7 ms·

It's also hard to watch people I agree with repeatedly make the same nonsensical arguments for a position I hold, and then repeatedly get surprised when they do

by blep_ 4y ago

It's also hard to watch people I agree with repeatedly make the same nonsensical arguments for a position I hold, and then repeatedly get surprised when they don't work out. This isn't a privacy issue any more than the legality of anything else is a privacy issue. Things don't become legal just because they're done in secret. It's not even a controlling-women issue. The abortion debate is, and has always been, a question of whether fetuses are alive enough for the term "murder" to apply to them. The longer we refuse to meet the opponent on those grounds, the longer every single thing we say will continue to sound like "it's okay to murder people because I'm doing so privately". This isn't to say the loss of those rights is okay. But our side did just get called out on some obvious bullshit, and if we want to get those rights back, we really need to do better than tenuous strawman arguments. Unless, of course, our goal isn't to win, but to just be eternally aggrieved. I am increasingly convinced that is the case.

amethyst 4y ago
> Unless, of course, our goal isn't to win, but to just be eternally aggrieved. I am increasingly convinced that is the case. It's worked pretty well for the conservatives the past couple decades.
lliamander 4y ago
Sounds like I hold the opposite politics from you (I am a conservative who believes abortion is murder) but I too am continually frustrated when my own side makes obviously bad (or at least obviously unpersuasive) arguments. It's true that good argument's rarely change people's mind about the issue. But a good argument, one that shows you are capable of seeing things from the other side, can change another person's mind about you.
- isaacfrond 4y ago
  Making obviously unpersuasive arguments is the <i>whole freaking point!</i> The whole abortion debate is a political tool to rally people behind. It is irrational precisely for this too work. Abortion proponents are not interested in debate and a reasonable outcome.
- blep_ 4y ago
  Yep. This is not limited to any particular issue or ideology. It's not about accomplishing any of your policy goals anymore, it's about scoring grievance points. On the left, we accomplish this by tying everything into sexism and racism, even when other things would explain it better. Everyone knows sexism and racism are bad, so if we frame X as one of those, then X must be bad. It's intellectual laziness, even if you're right. The way I see internet debates is like this: am I going to change this person's mind? Probably not. But this is a public forum, and there are many other people watching. Some are young people poking their heads into politics for the first time. Those people are the ones dragging the Overton window around. I do not want their first impression of my side of an issue to be "wow, these people are just incoherently mad about everything, but the other side has a bunch of well-reasoned arguments". Regardless of my opinion on the premises of those arguments - and that's all this is, you're starting from different premises than me and you reached the only reasonable conclusion from there - that is going to affect their perceptions of my side and push them toward the people I disagree with.
tialaramex 4y ago
> a question of whether fetuses are alive enough for the term "murder" to apply to them. They're not people. Lots of things are alive - spiders, bacteria, grass, mushrooms, there are even cogent arguments for saying viruses may be alive. The use of the term "murder" for non-people is merely an attempt at emotional manipulation. Now, I don't think newborn babies are people either, but the nice thing about a newborn baby is that you can just give it to somebody else which simplifies the ethics considerably, it's no more difficult to decide what we should do about a newborn whose mother can't or won't keep it than for a puppy.
- philsnow 4y ago
  > I don't think newborn babies are people either What is it, exactly, about newborn babies (for now, I'll ask about embryos later) that makes you think they are "not people"? Is it something they do, or something they don't/can't do? Something else?
  - orwin 4y ago
    Probably consciousness and sense of self? (Not GP). Or lack thereof. Full disclosure: i don't think the debate is on these grounds, i think the violinist or the seed-people are better ways to think about abortion right now (and at least until unwanted children are completely taken care of by the society and not the mother, and until a pregnancy gives you a white year/have no influence on your career prospects). But I did some research last year about consciousness in animals (i was always a functionalist, Chamets made me an illusionnist, i wanted to understand what it meant for animals and for AI). I was quite shocked to learn that a baby in his first weeks had a worse sense than any newborn mammal, and than most birds. What does that mean? For functionalists (probably GP is one), going full moral utilitarist, killing a litter (to avoid getting overwhelmed by kittens) is probably ten time worse than killing a three weeks old baby. Luckily, while i think utilitarist moral intuitions are probably the most accurate, I'm not fully utilitarist, and this kind of intuition repulse me. All of this to say that thinking logically, being pro-life to avoid 'murder' should push people to go full vegan (or eating only insects and seafood), and aborting a cat or killing a litter should be prosecuted as well.
cycomanic 4y ago
