5 ms·

The problem is thinking there's a correct side. If you believe life begins at conception and that ending a life is murder, then naturally you're going to belie

The problem is thinking there's a correct side. If you believe life begins at conception and that ending a life is murder, then naturally you're going to believe that abortion is murder and is therefore immoral. If you do NOT believe life begins at conception than naturally you're not going to believe it's murder and therefor not going to believe it's immoral. It's possible to disagree with someone's stance on abortion without thinking of it as correct or incorrect. --- edit: why is it people insist on arguing even when the entire point is that arguing about it isn't all that meaningful? The overarching point is to stop acting as if people are definitely right or wrong. stop arguing over semantics of words.

epcoa 3y ago
[flagged]
- l33t7332273 3y ago
  > Almost no one believes that ending a life is murder Can you elaborate on that?
  - PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
    while I do think the poster is a bit of a jackass, it's obvious they meant ending the life of a fetus and not ending the life of a person in general. We can take them for what they meant rather than what they said.
  - joelfried 3y ago
    Elaborating on that is the red herring. We shouldn't have to elaborate on that, it doesn't need to be the central argument here.
  - larkost 3y ago
    I think that the poster is implying that many of the same people who describe themselves as Pro-Life also support the death penalty, are huge supporters of having a huge U.S. military (much bigger than needed for territorial defense, so obviously it is going to be used for other things), and are often loudly pro-gun (the argument here is that a gun is offensive, not defensive, so anti-life). Squaring these positions with the description Pro-Life can be a little odd. While it is a little unfair to over-simplify this way, many Trump supporters are Pro-Life, and those same people seemed to enjoy and support his recent comments: "Very simply: If you rob a store, you can fully expect to be shot as you are leaving that store". You can make a position that the thieves he was talking about have given up their right to life in a way that a fetus can not, but I think there is also an argument that this view can not be squared with a Pro-Life designation. I find my own opinion somewhere in the middle, but closer to the latter.
    - PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
      I don't know if you're referring to my post when you say OP but the death penalty was very much not in my mind when making my statement.
      - p_j_w 3y ago
        It doesn't matter if it was in your mind. The people who claim to be pro-life explicitly do not believe that ending any human life is always murder, and are very vocal about it. Regardless of what was on your mind, it's impossible to reconcile these two claims about their moral beliefs.
        PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
        [flagged]
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
ralmidani 3y ago
Who decides if life begins at conception? Usually it’s fundamentalists and extremists who insist on that, and as a mainstream Sunni Muslim, I’ve not heard convincing evidence that Jewish, Christian, or Muslim texts support that position. In fact, I know that in Sunni Muslim tradition there is wide disagreement on when ensoulment of a fetus occurs. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_and_abortion https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_and_abortion And let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that life does begin at conception. Isn’t the life and/or welfare of the mother also important? And who would you want making such a specific determination, a healthcare professional or Ron DeSantis?
BobaFloutist 3y ago
"Life" is meaningless. Animals are a live. Plants are alive. Who cares when "life" begins? What should matter is when humanity begins, or, sapience. There's no world in which it makes scientific sense to afford a small cluster of cells without anything even resembling a cow's brain (remember cows? the things we legally slaughter by the hundreds of thousands every day?), let alone a human brain, more rights than the woman the organs of whom are supporting it. Not only that, but we don't allow the harvesting of organs post mortem without explicit, written consent, even if someone could use them to live. If we're not allowed to use other people's organs to ensure survival, even if the other person is dead, that should apply just as much to fetuses. There's very obviously a correct side if you want to apply any semblance of logic, reasoning, and thought to the issue. There isn't one if you want to apply religion to it, and follow your gut to conclude that your all-powerful, all-benevolent god is putting souls in fetuses he knows will be aborted, taking them up to heaven for eternal happiness, and getting mad at us for it.
- ralmidani 3y ago
  > your all-powerful, all-benevolent god As OP I agree that government has no business getting involved in these debates. But don’t you think insulting and ridiculing religious people, including those who agree with you on the general issue, is a bit much? You’re not really helping your cause by alienating those folks.
  - BobaFloutist 3y ago
    Is that an insult? And I don't think I'm ridiculing anyone that agrees with me on the general issue. I didn't invent the concept of god being all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-benevolent. That's my genuine, good-faith understanding of what people believe. I'm also not mocking it. I disagree with it, but I'm taking it seriously, arguing with the assumption that people believe what they tell me they believe. It's wild that religious people can say "You condone murder, and will be tortured for eternity for your beliefs" and that's just business as usual, but if I say "That's a bit silly, I would expect the god you tell me you believe in to be more forgiving and understanding" all of a sudden I'm being too mean. It feels like there's no way to say "I simply don't believe that, and the evidence points to you being incorrect" that's polite enough for religious people, but they can say whatever they want to non-believers and it's ok because it's just what they believe.
