I’m SH, and I oppose it? Well, I mean… unless a rape has occured?
Maybe. 
I saw this video today, and he mentions 'agnostics who oppose Choice? I can count ‘em on one hand.’ Also, I wanted to link to the vid b/c it’s really catchy and funny :).
So, any agnostics/secular humanists/atheists here oppose Choice?
Does this mean no?
Or does it mean everyone’s out on Friday night.
I am a true agnostic. I don’t oppose choice because I am a libertarian but I do oppose abortion (that is, I won’t propose laws to stop you but I still think it is a crappy idea). Part of it is that I don’t want to promote belief systems that lead to abortions being common. I don’t think that human society and the human psyche is meant to deal optimally with circumstances where abortions are common. I also don’t think they should be perfectly acceptable. One analogy is someone going into rehab. Now, you want rehab to be available if people need it but the life choices that led up to that should be shunned (personal experience).
I also strongly oppose the logic used by much of the more militant pro-choice and pro-abortion (yes, I am sure there is such a thing) crowd. The arbitrary delineations of when a developing baby becomes a life doesn’t sit well with my more analytical side. I also take serious issue with the “my body” argument. Haven’t they ever seen those Russian stacking dolls? Just because one thing is inside of another means that the bigger thing owns the littler thing and the little thing disappears. Plus, the “my body” argument breaks down when you start talking about things like abusing drugs while pregnant. Who would defend that? Some break out the “parasite” argument and that is when things go all to hell with me.
The man’s rights issue is probably the biggest and most insurmountable issue to solve. Arguments that are attempted against it are so unfair, backward, and oppressive that they cannot be defended in my view. I speak as one who loves my child and would love to have another soon. The fact that my pregnant wife could get drunk and mad and have an abortion without my consent doesn’t sit well with me.
I believe reproductive rights are the most basic imperative of any species. The fact that some in ours decide that they lie solely with one sex doesn’t change biology. My goal as a member of my species is to create and raise successful offspring. The fact that a woman can unilaterally stop that after the deal has been made is contrary to biology.
Many of the pronouncement of the pro-choice side aren’t logical and yet are delivered as facts:
It’s my body - Yes, but there is another in there too.
A life begins at birth - that is just plain religion. Object permanence is supposed to be mastered by the time you are three months old (hiding something doesn’t change the fact that it still exists).
A woman can decide if she wants to have a child - A man can create a life just as you can. Study genetics some time. Viewing a man as a lesser being because he can’t “carry” a child is serious oppression and I meant that seriously. There are things a woman can’t do either. A uterus doesn’t create life by itself. The man created and does have a lifetime of responsibility for that child too.
Atheist.
I am pro-choice, however I am not absolutely opposed to restrictions later in pregnancy.
By the way I never understood what rape or incest has to do with anything. The argument against choice is that a fetus is an innocent life which needs protecting. That argument is unaffected by the circumstances surrounding conception or the relative guilt or innocence of the mother or her emotional state.
I’m Pagan, and pro-choice. I believe the choice should be seriously restricted after the first trimester.
Shagnasty, you are correct that a man has to do with conception of a child - but carrying that child doesn’t cause changes in his body, or possibly his death. And he has the option to run away from it, which a woman doesn’t have.
In a perfect world, every child would be wanted, or at least every potential mama/papa could sit down and talk about it. Unfortunately, our world isn’t perfect.
That is just a small biological side effect and “changes in the body” don’t have that much to do with anything. Breast feeding causes changes too but a woman can’t just up and quit and let the baby die.
Abondoning their children isn’t just a male phenomena. I have met people whose mother’s left and they never saw them again. It just occurs later with the women by nature.
My main problem is that just looking at it analytically, I just find many of the pro-abortion points false or misleading. I feel like am being forced to listen to lies or misleading things when they are broken down point by point. Strong counterarguments leap into my mind for things that are presented as facts when they are really just opinions used to reach a goal.
Now let me present the practical side. My daughter was born on June 9, 2005. She was a healthy baby and came home from the hosputal 5 days later. During my birthday party 2 days later, she stopped eating and went into seizures. We took her to the local emergency room and they couldn’t figure out what it was so they sent us to Children’s Hospital Boston. The doctors were puzzled for days and brought in experts from Harvard and elsewhere. They ran a very obscure test on a whim and found out that she had one of the rarest genetic diseases in the world (less than 100 cases reported to date). She died on July 18th, 2005.
Sulfite Oxidase Deficiency is a double recessive disorder. When my wife and I conceive again, there is a 25% chance that it will happen again. Harvard is developing special DNA tests for us to be able to tell on week 12. If it is positive, we will have to abort. Many people in our families are anti-abortion but they say that it is Ok in this case. Why? The baby could live for a while. Where do you draw the line for how much life is sufficient: a year, 5 years, 20: It is all just arbitrary lines.
I agree wholeheartedly. I am pro-choice. I have taken that choice and NEVER regreted it. I made my choice because of my circumstances. I struggle to see why an egg fertilised by rape is the egg that “we” see as less than human.
Surely IF abortion is wrong, it is WRONG in ALL cases or it is not.
If you believe abortion is wrong then you must believe that a woman should carry a rapists child to term. If you believe it is horrible for a woman to carry a rapist’s baby then you must consider the other reasons a woman may choose to end a pregnancy.
If you believe a woman has the right to control her own body then it doesn’t matter if the ‘father’ is a rapist or a boyfriend or a husband.
I’m sorry about the loss of your little one. But if you feel abortion is a “crappy idea”, why do you feel you “have” to abort if your next child has this genetic disorder? Aren’t you aborting out of convenience? How is this different from any other reason to abort?
