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We don't use this standard of reasoning for anything else. If abortion is murder then it ought to be banned regardless of how effective the ban may be. Your jo

We don't use this standard of reasoning for anything else. If abortion is murder then it ought to be banned regardless of how effective the ban may be. Your job is to argue that abortion is not murder. Any argument that sidesteps the morality of abortion is not going to convince anyone.

rswail 4y ago
> Your job is to argue that abortion is not murder. Sure, and your job is to argue that abortion causes the death of a viable human life. Murder is defined as "the unlawful premeditated killing of one human being by another." Abortion isn't that.
- overrun11 4y ago
  Yeah I reject that definition and am not particularly considered with dictionary definitions when determining what is moral. By this definition we couldn't consider any killing sanctioned by the state to be murder.
- overrun11 4y ago
  You'll need to carve out a definition of "viable" that excludes late term fetuses that could survive outside the womb but includes born babies that cannot survive without the care of adults.
colinmhayes 4y ago
If you drink and drive and cause a car crash that requires you give a blood transfusion is it murder to refuse? I think hardly anyone would say that, because society has decided the right of bodily autonomy is paramount. I don't see abortion as any different from refusing to save someone you hurt in a car crash you caused.
- aftbit 4y ago
  In this _particular_ case, I think it would indeed be considered vehicular homicide if you drove drunk and killed someone. If you could and did save them by giving a blood transfusion, then you would likely still be guilty of some crime for hitting them in the first place, but not homicide.
  - colinmhayes 4y ago
    Sure, change drunk to really tired and reconsider.
  - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
    But that doesn't change anything - even if this person is a criminal, you still would not be allowed to use their blood for a transfusion without their concent. No additional crimes would result from the refusal itself.
- overrun11 4y ago
  In the United States a warrant is sufficient for a compulsory blood test to check blood alcohol levels. If we accept that proving guilt in court is an appropriate reason to violate bodily autonomy than so too would saving the life of someone who's been endangered by your actions. Morally however, I also do think it's wrong to not give the blood transfusion because the burden is small and the cost of not doing so is large. Whether it rises to the level of murder is a tougher question that I think would depend on intent. Do you think a suicidal pilot has the right to stop flying a plane mid-flight even if she knows that no one else on the plane will be capable of landing it?
  - colinmhayes 4y ago
    > If we accept that proving guilt in court is an appropriate reason to violate bodily autonomy than so too would saving the life of someone who's been endangered by your actions. But we haven't decided that saving the life of someone who's been endangered by your actions is an appropriate reason to violate bodily autonomy. That's the whole point, society has decided that you can refuse to give the transfusion, even it leads to a death you essentially caused.
    - overrun11 4y ago
      Society has already decided that proving guilt in a drunk driving case is a sufficient reason to violate bodily autonomy. I argue that saving a life is far more important than proving guilt for a fairly petty crime, therefore by the already accepted standard, it would be permissible to force the transfusion for this purpose.
  - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
    > Do you think a suicidal pilot has the right to stop flying a plane mid-flight Interesting example, but I don't think such a pilot whould cares about rights. The better question might be - what could you do to force such a pilot to fly the plane, and it appears that you could only plead - they would not be afraid of being shot (which is illegal anyway), and torture is very clearly illegal.
- _-david-_ 4y ago
  Most people believe you are obligated to provide basic care (food, water, shelter). Anything above that is not an obligation and not murder. That is not to say you shouldn't go above that, but just that it is not murder if you don't provide anything above the basics.
