Unworthy of Life

Discussion in 'Ethics, Morality, & Justice' started by SetiAlpha6, Sep 26, 2021.

  1. Capracus Valued Senior Member

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    The start of conception in this case may not be inconvenient, but the continuation of it could still be. If the gestational products are not legally classified as persons until later stages, then there’s still a window of opportunity to stop the process for matters of convenience.
     
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  3. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    By whom and for what reason that did not exist at time of the intentional fertilization?

    This type of conception and gestation can never be accidental or inconvenient. If anything, this procedure is always done for reason of convenience or necessity.
     
    Last edited: Oct 30, 2021
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  5. Capracus Valued Senior Member

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    It most definitely can be inconvenient for some at the start. Anyone who is able to obtain a viable cell from your body, would be able to without your consent, condition that cell to grow into a human organism, and if allowed to continue, a human being. Some might find the prospect of an unchecked herd of Write4Us running loose around the planet to be inconvenient.
     
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  7. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    That is a weirdly fallacious sentence. In fact, the more I read it, the less sense it makes. Some part of me wonders if you think private-sector lobbyists will win authority over the fate of these products of conception for MetaGest, Uterobox, GarageWomb, General Motors, and the fifty-sixth iteration of MySpace. And let's face it, if the software, biotech, or insurance industries have a say, there won't be oocytic personhood.

    Look, Capracus, we get that you're just trying to put on a show, but at least think it through.
     
  8. Capracus Valued Senior Member

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    Who else but the state has the power to regulate the actions of women and biotech firms who engage in the practice of gestation? Women get a waiver for 20 weeks, and biotech has a 14 day limit on growing embryos. Introduce the availability of artificial wombs to investor X, and who knows how many other entities will get in on the action. So in traditional gestation it’s the state vs. women, in the lab it’s the state vs. the researcher, and in the not to distant future it will be the state vs. who ever wants to grow human tissue and people.

    Lobbyist have always been hard at work influencing how the state will decide these issues. Judging by the 14 day rule, biotech doesn’t seem to be getting their money’s worth from their lobbyists.
     
  9. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    Category mistake
    "To show that a category mistake has been committed one must typically show that once the phenomenon in question is properly understood, it becomes clear that the claim being made about it could not possibly be true."

    You're gonna have to do better than that.......

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    Last edited: Oct 30, 2021
  10. Bells Staff Member

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    Why does the State get to have a say?

    I mean, as much as weird fantasies go, and I just don't understand why artificial wombs always makes its way into abortion discussion on this site because heaven forbid we deal with reality and what women are having to go through when it comes to their bodies, because it's best to indulge in science fiction instead..

    But the question remains the same. What stake does the state have, exactly, so much so that it keeps getting a say?

    Last I checked, the US and other Western countries does not have state sanctioned procreation.

    And you know what, don't answer that. Because you have decided to take this thread weirdly off-topic and this is about to start heading into Pseudoscience territory.

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    I think you need a hobby.

    Whatever weird concoction you're dreaming up about how to create a human baby is still failing to address the fact that whatever you come up with, women will still be denied their fundamental human rights.

    Not to mention these restrictive abortion laws are a nightmare for women who find out that their "baby" is incompatible with life and instead of being able to have an abortion, are now going to be forced to wait it out and hope it dies in-utero or that it's death during or after childbirth is not going to be as horrifically painful as it probably will be.

    But hey, let's deal with what isn't instead of dealing with what's actually happening instead.
     
  11. Capracus Valued Senior Member

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    Ever take a civics lesson? Who is responsible for creating and enforcing laws and regulations?

    The state is a form of human association distinguished from other social groups by its purpose, the establishment of order and security; its methods, the laws and their enforcement; its territory, the area of jurisdiction or geographic boundaries; and finally by its sovereignty.
    https://www.britannica.com/topic/state-sovereign-political-entity
    Artificial wombs and gestational research are realities now, and like the wombs of pregnant people, they too are regulated by the state. Heaven forbid that medical science would strive to employ technologies that would alleviate the burdens encountered by people during pregnancy.
    Back to civics 101, in a democracy the voice of the state represents the will of its constituents, and that will in most, if not all countries around the world, is for the the state to regulate human gestation.
    Well actually they do. Try to procreate with a minor, a close relative, or with a person against their will, and you will violate state sanctions on procreation.
    The central issue this thread is human personhood. And just where are issues of human personhood going to arise in our society? Like wherever gestation it’s presumed to occur, like in the bodies of pregnant people, and the labs of biotech researchers. So in reality examining both of these examples is extraordinarily on topic.
     
