I agree. That was an excellent post, Yllaria.
We argue about abortion and he can defend his position on abortion. In the end it comes down to his view that life begins a lot earlier than I do.
But when it comes to the other issues, all he has are talking points that don’t survive any scrutiny or even a google search.
To be fair, I have seen less of this from the left but it might be because I am one of the most liberal people I know.
My apologies for the book-length response:
So an insect that feels pain is of greater value than, say, a human victim of a spinal cord injury?
The whole point to this thread was to discuss people who defend abortion with stuff like, “Because the anti-abortion scum…” and think that they have a lucid argument.
Ok, if you really want to get into this shit… If you have a gripe with the fact that women and not men carry children, take it up with God or Mother Nature or whomever or whatever else you think is in control of these things. Part of the almighty process of life (which, according to arguments in this thread, has no beginning, but does have an end, kinda) is that females are impregnated by men and give birth to children, thus propagating the species. This is not enslavement or rape, it is NATURE.
Saying that women have the right to control their own body is simplistic and illogical. Do you believe that a fetus/baby/mass of cells can be aborted at any point until it is completely outside of the mother’s body? You conveniently ignore the argument of when life (or humanity or whatever you want to label it) begins, mainly because any acknowledgement of life, humanity, etc. would render your argument completely invalid.
And do you support laws that require that a man pay child support on any child he fathers?
I don’t know whether to feel sorry for you or to be afraid of you.
I knew you were joking, but you did provide some nice ammo 
I’m not disturbed at all. Despite what others may tell you, not everything is subjective. You make no allowance for a “complete” human to ever be present and seem to be reverse-engineering your answers by stating that abortion is fine and that life is not present until some indeterminate time, then working backwards to justify this opinion. The faltering logic comes from the argument that life is not created at birth. Have I been at all inconsistent on this? Everyone who argues that life begins later seems to have a different opinion, and each person thinks that their argument is self-evident. Clearly, conclusions are not reached and an opinion formed, but an opinion is formed and the rest is filled in later, often by desperately grasping at straws like misogyny, human rights, and a bunch of circle of life BS. You betray your own thought processes by accusing me of doing the same. I don’t need a beginning moment to support my stance because my stance is that life begins at conception. I didn’t concoct this idea to support my stance on abortion, my stance on abortion is defined by this idea. Again, this goes back to the whole point of the original post.
I didn’t move any goalposts, I carried your argument to it’s logical conclusion. I asked when life begins, you replied, “Birth. Now, you find me a logical, scientific reason to change my mind on that.” So, yes, you did say that a fetus isn’t alive.
If the status of “living” is achieved by exiting the mother’s body, then a miscarried baby is living. I was simply pointing out that your argument is simplistic and flawed.
Parents like me have no kids. They did, however, go through a fairly shitty school system. And if folks can’t afford to send their children to a better school, then they most certainly lose the right to choose where their kid is educated. Again, it seems that the endpoint of not supporting school choice is shaping your reasons for reaching it.
Sorry, I meant “shouted” in a general sense, not to imply any increase in your audibility. Let’s try this: In a calm and soothing manner you mindlessly repeat the same “argument” over and over and over as though the argument is justification of itself.
I need a nap.
But why would you believe such a thing, since it’s clearly contradicted by science?
The unfertilized egg is alive, and the fertilized egg is alive so, no “life” does NOT begin conception. And as **Yllaria **masterfully pointed out, you don’t even have the beginnings of an individual at conception. You have a developmental step that might lead to one person, or multiple people, or part of a person, or nothing at all if the egg fails to implant.
I submit that you yourself are guilty of exactly what you’re accusing others of. You’re creating an artificial distinction about “the beginning of life” that is not borne out by the realities of embryonic development. This distinction seems to exist only to justify a particular stance on abortion, even though it has far-reaching ramifications if taken to its logical conclusion: Are women who use birth control that suppresses implantation guilty of murder? If a fertilized egg is a human being, then how is intentionally preventing implantation any different than deliberately starving a baby to death? Should we devote a large amount of medical research toward increasing the likelihood that every fertilized egg implants? And so on.
I actually like seeing this kind of thread. As long as the two sides are talking, there’s hope.
Abortion is a tough issue for me. I normally align myself with the liberal side of the political scale, but abortion is one area where I can see both sides, and roll my eyes at the rhetoric of entrenchment on both sides.
