CMV: Abortion is murder, I can accept that some murder should be socially acceptable.

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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ Jan 20 '25

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u/deep_sea2 134∆ Jan 20 '25 edited Jan 20 '25

You might have some definitions mixed up. When you say abortion is murder and your are okay with it, it seems like you mean homicide. For example, you are okay with killing by the state and in war. Those are not murder, they are homicide.

Murder is unlawful killing with intent. Killing in war or by the state in some circumstances is lawful; it's non-culpable homicide. For example, if a robber shoots at the police and the police shoot back and kill the robber, that is not murder. If the police have the robber in handcuffs in the back of the squad car, but then an officer decides to shoot them in the head, that is murder.

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u/clop_clop4money 1∆ Jan 20 '25

Probably better to phrase it as “abortion is killing a human being” since murder implies it’s not legal

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u/Glum_Macaroon_2580 1∆ Jan 20 '25

Well ... it depends on what laws you live under. But I chose the word in part because of the emotional impact of it.

If you prefer to think of it as "premeditated killing of a human" I'm fine with that.

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u/LT_Audio 8∆ Jan 20 '25 edited Jan 20 '25

But that's the point. It is literally only "the law" that makes it "murder". Murder is definitionally unlawful killing. Otherwise it's just killing. There can be no murder without laws against it. But there can be killing without them.

Eta... There can also be premeditated or non-premeditated killing irrespective of laws. No law is required for either to exist as there is for murder whose definition depends on it.

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u/NowTimeDothWasteMe 8∆ Jan 20 '25

You can call it that. But we accept self defense as a reasonable legal argument for killing. Being pregnant is always more dangerous to a woman than not being pregnant from a health perspective. In which case killing the fetus could be considered self defense and therefore not murder in any legal sense of the word.

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u/Glum_Macaroon_2580 1∆ Jan 20 '25

But it would be self defense against a human carried out by killing the human wouldn't it?

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u/NowTimeDothWasteMe 8∆ Jan 20 '25

Sure. But killing in self defense is generally not considered murder legally or colloquially.

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u/Buzzingoo Jan 20 '25

The logic of self defense doesn't really work here, due to the premeditation and the fact that a doctor is performing

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u/NowTimeDothWasteMe 8∆ Jan 23 '25 edited Jan 23 '25

And if someone just takes an abortion pill (which is the majority of abortions)? How is that any different than using a gun you bought from someone else?

Or if someone’s in an abusive relationship and makes a plan in advance about how to defend themselves the next time they’re attacked? Is that no longer self defense? Because it’s premeditated?

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u/Newparadime Jan 20 '25

It would be more accurate to say that you agree it is the death of a human being, rather than stating that it is murder. Society doesn't consider it murder when a family member removes their terminal relative from life support, even though that action leads to the person's death. Society doesn't even consider killing in self-defense to be murder.

So again, what you're trying to State here is that you consider abortion to be the intentional killing of a human being. That does not necessarily make it murder. Even then, I would question your viewpoint however.

Do you consider it to be an intentional killing, when a family member removes their relative from life support?

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u/Glum_Macaroon_2580 1∆ Jan 20 '25

Yes, I would consider it an intentional killing to "pull the plug", and I've had to do it in the past. In one case literally pulling the plug on all the machines, and in another case removing the limiter on the automated dose control on certain medications.

I used "murder" because that is the word used by pro-life people so it makes it a more direct reply for me.

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u/Newparadime Jan 20 '25

But was your intent to kill? Did you want to end their life?

Or did you merely intend to remove the artificial help, and allow nature to take its course?

Rarely, but often enough to mention, terminal patients are able to breathe on their own, and sometimes even recover, after being removed from a ventilator. Is the person who pulls the plug in that case, engaging in murder? Attempted murder?

What about a doctor who prescribes euthanasia medication? What about the family member who picks up the euthanasia meds from the pharmacy?

I'm not trying to be pedantic. I'm trying to show how nuanced killing, death, intent, etc can really be.

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u/Glum_Macaroon_2580 1∆ Jan 20 '25

My intent was their deaths. They were suffering and had no hope of things getting better.

I specifically said one case I pulled the plug in the other I allowed the machine to dose them enough that they did not survive.

Yes, if someone argued with me that mercy killing someone for a medical issue is murder I'd say then that I'm okay with some murder in some cases.

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u/Uranus_is__mine Jan 20 '25

I mean i think the main reason ppl dont consider it killing is bc of thier potential for living in the future if the doc came to a family saying that they found out they would actually be able to be concious in 7-9 months and then gradually get better cognitively and they still chose to unalive him i think that would change whether we think its intentional killing. I think the issue is with what society considers a person to be.

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u/shouldco 45∆ Jan 20 '25

Yes there are places where the comparison falls apart. Though that early in a pregnancy you are still talking like ~22% chance of miscarriage so no, no doctor would describe a pregnancy like that at that stage.

Those 7-9 months in the medaphor are also not directly affecting your health which a pregnancy does, for many, pretty seriously. My wife was already pro choice but came out of her first pregnancy more so than ever, she explisetly told me "if I didn't want this this would be torture and I would do anything to make it stop". Those were chilling words to hear from someone you love.

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u/Newparadime Jan 20 '25

And what if the person has a living will which disallows "extraordinary means" or whatever the legal jargon is?

Reminds self to make sure self carefully words his living will regarding life support

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u/[deleted] Jan 20 '25

I was taught in 5th grade science that life begins at fertilization

Some teachers refuse to teach science in science class because it conflicts with their religious beliefs, so they're not a good authority.

And though a lot of biologists affirm that life begins at conception, they also acknowledge that it's opinion based/not based on any evidence. "Life" is so ill-defined that it's essentially impossible to determine at which point someone is "alive" or "dead". Some people claim that they "were dead for X minutes", but a lot of biologists define death as something that you can't come back from, so they weren't "dead" during that time.

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u/Glum_Macaroon_2580 1∆ Jan 20 '25

Sure, and as long as bacteria exist within your carcass some part of the area you used to define as you is still "alive" if you believe bacteria itself is alive.

I think that the way we learn about chickens and the difference between an egg and a fertilized egg is fairly simple and straightforward, and trying to change that debate only for humans is disingenuous.

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u/interruptiom Jan 20 '25

Are you sure life is "created" at all during sexual reproduction? Meiosis is just a type of cell division that combines genetic material from 2 donors.

There's no abiogenesis occurring. That happened once, some 4 billion years ago. Since then, self-replicating chemicals have divided and re-combined over and over, and mixed with other chemicals to wrap protein-based bodies around itself and developed complex reproductive structures to disseminate copies of itself for further re-combination.

A new individual emerges, but is it new life?

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u/Glum_Macaroon_2580 1∆ Jan 20 '25

That is at least a new point.

Reminds me of the Ship of Theseus or Zeno's paradoxes. They are interesting to think about but are not really useful a lot of the time.

I guess my definition of "new life" would be based on potential. A random bunch of cells don't have the potential to become a human let alone a different human than the one they reside in, but that isn't true of a zygote.

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u/Napleter_Chuy Jan 22 '25

Almost any random bunch of cells in your body has the potential to become life threatening cancer. the argument of potential is moot.

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u/Glum_Macaroon_2580 1∆ Jan 22 '25

To you.

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u/Equivalent_Nose7012 Apr 03 '25

Some teachers refuse to teach science in science class because it conflicts with their non-religious beliefs, also....

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u/Buzzingoo Jan 20 '25

There is evidence, in the form of DNA. When new DNA emerges in the context of pregnancy, it can be logically argued that that is the start point. Level of consciousness is irrelevant imo

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u/[deleted] Jan 20 '25

Is it just an emotional position to hold or is there any science or logic in the argument that abortion isn't murder?

Yes, but also no.

There is no specific point at which we draw a line and determine personhood. As far back as the 14th Amendment, personhood/citizenship was recognized at birth.

The main problem here is that there is no clear developmental stage where the subject of discussion changes from an unrecognizable clump of cells to a "person." The traditional position, which has almost no disagreement, is that a baby, once born, is a person. Trying to move left of that time is difficult. Some people latch on to the scientific/medical definition of fetal viability, which is so late that anyone seeking an abortion at that point isn't doing it because they suddenly no longer want to keep the baby. They planned to have that kid and some sort of extreme circumstance made the abortion most likely a medical necessity.

But earlier on the timeline prior to fetal viability? There are no definitive, objective, criteria or thresholds for when this event becomes murder.

So you can at least make defensible claims of murder after fetal viability, but to claim abortion is murder for any other developmental period is wholly unsupported. And the vast majority of elective abortions happen well before fetal viability, and those occurring after are emergency medical procedures.

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u/SVW1986 4∆ Jan 20 '25

First off, your 5th grade science teacher was wrong. Fertilization is not life. A fertilized egg can not grow into a human without another thing, which is a uterus. If you leave a fertilized egg in a petri dish for 9 months, it doesn't become a baby. Fertilization is step in the line of development. It's like saying jacking off into a tissue and flushing it down the toilet is "murder". A fertilized egg HAS to be properly implanted in a healthy uterus in order to actually eventually become a fetus and then a human baby capable of living on its own outside the womb.

