Mother and son in love in N.M. will go to jail to defend their relationship

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

It's wrong and shouldn't be legal, but hand-wringing about birth defects isn't the right argument here.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I really don't think Confucianism is typically considered an anarchist philosophy, unless you want to resort to some pointless What The Historical Confucius Really Taught argument or something. Mencianism is pacifist, but that's not the same thing.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I really don't think Confucianism is typically considered an anarchist philosophy, unless you want to resort to some pointless What The Historical Confucius Really Taught argument or something. Mencianism is pacifist, but that's not the same thing.

It's what my Confucian philosophy professor from China taught, using the text of the Analects of Confucius. If I look up my old notes I could use quotes.

There's a reason why the CCP originally tried to stamp out Confucianism. Only in recent decades have they decided to embrace it as part of China's cultural legacy, but they've twisted it with legalism and the need for government to maintain social harmony, which totally alters the textual and historical message. Confucius believed in re-establishing social norms that would keep order at a time when China was falling apart but refuted how some advocated a heavy showing of government force to reimpose order (and Confucius believed those social norms, not laws, were what made China so successful in the past), gentleman-like professionalism in the bureaucracy, and how education and an enlightened population was the key to it all. (Taoism, of course, went further, saying education wasn't even necessary, but reattuning with nature and living authentically) Confucius wasn't completely anarchist, but he didn't think more government and more law were the answer when it came to social order, favoring minimal government.

Thanks for elaborating. I think I've probably learned about Confucianism from a somewhat outdated perspective.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Honestly, the only arguments for this being illegal are definition of consent and potential for birth defects.

I really think it's remarkable that a certain stripe of social liberal will adopt baldly eugenicist reasoning to talk themselves into keeping incest illegal because they can't come up with enough other reasons to do so.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I am (and always have been) against considering "morality", a notion I thoroughly oppose but whose effects I do not particularly abhor in respect to efficacy, in the making of law. Such consideration would be  tantamount to legislating based off of religious doctrine, in the face of that for which America stands.

The relationship itself is questionable but not inherently dangerous. The line is clearly vaginal sex with insertion of the penis. Anything short of that, in my opinion, should be well legal. However, it is neither the government's duty nor right to legislate exactly what actions may be taken in the bedroom.

Considering all of this, I conclude that such a relationship should be legal, and were there to be a pregnancy, abortion should be mandatory.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

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obama pls ban, mods pls drone

What's wrong with that? Surely we're just talking about a bunch of cells here, no?

Oh for f**k's sake, don't start playing gotchas with this. There are just as many reasons to find this post absolutely horrifying from a pro-choice perspective as there are from a pro-life perspective, and you know it.

Fair enough. For some reason I was under the impression you'd emphasized the last sentence.

I'm no longer pro-choice, but typically the idea is that one does get a choice (whether or not most women who have abortions are actually given meaningful options is another question). Forced abortion is (ideally) just as anathema to that mindset as is being compelled to carry a pregnancy to term.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

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obama pls ban, mods pls drone

What's wrong with that? Surely we're just talking about a bunch of cells here, no?

Oh for f**k's sake, don't start playing gotchas with this. There are just as many reasons to find this post absolutely horrifying from a pro-choice perspective as there are from a pro-life perspective, and you know it.

Fair enough. For some reason I was under the impression you'd emphasized the last sentence.

I'm no longer pro-choice, but typically the idea is that one does get a choice (whether or not most women who have abortions are actually given meaningful options is another question). Forced abortion is (ideally) just as anathema to that mindset as is being compelled to carry a pregnancy to term.

So you're still 'pro-choice' then (even if you don't like that quintessentially American terminology), if you think so strongly against the absurdity and disgrace of a woman being compelled to carry a pregnancy to term?

I can't tell if this is a gotcha or if I actually wrote this unclearly. I think forcing someone to kill their offspring is worse than forcing someone not to kill their offspring. If I didn't think that the conceptus was a person or had rights, which Antonio doesn't, I would think both were equally bad.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Simfan, I'm philosophically in agreement with you on a lot of this, but I think you're not taking seriously the positions of pro-choicers who don't align themselves with some of the more ludicrous and depraved points of view and rhetoric on their side--just as you and I I'm sure agree in rejecting the more nakedly punitive or misogynistic points of view and rhetoric that exist on our side. These people would tend to think that the moral status of the conceptus is based at least partially on the mother's attitude towards it, which might be joyful acceptance and unconditional love or complete killing intent or anything in between. I think that there's definitely a faint perversity to this, but it's perversity of a markedly different order than the sort of blanket rejection of the idea that the unborn have any value or that anyone should care about them that you see in things like the NARAL response to that ad.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Birth defects as a result of incest isn't a good enough reason?

As I've said twice already in this thread, no, actually, it's not.

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Read this sentence back slowly to yourself.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

If you feel the need to automatically abort any offspring conceived in a certain type of sexual relationship, that does not help your case that that kind of relationship should be legal. If you feel that it should be legal, that does not help your case that any offspring conceived should be automatically aborted.

Of course, ideally, in the real, non-Huxleyan world, abortion should never be a 'should', and should be (putting on a 'doesn't believe that it's morally wrong regardless' hat here) left up to the mother, in which case it's much more reasonable to invoke muh consenting adults, since you're no longer making normative proclamations about how these consenting adults should respond to consensual pregnancies from all the consensual sex they're having. I have to wonder for what other situations involving the possibility of muh birth defects omegascarlet (and dax00 earlier in the thread) think abortion is a 'must' or 'should', versus for which it should be merely optional.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Does this belong in the off topic board. It strikes me as more of an individual politics thing.

Agreed.