Evangelical Switch from Pro-choice to Anti-abortion

About the main area of focus much of what you've said has seemed very definite, such as how there must have been a harm, and that I must know there was a harm, and that I'm denying my feelings. Assuming you mean a decision about having an abortion, however you decide you still won't have an answer to the question of when life begins. The question of whether to have an abortion and the question of when life begins are two separate questions. You're falling into Faith-speak, where if we were all honest with ourselves we'd agree with her. Well, I can admit that you've just said something fairly distasteful in calling me a psychopath for not seeing things your way. I said some questions have no answers, not that decisions don't sometimes have to be made in the absence of answers. I think you're failing to see that not everyone is the same. People have feelings, but they're not all the same feelings nor about the same things.While feelings might help you make a decision, they won't give you any objective answers.--Percy

Is there? Are we? How can you know there *is* harm? If you didn't *think* there was harm we wouldn't be having this conversation. Are you correct about there being harm or not? I don't know. You're talking about feelings and laws based upon feelings. It's subjective. Different people will feel differently. Right and wrong moral positions aren't objective. Different people will feel differently. Why? Because you think it's a harm? I didn't at all avoid your impugning of my integrity. Again you said, "I would label anyone a psychopath that didn’t feel that the deliberate destruction of a human embryo was in some way a harm." I think you've lost your emotional control on this issue. Why is it obvious, especially since the only support you provide is emotional statements. By leaving them as personal decisions. And that's the way you feel about it. Not everyone feels the same way. Persuasion through emotive expression isn't terribly convincing. Mathematics and moral decisions are based on feelings? Really? Well, you're half right. The majority of the South felt slavery rightfully moral. That does tell us things, but not about how rightfully moral slavery was.--Percy

What is a potential life? You're arbitrarily defining the potentiality to begin at conception. I thought Ringo's referencing when grandma and grandpa met made the necessary point. There is equally no need for you to keep ignoring it. I've never heard it claimed that all our laws are based upon harms before, but I'm not a lawyer. But I do know that there are often court cases to determine whether a harm has been done and if so to what extent. What is a harm and what isn't is not as black and white an issue as you make it out to be. I hope you're just speaking for the UK, because here in the US we still have Texas, capital punishment overachiever. I'll repeat it as often as you claim there are hard answers to inherently unknowable questions. You *think* it's a harm and you've explained why you *feel* this way. Society as a whole? Really? In any case, the number of people sharing a subjective feeling has no bearing on reality. Is there a real problem? Or do you just think there's a problem? When does life begin? I already did my best with your sentence, I think you should be the one to read it again, and if you find you had a clear meaning then you should state it. Clearly this time. Here's your sentence: Moving on: But your claim was, "How the majority feels, tends to give us our answers." Obviously how the majority feels does not necessarily give us correct answers. That we're rejecting desperate Central Americans at our borders now just as we rejected desperate Jews from Germany and Eastern Europe before WWII tells us that we're not really growing up. We're just riding a pendulum back and forth.--Percy

