> "... Live and let live" which seems to me the most logical/reasonable way to go about it.
Only if you assume we're not a society, and that there's no social benefits to enforcing socially desirable behaviors and suppress socially undesirable ones.
“live and let live” has traditionally described the more tolerant end of the spectrum of possible “social enforcement”, not the absence of such enforcement - the problem is that the group that wants religious rights for society doesn’t want marriage rights for others in society, and the group that wants abortion rights in society doesn’t want gun rights for others in society. And so on.
So the question is whether to have a society where we generally allow people to do things we don’t like, as the price of being allowed to do the things we do like, or a society that prevents us doing what we want as the price of preventing others doing things we don’t like. Or, you know, each side trying to get freedom for the things they care about but trying to ban the things they dislike?
There is an obvious analogy with religion and religious freedom that I think the US constitution and bill of rights handled very effectively (compared to most other countries) at the “live and let live” end of the spectrum, maybe as a society we might want to see if the same principles might work more broadly?
> There is an obvious analogy with religion and religious freedom that I think the US constitution and bill of rights handled very effectively (compared to most other countries) at the “live and let live” end of the spectrum
While the post civil war amendments were ruled to have changed it, at the time of ratification the establishment clause did not apply to the individual states. And many of the first thirteen had some official religion or other. So while it was live and let live at the federal level, at the local level it wasn’t so much.
Yes, the original design of the U.S. is something more like live and let live at the community level rather than the individual level. The idea was that you could have different groups of religious nuts living alongside each other, not to eviscerate the ability of each group to enforce rules within their own communities.
That's a false equivalence. "Pro-life" advocates use a topic that some people find emotive purely for political ends.
Gun control advocates object tto avoidable gun massacres in schools, malls, and other public places.
They're not remotely comparable.
The obvious difference is that if a woman has an abortion it's fundamentally a private matter. The outcome affects a single person. Or two people at most.
The outcome is not a line of ambulances and coffins and a traumatised community of teachers, parents, and neighbours.
Of course they're framed as if they're equivalent freedoms, because in the US "freedom" is a master-frame that can be used to justify almost anything.
And that's the real problem. One group consistently uses deceptive single-issue appeals to emotion to gain and hold political power. If there are no real issues to appeal to, they'll quite happily invent some. They fundamentally don't care what the issue is as long as it's politically useful.
The other group actually cares about outcomes - not just in a negative sense of wanting certain things not to happen, but in the positive sense of expanding political access to everyone in the community for the benefit of the entire community.
What's missing - in the US particularly - is a political system which makes this fundamental distinction clear and explicit. Democracies have few defences against deceptive framing used for political grift.
And that's not a good way to build a better future.
This reads to me as a perhaps unwitting but excellent demonstration of political intolerance.
Is it possible that the pro-lifers have a genuine belief that a fetus is worthy of protection equal to (or similar to) a human life? If that's their initial belief, it seems reasonable that they'd conclude that 40-50x as many abortions as firearm homicides per year represents a greater problem in the former than the latter.
I don't think your proposed "fundamental distinction" is anywhere near as fundamental as you seem to believe.
that’s a very long and eloquent way of saying “the thing I want is right and the thing you want is wrong” - unless you think you can persuade the people who disagree with you to support your position, my earlier point about “live and let live” still stands, and in fact, you’re making my point for me, that many people feel that the freedoms I believe in with should be available to everyone, while the freedoms I disagree with must be forbidden.
> That's a false equivalence. "Pro-life" advocates use a topic that some people find emotive purely for political ends.
No, we think killing innocent human beings is gross and wrong in principle.
There’s nothing emotional or religious about it. If you accept the premises that a fetus is an innocent human being and that intentionally killing innocent human beings is wrong, then if you have any respect for logic you must conclude that abortion is wrong.
Biology tells us that at the moment of conception that single diploid cell is a human being. Therefore, in that model, in order to justify killing a fetus it must either be unintentional or the fetus must not be innocent. The intentional case can apply to procedures that are intended to help the mother that unfortunately harm the fetus. For the other case I can’t see how a fetus could be guilty of anything deserving death. However, as an counter-example, I’m given to understand that’s the case in Jewish law at least some of the time.
Anyhow as you can see there is no deception, in framing or otherwise. It’s just simple premises and sound logic from them. On the other hand I rarely see logical moral reasoning with generally acceptable premises from the pro-Choice side, so you're correct that the subject is, for some people, primarily an emotional one.
Anyhow I've kept this to just a simple explanation of why we're pro-Life, because I don't think HN is the right place to debate political issues, but it is the right place to correct erroneous statements.
There's nothing metaphysical about that. Scientifically, "a human" is an alive organism of the species "Homo sapiens." A blastocyst, embryo, or fetus is undisputedly alive, and undisputedly has human DNA. It is "a human." Now, it's a human at an early stage of human development--and that might have various ethical and moral implications--but it's scientifically unsupportable to say that it's not a human.
For example, the OED defines "tadpole" as "the tailed aquatic larva of an amphibian (frog, toad, newt, or salamander) breathing through gills and lacking legs until the later stages of its development." There is nothing metaphysical about saying that a tadpole is "a frog."
