I’ve been debating abortion over at Ethics Alarms. Here’s one of my comments (the person I’m quoting and replying to is “Texxagg04”):
Sure the anti-abortion crowd can oppose [free birth control], because the anti-abortion crowd doesn’t feel the government’s or the people at large ought to pay for other people’s leisure activities and their effects.
1) Let’s be clear: Based on actual evidence, we know that free birth control can reduce abortion by 60%. ((See Preventing Unintended Pregnancies by
Providing No-Cost Contraception.)) In the US, there are about 1.2 million abortions a year. So making free, high-quality birth control universally available can prevent over 700,000 abortions every year. In a decade, that would be around eight million abortions prevented.
Pro-lifers say they consider each abortion to be the murder of an innocent human child. So what’s at stake here is a practical method, that has been proven to be effective both in other countries and in US test studies, which will prevent eight million children (in the pro-life view) from being murdered.
Are you honestly arguing that your philosophical preference that the government not pay for birth control, should count for more with pro-lifers than preventing eight million child murders?
If we’re really talking about the murders of eight million innocent children, then you should be willing to accept almost anything to prevent those murders.
When push comes to shove, you would rather have the government coerce the people at large into paying for a sub-set of the people’s leisure activities.
This argument doesn’t work, because we don’t have to tax people more in order to provide free birth control. As I wrote earlier, “a $235 million investment in birth control would save taxpayers $1.32 billion.” Taxes are coercive, I agree, but they’re also necessary. But in this case, the program would actually SAVE taxpayers money overall, not cost them money.
That said, yes. If it would prevent eight million child murders, of COURSE I’d rather tax the people at large a relatively minor amount than just sit there and not do what I can to prevent eight million child murders. Without any doubt.
Finally, I don’t think pro-lifers should be freed of all responsibility for their freely chosen positions. And the conclusion that pro-lifers are more interested in using government coercion on women who choose to have sex, then in preventing abortion, is a logical conclusion from the actual positions taken by pro-life groups and politicians.
The very common pro-life position, which you can see in dozens of examples of actual pro-life legislation, that raped women should be free to abort, but other women shouldn’t be, makes no logical sense at all if pro-lifers believe that a fetus is morally an innocent human child. No one would say that it’s okay to kill a five-year-old if her father was a rapist. The rape exemption is absurd if the goal of the pro-life movement is to save innocent fetuses; but the rape exemption makes perfect sense if their goal is to target women who choose to have sex.
Birth control, as we’ve seen in this thread, is another example. Free, high-quality birth control has been proven, in both studies and in real-world examples, to massively reduce abortion. If pro-lifers real goal was to prevent as many abortions as possible, and if they really believe that the 1.2 million abortions every year are 1.2 million child murders, then they should be willing to compromise on their opposition to birth control in order to prevent millions of child murders. To say otherwise is to say that being uncompromising on birth control is more important than preventing child murder.
But in real life, pro-lifers oppose doing all they can to prevent abortion. It is only using government coercion against pregnant women that interests them; they oppose much more effective techniques for abortion reduction, when those techniques don’t include government coercion against pregnant women.
If we really have two groups with the policy goals “reproductive freedom for women” and “preventing abortion,” then a real and effective policy compromise is possible, which will allow both sides to get most of what they want.
However, if what we have is two sides, one of which has the policy goal “reproductive freedom for women,’ the other of which has the policy goal “women shouldn’t ever choose to have sex, but if they do they should be forced to give birth,” then there is no possible compromise.
I don’t know why you bother to post over there, but in any case, the bigger flag in his comment is “leisure activities”.
You know, I tried to respond to “leisure activities” – a phrase that dude used a bunch of times in his comments – more than once. I kept on getting so mad that I’d lose all eloquence and start just typing insults, at which point I’d quit writing and wind up not posting anything. But you’re right, I should have addressed it.
That wasn’t a criticism of you, just an observation that your conclusion is confirmed: punishing sluts trumps babies.
Amp, I admire your patience and restraint. I don’t think I could have gone round and round with those people like you did. They may be sincere, but they’re quite sincerely wrong.
I’d love to see your links for the 28-week cerebral cortex development. I remember reading an essay somewhere, a long time ago, that discussed this subject. I thought it was a great argument, but I could never find it again.
In re leisure activities – there is also the fact that hormonal birth control is first-line treatment for an AWFUL lot of medical conditions.
(Which is to say – I agree with everything you have said! But HBC isn’t just about pregnancy.)
Patently untrue. The anti-abortion crowd is quite happy with public parks (at the local, state, and national level), public libraries, and public museums. They are more than happy to tee off on public golf courses, attend free music and other cultural events heavily (if not totally) subsidized by public dollars, pilot their boats and fish along the publicly maintained (if not created!) bodies of water, listen to radio stations managed under the Federal Communications Act (no laissez-faire competition at each stop on the dial, amounting to a “war of watts”), ride their bicycles along publicly-created and maintained bike paths, take vacations using publicly-created and maintained airports, rail, light rail, highways and bus systems, swim at public pools (or the aforementioned bodies of water), play league ball at public parks, watch professional sports or attend concerts at publicly-subsidized stadiums or convention centers, see historical plays or re-enactments at public historic sites, bring their blankets to the park for publicly-subsidized Shakespeare-in-the-Park, bring those same blankets to the publicly-maintained beach (while really appreciating the publicly-paid lifeguards and Coast Guard), go camping at public campgrounds (perhaps to ride mountain bikes on those publicly-paid trails!), hunt on publicly-owned land (for animals carefully managed by the public Department of Natural Resources)….need I continue? This whole summer is going to be filled with anti-abortion folks sucking heavily upon the public teat for their “leisure activities”.
Nicely argued over there, Amp.
(Don’t agree with everything, though. I’m quite uneasy with the notion that “sentient” machines have rights.)
* Hey! Why is my screen suddenly
I think that for the confirmed misogynist “pro-life” types, the argument that birth control prevents abortions is a nonstarter, because they believe that sex (except theirs, usually) should result in children. Hence, it’s as much of a sin to prevent that by preventing fertilization or implantation as it is to do so by terminating a pregnancy.
Long ago, I met an anthropologist who studied mormons and birth control (they’re agin it), and talked about the doctrine that each soul was predestined to a particular parent (or perhaps even a particular act of intercourse) so that if a mormon woman used contraception she was condemning that soul to eternal limbo. Some particularly sensitive women even had visions in which the spirits of their unconceived offspring tormented them.
Which is a long way to saying that once you believe every sperm is sacred, every sex action that doesn’t result in a baby involves abortion.
This the religous elite learned thousands of years ago that if you control sex and women you control everyone. So it is not about abortion, it is about power.
Thanks for the compliments!
Quoting myself from this post:
This report from the Royal College Of Obstetricians And Gynaecologists in the UK, called “Fetal Awareness,” is an excellent up to date review of the scientific literature. It focuses on the fetus’ ability to feel pain, but also considers the issue of consciousness:
This article from Free Inquiry Magazine about fetal pain also contains useful information.
An old but still good essay on abortion by Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan:
If, like me, you enjoy reading about these things in the form of an intelligent debate, I highly recommend this debate between Jennifer Roth and Richard Carrier. Carrier’s pro-choice argument is very much based on what we know about brain development in the womb.
Hi, I somehow came across this blog from another blog and it was the title that caught my attention. Let me introduce myself, my name is Shanna and I am what you would call a die hard conservative. I am very much against abortions, with the ONLY exception being in the case of mothers health.
But I differ from other conservatives because unlike them my main objective is to save the life of a child. I have said for years that the only way to do this is to make birth control free. I too used to be on the train of thought that I didn’t want to pay for someones birth control. After doing my research I have learned that you’re right. Since Roe v Wade will not be overturned the best way to prevent a innocent baby from losing their life is to offer bc to each and every female of childbearing age.
I would be more than fine with forking over a few extra dollars on my taxes if it means a child will be spared. A true pro-LIFE supporter only needs to do their research and they too will learn what I have, birth control is the key.
I dunno, Amp. I think it’s a lot simpler to use the “arbitrary, deal with it” argument than it is to define “personhood.” Newborn babies don’t have a whole lot of conscious thought and certainly don’t have fully formed brains yet. And although this is entirely normal for that stage of development, the reality is that an average adult gorilla or other highly intelligent animal that has actually experienced the world may have more overlap of thought process with us, than would a neonate.
