Deleted by Hunter

Hi Perigrinus,

Firstly, the eucalypt provides for the koala not the other way around, and as the koala cannot survive without the eucalypt, the eucalypt exists in higher status as far as the koala is concerned, although I'm sure the koala doesn't think too much about it.

Secondly, let's not forget the international communities reaction to China's population problem and the worldwide acceptance of later term abortions, suggesting given reason, the practice is justifiable under certain circumstances other than the health of the mother, and whilst not relevant to Australia, still in the Australian conscience a justifiable reason for abortion.

I agree with the use of RU486 over surgical procedure, however not in a self-prescribing context and would suggest a program of counselling be developed to go along with it which will provide much better insight into services which can be provided.

One thing I'd never seen before this discussion is the fear women suffer over the issue as a whole. It seems that there is fear over being forced to abort a pregnancy, a truly horrifying prospect and one which should be considered when discussing this matter.

Deleted by Hunter

Hunter, if you are going to be belligerent and antagonistic then expect responses to match.

I don't think anyone thinks of condemning a woman who's been through a forced abortion, and I couldn't agree more regarding support.

However the issue as I see it is whether abortion is justifiable if the wo/man has caused the pregnancy by intentional impregnation.

There are as many women who seek men out as a means to a reproductive end, as there are men who do so to women. Should men therefore have the right to abortion as equally as women do and would legal ejudication help?

Analysing this, abortion is a pretty drastic measure one which could destroy an innocent woman's mental health; leaving me to question whether abortion would destroy a woman guilty of impregnating herself or whether it would only hurt her ego?

I agree that for the sake of the greater protection of women, abortion should be mainly a female decision, however I do not believe it should be exclusively a female right, equally believing that the circumstances under which the pregnancy was created should be foremost in deciding the matter.

How do we protect men from being used by women to fund a lifestyle through child support? Surely forcing abortion is not the answer, but possibly review of child support arrangements is; in Australia the pension is sufficient to ensure a very reasonable standard of living with 7 years of no work or study requirements attached. You may however question a woman's ability to care for a child she created for financial gain, and then consider the child as better off with the man, in which case he must pay for the child, so it would seem the man is as stuck as the female impregnated by the male, where women in such cases post abortion report no feelings of guilt but a sense of relief.

This thereby brings me back to the question whether a woman impregnating herself would be hurt by an abortion and whether men should have the right to bring it to the Court? And would women so intent on impregnating themselves go underground so to speak to find more subtle ways to con men?

This leads me back to the thread about sex education and proves the need for an abstinence approach.

So I started to read the entirety of responses and inter-thread arguments playing out, but decided that I should rather post my own reply, without the inclination to jump into a month-old debate, so here it is:

Yes. Abortion is justifiable.

Undoubedtly, you are also looking for a reason behind the answer I've given and here it is:

The abortion, or continued gestation, of a human foetus should remain the choice of the mother/host, exclusively. That's my view, and as such, any reason that factors into the decision to abort the foetus is acceptable to me. Do I support the reason? Maybe, maybe not. Is the reason agreeable? Maybe, maybe not. But, regardless, it is not my choice, and so my reasons for supporting or arguing with the reasons of the mother are immaterial.

Are you looking for my reasoning for justifiable abortion? Here you go:

The pregnancy is the result of rape.
The pregnancy is the result of incestuous sexual activity, either concenting or forced.
The infant will be born with forseeable and expected malformations, mental inhibitions, or damaging/painful physical deformations/mutations.
The mother cannot afford to carry the pregnancy full term, nor afford the infant after it's birth.
The mother never wanted to get pregnant.
The mother is underaged.
The mother does not want the baby. Either pre- or post-birth.
Sorry to be so blunt and brutal, but that's something I will freely admit to. Brutal honesty. You may not like it, and that's your perogative, but it does not change the fact that this is how I feel about this issue.

Now, to respond to some of the carrying themes in this thread, without jumping headfirst into a twelve foot deep pool of a debate:

It seems that there are indidviduals who cannot comprehend, or refuse to accept, the biological reality of pregnancy. The foetus is a parasite, with the mother as the host. Inescabably true. For the first eleven weeks, that's seventy seven days, the foetus is not a foetus, is not a developing baby, and is not a human. It is biologically no different from a cancerous tumor. Cancer is the rapid, abnormal, (and often damaging) growth of human cells. Until enough nuerons develop and the foetus is capable of feeling, reacting, and experiencing existence, that is all that it is. A cancer.

