‘Enforced childbirth is slavery’: Margaret Atwood on the right to abortion • Hacker News Board

Re: ‘Enforced childbirth is slavery’: Margaret Atwood on the right to abortion

#41

Post by trasz » Mon, May 09, 2022, 4:59 PM UTC

dane-pgp wrote: post #40

trasz wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In other words, if somebody is violating your bodily freedom, you don’t deserve the right to defend in a way that would harm them? Abortion isn’t a complicated issue. It’s a typical science/ethics vs alt right stupidity issue. The only thing complicated about it is the prevailing political correctness towards religion.

> you don’t deserve the right to defend in a way that would harm them? If that's your strawman interpretation of what I said, then let me turn it around and infer your position: People's rights should be based on their ability to do harm to those trying to violate their bodily freedom. I don't think that actually is your position, but it is at least consistent with your view that vulnerable children should have no ri…

It's not a strawman, this is literally what you said above: that bodily freedom (in this case abortion) does not imply the right to actively defend against something/someone violating this freedom (in this case the foetus).

Children of course do have rights, because they don't invade anyone's freedom, in particular they don't parasite on another person's body against that persons will. As opposed to unwanted pregnancies.

Re: ‘Enforced childbirth is slavery’: Margaret Atwood on the right to abortion

#42

Post by dane-pgp » Tue, May 10, 2022, 7:39 AM UTC

trasz wrote: post #41

dane-pgp wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you don’t deserve the right to defend in a way that would harm them? If that's your strawman interpretation of what I said, then let me turn it around and infer your position: People's rights should be based on their ability to do harm to those trying to violate their bodily freedom. I don't think that actually is your position, but it is at least consistent with your view that vulnerable children should have no ri…

It's not a strawman, this is literally what you said above: that bodily freedom (in this case abortion) does not imply the right to actively defend against something/someone violating this freedom (in this case the foetus). Children of course do have rights, because they don't invade anyone's freedom, in particular they don't parasite on another person's body against that persons will. As opposed to unwanted pregnanc…

> something/someone violating this freedom (in this case the foetus).

Thank you for explaining your position, but I think it's an odd framing to say that a foetus is "violating the freedom" of the woman bearing it. If a woman decides to handcuff herself, and then accidentally loses the key, I suppose you could say that the handcuffs are "limiting her freedom", and she needs to "actively interfere with" the handcuffs by damaging them, but saying "violating" and "defend" makes it sound like the foetus has agency and is deliberately/knowingly acting against her wishes.

I'm sure it isn't your intention to make the foetus seem like a person (which is why you call it a foetus and not a child, even though we could be talking about a fully formed human being, one day before their birth). In any case, I'm afraid your argument sounds completely circular, because you are defining "that bodily freedom" to specifically mean a supposed right to abortion. Of course if that right exists then the foetus/child may not violate it, but if there is no such right then no one may "actively defend against" the existence of that foetus/child.

Re: ‘Enforced childbirth is slavery’: Margaret Atwood on the right to abortion

#43

Post by trasz » Tue, May 10, 2022, 7:02 PM UTC

dane-pgp wrote: post #42

trasz wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a strawman, this is literally what you said above: that bodily freedom (in this case abortion) does not imply the right to actively defend against something/someone violating this freedom (in this case the foetus). Children of course do have rights, because they don't invade anyone's freedom, in particular they don't parasite on another person's body against that persons will. As opposed to unwanted pregnanc…

> something/someone violating this freedom (in this case the foetus). Thank you for explaining your position, but I think it's an odd framing to say that a foetus is "violating the freedom" of the woman bearing it. If a woman decides to handcuff herself, and then accidentally loses the key, I suppose you could say that the handcuffs are "limiting her freedom", and she needs to "actively interfere with" the handcuffs…

Are you trying to say the law should prohibit helping people who handcuffed themselves and then lost the key?

Calling foetus a “child” suggests it’s a person, while in reality it almost never is, because it lacks the property defining a person: brain activity. It’s just a fundamentalist newspeak, invented to distort reality; kind of like “unborn child” or “civilization of life”. Why would anyone use terminology introduced by worlds leading child rapist association is beyond me.

The very idea of bodily freedom implies the right to abortion.

Re: ‘Enforced childbirth is slavery’: Margaret Atwood on the right to abortion

#44

Post by dane-pgp » Sun, May 22, 2022, 1:04 PM UTC

trasz wrote: post #43

dane-pgp wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> something/someone violating this freedom (in this case the foetus). Thank you for explaining your position, but I think it's an odd framing to say that a foetus is "violating the freedom" of the woman bearing it. If a woman decides to handcuff herself, and then accidentally loses the key, I suppose you could say that the handcuffs are "limiting her freedom", and she needs to "actively interfere with" the handcuffs…

Are you trying to say the law should prohibit helping people who handcuffed themselves and then lost the key? Calling foetus a “child” suggests it’s a person, while in reality it almost never is, because it lacks the property defining a person: brain activity. It’s just a fundamentalist newspeak, invented to distort reality; kind of like “unborn child” or “civilization of life”. Why would anyone use terminology intro…

> Are you trying to say the law should prohibit helping people who handcuffed themselves and then lost the key?

No, because metal handcuffs are not (and will never be) people, so that's quite uncontroversial. A more instructive example would be a 7 year old child super-glueing their hands to the hands of their mother (as some kind of prank). I think we'd all agree that the law shouldn't permit anyone to "help" the mother by amputating the child's hands.

> it lacks the property defining a person: brain activity.

I'm not sure what counts as "brain activity" to you, but "Ultrasounds can reveal the embryo moving as early as 6 weeks after conception (or 8 pregnancy weeks), detecting the electrical impulses that govern movement and indicating that the brain is beginning to function."[0]

> fundamentalist newspeak, invented to distort reality; kind of like “unborn child”

The adjective "unborn" only became necessary because these were the specific subset of children whose right to life were being ignored. It's like how we didn't use the term "World War I" until there was a second one. If abortion were legal after the child is born but before they could feed themselves, we would need a name like "dependent child" to refer to them as a legal class of citizen.

The very idea of bodily freedom implies the right to not be aborted.

[0] https://flo.health/pregnancy/pregnancy-health/fetal-developm...