Some of us are indifferent to the whole label thing. Want to call a fetus human, a person, a being…? Whatever, I remain pro-choice.
My point still stands: it’s precisely because the mother stands to lose/gain a lot (depending on her point of view) if the baby is born, that makes her an unobjective observer who can’t be trusted to make a fair decision.
Most cutters aren’t a threat to themselves. Only a very few go deep enough to hit arteries…and those very, very few can be restrained for their own protection.
Because if a minor were involved in cutting, the city, county, or state should intervene. That’s a matter for child protective services.
Meanwhile, if your kid disobeys you, you can send her to bed without supper…but you cannot compel her to have a baby.
You have a certain set of religious beliefs. This, clearly, disqualifies you from being the best judge of those religious beliefs. I’m in a much better position to tell you what you ought to believe. Your lack of objectivity means you can’t be trusted to make a fair decision.
The poster named Omg a Black Conservative made an identical argument - the pregnant woman is too involved to be trusted. I tried to clarify his views on this, leading the following exchange back in 2011:
[Quote=Bryan Ekers]
What you’re basically arguing is that nobody should do anything without checking with some authority to see if it’s okay, because if it’s something you want to do, your own ability to evaluate if it’s okay is hopelessly compromised.
[/quote]
I have to admit being taken aback by the honesty of his brinksmanship - in order to restrict abortion, he was basically arguing for the end of individual freedom as we know it.
Well, as we all know, Freedom is Slavery.
That’s what my big brother used to say, anyway…
And, okay, in a real sense, yes, most of us are too close to some of our decisions. It really does make damn good sense to ask your friends and family for advice, especially before making a big, scary, permanent decision.
I wouldn’t dream of getting married before asking my closest and most trusted friends, “Am I doing the right thing?”
But the difference between that and having the government make such consultation compulsory, and with advisors I have no choice in selecting, is day and night!
That’s exactly what’s going round again, with this kind of statement “it’s precisely because the mother stands to lose/gain a lot (depending on her point of view) if the baby is born, that makes her an unobjective observer who can’t be trusted to make a fair decision.”
Translation: The mother inside whose body the fetus is growing, who will have endure it to term, to give birth to it and thereafter nurture it and be emotionally and financially responsible for every aspect of its existence for some indefinite future, has no say in this matter. Such a judgment must only be made by religious Holy Rollers making dogmatic pronouncements about the miracle of God-given life while pounding on Bibles and praising the Lord, and the pregnant woman and her doctors and the entire medical profession had better stay the hell out of it because this is strictly between the Holy Rollers and their God. The pregnant woman is just a go-between; she has no relevance and no rights, and needs to shut up and know her place as the simple Bearer of God’s Miracle.
It seems that the liberalization of abortion laws has some kind of correlation with social progressivism and modern enlightenment in those jurisdictions. I just don’t see the connection. 
So, those directly affected by a decision that is necessarily subjective shouldn’t be allowed to make it? A man and a woman who might want to get married are going to directly benefit. Maybe we should take that decision out of their hands and let the government decide that one also.
But if bodily autonomy is sacrosanct, they shouldn’t be right? You don’t want somebody else making that decision, do you?
This is all just Whig Histiography, arrogance, and selective memory. Everything from the past you like you get to claim as progress and everything you don’t like you don’t. Progressives championed eugenics, forced sterilization, and prohibition.
Margaret Sanger, the founder of planned parenthood was very explicit in her advocacy of abortion to keep the feeble minded and unfit from breeding. Most people now recoil from that reasoning in public, but that is a part of social progressivism. Which means no one can make the claim that I’m right because people with my label have always been right.
She has plenty of say over it. She can choose give it up for adoption. No one advocates for a ban on adoption, we don’t say you have to take care of it once born, only that you can’t kill it beforehand.
The judgement is not between us Holy Rollers and God, it is also a part of society to have a judgement. Because it is not just a personal decision like getting a tattoo, cutting yourself, getting married, or getting a piercing. It involves another life, the baby. No one cares if you kick your car, but if you kick your kid you get arrested. It is not because us Holy Rollers and God want to decide if someone else gets to kick or not or because we want to control other people’s feet. It is because there is another person involved.
This is the central point of the debate. I don’t see how saying a mother can have her unborn baby killed for any reason at any time is treating the fetus with anything other than careless disdain. As far as weighing the life of the fetus against the interests and wishes of the mother, the fetus has eighty some years of life while the mother has eight months discomfort and then the emotional trauma of giving the baby up for adoption. How can those two things ever compare?
And it wouldn’t really matter if the Holy Rollers were basing their decisions based upon what they thought their God believed. They each get one vote just like everyone else.
Margaret Sanger opposed abortion, I believe, though she of course strongly supported contraception. Your broader point is of course well taken though. Abortion is a particularly bad issue to make arguments about whiggish history, of course, because there are many times and places where abortion laws/attitudes have gotten more stringent over time. Abortion was fairly common in pre-Christian Greece and Rome, after all, and only became viewed as murder after those areas were Christianized. More recently, abortion laws became more stringent in the 19th century in America (I believe). Abortion laws have gotten more stringent in a number of eastern and central European countries after the fall of communism, and have gotten stricter in some Latin American countries as well. In America, there’s little reason to think attitudes towards abortion are going to swing more pro-choice in future. Unlike gay marriage, this is not an area where the electorate seems to be liberalizing over time.
The rest of the world should aspire to the utopic liberty of Canada, which has no abortion laws. If they don’t, they’re just dumb.
Unless you are confusing “evidence” with “conclusive proof” you are mistaken. Cite.
Regards,
Shodan
Yes, actually, I do, in some cases. What’s your point here?
For example, I actually favor legalization of suicide…but I want it regulated so that the person must demonstrate mental soundness. I want to protect severely depressed people from doing very fatal harm to themselves.
Are you stuck with some kind of sound-bite morality where everything is all one way or all the other, lacking any nuance? Morals are complicated, and there are many special considerations we have to balance.
My point is that any discussion of abortion is ultimately pointless. For every analogy that the pro-life side comes up with, the pro-choice side will say “That’s different. Abortion is a unique case.” Both sides have made up their minds.
And yes, when it comes to liberty, I try to remove nuance wherever possible. I actually favor strong bodily autonomy. Want to have an abortion? Knock yourself out. Feel like cutting? I can’t relate but it’s not my deal. Tired of life? It’s not my business to make you keep living.
That’s what choice is about. If we could agree to disagree, the debate would be over.
Since you are talking about cutting (generic you) - much debate on choice assumes that the person making the choice is able to make a reasonably rational one. For abortion that is true no matter what choice is made. But for cutting? Banning cutting seems stupid, making sure that people who cut get some sort of assistance is not.
We’ve gone from throwing anyone a bit odd into an asylum to thinking that doing something about the guy living on the street and howling every night is violating his rights.
That is how abortion and cutting are different. This philosophy might help keep people from flying planes into mountains also.
I said pretty much the same thing earlier in this thread. Abortion discussions are indeed terribly pointless.
There, though, we differ, as I believe nuance is at the heart and soul of good morality. The context can make all the difference in the world.
Break the windows of a guy’s car. Bad! Except…to save the toddler inside who is baking to death in summery heat. Good!