Abortion

Crumble Froo

im pro-choice. wouldnt do it myself, but am for the option for people to decide for themselves.

coffee_cake

Sam Vimes wrote: »

My response made perfect sense as a response to your post.

No, it really didn't.

Unfortunately your post made no sense. What was your point exactly?

My point was the whole issue is murky enough without implying dead matter suddenly transforms into living cells at some point along the process. An offhand comment.

Sam Vimes

JC 2K3 wrote: »

Touché. The English language is really, really awful for discussing abortion.

By the biological definition of "life", it begins at conception. What I was referring to was what that article refers to as "human life", and what others refer to as "personhood" etc.

The question it not when "life", as it is biologically defined, begins, but rather when that life becomes worth protecting and why.

Great, now that's a different argument altogether. Personally I don't see why we should come up with any special technicalities as to why a human life at a particular stage of development would be worth protecting and why......unless certain people have a vested interest in it not being protected.

Once we start picking and choosing which human lives are worth protecting and which ones aren't we end up with genocide and slavery

Sam Vimes

Crumble Froo wrote: »

i couldnt though, cos my partner is adopted. man, that ****ed him up

How did it **** him up? I'm adopted and I know a good few people who were and they all turned out fine. Did the adoption not work out, like was he put in care or something, or did he just have issues with being adopted in itself?

And do you think he would rather have been killed than adopted?

Sam Vimes

bluewolf wrote: »

My point was the whole issue is murky enough without implying dead matter suddenly transforms into living cells at some point along the process. An offhand comment.

Well that's good because nobody's implying that. You're confusing the idea of life in general which did indeed begin a long time ago and a single, specific life which does begin at conception. The child's life as opposed to the life of either of the parents. When people say "life begins at conception" they mean the latter definition.

Glad we cleared that up

JC 2K3

Sam Vimes wrote: »

Once we start picking and choosing which human lives are worth protecting and which ones aren't we end up with genocide and slavery

Or, ya know, just a society where abortion is legal and socially acceptable and everyone gets on with their lives.

Crumble Froo

Sam Vimes wrote: »

How did it **** him up? I'm adopted and I know a good few people who were and they all turned out fine. Did the adoption not work out, like was he put in care or something, or did he just have issues with being adopted in itself?

And do you think he would rather have been killed than adopted?

tmi

Sam Vimes

Crumble Froo wrote: »

he never knew he was adopted until he was 16, and felt totally 'unrooted', or unwanted, since then

Ah you see that's the problem right there. My parents never made a secret of it which, as I'm sure you'll agree, is the right way to go about it. Children accept these things far easier than teenagers. It's just something I always knew and it never really made a difference to my life. When you tell a 3 year old that his natural mother wasn't able to look after him and so gave him to another loving family to look after he'll believe you because 3 year olds believe whatever their parents tell them. Not so much teenagers

Sam Vimes

JC 2K3 wrote: »

Or, ya know, just a society where abortion is legal and socially acceptable and everyone gets on with their lives.

.........except the human beings that are being killed out of convenience?

JC 2K3

Terry put it best:

Terry wrote: »

There are millions of potential people who never lived.
They could have been the next Einstein or the next Hitler.
Chances are they would have just lived a normal life.
We'll never know, but do you really care?
Do you really care that someone who never existed doesn't exist?

Sam Vimes

JC 2K3 wrote: »

Terry put it best:

Currently growing and developing =/= potential.

When you have the blueprints of a house you have a potential house but once you lay the foundations you've got yourself the beginnings of a house. Tearing up the blueprints is very different to ripping out the foundations

Terry talks about "potential people who never lived". But a foetus has lived and is living right up until you suck it out

philologos

spudington16 wrote: »

Well, the word 'kill' implies there is a life to take away in the first place, which is really not the case in the very early stage of a pregnancy anyway - it's a collection of cells with the potential for life.

Thanks for proving my point. Biologically it is a life, there is no way around it. Potential for life would be the sexual stage beforehand. It is only when a man has sexual relations with a woman that life can form in the first place. Potential for life after life has clearly formed is a bit silly though. Tell me what can grow without having life in biological terms?

