United States should downsize the population by ending all immigration and creating incentives for having fewer kids.

[sundin13]

NightlyPoe said:

sundin13 said:

1) And hence my issue with your original answer. There isn't really any argument within your assertion of "once a life starts it is human".

It's just a scientific fact that conception is when life begins.  I don't know what extra value there is that you want to give beyond that's when a separate entity is created that begins to develop as a unique individual.

I don't know what's circular about it.  It's just a factual statement.

Under the dictionary, a human is basically something with the features and qualities of a human, but a fertilized egg fails to reach even that low bar.

A fertilized egg is human, and therefore has human qualities.  You have a scientist examine a fertilized egg and ask him what species it is, they'll answer, "Human".

How is it alive?"

You're questioning whether a developing organism is alive?  What else would it be?

Again, you are largely missing the question. There is a significant non-moral and non-religious answer to the sanctity of life regarding individuals post-birth. One of the facets of that argument discusses the strength of society. It should be intuitive that a society that considers murder wrong is a lot stronger than a society which does not. However, the same doesn't really apply to abortion. If you consider abortion from a pragmatic viewpoint, it provides many benefits. These include: Increased access to education and increased labor force participation, which are both important factors to reducing poverty and inequality. It also provides agency, rights and control over their body to women and bringing it back to the overall question of this thread, it helps to reduce birth rates in a way which doesn't rely on heavy handed government control.

That's a rather crass utilitarian argument that should be discarded out of hand.  A society benefiting from an unjust action is not absolved.

There are a lot of shenanigans for all sorts of unspeakable evils that could be justified using that sort of logic.

The argument for the wrongness of murder simply doesn't extend to an argument for the wrongness of abortion, which is why such an argument needs to be made independently of the inherency argument.

It need not.  I am not making a utilitarian argument.  Not on such a basic matter.

My purpose in asking this question is because I think it is a discussion regarding the sanctity of life, and it is another situation where ending a life does not produce negative societal outcomes, and in fact may be a positive choice for society.

Again, I reject out of hand the notion that end of life care should be dictated by the positives a death would bring to society.  Jeez.

It is also an interesting parallel as it is a discussion of whether to mandate interference to ensure a human who isn't viable be kept alive. The difference here is that this is done using machines whereas a child is kept alive using a woman's body. I don't mind dropping this particular example though.

It's also not particularly useful.  We don't pull unconsenting people off of life support when we know they'll be able to function on their own in a reliably finite amount of time.

4) Another point of curiosity, do you believe in exceptions to your ban on abortion, such as in instances of incest and rape?

No.  I don't believe in punishing a person's progeny for their crimes.

Though, I will acknowledge that the issue has a few more shades of gray.  Namely that the woman did not consent to the pregnancy in the first place and has no... contract for lack of a better word, with the child for bringing them into life and the responsibility to see them to their birth at minimum that comes with it.

As you seem unwilling to engage in anything even vaguely resembling an argument, I'll be brief.

My qualms over your assertions of "human" and "life" regarding an undeveloped, fertilized egg lie in the fact that these distinctions you are making are functionally useless. If you take a drop of blood and hand it to a scientist and ask "is this alive?" they will look at the cells in the sample and make that determination. I am not asking "if" a fertilized egg is alive, I am asking "how", or "in what sense" is it alive. If the only factor is "the cells are alive", the definition you are providing is far too broad.

Similarly, if you then ask "is this human?" they will then look at the DNA inside the cells and make this determination. In both cases, a drop of blood contains all of the same factors of both being "human" and "life" as a fertilized egg. But is a cell belonging to a human a human, or is it the combination of many cells which makes a human?

Under the assertion that we must inherently protect "human" "life", with such a vague and overreaching definition, that statement stretches far beyond a discussion of abortion. As such, simply leaving it as "it is human life" is fundamentally nonsense.

As for the life support question, if that person, say, is undergoing kidney failure and needs a kidney in order to live, we do not mandate that someone gives a kidney to this individual, because the individual has absolute agency over their own body and this agency comes before even the lives of others. Similarly, a woman should have absolute agency over her own body. The state should not mandate she use it in a certain way, just as the state should not mandate individuals give up their kidneys.