True, but there is nothing better than life.
Jesus, who the fuck is this Randall Terry guy and how come I’ve never heard of him?
Of course not. And no. My point wasn’t that I’m against abortion, my point was trying to bring to the surface the philosophical difference of potential and actual.
Lucky?
Never ever implied that in the slightest. Go back and reread all my posts.
Hey. At least I know where I came from, unlike all you zombies…
Google “Randy Alcorn” for similar views. When a women’s health center won an $8,000,000 judgement against Alcorn, he stopped working and collecting royalties on his books so he wouldn’t have to pay them.
Seriously? I mean… seriously? This sounds like something that would come up in eighth grade debate class from someone who’s never had hetero sex let alone a pregnancy scare.
The great thing about the abortion debate is that you don’t need hypotheticals. There are a millions of real examples to choose from (granted, the stigma and shame keeps many women from discussing their experiences, which is why you hear more about the raped 9-year-olds than the overworked mothers of three who took antibiotics while on the Pill).
A few minor exceptions aside, no woman wants to get pregnant every time she has sex. And the reason abortion is such an omnipresent debate topic isn’t just science vs. religion, it’s because for the majority of sexually active women (and men, to a lesser degree) the possibility of procreation is always going to be there, somewhere, at the back of their minds as they have sex… miss a pill… get a period late… get Plan B… counsel a friend…
Ohh, a lesson in not changing history from Mr. “I’m My Own Grandfather”! Let’s just steal the damn dish and get out of here! Screw history!
I think you are on very safe ground, there. None of this “cite?” crapola, nosir.
I guess it depends on whether or not I’m John Connor.
That’s fine. But stop saying “perfectly capable of surviving outside the womb.” Because that’s not always the case.
Little Plastic Ninja, I wasn’t serious. It’s just my way of saying that these discussions have a tendency to give me a headache and often I want to scream at some of the utter stupidity. I don’t think it’s anymore extreme than the whole, “BABY KILLER!” crap.
Of course I don’t want to have an abortion (I don’t think anyone WANTS to, really – at least in the sense they’d rather not have to). It’s called, “sarcasm”.
My son is adopted. From South Korea where abortion is technically illegal with the health/life/deformity exceptions - and the health/life/deformity exceptions are handed out often enough where more boys are born than girls (girls in Korea are apparently a deformity, but that is beside the point I’m trying to make).
From my perspective, if my son’s birthmother had chosen to abort him, he would not exist. There would be another little boy in my life who I’d call by the same name. He wouldn’t be the same boy - perhaps he’d play soccer instead of baseball. Perhaps he’d have a great singing voice. Perhaps he’d be more of a reader. But since he’d be all I knew, the fact that a woman had an abortion wouldn’t affect me. Maybe there was such a potential little boy, one I don’t have in my home because a woman was able to procure an abortion. But that potential little boy is in the same place with all my potential children that I concieved over four years of “you probably have an implantation problem.”
At some point, there may be so few unwanted children born (hopefully due to lack of conception, but perhaps due to other reproductive freedoms) that I’d be forced to mourn the lack of a child in my life because none were available. But another women is not my baby factory - simply because I couldn’t and she could doesn’t mean I have the right to force her to provide. Any more than I could be forced to provide part of my liver to my sister who nearly drank hers into needing a transplant.
There are two parts of the pro-life side I’m uncomfortable with - one is the forcing someone to do something with their body - something that is not without risks. As was said before - we don’t force people to donate blood in this country. We don’t force dead people to donate organs. Hell, in this country, we get upset about the estate tax.
The second is the “and then what” question. Our schools are stretched - we don’t want to put more money into them - particularly the ones in poorer socioeconomic neighborhoods (people likely to be more inconvienced by reversal of Roe v. Wade - I can book a vacation in Montreal for myself or my daughter). Our social welfare programs are stretched. Our health dollars are stretched. Who is going to pay for the support of an unwanted child? There are enough abortions and enough waiting adoptive parents that if we outlawed abortions we’d have a surplus of adoptable children in about two years - and then what? Do we warehouse them? Do we force people to parent children they don’t want - but only the ones that aren’t wanted by others?
