Just a comment on the OP. It is disgusting and sick. I would hope in the U.S. people would stand up and be outraged about this. Hacking up human baby parts is something you would see (and did see) in Nazi Germany within the Medical community during the Holocaust. Just look at Mengele and his experiments.

The lack of outrage on this is just as sickening to me as the practice of hacking up human bodies.

"Do not play it off as just fucking around, because in most circumstances it is truly an accident that could not be humanly prevented."
I don't mean to sound snarky, but not being sexually active WOULD be a way to humanly prevent it. There are a lot of ways to dismiss that argument, but all of them boil down to the idea that preventing pregnancy is not actually the highest priority.

Oh ok sorry, lets just ban women who don't want to get pregnant from having sex.

"Oh ok sorry, lets just ban women who don't want to get pregnant from having sex."
No, let's just ban the women who felt that being able to have sex was a higher priority than guaranteeing a lack of pregnancy from aborting any children that end up accidentally resulting from their having sex.

WOW, it must be easy to say that as a man huh? smh

Don't allow men to have sex unless they are willing to support any and all children they might beget.

There, is that more fair?

Define "support", is it throw some money at the situation and not have to deal with anything else? Because that is what it tends to become. This is all ridiculous, as a fetus is not even a human being and should not be considered as such. I'm out, most of you have religious reasons for thinking these things and will not be persuaded regardless. Not bothering with that.

Well I would push for "no" to that.

As opposed to you who uses hard "science" to "prove" that something inconvenient isn't human?

Yeah, no. Clearly we're all mass serial killers who just want dead babies that we can do science experiments with.

I didn't realize you were an abortionist. I now know why you are so touchy.

So... It is a matter of conscience? "If they are right, I am a bad person"? Or something like that?

Oh sorry, I haven't actually had one. I could have worded that better. "We" as in pro-choice. And no, why the hell would I let some losers on the internet make me feel bad as a person for making the most logical decision possible.

"WOW, it must be easy to say that as a man huh? smh"
Well, at least you implicitly acknowledge that what I said about priorities has some truth to it. This is good!

"This is all ridiculous, as a fetus is not even a human being and should not be considered as such."
Once again, assuming what you're trying to prove.

"most of you have religious reasons for thinking these things and will not be persuaded regardless."
True, but then this point cuts both ways.

@Demon
I said, "I'm also not saying that we should scorn or shun couples that do this, and I'm sure a lot are genuine mistakes. It's not a thing where their life should be ruined after one mistake."
I meant that when people make mistakes I'm not saying we should shun or scorn them and make them feel like awful people.
I know someone who got an abortion and she said she cried the whole day before because it was such a hard decision for her to make. I'm not pretending to say it's an easy decision either way.
You say "No one wants to get an abortion because of carelessness" which is true. But, carelessness is still the CAUSE of most abortions.

"Do not play it off as just fucking around, because in most circumstances it is truly an accident that could not be humanly prevented."
I agree with Smoker here.

"Oh ok sorry, lets just ban women who don't want to get pregnant from having sex. "
Personally, I think both women AND men shouldn't be having sex if they aren't ready to have a child or at least are very careful in contraception.

But as you said, all this conversation is pretty meaningless compared to whether a fetus is human or not. I'm sure it's already been argued both way on this thread, so I'll probably want to read the entire thread and see the arguments.

@ pangloss

Yes, I appreciate Singer's consistency. I don't have much of a problem with after-birth abortion/infanticide myself.

I think that it is probably a good place to end our discussion. You have made your (eugenics/social dawinist) position vey clear. I have to say that I disagree with it from every perspective. I guess that we have no further to go on this topic.

For those interested in what is involved in a second trimester and upwards abortion I recommend this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53tzMV9OmvY. Note it is not overly gory just very matter of fact. Note also that the PP representatives were marketing the products of these 'late' abortions to the fake buyers in the videos.

OutsideSmoker27: “Okay. So do I. But I don't dismiss Genesis while doing so.”