Now we have the clump of cells hypothesis. This is really you just saying that the foetus should look like a full born baby if we are to argue it is a human life. This is ridiculous. At that stage in human life it is meant to look as such. Just because it does doesn't mean that it isn't human life at all. This is just you saying that attribute x must exist for it to be considered life. No it doesn't for it to be biologically viable as life. That's like me saying that a child has to play an accordion for it to be considered life. This isn't the case. If we are to try to come together to conclude on what should be morally correct in the universal, subjective philosophical understandings that detract from the actual biology just serve to make the situation we are in even more ambiguous. I think ambiguity is what the pro-choice side aims for a lot of the time. Even if it was ambiguous shouldn't we take serious precautions if this could be considered the death of another human life?

spudington16 wrote: »

Using the word 'kill' obviously has negative connotations, so it's sensible to call it a 'termination' rather than a 'killing' because arguably you're terminating a biological process, not killing a person.

It's sensible to call it "termination" rather than "killing" for emotive reasons not for factual reasons. People claim that pro-lifers are emotional about their argument, however from this discussion it seems the pro-choicers have appealed the most to emotion by far in this discussion.

philologos

JC 2K3 wrote: »

Or, ya know, just a society where abortion is legal and socially acceptable and everyone gets on with their lives.

As soon as you can justify the logic behind your position in a clear fashion as to why one set of rights should be held above the other and why a minority should be suppressed, and as soon as you can justify the logic as to why a different standard should exist inside the womb when it can be equally justified outside the womb in a way that is actually convincing I might be inclined to support such a society.

Most of the examples that people have raised can be discussed in an external sense as well as an internal development sense.

For example: "It doesn't look like a human life therefore it isn't one".
Opinion: What standard do you use for determining what a human life should look like. I could say that people with disability x don't look like the rest of humanity. Infact I could even say people of race x don't look like the rest of humanity.

JC 2K3

You have to examine the reasons why killing another human is wrong.

Personally, I don't believe human life has any inherent sacredness associated with it. Others should not be killed because of emotional and physical collective security.

Abortion would be convenient and workable if it were legal and socially acceptable, and I just can't see past that.

philologos

JC 2K3 wrote: »

You have to examine the reasons why killing another human is wrong.

I don't agree with killing on the battlefield either.

JC 2K3 wrote: »

Personally, I don't believe human life has any inherent sacredness associated with it. Others should not be killed because of emotional and physical collective security.

I don't ask you to view it as sacred. You fail to explain why different standards should exist external to the womb as well as internal. Why do others deserve more rights than the unborn if they are also human life? It's nothing more than pure discrimination.

JC 2K3 wrote: »

Abortion would be convenient and workable if it were legal and socially acceptable, and I just can't see past that.

Convenient for who? I don't think we should be aiming for "convenience" but we should be actually working to get a real solution on the issue. Most reasonable solutions come at reaching a via media between the two sets of rights involved.

The_Minister

This thread, which I've only dipped in and out of, is annoying me, especially the attitude of Terry.

I posted this in another thread, and I think it should be said again.

Or, in a less inflamatory way it's a "We know that you don't think it has rights or life, but we think it does, and you can't just kill it or pull it out like a rotten tooth" movement.

Liberalism is great, but if there is a disagreement about who human rights apply to (be it black people and slavery or foeti (?) and abortion) then you can't just say "oh its none of your business". If someone truely believes that a foetus is a baby, and then lets abortion be legal without question, then they are just like the Germans who kept quiet during the Holocaust (in that there was a dispute over humanity and they didn't make any noise). The "it's none of your beeswax" doesn't apply to abortion, because your asking people to stand by and let what amounts to murder (in their eyes) be committed, and no decent person will do that.

NOTE: I don't believe abortion = murder, I just think that pretending that objecting to abortion is the same as objecting to, say, pornography, is childish. If people look at a foetus and see human life, then they have a duty to object to its destruction.

You cannot say to pro-life people that its none of their business if you kill what they consider a baby, because, well, they consider it to be a baby.
Or a life with value.

You can't expect people who think the foetus has worth to turn a blind eye to the killing of foetuses (or is it foeti?).
In America for example, there are people who try and steal foetuses from the medical waste of abortion clinics, in order to give them a decent burial; you can't tell them to just mind their own business.

JC 2K3

But what are pro-choice/abortion people supposed to do if faced with an unwanted pregnancy? Not abort because someone else thinks the life of the foetus is worth saving?

bnagrrl

What about an option on the poll for those of us who, while not planning to have a child at this moment, would just accept things and get on with it and not even consider abortion?
That would be me.

BTW, I'm neither pro or anti abortion.

stovelid

Jakkass wrote: »

Children are under their mother and fathers juristiction for their entire childhood. Again, I don't see why there should be any difference in the situation for the unborn from the ones who are born.

Jurisdiction was probably the wrong word. I didn't mean jurisdiction as an area of care, rather a physical area of authority - an unborn child being inside the body of a woman, and whose existence is not viable outside that area.

