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Read the rules in the OP before posting, please.In order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a re-read to refresh your memory! The vast majority of you are contributing in a healthy way, keep it up! NOTE: When providing a source, explain why you feel it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion if it's not obvious. Also take note that unsubstantiated tweets/posts meant only to rekindle old arguments can result in a mod action. |
On November 03 2013 03:51 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On November 03 2013 03:42 KaRnaGe[cF] wrote:
i will pay taxes to help children that otherwise would have been snuffed out because their parent did not want to take care of them. What is at stake here is legally forcing women to give up their bodies as incubators, not you paying taxes. Your autonomy isn't threatened here, you are threatening that of others and saying "I'll happily pay my taxes to force other people to do shit" as if your consent to this arrangement is all that matters. It's not about your taxes, it's about their freedom.
You have the freedom to use condoms and birth control. If women were to spontaneously become pregnant i could see your point.
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United States43964 Posts
On November 03 2013 03:53 mcc wrote:Show nested quote +On November 03 2013 03:42 KaRnaGe[cF] wrote:+ Show Spoiler +
Do you have any idea how many hundreds of thousands of kids are already being shuffled from foster home to foster home or from group home to juvenile detention center? It isn't exactly difficult to figure out that the demographic most concerned with having access to clean, safe, and danger free abortions is also the poorest and most likely to include minorities. Where is your campaign for youth soup kitchens, before-school breakfast programs, and expanded/improved foster parent systems? Oh wait, this isn't actually about pragmatically bettering the lives of children, this is about imposing a rigid moral framework onto pregnancy that clearly cares less about reality than ideology. I won't even draw up the numbers, but if one compares the state of being poor and young in the US with the amount of money religious conservatives spend on billboards, protests, and ballot initiatives intended to dramatically restrict abortion, the truth of the matter is plain to see. This isn't actually about children at all.
I think we should put more money into the poor and homeless. Once again you are meshing abortion with religion. Not only am i not religious i'm also have liberal beliefs! That's right i believe in gay marriage and I'm against abortions! Maybe I'm just in the minority for thinking on my own. See you automatically throw me into some type of demographic because this is how you have been tooled to see things. It's frustrating. Life if life to me and this is the way i feel about it. A fetus is human life, in a non-religious, scientific sort of way and there is no denying that fact, Yes it is not as self aware as life that is outside of the womb, but it is human life none the less. Just as Kwark will pay taxes for people on life support and the mentally challenged, i will pay taxes to help children that otherwise would have been snuffed out because their parent did not want to take care of them. Foetus is non-sentient human life, that is a big difference. There is absolutely no inherent value in human life itself. We pretend like there is so we do not have to complicate our ethical reasoning too much, since in most scenarios it is an ok assumption. But reality is complex and mental shortcuts like that human life in itself has value are not good approach in all scenarios. There is value in a person, not in a human life.
Not even in all people to be honest but we prefer the society the big lie creates so we don't bother to prove it. If you were to cut people into bits and cut the bits into bits and so forth you wouldn't find a single piece of value there but we all collectively agree it must be there because we don't want someone else to cut us into bits. It's fine as a general principle to base a society around but once people start legislating away autonomy to protect the imaginary bits of value we start running into issues.
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United States43964 Posts
On November 03 2013 03:58 KaRnaGe[cF] wrote:Show nested quote +On November 03 2013 03:51 KwarK wrote:On November 03 2013 03:42 KaRnaGe[cF] wrote:
i will pay taxes to help children that otherwise would have been snuffed out because their parent did not want to take care of them. What is at stake here is legally forcing women to give up their bodies as incubators, not you paying taxes. Your autonomy isn't threatened here, you are threatening that of others and saying "I'll happily pay my taxes to force other people to do shit" as if your consent to this arrangement is all that matters. It's not about your taxes, it's about their freedom. You have the freedom to use condoms and birth control. If women were to spontaneously become pregnant i could see your point.
So it really is just punishing women for being pregnant. Gotya. I'd bring up the rape issue but I don't need it because I already find your argument nonsensical.
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+ Show Spoiler +
It's a common attitude among pro-lifers, they are dead set upon protecting the child at all costs, until it's born, at which point it's pretty much good luck have fun. And then accuse the mother of being a murderer for not wanting to be saddled with a child as a single mother with almost no support for the next 20 years. Derp.
