You could at least spell pedophile correctly :)

How many pedophiles these days don't know what they're doing is wrong? It's so socially disapproved of that the only people I can imagine who don't know it's wrong are those who are completely amoral.

It might sound like I'm dodging the question, but that's not my intention. My argument was based on an action which is evil but not universally condemned by society, so that some people will honestly say they don't think it's evil, and justify committing it. The same can't be said for raping a baby. I know you chose that because you consider it an action universally condemned by society, and that's exactly why it can't be dropped into my argument.

There's a second response as well, which I mentioned in #345. Raping a baby is illegal, so is a matter for the law, not for vigilantism.

Pedophile is not a word I spell all that often. Funny, I had it spelled correctly at first and then changed it!

I guess I am just sort of confused by a few things.

For example.  Yesterday the House of Commons stood up and gave a man a standing ovation for murder.  He murdered a guy who had shot another person.  No court of law, no judge and jury - straight out blew the guy away.  Now, maybe that was the only option available, I'm not sure, but almost the entire nation is celebrating the fact that this guy killed someone in an attempt to protect those who were innocent.

Now, from a pro life point of view, if you truly place abortion on equal footing with the murder of a baby (as many claim that they do), murdering someone would seem to be an equally justified, and in fact "standing ovation worthy" action.

So why are more pro-lifers not doing this?

I am starting to wonder if, even though they claim to place abortion and the murder of babies on the same footing, that they don't actually believe that, or the logical thing to do would be to find any means needed to eliminate those who choose to participate in mass murder (ie abortion doctors and nurses)

It really seems like you're not listening to what I'm saying.

Embryos and fetuses are human beings deserving of full human rights. I know people can construct moral conundrums around abortion, but in general there isn't a difference between killing a child before and after it's born. It's not 'murder', because murder is a legal term: it's only murder if it's illegal.

Now put that aside. We look at several separate moral questions. Is it permissible to kill someone who has done something wrong if it's not illegal? Or without a trial? Or if they don't think they've done something wrong and a significant proportion of the population agrees with them? I don't think it's permissible in any of those cases.

Clearly you think it's just to take the law into your own hands. Your comments in #352 imply that you would personally kill people who kill babies. Even if killing babies was legal and even if half the population believed it was morally justified.

Killing only leads to more killing; it doesn't change minds. The only feasible way we can stop this holocaust is by changing people's minds. Once enough people accept that children have human rights even before birth, then the law will have to change. Millions more children will die in the process, but there is absolutely nothing I can do to save them.

I'm trying here hakootoko.  Have a little patience with me.



The shooter in Canada was killed without a trial.  It sounds like, according to this, you think it's not permissible.  Fair enough, I'm not here to argue your viewpoint.  I'm here to try and understand the viewpoint of a nation of people that celebrated the fact that a man was shot and killed without a trial.  Who gave standing ovations and posted facebook posts which celebrated it.



I'm not sure what I would do.  I am trying to understand what public opinion seems to celebrate though.  The public seems to have no problem celebrating the fact that someone was killed without a trial.  Why is this?  Because he was perceived to be evil, and the innocent must be protected.  This isn't about me.  This is about a nation of people all seemingly communicating that it IS ok to kill someone, without a trial, in certain situations.



To hold this viewpoint is fine, and I can live with that (even though I do wonder if it can ever be practically lived out like that).  This isn't the viewpoint of the vast majority of the public, and particularly not of many of those who are pro-life, who also tend to be pro-war as well (in my experience, though perhaps that's not true).  I'm not arguing with your own personal beliefs.  I'm trying to understand the disconnect between public opinion on killing a man without a trial (forget the law, this was a justified killing outside of the law to protect the innocent!), and the fact that the same logic could easily be applied to killing an abortion doctor (forget the law, this is a justified killing outside of the law to protect the innocent!

Not knowing what incident in the house of commons you're referring to, I can't comment on it.

I can comment on the last sentence though. I do not believe that killing an abortion doctor will save the innocent. Until public opinion changes, the mothers will just get abortions elsewhere and no lives will be saved.

