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Comment by chokolad | Hacker News Reader

I had an argument recently with someone who is anti-abortion and his opinion is that life starts when sperm and egg meet. Anything preventing implantation of an egg is essentially killing of a baby - hence IUD is not acceptable contraception method. Condom is though. Or anything else which prevents sperm from meeting an egg.

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> his opinion is that life starts when sperm and egg meet.

There is some evidence that a large percentage (30-75%) of all fertilized eggs do not implant. If every one of those was a human life, your friend might consider this an extremely large public health problem, and perhaps of greater significance than poverty, war, and plagues.

IUD prevent fertilization, they may also prevent implantation but this is only likely to happen if it has been inserted after sex.

> I had an argument recently with someone who is anti-abortion and his opinion is that life starts when sperm and egg meet. Anything preventing implantation of an egg is essentially killing of a baby

This is a pretty common opinion among anti-choice people. One of the many divides in views on abortion is between people who believe life begins at birth vs. before birth, with a significant number of the latter believing life begins at conception.

EDIT: Obviously views on abortion are complicated and vary widely. All I'm saying is that it's really not hard to find people who will tell you life begins at conception (and by that logic, believe that killing a fertilized egg is equivalent to killing a baby).

From what I've seen, people with a pro-choice viewpoint generally acknowledge that life biologically begins at conception.

The split in viewpoints, as I understand it, is that early life isn't significant enough to protect at that stage of development.

Those egg and sperm cells are quite alive before they meet.

However neither carries a full copy of a person's DNA. They're only "alive" in that they're biological.

FWIW, from any of these debates I've read on reddit at least, I've encountered almost no pro-choice people who believe life begins at conception. The party line seems to be that it is a zygote until birth - well, of course they'd never state it in such clear terms as that, instead you get any variety of mental gymnastics to avoid the question, but one thing they are absolutely certain about is, it is not a life.

"Life" vs "(viable) human life". Not the same thing.

A 26 week old fetus is viable, but you can still abort it.

I think most people would say that "viable only with massive medical intervention" is not what they mean by "viable" in this context.

There are plenty of full term babies that need "massive medical intervention". Are they viable?

They are not, and using the exact same logic advocated by the the pro-choice camp, there should be no moral issues with not providing the necessary medical support for the baby to survive. Taken at their word, if it is not self-sufficient, it is not a life.

I'm more than willing to admit that if the baby is removed from the womb too early, it will not survive, so in that sense it is "not viable". What bothers me is most (if not all, in my experience) pro-choice advocates refuse to even acknowledge the fact that non-intervention will result in a human being successfully born in the vast majority of scenarios. To me it is intellectually dishonest.

Interesting. Most of the people I hear supporting abortion won't acknowledge that it's a life that's being ended. Whether they don't know or just won't admit it varies by person.

  early life isn't significant enough to protect at that stage of development

The usual condition as I understand it is that it must be a "viable human life" to merit protection. All sorts of things can go wrong, such as miscarriage, so it's not a viable human life until it's born.

Please refrain from using epithets to caricature opposing views. This includes calling another group 'anti-choice', 'anti-life', 'pro-coercion', or 'pro-death'.

>"Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say in a face-to-face conversation. Avoid gratuitous negativity.

When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names."[1]

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> Please refrain from using epithets to caricature opposing views. This includes calling another group 'anti-choice', 'anti-life', 'pro-coercion', or 'pro-death'.

I don't really like the term 'anti-choice', but 'pro-life' is also an epithet that many pro-choice people dislike (because it implies that pro-choice people somehow oppose life). 'pro/anti-abortion' are problematic for similar reasons.

So while I'd like to use an uncontended term, I really don't know of one.

Your opponents are of a similar mind. Consider what happens when I switch the 'life' and 'choice' in your comment.

>I don't really like the term 'anti-life', but 'pro-choice' is also an epithet that many pro-life people dislike (because it implies that pro-life people somehow oppose choice).

