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’ll give you late term vasectomies as far as effectiveness goes. I shouldn’t quote statistics by memory. In any case it is as good or better than any others, and how perfect people use it is in general how perfect they need it to be.
Lastly I’ll give you this link on NFP effectivness
I’ll give you post 6 mo vasectomy as being a bit better (I should not throw out stats from memory) but NFP is and can be better than almost all other forms of birth control.
Vasectomies are really the way to go.
In fact, as a man I feel obliged to stump for the wonders of vasectomies, so: Having had one, it was simple and relatively minor. They even told me to leave my hiking boots on (which seemed incredibly fucking hilarious as I was lying on the table, what with the drugs I was on.)
You spend three days watching movies, popping pills, and reading. So long as you have three days and an ice pack, it’s no big deal. On the scale of injuries and suckiness I’d rate it WAY below getting wisdom teeth out, WAY below my knee surgeries… maybe on the scale of “nasty cold” or “badly sprained ankle.”
Men: Spread the word!!
What else is new? I mean, who wastes their time worrying about nobody, really?
I blame Amp for my plight. He set up a generally liberal moderation policy with the objective, if not always the practice, that nobody should be excluded. Sure, I’ve found ways to circumvent his policies, but I’m still pissed.
Watch your back, Amp! ‘Cuz the next time you turn around, don’t be surprised to discover that nobody.really has been following you….
Is this jumping the shark? I’m thinking this may be jumping the shark.
Hitler was christian. therefore Jesus was a Nazi.
Now, THAT’s jumping the shark.
….despite the fact that there is no event recorded better in all history…
I start to think y’all might be being trolled. I mean, no one can actually *believe* this.
Oh, delagar. You’re not going to try to tell me that, say, the 2003 World Series of American Baseball is better documented than Jesus rising from his grave, visiting around a bit and then ascending to heaven, are you? Jesus’ resurrection is surely better documented than the Vietnam war, the election of JFK, the Communist Revolution(s), the fall of the Berlin Wall or the life of Charlemagne.
Next you’ll be telling me that subjective morality is more likely to exist than objective morality.
Like … it’s not even better documented than other fictional things.
The fall of Sauron? Better documented.
The death of Superman? Better documented.
The adventures of the Pevensie children in Narnia? Better documented and similarly Christian!
—Myca
I agree with g-a-w that vasectomies are awesome. Had one immediately upon turning 21, and never regretted it. (Though a later girlfriend did… she bizarrely argued that I was taking away HER reproductive choice!)
Until we can arrange for safe, automatic birth-control implants in every newborn baby, vasectomies are the way to go.
*blink*
For clarity’s sake: JutGory, are you asking me to explain how pedophilia, rape, et. al. fall within the category of sexual assault; or are you asking me to explain why sexual assault is a bad thing?
(Folks, forget about the “documentation” of Jesus being raised from the dead. THIS is what jumping the shark looks like.)
La Lubu,
The latter. (If you believe morality is subjective, mind you. If you believe it is objective, don’t bother to answer, because you and I will probably agree on your answer.)
-Jut
Jut – Distinguishing between sexual assault and the other things on your list is simple – sexual assault involves violence or coercion towards another, masturbation and homosexuality does not. Hence, if one ascribes to a morality (objective or subjective) that states that violence and sexual coercion are wrong, but that people should be allowed to engage in whatever sexual activity they wish as long as it is consensual, the division on the list is simple.
Now, if you are asking by what principle us subjective moralists choose to ascribe to such a morality as opposed to the objective moralists, that’s a different question. The answer – for me – is the reason is that I choose to do so, because that is the morality that is most consistent with what feels right to me. Now, you may think that “what feels right to me” is a pretty silly criterion to base one’s morality on, but I’d argue that it’s the exact same principle that every so-called objective moralist uses (or do you think there’s a particularly objective reason for why Franklin is a Christian, for example, and not a Muslim?).
Franklin, you didn’t quote statistics, by memory or otherwise; you made an unsupported assertion, statistics-free, based on ideology rather than fact. That’s pretty much what your follow-up statement that it is “as good or better” than any other contraception is, also – particularly when we keep in mind that effectiveness at preventing pregnancy is not the only determinant of whether contraception is “good”. (I should think you would particularly be aware of that, given that you admit prioritizing morality over effectiveness in family planning.)
It’s interesting that you didn’t cite to a study, but to a news article about a study. The study itself looked at one type of NFP (sympthothermal method), so it’s not really honest to say that it is about “NFP”, given that there are at least two other methods not examined by this study. The results were that 9.8 women out of 100 stopped using the method because of dissatisfaction, and that STM was highly effective when used perfectly.
Of course, the fact that it isn’t used perfectly – and in some cases, can’t be – is one of the selling points of NFP, isn’t it? If you screw up, you have a baby. That’s what the NFP advocate in the article I linked to earlier thought was great about it.
I should have said in all ‘ancient’ history. mea culpa.
@mythago – um I did not quote the specific numbers by memory I stated the relative effectiveness by memory (I had seen the stats but didn’t recall them by memory). But it was based on fact not ideology.
@Copyleft
“she bizarrely argued that I was taking away HER reproductive choice!” Yes – you did, at least if she wanted to be with you.
@Eytan
“particularly objective reason for why Franklin is a Christian” Yes there is. My morality being objective is not limited to how I feel. Feelings change morality does not, what if, in a fit of rage I feel like harming someone. Should my morality change because I am angry or depressed? No Morality needs to be objective.
or what If I said my morality stats that stealing from you is not bad, cause that is the way I feel. I guess I would be glad you agree that my morality is just fine as long as i feel it is.
So no it is not the exact same criterion that I have, There are thing that I have decided are wrong even if I do not feel like they are, because as you stated “pretty silly criterion to base one’s morality on”
Subjective morality does not mean “change as my mood changes” for the vast majority of us. Subjective morality means that what we find moral today (slavery, for example) we may not find to be moral tomorrow (slavery, for example). we make that change in our moral code through logic or experience or convincing argument or all of the above.
If, in a fit of rage, I feel like harming someone… I don’t. My sense of morals keeps from harming someone even if I’m enraged. In most cases. If my rage is caused by, say, somebody physically harming a member of my family I may be both enraged and perfectly within my moral code to physically harm the offender. If physically harming another person was objectively immoral, self-defense would be immoral. You would not be able to protect yourself or your loved ones because physically harming another person is immoral and evil can never do good. In your view – as stated in this thread – you would allow yourself or your loved ones to be physically harmed rather than perpetrate an immoral act to save yourself or them since evil can never do good. There is a tiny percentage of people who are pacifists in all circumstances – I take it that you are one of them.
To quote myself:
You do the same thing, Franklin. Is your moral code exactly the same as it was when you were 10? 14? 23? Five years ago? I doubt it. Even if there is an objective morality, you have no way of knowing what it is. You evaluate based on your experiences, arguments you’ve had/heard, etc. Then you decide whether it is moral or not. The big difference between us is that I don’t possess the hubris necessary to claim that my moral code is objectively moral.
@Jake
You misunderstand. I am saying that there IS an objective morality and that we should align ourselves to it not that I happen to poses the totality of it. and to any extent that my personal morality has changed I hope that it has gotten closer to that objective morality not farther away from it.
And no, morality has not changed. That is because it is based in human nature itself, unless you believe human nature has fundamentally changed, I do not see how morality could have changed. Unless you actually believe that slavery was moral at one point in time. I do not.
1)”You evaluate based on your experiences, arguments you’ve had/heard, etc. Then you decide whether it is moral or not.”
2)”Even if there is an objective morality, you have no way of knowing what it is.” These two statements are mutually exclusive. in the first you are trying to determine what is objectively moral in the second you say you cannot do that. If there is no Objective morality (or it is unknowable which amounts to the same thing in practice) then your first statement is unnecessary. Why ever try to ‘decide’ what is moral if there is nothing to base that against objectively? Morality is simply whatever you feel it is, which is no morality at all.
The bible and your ‘god’ certainly disagree.
—Myca
Franklin,
In the first I am trying to decide what I think is moral, not what is objectively moral. I do that because I know I have no way of knowing what is objectively moral. Nobody has a way of knowing what is objectively moral. To claim otherwise is an example of hubris.
You have nothing objective to base your morality on. You have something subjective that you’ve convinced yourself is objective, somehow. You have no evidence that what you feel is moral is objectively moral. Whatever you feel is moral. You have no morality at all.
@Myca
*sigh*
not really. One thing I wish people with opposing viewpoints here did was not tell me what it is I or my God believes. I’m happy to explain, and I am sorry you have misconceptions, feel free to ask me where you are confused, but don’t tell me what I believe or what the Bible or my God says if you are not well versed in the bible or believe in God. That is the Straw man fallacy, and in fact why I hopped onto this thread – telling me what prolifers really ‘give a damn’ about’
@Jake
“I am trying to decide what I think is moral”
what is your criterion?
What you believe is your business, and I wouldn’t dream of dictating it to you, but believing in any god is not a reasonable requirement for discussing that god’s historic teachings.
This isn’t a misconception, and I’m not confused.
