Firstly, if a person is unconscious or in a coma or is braindead, you do not have the right to kill them. Secondly, there is a rare condition where people do not feel pain, so suffering is also not a place where you can draw the line for the humanity of someone. Thirdly, the woman made decisions that led to the existence of that child, and in cases where it was nonconsensual, the argument still falls apart, because you cannot repay evil with evil. If someone murders your family, you cannot go and murder a random person. Nothing can justify an act of evil in response to another act of evil. If you are economically exploited by someone, you cannot turn around and go shoplifting at an unrelated store and call it justice. It doesn't work that way. Fourthly, you cannot place arbitrary factors that constitute the humanity of a person, because there is always a parallel to an adult. The secular point where a person has full value: living organism with human DNA, genetically deformed and diseased or genetically healthy The Christian point where a person has full value: before time began. You can't even account for the value of human life in an atheist context, so it is pointless to try to get atheists who operate under all of the fundamental axioms and presuppositions of atheism to be pro-life, because they have no authority compelling them or rational reason dictating to them, that life has value.
The reason why a baby is inside her isn't because she woke up in a hospital with a random baby inexplicably "attached to her". I think you will find that in (nearly) every case the mother was responsible for it being there in the first place. It matters not if it has a fully functional consciousness yet. The baby is alive before the abortion, and dead afterward. The process of chopping it into pieces to end its life is called murder. No one has the right to take the life of another for purely selfish reasons. It was said that abortion is justified because the baby has "no capacity for suffering." Air tight logic right? I mean if suffering is all that determines the morality of an act, would he be consistent in its application? Let's say his mother is lying in a hospital bed in a comma and some pervert enters the room and decides to take advantage of that situation. Since him mother isn't aware of what is happening, and has no mental capacity to suffer, that would be acceptable right?
It wouldn't. It wouldn't kill her, so she would face the consequences later. Bad analogy. Most unplanned parenthood end up with frustrated parents and miserable children. There's no point in spending decades in this conjuncture. A woman CANNOT impregnate herself all alone. It is not her entire responsability, as the man is involved in the act. No one has sex accidentally, yet not everyone have the minimal sexual education needed, for the sake of taboos.
Basically: Other people/things share responsibility for pregnancy and possible (though not necessary) misery to follow, so the mother is not morally responsible for the pregnancy and hence it is ok to kill. You see, you forgot to skip the first part by jumping to the case when the woman is raped in which case she is actually not responsible for the pregnancy. In the case you address, one must rationalize or just pretend that she is not responsible by creating a sob-story which actually applies in "real life" to some unknown number of people. This is pretty clear when you say "Most unplanned parenthood end up with frustrated parents and miserable children." but of course it would require some sort of amazing knowledge on the part of the person making such a claim to know that killing all those children actually would make the world a better place for people in general or those mothers in particular. So, to spin your argument in reverse, "There's no point in spending killing millions of children in this conjecture." So, supposing that she is not responsible, does that mean that she can kill the child? What if she were living all alone and a stork came in and dropped the baby in her arms? Can she just leave it outside to fend for itself? After all, as argued in the video, she is under no legal binding to spend her time trying to maintain the bodily functions of another being... which of course is incorrect, because if she has a child (she is the mother or she adopts) and she neglects the child by not providing it what it needs to survive, not only can the child be taken away but she can suffer criminal punishment: She is required to give of the money and food gotten by the sweat of her work to care for the child. And the same goes for the father, who is often hunted down for child-support and if he still gets off scott-free, then he is like a burglar who remains uncaught. The argument is that some people are in a bad situation and it would make everything better if we just killed one of them. Of course, giving ourselves the precedent to decide what lives are worth living gets messy quickly. What if the woman wants the child, but since she will be spending her time living off tax dollars ... can The State decide to kill the baby instead? Maybe if she is having too many children and they are all unhappy ... can society have her sterilized? What if we can pretend that we have the children and the mother's best interest at heart? It is the death-sentence to those who happen to be unfortunate enough to be too much a nuisance for others to keep around. And I'm not saying this because I'm such a great person that wouldn't be resentful for someone that I had to take care of. The question is whether someone is morally ok to kill their child. What is even worse about these sorts of arguments is that they don't stop at the not-yet-born, but also to those already born. If a mother wants a child, but then decides three months in that she is sick of the thing, then is it ok for her to "terminate the infancy"? That sort of thing is not acceptable, but think of all the suffering parents who would not have to deal with irritating and troublesome children, if the parents were given the right to kill them? There goes the myth of moral progress! What if lobbying is effective in getting what I already described (post-birth abortions, as they are called) legal? Will it stop there? I doubt it, because it never does. See an academic article titled "Why should the baby live?" if you want to explore what I have said some more.
The question "how can you support abortion and condemn Nazi atrocities at the same?", is a rather silly question. The two are not logically incompatible with one another. One could very easily maintain their support for abortion while simultaneously condemning the actions of the Nazis. In fact, I am one of those people. I support abortion and yet I also believe that the actions of the Nazis were terribly immoral. I support abortion on the grounds that it prevents a human from being born, which in my view, is a good thing. By aborting a fetus, you have prevented a human from being born and you have also thereby prevented the suffering that this person would have inevitably gone through in life. However, what the Nazis did is not really comparable to what takes place during an abortion. As far as we can tell, the Nazis deliberately harmed already existing people without their consent. When you have an abortion, you are NOT harming an already existing person, so to compare the two scenarios is rather silly. Unfortunately, the question "how can you support abortion and condemn Nazi atrocities at the same time?", is nothing more than a rhetorically clever question that is trying to appeal to people's emotions.
