26 Comments on “Abortion”

1. Ha nice one! Thou shalt stir the pot.
   Reeaaalllly curious to know the ratio of submitted/approved comments for this one.

2. I don’t filter any dissenting comments here. Ever. If some get caught by WordPress’s spam filter, I push all of them through no matter how much they disagree with me or how insane they are. (Not mentioning any names, but go back and look through the comments of some more recent posts and you’ll see what I mean.)

   The only time I would actually filter a comment is if the comment contained nothing but personal attacks (the 5 Simple Rules), but that’s very rare on this blog. (So far.)

3. Aaaaaaaand once again there is no mention whatsoever of Vasalgel, in an article where it is centrally relevant.

   I am reluctantly coming to the conclusion that I’m the only person in the androsphere who can think more than a few weeks into the future.

4. While I didn’t mention Vasalgel by name, I’ve already discussed future male birth control options right here, and even linked to that article early in the above post (in reason number 2).

5. Right. If you are going to have a baby, then you better have your own money to pay for it. Don’t be asking me to pay for your welfare checks because you wanted a kid. You want a kid, then pay for it. If you can’t afford to have a kid then don’t do it. If you can’t figure out how to make enough money to afford the kid then you aren’t smart enough to have one.

6. Amen!

   I made up a detailed budget before I ever had any children. I refused to have any kids until I knew damn well I could afford it. When I knew I could afford it, then I had kids. Until then, I waited.

   It’s not that difficult to do.

7. “Probably not a stance you’ve ever heard before…”

   I’ve heard it before. Once upon a time it was the stance of the Catholic Church … they referred to “The Quickening”.

   http://www.religioustolerance.org/abo_hist_c.htm

8. I’m sorry BD, but this position of yours in unviable. Picture this: The woman is a smoker, a drug addict, or an alcoholic. She gets pregnant. And because she has followed your philosophy, she thinks the baby is not a human being for the first two months. So she continues to smoke, drink, do drugs, or whatever for those two months. Then when the baby becomes human after those two months, she stops, sobers up, and starts living a healthy lifestyle.

   She never hurt the baby after it became human. But the baby is born brain damaged because of how she treated it before it became human.

   In your opinion, is she responsible and should she be arrested for child abuse? Or will you give her a pass because she abused the baby before it became human in your opinion?

9. Once upon a time it was the stance of the Catholic Church

   Wow. I had no idea. Some rationality from the (old) Catholic Church…amazing.

   The woman is a smoker, a drug addict, or an alcoholic. She gets pregnant. And because she has followed your philosophy, she thinks the baby is not a human being for the first two months. So she continues to smoke, drink, do drugs, or whatever for those two months. Then when the baby becomes human after those two months, she stops, sobers up, and starts living a healthy lifestyle.

   My recommendation to women is to quickly terminate the nonhuman embryo. It is not to torture or mutate the nonhuman embryo. That’s just pointless and disgusting.

   I occasionally eat meat, which means I support the painless killing of cows (which are not humans) for food. But I would NOT support someone torturing a cow, nor drawing out the cow’s death to something painful and horrible. That’s just sick. It’s the same deal.

   On wider note, you’re using the common tactic of “coming up with an extremely wild and insane example that will probably never happen in real life in order to refute a point”. If my position was so clearly wrong, you would not have to make up such an extreme, crazy example to prove me wrong.

10. “Some rationality from the (old) Catholic Church…amazing.”

    Not to worry … they compensated for that in other ways.

11. “I believe in Natural Law, which means all human beings own their own bodies.”
    So the woman, having the right to do whatever she wants with her body, could get the little human parasite out of her and it could do whatever it wants with its body. How could i own my body if i could be forced by law to let it be used for the needs of another?!

    “It has now gone from an embryo, a clump of cells and flesh, to a baby, a human. Granted, it’s the size of a orange at this point, but babies are small. That doesn’t make them less human.” – Those are not facts, those are your opinions upon some facts ( if it has organs and brain therefore …human). How about it dosn’t require to exist in another person .. therefore.. human? – That would be another opinion.

12. So the woman, having the right to do whatever she wants with her body, could get the little human parasite out of her and it could do whatever it wants with its body. How could i own my body if i could be forced by law to let it be used for the needs of another?!

    Because the ejection of this other human within you would cause the willful death of that human. That’s called murder.

    For example, there are laws that state you must feed your children so they don’t starve. I agree with these laws. If you have a small child, refused to ever feed it while you’re eating all the food you want, and that child died of starvation, you would rightly be guilty of murder. It’s the same deal. You have the right to sustain your own body, but you don’t have the right to kill another’s body. If you don’t want others to be dependent on you, don’t get pregnant and don’t have any kids. Which is not that difficult considering women have 11 forms of birth control.

    “It has now gone from an embryo, a clump of cells and flesh, to a baby, a human. Granted, it’s the size of a orange at this point, but babies are small. That doesn’t make them less human.” – Those are not facts, those are your opinions upon some facts ( if it has organs and brain therefore …human).