  12. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    This has not come up yet in terms of legal precedents because that is currently not possible. However, when it does, I strongly suspect that legal opinion will be that you own your genome, and others cannot harvest and use it for such a purpose without your consent.
     
  13. Bells Staff Member

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    What does this have to do with the contents of a woman's wombs or her own control over her own body?

    Did the state have a say when you and your partner decided to have children? Consider this..

    "Procreative liberty should enjoy presumptive primacy when conflicts about its exercise arise because control over whether one reproduces or not is central to personal identity, to dignity, and to the meaning of one's life." (Robertson, 1996)*

    This would be fairly accurate, no?

    Considering we are dealing with consenting adults here, the state is deemed to be intrusive and controlling if it tried to dictate people's reproductive choices. Forced sterilisations are no longer deemed acceptable, just as making people have children, or forcing procreation or limiting how many children people have, is considered controlling, tyrannical and prohibitive.

    Your civics lesson aside, I'll ask the question again, 'why does the state get to have a say'?

    They are nowhere near applicable that they could be considered useable now.

    Trying to address what is currently happening and you come out with 'what if's' about artificial wombs. Have you looked at how they grew the sheep in them? Or what their design or intent is for currently?

    It’s appealing to imagine a world where artificial wombs grow babies, eliminating the health risk of pregnancy. But it’s important not to get ahead of the data, says Alan Flake, fetal surgeon at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and lead author of today’s study. “It’s complete science fiction to think that you can take an embryo and get it through the early developmental process and put it on our machine without the mother being the critical element there,” he says.

    Instead, the point of developing an external womb — which his team calls the Biobag — is to give infants born months too early a more natural, uterus-like environment to continue developing in, Flake says.

    The human equivalent age of the lambs they used is actually around 24 weeks. All were removed from the sheep's womb by a c-section for the last few weeks of gestation.

    So, when you are discussing the use of using skin cells to create a human embryo and using an artificial womb, you are delving into technology that does not actually exist currently.. Hence, sci-fi and yes, presently, pseudoscience.

    Look, I don't understand why this always comes up when discussing women's fundamental human rights over their own bodies. It's a distraction for one. But it still does not address the actual issue.

    Actually, no it's not. Women's wombs are now being criminalised and treated as crime scenes - by over zealous right wing males - and I don't know if you know this or not.. But that's considered a bad thing.

    Hence why abortion is such a political issue. Not because it's bad, but because men have deemed it their role in life to control women's bodies.

    And this is literally what this subject is about.

    Your artificial wombs work solely to distract from the actual issues. Perhaps that's your intent. I don't particularly care whether it is or not. It's not the first time you've done this. And it probably won't be the last. But consider this.. If the issue is about saving the baby, why do Republicans cut funding to health services that help and treat babies?

    And then consider how abortion is not about the "baby". But about the control over women's bodies.
    Well that's was kind of 'goes without saying'. Here I thought I was discussing this with someone who understood the obvious!

    Guess I was wrong..

    No. Really?

    Actually, it's about the woman's personhood and how that is being eroded when she is pregnant.

    Two separate issues.

    One includes a human being. The other involves the use of a form of incubator.

    Do you think the woman's personhood should disappear entirely when she is pregnant? Do you consider her to be an incubator?


    ------------------------------------
    * Robertson, J., 1996. Children of choice. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, p.24.
     
  14. origin Heading towards oblivion Valued Senior Member

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    Less than 1/3 of US voters want to overturn Roe VS Wade. Guess we are done with this thread.
     
  15. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    Voters have no say in this. Ask Texans .
    Abortion is completely illegal in Texas. In fact, any citizen can sue a woman and the taxi driver who drives the woman to an abortion clinic and collect a "finders fee".
    (a la Nazi Germany on "reporting" Jews)

    Additional Texas abortion legislation[edit]
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Heartbeat_Act#
     
    Last edited: Oct 31, 2021
  16. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    No it doesn't. Here in the US democracy is subordinate to the Constitution. That can be changed but it is intentionally very, very difficult to do so. Thus even if 90% of the people in the US wanted to make Muslims slaves, it would not happen. You would have to work for decades to elect the people willing to draft an amendment, get most states to agree to it, and change out the composition of the US Supreme Court to even have a chance of doing so.

