A secular debate about abortion

[lordpasternack]

There's playing devil's advocate and there's plain trolling, Charlou…

If I were to give him the benefit of the doubt that it was indeed some little charade he was playing, and not his true colours - I can happily say that I DO find it just as obnoxious when feminists say with glee that men should just keep it in their pants if they don't want parental responsibility that bad, as when "masculists" say women should just keep their legs shut for the same reason. Both statements are obnoxious and disparaging - but the constraints of biology are such that women will always have the privilege of making others biological parents against their wishes… A woman could pick up a freshly post-coital condom, inseminate herself, have a baby, and arguably hound the male down and compel him to provide. I vaguely remember hearing that there had actually been a test case once involving just that scenario. I wouldn't enjoy reading about it…

And nor do you need to tell me that men also get a complete raw deal these days during separation and divorce. It took my mother being an incapable alcoholic before my dad even got a look-in. You don't need to fucking tell me that there are ways in which gender inequality cuts both ways, and that sometimes some feminists should blush - and there's no need to troll as an obnoxious male chauvinist to somehow demonstrate that.

[charlou]

I think it's possible to disagree with views expressed on this topic, without taking them personally. Use of the term "slut" for example: some might categorise my behaviour that way, but that says more about their mindset, than my behaviour, IMO.

[charlou]

Lordpasternack, the mods have discussed two of your posts* and have agreed some of your comments overstep our guidelines. This is a reminder to please refrain from personalising your comments, and stick to debating the topic.

* The posts discussed:

http://rationalia.com/forum/viewtopic.p ... 85#p752385

http://rationalia.com/forum/viewtopic.p ... 81#p752681

[lordpasternack]

I was using the term ironically, Charlou. "Punish the sluts" is a common rhetorical phrase used in debate…

Of course I don't believe that women deserve any more bad rap for however many or few sexual partners or sex sessions they engage in than men do. I don't believe members of any gender should be railed against for whatever consensual sexual activities they get up to in private - nor judged on the merits of other individuals who just happen to have the same genitalia and sex chromosomes as they do.

(And the latter is something that also cuts quite a few ways. I'd say that yet another example of male privilege in society is that they don't generally have to suffer so much from certain bands of outspoken obnoxious, self-righteous bastards trying to tell them what is demeaning to them and their gender, and that certain things should be banned, rather than to allow you to make certain decisions as an adult, and have industries properly regulated to ensure that they are filled with consenting autonomous adults.)

[charlou]

I was using the term ironically, Charlou. "Punish the sluts" is a common rhetorical phrase used in debate…

I know.

[lordpasternack]

Lordpasternack, the mods have discussed two of your posts* and have agreed some of your comments overstep our guidelines. This is a reminder to please refrain from personalising your comments, and stick to debating the topic.

* The posts discussed:

http://rationalia.com/forum/viewtopic.p ... 85#p752385

http://rationalia.com/forum/viewtopic.p ... 81#p752681

I agree that the first was a borderline ad-hom - but the second was a pretty robust attack of Seth's ideas and manner of discussion. Either way, I'm not too fussed. I don't think I've ever come close to transgressing the forum guidelines (or if I have, it was longer ago than I recall) - but there are times where I think provocation should partly indulge it, and I'm not quite Spock-like and intellectually masochistic enough to force myself to be remotely congenial to someone who is either deliberately being inflammatory (if you're playing devil's advocate, you can offer the basic courtesy of saying so), or frankly deserves my reaction at face-value, because it's what they really think and who they really are.

[Seth]

Seth wrote: "indeed, and deliberately so, because it confuses the issue. The essence of that consideration is who is it that created the obligation to support the child? In the case of a woman who chooses to keep a child unwanted by the father, it's the mother who has created that obligation without the consent of the father."
...
So in that case, a man may avoid the consequences of one-half responsibility for conceiving a child he doesn't want by refusing any kind of support, but a woman
You are blatant here in favoring the rights of men over women in this scenario. I pity your sexual partners, and I am deeply grateful you aren't in charge of American reproductive policy.

Now that was unnecessarily snarky and mean. This is an abstract philosophical debate, please try to maintain a degree of debatorial objectivity and refrain from personalizing it too much. Thanks.

Seth, I'm also curious why you so devoutly pursue the rights of a human being before it's born, but disclaim any responsibility for that same human being after it's born.

What makes you say that? I'm merely arguing that the burden of responsibility be placed where it should be placed and not shifted wrongfully to others just to suit the political desires of radical feminists.

