BREAKING: Roe v. Wade might be overruled or severely weakened by SCOTUS

[John Dule]

You know the Supreme Court made a horrible mistake when even a restriction down to 15 weeks would still put the US well to the left of a lot of European countries. Yah, there need to be some major restrictions, especially when half the country wants them. I guess the Supreme Court was under the fanatical impression that the US Overton window was to the left of Europe on this issue in 1973?

Whatever the court decides should be based on the law and not the will of the public. Nobody cares what the mob thinks of this issue. It has no say in the affairs of the individual.

[John Dule]

If a building was burning down and you could save either a newborn baby or 1,000 fertilized human embryos in test tubes, which would you save? If it's the baby, congrats-- you're pro-choice. Get over yourself.

[John Dule]

If a building was burning down and you could save either a newborn baby or 1,000 fertilized human embryos in test tubes, which would you save? If it's the baby, congrats-- you're pro-choice. Get over yourself.

This has to be the most moronic take I’ve ever read.

“If a man murdered your dog in front of you, and you were holding a gun, would you shoot him? If so, you’re pro-death penalty for animal abuse. Get over yourself.”

Before I explain why your analogy doesn't work, let's hear an actual response to the thought experiment I presented.

[John Dule]

Before I explain why your analogy doesn't work, let's hear an actual response to the thought experiment I presented.

You asked what one would do, rather than what one should do; you failed to demonstrate that a woman getting an abortion was choosing to save one born baby’s life over a thousand unborn baby’s life; and you completely failed to finish your postulation with priors or posteriors.

If I say you shouldn’t beat dogs, and then you say “But you wouldn’t stop someone from beating a dog if the building were on fire!!” you haven’t really addressed the moral validity of beating a dog. Rather, you would have demonstrated that you’re uncomfortable with defending dog beating and attempted to make me feel uncomfortable for opposing it.

I'll ignore this entire post because it is obfuscatory gibberish. However, for those of you keeping track at home, the obvious point is this: If life truly begins at conception, and one fetus is equivalent to a fully grown human being, then letting the 1,000 embryos burn would be 1000x worse than letting one baby burn. However, no one but the most hardcore ideologues would choose the embryos over the infant-- proving that we all implicitly accept the premise that a fetus is not the same as a human being (even if some of us are not willing to admit it).

[John Dule]

You are so impressively incompetent at moral philosophy it is stunning. I accept, as a basic fact, that I have been raised in a culture with a deep bias against the unborn; and, in truth, I would probably save the baby. But I ought to save the thousand, almost certainly.

I should also note that I would save my mother over a thousand strangers - this is not morally justified. There’s a reason arguments from analogy are considered the weakest possible argument in philosophy - they fall apart on examination. You can keep applauding yourself all you like - you have failed to assert whether or not all will be implanted or not; whether or not the action of abortion is itself justified; and really any pro choice stance at all. If I say “You ought not step on a lizard purposefully,” and you then attempt to justify it by saying it would be better than stepping on a human baby, you have completely and totally failed.

This isn't an analogy. It's a thought experiment that is designed to make you consider the logical implications of your position. You are the only person who has made an argument from analogy in this conversation. Anyway, at least you've answered my question-- you believe that allowing the baby to burn is the correct course of action, and saving the embryos is more important. What I like about this thought experiment is that it is a no-win scenario for pro-lifers; either you endorse a position that negates your own philosophy, or you endorse a position that is blatant in its moral repugnance. In this instance, I thank you for choosing the latter. It makes for much more entertaining reading.

[John Dule]

This talk of moral repugnance from someone who measures human value in terms of brain development is impressively condescending.

If we ought to determine how valuable people are based off of brain development, then infanticide ought to be legalized - or at least decriminalized. Bioethicists who are pro choice have mostly hit the bullet here and argued for legalizing infanticide. Very few of them have gone all the way through here and argued that it is morally justified to sentence people differently based upon how smart or strong they are. This is inconsistent.

Who said that I measured human value in terms of brain development? You are obfuscating again, this time by completely fabricating an argument that I never made. This is consistent with your style of argumentation on this site-- while you're clearly intelligent and articulate, you consistently put minimal effort into reading and comprehending what the other person is saying. This leads to awkward situations like this one, in which you argue against a claim that the other person never made, using logic that doesn't follow and employing terminology that nobody else understands. I literally cannot engage with this post because (though well-reasoned) it doesn't address any point I made in this thread. Are you just trying to derail the conversation?