> This isn't a privacy issue any more than the legality of anything else is a privacy issue. Things don't become legal just because they're done in secret. It's not even a controlling-women issue. > The abortion debate is, and has always been, a question of whether fetuses are alive enough for the term "murder" to apply to them. The longer we refuse to meet the opponent on those grounds, the longer every single thing we say will continue to sound like "it's okay to murder people because I'm doing so privately". I don't see how the abortion debate ever was about whether murder applies to fetuses. That's just been a figleaf. The self-proclaimed "pro-life" movement also strongly supports the death penalty, strongly oppose any sort of financial aid for poor children, are typically strong supporters of the military and violent intervention, unconditionally support the police in police violence cases, support corporal punishment of children etc.. "Pro-life" supporters have shown absolute disregard for born life, so I can not take serious a claim that they care about unborn life. Moreover, they oppose the measure which has been shown to be the most effective of reducing abortions, sexual education and availability of contraception. Make no mistake, the abortion debate has always been about forcing a specific belief system on everyone, once abortion rights have been taken away, they will move to the next part of their belief system to force on others.
- philsnow 4y ago
  Are you arguing against certain people or against certain positions? > The self-proclaimed "pro-life" movement also strongly supports the death penalty, strongly oppose any sort of financial aid for poor children, are typically strong supporters of the military and violent intervention, unconditionally support the police in police violence cases, support corporal punishment of children etc.. This is an incoherent straw man caricature of "the right". Unfortunately for us all, there are tons of people in every side of politics who hold incoherent sets of positions. They're the "sound of a potato rotating" [0] kind of folks. By "incoherent" I mean that I agree with you that it doesn't make sense for somebody to both be "pro-life" and also support the death penalty. But there are people who hold positions that are at least internally consistent. Why bother crafting arguments against the former (where you'll gain little if anything from winning) when you could against the latter (where you have a chance of changing the minds of a lot of people, if you make a strong argument)? [0] https://twitter.com/onlinegrapes/status/970945537435303936 https://twitter.com/onlinegrapes/status/970945537435303936
EntropyIsAHoax 4y ago
I don't really care whether fetuses are people are not. The fact is that bodily autonomy is never restricted so much, even when lives are at stake. I'm not forced to donate organs, to donate blood, or even to do something so simple as get a vaccine. Why is my bodily autonomy no longer important when the "life" at stake is inside my body? That's the crux of the debate, whether pregnant people have as much bodily autonomy as everyone else. If anti-choice people were to also concede that people should be forced to give up bodily autonomy in other areas like the ones I listed above, I would take them more seriously and we could discuss whether a fetus is a person. Until then it doesn't matter, it's just about restricting rights of others and almost always based in religious arguments and sexism.
- philsnow 4y ago
  > I don't really care whether fetuses are people are not. ... well, if they are, then abortion is murder, right? I don't see why you wouldn't care whether they "are people" or not. It seems crucial, at least if you think, like I do, that murder is just about the worst thing a person could do. > The fact is that bodily autonomy is never restricted so much [...] I'm not forced to donate organs, to donate blood, or even to do something so simple as get a vaccine. These are not in the same category. All of these might give another person a chance at living longer (and yes, some of them like organ donation in particular carry some risk of death for the donor). Abortion definitely takes away any possibility of living from another person. I don't buy the bodily autonomy argument. Yes, ~half the human population bears the burden of carrying children, and no, that's not fair. Everybody (men and women, of all generations) should be invested in living in a society where we don't create incentives for anybody to kill anybody else, up to and including not having sex outside of some setup/framework where any children produced will be loved and cared for. If we can't agree to something like that, then it seems like we would have to collectively accept that murder isn't all that bad.
  - EntropyIsAHoax 4y ago
    > some of them like organ donation in particular carry some risk of death for the donor Just like carrying a pregnancy to term. Especially in the US which has a very high maternal mortality rate. > if they are, then abortion is murder, right? If I'm giving someone a blood transfusion because their kidneys are failing and they'll die within minutes/hours if I stop, is it murder to disconnect us? Maybe so but I should still have the right to choose. I can only recommend this video which makes the point much better than I ever could https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2PAajlHbnU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2PAajlHbnU > Abortion definitely takes away any possibility of living from another person. This seems to contradict your idea that a fetus is already living in the first place? And if it is already living than just like organ donation, carrying the pregnancy to term "_might_ give another person a chance at living longer" just like organ donation. Remember miscarriages are common, stillbirths are common, dying in infancy is common. Organ/blood donation is extremely comparable to being pregnant if a fetus is alive: they are alive at the grace of and only because of your body.