Murder is also an ethical term. We see the concept of 'murder' (intentional killing of another person) pre-dating legal systems by a good margin. It's fully applicable to use 'murder' here, even in places or circumstances where it is legal (including, for instance, Nazis killing Jews, since that has already been brought up).

Good question though! Wow. It's one I've considered myself.

From a purely utilitarian viewpoint, yes, it would seem justified. And the fact that more pro-lifers aren't doing this is actually pretty telling. And this sort of thing doesn't apply to a lot of other cases. Like you can't really justify killing homosexuals for getting married. Sure, it's corrupting the fabric of the US, but no one is DYING from it. But an abortion doctor is presenting a clear and immediate threat (ignorant or not) to multiple other people.

To find an analogous situation, grandma has passed out at the wheel of her car and is going to run into a crowded sidewalk. You have the option of letting her do it, or you can hit her car with yours, most likely killing her, but saving all those people. Most people would argue that hitting grandma is unfortunate, but in this case, justified.

From a more deontological standpoint, killing is wrong. Jesus said do not kill. He didn't say 'don't kill, except to save others'. The rule is 'don't kill'. So from that standpoint, killing abortion doctors is NOT okay (and also we should disband the military).

From a practical standpoint, I don't think the stance on abortion will ever be reversed. It's too late, that ship has sailed, people believe what they believe. However, yes, terrorist action (aka, killing people in order to impact their political beliefs) has been shown to be effective, and would probably be somewhat effective here. This is especially so when the 'potential terrorist pool' is a little under half of the country's population.

But we don't do that. Why? I think a lot of it is just cultural inertia. We don't shoot each other in general, even when other people really, really deserve it. That's probably a change for the better, but it's not exactly a moral reason for most people. It's just what we're used to.

Ah sorry.  In Canada a couple days ago, a man with a gun shot a reservist and killed him.  This man was then shot and killed by a Parliamentarian sergeant-at-arms a short time later.

In the House of Commons the next day he was given a standing ovation for his heroism (killing a man without a trial).



There are more doctors to kill then!  I mean, obviously I'm being absurd, but this is the exact type of rhetoric that countries use all of the time when wanting to go to war.  "We will root out and destroy all of the evil - no stone will be left unturned!"

If you keep blowing up abortion clinics and killing doctors and nurses then eventually progress will be made.  Even better, shouldn't the women who had abortions, since they are part of the murder, also be killed, to try and shut down this abhorrent behaviour in society?

This all seems totally over the top, except that it is totally in line with how society wants to address other issues across the water in places like Syria, or Iraq.  Kill em all!

I can totally see how you don't support that way of thinking hakootoko.  Again, I'm just trying to connect the dots on the inconsistencies here.  I honestly don't think pro-lifers see abortion, and the actual murder of babies, on the same scale, or we would see far more violence in the name of justice being done.

It is a good question, and from my point of view, it comes down to the fact that believing something doesn't make it true.  You say:


But ignore the specific case of abortion for a moment, and just look at the logic you're using, and apply it to something else:  "Now if a person truly places having blonde hair on equal footing with murder, killing blonde people would be totally justified, right?"  OR "if a person truly believes that being the fan of a rival sports team is equal to murder, then they should probably kill those fans, in order to stop more murder from happening." OR "if someone truly believes that someone talking to them is equal to murder, then they'd be totally justified in killing everyone that talks to them."
All of that sounds totally absurd, and we'd never accept any of these arguments.  We can tell from this that "If you really believe X is equal to murder, you're justified in killing anyone who is/does X" isn't a legit argument.  Just believing something crazy isn't sufficient justification for murder.


On this I would agree.  While they claim a fertilized egg is equal to a human being, their actions don't seem to show that they really believe this.  They clearly think the fertilized egg has some value, but their actions don't seem to show that they really think it has the value they claim.  It sort of goes back to the old thought experiment about fleeing a burning building and having to choose to save a single baby, or a freezer full of frozen embryos.  Would anyone, pro-life or otherwise, choose to save the freezer rather than the baby?

I'd never heard that thought experiment. Interesting.

