Realistically, I don’t think there’s any ‘reasonable compromise’ that would make you happy. I admit there’s none for me, either… but at least I admit it!
I don’t want a compromise. I want to be on the right side of the issue, and for my conscience to be clear, and to that end I’m not going to water down what I believe, which is that elective abortion, starting from conception, is murder. I hold out some hope that in the long term, demographic and cultural changes may get my side to being a majority again, but until then, I’m quite cognizant that the truth is not always popular (particularly when it’s a truth that would require a lot of us to make substantial changes to our lifestyles).
[quote=“WhyNot, post:159, topic:679195”]
It’s really very simple. I don’t like ultrasound laws because I don’t *want *to “strongly discourage women from having abortions”. That doesn’t mean I don’t want to reduce abortions. I do very much want to reduce abortions. I want to do that by reducing the *need *for abortions. I want to increase childcare options and job training and job availability for people so they can afford to have their babies and support them, too. I want to increase education and availability and compliance with forms of contraception that are more effective than condoms and withdrawal. I want to change the culture of welfare dependence that keeps (some, few) families in a cycle of public aid. I want to make it easier for women of all ages to obtain sterilization when they want it. I want paid maternity and paternity leave for a reasonable time and breastfeeding friendly workplaces after a child is born so that having a baby isn’t a career killer.
I want to attack the most common reasons that women choose abortion, and resolve those problems so that women *want *to have their babies, and can have their babies. {/QUOTE]
No argument from me there.
Here I will argue with you quite strongly. I see no reason to think that people are necessarily always ‘right’ about what’s good for them, and I especially see no reason to think that a mother has rights over the life of her unborn child. Whatever her goals and life plans are, and however important her personal freedom and autonomy might be to her, they are trivial compared to the life of her unborn child.
I don’t agree, simple as that.
Ditto, same here.
So, let’s drop the topic, since it can serve no purpose.
Read any good books lately?
Trinopus Yea, this issue is not like, say, ‘How do we deal with North Korea’. The basic premises are too far apart (and, I think, rooted in some fairly deep psychological traits). People do change their mind on abortion rights, but not easily.
As for books, this is a cliché, but ive been working on the Game of Thrones series.
I only just discovered Josephine Tey and am having the time of my life!
The purpose of such laws is to harass those women, and in the case of forced transvaginal probes to sexually assault them. Legally mandated sexual assault is not much of a “compromise”.
Yeah, but I don’t think there’s a symmetry here.
Pro-choice doesn’t require any contentious premises: it doesn’t need to assert “There’s no such thing as souls”. It only needs to take the default position which is to act as though something doesn’t exist until we have good reason to suppose otherwise.
OTOH the specific defence of pro-life that you’re invoking requires at least these:
- Souls exist
- Souls come into existence whenever a sperm and egg combine (erm…and splits in the case of monozygotic twins).
- Souls are destroyed by abortions. Or at least: whatever happens to the soul after an abortion, is less preferable to human life.
And 4: Something with a soul is more morally valuable than something without one.
Its easy: support the things WhyNot said in post #159 and you’ll have a vast reduction of abortions and an increase in happier, healthier families. But a large segment of pro-lifers are Republicans, and Republicans are almost all pro-life. Their policies contribute to more abortions, poorer women, and an increase in dependency. Democratic policies that help the poor, make contraception available, and doesn’t use junk science to scare women out of abortions are the very antithesis of what you want to happen.
Its funny that pro-lifers all say they want to eliminate abortion, but refuse to do the things that would reduce it the most. Its like trying to treat a burn by putting on lotion instead of turn off the fire that is causing the burn in the first place. Pro-lifers will NEVER reduce abortion or eliminate it as long as there are poor women with no access to women’s health care, contraceptives, and accurate scientific facts about pregnancy.