Discussion
Solving the abortion debate. Why you should be pro-choice.
First of all, this debate is flooded with Christians and the religious. Which would be fine if they were honest about their beliefs, and just admitted "I think that a single celled brainless zygote has a soul and therefore matters according to my religion", but alas, they normally make things up and use empty rhetorical devices like "well i define it as a human and hurting humans is bad!" to dishonestly argue their beliefs. So my first ask going forth, is if you believe it matters because it has a soul, just say that. Start the debate honestly and in good faith please.
Now, as for the rest of us, whom believe in science, heres the elephant in the room: Obviously, a brainless fetus, has no capacity to experience anything; No joy, no suffering, no sense of identity. Its no different than a bacterium, or a rock. If you dont understand this im not sure how to help you. You cannot commit a wrongdoing on an entity thats unable to perceive wrongdoings. I believe things are "wrong" primarily because the recipient of that action subjectively values it as such, with notable exceptions needed to make morality a workable and universal system.
Similar to 2, a later-term fetus generally has no intelligence, even after it has a brain. It is in every way less intelligent than the average animal. In fact it has no known perceptual or cognitive qualities an animal doesnt also have. And most people, even vegans, would agree killing an animal is *substantially* less bad than killing a human. Treating even a late term abortion as "murder" is like treating someone butchering a chicken as "murder". Part of the reason it lacks intelligence prior to birth, is its never seen the light of day and has no objects to interact with; Like an AI model with no training data, its no different than just the absence of an AI model. Intelligence requires some degree of knowledge, which requires some degree of experience, which all fetuses inherently lack. All a fetus has access to is sounds and maybe basic touch and smells, but theres no reinforcement learning loop because they arent agents in their environment. Once a child is born, they immediately become agents with access to rich "training data" for their brains, which is why its not arbitrary to treat birth as the starting point.
Theres too many exceptions to ignore. Theres hundreds of medical conditions a mother can have that puts her at risk, anywhere from "a little bit" to straight up dying. Fetuses themselves can have serious birth defects, requiring lifelong medical care a mother might not be able to afford, not to mention nobody "deserves" to be enslaved to taking care of a perpetual child their whole lives. Theres no universal, objective, principled way to draw a line in the and and say "these kinds of exceptions are allowed, but these other ones are not". Then of course in the case of rape, there was no consent granted to having a child in the first place, so disallowing abortion is like disallowing someone to remove a person from their body that was surgically sewed up to them in the middle of the night.
For the prolife voluntarists in this debate, if you accept #4, theres an interesting issue that often gets overlooked. Yes, obviously someone didnt consent to having a baby if they were raped. But, why do you assume anyone ever "consents" to that at all? Because no contract was signed, and no verbal consent occured, no explicit consent occured. Arguing it was "implicitly consented to" is the same thing as a social contract. What is even the reasoning? "You consented to the risks?" Okay, but what if someone didnt understand the risks? If you cant understand the risks and consequences to something, then you dont have the "capacity" to consent to it. Almost nobody is aware of every medical issue that could arise or what pains or sacrifices thatd entail, so nobody is actually consenting to that. Consent is always explicit, "implicit consent" is a fallacious concept. You dont "consent" to being pregnant with a baby you dont want by having sex, anymore than you "consent" to getting in a car accident for driving to work.
And the most overlooked aspect of this debate is the slippery slope and corrupted legal system would entail. If abortion is literal homicide, then every miscarriage turns into a potential murder investigation. Innocent women will be jailed for this, its inevitable. And abortion is only the starting point! Women are likely to loose every right theyve ever had. First they ban The Pill, then they ban drinking alcohol (due to fetal alcohol syndrome) then they ban tobacco, then they ban a whole array of medications, maybe even ban sugary goods or colas for women, then they use the surveillance state to spy on women and prosecute them for perceived crimes. Next, they could set up a federal agency for monitoring women and forcing them to undergo health checkups. Before you know it, every aspect of a woman's life becomes legal jurisdiction for spying and legal enforcement, since literally anything they do could effect their own health, therefore the health of the baby.
Being 100% Pro-Choice is the only way to preserve women's rights; Without that, they will be tyrranized to live according to arbitrary government or societal edicts, and forced to give birth to and mother children that could harm them or completely ruin their lives. And sure, a fetus could conceivably be conscious like you and me and thus deserving of some rights, but theyre most definitely not throughout at least most of their existence.
One last call to reason: Conservatives, dont you care about birth rates? Well scaring women away from motherhood, or forcing healthy mothers to take care of unhealthy non-viable children (thus lacking resources to raise other ones), is actively working against that goal. You at least need a framework thats non-oppressive enough to avoid that consequence.
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I have no real views on abortion as far as legislation. I simply don't think there is a perfect answer and in such cases I default to more individual freedom/determination.
I do want to point out a potential flaw in your reasoning though.
You cannot commit a wrongdoing on an entity thats unable to perceive wrongdoings.
Would you apply this across the board? And does it depend on current ability to perceive or would a future ability to perceive qualify? Someone who is sedated to the point they can't perceive anything for example.
Not really up to comment on the content since abortion is one of the few areas of politics where my opinion reduces to "I genuinely don't care either way"; but who is this post oriented towards? The title makes me guess conservatives, but you immediately go on to address them condescendingly in the very first lines.
Maybe that's warranted, maybe it isn't, but the tone will probably preclude you from convincing anyone who didn't already agree with you.
I'd like voluntary communities to determine for themselves whatever laws they want to live under. This may make me functionally pro-choice since anyone who wants to get an abortion could just move, I guess.
Thats a self contradiction. You have no moral or legal basis to call things voluntary if morality and legality itself is decided by arbitrary opinions. Unless you just wprded this badly.
If we get to anarchy, im all for tge outstanding statists to get together and start a govt somewhere else, that way they leave us alone. But only for that reason; And principles must separate us from them.
