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Late term abortions (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter timschochet
- Start date
sn0mm1s
Footballguy
Wow... lack of reading comprehension ... no idea WTF you are talking about in the bold.
The red isn't false, it is just a hard to hear.
Not even sure what point you are trying to make about choice. We choose to do things. I choose to use my money as I want. I could use that money in many, many more humanitarian ways but I don't - and, unless you are some holy man living in poverty, no one else I can think of does either.
The point of the abortion is generally so innocent children aren't left in the rubble of poor choices and give me a break if you think good people and churches are stepping up and caring for all these kids.
Stealthycat
Footballguy
yes choices ........ however we do not have choices in life to kill innocent people do we ?
Even though I think violinists and fetuses are sufficiently different from each other that Judith Jarvis Thomson’s thought experiment doesn’t have a lot of bearing on the abortion debate, I want to back up and address it on its own terms ... or actually on slightly revised terms. Here is her statement of it:
Also, for the sake of this thought experiment, let’s make the violinist conscious so that he can state his preferences and engage in some negotiation. (Alternatively, he could have expressed his preferred way to handle this situation before he was rendered unconscious.)
Suppose the violinist wishes to remain plugged into you instead of dying, while you wish to unplug him. What rule should we adopt? Which of you should get to decide what happens?
The Coase Theorem tells us that, in the absence of transaction costs or other factors that would distort free bargaining, the rule we adopt doesn’t matter. (More precisely, it matters only to distributive concerns, not to the behavioral result.)
If the violinist values remaining plugged in at $3 million while you value unplugging him at $150,000, he’s going to remain plugged in no matter which of you gets to decide his fate. If he gets to decide, there’s no amount of money you’d be willing to pay him that would cause him to agree to be unplugged. If you get to decide, you’ll arrive at a bargain to let him stay plugged in for somewhere between $150,000 and $3 million. Either way, he’s going to stay plugged in.
In the real world, there are transaction costs and other factors to consider, such as the extremely unequal bargaining position between the two of you. He’s completely desperate at this point, so it’s less of a free negotiation than a stick-up.
One of the corollaries of the Coase Theorem is that, in the face of transaction costs or other barriers to free negotiation, we should pick the rule that defaults to the result that would have been arrived at in the absence of those barriers.
I suspect that, for the most part, violinists would value remaining plugged in more than non-violinists would value unplugging them, so the default rule should be that the violinist should have the right to remain plugged in unless you agree to pay him enough so that he agrees to be unplugged.
(There’s nothing special about violinists as a profession, obviously. Designating the person’s job just makes the thought experiment more vivid. But in this hypothetical universe, all people are equally likely to be “violinists” regardless of their profession.)
Insurance could help with this. Since being on either end of the plug is randomized, there’s no moral hazard problem with insurance. However much money would make you indifferent between letting the violinist remain plugged in or getting to unplug him, you could buy insurance for that amount. Or maybe we could fund universal coverage through taxes.
In any case, I suspect that if we all have to take turns rolling the dice, with an equal likelihood of ending up on either side of the plug, we’d collectively agree that a default position of remaining plugged in is better than a default position of unplugging.
It’s been a while since I’ve read Thomson’s article and I’d forgotten about the kidnapping element. I don’t see an analog to kidnapping in most situations involving abortion, so I’ll take the liberty of modifying that element. You wake up and find a famous violinist attached to you by magic. The universe does this from time to time randomly. Neither you nor the violinist nor the Society of Music Lovers is at fault. It’s just one of those things.
Also, for the sake of this thought experiment, let’s make the violinist conscious so that he can state his preferences and engage in some negotiation. (Alternatively, he could have expressed his preferred way to handle this situation before he was rendered unconscious.)
Suppose the violinist wishes to remain plugged into you instead of dying, while you wish to unplug him. What rule should we adopt? Which of you should get to decide what happens?
The Coase Theorem tells us that, in the absence of transaction costs or other factors that would distort free bargaining, the rule we adopt doesn’t matter. (More precisely, it matters only to distributive concerns, not to the behavioral result.)
If the violinist values remaining plugged in at $3 million while you value unplugging him at $150,000, he’s going to remain plugged in no matter which of you gets to decide his fate. If he gets to decide, there’s no amount of money you’d be willing to pay him that would cause him to agree to be unplugged. If you get to decide, you’ll arrive at a bargain to let him stay plugged in for somewhere between $150,000 and $3 million. Either way, he’s going to stay plugged in.
In the real world, there are transaction costs and other factors to consider, such as the extremely unequal bargaining position between the two of you. He’s completely desperate at this point, so it’s less of a free negotiation than a stick-up.