Why should the mother have no support? Why couldn't she give the child up for adoption? Why couldn't society support the poor? I believe we should! Surely the billions spent on wars could be spent utilized at home. I can see people arguing that a fetus could be killed if they do not believe it is life. However your argument that life is too expensive is another animal altogether. In reality we should care for the week and poor, but we spend money elsewhere.
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Abortion should be illegal because a child in the womb is still a child. Abortion should be legal, however, because forcing a woman to carry an unwanted child isn't good for the child, the parents or society as a whole.
So it should be legal with restrictions. Anything else seems to require an annoying amount of belief / mental gymnastics.
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On November 03 2013 03:59 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On November 03 2013 03:53 mcc wrote:On November 03 2013 03:42 KaRnaGe[cF] wrote:+ Show Spoiler +
Do you have any idea how many hundreds of thousands of kids are already being shuffled from foster home to foster home or from group home to juvenile detention center? It isn't exactly difficult to figure out that the demographic most concerned with having access to clean, safe, and danger free abortions is also the poorest and most likely to include minorities. Where is your campaign for youth soup kitchens, before-school breakfast programs, and expanded/improved foster parent systems? Oh wait, this isn't actually about pragmatically bettering the lives of children, this is about imposing a rigid moral framework onto pregnancy that clearly cares less about reality than ideology. I won't even draw up the numbers, but if one compares the state of being poor and young in the US with the amount of money religious conservatives spend on billboards, protests, and ballot initiatives intended to dramatically restrict abortion, the truth of the matter is plain to see. This isn't actually about children at all.
I think we should put more money into the poor and homeless. Once again you are meshing abortion with religion. Not only am i not religious i'm also have liberal beliefs! That's right i believe in gay marriage and I'm against abortions! Maybe I'm just in the minority for thinking on my own. See you automatically throw me into some type of demographic because this is how you have been tooled to see things. It's frustrating. Life if life to me and this is the way i feel about it. A fetus is human life, in a non-religious, scientific sort of way and there is no denying that fact, Yes it is not as self aware as life that is outside of the womb, but it is human life none the less. Just as Kwark will pay taxes for people on life support and the mentally challenged, i will pay taxes to help children that otherwise would have been snuffed out because their parent did not want to take care of them. Foetus is non-sentient human life, that is a big difference. There is absolutely no inherent value in human life itself. We pretend like there is so we do not have to complicate our ethical reasoning too much, since in most scenarios it is an ok assumption. But reality is complex and mental shortcuts like that human life in itself has value are not good approach in all scenarios. There is value in a person, not in a human life. Not even in all people to be honest but we prefer the society the big lie creates so we don't bother to prove it. If you were to cut people into bits and cut the bits into bits and so forth you wouldn't find a single piece of value there but we all collectively agree it must be there because we don't want someone else to cut us into bits. It's fine as a general principle to base a society around but once people start legislating away autonomy to protect the imaginary bits of value we start running into issues.
You do know there is a difference between your own cells and the definition of a fetus right?
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United States43964 Posts
On November 03 2013 04:05 KaRnaGe[cF] wrote:+ Show Spoiler +
It's a common attitude among pro-lifers, they are dead set upon protecting the child at all costs, until it's born, at which point it's pretty much good luck have fun. And then accuse the mother of being a murderer for not wanting to be saddled with a child as a single mother with almost no support for the next 20 years. Derp.
Why should the mother have no support? Why couldn't she give the child up for adoption? Why couldn't society support the poor? I believe we should! Surely the billions spent on wars could be spent utilized at home. I can see people arguing that a fetus could be killed if they do not believe it is life. However your argument that life is too expensive is another animal altogether. In reality we should care for the week and poor, but we spend money elsewhere.
His point is that the same people who advocate protecting the life of the fetus at all costs are the ones who actively cut back programs that stop the mother getting pregnant in the first place, stop her being able to care for the child once its born and create a cycle of more unwanted kids. Obviously it doesn't apply to you but the hypocrisy existing within the pro life movement about actually being pro life is staggering.
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United States43964 Posts
On November 03 2013 04:08 KaRnaGe[cF] wrote:Show nested quote +On November 03 2013 03:59 KwarK wrote:On November 03 2013 03:53 mcc wrote:On November 03 2013 03:42 KaRnaGe[cF] wrote:+ Show Spoiler +
Do you have any idea how many hundreds of thousands of kids are already being shuffled from foster home to foster home or from group home to juvenile detention center? It isn't exactly difficult to figure out that the demographic most concerned with having access to clean, safe, and danger free abortions is also the poorest and most likely to include minorities. Where is your campaign for youth soup kitchens, before-school breakfast programs, and expanded/improved foster parent systems? Oh wait, this isn't actually about pragmatically bettering the lives of children, this is about imposing a rigid moral framework onto pregnancy that clearly cares less about reality than ideology. I won't even draw up the numbers, but if one compares the state of being poor and young in the US with the amount of money religious conservatives spend on billboards, protests, and ballot initiatives intended to dramatically restrict abortion, the truth of the matter is plain to see. This isn't actually about children at all.
