Abortion
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With an account, you can revise, criticize, and comment on ideas.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)
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.
Evictionism 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)
It does if you caused them to be there to begin with.
(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)
That’s different because the person in your example made the choice to show up, whereas an unborn baby made no such choice.
(Danny)
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).
Where 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.
Not a doctor but AFAIK we already have medical knowledge about when physical dependency in particular ends. For example, doctors will sometimes deliver a baby prematurely when continued pregnancy would be dangerous for the mother.
(Danny)
When developing rules for society, we run into many arbitrary lines. More important than drawling the lines correctly is retaining the means to redraw them over time.
(Logan)