Mail call!
Let me begin by stating that I doubt that the now viral “Little Thing” letter is genuine. It may well be bait put on the web (it was first published on Reddit) to trap the worst unethical hypocrites of the pro-abortion movement. If so, it worked, for some pro-choice advocates have received it with deafening, nauseating, self-indicting applause. If, on the other hand, the letter is genuine, it is a chilling confirmation of the ethical gymnastics some abortion apologists put themselves through to rationalize what in their hearts they know to be wrong.
If abortion is ethically tolerable, it cannot involve the willful and unnecessary killing of a human life. Only then is “pro choice” a fair description of the legal and the ethical issues involved: the choice of a woman to end a her pregnancy without ending what she believes to be the life of an innocent child. There are many complex and logically dubious aspects to this. The magic moment, still moving, individually variable and often determined legislatively or judicially with the precision of a coin flip, when “undifferentiated cells” suddenly become a human life worthy of society’s respect and protection, is sometimes defined by the mother’s belief. If she believes she is with child, someone else killing that child may be charged with some form of murder. If she decides that it is no more human than a wart or a tumor, she is given leave by the law to kill it without regret or consequences. This means that it is in the interests of a woman who wishes an active sex life and wants to control the timing of motherhood to fit her life plan to tend toward the wart point of view.There is no integrity to defining a key factor in a life and death decision after we have already decided how we want that decision to come out. It is like the Bush administration, having decided that waterboarding is useful, creating legal arguments asserting that an act that had always been regarded as torture wasn’t torture after all. To many women on the pro-abortion side, unwanted or inconvenient babies are as much enemies as terrorists were to Dick Cheney. Thus life is defined in such a way as to make their war winnable.
This self-delusion, legal fiction, essential myth or convenient belief—pick your favorite—has obviously been very successful, and many women appear to accept it without thinking very deeply about it. If the option of an abortion makes one’s life infinitely more manageable, why begin questioning the ethics of the procedure, especially since about half the public, most of the media, prestigious organizations, the law, a political party and political correctness tenets tell you not to, that the issues are settled? Nonetheless, some women do question it, and do reach the conclusion that it is not a wart or tumor or enemy within them, but rather an innocent, growing, human life.
If and when a woman reaches that conclusion, as inconvenient as it may, then to go ahead with an abortion is unethical, and is, in fact, the ethical equivalent of murder. It is not the legal equivalent of murder, but when a mother believes that she is, through abortion, taking the life of an unborn child that she regards as an individual, I don’t see how it can be termed anything else.
And that is clearly the state of mind of the anonymous author of this letter, if it is genuine:
Little Thing:
I can feel you in there. I’ve got twice the appetite and half the energy. It breaks my heart that I don’t feel the enchantment that I’m supposed to feel. I am both sorry and not sorry.
I am sorry that this is goodbye. I’m sad that I’ll never get to meet you. You could have your father’s eyes and my nose and we could make our own traditions, be a family. But, Little Thing, we will meet again. I promise that the next time I see that little blue plus, the next time you are in the same reality as me, I will be ready for you.
Little Thing, I want you to be happy. More than I want good things for myself, I want the best things for the future. That’s why I can’t be your mother right now. I am still growing myself. It wouldn’t be fair to bring a new life into a world where I am still haunted by ghosts of the life I’ve lived. “I want you to have all the things I didn’t have when I was a child.” I want you to be better than I ever was and more magnificent than I ever could be. I can’t do to you what was done to me: Plant a seed made of love and spontaneity into a garden, and hope that it will grow on only dreams. Love and spontaneity are beautiful, but they have little merit. And while I have plenty of dreams to go around, dreams are not an effective enough tool for you to build a better tomorrow. I can’t bring you here. Not like this.
I love you, Little Thing, and I wish the circumstances were different. I promise I will see you again, and next time, you can call me Mom.
-h
I have been responsible for the deaths of living beings. I had my mother’s life support turned off. I wouldn’t write her a letter like this, however, or apologize. She was functionally dead: she had told be that she wanted me to do this. I’m not sorry.
I also have had to agree to euthanize beloved animal companions. I wouldn’t write a letter like this one to any of them, either. For all but one of them, I knew that I was performing a compassionate act: they were in pain, dying, and unable to take any pleasure in life. The exception was a Bassett Hound who had some kind of disorder that caused him to suddenly become vicious without reason or warning. He had attacked my young son, as he had attacked me and my wife. Experts said that we had no options other than putting him down. He was loving and gentle, when he was in his right mind, and didn’t understand.
But if I was sorry to have to kill someone or something that I didn’t have to kill, I would not kill him or it. Apparently the writer of this letter finds it comforting to pretend that a someone is a something, but that is an apparent exercise in intellectual dishonesty. We don’t write letters to “things.” It would be absurd to write such a letter to a dog, much less a wart or a tumor. Though the mother-not-to-be calls her doomed correspondent “little thing,” she is communicating to a human being, and she knows it.
Moreover, she makes it clear from the outset that she regards the human being as an individual. She can feel him. She knows that he will complete a family, if only she lets him live. Whenever dealing with the reality of what she knows to be the consequences of the abortion, she retreats into contradictory gibberish. She will “ never get to meet” him, because, you know, she is destroying him, but says that “ the next time you are in the same reality as me, I will be ready for you.” This is nonsense custom-made to avoid accepting accountability for her decision and its consequences.
She wants him to be “happy”? Then let him live. She doesn’t want him to be happy, though: she wants him to be gone so she can be happy. If the “Little Thing” could hear and understand this self-serving lie, he would either laugh ruefully (if he had a sense of the absurd, which I doubt embryos do), or reply, “Hey, I appreciate the concern, but don’t do me any favors: let me be born, and I guarantee that I’ll have more happiness than I will if I end up in a metal pan.” The rest of this paragraph is more of the same ludicrous rationalization: “I’m killing you for your own good,” when everything she says makes it clearer than clear that her own good is the sole concern. And that’s an ethical choice, if no other life is involved. She knows, however, that there is, so to pretend that she is making the best decision for everyone, she concocts outrageous statements like “I want you to have all the things I didn’t have when I was a child. I want you to be better than I ever was and more magnificent than I ever could be.”
In the annals of letting the perfect be the enemy of the good, this sets a record that may never be surpassed.
The letter ends in a crescendo of dishonesty and abdication of responsibility and adulthood. She doesn’t love “little thing,” or she wouldn’t kill him (and wouldn’t call him “thing.”) She wishes circumstances were different: well, being ethical involving doing the most good you can with the hands you are dealt, not throwing the cards in and only caring about others when you draw a straight flush and winning is easy. Finally, she resorts to sentimental nonsense that she already rejected in her second paragraph. No, she will not see him again, and her promise is a comforting lie for an audience of one.
So ethically confused, hypocritical and rationalization-infected is this letter that I would have thought intelligent abortion advocates would run away from it as fast and as far as they could. Maybe they are; maybe fans like Cosmopolitan’s Catriona Harvey-Jenner (“Her thoughtful words, written to ‘Little One’ – the baby she is choosing to abort – give an insight into why she has decided that terminating the pregnancy is the right option in her circumstances. Wanting to give a child of hers the best life she possibly can, she knows that now is not the right time.”), Jezebel’s Mark Shrayber ( “Beautiful and heartbreaking”) and others around the web are just on lower intellectual rung of the movement who fell into a well-constructed trap.
I hope so. Because if the “Little Thing” letter is real, it was written to an unborn human child who was murdered by a narcissistic idiot.
Ethics Alarms 
This article is perfect. May I share it on Facebook?
Thanks, and of course.
Very well said, Jack.
I hope that those who disagree will read this carefully, and follow your reasoning, instead of vilifying and abusing you because of their knee-jerk…ah, who am I kidding?
That “Dear Little Thing” letter will work wonders for reducing the objectification of women – such a fine example of non-objectification!
Silly me! I imagined that the salutation began with “Dear.” Well, the letter is for a good cause anyway, and Free Love is just around the corner.
I understand that whole issue about the sanctity of life and all, but a baby bump could prevent a girl from fitting into that dress that she wants to wear to the prom! Is that not what abortions are for?
Not just abortions, Michael – FREE abortions, without hassles like parents (or any other adults, like the impregnating teachers or police) knowing. (Abortions which of course will be safe, legal and rare, once the President signs the Executive Order that effectively implements an Affordable Prom Act.)
iconicphotos.wordpress..com/2009/08/12/vulture-stalking-a-child
Sorry, Kid. I followed Jack Marshall’s advice, and had you anyway. Yeah, I know that your life has been nothing but pain and misery, but I did my best, and it just wasn’t good enough. As the Scriptures say, “For God so loved the common vulture that He gave Him my only begotten Son.”
Yeah, that’s right Art, living human beings in the United States face lives of nothing but pain and misery, and just snuffing them out is the kindest thing to do. Adults too, really.
And I wonder if you realize how a comment like this undermines your credibility when you might actually have something intelligent to say.
It looked like sarcasm to me.
It wasn’t.
Are you sure? surely you do not think that, in my above comment, I was trying to claim that wanting to fit into a dress is justification for abortion.
No I didn’t. You have been commenting here often enough and long enough that, in your comments, I recognize sarcasm. Art has not, and, well, I would just rather not say anything further about Art. It was his comment I was referring to.
I’m surprised at you, Jack! All I am doing here is testing your position for coherence and consistency.
Faced with the “vulture baby” (real) hypo, you have two choices: to say that the mother should have carried it to term anyway in the face of an almost-certain probability that it would lead a life of privation and misery, and die before his or her tenth birthday, or concede that there is a line to be drawn between the vulture baby and the American. But if you opt for the latter, your job is only beginning: You have to use objective principles of ethics to identify the precise point where “black becomes white” and then, be able to defend that position. (This is part and parcel of the law school experience.)