The fact is that the Bible clearly condones slavery, and explains the conditions under which human beings may be treated as property. Now, I’d agree that slavery is immoral … I just also believe that the Bible which condoned it (and the ‘god’ of the Bible) must therefore also be immoral.
If you believe in objective morality, and that slavery was never moral, surely you agree.
—Myca
but you did tell me what my god and my bible say…
“…explains the conditions under which human beings may be treated as property” That it does, even under the existance of slavery – that is not condoning what we think of as slavery. Today ‘Slavery’ has certain connotations that it did not always have. It was the bible that stated how that all people were to be treated equally. And without it there would still be slavery today.
I feel like I had something to do with placing a hoop above the seawater for a shark to jump through; sorry about that. I think my point would make more sense if I step back and address the big picture.
Franklin, as I mentioned, my original point was not about “theists” and “atheists,” but about “people who make religious arguments in support of a policy” and “people who make nonreligious arguments in support of a policy.” These are not mutually exclusive groups of people, necessarily, and they are not necessarily the _same_ groups as theists and atheists. For example, there are many, many U.S. Congresspeople who are capable of making nonreligious arguments to support the policies they advocate, even though statistics indicate that something like 98% (or more) of congresspersons are theists.
It must have been a poor word choice when I said that people who believe in the supernatural can believe contradictory things; I had no idea that statement would be such a sore point. Perhaps I should have said that supernaturalists are capable of believing things that seem contradictory to non-supernaturalists. I’m sure you’re perfectly capable of explaining the Holy Trinity in a way that makes sense to you, but I don’t think you could explain how it _actually_ works to a person without resorting to some supernatural explanations, because the Holy Trinity is supernatural.
More salient to the point I was trying to make, though, is that making religious arguments and making nonreligious arguments are not two different sides of the same coin. Even theists and other supernaturalists are capable of making nonreligious arguments, using logic, reason, and factual evidence based on the world that we all share. Arguments that stem from supernatural beliefs, on the other hand, deviate–at some point along the way–from our shared reality, and that is one reason that I think these arguments are inappropriate for public policy debate.
Because supernatural beliefs allow a person to have a get-out-of-logic-free card, we see apparent contradictions like the one that Amp points out in the O.P. It would seem logical and reasonable that a person who believes that abortion is murder would support a policy that would reduce abortions, and since free birth control actually reduces overall monetary costs for our society in addition to reducing abortions, it is–logically–a win/win.
But if you hold the supernatural belief that we were created and designed to have penises and vaginas that have their Purpose Written Into Their Intrinsic Nature, well then, you have a get-out-of-logic-free card. You can oppose both abortion and also the simplest, cheapest, and best policy to reduce abortions because: magical thinking!
Now, I don’t think that magical thinking is a get-out-of-criticism-free card. I think it’s perfectly appropriate for Amp to point out that there are people who favor policies that have the effect of punishing and coercing women instead of saving theoretical lives. A policy can be sexist and bigoted even if god wants you to support it.
Yes, that would be sad. If it were true of my husband, or anyone else I know. But since I never said that, no sadness is required.
I agree that sacrifice is part of love. But you seem to have a major double standard regarding that sacrifice. You define periods of abstinence as a “moral” sacrifice, but sacrifices that arise from other methods of birth control as immoral, for no reason that I can determine.
I would also argue that the only sacrifice that is really loving is a sacrifice that actually benefits your partner. If I risk my life to save my husband’s (say, take a bullet for him) that’s loving. If I risk my life for something he doesn’t want (or wants far less than he wants his wife alive and healthy), it’s no longer a loving sacrifice. Likewise, forgoing happiness or pleasure for your partner’s sake is only loving if it actually benefits them. Otherwise, you’re just playing the martyr.
Yes, and I’ll continue to do so.
Allow me to quote.
Leviticus 25:44-46
New International Version (NIV)
I believe that taking immigrants and their children as property to be bought and sold for life is immoral and evil. I believe it was immoral and evil then, and that it’s immoral and evil now. Do you disagree?
Exodus 21:2-6
New International Version (NIV)
I believe that it’s immoral and evil to keep someone’s wife and children hostage until he agrees to be your slave for life. I believe that the concept of ‘slave for life’ is immoral and evil. I believe it was immoral and evil then, and that it’s immoral and evil now. Do you disagree?
Exodus 21:20-21
New International Version (NIV)
I believe that beating your slave with a rod is immoral and evil. I believe that it’s immoral and evil even if it ‘only’ takes the slave several days to recover and he or she does not actually die as a result. I believe it was immoral and evil then, and that it’s immoral and evil now. Do you disagree?
There’s more, certainly. I can keep going. I have no doubt that some of the restrictions the bible put on slave ownership were more moral than the prevailing custom of the time, one of the problems with objective morality is that slavery … even ‘bible slavery’ where you only beat your slave hard enough that they’re out of commission for a couple of days … is evil.
—Myca
@Phil
1) no thiest/or non thiest should have a ‘get out of logic free’ card. God is imminently logical. I find it to be the other way around generally, most leftists want to use emotion/ad homonym attacks as their ‘get out of logic free’ see the title of this post.
2)I believe I have been completely logical and presented a non-religious argument. You inferred a Deity from my ‘design’ comment, Clearly there is some design and I would agree that design points to a designer, but if you don’t believe that it does that is your argument to make not mine. Clearly there is some design in the world – you are free to hold that it is an accidental one.
3) I have done nothing but field criticism here, I have not shirked from it or played any type of “you cannot criticize me because of X” against it. Nor have I made any – cause God said so – arguments.
4) as it pertains to this particular post my logic was simple, you cannot call people two faced for not wanting the government to support something they consider immoral. you are free to disagree (and will) about contraceptives being immoral and I would not even support taking them away from you. you can go ahead and commit any immoral act you’d like as long as it is not harming someone else IMO. But it is an entirely different thing when you want to use government to support immoral activities. I am not arguing for more government, but less, so it is your side that has the burden of proof.
I have also tried to explain that the prevalence in birth control (and this policy would only increase it) has lead to much of the abortions, teen pregnancy, broken homes, dead beat dads etc etc. that we have today. Again I have not done the things you accuse “people who make religious arguments” of doing.
How so?
If I don’t take my temperature on a given day, then I’ve missed the indication that I’m about to ovulate. Therefore, if I wish to avoid pregnancy, I can’t have sex until I know that I’ve already ovulated (and 24 hours have passed since then).
The link you provided states that “When there is no [cervical] mucus, sperm life is very short, measured in hours, because the normal vaginal environment is very acidic and hostile to sperm.” I would like to see an actual scientific study for this, since every source I’ve seen suggests that sperm can easily survive a day or two, sometimes as long as five days.
“Theist” and “leftists” are not actually opposites. (I should know, being both.)
And while God may be logical, that doesn’t mean that anyone who claims to speak for him is logical as well.
From this statement, it seems you consider the only operative person in this equation is you; that other people and their lives don’t matter. What good is so-called “objective” morality (by which I assume you mean a morality that is separate and independent from human beings; a morality that would exist regardless of whether human beings did or not), if the holders of such “objective reality” still consider other human beings as objects? Because various ideologies have gained tenancy as “objective morality” while dehumanizing other human beings, with the end result of various monstrosities—while being completely “moral”, within the confines of that self-defined system.
Any form of morality centered from a nonhuman base can have that result. Or, morph into that result, given a charismatic-enough human proselytizer. Such a system does not require compassion or empathy—inherent evolutionary traits that most humans possess, precisely because those traits enhance our survival as a species. When and where we abandon our inherent propensity to empathize and treat others as we would wish to be treated (“we” meaning the 96% of the human population that aren’t sociopaths), we diminish our survival as a species. The most effective way to get human beings who are not inherent sociopaths to behave as if they are is to convince them that there is a nonhuman objective morality in which other human beings are inherently inferior—they are then “morally” free to dehumanize those Others.
Damn, La Lubu, I just wanted to say, I really love your posts.
Especially:
This is the problem with systems of morality that ignore outcomes completely. Remember, Kant argued explicitly (and re-confirmed when challenged) that under deontological ethics, there is a moral obligation to turn the Jews over to the Nazis, rather than hiding them. Because: lying is wrong.
Ideas are important, but they should never be more important than people.
—Myca
Not sure if I should be linking to it, but this was written in response to your post, so I figured you should be aware of it:
http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/05/30/fetal-attraction-abortion-and-the-principle-of-charity/
Franklin wrote (incorporating his correction in comment #115):
Actually, even with the word “ancient” added in, this is still a ridiculous statement.
First of all, there are many historical events for which we have much stronger evidence than Jesus rising from the dead. Virtually any event that left behind archeological evidence, for example – such as the building of the pyramids, for example, or that there was a great potter who signed his works “Exekias.”
There are also events for which we have copies of what appear to be contemporary accounts, such as Caesar’s writings. (In Caeser’s case, we also have multiple images of Caeser painted or sculpted by contemporary artists). Etc., etc. In Jesus’ case, no contemporary accounts appear to exist.
So you’re mistaken; there are many ancient people and events we have better evidence for, than for Jesus rising from the dead.
