6 ms·

I don't like defending opinions of straw-men, and particularly opinions I don't agree with, but I'm not sure your argument holds up. There is a important differ

I don't like defending opinions of straw-men, and particularly opinions I don't agree with, but I'm not sure your argument holds up. There is a important difference between a tragedy like a miscarriage versus a chosen act like having an abortion. That would be a bit like equating seeing someone being hit by a car with murder. Particularly if you come from a theological background there is a dramatic difference between a plague and a murder (not suggesting that's what abortion is, but that's the rationality). I think fossuser got it exactly correct: there is a good-faith disagreement here. The disagreement is "when does a citizen come into existence?". This is what lawmakers are supposed to decide - we elect them to draw a line in the sand. Denmark's line seems extremely reasonable.

camgunz 4y ago
> There is a important difference between a tragedy like a miscarriage versus a chosen act like having an abortion. Fair! Well, a couple things. First, many abortions are not chosen. We can go a little further and say many conceptions are not chosen (assault), but it's a little irrelevant, so I'm just noting. Second I'm not comparing abortions to miscarriages. I'm comparing miscarriage (a thing that affects embryos and fetuses) to a disease that affects born people. In doing so, I note the different reactions people have to miscarriage (it's natural and unavoidable) to the reactions people have to a disease that statistically killed as many born people as miscarriage kills embryos and fetuses (the vast majority of us die, it's very very bad). To me, this is strong evidence that we value embryos and fetuses differently than born people.
- Banana699 4y ago
  >First, many abortions are not chosen. How many? There is a survey floating around the Internet that asked ~2000 women in 2003 about abortion reasons, and about 80% or so said what amounted to "Pregnancy was too inconvenient". Was that updated ? >many conceptions are not chosen Again, how many? That same 2003 survey had 0.1% as the percentage of women who reported rape as the reason they aborted. People are arguing against the common case, the common case I'm seeing is celebrities and middle class women writing op-eds about how without abortion they would have never gotten that raise and pregnancy demolished their career. >I'm comparing miscarriage (a thing that affects embryos and fetuses) to a disease that affects born people. I think pro abortion folks have this common failure mode where they notice the non-linearity of the brain's moral response on abortion, and think that it points to a deeper hypocrisy or contradiction somewhere in the anti abortion stance. Here is a couple of examples of things where people believe something but "don't act like it" : - Vegetarians and Vegans (I'm one of them btw) believe that hundreds of millions of sentient, moral-consideration-worthy persons are murdered in the most brutal and cowardly fashion each year, and that doesn't turn them catastrophically mad or into genocidal terrorists. - Climate Change believers (I'm one of them btw) believe that our (in)actions now is setting the stage for the death of tens of million and the suffering of hundreds of millions of human and non-human animals, as well as uncountable billions of damage in material resources. They don't seem to be doing much except shouting, just like standard politics. - Believers in the harm of smoking (I'm... Ah screw it) think that 1.1 billion people are actively killing themselves by poisoning, and slowly poisoning those around them, 7 million people are killed each year due to this mass voluntary poisoning, more than 1/10 of WW2. And yet, I don't see any crusades (except the usual advocacy). The point is, what you're describing isn't new. It's what I called the brain's "Non Linear Moral Response" above, your brain saturates. One death makes you cry, two deaths make you scream, 3 make you want to gouge your own eyes off, but 10 just make you numb. And beyond 50 or so its just meaningless data. Your brain isn't equipped to respond meaningfully to tragedies at scale. That's probably for your own good.
  - camgunz 4y ago
