It's Infanticide: Legalize Abortion Anyway.

abortion in the year 2019 it's the
debate we didn't want to have in 1919 or 1959 so we're still having it now and look it up all around the world there are countries where abortion still remains in a legal gray area where it's still an unresolved question I was raised in Canada I was taught again and again that somehow Canadians were morally superior to Americans because we'd legalized abortions whereas Americans had not and that is a lie Canada the United Kingdom's many countries around the world the debate rages on precisely because we never have done what the people of Ireland did we never made the commitment to democratically deciding the issue through a referendum and once you commit to deciding the issue through a referendum by the same token you're gonna commit to through public education engaging with people caring about their beliefs their perceptions their misconceptions and trying to solve the problem at that level really reaching up to and engaging with the people who have the passionate conviction that abortion is morally equivalent to murder people who really believe that mothers should go to prison as criminals if they decide to have an abortion no I understand that perspective I understand it because it's not entirely false it's clinging to concepts that are true but misleading and those are important misconceptions to try to counter in the public and in this case even though I feel the left-wing basically has come to the correct conclusions they've come to the correct conclusions through reasoning that is completely false dishonest and internally incoherent okay so let's let's let's deal with that first the argument I've heard just today from The Young Turks left-wing news source you will have heard this from left winger as your whole lives probably the argument I've heard from the left-wing today is that abortion is simply a medical operation between a woman and her doctor' and that therefore the government should have no role in it whatsoever this is laughably outrageously ridiculously wrong and get of course if you look at it as just a single stage of analysis if you look at it as an isolated fact there's a sense in which it's self-evidently true yes abortion is a surgical procedure but that's not what we were debating was it okay yes having your tonsils removed is a surgical procedure yes having breast implants breast augmentation is a surgical procedure does that mean that there's absolutely no role for government law legislation or public policy on these things does that mean that if breast implants were illegal that you would object on the same grounds that this is a violation of women's rights today the young turks today they claim that this is morally the same as rape because it's interfering with what a woman wants to do with their body they actually made that claim so you know the fact that some breast implants are legal and some are illegal more famously that some forms of bum enlargement this kind of surgery are illegal and others are illegal that's in the news a lot because some people got those procedures and some people died you know the fact that those decisions are made in the public interest for public welfare by the government the fact that actually there are myriad laws even governing whether or not you can have your tonsils removed this is this is already one thing that's incoherent a dishonest Berryman even if we were to accept the premise that there was no more ethical significance to an abortion than there is to having your tonsils removed we would still have a question of responsible public education public policy of trying to reduce the number of people having their tonsils removed surgically every year we still say well look what is it is it a strep throat epidemic is it lack of Hygiene is it food standards why is it that so many people are going to hospitals I mean they're tossed remove is there is there a misconception that you'll be a better singer if you have your tonsils removed you have to do public education and tell people stop you know what is it we have to do step by step so we have a we have a society where there are as few tonsils being removed as possible or in fact the ideal number of tonsillectomies of tonsil or movie surgeries the ideal number is actually zero and we're never going to achieve that but let's admit this is something that's bad and wrong and a problem and that we're engaged in public Paul's turning us that is the position that is unthinkable to the left-wing and the mainstream left the mainstream center left because they've been avoiding the real ethical cultural and even legal problems raised by by abortion by trying to insist one that it's simply a type of surgery and then to any legislation interfering with it is violating woman's right to just privately decide this with their doctor and the shame of it is as I say the left wing has basically come to the right conclusion that yeah the simplest solution to this problem is to legalize abortion and try to have public education campaigns making birth control more available indeed even making adoption more available making alternatives more available to try to minimize the number of abortions of society but on the other hand the conservatives and the right wing are clinging to the simple notion that abortion is a form of infanticide and that also regarded in isolation is indeed effect I think every society in history of the world has had one form of socially sanctioned legally acceptable infanticide or another and in our society here and now when children are born with very serious mental and physical disabilities I think we should have infanticide permitted for some number of months within some limits for some conditions even after the birth of the child it's tremendously scary and saddening thing to take responsibility for but again you can confront people with this moral question well if you really believe that this is murder if you really believe that under any circumstances having an abortion under any circumstances committing infanticide is murder who is going to raise those children is it you and if not you then who in the year 2019 the legality of abortion is a tremendous simple issue mead complex and convoluted but the dishonesty of people on both sides the debate the dishonesty I feel stems from a fundamental discomfort with democracy itself very few people on the left or right are really interested in democracy democracy in the sense handed down to us from ancient Athens democracy in the sense practiced by the people of Ireland when they had a vote on the issue when they had a referendum when they determined through direct democracy whether abortion should be legal or illegal that is ultimately the decision that we all have to make society by society state by state whatever the case may be and if we make the decision democratically then we all have to be tremendously concerned about public education with the level of enlightenment and understanding that the general public has as is applied to this issue because the public lacks a certain level of education or enlightenment on the issue that it's going to have terrible