The boundaries of the “personhood” debate quickly devolve to issues of history or potential, and there are, obviously, a lot of slippery slopes in that arena. Moreover, it becomes harder and harder to define the boundaries of “personhood” in a matter which is logically consistent.
Sagan ducks that issue when he talks about “We are able to think things through, imagine events yet to occur, figure things out.” And we know he’s ducking–because, of course, neonates can’t do that yet. Neither can some adults who have severely limited brain function. But of course those neonates and adults are still human.
It’s morally comforting to believe that you can draw a line and be on the “right” side of it, but it doesn’t seem to reflect reality. I think it’s better to acknowledge that any decision we make is really pretty arbitrary–although that requires the moral certainty to stick to it with the knowledge that you may be on the wrong side of someone’s line.
Would I support infanticide? No.
Do I support abortions at 25 weeks? Yes.
Do I think that someone who has a major traumatic brain injury is human? Yes, of course.
Do I think that a gorilla is human, even if its mental capacity and thought processes are closer to “standard adult human” than some people with severely limited brain function who I will happily classify as “human?” No.
There’s no basis for these distinctions which isn’t wholly arbitrary.
I’m assuming that this is coming from telling insurance companies that they should cover birth control w/o requiring a copay. Given that, I don’t see how anyone could possibly believe that this equates to free birth control. I don’t know about you, but I pay hundreds of dollars a month for insurance and if I get birth control w/o a copay, it certainly is not free; I paid for it as part of my insurance coverage. And whether you use that coverage or not, it is none of anyone’s business (including the employer who provided access to, but did not pay for (as the employer contribution to an employee’s insurance coverage is considered to be an employee benefit) that insurance) that this coverage is there or not.
1. The discussion.
Here’s the topic under discussion at Ethics Alarms: Boy & Girl get pregnant. Girl wants to have baby; Boy doesn’t. Boy tricks Girl into taking abortion-inducing drug, and Girl miscarries as a result. What legal consequence for Boy? Specifically, could the state convict Boy of murder?
This scenario helps illuminate conflicts among world views. Some people (“pro-lifers”) claim to believe that fetuses should have the same legal rights as born human beings; these people favor prosecuting Boy for murder.
Others (“pro-choicers”) do not favor granting fetuses the same status as born human beings, often on the grounds that extending such rights would requiring subordinating the woman’s autonomy regarding her own body. Yet under the current scenario, making Boy subject to the harshest penalties would provide the maximum deterrent to Boy’s conduct in the future; that is, it would tend to lend the maximum support to the woman’s autonomy. Characterizing Boy’s conduct as murder would make Boy subject to harsher penalties than almost any other way of characterizing his conduct.
However, we draft laws to have general applicability. This often involves categorical thinking – a practice that has strengths and weaknesses. Here, we draft the definition of “murder” to apply only when a victim is in the category “living human being.” People defending abortion rights resist categorizing a fetus in this fashion, for fear that people who cannot transcend categorical thinking will not be able to understand how the policies regarding murder differ from the policies regarding abortion.
In short, the scenario provides a fine context in which to discuss a public policy. For some people, the ethical quandary pertains to the meaning of “living human being.” For others, the quandary pertains to the merits of applying a criminal statute to a circumstance that arguably was not on the legislators’ minds when that adopted the statute. (And as for prospective remedies, the legislature should pass a law ensuring that the act of tricking a pregnant woman into inducing a miscarriage would be subject to appropriately harsh penalties in its own right – whether or not someone would also characterize the act as murder. But that would ruin the fun of the discussion.)
2. The meta-discussion.
Arguments about abortion provoke visceral reactions on all sides. People may find themselves unwilling to extend a generous listening to other people’s views. I conclude that Amp has found himself in this situation.
I understand the Roman Catholic Church to promote a view that 1) people should not have sex without opening themselves to the possibility of reproducing, 2) people should not have sex outside of marriage, and 3) life begins at conception, and the fetus’s interest in life transcends the mother’s interest in bodily autonomy. While there are many devils in the details, I don’t see these propositions as inherently contradictory or absurd. Thus, I don’t find any necessary contradiction in opposing both contraceptives AND abortion.
What about people who oppose abortion except in the case of rape? Yeah, I have difficulty reconciling that view with the idea that fetus’ right to be born is inviolate. But I can well understand support for this exception as a political expedient.
Do pro-lifers feel animosity toward people who have sex without the intention of having kids? Quite likely; they regard them as engaging in reckless behavior that kills children. Rape victims may also kill children, but it’s unclear that rape victims’ recklessness contributed to the problem. Thus, even though pro-lifers may disapprove of abortion under any circumstance, it does not strike me as irrational that they would distinguish between the two scenarios. A person may oppose killing under any circumstances, yet still distinguish between acting in self-defense and becoming a paid assassin.
In short, I may disagree with pro-lifers – but I don’t condemn them all as irrational nutjobs (except to the extent that we all have irrational preferences.)
But here at last, I think I find myself on the same page with Amp: When someone opposes birth control and also says “Abortion is murder!” now I’m really perplexed. Because once we establish that easier access to birth control => fewer abortions, now these people are basically saying, “Yeah, abortion is murder, but I’m ok with thousands of additional murders just so long as we can accommodate my opposition to birth control.”
Again, not necessarily irrational – but very counter-intuitive.
Apropos Ampersand’s #2, I can relate; add English is my seond language. There is a futher difficulty or frustration that I continue to encounter when debating complex issues–mostly when debating these with myself: namely, that, more often than not, I find that my arguments not only often continue to lack some critical empirical evidence for which I must rely on the work and authority of others, but that even the way my mind processes these facts is in need of the essential help of others. I am so incomplete, so impatient. Maybe it is only a lack of historical awareness on my part, but it seems an essential aspect of mordernity to drive home this contigency on others for my own understanding and knowledge. And if others don’t do some, if not most of the work for me, I am lost.
Sorry. It is not my intend to get into a discussion of the social construction of reality or the sociology of knowledge, or raise the perennial problem of the one and the many. I only wish to point out that it is all to easy to shed the difficulties, the complexities and the uncertainties and just say: ” Screw this.” This, I think, is particularly true on matters which I deem to be especially important; or where the help or the insight is derived from parties which I tend dislike and consider my oponents. The internal and external dialogue comes to an end: ideology trumps pragmatism; attained unconsiouness without grace.
I wish to thank Ampersand for his eminently pragmatical argument. I am not a prophet, but I believe it is at this present critical juncture that we must come together and honestly and couragesly address some our present difficulties. I know there are exciting opportunities and solutions. Almost everyone I know and almost everyone I meet is critical in some way with the current situation and, like myself, has an opinion on what needs to be done. Naturally I, too, have my perspective and my solutions for some of this problems. Actually, I think I have some really great ideas and suggestions and insights. However, they are all contigent on a community of individuals comming together on and across all levels of society. I’ll start by seconding and forwarding Ampersand’s argument for “free” birth control to all parties from my local area of the woods.
Thanks again.
This post is an example of the “ends justifying the means” fallacy. If something is wrong then it is wrong regardless of the intended or unintended consequences. One could use the same argument here to inter the Japanese in WWII, Drop the bomb on Hiroshima or even preemptively invade Iraq. One does not look at a moral issue and decide if the evil being done outweighs the good that will occur because
1) Evil is evil and
2) we cannot see all ends. We are not omniscient, and while studies may shed light there are always unintended consequences. (one being how it affects the culture as a whole, the mindset of the people)
Conservatives do not which to coerce anyone and it is presumptuous for you to say so without understanding the real ethics behind their views. They are not new or strange, they are classical (in the classical understanding of ethics) and well thought out (by that I mean over a millenia of really smart thinkers).
As far as Incest and Rape. I agree there should be no exception, a human is a human regardless of circumstances, however these cases are so few that they are generally simply used as a poison pill by the anti-life side to justify their own infanticidal tendencies.
-Franklin
@Franklin
Excuse me, pregnancies resulting from rape and incest are not few. See here:
<a href="http://www.acog.org/About_ACOG/News_Room/News_Releases/2012/Statement_on_Rape_and_Pregnancy
There are 10,000-15,000 abortions due to rape/incest every year. We don’t know exactly how many victims carry their pregnancies to term, but I have seen numbers of up to 26,000 women yearly become pregnant due to rape.