    Keep in mind that in 1967, when interracial marriage in the US was made legal by the US Supreme Court, 85% of the US opposed it.
     
  17. Sarkus Hippomonstrosesquippedalo phobe Valued Senior Member

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    Only if the democracy operates a system like proportional representation.
    Any system that is "first past the post" is always going to restrict the ability of its constituents to get what it would like.
    In the UK, for example, no Labour or Conservative government has ever won with over 50% of the vote of population. Usually a 40-45% share will be enough to get victory, and a healthy majority in Parliament to boot, to enact what only that 40-45% of the people actually want, even if all the other 55-60% don't want it. One party has even won the General Election while getting a smaller share of the vote... much like a number of US Presidential candidates.

    Theoretically, in a FPTP system, if each constituency had 5 parties battling it out, 20%+1 vote could win that constituency. Repeat for all constituencies and a party could, theoretically, win every seat in parliament with just over 20% of the popular vote. If that party was right-wing, and all the other 4 were left-wing and splitting the vote of the 80%, the country could end up with an overtly right-wing government controlling a vastly left-wing population.
    But that's "democracy" under a FPTP system, where the "voice of the state represents the will of its constituents", eh.

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    Proportional representation would mean greater chance of decisions being the "will of the people", but then also risks stagnation if no consensus on issues can be reached.
    As one wise person might have once said: "Democracy is not actually as democratic as you might think."

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  18. Capracus Valued Senior Member

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    It demonstrates that the state at designated stages of pregnancy can exert authority over the use of a persons womb and body.
    Yes, from a legal perspective, we both had to be of age, not brother and sister, consent to the act of fertilization, and not abort a pregnancy after 20 weeks.
    Because We the People gave them permission. Just like We the People gave Trump permission to pack the Supreme Court with right-wing Catholic ideologs.
    Artificial wombs are real, they have been shown to successfully grow fetal animals in mid gestation, and if legally sanctioned, could do the same with a human fetus. Gestational research has produced lab grown gametes and embryos, and when resistance to work in later gestation occurs, then I would expect significant gains in those areas as well.
    The Biobag was designed to be a suitable womb substitute for viable midterm fetuses. It is not intended for use for previable fetuses, but it’s patent states that it’s capable of previable support. I imagine after human trials begin in a couple of years, it’s use may, if not impeded by ethical roadblocks be expanded to earlier fetal stages. A lot of these gestational technologies purposely try to avoid late embryonic and early stages of fetal development because the public perceives it as experimenting on babies, due to identifiable human structures visible at these stages.
    It’s not sci-fi or pseudoscience when the technology exists to condition a skin cell into a stem cell, and then condition a stem cell to an embryo, and to support a fetus in an artificial womb. I understand that these technologies are’t refined to the point where they can presently be combined to grow a human from skin cell to full term baby, but that’s not to say that there isn’t a reasonable expectation that they will be in the next decade or so. I mean you could label the effort to land people on mars as science fiction, yet the main impediment to that goal is not the lack of technology, but the lack of public will to accomplish it. And there’s a similar lack of public will in regards to gestational research, because a significant segment of the population isn’t comfortable with researchers experimenting on, and killing babies.
    If you violate a your nations laws, your nation has acquired through social consensus, the right to selectively limit, or completely nullify all of your rights depending on the given violation. All human rights are conditional. Commit a murder and potentially loose all of your rights.
    It’s not just men, roughly 40% of men and women want to criminalize most cases of abortion.
    Fetal personhood is the central issue, and it shouldn’t be contingent on the type of womb it resides in, but in reality to some degree it has to be. Regardless of social intent, all persons are not always equal in value, and in the case of a natural pregnancy, the life of a fetus is arguably less valuable than that of the parent, but the value of the fetus may be considered by the state to have greater value than the personal convenience of the parent.
    Yet it was you who posed the statement to the contrary. So yeh, I guess you were wrong.
    If the personhood of a mid term fetus conflicts with that of the parent, who is most responsible for this condition? Unlike Jesus, most fetuses don’t just spontaneously arrive in the parent, so that just leaves the parents and God to blame.
    No.
    Yes, people are what their organs do. They are thinkers, digesters of food, and at times incubators of human organisms..
    The poll I read stated that 20% were opposed to Roe, 29% were undecided, and 50% support it. But unfortunately for supporters, the body that is to decide its fate may be 66% against.
    https://thehill.com/regulation/cour...than-1-in-4-favor-overturning-roe-v-wade-poll
    When 40% of the country wanted to keep blacks as slaves, we had a civil war. I hate to think of what might happen now if 90% of the people felt that strongly about having their own way.
    I agree, democracy in the US is intended to be subordinate to the Constitution, but in the Loving case that didn’t occur for almost 200 years after its ratification. Was no one minding the store for those many years? Or it’s possible that the mood of the people wasn’t conducive to a successful challenge from the legal community. And that 85% of the people opposed to interracial marriage, that reflects the mood of all races in the country at the time. So there wasn’t a lot of pressure coming from any one community to change the existing laws, which may help explain why it remained in effect for so long.
     