I think we should put more money into the poor and homeless. Once again you are meshing abortion with religion. Not only am i not religious i'm also have liberal beliefs! That's right i believe in gay marriage and I'm against abortions! Maybe I'm just in the minority for thinking on my own. See you automatically throw me into some type of demographic because this is how you have been tooled to see things. It's frustrating. Life if life to me and this is the way i feel about it. A fetus is human life, in a non-religious, scientific sort of way and there is no denying that fact, Yes it is not as self aware as life that is outside of the womb, but it is human life none the less. Just as Kwark will pay taxes for people on life support and the mentally challenged, i will pay taxes to help children that otherwise would have been snuffed out because their parent did not want to take care of them. Foetus is non-sentient human life, that is a big difference. There is absolutely no inherent value in human life itself. We pretend like there is so we do not have to complicate our ethical reasoning too much, since in most scenarios it is an ok assumption. But reality is complex and mental shortcuts like that human life in itself has value are not good approach in all scenarios. There is value in a person, not in a human life. Not even in all people to be honest but we prefer the society the big lie creates so we don't bother to prove it. If you were to cut people into bits and cut the bits into bits and so forth you wouldn't find a single piece of value there but we all collectively agree it must be there because we don't want someone else to cut us into bits. It's fine as a general principle to base a society around but once people start legislating away autonomy to protect the imaginary bits of value we start running into issues. You do know there is a difference between your own cells and the definition of a fetus right?
Make your point.
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On November 03 2013 04:07 JonnyBNoHo wrote:
Abortion should be illegal because a child in the womb is still a child. Abortion should be legal, however, because forcing a woman to carry an unwanted child isn't good for the child, the parents or society as a whole.
So it should be legal with restrictions. Anything else seems to require an annoying amount of belief / mental gymnastics.
You're right, there is no point here i really wanted to make other that it frustrates me when people mesh abortion with religious or political views. I believe it would be harder on society, but i also think that theoretically if we should be so worried about the quality of life a child has that people who don't make enough money should be sterilized. Just think how much better the world would be.
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+ Show Spoiler +
That is the point. I mean that's where it ends. I believe it's a human life and you don't. I'm not mad at ya. That's all.
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+ Show Spoiler +
His point is that the same people who advocate protecting the life of the fetus at all costs are the ones who actively cut back programs that stop the mother getting pregnant in the first place, stop her being able to care for the child once its born and create a cycle of more unwanted kids. Obviously it doesn't apply to you but the hypocrisy existing within the pro life movement about actually being pro life is staggering.
This is true. I just think it sucks...
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On November 03 2013 03:53 mcc wrote:Show nested quote +On November 03 2013 03:42 KaRnaGe[cF] wrote:+ Show Spoiler +
Do you have any idea how many hundreds of thousands of kids are already being shuffled from foster home to foster home or from group home to juvenile detention center? It isn't exactly difficult to figure out that the demographic most concerned with having access to clean, safe, and danger free abortions is also the poorest and most likely to include minorities. Where is your campaign for youth soup kitchens, before-school breakfast programs, and expanded/improved foster parent systems? Oh wait, this isn't actually about pragmatically bettering the lives of children, this is about imposing a rigid moral framework onto pregnancy that clearly cares less about reality than ideology. I won't even draw up the numbers, but if one compares the state of being poor and young in the US with the amount of money religious conservatives spend on billboards, protests, and ballot initiatives intended to dramatically restrict abortion, the truth of the matter is plain to see. This isn't actually about children at all.
I think we should put more money into the poor and homeless. Once again you are meshing abortion with religion. Not only am i not religious i'm also have liberal beliefs! That's right i believe in gay marriage and I'm against abortions! Maybe I'm just in the minority for thinking on my own. See you automatically throw me into some type of demographic because this is how you have been tooled to see things. It's frustrating. Life if life to me and this is the way i feel about it. A fetus is human life, in a non-religious, scientific sort of way and there is no denying that fact, Yes it is not as self aware as life that is outside of the womb, but it is human life none the less. Just as Kwark will pay taxes for people on life support and the mentally challenged, i will pay taxes to help children that otherwise would have been snuffed out because their parent did not want to take care of them. Foetus is non-sentient human life, that is a big difference. There is absolutely no inherent value in human life itself. We pretend like there is so we do not have to complicate our ethical reasoning too much, since in most scenarios it is an ok assumption. But reality is complex and mental shortcuts like that human life in itself has value are not good approach in all scenarios. There is value in a person, not in a human life.