“Conservatives do not want to coerce anyone”? With all due respect, are you kidding me? If that is so, there would not be all the roadblocks thrown up at the state level to hinder women who are seeking a legal procedure.
I love my Infanticidal Tendencies. After all, they did one of the greatest teen angst/anger songs of the early ’80s.
I do love “evil is evil.” This combination of tautology with a manichean worldview that prevents acknowledgment of relative goodness and evilness and preferability of one possible course of action over another seems like an impediment rather than an advantage. But what do I know?
@redheadedfemme
Lets put this in perceptive, we are talking about < 1% of all abortions. I think that qualifies as relatively few.
We only want to coercion when it comes to protecting the fundamental rights of all humans. (among those rights: Life) Liberals, on the other hand want coercion over all aspects of our lives: 16 oz drinks, Smoking bans etc etc.
@jake
if you prefer unethical is unethical. and yes: tautology, yes: Truth, but not Manichean (Manicheans were evil, but I digress)
Please: what is relativegoodness and evilness? Once it is relative then you have tossed out the baby with the bathwater. Sounds to me like it is only a method to be used to rationalize anything… and in fact has.. Nuking Hiroshima is not as evil as losing military personel…
Preferability would only come into play when neither course of action was evil.
You cannot use evil to accomplish good.
Can you use a lesser evil to accomplish less evil than if you had used a greater evil? Less evil is more good unless you are unable to see gradations of good and evil. And, yes, dualist if you like. The inability to distinguish more gooder from less gooder is an impediment to making things better. If things are merely good or evil then mass murder, torture and theft of an apple are all precisely the same. That’ll sure simplify the penal code, though.
@Jake
Yes I can see gradations, but the fact remains that you should never choose evil. What I do not see is the relativity – things are not ‘made good’ due to another worse option, that is they are not good relative to other choices, they are good or evil choices in and of themselves.
My 15 year-old son will often say to me, “What I did was bad, but I could have done something worse” This is not a rational argument.
One should never say that they are choosing this evil because it is not as evil as another choice. One should always choose Good.
What happens when your choice is to run over the dog in the road or swerve into the pedestrians on the roadside? You’re going to make a choice there and neither one is good. (Or, on the off chance you see no evil in killing a dog, replace it with a child in the road) It is unavoidable that, at some point in your life, you will have to choose between some set of evil actions since no good options are available.
I’ll leave it there since you’re clearly not open to the idea that your philosophy isn’t realistic or achievable by an actual living person.
An act is good if the intention of the action is good, and it is orientated toward the good of the object of the action. In this case if intended action is to avoid the people, not to hit the dog. That would not be evil, while killing the dog -intentionally – would be evil. Killing the dog is a consequence of the action not the intent. This is called the “principle of double effect”
it is achievable? Well we all make mistakes and fail. But that does not mean that we should abandon all standards, that there is not truth that there is not Good and Evil and that we should not strive to live our lives according to what is right and wrong.
You are clearly not open to the idea that we should have standards to live by and thus cannot have any true morality. Your morality is a house of cards build on sand, at the faintest breeze it will come crashing down.
Consider this: The rationalization of philosophy such has yours has lead to every great atrocity that the world has ever known.
That’s just silly.
What if you make the decision to “swerve around the dog?” That’s a good action, as we both know. Does the consequence “….therefore mowing down three pedestrians” suddenly become non-evil?
Of course not.
Either you’re being completely meaningless, or you’re simply insisting that we refer to relative good/evil as “orientated toward the good of the object of the action.” which is just semantics.
Or, perhaps you think it’s perfectly OK to mow down the pedestrians, because there’s no winner in the competition between “avoid the dog” and “avoid the pedestrians.” I doubt it, though.
@Gin
The proportionality condition of the principle double effect states:
The good effect must be at least equivalent in importance to the bad effect.
In this case the good effect of not killing people is of greater importance than killing the dog.
Franklin:
And how does this not apply to the original post? Or to what Shanna says in comment 11?
Implicit in your argument here, but not explicitly stated, is that free birth control is wrong and/or evil.
Now we get that free birth control is wrong because providing free birth control is not an action with good intention, nor is it oriented toward the good of its users.
I think this is going to need to be explained.
So the good effect of not murdering millions of innocent children is not of greater importance than using free birth control?
I’ve got to think that some pro-life people legitimately think that killing unborn fetuses really is murder. So I don’t understand the inflammatory nature of this post. Why not “some pro-life people are A-holes who only want to control women”?
It is probably just as irritating to male feminists when they are accused of only wanted to get laid (and not even with a very effective tactic) when they seem to be feminists (and aren’t really). I would also say that is partially true, but some men really believe what they are saying.
So I just don’t get the purpose behind such an provocative statement when it isn’t even true.
@Denise
Yes – Using birth control is an inherently Evil act and providing it to people for free is complicit with that act and therefore immoral.
In this case we do not need to apply the principle of double effect because of two reasons
1) the first condition states: The nature of the act is itself good, or at least morally neutral. In this case the nature of the act is evil and as I stated we can never use evil to accomplish good, not even a little evil to accomplish a great deal of good.
2) The act of not providing free birth control is not mutually exclusive with outlawing (or preventing) abortion. We can do both and therefore not be complicit with any evil act. This was not the case with the ‘hit the dog or the person’ car example. In that (admittedly contrived) example one action had to be taken.
I hope that helps
Franklin:
1) Uh-huh. So why is birth control evil?
2) It is mutually exclusive with having the lowest abortion rates possible in our culture.
Varusz, did you even read my post? I explained why I hold my point of view. (See this post as well). Are you saying that it’s wrong to ever criticize pro-lifers for the large inconsistencies between what they say and the policies they favor?
I do agree that it’s unfair of my post to tar all pro-lifers, when there are a handful of consistent pro-lifers out there. So that’s a fair point.
“Are you saying that it’s wrong to ever criticize pro-lifers for the large inconsistencies between what they say and the policies they favor?”
——
As with any large movement, it’s likely that one group within the movement is espousing one thing and another group is espousing something else. As far as overlap with inconsistent stances goes – there are morons everywhere.
To bring the point closer to home, some feminists are espousing equality, whereas others are hitting things hard from the side of men not doing their traditional roles – like paying child support and alimony. It’s just two different groups that think they fall under the big tent of feminism.
If pro-life people who really only want to control women are the irritant, you should probably attack *those people* as a subset of pro-lifers. Otherwise it just comes across as stereotyping and blind hatred for a position that reasonable people can reasonably take and all the rest.
I know that there are also pro-lifers who keep their mouth shut, but wouldn’t personally have an abortion. They’re not trying to control anyone except themselves.
@Ampersand
1) I’m happy to discuss, but probably beyond the point of discussion. My point here was to address the “prolifers don’t give a damn about fetuses” and we “
hatecoerce women” comment. This is simply not true. We hold a consistent moral position and aren’t out to get anyone. I would hope that you can understand that, even if you may not agree (and, you know, disagreement is OK)2) If this statement was true (I do not believe that it is) and if contraceptives were good or even morally neutral then I would agree and have
noless (the feds should still stay out. States? possibly) problems with it. However I would argue that the large number of abortions is due to contraceptives. you tell me, prior to contraceptives as a common practice did we have more or less abortions in this country? If your statement is true then I would argue that it is contraceptives that helped made the culture the way it is, and that is what is causing the abortions.The policies and positions I’m criticizing are not only very mainstream for the pro-life movement, they are the policies and positions of the major pro-life groups, and of politicians who are supported and endorsed by those groups. I think it would be fair to say this group is not just a “subgroup,” but “the leadership.”
But again, you’re right that I should have noted that there are some exceptions among individual pro-lifers. That has been my habit in the past, and I did note that in the discussion thread that this post was quoted from, but I didn’t note it in the particular comment of mine that I quoted. So my bad.
I don’t see how either child support or alimony are inconsistent with equality, as long as one believes that, given a similar situation, both women and men should be required to pay either alimony and/or child support.