I do dismiss Genesis, but I think the real error in your argument is that you seem to derive a normative prescription out of a non-normative description. That is to say, even if God made man in His image, why should this support your position?

OutsideSmoker27: “Okay, I'm curious about your description of what a strong/non-infirm base consists of.”

I don’t think there is a strong basis for rights outside of the justification that we do as we please, and we happen to like rights at the moment. God can anchor many people’s morality, but He can only take us so far. Divine Command Theory and its cousins rely on the notion that God is good because He is good—a circular argument if I’ve ever seen one.

fulhamish: “I think that it is probably a good place to end our discussion. You have made your (eugenics/social dawinist [sic]) position vey [sic] clear. I have to say that I disagree with it from every perspective. I guess that we have no further to go on this topic.”

I’m unclear on how I’ve become a eugenicist or social Darwinist, so I would ask you to elucidate further. What are the specific traits of eugenics and social Darwinism? How does my post demonstrate the above traits? Why must I *necessarily* subscribe to these views?

Perhaps I have been unclear in my support of such measures, so I will take a brief moment now to elaborate. When I say that I don’t have a problem with after-birth abortion, I am not saying that it should or must happen in every (or most) situation(s). I am saying that in the event that an after-birth abortion occurs, I have no qualms with it. You will be hard-pressed to find many people who will undertake this action lightly; virtually all examples of this happening will be in cases where the infant has a debilitating illness which will result in death within days or weeks—and excruciating pain all the while. I think it a mercy to have a quick death early than to go for a period of time in pain followed by a slow death.

someone should have killed you as a baby pangloss

At least KingCyrus didn't call me Hitler, DemonOverlord.

fulhamish came close, though.

True. Alright, a regular abortion for you and an after-birth abortion for me I guess.

"the real error in your argument is that you seem to derive a normative prescription out of a non-normative description. That is to say, even if God made man in His image, why should this support your position?"
I'll recapitulate, then. I made 2 :

1. There is a hierarchy among species, or at least between humans and non-humans, and humans have superior authority and rights as compared to other animals. This is where Genesis 1.26 comes in: "Then God said, 'Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.'" As I said, I think the privileged status of humans comes through pretty clearly here and the 3rd-person imperative in "let them rule over" suggests there some prescription rather than just description going on here.

2. Mere membership in the human race is sufficient to grant all humans the right to life, subject to due process of law and the possibility of forfeiture due to illicit behavior. The the reason given for this sufficiency is given in Genesis 9.6: "Whoever sheds man's blood, by man his blood shall be shed, for in the image of God He made man." This is pretty normative language. Now, you may not think it SHOULD be made as normative (because it's insubstantial or unsupported by deeper argument or whatever) and you may object to the prescription it makes (which would be an entirely consistent position for you to take), but I think you have to do some violence to the text to read "in the image of God He made man" as mere description.

"I don’t think there is a strong basis for rights outside of the justification that we do as we please, and we happen to like rights at the moment."
Okay, fair enough.

"Divine Command Theory and its cousins rely on the notion that God is good because He is good—a circular argument if I’ve ever seen one."
Well, yeah. I will gladly make and hold to this presupposition as a basic belief. I don't expect you to accept it or approve of it unless and until God Himself decides to change your mind. But I'll keep on with it myself.

So.....when I said 2 , what I really meant was 2 poits.....with an n in the middle. (sigh)

Divine Command Theory isn't "God is good because he is good," it's "good is good because God says that good is good, and God is good." It can easily be reversed as well, and the only thing that prevents some next great philosopher from presenting an equally invalid argument like Divine Command Theory is religious bullshitters that can't buy the premise that God is bad even though they blindly believe he is good based on, as you said, a circular argument. Hopefully we'll see a new William Paley someday out of Satanists or something who basically makes fun of philosophy in general by presenting the simplest, stupidist, and most easily refutable argument ever while passing it off as logic. For some reason, people buy William Paley's watchmaker bullshit, and likewise, they "hold onto (the Divine Command Theory) as a basic belief" despite its logical, scientific, and philosophical invalidity. One of many problems with blind faith is that you're not blind, so why be blind?

