Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Abortion

  • What is Potentiality? An Exploration

    Our Czech friend Vlastimil V. writes, I believe it is precisely the potentiality — or the in principle capacity — of logical thinking, free decisions, or higher emotions that makes killing human embryos morally problematic, seemingly unlike the killing of non-human embryos. This seems to me a promising hypothesis, to say the least. But I…

  • Abortion and Same-Sex Marriage: Decoupling Religious and Secular Considerations

    I say they should be decoupled.  They won't be, of course, but they should be.  My case for decoupling may be gleaned from the following two substantial entries: What Does Abortion Have to Do with Religion? The Infertility Argument for Same-Sex Marriage

  • Bill O’Reilly Makes His Abortion Mistake Again

    He did it again last night.  So it is right, fitting, proper, and conducive unto clarity of thought that I re-post the following entry from 16 November 2012. …………….  The other night Bill O'Reilly said that a fetus is a potential human life.  Not so!  A fetus is an actual human life.  Consider a third-trimester human…

  • Nothing Liberal About Liberals Department: Free Speech is Out on the Left

    Free speech is so last century.  (HT: Karl White) On Tuesday, I was supposed to take part in a debate about abortion at Christ Church, Oxford. I was invited by the Oxford Students for Life to put the pro-choice argument against the journalist Timothy Stanley, who is pro-life. But apparently it is forbidden for men…

  • Why has the Left ‘Gone Ballistic’ over Hobby Lobby?

    It is hard for many of us to understand why so many leftists have worked themselves up into a frothing frenzy over the 5-4 SCOTUS Hobby Lobby decision, a frenzy that in the notable cases of Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton has spilled over into shameless  lying.  But even among those lefties who are not…

  • Megyn Kelly Refutes Nancy Pelosi’s Hobby Lobby Lies

    Here.  Kelly utterly demolishes Pelosi's shameless fabrications. That the Left lies repeatedly and blatantly and shamelessly about matters that are easily checked says something about them.  Among other things, it says that they view politics as war.  "All's fair in love and war."  "The end justifies the means."  Truth is not a value for the…

  • Zygotic Division: Was I Once a Zygote?

    Here is yet another entry from the now-defunct Powerblogs site.  It is pretty good, I think, and deserves to be kept online. …………. Have I been in existence as one and the same human individual from conception on?  Of course, I and any intra-uterine predecessors I may have had have been genetically human from conception on: at…

  • Orwellian Mendacity and Blatant Distortion at The New York Times

    Left-wing bias at the NYT is nothing new, of course, but the following  opening paragraph of a July 8th editorial is particularly egregious.  But before I quote it, let me say that the problem is not that the editors have a point of view or even that it is a liberal-left point of view.  The…

  • Robert Paul Wolff’s Misunderstanding of the Hobby Lobby Decision

    Professor Wolff of The Philosopher's Stone writes, When we got back to our apartment, I turned on my computer to check the news, and learned of the pair of decisions handed down by the Supreme Court.  That both decisions are disastrous goes without saying, but I think they have quite different significances. The Hobby Lobby…

  • A Possible Way to ‘Get Through’ to Liberals on Abortion

    Suppose I want to convince you of something.  I must use premises that you accept.  For if I argue from premises that you do not accept, you will reject my argument no matter how rigorous and cogent my reasoning. So how can we get through to those liberals who are willing to listen?  Not by invoking…

  • Arguments, Testicles, and Inside Knowledge

    T. L. e-mails, Here’s fodder for a follow-up MP post, if you care to pursue it. I do not endorse the following objection, but I wonder how you’d reply. In “David Lewis on Religion” you say: "To be a good philosopher of X one ought to know both philosophy and X from the inside, by…

  • Hippo Swallows Man Who Lives to Tell Tale

    If a hippopotamus swallows a man, does the man become a part of the hippo's body?  Might this be relevant to the Woman's Body Argument?

  • Gun Lovers and Abortion Lovers

    One often hears  liberals refer to gun owners as gun lovers.  Would they refer to pro-choicers as abortion lovers?  I don't think so.  Why the differential usage?  Is it just liberal bias? If you are pro-choice, then you stand for the right of a woman to have an abortion.  You want abortion to be legally…

  • Bill O’Reilly’s Abortion Mistake

    The other night Bill O'Reilly said that a fetus is a potential human life.  Not so!  A fetus is an actual human life.  Consider a third-trimester human fetus, alive and well, developing in the normal way in the mother.  It is potentially many things: a neonate, a two-year-old, a speaker of some language, an adolescent, an…

  • More Reasons Not to be a Libertarian: Abortion and Guns

    This from the Libertarian Party Platform: 1.4 Abortion Recognizing that abortion is a sensitive issue and that people can hold good-faith views on all sides, we believe that government should be kept out of the matter, leaving the question to each person for their conscientious consideration. 1.5 Crime and Justice Government exists to protect the…