Abortion Essay

[morriswalters]

I imply nothing. I state as an absolute that it is impossible to point to a place where personhood occurs. Neither is Roe v Wade a perfect solution. The point being that it was the only place were facts ruled over opinions.

But it's not impossible to see where it's clearly not. Or are you arguing that you can't say that a table is not a person, or a rock is not a person? One clear point is, where we know there does not exist a mind, that there does not exist a person.

You know no such thing. It may well be that a fetus is an empty vessel waiting to be filled. Does the fact that it has no contents mean that the vessel is not what it is. I don't mean to be contrary, or perhaps I do. But it is not as simple as saying that we know when a person exists, the mind is a product of the body. It can't be a mind unless it it filled with experience. When does that sum total of experience constitute personhood? Arguing that a person is not a rock is disingenuous. When is a person a person? If this was an easy question there wouldn't be this debate.

[Izawwlgood]

Does the fact that it has no contents mean that the vessel is not what it is.

I'm not even sure how obvious I should go to point out the absurdity of your query.

[Soralin]

You know no such thing. It may well be that a fetus is an empty vessel waiting to be filled. Does the fact that it has no contents mean that the vessel is not what it is. I don't mean to be contrary, or perhaps I do. But it is not as simple as saying that we know when a person exists, the mind is a product of the body. It can't be a mind unless it it filled with experience. When does that sum total of experience constitute personhood? Arguing that a person is not a rock is disingenuous. When is a person a person? If this was an easy question there wouldn't be this debate.

Vessel? Filled? Consciousness or intelligence aren't fluids, coming from outside, which makes it a rather poor analogy. They're a matter of processing power and the application thereof, and it's not a matter of being filled with them, they're grown, by the same process and set of genetic instructions that grew all the rest of your body.

And as for experience, if you say that it can't be a mind unless it's filled with experience, then you seem to be agreeing with my previous statements. I was simply pointing out, that we know a span of time where we know the level of experience to be 0. After all, until a brain has the capability of processing and storing experiences, it can't be filled with any experiences, in the same sense as a rock can't be filled with any experiences. In order to fill something with experiences, it must first actually be capable of experiencing something. And up until the point before mentioned, we know that it's not yet capable of experiencing anything at all, simply as a matter of observations made, and our knowledge of physics, biology, neurology, etc.

[morriswalters]

I'll try to be clearer. I'm aware that the brain is not fully developed in the womb. Neither is it fully developed when you are born. So when is the process of development sufficient? If there is no bright line which marks the boundary between personhood and whatever other state that exists, then when is it moral to destroy a fetus and when is it not? Do the contents of our mind or the biology determine personhood?

[Izawwlgood]

I think the measure of 'able to survive with any given individuals general care' has already been put forth? Maybe?
That seems a reasonable line for 'viability'.

Do the contents of our mind or the biology determine personhood?

Mind. Out of curiosity, how did you feel about the Terry Schiavo case? I think that'll explain a lot to us.

[morriswalters]

Given the level of understanding as of today, letting her die was mercy. But that could change. Give some thought to the idea that one day her condition may be reversible, or we may find that she still had a mind and it just couldn't communicate.

I'll make one more comment and then I'll just listen. What I find offensive about separating being human biologically and being human as in having a mind is that neither is describable in finite terms. We don't understand the mind well enough to separate the two. That may well change, but it makes me a conservative. I accept abortion as a lesser of two evils, but I don't believe that because females dislike the fact that they got the short end of the stick from a genetic standpoint, that there interests will always outweigh that of the fetus. But given the current state of our understanding about the biology I'm not willing to take away a woman's right to be the final arbiter.

[Soralin]

I'll try to be clearer. I'm aware that the brain is not fully developed in the womb. Neither is it fully developed when you are born. So when is the process of development sufficient? If there is no bright line which marks the boundary between personhood and whatever other state that exists, then when is it moral to destroy a fetus and when is it not? Do the contents of our mind or the biology determine personhood?

