UK Abortion Law
Discussion
Esceptico said:
One philosophical thought question in this area relates to donors. There is a shortage of organ donors. A lot of people die on the waiting list. Wouldn’t it make sense then to kill one healthy person to save the life of maybe four or five other people?
We do this and did this - it is why the definition of death in most of the world was changed to brain death not heart death in the 60's and 70's once organ transplants became effective. The body is still healthy, and by pre-60's and 70's definition we are killing healthy people to save others.Edited by wisbech on Wednesday 23 June 02:31
Edited by wisbech on Wednesday 23 June 02:31
Esceptico said:
One philosophical thought question in this area relates to donors. There is a shortage of organ donors. A lot of people die on the waiting list. Wouldn’t it make sense then to kill one healthy person to save the life of maybe four or five other people?
Your example is flawed. A much simpler method is to remove organs from the dead. They have no need of them and the next of kin's rights to them are only allowed by the society they are in. Therefore, society has the authority to change the rules and take them. Only the selfish and unsocial would object.Philosophy, eh? There are a lot more philosophical questions that can be put, such as, who chooses what is right and what is wrong. There is no way to define universal rights and wrongs. There is what's against the law. I've come to realise over the years that just because there's a law against it doesn't make it wrong.
There's the classical moral choice of diverting a train; the trolley problem. You must know of it. It's a series of problems without a right answer. Each is a dilemma. I like the one about the judge.
It shows, clearly, that there are no moral absolutes, and that includes abortion. You can concede the decision to society, the lawmakers. You don't have to agree with their decision, but if you live in that society, you have to abide by their rules and regulations or suffer punishment. Don't like them? You have a choice: go somewhere else where the rules are different or try and change the current ones.
Your opinion on whether abortion should be allowed is just that; yours.
If you are exercising your right to try and change opinions, then good for you. But accept that you are doing so under the rules of the society you’re are living in, just as are those who opt for an abortion.
Let's say we do away with abortions, then.
How do we provide the resources and care for these children?
At some point, of course, some variation on "well they should've thought about that before getting pregnant" usually raises its head, because it seems that quite a lot of people who want women to have babies instead of abortions are only "pro life" until the baby is out in the world, at which point a return to the business as usual of oppressing women happens.
Often framed as them having to take responsibility for their actions, of course. But only after the avenues available to them to do so have been suitably restricted.
If someone wants to stop abortions without such an approach, then society as a whole needs to be coming up with the goods to support the raising of these children.
This is not as good for society as allowing women to manage their own reproduction, with an aim that every child coming into the world be a planned for, wanted baby.
How do we provide the resources and care for these children?
At some point, of course, some variation on "well they should've thought about that before getting pregnant" usually raises its head, because it seems that quite a lot of people who want women to have babies instead of abortions are only "pro life" until the baby is out in the world, at which point a return to the business as usual of oppressing women happens.
Often framed as them having to take responsibility for their actions, of course. But only after the avenues available to them to do so have been suitably restricted.
If someone wants to stop abortions without such an approach, then society as a whole needs to be coming up with the goods to support the raising of these children.
This is not as good for society as allowing women to manage their own reproduction, with an aim that every child coming into the world be a planned for, wanted baby.
Esceptico said:
How can the beginning be as equally arbitrary as other points that depend upon human made definitions?
This is becoming very circular. I've already explained at length why- the two fundamental reasons being the underlying definitions ("human", "life") themselves being arbitrary (necessarily meaning the point a which they are decided to be applied being so) and the fact that determining the point of conception/fertilisation as "the beginning" is also arbitrary. One could make an equally compelling argument for, say, the point of implantation being "the beginning", or the point at which sperm and ovum cohabit the same body or vessel if the core precondition is there existing an environment where the requisite materials and environment for the creation of life exists. How are these any more or less objectively the beginning than fertilisation? They aren't- it all boils down to how you choose to define things.Esceptico said:
Your and others refusal to see that is because for various reasons you want to exclude embryos and foetuses from the definition of human.
