25 points

There is a good case that abortion is morally impermissible – or at least there is significant moral uncertainty.

it’s actually kind of rare that one of these loses me in the first sentence (cause TESCREALs don’t know about brevity so usually their point is buried under an avalanche of words) but here we are. the only people who can’t imagine a morally permissible abortion just don’t give a fuck about women

permalink
report
reply
15 points

Moral uncertainty is reason to become pro-life? We do morally uncertain things every day. That’s no reason to legislate.

permalink
report
parent
reply
14 points
*

“Put another way, even if one believes abortion is permissible, it likely remains a comparable problem to any problem of infant mortality – but with even more lost life-years, and occurring on a much larger scale than infant mortality”.

Well, it isn’t comparable, because abortion prevents forced birth, and forced birth is a form of torture. As indeed is being forced to care for a child in poverty.

“Other responses to Thomson highlight various other disanalogies between pregnancy and the violinist situation: In most cases of abortion, the woman is responsible for both the child’s neediness and their intimate biological relationship with the woman – unlike the violinist case. Other responses to Thomson highlight various other disanalogies between pregnancy and the violinist situation: In most cases of abortion, the woman is responsible for both the child’s neediness and their intimate biological relationship with the woman – unlike the violinist case.”

Bit of a bold statement, and likely untrue. It is impossible for a woman to know even when having unprotected sex if it will result in a pregnancy. Contraceptive technologies fail. And what about the responsibility of the father? It takes two.

“n the case of abortion, the woman is the mother of the child[6] – unlike the violinist case.[7]”

Ok, this is meaningless.

“The violinist is in an unnatural situation and being hooked up to the stranger is an unnatural position – by contrast, the fetus is exactly where she is supposed to be in her ‘natural habitat’.”

Not in my womb, it isn’t, motherfucker!

Quite a lot of pregnancies end early in miscarriage.

permalink
report
parent
reply
12 points

Well, it isn’t comparable, because abortion prevents forced birth, and forced birth is a form of torture. As indeed is being forced to care for a child in poverty.

Fun fact, abortion also prevents infanticide. Prolifers either don’t realise how pragmatic humans are, or are really into killing actual babies.

permalink
report
parent
reply
10 points

“6)deaths from abortion are a function of infrastructure, not law: pro-life countries/regions with good healthcare (e.g. Chile, Poland, Malta, South Korea (until recently), Ireland (until recently), North Africa, UAE, and almost all of Europe pre-legalisation) have very few, in many cases zero, deaths from abortion .”

Despite our good (?) healthcare, there was a high-profile death due to lack of abortion access in Ireland: Savita Halappanavar. And that’s despite the fact that from 1996 (?) to 2018 abortion was legally permitted to “protect the life of the mother”, if a panel of doctors agreed her life was in danger. In addition to Savita’s death there was a case in which a raped, pregnant teenager became suicidal, but because doctors did not agree she should have an abortion, she was committed and put on suicide watch. How’s that for harm? Women who travelled abroad for abortions also experienced significant medical and psychological harm as a result: consider the case of A, B and C vs. Ireland.

permalink
report
parent
reply
10 points
Deleted by creator
permalink
report
parent
reply
8 points

“While there is (in my view) a commendable case for opposing abortion (an action I leave intentionally broad/vague)”

Yeah you would want to, wouldn’t you. Don’t want any specifics to crack your veneer of moral righteousness.

permalink
report
parent
reply
21 points

I see the former evangelical Christians who were converted into EAs are busy redpilling themselves back into their original beliefs

permalink
report
reply
11 points

@lobotomy42 @dgerard Well eventually, because of roko’s basilisk and on a long enough timeline I am bored of this argument let’s just do awful things and justify them later like we used to.

Such lovely people. Ugh.

permalink
report
parent
reply
3 points

@lobotomy42 @cstross boosted even though I never really understood the red pill blue pill idiocy.

permalink
report
parent
reply
5 points

@MikeStok @lobotomy42 It’s a reference to a scene in “The Matrix”.

permalink
report
parent
reply
21 points
*

On one hand it’s encouraging that the comments are mostly pushing back.

On the other hand a lot of them do so on the basis of a disagreement over the moral calculus of how many chickens a first trimester fetus should be worth, and whether that makes pushing for abortion bans inefficient compared to efforts to reduce the killing of farm animals for food.

Which, while pants-on-head bizarre in any other context, seems fairly normal by EA standards.

permalink
report
reply
11 points
Deleted by creator
permalink
report
parent
reply
19 points

Gee, one might almost think that EA was hostile to women.

permalink
report
reply
19 points

I shouldn’t have to say this, but reporting an instance admin’s post for a joke you didn’t understand is incredibly bannable

permalink
report
reply
13 points

power trip unit testing PASSED

thank you for flying Awfulflot

permalink
report
parent
reply
8 points

“babe wake up, new mod format just dropped”

permalink
report
parent
reply
6 points

EA plus ‘nothing to do with AI’ lol. And then only adding pipe bombs as an afterthought/sidenote.

permalink
report
parent
reply

SneerClub

!sneerclub@awful.systems

Create post

Hurling ordure at the TREACLES, especially those closely related to LessWrong.

AI-Industrial-Complex grift is fine as long as it sufficiently relates to the AI doom from the TREACLES. (Though TechTakes may be more suitable.)

This is sneer club, not debate club. Unless it’s amusing debate.

[Especially don’t debate the race scientists, if any sneak in - we ban and delete them as unsuitable for the server.]

Community stats

  • 184

    Monthly active users

  • 333

    Posts

  • 7.9K

    Comments