As do I. Yay. But, then I also find neglecting the health and education of a child to be morally reprehensible, especially if that child exists because you insisted that it should exist. I also find that neglecting pre-natal care for a pregnancy to be rather deplorable.
But, those are also positions that many in the “pro-life” crowd hold.
To paraphrase: “I demand you have that baby, but I don’t want any part of it.”
Preserving a woman’s freedom to bear children or not outweighs whatever it is you’re after.
I disagree. I think the child’s life outweighs the inconvenience the pregnancy may cause the mother, at least in most cases.
“Inconvenience”? I don’t think you(nor I) am in the position to be labeling what women go through as a mere “inconvenience”.
I think I’m free to label it however I feel. You may not agree with my description, but I don’t subscribe to the idea that I’m not allowed to hold an opinion on the matter, or voice it, simply because I’m a man.
Then I hope you don’t mind if I retain the right to disagree with your opinion, and not just let it pass when your opinion seems to belittle those who go through pregnancy.
Not in the slightest.
I think pregnancies vary widely in … what’s the right word here … discomfort? severity? difficulty? On the one hand, I’m told that some women aren’t even aware they are pregnant until rather late in the process. OTOH, some women suffer serious health consequences and are acutely aware of it. It’s estimated that hundreds of women die each year from pregnancy-related causes.
How consistent are we when if comes to the life of a child. For instance, if a child is not a legal US resident, but comes here as a refugee anyway, do you think the life of that child outweighs the inconvenience of letting that child stay in the United States?
If you don’t think that you can make a consistent principle between your belief that the life of a child is sacred when it is involved with immigration, do you think that the life of a child outweighs your inconvenience of having to pay taxes for that child’s healthcare and education?
That may be a bit much to ask too, as demanding that someone have a child is not the same as taking responsibility for it, but since we are putting the life of the child over that of the wishes of the parents, does that mean that we can force vaccinations over the objections of the parents, including “religious” objections?
And speaking of religious objections, since the life of a child is insignificant compared to its immortal sol, since we are overriding parental decision in what is in the best interest of the child, should we restrict religious education to adults, and make it illegal to attempt to indoctrinate a child in theocracy before they are able to make adult rational decisions?
Exactly how much interference are we willing to make in the lives of families “for the good of the child”, and exactly how much of an inconvenience in the form of taxes are you willing to incur in order to protect these children that you hold so dear?
Ahhh, I see you did indeed figure out how paraphrasing via quotes works. Wonderful! 
I think we already found a point of agreement when it comes to actions taken to terminate the lives of children (see post #81). I don’t particularly mind having (and paying for) a police force charged with enforcing laws against this. I hope and suspect you’d also join me in holding a rather dim view of those who neglect or abuse children. We might disagree over how much of their college education society should be obligated to pay for. There’s obviously a lot of gray area on the spectrum between those two bookends.
No, those were actually “scare quotes”, and it was my own words, not attributed or attributable to anyone else. Paraphrasing with quotes is still a poor practice.
Right we agree that a healthy baby that has been born should not be killed.
“This”, being against infanticide? Do we not have that already? I was at a friend’s last night, and he was watching a police procedural where the entire plot was over the disappearance and eventual death of an infant. Please don’t tell me that that is only on TV that we investigate and prosecute such crimes.
Sure, but we may have different views of what is neglect or abuse.
There are some who think that sticking a needle in your child’s arm is abuse, and there are others who think that leaving your child susceptible to dangerous and deadly diseases is abuse.
I was raised that it was child abuse to not take your child to church and teach them the ways of God and Jesus. As an adult, I feel that it is child abuse to do so, and that children should be given a chance to understand the real world before being introduced to the next.
As a society, I feel that we collectively abuse children if we only allow them to receive the medical care and education that their parents can provide, if what they can provide is not adequate.
As a country, I feel that we abuse children when we seperate them from their parents because they were fleeing from violence and poverty.
I take a dim view of all that, do you?
Not just college, but primary education as well. Every person I know personally who is pro-life votes against school levies every single time and complains constantly about it. Do you support your local schools?
Yeah, it’s made up of pretty much the bulk of humanity. I think that we would only agree maybe 10% on what is definitely “evil”, and maybe 10% on what is definitely “good”. The rest is all somewhere in between.
You seem to be trying very hard to derail this thread with discussions about illegal immigration, vaccines, religious freedom, and / or welfare programs. Those are not the topic here. If you’d like to start another GD thread about any of those and are interested, I could certainly chime in and outline my views on any of those topics, but not here.
ETA: I’m not telling you that you can’t (I’m obviously not a mod), I’m just explaining why I’m ignoring those questions.
The fact that you oppose all abortions drains these arguments of weight - you oppose abortion before the point where there’s even a child to kill, or even before the point it can properly be called a living being. This casts into doubt that child abuse is the issue here, since you’re willing to call non-child things “children” just so you can pretend that child abuse is what’s going on. This doubt is increased by the fact that it’s long been the standard conservative position to violently oppose abortion and then violently oppose any and every effort to support post-birth children and the mothers of such children.