You completely misinterpret my intent here. I've made no statement at all which could be construed as "wanting to exclude embryos and foetuses from the definition of human". My argument is not based around any discussion of the moral or ethical perspectives on what should and shouldn't be treated as human, because I believe that's a decision for wider society to make. My point is, and always has been, to highlight that any and all arguments put forward on the subject are inherently arbitrary because of the lack of defined meaning and emotionally loaded implications of the terminology used and that, I repeat myself again, the assertion you made that "science says that life begins at conception" is factually wrong. Esceptico said:
The normal approach in science is to use the simplest explanation or make the fewest assumptions
Science doesn't follow Occam's Razor, it follows evidence. Even if it did, asserting "the beginning" being the point of conception doesn't make any fewer assumptions than any other point because it's entirely dependent on completely subjective determinations of what constitutes "human" or "life". It simply represents a convenient earliest point for your argument.Esceptico said:
If you want to take another point other than the beginning I think it is beholden on you to provide pretty comprehensive and persuasive evidence for doing so. Or are you saying all definitions are equally valid as all are arbitrary?
The latter. All attempts to assert or define "life" as beginning at X point, or argue that a certain point defines in an empirical way when an embryo becomes "human", are completely arbitrary. As I've already said multiple times, no scientific consensus exists on what either "life" or "human" mean.Esceptico said:
As you seem to know about these things, of the 7 plus billion people on the planet, roughly what percentage aren’t the result of the fusion of egg and sperm?
I'm not sure I see the relevance of this question? There are multiple characteristics which are shared by 100% of the 7+ billion people on this planet, the vast majority of which are shared with other life forms. Almost all mammals are the result of a fusion of an egg and sperm, that characteristic doesn't somehow separate humans from fruit bats. Esceptico said:
AJL308 said:
It makes no difference as to what they might become. If there is no brain and it has never been conscious it is not a person. It has no awareness of anything nor has it ever. To equate it with murder - which lots of Americans and other religious loons often do - is ridiculous.
The fact that an embryo or foetus isn’t conscious only means it won’t notice that it has been killed. The whole point of abortion is to kill the foetus before it becomes conscious. There isn’t that much “if” about it. It will become conscious if left to develop (of course that isn’t guaranteed as still births or death during birth of other ways of dying apply to any living creature).
It is interesting from a psychological perspective how many posters, including you, dismiss foetuses as just a bunch of cells. Presumably you wouldn’t condone the killing of a new born baby, toddler or adult. Ironically people tend to get most upset by the death of children. If a 95 year old dies, most people will think “they had a long life” and won’t be as sad as if a 5 year old dies “because they had their whole life ahead of them”. Yet killing someone in the womb seems okay even thought it deprives them of the most life.
Possibly people are okay with killing embryos and foetuses because they don’t have any connections yet. When a person dies they normally leave in hole: they are not just a person they are a husband, sister, friend, uncle, son, etc. People that are left behind are emotionally and perhaps financially impacted. Apart from the parents there is no one to mourn the unborn and if those parents don’t want the child then an abortion just removes a problem.
Yes, the point is to kill a collection of cells. I'm not "dismissing" anything as just a collection of cells, I am simply stating what it is. It is merely a collection of cells. The point is not to kill anything which could remotely be described as a person.
HM-2 said:
Esceptico said:
You are arbitrarily deciding what counts as human
A foetus does not fit the vast majority of definitions for "human". The onus is on you to provide a working definition that it does fit in order for this assertion to be valid.Esceptico said:
HM-2 said:
A foetus does not fit the vast majority of definitions for "human". The onus is on you to provide a working definition that it does fit in order for this assertion to be valid.
It should be clear from my previous comments that in my view a human exists from the point where the sperm and egg fuse and the cell starts to divide. BobsPigeon said:
HM-2 said:
Esceptico said:
You are arbitrarily deciding what counts as human
A foetus does not fit the vast majority of definitions for "human". The onus is on you to provide a working definition that it does fit in order for this assertion to be valid.I'm not claiming to be able to pin the take on this donkey, and to be fair to Esceptico neither is he, he's just taken a logical position and said its aswell to be at day 1 than day 150 or day 300.
Infantacide was practiced widely in the UK and wasn't treated as murder until modern history... Our moral view changes over time, long periods of time but they're not stagnant absolutes. We don't know who will be on the right side of this argument, but you can't just assume the status quo will last.
