Abortion

[FlareBlitz]

Abortion...is a complicated issue. Unlike most positions that oppose my own, I can fully empathize with pro-lifers (as far as their beliefs, definitely not the mechanisms through which they came to those beliefs or the mechanisms they attempt to use to enforce it). But I mean, there are a lot of factors to consider:

1) Are all forms of miscarriage to be considered manslaughter? Remember that 50% of fertile pregnancies end in miscarriage.
2) Why is it that a bundle of cells takes precedence over a woman's quality of life, or even her life itself? Recall that we do not extend legal protection to things that "will be" something, we extended legal protection based on what they actually are.

Those are just two of the many considerations that, to me, renders the pro-life position really problematic.

 

[Chou Toshio]

edit: "time for this thread again."

i am speaking terms as in rape, the mother being irresponsible, etc.
i think the mentality some people hold of "only rape victims should be allowed abortions" is ridiculous

late term abortions are slippery because you are entering the territory where the fetus could potentially live outside of the mother and be considered a fully developed baby
i am not against late term abortions per say but it is fuzzy where the line should be drawn for "too late to get one"

Late term is also slippery because the later it becomes, the more dangerous abortion becomes to the mother.

For what it's worth, I'm not against abortion at all-- mostly, I'm just annoyed that it's such an issue to begin with. srsly, if you're conservative in the true sense, does it really matter considering that someone's abortion will never affect your own life anyway? It's totally different from something like drugs, because another person's practice of safe sex/abortion has literally nothing to do with you. I can understand/accept religions teaching their systems of beliefs, and followers choosing not to use abortion, but trying to enforce that in a legal setting is bizarre to say the least imo.

 

[jrrrrrrr]

Here's a question. Your parents could have aborted you if they messed up. Have you ever thought of that? We wouldn't be here today if our parents had decided to abort us. Now do you feel about that? Never even getting the chance to stand up for yourself, no, not even having any say in it.

I'm glad my parents chose to have me instead of having a religious nut like you force her into giving birth.

the core of my argument is that yes, the father should have no say in a mother getting an abortion if she does not want him to have a say

I can agree with you here, as long as the mother has no influence in the father's role after birth if he does not want her to have a say. If the mother can abort without the father's consent, the father should have the equivalent right and be able to leave the mother without legal and financial repercussions. This thread will probably be locked soon so I'll end it on that.

 

[Stratos]

If you truly believe abortion is wrong then you are looking at it as an issue of murder, not ethics. I've learned enough not to voice my own views much on the Internet but to pro-lifers abortion is horrible and must be stopped the same as murder.

 

[Smith]

For what it's worth, I'm not against abortion at all-- mostly, I'm just annoyed that it's such an issue to begin with. srsly, if you're conservative in the true sense, does it really matter considering that someone's abortion will never affect your own life anyway? It's totally different from something like drugs, because another person's practice of safe sex/abortion has literally nothing to do with you.

Their argument for wanting to enforce this would have to do with a sense of justice, I imagine. If we still had slavery in the US, I would be a firm abolitionist, I really couldn't just sit by and say "well that doesn't affect me" if my morals are seriously injured.

note: when I invited conservatives to contribute to the thread, it was implied that it would intelligent discussion.
EDIT: That sounded a bit harsh- I just mean that if you have as well-developed an opinion as Master Win, then maybe you should just not post.

 

[Terrador]

Allow me to sum up:

NO ME GUSTA

inb4 religious derail

 

[Spork]

I hate that loophole "well technically it's not alive, so it's ok to abort it, right?" You started that life right away when the embryo as an egg was fertilized.

Now this is where it becomes a matter of opinion. Life begins when the egg is fertilised? Mrs. Nerg doesn't agree, and a fertilised ovum certainly doesn't have any more complexity than your average bacterium. What you believe is the issue here is that an egg has the POTENTIAL for life, and that we should nurse that potential as well as possible, which I'll come back to later.

Here's a question. Your parents could have aborted you if they messed up. Have you ever thought of that? We wouldn't be here today if our parents had decided to abort us. Now do you feel about that? Never even getting the chance to stand up for yourself, no, not even having any say in it.

The truth is, I wouldn't care, and neither would you, and we wouldn't have any thoughts on the matter at all. Foetuses don't have real brains. You cannot really argue whether it is better to live, or to never have existed at all, because not to have existed is not to have hopes, expectations, longing for life, or longing for death. Only the living fear non-existence; the non-existent have no fear. Literally the only thing that matters in the case of something not existing is whether or not someone else wants it to exist, in which case they allow its existence. But should that someone be a random government official, or the parent?