One of the corollaries of the Coase Theorem is that, in the face of transaction costs or other barriers to free negotiation, we should pick the rule that defaults to the result that would have been arrived at in the absence of those barriers.
I suspect that, for the most part, violinists would value remaining plugged in more than non-violinists would value unplugging them, so the default rule should be that the violinist should have the right to remain plugged in unless you agree to pay him enough so that he agrees to be unplugged.
(There’s nothing special about violinists as a profession, obviously. Designating the person’s job just makes the thought experiment more vivid. But in this hypothetical universe, all people are equally likely to be “violinists” regardless of their profession.)
Insurance could help with this. Since being on either end of the plug is randomized, there’s no moral hazard problem with insurance. However much money would make you indifferent between letting the violinist remain plugged in or getting to unplug him, you could buy insurance for that amount. Or maybe we could fund universal coverage through taxes.
In any case, I suspect that if we all have to take turns rolling the dice, with an equal likelihood of ending up on either side of the plug, we’d collectively agree that a default position of remaining plugged in is better than a default position of unplugging.
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On some topics, our brains are good at producing accurate answers because being accurate is beneficial to survival and reproduction. How far away is that lion? On those topics, we’ll generally agree with each other as our views converge on the factually accurate answer.
On other topics, our brains aren’t really designed to produce accurate answers because something besides accuracy is more important than accuracy. Is there a spirit-god that created and sustains the universe? Would Ted make a better leader for our clan than Wilma? Producing accurate answers to these kinds of questions is less important than producing whatever answer will raise our standing within our community, or within whatever coalition we’re trying to build within that community, so there’s no reason to expect our views to intuitively converge on the factually accurate answer.
On still other topics, our brains aren’t really designed to produce accurate answers because the questions just don’t (or historically didn’t) come up in our daily lives. Quantum mechanics is extremely unintuitive to human brains in part because quantum effects didn’t make a difference to our ancestors. There’s no force guiding our intuitions to converge on an accurate understanding of QM. Similarly, being attached to violinists who will die if we unplug them (or even anything very analogous to that) isn’t something that comes up a lot in our daily lives. So there’s no reason to expect us all to converge on the same intuitive answer about how we should deal with such a situation. It’s not surprising that individual reactions to that thought experiment differ quite a bit.
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AAABatteries
Footballguy
Henry Ford
Footballguy
A couple of things I'd like to address:
1. Changing the thought experiment from kidnapping changes our discussion. Once again (as is the case with, for some reason, about half the people this thread) you've simply removed incidents of being forced by another person from the equation. I understand you don't find it interesting to address those cases. They're still part of the equation on legal abortion. A very important part. You've also changed it from "violinist" to "anyone." That's also a change in the circumstance. The "violinist" addition isn't about making the example more vivid, it's about making it a small, obscure-set profession so that people can make it "the other" and so that we know they're not drags on society. Now with your change, we have to wonder if the person who may be attached is a net benefit to society, etc. We also have to introduce your new variable - "it could happen to us on the other side, too!" Which actually fits less with the abortion discussion than the kidnapping example, yet you chose to add that.
2. The person who isn't the violinist gets to make that decision. Full stop. Why? Because the violinist is not entitled to the use of the other person's body. Full stop.
We may, as a society, think "Oh, boy, I'd really prefer that the default position be remaining plugged in case it was me" but that doesn't really mean it's the correct moral decision.
The entire rest of your post is an attempt to monetize rights. The Coase theorem isn't some Kantian categorical imperative. It's about efficiency. Which is fine, but it isn't the basis for a moral code. You're saying "well, we could make it worth the other person's while..."
Okay. Fine. Make it worth his while. But that doesn't mean anyone has the right to force someone to stay attached.
And your view that the violinist probably cares more about it on average so the default position should be to require someone to remain attached unless the violinist agrees to be detached is, as I believe I stated, unconscionable in my opinion.
Henry Ford
Footballguy
Differing reactions to a thought experiment don't mean that our brains haven't evolved to deal with the scenario.
IvanKaramazov
Footballguy
I think MT is definitely right about the kidnapping thing. When you frame it that way, it makes the violinist sound like some sort of aggressor (not analogous to a fetus) and it strips the kidnapped person from the agency that is actually involved in consensual sex. MT's framing -- that this situation just happened and neither party asked to be put in this situation -- removes some of the framing problems in the original.
I also think MT's earlier point about what standard we would choose behind a Rawlsian veil of ignorance is obviously correct. The first time I read this example earlier in the thread, it struck me as own goal for that reason.