[John Dule]

Who said that I measured human value in terms of brain development? You are obfuscating again, this time by completely fabricating an argument that I never made. This is consistent with your style of argumentation on this site-- while you're clearly intelligent and articulate, you consistently put minimal effort into reading and comprehending what the other person is saying. This leads to awkward situations like this one, in which you argue against a claim that the other person never made, using logic that doesn't follow and employing terminology that nobody else understands. I literally cannot engage with this post because (though well-reasoned) it doesn't address any point I made in this thread. Are you just trying to derail the conversation?

I rather derive readings without explicit exegesis.

Well, you should stop because you are extremely bad at it.

[John Dule]

I pretended to talk to my baby brother for months before he died, and ever since my mother miscarried I have had a huge and aching hole in my heart. About two years ago, I realized that this was decidedly inconsistent with claiming life begins at birth. Perhaps it would be easy for you not to feel this pain of mine, yet I cannot help but feel it. I am, in my own mind, the boy with the dead brother. Every now and then I catch a smiling face about the age he would be now, and my eyes water profusely. Within me there is a deep well of sadness for my brother, and I refuse to apologize for this. I have lost a grandmother and great-grandparents, too, and each of these great griefs is different from the others. For me, when you ask if I would rather save an embryo or a baby, these are not abstract things, but human beings which I remember dying.

(I did not “resort to nothing but thought experiments” - you are confusing me with Dule.)

One does not need to believe a fetus is a human being in order to believe that a miscarriage is a sad thing. A miscarriage is not dissimilar to a woman finding out she is infertile-- nobody is actually dying, but the potential for life is being destroyed, which is tragic in a different way. Nature limits all of the possibilities in our lives. It's sad that some people want to be jockeys but were born too tall. It's sad that others want to be basketball players but were born too short. Thinking about what could've been is a fundamental part of the human experience, and nobody here is faulting you for that. We're just drawing a distinction between this and an actual death in the family.

I also frequently think about the siblings I never had. It makes me sad that I will never have a brother or sister to rely upon or care for. I also think about my future children, and thinking about them being harmed makes me angry and depressed. But my imaginary siblings and my hypothetical children do not exist right now. It is possible to feel deep emotions when life closes off a possibility to us without equating it with someone dying.

In short, when a fetus dies, we cry for what could have been. But when a human dies, we cry for what actually was. That is the difference.

[John Dule]

Out of curiosity, what was my brother’s body? Was it a pig, a figment of my imagination? I saw his hands and his feet; his heartbeat had stopped, and he was a bit bloody. His brain had developed at a rate of 250,000 neurons per minute for over ten weeks. This is not the same as those later brothers and sisters I did not have - he had a body, a heart, a brain. You did not bawl over their bodies - I did over my brother. You are not a guy who, as a child, had to bury his brother - I am. You do not cry upon seeing the face of a smiling child - I often do. My brother was not a pig, nor an invisible ghost - he existed. He was real. Will you speak to a widow about your imaginary dead spouse? I know you did not feel his cold, lifeless body; I know you did not see his heartbeat as we did. Your denial of this reality is absurdly cruel; by the time I was twelve I had seen members of four generations of my family die.

Your emotions have once again caused to you lose sight of the point I was making. I did not draw an equivalency between the many scenarios I mentioned. My point was that it is possible to have feelings about something that does not exist or is not possible. In this case, you feel deep emotions for the brother you could have had. These emotions are real. But they are fundamentally different from a widow's grief for her husband, as I'm sure you understand on some level.

But in any case, please do not take this to mean that your emotions are invalid. We have all experienced tragedies in our lives when a wonderful possibility was torn away from us by fate. It is deeply sad that we live in a universe that is indifferent to our suffering, but at the very least, we can empathize with one another. 

My brother was not imaginary, sir. Do not compare the pain of never having a sibling to losing one, sir. My brother not only was alive by the definition of bioethicists and biologists, but he was human, sir. As long as my lungs breathe air and my heart pumps blood I will not halt my testimony on this matter.

This verbose, breathless superciliousness might make you feel good about yourself, but it is exhausting for others to slog through. I empathize with your pain, but at the same time, I also object to your myopic assumption that you are the only person here who is capable of feeling these emotions. I am trying to validate and understand your perspective. I would appreciate it if you could make a modicum of effort to do the same in return.

