Nicker on 2/6/2009 at 06:00
Regardless of whether the fetus is a person or not, abortion is a matter of prior claim. All other things being equal, the woman was there first and it is her body, not her fetus'. Her right to the control of her own body trumps the claim of anybody else.
Swiss Mercenary on 2/6/2009 at 06:05
Displacer seems to think that the life of any stranger will trump hers.
Shug on 2/6/2009 at 06:23
Quote Posted by Displacer
I won't get into a pissing match about a woman's "right to choose". In my personal opinion a child's life should not be a choice. Again its just splitting hairs by saying its not a life until its born. If you can look at a ultrasound and say what you are seeing is not a real life, then you have more problems than can be solved on a forum. That's just my opinion, which has nothing to do with the other issue.
Full credit for having a strong and calm opinion on the subject, but in terms of public policy-making, personal or religious opinions shouldn't be welcome. If the law allows abortions up to a certain point - which I assume is still the crux of the issue here - you're more than free to make your own personal choices at that time.
I've always found conscience votes in the political arena to be fairly contemptible. You're in there to represent your community, not your religion. Abortion is very, very clearly a necessary function in society. It should be allowed. The scope itself is debatable, and everything after that is your own prerogative.
DDL on 2/6/2009 at 06:37
Displacer: I would argue there are WORLDS of difference between giving one's life to save a child you have raised, watched grow, given a sense of values, cradled in your arms and sung to sleep, been OH SO DAMN PROUD OF, and all that, and giving your life to save a foetus that has thus far simply given you water retention, partial osteoperosis and stretch marks.
As an aside, I love the tags in this thread.
SubJeff on 2/6/2009 at 06:40
Quote Posted by Shug
Abortion is very, very clearly a necessary function in society. It should be allowed.
Not according to displacer dude.
Quote Posted by Displacer
And with that I bow out of this unwinnable argument.
Its unwinnable by you because your opinion is nonsense. How dare you tell someone what they can and can't do with their own body?
Quote Posted by Displacer
Besides that's detrimental to your argument, pointing out I chose to risk my very being in order to save another instead of sitting on my ass and letting him die in order to preserve my own life.
No, I'm pointing out that this was your decision to make and that no one can tell you what to to - which is how it should be.
This "foetus isn't part of the mother" is one of the most ridiculous arguments I've ever seen on this subject. Regardless of the anatomical nuances the foetus is
totally physiologically dependent on the mother. Death of the mother at any point, right up until birth, will result in death of the foetus without very, very fast medical intervention. This "they are 2 entities" is just rubbish.
You have still not fully answered the question about forcing pregnancies to term. By your logic once a woman is pregnant she should have no choice to abort, regardless of the consequences and since we all know you believe this I'd like you to say it yourself, and then tell your wife and every other woman you know in RL.
Quote:
By using that logic if I'm crossing a bridge with a baby in my arm, since its totally dependent on me there should be no problem with me dropping it over the edge if I so choose.
Who said anything about force? Again using that logic by making murder illegal that's "forcing" a serial killer to not go on a killing rampage.
Are you actually reading what you are typing? I'm talking about physiological dependence and you know it. The serial killer comment... I don't even know where to begin. I'll explain the difference since you seem unable to recognise it yourself. Not having a baby may save your life, not killing other people saves them. Its at simple as that. This argument is about independence and the right to make choices about your own health, which you have demonstrated very well by giving up a kidney. Your view on, well everything, is so twisted its almost unreal.
And please tell us if you are a smoker, hypertensive, a diabetic or have a family history of diabetes or hypertension.
june gloom on 2/6/2009 at 07:40
I think we can all agree that there should be some accountability and responsibility on the parts of everyone involved. Planned Parenthood keeping mum in cases of obvious child sexual abuse is a perfect example. And rich white girls getting abortions every other month because they can't be bothered to use birth control is another. More stringent rules on the part of the former and better education on the part of the latter would solve a few problems.
Muzman on 2/6/2009 at 08:05
Quote Posted by Displacer
Dia, thank you for a intelligent debate on the subject. My entire point about no connection to the mother was when people stated "its her body" blah, blah. They are 2 separate entities, my only point on that matter. No splitting hairs at all.
It would not be my decision for life or death for either, it would be hers. My problem with it is someone would sacrifice their own child to save their own life. I'm sorry but I just can't understand that at all.
The thing that makes the rest of the debate a grey area is the definition of human life. Like I said before I cannot in any sense of the word look at a live ultrasound and justify saying that is not a person, that what I'm seeing is not alive. I cannot look at a small baby in the womb sucking its thumb, moving around and such and say "Meh, I'll get rid of it. I can always make another" I'm sorry but I just can't see it as a piece of property to discard as you please. I see a human life the same as you and I.
