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> the people advocating for outlawing abortion are also convinced it's a rights issue: the rights of the unborn child. This is a nice fiction but it doesn't ho

> the people advocating for outlawing abortion are also convinced it's a rights issue: the rights of the unborn child. This is a nice fiction but it doesn't hold up to any level of scrutiny most of the time. Largely the "pro-life" people also believe in things like self-defense laws and the castle doctrine, which require that you not believe anyone has a real right to life. Unless you think they'd all be ok with a squatter coming into their house and demanding food and that they wouldn't use their guns on them. But they think a mother should be required to literally risk her life in order to support a being she may not have chosen to create. You don't need to give the benefit of the doubt here. You don't need to believe disingenuous arguments just because people say they're what they mean. Dig a little deeper and understand what they really believe: women with unwanted pregnancies deserve to have it carried out against their will because they think they've sinned.

orthecreedence 4y ago
All of what you said is fine and makes sense and, regardless of the vast generalizations, I agree with most of it given what I know about anti-abortion people. It's shrouded in hypocracy. That said what I said holds: this is not a clear-cut case of rights, because the rights of two entities are in question and they are in conflict. Is a handful of cells with human DNA a person? Of course not, it's less biologically developed than an ant. Is a fetus that's developed for 8 months a person? Yeah, at that point it could exit the mother and be a (somewhat) functioning being. Where do we draw the line? At what point is a fetus a person? And from there, we can determine where its rights to not die at the hand of another person begin. And yes, we have to factor in the health of the mother, the health of the fetus, etc into these decisions. This is, and always has been, a nuanced issue.
- jasonwatkinspdx 4y ago
  I'm sorry but it really is not a nuanced issue. My mom marched with Operation Rescue during the summer that culminated in the bombing of an abortion clinic, and later the execution of the Dr that ran the clinic, in his own church, during service, while he was collecting offerings as an usher. I know in painful depth every detail of how these people think. It is not nuanced on their side. They outright reject empirical facts. They believe the earth is only 6000 years old, that the dinosaurs died in Noah's flood, and that evolution is a myth, not the central mechanism of all biology. They do not care about the facts other than pattern matching them as rhetorical thought ending cliches. They believe because they had an imaginary conversation in their head once, they are now born again, and have a private telepathic phone line to absolute truth. When they feel certain about something, it's the will of god revealed to them through the holy spirit. When other people express opposing certainty, it's because they have been tricked by the devil. There is no good faith debate on the basis of facts or nuance with these people. You could spend years refuting every single thing they believe on a factual basis beyond any nuance or doubt, and they will blink, look at you, and then say something like "I know what's true in my heart of hearts." Every single detail of how they talk about this and the actions they take make clear their actual grievance is regulating women's sexual behavior outside of their theocratic conception of marriage. There is no need to defend these people as some sort of morally principled people confused by the underlying nuances. They are no where near that intellectually honest on the subject.
  - prionassembly 4y ago
    I don't think the reasonable pro-lifers were in a protest that culminated in a bombing. Go to crazy places, meet crazy people. Most pro-lifers in the upper echelons of intellectual and professional life are probably silent, fearing reprisal.
    - jasonwatkinspdx 4y ago
      Opreation Rescue was by far the highest profile activist group in that moment. They were not radicals shunned by more moderate pro life people. They had enormous support. Go read and learn: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Rescue_(Kansas) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Rescue_(Kansas) Wichita is stuck in Kansas, a conservative state yes, but the average person you'll meet there is very similar to who you'd meet in any of the major metro areas. They are captive to a conservative rural minority in a microcosm of the same effect at national scale. "Go to crazy places" is a completely inadequate deflection. You know it. My family's church went into schism in response to the Tiller murder. The strongest condemnation on the anti murder side was basically "they shouldn't have done that in a church." I cannot recall a single person out of hundreds that condemned the murder (or bombing) itself directly. The closest is my father, who maintains a "abortion should be outlawed except if rape" perspective. Additional useful information here is he failed to know my older brother was sexually abusing me in his own house. I know "what if" style contrarian takes are an addiction on this forum, but please, do not engage in hypotheticals on this issue if you are not actually familiar and plugged in. You are doing evil purely in the service of some forum warrior "what if I actually have the smart take here" nonsense. These people know they're hypocrites drowning in dissonance. It's central to their mindset. Not only do they not care, they will double down on it every time.
