If you have a kid, but then three years later you decide you don't want it, should you just be allowed to kill it?

You said unwanted babies should be aborted because:
- they live a poor miserable life
- society has to pay for them because parents can't

These both apply to an unwanted three year old.

So according to you the world is much poorer than 50, 100, 300 years ago, and it's getting poorer every year.

no, techonologal increase has overcome population increase (if it didnt we'd be in the Malthusian trap still). If population hadnt increased so fast, our standards of living would have increased even more and we'd be even better off today with no third world countries.

complete nonsense

yes but killing an unwanted three year old is murder and killing a 1st or 2nd trimester fetus is not.

I was thinking about how I'd answer Katie Couric's question to Sarah Palin "Do you believe in a right to privacy?" if I was a pro-lifer. I would say "Yes, but not as an inalienable right. Some rights can overrule others in certain circumstances, and the right to life is one of them." This stops the whole "you either support cops being able to search your house at any time or baby killing" false dichotomy.

As for me personally, I take a consequentialist approach to morality, which means I don't fit neatly into the (overwhelmingly deontological based) pro-life and pro-choice camps. Ideally you'd try to judge the consequences of every individual abortion but from a policy standpoint that would be too difficult. So I think that keeping abortion legal and having government incentives to help achieve the consequences you're looking for seems better. For example, suppose you oppose abortion on natalist grounds that it is good to bring more people into the world. But you could achieve the same result by encouraging people (say, with subsidies) to have more children - a foetus earned is a foetus saved. Or suppose you support abortion because you take an anti-natalist position, then you could get a similar result by supporting the opposite policy - say, taxing people for having children.

For the record, I take a generally natalist position. It's easy to overlook the positive externalities of more people (say, intellectual contributions) while overcounting negative externalities (resource consumption is not an externality when the person pays for it).

you have to draw the line somewhere, and im OK with the way they have it, at the 6 month mark. You could move either direction from there but its a slippery slope and your moving into moral grey area.

Moreover, the claim that unwanted babies automatically have terrible lives is incredibly unfounded and paternalistic. Let them decide if the world is just so horrible that they would prefer to commit suicide. I think you'll find that the overwhelming majority of people around the world and through history would gladly trade their birth conditions with that of an "unwanted" American baby.

Furthermore, at least in my country of Canada there are very long waitlists and wait periods of 7+ years to adopt. Many couples are physically incapable of bearing children and for them providing a home to an "unwanted" child is a wonderful blessing. We don't have orphanages and I don't believe America does anymore either, or at least I haven't heard of it.

yes, we're all aware what the law already says. The question is "why does this make sense", is it consistent, what is the basis for the distinction, etc.

Why is the current line a good place?

Morals are always going to be subjective, so its really hard to argue this sort of stuff from a logical point of view. I just feel like the 6 month mark is a good borderline. It just feels morally unsound after that mark. And a lot of society agrees with me.

well they certainly are going to earn less income on average and be less productive than society than the average person. And our society says that we need to distribute the wealth from rich to poor because the poor have tough lives and really need the money.

If im going to contribute my money to helping poor people because theyre lives are so much worse than mine (something id prefer to do as little as possible as im very fiscally conservative), then the least their mothers can do is ensure they arent born.

And your last argument about anyone in the world wanting to trade places with an "unwanted" baby is irrelevant. Obviously they would but that isnt what we are discussing here. Its not like we can trade babies in africa for babies in america.

I'm in the viability camp basically if the fetus/baby can survive outside the womb then abortion should no longer be an option except in cases where the health of the mother is a concern. There's nothing magic about the day before birth and the second the baby is out. As for a specific cutoff date I don't know, leave that one up to an expert. But I don't mean that if science can create an artificial womb for the zygote (or w/e it's called) at t=1 that all abortion should become illegal. Talking about a specific developmental stage.

Also in before infanticide should be legal

Being less productive than the average is just that; they are still productive and not a net-burden on the economy. By the same logic immigrants are less productive on average, so America should put a full stop on all immigration according to you. Taking your arguments to their logical extreme, America should never have had immigrants, and all unwanted babies should have been aborted. Think about what kind of country the US would be if these policies had been followed.

You may also want to reconsider your assumptions about classes and the people within them. Many wealthy people have started out poor. Many happy people have been poor. Believe it or not, the poor actually have the same right to life as the wealthy.