Given the positions you have staked out, it looks to me as if you are going to have a serious problem. On the one hand, in the question of whether a judge should be held personally liable in tort for willful acts of misconduct on the bench, you have staked out the position wherein “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one,” and that it is perfectly acceptable to sacrifice a man’s rights on the altar of the “greater good.” Well, the same argument can easily be made in the classic Down pregnancy, wherein the needs of the family and society as a whole arguably outweigh the needs of the fetus; abortion is, by your own metric, the only ethical option. Indeed, a similar argument can be made for just about any elective abortion, and as an avowed atheist, you can’t claim that it is wrong because “it would make Baby Jesus cry.” A similar argument can be made for medically-assisted euthanasia for the elderly and terminally ill, when they reach the stage in their life that they are ready to end it all. (Alzheimer’s is one hell of a way to go.)
I don’t care what your answer is; I want to see how you attempt to untie a Gordian knot of your own construction. This is, after all, an ethics blog, and the process of developing, testing, and implementing a code of ethics should be of paramount interest to all.
You really are unhealthily obsessed with this judicial immunity thing, Art. I can recommend someone you might talk to. It comes into play so seldom, and the benefits of the protection it offers are huge and undeniable. Get help.
First, why the constant barrage of gratuitous verbal abuse? Have you so little confidence in the inherent soundness of your own opinions that you feel the need to indulge? (If I reciprocated in kind, I have little doubt that I would be banned.)
Second, I’ve already called bullshit on your baseless claim that the benefits of absolute judicial immunity are “huge and undeniable,” and you admitted that you have no evidence to support your position. Conversely, I can point to the decrepit state of appellate review in this country — fifty appeals were decided in two hours, Posner admitting that his “error rate is high,” and the empirical fact that in fifty years, the rate of reversal has dwindled from 30% to 10% — as being consistent with what happens when people don’t have to be responsible for their actions. But we have already covered that topic more than I care to, and you refuse to be confused by facts.
Finally, the only relevance of the “judicial immunity thing” here is that YOU have staked out two inherently inconsistent and irreconcilable positions — and are trying desperately to avoid acknowledging this fact. The problem with a code of ethics is that it demands consistency, and your hypocrisy is embarrassing and unprofessional. Either we should sacrifice the rights of the individual on the altar of the common good, or we should not. You can’t have it both ways, Jack.
My position is consistent. As the whole point of the rule of law is to protect the rights of the individual, there can be no exception from the rule that you are accountable for your actions, as the exception would swallow the rule, with predictable results. Conversely, when it comes to abortion, I have an aversion to telling others what they must do, as it would create precedent giving them power to tell me what I must do. No right is absolute, and as long as the State (which is the organ of society) has no legal authority to object, that is and ought to remain an individual decision. I trust those who have to live with a decision to make a sensible one.
False equivalency: “loss of potential (let’s be generous) life” is not the same as “inability to recover damages”. Show me some calculus where you weight all the detailed costs and benefits and I may take you seriously.
Hardly. According to Madison, as we have a liberty interest in our property, we have a property interest in our liberty. Take away my ability to practice a profession, by way of example, and it has a profound effect upon my life. If there is no remedy for their willful breach, do we even have “rights”?
It is rare that a woman takes a cavalier attitude toward abortion. The case of the Down fetus is a classic example. 93% of women who learn that they have one choose to abort and in almost every case (genetic testing is not done in the first trimester), they actually wanted a child. They all count the cost, and in almost every instance (unless they are religious nutters), have the abortion. And who can honestly blame them? Only the burro knows the weight of his load.
That second paragraph demonstrates nothing. Unless you want to use it as a “majority rules” argument (argumentum ad populum fallacy). Just because 93% of women with Down babies decided to kill them, doesn’t mean they were right doing so.
Consistent reference to “religious nutters” demonstrates your bigotry and inability to see this from a rational angle.
“Only the burro knows the weight of his load.”
This argument is tired and worn out. No one has to be a pregnant woman to accurately weigh in on the ethics of abortion. Nice try though.
I don’t think it was a nice try. I don’t even find Art’s arguments coherent, essentially because he either discards or misunderstand’s just about every principle of ethics, and confuses morality (religion) with ethics. I don’t write about morality, but in the case of abortion, it’s unnecessary. It’s a classic ethics dilemma: serious non-ethical considerations that Art, as an ethics agnostic, places paramount, vs. ethics, which is the determination of right and wrong. It also has elements of an ethics conflict—a supposed zero-sum game between the welfare of the child and the parent. When it IS a zero sum game (One must die so the other can live), that is indeed a lose-lose choice. Preserve a viable human life with an appreciable chance of flourishing vs. a parent accepting responsibility and even hardship as a consequence of causing that that life to come into existence, however, is not such a balancing stand-off. There is a clear ethical choice–those who have to make it just don’t like it very much.
Right, but some foolish part of me believes Art can be reached.
I should just quit. But it’s not in my nature.
And to clarify: when I say “nice try”, I’m usually being sarcastic. If I mean “nice try” it usually comes across as – “Oh I see what you mean, hm, that’s interesting, but have you considered…”
I find your rationalizations hypocritical. You were the one who staked out the “Spock Theorem” with respect to judicial immunity. I am pointing out that it is equally applicable to your pet causes.
If you say that the needs of the one outweigh the needs of the many, then you have a viable argument. But you can’t pick a lane.
If it is a question of whether the best decision for all involved is an abortion, the 93% figure is certainly relevant.
Religious nutters can’t see anything from a rational angle. Since when is it per se improper to dump on the Ayatollahs of the world?
No, moron. Again, because 93% of people chose that route doesn’t make it right. Do some research on Argumentum ad populum.
Education would do you some good.
Tex, if you don’t mind, I’d like to add something, here. That 93% figure is basically an artifact of physicians who have skipped the genetics class when it was offered. Down’s Syndrome is a genetic dysfunction that is easily identifiable and certainly has the potential for causing possible problems. However, those problems, which are manifold, are NOT guaranteed, although there is a higher risk of one or more developing. So, what Art is, possibly unknowingly, saying is that any baby with a higher risk of problems than “normal” should be aborted, for the convenience of the mother, father or both.
Art, I hope you really are not as ethically challenged as this comment makes you sound.
Why did you bring God into this?
Because you want to make Him a point of ridicule.
If you are really concerned about that child ask yourself why there is a photograph of him on the internet. Someone with a camera and the means to take and transmit a picture saw him and instead of helping took a picture so people like you could mock and make ethically stupid points. No one did their best and it’s not something God did or didn’t do. People are responsible for that. Where do you think the kind of thinking that could produce that photograph came from? Not from a respect for life.
Well, to be fair, it was a jaw-droppingly stupid comment with or without a God cheap-shot. I didn’t look at the photo, because no photo could possibly support such a world view.
It is how law profs make their students’ lives miserable: identify the most extreme case imaginable, and see if the student will draw a distinction. If s/he does, the prof gets the poor student to try to defend it. Sometimes, it can be ugly to watch.
And yes, if an interventionist God existed, I would blame Him. If we are to hold Barack Obama responsible for his subordinates’ failures (which Jack does all the time!) despite his limitations, why, then, should we not hold an omnipotent God accountable for the shocking failures of his subordinates (Rom. 10:1-7)? “Omniscient” means “knowing everything” (even Fast and Furious), and “omnipotent” means “being able to do something about it” (even Benghazi). As Pastor Bonhoeffer said, to not act is to act (see also, Jas. 4:17).
The problem is so vast as to border on the inconceivable. It is beyond the ability of one man to solve (unless that one man is a Koch brother!), and if anything, that photograph accomplished more than a ham sandwich could ever do. Kevin Carter knew that that child was beyond his aid, and he was so distraught and overcome by what he saw that he took his own life within a year of snapping it.
If anyone wants to talk with me about the loving and caring nature of their god, I refer him or her to that photograph. Or the bodies of the Holocaust victims my late uncle was charged with burying. Like Jack, I cannot find any evidence of a god deserving of my worship.
When you understand Christian theology a little better you can come back to the discussion. But your ramblings miss the mark entirely. Starting with your God-Man is Boss-Subordinate analogy you wander off the reservation completely. Nice try though. Failed again.
If you want people to take you seriously (which most don’t after your near-conspiratorial tin-foil-hat drivel you typically post) you shouldn’t pop off about stuff you know little about.
I understand Christian theology just fine — it is hypocrisy on steroids. Your god is a cosmic televangelist: takes credit for everything, accepts blame for nothing, and doesn’t do a damned thing.
If you sit in the center seat, you are responsible. Period.
No you don’t you ignorant fool.
It all comes down to Jas. 4:17, Agg: “If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and does it not, it is sin for them.” As Bonhoeffer observes, to not act is to act. And as Jack will tell you, the entity creating the harm has a duty to rescue.
Either your god is a watch-queen who jacks off during a gang-rape, or he is impotent. If your god exists, he is unethical. And a sinner in need of a saviour. If your god cannot even save himself, how can he save me? And from what does he save me?
Christian theology would even befuddle a Lewis Carroll.
Since this discussion, were it to be pursued with any intellectual honesty by you (and I know it wouldn’t be) leads one place, I’ll jump right to it.
Christian theology contends that God wants a relationship. It would then follow that he doesn’t want us to be robots. It would then follow that intervention (which would inevitably, via ripples of secondary and tertiary effects) would compel control of individuals… turning us into robots. So, we get bad things happening and God who doesn’t intervene (always) nor is compelled to.
We also suffer from viewing this world from our perspective of individuals, whereas God sees the whole.
But this isn’t a theological discussion. You are simply a bigot.
That image link is actually broken. Which is kind of fitting, being attached to such a broken world view, all things said. you need to remove the extra . before com to make it work.
And for figuring that out, I am treated to an image of an emaciated kid being watched by a vulture, just like I see out my kitchen window every morning. Seriously Art, bravo. You have removed the wool from my eyes. This is so relevant to our situation in the west. I’ve completely changed my views on abortion. Thanks.
It is totally relevant to the process of developing and refining a code of ethics. Correct me if I am wrong, but isn’t that the reason why we are here?
Art
You think there’s a reason we’re here?
Isn’t that a little inconsistent?
Not at all. You might be here because you are seeking affirmation of your extreme (well, maybe not for Wyoming, where men are men and the sheep fear it) right-wing religious beliefs, but the presumptive purpose of an ethics blog is to discuss the topic of ethics.