    That’s exactly what I said that in the post. Yes, that is my opinion, based on facts. Thanks for repeating me.

    How about it dosn’t require to exist in another person .. therefore.. human?

    A 1 or 2 year-old child requires you, its parent, to exist. Inside of you or outside of you is irrelevant; it 100% depends on you for its survival, but it’s still a human. (I have a feeling you would not grab a knife and kill your infant child because you thought it was convenient, and then say “Well, it wasn’t a human anyway, since it was completely dependent on me to live.”) What major difference is there between when that baby was inside a woman one day then the next day it’s born and outside of her? None. Either way it’s dependent on that mother for survival.

13. “Either way it’s dependent on that mother for survival.”

    No it isn’t … once born, anybody can take care of it, not just the natural mother. Key difference.

    I personally go with “human”, but I’m still ok with giving the mother the authority to determine life or death right up to the moment of birth.

    I also believe, following Jeremy Bentham, that “natural law” is “nonsense upon stilts”, and regard any argument that takes this as a starting point to be just another sort of religious argument … so no particular reason I should accept it.

14. No it isn’t … once born, anybody can take care of it, not just the natural mother. Key difference.

    True. If the presence of a 9 month-old baby in a woman is threatening the woman’s health in some way, then fine, I’m okay with doing away with it as sad as that might be. But otherwise, the purposeful death of that 9 month-old baby just because the mom suddenly changes her mind and decides she doesn’t want it is murder.

    I also believe, following Jeremy Bentham, that “natural law” is “nonsense upon stilts”

    Despite his views on Natural Law, Jeremy Bentham still believed in the individual’s rights as I do, so that’s probably not the best example to use.

    Regardless, I don’t believe in Natural Law because Natural Law is perfect or 100% logically rock-solid, because it’s most certainty not. I believe in Natural Law because history has repeatedly shown us that the only other option, that the collective owns you at least in part, always leads to horrible things.

15. “Rights”, in my book, are and always have been social constructs. I have a portfolio of rights as a citizen of the USA … and I did not acquire them all at the same time.

    For example, I didn’t acquire the right to enter into valid contract until I was eighteen, or the right to vote. I didn’t acquire the right to consume alcohol until I was twenty-one.

    So it is with my “right to life” … I did not acquire it until the moment of my birth, even if I were a fully formed human person before then. Until that time I lived at the mercy of my mother.

    Well, maybe that was not true in 1962, but that’s the stance we have collectively adopted now (with controversy, of course), and for various historical and utilitarian (utilitarian in the highest sense, in terms of its implications for women’s lives) reasons I will go to the mat to keep it that way.

16. BTW, I personally find the concept of “self ownership” to be muddled/vacuous … but that doesn’t mean I’m “owned by the collective” either. For me, at least, notions of property rights don’t enter into this. But of course, I’m not a libertarian.

    Point is, I can accept the same science and facts and reality you do, and make rational arguments …. and still end up in a different place, if I start from a different premise. So we can’t end the debate if we all just agree to use science and act rationally …. we’re going to be forced to make some sort of collective decision in the end that will displease many people (and not just the irrational ones).

17. You’re right; all philosophical concepts are human inventions, even Natural Law, even the concept of “rights”. That’s why I don’t believe in “God given rights” like a conservative. Anything “God given” is a human invention. Any philosophical concept you subscribe to is by definition an opinion, liberal, conservative, libertarian, whatever.

    In terms of who owns you, you really only have three choices. Either A) you own you 100%, B) the collective owns you 100%, or C) the collective owns you between 1% and 99%.

    A libertarian, objectivist, or Natural Law adherent believes in option A. That certainly includes me. A true communist believes in option B. Most normal people, i.e. a left-wing liberals and right-wing conservatives, believe in option C. It just depends on who runs society or the prevailing cultural zeitgeist in any given point in time.

    But we’re getting way off topic here.

18. BD, like your blog and have followed your posts even from FS days, always enlightening discussion. In my mind, one major component of the abortion rate drop is simply women in modern America are having significantly less sex than decades past. That’s somewhat captured in your Reason #1 Bad Economy. And also relates back to your Feb. 2nd blog post on the slight increased difficulty for alphas.

    But there is so much more going on here with the phenomenon of less overall sex in America and really the entire English speaking world (correlated here is the recent British study showing less sexual activity). And it’s common talk in the manosphere of the low sex activity going on in Japan.

    The reasons for why this is are many likely, but there are all these hints of data that keep coming through on less sex. I wish there were more discussion along these lines.

    I’ve been around university culture for more than twenty years, continuously, first as a student, then/now as employee. The youth culture on the modern campus is far different than twenty years ago, even still significantly different than ten years ago. One being the number of women in college is soaring, and that changes the social dynamics, not necessarily for the better for either sex. In contrast to our younger days (I’m about a year younger than you), one noticeable thing on college campuses is the general drop in more public displays of flirtatious activity/talk that had/should always be obvious among groups of young people. You just don’t really see this anymore. The students will say they go to parties and bars and such, still in high numbers for sure, but their public displays of social interactions are slightly “off” to me.