Your reasoning is just as strong when used against you, as when you employ it.

> Your reasoning is just as strong when used against you, as when you employ it. It fails by parity of reasoning.

So what neutral term would you suggest we use instead that is acceptable to everyone being described?

> Your opponents are of a similar mind.

Please don't make assumptions about my views on abortion or who my "opponents" are, especially since I've very explicitly tried to refrain from opining on the matter.

>"So what neutral term would you suggest we use instead that is acceptable to everyone being described?"

I would suggest that you refer to people by their preferred epithet, unless you can find a neutral one (which I cannot). This is common practice in most other ideological situations, (i.e. religions, political groups, and philosophical creeds,) and appears to be moderately effective at avoiding distraction from the discussion.

>"Please don't make assumptions about my views on abortion or who my "opponents" are, especially since I've very explicitly tried to refrain from opining on the matter."

I would be geniunely surprised if you self-described as 'anti-choice' (as I have never heard anyone describe themselves as anti-choice or anti-life outside of a joke,) so please correct me if I am wrong, but I stand by my assumption until it is proven false.

Speaking as someone who approves of the legal reality that abortion is a woman's right, I'm fine with pro-choice/pro-life. I don't think the aborted material constitutes a life, and the anti-abortionists' view that it does just makes me roll my eyes at their attempts to change that very common view with word games.

If you do nothing and let nature take it's course, in the majority of cases this material will proceed to be born as a human. If someone intervenes via abortion, that most likely outcome of a person being born will not happen. The willfully chosen action of an individual prevents a child from being born, whereas if they did nothing, the child would be born.

I can see how word games might make you roll your eyes, but does the above line of thinking also make you roll your eyes? I'm not suggesting we outlaw abortion, but I don't think it's that much to ask that people be honest about precisely what is happening. There are word games being played on both sides of this disagreement.

There's lots of man-made things that stop nature from "taking its course," like condoms or planning around a woman's menstrual cycle. An abortion is just another of those man-made things that stops nature from "taking its course". Aaand, it's been going on as long as people have been people.

We've been controlling pregnancy as a species for millennia. Abortion, in the medical, clinical sense, is just a safe, reliable, and legal way to do so, that also happily gives a woman body autonomy (a good place for us to get to, after so much of our history telling women their bodies aren't theirs).

Hey, maybe you don't like any of those, and sex should be purely procreative in its goals. Some people do feel that way, maybe you're one of them.

Now who's playing word games?

> 'pro-life' is also an epithet that many pro-choice people dislike (because it implies that pro-choice people somehow oppose life).

Many pro-life people dislike epithet "pro-choice" (because it implies that pro-life people somehow oppose choice).

Actually both implications are sort of correct. That whole debate is about what is more important: the right of fetus to live or freedom of choice of a pregnant woman.

While the AP Stylebook advises using "anti-abortion" and "abortion rights", it seems unrealistic to expect people to parse their statements that carefully, indeed journalists need a guide to achieve this aim professionally. Pro-life and pro-choice are common terms, and it seems uncharitable to leap to the assumption that someone flipping a prefix is purposefully using an epithet with the intent of caricature an opposing view.

I don't think that is the main divide. The divide would be life at contraception vs. life at some point in time during the pregnancy/fetus development. Where that line is seems to differ from country to country.

No the main divide is over who controls women's sexuality.

Full stop.

Agreed which is why the issue gets so complicated. Drawing moral lines is tricky. I can't think of anyone I have met who has argued that an abortion 24 hours before the birth would occur naturally is morally acceptable. It will be interesting to see how the debate changes as technology advances. If x years from now doctors are able to move a 2nd or even 1st trimester fetus into an artificial womb instead of aborting it, should abortions still be legal? What if it is more expensive/uncomfortable for the woman? Should the fetus then have full human rights once separated from its mother? All deep and interesting questions.

> among anti-choice people

Unless you want to be called "anti-life" it's better to use traditional names for such groups: "pro-choice" and "pro-life".

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