> I had an argument recently with someone who is anti-abortion and his opinion is that life starts when sperm and egg meet. Anything preventing implantation of an egg is essentially killing of a baby
This is a pretty common opinion among anti-choice people. One of the many divides in views on abortion is between people who believe life begins at birth vs. before birth, with a significant number of the latter believing life begins at conception.
EDIT: Obviously views on abortion are complicated and vary widely. All I'm saying is that it's really not hard to find people who will tell you life begins at conception (and by that logic, believe that killing a fertilized egg is equivalent to killing a baby).
No. Most people agree that abortion is acceptable early on (e.g. < 12 weeks). It's hardliners on both sides who are doing the most fighting because they either think that it's okay to abort up to the point of birth or that terminating a bunch of cells is murder.
> They believe life begins at conception with no basis other than religion.
It's not religion, it's science. A new human life (complete how it looks, what gender it's assigned, etc) begins at conception. It's not a full human, but it's slowly becoming one. The question is when it's too human to terminate.
> The problem is we've already gotten too philosophical. Nobody has any prepubescent moral instincts about fertilized human eggs. Nobody has any empathy for fertilized human eggs
Sorry, I vehemently disagree. I remember my parents explaining abortion to me as a child, and I thought it was pretty barbaric. My parents are less 'pro-life' than I am.
> criminalizing birth control.
Personally, I don't use birth control, because I think it's too dangerous.
> Is there somebody out there I could read who argues that the ethical responsibility to carry a pregnancy to term begins at the moment of egg fertilization,
There are even leftist orgs who engage in 'direct action', like pro-life Antifa: https://paaunow.org/. Not my cup of tea, since I typically disagree with leftist approaches to argumentation, even though we'd agree in this case. Here's their manifesto (https://paaunow.org/stances). They don't believe extramarital sex is wrong in a moral sense.
Honestly, most of the pro-life movement is not Catholic. Most evangelical and Protestant churches believe BC is fine. Many evangelical churches are okay with extra marital sex.
> Sorry, I vehemently disagree. I remember my parents explaining abortion to me as a child, and I thought it was pretty barbaric. My parents are less 'pro-life' than I am.
I'm not saying children aren't inclined to be repulsed by abortion, I'm saying they wouldn't empathize with a fertilized embryo any more than they'd empathize with a sperm cell. In fact they're probably a lot more likely to empathize with the sperm cell since it's moving around.
> Personally, I don't use birth control, because I think it's too dangerous.
I don't think I understand this.
> Sure. Christopher Hitchens was pro-life.
Thank you for this, it was interesting hearing his perspective. I really dislike his perspective, but it's interesting to hear anyway; it's the sort of example I was looking for.
What I dislike is how totally definitional his position seems. We musn't destroy fertilized embryos because they are humans, and they are humans because... we are defining humans to be fertilized embryos and beyond? Why not ask the question in the first place: Why is it wrong to kill? If it's because of the lost potential life that would have been lived had the killing not occurred, then we must outlaw all forms of birth control. If it's because of the termination of the neurological functions of a human or human-like brain, then there's nothing wrong with destroying embryos. But what is the ethical argument for the cutoff being fertilization? "Potential life" clearly does not work; potential lives are prevented all the time. "Imminent life" doesn't work either; sperm on their way to an egg are imminent life until they hit latex. The moment when "the chromosomes of the male and female pronuclei blend in the oocyte" is very interesting, but so are many other stages that precede it and follow it. I don't see why that stage strikes an ethical chord except in the minds of people who can't separate arbitrary term definition from reality.
What if we defined sexual intercourse this way? Let's find the biological moment where sexual intercourse has technically occurred, and rest our moral judgement on that biological definition. So, for example, rape with a condom is a whole separate class of crime, because sexual intercourse never occurred. Nevermind that the real impact to thinking, feeling people is almost totally disconnected from that specific biological definition we've picked.
