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You’ve submitted several criticisms in one idea. It’s in your interest to avoid doing that because you make yourself vulnerable to what we call ‘bulk criticism’. See #4471.
I may have more criticisms but I can’t really submit them productively until you split up your idea.
Please work on your tone. You’re mixing in personal accusations rather than just sticking with impersonal arguments. For example: “apparently insisting”, “pedantic”, and also a hidden accusation that I have an ulterior motive to punish women rather than save lives (“Regardless of whether your real concern here…”).
This kind of tone can derail and sabotage debate. Veritula has a policy against any behavior that sabotages debate. Please review our forum rules (#4460).
New accounts, especially anonymous ones, need to tread lightly and prove they’re worth engaging with.
This is not a valid or interesting criticism of my argument that the apparent dilemma can be resolved through the growth of knowledge.
It wasn’t intended as a criticism. It was a related observation. That’s why I didn’t mark my idea as a criticism. It sounds like you’ve misunderstood me.
This is not a valid or interesting criticism of my argument that the apparent dilemma can be resolved through the growth of knowledge.
Not interesting:
You’ve merely argued one side of the dilemma, apparently insisting that there is no dilemma to be resolved. If the dilemma can be resolved, then any argument for one side or the other is pedantic and superseded by that solution.
Not valid:
Sex is neither necessary nor sufficient to cause pregnancy. “Eating too much” is also neither necessary nor sufficient to cause adiposity. Even if you assume that those voluntary actions played a causal role in the transformation, the argument you presented depends on the premise that “if someone voluntarily performs any action that contributes to the antecedents of a transformation and has knowledge about the antecedent relationship between those actions and that transformation, then that transformation is under their authority.” This is a deeply problematic theory, because it results in every accident or crime against someone happening “under their authority.” With respect to sex and pregnancy, specifically, this theory leads to the conclusion that miscarriages are also under one’s authority. Regardless of whether your real concern here is about the loss of life due to terminated pregnancies (vs. punishing women for having sex), far more potential lives are lost due to miscarriage than abortion, so this should be of much greater concern.
Fortunately, miscarriages could also be avoided by using the technologies I proposed above. In the future, this could even become the preferred method of gestation for the protection of the child’s life, and the optimization of their early development.
It seems odd to me when people argue pregnancy is a loss of authority over one’s body.
A woman had sex. Assuming it was voluntary, what did she think was going to happen?
Imagine someone saying: ‘I ate too much. Now I’m fat. I’ve lost authority over my own body.’ But they didn’t. They got exactly what they should have expected.
I think what those people are really saying is: they don’t like that their actions have consequences. They want to have their cake and eat it, too.
Abortion is a technology problem, not a political issue. The choice between the loss of life and the loss of authority over one’s own body is a poor one. This dilemma is caused by a lack of medical knowledge.
At a high level, there are only two technologies needed to resolve this dilemma.
1. Safe extraction of a living pregnancy.
2. In Vitro Gestation.
In fact, if some of the political funding had been redirected toward research, it would probably be solved by now.
I’m pro abortion but I have some pro life in me.
Banning the abortion of a zygote seems ridiculous. So does aborting a seven-month-old fetus.
Why not go with: you can abort until the nervous system develops.
Clearly, an embryo without a nervous system can’t be sentient and thus can’t be a person, right? And as long as it’s not a person, it doesn’t have any rights.
According to https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK542179/, “CNS [central-nervous-system] development begins during the 3rd week of embryogenesis…”
This idea is for viable pregnancies only. Other considerations may apply for non-viable ones.
This video says 30 seconds in that babies cry inside the womb at 15 weeks. Crying seems to be a uniquely human activity. Maybe this is evidence that babies are already people and sentient in the womb.
I’ve heard that but I don’t know if that’s even true. If it is, the killing shouldn’t be considered a double homicide until after week 6.
Homicide is “a killing of one human being by another”. If an embryo isn’t a person yet, its death can’t be homicide.
Killing a pregnant woman is considered a double homicide, so aborting until week 6 can’t be right.
@dirk-meulenbelt argues that couples consider their first date to be the start of their relationship when it really wasn’t because you can’t ‘break up’ after a first date.
In other words, people choose somewhat arbitrary designations which aren’t morally relevant by themselves.
Heather, who’s publicly shared that she’s had an abortion, says people treat a zygote as a clump of cells only when they don’t want it. When they want it, then they consider it a baby. They can’t have it both ways.
This is the kind of thing that’s messed up and should be prevented: https://x.com/CatchUpFeed/status/1819079527366382071
There are financial incentives to do abortions as late as possible.
I’m pro abortion but I have some pro life in me.
Banning the abortion of a zygote seems ridiculous. So does aborting a seven-month-old fetus.
Why not go with: you can abort until the nervous system develops.
Clearly, an embryo without a nervous system can’t be sentient and thus can’t be a person, right? And as long as it’s not a person, it doesn’t have any rights.
According to https://www.neurosciencefoundation.org/post/brain-development-in-fetus, “an embryo’s brain and nervous system begin to develop at around the 6-week mark.” And: “At as early as 8 weeks (about 2 months), you can see physical evidence of the brain working (the electric impulses) as ultrasounds show the embryo moving.”
This idea is for viable pregnancies only. Other considerations may apply for non-viable ones.
Clearly, a fetus without a nervous system can’t be sentient and thus can’t be a person, right?
It’s not considered a fetus until week 9, at which point the nervous system has already begun building.
The correct word to use here is ‘embryo’.
If an already-born person is deadly ill, that doesn’t mean you can kill them. Why should that be any different for an unborn person?
If an already-born person is deadly ill, that doesn’t mean you can kill them.
What happens if only one of two twins is non-viable but abortion would kill both?
I’m pro abortion but I have some pro life in me.
Banning the abortion of a zygote seems ridiculous. So does aborting a seven-month-old fetus.
Why not go with: you can abort until the nervous system develops.
Clearly, a fetus without a nervous system can’t be sentient and thus can’t be a person, right? And as long as it’s not a person, it doesn’t have any rights.
According to https://www.neurosciencefoundation.org/post/brain-development-in-fetus, “an embryo’s brain and nervous system begin to develop at around the 6-week mark.” And: “At as early as 8 weeks (about 2 months), you can see physical evidence of the brain working (the electric impulses) as ultrasounds show the embryo moving.”
This idea is for viable pregnancies only. Other considerations may apply for non-viable ones.
I have addressed this issue separately – it’s a separate idea. #274
For non-viable pregnancies, where a doctor reasonably predicts that the baby will die during pregnancy or shortly after, abortions should be allowed throughout the entire pregnancy to avoid unnecessary suffering for parents and child.
This take does not address the issue of non-viable pregnancies.
Imagine being pregnant and looking forward to becoming a parent. However, during a routine diagnostic test, your doctor tells you your pregnancy isn’t viable; at birth, your baby will likely not survive long outside the womb. Because you live in a state like Texas that has recently banned abortion with few exceptions, you now need to carry this pregnancy to term, carrying the grief of a non-viable fetus and likely endangering your own life in the process.
Some say that there’s a soul from the moment of conception; that the soul has a right to life.