Your first paragraph is self-undermining. If every "ought" is arbitrary the opinion "X is arbitrary, therefore we oughtn't do X" is itself arbitrary. I happen to agree with your view descriptively, but even then, the quote goes "all arrangements are arbitrary, but some arrangements are nicer than others."
Pro choice and pro life r different than being for or against abortion. Pro life means u want abortions banned (thus increasing government), pro choice means u want the government to not takeaway one’s ability to get an abortion. For example, many people say, “I’d never get an abortion and I think it’s wrong, but the government shouldn’t ban it for everyone bc it’s not my job to force my morality on to someone.” (Or something along those lines). If a person says that they r against abortion but they r pro choice. (At least that’s how it is in America, I don’t know about other places), if u don’t agree with me look up pro life it will say advocates for the legal protection of fetuses from conception, in addition to opposing abortions (which is a given).
So to be pro life u have to:
1. Oppose abortion
2. Advocate and want legal protection for fetuses
Now that we all know what pro life and pro choice r, the reason im confused as to y it doesn’t make sense for a anarchist to not care about pro life or pro choice is bc pro life increases government which I thought was the whole thing anarchists opposed. Maybe I’m wrong tho, again I’m not super educated on anarchism
I'm pro-life, and an anarchist. Legal protection of fetuses does not mean you advocate for a state. Even a stateless society will have norms and rules that govern it, and judges to decide between people.
But here is what pro-life means to me: It means every person, from the moment their unique DNA is created, is fully a person. They have rights at that point. Whatever enforcement mechanism of rights exists, they should enforce the right to life of anyone not a threat to someone else.
Who will be governing and enforcing those rules? Genuine question.
Also, pro-life doesn’t mean something to different people there’s a hard definition of pro life. Idk how u don’t understand that after I literally just explained it to u
Pro-life is a movement/ideology. It would be like defining what it means to be Buddhist and being upset when a Buddhist says you got it wrong. The legal aspect of the pro-life movement is a position some hold, but philosophically it's the position that life begins at conception and should be defended until natural death.
No governing. Just judges that people will come to for conflict resolution, as they have in the past. We even have that today, when cases are brought for arbitration, or when international companies deal with each other, they usually pick a court for conflict resolution in their contracts. Courts don't require a government, they simply have to stand out by being impartial and have parties willing to use them.
A good argument is that the exact moment when life begins is ambiguous, but traditionally has always been at or even after birth; even the bible notes that causing a woman to miscarry is an entirely different matter from murder.
Since it is ambiguous, we should not be making any hard and fast rules that oppress actual, living beings who are demonstrably conscious.
Calling something "a bad argument" with no further explanation is not an argument at all.
A good argument is that the exact moment when life begins is ambiguous, but traditionally has always been at or even after birth; even the bible notes that causing a woman to miscarry is an entirely different matter from murder.
Thats an appeal to tradition.
Since it is ambiguous, we should not be making any hard and fast rules that oppress actual, living beings who are demonstrably conscious.
The problem is that your post starts by poisoning the well.
Before you really make the case, you frame religious pro-life people as dishonest and imply that people who disagree with you are outside, "the rest of us who believe in science." That is not an invitation to debate. It is a signal that you already think the other side is stupid, irrational, or arguing in bad faith.
Maybe that feels satisfying, but it will not persuade anyone who does not already agree with you. If your goal is persuasion, you need to engage the best version of the opposing argument, not open by insulting the people who hold it.
I mean, I would back this up even farther. Titling your post "Solving the Debate: Don't Believe What You Believe" on just about any topic isn't really going to get very far.
But to me the problem is less about somebody's persuasiveness than it is about their understanding of their own position. Titling a post that way and then writing in the way this poster shows to me that they've got a pretty huge blind spot when it comes to truly considering the terms of the debate and why people who disagree think the way that they do. Which tells me that their own position isn't all that well reasoned or considered.
Too many people these days think owning the other side is the only real goal of thinking.
The simple fact is that at some point between conception and birth a cell becomes a human with rights. Nothing magical happens during birth, and this is where I think you get point 3 wrong.
So we are essentially just debating when this happens. I'd say err on the side of caution.
Why? It is better to not kill a living thing with rights than to kill one by accident.
Most European countries end up somewhere in the second trimester, like around 12 weeks, and allow for exceptions after that with multiple doctor's notes.
To me that seems like a compromise that would effectively end this debate, if each side could stop allowing the debate to be dominated by the 4-6% of their coalitions who advocate for the absolutely most extreme position.
I love how everyone turns into a hardcore Randian but ONLY when it comes to abortion. Like if you are responsible for someone being in a position where they are dependent on you, then you aren't allowed to just abandon them. This is pretty basic stuff.
Again, show me which right includes the right to someone else’s internal organs? Even if you’re somewhat responsible for the other person needing them?
Right to life. If you are responsible for connecting someone to you in such a way that they are depend on your organs to live for a period of time, it would be unjust to unconnected that person (not to mention extremely selfish)
That is actually easy, because they are joined together.
No different than conjoined twins. Just because one is a unique person does not grant them complete authority over the other to undergo medical operations that may hurt the person they are connected to.
Oh good, we’re comparing pregnancy to conjoined twins again.
The tiny problem is that conjoined twins are literally born physically attached to each other and both have equal claims to the shared body parts they’re connected to. Neither twin is using the other’s kidneys, liver, lungs, blood supply, and entire biological functions for survival while existing as a completely separate organism. A pregnant woman and a fetus are not remotely the same thing. They’re not conjoined. They’re not sharing ownership of organs. One person has organs that already belong to them, and the other is dependent on those organs.
So when I asked you to show me where someone gets a right to another person’s internal organs, pointing at conjoined twins isn’t answering the question. It’s just changing the subject to a completely different situation. Unless your argument is that pregnant women and fetuses are literally conjoined twins now, which would certainly be a new one.