guelo 4y ago
Why do we have to meet the opponent on their ground? The ground I want to fight on is the question of what can the government force me to do to my body. Some of the same right-wingers that were ready to revolt over the government telling them to put on a face mask are ok with government forced births. It's not about the damn fetuses, it's about using the power of the state to control sex. A lot of these same people are against HPV vaccines, again to control sex. They want life altering consequences if we don't behave the way they want us to.
swearwolf 4y ago
Meeting the opposition on these grounds is playing into their hands, though. They came up with the abortion is murder framing. Conceding to that viewpoint is like agreeing to play a game of tug of war in which you’ll be standing on a muddy hillside and your opponent will be standing on on concrete atop the hill. You are guaranteed to lose ground that way. Speaking of things that are frustrating, it’s incredibly frustrating how many people who claim to be pro-abortion seem to be mollified by the legal arguments that are being used to dismantle it. Sometimes I think the real genius of the US Constitution is the seemingly magical ability it has to appeal to men’s innate desire to feel like very smart, very rational beings through nitpicking, pedantic debate. Who cares whether Alito’s argument makes sense? Who cares whether RBG thought Roe was built on a solid legal foundation? The thing that actually matters is that a very important right - the right to not be forced to risk your own wellbeing for the sake of another - is being taken away. Whatever Constitutional interpretation got us there is about as meaningful and impressive as Joseph Smith putting on his stone glasses to interpret the word of God. The rationalization was reverse engineered from the conservative justice’s political viewpoint, not the other way around. Whatever the Supreme Court was intended to be, it is absolutely a political body now. Unfortunately only one side - the ones who successfully ramrodded this change into effect against the wishes of most Americans - seems to recognize it. The other side is so caught up in the childish fantasy of Smart People Openly Debating the Tough Issues With Logic and Reason™, so enamored of this Aaron Sorkin inspired belief that the right soaring speech with a well thought out argument will always win the day, that they are and will continue to be thoroughly trounced by the other side, who at least realize that politics is a dirty game now where anything goes.
vagrantJin 4y ago
That was well put and especially interesting self-introspection, something lacking in the current discourse. > Unless, of course, our goal isn't to win, but to just be eternally aggrieved. I am increasingly convinced that is the case Where there is smoke, there is fire.
spacemanmatt 4y ago
Until the anti-abortion side comes clean with their argument about exactly when and how a pregnant person loses their right to protect their body from anything including a fetus, it is a dishonest argument in which one side is allowed to repeatedly get away with blood libel.
danaris 4y ago
Even if a fetus were a person, and "murder" could apply, there is no other situation where we require a person to surrender their body—or even a part of it, like a redundant organ, or even just their blood—to save or preserve the life of another human. And I haven't heard anyone advocating for forced blood or organ donations, no matter their political leanings.
- anamax 4y ago
  > there is no other situation where we require a person to surrender their body—or even a part of it, , like a redundant organ, or even just their blood—to save or preserve the life of another human. Both the draft (or any form of compulsory service) and taxes are counter-examples. You're probably going to object to taxes, but it's reasonably well established that wealth is health. (It's also true that taxes are spent on things that don't save or preserve the life of another human.) More to the point, taxes take my time, which I can't possibly get back. Interesting enough, so does prison.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- blep_ 4y ago
  I agree! This is similar to the argument that eventually convinced me, back when I was anti-abortion. But it was still a shaky belief, because "can you kill a person in this situation" is inherently a harder question than "can you kill a non-person". (I've since gone further and no longer believe fetuses are people, no need to convince me here.) Framing this as "privacy" makes no sense. Framing it as "choice" can be coherent if you express it this well, but most people don't. (I think I weakened my own argument here by including that sentence, but too late to edit it now. What I was trying to express is that this isn't actually a sexism thing: I have no trouble imagining these people applying the same standard to men in a world where any human could get pregnant.)
chalst 4y ago
> The abortion debate is, and has always been, a question of whether fetuses are alive enough for the term "murder" to apply to them. In many countries, if a mother kills her baby in the first few months after birth, this is illegal, the liveliness of the baby is not in doubt, and yet the killing is not considered murder, but rather the lesser homicide of infanticide. Likewise, while the Old Testament prescribes severe penalities for violence that causes a woman to miscarry, it has nothing to say about expectant mothers pursuing abortions. The illegalisation of abortion seems to date back to the Emperor Constantine. It is a false dichotmoy, that either the fetus is not considered yet alive, or the state should treat the mother as a murderer.