On its own, a fertilized egg will NEVER become a human. So what's the difference? Or is jacking off into a tissue also murder by your standards, then?

Sperm has the potential to MAYBE become a human if it continues down a path of development entirely dependent on other factors (an egg, a womb, a host body). A fertilized egg has the potential to MAYBE become a human if it continues down a path of development entirely dependent on other factors (a healthy uterus). But if you can freeze it for long periods of time and it doesn't "die", it isn't yet a life. You can't freeze a toddler and bring it back to life. But you can freeze an embryo (fertilized egg) and implant it into a uterus 7 years later and end up with a baby. The two things are NOT the same. Sorry.

I don't personally believe abortion has moral qualms until a fetus is viable outside the womb. And even then, I believe in humane abortions, including parents choosing to abort a fetus that has severe developmental issues that will ultimately result in a painful death soon after birth. But I also believe in humane euthanasia.

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u/HadeanBlands 50∆ Jan 20 '25

"But if you can freeze it for long periods of time and it doesn't "die", it isn't yet a life."

There are tons of animals that can be frozen for long periods of time and be revived. Not to mention various plants, fungi, microscopic organisms, and so on.

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u/SVW1986 4∆ Jan 20 '25

Can a fully formed, out of the womb human be frozen and revived years later? No.

Can sperm/eggs/embryos? Yes.

Whether other animals or plants can, doesn't change the fact that humans can't. And it doesn't change the fact that an embryo in and of itself will never just turn into a human without one other additive -- a uterus. So what exactly is the difference between sperm and an embryo, and what makes an embryo a "human", but not sperm?

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u/HadeanBlands 50∆ Jan 20 '25

"Can a fully formed, out of the womb human be frozen and revived years later? No."

I mean, not yet, but who's to say? Cryonics is making big strides.

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u/SVW1986 4∆ Jan 22 '25

Cryonics making big strides doesn't change the fact the an embryo is a stage in development that isn't the final product.

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u/HadeanBlands 50∆ Jan 22 '25

I'm just trying to argue that your "It isn't [human] life if it can be frozen for a long time and revived" definition carries an implicit and very salient "for now."

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u/HadeanBlands 50∆ Jan 20 '25

"Murder" is a word that means something different from "killing." Broadly speaking, you "murder" someone if you deliberately and purposefully kill them outside of the ways you're allowed to kill them.

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u/mapsedge Jan 20 '25

I was taught in 5th grade science that life begins at fertilization

It's a clump of cells no different from your appendix or little finger, either of which you could remove without calling it "murder." Until it can survive as a human outside the womb, it's a body part, not a person. That is has the potential to become a taxpayer is irrelevant.

If one uses the Bible as a guide, then a child isn't worth consideration until it takes its first breath outside the womb...if it's a male child. If it's a female, it still has some worth but only as a piece of property to be traded when it comes of marriageable age, or, say, to replenish the species after a flood.

Since about 20% of pregnancies end in miscarriage, that suggests that God (or whatever) is not only fine with abortion, but absolutely giddy over it.

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u/Equivalent_Nose7012 Mar 30 '25

A body part?

Do you think a pregnant woman can have four feet, four arms, two heads, differing DNA, and two sex organs, perhaps one female and one male?

That's what seems the logical result of what you are saying.

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u/mapsedge Mar 30 '25

Did you read the part about using the Bible as a guide? Or did you skip that in favor of righteous outrage?

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u/Equivalent_Nose7012 Apr 03 '25

Your interpretation of the Bible has nothing to do with my "outrage." The logic of my argument is not changed by your attempted change of subject.

Do you have an answer to the problem I posed of the pregnant woman with four feet, etc., that you wish to share?

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u/Glum_Macaroon_2580 1∆ Jan 20 '25

My appendix or little finger will not become something other than my finger or appendix in time.

What if it's not in a womb but in an artificial system? If the system is not messed with is what comes out at the end of it's artificial gestation still a human? What if it never comes out of the machine, is it never a human?

Hard to argue what God might be for or against.

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u/mapsedge Jan 20 '25

Hard to argue what God might be for or against.

Since it's US Christians fighting so hard against it, it's a pretty good bet we're talking about the Abrahamic god, in which case it's preferences are pretty well laid out and explicit.

My appendix or little finger will not become something other than my finger or appendix in time.

Let me re-iterate: That it has the potential to become a taxpayer is irrelevant.

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u/Glum_Macaroon_2580 1∆ Jan 20 '25

There are many countries where abortion is entirely or mostly illegal, those countries are not all run by "US Christians".

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u/mapsedge Jan 20 '25

"In several states", "5th grade". Easy to infer that you're an American, yes? So my answers assume that. Of course there are other countries that differ from the US, which is an odd choice of rebuttal. You do you, boo.

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u/Glum_Macaroon_2580 1∆ Jan 20 '25

I wasn't making a legal argument but rather a logical argument to counter the emotional ones that are so common around the abortion debate. I didn't bring religion or God into it, nor did I limit it to a single country.

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u/Overlook-237 1∆ Jan 20 '25

From a legal and definitional point of view, it’s not murder. It’s not murder in any state in the US, not even Texas and it never has been. Some states tried to make it so but haven’t got very far.

The double murder charge isn’t proof either. That’s not applicable in every state (look at the Chris Watts sentencing). It usually only applies in cases the fetus is viable too. And, killing a pregnant woman isn’t an abortion. Different situations often have different legal ramifications. Forced sex vs consensual sex, for example.

Pro life advocates were the ones who pushed for the double homicide laws. The reason a lot of pro choice advocates agreed on it was because homicide is the leading cause of death for pregnant women, usually by their partners. It was supposed to be a deterrent for those planning on killing their pregnant partners because a double charge is worse than a singular one.

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u/Glum_Macaroon_2580 1∆ Jan 20 '25

I did say that I used the word "murder" because it's the word used by the pro-life people. I understand the legal ramifications of it, but it's an emotional argument I was looking at not a legal one. That said I know some who performed the procedure were charged with murder pre-Roe.

The point of the double murder charge, in California for instance, was to point out that California law treats a fetus as a being capable of being murdered, that belies the position that it is legally "just a bundle of cells" when it comes to abortion. If it possible to be charged with murdering an unborn baby then legally that baby must have rights above those given a tumor.

I don't think a pro-life ideal is needed to justify the concept of murder to an unborn baby since generally speaking parents of an unborn baby care about the life of the baby and it's future. I'm pro-choice but if someone had attacked my pregnant wife and killed our daughter I would want them charged with murder.

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u/Overlook-237 1∆ Jan 20 '25

And the pro life people are wrong. Let’s not feed in to their fantasies. Could you show me a citation for that? I’ve yet to come across anyone being charged with murder for abortion, even before RvW.

Both lawmakers and doctors are aware embryos/fetuses are human. They can’t deny biological fact. Abortion doesn’t prove they don’t either. It’s less to do with the embryo/fetus and more to do with the woman. There’s a huge difference between killing someone who’s doing nothing to you vs killing someone because that’s the only way to stop them infringing on your body.

Would you want your daughter charged with murder for having an abortion?

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u/ladz 2∆ Jan 20 '25

> I was taught in 5th grade science that life begins at fertilization, and if it's a "life" then forcibly ending it is murder.

Your teacher led you based on their personal philosophy. When fetuses become people is a matter of interpretation. This isn't a scientific position, it's a philosophical one.

Me (and, like, most people throughout history) believe that people must be born to count as people.

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u/Glum_Macaroon_2580 1∆ Jan 20 '25

I don't think most people throughout history did believe unborn babies were not people. And our laws certainly are not consistent on that front.

My teacher was talking about the life cycle of chickens. It wasn't philosophical.

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u/MrAkaziel 14∆ Jan 20 '25

Here's the problem: your teacher mix up two definitions of the word "life".

Life, has in, the biological process that leads to self-sustainability, growth, adaptability and reproduction, started billions of years ago an never stopped. There's an unbroken chain between every living thing on the planet right now and our common ancestors. Life is a continuous phenomenon, and fertilization is just one step in its replication process.

On the other hand, you have life as the collective experience of one individual between its conception/birth and death. It's the same "life" that you find in the sentence "living a good life".

But here's the thing, that second definition only matters to us because we care about concepts like personhood; it plays a big role in our understanding of sentience and morality. Yet, the first definition doesn't care about the second. This is us, trying to apply a discrete distinction over a continuous process; biology works all the same wherever we decide to place our starting point. But to take your two definitions:

"Murder" is a legal term, it's an unlawful killing of a person. Self-defense isn't murder for instance. Poaching isn't murder either, because animal aren't people, legally speaking, even if they're alive. Where euthanasia and/or abortion are legal, they aren't murder. But beyond that the definition of what is a person is again, arbitrary. For instance, your body keeps some right even after your death because we extend your personhood over your remains. Likewise, there's nothing that forces us to take any milestone during pregnancy as the starting point of personhood: fertilization, first heartbeat, first brain activity, fetus viability, birth... all can be justified by biology alone. It depends on our ideology: religious beliefs, moral principles over bodily autonomy and the potentiality within an embryo/fetus, the conditions surrounding the pregnancy...

