Utilitarian Justification for Abortion

[Shogun]

I didn't say that, you idiot. As much as it goes against your nature, try not to make up stupid lies.

I said that human life =/= personhood.

It matters not that a fetus is a potential person, and that abortion inhibits that potential, unless you are willing to object to contraception and celibacy on the same grounds. If you will retort that abortion actively ends a human life, while celibacy and contraception merely prevent its existence, you are asserting that the fetus already has some inherent value by virtue of merely existing. I have pointed out that numerous nonhuman animals possess a greater level of awareness and a greater capacity to feel pain than that human fetus does, and thus are of greater moral status.

You likely disagree on the grounds that you consider all forms of human life to be inherently superior to all forms of nonhuman animal life. As a utilitarian, I reject this premise, and I would ask you to support it.

oh it DOES matter that a genetically distinct fetus is a potential HUMAN BEING. Contraception and celibacy do not produce a fertilized zygote. Didn't I ask you if you were versed enough in the subject of sexual reproduction to have this conversation? Indeed, the zygote DOES have inherent value by merely exhisting. This is how we feel about ALL our children.. you know, BABY HUMANS..

Again, greater levels of awareness does not make a fetal pig more valuable than a fetal human being. Thats just retarded as hell. AGAIN, a shoal that can run three minutes after dropping out of a horse vagina doesn't make it more valuable than a fucking 1 year old human child. If this is the sum total of your argument then you have failed.


i don't care what ethical standard you hide behind. Utilitarianism is not so rigid that the definition of utility is stuck to mean "which can bat an eye in the womb first".

 

[eots]

Animals with a greater level of self-awareness, rationality, and a greater capacity to feel pain than certain humans do indeed have a greater intrinsic value than those humans. For instance, a dog, cat, pig, or chicken would have greater intrinsic moral value than a human fetus in that regard, and a fish would have greater intrinsic moral value than a human embryo.

This is a truth that the utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham recognized 200 years ago. I find it astounding that a man can be so ahead of his time as to protest sodomy laws in the early 1800's, while Rick Santorum still supports their existence today.



You likely have no rational criticism of this position, considering what you have posted so far, and no criticism of this position whatsoever except that you believe that humans were created in the image of God and animals were not, and that humans possess an immortal soul and that animals do not. I no longer share that belief, so don't bother expressing it. It's not a suitable guide for secular legal policy, at any rate, nor secular ethics.



Please tell me you're not taking up forum space with this inane nonsense.

so then you do not feel a girl of 13 that is menstrual has the right to consent to sex...is that the position you take..please clarify

 

[Agnapostate]

Do you ever wonder if these people actually THINK about what they're saying? They set up these arbitrary, joke boundaries for no other purpose than to permit them to do whatever selfish thing blows their skirts up for the moment, and never seem to consider how ridiculous they actually sound.

The most ridiculous sounding person here is you, considering you have such an egregious misunderstanding of the consequentialist ethical perspective.

"Set up"? Please. Such an ethical standard was devised by Jeremy Bentham more than 200 years ago, following in the footsteps of John Locke and other Enlightenment philosophers. The most influential philosopher and ethicist in the world, Peter Singer, maintains such a perspective. It's not an arbitrary standard that's been entirely made up any more than your opposition to abortion is.

Who cares how much pain someone feels? What's that got to do with anything? Do I become less valuable as a living being when I'm under anesthetic because my capacity to feel pain has been reduced? I believe there's actually a neurological disorder in which the nerve endings do not report pain correctly, and so the sufferers have to carefully inventory their body parts for injuries every day, to avoid infections and gangrene from wounds they never knew they had, because it didn't hurt. Are THEY less valuable than regular humans because they have much less capacity to feel pain?

Is this really how badly people misinterpret this?

Basic sentience and awareness involves the capacity to feel pain, which is a reason for granting the suffering of nonhuman animals a certain consideration. The instances you mentioned do not involve a lack of self-awareness. Those humans would still suffer from their deaths because they have formed preferences and interests about the future, and would suffer from their denial.

Greater awareness? So stupid people are less valuable than smart ones? At what IQ level do we decide it's okay to shoot 'em in the head? I know a lot of people favor aborting children with Down's Syndrome, but do they also think we should drown them like kittens if they happen to slip through the pre-natal screening process?

