Dennis Hackethal
Member since June 2024
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#107 · Dennis Hackethal, 4 months agoI’m pro abortion but I have some pro life in me.
Banning the abortion of a zygote seems ridiculous. So does aborting a seven-month-old fetus.
Why not go with: you can abort until the nervous system develops.
Clearly, a fetus without a nervous system can’t be sentient and thus can’t be a person, right? And as long as it’s not a person, it doesn’t have any rights.
According to https://www.neurosciencefoundation.org/post/brain-development-in-fetus, “an embryo’s brain and nervous system begin to develop at around the 6-week mark.” And: “At as early as 8 weeks (about 2 months), you can see physical evidence of the brain working (the electric impulses) as ultrasounds show the embryo moving.”
Why does it matter exactly when personhood sets in? You know it becomes a person as long as you don’t abort the process.
(Dirk)
#142 · Dennis Hackethal, 4 months agoWhere exactly does a child’s dependency on the parents end? At five years old? When the child moves out? Seems arbitrary.
(Amaro)
Whenever a child may reach independence, it’s certainly well past pregnancy, so it’s not an issue wrt abortion.
#141 · Dennis Hackethal, 4 months agoBuilding on #140, it’s more like forcing someone into your home, locking the door, making them depend on you for food and water, and then complaining they’re in your home. Clearly, killing them is not the answer (if they’re a person).
Where exactly does a child’s dependency on the parents end? At five years old? When the child moves out? Seems arbitrary.
(Amaro)
#139 · Dennis Hackethal, 4 months agoIf you invite someone into your home and they come over you can still change your mind and kick them out. Just because you invited them doesn’t mean they can stay in your home against your will.
(Amaro)
Building on #140, it’s more like forcing someone into your home, locking the door, making them depend on you for food and water, and then complaining they’re in your home. Clearly, killing them is not the answer (if they’re a person).
#139 · Dennis Hackethal, 4 months agoIf you invite someone into your home and they come over you can still change your mind and kick them out. Just because you invited them doesn’t mean they can stay in your home against your will.
(Amaro)
That’s different because the person in your example made the choice to show up, whereas an unborn baby made no such choice.
(Danny)
If you invite someone into your home and they come over you can still change your mind and kick them out. Just because you invited them doesn’t mean they can stay in your home against your will.
(Amaro)
#137 · Dennis Hackethal, 4 months agoSomeone’s personhood has no bearing on whether you should be able to evict them, right? It’s your property, so it’s your choice.
(Amaro)
It does if you caused them to be there to begin with.
(Danny)
#136 · Dennis Hackethal, 4 months agoEvictionism doesn’t explain why personhood should be ignored.
(Danny)
Someone’s personhood has no bearing on whether you should be able to evict them, right? It’s your property, so it’s your choice.
(Amaro)
#134 · Dennis Hackethal, 4 months agoThere’s ‘evictionism’: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evictionism
I like this view because it sidesteps the issue of personhood and at what point it arises. It says you’re free to evict anything, person or not. We don’t know how creativity (ie the universal-explainer software mentioned in #119) works so this is handy.
(Amaro)
Evictionism doesn’t explain why personhood should be ignored.
(Danny)
Add missing word
There’s ‘evictionism’: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evictionism I like this view because it sidesteps the issue of personhood and at what point it arises. It says you’re free to evict anything, person or not. We don’t know how creativity (ie the universal-explainer software mentioned in #119) works so this is handy. (Amaro)
#130 · Dennis Hackethal, 4 months agoIt’s not right to force a parent to take care of a child they didn’t want. The result is often tragic. Abortion relieves parents of that responsibility and prevents this outcome. Parents don’t owe their children anything, and children don’t owe their parents anything.
(Amaro)
Parents don’t owe their children anything […].
Yes they do. They are responsible for bringing a helpless being into the world who depends on them.
#130 · Dennis Hackethal, 4 months agoIt’s not right to force a parent to take care of a child they didn’t want. The result is often tragic. Abortion relieves parents of that responsibility and prevents this outcome. Parents don’t owe their children anything, and children don’t owe their parents anything.
(Amaro)
The result is often tragic. Abortion relieves parents of that responsibility and prevents this outcome.
Adoption
#130 · Dennis Hackethal, 4 months agoIt’s not right to force a parent to take care of a child they didn’t want. The result is often tragic. Abortion relieves parents of that responsibility and prevents this outcome. Parents don’t owe their children anything, and children don’t owe their parents anything.
(Amaro)
A parent facing the consequences of his/her actions isn’t “force”.
It’s not right to force a parent to take care of a child they didn’t want. The result is often tragic. Abortion relieves parents of that responsibility and prevents this outcome. Parents don’t owe their children anything, and children don’t owe their parents anything.
(Amaro)
I agree that a non-aborted child’s quality of life matters. For that reason, I think the process of giving a newborn child up for adoption should be as easy as possible. I don’t think killing an unborn baby who may as well already be a person and thus have rights is the right way to prevent him having a bad life. Like, don’t punish an unborn baby for having bad parents.#125 · Dennis Hackethal, 4 months agoA non-aborted child’s quality of life matters, too. One benefit of allowing abortion at any time is that, if a mother decides not to abort despite having had ample opportunity to do so, she is definitely responsible for the child’s wellbeing. Then she can’t blame lawmakers or having had too little time; she can’t evade accountability for the living child as easily.
(Dirk)
I agree that a non-aborted child’s quality of life matters. For that reason, I think the process of giving a newborn child up for adoption should be as easy as possible. I don’t think killing an unborn baby who may as well already be a person and thus have rights is the right way to prevent him having a bad life.