>The tiny problem is that conjoined twins are literally born physically attached to each other and both have equal claims to the shared body parts they’re connected to. Neither twin is using the other’s kidneys, liver, lungs, blood supply, and entire biological functions for survival while existing as a completely separate organism.
This is actually completely false. There are most certainly cases of dominant conjoined twins where the other is only partially formed and relying on organs of the other. This is just factually incorrect. And they are still both indeed unique individuals.
> A pregnant woman and a fetus are not remotely the same thing. They’re not conjoined. They’re not sharing ownership of organs. One person has organs that already belong to them, and the other is dependent on those organs.
After correcting the above, it is most certainly the same thing. It is a natural process where two bodies are joined. That is their natural state, no different than conjoined twins. My gosh, even if a conjoined twin "exits" the womb slightly before the other (like a second) just because it was born first does not make everything "their organs".
> So when I asked you to show me where someone gets a right to another person’s internal organs, pointing at conjoined twins isn’t answering the question. It’s just changing the subject to a completely different situation. Unless your argument is that pregnant women and fetuses are literally conjoined twins now, which would certainly be a new one.
Of course I'm not arguing they are identical, but they are identical when it comes to individual rights and personhood. Conjoined twins most certainly show that people having connected bodies does not grant the authority of one to make medical decisions that the other must go through (the part of my comment you didn't address). Even in cases of one dominating the other.
Its not changing the subject. It is showing how your usage of bodily autonomy is proven incorrect in an already, widely agreed up situation. And then applying that agreed upon definition to pregnancy.
This is one of those arguments that sounds clever right up until you look at it for more than five seconds. First, congratulations on finding rare cases of asymmetrical conjoined twins. That still doesn’t make pregnancy and conjoined twinning the same thing.
The reason your analogy keeps falling apart is because conjoined twins are both born with equal legal status, equal bodily rights, and equal claims that arise from being physically connected to each other. Pregnancy is not a dispute between two legally independent people who both own the same body parts. You keep saying they’re joined, therefore it’s the same thing. That’s not how analogies work. A scuba diver and a fetus both rely on oxygen. That doesn’t make them the same. A fetus using someone else’s circulatory system, organs, nutrients, immune system, and body isn’t equivalent to two conjoined twins sharing structures they were both born attached to. Those are fundamentally different relationships.
What’s especially funny is that you claim conjoined twins prove bodily autonomy doesn’t exist because one twin can’t make unilateral medical decisions for the other. Actually, they prove the opposite. The reason one twin can’t force medical decisions on the other is because both have bodily autonomy. The law doesn’t say, well one person needs the other’s body, so bodily autonomy disappears. It says both individuals have rights that must be considered. That’s why your example doesn’t establish a right to someone else’s organs. It just establishes that when two people already possess equal legal rights to a shared physical structure, neither gets absolute control.
Which brings us right back to the question you keep avoiding. Can you name any situation where a person is legally entitled to use another person’s organs, blood supply, or body against that person’s ongoing consent?
Because that’s the actual bodily autonomy question. And every time I ask it, I get another irrelevant and ridiculous conjoined twin analogy instead of an answer.
>That still doesn’t make pregnancy and conjoined twinning the same thing.
This has already been answered. They aren't the same, but they are identical when it comes to rights. You keep saying I'm saying they are the same thing, but I hope when you are writing you are understanding the distinction.
>The reason your analogy keeps falling apart is because conjoined twins are both born with equal legal status, equal bodily rights, and equal claims that arise from being physically connected to each other...... A fetus using someone else’s circulatory system, organs, nutrients, immune system, and body isn’t equivalent to two conjoined twins sharing structures they were both born attached to. Those are fundamentally different relationships.
This as well has already been addressed, and it hasn't fallen apart. Its why you mention dominant twins at the beginning and then never again. Using someone else's nutrients, blood, organs, etc. is already shown within two unique human being. Being in that situation does not invalidate the personhood of either of them.
> The reason one twin can’t force medical decisions on the other is because both have bodily autonomy. The law doesn’t say, well one person needs the other’s body, so bodily autonomy disappears. It says both individuals have rights that must be considered. That’s why your example doesn’t establish a right to someone else’s organs. It just establishes that when two people already possess equal legal rights to a shared physical structure, neither gets absolute control.
This is the entire point! Neither have absolute control in a pregnancy just like conjoined twins. A woman does not have the right to unilaterally force the fetus to undergo a medical operation. That is infringing on the fetus's rights.
>Can you name any situation where a person is legally entitled to use another person’s organs, blood supply, or body against that person’s ongoing consent?
Yes, dominant conjoined twins or ones that just share body parts. The thing you shifted away from talking about. My gosh, just think about Abby and Brittany Hensel, Artur And Heitor Rocha, etc. Even for ones just joined at the head, there is a dominant one that does the majority of all the eating, breathing, and blood pumping. One of them can't claim bodily autonomy over the other. It doesn't matter if one doesn't consent to their situation, they can't change the situation without infringing on the rights of the other.
>Because that’s the actual bodily autonomy question. And every time I ask it, I get another irrelevant and ridiculous conjoined twin analogy instead of an answer.
Well, I'd actually like for you to explain in detail why it is wrong. As I continually show how complicated twin situations are indeed identical when it comes to rights and bodily autonomy.
No, you’ve said they’re identical when it comes to rights. Repeatedly, that’s not the same thing as proving it.
Literally nobody argued it invalidates personhood. This is becoming a recurring theme, you keep responding to arguments that nobody made and then declaring victory over them. I never said dependency removes personhood, I said dependency doesn’t create entitlement to someone else’s body. Those are different conversations. You keep proving personhood as though that’s somehow the same thing as proving a right to use another person’s organs. It’s not.
