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Why would people be against abortion?

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Original post by tazarooni89
I’m not “treating them” as separate things, they are separate things. If you’ve been talking about “human life” this entire time then you’ve just been arguing against a straw man; I said right at the beginning “replace human life with the right to life” when you took issue with “human life” in the first place, and have made that clarification multiple times since then.
You misunderstand my position then. I’m not “arguing against abortion” at all. I’m not dead set against it and claiming that it is necessarily immoral. I’m fully open to being convinced that it can be considered moral; I’m just waiting to be provided with an explanation as to how this can be done (as part of a consistent moral framework, without post-hoc rationalisation etc.) I’m only provisionally “against abortion” until this happens.
My argument is simply to tell you why I have not been satisfied with the explanations I’ve been provided with so far. The one you have provided is “well I can just define human life / the right to life as starting somewhere else”. That alone is not a complete argument, because that can be used to justify killing pretty much anybody. That’s what colonialists used to justify killing the African Bushman as well. I don’t see how it is possible to still consider this (and other types of murder) to be necessarily immoral at the same time as believing that the right to life can be defined however one likes. Hence the question: why is murder ever immoral then? So until I receive an answer to resolve this apparent inconsistency, I can’t be convinced by this argument.
Now bearing this in mind, what question do you want me to answer, if I haven’t already answered it above?
There are good arguments for allowing abortion under certain circumstances and they have been explained but you dismiss them becasue you ARE dead set against it. Pretending that you would change your mind if you saw a good argument when you know that you will simply reject every argument, good or not, is dishonest debating.
Original post by 2WheelGod
There are good arguments for allowing abortion under certain circumstances and they have been explained but you dismiss them becasue you ARE dead set against it. Pretending that you would change your mind if you saw a good argument when you know that you will simply reject every argument, good or not, is dishonest debating.


Incorrect. I decide what my own beliefs are, not you.
Original post by tazarooni89
I already retracted any appeal to “human life” long ago, when I said “replace human life with the right to life”, since it is not a necessary part of my argument. I’ve clarified multiple times that we’re talking about the right to life, not human life. So yes, you have been attacking a straw man since then.
I’ve just told you. I’m not as “against abortion” as you seem to think. I don’t claim that it’s necessarily immoral. I’m just waiting for the explanation that convinces me that it can be considered moral as part of a consistent set of morals. I’m provisionally “against abortion” until then, because I don’t see any inconsistency in that position.

If you did that then it would only have been recently. We spent the majority of this conversation talking explicitly about "human life". Why else would you have given the three conditions and made a huge deal about there (supposedly) only being one valid criteria? It isn't a straw man if it is (or was) the argument you were presenting.

To be "provisionally against abortion" would require some reason, else your position would simply be "I don't know". What makes being "provisonally against abortion" consistent? Consistent with regards to what?
Original post by tazarooni89
I already retracted any appeal to “human life” long ago, when I said “replace human life with the right to life”, since it is not a necessary part of my argument. I’ve clarified multiple times that we’re talking about the right to life, not human life. So yes, you have been attacking a straw man since then.
I’ve just told you, I’m not claiming that it’s necessarily immoral. I’m just waiting for the explanation that convinces me that it can be considered moral as part of a consistent set of morals. I’m provisionally “against abortion” until then, because I don’t see any inconsistency in that position.
So you have abandoned the concept of "human life" in favour of "the right to life" but have already admitted that TRTL is not universal. Until you clarify what is "the right to life"? Who/what has it? What are the criteria? Who/what decides this? then the term is meaningless.
Original post by tazarooni89
Incorrect. I decide what my own beliefs are, not you.
Indeed. And you have decided that there are no good arguments for allowing abortion.
Original post by SHallowvale
If you did that then it would only have been recently. We spent the majority of this conversation talking explicitly about "human life". Why else would you have given the three conditions and made a huge deal about there (supposedly) only being one valid criteria? It isn't a straw man if it is (or was) the argument you were presenting.
To be "provisionally against abortion" would require some reason, else your position would simply be "I don't know". What makes being "provisonally against abortion" consistent? Consistent with regards to what?
We didn't spend the majority of this conversation talking about "human life" - you did. I replaced the concept of "human life" with the "right to life" as soon as you took issue with it, reiterated on multiple occasions that I was referring to the right to life, and avoided even using the phrase "human life" in almost all of my posts, in favour of the right to life. The criteria with the three conditions that I was asking for also related to the right to life.

