From: Tim Hruby (hruby@his.com)
Date: Tue Mar 16 1999 - 17:35:20 MST
At 5:42 PM -0500 3/16/99, Alexander 'Sasha' Chislenko wrote:
> But then, of course, a newborn baby is also inferior to a cat, so rationally,
> getting rid of them is ethically no worse than killing a cow - right?
> And then, there are mentally retarded folk who will never turn into anything
> sentient... But that's really different... right?
Sasha seems to be agreeing with my point, while having ignored it :-)
My point was that the morality of abortion is not easily reduced to a
question of neurology and/or "sentience" in the mind of those who care
about the question. To most, morality is more complicated than that.
I take no (public) stance on the actual morality of abortion. I have an
opinion, but I don't care about it enough to risk being drawn into dealing
with and/or debating those people who do _deeply_ care about the issue.
Because of their passion for the issue, they (on both sides) demand far too
much time, energy, money and other scarce resources, considering that my
interests lie elsewhere.
I agree with Eliezer's post that the Extropian principles should not
contain such a statement either, but I think his reason is flawed. My
opinion for why the Extropian principles should be silent is closely
related to my own reasons for silence. It's a pragmatic reaction to the
risk on being drawn into a costly political debate over an issue (the
morality of abortion) that is at best tangential to Extropianism.
A question more closely related to Extropianism (at least the political
threads thereof) is the view of the Principles on whether the state should
be imposing a certain view of morality on individuals. But that question
is broader than and different from the issue of the _morality_ of abortion.
I don't think that Extropianism, as I understand it, has much to say on the
morality of abortion.
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