Abortion & gay marriage should not even be controversial

The BBQ Pit
381

I’ll tell you what anyone who has debated with you will see you as: “TL;DR, fucking boring”. Call me a hypocrite…

You know what? If we ignore the hyperbole for a moment, I think there’s an important lesson to be had here: if you hold a position that makes you look like an ignorant asshole (say, that the best way of dealing with a recession brought on by lack of demand is slashing government spending and giving the rich another huge handout), back a party made up primarily of ignorant assholes (the republican party still takes Rick Santorum seriously; that should speak for itself), and generally speak for those who have been wrong almost every time they have ever tried to dictate policy (those deemed “socially conservative” have been, historically, wrong on pretty much every issue, from slavery to racism to sexism to religious rights to gay rights…)… People are going to think that you’re an ignorant asshole, that you back a party of ignorant assholes, and that you’re probably wrong just about every time you open your mouth on social issues.

ANYWAYS.

On the topic of abortion. I’m having this exact same debate on several other forums, but I think there are some important things that need to be thrown out:

  1. Depending on the definition of a “human person”, a fetus may or may not apply at various developmental stages. This is important because “human persons” get rights; “human organisms” do not. This is the crucial difference between, say, a skin cell and a baby. It’s neither self-evident nor logical that all human organisms deserve human rights, regardless of what the organism actually entails. The actual definition of a “human” in terms of human rights is not entirely clear, at least according to the highest courts and democratic systems of the more modern countries in the world. In fact, I would consider it entirely fair to claim that this is not a matter of fact, but rather a matter of opinion, and of personal morality – it’s not that morally clear-cut.

  2. If one assumes the fetus is a human person, what of the mother’s rights? I hope I don’t have to bring up the Violinist thought experiment in this case. There are some very vital things to be said here, which make abortion suspect at best even if one assumes that a fetus is a human person. One could say that it’s a matter of weighing a woman’s right to her own body against the right of the fetus to life… But one would be wrong, as that’s not even actually the question at hand! You see, even if you grant that right to the fetus, what is going on is different – by aborting, you’re not killing it; you’re simply denying it resources that it needs to survive. Before you stand up and declare that justified, think about the analogy – if someone needs a kidney to survive, are you justified in taking that kidney from someone else at gunpoint? No. Of course not. When a requirement for the fetus to survive is an immense personal sacrifice on the mother’s behalf, I see absolutely no justification for forcing the mother to sustain this, and fail to see how her discontinuing this service is in any way equivalent murder (again: see the Violinist experiment).

  3. Even if the violinist argument fails, it is still a matter of rights vs. rights. Let’s assume for the moment that you disagree with the idea that it’s a matter of “refusing to do what is necessary for the person to survive” (which, again, is clearly a separate issue from murder). Even then, it’s still not a case of unjustifiable murder. In such a case, it’s a matter of a woman’s right to sovereignty over her own body vs. a fetus’s right to life. This is a subjective moral decision. If you intend to thrust your personal decision on this issue on to the rest of us, you’d better have a damn good reason. Pro-choice avoids the problem entirely by having each individual decide for themselves whether or not they think it becomes justifiable, and you know what? The most respected court in the modern world agreed. I personally feel that murder, assuming it is such, is justifiable in order for a person to have reasonable sovereignty over their own body. But you know what else I think? I think that until you become such a person, a person who has another human completely codependent upon them in a way they don’t want, you have no right to pass judgement. I think my opinion on this should not matter as much as a woman’s. And it damn well shouldn’t. I’m never going to become pregnant. I’m never going to be faced directly with this moral dilemma. And neither will you, Blackhead.

  4. At what point is a fetus not a part of the mother’s body? No seriously, when? It is completely codependent, grows out of it, and will die when removed. Why is it seen as its own organism? Not entirely sure on this count here… I mean, cancer has its own unique DNA separate from that of the host, but that doesn’t make it a unique organism…

Anyways. That should be food for thought on this issue… Gay marriage, I will agree, should absolutely and utterly be a non-issue at this point.