Developing? Perhaps. Redefining? You want to redefine ethics? To make abortion ethical? War is Peace, Less is More, Abortion is Caring.
No Art, just no. It’s unethical. It might be more preferable to have an abortion than to have a child in some cases, but in the west, and in China, where the vast majority of abortions are actually performed, with the prevalence of education, birth control, and contraception, it is a cripplingly stupid, utterly juvenile, irresponsible thing to get pregnant when you don’t want to be. I’ve said it before: Incest and rape are red herrings, they’re what abortion is for, I’ll add downs syndrome to the list. There are reasons to have abortions that aren’t in complete control of the parent, but in the vast majority of abortions, it’s just a series of really bad choices. New York State saw more black babies aborted than born last year. You can’t tell me that more than half the black pregnancies in New York were the product of abortion or rape, or were the victims of Down’s.
Get a grip.
Get a grip yourself. Beth lays out the argument: abortion is the best choice for all involved in many cases.
Don’t be dense. Best choice? By what metric?
In my mind, which may or may not amount to much, the best choice would have been to be more responsible before having an abortion is on the table. But those kittens left the box right? Ok. The BEST choice is to not kill your unborn, and if you can’t care for it, put it up for adoption. The EASIEST, least responsible, most unethical choice is the abortion. Easy does not equal best.
You presuppose any number of facts not in evidence. First, in the case of those who are born, adoption is an option. Second, you forget that no form of contraception is perfect, and the most effective one is dangerous (oral contraceptives cause strokes, and cannot be taken by everyone); you can act responsibly and still, be saddled with an unwanted pregnancy. Get off your high horse and introduce yourself to the real world.
The best choice in YOUR sanctimonious mind is to carry to term. And you have the freedom to make irrational decisions like that. If the ethical thing to do is the optimal thing (Jack’s Rule), abortion can be the best call. If you take issue with Jack’s Rule, you do.
1. “First, in the case of those who are born, adoption is an option.” I have no idea what you are talking about, and neither do you. It is always an option. Any parent can give up a child at the outset, legally, no questions asked. Easier now than ever before.
2. “You can act responsibly and still, be saddled with an unwanted pregnancy.” Yup. You can marry the girl of your dreams, too, and still be saddled with a 350 pound, abusive harpy ten years later. Life’s a bitch. You have to deal with it. Can’t shoot her. Sorry.
3. “Get off your high horse and introduce yourself to the real world.” A classic invalid unethical rationalization, which translates as “it’s unreasonable to expect people to do the right thing.”
4. Carrying a child to term is now irrational. This is a character tell
5. Two addenda to the previous warning, which this comment almost abides by (thank you). There is no “Jack’s Rule”–indeed rules are not ethics—and you have misrepresented me, repeatedly, in stating otherwise. Putting words in my mouth is a banishing offense…check the Comment guidelines. My fault, should have seen that one coming. The use of sanctimonious as pejorative description of a position advocating ethical conduct is also banned. You can argue about what ethical conduct is, but if you deny that ethics are good, a contradiction in terms, you stumbled onto the wrong URL, and qualify as a troll.
As a general rule, I do not read or respond to Art’s comments. Having slipped and read this one, I understand why I reached that decision.
All children, I’m quite sure, instinctively know that abortion is wrong. Everyone I’ve ever asked what they thought of it when they first heard about it admitted that they were horrified. I remember when I learned what it was from my (pro-choice) mother – aged 7 – and just could not believe anyone would do such a thing and that it wasn’t illegal. Can’t imagine any child, after being told what it is and why people really do it, thinking ‘oh okay, that sounds reasonable’, though I could of course be wrong about that. As we get older most of us manage to justify all kinds of horrible things to ourselves when it suits. It’s not necessarily wise to look to children for their opinions on important matters but I think it tells you something that they are invariably disturbed by it. I sort of glazed over the letter in this post as I had read it before some days ago. The thought that sprang to mind was that thing people say about sentimental people having the most potential for evil. The weirdest thing about it was this idea that the baby could just come back at a later date and she could mother it then instead of now. She actually thinks a child is replaceable? Babies are indistinguishable things and you can just dispose of one and get an identical one later on. It’s grotesque.
I do understand some of the pro-abortion arguments and think they have some points. The strongest, IMO, is that the risks of abortion are fewer and less serious than of giving birth. These days your chances of dying in childbirth in a first world country, especially the US where mostly obstetricians provide antenatal care, is vanishingly rare but more likely to happen than dying from having a termination. (So it’s rather disingenuous for anti-abortion folks, and I do count myself as one, to make so much out of the extremely rare instance of a girl dying from her abortion. And claiming that it causes breast cancer. Ugh, just shush.) It’s heartbreaking to hear of women in places where there is very little access to decent maternity care, where everyone knows someone who died having their baby – and what a gruesome death it usually is – exsanguinating after possibly days of exhausting, obstructed labour – and they are genuinely fearful that they will leave their existing children that they already know and love without a mother. Very hard to condemn them for choosing to terminate. But that is not why people have abortions here I think it is reasonable to expect people to take on some risks to themselves for the sake of their child that they brought into the world. (Maybe this is an unethical POV? To denounce abortion when the risks of having the child are small but sympathetic when the risks are more significant. I mean, does it really matter to you when you’re the one dying that your risk was relatively low?)
I had an acquaintance on Facebook who claimed in a status post that because we wouldn’t demand someone give bone marrow or a kidney to a stranger in need we shouldn’t demand that a woman give up her body as an incubator and jeopardise her health for the sake of a foetus. I agreed that yes we don’t expect people to just give up their organs and risk death for people they don’t know (people who do that are saintly) but we do expect parents to do that for their own children! Your unborn child isn’t some Joe Bloggs, they’re your flesh and blood. We *do* expect parents to rescue their children from drowning though they might drown themselves, we expect them to take their children to get their vaccines even though they could die driving to the doctor’s office, and if a parent was a match to their child that needed a kidney we would think they were pretty crummy parents if they refused to give theirs up. I don’t believe anyone today (or hardly anyone) styles themselves pro-choice because of their concern for maternal mortality, it’s simply that they don’t think people should have to suffer the consequences of their behaviour. I really think that’s all it comes down to. Even if we got maternal mortality and morbidity down to zero and made childbirth painless and we were so prosperous that no one ever had to worry about providing for their offspring, they wouldn’t be any less adamant that abortion is a right.
http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2007/10/safe-legal-and-.html The dangerous backstreet abortion argument is discussed in this piece. That’s another issue that I think anti-abortion people struggle with. It was interesting to read that at the time people were pushing for legalised abortion mostly on the basis that scores of women were dying from unsafe procedures, the people in the know (gynaecologists) said that the numbers were hugely exaggerated. Of course today the RCOG is robustly in favour of abortions. The article refers to the situation in Great Britain but I assume it was a similar story in the US.
Abortion: one definite human death, the risk, if small, of another. Childbirth: small risks of two deaths. This isn’t 1914: the risk of a woman dying in childbirth is like any other risk of living, and not substantial. Do you know of anyone who dies in childbirth? I don’t. If someone wants to avoid that risk above all else, don’t risk getting pregnant. Having sex carried risks too. I don’t think the relative risks of childbirth and abortion regarding the mother are even on the radar in this policy debate, not should it be. It certainly had nothing to do with why “Little Thing” was liquidated.
Whenever I’ve got into this subject (admittedly rare, especially since college) I swear that ‘abortion is safer than childbirth’ and ‘childbirth is more dangerous than drunk driving’ etc are some of the first points made and come before ‘saving the child from an unhappy life’. I just looked at the planned parenthood website and they mention this several times as well. So does NARAL. It makes sense… self defense is pretty much universally accepted as the only good reason for killing. But I think you are right that it is desperate to try to justify hundreds of thousands of infant deaths because it could save a handful of women from pregnancy related deaths. It’s only convincing if you believe the life of an adult is vastly more valuable than an unborn baby’s (which they do, clearly) but I do find it more *persuasive* than most other pro abortion arguments. But that’s probably because most of them are specious. I always asked when told that having a baby is more dangerous for the mother than drunk driving if that was with or without the benefit of modern medicine and I never got a straight answer so not really sure how true that statement is. The justification used in the letter to ‘little thing’.. that it is a kindness to do away with a child to save them from a less than ideal childhood is only at all compelling if you’re talking about bringing up a child in a war torn country or some other place of inescapable misery and want.
I know of someone who came very close to dying in childbirth, but that was because she was having a home birth (which is a whole other crapfest of a topic). No one in my family has died giving birth since the 50’s.
Did you read the article I linked to above? Would like to hear your thoughts on Dr Aleck Bourne. I was surprised to read about a doctor who performed abortions reluctantly and opposed the sweeping legislation that gave us, effectively, abortion on demand. Do you think what we (the British) had before 1967 was an ethical compromise?
If you have a viable alternative, let’s hear it. The suggestion that a couple has to refrain from sexual relations to avoid having a child is so daft that it is probably patentable.
Is this directed at me? A viable alternative to abortion is to have the baby and try to make the best of it. That is still what most people choose to do even in very difficult circumstances.
I do think people could at least refrain from sexual relations with people they wouldn’t want to have children with. That would reduce the demand for abortions considerably. I don’t think that is such a tall order but I am a stuffy old Christian.
You need to understand that Art’s worldview elevates “fulfillment of animal cravings” over “protection of innocent life”. Once you accept that, then you’ll understand how he can have such an upside down conclusion.
Art has also never heard of vasectomies, tubal ligation, adoption, birth control…I think he may be from another century.
Birth control has been known to fail, and ligations and vasectomies are not always reversible. I’m not saying that a couple might not want children but rather, that they don’t want one NOW. If you were born with a diamond-encrusted platinum spoon in your mouth, you might not understand why, but there is often a vast gulf between Harvard and the mean streets of reality.
Yep. We get it Art, pleasure trumps innocent life in your world.
What planet are you from? If a mother doesn’t believe her nascent child is an individual or human or a life, the law supports that position, and there is nothing unethical about aborting the pregnancy. If, however, a mother believes, as this one allegedly does, that the embryo is worthy of personification, aborting it out of convenience is wildly unethical. A person who believes that she is creating life from fertilization and just regards killing such life a necessary risk of getting her rocks off has such abysmal values and priorities that I wouldn’t trust her with the care of a kitten.