The point is that you can bound that greyscale, it's only greyscale where it's unknown or poorly defined, between two solid lines. To the right, we have a white line where we definitely know that something is a person, and everything to the right of that line is white. On the left, we have a black line where we definitely know that something is not a person, and everything to the left of that line is black. The greyscale only exists between those two lines.

The point is, the vast vast majority of abortions happen to the left of that solid black line, before the greyscale even starts, before it's even the darkest shade of grey, in the area where we know that no mind exists. The mind isn't some mystical thing, your computer does not run on magic smoke, a mind is a physical thing, brains operate through well known rules, and we can use that knowledge to know if it's functional or not, at least within a broad sense.

Given the level of understanding as of today, letting her die was mercy. But that could change. Give some thought to the idea that one day her condition may be reversible, or we may find that she still had a mind and it just couldn't communicate.

No, there isn't. Most of her brain was liquified, that information is simply gone, lost. If your hard drive melts into a pile of slag, then no matter what your capability of making or repairing hard drives is, you're not going to get your data back from it.

I'll make one more comment and then I'll just listen. What I find offensive about separating being human biologically and being human as in having a mind is that neither is describable in finite terms. We don't understand the mind well enough to separate the two. That may well change, but it makes me a conservative. I accept abortion as a lesser of two evils, but I don't believe that because females dislike the fact that they got the short end of the stick from a genetic standpoint, that there interests will always outweigh that of the fetus. But given the current state of our understanding about the biology I'm not willing to take away a woman's right to be the final arbiter.

They are describable, we do understand the mind well enough to separate the two, at least in broad general terms, even if the specifics require more magnification of our view. Heck, as an example, using an fMRI, we can reconstruct what someone is looking at, (again, in broad general terms at least) just by looking at their brain: http://newscenter.berkeley.edu/2011/09/22/brain-movies/ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FsH7RK1S2E I think we know far more than you think we know.

[morriswalters]

I don't know enough about Schiavo to say more than I did, but the idea of recovery from a persistent vegetative state is not unheard of. There are limits to fMRI. Again it is past the point of my knowledge, but fMRI has limits in that it is a statistical representation of what is happening. It doesn't represent more than a general look at the mind. They believe that the mind is an emergent property, but they don't understand it.

[Feddlefew]

The liquefaction of the majority of a human's brain isn't something that they're going to recover from. I believe she was missing the hippocampus and thalamus, which are known to be vital in relaying information to various parts of the brain. Her eyes were still capable of tracking objects because that's similar to a reflex, like blinking.

[Diadem]

I don't know enough about Schiavo to say more than I did, but the idea of recovery from a persistent vegetative state is not unheard of.

Decades ago, yes. Today, not so much. In the past we couldn't really tell what was wrong with a patient, other than that they were clearly in a coma. Today we can do brain scans, and get much more accurate data. We can tell what kind of comas someone may wake up from, and what kind are a hopeless case. There may still be some cases in which we aren't sure. But the vast majority of persistent vegetative states, we can say with certainty that this patient will never wake up again. Simply because we can look into their brain, and see that all the important bits are missing.

And no, repairing is not an option, as Soralin points out. No amount of repairing is going to restore information that is gone. You can in theory rebuild the neurons, and the connections between them. But our personality and memories are stored in the pattern of connections, which you have no way of recovering.

[TheGrammarBolshevik]

And at the point that you're saying "This person isn't good as dead, because we could in theory reconstruct the brain that was once there," you might as well also say "This corpse isn't good as dead, because we can in theory reconstruct the brain that was once there."

[Izawwlgood]

We're monsters for not doing all we can.

But... monsters for doing all we can! Le gasp! And then the postpartum depression. Man, everything sucks.

[morriswalters]

As I said, I know very little about the women. However in some cases there is an indication that at least one drug is capable of waking some from that state, if I can I'll find a link. However this is how it works here evidently, here, the world is one of absolutes, and black and white. My world is more gray. Still this distraction aside no one has offered to show me when abortion is moral and when it is not. What spark changes abortion to murder? For me the grayness means that I give the mother the choice, since I can't answer the question. But that leaves open the possibility that at some point abortion becomes murder.