That said, the standard you (Franklin) suggest is not a reasonable standard. If I tell you that I ate a sandwich at Lela’s Bistro for dinner earlier, you probably won’t require much evidence before believing that. If I tell you that I lifted Lela’s Bistro – the whole building – over my head, that’s an extraordinary claim, and you’d probably want quite a lot more documentation before you’d believe it. The claim that Jesus miraculously rose from the dead is, similarly, an extraordinary claim.
@Franklin: no, your post was not based on fact. (Also, this blog is not a memory test. You can Google statistics and information just like everybody else if you can’t remember them.) You continue to refuse to gather facts, because you’d rather simply repeat the falsehood that “NFP” is “as good or better” than everything okay maybe not vasectomy.
The perfect use failure rate of one particular type of NFP – symptothermal – is .4%. The perfect use failure rate of hormonal contraceptives is lower. And of course, the ‘typical use’ failure rate for NFP is much higher than four-tenths of a percent.
mythago, that’s a really useful little table. Thank you for linking that. (Though I have to wonder why there’s a difference between perfect use and typical use for vasectomy and tubal ligation, since I’d thought those were both a “once and done” sort of thing.)
Except that you have a hypothesis for that, not proof. Before you try to prevent other people from having access to birth control (and, yes, wanting their employers to have the right to deny insurance coverage *does* limit access), you need actual proof that it has those negative effects.
@KellyK: I’m guessing that ‘typical use’ takes into account medical error, while ‘perfect use’ accounts for procedures that are done correctly but the body spontaneously regenerates?
That makes sense. Also, I found this on WebMD:
So imperfect use might include a certain number of couples skipping the second semen analysis, plus the failure rate of that alternate method of birth control for those few months.
When I had my vasectomy, my doctor told me that it would take 25 ejaculations to “flush the pipes”. Once that was done, there should be “no wigglers”, and if there were, then it meant that my vas deferens had managed to reconnect and we would have to do another vasectomy.
He was a little startled when I returned five days later and declared the pipes flushed. I produced a sample for him. He examined it and declared, “No wigglers” and Lioness and I got on with our lives, sans other methods of birth control, and sans further children.
One little bit of possibly amusing anecdata.
I infer from the medical quote above that it takes most people several months to reach 25 ejaculations, which to me suggests a lack of initiative.
Grace
@Grace Annam
hahaha (snort) Hooray for initiative!
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Re: The perfect use failure rate of one particular type of NFP – symptothermal – is .4%. The perfect use failure rate of hormonal contraceptives is lower. And of course, the ‘typical use’ failure rate for NFP is much higher than four-tenths of a percent.
Thanks for the admission that . I’ve actually been impressed by the standard of debate here, the more usual argument I hear from cultural-liberal friends is a flat assertion that ‘natural family planning doesn’t work’, and it’s nice that no one has actually made that argument here.
I’d argue with your assertion that ‘typical use failure rates’ for NFP are 20%. The observed ‘typical use failure rate’ varies depending on the study and the exact form of NFP being used. This study, where they looked at the combination of observing cervical mucus and monitoring urine hormones (with a personal fertility monitor) found a typical use failure rate of 12%.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19370902
The typical use failure rate in that well-cited study out of Germany a few years ago, was 7.5%. (I can’t link to it directly, but it’s described below). Given that the failure rate of the Pill under *typical use* is around 8%, I’d say that study finds that the symptothermal method is about as effective as the Pill.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/02/070221065200.htm
Of course, it’s best not to hang too much on a single study, and that one is probably at the higher end of efficacy estimates (and, there may be issues extending it across cultures). Still, I’d say that the general trend from the studies that have been done of modern methods of NFP, suggests that the best methods are more effective than condoms, much less effective than long-acting hormonal contraceptives, and probably slightly less effective than the Pill (although in some circumstances they appear to be approaching the efficacy of the Pill). I would also say that it doesn’t make sense to include *all* natural family planning methods in a comparison of contraceptive efficacy, but only the most modern ones. Human physiology is an evolving science, and some of the older methods (like, charting the calendar, monitoring temperature by itself, etc.) have been, or at least should have been, superseded by more effective methods.
Given that there are a lot of people out there relying on condoms as their main method of birth control, I’d think that cultural liberals ought to spend more of their concern on them, rather than arguing against natural family planning.
Franklin,
This has been pointed out already, but just to reiterate, the morning-after pill isn’t an abortifacient. It’s intended effect is to suppress ovulation, not implantation. There’s no evidence to date that it does act to significantly suppress implantation.
None of that is intended as an argument for or against the *morality* of artificial contraception, of course- your argument against contraception, which is the standard Roman Catholic one, is certainly a strong and compelling one though I don’t happen to agree with it (at least, not with respect to all contraceptive methods).
Hector, and here I thought cultural conservatives were annoyed that liberals spend too much time talking about condoms! (One of the reasons, of course, is that NFP does pretty much nothing in the way of STD prevention.)
I suspect that people who are telling you “NFP doesn’t work” are making the mirror image of Franklin’s mistake; that is, assuming that there is only one type of NFP, probably calendar-counting, and not paying much attention to actual statistics on different types of NFP and how they compare to other methods. I also suspect that they may be reacting viscerally to the fact that Franklin is not really advocating NFP because it is super-effective, but because he thinks other methods are immoral, and therefore that he is not making an honest argument.
Here’s a very detailed look at NFP from someone who has done it, but doesn’t feel that it’s the only moral birth control option, so is very realistic about the pros and cons. One thing she notes is that the cervical symptoms are not as clear-cut as you might think. She talks about how stressful the first time having sex after ovulation was, because she might have calculated incorrectly.
Another thing I hadn’t realized is that getting up to go to the bathroom within an hour of your temperature check can mess it up.
None of this is to say NFP is horrible and no one should use it. But it’s not accurate to say that the most difficult method to use is “better” than much easier methods with the same effectiveness.
Kelly K,
Your link is wrong about the ‘typical use’ effectiveness of NFP, the most recent studies of state-of-the-art NFP are more on the order of 0.5% to 12% failure, not 25%. (For comparison, failure rates for the Pill seem to be 2% to 8%: IUDs around 1% or less). But we’ve been over that, and you seem to concede that NFP can be pretty effective (maybe a bit inferior to the Pill, but superior to condoms), so I won’t argue with you.
It’s quite true that NFP is difficult to use for some women (most notably because it forbids sex around the time of ovulation, when some women’s desire is strongest). However, as we all know, the Pill doesn’t work well for all women either. Some women experience increases in blood pressure, others experience weight gain or reduced libido, and I’ve certainly heard female friends of mine complain about the side effects. I have no interest in forbidding anyone from using hormonal birth control, and would generally favour it being covered by insurance and freely available, but it isn’t a panacea anymore than NFP is, and some women prefer NFP for personal health reasons rather than religious/moral ones. And then there are some women, as well as men, who don’t particularly like condoms (in addition to condoms having a higher failure rate than NFP).
And then of course there are the moral reasons in favour of NFP, which I know many people here don’t accept, but clearly Franklin does, as do a significant number of other people. If you accept the moral premises (I don’t, for what it’s worth), then Franklin is right.
@Hector, again, if Franklinhad said “Symptothermal NFP can be very effective, and for people such as myself it is the only moral choice” I doubt we’d still be talking about it. “Here is some bullshit about NFP because I want you to use it and I’ll bend the truth if need be” is a very different argument.
Franklin: “God is imminently logical”
Good to know, since I haven’t seen signs of God’s logic yet. Should we expect this within the day or within the week?
I have been refraining from commenting, as it’s not usually a good idea to put one’s words out there directly after ten minutes or so of screaming at one’s computer due to a comment thread. But, on reflection, may I state just this: this lack of unity, of bonding, of whateverthehell it is that Franklin is talking about; this theoretical loss of intimacy, for which there is no objective evidence whatsoever; this nebulous deficiency – what is the actual harm of this thing that may or may not exist, but probably doesn’t (and I must insist that one’s belief that a thing exists, unsupported, does not constitute evidence of its existence)? Where is the documented, proven, real harm? Because I can tell you the harm of the alternative. I can tell you that if I became pregnant again I’d be down at my local Planned Parenthood – which, since I live in a state where the citizens and legislators don’t feel compelled to be jerks, provides abortions and is within walking distance – for an abortion appointment as soon as I realized I was pregnant. I have had two children and there is nothing, no amount of money, no amount of help that would convince me to do that again. Nothing. Note that I didn’t have particularly rough pregnancies; just among women I know I can give you several who had much worse experiences. But I will not go through another pregnancy and I will not raise another child.
I should also note that never, not once, not ever did either my husband or I ever, on having finished sex, roll over and say, “You know, that was good, but it could have been better if only we might possibly have started another offspring down the pipes.”
And one last note: Assuming a certain percentage loss in achieved intimacy with sex while using contraception (let us call this number N), and factoring in days when intercourse is not possible while using NFP (Z), we can find the required number of extra acts of intercourse per non-fertile day for intimacy for the NFP couple to equal that of the contracepting couple:
(100 – N) X F = 100 X B X I/28
where F equals number of instances of intercourse per day for the contracepting couple, B equals number of instances of intercourse for the NFP couple, I equals the number of infertile days on which the NFP couple can have intercourse, and 28 is used as the standard length of a menstrual cycle.
