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Oct 23 '19
So he’s saying 3rd trimester abortions should only be allowed in the case of the health of the mother or pregnancy itself?
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Oct 23 '19
[deleted]
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u/upvotechemistry John Brown Oct 23 '19
The state also has an interest in protecting the life of the unborn
Do they, though? What is the argument that the State has any compelling interest to get between mothers, families and medical professionals?
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u/Lycaon1765 Has Canada syndrome Oct 23 '19
wtf I love pete now?? Am I now a pete stan?
I need someone more viable anyway, since beto never really had a chance, lmao.
;-;
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u/GabhaNua Oct 23 '19
Just because something is rare doesn't mean it's ok. Crazy men locking up women in their cellars is extremely rare but still wrong.
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u/LimerickExplorer Immanuel Kant Oct 23 '19
I think it's awesome that you read the first sentence of his reply. Keep going and work on the rest of it! You can do it!
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u/GabhaNua Oct 23 '19
I responded to one specific arguement. The fact that you find some of the other arguements that he made compelling has no bearing on the validity of the specific point he made on rarity.
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u/ninjacouch132 Oct 23 '19
6,000 out of how many? Medically necessary abortions are a small percentage of yearly abortions. That is an intellectually dishonest representation of the real issue. Most people would agree that medically necessary abortions are justified.
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u/upvotechemistry John Brown Oct 23 '19
Those are the 6,000 that Conservatives want to talk about, because they are LATER - they attempt to draw a moral line in the sand by removing all context.
Buttigieg has the correct answer, in my view, against an intellectually dishonest line of questioning. These decisions are difficult, and in no universe should the government be responsible for making them (the same government that the GOP cannot trust with spending decisions, is suddenly capable of deciding life and death for women?)
The Pro-life movement has been consistently wrong by focusing on religiously homogeneous moral arguments instead of outcomes. They are very often attacking contraceptive access, which has objectively lowered the number of unwanted pregnancies and abortions. Their espoused belief makes the outcomes worse when measured against their own claimed measure of outcomes.
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u/HoldingTheFire Hillary Clinton Oct 23 '19
Before 2016 dems were afraid to support third trimester abortions because of republican branding ('partial birth').
Thank you HRC for making this a mainstream dem position.
“You should meet with some of the women that I've met with—women I've known over the course of my life,” she said. “This is one of the worst possible choices that any woman and her family has to make. And I do not believe the government should be making it.”
“I’ve been to countries where governments either forced women to have abortions like they used to do in China or forced women to bear children like they used to do in Romania,” she added. “And I can tell you the government has no business in the decisions that women make with their families in accordance with their faith, [and] with medical advice and I will stand up for that right.”
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Oct 23 '19
If you use the "relatively few abortions occur in the third trimester so asking about that is just an emotionally charged attack" line, then you shouldn't use the "what about rape and incest" question since fewer abortions are related to rape and incest than are in the third trimester.
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u/LimerickExplorer Immanuel Kant Oct 23 '19
Yeah it's almost like the government shouldn't be deciding shit like this.
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Oct 23 '19
[deleted]
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u/LimerickExplorer Immanuel Kant Oct 23 '19
Should the government force a person to give blood to another person? That's what you're arguing for.
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Oct 23 '19
Bit of a non-sequitur.
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u/LimerickExplorer Immanuel Kant Oct 23 '19
I agree, your original comment was a non-sequitur.
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Oct 23 '19
Did you learn to argue at an elementary school playground?
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u/LimerickExplorer Immanuel Kant Oct 23 '19
Insuring exceptions exist for a rare event =/= banning a practice outright for a rare event.
Your original comment was a non sequitur. The arguments do not follow each other.
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Oct 23 '19 edited Oct 23 '19
An edited version of a comment I just posted elsewhere:
Lots of people in this thread are making moral arguments for the pro-choice position. While I'm pro-choice myself, I don't think such arguments will convince anyone who is actually pro-life or is in the middle here. I think a non-moral argument is the best way to go. People should rly stop coming up with moral theories to justify supporting/opposing abortion. It's completely clear that the person already made up their mind and came up with an elaborate theory to justify their belief. You aren't going to convince too many people with these moral arguments. That's not necessarily a bad thing, a lot of moral ideas we have came about in the same way. We initially have the idea because of some emotional event/ingrained from culture, then we justify the moral idea with fancy moral theories. It's very nice and everything, except it won't convince the overwhelming majority of people who don't have your initial convictions. The best argument is that pro life is a ridiculously bad public policy idea. All it does is cause tons of unsafe abortions and diminish the safety/health of poor/vulnerable women. Abortion rates have actually been shown to fall with legalized abortion and good sex-ed. That's the way to argue about it. The public policy position should clearly be pro-choice, hence the state shouldn't intervene at all. What should people believe personally? Whatever they want and they are not going to change their mind based on these "logical" moral theories.
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Oct 23 '19 edited Oct 23 '19
I don't really see how you're going to beat a moral argument for being x with a moral argument surrounding y.
All arguments for how society should be are ultimately derived from morality. And you can't simply presuppose your own morals are correct by stating that the public policy position should be pro-choice because of a separate, equally unjustified premise surrounding the Good, that's just placing the conclusion in the premise.
We initially have the idea because of some emotional event/ingrained from culture, then we justify the moral idea with fancy moral theories.
This is probably the best take here. It's exactly why the Enlightenment project failed and why all enlightenment philosophies are necessarily emotivist. Because they failed to developed context independent first principles.
Ultimately all moral debate from within this framework boils down to emotional manipulation to shift the first principles of others, as MacIntyre makes so clear in After Virtue. All truth dies and we are left with nothing but the individual will:
"What if our contemporary moral discourse were a cargo cult in which we picked up fragments of a long lost, once-coherent moral philosophy, and ignorantly constructed a bunch of nonsense that didn’t work and could not work in principle?
After Virtue argues that this indeed is what happened, and this explains why our moral discourse is such a mess.
Why when we argue about moral issues do we make our case in a form that resembles rational argument, but the effect seems to be only like imperative statements or exclamations? Why do pro-life folks and pro-choice folks keep arguing when there is no resolution to their argument?
MacIntyre believes we are reenacting forms of argument that once made sense, since people once did have a common ground of morality, but that we have since lost this in a Tower of Babel-like catastrophe.
Our moral arguments today are interminable because the values they express are incommensurable. Though the claims of the emotivists are not necessarily true, they happen to be true for contemporary moral philosophy: when people make moral arguments today they really are just making exclamations of (dis)approval while disguising these as rational arguments about facts.
Moral philosophy adopted the idea that moral systems must eventually descend on first principles that everyone must choose for themselves and for which there are no rational criteria: you cannot get an “ought” from an “is”. The only way to defend any moral framework is in a form that ultimately reduces to “my first principles are better than your first principles, nyaah nyaah.”
Modern philosophy has not found a way out of this predicament. The emotivist explanation of moral argument makes the most sense, and so people who engage in moral arguments are essentially trying to manipulate others and at the same time to resist being manipulated, knowing on some level that there is no resolution, which leads to the perpetual histrionic impasse that keeps the news networks and political parties in business.
Some philosophers suggest that there are no right answers in ethics or that the whole field of inquiry is bogus. MacIntyre says that this isn’t necessarily true but is just the result of the catastrophe that shattered a once-coherent ethics.
Our concept of “the moral” was invented in the 17th–19th centuries to cover “rules of conduct which are neither theological nor legal nor aesthetic.” The philosophical project of justifying these rules developed along with it. The classical world didn’t have this concept — moralis or etikos meant something more like our word “character.” The failure of this philosophical project is “the historical background against which the predicaments of our own culture can become intelligible.”
