No, I would not abort. If this technology was ever developed I believe that it would be an issue so large to split the Democratic Party right down the middle. It would pit homosexuals against pro-choicers. No homosexual wants homosexuality to be systematically eliminated from the gene pool. If this test was ever developed, then I would expect eugenics to take over and homosexuals would simply be exterminated out of society. There are plenty of people who will support homosexuals with their words, but would, given the choice, rather have a heterosexual child.
That seems absurdly far-fetched, and probably reflects a pretty poor understanding of genetics.
As we're asking all these hypotheticals, I feel like throwing in the Violinist Dilemma.
You wake up in the morning and find yourself back to back in bed with an unconscious violinist. A famous unconscious violinist. He has been found to have a fatal kidney ailment, and the Society of Music Lovers has canvassed all the available medical records and found that you alone have the right blood type to help. They have therefore kidnapped you, and last night the violinist's circulatory system was plugged into yours, so that your kidneys can be used to extract poisons from his blood as well as your own. [If he is unplugged from you now, he will die; but] in nine months he will have recovered from his ailment, and can safely be unplugged from you.
So, would you remain plugged to the violinist for the full nine months? Would you force a family member to remain if they were kidnapped?
edit: As far as OP's question is concerned, I'm pro choice but am very confused by selective abortion rather than abortion for financial or personal reasons.
This argument to me I say is not quite equivalent. First society as whole generally accepts people have a right to life and liberty. The dependent person has a right to life. The provider has the right to liberty. I feel these statements are fairly self evident. However, in the case of the violinist the situation is unexpected and is forced upon the provider. In the case of pregnancy it is usually the result of consensual sex. The risks should be well known to those who do have sex and one is pregnancy. To have sex consensual is to consent to the risks. Further pregnancy is not as debilitating as this analogy would have it to be. A pregnant woman is still able to move and perform every day activities except at the very end of the pregnancy.
I feel a better way to explain the situation is a ER doctor/surgeon who has a patient in critical condition. If the patient is given proper care full recovery is assured. He must care for patient continually or else the patient will die without his care. Obviously, this could be inconvenience to the surgeon if he had other plans during the term of treatment for the patient. Does the inconvenience give the surgeon the right to let the patient die? Additionally, one does not normally become a doctor/surgeon against their own will. He consented to his position and is well aware that he may have to deal with inconvenient situations such as always being on call for emergency situations. Its not perfect, but I feel its better than violinist. The main issues I see that a doctor usually has some form financial compensation while a mother may not. However, the doctor still has obligations. For consensual sex the mother consented to potential inconveniences it may lead too. Even if she use protection and birth-control the potential still exists and it was their choice to roll the dice.
Really what abortion debate comes down to is the conflict between the right to life and the right to liberty. People have died to protect liberty, but people have also died to protect life. Clearly, people are willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for both rights. Yet, clearly we do see exceptions to both these rights protection under law. People's right to do as they please is far more restricted under law than their right to live. There are quite a few laws that restrict people from performing certain activities. However there are fewer exceptions the make the killing or letting other individuals die legal. I feel that does show that society does seem to value a life more than choice alone.
The abortion issue is not likely to ever reach a consensus, but my view that life is more valuable than liberty alone. For without life one can not have liberty.
The idea of selective abortion actual brings up a problem. If we take fetus/embryo's DNA and examine it for features like hair color, eyes color, height, weight, sex, and any other feature of human make up, and decided to abort it based on that information. Is to treat life that fulfills the decided criteria superior to that which does not.
As we're asking all these hypotheticals, I feel like throwing in the Violinist Dilemma.
You wake up in the morning and find yourself back to back in bed with an unconscious violinist. A famous unconscious violinist. He has been found to have a fatal kidney ailment, and the Society of Music Lovers has canvassed all the available medical records and found that you alone have the right blood type to help. They have therefore kidnapped you, and last night the violinist's circulatory system was plugged into yours, so that your kidneys can be used to extract poisons from his blood as well as your own. [If he is unplugged from you now, he will die; but] in nine months he will have recovered from his ailment, and can safely be unplugged from you.
So, would you remain plugged to the violinist for the full nine months? Would you force a family member to remain if they were kidnapped?
edit: As far as OP's question is concerned, I'm pro choice but am very confused by selective abortion rather than abortion for financial or personal reasons.
But thats silly. Your hypo makes it seem like someone walks into sex not knowing the possible results. Maybe if you had signed up for a medical study and they chose you randomly to be hooked up to the violinist, it'd make more sense. At least TRY to show some agency on the part of the parents. Either way, the question then would be 1) what is morally right, considering you knew full well that you could be responsible for the life of the violinist, and 2) what should be legally right, considering your knowledge and actions
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What. I have a question for you pro-lifers. If you were against homosexuality and you found out your baby carried the gay gene, would you abort it?
No, I would not abort. If this technology was ever developed I believe that it would be an issue so large to split the Democratic Party right down the middle. It would pit homosexuals against pro-choicers. No homosexual wants homosexuality to be systematically eliminated from the gene pool. If this test was ever developed, then I would expect eugenics to take over and homosexuals would simply be exterminated out of society. There are plenty of people who will support homosexuals with their words, but would, given the choice, rather have a heterosexual child.
I agree that there would definitely be a schism, but I don't think it would be nearly so neat and tidy as you outlined. Some in the LGBT community are pro-choice even if we'd argue against specific reasons for making that choice. Some heterosexual people are pro-choice but would not choose to abort a LGB fetus. Certainly many would, not all parents are okay with having an LGB child, but the number of parents who are open to it increases all the time.
