No, abortion is not natural. For one, I'm not sure if killing off our young is something that humans did back before the rise of civilization. Even a couple million years ago, I'm not sure if it happened (I'm not saying it didn't, just that we don't know).
And finally, the reasons that humans practice abortion are unnatural. In all the cases you mentioned above, the reasons for the animals killing their young are driven by the need to pass along their genes. Mothers kill the weakest of their young so that the strongest have a better chance of surviving. A pack leader may kill the young of other pack members so that his/her own offspring have a better chance of survival. Human abortions have nothing to do with that. Our reasons are unnatural, and only due to our higher thought processes.
No, abortion is not natural. For one, I'm not sure if killing off our young is something that humans did back before the rise of civilization. Even a couple million years ago, I'm not sure if it happened (I'm not saying it didn't, just that we don't know).
Of course its happened. Abortion itself is newer, but people have been tossing babies of cliffs and burying them alive for millenia.
Most of our reasons coincide with providing the strong a better chance of survival, maybe we don't know why we are really doing it. For instance, very young or very old women are at higher risk for fetal anomalies. They are also at higher risk for their own life. Young have better chance of survival if they are not born too close together or too many to one woman. Many women choose abortion considering the children they already have, maybe subconsciously she is giving them a better chance of survival.
I'm not talking about timescales in terms of millenia. I'm talking about hundreds of thousands or millions of years ago. Back when we were still 'feral' so to speak, and more affected by the forces of evolution. The point I'm trying to make is that when animals kill their young, it's not a conscious decision. They do it because they are driven by instinct to do so. And some species have that instinct and others don't. My thoughts are on whether or not humanity ever had that instinct.
I'm well aware that infanticide isn't new, but all the examples given were in times when doing so was a conscious decision.
Animals routinely engage in cannibalism and infanticide.
some animals do these things.
No, abortion is not natural. For one, I'm not sure if killing off our young is something that humans did back before the rise of civilization. Even a couple million years ago, I'm not sure if it happened (I'm not saying it didn't, just that we don't know).
Secondly, the method(s) by which we practice abortion are not natural. In all the cases you talked about above, animals are killing their young after they have been born. I don't know of any species that kill off their young while in the womb.
And finally, the reasons that humans practice abortion are unnatural. In all the cases you mentioned above, the reasons for the animals killing their young are driven by the need to pass along their genes. Mothers kill the weakest of their young so that the strongest have a better chance of surviving. A pack leader may kill the young of other pack members so that his/her own offspring have a better chance of survival. Human abortions have nothing to do with that. Our reasons are unnatural, and only due to our higher thought processes.
In the animal kingdom, incest is a common practice. when a female comes into heat any nearby male will attempt to mate with her, be it brother, father, uncle, son, etc.
Our 4500 years of recorded history have shown that human have done it from the time of the ancient Egyptian. To say that you need to know the millinia of unrecorded history before human civilisation, of which we can have no way of knowing, in order to verify this 4500 years of history is just bogus. It's the kind of intellectual dishonesty I was trying to avoid. It's not reasonable to believe that human were more likely to not have practiced infanticide before they became civilised when we have evidence of the practice through out recorded history (and the fact loads of animals pratice it).
… History of Infanticide
Infanticide has been practiced on every continent and by people on every level of cultural complexity, from hunters and gatherers to high civilization, including our own ancestors. Rather than being an exception, then, it has been the rule. … …
I'm not talking about timescales in terms of millenia. I'm talking about hundreds of thousands or millions of years ago. Back when we were still 'feral' so to speak, and more affected by the forces of evolution. The point I'm trying to make is that when animals kill their young, it's not a conscious decision. They do it because they are driven by instinct to do so. And some species have that instinct and others don't. My thoughts are on whether or not humanity ever had that instinct.
I'm well aware that infanticide isn't new, but all the examples given were in times when doing so was a conscious decision.
What is the difference between abortion and miscarriage?
For me to consider abortion (or infanticide for that matter) 'natural', one of the criteria it would have to meet is that the desire to commit the act would be driven by instinct and not higher thought processes. And for the most part, it's not.
The reason that I'm discounting the last 4500 years of our history of infanticide is because you would have to go back a lot longer than that to get to a point where human beings were more creatures of instinct than rationality.
Regardless, I don't think the point really matters all that much. There are plenty of things which are 'natural' that are illegal, and plenty of things that are unnatural that are legal. Whether abortion is or isn't natural shouldn't (and doesn't) have any bearing on whether or not it is legal.
From a biological standpoint, I suppose it's not natural as in the body has no inherent mechanism to dispose of a fetus. On the other hand, the human body cannot do a great number of things and as a species we are generally pretty weak; that is why we have evolved an intelligent brain to compensate with creativity and invention. Abortion is a natural product of this.
If we're talking about history... well, abortion has been universal in all societies throughout recorded history.
There is simply no precedent to stop it now.
This might derail the discussion, but I don't see why we can't stop something just because it has happened all along. Slavery was quite pravelent across different places and time, doesn't mean it shouldn't be stopped if we deem it to be wrong.
I made this thread not to discuss whether abortion is right or wrong. But to raise a discussion about the fact that abortion (which, I maybe semantically incorrect, I see as the human equivalant to animal infanticide) is not particular to human civilisation and may have an instinctual basis behind it.
I am so tired of the slavery comparison that I'm not even going to bother fighting it. Please see the 10 x infinity threads that already exist on it.
We don't deem it to be wrong. AFAIK, in the U.S. people are fairly split on the matter... 50/50. That is enough for a pro-choice legal system IMO. Pro-choice encompasses the choice to have an abortion and the choice to not have one. Anti-choice legislation relegates women to unsafe procedures and the death rate increases.
Legal abortion is the only sane policy.
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