Which is your perogative, but I have my own opinions about the morality of that. I believe that this attitude has been a detriment to our society.
Yes, but can you at least acknowledge that it is not automatically or objectively true that we are choosing “convenience” over the lives of full-fledged people? I mean, I understand that many people truly believe that at the moment the sperm enters the egg, that entity is a person, with a soul, and with rights. I don’t agree with it, but I can see how someone who believes that would be opposed to abortion at any stage. It is internally logical. You don’t seem to be granting the other side the same courtesy. Could you perhaps allow that many people truly believe that an embryo or a fetus is not a person, does not have a soul, and that personhood relies on something other than unique human DNA? And that in this context, choosing bodily integrity, or even convenience, over that entity is not the horrible choice it seems to be to you?
Yes, of course. I am not necessarily asking anyone to take on my own sense of morality. But, as I say, I do have my own opinion of it. I’m not likely to change that because people want me to be accepting of their choices.
And likewise, of course. I believe that our society benefits from *happy * people more than it does from simply *more * people.
That sounds harsh, so let me clarify. I am not trying to condemn everyone who chooses to have an abortion. I am thinking more globally than that. What my point was supposed to be is that I am sorry for the direction society has taken the concept of self-determination. I think there are plenty of other examples of where this has taken a rather unattractive turn besides just the arena of pregnancy/abortion. One I already mentioned was that of people getting divorces for reasons of personal fulfillment (especially when their are children). I believe that, while self-determination is well and good, there needs to be a very strong element of personal responsibility as well. Where that line of responsibility is drawn is up to the individual, of course. I tend to think that in general it’s being set to a very low bar.
I guess what makes me concerned is what it seems to take these days to make people happy.
Ideally if she knew that sex has a non-zero chance of life creation at the time of sex there would be no difference to a modern day adult IMHO.
Real world, where do we want to define when someone has control over their sexuality, before that time it would be the parents decision, after that time it would be her decision.
OK, thanks! I don’t expect you to change your opinion any more than I’m willing to vote for abortion being illegal, just because I can understand why people might want it to be.
Most kids know at least to some extent that if you point a loaded gun at someone, there’s a risk of them getting shot. Yet, most people wouldn’t hold a kid to the same standards as a “modern day” adult when in comes to accepting legal consequences.
I think you’re wrong; the problem isn’t that that attitude exists, it’s that it appears to you that it doesn’t because people have different concepts of morality.
If you asked me, i’d say that morality matters very much. I would say that one person’s self-determination is important, but that it doesn’t override someone else’s, and that includes killing another person. I’m sure that my opinion of when morality matters is actually pretty close to yours. I just don’t apply it to abortions because I don’t believe what’s happening is the death of a person.
It would be like me saying to you that you don’t care about morality, because you walk on grass. How dare you cause pain to it? The truth isn’t that you’ve said “Ah, screw morality, my right to walk on grass is more important!” - you just don’t believe that grass is something that needs to be protected in that way. Now, I could certainly accuse you of being wrong with regards to grass, but I couldn’t say you don’t think morality matters; that would be quite insulting, really. Likewise, you can accuse people of being wrong about fetuses, and fair enough to you. But suggesting that people have decided morality is less important just isn’t true, and is a pretty offensive remark that not only insults in the idea that people have put themselves above morality but also in that it suggests people secretly do think fetuses are worthy of life (or however you’ve put it) but are lying.
Apologies. This is a tricky subject and I didn’t mean to misrepresent your position.
Neither do I. But in the argument you brought up, you made the idea that people prefer self-determination to
But you think that the fetus has that worth. And they don’t. That’s the point you’re missing; they’re not coming from your viewpoint. They do not believe that worth exists (at least not to the same extent). You can say that that is amazing, sure. But people don’t see the same worth as you do, and so they do not treat it with the same worth. That seems pretty reasonable to me. The basic point may be wrong, but the decision assuming that point is correct is perfectly legitimate.
