Abortion: Why is a lump of flesh worth more than another lump of flesh

@Usht:

So general consensus was that that was funny, am I correct?

Meh, I don't get it.

As for the second half, I'd say it's rather unethical to bring a person into existence when the risk is so high.

edited 13th May '11 1:54:37 PM by LoveHappiness

On abortion? I've never looked into it with Buddhism. It's not an issue I talk about often...

From what I know we agree that life begins at conception. Life grows and changes over time and it can become something bigger. We also have a general "Try not to kill shit intentionally" thing. How strongly that is followed varies. Theravada permits killing for the sake of food and the protection of the life of oneself and/or others (meaning you can kill the asshole who broke into your house if he has a gun and is threatening to kill you). Mahayana and Vajrayana may or may not either encourage or enforce a vegetarian life style. The killing is still bad but we take into account things other than action and result. Namely circumstance and intention. So I would assume that many Buddhists approve of abortion in cases of rape or if it's a health risk for the mother.

And...quick search proves these right! Well then. Thailand, where the school of Buddhism that I subscribe to hails from, has it illegalized save in the case of rape or if it's a health risk for the mother. It's considered to be murder of a living being both for the woman and the doctors involved, but certain circumstances may allow it. The life an adult woman trumps that of an unborn child.

I personally don't have much of a stance of the wrongness of it honestly. It's not an issue that affects me much. I do not want it to be illegal though. Just what we need are more back alley abortions that could kill the mom as well as the child. JUST WHAT WE NEED.

MORE VIEWS: It is generally regarded VERY negatively by Tibetan Buddhists. They feel that a person who has gotten one should be treated with compassion and encouraged to atone for their wrong doing. The Dalai Lama has declared it generally wrong but says there are exceptions. It's all circumstantial. Other Therevadan nations have similar views to Thailand. Japan has a laxer stance on these matters and even have Buddhist ceremonies for it. In the West we have a "Killing is generally bad, but it really depends on the circumstances" thing.

edited 13th May '11 1:59:00 PM by Aondeug

What risk? Cancer is cancer, it starts out a bulge of flesh, grows larger and then starts eating your cash as you constantly have to deal with it. Then, hopefully one day, it'll quit sucking cash out of your wallet, walk out the front door, and go get a job.

edited 13th May '11 1:57:32 PM by Usht

But really, that's not an argument that holds much weight. A gamete does not, in itself, have any potential to become a human being, not like an embryo does. A pair of suitably matched gametes does, of course, but as long as they are separated they are two different entities. I should probably check a bit of literature, to be honest, but more or less that's the main point if I remember correctly.

Thanks for the info!

edited 13th May '11 2:00:02 PM by Carciofus

Not risk for you, risk for the person.

Well, as much as I know you're worried about the person, I'm currently more worried about the carrier of the cancer, after all, they have to care for the lump of cancer and that costs money you know.

Once we develop artificial wombs and gametes, should we use its potential to the max?

edited 13th May '11 2:05:05 PM by LoveHappiness

Sure thing Carc.

Carciofus has laid out the essentials. The real question isnt "When (human) life begins" but "When does humanity (with all it's implied rights, including the right to life) begin?"

Nobody knows. We don't know what humanity is, let alone when it begins. What makes you a human being? Your answer to that question will (or it should anyway) determine your answer to the OP's questions. Since I believe that one's humanity develops slowly, and increases as one's capacity to engage in relationships with other human beings develops, I believe that one becomes human sometime after conception but before birth. That means I favor the legal status quo. If you happen to believe that humanity is a characteristic that is conferred upon one by God, and you also believe that this happens at conception, then that obviously determines your stand on abortion. Some people believe that 'humanity' is an entirely artificial construct, conferred on one person by the community into which they are born... thus community standards are the only standards that exist. Others will believe that in fact God (or the Gods) do not confer humanity until after birth... There is no possibility of an objective or rational answer to this issue. It's entirely a judgement call, based on the subjective values one possesses. The only important thing to realize is that no one can impose their values on others and expect them to conform, therefore a compromise between the two sides is necessary if we are to have any legal policy at all (another reason for favoring the status quo). Making abortion available while taking all possible steps to reduce the actual rate is the best approach I think I have heard on this issue.

edited 13th May '11 2:12:33 PM by DeMarquis

Being a person (conception of self and time etc.)> Being sentient>being scientifically "alive"

A piece of blank paper does not have the potential to become a great poem, in itself — in order to do that, it needs another, fundamental ingredient: the content of the poem. But a seed of a tree is a whole other matter: it does not need anything other than being put into an adequate environment — in the one it is meant to be in, in fact — for it to become a tree.

