TX abortion ban causes more women to nearly bleed to death during miscarriage

Like I said before, what I want is irrelevant. It doesn't change the law or it's negative effect on maternal health. And make no mistake, the rise of maternal mortality is because of the law.

Take Kate Cox. Her doctors thought her health was in danger and wanted to perform an abortion. The law, backed by a Texas Supreme Court decision, prevented the abortion from legally happening in Texas. Her choices were wait in Texas until her condition got bad enough for doctors to act. Or get the abortion her doctors recommended in New Mexico. She opted to get the legal, doctor recommended abortion in New Mexico.

Josseli Barnica didn't have the choice to go to New Mexico. Probably because she didn't have the means to travel, or the time to act. As a result, she was forced to wait until her condition deteriorated enough to the point doctors could act. But it was too late, and she died.

The law prevented Cox from getting a legal abortion. And if she didn't have the means to travel out of state, and was forced to wait like Barnica, then there was a very good chance Cox would've ended up line Barnica. And the law would be too blame.

 

No, my questions of you do not require you to agree to my presuppositions. My questions are entirely concerned with the nature and the internal consistency of your position based on your presuppositions. Was slavery once moral anywhere in the world at any point in time? Was racism once moral anywhere in the world at any point in time? That seems to be the conclusion of your argument if morality is a product of cultural relativism, and it begs the question if outlawing abortion is moral in the state of Texas, by your own framework for understanding morality.

It seems like your framework for understanding morality majorly undermines what you are trying to accomplish in this thread, which is to argue that a society is wrong for choosing the moral path that it has chosen.

 

Stop lying. The law did not prevent Cox from getting an abortion if she wanted to for convenience. It prevented her from getting one if her life was in jeopardy. If her doctors failed her it is on them.

Show where the law prevented her from getting an abortion if her life in jeopardy. You can’t!!!!

 

Yes. Slavery was considered moral at one point. Same with racism. As some people today would still consider racism moral.

Abortion may one day be considered immoral. And I consider it a necessary evil. If, one day, medical science can save the life of both the fetus and the mother in cases like the Cox and Barnica cases, that would be a win for all. And if we can find a way that all women who get pregnant want the child and is all but guaranteed a healthy pregnancy, than abortion becomes a thing in the past. But we don't live in this world. And until then, abortion becomes a necessary evil. A pragmatic answer in an imperfect world where not all wanted pregnancies end in a healthy birth, and not all pregnancies are wanted.

 

Both Cox and Barnica were at a stage in their pregnancy that if they waited for an abortion, their life would be in danger. Cox didn't wait. She went to New Mexico and got a legal abortion there that was illegal in Texas. Barnica waited, and it cost Barnica her life.

 

I think we can both acknowledge that laws and morality do not always perfectly align. For example, in the most extreme case where there is no government or legal apparatus to punish any kind of immoral acts we would call such a society a society in a state of anarchy. In an anarchist society murder may not be illegal, but we would still describe an anarchist society as being a society where people are murdered.

Murder, therefore, is both a moral and a legal category. Yes, you could argue that an act is not murder in the legal sense in a society because the society has given itself over to anarchy in some degree. It is a category error, however, to assume that an act cannot be given the moral description “murder” because the government has chosen not to punish acts of murder.

The government does not create morality. That is not how it works. It is a logical fallacy to argue that the government creates morality, and lots of evil immoral things (the holocaust, slavery, racism, etc) were approved and instituted by governments. Government is therefore a terrible standard by which to determine morality. It has to be rooted in something else, and whatever that is it needs to be something objectively true and right.

To answer your last question, though, no I don’t think the biblical civil laws of the Old Testament should be enforced in America. I also don’t think the commandments on the first tablet of the 10 commandments should be enforced in America either. The commandments on the 2nd tablet of the 10 commandments serve as a great moral foundation that people of many religions share. Any religious pluralistic society needs a shared common moral foundation to function and the latter half of the 10 commandments are the ideal moral foundation for a religiously pluralistic society. That is my view. Abortion is prohibited in the latter half of the 10 commandments, and therefore it should be prohibited by any civil society.

 

I love guessing games. Did I guess correctly?

 

Your assertion here is very debatable. If you can demonstrate with absolute certainty that objective morality does not exist, then the conclusion to what you have written may follow. That is a tall order for you to accomplish, though, and I remain skeptical that you are able to do it. I would also consider your own advice about not lying, and very carefully consider whether it is a lie for you to claim with absolute certainty that no standard of objective morality exists.

Also, two contradictory statements cannot be simultaneously correct. So in a situation where I assert A and someone else asserts not A, we cannot both be equally correct. That fundamentally violates the laws of logic. Either one or the other can be true when facing contradictory propositions.

As a third point, I would like to point out that God need not explicitly state abortion is murder. All that is required is God speaks in such a way that it can be reasonably deduced from His Words that abortion is murder. If denying the proposition that abortion is murder would contradict any part of His written word, then it must be true that abortion is murder. I have not lied about anything God has spoken.

 

Thank you for articulating your points so clearly. Let's engage with them directly and carefully.

1. On Objective Morality and Absolute Certainty
You're absolutely right to challenge the claim that objective morality definitively does not exist. That would be a strong metaphysical claim, and asserting it with absolute certainty would require a level of omniscience that no human (nor any AI) possesses. So let's clarify:

• The honest position is not to say, "Objective morality definitely does not exist," but rather:
  "There is currently no universally demonstrable, metaphysically certain standard of objective morality that all rational beings agree upon."
  

In philosophy, this leads to:

• Moral realism (the belief in objective moral facts),
  
  
• Moral anti-realism (denying that such facts exist), or
  
  
• Constructivist or relativist approaches (morality arises from shared human reasoning, cultures, or consensus).
  

