@Shamar
I don't know.

@Shamar
>wait to have for your first child in your arms

Then the irrational insticts will take over. The instincts that were designed by the evolution to maximize the number of living humans.
(Sorry for ruining the mood)

@Shamar
By irrational I don't mean "wrong" or "not real". I mean something closer to "not supported with logical arguments", "not supported with symbolic reasoning" or "a result of thalamus processing, as opposed to cerebral cortex processing".

@Shamar
IOW, a heuristic.

@Shamar
I think that if we only operated on experience, we'd end up with a situation where some people think eg. "vim is objectively and morally good, emacs is objectively and morally evil" and some other people think the same, but with vim and emacs swapped.

@Shamar
But if we move a level of abstraction above, from "I like my editor" to "everyone likes their editor" and from "I should be allowed to like my editor" to "everyone should be allowed to like their editor"
then we can come up with something that both of these groups can agree with.

@Shamar
Our instincts tell us we should not kill members of our species.
Other species' instincts tell us they should not kill members of their species.
Unless you can show how we're better than them, it would be as wrong to kill them as it is for them to kill us.
Similarly to how it is as wrong to steal from your neighbour as it is for your neighbour to steal from you.

@Shamar
My point is that if we keep going beyond instincts, we will arrive to a conclusion, that humans cannot possibly be the only creatures, killing of which is wrong no matter what. Therefore, we should figure out what it is that makes killing humans more wrong than killing eg. bacteria, and then include other creatures sharing this property in the "killing them is wrong no matter what" set. And we should do it _before_ someone accidentally kills them and starts a war.

@Shamar
Hence, imaginary arguments.
Because once contact other not-to-be-killed creatures become a reality, it will be too late to make a decision. If we don't educate people not to kill non-human not-to-be-killed creatures _before_ they meet such creatures, they will kill them. And it will be wrong, even though it was before the decision that it's wrong.

@Shamar @Wolf480pl As someone who *has* held their newborn children in their arms, I think that infanticide *is* ethically justifiable.

It's much like euthanasia. There's a lot of ethical complexity *around* infanticide - to what extent is the parents' choice free, to what extent does it problematically devalue human life, and so on.

But the raw act of killing a newborn is, in my opinion, less bad than killing an adult chimpanzee; it has greater capacity for suffering.

@Shamar @Wolf480pl As an ex-infant I now have the capability to anticipate the future and feel loss. A newborn can do neither.

I don't think that arguments-from-potential are valid. I continually shed skin cells which are genetically complete and have the potential to be cloned into fully-capable humans. Is it immoral to not clone my shed skin cells into people?

@Shamar @Wolf480pl

Why not?

It's a hypothetical intended to get you to expand on *why* you think human life is valuable.

Because I don't think that merely being genetically-human is the property that makes life valuable, and examples of genetically-human life being worthless are a valuable illustration of that.

For a real example: the HeLa cells are genetically human life we've been experimenting on. Do you object? Why?

This question is the crux of the abortion debate.

@Shamar @Wolf480pl Why should we kill anything at all?

Ideally, we wouldn't!

But we're compelled to kill billions of bacteria every day; we willingly kill any number of plants and animals, and we'll sometimes kill just because it's convenient.

Which is ok, as long as the benefit we're getting from the destruction is worth it.

For abortion the benefits can be huge - children require a huge amount of emotional and financial resources.

@Shamar @Wolf480pl And it's great that you love your daughters and have been able to provide for them!

But not everyone is you!

Not everyone has the same experiences, or will have the same response to the same experiences as you.

There are people who really hate their kids; who didn't want them, regret having them, and resent the sacrifices they've been compelled to make. In that situation both the parents *and* the children would have been better off with abortion.

@Shamar @Wolf480pl
No!

Not just cheaper!

The mother is pregnant for 9 months! During which she's at risk of a bunch of serious health complications. She might get terrible morning sickness. She's prevented from doing a whole lot of things, and, towards the end, she's literally exhausted by it.

Abortion is not JUST financially cheaper!

@Shamar @Wolf480pl
Now, if we happened to be able to remove the fetus from the mother and gestate it outside, *then* abortion would be just cheaper.

And *even* *then* being cheaper is ethically important!

External gestation would take significant resources; those resources would be unavailable for other purposes. If you can treat 100 cancer patients with the resources it would take to externally gestate one baby, is it still ethical?

@Shamar @Wolf480pl
That is irrelevant.

Pregnancy is *not* costless. It's stressfull (a cost!). It's possible (although quite unlikely) that you'll die (a cost!). It's possible (although somewhat less unlikely) that you'll have some permanent damage (a cost!).

And, even without permanent damage, there's the 9 months where you're restricted in what you can do!

Pregnancy is not costless! Abortion is generally less costly than pregnancy!

@Shamar @Wolf480pl

So, two things.

1) “Life” is not more precious than anything else. This is the core of our disagreement! I am explicitly in favour of the genetically-human life HeLa cells being endlessly cultured and killed in experiments.

2) Abortion is, in many cases, *better* for the woman than carrying a pregnancy to term.

Abortion can be a tool of women's liberation. Those who seek to restrict it do so as #oppressors of women.

@Shamar @Wolf480pl And, to be clear, I love *my* daughters. But we planned, we delayed having them until we were ready - both financially and emotionally - to support them.

That's not *just* The Dreaded Capitalism™ that's oppressing women. Even in a post-scarcity utopia where all material needs were freely available having a baby requires a huge investment of emotional resources.

Not everybody has those resources, and not everybody wants to spend them on childrearing.