"A potential goal new life"? You maybe mean "the goal of a potential new life"?We could probably agree that conception is easy to identify, but I could't agree that it is definitive about the origin of new life. I don't know what you mean by potential new life, since for you a zygote is potential new life while a sperm or egg is not. You're drawing distinctions without justification. But meeting for the first time is definitive, one of your criteria. And there is potentially a future baby. I thought you were telling me something you knew about the law, that all our laws are based upon harms, but looking this up it seems you were exaggerating. Plenty of laws have nothing to do with harms.This doesn't speak to the topic but more to your reliance on spurious arguments. No no, you misunderstand. I was commenting on where you expressed the opinion that we manage to work out an "objective way of calculating the punishment for *any* harm." Clearly we don't manage to work it out, and Texas is a prime example with their many executions, disproportionately black. How can we trust governments that believe life worth so little to be involved in decisions about when life begins or the rights of the woman? Well, that was random and irrelevant. You're making things up again. You're the one throwing around words like "definitive." You've been expressing your claims as if they had scientific certainty when all you really have is your feelings. Why we? We're both male. Women should have the right to make decisions about their bodies, not men or governments. I can't even parse this as a complete sentence. Is this some uncommon example of British syntax? Or did you perhaps mean "is" where you say "if"?But now that you've put that necessary comma in I think I get your meaning. Yes, of course life is messy. That's why your expressions of certainty are so out of place. I don't think "the best answers our institutions are capable of at the time" is a particularly strong endorsement. No matter how bad any answer from any point in history you could merely justify it as the best they were capable of at the time. But the evidence strongly suggests that such institutions are capable of coming up with horrible answers any time. US internment of Japanese Americans during WWII is an example. Justifying torture during the Iraq war is another example (the current head of the CIA ran a unit in Thailand that used torture). That would be nice, but history doesn't support this position. More likely the general worldwide trend toward greater respect for life and freedom is a reflection of increasing wealth and prosperity. If/when wealth starts decreasing this trend will reverse. I don't know what you're reading, but it isn't anything I said. I'm commenting that we're exhibiting the same lack of empathy and compassion that we exhibited 80 years ago. Trump's election and Brexit's passage was assisted by anti-immigrant sentiment. We've learned nothing. I do not share your optimism.--Percy

Catholic thinking *is* muddled, but it does help pinpoint a key flaw in your stance. You postulate a continuum from conception to baby and beyond but deny that the continuum also extends in the other direction before conception. Sheer consistency demands that it extend infinitely in both directions. You make this argument yourself at least a little by extending the continuum back just a little before conception to the IUD: But your preferred criteria of harms as a determination of when the harm is okay is still hopeless. There's no way to determine how much harm is done, let alone determine how much harm is too much. There are no objective criteria.
There is nothing that is, using another of your preferred terms , definitive. It is still all based on feelings, mostly on images that tend to create the strongest feelings.Hint: If you're using images of human fetuses to make your judgments you're not likely being objective. Here's one that will wrench your heart: It's fake, of course, but does that matter when the goal is to manipulate feelings, and especially when it works so well? We haven't forgotten your original point, but to use your own qualifier, if you're honest with yourself you'll see that preventing sperm from reaching egg is a harm that we should recognize.When mother and father want a baby then sperm reaching egg is a wondrous thing, but when they don't, when a baby is the furthest thing from their minds, then sperm reaching egg is a crisis. Your theory of balancing harms is just a morass of subjective feelings that provide no real objective answers. I say this not because I seek objective answers but because I know they don't exist. Such questions are unanswerable, even though governments try to answer them anyway.--Percy

You can't pretend NoNukes rebuttals of this argument didn't happen just because I'm not NoNukes. Conception is only one of many distinctions. You're ignoring creation of the gamete producers (parents), gamete production, gamete delivery, implantation, zygote, blastocyst, embryo, fetus. How much harm is associated with any of these stages? Give your reasons. I already looked up the harm principle, maybe you should do the same. Maybe it's been a while for you. It's a simple principle that runs somewhat along the lines of, "Your right to extend your arm ends at my nose." You're pretending the principle applies everywhere, probably inventing trivial and hypothetical harms in your mind. Again, you've got it completely backwards. I've stated that the questions are unanswerable and so could not possibly be looking for objectivity. I don't think it exists on this issue. I think you're grossly in error in calling your reactions to your feelings definitive. I do. I agree with all this except for the part where you expressed a belief that I reject or misunderstand this. Okay, so I'll repeat what I said before, which is a question since you haven't provided enough information: When does life begin? You can't pretend that the unanswerable questions don't exist. It's an Of Human Bondage kind of thing - people are people. They aren't going to change. It's a 20 minute video so I hope you'll forgive me for just reading the one sentence summary. That there's a long term trend of declining violence is well known, even through the bloody twentieth century and the wars in the Middle East. What I said agrees with Pinker, so I don't know why you bothered posting his video, though by the way it's embeddable: What I added is that the declining violence (I actually called it increasing respect for life and freedom) is a reflection of increasing wealth, and that when wealth goes south so will declining violence. Try reading for comprehension so that when someone presents evidence of a lack of moral progress that your response is in some way relevant. You know, there are links that make it easy to trace the discussion back. I was remaking the same point, this time with different examples, that you had completely missed previously. I was originally responding to your comment that "Improvements in our societies are developmental. Enslaving people is another obvious harm that we eventually grew up enough to overturn" from your Message 197.Slavery's still with us, by the way, e.g., Which countries have the highest rates of modern slavery and most victims?:

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At least 40 million people worldwide are estimated to be trapped in modern slavery today - more than ever before - as poverty, conflict and crises fuel the growing global slave trade.

