They Think It's Murder

Not only "They" think it's murder, we as a society tend to think it's murder too.

Here's my argument: in most jurisdictions, a killing of a pregnant woman brings harsher sentence than a killing of non-pregnant woman. In some, it just doubles the crime (double homicide, double manslaughter, etc.) Judging from this, we as a society see at least some value in the life of a foetus.

The issue is a complicated one. We seem to believe fetuses have the right to be born. We also seem to believe that women have the right to their bodies. In the case of abortions, these two rights cannot be achieved at the same time. These are "competing" rights. And while the question of "which right shall prevail" is a classic one for the courts to decide on, people will always go with what they "believe" is right, and disregard the opposing opinion.

In religions that believe in hell based on life choices, the ultimate smart move would be all fetuses aborted. The chance of heaven is 100% that way. What chance of heaven do we get if we are actually born? Maybe 10% at most? Billions are being condemned to eternal damnation if the fetuses are allowed to be born and live a life for at most about 100 years. That seems incredibly selfish and silly and short-sighted. We are talking eternity in heaven here. 100 years on this rock is nothing compared to the risk of losing the correct eternity.

So I don’t ever understand the viewpoint of fundamentalists on abortion. It seems like a failure to believe strongly enough in their religious views. Sure maybe the abortion doctor goes to hell, but he is really a dark Jesus figure that has sent multitudes straight to heaven.

Let's grant for the sake of this argument and this alone that fertilization signals the beginning of all rights.

You cannot be forced to donate a kidney to save someone else's life: they have no claim on your body. You cannot be forced to donate blood, for the same reason.

You cannot be forced into surgery. You have the right to refuse medicine. And, in general, you have the right to ingest whatever substances you want, even though the substances may be illegal to possess or sell.

Nevertheless, all of the above is useless, because the people who want to ban abortion are not, in general, sincere about saving humans life being their primary desire. Their primary desire is to have a subclass of humans who can be controlled and punished. Arguing with them about this is approximately useless; there are a few who are willing to discuss evidence and logic, but most are only displaying their allegiance to their tribe.

The article notably does not use the word 'fetus' - only 'embryo' is used. That's one technique to avoid addressing the strongest pro-life arguments.

Intellectual honesty demands that we address the strongest versions of our opponent's argument, not just the one that makes us feel the most enlightened and makes 'them' look stupid.

The article completely fails to mention that religious people tend to believe that humans have a "soul" and animals don't, which seems to me to be a massive oversight. Of course Dawkins doesn't believe in the soul, but it's hard to see how his arguments are going to move anyone who does believe.

The other problem with the argument is that, on the other side, many vegans believe that killing animals for food is wrong.

I strongly agree with one of Dawkins’s most important points, the effectiveness of the reductio ad absurdum as a rhetorical strategy.

If you want to persuade people, then you need to meet them where they are and adopt their way of thinking. Accept their premises and worldview, and show that it leads to bizarre, false consequnces.

My only issue with the staunch anti-abortion stance is that there have been women who have died because the doctors couldn't decide quickly enough whether an abortion was medically necessary, or outright refused anyway. There have been politicians who have espoused the opinion that ectopic pregnancies also have a "right to life" even though it is physically impossible for them to be viable, and cannot be implanted into the uterus to the best of my knowledge. It also opens the possibility that women who have a legitimate miscarriage may be scrutinized as if they were criminals, adding to their trauma.

There is no easy answer there. I will say this - in no other situation is it even tenable to force a person to use a part of their body to keep another person alive. Even corpses have autonomy - if the person decides when they're alive that they don't want to be an organ donor, we cannot in good conscience then take their organs anyway. Should pregnant women have less autonomy than a dead body?

Whether you agree with Richard Dawkins or not, I think he articulates really well the root source of disagreement between people who see and portray themselves as "pro-life," on one hand, and people who see and portray themselves as "pro-choice," on the other:

The two groups disagree as to when a human life begins.

People who call themselves "pro-life" sincerely believe life begins at the moment of conception. For example, most people in this camp believe the cells at all stages of human embryonic development constitute a human life.[a] Alas, there is a large subgroup of people in this camp whose rationale for these beliefs is religious and absolutist, and therefore non-negotiable.

