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Couldn’t hear it; I was laughing too hard. I had to play it three times.
Why is The Onion so awesome?
A bit of a terrifying thought, but what they’re discussing satirically doesn’t seem too far off the path of what people are trying to force women to do anyway.
Oh I hope some of the more extreme anti-abortionist don’t watch this. It might make them think these would be good ideas.
Might be the Onion but it mimics a very real proposal in the Kentucky Legislature to do something along the same lines.
http://www.courier-journal.com/article/20100114/NEWS01/1140325/Senate-panel-OKs-abortion-ultrasound-bill
what does this have to do with atheism?
What does that matter?
Only religion can make someone a sick enough fu*k to try and use this kind of emotional blackmail in order to press someone to have a child that they didn’t want or are unable to support. Especially since the same “pro-life” A-holes are those that will do anything to make sure that nothing is done to guarantee the child they were so eager to save a good public education or access to healthcare.
Only religion…
Not for nothing, but politics does it pretty well, too. Religion finds itself spectacularly unspecial in its capacity to get humans to do inhumane things.
I don’t think that atheism/skepticism should be coupled with pro-choice. You can be conservative on some issues such as abortion, spending, government, etc. and still be an atheist, agnostic or skeptic.
While I agree with you, I don’t think as a practical matter they *are* coupled. On either end. IIRC, 51% of American Catholics are pro-choice. The whole argument is done a disservice by being draped in religion and religious modes of argumentation, which are only ever means to an end when it comes to temporal matters.
yeah i agree with that. when i was a born again christian, i was part of the pro-life movement at college. i remember there was this girl that was an atheist that was pro-life, and everyone liked her and appreciated her and really wanted to get her saved. I remember thinking “we NEED people like her. Why does everyone have to be just like us?”
I don’t speak for all of atheism or skepticism. I speak for me — and I found this video amusing. Thus this video.
And thanks for the warning (Yeah, it’s The Onion! ;)). At least this time I didn’t get coffee running out of my nose.
I think the link between pro-choice and atheism has come about largely as a reaction to the extreme ‘pro-life’ (of course it’s not really pro-life, it’s anti-sex, anti-choice and anti-women) stance taken by the ‘religious’ right. Pro-lifers claim the soul enters the body at conception, and skeptics (who by and large are also atheists) see a number of problems with this proposition, never mind the hypocrisy that’s involved with being ‘pro-life’ while shooting abortionists and supporting the death penalty.
Horse / cart, cart / horse.
Atheism isn’t particularly associated with pro-choice, but theism is strongly associated with “pro-life” and atheists generally oppose the stance of theists.
“Pro-lifers” tend to base all of their objections to abortion on what their religion says about it (or at least what they think their religion says about it – for example the OT talks about ripping open pregnant women and killing their unborn infants).
The implication is that once one sets aside religious arguments and actually looks at the argument from the points of view of science and pure ethics, objections to abortions before 22 weeks (ish) of gestation vanish – and that’s largely true.
There are, of course, people like myself and brgulker who approach the issue from opposite sides but reach the same conclusion – abortion is necessary but we should do our best to limit “social” abortions, i.e. abortion as a birth control choice like condoms or the pill.
Even from the point of view of “pure ethics,” abortion is not less troublesome. Disregarding any religious texts at all, one can make a fairly solid case against abortion in many, if not all cases.
Also (not in response to custador, but I’ll just throw it in here) there is not necessarily a discrepancy between being pro-life and pro-death penalty, nor are all pro-life positions inherently anti-sex, anti-choice, or anti-feminist. (Mike, this is primarily aimed at your above post.)
“Even from the point of view of “pure ethics,” abortion is not less troublesome”
Up to a point, it very much is. Up to 20 to 22 weeks gestation, foetuses cannot survive outside of the womb – and it is strongly unethical to force a woman to bear what is essentially a parasite if she expressly does not wish to do so. Foetuses at that stage are not self-aware and do not feel pain, either.
