Abortion-clinic picketers.

The BBQ Pit
2161

I’ll respond to this one first, because it’s that idiotic.

And yet again, I point out to you how untrue and a load of BS this is. If this were true, and if people’s opinions mattered, as you say, then you would have to agree that abortion is murder (since the majority of respondents in the U.S. view abortion to be murder, with the majority of people who believe abortion is murder to equate it to killing a born child) and that abortion should be limited to cases of rape, incest, maternal health and severe fetal defects (as those are the only cases in which abortion support is greater than 50%). If, as you want us to believe (scoffs), the opinions of the people matter, then why exactly aren’t you fighting to overturn Roe v. Wade and let the people, whose opinions you say matter, determine what abortion laws are?

…Oh wait. I know! BECAUSE YOU DON’T ACCEPT THE NOTION THAT PEOPLE’S OPINIONS MATTER WHEN IT COMES TO SHAPING THE LAW! Duh! The fact that abortion laws in the U.S. are nowhere near what society as a whole wants them to be doesn’t matter to you one lick. It’s funny how you can type out the above garbage with any kind of sincerity.

Would you like a refresher course?

In post #1,497 you said, and I quote you verbatim:

[QUOTE=cosmosdan]
You can personally consider that potential life to be equal to a newborn, but that’s not the law, not the view of many of your fellow citizens, and not the view held by most societies {including ours} in history.
[/quote]

To which, in post #1,484, I responded:

[QUOTE=Me]
No, it’s not the law (currently). With that being said, would you like to place a wager on those assertions? It’s a well-known fact that, at least in the U.S., the majority of people view abortion to be murder and would restrict abortion not based on what the mother wants, but because of the situation (generally limiting it to cases of rape, incest and severe fetal defects).
[/quote]

To which you “conveniently” disappeared (I wonder why?). Someone asked for proof of those assertions, I gave them proof and you still decided to play MIA. Go figure! But since you’re here now…

Because the majority of people don’t want to make abortions flatly illegal, but rather leave it de facto legal but place restrictions on it. You seem to be operating under the assumption that not wanting to overturn Roe v. Wade means supporting abortion on demand. This is untrue, and quite so, though that’s probably hard for you to understand.

This is true as a general rule, but not as an absolute standard. Americans would not leave abortions legal and unrestricted in the first trimester, contrary to what you want to imply. I had to do a bit of digging to find a poll which asked respondents whether abortions should be legal in the first three months for any reason, for only specific reasons or not at all and came up with this:

Link

That doesn’t lead to unrestricted abortions in the first trimester, for the simple fact that where always legal has fewer respondents than certain circumstances and illegal in all. What it means is that where always legal and certain circumstances agree (in this case issues of maternal health and rape/incest), that abortion will be allowed because the two groups outnumber the illegal in all group, and that were certain instances and illegal in all outnumber always legal, abortion will not be permitted because they outnumber the latter group.

The only thing I could find which showed that Americans favored unrestricted abortions in the first trimester was from a study of GSS data on abortion done 11 years prior (1997), which found that:

If you can find something more recent than that and more recent than 2008, I’d love to see it. Otherwise, you have no argument here.

Now that’s funny. See the above given responses. To repeat, no, you don’t care about people’s opinions, because you won’t limit abortions no matter how many people agree they should be limited. We all know this, so cut the bullshit.

I did? Really?

Good luck with that citation.

I want to insult you, but I’m having trouble thinking of something I can compare to you with being insulting to that thing.

Before you press the “Post” button, do you put any thought into what you type out? Murder is illegal yet it still happens. Does that mean the populace wants it to happen? Rape is illegal yet it still happens. Does that mean the populace wants it to happen? Theft is illegal yet it still happens. Does that mean the populace want it to happen? I would continue, but I don’t need to. You get the point. Try to think next time.

Also, lol @ dubious polls. What’s a dubious poll? Any poll with which you don’t agree? So Gallup, Pew, CNN, FOX and ABC, all of which found the same thing, are in some kind of cahoots? I guess you’d consider this poll to be dubious as well? How about the GSS (ABANY, ABCHOOSE*, ABDEFECT, ABHLTH, ABNOMORE, ABPOOR and ABRAPE)? Dubious too because they don’t show that your view is the majority one?

(*I’ve no idea where the ABCHOOSE variable came from. It seems to be brand new, is the same as ABANY and is missing a ton of cases, but whatever.)

