LogFAQs > #958279875

Zeus posted...

...somehow one of those reasons seems far worse than the other. Being overly concerned about how somebody's death affects everybody else is kinda narcissistic sociopathic behavior. The concern should almost exclusively be around the deceased.

The dead don't care about being dead. The living generally don't want to die, but once they actually do, they stop suffering (unless you want to make a whole bunch of presumptions about what sort of afterlife they'll face, which isn't much of a basis for anything). Everyone they leave behind, however, does suffer. If anything, ignoring the effects somebody's death has on those around them is the sociopathic behaviour, not acknowledging it.

Zeus posted...

Which was also the historical argument for infanticide and child slaying.

It is, but in those cases, there's no benefit to killing the child over seeking other alternatives. The pregnancy's already done and the kid's already been delivered. If the parents don't want it, they have the option of giving it up for adoption without incurring any additional hardship. By contrast, abortion spares the mother the suffering and danger of pregnancy and childbirth, which she would otherwise have to go through to access any alternative options. It's a lot easier to justify killing the kid when there's actual benefit involved, even without getting into questions of how much more conscious/sentient (and therefore deserving of having their experiences and desires considered) a newborn is than a pre-viable fetus.

Zeus posted...

And even the claim that it's about protecting women's rights kinda rings hollow when female children are the primary victim of these practices,

"We must force women to involuntarily carry pregnancies for the sake of women's rights!" really doesn't have any merit to it. Yes, it is a problem that female children tend to be aborted more frequently (though it's not like there's much by way of meaningful differences at that gestational age), but that's a separate cultural issue that should not be "solved" by taking away other women's rights to make it more inconvenient to act upon.

Zeus posted...

or are hurt at a 50/50 rate

In other words, not treated any differently on the basis of their sex. That's generally how things should be.

Zeus posted...

when we decide -- for instance -- that a mother's right to over-drink is more important than a baby not being born with fetal alcohol syndrome (and let bartenders, whose job it is to prevent clients from self-abuse, get sued for discrimination in cases like those)

Realistically, by the time most women are far enough along in their pregnancy for a bartender to be reliably able to tell that they're pregnant, alcohol isn't going to be doing much to their baby. The vast majority of teratogenic activity - alcohol included - happens in the first trimester, sometimes before the mother even knows she's pregnant. FASD is bad and all, but trying to solve it policing women isn't going to help. Instead, there needs to be a focus on reducing unexpected/unwanted pregnancies, including birth control subsidies, improved sex ed, and access to abortions (since no preventative measure is going to be perfect).

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