I do not know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, when life begins. I know when it is there, and I know when it is not there. I do not know when it "gets" there or when it "leaves", and I do not pretend to know. That said, while the foetus is still in utero, life is evident. However I also know that when the foetus is just developing, say the first eleven weeks of the pregnancy, life is not there. I don't know how, when , or why life blooms within the child, but I do know that at some point after eleven weeks, and some point before the birith, life explodes within hir. Therefore I firmly know that life does not begin at conception. If it did, the mother's body would have been responsible for killing the child if she naturally aborts the baby (often referred to as "loosing the child"). She killed her own unborn child. If life begins at conception, then stillborn children were stillborn because...? I have no answer. Other than they never were alive and so life does not begin at conception.

Now some of my previous statements of belief will cause comments to be fired upon them. Credit where credit is due, it appears, so let me respond to them before the gun is fired.

Yes, I did say if the child was unwanted. Adoption is not always the answer for an unwanted child, and abortion is perfectly justifiable, if not agreeable, in that situation.
Yes, I also said that abortion is justifiable under conditions where the infant would be mentally or physically damaged, or malformed, or inhibeted, or retarded. Does that mean I have no qualms about killing blind, deaf, mentally ill, retarded, or deformed people who are already alive? No. That is not what it means.

I believe that life has no intrinsic value. If gold was not rare nor shiny, it would not be valuable. If money did not buy the things we desired, it would just be really ugly, green, badly drawn on paper. If there were not others to place value on your life, your life would not hold value, and therefore, your life could be easily taken without batting an eye. If there was one human alive, only one, would his life be valuable? No, of course not. He cannot contribute anything to anyone else, and therefore is worthless, because there is no benefactor nor recipient of his work, making him worthless. If there were two, one could hunt, the other could farm, making them valuable to eachother, and therefore of worth. Man derives value from the worth others place upon him.

Individuals who have had worth placed upon them, either physically, mentally, or emotionally, should not be killed, and to do so would be a crying shame at best. The blind man with friends who value his companionship should not be killed. A deaf man with a wife who places value in his love for her should not be killed. The child with systic fibrosis who has parents that place value on the fact that her deriving delight from the simplest things, that in turn gives them delight, should not be killed. But the old man, comatose, with no friends, no family, and no one to place worth upon him could be killled, and easily too. Most people are not comfortable enough in their own affirmations to admit to such blatant claims, even to the point of denying their agreement with it to themselves. That's understandable, I've lived a long time, and seen many things, and so I admit to having no time for personal qualms about the nasty business of killing. Note, however, I said could be killed, not should be. I am not trying to play God, deciding who should be killed, I am only a human being, deducing who could be killed.

Any other questions, objections, or arguments? I'm open to anything and willing to engage in conversation, dialogue, and debate over anything I've said. So long as it's civil, informed, and unapologetically honest.

If you’re trying to avoid “jumping headfirst into a twelve foot deep pool of a debate”, Cnsqntlst, the strategy you’ve adopted is a poor one. An argument which you have to support by claiming “the foetus is not a foetus” is almost certain to encounter opposition from anyone who speaks English, and if you also have to support it by claiming that the foetus is a parasite, is not human and is biologically no different from a cancerous tumour it is also going to be rejected – as I think you must know - by anyone accepting the conventional definitions of “parasite”, “human” and “cancer” respectively. You seem to be assigning some special, non-obvious meaning to these words.

I’m happy to engage in civil, informed and honest discussion with you of your views, but I think it’s reasonable to expect a corresponding civility from you. You would display respect for those you are in dialogue with if, when you assign a non-standard and non-obvious meaning to a word, you point out that you are doing so, and explain what that meaning is, rather than leaving us to guess.


Again, you’ll be aware that this view flatly contradicts the conventional scientific understanding of human reproduction. The conceptus is unquestionably alive from the very outset, not least because it can die (the death of the conceptus is thought to be the largest single cause of spontaneous miscarriages), but also because it grows and develops, and dead things don’t do that. Again, you seem to be using the word “life” with some non-standard, non-obvious meaning; you shouldn’t leave us to guess what that is.


Interesting. Does that mean that, if I assign value or worth to the unborn child that you are carrying, that creates an ethical objection to your decision to abort the child?

It seems to me that I may have been a bit overhasty in assuming the conceptualization of my ideas by others to be on the same page of understanding. Let me revise so that no undue confusion be the outcome:

First, by my saying I did not wish to "jump headfirst..." I did not mean into the wider debate of the issue, as anyone can and should do well to understand, I meant exclusively into the debates carried out and closed by other members of the Forum in this thread. I understand I am engaging in Topic A, what I meant was I did not want to engage in the debate of Topic A as carried out by Member 1 and Member 2, and I think it does not take any stretch of the imagination to grasp that statement, let alone does it take any great amount of difficulty to inuslt someone making that statement, as you have done.

