EPTUsing baby with you mean foetus and using murder when you mean abortion etc is nothing more than using intentionally vague or simply incorrect words in order to obfuscate the topic and avoid making an actual point. Furthermore when one of the core issues in any abortion debate is the value of the foetus' life then calling it a baby and refusing to acknowledge that it is not medically defined as a baby is a big issue. I don't think it's too much to ask that people actually argue the point they want to make and part of that is using the same set of words with strictly defined meanings. If you can't agree on a common language then no debate can take place.
However another mod didn't even take the time to attempt to regulate that topic and instead just closed it, presumably because unlike me he felt you guys were incapable of even forming a semblance of a debate. Would you be happier if I did that in future?
However another mod didn't even take the time to attempt to regulate that topic and instead just closed it, presumably because unlike me he felt you guys were incapable of even forming a semblance of a debate. Would you be happier if I did that in future?
The crux of the abortion debate is that there is not a common language because there are two very divergent beliefs. One, that the fetus is morally a human being - and the natural inclination is to, thus, call it a baby - and the other that the fetus is not morally a human being, and the natural inclination is to call it a fetus because why create another name for it when you already have fetus available. "Not-baby"? "Not-human-yet"? The meaning of those two words in the context of the abortion debate have been settled for 30-40 years. Only in KwarK-land is it unacceptable to call a fetus a baby, on the flimsiest of pretexts.
You are simply placing your opinion with a weak foundation of "it's vague" - how? That is ridiculous - to call an unborn child a baby - seems pretty specific to everyone but you - to the point of settled fact (where it is no such thing anywhere but apparently in medical literature, so what) and that you are apparently so very concerned about preciseness in language that you must place a restriction that just so happens to severely curtail the ability of the side you disagree with to make an effective argument articulating its core belief.
What if I allowed you to use the term prebirth baby? As long as you're not grouping prebirth and postbirth together with the same catch all term and then going "well of course it's wrong to murder babies" then debate can happen. A common understanding of what words mean is always going to be necessary for communication though.
You simply want the debate on your terms that make no sense, where one side is heavily favored because the most effective argument of the other side has been ruled out by you "because." The reasoning behind your decision is entirely laughable.
It's ideologically charged only because one side of the debate insists on claiming that a prebirth baby is the same thing as a postbirth baby because it helps their rhetoric of baby killing. It's a nonsense. You can believe they have exactly the same value and then make your case for the prebirth baby having value without having to call it the same thing as a post birth baby, it's not like recognising that you can use different words for them means that one is intrinsically less valuable than the other, the word simply describes the thing accurately. Meaningful communication is not ideologically charged, it gets in the way of the more extreme pro-life rhetoric but extreme pro-life rhetoric is not meaningful communication.
Oh, so calling a fetus a fetus to deny that it is morally a human being is also not ideologically charged? To one side of the debate it certainly is... the side you are not on. Surely this is mere coincidence.
It simply offends your sensibilities to read a fetus being called a baby, so we can't be having that.
We see once again you making judgments that are matters of debate and simply declaring them not to be.
If you think a three year old toddler has value that's great, you can argue why.
If you think a 20 week old foetus has value, also great, you can argue why.
Recognising the distinction between the two and explaining which it is you are talking about when you make your case does not weaken your case at all unless your case only applies to one of the two and you're making stuff up.
If you are talking about a foetus and they're talking about a foetus then calling it a word which applies exclusively to foetus does absolutely nothing to hinder your discussion but ensures a degree of intellectual honesty through making accurate points.
If you think a 20 week old foetus has value, also great, you can argue why.
Recognising the distinction between the two and explaining which it is you are talking about when you make your case does not weaken your case at all unless your case only applies to one of the two and you're making stuff up.
If you are talking about a foetus and they're talking about a foetus then calling it a word which applies exclusively to foetus does absolutely nothing to hinder your discussion but ensures a degree of intellectual honesty through making accurate points.
The foundation of the pro-life argument is that they are indistinguishable morally and this is expressed by using "baby" instead of "fetus." "Baby" is not a medical term; the correct term is "infant." To actually be living up to this standard you profess, "baby" should not be allowed be at all.
All you are doing is tilting the debate towards the side you favor and insisting that all you're doing is ensuring intellectual honesty and accuracy in language.
We can see again and again how you feel that your opinions are fact and that they should be authoritative because they are "right" and an expression of settled matters and that not adhering is a sign of dishonesty or an unwillingness to engage in constructive debate. This is a classic amateur-hour debate tactic. Rather than actually argue the merits, you declare the argument settled in your favor and refuse to engage on it.
I don't feel I have in any way compromised here. My insistence that we refer to a human before birth in terms which strictly mean before birth remains. Prebirth baby is a fairly nonsensical term, like calling a cow a pre-slaughter steak, but as long as everyone knows what everyone else means and nobody is deliberately obfuscating because they don't want to make a rational argument then I'm happy.
