There are people who believe it is murder. I am not one of them.
SCOTUS deciding EVOLUTION
- Thread starter Write4U
- Start date
Here are the philosophical aspects of the debate:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_aspects_of_the_abortion_debate
OTOH...
The universe at large is amoral. And biological evolution as one of nature's emergent processes is heterogeneous with regard to organism conduct. Giving its blessing to every type of tactical behavior under the sun that still allows a species to replicate adequately.
The crusaders said to the Universe: "Madam, we are the ones oppressed, not our opponents."
"However," replied the Universe, "You have me confused with a deity who gives a ####."
"However," replied the Universe, "You have me confused with a deity who gives a ####."
So "oughts" or ethical prescriptions are left to arise from initial practical group and individual self-interests of an era, along with blatant opportunism usually parasitizing on those (political, mercantile, and religious strains). Local human interactions and preferences forge regional social contracts. Not ubiquitous cosmic principles discovered under a rock objectively determining right and wrong.
In the case of a controversial issue like abortion, where the population is split, and which isn't necessarily going to derail civilization either way it goes (i.e., any more than a thousand other contended menaces)... The issue remains perpetually unsettled (at least until posthumans and their immortality or new methods of reproduction replace us). Temporarily the matter will be dictated by "winners" on a figurative battlefield, but with that victorious outcome being usurped itself later, during another battle.
Nature, meanwhile, doesn't care what either side is resorting to. Which includes conceptually inventing all sorts of standards and rights to believe in and defend, or pointing-out conflicts with some existing moral or governing framework that _X_ society is supposedly adhering to. And deception, intimidation, cheating, stealing, brainwashing, etc -- all the strategies that Nature gives its blessing to in the unfolding struggles of the animal world.
But undermining the very benchmarks and methods the Establishment uses for interpreting "what's going on", and replacing them with new ones, is the postmodern way.
Barry Lam: It's metaphysics, epistemology, moral philosophy, philosophy of language, usually highly abstract topics, where people build highly theoretical machinery to codify or justify various public practices that are considered to be morally obligatory. For instance, you might construct a theory of belief and justification that denies the rationality of using statistical evidence in making up one's mind about someone on the basis of race and gender data. I think this is going to be very prominent in the near future. I see a lot of young people doing it and I think we're going to see a lot of it in the next 10 years as younger people publish, get tenure, and become the mid-career people in the field.
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Write4U
Valued Senior Member
So are you saying that any "functional" form of government is morally acceptable as long as it does not destroy the species?
People survived the "dark ages". Does that mean the species evolved spiritually and philosophically during that time?
Colored people survived slavery. Does that mean those days are acceptable as a sign of an evolving human civilization?
Treating women as broodmares in the year 2022 (anno domini) is highly uncivilized and not conducive to human evolutionary processes in my book
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The universe in general is amoral (not immoral -- amoral). Anything consciously declaring that _X_ is "morally acceptable" or "not morally acceptable" is just that: A human or equivalent agent capable of concocting ethical schemes and justifications for them, or a follower advocating them.
Two competing views here:
The philosophical arguments in the abortion debate are deontological or rights-based. The view that all or almost all abortion should be illegal generally rests on the claims: (1) that the existence and moral right to life of human beings (human organisms) begins at or near conception-fertilization; (2) that induced abortion is the deliberate and unjust killing of the embryo in violation of its right to life; and (3) that the law should prohibit unjust violations of the right to life.
The view that abortion should in most or all circumstances be legal generally rests on the claims: (1) that women have a right to control what happens in and to their own bodies; (2) that abortion is a just exercise of this right; and (3) that the law should not criminalize just exercises of the right to control one's own body and its life-support functions.
The view that abortion should in most or all circumstances be legal generally rests on the claims: (1) that women have a right to control what happens in and to their own bodies; (2) that abortion is a just exercise of this right; and (3) that the law should not criminalize just exercises of the right to control one's own body and its life-support functions.
It's not going to be settled [temporarily at best] by either faction declaring that something a priori or "bigger than humans" -- God, the Universe, Evolution, a Platonic ethical form, etc, is on their side -- by waiting on a loud voice from the heavens to descend and declare its preference (i.e., issuing an objective status). All camps have to duke it out (hopefully in terms of intellectual and empathetic combat). Which is what is actually happening, like it or not (along with probably visceral and physical struggles, too).
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The philosophy behind the debate (and any appended side commentary) outruns the governing apparatus of a particular country -- and its procedures for implementing and retracting laws, rights, etc.
Yes, that's a detour from the thread topic, but one invited by: "So where is the justification for prohibiting abortion?".
But I'm not going to violate decorum by extending that detour beyond this and the other token clarifications. (Note to self: Remember that this is heavily depopulated Sciforums. Huge body count buried below in terms of permanent bans and other causes.)
Write4U
Valued Senior Member
I agree with regard to the general philosophy of natural evolutionary processes. However I hope that human spiritual aspirations exceed those of bacteria (i.e. quorum sensing).
The topic specifically addresses SCOTUS's role in this discussion.
Sciforums does not rule our lives. All of us are here voluntarily and by agreement to follow the rules.
We enjoy no such luxury in our daily lives when the governing powers place a bounty and promise of imprisonment on free speech or private peaceful conduct in the RW.
I find it odd that money is considered a form of free speech regardless of its corrupting influence, yet actual free speech is censored according to the whim of interpretation of religious scripture.
Permit an excerpt of an established public restriction on human rights prior to Roe.
Per chance, could Alito be referring to this?
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sculptor
Valued Senior Member
and, then
We have:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...-wants-danes-to-have-more-sex-a-lot-more-sex/
....................................................
pretty blond
but
women who dress like that
scare the heck outa me
We have:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...-wants-danes-to-have-more-sex-a-lot-more-sex/
....................................................
pretty blond
but
women who dress like that
scare the heck outa me
Abortion prior to movement in the womb (quickening) was legal in the colonies and early America.
But in pages 17 to 19 of the Initial Draft, Alito jumps across the pond to reference English judges like Coke, Hale, and Blackburn, to contend that even pre-quickening abortion was not entirely pardoned by law.
Most sources, however, contend that when waxing nostalgic about the original status of affairs in North America... Only pregnancy beyond circa 14 to 20 weeks was protected from the herbal medicines, sharp instruments, and vigorous massages of the trade.
It was the physicians of the latter 19th-century who were the primary force in getting abortion incrementally criminalized, before the quickening stage.
Partly from a desire to drive traditional folk and amateur practitioners (homeopaths) further out of business. That was on the tail end of poison-control laws passed in earlier decades to reduce the sale of sometimes fatal commercial preparations, which included a booming market of abortifacients. Thus, indirectly bolstering the drive for professional medical care (or what passed for it back then, as outputted by academic institutions).
Quickening was attacked by the antiabortion movement because it "was based on women's own bodily sensations—not on medical diagnosis. It made physicians, and obstetricians in particular, dependent on female self-diagnosis and judgment".
Another reason they attacked abortion was the nativism of Protestant doctors. Birth rates among Protestants were supposedly declining, while Catholic and immigrant populations were increasing. Apparently, some of them blamed abortion for the downslope in child numbers.
The irony, of course, is that even after campaigning to make it illegal state by state, physicians then proceeded to still offer abortion on the sly. Even in the next century, it's contended that circa several hundred thousand abortions a year were performed during the 1930s by licensed clinicians.
Later, doctors became key proponents in rendering abortion legal again (that trend was occurring before Roe versus Wade).
What the Caduceus took away, it eventually gave back.
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