As a somewhat related anecdote, my best friends had their first child seven years ago. Very early on, he was diagnosed with autism, as he developed, they began to realize that his autism was severe and that was going to present a whole array of challenges they were unsure they wanted to deal with. They had many instances where they admitted to me how hard it was. But when I asked them in the past couple years if they'd change anything, they told me they wouldn't because they loved their son, even the aspects of him they hadn't planned on. That's a sentiment I've heard a number of times from parents whose children were different than the expected default. So I don't believe LGB would be exterminated from humanity through selective abortions. By the time such a hypothetical technology existed, LGBT people will be much more normalized (well, we hope, anyway) and I think opening the door to our eradication would lead to a very bitter battle that I don't believe eugenics would win.
As we're asking all these hypotheticals, I feel like throwing in the Violinist Dilemma.
You wake up in the morning and find yourself back to back in bed with an unconscious violinist. A famous unconscious violinist. He has been found to have a fatal kidney ailment, and the Society of Music Lovers has canvassed all the available medical records and found that you alone have the right blood type to help. They have therefore kidnapped you, and last night the violinist's circulatory system was plugged into yours, so that your kidneys can be used to extract poisons from his blood as well as your own. [If he is unplugged from you now, he will die; but] in nine months he will have recovered from his ailment, and can safely be unplugged from you.
So, would you remain plugged to the violinist for the full nine months? Would you force a family member to remain if they were kidnapped?
edit: As far as OP's question is concerned, I'm pro choice but am very confused by selective abortion rather than abortion for financial or personal reasons.
This argument to me I say is not quite equivalent. First society as whole generally accepts people have a right to life and liberty. The dependent person has a right to life. The provider has the right to liberty. I feel these statements are fairly self evident. However, in the case of the violinist the situation is unexpected and is forced upon the provider. In the case of pregnancy it is usually the result of consensual sex. The risks should be well known to those who do have sex and one is pregnancy. To have sex consensual is to consent to the risks. Further pregnancy is not as debilitating as this analogy would have it to be. A pregnant woman is still able to move and perform every day activities except at the very end of the pregnancy.
I feel a better way to explain the situation is a ER doctor/surgeon who has a patient in critical condition. If the patient is given proper care full recovery is assured. He must care for patient continually or else the patient will die without his care. Obviously, this could be inconvenience to the surgeon if he had other plans during the term of treatment for the patient. Does the inconvenience give the surgeon the right to let the patient die? Additionally, one does not normally become a doctor/surgeon against their own will. He consented to his position and is well aware that he may have to deal with inconvenient situations such as always being on call for emergency situations. Its not perfect, but I feel its better than violinist. The main issues I see that a doctor usually has some form financial compensation while a mother may not. However, the doctor still has obligations. For consensual sex the mother consented to potential inconveniences it may lead too. Even if she use protection and birth-control the potential still exists and it was their choice to roll the dice.
Really what abortion debate comes down to is the conflict between the right to life and the right to liberty. People have died to protect liberty, but people have also died to protect life. Clearly, people are willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for both rights. Yet, clearly we do see exceptions to both these rights protection under law. People's right to do as they please is far more restricted under law than their right to live. There are quite a few laws that restrict people from performing certain activities. However there are fewer exceptions the make the killing or letting other individuals die legal. I feel that does show that society does seem to value a life more than choice alone.
The abortion issue is not likely to ever reach a consensus, but my view that life is more valuable than liberty alone. For without life one can not have liberty.
The idea of selective abortion actual brings up a problem. If we take fetus/embryo's DNA and examine it for features like hair color, eyes color, height, weight, sex, and any other feature of human make up, and decided to abort it based on that information. Is to treat life that fulfills the decided criteria superior to that which does not.
And if one does not have liberty, one may as well not be alive.
The violinist is actually an often apt analogy; people often do their best not to get pregnant and have a mishap. By your argument, if I attempted to avoid pregnancy, shouldn't I be able to abort?
And someone does *not* have to consent to the risk of pregnancy. They can, after all, use protection - if I have clearly not consented, why must I* wear the pregnancy?
Further, if you believe life starts at the moment of conception, planned abortion is the *least* of your problems vis a vis protecting life.
There is a plague which terrorises us all - and has killed more than you can imagine. I would estimate that it killed about a thousand times as many people during the twentieth century as the second world war. Or, to put it another way, 8 times as much as the next nearest cause of death in the 20th century, where the next nearest cause of death is "The sum total of every damn thing that ever killed anyone who was actually born"
I mean, hot damn, people - this is a medical emergency that makes HIV look like a cut knee. (HIV has killed one 4000th of the number of people this has killed). about 25 percent of all pregnancies end naturally in no birth. And prior to that, a large percentage (60 seems to be commonly quoted) of fertilised eggs fail to implant successfully in the uterine wall and the mother doesn't even know she was pregnant at all. That amounts to some six or seven "dead people" for every person currently living.
But you're not upset by this statistic, because it *doesn't make a lick of sense* to claim that a fertilised egg which fails to implant was a human being.
First off, I would say that Idea of a "gay gene" or being born that way is just a fallacy used by the gay and lesbian community to further their agenda. There is no solid proof of its existence. Anyways that is a debate for an other day.
You would have to shun all genetics as a theory easily disposed of to truly believe this. If you can do that than I admire your tenacity in your completely ignorant trolling statement/belief. You might as well say you don't believe that gay people are born homosexual instead of tip toe-ing around.