Ah, but now we’re not getting into abortion vs. keeping the pregnancy. We’re getting into the willingness of other people to help that woman; medical support, social support, and of course more direct help from family and friends. But it seems to me that your theory doesn’t hold up; often those people who are most against abortion are also those less willing to provide such support, at least from a government level (i’m sure they’d help out family and friends). Certainly I would agree that the societal acceptance of abortion probably leads to this, but I don’t think that in the total absence of it that it would be a rare viewpoint still.
Very good point, thank you.
While what you state is true, it really does not apply here as abortion is premeditated. Again in my view carrying a child to term is in no way a punishment, it is all about the child/fetus/baby (who should be given a pass according to your theory that youngen’s get off easy)
I’m with WhyNot, this is an excellent point. I have to say (and this is NOT a dig at Sarahfeena, btw), that I find it extremely frustrating that many people seem to work from the assumption that pro-choicers DO, secretly, think that a fetus is a “person”, and just don’t care. That’s every bit as insulting as the “pro-lifers hate women” assumption.
The point was that the pregnancy was not “premeditated”, I think. Discussing it as a punshment presupposes the existence of a diety, of course; a more objective assessment will note that a child having a child is undisputably an unfortunate situation for all involved.
Fortunately we have abortion to take care of the fetus/embryo/sperm+egg before it becomes a “youngen”, and can thereby save everyone a lot of (though not all related) trouble.
While the abortion is unquestionably premeditated I would say that the pregnancy was also by the act of sex.
No many here, who assume there is no such God, have expressed a opionion that insisting that a mother not murder her child is punishment.
I think that I haven’t been clear. Part of what I am trying to say is that I believe that this idea that the fetus is not a person has become more prevalent because of the desire for self-determination. The more society focuses on self-determination as a high value, the more and more the fetus will be considered “not a person.”
I think you misunderstand me…I am quite sure that some (many) folks do not believe the fetus is a person, and do not believe that there is any moral problem with its disposal. I’m prepared to believe (and in fact, know that it’s true), that these same folks are perfectly moral and upstanding people. The problem I have is that I believe that some things are inherently wrong, and that abortion is one of them.
Look at it this way…what if it was, say, animal cruelty? What if the people who are engaged in dogfighting, for example, don’t think that dogs have any rights, and that dogfighting is perfectly acceptable. Let’s imagine this is a conclusion they have come to after careful consideration, and they have decided that the dog isn’t a person, say, and therefore has no right not to be used for whatever amusement a person chooses. Would this be acceptable morality to you? Or is dogfighting so abhorrent to you that you believe they are wrong no matter what they think?
No problem.
Oh, I’m not missing that point…I completely get it. I just think their viewpoint is wrong. 
Going back to the example of the dogfighting, or any animal cruelty laws. I’m sure there are plenty of people who see no moral problem with such things…that doesn’t make those things right.
Well, first of all, I never claimed to be speaking for the pro-life movement. I am giving my own opinions. As far as government help goes, I think it’s perfectly acceptable to believe that help should be given through private organizations rather than through the government. Plenty of people I know donate and volunteer to help people in crisis pregnancies through their churches and other private organizations.
I don’t know if it would or it wouldn’t…I’ll bet it’s a lot more common than it was 100 years ago.
I don’t know if that’s what pro-lifers think, to be honest. I appreciate that you are not singling me out, but I don’t think that this is what pro-choicers believe, and I don’t think most pro-lifers do. What I actually believe is what I alluded to above in my response to RT…I think that the desire for self-determination, and the medical advances that have allowed it, have caused the idea that the fetus is a person to be eroded on a societal level. This idea is very real, but I think it is also cultural in large part (and this works both ways…my belief that abortion is wrong is also partially culturally-based).
I wanted to pull this one sentence out, to be sure that my point is clear. I don’t believe that individuals have put themselves above morality. It’s that I think that society has re-defined morality so that things people used to think are wrong, they don’t anymore. It’s not that people ignore morals, it’s that morals have changed…and IMO, not for the better. I fully understand that people are following what has become an acceptable moral code.
Which you accomplish only by completely ignoring you with the face’s valid point that children cannot be relied upon to connect cause and effect. So, they can pull the trigger without planning to kill, and they can have sex without planning to get pregnant.
In which case, it would not be “premeditated”.
