That’s what the big difference between pro-choice and pro-life positions boil down to: whether or not a murder is occuring when an abortion is performed. If abortion isn’t murder, and what is considered murder is governed by man made laws and enforcement, then abortion is no different than removing the placenta after birth. So in this sense, pro lifers are the ones treating what they claim is murder that is just like all other forms, differently than all those other forms.
You seem smart, but you sure don’t seem pro-choice. Are you sure you’re in the right thread? Any chance for those cites I requested above?
OP: I’m going to assume you haven’t signed in again and that’s why you’re not replying to questions directly asked of you. Because otherwise, that would be pretty rude in your own thread.
The facts of an abortion is that a pregnancy is terminated. Whether or not an abortion is a murder is a question of morality.
As Ambivalid noted, though, the difference is that murder is officially a crime. Pro-lifers are trying to tell abortion-rights supporters that they ought to consider abortion the same as murder, even though abortion (in the form that abortion-rights supporters are defending, at least) is not a crime.
In which respect, pro-lifers are no different from militant PETA-type vegetarians trying to tell everybody else that meat-eating is the same as murder. They’re entitled to regulate their own behavior in accordance with their own views, but they’re not entitled to impose their beliefs on people who don’t agree with them.
Well, that’s exactly the position that abortion law, based on longstanding tradition in most human societies, explicitly establishes, so not much of a shocker, really.
Except most of them don’t actually believe that in a logically consistent way. For instance, ask any self-identified pro-lifer you know to do the “fire in a fertility clinic” thought experiment—the one where you suppose that a fire breaks out in a fertility clinic, and there’s one 6-month-old baby in a child carrier at one end of the clinic and an insulated medical transport case containing a thousand viable fertilized eggs at the other end, and it’s only possible for you to rescue one of the two while the other will be burned up in the fire, so you have to choose which will survive—and they will almost certainly plump for rescuing the one 6-month-old living human being instead of the one thousand “living human beings”.
Well, you seem willing to let the bunch of old men in Washington take away from them the decisions about whether they can own nuclear missiles or anti-aircraft weapons, for example. I think it’s kind of hypocritical to arbitrarily declare that a certain category of weapon must be completely free from government regulation while so many others aren’t.
There are moral issues in which one side is clearly right and the other side is so clearly wrong it’s virtually non-existent. You don’t find people arguing whether or not murder is moral. Or slavery or cannibalism.
But there is no such consensus about abortion. People may feel their side is right but you won’t find anyone saying that everyone agrees that their side is right.
Pro-choice people acknowledge two sides exist - and don’t impose their moral views on the other side. Nobody is ever forced to have an abortion if they think it’s wrong.
It’s the pro-life people who want to impose their moral views on people who don’t agree with that moral view.
No, whether something is murder or not is determined by whether or not the being that was killed was human and that it was committed in a premeditated fashion. There is no morality influencing those facts. Are you saying our laws are dictated and shaped by moral judgments? Or just abortion law?
For the record, I hold neither of these positions and I am hesitant to state without a qualifying statement that many hold the first.
No one, cracking open a chicken’s egg* and finding plain ol’ white and yolk inside feels the same thing as if they had just smashed a living chicken’s head in and watched it die under their hands.
Instinctively, we recognize the difference between goo and life and, obviously, the baby-creation process is not a magical switch. The transformation from goo to life is a progression through stages.
Bringing up “a woman’s right” is unnecessary when we are talking about goo. Goo don’t give a jack and we don’t give a jack about goo. That some do in the case of humans is capricious and anything logical is, by definition, not capricious. By similar rights, it is capricious for harder drugs to be legal than some illegal drugs and that shouldn’t be the case regardless of whether you’re pro or con of legalized recreational drugs.
If we consider chicken goo to be goo, then human goo is goo. If we happily go around slapping insects on the walls, because we understand that they have 1 brain cell and that brain cell doesn’t do anything in the realm of understanding the self, well then anything with a single brain cell is pretty clearly on the “we don’t really give a jack” list.
Many people, not trained to be cold and merciless, would feel uncomfortable to take a rock, hold down a live dog, and bash its head in. Vegetarianism has a long history even before an age where mankind could safely trust his ability to consistently put food on the table. There is a point where we recognize that things are getting fishy and that the morality is more questionable.
Humans are just nerves, brain cells, and protein the same as everything else living on the planet. The rules should be relatively consistent.
