I want to say that I’m mainly posting in this thread to explain my perspective on this issue. I don’t expect anyone to change their opinions based on this discussion. But I think it is valuable to share conflicting opinions and engage in healthy debate rather than create an echo chamber and cancel anyone who disagrees with the mainstream opinion of said echo chamber.
The reason why this issue is important to me is that it is near and dear to one of the most important ethical and moral quandaries that we must face as intelligent beings: how do we value the lives of our fellow sentient beings?
I believe strongly that all sentient beings in this universe have an inalienable right to life, liberty, and happiness. This includes humans, animals, artificial intelligences, sentient extraterrestrial lifeforms, and yes, unborn fetuses that have the capacity for conscious thought. We are all in this universe together, and we must strive to find a way to coexist in harmony.
As such, the only exception where I believe killing should be allowed is when it is necessary for others to survive. Our current society depends on other animals as a food source, so unfortunately we are stuck with this reality until a viable alternative can be developed, such as cultured meat products. Additionally, killing is justified when there is an active threat to the survival of others, such as during self defense or the killing of terrorists.
And sometimes, despite defining our ethical codes, we still do things that we consider to be wrong. For example, I have killed ants that entered my home, because I selfishly valued the integrity of my property over the lives of the ants. I believe that it was morally wrong for me to kill those ants that entered my home, but I still did it anyway because as a human, I am a fundamentally irrational being. I tried to pick the ants up and deposit them outside at first, but eventually there were simply too many ants for me to deal with.
In the end, rather than try to exterminate the ant colony at the source as others advised, I opted to seal the area that they were entering into my home with some caulking, so that in the long term both the ants and I could coexist in peace.
In this scenario, I fell short of my ethical code. The truth is, as a selfish and irrational being, I don’t actually value the lives of all sentient beings equally. But my ethical code does value all sentient beings equally, and what’s important to me is that I strived to follow my code, even though I fell short at times.
In any case, I believe it is of the utmost importance that I follow an ethical code that is logically consistent. Ethics and logic are inseparable, and logic that is inconsistent or contradictory is not valid. Adhering to an invalid ethical code is a grave mistake that invites hypocrisy. I believe we must all strive to correct errors in our ethical codes so that we can become better people.
And again, as fundamentally irrational beings we may sometimes not live up to our own ethical codes. It is an inescapable fact that there will always exist a tension between ethics which is fundamentally logical and rational and human beings which are fundamentally emotional and irrational. But this does not mean that we humans shouldn’t strive to have a valid, logically consistent ethical system, so that it can become the North Star that guides us to make the best moral decisions.
Finally, I think that it is impossible to distill emotional and irrational human behavior into a logically consistent ethical code. As soon as you start trying to do this, you will eventually run into logical contradictions or inconsistencies in your ethics, because the underlying structure is fundamentally irrational.
For example, if you start trying to define an ethical code that values the lives of different people differently, it will eventually lead you down a path to something like speciesism, eugenics or nazism, you will realize that the code conflicts with other ethical values, and if you are a good person you will have to discard those ethics and start from a clean slate.
Although it’s normally detected at about 14 weeks, Anencephaly (lack of brain/skull) can be detected as late as 26 weeks, since the scan that specifically detects it is taken at 20+6 weeks. Some foetus (can you really call it a baby when it has no brain) are born with this condition, but the longest one has survived without life sustaining interventions is 28 months. Given that everyone needs time to make a decision to actually abort, a foetus with this condition could easily be aborted later than your 26 weeks, and is definitely not viable.
Within the context of my ethical code, the main concern is whether the fetus is capable of conscious thought. If anencephaly was detected after 26 weeks, then the fetus would not be capable of conscious thought, and therefore there would be no issue with an abortion. 26 weeks is just a number, the main issue here is the presence of conscious thought. Ideally, there should be some sort of device or test which can detect conscious thought, and if no conscious thought is detected, abortions should be allowed at any time.
And for the record, I do support the decision to allow Terri Schiavo’s body to die, because I do not believe it was capable of conscious thought.
Of course, this also assumes that every pregnancy has all the tests, that they’re all done in a timely manner, and the results are accurate. Do you guarantee that your healthcare system is currently testing every pregnant person in a timely manner?
