I think I answered this before. For the sake of having a practical dividing line, I define any person that is actually their own person as independant and anyone that isn't as dependant. Killing the homeless or whatever is killing independant people, and violates their autonomy. A pregnant woman choosing to terminate is killing a dependant person, and preserves her autonomy.
You're missing my question. Assume that a fetus is equal to any other person. Not your own definition. Im trying to isolate the two parts of the abortion issue. Would you concede that,assuming a fetus is a person, killing it would be the greater moral wrong then?
If not, then what about the retarded/unaffordable child? Can they be killed?
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As a final note, even this example of yours fails to do what I asked; sex directly causes the existence of a pregnancy, while it only incidentally causes a child's kidney failure.
That's special pleading. Other people already tried to say sex "incidentally" created the child, and you didn't accept that reasoning. I reject the same reasoning from you.
Not at all, you're falsely equating the two. Sex causes pregnancy. This is a medical fact. Sex does not cause kidney failure in the child.
And, if you can, please answer my question as well
Edit: sorry for all the edits, I'm replying on the fly. Think of it like this. I got pregnant, what caused it? Vs. My kidney failed, what caused it? There is such a vast degree of separation in the latter that your claim is almost nonsensical.
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Going to start by stating my position:
I believe that late term abortion is wrong, and that the legal limit in the US should earlier. However, I am not against extremely short-term abortions(such as "the morning after pills" and even abortions that are done within a month or so of the pregnancy). I believe that these are especially necessary in the case of rape. A woman should not have to have children a traumatic experience extended for 9 months, and would almost never be able to properly raise the child. However, I feel that the only reason for an abortion beyond a few months is for medical reasons. If the safety of the mother is at risk then abortion as a medical procedure to save her life is clearly okay. Removal of miscarriages should not be considered abortion.
Beyond that, I am unsure of the reasoning behind abortion. A women has the right to choose- when she had sex, was that not a choice(in the case of rape, it obviously was not. However, I do not believe that I have the right to tell another person what to believe. Late-term abortions are murder, which is one thing, but while I may believe that an earlier abortion is wrong, I don't have the right to impose belief on others. I would certainly never recommend an abortion to a friend or family member, and would in act try to talk them out of it, but if they make the decision to do so, that is not my business.
Why not?
Isn't that what legislation on social issues is about? I mean, the majority imposes its beliefs on the minority in this country every day (and many times, the minority imposes its moral beliefs on the majority). Why does abortion seem to be a special case? Would "I believe slavery is wrong, but I don't think I can tell other people to believe that" be an okay position to take? Or, instead, shouldn't you desire to make your moral concern the majority?
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Not at all, you're falsely equating the two. Sex causes pregnancy. This is a medical fact. Sex does not cause kidney failure in the child.
Edit: sorry for all the edits, I'm replying on the fly. Think of it like this. I got pregnant, what caused it? Vs. My kidney failed, what caused it? There is such a vast degree of separation in the latter that your claim is almost nonsensical.
Pregnancy: fertilization, implantation, both of which are multi step processes where one event leads to another. Kidney failure: during that process, genetic recombination happened, which gave the child a genetic disorder. But I can see that this isn't working, so I'll drop it. At least (I hope) you have a better idea where I am coming from.
So let me ask simply: assuming a fetus is a person, and therefore ending its life is some kind of homicide, when ,if ever, is it justifies to you?
It's tough for me to answer a question that is so loaded. It would be like me asking "assuming people have the right to their bodies, and therefore forced pregnancy is slavery, when, if ever, is it justified?"
I'll try anyway. You are justified in defending yourself against an invader that is doing you harm against your will. Therefore, if the mother is pregnant and doesn't want the child, removing it (which you insist is murder, fine) is justified.
So let me ask simply: assuming a fetus is a person, and therefore ending its life is some kind of homicide, when ,if ever, is it justifies to you?
This is where we apparently cannot agree. Ending a life is not always homicide. I see an abortion as an eviction that happens to result in a fetus (person if you insist) ending up in unlivable conditions, I do not see it as shooting it in the head. It is not the mother's or doctors fault that the fetus cannot survive outside the womb.
Lets try a new angle...
Lets imagine a world where it's possible to remove a fetus from a womb and put it in an artificial womb that will keep it alive but it would not develop any more than it has. It would be a zygote until the machine is turned off. Would you still see this as something that should be criminal? Nothing is dying here.
Zaph, Im seeing a real problem here with the refusal to acknowledge a person's actions leading to pregnancy. See pretty much all my posts on this topic. Are you intentionally excluding this fact in all of these analogies? If so, why?
Even if a person takes multiple specific actions to prevent pregnancy, unwanted pregnancies can happen.
-Condoms can break
-The pill can fail
-Every other method of contraception is less failsafe than the condom/pills
On top of that, even if the person is 100% abstinent, they can be raped.
Not that it's any of your business the circumstances by which someone ends up with an unwanted pregnancy. No one should be forced to endure the risks, pain, and stresses of pregnancy against their will.
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Why not?
Isn't that what legislation on social issues is about? I mean, the majority imposes its beliefs on the minority in this country every day (and many times, the minority imposes its moral beliefs on the majority). Why does abortion seem to be a special case? Would "I believe slavery is wrong, but I don't think I can tell other people to believe that" be an okay position to take? Or, instead, shouldn't you desire to make your moral concern the majority?
Slavery is a completely different case, because the people who are enslaved want to be free. A person who owns slaves is forcing their control over others, they should not be able to do so. Free will and the capability of making decisions is the key here. A fetus is not capable of making decisions, which makes this comparison not accurate. I agree that, if we could somehow prove that the point t which a fetus is a person, then abortion past that point is murder, and should be illegal. However, I also believe that the at which a fetus becomes a human is largely a religious perspective. I feel that it is well before current limits, but I also think that this can be viewed as a religious belief, in which case I do not the right to force people to agree with me. If there was a vote to extend or to decrease the time limit for abortion, I would be voting to decrease it. However, I do feel that there are valid reasons for the abortion argument. I feel that rape is the main reason for abortion, but there are pills that can be taken within even several days that can prevent pregnancy. I am ABSOLUTELY against late-term abortions, and my definition of late-term is well before most consider it.
The primary reason that I don't feel I should be able to impose my belief on others in case is that I am not a women. I feel that, as a man, I can't fully understand some of arguments in favor of abortion and so cannot judge. However, I also think that if there is sufficient reason to abort(as rape), then that can and should be such sooner than many consider okay.
Even if a person takes multiple specific actions to prevent pregnancy, unwanted pregnancies can happen.
-Condoms can break
-The pill can fail
-Every other method of contraception is less failsafe than the condom/pills
On top of that, even if the person is 100% abstinent, they can be raped.
