Roe v. Wade

Great Debates
1

Roe v. Wade is in danger of being overturned by the Supreme Court once Bush gets to replace a Justice or two with reactionaries. This could well happen, so I say this:

What is most nauseating about the “pro-life” people is that they claim to speak for morality itself when they lack even the moral courage to mean what they say.

They say: “Abortion is murder of innocent human beings.”

But if they believed that, the would consider a 17 year old girl with no means to care for her child to be the moral equivalent, say, of King Herod.

No sane person believes that.

I find the notion of abortion to be abhorant, and I resent profoundly any so-called “pro-life” moralist discounting my feeling in that regard.

Evidently I abhor other things more than I do abortion, like unjust laws, in this case, laws that discriminate against the poor and the uneducated and the abandoned. And, for example, the facts of unwanted or neglected children. That legal abortion is an alternative to unjust laws and neglected children is not a matter of good logic but of bad institutions, the very institutions that are, for the most part, controlled by those who want to keep women in their traditional place.

If, for a start, society were so arranged that adopting a child were no more difficult to cause than having a child; and that children were adopted only by people who will continue to want them and will care for them and that there are enough such people to care for all the children who need them, and that one knows how to tell who these people are; and that any grain of shame or discrimination attached to bastardy or to the fact of unwed motherhood or to parents who give their children up for adoption were itself seen as shameful; and supposing that contraception is known to be physically harmless to the people who practice it, and that women were supplied with expert and congenial advise and help during pregnancy and the father entitled, with the mother, to parental leave from work (these conditions can and should be supplemented and elaborated),

–then my liberalism on the issue of abortion would fade and my abhorance of abortion would flower.

–the abortion argument, so far as it is based on the status of the human embryo, not only cannot but must not be won. Voluntary abortion is less bad than its criminalization is, but it is not therefore all right. The more terrible one takes it to be, the more terrible one should take its indictment of society to be.

2

So… umm… what’s the debate? Is this just another generic abortion argument?

Jeff

3

No debate so far, Jeffy.

I’m saying that the “pro-lifers” don’t mean what they purport to say. Got it?

If you disagree, there’s a debate.

If you agree, well, good for you.

4

Well, my biblical history is a little rusty, so I apologize for not quite getting the Herod analogy. However, I’ll address the “pro-lifers don’t mean what they say” in general terms.

As far as I understand it, the pro-life argument is, basically:

  • Life begins at conception. I.e, as soon as the sperm hits the egg, you have a little human being in there.

  • Murder, ie, the taking of an innocent life, is wrong.

  • Abortion is the destruction of an embryo or fetus, which is, as mentioned above, a human life. Thus, abortion is murder. Thus, abortion is wrong. QED.

The argument can be made that it is more just to snuff out the life of an arguably non-sentient fetus than it is to bring it to term and let it live under less-than-ideal conditions - for example, raised by a single mom living in poverty. The pro-lifer would argue that an unborn child is still a child, and abortion in such an instance is morally identical to killing the child after it was born to the poor, unwed mother.

Basically, the pro-life argument seems to be morally consistent, and I see no inherent hypocricy. Of course, some pro-lifers may be hypocritical, but I see no fundamental hypocricy in the pro-life position per se. Or, to use your parlance, I think pro-lifers mean exactly what they say: “Abortion is wrong.”

If I’m misinterpreting your position, please enlighten me, in specific terms: what do pro-lifers really mean?
Jeff

5

I’m vehemently pro-choice, and I tend to think that most people mean what they are saying, whether they agree or disagree with me. Just because they have a different view on a topic than I do, doesn’t mean they are not being honest with themselves, or that they haven’t thought it through properly. It just means they have a different view on it. YMMV.

6

I’m a pro-lifer who believes that a 17-year-old girl who gets an abortion is the moral equivalent of King Crimson. There. Let’s see if that gets the debate rolling.

7

21st century schizoid fetus-killer. I hear that one rocked live.

8

I’d like to interject for a brief second and object to the terms being used.

“Pro-life” is meaningless as a descriptor and is not accurate. Using that term would suppose that people on the other side think everyone should have abortions. You can think abortion is a bad thing and hope that women wouldn’t have them, but still respect their Constitutional right to choose.

The only accurate terms are “Pro-choice” (women can decide for themselves) and “Anti-abortion” (women should not have abortions).

I’ve always had three big beefs with the anti-abortion movement:

  1. What have you done to educate people about contraception?
  2. What have you done to help care for these babies once they actually are born?
  3. How do you feel about capital punishment? (You’d be surprised how many people are against abortion but for capital punishment.)
9

I am pro-life. The life of the mother. I am pro-choice - her choice to choose to save her own life.

And ElwoodCuse - ditto. It’s unusual how being vehemently anti-abortion and vehemently pro-capital punishment are very often in the same camp (usually extreme right wing, though that’s not entirely fair to say, because many right wingers don’t advocate capital punishment, and may be pro-choice, ditto in reverse for lefties).

