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Abortion
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The Corinthian wrote: »I think you're getting confused. You asked how one can even measure potentials and I pointed out actuaries do.
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Nothing even remotely like what you're implying
Source: I am an actuary
So please drop your whole actuary argument0 -
Given the growing population of the planet and the start of dwindling resources surely abortion is a moral good?
It can ensure that people only have children when they are ready to do so and be able to provide for the children they want and not to have more children then they want.0 -
eviltwin wondered what would happen if the healthcare system worked on the basis of ascribing more value to one person's life over another. See eviltwin's post below:zeffabelli wrote: »How does this relate to the mother/feotus query?
I pointed out that private patients get timely colonoscopies and cancer treatment but that public patients are at the mercy of waiting lists.Its a horrible way to view people. Imagine the health care system worked on that basis, person A got a new heart because he was married and had a few kids but person B gets put to the bottom of the list because he's single.
'We are not refusing treatment. Run along now and come back next year if you're still alive.' But you say that's not refusal to treat?zeffabelli wrote: »They are not refusing treatment, they are making you wait for it. Time is tissue I know.
It is unrealistic to imagine that the delay inherent in waiting lists is not refusal to treat. The fact is that the government uses waiting lists for the very reason that it will not pay to treat all of the people who need treatment. If only some patients receive treatment per year, then the rest do not receive treatment. The simple fact of the matter is that a person on a waiting list is not actually receiving treatment.
On a waiting list = no treatment.
This is how the government saves money. Because even though time is of the essence in treating many illnesses, there is also the time value of money. Some people do not receive treatment so the government can save or invest money.
I got on to this topic because we had been discussing value judgements in relation to life and death scenarios, in the context of abortion. When it was asserted that these value judgements were horrible, The Corinthian pointed out that it is better to discuss these issues in objective and rational terms than to simply complain about them being horrible. Then you decided that value judgements relating to peoples' lives were 'science fiction'.
Following on from that, I pointed out the health service discriminates about who receives treatment and who does not. You asked how this relates to the mother/foetus query.
And here we are.
We are talking about value judgements made in relation to human lives. These judgements are made daily and yet people pretend that this doesn't happen.0 -
Given the growing population of the planet and the start of dwindling resources surely abortion is a moral good?
It can ensure that people only have children when they are ready to do so and be able to provide for the children they want and not to have more children then they want.
Well this gets into all sorts of ethnic cleansing debates. Look athe parts of the world where there is over population.
But on a more basic level, an infant/child has a pretty low shot at survival if the mother does not love or want the child.
Attachment and love with the parent are essential to an infant and child's survival.0 -
I never mentioned ethnic cleansing, nope you inserted that red herring.
Many women who have abortions are already mothers and so make that choice so they can look after existing children.0 -
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Not necessarily. The murder, after birth, of children that are unwanted or whose parents are not ready to care for them would achieve exactly the same outcome, but clearly that's not enough to make it a moral good.Given the growing population of the planet and the start of dwindling resources surely abortion is a moral good?
It can ensure that people only have children when they are ready to do so and be able to provide for the children they want and not to have more children then they want.
"We can identify a good consequence that will follow from X" is not enough to establish that X is a moral good.0 -
So actuaries never calculate or estimate potential value, such as future earnings or cost?Nothing even remotely like what you're implying
Source: I am an actuary
So please drop your whole actuary argument
Interesting argument, and it actually has a form of historical precedence.Given the growing population of the planet and the start of dwindling resources surely abortion is a moral good?
Pagan Iceland practiced infanticide on the basis that it was believed that the island could only support a limited population. So strong was this belief that, even following Icelandic conversion to Christianity in 1000 AD, the Church made the concession that this practice could be continued (although this was reversed a few years later).
Huh? She never mentioned or even implied ethnic cleansing.zeffabelli wrote: »Well this gets into all sorts of ethnic cleansing debates.