Your insistence is based solely on your personal opinion masquerading as accepted fact, which it is not. Billions of people sincerely believe, based on both emotion and reason, that a baby is a baby whether it is inside the womb or not. They sincerely believe that abortion is the murder of a baby. Many of them are not unwilling to engage in honest debate about it. But you, gazing into their minds through some amazing process (arrogance), have divined otherwise.
Also saying that the ten months following conception can be loosely categorised as the bit before birth and the bit after birth is in no way arrogant and I am not imposing my belief that it can be categorised that way upon anyone because it's not a belief. There really is a bit before birth and then a bit after birth. Ask anyone. Like I have literally no clue what point you're trying to make here but I'm fairly sure it's stupid. Unless you would like to argue that the bit before birth isn't always the bit before birth or that sometimes it can be both before birth and after birth at the same time then I have no clue what problem with the distinction you seem to be having.
roflmao
I'm not arrogant, but I can't really figure out your point but I think it's stupid. That is not arrogance at all.
As your position becomes less and less tenable, at least the humor level of your posts is rising.
There is no opinion being stifled. You are more that welcome to say that the bit before birth is no less valuable than the bit after birth. You are just not allowed to say that it is the same thing because it is not. One of them lives in a womb, that's how you tell.
There is no opinion being stifled here, except that one you hold that I think is stupid and wrong. Because.
Your argument is that because the dictionary definition is vague then we must be vague also? I maintain that vagueness helps nobody and clarifying what it is you are talking about doesn't in any way stifle an opinion. You also haven't explained why it is arrogant to assume that everybody must conform to the idea that there is a thing called birth which happens roughly 9 months after conception. I don't think it's in any way arrogant to tell everyone that they must accept that birth happens and clarify which side of birth they are referring to.
I don't think it's in any way arrogant to construct a strawman and then burn it down.
Pray tell, how is it vague? Everyone knows what is being referred to. So how is it vague?
It is arrogant to compel everyone to conform to your belief because sadly while you are grasping wildly to construct an authority here based on something other than your banling icon, that does not exist. Your entire argument is that "oh well there's a difference between being in the womb and being out of it, so they must be called two different things." Why?
Because being out of the womb and being in the womb is the dividing line. Only the most radical pro-abortionists would say that the woman has the right to an abortion after birth, and even they only say that is justified in the very rare cases where a doctor messes up a partial-birth abortion and the baby is successfully born. Oops, did I say baby to refer to the baby before birth? Sorry. I believe that it is a baby, morally indistinguishable from you or me, and that to call it "fetus" in anything other than a biological sense is "ideologically charged." Because it is. Both terms are ideologically charged, but KwarK has invented a way to say that only one is, and only it should not be allowed, and just by coincidence, it is on the side he doesn't agree with.
It's about idiots being deliberately vague because they're too lazy or too stupid to make an actual argument and then getting upset when told that birth is a dividing line in terms of the word we use, even if they can maintain that in all other ways it is of identical value. Making an argument which refers precisely to the issues at hand should not be a burden.
No, it's about one person making a ridiculous rule based on his personal feelings and then arguing terribly in defense of it. Birth is not the dividing line in the terms we use except in a biological sense, and to pro-abortionists. The two sides do use two different languages; the pro-abortion side looks at it biologically to arrive at its conclusion; the anti-abortion side looks at the situation morally from the beginning, biology is far down the line of importance to them.
You've devolved to the level of "idiot," "stupid," and you're still clinging to the truly stupid "vague" argument. This is going well for you so far and we're not even halfway through!
Then make the argument that a foetus is a human instead of referring to it as something not a foetus which everyone agrees is a human. Nobody is saying you can't have the opinion that a foetus is a human. If you believe that then you can make your point by going "I believe that a foetus is a human because". You just can't deliberately use vague terms which imply that it is a post birth human over and over without ever doing the "I believe that a foetus is a human because" stage. I'm only asking that people make clear arguments that refer to the issue.
How is it vague? Oh right, it isn't, you're just asserting ad nauseum that it is...
As long as you're happy to clarify that whether it's before birth or after birth that you're making your point about then you can come up with your own words. Just be check that the word you decide upon doesn't also mean something completely different.
Still clinging to your incredibly untenable position, huh?
So don't use it because it can also mean something else according to an online dictionary and makes certain people very confused. Instead come up with terms which precisely refer to the thing you want to refer to and nothing else.
We're sorry that it makes you confused (no one else has expressed confusion or the belief that it could cause confusion), and this confusion of yours makes your repeated use of insults about intelligence deliciously ironic.
Restricting the argument that abortion means aborting babies in general as opposed to just pre-birth babies is a good thing and if you feel stifled by it then you're just mad you can't use absurd and illogical statements to appeal to emotion.
Restricting the argument that abortion means aborting babies in general as opposed to just pre-birth babies means that you're afraid of the impact of that argument and you're just mad that no one believes your absurd and illogical statements that everyone but you is being absurd and illogical.
And sorry, but appeals to emotion are perfectly valid and are used thousands of times daily just here at TL. It is only in this one particular instance that you apparently feel it is so pernicious that it must be reined in.
I disagree.