Not that it's any of your business the circumstances by which someone ends up with an unwanted pregnancy. No one should be forced to endure the risks, pain, and stresses of pregnancy against their will.
Apart from rape, a person is ALWAYS responsible for pregnancy, wanted or otherwise. If I pressed a button that I KNEW had a 1% chance to kill someone, would I be responsible for that death if it occurred? Intent has nothing to do with responsibility. Also, again, I am not currently discussing rape. In fact, I haven't even given my opinion on abortion at all, I'm just asking questions that people apparently can't answer.
I will point out though, that no one should be forced to endure the pain and stresses of being murdered against their will.
This is where we apparently cannot agree. Ending a life is not always homicide. I see an abortion as an eviction that happens to result in a fetus (person if you insist) ending up in unlivable conditions, I do not see it as shooting it in the head. It is not the mother's or doctors fault that the fetus cannot survive outside the womb.
I have to ask now - are you even reading what I'm typing, or are you just posting whatever you want? I am asking you - SEPERATE FROM YOUR OWN OPINION ON PERSONHOOD IN PREGNANCY - if, given the assumption that 1) a fetus is a person and 2) that as a person, the fetus has the same rights, privileges, and status as any other person, and 3) the termination of which, by definition would be homocide of some sort (defined as the act of killing a person), would that homocide ever be the moral imperative? If so, how do you differentiate that from the comparable homocide of an already-born child?
Please, keep your analogies about eviction or whatever out of answering that question. If you think that a fetus dies separately from the abortion procedure, you need to do some basic research before continuing this discussion. I'm not asking about your stance on abortion or how you feel about fetuses. Im asking you to tell me if you can justify homocide. AFTER we establish a moral baseline for what would be right/wrong given those assumptions, we can discuss personhood/ect.
Lets imagine a world where it's possible to remove a fetus from a womb and put it in an artificial womb that will keep it alive but it would not develop any more than it has. It would be a zygote until the machine is turned off. Would you still see this as something that should be criminal? Nothing is dying here.
While not murder, this concept is pretty horrifying to me.
Pregnancy: fertilization, implantation, both of which are multi step processes where one event leads to another. Kidney failure: during that process, genetic recombination happened, which gave the child a genetic disorder. But I can see that this isn't working, so I'll drop it. At least (I hope) you have a better idea where I am coming from.
If youre going to get that technical on pregnancy, don't forget the other steps before the kidney failure occurs - every day the child eats, moves, drinks things, is exposed to various energies, ect... So add about 5000-10000 more steps to the Kidney failure bit. You CAN'T be seriously equating the two - your argument is so far removed from a reasonable chain of causation that it would be laughed out of a courtroom.
It's tough for me to answer a question that is so loaded. It would be like me asking "assuming people have the right to their bodies, and therefore forced pregnancy is slavery, when, if ever, is it justified?"
I'll try anyway. You are justified in defending yourself against an invader that is doing you harm against your will. Therefore, if the mother is pregnant and doesn't want the child, removing it (which you insist is murder, fine) is justified.
No more loaded than your hypos that included both an assumption on personhood and absolution of the parents from any responsibility. More to the point, I'm simply trying to address one of the two key issues in the abortion debate. I will, one last time, try to explain what I'm going for here:
First, I am not, and have not intended in any way through asking you these questions, attempted to discuss either of our position on the issue of abortion as a whole.
I believe that abortion can be distinctly divided into two questions: 1) Is a fetus become a person, and when does it gain all the protections and rights associated with personhood and 2) At any given time during a pregnancy, assuming the answer to 1, would an abortion be just.
Since 1 is the more contentious of the two questions, I opted to begin with 2. In addition, if the answer to 1 is "not a person", the answer to 2 is almost assuredly "yes" (if you don't think so, I'd love to hear why), so I simply went with the last remaining option: If 1 is "is a person", then how do you answer 2?
Based on your answer, I'm not sure if you're still differentiating the personhood of a fetus, or if you're drawing a line somewhere else. If you can, please tell me what you mean by "invader".
So in your own words, what are the reasons women get abortions?
I don't think every single situation is the same, but I think we need to split each scenario into one of two different categories. The first category is the women, who have abortions, that genuinely believe that what they are doing is no different than removing a wart, an appendix, or tonsils. The second category is the women who know that they are killing something that has its own unique human DNA, heartbeat, brain, brainwaves, dreams, eyes, ears, nose, mouth, hands, feet, arms, legs, bones, spine, etc. I think there are many women who fall in the 1st category that would not follow through with an abortion if they possessed the knowledge of the women in the second category.
I would suspect if you asked women who defend abortion and have had abortions you'd get answers that are related to finance and career. I think you could take every possible reason that women choose to have abortions and you could boil it down to one overarching reason, which is control. Abortion is about the fear of losing control of one's own life. Many women are terrified at the prospect that a pregnancy might cause them to lose control of their futures. Many women are also terrified at the prospect of motherhood because it is an enormous responsibility.
I think what is often overlooked is that these fears are not unique for women who have abortions. I think we have a major problem in America and in the west that is not unique to the political left or the political right. We do not love children. In the west we now view children as a curse rather than a blessing. We view children as a barrier to career and self-autonomy in our lives. We view children as an inconvenient by-product of sex. The proof of this reality can be seen in the statistics of population growth. If America and Europe did not have immigration, then we would soon have a population crisis because we simply do not have enough natural born children to sustain the previous generation.
If a society is infatuated with sex, but thinks children are a curse, then there will be lots of unwanted pregnancies. It is not difficult to figure that out. This is where we have to split women into the two categories. It is a no-brainer to remove an appendix, and if abortion is nothing more than that, then it is also a no-brainer. The woman in the first category has been deceived and will seriously regret what she has done when she realizes that she killed her own child.
The woman in the second category is much different. She is a control freak that values control over her own life more than the lives of others, and she is willing to kill in order to maintain complete control and self-autonomy in her life. She will shed the blood of the innocent without blinking an eye because her life is that much more important than the lives of others. She is a murderer at heart.
If a landlord evicts someone and they die from exposure did the landlord "kill" that person?
If I walk past a guy that is choking and I dont give him the Heimlich am I killing him?
Am I killing someone by not donating my kidneys?
Is it murder to not be an organ donor?
It's not the pregnant woman's fault that the fetus cannot survive outside the womb. It's just a fact of nature. It seems to me that it should be illegal to force someone to provide shelter and nourishment to someone that is undesired.
The problem with this analogy is that to evict a child is to cause it to be born. Eviction is not a good analogy for abortion. Abortion is more like the local police kicks the door down puts a bullet in your skull, and then carries you out of the house in a body bag. In real life that is clearly murder.