People who call themselves "pro-choice" have differing views as to when a human life begins. Most people in this camp think that cells at all stages of human embryonic development are just... cells, incapable of suffering because they lack a brain.[a] However, as an embryo gradually starts becoming a fetus, people in this camp often disagree with each other as to when those cells start becoming a human being. And then there's a large subgroup of people in this camp whose rationale is ideological and absolutist, and therefore non-negotiable.

IMHO the religious and ideological people on both sides are unlikely ever to come to agreement.

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[a] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_embryonic_development#/m...

I think most important is considering the 1A. I don't think it's likely to persuade people on this topic, change their minds about what they believe in regards to the subject. But surely we can agree the 1A should be respected? Not everyone agrees life begins at conception/implantation/etc. Opening the door to one religion dominating the laws seems to lead to outlawing contraceptives (preventing implantation of a fertilized egg) on the basis of enforcing the belief that life begins at fertilization of the egg.

I don't fully understand anti-choice advocates and most of the ones I know refuse to discuss the subject, of those who do their reasoning most often comes down to their religious beliefs- and if the basis of outlawing a medical procedure is one specific religious belief, is it not a violation of the free expression of other people's beliefs to deny them the ability to make decisions because of one specific belief system?

Opinions aside, it looks like a fundamental disregard for other religions and beliefs is at play here.

I don't think most pro-choice people are anti-natalists nor would they advocate for the death of people who have been born... the main reasoning seems to be women's access to healthcare, privacy, not criminalizing the decision of people seeking a procedure based on moral judgements built on spiritual beliefs, protecting people from collateral criminalization relating to miscarriages, and preventing needless mortality in pregnancy-related issues.

If you don't know, or can't prove, when personhood establishes, then there's at least some chance you are, in fact, killing a person. In my estimation the abortionist doesn't care about the possibility of killing a person because there are no consequences for it.

Persuading religious fundamentalists that their core ideology is fundamentally flawed by reasoned argument is about as likely of persuading Richard Dawkins and other New Atheists that their core ideology - their certainty about the nature of the universe - is similarly flawed.

Let's try, however. Questions about metaphysical notions, I'm afraid, cannot be addressed by the scientific method. Let's contemplate the simulation hypothesis, the notion that we live in a perfect virtual world running on some computational substrate 'somewhere else'. As it is a perfect simulation, no scientific test can reveal it to be a simulation, correct? Hence we cannot rule out a not-so-supernatural entity having built this simulation and turned it on (we could call that the Big Bang moment if we like). This philosophical notion can be extended to any religion on the planet, any fantasy story. All we can say to be logically consistent is that no one religion is any more supportable than another, from this viewpoint.

So, have we convinced the New Atheists to recant? I doubt it.

Now, as far as the abortion issue, to be diplomatic in these affairs we must seek common ground, and ignore the grinding of teeth and shouting on all sides. We should be able to agree that if the only time a woman became pregnant was by her deliberate choice to do so with the planned intention of raising a child, and there were no negative outcomes, like severe developmental defects that risked the life of the mother, then it would simply not be an issue, would it?

That's about as far as common ground goes, however. Personally I think the religious right are grotesque hypocrites as they refuse to back rational public health policy, quality childhood education for all, social support networks for children and mothers, or environmental policies that reduce exposure to teratogenic substances. They seem like blinkered religious fanatics and the notion that such people are susceptible to rational discussion is frankly ridiculous. These are the types of people who, if they had nuclear weapons, would likely set them off to achieve their fantasy of Armageddon and the Second Coming. The religious organizations they adhere to run brainwashing and mind control programs that target children, as a means of enforcing political and social control, and they've been at it for thousands of years. That's my view anyway.

The issue of abortion is one of many great examples of both sides talking (very loudly) past one another.

Killing a viable child (somewhere towards the end of the second trimester I think?) is ethically murder. Before that point, it’s a religious issue. And what happens when we can clone stem cells? Are identical twins one or two souls as they came from a single embryo/fertilized cell)?

Pass the following law:

If a person seeks to block an abortion they must agree to adopt and raise the child until age 18.

I think there might be a loophole. If a pregnant woman becomes a police officer before getting an abortion, she then just has to say the fetus was threatening and then she'll get some paid time off to recover.

I take the liberal position that pro choice fades into a right to life, especially around viability but the fade is still ongoing even then (takes more and more extreme circumstances to abort an embryo that is less dependent)

That said, the late-term and even post-term abortions that are happening now mean that if I am forced to choose between complete restriction and late/post, I will support whatever laws restrict late/post even if it’s overly restrictive. It is insane that these things are being conflated under the same term and that is shifting liberals such as myself farther from leftists just because the extreme position is so abhorrent.