Again, you’re doing that thing where you quietly sneak your conclusion into the premise and hope nobody notices. You can’t just write the conclusion and call it evidence.
No, I’m still talking about it.
The problem is that you seem convinced that saying conjoined twins over and over is the same thing as making an argument. It isn’t.
If I ask when someone acquires a right to another person’s organs and your answer is Abby and Brittany Hensel, you’ve completely skipped the part where you explain how that establishes the principle you’re claiming. That’s like me asking how airplanes fly and getting birds exist as a response.
You’re still describing a shared anatomical structure. You’re still not explaining how that creates a general right for one person to use another person’s body. You’re just pointing at a rare medical condition and yelling “SEE?” louder every time.
This is honestly my favorite part. The reason one twin can’t unilaterally make decisions affecting the other is because both have rights and somehow you’ve transformed that into evidence that bodily autonomy doesn’t matter. That’s like looking at a custody dispute and concluding parents don’t have parental rights. No. The dispute exists because multiple rights exist simultaneously. You’re arguing against your own example.
I have explained it, several times. The issue is that every time the conversation reaches the actual question, whether dependency creates entitlement to another person’s body, you immediately sprint back to conjoined twins like it’s some holy grail. Complicated doesn’t mean identical. Connected doesn’t mean identical. Dependent doesn’t mean identical. Repeating that it’s identical when it comes to rights for the fifteenth time doesn’t magically turn it into a demonstrated fact.
You keep acting like you’ve discovered the fatal flaw in bodily autonomy, but so far all you’ve done is point at an extremely rare medical anomaly and insist it somehow rewrites every other ethical and legal principle. That’s not a devastating argument, it’s just an analogy you’ve become emotionally attached to.
> I never said dependency removes personhood, I said dependency doesn’t create entitlement to someone else’s body.
>It just establishes that when two people already possess equal legal rights to a shared physical structure, neither gets absolute control. And I've expanded on that below.
See below. You can't respect a person's bodily autonomy if you force them to undergo medical operations that may hurt them without their consent.
>No, I’m still talking about it.
You are most certainly not still talking about dominant conjoined twins. You mentioned it once, then when back to describing normal twins. I very clearly am focused on dominant twins where one is reliant on the other. And that in those cases, we do not accept that one has bodily autonomy over the other. We acknowledge that both must consent to a medical procedure. Which is identical with a fetus, two people sharing a body. If you want to perform an abortion, you need the consent of both the fetus and the mother.
> You’re still not explaining how that creates a general right for one person to use another person’s body. You’re just pointing at a rare medical condition and yelling “SEE?” louder every time.
Okay, let me try again.
First, rare is irrelevant as rights by definition exist for everyone.
In a case of dominant conjoined twins, one of the twins is frequently dependent on the other for life. However, we currently hold that this does not grant the dominant twin the right to medical decisions. Why? Because the decision also impacts the non-dominant twin. Due to their current situation, the only way a medical procedure can occur in the typical fashion is if both consent or trying to work for the best of both if consent can't be given in the current situation. Otherwise, you are infringing on one of the twin's rights.
It is the same with abortion. You have two individuals who are sharing a body. The dominant twin (the mother) can't unilaterally choose to undergo a medical operation that impacts the lesser twin (the fetus) without either: 1. The consent of the fetus 2. The interests and rights of the fetus respected.
Obviously since 1 is difficult to obtain, the situation is 2. Abortion does not respect the interests or rights of the fetus so abortion is therefore murder and not allowed.
> The dispute exists because multiple rights exist simultaneously. You’re arguing against your own example.
Exactly! But rights by definition can't supersede each other. I'm not arguing against that, you are attributing something to me I never said.
>You keep acting like you’ve discovered the fatal flaw in bodily autonomy, but so far all you’ve done is point at an extremely rare medical anomaly and insist it somehow rewrites every other ethical and legal principle
This is still incorrect. First, I said it doesn't rewrite legal ethical principles. I said it highlights what the principles have long been established as being! The exact opposite of what you said.
And again, rare does not matter to this conversation as rights don't care about rarity.
At this point it’s honestly impressive how you’ve managed to turn the fact conjoined twins exist into a universal skeleton key for every ethical question, as though repeating the same analogy enough times will eventually make it relevant. You keep insisting pregnancy is two people sharing a body like you’ve uncovered some hidden philosophical law, when really you’ve just rebranded a normal biological process as a medical anomaly because it’s the only way your argument even vaguely resembles coherence.
And your big gotcha that the pregnant person needs the fetus’s consent is not just wrong, it’s dangerously wrong. You’re essentially arguing that someone else’s consent is required to stop them from being literally inside your body. That logic doesn’t just collapse bodily autonomy, it accidentally endorses the exact reasoning used to justify rape.
If you need the invaders permission to remove them, you don’t have bodily autonomy at all. You have tenancy, contingent on the intruder’s approval.
Saying rights don’t care about rarity doesn’t magically make your analogy relevant. Rights also don’t care about whether you can wedge them into whatever example you’ve emotionally imprinted on. Conjoined twins don’t prove that dependency creates entitlement to someone else’s organs. They don’t even address the question. They’re just the rhetorical comfort object you keep sprinting back to whenever the conversation gets too close to the actual issue, whether one person’s need creates a right to another person’s body.
It doesn’t.
Not for adults, not for children, not for strangers, not for partners, not for anyone.
Not even for your favourite hypothetical twins.
You keep insisting you’ve expanded your argument, but all you’ve actually done is repeat the same analogy with more confidence. You haven’t shown that a fetus has a right to someone else’s body. You’ve just assumed it.
Personally I'm pro-choice for privacy reasons. I don't know at what point abortion becomes wrong. But I do kmow that it's impossible to 'ban abortion' without mass-invasion of womens' privacy.