If we assume, say, ten possibly fertile days, and therefore 18 infertile days, then the NFP side of the equation becomes:
100 X B X 18/28
or
100 X B X 0.6
or
60 X B
It’s actually slightly greater than 0.6, but it’s early and I’m lazy. This gives us:
(100 – N) X F = 60 X B
or
(100 – N) X F/60 = B
or
F (100-N)/60 = B
meaning that, if N is less than forty, then, assuming the two couples average the same number of acts of intercourse per day when they actually have intercourse, then the contracepting couple achieves a greater total intimacy.
Final, final note: I refuse to check this crap for errors. It is early and I have had too much coffee. There are probably errors. Doesn’t matter, since the whole loss of intimacy idea is one for which there exists no credible evidence.
Footnote: I apologize for the crappy formatting of the equations. Never sure what will provoke the whole thing to go bazoo. Erring on the side of caution.
Re: “Here is some bullshit about NFP because I want you to use it and I’ll bend the truth if need be” is a very different argument.
I agree, but then I hope you’re equally critical of people (including some friends and associates of mine, highly educated ones who should know better) who praise the Pill without mentioning the potential weight gain / decreased libido, or people who sing the praises of condoms without mentioning the fairly high failure rate.
I agree that Franklin mis-stated the efficacy of NFP (it is not *the most* effective method out there), and he also made some false statements (subsequently retracted) about the pill & the morning after pill causing implantation failures (they don’t).
Re: Remember, Kant argued explicitly (and re-confirmed when challenged) that under deontological ethics, there is a moral obligation to turn the Jews over to the Nazis, rather than hiding them. Because: lying is wrong.
While that’s true, the Catholic natural-law tradition from which Franklin is coming, is not quite either deontological or consequentialist. Although it’s further towards the deontological end (i.e. more legalistic) than the Orthodox or than many Protestants. I think the *general* consensus among Catholic moralists (and I mean only the extremely orthodox, toe-the-Vatican-line-ones, not the standard issue/more liberal Catholic), is that in the case you cite:
1) You certainly can and should *hide* the refugees, and do your best to protect them (including by force if necessary), the question is whether you can actually lie.
2) While actually lying would be a sin, intentionally deceptive circumlocutions, gestures, behaviours, ambiguous phrasing and ‘mental reservations’ would be allowed and encouraged.
3) To the extent that lying would be a sin, it would be a venial sin (i.e. not one that damages the soul, and of considerably less gravity than, say, jerking off).
I’m not Catholic, and I wouldn’t agree with them here, but I just wanted to state the Catholic position fairly as I understand it (which is substantially different than Kant’s position, and based on substantially stronger arguments).
The problem being, of course, that from a non-Catholic point of view that looks like going to a lot of trouble to argue around to the position that one knows one wants to end up with, because one can’t endure the idea that one’s moral system might actually logically lead to turning Jews over to the Nazis; also, that would not be a time at which one wanted to do much moral agonizing. I mean, even worrying about whether it was proper to lie under such circumstances probably would not induce the sort of clear thinking that one would wish to have, under such circumstances.
Myca @133
Okay, Godwin nit-pick: I do not believe Kant said anything “explicit” about Nazis, as he died more than 100 years before the Nazis came to power.
Nevertheless, he did write (in two places, I believe) of an analogous situation about hiding someone and what to do if someone comes to capture or kill that person. In both instances, I think the issue at hand was whether one could lie about the person’s whereabouts, not some duty to turn them over (sorry, it has been a while since I read these passages and I don’t have my 5000 page “abridged” writings of Kant with me at work). In at least one of those places, if not both, Kant said that one option is that you can refuse to say anything, but, if you choose to say something, you may not lie.
That puts a different option out there: do nothing, say nothing. In Kant’s view, saying nothing is the better option than lying. And, for those who think this is a silly option to say nothing in the face of Nazi stormtroopers (which might cost you your life), that situation is not unlike (though certainly a milder version of) the situation faced by some Jews who had to decide whether it was moral to smother a crying baby in order to remain hidden from the Nazis.
These are not simple questions.
-Jut
They do rather make the point that the fine distinctions of morality are much easier to ponder upon when one isn’t in imminent danger of death, though, don’t they?
Re: the situation faced by some Jews who had to decide whether it was moral to smother a crying baby in order to remain hidden from the Nazis.
Well, the difference is in one case you’re actually killing/harming an innocent person, and in the other case you’re not. (The case against *lying* to the Nazi has nothing to do with harm, it boils down to the argument that lying perverts the communicative faculty and frustrates its natural end, which is to convey what we believe).
One can of course make arguments that ‘conveying what we believe’ *isn’t* the sole natural end of speech, that it serves moral and social functions as well as communicative ones, and if those premises are granted than the main argument against lying to the Nazis falls down.
If you’re not an amoral, narcissistic monster, they really are.
You lie to the Nazis. You save the Jews.
You don’t ‘refuse to speak,’ because then not only do the Nazis kill you, they also search your home and kill the hidden Jews. (Additionally, of course, refusing to speak contradicts the moral imperative, as it “perverts the communicative faculty and frustrates its natural end” as much as a lie. It’s not universifiable, it treats the Nazi as a means, etc.)
As Hector points out, comparing ‘lying to the Nazis’ to smothering a baby seems to miss some important points.
This is part of the problem with the deontological nonsense Kant calls a moral philosophy. His pose is that it lays out moral rules without exceptions: “Lying is never okay. Period.” “What about the inquiring murderer?” “NO NEVER NO NO NO.”
But, of course, he makes plenty of exceptions in his moral philosophy. “Murder is never okay except for in war when it doesn’t count as murder for some reason.”
Ah, so the wartime exception – does that apply to lying? No, of course not. Why not? Because Kant. Derp derp derp.
I think that part of the difficulty is that, contra Kant and Franklin, outcomes are and ought to be part of our moral calculus. Not 100% – I’m not a utilitarian, by any means – but part.
As I said earlier, ideas are never more important than people. Lying to a murderer in order to prevent a murder is supremely moral. Hard-and-fast-moral-law-with-no-exceptions-ever is a comforting idea, since you never have to grapple with the messy trade-offs of reality, but comforting isn’t the same as right.
Sure. It’s just that it’s rare in philosophy, which so often deals in hypothetical, to see the real world refute a philosopher so well. The actual example of the actual Nazis actually going door to door stands in opposition to all of the rhetorical bullshit Kant’s defenders have spun over the centuries. All of their excuses, all of their theorizing, all of their justifications fall away in the face of this truth.
Though neither Kant nor Constant used the term “Nazi” (since, as you point out, they were some distance off), the scenario Benjamin Constant proposed could not have more perfectly been matched by the Nazis had he known about them beforehand.
Natural law, while utter horseshit, is not what I’m arguing against … I’m just trying to address Franklin’s arguments in this thread, which are unquestionably deontological.
—Myca
There’s a difference between not mentioning drawbacks and outright fabrication, which is what Franklin was engaged in.
I would certainly object to anyone who said something like, “The birth control bill is awesome, and there are no side effects,” which would be the equivalent.
—Myca
Re: 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.
Well, I’d say (as would other pro-life folks) that the life of your unborn child was more important than whether you got to stay in high school, go to college, etc.. So no, we wouldn’t agree that that you made the right choice, or that your abortion was morally acceptable, or that it should have been legal. We are not permitted to murder someone in order to stay in school. (Of course, I’d prefer we had a society where teen mothers received generous social and financial support, so that they could eventually go back to school and get well paying jobs).
Sebastian,
Assuming it’s a genuine question, and with the caveat that I’m not Catholic and don’t subscribe to their position against contraception, here are the answers as I understand. It stems from the basic premises that contraception denatures the sex act, and that this denaturing of the sex act is a sin.
1) Taking a contraceptive to guard against the possibility of pregnancy regarding from rape, is allowed, and isn’t considered to be an act of contraception. (Sin requires the assent of the will, the sin involved in contraception attaches to the sex act rather than to the act of swallowing the pill, and in the case of rape, there is no assent to the sex act, hence no sin).
2) Taking a contraceptive for health reasons is also allowed, and isn’t considered to be contraception (Sin requires, again, a sinful intent, and when you take the pill for purposes other than denaturing the sex act, you lack the sinful intent).
3) An operation that leaves you unable to have children, as a side effect, isn’t considered a sin if there are (other) legitimate medical reasons for it. Again, the issue here is that (in theory) there is no contraceptive intent.
Re: I assume that it is also OK to use a morning-after pill if a pregnancy is likely to kill the mother.
Yea, in this case the actual sex act would be considered to be a sin, but the act of taking the morning-after pill wouldn’t be. As noted above, it’s a contraceptive, not an abortifacient.
Re: Or even to perform a late term abortion if the mother would otherwise die.
I think there’s some wiggle room here for Catholic moralists, revolving around what counts as a direct abortion vs. a surgery to save the mother’s life, with the side effect of killing the baby. Most non-Catholic churches do explicitly allow abortion in ‘life of the mother’ cases, though.
