Rational Arguments in Favor or in Opposition of Abortion

SuperSith89

If we are keeping this as only a moral question, then we must simply prove two things, in my opinion:

1.  That a fetus is alive
2.  That it is not only alive, but human
3.  Is it a part of the mother's body?

So, is a fetus alive?  Personally, I believe life starts at conception, but if you look at pregnancy week by week, the fetus at 13 weeks already has fingerprints, toes, fingers, a human shape, and, a week earlier, excretes urine.  At 6 weeks, there was already a heartbeat.  In the second trimester, things really take shape as after 15 weeks the fetus can sense light and has taste buds.  At 20 weeks, and probably before the fetus can feel pain.  20 weeks is when the nervous system is complete.  So, 4 weeks before most abortions are cut off, you have a creature that has all features of a living creature, dare I say, uniquely human features.  By 27 weeks, eyes are opening, and already there has been inhaling and exhaling of amniotic fluid.  By now, it's undeniably human and alive. 

So, simply, we can see that very early on we have a living creature.  Albeit, it can't survive without the mother, but it is clearly alive.  So the question now is, is the fetus a part of a woman's body?  The argument exists that a fetus is basically an infection, so let's look at that. 
Cells
All of your body parts have the same genetic code.  That's undeniable.  So, for something to be a body part, it must match that genetic code.  A fetus does not.  Now, a transplanted organ wouldn't match the genetic code of your body, but it matches the donor's.  So, if every cell is different in the fetus, is it a body part?
It takes two
The fetus did not originate from the woman's body.  While she carries it, nothing would have happened without a man.
Blood
Though not always the case, most the time the blood type is different from the mother.
Different sex
Sure, you normally can't tell until further along in the pregnancy what the sex is, but if the fetus has XY, that's clearly not the same sex as the woman.

Much more information on the differences between the fetus and the mother can be found here: https://abort73.com/abortion/mothers_body/

So what do we have here?  We have a fetus that is clearly alive.  We can tell it is undeniably human.  It is not part of the mother's body.  So, one final case here.  The baby is basically brain dead, it can't survive on its own, doesn't formulate thoughts like we do.  Like a person who is in a coma that may never return from it, and the family must decide to keep them of life support or not.  Many say this is the same thing.  For one, the baby has yet to develop thinking, motor skills, and using their brain like us.  Someone who is brain dead or in a coma has been alive, had a chance at life at the very least.  With that said, is it moral to abort?  Absolutely, 100% not.  If you could somehow abort in the first five weeks, maybe, but 6 weeks in gives you a heartbeat, and from then on the fetus begins to become more human every single day.  Even arguing from a legal point, if the moral point is wrong, forget the legality of it.  It's simply not right by any standards.  There is no right to choice when it comes to taking a life.    

Applesauce

@SuperSith89

I would like to add what if any value is placed on an individual's life, currently there must be some because murder is against the law.  Trying to remove legal issues really isn't possible but we'll try.

Life is the opposite of death wouldn't you say? 

So what is death, how do you know someone is dead?  Afaik, in medicine it's whether the person has detectable brain waves or not, if this is not true please feel free to correct me because I accept that I could be mistaken.  If I'm not mistaken then it seems to me brain waves = life/alive, so as a starting point when brain waves can be detected it's a live person.  If that is agreed upon the conversation can move forward, if not then the objector should lay out a reason why that is not true.

taking someone off of life support is called D.N.R.  this is not the same as taking an action to end that life, like injecting potassium chloride into the heart to stop it.
If you kill someone who is going to die anyway is it still murder?  (I know the answer but the read should find out for themselves)

WordsMatter

@SuperSith89 I have an issue with your claim that it is undeniably human. You make many points to show it is alive but you fail to address anywhere what makes a human a human. Many of the things you have listed to show that it is alive apply to many other organisms as well. The exact same statements are true for Apes, yet we don't grant them the same standard of life.

Therefore there must be something else that makes a human. It can't be the number of chromosomes as that varies. It can't be the specific genes or what genes can code for as that varies, and some people can be born with a total blank spot where an allele shows up in 99.9% of humans. So we can't use DNA.

https://embryology.med.unsw.edu.au/embryology/index.php/K12_Human_and_Other_Animal_Development
 Even the stages of embryonic development, particularly in the first trimester, is practically indistinguishable from other organisms to the layman. Theoretically during the first trimester if you have advance scientific tools you could alter the development of the fetus so that it still becomes alive, but could have features that no human in history had. So while their are markers in a first trimester embryo that can set it as human, it is far from indistinguishable and there are many things that could happen, unreadable genes, wrong chemical signals, that could cause the fetus to develop in a wrong way, most likely resulting in unviability. However those issues are present from conception, they can come along farther down the line.