I'd counter that sometimes we think things emotionally or instinctually, and sometimes we think it rationally. I'm not sure what further conclusions we can draw from that, though. Just putting it out there as a solution to Tycho's thought experiment.

Not a lot, if you're a person who cares less about principles and more about results. Terrorists are often of that sort of mentality. In many places in the U.S., predominantly in the South, they do actually have this mindset about the issue. Some think murder and arson is simply too far, but everything short of that is basically fair game.

As for why they all don't embrace murder, self-preservation is a big one here. It's the reason most sociopaths, that is, those who are diagnosed with Antisocial Personality Disorder, aren't murderers. It's not that they care so much about the value of the lives they would affect so much as the consequences it would bring to them. In this society, unless you have some fairly strong mitigating circumstances, killing someone would cost you a great portion of your life, if not your entire life. People might think someone should go and shut up that bad man in their neighborhood with a little vigilante justice, but they are too afraid of the consequences to do it themselves, either getting hurt by said thug or by the law. They'd sure applaud the person who did have the courage to do it, though. In these circles, we probably would see more celebratory killings for the cause, if they actually believed they could do it and get away scott free. But people in general, not just in this movement, tend to be cowards when it comes to actually standing for their beliefs at a significant personal cost. It's what makes those rare individuals who actually do put themselves at risk for their beliefs seem so special to the rest of us.

In some circles of the anti-abortion movement, that's pretty much how such figures are received. Many of them commit smaller acts of terrorism to abortion providers. Crowd facilities, curse them on sight, lie to their clients to scare them, physically intimidate them, stalk their movements, try to out them to their neighborhoods by demonstrating in front of their houses and harassing their families, vandalize their car or break into their offices or homes to sabotage their ability to go to work, etc. In certain parts of the country, many abortion providers go through great lengths to keep their identities and whereabouts secret specifically because of these tactics. However, most of these, as horrific as they are, are minor crimes that won't really cost these individual aggressors much. They are too many to hurt physically, and often the law in those regions are sympathetic to their cause, so they won't be made an example of.

However, very few are willing to take the sacrifice necessary to kill an abortion provider. These men and women naturally disgust some, but others see them as courageous and noble on a level above them, and revere them as martyrs, essentially tributing their lives for the cause. Try to find anyone over the past fifty years or so who tried to kill an abortion provider, and you will find a certain fanatical element that sees these people as heroes. It's no surprise that most of the people who went to take that final step are people who often didn't see much value in their own lives in the first place that they were more than happy to throw it away to a cause they saw as greater than them. Which, as you'll notice, fits the profile of a suicide bomber quite well. Even if relatively few people do it, the effect is quite great, as it legitimately scares people out of the abortion practice. No joke, some of those regions of the country have a very, very hard time trying to replace their doctors, because of the fear, harassment and risk that comes with it. It's terrorism, pure and simple. Different causes, different worlds, same principles.

I should note that most pro-life advocates don't follow this line of thinking. They honestly don't. As tempting as some might be to brand the whole cause by it's worst elements, it's generally nothing short of a straw-man to do so. This kind of mentality fails when you believe principles are just as important as results, if not more so. Most Christians, I would think, feel that there are rules that are too important, too sacred, to violate willingly, even if it would be convenient. After all, if they were willing to kill for the convenience of their cause, how much different would they be than the abortion providers they so revile, or the women who seek to kill their babies for their own convenience? The idea of redemption and understanding are pretty important to Christianity (or at least certain interpretations of it), but by killing sinners, you basically make that impossible. Compassion appeals to some, if not most, more than Justice.

The fear of consequences makes sense for sure.

I believe everyone is aware of the tragic shooting that happened last week.

Bringing it to a much less consequential topic, this is something I've been wondering (and brought up) many times previously; if we accept a human is a person from the point of conception (or from the point of 25 weeks, or whichever point we choose prior to the moment of birth) then we reasonably accept that legal abortion in the US accounts for tens of thousands to millions of deaths a year (depending on where you draw that particular line of 'human' vs. 'not).