I think it's really a question of when to consider the fetus a human life. Pro-lifers take this to the extreme by showing it's silly to suppose that killing someone already born is okay. Pro-choicers take this to the opposite extreme by showing it's silly to suppose that unfertilized eggs/individual sperm dying is some kind of tragedy. Really both of these extremes are silly.
As far as I'm concerned there's a gray area where, if we would recognize the fetus as being human, it should be considered human. A zygote is not recognizable as a human. A blastocyst is not recognizable as a human. Very early stage embryos are indistinguishable from embryos of other mammals. At some point it becomes clearly recognizable as human, and at that point I feel it should not be aborted. So I support the right to early-term abortions, but not late-term abortions.
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"For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love." --Carl Sagan
First off, I would say that Idea of a "gay gene" or being born that way is just a fallacy used by the gay and lesbian community to further their agenda. There is no solid proof of its existence. Anyways that is a debate for an other day.
You would have to shun all genetics as a theory easily disposed of to truly believe this. If you can do that than I admire your tenacity in your completely ignorant trolling statement/belief. You might as well say you don't believe that gay people are born homosexual instead of tip toe-ing around.
I think it's really a question of when to consider the fetus a human life. Pro-lifers take this to the extreme by showing it's silly to suppose that killing someone already born is okay. Pro-choicers take this to the opposite extreme by showing it's silly to suppose that unfertilized eggs/individual sperm dying is some kind of tragedy. Really both of these extremes are silly.
As far as I'm concerned there's a gray area where, if we would recognize the fetus as being human, it should be considered human. A zygote is not recognizable as a human. A blastocyst is not recognizable as a human. Very early stage embryos are indistinguishable from embryos of other mammals. At some point it becomes clearly recognizable as human, and at that point I feel it should not be aborted. So I support the right to early-term abortions, but not late-term abortions.
I think most people who argue for abortion won't address what actually goes on in America. For example we have people talking about zygotes and blobs of cells when a fetus has a heartbeat at 3 weeks. The fetuses that are getting aborted have their own unique set of DNA. They have their own blood type. They have their own heartbeat. Limbs are developing at 5 weeks, and brain waves are detectable at 6 weeks.
When we examine other human rights violations in the history of the west a common trend is that we attempt to dehumanize the victim. During the time of slavery, African-Americans were dehumanized through the use of language. During the Holocaust the same thing happened. Jews were dehumanized and seen as a lesser evolved species than the Arian race that Hitler was attempting to perfect through eugenics. And we see the same thing with abortion. The primary means we go about doing this is calling the person a "fetus." To push the point further we refer to people with heartbeats, brainwaves, unique human DNA, hands, toes, ears, and a nose as "parasites" or "blobs of tissue."
This is the position of the largest abortion provider in America:
Planned Parenthood is not just aborting zygotes or blastocysts. They are killing real people in the womb and are trying to expand those rights to do so outside of the womb.
For the sake of clarifying my biases, I'd describe myself as pro-choice and anti-to-neutral on abortion.
1) Godwins Law. Nice job.
2) Calling humans in diffrent stages of development fetuses or zygotes or toddlers or adults is technical terminology. Calling members of ethnic groups [fill in your own slur here] is just insulting.
3) "We believe that any decision that's made should be left up to the woman, her family, and the physician,". That doesn't sound like "Kill all the babies lol", and seems to come back to the point I keep pushing, which is "let the woman choose".
4) The video has been edited to cut out her previous discussion on the "surrender topic", so I don't know what that is. If it's part of avoiding a Kermit Gosnell* situation, then I've obviously no problem with it.
5) As far as life support is concerned, she says "those situations where it is in a rural health care setting, the hospital is 45 minutes or an hour away, that's the closest trauma center or emergency room. You know there's just some logistical issues involved that we have some concerns about." That could be solved by allowing abortions to take place in hospitals rather than separate clinics, as her concern seems to be one of practicality and avoiding suing doctors who physically can't move the baby (if it's born and viable, it's a premature baby, right?) to a hospital in time.
Gonna be honest here, if you want less abortions, you need better post-birth care for women and families, increased education and availability of contraceptives, probably greater government support for people without much money or prospects. Maybe work on increasing paid maternity leave so that having a kid doesn't necessarily kill careers?
This is why I'm so incredulous about your posting of a Pagan Ritual Sacrifice video in the other thread. There are legitimate reasons abortions happen, they don't generally involve dark gods or other blood sacrifice.
I think most people who argue for abortion won't address what actually goes on in America.
Banning legal abortion won't stop women from being in ***** situations, it'll just remove an option for escaping those situations without risking death or injury at a back alley clinic**. Legal, regualted abortion is an imperfect solution but the alternatives are worse.
Possibly relevant quote: "No woman wants an abortion as she wants an ice cream cone or a Porsche. She wants an abortion as an animal caught in a trap wants to gnaw off its own leg." -Frederica Mathewes-Green
*For the record, Kermit Gosnell performed illegal abortions past the 24 week limit, killed newborns that were born in his clinic, and killed a patient through gross malpractice. **He's basically the image in my mind when I talk about "worse alternatives".
"We believe that any decision that's made should be left up to the woman, her family, and the physician,". That doesn't sound like "Kill all the babies lol", and seems to come back to the point I keep pushing, which is "let the woman choose".
Sure, the PP representative wants the woman to be able to choose a post-birth abortion. The woman was unable to discern the personhood of a baby that is accidentally born in an abortion clinic. I simply do not understand how anyone could support a woman's so-called "right to choose" to exterminate a born child, and that is what the PP representative was saying in that video. Women do not have the right to choose murder. I simply refuse to believe that.