Secondly, I should think it would be fairly obvious the meanings I have attatched to the words that you seem to take issue with, regardless of the fact that you have done nothing in the way of refuting nor arguing the claims in which the words appear. Rather, all you have done is take issue to specific word-choice, not to the meaning or message which is delivered by the use of these words. Let me address this confusion you seem to be struggling with:

-"Foetus: an unborn or unhatched vertebrate in the later stages of development showing the main recognizable features of the mature animal." By that definition I operate, as should anyone choosing to use the word, and the arguement I presented is sound, seeing as the object under question is, undoubtedly, not a foetus. My only error may have been to not assigne a specific word outlining the pre-foetal embryo, so let me correct it by saying that when I do not specifically use the word "foetus," specifically in referrence to the developmental stage of the corresponding name (roughly Week 10 onward from viable conception), I mean "pre-foetal embryo."
-"Parasite: an animal or plant that lives in or on another animal or plant, called the host. The parasite obtains nourishment from the host, without benefiting or killing the host." By that definition I operate, as should anyone choosing to use the word, and as such, my usage is sound. Can we pretend that throughout the entirety of the pregnancy, the embryo/foetus is anything BUT a parasite? I should think not, and if anyone argues, they should take measures to further instruct themselves in the specific biology of human pregnancy. Indeed, the human parasite is sometimes damaging or even potentially fatal to the host/mother, making it more nefarious than a non-human parasite that does not harm or kill the host. With this understanding, the argument I make using these words is sound.
-"Human: characteristic of humanity; 'human nature'. Relating to a person; 'the experiment was conducted on 6 monkeys and 2 human subjects'. Homo: any living or extinct member of the family Hominidae characterized by superior intelligence, articulate speech, and erect carriage. Having human form or attributes as opposed to those of animals or divine beings; 'human beings'; 'the human body'; 'human kindness'; 'human frailty'." By that definition I operate, as should anyone choosing to use the word. Where then, in light of this definition, which you seemed to not be privy to, for some reason or other, is my error in using this word? Where does this word take on hidden meanings in my argument? Point them out to me. Biologically speaking, an embryo developing into a foetus, which may develop into a human (see above definition if you are still confused over my word usage here), IS NO DIFFERENT to a cancer (see below).
-"Cancer: (medical term: malignant neoplasm) is a class of diseases in which a group of cells display uncontrolled growth (division beyond the normal limits), invasion (intrusion on and mutation of adjacent tissues), and sometimes metastasis." By this definition I operate, as should anyone choosing to use the word. However, here do I use metaphor to ascribe cancerous traits to a human embryo. I said it is "a cancer." You will note I did not make the claim that pregnancy is cancer, in the same as it is a disease. I said pregnancy is a cancer, as in obtaining cancerous traits. Deny that and you have an even simpler understanding than I thought you did of the biology of pregnancy.

Thirdly, by the word "life" I did not mean the purely physiological presence of life, as in the opposite of death or being dead. I, here, use a philosophical understanding of "life": wherein those who possess life can reason, can experience anything on more than the purely biological level, may actively and intentionally interact with the world around them, and possess emotional and psychological awareness. An embryo, indeed perhaps even a foetus, is not alive by that definition when taken in the strictest of interpretations, however, I give on that issue somewhat, seeing as we cannot ever know which of these attributes a pre-birth foetus possesses.

Do not play coy, or stupid, it will get you nowhere. Rather than seek to undermine the validity of an argument by debating the semantics, openly oppose or support points of the argument on the validity of the argument itself, not the arguer's word-choice.

Finally, to answer the only direct response you gave to my original post, no, your assignment of value to my embryo or foetus does not create an ethical objection to my decision to abort the pregnancy. As I am the only one to have ever directly interacted with the embryo/foetus on any level, my assignment of value is the only one that matters to my decision. Were I to proclaim your pregnancy worthless, would it affect your decision to bring the foetus full term and birth it? I shouldn't think it would, so how can you say that your assignment of value should influence my decision? It is the height of arrogance, to say the least.

Were you to interact with the child after it was born and therefore have legitimate cause and reason and evidence to assign value to the child, it would be a different matter. But you don't have any reason, right, or say at all as to the value of my unborn, by any view of legitimacy. And if you choose to work in the realm of illegitimate claim (as you assignment of value would) then I will as well and say simply that I see you claim of value as worthless and therefore will go ahead, as scheduled, with the abortion this afternoon, and may stop off for coffee and a bagel on my way home from the clinic. After all, an abortion can set one's stomach to grumbling for sustenance.

Peregrinus.

Seeing as this issue is a personal one ie whether a woman, any woman, should have the autonomous control over her body and the risk upon her life and welfare of anything within it, I would like to ask you a personal question.