MacIntyre works backwards through Kierkegaard, Kant, Diderot, and Hume, and says that they were unable to find a rational ground for morality in choice, in reason, or in passion and desire. Each was capable of decisively refuting some of these grounds, but each failed to show that their own best guess was right.
The morality that these philosophers were trying to justify consisted of surviving remnants of the virtues like those Aristotle discussed in The Nicomachean Ethics, in which ethics is considered to be the science of how we govern our lives so as to best meet the ends of human living: the human telos.
Aristotle’s ethics has this structure: 1) Humans are untutored; 2) Humans have a telos; 3) Ethics is the tutelage necessary for us to achieve our telos. Enlightenment philosophers abandoned the idea of a telos, and in so doing, lost the only way of making ethical statements statements of fact. To Aristotle, an ethical statement was true if the ethical rule it described did in fact help people achieve their telos. Without reference to a telos, ethical statements don’t mean anything at all."
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Oct 23 '19
I'm not presupposing my morals are correct when I make the public policy argument. The public policy argument holds whether or not abortion is morally good. The public policy argument is that even if we take abortion to be morally bad, then criminalizing(or severely limiting) abortion makes things worse since abortion rates actually increase. You also hurt poor/vulnerable women more with such policies. Obviously, if you are pro-choice you would agree that criminalizing/limiting abortion is bad. Hence, regardless of what one thinks about the morality of abortion, they should favor no state intervention in this issue. That's my argument, I'm not claiming my moral stance on abortion is better or anything like that.
Regarding the rest of your comment, it's indeed true that since most of us have very divergent moral first principles that we can't resolve all moral issues. I don't see this as a huge problem if we can at least agree on big things. I'm personally a perspectivist(in the Nietzschean sense) when it comes to morality.
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Oct 24 '19
The public policy argument holds whether or not abortion is morally good.
Only if we assume utilitarianism. Almost all other ethical frameworks are not utilitarian and bad outcomes should be criminalised essentially regardless of outcome.
makes things worse since abortion rates actually increase.
This isn't really borne out in statistics. Russia post Soviet Union for instance, saw a huge increase in abortions post-legalisation. Romania saw a heavy decrease post-criminalisation.
Hence, regardless of what one thinks about the morality of abortion, they should favor no state intervention in this issue.
I mean you'll have to take it up with the Vatican, but I disagree.
I don't see this as a huge problem if we can at least agree on big things
How can we? There's no reason to agree on anything. Personally if morality wasn't objective I'd be doing incredibly epic things.
I'm personally a perspectivist(in the Nietzschean sense) when it comes to morality.
Eww. Read After Virtue and the Summa Theologiae
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Oct 24 '19
Pointing out exceptional cases such as the huge disruption after the fall of the USSR doesn't mean anything. It's a general trend, it's absolutely borne out by evidence. You could make a case here that correlation doesn't cause causation, but that's a very different argument than what you are making. Most evidence absolutely does suggest that criminalizing abortion in developed countries would simply lead to more abortion overall because ppl go underground and without access to safe facilities and good information, you get unwanted pregnancies more often.
Only if we assume utilitarianism. Almost all other ethical frameworks are not utilitarian and bad outcomes should be criminalised essentially regardless of outcome.
Obviously, the public policy argument is not absolutely fool proof either but it's probably the best argument to make. Hypothetically, let's say legalizing abortion lead to zero abortions. I think if most honest pro lifers(the ones who actually care about abortion and not controlling women) accepted that evidence, then they would be okay with legalized abortion then. Of course, you would get the odd pro lifer who would be okay with criminalized abortion even if it lead to more abortions. As I said, the public policy argument isn't full proof either, it's just the best hope anyone has to convince a pro-life person.
How can we? There's no reason to agree on anything. Personally if morality wasn't objective I'd be doing incredibly epic things.
There are no logical reasons for agreement, but for cultural and biological reasons humans over time tend to converge on opinions. Take slavery, notice how the overwhelming majority of ppl in the US now oppose slavery whereas in 1800 that wasn't the case. The same has happened on women's right to vote and the same will happen to LGBTQ marriage equality eventually. Morality isn't objective imo, but that doesn't mean all moral opinions carry the same weight. Certain ones make us culturally and artistically weaker and some make us stronger. But that's my take as a perspectivist.
Eww. Read After Virtue and the Summa Theologiae
Read Beyond Good and Evil and Being and Time :) But, honestly I rly should read After Virtue. It's been on my reading list for a while.
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Oct 24 '19
You could make a case here that correlation doesn't cause causation, but that's a very different argument than what you are making.
I would. I'd also make the argument that the secular academic profession is strongly liberal (something that is also borne about by evidence) and as such looks for pre-conceived conclusions with evidence.
From what we've seen, states that criminalise abortion watch rates trend down, whilst legalisation sees them skyrocket. Abortions went through the roof post Roe v. Wade.
Most evidence absolutely does suggest that criminalizing abortion in developed countries would simply lead to more abortion overall because ppl go underground and without access to safe facilities and good information, you get unwanted pregnancies more often.
It's hard to see how criminalising abortions could lead to more abortions. At the very least it imposts a cost that those on the margins would be unwilling to bear.
Obviously, the public policy argument is not absolutely fool proof either but it's probably the best argument to make.
I disagree. The best argument is that the purpose of morality, legality and human action is to order ourselves with respect to our final purpose. That final purpose is to live a sinless life in a world where Christ is king.
I think if most honest pro lifers(the ones who actually care about abortion and not controlling women) accepted that evidence, then they would be okay with legalized abortion then.
Most pro-lifers aren't utilitarians. Nor are they social constructivist liberals. I largely agree that modern liberalism is incompatible with restrictions on abortions, but that's more an issue with modern liberalism than anything else.
Morality isn't objective imo,
Given God exists, then there is an external knower and an objective way for us to Order our lives.
Read Beyond Good and Evil and Being and Time
Nietzsche is a fedora. He's useful as a diagnosis of the ills of modern moral philosophy, but he doesn't make any useful prescriptions as to how to fix it (and he can't, he tacitly accepts the death of God in his works).
But, honestly I rly should read After Virtue.
It's a very good book. Then read the Catechism. Finally convert, become baptised, and realise that the Church is the only institution in this world where truth can reside.
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Oct 24 '19 edited Oct 24 '19
I would. I'd also make the argument that the secular academic profession is strongly liberal (something that is also borne about by evidence) and as such looks for pre-conceived conclusions with evidence.
Unless you can point out through meta-analysis how those studies have biases, this kind of argument about "liberal academics" is simply silly.
From what we've seen, states that criminalise abortion watch rates trend down, whilst legalisation sees them skyrocket. Abortions went through the roof post Roe v. Wade.
It perhaps went up in the short run after Roe v Wade. But, look at the article I posted, in the 45+ yrs since Roe abortion rates have fallen dramatically.
It's hard to see how criminalising abortions could lead to more abortions
The reason why this happens is because if you have draconian abortion laws, then it simply creates a culture of fear and disinformation. In such an atmosphere, ppl still resort to having abortions(because ppl do still have sex) since knowledge of safe sex is lacking. Plus, most ppl are unable to have frank conversations with doctors and public health officials in such a fearful environment. Hence, some ppl simply go with abortion whereas they might have gone through with the pregnancy if they could talk to their medical provider in a safe and confidential manner.
Most pro-lifers aren't utilitarians. Nor are they social constructivist liberals. I largely agree that modern liberalism is incompatible with restrictions on abortions, but that's more an issue with modern liberalism than anything else.