The law is what it is because of SCOTUS; not because of the populace. The law was what the populace wanted it prior to 1973. Again, anyone familiar with abortion in the U.S. knows this.

Guess what? It’s not an inappropriate analogy. The right to not be killed isn’t contingent on one being a U.S. citizen. That’s nothing short of extreme idiocy, which I’m sure you very well realize, which is why you did your best to avoid the question posed to you. Which, by the way, you failed miserably to do.

Except-- and get this!-- it’s not a lame dodge. You said that pregnancy is a unique situation. If it’s a unique situation, then how can it be compared to something else? It either can’t be, or it’s not a unique situation as you claim. So which is it? Do you know know what unique means?

Ummm, yes, you did. On numerous occasions, only to have me ask you “Who’s defining anything?”.

And people who are pro-gun will support the choice to not own one. That doesn’t make them any less pro-gun, though. Just because you take offense to the pro-abortion label, doesn’t mean it’s inaccurate. All you’re doing so far is just showing that you don’t want to be associated with the word abortion. But your personal displeasure at being associated with the term doesn’t much matter.

Which is far less extreme than delivering live babies and killing them afterwards. At least one is killing to prevent another from being killed, while the other is killing to get his/her jollies.

Please. When I say pro-choicers, I don’t mean “every pro-choicer-on-the-face-of-the-Earth”, just like when someone says pro-lifers they don’t mean “every pro-lifer-on-the-face-of-the-Earth”. We both know this so let’s not play that game. The point, which is irrefutable, is that pro-choicers do discount the unborn, much to your consternation. A five minute glance at the first ten pages of this thread would tell you that. You’ve never read one of Dehr Tris’ (or however it’s spelled) posts?

I haven’t lost anything. Your entire argument can be boiled down to this; “I don’t like the term pro-abortion, there I’m going to claim its inaccurate and assume that the pro- in pro-abortion means something totally different to the way pro- is used in reference to any other activity”.

The choice that comes before sex. What about that one?

Looking at the statements you’ve proceeded to make in this thread, I don’t think you not finding my arguments all that logical is anything I need to worry about.

It didn’t need to get better, as it was already good.

Earlier you correctly pointed out that choice does not exist in a vacuum. I’d like to point out that the various factors in the abortion issue have to be considered as a whole within that issue. They are interconnected and cannot taken out and argued separately as if the other factors aren’t connected. Well I guess they can be because that seems to be what you’re trying to do, but it leads to a disingenuous argument and really lousy analogies and comparisons like this one.
Choice, the autonomy of ones own body, the rights of the woman, vs the limited and less specific rights of an embryo or fetus, the law, the welfare of society as a whole, the value of human life,etc. All the elements are weighed TOGETHER.
[/quote]

All of which has absolutely, positively nothing to do with forcing someone to adhere to a definition of personhood which is not their own. Oh, and just so you know, they’re neither lousy nor disingenuous comparisons, just so you know. But I’ll get to that in a bit.

… … …Really?

So ignoring the fact that in this very thread there are pro-choicers talking about how there is no consensus as to personhood as it’s dependent on one’s personal beliefs, so long as the majority of society agrees to a certain definition of personhood, then it’s okay to force that definition of personhood onto the the minority? Is that what you’re saying? Great! So then I don’t want to hear any more crap about imposing one’s beliefs on another and how wrong that is, since you just stated that as long as there is a majority consensus (exactly how many people make a consensus, anyway?) that the minority view is SOL.

Except it’s not, no matter how much you wish it to be so. You can’t say that it’s wrong to force someone to adhere to a view which is not their own then turn around and argue that someone can be forced to adhere to a view which is not their own. Even a child can see that’s hypocritical on your part.

ROFL! Please tell me where you live, so I can make sure my (future) kids stay the hell away.

First of all, please tell me when society defined personhood. I would like the time, day, month and year, please, as I feel you just pulled that statement out nowhere. I could have sworn that pro-choicers like to usually argue that there is no set definition of personhood and that everyone is entitled to their own beliefs regarding personhood (see: this thread). Second of all, did you really just say that it’s okay to force a definition of personhood, of which there is none, onto someone else via the law? If this is true, then you have no rational basis upon which to say that I can’t define the unborn at all gestational ages to be persons under the law and force that definition upon you. Well, that is, unless you’re going to argue that it’s okay to force someone to conform to your views, but that it’s wrong to force you to conform to my, or anyone else’s, views.

Is that what you want to argue? Please do, for I love it when someone displays their hypocrisy.