In addition to my questions from the previous comment, here's another thing I'd ask Christopher Hitchens (if he were still alive) or those who agree with him on this subject: Is it wrong to have sex with a woman born with a condition that allows her eggs to be fertilized, but leaves no chance for them to ever implant, thereby invariably killing one or two fertilized "humans" every month she has sex? Or, in abstract terms: Is it really the fertilized embryo entity that we care about? Or is it in fact the imminent life? And if it is the imminent life, then why is pulling out okay (or is it)?
>> The way I read it the parent comment portrayed all abortions to be of this type.
Clarification since there is a misunderstanding about my understanding: No, I know most of them are not this type. I also think there is a difference between late and early although I personally would advice against both. I am not a lawmaker though.
A little background: yes, I grew up in a pro life family and while I was always personally against I didn't really start bothering until that piece of news struck me from one of the major newspapers that day. Knowing this kind of cruelty actually happens on a more or less regular basis (well known by nurses even in the small country I live in) and on the scale of 88/day * botch_factor it is now hard not to care.
That said, yes, from a pragmatic perspective just getting rid of most of those 32000 late ones would be mighty good. I would believe a number of you could agree with that.
There is now and has been for some time a somewhat healthy debate around death penalty. Unfortunately IMO it seems that the right to kill innocent children before (or, if necessary because procedure failed, after ) birth is somehow sacred and cannot be discussed publicly.
> This is HN, some people here probably advocate for abortion after birth.
That’s called murder - the ending of a person, which by the law is a fully born human being. I doubt anybody sane on either side of the political spectrum supports that.
In the case that carrying a fetus to term would kill the mother: abort. One life does not merit the safety of another.
In the case that a fetus was conceived in rape: abort. Would you remind yourself, and even be beholden to, evil?
In the case that a fetus would be born unwanted: abort. It is better to be born into a loving family than raised in orphanages or worse: raised in a family who do not love you.
> Person at conception vs Person at X weeks/months
Except that some pro-choice advocates admit that it is a human life being killed and still insist it is good and necessary. That and most of the rest of the pro-choice activists would never accept being forced into making a determination on when they believe life begins. They don't care when life begins. They care about not restricting abortion.
Edit: I should have read other comments here first. As you can see, many pro-choice people are perfectly willing to acknowledge that they are willing to allow abortion even though it is a person. In other words, actively killing your child if you don't want to support them.
> That is very much a religious idea and not something universally held.
How so? From an entirely secular standpoint, it's the moment a distinct individual life starts (e.g. viable new organism with its own unique DNA).
> I certainly don't believe a jar of fertilized embryos is deserving of any special respect.
And that's supposed to prove what? Someone else might believe a child who has not yet met some arbitrary developmental milestone as not deserving of any special respect. And that's not hypothetical, infanticide has been common in many cultures up to and including recent times.
> I know, and I'm sure you know, that's the real issue. Lots of people are uncomfortable with the concept of consequence-free sex.
Hard disagree that the abortion issue is primarily about consequence-free sex. You stated the issue in the first line:
> A fetus isn't a person.
Pro-life people vehemently disagree about this, and it's not coming from a place of prudishness. They are outraged because they feel like babies are being killed.
> It's not killing someone. A fetus isn't a person.
Isn't a fetus kind of like a tadpole? Sure, we may quibble that it isn't a person, but it is still a living being on the way to maturity. Killing a tadpole is killing _something_, right?
>you are saying the rights of a blob of cells supersedes that of a grown woman.
There are many ways to philosophically argue against a 'life begins at fertilization' position. I don't know why you feel the need to assume things that were not said.
> Are you saying this is a hypothetical position that anti-abortion people should support, assuming they were being logically consistent? If so, then yeah, that would seem to make sense.
Yes, that would be at least logically consistent of them.
>Most people who are pro-choice consider framing the issue as murder as dishonest.