- missingrib 4y ago
  >I think hardly anyone would say that On the contrary, I think it would be very popular to say that someone who directly caused the crash out of negligence should be required to give blood to save the victim. You're referring to a version of the violinist argument: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Defense_of_Abortion#The_violinist https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Defense_of_Abortion#The_viol... Your version is actually pretty similar to a normal pregnancy (the woman brought about the pregnancy through her actions and now has to decide whether its morally okay to stop the babies' use of her body). I think it's very hard to justify abortion along these lines and might be easier just to try to show that the fetus is non-human and doesn't have rights.
divided 4y ago
Abortion is clearly not murder. Treating it as such has horrible implications. Let’s start with the belief that life starts at conception. With this belief, a fetus is equivalent in protection to a newborn. Following this, voluntarily ending it is murder. Then what about miscarriage? If a newborn were to die under unknown circumstances, there should be an investigation. Should then all pregnant people be investigated for potential negligence or abuse for this already traumatizing situation? 1/3 to 1/2 of all fertilized eggs never implant. Should these be scrutinized? I cannot see how one can say a fetus and newborn deserve equivalent protections and then fail to give them. Further, what about support for abortion exceptions for incest or rape? If the pregnancy in this scenario went to term and the child was born, one wouldn’t then support that murdering the newborn was OK. If you don’t believe these things, then you don’t believe newborns and fetuses deserve equal protection. You only happen to believe specific fetuses deserve one specific protection.
- l33t2328 4y ago
  > Then what about miscarriage? This argument has always struck me as odd. A miscarriage is, for lack of a better word, a random natural event. People die from random natural events all the time.
  - divided 4y ago
    Do you really believe all miscarriages are random and that none are due to alcohol, drugs, malnutrition, or other reasons? Now hopefully in the future the argument won’t strike you as odd.
- ModernMech 4y ago
  > what about support for abortion exceptions for incest or rape? If you’ve been paying attention, exceptions for incest and rape are being thrown out of the window in most red states. That was a pre supermajority compromise. Now that the supreme court is a conservative supermajority, the compromise position is no longer desirable for conservatives. They have the power and they are using it.
  - 4y ago
A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
<<Your job is to argue that abortion is not murder. Any argument that sidesteps the morality of abortion is not going to convince anyone. This is an interesting comment. It is not your job to do anything unless you are actually paid by an entity that has a vested interest in an outcome. Your argument structure does not have to follow predetermined steps ordained by the high priests. All these arguments are not going to convince anyone. For better or worse, most have already made up their minds a long time ago. Just to make it all more confusing, GPT-chan showed clearly you simply cannot trust online fora ( or, frankly, based on Amazon's raise the dead skill, phone conversations ) to have real humans anymore ( although you could argue, this was clear during last net neutrality debate and how comments there were not written by individuals). But going back to the crux of your argument, I disagree. This is HN. Morality will not impress people here. Rational discourse is a path forward if it is intended to sway anyone.
nick__m 4y ago
It's not murdered, the amass of dividing cells called a fetus isn't viable on it's own. When that fetus is unwanted, abortion is comparable to removing a tumor.
dragonwriter 4y ago
> We don’t use this standard of reasoning for anything else. Yes, we do. All kinds of things are viewed as immoral and not criminally punished, or punished less than things viewed as equally or more immoral, because of the perceived social cost/benefit of the alternative. It is murderously insane to consider only the problem addressed and not the impacts of the policy response in setting government policy.