Gonna be honest here, if you want less abortions, you need better post-birth care for women and families, increased education and availability of contraceptives, probably greater government support for people without much money or prospects. Maybe work on increasing paid maternity leave so that having a kid doesn't necessarily kill careers?
This is why I'm so incredulous about your posting of a Pagan Ritual Sacrifice video in the other thread. There are legitimate reasons abortions happen, they don't generally involve dark gods or other blood sacrifice.
I don't doubt that there are compelling reasons that cause women to desire an abortion. In ancient societies I also think that the reasons were equally if not more compelling than what women face today. If I was a pagan who worshiped a god or goddess of blood sacrifice I could be in desperate situation where I don't know if I am going to have enough food to last the year. What if there was a drought and I was starving for food? I could easily see pagans in ancient societies arguing that they have a so called "right" to a good harvest just like a woman in America has a so called "right" to choose. And the thing is the pagan's reason for participating in ritual blood sacrifice would be far more compelling than 99% of the reasons that women get abortions in America today. Women in America are not going starve and die if they don't have an abortion.
The problem with abortion is that at its very core women are demanding that others forfeit their lives for the liberty of women. It is exactly why ritual human sacrifice is evil. If veterans and war heroes are to be celebrated for giving up their lives so that others can have liberty, then abortion is shameful because it is the exact opposite of what good honorable people, like veterans and war heroes, do.
What would go a long way towards stopping abortion in America is if we were governed by the moral principle that he (or she) who lives by the sword shall die by the sword. If we were governed that way, then there would be way less abortions. Poverty is no excuse for abortion in America. The poorest Americans are among the top 10% of the richest people in the world.
Blinking Spirit already closed the "abortion is human sacrifice" thread. Do not revive it here.
Women in America are not going starve and die if they don't have an abortion.
How do you know this? What you are suggesting is that every American woman has the means to feed and raise a healthy child. This is blatantly untrue. What if that woman is barely able to feed herself? How will she manage to care for a young child as well? What if the child needs to go to hospital? From what I know of the American health system, getting sick is a good way to get into debt.
What if this woman has an ailment that means she will die if she carries on with the pregnancy? How is it fair that this woman give up her life for the foetus?
The way I see it is that a woman who can get pregnant has attachments. Emotional attachments to people she has met, people she has loved, etc. She has a definable past, and even a path that she intends to follow. This Foetus/unborn human has none of these things. No attachments(it won't be detected for another couple of weeks), no past.
The issue I have with "Pro-lifers" (I dislike these labels) is that most of them are happy to sacrifice other people's lives and well-being for their morality. Who am I to say what the woman down the road does? I have no right making her do something against her will because I disagree with it (Go on, bring up the "what if she murders someone" argument)
And one final point:
What if that woman is impregnated by rape?
Does she deserve to bring up the product of arguably the most terrifying night of her life? Does the child deserve to hear "well son, you see, I don't know who your father is because he raped me"? Does the child deserve to be abandoned to an orphanage because its mother can't bear to look at him because of the emotional trauma she suffered?
Or should she have the right to terminate the foetus before she and the unborn child have to suffer because of someone else's actions, and try to go back to a normal life?
Lets change the hypothetical brought up earlier a smidge.
Imagine a hypothetical treatment that requires a healthy person to be hooked up to an unhealthy person for several months so the healthy person's body can "scrub" something out of the unhealthy person. Hell lets even say it cures AIDs. Some person has an immunity to AIDs and by hooking up an AIDs patient to this person they can cure the AIDs. No harm comes to the person with the immunity other than having to stay pretty much in bed for the duration of the treatment (lets say 6 months). Now given this hypothetical scenerio, lets say the person with the immunity volunteers to be used to treat an AIDs patient. Now what if after 3 months this person decides they no longer want to participate and want to stop providing "treatment". Should this be allowed if it means the AIDs patient will continue to have AIDs? Does your answer change if stopping the treatment means immediate death for the AIDs patient? Why?
I see this as a right to body situation. Until the fetus has a high probability of surviving on it's own, I see no reason to consider it's rights over those of the mother. Once the fetus would have a high probability of survival though then I do believe the rights of the fetus need to be considered (if an abortion would leave you with a fetus that will live with major health issues for example).
For the OP's original question...
Who cares what the reason is? Gay, red hair, blue eyes.... unless there is a huge influx of gender selection (since that could have an impact on societies ability to sustain population) there is no reason to prevent this kind of selection. The hypothetical "attack on homosexual babies" idea would require a significant portion of couple actually choosing to abort their fetuses because of them being gay. If you havent noticed more and more people are perfectly happy to be around gay people and the people that are typically opposed to homosexuals are also strongly opposed to abortion. Seems like this is more of a conundrum for them than for liberals.
Lets change the hypothetical brought up earlier a smidge.
Imagine a hypothetical treatment that requires a healthy person to be hooked up to an unhealthy person for several months so the healthy person's body can "scrub" something out of the unhealthy person. Hell lets even say it cures AIDs. Some person has an immunity to AIDs and by hooking up an AIDs patient to this person they can cure the AIDs. No harm comes to the person with the immunity other than having to stay pretty much in bed for the duration of the treatment (lets say 6 months). Now given this hypothetical scenerio, lets say the person with the immunity volunteers to be used to treat an AIDs patient. Now what if after 3 months this person decides they no longer want to participate and want to stop providing "treatment". Should this be allowed if it means the AIDs patient will continue to have AIDs? Does your answer change if stopping the treatment means immediate death for the AIDs patient? Why?