I don't think OP was saying it is murder but that it's helpful to have some argument why it's not murder (since there are some that claim that it is). If someone says "Meat is murder" and I say "I have the right to eat what I want" then I've not really responded to their argument and to some it might even sound like I'm implicitly accepting their premise.
I am obviously pro-choice and I do understand the people arguing against abortion rights are doing so in bad faith in most cases but I am still not sure why there is such reluctance (in debates I've seen) to not demolish the "fetus=human being" argument which is put forward as the primary reason to ban abortion.
(Context: The article uses abortion as its central -- and only -- example.)
>Why is it traitorous to understand the people you disagree with?
It's not. Many people[1] spend a great deal of time studying the rhetoric and activities of people who oppose abortion. They have studied them far more than you.
>For better or for worse, the vast majority of people I know favor Roe v. Wade. Still, I think I understand the view of people on the other side.
You give two possible reasons for opposing Roe v. Wade, one of which rejects the legal argument as fundamentally arbitrary, and one of which is based on the idea that a human life, with all the rights and dignities that it is entitled to, begins at conception.
This falls into a common trap, which is treating "culture war" disputes as being fundamentally about abstract philosophical debates. This ignores the important parts of the dispute, which concern women's sexuality and the role of (conservative, patriarchal) religion in public affairs. It also ignores the mountains of bad faith and hypocrisy in the anti-abortion movement, including but not limited to a lack of interest in "saving" IVF embryos, bizarre ignorance of the female reproductive system, a refusal to acknowledge the circumstances under which people have late-term abortions, active opposition to medically-accurate sex education and easier access to contraceptives, and a lack of concern for what happens to babies after they're born.
>As far as I can tell, my object-level views on “when abortion should be legal” are close to the median in my (leftist-dominated) corner of the universe. Yet, except with close friends, I’d be scared to say what I think above.
Scared of what, exactly? When you publicly make bad arguments, you should expect public criticism.
The only reason I can see that someone would get mad at you is that you are treating abortion rights as a bloodless, impersonal affair. This is a very practical issue with very real, very serious consequences for the women involved. Most women do not want to engage in an abstract debate about whether they should be forced to carry a dead fetus to term[2].
If you want to discuss how all this relates to jurisprudence and philosophy, you can certainly do that. It's not wrong, and you're not wrong for wanting to ask questions and start discussions on those subjects. But it's important to be clear that such discussions are (almost) totally separate from the practical questions of how overturning Roe v. Wade will actually affect American women. Conflating the two buries the practical questions, and only benefits people who would prefer that the practical questions are ignored.
[1] The Slacktivist blog is a good place to start. Search for articles about abortion. Those articles will have many links to other people examining anti-abortion views. https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/
[2] Not hyperbole.
This is the crux of my disagreement with you, and you haven't really presented an argument for your position.
> if no one is ever justified to bring others into being then all life is the product of injustice
This is exactly what I'm saying. I've said why I believe it's unjust, and you agree with the core of my reasoning; that unborn children can't consent to their birth. If you have an argument for why that doesn't make procreation a moral harm then I'm all ears.
Sure people do. There are plenty of us. Even those of us who are atheist and/or pro-LGBT. It doesn’t strictly align with parties; for instance my own views are rather liberal except for this particular issue.
> Folks would lynch abortion providers -- not one or two, but en masse
This did not happen for a lot of other viewpoints throughout history that we now consider illegal and unthinkable. Those of us who are anti-abortion consider abortion to be much the same—it will take a long time to change society’s opinion but violence is not the answer to solving the problem.
This is a pretty common opinion among anti-choice people. One of the many divides in views on abortion is between people who believe life begins at birth vs. before birth, with a significant number of the latter believing life begins at conception.
EDIT: Obviously views on abortion are complicated and vary widely. All I'm saying is that it's really not hard to find people who will tell you life begins at conception (and by that logic, believe that killing a fertilized egg is equivalent to killing a baby).
reply