rswail 4y ago

> Your job is to argue that abortion is not murder. Sure, and your job is to argue that abortion causes the death of a viable human life. Murder is defined as "the unlawful premeditated killing of one human being by another." Abortion isn't that.

overrun11 4y ago
Yeah I reject that definition and am not particularly considered with dictionary definitions when determining what is moral. By this definition we couldn't consider any killing sanctioned by the state to be murder.
overrun11 4y ago
You'll need to carve out a definition of "viable" that excludes late term fetuses that could survive outside the womb but includes born babies that cannot survive without the care of adults.

colinmhayes 4y ago

If you drink and drive and cause a car crash that requires you give a blood transfusion is it murder to refuse? I think hardly anyone would say that, because society has decided the right of bodily autonomy is paramount. I don't see abortion as any different from refusing to save someone you hurt in a car crash you caused.

aftbit 4y ago
In this _particular_ case, I think it would indeed be considered vehicular homicide if you drove drunk and killed someone. If you could and did save them by giving a blood transfusion, then you would likely still be guilty of some crime for hitting them in the first place, but not homicide.
- colinmhayes 4y ago
  Sure, change drunk to really tired and reconsider.
- ClumsyPilot 4y ago
  But that doesn't change anything - even if this person is a criminal, you still would not be allowed to use their blood for a transfusion without their concent. No additional crimes would result from the refusal itself.
overrun11 4y ago
In the United States a warrant is sufficient for a compulsory blood test to check blood alcohol levels. If we accept that proving guilt in court is an appropriate reason to violate bodily autonomy than so too would saving the life of someone who's been endangered by your actions. Morally however, I also do think it's wrong to not give the blood transfusion because the burden is small and the cost of not doing so is large. Whether it rises to the level of murder is a tougher question that I think would depend on intent. Do you think a suicidal pilot has the right to stop flying a plane mid-flight even if she knows that no one else on the plane will be capable of landing it?
- colinmhayes 4y ago
  > If we accept that proving guilt in court is an appropriate reason to violate bodily autonomy than so too would saving the life of someone who's been endangered by your actions. But we haven't decided that saving the life of someone who's been endangered by your actions is an appropriate reason to violate bodily autonomy. That's the whole point, society has decided that you can refuse to give the transfusion, even it leads to a death you essentially caused.
  - overrun11 4y ago
    Society has already decided that proving guilt in a drunk driving case is a sufficient reason to violate bodily autonomy. I argue that saving a life is far more important than proving guilt for a fairly petty crime, therefore by the already accepted standard, it would be permissible to force the transfusion for this purpose.
- ClumsyPilot 4y ago
  > Do you think a suicidal pilot has the right to stop flying a plane mid-flight Interesting example, but I don't think such a pilot whould cares about rights. The better question might be - what could you do to force such a pilot to fly the plane, and it appears that you could only plead - they would not be afraid of being shot (which is illegal anyway), and torture is very clearly illegal.
_-david-_ 4y ago
Most people believe you are obligated to provide basic care (food, water, shelter). Anything above that is not an obligation and not murder. That is not to say you shouldn't go above that, but just that it is not murder if you don't provide anything above the basics.
missingrib 4y ago
>I think hardly anyone would say that On the contrary, I think it would be very popular to say that someone who directly caused the crash out of negligence should be required to give blood to save the victim. You're referring to a version of the violinist argument: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Defense_of_Abortion#The_violinist https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Defense_of_Abortion#The_viol... Your version is actually pretty similar to a normal pregnancy (the woman brought about the pregnancy through her actions and now has to decide whether its morally okay to stop the babies' use of her body). I think it's very hard to justify abortion along these lines and might be easier just to try to show that the fetus is non-human and doesn't have rights.

divided 4y ago

Abortion is clearly not murder. Treating it as such has horrible implications. Let’s start with the belief that life starts at conception. With this belief, a fetus is equivalent in protection to a newborn. Following this, voluntarily ending it is murder. Then what about miscarriage? If a newborn were to die under unknown circumstances, there should be an investigation. Should then all pregnant people be investigated for potential negligence or abuse for this already traumatizing situation? 1/3 to 1/2 of all fertilized eggs never implant. Should these be scrutinized? I cannot see how one can say a fetus and newborn deserve equivalent protections and then fail to give them. Further, what about support for abortion exceptions for incest or rape? If the pregnancy in this scenario went to term and the child was born, one wouldn’t then support that murdering the newborn was OK. If you don’t believe these things, then you don’t believe newborns and fetuses deserve equal protection. You only happen to believe specific fetuses deserve one specific protection.

l33t2328 4y ago
> Then what about miscarriage? This argument has always struck me as odd. A miscarriage is, for lack of a better word, a random natural event. People die from random natural events all the time.
- divided 4y ago
  Do you really believe all miscarriages are random and that none are due to alcohol, drugs, malnutrition, or other reasons? Now hopefully in the future the argument won’t strike you as odd.
ModernMech 4y ago
> what about support for abortion exceptions for incest or rape? If you’ve been paying attention, exceptions for incest and rape are being thrown out of the window in most red states. That was a pre supermajority compromise. Now that the supreme court is a conservative supermajority, the compromise position is no longer desirable for conservatives. They have the power and they are using it.
- 4y ago

A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago

<<Your job is to argue that abortion is not murder. Any argument that sidesteps the morality of abortion is not going to convince anyone. This is an interesting comment. It is not your job to do anything unless you are actually paid by an entity that has a vested interest in an outcome. Your argument structure does not have to follow predetermined steps ordained by the high priests. All these arguments are not going to convince anyone. For better or worse, most have already made up their minds a long time ago. Just to make it all more confusing, GPT-chan showed clearly you simply cannot trust online fora ( or, frankly, based on Amazon's raise the dead skill, phone conversations ) to have real humans anymore ( although you could argue, this was clear during last net neutrality debate and how comments there were not written by individuals). But going back to the crux of your argument, I disagree. This is HN. Morality will not impress people here. Rational discourse is a path forward if it is intended to sway anyone.

nick__m 4y ago

It's not murdered, the amass of dividing cells called a fetus isn't viable on it's own. When that fetus is unwanted, abortion is comparable to removing a tumor.

dragonwriter 4y ago

> We don’t use this standard of reasoning for anything else. Yes, we do. All kinds of things are viewed as immoral and not criminally punished, or punished less than things viewed as equally or more immoral, because of the perceived social cost/benefit of the alternative. It is murderously insane to consider only the problem addressed and not the impacts of the policy response in setting government policy.