  19. Beer w/Straw Transcendental Ignorance! Valued Senior Member

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    And the Borg is attacking Earth...
     
  20. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    No, AFAIK, the State is not exerting this power itself in conflict with the feds. It is delegating the power to individuals and that is a whole new can of worms, which will be litigated.
     
  21. Capracus Valued Senior Member

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    Rsistance is futile.
     
  22. Beer w/Straw Transcendental Ignorance! Valued Senior Member

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    kinky
     
  23. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    General and Particular: Notes on Purpose

    This is an extraordinarily important vector:

    The whole point of Capracus' nonsense is to isolate women.

    It stood out in its way because in #126↑, he missed the definition of viability when introducing the artificial womb question. Subsequent posts share a particular apparent disrespect of a woman's agency. In #126, "viability" suggests the end of abortion. #129↑ compares women to machines in the conditional: "If artificial gestation renders all products of conception as viable," he argues, "then under the present rules of viability, all stages of gestation would potentially be off limits to termination". And we notice that his comparative, "parents have a 20+ week window to shut down the process in case of buyers remorse". At no point does he seem to recognize a woman's sole agency over her body and what takes place in it.

    #133↑ is an interesting post, largely dependent on confusion about what fetal viability means. Syntactical vagary muddles the point of what should be regulated accordingly, but he finishes by rolling on his own argument: "If a parent can currently terminate gestation during the first 20weeks in a human womb, then why not the same for the synthetic variety?" That is, in #129, he asserts, "under the present rules of viability, all stages of gestation would potentially be off limits to termination", but asks about twenty weeks in #133 because, "In other words, if the developing organism qualifies as a person in a synthetic womb, then the same should hold for the occupation of a human one." This outcome assigns oocytic personhood for the gestating organism, and ignores the personhood of a pregnant person. As he stumbles all over the proverbial map, the common element is this question of a woman's existential status.

    It is not insignificant that his mention of women in the first sentence of #139↑ recognizes their disempowerment per circumstance. Still, though, look how he distributes the agency he disdains of her: His argument does not distinguish between cloning and sexual reproduction. Parental rights and responsibilities, as such, should "be sorted out to satisfy the varied demands of the general public". At no point in his argument is her independent agency recognized.

    We might wonder what world our neighbor imagines; it reads not so much as an idyll but a vacuum. And even when pushed on the point of comparing women to machines, he fashions a two-sentence post in #141↑ that so disregards women he doesn't seem to understand what he's responding to. However, if we observe his failure or refusal to recognize the humanity and human rights of women, then his observation in re a "window of opportunity" for "convenience" stands out for being on par.

    We're back to cloning in #143↑, though it seems, but beyond that, consider W4U: If W4U is a man, Capracus' argument is just a revisitiation of masculine ownership of a pregnancy; if W4U is a woman, the question has to do with whether the gestation is taking place inside her body or out, and we are aware he disregards her agency. Again, we find ourselves wondering at what sort of world Capracus imagines. In #145↑, he considers the agency of "investors" and "researchers", and we can start to wonder who is growing humans in artificial wombs, in that situation, and why.