I think any moral question should be evaluated by considering things from the perspective of everyone affected, preferably without knowing ahead of time which role we ourselves occupy. I think Rawls got some important things wrong in A Theory of Justice, but I believe he got that part right.
Henry Ford
Footballguy
The violinist doesn't do the kidnapping. The society of music lovers does. Like when someone gets raped and you're making a decision about a fetus, who obviously isn't the rapist.
And no one considering the question is ever going to be the fetus in this thought experiment.
IvanKaramazov
Footballguy
Is this intended to be a rape-exclusion-only argument? That makes a little more sense if that's the case.
Also, I'm pretty sure literally everybody on this forum has been a fetus.
Henry Ford
Footballguy
Except in the matter of a fetus, which is the analogy, we do know which we - or any person considering the question - would occupy.
Henry Ford
Footballguy
I'm pretty sure literally nobody on this forum will ever be a fetus in the future.
KCitons
Footballguy
The bolded is false. The words "openly hostile", is what makes it false.
Also incredibly false. Every day I see people stepping up. Can they help them all? No. Can they help as many as they can? Yes.
I don’t think it’s an own goal for pro-choice proponents. It’s literally impossible to consider things from the perspective of a fetus, I’d argue, because fetuses are incapable of forming perspectives. That’s an important difference between fetuses and violinists. But I realize that there’s more to be said about that because of the actual-versus-potential quagmire.
(Would I be okay with never having been born? Well, I wouldn’t be not okay with it, because I wouldn’t exist so as to be okay or not okay with anything. I think we kind of have to be okay with the thought of people never coming into existence. Otherwise we’d be in perpetual freak-out mode since the number of people who have never existed and will never exist is infinitely larger than the number of people who have existed or will exist.)
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sn0mm1s
Footballguy
Really, you don't think people are openly hostile (in my mind very vocal and not in a manner that merits further discussion) of taxes? welfare? food stamps? planned parenthood? or any other programs/systems meant to help less fortunate/redistribute some wealth?
Leroy Hoard
Footballguy
Thus those against all forms of birth control.
Henry Ford
Footballguy
And that makes your statement earlier make more sense. If you agree that the proper method of determining the morality of an action is to consider, in a Rawlsian sense, the action from both perspectives for some kind of aggregate utilitarian calculus to determine the morality of the action, now it makes sense that you think we aren't able to really consider it.
KarmaPolice
Footballguy
This is why I don’t think Thomson’s article has a great bearing on the abortion debate. Violinists have utility functions that should be taken into account. Fetuses don’t.
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Henry Ford
Footballguy
Fetuses don't have utility functions?
One of the main points of utilitarianism is to take potential good into account. That seems like a hop, skip, and a jump from defining the utility of a fetus.
Not if they have no subjective experience. Which they almost certainly don’t, IMO, until they start to have some measurable brain activity (around week 24?). And even then, it’s likely pretty limited for quite some time — more like a frog’s than a violinist’s.
Henry Ford
Footballguy
Then it seems like for a utilitarian it should be pretty simple to decide whether or not abortion should be allowed on demand in any case whatsoever.
KCitons
Footballguy
No. I think there is a difference between being openly hostile and wanting to make decisions that are fiscally sound. (please don't confuse this with fiscally conservative. I'm not, in any way, suggesting we pinch pennies for the sake of pinching pennies)
I think taxes are a hot button for a lot of people. If you said that a new 1/2 percent tax was to fund education or after school programs, then it would have a better chance at passing. The problem is, taxes aren't always earmarked for specific things and the money ends up going to some place that people don't agree with. Hence, taxes increases are met with resistance.
Welfare and food stamps are another touchy subject. I believe that people in need should be taken care of by the government (the people). The issue is that we know their are people gaining the system. We need to make the system work the way it's intended. More people in need will get the money they need. If people can work, they should work. If they can't work, we still need to find ways for them to gain self worth while on government assistance. A long term handout is not what's best for everyone.
Planned Parenthood is an obvious line in the sand. This thread is a micro example of how peoples views are rooted pretty deep in their beliefs. I don't think we will ever move past that. I'm okay with supporting Planned Parenthood for 99% of what they do.
Redistribution of wealth is only part of the problem. People with limited income can be happy, they can be successful. They need opportunities to help themselves and make a better life. Many of these people are not looking for a handout. They're just looking for a hand up. You didn't mention anything about education, prison reform, or crackdown on gangs? All things that would make an impact.
