No one disputes that abortion is an extremely personal choice. And no one should be forced to live by the creed of the other. The obvious solution is choice. Wherein those opposed to abortion may choose not to have one. And those who believe in choice may also live according to their beliefs.
The root problem is that the OP wants everyone to live according to what they believe. When there is no need to force anyone to follow the beliefs of another, by simply providing choice.
There are those who believe that eating meat is murder. Right or wrong, I have no issue with their beliefs. They do not get to tell us all we cannot eat meat anymore because they are ‘certain’ it’s murder. What they get to do, is not eat meat themselves.
No one’s ‘certainty’ that abortion is murder should interfere with anyone else’s choice on such a personal, far reaching, life altering decision. There is room for both to live as they believe, with choice. There is not room for one to tell the other it should only be their way.
You’re still not grokking. You’re talking about something that the antis view as murder. Replace “abortion” with “murder” and see how well your statement still holds up.
Try making the same argument for why you can kill annoying college students who are drunk in public and seeing if it still works, and saying that just because some people are “certain” that annoying college kids deserve to live, doesn’t mean that they should get in your way when you start ending 'em.
Convincing yourself that something is ‘murder’ doesn’t make it so, or obligate anyone else to agree with you.
People think killing animals, to eat, is murder. Doesn’t mean I shouldn’t be allowed to eat meat. Means they get to live as they believe, and not eat meat, and I get to live as I believe, and eat meat, not believing it is murder.
Abortion is not murder, as defined by the law, in the democracy in question. Nor is eating meat. Until you get either one redefined, they’re not ‘murder’. Your bible notwithstanding. If you choose to view either one as murder, and let that shape your actions, no one has an issue. When you want to use your beliefs to shape everyone’s actions you go too far, in my opinion.
The solution, for an issue, so polarizing, so life altering and far reaching, is clearly and self evidently (at least to me), choice. Such a decision is deeply personal and is no one’s business but the individual. I say, let each live according to what they hold true, and extend the same courtesy to their neighbour.
You’re still not grokking.
Again, from the antis point of view just change your statement to “convincing yourself that something isn’t murder doesn’t make it so, or obligate anyone else to agree with you.”
Murder is, rather obviously, not a matter of choice in any civilized society. So you can fall back on the fact that it’s currently legal, sure (but you’d be in trouble if RvW is ever overturned…). But that doesn’t make “choice” any more palatable to the antis, any more than “hey, let me murder [insert class of person], and we’ll just call it a choice. So if you don’t want to murder 'em, don’t murder 'em. Me, I’ll be stocking up on ammo.”
Murder is well defined in the law. And abortion does not meet the criteria. End of story.
Now, again, just because you perceive something to be murder (abortions, killing for food), doesn’t make it so. A bible doesn’t make it so, a Koran doesn’t make it so, because the law says it’s not.
Choosing to perceive murder, outside the legal definition is all on you. And no one really objects to that, do as you believe. But do not get to thinking that your perception should out weigh what the law is. No one is asking that you live in any way other than that which you believe. But your ‘beliefs’ shouldn’t determine how others get to live, so long as they are within the law.
Perhaps not, but I think that there is significant overlap between anti-abortion folks and pro-death penalty folks. Many seem to be able to hold both of these ideas in their heads at the same time.
So, the solution for these folks would be:
Make it a capital crime to inhabit another person’s womb without agreement from the womb-owner. Capital punishment for offenders unless they get out by themselves. Problem solved!
You can jam your fingers in your ears and sing “lalalalala I can’t heaaaaaaaaaaaaaar you!” all you want, but it still doesn’t change the fact that “choice” is a shitty argument with someone who considers abortion to be murder. It also doesn’t address the fact that, should RvW be overturned, you’d be out of luck.
I’m beginning to think that your lack of comprehension is willful. Of course people think that their perceptions should outweigh the law, that’s how laws get changed in the first place much of the time. And of course when we’re dealing with murder, your dodge of “determining how others get to live” is an absurdity.
Again, “I can murder college kids, and you have no right to say otherwise. What, do you want to determine how I can live?!?”
This is not a difficult concept, some people believe abortion is murder, others do not. Regardless of its legal status, it is a question of ontology. And arguing that people who think that abortion is murder should just suck it up and deal because murder is your “choice” is one of the single shittiest arguments possible, no matter how often you repeat it or how stridently you refuse to engage even rudimentary empathy.
I don’t think you’ve answered the hypothetical. If killing a child or an adult was not illegal, does that mean no one should work to make it illegal? Or should they just shrug and say “Hey, killing someone does not meet the criteria of a crime. End of story.”
Way I’d put it is that determining whether or not a fetus is a “person” is the intital issue.
If a fetus is not a “person” then there is no moral case to answer.
If a fetus is a “person” then there are other arguments about whether it is right to subject one person - the mother - to bearing another - the fetus - if it is not her wish to do so.
My own opinion: I agree with Carl Sagan’s analysis, that whether or not a gradually-developing fetus is a “person” depends on its ability to have conciousness - an ability that develops some time in the third trimester. Therefore, logically, abortion prior to that is a moral non-issue - aborting an early-term fetus is no more a morally troubling act than flushing a used kleenex, no matter what subjective upset it may cause to some.
Just because they say they believe it’s murder doesn’t mean we’re obligated to believe them. Their actions and their other beliefs are not consistent with the belief that abortion is murder. One of the biggest problems in American society is the “I am whatever I say I am” delusion. Lots of people tend to believe that they can just will things into being true even when all external evidence shows that they are false. “I believe abortion is murder” is just another side of “I’m a 3000-year old dragon spirit trapped in human form” in that regard. Those of us whose political philosophies are heavily based on an intolerance for bullshit can’t just let this stuff slide.
If you want to believe in some sort of international conspiracy of dishonesty involving millions upon millions of people, that’s your prerogative. Or you could grok that is their honest belief and some consequences aren’t followed through, others aren’t logically coherent, and others may seem incoherent depending on your axioms and perfectly coherent if someone holds other axioms.
You’re not going to do real well understanding your opposition if you think they’re all lying in concert.
Whether it counts as a “lie” or a “conspiracy” is a semantic question I’m not interested in. It’s trivially easy to show that conservatives (or any given group) often purport to hold positions they don’t really hold–just look at how a tooth-and-nail campaign to restrict who is allowed to get married has been labeled a “defense of marriage.” The fact that someone else just says something doesn’t put any burden on me to believe it’s true whatsoever, especially when there is lots of evidence that it is false. This isn’t Wikipedia, I don’t have to “assume good faith.”
Naturally, since it shows just how bonkers bazooie wacked-out the claim is. The terms lie and conspiracy are both 100% accurate, as you are claiming that millions, perhaps billions of people have adopted a claim which they know not to be true (a lie) and have done so in concert to advance a political ideology (a conspiracy).
Positing a billion-strong-conspiracy-of-lying simply because you’d rather handwave away a position you don’t accept isn’t made any more palatable by refusing to use the words “lie” or “conspiracy”
Well, regardless of any particular debate on abortion, can we agree that the video itself (among those of us who watched it) is less than effective? Amateurish, even?