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So please pardon my pessimism. That's what I've been telling you. You're going by your feelings, and your use of terms like "definitive" are not appropriate to the high degree of subjectivity involved. I'm sure many Jews also said, "This too will pass," after Kristallnacht on the eve of WWII. Again, I do not share your optimism.--Percy

Pragmatism, but of course. No need for an argumentum ad absurdum. I'm was just making clear your inconsistency.So what tells you that the continuum must begin at conception and not before? Your common sense? Your feelings? Doh! Sorry, brain cramp. Could I suggest that it might help get through to me if responses addressed what I actually said?So what do you mean "we"? Unless you're referring to the woman then someone else is making decisions for her based on *their* feelings rather than upon objective criteria. I don't believe people have the right to impose their feelings on others. Now if people have objective evidence and arguments for what they want to impose on someone else (for example, vaccinations) then that's another matter. Every time you say "definitive" it implies you have some kind of objective criteria. You don't. All you have is your feelings. If your judgments are based upon your feelings then you should stop using the word "definitive." Your repeated use of that word is the source of my references to objectivity that you keep complaining about. You're the root cause of the very thing you're complaining about. I was mimicking your "if you're honest with yourself" argument. If you're honest with yourself you'll acknowledge the vacuity of that way of arguing. As explained several times already, I don't think objective answers are possible. I'm just pointing out to you that feelings are no substitute for objective criteria, and the fact that "decisions must be made" doesn't give answers arrived at through feelings any basis in fact. Governments do the will of some people and not others. How many people wanted a law with these requirements in Texas:

• Most women must receive state-directed counseling that includes information designed to discourage her from having an abortion, and then wait 24 hours before the procedure is provided.
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• Private insurance policies cover abortion only in cases of life endangerment or if the woman's health is severely compromised.
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• Health plans offered in the state’s health exchange under the Affordable Care Act can only cover abortion if the woman's life is endangered or her health is severely compromised.
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• Abortion is covered in insurance policies for public employees only in cases in which the woman's life is endangered or her health is severely compromised.
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• Medication abortion must be provided using the FDA protocol. The use of telemedicine to administer medication abortion is prohibited.
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• The parent of a minor must consent and be notified before an abortion is provided.
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• Public funding is available for abortion only in cases of life endangerment, rape or incest.
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• A woman must undergo an ultrasound at least 24 hours before obtaining an abortion; the provider must show and describe the image to the woman.

Abortion is available in only 4% of Texas counties. I bet that was the will of the people, too. But I have insufficient information. I keep asking for that information, but you keep refusing to provide it and instead keep repeating your question while accusing me of avoiding yours. I'm not avoiding your question. I'm engaging in dialog. Give me the necessary information: When does life begin? I will, for the sake of discussion, assume your answer is objectively true and use it to answer the question.But that isn't really what you wanted, is it. Your question was actually a rhetorical ploy to force *me* to decide when life begins. I've already told you I don't know, that I have mostly questions and few answers. That hasn't changed.What also hasn't changed is the disparity between your degree of certainty and your paucity of facts, especially given your admission that all you have is feelings.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Typo, grammar.

