I don’t think you should need consent to take organs from a corpse, I can’t see any reasons why you should. Are there religious reasons I’m not aware of?
I agree, but I think it’s just from the general cultural notion that your body is yours and you get to decide what is done with it (which then, ironically, also doesn’t apply when cultural norms are different, e.g. afaik you’re not allowed to keep your relatives ashes in your home in germany, even if they willed it).
As with many social conventions, it doesn’t really make sense (but from what I’ve seen a lot of ppl do agree with it). But it does highlight how ridiculous some of the arguments against abortion are.
My general opinion is that organ donation should be opt-out. Most people aren’t organ donors not due to any real objections to the practice but purely because they don’t know that they aren’t.
Make it easy to opt out for any reason, but also make it easy to opt back in if you change your mind, because bodily autonomy is important in any free nation.
But also people are lazy idiots and for no-brainer medical questions like vaccines and organ donation, they should have to put in a minimum amount of work to continue a bad practice for the wider population. Make the bad practice slightly more work than the good one.
In some cases there are religious reasons, but I can see this as being a useful policy even in a purely secular world. Even with the fairly stringent organ donation consent laws we have, there have been instances where it appears that there have been instances where it appears that a person was exploited in order to harvest their organs. I’m talking stuff like conflicts of interest where transplant physicians are involved with determining the death of a donor, which could be a conflict of interest, or relaxing of standards of care of a future organ donor (i.e. letting their condition decline so their organs can be harvested sooner). There are rules about this stuff, but nonetheless, there are instances where the rules appear to have been violated.
Requiring consent of the donor (or their family) may seem silly, but removing that safeguard would inevitably lead to both abuse of the organ donation system, and also a distrust of the system by prospective donors and their families (the perception of tomfoolery would be a greater risk than the actual negligence, because cases of abuse are exceptionally rare today and I expect they’d remain quite rare even if we relaxed the consent requirement).
Philosophically, it’s also important to note that the organs aren’t actually harvested from corpses per se, but a heavily sedated person (who may or may not still be showing brain activity). They rule the death before they’ve harvested the organs, I think, but the person still being alive at the time of harvest is a big deal for organ viability. I don’t actually know if they ever actually harvest organs from corpses, but I do know that doing it while the donor is still alive is the standard. The point here is that it’s inherently an ethically dicey proposition, similar to how deciding to switch off someone’s life support of a non-donor can be a big decision for families and/or doctors. In a way, the consent requirement can be seen as a way of sidestepping the messy philosophical questions like “what even counts as being alive”. Ethically, it’s by far the safest approach.
Requiring consent of the donor (or their family) may seem silly, but removing that safeguard would inevitably lead to both abuse of the organ donation system,
I believe that the increase in legal and ethical supply would reduce the amount abuse.
and also a distrust of the system […]
That’s the real problem, but an opt out system would be a good compromise.
Philosophically, it’s also important to note that the organs aren’t actually harvested from corpses per se, but a heavily sedated person (who may or may not still be showing brain activity). They rule the death before they’ve harvested the organs, I think, but the person still being alive at the time of harvest is a big deal for organ viability. […]
The question is how you define personhood, but if you ask me, the body is alive, but the person is dead.
The point here is that it’s inherently an ethically dicey proposition, similar to how deciding to switch off someone’s life support of a non-donor can be a big decision for families and/or doctors.
No, in that case the person could be alive, maybe even conscious, but unable to interact with the world ever again.
In a way, the consent requirement can be seen as a way of sidestepping the messy philosophical questions like “what even counts as being alive”.
It doesn’t, because the consent is given when the person is still alive and only applies once they are considered dead.
Ethically, it’s by far the safest approach.
It doesn’t solve any of the questions around the definition of death, only concerns about the treatment of dead bodies. The same effect could be achieved with an opt out system, instead of the current opt in one.
“Pro-forced-birth” people (I refuse to give them the name “pro life”, because they are anything but), only care about control and punishment. After all, according to their “holy” text, giving birth is a punishment from their god to Eve for not having the knowledge of good and evil before eating from the tree of good and evil.