I can personally attest that my abortion had the good effect of allowing me to stay in high school and even finish a year early and go on to college. So, I hit the dog but my intention was to save the pedestrians. So I feel pretty morally OK.
(And my use of hormonal birth control for the past 25 years has been with the goal of not having to hit the dog, with the good effect of allowing me to finish 3 graduate degrees and participate in the education and personal well-being of many other people. So, yay contraception and its good effects!)
@Elusis
I am sorry that you equate a human life with that of a Dog. Or value your education above that of a human life.
Whether or not you are morally ‘ok’ has little to do with how you feel. Morality is objective not subjective. Again I am sure that the General who ordered the bombing of Drezden felt morally ok with what they did. They rationalized their actions. If they understood that you cannot use evil to accomplish Good then that evil would have been prevented.
Wow. Apparently those who challenge your use of birth control are not the only people to give you the third degree.
Franklin:
As much as I may agree with some of your points, I think this is unfair. I took her to be using the pedestrian/dog analogy, which I think you brought up.
Remember, it was an analogy. You can’t turn around and take it literally.
That said, you can argue about what the dog is versus the pedestrians, but you can’t jettison the analogy like that.
-Jut
Franklin, please do feel free to go into why birth control is evil here. I’m interested in what you have to say, and since I’m a moderator, and this is my thread, you’re in no danger of being dinged for going off-topic by going there.
Also, I think it’s relevant. Beyond any doubt, pro-lifers (and others) can always come up with a rationalization to believe whatever they want to believe. The question is, does the rationalization hold water, or is it just a pretext?
Finally, Elusis was just using the already well-established “dog and pedestrian” motif that already existed in this thread. Please try to give other posters here the benefit of the doubt, rather than leaping to score points with the nastiest interpretation available.
That said, I personally think that a dog has a greater claim to a right to life than an embryo, for the reasons I discuss in this post. But that probably really IS off-topic.
Nobody Really: Groan!
@Franklin
the large number of abortions is due to contraceptives.
I’m sorry, but that is absolute nonsense.
It doesn’t even make sense. Women use contraception to prevent pregnancies. Obviously birth control can fail. But when it works–which is most of the time–there is no pregnancy and hence nothing to abort.
Also, do you really think abortion and birth control were only invented in the 1950’s, straight out of the lab? Women have been getting abortions and using birth control (herbal, therefore not as effective) for millennia.
As far as this country, abortion was not even illegal until the 1800’s. Prior to then it was legal up to the time of “quickening” (when the woman first felt the fetus move) which could be three or four months. See here
(<a href="http://www.prochoice.org/about_abortion/history_abortion.html" ).
However, as far as I am concerned, that is a moot point. If a woman wants an abortion, she WILL get one. Outlawing abortion just endangers and kills women.
Franklin, I am no moderator, but I am also extremely curious about why birth control is evil. I’m especially curious whether you will be able to make an argument without appealing to the authority of any deities.
I apologize for the part of my comment to Elusis in which I stated that she valued Dog life over human life. I took the analogy literally and I agree it was unfair. Mea Culpa. However the Education > human life was still a fair comment.
@redheadedfemme
“Women use contraception to prevent pregnancies.” And that is the great irony of contraceptives. I am not talking about the failure of contraceptives but what our attitude toward sexual intercourse has become due to the prevalence of contraception in the culture. Would you not agree that our attitudes toward sex has changed? Would you not agree that the increase in out of wedlock pregnancies due to those changes were the major impetus to the Roe V. Wade decision?
Yes, Absolutely and without question: Contraceptives and the culture it has produced has led to the large number of abortions we see today. The fact that abortions have happened in the past in a infinitesimally smaller degree does not weaken the argument. The solution it responsible sexual intercourse, our attempt to tinker with moral laws have been an absolute failure: Broken homes, dead beat dads, Abortions, Teen pregnancies etc etc… Which, I suppose leads me to:
@Ampersand
Sexual Intercourse has in mankind has two natural consequences
1) Emotional Unity
2) Procreation (which is actually another and more complete type of unity)
The attempt to use unnatural means to circumvent the natural design of this is immoral. That is why extra martial relations is immoral as well as contraception. That, in the briefest possible statement, is why it is immoral.
Franklin doesn’t need to appeal to deities. He has stated clearly that morality is objective. How he knows what that objective morality actually is will be irrelevant. He can say his god laid it out or just that he – and everyone else – was born with that knowledge. It’s a discussion that has nowhere to go.
That view of morality, however, suffers from severe shortcomings when trying to convince those with a different opinion of morality about whether thing X is moral or not. Franklin can only say that it is or is not moral. He will not be able to tell you why since, according to him, reasoning and logic played no part in the delegation of thing X to one side of the ledger or the other.
@Sebastian
“I’m especially curious whether you will be able to make an argument without appealing to the authority of any deities.”
Maybe, maybe not. Morality is written in to the reality of who we are as humans and therefore can be appealed to without God, but once you understand that there is a God it tends to make a lot more sense as in fact without a God there is no morality of any kind at all. In an all material world morality makes no sense.
I guess we will see how I do…
The process of aging, and the multitudes of diseases affecting human kind have the natural consequence of decreasing the quality of human life past a certain age, and ultimately limiting its extent.
The attempt of using unnatural means to circumvent the natural design is immoral. This is why any use of medicine is immoral. Which is why anyone but members of the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God and similar religions is evil.
Franklin,
This is getting off the subject, but morality can also be based on *empathy* for other people. I much prefer to deal with people who have morality based on that reason, rather than people who are only following the “morality” because a father-substitute figure would otherwise punish them (with lightning bolts or something).
As for birth control, I can’t see any argument there. It just isn’t hurting anyone else.
Franklin, you believe that morality is written into reality? Do you also believe that morality changes with time, or that we humans have just learned how to read it?
Or just that you are the only one that knows how to read it? Because I assure you, it’s unlikely that there is another human on the planet with the exact same morality as you, that is someone who will agree with you about what is moral 100% of the time.
@Sebastian
yet these medicines are designed to the benefit of humanity within the whole context of their natural lives not to their determent. The same cannot be said for contraception. Contraception states that I want to eliminate this part of myself or that of my partner that is an integral part of what makes them either male of female. It therefore not only destroys the procreative part but the unitative part as well. If I as a man say I love you but not the part that makes you essentially female, that ‘sterilizes’ (pun intended) the very act that should be bringing them together.
@Sebastian
If I see a blue sky and you see a green one, the truth about what color it is is still an objective one.
@Varusz
your morality is not morality but feelings. “Do what you feel” is not a morality it is narcissism.
I see. So if a woman were held captive by her rapist (I know, I know, this never happens, just bear with me for the sake of the example) it would be immoral for her to use any contraceptives. Or any means of making conceiving less likely, like trying to avoid the attention of her rapist, now that I think about.
I am understanding you correctly, right? The act of using contraceptives is evil, so unless you are saving lives or something just as important, you really have no business using it.
If I see a blue sky and you see a green one, the truth about what color it is is still an objective one.
If you have defined blue as an interval around the wavelength of 475 nm, sure. So how do you define morality, apart from ‘what I think is moral’, or even ‘what person X says is moral’?
@Sebastian
“it would be immoral for her to use any contraceptives…” No. In your example this would not be immoral due to the circumstances there is no chance in the act doing what it was intended to do. This is through no fault of her own as she is not participating in the act willingly, she is responding to something being forced upon her.
Morality is either objective or it is irrelevant. If you believe it is irrelevant then you have no standing to ever say that anything anyone does (including cohersion of women as the title puts it) is ever wrong.
Franklin, it doesn’t matter if objectivity is moral or not, if there are no objective means of determining what, exactly, morality is.
Even if there does exist “objective morality,” what good is it? You can’t point to it. You can’t measure it. You can’t prove it exists.
@Ampersand
Well proof and belief are two different things. You and I all believe all kinds of things we cannot prove. We believe that the laws of nature will be the same tomorrow as they were yesterday with out any proof that it will be.
If we seek out Truth and orient our lives toward the truth then will be better off. You can drink a glass of poison and it will kill you even if you don’t know the truth about it. If we know truth it is always a good thing. Living our lives according to that which is not true is -literally- insanity.
We can come to know -at least in part- true morality just as Socrates and Aristotle did without divine intervention, due to our nature, but if you want to know morality to its ultimate depths you must know Him who created it.