Re: 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.
Right. It’s worth pointing out, though, that Irish law does allow abortion to save the life of the mother, though not in any other cases (as far as I know). The current legal changes are seeking to clarify the existing law, not to install a new one.
Is lying always that bad? I know a couple who claimed they were going to New Orleans for their honeymoon, when actually they were staying home but wanted privacy.
Now, I admit I felt like an idiot for rather forcefully recommending a restaurant in New Orleans, but I can’t say that anyone was actually harmed. (The restaurant was LeRuth’s, it was decades ago, and I have no idea whether it’s still as good.)
More generally, lying is a major defense of the weak. It’s unfortunate that it’s needed, but I’m not sure that having lying be a major moral break is a way of making the world better.
Possibly of interest: James Scott’s Two Cheers for Anarchy, which has quite a bit about the importance of various sorts of informal non-cooperation with the folks in charge.
Cite please? What studies, performed by whom? And do they count pregnancies that happen while a couple was using NFP as failures or as intentional?
Also, I’m not arguing that NFP is horrible and that nobody should use it. Just that there are other methods that are both more reliable and easier (in general) to use perfectly.
My personal experience with temperature charting and my high anxiety levels mean that it’s not something *I* should use. And I’m not a fan of the holier-than-thou moralizing that surrounds it, or the false notion that one person’s religion can make sweeping statements that must be true about another person’s sex life.
What makes an embryo or a fetus “someone,” though? I mean, in a sense that’s actually verifiable in a secular society, which rules out any theological ideas about souls. How do we determine that an entity without a functioning brain not only has the same rights as a human, but the right to use another human’s body against her will, endangering her health in the process? (If abortion should be illegal, then, by the same argument, organ donation should be mandatory.)
I also don’t know if the direct comparison even makes sense. It sounds like people who use and stick with NFP are, on average, people who are exceptionally organized and diligent when it comes to their own fertility.
Is it really safe to assume that the average contraception user is going to have identical results?
It’s as if the Advanced Calculus class in a high school has students who get “A”s on average, while the average grade of the ordinary-track math class is a “B-.” If we convinced all the ordinary-track math students to switch to taking Advanced Calculus instead, the result won’t be that they will all start being A students.
Well Yeah. Bertrand Russell once said something about not trusting a complete theory of the world developed by a man who never got more than 10 km outside of his hometown.
—Myca
Yeah, also true. It would be nice if there were some way to factor “level of effort” into the “typical use” statistics.
KellyK,
The study I’ve heard about most often in the last few years is this one from Germany, it was done over a 20 year period with 900 women, so it’s one of the largest datasets out there. They had a 2% failure rate (under typical use) and a 0.4% failure rate under perfect use. About 9% of women dropped out of the study due to difficulties with the method.
http://humrep.oxfordjournals.org/content/22/5/1310.long
In general, estimates of ‘typical use’ failure rates for the symptothermal method range from 0.5% to 20%. The German study is one of the most recent, and probably one of the most reliable due to the large scope, and it’s close to the low end of the range.
The alternative (most recent) NFP method uses, I think, urine hormone levels plus another indicator (either temperature or cervical mucus). The set of such techniques is called the Marquette Method after where they were developed, and it appears that the combination of cervical mucus/urine hormone monitoring yields a perfect use failure rate of 0.6%, a typical use failure rate of 8%.
http://epublications.marquette.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1006&context=nursing_fac&sei-redir=1&referer=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bing.com%2Fsearch%3Fq%3Dmarquette%2Bmethod%2Bnfp%2Bfehring%26qs%3Dn%26form%3DQBRE%26pq%3Dmarquette%2Bmethod%2Bnfp%2Bfehring%26sc%3D0-21%26sp%3D-1%26sk%3D#search=%22marquette%20method%20nfp%20fehring%22
The 0.5% ‘typical use’ rate is based from a study in China, involving 990 women, that I’m having difficulty finding right now. Even if that study is accurate though, it’s probably not particularly generalizable to other countries: China is (to say the least) very different from us, demographically, socially and politically. On the other hand, the advantage of that study (by contrast with the ones in Wisconsin and Germany) was that participants were randomly assigned, not self selected. I wouldn’t put too much weight on that study though, partly because it may not be published yet, and partly because it was in China.
Re: What makes an embryo or a fetus “someone,” though? I mean, in a sense that’s actually verifiable in a secular society, which rules out any theological ideas about souls
What makes you ‘someone’, as in a person worthy of legal protection? Or me?
The embryo is clearly a distinct organism with a unique genetic code, and if we were asking the question ‘when does this person’s life cycle begin’, the answer would be the same as with any other (diploid) organism: fertilization. My philosophical assumption is that personhood begins at the same time that one’s biological life cycle begins. You can choose to define personhood at other points in time (you could even argue that a human being isn’t a person until well after they are born, if you felt like, and some people do). Those lines all seem arbitrary to me, and I don’t see how a bright line can be drawn between abortion and infanticide. The distinguishing thing about pregnancy is that sometimes it poses serious health threats to the mother, and in those cases I think killing the baby (=abortion) should be allowed on the grounds of the right of self defence.
Re: And I’m not a fan of the holier-than-thou moralizing that surrounds it,
Well, yes, because you don’t share the moral theory underpinning it. If you did, the moralizing might seem convincing to you. (Or not: it’s possible to make an argument in favour of artificial contraception from within the natural law tradition, and some have).
An aborted fetus in virtually all cases lacks a complex cerebral cortex – a state that, in a born human being, would be called brain-dead. Legally, after being born, such a being is not considered alive in our culture. If the family or hospital elects to shut off the life support machines in such a case, that is not considered murder in our culture (at least, not in the mainstream).
(You might say “taking away life support isn’t actively killing someone, it’s merely allowing them to die.” But what if the hospital decides – without permission of the patient – to turn off the life support of a patient whose brain is functional? That might well be murder, unless there are some really odd extenuating circumstances.)
A patient without a cerebral cortex is legally and morally dead. This makes sense, because the thing we most value about that person – their individual human personality – is dead, and so are they. Ditto for a zygote, embryo or fetus.
So what makes a one-month fetus different, in your view?
There’s the matter of potential. But “could potentially become X” is not morally identical to “X.” An acorn is not an oak tree; we can easily imagine circumstances in which it would be wrong to cut down an oak tree, but fine to crush the acorns lying on the ground around the oak tree.
I could see recognizing some value in a potential person – just as I could recognize some value in an acorn. But to say there’s no moral difference in the value of an embryo versus that of a five-year-old is ridiculous. To say a mindless being is morally identical to a being with a mind, is to say that our minds have absolutely no value when making moral calculations.
Virtually all abortion takes place before the development of brain features which make it possible for a mind to exist. Infants, in contrast, already have advanced and functioning brains.
There’s also an enormous difference because women exist. Abortion is an issue of “rights in conflict” – the mother’s versus the embryo’s. This conflict has ceased to exist once birth has taken place. I don’t think you can consider that a meaningless distinction, unless you consider the mother’s rights to be meaningless (which I’m not assuming you do).
Ampersand,
Your whole argument essentially boils down to materialist premises: you think the mind and personality are epiphenomenal to the physical brain. I’m not a materialist, so I think that’s silly.
Now, KellyK asked if there are any arguments against early-term abortion that aren’t premised on the existence of an immaterial soul. Maybe not (although you could make a decent argument about potential). But what you fail to see is that your argument assumes the *nonexistence* of the soul (i.e. that thought and personality are dependent on the physical brain). That is no more a neutral argument than mine is.
Ultimately, I don’t think I’m going to convince you about when personhood begins, and you aren’t going to convince me (since I’m a substance dualist, and you’re a philosophical materialist/naturalist). However, since we can’t seem to agree, it seems more reasonable for us to err on the side of safety. Since we aren’t sure exactly when personhood starts, we should choose the earlier time point: conception. Which means, all abortions, except when the mother’s health is threatened, should be banned.
Re: I don’t think you can consider that a meaningless distinction, unless you consider the mother’s rights to be meaningless (which I’m not assuming you do).
*Compared to the life of the embryo*, I think the so-called rights of the mother are fairly trivial. They are not unimportant in and of themselves, but they can hardly be considered of equal value to the life of the embryo, which is far more important. Cultural liberals like to make much of slogans about ‘autonomy’ and such like, but whatever you think of so-called rights to bodily autonomy, they are limited and not absolute: when it comes to the liberty of the mother or the life of her child, there should be no conflict. The life of the child (whether at the embryo stage, or much closer to birth) is much more important.
Re: I could see recognizing some value in a potential person – just as I could recognize some value in an acorn
I don’t accept that the embryo is a potential person- I would say he/she is a full fledged person like you or me- but even those people who only think it’s a potential person, might easily conclude that the life of the potential person outweighs the so-called liberty or autonomy of the mother.
Evidence is lacking for the existence of souls. When I am presented with solid evidence for the existence of souls I will reconsider my current position. Until then, your statement in favor of souls is no stronger than an argument in favor of mythical being of your choice. If your argument on any subject requires a shared belief in something for which there is no favorable evidence it is an astonishingly weak argument.
