I get winded running to the bathroom. Holding it for less than ten minutes would probably have the same outcome.Armand Jacks_{March 20, 2017
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If I hold it for more than ten minutes, I certainly will be.
What if you hold it for less? Andrewasauber_{March 20, 2017
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Andrew:
So while you hold your breath, you are less human?
If I hold it for more than ten minutes, I certainly will be. :)Armand Jacks_{March 20, 2017
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Shouldn’t you be out there ending this crime
rvb8, And what crimes are you out there stopping? See, these abortion devotees are not interested in an honest discussion. Brainwashed children are they, playing games. Andrewasauber_{March 20, 2017
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rvb8 @ 43
Shouldn’t you be out there ending this crime rather than pointlessly writing on a blog with a readership of two? Those who killed the guards at Bergen-Belsen, Sobibor, and Treblinka, are today hailed as heroes; what have you done?
Myself and many others were arrested many times and spent months in jail for blocking the entrances to baby-murdering clinics. My wife and I took in unwed, pregnant teenage girls who needed a place to stay while carrying their baby. Just to mention a few items. The real question is, why am I letting myself be interrogated by a murderous barbarian? I don't have to answer to a savage killer. Let's get real about this. Google up abortion trash and then click Images. Do the same with abortion victims Now let's talk about the brutal, diabolical murder of children that Nazis like you advocate.harry_{March 20, 2017
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a breathing human being
Armand, So while you hold your breath, you are less human? Andrewasauber_{March 20, 2017
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Armand, mon pauvre vieux, so you're saying that breathing trumps life ? You need to get a 'breathing'. Breathing is ancillary to life. Getting oxygenated blood from his/her mother no more detracts from the value of the life of a human being at the foetal level of development, than an adult's receiving oxygen from a cylinder does.Axel_{March 20, 2017
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WM:
First, WJM never claimed that abortion = murder. I only ever stated that abortion = the deliberate killing of an innocent human life.I may differ from other opinions here because from my perspective “murder” is a legal term, so current abortion is not “murder”.
That is just equivocation.
Second, both AJ and RVB8 are making an elementary logical mistake by insisting that if two people have an equal right to life, then killing one or the other must result in an equal criminal charge. This is simply not true. The circumstances of the crime can call for varying charges.
With respect, the error is on your part. Yes, the circumstances of the killing can influence the charge. Killing in the heat of passion typically results in a charge of second degree murder or manslaughter. Killing to protect yourself or other is typically treated as self defence and charges not laid. On very rare occasions, killing someone out of a misguided belief that it is the compassionate thing to do, may result in charges of manslaughter of second degree murder. But other than this, when a person plans and executes the death of an innocent person, and there is clear evidence to support this, the person is charged with first degree murder. In the case of an abortion, you can't claim that it is done in the heat of passion. The women are certainly emotional, but it is not a spur of the moment decision taken without thinking. In some cases, like when the fetus is deformed or has a known genetic disease, you might be able to argue that the women believes that it is in the best interest of the fetus. In which case a charge of manslauter or second degree murder would be more appropriate.But the vast majority of abortions are of fetuses that are, to the best of the woman's knowledge, healthy. In that case, it can only be classified as first degree murder. Society can certainly create a new class of killing and have less harsh penalties, but in doing so they are acknowledging that the right to life of the fetus is not at the same level as the right to life of a baby, adolescent, teen, adult or the elderly, who are all "protected" by the existing classifications and penalties of killing.
It is therefore a logical mistake to insist that pro-lifers must all be in favor of bringing capital murder charges against either the doctor or the woman or else they are being inconsistent.
I didn't say that they all had to be in favour of this. In fact, I asserted that most of them weren't. That is where the inconsistency in their argument comes in. Assuming, of course, that their opposition to abortion is a belief that the fetus has the right to life that is equal to all other innocent humans.
A pro-lifer might advocate that they should be charged with a different type of homicide – perhaps one created specifically for abortions – that does not carry the same penalty provisions as capital murder. That doesn’t mean anyone is making a de facto admission that the unborn have a lesser right to life than anyone else;
Yes it does.
it just means that this category of homicide carries with it its own unique charge and set of penalties.
I would be interested to understand the rationale behind your thoughts on this. Are women somehow weaker and deserving of special treatment and special considerations when they plan and execute the killing of an innocent person? Or only if that innocent person is a fetus? If the same women decides to have the baby and then plans and kills it ten days after birth, should she also receive this special treatment that you are suggesting? At what age of the victim does this special consideration stop?
I would be in favor of a set of anti-abortion laws that provide for care, services and workplace protections of pregnant women who do not wish to keep their child and which delivered that child into a vetted adoption process, making “having the baby” instead of aborting it as safe and as non-problematic (financially) as possible.
But you wouldn't be in favour of such provisions if they weren't part of an anti-abortion law? Even if it resulted in the same reduction in abortion?
In that environment, I would set penalties for pre-birth infanticide at a term of 5 years probation for the doctor and loss of medical license, repeat offenses ending up in prison time, and a loss of reproductive rights for the mother.
How Orwellian of you. Maybe we should make her wear a big letter "A" on her dress.
I’m open to discussion and changing my mind on any of those penalties, but the point in me putting it out there is to show the foolishness of AJ’s and RVB8’s irrational argument. They first insist that Pro-Lifers must be in favor of an extreme position,...
Except that we never insisted this. At least, I didn't.
...and then irrationally insist that if they are not, they are being inconsistent, when there is no factual or logical basis for that claim.
There is nothing irrational about it. It is the necessary implications of insisting that the fetus' right to life is the same as that of a breathing human being.
It’s all invented, emotion-based, irrational rhetoric.
Unlike the assertion that abortion is a worse holocaust than that of the Nazi's? The main difference is that my emotion-based arguments with respect to charges and penalties for women having abortions is the logically sound implications and consequences of making abortion illegal based on the concept that the fetus has a right to life that is at the same level as that of a breathing human being.Armand Jacks_{March 20, 2017
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If abortion is homicide, then a mother who seeks and obtains one is criminally liable if the abortion is unjustifiable in line with current laws regarding homicide. It’s not even arguable.
Nobody claimed that current laws should be the laws that determine the penalties for illegal abortions. Nobody is even claiming that all abortions should be crimes. If the mother's life is at greater than normal risk due to some condition, I'd be in favor of allowing legal abortions in that scenario under a rule similar to self-defense. A similar argument can be made to terminate the pregnancies of rape victims - the mother did not willingly put herself into even the normal risk parameters associated with giving birth. I don't think she should be forced to undertake that risk by force of law - it might be similar to having to meet a lower standard self-defense. That might require some more serious debate, though. [Edited to make more sense. - WJM]William J Murray_{March 20, 2017
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PaV @ 15
jstanley01: Someone kills another person. Was it self-defense? Premeditated? Accidental? Hate-filled? Foreseen, but not prevented? The list can go on. Objectively, the termination of life is killing, but the circumstances dictate how it’s viewed. No reductio ad absurdum, please.
There is a word for it, when "someone kills another person." It is called "homicide," of which there are two kinds, justifiable and unjustifiable. Of the latter, from negligent homicide to first degree murder, all are crimes. If abortion is homicide, then a mother who seeks and obtains one is criminally liable if the abortion is unjustifiable in line with current laws regarding homicide. It's not even arguable.jstanley01_{March 20, 2017
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