      - prionassembly 4y ago
        I'm a pro-lifer. This isn't a hypothetical.
  - orthecreedence 4y ago
    > I'm sorry but it really is not a nuanced issue. So you would support an abortion procedure on a fetus after 8 months and two weeks of pregnancy? If you believe this to not be a nuanced issue, then are you in opposition to the original Roe vs Wade ruling that determined personhood for a fetus once it reaches a viable age for survival, and you instead support the ability to abort a fetus all the way up to the moments before birth? > There is no need to defend these people as some sort of morally principled people confused by the underlying nuances. I'm confused which one of my comments leads you to believe I'm defending the anti-abortion crowd. I was responding to a comment saying that this is an issue of bodily autonomy rights only. It's not. There are the rights of the unborn child at play as well, hence the nuance.
- larkost 4y ago
  And you have arrived at about the compromise that the Supreme Court had before this latest ruling: a fetus can start to get protections (on a state by state basis) when it hits viability (might be able to live outside the womb).
  - orthecreedence 4y ago
    Right, which is why I was (and still am) supportive of the nuance of the original Roe vs Wade ruling. I think it was the best possible outcome of all outcomes. I get the technical arguments against enforcing it in the supreme court, but I don't find them particularly comforting in the face of a bunch of religious nutjobs viewing women like faceless baby factories.
- drdaeman 4y ago
  > Is a fetus that's developed for 8 months a person? Yeah, at that point it could exit the mother and be a (somewhat) functioning being. I could argue that ability of an organism to survive on its own is not a requirement nor a sufficient criteria for neither personhood (a legal construct) or anything in lines of sentience, self-awareness and sapience (philosophical constructs commonly associated with a person, although it's not a clear cut - e.g. a person may become incapacitated and is still considered a person).
- tsimionescu 4y ago
  > Where do we draw the line? At what point is a fetus a person? And from there, we can determine where its rights to not die at the hand of another person begin. And yes, we have to factor in the health of the mother, the health of the fetus, etc into these decisions. That is irrelevant. At most, where you draw the line could affect what type of abortive procedure doctors would be allowed to employ - if you believe that the fetus is a person, you could mandate that the doctors must remove it from the mother's body without harming it. But just as you have no obligation to allow someone into your home (and are in fact perfectly within your rights to murder them if they refuse to leave), you have no obligation to grow another person inside your own body. There is no nuance here. There are only fallacies employed by people who desperately want to uphold some perceived status quo from time immemorial. It's also important to note that there isn't even any reason to believe ancient Christians considered abortion forbidden or immoral. This is a much more modern invention, one given steam by the desire to oppose sexual liberation.
  - orthecreedence 4y ago
    > But just as you have no obligation to allow someone into your home (and are in fact perfectly within your rights to murder them if they refuse to leave), you have no obligation to grow another person inside your own body. I find this an interesting argument, but I have to note the difference: the person in your home is willingly violating your space. The fetus is not willingly in your body, and is given no chance whatsoever to leave without being harmed. So I don't find personhood irrelevant here, and I think the nuance still applies. > There are only fallacies employed by people who desperately want to uphold some perceived status quo from time immemorial. So for you, rights begin at birth? I'm not judging, I'm trying to assess your solid position. > It's also important to note that there isn't even any reason to believe ancient Christians considered abortion forbidden or immoral. This is a much more modern invention, one given steam by the desire to oppose sexual liberation. I believe this to be irrelevant to the discussion. I think we've already determined that modern anti-abortion Christians are, as a group, often hypocritical. But the discussion has diverged from them and is now about when rights are assigned.
    - 4y ago
- stormbrew 4y ago
  > It's shrouded in hypocracy. You're misunderstanding me here (and I think this is the crux of a lot of "liberal" misfire on this and other issues): I don't think they're hypocrites, I think they're operating on different axioms from me (and probably you) and their views are entirely self-consistent. Absolutely reprehensible axioms to me, but they're not idiots. There is a minor hypocrisy in framing, but it's not really important and you never have to talk long before the real axioms come along. Just look at this subthread's dissenting views and find the cases where people subtly or overtly admit that "life" is relative, and the innocence of the child is key. Then consider: innocent compared to who? They do not believe that people have a right to life. They believe innocent people have a right to life. Once you understand that, what they say makes more sense. The mother who has a child out of wedlock (rarely will they consider the possibility a married person might need or want an abortion) and the man in your house demanding food have a thing in common: they both broke a rule considered sacrosanct and they both "knew what they were doing had consequences" (never mind broken condoms, hormonal birth control not working for medical reasons, let alone more obvious things like rape). It's not hypocrisy. Most people who fall on the side of "pro-life" arguments believe these things for reasons that make sense to them, and not always for religious reasons.