The choice to bear a child is one modern technology permits. Whereas you can quibble with her calculus, the putative mother is in a position to weigh the benefits and detriments. Remember, she can always make more, and she has an obligation to those yet unborn.
YOU staked out the position in our judicial immunity debate that it is OK to sacrifice the rights of one on the altar of the common good. Well, this was a consistent and principled application OF YOUR OWN RULE. The Down (where 93% of women choose abortion) and “vulture baby” scenarios are ones where the calculus is clearer, but it is hard to criticize from the cheap seats.
Again, why this constant barrage of gratuitous verbal abuse? I’ve told you what I am doing: playing devil’s advocate. Why must you abandon reason for the kingdom of emotion?
Yes you are correct there are dozens of ways to mitigate the consequences before they are consequences. I was merely attempting to focus on once the consequence occurs, Art still believes “animalistic pleasure” trumps “responsibility”.
Actually, this is an application OF JACK’S OWN RULE. If it is appropriate to sacrifice the rights of one on the altar of the common good, why is it not so here? Chris Christie has a coronary from eating too many pizzas whole. Should we not let him die, taking responsibility for his actions? No, we say that we will use technology to rescue him. Why not so here?
No it isn’t, because Jack’s conclusion on Judicial Immunity comes from a wholly different sent of premises than this discussion. The two are unrelated and your inability to see nuance as well as your close-minded absolutism combine with this unhealthy fixation on a single topic to keep you from coherent thought.
Keep trying though, when you reach a logical conclusion based on a rational weighing of societal values, I’ll share your joy of discovery with you. Until then, it will continue to pain me as I see you struggle with the basic concepts as you plod around your foggy upside-down view of the world.
What if they don’t want one?
You can practice your religion anywhere you want. Just don’t practice it on me.
What does religion have to do with anything? If you create human life, you are responsible for protecting it. Either don’t let it reach humanity, as the law defines it, don’t create it, accept the risk and consequences or creating it, and keep or give it away responsibly.In Art World, a woman who knew she would conceive every time she had sex would not be ethically obliged to even moderate her sexual activity, right? Just have an infinite number of abortions. Use abortion as primary birth control. Correct?
HE invoked his religion, Jack. I have no problem with others practicing their faith, but religion is like a penis. It’s fine to have one, but we would rather that you not force it on the rest of us.
If you conceive, you have to make a decision. By your own calculus, you have not only a right, but a duty, to maximize the common good. And if it means sacrificing the “little thing’s” right to life, it does. Your rules, Jack.
In my world, I don’t have a say in what you do, and vice versa, subject to the limits of the law. Freedom is your ability to do what I don’t approve of, and as their apostle Paul said, all things are permissible, but not all things are beneficial. If you want an infinite number of abortions (well, one every three months would do, as a biological reality), what is it to me?
While a woman could use abortion as a primary method of birth control, it is not exactly an enjoyable experience. But in Jack’s World, a judge could impose his will on every litigant that appears before him with impunity, and you seem to have no problem with that. People do what they perceive to be best for them, and the woman in your hypo is going to use birth control because it is cheaper and less invasive. As such, you should never get to the scenario you pose.
“In my world, I don’t have a say in what you do, and vice versa,”
Don’t be daft. Continually using verbiage that implies this is an invasion of privacy is tripe and dishonest. You know it is. Of course you actually do have a say in what *I* do, if what I’m doing infringes on the rights of others.
What you dishonestly pretend doesn’t exist is that there is a 3rd party whose rights are/are not being infringed when a woman gets an abortion. That is the ethics question to be answered. You, like an addled fool, pretend that question is answered. It is not.
Not only that, but the letter writer has conceded that point! This is why I posted on it; this is why it transcends the usual “is it a life or isn’t it?’ argument. I think I was pretty clear. But if the response of choice advocates is really “no, we know it’s a life, and we think we should be able to snuff it out anyway for any damn reason at all,” that is profoundly unethical, law notwithstanding And the particular arguments being put forth by Art and Beth are nothing less than Orwellian.,
Without a doubt. I’m afraid I helped digress the topic to a general abortion one. I’m also afraid that Art doesn’t care about the distinction. I think his line of demarcation is one of two things:
1) the law says it’s not a life therefore it isn’t so anyone who thinks it is is still off the hook ethically.
Or
2) he’s cool with anything up to birth being killed regardless of believing it is a life or not.
Well, to be fair, he also appears to think ending a life is the equivalent of not providing an opportunity for damages for a dead-beat dad who already has won a new trial to stall paying what he owes in support of his child as a result of a hack judge’s misconduct.
As a matter of law, there isn’t. Law defines the scope of society’s authority to intervene in the intimate affairs of others and here, there is no colorable basis upon which to intervene. The right to life only applies to persons, and snowflake babies are not persons. And in any event, the fetus’s right to life is not so absolute that I (meaning “the State”) could lawfully shanghai your fertile daughter and forcibly impregnate her with one.
The ethics question: If the law has spoken, and is both clear and eminently reasonable, do you have a duty and/or right to disregard it? At least in the context of illegal immigrants and our immigration laws, the answer is “no”. You can take issue with the law and work to change it, and work to change the situation one pregnancy at a time, but no, I (meaning “the State”) don’t have a say. In China, the State does have a say, and they can force you to have an abortion. Is that really such a good thing, agg?
Slippery slopes have a tendency to collide.
“The right to life only applies to persons, and snowflake babies are not persons.” That’s sophistry, Art. If the law says they are persons, then they are persons legally, but reasonable people don’t have to agree. Blacks were once not persons under the law—that didn’t mean that those who insisted they were in face persons with rights to freedom that person’s deserved were wrong. There is plenty of justification for concluding that a viable, unborn child, or even a fully formed one who is not immediately viable, deserves full human and legal rights. And that position may yet prevail. Again, you are confusing law with ethics.
There are two observations about you I made reading that post. First, after reading:
“If you conceive, you have to make a decision. By your own calculus, you have not only a right, but a duty, to maximize the common good. And if it means sacrificing the “little thing’s” right to life, it does. Your rules, Jack.”
I got it! Your hang up is in the understanding on how conception happens. Women don’t just conceive! Silly! Babies aren’t brought by the stork! There’s a process of things that happen beforehand, like the selection of the father, and a sexual act. So there we go. Responsibility starts earlier than conception.
“While a woman could use abortion as a primary method of birth control, it is not exactly an enjoyable experience. ”
Granted, but when coupled with:
“the woman in your hypo is going to use birth control because it is cheaper and less invasive.”
Cheaper? Cheaper than free? I mean…. That’s a premise I need you to demonstrate. I think that because the vast majority abortions are paid for in one form or another by either government or groups like Family Planning, contraceptives are more expensive, and that might be the deciding factor.
I guess we have to send you back to remedial kindergarten ethics, Art. Lesson 1: if you voluntarily do something that has life and death consequences, potential or certain, you are responsible for them. If taking care of said consequences means killing human beings, that option is out, and your choices are 1) another, non-death inducing resolution, or to avoid the act in question. Please repeat, absorb, and go back to the beginning of the thread.
You seem to be under the strong delusion that everyone is entitled to your opinion, no matter how inconsistent or irrational.
I’m merely applying your own rules, as established in our judicial immunity debate. You can either abandon the position or live with the consequences of it.
I have never met a woman who aborted in a cavalier fashion. I’ve tried to change the calculus, offering support for one young girl we knew who was in a financially-challenging pregnancy (she was only 18, and making little more than minimum wage), and I respect her decision. She went on to get a decent education and have other children and as such, her decision was the right one for the family unit.
No right is absolute, and your “rules” are inherently inconsistent. That you can’t see it is a source of mirth to me.
Twit, for the last time, the conclusion in the Judicial Immunity situation derives logically from an entirely different set of premises than the abortion one. Quit conflating the two via some elementarily derived “The Good of the Many Outweigh the Good of the One” formula. Because that isn’t the rule established. You have only skewed what was said by Jack and put those words in his mouth. We call that *dishonesty* where I’m from.
How so, Twit? In both instances, the rights of one (to equal justice under law) are sacrificed for the (ostensible) benefit of society as a whole. I use Jack’s rule regarding judicial immunity because his position is inconsistent with his position here, and there appears to be no principled ground upon which to draw a distinction.
In theory, I could have used Jack’s stance on illegal immigration, but there IS a principled rationale for a distinction there. I am not going to advance an argument that I know is flawed when I have a better one on offer.
“But life is more important!” Not to the Scots at the Declaration of Arbroath or the Framers in the Declaration of Independence. “It is not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom itself — for that alone, for which no honest man gives up but with life itself.” The right to kill a tyrant is absolute (e.g., Cicero), and logically extends to any judge who substitutes his will for the law (Locke). As it would be a bad thing for judges if people exercised their natural law right (e.g., Blackstone) to ISIS a judge’s family in retribution, a rational system of law is obliged to provide a remedy at law (Jefferson, Notes on State of VA), and that remedy is an action in tort (Bivens).
All I maintain here is that Jack (and the rest of you) have to “pick a lane.” If the loss of the innocent litigant’s rights is absque damnum injuria, then so is the loss of the fetus’s (legally non-existent) “right” to life. Jack can’t seem to find a principled distinction, and neither can I.
Last warning on “Jack’s Rule,” Art. The principled distinction is that the two situations are factually and ethically distinct, and I have postulated no such rule. You are intentionally misleading readers. Next Time I see “Jack’s Rule” in a post, you’re gone.
No, on second thought, the hell with you. I warned you to drop the ridiculous judicial immunity analogy on this thread, and you just did it again. You’re not just silly and insulting, you’re boring. Banned. Get lost. You’ll be able to sneak a few comments in before I spam them, but eventually, they’ll all end up with the comment spam from “Louis Vuitton 財布 2012～13年秋冬新作” and Nike Air Max 2010. Sorry you couldn’t obey basic moderation, but then you aren’t moderate, so it’s no surprise.