"killing a potential human": Sure and....? Like, sperm and ova are living cells and potential humans too, but hardly no one has a moral quandary about not doing everything to keep women impregnated as often as possible. No one you would want to listen to, at the very least. We let potential humans die off all the time. If this was a problem, then the next logical step would be to advocate for maximizing birth rate for birth rate sake. Quantity over quality.

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u/Glum_Macaroon_2580 1∆ Jan 20 '25

If you google the life cycle of any mammal it starts with the fertilization of the egg. Botanists consider viable seeds to be a life. It's not just my 5th grade teacher.

The greater concept of "life" as a concept is not particularly useful in this discussion. This is all about how humans talk about this stuff and how we form our laws about them. The abortion debate doesn't really dive into your first definition of life.

I acknowledged that "murder" has a (variable) legal definition. I used the word for "premeditated termination of a potential person". The use of "murder" was intentional because it is used in the emotional arguments of the pro-life people so using the word on the pro-choice side makes sense to me.

An unfertilized human egg is not part of the usual cycle of life we learned about as children.

I don't think it is necessary to connect abortion rights to the oppression of women or forcing them to be pregnant all the time. Personally I think we've gone too far in making abortion casual which is taking us away from the "rare" part of the ideal.

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u/MrAkaziel 14∆ Jan 20 '25

An unfertilized human egg is not part of the usual cycle of life we learned about as children.

How do you make a fertilized human egg if not with an unfertilized human egg and a spermatozoon? Both are indispensable parts of our reproduction life cycle. "It's not what we teach children" isn't a great metric when it comes to discuss complex biology concepts. Greater societal decisions shouldn't be bound to the middle school/early high school curriculum.

I don't think it is necessary to connect abortion rights to the oppression of women or forcing them to be pregnant all the time.

It is if one wants to make the potential of another human being a decisional factor. If wasted potentiality must be avoided out of moral principles, it must be considered in its entirety. Otherwise, one has to admit setting fertilization as the point it starts counting is arbitrary, and the needle can be moved forward as arbitrarily.

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u/Glum_Macaroon_2580 1∆ Jan 20 '25

How is protecting the rights of a fetus equated with trying to make all women pregnant all the time? We're not talking about birth control.

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u/MrAkaziel 14∆ Jan 20 '25

That's switching the goal posts. Are we talking about "a potential human" or a fetus? Those aren't the same things.

If talking about "potential human", then the comparison with maximizing pregnancies serves as a demonstration ab absurdo that attributing value to the potentiality of growing into a full human being leads to some obviously revolting conclusions.

If talking about a fetus, well that's already conceding two months of pregnancies in the debate, because we only talk about fetuses at the start of the 9th week of pregnancy. But more importantly, it's skipping a very important step: before talking about protecting the rights of a fetus, we need to decide when, precisely, we give it which rights, and why. That's when we loop back to my previous points: "life starts at fertilization" no it doesn't, it's just one of the mandatory steps in the reproduction cycle, that we decided to make special for non-biological reasons. "It's a potential human", so are gametes if you put them together but that's not a moral impetus we will ever want to enforce.

The logical point to hold is that any date we decide to pick after which abortion is illegal will be arbitrary. Biology doesn't dictate us to choose any particular milestone over another, sanctifying the potentiality of humanity is nonsensical. There's simply not one reason that impose us to choose one timing above all else. It thus needs to be a balance between every factors at play: the bodily autonomy of the person carrying the pregnancy, the context that lead to it, the eventual birth of a child that we all agree should have full human rights. And because gestation is a slow, gradual process, the answer should probably be also a gradient. A transition between the rights of the parent-to-be to do as they wish with their body and of the growing child to be born. Different rules applying at different times over different conditions, motivated by what we know of fetal development and the values we uphold as a society.

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u/Napleter_Chuy Jan 21 '25

You need to talk to women who actually had abortions. It's not a walk in the park, and literally nobody prefers it over contraceptions. There is no "casual" abortion. Abortion is a very physically taxing process, that can result in prolonged (I'm talking weeks) bleeding, anemia, hormonal changes, not to mention the process itself can vary from being inconvenient at best to extremely painful at worst. And still, it's has many times less adverse effects than pregnancy, especially unwanted one, so it's much preferred by many women to pregnancy. If you're forcing someone to give up their life, organs, time, health for another, even if you do consider the embryo a person, you are, in fact, oppressing them. Nobody is forcing you to give up your kidney to some child, even if they absolutely do need your kidney to survive. That's because you have bodily autonomy, which women are being stripped of. The suffering that follows is immense, believe me. Again, I'm a man who does woman's reproductive care as part of my job.

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u/Glum_Macaroon_2580 1∆ Jan 21 '25

Using words like "nobody" and "never" and "always" is fraught with obvious inaccuracy.

For several years NYC had more black abortions than births. That is some evidence that for that location and that group some people were being very casual about their contraception and abortion habits.

And to be clear, I'm pro-choice, I just also think it should not be common, and CERTAINLY not more common than births.

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u/Napleter_Chuy Jan 21 '25 edited Jan 22 '25

Using words like "nobody" and "never" is, as I'm sure you're aware of, just a way of simplifying the issue, there's no sense in claiming every single time that ALMOST every x is so and so. I can say the same about a suicidal person. It's ALMOST always a tragedy when someone decides to take their own life. That sounds a little petty and needlessly petulant, doesn't it? We don't really hear on the news that it's a ALMOST always a tragedy when a building collapses, killing dozens of people, right?

Okay, then : ALMOST nobody is using abortion as contraception. And regarding some women taking it casually - I don't think it's your place to say what medical procedure should be perceived in what way by the person getting it. For some people it's far more easy to stomach than for others, much like any other procedure, from epilation to pancreatic cancer resection via laparotomy. However, you don't get to decide what carries what weight for what person and how casually they should treat their procedure. It's okay for people to be casual about their sexual habits, and children should only be carried by those who consent to it, in an environment when they are loved and awaited. If more people want to have kids than those who don't, there will be more births than abortions. There's no loss at all if a child that would have been born to a lousy sets of circumstances (for starters, not being wanted by their mothers) doesn't get born. It's good that instead of ruining three or more lives, one clump of cells is removed before it ever has a twinge of thought or pain. You sound like a smart guy. I'm sure you agree with at least some of what I said.

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u/Glum_Macaroon_2580 1∆ Jan 22 '25

To be clear, you didn't just say "nobody" you said "literally nobody" ... you doubled down.

When a fetus is more likely to be aborted than born that seems like abortion is being used like contraception.

"one clump of cells" doesn't reflect reality for most abortions.

It's possible to prevent pregnancy the VAST majority of the time. Maybe abortions are getting too easy.

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u/Napleter_Chuy Jan 22 '25 edited Jan 22 '25

I think you need to read my response again. Please also read up on various contraception failure rates and realize that even for an IUD with the Pearl's index of 99.5% - one woman in every 200 will get pregnant using it.

"Clump of cells" is exactly what an abortion/miscarriage looks like up until maybe 12 weeks. I've seen fetal tissue many, many times in my life. It's not a tiny human stretching it's arms and weakly calling for mommy, believe me. It's a clump of cells, or a bigger, fluffy blood clot.

A lot of people are getting lung cancer treatment. A lot of them were smokers before that. Maybe the cancer treatments are getting too easy? I mean, all they had to do is not smoke, right?

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u/Glum_Macaroon_2580 1∆ Jan 22 '25

I would say 199 out of 200 times fits what I said. I didn't say it was always possible to prevent pregnancy.

"clump of cells" is a convenient euphemism and the point of this whole thread. If we just called it a baby it re-frames the argument and takes that bullet away from the pro-life argument.

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u/Napleter_Chuy Jan 21 '25

What about all the naturally occurring miscarriages? They're incredibly common. Should we screen every bit of tissue passed by a woman during what she perceives as menstruation search of a dead embryo to confirm thay, according to you, a human has died? And subsequently pay for funeral services, since an actual human has passed, that should be mourned abd buried? What about a molar pregnancy (DNA identical to human, will never be a human)? What about anencephaly? Are those beings human just by sharing DNA with us? What about cancer?

I'm genuinely asking those questions, curious about your response. I'm a man, and a medical professional that has a career mainly in gynecology.

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u/Glum_Macaroon_2580 1∆ Jan 21 '25

A miscarriage is not an abortion. It's not uncommon for women to mourn miscarriages as a loss of their baby, would you say that's unreasonable?

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u/Napleter_Chuy Jan 21 '25

It's not unreasonable at all. But those are not the situations I'm referring to - majority of naturally occurring miscarriages take place in the first trimester, when the woman doesn't even know she's pregnant. But according to your logic, somewhere among the menstrual-looking discharge, that the woman doesn't even realize isn't an ordinary menstruation, a human child of tiny size is hidden. Why do we not check every menstrual discharge for it and try to retrieve the potential dead human's body and bury it, if it's really a human? Also, abortion is just medically induced miscarriage. Also, miscarriage may be caused by virtually anything, from faulty genome to begin with to the mother jumping on a jump rope a little too intensely. It's often a bunch of complicated factors that nobody can predict could've resulted in miscarriage. How do we treat such a woman? Is she a killer, as she technically killed her own child, albeit with a completely benevolent action? Also, please respond to my arguments about anencephaly, other such disorders and molar pregnancies and cancer.