    There’s a lot of posturing in the youth today, even among women who are hot. I suspect that larger numbers of even highly attractive women are graduating college even as virgins these days. And if not that, there is also this aspect of the youth might have more sex partners than in the past, but lower total sex activity. Short serial monogamy relationships that really didn’t have much sex activity throughout. So there has gotten to be this sexually-immature/relationship-immature generational phenomenon going on…

    Your comments welcome, take care.

19. I find it interesting that Christians are so opposed to abortion when you consider how many babies and pregnant women were slaughtered at God’s command in the Old Testament. A few places even suggest that a child under one month old has no value and Numbers 5:21-27 provides a biblical instructions for performing an abortion when the husband suspects his wife of adultery.

    It’s actually surprisingly difficult to make a Biblical case for the “sanctity of life…”

20. But there is so much more going on here with the phenomenon of less overall sex in America and really the entire English speaking world (correlated here is the recent British study showing less sexual activity). And it’s common talk in the manosphere of the low sex activity going on in Japan.

    the general drop in more public displays of flirtatious activity/talk that had/should always be obvious among groups of young people. You just don’t really see this anymore. The students will say they go to parties and bars and such, still in high numbers for sure, but their public displays of social interactions are slightly “off” to me.

    And if not that, there is also this aspect of the youth might have more sex partners than in the past, but lower total sex activity. Short serial monogamy relationships that really didn’t have much sex activity throughout.

    These are all good points and I agree with all of them. As I’ve been saying for a long time, Western culture is full of sexual imagery, but Western people aren’t having that much actual sex, at least as compared to decades ago. A few years ago I made this blog post about how much more sex married people had in the 1940s as compared to now.

    Your examples are regarding younger people; I will give you examples from older people. The vast, vast majority of unmarried women I’ve met over the age of 30 have gone through phases in their lives where they didn’t have sex at all for one, two, or three years. Sometimes even longer. While I can’t say this for sure, I’m 95% confident this is a new cultural phenomenon. I don’t think women were doing this in the 70s or 80s. I don’t think back then women went through this very common “I hate men” phase or “Men are too much trouble” phase and then completely removed themselves from the sexual market for years at a time.

    On the average, people of all age groups, both married and unmarried, are indeed having sex across the board. Great point.

    I find it interesting that Christians are so opposed to abortion when you consider how many babies and pregnant women were slaughtered at God’s command in the Old Testament.

    That’s because the Old Testament is a Disney fairytale. While there are some interesting stories and quasi-history there (I’ve read much of it, being raised Catholic), no rationality can be gleaned from it.

21. BD, are you serious? You actually think my example is unrealistic? Do you know how many women continue to smoke and lead unhealthy lifestyles after they learn they’re pregnant? They do this because they figure it won’t hurt the baby, due to the pregnancy being “not far enough along yet.” Then when they get what they call “PREGNANT-pregnant,” they’ll sober up.

    My question was: If you think the embryo is not human yet, would you charge the woman with murder if the baby dies after birth due to brain damage, or child abuse if it is born brain damaged? Or would you give her a pass because the baby wasn’t human when she did those things to it? Would you therefore charge her with animal cruelty as a result of the human baby’s damaged brain after it’s born, if it can be proven that she damaged it before it was human?

22. Your example was a woman who treated her body like crap, then suddenly did a super healthy 180 at exactly the 2-month pregnancy mark. Yeah, that’s unrealistic. If you now want to change your example to something more realistic, then great.

    If you think the embryo is not human yet, would you charge the woman with murder if the baby dies after birth due to brain damage, or child abuse if it is born brain damaged?

    That’s a tough one. If the doctor could conclusively prove that the brain damage was done A) after the 2 month mark and B) because of specific, clear, purposefully destructive behaviors on the part of the mother, then yes, there should be legal consequences. But that’s a lot of ifs. I’m talking here about a woman who is 8 months pregnant who drinks a gallon of vodka and is snorting cocaine on a daily basis, for example. Hell yes that woman should face legal consequences for damaging that human inside her (one she chose to carry to eight months, when she should have gotten an abortion before two months).

    Or would you give her a pass because the baby wasn’t human when she did those things to it? Would you therefore charge her with animal cruelty as a result of the human baby’s damaged brain after it’s born, if it can be proven that she damaged it before it was human?

    Ah, this is where my libertarianism kicks in. I’m very much against animal cruelty on a moral level, but I’m a little squeamish on creating creating governmental animal cruelty LAWS. Just like I think, on a moral level, it’s very wrong to cheat on your spouse if you promise them monogamy, but I would never create a LAW that says a woman who cheats on her husband must go to prison, for example. Just because something is bad does not mean it should be illegal or that the government should get involved. The government has better things to do.

23. Blackdragon,

    This might interest you…

    http://davidvs.blogspot.com/2006/02/ensoulment-and-personhood.html

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