At least it's not just with me you're jumping to wrong conclusions.
Very true, but then how does one classify 'a necessary evil' on the moral scale. For example, the concept of a just war still requires the waging of violent conflict and the legitimization of murder, yet we can see it overall as a moral 'good' because of it's end. Meanwhile to refuse to carry out that 'necessary evil' can result in a greater evil and so be ironically seen as an immoral act as a result.Peregrinus wrote: »"We can identify a good consequence that will follow from X" is not enough to establish that X is a moral good.
Does the end justify the means?0 -
It's a good question, but unfortunately it doesn't lend itself to a one-word answer.The Corinthian wrote: »Very true, but then how does one classify 'a necessary evil' on the moral scale. For example, the concept of a just war still requires the waging of violent conflict and the legitimization of murder, yet we can see it overall as a moral 'good' because of it's end. Meanwhile to refuse to carry out that 'necessary evil' can result in a greater evil and so be ironically seen as an immoral act as a result.
Does the end justify the means?
Aren't we dealing with the problem of a conflict between competing moral principles? On the one hand, killing people is always morally problematic, to put it no higher. On the other hand, injustice is also morally problematic. The "just war" theory is an attempt to negotiate some resolution of the problem; if someone is threatening harm to you (the enemy soldier), and is doing so in order to perpetrate an injustice (the enemy's cause is oppressive) then, exceptionally, it may be permissible to kill him.
It's not easy to reason by analogy from this situation to abortion. There are cases where abortion is a threat to the mother's life (and they are much discussed in Ireland) but the truth is that very few abortions carried out in the western world are a response to a direct and substantial threat to the mother's life posed by the pregnancy. Plus, cases of rape and sexual exploitation aside, the pregnancy itself can hardly be characterised as an "injustice". You can use the just war analogy to argue in favour of a very limted abortion regime, confined to cases of grave medical problems and of rape, but not, I think, to an abortion regime which reflects a woman's right to choose.
Morag, of course, is not arguing by analogy with just war theory. But some of the same objections still hold. Just only a small minority of abortions are a reaction to threats to life or rape, so only a small minority of abortions are the result of a desire not to have children, so as to conserve the world's resources. If we in the West honestly want to husband the world's resources more carefully, abortion would be about no. 900 on the list of things we could usefully do. Abortions may be motivated by a concern about timing ("I intend to have children, but not yet") or even by a desire to avoid having a child because that would disrupt an already environmentally unsustainable lifestyle. There really is not much evidence suggesting that, in the real world, ready access to and frequent practice of abortion is associated with the better husbanding of scarce resources. And an argument that bad X is acceptable because it avoids even worse Y falls over completely if we observe that bad X does not have that outcome.
To my mind the strongest argument in favour of permitting abortion is the appeal to a woman's autonomy and dignity. I don't think it's a complete show-stopper, but it's stronger than any other argument I have seen.0 -
Peregrinus wrote: »
Morag, of course, is not arguing by analogy with just war theory. But some of the same objections still hold. Just only a small minority of abortions are a reaction to threats to life or rape, so only a small minority of abortions are the result of a desire not to have children, so as to conserve the world's resources. If we in the West honestly want to husband the world's resources more carefully, abortion would be about no. 900 on the list of things we could usefully do. Abortions may be motivated by a concern about timing ("I intend to have children, but not yet") or even by a desire to avoid having a child because that would disrupt an already environmentally unsustainable lifestyle. There really is not much evidence suggesting that, in the real world, ready access to and frequent practice of abortion is associated with the better husbanding of scarce resources. And an argument that bad X is acceptable because it avoids even worse Y falls over completely if we observe that bad X does not have that outcome.
To my mind the strongest argument in favour of permitting abortion is the appeal to a woman's autonomy and dignity. I don't think it's a complete show-stopper, but it's stronger than any other argument I have seen.
It is my understanding that it is more than a small minority of women who have abortions already have children (I think it's nearing 50%?).
