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And people back in the day were allowed to own slaves, yet we don’t look back on that an argue that we’ve regressed. Perhaps some day society will look back on
by RKearney 5y ago
And people back in the day were allowed to own slaves, yet we don’t look back on that an argue that we’ve regressed. Perhaps some day society will look back on abortions with the same disgust as we see slavery today.
- rmorey 5y agoThat would be because slavery is in fact bad, and reproductive healthcare is in fact good
- RKearney 5y agoOne could argue that ending a human life is fact bad.
- Redoubts 5y agoTo end, it must first begin.
- zdragnar 5y agoIt has human DNA unique from the mother and, in this case, an independent heartbeat. To the minds of the people supporting this law, that makes it alive, with its own rights independent of the mother's. Their argument, as such, is that it isnt a matter of reproductive healthcare at all, but murder. I know of a few states that would file multiple murder charges in the case of killing a pregnant woman, for example. All the comparisons to a handmaidens tale, yelling about womens rights and reporductive health will never change their mind... No different than the accusations of Larry Elder being a white supremacist.
- Falling3 5y ago> It has human DNA unique from the mother and, in this case, an independent heartbeat. I don't know why people use DNA uniqueness as a qualifier of anything. Are identical twins and clones not alive? Heartbeats aren't a measure of life either and, at 6 weeks, there is still no functioning heart. So despite the colloquial usage of the term, there is no heartbeat.
- zdragnar 5y agoThey may not be necessary conditions, but many consider them to be sufficient.
- guerrilla 5y agoI strongly support abortion but this is the dumbest argument there is. You're just perscribing new meanings to the words alive and life that almost nobody shares with the subset of people who do this, which by the way excludes biologists. Abortions kill living human animals and there are many good reasons why abortions are justified, but not being alive isn't one of them. Everything that applies to a fetus also applies to a coma patient dependent on life support. If you want arguments that don't suck then look at bodily autonomy, health (including mental), self-defense, etc. instead of attempting to water down concepts to support your position. Seriously fallacious, sad to see it's so popular.
- gibrown 5y agoEverything you just said also applies to amputating a limb. Or cutting out a cyst. Those seem like much closer analogies than a person in a coma.
- guerrilla 5y agoOther than the potential to be independent which the two share, yes, I think that does support my point. We have no need to reclassify limbs as "not alive" in order to have good reason to amputate them. Doing so would be seen as quite neurotic.
- Falling3 5y ago> Everything that applies to a fetus also applies to a coma patient dependent on life support Except that coma patients are not dependent on another specific individual to stay alive. If one needed your kidney to live, but you refused and they died, you would not be responsible for their death.
- guerrilla 5y agoRequiring another person to be alive does not make one not alive. Your argument doesn't suport that it does and I more or less agree with your argument, which is one reason that I supoort abortion. Perhaps you read too much into what I wrote.
- dang 5y agoPlease don't take HN threads further into predictable flamewar hell. We're trying for something else here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- dang 5y agoPlease don't take HN threads further into predictable flamewar hell. We're trying for something else here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- trophycase 5y agoActually, I say slavery is good, and abortion is bad. Who is right?
- bestcoder69 5y agoWhy do you say that? I'm interested to know.
- jedimind 5y agoIt's a "my word against yours" type of statement. He is trying to force the other person to bring evidence for their value judgments, but they, by definition, can not do that, since value judgments are not objective, so they just downvote without responding. Just trying to gather evidence would lead a thinking individual to reflect more about the nature of values, ethics and morals, but most people, doesn't matter if left or right, are almost equally dogmatic and most don't even understand anything about morality or ethics, they just blindly follow what society tells them. [0]"Study: Leftists just as likely to be dogmatic authoritarians as those on the right" [0]: https://www.psypost.org/2018/01/study-leftists-just-likely-dogmatic-authoritarians-right-50674 https://www.psypost.org/2018/01/study-leftists-just-likely-d...
- bestcoder69 5y agoYou can support value judgements with evidence easily. People do it all the time.
- jedimind 5y agoInstead of responding with a vapid statement, you should have just went right ahead and provided the evidence, but baselessly claiming that "people do it all the time" is infinitely easier I guess. Richard: Time travel is impossible, it violates fundamental laws of physics, the arrow of time just goes one way. Greg: * blindly downvotes * NONSENSE. You can time travel with a time machine easily. People do it all the time .
- dang 5y agoPlease don't take HN threads further into predictable flamewar hell. We're trying for something else here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- dang 5y agoPlease don't take HN threads further into predictable flamewar hell. We're trying for something else here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html