1678

No argument, though the point I’m trying (and likely failing) to make is that once religion has motivated a violation of a fundamental right, it’s easy to justify violating it for abuse of any and all sorts beyond that.

Watch what’s about to happen to the right to privacy for a nice, clear cut example.

1679

No doubt.

1680

I was going to answer some responses to my post but as usual in P&R:

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1681

But if you accept the notion that the fetus is a person at some point, then the act of abortion is entirely violating its bodily autonomy. You are literally killing it. You are violating that right to the maximum degree possible.

You cannot say that bodily autonomy is important for one person, but not for another.

That’s why the issue comes down to personhood. Prior to the fetus possessing the qualities required to define it as a person, then the question is as simple as you suggest. There only one entity in the equation deserving of rights, so obviously the procedure is acceptable.

But once both entities are people, then it no longer becomes only about what is right for the woman, because both entities have rights. Simply saying that you care about bodily autonomy doesn’t resolve the issue, because both entities have that right, and the procedure will constitute a maximum violation of one of those entities’ rights.

If we are willing to grant personhood to a child immediately upon birth (which I believe we all are), then it becomes arbitrary and capricious to deny that exact entity personhood moments before delivery. It’s functionally equivalent regardless of whether it has been delivered or not.

It comes down to what causes us to deem an entity to be a person. I think that there more to that, than simply whether it exists inside or outside a woman. I think it’s, instead, based on the inherent qualities of that entity as a thinking, feeling being.

In truth, even this becomes tricky, and I don’t know exactly how to resolve it. There are problems with it, because in many ways, a newborn infant is less cognitively capable than many animals that we kill every day. Peter Singer has argued that newborn infants are infact NOT people, because they lack certain key cognitive qualities. For instance, newborn infants likely do not possess a complete sense of self into a few months after they are born.

You could potentially create a more consistent view, by pushing the notion of personhood out to that point in development, but it would create some really messy situations that I don’t think many people would be willing to accept. It would mean that a newborn infant doesn’t enjoy any rights or protections of it’s own. It would would essentially just be property of its parents, like a pet, or livestock. I am skeptical that the parents here would be able to accept that kind of position. Then there are other cases, such as severely cognitively disabled people, who from a scientific perspective are less sentient than many animals, yet stripping them of their personhood feels wrong.

If we are granting personhood to the newborn infant, then I feel like we must grant that same personhood to any equivalent being, meaning anything that has the same fundamental qualities; the same conscious mind, the same overall potential. So that means I have to consider some subset of fetuses to be people, and thus deserving of the same projections that we grant to the newborn.

At that point, you have a conflict between the well-being of the woman and the well-being of the child. While some may suggest that the women has no responsibility to the child, and this is true, this doesn’t really resolve the issue because an abortion is not simply an abandonment of the fetus. It is an intentional act, which ends the life of the fetus. That makes it different, in kind, than simply walking away.

1682

The woman’s body belongs to the woman. The fetus, even if you want to say it’s a person, doesn’t suddenly get ownership, not even partial ownership. Anything and everything that can be done to save the fetus requires the consent of the woman, because nothing can be done that does not substantially violate her bodily autonomy. You don’t get to force her to give birth. You don’t get to force her to let you cut the fetus out. You, in short, don’t get to do anything to her without her consent. Full stop.

1683

One could extrapolate this from other legal scenarios.

In every one of them bodily autonomy wins. Even in death.

If you die in a car accident, and have a kidney that will save my life, I don’t get that kidney if you (or your family) don’t want me to. Heck, by default I don’t get it, even if your position was completely neutral either way.

Your corpse’s autonomy trumps my survival.

1684

Doesn’t the fetus, if it’s a person, have ownership of it’s own body?

Again, you are simply disregarding its rights entirely.

I think you are doing this because you don’t consider it a person, and while that may be ok, you seem to be unable to consider the position where the fetus is actually regarded as a person, because that has certain implications that you don’t want to deal with.

But you are talking about intentionally killing the fetus, and violating ITS bodily autonomy. Why are you ok with that?

But what about the fetus’ consent? You’ve stipulated that it is a person within this context, and yet you are suggesting that it is ok to intentionally kill it.

We aren’t talking about simply allowing it to die through inaction, either. We are talking about you actually choosing to act in such a way that you will actually end its life. Generally, through crushing its skull, and/or severing it’s spinal cord. Do you think that you would be able to do that? If so, would you be able to do the same thing to the child if the only difference was that it had been delivered before? The act would be effectively the same. You would be ending that being’s life. It would feel the same pain and suffering in both cases. You would be ending exactly the same life in both cases.