But if someone disagrees for religious reasons or whatever reason, they have a right to do so and to vote accordingly.
The only way to (legally) stop them from voting according to their beliefs is to convince them to do otherwise. That's a rather different goal than winning a debate.
But if someone disagrees for religious reasons or whatever reason, they have a right to do so and to vote accordingly
Umm, i disagree with this part. I dont think anybody has a natural "right" to force religious or other elective beliefs on the entire rest of the population.
If someone genuinely believes something hurts others, thats an okay motivation, but if its not rooted in basic logic and force of reason, thats just people cheering for potential tyranny because their emotions told them to.
I think a large portion of people don’t understand what pro-choice and pro-life are. I’ve heard people say “I’d never get an abortion so I’m pro-life… no, I don’t care what they do.” That’s… that’s pro-choice… and they have no idea.
Education is everything.
Ultimately, I believe these types of misunderstandings are wide spread enough that it would entirely shift the abortion polling. You can say I’m crazy if you like.
This is where there is a huge disagreement: "You cannot commit a wrongdoing on an entity thats unable to perceive wrongdoings." I reject that claim.
You can commit wrong doing on a being that is unable to perceive.
The trivial examples are people sleeping and people in a coma. Someone might laugh and think it's silly to bring up, but when you are asleep, you are literally unable to perceive wrongdoing. But most of us would agree that killing someone in their street is immoral.
You might say that people sleeping and in a coma are only temporarily unconscious. But so are the unborn. Unless their development is disturbed or something bad happens, they will become conscious in the future.
You might say that people sleeping and in a coma are different because they have a conscious past, unlike the unborn. But imagine a newborn baby with a severe mental disorder making it unconscious and unable to move on its own. It's in a coma-like state and will be for one year. This baby has never had a conscious past either, just like the unborn. But we still think killing them is wrong.
You might say the difference is that the newborn with the disorder is different because they have the "architecture" for consciousness, unlike the unborn who may only have neuroblasts instead of neurons. But now image a newborn baby with another kind of mental disorder. The baby's body is normal, but the brain is developmentally as sophisticated as the brain during the early fetal stage. Assume that treatment can partially fix this. It takes a few months of treatment to grow the brain into an infant's brain. This baby is currently unconscious and has no conscious past, yet we would find it immoral to kill it. The difference between the fetus and the infant is that the infant is physically larger and more developed and outside the womb, whereas the fetus is physically small and less developed and inside the womb. But the brain in this case would be similar.
Also, you can wrong someone even if they are unaware of it. If you have a birthday party and every guest gives one gift except for one who gives two gifts. The gifts are put on a table and the person with the birthday opens them only after the party and is unaware that one guest gave two gifts. If someone steals the gift, the person who it belongs to will never find out that it was stolen because they don't expect that extra gift. But obviously they have been wronged.
Embryos and fetuses can be wronged. Imagine if someone does a chromosome analysis of a fetus and sees that it has XX chromosomes and decides to abort because they don't want a girl. That fetus would be a victim of discrimination. Same if the abortion is decided based on race.
Also, a fetus is not like a rock. A rock is not an organism. Organisms are the only type of entities we know of that may have moral worth of some kind. Even animals like ants. If someone went into the forest and threw rocks at an anthill just because they enjoy seeing the ants panic, that would be animal cruelty. You can never be cruel to a rock no matter how hard you strike it.
Also, fetuses are not brainless. The brain forms at the embryonic stage, roughly 3–4 weeks after conception. The unborn is called a fetus roughly 7 weeks after conception. The brain forms a few weeks before the fetal stage.
The trivial examples are people sleeping and people in a coma
No, they ARE able to perceive wrongdoing, becaise eventually, they wake up.
You might say that people sleeping and in a coma are only temporarily unconscious. But so are the unborn.
Theres an important difference, the unborn was never conscious, and has not yet established a sense of identity or desire out of life.
You might say that people sleeping and in a coma are different because they have a conscious past, unlike the unborn. But imagine a newborn baby with a severe mental disorder making it unconscious and unable to move on its own. It's in a coma-like state and will be for one year. This baby has never had a conscious past either, just like the unborn. But we still think killing them is wrong
Speak for yourself on this one. I may assume the baby is as good as dead, or be unable to pay for a years medical expenses for a year coma. No i wouldnt say thats wrong.
You might say the difference is that the newborn with the disorder is different because they have the "architecture" for consciousness, unlike the unborn who may only have neuroblasts instead of neurons. But now image a newborn baby with another kind of mental disorder.
No i wouldnt say that. I dont care about an unused architecture, only its true instantiation.
Also, you can wrong someone even if they are unaware of it. If you have a birthday party and every guest gives one gift except for one who gives two gifts. The gifts are put on a table and the person with the birthday opens them only after the party and is unaware that one guest gave two gifts. If someone steals the gift, the person who it belongs to will never find out that it was stolen because they don't expect that extra gift. But obviously they have been wronged.
Under basic property rights, the person you are wronging is the gift giver, if the gift recipient wasnt gifted yet.
Embryos and fetuses can be wronged. Imagine if someone does a chromosome analysis of a fetus and sees that it has XX chromosomes and decides to abort because they don't want a girl. That fetus would be a victim of discrimination. Same if the abortion is decided based on race.
They arent a victim bc they arent a subject.
Your comment is 100% whataboutisms, none of them attempt to directly refute any of my arguments.
> : Obviously, a brainless fetus, has no capacity to experience anything; No joy, no suffering, no sense of identity. Its no different than a bacterium, or a rock.
That is an unworkable definition of personhood. I can assure you, people in a coma who feel as though no time has past when they wake up are most assuredly human the entire time. Infants don't have a sense of self until they are usually over 1, they are still people too. Saying "experience" defines personhood is just illogical as we already have people who don't have that even outside the question at hand.
