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Still a lot of countries which are not blue: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a5/Abortion_Laws.svg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commo

Still a lot of countries which are not blue: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a5/Abortion_Laws.svg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a5/Abortion... Which are also countries where overpopulation and destitution are most prevalent. Improving access to education, contraception, and abortion for women worldwide should be our #1 foreign aid objective. We should target this in place of food aid.

slumdev 6y ago
Abortion is evil. Placing it alongside education (a moral good) and contraception (bit of a toss-up, depends on who you ask) is dishonest.
- _Microft 6y ago
  If you want to hear an opinion that argues not from a moral standpoint but takes the view of someone who actually has to make such a decision, I can recommend listening to the very concise (< 2min) and thoughtful argument Pete Buttigieg makes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKOoWYfIzIw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKOoWYfIzIw
  - slumdev 6y ago
    I don't. I approach moral decisions from moral principles. Letting your emotions run you is a recipe for disaster and a mark of immaturity.
  - hackeraccount 6y ago
    Buttigieg's argument supposes that the question is if the government dictates the outcome or the woman does. It's true that at the end of the day someone is going to decide if a pregnancy is carried to term or not but Buttigieg is sweeping so much under the rug in a rush to get to a question that he feels comfortable with. He's avoiding things like: Is abortion a good thing or not? Should the government (and by extension people who don't support it) be paying for it? Should the government treat it as neutral - there are a raft of instances where we let people make decisions but we absolutely let government push a desired outcome. Don't smoke. Get exercise. Have kids. Get married. Don't be a bigot. Be patriotic. The annoying thing to me is that virtually everyone agrees that there's a space short of government dictating that abortions don't happen and not caring at all if they happen. Whne B. Clinton said "Safe, Legal and Rare" the question that people should have asked is "Why rare?" and "How do you want to make it rare?"
- lldbg 6y ago
  I just wanted you to know that I share your sentiment mostly, and that you are not alone in your opinion on this on HN. When is a life, a life? I was born very prematurely, as far as those things went back then. How can someone claim to be moral, yet be in favour of legalized murder of those babies in similar situations today? Certainly I do not think that the fetus is a person or a life (whatever that means) at four weeks, nor at conception. At best, abortion could be a necessary evil to save the life of the mother at later stages of the pregnancy.
  - slumdev 6y ago
    > How can someone claim to be moral, yet be in favour of legalized murder of those babies in similar situations today? It is not possible for that person to claim a moral high ground. It is a sign of a gravely malformed conscience. I think that most of those people haven't formed their own opinions, though, and mostly just regurgitate party platforms. It's not that they started from any reasonable base of knowledge and arrived at the wrong conclusion. It's just ignorance. While they could have been studying the ethical philosophers who made meaningful contributions on this topic, instead, they allowed social media and mass media to form their opinions for them.
- exgen 6y ago
  You are evil! This is a woman's body. This is woman's health. This is a woman's life. This is her decision. Nobody can decide for her. Not a fucking government! Not any fucking religion! Not fucking you!
- dang 6y ago
  Please don't take HN threads into flamewar hell. Nothing good is going to come of that, regardless of how right you are or how strongly you feel. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - slumdev 6y ago
    Allowing discussion of a divisive issue, while suppressing opposing views, is not a neutral moderation approach. The original post is itself flamebait and is not HN-worthy.
    - dang 6y ago
      Users took care of the article by flagging it. Your comment stood out in a bad way. When X is an inflammatory topic, entering with "$X is evil" is just exploding a bomb. That's not ok here.
      - slumdev 6y ago
        The users of this site express negative value judgments all the time, and frequently about each others' life's work. If that isn't inflammatory, I don't know what is. https://www.google.com/search?q=%22is+evil%22+site%3Anews.ycombinator.com https://www.google.com/search?q=%22is+evil%22+site%3Anews.yc...
        dang 6y ago
        Other people doing bad things is no excuse for you doing them. That's a recipe for a downward spiral. That reference is distorted, in any case. "$foo is evil" is a trope of standard internet hyperbole, that gets applied to things ironically. That is not at all the same thing as what you posted.
        slumdev 6y ago
        I don't mean to suggest that a bad action justifies another bad action. I mean to suggest that making a value judgment (directed against a thing, not against a person) is not a bad action. It's a normal part of discourse. Offense is in the eye of the beholder. Your point is taken, though. I'll watch it.

slumdev 6y ago

Abortion is evil. Placing it alongside education (a moral good) and contraception (bit of a toss-up, depends on who you ask) is dishonest.