I'm sorry you see my comment as unnecessarily snarky and mean-- I was not impugning you as a sexual partner per se; I was expressing my pity for women who would want to sleep with a man who has so little respect for their autonomy.

And as for this debate being abstract, well, it's easy for a man who claims no responsibility for the results of his sexual behavior to see this subject in an abstract way. When my body is on the line because of societal views or public policy, I tend to take it personally.
I'm sorry I seemed mean.

Hm. That sounds rather like you are impugning me as a sexual partner, theoretically softened with an insult to my sexual partners and their judgment, hypothetically excused by your inability to remain rational, all based on your erroneous attributions of unfavorable personal characteristics to a person you don't know in a forum whose entire purpose is rational debate. Something of a backhanded and weak apology, I'd say.

That you take such things "personally" does not mean that they were intended to be personal or that it's rational, much less adult, to assume that they were. This is what I mean by "maintaining a degree of debatorial objectivity." As Aristotle said, "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." Where, one wonders, does that leave you?

That being said, if that was an apology, if an inept one, I accept and forgive you, because that's the kind of guy I actually am.

Why are women the sole bearers of responsibility for the undesired results of sexual congress?

Because it's their womb, over which they have plenary and absolute control.

i.e.-- why are women either required to carry children they don't want, when a man does want them, or required to be the sole support of a child for life, if a man doesn't want it? I still don't understand how this is placing responsibility where it should be.

In the case of the former, it's largely a matter of "you should have thought of that before you had sex." Like jumping off cliffs without parachutes, some decisions have permanent, life-changing impacts. That's a good reason to make only good decisions about having sex so as not to create an obligation to others that ties one to gestating a child. As to the latter, the same rationale applies. It's your womb, use it properly and accept the consequences of your actions without blaming others.

[Hermit]

A human zygote is no more valuable than a zygote of any other species of multicellular eukaryote...

"Value" is an inherently subjective thing.

And there's no escaping the fact that, all the way during pregnancy, the foetus is scarcely sentient and questionably a person…

Again, this is not an objective determination...

That being the case, my argument that contractual obligations can bind a woman to specific performance stands as valid.

Orly? I suppose you can back the validity of the contractual obligations, as you define them here, by means of some objective standard? You know, the sort the lack of which apparently makes Lordpasternack's statements invalid in your eyes?

Methinks, at least one aspect of the Dunning-Kruger effect has been amply illustrated here.

What do you mean "objective standard?" The argument was over value, and I stated that value is not objective, it is subjective, and in the case of the value of a zygote or fetus, it's set by society to one degree or another.

My point was precisely that there is no objective standard - that the argument is over a value judgment. This much we are in agreement with. It's just when I asked you what makes your proposed contractual obligation scheme so different, you left the field. Your proposed contract is just as encumbered with subjective values as any other opinions that have been offered in this thread, and I doubt this can be avoided.

Assuming that (so long as the sex act is consensual) both parties to the act ratify a contractual obligation through their consent, we may as well acknowledge that the parties to the contract do not participate on an equal footing, the critical difference being that the man's role could be described as akin to putting coins in the vending machine. Unlike the woman he does not act as a live incubator for the life that may be created in the process. Your value judgment is that this has no bearing (sorry) on the contract. Mine (and almost everybody else's) is that that is does.

To adapt a couple of expressions of yours: A man doesn't have to submit, that's rather the entire point. He's completely free NOT to submit. But if he DOES submit, voluntarily, he undertakes certain contractual responsibilities. One of them is to acknowledge and accept the child bearer's right to decide what to do about the pregnancy. And, yes: it sucks to be a man. That's no reason to impose a burden on women. Life isn't fair.

[lordpasternack]

Like jumping off cliffs without parachutes, some decisions have permanent, life-changing impacts.

And like smoking in bed and causing a fire, sometimes they don't, because we get a chance to remedy the situation before it reaches a critical phase - and we usually aren't so seized by perverse priggishness and vindictiveness to state bluntly that the person should just "take responsibility"…

But no, Seth - let me sign up to your utopia, where everytime a woman gets pregnant, she has no choice but to keep the pregnancy to term, whether EITHER parent wants it, and both the biological mother and father are compelled to accept this "consequence of their actions" until it reaches adulthood. Lots of unplanned, unwanted children being raised in non-ideal conditions by parents who possibly weren't settled or ready to start or expand on their family. Lots of extra mouths to feed, on what might be tight budgets…

They should have thought of that beforehand? Is that really the base level of obnoxiousness that you reach when you start worshipping the supposed sanctity of the human genome - that strange magical, mystical, sacred arrangement of nucleotide bases - more than you respect real fucking human beings, with real fucking flesh and blood, and brains, and minds, and thoughts and feelings, and the real actual, developed children that are brought into the world to parents who never wished for them at any stage because you fancied that biological parents ought to "face that consequence"?

