If a pregnancy is unwanted, there was no invitation. (And please don’t give me any shit about “assuming a risk” by having sex. If you leave your door unlocked, does that mean you forfeit your right to defend your home against intruders?)
Exy,I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. Would you like to elaborate please or are you just going to snipe and run away like a pussy?
So, do you support the right to own a handgun in your home, so you can shoot intruders?
Anyway, beside the point. The point is that if your POV is that the abortion debate cannot consider whether the fetus is a person, then you are not really participating in the debate…you are doing exactly what John Corrado said you do:
Really? You read it again and you still think anything could ever follow from the fact that a full grown adult doesn’t have the right to live inside another person? It’s a really spectacularly stupid attempt at an argument.
As for the rest of your post, of which you say
No, you’re trying to argue that. Badly.
No, there may be irresolvable differences between people of differing views but that may well be the whole debate. To then declare the matter that many of those who disagree with you say is crux of the whole matter irrelevant is bollocks. Now, you might observe that those wishing to ban abortion typically have views on contraception, the role of women, and authority which strongly suggest to you that mostly this debate has been hijacked in its political dimension on one side by reactionaries - and I’d agree - but to declare the debate to be about women’s rights is to assume away the whole debate and declare yourself the winner.
And an irrelevant red herring is a wandering nomad.
Yes.
If a question has no answer then it’s pointless to consider it. The question of whether a fetus or an embryo or a zygote is a person has no objective answer so it’s a waste of time to argue about it. It’s stupid to say that an irresolvable, philosphical question must first be resolved before we can decide on practical legislation. That’s like saying that before we can decide what to teach in science classes we should first determine whether God exists.
I’m still not getting you. I was illustrating why even the hypothetically proven “personhood” of a fetus (and I can’t imagine how that could ever be proven) would STILL not ultimately have any relevance to the debate. It doesn’t MATTER if it’s a person because even if it IS a person, it still has no right to live inside another person without her permission.
I think it’s a HIJACK of the debate. The legal debate is ONLY about whether a woman is obligated to keep a fetus in her body.
Every adult woman should know that intercourse has a chance of resulting in pregancy - especially unprotected sex. Women have no right to expect that they will not have to be held responsible for letting their eggs get fertilized.
Just to clarify my position on this, my argument is that we cannot RESOLVE whether the fetus is a person. All we can ever do is argue in endless circles about it. The question has no answer but even if it did, it would still not have any bearing on the real issue of whether anther person should be obliged to let it live inside her body.
What do you mean by “held responsible?” What’s irresponsible about terminating a pregnancy? That’s a lot MORE responsible than having a baby you can’t take care of.
I think you’re on to something here. There’s no objective way to determine when a child is ready to have sexual relationships, so we should really legalise sex with two-year-olds, too. After all, the question of when they’re ready is irresolvable and philosophical, and therefore has no place in any legislation we might pass. I await your inevitable support for my position.
cough
That’s interesting, because in this post you say that there is no right to own a handgun.
Not really. Legislation is based all the time on what people think is moral, and not everyone agrees on what is moral.
I don’t believe there is any CONSTITUTIONAL right to own a handgun. That doesn’t mean I personally think they should be illegal or that I don’t support whatever statutory rights the states are willing to afford. Just because I don’t think a particular ban is unconstitutional doesn’t mean I personally support it.
Cite?
I don’t really see what this has to do with my point anyway. Are you saying that the question of whether a fetus is a human CAN be resolved? Are you saying that we should just decide it by popular vote? What is your point here? The issue is whether the state can show a compelling interest in abridging a woman’s right to privacy and the right to autonomy over her own body. If you want to argue that that compelling interest is in protecting another “person,” then you (and the state) would need to first prove that a fetus is a person (which is impossible) and then show some compelling reason why this “person” has a right to live inside another person’s body. Good luck with that. Even if you can get past the first hurdle (which there is no theoretical way to do) then the second hurdle is a 1000 feet high.
No, we do what we do with abortion. We draw an arbitrary but necessary line which will do the least damage. In the case of when a fetus becomes a person, that line is birth. Did you actually think this was a clever rebuttal?
