# Abortion-clinic picketers. **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [May 6, 2011, 5:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/abortion-clinic-picketers/580935 "2011-05-06T05:57:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 67
**Author:** ![Omg\_a\_Black\_Conservative](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/7ba0ec/32.png) [@Omg\_a\_Black\_Conservative](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omg_a_Black_Conservative)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2011, 3:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/abortion-clinic-picketers/580935/1321 "2011-05-16T03:29:17Z")
> [@Zeriel](#): > > If all innocent human lives are equally valuable (as specified by **classyladyhp** ), and if it’s equivalently difficult to save 1 or 500, both of which were specified. And yet, this still doesn’t flow. Two plus two doesn’t equal five. Again, the decision to save one or another is not based in such simple terms as numbers. That doesn’t mean that one individual has any inherent worth less than the other. Again, I direct you to my question I asked, of which no one has answered yet ☹ > [@](#): > > The jurisdiction that I am in does in fact investigate every death that doesn’t occur _under the care of a doctor_–that is, if someone just up and dies, there is GOING to be an autopsy 100% of the time. Under the care of a doctor is the keyword. No jurisdiction I am aware of investigates every single death. > [@](#): > > I don’t care what people do–we’re discussing policy here. What does policy have to do with solemnizing someone’s death? I’m sure I don’t solemnize everyone’s death-- only those whom I care about. > [@](#): > > Also, don’t condescend to me, man–my parents are both ludicrously Catholic (in the sense of “church organist/liturgy director” and “lay minister and church council chair”) so I’m quite familiar with the extremes of the “pro-life” stance, and unlike just about everyone I’ve seen argue here HAVE taken a logical anti-abortion position that flows from their axioms. I reserve the right to disagree with said axioms, but I don’t hassle them about it because their position holds together logically. By the same token, I have jumped on people like Der Trihs and others when they make equally ludicrous statements like “the anti-abortion movement is exclusively anti-woman in nature”, despite the fact we’re on the same side of the debate. Bottom line–if you’re pro-life, you don’t want \*\*classyladyhp \*\*to be the face of your group, and defending her makes you look silly. She seems to be doing a-okay. The bigger problems it the number of straw men coming from a certain side. Seriously. I can count, at least, four in the past five or so pages. > [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > Well, now that you’ve defeated a fictional pro-choicer (and bravo, applause-applause, you’re a regular gladiator), how about addressing some real ones? How do you feel about posts 1079 and 1089? Oh, but it’s not fictional a pro-choicer. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2011, 3:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/abortion-clinic-picketers/580935/1322 "2011-05-16T03:34:22Z")
> [@Omg\_a\_Black\_Conservative](#): > > Oh, but it’s not fictional a pro-choicer. Well, assuming you’re quoting (or at least reasonably paraphrasing) a real person accurately, that person is a _stupid_ pro-choicer. Try honing your skills on a smart one, rather than crow over trivial victories. ---
**Author:** ![Brown\_Eyed\_Girl](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/brown_eyed_girl/32/3574_2.png) [@Brown\_Eyed\_Girl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Brown_Eyed_Girl)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2011, 3:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/abortion-clinic-picketers/580935/1323 "2011-05-16T03:37:11Z")
> [@classyladyhp](#): > > No. That’s not what I’m saying. They should realize that sex may lead to pregnancy and that sometimes contraception doesn’t work. What if they do? How does that change anything? If the intent, in using contraception, is to avoid pregnancy, why should anyone be saddled with an unwanted pregnancy they did everything they could to avoid? ---
**Author:** ![Omg\_a\_Black\_Conservative](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/7ba0ec/32.png) [@Omg\_a\_Black\_Conservative](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omg_a_Black_Conservative)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2011, 3:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/abortion-clinic-picketers/580935/1324 "2011-05-16T03:40:10Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > Well, assuming you’re quoting (or at least reasonably paraphrasing) a real person accurately, that person is a _stupid_ pro-choicer. Try honing your skills on a smart one, rather than crow over trivial victories. Oh, but since the above would be the majority of pro-choicers, it’s not so trivial. Though, I have to say, I’m quite shocked at the number of pro-choicers who haven’t come out trying to prove why the not-so-fictional conversation was a horrible mischaracterization of pro-choice beliefs. > [@Brown\_Eyed\_Girl](#): > > What