consequences for us all that's one of the fundamental virtues of democracy as opposed to an elitist despotism if you live in an elitist despotism you can just decide well this is the right answer a small number of people in power make that decision and then the rest of us live with the consequences and it doesn't matter what percentage to the general public fails understand it have an ethical or other objection to the idea today in the United States of America only 18 percent of people take the view that under absolutely no circumstances should abortion be legal should abortion be permitted those people matter those people matter to if you sincerely care about democracy but the future of the democracy in your country you should care about reaching out to and educating those people engaging with them and getting them to think beyond just a single stage of analysis now the term I just used may seem unfamiliar but it's really easy to understand I'm vegan we have similar and similarly flawed debates about veganism all the time Matt Dillahunty recently said that he saw absolutely nothing wrong morally with drinking cow's milk and he said this because drinking the milk itself doesn't kill a cow all right that may be true but that's looking at only a single stage of the process that's not doing a full lifecycle analysis not even doing a ten year analysis okay so if you have a society where 1 billion people drank 1 billion liters of milk every day why don't we go through an analysis of what it takes to produce that milk what it takes to have cows giving birth to and maintaining the necessary number of cattle what those cows eat and the sewage they're gonna generate and what happens to that sewage because it doesn't go into the sewage system it pollutes the rivers and lakes and oceans and so on and so forth you look at a cycle of suffering that's being perpetuated by forcibly inseminating cattle keeping them in confinement etc etc now it's very obvious it's very obvious and yet someone's a so-called philosopher a leader of political opinion like Matt Delonte he spent decades of his life believing in this simplified single stage of analysis that in a sense is true the problem isn't that it's false the problem is it's true but misleading all right now I think the most sincere position adopted by the right-wing conservatives in this which is again in isolation true is that they will say abortion is an act of infanticide and that is true but that is only a single stage of analysis I knew one young man who was what we call a crack baby his mother used cocaine during the pregnancy in fact I met him in Canada it was almost living Canada's kid his family ran away from the city they were living the United States was something like Chicago I forget to try to get away from the drug scene they were trying to quit when she found out she was pregnant she was trying to quit ran away to a new city escaped the circle of friends and familiar dealers you can imagine there's a psychological as well as practical element to that and he had brain damage and physical damage from his mother's drug use and he said you know he was haunted by this idea that he was himself born to be a drug addict you know to some extent that's scientific in to some extent I think that's a bit of a folktale so on and so forth he's got to live with the consequence of that for the rest of his life and today these things are a lot easier to put together partly just due to the technology of YouTube you can put together case studies and testimonials and real examples and you can share them with the public educator public about the real consequence of these things in the past lawyers had to go around and find people who are willing to testify in front of Congress or in front of Parliament depending what country grant and then newspaper writers would report on that and then people would just be looking at the dry text of this and these people are not seeing the physical reality of what it is to raise a kid whose brain damaged or disabled due to the the drug addiction tomorrow with that guy I met he was he was one of the lucky ones and you know he you know he had use of of all of his arms and legs and so on he was an interesting guy he was a nice guy but you can imagine that was a chilling and very interesting influence for me in my life meaning someone who's whose whole life was shaped by the drug addiction of his of his parents that's not something that is maybe won't happen that's something that is inevitably going to happen the United States has an epidemic of drug addiction at the moment I think it's extraordinary the level of addiction to painkillers to opiates and there are women who are going to get pregnant and are going to continue using opiates continues in cocaine kids in using heroin continue drinking alcohol and so on during the pregnancy and a lot of those women currently have abortions if you make abortion illegal because of this single stage of analysis the isolated principle that abortion itself is an act of infanticide let me ask you do you want to raise those children do you want to take responsibility for raising the child of a drug addict and let's say again not to hypothetically the drug addict abandons that child to be a ward of the state to be left in an orphanage if not you then who I have a daughter my daughter is six years old we gave birth to the daughter my daughter in a hospital and I've mentioned this before the ward we were in basically was the healthy babies ward but still you're only there you know if you really have no problems you leave you leave five minutes after you give birth so a lot of people had some mild health problems I because we were vegan I had to go out and buy food for my wife and carry it in and I would come up the stairs in the next board next next section of the hospital and those are the families dealing with really bad news those are the families who had babies where the heart was outside the body at the time of birth born with a hole in their heart you know hole in their spine babies that were going through you know surgery and guess what some of those families some of them knew the baby had a serious non formation before it was born some of them had the option to abort and if you say but abortion is infanticide I would say back that's true but that's only a single stage of analysis and in the whole history of the world every society every society I know of has had formally or informally some capacity for socially sanctioned for acceptable for legal infanticide which could indeed include situations like a child being born with its heart outside of its chest these kinds of very serious physical and mental deformities now I would not merely vote to make abortion legal so I do think abortion should be legal that's what I would vote for I would vote to make infanticide legal within certain clearly stated limits I think people can give birth to a child and realize wow this child is so physically impaired or so mentally impaired that you know and again very often you're looking at complex surgeries the moment after the child is born to reconstruct its head reconstruct its mouth three conservatives its