[John Dule]

Your emotions have once again caused to you lose sight of the point I was making. I did not draw an equivalency between the many scenarios I mentioned. My point was that it is possible to have feelings about something that does not exist or is not possible. In this case, you feel deep emotions for the brother you could have had. These emotions are real. But they are fundamentally different from a widow's grief for her husband, as I'm sure you understand on some level.

But in any case, please do not take this to mean that your emotions are invalid. We have all experienced tragedies in our lives when a wonderful possibility was torn away from us by fate. It is deeply sad that we live in a universe that is indifferent to our suffering, but at the very least, we can empathize with one another.  

I apologize if you don’t understand my point - these emotions are not fundamentally different from the pain of losing my infant cousin. It feels the bloody same. Perhaps it’s odd to you, but in the South it’s not unusual to “talk to” a mother’s stomach to the child. We don’t pretend to not know that, as any bioethicist will tell you, a new life begins at conception. What would it take for you to acknowledge my brother’s existence? Should I dig up his body from the ground? Do I need to count his toes out for you? Should I have preserved his brain and heart that you could see him? I have seen babies a couple weeks older than the age of my brother in the hospital - are they too young to be human, too? There was not some vague, potential that was halted for my baby brother or for my newborn cousin. They were real, living human beings.

It's interesting to me that you are placing so much emphasis on the emotions you feel for your unborn brother, while earlier in this conversation you made such a point to emphasize that the emotions that guided you to save the infant in the thought experiment were invalid. You even argued that those emotions were irrational and the result of "socialization." What makes one emotion valid and another not?

[John Dule]

It's interesting to me that you are placing so much emphasis on the emotions you feel for your unborn brother, while earlier in this conversation you made such a point to emphasize that the emotions that guided you to save the infant in the thought experiment were invalid. You even argued that those emotions were irrational and the result of "socialization." What makes one emotion valid and another not?

I, oddly enough, view an emotion as valid if it recognizes the equality of us all, and in some sense invalid if it fails to. This may seem strange to someone who believes the more developed someone is, the more valuable they are, but for me it is a moral certainty.

You're putting words in my mouth again. I'll happily discuss this with you once you've decided to climb down off your cross and engage with me in a levelheaded manner.

[John Dule]

You're putting words in my mouth again. I'll happily discuss this with you once you've decided to climb down off your cross and engage with me in a levelheaded manner.

The difference between a fetus at 1 week and 20 weeks is development, or between a 20 week old fetus and a baby. If we decide that development is a good measurement of human value, then abortion and infanticide are lesser crimes than killing a toddler, which is a lesser crime than killing a teen, which is a lesser crime than killing an adult. At no point in development are you nonexistent. This isn’t controversial in bioethics - probably the majority of bioethicists think we should consider legalizing infanticide and making the murder of toddlers a lesser crime. Peter Singer, the most prominent bioethicist, is a moderate bioethicist in this regards - he thinks we should only be allowed to kill fetuses after 20 weeks & newborns if they have a disability like Down’s Syndrome.

You're still focusing on development as if it is the only relevant determining factor in the abortion debate. I didn't even bring it up. Yes, it's a part of the pro-choice argument, but there are many other factors to consider. I agree that if "development" was the sole determinant in this debate, your logic would follow-- but that is not the case.

It's worth noting here that the pro-life argument is itself based on development. You argue that life begins at conception-- why? Sperm cells are alive. So are eggs. Why is a zygote fundamentally different from these two things? Clearly, the debate here is not about whether a fetus is alive (it is literally composed of living cells); rather, the question is about when the fetus becomes human. You say that this happens at conception, which is just as much of an arbitrary delineation as 20 weeks, 40 weeks, or birth.

In short, you are the only person here who is making an argument based on development. Again, you need to actually listen to what other people are saying instead of basing your responses on random assumptions and strawmen.

[John Dule]

It’s not my opinion that conception is the beginning of life - it is a fact.

To assert that a new human life has not begun at conception is insane - it is the equivalent of asserting the Sun goes around the Earth.

It is interesting to me that Christians are so adamant about conception being the moment that human life begins. Scientifically speaking, the moment of fertilization is when the zygote becomes genetically identical to the fetus (and the person) it will eventually grow into. Choosing this as the moment of "ensoulment" is ironically rather materialistic; indeed, theologians of the past chose other moments (such as when a baby takes its first breath) as the moment when human life begins.