if they do? How does that change anything? If the intent, in using contraception, is to avoid pregnancy, why should anyone be saddled with an unwanted pregnancy they did everything they could to avoid? For the same reason I’m going to get saddled with child support payments for a kid I might not have wanted. ---
**Author:** ![Zeriel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/58956e/32.png) [@Zeriel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zeriel)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2011, 3:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/abortion-clinic-picketers/580935/1325 "2011-05-16T03:42:14Z")
> [@Omg\_a\_Black\_Conservative](#): > > And yet, this still doesn’t flow. Two plus two doesn’t equal five. Again, the decision to save one or another is not based in such simple terms as numbers. That doesn’t mean that one individual has any inherent worth less than the other. Again, I direct you to my question I asked, of which no one has answered yet ☹ Sure it does, or you need to come up with any, ANY logical reason that doesn’t violate her stated axioms why it should be any different. > [@](#): > > Under the care of a doctor is the keyword. No jurisdiction I am aware of investigates every single death. Now who’s the sophist? A death under a doctor’s care is implicitly investigated by the doctor when he fills out the death certificate. > [@](#): > > She seems to be doing a-okay. The bigger problems it the number of straw men coming from a certain side. Wishing doesn’t make it so. Again: why do you waste time defending her illogic? Is it so important to you that your side be right all the time? And why’d you waste the time typing out that long-winded strawman of yours? Surely you could easily pull quotes from the thread and prove that viewpoint exists somewhere other than your own head? > [@Omg\_a\_Black\_Conservative](#): > > For the same reason I’m going to get saddled with child support payments for a kid I might not have wanted. Wow, does that come off as misogynist. “If I’ve got no choice in whether I’m going to potentially suffer, you bet your ass she doesn’t get a choice either.” ---
**Author:** ![Omg\_a\_Black\_Conservative](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/7ba0ec/32.png) [@Omg\_a\_Black\_Conservative](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omg_a_Black_Conservative)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2011, 3:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/abortion-clinic-picketers/580935/1326 "2011-05-16T03:55:21Z")
> [@Zeriel](#): > > Sure it does, or you need to come up with any, ANY logical reason that doesn’t violate her stated axioms why it should be any different. She said everyone has inherent worth. Please, explain to me how you would get from everyone having inherent worth to saving individuals based solely on numbers (which has little to do with abortion, since abortion is rarely about saving one of the other)? > [@](#): > > Now who’s the sophist? A death under a doctor’s care is implicitly investigated by the doctor when he fills out the death certificate. I wasn’t aware that everyone dies under a doctors care. > [@](#): > > Wishing doesn’t make it so. Who’s wishing? > [@](#): > > Again: why do you waste time defending her illogic? Is it so important to you that your side be right all the time? Is that what I’m doing? Here I thought I was responding to a rather intellectually dubious question. (And why do you guys continue to refuse to answer my question?) > [@](#): > > And why’d you waste the time typing out that long-winded strawman of yours? Surely you could easily pull quotes from the thread and prove that viewpoint exists somewhere other than your own head? Long-winded straw man, you say? Is it a straw man? I’m sure that if you were to start at the top of page 22 or 23 (I believe it is), you would find numerous of your fellow pro-choicers spouting off some ignorance about the unborn not being humans (while calling someone else ignorant, mind you), and then later devolving their arguments into one of bacteria, cancer, tumors and the unborns not being persons. So where would you like to start? 😃 > [@](#): > > Wow, does that come off as misogynist. “If I’ve got no choice in whether I’m going to potentially suffer, you bet your ass she doesn’t get a choice either.” You know there’s something wrong when expecting women to have the personal responsibility angle heaped upon them as it is men is deemed misogyny. ---
