Pro-Lifers: Are they hypocrites?

[Der_Trihs]

@JThunder

What’s the difference, then? What is the essential difference between a human being and a person?

Now, this is the point at which some debaters say, “It’s a person if it’s born, and a non-person if it’s not.” That answer is mere circular reasoning, though. It dodges the question of why personhood should be taken to begin at birth, and what intrinsic qualities make the unborn a non-person.

So please, can you cite some commonly accepted definition of personhood that predates Roe v. Wade, and which firmly establishes the unborn as a non-person?

The mind is what matters. A brain dead person is human, but dead; that’s why we can ethically harvest his/her organs; the person is gone. A one-month fetus is biologically human, but not yet a person; the brain isn’t developed enough to produce a mind.

I have no idea what definition existed before Roe vrs Wade, nor do I care. I live in the modern world, not the past.

[John_Mace]

Bricker: Assuming Roe were overturned, and you were able to vote in your state on abortion matters, would you oppose all legislation for elective abortion, even the use of the RU-486 pill (that would prevent uterine implantation of a few days old blastocyst)? I’m just curious to understand your exact position on this issue.

[Bricker]

@Arwin

I still don’t believe you want women to have a choice in this. And so my stance that your goal to make having the child the better choice is hypocrite. For that, you have to keep it a choice.

And on what, precisely, is your belief based?

While that is certainly my main gripe, I am also fully not convinced that your cited reason for the brotherhood is based on tax. To put it mildly, I don’t think you respect the position of women in this issue as much as you seem to.

Same question.

Your accusation of hypocrisy here is factually wrong. You are attributing to me positions you only THINK I hold. You say you believe I feel a particular way, and that justifies your accusation of hypocrisy.

That’s insufficient. I could just as well claim you’re a hypocrite, because, although you claim to be pro-choice, you secretly wish that all abortion clinics were burned to the ground and the staff tortured to death. I know you haven’t said that, but it’s just a feeling I have about you.

[Bricker]

@John Mace

Bricker: Assuming Roe were overturned, and you were able to vote in your state on abortion matters, would you oppose all legislation for elective abortion, even the use of the RU-486 pill (that would prevent uterine implantation of a few days old blastocyst)? I’m just curious to understand your exact position on this issue.

I’m not sure how “elective” abortion would be defined.

[sciurophobic]

@Bricker

Think hard. Go back and review. Did I say anything about the legal system, and how that might distinguish the cases? Did I offer any sort of recognition about abortion providers acting in good faith?

Furrow your brow and concentrate. I know you can do it. We’re all pulling for you!

I asked a simple question, and you keep evading it. I’ll ask it again. If abortion is murder (which you believe) then why shouldn’t mothers who have abortions be treated exactly the same as mothers who commit infanticide? None of your posts answer that question. If they do, then link to them.

[Malacandra]

@holmes

What circumstances would that be? Marriages fail, lovers lie, people die. What, I should be wealthy before I have sex, in case something disastrous happens and I find myself having to make a decision based on my circumstance?

Mf. So is this where I get special pleading on behalf of widows and abandoned women, such that I can either be unbearably hard-hearted if I don’t allow it (in which case my argument can be safely ignored, as that of a cruel excuse for a human being) or told that the moral case can’t be that strong if I’m willing to set it aside based on a woman’s straitened circumstances? I’m sorry, I have a marked aversion to being asked if I’ve stopped beating my wife :dubious:

Marriages fail, lovers lie, people die. Divorced husbands and false-hearted lovers alike can be nailed for child support, however, and the law doesn’t even require that they be given a say in the decision to abort or not. Life insurance isn’t ruinously expensive, especially for the young and healthy. There are options other than abortion, unless you shut your eyes to the possibility that they might be needed.

Now I’m all in favour of a social climate that strongly encourages men to face up to their reproductive responsibilities. Does abortion on (the woman’s) demand encourage this? Or does it encourage lovers to lie, on the basis that she can always get an abortion if she gets pregnant? Does abortion, in fact, encourage a social climate in which abortion is increasingly a necessity? Is it self-perpetuating?

You should be wealthy before you have sex? Maybe a contingency plan that will cover you through the rest of the pregnancy, at least. If I want to undertake any activity - especially with no goal other than my own pleasure - it behoves me to cover my own ass and that of any innocent third party. That’s why the law requires me to cough up for insurance before I can take my motorbike on the road. Strangely, I’m not allowed to take a gun with me so that, if I cripple someone through my carelessness, I can mercifully put paid to their existence.

[Malacandra]

@Bricker

And on what, precisely, is your belief based?

Same question.

Your accusation of hypocrisy here is factually wrong. You are attributing to me positions you only THINK I hold. You say you believe I feel a particular way, and that justifies your accusation of hypocrisy.

