I am tired of it. Abortion threads in which anti abortionists say that Abortion is killing babies, and a pro abortionists says, I think what you meant to say is a woman making a choice about her body. For example (sorry to pick on you Qadgop) this thread Qadgop says “Wouldn’t it make more sense to kill old people, instead of letting women make their own decisions about their own bodies?”
That argument misses the point entirally*. No one is objecting to the woman’s right to choose what happens to thier body, they object to the fact that another HUMAN BEING is being killed.
In order to refute thier argument you must argue that a fetus is NOT A HUMAN BEING. Talking about a woman’s right to choose what happens to her body misses the point.
That’s the “accepted name” because it’s descriptive of the reality. To assert that anyone opposing the anti-abortion stance is, de facto, in favor of killing babies is to polarize the issue in an infantile appeal to emotion.
I love babies. I have two of 'em myself, and I wouldn’t trade them for the world. However, as a Penised-American, I also acknowledge that what a woman does with her body is none of my fucking business. That’s between her and whatever deity she chooses to worship.
You don’t have to like it. You don’t have to condone it. If you don’t like abortion, DON’T GET ONE. Speak out against it if you must, but don’t kid yourself - statements like yours are transparent rhetoric, not a logical refutation of the premise.
And you just registered last month! (Although I don’t know how long you’ve been lurking.) Imagine how us who have been here a while feel about these endless “discussions” in which folks take turns on the soapbox and nobody’s mind gets changed at all. There have been a lot of them in the Pit just in the past couple weeks. However, that and the fact that I’ve been spending most of my time in the Pit the past couple weeks have nothing in common.
On and off, for a year or so. Until recently, I wasn’t a big fan of web boards.
I wasn’t really talking about the board, though it obviously applies here as well. Kinda sad, given the stated goal of ‘fighting ignorance.’
It bugs me that the most vocal parties (and therefore the ones who garner the most attention) are, by and large, such overbearing zealots that they’re constantly demonizing the opposition. Such histrionics do nothing to solve the problem; they simply ensure that the issue will never be laid to rest.
And that goes for parties on both sides of the issue, by the way. In my experience, most pro-lifers aren’t bible-banging fascist fuckheads who blow up clinics and shoot doctors, and most pro-choicers(?) aren’t NOW-toadying mass-murderers who’d be ecstatic if Heinz added ‘pickled fœtus’ to their 57 varieties.
Just my worthless, opinionated, fence-straddling two cents.
Doesn’t anyone find it amazing that the most vehement “pro lifers” are men? Men that never have to deal with carrying a child. It’s easy to say you can’t do that when you never have to go through it.
This is the way it will always come down. “Pro-lifers” will want to debate on the “murder” issue because that’s the defining part of their belief. They don’t give a rat’s ass about “choice” because how important can choice be when life is involved?
The “pro-choice” folk aren’t going to debate that because for them, the life issue is something that isn’t a factor during early pregnancy. They’re not going to take “Murder” discussions seriously because given their basis, it is pointless and irrelevant, and the issue of “choice” takes precedence.
In other words, the two sides are not starting out on common ground. They start talking past each other and it goes downhill from there.
This is what makes 98% of abortion debates dysfunctional. That’s how it is, how it will probably always be. Attempts to convince pro-choicers that life is an issue aren’t going to work, just like attempts to convince pro-lifers that choice is an issue aren’t going to work.
I’ve found that if that sort of argument drives you nuts, it helps to just not even get into it with anyone.
However, to rehash a point made numerous times before - apotheosis, your analysis of the issue, above, is sorely lacking. You merely discuss the woman and her right to do with her body what she pleases. Clearly, if you believe another human life is involved, then at the very least you must allow some sort of balancing test.
You would, I assume, be in favor of prosecuting a mother who decided to lay down on top of, and smother, her week-old infant - or even one who stopped feeding that week-old infant and let her starve. In the former case, it’s an attack on a human being - clearly murder. In the latter, we as a society impose a legal duty on the guardians of an infant to care for that infant. In either case, I assume you agree that the law should act to punish those described.
On the other hand, we would not compel a mother to, for example, give up a kidney for transplant inot her ailing child, even though that may be the only possible way to save the child’s life.
In short, when a child is born, most everyone has no problem balancing the mother’s interest in freely living her life and managing the destiny of her body with the child’s right to life and sustenance.