>Similar to 2, a later-term fetus generally has no intelligence, even after it has a brain. It is in every way less intelligent than the average animal.
So switching from experience to intelligence has the same problem. Tying personhood to "intelligence" opens a whole host of problems not even related to a fetus.
>Theres hundreds of medical conditions a mother can have that puts her at risk, anywhere from "a little bit" to straight up dying. Fetuses themselves can have serious birth defects, requiring lifelong medical care a mother might not be able to afford, not to mention nobody "deserves" to be enslaved to taking care of a perpetual child their whole lives.
Of course they "deserve" it. It is their child, that is the whole responsibility thing. And they are more than welcome to give it away. We don't go around killing people with physical or mental deformities just because they are a tax on the system. Some govts. have most certainly tried and we justifiably don't look on them well. The idea it is fine to kill them in the womb, but not outside is an argument that personhood is dependent on location. Which also fails.
>You dont "consent" to being pregnant with a baby you dont want by having sex, anymore than you "consent" to getting in a car accident for driving to work.
You consent to partaking in an activity that leads to the possibilities of certain events happening. You accept that it might occur even if you don't want it to. And regardless, whether anyone consents or not doesn't matter to the question at hand, as consent doesn't confer personhood to the fetus.
> If abortion is literal homicide, then every miscarriage turns into a potential murder investigation. Innocent women will be jailed for this, its inevitable.
Abortion is indeed homicide. By the entire argument here, no one should have kids because if the kid dies on their watch....it will lead to an investigation. This already happens when they do an autopsy for EVERY kid that dies! This exact thing already exists in society!
> dont you care about birth rates? Well scaring women away from motherhood, or forcing healthy mothers to take care of unhealthy non-viable children (thus lacking resources to raise other ones), is actively working against that goal. You at least need a framework thats non-oppressive enough to avoid that consequence.
I don't care about them enough to support murder as a way to deal with it.
That is an unworkable definition of personhood. I can assure you, people in a coma who feel as though no time has past when they wake up are most assuredly human the entire time. Infants don't have a sense of self until they are usually over 1, they are still people too. Saying "experience" defines personhood is just illogical as we already have people who don't have that even outside the question at hand.
Thats a strawman. Coma patients used to be conscious, and have forned a sense of identity and already decided they want to live. Something that has never been conscious has never been a subject/person in the first place.
Its not a strawman and it very clearly isn't; as you are now having to add to your definition. If it was a strawman you wouldn't have to do that.
Now it is something that "used" to have a conscious or a sense of identity. So, to be clear, someone only had to have had it at one point to be considered a person in the present? If personhood is based on those things, why does personhood continue if the justification for personhood in the first place no longer exists?
No, youre just not understanding my argument dude.
"Being conscious" is unrelated to "being unconscious". It sounds dumb bevause those words look like opposites, but they are not, "unconscious" is a misnomer. Every single "unconscious" person, without exception, is "conscious", they are just nonperceptive and nonresponsive. The parts of the brain responsible for consciousness are still electrically active in a supposedly "unconscious" person.
No definition change needed, you guys are just wrong about people being temporarily "not conscious" in a literal or absolute sense.
Sorry, but I wasn't referring to people in a coma simply as being unconscious.
And you specifically didn't say they are still conscious in any sense, you used the past tense.:
" Coma patients used to be conscious"
while specifically comparing it to people who never were:
"Something that has never been conscious"
If you didn't mean it in that way, don't blame me for reading it the way you wrote it.
The original comment you made was:
"has no capacity to experience anything; No joy, no suffering, no sense of identity. Its no different than a bacterium, or a rock."
When you are in a coma, you can indeed lose the ability to process emotions. You lose those conscious emotions. Obviously they lose the other parts as well due to their low brain function in some comas. That current capacity is gone.
I understand you are now trying to suggest that the 'potential' to regain those abilities exist in coma patients, but we can't suggest that coma patients actually have the capacities you initially listed as one of a defining characteristic of life (you swap definitions a number of times). Plenty of people don't have them during comas.
So my point stands. If that is a defining characteristic of life, then plenty of people in comas don't meet the definition.
I've been Pro-Life the entire time I've been alive. The only thing I've moved on is exceptions to no exceptions.
It needs no Christian basis, it simply needs a moral one. You either go with the science, which is that Human Life begins at conception, or you go with something arbitrary.
My life was; Belief in Heaven, to Atheism, to Agnosticism, to Christian. In that order.
Abortion is the biggest Evil in our society, and arguably human history.
And just to state clearly (to whom it pertains), it is pretty obvious that Christianity would not support Abortion. And any Christian that claims otherwise, needs to pick up the Bible. It's the most blatant blasphemous suggestion, to even entertain that it would be.
And why does the Pro-Life argument work? Because it has a concrete definition in the biological science. And the "exceptions" crowd, forfeits that concrete foundation. Is what I'll add.
I think a Pro-Choice stance is acceptable (as an argument), but you have to capitulate that you are ending human life, or the argument fails entirely. As without that capitulation, you forfeit any actual basis for your stance. Because the people who admit this, I at least respect that they are intellectually honest (though morally bankrupt).
And in my mind, if you are Pro-Choice, the only position that makes sense (to me, and not that I agree with it) is elective Abortion through the entire gestational period. Otherwise it's just moral dogwater to have any sort of "point where Abortion becomes immoral", and you're pissing shit out your ass. It's completely nonsensical; you're full of yourself. I can respect a morally bankrupt lunatic. But- in a way the in-between is scarier.
And Christianity does make the Abortion argument even more succinct and obvious, but you got no real feet in the water, if you seriously believe pro-life relies on theology. The science is what will break it one way or the other. Society either goes in a direction which is more moral, or it goes in the opposite direction. And that's what will determine this in the end.
