Yeah, well, I also used to be a field of wheat, and before that, a handful of dirt. I don’t think that requires me to sentimentalize over the destruction of a wheat field, or identify with with a dirt lot.
Okay then, you win.
Well, but we are rationalizing that meat isn’t murder. Granted, for the most part, we’re killing animals for our own sustenance. I love a prime rib as much as the next guy, but that doesn’t allow me to not feel any sort of empathy for the steer.
My point was that individuals can’t (and shouldn’t) be legally compelled to take in the disabled and elderly, and likewise shouldn’t be compelled to incubate. The difference, of course, is that I also don’t get to terminate the inconveniently elderly or disabled, not because they are any more “worthy” than a fetus, but because they are not currently residing inside my body. It’s not about the relative humanity of the thing in question, it’s about sovereignty over my own physical being.
Please, like I said before, I don’t believe human development begins until fertilization. And I’m not weepy at all. I’m just calling a spade a spade.
You’re drawing a line, because there’s a part of you, however small, that needs to. Own up to it.
But it’s not their pride, it’s their worldview. People who, for instance, believe that birth control is wrong will push abstinence, even if it doesn’t work as well as sex ed.
People who are against sex ed won’t be for it if they view it as ‘sinful’. And that’s to say nothing of folks who don’t just want to reduce abortions (and who might agree with some of all of your suggestions) but who totally want to eliminate abortions no matter which suggestions of yours they agreed with.
We can discuss the rationale for all that until the cows come home, and dish out dozens of adjectives, but pretending that all of those people are acting out of hatred of women (including the women themselves) is… at best, sloppy. When dealing with someone like Der who habitually sees his political opponents as an undifferentiated mass of fungible pure evil, it’s a sign of a pathology.
Then why all the uproar over ovums?
That is no longer taught by the Catholic church. (The concept of Limbo, that is)
Excuse me, I meant fertilized ovum. My bad.
[PEDANT] Ova. [/PEDANT]
There aren’t really orphanages in American society - and our unwanted children are a huge issue.
Oh, its great when a woman chooses adoption for her infant - particularly if the infant is healthy, and extra special if the infant is white. We get a little more complicated though when there are complications. I know adoptive parents who turned down apparently healthy infants because the mother drank ONE DRINK during pregnancy.
But there are real issues in placing older children, and real issues with placing children who have had poor (abusive) parenting. What often happens - according to the social workers we worked with during our adoption - is that a woman who is ambilvent about her pregnancy but uncertain about abortion will choose to give birth - and its surprisingly few of these women who make and follow through with adoption plans. Something happens during nine months of pregnancy, and it takes a special person to let go. So these women often try and parent. But being a parent is hard - and these kids often enter the system a few years later, when they are no longer cute babies.
In the U.S. the system is one of foster care, and foster care is a system with its imperfections. In some cases, foster parents are wonderful human beings opening up their homes and families to kids. In others, they are trying to “save” the child. Or they are abusive. Or they are doing it for the stipend they get for having foster kids. Foster kids are often moved from home to home - stability doesn’t tend to be a predominant feature of the system.
The U.S. is also not a country known for its generosity towards the less fortunate. Single mothers looking to make a go of it aren’t given much help from our government - and often face a lot of disapproval from society as well. Foster care programs don’t tend to be well funded - and social services agencies operate stretched even in the best of times.
At that very instant. then? When the paternalistic sperm forces its way into the innocent ovum, that is human life beginning? So, if we prevent said object from attaching to the uterine wall, then that is murder of a human? Or if, for whatever reason, if fails to do so, we should have a funeral? Perhaps an inquest, to ensure that there was no crime? Is it abortion, or birth control?
How about the wretched incident outlined above, where mis-conjoined twins face a future you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy, not to mention the suffering of the parents? Is life itself, sheer existence, so utterly holy that it outweighs compassion?
Is that a religious conviction? Sunday school I went to, I was offered the notion that my favorite Jewboy put compassion pretty much at the top of the list.
Yes. Yet with free will, we can choose compassion over suffering, pleasure over pain, joy over sorrow. And sometimes we do.
Roger that, please state your position. Ova.
Sure, why not? I didn’t make things the way they are, they just are.
I may be a cynical fuck, but all this altruistic and sanctimonious attitude is bullshit. 90% of the decisions we (and yes, you.) make are out of self-interest or convenience. Even when we’re being generous, there’s usually an ulterior motive attached. Why do you care so much about other people’s suffering then? Why give to charity, or offer your bone marrow to strangers? Why help the elderly, the sick, the disabled when it’s so much easier to just euthanize them? They’re just miserable, right?
Why draw a line somewhere? Because it makes everything easier, that’s why. What makes us more than merely a trillion cells working in unison? Fuck if I know, but I sure as hell know this, don’t pretend to have it all figured out.
You’re the one presuming to tell people how we “should” feel.
We all do, don’t we? (that’s the point of debate.)
You and a few others are trying to tell me that humanity doesn’t begin at fertilization, but at some “magical” point where fairies and unicorns instill it with “personhood.” Conveniently, somewhere right before they draw that line.
Just own up to it, and say you’re terminating a human being, whether it’s a pill, abortion or some other means. What’s so hard about that? What are we so afraid of?
Erm… didn’t I?
Did you?
Have I somehow failed to make it clear that the humanity of it makes no difference to me at all?
Honestly? Many women and reproductive rights activists are afraid that any expression other than ‘It was the hardest decision I ever made and I cry every day over it and by the way I was a virgin raped in a dark alley by my uncle who has a genetic disease’ will be met with condescension and ire from people who most likely have never and will never need to make the decision whether or not to bring life into the world (some of which can be found in this very thread).
Forget expressing relief or lack of regret, just admitting you’ve had an abortion at all, a legal procedure, is pretty taboo.
And I still don’t see it as terminating a human being – just a potential one. Yes, that is a lot of power for one person to wield, which is no doubt why it’s so controversial.