robertv3 wrote:
I very much disagree with your statement. I am disagreeing with it on logical grounds, as follows:
You wrote: "... if there is any doubt - ANY DOUBT AT ALL - that a life might be terminated unnecessarily, then abortions should not be approved for any reason ...".
Consider the following statement, which I just now made up, and which, I believe, is logically equivalent to your statement.
"If there is any doubt - ANY DOUBT AT ALL - that someone might die as a result of an action, then that type of action should never be approved for any reason."
A great many actions, even some we consider very normal, might result in an unnecessary death.
Example 1: driving a car on a public road. We know that some people are going to die every day from driving accidents on the roads. They are unnecessary deaths. These unnecessary deaths by driving accidents could be prevented if everybody just stopped driving. Some such fatal accidents happened by reason of kids having fun joyriding or showing off to their friends by driving fast, yet _some_ such fatal accidents happened because of _another_ "reason"(!) such as some driver momentarily not paying enough attention to the road -- the type of thing which is sure to happen if enough people drive enough times. The statement disallows the driving for all reasons if even one reason (showing off to friends by driving fast) might lead to a death.
Example 2: passing another vehicle, on a two-lane highway (the kind that has one lane going one way, and the other lane going the other way). Passing on such roads increases the likelihood of deaths by collision with an oncoming car. The vast majority of those deaths (presumably) are unnecessary deaths. (Exceptions might be emergency situations such as where an ambulance has to pass to get a patient to the emergency room on time.) To prevent that kind of accident, everybody (except maybe ambulance drivers) could stop passing on such roads.
Example 3: medical procedures. Some of them result in deaths which would not have occurred if the patient had just stayed home instead. They're not really necessary deaths. For example, I had an operation a couple of years ago. It was pretty safe, but there was still some small chance I could have died an unnecessary death from it. (Maybe it was a 0.00001 percent chance of death.). All it was was a hernia repair; I could have LIVED a long time without that operation being done (I just would have been a lot weaker for the rest of my life, as a result of the unrepaired hernia). There will always be _some_ chance of death from such an operation, though the chance might be very small.
Example 4: enforcing the law. Some deaths result from using force while enforcing laws. And yet, we consider it normal that force is one of the options that sometimes has to be used when enforcing some laws. To prevent the occasional deaths by law enforcement, the first thing we could do is just prevent law enforcement from ever using force at all, because (revisiting the statement (the version I made up)):
"If there is any doubt - ANY DOUBT AT ALL - that someone might die as a result of an action, then that type of action should never be approved for any reason."
And _your_ statement, which I had quoted above, was, again:
"... if there is any doubt - ANY DOUBT AT ALL - that a life might be terminated unnecessarily, then abortions should not be approved for any reason ..."
So my disagreement is about the logic of your statement.
I very much disagree with your statement. I am di... (
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