"NEVER MIND THE BOLLOCKS", HERE'S THE SIMPLE TRUTH ABOUT ABORTION

Should you think about your duty, or about the consequences of your actions? Or should you concentrate on becoming a good person?

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Harbal
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Re: "NEVER MIND THE BOLLOCKS", HERE'S THE SIMPLE TRUTH ABOUT ABORTION

Post by Harbal »

Immanuel Can wrote: Sat Jun 01, 2019 2:30 pm But the problem with that point is that one doesn't state things that one expects to have "no weight." Why bother? But where is any "weight" at all coming from, and why should any of us agree to pick it up, if Peter's opinion simply "has no more weight" than its total opposite?
I don't really know what all that means, IC, but I do think there is a lot of barking up the wrong tree going on here. You can have your moral standpoint, no one would deny you that, but it would not be right for a reluctantly pregnant woman to be obliged to conform to your morality rather than her own. Surely you wouldn't want her to have to live with the negative consequences of your moral decision after you have walked away from the situation and she is left there stuck with it.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: "NEVER MIND THE BOLLOCKS", HERE'S THE SIMPLE TRUTH ABOUT ABORTION

Post by Immanuel Can »

Harbal wrote: Sat Jun 01, 2019 2:48 pm ... it would not be right for a reluctantly pregnant woman to be obliged to conform to your morality rather than her own.
Well, there are a couple of assumptions in this claim, and they'd need proof.

Firstly, we'd need to know that the child was not a person -- if it is, then the woman's wish to dismember him/her, not matter how urgent in her mind it is, is obviously not sufficient to offset that. We don't condone murder, if that's what it is. Secondly, we'd have to accept that morality was relative -- the woman's being of equal weight with anyone else's -- which, if as I suggest, morality is objective, is not true. But thirdly, we'd have to imagine that woman had no choices before this, and that pregnancy is like cancer -- something that happens without a person's say-so or decision-making. But in almost every case, (we know it's higher than 93%) the woman already has had many "choices" which she clearly "chose" to make badly, since they've precipitated her into a situation that, by her own confession, she regards as bad. We are therefore not well-advised to encourage her to think that this last "choice" in the sequence is automatically a good one.
Surely you wouldn't want her to have to live with the negative consequences of your moral decision
As I say, the decisions have been all hers, so far. And now, it's not my decision as to whether or not the child is a person -- that's a factual assertion, not an opinion-dependent one. It will be true, regardless of my opinion or hers. The morality is on the question of whether or not the woman is right to kill her child.
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Harbal
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Re: "NEVER MIND THE BOLLOCKS", HERE'S THE SIMPLE TRUTH ABOUT ABORTION

Post by Harbal »

Immanuel Can wrote: Sat Jun 01, 2019 3:22 pm
Well, there are a couple of assumptions in this claim, and they'd need proof.
No, IC, let me stop you there. I am not going to read any further, I am not going to get tangled up in your convolutions and spurious threads masquerading as logic.

I was expressing my opinion, not making a claim. I cannot prove that it is my opinion, but I ask you to accept my word as a gentleman that it is.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: "NEVER MIND THE BOLLOCKS", HERE'S THE SIMPLE TRUTH ABOUT ABORTION

Post by Immanuel Can »

Harbal wrote: Sat Jun 01, 2019 3:37 pm I was expressing my opinion, not making a claim. I cannot prove that it is my opinion, but I ask you to accept my word as a gentleman that it is.
Of course I accept an opinion as an opinion. So long as it stays within the bounds it defines for itself, any rational person should. As a gentlemen, or otherwise, I certainly accept your word.

At the same time, an opinion is not a basis for policy, of course. For that, we would need to refer to facts and values; and abortion is a policy issue. One cannot "opinion" a child into or out of existence.
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Re: "NEVER MIND THE BOLLOCKS", HERE'S THE SIMPLE TRUTH ABOUT ABORTION

Post by Univalence »

Immanuel Can wrote: Sat Jun 01, 2019 3:43 pm At the same time, an opinion is not a basis for policy, of course. For that, we would need to refer to facts and values; and abortion is a policy issue. One cannot "opinion" a child into or out of existence.
One can do whatever one pleases.

Laws are reactive in nature, not proactive. And so the onus is on policy-makers to prove (as in scientifically) that any policy will have the effect for which it is being put in place for. Least policy-makers waste our tax money on policy that has no measurable effect on society, or worse - it backfires.

