Starlight's view on infanticide - derail

[Cow Poke]

I'm pro-choice and am tolerant of a very late cut-off age for abortion... it apparently drives them nuts.

It doesn't drive me nuts at all - it just says a lot about the kind of person you are.

[Adrift]

"Yeah, I support infanticide up to a certain age. Ridiculous how much that freaks some people out."

Are you out of your flipping mind? Really?

I can't even comprehend how that makes any rational sense in your head. It's just... It's horrific. Absolutely horrific.

[KingsGambit]

I find it impossible to square the notion that personhood is not complete and concrete until the age of three... with my 23 month old who happily greets me with a wide grin and yells "Daddy!" when I get home from work every day.

You should be on a list somewhere.

[Adrift]

It doesn't drive me nuts at all - it just says a lot about the kind of person you are.

I actually find myself driven a bit nuts by it. I can't even imagine how any sane person can say or defend such a position. Just so wicked.

[Sea of red]

I'm pro-choice and am tolerant of a very late cut-off age for abortion... it apparently drives them nuts.

In the same way that pro-choice people don't write posts saying "I want more fetuses to die! Kill them all!", I likewise haven't ever in my life expressed a desire for more children to die. Like most pro-choice people, I think the number of abortions should be reduced by better sex education and contraceptive methods, and think that reducing the total number of abortions is a worthwhile goal. I don't want to see more abortions occur, I don't want to see more children die. I certainly don't want, myself, to ever kill any children or perform any abortions.

Like many pro-choice people, I lack a very strong opinion about exactly where the cut-off is for "abortions are valid up until this time" vs "not acceptable after this". I think the start of person-hood is a bit philosophically fuzzy. I would say that a reasonable cut-off would have to do with the presence of higher brain functions. But there's no clear exact point in time when that happens. It begins around the time when the blood flow to the brain begins, and reaches full fruition about the age of 3 when all the major higher brain functions are clearly present (reasoning, language, memory, object-recognition, intention, etc). I am not wedded or committed to any particular view about exactly when in that development process the cut-off should be or why.

I think the arguments of philosophers such as Peter Singer and others, that a society using this sort of brain-function definition might reasonably decide to set the cut-off point a short time after birth, seem reasonably valid, and I don't have a problem with the current policy in the Netherlands with regard to parents and doctors together agreeing to euthanize newborns who are suffering serious trauma. As such, I have repeatedly said in such discussions that I've got no inherent moral objection to the idea of it being legal under some circumstances for a post-birth abortion to be performed, with approval of parents and doctors, on an infant under the age of 1. I would feel slightly hypocritical I indeed I were to object to such a thing, since I regularly eat meat from animals more intelligent that a human child that age (although meat-eating is something I have been reconsidering lately for this reason, because am not happy about the deaths of these intelligent animals and I would be similarly unhappy about the deaths of very young children for the same reason).

This causes certain posters here (such as LPOT and others) to utterly lose it whenever they are reminded of this. In their creative reinterpretation I "want to kill children"... which causes a great deal of eye-rolling on my part. Tolerance of abortion on my part is creatively reinterpreted by them as an active desire on my part to want children to die, and creatively reinterpreted by them as wishing to myself be the one to kill them.

I think that is a far too late benchmark for abortions, Starlight.

After twenty to twenty-five weeks, fetuses begin to experience EEG patterns consistent with that of adults humans. The important thing is not intelligence but the capacity for an organism to suffer. Well, most fetuses after my cut off would be able to hear and even be able to have reflexes to outside trauma - meaning they can suffer. This is because the cerebral cortex becomes so developed that it's likely that consciousness is extremely likely. This means the fetus can feel both pain in response to outside forces, and IMHO thought sequences - though primitive they maybe.

So I think your line is WAY too late and incredibly inhumane in practice.

[Sea of red]

Okay... so 100 years in the future where they have invented a device to perform abortions instantly, without any kind of pain and suffering (or perhaps, say, they've found a way of giving the mother an anesthetic that gets transferred through to fetus and knocks it unconscious or something)... what is your new abortion cut-off and why?

You're not following me. The capacity for suffering is what makes it apart of the human race, not whether it suffers. Just like if a shoot you and it's painless it doesn't make it any less of a murder, destroying an infant with a 'painless' method does not make that any less murder. I realize you're not an evil individual - I really do. But you've mixed up a lot of different concepts and confused their relationships to each other.

[Starlight]

The capacity for suffering is what makes it apart of the human race, not whether it suffers.

Ok.

So what about animals? Do they deserve full and equal treatment with humans due to having the exact same capacity to suffer? Is killing a dog or a cow morally as bad as killing an adult human, and should the prison term be the same length?

[Sea of red]

I have no idea why you are talking about personhood in a thread about homophobia in the first place. But since you were, I decided to answer you. Deal with it.

I tell ya', I can't win for losing on this site lately.

LPOT brought up Starlights abortion views in this thread and I simply asked for someone to explain the whole context of it. Adrift quoted the posts in question, after which Starlight responded back to me, offering an elaboration on his views. I didn't bring any of this up. If you want to blame somebody for the derail, blame LPOT for once again, following Starlight into another thread to bait him into a conversation on this.

[Sparko]

I tell ya', I can't win for losing on this site lately.

LPOT brought up Starlights abortion views in this thread and I simply asked for someone to explain the whole context of it. Adrift quoted the posts in question, after which Starlight responded back to me, offering an elaboration on his views. I didn't bring any of this up. If you want to blame somebody for the derail, blame LPOT for once again, following Starlight into another thread to bait him into a conversation on this.

yeah I see. ok back to the topic then.

I don't have anything against gay people as people. My best friend's brother is gay and I think of him as a friend. I don't like his lifestyle and don't think it is moral. But I don't hate or fear the guy. I look at it just like I do any other immorality. I am against adultery too, for instance. I had a friend who was cheating on his wife. I didn't hate him, but I thought he was doing something wrong and immoral and I didn't want anything to do with it. I even told him he needed to stop and tell his wife what he had done. While he was cheating, I did not hang out with him, or participate in any activities where he was with this mistress. That doesn't mean I hated or feared him. I was not an "Adulterist-aphobe."

[Sea of red]

Do you mean from me?

What do you expect? I didn't start the trouble, Starlight didn't start the trouble. We both came into this thread on topic, until it was derailed by two others that seem unable to control themselves, and that point I figured I might as well use the opportunity to hear Starlight out for myself.

[lilpixieofterror]

LOL you want to teach Christians about persecution. That's hilarious.

Yep, the same guy that wants it to be legal to kill children wants to preach to Christians about morality.

[lilpixieofterror]

Because RTT and LPOT launched into ad hominems against Starlight about infanticide, which led to SoR and SL discussing personhood.

Yeah because somebody preaching about morality, while holding a position that it should be legal to kill children, shouldn't be called out for his immorality.

[lilpixieofterror]

I tell ya', I can't win for losing on this site lately.

LPOT brought up Starlights abortion views in this thread and I simply asked for someone to explain the whole context of it. Adrift quoted the posts in question, after which Starlight responded back to me, offering an elaboration on his views. I didn't bring any of this up. If you want to blame somebody for the derail, blame LPOT for once again, following Starlight into another thread to bait him into a conversation on this.

How dare I bring up relevant hypocrisy that he holds to while preaching to Christians about being moral. It's so terrible of me. I wonder what his position would be if we ever discovered how to tell what children are 'gay' and what ones are not. Would he be all for killing them or not? After all, since he really doesn't see them as people, he shouldn't care, right?

[lilpixieofterror]

Yes. Numerous Christians on this site, and Christians I've talked to in person, have no clue about persecution.

They live in a country where they are a majority, and have used their political power to viciously and horribly discriminate against others. All the while they utterly delude themselves into thinking that their discrimination against others is minimal and not even worth being titled "discrimination", and that they themselves are being seriously persecuted on a daily basis.

I think if someone applied to them even one tenth of the level of discrimination they apply to others, they would run away screaming "WE'RE BEING PERSECUTED!"

Whines about people's immorality, holds to immoral positions that it's ok to kill children.

[Spartacus]

Whines about people's immorality, holds to immoral positions that it's ok to kill children.

It's abundantly clear to me from the context provided in this thread that he was posing a philosophical problem, not personally advocating for it.

Please do me a huge, huge, size-of-Trump's-ego personal favor and stop derailing this thread from the interesting discussions Leonhard has been facilitating.