You have also egregiously misunderstood the concept of "awareness." I stated that self-awareness was a marker of personhood. Self-awareness is being aware of one's own existence as a distinct entity over time. Beyond the point of self-awareness, most differences between humans in terms of their capacities to form preferences are incommensurable. Hence, IQ level cannot form a sufficient standard for moral value, especially since many IQ differences are likely environmental. Your talk of "drowning them like kittens" when it comes to infants with Down's Syndrome is similarly odd. Individuals with Down's syndrome can derive much happiness from their lives, and it would be wrong to kill an infant with Down's syndrome (or any infant, for that matter) because it could be adopted by others.

oh it DOES matter that a genetically distinct fetus is a potential HUMAN BEING. Contraception and celibacy do not produce a fertilized zygote. Didn't I ask you if you were versed enough in the subject of sexual reproduction to have this conversation? Indeed, the zygote DOES have inherent value by merely exhisting. This is how we feel about ALL our children.. you know, BABY HUMANS..

Again, greater levels of awareness does not make a fetal pig more valuable than a fetal human being. Thats just retarded as hell. AGAIN, a shoal that can run three minutes after dropping out of a horse vagina doesn't make it more valuable than a fucking 1 year old human child. If this is the sum total of your argument then you have failed.

i don't care what ethical standard you hide behind. Utilitarianism is not so rigid that the definition of utility is stuck to mean "which can bat an eye in the womb first".

I didn't say anything about a horse fetus, you moron. I said a horse. Or a pig. Or a dog. Or even a chicken. Not anything about a fetal pig. Now, going back to the issue of greater levels of awareness and a greater capacity to feel pain, you have asserted that human life is inherently superior to nonhuman animal life even if that animal life has a greater level of awareness and a greater capacity to suffer. I have asked you to justify this belief, which you have not done. What ethical reason lies behind your belief for considering human life inherently superior to nonhuman animal life at a greater level of awareness?

 

[AllieBaba]

Are you a complete moron? Measurements of brain activity. And while a fetus may have some degree of brain activity, it is most certainly not self-aware, and while most nonhuman animals are not self-aware beings either, many have a greater degree of awareness than a fetus does.

Opinions every one.

And laughable opinions at that.

And as I have stated before, if self-awareness is what we are using to determine the right of people to live, most cops and pretty much all of academia needs to be put down right now. Preferrably in the most painful way possible.

 

[AllieBaba]

You have also egregiously misunderstood the concept of "awareness." I stated that self-awareness was a marker of personhood. Self-awareness is being aware of one's own existence as a distinct entity over time. Beyond the point of self-awareness, most differences between humans in terms of their capacities to form preferences are incommensurable. Hence, IQ level cannot form a sufficient standard for moral value, especially since many IQ differences are likely environmental. Your talk of "drowning them like kittens" when it comes to infants with Down's Syndrome is similarly odd. Individuals with Down's syndrome can derive much happiness from their lives, and it would be wrong to kill an infant with Down's syndrome (or any infant, for that matter) because it could be adopted by others.

THat is nothing but a subjective theory, based upon nothing but emotion, and wouldn't even get you a "c" in sociology in community college.

 

[Agnapostate]

Opinions every one.

And laughable opinions at that.

And as I have stated before, if self-awareness is what we are using to determine the right of people to live, most cops and pretty much all of academia needs to be put down right now. Preferrably in the most painful way possible.

That would cast doubt on your own intellectual capacities, (though that was done a long time ago), so maybe you shouldn't advocate such positions.

 

[Agnapostate]

THat is nothing but a subjective theory, based upon nothing but emotion, and wouldn't even get you a "c" in sociology in community college.

This is nothing but a component of utilitarian philosophy, formed about 200 years ago by Jeremy Bentham, and advocated by the most influential philosopher and ethicist in the world.

If you have an objection to the "subjective theory," then by all means, state it.

 

[Shogun]

I didn't say anything about a horse fetus, you moron. I said a horse. Or a pig. Or a dog. Or even a chicken. Not anything about a fetal pig. Now, going back to the issue of greater levels of awareness and a greater capacity to feel pain, you have asserted that human life is inherently superior to nonhuman animal life even if that animal life has a greater level of awareness and a greater capacity to suffer. I have asked you to justify this belief, which you have not done. What ethical reason lies behind your belief for considering human life inherently superior to nonhuman animal life at a greater level of awareness?


it really doesn't matter WHAT animal you name since NO animal is more valuable than a human fucking being at ANY stage of the game. If ANYONE is leaving a burning building that has the chance to save a goddamn DOG or a HUMAN CHILD they choose the fucking HUMAN CHILD every goddamn time. Again, it's BEYOND fucking retarded for you to make an equivalence between a human and any animal. Hopefully, the next time your kid is in danger someone will c=make the utilitarian decision to save the life of a dog rather than the life of your child.