A utilitarian may decide then, killing ten or twenty adults is a reasonable trade-off if it saves an equal number of unborn humans (or maybe even a smaller number, as the latter are the innocent subject and the former are the actors). Which begs the question, why doesn't this happen more often?

My dad posted this article today which goes into it, and brings up some useful points.



http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.c...id=fb-share&_r=0

I thought this was very interesting and worth sharing. I wonder if people have any other thoughts on why these sorts of attacks are morally justified or unjustified. Related, and perhaps worth another thread, are there conditions where insurgent attacks like this would be justified?

(Note: Again, these attacks are tragic, and real people died. I don't mean to detract from them in any way, or the horror for those affected. This is a real question though, with real implications for our daily living, and as such, I honestly believe it is worth inspection, even acknowledging it is a sensitive topic.)

This is why the "line between human/not" is messed up, in my view.  You've basically said "once we accept that a line exists, it's probably okay to murder anyone who disagrees with us, because hey, we believe they're killing millions of people."  Notice that this doesn't depend on whether you've drawn the line correctly or not.  If someone believes your life begins when your mother ovulates, well, then by this argument, they're justified in killing anyone who menstruates, since in their mind, millions of unborn people are being killed every day.  That's bonkers right?  But it's the exact same argument you're making here, and which many "pro-life" people make, just with a different line (and again, the argument doesn't depend at all on whether the line really exist, merely that the person believes in it).


Because, I would say, at some level, people realize that a fetus is not the same as a person.  They really do believe it has a large value, but not enough to murder people over.  It has some value to them, but not the value they say it does.  Their actions show this, even if their words don't, I'd say.  Or at very least they have sufficient doubt that a fetus has the same value as a person to stay their hand.


Think a bit about what you're asking.  You're asking if the argument "I believe X is equal to murder, therefore I'm justified in killing anyone who does X" is something we should take seriously.  Note that the argument is completely independent of what X is!  You can put "abortion" in for X, but you can just as well put "singing in the shower" or "sleeping past 6am" or literally anything else, and the argument is exactly the same.

The critical bit is that believing something doesn't make it so..  It doesn't matter that someone believes it or not; what matters is whether or not that belief is correct.

The reason anti-abortion terrorists kill people is the same reason all terrorists kill people: they're so convinced of their own correctness (and everyone else's wrongness), that they feel justified in killing those who disagree with them.

Katisara,

This is such a great point and part of the reason I struggle to really have any intelligent answers for the whole abortion debate.

Tycho,



Doesn't the western world do this already?  When ISIS commits atrocities against people we have decided on our own line - human life - and our armies go bombing them and killing them in order to stop the murdering of people. Yet a much larger number of people have no problem with that, and in many cases those who are opposed to killing other murderers are seen as the ones who are bonkers.



Many of us are horrified at the things that are happening around the world in the form of child sex trade, torture, etc, but few of us are actually doing anything about it. You could be right that anti-abortionists don't ACTUALLY believe as strongly as they claim, or it could simply be that belief and action don't always line up in the neat ways that we think they should.

Any time I wonder why more anti-abortion attacks don't happen, I just think of how many other horrible things are going on around the world and how little we (myself included) actually do to try and stop those things from happening.

A child, a fetus, and embryo, all are human beings by right of their DNA, and have the same human rights as an adult.

Pretending that singing in the shower is a crime against humanity on par with abortion is a very sick joke to make.

So you won't accept that I believe this unless I go out and kill someone to prove it to you? What kind of twisted logic is that? Killing someone to save a live is hypocrisy. Hate causes hate, and murder causes more murder. Killing people won't change minds. Killing people isn't a solution.

Yes, absolutely agree with you here.


Yes, this is true.


Entirely fair point.


They all have human DNA, but that doesn't make them human beings, otherwise hair and saliva would be human beings.  And children don't have the same human rights as adults.  Whether you think they should is another issue, of course, but it's simply not true that they do have the same rights. Children cannot vote, marry, or own property (in many cases at least).  Their parents can make decisions on their behalf, in some places even up to the point of declining life-saving medical treatment for the child based on religious beliefs.  Let me repeat that: in many places in the US, a parent can refuse life-saving medical treatment for their child.  If religious people really valued the life of children, I'd think they'd target that issue much more than they do.