“foetuses cannot survive outside of the womb”
I’ve never been entirely comfortable with this as an argument as a baby can’t survive outside the womb for a many years without human intervention. I agree with JonJon that abortion is troblesome and that’s mainly down to the fact that you have two parts competing for choice and those choices are mutually exclusive.
It’s not the most comfortable argument, is it? The fact is, though, that a 22 week foetus is not an intelligent, self-aware being – and the mother is. The choice is the mother’s to make.
In a strange way I like the simplicity of the at conception argument as there is a clear difference between before and after compared to a date based on is it viable, does it feel pain etc. Of course this argument relies on mistakes never being made so in reality is a bad choice.
I’m actually fairly happy with the law as it is as it gives people a choice and recognises that mistakes happen. As my better half says, her choice has always been that even in the face of an accident she wouldn’t have an abortion but that’s her choice and not one should would force on others
Custador:
“The fact is, though, that a 22 week foetus is not an intelligent, self-aware being – and the mother is”
How in the world do you know that? A fetus at 22 weeks has a brain, nervous system, etc. Isn’t it just as dogmatic to assume that its unaware at this point, even though developmentally it has the capabilities to feel fear and pain?
I don’t believe that the soul magically enters the fetus at conception, but nearly do I naively believe that a fetus feels and knows nothing until birth.
“even though developmentally it has the capabilities to feel fear and pain?”
No, it does not. The only pain reactions from a foetus to pain are at the brain-stem level. There’s no higher function for pain at all until after birth.
“The only pain reactions from a foetus to pain are at the brain-stem level. There’s no higher function for pain at all until after birth.”
Again, I have to ask you, how do you know that? What happens at birth that “turns on” the higher brain functions? What scientific evidence do we have that fetuses do not feel pain in the womb, when all the hardware for it is basically there? I’ve heard of ultrasounds of abortions where the fetus actually looks like its crying out. I’m not trying to overly critical of you, I just really want to know.
Note, I am NOT pro-life. I’m just trying to be ethical and non-dogmatic.
Sure I read it somewhere…
Well, you don’t have to be a moral agent to be a moral patient. There are some adults who are not intelligent or self-aware either, but killing them is still murder. There is a continuum here that is not easily split into categories of “not aware” and “aware.” At what point is somebody a fully-functional adult?
Frankly, to me, it does not matter. I am not a vegetarian and I am not opposed to abortion because, fundamentally, I do think there is something inherent in the conscious sort of thinking humans exhibit that few or no other animals seem to, and which fetuses certainly do not. Furthermore, morality seems to be derived from a search to increase not just happiness–that can be easily done with drugs–but a sort of intellectual contentment that only humans (as distinct from human fetuses and from other animals) can really enjoy anyways.
But I don’t think it is a morally trivial question. Just because a fetus is not conscious does not necessarily mean it does not have rights.
Custador – I like how you keep bringing it back to the issue of capacity to suffer. I think that is the crux of the issue.
This is not an easy discussion. I don’t think the fetus is a human being before a certain age (perhaps 22 weeks) because humans share certain traits and a fetus is not yet developed to that point (of course, I don’t believe in the whole superstitious “soul” argument so that’s not a consideration).
And yes, it is a parasite before that age. On the other hand, it is some form of life that deserves to be considered. This is a very grey area, but ultimately my moral system is based on suffering. Maximum morality = minimum suffering.
And I am curious about that comment from (someone – was it JonJon?) that being “pro-life” on the abortion issue is not necessarily inconsistent with being pro-death penalty. That makes no sense to me at all. (And these are the people that are usually really, really excited about war. Pro-life? Think not.)
The difference between supporting the death penalty and supporting abortion is rather clear. When one private individual kills another intentionally, it is legally defined as murder. This is what most pro-lifers think abortion is. Murder is almost always frowned upon by the people in a society, although it can occasionally be justified in cases of self-defense. When a government kills someone legitimately, using the authority given to it by society, it is an execution. The government has been given the power to execute people who meet certain fairly rigorous standards, and they are not legally culpable of murder, or even conspiracy to commit murder, so long as they use this power correctly. Murder is quite specifically an act of a private party. War is similar to execution in this regard: individuals act as representatives of their government, and are not legally culpable for performing acts of violence on enemy combatants as long as they are in accord with the rules set out for them by the government. (Obviously, war crimes can and do happen, and the government’s authority could not completely save, say, certain Nazis who were still held accountable for wartime actions. But usually the actions are permitted by the government, and are not legally considered to be a criminal act.)