HERE is the ethics, motherfucker:


utility: that is, its contribution to happiness or pleasure as summed among all persons. It is thus a form of consequentialism, meaning that the moral worth of an action is determined by its outcome: put simply, the ends justify the means.

ANY single child can grow to save the lives of hundreds of any given animal. They can grow to become a member of society which makes it POSSIBLE for animals to even exist outside of strict nature. PAIN, in relation to which feels it first, isn't even a fucking factor in UTILITY. Go tel every human being you encounter today that they would have been better off dead since a fucking GOAT can feel more pain, earlier, than they ever could. for real. Your opinion is beyond stupid. If you can't fathom the inherent superiority of human beings over pet shop gerbils then such is a testament to your own goofiness rather than your grasp on utilitarianism.

 

[AllieBaba]

This is nothing but a component of utilitarian philosophy, formed about 200 years ago by Jeremy Bentham, and advocated by the most influential philosopher and ethicist in the world.

If you have an objection to the "subjective theory," then by all means, state it.

Sorry, I remain unimpressed by human-hating blathering fools, and I'm even less impressed by the sheep who follow them.

 

[Agnapostate]

it really doesn't matter WHAT animal you name since NO animal is more valuable than a human fucking being at ANY stage of the game. If ANYONE is leaving a burning building that has the chance to save a goddamn DOG or a HUMAN CHILD they choose the fucking HUMAN CHILD every goddamn time. Again, it's BEYOND fucking retarded for you to make an equivalence between a human and any animal. Hopefully, the next time your kid is in danger someone will c=make the utilitarian decision to save the life of a dog rather than the life of your child.

Listen, you fucking idiot, before you go running your stupid mouth and blathering about any more of this stupid shit that exists in your deluded little imagination, a human "child" possesses a greater level of self-awareness than a dog, so the child would be of greater moral value in that instance. If it came to a human infant versus an adult chimpanzee, the chimpanzee would possess a greater level of self-awareness and would be of greater moral value in that instance.

You've also committed a rather common fallacy in inserting a personal perspective into the utilitarian equation. Many a parent would sooner save his three children from death by house collapse than save forty strangers from dying by fire, but that would not change the fact that according to an objective and neutral basis of the utilitarian perspective, it would be preferable to save the forty from fire.

You have been asked to justify your belief that a human is inherently superior to nonhuman animals even if those animals possess a greater level of self-awareness and a greater capacity to feel pain. You have FAILED to do so.

HERE is the ethics, motherfucker:

utility: that is, its contribution to happiness or pleasure as summed among all persons. It is thus a form of consequentialism, meaning that the moral worth of an action is determined by its outcome: put simply, the ends justify the means.

ANY single child can grow to save the lives of hundreds of any given animal. They can grow to become a member of society which makes it POSSIBLE for animals to even exist outside of strict nature. PAIN, in relation to which feels it first, isn't even a fucking factor in UTILITY. Go tel every human being you encounter today that they would have been better off dead since a fucking GOAT can feel more pain, earlier, than they ever could. for real. Your opinion is beyond stupid. If you can't fathom the inherent superiority of human beings over pet shop gerbils then such is a testament to your own goofiness rather than your grasp on utilitarianism.

Here you go again with it, you fucking moron. The argument from potential was addressed in the very first fucking post in this thread, but your dumb ass apparently can't read. It does not follow that an X has equal rights to a Y, and a potential X thus has equal rights to a Y. Tell me, do you consider it worse to drop an egg into a pot of boiling water or a chicken? An egg is a "potential" chicken, after all. But hopefully, you recognize the rather obvious fact that a chicken has a capacity to suffer from being dropped into a pot of boiling water that an egg does not, despite the fact that the egg is a "potential" chicken. Similarly, a grown person has a capacity to suffer that a fetus does not, (through the denial of future preferences and interests that he or she has developed as a self-aware being), despite the fact that a fetus is a "potential" person.

You also fall back on some form of the "future like ours" argument advocated by Don Marquis in that the fetus has a potential to become a person that an animal does not. But as I mentioned, contraception and celibacy also inhibit the development of a person, so your objection is to the active destruction of human life in the womb rather than the prevention of its existence. Thus, you would need to assert that a fetus already possesses certain morally valuable traits in and of itself, and it has been pointed out to you that many nonhuman animals possess greater levels of self-awareness and a capacity to feel pain than a human fetus does.

It would be a rather obvious fallacy of circular reasoning if you were to again claim that a fetus was a "potential" person.

Sorry, I remain unimpressed by human-hating blathering fools, and I'm even less impressed by the sheep who follow them.