joelfried 3y ago
I'll try to respond to your edit. People are arguing about your words because the ones you pick to make your argument DO matter. You've chosen the dichotomy generally pushed by the Right, rather than a discussion of health care or women's safety. Consider the difference in feel if you posted this as your two conditionals: If you believe that doctors should be given leeway to treat their patients as they best see fit even if sometimes you disagree with their rationale, you're going to believe abortion should be available. If you believe that moral rules should be followed and your moral rules are paramount regardless of any doctor's opinion on the ground, you're going to believe abortion should not be available. This gives a very different feel and perspective to the conversation. The words you pick matter.
- PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
  the ideas matter, not the words. the art to disagreeing with someone without vilifying them is to recognize their beliefs come from their values. Even what you're trying to argue about healthcare. someone who believes in the word of God is going to argue an individual is less important than God's commandments, someone who does not will argue the individual is more important. And I don't want to hear any whiffle about a dichotomy here, consider it a spectrum between 0 and 1 if it makes you feel better. ------------ The point is that framing this as correct/incorrect is a very poor way to frame it, it leaves no room for understanding.
  - dpkirchner 3y ago
    It isn't really a spectrum -- it's binary. The question ultimately is: should the government be able to force you at gunpoint/threat of imprisonment to carry a fetus for 9 months? If you say no, you're on the side that claims to be pro-choice. If you say yes, you're on the side that claims to be pro-life. Whether or not you believe that abortion is right or wrong isn't really relevant, except in so far as it informs your opinion about government coercion.
    - joelfried 3y ago
      That depends on what your "it" is, and I agree here that framing is really key. Consider the difference between your formulation: > should the government be able to force you at gunpoint/threat of imprisonment to carry a fetus for 9 months? and: When should the government be able to force you at gunpoint/threat of imprisonment to carry a fetus for 9 months? You can take my version and reduce it to yours with "always" and "never" responses, but the world is not digital, it is analog. My question allows for a lot more answers, a lot more debate, and compassion for one another. A binary response leads only to argumentation because we can't find the edges that we agree on, only the boundary we fight over.
dahart 3y ago
Right, each side is correct within its own framing of the issue, they are both right according to their own separate standards. Both sides are villainizing the other side, and you’re right: they don’t have to. It’s not necessary to say the other side is wrong or immoral. The problem is that in many ways it is pretty effective rally & argument strategy, at least locally & temporarily; it does help some people who mildly agree with it to cement their position and have dramatic talking points that spread. How do we break the cycle of increasing polarization? I honestly don’t know. It seems to be happening not just for abortion but for everything. All policy and culture, even innocuous stuff, seems to be getting polarized and tribalized in service of the politicians. Rejecting the extremist and villainizing framings of the opponent, on both sides, might help. Listening to and accepting the other side’s reasoning often does wonders for having civil conversation. I like to think of political debates as simply prioritizing what we want, and I wish our political debates would stop name-calling and just evaluate and rank the priorities rationally. This is hard to do though, it takes a lot of work, and there are conflicting priorities. Yelling and polarizing is way easier, takes less work, and is helping some politicians get what they want without having to be polite to their opponents or spend time evaluating their arguments. Maybe it would do some good if we can just help everybody we know see that our debates are mostly making us all tools of the politicians?
godshatter 3y ago
Thank you for this. Assuming that people disagree with you for valid reasons is a skill people generally seem to have lost. It's a lot easier to just pigeon-hole them as "other".
larkost 3y ago
I have always thought that the phrase that was popular some years ago "science tells us that life begins at conception" was odd, and misunderstands what we know about life from science. Life does not begin at conception because it never stopped. The sperm and the egg were both alive at the time of conception, and were life that split off of the collections of cells that we call the parents. Those parents were in turn conceived of live cells (again: a live sperm and a live egg) that came from their parents. The whole point is that life is one big unbroken chain going back to some first cell (and at that point what is "life" gets complicated). Rather the whole thing is about a "human life", as in when do we decide that this ball of cells is a separate individual deserving of the protection we give "people". And that is almost completely arbitrary, and science can offer no input on this at all. Why is a fertilized egg a person? Why are the skin cells that have scraped off on your keyboard not a person deserving protection? If you start chopping bits of a person off (I am not recommending this), is the severed limb not a person? If you could chop off the head and keep both that and the body alive, would those be two people? Or would only the head count as a person?
p_j_w 3y ago
No one treats people who want to legislate veganism with this level of charity, there's no reason to do so for the "pro-life" crowd.