I don’t think you’d see the distinction in our obligation not to infringe on someone else’s right to life as an absolute and our allowing others to select for themselves what causes they believe so worthy they are willing to sacrifice their own lives.
But I will mention that to any observer who thinks you are making a valid point. You aren’t.
Citing examples of individuals who valued Liberty so highly that they died for it is not the equivalent of saying one person’s right to Liberty trumps another person’s right to Life if the two conflict…which is what you are attempting to claim. That’s simply fallacious.
Birth Control? Condoms? Other contraceptives? Anal? Sterilization? Cycle management? Surely you aren’t stupid enough to suggest the options are abortions or abstinence?
He is stupid enough.
I am actually wondering when he is going to get tired of having his butt handed to him by you, Jack and many others. Oh, I forgot, he’s always right, so probably never.
Jack, you are practically begging me to trot out your arguments in favor of absolute judicial immunity.
Have you ever stopped to think of the price that celibacy would impose on a marital relationship? Your solution is so insane, you could patent it.
Tell me again why judges should receive absolute immunity in tort. If they don’t want to get sued, all they have to do is their jobs!!!
Abortion is, admittedly, an inelegant solution for an imperfect world. But unless and until you can come up with a less risible solution, it will have to do.
“Inelegant.” Incredible.
It is inelegant. Abortion is not a pleasant procedure, but then again, neither is a triple bypass. It is something to be avoided when possible. That having been said, under your own rules, it is a permissible thing.
In a perfect world, every child would be wanted and healthy, and parents would have the resources to care for them. Birth control would be 100% effective, and women would not suffer strokes from taking oral contraceptives. But in a perfect world, would there ever be any need for ethics?
I have no words. Appalling if true.
But what kind of a thought process, ethical compass and brain pan leads someone to read this and react, “Awwww! Isn’t this sweet?”
Someone who is so all in they’ll do anything to keep from admitting that the pro-abortion argument ultimately boils down to prioritizing comfort and convenience over innocent life. So far that they need something on their side to “sound” noble.
It’s not that hard, when one is already upside-down ethically, to make the connection that creating a paean to the life you are taking is a noble gesture.
The pro-abortion movement comes down to maximizing common benefit through the use of technology. Jack has NO problem with that principle when it serves his purposes, and I’m badgering him into explaining why Jack’s Rules should change here. He is flailing, and we all know it.
Except it is not one of his rules. Which is why you are flailing…and we all know that.
But, by all means, continue, it becomes darkly humorous.
Someone who did not do the math, “Little thing, I love you… so I’m going to take a pill and poison you!” There used to be very large public hospitals for people who thought like that.
She “did the math,” and under Jack Marshall’s Rules of Ethics, it was the optimal solution. How can you criticize that and be his disciples?
No, she is saying she “loves” little thing, so thus wants to poison or dismember it. Jack’s argument is that once you “love” something, you can no longer ethically destroy it. I fear (for?) you, if you believe otherwise.
A rational one, applying Jack Marshall’s Rules of Ethics. That is my point here.
I don’t want to revisit the ethics of abortion here, but I do often think that the optimal time to have children and the optimal number of children are issues that are often overlooked by both sides.
For most families (those that do not have challenges with conceiving/carrying a baby to term), they have a set number of children in mind, or at least a limited range. For me and most of my friends, that number was 2-3. I have other friends who were at 0-1 and just a couple of friends at 4-5. This is important, because we are so focused at that first life in the womb. (I’ll talk in pro-life terms for now and presume that even a one-day old fertilized egg should be considered a baby.) If we are focused at preserving that life in the womb, we are essentially preventing another life from entering this world a later point in time, because that mother is going to have a set number of children (again, that number could vary).
In both macro and micro terms, isn’t it better for that set number of children to be brought into existence at the best possible time for those children to have a chance to succeed? And if we are bringing into this world children who will not be properly/optimally cared for, we’re denying the chance later on for other children to come into this world who might have a better chance of success: socially, economically, and emotionally.
I have two children, which I had in my 30’s, following many years with my husband, two advanced degrees, a home, two well-paying jobs, etc. (That was my path — I’m not suggesting that it is the correct path for everybody.) But, if I had had my children in my 20’s, I wouldn’t have the children that I do now. It doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t have loved those other children, but I would be fooling myself if I thought I could have provided for them in the same way that I do now for my actual children. And those differences in wealth, maturity, relationship security, etc. are even more pronounced when you’re talking about a teenager, or someone living below the poverty line.
My sister-in-law had her first baby at 17 (my niece) and then two other children ten years later with her second husband. My niece is essentially like a first daughter to me (I was also 17 at the time she was born), and I wouldn’t trade her for the world. But, she has had a harder path in life compared to her younger half-siblings, and the decision to have her derailed my brother’s life (he had to drop out of college to work) and her mom’s life (she went to vocational school instead of becoming a doctor) forever. Even my niece recognizes this. When you consider that there are millions of children that are born in these less-than-ideal circumstances, perhaps we should focus (at least more than we do now) on the lives that could be if we let that woman wait a few more years before she has her set number of children.
Of course its an important consideration. What does that consideration have to do, however, with the child conceived at the “wrong” time? Well-timed or not, this is the shot at a life—there’s not another bus arriving if this one is missed. The idiot who wrote this sickening letter pretends that the child–who she “loves!”— is fungible, indeed, that the same “thing” will be returning later when it’s more convenient. Do you think that’s honest? Rational? Ethical? Sane?
I’m not talking about the letter itself, just the abortion debate. If this fictional woman had the current baby, she wouldn’t be having a later baby. Isn’t that future baby deserving of life too? And if that life is going to be a better one, does she owe some sort of duty to that future egg, even if it hasn’t been fertilized yet? Maybe she even owes a greater duty?
I’m obviously pro-choice, but I have never been militant about it, because I know what I would have done at 17. I would have had the baby — just like my sister-in-law did. And everyone assumes that is the ethical choice. But is it? I wouldn’t have my husband and my 2 daughters if I gave birth at 17. And I wouldn’t have been able to provide for that baby the way I do with my daughters now.
“Future baby”? “Future baby” doesn’t exist, may never exist, has neither rights not atoms. We must abort actual, blood-containing, unique DNA possessing, healthy and soon to be viable baby with an average life expectancy of 78.6 years with at least a distant chance of curing cancer, rescuing a family from a fire or beating 123 year old Mitch McConnell for re-election to the Senate so theoretical,fantasy, unfathered baby might exist in an alternate reality? What is this, “The Terminator”?
Each egg has its own unique DNA and has the possibility of becoming a healthy and soon to be viable baby. But your argument bleeds into pure emotion (which I’m not knocking — I can be guilty of that myself). That baby might have a distant chance of curing cancer, but it is statistically probable that he/she will be raised in less than ideal circumstances with greater chances of poverty, teenage pregnancy, or even prison time. But, if you take that same woman and have her wait to a less climatic time in her life to have a child, then that child will be better off and certainly would have a greater statistical chance of curing cancer. In short, all of society would be better off if that women decided to have her children at a later point.
And thanks for putting the Terminator theme song in my head.
Jack’s emotions have overwhelmed his ability to reason here and worse yet, he isn’t astute enough to see it. He is flailing, and obviously so. His ego won’t let him admit that he is wrong, which forces him to flail.
I don’t remember much about this judicial immunity thing, but it’s blindingly obvious from this comment section alone that you’re emotionally hung up on the matter and acting like a smug ass because of it. You’re not wrong *because* you are being an ass, but you may independently be both. Chill, man. It’s ok.
I think when Art was a child, a judge must have punched his dad in the mouth and walked away screaming “judicial immunity”.
It’s scarred him since.
The relevance of judicial immunity to this discussion is limited to the rule Jack staked out: The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one. It is okay, in his mind, for a judge to run roughshod over the rights of one of us, as long as society benefits. It may suck if you are the guy screwed, but Jack Marshall is not bothered as long as it is not Jack Marshall.
As Beth demonstrates, that rule applies here with equal force. It may suck for the aborted mass of cells, but it is okay as long as society as a whole benefits.
This isn’t a response. An egg is not an organism, nor is a sperm—this is an intellectually dishonest analogy. Sure, all society would be better if women decided ti have their children later, but that doesn’t justify decreeing that all early births be terminated, does it? The Chinese are correct that one child per family is better for all too, but that doesn’t make laws penalizing families for having too many ethical. This is Kant, straight up: you don’t use another human life against its will for a personal or even societal agenda. Virtually everyone is raised in “less than ideal circumstances”—should we have aborted all the children conceived in the Great Depression, because Future Babies would have been happier and with a better chance of success? Funny, that Depression generation did pretty well by American society.
Thanks for the last line, I was actually about to cut in and say, it seems like the Depression Generation turned out considerably better than the spoiled rotten generation (for which I make you and my parents an exception) that was born in “more ideal conditions”.
“This is Kant, straight up: you don’t use another human life against its will for a personal or even societal agenda.” But the pro-lifers are doing just that. They are telling that mother that she must use her body to incubate a child for 9 months, and then either give it up for adoption or raise it. And raising it involves tremendous sacrifices — if you’re doing it right. And if you’re doing it wrong, then you go to prison. Your argument isn’t logically consistent.
And there are religious groups out there who would go as far to say that eggs, or even sperm shouldn’t be used for anything other then deliberate procreation. During the Great Depression, everyone (except the uber-elite) were suffering, so your argument doesn’t even make sense. Society had to move forward. That is not the case now — family planning is no longer an art.
Of course it’s logically consistent. Someone’s life must suffer in the equation, but the mother isn’t facing death, and the child—IF IT IS A CHILD, AND THE LETTER WRITER HAS CONCEDED THAT IT IS, TO HER—is. You don’t see that? You don’t see that ending life is greater incursion on a life than necessitating a burdensome 9 month, health care expenses, adoption red tape, etc? The child is intentionally requiring nothing of the mother at all. The mother is eliminating its life. And all you cab add to even the scales is the speculative wonder of Future Baby’s impact on humanity? It’s not even a close call.