Franklin:
How so?
Ampersand:
I believe that Franklin answered that when he made the claim that morality is written into reality. That is all the proof that Franklin needs and, therefore, sufficient proof for anybody and everybody (although not for nobody.really).
No. In your example this would not be immoral due to the circumstances there is no chance in the act doing what it was intended to do.
Even if I were to accept that the act is ‘intended’ to do something by anyone else but the actors, by your definition, that something would be emotional unity and procreation. Unless one disregards both anecdotal evidence and statistics, it is quite clear that one of the two objectives can be certainly be achieved through rape. There are known cases of rapists who held their victims prisoners, and wanted and prized the children resulting from the repeated rapes.
There is also strong evidence (unfortunately, it’s only scientific evidence) that sex releases hormones that facilitate bonding in women. I am not aware of any research that claims that these hormones are not released during rape, although they would have to contend with other stimuli acting on the victim.
So it looks to me that both ‘intended’ consequences cannot be dismissed as unachievable. Are you going to actually claim that because they are ‘intended’ and possible, trying to prevent them is evil?
Morality is either objective or it is irrelevant. If you believe it is irrelevant then you have no standing to ever say that anything anyone does (including cohersion of women as the title puts it) is ever wrong
What nonsense. Pouring cherry juice in my gas tank is wrong if I want to use my car to get somewhere. Treating people in ways they do not want to be treated is wrong if I want to maintain a society that I would want to live in. Doing something that makes me feel guilty is wrong if I want to maintain a good self-image.
We certainly have proof that the “laws of nature” (I will interpret that as “laws of physics”) are overwhelmingly likely to be the same tomorrow as they were yesterday. We also know that, since we don’t know everything, that there is a chance, however infinitesimally small that they won’t be.
@Jake
If morality is subjective then I can say my morality (subjective) is different than yours. my morality tells me that I can do anything I feel like. If I feel like harming you then you cannot tell me it is wrong because it is only wrong for you, not for me. You cannot make laws, you cannot appeal to justice and you are relegated to Thrasymachus’ “Justice is in the interest of the stronger” (see Plato’s Republic) or more commonly known as: “Might makes right.
Therefore a subjective morality is not only irrelevant but worse than that, it is equal to having no morality at all.
The entirety of your comment #61, Franklin, shows that subjective morality is relevant. It’s relevant in that you may harm me because that’s a perfectly moral action in your subjective code. It’s relevant in that the laws that are made (btw, morality has nothing to do with whether one can make laws or not) may reflect your morality and not mine.
On another note, I find it terrifying that, absent a belief in objective morality/fear of one or more gods, there are people who would find it perfectly moral to harm others. That is a true lack of, as the saying goes, a moral compass.
@Sebastian
Pouring cherry juice in your tank is amoral regardless of what you want it to do.
you misunderstood the object of my word ‘intended’ I meant it as the the intrinsic act of sexual intercourse itself. Unless you cannot see the difference between a rape and consensual sex I don’t see how you can say rape can be unitive. My guess is if you think it can be, you have never been raped. It cannot by the very fact that the woman does not want it to happen be unitive. But your argument that ‘unitive’ hormones are released in sex only strengthens my argument that it is one of the natural outcomes of sex
(sometimes editing a comment results in it getting marked as spam. changing “are” to “or” did it this time)
The entirety of your comment #61, Franklin, shows that subjective morality is relevant. It’s relevant in that you may harm me because that’s a perfectly moral action in your subjective code. It’s relevant in that the laws that are made (btw, morality has nothing to do with whether one can make laws or not) may reflect your morality and not mine.
On another note, I find it terrifying that, absent a belief in objective morality/fear of one or more gods, there are people who would find it perfectly moral to harm others. That is a true lack of, as the saying goes, a moral compass.
@Jake – I completely agree (except that laws are often based on morality)
@Jake
“overwhelmingly likely” is not proof – it is belief.
yet these medicines are designed to the benefit of humanity within the whole context of their natural lives not to their determent. The same cannot be said for contraception. Contraception states that I want to eliminate this part of myself or that of my partner that is an integral part of what makes them either male of female.
I know at least two women who have used contraceptives while not being sexually active, in order to affect their periods. So, please clarify this for me. Where their actions evil because they used an evil tool, or were the actions evil because their ‘intended’ femininity would have been denied if they had somehow ended up having sex (rape, lack of morals, or even blitz matrimony) while under the contraceptives’ influence?
Hey, this got me thinking. How evil is a surgical operation that may leave the patient unable to have children? What is the precise probability ratio between chance-to-die-without-intervention/chance-the-intervention-will-result-in-infertility that marks the evil divide? Is the evilness ratio in any way affected by the effect on the patient’s life quality? So many questions… and poor me who does not have the ability to just read the answers from reality.
You either don’t understand what I wrote or don’t understand how science works. I don’t know how to state it any more clearly.
Pouring cherry juice in your tank is amoral regardless of what you want it to do.
More nonsense. What if I know that my car is going to be used for some nefarious purpose and I want to disable it by displacing the gasoline from the bottom of the tank, where the gas pump’s intake resides?
Are you saying that pulling a trigger is amoral regardless of what’s downrange?
You cannot disassociate any action from its intended purpose. I would even say that the end does justify the means, as long as you include the total cost of ‘the means’ into ‘the end’. For example, if you believe in souls and damnation, the possible damnation of a killer’s soul has to be weighted against the results of the killing. If you do not, and you are contemplating killing, you have to include the cost of the remorse for having killed.
I don’t understand why using or doing something for other than its intended purposes makes it necessarily immoral.
Avocados’ primary purpose is food. Is it immoral to use it as a face mask?
Flowers’ primary purpose is to promote pollination so they can create seeds. Is it wrong to cut them and give them to a loved one?
Laughter’s primary purpose is to show fellow members of society that you are no threat and to encourage social bonding. Is it wrong to laugh at youtube videos alone in your room?
Sex’s primary purpose is to create children. But dang if it isn’t a great ab workout, even though me and my partner have absolutely no chance of making a child!
@Sebastian
Using something that my have a contraceptive affect would not be immoral if that was not the intended effect. The tool itself not evil, the intent to thwart the natural act of sexual union is. In fact even if they were in engaging in morally licit sexual acts at the time it would not be immoral to use the contraceptive to accomplish another end.
your second question is about the same as the first. If infertility is the side effect of something you are doing that is moral explicitly to accomplish a good (lets say a hysterectomy for a medical need) then there is no moral problem with it as long as the good accomplished is more important than the bad effect. That is the principle of double effect as I have stated earlier.
I think it is reasonable to point out that Franklin appealed to a deity both in explaining why birth control is immoral and then again in explaining how that explanation was not necessarily an appeal to a deity.
First, by referring to the “natural design” of Sexual Intercourse, you are implicitly referring to a designer.
Second, by saying that “Morality is written in to the reality of who we are as humans and therefore can be appealed to without God,” you are–paradoxically–arguing that there is something/someone doing the writing.
I point this out not because people don’t have the right to make religious arguments in the public sphere–we do–but because, in my opinion, religious arguments make very poor support for public policy, and I think that we should avoid appealing to the supernatural when we are making arguments that affect our shared culture.
One reason that I hate (hate) these natural law-esque arguments is because, no matter how you slice it, they rely on arbitrary definitions by people who are pretending that the definitions are not arbitrary. My impression is that this is the result of people spending _centuries_ creating arguments where they started with a conclusion and then came up with reasoning to support it.
For example, Franklin, you wrote that Sexual Intercourse has two natural consequences. But that’s not true. Sexual Intercourse has many consequences, and you have arbitrarily chosen two of these and pretended that they are the only possible consequences.
If this were a real argument, or better still, a real discussion, where people listen to each other and think for themselves, I could point out one of the many other possible consequences of Sexual Intercourse and you might listen to it, evaluate it, and reconsider your position.
But experience tells me that people who make religious arguments don’t do that, because listening to other people and thinking for themselves requires them to throw out their entire worldview.
Do you think that is a fair characterization, Franklin?
@Octolol
I am not talking about using things in a different manner than they were intended.
I am referring to the nature of the human being in its whole being. You are welcome to use an Avocado in any way you like as long as it is not immoral (e.g. shoot it at someone at a high rate of speed).
