I think part of the problem with abortion is the left argues that "it is not a life" which is generally a weak argument. It's better to accept/concede that you are ending life, but doing so without suffering before there's a neural net that can recognize anything - I think that's the important bit (and why third trimester abortions are banned anyway).
The push back then tends to be that life itself is sacred and can never be ended (suffering is not relevant), but this is generally not truly believed by the people making the argument so it's easy to point out their contradictory support for the death penalty. They then usually say there's a difference between innocent life and people who've committed crimes at which point you're back to negotiating conditions and suffering seems like a pretty good condition to use.
[Edit] It's also a messier issue because I think a component of the debate is shaming women for sex. That they should be forced to have their baby as some sort of penance for having sex. Obviously this is largely unsaid in favor of more palatable arguments, but if it's the true driver then it's hard to even start because you're not addressing the true motivation (which may not even be fully realized by the person arguing).
First, this assumes that such a "neural net" is required for suffering. I personally don't have a problem with that, but making an ironclad scientific case for it is going to be very difficult, since we don't understand how "neural nets" actually produce suffering even in the case of humans with fully developed brains.
Second, by this criterion, it's not just third trimester abortions that should be banned, but abortions at any time after the "neural net" develops. That's a lot earlier than our current jurisprudence draws the line (neural activity can be detected in the brain of a fetus at about six weeks, vs. viability at roughly 24 weeks as more or less the current jurisprudence line), which means that our current jurisprudence is allowing a lot of suffering by this criterion.
So I'm not sure this framing actually makes the argument any easier.
I had some time to think, I think you're right and at some point it becomes a utilitarian trade-off where there is no obvious answer, but a lot of factors that can help support/determine what the best policy is.
I think the suffering framing does move the needle away from the 'life is sacred argument' to something more actionable and specific (also honest/consistent with other beliefs often held by that crowd like the death penalty). There is a baked in assumption here that everyone is arguing in good faith though which I don't think is necessarily true (see the edit on my initial comment).
I don't think this is accurate. Getting a typical pro-choice person to discuss the fetus at all, much less whether it can be called alive, takes some serious cornering (I am pro-choice, to be clear).
There are a lot of good reasons other than this one to support pro-choice, but those reasons will be irrelevant to someone who views 'abortion as murder'. You have to put yourself in their position and reason about it like they would, then think about what is the best argument from their position.
Basically steel-manning their side and then tackling the best argument head on.
I think this is where really interesting discussions happen and where minds can change, otherwise you end up just discussing the same tired points without making any progress.
Really? I think it becomes much more difficult. It invites arguments for infanticide (see the 2013 Giubilini paper on after-birth abortion for a famous example of this). The same arguments concerning a woman who is not able to take care of a child apply equally well after birth if suffering is the only consideration, because it's entirely possible to end the life of the baby in a painless manner. As someone who is pro-life, I've generally found the suffering angle to be the least compelling of the pro-choice counterarguments.
I think it's a mixture of suffering and having a neural network formed enough for ...something? I have an intuitive feeling that it's wrong to kill infants before they're self-aware even if 'done painlessly', but I don't feel that way about a blastocyst or a fetus without a sufficiently formed neural network that can suffer.
I recognize this isn't perfectly consistent though and I don't have a great answer for why.
#repealthe8th
The GP is not talking about prejudice; he's talking about a genuine difference in priorities. Calling that "prejudice" implies that one of those choices of priorities is simply wrong; it ignores the possibility that there is no one "right" choice of priorities.
Basically, a technique that works to convince people away from prejudice over and above what presenting them with truth does should be applicable to any belief.
The fact that I'm tall is proof that people can be tall. But not that you can become tall.
In general people have the opinions they need to have to feel good about themselves. That's hard to change.
Regarding feeling good: yeah, that's a problem, and that makes it harder, no argument from me. The point I thought GGP was making (likely incorrectly; see my response to their response) was that you can't persuade people out of "genuine differences in priorities", which I think is untrue.
The book that gave me much of my cynicism on this topic: https://www.amazon.com/Elephant-Brain-Hidden-Motives-Everyda...
Yes, it does, because the post I originally responded to said "persuading people out of" these beliefs. How is that justified if the beliefs are not known to be wrong? "Prejudice" implies that the beliefs are known to be wrong, so it's justified to try to persuade people out of them. "Strongly held beliefs" does not carry the same implication.
My bad, I thought you were arguing that "prejudice" is something that can be argued-out-of, whereas a "genuine difference in priority" cannot. If you're arguing persuading people is unethical, then…I disagree incredibly vehemently. Like, that's what a peaceful society is built on; I'm not sure what other method of change you imagine would take its place?
It depends on what you mean by "persuade". Trying to convince people to change their minds about something, and understanding that a lot of times you'll fail and accepting that, is one thing. Trying to force them to change their minds, or at least to act as though their strongly held beliefs were simply wrong and yours were right, for example by using the power of the law, is another.
> that's what a peaceful society is built on
A peaceful society is built on trying to convince other people, but accepting that a lot of times you'll fail, and accepting that when you fail, the law should not take either side. In other words, the force of law should only be used if there is a very strong consensus on a policy, to the point where the only people who don't agree with it are obvious outliers. It should not be used if there is just a 51% majority that favors a policy.
The problem that I have, though, is that I don't believe that many pro-life advocates look at it that way; instead of thinking about what's best for the people around the potential baby, they resort to religious or strictly emotional arguments in support of their views[0], which I will never consider persuasive.
The cut-off point is entirely up to society's consensus. You could go to the extreme and say that vasectomies (or even male masturbation) and tubal ligations are murder, because they destroy germ cells that could turn into children eventually. Some religions prohibit birth control of any kind. Many people aren't comfortable with the morning-after pill. Some people are fine with an abortion up to N weeks, but not after.
And that's what I find sad about arguments on this topic: people have drawn their line in the sand, and they believe that they are right, any other option is wrong, and that they must impose their rightness on everyone else, regardless of any disagreement in beliefs.
As a result, I just tend to not get into arguments about this, as I don't think it's worth the blood-pressure increase to engage a pro-life advocate in discussion.
[0] I may be wrong about this; I frankly do not have many (any?) pro-choice friends, so I only know what I read, and that may be a case of me just hearing the loudest voices, not the most representative ones.
Abortion is tricky because once you recognize the life of the embryo as a value to protect it's difficult to have it come as less compelling than a right to bodily autonomy. Still, most anti-abortion people would still carve out a lot of exceptions (rape, genetic problems, danger to the mother's life and so on). Most people recognize that the even right to life is not absolute (another example: they would agree it would be unlawful to refuse to obey an order in time of war that would almost certainly result in a soldier's death).