Meanwhile–the children born in less than ideal circumstances are bouncing bundles of unimpeachable joy as long as everybody is suffering? Got to get my head around that one. Sound like the “everybody does it” rationalization of the century. So now that we have the luxury of aborting the unlucky offspring of mothers still waiting to attain the peak of career and life mastery in favor of Future Baby, we should? Wowsers.
Why do you keep talking about a fictional letter that was poorly drafted to begin with? I’ve made it clear that I was discussing a related topic in the abortion debate.
Your stance ignores possible circumstances surrounding the baby’s conception. Is there substance abuse involved? Domestic abuse? Does she have a partner? Is the partner the fetus’s father? Is the mother in school? Does she have family support? Does she have two dimes to rub together? Does she have access to prenatal care? Does she have the mental will to give up a child for adoption? (I wouldn’t be able to give up a child for adoption. No way.)
Why not wait for that mom to get her life together and have children at a later point in time? We keep expecting that suddenly people will get their shit together and become rational thinkers or suddenly awesome parents after an unplanned pregnancy. But, absent some defect with birth control, having an unplanned pregnancy is a pretty stupid, irrational/immature act. And you want to have these people raise children? We know what happens when they do — but for the handful that are adopted or are lucky enough to succeed despite the odds, most of them become drop-outs, teenage moms, welfare recipients, prison inmates. Is that honoring and cherishing life?
I don’t think it is.
I keep talking about the letter—why do you say with such certainty that it is fictional, and why does it matter, since “pro-choice” advocates are cheering it?”—because that is the context of the thread. Then your pal Art defended the letter on the ground that the aborted child was going to be stalked by vultures, so it was better off dead…which you refined to “not as well off as the Future Baby that will come into existence only if this one is consigned to oblivion, and thus better off dead.” Just when do the bells go off causing the thought—“hmmm, this sounds the argument of a science fiction movie madman”?
I don’t like discussing letters like this because 1) it may be fictional; 2) if it isn’t fictional, I don’t hold anonymous people on the internet to the same standards of writing that I would other people. I don’t like attacking this word here, or that poorly constructed sentence there. I’d rather talk about the issue.
It is the issue. The questions, and issues, are: “Is the sentiment expressed in the letter valid? Is this a good reason to abort a child? Is a mother who thinks of her gestating child like this—as a living human being that she feels is worthy of direct address— being ethical to use such rationalizations? Is “thing” respectful or fair, or just a distancing device to allow the mother to avoid dealing with what is really going on? The commentators who applauded the letter are real: is their praise justifiable? What kind of values are being asserted here?” The self-contradictory sentences in the post are evidence of muddy and self-serving thinking, not poor writing skills.
“And there are religious groups out there who would go as far to say that eggs, or even sperm shouldn’t be used for anything other then deliberate procreation.”
So? It isn’t a religious discussion… nice try making it one though.
““This is Kant, straight up: you don’t use another human life against its will for a personal or even societal agenda.” But the pro-lifers are doing just that.”
Nonsense. The mother (and father) created a life. We’re no longer discussing personal or societal agendas. We’re discussing an innocent life, which either needs to be protected or it doesn’t. Your stance is that it doesn’t need to be protected. Our stance is that is does, because it is an innocent human life.
And I hate to keep bring this back to the stupid letter, but I’m giving abortion advocates what they want: I’ll accept that if they sincerely don’t think they are aborting an innocent human life, they aren’t, and that’s ethically defensible. But now Art and Beth are arguing, “No, we know we’re taking innocent life, but it’s still OK.” That’s what Mother of Little Thing believes too, and it can’t be squared with any ethical principles whatsoever. “The ends justifies the means” precludes using killing an innocent as “the means.”
I didn’t say it was innocent life, I said that I would concede it was for purposes of my argument.
Don’t you ever think about the children that could be? Many women get depressed for a time when they decide not to have children, can’t have children, or decide to stop having children. Family planning involves tough decisions — we need to give women every option possible without condemnation.
Acknowledging that a religious group would disagree with a position that Jack took does not make it a religious discussion. It is bringing facts into the discussion.
How are those facts relevant? There is a cult in Maine that believes I am made of hummus. So what?
There’s no point mentioning what their religious beliefs are about the Egg or Sperm IF you didn’t also believe there might be a reason to consider religious beliefs as an ethical starting point.
So, I can accept that you were just adding chaff to an already muddled discussion. But if you insist that mentioning that was ADDING to the discussion, then it must be because religious premises are valid in this discussion…
Why not? If the woman decides that it is better to abort than carry a fetus to term, she does. And who can question her? It’s an application of YOUR OWN DAMNED ARGUMENT!!!
Doesn’t it suck, Jack? Even Beth is using Jack Marshall’s Rules of Ethics against you. Someone else does get it, which means that my foray was not without benefit.
Life is all about risk. It is a terminal disease. You pays your money, and you takes your chances. Like the real-life Beth here, my friend was also named Beth, and followed a similar path. In hindsight, her decision was the correct one. And you can’t process it.
I don’t even know what you think Jack Marshall’s Rules of Ethics are, in part because I don’t think you know what ethics is, or at least acknowledge the importance of it. (Situational ethics is not ethics.). My ethics guides are the full range of ethical systems and methods of analysis, without being in thrall to any one system, which leads to ideology—they all have legitimate applications. Most ethical decision-making is based on objective common sense applied to established ethical values and their application to reality as we, as a culture and a species, accumulate wisdom over time and experience. One constant is that human life itself, as a value and an objective, carries the most weight of any factors in the unavoidable utilitarian balancing.act.
He’s on the Judicial Immunity rant again. He thinks your conclusion there is based on some absolutist application of “The Good of the Many Outweigh the Good of the One”. Then he believes that is the base rule for EVERY ethical question. Then he believes it should be applied absolutely. Then, in this case, he ignores all other considerations and pretends the abortion question is a Needs of Society vs Needs of the Unborn. That’s where he applies the rule.
This is what I refer to, in short, as willful self-delusion.
I think, in the end, this abortion debate is just a side-show for Art (since he’s flapping hopelessly in the wind). I think he’s just trying to get you to change your views to his on his sacred cow…the judicial immunity bit.
Why doesn’t the rule apply here? Because abortion makes your Widdle Baby Jesus cry? Make a coherent argument for an exception, if you can.
Because that isn’t the rule you illiterate putz.
Really? Widdle Baby Jesus? That’s the comeback? Touché.
Seriously though, the difference is that there is a life, wholly independent of the mother at stake in those situations. There are very few situations where we as a society sentence someone to death. We lock people away, we cripple them financially with reckless abandon, but actually snuffing out their life happens only in the most heinous of crimes, and in an example of insane hypocritical behavior, progressives scream and holler about the death penalty while cheering on abortionists. The rule doesn’t apply here because we are talking about life.
The difference is that “current baby” exists (as a single cell if you want to) and “future baby” doesn’t (unless you really want to stretch the definition of what a baby is, in which case every time you rejected the advances of anybody you “aborted” 5 or 6 babies down the road).
Life is all about risk, Alex. You have to make the best decision you can, based on the best evidence you have. And the evidence is clear: Some children have a better chance of thriving than others. That was my point in raising the Vulture Baby scenario.
Ethics doesn’t allow you to remove innocent lives (certainly not innocent lives of your making) to reduce risk. Sorry, it simply doesn’t. I know in twisted Artopia the innocent have no value. But here, they do.
Why not? If protection of the innocent is paramount, any argument in favor of judicial immunity evaporates, as well You want it both ways, and all I am pointing out is your prodigious hypocrisy.
Innocent life* you goal-post moving twat hammer.
SCOTT??? Is that you???
Scott would be a perfect counterbalance to this guy.
I miss Scott a little.
The Baby Vulture Scenario is just another tired worn out and debunked argument based on “I know what’s best for you”. It is arrogant and flawed. The BVS is especially flawed because it uses hind-sight bias to pretend like an outcome is known simply because of assumed odds. The BVS is also especially flawed because the circumstances leading to the baby in the miserable situation are myriad and solvable in many ways other than “Hey let’s kill an innocent life”.
But I don’t expect you to grasp that, because in simplistic Artopia fulfilling pleasure trumps protecting innocent life.
In Artopia, can we just kill the Vulture Baby since he’s not going to have a good life? Should we euthanize the orphans, homeless children, and victims of domestic abuse because they are severely at risk to have a bad life? In Artopia, I don’t see why we shouldn’t, but I’ll bet the orphans and vulture babies of the world would prefer that we don’t.
If you don’t think we can ethically do this, Art, you are fighting over the wrong issue, that being where we draw the line defining life. But the Little Thing author acknowledged the life she was terminating, which means she had the mens rea of a murderer, and committed an act which, at least in her mind, ended a life. The right to life is the most important of any, and I challenge you to find one instance, other than abortion, where an innocent individual’s life is intentionally, legally, and ethically, subordinated to the good of society.
Bingo
For good or ill, we draw a distinction based on personhood, so even if you would make that argument, you couldn’t do anything about it. The fetus is not a person. If you want to change the rules, all you have to do is pass a federal constitutional amendment declaring the fetus to be a person.
Ethics and law aren’t necessarily coterminous, but you have to come up with a position that is intellectually consistent. That is my complaint.
Although the Troll is banned, it’s worthy to point out the nonsense here as well to anyone reading:
Art, in 5 sentences has made an argument in an ethical discussion (that is to say the law as written has no bearing on this discussion) using the law as an end to the discussion. Then asserted that all you have to do to change ethics is rewrite the law. Then concludes his argument by asserting that one shouldn’t have to consider the law in an ethical discussion.
If rhetorical opposites ever did the same when they collided as matter and anti-matter do, then Art’s 2 paragraphs here would have created a sizable crater in the internet…
1. Last sentence: you owe me a keyboard.
2. After his banning, Art went for “Bouldergeist’s” post-banning 2014 record with about 9 loooong posts, some quite detailed and articulate, I suppose to male me feel bad about sending them and him to Spam Hell.
