So you agree that an argument against abortion of a conscious pre-birth baby is reasonable and not based on anything supernatural or upon sentimentality?
So you made a ludicrous and hyperbolic statement that **all **arguments against abortion were based on the supernatural and sentimentality. When challenged you repeated that ludicrous absolutist statement.
And now you are conceding that in fact the single most common argument against abortion is in fact perfectly reasonable and justified and has nothing whatsoever to do with the supernatural or sentimentality.
I’ll just repeat what others have said: these debates aren’t generally prolonged because they don’t matter. They are prolonged because of the blinkered attitude we have seen here from Lobohan and Der Trihs. When people enter an argument with the view that nothing the opposition says can even have a valid basis, let alone a valid conclusion, they aren’t going to have your mind changed by facts.
You’ve really almost got it. There are arguments against specific abortions.
There are no arguments against all abortions that aren’t based in nonsense.
Anyone arguing for doing away with* all abortions* is being a complete twat.
Again, I’m conceding nothing. You misunderstood what I said. You did this because you were so charged with outrage it kept you from considering it clearly.
There is no argument for outlawing all abortions that isn’t nonsense. See above.
Irony. You still haven’t understood what was said and you’re still going off and doubling down on it.
Usually, not much, but slavery in America wasn’t really comparable to slavery in most other parts of the world. The huge number of slaves, and the degree to which white society had dehumanized them in order to justify their treatment, is really unparalleled. There was no compunction about working a slave to death to make a profit. If slavery stopped being profitable, I doubt there’d be any compunction about killing a slave to prevent a loss.
Of course, you fail to come up with any examples of such a “valid basis”. You simply claim that it must exist, and that anyone who points out that the Emperor has no clothes is unreasonable and “blinkered”.
Without reading all the posts, I’m going to disagree with the OP.
I can see the point of deciding to ignore a big philosophical issue like “Is there a God?” or “Is there an afterlife?” These are important issues but what are you really going to do about them?
But issues like “Pro-life or pro-choice?” or “Should we invade Iraq?” have very immediate real-world implications. We can’t just avoid these issues. They have to be discussed so that decisions can be made.
That’s an empirically dubious claim (though popular among historians before 1950). If it was empirically valid, then I agree (cold-heartedly) the C/B investigation would be appropriate.
Consider canals. A superior technology was introduced- railroads- and they stopped being built. Indeed, many went bankrupt, because they couldn’t keep up with their interest payments. But canals didn’t stop operating during the 19th century. Rather after reorganization revenues typically still exceeded operating costs, so they persisted. Similarly, the industrial revolution would have led to bankrupt plantations and declines in the sale price of human beings. But there would have to be a lot of technological innovation before the price would drop below zero and the institution would become unviable. And in the 20th century technology could conceivably help lower monitoring and control costs. So, no, the empirical claim wouldn’t be expected to hold. Bankrupting a plantation isn’t the same as driving slavery out of business. For that you would need to drive the asset price below zero.
Cite: Robert Fogel and others.
ETA: The OP. If one side, the other, or both are populated by hysterics, then there are no small questions.
There are other “big issues” from the past that were addressed successfully, thank goodness: independence from England and women’s right to vote to name a couple. Is the use of human torture any less critical? Our right to privacy?
But I wouldn’t think that it would have been profitable to work a slave to death. Slaves were expensive. Do you have a reliable source for this claim on what slave owners or managers had compunctions about? Was this true for Southern slave owners as well as Northern slave owners? It is hard to think of those who founded our country (often wealthy landowners) as being so inherently cruel.
Not solely. Wall St. mainly. And fear mongers with access to government money.
I disagree with this too. If you’re in a job that makes you want to kill yourself every day, then no matter how committed you are to it there’s no way you’ll be successful in it. You’d have to put in exponentially more effort on everything just to keep up, and your attitude will shine through to everyone in the vicinity. Compare that to doing a job you love…make the right big decision and all the little decisions fall into place.