“Preventing them from having their children killed” is a very pretty way of saying “reduce women to breeding animals”. You might as well just outright rape them; if you can justify outlawing abortion then you can certainly justify rape, in both cases they are you asserting that you own a woman’s body and she doesn’t.
A mindless lump of cells isn’t a victim, innocent or otherwise. It’s a thing, not a person.
Hardly false; the anti-abortion movement consistently acts to harm women and shows zero concern with the “unborn”, and almost as little concern about actually reducing the number of abortions.
No; they’d grow up to be slaves, under your system. Breeding animals.
The recent case of the woman who died, when medical care could have saved her life, because that medical care would also have aborted her pregnancy, is at least part of the basis for the accusation.
You can say the accusation is untrue…but you cannot say it is without basis.
The anti-abortion groups in Ireland have of course repeatedly stated their unwillingness to compromise or relent in any way in the wake of her death, which is to be expected; it’s not like people like them will feel anything other than gloating sadism over her slow death. Monsters.
All but the very most extreme on the anti-abortion side recognize the necessity of abortion in a case where allowing the pregnancy to continue poses a serious and credible threat to the life and safety of the mother. This is basic self-defense, the same principle upon which homicide is otherwise justifiable.
But the vast majority of abortions do not take place under any circumstances that come anywhere close to this. Under any other circumstances, most abortion would be clearly recognized for what they truly are—the needless killing of an innocent human being, in the absence of any circumstances nearly drastic enough to justify such a killing.
No; they just say that where they can’t get away with openly condemning women to death. When and where they can they do forbid women life saving abortions, and kill women without remorse.
Garbage. A fetus isn’t a person. And even if it was it has no more right to parasitize a woman than you do to rape her or steal her organs.
Bob Blaylock: Whew… I take a position much less – ah – pronounced than Der Trihs does. I think there is some element of misogyny in the pro-life viewpoint. Inescapable, to some degree, as it inevitably pits itself against the will of a woman who is intent on self-determination. I don’t hold with the language used – “slavery” and “rape” and so on – but I also cannot find myself comfortable with the violation of individual rights that the pro-life position necessarily entails. To me, “My body, my rights” is a more persuasive argument than any that the other side has ever brought up.
The issue has no possible “final resolution.” You think it’s wrong, and I think you’re wrong, and we’re just stuck with that.
Thank you for taking a moderate position of your own, namely accepting abortion as a life-saving procedure in those cases (thankfully rare) where there is no other alternative. You say that all but the most extreme will accept this view; please take that in balance for my own careful distancing from the most extreme views held by some on my side.
It is my position that from conception, what exists is a human being, and that abortion, at any stage, is nothing less than the killing of a human being. I do recognize that there are some drastic circumstances under which it is necessary and justifiable to kill a human being, but abortion very rarely involves these circumstances. I have no problem with abortion when it is necessary to protect the mother from a credible and imminent threat of death or serious, permanent harm; and neither do the vast majority of others who generally oppose abortion. I have a big problem with abortion when it takes place—as the vast majority of abortions do—under circumstances that are nowhere near comparable to other circumstances under which homicide would generally be considered acceptable
Within any segment of the human population, that can be grouped by similar views, there will always be a few extremists that hold views or positions that the overwhelmingly-vast majority of their peers would solidly reject. Any element of misogyny as a basis for opposing abortion would be such an extremist view. With the exception of the rare extreme freaks, none of us oppose abortion because we have any antipathy toward women. Our position is based on a desire to protect the very most essential of all human rights—the right to life itself—on behalf of the very most innocent and defenseless of all human beings; and not on a desire to oppress any group or to violate anyone’s rights.
It is well worth noting that abortion itself is sometimes driven by misogyny, especially in cultures such as China or India where girls and women are held to have much lower value than boys or men; and in which is it very often girls who are targeted as the victims of abortion by parents who do not want daughters.
Can you understand that someone who doesn’t have the same position will not make the same conclusion, and that asking them why they want to kill innocent children is nothing but grandstanding because they do not think that a fetus is the same as a fully developed child.? Can you address this one point, please?
A position which makes no sense and degrades the term “human being”. A mindless lump of flesh is still a mindless lump of flesh whatever label you choose to put on it; you are simply creating a category of “human being” that it’s OK to kill, not successfully arguing that abortion should be illegal.
No; it is the whole point of the anti-abortion movement, and the attitude of virtually every member of it. And yes, that includes the women.