So let me start by saying that this is far better than the violinist hypo. If the person volunteered (and presumably signed some sort of contract) and broke it, they are free to stop, but there would be legal repercussions. If the person signed a contract to do the treatment, then three months in chose to stop, AND it resulted in the death of someone else, there would be SERIOUS personal and criminal reprecussions, (possibly criminally negligent homocide) and jail time.
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The violinist hypothetical only really works for rape, and even then, it's pretty loose.
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"If you're Havengul problems I feel bad for you son, I got 99 problems and a Lich ain't one." - FSM
"In a world where money talks, silence is horrifying."
Ok, but lets say there is no legal contract. When two parties have sex they certainly dont sign any kind of contract having to do with pregnancy. So, this person just goes to his neighbor that has AIDs and feels bad and says "alright hook me up" no contract signed stating he would complete the treatment... Then the side effects become too much for him and he wants to stop.
Ok, but lets say there is no legal contract. When two parties have sex they certainly dont sign any kind of contract having to do with pregnancy. So, this person just goes to his neighbor that has AIDs and feels bad and says "alright hook me up" no contract signed stating he would complete the treatment... Then the side effects become too much for him and he wants to stop.
This is where the identification of personhood comes in, which is its own debate.
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"If you're Havengul problems I feel bad for you son, I got 99 problems and a Lich ain't one." - FSM
"In a world where money talks, silence is horrifying."
How do you know this? What you are suggesting is that every American woman has the means to feed and raise a healthy child. This is blatantly untrue. What if that woman is barely able to feed herself? How will she manage to care for a young child as well? What if the child needs to go to hospital? From what I know of the American health system, getting sick is a good way to get into debt.
I never said every woman in America has the means to feed and raise a healthy child. We both know that there is a solution for that problem that doesn't involve infanticide. There is adoption, and then a last resort is an orphanage or a foster home.
What if this woman has an ailment that means she will die if she carries on with the pregnancy? How is it fair that this woman give up her life for the fetus?
Now that is a different story. Both lives have value, and there is not a fair outcome either way in that scenario. I don't understand how this 1% scenario helps establish the entire concept of so called reproductive rights that allows a woman to take end an innocent life in order to pursue her career or to help with finances, etc, etc.
The issue I have with "Pro-lifers" (I dislike these labels) is that most of them are happy to sacrifice other people's lives and well-being for their morality. Who am I to say what the woman down the road does? I have no right making her do something against her will because I disagree with it (Go on, bring up the "what if she murders someone" argument)
At least you realize the counter-argument here that forces you to concede that morality is not a private affair where each individual gets to pick and choose the rules that make up his/her morality. A society at large has a say about what is acceptable moral conduct and what is not acceptable moral conduct. You realize murder is wrong, and I am not just enforcing "my morality" on others when I say that. There is no distinction between "my morality" and "your morality."
Does she deserve to bring up the product of arguably the most terrifying night of her life? Does the child deserve to hear "well son, you see, I don't know who your father is because he raped me"? Does the child deserve to be abandoned to an orphanage because its mother can't bear to look at him because of the emotional trauma she suffered?
No it is not fair, but abortion doesn't really solve the fairness issue it actually compounds it with an even greater injustice. There are some things in this world that are not fair, and many of those things are irreversibly unfair. A woman getting raped is one of those things. Once the damage is done it is done. Killing the child doesn't fix that.
Ok, but lets say there is no legal contract. When two parties have sex they certainly dont sign any kind of contract having to do with pregnancy. So, this pe0rson just goes to his neighbor that has AIDs and feels bad and says "alright hook me up" no contract signed stating he would complete the treatment... Then the side effects become too much for him and he wants to stop.
I'd argue the contract represents knowledge of conequences., but sure.
Without a contract, same thing as if you started giving treatment to someone who got hit by a car would likely apply - if you stop, you're still liable for the damage. So yeah, that applying to abortion would be fine.
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When we examine other human rights violations in the history of the west a common trend is that we attempt to dehumanize the victim. During the time of slavery, African-Americans were dehumanized through the use of language.
I don't think you want to talk about "dehumanization" and "slavery." The Pro-Life position advocates exactly for that by insisting that a woman who has had sex does not deserve the same rights we offer everyone and that we not only can but have to enslave her for the sake of a third party.
Ok, but lets say there is no legal contract. When two parties have sex they certainly dont sign any kind of contract having to do with pregnancy. So, this pe0rson just goes to his neighbor that has AIDs and feels bad and says "alright hook me up" no contract signed stating he would complete the treatment... Then the side effects become too much for him and he wants to stop.
I'd argue the contract represents knowledge of conequences., but sure.
Without a contract, same thing as if you started giving treatment to someone who got hit by a car would likely apply - if you stop, you're still liable for the damage. So yeah, that applying to abortion would be fine.
I dont think that's true at all... If someone is hit by a car and I begin CPR I am not required to continue to do so. I can become exhausted, are you suggesting that I should become liable for trying to save someone's life but then getting too tired to continue?
If you try to help to the best of your ability, that's one matter. But if you begin to administer CPR and then stop because you don't want to anymore, that wouldn't be covered under any good Samaritan law. That would be negligence at best.
To get technical, once you begin assisting someone you DO owe them a duty; you can't just stop without exposure to liability. Laws protect you as long as you do your best to fulfill that duty, but if you stop, its on you.
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If you try to help to the best of your ability, that's one matter. But if you begin to administer CPR and then stop because you don't want to anymore, that wouldn't be covered under any good Samaritan law. That would be negligence at best.