To be "provisionally against abortion" would require some reason, else your position would simply be "I don't know". What makes being "provisonally against abortion" consistent? Consistent with regards to what?


Consistent with regards to the wider set of morals that the proponent of that position holds. I've already outlined the inconsistency that is apparent to me in your position. I've always seen similar inconsistencies whenever anyone else has tried to provide me with a pro-abortion argument as well. I don't typically see any such inconsistencies in the anti-abortion position, so I've already been able to accept it as at least a valid position.
(edited 1 month ago)
Original post by tazarooni89
We didn't spend the majority of this conversation talking about "human life" - you did. I replaced the concept of "human life" with the "right to life" as soon as you took issue with it, reiterated on multiple occasions that I was referring to the right to life, and avoided even using the phrase "human life" in almost all of my posts, in favour of the right to life. The criteria with the three conditions that I was asking for also related to the right to life.
Consistent with regards to the wider set of morals that the proponent of that position holds. I've already outlined the inconsistency that is apparent to me in your position. I've always seen similar inconsistencies whenever anyone else has tried to provide me with a pro-abortion argument as well. I don't typically see any such inconsistencies in the anti-abortion position, so I've already been able to accept it as at least a valid position.

If that's the case then you have treated "the right to life" as a status which, once gained, is held until something dies. That was one of your conditions. "Why is murder ever immoral?" is therefore an entirely separate argument.

As I said earlier, by those conditions it would be possible for something to obtain "the right to life" but be morally acceptable to kill / terminate (depending on the reasons). In other words, the appeal to what does and doesn't have "the right to life" doesn't help us in deciding whether abortion is or isn't moral. We would have to rely on an entirely new argument. It is essentially the same problem with the appeal to "human life", different criteria for "the right to life" can lead to different outcomes.

Funnily enough, when I first made this point your response was 'That is irrelevant, that only applies to human life. I am not talking about that, I am talking about the right to life'. But now you admit that it also applies to "the right to life". At least make up your mind if you are going to accuse me of strawmanning you.
Original post by tazarooni89
We didn't spend the majority of this conversation talking about "human life" - you did. I replaced the concept of "human life" with the "right to life" as soon as you took issue with it, reiterated on multiple occasions that I was referring to the right to life, and avoided even using the phrase "human life" in almost all of my posts, in favour of the right to life. The criteria with the three conditions that I was asking for also related to the right to life.
Consistent with regards to the wider set of morals that the proponent of that position holds. I've already outlined the inconsistency that is apparent to me in your position. I've always seen similar inconsistencies whenever anyone else has tried to provide me with a pro-abortion argument as well. I don't typically see any such inconsistencies in the anti-abortion position, so I've already been able to accept it as at least a valid position.
The fundamental argument for abortion is that it causes less harm than the alternative of forcing an unwilling woman to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term and hoping that the someone takes proper care of the unwanted child.

Your argument is based on the assumption that a fertilised egg has all the same rights, responsibilities, etc as an adult member of society but you have completely failed to provide any good argument to support this claim. You simply assert it, insisting that your opinion trumps everyone else's and fail to address the real-world issue of unwanted pregnancies and their consequences.

Any argument based on "morality" is merely opinion. You don't like the idea of abortion (for whatever reason) and neither do I, but I can see why it is sometimes the better option. My "morals" require reducing actual, real-world harm rather than some ideological, theoretical version of it.
(edited 1 month ago)

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