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linktwinmaniac · 23 days

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Re (2): Is the moderate pro-life view really incoherent?

Prof. M. Scarfone has answered my first email (he answered it on the day I sent it) and pointed me to his paper on which his Conversation article is based. I read the thought-provoking piece. Here's my reply email to him:

Dear Prof. Scarfone,

Thank you for replying so quickly (and for addressing me with the vocative)! 😊

I’ve read your paper and found it even more thought-provoking than your article. I’ve got some points to say in answer to it:

(f) There is only one thing that determines your rights and duties (what you ought to do, what you may do, and what you ought to not do): the universal, immutable, utter, and timeless Natural Law. The relationship which spoken or written "laws" bear to Natural Law is the same as the one which written mathematical theorems bear to mathematical facts. The only thing that counts is the logical fact, not what someone has scribbled on a piece of paper. You ought to not steal because theft is wrong, not because some lawmakers want you to not steal. Manmade "laws" that go against the Natural Law are null and void. Each and every person has not just the right to not bow to them, but the duty to; for by obeying a rule that goes against Natural Law, you go against Natural Law and thereby make yourself culpable. For instance, in a slave-holder society, it’s everyone’s duty to take slaves away from their masters and free them even though the "law" of such a society regards such heroism as theft. Making "laws" that go against Natural Law is one of the worst crimes one can commit, as it causes others (the "law"-abiding citizens) to also go against Natural Law. Therefore, lawmakers whose "laws" are immoral ought to be severely punished. For example, lawgivers who draft or pass "laws" outlawing abortion even in the case of rape commit a crime not inferior in heinousness to rape itself, I believe. Therefore, I believe, they (as well as everyone supporting such terribly unjust rules) are guilty of a crime deserving punishment no less severe than the one for rape as long as they don’t change their ways. I’m aware that I might, and probably do, have some false ethical opinions myself. If that lead (subjunctive) to harm, I be culpable. So my thinking about ethical issues is driven in part by fear … fear of harming my soul through confusion-based injustice.

(u) My moderate pro-life position is that abortion is wrong unless the mother’s life be in danger or her bodily health in serious danger, the fetus suffer (subjunctive) from genetic defects, or the fetus have resulted from rape. I explicitly exclude incest, as I see no reason why it supposedly make killing a human being allowed.

(þ) I also believe that incest and sibling marriage ought to be legalized, since I reckon it (sibcest at any rate) perfectly moral, and that society owes the victims of anti-incest laws compensation with compound interest.

(a) Not only persons have dignity, but all living beings do.

(r) There’s another kind of self-worth other than dignity: intrinsic value. While non-living things, such as fair caves, have no dignity, they do have intrinsic value if they are good or fair, for Goodness and Beauty are among the highest of all goods.

(k) Everything with self-worth is at least also an end in itself. Fully good persons are only ends in themselves. However, against Kant, killing another or oneself need not be using the other or oneself as a means. Absolute killing is impossible, because the soul is essentially immortal, as Plato showed in the Phaedo. And physical killing, severing a certain connection between a soul and the physical Universe, need not always be using the soul as a means to an end. For instance, a soul might want to sever its connection to a hopelessly sick body or have another one sever it so that it can be reincarnated in a healthy one. Or someone may kill themselves to hinder others from torturing them into doing bad things. Such an act of suicide would be worthy IMHO. By contrast, I find Socrates’ claim that humans shouldn’t kill themselves because they be property of the gods repulsive; living beings, especially sapient ones, are nobody’s property. Servility, including servility towards the gods, is disgusting.

(g) I have to qualify what I said. All living beings have dignity at first. However, only those who have chosen to be perfectly good persons (“persons” means sapient living beings) have kept their dignities unblemished. At the other end, persons who have chosen to be evil, such as serial killers, have amassed a negative dignity, wherefore it’s not only allowed to eliminate them, but a duty to do so.