In any case, there remains no consensus on when personhood actually begins, and if I wanted to make an appeal to ethos I could very easily conjure up a similar list of quotations.

[John Dule]

Dule , shouldn’t you as a libertarian support the individual states right to pass their own abortion laws

I'm torn. I do believe that Roe was poorly decided (as lfromnj noted), and I understand that whatever threshold the law establishes for "personhood" will be fundamentally arbitrary on some level (not unlike the age of consent). However, Blairite is also right in noting that libertarians should not endorse any government taking away people's rights, whether that is a federal, state, or local government. In fact, smaller governments are often more prone to wild reactionary conservatism than the federal government, so in some ways I trust them less to preserve people's rights.

That said, I am ok with certain states passing certain abortion restrictions-- but the idea that a zygote is equivalent to a living person is fundamentally insane and any attempt to legislate to that effect should be resisted. I personally think the cutoff for abortion should come when the fetus becomes viable, but unlike certain people, I understand that there is no exact moment when a fetus becomes a person. Personhood isn't something that happens in a split second. It is a gradient scale, and while either end of that gradient is clearly defined, there is no naturally occurring delineation in between that we can use as a basis for legislation.

[John Dule]

Yes, from the eleventh century until the late nineteenth century the Catholic Church and scientists were unaware that life began at conception - they thought that, until the baby began to move, it was inert, without life. The science proved them wrong, and as such the Pope changed the position of the church.

At the risk of taking a cheap shot... since when has the church cared about science proving its teachings wrong? If scientific inquiry tells us that a zygote is genetically identical to a fully grown person at the moment of fertilization, why should that have any bearing on Christian dogma? Does the material nature of the zygote's genes somehow imbue it with a soul, consciousness, or self-awareness? Again, this is a radically materialistic argument for you to make. The idea that a zygote is a person just because it has certain genetic qualities, or that a fetus is human simply because its neurons have developed to a certain degree, is the type of "argument from development" that you decry-- yet you make these exact arguments yourself.

In any case, I do not think that merely having these traits makes something "human."

“There is no consensus on when personhood begins!!!!” is not an argument. It is clearly a lack of one. Obviously, most rights (such as driving, guns, drinking, etc.) develop over time. The right to life is not one that does so - if it were, it would be better to kill a child who murdered someone and worse to kill an adult who murdered someone.

Nobody seriously thinks that a child becomes an adult immediately on their eighteenth birthday. The process is gradual. Some people are mature enough to vote before they turn 18. Others are never mature enough to vote, but they do so anyway. Regardless, we've set 18 as the (rather arbitrary) barrier for voting, because the alternative would be to make decisions on a case-by-case basis, which would be time-consuming, unfair, and inefficient. Eighteen is a socially acceptable age to set this delineation at, and while it might be unfair to certain people, it is nonetheless fair in that it is equally applied.

Once you are 18, however, you are free to vote however you choose. You do not gain a greater right to vote the older you get after eighteen-- nor do you gain a greater right to life the older you get after you are born. The two situations are precisely analogous, and therefore your "logic" in the bolded portion does not follow. You are not responding to an argument that I or anyone else has ever made. The idea that one's abilities develop over time is not incompatible with setting a cutoff age above which we treat everyone the same way.

The fact that a human's consciousness is not created instantaneously (and is instead developed over time) might be offensive to your Christian sensibilities, but it is the only reasonable conclusion one can draw from looking at the stages of human development. The delineation you have chosen for when a fetus becomes human (conception) is no less arbitrary than 20 weeks or 30 weeks. Our goal should be to set this arbitrary delineation at a point that does not result in widespread social harm-- for example, giving parents free license to kill their five-year-olds, or on the flip side, treating every sperm as sacred.

[John Dule]

I believe you are confusing the Roman Catholic Church, the Anglican Church, my church, and every church which has existed for any long period of time with the SBC. They have no process of ordination which I recognize; they continually lie about basic facts; in short, I find it difficult to consider them Christian.

It’s not about its neurons - it is about whether or not it is alive. If you would care to tell me the moment between when my brother was not human but my dead infant cousin was, J would appreciate it.