    > Your weird survey. I'd love it if you can link it, until then I'm gonna ignore it. > Here is a couple of examples of things where people believe something but "don't act like it" : I'm actually sympathetic to this! Humans are pretty great at tolerating outrageous things. The effective altruism movement is essentially all about this, or yeah, like your last paragraph. My point isn't simply "they don't act like it". My point is that there are lots of other, easier things pro-life advocates could do to reduce abortion rates, but they focus on controlling women. My hypothesis here is that the pro-life movement is fundamentally misogynistic, and wholly uninterested in measures that would reduce abortion rates while allowing women to be 1st class Americans. The point is to make women 2nd class Americans again.
    - Banana699 4y ago
      >I'd love it if you can link it I couldn't find what I had in mind, but here's a visualisation of a 1998 meta study[1], where the reasons for abortion are broken down. In the US, abortion due to fears about the mother's health is (eyeballing it) less than 2%, fetus defects? less than 2%, "other" (which presumably include rape)? Less than 1% and that's being generous. So, the 3 reasons where I support, grudgingly as the lesser evil, abortion account for about 5% of total abortions. 1/20. 19 out of every 20 abortion is because abortion defenders have made baby killing an acceptable contraceptive solution. More than 60% of the cases is one variant or the other of "Baby is too inconvenient", the rest is slightly more defensible versions of it ("mother was too immature", "partner was not ready"). You're, essentially, killing something extremely, dangerously, close to a human, because the very people who brought it to life changed their mind. Why, why did they bring it to life in the first place? >My point is that there are lots of other, easier things pro-life advocates could do to reduce abortion rates You don't have the right to tell people how they should fight for their principles. An animal rights activist might choose to educate, or save street animals, or campaign against raising cattle, or blow themselves up in a slaughterhouse. People enact their principles in a variety of ways, you just notice those who choose the methods you find most reprehensible. But this doesn't mean other people aren't doing other things. >My hypothesis here is that the pro-life movement is fundamentally misogynistic I'm trying to be charitable here but you're making it extremely difficult, so here are some facts 1- I'm not American, but I can be described to have moderately pro life views, in that I think abortion should be always banned, except for the 3 reasons I listed above, which (after proof) would bypass the ban at any moment in the pregnancy. 2- It's not misogyny to hold women accountable for their actions. Pregnancy is the direct result of the women's actions, it is fair for the woman to bear responsibility for it. Indeed, countless contraceptive variants (male variants soon to exist in mass production) have decoupled pregnancy and consequences of women's actions to a very high degree, so it's even less defensible or justifiable to get pregnant then change your mind. As Progressives are extremely fond of saying in other contexts, "Freedom Doesn't Mean Freedom From Consequences", irresponsible women are as free and as first-class as anyone, they are just not allowed to kill babies for their convenience, especially when they had every chance to prevent that baby from being born in the first place, or wait months and abandon it to someone else. 3-50% or so of women are against abortion in the United States, and men are divided roughly equally, so its remarkable that hating women is this diverse of a position, you would think that it would be more male-skewed than this. 4- Abortion is philosophically complex and a morally treacherous. A big part of my pro life bias is as a counter reaction to the obnoxious moral certainty of the progressive variant of abortion defenders, those who find it morally okay to "shout their abortion" and compare babies to cancer and parasites. I, quite frankly, want to punish those people. If I detect any kind of moral uncertainty or recognition of the fundamental evil you're flirting with when you argue for more permissive abortion, I'm usually inclined to show some moral uncertainty of my own. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion#/media/File%3AAGIAbortionReasonsBarChart.png https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion#/media/File%3AAGIAb...