(w) How so? Well, dignity cannot be damaged or taken away from the outside, so the ground rights that come with it ought never to be violated. However, they can be relinquished, and they can be forfeited, from the inside, so to speak. Someone relinquishes their right by directly giving it up, and they forfeit it by deciding to do something bad. Relinquishing rights, rather than outweighing or circumscribing (limiting) them, is what my view on abortion is about.

(h) For instance, in your example of the defender killing the attacker, the defender’s right to not be attacked doesn’t outweigh the attacker’s right to not be killed. Rather, by attacking, the attacker has forfeited their right to not be killed. So there’s no conflict of rights; there’s only the defender’s right to not be attacked.

(n) (This is a key point for the matter at hand.) Likewise, my moderate pro-life position is all about the mother relinquishing her right to bodily autonomy to her baby through consensual sex or other voluntary deeds, e.g. willing artificial insemination. It’s irrelevant whether her right to bodily autonomy would normally outweigh her unborn baby’s right to life, and it’s likewise irrelevant whether the former would normally circumscribe the latter. In fact, at one point, I thought the mother’s right to bodily autonomy would always outweigh the fetus’ right to life. Even so, I held the same moderate pro-life position then as I hold now, for I was aware that the mother had relinquished part of her right to bodily autonomy.

(i) You seem to have anticipated my position or something akin to it by considering the duty to gestate and outlining Margaret Little’s argument against consensual sex entailing a duty to gestate. I reject the premise of that argument that when a woman willingly has sex, she consent just to her partner. Rather, she consents both to the partner having sex with her and to potential babies resulting from the sex using her body. Therefore, I reject the argument.

(j) Whence does the mother’s duty to gestate come? From the baby’s right to continuation of their life and the mother’s acceptance of the chance to become pregnant.

(ei) You gave a very good analogy to the mother’s duty to gestate by likening it to the duty to help one’s acquaintance.

(p) You then go on that the line of reasoning about the duty to gestate can’t justify (3), and while you’re right on this point, the moderate pro-life position in itself does not involve (3) or (2). In your paper, you write: “Above we saw how the position was characterized not by who and who does not have a duty to gestate, but by whether or not the right to life was stronger than the right to bodily autonomy.” I reply: “No, my position has nothing to do with rights outweighing or circumscribing (limiting) each other, but indeed with who has a duty to gestate and who doesn’t.” Your paper: “In appealing to a failure to generate a duty to gestate, one would be explaining why (2) is inadequate.” I: “(2) is indeed inadequate, which is why I, a moderate pro-lifer, reject it.” Your paper: “This may well be right, but recall that we are seeking grounds for (3) and not an alternative reading of (2).” I: “No, we aren’t. We’re trying to explain why killing a healthy non-rape fetus who doesn’t endanger their mother’s life or bodily health is wrong, but aborting a rape fetus is fine (and, I venture to add, encouraged).” Therefore, I believe you’re mistaken to conclude: “As such, the moderate anti-abortion position cannot appeal to the duty to gestate as doing the needed explanatory work here.”

(z) I think hardly anyone believes in (3*) owing to your use of the word “organism” in it. If a facultatively parasitic microbe is begotten by a free-living parent without violating anyone’s rights and later gets into my body and annoys me, don’t I have the right to kill it?

(s) This reminds me that we must wield the word “rape” very broadly; for example, if a villainous doctor drugs a woman and artificially inseminates her or transplants a foreign fetus into her womb, this should also be called “rape” in the current discussion. We have to also refer to stealthing with “rape”; for the stealther deceives the woman and does something to her she didn’t consent to. In fact, anyone who deceives the woman to the effect that she underestimates the chance of her getting pregnant should be called “rapist” in our discussion, I believe. And if she underestimates the chance of getting pregnant due to deception, her duty to gestate may be weaker or void. Accordingly, the guilt of murdering the fetus if she aborts partly or wholly transfers to the deceiver.