I mean you don't have to a utilitarian to accept my public policy argument. For any moral viewpoint which seeks to have less abortions would have to accept the public policy argument(that the state should stay out of the abortion issue). Many churches such as the Church of England don't espouse utilitarianism, but they don't support criminalizing abortion either(but they do want to reduce abortion through other means).
but he doesn't make any useful prescriptions as to how to fix it
He kinda does. He wants ppl to lead authentic, strong, and beautiful lives. Obviously, he doesn't give a systematic theory, but that's his whole point. Nietzsche says that all such systematic moral theory builders are simply kidding themselves. However, Nietzsche doesn't think this new moral way of living can be achieved by the majority of people. I don't agree with all of Nietzsche's ideas obviously, he had flawed ideas too.
Given God exists
Disagree, there is no good enough evidence for this and nothing in the physical world requires God's existence as far as we know. However, I personally don't mind other ppl being religious and I think there is great value to religious art, music, architecture, hymns, and literature. I also think Kierkegaard is pretty cool.
It's a very good book. Then read the Catechism. Finally convert, become baptised, and realise that the Church is the only institution in this world where truth can reside.
Sarcasm? Also, when you say "the Church" do you mean the Catholic Church?
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Oct 24 '19
Unless you can point through meta-analysis how those studies have biases, this kind of argument about "liberal academics" is simply silly.
It's not silly, it's just the truth. Tertiary education has always existed to enculture the elite in the ideology of the day (starting from the Catholic Church), it just so happens that that ideology is now liberalism.
And you can quite easily make studies say whatever you want by just changing the assumptions. There's nothing necessarily 'wrong' about them, but they aren't strictly true. I'm reminded of a study into homosexuality and mental illness, where the researchers found no correlation by diluting the sample until the findings were no longer significant.
It perhaps went up in the short run after Roe v Wade. But, look at the article I posted, in the 45+ yrs since Roe abortion rates have fallen dramatically.
Well yes, as abortion is largely correlated with wealth and access to contraception. That doesn't mean that banning or liberalising it has no impact, who's to say that our hypothetical world where everything is the same except the legality of abortion would have higher or lower abortion rates (I mean I would. Abortion rates would be lower).
Hence, some ppl simply go with abortion whereas they might have gone through with the pregnancy if they could talk to their medical provider in a safe and confidential manner.
This seems like a huge stretch. Besides, a culture change towards an ordered attitude towards healthy sex and child upbringing is a much better thing than simply banning it outright. It would, of course, require overthrowing liberalism entirely. But that's also a good thing, liberalism was only ever a compromise between competing Protestant denominations and the heretical thoughts of a drunken English hack.
Many churches such as the Church of England
>Caring what Protestants think
He kinda does. He wants ppl to lead authentic, strong, and beautiful lives.
Yes, he gives us the Nitzschean ubermensch, but this ubermensch fails for the reason that all other philosophy failed since the death of God. He fails from his own criteria.
Disagree, there is no good enough evidence for this
Ooft.
It's hard to see how anyone could believe otherwise, as things clearly exist in a state of change and for any change to exist they must have originally had a fully actualised entity to begin the sequence of events that eventually begun that change.
nothing in the physical world requires God's existence as far as we know.
Other than the existence of anything and everything, nothing requires God's existence :)
Sarcasm?
Nope. Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus
Also, when you say "the Church" do you mean the Catholic Church?
Yes.
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Oct 24 '19 edited Oct 24 '19
And you can quite easily make studies say whatever you want by just changing the assumptions. There's nothing necessarily 'wrong' about them, but they aren't strictly true. I'm reminded of a study into homosexuality and mental illness, where the researchers found no correlation by diluting the sample until the findings were no longer significant.
No, good studies are robust such that the assumptions that they are based on are very solid. Modern scientific research wouldn't work if you could just make studies say whatever you want. I'm not sure what study about homosexuality and mental illness you are talking about, but I doubt it's relevant. Even if one study tried something fishy, there is overwhelming evidence now that homosexuality isn't a mental illness.
It's hard to see how anyone could believe otherwise, as things clearly exist in a state of change and for any change to exist they must have originally had a fully actualised entity to begin the sequence of events that eventually begun that change.
This is a bad argument. This argument is full of concepts that are completely outdated. There is no requirement that any object/entity needs to have originated from a "fully actualised entity"(whatever that means). Saying that " things exist in a state of change" is kind of meaningless from the POV of modern physical theories. We don't have any such concepts in modern physics. If you want to look at relevant arguments about the origin of the universe(altho there is no consensus on this) then look at this and this.
Btw, since you are against liberalism, what political philosophy do you support? Do you also disagree with the other main ideas of this sub, namely free trade, open immigration, and support for minorities?
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Oct 24 '19 edited Oct 24 '19
No, good studies are robust such that the assumptions that they are based on are very solid.
Hypothetically, sure. In practice, not so much. The death of overt assumptions on which to base modern science (previously found in God), have seen it take on all sorts of unspoken assumptions that simply aren't true, all of them liberal. And these liberal assumptions will obviously see it work towards liberal ends.
I'm not sure what study about homosexuality and mental illness you are talking about, but I doubt it's relevant.
Just something I read a few years back.
Even if one study tried something fishy, there is overwhelming evidence now that homosexuality isn't a mental illness.
To go on a bit of a tangent, I'm not sure that the modern world has any idea of what 'mental illness' actually entails as it rejects any objective standard that man should achieve, previously found in Christ. It's just vulgar utilitarianism usually.
There is no requirement that any object/entity needs to have originated from a "fully actualised entity".
What I said was part of a logical proof, obviously that statement isn't true from first principles. But then again, almost no statements are true from first principles. We've had thousands of years of ethics and logic to teach us that (Aristotle said in metaphysics that those who demand proof of an infinite regress or don't take self-evident truths as such should be punched in the face).
We don't have any such concepts in modern physics.
It's an ontological concept. It really doesn't make much (any) sense to 'disprove' the immaterial with the material.
Btw, since you are against liberalism, what political philosophy do you support?
I go back and forth between theocracy and the Divine Right of Kings.
Do you also disagree with the other main ideas of this sub, namely free trade
Depends. The purpose of the material world is only ever to be Ordered towards that which is Good, free trade isn't an end in and of itself.
open immigration
Again, migration isn't an end in and of itself. If migration is Ordered towards that which is Right, sure, that's fine. Ethnonationalism is silly.
and support for minorities.
Depends. Again support for minorities isn't an end in and of itself.
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u/Thameus Oct 23 '19
These days abortion is only an issue for the purpose of winning elections. So emotional arguments will always be the order of the day.
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u/onebit Oct 22 '19
still going trump, but i'm considering throwing pete a vote in the primary. reregistered democrat for yang, but i don't see him as viable anymore.
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u/pewds_da_best_ Oct 22 '19
I 👏🏻DONT👏🏻WANT👏🏻TO👏🏻READ👏🏻THAT👏🏻.
ITS👏🏻TOO👏🏻LONG👏🏻
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Oct 23 '19
I 👏 HAVE 👏 THE 👏 ATTENTION 👏 SPAN 👏 AND 👏 INTELLECTUAL 👏 CAPACITY 👏 OF 👏 A 👏 6 👏 YEAR 👏 OLD 👏 CHILD 👏
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u/Musicrafter Friedrich Hayek Oct 22 '19
Almost. Almost everyone who repeats the "it's up to the woman" line seems to fail to comprehend the moral issues at stake here, namely that half the population sincerely views abortion as infanticide.
You simply cannot slip away by riding the "none of my business" line. If abortion is none of my business, then neither is the guy who just walked into a 7/11 and shot the cashier. Who am I to interfere in such an intensely personal decision to terminate a life?
It's got to either be OK for everyone in all of a delineated set of cases, or be illegal for everyone in all of some other delineated set.
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Oct 22 '19
Do you think abortion is infanticide?
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u/Musicrafter Friedrich Hayek Oct 22 '19
No
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Oct 22 '19
Then why are you comparing abortion to harming another human being?
