Thursday, April 01, 2010

The wire coat hanger and Darwin

From here:
The wire coat hanger has long been the prop of "choice" for those staging pro-abortion rallies or protests. You see them on signs and buttons and hanging around necks, all designed to symbolize what will happen to women if they ever lose the legal right to kill their unborn offspring. There are a couple of serious problems with this tactic and, ultimately, this line of thinking. First, the "coat hanger defense" has nothing to do with the ethics of abortion. It makes no attempt to justify the act, it simply argues that if women ever lose this right, they'll die en masse from self-induced abortions. Those who make such an argument conveniently ignore the fact that abortion, itself, kills a living human being, not by accident but by design. It is completely backwards to argue that society must "keep it safe" for one human being to kill another human being, one who is completely innocent and defenseless. It is like arguing that we should legalize armed robbery because bank robbers might die in the process of holding up a bank. Laws must protect the potential victim, not the potential assailant.
Solid reasoning.  Let me add this:  Let's say that abortion gets outlawed in the USA in the near future.  Some women resort to abortions done
-with wire coat hangers (as opposed to the only sometimes-sterilised tools currently used in abortuaries)
-in back alleys (as opposed to the often-frightening confines of often-unprofessional abortuaries wherein the "doctor" and the nurses are paid on the basis of frequency of abortion performed)
-performed in non-sterile conditions (well, even less sterile than most abortuaries, I mean)
-if not by themselves then by medical quacks (well, a higher percentage of quacks than are currently employed in the baby-murder industry).  The oft-implied fear is that, as the article says, "they'll die en masse from self-induced abortions".  Why?  B/c, obviously, more women will die due to infections, toxic shock syndrome, incomplete abortions and D&Cs, perforations of the uterus, etc. I mean, more than die or become sterile NOW, b/c certainly quite a few end up with such negative personal consequences (let alone their babies, who usually end up dead and not even given the courtesy of burial in one piece).

The irony is that most baby-murder proponents are also believers in Darwinian evolution by natural selection, and it's strange that believers therein would have a moral objection to natural selection taking place.  If these womens' systems are not strong enough to withstand these infections and syndromes, then what is the problem removing these women (and their defective genes) from the gene pool?  They won't introduce any offspring into the gene pool either (fortunately, since the offspring die in the process), so these weak systems and weak uteri will not perpetuate themselves in future generations.  That's a good thing, right?  Even if women become sterilised by abortions incompetently performed, is that not an occurrence of natural selection as well, deactivating the uterus of the woman whose genes were not strong enough to resist pointy-ended trauma and/or subsequent infections and whose offspring were not strong enough to survive the application of chemical weaponry and forcible dismemberment?  What's the objection here, precisely?

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Just a thought: You'd think that if we can legally kill our babies, we could also legally kill ourselves. Why isn't suicide legal, by this logic?

Rhology said...

Haha, I don't know if anyone ever accused the gov't of being consistent.

justfinethanks said...

If these womens' systems are not strong enough to withstand these infections and syndromes, then what is the problem removing these women (and their defective genes) from the gene pool? ... That's a good thing, right?

Is. Ought.

And there are atheist pro lifers.

Rhology said...

Yes, that's an is/ought fallacy, WHICH DARWINIANS MAKE ALL THE TIME. You think I'm Darwinian? It's an internal critique, a display of their idiocy and inconsistency.

And atheist prolifers are inconsistent too - they should be totally apathetic on the question just like any moral question.

justfinethanks said...

Yes, that's an is/ought fallacy, WHICH DARWINIANS MAKE ALL THE TIME.

So that justifies your making it?

Saying that eugenics is good because evolution is true is as silly as saying plane crashes are good because gravity is true.

Rhology said...

No, THEY make it. I'm pointing out their making it.

Somehow I doubt you're going to take anyone on your own side to task for this, tho. You don't have the courage of conviction. Surprise me.

justfinethanks said...

No, THEY make it. I'm pointing out their making it.

If your point is that people shouldn't make the is/ought fallacy, then yes, I wholeheartedly agree with you. But of course people who commit this fallacy are hardly limited to people who accept Darwinian evolution, so I don't know why you framed it that way. You could have just as easily given the example of people who condemn homosexuality because it's "unnatural."

But I suppose we don't really have any disagreement: people but who wish to make logically sound arguments, be they "Darwinian" or not, should be aware of the is/ought problem and seek to avoid it.

Rhology said...

But of course people who commit this fallacy are hardly limited to people who accept Darwinian evolution

Two wrongs make a right fallacy.


You could have just as easily given the example of people who condemn homosexuality because it's "unnatural."

That is also wrong. Doesn't change the truth of my statement in the post.


should be aware of the is/ought problem and seek to avoid it.

"Should"? Give me a reason to think that your worldview includes any prescriptive power.

justfinethanks said...

Two wrongs make a right fallacy.

When did I say it was right? In fact, I very explicitly said it was fallacious no matter who was committing the fallacy. I was simply pointing out that if your post was about how the naturalisic fallacy was bad, then it was sort of an odd way to frame the issue.

That is also wrong. Doesn't change the truth of my statement in the post.

Absolutely, and that's why I said we both agree: you can't derive an is from an ought. I totally think we share common ground here.

"Should"? Give me a reason to think that your worldview includes any prescriptive power.

You missed the first part of that sentence, which was:

people but who wish to make logically sound arguments

But why, you ask, would anyone want to be logically sound given naturalism? Because it's impossible to not want to be logically sound. Because if you don't want to be logically sound, it follows that you DO want to be logically sound and DON'T want to be logically sound AT THE SAME TIME.

The desire for logical soundness is a necessary, unavoidable, and self supporting part of every worldview.

Of course, this is totally off track, and on your main point, that when you attempt to derive an is from an ought you run into a lot of absurd conclusions, I don't think anyone who has a passing familiarity with epistemology could possibly disagree with.

Rhology said...

Because it's impossible to not want to be logically sound.

Talked to any Moonies, Mormons, or Branch Davidians recently?