If we got magically transported to a universe where children’s books with talking sentient animals were true, our attitude towards eating cows and pigs would be very different.
In our universe most food animals are either not sentient or look non-sentient so the issue doesn’t come up. But if the cows on the feedlot start chatting with us, many of us would turn vegetarian real quickly.
Unless you dispute the fact that people are always comprised (at least partially) of bundles of cells, your stated belief is contrary to fact. I think you meant to write, ‘people always have brains therefore organisms without brains are a separate class from people’.
And if I recall correctly the presence of measurable brainwave activity (around twenty-five gestational weeks?) was a standard for personhood endorsed by the All-Knowing Perfect Master himself.
He was operating on a premise that there are limits, and your counterarguments do not respect those limits, they are thus invalid counterarguments.
~Max
Cows and chickens are certainly sentient.
I’m pro-choice because I’m pro-me. I’m pro-women. I’m pro-health and pro-happiness.
Pregnancy is a life-altering, body-altering and possibly dangerous state to be in. Child birth is neither easy nor fun and can also be dangerous. I am appalled by the hand-waving of these things by people (men) who think all of that is a fair consequence for “one night of fun.” Like one night you do a sin and then you end up with a baby and there’s nothing between that, or after that. Fuuuuuuuck all that.
And the possibility that all of this can happen not only due to rape, but because there’s that percentage where birth control fails, fuck all that too. I need BACKUP FOR MY BACKUP.
Actually that is actually one of the very rare exceptions that is covered in the bill.
If your daughter is raped, the rapist father is explicitly prevented from suing for the $10,000 if the woman gets an abortion. Although anyone else can sue. So for anyone planning to use this scheme, make sure you have a friend around to actually do the suing. 
Yeah, then a couple books later there’s all sorts of business about cud-chewing and hooves cloven or not and carrion eats and OMG not pigs and… it got complicated.
As also noted: the Bible actually says nothing about abortion, and specifies a monetary fine - to the husband - for causing a miscarriage.
So belief in the bible has no bearing on the discussion, just following what others have said.
If someone thinks the bible is the word of god, and that the derive their morals from it, then it would behoove them to at least skim it sometime.
Some people do indeed. Those are not relevant to the discussion about what people are told it says.
Do you think that animals do not have brains? That’s the only way this statement makes sense.
Yes, he is saying that there are limits that he has set, and that any counterarguments that do not fall within the limits that he has set he will consider invalid. This is not an argument, this is simply an assertion.
I’m pro-choice because I understand the reasons that a woman might have to compel her to choose abortion. Those reasons:
It may be worth noting that the Bible has almost nothing to say on abortion and what it does say suggests it is kinda ok with it.
It will become a human being, but even at that point, things can go horribly wrong. And these things might not show up until well into the pregnancy. Then we have the horrible situations like the ones described on the site A Heartbreaking Choice, with parents who very much wanted to have the baby but received the worst possible news.
I’m pro-choice because it’s none of my business. I believe DMC covered this quite aptly with his/her graphic.
In this debate it seems to come down to personal belief or religious belief.
We know religion has very little to say about this and what it does tends to be ok with abortion. 71% of the US is Christian. 23% “unaffiliated”. And the rest a mix. I cannot speak for all religions but in the US the majority of religions say almost nothing about abortion and, when they do, seem kinda ok with it.
So, religion is out. Heck, we know the conservatives manufactured this as a wedge issue in the 70s.
Now we get to your feels. You just believe it is “wrong”.
But this gets weird fast.
If you think abortion is murder then you have to think any woman who has an abortion is a murderer. Like walking down the street and shoots a kid. But we don’t really see it that way.
If you think abortion is murder then you think it is the same as a mother suffocating her baby. But we don’t really see it that way.
If you think abortion is murder then every abortion clinic is a murder clinic. If we had actual murder clinics I think people would be super outraged at production-line murder. Yet somehow no one is really that super bent out of shape about it. (ok…there have been a few whackos who thought along these lines and actually murdered people)
More, as a society, we do not generally have funerals for miscarriages. We feel sorry for the mother but we, as a society, aren’t bent out of shape about the dead fetus.
So I call bullshit. It is a political wedge issue. That’s it.
I’m pro-choice because I’m male, and am therefore unlikely to ever get pregnant. It’s none of my business.
Syllogism:
We are allowed to eat every creature that lives.
For a living creature to be ours to eat, it must also be ours to kill.
A fetus is a living creature.
Ergo, fetuses are ours to kill (and eat, but there’s no requirement to do so).
Note: I don’t subscribe to this logic, just demonstrating the limitations of using scripture as argument.
What I find hard to reconcile is how anti-abortion activists simplify the issue, as if the entire discussion centers around whether a fetus has a heartbeat or not. Life and death decisions are rarely so simple - not even for people who’ve been alive and walking on the planet for a few decades.
I tend to have one paramount question. Does it benefit the planet as a whole, living entity?
All the current evidence suggests that the human population is billions over carrying capacity, which I will define as the point after which the fabric of the biosphere degrades. Anything that reduces the population of humans is a good thing for the planet – at least anything which doesn’t at the same time degrade the biosphere even farther (like famine would do, for example, or nuclear war).
There is no surer way to reduce the population without degrading the biosphere than empowering women. Women who have control over their reproduction (which directly enables other freedoms) have many fewer children, on average.
Therefore I am for empowering women, and for any kind of safe birth control including abortion.
Sure, fetuses are innocent. So is just about everything else. The fewer new humans, the better off all living things are.
I think most people think that individual human beings have value, and that your “one, paramount question” is not the only concern. That’s why they don’t advocate going around killing people to reduce the population, and they mourn when lots of people suffer and die, even in densely populated areas, from wars or natural disasters.
Of course. I’m no different. But I’m going for a planetary view here, not an emotional one. That’s been covered.