Does this mean that you support abortions being legal moments before birth? What about seconds after birth?
I’m not trying to play a “gotcha”. My own opinion is that abortion should be legal immediately after conception but illegal immediately before birth. I am presuming, perhaps in error, that most people would agree with those wide parameters. The whole issue is the line between legal/illegal.
Your meta argument seems to ignore the fact that there has to be a point where society decides that terminating the organism* is illegal and wrong. Maybe that point is when the head breaches the birth canal but even then it’s arbitrary and we don’t let mothers choose to ignore it.
Well, if that’s your concern, perhaps it might be useful to look at places where elective abortion one-second-before-birth is technically legal, to see if it actually occurs or leads to seconds-after-birth infanticides.
OK, let’s tackle this part. “Killing is wrong,” is NOT a tautology, sez you, because it doesn’t end “…because killing is wrong.” Instead, it ends: “…because X.”
I don’t think, any more, that Bryan is being deceptive. I think what I believed was evasiveness was simply my inability to get what he was saying, but I still don’t. And it may well be that I am the opaque one here, so if there’s a translator that can help, please step up.
I believe that his position is that there should be laws against murder, not because murder is evil, or wrong, or immoral; nor because murder deprives another human being of their life; but because if murder were legal, society would fall apart. On the other hand, if abortion were legal society would NOT fall apart. Ergo, there need NOT be laws against abortion.
There’s a certain brutal elegance to that formulation, I must say…
If I may address a possible misconception (and I gather I’m being criticized in some way), if murder (or anything, really) could only be described as “evil, or wrong, or immoral”, if its actual real-world effects could not be measured and found to be harmful… then outlawing it on that basis alone would be irrational. Consider all the things that were (and to some people, still are) considered “evil, or wrong, or immoral”, and were outlawed. Homosexuality comes to mind, and the laws against it were not needed because they were increasingly obviously pointless.
I don’t expect murder will ever be viewed in that light. It will take some time before abortion is, at least in the U.S. Gay marriage in the U.S., I give about a decade.
Coming from someone who thinks gay marriage is bad because dictionary definitions are more important than human rights, I take the accusation of bad logic to heart.
Again, because you’re not smart enough to understand things said simple the first time: A secular person and a religious person can be against abortion. A religious person who is against abortion because of their religion is shitty if they try to enshrine it into law.
Bricker is so religious he has deluded himself to believe that the crackers are changing substantively when Jesus melts in his mouth. I’m just gonna assume that baby Jesus is why he wants to stop the “murder” as he called it.
Democracy is secular religion, it is based on a presumption of faith. “We hold these truths to be self-evident” is the most beautiful and most profound evasion in the history of human thought. My belief in the inherent right of a woman to control her own body is based on that secular faith, I can no more prove it to be a fact than Bricker can prove transubstantiation.
Actually, I agree with the compromise in Roe v. Wade, where the government’s interest in the unborn grows, gradually over time. Early abortions are not to be interfered with at all. Later ones will be more legally complicated.
And, of course, in practice, this (abortion at the very last second) never actually happens. If I were to argue for an ideal, I would say, yeah, the right exists and should not be interfered with, right up to the very last second. However, ideals don’t really come up that often in the real world.
Another big problem is the legal boundary set at fetal viability. This cannot be determined to the nearest second, or even the nearest week. (And how many women know exactly on which day they conceived? Many will…but many won’t!)
Meanwhile, the legal grounds I consider applicable to the issue of compulsory sonograms, waiting periods, mandatory counseling, etc. is the “undue burden” criterion. It is my belief (widely shared here) that these laws were implemented solely to be an obstacle to a woman’s exercising her rights, and, for that reason, are constitutionally dubious.
The contrapositive is also instructive: there are things which are unquestionably harmful – alcohol is way up there on the list – and, while the outlawing of such things may not be irrational, it is unworkable.
Meanwhile, total agreement. If someone could show that abortion really does harm to society, they might have a point. (I might still oppose a ban, on the grounds of “the lesser evil.”) But as far as the evidence goes, the availability of abortion provides actual social good. It expands women’s freedom, removes the burden of unwanted pregnancy, removes the burden of unwanted children, and may very well help reduce crime rates.
Your misrepresenting my position comes as no surprise. But to help you a bit, our disagreement stems from different priorities, not from poor logic. On my part anyway.
Back to your schtick of ad hominems. Again, no surprise.
You’re free to assume that. But when he tells you that his reasons for opposing abortion have little to do with religion:
[QUOTE=Bricker]
So, an atheist opposing abortion has a reasonable position, but I don’t, even though I oppose abortion for reasons having little to do with Catholism.
