peter singer's "pro-abortion" stance ultimately boils down to examining the presumptions under which killing a human is permissible. he argues that a human does not rightly become a person without certain mental characteristics and faculties, and therefore infants in particular are humans that aren't people. therefore, infanticide and abortion are equal and ethical.
cultural attitudes towards and practice of infanticide has varied over the millennia and around the world.
not even that long ago either. impoverished women with nowhere to give a baby for adoption... your grandmother probably knew somebody or heard stories about terrible desperation.
if you don't believe in souls then the thing that really makes us people is brain processes and... stuff starts getting real gross real fast. Maybe it's true that you're not a person until you're a few months or years old (idk, not a child neurologist) and maybe it's true that some people are gone before their organs quit but there's no benefit to society to be more precise than draw the lines at birth and brain-death. doing more just opens the door for nazis.
fun fact: archeologists sometimes throw up upon realizing they've licked human remains, because it was common in Italian and Anatolian cultures to bury babies in the walls if they died within ten days of being born. They were literally considered garbage. However, they look like any other bone if you don't know what baby bones look like, so people just lick them to see if they're bones. It's the fastest field diagnostic because the hollow canals suck the moisture out of your tongue, and very few rocks will do that.
![[CW: bestiality] Professional "moral philosopher" ponders whether it's OK to sexually assault animals, featuring AI art](https://hexbear.net/pictrs/image/f26b2dce-7254-4537-acd1-5de623b591e0.png){kind=link}
peter singer's "pro-abortion" stance ultimately boils down to examining the presumptions under which killing a human is permissible. he argues that a human does not rightly become a person without certain mental characteristics and faculties, and therefore infants in particular are humans that aren't people. therefore, infanticide and abortion are equal and ethical.
cultural attitudes towards and practice of infanticide has varied over the millennia and around the world.
not even that long ago either. impoverished women with nowhere to give a baby for adoption... your grandmother probably knew somebody or heard stories about terrible desperation.
if you don't believe in souls then the thing that really makes us people is brain processes and... stuff starts getting real gross real fast. Maybe it's true that you're not a person until you're a few months or years old (idk, not a child neurologist) and maybe it's true that some people are gone before their organs quit but there's no benefit to society to be more precise than draw the lines at birth and brain-death. doing more just opens the door for nazis.
fun fact: archeologists sometimes throw up upon realizing they've licked human remains, because it was common in Italian and Anatolian cultures to bury babies in the walls if they died within ten days of being born. They were literally considered garbage. However, they look like any other bone if you don't know what baby bones look like, so people just lick them to see if they're bones. It's the fastest field diagnostic because the hollow canals suck the moisture out of your tongue, and very few rocks will do that.
no that fact is not fun
Well, fact for you then.
absolutely
Hey wasn't this the exact argument that was used to justify
CW: eugenics
Aktion T4
What the hell.
https://archive.ph/GsrSK here's a washpo article from '99 with some good quotes