An argument can be made that in this situation the issue should be resolved by balancing the rights of the two individuals. And that the right of one individual to not be killed supercedes the right of another individual to not be pregnant for nine months.
I want to repeat that this is not necessarily the argument I would make on this issue. But it’s not an irrational or indefensible position.
Well that’s the problem with government involvement in marriage, I think they should just drop out of the marriage game entirely.
Yes it is, because a fetus isn’t an “individual”, isn’t a person in the same way a woman is. The central reason why individuals have rights in the fist place is because they have their own thoughts, feelings and desires; a fetus doesn’t have the very things that grant people rights. A fetus doesn’t have rights for the same reason a house plant doesn’t have rights; there’s no one there to have rights.
In other words, the argument is “irrational or indefensible” because it is based on a grossly inaccurate view of the fetus. You could use the same “logic” to ban chemotherapy because it violate the rights of tumors.
Why should religion be allowed to steal marriage?
Probably a good example would be when they want an abortion for themselves.
As I said, whether or not a foetus is a person is a matter of opinion. And most of us are able to distinguish between opinions and facts.
I’ll say again what I’ve said before - parents must care for their children or turn their care over to someone else (eg., the state, adoptive parents). In your increasingly hysterical mother-in-law hypothetical, you could find someone else to take over her care if you no longer wanted to. We don’t, as a society, force people to raise children they don’t want or take care of guests who will not leave, no matter how they got there. We provide means for parents and others to be relieved of their burden. When you find some way for a fetus to be transferred to someone elses care, let the rest of us know and maybe we’ll change our stance. But for now, removing a fetus from the womb will generally result in death of the fetus. That’s a side effect of removing it, not the whole point.
I don’t have to butcher logic because you have absolutely no evidence that the people saying “She has the right to abort right up until birth!” or “She has the right to abort right up until viability!” are *exactly *the same people saying “sex-selective abortion should be illegal!” Strangely, people who agree about a general principle can disagree about the details. Someone who describes themselves as pro-choice may not be in the “any reason at all is a good enough reason, it’s the mothers business” camp, they may be in the “only some reasons and some time periods are acceptable, we need to limit it” camp.
If you’d like proof that this is so, take a look at the Canadian opinion poll you so proudly linked to earlier. 50% of respondents think ‘there should be laws which outline when a woman can have an abortion in Canada’, and yet only 27% of Canadians describe themselves as pro-life. So a healthy number of that 50% must be made up of people who are pro-choice but want certain limitations on when or why a woman can have an abortion. Personally, I disagree with that, but that doesn’t make those people not pro-choice.
Sure, there may be some people who have said both “make it legal anytime” and also “make it illegal just in this case”, and those people would be hypocrites. But if you want to make the argument that the inclusion of a few hypocrites makes an entire group of people all wrong, you might want to take a long hard look at your own pro-life side first (the only moral abortion is my abortion, anyone?).
And yet a dead person’s right to bodily autonomy is considered more important than a person’s life when the question of mandating organ donations is considered.
No, it isn’t. Unless you twist the definition of “person” so much that it means something completely different, and therefore has completely different moral and legal implications.
And their personal property isn’t sold off and the proceeds given to charity, either. Society has collectively decided that people have the right to decide what happens to their property after death.
That said, I do support the idea of organ donorship becoming “opt-out”; unless you specifically forbid it, useful organs should be harvested.
And it somebody were to argue that people give up ownership rights to their body at the time of death, I’d say that was not an irrational or indefensible position either.
I’ve always found this article interesting, “The Only Moral Abortion is My Abortion.”
Well, that’s an easy decision to make about someone else’s uterus, to be sure.
No it isn’t. It’s a very difficult decision. The only people who find decisions like this to be easy are the ones who make them without thinking about both sides of the issue. They just pretend there’s only one possible side and that makes the decision easy for them.
Heh, I get the sense that I’m being equated with someone who’d ban all abortions under all circumstances.
It isn’t pretending; the other side’s arguments are based on falsehoods.