Jake Squid,
Materialism/naturalism isn’t anymore provable than the existence of the soul.
I’m generally fine with a society in which we have the separation of church and state (if not my ideal situation, I can live with it), but there are issues about which the state can’t remain neutral. If the Christian theory about life beginning at conception is correct, then abortion *really is* equivalent to infanticide, and the protection of innocent human life (which is pretty much the most important imperative) becomes *more important* than maintaining church-state separation. (Not that you need to be a Christian to believe life begins at conception, just that Christians generally *happen to* believe that).
Thanks for posting here, and for remaining polite; I know it’s not always easy being the odd person out in these forums.
I think that in the same way I think that my thumb is connected to my hand, or that gravity exists; it is a well-proven fact, one that cannot be shown to be in doubt using any evidence-based logic. (*)
There is no basis that anything called a “soul” exists apart from the brain. It’s a purely religious argument, and thus conflicts with the idea of the state not establishing a religion. (My argument is not religious at all, in contrast.)
And even if the soul exists – and you’ve provided no logical reason to believe that – that would hardly win the argument for you, because you’d have to demonstrate that souls are significantly harmed by abortion.
If killing the body leaves the individual personality intact and alive, after all, then the grounds for calling abortion a major harm, as opposed to just an inconvenience, are much weaker. (We’d also have to significantly rethink both murder laws and, on the liberal side, opposition to capital punishment.)
You’re also not going to be able to convince me that my children are doomed to burn in Hell unless someone tells them about Christ. Should you therefore favor using the force of law to make sure my children are taught about Christ?
If not, why not? Surely burning in Hell for all eternity is at LEAST as bad as being aborted (unless you believe that aborted souls go to Hell, in which case they are equally bad).
I think the answer to both questions is that in a civilized, multicultural society – and particularly one with a First Amendment – the force of law should not be used to force religious beliefs and practices on those who don’t share them. If something cannot be reasonably justified with secular logic, then it doesn’t belong in the law of a secular government.
That is only true if we accept your religious belief that it is possible for a person to exist without a cerebral cortex. I don’t accept that premise.
Because creatures without higher brains cannot have “rights,” any more than a fence post can have rights, the embryo has no rights of its own. It can have value, the same way that many things without rights can have value – because the way people think about it makes it valuable.
But nothing without an individual living personality can have rights. So when the two are in conflict, the rights of the mother always overcome the “rights” of the embryo.
Re: Potential person. Since you made no argument here, I don’t see any need to respond.
(*) Of course, I suppose someone could take a meat cleaver to my hand, and then say “see? The thumb’s not connected!” But I’m excluding that sort of logic from consideration here, although in a certain sense it is evidence-based.
Absurd. There is objective, observable evidence for the assertion that thought and personality are dependent on the physical brain. It may not be “provable,” but it’s about as close as humanly possible given our limited experience of the world.
There is absolutely zero objective, observable evidence for the existence of the soul. It’s not just “not provable,” it is in no way scientifically supportable. And I say that as someone who believes in souls! I’m just honest enough to realize that faith is a choice, and part of the definition of faith is believing in something despite the lack of objective, observable evidence. It’s unreasonable to expect the rest of the world to bend to, or even agree with, my faith, because faith is inherently irrational.
The rest of your argument is a riff on Pascal’s Wager, but “What if magic really DOES exist?” is not really a compelling argument to anyone not already predisposed to believe in magic. To base public policy on the supernatural belief that a fetus not only has a soul, but has one before it shows any evidence of brain activity, is not “to err on the side of safety,” as you say, it’s to err on the side of irrationality over the evidence we have in front of our eyes.
Of course materialism is more provable than the existence of the soul. The material world is the only one that all reasonable people can look at and make reasonable inferences about. True objectivity may be impossible, but materialism comes as close as we can get. The spirit world is something that, far as we know, may only exist in our imaginations. While I may believe in that realm, I also believe it shows supreme arrogance to make judgments about it. It is wrong to hold certainty over that which we have no right to. And it is even more wrong to push our flawed perceptions of what exists beyond onto other human beings in the material world.
To be perfectly accurate you need acknowledge that I am a physicalist rather than a materialist.
Well, I can’t disprove the existence of the invisible brain slugs that control each and every person, either. Therefore… they are just as likely to exist as souls (given a few more millennia to find no evidence of them).
Yeah, the lack of evidence blah, blah, blah. Nothing would get done if we took every possibility – no matter how unlikely – to be equally valid.
Basically, nothing is provable since we can’t prove our perceptions are correct. In which case all argument is baseless and why are we arguing about/discussing anything? Is it just so we have something to do?
I find your reductionist argument (the “nothing is provable” one) to be absurd and suspect it is meant to shut down opposition to your beliefs.
Hector:
I know I have said this before in other similar conversations, but I feel the need to point out, since you are making a Christian and not a universally accepted religious argument, that there are religious traditions that disagree. Judaism, among the monotheistic traditions, is one of them; Buddhism is another.
When you try to impose a Christian notion of when personhood and/or ensoulment begins and on top of that impose the Christian perspective on weighing the rights of the mother versus the rights of the embryo/fetus–and I wonder if you realize just how offensive the modifier “so-called” is–you are in fact imposing the specific morality of one religious tradition on people who believe in different traditions, never mind people who don’t accept religious traditions as at all relevant in this question.
All of which goes not only to Amp’s point about living in a “civilized, multicultural society,” but also to the tendency of this debate to devolve into one that assumes Christianity’s is the only religious position worth considering. In my experience, this devolution is due largely to the tendency of Christians to assume that theirs is the only tradition that has access to the truth. (I am not saying, Hector, that you take this position, since I don’t know; I am reporting my experience in previous discussions of this sort.)
Richard Jeffrey Newman,
Yes, I’m aware of that. And I appreciate that Jews, Buddhists, and secularists will feel aggrieved (with good reason) that their views about abortion wouldn’t be taken into account, in my regime. But that’s inescapable, because as I said above, there is *no neutral position* on the question. One can’t remain neutral on the question of whether the [fetus/embryo/unborn baby] is a person or not, because if they are, then a serious injustice is being done to them. We need to decide when personhood starts. And if we aren’t going to decide based on the tenets of any religious revelation, then we have at least three choices:
1) Let the people decide democratically when abortion should be allowed. You and I both agree, presumably, that’s absurd and immoral. This is too important a question for a popular vote.
2) Err on the side of the life of the [fetus/embryo/unborn child]. This is the pro-life position, and mine, which happens to line up with Christianity.
3) Err on the side of women’s autonomy. This is the pro-choice position, which happens to line up with some other religions, and with the ethics of (some) secular physicalists.
It’s unclear to me why position 3) is *more neutral* than position 2). Neither of them are neutral, either religiously or philosophically. One person has to give way, and there isn’t room for compromise in theory.
*In practice*, I think there is some room for compromise right now, because Roe v. Wade isn’t going anywhere in the foreseeable future, so it makes sense for the pro-life movement to focus their efforts on the cultural arena rather than the legal arena for the time being. And to try to build a society that makes it easier for young, poor and/or unmarried mothers to care for their babies, which I think will do a lot to lower the abortion rate.
I am somewhat curious what will happen to public opinion about abortion in the next few decades, I think there are demographic reasons to expect it might shift towards the pro-life side, but I’m not really sure.
I think the so-called rights of the mother are fairly trivial. They are not unimportant in and of themselves, but they can hardly be considered of equal value to the life of the embryo, which is far more important.
I think it’s pretty safe to say that I don’t, and didn’t, think that my rights or needs were “fairly trivial.”
I was also, at the time, a subscriber to a Christian faith that agreed with me, and considered early-term abortion a matter for a woman to decide in consultation with God.
And given that I have no God any more, religious-based arguments couldn’t be more “trivial” to me.
Because position 3 allows all people to live according to the dictates of their conscience, while position 2 does not. Position 3 allows those who believe that a fetus is a full person to act accordingly, while position 2 does not accord the same respect to those of us who believe otherwise.
It’s the difference between forced childbirth, forced abortion, and the ability to choose childbirth or abortion for oneself. The fact that there is no meaningful segment of the American political spectrum calling for forced abortion means that sometimes people think of “forced childbirth” and “the ability to choose childbirth or abortion for oneself” as diametrically opposed positions. They’re not. The ability to choose childbirth or abortion for oneself is the neutral position.
—Myca
Re: I think it’s pretty safe to say that I don’t, and didn’t, think that my rights or needs were “fairly trivial.”
I’m sure. I also, of course, think that you’re wrong. And I said, specifically, *compared with the life of that embryo*, your other concerns were fairly unimportant
.
Re: The ability to choose childbirth or abortion for oneself is the neutral position.
Clever, but not really: you’re choosing to frame it that way, but it could be framed in other ways. One could equally easily make the argument that there are three ‘reasonable’ positions:
1) No one has the right to artificially control reproduction at any stage (i.e. no birth control, no abortion).
2) You have the right to control reproduction up to a certain point (conception), but not after that point (barring health reasons, etc.).