To get technical, once you begin assisting someone you DO owe them a duty; you can't just stop without exposure to liability. Laws protect you as long as you do your best to fulfill that duty, but if you stop, its on you.
Based on that it's in my best interest to not help people. I am not ever required by law to begin administering CPR (even though I have been trained several times), so simply by starting to help I open up the possibility of having legal action taken against me. Seems like a stupid law to me.
More on topic... Having sex does not always result in pregnancy, in fact for many people they believe that sex will not because of being on birth control. Are you of the opinion that's it's too bad for those people that get pregnant because "they knew the risks?" I would say the birth control producers are more at fault in this case than the women would be.
That seems absurdly far-fetched, and probably reflects a pretty poor understanding of genetics.
This argument to me I say is not quite equivalent. First society as whole generally accepts people have a right to life and liberty. The dependent person has a right to life. The provider has the right to liberty. I feel these statements are fairly self evident. However, in the case of the violinist the situation is unexpected and is forced upon the provider. In the case of pregnancy it is usually the result of consensual sex. The risks should be well known to those who do have sex and one is pregnancy. To have sex consensual is to consent to the risks. Further pregnancy is not as debilitating as this analogy would have it to be. A pregnant woman is still able to move and perform every day activities except at the very end of the pregnancy.
I feel a better way to explain the situation is a ER doctor/surgeon who has a patient in critical condition. If the patient is given proper care full recovery is assured. He must care for patient continually or else the patient will die without his care. Obviously, this could be inconvenience to the surgeon if he had other plans during the term of treatment for the patient. Does the inconvenience give the surgeon the right to let the patient die? Additionally, one does not normally become a doctor/surgeon against their own will. He consented to his position and is well aware that he may have to deal with inconvenient situations such as always being on call for emergency situations. Its not perfect, but I feel its better than violinist. The main issues I see that a doctor usually has some form financial compensation while a mother may not. However, the doctor still has obligations. For consensual sex the mother consented to potential inconveniences it may lead too. Even if she use protection and birth-control the potential still exists and it was their choice to roll the dice.
Really what abortion debate comes down to is the conflict between the right to life and the right to liberty. People have died to protect liberty, but people have also died to protect life. Clearly, people are willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for both rights. Yet, clearly we do see exceptions to both these rights protection under law. People's right to do as they please is far more restricted under law than their right to live. There are quite a few laws that restrict people from performing certain activities. However there are fewer exceptions the make the killing or letting other individuals die legal. I feel that does show that society does seem to value a life more than choice alone.
The abortion issue is not likely to ever reach a consensus, but my view that life is more valuable than liberty alone. For without life one can not have liberty.
The idea of selective abortion actual brings up a problem. If we take fetus/embryo's DNA and examine it for features like hair color, eyes color, height, weight, sex, and any other feature of human make up, and decided to abort it based on that information. Is to treat life that fulfills the decided criteria superior to that which does not.
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But thats silly. Your hypo makes it seem like someone walks into sex not knowing the possible results. Maybe if you had signed up for a medical study and they chose you randomly to be hooked up to the violinist, it'd make more sense. At least TRY to show some agency on the part of the parents. Either way, the question then would be 1) what is morally right, considering you knew full well that you could be responsible for the life of the violinist, and 2) what should be legally right, considering your knowledge and actions
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I agree that there would definitely be a schism, but I don't think it would be nearly so neat and tidy as you outlined. Some in the LGBT community are pro-choice even if we'd argue against specific reasons for making that choice. Some heterosexual people are pro-choice but would not choose to abort a LGB fetus. Certainly many would, not all parents are okay with having an LGB child, but the number of parents who are open to it increases all the time.
As a somewhat related anecdote, my best friends had their first child seven years ago. Very early on, he was diagnosed with autism, as he developed, they began to realize that his autism was severe and that was going to present a whole array of challenges they were unsure they wanted to deal with. They had many instances where they admitted to me how hard it was. But when I asked them in the past couple years if they'd change anything, they told me they wouldn't because they loved their son, even the aspects of him they hadn't planned on. That's a sentiment I've heard a number of times from parents whose children were different than the expected default. So I don't believe LGB would be exterminated from humanity through selective abortions. By the time such a hypothetical technology existed, LGBT people will be much more normalized (well, we hope, anyway) and I think opening the door to our eradication would lead to a very bitter battle that I don't believe eugenics would win.
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And if one does not have liberty, one may as well not be alive.
The violinist is actually an often apt analogy; people often do their best not to get pregnant and have a mishap. By your argument, if I attempted to avoid pregnancy, shouldn't I be able to abort?
And someone does *not* have to consent to the risk of pregnancy. They can, after all, use protection - if I have clearly not consented, why must I* wear the pregnancy?
Further, if you believe life starts at the moment of conception, planned abortion is the *least* of your problems vis a vis protecting life.
There is a plague which terrorises us all - and has killed more than you can imagine. I would estimate that it killed about a thousand times as many people during the twentieth century as the second world war. Or, to put it another way, 8 times as much as the next nearest cause of death in the 20th century, where the next nearest cause of death is "The sum total of every damn thing that ever killed anyone who was actually born"
I mean, hot damn, people - this is a medical emergency that makes HIV look like a cut knee. (HIV has killed one 4000th of the number of people this has killed). about 25 percent of all pregnancies end naturally in no birth. And prior to that, a large percentage (60 seems to be commonly quoted) of fertilised eggs fail to implant successfully in the uterine wall and the mother doesn't even know she was pregnant at all. That amounts to some six or seven "dead people" for every person currently living.
