The funny thing is that his position and mine are probably identical and pro-choice. It’s his style of debating that I find deplorable; comparable to a six-year old throwing a tantrum and demanding to be treated like a grown-up. You can see it in how his standard reply is to accuse others of not debating him intelligently. Going all-caps is another clear “tell”.
That was why I invited him to change sides; he could do more damage to the pro-life position by arguing on their behalf.
I, of course, would be chuckling as the pro-lifers scrambled to disassociate themselves from him.
Sure it is! We’ll just have to disagree on this point. To me it is indisputable that the foundation for all rights is the right to simply exist. My belief does not necessarily imply that all forms of existence are equally “desirable” or fulfilling. There is no freedom you can pursue, including having an abortion, that does not rely on a more fundamental right.
That’s my point (which I know you get, but don’t agree with )…
Suppose I leave her nutrients alone, but I kill her. Have I violated a more important right? Can it be said that the right of an innocent to exist is a higher right than any other right that entity might possess?
The guilt or innocence of the fetus is not relevant here.
A leech or a tapeworm is not a guilty creature. It may only be innocently trying to survive by attaching itself to my body and sucking my blood, but I can still remove it by any means possible, including killing it. The word guilt implies malice, but malice on the creature’s part is not neccesary to giving me the moral authority to remove the creature from my body.
Big problem with the standard of viability. Problem is that what is “viable” now wasn’t viable 50 or 100 years ago, and what is not viable now may well be so in 50 or 100 years.
So I don’t really think we can use “viability” as any kind of standard for permissibility (or prohibition) of abortion at any particular time. Since fetuses have been pretty much the same since the dawn of time (or the dawn of people, anyway), and if we’re using “viability” as some sort of standard by which to measure whether or not a fetus is a person, we get into trouble. All of us, I think, whichever side of this debate we’re on (and I’m not taking or stating a position here), would agree that being “alive” or a “person” should not be dependent on the current state of medical knowledge. That is a very slippery slope that I don’t think we want to start sliding down.
I’m not discussing leeches, since they do not possess human rights. You’re avoiding my point. Let’s stick with your anology, just for giggles. Whichever right you suppose allows you to cast off a leech, suppose I kill you before you exercise it. Have I abrogated a greater right in killing you than I would have in keeping you from removing the leech? Why?
Well, two ways, there is the morning after pill which is generally a high dose of birth control pills. This generally has the affect (effect) of inducing menstration and prevents the zygote from attaching to the uterin (sp?) wall. This has to be taken within a few days of intercourse and is not all that reliable*.
There are now one (maybe two) perscription medications that will cause a miscarriage within I think about a month of intercourse*.
From my experience, girls having a scare would go to their doc, ask for the morning after pill, and then hope for a couple of days. All this occured BEFORE they knew they were pregnant.
I’m not as familiar with the newer medications, but these can be taken before or after a woman knows she’s pregnant.
So the issue is, if the woman was pregnant, and she used one of the above methods to prevent pregnancy, would that be an abortion? The end result is the same. In theory a woman could follow this practice after each instance of intercourse, without ever knowing she was pregnant.
It reminds me of a case where a man shot someone who was already dead. He was convicted of murder dispite not having killed the guy, since he had the intent, and actually carried out the act.
One other thing to remember is that dead people actually have a certain amount of rights. You’re not allowed to have sex with a cadaver, and run a google search for that case where the funeral home couldn’t be bothered cremating people, so they just dumped the bodies in the back yard.
*this information presented here is intended purely for entertainment, and is not to be considered medical advice.
Neither do fetuses, under the current law. And I hope for the sake of millions of women who want control of their own destinies that it stays that way.
My instinct is to say that you have abrogated a greater right by killing me, although that depends. If you were going to torture me for an extended period of time with leeches the level of evilness of that particular action starts to go up.