If you or your daughter were made pregnant from a rape, how would you feel about the pregnancy and do you think you would be able to raise the child in a loving way? If yes, would you marry the man who had raped you or encourage your daughter to do so to enable the child access to it's father or would you seek the denial of access? If no, why not?

Please note I do not intend to cause offense by asking these questions, however as we are discussing matters relating to every woman's right to be considered a conscienable person and her henceforth right to be allowed personal autonomy equal to that of a man, I see it as important to establish as experienced a view as possible. Please also note that I see the issue as drawing a line with regard to the allowable sexual conduct of a man, non-resolution of which has been a matter of life and death for women. May I also add that often a male defense to accusation of rape is she let me, she didn't say no and she didn't stop me.

A paedophile drags a 13 year old child (although menstruating) off the street and impregnates her. Should the girl be offered abortion and the chance of restoration to life before the attack, or should she be made to live with the outcome?

If so what message would the law be sending males who's sense of morality has long since left them in terms of sexual conduct, something most would not need to question?

Should we outlaw abortion because we don't like the practice or should we allow it because we don't like rape? When it came to the issue of the expanding world population, China's offer to one child families was ratified by Australia, was that wrong?

To me the matter in Australian culture revolves around sexual conduct but then possibly your view is based on whether you consider women conscientable beings capable of understanding and acting in a moral fashion.

Or in this case is the question of sexual morality a matter for female's to determine without any protection from the law or of their own decision. I.e., if a man sees a woman who makes him want to rape, should he be free to do so leaving the woman to learn how to dress in such a fashion that makes him not want to do that? Or is the conduct of the man wrong? I think it boils down to whether you think rape is natural or not? Personally I think most men would be offended if they were accused of being capable of rape, which seems to leave one group left; those that will. To me abortion is a solution to that as a problem, that is if you consider rape a problem at all.

Morality to my mind does not disclude women's input. Maybe I'm of the new school where I see women as people rather than in an animalsitic sense. I come back to my question of your own daughter?

Maybe it's simplistic however justice is never one or the other it's the meritable balance of two extreme's, abortion sits in the middle. I would draw conclusions from my own life, and not assume the whole country needs to be virtually put in jail allowed out on psychological review from the authorities.

I don't believe most in our fine nation of individual's are ignorant, fools, or morally inept, nor do I believe they need to be taught right from wrong, although parent allowance certainly does have the impact. I do however believe Australian's, as with most people in the world, capable of doing the right thing all by themselves, and it rare that people act unscupulously, most capable of making decisions for themselves and if need be to bring a case before the Law if they see it necessary, which is what the law exists for (another subject maybe).

There is no way in hell or in a million years that I would or need to force anyone into parenthood, nor am I remiss of responsibility to either myself or to others, making me I believe a person of morality, that I don't just consider myself as important and worthy of consideration but equally do I others as well.

I am able to exist within a community and do not need to seek nor take advantage of anyone, the Law, the young or the mentally frail or infirm especially when it comes to reproduction - what to some should be the product of love.

Cnsqntlst, there’s a certain tension between your intial call for civil conversation, and this kind of language:

“you have an even simpler understanding than I thought you did . . . Do not play coy, or stupid, it will get you nowhere”

You wrote “a foetus is not a foetus”. If that seems incoherent to me, I don’t think that gives you grounds to accuse me of stupidity or limited understanding.

You’ve arbitrarily and without explanation adopted a “philosophical” understanding of life which, we now discover, excludes the great majority of the things normally regarded as alive.

You’ve chosen a definition of “parasite” which I think is not one accepted by any biologist. My dictionary has “An organism that lives on, in, or with an organism of another species, obtaining food, shelter, or other benefit”. Or, if you are resistant to technical definition, you could have checked a source like Wikipedia, which starts with “Parasitism is a type of symbiotic relationship between organisms of different species . . .”. It may be that you have found a source which does not define parasites as being of different species, but I think you’ll struggle to find any comprehensive and credible account of parasitism which doesn’t include this qualification. In any event, by what authority do you dictate that “anyone choosing to use the word” must adopt your definition, given that it doesn’t require a very profound knowledge of biology to appreciate that your definition departs somewhat from the consensus in the field?

None of this entitles you to abuse me as coy, stupid or of limited understanding. You’re employing definitions of concepts designed to support the conclusion for which you are arguing. I think I’m entitled to bring that our by pointing out that you are doing this, and asking you to explain your concepts. Keep it civil, please.

Right. It seems to me that you are making two separate arguments here:

First, up to around about the age of about 11 weeks the developing human being cannot reason, cannot “experience anything on more than the purely biological level”, cannot “actively and intentionally interact with the world around them”, and does not “possess emotional and psychological awareness”, and the lack of these characteristics answers any ethical objections we may have to abortion.

