Religions say all sorts of things - don’t murder, don’t steal, be nice to poor people. But no one ever complains when religious people put those values into action. No one ever says “Look at that horrible Senator - he voted to ban robbery because his stone-age deity told him to”. How is abortion any different? It doesn’t require any supernatural evidence to start from the (nearly) universal belief that destroying innocent life is wrong, and then conclude that abortion falls under that condemnation. If fact, if it *did *require supernatural evidence, then we Christians would be in big trouble, considering the Bible never mentions abortion.
I’m not pro-life because I’m a Christian. If anything it’s the other way around - I’m a Christian because I’m impressed by any religion willing to suffer such scorn in order to defend helpless unborn life.
And when pray tell does it become a person? Is there a magical point of transformation when this glob of cells suddenly becomes a full-fledged human? The human body is continually changing, in form, needs, and capability, from conception to death. I don’t think the moment a baby leaves its mother’s womb is any more significant than the moment it eats its first cookie, as far as personhood goes.
But that’s silly. If I truly considered females to be such vile beings, why should I be ashamed to admit it? I’m clearly not very concerned about maintaining a positive public image here. If I oppose abortion, I’m going to be reviled no matter what. So what do I have to lose by revealing my true colours?
I don’t mind being called evil and bigoted, but it seems rather unfair to accuse me of dishonesty unless you have specific evidence of it.
Because forbidding abortion is cruel, oppressive, degrades women, and requires either delusional beliefs about what a fetus is or complete contempt for women. And people do on occasion complain when a religious person does “good” just because his religion tells him too, because he isn’t good; just amoral. If he forbids murder today only because religion tells him to, then he’d have just as much reason to turn around tomorrow and order murder if his religion told him to.
Yes it does. It requires pretending that an embryo is more than what it is, a mindless lump of flesh. It requires creating a special definition of personhood/humanity that is tailor made for the purpose of defining abortion as murder, so it can be used as a weapon against women.
And now we have the poor-persecuted-Christian routine, in a nation overwhelmingly dominated by them.
There is no such “point”, it’s a process. However, that point is nowhere near conception. And birth is important because once it occurs, the newborn is not inhabiting the woman, and the physical traumas of pregnancy & birth have already happened; this completely changes the moral and practical situation.
Because “we oppose abortion in order to punish women” won’t get much support.
I don’t think we’re persecuted, no. However if Christians truly did “overwhelmingly dominate” this country, abortion wouldn’t be legal.
But I guess there’s not much point in me continuing this discussion with you if you keep trying to tell me how I think. Silly me, expecting a civil debate in good faith.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some more women to punish. Those dreadful females. Where did I put my thumbscrews?
“Christian” isn’t a synonym for “agrees with Weeping Wyvern”. Most pro-choice people in America are, pretty much by definition, Christian. Most people in America are.
If you want a “debate” where all other people do is take everything you say at face value and nod in agreement, you’ve come to the wrong place.
Making fun of it won’t reduce the suffering of your victims.
No offense but damn near Bill Clinton. He once said “Abortion should not only be safe and legal, it should be rare” which seems to be pretty close to your position.
I think most people would classify Skammer as pro-choice, despite his self-identification. Being pro-choice isn’t about approving of abortions, it’s about not trying to force women to not have them. Thus the term “choice”.
Oh very well, replace “Christian” with “The mysterious religion you believe causes pro-life people to be pro-life”.
Um obviously I don’t expect you to agree with me about everything. That’s kinda the point of a debate. But there’s a huge difference between
“I disagree with you when you say abortion should be illegal”,
and
“I disagree with you when you say you genuinely care about protecting unborn life, because you really just want to oppress women”.
The first statement would be entirely justified, were it true that abortion is acceptable. But the second statement would be groundless even if abortion was acceptable, because you have zero evidence that I harbor any personal dislike of the female sex.
But it will draw attention to the fact that my “victims”, far from being a mass of innocent and oppressed women, actually come from both sexes. Both males and females who commit abortion have innocent blood on their hands, and deserve equal punishment regardless of their sex.
Even if we could save a single innocent life, it would be worth it.
But anyhow I’m not sure it’s fair to compare the US to other countries which currently ban abortion. We have much better resources which a pro-life government could use to entice mothers to carry their babies.
I don’t want to sound flippant or offensive, but why?
If we really held to the principle that any action is justified if it saves a single innocent life, then we’d ban fire-arms and cigarettes and cars and alcohol and swimming pools and household pets - all of these take innocent lives on a regular basis.
The reality is that our society has decided there are limits to what a life is worth. People want to have the freedom to make choices and sometimes those choices cost lives. We weigh the value of the freedom against the value of the lives. We accept a certain amount of loss of innocent life every year in the name of liberty.
And that’s where a lot of people fall on the abortion issue. They feel the woman’s freedom can outweigh the fetus’ life. Especially when “life” is a nebulous concept in this case. (Freedom is usually a nebulous concept.)
Ah. I see. You think that the women who die from unsafe illegal abortions are not innocent enough, so their lives are not worth as much as something that isn’t really human yet.
Der Trihs, a couple of days ago I gave you a mod note about doing exactly this in another thread. Claims like “you want to treat women as subhuman” are attacks on the poster, not his ideas, and so are statements about his purported “victims.” You can attack the ideas and you can attack Christians or groups of Christians in general, but do not accuse individual posters of wanting women or other groups of people to suffer or say they want to treat women as subhuman. You can do that in the Pit, but not GD.
Just as any animal or plant it becomes a person or fruit, when it can be recognized as such. Until then, like an apple blossom that has been pollenated, it won’t be an apple until it can be recognized as such. One doesn’t look at the cells dividing in a petri dish and say,"Oh what a cute little baby. Yes, it contains human life, but so does a man’s sperm, and that is not a baby or a human person. It will have a chance to be;If it fertilizes an ova, But while it is in the petri dish, it is not a person yet.
To be serious, I know my position of not wanting to criminalize abortion might mean to some people that I am pro-choice. But really I’m just advocating the most practical and effective ways of reducing abortions in this country. I consider every abortion a tragedy; but outlawing abortion creates tragedies as well for both mothers and babies. I want to stack the deck so that in as many cases as possible, giving birth is a more attractive option than abortion is. In other words, influence the abortion rate with carrots and not a stick.
Clearly the difference is that while all the things you mention have the potential for danger, in themselves they are morally neutral. Abortion, however, is impossible to commit without doing evil.
The pro-choice argument I can most respect is the one that goes like this: “Yes, abortion kills innocent human life, but preserving the woman’s freedom is a more important goal”.
Well obviously anyone who dies in the act of committing a crime (be it abortion or any other crime) is not innocent. This doesn’t mean I rejoice in their deaths, though, because
I do not favor capital punishment.
If we do execute criminals, it should be done by the state alone.
Anything which anyone ever says is “according to” that person… I think that goes without saying.
There is indeed a difference. I can think of plenty of things which are evil yet should be legal. But if my views on the morality of abortion are correct, then it’s not simply a personal vice which the law can afford to tolerate. Instead, it has a direct and deadly impact on other people.
No; a great deal of what people say is based on facts and logic, not just baseless assertions.
No, it doesn’t. A fetus is not a person. And if you define it as a person, then all you do is degrade the term and create a category of “person” that lacks all the morally important qualities of personhood. If a fetus is a “person”, then you’ve just created a category of “person” that it is morally trivial to kill. You might as well call a houseplant a person and then call someone who throws it in the garbage a murderer.
What does have a direct impact on other people is forcing them to go though a pregnancy against their will.