https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/02/20/writing-advice/

I did actually get what you were saying, though I realise my post was not the most precisely delineated or argued. (and sorry for responding to that part of your your post, while ignoring the rest, I guess)

But

I actually do really think it isn’t even slightly morally senseless, and that dismissing it offhand, especially calling it “morally senseless,” is completely tone deaf and (comes across as) actively disrespectful to people who have been raped:

Whether or not we’re all sacred beings ensouled in mortal vessels or not, killing a baby is not as bad as killing a child or adult, because it doesn’t have plans, or agency, and it can’t fear the possibility, off the very top of my head. It is the termination of a life, sacred or not, no less, and no more.

Killing an adult, or child, is more than that, whether what it’s on top of, is a greater or lesser crime, in line with whether the baby is one of god’s sacred children, or -lets say we’re an intelligence-absolutist non-species-ist-absolutist, -about as bad as killing a pig, for an opposite extreme.

If that’s too abstract, then it’s the difference between killing a baby immediately at birth, (as many cultures have made legal practice by the way, unlike child or adult killing) and killing it at four years old. They’re different things, right?

Killing a fetus is on a completely different level from killing either a baby or a more developed human, because whether or not it has a soul, it doesn’t have a brain. Whether it isn’t strictly speaking an entity at all, or whether it’s an ensouled entity not yet tethered to this world by body, and brain, and a mind that here resides (unless one holds that souls control humans without intermediation through the brain), it’s actually not all that different.

Specifically, the difference is between “killing” something that is not an entity at all, and sacriligeously murdering- preventing a truly existent life from coming to proper fruition, which will still, nonetheless, suffer no more than to pass from this world back into god’s embrace.

That is a meaningful, significant difference, but it’s not a difference on the level of the difference between killing an ensouled-fetus and a “mere material” baby, or the difference between killing an ensouled baby and an at-this-point-the-soul-is-moot- -child.

And imo it’s also nowhere near the difference between a raped woman having to, by law, carry the baby to term, and us having a society where we appear in any imagined way at all, to not unambiguously not side with rapists, or against those who we have failed to protect. It’s a completely different class of thing, but in the exact opposite direction than you’ve suggested.

I also don’t think killing an ensouled fetus is on the same level as bringing a child into the world who his mother has been forced to carry into term under such circumstances. Is that fair on the child? Imo it’s a good deal less fair than a blashpemous, sacriligeous murder, that at the end of the day just amounts to a return to god. Bringing that child into the world, if one genuinely and fully accepts the religious premise, is like thinking a forced deportation is worse than a life sentence.

And I can’t really overstate the importance of the signalling side of this. The message should be, if someone’s been through that, unequivocally: “we are on your side”, not “you must suffer more for the sake of our beliefs, or your rapist, or their child, -let alone their fetus”.

Honestly, I would rather say that raped women have a right to kill their rapists grown children or relatives, than that they must carry the fetus to term. Alright, maybe not really, not quite, but the message that is sent is fucking important, and it is part of the moral question.

It’s just wrong to pile that obligation on them, like an additional punishment, and not like, but literally being, an additional burden they have to bear, a difficult one at the very best of times. And then, what?, give it away or spend the rest of their lives promoting it, trying not to treat it worse than they would their own chosen child? Trying not to resent it, or treat it as second best. Trying to love it, trying not to think of it a their rapists child.

I have no doubt some women have done a great job of it, but that’s for them to decide, IF THEY SO choose, not others, not society, and not even fucking God. (if he somehow was dull and stupid enough to support this notion)

So I don’t think that thinking this isn’t a clear cut thing that’s an obvious win for (not all) religious people, is uncontroversially morally senseless. I actually think this issue has priority over all other issues involved, and beyond, up to and including, souls or not, sacred or not, infanticide, .

I think the idea that it is just an offhand thing, and who cares?, is beyond morally senseless, and is almost precisely morally inverted. It might not be a politically relevant concession (though it might well, if that matters at all,) but it’s a huge concession to insanity, and mundane evil, and “moloch.” No bigger one comes immediately to mind.