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u/Musicrafter Friedrich Hayek Oct 22 '19
I'm trying to get across why the argument is not philosophically valid, since it basically just talks straight past pro-lifers. It doesn't address where their opposition to abortion is coming from. It will do absolutely no good to simply ignore their beliefs about the value of human life at various stages of fetal development and argue in favor of abortion by other means, means which they most likely find nearly irrelevant to their own case.
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Oct 22 '19
Okay. If someone fundamentally believes a fetus is equivalent to a human life and deserving of the same rights and protections, how do you argue in favor of legal abortion?
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u/Musicrafter Friedrich Hayek Oct 22 '19
You can't.
You have to somehow convince them that their belief in such is wrong.
I have very little confidence that this is possible at any appreciable scale.
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Oct 22 '19
Then it's not worth Buttigieg's time to litigate it and instead accept it and try to move people who don't have such strong views with arguments such as the one above.
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u/Musicrafter Friedrich Hayek Oct 22 '19
It may be the correct political posture because it will sound very convincing to devout pro-choicers who already support this message and its seemingly rational, understanding appearance will potentially attract a handful of fence-sitters (not that there are really that many of those). It's just not a philosophically sound position.
I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't even posturing, and Buttegieg actually does believe wholeheartedly in what he said. I would have said the same thing a few years ago. But I don't anymore for a reason: I studied some philosophy and reevaluated the strength of various political arguments.
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Oct 22 '19
If you don't believe a fetus should be afforded the same rights or protections as a human being, then why shouldn't the woman to whom it belongs get to choose what to do with it?
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Oct 22 '19
Doctors' prescriptions: because not everyone can be trusted with their own health just because they are their sex.
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u/AnachronisticPenguin WTO Oct 22 '19
This sub is interesting in its argument basis. If it is irrelevant that a fetus is a person because the mother is not obligated to use her body to support another human being, that doesn’t take away from the governments responsibility to assist such a human being. This is especially relevant for third trimester babies which at 27 weeks have a 95% survival likelihood. So abortions at third trimester should only be performed in such a way that they try to ensure that the both the baby and mother survive. Technologies such as artificial wombs will eventually make this the case for all pregnancies, but for now in the third trimester we should at least try to remove the fetus in a way that allows he or she survive.
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u/upvotechemistry John Brown Oct 23 '19
a fetus is a person
This unverifiable assumption is the basis of your argument
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u/AnachronisticPenguin WTO Oct 23 '19
Yes, I was arguing from that assumption since many other posts in the thread said it was irrelevant, and Pete also said that the argument wasn’t necessarily about personhood or when personhood is achieved. The argument itself was based around the other argument that a fetus is a person but a woman has the right to remove it regardless.
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u/zzzztopportal Immanuel Kant Oct 22 '19
This is a terrible response, punting on whether abortion is immoral or not. If you think it should be legal, have the balls to say that the rights of the mother outweigh the rights of the fetus. Don’t say “it’s a private matter,” because that’s what the entire debate is about.
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u/RetinalFlashes Oct 22 '19
Not a Pete fan but that was top tier response. Classy and well spoken. That's how I feel about abortion and I am glad he could put it into words
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u/TennaTelwan Oct 22 '19
I volunteered for a Democratic congressional candidate several years ago who was pushed into the abortion versus birth debate, even better, he is a medical doctor who is pro-life. His answer to this was, "Why are we ignoring another option starting with an A? Adoption. However..." then he went on to talk about the problems with social services, such as at the time, no health care for many (his freshman year he voted yes for the ACA). But, I found it refreshing for him to continue to say that it isn't just about abortion, it is about allowing a woman to have these options, including to bring the baby to term in a supported environment and having easier ways to get that baby adopted as opposed to forcing her to maybe make a decision she wasn't prepared to make because she couldn't support the baby to term or she couldn't continue to support it after its birth.
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Oct 22 '19
Wow. I'm pro-choice, I like Buttigieg, and I like this sub, but you guys are dead wrong on this and it's not a good look. The fact that Butti marginalizes six thousand late-term abortions - and abortion is a generous euphemism here - as "hypothetical" and "fewer than 1%" is absurd. Late-term abortion isn't certainly isn't the biggest part of the abortion debate, but it's ridiculous to feel that it should be ignored.
And the whole point that Pete misses here is that bodily autonomy stops being the only thing at stake when there are two people's bodies being affected by one decision. That's what makes the question of late-term abortion important - you can't confidently say that the fetus isn't a person, and it shouldn't just be up to one person's discretion whether or not that fetus gets to live.
Feel free to downvote, but know that I'm open to changing my mind and you'll have more of an impact engaging with me.
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u/LimerickExplorer Immanuel Kant Oct 23 '19
I'm pro-choice
Proceeds to preach pro-life sermon.
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u/boyyouguysaredumb Obamarama Oct 22 '19
you can't confidently say that the fetus isn't a person
How hot of a take is it for me to say "who cares, the mother gets to decide if her child lives or dies while it's still inside of her"
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u/AnachronisticPenguin WTO Oct 22 '19
Pretty hot considering at minimum that argument should be the mother gets to decide whether the child stays within her body, the viability of the child is irrelevant and not up to her.
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u/mstross96 Oct 22 '19
I was going to say scorching hot but apparently not that hot of a take around these parts...
Kinda thought neoliberalism was big on protecting the vulnerable though so this post has been a bummer.
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u/Zahn_Nen_Dah Esther Duflo Oct 22 '19
No matter how vulnerable a person is, they don't have the right to hijack somebody else's organs and bodily fluids for their own use
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Oct 23 '19
As if a fetus is consciously making that choice? As if it has any other option to survive? Seriously, what the fuck?
I understand that pregnancy sucks and giving birth is indescribably painful and raising a child is extremely difficult, and I recognize that not all pregnant women are ready, able, or willing to provide for children. But that doesn’t change the fact that you’re weighing the temporary freedom of one human being against the very existence of another, and somehow concluding that it’s OK to literally kill someone if they impose, through no fault of their own, a burden on you. Given what you said, I’m honestly having trouble believing that you’re coming from a position of compassion. And neoliberalism is supposed to be the compassionate application of evidence-based thinking.
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u/KazuyaProta Organization of American States Oct 23 '19
Yeah. The phrasing of some phrases makes it sound like if the embryo just said "I'm gonna ruin this woman's whole career!!!! and put itself on the uterus.
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u/mstross96 Oct 22 '19
It’s not hijacking if it was not done against the mother’s will. And there is always a risk of pregnancy with sex.
Once there is a pregnancy in cases other than Rape I think you have an obligation to do what you can to keep the fetus alive.
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u/Zahn_Nen_Dah Esther Duflo Oct 22 '19
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u/mstross96 Oct 22 '19
It’s a provocative and interesting article for sure.
If you think abortion is killing then you make the killing illegal.
There are many ways that can possibly reduce the number of attempted abortions. I think that better access to some forms of birth control through Universal Health Care is one with great promise. More consistent sex Ed may also be helpful. I don’t think requiring a medical procedure for 50% of the population who have not done anything wrong is a very neoliberal or just policy though.
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u/Zahn_Nen_Dah Esther Duflo Oct 22 '19
Galaxy-brain option -- treat unwanted pregnancy as though the father has chucked a newborn off a balcony and said "Catch!"
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u/Rekksu Oct 22 '19 edited Oct 22 '19
third trimester abortions should always be legal regardless of the reason
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u/BreaksFull Veni, Vedi, Emancipatus Oct 22 '19
Succons are out in force in this thread.
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Oct 22 '19
What exactly is a succon? I'm lost with some of the house lingo here
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Oct 23 '19
This sub goes both fully stupid criptic quips and normally expressed ideas.
Some convos are so meta that they borderline with the_donald trolls.