It is 100% fatal, usually within the first few weeks of life even though the child looks healthy at birth. Once the seizures begin, there is no treatment and profound, irreversible brain damage takes place. In a handful of these cases, the child has lived in a vegetative state for a little over a year.
We ran up $200,000+ in medical bills in 6 weeks and stayed with Sophie 24 hours a day in an suite in Children’s Hospital. Life will never, ever be the same again. If it happened again, abortion would be necessary for lots of reasons.
I use this example because she was born healthy. Other babies with are too. How much quality life is enough before we say it is always Ok. Fuzzy lines.
A little hear, hear from me. That’s always bothered me. A rape and incest exception amounts to two abortion policies: one for nice girls and one for tramps. I admire politicians who find this unacceptable, but vote for those who are pro-choice.
I actually agree with that to some degree. However, there is one fairly good argument why rape and incest exceptions could be made. You could view sex as a physical contract between a male and a female in which procreation is possible. Birth control may make that unlikely but the chance is still there and responsible people must take that into account. If a baby is created, it was by the consent of of both DNA donors.
Rape and incest do not have that consent from both partners. Forcing a female to combine DNA with someone she doesn’t want to is not good biologically and ethically.
This argument simply switches arguments about the sanctity of the fetus for one over the genetic rights of the parents. Carried to its, conclusion it introduces a different set of issues. However, this argument has merits too.
No that’s just silly. Either the fetus has the rights of a citizen or it doesn’t. If it doesn’t, then the government has no interest in telling a woman what medical procedures she may undergo. She may exercise poor judgement, but it is her judgement to exercise.
The only reason you can be pro-life, without subscribing to moral idiocy, is because you believe that the fetus has the same rights as a human being. By your reasoning, a 5-year-old child who was conceived through rape can be killed with impunity as well.
I could be wrong about this. Perhaps at the bottom of the Bill of Rights, it says “Except for sluts,” and I just missed it.
Its not silly although I never said I supported that idea. Whenever you decide it is Ok to kill a baby or not is just arbitrary line drawing and people need to realize that. We could live in a society in which the custom was to take a look at the newborn and keep it if you like it, kill it if you don’t. That isn’t much different than a late-term abortion in my mind.
It is silly to think that a baby born at 7 months through emergency C-section is instantly more human than an 8-month old baby still in the womb. Attributing mystical properties to the birth process is just religion made up as we go.
My personal line is whether or not the child can be reasonably expected to survive outside the womb on its own. Yes, I know many short-term fetuses have survived, though few without having to be tethered to some sort of machine for an extended period of time. Generally speaking, abortion after six months gestation would not be ok with me.
I’ve never quite understood why whether you’re against abortion is tied to religious beliefs anyway. I’ve always seen it tied to whether you believe abortion is taking a human life. I doubt whether you are atheist or theist determines whether you are for or against the taking of life. I would like to think most people are against the idea. The real debate regarding abortion should be “Is the abortion of the fetus at x weeks the taking of a life or not?”.
I would consider myself atheist, and I am horrified by the idea of abortion because I am very unsure about where the line is in terms of defining the fetus as human. I will try more than anything to make this an issue I don’t have to deal with personally, but if I had to I would almost certainly be trying to convince the person not to have an abortion (assuming I was also responsible for the pregnancy, otherwise it isn’t really any of my business). I would not support legislation denying people the right to make this choice however. Given how unsure I am of the consequences, I feel I only have the right to make the call if I am personally involved, and do not have the right to dictate to other people what they must do.
Perhaps you missed the point. Making exceptions for rape and incest is valuing the life of one individual based upon the actions of another. That is wrong. It would still be wrong if we all decided to do it as a society. If you don’t believe that the fetus has the rights of a person, then denying abortions to women who were not raped is the equivalent of denying heart medication to the obese.
I am just asking you to imagine this with a different set of starting assumptions. Imagine that we have a society that considers the creation of life to be primarily about the right of both the man and the woman to pass on their genetic material. An implied contract is entered into whenever a man and woman have sex. The life of the unborn child isn’t considered important in and of itself, only the potential benefit for both parents to pass on their genes. In such a society, there would be a difference a baby conceived through rape or incest and one created through consensual means. One has a valid contract as defined by society and the other does not. In that society, the rights of the father would be much different.
My main point is that people just make this stuff up as they go along like I just did. The core assumptions on both sides are not the only valid ones and all arguments have strong counterarguments. One shouldn’t present conclusions based on arbitrary believe systems as facts that they expect others to follow.
Shag can we please confine the debate to existing societies and existing arguments? I could also come up with a hypothetical society in which the purpose of sex is to create brown eyed babies, which cannot be aborted, wheras all others must be. That would really change the argument wouldn’t it?
I don’t think that argument is that far out there especially from a sociobiology perspective. It started to grow on me and make a lot of sense as I was writing it. It addresses some of the father’s rights and responsibilities too which are sorely lacking right now.
The practical arguments are really the only pro-abortion arguments that don’t set off my bullshit and contradiction meters very two seconds and I try to listen to all of them with an open mind. Example: A 15 year old shouldn’t have to sacrifice her life because of an immature mistake when there is an easy fix. Ok, I have a daughter and I could probably go along with that.
I believe the pro-life side has a stronger philosophical argument that is more consistent and the pro-choice side has a stronger practical argument. Simple as that.
Guys, please start a new thread to debate the issue- or else the mods will move my thread, and they’re tired of moving my threads.
And as for what was said about theists and atheists and how that correlates to abortion- fund. Christians oppose the act b/c they believe ‘God’ created the child and they oppose an innocent child created by ‘God’ being killed.
Death penalty, OTOH, involves a guilty creation of ‘God’ and killing him is alright.