Is there something wrong with wanting to avoid both? The pregnancy is just the more immediate problem, and considering the physical discomfort involved, I daresay it goes somewhat beyond mere “inconvenience”, as you rather flippantly described it. “Inconvenience” is having to cancel all your credit cards after your wallet gets stolen. Pregnancy, I’m given to understand, is rather more extreme.
All that may well be true of a lot of anti-abortionist out there, but the ones posting in this thread haven’t generally displayed that kind of misogynistic attitudes, and you can’t blame them for what those other people say or do.
I’m not defending the pro-life people because I agree with them, but because I thought the balance in this discussion was a bit off-centre, and didn’t favour mutual understanding at all. The point of having a discussion like this is not to forcibly convert anyone else to ones own ideals, nor is it to just sit around respecting each others opinion, but to defend and explain one’s own opinions in such a way that other people, even if they still do not agree with it, understand it better than they did before. The most successful argument is the one that convinces your opponent that you’re right, which isn’t likely to be the one which claims that he, or she, is gloatingly sadistic or scum. As someone else has already pointed out, convincing others that one is right is absolutely essential if you happen to live in a democracy and hope to see your own opinions influence legislation. So please, as a fellow pro-choicer, do me the favour of not offending the pro-lifers needlessly.
I’m interested in knowing where you saw me make the second argument.
We’re not talking about who obtains the majority of abortions, but rather that the majority of abortions are done on unintended pregnancies (see: data by Guttmacher). And if, as you say, women who impulsive, short-sighted decisions would suffer more unintended pregnancies then their opposite, then it stands to reason that they’ll obtain the majority of abortion.
Why? It’s true. I’ve never seen anyone who was aborted come out and defend the practice, but I have seen individuals who were aborted come out and speak against the practice.
I’m pointing out to you data reported by AGI. As it stands, you’ve brought up an extraneous fact upon which you have yet to provide any reasoning as why one should accept it.
Except there is no reason to believe this is true other than you want it to be true. I still want you to produce for me some kind of evidence which gives credence to the claim that rape victims tend to abuse their children moreso than non-rape victims do. You see, if you produced something which said that rape victims are more likely to abuse their children than are non-rape victims, then your criticism would be valid. But you haven’t.
Why would you find it surprising?
And how does that reinforce poverty? You made a claim. I’m waiting for you to back it up. You seem to be operating under the mistaken assumption that having a child prevents someone from changing social class or the (usually liberal) notion that children are a detriment. Do women no longer try to better themselves for the sake of their children?
I thought it was the job of the government to protect individuals over which is presides?
So, in other words, state intervention is okay when you think it’s okay, but not when you don’t think it’s okay?
Where did I mention infanticide?
No, no you haven’t. If someone *was *aborted, they’re not speaking, because they don’t exist. Or they’re dead, if you prefer.
If you’re talking about women who have *had *abortions speaking out and defending them, then there are thousands of them. There’s another thread right here on the Dope at the moment, in fact, that is women sharing their abortion experiences, and every single one has said they have no regrets and would do it again in identical circumstances. There are entire websites devoted to pro-choice women sharing their abortion stories, and they overwhelmingly support abortion still.
I’m not going to say you’ve never seen them, but I will say that if you looked just a little harder, you could.
Yes, I agree; inconvenience is not the right word. However, it is not so terrible that people aren’t willing to endure it when they do want to have children. The fact that more mothers have given birth to their own children than have adopted them, and that most mothers, even those who could easily afford it, prefer not to let a surrogate deal with the pregnancy for them, unless their medical condition prescribes it, proves that it isn’t something to be avoided at all costs.
I, for one, would rather be pregnant than dead, and the reason why I feel that I can defend abortion and foeticide as morally sound is either that I consider my interests (not wanting to be pregnant, giving birth, or wanting a child) more valid or weighty than the interest of the foetus (staying alive, avoiding pain), or because I believe the foetus incapable of having interests.
I would love it if they would invent a uterine replicator. Heck I’d even help fund it. I have no problem with the mother taking it out of her uterus and putting it in one of these replicators. I think of it as a revolutionary new form of adoption.
That is a very prescriptivist attempt at redefining abortion, which colloquially refers to the process which ends in the death of a fetus.
But sure, if you want to play that game, then I’m going to claim that anyone ever born prematurely was aborted, because the medical definition of abortion is premature exit from the womb, method unspecified. :rolleyes:
Do the eye roll smiley all you want. That’s not redefining an abortion. Just because one survives an abortion (which happens yearly, though rarely), does not make it any less of an abortion.
