Introducing Reason to the Abortion Debate

[The Black Ghost]

To be honest, I love the avenue you are approaching this because its attempting to look at the arguement rationally. While I think the essay is sound in what you wrote, I do however question your basic premise, which is this: The value of life is determined by the quality of life--as seen through the subjective eyes of other people.

You are arguing that "abortion is logical because it does not degrade the quality of life". That arguement has been used in the exact reverse: "killing is logical if is improves the quality of life". This is a dangerous road to go down.

Your central point should instead be: "Is abortion neccessary?"

If it is, you would then have to reconcile with the fact that sometimes killing is neccesary to do greater good, but its still killing. If you are performing an abortion to save a mother, then you have to choose between two evils without a middle ground--in that case abortion is justified as neccesary killing.



Also, is infanticide a form of "abortion"? Because in many third world countries where abortion is unavailable, infanticide is practiced. I'm not judging whether this is good or bad, but I like to bring this up to show the relative hypocrisy some people have with this issue. (i.e. killing is fine when you dont actually see it or have to think or worry about it--which happened in Nazi Germany)

[grendelsbayne]

I've thought about this before. When the person in the given situation is me instead of someone else, it doesn't change anything. It doesn't make a difference whose life is ended.

There are three basic characteristics that the act of ending a life must have in order for it to not cause a reduction in one's quality of life. 1) It has to be instant and painless. 2) The victim cannot realize ahead of time that he's about to be killed, otherwise the anticipation will cause him to live in fear. 3) There must not be anyone who cares about him and wishes to see him alive.

If these conditions are met, no one's quality of life will be reduced. Abortion has all three of these characteristics, which is why I don't object to it. If you still think that killing someone of any age (in the manner I described above) is wrong, it's probably because of one of two things: A) You believe that the quality of life is actually being reduced somehow. B) You believe that the quality of life is not the only thing that matters; you believe there is more to the moral value of an action than its effect on the quality of life.

If it's A, I'd like to know how. If it's B, I'd like to know what else actually matters.

Actually, abortion doesn't always have all of these qualities. According to your reasoning, should abortion still be legal when the father objects? Or the grandparents? Should it still be legal when death is not instant?

[barts]

Actually, abortion doesn't always have all of these qualities. According to your reasoning, should abortion still be legal when the father objects? Or the grandparents? Should it still be legal when death is not instant?

To my mind the morality of abortion and its legality are two quite different things. Some social activities that are arguably ethical (growing and using marijuana for personal use, for example) are illegal, while clearly unethical activities (using legal action to stifle public participation in political decisions) are legal.

To "reason" about the abortion debate, I think it is useful to break it down into its components. Some abortions may be ethical, others may be unethical. Making abortions legal or illegal may be nothing more than a public policy decision made to enhance the electoral fortunes of politicians pandering to an extremist, but electorally large and important faction.

[grendelsbayne]

To my mind the morality of abortion and its legality are two quite different things. Some social activities that are arguably ethical (growing and using marijuana for personal use, for example) are illegal, while clearly unethical activities (using legal action to stifle public participation in political decisions) are legal.

To "reason" about the abortion debate, I think it is useful to break it down into its components. Some abortions may be ethical, others may be unethical. Making abortions legal or illegal may be nothing more than a public policy decision made to enhance the electoral fortunes of politicians pandering to an extremist, but electorally large and important faction.

Isn't what you're describing here the current, non-reasoning state of affairs that the op stated this argument was supposed to overcome? 'Introducing reason to the abortion debate'?

[Muckraker]

The central theme in a reasonable discussion of abortion should always be about whether abortion reduces the quality of life. Even though abortion ends life, it does not reduce its quality. This is a key distinction.
The quality of life is specifically defined by the sum of the pleasant and unpleasant experiences one has.

I disagree. The central theme for me is bodily autonomy versus the rights of others. I've posted extensively on that constantly changing relationship in other threads but I'll focus on rebutting yours here--unless you want me to expand on my position as well.

Reduction of the quality of life is subjective and extremely complex. How can a person bound by subjectivity and stuck in the present moment determine that an action they take today will ultimately yield a greater, lesser, or unchanged quality of life? And if the individual making the decision cannot possibly have all the required information to make the best objective choice then how can other people?

Quality of life is a measurement made at the end of a life and variables that drastically improve one person's quality of life may drastically decrease the quality for another person. How can we use this unattainable and subjective information to make the universal determination that an abortion occurring at this moment is objectively and ultimately justified?