Personally, I think this is perhaps the most important distinction in this debate, but one that anti-abortionists will either dismiss with a "so what, a fetus is still a human organism" or will shrug it off as "mental gymnastics" (or something of the sort).
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United States43964 Posts
On November 03 2013 04:18 KaRnaGe[cF] wrote:+ Show Spoiler +That is the point. I mean that's where it ends. I believe it's a human life and you don't. I'm not mad at ya. That's all.
Which comes down to ensoulment, basically. Hence the issue. You may not personally be religious but you're living in a society built on a Christian background and despite your lack of religious beliefs somehow ensoulment got stuck in there. You go "those cells are just cells but these ones over here have some special value that is worth taking away someone else's liberty for". If you wanna legislate on it, prove it.
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On November 03 2013 04:26 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On November 03 2013 04:18 KaRnaGe[cF] wrote:+ Show Spoiler +That is the point. I mean that's where it ends. I believe it's a human life and you don't. I'm not mad at ya. That's all. Which comes down to ensoulment, basically. Hence the issue. You may not personally be religious but you're living in a society built on a Christian background and despite your lack of religious beliefs somehow ensoulment got stuck in there. You go "those cells are just cells but these ones over here have some special value that is worth taking away someone else's liberty for". If you wanna legislate on it, prove it.
Sorry but we did have this "coma-guy" argument before. A fetus is going to become a full-fledged person, your skin-cells are not, what's so intellectually challenging about that concept?
I still don't get all the technical "is this fetus a person/is it not"? stuff. It will be, that's what matters.
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On November 03 2013 04:26 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On November 03 2013 04:18 KaRnaGe[cF] wrote:+ Show Spoiler +That is the point. I mean that's where it ends. I believe it's a human life and you don't. I'm not mad at ya. That's all. Which comes down to ensoulment, basically. Hence the issue. You may not personally be religious but you're living in a society built on a Christian background and despite your lack of religious beliefs somehow ensoulment got stuck in there. You go "those cells are just cells but these ones over here have some special value that is worth taking away someone else's liberty for". If you wanna legislate on it, prove it.
OK I'll splooge on the table and in nine months if it's up crawling around eating and shitting I'll let you know.
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On November 03 2013 04:31 Nyxisto wrote:Show nested quote +On November 03 2013 04:26 KwarK wrote:On November 03 2013 04:18 KaRnaGe[cF] wrote:+ Show Spoiler +That is the point. I mean that's where it ends. I believe it's a human life and you don't. I'm not mad at ya. That's all. Which comes down to ensoulment, basically. Hence the issue. You may not personally be religious but you're living in a society built on a Christian background and despite your lack of religious beliefs somehow ensoulment got stuck in there. You go "those cells are just cells but these ones over here have some special value that is worth taking away someone else's liberty for". If you wanna legislate on it, prove it. Sorry but we did have this "coma-guy" argument before. A fetus is going to become a full-fledged person, your skin-cells are not, what's so intellectually challenging about that concept? I still don't get all the technical "is this fetus a person/is it not"? stuff. It will be, that's what matters.
Actually... a foetus will only be made into a person if someone agrees to (or is forced to) undergo the long, arduous and painful process of pregnancy and giving birth. A collection of skin cells could also be made into a person if someone agrees to perform a series of expensive and complicated experiments*. In each case the potential is there.
We dont legally oblige fathers to donate bone marrow to save their living child with leukaemia, I dont see why we should force mothers to undergo pregnancy for the sake of their unborn one.
*As of today this has to my knowledge only actually been done with mice. It's clearly possible to do with people as well though, just more complicated and more ethical hoops to clear.