382

Well, I think that presents an irreconcilable difference. Perhaps the democratic process is the only way to resolve this issue, it doesn’t appear that either side thinks the other is being rational.

You’re the one that said “You don’t see any difference between a fetus and a newborn?” I don’t know if you were trying to justify abortion at any time prior to birth but if you don’t see any difference between a newborn moments after birth and a fetus moments before birth then I would think that you would limit abortions that were near term.

I didn’t think I was saying any of that. I was just pointing out that you expose yourself to the risk of pregnancy when you have intercourse, that pregnancy was not thrust upon you. I happen to want to live in a society where women have reasonable control over their reproduction and to me that means what we have with Roe v Wade more or less. Do whatever you want in the first trimester, we can tell you what to do in the last trimester.

:smack:

It entirely discounts any consideration of the fetus.

And I would have no problem with those abortions. But depending on how you are defining late term abortions, the Guttmacher institute (defining it as an abortion after the 16th week) would disagree with you.

If you notice, the life and health of the mother didn’t even make the list and fetal problems was only 2%.

Abortions after 21 weeks accounts for 1.5% of abortions

If you are talking only about third trimester abortions, I don’t know of any reliable data, do you have a cite? I have not found reliable data either way, it seems to be a lot of anecdote.

383

Err… What considerations does a fetus have before the 24th week? It’s about as sentient as the bacteria in your gut up until then.

384

Yeah, speaking of which, that link was broken.

OMG Can you provide another link that shows that Rawls would have extended the Rawlsian franchise to a fetus (or better yet a blastocyst) because I have looked for such a position and Rawls seems to have a more nuanced view than you do. I am almost positive that Rawls would have supported absolute choice to a woman for abortions early in the pregnancy.

385

Very very few. See cite above. Rape, incest, life or physical health of the mother account for less than 1% combined.

386

Well, like you said, its a generalization. Not all conservatives are like that and its not fair to make assumptions about you based on a stereotype.

387

How about late abortion. 3rd trimester abortions. Gender selection abortions. Abortion on account of trivial faults to the genome of the baby. Abortions of homosexual babies. Idiots being forced to abort. Controversial?

388

Sure, in the sense that porn is controversial as (to many people) it pushes the limits of freedom of expression.

389

No, I disagree (or rather, agree with Rune). There are elements to abortion which are highly controversial, and which present problems beyond the easily dismissed “fetus is a human person” issue. Hell, even the distinction being based purely on birth seems extremely abritrary; there’s a scene in the book “The Bear and The Dragon” which really puts this into a stark perspective.

390

I’ve come up with an argument against SSM…I think. If there were only three people left in the world, two women and one guy, then for the sake of the human race one of the women must marry the man. Now of course this is because they have to be married to have sex and the only reason to have sex is to have babies. And of course this argument then scales up to hundreds of millions of people as well.

QED

391

Except that:
a) this deals with reproduction, not marriage – it’s entirely possible for the man and women to reproduce without love involved, let alone marriage
b) it doesn’t scale up at all because what you described would be a statistical anomaly; among three people, more than one being gay is not as common as one would think
c) it also doesn’t scale up because…

This is a troll post, isn’t it?

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I haven’t read that particular book, but I cheerfully recognize that a controversy exists. In any case, arbitrariness alone, regardless of “extremity” means very little - one can be a criminal or not a criminal based on what side of an international border one is on. One can be an adult or not an adult based on how many planetary orbits have occurred since one’s birth. These are both purely arbitrary legal points, and yet neither of them involves the unwilling participation of another person’s uterus.

Personally, it’s none of my concern what reasons a woman has to seek an abortion - including the fetus’s gender - just as it’s none of my concern what reasons a film studio has to produce or not produce the films of its choice.

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Really?:confused: It seems to be a pretty visible part of the conservative agenda.