Indeed I did, and your answer appears to be the confirmation of this, admitting as it appears to that subjectivity does indeed permeate our laws. Which, of course, you denied mere moments ago. Of course, in the abortion case you continue to insiste that subjectivity is whatever is in perfect accord with your opinion, but that’s beside the point.
Pray tell, how do we arrive at the arbitrary line for kiddy-fiddling, eh? It can’t be subjective or philosophical, after all, since you declared that such naughty things have no place in the legislative process. Where did this objectively-defined age of 16, oops no 18, oops no 14, etc. come from?
You may draw the line at that point but “we” don’t. “We” draw that line at viability at which point “we” declare that the state has some interest in the life of the fetus. The mistake you’re making is in throwing the baby out with the bath water, if you’ll pardon the pun. While it’s true that “personhood” is not objectively determinable, that doesn’t mean it becomes irrelavent. We can’t pinpoing the instance in which a fetus or a baby becomes a person, but we can recognize that becoming a person is process, not an event. And in that case, we can err on the side of caution, saying that the state may step in once the fetus becomes viable.
Your method leads to the absurd moral calculus that it’s better to deliver a fetus prematurely, subjecting it to the possibillty of lifelong mental and/or physical handicaps, rather than “inconveniencing” the mother with 2 more months of pregnancy.
Drawing those lines is a question of pragmatism, not subjectivity.
We decide it as pragmatically as we can. We find an age at which – in GENERAL-- a sufficient physical, emotional and cognitive maturity has been reached so as to allow an individual to understand and accept responsibility for his/her own decisions. Duh.
Glad you cleared that up. In the previous discussion, we were not talking about the Constitutionality of owning handguns.
Murder?
I could take a cue from your debating handbook and say "It already has been resolved. The fetus is a person. Case Closed. But, no, it is obvious that MY believing so does not make it so in YOUR mind.
Deciding something by popular vote. Hmmm…there’s a concept. I actually believe that abortion laws should be made at the state level. So, while obviously that’s not exactly “popular vote,” it does put some of the power to make laws on this issue back in the hands of the people.
I disagree this 1) necessarily needs to be proven from a philosophical standpoint, and 2) has not been proven to be more true than not.
If you say so. :rolleyes: This is the point. It has nothing to do with the abortion debate. You are prone to doing this in all the political threads you participate in. The post I linked to…about authoritarianism in government…shows the exact same tendency.
OK, I’ve had you, Diogenes the Cynic. I’ve seen you post rambunctious stuff and thought that sometimes passions overcome reason (or smudges its marks). I’ve seen decent stuff and given you a smidge more benefit of the doubt. But I’ve seen enough now.
Yes, dear heart; pragmatism is the motive, subjectivity is the process. The line has to be drawn, so we do it subjectively and keep an open mind. Subjective is one up on arbitrary, the word with which you earlier characterised these lines. If the lines were truly arbitrary, there would be no reason to draw the line at 14/16/18 or whatever as opposed to, say, two years old (or fifty, for that matter). I’m assuming you disagree that two years old is a suitable age of majority, in which case it is only by supreme sophistry that you can possibly disagree that subjectivity is involved. Do you deny this?
Yeah, duh; precisely my point. Now, and this is a “yes” or “no” question: is that balance that we find subjective?
Not true. You’re talking about the line for elective abortion. I was talking about the line for legal personhood. Third trimester fetuses may be protected in some circumstances, but not all, and they are still not legally “persons.”
Erring on the side of caution is erring on the side of protecting the rights of the entity you KNOW is a person.
If viabilty were really the line we wouldn’t have a pro-life movement, by the way, because most states already have that line. The pro-life movement is not about protecting third tri fetuses (which are for the most part, already protected) but about protecting pre-viable fetuses, embryos and zygotes – entities for which any argument for humanity goes past rational ambiguity and into the realm of pure faith.
My contention is that no person is obligated to play host to an unwanted parasite.
Purely elective abortions in the third trimester are already illegal and virtually non-existent anyway. Legality in that regard has already been decided, and really has nothing to do with what either side is arguing about.
Whatever. I still have no idea what you’re so offended about.