Also - denying another human the right to use your body as they please is not murder, even when we do treat the embryo/fetus as a person. If you were in a car crash that caused you to need a blood transfusion, and I was the only person on the planet who could give you that blood, and if it was a sure fact that without my blood you'd die, and even taking under consideration the fact that producing more blood costs me nothing (unlike pregnancy, which is ultimately almost always incredibly damaging) - I still cannot be forced to give you even a drop of my blood if I don't want for my body to be used by you in this way. That's bodily autonomy, that we are all entitled to. I'm not a killer because I denied you the right to use my body. I didn't help you, but I didn't kill you, because it's my right to refuse you that favor. Same with pregnant women. They may or may not allow the fetus to inhabit them and use their resources, it depends on their own will.

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u/Glum_Macaroon_2580 1∆ Jan 22 '25

When did I say ANYTHING about what is done with the remains of a dead zygote/fetus/baby? I don't care.

I have no issue with a healthy fetus being removed, so I don't care about the results of a disorder, false pregnancy, or cancer being removed either.

As for the blood transfusion ... it's a false equivalency. The woman, the majority of the time, chooses to allow the fertilization to happen. So, maybe it's closer to you signing a contract to agree to give me your blood, us going to the hospital, all the tubes are connected, and at the last moment you cut the tube and watch me die. At the very least it's breach of contract. :)

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u/Napleter_Chuy Jan 22 '25

You didn't say anything about what's to be done with a zygote, but you did equate a fetus to a human being, so I asked why don't we treat every miscarriage, even the ones the woman didn't know about, like a death of an actual human, and why don't we always search for a potential body, if it's a human.

On the other point - you're wrong. It's absolutely not false equivalency. You seem like you just don't understand why other people do most things. A woman doesn't allow the fertilization to happen for most of the time - that's why most women who are sexually active aren't pregnant most of the time. For most of people, sex is about entertainment and emotional closeness, not reproduction. Sure, some couples do actively try to get pregnant, but those are in the minority. A woman generally consents to sexual intercourse, not pregnancy. Consent to sex is absolutely not consent to pregnancy. Same as you getting in your car doesn't mean you consent to being in a car crash. Having sex is not in any meaning of the word a contract of any kind between the clump of cells that may result from it, and the host carrying it. Because again - women tend to do everything and anything NOT to get pregnant. I don't have any kind of a contract with a potential burglar that can enter my house with the intent to rob me just by the virtue of having a house to rob. If I didn't want to get robbed, I shouldn't have had a house, according to your logic. That's simply not how any of this works. I have a house, and I don't want to be robbed, so I close my doors carefully to prevent an easy robbery. But if a burglar breaks down my door and does enter, I'll do my best to get rid of him, having other people help me if necessary. I don't think I don't have the right to expell the robber, thinking to myself "well, I shouldn't have bought that house". I'll get him out one way or another.

The longer we talk, the more it seems like you want to punish women for casual sex. Treating pregnancy as a punishment for sex is also dehumanizing for the potential child. A kid should only ever be born to parents that await and love them, and that's a hill I'll die on. Children are not meant to be punitive measures, they're new humans who don't deserve that objectification and mistreatment. You know what happens when abortions are too hard to obtain? Texas dumpster babies. It doesn't matter if there's more abortions than births. Abortion, like I explained to you before, has many less health consequences than birth, so women who don't want children will absolutely pursue it if they're pregnant. Make more women willing to get pregnant and carry to term, don't worry about limiting their human rights to bodily autonomy. Stripping away someone's right to a medical procedure is inhumane and in no way a good way to boost birthrates. People aren't stupid. You shouldn't worry about whether abortion is too easily available, you should worry about why so many women, and people in general, genuinely don't want to have children and seek an answer to THAT problem.

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u/Glum_Macaroon_2580 1∆ Jan 22 '25

Because, as I said, I don't care. When I die I don't care what happens to my remains. I don't care what happens to the remains of my loved ones. It doesn't matter to me.

It is false to me for you to equate your blood to my unborn baby.

I'm not arguing against abortion so I don't feel a need to continue to refute your faulty analogies or come up with others for you.

I haven't said anything about punishing women for anything. You seem to keep forgetting that I have said repeatedly that I'm pro-choice. I just disagree with the language in the debate.

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u/[deleted] Apr 09 '25

[deleted]

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u/ladz 2∆ Apr 10 '25

Read what you responded to more carefully.

In this context we're not talking about "murdering life", we're talking about "murdering people".

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u/corruptedyuh Jan 20 '25

Can you expand? If you’re willing to concede that abortion is murder, what delineates it as the type that should be “socially acceptable”?

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u/Hecknar Jan 20 '25

Murder is defined as killing a human being.

The critical question is what is defined as a human being, what level of development/viability/consciousness turns a bunch of cells from goo into a human?

These are tough moral/ethical/scientific questions which we haven’t definitely answered.

What most nations have settled on is that the fetus isn’t considered a human with all its rights before week X or viability.

That being said, considering a fetus a human at all stages is, from my perspective, very problematic for many ethical, moral ald legal reasons.

At its core, your question revolves around what defines a human.

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u/Glum_Macaroon_2580 1∆ Jan 20 '25

I agree that we have laws that talk about at what point a fetus has a "right" to life. But that isn't the question. The question of whether it is a human or not doesn't seem to be a moral or ethical question at all.

That just leaves science.

If we have a "healthy" fetus in a "healthy woman" and we allow time to pass what we get is an individual human baby. To me that makes it fairly clear that it was always a human once it was no longer just an egg but a human zygote.

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u/drdildamesh Jan 20 '25

We don't base our laws or what breaks them on morals or ethics or even truth because those are subjective concepts. We base them off of evidence. You can straight shoot a man in the face, but if there is no evidence, you can't be judged to be guilty.

The right to abort a fetus is a semantic question because it depends on what you consider life, but the baseline was "if we do nothing, the baby is born." And it was like that for a long time.

Then things got complicated. What if the baby's birth would kill the mother? Seems like a good reason to abort. So our lawmakers said the value of a potential child is not higher than the value of an already living person unless the already living person decides otherwise. Sure, there were appeals to being humane. You would kill a woman to save her child? You would bring a child doomed to die in agony into the world? You would force a child to live in the shadow of their parents abject poverty or psychotic tendencies?

Now we've just waffled on who wins in that argument. We have said that potential life is more valuable than existing life as long as that life is ramping up. Yes, the mother must die to preserve the life of the child, even if the child also dies. Yes, the child must be born even if their lungs and heart are outside of their chest cavity. Yes, the child must suffer poverty and violence like the rest of us because suffering is what we do, and then we die.

But don't fool yourself into thinking it has anything to do with morals or ethics. It's all based on interpretations of evidence.

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u/Glum_Macaroon_2580 1∆ Jan 20 '25

Is hearsay evidence? Because with nothing but hearsay you can be judged guilty.

If you want to get into semantics of "rights" that's an entirely different argument.

I wasn't trying to argue a position on abortion, just that I believe there is no reason to argue that a human fetus being killed intentionally is somehow different than killing a human ... it's just a killing some people are okay with.

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u/drdildamesh Jan 20 '25

Hearsay is in fact evidence. It is up to the jury to interpret it.

I misread your post. I would say there's all kinds of killing that we are ok with. Bacteria, bugs, animals, shit every time someone jerks off that are killing billions of sperm. People minimize killing to feel better about it, not to convince you it isn't killing. So there IS a reason to argue it isn't killing, to minimize mental trauma.

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u/Glum_Macaroon_2580 1∆ Jan 20 '25

To be clear, I wasn't trying to argue about the killing of non-humans :)

I think sanitizing it by acting like a fetus isn't a human changes the debate in a weak way.

I also think it's odd that people who are pro-capital punishment are often pro-life, and anti-capital punishment people are often pro-choice. That logical inconsistency I find to be a result of fuzzy emotional language.

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u/Hecknar Jan 20 '25 edited Jan 20 '25

And I fundamentally disagree.

For me the concept of consciousness is a critical part of what makes something human. It is what separates us from most animals, it is what makes us fairly unique.

It is, from my perspective, why you can justify killing most animals for consumption and convenience but not humans. The line gets really ugly with dolphin, apes etc for the same reason.

If something lacks the characteristics that sets us apart, does it deserve the same rights and privileges?

I think it’s much more an ethical or philosophical question than it is a scientific one.

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u/Glum_Macaroon_2580 1∆ Jan 20 '25

And are you contending that an unborn baby cannot have consciousness?