_Microft 6y ago
If you want to hear an opinion that argues not from a moral standpoint but takes the view of someone who actually has to make such a decision, I can recommend listening to the very concise (< 2min) and thoughtful argument Pete Buttigieg makes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKOoWYfIzIw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKOoWYfIzIw
- slumdev 6y ago
  I don't. I approach moral decisions from moral principles. Letting your emotions run you is a recipe for disaster and a mark of immaturity.
- hackeraccount 6y ago
  Buttigieg's argument supposes that the question is if the government dictates the outcome or the woman does. It's true that at the end of the day someone is going to decide if a pregnancy is carried to term or not but Buttigieg is sweeping so much under the rug in a rush to get to a question that he feels comfortable with. He's avoiding things like: Is abortion a good thing or not? Should the government (and by extension people who don't support it) be paying for it? Should the government treat it as neutral - there are a raft of instances where we let people make decisions but we absolutely let government push a desired outcome. Don't smoke. Get exercise. Have kids. Get married. Don't be a bigot. Be patriotic. The annoying thing to me is that virtually everyone agrees that there's a space short of government dictating that abortions don't happen and not caring at all if they happen. Whne B. Clinton said "Safe, Legal and Rare" the question that people should have asked is "Why rare?" and "How do you want to make it rare?"
lldbg 6y ago
I just wanted you to know that I share your sentiment mostly, and that you are not alone in your opinion on this on HN. When is a life, a life? I was born very prematurely, as far as those things went back then. How can someone claim to be moral, yet be in favour of legalized murder of those babies in similar situations today? Certainly I do not think that the fetus is a person or a life (whatever that means) at four weeks, nor at conception. At best, abortion could be a necessary evil to save the life of the mother at later stages of the pregnancy.
- slumdev 6y ago
  > How can someone claim to be moral, yet be in favour of legalized murder of those babies in similar situations today? It is not possible for that person to claim a moral high ground. It is a sign of a gravely malformed conscience. I think that most of those people haven't formed their own opinions, though, and mostly just regurgitate party platforms. It's not that they started from any reasonable base of knowledge and arrived at the wrong conclusion. It's just ignorance. While they could have been studying the ethical philosophers who made meaningful contributions on this topic, instead, they allowed social media and mass media to form their opinions for them.
exgen 6y ago
You are evil! This is a woman's body. This is woman's health. This is a woman's life. This is her decision. Nobody can decide for her. Not a fucking government! Not any fucking religion! Not fucking you!
dang 6y ago
Please don't take HN threads into flamewar hell. Nothing good is going to come of that, regardless of how right you are or how strongly you feel. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- slumdev 6y ago
  Allowing discussion of a divisive issue, while suppressing opposing views, is not a neutral moderation approach. The original post is itself flamebait and is not HN-worthy.
  - dang 6y ago
    Users took care of the article by flagging it. Your comment stood out in a bad way. When X is an inflammatory topic, entering with "$X is evil" is just exploding a bomb. That's not ok here.
    - slumdev 6y ago
      The users of this site express negative value judgments all the time, and frequently about each others' life's work. If that isn't inflammatory, I don't know what is. https://www.google.com/search?q=%22is+evil%22+site%3Anews.ycombinator.com https://www.google.com/search?q=%22is+evil%22+site%3Anews.yc...
      - dang 6y ago
        Other people doing bad things is no excuse for you doing them. That's a recipe for a downward spiral. That reference is distorted, in any case. "$foo is evil" is a trope of standard internet hyperbole, that gets applied to things ironically. That is not at all the same thing as what you posted.
        slumdev 6y ago
        I don't mean to suggest that a bad action justifies another bad action. I mean to suggest that making a value judgment (directed against a thing, not against a person) is not a bad action. It's a normal part of discourse. Offense is in the eye of the beholder. Your point is taken, though. I'll watch it.