When you intentionally thwart one of the key marks of sexuality you are acting immorally. This is because it is an abuse of human nature and an objectifying of your partner. You want to say in the most meaningful act two people can share that you really only love the part that can pleasure you, but not the part that makes you part of who you are.
When you have sex it should be a total self giving of one person to another, but this cannot be said of the contraceptive sex. Sex was designed to be a complete love from one person to the other. That love is not complete if we are rejecting a vital part of what makes a person human.
Contraceptive sex is a lie about the love that should be happening at that moment and is therefore immoral, the same thing cannot be said of avocados.
But you are free to get whatever ab workouts you can out of either one.
We are slowly getting somewhere. We have established that as long as we have ‘good’ in mind, it’s OK to commit an act that may be itself be ‘evil’. As Franklin said, it is moral to perform a hysterectomy for a medical need.
I assume that it is also OK to use a morning-after pill if a pregnancy is likely to kill the mother. Or even to perform a late term abortion if the mother would otherwise die. Asshole as I am, I have to point out that not all Readers of Reality agree on this one, as the incident in Galway showed.
Now, my next question is: Is it OK to use contraceptives if you are happily married to a woman who would be P% likely to be killed by a pregnancy, or should you just abstain from sex? For what value of P does the ‘unity’ trump ‘thwarting procreation’?
@Phil
I think I said that you can not have morality at all without a God so the fact that I am having a moral discussion implies that there is a God. What I am trying to do is to be able to identify the moral pasterns written into reality without having to rely on some form of divine revelation. One could argue (though I am not – and I think it is a bit ridiculous) that morality is based on the ‘design’ of nature with or without a God and it is that design that is objective that we can base our morality on. If you so choose to take this line of thought I was not intending on arguing against it here.
I think I was being quite open about that.
Perhaps ‘consequences’ of the sexual act was imprecise. how about that those two things are of a ‘fundamental nature’ to sexual intercourse. And I would certainly entertain any other things you thought were also fundamental in nature to the act.
as far as your the last two paragraphs degrading theists: I find them unnecessary in this debate.
@Franklin I would say an avocado being food is as fundamental to it as sex producing pregnancy is to humans. In fact, I have eaten more avocados than I have conceived children. Being food is a key mark of avocado, I would say. Thwarting that by using it as a face mask goes against that. And yet I don’t think that is immoral, any more than using sex for purposes other than procreation is.
I guarantee you, despite neither of us being on contraceptives, neither of us are getting pregnant anytime soon. :D And yet, I don’t think that changes the fact that we love each other very much and get a moral good out of being physically close.
“how about that those two things are of a ‘fundamental nature’ to sexual intercourse. And I would certainly entertain any other things you thought were also fundamental in nature to the act.”
I think my argument still holds true: you are arbitrarily selecting things and pretending that they are fundamental. Since there is no God, and since we were not designed, the only things that are “fundamental” to sex are that it feels good when our genitals are stimulated, and this–we now know–proved to be an effective way to get our genetic material passed on so that our species could continue. But not even continuing the species is “fundamental.” Some species die out, and some continue. Masturbation, sexual intercourse, homosexual sex, recreational sex–all of these are just as “natural” and good as procreative sex. We can use philosophy and reason to discuss ways that all of these things could be used in a bad way, but that badness is not inherent. If you want to argue that procreation is good, that’s fine. The many other purposes of sex do not cause procreation to cease to exist–to suggest otherwise is fallacious.
“as far as your the last two paragraphs degrading theists: I find them unnecessary in this debate.”
I’m sorry if you feel that I’ve degraded theists. It was not my intention to make anyone feel bad. But…was the point I was making inaccurate? Or are you just saying that I phrased it poorly? Because I think I was accurate: as a nontheist, I can listen to what you say and make up my own mind, and it doesn’t change my entire worldview. But if everything is connected to a Supreme Being, then it is much more difficult for me to synthesize new logic that might contradict the totality of the “objective morality” that is all connected to my Supreme Being.
I think that an analysis of religious arguments is reasonable in this thread, because I think it pertains to a flaw in Amp’s original post. No offense, Amp, but you write about a perceived contradiction in the rhetoric of major pro-life groups, and you write about it in a logical, rational way. But in reality, a huge number of pro-life persons are pro-life because of religious arguments, which means that their logic and reasoning relies at some level on a belief in the supernatural. Supernatural arguments don’t hold up to the same kind of logical criticism as nonsupernatural arguments. (That’s not “degradation,” it’s just the truth: when you believe in the supernatural, it is possible to hold conflicting or contradictory beliefs.)
Phil:
Masturbation, sexual intercourse, homosexual sex, recreational sex–all of these are just as “natural” and good as procreative sex. We can use philosophy and reason to discuss ways that all of these things could be used in a bad way, but that badness is not inherent.
You forgot rape, incest, pedophilia, necrophilia, and bestiality (among possibly others). Are their badness not inherent? If not, please explain why. Or just state that they, too, are morally neutral, if that is what you believe.
-Jut
Jut, your most recent post seems to indicate that you assume Phil has lots of time to sit around typing on the internet to clarify his views, while you are offering little of your own time, and little clarification of your own views.
For instance, do you believe that masturbation is immoral? If so, could you please explain why? Ditto for lesbian or gay sex between consenting adults.
If Phil decides not to respond to your laundry list, or to respond to only a couple of items on it, I trust you’ll be understanding.
Pretty sure Phil didn’t “forget” about these; he probably left them out because these are all forms of sexual assault, not consensual sexual relations. Sexual assault is inherently bad.
@Sebastian
“We have established that as long as we have ‘good’ in mind, it’s OK to commit an act that may be itself be ‘evil’”
I disagree. The act may not be evil itself, you cannot use evil to accomplish a good. A hysterectomy in and of itself is morally neutral, not immoral.
“I assume that it is also OK to use a morning-after pill if a pregnancy is likely to kill the mother.”
Again No. The intended effect of taking the morning after pill is to kill the fetus. Thus making it an immoral act.
“Or even to perform a late term abortion if the mother would otherwise die.”
Lastly No. While this is hard and far be it from me to judge, the intent of the act cannot be to kill and innocent human. that is an evil act and cannot be used for a good end.
“Is it OK to use contraceptives if you are happily married to a woman who would be P% likely to be killed by a pregnancy”
I actually know of some cases of this, and there is a moral option that is not solely abstinence if you are willing do it.
Now – I have no delusions that I will convince anyone here. What I hope to have done is explain that there are rational reasons for conservative belief systems and they are based on classical moral thought. These are not even my ideas (although I understand and agree with them) and even I can struggle with them at times. But struggling is how we grow and if we do not have a value system that is outside of ourselves then we have no true values at all. As I said, the faintest wind will come and you will realize that you truly had no morality at all.
@Phil
your point was inaccurate. atheists are in general less open minded than theists in my experience and for good reason. Theists, only have to change their world view if they are wrong, atheists have to change not only their world view but their behavior as well. Changing a world view is easy, changing your behavior is hard.
“when you believe in the supernatural, it is possible to hold conflicting or contradictory beliefs.”
huh? how so?
Trigger warning: because of the nature of this discussion, my comment here might contain trigger language for survivors of different types of assault.
Jutgory,
There’s a problem with the logic implicit in your argument here, Jutgory. The problem is this: you have implied that you think masturbation is immoral, and yet, here you are, jerking me off.
Implicit in the slippery-slope nature of your statement is that you, personally, do not see an intrinsic difference between masturbation/homosexual sex/recreational sex on the one hand, and rape and child molestation on the other.
But I don’t think it is reasonable for you to expect someone to reply to you–to complete the assignment that you are giving–unless you are willing to explicitly state the implicit premise in your argument. That is, if you cannot come up with a single moral difference between masturbation and child-fucking, then go ahead and say so. You could write something like, “Since I, Jutgory, cannot fathom a single difference between child-rape and an adult man jerking off in the shower, can you please explain the difference for me.” Or you might choose to write something like, “Since the only moral differences I can possibly understand stem from supernatural beliefs, if someone were to convince me that there isn’t a god, I would have no problem running out and sexually assaulting little kids. Therefore, can you please provide me with a nonsupernatural basis to refrain from such assault, just in case?”
