I understand your point, and frankly the idea of forcing another human being with the work, weight and inconvenience of a pregnancy makes me feel ill.
However I see this as the cost of having sex. No, it is not fair that a woman has to bear this burden while a man can go free, but it is still there no different from a gambling debt.
Also, I see this as no different than the enslavement of parents of born children. Once the egg is fertilized a child is created and you must care for that unborn child just as you would for a five year old.
Do you consider parents of a five-year old “enslaved”?
They have a right to those things by the fact that the mother consented to sex and thus consented to the possibility of a fetus demanding those things.
Those would only have the possibility of working in the case of rape.
But I say that the mother consented to those burdens by taking the risk of sex.
He is not always held responsible. Ideally, and in my world legally, he would be. It is not fair that the woman is so physically burdened with the child.
They probably would.
You are absolutely right. It is not fair. The woman is forced to carry the burden of pregnancy. I don’t like it. The idea of it makes my Libertarian heart feel nauseous. Women are stuck paying a price for their actions that men can never really carry and can skip out on. Maybe if we were egg laying creatures it would be different, but we are not. We are mammals and we are designed so that the female must carry the burden of pregnancy if she is going to have sex. It is not fair, but it is how things are.
- She should have then given you up for adoption.
2.So to avoid some guilt you would kill the child?
I don’t like it either, but I see it as no different than how we compel parents to care for their born children.
Because with the uterus a person took actions that directly led to the situation of pregnancy.
That is not true in my case or arguments. I don’t give a damned what a person does in the bedroom. I don’t care if you are gay or straight, if you are monogamous or a swinger, if you own every toy under the sun or are a strict missionary only person. All I care about is protecting peoples lives.
And, by my view, those people were murderers.
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I’d say that if the woman was completely contained within your body and drawing critical sustenance from you… go for it.
I daresay slavery has a similar record.
And yet, you didn’t answer as to how you would go about punishing the man who is aware of the pregnancy and assists with the abortion, monetarily or otherwise. It has nothing to do with fairness.
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Why? She loved me, and didn’t want anyone else raising me. She wanted children, just not that young. And, had she given me up after I was born, she would have regretted it her entire life. You seem to think that giving a child up for adoption is somehow less traumatic and painful than having an abortion. That just isn’t so. The bond that is formed after nine months of carrying a child is stronger than after, say, six weeks, and far more wrenching when that bond is broken.
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No, not “kill a child.” I’m sorry, a six week fetus is not a child. Or a person, or a baby. And yes, I would terminate a pregnancy before I would bring a child into the world and resent that child for its existence. I’m just funny that way, I think children should be planned and wanted. Forcing a woman to have a child as a punishment is torture to all parties involved. I’m not sure why you fail to understand that. But again, I see what happens to that child after it’s born is of no concern to you.
It seems to me, Muad’Dib, that you simply refuse to allow yourself to see any perspective other than your own. If that’s the case, I see a very lonely life for you.
Isn’t it possible they just didn’t understand what they were doing, like the women in this thread, apparantly?
Agree. 100% on the mark.
I like to ask anit-abortion people how many unwanted, disabled or uninsured children they have adopted or are supporting. Usually a moment passes as confusion spreads across their face, and then inevitably they say “But this is different” or “It’s murder”. When you think about it, a child who lives through birth only to die from malnutrition or child abuse is a pretty bad way to die, don’t you think?
Just thought I’d pop back into the thread one more time to say this: what goddamned train wreck.
Whether or not you agree with it (and I don’t), the basic anti-abortion argument is a valid one and deserves to be treated with respect. Given the utter disrespect with which his views generally been treated, as well the numerous, completely uncalled-for personal attacks directed at him, Muad’Dib has been remarkably patient and polite.
I understand that this is an easy thing to say when virtually everyone in the thread shares your perspective, but that doesn’t stop it from being either wrong-headed or ironic (or both).
