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The 8th Amendment Part 2 - Mod Warning in OP
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robarmstrong wrote: »If they read even half of what they write out loud in front of others (particularly women) I wonder would they even then realise the sheer absurdity of what they're spouting...
In fairness, there are many women who are also against abortion in the case of rape.
Seen the following trailer recently and in it you see many of those who have even been conceived in rape speak out against abortion too.
I personally feel it should be legal for a woman to have an abortion if they are pregnant from rape, as I don't feel it's right that someone should be made to carry a baby which has resulted from a violent act......... but, I do feel the views of these people at least deserve to be listened to and considered by people before they decide which way it is they want to vote. Have an opinion, by all means, but make it an informed one.0 -
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Outlaw Pete wrote: »Before anyone votes I really wish they would make sure to make themselves fully aware of just how developed fetuses are during the latter stages of the first trimester. It's substantially more than many would like you to believe.
Which "many" is this? Could you cite "many" users doing this? Let's start with 10 and see how close you get. Because generally it seems to me that people talking openly about the developmental stages of the fetus at 12-16 weeks are ABUNDANTLY clear and accurate as to what those features are.
The distortions actually comes from people trying to make it sound like it is MORE developed than it actually is. Often, like you yourself are egregiously guilty of for example, by lifting descriptive rhetorical sentences out of studies that make it sound like more is going on that there actually is. Sentences that, in isolation, sound like they are saying a LOT more than they are.
You list things (bodies, limbs, organs, heartbeat, DNA) that I am not seeing anyone, let alone "many" denying or hiding or in any way obfuscating at all. Rather the things you list are not things that should be eliciting moral and ethical concern in pro-choice speakers.
So yes, by all means let us be 100% totally entirely accurate as to what is going on at 12-16 weeks gestation. I want everyone to know. Because nothing I know of, let alone anything you have offered, is happening at that stage that I think supports any anti abortion rhetoric at all. Which is why the anti-choice side quickly and often move to discussions of not what the fetus IS but what they imagine it will BECOME.Outlaw Pete wrote: »It may be at the very beginning of it's life, but it's still their life. Why (unless necessary to save the life of it's mother) should that baby be deemed so unimportant that it should be legal to take their life in such a nonchalant fashion?
Odd that you should ask this given how many times it has been answered directly to you in the past. But I am more than happy to answer it again.
We kill life, actual walking around happily living their life life, all the time. We do it in our meat industry in the 1000s. We do it to trees and vegetables also in large numbers in our food and paper industries. We do it by the millions in insecticides. We do it in the billions in medicine. We end life ALL the time, and we are pretty much "nonchalant" about it in your words.
So the question becomes, when we have exceptions to that rule....... on what basis do we do so? When we value Life over life, and single certain types of it out for protections that other life lacks..... what are the attributes and foundations upon which we do that?
I have explored that question deeply, and explained to you on numerous occasions the fruits of that labor. And I am happy to do so again on request. But to summarize it quickly: EVERY attribute I have found that sensibly mediates those specific moral and ethical concerns are attributes the fetus at 12-16 weeks simply lacks. Not just partially lacks but the fetus WHOLLY lacks those attributes AND many of their pre-requisites too.
Now while you might disagree with some part of that, though you have never been clear what and more importantly why, I genuinely see no utility in feigning ignorance about it.Outlaw Pete wrote: »that doesn't excuse the dispassion of prochoicers.
There is nothing TO excuse. You are merely asserting based on nothing that passion is warranted and then demanding justification from those who do not have it. It does not work like that.
I am intensely passionate about human morality and ethics. More so than you pretend to be I suspect. But I am also focused not just on morality and ethics but what they are FOR, and what they are applied TO and most importantly WHY.
And the results of all that means that I am passionate about what there is actually genuine and coherent reasons to be passionate about. Which is quite simply the well being of sentient creatures. No more. No less. If morality is "for" anything then it has to be that. Otherwise what the hell is it?
The fetus is no such entity however. Therefore no passion is warranted, let alone to the level we have to "excuse" ourselves for anything. And in your rush to Virtue Signal your own capacity for compassion it seems what needs to actually be "excused" is the lack of compassion shown to those who actually warrant it (the pregnant woman).... in deference to something that does not (the fetus).
Passion is a good thing. Being passionate just for the sake of being passionate, or to be seen to be passionate..... not so much. I am every bit as passionate as you, perhaps more so. I just contrive to be abundantly clear about where my passion is directed, and on what justifiable and meaningful basis.... rather than simply spew passion for it's own end and it's own sake.Outlaw Pete wrote: »Sentience is a philosophical argument. That's why ambulance personal don't look for it at the scene of an accident.
Straw-manning the sentience argument does not magically make it a red herring. Mainly because there is a core and powerful distinction you contrive to simply gloss over in your "ambulance" comparison.
The difference between a fetus and a living victim at the scene of an accident is a massive one. The latter HAS the faculty of sentience. Nothing to do with it's current operational status, it is still there. The fetus however does not have it, has never had it, and is yet some time off ever having it.