That is not some passive choice. That is intentional action to end the life of a person.

Yes, but I’m not sure that there are cases where the law rules that someone is allowed to take intentional action to kill another person, in order to preserve some amount of personal autonomy.

That’s a key difference here, in that the choice of an abortion is not simply the refusal to do something, or provide some service. It goes beyond that, as a result of the procedure actively terminating the life of the fetus.

I don’t think there is an analog in other legal proceedings, where that kind of active procedure is allowed, is there?

1685

Sure. Unfortunately for it, it’s inside someone else’s.

You’re disregarding the woman’s. In point of fact, the entire rest of your post makes it clear you think the fetus’s autonomy is more important than the woman’s. Why is that?

1686

A fetus is not “special” at all; it’s just a human being. This is not a religiously grounded premise, but a scientific one. A zygote is what a unique human life looks like at its inception. A fifteen week old fetus is what a unique human life looks like at fifteen weeks old.

The only religiously based premise I bring to bear on this question is that we have a duty to protect human life when we can, because human life is of immeasurable value. (The religious language would be “sacred.”) I think this one is hard to justify without recourse to certain transcendental truths, but I’m glad that it’s nevertheless actually the one most of us can probably agree on.

And then, a premise from reason (extremely cursory version): When conflicts arise between our duties to protect the lives, well-being, freedom, and other interests of our fellow human beings, we have to find the most just outcome for all. That can involve weighing many contingencies, including the age, health, capacities, potential, threats posed, etc of those involved. We must also accept that there is rarely perfect justice. In these questions, life is the sine qua non, without which other interests do not exist obtain. Therefore it frequently has the strongest weight.

I’ll add another: When we make exceptions to the protection of human life–and sometimes, arguably, we must–we open ourselves up to grave moral dangers. One is the danger that we will start to make such choices casually, systematically, invisibly. (Death row is, I believe, an example.) These are “choices” we make at a societal level, and must be grappled with at a societal level, and cannot be sequestered to individual judgment. It doesn’t mean that we don’t sometimes go through with these exceptions, but it is fitting to carry them out with grave reverence, to do as little as possible to erode the perceived value of human life generally.

Finally, I would say there is a similar benefit to maintaining, societally, extreme caution around violations of our duties toward those who in whatever way are most marginalized, because they are poor, overlooked, neglected, silent, discriminated against.

Given these premises, I conclude that–while it is extremely understandable why a woman would seek an abortion, and we have a strong duty to protect her health and well-being and bodily integrity, and recognizing the real stress and trauma that is inherent in even the most benign births, and recognizing that all these obligations are in force before and after birth for mother, child, and family–the circumstances where it is justified to extinguish the life of a human child in the womb are very rare. And our whole society has an interest in recognizing and preserving this aspect of justice, as much as we do with prohibitions against murder, abuse, etc. that can often take place privately or unnoticed.

I’m not familiar with this term, what does it mean?

Then I can restate this way: I don’t think it’s possible to extrapolate values or meaning from materialistic premises. It’s because science, by its nature, does not admit immaterial evidence that I said what I did about science. For the record, this is also what makes science so powerful and effective! But it leaves whole swaths of intellectual pursuit untouched. And I don’t mean simply religious matters, but simply some philosophical ones. (Which happens to include a question like: “Is science good?”)

(For the record, I agree with you on this one, Matt, not Timex.)

You declared this in the other thread and I pointed you to, I think, three secular anti-abortion organizations? I don’t think you bothered to even register the correction, but you are happy to just go making this sweeping generalization again, like it’s self-evident.

1687

Not to go down this road, but in fact there are subtle disasters afoot here. Just off the top:

  1. Preventing someone from being conceived.
  2. Preventing ‘implantation’ (a pretty clinical term) of a fertilized egg.
  3. Failure to maximize outcomes. (going to be a big problem with genetic engineering in the future).
  4. Failure to maximize reproductive potentials. (tied to no. 1).
1688

But if you admit that fetus is a person, then why are you ok with violating its rights, that you claim are sacrosanct?

But that’s the thing, I’m not disregarding them at all. I’m explicitly acknowledging them.

In this situation, we have a conflict between two entities whose rights are at odds. You need to resolve that situation in a manner which minimizes harm. You cannot just pretend one person doesn’t have rights.

In that extreme situation, I’d have to rule in favor of the fetus, because the harm done to it in the abortion would be greater than the harm done to the woman otherwise, and I think there are ethical problems will intentionally killing one person for the a lesser benefit to another.