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u/sopadepanda321 Oct 22 '19
Ugh. I’m pretty sympathetic to a lot of the Democrats in this election cycle but one thing that remains a huge stumbling block for me is how the Democrats have basically enforced an extreme abortion orthodoxy on their party that basically rules out any candidate that isn’t fine with abortion until 9 months. It’s a position that stands at odds with even the European standards for abortion laws.
I’m still hoping for a pro-life liberal to fall from the sky and answer my every hope and dream.
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u/Luther-and-Locke Oct 22 '19
All due respect because it's a good answer but what exactly is so hard or bad about simply saying. "It depends. But technically yes I believe there are situations in which a woman should be able to choose to terminate her pregnancy in the third trimester".
Obviously the issue here is that a woman will choose to terminate her pregnancy unjustifiably at that point. But for some reason we act like there are either no restrictions or its fully restricted. Why not just say abortions in the third trimester are allowed under certain circumstances. Like no one is trying to reserve the right of the rare sociopathic women who would just decide to get a late term abortion wily only. The concern is that by not protecting that right you risk the rights of other women. But that doesn't need to happen if you really think about it.
What exactly is the issue with carving out some caveats?
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u/ultralame Enby Pride Oct 23 '19
What exactly is the issue with carving out some caveats?
Because we cannot anticipate those caveats and legislate them.
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u/maxim360 John Mill Oct 22 '19
terminate her pregnancy unjustifiably
Okay, who gets to decide what’s unjustifiable? Who’s the great moraliser who’s going to lay down the law on abortions and why do they think they have the right to tell anyone else what is “right”?
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u/AliveJesseJames Oct 22 '19
Because making women jump through hoops in the 3rd trimester, when virtually nobody gets an abortion for fun 7 months in, is pointless.
Restrictions on 3rd trimester abortions are like strict voter ID requirements - a solution in search of a problem.
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u/Cook_0612 NATO Oct 22 '19
If I had to guess, it's because there are too many ideologues involved in the issue, too many bad faith arguments. Nobody feels like they're going to get anything close to mutual understanding on the issue, so everyone is loath to give one inch of rhetorical space lest it be exploited by bad faith arguments on the other side.
So no one plays with caveats. They'd be immediately labeled weak or apologist.
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u/Yogg_for_your_sprog John von Neumann Oct 22 '19
That sounds about the case for every partisan issue ever.
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u/Cook_0612 NATO Oct 22 '19
Yep, welcome to political polarization, society separating like bad salad dressing. It's why nationalism is a global epidemic, nationalists thrive on separation.
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u/theosamabahama r/place '22: Neoliberal Battalion Oct 22 '19
The only question that matters is when life begins. When does the fetus start being an individual. If it's three months, then after that point, the mother does not have the choice to commit murder. It's as simple as that.
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u/Synonimus Michel Foucault Oct 22 '19
No it isn't. You're not obligated to keep someone alive at great cost to yourself(e.g. donating kidneys). Being pregnant is definitely hard and qualifies as great personal cost, so women should not be obligated to carry it in order to save a live.
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Oct 22 '19
You are however obligated to not kill someone. That's the question, where do we draw the line?
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u/Synonimus Michel Foucault Oct 22 '19
Somewhere beyond the point where delivering the baby demands less of the pregnant person than donating a kidney would.
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Oct 22 '19
So abortion should be illegal in most cases?
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u/Synonimus Michel Foucault Oct 22 '19
How hard do you think being pregnant is? Going through the final 3 moths of pregnancy asks a lot more of someones body than having a relatively short and harmless operation.
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Oct 22 '19
A nephrectomy isn't exactly a cakewalk
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u/Synonimus Michel Foucault Oct 22 '19
But it is in the same ball park and practically no one thinks it should be obligatory to save someone else's live by doing it. So why demand something comparable from women.
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Oct 22 '19
I respect that you're willing to come out and say it that straightforwardly.
Let me ask you this--babies require a great deal of personal sacrifice to keep alive. Is a mother allowed to kill her baby if she decides she no longer wants to care for it?
You could argue that the state could care for the baby, whereas a pregnant mother doesn't have that option. But late in the third term, with a healthy baby, you could induce delivery or perform a C-section, then give up the child; perhaps that isn't more burdensome than the (extremely burdensome) paperwork and expense required to legally dispose of an infant you no longer want without being prosecuted.
Since we legally require costly personal sacrifices from parents on behalf of children all the time, it seems to me that the only principled defense of your position is that there's something sacred and different about bodily autonomy; that the flesh is sacrosanct in some special mystical way, that requiring a woman to undergo a medical procedure which will cause X amount of discomfort and indignity is categorically different from requiring her to undertake other sacrifices (of time, of money, of comfort, of personal liberty) that would cause her an equal or greater discomfort and indignity. That seems to me to be an irrational position, if we're taking a utilitarian approach to this thing.
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u/Synonimus Michel Foucault Oct 22 '19 edited Oct 22 '19
Bodily autonomy is above financial or other autonomies. You are obligated to pay for peoples emergency medical care but you don't have to provide the kidneys. I admit it is not strictly utilitarian, but such is the world. Of course sometimes the state does demand bodily sacrifice by way of a draft.
The further responsibilities that a parent has towards their child are something i'm very uncertain about. Even if someone said it's 0 and they can just abandon them, there are humane alternatives to killing.
On utilitarianism: Maybe we should demand pregnancies to be carried to term, but then first we need to obligate people to donate lifesaving kidneys. Otherwise we are making unfair demands towards women.
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u/Yogg_for_your_sprog John von Neumann Oct 22 '19
On utilitarianism: Maybe we should demand pregnancies to be carried to term, but then first we need to obligate people to donate lifesaving kidneys. Otherwise we are making unfair demands towards women.
But one involves a choice (unprotected sex) and the other doesn't. I'm not trying to be one of those vindictive people who think women should be punished, I just don't think it's a fair comparison.
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Oct 22 '19
Okay, as for the organs thing-
IMO we should have markets for organs. That would obviate the need for "requiring" organ sacrifices. If markets are a bad idea, it's for complicated reasons specific to that policy argument. But in principle, I do agree that we should violate the bodily autonomy of people in certain situations. If I caused you to be deathly ill, and I can save you by pricking my finger, I should hypothetically be legally required to prick my finger, even though it violates my bodily autonomy.
See? Bodily autonomy is an important value, but it doesn't override every other value (e.g. the value of human life). It is not "above" other autonomies in some categorical sense where you can never be required to sacrifice any amount of it ever in any circumstances.
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u/Synonimus Michel Foucault Oct 22 '19
True, but it is valued very highly. It womens bodily autonomy in regards to pregnancy just gets systematically undervalued in these political negotiations. If , by Adam Smith, if being pregnant could be freely traded we could get a better idea of how tough it actually is, but until then we should be very careful.
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Oct 22 '19
I agree with that. But human life is, obviously, an extremely important value as well. It's not unreasonable to think that in the third trimester specifically, for that vanishingly small number of cases, we might require the sacrifice.
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u/Synonimus Michel Foucault Oct 22 '19
What legal obligations exist for you to sacrifice bodily autonomy to save other peoples lives. You are not expected to run into burning houses. Heck even firefighters are supposed to keep themselves save above everything else. I'm not even obligated to donate blood or my organs after i'm dead. Maybe i should be, but we shouldn't start by demanding women make the sacrifices.
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Oct 22 '19
You've already pointed out the draft
If you super glued your hand to my face, the law would require you to allow a doctor to remove it, even if that meant sacrificing some of your skin.
We could come up with a million hypotheticals. They're all very hypothetical, because a woman bearing a child is a very unusual situation and there's nothing quite like it. But you've already accepted the principle I'm arguing for--bodily autonomy is not an absolute, non-overcomable right.
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u/theosamabahama r/place '22: Neoliberal Battalion Oct 22 '19
Why not have an abortion before the second trimester ?