But you're not upset by this statistic, because it *doesn't make a lick of sense* to claim that a fertilised egg which fails to implant was a human being.
* Well, the woman, obviously.
You would have to shun all genetics as a theory easily disposed of to truly believe this. If you can do that than I admire your tenacity in your completely ignorant trolling statement/belief. You might as well say you don't believe that gay people are born homosexual instead of tip toe-ing around.
TBH I think this whole topic is a big troll.
Accusing someone of trolling is flaming.
As far as I'm concerned there's a gray area where, if we would recognize the fetus as being human, it should be considered human. A zygote is not recognizable as a human. A blastocyst is not recognizable as a human. Very early stage embryos are indistinguishable from embryos of other mammals. At some point it becomes clearly recognizable as human, and at that point I feel it should not be aborted. So I support the right to early-term abortions, but not late-term abortions.
Just learned something new. Hm.
I think most people who argue for abortion won't address what actually goes on in America. For example we have people talking about zygotes and blobs of cells when a fetus has a heartbeat at 3 weeks. The fetuses that are getting aborted have their own unique set of DNA. They have their own blood type. They have their own heartbeat. Limbs are developing at 5 weeks, and brain waves are detectable at 6 weeks.
When we examine other human rights violations in the history of the west a common trend is that we attempt to dehumanize the victim. During the time of slavery, African-Americans were dehumanized through the use of language. During the Holocaust the same thing happened. Jews were dehumanized and seen as a lesser evolved species than the Arian race that Hitler was attempting to perfect through eugenics. And we see the same thing with abortion. The primary means we go about doing this is calling the person a "fetus." To push the point further we refer to people with heartbeats, brainwaves, unique human DNA, hands, toes, ears, and a nose as "parasites" or "blobs of tissue."
This is the position of the largest abortion provider in America:
Planned Parenthood is not just aborting zygotes or blastocysts. They are killing real people in the womb and are trying to expand those rights to do so outside of the womb.
1) Godwins Law. Nice job.
2) Calling humans in diffrent stages of development fetuses or zygotes or toddlers or adults is technical terminology. Calling members of ethnic groups [fill in your own slur here] is just insulting.
3) "We believe that any decision that's made should be left up to the woman, her family, and the physician,". That doesn't sound like "Kill all the babies lol", and seems to come back to the point I keep pushing, which is "let the woman choose".
4) The video has been edited to cut out her previous discussion on the "surrender topic", so I don't know what that is. If it's part of avoiding a Kermit Gosnell* situation, then I've obviously no problem with it.
5) As far as life support is concerned, she says "those situations where it is in a rural health care setting, the hospital is 45 minutes or an hour away, that's the closest trauma center or emergency room. You know there's just some logistical issues involved that we have some concerns about." That could be solved by allowing abortions to take place in hospitals rather than separate clinics, as her concern seems to be one of practicality and avoiding suing doctors who physically can't move the baby (if it's born and viable, it's a premature baby, right?) to a hospital in time.
Gonna be honest here, if you want less abortions, you need better post-birth care for women and families, increased education and availability of contraceptives, probably greater government support for people without much money or prospects. Maybe work on increasing paid maternity leave so that having a kid doesn't necessarily kill careers?
This is why I'm so incredulous about your posting of a Pagan Ritual Sacrifice video in the other thread. There are legitimate reasons abortions happen, they don't generally involve dark gods or other blood sacrifice.
Banning legal abortion won't stop women from being in ***** situations, it'll just remove an option for escaping those situations without risking death or injury at a back alley clinic**. Legal, regualted abortion is an imperfect solution but the alternatives are worse.
Possibly relevant quote: "No woman wants an abortion as she wants an ice cream cone or a Porsche. She wants an abortion as an animal caught in a trap wants to gnaw off its own leg." -Frederica Mathewes-Green
*For the record, Kermit Gosnell performed illegal abortions past the 24 week limit, killed newborns that were born in his clinic, and killed a patient through gross malpractice. **He's basically the image in my mind when I talk about "worse alternatives".
Art is life itself.
Sure, the PP representative wants the woman to be able to choose a post-birth abortion. The woman was unable to discern the personhood of a baby that is accidentally born in an abortion clinic. I simply do not understand how anyone could support a woman's so-called "right to choose" to exterminate a born child, and that is what the PP representative was saying in that video. Women do not have the right to choose murder. I simply refuse to believe that.
I don't doubt that there are compelling reasons that cause women to desire an abortion. In ancient societies I also think that the reasons were equally if not more compelling than what women face today. If I was a pagan who worshiped a god or goddess of blood sacrifice I could be in desperate situation where I don't know if I am going to have enough food to last the year. What if there was a drought and I was starving for food? I could easily see pagans in ancient societies arguing that they have a so called "right" to a good harvest just like a woman in America has a so called "right" to choose. And the thing is the pagan's reason for participating in ritual blood sacrifice would be far more compelling than 99% of the reasons that women get abortions in America today. Women in America are not going starve and die if they don't have an abortion.
The problem with abortion is that at its very core women are demanding that others forfeit their lives for the liberty of women. It is exactly why ritual human sacrifice is evil. If veterans and war heroes are to be celebrated for giving up their lives so that others can have liberty, then abortion is shameful because it is the exact opposite of what good honorable people, like veterans and war heroes, do.
What would go a long way towards stopping abortion in America is if we were governed by the moral principle that he (or she) who lives by the sword shall die by the sword. If we were governed that way, then there would be way less abortions. Poverty is no excuse for abortion in America. The poorest Americans are among the top 10% of the richest people in the world.