Mmmkay. I had to take care of a few things 
I fail to see what rainbows and unicorns have to do with anything, but this is your normal attempt at obfuscating, so I’ve grown used to it.
…Yeah… You do realize that we’re able to look things up, correct?
1.) The first person to ever mention “a higher authority” was you.
2.) No, I did not say that individuals cannot be trusted and that they should always check with a higher authority before taking a specific action. The closest to that you’ll ever get is me saying that society dictates what individuals can and cannot do which is-- you know-- how society works. Except in Canada. Apparently.
3.) As I’ve said to you a gajillion times, when you want to seek to kill someone, you have to explain why you should be allowed to do that. In fact, when you want to act in a certain manner, you have to demonstrate that doing so does not infringe upon someone else.
I’m taking things slightly out of order and lumping these three responses together. You’re a person of slightly below-average intelligence. Spot the problem here, Bryan.
OMGABC: “Pro-choicers are content to sweep any moral issues regarding abortion under the proverbial rug.”
Bryan: “I’m not sweeping anything under the proverbial rug!”
Bryan: “Abortion isn’t a moral issue, anyway.”
Bryan: “Besides, not everything has to be a moral issue!”
I think the biggest question is this; pray tell, Bryan, how do you tell when something is a moral issue and when it’s not. And what is a moral issue and what is not. And what is the dividing line between the two?
How many examples would you like of you flatly ignoring things that are neither stupid, irrelevant nor irrational?
…Yeah… We’ve already done the veil of ignorance thing. To refresh your memory, I specifically asked you:
[QUOTE=Me]
Let’s assume that, for whatever reason, all you know about abortion is the following. Assuming two individuals, either you’re the aborter, in which you live but the other dies, or you’re the aborted, in which you die but the other lives. Without knowing which you are, and someone asks you whether or not abortion should be legal or illegal, which would you choose?
[/quote]
To which you ultimately responded:
[QUOTE=You]
Okay… if I choose to allow the action, then me and the other person will either fight to the death or one of us will be randomly killed or something… Okay… I would not choose to allow the action.
Of course, the illustration has no relevance to abortion as long as a certain critical element is omitted.
[/quote]
(I got a chuckle out of the attempted obfuscation.)
So by your own admission, if you were presented with a situation in which you would either be afforded the option to abort someone, or would be aborted yourself, without knowing which you are, you would choose to disallow that action, as most any rational person would. So tell me what you were arguing again?
Individual rights don’t exist in my worldview? Well, that’s a lie and you’re lying when you say that, as I never once said that. Let’s recap the actual argument, shall we? You tried arguing that you had an “arbitrary fondness for more individual freedom over less individual freedom [because] freedom is good, even if [you didn’t] have a mathematical proof for it.” I responded that, assuming more individual freedom is better than less individual freedom, that slavery should be legal since it results in more individual freedom for the individual seeking to own slaves and asked where you lived to have unabated personal freedoms. You more-or-less called straw man, I pointed out that it wasn’t and you conceded that while you would prefer more individual freedoms to less individual freedoms, that less indidivual freedoms are better if they work to the benefit of all individuals. I asked whether or not preventing one individual from killing another was a good enough reason to restrict abortion and pointed out to you that if you deem it to not be a good enough reason that you have no basis under which to not also say there is no basis on restricting murder. You gave me some non-answer. I again pointed out that if, as you claimed, preventing one individual from killing another was not a good reason to prohibit abortion, then you had no logical basis upon which you could say murder should be prohibited. You came back by effectively telling me that abortion is different and thus gets it own special rules and considerations.
So here’s what really happened, simplified.
You said you thought more individual freedoms was better than less individual freedom unless less individual freedom resulted in a greater net benefit for all involved (which really doesn’t make sense as the person who loses their individual freedoms is worse off, but that’s neither here nor there). I pointed out that abortion should be illegal since it involves one individual killing another. You said that wasn’t a good enough reason for restricting abortion. I asked why murder shouldn’t be legal under the same justification and you turned around and told me because that’s different.
…But, yeah. You’re just a regular paragon of logic and intellect there.