An illogical complaint since it’s simply the same principle you are pushing; that women are merely brood mares, wombs on legs who don’t own their own bodies. If you can justify forbidding abortion, you can justify forcing one; in both cases you are asserting that you own the woman’s body and can use it as you see fit.
There’s certainly no possibility of a resolution, ever, so long as thoughtful discussions among rational people of good conscience are sidetracked by the crazies (firebombing abortion clinics from the “pro-life”, Panini presses for babies who survive abortion from the “pro-choice”…)
Gotta agree. In the other thread (Born Alive Infant Protection Act) a compromise was suggested: abortion is okay up to the onset of fetal viability. Heck, Roe v. Wade embraced compromise. An approach of this nature, with gradual encroachment by the government over the rights of individuals, seems to only possible way forward.
(Forward? It’s what we have now. Let’s all go home and have sandwiches. Or sex.)
I am not comfortable with the idea that just because a human cannot yet live outside her mother, she has no right to live and therefor am opposed to routine abortions unless the mother’s physical or mental health is endangered in some significant way by continuing the pregnancy.
But I do see that people who are thoughtfully considering the rights of both mother and child could come to that conclusion, though I disagree. And I can more easily see that balancing the mother’s rights with the child’s could someday lead to allowing abortion on demand in the early weeks, up to the point where the embryo becomes a fetus. Last time I checked, most abortions in the US are actually performed at this early stage.
they definitely don’t want to admit that women create life - so they imagine that God pressed the Create Soul button and a pregnant woman was just an incubator. that’s the only answer that makes sense.
What “basics” do you think one has to not understand in order to recognize a human being as such, from the moment of conception?
Really, there has to be a solid, clear line drawn somewhere, where you can recognize that what exists at that point is something completely different than what existed a moment before. I see only two such points in the entire human life cycle.
The first is meiosis—the process which produces gametes (sperm or egg cells). This process starts with a complete diploid (containing two sets of chromosomes) human cell, which, in the course of the process, splits twice, producing four cells. During this process, the DNA is replicated once, and then divided up and shuffled, so that the four cells that result each are haploid, containing one set of chromosomes.
The other is syngamy, or conception. This, I say, is the point at which a human being comes into existence. What exists at this point is undeniably, by every recognized scientific criterion, a new living organism, that did not exist before. It has two sets of chromosomes, which identify what kind of organism it is, viz., a member of the species Homo sapiens—in other words, a human. At this point, it is only one cell. Shortly, it will be two cells, then four, then eight, and so on. The cells will begin to differentiate,and form tissues and organs.
I say that conception is the only rational point to recognize that a human being has come into existence, that did not exist the moment before. From this point, until the end of its life, there will be no other point where it suddenly becomes something entirely different. Every change from here on will be a matter of development and growth, not of suddenly becoming something different than what it was before.
“Viability” really isn’t useful as a consistent, rational standard for when a human being comes into existence. Aside from simply not being scientifically-accurate for this purpose, it is highly subjective, and is subject to too many variables. As “viability” is usually understood in the context of this issue, it depends greatly on the technology available to care for a prematurely-born infant. One who would be “viable” in a modern, first-world country, in a context where the very best medical technology is available to care for him, would not be viable in some third-world country without such technology. Can it be moral to for one’s recognition as a human being whose basic rights must be upheld, to be contingent on the level of technology available where he lives?
Even so, I would argue that no human being truly achieves “viability” until quite a few years after birth. Even under the most ideal conditions, the healthiest newborn requires a great deal of care from other human beings in order to survive. The degree of care that the new human being requires diminishes as he grows older, and gains the knowledge and the physical ability to take care of more of his own needs. Putting aside the accepted legal and social definitions, I would say that adulthood could be rationally defined as the point where one gains the ability to meet all of one’s own needs, without requiring the care and support of parents or guardians in order to survive. Really, this would also be the point where one could truly be considered to be fully “viable”.
So, if we use “viability”as the standard to define when a human being come into existence, along with the rights that this existence entails, then we’re really not in a good position to argue that it’s not moral to “abort” any child, who is still young enough and immature enough to be dependent on his parents for his survival.
No there doesn’t. Nature is not required to provide the kind of neat, clear divisions that humans like, and usually doesn’t.
Which again, does nothing but cheapen the term “human being”. A tiny mindless blot of tissue is still just a tiny mindless blot of tissue regardless of what you name it, and deserves no more consideration.
Wait, you mean you don’t think any line can be drawn, not even birth? **Bob Blaylock **makes a good argument that even birth is a rather arbitrary line, do you agree with that? Where is your line? Does one exist?