What alternative is that? That all human beings have a right to life? The parents have a choice already. The mother of the child can choose to abort. Or they can opt to put the child up for adoption if they don’t want it. They don’t get to kill it when it’s out of the oven.
Very well. I modify my statement to “No one has provided a good argument in favor of legalizing infanticide, because there’s absolutely no reason to legalize infanticide. It’s a barbaric and terrible practice.”
You could make the same remark about legalizing murder. It would still be absurd and would be widely unpopular, since most of us would prefer not to be killed.
Erm… if what it will EVENTUALLY be is irrelevant, then why are we having this discussion? Nobody’s interested in preventing anyone from removing tumors, specifically because tumors don’t turn into people. You’re never going to succeed at getting anyone to forget about that part.
A person’s body is more sacrosanct than their property under just about every law known to man. And as to what “the majority of the population” thinks, I’m not running for Prom Queen, here.
If you mean if babies already born and seperated from the mother should be killed, I’d say no, even though I’m for abortions up until birth. It just opens too many floodgates
Oh.
::hides “DianaG for Prom Queen” banner under chair::
How about class treasurer?
Every sperm is sacred? Meh, I think not. A seed ain’t a tree.
I think we’re having this discussion because the thread is (was?) discussing infanticide. To many, your position is, quite explicitly, the pro-infanticide position. “I don’t want this baby, and so it’s my right to kill it! Kill babies!”
If you don’t want to change the law that’s fine, I judt wish you’d stop saving the pro-choice the effort of inventing strawmen. To me, your position is an argument against pro-choice.
The alternative is that parents are glorified babysitters for the state. That’s digsusting. Do you want to bring your child up for politicians?
False equivalence. Do you support conscription?
We’re kind of used to it, aren’t we?
That’s correct, and I don’t see it changing any time soon.
We’re also used to billions going without clean drinking water.
Neither situation is right.
On the contrary. You see, NO ONE believes that a blastocyst IS “a person”. Well, no sane people, because that’s just friggin’ mental. So why try to argue against what no one really believes? It’s all about the fact that a blastocyst left to it’s own devices will *become *a person. That’s a simple fact, and there’s also no point in arguing against a simple fact.
Then you’re profoundly misunderstanding it. My argument is simply that my right to sovereignty over my own body is not dependent on the relative humanity of the fetus. No one else gets to use my body without my permission, and the fetus just plain isn’t so special that it’s an exception.
So you’re saying that we live in a terrible society because people can’t kill their own children? But are you aware that no one is forced to raise kids “for politicians”? That abortion exists, that adoption exists, and that when most people raise their kids, it’s because they want to? Or are you trying out some wacko position because you have some larger point to make?
How so?
No, and I said so earlier in this thread. A few years ago I put it this way:
I think you might be surprised.
And my position is, from certain angles your argument looks full of holes. The most notable being the notion that that pregnancy? You never asked for that? Just woke up one morning and suddenly were fat, did you?
(And now we cite rape and immaculate conception and whatever special cases are necessary to argue for the general case to which they do not apply. Right. Whatever. I have stated my case, and you don’t care that your argument is flimsy as wet toilet paper. Fine. Moving on with life…)
How is “my body is mine and nobody gets to use it against my will regardless of the circumstance” a flimsier argument than “well, try thinking of it as a tumor”?
And exactly how pro-choice are you if you’re treating “you play you pay” as a valid argument against abortion?
Because that is your entire position, and it’s only a gross simplification-if-not-characature of mine, which is not “pretend it’s a tumor”, it’s “it is not a person or baby, therefore it is not wrong to kill it”.
Your argument is flimsier than that because it’s susecptible to a broader range of counterarguments, including, “'Round these parts we don’t kill babies, ma’am.”
Perfectly pro-choice, it’s just a different kind of pro-choiceness than yours. “You play, then you can get an abortion, but you can’t wait forever, because some time after conception you stop dealing with a non-person and start dealing with a person. So, if you play and dawdle, you pay.”
The main difference between me and some other pro-choicers is decision of where the cut-off point is: brain activity, birth, or voting age. The arguments for the latter times are a lot flimsier, though.
Because murder is of an adult who does not want to be killed (I have no problem with assisted suicide, and I suspect you don’t either). The entire point of infanticide is that the parent is making the decisions for the child, and the parent decides that it is in the best interests of the child for it to be killed. So it is simply a form of assisted suicide.
Good. I agree with you. So we agree it is wrong for the state to have power to kill its citizens. We only differ in whether the right to insist on death is the same as the right to insist on life, I think 
The fact is they are two sides of the same coin.
Well, why should the parent have that right? If the parent doesn’t want to bring the child up, no politician is forcing the kid to do so.
Yes, because it’s an entirely adequate position. Unless of course, you can think of some situation where using another person’s body against their will is legally or morally acceptable.
You mean, like physically manipulating a person’s body in such a way as to damage it and thereby end their life, possibly prior to extracting it from a womb? Using their body that way?