**Author:** ![Zeriel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/58956e/32.png) [@Zeriel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zeriel)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2011, 4:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/abortion-clinic-picketers/580935/1327 "2011-05-16T04:14:28Z")
> [@Omg\_a\_Black\_Conservative](#): > > She said everyone has inherent worth. Please, explain to me how you would get from everyone having inherent worth to saving individuals based solely on numbers (which has little to do with abortion, since abortion is rarely about saving one of the other)? She has said more than that. She has said, among other things: 1. life beings at conception, and is fully human from that point on with full human rights. 2. no human life, regardless of status, has more inherent value than any other human life. Thus, in a situation where it is equally easy to save one 5-yr-old or save five hundred embryos, 1. By 1), the embryos are fully human and have full human rights. 2. By 2), each embryo is as valuable as the five year old 3. By the problem statement, it takes equivalent effort to save all the embryos or the single child, but both cannot be saved. 4. By 2) and the problem statement, the embryos are worth exactly 500 times as much as the child. 5. Q.E.D. the right decision under those axioms is to save the embryos. Certainly if you added axioms regarding the relative value of embryos and 5-yr-olds, or even dropped axiom 2, there wouldn’t necessarily be a straight logical solution. However, with both of the axioms presented, there is only one logical choice. As for it’s unrelation to abortion, that’s nearly the entire point. If someone states an axiom and uses it to justify abortion, one can test the logical consistency of that view by assembling a scenario that doesn’t touch abortion but does touch on that axiom. If a person then appears to react to a non-abortion scenario in a way contrary to the axiom presented as justification for the abortion stance, we know that axiom doesn’t really apply in their minds. > [@](#): > > I wasn’t aware that everyone dies under a doctors care. You cannot be this stupid. If a person dies under a doctor’s care, the doctor investigates the cause of death. If a person dies not under a doctor’s care, the coroner’s office investigates the cause of death, and as necessary in either case the police investigate any possible criminal implications thereof. I think you’d be hard pressed to find a jurisdiction within the United States where a medical professional of some stripe DIDN’T investigate every body. > [@](#): > > (And why do you guys continue to refuse to answer my question?) Which question? I already answered why it’s a no-brainer (because of classyladyhp’s stated axioms). I’ve responded to every question mark in that first post of yours. > [@](#): > > You know there’s something wrong when expecting women to have the personal responsibility angle heaped upon them as it is men is deemed misogyny. If there’s a baby, both parents support it. No baby, no support. Abortion is completely unrelated to the personal responsibility involved in procreation. ---
**Author:** ![Zeriel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/58956e/32.png) [@Zeriel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zeriel)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2011, 4:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/abortion-clinic-picketers/580935/1328 "2011-05-16T04:22:42Z")
Never mind, I realized you were referring to your incompletely specified elderly and newborns scenario. > [@OMG](#): > > Let’s assume that you’re in a burning building, and you have a choice between saving a sixty year old and thirty newborns. Which will you save? Now how about a sixty year old and twenty newborns? A sixty year old and ten newborns? What about a sixty year old and one newborn? Does the one you don’t choose to save have no worth? Would you agree that the one not saved has no rights? What’s the point of me asking such a question in the first place? I’d save whatever combination resulted in more lives being outside the building at the end of the scenario. If it’s one and one, I’m saving the newborn out of nothing but self-interest–the newborn is lighter and easier to carry. This question says nothing particular about me since I’ve asserted nothing contradictory. Rights don’t enter into your hypothetical, either. The question of “which combination of beings to save or damn” says nothing about my beliefs regarding their rights. As for worth, in a vacuum all humans who are independent persons have the same worth in the absence of any knowledge of their behavior–if the old guy was Hitler, yeah, he’s worth less than J. Random Newborn. A pragmatic decision to save many and leave one doesn’t say the one is worthless. Presumably you’d ask such a hypothetical question to explore the edges of someone’s moral framework by comparing their previous statements to their response to this question. As a non-targeted question, it has no value whatsoever. Of note, now that I’ve answered this, you’re welcome to make up further hypotheticals to try to catch ME in a logical contradiction. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2011, 4:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/abortion-clinic-picketers/580935/1329 "2011-05-16T04:41:28Z")
> [@Omg\_a\_Black\_Conservative](#): > > Oh, but since the above would be the majority of pro-choicers, it’s not so trivial. I’m willing to concede you’ve had conversations along the lines you’ve described with some people around here, but this statement is a little too improbable for me. And in any case, it fails to address conversations that _don’t_ start with trying to define fetus as human or not human. > [@](#): > > Though, I have to say, I’m quite shocked at the number of pro-choicers who haven’t come out trying to prove why the not-so-fictional conversation was a horrible mischaracterization of pro-choice beliefs. I daresay your degree of shock can’t be _that_ strong. Besides, even stipulating that the transcript is a 100% accurate account of a conversation a pro-choicer and a pro-lifer once had, the pro-choicer is using a foolish argument. There are far better ones. I’ve used them. I’ve used them on you, as I recall. ---