epcoa 3y ago

[flagged]

l33t7332273 3y ago
> Almost no one believes that ending a life is murder Can you elaborate on that?
- PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
  while I do think the poster is a bit of a jackass, it's obvious they meant ending the life of a fetus and not ending the life of a person in general. We can take them for what they meant rather than what they said.
- joelfried 3y ago
  Elaborating on that is the red herring. We shouldn't have to elaborate on that, it doesn't need to be the central argument here.
- larkost 3y ago
  I think that the poster is implying that many of the same people who describe themselves as Pro-Life also support the death penalty, are huge supporters of having a huge U.S. military (much bigger than needed for territorial defense, so obviously it is going to be used for other things), and are often loudly pro-gun (the argument here is that a gun is offensive, not defensive, so anti-life). Squaring these positions with the description Pro-Life can be a little odd. While it is a little unfair to over-simplify this way, many Trump supporters are Pro-Life, and those same people seemed to enjoy and support his recent comments: "Very simply: If you rob a store, you can fully expect to be shot as you are leaving that store". You can make a position that the thieves he was talking about have given up their right to life in a way that a fetus can not, but I think there is also an argument that this view can not be squared with a Pro-Life designation. I find my own opinion somewhere in the middle, but closer to the latter.
  - PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
    I don't know if you're referring to my post when you say OP but the death penalty was very much not in my mind when making my statement.
    - p_j_w 3y ago
      It doesn't matter if it was in your mind. The people who claim to be pro-life explicitly do not believe that ending any human life is always murder, and are very vocal about it. Regardless of what was on your mind, it's impossible to reconcile these two claims about their moral beliefs.
      - PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
        [flagged]
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]

ralmidani 3y ago

Who decides if life begins at conception? Usually it’s fundamentalists and extremists who insist on that, and as a mainstream Sunni Muslim, I’ve not heard convincing evidence that Jewish, Christian, or Muslim texts support that position. In fact, I know that in Sunni Muslim tradition there is wide disagreement on when ensoulment of a fetus occurs. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_and_abortion https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_and_abortion And let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that life does begin at conception. Isn’t the life and/or welfare of the mother also important? And who would you want making such a specific determination, a healthcare professional or Ron DeSantis?

BobaFloutist 3y ago

"Life" is meaningless. Animals are a live. Plants are alive. Who cares when "life" begins? What should matter is when humanity begins, or, sapience. There's no world in which it makes scientific sense to afford a small cluster of cells without anything even resembling a cow's brain (remember cows? the things we legally slaughter by the hundreds of thousands every day?), let alone a human brain, more rights than the woman the organs of whom are supporting it. Not only that, but we don't allow the harvesting of organs post mortem without explicit, written consent, even if someone could use them to live. If we're not allowed to use other people's organs to ensure survival, even if the other person is dead, that should apply just as much to fetuses. There's very obviously a correct side if you want to apply any semblance of logic, reasoning, and thought to the issue. There isn't one if you want to apply religion to it, and follow your gut to conclude that your all-powerful, all-benevolent god is putting souls in fetuses he knows will be aborted, taking them up to heaven for eternal happiness, and getting mad at us for it.

ralmidani 3y ago
> your all-powerful, all-benevolent god As OP I agree that government has no business getting involved in these debates. But don’t you think insulting and ridiculing religious people, including those who agree with you on the general issue, is a bit much? You’re not really helping your cause by alienating those folks.
- BobaFloutist 3y ago
  Is that an insult? And I don't think I'm ridiculing anyone that agrees with me on the general issue. I didn't invent the concept of god being all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-benevolent. That's my genuine, good-faith understanding of what people believe. I'm also not mocking it. I disagree with it, but I'm taking it seriously, arguing with the assumption that people believe what they tell me they believe. It's wild that religious people can say "You condone murder, and will be tortured for eternity for your beliefs" and that's just business as usual, but if I say "That's a bit silly, I would expect the god you tell me you believe in to be more forgiving and understanding" all of a sudden I'm being too mean. It feels like there's no way to say "I simply don't believe that, and the evidence points to you being incorrect" that's polite enough for religious people, but they can say whatever they want to non-believers and it's ok because it's just what they believe.

joelfried 3y ago

I'll try to respond to your edit. People are arguing about your words because the ones you pick to make your argument DO matter. You've chosen the dichotomy generally pushed by the Right, rather than a discussion of health care or women's safety. Consider the difference in feel if you posted this as your two conditionals: If you believe that doctors should be given leeway to treat their patients as they best see fit even if sometimes you disagree with their rationale, you're going to believe abortion should be available. If you believe that moral rules should be followed and your moral rules are paramount regardless of any doctor's opinion on the ground, you're going to believe abortion should not be available. This gives a very different feel and perspective to the conversation. The words you pick matter.

PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
the ideas matter, not the words. the art to disagreeing with someone without vilifying them is to recognize their beliefs come from their values. Even what you're trying to argue about healthcare. someone who believes in the word of God is going to argue an individual is less important than God's commandments, someone who does not will argue the individual is more important. And I don't want to hear any whiffle about a dichotomy here, consider it a spectrum between 0 and 1 if it makes you feel better. ------------ The point is that framing this as correct/incorrect is a very poor way to frame it, it leaves no room for understanding.
- dpkirchner 3y ago
  It isn't really a spectrum -- it's binary. The question ultimately is: should the government be able to force you at gunpoint/threat of imprisonment to carry a fetus for 9 months? If you say no, you're on the side that claims to be pro-choice. If you say yes, you're on the side that claims to be pro-life. Whether or not you believe that abortion is right or wrong isn't really relevant, except in so far as it informs your opinion about government coercion.
  - joelfried 3y ago
    That depends on what your "it" is, and I agree here that framing is really key. Consider the difference between your formulation: > should the government be able to force you at gunpoint/threat of imprisonment to carry a fetus for 9 months? and: When should the government be able to force you at gunpoint/threat of imprisonment to carry a fetus for 9 months? You can take my version and reduce it to yours with "always" and "never" responses, but the world is not digital, it is analog. My question allows for a lot more answers, a lot more debate, and compassion for one another. A binary response leads only to argumentation because we can't find the edges that we agree on, only the boundary we fight over.

dahart 3y ago

Right, each side is correct within its own framing of the issue, they are both right according to their own separate standards. Both sides are villainizing the other side, and you’re right: they don’t have to. It’s not necessary to say the other side is wrong or immoral. The problem is that in many ways it is pretty effective rally & argument strategy, at least locally & temporarily; it does help some people who mildly agree with it to cement their position and have dramatic talking points that spread. How do we break the cycle of increasing polarization? I honestly don’t know. It seems to be happening not just for abortion but for everything. All policy and culture, even innocuous stuff, seems to be getting polarized and tribalized in service of the politicians. Rejecting the extremist and villainizing framings of the opponent, on both sides, might help. Listening to and accepting the other side’s reasoning often does wonders for having civil conversation. I like to think of political debates as simply prioritizing what we want, and I wish our political debates would stop name-calling and just evaluate and rank the priorities rationally. This is hard to do though, it takes a lot of work, and there are conflicting priorities. Yelling and polarizing is way easier, takes less work, and is helping some politicians get what they want without having to be polite to their opponents or spend time evaluating their arguments. Maybe it would do some good if we can just help everybody we know see that our debates are mostly making us all tools of the politicians?

godshatter 3y ago

Thank you for this. Assuming that people disagree with you for valid reasons is a skill people generally seem to have lost. It's a lot easier to just pigeon-hole them as "other".

larkost 3y ago

I have always thought that the phrase that was popular some years ago "science tells us that life begins at conception" was odd, and misunderstands what we know about life from science. Life does not begin at conception because it never stopped. The sperm and the egg were both alive at the time of conception, and were life that split off of the collections of cells that we call the parents. Those parents were in turn conceived of live cells (again: a live sperm and a live egg) that came from their parents. The whole point is that life is one big unbroken chain going back to some first cell (and at that point what is "life" gets complicated). Rather the whole thing is about a "human life", as in when do we decide that this ball of cells is a separate individual deserving of the protection we give "people". And that is almost completely arbitrary, and science can offer no input on this at all. Why is a fertilized egg a person? Why are the skin cells that have scraped off on your keyboard not a person deserving protection? If you start chopping bits of a person off (I am not recommending this), is the severed limb not a person? If you could chop off the head and keep both that and the body alive, would those be two people? Or would only the head count as a person?

p_j_w 3y ago

No one treats people who want to legislate veganism with this level of charity, there's no reason to do so for the "pro-life" crowd.