(And since ‘premeditaded’ is not a word we use to descibe enything but a crime, you are implicitly trying to (baselessly) presume your conclusion to poison the argument. This sort of cheap rhetoric is of course worthless as serious debate.)
Firstly, it’s not a child; no matter how many times you repeat it you don’t get to assume your conclusion. Secondly, since there’s no child, there’s no murder*, and since there’s no murder, there must be some other reason you’re attempting to control the actions of the women in question. (It’s not too hard to make a reasonable guess at what that might be, based on the prudish nature of the average anti-choice person or group.)
- If you thought killing a fetus would qualify as murder, you wouldn’t bother pretending that it was a child. You do so pretend, so it therefore doesn’t qualify. (At least regarding arguments with you and other persons who feel that they need to refer to things by the wrong names in order to support thier position.)
Thirdly, the main difference between your position and the complaints of the persons whose lives the antichoicers are trying to control is this: For pregnancy to be a punishment, there has to be a god making it so, since no man invented pregnancy. (Also you have to be pretty stupid about what the cause of pregnancy actually is to think that it has solely punitive purposes…however inadvisable or pointless any specific pregnancy might be.)
In contrast, for preventing the cancellation of pregnancy to be punishment, there has to be…persons trying to prevent it without reasonable cause. Realizing, of course, that many people recognize that whatever’s in there isn’t a “baby” or a “child”, why should such people see reason in the restrictive actions of anti-choicers? Absent direct causes for the restrictions, they can only be meant as arbitrary punishment. So, there is reason to percieve the actions of anti-choicers as punitive, and you don’t even have to leave the physical plane to find somebody doing the punishing.
While i’m sure there are some people who did come to their conclusions that way, again i’m not certain you can suggest it so easily.
Essentially what you’re saying is that pro-choice* people often don’t actually have well-thought through arguments for why a fetus isn’t a person, or that such views may be motivated considerably by avoiding inconvenience. And sure, i’d agree that such people exist. But to use it to describe (apparently) a whole societal change seems to me to cheapen those arguments.
Flip it around; it’s like me saying that pro-lifers are actually motivated by a desire to keep women in their place, and their apparent “arguments” are just motivated by that; they aren’t looking at the situation honestly. And again, sure, there probably are such people. But if would be silly and wrong of me to paint a whole societal change based on that; it cheapens the pro-life arguments and suggests that they’re really just a means to an end. I do disagree with those arguments; but I don’t deny that the people who hold them believe them. And I don’t deny that the people who hold them are very likely to hold them because of an or several honest arguments they’ve reached themselves and are happy with, not because they have some ulterior motive.
Ah, i’m with you here. Certainly, if you’re right, I hold an immoral view. And vice-versa, though to a lesser extent. My only argument here was with this;
… which led me to believe that what you were saying was that people actually did agree with you on what was moral, or even had a moral system different to yours - and that they ignored it, or put themselves above it. That’s not what’s happening here (in most cases, anyway). People’s actions, whether they’re pro-choice or pro-life, are equally (roughly) in accordance with that person’s system of morals. IOW, people think morality is just as important as ever.
Sorry to snip this; I think the above bit addresses it. Certainly, I could accuse such people of not being moral (from my own standpoint). It doesn’t matter how strongly they hold that view, I am just as entitled to disagree with it. But I can’t accuse them of abandoning their morals in order to favour self-determination; they are acting as entirely within their moral system as I would be for calling the police on them.
I wouldn’t claim to speak for the pro-choice movement, either… while in general my views are the common ones, I do sort of disagree in a couple of places (I get to look like a monster to them, too! 
)
The problem with the government/free choice of giving argument is… at what point are you willing to say “No, people aren’t giving enough, mandate it”? You’re not happy with support given to pregnant women, and neither would most people be, I think. Can we rely on charity and generosity to help make up for it? Or must it be enforced? I’m probably more along the “tax us bastards” route than you, but that’s a whole other debate.
More common, sure. But I wouldn’t say a huge amount more. Especially when, as in this instance, the issue at stake is (potentially) human lives.
*I’m using pro-choice and pro-life just for ease.