Re: Death By Pregnancy
In all those examples, lives (and mostly quality of life, not a life) are weighed against resources, $$, not other lives.
All of them weigh lives against lives.
You acknowledge this in the case of gun control.
Vaccines save many lives but unfortunately have a predictable (low, but nonzero) rate of debilitating or fatal complications.
Even parks save lives. An inner-city park (built with the same funds as a rehab clinic) enhances the environment, the community, and the local economy. It creates a safe place in the city. It promotes health and exercise. All these things have significant and predictable impact on quality of life
and on life itself. A park measurably changes the number of people who die of drug overdoses, inner-city crime, poverty, health problems, suicide, etc. Each option sacrifices one set of lives for another, statistically speaking.
And if you had read more closely, you would have seen that I was trying to discuss the moral aspects.
If you acknowledge we're not discussing laws, where does "against their will" come from?
The
sine qua non of moral argument is to persuade others to change their will--to desire to do the right thing. In this case, persuading mothers their unborn children are precious and very much worth the risks of pregnancy. In other words, advocating for the child, just as one would strive to persuade a fearful or overwrought mother from abandoning her newborn infant.
If you're saying that moral persuasion in non-zero-risk situations is immoral, your position is absurd on its face. You might as well argue it's immoral to encourage teachers, doctors, construction workers, etc. not to quit their jobs because there's a risk of death.
Will you ever directly and honestly answer the question in that response?
I do
not value the life of one foetus more than the life of one mother. If a pregnant mother's life is imperiled with a significant likelihood of death, even if this likelihood is as low as 10%, I personally don't judge any mother who elects to sacrifice the child to save her own life. This means that at a bare minimum I value the mother's life
ten times as dearly as the life of her child.
Your assertion that I devalue the mother's life is
false. I furthermore utterly reject your assertion that human value ought to be determined by criteria such as "presence", "commitments", sentiments of family members, sensitivity to pain, etc. rather than preservation of life, notwithstanding a individual's moral right to self-defense in the case of a significant threat.
We've determined the risk of mortal threat to a mother's life in the US to be roughly 1-in-10,000. This means that for every mother's life saved by termination of pregnancy, 10,000 unborn children die. Although I suspend judgment when the ratio is as high as 10 lives lost to one life saved, you'll note that 10 is 1,000 times less than 10,000.
You say this factor of 10,000 is irrelevant and "dehumanizing" because it's a number. I say that when it comes to weighing lives against lives, numbers, although not all-important (as the 10-to-1 figure implies), are of great importance. I also say that your 100%-number-free valuations are indefensible rationalizations that are just as applicable to infanticide and murder of the infirm.
It carries weight to you, but not to all or even most, hence why abortion is legal. Society determines what lives carry more weight.
If you're arguing from a legal standpoint: tell me something I don't know.
If you're arguing from a moral standpoint: if society told you to jump off a bridge, would you do it?
