Abortion

Quote: Wizard

Question for the forum -- You come upon 20 people tied to railroad tracks with an incoming train seconds away. You don't have time to untie them. However, you can flip a switch to make the train turn onto a different set of tracks, which have 10 people tied to them. You don't have time to untie them either. Do you flip the switch?

I flip the switch

Quote: terapined

I flip the switch

Some people would be paralyzed with shock, some would go by the numbers, some might choose by age or race but no one facing a financially and socially inconvenient pregnancy is going to be aided by a momentary flick of the switch. Even girls who are not having sex, think about abortions. Women who have abortions usually have thought about the procedure in the abstract and also in the more pressing circumstances of "reality".

Consider the recent survey among college girls in Miami, FL about decision making before visiting a nightclub.

Look cute but not too cute.
Call friends so as to neither Uber alone nor be in a nightclub alone.
Protect your drink at all times, some girls even using drink covers while holding a glass.
Don't even think about a solitary trip to the ladies room.
Uber homeward with the same crowd.

Now if that much time and effort goes into a 'night on the town', just how relevant is a railroad track analogy requiring instant decision making?

Quote: Fleastiff

some would go by the numbers,

Strictly a numbers game for me
20 die or 10 die. Its a no brainer to me, 10 die

Quote: Wizard

Question for the forum -- You come upon 20 people tied to railroad tracks with an incoming train seconds away. You don't have time to untie them. However, you can flip a switch to make the train turn onto a different set of tracks, which have 10 people tied to them. You don't have time to untie them either. Do you flip the switch?

I don't think I would flip the switch. Flipping the switch actively kills 10 people and I would be responsible. Luckily in my made up theoretical situations I carry explosives that would stop the train.

Quote: Wizard

It would be nice if one day I heard a discussion on ways to reduce the number of abortions.

Want one? I'll try not to go full RV salesman. No promises =p

The answer is education, plain and simple. The amount of societies' ills combated with nothing more than knowledge is a list as long as my list of things to rage about. Do so many of our surgeries go well because of a law forcing glove use? Or is it because those engaging are educated on pathogens? A glove law may have an intention, but one could comply yet take a dump, pay for vending, and pick their ear all with gloves on. The law does nothing. Education is the answer.

I don't get out much... tobacco illegal anywhere where y'all at? Kenarman's our resident elder, they ever been illegal in your lifetime, ken? Despite complete political protection on what SHOULD be a proper Schedule 1 drug, and despite it being completely accessible for the entirety of all our lives, and despite it being the most addictive drug I have ever taken, tobacco use has and continues to fall across all demographics. Why? E.D.U.C.A.T.I.O.N.

And this is what's got me f#$%ed up and causes me to fly off the handle. The answer is RIGHT THERE, but our puritanical sensibilities are mucking it all up. We can show people being murdered on live TV. We show dead bodies under tarps, show people getting knocked out outside of bars, see people being tased and sprayed by 5-0. We'll show people getting their throats cut out or have cheese squeezed out of their aorta in autopsy live on TV at 1300hrs. We'll positively saturate our entire lives with all sorts of nastiness, but mention sex and it's non-stop pearl clutching.

Those who get all pinched about sex need to f#$% back off to the 1700's. I made a crude comment on the other site about how people in my area, some women included, think women pee out of their vaginas; a commentary on the absolute horridness of our education. Thing is, it wasn't hyperbole. These people actually exist, and in large numbers! You know how many 30yr olds that I turned onto the fact that, hey, cold sores are herpes? That HPV can give you cancer? That there's vaccines for some of these things?

Just look to your y'alls favorite bitch, legalized prostitution. How much of your fight is fight against fact, vs how much is a fight against other people's emotions? I think prostitution is gross and I will never not ever avail myself to one, but I'm also not a simple idiot. You're damn right I can see the myriad absolutely horrible results from prohibition. Increased disease, increased violence, not to mention creating a black market that makes stealing children a financial interest. It's right in front of their face, but they're too gd selfish. I don't like it, so YOU can't have it. It's guns all over again.

You may not hear debates because there's nothing to debate. How to reduce abortions is known (as evident when viewing our decreasing rates of occurrence). Educate and supply resources. An answer old as time.

But it's not about answers. It's about control.

Quote: pew

It depends on who they are.

We can assume they are random looking adults, mixed race, gender, and age. You don't have time to do a study on the details.

Quote: FrGamble

I don't think I would flip the switch. Flipping the switch actively kills 10 people and I would be responsible. Luckily in my made up theoretical situations I carry explosives that would stop the train.

I would flip the switch. The decision to not flip I would say actively kills 20 people. The way I look at it is 10 people will day either way. Do you want to kill 10 more or not?

Quote: Fleastiff

Now if that much time and effort goes into a 'night on the town', just how relevant is a railroad track analogy requiring instant decision making?

How relevant is this whole discussion? Do you think anybody will change their position even slightly? I'd like to think we're here out of the appreciation of a discussion and debate.

My analogy was directed at this comment...

Quote: FrG

Not giving blood is not murder. Doing something to intentionally cause the death of an innocent life is murder.

I would say that flipping the switch is not murder, but saving 10 lives.

you have no legal obligation to save anyone's life if you did not create the danger, but if in trying to switch the points you wreck the train you are responsible for your actions.

Dana Weinstein was 31 weeks into her second pregnancy, preparing to welcome a daughter, when she and her husband were given horrible news: A critical piece of the brain had not developed properly. "[We were told] that our baby would have seizures 70% of the time — that was a best-case scenario; that when we delivered her, that we'd need to have a resuscitation order in place because she would most likely seize to death," Weinstein said.
NPR on April 30, 2019 talking about an even 17 years earlier. Dana went to Colorado which was one of the few clinics that would perform a third tri-mester abortion.

Quote: Wizard

I find the five people who voted "for without restrictions" to be just as radical. I mean legally terminating a healthy pregnancy at eight months? I view that as just as bad as infanticide.

I think that the Wizard has a point. If you don't want the child at the end of 8 months of pregnancy, then adoption should be the only option.

Quote: Wizard

I would say that flipping the switch is not murder, but saving 10 lives.

When posed as a strict numbers gain, you have to flip the switch.

If you were told that the average age of 10 people was 30 years younger than the average age of the 20 people, you would have an actual moral quandry.


===================

We were given one of those morality quizes in the tenth grade where we had to choose 2 out of 10 people to get the lifesaving organ for transplant. We were told that all candidates had an equal probability of survival. We were just given ages, sex, and occupations along with some personal promises. The rabbi was at peace with GOD about dying, and the rich man would give a million dollars to organ charity if he was chosen.

I remember that nobody in the class chose the rich man, the rabbi, or the middle aged mother of six children. I can't remember the other details as it was over 4 decades ago. When it was all done, they told us in actuality it was determined by lottery since the board felt that no one had a right to make this decision.