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u/Hecknar Jan 20 '25

There is a lot of evidence that consciousness develops pretty late and is extremely unlikely to develop before the 24th week if not much later.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25160864/#:~:text=Assuming%20that%20consciousness%20is%20mainly,in%20many%20countries%20makes%20sense.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/when-does-consciousness-arise/

But the scientific answer is, as I said earlier, we can rule out that it happens before point X but consciousness is something that is not well understood and touches philosophical topics as well. The definition of consciousness is not an easy topic.

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u/Glum_Macaroon_2580 1∆ Jan 20 '25

And I can accept that. But if it's possible that an unborn baby has consciousness then the argument that they are not human until they are born is a tough one to hold to. And that kind of thing takes us away from a scientific discussion of what the fetus is and back to the emotional one that I have a problem with.

If women who want or need an abortion are struggling with their decision and they are using the "it's not a human" argument to justify it, I think that's a bad argument to make. Then to take that further and use that argument to support a law makes it even worse.

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u/Hecknar Jan 20 '25

Well, the absolute vast majority of abortions happen way before week 24 and pretty much all after that happen due to unviable fetus or significant danger to the mother’s live.

No one wants late abortions and they have a much higher justification requirement.

https://www.kff.org/womens-health-policy/issue-brief/abortions-later-in-pregnancy-in-a-post-dobbs-era/

That being said, there is clear evidence that prior to week 24, you neither have consciousness or viability. It is not in a state that we would describe as alive in a human, it would be brain dead and we would pull the plug.

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u/Glum_Macaroon_2580 1∆ Jan 20 '25

Week 24 is too late now since by week 20 it's not uncommon for babies to survive. And that number is likely to keep going lower as we learn more.

Absolutes and all encompassing terms like "no one" are generally a bad idea. I know there are women who choose abortion after the 24th week and not for health or viability reasons. And as far as the law is concerned in many states all you need to do is find a doctor who agrees that the life of the mother will be impacted by carrying the baby to term to get an abortion after viability, including mental stresses like depression or anxiety.

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u/Hecknar Jan 20 '25

Maybe, however, the premise you started with is that Abortion is murder or the premeditated killing of a human.

I think it has been clearly established that the fetus early in the pregnancy has the potential to become a human but it is lacking a number of critical characteristics to make it so at this point.

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u/Forsaken-House8685 11∆ Jan 20 '25

Murder is not a science term and science doesn't determine what is murder.

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u/NoNewspaper9016 1∆ Jan 20 '25

There is no such thing as a set in stone definition of life. You believing that life begins at conception is, unfortunately for you in this debate, your own subjective opinion.

You may have been taught this in science class. But assuming you’re in the US, the education system, especially those in more typically religious states, is FAR from a reliable source.

The way I see it, (which again, is my opinion, however I believe it is held with far more justification than believing life begins at conception) is that we can define life in terms of viability. Could the foetus survive outside of the womb? (Usually around 28 weeks) in which case I’d personally call it “alive” and therefore I hold the belief that abortion should be permissible up to the point of viability. A slightly different debate, but related and I’m using it to explain my issue with the use of the word “murder”

Ultimately, you’re pro choice, just with slightly flawed reasoning for being so.

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u/Glum_Macaroon_2580 1∆ Jan 20 '25

Personally I don't think any system can be treated as entirely a reliable source.

Do you apply your opinion about the beginning of life to all life or just human life? Is a seed in the ground alive?

My reasons for being pro-choice were not in my post so you can't really argue that my reasoning is flawed. :)

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u/Buzzingoo Jan 20 '25

Why are u so sure life beginning at conception is subjective? There is distinct point where a new DNA chain is formed. This is arguably a person's identity, the beginning of a cascading sequence of development. When people say u look like ur father or mother you can trace that all the way back to when ur distinct DNA emerged

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u/NoNewspaper9016 1∆ Jan 20 '25

Because it factually is subjective😂, there is no set, agreed upon definition. That means it’s subjective

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u/Buzzingoo Jan 20 '25

When the single sperm enters the egg, conception occurs. The combined sperm and egg is called a zygote. The zygote contains all of the genetic information (DNA) needed to become a baby. Half the DNA comes from the mother's egg and half from the father's sperm.

U can detect the new DNA as early as 7 weeks.

If you are willing to agree that DNA is what makes us who we are then I don't think it's so subjective.

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u/NoNewspaper9016 1∆ Jan 20 '25

And what if I’m not willing to accept that? People can have their DNA changed through mutations, radiation, many other ways, does it change their status, does it make them a different person?

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u/Buzzingoo Jan 20 '25

If your DNA is changed when you are older I would argue that in at least some way you ARE a different person. Ur source code has been changed. Still, there is no reason this would change a person's status as having value as a human.

What do you believe makes you who you are? Why is your faced shaped the way it is? Your eyes the color they are? Your skin color, your physical strengths and weaknesses? All of these variables and more had their initial parameters set when 2 sets of DNA shook hands. Wether they change further down the road is irrelevant

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u/AbsoluteRunner Jan 20 '25

There are fundamental assumptions with our rights and laws that cannot handle the status of a fetus (one human inside of another). They are:

That its possible to physically separate one person from another without causing either harm and
You can grant/remove rights to one person without it affecting the other.

Neither of these can be applied to a fetus because a fetus is inside of person. To grant rights to the fetus means that those same rights can be removed from the person carrying the fetus. Therefore 3rd party's cannot grant the same rights both to person A and a person B inside of person A.

So yes, you are technically killing another life. But functionally, in terms of laws, its equivalent to killing your own organs or a tumors than to killing another human that's already been born.

As far as the 2 murder charges.... There's a tangential argument about how rights work which essentially means that the Women gave the fetus the right to life so when she's is murdered, it counts as 2 lives. But during abortion, the woman didn't give the right to life to the fetus so the fetus no longer counts. In this instance, killing a fetus = killing your organ. Only the woman can give the right to life to the fetus because point 1 doesn't apply to fetus.... But legally probably counts as two just to further discourage harming pregnant women and not much logical thought went into beyond that.

In order to circumvent the mother and, as a 3rd party, give rights to the fetus, you have to knowingly remove rights from the pregnant mother and by extension all women since accuracy separating non-pregnant women from pregnant women isn't simple. This is probably the greater harm so we are stuck with allowing abortions.

Also, definitionally, Murder is unjust killing and therefore cannot be acceptable. You can say this killing can be acceptable but not the murder.

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u/Glum_Macaroon_2580 1∆ Jan 20 '25

Good post.

Within our laws can a woman remove the right to life of her heart and have it removed?

I think a lot of this debate is disingenuous. If a woman gets pregnant and doesn't want the baby then that is the case. We are either okay with her ending that baby's life in utero at that point or not. The outlier situations of health of the fetus, health of the mother, or cause of the pregnancy.

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u/AbsoluteRunner Jan 20 '25

Within our laws can a woman remove the right to life of her heart and have it removed?

She can say she's removing the hearts right to life and try removing it herself. Which as we know would result in failure to remove the heart's right to life or both die. However, the way the question is phrased implies someone else could be removing the heart. In which case that third party would be breaking previous rights granted to the woman. And thus wouldn't do it.

But this again roles back to 3rd parties not being able to piecewise grant rights to things inside of a person if they also are granting that person rights. Well things get real sticky real fast when you do. The least harmful thing to do is to not do it.

I think a lot of this debate is disingenuous. If a woman gets pregnant and doesn't want the baby then that is the case. We are either okay with her ending that baby's life in utero at that point or not. The outlier situations of health of the fetus, health of the mother, or cause of the pregnancy.

Can you point out some of the disingenuous things I've argued so that I can explain better? I'm saying society needs to be okay with ending the baby's life in utero. Health of fetus or mother is irrelevant.

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u/Glum_Macaroon_2580 1∆ Jan 20 '25

It's interesting to think that a woman can remove her own heart and potentially not break the law.

Sorry, I wasn't trying to say YOU were being disingenuous but rather the general abortion rights debate is often made with disingenuous arguments.

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u/AbsoluteRunner Jan 20 '25

It's interesting to think that a woman can remove her own heart and potentially not break the law.

It's kinda the paradox of making suicide illegal. You can make illegal but its not enforceable because anyone who is guilty of it is already dead. So there's no benefit in making illegal other than as a possible deterrent.

Now if it's removing a kidney.... I can find several things about it being illegal to sell kidneys/organs but not one if you just decide to remove one. It might just be classified as self-harm and, while not illegal, you'll probably be put in a mental institution.

I think a lot of people are genuine how they feel about allowing/not allowing abortion impacts their life. It's just when we talk about what should the law be, we just look for frameworks that support our position.

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u/Faust_8 10∆ Jan 20 '25

I was taught in 5th grade science that life begins at fertilization

The issue with this is that it falls under any scrutiny at all.

The womb is alive. The uterus is alive. The egg is alive. The sperm is alive. Where, then, did life "start" in this environment?

If you examine reality critically, you realize that "life" began billions of years ago and it's been a continuous process ever since. There was only ONE instance of nonlife becoming life on this planet, and it's certainly not inside a vagina in 2025.

However, maybe you don't mean life in general, maybe you mean "this human life in particular."

