This is a wordy way to say “The Innocence Project is right and the pro-life movement is wrong, therefore the pro-life movement is hypocritical.” This obviously does not follow logically, because hypocrisy consists of avowing a belief but not acting in accordance with it. This is not the case with the pro-life movement, so they are not hypocritical.
The flip side of this is that the Innocence Project would be hypocritical if they refused to support the death penalty for the roughly half of those whose guilt is shown by DNA evidence who appeal to them.
Not to mention that you are (unsuccessfully) trying to move the goalposts. Earlier you were arguing that it was the fact that pro-lifers were only concentrating on what they consider deliberate causes of death that made them hypocrites. I see from your unacknowledged abandonment of that position in favor of another, equally wrong-headed one that you recognize that you have been refuted.
I am minding my own business. And the state of your innards is of no consequence.
Oh, please. I didn’t hear any “pro-life” person speak up against AIDS, a disease with a 100% mortality rate. For 10 years they ignored it, saying it was God’s punishment for “those people”–you know, queers and junkies.
I bet you more of them are still harassing women instead of raising funds for AIDS research.
This is a wordy attempt to avoid admitting the fact that you don’t actually have any logical rebuttal of my explanation of why the Innocence Project is not analogous to the “pro-life” movement on this issue.
I was arguing that it is the fact that “pro-lifers” only concentrate on what they consider deliberate causes of death, with the implicit but inconsistently applied assumption that such deaths count as the destruction of fully human lives, that makes them hypocrites.
And I still am. And you still aren’t able to refute it.
Keep on floundering around trying to contradict it all you want, though. As I said to elucidator, this isn’t about trying to get through to you individually; this is about using a discussion to illustrate to posters like gigi and others where the “pro-life” movement’s standard arguments are logically falling short.
Yes, I did know that. You used the word “immense” to describe the difference and they are both in the low millions. In addition, the dismay seemed to be people’s reactions to miscarriage versus abortion, and they can’t have a reaction to something they never knew about.
And yes, I would be more concered about people actively killing toddlers than them dying of natural causes. Millions of people die of natural causes every year; I’d be more concerned about a society that euthanized a much smaller number of them.
How was I passing over them? I know that I won’t change your mind and I’m not trying to. But please tell me you can see the difference between actively killing an embryo versus it dying of natural causes? And that someone can work to end abortion and also work for prenatal health and to decrease infant mortality from natural causes?
Can’t think of any off the top of my head. I got involved in the David Suzuki Foundation that works to understand and value nature and thus the environment because my health has been severly impacted personally by the pollution of our air, food, and water. And I wish to leave an inhabitable world to my grans.
However, I was not excluding myself when I said “If WE would all mind our own business…”.
Your response completely ignored, i.e., passed over, the several million of those fertilized ova that each year fail to survive without falling into the “known miscarriages” category.
Either you simply weren’t aware of those millions of deaths annually, or you thought that they somehow just “didn’t count” in terms of estimating the impact of various threats to “pre-born” life.
Both of which attitudes seem rather inconsistent with the much-trumpeted “pro-life” assumption that every fertilized ovum counts as a fully human person from the very moment of its fertilization, and its life thenceforth is just as valuable and precious as every other human life.
No, in the case of non-humans, there is not necessarily any ethical difference whatsoever between deliberate killings and natural deaths. For example, not being an extreme animal-rights supporter, I consider there is no ethical difference between humanely killing an animal for food or pest control and the natural death of such an animal.
If you want to convince me that I should regard embryos as fully human persons (and consequently that aborting them is morally worse than their dying naturally), you first have to convince me that you genuinely and consistently regard embryos as fully human persons. If you don’t, then you’re a hypocrite.
And when you are oblivious of or indifferent to the fact that about five times as many embryos/blastocysts die naturally as are aborted—while the “pro-life” movement that is supposedly all about valuing and defending “pre-born” life doesn’t seem to think that this catastrophic and tragic destruction of “pre-born” life on a huge scale is worth any serious attention—then you definitely don’t come across as genuinely and consistently regarding embryos as fully human persons.
So I call hypocrisy. And you have yet to make any point that logically challenges that call.
If you know that life begins at conception, how do you know “every miscarriage is a natural death”? Surely some woman are responsible for their miscarriages, and should be prosecuted for murder.
Nitpicky point of order: It does not require holding an extreme point of view in order to see an ethical difference between killing and natural death in nonhumans.
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The subject of OP is at it again with more reprehensible opinions on women he couldn’t resist interjecting in a SSM debate:
Nope, nothing wrong in equating women’s rights with that of children.
