Is abortion morally justified and if so until what time?

[Yuurei]

So if someone has a miscarriage they are morally reprehensible?

A disturbing number of people think so.

 

[EcK]

I would take it on a case by case basis, leaning towards the side of yes, it’s morally justified. There are so many cases in which the mother’s life is in danger, in which case if she has other children they’re in danger of being left motherless, etc. There are so many women who’ve died preventable deaths because the doctor refused to perform an abortion. Is it morally okay to refuse to save a dying woman when you’re capable of doing so?

Have you read the OP? Because I clearly state there that I believe the life the mother comes before that of the child at times when her life is in danger. So I agree with you. And the only people I hear saying that people WANT to put the life of the child before that of the mother are feminists doing anti-male propaganda. Not a single person I've ever spoken to or read about has ever said that. Now yes I'm sure there are some nutjobs saying the contrary but there are people thinking the reptile aliens from V are real so.. pinch of salt.
I don't think the life of the mother is worth more than that of the child, however if it's the choice between two lives you gotta prioritize the one, as you said, who have loved ones, friends, kids etc. It's not a pleasant calculus but it's nevertheless an inevitable logical conclusion if one has to choose between two lives in this case.

I think you mentioned that you don’t agree with the bodily autonomy argument, but I do. Part of the bodily autonomy argument is that someone else can’t use your body without your consent. Even corpses have that right, so if you take that right away from a pregnant woman, you’re giving her less rights than that of a corpse.

Well yeah but you can use that same bodily autonomy argument about the fetus. Furthermore I'm pretty sure you'd have to give priority to a right to life over that of bodily autonomy (as all other rights depend on one's being alive - so it must therefore take precedence over all other rights).
If we start saying that one life is worth more than the other we open the door to the killing of 'inferior people' of all kinds in the absence of a 'need' to kill (such as self defense or if it's either one life or the other like in the example above).

Also people generally don’t get abortions just for shits and gigs. It has to be a dire situation to even consider getting an abortion. No one wants to do that. It’s traumatic, dangerous and it often leaves people infertile afterwards.

Well I don't know if it's for 'shits and gigs' - but from the stats I've seen the vast majority of abortions seem to be out of convenience. Killing someone to increase your income later in life is not a moral act. Neither is killing someone because 'your life is complicated right now'.

Finally I have to ask, are you a male? If so you’ll never be in danger from a pregnancy, you’ll never have to carry a rapist’s child, etc. So while it’s a fascinating debate for you, it’s a very real and tragic issue for many others. I saw that you told someone not to participate if it was a personal topic for them. I disagree - I think if someone has personal experience with this topic, they are the most qualified to participate. We can learn more about the reality of it from people who’ve actually experienced it.

Irrelevant. Should we ask murderers if murder is moral given that they've 'lived it'. Facetious argument. You seem to be confusing empathy with ethics: they are separate. Empathy is about as praise worthy an achievement as height or iq. It is mostly an unvoluntary personality traits even the most lazy can embody. And of course to point out the obvious, i could turn your argument on its head by stating that we should ask children if they'd have prefered being killed in the womb. How d'ya think this poll would come out? Would you prefer to have been aborted? But it's of freaking course irrelevant as ethics are not a democratic process, just pointing out how poor your argument is. Still leaps and bounds above most on this thread so, so there's that.

 

[Lark]

I dont think its useful to conflate abortion with infanticide, as a lot of people do.

Not least because a lot of people who find they can not carry a baby to full term, experience miscarriages etc. etc. can be effected by that.

Personally, I think this is something which is it very hard to generalise about. Not to necessarily conflate law with morality, since that is not always the case, but in the ROI's recent vote to make abortion more freely available they choose to generalise from one or two cases which while terribly tragic are definitely not typical.

I personally do not feel that always makes for good law as it applies to those in those circumstances and those that very much are not. Although, I also think that it was a case of a decision made which was probably correct but made for the wrong reasons, does that matter? I think it does but perhaps the consequences matter the most.

Another reason that mentioned the miscarriage point was that I would like to interrogate what is meant by "moral justification" in the first place.

A great deal of the opposition to terminations or abortion, besides the conflating of abortion with infanticide (a closer parallel could be drawn between abortion properly understood and practiced would be onanism in males, which is also taboo in one source of morality, ie scriptural tradition for the abrahamic faiths), is that it was considered an interference with "nature" or "natural processes".

If opposing abortion as a medical intervention, in this way, then you will be opposing most forms of artificial contraception too, which are generally, I find, discussed as alternatives to abortion. Which will mean recommending, while there are other forms of contraception which dont involve "artificial measures", celibacy or other sorts of discipline to couples, most definitely an end to recreational sex with random partners. Most of the people I have known who oppose it would not favour those radical changes.

If your criticism of it does not involve "natural law", which has been too easily dismissed as a "naturalistic logical fallacy" by a lot of thinkers lately, then you could discuss it on the basis of some sort of Kantian harm principle, ie obligations to prevent or reduce harm. It is hard to do that if the point at which an abortion or termination is permissible makes it akin to onanism or even where a male not to engage in onanism after a time passes the body would automatically discharge material involuntarily in sleep.