(t) Unless done to save the mother’s life or health, all abortions of healthy fetuses are indeed equal in that they all constitute murder. However, they’re also unequal in that the identity of the murderer varies depending on whether the pregnancy arises from rape: If the mother conceives through consensual sex, she and the doctor doing the abortion and anyone telling her to abort (sometimes the baby’s father) are the murderers. On the other hand, if she conceives because she’s raped (or through some other violation of her rights), the rapist is the sole murderer.

(b) In your article, you give an example of a religious justification of the pro-life position: “For example, if God creates life, then, God alone has authority to take life; to interfere in life by killing others or oneself “would cause offence to God” (Wicks 2010, 24).” So women have no right to destroy life they’ve begotten, but gods have the right to destroy life they’ve created? How incoherent is that? Moreover, nobody, man or god, has the right to violate ground rights. A god who kills for no very good reason is just as much a murderer as a human who kills for no very good reason. (Yes, ancient myths are full of criminal gods, including Inanna, Tlaloc, Zeus, Janus, and Odin.) The Natural Law rules over gods as much as it rules over living beings. By the way, souls are simple, eternal, and not created or timelessly brought forth. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be souls.

(e) In your article, you write: “Of course, fetuses do not have a right to bodily autonomy. Even if one thinks that fetuses enjoy a right of noninterference, they will of course lack a right of self-determination.” Why be that of course? Fetuses are not yet sapient, but neither are (any known) non-human animals or born human babies. Do these two lack a right to self-determination?

(m) Clearly, I don’t think women deserve to get pregnant for having sex any more than I think (I don’t) that boxers deserve to be punched in the head and suffer concussions. However, by willingly taking part in a boxing match, the boxer accepts the risk to get punched and suffer a concussion. Likewise, a woman who has consensual sex accepts the risk of getting pregnant.

(l) My position of abortion is moderately pro-life in that I hold abortion to be wrong except in the aforementioned cases. I hold that a woman who got pregnant through consensual sex and wasn’t tricked into pregnancy (e.g. by someone fraudulently claiming to have undergone vasectomy) is like a willing kidney-giver and her unborn baby like a kidney-recipient. I also hold that by contrast, a woman who is pregnant due to rape is like Alice in my example, whose kidney the evil doctor robbed without her consent, her rape fetus is like the unlucky guinea pig and kidney recipient Bob, and the rapist like the villainous scientist. Is it incoherent to hold that the willing kidney-donor has no right to later change their mind and demand their kidney back, but that Alice does have the right to get her kidney back even if Bob would die as a result? Similarly, is my moderate pro-life view incoherent?

(ŋ) You have criticized the moderate pro-life view by ascribing to it claims (2) and (3) and then pointing to the contradiction between (2) and (3). However, I have shown that the moderate pro-life view need not accept either (2) or (3). So haven’t you made a straw-man argument after all?

(d) It seems you might’ve anticipated and accepted my criticism in note 18 of your article, but I’m not sure about that.

(o) In your note 17, you’ve anticipated my view that ground rights don’t truly clash with each other. On the other hand, the other option you mention there, that clashes between rights be non-resolvable, would imply that Natural Law be contradictory, which would go against the essential nature of Natural Law.

In your answer to my first email, you said that my view that there isn’t any true conflict between fundamental rights seemed implausible to you. However, in all the examples we’ve looked at, from abortion over stolen kidneys to the defender killing the attacker, all apparent conflict seems to have turned out to be illusory. So do you still think that my position on this matter be implausible?

Even if so, implausible doesn’t let incoherent follow.

Moreover, as we’ve seen, the question of whether there are conflicts between rights has little to no bearing on my moderate pro-life position, as the latter is all about the mother’s relinquishment of her right to bodily autonomy to the fetus as far as pregnancy goes. It’s like with your right to confidentiality of your communications and my right to freedom of speech. I think that your right to keep your emails to me private circumscribes my right to freedom of speech to the effect that I may not publish them without your permission. However, once you’ve freely given me the permission to publish them forever and thereby relinquished your right to the confidentiality of those emails, you can’t later take it back. And since we’re talking of this matter … May I publish your last email to me and the one in which you’ll (hopefully) answer this email of mine?

