PigLick on 3/7/2013 at 09:17
itt actual women post
has ttlg become such a brofest?
didnt realize
SubJeff on 3/7/2013 at 09:35
Quote Posted by Shayde
You weren't talking about dolphins that should listen to/ involve women, you meant men.
No, I meant the legal and scientific professionals and politicians that make these laws. They should listen to women as a group, regardless of other considerations like the specific expertise of the engaged women, because this issue only directly affects women.
Please god tell me you can understand this now. I can't really be any clearer
DDL on 3/7/2013 at 10:14
Quote Posted by Vivian
Remember I had this conversation with a colleague (proper genius-level scientist, one of the relatively few I've ever met). He said "yeah, I mean there has to be a limit, and development seems as sensible a basis as any. 1 year old sounds about right."
I'm with him. Hell, I'd possibly go as far as "as soon as it demonstrates self-awareness", so mirror tests for all!
Newborns are useless mewling bags of helplessness that we wouldn't think twice about ditching if we weren't fundamentally tweaked at the instinct level to go "D'awwwwwww" instead (and obviously there are very very strong selection pressures for exactly that response).
But ultimately, all I'm pitching in is "a few CCs of sperm, time, and money". I don't have to go through umpteen healthrisks pre and post partum (seriously, google postpartum and the dropdown list is ALL BAD THINGS), don't have to give up my bone calcium to build a tiny helpless person, don't have to basically turn myself into a glorified person-incubator. I really shouldn't be allowed to decide that someone else MUST do all those things. Saying "it's my kid as much as it is hers" misrepresents the relative contributions of both parties incredibly comprehensively.
So yeah: Dethtoll's on the money here, really.
Gryzemuis on 3/7/2013 at 10:29
I agree that abortion is 99% women's business. And that women should make the rules. And men should stay out of it.
(The remaining 1% is that the male partner is allowed to voice his opinion once, and then keep his mouth shut).
Harvester on 3/7/2013 at 10:35
Quote Posted by DDL
Newborns are useless mewling bags of helplessness
So usefulness is the primary criterion here? God, you people. I'm tempted to pull a Godwin here, and I'm starting to think there might be something to the "slippery slope" argument that pro-lifers use.
june gloom on 3/7/2013 at 10:44
Quote Posted by PigLick
itt actual women post
has ttlg become such a brofest?
didnt realize
Has been for years, which is why whenever a discussion about women's rights or gay rights or objectification or whatever comes up I start screaming at the monitor about halfway through the thread.
Vivian on 3/7/2013 at 10:45
Yeah, but if you want to put some kind of hard limit on when a person is a person, it's always going to be quite dodgy. There are criteria by which you could judge a new-born baby as non-conscious entity. If you're being objective about it, and the only counter-argument is an emotional one, then I have to admit I kinda see his point. I'm not saying we should kill babies, but I do think the only reason we don't is to do with our psychology rather than anything practical. So maybe I think the limit should be 'while it's still inside another person'? Yeah, fuck it. Why not. That's my opinion.
Dethy, you do seem to look for excuses to get excited about things like this though.
faetal on 3/7/2013 at 11:09
I agree with Dethtoll about 90%, but the 10% of doubt is made up by whether the opinion / law-making process should involve male medical professionals and medical scientists. If someone is an experienced expert in foetal development, the idea that they shouldn't be able to contribute to the discussion because they can't give birth is throwing the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak. I only really think the sperm donor should be part of the discussion if some part of the woman's decision is dependent on his assurance of support, e.g. "I won't have this kid if you won't stay with me and help raise it". So still the woman's decision.
My personal opinion is that abortion should be a-ok if the woman wants it, I think some counselling should be involved to ensure that the decision isn't due to any acute psychological factor (excluding rape) which will leave them scarred with regret, but other than that - the only limitation should be based on the science of the developmental process and that part is where both sexes can have equal input, based solely on their scientific knowledge of said process.
I have read some interesting studies on pain which suggest that pain as a mechanical process is meaningless without theory of mind, in which the context of the signals has meaning to the organism experiencing them. However, those studies were undertaken by a man, so I guess they're not admissable...
I think abortion is a great idea overall, we're multiplying way too fast as a species as it is and I'd sooner that people who don't want a child are given the option by as many routes as possible, else in future, we'll be having to restrict who can have kids
DDL on 3/7/2013 at 11:14
If you rationalise it as "death of conscious, self-aware beings (presumably capable of comprehending the terror of death) IS A BAD THING", then being pro-abortion and anti-death penalty (for example) is entirely consistent. I kinda regret the death of "life experience", I guess: a baby doesn't really have any clue what's going on: there's no "self" there yet. An adult, even one who may have done terrible things, has seen and done so much. Attack ships burning off the shoulder of orion, and stuff. All that being lost seems terrible to me, and all that being lost through deliberate action seems even worse.
Still "inside a person" is a nice boundary, though, because it's self-evidently a yes/no situation. It has caveats, of course: the usual criterion has been something along the lines of "can survive outside a human", but that gets increasingly tenuous as we get better at keeping premature babies alive.
But yeah, my policy'd be "agree with whatever the wife says".
(this is pretty good advice in general, incidentally)
faetal on 3/7/2013 at 11:19
Quote Posted by DDL
An adult, even one who may have done terrible things, has seen and done
so much. Attack ships burning off the shoulder of orion, and stuff. All that being lost seems terrible to me, and all that being lost through
deliberate action seems even worse.
This is why language sets us apart. Specifically the encoding of thoughts into symbols on storage media. A great deal of that experience isn't lost in its entirety. Shoulders of giants and all that.