If you EVER use either of these terms - “woman-hater” to describe staunch anti-abortionists, or “baby-killer” to describe staunch pro-choicers - then you are dismissed. You are not needed anywhere in this debate, because you are so entrenched that you are no longer capable of any sort of real diplomatic compromise, which is, of course, the only way to handle the issue.
Look, it’s completely understandable that people are concerned with a woman’s rights here. It IS her body. On the other hand, it is completely demonstrable that a fetus is a living, responsive, pain-feeling human being BEFORE it exits the mother’s body. It’s also completely demonstrable that the embryo is nothing more than a ball of cells up to a point.
You have to define that point. You simply can’t say “never!” either way.
“Clearly contradicted by science?” When did science clearly contradict this?
The unfertilized egg is not in itself a human life - the fertilized egg is. Semantics involving the word “alive” do not prove your point.
I submit that you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. As I’ve explained ad nauseum, before conception there are two cells, after conception you have the beginnings of human life. Something versus nothing is hardly an artificial distinction. An artificial distinction is arguing that this new thing is created but isn’t what it is yet because it’s something else until later when it becomes what it is…
And I will challenge every poster again to specify when life begins, if not at conception. You’re quite good at specifying that it absolutely does not begin at one point, but can’t specify when it does.
I’ll point out one more time that I have made a consistent argument while those who disagree are throwing everything but the kitchen sink at it - and aren’t even consistent in their own arguments. “I’m rubber, you’re glue” doesn’t work anymore. Sorry.
Your so-called logical conclusion is nothing of the sort. Religious aspects aside, how exactly does saying that life begins at conception (i.e. the sperm penetrating the egg) equate to murder being committed by someone who prevents conception? As for prevention of implantation, that would depend upon the method by which it is achieved. The example involving the starving baby is ludicrous at best. If you were at all intellectually honest you would see that.
Again, you’re assuming that human life must have a fixed beginning point.
But it’s just as reasonable to say that gestation is an incremental process. At each stage something that is less human becomes something that’s more human. The end result can be a human life without there ever being a specific moment when the “humanness” is switched on.
I’m not sure why it’s ludicrous. If a fertilized egg is a human being, then deliberately denying nourishment to the egg so that it dies (by preventing implantation) is murder. How could it be otherwise?
If the process never ends, then we are never human. There has to be a point where humanness is achieved.
To clarify your stance, do you think that there should be any limits on abortion (partial birth, third trimester, etc.)?
I think I was arguing a different point. :smack: What you point out is right - it’s the same as abortion.
At what moment does a house under construction become a house? A hole in the ground isn’t a house. Each nail driven, each bit of pipe laid, makes it more house-like. Eventually at the end of the process everyone would agree that there’s a house there, even though there’s never a specific moment when the transition from “not house” to “house” occurs.
I think the trimester rule is a decent attempt to impose an arbitrary legal structure on what is essentially a structureless process. It’s useful the same way that we arbitrarily pick an age where you can drive, or an age when you can serve in the army. There’s nothing magic about the age of 16 or 18, but we have to pick some cut-off.
Would you agree that prison time (or perhaps the death penalty) would be an appropriate punishment for women who use some forms of birth control?
But houses aren’t people. At some point a person exists or we no longer have any legal or moral structure. If I can kill someone at any point and then argue that I didn’t believe they had completed the humanity process yet, society would break down.
And no, no gotcha question there - a woman using birth control is no more guilty of murder than a slaveowner in 1850 was guilty of a crime. There are no laws against it and women are taught that it is ok. And abortion doctors shouldn’t be shot and clinics shouldn’t be bombed.
This has been my experience. I live a very economically depressed part of Oregon, and this county has a history of a very strong timber economy. For generations one could find work in the woods or the mills, and the only good government role was a non-existent one. So the vast majority of the population identified itself as staunch conservative.
Times have changed, and many, many people have lost their jobs in the timber industry. There is a disproportionate number of people on food stamps or TANF, unemployment is high, etc. It always surprises me how many people identify themselves as conservative when their lifestyle so closely relates to that of a liberal. I personally know people who consider Obama the antichrist and think Palin walks on water, yet their entire livelihood is subsidized by the government. USDA or VA loans for housing, or utilizing sec. 8. They recieve food stamps, DHS subsidies for daycare, and enroll their kids in head start. But they’re conservative, by Og. To hell with the stupid democrats and their meddling ways! :rolleyes:
Myself, I’m a liberal because I frmly believe that an increased tax on the rich should be used to fund welfare programs for the poor. Government “interference” in businesses oftentimes results in good things, not bad. (For a good example of when government doesn’t interfere and things go to hell, Google ‘great depression’') I don’t believe in gun control or abortion, I also don’t believe Bill O’Reilly and think Glen Beck is the retarded spawn of Satan (my regards to Stephen King for borrowing this apt description).