Thank you for helping me hone my ethical understanding and defending women’s rights! 😃

Best regards!

Tristanaz

#pro life #pro choice #abortion #human rights #reproductive rights #reproductive freedom #reproductive justice #reproductive health #women's rights #fetus rights #baby rights #ground rights #fundamental rights #dignity #incest rights #sibcest rights #sibling marriage #sibcestophobia

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linktwinmaniac · 26 days

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Is the moderate pro-life view really incoherent?

I write this open email to Matthew Scarfone as a response to his article If you’re pro-life, you might already be pro-choice.

Dear Prof. Scarfone,

I’m T́ristanaz Ĺaihnazrijaz, a maths student at the Distance University in Hagen with a great interest in philosophy, which stems in part from my delving into the groundwork of mathematics. I came upon your aforementioned article on The Conversation and found it to provide food for thought. Specifically, I believe to have found a flaw in your argument against the moderate pro-life position. First off, I’m a moderate but vehement pro-lifer myself, who acknowledges the fact that unborn human beings are obviously human beings and that therefore, aborting them for no very good reason is murder. I think such very good reasons exhaust themselves in the following list: rape, threat to the mother’s life, and danger to the mother’s health or that of the fetus (e.g. genetic defects of the latter). I am instinctively taken aback both by the extreme pro-life position and the extreme pro-choice view. Therefore, your article provided my instinct’s deeming with a noteworthy challenge.

You wrote that moderate pro-lifers base their view on three assumptions: 1. that a human fetus is (quite obviously by definition) a human and therefore has a right to the continuation of their life, 2. that this right trump (subjunctive) the mother’s right to bodily autonomy, 3. except in the case of rape. You rightly pointed out that points (2.) and (3.) contradict each other. Thence, you concluded that the moderate pro-life view be incoherent. But here lies your mistake; for moderate pro-lifers like myself don’t claim either (2.) or (3.). We do, of course, accept (1.) and draw attention to the fact that if someone refuses to acknowledge the humanity of an unborn baby because such acknowledgement would bear uncomfortable consequences for them, they are no different from an Ancient Roman who refuses to recognize the humanness of slaves out of fear that such recognition would make the Roman economy collapse.

The right to continuation of one’s physical life and the right to bodily autonomy are both ground rights (unlike the right to property, for example, which is more of a privilege, I believe) and therefore cannot be trumped by each other or anything else. Fundamental rights are untrumpable. Therefore, weighing them against each other, as is done in (2.), is a forbidden move, to borrow Chess parlance. Mr. Spock is wrong to claim that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. In truth, each one’s ground rights are not outweighed by anything. For instance, nobody has the right to do experiments on you without your consent even if they’d reap huge benefits for the whole rest of humankind.

Consider the following hypothetical: A ruthless doctor abducts Bob and does experiments on him because Bob’s body has some unusual features that make him a perfect guinea pig. As a result of an experiment gone wrong, Bob loses both his kidneys. The doctor wants to not lose his experimentation subject, so he abducts Alice and transplants one of her kidneys into Bob’s body without her consent. But a dogged sleuth by the family name “Di” unmasks the villain. The police free Alice and Bob from the doctor’s grasp and put the culprit in jail. Alice now wants her kidney back. But Bob would die without her kidney. So, does she still have the right to get her kidney back?

Of course she does.

So does her right to bodily autonomy outweigh Bob’s right to continuation of his bodily life?

No.

Then why does Alice have the right to retrieve her kidney?

Because it was taken from her without her consent, thereby violating her utter right to bodily autonomy.

But that would take Bob’s life.

True, but is that Alice’s fault?

