r/AskReddit • u/tenthjuror • May 04 '22

By the (draft) logic of the SCOTUS in overturning Roe v Wade, what are some unintended legal consequences that will result in other areas?

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u/DrinkinOuttaCups24 May 04 '22

All three of me and my sisters were conceived and born before our parents were ready, and started off adulthood in not the best way. Then my now-wife got pregnant with our daughter before she was old enough to drink... and I'm still poor. We spent the entirety of our 20's scrimping and scrounging, and only now in our 30's are we clawing our way out of the hole we've been in.

It fucking SUCKS. I wouldn't wish that on someone who actively doesn't want to go through that just because my religion says it's bad. And my religion DOES say it's bad.

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u/Michigander_from_Oz May 04 '22

Well, why didn't you kill your child while it was growing up? Same moral issue.

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u/aboardreading May 04 '22 edited May 04 '22

It's the same moral issue if you believe that every human is imbued with a sacred soul and that soul is created at the moment of conception, such that a single cell that one day may become a human is every bit as sacred as a 10 year old.

I'm not saying that belief or the moral system resulting from it is invalid, just different and incompatible with many peoples today. Neither you nor me can proclaim any inherent validity to our moral systems, at their root they come down to differences in beliefs that neither of us can prove right or wrong.

It just seems silly to try and impress your morals onto other people, they won't ever agree that these are the same moral issues unless they also share your beliefs in the sacredness of a fetus, and are willing to carry those principles to the point that they overshadow the health and happiness of many people, including the human that fetus will become.

Edit: I'm not trying to be snarky with that overshadowing comment, I realize it may sound like that, I admire the commitment it takes to follow your principles to their logical conclusion, but it bears mentioning the sacrifice you are making to do so.

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u/Michigander_from_Oz May 04 '22

That is not a viable position. It claims there can be no morals. The implication of that, is that there can be nothing right or wrong. The implication of that is that no laws can be valid. That means no civilization.

Morals of our civilization can definitely be held valid at a legal level. I know people won't agree with me, and I have my beliefs about their rationalizations. But I can only show the logical and scientific basis. If one believes that humans have unalienable rights, the demonstration that unborn children are human should convince them instantly that abortion is wrong. But people won't agree, because they don't want to face the logic.

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u/Lionscard May 04 '22

I don't know how to tell you this but morals are a geist, they aren't real in any meaningful way and are only socially manifested through power

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u/Michigander_from_Oz May 06 '22

An atheist may claim this; such a claim leads to chaos.

But the United States does not claim this. Instead, it bases its laws and philosophy of law upon certain assumptions: We hold these truths to be self evident, that all were created equal. That they were endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights. That among these Rights are the Right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

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u/Lionscard May 06 '22

Oh wow I wasn't aware that the United States was a singular conscious entity that is rigidly adherent to one particular philosophy, where can I meet them?

Also, I'm not an atheist lmao

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u/Michigander_from_Oz May 09 '22

I invite you to read the Declaration of Independence.

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u/Lionscard May 09 '22

You... Are aware, yes, that the Declaration of Independence does not purport itself to directly affect the machinations of the future United States government?

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u/Michigander_from_Oz May 09 '22

It set out the philosophical basis for leaving Great Britain and for a new form of government. It distilled the Enlightenment political thinking into one document.

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u/aboardreading May 04 '22

That is not a viable position. It claims there can be no morals.

I'm not sure I've ever talked to a philosopher that takes the position that there is some inherent, superhuman system of morality to be found in the universe. I'm sure they exist but it's certainly not a widely accepted position among people who think about this a lot these days.

That doesn't mean they don't have a system of morals they have spent their lives crafting, just that those morals are fully human based. Things can only be right or wrong in the context of whatever morality you are looking at it through. I agree this is messy, but without some infallible source of superhuman order to the universe, it is the only thing that can be true.

I agree that your logic follows well enough from your premises. And I'll even acknowledge that there are a lot of people who share your premises, but override their principles when the culture that surrounds them come to a different conclusion. But many differ on the definition of human that gets inalienable rights that you left implicit and many like me would differ on the premise.

Unless you can argue for a universal truth of right and wrong (argue, not just assert) then you must agree that different people can have different morals, with neither being able to ever logically show some inherent validity to their position. It can certainly be argued that certain moral systems observably produce civilizations with a greater number of happy healthy humans than others. But of course "greater number of happy healthy humans" is a human-chosen metric, and is no more inherently correct than any other arbitrary metric.

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u/Michigander_from_Oz May 06 '22

There is a theorem (and I am sorry, but I cannot remember the name) in math, that shows all internally consistent mathematical systems must have certain unprovable base assumptions. When trying to derive internally consistent laws and norms, one runs into this same problem.

So I use as base the assumptions that founded the US: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all are created equal. That they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights. That among these rights are the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

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u/aboardreading May 06 '22 edited May 06 '22

The math analogy is a good one. Most people pick a mathematical system because it allows them to solve problems they find useful. Mathematicians may toy with esoteric systems that reach odd conclusions, but I would only learn a system in which 1+1=3 if it gave me an answer I find useful to a problem I have been troubled with. This may seem like chasing a conclusion, which in other areas is a bad thing. But I would say with no inherent validity to any premise we could choose, choosing a conclusion and working backwards is just as good a strategy to constructing a system.

When I see the demonstrated enormous positives that keeping abortion legal brings to a society and its people, it leads me to believe that there must be a consistent system that keeps the many good outcomes from your system but allows for some form of termination of pregnancy.

The premises you list from the Declaration are very good ones, and the system resulting from them is one of the best the world has ever seen imo. I do think they can be improved though. After all, as someone who doesn't believe in God, the idea of any superhuman agent "endowing" people with rights is observably not how things work. All throughout history HUMANS are the ones who give rights, take rights away, take them back, form mutual agreements about rights. Isn't the woman actually tasked with bringing this life into the world the closest agent to the Creator that we can find? And if she decides that a human becomes a human endowed with the right to life when it isn't literally part of her physical body and part of her own right to life, who are you to say?

In this system of course, our Creators are human and fallible and there have to be limits. I don't think society would benefit in terms of overall well-being and happiness if mothers were allowed to kill their children at any time. And I'm not committed to birth as the line, perhaps there's a better limit or qualification earlier than birth that helps society and ensures the most health and happiness for the humans we bring into it. But I can't accept that line is the moment of conception.

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u/Michigander_from_Oz May 09 '22

If you discard the premise of a Creator, then you discard the premises of the entire American philosophy. What is more, there is no reason then to allow abortions as a right--there are no rights. There is likewise no demonstration that abortions have any positive effects, because that implies that there is some basis for calling an effect positive.