Which was sort of my point.  Many people view your beliefs about abortion as a very sick joke.  You view other people's beliefs about it as sick jokes.  But the "if you think abortion is murder, then its okay to kill doctors" argument doesn't depend on whether the belief is a sick joke or not, merely on whether someone holds it or not.


A) no, I could accept that you believed it if you reacted the same way to it happening that you do to a parent killing their toddler.  Murder isn't necessary to convince me, and I definitely am not trying to tell you to kill anyone--just the opposite, really.
B) convincing me that you really believe it isn't that important, in the grand scheme of things, and isn't something you should really hold as a goal/priority.
c) convincing me that you believe it is entirely independent from convincing me that your view has any merit.  Murdering doctors would convince me you really believed it, but it'd do just the opposite in terms of convincing me that your views were at all valid.


Yes, on this we can certainly agree.

You're correct... But I don't think that's necessarily wrong. Is it reasonable to kill one human to save a dozen? Utilitarianism says yes. But a line must exist. Rocks are not human. But you and I are. Killing one person to save 12 rocks is not ethical, but to save everyone in this chat room is (I don't know if you agree personally, but I hope you at least accept it's a rational premise).

So where is that line? 100 years ago, it was Christians but not Jews, or Japanese but not Chinese, or white immigrants but not aborigines. 170 years ago it was white people but not black people. Today it's born people but not fetuses. (Also, homo sapiens but not rocks.)

The article drew a parallel with the slave revolts and massacre of John Brown. Was John Brown, a slave, justified in killing other humans in an attempt to save the lives of other slaves, in a time where no civil methods were available?




I think there are several possible reasons. I don't know that I'd use 'realize' there, but 'believe'. But also, we have a legal method of resolving this. If enough people vote or protest or what not, or even using non-lethal methods like chaining clinics shut, the fetuses can be protected. I don't think anyone would kill to get their ethical views protected if they could just go to a protest instead.




Ultimately, everything comes down to belief. You believe science is correct and dependable. You believe in the scientific articles you read and the peer review process. You believe the analysis they produce. You form your judgments on that basis. If you had the opportunity to live in luxury but in the process you'd produce 100,000 tons of CO2, I don't imagine you would take it, because you believe that would cause harm.

I also think there are some beliefs that are worth killing, and dying for. I believe our participation in WWII was justified, even though it killed scads of young men. And I suspect you would agree.

So yes, on the statement 'I believe X is of highest moral value, therefore I will perform an act of lesser moral sin in order to achieve it', I feel is fundamentally valid. It is, after all, the core of utilitarianism, isn't it?

But what I'm saying is that just because someone believe rocks are human beings, we shouldn't say that it's okay for them to kill someone to save a bunch of rocks.  It matters if their beliefs are true, not just whether they hold them or not.


To be fully honest, I don't trust my memory of my high school history classes well enough to say one way or another.  I'm sure cases can be made both for and against.  But I think whether it was justified or not doesn't depend on what John Brown believed, but rather on what is actually true (or at least what we hold to be true, if we're deciding whether it was justified or not).


But not because of what the people who fought in WWII believed.  The Nazis believed just as strongly that they were in the right.  You believing something is worth killing over is not sufficient for <i>me to think you're justified in killing someone over it.  In order for me to find your actions justified, you need to convince me that your beliefs are correct, not just that you think they're correct.


Then you would have to accept the Nazi position in WWII as "fundamentally valid," which I'm guessing you don't.  People believe crazy stuff, and act on crazy beliefs.  The fact that their beliefs are crazy is important when we determine what we think of their actions.

To bring us back to the question at hand, though, I think the golden rule is usually a good place to look for guidance.  Most pro-life people in states also eat meat.  There are PETA folks who think eating meat is murder.  If you're* a pro-life meat-eater, you are in a situation where someone thinks your actions are equivalent to murder, but you don't think they are.  How would you like them to treat you?  Do you want them to kill you to save the cows, pigs, and chickens you would otherwise eat during your life?  If not, then you shouldn't kill pro-choice people.  You should treat pro-life people (doctors, patients, whoever) the same way you want PETA people to treat you.