…Yeah… The “difference”, as you see it, is because one is born and one isn’t, though that literally changes nothing.
Where are they?
Unless “refining your debate skills” means “how to be a bigger sophist”, then you REALLY need to sharpen up. But, anyway, how many examples do you want of:
1.) Me flatly asking you for a cite and you refusing to provide one?
2.) You continually stating something which is proven to be false? Or
3.) Claiming that your arguments are self-evident and need no justification?
There are many women like me for whom there is only one possible side - the thought of being pregnant and giving birth is so horrible that the only decision would be abortion. There is no pretending about it - we don’t want to be pregnant, period. Some women even have a sort of phobia about it from what I’ve read.
You sound like you think that all women who have had abortions have to go thru a soul searing debate with herself, and if she has the procedure, it scars her mentally for life. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Little Nemo,
Read OMG, he is a representative of the anti choice side. He believes that a woman got herself into a pickle and should be punished by carrying an unwanted pregnancy to term. It is all about punishment for him. Other Anti choice people believe that women are incubators, other anti choice people think that god wants them to save the contents of the uterus, from the owner of the uterus.
It goes on and on…but the other side are basically holier then thou, and potentially dangerous crazies who get off on messing with a woman’s right to control her own reproduction. They will do anything to make sure that a woman has no power at all.
Well, sir (or ma’am), I would like to congratulate on the biggest straw man I’ve read on this board. I tip my non-existent hat to you.
What part do you consider straw? Looks like a pretty good summary of your position on abortion to me.
Omg a Black Conservative, I must admit that I didn’t read all your links to the giant walls of text that you’re so fond of, but the bizarre hypotheticals are not doing you any favours. The ‘assuming two individuals, one who will be aborted and the other is the aborter - you could be either one! Don’t you see how eeeevil abortion is now!’ hypothetical is just plain stupid. The mother-in-law was just as bad. You seem to think that you’re winning points with these things, but you’re not.
It would help if you stuck to either facts or reasonable, real-world analogies. Try to make your argument without falling back on such weird flights of fancy. It really exposes the weaknesses in your side.
Heck, I’ll stack my posting history’s intelligence, rationality and honesty against yours any day of the week, so research your little heart out.
So? Are you claiming I just injected it into the conversation for no reason whatsoever? It’s my recollection that you said the individual can’t be trusted to rationalize their actions, I asked (facetiously) if this mean no individual could be trusted, ever, you said “yes” and I thought that was hilariously totalitarian of you.
Yeah, you kinda did. You’re very casual about dismissing individual rights if the individuals are doings thing you don’t like. It’s childish, short-sighted…
…stupid, basically.“Useful idiot” stuff.
I’ve said back, though rather less often than a gajillion times, why abortion presents a unique circumstance that I, being an intelligent person, takes into account and you, being dumb, cannot.
I’m of significantly above-average intelligence and because of that, you’re not capable of riling me up in such a clumsy, obvious way.
I’m not sure how many exclamation points I’ve used in this thread. I don’t recall using them at all in the post you’re paraphrasing. I’d look it up but I don’t care.
I’m not aware that morality lends itself to tidy Boolean logic. I suppose I could make up some platitude-ridden answer that you’ll just ignore or mock or misquote or whatever.
I’m not asking for any. You made the claim, I figure the burden is on you to support it, not on me to prompt you for evidence and I guess wait with bated breath for you to provide them, or something.
You asked me about a ridiculous hypothetical, to which I responded with the seriousness it deserved.
And there it is. I’m not going to delve into your labyrinthine attempt at logic, when the stark reality of unwanted pregnancy is so commonplace and has been with humanity for so long that there’s just no point to taking day-trips to Fantasy Island.
The amount of effort you put into writing you post makes me laugh.
Well, not really, but I remember you said something like that to me once and it pretty well spelled the end of any chance I’d ever take you seriously again.
I surprised you came to the right conclusion after such a chop-logic thought process.
Picture the one that isn’t born being inside your body against your will and then tell us if that makes a difference.
Knock yourself out, sport. Pull up as many examples as you like. I’ll respond to the funnier ones, maybe.