3. Kant’s primary value with his Rule of Universality and the Categorical imperative is to temper the slippery slope of utilitarianism and allow brakes to the slide before we’re using the homeless as unwilling guinea pigs for an ebola vaccine. I have never encountered anyone who couldn’t grasp this, or who thought using a human life’s sacrifice as a Bridge To Utopia Too Far was inconsistent: that’s the point about exceptions,after all…they ARE exceptions.
4. And to be so adamant about supposed hypocrisy because of a claimed analogy between abortions and removing the option of suing judges because they are boinking your wife…I really don’t get it. I thought this was so whacked that an intelligent readers would have to eventually come around. That’s why the troll verdict was out so long.
When you have to start projecting the possibly beneficial possible lives of children that might possibly be born if their mother is in a place she considers ideal you’ve moved so far from reality you can’t be taken very seriously.
If you think every child deserves these ideal circumstances, (And wouldn’t it be great if that were really possible?) and you are sincere, you owe it to that possible future child to wait to conceive them at that ideal time. There is really no possible way to get away from the reality that abortions end life. Real lives that have a claim on the people who conceived them.
Wyogranny, I;’m talking statistics — which couldn’t be more firmly rooted in reality. The “ideal” I am talking about is different for each family based on their circumstances. Not everyone needs to become a doctor before having a child. But graduating high school and getting a job that pays the rent would be a good start.
The rest of your argument (again) goes into pure emotion. If you are focused on the rights of that one individual fetus, then it’s easy to take your stance. If, instead, you want to look at the life of the mother, father (assuming he’s in the picture), potential future children, and the betterment of society in general, then you would have to side with the pro-choice crowd.
Religion is all about emotion, and amusingly, the pro-choice argument is a practical application of Jack Marshall’s Rules of Ethics. In the case of a Down fetus, the calculus points toward abortion, and 93% of women make that choice. In the case of an anencephalic one, the calculus points even more clearly, to the point where only certified religious nutters like Rick and Karen Santorum don’t choose the rational option of abortion.
Argumentum ad populum. Fallacy. Try again.
And why are the many wrong here? Cuz your Holy Babble done told you so?
I didn’t think you could maintain any intellectual honesty here.
Look up Argumentum ad populum. It’s not that hard.
I hate this argument, that we must think the way we do because Jesus. Fuck Jesus. I’m biased towards the unborn because I used to be one. And by the grace of the Meatball-Eyed Spaghetti-Headed Monster I was brought to term and I work every day to get to my potential. We exist in a shared human experience, and there is just something crazy wrong with society as a whole when we kill our kids for convenience, and draw the line at the side of the vagina you’re on.
Here’s the frustrating bit – the Anti-Abortion argument can readily be arrived from non-religious premises. That a certain sub-set of the Anti-Abortion crowd reaches their position from religious premises does not invalidate the conclusion. It does, quite aggravatingly, allow the Pro-Abortion crowd to disregard the entire stance as a religious one.
Here’s what I’d love, since Christianity is the favorite whipping boy of the Left (which I find odd as every other religion is typically given a pass on the kind of abuse Leftists love to heap on Christianity), I’d love to see if someday an ethical non-religious argument were made that definitively shows that killing, eating, harming or using cows for anything is Unethical. I’d love to see if the Leftists jump on Hindus for supporting such an ethical argument (from a religious angle) despite there being perfectly non-religious reasons (in the hypothethical) to do so.
Something tells me they wouldn’t.
Got it Beth, like Art, you think comfort and convenience of the luckily born trump protection of the innocent life of the unborn. We know. But that position doesn’t invalidate WYO’s stance.
Try again.
The burden is on you to show why non-ethical considerations trump innocent life.
We’re still waiting.
The mother is an innocent life as well. And as an actual “life in being”, her rights (legally and ethically) do trump the innocent cells growing in her body that need about 18 years + 9 months of intense care to turn into a functioning member of society.
Unless there is a way (and there’s not) to take every unwanted fetus at the point that the mother would otherwise abort it and give it a happy, safe, secure childhood, I am on the right side of this ethical debate.
But the truth is that society doesn’t care about these unwanted children. Look at the thousands, THOUSANDS, that are available for adoption in the US. But no one wants them because they are viewed as undesirable because being raised in a crappy home (even for a few years) can scar them for life. So why would we mandate bringing more unwanted children into this world? Because of the one who might become the next Steve Jobs? You would condemn thousands of children (each year) to poverty and potential abuse for one Steve Jobs each 100 years? You would grow the cycle of teenage pregnancies? You do know that a child of a teenage mom is more likely to also have a child as a teen? So, this problem keeps getting worse.
My position is to give that mom a choice, and for society not to condemn her because of her choice — no matter what it may be. Yet I am unethical. Incredible.
“The mother is an innocent life as well.” WHAT????? She’s not a guilty life, necessarily, but unlike the pseudo-child, she is responsible for her own circumstances, she has power, she has the ability to affect her environment and circumstances. The definition of innocent you are looking for is “not responsible for or directly involved in an event yet suffering its consequences.” This would apply only to a victim of rape.
Beth may or may not realize it, but she suffers from some of the delusions that militant feminists suffer from that I love to pick apart, like how discrimination doesn’t hurt men, and in this case, that women are innately innocent.
No Beth. The child is innocent because it hasn’t made any decisions ever. It isn’t a parasite, it didn’t choose to show up there. Those CHOICES were made by the parents, but first and foremost the mother, because if it’s ‘her body, her choice’ (A premise I won’t infringe on, by the way) then it’s also her responsibility, and attempting to wash away that responsibility by calling her an “innocent woman” is so fucking insane I actually think you might also be slightly retarded.
I won’t say that it isn’t a woman’s right to have that abortion, but it’s one of the most unethical things a human being can do, and it should carry some amount of shame.
I’m not a militant feminist. I think I said that in one of my first comments. I’ve never had an abortion, and I would think that it would be shameful if I did, because I “can” provide for additional children.
You’re irrational and assume too much about what I think.
As for choices, they didn’t choose to become pregnant. They chose to have sex.
Beth. They chose to have sex, which involves acceptance of the risk of becoming pregnant.
“I chose to ride a motorcycle in the rain, I didn’t choose to crash.” “I chose to go to a baseball game and sit near the field without paying attention to the game: I didn’t choose to be hit in the face with a batted ball.” “I chose to vote twice for a President with no leadership experience or demonstrated competence whatsoever; I didn’t choose to end up with an utterly incompetent President.” “I chose to eat six meals a day. I didn’t choose to be fat.”
Come on.
See, if I punched someone in the face, and then said I didn’t punch them in the face, I still punched them in the face. Simply saying you aren’t a militant feminist would not make it true.
But even then, that’s a mischaracterization of what I wrote. I said that you share some delusions. Which I firmly stand by, and could quotemine this site for proof if you really need me to. I don’t know the machinations that go on in your head. You do some just amazing mental gymnastics to justify absolutely morally bankrupt positions, and then when confronted with logic, you respond with feelings, like your feelings are evidence. It’s especially tragic because I don’t actually believe you’re retarded, you just act that way every now and again. So no, while I don’t know what goes on inside your head, I do have years of written positions from you to fall back on. I feel that’s enough.
As to your last sentence, they chose more than just sex. They chose to have sex while not on the pill, they chose not to use contraception, or make him do so, they chose to have sex during their fertile period, they chose not to have anal. There are a whole lot of choices you choose not to give any credit to, because like I’ve said, three times now, rape and incest are what abortions are for, I added Down’s to the list when it was brought up. All these red herrings don’t justify the millions of abortions every year from parents who were too stupid to use a condom.
“But even then, that’s a mischaracterization of what I wrote. I said that you share some delusions. Which I firmly stand by, and could quotemine this site for proof if you really need me to. I don’t know the machinations that go on in your head. You do some just amazing mental gymnastics to justify absolutely morally bankrupt positions, and then when confronted with logic, you respond with feelings, like your feelings are evidence. It’s especially tragic because I don’t actually believe you’re retarded, you just act that way every now and again. So no, while I don’t know what goes on inside your head, I do have years of written positions from you to fall back on. I feel that’s enough.”
Wow. I’m done. You are a nut job.
So, you’d make an exception for Down’s babies because they wouldn’t live the kind of life *you* would hope to live?
So you think that the possibility of someone *maybe* envying someone else’s living conditions is a valid reason to off them?
Make an exception for rape and incest? We’re still looking at offing someone else for the misconduct of others…
I still don’t approve, but it’s a red herring to the discussion. I think from an ethical standpoint, it still isn’t the fault of a child conceived of rape that their father was a violent asshole. But at that point, it’s also unreasonable to say that the situation is completely identical to a normal pregnancy, the issue is: Does that change the situation enough? I don’t know that it does, but I want to have this other conversation first.
The mother has lots of ethical choices, including abortion, since the law allows her to honestly conclude that it isn’t a baby at all, if she can do that. It also allows her to kill what she believes is a baby—but that’s unethical.
“Yet I am unethical. Incredible.”
You are the one saying it is better to kill a baby than let it *possibly* live a life conditions that are “sub-optimal” (according to you).
It is better for the mother, her eventual children, and society. According to Jack, it is ethical to sacrifice the rights of the odd man out for the benefit of society. If he hadn’t staked out this position, he might be consistent, but it was his choice. He is responsible for his own hypocrisy.
1) better for mother. Debunked. Elevating non ethical consideration over innocent life
2) eventual children. Comparing what is to what isn’t. Debunked.
3) false assertion of “jack’s rule”. Debunked.
TROLL!
Art, you’ve called me a hypocrite for the last time on this thread, and also made your final comment related to the obvious and hardly controversial propositions that 1) the individual must frequently forgo absolute exercise of rights in the reasonable interests of society, and 2) that innocent human life itself cannot be ethically sacrificed for an argued societal good.
So allow me to be clear and fair. If you raise your obsession with judicial immunity again in any context other than judicial immunity, I’m banning you. If you call me a hypocrite based on my acceptance of judicial immunity as a systemic necessity and rejection of a mother intentionally ending what she regards as a human life for convenience’s sake, I’m banning you. If you try to play games to get around these two edicts, which is what they are, I’ll ban you for that too.
You can opine on any new or former topics you like, and you can even raise new points on this one. But arrogance divorced from common sense is intolerable. I’ve been accommodating and patient, but you have your warning. The next move is yours.