No.

Then why should she have to accept a violation to one of her ground rights because of someone else’s (the doctor’s) crime?

Right, she shouldn’t.

Exactly; nothing excuses violating a fundamental right, not even guarding another ground right. In particular, this applies to abortion. The rape victim is like Alice, the unborn baby like Bob, and the rapist like the doctor. If Alice gets her kidney back and Bob dies as a result, is it murder?

Yes.

And who’s the murderer?

Clearly the one responsible for Bob’s plight: the doctor.

And so it is in the case of aborting a rape fetus: It does constitute murder, and the murderer isn’t Alice, but rather the rapist. The fetus has no right to be carried to term by the raped woman for a similar reason that tests on non-human animals which endanger the latter’s life or health are probably wrong: Non-human animals’ right to life and health clearly doesn’t outweigh humans’, but it’s morally forbidden to violate their fundamental rights to save the humans’. Simply put: If a human has cancer, that’s their problem with their egoistic cells. What’s the poor mice’s fault?

None. But a case could be made that the mouse soul freely chose to incarnate in a mouse body, knowing that the latter would support only cognition not sophisticated enough to think much about right or wrong. Therefore, it have (subjunctive) forfeited the absoluteness of its right to life and health. So it be morally allowed to sacrifice the mouse’s life or health for good reasons, e.g. to save people who can think about right and wrong and have chosen to fight for the former.

Yeah, maybe, but animals as highly feelingful and thoughtful as coleoid cephalopods, primates, and corvids remain off-limits. For the same reason, burking is wrong. Of course, if any animal endangers an innocent human, it’s right to kill the animal to shield the human, because here, the animal tries to infringe on the humans’ right. The same is true of humans endangering innocent humans: You have the right to kill someone who tries to kill or seriously hurt you for no good reason. Anyway, just like it’s wrong to sacrifice one human’s life for the sake of humanity if that human refuses, so it’s wrong to sacrifice a raped woman’s right to bodily autonomy for the baby’s sake.

That explains why a woman has the right to kill her unborn rape baby. But why may she abort if her life or health is in danger?

For a very similar reason: Her absolute right to life and health must not be sacrificed against her will for anything else, including saving the life of her fetus.

Alright. But why may she abort a not yet too old (!) fetus if the latter suffers from genetic defects?

Because she isn’t forced to commit the baby to a life of misery. For the same reason, family members who have a good relationship with a patient on life support who can no longer clearly think can decide whether to continue life support or not.

That’s all nice and well, but it doesn’t explain why a mother does not have a right to kill her unborn baby under all circumstances. So, why doesn’t she?

Because by willingly having sex, she freely gives up part of her right to bodily autonomy to any potential babies resulting from the sex. You see, nobody can take your ground rights away … nobody but you, that is. You can relinquish your fundamental rights, and you can also forfeit them. A kidney giver freely relinquishes their utter right in one of their kidneys. And a serial killer forfeits their right to continuation of their life. Alice can rightfully demand her kidney back from Bob because it was robbed from her. However, if she freely gives her kidney to Bob, she obviously has no right to later change her mind and demand it back. A woman who’s gotten pregnant from consensual sex or through another action she took part in out of her own freewill is exactly like a kidney donor, and her unborn baby is exactly like the kidney recipient.

As we’ve seen, it is sometimes, but only sometimes, okay to let an unborn human being die, but the same is true of born and even grownup humans. In accordance with human self-worth, we haven’t treated unborn humans differently from born ones. Yes, a raped woman has the right to let her unborn baby die, but you likewise have the right to refuse to donate blood even if someone would die without receiving some of your blood. However, if the woman has had the chance to abort her rape baby for a long enough while but hasn’t made use of it, this also constitutes a relinquishment of her right to bodily autonomy of her own accord. For instance, if she had the chance to abort from the day of her rape up until, say, eight months later, but hasn’t, she has no right to change her mind that late and kill and eight-months-old unborn baby. Why? Because by freely choosing to not abort for eight (the number is just an example) months, which is more than enough time to make one’s mind up, she has given her right to bodily autonomy up as far as carrying the baby to term goes. By the way, it’s crystal clear that an e.g. eight-month-old unborn baby is a human being, who can feel stuff and move like a born baby; after all, some babies are born younger. Are these no humans, either? Or does sliding through a woman’s vagina magically turn a non-person into a person? On a funny note … if so, does a man’s tarse that had been in a woman’s sheath become a person once he pulls it out 😉?