That’s insufficient. I could just as well claim you’re a hypocrite, because, although you claim to be pro-choice, you secretly wish that all abortion clinics were burned to the ground and the staff tortured to death. I know you haven’t said that, but it’s just a feeling I have about you.

Can I just say, Bricker, that I’m astonished you’re spending even this much time rebutting such a blatant ad hominem?

[John_Mace]

@Bricker

I’m not sure how “elective” abortion would be defined.

I had originally put a definition in my post, but then decided it wasn’t needed.

By “Elective” I mean that a woman could not opt for abortion on demand, but that there would be provision to allow abortion in the case of risk of health the the mother. You can choose whatever provision you feel is necessary to make the law palatible. And note that I inclduded the use of RU-486 even though it might not be considered abortion since the blastocyst has not implanted on the uterine wall yet, but it is w/o question a fertilized egg that has begun dividing.

[Walloon]

@Der Trihs

Most of them appear to be motivated by a combination of religious fanaticsm and anti-woman bigotry.

In 2003, the Center for the Advancement of Women, headed by former Planned Parenthood president Faye Wattleton, published a report titled Progress and Perils: A New Agenda for Women. In that report was a survey of American women’s attitudes of a variety of political topics, including abortion.

Guess what? Most women oppose it. Of 1,000 women surveyed nationally, 51 percent wanted to ban abortion altogether or to limit it to cases of rape, incest, and where the mother’s life is endangered. Another 17 percent said the procedure should be available under stricter limits than now apply.

Center for the Advancement of Women
See Progress and Perils, Part II

[Bricker]

@sciurophobic

I asked a simple question, and you keep evading it. I’ll ask it again. If abortion is murder (which you believe) then why shouldn’t mothers who have abortions be treated exactly the same as mothers who commit infanticide? None of your posts answer that question. If they do, then link to them.

Because mothers that procure abortions lack the requisite mens rea to be treated as murderers.

Explained here.

[Der_Trihs]

@Walloon

In 2003, the Center for the Advancement of Women, headed by former Planned Parenthood president Faye Wattleton, published a report titled Progress and Perils: A New Agenda for Women. In that report was a survey of American women’s attitudes of a variety of political topics, including abortion.

Guess what? Most women oppose it. Of 1,000 women surveyed nationally, 51 percent wanted to ban abortion altogether or to limit it to cases of rape, incest, and where the mother’s life is endangered. Another 17 percent said the procedure should be available under stricter limits than now apply.

Center for the Advancement of Women
See Progress and Perils, Part II

Somhow I doubt the accuracy of this. Even if it’s true, that just means there’s a lot of self hating/stupid women. Look at any place or time where the anti-abortion people get their way, you’ll find it a sinkhole of hatred and abuse against women ( and children ).

[Crotalus]

@Der Trihs

Somhow I doubt the accuracy of this. Even if it’s true, that just means there’s a lot of self hating/stupid women. Look at any place or time where the anti-abortion people get their way, you’ll find it a sinkhole of hatred and abuse against women ( and children ).

Why do you correlate opposition to abortion with self-hatred or stupidity? I really don’t understand that.

[Crotalus]

@Der Trihs

Somhow I doubt the accuracy of this. Even if it’s true, that just means there’s a lot of self hating/stupid women. Look at any place or time where the anti-abortion people get their way, you’ll find it a sinkhole of hatred and abuse against women ( and children ).

And as to your last sentence, can you offer any support for that? Isn’t abortion illegal in some European countries? In Ireland, for instance? Is Ireland as you describe? Before 1973, abortion was illegal in Maryland and legal in DC. I lived in Maryland at that time. I didn’t notice it being a sinkhole, or DC being a relative paradise.

[Der_Trihs]

@Crotalus

Why do you correlate opposition to abortion with self-hatred or stupidity? I really don’t understand that.

Because it hurts women of course.

And as to your last sentence, can you offer any support for that? Isn’t abortion illegal in some European countries? In Ireland, for instance? Is Ireland as you describe?

I’ve heard plenty of horror stories about women, abortion and Ireland. Besides, how can being fored to act as an incubator be anything but oppressive ?

Here’s an example from Cecil himself : Link

Dear Cecil:

I recently saw the movie The Magdalene Sisters on DVD. Here’s the premise: For 150 years, ending in 1996, teenage girls in Ireland who got pregnant or raped or were so attractive it was assumed they would eventually become promiscuous were sent by their parents to prisonlike asylums run by the Catholic church. Nuns oversaw day-to-day operations. The girls were forced to work in laundries from dawn till dusk 364 days a year and were fed only gruel. The asylums were surrounded by high walls topped with broken glass and had locked gates and bars on the windows. Nuns stood guard at night to make sure no one escaped. Far from being released upon turning 21, these girls were imprisoned for life; in the words of the movie’s mother superior, “I decide when or if you’re allowed to leave.” Thirty thousand women were locked up in these asylums over the years.