Secondly, the human being, at whatever stage of development, has no intrinsic value, but only has such value as others place on it. If nobody else values that human being, there is no ethical objection to abortion (or indeed to killing at any stage after birth).

Is there, I respectfully ask, a tension between those two arguments?

The implication of the first argument is that possessing the capacity for reason, for interaction, for awareness, etc does have moral/ethical significance. You use the term “alive” to describe the situation of an entity with those capacities and, though I quibble with the helpfulness of the term and with your wisdom in choosing it, I do see the point you are making, and the choice of such a loaded term does suggest that you feel that the moral/ethical significance associated with these capacities is very great. It does seem to me that the implication of your argument is that the developing human which has attained “life” in this sense does have some kind of ethical claim on our respect and esteem such that abortion is, to put it no higher, not a morally negligible matter. Tom, I think, would suggest that we should not do that human what we would not want done to ourselves, and the idea is an attractive one.

And yet your second argument seems to undercut this. Under your second argument, neither these capacities nor any others confer any worth at all on the developing human that possesses them. It is only other humans that can confer worth. If we choose to withhold our respect and esteem from the human who is philosophically “alive”, then it seems philosophical “life” does not, after all, have all that much moral significance, or perhaps any at all. We could just as well choose to ascribe worth only to those with much more extensive capacities – the capacity to speak French, for instance, and to tell a good whiskey from a bad, and to play the viola.

I’m not joking. I deliberately choose ridiculous examples to illustrate the point, but it’s not quite so ridiculous to suggest that people might choose to make “worth” conditional on the quality of being white, or of not being Jewish. They have done so in the past. In the present time they might choose to make “worth” conditional on the capacity of not suffering - to any extent - from Down’s Syndrome.

The first of those ideas horrifies and disgusts us. The second we are much more likely to see as defensible, even reasonable. And I think what this points to is a gap in your thinking – as you have laid it out so far, at any rate. The decision of whether we ascribe value or worth to somebody is not wholly for us to make; we feel at the very least constrained by facts, circumstances and some fundamental principles so that it is morally indefensible to, eg. ascribe worth only to Gentiles. And that in turn suggests that we don’t feel that the ultimate source of worth is our choice to confer it; our choice is merely a response to prior realities. We need to look at those realities and reflect on what it is that means that some realities compel our respect for other human beings.

And this ties in with the other point that I wonder about. If the man with no friends, no family and no-one to ascribe worth to him can be killed, the implication is that his own regard for himself does not confer the necessary worth on him. And my regard for myself, presumably, does not confer worth on me; only others can do that. But if I cannot ascribe worth to myself, what authority or power do I have to ascribe to someone else? Why should my ascribing worth to somebody have any moral significance at all? Again, we may find an answer by recognising that my choice is merely my attempt to reflect a pre-exisiting reality. But the implication of that is that the subject would have moral worth even if I failed to recognise the reality in question.

Phil73, just to be clear: I do believe that the decision to have, or not to have, an abortion is one primarily for the woman concerned. Others may have a claim to be considered, to be heard, to have their views and interests carry some weight in the decision. But I don’t believe that those others have a right to compel the woman to either course of action.

I’m a bloke, so I don’t face the immediate issue myself. God forbid that somebody close to me would ever be made pregnant through rape, but if that were to happen I know what I should do; support her in every way that I can; support her in particular in making her decision; and love her unconditionally regardless of whatever decision she might make. And all of that would still be true if she faced a crisis pregnancy not resulting from rape.

But none of that means that the decision she would have to make is morally or ethically neutral, that whatever decision she makes is, because she has made it, by definition the “right” decision, that there is nothing more to be said about it, etc. I think we need to support a woman facing a crisis pregnancy in addressing the moral issue that she faces; I don’t think we really support her effectively by pretending that she doesn’t face a moral issue.

I’m not really interested in the moral question for the state of whether abortion should generally be outlawed. To my mind, the answer to that is clear; no. The much more challenging moral question – and therefore the one which is much more worth discussing - is the one facing the woman with a crisis pregnancy; should she abort? Too often people ignore, or even deny the reality of, the ethical dimension to that question in an attempt to get the answer they want to the question about what the state should do.

I think I see abortion, in certain circumstances, the way I see murder in self-defense: it is a lose-lose scenario, rather than a lose-win scenario, and the only way it could not have been a lose-lose scenario is from events prior to the current scenario (i.e. if the woman did not become pregnant by whatever means, or if the attempted-murderer did not choose to attack his victim).

I'm not claiming that these circumstances are the same: obviously it is sometimes possible to save the life of the mother and the life of the child, and so on. But the lose-lose nature of the circumstance is the same if life is not the only measure of value - there is no 'best' answer because of the way the situation is configured, and much as we may like there to be a 'best' answer, not all ethical situations have them.