I believe to have thus laid bare the straw man argument in your article. Another important thing I have done is to point out a third rightful reason for abortion: genetic defects of the fetus. On the other hand, you may find one of the exceptions you mentioned conspicuously absent from my account: incest. Why is that? Because incest alone does not provide any grounds on which to kill a human being. The unborn baby has resulted from the sexual intercourse of, say, sister and brother. So what? As long the sex was consensual and the baby doesn’t suffer genetic illnesses due to the incest, there’s no reason to slay it.

Indeed, I strongly support the right of siblings to have romantic and sexual relationships with each other and have children together.

But doesn’t that lead to genetic defects?

Firstly, inbreeding does not create harmful alleles, but only raises the likelihood that recessive alleles, both good ones and bad ones, be expressed. It thereby raises the risk for the children to have harmful recessive traits, but also the opportunity for them to have helpful recessive traits. Yet even the former effect has its good side, though, as it cleanses the population of harmful recessive alleles through genetic purging: It exposes them to natural selection. Species like the fish Pelvicachromis taeniatus bear witness to the useful sides of sibcest (sibling incest).

But humans aren’t fish.

As a matter of fact, we are; J we evolved from fish and therefore are fish. Indeed, we’re rooted deeply in the fish family tree, deeper than sharks and rays, in fact. On a funny note: You can point out that mammals are fish whenever some smart aleck claims that whales aren’t fish, but mammals 😉.

Secondly, in today’s world, sibling couples can let their unborn embryos undergo genetic screening and abort the sick ones among them. Or rather, they could, were it not for the incest taboo or even incest prohibition, which prevents them from accessing said treatment lest they be shunned by society or thrown into jail. So it’s ironically not incest, but the incest taboo and prohibition, which are responsible for genetically ill children being born of incestuous unions.

Thirdly, the eugenic argument against incest is as unacceptable as any other eugenic argument. By its logic, the state should forbid any couple who have a higher risk of begetting ill children from having them.

Fourthly, the incest taboo and prohibition apply even to non-begetting sex on the one hand while on the other hand – please correct me if I be wrong – not forbidding a sister from conceiving from her brother through artificial insemination. Absolutely nobody is harmed in the least if a brother has a vasectomy before having sex with his sister, for example.

Anyway, incest poses no public health risk and no health risk to people who have nothing to do with the incestuous couple, as it causes no infectious diseases. By contrast, promiscuity and certain disgusting sexually motivated acts (be they opposite-sex or same-sex) do spread dangerous pathogens throughout society, such as HIV. Thereby, they also affect people not involved in any way in the sex, for example patients who receive blood from donors infected with HIV due to the latter’s promiscuous habits. So there is a case to be made for outlawing promiscuity and literally dirty pseudo-sex, since it endangers the health of third parties and society as a whole.

I believe to have thus thoroughly debunked the eugenic argument against sibcest.

As for other arguments against it, I can’t find any sound ones. If a brother rapes his sister? Well, that’s rape, and this is why it’s wrong. A woman raped by her brother is no more a victim of incest than a boy raped by a man is a victim of homosexuality or, indeed, a woman raped by a man is a victim of heterosexuality.