IvanKaramazov
Footballguy
I thought you might respond with something along these lines. I agree that it's complicated -- I've thought about this before and I'm not sure that my way of approaching it is right. I might try to write up something on this later on after I've mulled it over a little more.
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timschochet
Footballguy
Some very good discussion here; I really enjoy reading it.
shader
Footballguy
I’m fine with people never coming into existence. It’s the erasure of people that have come into existence that I’m not fine with.Maurile Tremblay said:
And yes, some of those people might be too young to feel pain, have a perspective, and they may be wholly dependent on the mother for support. But they are still individual humans on the path of life. There’s not a mythical “coming into existence” moment in the womb as a fetus exists.
KarmaPolice
Footballguy
This is one of the sticking points on this debate. "On the path of life" <> a living being to a lot of people.
adonis
Footballguy
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Ramblin Wreck
Footballguy
timschochet
Footballguy
President Trump returned to this issue last night. It’s a political winner for Republicans as a majority of Americans are opposed to late term abortions.
I believe this is so because the public has bought into the conservative perception that we are talking about lazy or selfish women who decide at the last second that they simply don’t want to be mothers and thus murder their almost fully formed babies. Words like “infanticide” are thrown about. This POV is pretty ingrained and I don’t know if it’s possible to change minds on this.
I believe this is so because the public has bought into the conservative perception that we are talking about lazy or selfish women who decide at the last second that they simply don’t want to be mothers and thus murder their almost fully formed babies. Words like “infanticide” are thrown about. This POV is pretty ingrained and I don’t know if it’s possible to change minds on this.
adonis
Footballguy
A harder question is, when does a collection of cells with human DNA propagate, differentiate, and grow enough to be considered human?
Henry Ford
Footballguy
I’d like to make a slight terminology fix if @adonis will permit me.
It makes a human. It doesn’t make a human being. A person.
Consciousness makes a human being. And a conscious human being is a person.
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Ramblin Wreck
Footballguy
Henry Ford
Footballguy
timschochet
Footballguy
adonis
Footballguy
Yeah, I'm being more loose with terms than I should be.
When does a collection of cells with human DNA propagate, differentiate, and grow enough to be considered an individual human being/person, with all the protections that should morally follow the designation.
Henry Ford
Footballguy
@Maurile Tremblay I’m a deontologist with a dash of virtue ethics. Never been a fan of utilitarianism. Which is why my answers come up quite differently than yours about what we can and can’t really consider or understand. I don’t think it’s about whether it’s a question we can really understand give our development - I think it’s just a difference of perspective based on our own moral reasoning systems.
timschochet
Footballguy
I plead guilty to ignorance here. Can you break down these terms and explain how they apply to your views on this issue? Tia
adonis
Footballguy
I'm not willing to plunk down an easy answer such as "conception" which introduces all kinds of downstream issues for women, just because it's easy.
I'm willing to discuss, negotiate, consider, adjust as various other party's interests are in play, as the state of science advances, as our understanding of human consciousness grows...
What I'm comfortable with now isn't an indefinite, for all times stick in the ground definition of life/person-hood/human life sparking into existence. It's really just a best guess based on what we know now and what works for us in society.
For me personally, without negotiating with others, or taking others interests into account, it'd be when the body comes together, organs developed, brain developed sufficiently to start controlling what it's intended to control. Somewhere around that point, which is different for every pregnancy. No way to reasonably give an exact timeline.
And when we understand consciousness better, and have better methods to test for it or recognize it, i'd be more than happy to adjust my perspective to reflect the new information.
Henry Ford
Footballguy
In very general, simplistic terms that are obviously oversimplifications of ideas people spent lifetimes formulating in multiple books that could each be used as doorstops to a bank vault:
1. Deontological ethics: Duty ethics. Based on the idea that one should follow universal maxims which form the bases of our ethical duties - right action. Example: Immanuel Kant.
2. Utilitarianism: Utility ethics or hedonic ethics. Based on the idea that we should take those actions that have the likelihood of creating the greatest good for the greatest number of people. Example: Jeremy Bentham.
3. Virtue Ethics: “What Would Jesus Do.” Right thought, right action, creates right result. The idea that morality is based in being a good person. Train yourself to think virtuous thoughts by doing the right thing. When you do the right thing often enough, you will start doing it for the right reason and you will do good things for people, which will make you a virtuous man. Example: Aristotle.