And he yours. Let me know when you win. But you don't know this. No one knows when conception happens, except after the fact. It's estimated that for 50% of conceptions there isn't any knowledge that it ever happened. So much for knowing anything. Capital punishment. Anti-dancing laws. Anti-driving laws. Blue laws. Jim Crow laws. Voter ID laws. Incarceration for non-payment of legal bills (modern version of debtor's prison). Criminalizing honest mistakes on welfare forms ("I swear under penalty of perjury that the above is true and accurate..."). NFL games cannot be televised at the same time as college games. Prohibition. Taxes. Some zoning laws. Tobacco subsidies. Fugitive Slave Act. Stand your ground laws. Patriot Act (unlimited surveillance). Indian Removal Act. Internment of Japanese Americans law. Sodomy laws. Adultery laws. You neglected to provide your question, which was, "Should a woman be able to abort her foetus one hour before its birth?" You tell me when life begins and I'll answer your question. Why are you so resistant to providing that information? Why are you holding a vote on what a women gets to do with her body when you can't even tell us when life begins? People are not changing. Evolution doesn't happen that fast. But environments, particularly social, cultural, political and economic, can change very fast, and people are products of their environment. Any improvement trends are a result of increasing wealth trends, and if those wealth trends reverse then so will the other trends. Thanks. In discussion here, though, could you please make your arguments in your own words and offer links and videos and so forth as supporting references? Not necessary in this case, as I already told you I'm already familiar with this. And I gave examples of repeating the same mistakes today that we made in the past. I said I agreed with him. I'm talking about going forward. I believe how civilized we are is a function of how wealthy we are. I believe declining wealth for a substantial segment of people in the US and Europe is driving anti-migration and right wing sentiments, and there could be worse to come. I don't believe it's inevitable, but I do believe it's wise to be concerned. It could be a race to see whether technology will bail us out before population and climate change and energy costs overwhelm us. Gee, this is going well. How would I know what you already know? I can assure with great confidence that I will continue to not know what you already know and could easily introduce information you already know in the future. Better get used to it.Modern slavery is more evidence that people today are no different than thousands of years ago, even just a hundred or two years ago. Yes, of course. Improving social attitudes go right along with increasing wealth. But what if wealth stops increasing? Definitive of what? The point after which harm is possible? If so then no, conception is not scientifically and objectively definitive of the point where harm is possible. It's how you feel about it, but that isn't definitive of anything. I think there was a doubled "is not" in there, I deleted it. Yes, just what I've been saying. That it will likely happen again is my point. Overall world-wide? Yes, for now. I recounted history, not my feelings.--Percy

Yes, I'm very hard to get through to, I'm sure it's all me. Had I known there was a chase I would have cut to it long ago. How do you know we're the right people to make the decision? What established our right to do this or gave us jurisdiction? Yes, that's correct. Oh, I didn't know you would permit me "women's choice" as an answer. I thought you were demanding I answer yes or no. I choose women's choice. Agreed. Some of us see danger in certainty and prefer more tentativeness and deliberativeness in decision making. Me too.--Percy

Who has the right to carry out law enforcement? It isn't me. But for the record I'm in favor of the appropriate authorities enforcing our criminal statutes, our speed limits, and our no smoking laws. "Outwith public policy"? I'm again unable to parse something you write. Did you maybe mean "outside public policy"? You never did clarify that other garbled sentence - was my guess that you meant "is" instead of "if" correct, or was it something else? You finally included an acceptable answer in your list of permitted answers, one I already gave earlier at greater length back in Message 220: Moving on: I think you're obsessed. We've been over this. Tell me when life begins and I will, for the sake of discussion, assume your answer is accurate and use it to answer the question.But that's not really what you want, which is for people to respond with answers about when life begins despite telling you many times they don't know. Obviously you think there's an answer and that you know it, so congratulations on your certainty.--Percy

That's only because despite repeated protestations that I have few answers, you keep pressing me for answers anyway. Why does society have to decide? Why isn't it the woman's choice? In your previous post to me (Message 238) you asked if the woman should be allowed to kill her fetus, now you're asking if she should be allowed to abort it. I assume, though you don't say, that you still mean just before birth. Just before birth, killing a fetus (if indeed killing is what it is, though since you admit you don't know when life begins you don't know whether the fetus is alive or not and therefore don't know whether it can be killed, since you can't kill what isn't alive) is much different from aborting a fetus. I don't think a true abortion is possible just before birth. How would the abortion be accomplished except by inducing labor, which would produce birth, not an abortion.So are you talking about killing the fetus (in which case the answer depends upon when life begins) or aborting the fetus (which likely isn't possible)? If we're talking about killing the fetus then it matters a great deal. If, hypothetically, the fetus is not alive until born, then killing it before birth is fine, though "killing" is the wrong term since it was never alive in the first place. But if, hypothetically, the fetus is alive just before birth, then killing it would constitute murder and is criminal.So when does life begin? Then all you have is your feelings that you're trying to impose on others.--Percy