Jack believes that everyone is entitled to his opinion, no matter how absurd and hypocritical it is.
My position is that the law gives her that choice, and that Jack does not own the topic of ethics.
Wow, you figured out that the law gives her that choice, which I stated in the post at the very start. Impressive. You apparently have not figured out that a legal right to do something doesn’t mean it is always ethical to exercise that right, or that stating an analysis of an ethical dilemma’s proper resolution does not in any way constitute as assertion that I “own ethics”, which is an asinine statement. Now before you respond, check my warning post. I don’t want to induce you to violate it against your will.
You have a very macroscopic view, which simply overlooks Jack’s position. Jack states here that once you acknowledge there is a living human baby in your belly, it is ethically indefensible to kill it.
Jack acknowledges an indefinite period where their might be no life present, subject to the women’s discernment; if a women discerns no life, she may ethically abort. Many religious groups take it a step further; the presence of a fertilized egg is prima facia evidence of a life, and abortion thus never permissible. In your hypothetical, you “concede” there is a life, and the discussion simply ends, once you concede a life is present, then its destruction cannot be justified. Continuing the discussion results in an absurd defense of destroying an innocent life.
If a life is present, the only rational conclusion is that the life would rather live a life of poverty than not live at all; it would rather risk getting eaten by a bird, than not live at all. It would even prefer the mother take nine months out her life to raise it, facing the inherent risks of complications, and possibly not surviving the pregnancy, than not live at all. Once a life is acknowledged, destroying it in favor of potential life in the future, potential prosperity in the future is not only unethical, but absurd.
Jack’s position is a fairly moderate one; abortion after acknowledgement is of life is an ethical, but not necessarily a legal issue. The whole argument here is based on the concession that there is a life. Anything further reason given for destroying it is at best a rationalization, though not necessarily grounds for criminal charges.
Bingo!
Hate to break it to you, but Jack’s “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few” rule provides the rationale for almost any abortion.
Jack believes that Jack’s rules are always subject to change whenever he chooses.
Your assertion of “jack’s rule” has been debunked time and again. You must be illiterate, a fool or a troll.
My guess is: troll (on this topic)
Likely a fool on the others.
It’s amazing that being on the side of life and it’s varied experiences both good and bad is considered religious emotionalism while convoluted “what if’s and “statistics” that presume to define the ideal conditions of life are considered rational thinking.
No wonder people are confused. If Beth and Art really represent current ethical thinking ethics is no longer the correct word for it.
No where did I discuss religion — only facts. And if people are going to be blind to facts when debating or voting, then our society will continue to go downhill.
“And there are religious groups out there who would go as far to say that eggs, or even sperm shouldn’t be used for anything other then deliberate procreation.”
Yes, in response to an argument that Jack made! You really are an idiot. I never said I condoned that belief.
Let me put the two statements closer together to see if you can spot the mistake you made:
“No where did I discuss religion — only facts. And if people are going to be blind to facts when debating or voting, then our society will continue to go downhill.” “And there are religious groups out there who would go as far to say that eggs, or even sperm shouldn’t be used for anything other then deliberate procreation.”
See… You did discuss religion. The how or the why or the views or the agreement is completely irrelevant. Everything on this site is date stamped and saved for us to see, regardless of how much we would love to edit typos. You can’t type one thing, and then say you didn’t and not expect to get called on it.
.
Yes, I’m also puzzled by this, and would like to know what Beth means, since she can’t possibly mean that she thinks stating “Some religions say X” isn’t discussing religion.
Actually, when I made the first comment I hadn’t even mentioned a religious group. And then when I did, I neither condoned nor dismissed it. Idiot.
There are a few certifiable ones in Jack’s circle of disciples. it is a delight to make them face their own hypocrisy, but you will be attacked personally for so doing. Anyone who disagrees too ardently and returns the personal attacks is banned, so that Jack can maintain his little echo chamber.
October 17, 2014 at 3:04 pm
“Wow. I’m done. You are a nut job.”
October 17, 2014 at 3:05 pm
“Actually, when I made blah blah blah blah. Idiot.”
Well that didn’t last long. And this is just par for your course isn’t it? When confronted with your batshit statements, especially after I’ve unplugged some snark, you retreat. You don’t debate, you dictate, you don’t answer direct questions, you dodge. Well congratulations. It doesn’t make you right, it just gives you politician level grease creds.
I was also replying to Art who did mention religion.
And now we have the name calling. The discussion is over. Now it’s just “neener neener I know you are but what am I” childishness. Good to know next time I read an Art or Beth comment. No emotionalism there at all.
I’m sorry WYO. it’s a character flaw. I have extremely Joey patience with certain individuals. And though my patience lasts it doesn’t last long and I feel compelled to identify a person for what they are.
And Art earned what I identified him as.
Main reason I wouldn’t engage him. I have great difficulties with that level of arrogance. Jack’s patience approaches sainthood.
It just got quiet at the dinner table.
I noticed. Interesting.
For those relatively new here and puzzled by the reference to judicial immunity in this thread, here is the post being referred to. Judicial immunity doesn’t come up often, which is why I posted on it. For reasons nobody here can quite plumb, reader Art Hawley is wildly offended by this sliver of sovereign immunity.The fact that I stated that it was a reasonable utilitarian balancing principle that allowed judges to make controversial decisions without fearing civil law suits, as well as a wise one, has been warped in his commentary into an alleged belief on my part that rights of individuals should always be sacrificed to the greater good of society.
I have, of course, never made that generalization. Indeed, this blog stands for the proposition that broad generalizations in ethics almost always lead to absurd and unethical results.Even in the case of immunity that I highlighted, the consequences to the aggrieved party were minimal. He got his case reversed, and a new trial (he was almost certainly liable—there is no evidence that the judge who was sexually involved with his ex-wife, the plaintiff, decided the case wrongly, just that he was hopelessly conflicted.) The judge was kicked off the bench. No tangible injustice resulted from the civil suit being blocked, other than the defendant’s pure inability to sue—indeed, it is uncertain to me that cash damages were warranted.
Nonetheless, Art has raised this outlier of a situation in multiple unrelated threads, to argue that, for example, the Obama Administration was justified in refusing to defend DOMA, which was a validly passed law on the books, on the grounds that my support for judicial immunity must represent a general assertion that any responsibility of officials can ethically be jettisoned for “the greater good,” like, you know, judges’ obligation not to misbehave while handling cases.
On this thread, he appears to think that my support for judicial immunity, a very rarely invoked convention that in the case I discussed it had minimal adverse effects, if any, to the individual blocked from the suit, now obligates me to side with a pregnant women who aborts an unborn child that she regards as sufficiently human to justify an apologetic “here’s why I’m killing you” letter. Art’s logic seems to be that both the dooming of the innocent human child and the blocking of the lawsuit by the deadbeat dad are equivalent individual injustices that are made ethical by virtue of their benefits to the public and society.
Since in one case what is sacrificed is a human life, and what is gained is “better timing” for the mom, and in the judicial immunity case what is lost is a possible windfall damages award at the cost of all judges calibrating all rulings by who is most likely to sue them, Art’s increasingly nasty assertions that my positions are inconsistent and corrupt are inexplicable and obnoxious.
Moreover, what he sees as inconsistent he continues to call “hypocritical.” He does not know what the word means, apparently. Hypocrisy is the assertion of a position that one does not believe, and a hypocrite is an individual who engages in the conduct that he publicly condemns, or one who condemns conduct by some that he approves in others. Neither applies here.
I mention this in detail so that when Art indeed gets himself kicked off the blog—as I fear he will because he can’t seem to help himself—after he refuses to stop boring us with his judicial immunity obsession and insulting me with false accusations of an integrity deficit, you will understand why.
I realize that this was primarily for the new folks who do not know you as well as some of us do, you have absolutely no reason to explain yourself, or offer a defense. Art’s arrogance is obvious, and his inability to grasp even the basics of diplomacy and/or ethics is glaring. As is his assumption that anyone who disagrees with him is a hypocrite. I give you a 9.5 on the ethics scale (1-10), I give Art a 2.4, mostly for persistence, after everybody but Beth handed him his head.
The integrity issue is what I care about. I don’t mind being wrong, as I am perfectly capable of being, but I get to wrong the right way. If I end up banning Art for repeatedly crossing reasonable lines of fairness and rationality here, and get the response I always do from commenters like him, that I discourage dissent and punish critics, I want the record to be clear. Art has lasted this long because I want critics, right, left, or indefinable. But a minimal understanding and respect for ethics is a requirement.
For some reason, I’ve banned as many commenters in 2014 as in the previous 4 years. Not sure why, but I just reviewed them, and I can’t say there are any I regret…well, Scott Jacobs, but he banned himself.
Several were Art-like, playing the same tune relentlessly and getting progressively more emphatic and insulting over time. One of them in particular might even BE Art. But I don’t like doing it, and if someone can write and is intelligent, I want to try to keep them around if at all possible.
One of the reasons you are banning more people is that word is spreading and you are attracting more responders. Sadly, many are showing up with a preformulated idea as to what this site/blog is…specifically, a conservative political blog. It isn’t, of course, but they are shy of ethics themselves, often have an agenda (to wit, show up those conservatives with superior wit, knowledge and intellect) and will NOT respond to repeated warnings, because being banned makes them martyrs, in their own eyes. I hate to say it, but as you attract new readers and responders, you should probably be prepared for banning an increasing number of idiots.
Note that I didn’t comment or discuss Art at all. I don’t condone that style of discussion — so I just ignored it.
I appreciate that. It became apparent that the choice with Art was to ignore him, or ban him.The fact that he actively and apologetically misrepresented what I was writing eliminated one of those options.
Announcement: I just banned Art Hawley. I knew this was coming. I told him the conditions under which he could stay, and he ignored them. Too bad. But he was getting worse and more abusive, and not just to me, and misrepresenting what I write so intentionally and blatantly is just not permitted, nor will it be.
It’s as if he wanted it to happen. I come across a lot of children who behave that way. Hard to know if they desperately want to be reined in or if they just want attention or if they really believe the things they say.