If we extend basic human rights to a few bundles of cells, aren't we also obliged to save every single gamete? Shouldn't women be forced to conceive at every ovulation? Should men be forced to undertake nofaptember-tober-cember-vember-ever?

I've heard lots of stories about "mothers" aborting their babies. They regretted it for the rest of their life..

This isn't an argument, but ok. Anyway, even if we are absolutely fundamentally opposed to abortion, do you not see anything authoritarian and immoral about forcing a woman through such a drastic, life-changing and life-threatening process? What if she's a rape victim, is she just trapped? And surely you have to relent when there's a strong risk the mother might die. How can you say the baby's life is worth more than the mother's if all men are equal? What if there's, say, a 90% chance the baby AND mother will die if she carries it to term? Do we push through with the pregnancy because of that potential for life? Even if the potential for death is stronger?

You really have to step back and be more libertarian about it. Something with the potential for life does not actually concern barely anybody but the mother. So if the mother wants to abort her child, we kinda have to let her, or else we are exercising absolute control over the body and life of another, and we really only have to support the human rights of the baby when it becomes life. Defining at what stage in the pregnancy it becomes life though is still up for debate.

And then of course, people will get abortions no matter what the government thinks, so you have to make it safely available.

 

[Chou Toshio]

Their argument for wanting to enforce this would have to do with a sense of justice, I imagine. If we still had slavery in the US, I would be a firm abolitionist, I really couldn't just sit by and say "well that doesn't affect me" if my morals are seriously injured.

note: when I invited conservatives to contribute to the thread, it was implied that it would intelligent discussion.
EDIT: That sounded a bit harsh- I just mean that if you have as well-developed an opinion as Master Win, then maybe you should just not post.

I said "conservative in the truest sense," because conservative beliefs are almost all centric on protecting the rights that best serve your own interests. From that angle, it's odd that the shoe is on the other foot, because undoubtedly the right to have an abortion is something that protects the individual's interests. To me it would make more sense if the lefties were the ones bawling over the rights of unformed "potential sentient beings" and the righties who were saying, "Gov, keep your damn nose out of my daughters affairs."

(keep in mind that I am even more right than Deck Knight on that political map thingie)

Or rather, maybe it is because I'm so right that I'd rather keep my right (or my girlfriend's? sister's? etc) to abortions and have the government keep their nose out of it.

 

[Steamroll]

because a 13+ year time lapse between the two shows a clear causation.

Because people start committing crimes the second they are born...

The peak age for people committing crimes in the US is around the age of 22-23 and check the dates. 1970 and 1993. GG

 

[Spork]

I think defining abortion as a topic of "left or right" is kinda missing the point...

Anyway, Conservative =/= Libertarian, especially in America.

 

[Furosuto]

Hmm....I can see where your argument stands. And I guess it's a very good argument.

I guess I just have a different point of view. That's about it. Everyone is gonna have there own point of views on the topic. Abortion is a subject that to me, I don't feel it should happen. But that's the thing. A topic like this is opinionated. It all depends on the writer's point of view of things.

EDIT: Lol, this might be the most intelligent thing I've done. And that's keeping opinions to yourself cause the world disagrees with you. That and your a dumb freshman.

 

[Spork]

Well basically what I was trying to get across is that, if you don't like abortion, don't have an abortion. I think you really have to protect the rights of individual human citizens as a priority in every case.

 

[Chou Toshio]

My point wasn't to cement abortion as right or left, I was just pointing out the strangeness of pro-life not aligning well with the underlying principle of conservatism.

@j7r's comments:

-he's right you know, father's rights in the US are absolute bullshit. Men basically get fucked on everything so watch your backs dudes. He's definitely right that there are some real benefits in being gay and not getting messed up by the laws pertaining to women.

-"irresponsible" is pretty unfair, since even with a condom, there is always the chance of failure and pregnancy. I'm not going to hold someone up as "irresponsible" just because they had an accident or screwed up once or twice with the proper procedure of using a condom. It's even easier for "human failure" to come into play with things like diaphrams.


Interesting: Did you ever consider the fact that a woman could just lie about whether or not she took her birth control pills...?

How should the father feel/be treated when he was lied to like that?

At the very least, I think a man should not have to be saddled with responsibility if deception was in fact used in order to carry out the fertilization.

 

[Stratos]

Okay so I couldn't resist any more of Master Win and Kingcharizard being the only prolifers to post in this thread and I'm sure most of you already guessed that I am against abortion.