10

For Preventing The Children of Poor People in Ireland
From Being Aburden to Their Parents or Country, and
For Making Them Beneficial to The Public

By Jonathan Swift (1729)

http://art-bin.com/art/omodest.html

11

You callin’ my dear sweet mother a liar? I would assume not. In fact, being the gracious guy I am, I am instead going to assume that you MEANT to say “A small number of vocal pro-lifers have an agenda other than what they say, while the majority of pro-lifers are honest in their expressions of belief.” 'Cuz I’m such a nice guy.

Now, if you want to call my dad a liar, have at it. :smiley:

12

It’s ridiculously easy to create such an exagerated argument, claim it is typical of one’s opponents, and then claim they are insane for believing it. Look up “straw man argument” sometime.

I doubt anyone pro-lifer is seriously claiming there’s a moral equivalence to King Herod, but I’m sure there are quite a few who liken a woman seeking or obtaining an abortion to Susan Smith, who drowned her two children because they were inconvenient.

13

**And “pro-choice” would suppose that those on the other side are against all choice. Look, both labels are largely self-chosen, specifically because of what they connote. If you have issues with one because of a lack of “literalness,” then be consistent.

This is getting to be a regular argument in our abortion threads, and it is as logically fallacious now as it usually is. You are begging the question in assuming that pro-life people universally are uninvolved in education regarding contraception and in caring for “unwanted” children, and that they are universally opposed to capital punishment. You have done nothing to show that this is so. I can tell you for sure that it’s untrue, but so what.

Because even if you could prove it conclusively, you have not made an argument as to why this is necessarily illogical and inconsistent on the pro-lifer’s part. And last, and most important, even if you could show that, you’d be demonstrating that pro-lifers are hypocritical (which, again, you have not), but that does not mean that the argument they advance for the pro-life position is incorrect. It only means they are hypocrites.

Other than that, everything you offered was OK.:wink:

14

Notice that in states with laws requiring a waiting period and for minors to inform their parents, the abortion rates are 1/2.

Also, somewhat ironically, those who are pro-choice often also are anti-death-penalty. Meaning it’s wrong to take the life of a criminal but ok to kill a fetus. Shrug Of course its another assume your opponant’s thoughts deal though.

15

One thing that’s always struck me, and I freely confess that I’m not entirely sure what to make of it, is that the most virulent anti-abortion people, the ones who get carried away and do things like bombing clinics, shooting doctors, screaming at women entering clinics, and so forth, are usually men. Apparently, it’s easier to be categorically opposed to abortion when you’re not the one who has to be pregnant.

16

I saw Crossfire yesterday, and someone asked the commentator why the use of specific terms. He described it as , not a specific accusation, but as a descriptive side to an arguemtn. He gave the example of gambling. If someone is for gambling, we call them pro-gambling. Not that they think everyone should gamble, but that people should have the choice and opportunity to gamble. And the ooposition to be called anti-gambling And if you feel the Pro-Life people should be called anti-abortion to be constistant with their arguements be called anti-abortion, it would be consistant to call pro-choice as pro-abortion. But we don’t do that for obvious reasons.

I’ve always had three big beefs with the anti-murder movement:

  1. What have you done to educate people about self restraint?
  2. What have you (personally) done to help care for these murderers once they actually are caught?
  3. How do you feel about capital punishment? (You’d be surprised how many people are against murder but for capital punishment.)

Straw man anyone?

17

But the common denominator in this debate, one BOTH sides agree on, is that one side is for outlawing abortion and one side is for keeping it legal. The keeping it legal side contains people who are both for and against abortion, but consider it a personal moral choice. I think the accurate terms would be ‘pro-abortion rights’ and ‘anti-abortion rights’.

18

OK, here’s one person.

The position is not self-contradictory. Surely you can see (even if you don’t approve of the death penalty) the difference between killing an innocent and killing someone who has been tried and convicted of a crime.

Zev Steinhardt

19

The OP is creating strawmen with such vigor that, should a remake of Wizard of Oz be in the offing, I have every confidence that one of his creations could be cast in a lead role.

But here’s this take on it: I suggest that Roe v. Wade be overturned not because the wrongness of abortion, but because it amounted to judicial legislation. That is, it purported to find in the Constitution a right for women to choose abortion. I think a better approach would be to acknowledge that the Constitution does not protect that choice, and, indeed, the issue is not a federal one at all. The citizens of South Dakota, let us say, may then happily permit abortions, and the citizens of North Dakota may equally happily forbid it.

There is nothing in the federal constitution that should give rise to a federal right in this area. Yet the Roe court found there to be such a right, and the Casey court agreed. I believe those were ill-advised decisions, although they are the law of the land at present.

The above is certainly a pro-life argument that means what it says.

  • Rick
20

Or…you know, most people who commit violent crimes, bombings, shootings etc…regardless of motivation, are …

…wait for it…
…shockingly…

Male.

Sometimes a horse is a horse and not a zebra.

:rolleyes: