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(1) is made irrelevant in the most iron clad way by the First Amendment.
by nsxwolf 3y ago
(1) is made irrelevant in the most iron clad way by the First Amendment.
- trasz4 3y ago[flagged]
- rayiner 3y ago[flagged]
- trasz4 3y ago>Abortion is considered immoral Not praying as often as one should is considered immoral too. But "immorality" is not binary, and abortion tends to be quite low on the scale. Especially early abortion, which is specific to one particular branch of Christianity. >Abortion “rights” arises from a belief system The same one that got us other human rights, like freedom of speech. It's called humanism. It's different from religions by not being made up. Also, note the "life from conception" fringe is a relatively recent invention: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Christian_thought_on_abortion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Christian_thought_o.... Protestantism generally kept the old beliefs instead of adapting the new idea.
- nsxwolf 3y agoYou have an inalienable right to express any view on abortion in the US, regardless of merit.
- trasz4 3y agoYou have an inalienable right to express any view on flat earth in the US. But it doesn't matter if the state law is enforcing religious rules, like in the case of abortion ban.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- rayiner 3y agoAbortion bans aren’t “religious rules.” Abortion has been banned in officially atheist countries, like Stalinist Russia and communist Albania. Conversely, the notion of a “right to abortion” or a “right to bodily autonomy” is for all practical purposes a religious view. It’s a belief about the nature of human society and the value of human life in its various stages.
- kelnos 3y agoIf that's the case, a right to freedom of speech is a similarly "religious view". I don't really see the distinction you're trying to make.
- bhupy 3y agoYes, that's absolutely correct. I'm a strong proponent of the right to freedom of speech (and I'm pro-choice), but we have to be clear about the fact that these are derived from axioms, which are by definition maxims derived from subjective leaps of faith and not evidence-based objectivity. I think that's Rayiner's point; you can't admonish people deriving philosophical views from the theistic beliefs and value systems they practice when the opposing side of those views are essentially derived from secular/atheistic beliefs and value systems. At some point in the chain of derived arguments and justifications, you arrive at an axiom whose only justification is "because I believe this should be so" or "because my in-group believes this should be so" or "because <authority figure> believes this should be so" — it's still a leap of faith. "Humanism" is just another subjective belief system, and its adherents are no more immune to the forces of tribalism and faith-based reasoning as adherents of older belief systems.
- rayiner 3y ago> The same one that got us other human rights, like freedom of speech. It's called humanism. It's different from religions by not being made up. Humanism is just as made up and non-falsifiable as any religion, and in some cases more so. If you autopsy a dead body, you won’t find either a soul nor any form of “human rights.” At least religious traditions are often based on practical experience. For example, in Islam it’s considers a moral obligation to get married and have children. Leaving aside any supernatural basis for that moral dictate, it makes sense given that human societies have to raise a lot of kids simply to perpetuate themselves from generation to generation. But what about the humanist idea that you have no such moral obligation, and that “child free” people are of equal value to society as people doing the labor of perpetuating society—because of some invisible “human dignity” and “right of self actualization.” That’s pulled straight out of thin air. > But "immorality" is not binary, and abortion tends to be quite low on the scale. Not true. Most muslim countries, for example, including the one I’m from, have more restrictive abortion laws than any U.S. state. India similarly has a quite restrictive abortion law (not one inherited from the British, but one of their own construction after an extensive process) from 1971 until its Supreme Court intervened in 2022. To my knowledge, no major culture that isn’t formerly Christian has the western notion of an individual “right” to an abortion. Even in Asian countries that permit abortion, it’s viewed more in terms of a collective policy of reproductive control than an individual right. That fact is completely unsurprising: deciding when life begins is obviously a matter for the government. Only westerners are so pathologically individualistic as to think that social determination should be subject to overruling by individual morality.
- redeux 3y agoI’m not sure what relevance this has for a secular nation like the United States.
- localplume 3y agoIf you think any western country is actually secular then I have a bridge to sell you. christianity is woven into the very fabric of their culture. visit a cemetary and see crosses. listen to language and hear references to "christening", christian names, "this book is the x bible", expletives referencing "jesus christ", christmas, easter, the abundance of churches over any other site of worship.
- trasz4 3y agoSure, but there's a fundamental difference between christianity in culture and promoting female genital mutilation or denying reproductive rights.
- rayiner 3y agoAmerica isn’t a “secular” nation. It’s a religiously pluralistic nation. That means that all of the various non-falsifiable moral ideologies, from Christianity to Islam to secular humanism, are on equal political footing. If more people prioritize the mother’s invisible, non-falsifiable “right to bodily autonomy” over the fetus’s invisible, non-falsifiable “right to life” then you can permit abortion. If the opposite is true, you can ban it.
- redeux 3y ago> Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof … The United States government, which is what we’re discussing is absolutely a secular body. The various religions or non-religions of the citizenry are irrelevant, constitutionally.
- rayiner 3y agoThe first part just means that Congress cannot regulate established state churches (https://live-bri-dos.pantheonsite.io/activities/handout-c-map-of-disestablishment-in-the-united-states https://live-bri-dos.pantheonsite.io/activities/handout-c-ma...), while the second states that Congress cannot prohibit people from practicing their religion. What the first amendment doesn’t do is exclude moral beliefs rooted in religion from being the basis of public policy. If the government can regulate conduct that kills living things, then it’s immaterial whether any particular legislation is rooted in the moral framework of Christianity or Islam or Feminism. In the American system, all moral frameworks, whether rooted in religion or not, are on equal footing. That’s distinct from secularism, as practiced by France and formerly Turkey, where religious philosophy is singled out and excluded from the public sphere.
- mullingitover 3y agoOpinions on abortion among many christian groups have been pretty fluid in the past century[1]. > The rhetoric about abortion being the catalyst for the rise of the Religious Right, however, collapses under scrutiny. Evangelicals considered abortion a “Catholic issue” until the late 1970s. In 1968, the flagship evangelical magazine Christianity Today convened a conference with another evangelical organization, Christian Medical Society, to discuss the ethics of abortion. After several days of deliberations, twenty-six evangelical theologians issued a statement acknowledging that they could not agree on any one position, that the ambiguities of the issue allowed for many different approaches. “Whether the performance of an induced abortion is sinful we are not agreed,” the statement read, “but about the necessity of it and permissibility for it under certain circumstances we are in accord.” The statement cited “individual health, family welfare, and social responsibility” as possible justifications for abortion and allowed for instances when fetal life “may have to be abandoned to maintain full and secure family life.” And this is a real eye-opener: > Baptists, in particular, applauded the Roe decision as an appropriate articulation of the line of division between church and state, between personal morality and state regulation of individual behavior. “Religious liberty, human equality and justice are advanced by the Supreme Court abortion decision,” W. Barry Garrett of Baptist Press wrote. [1] https://religiondispatches.org/the-evangelical-abortion-myth-an-excerpt-from-bad-faith/ https://religiondispatches.org/the-evangelical-abortion-myth...
- nvahalik 3y ago[flagged]
- mullingitover 3y ago[flagged]
- rayiner 3y agoWhy restrict your analysis to such a narrow scope? Abortion was illegal in every state in the US by 1910. It’s also still illegal in my home country, which is a Muslim country on the other side of the planet from the US. Opposition to abortion is longstanding across completely different cultures and religions. It’s not credible to say it’s something that arises from evangelical Christianity or a late 20th century political movement. What you’re describing is instead an ideological schism within Protestant Christianity. Since Luther, Protestant Christianity had a strong natalist orientation. That’s why abortion was illegal in every US state by 1910. But during the 20th century, mainline protestantism adopted an anti-natalist view out of concerns about overpopulation and the welfare of the poor. That’s the genesis of the modern US abortion debate. It’s not accurate to say that these patterns reflect views on abortion being “fluid.” Protestantism isn’t centralized—especially denominations like Baptists. Until the mid-20th century, pretty much all the denominations agreed abortion was wrong. Once the anti-natal movement got going, those denominations fractured and people sorted into different ones. For example, the Evangelical Presbyterian church split from what’s now the PCUSA in 1981. Both are “evangelical.” But we apply the “evangelical” label to one and not the other, based on their views on abortion and other issues.
- cobrabyte 3y agoLike anything else, you may not agree with their argument, but their right to peacefully protest should not be trampled upon by the government.
- mullingitover 3y agoAs long as it's a level playing field. It shouldn't be less legal to protest at the home of a supreme court justice than to protest at the homes of abortion clinic staff members.
- gadders 3y agoI'd be very surprised if there were zero atheists that were anti-abortion.
- rayiner 3y agoAlbania has been officially atheist since 1967. But abortion was not legalized until 1995. The idea that American “evangelical Christians” invented opposition to abortion is typical American ignorance and myopia. Various levels of opposition to abortion is the norm across the world—for pretty obvious reasons. The rights-based view of abortion is what’s actually unusual and unique to Christian and post-Christian societies.
- kelnos 3y agoWho are the loudest voices advocating for abortion bans, though? Of the legislators who write and vote for abortion ban bills, what is their reasoning and background? At least in the US, it sounds like the loudest of those voices are coming from a religious place, mostly from a Christian perspective. I'll grant you that it's certainly more than just "evangelical" Christians, but I consider that an irrelevant distinction. (Note that I'm not arguing that there are no non-Christians who are anti-abortion, just that they don't seem to be the ones pushing these laws through.) Either way, I think if you're going to engage in some American-bashing, you should probably cite some sources to back up your claims.
- aftbit 3y agoThere are plenty of secular arguments against abortion. I'm not sure why both sides are acting like this is an obvious question with an obvious answer. Abortion balances the life, health, and happiness of the mother against the life of the unborn fetus. IMO this is one of the most ethically challenging questions that we're still arguing about as a society.
- trasz4 3y ago>There are plenty of secular arguments against abortion. There are plenty of secular arguments for flat earth. It's not about the number of arguments, but about their validity. There are no secular arguments that don't depend on logical fallacies or invalid assumptions. >Abortion balances the life, health, and happiness of the mother against the life of the unborn fetus. And similarly when talking about forcing someone to donate their blood, or part of liver for transplant we'd need to balance the rights of the forced donor and the rights of the prospective transplant receiver, right? >IMO this is one of the most ethically challenging questions that we're still arguing about as a society. It's not only not one of the challenging ones, it's not a serious question at all. Modern ethics is pretty clear on reproductive rights.
- aftbit 3y ago>There are plenty of secular arguments for flat earth. It's not about the number of arguments, but about their validity. There are no secular arguments that don't depend on logical fallacies or invalid assumptions. This is a false equivalency. Flat earth is a matter of facts, not ethics. Further, you are taking the least charitable interpretation of my words. Of course I meant that there are plenty of _valid_ secular arguments. >And similarly when talking about forcing someone to donate their blood, or part of liver for transplant we'd need to balance the rights of the forced donor and the rights of the prospective transplant receiver, right? Yes, this is a common counter-argument. I first encountered this in A Defense of Abortion in the form of the "unconscious violinist". A more whimsical version can be found in Rick and Morty's second Interdimensional Cable. A common counter-counter-argument is that this situation differs from abortion in that the mother bears partial responsibility for the creation of the fetus, and thus owes it more than she would owe another random person. This is one of the reasons people get more outraged about restriction of abortion rights in cases of rape, as the mother had no volition and thus (by this logic) owes her fetus nothing more than she would owe a stranger. Regardless, you may find that the right of the mother to bodily autonomy outweighs the right of the fetus to life, but not everyone will weigh the situation the same. We often agree as a society that one must help others if the cost to oneself is considerably lower than the value provided to others. For example, you are obligated (in an ethical sense) to provide water to a man dying of thirst as long as you have plenty. Or perhaps (more controversially), you are obligated to jump into a cold swimming pool to save a drowning child (if you can swim). Some argue that the temporary albeit serious inconvenience to the mother outweighs the life-long value to the unborn child in a similar manner. >It's not only not one of the challenging ones, it's not a serious question at all. Modern ethics is pretty clear on reproductive rights. The funny thing is that each side seems to think this, and that the other side is insane, naive, or misguided for disagreeing. FWIW, I am personally pro-choice, but I also think that if you cannot understand the other side's arguments, that is a weakness of your own mental model, not a sign that they are crazy or bad arguments. I'm happy to talk more about this, as I think it is a genuinely interesting and challenging issue that remains unresolved, unlike many things that our society argues about. Another interesting unresolved issue is the ethics of punishment - I have come to believe that government punishment is generally unethical, but that's another post.
- Georgelemental 3y agoI am an agnostic. I oppose abortion because I saw some pictures of the mutilated bodies of its victims, and realized that what I was looking at was wrong.