Most of our lives are spent planning for and ignoring our predictions about our own quality of life. I can buy $50 worth of heroin and drastically increase my quality of life for the next few moments--and if a meteorite hits me in the head just as I'm coming down it will have been worth it--but what happens when my life extends beyond the next few moments? What happens when I need another $50 to avoid a major reduction in quality of life? What happens when I mug my grandmother for $50 or my self-medicating addiction to heroin is all that is keeping me from going on a suicidal rampage?

I can buy $50 worth of stock today, live extravagantly, and it may still cover me financially through the end of my life. I can live frugally, buy $500,000 worth of stock over time, watch it go to $50 overnight, and then see my children wipe out their own savings to cover the expenses of my lingering death. My lingering death may have been caused by me making the most of a $50 carton of smokes I found laying in the street when I was twelve.

For your quality of life position to be valid you would need to prove that a person can examine all existing objective variables today, calculate the current cumulative effects of that arrangement of variables, extend that equation into the indefinite future, calculate the effect of unknown future variables created by the known equation, and then assign an objective value to the subjective result as it appears at the exact instant of death.

And if we can prove that then the next step is to prove that one person can make those same calculations for another person. And if we can do that then the final step is to prove that every single set of abortion variables will not reduce the quality of life for any single set of human variables (or animal if we are not speciesists).

Since medical research shows that abortion does not reduce the quality of life, it is simply unreasonable to object to it.

I feel the above argument disproves this claim.



PS - This is why my brain feels like it's going to implode when I'm sitting in traffic and I look around and realize I'm surrounded by other people sitting in traffic. It improves my quality of life to view them as life-size, free-standing, color cutouts promoting a movie I have no interest in seeing.

[grandpa]

I disagree.
The central theme for me is bodily autonomy versus
the rights of others.

A fetus relies almost exclusively on the bodily resources of
another human being. That sort of complicates the issue.

Grandpa h.

[Muckraker]

A fetus relies almost exclusively on the bodily resources of another human being. That sort of complicates the issue.

I totally agree. My more complete argument on bodily autonomy versus the rights of others is detailed in the thread below and I would be happy to debate that further there or anywhere else.

http://www.volconvo.com/forums/socie...rgument-1.html (Post 28-->)

My official stance is dynamic. I see the issue as a sliding scale with individual rights on one side and bodily autonomy on the other. At this point in time the actual slider (of reality and law) is deep into bodily autonomy territory.

[barts]

Isn't what you're describing here the current, non-reasoning state of affairs that the op stated this argument was supposed to overcome? 'Introducing reason to the abortion debate'?

Is the OP about introducing reason to "abortion" or to the "debate"? They're not the same thing.

[Savi]

If you are ending a life then you are ending the quality of that life. While you may not be causing suffering to that life by ending it, you are ending it's quality. Meaning, it has no more quality. You'ved stated that we desire to improve the quality of our lives. If something has ended the quality of a life, then it has taken that quality away. It cannot have quality any longer. Therefore, the quality of it's life is reduced, and, extinguished.

You misunderstood my use of the term "quality of life." Although I probably should have been more descriptive. The quality of one's life is the positive or negative quality of one's experiences at any given time. It could be high one day, low the next, etc. If you remove something pleasant from someone's life, or add something unpleasant, you're reducing the quality of their life.

If a life ends instantly and painlessly, then its quality is not reduced. This is because there were no unpleasant experiences for the victim. When you end a life in the manner I described in my last post (with those three main attributes), the victim doesn't even have the opportunity to realize that his life is being taken. So it's impossible for his quality of life to have been reduced. The fact that his life is taken away/ended is irrelevant, because he never experienced this event happening to him in the first place. The only thing that matters is whether there is an actual reduction in the quality of life, which requires the conscious experience of something unpleasant.

[Savi]

I disagree. The central theme for me is bodily autonomy versus the rights of others.

Having bodily autonomy improves one's quality of life. Lacking it reduces one's quality of life. It's always going to come back to the good ol' QOL.

Reduction of the quality of life is subjective and extremely complex. How can a person bound by subjectivity and stuck in the present moment determine that an action they take today will ultimately yield a greater, lesser, or unchanged quality of life? And if the individual making the decision cannot possibly have all the required information to make the best objective choice then how can other people?

It's usually pretty simple. Most actions have immediate effects. If someone complains about it and expresses their frustration/displeasure, then it obviously reduced their QOL. (In the interest of brevity, I'm just going to keep calling it that). Long term effects are often predictable. Even when they're not, people can assess the long term effects of a given action or policy over time to determine its overall effect on the QOL.

Quality of life is a measurement made at the end of a life and variables that drastically improve one person's quality of life may drastically decrease the quality for another person. How can we use this unattainable and subjective information to make the universal determination that an abortion occurring at this moment is objectively and ultimately justified?