Granted, but that is irrelevant unless one first assumes that “current law” is righteous and just. That is, of course, circular reasoning, since the justness of said laws is precisely the matter being debated.
I’m late in coming back to this thread because I forgot to subscribe to it, so I’m going to take us back in time a little to some stuff that was directly addressed to me or otherwise begging for a reply.
It’s not just a dangerous term to apply, as far as I’m concerned, it’s a completely unapproachable term to apply.
Complete lobotomy? Severe brain damage? Dementia? Alzheimers?
Seriously, I will no more “allow” that it would ever be proper to allow elective abortions than it would ever be proper to allow elective murder. I cannot and will not compromise on an issue of chosen death. Consider me unreasonable as a result if you will; I am pro-life, and as such, will not consider any proposal which demands that I “allow” any option which is incompatible with sustaining all the lives in the equation whenever physically possible.
Since you’ve asked for something akin to a laundry list, I’ll provide one.
[ul][li]I’ve been part of mentoring program for many years, before mentoring became the new hot public service. The young women who I’ve worked with have all been from single parent, impoverished households, though it should be clear that lack of a parent or financial stability aren’t prerequisites for the program.[/li][li]I’m also a financial supporter of Big Brothers/Big Sisters in NYC. (My husband is a Big Brother, my mentoring work precludes my taking on yet another obligation of that sort.)[/li][li]I coordinate a community outreach program at my church which provides health, childcare/parenting, nutrition and (pro-life) family planning education and computer training, to young women (married or single, mothers or childless) and food and clothing bank assistance to them and their families. [/li][li]I donated blood on a regular basis until my blood became undesirable because I was availed of information. (I posted about this in a recent thread about blood banks, you can search for that post for details.)[/li][li]I carry an anatomical gift card which designates that my organs can be used for both life-saving and research purposes following my death.[/li][li]I coordinate an annual organ donation information drive at a community health fair which regularly results in several dozen new donors.[/li][li]I am listed on the national bone marrow registry.[/ul][/li]
How about you, Zoe?
But that analogy still isn’t correct, legally speaking, nor, do I believe, ethically. You cannot (legally) kill a trespasser on your property who is “infringing on your rights.” That statement is so overbroad as to be void for vagueness.
You cannot kill a trespasser on your property just because his presence makes you unhappy. You cannot kill a trespasser to get him off of your property because he’s doing physical damage, like cutting down your 100 year old maple tree or breaking your windows. You cannot kill an intruder who comes into your living room, unfurls his bedroll, pitches a tent with the intent to stay for a month or two and then begins to urinate all over your furniture. All of these situations represent an infringement upon your rights at various levels, but none of them rise to the level of infringement needed to justify a killing.
Conversely, you can kill a “trespasser” (word in quotes because trespassing, as an actual crime, would never be enough of an infringement to justify someone’s killing) if you reasonably believe that they are about to do you bodily harm and you have no other way to escape (that varies by jurisdiction) or if they are already doing you great bodily harm. By great, I mean something more than a punch in the nose or a kick in the testes – I’m talking about a severe beating, a rape or an attack with a deadly weapon which could lead to your death.
Great bodily harm – that’s the standard. Not “infringement upon rights” not emotional harm, not financial harm. The line for the justified killing is simply and clearly drawn – you can kill someone when what they’re doing to you or are (reasonably believed to be) about to do might kill you or leave you permanently injured.
Obviously, extending this analogy to the abortion debate brings us to a position that pro-choicers will not accept: abortion on demand for any reason is not in any way equivalent to the justified killing standards for post-birth individuals. Those standards are more analogous to the pro-life position: abortion only when necessary to save the life of or prevent serious loss of health by the mother.