So what makes a human a human? This is one of the great philosophical questions that is pretty much unanswerable. Throughout history there have been many suggestions. Ability to read and write a rigidly structured language. Consciousness and self awareness. Morality. Future planning. Culture. Tool making. Capacity for religion.

You will find scientists defending the pro and con side of each of these, either to reinforce human dominance over the animal kingdom, or to destroy man's arrogance.

Apes can do almost anything a human can. Koko the gorilla can speak sign language and communicate with humans. She showed sadness when she found out Robin Williams died. She had met him earlier and developed what we can only describe as a friendship with him. They have war. They can create tools and weapons. If an App kills a person should we give it the same standard of a fair trial?

So I ask you, what seperates us from Apes? What seperates our fetuses from Ape fetuses, in a way that their can't be a single exception or human that could possibly differ from, even if they have the most rare of conditions, womb environment, or disease. The only possible answer I can see to this question is that somehow humans have something like a "soul" that animals lack. But that begs the question of when does a human get their soul? What is a soul? How do you know it's there in humans and not in Apes? Is it because of a single religious text that you come to this conclusion?

I cannot personally accept a religious argument to judge the morality of abortion. I would be more inclined to accept the biological argument that we are supposed to be hardwired to maintain our species, however I think humans override that instinct in our daily lives. Depending on where your morality comes from, which religion or philosophy, or even just through personal experience, will dictate whether you believe abortion is moral or not. If you ascribe to Nihilism then abortion can be moral as nothing matters at all. You can take the view, or even be born as a psychopath, and not have morals at all.

It is hard to untie the judgement on the morality of abortion from other factors in the world. In any moral dilemma surrounding circumstances are important and can change the morality of the exact same action. It is for this reason that I am fine with abortion. I don't view a fetus as a human yet, and the potential for life argument is lost on me as I believe in evolution and therefore given enough time a single strand of RNA could eventually develop into what we call a human. I view the morality of abortion as something abstract, that can be totally opposite for two people and both of them be right, or could be moral and immoral to a single person in two different circumstances even though it's the same person, and again they can be right both times. It's not place to force a code of morality on others in what I view as something ambiguous. Let them make their choice, and if there is a God let him judge the morality of the action. For example if Hitler's mother had the foreknowledge of what he would do, would abortion be moral in that case? Which only leads to a greater discussion on morality where more than just the act of abortion matters in the morality.

SuperSith89

@WordsMatter ; I see what you're saying, but one key difference that sets us apart from apes, despite the fact that they are incredibly smart, they are still acting on instinct.  No matter how much emotion they may show, they act out of survival.  We see apes performing feats close to humans, but you will never see an ape create something of their own doing, say a book, blueprints for architecture, or even something like a board game.  We have the ability to create, we have a conscience, and we don't act off of survival instincts.  We not only communicate, but we have created languages and diverse cultures out of communication.  We do not only have memory, but we have taken memory and gone to the limits of our imaginations (another thing setting us apart) in what we can do psychologically.  And on the topic of religion, the pure fact that we have religion sets us apart.  Every culture in the world has a religion, and their own form of it.  Taking a religious studies class this semester, and it blows my mind just how diverse religion is and how many people are connected with it.  

So, while a fetus doesn't perform above actions, is it really fair to say they aren't human since none of us picked up on half of that until we were older?  Really, half of that stuff isn't performed by infants, so are they not human?     

WordsMatter

@SuperSith89 I think you are going to be a great person to have a constructive debate on this. I think we may have both gotten ahead on the topic so maybe we should start from the ground up. I'm assuming the argument that abortion is immoral is based on the idea that killing another human is wrong. Is this correct for you?

So is killing another human always immoral? If we introduce the word murder then what would be the difference between the two? Would killing be there morally justified taking of life while murder is immoral? Or can killing also be immoral? 

I feel like it's important to start with the morality of ending a life before getting into whether we consider a life or not, or talking about ending a life in a very narrow way. 

For me I don't believe that you can make a blanket statement that taking another humans life is immoral. I also find the line between murder and killing to be a gray area, assuming the difference between the two terms is the morality of it. In society some accept the death penalty as moral. Many accept war, at least for the side they are on, as moral. If we get into the ethical dilemmas such as the trolley problem, or a question of if it's ok to kill 1 innocent person to save, 10, 100, 1million lives. What if all of ISIS was together in one building with 100 kidnapped children, would taking their lives with the terrorists be moral because of the far positive reach it would have on many more lives?  These questions only muddy the waters further on when taking a life is moral or not. Leading me to believe that in the case of abortion the same act can be both moral and immoral based on the surrounding circumstances.