And with that I bow out of this unwinnable argument.
It would be much easier to pretend you have a moderate non argumentitive position if you didn't fall back on these tired, over simplified, emotive pseudo arguments. They sound like the stuff the protesters say outside of the clinics.
The characterisation of the emotionless callous woman, abortion supporter or doctor, discarding babies like some sort of faulty sausage machine is the most despicable kind of straw-manning. You might as well blood libel them and say they're producing for Milan's wealthiest foodies. It doesn't suit.
There also would not be a lot to see on an ultrasound when most abortions are performed, but we'd have to credit the 'inhuman, emotionless' argument too much to address that bit.
You seem to have demonstrated some knowledge of developmental biology. I don't know how anyone can look at it, really look at it, and say 'simple as that' about any of it. The whole thing is the greyest of areas.
The bridge argument was absurd; a baby dropped from a bridge would go on living if it survived the fall. A foetus in the same situation would not (no one try too hard to picture how that might be) except maybe after a certain point in development. That is why the decision to drop in each case is different. It's also why the child/not child debate isn't hair splitting at all, unlike your hair splitting over the semantics of "dependant". You've bowed out but I ask anyway; how do you feel about women who use Plan Bs and Ru-486 or IUDs after intercourse, sometimes days later. These methods would terminate any existing gestation, or prevent one from occuring. But it's unlikely anyone would know which. That might, or might not, be precisely the same decision as abortion, as far as you are concerned. It is after all the same stuff that might be sucking its thumb on the ultrasound in a few months. There's a Schrodinger's Cat dimension to the debate at this end of the development; is it killing it if you haven't looked at it?
The religious nuts have generally followed this train of thought already and that's why they intend to remove human agency from the baby business altogether.
(If they ran things I think we'd all have to give up and try and spawn like salmon; just spray eggs and sperm about and see what happens. Sure would make nighclubbing interesting. "Wearing a raincoat" wouldn't be a euphemism.)
Anyway on other things. The stories about this doctor that have been coming out are amazing. It makes the whole thing even more outrageous. If they shot up a regular abortionist (even though there's probably no such thing) I'd be annoyed and then some. But, as others point out, this guy was a unique specialist surgeon to truly desperate people. And he was hounded and shot at and murdered because of the whole 'late term' thing. These idiots don't even know what he did. He was killed over a buzzword. If there was a god he'd be like "Nah, fuck that lot. What about cats? I'll meddle in their lives. Much better bet".
Kolya on 2/6/2009 at 08:20
Is it too late to abort this thread? I don't see enough thumb sucking here tbh.
snowcap21 on 2/6/2009 at 13:56
The search function suggests this thread as the appropriate place to look for some opinions about The Limits of Control.?
I think there's something in the distinction between law and moral conviction, that could help with the line drawing problem demagogue talked about. The line a law has to draw in such cases will always seem a bit arbitrary, especially since you have to give a fixed criterion, usually age of pregnancy, which hasn't a value of it's own, only in relation to a supposed state of development. But that's no real problem for a law in my opinion, it's even the job of a law to provide a such a line, because we need one. That doesn't mean, that the line cannot be discussed, but I think one has to accept that there'll never be a perfect solution or a line that naturally suggests itself to everyone.
In a lecture some years ago I heard about a similar problem at the end of life, regarding how to define death. For many people it seems contraintuitive to accept brain death as "real" death and that's even somehow understandable, because it's a stage in the process of death, which would normally come with a heart that doesn't beat etc. and the person would then really look dead. But you need the definition of brain death if you're interested in organ donation, so it makes sense to pick one suitable criterion out of the complex prozess and fix the legal consequences to it.
Shadow on 3/6/2009 at 01:23
Quote Posted by Subjective Effect
How dare you tell someone what they can and can't do with their own body?
God, stop posting this horseshit.
Look, I'm pro-abortion, but even so these kinds of dumb 'arguments' are just strawmen. His whole argument is that the fetus is a separate person. If that's the case, then it isn't
just the woman's body that's being affected.
Likewise, pro-lifers need to stop posting this "Well, they just want to take the easy way out by murdering babies!" drivel, because the argument of many pro-choicers is that a fetus
isn't a person, and so in their eyes, nobody is being murdered.
This is why I don't come here for serious discussion, because rarely do threads progress past the useless propaganda stage. In fact, even on "intellectual" forums they rarely progress past that stage, and so I tend to simply stay out of all abortion debates.
Also, the tags on some of these threads are fucking hilarious.