Firstly, if a person is unconscious or in a coma or is braindead, you do not have the right to kill them. Secondly, there is a rare condition where people do not feel pain, so suffering is also not a place where you can draw the line for the humanity of someone. Thirdly, the woman made decisions that led to the existence of that child, and in cases where it was nonconsensual, the argument still falls apart, because you cannot repay evil with evil. If someone murders your family, you cannot go and murder a random person. Nothing can justify an act of evil in response to another act of evil. If you are economically exploited by someone, you cannot turn around and go shoplifting at an unrelated store and call it justice. It doesn't work that way. Fourthly, you cannot place arbitrary factors that constitute the humanity of a person, because there is always a parallel to an adult.
The secular point where a person has full value: living organism with human DNA, genetically deformed and diseased or genetically healthy
The Christian point where a person has full value: before time began.
You can't even account for the value of human life in an atheist context, so it is pointless to try to get atheists who operate under all of the fundamental axioms and presuppositions of atheism to be pro-life, because they have no authority compelling them or rational reason dictating to them, that life has value.
The reason why a baby is inside her isn't because she woke up in a hospital with a random baby inexplicably "attached to her". I think you will find that in (nearly) every case the mother was responsible for it being there in the first place. It matters not if it has a fully functional consciousness yet. The baby is alive before the abortion, and dead afterward. The process of chopping it into pieces to end its life is called murder. No one has the right to take the life of another for purely selfish reasons.
It was said that abortion is justified because the baby has "no capacity for suffering." Air tight logic right? I mean if suffering is all that determines the morality of an act, would he be consistent in its application? Let's say his mother is lying in a hospital bed in a comma and some pervert enters the room and decides to take advantage of that situation. Since him mother isn't aware of what is happening, and has no mental capacity to suffer, that would be acceptable right?
Orville Wright
Amen brother
It wouldn't. It wouldn't kill her, so she would face the consequences later. Bad analogy.
Most unplanned parenthood end up with frustrated parents and miserable children. There's no point in spending decades in this conjuncture.
A woman CANNOT impregnate herself all alone. It is not her entire responsability, as the man is involved in the act. No one has sex accidentally, yet not everyone have the minimal sexual education needed, for the sake of taboos.
Basically: Other people/things share responsibility for pregnancy and possible (though not necessary) misery to follow, so the mother is not morally responsible for the pregnancy and hence it is ok to kill.
You see, you forgot to skip the first part by jumping to the case when the woman is raped in which case she is actually not responsible for the pregnancy. In the case you address, one must rationalize or just pretend that she is not responsible by creating a sob-story which actually applies in "real life" to some unknown number of people. This is pretty clear when you say "Most unplanned parenthood end up with frustrated parents and miserable children." but of course it would require some sort of amazing knowledge on the part of the person making such a claim to know that killing all those children actually would make the world a better place for people in general or those mothers in particular. So, to spin your argument in reverse, "There's no point in spending killing millions of children in this conjecture."
So, supposing that she is not responsible, does that mean that she can kill the child? What if she were living all alone and a stork came in and dropped the baby in her arms? Can she just leave it outside to fend for itself? After all, as argued in the video, she is under no legal binding to spend her time trying to maintain the bodily functions of another being... which of course is incorrect, because if she has a child (she is the mother or she adopts) and she neglects the child by not providing it what it needs to survive, not only can the child be taken away but she can suffer criminal punishment: She is required to give of the money and food gotten by the sweat of her work to care for the child. And the same goes for the father, who is often hunted down for child-support and if he still gets off scott-free, then he is like a burglar who remains uncaught.
The argument is that some people are in a bad situation and it would make everything better if we just killed one of them. Of course, giving ourselves the precedent to decide what lives are worth living gets messy quickly. What if the woman wants the child, but since she will be spending her time living off tax dollars ... can The State decide to kill the baby instead? Maybe if she is having too many children and they are all unhappy ... can society have her sterilized? What if we can pretend that we have the children and the mother's best interest at heart? It is the death-sentence to those who happen to be unfortunate enough to be too much a nuisance for others to keep around. And I'm not saying this because I'm such a great person that wouldn't be resentful for someone that I had to take care of. The question is whether someone is morally ok to kill their child.
What is even worse about these sorts of arguments is that they don't stop at the not-yet-born, but also to those already born. If a mother wants a child, but then decides three months in that she is sick of the thing, then is it ok for her to "terminate the infancy"? That sort of thing is not acceptable, but think of all the suffering parents who would not have to deal with irritating and troublesome children, if the parents were given the right to kill them? There goes the myth of moral progress! What if lobbying is effective in getting what I already described (post-birth abortions, as they are called) legal? Will it stop there? I doubt it, because it never does. See an academic article titled "Why should the baby live?" if you want to explore what I have said some more.
The question "how can you support abortion and condemn Nazi atrocities at the same?", is a rather silly question. The two are not logically incompatible with one another. One could very easily maintain their support for abortion while simultaneously condemning the actions of the Nazis. In fact, I am one of those people. I support abortion and yet I also believe that the actions of the Nazis were terribly immoral. I support abortion on the grounds that it prevents a human from being born, which in my view, is a good thing. By aborting a fetus, you have prevented a human from being born and you have also thereby prevented the suffering that this person would have inevitably gone through in life. However, what the Nazis did is not really comparable to what takes place during an abortion. As far as we can tell, the Nazis deliberately harmed already existing people without their consent. When you have an abortion, you are NOT harming an already existing person, so to compare the two scenarios is rather silly. Unfortunately, the question "how can you support abortion and condemn Nazi atrocities at the same time?", is nothing more than a rhetorically clever question that is trying to appeal to people's emotions.