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[Bauglir]

No, I definitely just made a ridiculous typo and completely inverted the meaning of my post.

no worries. you would not believe how often i do that when i'm writing papers

[Frumple]

No, I definitely just made a ridiculous typo and completely inverted the meaning of my post.

To ramble somewhat tangentially, it'd still be possible for that to be calling it too late, though. The logical end-state for the argument from potential that a lot of at-conception positions work from would roughly mean that every bit of reproductive material that's allowed to die* is equivalent to murder. If the biological gruft that exists at conception is enough to count, the stuff it's made from should be included as well -- the differentiation between it and a late-term fetus is significantly less.

Starting from conception also means you've got a hell of a lot bigger problem than artificial abortion -- the vast majority of abortions occur naturally, just as a part of how human biology and reproduction work, and have little to do with medical intervention (save for its lack, anyway). Fun part is a lot of pro-life/anti-choice groups are actually vehemently opposed to research and organizations that work to study and reduce the vagrancies of our shitty, shitty biology on the reproductive process.

*Of which droves do, entirely naturally -- every non-sterile man is a walking genocide, just due to the normal amount of potential fertilization material they allow to die on a daily basis, and women are only somewhat better off. The parody bit is that whole "every sperm is sacred" rigmarole.

[Baffler]

There's a slight difference between a deliberate abortion, and biology just spontaneously deciding that no this isn't going to happen, or gametes dying off in the testes because the fella isn't having sex literally all the time. If the former is murder, the latter is more akin to dying of disease, or in an accident, or of old age. Nobody is really at fault.

And it's just as easy to extrapolate to some ridiculous conclusion in the other direction. The whole killing useless children thing might fall a bit flat on the Dwarf Fortress forums but I could, for example, draw from the common "able to sustain itself outside the womb" stance and say that you'd be hard pressed to find an even mostly self-sufficient kid under the age of 6 at least. A baby wouldn't last more than two or three days on its own. Does that mean they aren't really people, and can be humanely euthanized with a clean conscience?

[Lord Shonus]

No, I definitely just made a ridiculous typo and completely inverted the meaning of my post.

To ramble somewhat tangentially, it'd still be possible for that to be calling it too late, though. The logical end-state for the argument from potential that a lot of at-conception positions work from would roughly mean that every bit of reproductive material that's allowed to die* is equivalent to murder. If the biological gruft that exists at conception is enough to count, the stuff it's made from should be included as well -- the differentiation between it and a late-term fetus is significantly less.

This isn't logical at all. That's like saying that vegetarians can't eat wheat because it is a component of Beef Wellington. An individual sperm or egg cell will never develop into a human, while once you mix them a human will result unless something goes wrong (or somebody forces something to go wrong). Thus conception is the earliest possible "Is it human?" moment.

Starting from conception also means you've got a hell of a lot bigger problem than artificial abortion -- the vast majority of abortions occur naturally, just as a part of how human biology and reproduction work, and have little to do with medical intervention (save for its lack, anyway).

The vast majority of human deaths occur naturally, just as a part of how human biology works, and have little to do with medical intervention (save for its lack, anyway).  That doesn't change the fact that chopping somebody up is simply wrong.

[Bauglir]

yeah, this is just a general sort of problem that arises when you've got a fundamentally continuous process, and an interaction with it that is pretty damned binary like an abortion

shit gets philosophical

i'm not prepared to address it tonight, and i've thought better of my original plan and decided to omit the spoilered dead baby joke i was going to end this post with

[Lord Shonus]

Yes, but in cases where birth complications result in a situation where either the child dies or the mother dies?

(Quote chain removed)

Technically speaking, such situations rarely exist - the much more likely choice is "either the child dies or both die", in which case the only option that preserves life must be taken. This is no different from situations where one person is trapped beyond recovery by a fire, and trying to save them would result in another person dying.

While, as I am not a doctor, my knowledge is limited, I can't conceive of any situation where there is a possibility of saving either that doesn't also have the chance of saving both. If such a situation did come up, the ethical lines would be blurry as hell.

[Frumple]

That doesn't change the fact that chopping somebody up is simply wrong.

Standing and watching while someone dies is pretty much as bad, though, and would be the equivalent action to just letting nature take its course. And hell, maybe it is the less immoral act, but even if it is the scale is massively different. Doesn't mean you should stand aside as someone's chopping people up, but if you're trying to be even remotely consistent you should be a lot louder about the bigger problem (especially considering it's one that's significantly less of an ethical question, heh.).

You'd also note well a lot of vegetarians abstain from dairy products, heh. Which would be a closer equivalent, imo. Milk and beef is just a titch more akin to each other than wheat and beef. It's not so much a matter of being a component as being a similar sort of thing, and the component parts in the case of a fertilized egg share a hell of a lot more with it than the egg shares with a developed fetus. If you're going to lump the egg in with the fetus, you should probably be lumping the egg's components in there, too.

