RR (17,7,5): Abortion is murder
People who happen to not know me personally IRL or never read most of my posts might think that me having claimed that abortion is murder is a sign that I'm one of those weird anti-abortion people. Hey, guess what? I'm a pro-choice person.
Let's attack straw men first, because that happens to be something I do relatively well. One claim going against abortion is the that of the equivalence to murder. The obvious counter-claim: "so what?". That counter-claim works against pretty much every argument. Is murder bad? Hold on. Let's just define "murder" first. Wiktionary says: "[an] act of deliberate killing of another human being", which is, uh, what? How is that wrong? Let's break this up further. There's an assumption that killing is "bad", in some sense. Prove it; the burden of proof lies on the person making the claim. Killing makes a lot of economic sense. If you don't realise, human bodies kill many living things (another term with a somewhat debatable definition) constantly, all the time. Germs in your body? Either you kill them, or they kill you. Simple. And of course we kill a lot of non-human animals in our lifetimes (possibly using other people as a proxy) for food. (Exception: if you're a noncarnivore, or you're in PETA. Minority groups we don't have to care much about.)
So what's so special about humans to consider us as being different from and superior compared to other animals? I don't know, we're the only ones who use the internet? Biologically, there isn't much of a difference. We're all made of mostly the same stuff. So what, murdering animals is fine but murdering people isn't? That's an inconsistency, you hypocrite.
In fact, from a biological perspective, we're even killing ourselves, in the sense that some cells cannibalise on other cells. (Despite not being good at cell bio, I actually remember some stuff.) "But it's myself I'm killing, not others!" Honestly, I don't see how you can support that stand. From an evolutionary standpoint (yes, evolution works) people act for self-interest. In other words, if it makes sense to, killing other people is fine. Perfectly fine. Of course, most of the time this doing this is a dumb idea, since it destroys public opinion about you, which is not a good thing, and also a net negative impact on the whole society. (Despite, or should I say, precisely because of us being selfish, we tend to act selfless. It's not a paradox, it's an idiosyncrasy in the definitions.) Of course, out of sheer stupidity people can do things that have a net negative impact on society unintentionally. (Again, I'm not claiming that I'm not stupid.) But is that outlawed? In most cases, no. In fact, outlawing it is useless since there would be no way of prosecution.
About killing above. What really constitutes as killing? Conventionally, when a person is killed, not all the cells die simultaneously. Anyway, this isn't really relevant to the current discussion, just some food for thought.
Let's think about things differently. Fetuses are parasites of the hosts. It suddenly makes a lot of sense to get rid of this parasite if it doesn't seem to provide an eventual benefit. Even if the parent cannot have an exact answer as to whether the fetus will eventually provide some kind of benefit, such a choice is not ill-made. A (relatively) common counter-claim to this is that people justify their actions after they have already decided; my obvious reply is "so what?"; that means that they think what they're doing is for the greater good. They might be wrong, but again, so what? People make wrong choices all the time.
Now, before you use that burden-of-proof thing on me, note that initially, people did not have laws. Social rules maybe, but not laws. In other words, while I'm making a claim, I'm not the one making the claim opposing the original (lack of) intention, burden of proof doesn't lie on me. Besides, it's not as if I didn't properly support my claims.
The real underlying issue is that people are taught the wrong things. Pretty much every moral or ethics teaching involves a Fantastic Aesop. If people could just learn to ask "so what?" then these teachings no longer make sense. Okay disclaimer this discussion is going off-topic. If that's the case then why should we stay alive? It makes evolutionary sense to. But why should we care about that? For teh lulz.
Let's attack straw men first, because that happens to be something I do relatively well. One claim going against abortion is the that of the equivalence to murder. The obvious counter-claim: "so what?". That counter-claim works against pretty much every argument. Is murder bad? Hold on. Let's just define "murder" first. Wiktionary says: "[an] act of deliberate killing of another human being", which is, uh, what? How is that wrong? Let's break this up further. There's an assumption that killing is "bad", in some sense. Prove it; the burden of proof lies on the person making the claim. Killing makes a lot of economic sense. If you don't realise, human bodies kill many living things (another term with a somewhat debatable definition) constantly, all the time. Germs in your body? Either you kill them, or they kill you. Simple. And of course we kill a lot of non-human animals in our lifetimes (possibly using other people as a proxy) for food. (Exception: if you're a noncarnivore, or you're in PETA. Minority groups we don't have to care much about.)
So what's so special about humans to consider us as being different from and superior compared to other animals? I don't know, we're the only ones who use the internet? Biologically, there isn't much of a difference. We're all made of mostly the same stuff. So what, murdering animals is fine but murdering people isn't? That's an inconsistency, you hypocrite.
In fact, from a biological perspective, we're even killing ourselves, in the sense that some cells cannibalise on other cells. (Despite not being good at cell bio, I actually remember some stuff.) "But it's myself I'm killing, not others!" Honestly, I don't see how you can support that stand. From an evolutionary standpoint (yes, evolution works) people act for self-interest. In other words, if it makes sense to, killing other people is fine. Perfectly fine. Of course, most of the time this doing this is a dumb idea, since it destroys public opinion about you, which is not a good thing, and also a net negative impact on the whole society. (Despite, or should I say, precisely because of us being selfish, we tend to act selfless. It's not a paradox, it's an idiosyncrasy in the definitions.) Of course, out of sheer stupidity people can do things that have a net negative impact on society unintentionally. (Again, I'm not claiming that I'm not stupid.) But is that outlawed? In most cases, no. In fact, outlawing it is useless since there would be no way of prosecution.
About killing above. What really constitutes as killing? Conventionally, when a person is killed, not all the cells die simultaneously. Anyway, this isn't really relevant to the current discussion, just some food for thought.
Let's think about things differently. Fetuses are parasites of the hosts. It suddenly makes a lot of sense to get rid of this parasite if it doesn't seem to provide an eventual benefit. Even if the parent cannot have an exact answer as to whether the fetus will eventually provide some kind of benefit, such a choice is not ill-made. A (relatively) common counter-claim to this is that people justify their actions after they have already decided; my obvious reply is "so what?"; that means that they think what they're doing is for the greater good. They might be wrong, but again, so what? People make wrong choices all the time.
Now, before you use that burden-of-proof thing on me, note that initially, people did not have laws. Social rules maybe, but not laws. In other words, while I'm making a claim, I'm not the one making the claim opposing the original (lack of) intention, burden of proof doesn't lie on me. Besides, it's not as if I didn't properly support my claims.
The real underlying issue is that people are taught the wrong things. Pretty much every moral or ethics teaching involves a Fantastic Aesop. If people could just learn to ask "so what?" then these teachings no longer make sense. Okay disclaimer this discussion is going off-topic. If that's the case then why should we stay alive? It makes evolutionary sense to. But why should we care about that? For teh lulz.
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