3) You can control reproduction at any stage (i.e. abortion on demand).
I’d say that’s an equally valid framing of the debate, and it leaves the basic “no elective abortion” position as the neutral one. (I can’t conceive of ‘I have an absolute right to control my own reproduction’ as in any way a ‘neutral’, or reasonable one: it seems to me to be a radically libertarian conception of the world, bordering on nihilism.)
You’re confusing ‘neutral’ with ‘middle’ which is at least wandering about in the neighborhood of the fallacy of moderation. Allowing citizens the ability to choose childbirth or abortion for themselves is not neutral because ‘there are three options and look it’s in the middle,’ it’s neutral in that it does not stake-out a metaphysical position and force citizens to conform to it, but rather allows them to determine their own metaphysical beliefs and act in accordance with them.
Part of your problem is that you seem to think that it’s the government’s role to take a philosophical position and to enact laws in line with that philosophical position, which is muddy thinking at best.
Take childbirth out of the equation. Think of it as a discussion about attending church.
If you begin from the position that the government ought to (or has no choice but to) decide whether the Christian God is good and true and right and to enact laws that express that metaphysical position, you might see the positions as:
1) The Christian God is true! Let us encourage his worship!
2) The Christian god is false! Let us discourage his worship!
And you’d be right … a government that must determine a metaphysical position and enact laws in concord with that position must, of nature, take sides.
Thus the actually neutral position is the one we have:
3) We’re not going to take an official position as to the truth-standard of Jehovah. Let the people believe, and worship, as they may.
Allowing the populace to determine their own metaphysics is the neutral position.
—Myca
Does being anti-abortion because it’s better to not take chances lead to being anti-war? If women’s interests are negligible compared to the interests of the fetuses they’re carrying, then I think it follows that the people in a country’s interest in not being conquered is negligible compared to the risk of killing innocents. Even in wars of national self-defense which are within the attacked nation’s borders, there’s still the risk of a nation killing its own civilians, not to mention that there might be pregnant women in the invading country’s army or support staff.
Okay, so if “life” always supersedes “bodily autonomy,” then a law mandating blood donation for everyone qualified would be moral, right? Same with organ donation, provided that you’re healthy enough that the surgery is no riskier than childbirth, and it’s an organ you can do without (e.g., anything you have two of, or pieces of anything that will grow back)? For that matter, should any organization that’s saving lives be allowed to conscript people—after all, my choice of what to do with my time or my money is insignificant in comparison to someone else’s life, right?
Treating an embryo or fetus as a person with an inalienable right to life *inherently* treats the mother as less than a person. “You must spend a year of your life having your body used to support another life” is not a neutral, or “better safe than sorry” statement; it’s a statement that she is less than a person and her body exists for the use of others, even “others” who aren’t “people” in any verifiable sense of the word.
This is another good argument. Most Christians hold that a child who dies goes to heaven, after all. So, not only is banning abortion choosing in favor of something that may not be a person, it’s assuming that even if it is, it would perceive what happens to it as harm.
Religiously, I tend to believe that the fact that half of fertilized eggs don’t implant anyway, and another sixth of those are miscarried, is fairly strong evidence that souls come into existence some time *after* conception. This isn’t exactly rock-solid, because it’s based on a view of a caring God who doesn’t make souls and then kill them just for the hell of it—which an awful lot of horrible diseases and natural disasters could be viewed as evidence against. But there’s also a logical contradiction in the idea that an embryo can have a soul (or be a “person” if we want to pretend we’re using non-religious arguments) prior to the point where it could split into twins.
It doesn’t actually have to assume the nonexistence of the soul. You could assume nonexistence, you could assume the soul comes into existence at the same time as brain function does, you could assume that the soul exists but is not harmed, you could be uncertain about the existence of souls and when they come into being, etc.
It assumes only that we should not force people to make decisions based on things whose existence we have no evidence for, and that the value of someone who is provably, demonstrably a person is greater than the value of someone who might be a person by some definitions, when those definitions require us to accept the existence of things we have no evidence for.
Nice! That’s an exceptionally long-term study with enough participants to make it meaningful. (Thank you for sharing that.) I also like that they actually included in the abstract how many people dropped out due to difficulties with the method.
So, over the course of a year, 11% of women either got pregnant or gave up on the method due to difficulties with it. Now I really want to find similar studies of other methods of birth control that would allow comparison of the failure rate and drop-out rate combined.
Hector,
First, regarding neutrality, what Myca said. Second, since your position is rooted in faith, which is essentially a non-rational act of imagination–which I mean as description, not criticism–I recognize there is no point in arguing with you about the nature of your position. My goal in pointing out the existence of other religious ways of understanding abortion was to point out that your “regime,” which I think was a very apt choice of words, would be just that, a decidedly Christian regime, one that would be antithetical to the idea of a nation where there is freedom of religion. That is the problem with your position, not your own commitment to its internal logic. (And, for the record, the Jewish position, which does not see abortion as murder, is not rooted in concern for the woman’s autonomy per se, as that term would be typically understood in the pro-choice position, but rather for the integrity of her personhood. I am not arguing for the Jewish position per se when I say that; I just want to point out that even the oppositional categories you are using to make your argument are really too narrow.)
I know I have linked to this post of mine before in threads like this, “Know Thine Enemy: Fetal Personhood as Metaphorical Thinking.” It’s long, but I think it’s relevant. Saying an embryo/fetus is a person is not only saying that it is “just like me” in some very fundamental way; it is also saying that I am, fundamentally, no more than what it is, and that is a reductive way of thinking that I think is very scary.
Nancy:
And not only that, Nancy, but some of them might be carrying boys.
KellyK:
This is an excellent point. I nominate Hector’s liver and bone marrow for involuntary donation to those who need them.
Grace
Re: Okay, so if “life” always supersedes “bodily autonomy,” then a law mandating blood donation for everyone qualified would be moral, right? Same with organ donation, provided that you’re healthy enough that the surgery is no riskier than childbirth, and it’s an organ you can do without (e.g., anything you have two of, or pieces of anything that will grow back)?
The operative distinction there is, active vs. passive. In the case of abortion, the child is *already there*, and by interrupting the pregnancy we would be actively killing a child. In the case of choosing not to donate an organ, you’re passively failing to affirmatively act to help someone else out. Killing vs. letting die, etc.
Having said that, organ donation has some substantial health risks, but I wouldn’t particularly object to, say, mandating that everyone over a certain weight was required to donate blood (nor would I particularly favour it, but it doesn’t seem clearly immoral to me).
Re: For that matter, should any organization that’s saving lives be allowed to conscript people—after all, my choice of what to do with my time or my money is insignificant in comparison to someone else’s life, right?
Yes, sure. I’d be perfectly happy with the government requisitioning people’s labour for, say, a few days every week or whatever, as long as they can still support themselves. Labour taxes and the like are pretty common thing in human history, under both feudal and socialist societies. If societies can conscript people (for certain time periods) into the military, then they can equally well conscript people into building roads, doing farm labour, or anything else the government chooses.
Having said that, of course, abortion is still a separate issue because of the active/passive distinction. The choice isn’t between ‘actively helping someone’ and ‘doing nothing’, it’s between ‘actively killing someone’ and ‘doing nothing’.
Re: Treating an embryo or fetus as a person with an inalienable right to life *inherently* treats the mother as less than a person.
Uh, we place restrictions on what children can do all the time, that doesn’t mean we don’t recognize children as people. That children aren’t allowed to vote, doesn’t make them any less ‘people’. If you think being a full-fledged person means having the ‘liberty’ to do whatever you like, then you have a deeply impoverished understanding of personhood.
Re: “You must spend a year of your life having your body used to support
another life” is not a neutral, or “better safe than sorry” statement;
I don’t see why not. Sometimes our obligations to other people, and to the common good, outweigh what we would like to do with our lives. This is particularly the case when (except in cases of rape), people choose to undertake an activity that has a known, nontrivial risk of pregnancy. Which is another way of saying, I guess, that I don’t place nearly as much importance on personal liberty or autonomy as you do.
Re: My goal in pointing out the existence of other religious ways of understanding abortion was to point out that your “regime,” which I think was a very apt choice of words, would be just that, a decidedly Christian regime, one that would be antithetical to the idea of a nation where there is freedom of religion
Yes, and a nation which allowed abortion rights is implictly operating on the premise that Christian teaching about personhood is false.
Re: Saying an embryo/fetus is a person is not only saying that it is “just like me” in some very fundamental way; it is also saying that I am, fundamentally, no more than what it is, and that is a reductive way of thinking that I think is very scary.
Obviously there are individual attributes you have that a fetus doesn’t, but an embryo shares the same essential nature as you do, and yes, you are fundamentally no more than what the embryo is (and have equal moral worth to the embryo). It’s not particularly my concern if you find that scary or not. The truth is often unpalatable to a lot of people.
The DNA, in other words, is a metaphor for inviolate divinity, which means that every normal conception that takes place is, in fact, a metaphor for the conception of Jesus, and every woman who becomes pregnant is a metaphor for Mary pregnant with Jesus, and every act of heterosexual intercourse is a metaphor for the act by which God entered Mary, and every man who engages in heterosexual intercourse is therefore a metaphor for God, and, most importantly, every conceived child, from the moment of conception through the rest of its life, is a metaphor for Jesus himself.