Historically, abortion and infanticide seems to have been wildly common. Female babies would simply be taken into the forest and abandoned or quickly put out of their misery if they weren’t going to be productive and would simply cause the family to starve. That I’m aware, the belief that a newly born baby is more in the realm of a human and less in the realm of a cat so far as the morality of killing goes, is largely a product of Judeo-Christian thought. Minus that and our natural instincts go the other way.
So I would hold that people don’t feel like fetuses are human nor even newly born babes - that doesn’t seem to be the way it has worked over the vast expanse of human history - they’re told that it’s the case and maintain it out of indoctrination. That’s a slightly different thing from feeling like a murder has happened and, thusly, you note that there’s no real push to punish anyone for the crime - just to disallow it.
- This is a discussion of abortion. Yes, I know that your average store-bought chicken’s egg is not fertilized. Thank you. A fertilized egg, however, is nigh-indistinguishable from a non-fertilized one (so long as the farmer gathered it within 24 hours of it being laid and refrigerated it) and you would never know if someone gave you one. Any farm-bought, organic-y egg you have ever bought or perhaps been fed at a nice restaurant may well have been a fertilized egg.
I’m pro-choice because I ride bikes.
I’m pro choice, for several reasons, being smart or intelligent are not two of those reasons.
I’m lazy, apathetic, male (I’ll never have to deal with carrying a baby to term in my own body), vasectomized (never have to deal with raising more kids unless I actively work hard at getting someone elses kids) and kimstu’s post above provides some clarification and justification for a vague notion about the whole issue I’ve had for quite some time.
Also, I don’t get paid for my stance sooo, wouldn’t that be amateur choice instead of pro choice?
Thanks for all the replies, even the ones that were just to bitch at me. In this thread, and its predecessor, I have learned some valuable things about dopers who I never really noticed before. They gave me a lot of thoughtful, detailed answers that really were thought-provoking. I also had my opinions confirmed on several posters, though I scarcely needed more evidence on that account. These threads are of great value, no matter what your opinion of me may be, if you set aside your desire to jump in and tell me how I am wrong (though I didn’t offer an opinion of my own in this one) and use them as a tool to view how dopers view themselves. For the loudest and angriest among you, there is a Pit thread about me that has been going on for some time. You should consider spending more of your energy in it and less spastically flailing in threads like this one when you know I won’t reply to your off-topic frothings.
So…nothing specific to say about your own views on the matter?
Personally, I’m pro-choice because of reasons already stated(the rights of women to control their own destinies, the lies told by so-called “Pregnancy Centers” and those that support them, the demand that women give birth no matter how viable the pregnancy is etc.)
Edited to add: Would you mind pointing out the “loudest and angriest” posts? I wouldn’t mind knowing where that bar is set.
That Pit thread is still there, me ol’ china. Hie thee there and bitch about me in your shrillest tones.
No bitching(shrill or otherwise) from my side of the aisle. I’m just asking for clarification of your previous post.
I have as well. I shall be altering my viewing habits accordingly.
I’m pro-choice because I try to be a decent person. It’s not easy, but it’s simple.
I disagree. Saying that John Smith is dead is a matter of objective fact. Saying that Smith’s death was caused by a gunshot is a matter of objective fact. Saying that Bob Jones shot Smith is a matter of objective fact (although there may be a dispute because of incomplete information).
But saying that Jones murdered Smith is a subjective moral issue. Jones may have murdered Smith. Or he may have defending himself by shooting Smith. Or he may have committed an act of war. Or he may have shot Smith by an unforeseeable accident. The determination of which of these situations occurred is a moral decision. The law is just a codified expression of our moral consensus.
Er, these are all questions of objective fact too. A guy was either defending himself or he wasn’t, and deciding that is a determination of fact. This determination may be influenced by opinion, but the opinions in question aren’t opinions about morality, they’re opinions about the facts.
Similarly, the question of whether a killing was justified/allowed by the rules of war is a question of fact, the question of whether it was an accident is a question of fact, and the question of whether the thingy in the woman’s tummy is a human yet is a question of fact. One that can come down to opinion, but it’s still a question of fact.
Honestly, the closest that laws come to morality is whether a given law should exist at all.
You know what else I learned from these threads? That you, apparently, think everything really is about you. From your responses, one might gain the impression that I started these threads just to troll you because reasons.
I’m can’t say that people are pro-choice because they are smart, but this thread indicates that a lot of thought was put into the decision by most here.
And I’m learning that your approach to life is to refuse to answer reasonable questions.