So I personally call myself a liberal because that label best matches my viewpoint. Frankly, most conservatives I know call themselves such because that’s what their daddy or their minister said they should be. 
At the end of the day, however, they don’t walk the walk. That’s my experience, may not be common, although I suspect you find something similar in many rural communities with bad economies.
Perhaps you didn’t move any goalposts but you certainly tried to put words in my mouth. I stated that a human life starts at birth IMO - this is something completely different than being simply alive.
Huh? Do you have kids or not?
Then, perhaps, they should not have had children, particularly more than one. I simply cannot be sympathetic to parents who have kids and then whine because whatever free public school district they live in isn’t up to their standards. Particularly when they whine and expect others to fix it for them.
There really isn’t any other definition of shouted other than an increase in volume.
Well, (ignoring that you are repeating the same thing over and over mindlessly) it pretty much is. No matter how you want to present it, what you want is to be able to force a woman to undergo any pregnancy she finds herself with. Which turns her into essentially a slave for her reproductive years, which span more or less 35 or so years. Even women like me aren’t exempt, because it is still (remotely) possible I could get pregnant despite my tubal and having gone thru menopause, yet a pregnancy would cripple and maybe kill me.
Now, tell me why it is that your decision that human life begins at conception should be so important that every woman in the country has no choice regarding whether or not she has children? Who died and made you king?
No. First, not calling them woman haters would be both a lie and and self defeating, since they are. They are not motivated by any desire to stop abortions, nor do they act like it; their desire is to cause the maximum amount of harm to women that they can, and that is what everything they do is aimed at. Even if you magically ended all need for abortions, they’d just turn to something else to use as a club against women.
And second, compromise with them is unethical as well as futile. Compromise with bigots doesn’t work. For that matter, if they really believed that “abortion is murder” nonsense, compromise would be unethical from their side.
An insect that felt pain wouldn’t be an insect anymore. And a human with spinal cord damage can still feel pain and other forms of suffering, and has other important mental qualities. But this is a silly argument coming from you, since your definition of “human life” dismisses the importance of all such qualities.
And they do. Faking respect towards some of the most vile people on the planet wouldn’t make my arguments any better, it would just make me less honest.
Yes. And you have no right to enslave women who disagree.
No it wouldn’t. I’m a fully intelligent being, and if I tried to parasitically attach myself to you, you’d have a perfect right to shoot me.
It depends. That’s a more complex issue.
Well shoot, according to some online test, I am actually a statist with conservative tendencies. WTF!!!
Even more amusing is the fact that I generally refrain from saying anything at all on that subject. Damn, but some of you are good at getting people to spill their guts! Carry on…
I’ve never shot a dog, but I did shoot my cat. In the head. With a 12 g. shotgun. Yeah, it was legal, but that’s because sometimes you have to shoot that cat. Sometimes it has to be done, and I was the one who had to do it. But that was several years ago. My last cat was done by paying the vet to come to my house and give it an injection. That wasn’t pretty, either. It ain’t never pretty, or nice.
Has society broken down since abortion started being practiced? We do have a legal structure around it, you simply don’t like it. You keep complaining about the choice of when to designate life as starting as being arbitrary, but most laws have arbitrary lines and our understanding of biology is not perfect, let alone our understanding of the nature of human life.
18 USC 666(b) describes theft or bribery from programs receiving federal funds. It only penalizes people who obtain $5,000 or more. You can see why they would want a limit - you don’t want to throw an employee in jail for bribery for grabbing a sheet of paper or having a piece of gum. But why 5,000? Why not 8,000? Why not 5,677? Why not 234?
You pick the moment of conception. I haven’t seen any proof that this is definitively when life begins. The egg was alive prior to this. You argue that conception is different than the cell division occurring in a tumor because a new person is being created. But what is person-hood and how can you prove that an embryo is a person? You want to regulate other peoples’ actions based on your own morals. So do a lot of people. I don’t care. Get over yourself.
Der Trihs: Ok, the questions you’re responding to aren’t there, but I have some more questions to try to understand your view - I’m not trying to call names here, but since you’ve already made the case for not respecting the opposition, I don’t see how any sane, non-sociopathic person can have your views, so, naturally, I don’t understand them.