[Izawwlgood]

I asked about Terry Schiavo in response this statement you made:

Do the contents of our mind or the biology determine personhood?

The idea being that if the mind is gone, it's not murder. Similarly, a fetus doesn't have a mind, doesn't even have brain activity, until very late in development. I would go so far as to say that a human baby, born and able to survive from input from any individual human, doesn't have much in the way of a mind for another 4-8 months. So saying 'but you're murdering a human' when you are discussing abortion, and then bringing up 'mind' as the reason for this, is in my opinion, ignorant of reality.

[morriswalters]

If it makes you fell better, but a word to the wise, don't drag brain damaged people into this. Fetus's aren't damaged, they eventually will work. And unless you know how the equipment works you can't really say when a mind is working. Tell me when babies have a mind. When does it happen? How does it happen? Neuroscience can't say. People are way to blase about this. At some point in time killing a whatever you choose to call it is morally wrong. No body has yet said when. What it seems to boil down to is whenever it's inconvenient, abort it. I can live with that because I don't have a better answer, but I damn well don't like it.

[Copper Bezel]

If it makes you fell better, but a word to the wise, don't drag brain damaged people into this. Fetus's aren't damaged, they eventually will work.

You're misreading the argument. Fetuses are not brain damaged. People with extreme brain damage are just a test case that illustrates that a body without a brain doesn't count as a person. It's not an analogy for a fetus or a similar situation in any direct sense. The only thing the two states have in common is the thing being explained, and they have that in common literally, not merely as an analogy.

This is no different from the references earlier in the thread to the moral status of a rock. We already know that fetuses are not composed of assorted minerals through sedimentation or vulcanism and don't need that spelled out.

And unless you know how the equipment works you can't really say when a mind is working. Tell me when babies have a mind. When does it happen? How does it happen? Neuroscience can't say.

Neuroscience can say with certainty that something that doesn't have a functioning brain with all the right little connections going on and actual brain waves doesn't have a mind. Fetuses in the first two trimesters are in that situation. We can say this with absolute certainty. When you trust medical doctors to treat you, or begrudgingly distrust them and still find yourself surviving an episode that would have killed you otherwise, you're depending on similarly ascertained information. Making an argument that early-stage fetuses have minds in light of what modern medicine is actually capable of determining is like denying relativity in light of GPS technology.

People are way to blase about this. At some point in time killing a whatever you choose to call it is morally wrong. No body has yet said when. What it seems to boil down to is whenever it's inconvenient, abort it. I can live with that because I don't have a better answer, but I damn well don't like it.

The US supreme court decided based on convenience, yes. There's also an argument in this thread that a fetus doesn't have the "right" to inconvenience the mother, too, at whatever stage of the pregnancy. But if you're concerned about minds (as I am, and maybe that's the wrong approach,) then yes, you can define a time at which something counts as a mind.

But there is no one moment at which it becomes morally wrong to terminate a pregnancy as if by some dictate from beyond the human realm. That's something you absolutely need to understand here. There is no light bulb of consciousness that suddenly clicks on. No one has said "when" beyond "sometime between six months and nine," that's true, and there's a small part of that that has to do with what science can determine. There's a much larger part of it that isn't, that has nothing to do with science. Given absolute scientific certainty of the exact sophistication and self-awareness of a fetus at a second-by-second scale, there'd still be a value judgement involved to decide at what point a fetus counts as a moral agent and recipient of moral agency. Babies newly born aren't people in the way that we ordinarily meant the term. Really, they aren't at two months, either, and children don't have all of the the same "innate" rights and moral responsibilities as adults. Morality often sounds best when it's nice and neat and abstract and absolute, and nothing that is has any chance of describing things that actually happen in the real world.

So no, I'm sorry if you find this troubling, but there is no point at which anything "is" anything. There's a point at which we've generally decided it's best if we sort of agree to think of it as. That's round-abouts six months in by standing precedent. We can fiddle with the details from there.

[Izawwlgood]

Tell me when babies have a mind. When does it happen? How does it happen? Neuroscience can't say.

