The trouble with this reasoning is that universally accepted norms cannot be based on lines drawn at arbitrary points. There must be a strong focal (Schelling) point where the lines are drawn, or otherwise they will soon be pushed in one direction or another. Or to put it differently, slippery slope arguments usually have at least some validity.
With this in mind, arguments against things based on placing them into common categories with bad things can be perfectly valid in a very important sense. Yes, they usually produce powerful propagandistic rhetoric as a side-effect, and sometimes that is their primary purpose. However, often there are no convenient focal points where you would ideally like to draw the lines, and the best available focal points are around some much broader category, so if you won’t draw the lines around the broader category, there is a very real possibility that some pressure will push them all the way to things you’d definitely want to prevent.
So, for example, people who want to draw the line so as to condemn all eugenics (under some coherent and widely accepted definition of the term) have a workable focal point to defend. In contrast, if you’d like to draw the lines around some forms of eugenics and not others according to some sophisticated ethical analysis, chances are such norms would be unstable and the lines would soon be moved in one direction or another.
Surely not—almost everyone (and the law in all countries as far as I am aware) agrees that there is some time after which is no longer permissible to have an abortion (except in circumstances where there mother’s life is in danger, etc), and that that time is earlier than birth.
That merely means that it will be hard to convince people to adopt that line, not that it isn’t a Schelling point, nor that it is not a conservative one with respect to the issues of harm to a person.
In Australia it is regulated by state, not nationally. In the ACT, there are no restrictions whatever. They repealed the previous abortion code entirely.
Neither of these means it is trivial to get a late term abortion, of course. Not criminalized is not the same thing as unregulated as a medical procedure.
The trouble with this reasoning is that universally accepted norms cannot be based on lines drawn at arbitrary points. There must be a strong focal (Schelling) point where the lines are drawn, or otherwise they will soon be pushed in one direction or another. Or to put it differently, slippery slope arguments usually have at least some validity.
With this in mind, arguments against things based on placing them into common categories with bad things can be perfectly valid in a very important sense. Yes, they usually produce powerful propagandistic rhetoric as a side-effect, and sometimes that is their primary purpose. However, often there are no convenient focal points where you would ideally like to draw the lines, and the best available focal points are around some much broader category, so if you won’t draw the lines around the broader category, there is a very real possibility that some pressure will push them all the way to things you’d definitely want to prevent.
So, for example, people who want to draw the line so as to condemn all eugenics (under some coherent and widely accepted definition of the term) have a workable focal point to defend. In contrast, if you’d like to draw the lines around some forms of eugenics and not others according to some sophisticated ethical analysis, chances are such norms would be unstable and the lines would soon be moved in one direction or another.
We may draw a distinction between what is right and what should be proposed as a social norm. The former informs the latter.
In this particular case, birth seems like an excellent conservative line.
Surely not—almost everyone (and the law in all countries as far as I am aware) agrees that there is some time after which is no longer permissible to have an abortion (except in circumstances where there mother’s life is in danger, etc), and that that time is earlier than birth.
That merely means that it will be hard to convince people to adopt that line, not that it isn’t a Schelling point, nor that it is not a conservative one with respect to the issues of harm to a person.
In any case, here are two countries:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_in_Canada
In Canada there are no legal restrictions at all. The laws were struck down by their Supreme Court, and no others laws have been passed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_in_Australia
In Australia it is regulated by state, not nationally. In the ACT, there are no restrictions whatever. They repealed the previous abortion code entirely.
Neither of these means it is trivial to get a late term abortion, of course. Not criminalized is not the same thing as unregulated as a medical procedure.