by blep_ 4y ago

amethyst 4y ago

> Unless, of course, our goal isn't to win, but to just be eternally aggrieved. I am increasingly convinced that is the case. It's worked pretty well for the conservatives the past couple decades.

lliamander 4y ago

Sounds like I hold the opposite politics from you (I am a conservative who believes abortion is murder) but I too am continually frustrated when my own side makes obviously bad (or at least obviously unpersuasive) arguments. It's true that good argument's rarely change people's mind about the issue. But a good argument, one that shows you are capable of seeing things from the other side, can change another person's mind about you.

isaacfrond 4y ago
Making obviously unpersuasive arguments is the <i>whole freaking point!</i> The whole abortion debate is a political tool to rally people behind. It is irrational precisely for this too work. Abortion proponents are not interested in debate and a reasonable outcome.
blep_ 4y ago
Yep. This is not limited to any particular issue or ideology. It's not about accomplishing any of your policy goals anymore, it's about scoring grievance points. On the left, we accomplish this by tying everything into sexism and racism, even when other things would explain it better. Everyone knows sexism and racism are bad, so if we frame X as one of those, then X must be bad. It's intellectual laziness, even if you're right. The way I see internet debates is like this: am I going to change this person's mind? Probably not. But this is a public forum, and there are many other people watching. Some are young people poking their heads into politics for the first time. Those people are the ones dragging the Overton window around. I do not want their first impression of my side of an issue to be "wow, these people are just incoherently mad about everything, but the other side has a bunch of well-reasoned arguments". Regardless of my opinion on the premises of those arguments - and that's all this is, you're starting from different premises than me and you reached the only reasonable conclusion from there - that is going to affect their perceptions of my side and push them toward the people I disagree with.

tialaramex 4y ago

> a question of whether fetuses are alive enough for the term "murder" to apply to them. They're not people. Lots of things are alive - spiders, bacteria, grass, mushrooms, there are even cogent arguments for saying viruses may be alive. The use of the term "murder" for non-people is merely an attempt at emotional manipulation. Now, I don't think newborn babies are people either, but the nice thing about a newborn baby is that you can just give it to somebody else which simplifies the ethics considerably, it's no more difficult to decide what we should do about a newborn whose mother can't or won't keep it than for a puppy.

philsnow 4y ago
> I don't think newborn babies are people either What is it, exactly, about newborn babies (for now, I'll ask about embryos later) that makes you think they are "not people"? Is it something they do, or something they don't/can't do? Something else?
- orwin 4y ago
  Probably consciousness and sense of self? (Not GP). Or lack thereof. Full disclosure: i don't think the debate is on these grounds, i think the violinist or the seed-people are better ways to think about abortion right now (and at least until unwanted children are completely taken care of by the society and not the mother, and until a pregnancy gives you a white year/have no influence on your career prospects). But I did some research last year about consciousness in animals (i was always a functionalist, Chamets made me an illusionnist, i wanted to understand what it meant for animals and for AI). I was quite shocked to learn that a baby in his first weeks had a worse sense than any newborn mammal, and than most birds. What does that mean? For functionalists (probably GP is one), going full moral utilitarist, killing a litter (to avoid getting overwhelmed by kittens) is probably ten time worse than killing a three weeks old baby. Luckily, while i think utilitarist moral intuitions are probably the most accurate, I'm not fully utilitarist, and this kind of intuition repulse me. All of this to say that thinking logically, being pro-life to avoid 'murder' should push people to go full vegan (or eating only insects and seafood), and aborting a cat or killing a litter should be prosecuted as well.