I think you're ignoring Soralin's comment (Also, CB has largely addressed this). You should reread it. And this time, reread it with the understanding that we actually know quite a bit (quite a bit!) about fetal brain developmental stages and brain activity. Now, obviously we don't have a test or a moment when we can say "Aha! Mind is starting...... NOW!", but we know what a 1-year old brain looks like, we know what a 5-year old brain looks like, we know what an autistic brain looks like, we know what a brain dead brain looks like, and most importantly to this discussion, we know what healthy brains look like. And yes, for an epic understatement: we have A LOT more to learn about development. But don't take my word for it! Do some research as to when brain activity begins in a fetus, or what kind of brain activity is going on in a baby between the ages of 0 and 1 years of age.

A fetal brain is very different from the lump of flesh in my head or your head; that's the point, that terminating a fetus is NOT terminating a gestalt conscious mind, just like pulling the plug on Terry Schiavo was not murder (because she was already dead).

I know you side in favor of allowing a woman to choose, but the decisions being made by a woman are influenced by their personal moralities and understanding of (among many other things I'm sure) their own bodies and the developing fetus. You seem to be operating under incorrect pretenses about how a fetus develops, misinformation that I feel is important you are at least made aware of.

[morriswalters]

The thing that we call human is not complete until very late in life, say sixteen years or so. Even a child of ten doesn't yet have all his cognitive skills.

People with extreme brain damage are just a test case that illustrates that a body without a brain doesn't count as a person.

Again it comes down to quantifying that. We err on the safe side in the case of brain damage. If the brain could be regenerated even at the price of losing the distinct personality it had, would it be moral to let it die?

Neuroscience can say with certainty that something that doesn't have a functioning brain with all the right little connections going on and actual brain waves doesn't have a mind. Fetuses in the first two trimesters are in that situation. We can say this with absolute certainty. When you trust medical doctors to treat you, or begrudgingly distrust them and still find yourself surviving an episode that would have killed you otherwise, you're depending on similarly ascertained information. Making an argument that early-stage fetuses have minds in light of what modern medicine is actually capable of determining is like denying relativity in light of GPS technology.

I would posit for the sake of argument that genetic distinctness is a better marker then mind. It's a matter of degree. The argument seems to be that we know it's human here and it's not human there. Where are the lines? It's not the fact of abortion that bothers me, it's the causal way people make the assumption that it makes no difference.

I don't have much to say about your final paragraph other than to point out if we can't pick a point someone else will. If you argue for mind then you open the doors to things that you might find distasteful. Should we harvest fetus's for any resources they might have? For all intents and purposes we could do it. Would it be moral for women to grow fetus's for sale? As I said I support the status quo. But I am not as comfortable as some with what it does to society. In any case I'm done. I shouldn't have joined this conversation, it generally doesn't end well.

@Izawwlgood

I'm not missing anything. We know a lot about the brain, but there is a vast amount we don't know. No one yet can tell you what a mind is, other than to say things like, I have one and I think you do. fMRI is a good technique, but its utility for individuals is limited. They study broad swaths of the mind, but on an individual level the pieces and parts are all slightly different. The new buzz word or meme if you will is emergent. But they have no idea how. Try this. Separate the left brain from the right brain by severing the connections. You will never be aware that you are effectively blind on one side and only using half your brain. And your IQ stays the same.

@

[Lucrece]

Women already grow fetuses for sale. It's a fairly lucrative business. I doubt infertile couples find it distasteful.

Moreover, I think you're projecting when you're saying people will find the harvesting of fetuses (aptly phrased for extra instinctive recoil) distasteful. Those that mistakenly hold fetuses to be persons will -- those who regard a fetus with no more reverence than they do individual sperm will find little issue harvesting fetuses if it proves to be a boon for actual persons.

