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RebelHeart
New Zealand722 Posts
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NonY
8748 Posts
The bottom line is that there must be some measuring stick upon which we apply human rights, and the only logical one is the presence of human life. He provides absolutely no support for this. To ignore the rights of the baby, by assuring that somehow the mother has more rights "because it's her body", is no different to turning a blind eye to child abuse or child murder because "a man's house is his castle". This isn't right at all. He doesn't even attempt to justify or defend it. The truth is, a mother takes on the responsibility of motherhood from the moment of conception, not from the moment of birth. This is a contingent truth based on a claim which he didn't support. So basically, it's not a truth at all. She has a "choice" about whether or not she had unprotected sex, or whether she had sex fullstop. Not all women have a choice. If the rights, or lack of rights, of the mother depend on the act of sex being her choice, then there are many cases in which this guy's philosophy are insufficient. And from a Libertarian perspective, it is actually more rational to support the anti-abortion lobby, because they are standing up for the non-initiation of force against a weaker party - the baby. Does he even know what the phrase "more rational" means? It doesn't make sense in this context. This totally destroys the credibility of his philosophy on abortion. How can we listen to someone who doesn't know what being rational is? Your analysis doesn't go far enough. Hypocrite anyone? | ||
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DeadVessel
United States6269 Posts
abortion is a slippery slope. there is no right or wrong stance on it because they all have massive grey areas. | ||
micronesia
United States24676 Posts
On August 26 2007 11:22 NonY[rC] wrote: He provides absolutely no support for this. This isn't right at all. He doesn't even attempt to justify or defend it. This is a contingent truth based on a claim which he didn't support. So basically, it's not a truth at all. Not all women have a choice. If the rights, or lack of rights, of the mother depend on the act of sex being her choice, then there are many cases in which this guy's philosophy are insufficient. Does he even know what the phrase "more rational" means? It doesn't make sense in this context. This totally destroys the credibility of his philosophy on abortion. How can we listen to someone who doesn't know what being rational is? Hypocrite anyone? I agree with Nony and furthermore, in response to the bold section, isn't it amazing how the person protecting the rights of the fetus seems more like he's trying to just punish women? A few weeks ago my dad told me he noticed when you listen carefully to pro-life activists they pretend to be looking out for the well being of those who can't defend themselves, and yet it's just a thinly veiled attempt to punish women. I'm sure this isn't always the case, but it certainly is noticeable. | ||
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NonY
8748 Posts
"Fetuses perform human-like behaviors." This is true to a very short extent and to put that short extent into consideration, we can compare a fetus's human-like behaviors to a dog's or a bird's. Both dogs and birds can take an extensive amount of voice commands. Fetuses know no voice commands. Birds can communicate back through human speech and dogs can communicate back with non-speech communication that is nonetheless much more extensive than any communication from a fetus. Dogs and birds have created more complex relationships mimicking human-with-human relationships than a fetus has. Dogs and birds have displayed a much wider range of human emotions than a fetus has. So, in communication, behavior and emotions, animals are closer to humans than fetuses. "Fetuses have the potential to become humans, so they share the rights of humans." This statement implies that the potential to become something is worth the same as the actual something. This isn't logical and it's not practical. A potential murderer is not treated the same as an actual murderer. Nobody will accept potential payment as real payment. None of it makes any sense. There could be something special about the case of a fetus being potentially a person, but I haven't heard of any special justification from the pro-lifers, so until them I assume that this argument is just rhetoric with no substance. "Fetuses are already people" or "There's no such thing as a fetus." This would be a modification of the previous paragraph's statement where the pro-lifers just forget about potential people and say that they're already people. How do they support the claim? This, I believe, is where the gray area is the biggest. What kind of definition of 'person' are we using? Using the idea that a person is anything that behaves like a person would mean the baby is less person-like than many animals, as I've mentioned above. There are other definitions, like some would have us look at the DNA. But we can take the DNA of a dead person, or a single cell stripped from a living person, and still see human DNA. We can say that if a fetus can be removed from the mother and still sustain life, then it's a person, but that means we have a changing line. As medicine improves, the fetuses could be removed at earlier and earlier stages and still survive. Why this reasoning would even be used seems unsupported anyway. What about cloning? What about an egg fertilized in a lab, and grown completely to adulthood (not possible now, but potentially)? Any method of defining a human seems arbitrary. And seeing as how the person doing the defining will know if his definition ends up supporting pro-lifers or pro-choicers, it seems difficult to be objective. Basically, pro-lifers cling to this gray area and want everyone to be worried about the fact that abortion might be the same as murder in the traditional sense. They refuse to look any farther in the issue, like what is good for society. It is inevitable that if abortion were illegal, mothers who wanted to abort would try to self-abort. Coat hangers, drug and alcohol abuse, "accidents", suicide, etc. Pro-lifers ignore this repercussion because they have no good response to it. The best they can say is "it's a separate issue and should be dealt with as a necessary repercussion of preventing possible murder". They won't admit to it being inherently part of the issue. This is a trend that will continue for all pro-lifers' responses to social repercussions. Anyway, the mothers will try to self-abort and already that is creating situations worse than abortion with respect to society. Suppose a mother (and possibly father, if they're together) wanted to abort but was not allowed to. So now the child has a parent who does not want to be a parent. People like that do not make good parents. Remember, the issue here isn't "punishing" the mother for conceiving a child when she doesn't want a child. The pro-lifers would have you ignore the fate of the child while you shake your finger at the mother and say "tough luck." The issue here is, now that the woman has conceived, what is best for society and the child? An unwanted child will have a much higher chance of growing up unloved, of being abused, of being in poverty, etc etc. These are all bad things for the child and for society. (Note the difference between an unplanned and an unwanted child. A financially secure, mentally stable, healthy, loving person who has an unplanned baby will make for a much better parent than one who does not want a child.) Or perhaps the baby is put up for adoption, but isn't adopted, and bounces around orphanages for a childhood. Such children are much more likely to be unhappy criminals. The irony is that the pro-lifers think of themselves as upholding the law by preventing abortions but their actions create a spawning pool for criminals. To sum up my reasoning overall... The gray area of the abortion issue is whether or not killing a fetus is murder. Arguments go back and forth, progress is rare, and it usually ends up with each person choosing a seemingly arbitrary point to land on because that particular point just seems right. However, there are fairly black and white areas in the issue of abortion, such as what would happen to the people who want to abort, but can't. It's pretty clearly bad for the mothers, fathers, and children in this situation. The ripples in society that these people would create are also generally bad. In the absence of conclusive evidence from other parts of the issue, we should act according to what's best for society. | ||
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A3iL3r0n
United States2196 Posts
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HeadBangaa
United States6512 Posts
On August 26 2007 15:54 A3iL3r0n wrote: Unwanted children typically grow up to be terrible people. So I'm pro-choice, but pro-choice people should readily accept the fact they are terminating a life and not try to argue out of it on the technicalities. A life is being taken, but probably for the better. We should sweep the ghettos, goddamn welfare-leechers. Mow them down. It would be for the better. | ||
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Asakura
Germany471 Posts
And as I said the foetus has no real consciousness. It's perhaps comparable with the consciousness of animals or insects. You don't ask animals if they want to keep on living, you just kill to eat them. You don't ask insects if they want to be alive, you just kill them because they're annoying you. It's fine that you're Christian, it's your business, but it's not fine to be a narrow-minded Christian dumbass - remember! | ||
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