And that argument is perfectly relevant. If all those people would obviously gladly trade their places with an unwanted American baby, then that baby's life can't be all that bad, can it? Why is the world not ravaged by mass suicides? It seems to be filled with people who are so badly off that they would be thrilled to live a "poor, miserable life".

I think we should keep in mind that there are way more people that want to adopt than there are babies up for adoption

well if the poor live such happy lives then they certainly wont mind if I dont subsidize them with my tax dollars anymore correct? After all, money doesnt matter right? Income inequality doesnt matter right?

yeah i never get why people dont put their child for adoption more. I think this is the best solution of all assuming supply never outstrips demand.

I agree; nothing special happens the moment a baby is born, so if it's alive, it was alive just before exiting the womb. Here's my anti-abortion argument based on this premise. Let's start with the assumption that if a baby can survive outside the womb, it is wrong to abort it. Currently the most premature baby was born at 152 days gestation-- he "survived and is quite healthy". Since it would have been wrong to abort the baby that day, it follows that it is wrong to abort babies at 152 days of pregnancy.

However, this baby survived in large part due to the medical technologies we have developed in the 20th century. Unfortunately, premature babies born in the 19th century didn't have access to the same medical care. However, they should also have the right not to be aborted after 152 days gestation, otherwise we are discriminating by time period and assigning different rights to babies born now than babies born in the past.

Since it can be expected that medical technology will improve further in the future, we could expect that babies born, say, in 2400 could survive after perhaps a mere 120 days gestation. Maybe it could even be less. If it is wrong to abort a baby after 120 days gestation in 2400, it is wrong to abort a baby after 120 days gestation now. And since we don't know how far the medical advancements will reach, and therefore where to set the line, we shouldn't abort babies at all.

Yes, I did write a philosophy paper on the subject in college.

These aren't concerns that abortion resolves. The welfare state is a product of our quasi-democratic political system. The majority of people vote themselves funds from the treasury.

ok in a world where there was no welfare system or it wasn unneeded i think your argument has a lot more merit. Sadly we dont live in such a world.

As I said before, the body of people we are referring to as "unwanted" American children is comparable to the body of people we bring here as immigrants. Immigrants are not a net drag on our society, they are a net benefit, and a considerable one, in spite of being less educated, less well-versed in English, less productive and with a higher crime rate than the national average. Therefore unwanted American children as a comparable group represent the same benefit. The economy can't run with only "rich" people. You need people to work in construction, agriculture and at Walmart doing the jobs you (and I, I'll admit) don't want to. Eliminating sources of the underclass isn't beneficial to the economy.

The government subsidizes them through social services and tax credits, but on a pragmatic level this process benefits people in the middle and upper classes, believe me. It might cost you some money in the short run but in the long run it makes the lower classes productive and civil and keeps them from rioting, and keeps the economy humming along which keeps the upper classes flush with wealth. In terms of pure utility the welfare system benefits all classes of society, and I'm saying that as a philosophical libertarian.

Well im not exactly pro-immigration either but its a fairness issue and I do feel like we owe it to allow some people to immigrate here. Its not that same situation as the abortion where the baby can just never be born in the first place. The immigrant has already been born and has to live some where.

I certainly dont believe in the "we need immigrants and poor people to make sure we have someone doing our low-wage unwanted jobs" argument. Id rather live in a world where there were less poor people and take the risk that no one wanted to do these jobs and so they started paying better and costing society more. I think thats a fairer way of setting it up than the rich subsidizing the poor.

I'd imagine as traumatic as abortion can be for a woman, bringing a child into the world and then giving it up for adoption may be even more traumatic for a lot of women. Though i could be wrong. I do agree that it seems like it should be more desirable.

I think a significant reason why people support abortion but not infanticide is that infants are cute and cuddly, invoking strong instinctual desires to protect them from harm, while an embryo looks nothing like a human. Opposition to abortion rises as the embryo/foetus becomes more human-like with few regards to other matters. That's my cynical take, anyway.

I am anti-choice on this issue - abortion is murder. No idea on how to proceed practically upon reaching this conclusion; socons seem to advocate going after the doctors. I think the best solution is to make it taboo, but legal, like incest. Obv. we don't want any more butter box babies.