[/QUOTE]
…I don’t know why you would claim to have a better look into his motivations than he does. It appears your problem stems from you simple insistence that his opposition to abortion must necessarily be due to his Catholicism. And this even after he supplied cites showing both other religions and atheists who are also anti-abortion.
And perhaps you could address where we left off a week ago. Here’s the last exchange:
[QUOTE=magellan01]
[QUOTE=Lobohan]
I can make a reasonable case if I see the person talking at length about religious stuff. Bricker really digs his Catholicism. Those priests who brainwashed him set the hooks deep.
[/QUOTE]
Case for what? That Bricker’s motivation for his position is Catholicism-based? Obviously, his Catholicism plays some role in his position, somewhere between 0% - 100%. He has told you that it plays little role. But even if it was 100%, so what? That merely goes to his position. Do you think the subject of the thread is “Bricker’s Motivation for Being Pro-Life”? It’s not. So even if a particular person’s motivation is purely religious, so what? It has been proven to you that people can have a position against abortion that is non-Christian based—even non-religion based,—so I just don’t get what you’re trying to prove/show.
[/QUOTE]
Thanks for the reply. I guess I’m surprised that one would want abortion legal even seconds before birth. (Granted this almost never–if ever–happens so I think I understand your point; I would never want to take the chance.) I view the moment the baby exits the birth canal (or whatever you want to call it) no less arbitrary than cutting the umbilical cord or the second trimester. I agree that it has the slight advantage over the latter in that it can be more precisely determined.
Yes, you prioritize dictionary definitions over human rights.
It isn’t an ad hominem to say that a religious person trying to enshrine their religion into law, in America, a secular country, is shitty.
I know there are atheists who oppose abortion rights. That isn’t the issue. I think Bricker isn’t being honest, because he’s not a particularly honest person.
I’ve already explained this several times, you just haven’t understood it.
True or false, the same action can have different motivations?
I can’t agree with this particular view of democracy. Unlike switching out Zeus and replacing him with God, switching out not-democracy and replacing it with democracy has a significant effect, as does replacing democracy with not-democracy. Of course, there are many flavours of “democracy”, including some states that claim the term but ignore the concept, but we could compile statistics on life expectancy and productivity and see an advantage that can’t be casually ignored.
In other words, I disagree that it’s as arbitrary and interchangeable a concept as you suggest. Possibly China will remain a not-democracy but eventually reach or exceed many of the benchmarks enjoyed by the western democracies. I have my doubts, but the century is young.
Well, if I had to choose between no abortion laws and Wisconsin’s abortion laws, I’d go with the former, just as a calculation of lesser evil. It’s not weighing one-second-before-birth elective abortions, after all, but the chance (your word) of one-second-before-birth elective abortions.
I could even see myself agreeing to a third-trimester elective abortion ban if it represented an improvement on the status quo. This isn’t currently the case where I live, but if I was in Wisconsin (or Virginia/Utah/Texas etc.) I’d likely view it as a breakthrough.
That’s a nice idea, but the state is the deceptive one in this instance. Yes, the tag funds go through the state, but the state gets to decide (by legislative vote) who gets the funds. The “Choose Life” tag money goes to “Heartbeat International, Inc., for distribution to tax exempt pregnancy centers in Virginia that provide services to pregnant women and women who suspect that they may be pregnant.” Cite. The organization then gives the funds to the “pregnancy centers” who tell blatant lies to the women.
The “Trust Women; Respect Choice” tag funds go to “Virginia League for Planned Parenthood and used to provide women’s health services in Virginia, but shall not be used to provide abortion services” which pretty much defeats the whole purpose of “choice,” doesn’t it? Cite. If it was not state money, they would not get to say it’s not to be used for abortion services.
Therefore, the state is promoting lying (clearly against any even remotely “Christian” tenets) while telling Planned Parenthood what they can and cannot do with *their *money. Sounds like state money to me.
About this hypothetical nephew and his aunt, I have some questions:
How long has the nephew known about this aunt? Did he intend to have an aunt? Did he take her on willingly or was she thrust upon him even though he tried every way he could to avoid having an aunt?
Is she completely and totally dependent upon the nephew for all of her sustenance, her care, because she can do absolutely nothing, even live, without 100% of his participation?
Is she basically a parasite, using his assets, his health, his emotional well-being, his very body and blood to sustain her own life? Is he prepared to face personal physical changes and illness, and medical complications and possibly death for her?
Is he prepared to provide his assets, his attention, his emotional well-being to completely support for her for the next 18+ years of her life?
My decision about your question may depend on your answers.