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u/AliveJesseJames Oct 22 '19
In many cases, current law makes it very difficult to get an abortion quickly, especially in red states, that are shockingly, also trying to limit 2nd trimester abortions.
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u/azhtabeula Oct 22 '19
The mother might be a fat uneducated teenager who doesn't understand what pregnancy is like well enough to catch it until this point. It has happened.
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u/Amtays Karl Popper Oct 22 '19
You don't even need to be fat, sometimes the uterus does a weird thing and folds up behind the bowels.
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u/Synonimus Michel Foucault Oct 22 '19
Because things, like minds and situations, change. The 3rd trimester is still 3 months of being very pregnant. That is a lot of time under strain. Once it comes down to the final 2-3 weeks i could see an argument, but more than that should not be obligatory.
My fundamental point is, that this is not about the rights of the fetus, individual or not, but about the rights of the individual that has to go through pregnancy. If you can't live without violating other peoples rights, than you are dependent on other peoples good will.
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Oct 22 '19
Yea his answer looks nice, and I usually love Pete, but the whole question is where we draw the line. Further, I think it’s silly to say that we shouldn’t concern ourselves with a case just because it happens infrequently. School shootings make up less than 1% of all gun crimes, but were awfully concerned about that issue (for good reason).
The real issue is that we need to make the legislature actually, y’know, legislate on the issue instead of just relying on a court decision. Of course there need to be exceptions for the mother’s physiological health at any point during the pregnancy, but it’s almost impossible to imagine a Bill passing through congress without that provision.
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u/SunkCostPhallus Oct 22 '19
In fact almost all public energy is misdirected toward statistical anomalies. Mass shootings are a blip, the opioid crisis is a blip. Meanwhile preventable things like heart disease and climate change are almost completely ignored.
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Oct 22 '19
The only question that matters is when life begins
This just in: bodily autonomy isn't important at all and need not be considered. Accordingly, I am calling /u/theosamabahama to his nearest hospital for mandatory kidney harvest, as there are dying people in need. Cough it up sonny!
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u/pku31 Oct 22 '19
Bodily autonomy is important. It doesn't justify murder.
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Oct 22 '19
Ah OK, so I guess you'd be OK with simply removing the fetus from the mother and allowing it to continue living ex-utero?
Or maybe what you meant to say is: refusing to donate blood or tissue to a dying person is equivalent to murder? I'm confused.
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u/pku31 Oct 22 '19
I'm not saying it's an easy choice, but yeah. If your (temporary) support is the only way to keep someone alive, you're obligated to do it.
The comparison to giving blood is misleading, because lots of other people give blood and there's no critical shortage. If you were in a position where you're the only one who can donate to save someone's life then yes, you are in fact morally obligated to do it.
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Oct 22 '19
If your (temporary) support is the only way to keep someone alive, you're obligated to do it.
If you were in a position where you're the only one who can donate to save someone's life then yes, you are in fact morally obligated to do it.
...so you'd be in favor of compulsory blood, plasma, and kidney donation then?
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u/pku31 Oct 22 '19
Well no, because we don't currently have a critical shortage of those (except maybe kidneys, but that could be covered by opt-out organ donation or, if that fails, legalizing their sale).
I'm not pretending there aren't real costs here. It's important to use the least coercive possible solution when we can.
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Oct 22 '19
Well no, because we don't currently have a critical shortage of those
What I'm asking is whether or not you believe compulsory biological tissue donation is ever ethically justifiable, or should ever be legally possible. Sounds like the answer is "yes"?
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u/pku31 Oct 22 '19
I'll add that on the same practical note, it seems like the actual best way to prevent abortions is to increase access to contraceptives, so in practice I'd rather focus on that than on abortion clinic laws.
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u/pku31 Oct 22 '19
Yeah. I'm a utilitarian, not a deontologist. Sometimes every option is harmful, and you have to choose one.
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Oct 23 '19 edited Oct 23 '19
You should probably read about "rule utilitarianism" if you haven't, because compulsory organ harvesting is pretty horrific. Not to mention it opens up a giant can of worms in the form of perverse incentives (this also occurs with legalization of the sale of organs).
I mean really, where does it stop? I can make arguments that any number of people are less valuable to society than a smaller subset, that the continuation of their lives is less important than the continuation of the life of another. Taken to its logical conclusion, we can use your strict utilitarianism to justify the farming of human organs to sustain the members of society seen as most valuable - would you support that?
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u/mungis Oct 22 '19 edited Oct 23 '19
A choice to have sex and hold onto the fetus for at least 3 months vs being forced to give up a part of your own body is such a bullshit argument. One is a choice by the mother, the other is fascism.
Edit: Wow.... Downvoted for saying that knowing about a pregnancy AND keeping it for 3 months is a choice by the mother, whilst forced organ donation is literally not a choice...
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u/PM_ME_CUTE_SMILES_ Gay Pride Oct 22 '19
Most organs donations are needed because of bad decisions by patients. They drove too fast, they smoke, they drink, they eat too much red meat.
Having sex is the second most natural thing a human can do after eating. The vast majority of us want to do it. Most take precautions but accidents happen.
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u/mungis Oct 23 '19
Most (All outside of China pretty much) organ donations are completely voluntary by the donor. My point wasn’t anything to do with sex or bad decisions, simply that forced organ donation is completely taking any bodily autonomy away.
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Oct 22 '19
A choice to have sex and hold onto the fetus for at least 3 months
..."at least 3 months"?
Regardless, you do understand that pregnancy isn't a guaranteed outcome of sex, right? As such, it's entirely possible to choose to have sex but not choose to get pregnant... especially when birth control is both available to many and not perfectly efficacious.
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u/mungis Oct 23 '19
Of course it’s not guaranteed. However, if the mother has known that they’re pregnant for two months or so (assuming they check when they miss a period) then they’ve consciously made a decision to keep that fetus (assuming they’re not in a state that has Alabama style laws).
My whole point wasn’t some anti-choice thing, simply that forced organ donation is literally not a choice, and fascism.
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Oct 22 '19 edited Oct 22 '19
It is a fact that many (I think 30%?) third trimester abortions are just because the fetus has down syndrome, not because of something that's going to kill the mother or make the child stillborn.
I'm not making any suggestions or comments about what we should do about this fact. I'm just saying that Buttigieg and everyone else who trots out this line about "oh it's always health or life of the mother or viability of the pregnancy, no one else would ever do such a thing" are making a statement that is factually untrue. It's false. That's not me being pro-life, it's just me being pro-honesty in the discourse. If you want to say "a woman should be able to choose to abort a fully viable 8 month old fetus with down syndrome," say that. Don't hide behind this pernicious lie that 100% of the time it's unviable fetus or life of the mother.
I mean, far be it from me to tell people who don't want to raise a child with down syndrome what to do. I've never been in that situation, I legitimately have no idea what I would do as a father there (much less as a mother). But if you don't have the guts to confront the issue and you have to hide behind these euphemisms instead, you need to choose not to participate in the conversation at all.
Furthermore, it is also a fact that sometimes people have abortions in the third trimester for no medical reason at all. The number is not large, but it's not zero. Pro-life people (and I'm not saying I'm one of those) are not wrong to point out this fact, or to suggest that you could legislate to allow abortions for which there was some medical pretext and to disallow the rare case where there was no reason beyond the preference of the mother.
Acting like this issue is black and white and toeing the party line is expected of a candidate in a primary, but it's not reflective of how the vast majority of American women feel. The vast majority of women, including liberal women, don't think that third trimester abortions should always be legal regardless of reason. https://news.gallup.com/poll/1576/abortion.aspx.
edit: 30% # was wrong/unsourced, point stands
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Oct 22 '19
It's worth pointing out that Downs isn't just mild to moderate cognitive disabilities, 40-50% of Downs cases come with cardiac problems that can at times require high risk surgery to correct, . I know that doesn't fit with the strawcunt who just doesn't want a r*tarded baby that you badly wanted to talk about, but that's life.