  - orthecreedence 4y ago
    Thanks for explaining, I think I understand your viewpoint a bit better now. I still think it's somewhat hypocritical that they want the baby to be born at all costs but many of them do not want public services to help single mothers. And I've seen first-hand how single mothers are treated in churches, so pushing church as a solution is not a viable workaround.
    - stormbrew 4y ago
      Part of the conservative worldview is just so deeply tied into the idea of "deserving," both in a good and bad sense, that it interferes with the value of harm reduction. If a single mother struggles it's because she deserves it. If her child suffers for that struggle it's her fault. So long as there's something or someone to blame, you can ignore the question of how you could have prevented the problem in the first place. In fact, if you provide her support, you might be rewarding her infidelity. And then people will perceive that as a reasonable thing to do and more people will do it and then and then and then.... But the important thing is that she didn't "sin" by "killing the baby". If the baby dies after it's born, it's also her fault. Like I said, there's no hypocrisy there. Being a hypocrite isn't the worst thing someone can be. It's entirely possible to have a perfectly (or as perfectly as humans are capable of) self-consistent worldview that is also incredibly cruel. I think a lot of people have lost sight of that. At some point people started to believe that conservativism was about "preserving the past" but that's subtly wrong. It's about "preserving hierarchies". Recognizing that all people are worthy of life is contrary to the idea that some people deserve what's coming to them.
fallingknife 4y ago
If you are trying to draw an equivalence from a mother having a duty of care to her unborn child to someone robbing her house, yours is the argument that doesn't hold up to scrutiny.
tablespoon 4y ago
>> the people advocating for outlawing abortion are also convinced it's a rights issue: the rights of the unborn child. > This is a nice fiction but it doesn't hold up to any level of scrutiny most of the time. Largely the "pro-life" people also believe in things like self-defense laws and the castle doctrine, which require that you not believe anyone has a real right to life. Huh? I know people are really tempted to construct straw-men to make their opponents look like hypocrites, but this one is especially weak. > You don't need to give the benefit of the doubt here. Eh, no. You do, otherwise you end up with nonsense like what you wrote next. > Dig a little deeper and understand what they really believe: women with unwanted pregnancies deserve to have it carried out against their will because they think they've sinned. You may be able to find an example of that, but I really doubt that's the motivating idea for the vast majority of the pro-life movement. I would bet money what most of them "really believe" is that a fetus is a baby and that baby should be protected from harm.
- kaba0 4y ago
  And we have a women in the picture who is much more of a human being and she should also be protected from harm caused by a technically parasite entity that leeches on her resources potentially causing life-altering changes and could even prove fatal.
  - tablespoon 4y ago
    > parasite entity that leeches on her resources potentially causing life-altering changes and could even prove fatal Yet when my friend lost a child to a miscarriage, they grieved. It's interesting to note when people latch on to starkly dehumanizing rhetoric such as you've displayed. It's not just in the abortion debate. A lot of people really want this question to be black and white, and struggle to make it so, but it really isn't and never will be.
    - kaba0 4y ago
      Your friend had a personal choice over her body to get a child. And it is a beautiful thing to do so, and I’m very sorry it happened - hopefully she will recover both mentally and physically and will have a sought-after child she wants. Why do you want other women who did not choose this way to go over the potentially even more terrible thing of birthing a child at significant health risks she half-loves (as hormones are powerful things), half-hates? That just kills 2 people mentally.
prionassembly 4y ago
I don't think the unborn are to blame for the flaws of the people who set out to defend them.
Banana699 4y ago
>Unless you think they'd all be ok with a squatter coming into their house and demanding food and that they wouldn't use their guns on them Your actions didn't cause the squatter to come into the house, while it's the pregnant woman's actions that caused the baby to form inside her. A better analogy would be you advertising free food and residence, then changing your mind after a squatter comes to take you on your word. I personally believe you shouldn't kill a squatter as long as no credible threat to your life exists, you can always remove by force, non lethal weapons are a thing. I also believe you don't have the right to terminate a being's life when you're the one who started it in the first place, no matter how much you dress it up in colorful language and fanciful thought experiments. It's a fundamentally treasonous thing to do, to invite someone into life then quash them like a fly at the earliest inconvenience.