All of the above applies to a born child.
In the case of an unborn child, many people feel that this is, at best, potential human life, and at worst, not life at all, but merely a blob of tissue. If that is correct, then of course the only thing to concern ourselves with is the desires and rights of the mother.
Many other people feel that the unborn child is a human being at some point - and there are many opinions about when this happens. Some feel that this change occurs at one of the trimester points, or points in between, while others feel it happens at the moment of conception.
All of these people buy into the balancing argument - although not all of them assign the same weight to various factors to be balanced. Most, for example, would agree that killing the unborn child to save the life of the mother us an appropriate choice. Many would agree that the damage done to the mother by forcing her to carry a child conceived in rape or incest outweighs the interests of the child’s life.
And, of course, some feel that under no circumstances should the unborn child be killed.
In short, beliefs run the gamut. And they all have this in common: none of them are susceptible to rigorous proof. There is no way to measure what a human being is - it will always be a matter of definition. Accordingly, we will never reach agreement by proof on this point. Even if we did, we are still faced with the choices of what weight to give each of the factors I discuss above; these, too, are not susceptible to rigorous proof of any kind.
But in no event does your analysis accurately reflect the situation. You say, “You don’t have to like it. You don’t have to condone it. If you don’t like abortion, DON’T GET ONE.” To a person that believes the unborn baby is a human being, you might as well argue that murder of born babies - or of adults - is also not their business. But, of course, it is. We as a society act against those who take life. It is our business.
What neither side of this debate can prove is whether or not human life is involved, and if it is, how to balance the competing interests of two essentially innocent parties.
Yeah, I ‘get’ that you latched onto the three words in the whole response that you considered a talking point.
You’ll also note that in the very next sentence, I acknowledged your right to speak out against it if your personal beliefs motivate you to do so – the same sentiment which you’ve essentially restated, though at far greater length.
I’m not an attorney…but as far as I know: Murder is the illegal killing of a human being with malice. Since abortions are legal in this country, abortion is not murder.
Unfortunately, what you’ve done is spawn yet another one.
Never been stabbed in the head with scissors, either. Wouldn’t want it to happen to someone else though.
I can buy this part, despite how remarkable it is to me that science can’t give us this answer. Biology, in particular, is all about life, and it can’t even tell us what life is.[sup]1[/sup]
Its very ambiguity is what makes it a prized issue for politicians. Reason is not required; in fact, reason won’t get you anywhere.
[sup]1[/sup]University of Chicago Newton BBS “Even when all the criteria are met, it may be difficult to determine if something is alive or not.”
But with this one I take issue. In most cases of induced abortion (and that is the kind of abortion everybody means in the context of these debates), there is only one party who is innocent.[sup]1[/sup]
[sup]1[/sup]Epigee Birth Control Guide “Although there are situations in which abortion is in response to health concerns of the mother or fetus, or in response to pregnancy arising from abuse, the majority of abortions are obtained for social and financial reasons.”
Do kidneys struggle to survive and go into convulsions when you drown them in salt water?[sup]1[/sup]
[sup]1[/sup]Alpha Womens Center “Some of the amniotic fluid is drawn out and then is replaced with a strong salt solution. The mother may experience discomfort during this process, because the fetus struggles and sometimes goes into convulsions.”
And it was actually that sentence which motivated me to post, since I wanted to show that your argument was ineffective rhetoric, as opposed to a logical refutation of the premise.
Again, it’s of no rhetorical value to simply say, “If you don’t like abortions, don’t get one.” Many people believe that abortion is the unjustified killing of a human being, and should be prohibited by law, in the same way that other killing of human beings is.
To argue against that, you must address the point that either an unborn baby is not a human being, or that, if it is, the interests of the other parties involved - the mother, the father, and society at large - are best served by permitting the death.
Which is impossible to prove - just as the contrary positions are impossible to prove.
Could a anti-abortionist (and I’m not on either side here) Explain this to me?
Today driving home, there were a lot of people standing on the side of the highway holding signs saying “Abortion kills children”, “Adoption is a better choice” etc. all along the highway. I don’t really understand why someone would stand along the road holding a sign like that. I personally am not going to look at a bunch of people holding signs and change my mind on my views, so why do they bother?
