No, the question is, how can anti-choicers convince people that they’re not mutant woman-haters who just want to force the dirty sluts to accept their punishment for sex? If the anti-choicers want to reduce abortions, it’s long been known how to do exactly that: educate women, promote sex education, offer genuine support for women who don’t have resources----instead of the pious lip service they seem to think will suffice; aid women in abusive relationships, and support things like subsidized daycare and pre- and post-natal care, which enable women to have healthy children in difficult circumstances. Yet if you look at the actual actions of the anti-choice movement, there’s none of this; instead there’s terrorism, the disgusting misogyny of its mostly male leaders, moralizing about sex, lies, lies, and more lies—abortion causes breast cancer! Abortion makes you sterile! Whatever.
They can bitch and moan all they want, but all they do is talk—and what they do, when they’re not voting against <i>everything </i> that would enable women to avoid abortions is campaign against womens’ rights in the name of the ‘family’—which seems to mean only a male-headed household, however abusive that figure head might be.
Oh, and this? Fuck no.
So, are they carrying toddlers around in utero these days? Because otherwise that’s a blatantly ridiculous and dishonest comparison.
No it clearly isn’t. A toddler indicates someone has already made their decision to assume the emotional and financial burden of a child. A pregnancy does not.
I’m talking about the pro-lifers who want to force someone to assume that burden according to their moral code. I’m saying their actions to force that on someone carries with it other moral responsibilities. Just as the example I gave before , if a parent or husband or say, antiabortionist pushes someone to have a child rather than terminate on moral or religious grounds and then abandons that woman and her child with no regard to real world issues of care, that’s kind of a dick move.
again, not a fair comparison. A toddler is universaly recognized as a person with human rights. A cluster of cells in a womans body is not. Let’s try another angle. We as a society already care for children. If a mother became unable to care for her child the state steps in to provide care. The antiabortionists are saying a fetus is a baby and deserves equal care and consideration. OKay, if that’s your moral belief and you have to assert it by actively working to prevent abortions then why wouldn’t you be at least somewhat morally obligated to assume the burdon of care as well.
Just as the state doesn’t cast aside the children in our society, neither should the antiabortionists cast aside the unborn it insists are “babies”
It’s pretty simple really
pro-life to pregnant woman
“It’s morally reprehensible and a sin to have an abortion. You’re killing a baby”
“But I can’t afford the medical bills and I can’t support a baby after it’s born”
“Too, bad, you should have thought of that before you had sex. You have to have this baby and then you’re on your own.”
Isn’t that bad behaviour by any reasonable standard?
AS a society we take a certain responsibility for our children. By targeting a certain group antiabortionists have a certain responsibility for those children.
We can say with certainty that adding 10s of thousands more babies requires a lot more resources. For those who aren’t interested in helping to provide those resources I’d suggest they consider thier “moral” position more carefully.
It could be that is what it means to many of the people who show that bumper sticker - it isn’t a question of morality to me because I don’t consider a fetus to be any different than any other body part that isn’t doing what I want it to. And, I’m not interested in discussing it with any fundie because I don’t think talking to crazy is all that much fun.
Yes, I think this is where we show that we are of a better class of human, since we aren’t using our cars to try to force others to agree with our opinions! OTOH, it may be that the cars with the “don’t have one” stickers on them belong to people who live in an area with a lot of fundies and they just want them to shut up.
The first time I saw that one, I wondered “what if folks like you would quit assuming that your religious choices are more important than others?” I mean, come on, are those folks really unaware that there are hundreds of thousands of people who don’t care about Jesus? And why do they always have to drag the poor guy into everything anyway?
Apples and oranges, genocide is illegal. Abortion is legal.
What I do with my body is my personal choice. Your morals have nothing to do with mine. I understand that you [in the generic sense] have determined that abortion is a sin by your religion. Your religion is not my religion, so I do not have the same morals you do. If you do not want to have an abortion because you think it is a sin, then don’t get one but just deal with it if I choose to have one. If I end up in hell, that is my problem, not yours.