The other problem with these analogies is that abortion is not murder by omission it is murder by commission. If the child is left alone it will most likely be born and live. A better analogy for abortion is if all the rich people in our society banded together loaded up with ammo and went on a shooting spree in neighborhoods and apartment complexes that offer subsidized government housing.
Basically, the point is that the inconvenience that you're asking about is, by definition in this case, caused by the person trying to avoid it.
And I think that is irrelevant.
Let me ask this way: if a fetus is a person, is abortion murder to you? (Assume that we've somehow proven that a fetus is a person)
Since you don't like my analogies, let's use an analogy.
A man and woman decide that they want a child. They have sex willingly knowing that they may have children. A child is conceived and is born. They raise the child. The child has a rare genetic disorder and needs a kidney transplant. The father is a match. We are left with the following:
We've done away with the personhood issue; this is a person.
The child needs someone else's body in order to live.
The father willingly had sex knowing the consequences.
The inconvenience that we're asking about is, by definition, caused by the person trying to avoid it.
If he refuses to donate his kidney, is he a murderer? I don't think so, and I don't see any difference between the above situation and an abortion.
There is one major difference between the two. Abortion refers to an act of commission. In many abortions, for example, the child is dismembered in the womb. In other abortions the child has its skull punctured and then its brain is sucked out with a vacuum. If you recognize the personhood of the fetus at all, puncturing his/her skull and vacuuming his/her brain out is clearly murder.
The father, who refuses to give his kidney to his son, refuses to save his son's life. He could prevent his son's death, at a great cost, but he refuses to. We don't call this murder because acts of omission that lead to someone's death or fail to prevent someone's death are not acts of commission like murder is. Abortion is very unlike your analogy because abortion is killing by commission. I think you would be hard pressed to find an analogy where killing by commission is not murder. Stand your ground is about the closest example I can think of, and that only applies in life threatening situations.
You aren't just asking her to not kill someone. You are insisting that she must give up her body in order to let another person live. That's a right no one has that you are giving to an unborn child.
You wouldn't insist that a person had to donate body parts because otherwise they would be murdering someone. Not even death row inmates can be forced to do that. Slave owners like Washington could forcibly remove a slave's teeth because he wanted new ones, so I think the comparison is more apt than you think it is.
Saying the mother has the so called right to control her own body doesn't actually solve the problem that someone has been given the right to control somebody else's body. The pro-life position simply says the mother cannot kill the child. The idea that the baby has any type of control is ludicrous. It is simply a passenger along for the ride for 9 months. The mother is the one in the driver's seat. The baby cannot give orders like a slave driver does. The baby cannot even talk. The baby can't tell the mother what it wants to eat. The baby can't tell the mother where it wants to go. All of these things are under the control of the mother. When we consider the balance of power that exists between a mother and her baby the balance of power is overwhelmingly in the favor of the mother. She just shouldn't be able to kill the baby.
Now lets flip the tables and consider the type of control that pro-choice gives a mother over her child. The mother already gets to choose where the baby goes and what the baby eats, and now she gets to control when it dies and how it dies. She gets to choose whether or not it will die by dismembering or by vacuuming its brains out. She can have it burned in acid or she can have its spinal cord snipped. To pretend that pro-life gives a baby unprecedented control over someone else's body is a lie. Babies are powerless passengers that are hanging on for dear life. They have no control over anybody or anything. Pro-choice is the position that gives someone unprecedented control over someone else's body. It gives women the type of control that history's worst tyrants and mass murderers could only dream of. A woman's so called right to control her own body is the actually the right to fully control two bodies. The so called rights that pro-choicers grant to women go far above and beyond the rights granted to babies by pro-lifers. This fact alone reveals that this "control over a person's body" argument is a facade that is hiding something else.
So tell me...what about the baby's right to control its own body? Isn't that being violated in a much more forceful way than the mother's so called right to control her body? And when is non-consensus ever interpreted as a license to kill?
[quote from="Wildfire393" url="http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/outside-magic/debate/540226-a-question-for-pro-choicers?comment=86"]
I have to ask now - are you even reading what I'm typing, or are you just posting whatever you want? I am asking you - SEPERATE FROM YOUR OWN OPINION ON PERSONHOOD IN PREGNANCY - if, given the assumption that 1) a fetus is a person and 2) that as a person, the fetus has the same rights, privileges, and status as any other person, and 3) the termination of which, by definition would be homocide of some sort (defined as the act of killing a person), would that homocide ever be the moral imperative? If so, how do you differentiate that from the comparable homocide of an already-born child?
Please, keep your analogies about eviction or whatever out of answering that question. If you think that a fetus dies separately from the abortion procedure, you need to do some basic research before continuing this discussion. I'm not asking about your stance on abortion or how you feel about fetuses. Im asking you to tell me if you can justify homocide. AFTER we establish a moral baseline for what would be right/wrong given those assumptions, we can discuss personhood/ect.
No. You are trying to force me to debate on your terms. You want me to make a bunch of concessions that I do not have to make so you can back me into a corner. The funny thing is you are still WRONG. Even if we say abortion is killing a person, sometimes killing people is perfectly justified and legal. For example if someone attacks me I can defend myself. I am not even talking about whether or not the fetus is a person. What I am telling you is in my opinion it does not matter. You could call a fetus the grand puba of personhood for all I care. This is a thing, person, whatever... that requires someone else's body to survive, in no other instance to we force people to give up their bodies against their will for anyone else.
I am sorry but I will not go down some road where you "prove" to me that if abortion is homocide, and homocide is never legal, then if a fetus is a person it must be illegal to abort it.
@Cloudman
The Earth cannot sustain continued population growth. It's not a plague to existence for people to elect to not have children. In fact it's a good thing. Sure the economy doesn't like it... but the economy wont matter much when there is no more food on the planet.
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DokuDokuH: I think the bigger problem here is you seem to view sex as some kind of legal social contract. It seems to me that in your mind every time a woman has sex she is signing a contract that says "I may become pregnant and I accept the risks and changes to my life and body that will occur do to this pregnancy, despite the risks I am still going to enjoy the next few minutes because it feels damn good". Having sex should not carry the same weight as putting an organ donor stamp on your license, or signing up to donate a kidney, having sex should not carry the same weight as adoption, becoming a surrogate, signing up to be a foster parent... etc etc... We make people go through a hell of a lot of legal hoops and paperwork for things a hell of a lot less trivial than pregnancy. Yet you want to hold the act of SEX to a higher standard than many legal contracts. That's just ridiculous.
Based on your answer, I'm not sure if you're still differentiating the personhood of a fetus, or if you're drawing a line somewhere else. If you can, please tell me what you mean by "invader".
