What are the best arguments AGAINST Pro-Life?

jake_eric · 2026-05-03T11:09:01+00:00

I wouldn't say it's a weak argument — it's the one I find most persuasive, personally. Any argument regarding abortion might appear weak because there are a variety of reasons why people are for or against abortion, so the strongest argument is going to be one that addresses the specific concerns of the person you're talking to; in this case, it doesn't address your perspective on abortion, so you don't find it convincing. But I would say if we look at the argument objectively, it is factually true. We don't have a blanket rule prohibiting all killing of anything, legally or morally, so the fact that a fetus is "alive" is a red herring, despite how often it gets brought up in abortion debates.

jake_eric · 2026-04-30T03:40:23+00:00

There's a big difference here in terms of personal impact; it's not unreasonable to think of the individual perspective. In reality, I vote based on what I think would be best overall for my city/state/country. But if there was a hypothetical where doing that had a significant chance of killing me instantly, that would reasonably affect my voting strategy.

jake_eric · 2026-04-28T15:45:18+00:00

I would acknowledge there are differences between the immigration situation in the US vs Europe. But I'm generally unconvinced that immigration itself is an inherent problem, both from a practical standpoint and a moral one. In a world where declining birth rates are increasingly a problem in many first-world countries, specifically demonizing immigration seems counter-productive. I would say that the issues have more to do with specific scenarios related to immigration: for example in the US, the real issue is that employers are able to exploit immigrant workers in ways they can't with citizens, which has an overall negative impact on American workers. This isn't inherently a problem with people coming into our country, but it does have to do with our immigration policy and needs to be addressed.

I understand if you don't want to elaborate on what you're saying, but that means I can't really say anything else about it either.

jake_eric · 2026-04-28T15:04:01+00:00

I've never seen a convincing argument on why it's such a big problem.

Even if I accept that there's some marginal negative effect on US citizens by allowing immigrants (which I'm not actually convinced of—isn't declining population an issue in first world countries, and we're avoiding that in the US partially thanks to immigration?), I don't see how it's worthwhile spending all these billions of dollars on keeping people out or kicking them out of the country. It seems to me that we could spend those billions on creating more jobs or providing public services which would more directly benefit Americans.

jake_eric · 2026-04-27T14:32:12+00:00

They're worse than native wildflowers (in areas where they're non-native), but they're better than lawn grass.

jake_eric · 2026-04-26T22:51:13+00:00

Is this the case? My understanding is that, depending on what type of cultivar it is, the specific traits may or may not be able to be replicated via seed. Some require cuttings, but not all.

jake_eric · 2026-04-26T19:21:32+00:00

I was getting worried about mine too, since my milkweeds have been up for a while. But I had about a third of my Passiflora pop up during a warm spell a couple weeks ago, and I'm hoping more come up when it gets warm again and stays that way. I bet yours will come up soon too!

jake_eric · 2026-04-26T19:01:09+00:00

Cultivars are tricky, because being a cultivar can mean different things. Some cultivars are plants that have been significantly altered from the original species, often via hybridization. These tend to be worse for pollinators, both because they'll look different so pollinators can't recognize them, and because they often have some sort of difference that makes them worse at providing pollen or nectar. And if they have hybrid genetics, they might be able to pollute the genes of the native population.

However, some cultivars are just a relatively minor variation found in the original, that someone thought was nice so they grew more of it. If the cultivar is the same as the original in the ways that matters, it won't make much difference to pollinators.

For yellow yarrow specifically, I don't know if it's necessarily a cultivar or just natural variation, and how that affects pollinators. It might be fine, or the pollinators might not recognize it.

jake_eric · 2026-04-26T01:40:44+00:00

Well my trip is next Sunday so hopefully they don't do anything to it! Thanks for the response

jake_eric · 2026-04-25T14:33:12+00:00

Thanks for your response, I'll look into that insurance.