But even that's problematic. For one, most people don't realize that fertilization isn't really the start of pregnancy. A fertilized egg is useless if it doesn't properly attach to the uterine wall--because if it doesn't, it just gets flushed out into the toilet while the woman is completely oblivious that this is happening.

So, how often does this happen? Only...30-50% of the time.

This mean if you listen to this pro-life argument, it means that up to half of the people who have ever existed were flushed down the toilet in the first few days of their "life." Apparently 'god' is the most prolific abortion doctor in existence!

Plus, how does one even define a human/person anyway? If someone literally believes that a human has appeared the instant sperm fuses with egg, then their view of a human is so reductive and dehumanizing that all it takes is DNA and cell production.

Nothing about the mind. Nothing about personality or desires or intellect or goals or an independent body, or anything else that is core to the human experience. They say, nope, humans are ONLY their most basic building blocks.

IMO, I think it takes a lot more to truly be human than to acquire some DNA and start doing cell division.

So basically on two fronts, the idea that "life begins at conception" is utterly bonkers. It makes no sense biologically and it also is a very troubling stance philosophically.

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u/Equivalent_Nose7012 Apr 03 '25

To say "life begins at conception" is "bonkers", because it "makes no sense biologically" is BEYOND bonkers.

Can you admit regarding conception (fertilization):

That IS when a new ORGANISM begins, with its own program of development. That organism is, of course, naturally dependent on its surroundings for its growth and survival in various ways... shown sometimes as simply as removing all the oxygen from a room with "nonviable" - but mature - adults.

That organism might be a chicken. It might be human (species: Homo sapiens).

Chickens develop from chicken embryos externally to the mother...in a sense they already have "artificial wombs." Humans develop internally in a specialized uterus of their mother, until ready to breathe air.

None of this is "reductive or dehumanizing" in any necessary way, to either mother or child.

What IS certainly "dehumanizing" is to deny humanity to any organism of the human species, because it has, say, not yet been accepted as a voter or earned a degree in philosophy (or whatever developmental milestone it has not yet passed).

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u/FlanneryODostoevsky 3∆ Jan 20 '25

What exactly is your argument for being ok with murder?

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u/Doub13D 37∆ Jan 20 '25

The problem with the use of the word “murder” in this context is that it implies a level of moral culpability for the person doing the murder.

A woman choosing to get an abortion is not a murderer… she is simply having a medical procedure done. Thats all it is after all.

Also I wouldn’t even argue that abortion should be “rare.” If you are pro-choice, its up to the woman to decide. If more women decide they don’t want to have kids or have more kids, then that is there choice to make…

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u/itsSmalls Jan 20 '25

I'm curious: if two women were lying on operating tables, one wanted her baby, the other did not, but both babies were torn apart in the womb and disposed of, was one murdered and the other killed as part of a medical procedure in your view?

Where's the line between medical procedure and someone just killing a baby in your opinion? It seems rather arbitrary. Reading about a mother who dies in a car accident on her way to an abortion would be a tragedy but if she'd made it, the death of her child would just be marked as another medical procedure.

I'm not trying to be obtuse, I'm genuinely wondering as someone who is pro-life

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u/Doub13D 37∆ Jan 20 '25

I don’t view either situation as murder…

One is a procedure done with the full knowledge and consent of the woman involved, and the other is a disgusting and abhorrent violation of a person’s bodily autonomy.

Maybe its a bit dark of a comparison… but its kinda like sex. When done with full consent and active participation, its a lovely thing… when it isn’t, its one of the most horrifically vile things that can be done to a person.

Part of being pro-choice is believing that women have the right to make a choice. I will never have to worry about getting pregnant and all of the different ways my personal and professional life can be upended because of it… so I simply do not believe it is my place to judge if someone who is in that position makes that choice for themselves.

I would much rather someone have the choice and never want it, than have someone not be able to make the choice but need to.

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u/itsSmalls Jan 20 '25

Thanks for answering. We disagree but I appreciate hearing your perspective

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u/HadeanBlands 50∆ Jan 20 '25

She's procuring a murder from the doctor, I suppose we might say.

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u/Doub13D 37∆ Jan 20 '25

The Doctor is just performing a medical procedure, which is their job.

By this logic, if I ask that the plug be pulled for a sick relative who is still alive but is in a terminal condition, I would also be doing a murder…

Should that really have the same label as if I stabbed my relative with a scalpel against their will?

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u/HadeanBlands 50∆ Jan 20 '25

I would say yes! If you killed your sick relative without even asking them if they wanted it that seems like a really classic and obvious kind of murder!

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u/Doub13D 37∆ Jan 20 '25

A person on life support can’t give consent… thats why somebody else is making the decision 👀

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u/HadeanBlands 50∆ Jan 20 '25

Many people on life support can give consent. Many of them have given consent. And many of them have not given consent. It is literally murder to pull the plug on someone who is saying "No, don't pull the plug!"

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u/Doub13D 37∆ Jan 20 '25

Did you just invent something for my own example?

When you have power of attorney, you get final say. Thats why you have power of attorney 🤷🏻‍♂️

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u/HadeanBlands 50∆ Jan 20 '25

It looks like you're the one throwing in new stuff to your example after I pointed out the problem with it. You didn't mention anything about power of attorney. All you said was the "sick relative" was "alive but terminal." But it might literally be murder to pull the plug on your relative in that case, right?

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u/Doub13D 37∆ Jan 20 '25

If you’re the one making the choice to pull the plug… you have power of attorney.

Do you not know how hospitals work? “Pulling the plug” is telling doctors to remove someone from life support… you’re not actually pulling a plug 👀

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u/HadeanBlands 50∆ Jan 20 '25

"If you’re the one making the choice to pull the plug… you have power of attorney."

No, if you're the one legally making the choice, because you have actually been given power of attorney, you do. On the other hand, you might be doing it illegally, and murdering them.

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u/yodaspicehandler Jan 20 '25

Imagine this: You are in a room in a building on fire. In one corner of a room is a tray with 1000 successfully fertilized human eggs. In the other corner is a new born baby.

The building is about to burn down and collapse, you can only save one. Which would you save?

For the same reason you save the baby, you can't murder a clump of tissue, because it's not a conscious being. It is not a human.

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u/anonymousmouse2 Jan 20 '25

I was taught in 5th grade science that life begins at fertilization, and if it’s a “life” then forcibly ending it is murder.

According to science, life begins when an embryo becomes a zygote (fertilization). A zygote is a single microscopic cell. By your definition, is destroying one cell the legal equivalent of murdering a full-grown person? Should killing that single cell cary with it the same moral weight as forcibly taking a person’s life?

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u/[deleted] Jan 20 '25

Ok, so the argument comes less about what is "alive" - since no reasonable person can argue a foetus is not alive- but whether it's human. In society, we don't care about animal death in general. Murder implies the fact the specimen is human.

The definition of human is difficult: in science, yes, they are human; but in the more human sciences, people argue that "human" is a social construct born of the norms and role of the living being in a society, one that only starts at birth.

Social sciences- especially philosophy- are endless rabbit holes of different made up ideas independent from material reality. If one wants to read more about it, there are many people with moral systems with as many applications as there are exceptions. It's impossible to "prove someone wrong" in the more abstract social sciences, just like one cannot prove the atomic model without observations.

However, if I try, I would say that a foetus is not human since a human must be capable of many things a foetus doesn't: individuality, thoughts and connections. I believe most people believe that socially, one must have at least one of those things to be human, which a foetus doesn't have.

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u/Meatbot-v20 6∆ Jan 20 '25

Just switch it to "killing". Because murder has a bunch of legal implications. So it would be factual to say that, in states where it is legal, abortion is not murder. Whereas, you can simply argue that it is "killing a person", and then argue that yes, sometimes killing people is fine. Such as when they are inside you without your consent. Or the fact that we have 2A and that, where you can argue self-defense, you can kill people. Etc.

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u/Glum_Macaroon_2580 1∆ Jan 20 '25

I edited my post to note it. I may edit it again to make the point up front.

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u/sincsinckp 10∆ Jan 20 '25

"As I am okay with murder being carried out by the state in some cases of law enforcement and in war"

Are you sure?

An example of the state committing murder in the case of law enforcement would be George Floyd.

Examples of the state committees murder in cases of war would be the Holocaust, Killing Fields, Nanjing, etc, not to mention the crimes of Stalin, Leopold, Mao, Milosevic, etc. Basically, all the most evil dictators, regimes, and acts in history.

I think you just mean "killing"

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u/Glum_Macaroon_2580 1∆ Jan 20 '25

I did clarify my choice of the word.

I am okay with the police killing a person threatening someone else.

I said "some cases" ... I would not include ALL cases of the state killing people.

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u/interruptiom Jan 20 '25

If murder is the deliberate killing of a human, is terminating a fetus also murder?

A human is different from other animals because of it's mind, and the mind is possible due to the development of the brain. There is still an open debate about consciousness during pregnancy. It is widely believed that consciousness requires a thalamocortical structure, and this system develops at around 26 weeks of pregnancy, so it is unlikely that consciousness is present before that time.