As far as considering a fetus a parasite, I’ve heard conflicting reports on this one. On the one hand, a fetus certainly draws nutrition from the mother. However, many definitions of parasite require it to be of another species than the host (although this may be simply to distinguish it from a fetus). I have heard from a non-religious, pro-choice, liberal lesbian college professor that a fetus is not the same as a parasite because the host body does not “willingly” provide nutrients to the parasite, whereas a human female’s body will actually send nutrients to a fetus at the expense of its own health; the fetus does not do anything to actively obtain these nutrients. Additionally, many definitions of parasite require that no advantage be delivered from the parasite to the host. At first glance, a fetus seems to fit that description, although since a fetus contains half of the mother’s DNA, a mother is evolutionarily benefited by the fetus: it allows for the spread of the mother’s DNA which, while certainly not a nutritional advantage, does contribute to the overall survivability of the mother’s genetic material.
I think parasitism is a more difficult question than “why is execution different than abortion.”
@JonJon – very interesting comment, especially the part dissecting whether or not a fetus is a parasite. Very thought-provoking. To be honest, I had used that term rather loosely without thinking too much about it. It’s important to be careful with words, isn’t it?
However, I disagree with you about state-sanctioned execution. Don’t you consider it to be a “legal fiction” that when it is not an individual doing the killing, it’s not murder? That somehow because it’s the state doing it, it becomes moral? If an individual cannot morally kill someone in retribution, why is it moral for the state? And from a practical standpoint, how can we ever be sure enough of someone’s guilt to execute them? Since DNA testing became available, many people have been released from prison – some from death row. For others, it was too late.
My personal belief? That what is immoral for an individual is immoral for a country. It is wrong to start a fight. It is wrong to kill someone, even in retribution. The only time it is morally justifiable is in self-defense. That is, if another country invades my country, I can fight them off – I can defend my person, my family, my property, and my country.
To say that individuals have one standard, and the state has another, means that maybe you didn’t think this through.
Individuals give the government the legitimate right to kill people. In the US, there are states without the death penalty, where people who don’t feel that people should be executed by the state have made their voice heard through the legislature or through referendums. Thankfully, most democratic nations have the opportunity, however gradual, to change what the state can and cannot legitimately do.
It is absolutely, 100% okay to disagree with a government policy. Lots of people do. That doesn’t diminish the legitimacy of governmental policies. The state *does* have a different standard than an individual. This is in part because of the incredible amount of power it wields, and in part because of its responsibility to look out for the interests of the people it represents. In actual fact, the death penalty may be immoral. Governments have had many immoral policies that have been overturned by the tide of popular opinion, or by a few outspoken advocates.
As for why pro-lifers consider state-execution to be morally acceptable, I certainly can’t speak for all of them. It *is* a different thing, though; disagreeing with abortion policy does not necessitate disagreeing with policies on execution. Just because one side of the argument has labeled themselves “pro-life” and the other “pro-choice” does not mean that pro-lifers agree that all life is sacrosanct any more than the pro-choice camp agree about protecting *each gender’s* reproductive choices equally. Some people who are pro-choice actually believe that all sex in a patriarchal system is effectively rape, while many others would disagree. All I mean to say is that holding one political position doesn’t necessitate holding another, nor do moral positions necessarily bleed into each other.
(If you’re interested, there is a conversation happening in the forums which touches on the problems that would follow from allowing men an equal amount of control over their reproductive rights. Should a man be allowed to legally force his partner to have an abortion because he doesn’t want to have a child? I don’t have a good answer to the question, but it seems that opinions from both camps would be extremely divided.)