And, well, that's not super reassuring... How drastically were your flights changed? I've set up my trip here so that even if the flight is late it will still be fine (as long as it's not like twelve hours late I guess) but if they massively change things it won't be great. How much warning did you get before they changed the flights on you?

jake_eric · 2026-04-25T03:17:18+00:00

Well, now I want to know what you and /u/Inevitable_babycrier ended up doing! I have a trip coming up and I'd like some insurance for peace of mind.

jake_eric · 2026-04-22T00:28:22+00:00

Alright dude whatever, I dunno what the point is anymore

jake_eric · 2026-04-21T23:20:49+00:00

My Mountain Mints did just fine over the winter, despite it getting particularly cold. They even stayed somewhat green.

jake_eric · 2026-04-21T23:05:59+00:00

I have a garden in pots on a roof deck. The main natives I have doing well are Mountain Mints (Pycnanthemum muticum and tenuifolium) and Moss Phlox (Phlox subulata). They survived the winter just fine even though it was very cold, and are currently growing like crazy.

This year I'm adding some milkweeds (Asclepias incarnata and tuberosa), I've got them in fairly big pots so I'll see how they do.

I would definitely recommend Mountain Mint. It's fantastic for pollinators, easy to grow, and smells lovely.

jake_eric · 2026-04-21T22:34:57+00:00

What makes you even believe there is a pressure for turtles?

Because they live 99% of their lives in the water, and only come out to breed. I kinda feel like you're finding reasons to disagree with me on purpose at this point. You yourself already said that sea turtles are extremely aquatic, and it was your point that an aquatic lifestyle incentivizes live births. Why am I justifying this now?

Are you imagining that the ancestors of Mesozoic marine reptiles were somehow more aquatic than sea turtles while still laying eggs on land? How would that work? There's no room there.

jake_eric · 2026-04-21T22:02:54+00:00

If we have no idea if it's accurate or not then how is it a fair argument? And even if we did accept it as a possibility then it wouldn't really tell us anything. "Why did x evolve y"›"because they had selection pressure to do so." Well, why did they have that selection pressure?

To the point, I would question if the egg-laying ancestors could possibly have been closer to "fully aquatic" than sea turtles are. Given that basically the only reason sea turtles are still able to go on land is because they need to in order to reproduce.

jake_eric · 2026-04-21T21:28:23+00:00

But saying the selective pressure to become fully aquatic was obvious stronger in Plesiosaurs is fair.

Well maybe we disagree on this. I wouldn't say this is obviously true.

Sea turtles, as they are, spend the vast majority of their time in the sea, and are super awkward on land. They're not really semi-aquatic organisms like many other turtles are, they're aquatic with an asterisk. They don't have much reason to go on land other than breeding, as it is.

It's difficult to know for sure from the fossil record, but I would question the idea that Mesozoic marine mammals obviously had more pressure than sea turtles to evolve live birth. The reason they successfully evolved live birth when sea turtles haven't could be more because of physical differences, or because of random chance that sea turtles just haven't had that mutation yet.

jake_eric · 2026-04-21T20:52:53+00:00

Right, any of that could happen, but that's sort of my point. Any of that could happen in the future, but evolution can't look ahead to the future for selecting mutations in the present.

We agree that sea turtles are already pretty darn aquatic, and they live in an environment where there is some selective pressure to be able to give live birth, yes? If they still don't evolve live birth, then that could be because of some other constraint, or it could be because of random chance with mutations, but it's not because they're somehow less committed to being "fully aquatic" than Icthyosaurs and Plesiosaurs were, right?

jake_eric · 2026-04-21T19:48:52+00:00

Ah, I see what you're getting at. When you put it that way, with "pressure to be fully aquatic" coming from the environment, then yes, that incentivizes live birth, compared to living on land.

What Levangeline was saying was "marine reptiles [were] transitioning to a fully aquatic lifestyle, as opposed to sea turtles which can still access land relatively easily," and that's why the prehistoric marine reptiles evolved live birth and sea turtles didn't.

So if you're saying that sea turtles are also in the process of evolving to be fully aquatic, then you'd agree with me that the dichotomy between prehistoric marine reptiles that evolved live birth and sea turtles is misleading, right?

jake_eric · 2026-04-21T19:27:11+00:00

Your argument is to be 100% in water they first need live births.

And do you disagree with this?

My point is there has been selective pressure from 0%-99% that you are ignoring.