Human hating? What idiocy. Most humans are the highest and most valuable form of life that exist, as persons.

 

[Shogun]

Listen, you fucking idiot, before you go running your stupid mouth and blathering about any more of this stupid shit that exists in your deluded little imagination, a human "child" possesses a greater level of self-awareness than a dog, so the child would be of greater moral value in that instance. If it came to a human infant versus an adult chimpanzee, the chimpanzee would possess a greater level of self-awareness and would be of greater moral value in that instance.


Listen, you dumb ****, NO level of self awareness in ANY animal trumps even a single retarded, underdeveloped human being. That is the end of the your logic. MEEEEEEP. The fucking End. NO adult chimp has a greater utility than a SINGLE human being; child or otherwise. THIS truly is one of the stupidest fucking tangents i've ever has the pleasure of reading on this forum.


You've also committed a rather common fallacy in inserting a personal perspective into the utilitarian equation. Many a parent would sooner save his three children from death by house collapse than save forty strangers from dying by fire, but that would not change the fact that according to an objective and neutral basis of the utilitarian perspective, it would be preferable to save the forty from fire.

yea! HAHAHAHA! because you can name a single motherfucker that would hid behind utilitarian bullshit to save ANY animal from a burning building than human strangers OR their own kid! FORTY STRANGERS OR A PERSONAL KID: THEY ARE STILL HUMANS, you dumb bitch. Now, tell me how many goldfish your moral imperative values above the life of a human being if the pet store goes up in flames, stupid.


You have been asked to justify your belief that a human is inherently superior to nonhuman animals even if those animals possess a greater level of self-awareness and a greater capacity to feel pain. You have FAILED to do so.

HAHA! because only a fucking inbred idiot would EVER argue that, at any stage of the game, a human being is LESS valuable than ANY animal life at any state of the game. Like I said, I hope you review your position in this thread the next time someone saves the life of their dog rather than your parent or kid. I mean, why save your family member when Scruffy gives an individual more utility value than your stranger family ever could?



Here you go again with it, you fucking moron. The argument from potential was addressed in the very first fucking post in this thread, but your dumb ass apparently can't read. It does not follow that an X has equal rights to a Y, and a potential X thus has equal rights to a Y. Tell me, do you consider it worse to drop an egg into a pot of boiling water or a chicken? An egg is a "potential" chicken, after all. But hopefully, you recognize the rather obvious fact that a chicken has a capacity to suffer from being dropped into a pot of boiling water that an egg does not, despite the fact that the egg is a "potential" chicken. Similarly, a grown person has a capacity to suffer that a fetus does not, (through the denial of future preferences and interests that he or she has developed as a self-aware being), despite the fact that a fetus is a "potential" person.

You also fall back on some form of the "future like ours" argument advocated by Don Marquis in that the fetus has a potential to become a person that an animal does not. But as I mentioned, contraception and celibacy also inhibit the development of a person, so your objection is to the active destruction of human life in the womb rather than the prevention of its existence. Thus, you would need to assert that a fetus already possesses certain morally valuable traits in and of itself, and it has been pointed out to you that many nonhuman animals possess greater levels of self-awareness and a capacity to feel pain than a human fetus does.


NEITHER THE EGG NOR CHICKEN IS A HUMAN BEING, stupid. No matter how much you avoid this FACT it will remain to be the case. Indeed, show me one animal fetus that ever became a HUMAN PERSON, stupid. If you can't name fucking names in this genetic fucking MIRACLE than you might as well pack up your bags and shit the fuck up. Name dropping Don Marquis might impress your ethic professor, Freshman, but the complete failure of utilitarianism as a universal principal might just burst your little pseudo-intellectual bubble.


Contraceptions and abstinence don't PRODUCE FERTILIZED ZYGOTES. What part of the sexual development of human beings don't you understand? THERE IS NO PERSON to be inhibited. You fail, once again, at even the slightest hint of logical consistency.

And, as much as I give a fuck about what you think I should attribute to a fetus I'm afraid I'm just going to have to remind you that the core of your argument, that humans are equivalent to animals across developmental stages, is a crock of shit in the first place. You know goddamn well you would not save a rabbit with more self awareness than a tucking toddler from a burning building just like I know you woulnd't. Why? Because your bullshit logic-wrestling with utilitarianism means jack shit in the realm of reality where it doesn't take a fucking dissertation to figiure out that a HUMAN > ANIMAL every day.



It would be a rather obvious fallacy of circular reasoning if you were to again claim that a fetus was a "potential" person.


Face it, people who try and insist that animals are more valuable than human beings, at any stage of the game, probably shouldn't be making value judgments on the reason of others.