heart and so on and yes I do think that responsible adults parents it's another question who should make the decision and so on this needs to be legislated carefully maybe for the first six months after a child is born there should be the off option to euthanize to genuinely commit infanticide to spare that child a life with those physical or mental deformities it's a decision I take very seriously but taking those decisions seriously is what democracy is all about as tempting as it might be for me to just drop the mic there I think I should say a little bit more about how morally incoherent the left wings position on this is what I hear from the left just today I was hearing it from the young turks left-of-centre or podcast a news show what I hear from the left is the insistence that the surgical operation itself is no different from a woman having her tonsils removed single stage of analysis and then they build on this premise the idea that any intervention by the state whatsoever actually today the Young Turks they they said that it was rape they said it was morally tantamount to rape for the government to legislate anything that would constrain what a woman can or cannot do with her own body um okay sorry you know there are laws that govern having your tonsils removed did you know that I can't just go in and decide to have my tonsils removed because I think it would look cool it would make me sing better they're actually laws on that um there are laws very specifically about what women can and can't do to their bodies some a breast breast implants breast augmentation some breast implants are legal and some are illegal in the United States most of the surgeries to make your bum bigger to make your bum or are illegal and you may have heard about this some women fly to other countries where they don't have that legislation place so yes there are always going to be laws governing what surgeries people can and can't have under what circumstances even when the surgeries do not have any of these ethical cultural or religious questions attached them I don't know of any religions that attach a special significance to keeping your tonsils in your throat I think it's an open question the morality of breast augmentation the topic for another video but yeah that debate isn't over there are signs now that there were really serious health consequences negative health consequences from breast augmentation and probably that debate needs to be had again probably needs to be voted on to what extent which surgeries are permissible which are not here's the thing what the left wing is refusing to do is acknowledge even if we were just talking about removing your tonsils because of tonsillitis it would still be a morally positive virtuous and pure position to say that you aspire to have a society in which the fewest people possible get their tonsils removed to say hey you know what the this this operation it's it's bad it's a bad thing in a perfect world nobody would have to have their tonsils removed and we've got to look at all the policies and procedures we can put in place so there are circumstances that avert this whether as few as possible and so that there are alternatives all right that really is the morally responsible attitude to take towards abortion and nobody can do it because nobody's going to get past this single stage of admitting yes abortion is a form of infanticide and therefore you know you know there are all kinds of alternatives there alternatives include the child being given up for adoption there are alternatives that include making contraception as available as possible and the public being as well-informed as possible etc etc there's a whole series of policy choices you can make that are gonna minimize the number of accidental and unwanted pregnancies and yeah you know some of them though some of them are coercive um you know again when you think about it when you think about women who you know may be legally insane may be mentally impaired may be drug addicts maybe a combination of all three you can centers get you know one woman like that is repeatedly getting pregnant repeatedly having abortions there are tough decisions and legal questions they say okay well at what point do we start really legislating people have to take responsibility for their own we pre-production and when they fail to at what point you say look we have to really incentivize people to take this responsibility and take it seriously because we don't want to be a society with X billion abortions happening per year we want to be a society that a judicious way through public policy is minimizing the number of abortions okay now one of the reasons why I'm so familiar with all this is that it's closely comparable to discourse we have within veganism okay if you come to the conclusion that everyone should adopt a vegan diet it's good conclusion but people come to that conclusion through incredibly flawed industry circuitous and long courses of reasoning one who's come and they say oh well all life is sacred therefore they're freaking and I don't believe that it whole I'm a nihilist I don't like any life is sacred human or animal but I'm vegan because it's the right thing to do because I'm interested in people taking responsibility for the consequences of their actions and making the world a better place alright legalizing abortion which countries like Canada have not yet done countries like the United Kingdom England have not yet done society is carrying on a very hypocritical way if you really believe in democracy you should press don't press with the status quo press for outright legalization right now in the United States of America you should be pressing for a referendum on a constitutional amendment to legalize abortion should do it democratically you don't you don't want Supreme Court justices making decision stop and think why do you why do you call a judge in court you know my lord it's a court think about the meaning of the word court this is a medieval futile aristocratic arrangement this is not democracy you don't want judges deciding this for you you want to decide this democratically and as soon as you commit to a democratic solution this problem then you're going to commit to public education lobbying involving people even the backward people of Arkansas the people are most committed to making abortion illegal you're gonna involve them in this discourse to legalize abortion um you have to understand that the commitment to legalizing abortion is not gonna be the end of the struggle no more than the commitment legalizing abortion would end adoption or would end drug addiction or it and the myriad other social problems of indeed rape incest that intersect with this issue okay you're not going to solve all of them with one law and you're not gonna solve all of them with one stroke of the pen and there's going to be an ongoing discourse about how we as a society can better educate and prepare people of both genders so that we have the fewest unwanted pregnancy as possible so that we have the fewest abortions possible I mean people like to disrespect my truth but the fact is that you know my name is I don't know