Also, older children are languishing in foster care because perspection adoptive parents want perfect babies. The astronomical cost of this is supported by tax dollars. The psychological cost to the older children is heart breaking.
Y’know. If we could just install an on-off switch on our balls, or your uteruses, we could avoid all this messy abortion biznass. But not just any on-off swtich. I’m thinking something like this.
Huh. Now, that label is kind of unfortunate…
Hmm…
Well, some of us are. You, I’m not so sure about.
But, yes, generally speaking, a human life is more than organic molecules and carbon compounds. But a gamete stuck to the wall of a uterus is, in fact, nothing more than carbon compounds and organic molecules. If we should, as you have stated, feel some special empathy for that clump of matter because it might one day turn into a human, we might as well feel the same empathy for every other clump of matter that led up to the formation of that gamete.
Yes, and if you’d shown any interest in any of the other answers you’ve been given, I’d not have snarked at you. But since the greater part of your contribution to this thread has been, “That’s not what you really think. This is what you really think,” it seemed unlikely to me that your response to Cat Fight would be any different. If you so dislike being snarked at, one potential course of action I could recommend is allowing that people may, indeed, have different ideas than you, and disagreement is not the same as dishonesty.
Aww shux, I bees caught in a contradiction. Damn, I guess my already gossamer-thin credibility is shot.
Oh yeh, I’m just so stubborn and unwilling to listen to everyone else’s ideas. I’m searching is all. Searching to make sense out of what it means to be human. Is there a line somewhere? If there is, should we care? And who/how is that line is determined. No one has a definite answer, and if the answer is a gradient, then where does the gradient begin? I believe it’s a gradient, but one that begins somewhere. You’re trying to twist my words and make it look like I’m arguing that every atom in the earth is/was/shall be part of a human someday. That’s not what I’m saying, nor is it tantamount to my argument.
All I said is you’re killing a human. I never said terminating it should be considered “murder”. I’ll concede that a gamete is hardly anything recognizable as human. The only life we can detect is that at the cellular level. I decide to say fertilization is the point of becoming human, as the most proper definition of what and when we’re calling something a human. If you believe humans become human at some point in-utero or after birth, then that’s your prerogative. I just don’t, for myself, know where to draw the line after that and say, this is where we’re considering it “murder”. I have no idea, and apparently there’s a lot of people who disagree on this point.
So I’m not wrong in the sense you imply I am. I don’t believe there* is* a wrong and a right here. I’m doing some serious thinking and I’ve been nothing but honest, despite my errors in my thinking. This is the Pit, so I’m expecting hostility, but at least everyone is free to speak their mind here, and be an asshole if they wish. Your problem is you think you’re giving me objective answers. This isn’t about objectivity, because we cannot discern the exact point of murder. In fact, I’m not really interested in murder. We’ve all killed for different reasons, and murder is the unlawful killing of another human, pre-meditatively. So, really, what’s the big deal, if no one cares about the individual? And what’s an individual in this case? See, this is where it all gets fuzzy. You have it all figured out, and that’s great for you, but don’t pretend you have answers. There is no such thing in this case.
Good lord, are you ever dense.
First, I’m not twisting your words, I’m pointing out a logical consequence of your position that you have not considered and which undercuts your argument. Second, I’m not insisting that no one can ever define a gamete as a human life. If you think life begins at conception, fine, bully for you. Not everyone agrees with your reasoning. But consistently in this thread, whenever anyone has suggested that a gamete is not a human life, you have not limited yourself to simply disagreeing with them, but have outright stated that they are not being honest in their opinions, and that they secretly agree with you, but are afraid or unwilling to admit it. Which attitude does not well comport with your continued insistence that you’re just “searching” and trying to figure stuff out. And when you turn around and accuse me of pretending like I’ve got all the answers, the contrast is blinding.