cycomanic 4y ago

> This isn't a privacy issue any more than the legality of anything else is a privacy issue. Things don't become legal just because they're done in secret. It's not even a controlling-women issue. > The abortion debate is, and has always been, a question of whether fetuses are alive enough for the term "murder" to apply to them. The longer we refuse to meet the opponent on those grounds, the longer every single thing we say will continue to sound like "it's okay to murder people because I'm doing so privately". I don't see how the abortion debate ever was about whether murder applies to fetuses. That's just been a figleaf. The self-proclaimed "pro-life" movement also strongly supports the death penalty, strongly oppose any sort of financial aid for poor children, are typically strong supporters of the military and violent intervention, unconditionally support the police in police violence cases, support corporal punishment of children etc.. "Pro-life" supporters have shown absolute disregard for born life, so I can not take serious a claim that they care about unborn life. Moreover, they oppose the measure which has been shown to be the most effective of reducing abortions, sexual education and availability of contraception. Make no mistake, the abortion debate has always been about forcing a specific belief system on everyone, once abortion rights have been taken away, they will move to the next part of their belief system to force on others.

philsnow 4y ago
Are you arguing against certain people or against certain positions? > The self-proclaimed "pro-life" movement also strongly supports the death penalty, strongly oppose any sort of financial aid for poor children, are typically strong supporters of the military and violent intervention, unconditionally support the police in police violence cases, support corporal punishment of children etc.. This is an incoherent straw man caricature of "the right". Unfortunately for us all, there are tons of people in every side of politics who hold incoherent sets of positions. They're the "sound of a potato rotating" [0] kind of folks. By "incoherent" I mean that I agree with you that it doesn't make sense for somebody to both be "pro-life" and also support the death penalty. But there are people who hold positions that are at least internally consistent. Why bother crafting arguments against the former (where you'll gain little if anything from winning) when you could against the latter (where you have a chance of changing the minds of a lot of people, if you make a strong argument)? [0] https://twitter.com/onlinegrapes/status/970945537435303936 https://twitter.com/onlinegrapes/status/970945537435303936

EntropyIsAHoax 4y ago

I don't really care whether fetuses are people are not. The fact is that bodily autonomy is never restricted so much, even when lives are at stake. I'm not forced to donate organs, to donate blood, or even to do something so simple as get a vaccine. Why is my bodily autonomy no longer important when the "life" at stake is inside my body? That's the crux of the debate, whether pregnant people have as much bodily autonomy as everyone else. If anti-choice people were to also concede that people should be forced to give up bodily autonomy in other areas like the ones I listed above, I would take them more seriously and we could discuss whether a fetus is a person. Until then it doesn't matter, it's just about restricting rights of others and almost always based in religious arguments and sexism.

philsnow 4y ago
> I don't really care whether fetuses are people are not. ... well, if they are, then abortion is murder, right? I don't see why you wouldn't care whether they "are people" or not. It seems crucial, at least if you think, like I do, that murder is just about the worst thing a person could do. > The fact is that bodily autonomy is never restricted so much [...] I'm not forced to donate organs, to donate blood, or even to do something so simple as get a vaccine. These are not in the same category. All of these might give another person a chance at living longer (and yes, some of them like organ donation in particular carry some risk of death for the donor). Abortion definitely takes away any possibility of living from another person. I don't buy the bodily autonomy argument. Yes, ~half the human population bears the burden of carrying children, and no, that's not fair. Everybody (men and women, of all generations) should be invested in living in a society where we don't create incentives for anybody to kill anybody else, up to and including not having sex outside of some setup/framework where any children produced will be loved and cared for. If we can't agree to something like that, then it seems like we would have to collectively accept that murder isn't all that bad.
- EntropyIsAHoax 4y ago
  > some of them like organ donation in particular carry some risk of death for the donor Just like carrying a pregnancy to term. Especially in the US which has a very high maternal mortality rate. > if they are, then abortion is murder, right? If I'm giving someone a blood transfusion because their kidneys are failing and they'll die within minutes/hours if I stop, is it murder to disconnect us? Maybe so but I should still have the right to choose. I can only recommend this video which makes the point much better than I ever could https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2PAajlHbnU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2PAajlHbnU > Abortion definitely takes away any possibility of living from another person. This seems to contradict your idea that a fetus is already living in the first place? And if it is already living than just like organ donation, carrying the pregnancy to term "_might_ give another person a chance at living longer" just like organ donation. Remember miscarriages are common, stillbirths are common, dying in infancy is common. Organ/blood donation is extremely comparable to being pregnant if a fetus is alive: they are alive at the grace of and only because of your body.