I'm not differentiating the personhood of a fetus. It doesn't matter when the fetus becomes a person, because the "rights associated with personhood" do not include rights that Pro-Life advocates insist a fetus has. I can, for the sake of argument, grant that a zygote is a person deserving of all of the rights of personhood and my opinion will remain the same.
By "invader" I mean the noun form of "invade," "to enter and affect injuriously or destructively," "to enter as if to take possession."
I am sorry but I will not go down some road where you "prove" to me that if abortion is homocide, and homocide is never legal, then if a fetus is a person it must be illegal to abort it.
Holy hell, this is like pulling teeth. I'm not trying to prove anything right now, I'm asking you a question about what you believe in a given hypothetical. Would it make you feel better if I ask you to answer the same hypo, only assuming that the fetus ISNT a person? I didn't ask that because your answer seemed obvious, wheras you have yet to answer the other hypo. Can you really not separate your opinion on the topic from a hypothetical constrained to a single part of the issue?
I'm not proving that abortion is homicide OR that it is never legal, I am asking what YOU think should be legal, assuming that a fetus is a person and therefore by definition abortion would be homicide.
DokuDokuH: I think the bigger problem here is you seem to view sex as some kind of legal social contract...
First off, this isn't only about women, so don't discuss it as if it was. You can apply the same argument above to driving a car, hunting (or shooting for fun), or doing tons of other activities. But are you really going to deny that there is some sort of social duty that you owe when you engage in activities that involve human lives? Why does sex get the special exception to the duty we impose on drivers and others? This kind of outlook is incredibly irresponsible.
I'm not differentiating the personhood of a fetus. It doesn't matter when the fetus becomes a person, because the "rights associated with personhood" do not include rights that Pro-Life advocates insist a fetus has. I can, for the sake of argument, grant that a zygote is a person deserving of all of the rights of personhood and my opinion will remain the same.
By "invader" I mean the noun form of "invade," "to enter and affect injuriously or destructively," "to enter as if to take possession."
What rights are those? The only right I had assumed was in play was the right to life that we were weighing here.
As for invader - the reason I asked was because it was unclear if you meant physical, bodily invasion or not. If you DO mean that, would you apply the same standard to any other person that attempts to do you bodily harm?
Finally - do you draw a line anywhere? Does at any point the fetal homicide become immoral or unjustified (still assuming it is a person), or are you fine with things like partial birth abortions?
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The discussion section of this paper (page 11, not copy/pasting because the ocr is bad) supports my previous argument that a good way to lower the number of abortions is to provide greater financial and social support to pregnant women. Also, greater education on usage and effects of contraceptives was suggested.
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“Tell me who you walk with, and I'll tell you who you are.” Esmeralda Santiago Art is life itself.
What rights are those? The only right I had assumed was in play was the right to life that we were weighing here.
The right to bodily autonomy. It doesn't matter if you absolutely need that bone marrow to survive, we can't force anyone to give it up. Your right to live ends as soon as it intrudes on another's body.
As for invader - the reason I asked was because it was unclear if you meant physical, bodily invasion or not. If you DO mean that, would you apply the same standard to any other person that attempts to do you bodily harm?
Yes, physical, bodily invasion. Same thing goes for anyone that would attempt to do you harm.
Finally - do you draw a line anywhere? Does at any point the fetal homicide become immoral or unjustified (still assuming it is a person), or are you fine with things like partial birth abortions?
At no point does that right go away. All that changes is the likelihood that the fetus will survive removal.
First off, this isn't only about women, so don't discuss it as if it was.
Tell you what. We women will be ok with it not only being about us, when you men have accept the same risks/responsibilities in having sex that you insist women need to put up with. You know, the whole being forced to carry another organism inside, being forced to put your entire life on hold, being forced to downsize your career on account of this, and so on.
Oh wait. That's biologically impossible. So tell you what. Since we can't possibly force men to have these responsibilities, maybe we should just agree neither party should be forced to? Sounds fair doesn't it?
And that, guys, is why so many women think that anti-abortion activism is fundamentally sexist - you are making extra demands of women, demands that have historically been used to control and confine women, and then call us murderers when we object. And you wonder why women are pissed off about this, and you wonder why they aren't too interested in listening to what men have to say on the matter.
If you're of the opinion that any male opinion against abortion is sexist, is there even a point in discussing it with you?
What if instead, I just cite from the myraid of women against abortion? Would that be fine? Do their opinions, which are identical to the opinions of men against abortion, validate the men's opinions or not?
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Note - I stated that many women have a certain opinion. I didn't say I had such an opinion. However, given the fact that previous iterations of this debate were in fact loaded with sexist sentiments, you do have a burden to demonstrate that is not in fact present in your own motivations. You are correct in your implication that women with your views possess more credibility the you yourself do, because they do not have the aforementioned burden of proving they aren't sexist.
My own 2 cents worth is that abortion should exist as an option, but we should do everything we can to minimize the need for it. I personally feel my opinion aligns more or less with that of Blinking Spirit's. Even if the fetus is a "person", it is a person who is essentially enslaving the women it is inhabiting for it's sole benefit. We do not permit people to enslave others, even if they need to do so to live. Easy example - just because my Grandma needed extra help from an in-home nurse in order to stay alive in her last years, does not mean she was obligated that support, and it does not mean that support came for free. Had our family been unable to pay for it, or unwilling, she would indeed have died from that lacking. While such an action we could agree would be morally undesirable, we do not legally classify that as murder. And that's how I feel about abortions, they're morally undesirable, but legally should not be classified as murder, for the same reasons the situation with my Grandma would not have been.
I am sorry but I will not go down some road where you "prove" to me that if abortion is homocide, and homocide is never legal, then if a fetus is a person it must be illegal to abort it.
Holy hell, this is like pulling teeth. I'm not trying to prove anything right now, I'm asking you a question about what you believe in a given hypothetical. Would it make you feel better if I ask you to answer the same hypo, only assuming that the fetus ISNT a person? I didn't ask that because your answer seemed obvious, wheras you have yet to answer the other hypo. Can you really not separate your opinion on the topic from a hypothetical constrained to a single part of the issue?
I'm not proving that abortion is homicide OR that it is never legal, I am asking what YOU think should be legal, assuming that a fetus is a person and therefore by definition abortion would be homicide.
I disagree with your assertion that abortion is homicide even if we say a fetus is a person. Beyond that as I stated... there are times when it is perfectly legal for a person to cause another person to die. So sure if you want to call it legal homicide... go ahead.
DokuDokuH: I think the bigger problem here is you seem to view sex as some kind of legal social contract...
First off, this isn't only about women, so don't discuss it as if it was. You can apply the same argument above to driving a car, hunting (or shooting for fun), or doing tons of other activities. But are you really going to deny that there is some sort of social duty that you owe when you engage in activities that involve human lives? Why does sex get the special exception to the duty we impose on drivers and others? This kind of outlook is incredibly irresponsible.