I realize the government has tremendous power, and that in reality “might makes right”. But as you pointed out, that doesn’t make it moral. So that brings me back to my original point. Why do so many so-called “pro-lifers” support the death penalty? Is human life sacred only when it is innocent? I thought we were all born in sin? Maybe it’s because the baby isn’t born yet – it’s the one human being without sin??? I just don’t get it. It makes absolutely no sense to me. You either value life and consider it precious, or you do not.
I consider myself extremely pro-life, especially since I became atheist. I see life and the fact that we exist an incredible accident. The odds of us not having been conceived and born are astronomical, and if our parents had copulated a minute or two later or earlier, we would not be “us”! It’ll twist your head around if you think about it too much. In any case, I’m grateful to be here. I place a high value on all life, including that of the fetus. But fetuses (or is that fetai?) are not human beings, capable of suffering and pain. Most people would agree that we value animal lilfe, but not as much as human life. It is possible to respect life but still have a hierarchy of value.
However, in my view it is profoundly immoral and evil to kill any human being. Including those who richly deserve it! Because this does not create justice. You can’t undo the past by killing someone. All it does it diminish us as a society.
“However, in my view it is profoundly immoral and evil to kill any human being. Including those who richly deserve it!”
That’s fine. Other people believe that killing people who deserve to die is a necessary evil. If I may be permitted to use your own words against you:
“It is possible to respect life but still have a hierarchy of value.”
Some cultures would be (violently) opposed to your idea of evil. They might feel their society diminished by its inability to punish those who committed evil acts.
“nor are all pro-life positions inherently anti-sex, anti-choice, or anti-feminist. (Mike, this is primarily aimed at your above post.)”
Of course not JonJon. These views are only co-joined by pure co-incidence.
If you consider the needs of a blob that does not feel pain, does not know it exists,is not even formed yet, over the needs of a woman, you are anti-feminist. I don’t think anyone likes the idea of abortion, and I think we can all agree that we need to have better sex-education, self-respect etc. to minimize accidental pregnancies. This is in everyone’s best interest. However, to say that the needs of that blob outweigh the needs of an adult human being is anti-woman, to say the least. And if you are pro-life, you are by definition anti-choice.
So if, for example, I consider the needs of my pet rat over the needs of a human female I don’t like very much, I am anti-feminist? What if I consider the Mona Lisa more valuable than a human female’s life? This might make me a terrible person, but would it make me anti-feminist, or even misogynistic? Feminism =! the rights of women. It is a movement toward extending those rights and working toward gender equality. I can value that movement and still value something else more. Even if I hate individual women, I might still be a feminist. Heck, I could hate several specific women and still not be a misogynist. As long as pro-choice means “unlimited, unrestricted choice,” then yes, pro-life is automatically opposed. That’s the nature of the debate.
Another abortion debate? Is there really anything that could be said in these comments that hasn’t been said already?
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eh why not just deliver the baby and see if it looks attractive?
Or see if it might be tasty?
Only to the Baby Eating Bishop of Bath and Wells.
I think there are two powerful reasons abortion is related to atheism – the concept of the soul, and guilt.
One of the goals of the religious anti-choice movement is to make women feel guilty while they attempt to make what is a gut-wrenching decision. I’ve seen women struggle over this issue and had to myself when I found out at 5 months that my child had a “skeletal dysplasia” (fancy word for dwarfism). If you can convince women that to even consider abortion, to weight the effects of continuing a pregnancy in a rational manner, is a sin – well then score one for the religious nuts. Religion also perpetuates the idea of the “soul”. If one accepts the idea that it somehow magically enters the fetus upon conception or at whatever arbitrary time they pick – well then you’re not just ending a “parasite” you’re killing another soul!!
An atheist has let go of the idea that someone in the sky is watching your every move, that one has to feel guilty for thoughts and that there is some everlasting, unending punishment. Most atheists have let go of the idea of a “soul”. Thus, an atheist woman is better equipped than a religious one to actually think rationally if she is confronted with having to make a decision about continuing a pregnancy.
