I'll break this into two parts because I think two very very separate things are getting confused here:
The value of humans and generally clarifying my point
I made a huge gaffe in saying inherent value where I meant intrinsic, and I've fixed that in my post.
It also seems that I need to clarify my stance because "ethically meh" was unsurprisingly an unclear way of putting it. I meant that it's (for lack of a better word) amoral. As a consequentialist, I don't really believe that anything is categorically amoral*, so I resorted to Simpsons vernacular express that people don't naturally (HA!) care all that much and nor should they. Sorry, it seems it may have wasted both of our times.
Now back to the value of humans. Let's see if this makes it clear: I do in fact believe the value of human life is 0 unto itself. Now add the most basic, foundational, biological factor that that human's mother loves them and her personal existence is invested in that life, and that life has a value of ... like holy shit, you might be able to convince me that there's literally nothing of greater inherent value on this earth.[2] Add to that an ability to make people smile, and this life's really got some value and it would be a shame if something happened to it; please don't do anything to it if you can help it. However, an unloved thing that can't--on its own accord--do things that anyone cares, is valueless, regardless of whether or not the semantics can be managed to make it a human life.
Again, this isn't to say that aborting fetuses is categorically amoral. If you love your EZEF, but decide to shove a coat hanger up your vagina because you can't find much better to do with your Friday night, then I would say that the shortterm value of finding something to do with your night (if that's even positive in the first place) is far outweighed by the value that has been placed on the EZEF. If you would love nothing more than to create life and raise it with your loved one, but you would be ill-advised (or, if you will, it would be unethical) to abort the EZEF for something silly like the babyis too black due to 1/16th bit of African American blood that you'd hidden in your ancestry. I could also very easily be convinced that abortions are often of positive value (ethical, if you will).
The point is that the weightiest parts of the issue (when does human life begin, what's the intrinsic value of a human life, etc.) overcomplicate the matter. It really is as simple of weighing whether bringing that child into the worth will be a good thing for all involved.
*That might take a while to explain, but imagine if someone went through the BC and commented on 9/10 hands being like, "You didn't do anything abhorrent, but you didn't do anything heroic either," and then in the 10th hand was like, "You did one of those things you're never supposed to do; may you burn in Hellmuth!" That's kinda how I see people who label entire categories of actions as amoral. There are precious few decisions in life where it doesn't much matter either way which you choose, and the other basquillion should either be expected to on-the-whole have positive or negative results (and not because of what category that action falls under, but because of the world of factors that there are to consider).
[2] Something like an inoculation that saves 1,000,000s of loving mothers and loved children's lives is a secondary instrumental good: it's good insofar as it facilitates the salvation of lives that are themselves inherent values (but intrinsically useless); all of these entities we're discussing are worthless floating out there in the vacuums of space.
All the natural law stuff
Let me first say that I'm not a believer in Natural Law. The only part it was vaguely important was to make a passing comment that evolutionary ethicists might not like abortion. EDIT: After rereading this post, I'd advise you to stop reading here. I do provide a clarification of what I meant and why I agree with several of your points without having to amend my position, but it's a bit rambly. So sufficed to say that it's not relevant to my point and proceed from there with caution.
Anyway, we're on the same page for thinking that natural versus unnatural is silly criteria for ethics. The same preachers who speak out against the unnaturalness of homosexuality (if that premise is even true to begin with, which biology doesn't all-too-readily support), are the same ones who are offended when you say their ancestry is shared with beasts. Well, which is it preacher; are we higher beings who can opt out of throwing our feces and fucking everything we see and opt into reading books and believing in god or are we held to the same standards of natural laws.
I maybe should have said something more like "anti-natural" because women have a keen protective instinct as part of the well-oiled reproductive machine that evolution hones and the uninterrupted course of pregnancy would lead to child birth if not for fairly invasive measures terminate it ("invasive measures" is certainly not solid footing to rest our terminology, but whatever). In this way, it works strongly and directly against nature and the course of evolution. Jizzing in a guy's butt, on the other hand, is no less anti-natural than not jizzing at all as neither will lend to reproduction. I'm not saying that "working strongly and directly against nature and the course of evolution" is sufficient to proving it's unethical--well obviously not because this was all part of an argument that abortions are (mostly) amoral.
But I was kinda glossing there, anyway. I only meant to say that, though my answer is "simple," even if (big assumption) it comes to be the accepted one, I expect that to be many years and many protests down the line because the answer is offensive to the popular standings in almost every field, from science to religion, from the arts to philosophy.
Also certainly most definitely not at all was I criticizing humans for acting unnatural. I hope this post serves as a clarification of that, but even putting aside the unnatural/anti-natural distinction (which is a guess--probably an imperfect improvement), I was only speaking for why it's going to be tough to convince an evolutionary ethicist that abortion is fine. I wasn't speaking for my own ethical beliefs; only saying we have a ways to go before my "simple" answer could ever be adopted in the heart of the populace.
For whatever it's worth, I wasn't arguing that humans are valuable as separate from nature, since I'm not quite sure what that means. The closest I can come to comprehending is saying that humans are valuable in a vacuum, that they're a good unto themselves regardless of the world that surrounds them, and I most definitely do not believe that. This is exactly what I'm speaking against when I say humans have no intrinsic value. I didn't even mean to argue that humans are more valuable than any other thing in nature (I would, if forced to, argue we're the most awesome animal, but I'm no expert on the subject and that's not totally pertinent here). You could say that we're a cool people by nature, for nature and of nature and I'd say groovy, whatever, sounds good enough for me, I won't even ask for too much clarification on what that means because I think it's oblique to the discussion as I see it.
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Originally Posted by surviva316