It's going to depend on the value by which you measure the possible outcomes: if you measure by life only, then the only acceptable answer is that abortion is unjustifiable. If you measure by quality of life, however, there may be no possible winning combination.

I tend to assign the value of agency or consciousness as a measure of situations, and so before the foetus develops consciousness (or, say, proto-consciousness) I find abortion acceptable (though not the best possible option - that would have been choosing carefully if and when to get pregnant, but this is not always possible). I tend to assign the pre-conscious life in the womb roughly the same potential value for consciousness as I do sperm and ova - they could turn into consciousness one day, but I have no qualms that not all my sperm will turn into consciousnesses.

Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt in their book "Freakonomics" suggest (not without controversy) that the legalisation of abortion in the USA caused a drop in street crime fifteen to twenty years later. I don't know how accurate this really is, but this thread made me think of it.

Again I seem to have laid out a foundation of confusion with my languange. Let me be clear. Civility does not exlude the ability to insult. Only insult civily. Do not call me a stupid head, cow pie eating, bulletbrain retard, because that is not a civil insult. Advising you not to play coy nor stupid is an insult, something that I laid out no restrictions against, however it is civil, in that it is not lowbrow, vulgar, or a below-the-belt attack.

While I may have used definitions that without a doubt support my argument, I did not seek out and use only definitions that did so. I simply typed into the Google search engine: Define (enter word here) and used the first definition available, which is not to say that it is discredited in any matter nor that I "designed the definitions to support my argument." You would not accuse someone of designing the definition of "attack" to support his argument against violence, so don't do it here to me. Also I will not go to wikipedia for anything I need hard, undeniable facts on, seeing as my eleven year old sister can edit the information that website offers. And I don't trust her to understand the basic idea of parasitism, at least not yet. Again, you seem to be stuck on the semantics of my argument rather than the argument.

Please, if you have a problem with the "pregnancy as parasitism" argument as a whole, outline your objection, do not say "I don't like that word that you used, so I'm going to ignore the message and pick at the paper."

All of that entitles me to advise you against being coy, stupid, or of thinking you had a limited understanding of what I was speaking of. If you did not understand my initial posisiton or my original message because of the words I used, you should have asked me for a clarification. Instead you nit-picked over my word-choice and pussyfooted around what I percieved to be clear and concise argument. And, upon reading the entirety of your latest response, I don't think you are a stupid individual, far from it, and so I see no reason as to why you would behave stupidly when responding to my original post.

Moving on to your questions:

The only reason I had to make two arguments is because you attacked two unrelated statements I made in the original post. Please refer to it if you don't remember what those were, and I say "No" there is not a tension between the two arguments.

Again do not play coy or stupid, you know perfectly well, as, I believe, do many others, that my view of a philosophical understanding of "Life" does not mean to the exclusion of all other attributes. Don't be ridiculous. There's another civil insult, if you lost track of them, and that was another.

As to your, ahem, "quibble" with certain aspects of my choice of the word "Life" as previously defined, again I ask you to outline clear and concise problems you have with the choice. And, on a side note, your reference to Tom and his "do unto others" is perfectly attractive, when others have the capacity to do unto you what has been done unto them. An aborted embryo cannot return the favor, nor can anyone "abort" you in retribution, so that little Golden Rule tidbit has no clear standing, to my understanding. Perhaps if you were to extrapolate that nugget into an actual idea to be argued, I might better understand your reasoning for it's inclusion here.

As to your noticing that the second argument seems to undercut the first about the capacity of the afforementioned prerequisites of "life" doesn't infer any worth, I say good job and have a cookie, you've finally caught up to where I said that...in the original post. (That was another civil insult, by the way, although it did toe the line, much to my amusement.)

And you are absolutely right, just because you possess the attributes I personally consider necessary in order to be termed "alive," as previously defined, does not also mean that you possess an inherent value. Like I said before, the only man on the planet is worthless because neither his action nor inaction is of use to anyone else, but himself. And we've already been over the "I don't think life is inherently valuable," so let me say that one placing value on oneself is to claim inherent value.

However, maybe I should address the issue of "placing value in others" or "making others worth." It's their usefulness. What they can do for me and mine, either emotionally, physically, or mentally. Go back a few posts and read what I wrote. The blind man with friends who value his companionship, is useful to them, and so the blind man derives his worth, from them. And so on with the deaf the dumb and all other manner of human.

And I do not argue that people's view and definition of worth changes and as such the value of life changes with that view. My view is that worth is derived from usefulness, which imparts value. Hitler had his view, Pol Pot had his, and you have yours. I have no argument with that. But then you head out towards left field.