The comparison to blood transfusion is really great and describes perfectly my personal feelings about the topic
- No forcing. No one can force you to give that blood transfusion to your sister. You can have million reasons why you don’t or can’t make that blood transfusion
- Your body, your choice. No laws that should change that
- Morally speaking, should you give that blood transfusion to your sister? Well, yes. Even if you hate her, it’s still your sister and only you can save her (in this scenario). Especially when there’s no life-threatening situation preventing you from blood transfusion
- Should you be punished for not giving your sister the blood transfusion? No. Will a lot of people think of you as an asshole for not saving your sister’s life? Yes, unfortunately regardles of your reasoning
- Should we educate people about the blood transfusions, encourage them to regularly donate blood and help them to go through the process even if they’re scared? Absolutely
Am o neg. Have given blood in the past but I pass out any time blood is drawn, even small amounts for testing. Donation techs told me multiple times to just stop coming. I keep my blood now. I tried, but I won’t put myself or the techs through that again. I warn phlebs at the doctor’s office what is going to happen, most listen, but every now and then I get to really scare someone.
I’m curious, do you have a conditionor is it just some unexplainable pass out? Asking cause I can relate to some extent, even though I’m ok with normal amounts for blood tests.
No known condition, just lights out when blood is drawn by a professional. Doesn’t happen if i spring a leak on accident. Just triggers my nope switch I guess.
Vasovagal syncope, likely.
What did you call me? I’ll have you know I know right where my towel is.
To the end of that excellent review I’d add:
and you’re excepting the soul of the rape child to death because of the actions of it’s rapist parent - again, as if it’s their fault. Your duplicity and immorality is disgusting. All to treat women as birthing chambers, completely robbed of their autonomy and agency. If men could carry children abortions would be available in vending machines.
If there was somehow a way to biologically make the rapist carry the child instead, and make them go through with the pregnancy after a sophisticated medical procedure and then be obligated in all these legal ways for the life of the child after the pregnancy and birth, do you think they’d be in favor of changing the law to make that mandatory by court order?
Or do you think it would all of a sudden be very very complicated, and that person’s bodily autonomy even despite the crime they committed would be super important all of a sudden?
I know what I suspect about it.
That sounds really good to me! Except the part where the child is being cared for by a rapist, in such a case, better off aborted.
actions are a language. Some people speak love. Some people speak power. It is ok to speak back in the language you are spoken to.
…and yes… … better off with abortion in that case.
one of the things about sovereignty - Nobody may force you to anything without potentially enduring those consequences themselves.
with abortion, the action is to refuse to feed and to cut someone off. The only response someone else could reasonably “attack” with in reply would be to cut you off.
Any right we refuse to grant another, we may find taken from us. It is justified to kill those who are actually trying to kill you.
“trying to kill you,” though, does not include cutting you off. Nobody has to feed you, nobody has to give to you from their own energy or life, even if it kills you. Those things are gifts of society or individuals who care (or are guilted enough to motivate them). When someone cuts you off, the only right you get from that is to cut them off - which you already have.
Getting abortions is a moral good. It pisses off fascists.
Also, having a child is morally indistinguishable from murder.
You are directly and intentionally causing that person’s death, probably after decades of suffering and existential horror.
Abortions save lives. By killing that parasite before it can become a person, you avoid murdering that hypothetical person.
This is bullshit from a brand of fatalism I find tiresome, but would piss a fascist off so much. Totally say that when you do it!
“The unborn” are a convenient group of people to advocate for. They never make demands of you; they are morally uncomplicated, unlike the incarcerated, addicted, or the chronically poor; they don’t resent your condescension or complain that you are not politically correct; unlike widows, they don’t ask you to question patriarchy; unlike orphans, they don’t need money, education, or childcare; unlike aliens, they don’t bring all that racial, cultural, and religious baggage that you dislike; they allow you to feel good about yourself without any work at creating or maintaining relationships; and when they are born, you can forget about them, because they cease to be unborn. You can love the unborn and advocate for them without substantially challenging your own wealth, power, or privilege, without re-imagining social structures, apologizing, or making reparations to anyone. They are, in short, the perfect people to love if you want to claim you love Jesus, but actually dislike people who breathe. Prisoners? Immigrants? The sick? The poor? Widows? Orphans? All the groups that are specifically mentioned in the Bible? They all get thrown under the bus for the unborn.”
― David Barnhart
The gangs who drug people to steal their kidneys are just extremely pro-life.
This is such an excellent explanation of the whole concept of choice and bodily autonomy.
I think there should be a compromise, where for every 10 banned abortions, you get to legally kill someone.