I’m assuming even the Catholic church in Ireland wasn’t exempt from laws against false imprisonment and the like, so these women had to know they were being held illegally. Despite the high walls and so on, it’s hard to imagine a woman of, say, 35 having remained there since age 18 or 19 simply because she’d been physically prevented from leaving. Could a religious organization hold someone against her will decade after decade? Wouldn’t the more determined eventually find a way out? The inmates outnumbered the nuns by a wide margin. It’s not like the nuns were armed. What gives? --Mark Reynolds, Carol Stream, Illinois

Cecil replies:

I hear you, bud. The common reaction to Peter Mullan’s The Magdalene Sisters (2002), which depicts what amounts to a church-operated slave labor camp, is disbelief. You can imagine this kind of thing happening during Victorian times, but the movie is set in 1964. Was Ireland that wacky? Was the Catholic church? Sure looks that way. The scandal didn’t break until 1993, and the full story has yet to be told, but here’s what we know so far:

1. Contrary to wide impression, Magdalene asylums weren’t centrally organized, weren’t operated by a single religious order or solely by the Catholic church, and weren’t all in Ireland. There was a Magdalene asylum in San Francisco as late as the 1930s, and similar institutions could be found at one time around the world.

2. Named for the New Testament figure popularly but probably erroneously assumed to have been a prostitute, the Magdalene movement originated in 18th-century England. Magdalene asylums took in fallen women–prostitutes initially, then unwed mothers and eventually, in Ireland at least, any female suspected of being out there sexually, including girls who were simply flirtatious. In Sex in a Cold Climate, the 1998 documentary by Steve Humphries that inspired Mullan to make his film, four former inmates speak chillingly of the cruelty of the nuns in charge, some of whom had once been inmates themselves. A good if less-than-comprehensive account is Do Penance or Perish: A Study of the Magdalen Asylums in Ireland by Frances Finnegan (2001).

3. Organized abuse of children in Ireland wasn’t limited to Magdalene institutions. Equally appalling were the Irish industrial schools, which were funded by the state and operated by Catholic religious orders. Most of the inmates weren’t orphans but rather kids (of both sexes) whose parents were too poor to care for them. They were beaten, starved, and dressed in rags; many were sexually abused. Reports of unexplained deaths and so on were dismissed by public officials. The industrial schools began to close in the late 1960s; in 1999, after several media exposés, the Irish government apologized to the former inmates. Later the Catholic church agreed to pay £100 million to sexual abuse victims. The best examination to date is Suffer the Little Children: The Inside Story of Ireland’s Industrial Schools by Mary Raftery and Eoin O’Sullivan (1999).

4. Were Magdalene asylums in Ireland conspicuously worse than those elsewhere in the world? Too little is known to permit any confident statement. However, Finnegan’s account suggests that while the strict discipline in the asylums in some countries relaxed over time, in Ireland it grew harsher. Why? The rigid character of the Irish Catholic church and its dominance of the Irish state surely had something to do with it. Rather than administer social services itself, the government subcontracted many of them to religious orders. Take that authoritarian predisposition and add in Irish society’s archaic attitude toward sex, and the unsurprising result is systematic brutality that would do credit to the Taliban.

Which brings us to your question. How did the Irish gulag persist for so long with so little outcry? Social pressure was part of it: Magdalene prisoners–like their families, who alone could rescue them–generally felt too stigmatized to discuss the experience. More fundamentally, Mullan has argued in interviews, the victims accepted the premise that the twists in charge could send them to perdition and that, in the end, submission was their only choice.

–CECIL ADAMS

I also remember a 60 minutes ( IIRC ) segment about child abuse by Irish nuns; I remember one orphanage that didn’t allow children names, only numbers. The nuns also beat a baby to death for laughing.

[Bricker]

@Der Trihs

Because it hurts women of course.

I’ve heard plenty of horror stories about women, abortion and Ireland. Besides, how can being fored to act as an incubator be anything but oppressive ?

So it’s definitional. BY DEFINITION, a society that prohibits abortion is a sinkhole of hatred and abuse against women?

[andros]

@Bricker

So it’s definitional. BY DEFINITION, a society that prohibits abortion is a sinkhole of hatred and abuse against women?

Definitional, hell. Looks like it’s axiomatic.

Der Trihs, I’m still not sold on the idea that anti-abortion == self-hating or stupid. Can you explain that position a little further?

[Crotalus]

Der Trihs,

Looks like I tossed you an easy one with my mention of Ireland. That evidence certainly supports your assertion. Do you think the same applies to areas in the US where abortion was illegal or severly restricted, pre 1973?

[Der_Trihs]

@andros

Definitional, hell. Looks like it’s axiomatic.