Yes, it is only about women. Men can't get pregnant or have abortions. I dont see what you mean about driving... we do sign contracts for driving... we take classes and get a license. I dont get where you are going with gun ownership since owning a gun or shooting it for fun has nothing to do with killing people. Sex does not require special classes or licensing or contracts yet for both men and women it can lead to life ending or life altering consequences. Trying to prevent sex will go over as well as prohibition... so it seems to me the best option is to reduce the consequences.
Finally - do you draw a line anywhere? Does at any point the fetal homicide become immoral or unjustified (still assuming it is a person), or are you fine with things like partial birth abortions?
Personally I draw the line when a fetus would be viable outside the womb.
Note - I stated that many women have a certain opinion. I didn't say I had such an opinion. However, given the fact that previous iterations of this debate were in fact loaded with sexist sentiments, you do have a burden to demonstrate that is not in fact present in your own motivations. You are correct in your implication that women with your views possess more credibility the you yourself do, because they do not have the aforementioned burden of proving they aren't sexist.
Isn't giving one gender more credibility over the other sexist as well?
Honestly, I call BS on this line of reasoning. Anyone who makes the abortion debate one about controlling women or sexism is either disingenuous or misguided. The debate is, and always has been, about when a human life is recognized, and when we assign value to that life. And in that context, to claim that men somehow have less say than women because they are less physically involved is unfair, in my opinion.
I mean, would you say its fair for me to claim that until last year, women's opinions on the military were worthless since they didnt serve on the front lines?
EDIT: Upon later consideration, its insane that I have the burden of proving that I am not sexist. Nothing I have said or suggested has in any way been sexist, and my discussion of personal responsibility has not been specific to a gender, which I have gone WELL out of my way to make sure is clear. If you're suggesting that after that, you're going to open by accusing me of being sexist merely because I'm male, then... well that's a pretty disappointing thing to hear from someone active in the debate forum. NO ONE should be assumed a sexist against women because they are male, unless you think that making blanket, baseless assumptions about groups of people is the way we should conduct business here.
Fluffy - I'm not going to argue basic English with you. Since you are demonstrating a repeated inability to answer a simple hypothetical, (or is it a basic misunderstanding of the process of abortion?) or at least an inability to separate your own bias from a hypothetical, I'm just going to hang up my hat and call it a day with you. If you feel like actually answering the hypo, I'll be glad to continue.
Your hypothetical is a waste of time. Its a fusion of the tautological and begging the question. First because your asking him to just agree for the purpose of argument that killing a fetus counts as homicide which is, by definition, an illegal killing, and then asking when it should be legal. Its begging the question because of the assumption that its murder, but mostly just a tautology. "What if you agreed with all of my premises, would you agree with me then?"
This kind of argument will get you nowhere, very slowly apparently, and I'd advise you find another avenue and heres why:
Everyone agrees that murder is wrong, and yet, some people don't seem to think abortion is murder. As at result, instead of posing hypothetical that are, basically "But what if abortion was murder" the line of argument will need to go to personhood or something that would go after what the persons ideas of the category of a pregnancy and not, in any way, towards their conception of murder because their conception of murder is the same as yours.
As to whether or not the abortion debate is sexist or misogynistic, thats how it ends up working in the fields of groups actively engaged with the issue. Abortions are a 40 year low because we have access to better contraception, but the big organizations and politicians who are fighting against abortion, as a rule, do not advocate for interim measures reducing the need because the interim methods are considered immoral by their constituents. Can you imagine the little old church ladies giving cash to "Won't Anyone Think of the Children" or Senator old white guy if part of their platform is easy access to the pill, plan B and condoms?
But late stage abortions are killing babies with beating heart and stuff! Well, and anybody who doesn't know this should be happy about it I guess, but there are an incredibly small number of these things for 2 simple reasons. Primarily, women who want an abortion (and, I suppose I should ad, have the capacity to get one) have no incentive to wait. They are going to do it earlier rather than later. I don't know what the numbers are for last year, but the last time I got into one of these threads I linked something from Fox that broke down the stats for, like, 2011 or 2010 and it was 91% first trimester and 9% 2nd trimester. That apparently statistical blip is due to rounding since there were less than 100 3rd term trimester abortions that year. Other estimates in other years put it closer to 1000 which still puts it as less than 1% of all abortions. Not to mention that to get one of these you have to go to one of, what, four doctors in the entire country who are willing to risk being shot in the head at church to provide what is, in many cases, a lifesaving medical treatment. If the women getting 3rd trimester abortions didn't want to have a kid, why wait until the pregnancy is so far along?
So why focus on nasty stuff, not that I'm saying you are, but it needs to be addressed. Why is the idea that we're "killing babies" and committing homicide when the majority of abortion, the far far far majority, happens significantly earlier in the process?
Why are interim measures not being proposed?
Why do so many of these debates, and their proponents, particularly on a national scale focus on women keeping it in their pants but not men? Sandra Flukes media exposure comes to mind where people were asking her how many pills she needed, seemingly unaware that he pill doesnt work like an antacid and that you take it every day whether not sex is occuring.
Why is there so much misinformation in the abortion debate? Why do people in your camp claim that plan B is an abortion pill?
Ladylucks comments about the existing sexual sentiment is true and while I don't agree that you need to necessarily prove that you aren't operating under the paradigm she is describing, it can't hurt your case.
Your attempts to argue with Fluffy border on presuppositionalism though and you really gotta drop that
Slightly off topic, but it's apparently cheaper to give homeless homes than leave them. This makes me think that greater support from government or other social sources would actually solve most of your examples: there's no need to kill someone if they can be supported by other means.
Art is life itself.
If not, then what about the retarded/unaffordable child? Can they be killed?
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And, if you can, please answer my question as well
Edit: sorry for all the edits, I'm replying on the fly. Think of it like this. I got pregnant, what caused it? Vs. My kidney failed, what caused it? There is such a vast degree of separation in the latter that your claim is almost nonsensical.
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I believe that late term abortion is wrong, and that the legal limit in the US should earlier. However, I am not against extremely short-term abortions(such as "the morning after pills" and even abortions that are done within a month or so of the pregnancy). I believe that these are especially necessary in the case of rape. A woman should not have to have children a traumatic experience extended for 9 months, and would almost never be able to properly raise the child. However, I feel that the only reason for an abortion beyond a few months is for medical reasons. If the safety of the mother is at risk then abortion as a medical procedure to save her life is clearly okay. Removal of miscarriages should not be considered abortion.