How is it a function of age? You mean the same way that 80 year olds tend to be racists because of the world they grew up in sort of thing?

394

Looks more like sarcasm to me.

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I’d guess that the woman and one of the men could only get legally married if the other surviving man was a priest or minister, to perform the ceremony.

Otherwise, they’d be living in post-apocalyptic sin.

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So never mind that, because I don’t feel like explaining it yet again.

…Yeah… All right. I’ll totally play along. Here’s a quick guide of how to be a Democrat.

1.) Regulate businesses into oblivion and then complain about how there are no jobs because the greedy corporations packed up and left for greener pastures.

2.) Argue that everyone has a basic right to be provided food, water, health care and an education yet wonder why you can’t pay your obligations.

3.) Fail to understand why someone would be slightly annoyed at the prospect of you living in their house rent free, eating their food and running up their electricity while they’re at work for 50 hours a week (think about the reference for a bit).

4.) Argue that slavery is a matter of personal morality.

5.) Nominate a known segregationist for POTUS.

6.) Attempt a filibuster of the Civil Rights Act.

7.) Forget the above three situations ever happened.

8.) Claim everyone who doesn’t agree with you is a racist, a sexist or a homophobe.

9.) Claim you’re none of the above.

10.) ???

11.) Profit.

/semifacetiousness

…Yeah…

My first inclination was to ask you the difference between a human being and a human organism, but then I figured I’d just point out to you that you, apparently, do not know the what is meant by the word organism. A cell, unless we’re dealing with a single-celled organism, is not an organism within itself. Especially not a somatic cell, which is part of a whole.

Which, is why, you have never heard one country or government body scream at another about “human rights” violations, right? Obviously, someone, somewhere, knows what the word “human” in terms of human rights means, and I’m going to go out on a rather short limb and say it’s the scientific definition of a human.

Okay, fine. My opinion is that you’re not a human. Do I get to kill you? Rhetorical question, of course, because both of us know what your answer to that question is going to be and won’t allow me to hide behind the “don’t force your opinion on me!” mantra.

By the way, can I get a definition of “human person”, please. I’ve asked this many times over in this thread and no one wants to oblige.

I’ve gone over this time and time again. Positive vs. negative rights.

Only if the unborn has no right to be acted against, for if it does then the woman’s right to act against it would be

To prevent one human from being killed by another. That seems a pretty powerful justification.

Now this is something which annoys me. No, pro-choice individuals don’t afford that. What they afford is an individual to decide for themselves up to the point where the idea of killing another no longer becomes palatable to the pro-choicer. They’re only affording a “choice” so long as they think that “choice” should be an “actual choice”. In other words, what the individual might do is not constrained by their own decisions but rather what someone else decided. Fundamentally, it makes you no different from a pro-lifer who sets the cut-off date earlier than what you would like.

What kind of argument is this? So what? I didn’t know that SCOTUS ruling on an issue somehow means that ruling right or worthy of respect or was even the correct one.

-Dred Scott v. Sandford
-Plessy v. Fergusson
-Bowers v. Hardwick
-Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission

By even the most ardent of liberal supporters, all wrong.

Why not? This assumes some kind of absolute truth in regards to abortion.

And here is the not so inevitable “You’re opinion doesn’t matter because you’re a man!” line. So I’ll never become pregnant? Big deal; it has no bearing on whether or not the action in question, in this case, abortion is morally permissible. If a woman is infertile, does her opinion on abortion become irrelevant? If the permissibility of an action was decided solely by the individual engaging in that action, then everything would be permissibile so long as there is an individual who engages in it.

Here’s a not-so-rhetorical and slightly humorous question for you; have you ever, for example, seen a woman with four eyes, twenty fingers, twenty toes and a penis?

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Ironically, you consistently fail to understand why someone would be slightly annoyed at the prospect of someone living in their uterus rent free, imposing discomfort and burden, for 168 hours a week.