**Author:** ![Omg\_a\_Black\_Conservative](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/7ba0ec/32.png) [@Omg\_a\_Black\_Conservative](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omg_a_Black_Conservative)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2011, 5:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/abortion-clinic-picketers/580935/1330 "2011-05-16T05:34:21Z")
> [@Zeriel](#): > > Presumably you’d ask such a hypothetical question to explore the edges of someone’s moral framework by comparing their previous statements to their response to this question. As a non-targeted question, it has no value whatsoever. No, I just sometimes like asking dumb and pointless questions which don’t prove any point. 😉 > [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > I’m willing to concede you’ve had conversations along the lines you’ve described with some people around here, but this statement is a little too improbable for me. A little too improbable, why? > [@](#): > > And in any case, it fails to address conversations that _don’t_ start with trying to define fetus as human or not human. Not terribly. Just skip down a future part of the argument, as we’ll get there inevitably. > [@](#): > > I daresay your degree of shock can’t be _that_ strong. Besides, even stipulating that the transcript is a 100% accurate account of a conversation a pro-choicer and a pro-lifer once had, the pro-choicer is using a foolish argument. There are far better ones. I’ve used them. > > I’ve used them on you, as I recall. Really? You’re going to have to refresh my memory. ---
**Author:** ![curlcoat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ea5d25/32.png) [@curlcoat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/curlcoat)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2011, 5:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/abortion-clinic-picketers/580935/1331 "2011-05-16T05:55:50Z")
> [@Omg\_a\_Black\_Conservative](#): > > No. Here’s a classic example of sophistry at work. I admit I haven’t read every post in this thread (don’t have the time!) but I don’t recall seeing any conversations in here that sound anything like this. > [@Omg\_a\_Black\_Conservative](#): > > Again, I direct you to my question I asked, of which no one has answered yet ☹ What question was that? > [@Omg\_a\_Black\_Conservative](#): > > Though, I have to say, I’m quite shocked at the number of pro-choicers who haven’t come out trying to prove why the not-so-fictional conversation was a horrible mischaracterization of pro-choice beliefs. Well I suppose we could start with the fact (that I’ve seen, again haven’t read every post) that no one has said anything about torturing the fetus. > [@](#): > > For the same reason I’m going to get saddled with child support payments for a kid I might not have wanted. Just because that is an unfair issue doesn’t mean that men get to retaliate by forcing women to carry all pregnancies to term. Indeed, if you don’t want to get saddled, it would seem you would approve of an abortion of a fetus neither of you want. > [@Omg\_a\_Black\_Conservative](#): > > She said everyone has inherent worth. Please, explain to me how you would get from everyone having inherent worth to saving individuals based solely on numbers (which has little to do with abortion, since abortion is rarely about saving one of the other)? **classyladyhp** says that “everyone” includes a fertilized egg, still sitting in the fallopian tube. People who do not believe that “everyone” includes anything other than actually living breathing humans tend to think it is better to save many than one, when the choice is between strangers. > [@](#): > > Long-winded straw man, you say? Is it a straw man? I’m sure that if you were to start at the top of page 22 or 23 (I believe it is), you would find numerous of your fellow pro-choicers spouting off some ignorance about the unborn not being humans (while calling someone else ignorant, mind you), and then later devolving their arguments into one of bacteria, cancer, tumors and the unborns not being persons. So where would you like to start? 😃 The “unborn” are not necessarily human - how you view it all depends on what _your personal_ decision on the subject is. Science (I think, if I remember the quotes right) find nothing tangibly human about it until it’s at least a month and more like two months along. It is not ignorant to say that a fetus is not a human being, but it is ignorant to insist that everyone else agree that it is. ---