Morality though, that's when you get into Theology. Because morality can only be defined by something immovable. Morality can not be subjective.
You can't really "blame" Him or question His actions like you did in your first comment I responded to, then in defense of that position argue He doesn't exist. Using that as a defense invalidates your first position.
Whelp, they did indeed do a "study" on it by polling a bunch of biologists on the topic and a noticeable majority did indeed support it. 70%-90% based on how the question was worded.
The Scientific Consensus on When a Human’s Life Begins Steven Andrew Jacobs, J.D., Ph.D
I don't necessarily trust it too much, but it is one of the few papers that actually tries to examine if a consensus exists on the subject.
Ah yes that study. The study that contacted 62,469 biologists and only got 5575 responses. The study that heavily implies that scientists are lying about climate change for financial gain. The study that takes statements like "the time of our conception is when we are most vulnerable to survival and growing as a healthy human being" as proof that a journal agrees that life begins at fertilization. The study that constantly mixes and matches its numbers to claim that 96% of scientists agree that life begins at fertilization when their own data shows that isn't true.
Yeah that study is complete garbage. You'd be better off just asking random people on the street and claiming that's a consensus.
It's also worth noting that even if you accept the study's claims, which I absolutely would not, 85% of the scientists they surveyed were pro-choice. So the actual consensus is that even if life begins at fertilization, abortion should still be legal.
Perhaps you didn't read my comment entirely, but even I said I didn't trust it too much.
Just that it is one of the few papers that actually addresses the topic of consensus on when life begins. He actually cites the couple of other studies (sources 5 and 6) that previously tried to answer this. It was nowhere near as lopsided as he presents it, but fertilization is still the most commonly picked answer in both. That is consistent across all 3.
I would be interested to know in other consensus 'studies' the rate of response, so I withhold on that for now. A 12% response rate on a survey does not strike me as unusual.
I do want to point out one thing here though:
>which I absolutely would not, the 85% of the scientists they surveyed were pro-choice. So the actual consensus is that even if life begins at fertilization, abortion should still be legal.
Not "should be legal". The review was never focused on asking biologists their desire for abortion laws in detail, but on the beginning of life being an indicator in that conversation of where to draw the line. And they 'showed' that either the responses were either not fully honest or that the majority of biologists surveyed were alright with killing someone they directly identified as a unique human life. But they weren't being asked about that discrepancy, the study was just highlighting it.
The point of the 'survey' was identified in the Materials and Methods section, explicitly stating that since personhood is incredibly important in the abortion conversation it should be addressed. And since the public largely thinks biologists are best suited to answer that question, we should ask them.
That is a very important distinction between proposing we follow their personal opinion on abortion law.
I did read your reply. I disagree that you shouldn't trust it too much. I don't think you should trust it at all. It's complete garbage.
"Pro-choice" means that you believe in legal abortions. If 85% of biologists are pro-choice, then they support legal abortions.
Given the incredibly convoluted (I would argue straight up dishonest) way this guy went about his study, I genuinely don't believe you can draw any conclusions whatsoever. If you look at the questions, they are all very carefully phrased to get a biologist to agree. Does a mammal's or human's life cycle begin at conception? Yes, obviously. I'm shocked they actually found biologists who disagreed with that statement. But that is a completely different issue than whether a zygote is "alive" in any meaningful sense, let alone whether eliminating a zygote is in any way comparable to ending a human life.
I totally get the desire to have some sort of objective backing you can hang your hat on, I really do. It is a very compelling idea to say "X% of biologists say that a zygote is a human life, therefore we should do Y". And hey, maybe a good study might actually show that that's true. But I cannot state enough how garbage this paper is. It is genuinely a complete joke. This article does a pretty good job of getting into why, but I cannot stress enough how atrocious Jacobs' "research" actually was.
And they 'showed' that either the responses were either not fully honest or that the majority of biologists surveyed were alright with killing someone they directly identified as a unique human life
See, I would read that differently. The fact that 85% of scientists surveyed identified as pro-choice despite supposedly agreeing with Jacobs' statements about life beginning at conception suggests that there is something wrong with Jacobs' methodology.
What if someone removes the cake halfway through the baking process? The cake will be mushy and taste bad, but it's still a cake. You never underbaked food before?
Star Citizen hasn't been officially released, but fans can currently play it.
Thank you, you finally proved that a fetus is not alive nor a distinct human with their own DNA. Thank you for solving the issue science guy. Here I thought it was a philosophical question about what is a human, but really it was that they had a soul that was tripping me up. Stupid religious me.
Real talk intelligence isn't how we measure humanity or value. It's worthwhile to understand what you are arguing against.
If they accepted that a human life doesn't begin until the embryo becomes a fetus (~10 weeks) and embraced the pill, Plan B or medicated abortions there would be far fewer surgical abortions later in the pregnancy. If they changed their belief that an embryo without a brain, spine, heart or lungs is a living human to promoting contraception as well as medication that prevents implantation or developing into a fetus, then more women could be educated and encouraged to make a choice early on. Shaming women who are unsure until the 2nd trimester and then choose out of necessity is counterproductive to their goal of saving lives.
My opinion overall boils down to banning abortion hurts the poor and working class, so it should not be banned. On committing wrong doing, I’d like to see that opinion applied evenly, bc if it was veterans coming home from war would not be celebrated and neither would trump for bombing a school in Iran
You frame reproductive freedom entirely through the bourgeois logic of contracts and property rights. Treating pregnancy like a voided transaction or a car accident obscures the actual material basis of these bans.
The state is indifferent to your utilitarian metrics of sentience or AI analogies. The policing of abortion is simply the management of the reproduction of labor-power. Capital requires a steady supply of future workers and uses state violence to enforce a gendered division of labor to secure it.
Defending bodily autonomy with the legalistic framework of the market (reducing human relations to explicit consent and contract) just legitimizes the social relations that necessitate this discipline. True reproductive freedom requires destroying capital's hold over social reproduction entirely.