Beyond that, I am unsure of the reasoning behind abortion. A women has the right to choose- when she had sex, was that not a choice(in the case of rape, it obviously was not. However, I do not believe that I have the right to tell another person what to believe. Late-term abortions are murder, which is one thing, but while I may believe that an earlier abortion is wrong, I don't have the right to impose belief on others. I would certainly never recommend an abortion to a friend or family member, and would in act try to talk them out of it, but if they make the decision to do so, that is not my business.
Why not?
Isn't that what legislation on social issues is about? I mean, the majority imposes its beliefs on the minority in this country every day (and many times, the minority imposes its moral beliefs on the majority). Why does abortion seem to be a special case? Would "I believe slavery is wrong, but I don't think I can tell other people to believe that" be an okay position to take? Or, instead, shouldn't you desire to make your moral concern the majority?
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I'll try anyway. You are justified in defending yourself against an invader that is doing you harm against your will. Therefore, if the mother is pregnant and doesn't want the child, removing it (which you insist is murder, fine) is justified.
This is where we apparently cannot agree. Ending a life is not always homicide. I see an abortion as an eviction that happens to result in a fetus (person if you insist) ending up in unlivable conditions, I do not see it as shooting it in the head. It is not the mother's or doctors fault that the fetus cannot survive outside the womb.
Lets try a new angle...
Lets imagine a world where it's possible to remove a fetus from a womb and put it in an artificial womb that will keep it alive but it would not develop any more than it has. It would be a zygote until the machine is turned off. Would you still see this as something that should be criminal? Nothing is dying here.
Even if a person takes multiple specific actions to prevent pregnancy, unwanted pregnancies can happen.
-Condoms can break
-The pill can fail
-Every other method of contraception is less failsafe than the condom/pills
On top of that, even if the person is 100% abstinent, they can be raped.
Not that it's any of your business the circumstances by which someone ends up with an unwanted pregnancy. No one should be forced to endure the risks, pain, and stresses of pregnancy against their will.
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Slavery is a completely different case, because the people who are enslaved want to be free. A person who owns slaves is forcing their control over others, they should not be able to do so. Free will and the capability of making decisions is the key here. A fetus is not capable of making decisions, which makes this comparison not accurate. I agree that, if we could somehow prove that the point t which a fetus is a person, then abortion past that point is murder, and should be illegal. However, I also believe that the at which a fetus becomes a human is largely a religious perspective. I feel that it is well before current limits, but I also think that this can be viewed as a religious belief, in which case I do not the right to force people to agree with me. If there was a vote to extend or to decrease the time limit for abortion, I would be voting to decrease it. However, I do feel that there are valid reasons for the abortion argument. I feel that rape is the main reason for abortion, but there are pills that can be taken within even several days that can prevent pregnancy. I am ABSOLUTELY against late-term abortions, and my definition of late-term is well before most consider it.
The primary reason that I don't feel I should be able to impose my belief on others in case is that I am not a women. I feel that, as a man, I can't fully understand some of arguments in favor of abortion and so cannot judge. However, I also think that if there is sufficient reason to abort(as rape), then that can and should be such sooner than many consider okay.
Apart from rape, a person is ALWAYS responsible for pregnancy, wanted or otherwise. If I pressed a button that I KNEW had a 1% chance to kill someone, would I be responsible for that death if it occurred? Intent has nothing to do with responsibility. Also, again, I am not currently discussing rape. In fact, I haven't even given my opinion on abortion at all, I'm just asking questions that people apparently can't answer.
I will point out though, that no one should be forced to endure the pain and stresses of being murdered against their will.
I have to ask now - are you even reading what I'm typing, or are you just posting whatever you want? I am asking you - SEPERATE FROM YOUR OWN OPINION ON PERSONHOOD IN PREGNANCY - if, given the assumption that 1) a fetus is a person and 2) that as a person, the fetus has the same rights, privileges, and status as any other person, and 3) the termination of which, by definition would be homocide of some sort (defined as the act of killing a person), would that homocide ever be the moral imperative? If so, how do you differentiate that from the comparable homocide of an already-born child?
Please, keep your analogies about eviction or whatever out of answering that question. If you think that a fetus dies separately from the abortion procedure, you need to do some basic research before continuing this discussion. I'm not asking about your stance on abortion or how you feel about fetuses. Im asking you to tell me if you can justify homocide. AFTER we establish a moral baseline for what would be right/wrong given those assumptions, we can discuss personhood/ect.
While not murder, this concept is pretty horrifying to me.
If youre going to get that technical on pregnancy, don't forget the other steps before the kidney failure occurs - every day the child eats, moves, drinks things, is exposed to various energies, ect... So add about 5000-10000 more steps to the Kidney failure bit. You CAN'T be seriously equating the two - your argument is so far removed from a reasonable chain of causation that it would be laughed out of a courtroom.
No more loaded than your hypos that included both an assumption on personhood and absolution of the parents from any responsibility. More to the point, I'm simply trying to address one of the two key issues in the abortion debate. I will, one last time, try to explain what I'm going for here:
First, I am not, and have not intended in any way through asking you these questions, attempted to discuss either of our position on the issue of abortion as a whole.
I believe that abortion can be distinctly divided into two questions: 1) Is a fetus become a person, and when does it gain all the protections and rights associated with personhood and 2) At any given time during a pregnancy, assuming the answer to 1, would an abortion be just.
Since 1 is the more contentious of the two questions, I opted to begin with 2. In addition, if the answer to 1 is "not a person", the answer to 2 is almost assuredly "yes" (if you don't think so, I'd love to hear why), so I simply went with the last remaining option: If 1 is "is a person", then how do you answer 2?
Based on your answer, I'm not sure if you're still differentiating the personhood of a fetus, or if you're drawing a line somewhere else. If you can, please tell me what you mean by "invader".
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I don't think every single situation is the same, but I think we need to split each scenario into one of two different categories. The first category is the women, who have abortions, that genuinely believe that what they are doing is no different than removing a wart, an appendix, or tonsils. The second category is the women who know that they are killing something that has its own unique human DNA, heartbeat, brain, brainwaves, dreams, eyes, ears, nose, mouth, hands, feet, arms, legs, bones, spine, etc. I think there are many women who fall in the 1st category that would not follow through with an abortion if they possessed the knowledge of the women in the second category.
I would suspect if you asked women who defend abortion and have had abortions you'd get answers that are related to finance and career. I think you could take every possible reason that women choose to have abortions and you could boil it down to one overarching reason, which is control. Abortion is about the fear of losing control of one's own life. Many women are terrified at the prospect that a pregnancy might cause them to lose control of their futures. Many women are also terrified at the prospect of motherhood because it is an enormous responsibility.