Because Bryan brought it up. Yeah, startling, I know.

Abortion is legal, but only until the right case gets to SCOTUS. Which it will.

You can’t win the abortion argument. Pro-lifers are far more effective at framing the abortion debate than are pro-choicers.

Conception?

This is all kind of ironic, given the above responses.

What question have I ignored? Certainly none until after you started to wilfully choose to pretend like you didn’t see my posts, if at all.

(1) What happened in post #1,867 and (2) you’re one to talk about going in circles when the above is filled with at least three different circular arguments galore.

Now this is just stupid. You haven’t “logically dismantled” anything, except for maybe your own arguments.

You’ve yet to provide proof of any of your assertions (i.e., the majority of Americans don’t view the unborn as being equal to a born child, the majority of Americans would leave abortion legal for any reason within the first three months). You make non-factual and otherwise incorrect statements (i.e., no one viewed abortion as a moral issue in the 19th century or whatever the line was), and when faced with evidence to the contrary, you disappear for a few days. You engage in some ridiculous circular arguments or just general non-sequiturs and you throw your own arguments and reasoning when it suits you to do so (i.e., it’s only wrong to force your beliefs on someone else when it involves forcing you to conform to a set of beliefs not your own). But hey, that’s just you.

Now when you respond, be sure to make a post filled with self-evident statements that just beg for some proof (but don’t provide any!) and opinions/assumptions passed off as fact. I know you want to.

Also, please note Zeriel’s post. That’s what a straw man looks like.

2162

Don’t bother with that one.

Also, I <3 **Zeriel and Irishgirl ** for being classy. And I mean that sincerely.

2163

Speaking of fallacies, have you ever heard of argumentum verbosium?

2164

IMO, that’s a threshold of proof requirement that virtually nobody meets when talking about their beliefs. We shouldn’t have to prove that the fetus is human. The burden of proof should be on those insisting that it isn’t.

If we meet the “hypocrisy” requirements and in fact go beyond them when it comes to insisting that we as a society respect not only human life, but animal as well, then it seems to me that those that insistent the fetus isn’t human until it hits air are infact the ones that hold inconsistent views.

I expect that from the conservative pro-lifers. I hold our side to a higher standard. :slight_smile:

2165

So, wait. You expect pro-choicers to make your argument for you? That’s novel. It’s also nuts. That’s because if you argue that a three month fetus is human, there’s the impediment that it looks like a salamander.

2166

It’s 18 hours now by my reckoning.

Maybe he/she ran out of cuss-words and is digging away in his/her thesaurus for some new ones. It might take a while 'cos some of those are BIG words that take a bit of time and effort to understand.

Or mum has revoked his computer rights like you said Baker. :smiley:

2167

Biologically the fetus is not yet a person. You don’t look at a frozen embryo and say ,"Oh what a cute little baby.. A hen’s fertile egg is not a chicken, a pollenated apple blossom is not an apple, a horse’s fetus is not yet a horse. It is just a religious teaching that calls a fertile egg a human being.There is just as much "life in a man’s sperm as in a full grown adult. Many human lives are lost with each ejaculation, if a conception takes place or not! Life is a passed on thing!

It is a rediculous argument to you, because that is your belief and what you were taught. No one should force you to have an abortion even if you were raped, but to force a woman to have children she is unable to care for is just as wrong, it seems okay to have children and let them starve to death as happens in other countries. That, you can apparently justify. as long as the fertile egg is brought to birth?

Strange, how so called pro-lifers think it okay to kill human beings in a war, but deprive a woman of her choice of self defense! Many innocent born and un born die in wars, far more innocent than the guilty. Look how many have died to get Saddam in Iraq, and the death toll is still rising!

2168

snerk :smiley:

2169

Well done, Zeriel. I realize this isn’t *your *argument, but I figure you’ll be more likely to respond to challenges to it. Can you apply this argument to the scenarios I presented previously in #1710?

I suppose, if nothing else, trying to think like an anti-abortioner reinforces your own pro-choice position.

2170

Out of curiosity, where do you honestly believe society as a whole wants the abortion laws to be, and what is keeping existing law nowhere near this?

2171

I don’t think ANYONE can meet the burden of proof for any definitional statement, pro or anti. At some point, you have to decide what a “human” is, and if you can find a way to prove someone is human or not human without declaring a set of essentially arbitrary axioms, you’d better have peer-reviewed repeatable evidence showing that you’ve discovered the soul and are simultaneously going to get the Nobel Prize and Sainthood.

I don’t see the respect of animal life as anything but irrelevant to the entire argument.

2172

Yes, if you’re going to make the argument that you can terminate something that is increasingly becoming more baby like with each passing day, I think the burden of proof is on you to show that it isn’t human yet before you kill it.

BTW, I don’t argue that a 3 month old fetus is human.

2173

As you point out, we can’t really prove anything. Therefore when deciding to terminate a life, it’s probably best to do so “conservatively”. :slight_smile:

If it isn’t human, it’s probably still alive and “animal” is probably a close alternative category. Quite often you hear a claim of “parasite” as a descriptor from the pro-choice side. I can understand that that makes termination of the fetus more palatable regardless of the stage of development.

2174

Heck, I’m pro-choice and I can’t see why you wouldn’t describe a fetus of any age as “human.” It’s made up of human tissue, from human donors…

2175

Why should the burden of proof be on the ones who are drawing even rudimentary knowledge of the natural world to make their conclusions? Even though scientists don’t provide a direct answer to philosophical questions, it does provide a logical framework. People in this thread have provided their logic. It’s not even very complicated and uses very simple comparisons that ARE reasonable.

If we apply our reasoning skills that we use in every other aspect of our lives to identify a zygote or early embryo, anyone would logically say that it does not remotely resemble, in any way, shape or form a baby. Yet, we discard reason in this instance because people have made this potential to become a baby a sacred thing. So sacred, this thing has rights that even babies don’t have (taking away control of a person’s body). Because it has now become sacred, no logic or proof will ever be accepted. This is exactly the argument for people’s religion. They put the burden on non-believers to provide evidence that the supernatural claim they are making doesn’t exist. No other aspect of our lives work this way.

I don’t know of any pro-choice person wanting anyone to respect an amoeba. Not even PETA would storm a tissue culture facility to save the precious tissue. Then there’s also the argument made time and time again, that no pro-choice or PETA person would force someone to keep an animal in their womb for 9 months.

2176

Yeah, honestly, I only do that kind of thing because my dad exists. Have I mentioned I really like my dad, and I bristle at the implication that he’s misogynist and evil and stupid because he happens to have one specific position (that’s unfortunately shared with people like OMG and classy)? :smiley:

Rape is a damnable thing. I’m sorry, but under the axioms presented abortion cannot be justified. Laws that require colleges to allow medical withdrawal for pregnancy with no academic penalty should be implemented.

Too close to call, but I am willing to believe that a 48-yr-old woman is going to have enough potential complications to invoke the life/health exception.

Abortion cannot be justified absent a psychologist’s declaration that you are an actual suicide risk while pregnant. State probate law should treat the fetus as an actual child (which in my state means, as I understand it, that unless they were expressly disinherited, they get a specific major share).

Abort, no question. Too much health risk to the mother.

Abortion cannot be justified. Welfare that preserves your ability to get adequate prenatal care without having to worry about lost job hours is morally required.

Abortion is justified, as violent psychological disorders definitively count as “health of the mother”.

I think we could stretch the premise that requires a fetus to be capable of full human development to allow the abortion of a fetus that can be confirmed to have as lethal a disorder as Tay-Sachs. Big grey area here.

Abortion cannot be justified. Medical standards should be changed so that people in your situation can be medically sterilized by competent gynecologists without a hassle.

Abortion cannot be justified. (damn, some of these break my heart)

Wait, is the kid pregnant, or are we trying to figure out if the kid should have been aborted?

In the presence of a serious health risk, abortion is allowed, otherwise, no.

See answer 1, although the international nature of the situation makes legal remedies problematic.

Wow, that hurt my heart a little.

Yeah, me too. It helps to do these kinds of thought exercises, though–it reminds (the general) you that pro-lifers are actual people and they’re not necessarily crazy, misogynist, or religious nuts; they just have a different belief about what it means to be human in a specific case than you.

2177

Why? Many justifications for being pro-choice exist that don’t depend one way or another on the personhood of the fetus. I do it in one axiom:

“No one should ever be required to give their own life’s blood to another, or be required to continue doing so having consented to do so at one point.”

2178

Just to calm your fears guys.“rolls eyes”…I haven’t disappeared. Some of are very busy and don’t have countless hours to spend on the internet. I shall return later to respond.

2179

I don’t think your return calms our fears as much as dashes our hopes.

2180

Gotta love the abuse. I feel so loved:D