7 ms·

I think the abortion discussion is much easier than its made out. I like Peter Singers approach to ethics which sets the goal to be avoiding of suffering. Now t

I think the abortion discussion is much easier than its made out. I like Peter Singers approach to ethics which sets the goal to be avoiding of suffering. Now the question is easy: at what stage of the pregnancy can the being suffer? The entire abortion conversation is completely ruined by most people wearing glasses colored with existence bias.

marcoperaza 9y ago
If you like Peter Singer's approach so much, then you agree with him that one should be allowed to "abort" babies for a long time after birth as well? No? I guess it's not so easy after all.
- ajmurmann 9y ago
  Actually I do agree with that as well. Where I'm much more of a bigot is when it comes to the much more obvious issue of how we treat animals. I was a vegetarian for several years but have up on it because I didn't believe it was making a difference. If we had a vote though to ban animal slaughter and especially factory farming I'd vote for it in a heartbeat.
  - marcoperaza 9y ago
    >Actually I do agree with that as well. [...] If we had a vote though to ban animal slaughter and especially factory farming I'd vote for it in a heartbeat. So you're for literally killing babies years after birth, but against killing animals for food. What a time to be alive where such degeneracy is seriously entertained.
    - ajmurmann 9y ago
      It depends on the circumstances. We don't kill animals because we are hungry. We kill animals because we want more enjoyment from food. If you are somewhere starving and it's you it the rabbit, go for it. That's not the common situation though. Euthanasia is a much more complicated topic and I find it bewildering that we are focusing on this discussion on babies. I assume it's out of some notion of protecting the adorable innocence. I think it's important with these topics to try to keep emotions out of it because they just reflect biases we have built in due to evolution. Evolution of course is not your friend. Especially not after you've procreated.
    - Jotra7 9y ago
      You reactionaries love the word degeneracy so much. Is it a signal word or something?
- paulmd 9y ago
  You're being hyperbolic but we don't allow children to make medical decisions for themselves until the age of majority, and parents can choose to make medical decisions that they know will result in the death of a child (eg refusing treatment for life-threatening diseases due to religious concerns). So effectively yes, this is already the state of things, and there is no serious movement to restrict this form of post-birth abortion. Who would have imagined that all it would take for abortion to gain acceptance is to frame it as a religious liberty? (correct answer: anyone who's lived in America)
  - marcoperaza 9y ago
    >parents can choose to make medical decisions that they know will result in the death of a child (eg refusing treatment for life-threatening diseases due to religious concerns). That is false. Parents cannot legally deny their children life-saving treatment. Also, I'm not sure where I am being hyperbolic. Peter Singer literally does advocate for the "right" to kill young children for a long time after their birth. So if you say that Peter Singer offers an "easy" moral approach to abortion, I have to ask whether you actually do agree with his logic and follow it to the same ultimate conclusions that he does.
- jessaustin 9y ago
  I wouldn't argue that we should legalize killing infants and toddlers, but I would suggest that the tendency for the whole society to lose its collective shit about infanticide is related to our discomfort with the legal status of abortion. Ethically, there doesn't seem to be much difference between an infant one day before and one day after birth. Of course, ours is not an ethical society, so killing one is perfectly legal while killing the other will inspire a vituperative media circus, widespread hand-wringing, and decades in prison. Why is that? It seems that mothers who kill their young children function as scapegoats, so that we may have a focus for the hazy sense of guilt that many of us feel about abortion.
dcow 9y ago
So a fetus can't suffer? I think science has proven quite the opposite.
- gh02t 9y ago
  I think the point is that a fetus doesn't have the capacity to suffer before a certain point. A blastula of cells shortly after conception is not capable of feeling pain, but a fetus at 8 months likely is. OP is saying that it would be morally acceptable to terminate pregnancy before the point where we could establish that the fetus was capable of suffering.
  - dcow 9y ago
    Being unfamiliar with Peter Singers ethical approach, it was not clear to me from the parent comment alone that the notion of suffering extended also to a developed fetus. While an interesting approach, I'm not sure I agree that the ability to suffer is enough of a definition of humanity to use in isolation. It also does not account for scenarios where one might be willing to suffer on behalf of another. In other words, I'm not sure there exists an absolute scale of suffering which we can use to judge the morality of such a scenario. Again, maybe I'm not familiar enough with this ethical framework.
    - gh02t 9y ago
      Singer is definitively pro-abortion, for basically the reasons I mentioned. It's not terribly nuanced, it follows pretty directly from his basic ideas. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Singer#Abortion.2C_euthanasia.2C_and_infanticide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Singer#Abortion.2C_eutha... I'm not super expert about it either (at best a casual armchair philosopher), but from what I know Singers philosophy isn't specifically about suffering, it's about weighing interests. He assumes that the desire to avoid pain is one of the more important interests, hence it takes priority most (but not all) of the time. It's not black and white, it's more of a calculus about weighing the different competing interests of individuals, with certain classes of interests being given more weight than others. I think Singers arguments in favor of abortion actually go farther than what OP's post implied regarding the fetus' capacity to feel pain. Singer argues that a fetus is unable to have any self-interests (including the desire to avoid pain), hence the interests of the mother should be given priority. I think this is taking it too far myself; I can agree with the delineation of the fetus' capacity to feel pain, but it is not clear to me at what point (if any) Singer feels it would be immoral to abort a fetus.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
yters 9y ago
If avoiding suffering is the issue ten anyone can be murdered morally under the right conditions. I can stab you in your sleep (painlessly), and that would be fine according to this criterion.
- ajmurmann 9y ago
  It would certainly not OK unless you also painlessly kill my wife, family and friends. Of course I would still be afraid of it because we have the irrational existence bias built in. I'm not particularly upset about the fact that I didn't exist 100 years ago so why should I be upset about not existing 100 years from now as long as no suffering is involved. Of course knowing that our existence is about to end causes as agony due to our biases. That doesn't mean though that we as a rational society should allow these biased to set or goals. We need to take them into account though.
- pharrington 9y ago
  Morally, that is only true for the first iterative pass. We are social creatures.
wruza 9y ago
I think the main point is not who suffers, but who cares and why. We have a lot of people suffering around due to lots of reasons, but don't actually care to fix that. E.g. "abortion" after birth is biologically rejected by many, because it completely contradicts the evolutional efforts of a group to survive and reproduce. That's why children make many of us happy — if you're not happy or careful enough, then they're quickly dead, and your group is dead. Other animals have different strategies, from having hundreds of children to being pregnant for years, so child is ready to fall to the ground and go travel in five minutes. Suffering has nothing to do with it, it's just a biological motivator for both parent and child to escape pre-reproduction death with insignificant side-effects like really, really missing a nice car or just an ice cream. But while this topic is naturally highly dependent on "local" social rules, I think modern society should put responsibility and planning on the first place. If someone is not very sure that s/he can raise, care of, or simply enjoy the parenthood, it must be okay to abort it, unless that overweights all imaginable social programs. Like killing born children, for one. With modern society atomization and precision, abortion absolutely falls into "not your business" category in most places, unless one has very conservative and/or intrusive religious views, which is a bad thing itself, given how many completely different minds have to interact now on daily basis.
- ajmurmann 9y ago
  Your first paragraph explains what evolutionary forces have shaped our minds and societies. It's unclear why that should be a basis for ethics. If that was our goal we should all have ten children and user religious devotion to stay cohesive as a group.