If there was a magical device that could teleport a “child” (fetus, zygote, whatever) out of a womb without it being dead at the moment of its arrival outside, aside from making lots of women very happy, would you see it as a solution to the abortion dilemma? The woman extracts the living mass of tissue, leaves it on a tray, and walks away?
Just for my own edification, in your view when are these two points?
Presumably we’re teleporting it into some sort of incubator that will allow it to continue to live and grow, right? If so, then yes, I’d see it as a solution to the abortion dilemma in that I’d support the use of this magical device and the outlawing of abortion. Did I understand your question correctly? Or are you proposing that in place of chemicals / dismemberment / whatever we’d use this magical device as an alternative means to terminate the “child” (fetus, zygote, whatever)'s life and wondering if I’d find that acceptable, presumably because the actual death occurs “on a tray” outside of the womb? If that’s the question, that’s a definite “no”. Did at least one of those answer your question?
I’m of the opinion that I don’t know enough about the medical science to know these points to any specific degree, but in an ideal world they would be determined by milestones, not time. As a rough, not-a-doctor start, I’d say a decent marker for being a living being is when it has a distinct heartbeat from the mother (marking it as being its own entity rather than a growth on the mother), and a decent marker for when it’s a child is when it has achieved demonstrable sentience.
I’m not sufficiently well-read enough to say when these milestones are likely to occur, on average, but I’m pretty sure they don’t happen in the first week.
Whose responsibility is it to provide and pay for the incubator? And what if there is no incubator that exists that can enable the survival and growth of the cell-clump or whatever it is at week 2? Or 4? Or week 16?
It’s not a derail at all. You are saying that you are concerned for the welfare of the child, and that is why you are willing to use the criminal justice and law enforcement system to have your preferences enforced.
Just seeing what other aspects that you are willing to use the power of the government to enforce your view of what is in the best interests of the child. If this is the only thing that you would ask the government to compel of parents, but you feel that the govt should keep its hands off of other child raising particulars, then your argument has no consistency, and falls apart, leaving the fig leaf of “best interests of the child” naked and bare.
If you choose to ignore questions that would shore up the consistency of your argument, that is your choice, just remember that you made that choice when your arguments are not taken seriously.
There are many different milestones, but if the clump of cells hasn’t even differentiated, it’s not a child.
If it hasn’t developed a nervous system, it’s not only not sentient, it’s not even aware. If it hasn’t developed differentiation in brain tissue, then it’s not really even human yet.
Should we have that technology, I will be happy to have my tax dollars go towards such procedures. For my opinion, I would say that if it’s not viable in the incubator, it’s not viable at all. I will never try to say that my opinion should override that of the person who actually is carrying the fetus. If it can’t go to the incubator till 12 weeks, and it is 11.5, I’m all for her terminating it, if that is her desire.
Thanks for sharing. I suspect you’re right (about the first week). I am not a doctor either, but my understanding is that a fetal heartbeat can usually be first detected via a transvaginal ultrasound at around 5.5-6.5 weeks and via fetal Doppler around 8-10 weeks. I suspect there’s more vigorous debate about what constitutes “demonstrable sentience”, but I do appreciate hearing your thoughts.
If such a magical device existed and the only impediment was cost, I’d support taxpayer funding being used to pay for the magical devices and / or incubators. Back here in the world lacking such magical devices, I don’t generally support killing the “cell-clump or whatever”, and find that my revulsion at the idea grows more severe the later into the pregnancy the termination occurs.
My revulsion doesn’t start until I’m convinced the thing is both a living entity and sentient - prior to that it’s exactly morally equivalent to removing an appendix. After that I get less happy about terminating - it’s at this point I’d like it extracted alive - except that I know that the current status of child care is to just let the thing languish unloved in the system, so there’s little point. It just becomes a more unfortunate situation overall, if nobody wants it - neither the mother nor her conservative overlords.
Understanding that I’m asking for a layman’s opinion, which milestones would you consider “demonstrable sentience”?
I don’t mean to put words in your mouth with this next question, I’m just trying to explore your opinions on the matter a bit: Does this feeling extend to children after birth that are / would be put up for adoption? Do you feel it’s better / would almost be better if they were never born?
Reactions to stimulus that indicate more than just a basic nervous system response. As layman that’s about all I can say.
Better for them or for society? I’m not sure that painless death is itself a bad thing, except for the impact it has on the people who observe it and/or who will miss the deceased. If there’s nobody to miss them, well, if there were nobody to miss me or find my body, there are worse things that could happen to me than painless death. (Making the rather bold presumption that the death is painless and unanticipated, mind you.)
Making the rather tenuous presumption that we shouldn’t kill unwanted viable fetuses, the question becomes what we’re willing to do to keep viable children alive, for that period between when they become sentient and when we can extract them alive. If I had to enslave, imprison, or torture somebody to keep myself alive, I’m pretty sure that it would be immoral for me to do so. Which means there’s a scale. Where does pregnancy fall on it - and how inconvenient or dangerous does a pregnancy have to be? I’ve seen women on several month’s bedrest. Imprisonment?
Questions, questions, questions. One thing I am sure of, though - if we ever do advance the science of extraction and incubation to the point where every sentient fetus can be extracted and baked artificially, the cost of this must necessarily fall entirely on the society that mandates that it happen, in cases where the woman would choose to wash her hands of it all.