If you honestly hold that view, you're just despicable…

[Gawdzilla Sama]

(something went wrong with this post)

I blame Darwin.

[Seth]

Seth wrote: Consent to sex constitutes consent to the implied contract, which may include compulsory gestation. If you don't want to consent to that contract, don't have sex. It's just that simple.

hadespussercats wrote: And I'll repeat, "if there is inequity as a result of the fact that women have the children," then men who want children but can't find women to bear them are shit out of luck until medical science advances to meet their needs, as it has in the case of women who get abortions. Until then, well, as you say, cry me a river.

I'm with ya there.

How can you be "with [me] there," if you believe in "compulsory gestation"?

It may only be compelled as a part of enforcing a contract. As I said elsewhere, it may be preferable to have a contract that calls for money damages rather than duties of specific performance. That would remove any compulsion in such a sensitive situation.

But the essence of my argument is that because there is a contract that requires specific performance, it is reasonable to enforce that contract through the common methods of contractual enforcement, and it's not "compulsion" to do anything other than what was previously agreed to.

The thing I don't understand about your idea, Seth, is this whole "contract" idea. What contract? A contract in law is: offer, acceptance, consideration and a meeting of the minds or a manifestation of mutual assent.

If we were really talking about a contract, then if the parties don't discuss the issue of offspring and they just decide to move forward and have sex, there is no "contract" between the two. You're basically suggesting that by the mere fact of having sex without affirmatively specifying in advance that the man is to support any progeny that result from that sexual congress, then he will only have the obligation to care for the child if he affirmatively and expressly assents to that care after he is notified of the pregnancy and before the child is actually born.

The thing is - there is no express contract there. Nobody agreed to that, unless they happened to write something out or verbally agree to it ahead of the coitus.

Well, this is where we disagree. In the common law, one can ratify a contract through performance, and implied contracts are everywhere in the law. Go look at any warranty for a consumer good, which will disclaim any "implied warranty." A warranty is a contract. If I invite you onto my property, there exists an implied contract between you and I that I will take due care not to expose you to hazardous conditions, like an icy sidewalk. If you are a trespasser, however, my duty of care is "ordinary care," which means not to knowingly create a hazard that can harm you, but if you get injured by some ordinary hazard, I'm not responsible. These sorts of implied contracts can be based, as we see, in societal expectations and common practice.

My argument is that because pregnancy is a natural, ordinary, known and predictable (to some extent) result of sexual congress, society is free to acknowledge a common law contractual obligation on the part of both parties to the sex act in the interests of equity among the parties and in the interests of public policy, in the same way that the common law recognizes a contractual relationship between an invitee and a landowner, or a permitee and a landowner, or a trespasser and a landowner.

The entirety of tort law is in fact a whole series of implied contracts between members of society that require no oral or written ratification. The laws of libel, for example, apply whether or not the libelist has agreed to have his free speech constrained. The same is true of every other tort claim.

And as we see in current legal interpretations there IS a common law implied contract of specific performance that burdens both parents to support THE CHILD. The child has not made a contract, the parents have not necessarily orally or in writing agreed to support the child, and yet it is universally true that the courts enforce that contractual liability that is created when a child is born. This is an implied contract acknowledged by all civilized societies, and it proves my point that such contracts DO exist.

Because they do, there is no reason not to extend the logic further.

Contracts are always best if expressed orally or in writing, but it is not legally necessary in all cases to do so for a contract to be ratified.

[Gallstones]

• 

bbl, too much to read.

[Hermit]

Any dispute that the organism involved is of human origin, and is therefore "human?" I mean it's not a turtle or a chicken zygote, is it?

So, it's indisputably human.

And it has achieved "the quality or state of having existence."

Therefore, it is a "human being." Other definitions may also apply, such as "human life" or "human organism." But it's quintessentially a "human being."

A zygote that will develop into a human is no more a human than a zygote that will develop into a chicken is a chicken. If you keep saying otherwise I shall once again strike up this tune:

Every sperm is sacred.
Every sperm is great.
If a sperm is wasted,
God gets quite irate.

[lordpasternack]

These are Braeburn apples:



TRUE STORY.

[charlou]

Split some posts regarding interpretation of our guidelines to a new thread in In Depth (must be logged in to view): http://www.rationalia.com/forum/viewtop ... 27&t=23047