No, I don’t guarantee or expect the universal availability or accuracy of tests. But this is no excuse to have a logically inconsistent ethical code.
There are people who are in denial about being pregnant, or who are obese, and don’t realise they’re pregnant. I had an acquaintance who was told she couldn’t get pregnant, who had severe pains and went to hospital, only to have a baby that nobody expected, including her husband who already had children by his previous wife, so I’m absolutely sure that even the very best health system has pregnancies that fall through the cracks.
I don’t follow this. I’m not sure why someone who didn't even know that they are pregnant would want an abortion in the first place, unless their health was suddenly at risk, in which case the abortion would be justified.
Too much grey area there. The two women mentioned upthread died because doctors had difficulty interpreting what counted as "life at risk". It should be doctors that make that call, not politicians.
Furthermore, if the mother’s life being at risk is the only reason for a late term abortion, the medical team needs to dilly dally around deciding whether it really is at risk (or waiting for it to be at indisputable risk), potentially resulting in maternal deaths. The mother whose death resulted in this thread actually died for this reason.
As I understand it, both of the cases in this thread are from Texas, where the law specifically doesn’t carve out any protections for the health of the mother. As such, the issue became a legal gray area involving subsequent laws, legal rulings, and medical board recommendations. As such, many doctors became afraid to administer care to women in danger because of the lack of clear guidelines.
This situation in Texas is completely unacceptable. I believe that any abortion law must have easy to understand and well defined protections for the health of the mother that put both women and doctors at ease. Anything else is completely unacceptable.
As an unrestricted pro-choice woman, I’ll tell you why I disagree with your view. I’ve never known a woman to consider an abortion after 26 weeks who did not have a very good reason. Her health, the viability of the fetus, the possibility that the baby would be born with a painful and debilitating defect. None of those women considered it flippantly or heartlessly. None of those pregnancies were unwanted. I am sure there are many women I don’t know who consider abortions after 26 weeks because of things like drug addiction or mental illness.
Any restriction on abortion is a judgment against women. There’s an assumption that irresponsible and callous women are out there having sex and killing babies. We need to protect the babies from these murderous women. Somehow, these psychopathic baby killers will be cured if they are forced to give birth to babies, because then their true nature will be unlocked by mother’s love: suddenly, their maternal instincts will kick in and they will reach their potential as loving mothers, or they will give their babies up for adoption to other loving mothers.
A pregnant woman is the best person to make an educated decision about her body and her fetus. The callous baby killing pregnant woman doesn’t exist, and if she does, she should probably be allowed to have an abortion for society’s sake, anyway.
I actually agree with everything that you are saying, other than that I still believe the children of bad people have a right to life. Otherwise, what you are saying is valid, heartfelt, and truthful.
However, none of what you said is a reason for me to lack a logically consistent ethical code regarding the protection of sentient life. I cannot simply trust others to do the right thing. I must have my own code to guide me.
A pregnant woman is the best person to make an educated decision about her body and her fetus. The callous baby killing pregnant woman doesn’t exist, and if she does, she should probably be allowed to have an abortion for society’s sake, anyway.
A point well made.
I wish that people, when considering abortion, thought more about the negative consequences of allowing the baby to live - negative for the baby (in cases of severe disability), the mother and/or society. It's inconsistent to consider only one side of the ledger.
I do not agree with this statement at all. Under this logic, we could justify the killing of all sorts of people whose existence does not benefit society. If we put logic like this into our ethical code, it could justify eugenics.
People with Down Syndrome will never integrate well into society. Should we kill them? Violent and aggressive autistic people are a constant threat to everyone around them. Should we kill them? What about pedophiles? Psychopaths? Rapists? Psychopathic rapists? Psychopathic rapist pedophiles? How about terrorists?
Ok, well unlike the previous groups of people I mentioned, I think most of us agree that it is ok to kill terrorists. At some point, you have to draw the line. And I chose to draw it there because terrorists are a direct threat to the survival of other people, and the other groups of people, however dysfunctional, loathsome, or evil they may be, are not.
Where do you draw the line?