Excellent point. Not only does viability change as medical technology improves, it varies by gender – baby boy preemies have a lower survival rate than baby girl preemies – and location – proximity to a medical facility with a high level NICU is a major factor in the survival of premature children. A child who is viable in Chicago (where a baby boy who was born at 25 weeks gestation and weighing only 12 ounces was recently released from an area hospital to go home with his parents, Google for details if you wish) may very well not be in Bear Creek, Wyoming. And viability at full gestation isn’t a given in many parts of the world (check out WHOs infant mortality statistics) for a variety of reasons. Viability isn’t a standard.
Interestingly, the same day I read about the 25-week preemie’s recovery, opening my yellow pages I read about two abortion clinics which proclaimed, in headlines, that they will abort up to 24 weeks. That line is getting more and more blurry as time passes.
**Not much of a debate, then, is it? Do you want to discuss what is legal? There’s no argument there. I thought we were discussing what ought to be legal.
I promise not to torture you with leeches. But even if I were to do such a thing, do you agree that your right to live free from torture does not exist without a foundation of the right to simply exist?
Let’s address your instinctive reply (which you should, of course, feel free to retract or clarify upon further reflection; I understand you were reacting “from the hip”). The women you feel so strongly have the right to obtain abortions have a greater right in their human right to exist. I posit that no other right is meaningful without this right.
The question then becomes what ought to be the resolution of rights in conflict between separate human beings. I have the right to expect that you will not tap my car’s bumper through your own carelessness. I have the right to my property and the protection of my property, and that ought to be respected. I don’t, however, have the moral standing based on this right to kill you in order to avoid your careless tapping of my car’s bumper. The fact that you have no “moral claim” to tap my car–fact though it may be–does not permit me to subjugate your greater right to my own lesser right.
Yes, it can. The right to self-determination of one’s body is not, and has never been, an absolute right. It is certainly nowhere near as fundamental as an innocent being’s right to existence – which, as Bob Cos, beagledave as I have repeatedly pointed out, is the most fundamental of all human rights. It is the one right without which all other rights cannot exist.
It most certainly does. After all, my statement was made in response to the claim that abortions will continue, even after they are made illegal. Obviously, this is an insufficient reason to shink away from banning abortions.
You raise the issues of pot and gambling, as though these supported your claim. They do not. Remember, we are talking about whether the futility of eradicating abortion is a valid argument against de-legalizing it. This is separate from the question of whether a given act should be rendered illegal – a matter which obviously depends on the act itself.
Quite simply, the fetus itself. Anyone with even a passing familiarity with the abortion issue should know that this is the heart of the abortion debate.
Speaking as an overt - even outrageous - pro-choicer, I’d say that what emerges from this thread, indeed virtually any thread on abortion, is the impossibility of compromise, at least within a context where significant numbers take certain kinds of Christian totalitarianism seriously - hence my allusions to countries like the UK (where I was a post-grad student and where they very much don’t) on various threads.
Now, I’m unencumbered (as a Jewess) with the idea that I have to make moral judgements and, certainly, accept moral judgements based on any kind of Christian theology whatsoever - not only that but, of course, I’d never accept the idea that my moral/ethical precepts should be subject to any kind of judgement from people with a Christian perspective in any way that I should acknowledge. In other words, Christians are ‘invisible’ to me from that point of view.
The reason for my saying what I’ve said is that it seems to me that those of us who share a pro- choice position would be far more profitably employed in spending our time considering how to organize a political opposition to these people rather than waste our time arguing with them within a premise/paradigm context of their creation. The choice/anti-choice debate isn’t one that can be had within somebody else’s paradigm, we’ll never accept one another’s paradigms.
In other words, I’m not vaguely interested in The Thunderous One’s (just taking one example) worldview on this or any subject, I’m only interested in how to stop him and his kind in their political tracks.
And if the pro-lifers here were attempting to argue on the basis of Christian teaching, that would be one thing. You will note, however, that most, if not all, of us have consistently failed to use such an approach.
And yet you continue to participate in these discussions. Seems to me that you have been amply demonstrating your interest. Now, as to why you now claim to have no interest whatsoever… well, I’ll leave that as an exercise for everyone.
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