John Wilkes Booth

Take a close look at the criteria you're listing here. None of it really differentiates a fetus from other humans in all of their various (illegal to kill) forms and stages, other than the 'dependent on the connection to the mother' one. Of course, you still have to explain why the fetus not being independent makes it ok to kill.

As an aside, I think that the tendency to use terms like "lump of cells" points to an attempt at emotional detachment from the pro-choice angle. It's not a rational argument, just an attempt to dehumanize the thing we'd like to kill.

misspoptart

And you're the expert on killing, right John?

Guybrush

Take a good look at my post and you will see that I do. I also added "generally lacking in capacity to suffer for the decisions made by its mother". A person who has been born generally does have the capacity to suffer, emotionally, physically, socially. That is as long as they are of health. When people who have been in an accident are severly brain damaged to the point where people may call them vegetables, they are often taken off life support. The idea is that when it's just a body with no consciousness in it to feel neither pain, joy - perhaps even no perception of its environment - then it's okay to "kill".

In the present when the decision to abort is made, the fetus generally has more in common with that braindead person on life support than it does a grown, healthy human with regular human rights. I think the distinction between having the ability to feel, think, reflect and perceive - or not - is an important one and it's also one widely used in other situations. As a moral idea, it is widely accepted. F.ex a vegetarian may think it is better to kill a plant than it is a pig because the plant suffers less from getting killed.

Should we protect the "interests" of the fetus (it has no interests) or the interests of the mother (she does)? Of the two, the one who can feel, reflect, perceive and so on is the mother and so it is her interests/rights we should look after.

How is it not rational? It's pretty much calling it what it is without getting tangled up in future possibilities and human emotions. How is it more rational to portray it as a person with thoughts, feelings, perceptions, life experiences, etc. when it isn't?

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John Wilkes Booth

Good point, but I honestly don't think that the capacity for suffering works as a consistent criteria either. Would it be alright to kill somebody if the death was quick, painless and unexpected? If not, then I don't see what the capacity for suffering has to do with the distinction between that scenario and killing a fetus.
There is of course one key difference between a fetus and a vegetable: the fetus (if healthy) is on course to wake up. If we knew for a fact that someone in a coma would wake up after 9 months, would it still be alright to kill them?
That's a hazy line to draw, though. Do you think newborns possess all of those qualities to the same extant as a 5 year old? If not, isn't it still equally wrong to kill both?

edit - Interesting article on the topic: http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...iousness-arise
I'm inclined to agree with you here, for practical reasons. I still think we're side stepping the moral question to a certain extent.
It's not rational because while the phrase is technically correct, it's too reductionist. Like Lateralus pointed out, that phrase applies just as much to us as it does to an embryo.

It's also not rational to give a fetus the attributes you just listed (thoughts, feelings, etc). I don't see this as the obvious alternative to "just a lump of cells" though.

Guybrush

It would be the best way to kill someone, I'm sure most will agree. If you were convicted for it, you would probably do less time than if you had tortured someone to death. But in harming another adult human being, you are also hurting the ones whose happiness is, in part, dependent on that person. In addition, the murder may scare or otherwise discomfort a large number of people and so your action harms society by hurting people in it and even if you are not causing physical pain as you murder, you are most likely still causing a lot of suffering.

If you abort a fetus, you cause suffering to the mother who asked for it, is ready to take the moral responsibility, and probably thinks she's getting the best possible outcome, even if it's not painless for her.

Actually, I still think of someone asleep or in a coma as someone who has the capacity to care about their life and all it entails. The capacity is there, even if it's not being used. If you are asleep, you still care about things in your life, even though they may not be in your thoughts right then. If you're dreaming, you may be dreaming of someone you love.

A "lump of cells" without a developed nervous system doesn't have that capacity.

The more suffering it causes, the greater the crime. Generally speaking, I do think it is worse to kill a five year old than a one year old. Let's say their family loved them equally much and suffered equally at the loss of both. If the five year old suffers more from being killed than the one year old, then killing the five year old will have caused a little more suffering, even if the extra amount of suffering is miniscule compared to the total suffering added up across friends and relatives.

So generally speaking, I believe murders of five year olds on average causes a little more suffering than the murder of one year olds. A five year old on average has more relations which will suffer. But practically speaking, both crimes are so heinous that the difference doesn't matter much.

I disagree .. Well, of course it is reductionist. Describing something in that way using a few words always will be. But I think describing adult humans as a lump of cells is more reductionist than calling an early embryo a lump of cells. After all, humans are much larger and contain cells which are highly differentiated. We contain bones and highly organized and intricate structures, more so than any fetus.

If you want to mix personality, thoughts and dreams into it, those are also reduced when describing adults as lumps of cells, but not when describing fetuses as such as these things have yet to develop, if they would at all.

Let's forget about the thoughts and stuff for a sec because what I really think of as important is the capacity to suffer. I think there are many ways to suffer, not just physically, which is why I've mentioned stuff like an ability to reflect upon things. If you love your children, being separated from them hurts you and so your capacity for love also becomes a capacity for suffering.

So if we reduce all that to a simple capacity for suffering, that's really what I'm interested in and that's where I think fetuses are lacking. I also think there are few people whose happiness or suffering depends on a fetus compared to the average child or adult and so removing one does less harm in the world than when removing a born human being.

My thoughts are a mix between a utilitarian wish for the best outcome happiness / suffering wise, but I also think that having a choice to abort generally gives good consequences for society. As I wrote earlier, happy families with healthy children. Parents will have more freedom to have healthy children when they want them and can support them. If you force them to become parents at a time when they don't want them, can't support them or when the child would be so sick they'd rather not have it, of course they may in time become a fully functional, happy family. But I think on average, the families people make will be a little happier if they get to choose for themselves whether to make them / add to them or not.

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butthead aka 216

i separated this from the rest of the quote because this is how i feel. the part about a sick baby really strikes me because it is true that some ppl would rather just flat out not have the baby. and many people want to stand on their moral mountain and gasp and say 'omg how could they not want a child??' but in all reality i think most people would feel the same given they wer ein that situation.

actually same goes for any abortion. i always feel like that if everyone was placed in a situation where abortion was an option then maybe they would feel differnet about it. because its very easy to make statements from a distance and make yourself feel like you ar emorally superior. like i said i had a girl get an abortion awhile ago and you just have to think practically and logically and try to remove emotion as best as possible.

John Wilkes Booth

So theoretically speaking, if you were to kill someone in that way who was a loner with no connections then there's nothing wrong with that as long as nobody finds out.
So then if someone is in a coma and there's no telling whether they will ever come out of it then it's still wrong to kill them because they might still have some self-awareness through dreams or whatever?
Fair enough. But following that line of thinking to its conclusion, it would be a significantly more heinous crime to kill a popular adult than a neglected or unloved child.
It is more reductionist, my only point was that both are reductionist. The fact that it's a lump of cells isn't really important - the reason people care about the lump of cells is because it's a growing human.
I agree with all of that. The utilitarian logic for supporting abortion is clear. It's only when I apply that same logic to other scenarios that inconsistencies start to surface.

Basically, utilitarian morality can easily give rational reasons for supporting abortion. What I am skeptical about is its ability to give a complete and consistent account of why we place such value on human life, which is honestly the only reason pro-lifers care about abortion in the first place.