398

What in the fuck is this? A massive collection of laws, straw men, and the cherry on top of the false equivalency, as if democrat was on the other side of “conservative” and not “liberal”? Ugh, I really don’t want to get into this, but because you need a little clarification…

Overregulation is a nice term to throw around, but quickly falls flat as an argument when you realize that the USA is, in many regards, drastically underregulated, and that it was exactly that kind of underregulation which caused the crash of '08, the Enron fiasco, and several other severe market problems. Your complete straw man of social policies is not only disturbingly inaccurate but also entirely offensive to anyone who actually has been through that situation. But most importantly:

Who cares what the democrats did 50 years ago if their platform now is completely different? I mean, seriously, how fucking petty do you have to be at this point? Yeah, the democrats used to be the socially conservative party. They were wrong then too. Now the shoe’s on the other foot, and now it’s the republicans who are dead wrong every time they speak on social issues. Claiming “they’re doing it too” would almost be an excuse. Claiming “they did it 50 odd years ago” is fucking pathetic.

I’m criticizing you for being a neocon now. I’m criticizing you for supporting a party whose policies are now completely and utterly batshit insane. Go back far enough, and you have the party of Lincoln, the party of progress and sanity. But now? Fuck no. And I wasn’t claiming that the party was always wrong. I was claiming that the social conservatives were always wrong, be they democrat or republican.

Fair enough, my mistake.

Indeed! Human is a term which, while unclearly defined, quite clearly applies to certain objects! It’s like you can’t quite pin down what “good design” is in a video game, but you can clearly demonstrate that something evidences it. There’s not entirely certain definitions for “human” in that sense, but everyone can tell that a person who is currently living outside of the womb is one! I have yet to hear of anyone worth listening to scream about the horrible human rights violations of the abortionists of the west.

Wiggle room ≠ complete ability to redefine what the word means. I am evidently a human person by right of being a sentient member of the species homo sapiens.

This is because there is no clear definition of the term. Again, there is some subjective wiggle room – some would define it as a member of the human race with self-awareness; some would define it as a member of the human race with basic brain functions; others still would eschew the concept of “human person” entirely and expand it to just “person”, which would include any self-aware being as worthy of said rights, including, among other things, artificial intelligence and certain great apes. It’s not a clear-cut issue, but everyone is in agreement that the definition must encapsulate self-aware members of the homo sapiens sapiens species.

I was strongly under the opinion that I refuted that argument. I’m not removing the fetus’s right to life; I’m simply removing what is necessary for that fetus to live.

I’m confused.

Sigh Now we’re just going around in circles, aren’t we?

This is complete and utter horseshit.

SCOTUS has been wrong in the past. But you have to remember, this isn’t just SCOTUS – there isn’t a single court in the entire modern world who has ruled that abortion is murder. Not one. There are about a total of 5 European countries where it’s not completely and utterly legal, and most of the Major European countries have it legal. Japan has it legal as well, so does China. So what else is left? South America? Yeah, a lot of places there have it banned, which merely rachets up the rate of back-alley, illegal, and often deadly abortions. Africa, the Middle East, and most of the rest of Asia are probably not the best places to look when we’re trying to think about sensible social policy.

It’s because you completely and utterly lack the scope necessary to engage in this debate. Hell, so do I.

…Oh for fuck’s sake.

Tell me where you see a human there.

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I know exactly what I was doing, hence the “/semifactiousness” at the end. But since you missed it, I guess I’ll be serious now.

Ensuring companies have ethical business practices isn’t quite the same thing as overregulation.

With that being said, you obviously haven’t taken a good look at most any state in which Democrats are the major party. Those states tend to have unfriendly business climates and [tax codes which aren’t business friendly]( to which the first example was of). California, to whom the first example was mostly a reference to, is a good example of this. When you pass silly laws and make it harder for businesses and corporations to operate, you know what they do? They get the hell out of your state. And do you know what happens when businesses get the hell out of your state, they take jobs with them. Of course, when they leave, then it’s because they’re “greedy corporatists who care only about making a profit”.