I don't understand the pain argument against abortion. If the fetus is about to be killed, it can't be hard to apply some anesthetic that numbs the pain. Hell, they got me totally drunk when they shredded my penis shortly after birth to numb the pain and religious folk are totally okay with that, so what's so different about numbing a fetus?

@anyone using the line "God made man in his image" ... no, man made God in his image. Get it right. God is an archetypal projection of the things we can't be, nothing more. If he exists, he doesn't exist as the Bible or any other mainstream religious scripture says.

Thus concludes my random thoughts.

@pangloss

A Disabled Person’s Perspective on Eugenic Abortion

https://www.spuc.org.uk/documents/papers/e-0079b.pdf

I don’t suppose that you will read it, but just in case.


As you bought up Hitler and social darwinism (Sic semper tyrannis), I thought that you would enjoy this:

"Sparta must be regarded as the first Völkisch State. The exposure of the sick, weak, deformed children, in short, their destruction, was more decent and in truth a thousand times more humane than the wretched insanity of our day which preserves the most pathological subject, and indeed at any price, and yet takes the life of a hundred thousand healthy children in consequence of birth control or through abortions, in order subsequently to breed a race of degenerates burdened with illnesses"

Hitler, Adolf (1961). Hitler's Secret Book. New York: Grove Press. pp. 17–18.

@OutsideSmoker27, Could it be possible! This old saint in the forest hath not yet heard of it, that GOD IS DEAD!

@fulhamish, I asked you three questions, of which you have answered none. To reiterate:

What are the specific traits of eugenics and social Darwinism? How does my post demonstrate the above traits? Why must I *necessarily* subscribe to these views?

I am in the process of reading your article now, so maybe the answers to my questions lie therein. Judging from the first couple of pages, I think not. But you never know!

@ fulhamish: I'd be inclined to doubt the accuracy of anything Adolf Hitler wrote after 1945...

"Could it be possible! This old saint in the forest hath not yet heard of it, that GOD IS DEAD!"
In fairness, it WOULD be hard to call this discussion complete without hearing at least SOME contribution from Nietzsche.

Are Jamiet, how very nice to hear from you. Thank you for the correction, but I think that you will find that little date refers to the published date and NOT the written date. Anyway that is how it normally works with referencing just to get you up to speed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zweites_Buch
Please do let me know if you disagree. Otherwise it does form a pretty good back drop to the eugenics, social darwinist, abortion debate. Now please remind me again about Margaret Sanger, the founder of PP.

I was just being facetious. Everyone knows Hitler died in Argentina in 1993.

Also, sorry, but what do you want to be told about Margaret Sanger? And why are you asking me? I've barely even heard of her.

Margaret Sanger was the founder of Planned Parenthood. She was a supporter of Eugenics; indeed she was a prominent member of the American Eugenics Society.

http://www.eugenicsarchive.org/eugenics/

http://www.npr.org/sections/pictureshow/2011/06/01/136849387/found-in-the-archives-americas-unsettling-early-eugenics-movement

She wrote this in 1932, recommending that the US government: . . . keep the doors of Immigration closed to the entrance of certain aliens whose condition is known to be detrimental to the stamina of the race, such as feeble-minded, idiots, morons, insane, syphiletic, epileptic, criminal, professional prostitutes, and others in this class . . . apply a stern and rigid policy of sterilization, and segregation to that grade of population whose progeny is already tainted or whose inheritance is such that objectionable traits may be transmitted to offspring. (Jan. 17, 1932 [LCM 130:198].)

Many black and brown people view the current actions of Planned Parenthood with deep suspicion. In this context it is salient to note that I believe in New York more black babies are currently being aborted than are being born.

Ok, abortion is racist.

Got it, thanks.