**Author:** ![Princhester](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3e96dc/32.png) [@Princhester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Princhester)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2011, 5:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/abortion-clinic-picketers/580935/1332 "2011-05-16T05:58:03Z")
> [@Omg\_a\_Black\_Conservative](#): > > You know there’s something wrong when expecting women to have the personal responsibility angle heaped upon them as it is men is deemed misogyny. Both parents have obligations concerning child support but pregnancy is inherently gender imbalanced because only women can get pregnant. The whole debate gets bogged down in silly arguments by proxy using endless, pointless, unresolvable definitional squabbling to try to sort out a substantive issue. In my view the correct approach is to decide whether, when, where and by whom abortion should be lawful on substantive, rational and factual grounds and then make it so. If that means it’s lawful or unlawful to abort what is named as a “person” or a “human” or a “human person” or a “baby” or a “fetus” or an “embryo” or a “clump of cells” or a “thing-analagous-to-a-tumour” or a “kalamazoo” then so be it. The name by which we call it should not be the basis upon which the law is made. It is a pre-occupation of inferior minds to take such arguments seriously. If that means it’s only lawful for [“insert your favoured term here”] to be aborted by certain people or under certain circumstances or at certain times, then so be it. Laws that vary the lawfulness of an act depending on various additional factors are commonplace. It is a pre-occupation of simpletons to suggest that laws must maintain absolute consistency towards a particular thing for consistency’s sake and not draw distinctions based on other arguably relevant factors. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2011, 5:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/abortion-clinic-picketers/580935/1333 "2011-05-16T05:58:09Z")
> [@Omg\_a\_Black\_Conservative](#): > > A little too improbable, why? If the _majority_ of pro-choicers argued as cluelessly as your example, I doubt abortion would ever have been legalized. > [@](#): > > Not terribly. Just skip down a future part of the argument, as we’ll get there inevitably. Meh, it’s a waste of time to even _start_ with the whole “human/nonhuman, person/nonperson” mess. I’m still a little surprised anyone bothers, but it’s apparently very important to them for reasons that escape me. > [@](#): > > Really? You’re going to have to refresh my memory. Well, give post 1079 a shot, since classylady can’t or won’t. ---
**Author:** ![AlienVessels](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ba8739/32.png) [@AlienVessels](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AlienVessels)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2011, 6:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/abortion-clinic-picketers/580935/1334 "2011-05-16T06:43:38Z")
> [@curlcoat](#): > > Only if those resources come from those who think that abortion is murder. Those of us who think that abortion is merely termination of a pregnancy shouldn’t have to pay to support your beliefs. Society doesn’t work that way. You don’t get to pick and choose the rules society determines that we live by, nor which ones your tax dollars go to fund. ---
**Author:** ![curlcoat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ea5d25/32.png) [@curlcoat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/curlcoat)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2011, 6:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/abortion-clinic-picketers/580935/1335 "2011-05-16T06:50:00Z")
> [@AlienVessels](#): > > Society doesn’t work that way. You don’t get to pick and choose the rules society determines that we live by, nor which ones your tax dollars go to fund. I realize that society doesn’t work that way, but since you said your personal preference was that society change the rules to pay even more to support even more pregnancies, I was voicing my personal preference. Just seems fair that if you want to force women to carry every pregnancy to term, you and others who also want that should pay for it by yourselves. You know, separation of church and state and all that? 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![AlienVessels](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ba8739/32.png) [@AlienVessels](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AlienVessels)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2011, 6:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/abortion-clinic-picketers/580935/1336 "2011-05-16T06:51:30Z")
> [@Zeriel](#): > > Can you name any other place in law where someone is REQUIRED to give up their bodily substance to preserve the life of someone else? If not, then disallowing abortion DOES give fetuses more rights than it gives normal persons. > > I’ll wait. You can also choose to force drugs into the fetus during pregnancy. I’d say that the fetus has less rights in that case. More in some areas, less in others. BTW, I don’t have a problem with abortion up to the point of that 20-24 week region. I do have a problem with classifying the fetus as extraneous tissue until it’s outside the mother’s body. ---