guelo 4y ago

Why do we have to meet the opponent on their ground? The ground I want to fight on is the question of what can the government force me to do to my body. Some of the same right-wingers that were ready to revolt over the government telling them to put on a face mask are ok with government forced births. It's not about the damn fetuses, it's about using the power of the state to control sex. A lot of these same people are against HPV vaccines, again to control sex. They want life altering consequences if we don't behave the way they want us to.

swearwolf 4y ago

Meeting the opposition on these grounds is playing into their hands, though. They came up with the abortion is murder framing. Conceding to that viewpoint is like agreeing to play a game of tug of war in which you’ll be standing on a muddy hillside and your opponent will be standing on on concrete atop the hill. You are guaranteed to lose ground that way. Speaking of things that are frustrating, it’s incredibly frustrating how many people who claim to be pro-abortion seem to be mollified by the legal arguments that are being used to dismantle it. Sometimes I think the real genius of the US Constitution is the seemingly magical ability it has to appeal to men’s innate desire to feel like very smart, very rational beings through nitpicking, pedantic debate. Who cares whether Alito’s argument makes sense? Who cares whether RBG thought Roe was built on a solid legal foundation? The thing that actually matters is that a very important right - the right to not be forced to risk your own wellbeing for the sake of another - is being taken away. Whatever Constitutional interpretation got us there is about as meaningful and impressive as Joseph Smith putting on his stone glasses to interpret the word of God. The rationalization was reverse engineered from the conservative justice’s political viewpoint, not the other way around. Whatever the Supreme Court was intended to be, it is absolutely a political body now. Unfortunately only one side - the ones who successfully ramrodded this change into effect against the wishes of most Americans - seems to recognize it. The other side is so caught up in the childish fantasy of Smart People Openly Debating the Tough Issues With Logic and Reason™, so enamored of this Aaron Sorkin inspired belief that the right soaring speech with a well thought out argument will always win the day, that they are and will continue to be thoroughly trounced by the other side, who at least realize that politics is a dirty game now where anything goes.

vagrantJin 4y ago

That was well put and especially interesting self-introspection, something lacking in the current discourse. > Unless, of course, our goal isn't to win, but to just be eternally aggrieved. I am increasingly convinced that is the case Where there is smoke, there is fire.

spacemanmatt 4y ago

Until the anti-abortion side comes clean with their argument about exactly when and how a pregnant person loses their right to protect their body from anything including a fetus, it is a dishonest argument in which one side is allowed to repeatedly get away with blood libel.

danaris 4y ago

Even if a fetus were a person, and "murder" could apply, there is no other situation where we require a person to surrender their body—or even a part of it, like a redundant organ, or even just their blood—to save or preserve the life of another human. And I haven't heard anyone advocating for forced blood or organ donations, no matter their political leanings.

anamax 4y ago
> there is no other situation where we require a person to surrender their body—or even a part of it, , like a redundant organ, or even just their blood—to save or preserve the life of another human. Both the draft (or any form of compulsory service) and taxes are counter-examples. You're probably going to object to taxes, but it's reasonably well established that wealth is health. (It's also true that taxes are spent on things that don't save or preserve the life of another human.) More to the point, taxes take my time, which I can't possibly get back. Interesting enough, so does prison.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
blep_ 4y ago
I agree! This is similar to the argument that eventually convinced me, back when I was anti-abortion. But it was still a shaky belief, because "can you kill a person in this situation" is inherently a harder question than "can you kill a non-person". (I've since gone further and no longer believe fetuses are people, no need to convince me here.) Framing this as "privacy" makes no sense. Framing it as "choice" can be coherent if you express it this well, but most people don't. (I think I weakened my own argument here by including that sentence, but too late to edit it now. What I was trying to express is that this isn't actually a sexism thing: I have no trouble imagining these people applying the same standard to men in a world where any human could get pregnant.)

chalst 4y ago

> The abortion debate is, and has always been, a question of whether fetuses are alive enough for the term "murder" to apply to them. In many countries, if a mother kills her baby in the first few months after birth, this is illegal, the liveliness of the baby is not in doubt, and yet the killing is not considered murder, but rather the lesser homicide of infanticide. Likewise, while the Old Testament prescribes severe penalities for violence that causes a woman to miscarry, it has nothing to say about expectant mothers pursuing abortions. The illegalisation of abortion seems to date back to the Emperor Constantine. It is a false dichotmoy, that either the fetus is not considered yet alive, or the state should treat the mother as a murderer.