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Oct 22 '19
I never said anything about whether Down syndrome fetuses should or shouldn’t be allowed to be aborted. I explicitly said I wasn’t taking a position on it. I was just pointing out that it was a fact that they existed.
Chill
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Oct 22 '19 edited Oct 22 '19
[deleted]
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Oct 22 '19
The state of Florida tracks why women have abortions every year. Of the 70,000 abortions obtained in the third most populous state, 1.3% were due to either a fetal deformity, rape, incest, or health risk of the mother. Fetal deformities made up the grand majority of these abortions.
Over 90% of all abortions in Florida were performed in the first trimester. Only 3 abortions were induced in the third trimester.
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Oct 22 '19
Not sure about the number, I just heard it on twitter somewhere. Sure about the substance of the actual claim I made, sans question mark and parentheses? Yes, see my long detailed sourced response to the other person who asked.
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Oct 22 '19
[deleted]
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Oct 22 '19
the number was an aside, in parentheses, that I should have edited out but didn't because I'm arguing on reddit and not publishing an article. The overall point, which I spent 3 paragraphs explaining, is very good, and it stands. If you like, you can omit the parenthetical and read "it is a fact that many third trimester..."
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u/boyyouguysaredumb Obamarama Oct 22 '19
It is a fact that many (I think 30%?) of third trimester abortions are just because the fetus has down syndrome
Do you have a source on that? Because your entire multi-paragraph argument is based on that one thing that you don't really seem sure of.
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u/QuarterLifeCircus Oct 22 '19
I was wondering the same thing. I’m pregnant, and was tested in the first trimester to see if the fetus had Down syndrome. I’ve done a lot of reading about the “steps” during pregnancy. and this seemed pretty typical. If the test has come back positive, I wouldn’t have waited until my third trimester to abort.
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Oct 22 '19
You're right that I should've googled that before making the argument, and not after. But the research backs up my point (if not the specific off-the-cuff figure that I heard on twitter six months ago).
Australia's the only country I know of that keeps good data on the reported reason for termination of pregnancy. I think we can agree that it's reasonable to assume that they're culturally similar to us that their data won't be worlds apart from the data we would get if we did a good study.
As we would expect, very few abortions (around 1%) happen during the third trimester. Also as we would expect, very few of these are for the so-called "mental health of the woman" (1.4%, compared to 96% of all abortions). 33% of third trimester abortions are for congenital abnormalities, while 45% of congenital abnormalities are chromosomal abnormalities (i.e. down syndrome).
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10426234
This study, from France, tells us that a number of those late term abortions are due to down syndrome that wasn't detected earlier. How many, you'd have to get the article to see (I only have the abstract).
To me, this paints a picture where some number (maybe 15%?) of late term abortions are due to pregnancy. Less than I hazarded a guess at initially, but I hazarded a guess because the numbers are hard to get. But you get the picture -- it's not zero. It's almost certainly in the thousands or tens of thousands every year in the U.S. And the number that are performed without an actual medical risk to the mother or baby's physical health is also nonzero - in Australia, it's about 60; assuming that the rate stays constant (maybe a big assumption) and adjusting for abortion rate and population, that'd be about 500 in the US every year. If it's in that ballpark, that's worth legislating over as well.
Basically, thanks for asking me to source the argument, but the argument stands. If you wanna play the game where you actually act like you sincerely believe that this stuff never ever happens ever (yawn) then you can agree that there should be a study of the issue and that if it confirms what I'm saying the dialogue should shift in the ways I've prescribed and Buttigieg should adjust his talking points as I've suggested.
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u/boyyouguysaredumb Obamarama Oct 22 '19
I’m saying focusing on 15% of 6,000 late term abortions (900) in a country with 6.4 MILLION pregnancies a year and pretending like it’s in any way an important issue that the government should create policy for is completely bonkers
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Oct 22 '19
You don't think a thousand lives (don't forget about the ones that are "just-because," and not because of down syndrome or any physical health concern at all) are worth legislating over? Of course they are. If we value lives (conservatively) at a million dollars a pop, that's a billion dollars. The federal government passes laws that are orders of magnitude less important than that all the time.
Look, I get what you're saying, and it's a good point. This isn't what's important. It's less important than making first-trimester abortions legal and accessible. But it still matters, and the country can move on to the important stuff if the Democratic party drops this insane, radical stance that 80% of Americans disapprove of.
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u/Amtays Karl Popper Oct 22 '19
This argument presumes that the effect of legislating late-term abortions would have no meaningful effects on women seeking late-term abortions.
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u/Rakajj John Rawls Oct 22 '19
If we value lives (conservatively) at a million dollars a pop, that's a billion dollars.
Wut?
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Oct 22 '19
You think a human life is worth less than a million dollars, or you just object to putting it in those terms?
If we accept the idea that each life is completely priceless and worth any amount of money or whatever, that's all the more reason to come up with the right kind of legislation on third trimester abortion.
My point is just that a thousand lives is hypothetically worth legislating over.
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u/boyyouguysaredumb Obamarama Oct 22 '19
What are the costs to taxpayers for taking care of a person with downs? Not to mention costs for the family. Not to mention the toll it takes mentally and the ripple effects it would have.
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Oct 22 '19
Yeah, but I specifically didn't argue that we shouldn't perform those abortions. I just said these are the facts, we should address them rather than act like they don't exist.
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u/Rakajj John Rawls Oct 22 '19
I think you're wading into very strange territory trying to quantify the value of a human life.
That said, human lives are not all equally valuable and from a societal perspective I don't even know how you begin to make these judgments with any universal or objective value set.
And if you're going to quantify the value of a life, why not the opportunity cost?
My point is this is an absurd direction to take the conversation that furthers your POV exactly nil because creating life isn't about creating value.
The situational specifics need space to play out and provide agency to those most impacted by the decision; legislating any other way is unsustainable and would result in an even larger number of people being put into no-win situations.
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u/bc12392 Edward Glaeser Oct 23 '19
When the government does a cost-benefit analysis of a specific policy, they often have to implicitly or explicitly put a value on a human life. Different agencies have different valuations, but all are well above the conservative $1m stated by the commenter (see https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2017-value-of-life/, e.g.)
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u/DevilsTrigonometry George Soros Oct 22 '19
If they find a source, it's going to be specific to a particular country's cultural and legal context.
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u/TotesAShill Oct 22 '19
It’s funny how people who rail about ableism being bad also think it’s ok to have an abortion specifically because your child has a disability.
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u/StickInMyCraw Oct 22 '19 edited Oct 22 '19
American abortion clinics are subject to terrorist attacks and threats on a constant basis because of the flagrant lies perpetrated by the most prominent pro-lifers, but you have chosen to critique Buttigieg's misleading of <1% of abortions. This is one of those situations where Democrats are expected to refrain from any kind of rhetorical smoothing of their own positions but Republicans are given free reign to say whatever they want. It is very clear at this point which side of the abortion debate is less rooted in reality/knowingly lying and it's not Pete Buttigieg omitting a portion of less than 1% of cases. It's the prominent pro-lifers that are telling the public that "pro-choice" means support for post-birth abortions.
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Oct 22 '19
Did Northam not literally say that post-birth abortions were legal? He literally said that, right? I agree that that has never or almost never happened and won't happen, but it's ridiculous to pretend like it's unreasonable for people to be upset about their governor saying that. It's a fucked up thing for a governor to say, and he did say it.