marcoperaza 9y ago

If you like Peter Singer's approach so much, then you agree with him that one should be allowed to "abort" babies for a long time after birth as well? No? I guess it's not so easy after all.

ajmurmann 9y ago
Actually I do agree with that as well. Where I'm much more of a bigot is when it comes to the much more obvious issue of how we treat animals. I was a vegetarian for several years but have up on it because I didn't believe it was making a difference. If we had a vote though to ban animal slaughter and especially factory farming I'd vote for it in a heartbeat.
- marcoperaza 9y ago
  >Actually I do agree with that as well. [...] If we had a vote though to ban animal slaughter and especially factory farming I'd vote for it in a heartbeat. So you're for literally killing babies years after birth, but against killing animals for food. What a time to be alive where such degeneracy is seriously entertained.
  - ajmurmann 9y ago
    It depends on the circumstances. We don't kill animals because we are hungry. We kill animals because we want more enjoyment from food. If you are somewhere starving and it's you it the rabbit, go for it. That's not the common situation though. Euthanasia is a much more complicated topic and I find it bewildering that we are focusing on this discussion on babies. I assume it's out of some notion of protecting the adorable innocence. I think it's important with these topics to try to keep emotions out of it because they just reflect biases we have built in due to evolution. Evolution of course is not your friend. Especially not after you've procreated.
  - Jotra7 9y ago
    You reactionaries love the word degeneracy so much. Is it a signal word or something?
paulmd 9y ago
You're being hyperbolic but we don't allow children to make medical decisions for themselves until the age of majority, and parents can choose to make medical decisions that they know will result in the death of a child (eg refusing treatment for life-threatening diseases due to religious concerns). So effectively yes, this is already the state of things, and there is no serious movement to restrict this form of post-birth abortion. Who would have imagined that all it would take for abortion to gain acceptance is to frame it as a religious liberty? (correct answer: anyone who's lived in America)
- marcoperaza 9y ago
  >parents can choose to make medical decisions that they know will result in the death of a child (eg refusing treatment for life-threatening diseases due to religious concerns). That is false. Parents cannot legally deny their children life-saving treatment. Also, I'm not sure where I am being hyperbolic. Peter Singer literally does advocate for the "right" to kill young children for a long time after their birth. So if you say that Peter Singer offers an "easy" moral approach to abortion, I have to ask whether you actually do agree with his logic and follow it to the same ultimate conclusions that he does.
jessaustin 9y ago
I wouldn't argue that we should legalize killing infants and toddlers, but I would suggest that the tendency for the whole society to lose its collective shit about infanticide is related to our discomfort with the legal status of abortion. Ethically, there doesn't seem to be much difference between an infant one day before and one day after birth. Of course, ours is not an ethical society, so killing one is perfectly legal while killing the other will inspire a vituperative media circus, widespread hand-wringing, and decades in prison. Why is that? It seems that mothers who kill their young children function as scapegoats, so that we may have a focus for the hazy sense of guilt that many of us feel about abortion.