No, this is blatantly untrue. It may well be operating on the premise that it is not the state’s role to make grand pronouncements about Christian personhood teachings.
You don’t need to respond to my post #179, and I understand why you would not want to, but please stop repeating obviously discredited claims.
What you want, clearly, is for the government to take your side in the culture wars. That’s cool. What we want is neutrality. You won’t do yourself any favors by continuing to claim that neutrality amounts to ‘taking our side.’
—Myca
Myca,
Sorry, I can respond.
“Allowing citizens the ability to choose childbirth or abortion for themselves is……neutral in that it does not stake-out a metaphysical position and force citizens to conform to it, but rather allows them to determine their own metaphysical beliefs and act in accordance with them.”
Yes, but when you say ‘citizens’, you’re implicitly not including the unborn as citizens. That is taking a metaphysical position, if only implicitly.
Hector: “We need to decide when personhood starts.”
As others have alluded too, we really don’t. Even if fetuses are persons with rights, that does not necessarily give them the right to use another person’s body against their will. What you’re actually arguing for is not equal rights for fetuses; you’re arguing that they have special rights that born people no longer have.
Now, I think you can make a case that fetuses, because of their unique status, do have special rights. I would still disagree with this argument, but at least it would be more honest, and more logical.
“Yes, and a nation which allowed abortion rights is implictly operating on the premise that Christian teaching about personhood is false.”
How so? Is a nation which allows gambling implicitly operating on the premise that Christian teaching about gambling is false? Is a nation which allows gay marriage implicitly operating on the premise that Christian teaching about homosexuality is false? Is a nation which doesn’t throw people in jail for sleeping with their neighbor’s spouses and lying about it implicilty operating on the premise that Christian teachings about dishonesty and adultery are false?
Of course not. The implicit premise is that Christian teachings are none of the government’s business. They may be true or false; the government does not take a position. People are free to choose to follow those teachings or not.
There’s also the fact that Christian teaching about personhood may actually be false. It is certainly not provable scientifically at this point. And I, even as a person of faith, do not want myself or my body ruled by the doctrines of a God I have the good sense to acknowledge cannot be empirically proven to exist.
Since your claims about personhood originating at conception cannot be proven, for me it’s a no-brainer that the rights in this situation should be unequivocally held by the person we already know for a fact exists–the woman. Anything else is stating that the nonsentient fetus is more of a person than the woman, and reduces her to the status of incubator. (See the case of Beatriz in El Salvador for a real-life example. And yes, I know she did subsequently have a C-section, but this is the mentality your attitude about abortion produces.)
Religion–any religion, and the doctrines, rules and laws thereof–is only for those who choose to believe, not for the population as a whole.
This is why the wall between church and state exists in this country, and should be made a whole lot bigger, in my opinion.l
Re: How so? Is a nation which allows gambling implicitly operating on the premise that Christian teaching about gambling is false? Is a nation which allows gay marriage implicitly operating on the premise that Christian teaching about homosexuality is false? Is a nation which doesn’t throw people in jail for sleeping with their neighbor’s spouses and lying about it implicilty operating on the premise that Christian teachings about dishonesty and adultery are false?
Abortion is different than those other cases because *if my premises are true*, then it involves direct lethal violence inflicted on a person who has done nothing wrong. It’s true that gambling usually hurts other people, and adultery sometimes does, but neither of them involves direct physical violence in the way that abortion does; and gay marriage doesn’t directly *harm* anyone, except (if you think homosexuality is a sin) the two people involved. None of those things is really comparable. Christians can take a hands-off approach to gay marriage and say ‘not our thing, but the state can do what it thinks best’. They can’t take a hands off approach to abortion, because if there beliefs are correct, then there’s an innocent victim.
Now, you don’t accept my premises, which is OK, but it also means that we’re at an impasse, and compromise or neutrality is unlikely.
>>It’s unclear to me why position 3) is *more neutral* than position 2).
>Because position 3 allows all people to live according to the dictates of their >conscience, while position 2 does not. Position 3 allows those who believe that a >fetus is a full person to act accordingly, while position 2 does not accord the same >respect to those of us who believe otherwise.
Position 3 does that, if the implicit assumptions of Position 3 are considered as postulates of the logical system. Hector is right; that doesn’t make Position 3 wrong or Position 2 right, but it does reduce the credibility of Position 3’s claim to neutrality.
You are right, Myca, that neutrality is not the “middle ground”, but applying the trilemna to other moral questions quickly shows, intuitively, how it isn’t a neutral laissez-faire solution, but rather a solution that implicitly takes a side and then fronts as neutral.
If some people think that Italians are not human, and they are sincere in that belief (which is religious, not scientific, and thus not susceptible to being shown Italian genome maps that are fully human, etc.), then we could say:
Position 1 is that the state says Italians are human and thus even non-believers in Italic humanity are obliged under law to treat them as human, not murder them, not use them as food animals, etc.
Position 2 is that the state says Italians are non-human and thus the converse.
Position 3 is that the state takes no position on the religious question and everyone may treat Italians as they feel called to do by their conscience.
Is position 3 “neutral”? Not from the point of view of an Italian; if you are one of the people who does not believe in Italic humanity then you would consider this neutral because you don’t think Italians have a point of view which is necessary to consider.
You may reply that unlike the example, the personhood of a fetus is scientifically determinable; but as Hector notes, this is the question under discussion. Amp thinks that nothing without a cerebral cortex is human, and Hector disagrees. Therefore, no matter what position the state takes, the beliefs of one of you are being valorized or being suppressed. That doesn’t make the position incorrect on empirical grounds, or say that it is the wrong position to take from the point of view of maximizing civil liberties for the defined preferred class (in this case women) – but it is not and cannot be a neutral position.
No position that defines a group as non-human, that a non-insane group of humans views as human, can be neutral, even if the decision of non-personhood is tacit and implicit.
Yes, absolutely.
We don’t always want the state to be neutral. Sometimes we want the state to take sides. State neutrality on matters of rape and murder sound horrific.
Neutral and right are two different things. You favor state neutrality in matters of racial discrimination. I don’t. You’re wrong.
Your argument, and Hector’s argument boils down to “the state should take my side on the issue of abortion! It shouldn’t be neutral because I’m right right right!”
And yes. We’re aware that you believe that.
But unlike matters of rape, murder, and racial discrimination, matters of ‘when life begins’ and ‘is there a soul’ are much more closely linked to religious matters – matters on which we, as a society have tried our hardest to stake out a scrupulously neutral position.
—Myca
Fixed that.
Hector:
Well, no. Others have responded in more detail above, so I will just say this: A state which allows abortion rights is explicitly operating on the premise that the truth of anyone’s claim as to when personhood begins is ultimately unknowable and that the question of whether or not abortion should be understood as murder, and how to weigh the rights of the mother against those of an embryo/fetus/etc., is therefore best left to the collective and individual consciences of those groups and the people within them.
Amp – Correction noted, apologies for the mis-statement.
Myca – You don’t actually know my positions, amigo, and you missed the point of what I wrote entirely. Other than writing it all again, I don’t know how to make it any clearer, so *elaborate shrug*.
…Except to add that your last paragraph contains its own contradiction so starkly I don’t see how you can miss it.
Maybe this will help:
“But unlike matters of murder, matters of ‘is this killing a murder’ are much more closely linked to religious matters – matters on which we, as a society have tried our hardest to stake out a scrupulously neutral position.”
It’s only a neutral position if you have come down on one side of the religious matter. If you have the opposing religious view, it’s not a neutral position at all. Do you not see how that is not neutrality? If you believe that no, its not a murder, then you see a distinction – and it looks neutral to you. If you believe that it IS a murder then we’re making a policy distinction based on what kind of question it is, FROM THE VIEWPOINT OF ONE SIDE OF THE ARGUMENT. That isn’t neutral; that’s a tacit adoption of one side as right and the other side as wrong.
It’s like being a white guy who doesn’t see any discrimination in the workplace; all the white guys HE knows are getting treated fairly, so how can there be discrimination? The system is totally neutral. The white guys with an IQ of 150 tend to get better jobs than the white guys with IQs of 140, so it’s completely fair. Yes, if you totally obviate the point of view of the people who *fundamentally differ*.
Look, whether ‘abortion is murder’ is the issue at question.
Of course you see a contradiction there. Of course you don’t view it as neutral to allow other people to come to different conclustions than you and act on those conclusions.
Just as the people who believe that Jesus is Lord might not view it as neutral to allow the worship of other gods.
Ah, I think maybe I see where you’re confused. Allow me to explain. I’m not arguing that ‘the system is neutral,’ I’m arguing that the government’s position is neutral in regards to the personhood of the fetus.
Were the government’s position neutral as to, say, whether businesses ought to be compelled to serve African-American customers, that would be (and was) deeply oppressive. You see the government’s neutrality on the personhood of the fetus as leading to a deeply oppressive system, I’m guessing. (Sorry for assuming your position there sport champ buddy)
—Myca