About the Abortion Controversy

[Wildswanderer]

Yeah, the purpose of it was to cause an abortion/terminate the pregnancy in unfaithful women.

Not quite. The ritual is a test and then God judges the woman guilty or not. If she's guilty, most translations say she would then have a disfigurement. In fact I'm not seeing anything in the passage about her even being pregnant. It says if she's not guilty she will then conceive. So I learned something new.

" And if the woman be not defiled, but be clean; then she shall be free, and shall conceive seed."

 

[Subduction Zone]

No I asked if you believed in the curse. Of course you don't, so you can't interpret anything in the book correctly if you don't believe in the power of God to do anything.
Looks to me like the husband suspected, and was jealous and the ritual was a test to see if he was correct.

14 And the spirit of jealousy come upon him, and he be jealous of his wife, and she be defiled: or if the spirit of jealousy come upon him, and he be jealous of his wife, and she be not defiled:

Of course I don't believe the curse nonsense. As a child you should have watched Scooby Doo more often. Do you know what? It was never the ghost. And no, you are the one that is using exegesis rather than eisegesis. I can understand it because I do not have your false prejudices.

And 14 does not answer the question. Why was he jealous?

 

[Subduction Zone]

Not quite. The ritual is a test and then God judges the woman guilty or not. If she's guilty, most translations say she would then have a disfigurement. In fact I'm not seeing anything in the passage about her even being pregnant. It says if she's not guilty she will then conceive. So I learned something new.

" And if the woman be not defiled, but be clean; then she shall be free, and shall conceive seed."

There you go making the mistake of reading the Bible too literally again. If you do not believe in a Flat Earth you are not being consistent.

 

[Wildswanderer]

There you go making the mistake of reading the Bible too literally again. If you do not believe in a Flat Earth you are not being consistent.

Lol, that's hilarious. You are literally misinterpreting the Bible to fit your beliefs while telling me I shouldn't read it for what it actually says.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Lol, that's hilarious. You are literally misinterpreting the Bible to fit your beliefs while telling me I shouldn't read it for what it actually says.

No, once again that is you. But what is worse you have a very very biased opinion that affects your exegesis severely. I do not need to misinterpret the Bible to support my beliefs. I know that quite a bit of it is nonsense. You have some very set beliefs. As a result when the Bible goes counter to them you force yourself to reinterpret it incorrectly. You interpret poetic phrases literally. that is always an error. But you do not interpret all poetic verses literally. That leads you to faulty beliefs. You only take the parts literally that you want to take literally. Even if you end up calling God a liar in the process.

 

[Valjean]

The right to bodily autonomy is dependent upon and subject to the right to life. Thus, the question of the right to life takes precedent over the right to bodily autonomy. The right to life as determined by we humans is predicated on our being a being human. (We do not generally afford that right to any other species.) So the determining factor in affording the right to life is a human being. Once that right is established, then the issue of bodily autonomy can be addressed (slavery).

So what criteria entitle a human to a right to life, but not a cow? Is it simply species? Wouldn't that be simple speciesism? How would that be any different from using race as a moral claim determinant?
How about a Martian from a flying saucer? Clearly not human, but would you afford him a right to life?

But that's not really what this is about. If it were that, alone, few would argue with the woman's right to choose what happens inside her body. But that's not the real issue. The real issue is one person's right to deny another person their right to live, because the other person is living within the first person's body.

And here's the rub; is the fœtus actually a person? Is personhood simply a matter of genetics? If that were the case, the Martian wouldn't be a person, and could be butchered and eaten with no moral violation.

So is right-to-life just speciesism; the new racism?

 

[Valjean]

It's not about embryos and fetuses. It's about when these become human beings, INSIDE a woman's body. And how to determine the rights of one from the rights of the other.

They are human beings at conception, but that's just genetics. The moral determinate is personhood, not genetics/humanness.

 

[Heyo]

No, once again that is you. But what is worse you have a very very biased opinion that affects your exegesis severely. I do not need to misinterpret the Bible to support my beliefs. I know that quite a bit of it is nonsense. You have some very set beliefs. As a result when the Bible goes counter to them you force yourself to reinterpret it incorrectly. You interpret poetic phrases literally. that is always an error. But you do not interpret all poetic verses literally. That leads you to faulty beliefs. You only take the parts literally that you want to take literally. Even if you end up calling God a liar in the process.

How did we end up discussing the bible in an abortion OP (and a good one)? I guess it was you by mentioning the bible. Can we close this by saying that the bible is not a biology book, doesn't inform morality and should have to do nothing with our jurisdiction?
I think (hope) @Wildswanderer would agree. If the bible is your only argument, you don't have an argument that would count in a court of law or when making laws.
Can we close this tangent?

 

[Valjean]

So why do you consider her 'personhood' more important than the person living insider her body? As most of us will agree that it becomes a person at some stage in it's development. I mean, by what reasoning?

The 'person' inside her body is not a person. It has none of the features that confer personhood. It's not conscious, It's not aware it exists, and has no interest in continuing to exist.

I don't see the personhood of an 8 month old developing fetus as all that questionable. Do you?

Few would support the abortion of an eight month old, without serious medical justification

 

[Valjean]

I don't see the personhood of an 8 month old developing fetus as all that questionable. Do you?

Few would support the abortion of an eight month old, without serious medical justification

No there aren't. There's indication that God used miscarriages to punish a sinful person. Think about that. It's not a argument for abortion.
Losing a baby in those times was considered a terrible thing. The last thing any woman wanted.

At that time people exposed unwanted children all the time.

 

[Subduction Zone]

The 'person' inside her body is not a person. It has none of the features that confer personhood. It's not conscious, It's not aware it exists, and has no interest in continuing to exist.