(*I'm using "you" here in the generic case, rather than specifically meaning you, katisara.  Realized it might read a bit personally-directed, but that's not my intent)

As humans, we are always limited by belief. This is a philosophical truth. Some beliefs may be better agreed upon than others, or better supported than others, or more easily tested or repudiated, but ultimately, it's all belief.



I'm not sure where you're going for with this. My guess is you're saying, if I believe nazism is evil, and I volunteer to kill nazis, that's fine, but I can't compel someone else to kill nazis (such as via the draft?) Is this a consent question? If so, why is it okay for me to kill nazis, who don't consent to being killed?




I believe the Nazi behaviors were rational, if you accept the a priori assumption of the Nazi party. I personally do not make that first assumption, so what follows fails as well. I personally believe that fighting the Nazis was a high moral good, and so killing young men and women was rational and justified. I'm not asking if the 'I believe X ...' moral for immoral values of X. I'm asking if that statement stands on its own, if X is not under consideration.

Is it acceptable to violate a lesser moral value in order to support a greater one? Are there limitations on this?

Yes.


No, what I'm saying is that the Nazis also had beliefs they used to justify their killing.  It makes no sense to say "okay, for pro-life people, we'll just assume their beliefs are given" but not do that for any other groups, like the Nazis, or ISIS, or whoever else.  For every other group we say "okay, they're wrong to do what they do.  Their beliefs are wrong, and lead to evil actions."  But for pro-life terrorists you seem to be skipping a step, and just saying "okay, let's put aside the question of whether their beliefs are correct or not, and just accept they they think they are.  Those beliefs justify their actions, so who are we to judge?"  Why do that for pro-life killers, but not any other group of killers.  Pretty much every killer has beliefs that motivate their actions.  It's not something unique to the pro-life crowd.


Exactly.  That "I don't make that first assumption..." bit is very important.  You don't skip it for the nazis, and we shouldn't skip it for pro-life murderers either.


But if you don't consider X, all you have is "if you believe its okay to murder people, then it is."  That's all your left with.  It means anyone can kill anyone they like, for pretty much any reason they like, and all you can say is "well, I guess they believed in what they were doing..."

If you were to apply this thinking consistently, you'd have to say the pro-choice side is entirely justified in performing abortions (its an action based on their beliefs), but that the pro-life side is entirely justified in killing them for doing it (because their killing is based on their beliefs).  If we're to have any kind of opinion about the rightness or wrongness of either side in this, we have to evaluate what they believe, not just accept any action based on any belief as fine.

Ooooohh... Okay. I understand now.

This is an assumption for the sake of discussion.

Specifically, the pro-life side has an interesting dilemma. They assume that a fetus is a person. Their philosophy is about saving lives. Overall they seem to be content to live within normal civil society. But in their philosophy, hundreds of thousands of people are being massacred every day. How does a pro-life person deal with those apparently incompatible values? Is the use of deadly force justified? If not, why not?

The discussion of ISIS or Nazis isn't nearly so interesting. Both of those groups put killing other people as a good thing, and they are specifically militaristic organizations who are formed with the intention of using deadly force. There's no ethical conflict there.

You brought up animal rights groups previously, which I think are a closer parallel. Abolitionists are another example. Both of those groups live in civil society, don't specifically espouse violent methods, but are living in the middle of an ethical crime of tremendous proportions. How does one deal with that?

I'm not particularly interested 'first cause' here. We can choose another if you feel it would make it easier to argue. For example, a small group of people are intentionally causing tremendous ecological damage for personal profit. Someone is, legally, creating and releasing artificially engineered diseases. Someone is (legally) disseminating bad information which is getting other people killed. Your choice.

The point is, someone is doing something which you believe is seriously harming others. What steps are you justified in taking to stop that?