"The decision of whether we ascribe value or worth to somebody is not wholly for us to make; we feel at the very least constrained by facts, circumstances and some fundamental principles so that it is morally indefensible to, eg. ascribe worth only to Gentiles. And that in turn suggests that we don’t feel that the ultimate source of worth is our choice to confer it; our choice is merely a response to prior realities. We need to look at those realities and reflect on what it is that means that some realities compel our respect for other human beings." --Your words

The decision of whether we ascribe value or worth to somebody IS WHOLLY ENTIRELY AND INESCAPABLY for us to make. Without reservation. The only thing left is to deal with the consequences of that decision. Hitler decided who had worth and acted accordingly, the world didn't like it and set out to put an end to his actions. Simple as that. "You make your bed," and all that fortune cookie crap. I do not, for the life of me, (and that was just a figure of speech, don't let my usage of the word "life" throw you off...oh, look at that. Another one) understand where this thread of thought came from, what it is about, or where it is going.

And we go back to ascribing self-worth. Self-worth, to me anyway, is like self-confidence. Nobody but you cares about what you think of yourself. Also, it is not so much authority or power you weild to ascribe worth to others like regally pointing and proclaiming for all to hear. It is more, you place worth in someone based on how useful to you they are emotionally, physically, or mentally, and that worth is there. Period. Now, someone else who places no value in my views of worth and value from usefulness, can easily kill that person without batting an eye. All I'm saying here, is that I personally, value that value. If I were to kill that person, I would not only be killing someone valuable to others, but someone useful to others. Someone who has others depending upon him or her to do something or be somewhere.

Abortion, therefore, is exempt from that calculation of harm to others from my harming the valued. No one but me can place value on my unborn child, because no one but me has experienced my unborn child, and therefore has no basis to ascribe value. No legitimacy to say "Do not abort the pregnancy, for I value that unborn child." And because there is no legitimacy, there is no usefulness in saying such things. And when there is no usefulness, there is no value. No value, no worth. No worth to what you say, what you say has no influence over my choice to abort.

As for the Freakonomics tidbit, imagine that the most prevalent case of abortion is when the mother is raped, or cannot afford to keep the child, for whatever reason. That leads us to assume that the mother is in a lower income situation. Lower income situations lead to higher instances of crime. Fewer individuals born (due to the fact they were aborted) leads to fewer individuals being raised in the lower income situation, leads to fewer individuals engaging in instances of crime, leading to a correlative drop in crime rate due to abortion legalization. At least, that's how I see it.

Their statistics show both that the majority of abortions were for people in lower socio-economic conditions, and that most of the abortions were for people who, though not usually victims of rape, people who did not intend to have, and therefore care, for children. Their conclusion is that there were less poor neglected children who were the perfect candidates to become underage criminals.

My dictionary tells me that insults are rude, and that civility is not, and so civil insults are an oxymoron. I understand where you are coming from, in that you have specific meanings and that Peregrinus is debating the labelling of those meanings (though I agree with him that the way you categorised "life" seems to ignore what is generally considered life, and therefore is perhaps not the choice which generates the greatest understanding - perhaps consciousness or agency would be more appropriate). Why you have chosen to be rude, though, is beyond me. It certainly doesn't add to your argument or your credibility, and gives me the impression that you are very unlikely to actually assess what other people are saying if they don't agree with you. I don't know if this is the case, but I am sure there is a way to be civil and still get your point across.

Oh, and I do agree with your assessment of the Golden Rule in this case.

Hi Cnsqntlst

I’m obliged to you for the concept of the “civil insult”. I’m sure it’ll be every bit as useful in discourse as philosophical “life”, the “parastitic embryo” and the “non-foetal foetus”.


That’s what I did, Cnsqntlst. I suggested that you needed to explain what you meant by the various words you chose to use. How is that not asking for a clarification?


Um, Cnsquntlst, when I said you were making two arguments I was talking about the “two unrelated statements” (your words, not mine) in your original post.

When you talk about “having to make” two arguments, the truth is that you chose to make two arguments in your original post. But you don't need to be defensive about that; I didn’t intend anything critical with my observation that you were making two arguments. I merely pointed out that you were doing so because I intended to address them separately. I don’t see anything wrong with your making two arguments in support of the same conclusion.


Sure. You’re assigning to the word “life” a meaning which excludes the great bulk of living things. This is almost certain to cause confusion. It’s like saying that people from Sydney are not Australian because you define “Australian” to mean “born in Coober Pedy”. If you were going to use the word “Australian” in that sense, I think the rest of us would be entitled to observe (a) that you were using it in a confusing way, and (b) you would be wise to explain that sense before you start employing the word.

