{"id":446,"date":"2014-03-20T16:56:21","date_gmt":"2014-03-20T14:56:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/freesociety\/?p=446"},"modified":"2014-03-20T16:56:21","modified_gmt":"2014-03-20T14:56:21","slug":"debate-secular-arguments-abortion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/freesociety\/debate-secular-arguments-abortion\/","title":{"rendered":"The debate on secular arguments for abortion"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"abortion_poll\"<\/a>My colleague Notung has already said<\/a> most of what I want to say on the background issues related to a current debate in the atheist\/skeptic blogosphere – in summary, that we should be very wary of ruling things as\u00a0out of order<\/em> in terms of debate. As he does, I’d concur with Mill in saying that hearing opposing views to ours is typically a good thing, either because we can be exposed as wrong, or because we can take the opportunity to learn more about why<\/em> we are right.<\/p>\n

Two brief notes are in order, though. Before I get to those, I shall note, to avoid misinterpretation, that no non-affected person should ever get to say what another person does with his\/her body, and even once another person is affected, they don’t get to dictate<\/em> what others do with their bodies. Then, non-persons (like foetuses) have no rights claims whatsoever. This does\u00a0not<\/em> mean that abortion is necessarily always right – it simply means that nobody but<\/em> the pregnant woman has a\u00a0right<\/em> to insist on that abortion. This is simply a sketch of a position, rather than an argument for it – I realise that there’s much to be explicated there.<\/p>\n

In short, women have all the rights to choose, should certainly have\u00a0more<\/em><\/a> rights<\/a> in this regard, and I’d even say that there are further rights that parents, more generally, should have<\/a> in this area.<\/p>\n

Those two notes, before I forget:<\/p>\n

First, allowing for debate does not need to (and shouldn’t) mean tolerating endless rehashing of naive, discredited, or scientifically illiterate arguments. We’re not obliged to listen to anyone, or anything – and if your secular argument for abortion relies on twelve-week old foetus feeling pain, or having a soul, you’re not equally deserving of a place at the table. Saying that debate is permissible has\u00a0nothing<\/em> to do with the judgements we make as to the opinions and arguments we hear – one can (should) allow for debate, yet\u00a0also<\/em> not be shy of saying “you’re adding nothing to the conversation – go away and read a book”.<\/p>\n

Second,\u00a0having the final say (or the right<\/em> to make the decision) in the matter of abortion is a completely different matter to whether you might (or might not) have useful thoughts to offer on the situation. Anyone can have a view, even if they are <\/span>not<\/em>\u00a0the pregnant woman in question. Whether their view is informed, or useful, is a separate matter.<\/span><\/p>\n

Assuming that someone who has the property of “not being a woman” cannot have useful thoughts to offer on the question is absurd. In the relevant sense of “not being able to gestate an infant for 9 months”, most 50 year-old women don’t qualify either – and might never even have had children – yet they are never told that they can’t even\u00a0<\/span>express a view<\/em>\u00a0on this topic (as men entering these debates\u00a0<\/span>occasionally\u00a0are told).<\/span><\/p>\n

They (the men) certainly don’t get to\u00a0insist<\/em>, no – but they do get to speak. As does anyone – and once they speak, feel free to tell them they’re talking nonsense. But pre-judging their speech as nonsense before it’s uttered is sexist nonsense.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While there’s no question regarding a woman’s autonomy in the abortion debate, that has nothing to do with who can express a view.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":447,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[260,6,13],"tags":[28,296,297],"class_list":["post-446","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-politics","category-secularism","tag-abortion","tag-infanticide","tag-secular-ethics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/freesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/freesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/freesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/freesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/freesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=446"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/freesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/freesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/freesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/freesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/freesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}