orthecreedence 4y ago

All of what you said is fine and makes sense and, regardless of the vast generalizations, I agree with most of it given what I know about anti-abortion people. It's shrouded in hypocracy. That said what I said holds: this is not a clear-cut case of rights, because the rights of two entities are in question and they are in conflict. Is a handful of cells with human DNA a person? Of course not, it's less biologically developed than an ant. Is a fetus that's developed for 8 months a person? Yeah, at that point it could exit the mother and be a (somewhat) functioning being. Where do we draw the line? At what point is a fetus a person? And from there, we can determine where its rights to not die at the hand of another person begin. And yes, we have to factor in the health of the mother, the health of the fetus, etc into these decisions. This is, and always has been, a nuanced issue.

jasonwatkinspdx 4y ago
I'm sorry but it really is not a nuanced issue. My mom marched with Operation Rescue during the summer that culminated in the bombing of an abortion clinic, and later the execution of the Dr that ran the clinic, in his own church, during service, while he was collecting offerings as an usher. I know in painful depth every detail of how these people think. It is not nuanced on their side. They outright reject empirical facts. They believe the earth is only 6000 years old, that the dinosaurs died in Noah's flood, and that evolution is a myth, not the central mechanism of all biology. They do not care about the facts other than pattern matching them as rhetorical thought ending cliches. They believe because they had an imaginary conversation in their head once, they are now born again, and have a private telepathic phone line to absolute truth. When they feel certain about something, it's the will of god revealed to them through the holy spirit. When other people express opposing certainty, it's because they have been tricked by the devil. There is no good faith debate on the basis of facts or nuance with these people. You could spend years refuting every single thing they believe on a factual basis beyond any nuance or doubt, and they will blink, look at you, and then say something like "I know what's true in my heart of hearts." Every single detail of how they talk about this and the actions they take make clear their actual grievance is regulating women's sexual behavior outside of their theocratic conception of marriage. There is no need to defend these people as some sort of morally principled people confused by the underlying nuances. They are no where near that intellectually honest on the subject.
- prionassembly 4y ago
  I don't think the reasonable pro-lifers were in a protest that culminated in a bombing. Go to crazy places, meet crazy people. Most pro-lifers in the upper echelons of intellectual and professional life are probably silent, fearing reprisal.
  - jasonwatkinspdx 4y ago
    Opreation Rescue was by far the highest profile activist group in that moment. They were not radicals shunned by more moderate pro life people. They had enormous support. Go read and learn: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Rescue_(Kansas) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Rescue_(Kansas) Wichita is stuck in Kansas, a conservative state yes, but the average person you'll meet there is very similar to who you'd meet in any of the major metro areas. They are captive to a conservative rural minority in a microcosm of the same effect at national scale. "Go to crazy places" is a completely inadequate deflection. You know it. My family's church went into schism in response to the Tiller murder. The strongest condemnation on the anti murder side was basically "they shouldn't have done that in a church." I cannot recall a single person out of hundreds that condemned the murder (or bombing) itself directly. The closest is my father, who maintains a "abortion should be outlawed except if rape" perspective. Additional useful information here is he failed to know my older brother was sexually abusing me in his own house. I know "what if" style contrarian takes are an addiction on this forum, but please, do not engage in hypotheticals on this issue if you are not actually familiar and plugged in. You are doing evil purely in the service of some forum warrior "what if I actually have the smart take here" nonsense. These people know they're hypocrites drowning in dissonance. It's central to their mindset. Not only do they not care, they will double down on it every time.
    - prionassembly 4y ago
      I'm a pro-lifer. This isn't a hypothetical.
- orthecreedence 4y ago
  > I'm sorry but it really is not a nuanced issue. So you would support an abortion procedure on a fetus after 8 months and two weeks of pregnancy? If you believe this to not be a nuanced issue, then are you in opposition to the original Roe vs Wade ruling that determined personhood for a fetus once it reaches a viable age for survival, and you instead support the ability to abort a fetus all the way up to the moments before birth? > There is no need to defend these people as some sort of morally principled people confused by the underlying nuances. I'm confused which one of my comments leads you to believe I'm defending the anti-abortion crowd. I was responding to a comment saying that this is an issue of bodily autonomy rights only. It's not. There are the rights of the unborn child at play as well, hence the nuance.
larkost 4y ago
And you have arrived at about the compromise that the Supreme Court had before this latest ruling: a fetus can start to get protections (on a state by state basis) when it hits viability (might be able to live outside the womb).
- orthecreedence 4y ago
  Right, which is why I was (and still am) supportive of the nuance of the original Roe vs Wade ruling. I think it was the best possible outcome of all outcomes. I get the technical arguments against enforcing it in the supreme court, but I don't find them particularly comforting in the face of a bunch of religious nutjobs viewing women like faceless baby factories.
drdaeman 4y ago