[Diadem]

Another abortion essay. This one though is actually interesting.

http://jme.bmj.com/content/early/2012/0 ... l.pdf+html

ABSTRACT
Abortion is largely accepted even for reasons that do not
have anything to do with the fetus’ health. By showing
that (1) both fetuses and newborns do not have the
same moral status as actual persons, (2) the fact that
both are potential persons is morally irrelevant and (3)
adoption is not always in the best interest of actual
people, the authors argue that what we call ‘after-birth
abortion’ (killing a newborn) should be permissible in all
the cases where abortion is, including cases where the
newborn is not disabled.

The article is not very well written, at least at the start, in my opinion. They seem to focus on only on medical situations, and they keep talking about 'situations in which abortion would be permissible' without defining it, which is rather annoying. It gets better later on though, when they article becomes more structured. I thought it was an interesting article.

[Роберт]

Another abortion essay. This one though is actually interesting.

http://jme.bmj.com/content/early/2012/0 ... l.pdf+html

ABSTRACT
Abortion is largely accepted even for reasons that do not
have anything to do with the fetus’ health. By showing
that (1) both fetuses and newborns do not have the
same moral status as actual persons, (2) the fact that
both are potential persons is morally irrelevant and (3)
adoption is not always in the best interest of actual
people, the authors argue that what we call ‘after-birth
abortion’ (killing a newborn) should be permissible in all
the cases where abortion is, including cases where the
newborn is not disabled.

The article is not very well written, at least at the start, in my opinion. They seem to focus on only on medical situations, and they keep talking about 'situations in which abortion would be permissible' without defining it, which is rather annoying. It gets better later on though, when they article becomes more structured. I thought it was an interesting article.

That's silly. There's no bodily autonomy involved anymore, and there's "baby Moses" sites where you can drop children off and wash your hands of it. I see no reason to allow infanticide because it's no longer a rights of the mother (bodily autonomy) vs rights of the child. Now it's just rights of the child versus the wants of other people. Rights trump wants, baby doesn't get killed until ze's old enough to consent to assisted suicide.

[Ashlah]

I think that article is pro-life trolling.

[Diadem]

That's silly. There's no bodily autonomy involved anymore, and there's "baby Moses" sites where you can drop children off and wash your hands of it. I see no reason to allow infanticide because it's no longer a rights of the mother (bodily autonomy) vs rights of the child. Now it's just rights of the child versus the wants of other people. Rights trump wants, baby doesn't get killed until ze's old enough to consent to assisted suicide.

Wait, what? Baby Moses what? I don't know where you are from, but I've never heard of that. Must be something very specific to your country.

And their argument never was about bodily autonomy was it? It was about an infant not being a person. They argue that a baby is not harmed in any meaningful sense of the word 'harmed' by being killed, since it has no desires or goals, so it does not lose anything. On the face of it, I can't really see a flaw in their argument.

You posit "it's about rights of the child". But well, proof to me that a newborn baby should have rights.

[JBJ]

Wait, what? Baby Moses what? I don't know where you are from, but I've never heard of that. Must be something very specific to your country

Also known as Safe Havens. It allows new mothers to drop off infants at certain locations, like fire stations and hospitals anonymously. All US states have some variation of the law.

Apparently in Europe and other areas, they are referred to as Baby Hatches. Legality not as widespread.

[Diadem]

Wow. That's fucked up.

[Lucrece]

Yeah, well, better than dropping them off at dumpsters or leaving them on a mound somehwre by the nearby hill.

[Роберт]

I think that article is pro-life trolling.

+1.

But well, proof[sic] to me that a newborn baby should have rights.

"Proof" to me that YOU need rights.

[Izawwlgood]

Wow. That's fucked up.

I think it's a pretty humane solution to an otherwise serious problem. Unless there are facets of these laws I haven't considered, I actually applaud America for once, for recognizing that punishing someone in a situation desperate enough to abandon an infant at a doorstop is a bad thing.

I think the laws at worst support pro-life agenda's, but better they exist than something else ridiculous happen.

[lucrezaborgia]

Unless there are facets of these laws I haven't considered

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26887181/ns ... haven-law/

[Copper Bezel]

Yes, but that's just a comically poorly-written law.

I'm almost disappointed that the article is a joke. I have to say, the thing I'd find most reprehensible about their rather modest proposal is the double-speak term - which I know is intended, but I have a much more visceral reaction to it than to the idea of infanticide.