#125 · Dennis Hackethal, 4 months agoA non-aborted child’s quality of life matters, too. One benefit of allowing abortion at any time is that, if a mother decides not to abort despite having had ample opportunity to do so, she is definitely responsible for the child’s wellbeing. Then she can’t blame lawmakers or having had too little time; she can’t evade accountability for the living child as easily.
(Dirk)
Blaming the birth on lawmakers or on having had too little time is already a lame excuse if a woman has six weeks to figure out whether she’s pregnant. That’s enough time for a conscientious person. And whose actions resulted in pregnancy? Not the lawmakers’.
#114 · Dennis Hackethal, 4 months agoIt’s arguably a sexually active woman’s responsibility to monitor whether she’s pregnant.
If it weren’t her responsibility, then a burden would fall on the baby, which can’t be right because the baby only exists because of the mother’s choices.
Home pregnancy tests are affordable and reliable. According to https://health.clevelandclinic.org/how-early-can-you-tell-if-you-are-pregnant, “[h]ome pregnancy tests can detect pregnancy just two weeks after ovulation”. So there’s plenty of time.
A non-aborted child’s quality of life matters, too. One benefit of allowing abortion at any time is that, if a mother decides not to abort despite having had ample opportunity to do so, she is definitely responsible for the child’s wellbeing. Then she can’t blame lawmakers or having had too little time; she can’t evade accountability for the living child as easily.
(Dirk)
#116 · Dennis Hackethal, 4 months agoWhile the fetus is attached to the mother, it’s her property and she is free to do what she wants with it. Therefore, she can abort the baby at any time prior to being born and the umbilical being but, at which point the baby is an independent person.
(John)
Building on #123, cutting the umbilical does not make the baby an “independent person”. The baby still depends on the parents physically, financially, emotionally, etc.
#116 · Dennis Hackethal, 4 months agoWhile the fetus is attached to the mother, it’s her property and she is free to do what she wants with it. Therefore, she can abort the baby at any time prior to being born and the umbilical being but, at which point the baby is an independent person.
(John)
Physical (in)dependence isn’t a valid yardstick because it does not confer rights. The only thing that confers rights to an organism is personhood.
#120 · Dennis Hackethal, 4 months agoThere’s ‘evictionism’: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evictionism
I like this view because it sidesteps the issue of personhood and at what point it arises. It says you’re free to evict anything, person or not. We don’t how creativity (ie the universal-explainer software mentioned in #119) works so this is handy.
(Amaro)
Building on #121, a baby is not a “trespasser”. A pregnant woman ‘invited’ the baby into her womb. Unless she was raped, in which case the rapist ‘put’ the baby there. But the baby is blameless either way and thus can’t be likened to a trespasser.
#120 · Dennis Hackethal, 4 months agoThere’s ‘evictionism’: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evictionism
I like this view because it sidesteps the issue of personhood and at what point it arises. It says you’re free to evict anything, person or not. We don’t how creativity (ie the universal-explainer software mentioned in #119) works so this is handy.
(Amaro)
The linked Wikipedia article says:
Evictionists view a woman's womb as her property and an unwanted fetus as a "trespasser or parasite", even while lacking the will to act. They argue that a pregnant woman has the right to evict a fetus from her body since she has no obligation to care for a trespasser.
If this is an accurate description of the evictionist view, it strikes me as deeply flawed.
A pregnant woman does have an obligation to care for her fetus (at least once it’s a person). She took an action which resulted in the fetus’s existence.
#107 · Dennis Hackethal, 4 months agoI’m pro abortion but I have some pro life in me.
Banning the abortion of a zygote seems ridiculous. So does aborting a seven-month-old fetus.
Why not go with: you can abort until the nervous system develops.
Clearly, a fetus without a nervous system can’t be sentient and thus can’t be a person, right? And as long as it’s not a person, it doesn’t have any rights.
According to https://www.neurosciencefoundation.org/post/brain-development-in-fetus, “an embryo’s brain and nervous system begin to develop at around the 6-week mark.” And: “At as early as 8 weeks (about 2 months), you can see physical evidence of the brain working (the electric impulses) as ultrasounds show the embryo moving.”
There’s ‘evictionism’: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evictionism
I like this view because it sidesteps the issue of personhood and at what point it arises. It says you’re free to evict anything, person or not. We don’t how creativity (ie the universal-explainer software mentioned in #119) works so this is handy.
(Amaro)
Because personhood is not the result of something physical but of having and running the right software.
Specifically, it’s the universal-explainer software David Deutsch outlines in his book The Beginning of Infinity.
This software presumably can’t run in the baby before its nervous system is formed to some sufficient degree. At the earliest, it’s when the nervous system reaches computational universality. (Does anyone know when that is?)
#107 · Dennis Hackethal, 4 months agoI’m pro abortion but I have some pro life in me.
Banning the abortion of a zygote seems ridiculous. So does aborting a seven-month-old fetus.
Why not go with: you can abort until the nervous system develops.
Clearly, a fetus without a nervous system can’t be sentient and thus can’t be a person, right? And as long as it’s not a person, it doesn’t have any rights.
According to https://www.neurosciencefoundation.org/post/brain-development-in-fetus, “an embryo’s brain and nervous system begin to develop at around the 6-week mark.” And: “At as early as 8 weeks (about 2 months), you can see physical evidence of the brain working (the electric impulses) as ultrasounds show the embryo moving.”
Why would a fetus without a nervous system not be a person?