rojoloco,
I'll give you a consistent argument for why abortion should be permitted under certain circumstances, and I'll do it in a few lines:
Human life isn't intrinsically valuable. It's valuable insofar as it has a capacity for conscious experience -- pleasure, pain, etc. Fetuses before a certain stage in pregnancy have no capacity for conscious experience because they have no central nervous system. Therefore, their life is not yet valuable. Therefore, we must evaluate the effect such a life would have on society and all interested parties. We routinely euthanize dogs because we do not foresee a pleasant future for them, and these are dogs that are conscious. The life of just about any dog is more valuable than the life of a fetus without consciousness because that dog has conscious experiences, whereas the fetus has none. Therefore, if the fetus is not yet conscious, and all interested parties (parents) agree that the effects of the babies birth would be sufficiently negative, abortion can be justified.
I'll give you a consistent argument for why abortion should be permitted under certain circumstances, and I'll do it in a few lines:
Human life isn't intrinsically valuable. It's valuable insofar as it has a capacity for conscious experience -- pleasure, pain, etc. Fetuses before a certain stage in pregnancy have no capacity for conscious experience because they have no central nervous system. Therefore, their life is not yet valuable. Therefore, we must evaluate the effect such a life would have on society and all interested parties. We routinely euthanize dogs because we do not foresee a pleasant future for them, and these are dogs that are conscious. The life of just about any dog is more valuable than the life of a fetus without consciousness because that dog has conscious experiences, whereas the fetus has none. Therefore, if the fetus is not yet conscious, and all interested parties (parents) agree that the effects of the babies birth would be sufficiently negative, abortion can be justified.
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