I'm not going to do something retarded like equate it to murder because as Spork already said, murder is when someone is killed in the middle of their life with ambitions, fears, and feelings. With abortion you never got the chance to have any of those things, so in essence you never really existed.

But when I hear you say that the kid is virtually guaranteed to have a shit life because of teenage pregnancy, it makes me squirm. Getting a chance and it not working out so hot is basically guaranteed to be better than no chance at all, and that bundle of genes will only happen once. I think it's not fair to society as a whole to deny them some super large number of possibilities because "they'll probably have a shit life." Further you're forgetting that not all abortions are by sixteen year olds.

That said I don't know where I stand legalistically on abortion. In a sense, it's basically a month-after pill. However it probably shouldn't be allowed in the third trimester due more to safety reasons than ethics. I definitely don't want to say "abortion in the case of rape" because it is highly likely to have the horrible side effect of hundreds of innocent teens landing in jail because of their hysterical girlfriends.

As for the father's role, I agree with j7r in that the custody laws are rediculously one-sided and that the fathers are getting severely screwed.

There you go as my feeble attempt to pin down my ideas.

 

[Spork]

And I was trying to point out that pro-lifers aren't all conservatives.

And yeah I also disagree with "irresponsible". The only way to prevent all risk is literally to never have heterosexual sex, which is extremely unreasonable.

 

[Chou Toshio]

but... the majority are and I was addressing that? so yeah

way too unreasonable. shoot me now

 

[Nastyjungle]

EDIT: Lol, this might be the most intelligent thing I've done. And that's keeping opinions to yourself cause the world disagrees with you. That and your a dumb freshman.

people should voice their opinions even if they are the minority, that is how changes and revolutions happen

it is perfectly intelligent to voice your unpopular opinion if you can back it up with sound reasoning, logic, facts or a combination of the three

if you can't argue your position with somebody it means either:
a) you don't feel very strongly or passionately about the issue and probably wouldn't want to argue about it in the first place
b) you don't know what you're talking about so you shouldn't have a solid opinion on it and probably shouldn't be arguing at all

 

[Smith]

EDIT: Lol, this might be the most intelligent thing I've done. And that's keeping opinions to yourself cause the world disagrees with you. That and your a dumb freshman.

this made my day

 

[Chou Toshio]

mmmm Nasty... but I also disagree that only intelligent and well informed people should have opinions and be allowed to express them. Stupid people who aren't good with words (and this is the majority of humanity frankly), have every right to have an opinion and express it. discrimination!



btw-- how would you feel about a man being made to pay child welfare checks when he had sex with a woman in her fertile period when she lied that she was on birth control? I've actually heard of this happening a couple times from a friend in Seattle where the laws are particularly slanted (according to my friend...)

Or, even simpler, a woman could always impregnate herself with the contents of a condom after her boyfriend left. There's any number of ways for either side to violate the agreed terms of sex if they want to.

 

[Spork]

@Pwnemon Really that just sounds very reasonable. If you were referring to me though, I wasn't actually saying anything against teen mothers, just giving a hypothetical response to j>9000r's indignation about taxes paying for abortions; basically saying that, in a wholly economic sense (this'll sound callous, don't shoot), an abortion might be cheaper to the state than the an unskilled labourer/tosspot.

@Chou that latter case would probably be impossible to prove, but yeah paying child welfare after that is bullshit. The ideal solution is to not have sex, or not get into relationships, with maniacs, but most often people feel like they don't have time for either of those things.

 

[Banedon]

I hope y'all realize I'm asking this with honesty, and not trying to stir stuff up or troll. I'm only asking it because I've never heard a clear answer from any of my pro-choice friends or acquaintances.

Where is the cutoff and how do you personally determine it?

The moment the baby is born. It is clear and unambiguous.

I'm pro choice. The argument "but it's murder" doesn't hold water with me because, whether we like it or not, we are all murderers. You have to kill to survive everyday - your body does away with millions of bacteria (living beings) without you even noticing it, daily. You also have to kill for food (plants are living things too, so being vegetarian does not help). Everyone kills, and there's no reason why the life of a human being should differ from that of an animal / plant / bacteria.

This doesn't mean that it's fine to go kill other people and eat them, but it argues against opposing abortion because it's killing.

 

[Nastyjungle]

The moment the baby is born. It is clear and unambiguous.

I'm pro choice. The argument "but it's murder" doesn't hold water with me because, whether we like it or not, we are all murderers. You have to kill to survive everyday - your body does away with millions of bacteria (living beings) without you even noticing it, daily. You also have to kill for food (plants are living things too, so being vegetarian does not help). Everyone kills, and there's no reason why the life of a human being should differ from that of an animal / plant / bacteria.