Those uppity women who just couldn’t settle for their ‘follower’ and ‘subordinate’ position and now they are responsible for the “breakdown of authority in the liberal west!”
Hector_St_Clare, there are some places in the world that share your view of marriage. Primarily theocratic third world countries.
Lastly, here he is lamenting for a return to the Dark Ages …
Children sure as hell were considered a man’s property up until about the middle of the 19th century, in both the US, and pretty much all European nations.
I’m not sure what HSt.C’s definition of a Christian nation is-- whether he means one where a form of Christianity is the official religion, but the country isn’t a theocracy, or whether it must actually be a theocracy-- but wives have been “chattel” in many nations where Christianity was the majority religion. What the heck does he think the little ceremony of a father giving a daughter to her husband at the wedding harken back to?
Seriously. It’s possible to both think that innocent people who are wrongly incarcerated should be released, and that rightly incarcerated people should remain that way, and not be executed.
Yeah. I had a miscarriage last month and all the sudden people started sending me all these pro-life themed articles - a lot of which basically pretended to actually give a shit about women who had miscarriages but were really just using that as a thin veneer to push their propaganda. That pissed me right the fuck off, as did all the bullshit comments about how it was meant to be and that someday I would meet my fetus in heaven.
The idea that ‘‘God’’ has some divine plan when a baby is conceived is a fucking joke. ‘‘God’’ forces women to have abortions all the fucking time. At least 20% of the time but if you include the unknowns it could be as high as 50%. We don’t get a say in the matter. It’s some sick fucking shit to believe that a deity aborts babies at will and then somehow gives a shit about the ‘‘miracle of life’’ when some women choose to do it on their own.
My Mom is one of these people. I was conceived by rape and she didn’t abort me and now she’s like super pro life because I’m a gift from God or some shit. Like i didn’t notice how much my existence fucked up her life or how difficult my life was because I was brought into a world where I created more hardship than joy. We’ve healed from the utter clusterfuck that was her attempt to raise me, but that doesn’t change the fact that bringing me into the world was really not the best plan. I don’t mean it in a self-deprecating or traumatized way when I state very matter of factly that I probably should never have been born.
I’m actually, I would say, pro-religion but I would like to hail a hearty ‘‘fuck you!’’ to all the people out there who want to control my right to procreate on the grounds that somehow there’s a benevolent being that gives a flying fuck about human life. We live in a world where people who desperately want children are not able to have them, where women who are unprepared for children have them forced upon them, and meanwhile thousands and thousands of children languish in foster care without hope of having loving parents.
Either there is no such thing as God or God is a fucking hypocritical patriarchal sadist. The women’s ‘‘curse’’ we were taught in Sunday School, is having to have a period and go through labor and shit. Now that I’ve experienced it I know the real curse is losing your fucking unborn child and you are not going to sit there and tell me that came from a loving God and in the same goddamn breath tell me God thinks it’s wrong to kill children. No. Fucking. Way.
I’m very sorry to hear that, Spice Weasel: all the condolences. And it sucks that people are using your bereavement to push their own political agendas on abortion, too.
Oh, and just so we’re super clear, the only reason i would ever get an elective abortion is to save my own life. I just figured out sometime in my development of consciousness as a participating member of American society that using my own personal beliefs to limit the freedom of others is a pretty shitty thing to do.
I just wanted to let you know that I completely understand your point even if others don’t seem to quite understand. Humans die of natural causes at EVERY stage of development - it would be more strange if embryos/fetuses didn’t ever die of natural causes. Then maybe the pro-choicers who try to argue fetuses aren’t even alive might have a point.
If we want to accuse people of hypocrisy, what about looking at the hypocrisy of the pro-choice side: How many people out there who pat themselves on the back for being “pro-choice” have actually done something concrete to help a woman make a choice other than abortion? How many “pro-choice” people have personally welcomed a pregnant woman into their home, fed and clothed her, offered help with childcare, etc. to make sure that the woman could choose what she truly wanted to do instead of feeling forced to abort out of desperation?
Faced with a desperate woman who doesn’t really want to abort but feels forced to do it, a lot of pro-choicers would take the attitude of “Welp, I did my part by printing out directions to the abortion clinic for her. Now I can wash my hands of the situation and forget about the whole thing.”
You mean like lobbying for better health care, access to free birth control, better welfare, better food stamps, help with child care, better jobs, increase in minimum wages, child support enforcement, narrowing the income gap, better infrastructure, paid days off, parent-friendly workplaces, equal pay, public transportation, and a lack of judgment about single motherhood? Most of us, actually.
