16th February 2020, 7:38 AM
https://www.zootopianewsnetwork.com/2017...comic.html
Obviously the comic is hilarious and the title of this thread is tongue-in-cheek. I've been firmly pro-choice for years, and still am, but I WILL say that after listening to pro-life arguments over the years, I'm more sympathetic to their claims. Were there not the factor of bodily autonomy and the burden of pregnancy, I might be more inclined to agree with the idea of "do we truly know when life begins, and is it up to us to snuff out that life?"
That's the fundamental question, isn't it? When DOES life begin? Is life defined by a heartbeat? Seems to me like the heartbeat argument is spurious. Why exactly would heartbeat imply life and sentience? It's simply a mechanism to distribute oxygen and nutrients to an assortmant of organs. It seems to me that higher brain function is a better descriptor of whatever the hell a "soul" is, without getting into the distracting and problematic idea of souls to begin with. Keeping in mind that independent of the idea of "souls" (which is religious/implies life after death, and is irrelevant in this discussion), we can all agree that all life is sacred, and that in particular as liberals, we ought to be doing everything we can to promote the well-being of every living human, including robust social programs to feed, clothe, shelter, and provide health care to every citizen.
So the heartbeat argument is spurious for another reason. In 2-4 weeks after conception, we can detect a functional "heart" beat, pumping the fetus's own circulatory system. Of course, recent developments in science demonstrate that this is not a completely formed heart, but a primitive version that still hasn't fully developed. So making the claim that "the baby has its own heart" is less robust than we might think.
Let's get back to brain activity. Can science determine whether a fetus is a life based on how advanced its brain is? Does this mean that patients who are comatose, with little-to-no detectable brain activity, are not alive? More to the point, does this render their life no longer sacred? Are they no longer afforded the dignity and sanctity of a functioning human being? How much brain activity can make this distinction? What about those with major brain disabilities, low IQs, or brain damage?
Can science answer these questions? Using science to determine what life is worthy of dignity has problematic backgrounds. In the name of science, eugenics has been advocated, determining that humanity as a whole would progress if we culled out races that were considered of natural lower intelligence. Many prominent thinkers (possibly including Darwin?) believed that "negroids" were naturally inferior than whites, and used junk science (now debunked) to justify their attitudes towards Africans.
Keep in mind that I fall back on the sanctity of bodily autonomy, and that women have inherent reproductive rights (as important as any other civil right). I may be projecting, but I assume the same is true of the other (all 4 of you) other regular posters up in this bitch. So I think it's interesting to explore alternatives to what we believe and contemplate them. I'll further assume that no one here believes that life begins at conception, that terminating first-trimester fetuses is cool and good, and that terminating a late-term pregnancy (let's go extreme and say 2 weeks before delivery) is bad and and wrong.
So exactly where do we make that cut-off? Noted obnoxious-but-admittedly-sometimes-effective-rhetoricist Ben Shapiro makes the argument that you can't rigorously define that cut off. Let's say we define it as viability outside the womb, which I think is a good starting point. Does this mean that simply a week or a day before we meet this criteria, it's suddenly okay to abort the fetus? What's so important about that one week? You can continue moving the goal posts until you come up with a window so small, that it's better to simply disallow abortions altogether. Maybe life really DOES begin at conception? (Narrator: it doesn't.)
But the goal posts thing is obnoxious because you can also apply it to other gray areas of a timeline, such as the age of consent. Hey, it was a week before her 18th birthday, so is it really statutory rape? Come on, she's 17, she's ready, you can't tell me that one year would make a difference, she's mature for her age, a lot of them are having sex by 17 anyway so who cares? And come to think of it, 16 isn't that far away from 17, etc.
So we can agree that a cut-off is important somewhere. But there's always the lingering doubt: can we TRULY be the judges of whether life is real and legitimate at any point during the pregnancy? Isn't it better to err on the side of caution? Isn't it more compassionate to assume that the fetus's life is as important as any of our own? Isn't it problematic to "play God", even if you don't believe in such an entity?
