Poll: A moral dilemma

[magicmonkeybars]

*edit To be clear,
option one means baby and cows live.
option two means baby and cows die.

These are always fun.

What do you choose, stopping an abortion from happening or the slaughter of a million cows ?

Let's say the pregnancy is in its fifth week, the fetus won't be used in anyway like research.
The pregnancy isn't from any kind of abuse or outside of a relationship, both parents are 25 years old not blood related and in a stable relationship.
The abortion won't cause complications but the pregnancy might but no more than usual.

The cows if killed won't be used for anything like food, research or fertilizer, it's just wasted meat.(*edit assume we burn the meat to ash, nothing is derived from it.)
The cows are healthy, live by industry standards, are not suffering and will live out their lives until used for food or leather or whatever else we use cows for.
(*edit The cows are bought if killed and burned without the owners losing money.)
I look forward to seeing the results.

I for one choose to have the cows killed and as a result have pregnancy be aborted.

(I hope the Poll is included, don't blame me if it's eaten by the forum.)

 

[JaymesFogarty]

It's the woman's choice, not mine. So one million cows.

 

[Queen Michael]

Save the cows, save the cows! They have the right to become hamburgers! [small]well it might not be a right as such but anyway I like hamburgers[/small]

 

[Srdjan]

No one has right to kill human being, if ***** didn't want children she should have used protection or pill, not kill five weeks old fetus, which is perfectly healthy and legally undisputed.

So kill million cows, you would kill them anyway and you didn't say the meat would be thrown, it would be used anyway.

 

[magicmonkeybars]

No one has right to kill human being, if ***** didn't want children she should have used protection or pill, not kill five weeks old fetus, which is perfectly healthy and legally undisputed.

So kill million cows, you would kill them anyway and you didn't say the meat would be thrown, it would be used anyway.

If you kill the cows the meat would be wasted, I did mention that, only if the cows are "saved" does the meat get used.

 

[MelasZepheos_v1legacy]

Why? I know there's this tendency of philosophical debates to rely heavily on the metaphoric or hypothetical, but really I don't like answering them unless they have some sort of real world application. Morality does not happen in isolation, it must be applied. I could be faced with the choice between aborting a baby to let the mother live or knowing the mother will die in childbirth but saving the baby, that is a real world concern. Similar issues about euthanasia, right to die with dignity, these are real issues about which morality can be argued and applied successfully.

Your argument has no relation to anything real world, and thus there's not much point in arguing it, because the situation would never come up, and why should we argue for the morality of such a situation. It would be like me asking you think it is more moral to blow up the moon or allow an alien race to invade our planet. It's not a situation we will face, so why bother arguing about it?

 

[Naheal]

Just because we don't use the meat doesn't mean something else isn't going to use the meat. Slaughter the cows.

 

[Roganwilson]

On the one hand, the child could be someone special. On the other hand, he could be yet another degenerate waste of life. If the cows were butchered and used, they could go to feeding people and producing other essential things. The lives you save by butchering the cows and using the meat are many more than not aborting one fetus.

 

[Eisenfaust]

why does it have to be so polar? in any case, i'd go for the abortion... killing the cows would be wasted meat that can be used down the track, but you're not "performing an abortion on an unwilling person" or whatever, you're just stopping one, and there has to be a reason the parents want an abortion, even if it's just that they don't want the child, at which point NOT stopping the abortion will just leave them with a child they don't want and can't love, leaving it doomed to grow up in a broken home and, after being bullied at school because it's parents can't be bothered buying it a nice hat, it gets a gun and shoots 15 OTHER people...

given a little more flexibility, i'd do nothing... if it's that easy to stop the abortion, or that pointless to kill the cows, then someone else will stop the abortion, and the cow's owners will realise it's completely stupid to kill them for no reason...