AmericanFurryBoy

I’d like to start out with the argument that some make stating that “you can’t be Pro-life if you support the death penalty.” This simply is not true due to the fact the convicted felon did something to deserve this punishment while the unborn child has done nothing and simply wants to survive.
The next argument to tackle is that it’s the women’s body and they can choose what they want to do with it. This again simply isn’t true because while the child does feed off the mother, it isn’t a part of their body. It is a seperate complex organism that is comprised of half of the fathers DNA and half of the mothers.
So in conclusion, no. Abortion is not moral in any way. Especially if it occurs seconds before birth. 

On on a different note, isn’t it funny that Democrats support the rights of illegal immigrants more than they support those of a child? Hell,  Northam even supports infanticide.

funperson

Unacceptable for at least two reasons
1. If someone says that an abortion is needed if the child would grow up poor anyway, the implication is that poor children are better off dead. I'm sure nobody would say to an impoverished kid "it'd be better if you weren't alive."
2. If a fetus is a life, it can't be killed because you can't kill people. If you're unsure if it's a life, you'd be better off playing it safe and assuming it is. Better safe than sorry.

AmericanFurryBoy

And, they support these because the child might have deformities or birth defects. Let that sink in. They yell at me for maybe making an autism joke (A JOKE) but they turn right around and say that any unborn child with this specific condition or one similar should be aborted. What a bunch of idiots.

SuperSith89

@WordsMatter ; Yes, we should start by defining the line between killing and murder.  
Personally, I see murder as pre-meditated, taking another's life for the sake of taking that life.  For example: school shooters, gangs, ISIS, Nazi Germany, your general murderer you see in the news, sadly, every day.  Killing on the other hand involves protecting yourself, war, and stopping someone from taking more lives.  For example: protecting yourself during a home invasion, on the street, or anywhere where you have a split second decision between killing or being killed.  Now, I do think there is war that is wrong.  War based off of greed and a lust for power.  I think our involvement in WWII was needed and completely validated, and was not immoral because one side took lives that were innocent, that a lot of the time didn't fight back.  I think the Civil War was wrong.  There was a lot behind it, but it never should have happened.  Ultimately, it was protecting your own life there, and one side was treating humans as property. 

I like how you brought up all the morally gray arguments.  Especially the argument of trading lives.  I hate to do this, but I have to bring in nerd talk.  Captain America has a lot of great one-liners, not jokes, but lines that show his morals on taking other lives.  In Infinity War, he tells Vision "We don't trade lives," when referencing Vision wanting to give up his for the universe.  Would it have worked?  I think so, but Cap had a good point.  I think all life, even if you've messed up, deserves a shot.  They were wrong, but only because the villains managed to lure Scarlet Witch away.  And, to be fair, Endgame has yet to happen, so that had to happen if Doctor Strange is correct.  To get back on topic though, this is also why I disagree with the death sentence.  Everyone deserves forgiveness, everyone has a shot at redemption, it's an innate value I believe exists, mostly because I'm a Christian, but I still think that's something you could agree with.  Even the worst people have the capability of change. 

Hope that sums up what you're looking for in my views on killing and murder, and I think we both can line up pretty well in how we define it going on from here.  I think we could both agree that murder would be taking a life that isn't threatening you, isn't threatening others, and that has no way to protect itself.  Killing would be in self defense, helping to save a life or many lives by eliminating a person who is an active threat, but not who may become a threat.  Which actually brings me to answer a rhetoric question you brought up in your first argument: If Hitler's mother knew who he would be before hand would it be moral to abort him?  I say no, which sounds insane, but at that point he hadn't done anything, and doing so would not have been fair since he at some point chose to enact those things, and he had every opportunity to choose otherwise.    

whiteflame

I feel like the effort to make this debate rational always runs aground on the issue of personhood and when it begins. I say this about both sides because, from what I've seen of this debate, pro-life advocates tend to slide that scale back to the point of conception, whereas pro-choice advocates slide it to the generation of a nervous system or a viable state. It's not that I don't see any validity to these arguments, it's that I see them all as inherently arbitrary. We select specific traits, state that those traits impart personhood (or humanity, if that's the term you'd rather use), and declare that human life as truly "begun." Rather than provide all the problems I have with these arguments, and they are many, I will target the two major problems as I see them.