> Scientifically, "a human" is an alive organism of the species "Homo sapiens."
You seem to be conflating linguistics with biology. If we agree to change the definition of a word "human", this isn't going to make pro-lifers happy, because their problem is not with words.
Also, I don't think "human" means alive Homo Sapiens. Human and Homo Sapiens are synonyms.
> A blastocyst, embryo, or fetus is undisputedly alive
But that's exactly what is being disputed. For example a braindead person is "undisputedly" dead, yet an embryo has even less brain activity.
> For example a braindead person is "undisputedly" dead
No, they’re not. If they were indisputably dead we’d just say dead. The qualifier means it’s something other than actually dead.
You could quibble that after medical death biological processes continue in various cells and organs for a while though. And of course there’s the old first responder’s adage that the patient isn’t dead until he’s warm and dead. Cold and dead, as in fished out of ice water, isn’t necessary dead dead.
This is a good example of a premise that isn’t generally acceptable. If we agree that persons who lack agency have no right to not be killed then we can kill infants, the severely mentally ill, involuntarily commited persons, and arguably severely physically disabled persons.
Not to mention, determining who does and doesn’t have agency and thus a right to not be killed strikes me as considerably trickier than the basic medical definition of dead, which is basically no heartbeat. Hence the observation that cold and dead might not really be dead. Severe hypothermia can make the pulse undetectable.
> basic medical definition of dead, which is basically no heartbeat
This is an extremely reductive statement. There is no unified medical definition of death, precisely because it's a highly controversial topic.
Closest to what you're trying to say is UDDA (which, ironically, is currently being revised), and it explicitly mentions brain death: "An individual who has sustained either (1) irreversible cessation of circulatory and respiratory functions, or (2) irreversible cessation of all functions of the entire brain, including the brain stem, is dead."
> I can’t see how a fetus could be guilty of anything deserving death
Paradoxically the Catholics do (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_sin) I’m sure there’s finicky nuance that the current devout could counter with—apparently they recently decided they were just kidding about limbo being a thing—but that was the mindset drilled into me during my formative years.
You use an abrahamic notion of human being defined as a soulless meatbag. Diploid cell, lol. If your body except for one diploid cell was pulverized, you won't consider it death? Stoics redefined human being to be primarily mind, and body being secondary to mind. Mind is the difference between a fetus and a human.
> You use an abrahamic notion of human being defined as a soulless meatbag.
I use the Christian notion of a human being defined as a human body and a human soul unified in one creature. I believe both human body and soul are created at the same time, namely conception. While most Muslims agree with that assessment, most Jews do not[1]. Therefore it's not an Abrahamic notion.
In fact, the very concept of a soul, or anima in Latin, is that which animates a body. By definition, every animate creature has a soul because it is the name for the animating principle. And so death then is the transition from being a living animated body with a soul to being an inanimate dead body without a soul.
[1] The Talmud says that the soul enters the body with the first breath.
Partly, yes, but it also assumes that "leaving each other alone" results in societally beneficial outcomes. That's not necessarily true. For example, in many Asian countries it's common to call out family and friends on their weight. It's not a "live and let live" approach, but it might explain why Asians tend to be skinny. (I'm reminded of the line from "Everything, Everywhere All at Once," where the mom goes "Wait. You are getting fat. And you never call me even though we have a family plan. And it's free. You only visit when you need something. And you got a tattoo and I don't care if it's supposed to represent our family. You know I hate tattoos.")
Fair point and great anecdote. Though when I think "interference of my 'let-live'" my mind jumps to things a decent bit worse than family who make some well-meaning remarks that sting.
I don't want to turn this into a big political/philosophical thing, but it feels like the line is between suggestions or commentary and forcible policing.
There's a line where you should intervene when others are not letting others live and let live. That's the overall human societal obligation that everyone has to each other.
Then there's another line where you build the type of society you want, but only within your own circle of culture or geography or whatever.
Live and let live requires assuring the first part, while also not imposing your own version of the second part on people who are not within your circle. The expression has always had nuance. Until now, I had never heard such a simplistic interpretation.
> There's a line where you should intervene when others are not letting others live and let live.
But why should that be the line? Why shouldn't we police each other's behavior to ensure everyone is making better decisions that serve larger societal ends while preserving social peace?
The Counterpoint is that individuals should serve their own ends as long as it preserves social peace.
Many object to the idea that Society should extract as much utility value from individuals as possible up until they're breaking point is reached.
Furthermore, the breaking point for social peace can be modified and delayed by harsh repression and subjugation, so I don't think it is a suitable limit on suppressing the desires of individuals
Maybe I wasn't clear, but that's the second line I described in the second paragraph that I wrote.
You can build whatever society you want. But there are also different societies. Some by choice, some not. People can be part of multiple societies at the same time. The trick is to manage the interfaces between societies without imposing yourself on a society you don't belong to. Live and let live.
You assume that there is and of a right aught to be enforcement. Others view that social evolution as up to god. We all cooperate and the least rigid will adopt the best and we’ll all copy one another.
Only if you assume we're not a society, and that there's no social benefits to enforcing socially desirable behaviors and suppress socially undesirable ones.