DISCUSS, or just laugh at the Zootopia comic.
Obviously the comic is hilarious and the title of this thread is tongue-in-cheek. I've been firmly pro-choice for years, and still am, but I WILL say that after listening to pro-life arguments over the years, I'm more sympathetic to their claims. Were there not the factor of bodily autonomy and the burden of pregnancy, I might be more inclined to agree with the idea of "do we truly know when life begins, and is it up to us to snuff out that life?"
That's the fundamental question, isn't it? When DOES life begin? Is life defined by a heartbeat? Seems to me like the heartbeat argument is spurious. Why exactly would heartbeat imply life and sentience? It's simply a mechanism to distribute oxygen and nutrients to an assortmant of organs. It seems to me that higher brain function is a better descriptor of whatever the hell a "soul" is, without getting into the distracting and problematic idea of souls to begin with. Keeping in mind that independent of the idea of "souls" (which is religious/implies life after death, and is irrelevant in this discussion), we can all agree that all life is sacred, and that in particular as liberals, we ought to be doing everything we can to promote the well-being of every living human, including robust social programs to feed, clothe, shelter, and provide health care to every citizen.
So the heartbeat argument is spurious for another reason. In 2-4 weeks after conception, we can detect a functional "heart" beat, pumping the fetus's own circulatory system. Of course, recent developments in science demonstrate that this is not a completely formed heart, but a primitive version that still hasn't fully developed. So making the claim that "the baby has its own heart" is less robust than we might think.
Let's get back to brain activity. Can science determine whether a fetus is a life based on how advanced its brain is? Does this mean that patients who are comatose, with little-to-no detectable brain activity, are not alive? More to the point, does this render their life no longer sacred? Are they no longer afforded the dignity and sanctity of a functioning human being? How much brain activity can make this distinction? What about those with major brain disabilities, low IQs, or brain damage?
Can science answer these questions? Using science to determine what life is worthy of dignity has problematic backgrounds. In the name of science, eugenics has been advocated, determining that humanity as a whole would progress if we culled out races that were considered of natural lower intelligence. Many prominent thinkers (possibly including Darwin?) believed that "negroids" were naturally inferior than whites, and used junk science (now debunked) to justify their attitudes towards Africans.
Keep in mind that I fall back on the sanctity of bodily autonomy, and that women have inherent reproductive rights (as important as any other civil right). I may be projecting, but I assume the same is true of the other (all 4 of you) other regular posters up in this bitch. So I think it's interesting to explore alternatives to what we believe and contemplate them. I'll further assume that no one here believes that life begins at conception, that terminating first-trimester fetuses is cool and good, and that terminating a late-term pregnancy (let's go extreme and say 2 weeks before delivery) is bad and and wrong.
So exactly where do we make that cut-off? Noted obnoxious-but-admittedly-sometimes-effective-rhetoricist Ben Shapiro makes the argument that you can't rigorously define that cut off. Let's say we define it as viability outside the womb, which I think is a good starting point. Does this mean that simply a week or a day before we meet this criteria, it's suddenly okay to abort the fetus? What's so important about that one week? You can continue moving the goal posts until you come up with a window so small, that it's better to simply disallow abortions altogether. Maybe life really DOES begin at conception? (Narrator: it doesn't.)
But the goal posts thing is obnoxious because you can also apply it to other gray areas of a timeline, such as the age of consent. Hey, it was a week before her 18th birthday, so is it really statutory rape? Come on, she's 17, she's ready, you can't tell me that one year would make a difference, she's mature for her age, a lot of them are having sex by 17 anyway so who cares? And come to think of it, 16 isn't that far away from 17, etc.
So we can agree that a cut-off is important somewhere. But there's always the lingering doubt: can we TRULY be the judges of whether life is real and legitimate at any point during the pregnancy? Isn't it better to err on the side of caution? Isn't it more compassionate to assume that the fetus's life is as important as any of our own? Isn't it problematic to "play God", even if you don't believe in such an entity?
DISCUSS, or just laugh at the Zootopia comic.