Those would be acceptable things to write, but you are of course free to phrase the disclaimer as you wish. Otherwise, perhaps you can see why I said you’re yanking my chain? (Metaphorically, of course.)
That is an absolute lie. Complete and unadulterated bullshit. I’m sorry to be so harsh, but as someone who has had an awful lot of sex both protected and unprotected, I take *serious* offense to the idea that my husband putting on a condom in order to protect me from the physical and emotional harms of a pregnancy that would severely worsen medical conditions that I was still getting straightened out (and that I wasn’t ready for emotionally) was in some way objectifying me. Or that I was using him because I wasn’t willing to either wreck my health for the sake of sex.
For that matter, the sex we’ve had *trying* to conceive has been less loving and more objectifying kind of by definition, because it’s done with a goal of having a baby rather than just as an act of loving each other.
Whether sex is unitive or not has exactly zilch to do with whether it’s procreative or not.
That is untrue. There is no fetus the morning after. Not even a blastocyst or an embryo. The intended effect is to prevent pregnancy. (The means of preventing pregnancy happens to be by preventing ovulation.)
Natural family planning has a lot of risks and potential downfalls. It works best with women whose cycles are very regular. Yes, you can use a dip in basal body temperature to predict ovulation. *But* sperm can live in a woman’s body for up to 5 days. So, unless you have a pretty good idea from the calendar when that’s supposed to occur, it may already be too late to start abstaining by the time a woman has an indication that she’s ovulating.
However, let’s say it has a 5% failure rate. There are woman who, if they become pregnant, cannot carry to term and will likely die. Full stop. Please explain to me how it is “moral” to take that 5% chance with a woman’s life, rather than allowing her to use a method with only a 1% chance of failure, or to combine multiple methods for a risk that’s in the tenths of a percent. Remember that this is not her life versus her baby’s, because there is no baby yet. It’s her life versus an arbitrary position that “moral” sex must include the possibility of procreation, regardless of the risks involved.
It is possible that, in practice, atheists are intransigent about evaluating their arguments or about changing their behaviors. But I’ve been trying not to talk about “atheists” and “theists,” here. I’m trying, instead, to talk about “people who make religious arguments,” although I haven’t been entirely consistent in that.
That said, I do not think your distinction about changing worldviews and changing behaviors is valid. If I am evaluating a policy based on nonsupernatural evidence, then I can change my mind easily based on new evidence, and then, while it may be difficult, I can change my behavior. For example, I support fluoridation of water because I believe the evidence that it leads to a decrease in tooth decay without causing significant harm. But if credible evidence were to emerge tomorrow that fluoridation of water actually does lead to significant increases in cancer rates, I could–and probably would–change my stance on this policy issue immediately.
In contrast, if you support water fluoridation because the Goddess Fluoridia bestows immortal life-after-death on those of us who drink her goodly fluorides daily, then a new study about cancer rates is less likely to cause you to rethink your beliefs, because it doesn’t have anything to do with your core belief in the Goddess Fluoridia, and an increase in death rates may be insignificant compared to the supernatural eternal life that you believe in. I realize that’s a silly-sounding example, but I’m trying not to make fun of actual supernatural beliefs that people hold, because people can be sensitive about that. (For example, you accused me of “degrading theists” when I criticized theistic arguments in the abstract.)
Are you really saying that you do not understand how a person who believes in the supernatural could hold contradictory beliefs? Really? I mean, even without getting into your own personal beliefs, surely you can acknowledge that, in the abstract, supernatural beliefs can be contradictory.
A cult could believe in a Goddess who is simultaneously a mother, a daughter, and a mystical other, and yet she is only one being! Even though we represent her with completely different iconography, and pray to her separate entities separately, she is still just the one! How? It’s a miracle?
You could be a faith tradition that holds that lying is a sin, but that “lying for the Lord” is not. And so forth.
Here’s a good way to tally up the contradictory beliefs that can–possibly–be held by supernaturalists. Eavesdrop on every conversation in the history of the world, and every time you hear someone say, “Why? Well, the Lord works in mysterious ways” you can chalk one up in support of my contention. Does that make sense now?
@KellyK
yeah – that was kinda my first reaction (with less profanity) when I first encountered this argument. And clearly there is still some unitive effect even in sterilized sex. I am happy the two of you experienced it. I suggest further reading on the subject.
With all due respect you do not know of what you speak in regards to NFP. If used properly, even in women with irregular cycles, it has a smaller failure rate then all forms of contraception including vasectomies. So if you truly want to save the life of the woman and were unwilling to abstain I suggest you take the next safest option
lastly with regards to the morning after, I made the assumption that it was an abortifacient. If not then the act of taking the pill is neutral and it would be the effect that would regard the morality. If the woman had sex with the intent to contraption later then, imo it would be the sex that was immoral not the morning after pill. that’s my initial reaction anyway.
Amp, La Lubu, and Phil,
Not able to block-quote effectively right now, so I will respond generally.
Franklin has put out a detailed defense that has been repeatedly attacked as relying too much on some form of deity.
I merely meant to point out that, given your apparent repudiation of that rationale, you should explain how various other form of “sexual activity” could be deemed immoral.
For sake of argument, Amp, assume I agree with Franklin on all points (probably not true, but sufficient for the time being; one can argue masturbation is immoral, but I may not find them completely persuasive). Maybe, when I am more equipped to answer, I will.
Franklin has, at least, exposed his standards to criticism. Those who criticize them have not. You, Amp, have said (sorry, again, if I have misquoted, as my current device, an Atari 2600, does not handle Blogs well) that objective morality is beyond proof. Well, what makes my “laundry list” any more immoral? I bet that Franklin may not distinguish between masturbation, homosexual acts, rape, and pedophilia as all being immoral. But, you and others (apparently) do.
Why? How? (You see, it really was not intended as a laundry list, but, instead, several examples to make the same point.). I know (I think) Franklin’s position. Can you justify yours as well as he has his (however flawed that justification may be)?
-Jut
@Phil
your contrived example only makes any sense because fluoride in your drinking water is not a part of your world view for you (you really don’t care either way it is simply a pragmatic matter for you) but IS for your make believe theist. If the example included something that would shake your world view you would be just as hesitant to change if not more so than a theist.
“Are you really saying that you do not understand how a person who believes in the supernatural could hold contradictory beliefs”
yes Phil – I really am. I am a little shocked by your thought that it is. I am saddened that you misunderstand religion so much.
Are you saying that the Trinity is contradictory? I assure you it is not. If you would like me to go into it I can. Not sure if that is what you meant by the mother/daughter thing maybe that was tongue-in-cheek maybe you were referring to something else.
I am not aware of lying for the lord. but I would say that lying is not ‘always’ immoral. you can lie for example if there is a surprise party.
also miracles are not contradictory either.
Why is saying “the lord works in mysterious ways” contradictory? Not being able to understand something does not make it contradictory.
Franklin, I’m not talking about theists and atheists, I’m talking about people who make religious arguments to support their positions and people who don’t. Can you give me an example of a situation where someone like me could be presented with a nonreligious counter-argument that might shake our worldview?
I think you misunderstand what I mean when I say “contradictory beliefs,” especially if you are contending that the existence of a god who is simultaneously three beings and yet only one being is not contradictory. But I think, perhaps, you are proving my point. You are a supernaturalist, and thus, to you, no two beliefs can possibly be contradictory, if God wills it to be so.
Do you disagree with that statement? As someone who believes in a God, can you envision any possible situation where God wills two beliefs and you would find them contradictory? (Let’s say, for example, there is new divine revelation coming from the pope, speaking infallibly.) If not, then I think you’ve made my point: you’re perfectly capable of holding contradictory beliefs.
To a person who doesn’t believe in the supernatural, however, holding the following two beliefs is a contradiction:
1.) I believe in a being who can do or create anything.
2.) I believe that this being can create a puzzle so difficult that not even he can solve it.
Many theists hold these two beliefs. They are contradictory beliefs. Centuries of semantic rejiggering does not render them noncontradictory. Calling them “contradictory” is not, necessarily the same thing as calling them false. It just means that…the Lord works in mysterious ways.
If anything, belief in an omnipotent and omniscient God forces you to accept my point that supernaturalists must, at least in the abstract, hold contradictory beliefs.
