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Many suggestions around abortion can be evaluated by asking at whose expense? Whenever the answer is at the baby’s, something is wrong, since the baby did not make any decisions and thus cannot be held responsible.

A lot of the problems around abortion will go away with better technology. (Dirk)

There should be a pill for men, too. That would really shift the power dynamic, too. (Martin)

It’s possible creativity, and with it, personhood and rights, only comes online after birth. For example, the universal-explainer program may be partly memetic, as David Deutsch argues in The Beginning of Infinity. In which case creativity only comes online upon exposure to other people.

But that’s highly speculative. The program might as well be wholly genetic and start running before birth.

I don’t see why forgetting things that happened before age 3 is meaningful here.

Building on #164, rights do not depend on the presence of any specific skill or knowledge.

A child does not seem anything like a functionally complete person until somewhere between 9 to 15 months old.

Basing personhood on ‘functional completeness’ is fudging smarts and intelligence.

I use David Deutsch’s concept of the universal explainer.

(John)

How do you define personhood?

It would be gross and upsetting, though, so let’s settle for abortion up until the child can be delivered and adoption for any unwanted babies.

That’s an inversion of morals and emotions. The emotional response should come after you form a moral judgment, as a result of that judgment. Conversely, moral judgment shouldn’t be the result of an emotion.

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.

This mistake strikes me as an instance of the wider mistake of granting or withholding rights based on physical differences.

Once the fetus is a person, it can’t be property.

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)

We already have laws for how to deal with neglect.

(Danny)

Parents facing the consequences of their actions isn’t “force”.

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)

It matters because the abortion debate is largely about what rights (if any) an unborn baby has. Personhood determines those rights. Killing a person is morally (and legally) different from killing a non-person, so you need to know when personhood starts.

It’s true that you know personhood will start at some point as long as you don’t interfere, but this is for people who do want to interfere without committing a moral (or legal) crime.

Whenever a child may reach independence, it’s certainly well past pregnancy, so it’s not an issue wrt abortion.

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).

That’s different because the person in your example made the choice to show up, whereas an unborn baby made no such choice.

(Danny)

It does if you caused them to be there to begin with.

(Danny)

Evictionism doesn’t explain why personhood should be ignored.

(Danny)

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.

The result is often tragic. Abortion relieves parents of that responsibility and prevents this outcome.

Adoption

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.

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’.