I do mention it because even when the procedure goes to plan it can be harmful, there's accounts of women harmed by abortions for anyone who chooses to look for them. I mention this because often this topic is discussed in a sort of abstract choice between an imperfect or bad choice and a perfect or good choice, in reality it is much more often instead a choice between two highly imperfect undesirable choices.

The other thing, when considering Kant, is his moral categorical imperative, that is of self-determination, which if you are talking about genetic matter as opposed to an unborn child (I see that as something that can and should be determined by medical science and the term limits they establish) then it is the mother whose self-determination matters. I know that some people will argue that men ought to have a say given their role in the process of begetting children. I dont agree with that at all. The reality is that men and women are not equal in the process of conception, child bearing and child birth. Men do have an important role but its different and over their part they are sovereign but not that of the women. That sovereignty is important and men ought to think more about that, at least I think so, than they do about women's role in things.

The only other real reference point in terms of moral justification or ethics that I can think of are virtue ethics and Aristotle, which I'm not sure whether or not anyone wants to interject with that sort of thing.

I also consider a lot of things in relation to questions like this that I dont think a lot of people do or would.

Like I do think about what the popularity of abortion, policies like the one child policy in China, will influence ethnic and cultural diversity through demographics (demographics are destiny). I dont believe in ethno-nationalism, nor do I believe in the supremacy of any mono-culture, I actually believe the opposite to be true. However, I know there are people who definitely do believe those things and they are liable to shape the world in accordance with that view by getting certain trends to become popular in the societies they consider to be "other".

Even if its not valued at a cultural level that diversity is pretty important at the genetic level, so even if the dreams of different racist groups could be completed by a single exclusive ethnicity surviving for the human species it would be a very, very bad thing. This is why its vitally important to understand that one of the quickest ways to spell doom for any nation is to restrict the ethnic mix (emigration and immigration flows) in the way most racists are most comfortable with.

Because of the regard liberalism has for individual freedom, sovereignty, free agency and choice, all good things, abortion tends to align with liberalism. The thing is the good things which comprise liberalism are the perfect Trojan Horse for norms which will totally and utterly crash demographics.

There are a TON of the present preoccupying causes of liberals which if you appraise them amount to "less births, less births, less births and that'll mean less births". I am still waiting for the aggressive push in terms of homosexuality, transexuality etc. to jump the shark, and I am actually sure it will eventually, although not so long as cartoon villain versions of religion and other authorities survive in the popular imagination.

The "death wish" tendencies are alive and well in the conservative quarters too but they take a different shape, more obviously Malthusian maybe. I think the fight against affordable or tax funded public health services is part of that, so is the attitude to gun control, or rather gun related deaths (the majority of which are suicides of gun owners themselves). Although the two things about conservatism I think are the most enduring, everywhere it exists, are "why are the poor so numerous" and "less eligibility" and those things are definitely part of it. That's a little off topic but I wouldnt say entirely so.

 

[wildmoon]

You seem to be confusing empathy with ethics: they are separate.

Okay, so out of curiosity, what is the point of ethics without empathy? I would think that ethics arose from empathy. Like, you can’t have one without the other.

i could turn your argument on its head by stating that we should ask children if they'd have prefered being killed in the womb. How d'ya think this poll would come out?

Fair point. I actually don’t have an argument against that, other than I don’t think of a foetus as being fully a child yet.

Still leaps and bounds above most on this thread so, so there's that.

Well thanks lol.

Here’s a hypothetical situation: If abortion was declared to be unethical at certain times, what’s to stop it from being declared unethical at all times? And by extension becoming illegal at all times? If that were to happen then women dying from ectopic pregnancies etc. couldn’t legally be saved. I think it’s a slippery slope from one premise to the other.

 

[Lark]

Okay, so out of curiosity, what is the point of ethics without empathy? I would think that ethics arose from empathy. Like, you can’t have one without the other.


Fair point. I actually don’t have an argument against that, other than I don’t think of a foetus as being fully a child yet.


Well thanks lol.

Here’s a hypothetical situation: If abortion was declared to be unethical at certain times, what’s to stop it from being declared unethical at all times? And by extension becoming illegal at all times? If that were to happen then women dying from ectopic pregnancies etc. couldn’t legally be saved. I think it’s a slippery slope from one premise to the other.

There's a good book called "Man for Himself" by Erich Fromm (I think its an abbreviation of the life boats saying "Every Man For Himself") which is a psycho-analytical interrogation of ethics that reaches a similar conclusion about empathy and ethics.

Its a bit of a response to Freud's conclusion in Civilisation and Its Discontents that the traditional teaching of "Love others as you love yourself" was totally absurd and dangerous (let alone any Christian attempt to go even further beyond that rule), I hadnt realised that at the time I read it but subsequently realised it reading Freud's book.

Fromm also tackles it in "Freud, The Greatness and Limitations of His Thought".

 

[Maou]

So if someone has a miscarriage they are morally reprehensible?

You do not choose to have a miscarriage. Therefore no one is responsible, and as a result no moral or ethical wrongs were committed. This is a non-sequitur.