If you burn the tree seed, you burn the tree that it will never be; but if you burn the paper you, well, just burn a piece of paper — there is no reason why it should have been expected to become a poem rather than anything else, in fact.

Now, a gamete contains part of the information that contains the DNA of a person, and part of the other metabolic ingredients that you would need for it to start developing; but it is not enough, and a gamete, in itself, does not have the potential to become a person.

You could perhaps do some fancy stuff to it and get it to acquire this potential, or you could just join it with another gamete; but in any case, you are adding something more to it, not just placing it into an environment suitable for its development like an embryo — or a tree seed, to return to our example — would only need.

edited 13th May '11 2:18:14 PM by Carciofus

My take:

1. It doesn't, really. It's a process. In sexual species, two reproductive cells merge to become one at a certain point, yes, but both of those things were alive before then. There is no magic to that merger, no spark to it. We shed cells all the time; most reproductive cells die without ever undergoing that merger.

2. Same question, surely?

3. A soul is a theoretical construct at best, surely, and defined as undetectable and more-or-less undefinable? I think the only honest answer is that we don't know. If there is such a thing, though, my personal belief is that it either comes into being the same way as the body itself does (little bits of both parents' souls merge and split off and grow) or it is an artifact of sentience and grows as sentience does.

What's definitely the case, anyway, is that a good proportion of fertilized ova and subsequent, microscopic stages of growth do not successfully proceed and instead die, purely naturally.

4. I don't think it is. Given the health and life risks of pregnancy, especially; we are not a species that has easy pregnancies or births. I believe it's better to prevent the possibility of pregnancy than end it later, though, but mostly from the purely practical point of view.

5. Potential only.

"Item 3 is subjective - depends on when you consider the soul - or if you even believe in the concept of a soul - to have entered the body." - pvtnum

No, it's not "subjective." That would imply it is a matter of opinion. This is a matter of assumption. And "a fetus is unfeeling, at least in the first or second trimester" is a fairly reasonable assumption, as the current scientific explanation of feelings does not apply to fetuses early in development. The notion of a "soul" is just an arbitrary superstition. For as little scientific evidence as there is for a soul, one may as well claim there's invisible fairies in the air that we're hurting every time we walk around.

The point I was attempting to make was that someone's stance on item 3 is dependent on if they believe in a soul and all that stuff that goes along with it.

Take out the word "soul" and put in "potential for intelligence"

I think that part falls in to item 5, myself - the bit about cancer vs. embryo.

By that logic it's unethical for anyone in third-world countries with the possible exception of the wealthy moguls firmly keeping them in third-world status to reproduce at all, seeing how their quality of life is miles below what the majority of abortion cases here would ever reach.

edited 13th May '11 2:38:17 PM by Pykrete

This seems to me to be very odd logic.

Yes, a piece of paper doesn't have the potential to become a poem on its own, but neither does a seed; it needs soil and water and all kinds of other things to become a tree. If I left a seed out on my desk it wouldn't become anything. And if you don't give a seed water, or even if you deliberately deprive a seed of water, you're not killing a tree.

Really even if you were to burn it you're not killing a tree, because potential isn't worth much morally. You don't say you've knocked down a building if you stop building it halfway. I don't say I've deleted my post if I stop writing it halfway.

Extending this back to abortion, it's not murder to kill a fetus, and it's certainly not murder to deprive a fetus of a uterus.

1. Billions of years ago.
2. Paradox of the heap. There is no single point where human life starts; it's definitely not started before meiosis, and definitely has started when the kid learns to speak, but between those two it's difficult to tell.
3. There is no such thing as a "soul". If you mean consciousness, of course something without a brain can't be conscious.
4. Hmm? This seems like a leading question, honestly. As a general rule I refuse to answer leading questions even if they're biased towards me, sorry.
5. This also seems a bit leading but it's a reasonable question to ask, so I'll ignore that it seems to be there to make a point. At the point when the fetus is an embryo, it doesn't; they're both essentially independent organisms taking resources from another organism. But the reason this isn't a great comparison is that we humans don't like cancer because it'll kill you. A better analogy would be chimerism.