Simlarly, when you tell us that, in the first eleven weeks of pregnancy, “life is not there” and that “I firmly know that life does not begin at conception”, we are smart enough to work out that, by “life” you clearly cannot mean, well, life. But you can hardly expect us to mysteriously divine what you do mean, or accuse us of stupidity for failing to work out a meaning which you could not be bothered to explain. And, as mcfate has pointed out, you could at least have taken the trouble to chose a term whose common meaning bore some relationship to the concept you actually intended.


The Golden Rule is not, e.g., “do not do to Cnsquntlst what you would not like Cnsqntlst to do to you”; it’s “do not do to others what you don’t want others – not necessarily the same other - to do to you. Thus, the fact that a particular person is not in a position to kill you doesn’t mean that you can therefore kill him without infringing the Golden Rule. If the Golden Rule were as you suggest then I could cheerfully exploit and abuse the powerless and marginalised on the basis that, being powerless and marginalised, they were not in a position to abuse me.

If, therefore, the foetus has reached a stage of development where it has attained your concept of philosophical “life” and if, as your argument implies, moral significance is thereby to be attributed to it, the question arises as to whether it is now within the scope of such ethical precepts as the Golden Rule. And, if it is, killing is it problematic because, as you know, we generally don’t like to be killed ourselves.


But why do we attribute any moral significance to his usefulness to others, if the people who whom he is useful have themselves no necessary moral significance? Is being useful to other people more morally significant than being useful to a beetle, or a tree, or an amoeba, or a pebble? Asserting that it does seems to assign an intrinsic moral significance to the person.


Well, that’s what the word “decision” means, I suppose. But you are ignoring the question of how we make the decision. Do we arbitrarily decide that we will value the ability to speak French, but not the ability to speak German? I don’t think that’s how we perceive or experience this decision. We feel ourselves, not to be creating and assigning value, but to be discerning the presence of value. Discernment is of course a subjective process, and so the decision is – as all decisions are – a subjective one. But that doesn’t mean that the value only exists when we think we discern it.

Or, to put it another way, suppose our friend Adolf over there decides that life is not “life” unless it is Gentile life. This is not a decision that either you or I would make. But can we offer any more forceful criticism of Adolf’s decision than “this is not a decision that we would make”?


And quite possibly nobody cares what I think of anyone else either. So why should what I think of anyone else create “worth” in a way that what I think of myself does not?

And why should what third parties care about have any role to play in creating “worth”? If their self-regard has no significance, why should their care have any?


The Freakonomics tidbit, as you describe it, is a useful example of the limits of simplistic consquentialism. In fairness to the authors, it should be pointed out that at no stage do they suggest that, because abortion reduces future crime rates, therefore it is a good thing. Exactly the same crime reduction could be achieved not by aborting the children concerned, but by lining them up against a wall at the age of ten and shooting them. And yet nobody suggests that the anticipated crime reduction would justify such a measure. We cannot, therefore, justify an action as good merely by pointing to a good consequence of that action. Observing that abortion reduces crime rates, even if this is empirically supported, does not create a justification for abortion.

Throughout the entirety of our bickering about the semantics of my arguments I have noticed one prevailing fact. You've never actually taken issue with my position, only how I choose to defend it. So let me put a stop to the bickering now and ask you openly:

Do you think abortion is justifiable? Why or why not?

And please don't ask me to go back through the pages of this thread trying to find your original answer if you've posted one. I apologize for my insults and for whatever confusion I caused you or others. I want to move on from that. So answer the question.

I've always thought that retrospective abortion was justifiable in certain cases.

Sorry for the delay in coming back to you, Cnsqntlst. As you may know if you have been following other threads I’ve been off on a drunken debauch for a few days, so don’t take it personally.


Huh? There’s a difference between taking issue with your position, and taking issue with how you defend it? Is it possible for me – or anyone – to question the basis no which you support your position without thereby questioning your position as well?

What I haven’t done is set out a separate position of my own. But that, of course, would have no implications for the validity or otherwise of whatever criticisms I might offer of your position.


In general I doubt that abortion is ethical. This arises from my humanist values in which the human person is infinitely precious, and from my inability to develop a sufficient moral certainty that the developing human being has no claim to be respected as a human person.

But I am also of the view that the person who must ultimately make the judgment about any particular abortion is the woman concerned, and that there are no circumstances in which I could ethically compel her to a course of action she did not choose, and very limited circumstances in which the community at large could do so.

There are two question here, specifically is abortion justified and what should be or relation to a woman's choice in the matter.

1. Abortion is fine because the fetus has no interest in its own existence. This is because it has no consciousness or mental awareness that allows it to think and comprehend its existence, let alone value it.

2. A woman's choice is paramount in her considering abortion. Forcing her to choose either way is immoral, but attempting to persuade her to do so or not seems valid given it is merely the function of free speech, expression and argumentation.