Elon’s meme with the left running further left and then calling everyone else bigots is relevant here.

That’s a great sentiment, but their belief is not based on reason, but instead faith. You don’t reason with the faithful, you just walk away.

Dawkins is not a stupid man, yet he does not make arguments that the embryo isn't a human life in all his erudite prose. Who will he convince?

Our early-modern ancestors, and even those only a few generations ago were more than aware that most babies did not survive. Whether miscarried, birthed still, or died in infancy. Our ancestors never imagined these things weren't deaths, and that those who cause them intentionally, wicked.

There were of course exceptions to this judgement, but there is the rub; they were exceptions.

Dawkins says that we "need to persuade" them.

But he's wrong. We're the majority. They managed to change the law, even though they are a minority. This cannot stand.

If they want to change the law, then THEY need to persuade US. That's supposed to be how it works.

The thing that gets me about this is that evangelicals considered this whole area to be an issue for catholics, and nothing to do with them and nothing of interest.

But it was made a wedge issue, and became an artifact of the culture wars, and now here we are.

Science thinks life begins at fertilization too.

https://www.princeton.edu/~prolife/articles/embryoquotes2.ht...

Ah Richard Dawkins... there's no such thing as a soul, but all human life has value, but not until they exit the birth canal. At some point the secular humanists are going to realize that without any metaphysical / religious justification the notions of human equality and their moral and ethical framework become completely arbitrary. The "cut flower thesis" that we're basically just running on steam as we've severed the roots and foundations of our beliefs (in the West this would be the Bible) isn't just a thought experiment, you can plainly see it in the world around you.

So those "backwards regressives" who cling to the old ways... oh, they're the only ones reproducing at replacement rates... perhaps because they don't kill their unborn, put off family until they're beyond their health fertility window, sterilize their kids with hormone treatments, or any other countless self-destructive practices promoted by the modern "intellectuals." Turns out if we judge ideologies through meme theory, where those that are symbiotic rather than parasitic to their host (aka believer), are superior... traditional religion beats out all this modern BS. By purely Darwinian metrics "God's wisdom" is better than "institutional science" (which is little more than a corrupt cult claiming to be about empiricism at this point).

So now your days are growing short Dawkins, both for you personally and for your ideology. Yes, they think it's murder because they believe in God and a soul, which makes a lot more sense than believing that "human rights" are sacred when "human life" is not.

If you really want to convince pro-life people that you don't think ending the life of a 27 week old fetus is murder; Allow it. Legalize infanticide under (28? 30?) weeks from conception.

If you think all fates are fixed and invariant, then some are meant to die in birth, some are meant to die before and some are meant to live. Their actions and those of their parents are fixed before they occur. Thus, no penalties are incurred or even possible.

If, however, free will exists, then the aggregate sum of good and evil will be weighed and your fate determined. Essentially all humans will live an ambiguous life and end up relying on forgiveness.

Or, it might be that this world is all there is and so behaviour that maximizes the situation of the most people is the optimum choice.

Edit: imagine how things would have been different if the ruling followed the guidelines on a different Xtian religion. Jehovah Witnesses forbid transfusions - lose the right of both abortions and transfusions going forward.

It is murder, simple as that. The moment a sperm fertilizes an egg, a new unique genetic material is formed, which is damn near the closest thing we have to an objective standard of when a new human life is started.

Embryo is a stage of development in a human being (and many other life forms on this planet). Maybe it's not synonymous with baby, I could grant that, and allow for baby to represent a different and later stage of development (possibly after birth), but even if I grant this, I'll still say killing that embryo is akin to murder. (Calling it a baby or child regardless of being inside the womb is still fairly natural and common in everyday speech.)

There's a grave fallacy in the article where it tries to compare an acorn to an oak tree. No, the acorn is not an oak tree. No more than a baby is an adult. But where the acorn is still oak, a baby is still human. Further fallacies are made as it tries to compare (and maybe equate?) human embryos with that of pigs and cows. Yeah... no. A woman is not going to give birth to a cow. That doesn't happen.

The article doesn't really do anything to establish anything new. It's only trying to dehumanize human development before birth.

Four ethical alternatives to abortion:

* Abstinence

* Contraception

* Adoption

* Motherhood

The last of these is the most preferential, and none of them involve murdering other humans.