Therefore the question should be "when is it ethical to terminate a fetus". Pro-choice voters have different answers for this question. The problem is pro-life hardliners who refuse to play ball whatsoever. They believe life begins at conception with no basis other than religion.
No. Most people agree that abortion is acceptable early on (e.g. < 12 weeks). It's hardliners on both sides who are doing the most fighting because they either think that it's okay to abort up to the point of birth or that terminating a bunch of cells is murder.
> They believe life begins at conception with no basis other than religion.
It's not religion, it's science. A new human life (complete how it looks, what gender it's assigned, etc) begins at conception. It's not a full human, but it's slowly becoming one. The question is when it's too human to terminate.
> It's hardliners on both sides who are doing the most fighting because they either think that it's okay to abort up to the point of birth or that terminating a bunch of cells is murder.
The pro-life hardliners are the ones currently overturning super-precedents and creating trigger laws in red states. This isn't hypothetical, it's going to cause real harm to poor women and poor children.
Again, all these decisions are being made by pro-life hardliners aren't even willing to have a discussion AT ALL, many even believe that contraceptives are "killing babies". There's no basis behind their beliefs other than the bible. Most couldn't even tell you the stages of fetal development.
That is a bit unfair. An ultrasound is pretty compelling evidence.
Also, I could show you an ultrasound of a mouse or a dolphin at 6 weeks and tell you it's a human fetus and you'd believe it. "Well the human fetus has human DNA" ok, does that have any meaning at that stage of development when their features are all the same? At that point the distinctive trait that allows for abortion of a Dolphin but not a Human is the DNA, or that it's inside of a human mother. It's all arbitrary distinctions. You can have a real discussion about it but pro-lifers start and end at the Bible.
Tell that to a right-leaning Christian pastor, or their congregation. Most of modern Christianity specifically teaches that, in some places, things are most definitely black and white and some basic questions do indeed have easy answers. "Murdering babies", as a family member of mine likes to phrase it, is to them one of the most straightforward and simple of them all.
Only if you're an utilitarian. There's perfectly good reasons not to subscribe to this moral philosophy.
And why have you chosen to portray the most radical and unreasonable of all your numerous opponents? It's not exactly "straw-men" because these people exist, but looks pretty similar to it.
Also even if there weren't tons of holes to poke in the philosophical argument of "what is a human life? / what makes human life valuable?", life isn't sacred. We kill prisoners, send soldiers overseas, or let people die as a result of preventable diseases (COVID).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_of_life#United_States
The question for a utilitarian is when is it ethical to terminate a fetus? Weighing the costs of an unwanted child on society, the cost of life if the mother dies, the cost of preventing back-alley abortions, the cost of her future as a mother if she suffers reproductive damage and cant have kids in the future even if she wants to, etc.
How so? less intelligent humans have cognitive ability so they have rights.
> It also doesn't adequately address why a human with microcephaly or no frontal lobe has rights, but a dolphin or octopus or killer whale does not.
The question is not why the law is the way it is but the way that it should be. As it is now, It has rights because it is a human, we make our laws for ourselves and sometimes for other species, and I would definitely say that animals should have protections/rights (and they do). A law is also a custom or an enforced custom and certainly animals have customs. At least in america, many families take the toll of taking care of their family members with many deformities. the state should not enforce termination of these, but it should be optional for those that do take this unfortunate toll in their hands. (criminalization != decriminalization)
> It also allows for the justification of cruelty against animals who can feel pain but aren't intelligent enough to pass some arbitrary test of intelligence.
On the contrary, as a cognitive animal capable of pain. it indicates that you should not do so, I would say the capability of pain is the most important aspect to life. given that it is usually an indicator of the will to live.
> To be clear, I don't know the answer, I am hesitant to label anything as "innately valuable". I think that there is however a sliding scale of what is "ethical".
Neither do I. Abortion is euthanasia, and it certainly has merit. both economically speaking and in the sense of well being for humans. Given that human childbirth is probably one of the worst around on the animal kingdom.
It would be nice if we just relegated pregnancies to artificial wombs, but until the technology is there. I guess we'll be having this abortion "debate" forever.
I know this is a hypothesis, but I'm sure simplifications like blyss symbolics or toki pona or https://www.plainlanguage.gov/ would "augment" intelligence as well. I've also heard dyslexia is non-existant in other languages. Which indicates that the complexity helps no one and at this rate, in due time, humans will be mentally incapable of handling the complexities of the world itself.
But that's off topic. sort of.