 

[Agnapostate]

What a fucking imbecile.

You have your head stuck so far up your ass that no amount of reasoning is going to reach it.

I'll wait for someone not as patently idiotic to respond.

Your simian grunting has kind of reduced my opinion of the moral value of chimps, to be honest.

 

[Ravi]

What a fucking imbecile.

You have your head stuck so far up your ass that no amount of reasoning is going to reach it.

I'll wait for someone not as patently idiotic to respond.

Your simian grunting has kind of reduced my opinion of the moral value of chimps, to be honest.

I see you've met Soggy.

 

[Shogun]

What a fucking imbecile.

You have your head stuck so far up your ass that no amount of reasoning is going to reach it.

I'll wait for someone not as patently idiotic to respond.

Your simian grunting has kind of reduced my opinion of the moral value of chimps, to be honest.

Insisting that a chimp at ANY stage of their development has more utility than a human at ANY stage of theirs is neither reasonable or logical. Indeed, you sure have a track record of collecting responses that agree with such a goofy fucking notion, don't you? Your reptilian mind says a lot more about your own idiot box personality than it does conveying anything about utilitarianism used to rationalize abortion. Face it, as long as you refuse to face that a human > an animal at any stage of their respective development, you lose.

 

[Cecilie1200]

What a bunch of garbage. ... .how retarded of you to think other people should live their lives the way you do. Maybe if y'all didn't teach them "abstinence only" your babies wouldn't have babies....

Yeah, Jillian, it's teaching them about abstinence that has increased teen pregnancy, not YOUR ilk getting in there and teaching them, "You're all just horny little minks, so we should just give you condoms and let you go at it. If something goes wrong, you can always abort." Because we all know how rampant teen pregnancy was prior to the sixties, when all of society was insisting on abstinence. Oh, wait. It wasn't.

Worry about your own house before you judge others. And the biggest joke is how self-satisfied and full of yourself you are when near as I can see, your life isn't exactly a road map for good judgment. .. certainly not good enough to be substituted for my own or anyone else's.

Of course I'm self-satisfied. My daughter was a virgin all the way through high school, and then came to me and asked me to take her to the doctor to discuss birth control when she was ready to become sexually active. She's now nineteen, involved with a man I don't particularly like but with whom she is stable and happy, and has a lovely little baby boy. I've been happily married for fourteen years, and have had friends who thought marriage was a fate worse than death decide that maybe they wanted to give it a try after all, just because they spent time around us. I don't know what YOU are seeing that makes you think my life is a road map for bad judgement, unless it's just your own inability to put out the effort and self-control it would take to emulate me.

So save it for someone who buys what you're selling.

Well, I certainly WISH I could be as unhappy, bitter, and defensive as you are, but unfortunately, my life doesn't suck enough to manage it.

 

[AllieBaba]

What a fucking imbecile.

You have your head stuck so far up your ass that no amount of reasoning is going to reach it.

I'll wait for someone not as patently idiotic to respond.

Your simian grunting has kind of reduced my opinion of the moral value of chimps, to be honest.

What you are saying is that the value of a human is in the eye of the beholder.

Pretty much the calling card of every pedophile, eugenics-spouting backward retard on the face of the planet.

Tell me, do you think sex with animals is as okay as sex with children? After all, they are moral equivilents....

 

[Shogun]

I see you've met Soggy.

indeed, lets see Ravi jump in since she has no reason to agree with me.


So, RAVIR, would you rescue a box full of adult gerbils from a burning pet store instead of a human 1 year old because the rodents are more "self aware" than a human newborn?

pray tel.

 

[Ravi]

indeed, lets see Ravi jump in since she has no reason to agree with me.


So, RAVIR, would you rescue a box full of adult gerbils from a burning pet store instead of a human 1 year old because the rodents are more "self aware" than a human newborn?

pray tel.

lol, I do believe you've got cotton fluff in your head instead of a brain.

 

[Agnapostate]

What you are saying is that the value of a human is in the eye of the beholder.

Pretty much the calling card of every pedophile, eugenics-spouting backward retard on the face of the planet.

Tell me, do you think sex with animals is as okay as sex with children? After all, they are moral equivilents....

Here goes the little Christfag with her inaccurate definition of pedophilia again. Haven't I already told you that that's your own idiocy, not a legitimate psychological definition?

Eugenics? Please. If we wanted to talk about Hitler's brand of Christianity, we could discuss this. Not here. In what manner have I advocated the selective genetic breeding of children?

 

[AllieBaba]

Well Ravi, you would know.