**Author:** ![AlienVessels](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ba8739/32.png) [@AlienVessels](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AlienVessels)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2011, 7:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/abortion-clinic-picketers/580935/1337 "2011-05-16T07:04:52Z")
> [@curlcoat](#): > > I realize that society doesn’t work that way, but since you said your personal preference was that society change the rules to pay even more to support even more pregnancies, I was voicing my personal preference. Just seems fair that if you want to force women to carry every pregnancy to term, you and others who also want that should pay for it by yourselves. I never said anything about forcing women to carry every pregnancy to term. That’s you making things up from whole cloth because it’s easier to polarize and then just argue with the hyperbolic version. I object to both the notion that a fertilized cell is a person and the notion that a baby is a lump of tissue the minute before birth. The notion that you get to pick and choose which parts of society you’re responsible for funding is absurd. It just doesn’t work that way. And asserting that if you change that one little thing that the balance sheet is then “fair” is lolworthy. ---
**Author:** ![kambuckta](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/53a042/32.png) [@kambuckta](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kambuckta)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2011, 7:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/abortion-clinic-picketers/580935/1338 "2011-05-16T07:07:42Z")
> [@AlienVessels](#): > > The notion that you get to pick and choose which parts of society you’re responsible for funding is absurd. It just doesn’t work that way. And asserting that if you change that one little thing that the balance sheet is then “fair” is lolworthy. Oh, I see you haven’t yet been introduced to **curlcoat** -world **AlienVessels**? 😛 ---
**Author:** ![curlcoat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ea5d25/32.png) [@curlcoat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/curlcoat)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2011, 7:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/abortion-clinic-picketers/580935/1339 "2011-05-16T07:19:48Z")
> [@AlienVessels](#): > > I never said anything about forcing women to carry every pregnancy to term. That’s you making things up from whole cloth because it’s easier to polarize and then just argue with the hyperbolic version. The way that you presented yourself with wanting a “full court press” on every pregnancy made it sound like you were anti-abortion. I see that in a later post you say that you don’t have a problem with early abortion, but also that I wasn’t the only person to misunderstand your position. > [@](#): > > I object to both the notion that a fertilized cell is a person and the notion that a baby is a lump of tissue the minute before birth. I haven’t read every post but I don’t believe that anyone has said that a baby is a lump of tissue the minute before birth. > [@](#): > > The notion that you get to pick and choose which parts of society you’re responsible for funding is absurd. It just doesn’t work that way. And asserting that if you change that one little thing that the balance sheet is then “fair” is lolworthy. What is, er, lolworthy is that I already said that I am aware that I cannot pick and choose, and I was very clear that I was answering the same way you presented the original premise - personal preference. Is it that you cannot follow the conversation, or that only you get to have a personal preference? ---
**Author:** ![villa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/bc79bd/32.png) [@villa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/villa)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2011, 7:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/abortion-clinic-picketers/580935/1340 "2011-05-16T07:34:43Z")
> [@classyladyhp](#): > > No they wouldn’t get the death penalty. They’d go to jail and perhaps get some kind of therapy. You see, your whole argument is based on the idea that a fetus is human, and when you deliberately kill an innocent human it is murder (which is false, actually, but never mind). Yet you now suggest that abortion should be treated differently to murder. Which to me suggests that you don’t think of abortion as murder, and therefore that you don’t think of a fetus as having equal rights to a human. To take this a little further - if you have a situation where absent an abortion, both the fetus and the mother will certainly die… I would hope you would support a right to abortion there. Now let’s alter it a little bit. If we have a situation where if the fetus is aborted, the mother will survive, but if the fetus is not aborted, the mother will die, but the fetus will live. Would you support a right to abortion there? If so - why? What about a situation where absent the abortion the mother will die, but the fetus stands a 10% chance of survival despite the mother’s death. Should the mother have a right to abort? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/abortion-clinic-picketers/580935.md?page=66) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/abortion-clinic-picketers/580935.md?page=68)