I think what’s drawing so much heat isn’t just his opposition to abortion, it’s also his opposition to the most effective forms of birth control, the very ones which are most likely to reduce the risk of an unwanted pregnancy and his statements that he doesn’t care about the mother of the child, not to mention statements about locking people up. I’ve read a certain callousness into his statements which you may not have.
Respectfully,
CJ
The basic anti-abortion argument is not a valid one, and it deserves to be treated with the respect of an invalid argument.
I agree that personal attacks on Maud’Dib are undesireable, but I have to point out that the consequences of Maud’Dib’s arbitrary decision to want to assign human rights to a bunch of cells within a woman’s body are a deep insult to many people.
This includes board members, who will very understandably consider Maud’Dib’s stance a personal attack on their life choices.
What Maud’Dib has done, is work with a dataset of one (his sister), forms a relatively arbitrary theory to justify the results of that dataset (seems to have worked out ok), and then proceeds to apply this to the whole world with a dogged persistence showing a near complete disregard for the consequences of that position.
The train-wreck is of Maud’Dib’s own making. But I still like to give him the benefit of the doubt. I think he means well, and he seems to have a general respect for science and philosophy. He will soon learn that it doesn’t take a cruel law to justify the joy he experiences in seeing his 5 year old nephew and his 21 year old sister doing well and having had a part in that.
I can give you a valid argument for the Swiftian feeding of the poor to themselves, based on the principles of Sanger. I would laugh my ass off if anyone gave it any respect whatsoever. The premises are damn important.
Although, I do agree, Muad’Dib has been remarkably and pleasantly melt-down resistant.
Also, did he ever post his reasoning for assuming that a fertilized egg was a human, beyond the one-line snippets we kept refuting?
I’ll do so when you stop advocating tyranny directly solely against women. Sorry, but you should be able to see that if your premise is wrong, then what you advocate is tyranny–and that many of us believe that your premise is wrong.
Find me something in a peer-reviewed journal suggesting that neonates can form no desires. It’s an extraordinary claim, that they haven’t the experiences of warmth, of pain, of hunger, of satiety. If my claim is so controversial, prove it.
Do you accept that in your farmer example, the only harm done is against the farmer–that the seedlings have no rights?
Do you understand that when you say the fetus would have become aware, you’re using a verb mood that indicates something contrary to fact?
Daniel
I’m just going to duck in here and point out that there really is no historical precedent for Maud’Dib’s opinion. Until recently, the last few hundred years, exposure of children up to about two years of age was, if not common, not unheard of. The death of young children was almost expected, thanks to high infant mortality rates, as well. This created certain traditions, such as baptism after thirty days or so, and various folk sayings, such as the tradition my grandmother once explained to me, that children do not have souls until they’re a year old.
Now that we can save almost all children, there is a tendency, understandable, to want to do so, but historically, the concept of a child having a soul before being born doesn’t appear to have much in the ways of legs.
This is possibly why the entire concept of ‘quickening’ comes up in the Roe vs Wade decision, as the earliest point that could be justified in law as the child being alive, as some sort of common ground.
Also, those bloody pictures of fetuses generally either aren’t abortions, or they are pictures of exceptionally rare ones. They are the rough approximation of denouncing slavery in the 1880s by holding up pictures of a beautiful young white girl who was drowned and eaten by fishes. While white slavery did exist at the time, it’s not what the issue is generally about. Simply more photogenic.
Huh?
what does being eaten by fishes have to do with slavery?
We don’t compel parents to care for their born children. We allow people to put their children up for adoption. There’s nothing illegal about putting a child up for adoption.
So, if I shot you and you needed a new kidney, you could take mine? Or when George Bush sends troops to Iraq, he’s on the hook for blood transfusions if anyone gets hurt? Funny, I don’t think I’ve ever seen that.
The point is that, in fact, it had nothing to do with slavery, except possibly runaway slaves could have drowned.
The same goes for pictures of miscarried fetuses, which is what most of the grossout pictures are. Nothing to do with abortion.