Originally posted by Starlight
View Post
The anti-abortionist movement in general seems to rely primarily on emotionalism and mass hysteria, with the occasional false biological 'facts' and occasional terrible theology thrown in.
everal have pressed you on what essential features a human must have to be a person, and you've been the one to handwave it away "quality of life... level of cognition"
We've affirmed that this is either an unintelligible position, or its arbitrary, or its symptomatic of the failings of utilitarian ethics.
We've also pressured you on the fact that your position affirms something many pro-abortionists don't acknowledge, namely that if you accept the logic of abortion, then infanticide isn't morally wrong, and could in principle be allowed, for instance for suffering babies, or for young women who had a child they think they can't take care of that hampers their chance for education and economic freedom (or other such Social Justice stores). You bit the bullet on that, something that left us flapper gasted. Since this came in the same thread where you asserted several times that Christians literally had nothing to fear about coming social changes, regarding pastors right to affirm the things they do, and therefore they shouldn't engage in such a lawsuit, we did discuss this.
As I pointed out earlier, biblical law appears to make clear that <1 month-olds are not counted as humans, that fetuses are not legal persons when it comes to murder, and that abortion is a legitimate punishment for infidelity.
Nor does there seem to be a basis for an anti-abortion stance in any sort of sound and logical secular reasoning: People tend to take a certain level of awareness and humanness as the cut-off and are okay with abortions occurring prior to that level of awareness developing.
Most anti-abortionists seems to rely heavily on arguments about the fetus having an immortal soul, which I deconstructed.
Do I as a Catholic believe that there's an immortal soul present at the point of conception. Yes I do, but I thought this was going to be an ethical discussion not an religious discussion. As such you brought the notion of soul in here, not you, that reflects your biases and expectations of pro-life arguments, and they're not a reflection of actual reality.
The humans would be self-aware, conscious, sentient beings, so the elves killing them is not okay. My general criteria is quality of life / level of cognitive functioning.
I guess I'd describe myself in hindsight as being exceptionally informed in some areas, but pretty naive in others.
Comment