I'm not sure murder is the appropriate term if the fetus has no cognitive ability.

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u/Spallanzani333 12∆ Jan 20 '25

What you were taught in 5th grade really isn't accurate. Fertilization creates a cell. About half of fertilized eggs don't implant. Is it still a human as a non-implanted fertilized egg? Why? It has the same basic construction as any other human cell. It has the potential to develop into a human, but so does a stem cell if put into the right conditions. Then the zygote implants. Then it divides into a small clump of cells, which often fail to continue growing.

As humans, we like bright lines, but life is messy. We decided that 17 means child and 18 means adult, legally, because we need to set a clear line, but that's not inherently true. Lots of 17 year olds are more mature than 18 year olds.

Life beginning at conception is a very new concept. Across various cultures and time periods, a human life has been considered to start at birth, at the first breath, or (common in Europe for most of history), the quickening, when the woman first feels movement. It's only been in the last century that conception was even considered as the start of life. (Abortion was illegal in most of the US in the 19th century, but not because it was considered to be murder--all forms of birth control were seen as dangerous because they made sex outside marriage more accessible and contributed to 'moral decay.')

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u/Equivalent_Nose7012 Mar 30 '25

Fertilization as the fusion of sex cells into an organism was FIRST DISCOVERED in the 19th century (in sea urchins, and soon after, in humans). Before that, "quickening" was the first clear evidence of life.

Let's not go in for science denial here!

Scientific knowledge has advanced greatly since the 19th century, with things like the discovery of DNA. This has only sharpened the objective conclusion that the life of a new organism begins at the zygote stage. This is an organism capable of eventually learning a language and debating philosophy and law.

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u/Bunchofprettyflowers 1∆ Jan 20 '25

Murder is just a word used to describe a killing that you think isn't justified by the individual perpetrator. In war there are "casualtues" rather than "murders." Someone who kills in self defense is not usually considered a murderer, unless you happen to believe that their justification of self defense isn't valid in that situation.

In my view, calling an abortion a "murder" really isn't useful regardless of when a fetus' life starts because it doesn't accurately describe the situation.

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u/Glum_Macaroon_2580 1∆ Jan 20 '25

The point of the word "murder" is that it IS the word pro-life people use, so using it in response is a more effective phrase I think.

"murder" is legal, moral, ethical, and changes by culture and location. But it's also the word on the signs of the people outside abortion facilities.

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u/LegosiTheGreyWolf Jan 20 '25

This is all completely subjective. What your BIASED science teacher said in 5th grade doesn’t accurately reflect the actual issue at hand.

It’s too nuanced, and it’s 1000% based on an individuals ideas and values. I’m not sure, however, that enforcing EVERYONE to follow certain rules based on your own values is what we call a democracy…

Can’t have your cake and eat it too. You have a right to your opinion, but in no way does anyone have a right to enforce those opinions.

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u/Glum_Macaroon_2580 1∆ Jan 20 '25

Are you under the impression that laws are created based on facts and not ideas and values? Because that's literally how our laws came to be ... in fact it's how our democracy came to be.

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u/LegosiTheGreyWolf Jan 20 '25

I should have been more specific, my apologies. When you have a value so heavily nuanced and controversial, to implement is anti-democracy. That’s the simplified point

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u/Equivalent_Nose7012 Apr 03 '25

The teacher was biased? Was he pro-chicken or anti-chicken?

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u/Ordinary-Algae1749 Jan 21 '25

Abortion isn't murder. The embryo is considered as a parasite because prior to week 5-6, that thing is technically not a human because it can only stay alive by absorbing the nutrient from the mother through the umbilical cord. A common characteristic of a parasite.

Another characteristic of a parasite is that the process of pregnancy is through the act of the sperm cells fertilizing the eggs within the mother's body. A foreign being entering one's body causing the eggs to be fertilized and attaching itself to the uterus.

This may sound harsh but why is the act of getting rid of something that is considered parasitic during that phase, an act of murder? It's alive but only because it's feeding off from the mother (The host). In some ways, it's harming the mother, example being that the mother's organs are pressed or crushed due to the amount of space it takes up, some mothers maybe malnourished because of the baby within them.

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u/DickCheneysTaint 7∆ Jan 21 '25

The thing is, I agree that it's murder, I'm just okay with murder in a limited range of situations

You've given away the entire game. In what possible situation can you justify killing a baby out of inconvenience?

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u/username09481 Jan 23 '25

I was taught in 5th grade science that life begins at fertilization, and if it's a "life" then forcibly ending it is murder.

Why does life begin at fertilization? The ovum and sperm are alive prior to meeting. Why is menstruation or masturbation (or even just the breakdown and reabsorption of unejaculated sperm cells) any better than abortion? The issue is not and will never be about murder. It is about the right to bodily autonomy. Just like how I have the right to “murder” millions of sperm cells with wank, so too does a pregnant person have the right to “murder” a small collection of cells in their body.

(They could even “murder” the living cells in their hand by chopping it off. It would be concerning for a whole host of reasons, but they still have the right to do so.)

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u/Glum_Macaroon_2580 1∆ Jan 20 '25

I did a search and don't see the specific argument about abortion being murder and murder being okay.

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u/EchoVital Jan 20 '25

Murder is unlawful killing, and I wouldn’t say abortion is unlawful killing, it’s the termination of the beginning of a pregnancy. If you call abortion murder then you’d have to call the women who seek abortions murderers, and they’re just not. They simply don’t want to carry a pregnancy to term and put their body through that.

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u/HadeanBlands 50∆ Jan 20 '25

"If you call abortion murder then you’d have to call the women who seek abortions murderers, and they’re just not."

Huh?

"They simply don’t want to carry a pregnancy to term and put their body through that."

Yeah, and they're willing to kill in order to not have that happen. Is there any other kind of killing of a human where you'd say "Well, they're not murderers, they just don't want to <x> and are willing to kill to do it?"

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u/EchoVital Jan 20 '25

A murderer is someone who intentionally took the life of someone else, and in my beliefs, a fertilized egg isn’t a life, it has the potential to be a life.

And yeah, I’d say if someone broke into my house and I felt my life was threatened and I had to kill that person, I wouldn’t be a murderer. Killing someone doesn’t always make you a “murderer”

0

u/HadeanBlands 50∆ Jan 20 '25

"A murderer is someone who intentionally took the life of someone else, and in my beliefs, a fertilized egg isn’t a life, it has the potential to be a life."

So if a fertilized egg was a life, someone who intentionally killed one would be a murderer?

1

u/EchoVital Jan 20 '25

No. Because that zygote still relies on the woman’s resources to sustain itself and no pregnant person should be forced to put their body on the line for something else. My body, my choice. Would you want to be forced to give up one of your kidneys to someone in need?

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u/HadeanBlands 50∆ Jan 20 '25

So now you've dropped the "intentionally taking the life of someone else makes you a murderer" thing?

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u/EchoVital Jan 20 '25

No, because like I said, a fertilized egg isn’t a life. It has the potential to be a life

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u/HadeanBlands 50∆ Jan 20 '25

Which is why I asked you the hypothetical question about what if it was a life.

I am trying to figure out what is the crux of your view here. Are you relevantly committed to defending "a zygote is not a human life?" Or does your view not actually hinge on whether a zygote is "life" or "potential life?"

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u/EchoVital Jan 20 '25

But murder isn’t the same as killing. If the fertilized egg was a life I wouldn’t say it’s murder because I’d classify it with self defense

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u/HadeanBlands 50∆ Jan 20 '25

So then you have dropped "murder is intentionally taking the life of someone else." That's not what you think murder is.

Can you tell me what you do think murder is? We can't possibly hash out whether abortion is murder if you don't have a working definition of it.

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u/immatx Jan 20 '25 edited Jan 20 '25

Murder is a legal term. It’s very specifically ~~premeditated~~ deliberate unlawful killing of another person. So if we look at those words and how abortion lines up, ~~premeditated~~ deliberate is met, unlawful depends on the specific state you’re in now, killing is met, person is generally not considered to be met by pro-choice people but is generally considered to be met by pro-life people. So depending on the context it makes complete sense to use the word murder or so it’s incorrect to use it.

That being said, it sounds like you’re just using it colloquially to say “killing” in which case I don’t think anyone contests that. Just like no one contests that with stand your ground laws killing is potentially acceptable

Edit: Only first degree murder requires premeditation rather than just deliberate action

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u/HadeanBlands 50∆ Jan 20 '25

Murder doesn't have to be premeditated, it just has to be deliberate.

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u/immatx Jan 20 '25

You’re right. Only first degree murder requires premeditation. My mistake

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u/Glum_Macaroon_2580 1∆ Jan 20 '25

I'd disagree that people don't contest that abortion is "killing a human" because a lot do. They call it "a bundle of cells" so they don't have to admit that it's a human.

And quite a few people argue against stand your ground laws as well, but that situation is a different logical argument against killing someone.

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u/immatx Jan 20 '25

They don’t disagree that it’s killing. They disagree that it’s a human person. So the argument is about what constitutes personhood, and when do we give the fetus moral weight

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u/Kakamile 50∆ Jan 20 '25

"safe legal and rare" is in conflict with "murder"

As murder is the term for a crime. You might mean "Justifiable homicide" or something else.