In reply to katisara (msg # 371):

Sorry for taking a while to reply.  Partly its been RL hectic-ness, partly it's been me not knowing how to respond.  Normally I'm all up for discussing hypotheticals, playing devils advocate, etc., but this really is just a bit past my comfort zone.  A discussion where one side is actually arguing "it's okay to go out on a killing spree if you believe the following things...," particularly when there's a non-trivial chance someone here (either now, or some unknown point in the future) might actually believe those things, just isn't something I'm comfortable with right now.  I'm probably over-reacting here, but then, people literally going out and killing people over these kinds of things.  I don't really want to take part in anything that might encourage someone to do so, even if my part is just arguing the "don't do it" side.

I've tried to think about analogous cases we might talk about instead (PETA, abolitionists, etc.), and part of me says it'd be okay if were discussing "when do we accept it as justified for people to kill us" rather than "when is it okay for us to kill someone else," but I'm just worried that that the former will quickly turn into a thinly-veiled version of the latter.

In cases that I know aren't going to come up in the real world, I like probing people's moral systems, and looking for contradictions, etc.  The classic set of questions like "would you pull a lever to derail a train full of people if there was a person tied to the tracks?" are all good.  But I've worried that anyone would hear that discussion and run out and start derailing trains, or pushing people in front of them to save another train, etc.  But when it comes to abortion, people really do get it into their head that their beliefs justify murder.  So it's not just a question of exploring the moral question, it's also a question of "will someone read this discussion and go shoot someone?"  It's a tiny chance, I know, but it's non-zero.  And while we might find the discussion interesting, I doubt we're going to get a sufficiently profound insight from it to justify that chance to me.

In a pub or my living room, with a small group of people I knew very well it might be different.  But on the internet, where anyone can read it, it just doesn't seem wise.

That's fine. Sorry about putting you on the spot there.

The problem isn't if a fetus is a human life.  The problem is that we treat all levels of human life differently.

Look, no one would complain much if we executed an adult mass murderer.  That's because, due to their crimes, we value their life as something less than human.  We kinda do this in all aspects of our lives-- the humans closest to us, our friends and familes?  We value their lives more than random strangers.  I mean, if you had to choose between saving the life of a stranger, or saving the life of your partner?  or your child?  No contest.

The disconnect is how much value a fetus's existance should have.  Some of the pro-life movement value the fetus's life far beyond what they do adults.  The pro-choice movement is at least consistent, they value the fetus less than the mother.

We can't really answer this issue, because I can't make any of you value a life the same as I do.  It's a matter of opinion, of personal philosophy, and there isn't a good middle ground.  If we get stuck on this topic, we'll never get anywhere.

That said, I do think there's another disconnect.  Abortions are due to unwanted pregnancies.  But we're so used to supply-side thinking, we focus too much on the pregnancy aspect and not enough on the "unwanted" part.  I believe that with improved birth control technology, we can eventually make it so conception becomes solely possible by choice-- someday, you will not be able to become pregnant unless you actively choose to do so.  That means there's no such thing as an unwanted pregnancy, and demand for abortions will dry up.

I don't think everyone operates that way (I don't think you do either, but it's worth stating). For many people, killing the mass murderer isn't 'not-evil', just 'less-evil'. (Although realistically, given modern prisons, I don't see that argument as having a lot of weight any more. We don't expect mass murderers to escape and go back to killing, which was more of a threat a hundred years ago.)

But anyone who accepts that view at such an extreme place would also need to accept yours--that birth control is the lesser evil than abortion.

As a note, the Catholic view is that birth control is gravely disordered and a mortal sin. It is removing the purpose of sex, and the married couple is withholding of themselves. Meanwhile, abortion is equivalent to murder, which is also gravely disordered (for obvious reasons). They're both mortal sins, but the latter is definitely the worse of the two.

I totally understand and support Catholics who reject both. More power to them! At the same time, I think the emphasis that some Catholics put into stopping things like distribution of condoms is supporting some really backwards priorities. The absolutist 'do no harm' position is great, but it doesn't have to be a suicide pact.

(However, for the sake of having an interesting back-and-forth, I'm totally able and willing to support the opposite position. I do think the Catholic position of stopping birth control is logically cohesive, and self-consistent.)