Hence, “If you are against abortion, then don’t have one” is perfectly legitimate as a response to someone. I am not telling you that you have to have one, just to let me have one [if I choose to]. It is not a facetious answer - it is very bluntly telling someone that I am making a choice for myself and they are not a part of that choice. Would you rather I tell them to “fuck off and die bitch”?
There was a time when abortion was illegal. In fact, it still is in various countries.
There have also been regimes that condoned – even promoted – genocide. Do you remember a certain example from the 1940s?
Heck, if you know your US history, then you know that slavery used to be legal. If you know your current events, you also know that homosexual marriage is also illegal in most US states.
Do you really want to hinge your case on this line of reasoning?
As is typical, you’ve made this all about you. Nice selective reading though.
Using their bodies? Oh come on, that is entirely disingenuous. There is no use of a body in any fashion in opposing abortion that compares to pregnancy. To suggest that with a straight face is both pitiful and disgusting.
No, but we do allow people to surrender their toddlers for placement in a foster home or to be adopted. When you develop a way for women to surrender fetuses to be implanted in other wombs, then you can make analogies between fetuses and already born children in this fashion.
You’re correct that it isn’t about the technicality of it being a law. We have a history of examining our society and changing laws, writing new laws. There are plenty of examples.
In this case the laws were changed to make abortion a legal personal choice because of a careful examination of individual rights with consideration given to the welfare of society as a whole in preserving human rights. The laws were put in place as a moral decision.
When you speak of countries where abortion is illegal you might consider this
At this point in time, yes. At this point in time genocide is illegal, slavery is illegal and abortion is legal. Stay the fuck out of my reproductive life. Unless we are fucking, you have absolutely NO say in anything I do with my cunt. Is that any clearer?
I like the way you think. I think medicine should work on a very easy and safe procedure to transfer a fetus into another person. Key to this is to give anti-choice men wombs. If the anti-choice people don’t want pro-choice women to have choices, they also get to lose their choice. Oh, they can say, “Well, that woman lost her choice when she got pregnant!!!” and we’ll just say, “Sorry, deary, we’re just following your religion like you wanted. Now you can really call yourself PRO-LIFE! Yay!”
Then we’ll watch as the anti-choice movement is immediately extinguished and laugh like evil commie atheists.
Well the thing is, we can’t force anyone to accept a fetal transfer, or then we’ve just negated their choice. But if there isn’t anyone willing to take a transferred fetus (as there isn’t anyone willing to take hundreds of thousands of children in need of a home right now) or the woman doesn’t wish to transfer it, then she terminates the pregnancy and it’s a done deal.
People “say” these kind of things all the time–that is, they say, in effect, I believe this is wrong, but it’s not my place to stop you from doing it. Some people “say” this about pornography, or eating meat or using drugs. Some say it about the way others treat their families.
But the whole joke is for pro-choice people to act like the anti-choice people and force fetal tranfers (and womb assembly) procedures. Wouldn’t be long before everyone was pro-choice. Especially men.
Oh and we could make up some kind of religious element to support our actions.
I think we have to make a serious distinction between moral breaches that are (1) non-controversial, (2) ones that are, and (3) mere opinion differences.
Example: Let’s say I hate rap music. So I don’t listen to it. So should I be able to pass a law prohibiting anyone else from enjoying it? (Category #3)
There’s not much controversy about burglary, so we pass laws to make that illegal. (1)
That leaves (2), which abortion falls into. It’s unlikely that the anti-abortion forces will convince the pros that abortion is equivalent to murder, and just because some people (maybe not a majority) strongly believe it is doesn’t provide justification for a law against it.
I would use the analogy that religious group #1 wants to pass a law that all citizens must worship God #1 and make it illegal to worship God #2, the god of group #2. It’s not hard to find proponents who say that their god is the only, one, true god, but would it be proper to force non-believers to worship their way only? Abortion is very close to this kind of belief – less science, more philosophy.