I think what is often overlooked is that these fears are not unique for women who have abortions. I think we have a major problem in America and in the west that is not unique to the political left or the political right. We do not love children. In the west we now view children as a curse rather than a blessing. We view children as a barrier to career and self-autonomy in our lives. We view children as an inconvenient by-product of sex. The proof of this reality can be seen in the statistics of population growth. If America and Europe did not have immigration, then we would soon have a population crisis because we simply do not have enough natural born children to sustain the previous generation.
If a society is infatuated with sex, but thinks children are a curse, then there will be lots of unwanted pregnancies. It is not difficult to figure that out. This is where we have to split women into the two categories. It is a no-brainer to remove an appendix, and if abortion is nothing more than that, then it is also a no-brainer. The woman in the first category has been deceived and will seriously regret what she has done when she realizes that she killed her own child.
The woman in the second category is much different. She is a control freak that values control over her own life more than the lives of others, and she is willing to kill in order to maintain complete control and self-autonomy in her life. She will shed the blood of the innocent without blinking an eye because her life is that much more important than the lives of others. She is a murderer at heart.
The problem with this analogy is that to evict a child is to cause it to be born. Eviction is not a good analogy for abortion. Abortion is more like the local police kicks the door down puts a bullet in your skull, and then carries you out of the house in a body bag. In real life that is clearly murder.
The other problem with these analogies is that abortion is not murder by omission it is murder by commission. If the child is left alone it will most likely be born and live. A better analogy for abortion is if all the rich people in our society banded together loaded up with ammo and went on a shooting spree in neighborhoods and apartment complexes that offer subsidized government housing.
There is one major difference between the two. Abortion refers to an act of commission. In many abortions, for example, the child is dismembered in the womb. In other abortions the child has its skull punctured and then its brain is sucked out with a vacuum. If you recognize the personhood of the fetus at all, puncturing his/her skull and vacuuming his/her brain out is clearly murder.
The father, who refuses to give his kidney to his son, refuses to save his son's life. He could prevent his son's death, at a great cost, but he refuses to. We don't call this murder because acts of omission that lead to someone's death or fail to prevent someone's death are not acts of commission like murder is. Abortion is very unlike your analogy because abortion is killing by commission. I think you would be hard pressed to find an analogy where killing by commission is not murder. Stand your ground is about the closest example I can think of, and that only applies in life threatening situations.
Saying the mother has the so called right to control her own body doesn't actually solve the problem that someone has been given the right to control somebody else's body. The pro-life position simply says the mother cannot kill the child. The idea that the baby has any type of control is ludicrous. It is simply a passenger along for the ride for 9 months. The mother is the one in the driver's seat. The baby cannot give orders like a slave driver does. The baby cannot even talk. The baby can't tell the mother what it wants to eat. The baby can't tell the mother where it wants to go. All of these things are under the control of the mother. When we consider the balance of power that exists between a mother and her baby the balance of power is overwhelmingly in the favor of the mother. She just shouldn't be able to kill the baby.
Now lets flip the tables and consider the type of control that pro-choice gives a mother over her child. The mother already gets to choose where the baby goes and what the baby eats, and now she gets to control when it dies and how it dies. She gets to choose whether or not it will die by dismembering or by vacuuming its brains out. She can have it burned in acid or she can have its spinal cord snipped. To pretend that pro-life gives a baby unprecedented control over someone else's body is a lie. Babies are powerless passengers that are hanging on for dear life. They have no control over anybody or anything. Pro-choice is the position that gives someone unprecedented control over someone else's body. It gives women the type of control that history's worst tyrants and mass murderers could only dream of. A woman's so called right to control her own body is the actually the right to fully control two bodies. The so called rights that pro-choicers grant to women go far above and beyond the rights granted to babies by pro-lifers. This fact alone reveals that this "control over a person's body" argument is a facade that is hiding something else.
So tell me...what about the baby's right to control its own body? Isn't that being violated in a much more forceful way than the mother's so called right to control her body? And when is non-consensus ever interpreted as a license to kill?
No. You are trying to force me to debate on your terms. You want me to make a bunch of concessions that I do not have to make so you can back me into a corner. The funny thing is you are still WRONG. Even if we say abortion is killing a person, sometimes killing people is perfectly justified and legal. For example if someone attacks me I can defend myself. I am not even talking about whether or not the fetus is a person. What I am telling you is in my opinion it does not matter. You could call a fetus the grand puba of personhood for all I care. This is a thing, person, whatever... that requires someone else's body to survive, in no other instance to we force people to give up their bodies against their will for anyone else.
I am sorry but I will not go down some road where you "prove" to me that if abortion is homocide, and homocide is never legal, then if a fetus is a person it must be illegal to abort it.
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The Earth cannot sustain continued population growth. It's not a plague to existence for people to elect to not have children. In fact it's a good thing. Sure the economy doesn't like it... but the economy wont matter much when there is no more food on the planet.
Edit:
DokuDokuH: I think the bigger problem here is you seem to view sex as some kind of legal social contract. It seems to me that in your mind every time a woman has sex she is signing a contract that says "I may become pregnant and I accept the risks and changes to my life and body that will occur do to this pregnancy, despite the risks I am still going to enjoy the next few minutes because it feels damn good". Having sex should not carry the same weight as putting an organ donor stamp on your license, or signing up to donate a kidney, having sex should not carry the same weight as adoption, becoming a surrogate, signing up to be a foster parent... etc etc... We make people go through a hell of a lot of legal hoops and paperwork for things a hell of a lot less trivial than pregnancy. Yet you want to hold the act of SEX to a higher standard than many legal contracts. That's just ridiculous.
By "invader" I mean the noun form of "invade," "to enter and affect injuriously or destructively," "to enter as if to take possession."
Holy hell, this is like pulling teeth. I'm not trying to prove anything right now, I'm asking you a question about what you believe in a given hypothetical. Would it make you feel better if I ask you to answer the same hypo, only assuming that the fetus ISNT a person? I didn't ask that because your answer seemed obvious, wheras you have yet to answer the other hypo. Can you really not separate your opinion on the topic from a hypothetical constrained to a single part of the issue?
I'm not proving that abortion is homicide OR that it is never legal, I am asking what YOU think should be legal, assuming that a fetus is a person and therefore by definition abortion would be homicide.
First off, this isn't only about women, so don't discuss it as if it was. You can apply the same argument above to driving a car, hunting (or shooting for fun), or doing tons of other activities. But are you really going to deny that there is some sort of social duty that you owe when you engage in activities that involve human lives? Why does sex get the special exception to the duty we impose on drivers and others? This kind of outlook is incredibly irresponsible.
What rights are those? The only right I had assumed was in play was the right to life that we were weighing here.
As for invader - the reason I asked was because it was unclear if you meant physical, bodily invasion or not. If you DO mean that, would you apply the same standard to any other person that attempts to do you bodily harm?
