Pregnancy isn’t the punishment. Being prevented from ending the pregnancy is the punishment.
In your ACL example, it would be like an insurance company saying, Sorry, you knew the risks when you went skiing, so we’re not going to cover your ACL surgery. Now, if someone had come along and twisted your leg without your permission, we’d cover that.
No absolutely not and no such case could be made for it. That would be barbaric. That is a straw man. The taking of another life for a change of circumstances of your life is the issue.
You’re the one who made the ACL analogy. And if you believe abortion is “taking of another life,” why were you arguing back in post 12 that the rape exception was about “acceptance of the consequences of sex.” If it’s murder, who cares about the circumstances of the sex?
By the way, I was agreeing with that post, but you came back with a bogus attack on my logic.
Agreed and with any analogy it only goes so far. It is there to help make a point or share a view point more than to prove anything.
No I don’t but I used to so I get to play devil’s advocate from a first person perspective. My current belief is unusual, but gives the woman absolute right, with God’s blessing, to bring forth the child or not at her wish (that’s why God placed the child there). IMHO God has given the power of bringing forth life into our world to women, we need to respect that, but generally society has tried to control that because they don’t trust God. I also don’t believe abortion is murder or killing just denial entry into our world. Please don’t hate me for it but back to devil’s advocate…
The rape exception was about honoring women and their right to free will. Having willing sex justifies the chance that one should bear a child - free will decision made, rape however does not mean that the mother must continue with a child she does not desire and thus can terminate the child due to free will (or lack of in this case).
The woman has the priority always when it comes to her body and can not be forced, but if her free will decisions creates a person she should not be able to terminate his/her life, especially in the case for her convenience.
I disagree that anything in an abortion ban honors women’s anything.
Okay, I misunderstood you. Your belief is a lot more nuanced than I first understood, and I can fully respect it. I also misunderstood that you were playing devil’s advocate when you said …
It is interesting that – if I’m reading you right – some anti-abortion proponents connect a woman’s free will (her willingness to risk pregnancy by having consensual sex) with the personhood of the fetus in God’s eyes. I completely disagree, but it’s still interesting.
A problem with this argument is that lack of consent doesn’t in any way make something that is murder no longer murder. The fact that you didn’t consent in my existence doesn’t somehow mean you can kill me. You* appear to just be making up a new rule to justify the rape exception.
That’s trivial in this case, as the pregnancy in question is one the woman does not want. She sees it as a negative thing. Said pregnancy is not an inherent outcome of her consenting to sex (as ways to terminate it exist) but one being forced upon her. It is thus experienced by her as an enforced negative consequence. That’s the definition of a punishment.
*Well, past you, as you say this is a former belief of yours.
Alrighty but that’s not what I said. A women who was raped has a right to abortion. That is not banning ti but allowing it. The absolute right to murder not only another person, but the person she was involved in creating. That is a powerful right, God like.
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This is becoming a debate (complete with a devil’s advocate on board!), and y’all being far too civil for the Pit. Either take it to GD or get flaming on each other!
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The problem is that you’ve already effectively argued that abortion isn’t murder. The fetus’s right to life only becomes an issue for you if the mother has consented to the sex that resulted in said life. The same thing does not work with murder—it would still be murder to kill a 5 year old who is a child of rape. Murder is the intentional, avoidable killing of an innocent human person.
You instead argue about consent, which I agree is a great way to look at this situation. Where my opinion differs from yours, however, is that I cannot agree that consensually having sex is the same thing as consenting to have a full term pregnancy. One basic aspect of consent is that it can be withdrawn at any point.
The concept of continual consent is quite important. Someone can agree to have sex with you, but then decide to stop at the last moment. They can have sex with you, but then not have sex with you again. They can be in a committed, even married relationship but not consent to sex at all times.
Consent is a concept that only works if it can be withdrawn. Otherwise consent becomes something that forces people into actions they do not want to take, which undermines the very concept of consent.
Screw you, man! You can’t tell me what to do! YOU’RE NOT MY REAL DAD!!!
Search your feelings, you know it to be true.
Reading back over the last few posts, I’m aware that we pro-choicers may be not exactly be playing fair in this debate.
Opponent of legal abortion: “I oppose abortion except in the cases of rape and incest.”
Supporter of legal abortion: “You don’t really think abortion is murder, then – you just oppose women’s right to have sex.”
Opponent of legal abortion: “No, I do think abortion is murder, so I’ve changed my mind to oppose it even in the cases of rape and incest.”
Supporter of legal abortion: “You monster! You’d force a woman to carry a baby to term that was conceived via rape!”
There are many excellent arguments in favor of keeping abortion legal, but I’m not sure picking on the rape exception is one of them.
This pro-choicer agrees the rape exception is silly. If it’s murder, like actual murder, then it should be illegal. Otherwise, I would argue that anyone that was conceived during a rape could be killed any time.
As a pro-choicer, I think it’s monstrous that a woman could be forced to continue a fetus to term that was created when she was raped. I think it’s still awful, but maybe less monstrous, to prevent a woman from having an abortion for many, many reasons, including “she doesn’t want a baby”.
The rape exception, for those that push it, lays bare the hypocrisy – those who want to ban abortion but allow that exception must not really think it’s murder, so what is it? Seems like a desire to control women’s bodies.
Those who don’t allow that exception are just monsters.
They are calling pro-choicers literal baby murderers, using the correct definition of literal, not the BS-definiton. The fact that they are outed as hypocritical misogynists seems rather tame in comparison.
The ‘they’ in this post should include the voters who are pro-ban but would switch their votes if the rape exception is removed. ‘They’ are all about controlling women, and not so much about preventing murder, and ‘they’ are a big group.
No argument from me on this point.
The rape exception is a bit problematic anyway.
Does her rapist need to be convicted before she is allowed to terminate the pregnancy? Charged, arrested?
Does she have to name her rapist? What if she doesn’t even know who it was?
Will we take a woman’s word for it? It’s bad enough that MRA types claim that women regularly claim rape, this would only add fuel to their hysteria.
I still think that the simplest answer is to leave the question to the person who is most connected to the issue, the woman.
But continuing this ACL analogy into the current debate, would be to say that if someone attacked you and tore you ACL, then it would be OK to take the instant procedure that instantly healed your leg but meant a death to someone else. Which is monstrous.
So again if one really believed that abortion is close enough to murder that it justifies loss of bodily autonomy of the mother, than it shouldn’t matter how it came about.
In all of politics, ideological purity and sometimes even ideological consistency is sacrificed on the altar of getting things done. As somebody famous said: “Politics is the art of the possible.” Stopping 80% of e.g. drunk driving is better than stopping 50% of it, even if that 80% solution excuses 20% of the cases and exonerates 20% of the perpetrators.
I have zero use for any pro-life arguments. It’s illogical primitive Dark Ages garbage from one end to the other.
But pro-choicers taking the position that anything less than total ideological purity on the part of pro-lifers proves their goals are a sham is bogus thinking. If the political price of stopping most abortions is permitting the small percentage that are rape-based, from the pro-life POV that is a perfectly rational political and public policy tradeoff.
There’s lot’s wrong with the pro-life POV. Including the name. But this issue ain’t one of them.
I think “pro-birth” is a better label.