Few would support the abortion of an eight month old, without serious medical justification

I think that when the anti-choice people bring up pregnancies eight months along they know that it is a red herring. I have even been far more generous and said we could ban all elective abortions after 22 weeks. That is a shade over 5 months, as long as we keep the exception that is already allowed that if the health of the mother is threatened an abortion would be allowed.

Not one has said "yes, that is reasonable". I am just hoping that people remember how mad they are in November.

 

[Heyo]

It's cognitive dissonance as he holds contradicting positions and changes parameters of his beliefs so they are consistent. Discomfort doesn't necessarily mean a physical feeling of uneasyness, and it's often a means of psychological defense to not acknowledge such a contradiction.

Yeah, the purpose of it was to cause an abortion/terminate the pregnancy in unfaithful women.
And, no, the husband wouldn't necessarily know. Silly and primitive rituals tell us nothing other than how lucky we are these dangerous rituals didn't kill us off sooner. It's impossible for such a thing to tell us if a woman was actually unfaithful or not.

I've created a thread at What is "Cognitive Dissonance"? to keep that discussion out of this one.

 

[Heyo]

They are human beings at conception, but that's just genetics. The moral determinate is personhood, not genetics/humanness.

I think you are mixing topics here. "Personhood" is a legal concept, not a moral one. Personhood starts at birth and is legally recognized through a birth certificate. This is used pretty consistently throughout laws and almost universally.
The discussion about abortion is not whether a foetus is a person but whether it has rights aside from being a person.

 

[Valjean]

I think you are mixing topics here. "Personhood" is a legal concept, not a moral one. Personhood starts at birth and is legally recognized through a birth certificate. This is used pretty consistently throughout laws and almost universally.
The discussion about abortion is not whether a foetus is a person but whether it has rights aside from being a person.

Personhood can be looked at as either a legal and moral concept, no?

 

[Heyo]

Personhood can be looked at as either a legal and moral concept, no?

Well, yes, in principle. Moral philosopher tend to use different words like "human being", "sentient being" etc. while "person" is used in jurisdiction. You can use "person" but you set yourself up for equivocation fallacies.

 

[amorphous_constellation]

On the other side of the issue, in favor of legalizing abortion, we start from the same difficult premise: that we do not know when or by what measure a human being is or becomes a human being.

So I read your whole op, and I find that I don't resonant much with any of your arguments. I don't find it that complicated, to merely draw line somewhere before the fetus is viable, and not be an authoritarian about it if she has do it a bit later, for any number of reasons. Likely, the longer she waits, the more devastating it obviously would be for the would - be parent(s). I assume there is a good reason why they did it. But again, to me, all that is at the absolute bottom of the stack of my concerns

For all that you wrote, you don't write much, if at all, about what I am extremely concerned about. And to discuss that, we have to pare this all down to more of logical mode of thinking. I am concerned about the carrying capacity of the planet itself, and I am concerned about how well grounded the parents are, in any number of domains. I seriously wonder about the future of the human race itself. All of that, comes way ahead of whatever this problem is, that deals with when the transformation into 'human' occurs

And no one seems to really want to look at it that way. So I am kind of the lone voice on this, coming from that angle.

 

[Wildswanderer]

know that quite a bit of it is nonsense.

If you " know" that, it's impossible to interpret it correctly.

 

[PureX]

Ooh. That appears to be a bit unkind. That seems to imply that he is unable to understand how he is wrong.

I assumed that he could understand those verses. Perhaps I was being too generous.

We tend to "understand" things according to what we think we already know. Rather than, "cognitive dissonance", it's more like, "does not compute, Will Robinson!".

 

[PureX]

So I read your whole op, and I find that I don't resonant much with any of your arguments. I don't find it that complicated, to merely draw line somewhere before the fetus is viable, and not be an authoritarian about it if she has do it a bit later, for any number of reasons. Likely, the longer she waits, the more devastating it obviously would be for the would - be parent(s). I assume there is a good reason why they did it. But again, to me, all that is at the absolute bottom of the stack of my concerns

For all that you wrote, you don't write much, if at all, about what I am extremely concerned about. And to discuss that, we have to pare this all down to more of logical mode of thinking. I am concerned about the carrying capacity of the planet itself, and I am concerned about how well grounded the parents are, in any number of domains. I seriously wonder about the future of the human race itself. All of that, comes way ahead of whatever this problem is, that deals with when the transformation into 'human' occurs

And no one seems to really want to look at it that way. So I am kind of the lone voice on this, coming from that angle.

That's because the problems you are eluding to are not actually being addressed by allowing or disallowing abortion. Bad parents will be bad parents whether they are afforded the option to abort a pregnancy or not. The world will be over-populated and abused by we humans whether we allow humans to abort unwanted pregnancies or not. Human ignorance, selfishness, fear, and stupidity are universal characteristics that would not be mitigated even if humans never procreate, again. Until we died of, we would still be what we are. So to my thinking, there is no logical connection between the abortion question, and the conditions you are worried about. And I suspect others think similarly, which is why it has not otherwise come up in this conversation.

 

[PureX]

I am wondering what you all think of my observation that the folks who want to keep abortion illegal seem to have another agenda that is so important to them that they neglect to posit their most logical, reasonable argument. And that because that "other" agenda seem to involved a lot of unnecessary judgment and animosity toward other people, and toward women in particular, it mostly only serves to discredit them and their position.

I ask because this is a serious concern in determining my own position on abortion. The animosity being displayed by the people that want to keep abortion illegal, and my desire to see that it does not find expression in civil law or policy, weighs heavily, for me, on the side of allowing everyone to decide for themselves (keeping abortion legal). Does anyone else feel this way? And if so, what do those of you who want to keep abortion illegal have to say about it?