> Is a fetus that's developed for 8 months a person? Yeah, at that point it could exit the mother and be a (somewhat) functioning being. I could argue that ability of an organism to survive on its own is not a requirement nor a sufficient criteria for neither personhood (a legal construct) or anything in lines of sentience, self-awareness and sapience (philosophical constructs commonly associated with a person, although it's not a clear cut - e.g. a person may become incapacitated and is still considered a person).
tsimionescu 4y ago
> Where do we draw the line? At what point is a fetus a person? And from there, we can determine where its rights to not die at the hand of another person begin. And yes, we have to factor in the health of the mother, the health of the fetus, etc into these decisions. That is irrelevant. At most, where you draw the line could affect what type of abortive procedure doctors would be allowed to employ - if you believe that the fetus is a person, you could mandate that the doctors must remove it from the mother's body without harming it. But just as you have no obligation to allow someone into your home (and are in fact perfectly within your rights to murder them if they refuse to leave), you have no obligation to grow another person inside your own body. There is no nuance here. There are only fallacies employed by people who desperately want to uphold some perceived status quo from time immemorial. It's also important to note that there isn't even any reason to believe ancient Christians considered abortion forbidden or immoral. This is a much more modern invention, one given steam by the desire to oppose sexual liberation.
- orthecreedence 4y ago
  > But just as you have no obligation to allow someone into your home (and are in fact perfectly within your rights to murder them if they refuse to leave), you have no obligation to grow another person inside your own body. I find this an interesting argument, but I have to note the difference: the person in your home is willingly violating your space. The fetus is not willingly in your body, and is given no chance whatsoever to leave without being harmed. So I don't find personhood irrelevant here, and I think the nuance still applies. > There are only fallacies employed by people who desperately want to uphold some perceived status quo from time immemorial. So for you, rights begin at birth? I'm not judging, I'm trying to assess your solid position. > It's also important to note that there isn't even any reason to believe ancient Christians considered abortion forbidden or immoral. This is a much more modern invention, one given steam by the desire to oppose sexual liberation. I believe this to be irrelevant to the discussion. I think we've already determined that modern anti-abortion Christians are, as a group, often hypocritical. But the discussion has diverged from them and is now about when rights are assigned.
  - 4y ago
stormbrew 4y ago
> It's shrouded in hypocracy. You're misunderstanding me here (and I think this is the crux of a lot of "liberal" misfire on this and other issues): I don't think they're hypocrites, I think they're operating on different axioms from me (and probably you) and their views are entirely self-consistent. Absolutely reprehensible axioms to me, but they're not idiots. There is a minor hypocrisy in framing, but it's not really important and you never have to talk long before the real axioms come along. Just look at this subthread's dissenting views and find the cases where people subtly or overtly admit that "life" is relative, and the innocence of the child is key. Then consider: innocent compared to who? They do not believe that people have a right to life. They believe innocent people have a right to life. Once you understand that, what they say makes more sense. The mother who has a child out of wedlock (rarely will they consider the possibility a married person might need or want an abortion) and the man in your house demanding food have a thing in common: they both broke a rule considered sacrosanct and they both "knew what they were doing had consequences" (never mind broken condoms, hormonal birth control not working for medical reasons, let alone more obvious things like rape). It's not hypocrisy. Most people who fall on the side of "pro-life" arguments believe these things for reasons that make sense to them, and not always for religious reasons.
- orthecreedence 4y ago
  Thanks for explaining, I think I understand your viewpoint a bit better now. I still think it's somewhat hypocritical that they want the baby to be born at all costs but many of them do not want public services to help single mothers. And I've seen first-hand how single mothers are treated in churches, so pushing church as a solution is not a viable workaround.
  - stormbrew 4y ago
    Part of the conservative worldview is just so deeply tied into the idea of "deserving," both in a good and bad sense, that it interferes with the value of harm reduction. If a single mother struggles it's because she deserves it. If her child suffers for that struggle it's her fault. So long as there's something or someone to blame, you can ignore the question of how you could have prevented the problem in the first place. In fact, if you provide her support, you might be rewarding her infidelity. And then people will perceive that as a reasonable thing to do and more people will do it and then and then and then.... But the important thing is that she didn't "sin" by "killing the baby". If the baby dies after it's born, it's also her fault. Like I said, there's no hypocrisy there. Being a hypocrite isn't the worst thing someone can be. It's entirely possible to have a perfectly (or as perfectly as humans are capable of) self-consistent worldview that is also incredibly cruel. I think a lot of people have lost sight of that. At some point people started to believe that conservativism was about "preserving the past" but that's subtly wrong. It's about "preserving hierarchies". Recognizing that all people are worthy of life is contrary to the idea that some people deserve what's coming to them.