... also, we could totally get parthenogenesis working if we'd just get off our asses and do it. That never is pretty conditional to the present, heh.

There's a slight difference between a deliberate abortion, and biology just spontaneously deciding that no this isn't going to happen, or gametes dying off in the testes because the fella isn't having sex literally all the time. If the former is murder, the latter is more akin to dying of disease, or in an accident, or of old age. Nobody is really at fault.

The gametes dying off in particular is more akin to someone in front of you starving to death -- a preventable event. You don't even have to be constantly having sex, there, just preserving the material. There's a substantial amount of fault lying in the hands of people doing nothing while others die, particularly when they have a relatively straightforward way of helping. Watching as someone starves in front of you when you have food isn't exactly a blame free action.

And yeah, the extremis in the other direction is completely ridiculous, too.

[SalmonGod]

There is no clear objective answer to the question of when life begins, or when something can first be defined as a human being.  So trying to tackle the issue from that direction is a bunch of pointless volatility.

This may be the only subject I take this stance on, but it's an issue that can only be constructively addressed in terms of what's most pragmatic.  Restricting abortion is demonstrably the least pragmatic course of action by every metric.  Unwanted children result in increased suffering for society as a whole, not even just the unwilling parents.  Even if you believe that abortion is murder, and I say this as one who is on the fence on that point, the pros outweigh the cons to such a degree that I question the ethical integrity of anyone who opposes abortion on that basis without also strictly opposing any harm intentionally or indirectly ever done to anyone for any reason ever.  Any exploration of the topic beyond that is purely fluff speculation that as such shouldn't need to get at all heated.

And it's just as easy to extrapolate to some ridiculous conclusion in the other direction. The whole killing useless children thing might fall a bit flat on the Dwarf Fortress forums but I could, for example, draw from the common "able to sustain itself outside the womb" stance and say that you'd be hard pressed to find an even mostly self-sufficient kid under the age of 6 at least. A baby wouldn't last more than two or three days on its own. Does that mean they aren't really people, and can be humanely euthanized with a clean conscience?

Human cultures that don't grant personhood to a child until long after they've been born are not unheard of.

[Willfor]

It's silly to debate abortion without debating forced body autonomy. While this, at first, may seem like a strange argument, no one is legally allowed to compel you to donate any portion of your body to save a life, even if that risks the life of someone else. Abortion restrictions are in essence infringements on the bodily autonomy of the woman who will have to carry a child to term, something that can (will) cause permanent changes to her body in the process.

I believe life begins at conception myself, but I also sort of believe in the rule of law? And currently the pro-life choice should be weighing itself behind birth control to prevent unwanted pregnancies, and support of lower income households instead of infringing on the rights of others.

[Flying Dice]

In the US, there is also the possibility of fear mongering over the re-creation of hitler via cloning.

Who needs zombie hitler, when you can have Mini-Hitler 2.0 instead!

...Seriously?
Ugh.
I feel like slapping everybody who thinks that a clone of Hitler would inevitably re-enact WWII.
They would not have had anywhere near the same experiences that drove original!Hitler to be, well, Hitler.

I suspect it's less fear of literally cloning Hitler and more that people are worried that it could rebirth the eugenics movement.

[Mech#4]

"GATTACA" type stuff? Why settle for less than superior?

[Flying Dice]

Eeh, not so much. More in the same vein as the notion of designer babies, except with the added horror of growing people to-order for jobs and slavery making a comeback.

Even though this would be one of the relatively easy ways to achieve biological immortality; you "only" need the ability to make perfect clones relatively inexpensively and to conduct brain transplants with a low percentage of errors.

[Loud Whispers]

Eeh, not so much. More in the same vein as the notion of designer babies, except with the added horror of growing people to-order for jobs and slavery making a comeback.

Even though this would be one of the relatively easy ways to achieve biological immortality; you "only" need the ability to make perfect clones relatively inexpensively and to conduct brain transplants with a low percentage of errors.

Yeah but it is a bit weird you can abort a perfectly healthy baby for whatever reasons but then there's an uproar when you want to for a baby that'll be born mentally porked
Oh wait nah abortion has uproars every time, nvm

[redwallzyl]

and... back to police!

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/10/27/452206430/video-of-s-c-police-officer-throwing-student-to-ground-prompts-inquiry-and-outra

and somehow people STILL defend it! *slams head on floor because was flipped out of desk

[smjjames]

Theres already a thread for that though redwallzyl. Though yeah, the hell was up with being that violent?

Also: http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/27/politics/ben-carson-donald-trump-cbs-poll/index.html

I think it's just the whole 'flavor of the month' effect that is trying to enforce itself.