It's The Mother or the Baby: A moral dilemma for pro-lifers

MayCaesar

I will play a devil's advocate and say here that I really dislike this type of objections. It does not really address people's argument and is a very marginal situation. Whether people choose to save the life of the mother at the expense of the fetus or vice-versa, their position does not become more or less consistent. The core of the issue should be addressed, not such special cases.

It is like the commonly used objection to death penalty: "What if the person turns out to be innocent?" Sure,  but same goes for any other penalty as well. Court errors happen, and their presence should not affect how the system of justice works in general. Similarly, marginal cases such as the woman's life being in danger, should not affect the general approach.

To me, outlawing abortion makes no sense not because of such special cases, but because it would be infringement on the most basic individual right - bodily autonomy. Whether the mother is endangered by the process of giving birth, whether the child is likely to have a mental deviation, etc. - it is her choice, and nobody can tell her what to do.
Let us have a consistent position on this not requiring considering countless special cases. Otherwise this debate will go on forever, and we will keep exchanging jabs: "What if the mother's life is in danger?" "And what if it is not?" "I think aborting the fetus at a late stage is wrong." "What about aborting it at an earlier stage?" The government should not interfere in these things; let us just leave it at that and not complicate everything needlessly.

ZeusAres42

@MayCaesar

My argument here is to do with taking the issue of the pro-life position.

MayCaesar said:

I will play a devil's advocate and say here that I really dislike this type of objections. It does not really address people's argument and is a very marginal situation. Whether people choose to save the life of the mother at the expense of the fetus or vice-versa, their position does not become more or less consistent. The core of the issue should be addressed, not such special cases.

It is like the commonly used objection to death penalty: "What if the person turns out to be innocent?" Sure,  but same goes for any other penalty as well. Court errors happen, and their presence should not affect how the system of justice works in general. Similarly, marginal cases such as the woman's life being in danger, should not affect the general approach.

To me, outlawing abortion makes no sense not because of such special cases, but because it would be infringement on the most basic individual right - bodily autonomy. Whether the mother is endangered by the process of giving birth, whether the child is likely to have a mental deviation, etc. - it is her choice, and nobody can tell her what to do.
Let us have a consistent position on this not requiring considering countless special cases. Otherwise this debate will go on forever, and we will keep exchanging jabs: "What if the mother's life is in danger?" "And what if it is not?" "I think aborting the fetus at a late stage is wrong." "What about aborting it at an earlier stage?" The government should not interfere in these things; let us just leave it at that and not complicate everything needlessly.

Moral dilemmas do exist and cannot be ignored. It doesn't matter how marginal one thinks a case is. The core of the issue regarding abortion is that it does rest largely on many different circumstances with many different moral and ethical dilemmas for one to make such blanket statements such as they are pro-life. The same goes for pro-choice. However, my argument here is to do with the inconsistency of the self-proclaimed pro-life position which I contend is flawed and with one those flaws being a conflation of moral acceptance of abortion and the meaning of life to people.

Furthermore, thanks for your devil's advocate which is exactly how I anticipated genuine pro-lifers to respond. But avoidance of the issue is not a sound argument. Your Devi's advocate can be boiled down to this:

P1 "Oh that is a special case."

P2 "I don't think that matters

Conclusion: Therefore, I am still pro-life.

This doesn't really come across to me as being a strong objection. And again, this sounds like rationalization too.

MayCaesar

@ZeusAres42

I am not really saying that your objection is not valid; I am saying that this objection is fairly minor and can be dismissed under various fairly logical assumptions. If you want to criticise the anti-abortion stance as a whole, you want to say something about the underlying issues pertinent to all cases, not just to their small subset.

In real life, we always have to assess probability of various things and act based on that assessment. For example, when you go to a party at your friend's house and are offered a cup of wine, there is a theoretical possibility that your friend has poisoned the wine and wants to kill you - however, in practice you will accept the cup and drink it, because you see that theoretical possibility as fairly insignificant. It does happen that good friends poison each other, so it is not something that exists only in your imagination - however, the effect of it on the situation in general is fairly small, sufficient to be neglected.

