I was watching Jordan Peterson answer a question about abortion. He admitted he didn't have a ready answer to person's question so instead he would essentially think out loud about it.

In his thinking out loud he made the comment/quick argument that everyone agrees abortion is wrong(which I don't think is true but this isn't a thread about abortion so no need to go there). He then went on to pose a question should everything immoral be illegal. Assuming there is no God in the picture and morality is just human construct are there immoral actions that should be legal?

I'd say breaking up relationships and the methods used can be immoral at times but shouldn't be illegal. Who should go in and check the details?

Stupid planning is another one. Those *******s should know better.

The law isnt based on what's immoral.

Morality is debatable. There is no standard of morality in society, which is why there are discussions like this. IMO society worked better internally when there was more of a shared morality; when peoples beliefs were more homogeneous. Now we have people who literally believe they are cats.

Criminalizing the freedom to disbelieve any morals is like criminalizing the freedom to believe in any morals.

A large part of what various people define as "morals" is entirely subjective or culture based. So, no, "immoral" things should not be banned.

And LOL at Peterson thinking everyone agrees that abortion is wrong.

"An embryo has no rights." - Ayn Rand

He has to claim it’s wrong with a fallacious appeal because he can’t claim how it is wrong otherwise, perhaps?

Abortion rights clearly stem from fallacious reasoning. Just look at two separate but equal court cases. In one, a man kills a fetus he was partially responsible for by spiking a womans drink with a pill that does no other harm to her and hes found guilty of first degree murder. In another a woman takes a pill to kill a fetus and it's 'her right to choose.' In both situations you have an adult, administering a pill, to kill a fetus. So even abortion rights advocates think it's murder to kill a fetus, they just apply that belief to men only.

In another example, a woman wants to keep a fetus and a man doesnt, yet hes on the hook for 18 years of child support. But if a woman wants to terminate a fetus and a man doesnt, the fetus gets terminated.

If you want to argue that a man giving a pill to a woman to kill a fetus is a crime, I agree. But it's not murder if killing a fetus isnt murder. Itd be "invasion of bodily privacy" or something similar.

Make the law whatever you want, but at least try to make its application consistent.

Sure, but legislating "morality" and government trying to be all things to all people leads to this sort of inconsistency.

Seems to me like the reading of what a fetus is is the actual inconsistency. If it's not a human being then it's not a human being and you shouldnt be convicted of murder for destroying it. Similarly, if it is a human being then it is one, and anyone who is involved in abortion is also involved in murder.

That's actually a massive problem with the law, not just on the abortion issue. Language and definitions are interpreted by supposed expert judges who are no less fallible in applying inconsistent reasoning than anyone else.

It could also be that the inconsistency is from the precedent for murdering an unborn baby going back farther than the precedent for womens abortion rights. The law needs some mechanism for adapting to changing moral opinions.

So to get away from the issue that will make everybody's head explode....

The morality and Law discussion can be better framed with respect to gambling.

The moralists say gambling is immoral because (pick a reason) and want it banned. The non-moralists say it's case of individual freedom.

I'd say I'm not picking a side, but on this site, that would be silly. Of course I think gambling should be none of the business of the collective.

Is it the government's job (if the majority says so) to protect us from ourselves?

I say no.

But then indivividual freedom has to be held morally virtuous, and clearly there are limits to it as well. What moral code do you refer to in order to determine the limit?

Your hypothetical doesn’t appear to discern whose body get’s pregnant. You appear to presuppose that someone else terminating a fetus inside a woman’s body is the same a woman as terminating a fetus inside her body. The relationship between a woman and her fetus only has room for two and a doctor. It doesn’t compare to some devious example of a drink spiking man. He isn’t even in the same room.

Its precisely the same act. A fetus is being killed by someone. It cant be murder in one case and not another. Either the fetus is a human being or it's not. It can't be both.

Well I was thinking Peterson has a plan to run for public office in Canada and wants to placate both sides when it comes to abortion which is why he said what he said. I found it a little unbelievable he hadn't thought about the abortion issue so deeply that he could not just answer the question presented to him.

How about when Hal started to abort the astronauts? Who was that between?

Murder is a legal term not a moral. Murder means to unlawfully kill another human being. Since it is legal in this country for a mother to kill her fetus in the womb(up to a certain point), that is technically not murder.

The only limits to individual freedom should be laws against the initiation of physical force or fraud.

In the US there are way too many laws. We incarcerate a higher percentage of our citizens than any other nation, half of which are non-violent drug offenders (essentially people engaging in voluntary commerce).

Actually, a man poisoning a pregnant women is one act and pregnant woman having a medical procedure is another.

A film-maker and the script?

The characters in the proposed “movie” here are a woman deciding to become a parent or, not. And a man deciding to poison a woman. It’s more like a Little Red Riding Hood situation than 2001 A Space Odyssey.

It's still a contradiction and violates equal protection under the law.

The man isnt poisoning the woman, hes destroying the fetus. Hes doing the same thing as the doctor. What you're saying is that a fetus's human status is dependent on a womans decision. That's insane.

That doesnt answer the question of why human freedom should be expansive or why those limits should be applied.

It's not rigorous enough to protect anyone from much, for one. Some relevant examples would be medical malpractice, overuse of legitimate/necessary physical force, or hyperexploitation and coercion from enormously wealthy corporations. Libertarianism sounds nice in theory but in practice is silly.

When a man poisons a woman, a man poisons a woman.

One could frame it as a man imposing a medical procedure on a woman, killing her decision to become a mother by destroying her fetus.

On the topic of Jordan Peterson, I enjoyed this entertaining and informative response to his work...

https://youtu.be/4LqZdkkBDas

And when a man gives a woman something to kill the fetus, hes doing the exact same thing that a doctor does when he kills the fetus. Unless you want to hold medical professionals liable for poisoning women?

One could frame it however they want, but no amount of reframing will get rid of logical inconsistency. The harder you try the more it makes you sound like youre deceptively arguing for unequal protection under the law.