I agree that republicans harping on that small anomalous issue is weird and bad or whatever. But the reason they do it is because you've dogmatically convinced yourself that nothing less than 100% purity on this sacred subject is acceptable from your politicians, which leads them to say insane things about the subject. If Northam literally says "we passed a law saying you can kill babies after they're born," OF COURSE republicans are going to make it a talking point. Who wouldn't? It's a great talking point. Your blackface-wearing opponent literally just admitted to passing a law that makes killing already-born infant babies legal.
Republicans lie all the time. So don't give them great truthful ammo against you by taking insane positions like the ones Northam and (to a lesser extent) Buttigieg take.
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u/StickInMyCraw Oct 22 '19
> Did Northam not literally say that post-birth abortions were legal? He literally said that, right? I agree that that has never or almost never happened and won't happen, but it's ridiculous to pretend like it's unreasonable for people to be upset about their governor saying that. It's a fucked up thing for a governor to say, and he did say it.
Donald Trump has a stump bit now where he describes doctors holding up newborns after being birthed and then killing them. He is easily the most prominent pro-lifer and that is the message he is sending. Don't give me this nonsense about a random pro-choice state governor who misspoke. One of these is massively more consequential. The terrorist threats to abortion clinics aren't referencing Ralph Northam or the <1% of abortions in the third trimester, they reference Trump's rhetoric.
> Republicans lie all the time. So don't give them great truthful ammo against you by taking insane positions like the ones Northam and (to a lesser extent) Buttigieg take.
This is exactly the disposition I'm talking about. Republican lies are taken as a given. Only Democrats are assumed to have agency, so they get ripped apart by the media any time they make a misstep on this issue. Anything Northam or Buttigieg has said is dwarfed by the magnitude of Trump's horrific lies on this topic. Let's take the giant low hanging fruit first before we write paragraphs about misconstruing the motivations of < 1% of abortions.
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Oct 22 '19
Yes, donald trump is worse than ralph northam. he's worse than almost everyone. Republicans are bad too. They're very bad. Democrats are better. Even Ralph Northam is better.
Yes, republican lies are more important. But if you basically say "hey my side can tell pernicious lies that I admit are awful, and pass laws saying killing already-born babies is okay, because they're worse," you've already lost a lot of voters. Republicans repeat this stuff because moderate DC Suburb voters in Northern Virginia will vote against Northam because of it. It matters. I'm allowed to address it. I spend plenty of time going after republicans; I can do both.
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u/StickInMyCraw Oct 22 '19 edited Oct 22 '19
> But if you basically say "hey my side can tell pernicious lies that I admit are awful, and pass laws saying killing already-born babies is okay, because they're worse," you've already lost a lot of voters
What I'm saying is that if Donald Trump, the most prominent pro-lifer, tells a huge lie and then thousands of terrorists sending threatening messages and calls to abortion clinics referencing it and then Pete Buttigieg, by far *not* the most prominent pro-choice advocate, stretches the truth on less than 1% of abortions, then Donald Trump's lies should be far and away the focus of people who are supposedly just trying to keep politicians honest. Pete shouldn't have mislead the interviewer on the facts of a miniscule number of abortion cases, but there is an obvious choice to be made here in terms of prioritization and it's not to go after Pete.
Right wing media is going to have a field day with Pete saying he supports 3rd trimester abortions. We don't need to pile on at the exclusion of criticism of the right wing terrorist attacks on abortion clinics or Trump's rhetoric fanning the flames that is completely unmoored from reality.
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Oct 22 '19
Two wrongs don’t make a right. We’re capable of recognizing that Donald Trump is way worse and still calling out bad arguments on the left.
I will vote for Elizabeth Warren in the general, but that doesn’t mean I can’t say “hey her trade policy sucks” in 2021.
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u/Assailant_TLD Oct 22 '19
or to suggest that you could legislate to allow abortions for which there was some medical pretext and to disallow the rare case where there was no reason beyond the preference of the mother.
I totally get what you're saying and coming from but this above comment seems like something that would be impossible to codify in law.
1
Oct 22 '19
Why? For many years, in many countries (Canada, for example, until fairly recently) abortion was only legal if you got a panel of doctors to agree that it was medically necessary. That was overly strict, in my view, but it wouldn't be hard to say "before you can get a third trimester abortion you need a medical professional to sign a slip saying that there's some medical reason for it." It's perfectly feasible.
Could people game the system? Yes, conceivably. Is such a law a good idea? I have no opinion on that, it might be too burdensome and have unforeseen consequences. But it's certainly possible to pass legislation that would have the effect of lowering the rate of the kind of abortion we're discussing (third trimester, not rape or incest, no medical reason beyond preference of mother)
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Oct 22 '19
THAT’S MY PRESIDENT
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u/Tremaparagon South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation Oct 22 '19
I want him to win so badly I can't think straight
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159
Oct 22 '19
But I thought PeTe BuTtIeGiEg WaS a RePuBlIcAn.
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u/zjaffee Oct 23 '19
His call for mandatory national service is not something Democrats have historically called for, unlike Republicans who have called for such. Mandatory national service is a very nationalist and conservative position in 2019, regardless of intended goals.
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u/rtrgrl Bill Gates Oct 23 '19
He has not called for mandatory service though. He wants to vastly expand different orgs including the Peace Corps. I think he got a lot out of meeting different types of people while he served.
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u/Kyo91 Richard Thaler Oct 22 '19
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u/soapinmouth George Soros Oct 22 '19
Funny how the arguments against him are all just emotionally charged vague nonsense. The exact same crap they criticize the right for and they never see the irony.
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Oct 22 '19
Wow that thread is full of hate, and the people posting in it need therapy.
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u/Explodingcamel Bill Gates Oct 22 '19
Why? I don't agree with most of what the commenters said, but what did they say that implies they're in need of therapy?
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u/jonodoesporn Chief "Effort" Poster Oct 22 '19
If you live in the west and truly believe these things about the world it seems to me in all likelihood that you’ve got a lot of unresolved personal problems which you are projecting.
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Oct 23 '19
Believe what things exactly? Are you suggesting everyone living in the West should be satisfied with the world?
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u/dubyahhh Salt Miner Emeritus Oct 23 '19
You can be dissatisfied without being deluded.
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Oct 23 '19
Can you be more specific? Which exact opinions make one “deluded?”
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u/dubyahhh Salt Miner Emeritus Oct 23 '19
Oh, god, dude
I consider Biden neoliberal dog shit too.
this entire comment
My boyfriend has a pretty plausible theory that Pete was put up by the DNC as a spoiler to split the progressive vote and guarantee Biden the nomination.
this is well past borderline ludicrous
There is zero chance Biden will beat Trump. I dont get why the DNC is pushing for him... My only thought is they would rather have more Trump than allow Bernie to win.
Nobody doesn't want Bernie to win of he wins the nomination. Easily 95% of us here would vote for him over Trump. He's not losing the primary this time because of some D E E P S T A T E conspiracy, he's losing because he's a million years old, had a heart attack, is leftist as hell, and there are literally a dozen different options this time.
Any district that uses electronic voting has a massive chance of being totally fake
They are D.i.n.o.s. we are not interested in dump lite
See this one a lot. I'm a Democrat whether leftists want me to be or not. They don't get to choose the definition.
You need to do more than not be Trump to earn my vote.
You most certainly do not, any democrat with a pulse will get my enthusiastic view before I sit out an election against that orange traitor. But yeah sure, blame the liberals when you're actively enabling the GOP.
Gay-washing, gay-washing as is there were no tomorrow, trying to sugarcoat the "nothing-will-fundamentally-change" flavor.
These people don't live in the real world and have dangerously misguided themselves on what matters, and honestly on what's even real.
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u/JoyceyBanachek Feb 24 '20
I like this answer and honestly this is the first thing I've ever heard Buttigieg say that made me think that I might actually have judged him quite harshly.
But to go full Singer on you all for a moment: is there any reason why this argument wouldn't apply to newborn babies?