 

[EcK]

You do not choose to have a miscarriage. Therefore no one is responsible, and as a result no moral or ethical wrongs were committed. This is a non-sequitur.

Yes, this. it's akin to asking who's morally responsible for the meteorite strike that ended the reign of the dinosaurs. It's either god if god exists or no one. There is no ethics without agency.

 

[Lark]

You do not choose to have a miscarriage. Therefore no one is responsible, and as a result no moral or ethical wrongs were committed. This is a non-sequitur.

Which is why the example of onanism is closer to abortion.

Why do you say it is a non-sequitur?

 

[Lark]

Yes, this. it's akin to asking who's morally responsible for the meteorite strike that ended the reign of the dinosaurs. It's either god if god exists or no one. There is no ethics without agency.

I'm not sure there's any equivalence to questions about the existence of God, maybe you want to elaborate.

Seeing as you are linking choice and responsibility what if the women did not choose to become pregnant?

Or does their having sex with a man entail consent to or a desire to or a choice to become pregnant?

 

[Maou]

Which is why the example of onanism is closer to abortion.

Why do you say it is a non-sequitur?

Because you posted it in a thread about abortion. So you're implying miscarriage is a choice. Then you presented it as a question, with the implied conclusion that it is comparable to abortion morality wise (or to be able to receive judgement morally wise), which does not match the logical conclusion of the original argument presented by Eck. Which is if the choice of aborting a fetus is moral/ethical or not. A miscarriage is not a choice to begin with, so your statement didn't logically follow as an appropriate response to begin with.

 

[Lark]

Because you posted it in a thread about abortion. So you're implying miscarriage is a choice. Then you presented it as a question, with the implied conclusion that it is comparable to abortion morality wise (or to be able to receive judgement morally wise), which does not match the logical conclusion of the original argument presented by Eck. Which is if the choice of aborting a fetus is moral/ethical or not. A miscarriage is not a choice to begin with, so your statement didn't logically follow as an appropriate response to begin with.

A miscarriage is not infanticide, therefore the abortion of a fetus is not infanticide either.

The argument being put forward was that abortion was morally unjustifiable because it was infanticide.

Just how simply, and just how short, I have to make points on this forum at the moment is really depressing me.

It really makes me feel like my posting is becoming more autistic. Its something I remember feeling before when I decided to stop posting. It could just be a bunch of online norms have an operant conditioning effect. Its good to be aware of this sort of thing.

 

[Grand Admiral Crunch]

Antinatalists aren't necessarily pro-abortion, but some of their arguments against procreation might apply to justifying abortion.

Having children is not life-affirming: it’s immoral | Aeon Essays

 

[Maou]

A miscarriage is not infanticide, therefore the abortion of a fetus is not infanticide either.

The argument being put forward was that abortion was morally unjustifiable because it was infanticide.

Just how simply, and just how short, I have to make points on this forum at the moment is really depressing me.

It really makes me feel like my posting is becoming more autistic. Its something I remember feeling before when I decided to stop posting. It could just be a bunch of online norms have an operant conditioning effect. Its good to be aware of this sort of thing.

Abortion is infanticide, miscarriage is not. Abortion is intentional, miscarriage is not. Abortion is a man made procedure, miscarriages happen naturally.

You are saying abortion isn't infanticide when the very definition of infanticide is the intentional killing of babies That is exactly what abortion is. Miscarriages are not intentional (usually). It doesn't matter if they are in the womb or not. If you stab a pregnant mother, its still considered double homicide.

 

[Lark]

Abortion is infanticide, miscarriage is not. Abortion is intentional, miscarriage is not. Abortion is a man made procedure, miscarriages happen naturally.

You are saying abortion isn't infanticide when the very definition of infanticide is the intentional killing of babies That is exactly what abortion is. Miscarriages are not intentional (usually). It doesn't matter if they are in the womb or not. If you stab a pregnant mother, its still considered double homicide.

There can be no agreement between us on this point. I believe you are wrong and the medical evidence backs up my perspective.

Abortion is not the intentional killing of babies, it is the abortion of genetic matter which is not yet a baby, as I've said before it would be equivocal to male onanism.

Though your mind is made up and that's grand, maybe if the caliphat had lasted you'd have been at home there. I can appreciate it could be difficult for you living in a part of the world where yours in the minority opinion.

 

[Maou]

There can be no agreement between us on this point. I believe you are wrong and the medical evidence backs up my perspective.

Abortion is not the intentional killing of babies, it is the abortion of genetic matter which is not yet a baby, as I've said before it would be equivocal to male onanism.

Though your mind is made up and that's grand, maybe if the caliphat had lasted you'd have been at home there. I can appreciate it could be difficult for you living in a part of the world where yours in the minority opinion.

I wasn't seeking agreement, I am just pointing out the error in your logic.

Are you seriously equating a fetus (which contains the genetic information of both parents) with masturbation?

My original statement is Life is Life. I made no distinctions in my other posts (not regarding you) about when a baby is a baby. I think its already a human being as long as it is alive after conception. Just because it cannot talk or think yet, doesn't make it not human. Abortion just a logical and cold way to justify killing it. It is the demonization of life. Oh but Its okay! It is not human!/s