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timschochet
Footballguy
I’m not a utilitarian. I’m not in any particular category. I said yesterday that I’m more of a utilitarian than a natural rights theorist when evaluating the violinist situation. There are plenty of other situations, both real (slavery, world poverty, criminal justice) and hypothetical (Omelas, utility monsters), where I think utilitarianism is less useful than other approaches. I tend to flit from ethical theory to ethical theory to address different dilemmas based on what feels right in a given situation. It may seem unprincipled, but there’s no single ethical principle I’ve ever come across that doesn’t handle at least some situation in a manner that rubs me the wrong way. Ultimately, my unprincipled principle is something like try to consider a situation from every angle I can think of and then go with my gut.
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Henry Ford
Footballguy
I find that Kant with a dash of Nietzsche and a pinch of Aristotle makes a hearty base for just about any situation.
There seems to be a natural tendency to evaluate things based on labels (which are subjective, or at least negotiable) rather than characteristics (which are brute facts).
I view this tendency as more of a diversionary mental block than a useful habit.
If I’m trying to predict what the impact will be if Pluto collides with another astronomical object, what I want to know are certain characteristics of Pluto: its mass, the shape and velocity of its orbit, and so on. I don’t really care about whether or not we label Pluto as a “planet,” which is a semantic issue rather than a factual one.
Likewise, if I’m trying to evaluate the morality of sacrificing some particular life form for a given reason, I want to know about its characteristcs: can it feel pleasure or pain, does it have subjective experience, does it have a soul, and so on (feel free to make your own list). Whether we call it “human” (or a “human being”) or something different from that is a semantic issue, not a factual issue, and is therefore a red herring, IMO.
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Henry Ford
Footballguy
I disagree. And I think Wittgenstein and Russell would take my side on this.
Linguistics and denotation are as important as any other thing in this conversation - primarily because the categorization is otherwise just broken down into individual characteristics with no value outside of some "in a vacuum" conversation. It's Wittgenstein's "game" conversation and Russell's "denoting phrase." In your own head, consider whatever you'd like, but if we want to have a conversation, we have to have a shared understanding of what is, and what is not, being discussed. You can call that a "label" if you want, but "is a person" is no more a "label" than "has a soul" or "has a subjective experience" in my opinion. It's a denoting phrase indicating a bundle of rights and responsibilities we all have a general understanding of (even if those understandings have slight differences.)
If I say a thing is a human being, you know things about it - like it has a soul, it has subjective experience, it feels pleasure or pain. That has conversational value. You'd like to know if there are a series of bricks made of earth and dried to hardness, placed one on top of the other with a hardening substance between them to keep their shared, collective shape constant over time. I'd like to differentiate between a stack of bricks or a brick wall.
IC FBGCav
Footballguy
I will not get involved with you guys in depth conversation. But when the point comes that it is healthier for the woman and child to grow outside the womb. What happens then. I am not dumb and know this will be a huge change and progression that many will not want to adopt. And probably take the risks of having it the old fashion way.
Will those baby's be looked at different?
Will those baby's be looked at different?
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I agree with this. Between the endpoints of an unfertilized egg (some of which are already present in a female’s ovaries when she herself is born) and a retired octogenarian, there is no single magical moment where it becomes super entirely different a second after that moment from a second before. It’s just tiny, incremental, non-magical steps the whole way.
Saying that abortion should be legal before some point (the end of the second trimester, say) and illegal after that point, is rather like saying that a person should be ineligible for a driver’s license before some age (e.g., 16) but eligible after that age.
A person isn’t obviously more capable of driving responsibly ten minutes after her sixteenth birthday than she was ten minutes before. But we have to pick some arbitrary point to draw the line. Four years old is obviously too early and forty years old is obviously too late, so we pick a point in between that seems kind of roughly okay even though it’s not magical.
Similarly, we have to pick a somewhat arbitrary, non-magical point between an unfertilized egg and natural death from old age where we decide that it’s illegal (or immoral — those don’t have to be the same point) to kill a human organism for a given reason. Worrying greatly about unfertilized eggs within an infant’s ovaries seems way too early to most people. Not worrying about a fetus until after it is a born baby seems too late to most people. Somewhere in between, as with the driver’s license issue, we need to pick a somewhat arbitrary point where we draw the line. The line will not be magical. The egg or fetus will not be super different a minute before or after that line. There’s nothing starkly binary about any specific point in the slow, gradual, developmental process of human gestation.
To me, the age of sixteen doesn’t seem obviously stupid as a place to draw the line for eligibility to drive. And the end of the second trimester doesn’t seem obviously stupid as a place to draw the line for the legality of abortion. If I were in charge of drawing those lines, I might pick different ones myself, as might you or anybody else. But I think “not obviously stupid” is a decent enough bar to set for government work.
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