I could simply assert that God is capable of creating contradictory beliefs, and either you believe that, or God is not omnipotent.
If used properly, even in women with irregular cycles, it has a smaller failure rate then all forms of contraception including vasectomies.
According to the NIH, the “early” failure rate of vasectomy (motile sperm 3-6 months after surgery) is .3-9%; the later failure rate is .004%-.008%. NFP, which includes varying methods, ranges from 94-97% effectiveness when sex is limited to the postovulatory phase – which I assume is what Franklin means by “used properly” – but in practice ends up being 80% effective. Even an unsupported claim by a devout NFP enthusiast claims that symptothermal NFP can be “up to” 99.6% effective, which is far less than vasectomy, and is also a little at odds with her later statement that every time a couple has sex they might be ‘co-creators with God’ (i.e., ending up with a pregnancy).
Franklin’s argument reminds me of fellow Jews who try to claim that kashrut is not only religiously appropriate, but objectively healthier for [bogus nutritional reason].
Cite please. Preferably from a neutral scientific study.
Obviously, it depends on what percentage of the woman’s cycle you mark off as “no sex.” If a couple decides, for example, that they will only have sex during the first 3-4 days of the woman’s period, then their odds of not getting pregnant should be over 99%, especially if they’re tracking her cycles to make sure she doesn’t ovulate bizarrely early.
However, that’s not reasonable to maintain for most people, any more than total abstinence is reasonable to maintain for a married couple.
Likewise, Mythago’s statement about only having postovulatory sex means that for NFP to work properly, you have to correctly identify when ovulation has occurred and wait a day or two afterwards before having sex. Since ovulation occurs halfway through the cycle for most women (day 14ish), that’s 2 weeks or so that you can’t have sex (though, again, you could probably be safe in the first few days of her period, so call it 10). You can’t predict ovulation soon enough to have sex within 5 days of when she could conceivably ovulate.
It’s also worth noting that the point when a woman most desires sex is the point where she’s fertile. So for women with a lower sex drive, NFP basically boils down to “You can only have sex if you don’t want to have sex.”
I do have some experience with NFP, as it was the method my Catholic sister-in-law used. (I think they were married for 6-8 months before she was accidentally pregnant because antibiotics messed up her cycle.)
Additionally, NFP cannot possibly be the most reliable option, because there’s always the possibility of combining multiple options (for example, having sex only when NFP says you can, but also using condoms).
Okay, now I’m confused. The sex I have in love with my husband is immoral, evil, and objectifying, but you’re glad I experienced it?
Also, you’re missing my point. It’s not that there’s “some” unitive effect–it’s that sex that respects the other person’s desire not to have a baby can be as loving or more loving than unprotected sex.
To get into what is probably TMI, it’s no secret that the physical pleasure of sex for a man is dulled a little bit by a condom. So, doing something that reduces his physical enjoyment, for the sake of his partner’s physical well-being, is a loving act. Likewise, a woman who accepts the crappy side effects of hormonal birth control pills (which are definitely TMI) because her husband is unready to be a father is showing love toward him.
Insisting on unprotected sex, particularly if it’s for the sake of your own pleasure, when the other person doesn’t want a pregnancy is the epitome of unloving. It means being more concerned about what you want than about their needs.
Sex that respects the whole person *has to* include respecting what that person wants for their life, as well as that person’s health issues.
Another thing to consider with the effectiveness of various birth control methods is the ease of use. If we’re going to compare “perfect use” to “perfect use,” then we have to consider how likely that “perfect use” actually is.
Condoms are pretty easy to use perfectly. The main source of failure is leaving it someplace hot (like a wallet) such that the plastic breaks down, or using it past its expiration date. Spermicidal condoms, or condoms used with a separate spermicide, still provide some protection even if the condom does break.
Hormonal birth control varies depending on the method. The pill is a little harder to use perfectly, as you have to remember to take the pill at pretty much the same time every day, and if you miss a couple, it messes up the whole month. The shot, the implant, and the patch, however, are all pretty low maintenance. Likewise for the ring, with the small step of occasionally checking to make sure it’s still in position.
NFP is by far the most demanding method. First, you have to check your temperature every single day at precisely the same time. This means that if you were previously in the habit of sleeping in on weekends, forget about it. You also have to remember to do it while you’re still in bed, which can be a trick when you’re groggy in the morning. You also have to track whatever other symptoms you’re using (e.g., cervical mucous) and chart all of that. Ideally, you would also use an over-the-counter ovulation predictor, at least for the first few months, to measure the level of LH and verify that all the symptoms line up. (For example, to make sure that you don’t treat a random dip in basal body temperature that was due to some other cause as if it predicted ovulation, and then have sex too soon.)
Not to mention that if you’ve decided that NFP is the only “moral” form of birth control, your only option if you mess up a day is to forgo sex for the rest of the month. Miss a pill, and you can use condoms and spermicide instead.
So NFP is one of the more difficult forms of birth control to implement, and with absolutely no available backup plan. That really needs to be considered when it’s recommended.
Why?
I’m confused. Natural Family Planning is used as a way for couples to have sex without producing offspring.
How is this morally different than other forms of birth control? Aren’t the motives and end results the same?
“They Only Care About Coercing Women.”
Now, that’s not fair… they also care about punishing sex.
@Phil
-I assume you would reject out of hand any evidence that Jesus rose from the dead that was found in the gospels, despite the fact that there is no event recorded better in all history and yet you probably also believe in any number of historical events with much less documentation.
When I say I do not believe in contradictory things I mean I believe in the principle of noncontradiction
“Many theists hold these two beliefs.”
I disagree. Not sure who you have been talking to, but your statement #2 is a oxymoron or non-nonsensical statement. When we say that God can create anything we mean he can create anything that is not self contradictory. He can’t make a square circle or a rock so heavy he can’t lift because these things are nonsensical by their very nature. These are word games with no real meaning. If you can explain to me what the nature of a square circle would be, then God could create that, but saying God cannot do non nonsensical things does not diminish the omnipotence of God.
“As someone who believes in a God, can you envision any possible situation where God wills two beliefs and you would find them contradictory?” No.
you example shows that you do not understand divine revelation as understood by the catholic church. The catholic church teaches that there cannot be any more public divine revelation sense the death of the last apostle (see Vatican II document Dei Verbum paragraph 4 ) So no worries on that end that the Pope will come out with something new.
“…you are contending that the existence of a god who is simultaneously three beings and yet only one being” I most certainly do not contend this, because this that would violate the principle of non contradiction.
God is One being. One, Uno, single being. But when I say “Being” I mean the nature of god. There is only one God nature. Your Nature is what you are. If I asked you what are you, you would probably respond “Human”. Your nature defines what you can do (among other things) But when we speak of the trinity we are speaking of the persons who posses the being of God. If I asked you who are you? you would probably respond “Phil”, because that is your person, your ‘who’. You have one person that possesses your one nature, but God has Three persons to one nature. Three Who(s) and One What. It may seem a bit strange to you, but it is not contradictory.
“I could simply assert that God is capable of creating contradictory beliefs, and either you believe that, or God is not omnipotent”
Again, he cannot. Contradictions cannot exist, not even in the abstract. So no, I do not and would not ever believe anything that was contradictory.
I hope that helps you understand the Judeo-Christian perspective a bit better.
@Kelly
I am not glad you participated in sterilized sex, but having done that I am glad you experienced at least part the unitive aspect of sex.
I know we don’t like talking about sacrifice in this culture and if putting a condom is the largest amount of sacrifice one spouse is willing to give to the other then it is a bit sad. Having periods of abstinence for your partner is loving in a way that cannot be explained on an internet forum. True love cannot exist without sacrifice. If you are not willing to sacrifice then you do not truly love.
I didn’t say NFP was easy, but really it is not as hard as you make it out to be. I have been using it for 15 years so I know of whence I speak. Also messing up a day only means you need to wait an extra day not a month (and then only sometimes, depending on the day you missed) Perfect use is in the user and if the woman is afraid she will die if she gets pregnant, then I would suggest they be as safe as possible and would expect them to use it perfectly. While others may let things slide and therefore still be open to the possibility of life.
I am not going to convince you, but if you would like to understand more I suggest somthing like this book from Christopher West