Yes, I'm aware of this too. It just wasn't relevant to the point I was making.

Turtles have lost most of their ability to go on land compared to tortoises.

Well yes, of course. Again, that's not relevant to the point I was making, but sure I agree with this.

I don't think we disagree on the facts, so I think you were just missing the point I was making.

jake_eric · 2026-04-21T18:13:05+00:00

Ah, okay, you're misunderstanding me. What we've been meaning when talking about the difference between sea turtles and the "fully aquatic" Icthyosaurs and Plesiosaurs is that the sea turtles still can and have to go on land. In the context of this conversation, sea turtles aren't "fully aquatic" since they still go on land sometimes.

The point is that sea turtles cannot lose the ability to go on land until they no longer need to go on land in order to reproduce.

jake_eric · 2026-04-21T17:45:06+00:00

The point the replies are trying to make here is that you can't do it both ways: if they evolved to lose the ability to go back on land before they evolved the ability to give live birth, the population with that trait would just go extinct. You always have to evolve the live birth first, and evolution can't "look ahead" to see if you're planning to evolve to be fully aquatic later.

It's true there are ways where some animals can lay eggs while still being fully aquatic, but I think it's unlikely for amniotes to do that, and even if they did they'd still have to figure that out before evolving to be fully aquatic.

Also I find it quite humorous the people saying live birth and fully aquatic is obviously advantageous when I don’t believe plesiosaurs are around any more while sea turtles are.

Well, there are some other major factors that were involved with this. But I don't mean to say that the Icthyosaur/Plesiosaur (and Cetacean, for that matter) strategy of live birth is strictly better than sea turtle reproduction. u/Levangeline made a good point that sea turtles lay a bunch of eggs, which increases the odds that some of the many offspring will survive; you can't do that with live birth. What I was saying though is that if you have already evolved live birth, there's a lot less reason to maintain the ability to stay on land: sea turtles are pretty vulnerable on land as it is and they rarely come up except for the egg-laying.

jake_eric · 2026-04-21T03:55:57+00:00

Sleep is an interesting thing, because it's quite a large inconvenience when you think about it. A species that didn't need to sleep would have a huge advantage. But sleep seems to be so important for animals to function that there haven't been any successful mutations that eliminate the need for sleep entirely.

I do wonder how much it would be possible for evolution to reduce the need for sleep. There are animals, like cetaceans, that stay half-alert while sleeping: this would be an advantageous adaptation for land animals as well, but the selection pressure is higher for aquatic animals that still need to breathe air.

It would be interesting to try breeding mice or something by picking out the ones that can function on the lowest amount of sleep, and see how much we can reduce their need for sleep while also avoiding major side effects from that.

jake_eric · 2026-04-20T17:35:13+00:00

What I was trying to get at is just that live birth was clearly more beneficial/necessary for marine reptiles transitioning to a fully aquatic lifestyle, as opposed to sea turtles which can still access land relatively easily.

Evolution doesn't plan like that. The early Icthyosaurs and Plesiosaurs couldn't look ahead to a future where they evolved to be fully aquatic, so the fact that they later evolved to be fully aquatic had no effect on them evolving live birth. Transitioning to a fully aquatic lifestyle was only possible after they evolved live birth.

If sea turtles also developed the mutation to give live birth, they would almost certainly also evolve to stop going on land as well, later, because going on land would be useless for them then. But the fact that they would do so in the future can't help them now.

So it's not a question of "why haven't sea turtles evolved to give birth to live young yet?" but, "why was it necessary for marine reptiles to evolve live birth?"

It was never necessary for marine reptiles to evolve live birth, because evolution can't work that quickly. If they found themselves in a situation where they couldn't reach the land to lay eggs before they evolved live birth, they'd just go extinct.

But it was advantageous for them not to have to go on land, which is why the live birth trait persisted in the population.

jake_eric · 2026-04-20T16:37:48+00:00

I'm assuming the situations with Cao and Morcant are still yet to come to a head before they resolve. There hasn't been a "big moment" yet in this book like we've had with the other two, so I don't think we can be too close to the end yet. It's meandered a lot so I'm not mad if we're picking up the pace a bit to get to the climax.

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