The thing that we call human is not complete until very late in life, say sixteen years or so. Even a child of ten doesn't yet have all his cognitive skills.

Agreed, although a child of two is certainly a person in a very real sense.

Again it comes down to quantifying that. We err on the safe side in the case of brain damage. If the brain could be regenerated even at the price of losing the distinct personality it had, would it be moral to let it die?

How much of the personality? As you say, we err on the side of caution and try to save what we can. But if it's a complete tabula rasa in the body of a person now lost, then we're back to Frankenstein's monster. Forget letting it die; I'm pretty sure the only moral thing to do in that case is to make damn sure it's dead.

I would posit for the sake of argument that genetic distinctness is a better marker then mind. It's a matter of degree. The argument seems to be that we know it's human here and it's not human there. Where are the lines? It's not the fact of abortion that bothers me, it's the causal way people make the assumption that it makes no difference.

Look, that's an argument of convenience, too, but it's convenience for the people making the definitions instead of convenience for people involved in the actual situations. A lot of distinct human genomes aren't people. Again, IVF clinics have absurd numbers of them lying around on ice, and no one argues that those embryos have legal rights. Some people argue they shouldn't have been made in the first place, but that's not at all the same thing.

I don't have much to say about your final paragraph other than to point out if we can't pick a point someone else will.

No, someone else already has. In the US, that someone is the US Supreme Court. Our picking of points is irrelevant to practice.

But many other people do pick out points, and many of them pick out the moment of fertilization, because it's the easiest to understand and defend. That doesn't make it an intrinsic property of the universe; it's still something that someone has chosen to define as such, equally arbitrary. Being really certain of an uncertain thing doesn't make the thing itself more certain.

So I'm not sure what you're suggesting. It sounds like you want an equally black-and-white alternative to the moment-of-fertilization argument, something that makes personhood and legal status and an easily identifiable individual all happen at the same time and somehow fits our commonsense use of everyday words at the same time. There isn't one.

And again, the semantics are still separate from reality, because the words weren't made up and calibrated for this particular discussion. It doesn't matter what you want to call a person or whatever else. You can call a fetus a person. You can call an embryo a person. You can call an unfertilized ovum a person. It's just absurd to extend them legal status.

It's not a matter of drawing a line. There are a bunch of lines, they're already drawn, and they don't all intersect at the same point. Trying to change the lines to make them more convenient to talk about is nonsense.

If you argue for mind then you open the doors to things that you might find distasteful. Should we harvest fetus's for any resources they might have? For all intents and purposes we could do it. Would it be moral for women to grow fetus's for sale? As I said I support the status quo. But I am not as comfortable as some with what it does to society. In any case I'm done. I shouldn't have joined this conversation, it generally doesn't end well.

Respect is another thing that doesn't correlate one-to-one with legal status. We don't treat human bodies like that under any circumstances. We don't sell them and we don't eat them and we only very rarely make them into creepy museum exhibits or have medical students cut them up, both for educational purposes that can't be served in any other way. We don't do things like what you're suggesting because they're distasteful, and we have laws against them for the same reason.

[morriswalters]

Just for clarity, when I say genetically distinct, I mean a fetus that has set up housekeeping in the womb, where the womb, or whatever mechanism that exists, protects that organism from being rejected by the mothers body.

[Diadem]

Yeah, well, better than dropping them off at dumpsters or leaving them on a mound somehwre by the nearby hill.

No it isn't.

If you abandon an newborn baby you are doing harm to an actual person. If you kill a newborn baby, you are not. That's a rather important difference, to me. Anonymously dumping your kids is bad for those kids and bad for society. It's highly unethical.

I'm almost disappointed that the article is a joke.

A joke? What makes you think that? I did some googling but haven't found any website suggesting it wasn't serious. I did not pick up any sarcastic tone in the paper itself either. Anyway it doesn't matter. They still raise valid points.

[Azrael]

Yeah, well, better than dropping them off at dumpsters or leaving them on a mound somehwre by the nearby hill.

