When does life become sacred?

Great Debates
41

[QUOTE=MrDibble]
Since your bolded(by me) premise is not true, and has been shown to be not true, are you prepared to acknowledge that drawing the line at birth or some other arbitrary place is now a perfectly reasonable option?
[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=ExTank]
Yes, it was posted after I had.
[/QUOTE]

First of all, my apologies for the drive-by posting earlier. I had started to reply, noticed the time, had to be somewhere else, and instead of waiting to reply later, I just glurged out that nonsensical bullshit, above.

In actual response, I don’t think arbitrariness is a wise policy in crafting law or policy. elelle’s post was chock full of good info, and I need time to digest it and think carefully before saying before altering my opinion.

What it boils down to is essentially this: I am morally against abortions-of-convenience, or sweeping on-demand abortions for everyone who wants one simply to satiate some meta-political point about a woman’s right to self-determinism WRT her own body.

To my way of thinking, there are a few choices that can be made prior to choosing to have an abortion, such as abstinence (okay, I can barely get that out with a straight face), contraception (for Him and for Her), and lastly, carrying the child to term and giving it up for adoption. I’m sure there are some lucrative financial arrangements that can be made in the mother’s favor to help in this last option. And I realize that that’s not universal.

Politically, I’m much more neutral on the topic. As I stated earlier, I’m a fairly live-and-let-live kind of person. I live peacefully with my fellow human being, and as such, don’t like being told how to live my life by the government. As such, I tend to NOT vote in such a manner as to deprive others of similar freedoms. IOW, if I cast my vote for a pro-life candidate, it’s not his or hers pro-life stance that I’m voting for; it’s some other issue(s), typically fiscal policy and gun rights record.

42

[QUOTE=ExTank]
First of all, my apologies for the drive-by posting earlier. I had started to reply, noticed the time, had to be somewhere else, and instead of waiting to reply later, I just glurged out that nonsensical bullshit, above.

[/QUOTE]

No worries, rereading my post, I think it may have come across as stroppy, which wasn’t my intent.

[QUOTE=ExTank]

In actual response, I don’t think arbitrariness is a wise policy in crafting law or policy.

[/QUOTE]

By arbitrary I did not mean randomness, though. I meant that it becomes something decided by judges ad hoc rather than legislators. There can be a carefully reasoned process to arrive at a time that isn’t one of the endpoints.

[QUOTE=ExTank]

What it boils down to is essentially this: I am morally against abortions-of-convenience, or sweeping on-demand abortions for everyone who wants one simply to satiate some meta-political point about a woman’s right to self-determinism WRT her own body.

[/QUOTE]

This para scans poorly - I take it you’re *not *trying to say there are people who have abortions just to make a political point, are you?

Anyway, for the pro-choice faction I belong to, it’s not some metapolitical point, it’s a very real concern that the pro-life position tramples on what we consider a desirable societal right of pregnant women.

[QUOTE=ExTank]

To my way of thinking, there are a few choices that can be made prior to choosing to have an abortion, such as abstinence (okay, I can barely get that out with a straight face), contraception (for Him and for Her), and lastly, carrying the child to term and giving it up for adoption.

[/QUOTE]

For me, that last option swaps out with abortion, because the existing societal member’s right-to-self trumps the potential-society-member’s right-to-life. That’s a fundamental disagreement on basic principles we have there, but…

[QUOTE=ExTank]

Politically, I’m much more neutral on the topic. As I stated earlier, I’m a fairly live-and-let-live kind of person. I live peacefully with my fellow human being, and as such, don’t like being told how to live my life by the government. As such, I tend to NOT vote in such a manner as to deprive others of similar freedoms.
[/QUOTE]

…that last quoted bit means your personal feelings are of no concern to me and others like me. All pro-lifers should be as ready to live-and-let-live (errm, I think we both need a better phrase there, maybe?). I know some of the others on this board are more like you, too. No quibble there.

43

[QUOTE=MrDibble]

[QUOTE=ExTank]

What it boils down to is essentially this: I am morally against abortions-of-convenience, or sweeping on-demand abortions for everyone who wants one simply to satiate some meta-political point about a woman’s right to self-determinism WRT her own body.
[/quote]

This para scans poorly - I take it you’re *not *trying to say there are people who have abortions just to make a political point, are you?
[/quote]

Not at all. Let me rephrase and attempt to be more clear: there is a segment of females (how many, and how representative of the pro-choice position they are, I don’t know; but I’ve met a few personally, and called one “Mom”) who are pro-choice, even if they never had an abortion, and never want an abortion.