Sister and brother who make love with each other in complete consent and let their embryos undergo genetic screening harm no-one and are therefore fully innocent. Therefore, sibling incest in and of itself is neither wrong nor immoral nor unethical nor anything of the sort. I’m appalled and shocked by the fact that many supposedly enlightened jurisdictions, including Canada, most of the U.S., and much of Europe, still prohibit sibcest, in some case with extreme punishments worse than ones meant for serious crimes. And that in the Twenty-First Yearhundred!

I’m strongly against sibcestophobia and homophobia, but what truly disgusts me is the incoherence and hypocrisy inherent in the view that same-sex sex be okay whereas sibling sex be not. What disgusts me even more is the perversion (in the literal sense of “wrong-way-round-ness”) of the opinion that incest or homosexual intercourse be wrong whereas adultery should not be forbidden. Why? Because incest and same-sex sex in themselves are victimless whereas adultery has a victim: the cheated spouse. Adultery is a type of breaking one’s promise and ought therefore to be forbidden and punished. And it’s a dangerous type of breaking one’s promise at that, as the adulterer can infect their spouse with HIV and other nasty buggers. The cheater endangers their spouse’s health and life without the latter’s knowledge and accordingly ought to be punished severely. By contrast, little is wrong with an open marriage, for there, the spouses haven’t promised each other to have no romantic or sexual relations with others and accept the associated risks. Only if there be an infectious danger to public health should open relationships be outlawed. By “marriage”, I mean the state of two or more people being in a romantic and sexual relationship with each other which they mean to last. I don’t mean the IMHO hocus-pocus involving priests or registrars. Spouses don’t get married; they marry one another. Something akin to adultery in wrongness is plagiarism (not to be confused with refusing to bow to copyright or patent), which is the fraudulent misattribution of others’ intellectual achievements to oneself and thereby a form of lying. Why akin? Because both are instances of dishonesty, and dishonesty is one of the worst things, as already Immanuel Kant realized.

Speaking of marriage … just as sibling marriage is victimless and not immoral in any way, so are same-sex marriage and marriage between more than two people. Hence, one shouldn’t discriminate against marriages based on relatedness, gender, or number.

Coming back to our topic: It seems that our gut feeling has been right after all in telling us that killing an unborn human for no good reason is murder, but that forcing a woman to carry a rape child to term is an equally egregious rights violation. Well, at least my gut feeling has always told me that, and I venture to say my gut is quite healthy 😉. You have shown that some people’s rational justification for their right instinctive judgment is wrong, though.

So … am I right that you have made a straw man argument against the moderate pro-life view? Have I shown that the moderate pro-life position is coherent and, indeed, right after all?

Sincerely yours,

T́ristanaz Ĺaihnazrijaz, ðe Liŋk Twin Maniac (L™)

P.S.: I’m surprised it’s the left which usually advocates abortion rights and the right which speaks for baby rights. Why? Because normally, it’s the left-winger who speaks for equality and the rights of everyone whereas the right-winger is more prone to supremacism and, at the extremist fringe, to endorsing dehumanization. The left acknowledges that race, ethnicity, gender, culture, religion, sexual orientation, wealth and so on are no valid grounds on which to discriminate against people. So why age (bornness vs. unbornness)?