If I recall correctly you are something of a Star Trek fan. I remember the episode well (one of the best Stewart performances I can think of other than maybe the double torture episode and the one where he lived an entire second life playing the flute) where he argued for the sentience of Commander Data, Mr. "I am operating within normal parameters" himself. Were ANY of his arguments based on Data having (or not having) limbs or a heart? Or were they couched on his sentience and his having of individual goals and concerns? And do you understand how and why a coma patient or injury victim is still a sentient entity just not "operating within normal parameters"?
So the comparison you offer here simply fails and does not hold. The Red Herring is being fried up in your kitchen, nor ours.Outlaw Pete wrote: »If a woman miscarries, she will generally say she has lost her baby.
This is the salad and Pommes to go with the Herring though. You are attempting to conflate people's use of terminology with the actual meanings of terminology. Leo V did this too in the press and he was as wrong to do so there as you are here.
Yes, people use the word "baby" during pregnancy and often after losing one. We are a narrative driven species and we use words that conform to our narratives. And our narratives around pregnancy, emotionally, are built on the baby we imagine it producing rather than on the pregnancy itself which is for the most part invisible to us.
But in a debate about abortion we are MORE than warranted at exploring what words they use..... what the implications of the used words are...... and which of those implications are warranted and which are simply being used as emotive nonsense in lieu of actual anti-abortion arguments.
Again this has been explained to you on numerous occasions however. So once again I question your motivations in choosing to feign ignorance about these explanations. Similarly I am not sure why you are feigning ignorance on late term pregnancies where you know the move is generally to terminate the PREGNANCY and not terminate the baby. So why you are here asking "women should be able to kill the babies they are carrying at ANY stage of their pregnancy?? Even the week of delivery??" is unclear to me. Especially given in a later post you accuse others of missing your points deliberately. We err towards pot and kettle stuff there.Outlaw Pete wrote: »So these people do not believe what they are saying as they themselves don't think all pregnant women should be able to do what they like with their pregnancies.
This too has been answered for you on numerous occasions.
As I have told you before, my complete and open freedom to swing my arms and fists around ends at your face. Why? Because people should have completely free reign over their own choices and own body until such time that their choices impact on the well being and/or rights of another sentient agent.
The moment that happens their freedoms, rights and choices should be curtailed proportionately as a result. This is generally what people mean when they say women should be able to do what they want with their own body/pregnancy. And it explained entirely why most such people are ok with termination of a fetus at 12 weeks but not 38 weeks.
But as has been explained to you on numerous occasions A) No one is proposing any legislation to allow termination at 38 weeks and
Even when terminating at such late stages we terminate the pregnancy not the fetus. We delivery a living baby.
So your issue here is on one hand entirely erroneous and on the other hand irrelevant for a number of reasons. And AT BEST all you can be said to be doing here is complaining in a pedantic fashion about HOW people make their points rather than engaging in WHAT their point actually is.Outlaw Pete wrote: »At what stage do we feel it should be okay to still the heartbeat of a baby developing in the womb?
At any stage where we can say with as much scientific certainty as we can that the faculty of Human Sentience has simply not come into play. As soon as doubt comes into play on that question our willingness to engage with the process of termination should decline in direct proportion to this.
The near totality of abortions sought purely by choice are performed WELL within that criteria. In or before week 16 of gestation. There is no basis there for moral and ethical concern. Least of all in emotive approached like "Look at its little fingers" or "Look how music influences the movement of it's tongue".Outlaw Pete wrote: »No, as over 90% of pregnant women that are informed that the baby they're carrying has Down syndrome (in the UK and a few other countries in the Europe) are choosing to have them killed. How is that not a genocide?
For the same reason that my garden implement is not "cake". Because that is not what the word genocide means or at least has come to mean in our culture. For example "The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide" have come to the conclusion that it involves "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group".
This does not map AT ALL into putting the choices into numerous individual hands as to whether they themselves wish to continue with the pregnancy to produce a child with DS. The use of the word "genocide" can merely be classed with your other numerous attempts at emotive, rather than substantive, moves in this topic.
There are of course many definitions on offer and there are some individuals, like Pieter N. Drost which likely offer ones closer to your liking. So of course a pedantic trawling of definitions to offer a weak justification for the use of that word is certainly possible..... but overall the general trend in the use of that word, definitions of that word, and the historic events of horror attached to that word..... make it's use in this context emotive rather than substantive. It adds nothing by it's use and obfuscates much, which I grant may be your intention.Outlaw Pete wrote: »What if there was a test to tell race in the first trimester and it came out that 90% of white women were choosing to abort the baby when told it wasn't white? Would that be okay?
It depends what you mean by "ok". I think you need to make a STARK distinction between the judgement of whether someone should be allowed do "X" and the judgement of their motivations for doing "X". I think very often they are massively different things.
For example I believe in your right to drink coca cola. You might however contrive to drink so much of it a day that you develop conditions like obesity and diabetes and others for which you could maybe claim disability allowances or something.
Now I would find horrific and immoral your motivation for drinking coca cola therefore. But I would still absolutely support your right to drink it.
Similarly you might contrive to find extreme, pedantic and unlikely motivations (like "race" above) as to why someone might seek an abortion here in Ireland. And I would indeed question the morality of SOME of those motivations were people to actually show up displaying them.
But it would still say ZERO to me on the discussion of whether they, let alone people as a whole in general who do not have such extreme or questionable motivations, should have a right to seek abortions.0
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