Edit: And you can add someone like Ana Rosa Rodriguez to the list.
Yes I can, since they support such people, and because the anti-abortion movement is about misogyny. It is a hate movement, no better than the white supremacy movement.
Such people are not convinced, they are outlived. They will almost certainly continue hating women and trying to hurt them until the day they drop dead.
And I just now saw this. Assuming the unborn doesn’t die and can develop just the same as it could if it were left in its mother’s womb, then what’s the problem?
Ignore them? No.
My assumption (without data) is that a significant chunk of those falls within the health of the mother exclusion or that there was a problem with the pregnancy or the abortion was otherwise medically necessary. I don’t imagine that many women opting for late term abortions on a whim.
If my assumption is correct, I’d still rather have the decision made by the woman and her doctor than by a politician because any legislation is likely to unduly impact the medically necessary abortions.
On the other hand, if my assumption is way off, I’d be happy to withdraw my objection.
I agree that you shouldn’t have to, and I’m sorry if it seemed like I didn’t appreciate the difficulties of pregnancy. I’m sure it can be perfectly horrible. However, none of this changes the fact that, unless being pregnant actually kills the mother, she will in some ways be better off than the foetus she aborts. In my opinion it is not enough to claim that the mother has a right to the use of her own organs if you want to defend this outcome: I think it is necesary to establish exactly what gives her this right.
In the end, I think the reason why I keep arguing this point is because I find the term hijacking inappropriate in this context, because hijacking implies an activity, and the foetus obviously isn’t an active agent in this case. This is linguistic nitpicking of course, but I just wanted to explain why I don’t find argument entirely compelling.
It’s obvious by now, even to me, that my hypothesis was more than a little absurd. Suppose I retract it and replace it with this one (just as implausible, if not more so, but not impossible): You’re making your way through a desert (alone) and one morning you come across an infant lying abandoned on a dune. If you leave it there it won’t survive for long once the sun is fully risen and the temperatures go up. You aren’t short on supplies so bringing the infant with you wouldn’t greatly diminish your own chances of surviving untill you reach the nearest town. However, that town is quite far away, and bringing the child with you will make the journey considerably more difficult: it’s a heavy burden to carry, it keeps crying, you have to stop to feed and change it, and so on.
In this case, do you have a moral obligation to bring the child along or not?
Then why are you arguing at all?
Thanks for the answer. By the by, the purpose of the thought experiment is to separate out the “pro-lifers” who are working from misogynist or anti-sex motives from the pro-lifers who are genuinely and solely concerned with the life of the fetus.
For the record: people from the former category will answer that they don’t believe a person should be able to duck the consequences of sexual activity so easily. I’ve heard it more than once, but not commonly–glad you’re not in that camp. I suppose I’m mostly doing it to make sure that people recognize that not every pro-choicer is like Der Trihs either.
Because I enjoy arguing with people. Probably the same reason most people are here in GD in the first place.
–> Der Trihs: Sorry, that was a flippant reply. But don’t you think that Omg a Black Conservative’s and classyladyhp’s responses to Zeriel’s thought experiment prove that they aren’t in it for the misogyny? They would both gladly allow women to terminate gestation if the continued survival and wellbeing of the foetus outside the uterus could be ensured.
Thank you. All I care about is the life of that precious baby. As long as the baby can be allowed a chance to live I don’t care if it’s in it’s mother’s body or a machine. The last thing I am is a misogynist.
I actually thought this discussion was fairly respectful and honest. It was closer to nuanced than any previous discussion that I witnessed. The off-topic It is a baby, I tell you. Tis not. Tis too side bar is more typical of this kind of discussion where the extreme positions suck all the air out of the conversation.
I don’t imagine anyone’s mind was changed but maybe classyladyhp, at least, now understands that pro-choicers are not necessarily pro-abortion and the OP realizes that he is not alone in thinking that fetus=baby and pro-choice positions are compatible.
Given the circumstances of the thought experiment and your response–I hope that you in turn can see how someone can honestly believe that the mother has the right to “evict” the baby, even if under current circumstances there is no option for that beside abortion, without being anti-baby or necessarily a gleeful murderer. I think most of the pro-choice folks I know have said they would personally never have an abortion, but they understand that the moral dilemma doesn’t work out the same way for everyone and recognize that it’s not a cut and dried thing that can be put into law in good conscience.
It’s possible to disagree on moral values (and the relative weight of those values) while remaining civil.