Ten babies saved, but the reluctant mothers get to forcibly inject a pro-life influencer with a chemical which causes leukemia.
Sounds like a fair exchange.
honestly, one to one exchange is fair too, since they’re not pro-life, just pro-birth
To be fair, they would probably be pro-life when it comes to giving a pro-life influencer leukemia.
Perhaps a better compromise would be that for every unwanted pregnancy, we get to sterilise the entire family of a far right influencer or politician. For example, Donald Trump’s family are all sterilised to the third degree removed.
And while we’re at it, everyone needs to have gay sex at least once, to see if they like it. Statistically gay couples are less likely to have an abortion, so increasing the amount of gay couples is pro-life. Suck a cock, save a life.
that Cliff Cash bit on being pro-gay to be pro-life comes to mind
Needs text alternative.
Images of text break much that text alternatives do not. Losses due to image of text lacking alternative such as link:
- usability
- we can’t quote the text without pointless bullshit like retyping it or OCR
- text search is unavailable
- the system can’t
- reflow text to varied screen sizes
- vary presentation (size, contrast)
- vary modality (audio, braille)
- accessibility
- lacks semantic structure (tags for titles, heading levels, sections, paragraphs, lists, emphasis, code, links, accessibility features, etc)
- some users can’t read this due to lack of alt text
- users can’t adapt the text for dyslexia or vision impairments
- systems can’t read the text to them or send it to braille devices
- web connectivity
- we have to do failure-prone bullshit to find the original source
- we can’t explore wider context of the original message
- authenticity: we don’t know the image hasn’t been tampered
- searchability: the “text” isn’t indexable by search engine in a meaningful way
- fault tolerance: no text fallback if
- image breaks
- image host is geoblocked due to insane regulations.
Contrary to age & humble appearance, text is an advanced technology that provides all these capabilities absent from images.
Images of text make it a pain in the ass to quote text.
I agree that abortion is about the fundamental right to bodily autonomy, wrote the same point before, and think too many people miss that & liberal philosophy in general. Everything in their first comment is great.
However, I think they mischaracterize the objection.
When you say “rape is the exception” what you say is this: You are treating pregnancy as a punishment.
That’s not necessarily the argument. A more challenging argument: someone who willingly places a body in themselves creates a duty absent from someone who has not. The host willingly placed inside themselves a body that did not choose to be there & now depends on the host. Therefore, the host has an obligation to fulfill their duty to that body.
An analogy might be a life-saving procedure dependent on a host that almost certainly results in death when interrupted. Someone volunteers to a random lottery for a host & is selected. They allow the procedure to begin. However, midway through they demand to interrupt the procedure.
While I’m in favor of abortion for various reasons[1], I think this is a more difficult argument to counter. Maybe a better arguer knows a good counterargument.
primarily, if I were a fetus, I don’t think I’d mind getting aborted ↩︎
To combine your analogy with the original one:
Say your sister had a chronic condition and required frequent blood transfusions of your extremely rare blood type. Without your donations she is almost certain to die. Is it OK for the government to force you to donate?
What if you agree to donate, but change your mind later? Maybe you have a falling out, or it’s negatively affecting your health, or it’s just consuming so much of your time and energy that you want to stop? Should that be illegal? Should the government throw you in jail and call you a murderer because you had the misfortune to allow someone to depend on you?
What if you didn’t even mean to donate to her that first time, you just agreed to get tested to see if you were a match? You were hoping it would be incompatible, because you really had no intention of sacrificing yourself like that, but you wanted to keep her love? Should the government force you to donate if you did turn out to be a match? Plenty of people who seek abortions never intended to become pregnant.
- usability
Get pregnant just so you can have an abprtion. Piss off a Nazi today!
Yeah it’ll suck, but it’s worth it.
I don’t think we should play with that if we don’t have to.
It can be a lot for your body, but it will make the Nazis so mad, and that’s a treat.
You can just not and say you did. Then again Nazis get really angry about anything. Say you enjoy spicy food as a white person. Date a person of a different race. Kiss a person of a different gender. Be not-white. Be a woman. Fucking say that people that aren’t white men deserve equal rights.
All great things you should also do!
Maybe only do the dating one if it has something to do with the person; super awkward to explain ‘I’m paying for dinner because fuck Nazis’ but totally let it be a tie breaker if you’ve got multiple suitors!