The QOL can be measured at any time, and it fluctuates quite a bit. I just recently explained this in my reply to RobotBeeps.

If an action improves one person's QOL while reducing that of another, I'll still object to it. I don't like the "greater good" mentality, because it justifies acts of oppression by the majority at the expense of the minority. In other words, it reduces the minority's QOL.

Most of our lives are spent planning for and ignoring our predictions about our own quality of life. I can buy $50 worth of heroin and drastically increase my quality of life for the next few moments--and if a meteorite hits me in the head just as I'm coming down it will have been worth it--but what happens when my life extends beyond the next few moments? What happens when I need another $50 to avoid a major reduction in quality of life? What happens when I mug my grandmother for $50 or my self-medicating addiction to heroin is all that is keeping me from going on a suicidal rampage?

I think everyone--even drug addicts--is aware that drug addiction sucks in the long term. The addicts still get high anyway because they lack the willpower to stop. If they could just magically stop and not feel any withdrawal symptoms, I'm sure most of them--if not all--would gladly do so. That's because they realize that the overall effect of their addiction creates a reduction in their QOL. If someone is addicted to drugs, you can safely bet that the overall effect it has on them is negative, despite the temporary euphoria they get when they're high. I'm sure most--if not all--would admit this. So yes, I do object to the use of hard drugs. However, I don't want to control people's lives and tell them what they can or can't put in their bodies. That would limit their freedom and cost the taxpayers a ridiculous amount of money, which I think would do even more harm than the drugs. I think the best way to get someone off drugs is to make sure they're informed about what they're getting into, and for their friends and family to offer support for them and compassionately encourage them to make healthy choices without being coercive.

For your quality of life position to be valid you would need to prove that a person can examine all existing objective variables today, calculate the current cumulative effects of that arrangement of variables, extend that equation into the indefinite future, calculate the effect of unknown future variables created by the known equation, and then assign an objective value to the subjective result as it appears at the exact instant of death.

And if we can prove that then the next step is to prove that one person can make those same calculations for another person. And if we can do that then the final step is to prove that every single set of abortion variables will not reduce the quality of life for any single set of human variables (or animal if we are not speciesists).

lol. As I mentioned near the top of this reply, you don't need to make any complex calculations or predictions. People just need to be conscious of the perceivable effects their actions have on themselves and others. If an action seems fine at first, but people later discover that it's affecting us in a negative way, we can simply stop doing it. There's no need to predict the future in order to ensure that nothing bad could possibly happen to anyone. We just need to do the best we can with what we have.

[Savi]

You are arguing that "abortion is logical because it does not degrade the quality of life". That arguement has been used in the exact reverse: "killing is logical if is improves the quality of life". This is a dangerous road to go down.

That sounds scary on the surface, but when you think about it, what's so scary about something that improves the quality of life? We kill plants, animals, and germs to improve our own quality of life. Killing is necessary for any individual or species to maintain a decent quality of life.

Your central point should instead be: "Is abortion neccessary?"

If it is, you would then have to reconcile with the fact that sometimes killing is neccesary to do greater good, but its still killing. If you are performing an abortion to save a mother, then you have to choose between two evils without a middle ground--in that case abortion is justified as neccesary killing.

Sometimes in order to save a woman's life, the pregnancy must be aborted. Sometimes in order to prevent the woman and/or child from having a hard and shitty life, the pregnancy must be aborted. Sometimes in order to attract members of the opposite sex, you must kill the germs on your body by taking a shower.

I'm interested in the wording you chose: "but it's still killing." This implies that there's something inherently wrong with killing, in and of itself. I disagree with that. I think it's the suffering that's often associated with killing that we object to. We just don't like it when people suffer (most of us, at least). And since killing is almost always accompanied by suffering, we object to killing. In other words, "killing" is guilty by association.

Also, is infanticide a form of "abortion"? Because in many third world countries where abortion is unavailable, infanticide is practiced. I'm not judging whether this is good or bad, but I like to bring this up to show the relative hypocrisy some people have with this issue. (i.e. killing is fine when you dont actually see it or have to think or worry about it--which happened in Nazi Germany)

I don't really care to make distinctions pertaining to the stage of someone's life at which they are killed. The only thing that matters is whether the murder has actually reduced anyone's quality of life. When someone is a child or an adult, the chances of reducing the QOL are just MUCH greater than they would be if the person was still in the womb.

[grendelsbayne]

I'd still like to know whether your qol calculation changes any when the father/grandparents object to the abortion, or the fetus does not die instantly.