The best argument I can make against the “soul entering at conception” argument is the phenomenon of chimerism. Chimerism happens when fraternal twin blastocysts merge to make one person. Many times, chimerism goes undetected, but in the case of a male and a female merging, a hermaphrodite results. So, does this one person have two souls??? Obviously not. So clearly, the “soul” (if such a thing exists) does not enter at conception.
Likewise, do identical twins have just 1/2 of a soul when the fertilized egg splits at the blastocyst stage??? Clearly that is ridiculous.
I’ve often thought that was the real objection of the religious right to cloning. If you can produce two identical people – does that mean that they share a soul?
LRA thats a really good point.
LRA – That’s a great point. Thank you!
For those who are comfortable with the life-begins-at-conception argument, this seems very weak when nature/life itself is so profligate with the way it treats blastocysts.
From a biologic point of view, the idea of ‘life beginning at conception ‘ doesn’t make sense. Sperm and eggs are both alive before they connect, and still alive after. The only point of ‘un-life’ was 4 billion years ago when self organizing compounds began to copy themselves. Life never stopped after that.
The real question of abortion and euthanasia is the definition of ‘person’, not ‘where does life begin’. Its a legal question, not a science question. At what point do we call something a person so that it has rights under the law?
Precisely.
Wow, that’s it. You hit the bullseye.
Thanks. I put quite a bit of thought into the abortion debate. I think all social problems can be easily fixed through physical evidence and reasoned logic. When I parsed out the arguments of most pro-lifers, it seemed that they weren’t arguing about life per-say, but arguing that the fetus was a person. Religion causes those kinds of cognitive dissonances, like a loving god that will burn you for eternity if you don’t love him back. People rationalize cognitive dissonance through emotion. It might rationally be wrong, but it FEELS right dammit!
If you like my take on abortion, you should hear how I would fix the immigration problems.
I have posed a similar question to many believers:
If life begins at conception, meaning that ensoulment is instantaneous, how many souls do parasitic twins/fetus in fetu have?
Here we have a problem: the partial development of one twin whilst the other either fails to separate from the healthy twin or is enveloped by the other twin. The result is, in essence, a tumor. The fetus in fetu is still alive, albeit without a brain, etc. So if life/ensoulment begins at conception, does the fetus in fetu, which is still living tissue, still have a soul, or did it lose it? And if it lost its soul, at what point did that happen?
The answer to these questions has universally been “I don’t know.” There’s nothing like a scientific oddity to throw a wrench into religious thought.
Good argument!
i think emma hit a nail on the head here, though maybe not the one she was thinking.
if there is one reason to consider being opposed to abortion, it is the psychological and physical havoc the process can wreak on the mother. even if the mother is an atheist, the gut-wrenching decision to terminate a pregnancy or not can cause years of self-doubt later on. and don’t forget all the hormones that go into making a baby; there are physical repercussions, too. the choice to have an abortion is an extremely personal one for any woman, and talking about abortion like it’s some political or religious ideal that we can ever really regulate is ludicrous when you consider the actual human element involved. i am a solidly pro-choice woman, but i hate abortion. i have helped several friends cope with unwanted pregnancies, even years after they made their decision. it’s not a choice i’d wish on anyone, or a process i’d like to watch anyone go through. nevertheless, i think my friends should be allowed to make their own choices, just as much as i think i should be able to make mine. i don’t know a single woman who thinks abortion is just some little procedure you do on a saturday afternoon whenever you feel like it. lots of thought and consideration goes into the decision, and telling a woman she hasn’t thought about it enough and needs to see an ultrasound, or consider whether or not the baby has a soul, or whatever other stall tactics these men are thinking of (yeah, men, btw, not the people carrying the babies) are just cruel.
on a similar note, i’ve also helped friends deal with natural miscarriages, which are every bit as difficult to live through. should women who are pregnant be prosecuted for consuming caffeine, or for eating junk food, or for living in a place that has a lot of smog, or for having a stressful life situation? these are all things that can affect a fetus, and even cause a miscarriage, but i haven’t heard of any laws on the books in kentucky that say pregnant women should be treated like the miracle the fetus is supposed to be.
pregnancy is a natural process, and always has been. trying to regulate it with laws looks like a stupider and stupider idea the more you know about it.