When talking about societal rules, we always have to make some compromises. This always creates a dilemma: either we introduce a hard rule applicable to everyone, severely disadvantaging a tiny minority of people, or we compromise and make the rule softer, allowing for exceptions. In light of this, a person, for example, may in principle be strongly against abortions, but allow for them in very extreme cases, especially in cases where lives of multiple entities are put on the scale and one has to choose one of them.

I do myself like to point out the inconsistency you are hinting at: that people who value the life of a fetus high enough should not make exceptions just because the mother is in danger, or because the mother was violated. However, it is more of a philosophical objection; it does not have to apply to how the system of justice works. We all make exceptions and compromises on our positions all the time; that is just how the world works.

In any case, my point was practical: that you are going to have a better luck changing people's minds by attacking their argument at its core, rather than considering its individual branches. I may be wrong about it, but that is what my experience tells me: unless you get someone to see how their argument is severely flawed at its base, you will not break them out of their mindset. You can get them to make some concessions, but to change their view on the subject entirely, you have to go deeper.

ZeusAres42

MayCaesar said:

@ZeusAres42

I am not really saying that your objection is not valid; I am saying that this objection is fairly minor and can be dismissed under various fairly logical assumptions. If you want to criticise the anti-abortion stance as a whole, you want to say something about the underlying issues pertinent to all cases, not just to their small subset.

@MayCaesar

The abortion debate is not simply about logical reasoning. If only that was the case. Albeit, there does exist arguments that can and do contain logical flaws regarding abortion as well as other flaws. Anyway, what exactly are these underlying issues are you referring to you? Also, how would you do in this scenario I provided and why?

In real life, we always have to assess probability of various things and act based on that assessment. For example, when you go to a party at your friend's house and are offered a cup of wine, there is a theoretical possibility that your friend has poisoned the wine and wants to kill you - however, in practice you will accept the cup and drink it, because you see that theoretical possibility as fairly insignificant. It does happen that good friends poison each other, so it is not something that exists only in your imagination - however, the effect of it on the situation in general is fairly small, sufficient to be neglected.

This is still an avoidance of the moral dilemma I provided. How likely it is in the real world is irrelevant to the question which still has yet to be answered. If I had said that we should all go undercover because it's possible that asteroid could hit the earth anytime then I would be making an appeal to possibility. But that's not what is going on here in my argument.

When talking about societal rules, we always have to make some compromises. This always creates a dilemma: either we introduce a hard rule applicable to everyone, severely disadvantaging a tiny minority of people, or we compromise and make the rule softer, allowing for exceptions. In light of this, a person, for example, may in principle be strongly against abortions, but allow for them in very extreme cases, especially in cases where lives of multiple entities are put on the scale and one has to choose one of them.

This I am not disputing.

I do myself like to point out the inconsistency you are hinting at: that people who value the life of a fetus high enough should not make exceptions just because the mother is in danger, or because the mother was violated. However, it is more of a philosophical objection; it does not have to apply to how the system of justice works. We all make exceptions and compromises on our positions all the time; that is just how the world works.

This is an objection and it has happened a lot in the person and sometimes still does. Moral Dilemmas cannot be ignored. They may to one appear as a philosophical questioning. However, these things have and do happen in the real world.

In any case, my point was practical: that you are going to have a better luck changing people's minds by attacking their argument at its core, rather than considering its individual branches. I may be wrong about it, but that is what my experience tells me: unless you get someone to see how their argument is severely flawed at its base, you will not break them out of their mindset. You can get them to make some concessions, but to change their view on the subject entirely, you have to go deeper.

Right, so what are these underlying issues?

In conclusion of my responses, the dilemma I provided is basically just a way of epitomizing how inconsistent and flawed the pro-life position is. I could go on and list multiple dilemmas but why do that when I can just use one or a few that are enough to suffice to be concise and to the point? In addition to that, the moral and ethical dilemma that I provided is reminiscent of real-life and real-world as I've already demonstrated.

Finally, @MayCaesar thanks for being someone to give me a decent debate here that actually gets me thinking. That doesn't happen very often these days.

ZeusAres42

I just realized I put this into the workplace category lmao. I just had to edit it.

AlofRI

Been there, done that. There should be NO dilemma for anybody.

But, then, this country has gone crazy, on the right …. the FAR right, anyway.

Over 60% of "right wingers" support Roe v Wade. That SHOULD be enough, but ………………...