Fortunately I see two solutions to this. Solution A, autoclose any discussion of topics such as abortion. Solution B, trust you guys to attempt a reasonable debate but impose my rules upon it. If you dislike the rules then you can choose to either pretend solution A has been used and not post in it or follow them anyway and just accept that you don't get to imply they kill cute little toddlers while you call pro-choice advocates murderers. I'm going to go with B but if you object to the rules then, as always, website feedback is your friend.
Fortunately I see two solutions to this. Solution A, autoclose any discussion of topics such as abortion. Solution B, trust you guys to attempt a reasonable debate but impose my rules upon it. If you dislike the rules then you can choose to either pretend solution A has been used and not post in it or follow them anyway and just accept that you don't get to imply they kill cute little toddlers while you call pro-choice advocates murderers. I'm going to go with B but if you object to the rules then, as always, website feedback is your friend.
"I disagree." So your opinion really does have the weight of fact? Let me call up the Encylcopedia Britannica, or perhaps Wikipedia, if you prefer that.
Solution C, KwarK stops embarrassing himself, is apparently not an option. Any solution where KwarK does not use strawmen as a way to personally attack others with withering sarcasm is also apparently not an option.
Yes.
Example below.
Pro lifer: "you're okay with killing babies"
Pro choice: "..... you're fucking retarded"
Example #2
Pro lifer: "you're okay with killing foetus"
Pro choice: "yes, as long as it's before it can exist independently outside of the womb (or whatever other rules that pro-choicer puts on it)"
Pro lifer: "oh.... well, I think you shouldn't kill a foetus because...."
Pro choice: "well I disagree because...."
Example below.
Pro lifer: "you're okay with killing babies"
Pro choice: "..... you're fucking retarded"
Example #2
Pro lifer: "you're okay with killing foetus"
Pro choice: "yes, as long as it's before it can exist independently outside of the womb (or whatever other rules that pro-choicer puts on it)"
Pro lifer: "oh.... well, I think you shouldn't kill a foetus because...."
Pro choice: "well I disagree because...."
Can I borrow your crystal ball, I have some calls to Vegas I'd like to make...
Because making the argument that a pro choice advocate is in favour of infanticide is such a stupid thing to say that calling them a retard is an act of charity. Someone stupid enough to actually say that may have gotten to that point in their life without noticing that they're a complete moron because they're simply too stupid to understand it, flat out telling them is a kindness.
Ah yes, you're so stupid that I'm being nice calling you stupid.
Someone stupid enough to advance the arguments KwarK has advanced needs the kindness of a mental and psychological evaluation, not the kindness of actually entertaining their egomania.
I'm not sure why there is such a negative connotation attributed to the word fetus, but technically it isn't even the right word to refer to an unborn human child, so I'd personally be fine with not using it either. I still feel people who want to be taken seriously by obvious pro-choice debaters should avoid using the word baby in exchange for the pro-choicers not incorrectly using medical terms in an effort to dehumanize the discussion.
Could you stop piling up adjectives that make absolutely no sense in the way you use them? I know you're trying very hard to appear intelligent, but calling an unborn child a baby being "dehumanizing" simply beggars belief.
You are not the arbiter of who gets taken seriously or not, despite your fervent belief that you are.
This is website feedback, you can say pretty much whatever you like in here and not get banned. Feel free to call us godless liberals if you want.
The flipside of this is that I can be more than usually blunt in addressing your concerns, the freedom to be frank with each other goes both ways.
The flipside of this is that I can be more than usually blunt in addressing your concerns, the freedom to be frank with each other goes both ways.
Are you capable, emotionally, of responding to what people actually say? Did xDaunt or jdseemoreglass express a desire to call anyone a godless liberal?
You are very adept at setting up these situations that have no resemblance to the actual reality of the discussion and then responding in a way emotionally pleasing to you, but other than that, it isn't getting you much.
FallingI actually disagree that 'baby' should be a disallowed term for a 'fetus' because it forces one side to use their opponents set of definitions and thereby the control of the debate goes to those that are allowed to use their 'own' terms. Both sides feel they are justified scientifically or linguistically to use fetus or baby. Both sides use the terms they do because of they implicitly support their own positions: amoral, routine procedure vs immoral killing.
Has KwarK told you how absurd, illogical, retarded, stupid, idiotic, and dehumanizing you are yet?
It is very telling that KwarK cannot make his argument without including it in these generic and lazy insults. How about a little intellectual honesty from KwarK: simply admit that you frame the terms of the debate in a way favorable to the side you agree with because it is offensive to you to read a fetus being called a baby. There is no reason-based explanation for your behavior. Your contention that the dictionary definitions are meaningless because they are "vague" is hysterically laughable. Baby is defined that way because large numbers of people believe that the word "baby" includes the time in the womb. If you don't like it, if you think it is stupid, then argue so. Do not use your authority to simply declare yourself the winner in an argument that you obviously hold a high emotional stake in. If your poor widdle feelings can't handle it, then don't engage in that debate. Isn't that the advice you've been giving?