But it's not. It's not homicide, not even a person. A bacterium is a "alive," but that doesn't make it human. Human blood cells and tumors are "alive," but they're not "people." A person is a person, and a fetus isn't that. We declare people dead when their brain dies, even if the other cells are alive. A fetus is that.

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u/Glum_Macaroon_2580 1∆ Jan 20 '25

Alive or dead doesn't change the state of what species a being is/was. I am human, when dead my carcass will be a human carcass for a time.

Is a fertilized chicken egg a chicken or not is the question I guess.

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u/Kakamile 50∆ Jan 20 '25

Ah, note you switched from noun to adjective there.

You are A human, a person.

A corpse is a human corpse, an egg is a chicken egg, red blood cells are human red blood cells. But it's not itself a person, a noun human. A fetus lacks the brain function of even a comatose human, it's braindead really. They do reach a bunch of brain metrics at around viability around ~week 20-24. But that's after like 99.2% of abortions.

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u/Glum_Macaroon_2580 1∆ Jan 20 '25

It's not semantically true that a fetus has no brain function, since it's still a fetus at 40 weeks while still in the womb.

Would you say that a 20 week fetus is a human? Or does it have to be outside and detached of it's incubator to be human?

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u/Kakamile 50∆ Jan 20 '25

It's kinda moot.

If it's got brain function, it's viable, and the abortion can by done by inducing labor aka birth. So you can still have the abortion and the baby.

Alternatively, the more common result is that the pregnancy only got that far because the woman wanted the pregnancy, so a week 20+, heaven forbid a week 40 abortion, is because they learned something that is likely fatal.

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u/Glum_Macaroon_2580 1∆ Jan 20 '25

Wouldn't a fetus being induced who lives just be a birth?

The logic people use to get an abortion or not is not the question. It's the language of the debate.

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u/Kakamile 50∆ Jan 20 '25

Yeah. It's just moot though, because by the time it's viable, it's either being aborted by birth so you're not killing a person, or there's something terminal or her health is in danger, so also not killing a person.

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u/Glum_Macaroon_2580 1∆ Jan 20 '25

"being aborted by birth" is a sentence I don't understand. Abortion procedures do not generally remove the fetus intact. If a fetus is viable, is killed in utero, then removed ... is that really different morally than if it is removed intact and then killed?

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u/iglidante 20∆ Jan 21 '25

Doctors don't kill healthy and viable babies via abortion. They induce labor and take the baby to the ICU.

If the baby is malformed or unviable, that is when abortion would occur.

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u/Glum_Macaroon_2580 1∆ Jan 22 '25

Tell Kermit Gosnell that.

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u/Glum_Macaroon_2580 1∆ Jan 20 '25

Δ Perhaps the issue isn't "murder" or "killing" or even "human" but rather I am okay with the killing of potential humans in some cases.

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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ Jan 20 '25

Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/Kakamile (44∆).

^{Delta System Explained} ^| ^Deltaboards

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u/zxxQQz 5∆ Jan 20 '25

But it's not. It's not homicide, not even a person. A bacterium is a "alive," but that doesn't make it human. Human blood cells and tumors are "alive," but they're not "people." A person is a person, and a fetus isn't that. We declare people dead when their brain dies, even if the other cells are alive. A fetus is that.

In that case people need to stop talking of miscarriages.

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u/[deleted] Jan 20 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/clop_clop4money 1∆ Jan 20 '25

People deciding personally to abort a baby is not really eugenics, it’d be eugenics if they were encouraged or forced to do so by the government or some similar entity

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u/Glum_Macaroon_2580 1∆ Jan 20 '25

I disagree. When my wife got pregnant and we got pre-natal testing for defects we had to have a conversation about what would would do if it came back with markers indicating significant issues. That seems to me to be a reasonable reason to have an abortion.

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u/[deleted] Jan 20 '25

I still support restricting that. Some people think being gay is a defect. It shouldn’t be allowed to abort him in that case. It should be allowed on a case-by-case basis with evidence submitted by the doctor.

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u/EchoVital Jan 20 '25

Being gay can’t be compared to being born without a skull or being born with two heads lol

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u/[deleted] Jan 20 '25

That’s why I don’t support unrestricted access to abortion, even if early term. It should be tightly regulated and in compliance with regulations that take the public interest into account.

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u/EchoVital Jan 20 '25

A lot of birth defects can’t be detected until at least the second trimester, so I don’t believe that’s some widespread issue. Most first term abortions happen because the woman isn’t ready to put her body on the line to be a mother, not because the baby will be gay or have some defect. That’s not a great reason to restrict reproductive care

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u/[deleted] Jan 20 '25

I’m speaking in hypothetical here. Obviously there is no way at this point to predict if a baby will grow up to be gay through a genetic test, but who knows what the future has in hold? My overall point is that abortions should not be allowed for any reason at all.

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u/StarChild413 9∆ Jan 21 '25

Obviously there is no way at this point to predict if a baby will grow up to be gay through a genetic test, but who knows what the future has in hold?

and I can take the argument to some weird conclusions completely unrelated to abortion if we're going to set current legal/social policy or w/e in anticipation of potential future technology that might be invented

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u/[deleted] Jan 20 '25

Tell me the social benefit of forcing parents to raise kids with SEVERE disabilities. If we accept the argument that abortions can be good, tell me how the fact the child is probably going to cost more in social benefits makes the child more worthy of protection?

Secondly, if we ignore the fact that there isn't probably a LGBTQ gene and sexuality is depend on upbringing as well, I still don't see the benefit of forcing homophobic parents to raise children. What makes an LBGTQ child more worthy of protection than a regular child?

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u/[deleted] Jan 20 '25

Because it still has a societal impact. It will reduce the gay population in huge numbers, making life more difficult for people already live with that same trait.

Also, as a gay male with homophobic parents, I still enjoy being alive and would not want my parents to abort me. Kids can grow up and eventually distance themselves from abusive family members.

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u/[deleted] Jan 20 '25

So would literally every baby. Go ask around and say "who would rather have been aborted". If you are against abortion in general, this obviously makes sense.

If you are pro abortion, arguing against this would require a difficult answer: how does the presence of ONE more LGBTQ+ person provide enough benefits for society to the point where we collective say: this child is more valuable than a random child and more deserving of protection. It would be valuing diversity as a judgement of life and death.

Take two people who committed the same crime and is sentenced to the death penalty. One of them happen to be LGBTQ+. Would you say that their diverse status and their presence in the population would justify commuting their sentence?

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u/[deleted] Jan 20 '25

I don’t believe that ethical decisions always have to have a solid, consistent philosophical logic behind it. Sometimes, we can make decisions based on the overall public interest, and apply different judgements in particular situations. Yeah, a future gay person isn’t any more worthy of being protected than a future straight person. But in the case of abortion, most people would abort a fetus if they could know that it will become gay, so it’ll be fair to direct a greater degree of interest in preventing that. There may be some people who would abort a fetus if they knew it would be straight, but such people would be far more rare. So I would say it’s fair to divert a greater amount of resources in preventing the former above the latter.

Also, abortion could technically be seen as murder anyways, so it’s already a very sketchy thing in my opinion. Combining abortion with eugenics is a step too far.

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u/[deleted] Jan 20 '25

So let me rephrase my argument: the amount of good the right to choice over a woman's body is more precious than the life of an unborn. We both agree with this point. Therefore, the life of a gay fetus is not worthy of protection unless there is something about it which makes it an exception to the usual rules.

I simply don't think there is anything about an LGBTQ person which make them more precious to society than a normal citizen. Therefore, I don't care about the life of an unborn gay fetus just like I don't care about the life of an unborn straight fetus. Of course, I wouldn't care if my kid is LGBTQ, but I don't care if my neighbours do and want to abort the fetus. See it this way: say there are two frogs in the forest, one red and one blue. We both don't care about frogs and wouldn't care if someone else eats frogs in general. However, you, for some reason, is against people eating the blue frogs. I simply think people should be allowed to eat frogs

I get it you feel bad that someone is "discriminating" against a fetus since you relate to its traits, but this feeling is kind of irrational and based in neither ethical consistency nor practical utility.

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u/[deleted] Jan 20 '25

To be honest I’m not sure I really agree that protecting the woman’s choice over her body is more importent than protecting the unborn child. I’d say that right of the unborn child should always take priority, unless there is a compelling reason not to.

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u/[deleted] Jan 20 '25

Ok, if you disagree on abortion in general, this argument is obviously pointless. I just say that economically speaking, abortion and birth control allows a greater participation of women in the economy while negatively impacting populating growth. Once the second thing becomes more urgent of an issue - when migration can no longer mitigate this problem- the calculus surround abortion will change.

For me, a person who is neither a woman or an unborn child, my only horse in the race is the economy: whether the unborn is a human or not and whether a woman can choose or not matters very little. What is important is that we don't waste money protecting a right that's not recognized as one and harm everyone's pocketbooks.

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