This doesn't mean that it's fine to go kill other people and eat them, but it argues against opposing abortion because it's killing.

i think it is certainly not clear and very ambigious
by your logic, a child just one day before birth could be killed and be viewed the same as killing a little mass of non-sentient cells
saying there is no gray area is a joke

there is a difference between murder and killing, killing bacteria (i cant believe you even said this, honestly) or plants and animals is not the same as killing a human being and the fact that you would even try to use that logic is completely beyond me

 

[MrIndigo]

I said "conservative in the truest sense," because conservative beliefs are almost all centric on protecting the rights that best serve your own interests. From that angle, it's odd that the shoe is on the other foot, because undoubtedly the right to have an abortion is something that protects the individual's interests. To me it would make more sense if the lefties were the ones bawling over the rights of unformed "potential sentient beings" and the righties who were saying, "Gov, keep your damn nose out of my daughters affairs."

(keep in mind that I am even more right than Deck Knight on that political map thingie)

Or rather, maybe it is because I'm so right that I'd rather keep my right (or my girlfriend's? sister's? etc) to abortions and have the government keep their nose out of it.

This has always bemused me - how the US 'civil libertarians' all favour individual rights, except in cases like this. It's largely because the US conservative lobby are hard Catholic/Baptist religious and not civil libertarians at all.

In fact, I'd say most of them are not civil libertarians at all until it becomes an issue of money or taxation, in which case they're "DONT TAKE MAH MONEY, I HAVE RIGHTS".


As for the cutoff point between when it becomes murder, I don't know enough about birth and gestation biology etc. to say precisely when it is, but the logical cutoff point is when the foetus becomes capable of self-sustainment, or possibly when fully developed inside the womb but hasn't yet been expelled.

Before self-sustainment, it is not a separate life form and is biologically part of the mother, in which case damage to it would be actual/grievous bodily harm. In addition, while the baby is feeding on nutrients from the mother's body directly (from the bloodstream) it is a parasite in the technical sense and hence there is some logical justification that way.

The fully-developed line is the only place that you can actually draw a nonarbitrary line. Anything prior to that falls to the pile-of-sand argument, at which point the destruction of a single living cell is logically equivalent to murder.


Any "imagine how it must be to be an aborted foetus" arguments are disingenuous - since an unborn child is incapable of awareness, this has about as much logical relevance as "Imagine being a tree, imagine getting cut down! I'd hate it, therefore we shouldn't cut down trees".


It should be noted, as an aside, that social experiments have more or less proved that for most US conservatives (in particular, the Rebulican politicians) the abortion issue is not at all concerned with the rights of the child and entirely concerned with the oppression of women. When one of the laws criminalising abortion in the US was being proposed, another senator proposed an alternative bill that included provisions that said a man who is guilty of getting another women pregnant via rape or adultery more than once would be chemically sterilised, and set up various provisions that stated the child in such a situation would receive funding (from either the father or the state) to pay for it's upbringing, schooling, and college tuition until the age of adulthood. The bill was unanimously rejected by every relevant Republican. What this shows is that while the rhetoric is all about preserving the rights of the unborn child, in reality it's about enforcing what the religious right see as 'moral behaviour' by punishing the woman for getting pregnant (because clearly it means she was sexually promiscuous and that's a Bad Thing because women shouldn't be sexually independent or anything).

 

[Banedon]

Sure there's a grey area, but it is possible to define a line that leaves no grey area. Simple comparison: we define voting reqs to be 1350. Is a player who only has 1349 rating necessarily worse than a player who's rated 1351? Obviously not. But we can unambiguously say that the 1351 player can vote while the 1349 player cannot because we have drawn a very clear line. Drawing the line between acceptable and unacceptable at the moment a baby is born is the same.

I'm sticking to my belief that plants, animals (a group which includes humans, btw) and bacteria are all living beings and killing them is (strictly speaking) no different from killing other humans. I'm not saying we can go out there and kill other humans because we already kill plants, animals and bacteria. I'm saying that to oppose abortion on the basis that it's killing and as a person you do not like killing etc is illogical. Like it or not, you are a killer. Blame God - he made life that way.

 

[Chou Toshio]

@Mr.Indigo-- Exactly, it's so hypocritical it's a joke.

That's why the sensible thing is to bitch about my government taking my money, giving it to poor people, using it to pay for other people's medicals AND about them trying to stop my sisters/cousins/lovers/etc. from getting abortions.