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United States43964 Posts
On November 03 2013 04:31 Nyxisto wrote:Show nested quote +On November 03 2013 04:26 KwarK wrote:On November 03 2013 04:18 KaRnaGe[cF] wrote:+ Show Spoiler +That is the point. I mean that's where it ends. I believe it's a human life and you don't. I'm not mad at ya. That's all. Which comes down to ensoulment, basically. Hence the issue. You may not personally be religious but you're living in a society built on a Christian background and despite your lack of religious beliefs somehow ensoulment got stuck in there. You go "those cells are just cells but these ones over here have some special value that is worth taking away someone else's liberty for". If you wanna legislate on it, prove it. Sorry but we did have this "coma-guy" argument before. A fetus is going to become a full-fledged person, your skin-cells are not, what's so intellectually challenging about that concept?
A sperm cells a micrometer away from an egg that in 0.001 seconds will make contact with the egg is also destined to become a person. A long marriage involving unprotected sex between two fertile people has good odds to produce a person too. Producing a person has no value, people are easy to produce, I value lives, not potential lives. There are infinite potential lives out there, a vast potential combination of sperm and egg matches and even once you have the genetics sorted how you raise them will have far more impact on who they are as a person than the biology. Arguing that one potential life is more virtuous than another is a nonsense, it's all hypotheticals.
A girl who drops out of school to become a single mom because she can't abort may have fewer children than if she had waited, got some financial security and then started a family. In this case the result of the abortion would be fewer fully fledged people, you may have ensured one that was close to the finish line made it across but it was no more special than any other.
An interesting side note regarding this comes from a hypothetical regarding a friend I had who died of muscular dystrophy. MD can be effectively screened for now using IVF because women can be carriers but not, as far as I know, suffer from it due to chromosomes so a simple screening of zygotes by gender will ensure a woman who knows she is a carrier can avoid passing it on. I wondered if the mother had any regrets about her son being born and not another child, given the son tore her family apart (father left), ruined her health (she destroyed her back caring for him), ended her life outside of him (could not work, full time carer) and eventually broke her heart with his death. Probably not, she loved her son and even though the story was always going to have a tragic ending she wouldn't wish he had never been born. But had someone switched the embryos, or if she had had a miscarriage and tried again with a girl or whatever it would have been the best thing that could have ever happened to her. She would have loved the new child just as much and wouldn't have known the child that never was. She might even have had more kids (after learning you had a son with MD you tend not to want more). Viewing these embryos as people, of course she wouldn't switch, she loved her son and that embryo became her son so it was precious while the hypothetical alternate didn't exist and therefore has no value. But before they're born one hypothetical child is pretty much as precious as another, treating them all as people makes no sense.
Each time you jack off billions of hypothetical children cease to be possible but that doesn't make it a genocide because hypothetical children are not equal to real children. Genetic reproductive material is not special, the way we have evolved is to have a surplus of it which we discard liberally in the hope that some of it gets where it needs to be. To reiterate an earlier point, if you want to treat genetic material as special feel free to do so but don't use the law take those beliefs into someone else's womb.
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United States43964 Posts
On November 03 2013 04:33 KaRnaGe[cF] wrote:Show nested quote +On November 03 2013 04:26 KwarK wrote:On November 03 2013 04:18 KaRnaGe[cF] wrote:+ Show Spoiler +That is the point. I mean that's where it ends. I believe it's a human life and you don't. I'm not mad at ya. That's all. Which comes down to ensoulment, basically. Hence the issue. You may not personally be religious but you're living in a society built on a Christian background and despite your lack of religious beliefs somehow ensoulment got stuck in there. You go "those cells are just cells but these ones over here have some special value that is worth taking away someone else's liberty for". If you wanna legislate on it, prove it. OK I'll splooge on the table and in nine months if it's up crawling around eating and shitting I'll let you know.
STOP! If you go on the table and not in a fertile woman millions of potential genetic combinations for potential children will cease to be possible! Won't someone please think of the children!
The jacking off argument is actually a fun one. There really isn't much reason to treat some genetic material as special and not others but as men we like jacking off way too much so we create a little bit of double think where genetic material only becomes special when it's the obligation of the woman to look after it but has no value before then. Kinda funny when you think about it. We literally flush the stuff down the toilet when being logically consistent would interfere with masturbating but when the same belief means we don't have to do anything but control women we're all for it.
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Women can also suffer from muscular dystrophy, but you are at least partly correct in that some subtypes they can't.
Also, a sperm only possess half the genetic material, but I guess ignoring facts are convenient when yelling at others.
How about we discuss US politics in this thread and abortion in one of the many threads already present here on TL for that specific purpose? Y'all would do well reading them at least as you have yet to make an argument which hasn't already been debated and make up hilariously terrible analogies.
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Well, it is relevant given recent news that Lyndsey Graham is championing a new, highly restrictive anti-abortion bill.
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