AJL308 said:
BobsPigeon said:
HM-2 said:
Esceptico said:
You are arbitrarily deciding what counts as human
A foetus does not fit the vast majority of definitions for "human". The onus is on you to provide a working definition that it does fit in order for this assertion to be valid.I'm not claiming to be able to pin the take on this donkey, and to be fair to Esceptico neither is he, he's just taken a logical position and said its aswell to be at day 1 than day 150 or day 300.
Infantacide was practiced widely in the UK and wasn't treated as murder until modern history... Our moral view changes over time, long periods of time but they're not stagnant absolutes. We don't know who will be on the right side of this argument, but you can't just assume the status quo will last.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_mind
The mirror with dot on forehead test is often the crudest example.
BobsPigeon said:
AJL308 said:
BobsPigeon said:
HM-2 said:
Esceptico said:
You are arbitrarily deciding what counts as human
A foetus does not fit the vast majority of definitions for "human". The onus is on you to provide a working definition that it does fit in order for this assertion to be valid.I'm not claiming to be able to pin the take on this donkey, and to be fair to Esceptico neither is he, he's just taken a logical position and said its aswell to be at day 1 than day 150 or day 300.
Infantacide was practiced widely in the UK and wasn't treated as murder until modern history... Our moral view changes over time, long periods of time but they're not stagnant absolutes. We don't know who will be on the right side of this argument, but you can't just assume the status quo will last.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_mind
The mirror with dot on forehead test is often the crudest example.
AJL308 said:
I kind of knew what you were getting at. The point is that in the context of an abortion discussion any type of awareness is what we are getting at. Pre-12 weeks there is no possibility of any awareness at all as there simply is not the means for it to be present. It's a collection of cells and not a person.
OK, my point was that it's probably fair to say that about a 1 week old baby as well but you can't terminate that "thing" legally... The law is a frame work, a compromised moral position to offer an acceptable position for the majority, that's how democracy should work. I'm not claiming to know when full legal rights should be afforded to the baby/feautus but my feeling is it somewhere before 24 weeks and probably after 12 weeks, that's just my opinion and feelings on the matter. You seem to be more secure in your opinion of when a feautus becomes a baby, I'm not sure I understand where your confidence comes from. I'm not entirely convinced the law is correct at this juncture, you seem to be saying you'd be happy if it extended the other way into the 3rd trimester. Correct?
BobsPigeon said:
AJL308 said:
I kind of knew what you were getting at. The point is that in the context of an abortion discussion any type of awareness is what we are getting at. Pre-12 weeks there is no possibility of any awareness at all as there simply is not the means for it to be present. It's a collection of cells and not a person.
OK, my point was that it's probably fair to say that about a 1 week old baby as well but you can't terminate that "thing" legally... The law is a frame work, a compromised moral position to offer an acceptable position for the majority, that's how democracy should work. I'm not claiming to know when full legal rights should be afforded to the baby/feautus but my feeling is it somewhere before 24 weeks and probably after 12 weeks, that's just my opinion and feelings on the matter. You seem to be more secure in your opinion of when a feautus becomes a baby, I'm not sure I understand where your confidence comes from. I'm not entirely convinced the law is correct at this juncture, you seem to be saying you'd be happy if it extended the other way into the 3rd trimester. Correct?
AJL308 said:
BobsPigeon said:
HM-2 said:
Esceptico said:
You are arbitrarily deciding what counts as human
A foetus does not fit the vast majority of definitions for "human". The onus is on you to provide a working definition that it does fit in order for this assertion to be valid.I'm not claiming to be able to pin the take on this donkey, and to be fair to Esceptico neither is he, he's just taken a logical position and said its aswell to be at day 1 than day 150 or day 300.
Infantacide was practiced widely in the UK and wasn't treated as murder until modern history... Our moral view changes over time, long periods of time but they're not stagnant absolutes. We don't know who will be on the right side of this argument, but you can't just assume the status quo will last.
Ntv said:
There is at least a moral argument for aligning the date with the date from which many foetuses can be kept alive outside the womb. Now, that might not be an absolute ... imagine that date was 1 week ... though it seems to me a relevant moral consideration.