Der Trihs, I’m still not sold on the idea that anti-abortion == self-hating or stupid. Can you explain that position a little further?

Simple. Abortion is a women’s rights issue; it’s foolish for a woman to oppose her own rights.

[andros]

@Der Trihs

Simple. Abortion is a women’s rights issue; it’s foolish for a woman to oppose her own rights.

I’m not sure that’s entirely tenable.

I know women who do not share your belief that abortion is a right. Are they stupid because they do not agree with you? Or do they secretly hate themselves?

[holmes]

[QUOTE=Malacandra]
Mf. So is this where I get special pleading on behalf of widows and abandoned women, such that I can either be unbearably hard-hearted if I don’t allow it (in which case my argument can be safely ignored, as that of a cruel excuse for a human being) or told that the moral case can’t be that strong if I’m willing to set it aside based on a woman’s straitened circumstances? I’m sorry, I have a marked aversion to being asked if I’ve stopped beating my wife :dubious:

I’m not the pleading type…in fact I’m a selfish bastard; so don’t worry about me tugging any heart strings. I would rather your missus decides for herself what to do about her pregnancy, before it becomes a matter of the state AND me; because being a bastard, my needs come first and you don’t want me judging you and yours. Trust me.

Since I’m aware of my failing, I prefer not to interfer in your life unless I have to and i will do all I can to keep the state from doing so as well. If that means she choses abortion, fine, as long as the state doesn’t force or forbid; I got no beef. (Now understand, I don’t believe a 8 week old fetus’ rights trump the mothers, or your right not pay for your moment of pleasure, trumps the states right, not the have to pay for your moment of pleasure.) So If that means she keeps it and YOU have pay for it; that’s fine by me too. Keep me out of it.

Life insurance isn’t ruinously expensive, especially for the young and healthy. There are options other than abortion, unless you shut your eyes to the possibility that they might be needed.

And when did you first get your life insurance policy? Before you first got laid, when you first got married? I know I didn’t, because we were young and strong and unstoppable, with plenty of dough. Hell we didn’t even have health insurance back then. Don’t get me wrong, I think you’re right, but being right and ignoring the way the world works will lead to disaster. If some guy proposed creating law based on the ability and requirement for young people to willinglypurchase insurance, I would think him mad; because we know that young people on average don’t do such things; even if it’s available.

There’s a reason why the state demands you have car insurance, not to cover YOUR ass or to protect the innocent, but to cover state’s ass and the insurance companies ass; having millions of uninsured motorists slamming into each other would bankrupt them. They know that the majority won’t do it, unless they make them; so they do; if we could be trusted to do the practical, smart thing, they wouldn’t have to force us to have auto insurance. Why in God 's name, should we trust two people in heat, to plan for the possibility of one of them having a different idea of what reproductive responsibility means? Especially after the fact? Yet everyday people do just that, they take birth control, they refrain, they get married, they keep the child, give it up for adoption and sometimes they abort.

You see, I’m not shutting my eyes to other options, I simple refuse to shut my eyes to the realization of what leaving abortion to the states to decide will do the country…we’ve been here before. You can’t have half the country with liberal abortion rights and the other half with restrictive, no more than we could have half slave and half free. Like slavery, this is simply too big.

[quote]
Now I’m all in favour of a social climate that strongly encourages men to face up to their reproductive responsibilities. Does abortion on (the woman’s) demand encourage this? Or does it encourage lovers to lie, on the basis that she can always get an abortion if she gets pregnant? Does abortion, in fact, encourage a social climate in which abortion is increasingly a necessity? Is it self-perpetuating?[/qoute]

Lovers don’t need much encouragement to lie, hell I’ve been known to softly whisper a promise or two in the dark. In my youth, before abortion was as accessible as it is now, when a guy got a girl in trouble, he ended up in the armed forces or she disappeared to some far away relative. Sometimes they got married, sometimes they didn’t. Reproductive responsibilty for a man was pretty much FINANCIAL, sending some money, which slowly dried up; leaving the mother to rely on the kindness of her parents or the state, because they were lied to…a liar is a liar, regardless of the ability to abort or not.

As far as social climate, I don’t believe the majority of Americans think abortion is a good thing, but we believe it’s a neccessary OPTION to have, and it’s madness to allow such a powerful option to be unequally applied throughout the country. Further where does it end? Is birth control to be the next indicator of social ill? Are we to find ourselves asking if promiscuity is created because of the ability to have sex without falling pregnant, therefor we should restrict birth control in order to reduce the social climate that allows people to have sex whenever and with whomever they wish? Are lovers who promise to be faithful more prone to lie, because they know they won’t have a child to tie them down and can bang as many people as they wish?

Restricting abortion won’t fix whatever you believe is wrong with society, that makes abortion a neccessity…solve that problem in society and the need for “frivolous” abortions will be reduced.

Apologies for the long post.