For them, it’s all about the right to choose, and I can and do understand that. Even if I disagree with it in certain circumstances.

I’m wading into a minefield here, so I’ll try to choose my words extremely carefully.

Taking elelle’s cite above at face value, and assuming that I correctly understood the data presented, I see no reason why natural miscarriages, or miscarriages for unknown reasons, can be used as a logical springboard for supporting sweeping, on-demand abortion for any woman who asks for it.

The miscarriage is at best (if such a thing could be termed such) a natural process, or an artificial process that medical science only partially understands.

An abortion is a human-enacted, medically induced procedure.

One is an accident, or an “act of Og,” or an as yet not understood process; the other is fully understood, scientifically proven, medical procedure.

[QUOTE=MrDibble]

For me, that last option swaps out with abortion, because the existing societal member’s right-to-self trumps the potential-society-member’s right-to-life. That’s a fundamental disagreement on basic principles we have there, but…
[/quote]

…but it’s nice to discuss it civilly. My thanks. :slight_smile:

44

When auto manufacturers fight changes that will save lives is that saying life is sacred or that it has value.? Value measured in dollars. When airlines don’t make safety changes because they are expensive,and they know the trade off is in human lives does that say life is sacred.? When electric companies fight laws that will force them to put scrubbers on smoke stacke because it hurts the bottom line,is that life is sacred.? No way life has value but in our society it is not sacred. I wonder if before a war ,does someone decide how many human lives an oil field or rubber plantation is worth.

45

[QUOTE=ExTank]
…and lastly, carrying the child to term and giving it up for adoption. I’m sure there are some lucrative financial arrangements that can be made in the mother’s favor to help in this last option. And I realize that that’s not universal.
[/QUOTE]

Just so you are aware.

Guttmacher estimates that 2.5 million abortions are preformed each year. About 3 million parents are waiting to adopt. The average wait to adopt is longer than a year.

If all fetuses currently aborted were to result in babies, we’d have a glut of babies to adopt in a very short amount of time. Realistically, less than five years.

Furthermore, many abortions are done because of fear of birth defects - and many adoptive parents NOW are pretty picky about child health. When there are more children than potential adoptive parents, the adoptive parents will be able to be even pickier. I know people who have refused children where the birthmother has had ONE drink - that is only likely to get worse when there are more babies available than parents.

At which point the question becomes once we no longer have waiting lists of adoptive parents, but instead waiting children (which we already have), how do we take care of the kids? Because, in my opinion, we currently do a piss poor job of taking care of the kids without permenent families - I’m not sure how much more pressure that system would take for it to shatter completely. Particularly when the “desireable” children are cherrypicked into adoptive homes and the ones left in the system got a bad start in the in utero lottery. And we seem - as taxpayers - to enjoy paying for social services so much that I’m sure we will all be willing to make sure that these kids get the best.

46

Human life cant be VERY sacred because sooner or later we all die .

A foetus with the potential ,probable or not ,for sentience doesn’t know its alive so its similar to an empty vehicle waiting for a driver.
And remember if that driver DOES turn up it could well be a Pol Pot Peter Sutcliffe or Adolf Hitler.
Would we fight so strongly for the sacredness of that potential entity?.

I can never understand why the people who are prepared to commit murder for the" rights" of non sentient biological clockwork dont even bat an eye lid when a most definitely sentient soldier with loved ones ,with hopes,dreams and opinions gets killed.

Of course by turning the process of getting pregnant into some sort of sacred miracle it makes the person themself into someone very special"aren’t I wonderful I’m a miracle worker".
Inspite of the fact I maybe incapable of tying my own shoelaces or too lazy to find work.
Getting yourself impregnated isn’t some sort of talent on this over crowded planet as Billion upon Billions can testify to.

Not a very fluffy,cuddly post Iknow but more and more people are being intimidated out of expressing views similar to this and I’ve no doubt at all that I’ve made myself even more enemies who wont bite me much in this thread but will jump me en masse a couple of threads up the line.
Best I start checking my punctuation now plus American spelling !LOL!