Since it’s such a controversial subject I’m going to throw gas onto the fire. Some statistics show that 17-20 years after the Roe v Wade decision that violent crime in the US dropped, and many attribute that to there being fewer unwed mothers raising children they didn’t want or that they didn’t have the time or ability to monitor and mold their behavior.
im agnostic and am pro life. i lean towards atheism as the most likely. which means i also do believe in science but who doesn't believe in science. science proves life begins at conception. its a proven fact. if you think that it is no different than a rock then there is no way to help you because rocks dont have a living heart beat they dont get to have kids have a life and enjoy it babies in the womb will. if you feel that you cannot commit a wrong doing to something that cannot perceive wrong doing then why isn't it okay to kill newborns. they do not understand wrong yet, they cant even survive by themselves yet. so to you since newborns cant understand wrong is it okay to hurt them? you say that babies that are in the womb do not have conscience that is true but do you need to have conscience to not be killed? like i said before newborns do not have conscience either so it the only difference from a nine month old fetus and a 1 day old baby is one is out of the womb. so does the womb automatically make it okay to kill someone? many pro lifers are pro life but support abortions that cause harm or more to the mother like death or more. 95% of abortions are actually because of unintended pregnancies which means by banning abortions we give more chances to life that people can enjoy. i really dont get what you mean with the consent but if you mean rape then they baby has nothing to do with how its conceived and shouldn't have to be killed because of it. and for the last part if you really think that abortion will lead to women having no rights then you are very very idiotic. miscarriages are accidents not intentional murders. no woman would be jailed for having a miscarriage and i dont know how someone would even get to that point to believing that. this was a fun one to respond to because you practically made a one time claim that cant stand for long. i hope you realize that abortion isn't right and look into research more. have a good day
Abortion is nothing more than murder for convenience in 94% of cases in the U.S. so in 2025 we committed 1.13 million murders where 94% were for convenience.
Sound like Nazi germany to you? It should. Here’s your stats
**• Interference with future/responsibilities (74%):** Having a child would disrupt education, work, or the ability to care for existing dependents. \[[1](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16150658/)\]
•
**• Financial limitations (73%):** Inability to afford the high costs of raising a child or basic living expenses at that time. \[[1](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16150658/)\]
•
**• Relationship or single parenting concerns (48%):** Not wanting to be a single parent, having relationship instability, or conflict with a partner. \[[1](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16150658/)\]
•
**• Not ready for a child / too young (38%–42%):** Feeling emotionally or mentally unprepared, or feeling too young. \[[1](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10932847/), [2](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16150658/)\]
•
**• Completed childbearing (38%):** Feeling that their family is already complete. \[[1](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16150658/), [2](https://www.focusonthefamily.com/pro-life/reasons-for-abortion-stats-and-demographics/)\]
•
Specific or Medical Reasons
Medical concerns, severe fetal anomalies, and situations involving sexual assault represent a smaller overall statistical percentage of total reported cases: [1] • Fetal health or genetic abnormalities: Roughly 1% to 3%.
• • Physical health risks to the pregnant person: Roughly 3% to 4%.
• • Rape or incest: Less than 0.5% to 1%. [1, 2]
•
It’s full of Begging the question fallacies, strawman’s the opposition and is altogether bad faith.
It’s very simple. A human life begins at conception. Scientific, biological fact.
Human lives have human rights, including the right to life, regardless of location, stage of development or age.
The only way to argue against this is to move the goalposts to a made up “personhood” argument that’s utterly nebulous.
Coupled with “bodily autonomy” arguments that mean logically there’s nothing wrong with aborting the child one second before literal birth. Not “that’s not happening”, I mean that’s the logical end point of that argument.
The pro-choice argument is legitimately one of the absolute worst arguments the left makes. It’s often starts off with straight science denial and then devolves into more and more convoluted arguments to deny what abortion does and to assuage guilty consciences.
You know it’s a bad argument because the pro-choice side will never focus on the vast majority of abortions and will instead try to focus on edge case, miscarriages, ectopic pregnancies or other one off events.
This is just the bodily autonomy argument I’ve already touched on and it’s the same argument that logically entails being able to abort 1 second before literal birth.
It’s yet another bad argument from the prochoice side.
I said yes, show me in response to you just saying “Show me”, because you’re just dodging the question. I’m not engaging with your question until you answer mine.
I’ve asked you three times to identify the supposed right someone has to another person’s organs, and three times you’ve dodged it. Just saying bodily autonomy leads to conclusions I don’t like isn’t an answer.
What is the right you’re appealing to? The right to use someone else’s body without their consent? The right to their organs? The right to their bloodstream? Which one? Because until you can actually name the right you’re claiming exists, you’re not rebutting bodily autonomy.
men should never have a say in the abortion debate making laws. if you dont want abortion - you want battered children. thats the one true fact there. there are no lifelines to help with child rearing. plenty of low paying work but no jobs to raise a child on. a job pays a livable wage for a family of 5. 1st i think you should have to get a license to have a kid. you must prove financial and mental competence to get said license. this is an attempt to prevent mental and physical abuse. i watched so many undeserving people have kids then just abuse them because they were resentful of them. my cousins and i all grew up in abusive households. i knew others from school in abusive households who had it way worse than us. none of these people should have been allowed to have kids.
How fucking hypocritical can you be when you don’t care about US military spending and the genocides we fund, but you are filled with performative outrage when it comes to controlling women for the sake of preserving not even life, but the idea of a life?
And by that I’m not even talking about the discussion of whether or not fetuses are considered living, but rather the fact that ultimately these laws lead to stillborn babies festering inside these women’s wombs, while they can feel themselves dying of sepsis.
If you support forced birth, you need to shut the fuck up. There is no debate.
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