 

[Queen Michael]

On the one hand, the child could be someone special. On the other hand, he could be yet another degenerate waste of life. If the cows were butchered and used, they could go to feeding people and producing other essential things. The lives you save by butchering the cows and using the meat are many more than not aborting one fetus.

This is sound and clever logic;
I agree with Roganwilson.
Slaught'ring cows does more for mankind
than one human's likely to do.

 

[kurupt87]

Oh for crying out loud, this is like the stupid questions you got asked at school. Would you rather suck a dick or get bummed? Would you rather lose an arm or a leg? They were better than this though, they at least have the decency to have two comparable choices, they'd both be judged bad for the same reasons. This question is more like; would you rather suck a dick or lose an arm? A stupid question, only made worse by the apparent seriousness of the questioner. They're both bad but for completely different reasons.

I'll still answer the damn thing though.

Firstly, I've got to put myself into the situation; so, I am the expectant father who has a cow slaughtering device that kills a million cows for no reason. Unless I choose one of the given options the world implodes or gravity turns into gravy or something, whatever but everyone/thing'd be dead.

Altruistically it's fairly obvious, you'd have to stop the cow slaughter. Egotistically you'd choose to have the abortion. Realistically I'd stop the cow slaughter, support my partner through the birth and then put the baby up for adoption.

 

[Chaos-Spider]

Other than the species divide, this almost sounds like the 'save myself or save the world' dilemma, at least from a purely numerical perspective.

I basically see the poll options as :Save one thing or save one million things.
One on one it might be considered equal, but no one human, whatever the become or grow up to do is worth one million of any other multicellular eukaryotic life form.

I would therefore choose to stop the slaughter of the cows, but that's just me.

Edit: The pol says 'which would you allow' rather than 'which you waould stop' leading to the prevention of the abortion in either scenario. This is not fair considering that the thread question is the latter. Can you please either fix the pol to better reflect your actual queston or remove it.

 

[Shockolate]

On the one hand, the child could be someone special. On the other hand, he could be yet another degenerate waste of life. If the cows were butchered and used, they could go to feeding people and producing other essential things. The lives you save by butchering the cows and using the meat are many more than not aborting one fetus.

This is sound and clever logic;
I agree with Roganwilson.
Slaught'ring cows does more for mankind
than one human's likely to do.

But the OP says "The cows if killed won't be used for anything like food, research or fertilizer, it's just wasted meat."

No food, research, or fertilizer. We don't get anything.

It's not so much a question of "What would be better for society to have killed off." It's more of a "What can you stand to kill off, given the choice."

 

[Phoenixlight]

Abortions are wonderful as they help to prevent the world from being more overpopulated, at least with cows they can provide milk for weetabix and other cereals.

 

[mad825]

I see a Dilemma? I not choosing any as I have no real problem with either...( apart from stopping the abortions)

 

[Roganwilson]

On the one hand, the child could be someone special. On the other hand, he could be yet another degenerate waste of life. If the cows were butchered and used, they could go to feeding people and producing other essential things. The lives you save by butchering the cows and using the meat are many more than not aborting one fetus.

This is sound and clever logic;
I agree with Roganwilson.
Slaught'ring cows does more for mankind
than one human's likely to do.

But the OP says "The cows if killed won't be used for anything like food, research or fertilizer, it's just wasted meat."

No food, research, or fertilizer. We don't get anything.

It's not so much a question of "What would be better for society to have killed off." It's more of a "What can you stand to kill off, given the choice."

If the fetus is aborted, the cows get used like they would usually be. If you kill the cows, the fetus becomes a baby.

 

[Woodsey]

Allow the abortion to happen; it's a bunch of cells still and it's up to the parents whether or not they abort it. If they want to then go for it.

Also, I'm assuming at least some of these cows would have to be taken from people's livestock, meaning you're potentially ruining the lives of many people.

 

[zatzie zombie num666]

1 mill cows will do more good then stoping a child from entering this world i would love to see someone tell me how thats not true(i dont mean to sound like a ass i srisly want someone to explain)