iwpoe wrote:

What? No. The reason would be because you educated a new ideology, eliminated abortifacients, and prosecuted abortions...

If the "natural law" on its own was effective without the acts of men you presumably would need to do nothing.

Not true. Unless you are a rare breed, Poe, your parents taught you a lesson or two. Later you saw the sense in it.

With abortion, it is different still. Children do not (assuming the minimum age of reason) see a difference (once they have some understanding they came from mommy's tummy) between themselves and the 'bundle of cells' called 'a fetus'. They don't see the difference. It's easier for a child to lose their temper and whack around their younger sibling and understand why they require disciplining for that than for them to see the wrongness in abortion (which they can't, obviously, themselves do - i.e., cause (whereas, they can hit their younger sibling)).

The 'problem' is children are just too powerless qua children (politically) and dependent on their parents and society (equally obvious to them even at tender ages). My point only is that a generation could with extreme ease be raised horrified at the notion of abortion. That's the natural aspect I am referring to. It takes becoming a jaded adult to talk coolly about sticking a suction tube into a mother's pregnant belly and vacuuming into goo a once viable child.
 

Last edited by Timocrates (3/31/2016 11:39 pm)

iwpoe wrote:

I mean look, I'm sympathetic, but it's hard to see how your account doesn't equate natural law with the willies. I can't but hardly get upset seeing surgery.

Also, maybe I'm being pedantic, but you literally gave me three major political policies that would require significant effort in education, investigation, and enforcement and then told me that abortion would go away "because the natural law". Where did it come from then? And it's hard to see how the political policies are "the natural law" simpliciter.

Abortion doesn't come by nature. It's an act against the natural order: let's be clear on that. I remember the story of a Jewish woman in the 19th century being evacuated from programs in Eastern Europe and - in entering Western Europe on the way to cross to England - heard for the first time in her life the idea that a child even could be aborted. They (the refugees she was with) were worried about the extra weight and her possibility of entering into labour crossing the Channel and also the legal paperwork that might be involved. That just is possible. I'm only 30 and I couldn't conceive of Sodomy or somody-like acts for the longest time. Wasn't even sure what people were sometimes saying.

There are 1001 things we right now culturally and through custom take for granted that could easily be destroyed by a fiat of positive law. That's the weakness in our modern, liberal government system. The Law is a Teacher. Americans once had terrible respect and fear for "the law." That whole notion is evaporating today, though.

I insist again: abortion could be eradicated virtually from the human psyche with ease. It is invasive and dangerous by nature (who would ingest a poison or let a doctor stick a metal thing into your stomach without pervading reason? For fun??); being pregnant, for a woman, is at least not unnatural. Moreover, children naturally do not fail to identify with the womb once they get they didn't come from visiting storks.

I'm asking you, iwpoe, to culturally separate yourself for a second. I'm only 30. I assure you anyone even 5+ years older knows perfectly full well how easily society could return to, e.g., a day when homosexuality was simply considered morally wrong. Abortion is only hard to get rid of in the sense we were literally born into its legal reality as a fait accompli.

 

In the woods about what? Ignorance of evil is not contrary to human scientific progress. We don't need to know evil to make progress. Learning math doesn't teach you any evil

Furthermore, let's run an experiment. Let's force - for 72 hours straight - nothing on the internet or the television would show anything but what actually happens to a baby being "aborted" in the womb. Let's show that. Watch as 80% of Westerners overnight beg and scream that it end forever. It's absolutely horrible. There is nothing pretty in a human life being destroyed. Then there is no 'in the woods'.

No, iwpoe, we are in the woods. A self-imposed woods. Like refusing to look at the horrible scars from whips on the back of a slave for the most ridiculous 'offense'.

Ridding the world of abortion is easy. What's hard is the courage to do it. As Robert Kennedy once said, "Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle.. few can withstand the wrath of their society, the censure of their fellows." [1]

Last edited by Timocrates (4/01/2016 1:36 am)

iwpoe wrote:

Jesus, Tim. What's next? Fordyce's Sermons?

Less blasphemous use of my Lord's name, Poe.

Anyways, the fact that abortion can be removed easily remains. Too easy. One wonders why we pretend to debate it anymore.

Last edited by Timocrates (4/01/2016 5:04 am)

I was literally requesting divine aid to weather your pastor Bob-style homily on my phrase "in the woods" (which was not a metaphor, but literally reffered to the fact that provincial people are often ignorant of much other than the trees around them) since you totally missed the point that the moral feelings of situationaly ignorant bumpkins like your 19th century Eastern European hardly seem interesting, even if they get it right.

One problem is that you're not even speaking of a moral intuition specifically but rather a feeling of aversion which needn't even be moral at all. Children are also often spontaneously and strongly averse to leafy vegetables and church and any number of other stupid things because they're children. I was bothered by girls and sexuality at such when I was six years old and lots of kids are. So what?

Since when was the mere reaction of upset the dictator of the good? Surgery is revolting as abortion is revolting. The site of murder is revolting as is the slaughter of animals. The site of starvation in famine is revolting as is the site of a man having fasted 40 days in imitation of Christ. War just and unjust alike is revolting. What follows from the presence of feeling in each case? Little of demonstrative value.

You simply muddy the understanding of the natural law by asking people to look to emotional responses without further ado. That way of putting things is why so many people think that anyone who opposes gay marriage is *nothing but* grossed out about it. Since most people after adolescence are aware that what we merely feel averse to is not directly of moral import appealing to feelings is absurd. And thank God, since many secular and atheistic people have feelings of aversion to us, and at least some few of them are sensible enough to sort out their distaste from their moral will.

Also, you seem strangely unaware that the exposure to the revolting, morally right or not, inures the person exposed. It's how we train soldiers to kill pepole and surgeons to cut them open.

Last edited by iwpoe (4/01/2016 8:07 am)