Thank you for summarizing your beliefs and opinions.
Please define ‘early life’ and/or ‘early stages’ in terms of age or developmental milestones. 2 days? 6 months? 18 years? Eating unassisted? Walking? Talking? Financial independence?
Please also provide peer-reviewed evidence of the difference between maternal and paternal influence on childhood development and the negative effects of non- male + female child rearing.
While I can’t speak for kanicbird, I’m pro-life (and obviously have issues with aborting for this and most other reasons) and I support gay and lesbian adoptions. And adoptions by single, straight folks as well. Kids need homes, and anyone who can show fitness for parenthood by passing a homestudy should be allowed to provide a home for them. To exclude people based solely on the fact that they’ll either be a single parent or their partner is the same gender is detrimental to children who might otherwise have a far better upbringing than languishing in a series of foster homes.
IMHO Up until weening would be when a very consistent maternal presents is critical, it is the time of transition from continuous maternal contact and support in the womb to when the child is comfortable with other people caring for him.
A very good book on this is “The Transforming of the Inner Man” by John and Paula Sandford, based on scriptural principals it does go into a lot of early life issues including gender roles. But like anything else the very best answers we can get are going to come straight from the Word of God.
First, what ‘equivalent situation’? The realities of biology are such that this is a separate and unequal issue.
Your scenario is certainly one in which the phrase makes sense, however it is not the ‘only possible’ scenario. There are a few situations where ‘a man’ (presumably the father) or anybody else would not ‘reasonably have a say’. Additionally, instead of ‘individual’, I should have said ‘unilateral’.
The phrase could also have meaning with regard to a single woman’s choice to undergo voluntary sterilization, or her choice to not be forcibly sterilized. Does a doctor, spouse, or parent ‘reasonably have a say’ in those cases?
What about a rape victim’s possible decision to abort? Would you argue that a rapist might ‘reasonably have a say’?
What about pregnant minors? The pro-choice position generally, although not necessarily, is that such minors’ parents do not ‘reasonably have a say’.
This particular facet of the thread is going to come down to a debate over what is ‘reasonable’, which means that it will ultimately be futile.
I respect your theological stance on this, however religious texts and popular-audience books based on them are not evidence of anything. How do you peer review a deity or a prophet? What is His control group?
Please provide useful, impartial data or kindly admit that your opinions are no more authoritative than anybody else’s and are therefore useless as debating points.
Perhaps, but in India and China there is a growing imbalance in the ratio of the sexes because more female than male fetuses are aborted. Here in the States there’s some speculation that a drop in crimes rates may have been due in large part to abortion, since many women who had gotten pregnant in unfavorable circumstances for raising a child are now aborting rather than carrying their pregnancies to term. Abortion obviously can have significant impact on a society.
Look it up yourself.
Geez Lonesome Polecat, talk about flubbing an easy catch. You were asked only to provide evidence that “there’s some speculation that a drop in crimes rates may have been due in large part to abortion” (emphasis added). All you had to do was google “abortion crime rates” and up pop any number of cites, including a wiki article:
You’re welcome.
Since you respect my theology you must respect my stance that the wisdom of God and His Word far outweighs any earthly authority, as such it is the only source of truth and is the final say of the issue.
Thank you for respecting my theology.
Thanks, Kimstu, but a one word post consisting of “Cite?” doesn’t deserve even so minimal an effort for a response.
That stance can certainly be respected as a religious belief, but it cannot be respected as providing a valid equivalent to useful, impartial data in the context of a debate in this forum. I’m happy for you that you feel secure in your religious beliefs and all, but your religious beliefs are not a valid cite for your assertions.
So Furious_Marmot called it correctly: your opinions are no more authoritative than anybody else’s and are therefore useless as debating points.
To be fair, though, you did qualify several of your assertions with “IMHO”, acknowledging that they are only your own (humble) opinion. So I think you get a pass on those.
Hmm, that’s not my understanding of how this forum works, but YMMV.
And if someone’s asking for evidence to support an assertion, I don’t quite see what’s wrong with keeping the request as short as possible. AFAICT, there’s no functional difference between “Cite?” and “I’m not convinced that the assertion you just made has an adequate factual basis, so I’m requesting that you respond by posting some reliable data, or link(s) thereto, that convincingly substantiate your claim.”
I suppose we could abbreviate that to “INCTTAYJMHAAFBSIRTYRBPSRDOLTTCSYC”, but frankly I think “Cite?” is preferable.
What about if some organization, “Planned StraightHood”, started provided free or low cost abortions for gay fetuses?
What if they started plastering bilboards along the freeway: “Have a gay fetus? We can help! 1-800-GAY-ABORT”
As you say, if the fetus can’t be a victim, than nobody is getting hurt, right?
This raises a sincerely-asked question. If all of your evidence for something is theologically-based, how can you convince people who do not subscribe to your interpretation or are members of another faith entirely? To, say, a Buddhist, an argument based entirely on Christian scriptural interpretation is no more persuasive than one made up out of whole cloth.
What, then is the point of debate? Are you hoping that people will convert and accept the same authority you base your argument upon? Is it a demonstration of righteousness?
Being pro-choice means you respect a woman’s right to choose what she would like to do as far as her reproductive system is concerned – but one would hope she is making an informed choice, considering all variables (and, ideally, already having gone through sex ed).
If people are being taught that females and homosexuals are subhuman, you can have a problem with that and still be pro-choice. If women are aborting their fetuses because they cannot afford to raise children, even though they’d like to, you can be pro-choice and have a problem with that. If women are having unwanted children after being fed misinformation about abortion’s links to fertility and cancer, you can be pro-choice and have a problem with that.
I have to wonder if we’re even discussing a real problem here. Are there that many people who are both pro-choice and violently homophobic? It’s been my impression that the theology that supported homophobic bigotry was very, very closely tied to the pro-life stance as well.
Are there really that many people who would abort a gay fetus?
That’s right. Your scenario is ludicrous and wouldn’t happen, but I wouldn’t give a shit if it did. How would it harm anybody?
Instead of debating what we think pro-/anti- -abortion/-gay people would think or do if a certain hypothetical became real, wouldn’t we be better off polling people of various opinions? Then we’d have actual numbers (albeit statistically crappy ones) to work with instead of a bunch of opinions about what people who we may or may not agree with would or wouldn’t do.
As far as the OP goes and being pro-choice, I also think it would be a very slimy reason for an abortion, but the reason, be it sexual preference or gender or whatever, is irrelevant.
One other thing to consider though, is that while sexual preference may in fact be genetic, that doesn’t automatically correspond to "the fetus has the gene/s, and will therefore be gay. If there’s an environmental component necessary as well that triggers the gene it may not be realized. (IANAGeneticist, so what I’m saying could be completely off) Likewise, if the gene/s are recessive or simply indicate a probability as opposed to a certainty, then it would be irresponsible for a screener to say simply “he/she is gay.” Rather, “he/she has a higher than average probability of being gay.”