But if the question is about whether or not the fetus is alive, then surely you must agree that this argument applies to eggs and sperm as well. Those are literally living cells. Nobody denies that a zygote is composed of living genetic material; the question is whether that zygote can be classified as "human." My toes are "alive" in the sense that they are made up of living cells. But they are not humans.

Again, there is no "moment" where a zygote or fetus suddenly becomes human.

This is not “offensive to my Christian sensibilities” except in the sense that murder generally is. I did not say we should treat “every sperm as sacred” - this phrase is so boorish I find it difficult to believe you thought it out in your head, typed it up, and thought “Yes, this isn’t a straw an at all.”

If you read that again, you will find it obvious that I didn't imply that it was something you believed. I just named two equally extreme positions which neither of us believe in.

You’re the first PC person I’ve had this discussion with to pretend conception is arbitrary. It is, in point of fact, the only line which is not arbitrary - it is when life begins. Even the BBC, which uses purposely biased phrases, has said “The chief appeal to defining our value as beginning at conception is that it is the only point which is not arbitrary.”

You are still talking about "life" as though that is the deciding factor. Again: Sperm cells are alive. Life exists prior to conception, and it exists after conception as well. Whether or not the zygote is "alive" is not a meaningful  distinction. All that changes at the moment of fertilization is that the zygote possesses genetic material that is identical to that of the fully formed human. But it does not gain a soul, consciousness, or whatever you'd like to call it in that instant.

You previously (and laughably) claimed that ancient theologians did not believe abortion was murder; when proven wrong, you then mocked me for... believing in my religion? You can’t have it both ways - when you thought ancient theologians were on your side, you suggested it was a heavy blow against me. When I demonstrated this was wrong and the opposite was true, you suggested that I ought not place my values into laws? This is absurd - I do not intend to pretend that your “secular values” are somehow innately superior to my values to such an extent that I would advocate for your values over mine.*

Are you claiming that many Christians of the past did not believe that life began with an infant's first breath? That is factually wrong. In any case, my point was never that ancient Christian teachings should be taken seriously. My point is that different cultures place the beginning of personhood at different places, and it is far from a foregone conclusion that a fertilized egg ought to be treated as a human being.

*(It should be noted that, as a self-proclaimed moral non-realist, your previously expressed judgments on my conduct as bad or unbecoming contradicts your claim to be a moral non-realist. Indeed, as a moral realist, I can reasonably claim that your positions are bad in some real sense; you lack the ability to thus far even insinuate that my values are bad in any real meaning of the word.)

When I make a moral judgement, it is my opinion. The same is true for you (even if you pretend otherwise).

[John Dule]

You are still talking about "life" as though that is the deciding factor. Again: Sperm cells are alive. Life exists prior to conception, and it exists after conception as well. Whether or not the zygote is "alive" is not a meaningful  distinction. All that changes at the moment of fertilization is that the zygote possesses genetic material that is identical to that of the fully formed human. But it does not gain a soul, consciousness, or whatever you'd like to call it in that instant.

More than this changes; the telos of the cell changes irreversibly after conception. Prior to conception, a sperm cell or an ovum left to its own devices will continue to exist as itself in perpetuity as long as conditions allow it to live. Following conception, the merged zygote left to its own devices will grow invariably into a human fetus, a human child, and an human adult as long as conditions allow them to live.

We can have that conversation too, but at that point we are no longer talking about "life." So just to clarify, whether or not the cells are alive is not the meaningful distinction that will solve this issue, yes?

[John Dule]

I think you would see mass mobilisation of pro-choice Americans and a mass drain of demographic and economic drain from states where there would be default anti-choice legislation.

So, Ohio, West Virginia, Missouri, Iowa are doomed economically?

I think states with punitive abortion law will see both economic boycotts and a drain of young people. Women have much more social mobility than they did pre Roe.

'Big Pro-Life' is well connected and powerful but it is not popular. Repealing Roe ends the grift.

This is just silly

It’s hard enough to find a job or a house nowadays. Educated women aren’t going to leave booming places like Nashville, Atlanta, Austin, etc because of abortion laws.

At most, they’ll travel out of state to get an abortion.

People do not base their lives on certain laws, much less laws on a hypothetical situation that may never happen

Ok. So the women who have enough money to travel will be able to get abortions, whereas women who don't have time/money to spare will be forced to give birth. Sounds like a great system, and I foresee no potentially bad consequences to this.