No it isn't. If you abandon an newborn baby you are doing harm to an actual person. If you kill a newborn baby, you are not. That's a rather important difference, to me. Anonymously dumping your kids is bad for those kids and bad for society. It's highly unethical.

Holy shit, where to start.

First, newborns are readily adoptable. There's more demand than supply, just see the large and growing trend of adopting from abroad. Drop offs provide a safe release for that tiny minority of parents who can't/won't/aren't able to undertake the normal adoption process.

Second, it didn't give you pause to say that making use of a safe, albeit emergency, entrance into the adoption process is less ethical than killing the newborn? Your logic suggests that it is better to kill a person rather than cause them some long-lasting damage. Just about every ethical and legal system world-wide disagrees.

[krogoth]

The article listed seems to fit the definition of Poes law almost exactly to me, A satire by pro lifers. But I could see it also see it at just an attention grabbing bit of self initiated philosophy (self debate about both sides of an issue) then submitted as a paper.(feels like something I would do)

It seems from what I read to be arguing for a position as Devils advocate, if not any of the above things.

[Copper Bezel]

If it was serious, it wouldn't introduce the term "after-birth abortion." They'd call it infanticide, or any of a number of less charged words for the same thing that actually describe what's being described. I'm more comfortable with the idea of bringing infanticide back than I am with such a reprehensible and morally bankrupt abuse of a perfectly good language.

Seriously, that's like calling warfare "kinetic humanitarian action" or something.

Just for clarity, when I say genetically distinct, I mean a fetus that has set up housekeeping in the womb, where the womb, or whatever mechanism that exists, protects that organism from being rejected by the mothers body.

Oh, okay, I can see that in a sense. I don't get the phrase, though - isn't an embryo genetically distinct at the point at which it starts being an embryo?

[Diadem]

Holy shit, where to start.

First, newborns are readily adoptable. There's more demand than supply, just see the large and growing trend of adopting from abroad. Drop offs provide a safe release for that tiny minority of parents who can't/won't/aren't able to undertake the normal adoption process.

Adoption is not an optimal start in life even under the best of circumstances. Doing it like this though is much worse. That's (on average) going to cause a lot of suffering. I'm not against adoption, but that doesn't mean I should endorse all forms of adoption. Just like I'm not against eating meat, but against treating animals cruelly while producing meat.

Besides, this argument kind of misses the point. Just because adoption is available doesn't mean it should be required. Some people may not want to give their newborn kids up for adoption, for whatever reason. It also doesn't solve the problem of children with severe birth defects. They will still have those defects, even if given up for adoption.

Second, it didn't give you pause to say that making use of a safe, albeit emergency, entrance into the adoption process is less ethical than killing the newborn?

Sure it gave me pause. I paused, thought about it, looked at the issue from several angles, and posted.

Your logic suggests that it is better to kill a person rather than cause them some long-lasting damage. Just about every ethical and legal system world-wide disagrees.

It's better to kill a non-person than to cause long-lastig damage to a person. Is that a concept that is so hard to grok?

Should newborn infants not be considered persons? I don't know. There are some compelling reason to think so, but that is not proof. That question however is ultimately one of science. We can do the research and then make a decision based on that. In the meantime, I am by no means certain. But like I said, there are some compelling reasons to not consider infants persons.

I mean, newborn infants respond to stimuli, but that's about it. They don't seem to have a mind or a personality. There are many animals far more advanced. Animals we kill for food or sport without remorse.

[poxic]

As a (once upon a time) baby born to a teenage girl, then given up for adoption... yes, a rocky adoption can lead to lifelong problems. Perhaps ideal-case adoptions do as well. Still, I'd rather be here than not be here.

Spoilered for probably not as relevant to the current discussion as it could be, but I felt the need to braindump. Sorry.

Spoiler:

That said, I did resolve the issue for myself when I was younger. Yes, if abortion were available and simple when my birth mother was pregnant with me, I might not be here writing this. (Or maybe I would.) I worked through my feelings vs. my ideals, then decided I would support a woman's right to choose. After all, I am a woman. There have been very few places in my life when I could have withstood a pregnancy, including physically once I was diagnosed with kidney disease at 23ish, can't remember exactly what year that happened.