Blinking Spirit already closed the "abortion is human sacrifice" thread. Do not revive it here.
Art is life itself.
How do you know this? What you are suggesting is that every American woman has the means to feed and raise a healthy child. This is blatantly untrue. What if that woman is barely able to feed herself? How will she manage to care for a young child as well? What if the child needs to go to hospital? From what I know of the American health system, getting sick is a good way to get into debt.
What if this woman has an ailment that means she will die if she carries on with the pregnancy? How is it fair that this woman give up her life for the foetus?
The way I see it is that a woman who can get pregnant has attachments. Emotional attachments to people she has met, people she has loved, etc. She has a definable past, and even a path that she intends to follow. This Foetus/unborn human has none of these things. No attachments(it won't be detected for another couple of weeks), no past.
The issue I have with "Pro-lifers" (I dislike these labels) is that most of them are happy to sacrifice other people's lives and well-being for their morality. Who am I to say what the woman down the road does? I have no right making her do something against her will because I disagree with it (Go on, bring up the "what if she murders someone" argument)
And one final point:
What if that woman is impregnated by rape?
Does she deserve to bring up the product of arguably the most terrifying night of her life? Does the child deserve to hear "well son, you see, I don't know who your father is because he raped me"? Does the child deserve to be abandoned to an orphanage because its mother can't bear to look at him because of the emotional trauma she suffered?
Or should she have the right to terminate the foetus before she and the unborn child have to suffer because of someone else's actions, and try to go back to a normal life?
Imagine a hypothetical treatment that requires a healthy person to be hooked up to an unhealthy person for several months so the healthy person's body can "scrub" something out of the unhealthy person. Hell lets even say it cures AIDs. Some person has an immunity to AIDs and by hooking up an AIDs patient to this person they can cure the AIDs. No harm comes to the person with the immunity other than having to stay pretty much in bed for the duration of the treatment (lets say 6 months). Now given this hypothetical scenerio, lets say the person with the immunity volunteers to be used to treat an AIDs patient. Now what if after 3 months this person decides they no longer want to participate and want to stop providing "treatment". Should this be allowed if it means the AIDs patient will continue to have AIDs? Does your answer change if stopping the treatment means immediate death for the AIDs patient? Why?
I see this as a right to body situation. Until the fetus has a high probability of surviving on it's own, I see no reason to consider it's rights over those of the mother. Once the fetus would have a high probability of survival though then I do believe the rights of the fetus need to be considered (if an abortion would leave you with a fetus that will live with major health issues for example).
For the OP's original question...
Who cares what the reason is? Gay, red hair, blue eyes.... unless there is a huge influx of gender selection (since that could have an impact on societies ability to sustain population) there is no reason to prevent this kind of selection. The hypothetical "attack on homosexual babies" idea would require a significant portion of couple actually choosing to abort their fetuses because of them being gay. If you havent noticed more and more people are perfectly happy to be around gay people and the people that are typically opposed to homosexuals are also strongly opposed to abortion. Seems like this is more of a conundrum for them than for liberals.
So let me start by saying that this is far better than the violinist hypo. If the person volunteered (and presumably signed some sort of contract) and broke it, they are free to stop, but there would be legal repercussions. If the person signed a contract to do the treatment, then three months in chose to stop, AND it resulted in the death of someone else, there would be SERIOUS personal and criminal reprecussions, (possibly criminally negligent homocide) and jail time.
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This is where the identification of personhood comes in, which is its own debate.
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I never said every woman in America has the means to feed and raise a healthy child. We both know that there is a solution for that problem that doesn't involve infanticide. There is adoption, and then a last resort is an orphanage or a foster home.
Now that is a different story. Both lives have value, and there is not a fair outcome either way in that scenario. I don't understand how this 1% scenario helps establish the entire concept of so called reproductive rights that allows a woman to take end an innocent life in order to pursue her career or to help with finances, etc, etc.
At least you realize the counter-argument here that forces you to concede that morality is not a private affair where each individual gets to pick and choose the rules that make up his/her morality. A society at large has a say about what is acceptable moral conduct and what is not acceptable moral conduct. You realize murder is wrong, and I am not just enforcing "my morality" on others when I say that. There is no distinction between "my morality" and "your morality."
No it is not fair, but abortion doesn't really solve the fairness issue it actually compounds it with an even greater injustice. There are some things in this world that are not fair, and many of those things are irreversibly unfair. A woman getting raped is one of those things. Once the damage is done it is done. Killing the child doesn't fix that.
I'd argue the contract represents knowledge of conequences., but sure.
Without a contract, same thing as if you started giving treatment to someone who got hit by a car would likely apply - if you stop, you're still liable for the damage. So yeah, that applying to abortion would be fine.
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I dont think that's true at all... If someone is hit by a car and I begin CPR I am not required to continue to do so. I can become exhausted, are you suggesting that I should become liable for trying to save someone's life but then getting too tired to continue?
To get technical, once you begin assisting someone you DO owe them a duty; you can't just stop without exposure to liability. Laws protect you as long as you do your best to fulfill that duty, but if you stop, its on you.
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Based on that it's in my best interest to not help people. I am not ever required by law to begin administering CPR (even though I have been trained several times), so simply by starting to help I open up the possibility of having legal action taken against me. Seems like a stupid law to me.
More on topic... Having sex does not always result in pregnancy, in fact for many people they believe that sex will not because of being on birth control. Are you of the opinion that's it's too bad for those people that get pregnant because "they knew the risks?" I would say the birth control producers are more at fault in this case than the women would be.