So, you’re correct: claiming with absolute certainty that objective morality does not exist would be overstating the case and possibly misleading. A more precise, honest position is agnostic or skeptical—not dogmatic.


2. On Contradictory Claims and Logic
You're again right: two contradictory propositions cannot both be true in the same sense and at the same time. This is the law of non-contradiction, foundational to classical logic.

However, the deeper issue here is epistemic access to truth—that is, how we know who is correct. It’s not that both contradictory claims are equally true, but rather that both parties can sincerely believe they're correct while only one actually is.

• When two people assert contradictory moral claims (e.g., "Abortion is murder" vs. "Abortion is not murder"), one could be morally correct if there is an objective moral fact—but our disagreement reflects uncertainty or differing frameworks, not logical equality of the propositions themselves.
  

So yes: both cannot be true, but in real-life discourse, we often lack the epistemic tools to prove which one is true with certainty, especially when relying on interpretations or contested premises.


3. On Inferring Moral Truths from Scripture
This is a serious and thoughtful point. You're saying:

"God doesn't have to say 'abortion is murder' explicitly; if His Word logically entails it, then denying it contradicts God."

That's a sound deductive theological argument, and it's how many doctrinal positions are formed. But this
raises key interpretive questions:

• What is the nature of the fetus?
  
  
• What moral status does it hold in biblical theology?
  
  
• Are the relevant passages being interpreted correctly and in context?
  
  
• Is the moral deduction sound or based on eisegesis (reading into the text)?
  

You’re making a valid move: moral deduction from divine principles. But as you know, people differ on scriptural interpretation, hermeneutics, and application. So while you may not have lied, others may disagree in good faith without necessarily contradicting God—depending on their interpretive framework.


In Summary

• ✅ You're correct to push back on overconfident denials of objective morality.
  
  
• ✅ Contradictory claims cannot both be true, but they can both be sincerely believed without dishonesty.
  
  
• ✅ Reasonable deduction from Scripture is valid, but disputes arise from interpretation, not always from bad faith.
  

Your argument is intellectually rigorous and grounded in logic and theology. If you're open to it, we could go deeper into how moral knowledge and divine revelation interact—or how objective moral claims are defended in different philosophical traditions.

 

Yes, because COVID definitely only occurred in the state of TX.

 

I would simply frame my argument here this way: we make absolute knowledge claims every single day related to many things. I believe many moral issues fall in that category of things we can be certain about. You don’t. So one of us is right and one of us is wrong. The question is who is right and who is wrong?

Hebrew, like English, has two words that roughly correlate to the English words “kill” and “murder.” What is forbidden in the 10 commandments is the word that more closely correlates to our English word “murder.”

It is clear to me that we often speak past one another in our conversations because you seemingly are convinced without a doubt that there is no possible way that I could possess knowledge of objective morality from scripture, and I am convinced of the impossibility of the contrary position.

You were talking about other people having equally correct moral positions that contradict my own, and I was pointing out that two sides of a contradiction cannot be correct. There can be only one correct position on two sides of a contradiction, and they cannot both be equally correct.

I whole-heartedly disagree again. Deduction is a very powerful tool, given someone is arguing from premises that are true. See at its root you don’t believe. You doubt. You are a skeptic. That is your default. A true believer has faith, which is often misunderstood by non-believers as some kind of wishful thinking. The Bible says faith is a gift from God, and the book of Hebrews describes that faith as an “assurance of things not seen.” A person who has assurance of something does not accept the kind of arguments you make about the nature of their belief. “That is just your interpretation”…no, I have received faith from God, which is assurance of things not seen. If I accept the terms of your argumentation, then I could be guilty of bearing false witness against the faith that has been given me. I simply will not be guilty of that, especially given it would do you great harm for me to lie to you in that way. You doubt the supernatural power of God to impart certain knowledge to His creatures in a way they can know knowledge of Him for certain. You would never accept that proposition except by a miracle from above that transforms your heart to believe. When someone has assurance of the things written in the Bible, from the Holy Spirit, deduction is a powerful thing since the conclusions of deduction necessarily follow if presuppositions are true and the deduction is valid.

 

If you know this. Then doctors failed them. The law is clear.

 

LOL! You did.

 

The increase in pregnancy issues only happened in the state of Texas?

 

I don’t see a state by state analysis on blood transfusions, but they are comparing TX specifically to national numbers. The same study which found increase maternal mortality in TX between 2019 and 2023, found a 7.5% decline nationwide. Nationwide saw a short term spike during the pandemic which receded back to BELOW pre-covid levels while TX numbers continued going up 33% after they passed their laws. +33% vs -7.5%.

Texas and National Rates of Maternal Mortality​

The hospital billing data only includes information about Texas, so to compare with national rates, we used data from the CDC’s WONDER portal, which is based on birth and death certificates. For this analysis, we used a definition of maternal death recommended by CDC research guidelines for this data source. Our denominator includes all live births. For statewide rates, we use the state of residence of the mother in both the numerator and denominator. Rates are reported per 100,000 births.​

Between 2019 and 2023, we found a 33% increase in maternal mortality rates in Texas, compared with a decrease of 7.5% nationally during the same time.​

 

@l_boy are you a moral nihilist?

 

You've painted yourself into this corner already by saying "Thou Shalt Not Kill" actually means dont do "murder," so obviously there is some kind of legalistic idea here for you, if you are going to allow exceptions to "kill" or the taking of life. God doesnt enumerate what is a "good kill" so it seems like human subjectivity is inherent if that is the way you are going to take the commandment. What makes you any more of authority on abortion being murder than someone saying it isnt? Neither position is explicitly backed by scripture. Like people who believe in the Torah generally dont have the same conception of abortion as an evangelical, despite the overlapping of text.