Well if that were the case a solution would be to remove the embryo from the womb at 1 week and allow it to gestate exutero under the sponsorship of someone who did want a baby. Or the state. If this was medically possible I suspect pretty soon all babies would be brought into the world like this and it would be like that Brave New World book and we'd all be much happier, except those that weren't.
BobsPigeon said:
Ntv said:
There is at least a moral argument for aligning the date with the date from which many foetuses can be kept alive outside the womb. Now, that might not be an absolute ... imagine that date was 1 week ... though it seems to me a relevant moral consideration.
Well if that were the case a solution would be to remove the embryo from the womb at 1 week and allow it to gestate exutero under the sponsorship of someone who did want a baby. Or the state. If this was medically possible I suspect pretty soon all babies would be brought into the world like this and it would be like that Brave New World book and we'd all be much happier, except those that weren't.
BobsPigeon said:
AJL308 said:
I kind of knew what you were getting at. The point is that in the context of an abortion discussion any type of awareness is what we are getting at. Pre-12 weeks there is no possibility of any awareness at all as there simply is not the means for it to be present. It's a collection of cells and not a person.
OK, my point was that it's probably fair to say that about a 1 week old baby as well but you can't terminate that "thing" legally... The law is a frame work, a compromised moral position to offer an acceptable position for the majority, that's how democracy should work. I'm not claiming to know when full legal rights should be afforded to the baby/feautus but my feeling is it somewhere before 24 weeks and probably after 12 weeks, that's just my opinion and feelings on the matter. You seem to be more secure in your opinion of when a feautus becomes a baby, I'm not sure I understand where your confidence comes from. I'm not entirely convinced the law is correct at this juncture, you seem to be saying you'd be happy if it extended the other way into the 3rd trimester. Correct?
Thread revival.
Whatever one might think of UK abortion law, it’s a damn sight better than Texas.
Texas has passed a state law outlawing abortions at 6 weeks. And the rider is that the law grants anyone the right to sue someone who breaks the law and claim $10k. No loss required. This is simple bounty hunting written into law.
Abortion providers in Texas petitioned the Supreme Court to have the law suspended pending a full hearing. The Supreme Court declined to hear that petition and won’t step in until the matter is fully argued in 1/2/3 years.
Texas’s law is no less theocratically driven hardline Christian than the sort of theocratically driven hardline Islamic laws in Iran and Afghanistan that Americans get so heated about. It’s fricking crazy.
Be thankful for what we have here. It’s easy to overlook how good we have it.
Whatever one might think of UK abortion law, it’s a damn sight better than Texas.
Texas has passed a state law outlawing abortions at 6 weeks. And the rider is that the law grants anyone the right to sue someone who breaks the law and claim $10k. No loss required. This is simple bounty hunting written into law.
Abortion providers in Texas petitioned the Supreme Court to have the law suspended pending a full hearing. The Supreme Court declined to hear that petition and won’t step in until the matter is fully argued in 1/2/3 years.
Texas’s law is no less theocratically driven hardline Christian than the sort of theocratically driven hardline Islamic laws in Iran and Afghanistan that Americans get so heated about. It’s fricking crazy.
Be thankful for what we have here. It’s easy to overlook how good we have it.
Rufus Stone said:
Good for the mother, not so good for the unborn child though.
Oh dear. Always about “the unborn child”.Please stop with the pseudo philosophy. Abortion laws are just another religious, misogynistic way for men to control women.
America is an awful place where gun massacres are just swept under the carpet and the murder of doctors who practice in abortion clinics are welcomed by large parts of the population.
It’s the woman’s right to control her body in all ways.
Rufus Stone said:
Good for the mother, not so good for the unborn child though.
Not always good for the mother either. My understanding, is that mental health may suffer in later life as a result of the difficult decision they had to make. When a proportion of society is saying that decision was immoral, it can't help those people and their occasional flashbacks.
I personally stand by, it's a woman's right to choose.
And that much of the people who profess to be Christian across the world are very much Not.
Do they really think that Jesus would have condemned someone who has had an abortion, or offer that person love and understanding?
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