Finally - do you draw a line anywhere? Does at any point the fetal homicide become immoral or unjustified (still assuming it is a person), or are you fine with things like partial birth abortions?
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The discussion section of this paper (page 11, not copy/pasting because the ocr is bad) supports my previous argument that a good way to lower the number of abortions is to provide greater financial and social support to pregnant women. Also, greater education on usage and effects of contraceptives was suggested.
Art is life itself.
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Tell you what. We women will be ok with it not only being about us, when you men have accept the same risks/responsibilities in having sex that you insist women need to put up with. You know, the whole being forced to carry another organism inside, being forced to put your entire life on hold, being forced to downsize your career on account of this, and so on.
Oh wait. That's biologically impossible. So tell you what. Since we can't possibly force men to have these responsibilities, maybe we should just agree neither party should be forced to? Sounds fair doesn't it?
And that, guys, is why so many women think that anti-abortion activism is fundamentally sexist - you are making extra demands of women, demands that have historically been used to control and confine women, and then call us murderers when we object. And you wonder why women are pissed off about this, and you wonder why they aren't too interested in listening to what men have to say on the matter.
What if instead, I just cite from the myraid of women against abortion? Would that be fine? Do their opinions, which are identical to the opinions of men against abortion, validate the men's opinions or not?
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My own 2 cents worth is that abortion should exist as an option, but we should do everything we can to minimize the need for it. I personally feel my opinion aligns more or less with that of Blinking Spirit's. Even if the fetus is a "person", it is a person who is essentially enslaving the women it is inhabiting for it's sole benefit. We do not permit people to enslave others, even if they need to do so to live. Easy example - just because my Grandma needed extra help from an in-home nurse in order to stay alive in her last years, does not mean she was obligated that support, and it does not mean that support came for free. Had our family been unable to pay for it, or unwilling, she would indeed have died from that lacking. While such an action we could agree would be morally undesirable, we do not legally classify that as murder. And that's how I feel about abortions, they're morally undesirable, but legally should not be classified as murder, for the same reasons the situation with my Grandma would not have been.
I disagree with your assertion that abortion is homicide even if we say a fetus is a person. Beyond that as I stated... there are times when it is perfectly legal for a person to cause another person to die. So sure if you want to call it legal homicide... go ahead.
Yes, it is only about women. Men can't get pregnant or have abortions. I dont see what you mean about driving... we do sign contracts for driving... we take classes and get a license. I dont get where you are going with gun ownership since owning a gun or shooting it for fun has nothing to do with killing people. Sex does not require special classes or licensing or contracts yet for both men and women it can lead to life ending or life altering consequences. Trying to prevent sex will go over as well as prohibition... so it seems to me the best option is to reduce the consequences.
Personally I draw the line when a fetus would be viable outside the womb.
Isn't giving one gender more credibility over the other sexist as well?
Honestly, I call BS on this line of reasoning. Anyone who makes the abortion debate one about controlling women or sexism is either disingenuous or misguided. The debate is, and always has been, about when a human life is recognized, and when we assign value to that life. And in that context, to claim that men somehow have less say than women because they are less physically involved is unfair, in my opinion.
I mean, would you say its fair for me to claim that until last year, women's opinions on the military were worthless since they didnt serve on the front lines?
EDIT: Upon later consideration, its insane that I have the burden of proving that I am not sexist. Nothing I have said or suggested has in any way been sexist, and my discussion of personal responsibility has not been specific to a gender, which I have gone WELL out of my way to make sure is clear. If you're suggesting that after that, you're going to open by accusing me of being sexist merely because I'm male, then... well that's a pretty disappointing thing to hear from someone active in the debate forum. NO ONE should be assumed a sexist against women because they are male, unless you think that making blanket, baseless assumptions about groups of people is the way we should conduct business here.
Fluffy - I'm not going to argue basic English with you. Since you are demonstrating a repeated inability to answer a simple hypothetical, (or is it a basic misunderstanding of the process of abortion?) or at least an inability to separate your own bias from a hypothetical, I'm just going to hang up my hat and call it a day with you. If you feel like actually answering the hypo, I'll be glad to continue.
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This kind of argument will get you nowhere, very slowly apparently, and I'd advise you find another avenue and heres why:
Everyone agrees that murder is wrong, and yet, some people don't seem to think abortion is murder. As at result, instead of posing hypothetical that are, basically "But what if abortion was murder" the line of argument will need to go to personhood or something that would go after what the persons ideas of the category of a pregnancy and not, in any way, towards their conception of murder because their conception of murder is the same as yours.
As to whether or not the abortion debate is sexist or misogynistic, thats how it ends up working in the fields of groups actively engaged with the issue. Abortions are a 40 year low because we have access to better contraception, but the big organizations and politicians who are fighting against abortion, as a rule, do not advocate for interim measures reducing the need because the interim methods are considered immoral by their constituents. Can you imagine the little old church ladies giving cash to "Won't Anyone Think of the Children" or Senator old white guy if part of their platform is easy access to the pill, plan B and condoms?
But late stage abortions are killing babies with beating heart and stuff! Well, and anybody who doesn't know this should be happy about it I guess, but there are an incredibly small number of these things for 2 simple reasons. Primarily, women who want an abortion (and, I suppose I should ad, have the capacity to get one) have no incentive to wait. They are going to do it earlier rather than later. I don't know what the numbers are for last year, but the last time I got into one of these threads I linked something from Fox that broke down the stats for, like, 2011 or 2010 and it was 91% first trimester and 9% 2nd trimester. That apparently statistical blip is due to rounding since there were less than 100 3rd term trimester abortions that year. Other estimates in other years put it closer to 1000 which still puts it as less than 1% of all abortions. Not to mention that to get one of these you have to go to one of, what, four doctors in the entire country who are willing to risk being shot in the head at church to provide what is, in many cases, a lifesaving medical treatment. If the women getting 3rd trimester abortions didn't want to have a kid, why wait until the pregnancy is so far along?
So why focus on nasty stuff, not that I'm saying you are, but it needs to be addressed. Why is the idea that we're "killing babies" and committing homicide when the majority of abortion, the far far far majority, happens significantly earlier in the process?
Why are interim measures not being proposed?
Why do so many of these debates, and their proponents, particularly on a national scale focus on women keeping it in their pants but not men? Sandra Flukes media exposure comes to mind where people were asking her how many pills she needed, seemingly unaware that he pill doesnt work like an antacid and that you take it every day whether not sex is occuring.
Why is there so much misinformation in the abortion debate? Why do people in your camp claim that plan B is an abortion pill?
Ladylucks comments about the existing sexual sentiment is true and while I don't agree that you need to necessarily prove that you aren't operating under the paradigm she is describing, it can't hurt your case.
Your attempts to argue with Fluffy border on presuppositionalism though and you really gotta drop that