Well, there’s no real reply I can make to this, but for the heck of it I’ll just ask if Canada strikes you as a country lacking in intelligence, ethics and thoughtfulness. There is literally no law here against a last-minute elective abortion, nor has there been since 1989.
Let’s go back to the right to life concept.
Compare it to another right, like the right to own a gun. Rights are passive. You may own a gun, but no one has to provide it to you. And no one is obligated to sell it to you.
You have the right to life, but no one has to provide it for you. It’s up to you to breathe, eat, and stay warm. This is where health care gets funny because you have no right to stay alive.
Remember the guy on a heart/lung machine? He has a right to life, but no one has to provide it for him. No one is obligated to provide the machine to him, even if it means he’d die. If he snuck into the hospital, and hooked himself up, without any intentions of paying, what would we do?
A fetus has a right to life, but only so far as it is able to obtain it. Until its lungs develop, it lives at the discretion of the mother who is providing oxygen and removing CO[sub]2[/sub].
Now look at what happens when the infant is born premature but viable. Its only chance for survival depends on advanced medical treatment. Its right to life only exist so far as a hospital is willing to provide it. But a hospital is under no obligation to, no one has the right to health care.
Again the infant has a right to life, but if living requires donated blood, bone marrow, or a kidney, no one is obligated to provide it.
Even after the infant is stable, it is entirely dependent on someone for food and protection. It has a right to life, but no one has a right to be fed, clothed, or sheltered. No one is obligated to provide those things.
Funny the way rights work.
My point, quite obviously, is that you are saying that I should be legally compelled to use my organs to keep this thing alive, providing it with a ‘right’ that no other being on this earth has. Not even my own children, the ones I chose to carry to term and give birth to. There is absolutely no justification for that.
You’re the one who keeps insisting that there’s no difference between a term fetus on the inside or the outside. Perhaps you’d care to take a stab at explaining why I’m suddenly NOT obliged to support it with my own organs once it’s outside, regardless of need. :dubious:
Um, no. I’m seeking to get it out, and whatever harm that comes to it in the process of getting it out is incidental.
My goal is not to hurt a fetus, it is to not be pregnant.
I don’t think I can really explain this any more clearly.
They are not arguing that a infant has no rights they are saying a fertile egg does not have the rights, as a born person. One a child is able to live out side the womb, then the person who wants the child should step up, pay the expenses and care for the child until it reaches adult hood, that should ease the argument. Have you stepped up?
Actually no, some people upstream have discussed the morality of killing infants after birth.
The people down the street have the same right to life as you, me, and the fetus. And no one is obligated to provide that for them.
If a person is so severely mentally disabled that they cannot provide for themselves, they’ll die, that’s just how it is. No one is obligated to care for them. Even if it is your child, spouse, or parent, you are not obligated.
If a person’s lungs, brain, heart, kidney, or liver stop working they’ll die. That’s how the human body works. It’s not that they stop being human, it’s that they stop living. A person with server emphazema or endocarditis is a lot like an infant, they both lack the lung and heart capacity to survive on their own. Are they human? Are they alive? Do they have a right to life?
The could survive, if someone is willing to provide for them. Either by paying for a heart/lung machine, or being a donor. Without someone elses assistance, they die. No one is obligated to provide that assistance.
If you choose not to be a live donor and give up half your lung, one of your kidneys, and part of your liver, a person would die. Ditto for the mother. If she choose to no longer be a life support system for someone else, so be it.
And let’s hedge off the obvious reply: No, you can not actively kill them, that is wrong, that would be murder. And yet at the same time, you are not obligated to provide for them. Notice that without you, they’ll die, which is allowed, but you’re not allowed to kill them, even though that also means they’ll die.
A fetus is only alive, with a right to life, at the discretion of the person that chooses to provide that life.
Morality and rights are two different things.
And the beautify of the American Medical System is that no one has a right to medical care.
I think Paul’s point (please do correct me if I’m wrong) is that someday, when humans have reached enlightenment, pro-choicers will be said to have been motivated by developmentism or dependentism or some other -ism that caused them to think that killing not-completely-developed humans was OK.
That’s one way of looking at it. Perhaps instead they were motivated by centuries of sexism, and became enlightened enough to consider the rights of a woman, and respect her opinion, her body, and her choice. Combined with the realization that we have no legal way of knowing if she is pregnant, and therefor have no legal way of knowing if she had an abortion.
Yep. I suspect our great grandchildren would be amazed their ancestors were so brutal.
So looking back 20, 40, or 100 years, how would you describe the way our ancestors treated women? I would describe it as brutal.
In 100 years our descendants will look at early 19c treatment of a fetus at the expense of the mother, then look at late 19c treatment of women at the expense of a fetus.
If you think a fetus is human, or at least deserves the rights to life and liberty that are offered to humans, then the issue has nothing to do with sexism.
I completely agree that we should repsect a woman’s rights, opinions and choices. Therefore, if a woman doesn’t want to have sex or insists on birth control, we ought to respect that. But birth control isn’t fail-proof! Yes, I know. And so do the women who use it. So, if/when birth control does fail, the reality is that pregnancy happens. Now a woman’s got to choose between a life or an abortion. Personally, and it has *nothing *to do with sexism, I couldn’t rob a being’s potential to human life.
Sure it does. If you believe that all humans have the right to life, and yet don’t believe that I have a right to one of your organs if I need it and it’s a match, then you believe that my body is intrinsically less mine than your body is yours. More explicitly, that I and all women have an organ that renders our bodies primarily for use by other people, and yeah, that’s sexist.
Well-phrased, and somehow, your point keeps getting missed. So, quoted for truth and all that.
If you (again, the general You) don’t like abortions and think they’re wrong, don’t get one. But you (You) have no right to take that medical option away from other people who have circumstances different from yours.
It’s like if vegans suddenly took control of Congress and outlawed bacon, because they feel that meat = murder. Can you imagine the outcry?
It sounds like you’re arguing that even if robbing the potential for life is not so great, it’s ok because of the abhorrent treatment of women in the past. I don’t know what specific past treatment of women you refer to, but I’d agree that sexism was a big problem. I’m just not sure what that’s got to do with abortion issues today.
Where is this coming from? I haven’t read the entire thread, but I haven’t seen anyone invoking god as the giver of morality.
Just watch the damn video. It’s a Kids in the Hall sketch, not to be taken seriously.
Yeesh.
My bad. Can’t access youtube at the moment.
If you are arguing the potential for life, then O’Donnell is correct., masturbation is wrong because you are wasting the potential for life. The Pythonesque “every sperm is sacred” comes to the fore, because sperm is a potential for life. Can you justify wasting it?
The abortion argument seems to have no agreeable beginning and a dissatisfying end.
Nobody is pro abortion. They are pro choice. It is not my right to make a life decision for you, regardless of how strongly I believe. My belief does not trump your right to make life changing and important decisions that will affect your family possibly is severe and powerful ways. The best I can do is stay out of your way. It is your life.
Classic.