Would this not suggest this is about the better husbanding not of world resources but of interior family resources?0 -
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Yes, that's pretty much my point. Of course there's an overlap between reduce resource consumption on the macro level and at the household level, but my gut feeling tells me that in this instance it's a fairly small overlap.zeffabelli wrote: »It is my understanding that it is more than a small minority of women who have abortions already have children (I think it's nearing 50%?).
Would this not suggest this is about the better husbanding not of world resources but of interior family resources?0 -
The Corinthian wrote: »Very true, but then how does one classify 'a necessary evil' on the moral scale. For example, the concept of a just war still requires the waging of violent conflict and the legitimization of murder, yet we can see it overall as a moral 'good' because of it's end. Meanwhile to refuse to carry out that 'necessary evil' can result in a greater evil and so be ironically seen as an immoral act as a result.
Does the end justify the means?
Most evil is accomplished by well meaning people thinking they are obliterating evil.
Ugly truth is, most of us wouldn't be here if it weren't for human's ability to kill efficiently. When I say kill efficiently I don't necessarily mean humans. I mean animals, I mean the ant genocide I commit walking across a lawn to pull a fig off a tree as well as the life I have taken from the fig. I mean the capacity to fight back when a Nazi tank comes rolling through the living room.
I am of a generation of 46 million people, sandwiched between the babyboomers of which are 80 million and millenials of which there are close to 80 million.
What happened to the other half of my generation- the kids of the free love peace loving babyboomers? Was it a shift in family planning or were half of them aborted?
Facing moral questions like this requires a kind of strength most of us don't have.0 -
Killing an unborn human that has a functioning nervous system is wrong most of the time in my opinion.0
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There are a few points to make here. Firstly, Ireland was a conquered country for a long time (in part because of William of Orange but we won`t hold that against you) and because we were a conquered people for so long, we have a conquered mindset. In other words, when someone from another country, the Netherlands for example, says "we have abortion and we have no problem with that," those Irish with the inferiority complex that is part and parcel of the conquered mindset, say to themselves, they have abortion, maybe if we had abortion we would be as great as the Dutch.Liesannenl wrote: »Hi there!
I'm Liesanne and I'm from the Netherlands. I'd like to ask you a few questions about Abortion. Like I already said I'm from the Netherlands, where abortion is generally accepted. But when I'm reading the news about Ireland and abortion it's rather the opposite. So the reason why I opened this thread, is because I wonder where this comes from. Why is abortion still illegal in most of the cases? I wonder what you think of abortion and what do you think should be the law in Ireland of abortion?
Sincerely,
Liesanne
For my part, I have tremendous respect and admiration for the Dutch people but not because they have abortion. I admire the Dutch because they have built the dykes and reclaimed land from the sea. I admire Dutch entrepreneurship in horticulture and specialized industries. I do understand why conservative Dutch people emigrated to the colonies in previous centuries because they did not like the liberal developments in the Netherlands and again those colonists are worthy of tremendous admiration and respect for their accomplishments.
By contrast, work and seriousness are things Irish people seem to shy away from. Anyway, the second point is this: If it is ok to kill the unborn child, where does the killing stop. I have heard people assert that abortion happens, therefore it should be legal. However, if we apply this standard of morality and logic to murder, pedophilia, genocide etc, well they happen, does that mean they should be legal?
I will add one more point. I know of a couple who adopted children who were mentally and physically disabled. They were not looking for the "perfect" child. Why did they do this? Had they adopted the "perfect" child, that child could perhaps have become a great athlete or achieved great things to make them proud. A handicapped child might not be able to achieve greatness beyond mastering their own limitations but they are capable of giving and receiving love and perhaps more intensely because of their handicap, just as a blind person may develop stronger than normal non-visual senses. So it may be a question of values. Do you value pride which is one of the 7 deadly sins, or do you value love?0
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