First, I don't see how we can designate any specific trait as required to impart personhood, whether it's in the present or future. Starting with the present, I don't see how we can select a trait (or, for that matter, any single set of traits) that impart humanity. Simply stating that "this trait is what separates us from all other animals" invites a great deal of questions. What if an animal acquired that trait? What if we built a robot with that trait? Would they be human? What if someone we deem to be human is born without that trait and never acquires it? Do we strip them of their humanity? Do partial versions of that trait impart partial humanity? I can get into specifics on each possible trait, but I don't see how any single one could satisfyingly be used to answer these questions. Focusing on future acquisition of a trait, I think it runs into much the same problems, but it acquires a few more. Now we layer on an assumption: that a given living being will acquire a given trait. If we accept uncertainty and simply argue that the potential to acquire a given trait is sufficient, then we run into the issue of infinite regression. If potential acquisition is sufficient reason to award personhood, then there is no reason to stop at a given likelihood of acquisition. Why stop at conception? On this basis, every sperm and ovum has the capacity to acquire these traits, albeit with an extra step or two. So, too, do the stem cells that formed them. We can keep tracing those cells back and eventually declare many individual cells in the mother and father to be independent humans by the same token. 

Second, if we assume that we can designate the point at which personhood begins, it should be possible to designate the exact moment at which this occurs. This requires some examples. Let's say that I have designated the formation of a unique human genome as the start of personhood. Setting aside the need to define "unique" and "human," when do we determine that it meets this threshold? How many DNA bases have to pair up in a distinct order before we call it a person? How much of the cellular structure has to form before we call it human? Sure, we can define the point at which we have definitely met that threshold, but there should be a clear brightline stipulating the inciting moment. On that same basis, let's say that we designate the formation of a nervous system as the beginning of personhood. How many neurons must be connected before we find it sufficient to call it a nervous system? What level of functionality must exist within that system before it meets that threshold? What capacities must the developing unborn child have, and how can we assess them? Viability is similarly difficult to define, and it changes based on our increased capacity to keep premature infants alive. Viability isn't the same now as it was a decade ago. Beyond that, what traits make one viable? What degree of development do those traits need to have to meet that threshold? I feel like the line is entirely blurred on all of these, and so long as the line is unclear, defining the start of humanity based on any of them seems inherently flawed.

I think there are lots of good reasons to support each side of this argument, but I just find the effort to define the start of personhood based on biology to be so pervaded with problems that it's basically impossible. It requires that we view this question philosophically. That's a fine place to have it, but it often pushes people to take emotional positions on this argument, viewing the other side as morally bankrupt. For that reason, I appreciate the argument that's been had here so far, and I hope it continues to be respectful and incisive.

MayCaesar

My view is based on the principle of ultimate respect for individual property. Anything that I own is my property. My body is also my property; in fact, the body is the ultimate, most intimate, most inherent property a human has. No government or any other human should have a say in what the owner does with this property. There is no reason, no greater good, nothing that justifies infringement on the person's right to control their body.

Next, the value of human life is directly derived from this principle. Why is my life valuable? Not because of some cosmic abstract principle. Simply put, my life is valuable because it is a piece of property, and every piece of property is valuable and can be traded upon the owner's permission.

Here is what happens when a woman gets pregnant. Her body - her property - evolves naturally, growing a fetus. I will highlight it: her property grows a fetus. What happens when our property grows a property? That new property obviously also becomes our property.

Think about it this way. Suppose you start a business which entirely belongs to you, that is you do not sell stocks and do not grant ownership of a part of the business to anyone.
Eventually your business grows. You hire a few managers. You give those managers a lot of power and freedom to act.
Those managers decide to build an office in Japan, without you being involved in the operation. Does the office belong to them, or to you? The answer is obvious: you are the sole owner of the business, and as such all of its assets, including the office building in Japan, belong to you.

Hence, we can see that while the fetus is in the woman's body, it is not the owner of its body - but, rather, the woman is. The fetus is a part of the woman's body, and just because this is a part that was created by another part of the same body, does not mean it suddenly acquires a new owner.

And as the owner of her body and everything that it has produced, including the fetus, the woman fully controls what she does to that fetus. And if she decides to abort it, then nobody has the right to stop her.

---

When does this arrangement end? When the fetus is expelled from the body, that is at the moment of childbirth. Just like the business owner selling the office to someone loses ownership of that office, a woman giving a childbirth loses ownership of the child's body. The body now belongs to the child, and while the woman may retain some parental rights over the child, she cannot do with its body whatever she pleases. Now the child is the owner, and the woman is a client.

So, based on this logical chain based on the concept of uninfringeable individual property, we can conclude that abortion is moral at any stage, even a second before the child would be born. But once the child is born, once its attachment to the woman's body is no more - at that moment the child's life becomes valuable in itself, rather than a part of a greater whole, and cannot be taken away by anyone's decision.

SuperSith89

@MayCaesar ; I'll let someone else take this because I refuse to debate anyone who thinks abortion up to seconds before birth is at all even close to being moral.  It's infanticide.