fallingknife 4y ago

If you are trying to draw an equivalence from a mother having a duty of care to her unborn child to someone robbing her house, yours is the argument that doesn't hold up to scrutiny.

tablespoon 4y ago

>> the people advocating for outlawing abortion are also convinced it's a rights issue: the rights of the unborn child. > This is a nice fiction but it doesn't hold up to any level of scrutiny most of the time. Largely the "pro-life" people also believe in things like self-defense laws and the castle doctrine, which require that you not believe anyone has a real right to life. Huh? I know people are really tempted to construct straw-men to make their opponents look like hypocrites, but this one is especially weak. > You don't need to give the benefit of the doubt here. Eh, no. You do, otherwise you end up with nonsense like what you wrote next. > Dig a little deeper and understand what they really believe: women with unwanted pregnancies deserve to have it carried out against their will because they think they've sinned. You may be able to find an example of that, but I really doubt that's the motivating idea for the vast majority of the pro-life movement. I would bet money what most of them "really believe" is that a fetus is a baby and that baby should be protected from harm.

kaba0 4y ago
And we have a women in the picture who is much more of a human being and she should also be protected from harm caused by a technically parasite entity that leeches on her resources potentially causing life-altering changes and could even prove fatal.
- tablespoon 4y ago
  > parasite entity that leeches on her resources potentially causing life-altering changes and could even prove fatal Yet when my friend lost a child to a miscarriage, they grieved. It's interesting to note when people latch on to starkly dehumanizing rhetoric such as you've displayed. It's not just in the abortion debate. A lot of people really want this question to be black and white, and struggle to make it so, but it really isn't and never will be.
  - kaba0 4y ago
    Your friend had a personal choice over her body to get a child. And it is a beautiful thing to do so, and I’m very sorry it happened - hopefully she will recover both mentally and physically and will have a sought-after child she wants. Why do you want other women who did not choose this way to go over the potentially even more terrible thing of birthing a child at significant health risks she half-loves (as hormones are powerful things), half-hates? That just kills 2 people mentally.

prionassembly 4y ago

I don't think the unborn are to blame for the flaws of the people who set out to defend them.

Banana699 4y ago

>Unless you think they'd all be ok with a squatter coming into their house and demanding food and that they wouldn't use their guns on them Your actions didn't cause the squatter to come into the house, while it's the pregnant woman's actions that caused the baby to form inside her. A better analogy would be you advertising free food and residence, then changing your mind after a squatter comes to take you on your word. I personally believe you shouldn't kill a squatter as long as no credible threat to your life exists, you can always remove by force, non lethal weapons are a thing. I also believe you don't have the right to terminate a being's life when you're the one who started it in the first place, no matter how much you dress it up in colorful language and fanciful thought experiments. It's a fundamentally treasonous thing to do, to invite someone into life then quash them like a fly at the earliest inconvenience.