It’s not that one is more important than the other, their rights are equal. But the two choices in that situation result in uneven total utility across both parties.

As Matt had pointed out, in a situation where the choice is between an abortion to save the life of the mother, or birth which will save the life of the child, the abortion becomes viable again, because both situations end up doing equal (i.e. maximum, in this case) harm. I would actually tend to lean toward the abortion, given that the woman will be able to continue a productive life after the abortion, where the child will have no chance without it’s parent. … Although there are likely cases where the mother would choose to give birth and sacrifice themselves, that’s a different scenario.

1689

This isn’t just a problem between secularists and the religious but between them.

Imagine some future religion - Zensunni or something - that believes in group or social dynamics rather than individual ones. That the true good is maximizing the present and future bloodlines of humanity. Allowing the weak and indigent to survive and reproduce is what’s against the will of the Divine Zen Hidden Master, and individual considerations matter little compared to the group.

Now for the sake of argument there are only two moralities present - one that says that all humans should be preserved no matter what, and another that says that doing so is in fact against the will of God. The question isn’t really is this a legitimate philosophical position but can these two groups manage to live together. If so, how, and if not, why not? If everyone is 100% certain, how can they move forward?

It’s obvious that secular politics goes bad when taken to the extreme - just see the first half of the 20th. Ideologies that cannot be disproven, only failed, that are taken as first principles and so much the worse for reality. The difference is that in the modern context, mostly speaking, only political religion has this problem, and is being forced to confront fallibility when by their nature they assert more or less the opposite. What we’re seeing in America, quite loudly, is that “so much the worse for reality” is becoming reality and the policy assertion, it seems, not the reverse.

1690

I’m pretty sure children don’t get a say on their bodies with respect to at least medical treatments until they are of age. Until then they get whatever medical treatments parents decide for them.

1691

Execution isn’t a medical treatment, and we wouldn’t let parents choose it.

1692

Just want to reiterate that I appreciate your engagement on this stuff, am truly interested in your perspective, and apologize if/when I am unnecessarily antagonistic. I’m fascinated by the premises that underlie how we create values and meaning, and I think we (by which I mean religious and non-religious people alike) do this in largely the same way. My hope is that is the basis for some common ground–I think we’re kind of in a weird state now (which @Enidigm has alluded to) where our value judgements are based on secular premises, but the values themselves are often religious in origin. It creates kind of a cultural cognitive dissonance that plays out in these culture war issues.

1693

On a lighter note, remember:

1694

I lost you on this one, Enidigm! Care to restate?

I don’t know if it helps, but I’ve long been of the opinion that politics has always been about moderating conflicting notions of what is true and good, that all sides come into the public square with propositions of that order, and that pretending otherwise is either delusional or a convenient political tactic. To put it another way, people like to say you can’t (or shouldn’t?) legislate morality. But I think that’s the only thing we do legislate!

1695

Tom Holland makes a good case that most of Western morality derives from the evolution of Christian philosophical and theological thought over a good 1500 years.

And i do think that if you look seriously at the Hellenistic philosophical schools - Epicurianism, Stoicism, Neoplatonism - you don’t really find the origin of concepts of universal human dignity. Stoicism is especially droll and Eeyore-ish. “Oh, i’ve been wronged by those people. Well, i imagine they’ll be dead soon, just like me.” (I’m being pretty unfair!) It seems clear that these ideas descend from Christian morality. And it’s also clear that most medieval (northern medieval) cultures saw Christianity as a much more civilized culture than what came before.

The problem isn’t so much that Christian morality is ‘wrong’ (at least in the most abstract sense) but that’s it’s straining, like a belly about to burst its belt, with the belt being scripture and the belly being modern sociological developments that far outstrip what came before; and that also in order to keep the wolves at bay and the belly from popping from beyond the belt, modern Christianity has become increasingly hostile to secular culture and social developments.

1696

This is insightful, and may have been true at one point, but I’m not sure it is anymore.

Today, politics seems much more about some kind of fight to the death, of where the other side needs to be destroyed utterly, as they are made of absorbent monsters.

That was supposed to say abhorrent, but I’m going to leave that autocorrect, because I like the idea of sponge monsters.

1697

I always appreciate your input, Matt, and find it consistently thoughtful and valuable. There are several folks here whose contributions, no matter how much we disagree, encourage me to try to match them for insight, fair-mindedness, and graciousness. I know I don’t always succeed, but I hope it shows sometimes.