Kat, do you think it would be less difficult for women if there wasn’t a large group of people telling them that they are evil and murderers?
I’m not a woman, so I’m not qualified to answer that question. I know it would always be a difficult decision, but how much of our culture creates the feelings of guilt that so many women feel? If we had less social stigma attached to abortion, how much would that go to alleviate the mental suffering so many women feel?
I agree – that guilt and trauma many women feel over abortion is, in my view, for 2 reasons:
1. They really wanted the baby but were pressured to abort.
2. They grew up in a religious home or otherwise oppressive and conservative environment that brainwashed her into thinking that the “baby” had a “soul”.
This is purely conjecture of my part, but I sometimes think many women only have children because they are expected to – they’re female and there’s this pattern of grow-get-married-have-a-kid that is implied in society even if not enforced. It always bugs me when someone sees a friend of mine single and promptly starts plotting to match them; if they’re married, when will they have kids; if they say they don’t want to, a discussion ensues: why not, what if you meet a nice guy and he wants kids, etc.
Conversely, having an abortion – well, that’s a break from the expected norm isn’t it? We’re supposed to WANT kids. We’re supposed to be nurturing and loving and motherly. Well, except when we aren’t and we don’t… so I don’t think it’s necessarily being told we’re evil murderous sinners, but more like “I’m supposed to like this, to love this, to want this, even if it was some random rapist or if I have no condition or want to raise a child, I’m supposed to connect to it and instantly become warrior mother lady, think of the future, what a lovely person this could be” and so on and so forth.
Psychological bondage sucks.
It’s true that pregnancy is a natural state. However, babies are bigger than they used to be and women have not been given a chance to evolve so that this is a healthy and relatively painless process. Although abortion can cause hormonal ups and downs, and if a person is plagued by guilt they may have doubts after having it done, but the bottom line is that prenancy is many times more risky and dangerous. Hormones keep raging and changing throughout the whole pregancy. The baby pushes on organs that were never meant to be pushed on, and many women suffer ill health forever after having a child. My mom (who is elderly) lost her teeth from pregancies – too much calcium was going into the baby. Many women get high blood pressure or toxemia, and it never goes away. I got heartburn, and ever since I have suffered from acid reflux disease (which is actually under control now, but had it for 20 years).
Another point to consider is that women live much longer today. It used to be that women had a few babies and dropped dead by 30. Now, women are living their full reproductive lives so there is a much greater chance of “unwanted” pregnancy.
Has anyone heard the statistic that when abortion laws are loosened (ie women can have abortions without much hassle), crime rates go down about 15 years later. There is a link between “unwanted children” and criminality. I’m looking for these studies, so if anyone has seen them….thanks….
The studies were done by Stephen Levit and published in his book Freakonomics.
It was a great book. He had some very interesting insights into a wide variety of topics. He also popularized the idea of using economic tools to measure different topics other than just money. Basically the study of incentives and disincentives.
Don’t bother with his second book, it was rubbish.
Also, I just wanted to respond to this line “..babies are bigger than they used to be and women have not been given a chance to evolve ..” Evolution only guarantees the survival of a species that adapts to its environment, it doesn’t guarantee comfort or efficiency in its designs. If sexual preferences of men continue to trend towards tiny framed females, then you can expect painful deliveries for many more generations. If you wanted to do unethical experiments of eugenics, you could artificially select humans for wider birth canals. Other than that, I think human females are stuck with difficult deliveries until medical science can bypass the biology.
Very interesting comment. I would suspect that we do change & evolve so that processes happen more naturally. As women are having smaller families (in no small part because of how incredibly pregnancy & delivery is is on women’s bodies), our species will probably survive but will be fewer in number!
And thanks for the tip on the study – I’ll check it out!