Our society regularly decides that the life of the leader of a country is worth more than the lives of others in the same country (or even other countries). That bothers me on some level, but it's damned unlikely to change (the situation, and my feelings about it). I have to figure out how to be at peace with that.

I find it odd that many people would place the life of a yet-unaware embryo or what-have-you above the life of a fully aware and developed human being. It smells of the attitude that "the lives of women can be ignored because they don't count", even if that isn't the intent.

[Lucrece]

Holy shit, where to start.

First, newborns are readily adoptable. There's more demand than supply, just see the large and growing trend of adopting from abroad. Drop offs provide a safe release for that tiny minority of parents who can't/won't/aren't able to undertake the normal adoption process.

Adoption is not an optimal start in life even under the best of circumstances. Doing it like this though is much worse. That's (on average) going to cause a lot of suffering. I'm not against adoption, but that doesn't mean I should endorse all forms of adoption. Just like I'm not against eating meat, but against treating animals cruelly while producing meat.

Besides, this argument kind of misses the point. Just because adoption is available doesn't mean it should be required. Some people may not want to give their newborn kids up for adoption, for whatever reason. It also doesn't solve the problem of children with severe birth defects. They will still have those defects, even if given up for adoption.

Second, it didn't give you pause to say that making use of a safe, albeit emergency, entrance into the adoption process is less ethical than killing the newborn?

Sure it gave me pause. I paused, thought about it, looked at the issue from several angles, and posted.

Your logic suggests that it is better to kill a person rather than cause them some long-lasting damage. Just about every ethical and legal system world-wide disagrees.

It's better to kill a non-person than to cause long-lastig damage to a person. Is that a concept that is so hard to grok?

Should newborn infants not be considered persons? I don't know. There are some compelling reason to think so, but that is not proof. That question however is ultimately one of science. We can do the research and then make a decision based on that. In the meantime, I am by no means certain. But like I said, there are some compelling reasons to not consider infants persons.

I mean, newborn infants respond to stimuli, but that's about it. They don't seem to have a mind or a personality. There are many animals far more advanced. Animals we kill for food or sport without remorse.

Could you offer citations for the way in which adoption irreparably damages a human being? Not everyone, including cognizant children wanting to be adopted address the thought of adoption as ominously as you do.

What's so awful about being dropped off at a fire station by a mother who didn't have the means for proper abortion, and now you have a likelihood of being placed in a loving home as opposed to "Oops, we're pregnant; this is gonna suck." unprepared parents?

Have you tried talking to adopted children about their harrowing experiences growing up in a home where the parents actually coveted them for love and attention?

P.S. Bringing up failed adoptions is a moot point. It's as simple as failed parenting. If you're going to argue that someone is better off not developing than being adopted because you could be stuck with shitty people, then that point applies to pretty much any case for birthing offspring.

[The Great Hippo]

More than that--I'd like a citation specifically on the following:

Adoption is not an optimal start in life even under the best of circumstances.

Emphasis mine. The best circumstances are that you're adopted by a super-loving billionaire couple who both have Ph. Ds. in 'Raising Kids To Be Awesome', and you grow up to never care about who your actual birth parents are. How is that not optimal?

[poxic]

Compared with "growing up with biological parents in crappy circumstances"? Can't possibly be worse.

OK, that was a bit snarky. For serious, I have met both of my birth parents now, and I have something of a relationship with my birth mother. I can see a rough trajectory of how my life would have been had they stuck it out to raise me. I doubt I would be as well off as I am now, having been raised by capable (if also neurosis-inducing) adoptive parents with better financial, emotional, and social resources.

A few of my lingering personal issues might have been different, sure. Being raised by someone very like me would probably have been a boon for my artistic development as well. Being raised by two substance-abusing people who disliked each other would probably not have helped very much in the long run, though, compared to what actually happened (two sorta-yuppies with two kids already and the ability to fund a college education).