Jakkass wrote: »

As for non-viable, what do you mean by this?

Not able to survive outside of the body of its Mother before a certain age.

Jakkass wrote: »

This is allowing the mother's rights to trump over the childs however. There are limits I draw to choice personally, I don't think it's warranted in any circumstance to choose about someone elses life.

You see, the crux of it is that I do believe that the Mother's rights trump that of the child's.

This is why I don't argue about abortion too much. I actually accept most of the pro-life arguments about the foetus (viable or not), hence the fact that I don't think I could ever acquiesce to an instance of it involving my offspring. But I still think women have the right to choose termination of early stage pregnancies if they wish, so for me, arguing scientifically (except for the viability argument perhaps) is of little use to me since I accept most of the arguments.

I also wish people would stop using the verb Kill so freely in the thread. It's public, and anybody could be reading, including people who could have made decisions that they deeply regret. Surely we can show some respect to each other?

JC 2K3

bnagrrl wrote: »

What about an option on the poll for those of us who, while not planning to have a child at this moment, would just accept things and get on with it and not even consider abortion?
That would be me.

BTW, I'm neither pro or anti abortion.

Option 2.

It's a "what would you do?" poll not a "what is your stance?" poll.

Malari

JC 2K3 wrote: »

But what are pro-choice/abortion people supposed to do if faced with an unwanted pregnancy? Not abort because someone else thinks the life of the foetus is worth saving?

I agree with The Minister. But I think his point is not what should be done, rather the way that pro-choice people make their argument often misses the point completely about what anti-abortion people are saying.

I would argue (and have argued) that the mother has, or should have, more rights than an unborn child in any case. I'm never going to say "it's not a human until it's born". Of course it's human, why else would I want to terminate it. I just don't think it's life is as important as the woman, at a few weeks.

JC 2K3

I agree on that note. It's why the "abortion is only ok if the woman was raped" viewpoint baffles me. If you think abortion is murder then it's still murder even if conception occurred due to a rape.

philologos

stovelid wrote: »

Jurisdiction was probably the wrong word. I didn't mean jurisdiction as an area of care, rather a physical area of authority - an unborn child being inside the body of a woman, and whose existence is not viable outside that area.

Isn't the body of the mother also within a nation? Again "not viable outside that area". The life of anyone is not viable if their parents do not provide for them when they are born either?

stovelid wrote: »

Not able to survive outside of the body of its Mother before a certain age.

Surely they aren't able to survive outside of the body of it's mother without it's mother before a certain age either? Dependence can be applied both inside and outside of the womb. To be consistent one would have to see a change in how it is dealt with outside the womb also.

stovelid wrote: »

You see, the crux of it is that I do believe that the Mother's rights trump that of the child's.

I promote equality in respect to human rights, as such I cannot hold this understanding.

stovelid wrote: »

I also wish people would stop using the verb Kill so freely in the thread. It's public, and anybody could be reading, including people who could have made decisions that they deeply regret. Surely we can show some respect to each other?

Unfortunately we are talking about the truth of the situation here. It's a horrible decision to ever have to make and we all do things wrong in daily life. This is no different. It's only correct to call something as it is though.

The_Minister

When I was diggin up the post further up, I rediscovered this trainwreck.
Thank Og that this thread is going better.

The_Minister

Malari wrote: »

Of course it's human, why else would I want to terminate it.

Taken out of context, that is the most evil statement ever made on boards.

Malari

The_Minister wrote: »

Taken out of context, that is the most evil statement ever made on boards.

Some of my best quotes have been taken out of context

Sam Vimes

JC 2K3 wrote: »

But what are pro-choice/abortion people supposed to do if faced with an unwanted pregnancy? Not abort because someone else thinks the life of the foetus is worth saving?

What would you suggest a woman do if she answered the door to find that someone had left a baby in a basket?

JC 2K3

Phone social services.

The difference between that situation and having a developing foetus in the womb is that when in the womb, the baby can't be adopted or cared for by anyone else until birth.

philologos

JC 2K3: I have yet to see how that warrants death though?

Sam Vimes

JC 2K3 wrote: »

Phone social services.

The difference between that situation and having a developing foetus in the womb is that when in the womb, the baby can't be adopted or cared for by anyone else until birth.

This is true. In that case the woman finds herself in the unfortunate situation that there is a human being growing inside her who has just as much of a right to life as she does. Once she does what any decent member of the human race would do, ie not end this life because it's inconvenient to her, she can call social services. Not an ideal situation but better than mass murder terminations