I think this short excerpt from Reasons U.S. Women Have Abortions: Quantitative and Qualitative Perspectives indicates that back in 2004 inconvenience was one of the reasons women cited, though the study doesn't use that specific term:

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Thirty-eight percent indicated that having a baby would interfere with their education, and the same proportion said it would interfere with their employment.

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If you look at Table 2, the top four items seem to fall into the category of inconvenience: While I'm male so I guess you could argue my feelings are irrelevant, my own reaction was that it would be inconvenient.I think it could also be argued that inconvenient is the wrong term, that it minimizes the impact of an unwanted child. Life-shattering might be more accurate.--Percy

Can the unborn be considered citizens if they have no birth certificate?Which unborn should society protect? Zygotes? Blastocysts? Embryos? Fetuses?Or answering the same question again but based on time instead of state: After 1 week? 5 weeks? 10 weeks? 20 weeks? 30 weeks? 40 weeks?Or answering the same question again but based on developmental characteristics: At conception? When there's a ball of cells? At implantation? When there's a head? When there's a heart? When there's a heartbeat? When there are fingernails? When it begins moving? Isn't the answer obvious? Need anything really be said? When is it alive? You can only kill what is alive. Jar and I *have* answered the question many times (we don't know), you just refuse to accept it. You are the one refusing to provide an answer. Let me prove that you're not answering the question once again: When does life begin? The proof will be you lack of answer in your response. Whether the fetus is alive before birth is not a semantic question. Stop avoiding the question. Phrasing the question a bit differently and a bit more directly, is the fetus alive before birth? I'd like to answer your question, I really would, but in practical terms I don't see how it's possible to terminate a pregnancy just prior to the moment of birth. Let's say the woman is 10 cm dilated and the crown of the head is visible, likely just a very few more pushes are necessary, but suddenly the woman announces, "I'd like to terminate." How would that work exactly? That's a rhetorical question. I'm just trying to clear about why I don't see how terminating a pregnancy just before birth is possible. I won't argue about the degree to which feelings govern our current laws, but will just say that we should strive for objectivity as opposed to subjectivity in our laws. Uh, I think a strong argument can be made that theft is objectively wrong. But there are plenty of laws that are subjective and therefore are themselves wrong. No fishing for solo women in Montana. No drinking in Lynchburg, Tennessee. Yes, I just provided a couple examples. You keep switching back and forth from one message to the next between killing versus aborting the baby. Those are not the same thing, so which one are you arguing? If the law of the land were that men must be circumcised by age 12, how would men feel about the law's right to say what they should do with their bodies? Should there be such a a law?In the same way, if the law of the land said that women have no say about terminating their pregnancy after some point that society chooses, how should women feel about the law's right to say what they should do with their bodies? Should there be such a law? Maybe there should, but then society has to answer the question: When does life begin?--Percy

