I’m confused as to why you think this requires a religious belief. Do you believe a person with a severe mental disability is a person?
I don’t support “abortion rights” at all, I don’t believe women should have a right to decide to end their pregnancy. I support legal abortion–because it’s a practical necessity.
This is called pragmatism, something more people should exercise on a regular basis.
I could respect the person who wrote this.
Well, except for that first sentence, which seems to sit there like an angry little cyst of cruelty.
But in the course of 5 years, it seams to have developed like a raging cancer.
At first I thought you might have intended this as irony, but your subsequent posts were less Modest Proposal and more Final Solution.
I know Czarcasm already Godwinized the thread, but I’ll flip that dial to 11.
Would you similarly support a law that allowed newborns to be killed as long as it was within a certain amount of time after birth?
Also, a tip of the hat to someone who chose to take the high road.
There’s no debate extant over killing people with severe mental disabilities. It doesn’t matter if they are a person or not. There is no infringement on anyone else’s rights by assuming they are.
Only a religious assumption can make a fetus or embryo into a person, because there aren’t any of the actual physical functions of personhood available to one. No brain, no nervous system, no senses. Even the most severely disabled person has all of these. There is no need for a religious assumption regarding disabled persons, but there is regarding a fetus.
Also, that’s what the religious opposition says in large part. They, themselves, phrase the debate in religious terms. (Not all of them, but a great many, certainly a majority.)
I have to admit finding the reaction to Martin Hyde a tad amusing. Seems to me one could get a similar response by saying something along the lines of “I agree with your views, but I think your reasoning is just a little skewed.” Then be coy about why you think their reasoning is skewed, though never forget to mention the skew at all opportunities.
Heck, if you meet someone who stands in total opposition to your stance, just shrug. Meet someone who is in almost total agreement with your stance except for that stubborn unbudgable oft-cited one percent…
Anyway, it’s a thought experiment. I figure Martin’s free to view abortion as the darkest sin conceivable in the mind of omniscient Yahweh and every D&C procedure sends Satan into trilling climaxes of ecstasy, but as long as Martin doesn’t vote along those lines (or even if he does, really)… big deal.
Also, this thread shouldn’t devolve into the abortion-debate de jour. We’re celebrating a victory here.
You are just twisting yourself into knots. It’s possible to not support abortion but still support a woman’s right to do it. It is not possible to not support a woman’s right to abortion but still support legal abortion. Those are the exact same fucking thing. If something is legal, that means people have a right to do it.
Not that it matters. You said you supported it being used by your political opponents to reduce their numbers. So you do support abortion. You are okay with someone you believe to be a person being killed to further your political goals.
You showed you just are against it in order to hurt people, and have no problem switching allegiances if that hurts people.
And then be partly guilty because you didn’t even try to dissuade them.
I don’t mean you have to put in a lot of effort, but this is a fucking message board. It takes very little effort to call people on their shit.
I understand it if you’re saying that abortion should be allowed to prevent unwanted children (i.e. another form of birth control), and if you’re of the opinion that having an abortion for this reason isn’t gravely immoral. However, if you truly believe that abortion is akin to infanticide, then the fact that a child is unwanted should not be a factor. If you believe that killing an infant is gravely immoral, and if you believe that the the killing of a fetus is tantamount to killing an infant, then it would follow that terminating a fetus is equally repugnant and therefore impermissible. It’s the logic that bothered me, not the opinion itself. Personally, I have problems with abortion used as another form of birth control. However, I would not say that it is gravely immoral.
Pregnancy will never be without the risk of serious medical complication to a mother. This is especially true if we limit access to safe and legal abortions.
The anti-abortionists absolutely do not care about the life of the mother - at all. They are passing some of the harshest legislation knowing that they are imperiling the lives of pregnant women.
That’s my take as well. It seems to me he’s arguing that preventing unwanted children is more important than preventing infanticide, which seems strange by conventional ethical standards.
I’m not confused at all. I’m not the one who equated abortion with infanticide, and then said I supported the one but not the other. You support murder* to foster some sort of social change. It’s not any more complicated than that. I actually HOPE you’re confused, because if if you’re not, that’s pretty scary!!
*What you call murder, not what I call murder, since I don’t consider abortion (before a certain point) to be equivalent to infanticide.
Because absent religious belief, the idea of human personhood as something that is instantaneously conferred, rather than something that gradually develops in the long process of gestation, doesn’t make any sense.
For practical reasons, we as a society need to draw a more or less arbitrary “bright line” as to when in that developmental process we consider the developing person to acquire full human rights. But there’s absolutely no a priori reason to set that point at some imagined “instant” of fertilization (and the fertilization process takes much more than an instant, anyway), rather than at some later point during gestation.
[QUOTE=Martin Hyde]
Do you believe a person with a severe mental disability is a person?
[/QUOTE]
Sure, as is a person in a permanent vegetative state. But that’s got nothing to do with how well their brain functions compare to those of the average person: it’s based on the incontestable fact that they went through the fetal development process.
People can certainly have different views about where in the fetal development process we should place the arbitrary cutoff for legal “attainment of personhood”. But there’s nothing in the least “obvious” about saying it has to coincide with conception—unless you’re equating personhood with some kind of immediate abstract quality like “spirit” or “soul”, which is ultimately a religious concept.
And even if I accepted that - which I don’t - forbidding a woman an abortion is the moral equivalent of raping her for nine months, and far more evil than murder.
The term for someone as “mentally disabled” as a fetus is “brain dead”, and no I don’t consider them people. Nor does the law, which is why they can be taken apart for their organs.
No–there’s no practical reason to allow that. Abortion would be almost impossible to stop and women would actively seek alternatives, some much worse for everyone involved.
Plus with abortifacient pills these days, black market abortions would actually be a lot “easier” than they were in the early 20th century. If we can’t control all the heroin and cocaine coming into America I doubt very seriously we could stop the black market trade in abortifacients were it banned.
Absolutely no practical argument would be present for allowing newborns to be killed–they can just become wards of the state.
But based on your prior points, allowing them to be killed would result in fewer Democrats. Why do you favor legal abortion because it results in fewer Democrats, but oppose this which could similarly result in fewer Democrats?
Why do you consider it “practical”, and even a “practical necessity”, to allow embryos/fetuses to be killed because they are unwanted and/or might grow up to vote Democratic, but reverse your position for newborns? Newborns can be unwanted and/or grow up to vote Democratic too. (ETA: or what iiandyiiii said.)
Your arguments here are not in any way logically defensible. If you really think that abortion is morally equivalent to infanticide but it ought to be legal anyway, then you have no rational grounds for arguing that infanticide ought not to be legal.
What if it could be shown , conclusively beyond a shadow of a doubt (to whatever level of satisfaction you currently have that abortion reduces the number of Democrats) that those “wards of the state” would not only be more likely to voteD, but could indeed become passionate progressive activists, swaying other voters? I mean, they would have only survived infancy thanks to the welfare, nanny state, Big Government- style of government; that kind of start to life could kindle a passionate activism.
Would you support such a proposed law in that case?
Consider it in conjunction with legal abortion, not replacing it. Twice as much political gain for your side!
I don’t favor it because it would result in fewer Democrats, I explained already that I favor legal abortion because it’s societally necessary due to practical concerns. And that I would “tepidly” support it if that were all, but the demographic benefits mean I’m a pretty enthusiastic supporter.