I never really understood how that worked.

The only “social policy” in there was slavery, even though it really wasn’t, and I don’t know anyone alive today who was a slave. As far as it being a straw man, it really wasn’t, since Stephen Douglass argued that slavery was a matter of morality and that everyone should be able to decide the issue according to their conscience and religion. If that’s not what you were talking about, well, then I don’t know.

1.) I care (and so too do other people when they’re railing against the GOP).

2.) I purposely ignored this before, but social conservatism did not even exist in the U.S. until the 20th century and was not even prominent until the latter half of the 20th century. To say social conservatives were on the “wrong” side of the issue “on pretty much every issue, from slavery to racism to sexism to religious rights to gay rights” is a load of horse manure since some of those issues predate social conservatism while social conservatism does not promote some the others. Now the gay marriage thing? Yes, I’ll give you that.

Your gratuitous use of the word “everyone” is rather annoying, as it “everyone” knew it, then no one would ever need to scream about human rights violations. But since they do then, obviously, not “everyone” knows what you think they know.

This isn’t really evident since (1) persons don’t lose their status as persons on account of not being sentient and (2) you don’t even need to be sentient to be deemed a person in the first place. This talk about sentience is nothing more than pro-choicers attempt to rationalize the unborn not being persons post facto.

If, as you claim, everyone is in agreement that the definition of a “human person” must encapsulate self-aware members of the homo sapiens sapiens species, then everyone would also agree that newborns, up to a certain point, are human non-persons. Now explain to me why it would be morally impermissible to kill them (which I’m assuming is what you would say), seeing as how they would possess no right to not be killed on account of not being persons. To quote some random individual:

Would infanticide be okay because newborns aren’t self-aware? Would it be okay to kill the profoundly disabled because they’re not self-aware? Do you really want to base a definition of “person” on self-awareness?

Apparently, you also thought you understood what negative rights are, but you did not. So here is a definition for you:

In no way, shape or form can you somehow assert that “removing what is necessary for the fetus to live” is a form of non-interference. In fact, it’s the exact opposite, for the fetus would live if you did nothing, where it will not precisely because you interfered.

Except it’s not horseshit. Nor complete nor utter, in fact. But since you think it is, would you care to explain why you think it is?

SCOTUS has been wrong in the past. But you have to remember, this isn’t just SCOTUS – there isn’t a single court in the entire modern world who has ruled that abortion is murder. Not one. There are about a total of 5 European countries where it’s not completely and utterly legal, and most of the Major European countries have it legal. Japan has it legal as well, so does China. So what else is left? South America? Yeah, a lot of places there have it banned, which merely rachets up the rate of back-alley, illegal, and often deadly abortions. Africa, the Middle East, and most of the rest of Asia are probably not the best places to look when we’re trying to think about sensible social policy.
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Actually, is is just about SCOTUS. Why do I care what other courts in other countries do? I don’t, as I don’t live in those countries. I happen to live in this one. And, for the record, Europe-- as a whole-- has stricter abortion laws than do Europe.

Gender does not affect one’s ability to understand abortion.

No idea, as it could be numerous organisms. Luckily, being a human is not defined by the way one looks. If it was, then I can only wonder how far away from the “norm” would one have to deviate until they are deemed to not be a human?

400

This was a great post overall, but I especially appreciate this part. We don’t force people to give of their body in any other situation, so making abortion illegal is essentially giving the fetus rights above and beyond everyone else. You do not have to donate a kidney to someone, even if the lack of that kidney will result in their death. You don’t even have to donate a kidney to your own child if they need it, even though you were a part of making that child. If you have been regularly donating blood for someone with ongoing health problems, you are free to stop donating blood to them at any time - even if that will result in further illness or even death for them. All of those people have the right to live, but they do not have the right to demand that you help them live by contributing (or continuing to contribute) parts of yourself.