I’m pro-life and I’m not a woman-hater. Your first statement is shot down. Zing!
If all pro-choice people are woman-haters, are pro-choice women self-loathing?
You’ve backed me into a corner with your argument about compromise. I guess you’re right - any compromise that allows abortion is murderous and immoral. I guess you win that one.
Telling a woman she can’t kill a baby is hardly enslavement. This argument not only comes across as hysterical ranting, it diminishes the serious moral abomination that is actual slavery.
Why not? What would it become? At what point does an insect become an insect? Is feeling pain the only criterion that must be met for it to become a non-insect?
So now babies are parasites??? First of all, if everyone felt that way we wouldn’t be having this argument because the species would have died out long ago.
Secondly, to follow this to its logical conclusion, children would be fully parasitic and subject to termination until they were old enough to fully fend for themselves. I’m asking honestly - do you think that adults should have the right to “abort” children up until the point that they can live on their own?
Thirdly, an intelligent person who parasitically attaches himself to another person has made a conscious decision to do so. It’s hardly comparable to abortion.
Thanks for being honest. I tend to hear that men must take care of their responsibilities with children, which doesn’t logically fit into the notion that abortion is solely a woman’s choice. If the man has to pay for the child, shouldn’t he have a say in the matter? If the man wants an abortion and the woman says no, shouldn’t he be absolved of any responsibility?
It is certainly arguable that society has broken down since abortion was legalized. (I believe it’s been practiced, in one form or another, since time immemorial). The argument here is over humanity, not theft or bribery. They are no more related than are shoplifting and murder.
And again with the semantics about being “alive.” You could also argue that plants are alive, but we kill them, conveniently ignoring the fact that plants are not, and never will be, human beings. Same with a tumor. I’ll point out again that the repeated counter-argument to life beginning at conception is “no it doesn’t” without ever addressing when it does begin. If you’re absolutely sure that it doesn’t begin at conception, then you must have be absolutely certain of when it does begin. Not only can you not prove your anti-conception stance, you can’t even form a countering hypothesis.
There’s all sorts of talk here about the arbitrary nature of laws and of personal morals, but even without written laws and without a set of personal morals, does murder suddenly become ok? Even animals don’t kill for the pure sake of killing.
And I’ll further counter that the abortion of a fetus is a much more glaring example of imposing one’s morals on another than is preventing that abortion. This relates to the contention by Der Trihs that “forcing” a woman to give birth is slavery. Defending abortion as a simple medical procedure designed to rid the body of a parasite or as a simple matter of choice (i.e. convenience) imposes morals on a human (or even under your definition, a future human) who has no say in the matter and will not be able to develop his or her own moral concepts. It is placing the opinions and desires of one person as more important than the very existence of another person. You, as someone who vigorously defends this selfishness, should get over yourself.
3 billion years ago, give or take. It’s been continuous ever since. “Life” does not “begin” at conception. The unfertilized egg is no less alive than the fertilized one. The proper question is “when does it become a ‘person’, deserving of legal protection?” which is a purely political question, not scientific, and thus will have a purely arbitrary answer, decided by however the society decides those questions. Trying to apply science to it only gives an ambiguous “sometime after this point and before that point, but between those two points, it’s changing from one into the other, with no clear dividing line” answer.
You’ve never had a cat, have you?
Yes, clearly the difficulties in line drawing is irrelevant to the discussion of when life begins. Nice argument.
How do you define society being broken down? The lights are on and the water is running… And yes it has been practiced forever, and was not illegal for millennia or centuries or whatever. When was civilization born? When did it break down? Was it born and then it fell apart, and then reborn when when it was made illegal, and then broke down again after it was legalized? I didn’t get the memo.
First of all, that’s ridiculous. I’m absolutely certain that the Earth wasn’t formed yesterday, but I am not absolutely certain of the exact date that it was formed.
Second, it completely misses the point. I never stated that I’m absolutely certain that it doesn’t begin at conception. I don’t know when it begins with absolute certainty. You claim to have perfect knowledge of this and are willing to command others to act according to your beliefs. I just don’t think your knowledge is perfect. And I don’t think it’s appropriate to dictate other people’s behavior based on a belief that is unproven.
No, murder isn’t OK. But to have a murder, you need a person. And I don’t see proof that a fertilized egg is a person.
All of this assumes that a fertilized egg is a person.
And besides, I have no intention of aborting anything. Personally, I think it’s wrong. But it’s just my opinion and I see no compelling reason to force others to live by my views.