dcow 9y ago

So a fetus can't suffer? I think science has proven quite the opposite.

gh02t 9y ago
I think the point is that a fetus doesn't have the capacity to suffer before a certain point. A blastula of cells shortly after conception is not capable of feeling pain, but a fetus at 8 months likely is. OP is saying that it would be morally acceptable to terminate pregnancy before the point where we could establish that the fetus was capable of suffering.
- dcow 9y ago
  Being unfamiliar with Peter Singers ethical approach, it was not clear to me from the parent comment alone that the notion of suffering extended also to a developed fetus. While an interesting approach, I'm not sure I agree that the ability to suffer is enough of a definition of humanity to use in isolation. It also does not account for scenarios where one might be willing to suffer on behalf of another. In other words, I'm not sure there exists an absolute scale of suffering which we can use to judge the morality of such a scenario. Again, maybe I'm not familiar enough with this ethical framework.
  - gh02t 9y ago
    Singer is definitively pro-abortion, for basically the reasons I mentioned. It's not terribly nuanced, it follows pretty directly from his basic ideas. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Singer#Abortion.2C_euthanasia.2C_and_infanticide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Singer#Abortion.2C_eutha... I'm not super expert about it either (at best a casual armchair philosopher), but from what I know Singers philosophy isn't specifically about suffering, it's about weighing interests. He assumes that the desire to avoid pain is one of the more important interests, hence it takes priority most (but not all) of the time. It's not black and white, it's more of a calculus about weighing the different competing interests of individuals, with certain classes of interests being given more weight than others. I think Singers arguments in favor of abortion actually go farther than what OP's post implied regarding the fetus' capacity to feel pain. Singer argues that a fetus is unable to have any self-interests (including the desire to avoid pain), hence the interests of the mother should be given priority. I think this is taking it too far myself; I can agree with the delineation of the fetus' capacity to feel pain, but it is not clear to me at what point (if any) Singer feels it would be immoral to abort a fetus.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

yters 9y ago

If avoiding suffering is the issue ten anyone can be murdered morally under the right conditions. I can stab you in your sleep (painlessly), and that would be fine according to this criterion.

ajmurmann 9y ago
It would certainly not OK unless you also painlessly kill my wife, family and friends. Of course I would still be afraid of it because we have the irrational existence bias built in. I'm not particularly upset about the fact that I didn't exist 100 years ago so why should I be upset about not existing 100 years from now as long as no suffering is involved. Of course knowing that our existence is about to end causes as agony due to our biases. That doesn't mean though that we as a rational society should allow these biased to set or goals. We need to take them into account though.
pharrington 9y ago
Morally, that is only true for the first iterative pass. We are social creatures.

wruza 9y ago

I think the main point is not who suffers, but who cares and why. We have a lot of people suffering around due to lots of reasons, but don't actually care to fix that. E.g. "abortion" after birth is biologically rejected by many, because it completely contradicts the evolutional efforts of a group to survive and reproduce. That's why children make many of us happy — if you're not happy or careful enough, then they're quickly dead, and your group is dead. Other animals have different strategies, from having hundreds of children to being pregnant for years, so child is ready to fall to the ground and go travel in five minutes. Suffering has nothing to do with it, it's just a biological motivator for both parent and child to escape pre-reproduction death with insignificant side-effects like really, really missing a nice car or just an ice cream. But while this topic is naturally highly dependent on "local" social rules, I think modern society should put responsibility and planning on the first place. If someone is not very sure that s/he can raise, care of, or simply enjoy the parenthood, it must be okay to abort it, unless that overweights all imaginable social programs. Like killing born children, for one. With modern society atomization and precision, abortion absolutely falls into "not your business" category in most places, unless one has very conservative and/or intrusive religious views, which is a bad thing itself, given how many completely different minds have to interact now on daily basis.

ajmurmann 9y ago
Your first paragraph explains what evolutionary forces have shaped our minds and societies. It's unclear why that should be a basis for ethics. If that was our goal we should all have ten children and user religious devotion to stay cohesive as a group.