If murder laws do not reduce murder rates - murder laws (and the salaries of all government employees who enforce them) are a waste of your tax money.
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Harbal
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Re: "NEVER MIND THE BOLLOCKS", HERE'S THE SIMPLE TRUTH ABOUT ABORTION

Post by Harbal »

Immanuel Can wrote: Sat Jun 01, 2019 3:43 pm At the same time, an opinion is not a basis for policy, of course.
As far as abortion is concerned, there is nothing else to base policy on.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: "NEVER MIND THE BOLLOCKS", HERE'S THE SIMPLE TRUTH ABOUT ABORTION

Post by Immanuel Can »

Univalence wrote: Sat Jun 01, 2019 3:48 pm
One cannot "opinion" a child into or out of existence.
One can do whatever one pleases.
So one can imagine, and one's imagining becomes truth?

No, I don't think anyone's going to buy that...well, except someone whose usage of LSD has gotten out of hand. :wink:
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Re: "NEVER MIND THE BOLLOCKS", HERE'S THE SIMPLE TRUTH ABOUT ABORTION

Post by Univalence »

Harbal wrote: Sat Jun 01, 2019 3:51 pm As far as abortion is concerned, there is nothing else to base policy on.
Crime rate reduction (less unwanted/abandoned children).
Lower death rates for mothers who seek unsanitary abortions on the black market.
Early termination of unviable offspring (genetic defects, other illnesses etc.)

Those are the three I can remember off the top of my head.
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Re: "NEVER MIND THE BOLLOCKS", HERE'S THE SIMPLE TRUTH ABOUT ABORTION

Post by Univalence »

Immanuel Can wrote: Sat Jun 01, 2019 3:53 pm So one can imagine, and one's imagining becomes truth?

No, I don't think anyone's going to buy that...well, except someone whose usage of LSD has gotten out of hand. :wink:
It worked for Steve Jobs. Both the LSD, and the imaginations becoming truths.

But you sure dodged the point about the efficacy of public policy.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: "NEVER MIND THE BOLLOCKS", HERE'S THE SIMPLE TRUTH ABOUT ABORTION

Post by Immanuel Can »

Harbal wrote: Sat Jun 01, 2019 3:51 pm
Immanuel Can wrote: Sat Jun 01, 2019 3:43 pm At the same time, an opinion is not a basis for policy, of course.
As far as abortion is concerned, there is nothing else to base policy on.
That's an assumption, of course. But if it were true, then there would be no common basis upon which policy disputed could be adjudicated. In short, there'd be no argument for ny particular policy or against any. Nor would there be any "rights," or any reason why the people who claim a "right" to abort should be preferred to those who do not.
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Re: "NEVER MIND THE BOLLOCKS", HERE'S THE SIMPLE TRUTH ABOUT ABORTION

Post by Univalence »

Immanuel Can wrote: Sat Jun 01, 2019 3:56 pm That's an assumption, of course. But if it were true, then there would be no common basis upon which policy disputed could be adjudicated. In short, there'd be no argument for ny particular policy or against any. Nor would there be any "rights," or any reason why the people who claim a "right" to abort should be preferred to those who do not.
The argument against such policy is simple.

If you pass the law - I am going to the black market. Good luck!

It's exactly the same argument as "If you pass a law against guns - I am going to lose all of mine in a boating accident".

Good luck.
Last edited by Univalence on Sat Jun 01, 2019 3:59 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: "NEVER MIND THE BOLLOCKS", HERE'S THE SIMPLE TRUTH ABOUT ABORTION

Post by Immanuel Can »

Univalence wrote: Sat Jun 01, 2019 3:55 pm But you sure dodged the point about the efficacy of public policy.
I thought you premised it on your first claim, which I considered obviously wrong, and gave a reason why it was.
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Re: "NEVER MIND THE BOLLOCKS", HERE'S THE SIMPLE TRUTH ABOUT ABORTION

Post by Harbal »

Univalence wrote: Sat Jun 01, 2019 3:55 pm
Crime rate reduction (less unwanted/abandoned children).
Lower death rates for mothers who seek unsanitary abortions on the black market.
Early termination of unviable offspring (genetic defects, other illnesses etc.)

Those are the three I can remember off the top of my head.
Yes, apart from all that, of course.
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Re: "NEVER MIND THE BOLLOCKS", HERE'S THE SIMPLE TRUTH ABOUT ABORTION

Post by Univalence »

Immanuel Can wrote: Sat Jun 01, 2019 3:58 pm I thought you premised it on your first claim, which I considered obviously wrong, and gave a reason why it was.
My claim that you can do whatever you want is "obviously wrong"?
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Immanuel Can
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Re: "NEVER MIND THE BOLLOCKS", HERE'S THE SIMPLE TRUTH ABOUT ABORTION

Post by Immanuel Can »

Univalence wrote: Sat Jun 01, 2019 3:58 pm If you pass the law - I am going to the black market. Good luck!
Not a good argument. It might turn out that you do that, but it does not suggest others all will, or what the public consensus ought to be.

As you pointed out, people "can" do one thing, but they ought to do another, sometimes. And it policy, it's doubtless the case that some people have successfully murdered and escaped justice. That hardly counts as an argument for a general social policy encouraging murder.
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