I vehemently defend living being rights. I acknowledge that all living beings, from bacteria and archaea through plants and non-human animals to humans, transhumans, superhuman AGIs, and superhuman aliens, have inviolable dignity which can be damaged or forfeited only by their own freewilled choices. I admit that by choosing a primitive body not able to support the intelligence needed for ethics, lower life forms have probably forfeited some of their ground rights. I’ve always, since long before I went to school, spoken for the rights of animals and even plants (I always opposed cutting trees down). I’m aware that damaging anything good or beautiful, even if it’s not alive, e.g. a fair jewel, for no good reason is wrong. I realize that bullfighting, butchering whales for fun, pure sports hunting, and all other forms of blood sport are among the most perverse activities imaginable. I’m appalled by such monstrous crimes as eating live octopuses, who are highly feelingful and smart beings, and cutting fins off living sharks. I’m aware of the realness of manmade global warming and know that fighting it is one of the weightiest things we have to do. I’m an enthusiastic pro-vaxxer but grudgingly admit that everyone has the right to refuse to get vaccinated based on their right to bodily autonomy. In fact, I believe the whole population ought to be regularly vaccinated against the deadliest non-prionic infectious disease I’m aware of: rabies. I’m for women’s rights, children’s rights (born and unborn alike), sibcest rights, polygamy rights, and LGBTIAQ+ rights. I’m against acephobia, sibcestophobia, homophobia, transphobia, and ableism. I’m spellbound by Darwinian evolution (evolution by random variation and natural selection) and reject creationism and theistic evolution. I’m aware of the soul and reject physicalism. I believe that humankind is by far the most advanced species currently on Earth, but only by chance, and that species far more sophisticated are possible. I’ve shown that copyright, patent, and other kinds of CoPaKIP (copyright-or-patent-kind intellectual property) violate the rights to freedom of speech, freedom of science and art, and free unfolding of one’s personality and that they’re based on ethical and metaphysical errors. A whole chapter of my mythical saga True Twin Telepaths Go Trick-or-Treating outlines some of my arguments, and I have an upcoming book about the matter going into far more detail. I believe in the universal right to free healthcare and free education (including higher). I’m currently mostly sympathetic to moderate socialism and critical of rampant capitalism, though I recognize the worth of competition and that capitalism has its good sides, such as Elon Musk’s space program. (As for CoPaKIP, it violates both capitalist and socialist principles, as I show in the aforesaid myth.) I’m against imperialism, oppression, and supremacism and for freedom, multiculturalism, and openness. I’m against drugs of almost all sorts (coffee is the only exception I’m thinking of right now), including nicotine and alcohol, though I’m more strongly against marihuana and far more strongly against the harder drugs. I’m also against gambling. I’m strongly against sending the seeds of life (directed panspermia) to objects (e.g. planets and star-forming clouds) that can or will be able to bring forth life of their own, as that would prevent new, original life from arising by itself. Seeding an uninhabited but habitable world or a nebula that’s likely to become one is like putting a foreign embryo into a woman’s womb before she has a chance to beget her own. One of the things most important to me is saving species, including alligator gars, coelacanths, and Venus flytraps, from extinction, protecting the environment, and renaturation.

And last and perhaps greatest … I agree with Stephen Hawking that we must NOT send signals willy-nilly into space without knowing what creeps and crawls around out there. 😰

So I find myself in the rather awkward position of being broadly allied on the issue of abortion with those most of whose other views I oppose. In fact, I don’t get the logic behind the definitions of leftwing and rightwing. As said, I’d classify pro-life as leftist and pro-choice as rightist. Likewise, the right rightfully leans away from living on debt. Then why does it embrace making the worst debt of all: over-exploiting the planet? Often, I just memorize which positions are ascribed to which of the two wings. But it matters little, for as they look in part like jumbled assortments of views to me, I don’t count myself among either.

P.P.S.: Please address me with the vocative (calling case), “Tristan” or “Mr. Laihnazrii”, rather than the nominative (who-case), “Tristanaz” or “Mr. Laihnazrijaz”. Please say or write e.g. “Tristanaz is moderately pro-life” (nominative), “Tristan, how are you?” (vocative), “She heard Tristanan” (accusative, whon-case), “Can I help Tristanai?” (dative, whom-case), “Tristanis/Tristanas arguments are sound” (genitive/possessive, whose-case), and “You can hone your philosophizing skills with Tristanoo” (instrumental, tool case, with-whom-case).

#pro life #pro choice #abortion #human rights #reproductive rights #reproductive freedom #reproductive justice #reproductive health #women's rights #fetus rights #baby rights #ground rights #fundamental rights #animal testing #dignity #incest rights #sibcest rights #sibling marriage #sibcestophobia

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