camgunz 4y ago

> There is a important difference between a tragedy like a miscarriage versus a chosen act like having an abortion. Fair! Well, a couple things. First, many abortions are not chosen. We can go a little further and say many conceptions are not chosen (assault), but it's a little irrelevant, so I'm just noting. Second I'm not comparing abortions to miscarriages. I'm comparing miscarriage (a thing that affects embryos and fetuses) to a disease that affects born people. In doing so, I note the different reactions people have to miscarriage (it's natural and unavoidable) to the reactions people have to a disease that statistically killed as many born people as miscarriage kills embryos and fetuses (the vast majority of us die, it's very very bad). To me, this is strong evidence that we value embryos and fetuses differently than born people.

Banana699 4y ago
>First, many abortions are not chosen. How many? There is a survey floating around the Internet that asked ~2000 women in 2003 about abortion reasons, and about 80% or so said what amounted to "Pregnancy was too inconvenient". Was that updated ? >many conceptions are not chosen Again, how many? That same 2003 survey had 0.1% as the percentage of women who reported rape as the reason they aborted. People are arguing against the common case, the common case I'm seeing is celebrities and middle class women writing op-eds about how without abortion they would have never gotten that raise and pregnancy demolished their career. >I'm comparing miscarriage (a thing that affects embryos and fetuses) to a disease that affects born people. I think pro abortion folks have this common failure mode where they notice the non-linearity of the brain's moral response on abortion, and think that it points to a deeper hypocrisy or contradiction somewhere in the anti abortion stance. Here is a couple of examples of things where people believe something but "don't act like it" : - Vegetarians and Vegans (I'm one of them btw) believe that hundreds of millions of sentient, moral-consideration-worthy persons are murdered in the most brutal and cowardly fashion each year, and that doesn't turn them catastrophically mad or into genocidal terrorists. - Climate Change believers (I'm one of them btw) believe that our (in)actions now is setting the stage for the death of tens of million and the suffering of hundreds of millions of human and non-human animals, as well as uncountable billions of damage in material resources. They don't seem to be doing much except shouting, just like standard politics. - Believers in the harm of smoking (I'm... Ah screw it) think that 1.1 billion people are actively killing themselves by poisoning, and slowly poisoning those around them, 7 million people are killed each year due to this mass voluntary poisoning, more than 1/10 of WW2. And yet, I don't see any crusades (except the usual advocacy). The point is, what you're describing isn't new. It's what I called the brain's "Non Linear Moral Response" above, your brain saturates. One death makes you cry, two deaths make you scream, 3 make you want to gouge your own eyes off, but 10 just make you numb. And beyond 50 or so its just meaningless data. Your brain isn't equipped to respond meaningfully to tragedies at scale. That's probably for your own good.
- camgunz 4y ago
  > Your weird survey. I'd love it if you can link it, until then I'm gonna ignore it. > Here is a couple of examples of things where people believe something but "don't act like it" : I'm actually sympathetic to this! Humans are pretty great at tolerating outrageous things. The effective altruism movement is essentially all about this, or yeah, like your last paragraph. My point isn't simply "they don't act like it". My point is that there are lots of other, easier things pro-life advocates could do to reduce abortion rates, but they focus on controlling women. My hypothesis here is that the pro-life movement is fundamentally misogynistic, and wholly uninterested in measures that would reduce abortion rates while allowing women to be 1st class Americans. The point is to make women 2nd class Americans again.
  - Banana699 4y ago
    >I'd love it if you can link it I couldn't find what I had in mind, but here's a visualisation of a 1998 meta study[1], where the reasons for abortion are broken down. In the US, abortion due to fears about the mother's health is (eyeballing it) less than 2%, fetus defects? less than 2%, "other" (which presumably include rape)? Less than 1% and that's being generous. So, the 3 reasons where I support, grudgingly as the lesser evil, abortion account for about 5% of total abortions. 1/20. 19 out of every 20 abortion is because abortion defenders have made baby killing an acceptable contraceptive solution. More than 60% of the cases is one variant or the other of "Baby is too inconvenient", the rest is slightly more defensible versions of it ("mother was too immature", "partner was not ready"). You're, essentially, killing something extremely, dangerously, close to a human, because the very people who brought it to life changed their mind. Why, why did they bring it to life in the first place? >My point is that there are lots of other, easier things pro-life advocates could do to reduce abortion rates You don't have the right to tell people how they should fight for their principles. An animal rights activist might choose to educate, or save street animals, or campaign against raising cattle, or blow themselves up in a slaughterhouse. People enact their principles in a variety of ways, you just notice those who choose the methods you find most reprehensible. But this doesn't mean other people aren't doing other things. >My hypothesis here is that the pro-life movement is fundamentally misogynistic I'm trying to be charitable here but you're making it extremely difficult, so here are some facts 1- I'm not American, but I can be described to have moderately pro life views, in that I think abortion should be always banned, except for the 3 reasons I listed above, which (after proof) would bypass the ban at any moment in the pregnancy. 2- It's not misogyny to hold women accountable for their actions. Pregnancy is the direct result of the women's actions, it is fair for the woman to bear responsibility for it. Indeed, countless contraceptive variants (male variants soon to exist in mass production) have decoupled pregnancy and consequences of women's actions to a very high degree, so it's even less defensible or justifiable to get pregnant then change your mind. As Progressives are extremely fond of saying in other contexts, "Freedom Doesn't Mean Freedom From Consequences", irresponsible women are as free and as first-class as anyone, they are just not allowed to kill babies for their convenience, especially when they had every chance to prevent that baby from being born in the first place, or wait months and abandon it to someone else. 3-50% or so of women are against abortion in the United States, and men are divided roughly equally, so its remarkable that hating women is this diverse of a position, you would think that it would be more male-skewed than this. 4- Abortion is philosophically complex and a morally treacherous. A big part of my pro life bias is as a counter reaction to the obnoxious moral certainty of the progressive variant of abortion defenders, those who find it morally okay to "shout their abortion" and compare babies to cancer and parasites. I, quite frankly, want to punish those people. If I detect any kind of moral uncertainty or recognition of the fundamental evil you're flirting with when you argue for more permissive abortion, I'm usually inclined to show some moral uncertainty of my own. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion#/media/File%3AAGIAbortionReasonsBarChart.png https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion#/media/File%3AAGIAb...