    Once investors are in, termination will include postnatal personhood rights, as proprietarily gestated humans will be obliged to subscribe to proprietary maintenance. I mean, I know that sounds like sarcasm, and, sure, I hope it remains so, but are all aware of capitalistic priorities, and the punch line that goes here is far too complicated for the moment.

    Still, though, punch lines, or not really: An obscure bit about free speech and, if I recall correctly, one-armed men, comes to mind because, in our moment, what stands out about Capracus' posts is his steadfast, nearly perfect evasion of woman's agency.

    And that evasion deserves its own independent acknowledgment because it is kind of impressive in its way. But that's also the thing, it reads kind of like the grumblings of a bitter, failed comedian who still doesn't understand what went wrong. Functionally, there is in that context a particular contrasting juxtaposition: If the evasion is a deliberate calculation, it's actually an impressive attempt that just doesn't quite work out; if it is an accident, the pathway to such a result is itself worth considering for the priorities that mark its boundaries—the simple way to say it, I think, is that I'm not sure which is worse.

    This isolation of women, this evasion of their human agency, is not unique to Capracus, or even the masculinistic history of his discussion in these issues. To use American markers: Conservatives, in recent years, keep saying the quiet part out loud, and among traditionalist-supremacists, well, that's the thing, masculinists have been saying it out loud for generations, and even more loudly and panicked and menacing in recent years.

    Notice that as he answers Bells, he scolds, "Heaven forbid that medical science would strive to employ technologies that would alleviate the burdens encountered by people during pregnancy." We ought not be tempted to wonder that he couldn't quite grasp the implication when Billvon↑ made the point, or I came right out and said it explicitly↑, twice↑; it's no mystery.

    †​

    Intermezzo: Imagine, please, that you raise what seems an important point, but the other, in answering, seems to have not actually answered, and maybe this has gone on for more than one iteration or cycle, until the occasion they finally get around to addressing the point, except what they have done is not answer but turn it to some manner of belligerence that seems to have overlooked the point.

    †​

    Consider the truculence of asking if someone has ever taken a civics lesson: We might wonder at Skitt's Law in re grammar, spelling, &c., compared to certain manners of belligerence running on fallacy: The sleight is in his question and encyclopedia citation.

    In American jurisprudence, the question of "creating and enforcing laws and regulations" is why conservatives used to pretend their anti-abortion campaigns were about protecting women as medical patients. Capracus abides the conservative presupposition of fusion-assigned (or thereabout) "personhood". The argument about protecting women has run its course in American society and failed; this is about regulating women.

    There really isn't any question of Capracus' argumentative vector; #126 is clear despite its misuse of "viability", and consistent with subsequent posts: "Heaven forbid," he wags, "that medical science would strive to employ technologies that would alleviate the burdens encountered by people during pregnancy." He could only acknowledge the obvious when turned to some manner of belligerence.

    Remember, not only does he not understand cloning, but his framework of personhood—i.e., "the central issue in this thread", as he has it—does not understand viability, and the prospect that his juxtaposition of women and machines "is extraordinarily on topic" follows the same course we saw years ago↗, and if I happened to recall it recently↑, I am uncertain what to say about the point that it never seems to change; these years later, the personhood debate still excludes women as if according to an ingrained, pathological article of faith. It's actually, well, not so much kind of creepy, but, rather, as an American cultural phenomenon, kind of alarming.

    In dealing with what is or isn't happening, it is important to observe that this isolation of women does not seem absolutely necessary to the political issue, but, rather, has its own purpose, and the politics of abortion some sort of convenient vehicle. To wit: In American discourse, some pro-choice and feminist critiques of the anti-abortion argument take especial note when women are assessed in a manner that relegates them to breeding vessels. However, such belligerent isolation, this wilful alienation, and degredation of women, can also be its own purpose.°

    As such, this might not be about evading woman's agency so much as assailing it. Relegating women as machines might serve an anti-abortion argument, but it can serve its own satisfaction wherein he diminishes women because it pleases him to do so.
    ____________________

    Notes:

    ° His "pro-feticide", men's rights case in favor of abortion is a similar↗ existential↗ headache↗.
     

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