Interesting to know. Who has it about right? The US, where each state brews their own abortion laws within the Supreme Court framework? The UK, whose abortion laws I'm unfamiliar but which unless there's some remarkable coincidence are not the same as the US? The EU? Saudi Arabia? Iran?I'm pretty sure it's the same as religions, where since they can't all be right they must all be wrong. So why isn't it the women's choice? Should it become publicly known that a woman is seeking an abortion in a country where it is illegal, should she be locked up until she gives birth? Yes, what about those rights? Do they override the woman's rights? Can the father force the mother to give birth? When does life begin? I am not, as you might have guessed, asserting anything. I asked you a question, the same question I've asked you many times. When does life begin?So are you saying that life begins before birth? When, precisely? I am not, as you might have guessed, asserting anything. Are you saying that life begins at the moment the fetus's heart begins to beat and brain begins to function? Terminate and abort are synonyms, kill is not. Believe what you like, I still think what I do and what I've described here.And you ignored the main gist of what I said, despite quoting all of it: abortion isn't really possible at this point, so continuing to include it in your "scenario" doesn't make sense. Okay, so possibly because you do recognize that abortion at this point makes no sense, you're going with the kill scenario. Is the fetus alive at this point? Despite that you won't answer this question, everything you say points to you believing that the fetus is alive just before birth. If you are correct then that means it *can* be killed (as opposed to things which are not alive and so cannot be killed), and killing it would be murder. If you are correct that the fetus is alive, then since it would be murder the woman cannot purposefully kill the fetus without committing a capital offense. The thought hadn't occurred to me. That such a silly possibility concerns you tells me you're really not listening to me. For me it really really really really does come down to when life begins. Start believing that I believe that, because until you do you're going to continue to just be flat out bewildered and stupefied. I do not, as you might have guessed, know when life begins.In a more general sense you are correct. I do not trust my feelings to inform my knowledge. I rely upon facts for that. Just as I could not be in favor of vaccination laws without facts, I cannot be in favor of abortion laws without facts.You keep insisting you know my thinking, so let me comment a bit about your own. You think that because you haven't been able draw an admission that life begins at conception that you'll go around the back door and attempt to draw an admission that certainly life has already begun by the time birth is imminent. Once you obtain that admission you'll push for earlier and earlier admissions of when life began until you reach conception. And you're somehow going to do this based upon how you feel. We can probably only agree that there is subjectivity in our laws. We probably will never agree that that's a good thing. "Harms another"? As in another living human being who has experienced birth? How is this relevant? And aren't these hypotheticals much too vague? Is the theft of some unnamed thing that could be anything from a stick of gum to a cure for cancer worse than rape? Who could know? Is stealing from a pensioner worse than stealing from a bank? Got me. Was the pensioner tricked out of his entire retirement by an Internet scammer, while the bank just lost a few hundred from a teller's window? Was a gun involved? Etc. Yeah, I was already pretty sure you felt that way. This is the language of pro-lifers, and you also seem to be sliding a bit toward their type of tactics (painting gross images like skewering the fetus with a knitting needle). You're trying to persuade by arousing emotional reactions in people. I think the issue is better discussed if kept dispassionate and focused on facts and what we know. Good to know where you stand. No, of course it isn't. So how would men feel about the law's right to say what they should do with their bodies? Should there be such a a law? But how should women feel about the law's right to say what they should do with their bodies? Should there be such a a law? I wasn't involved in any policy, not the current one or any predecessor. It seems to me essential to making laws regarding abortion to know when life begins. If you're doing what you feel is right does that makes it okay?--Percy

Yes, obviously. Here's the link again in case anyone wants to see the full table: Reasons U.S. Women Have Abortions: Quantitative and Qualitative PerspectivesThe text used a form of the word "interfere" 16 times, including in a couple of the items in the table. Forms of the word "dramatic" only appeared 5 times. Draw what conclusions you will. You never stop worrying about your kids. Sure, that's the reality after the fact, but how many women view it that way or think it through in detail beforehand? All surveys have this quality. Not unaware, but not really thinking about that in any detail. I don't think all women contemplating abortion view it as "a very important decision." I think there's a great deal of variety in how women feel about it. I think many parents enter parenthood from a very naive standpoint. I know we did. We felt we wouldn't let parenting affect our lifestyle, and for a while we were right. We were young with plenty of energy, and taking care of a baby was easy. My son, our first child, went to the US Open (tennis, Flushing Meadow in Queens) when he was one month old (mostly slept). He went to the movies when he was five months old (slept). But as he grew older the demands of parenting gradually increased and our naivet slowly melted away. By the time he left home we were totally exhausted.What I'm trying to say is that before you're a parent you don't have a very good understanding of the time and effort required by parenting. It's all unknown and hypothetical.--Percy