Yantelope V2 Posted February 2, 2012 Report Share Posted February 2, 2012 (edited) Yeah, admittedly I don't have children, but I would be absolutely shocked if that changed my viewpoint one little bit. I love kids, but that doesn't have much to do with opposing/supporting abortion. There's something about feeling the baby kicking in your wife's belly. Something about hearing that heart beating on the monitor. It makes it all very much more real and much less hypothetical. Will it change your philosophical stance? I don't know but it sure hardened my belief that children who aren't born are still children. fund abortions illegally ...you do know what Planned Parenthood actually does most of the time, don't you? Here, let me fill you in. http://front.moveon....-actually-does/ I know it might sound convincing when the GOP goes after Planned Parenthood and labels them as evil abortion monsters, but they are an important organization. And defunding them is seriously screwed up. And you may not like the idea of abortion, but you also probably don't like the money that comes from YOUR taxes that ends up paying the childcare after someone who can't take care of a baby has one and thrusts it into the government's hands. Or would you rather let the child grow up in a piss poor environment and leave the government out of it entirely? Either way, it's a shitty life you're sending those children into. I tell you what, I know a lot of people at my church who would love to adopt children but can't because of beaurocratic nonsense. Maybe instead of aborting kids we should be fixing the broken fostering system in america. As far as abortion goes, it's the mothers choice. If they're unable to provide for a child, why should they? I'd think it much better a child be brought into a home that is prepared and wanting, than to have both parents and child struggle for the next two decades or so. It's not fun for either. No home is prepared and waiting just like it will always be difficult to raise a child. My nephew was a surprise baby and his parents weren't yet married. I find it sickening to think this kid whom we all love so much could've been taken away before we ever met him. I'm in no way anxious to have a kid (my wife is another story) but I can't see every just getting rid of it because it's inconveinent. Every child is inconvenient, planned or not. I've heard it said that you will never know how truly selfish you are until you have children. I've also heard it said that you will never give so much to someone who gives so little in return. Children take your time, your money and so much more. They're worth every second, penny and ounce of love in return but some people never see it that way. Parenthood by defninition is about sacrifice. Edited February 2, 2012 by Yantelope V2 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deanb Posted February 2, 2012 Report Share Posted February 2, 2012 I tell you what, I know a lot of people at my church who would love to adopt children but can't because of beaurocratic nonsense. Maybe instead of aborting kids we should be fixing the broken fostering system in america. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thorgi Duke of Frisbee Posted February 2, 2012 Author Report Share Posted February 2, 2012 (edited) Someday I, too, might like to raise a kid of my own. Unfortunately, child adoption centers are allowed to deny gay couples adoption because of their own prejudicial views. That's another thing the government has to fix, since it isn't getting any better by letting the adoption centers decide for themselves. Also, it's amazing that you're a father, Yantelope, but don't you think that having a kid may have skewed your views on it somewhat? Like, you may be just thinking of your own kid instead of the bigger picture with these kinds of arguments? Edited February 2, 2012 by DukeOfPwn 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yantelope V2 Posted February 2, 2012 Report Share Posted February 2, 2012 (edited) Of course having a child has skewed my views. That's exactly what I meant when I said "have a kid, it'll change your feelings on abortion". I didn't mean that it would necessarily change your world view but it will give you a different perspective on what it actually is to terminate a human pregnancy and how much life there is in an unborn child. We could argue big picture but personally I'm not really interested in it too much. Big picture makes it easy to rationalize. it's much harder to rationalize the ending of one life because it was inconveniencing another especially when the actions of the second (usually) led to the creation of the first. Edited February 2, 2012 by Yantelope V2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thorgi Duke of Frisbee Posted February 2, 2012 Author Report Share Posted February 2, 2012 Fair point. Big picture may be dehumanizing the discussion, and I do think humanity is the #1 reason why it's such a contested subject. If only there was a way for this conflict to be resolved so that abortion and anti-abortion parties could be satisfied. Unfortunately, it's going to be one or the other, and people will cry foul when the ball drops. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post Johnny Posted February 2, 2012 Popular Post Report Share Posted February 2, 2012 Honestly, this may sound like an oversimplification and also pretty harsh, but I think it's the only way to go about it: Don't like abortions? Don't get one, and stop trying to make the same choice for everyone else. 6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr. GOH! Posted February 2, 2012 Report Share Posted February 2, 2012 (edited) we're supposed to cater to the grand majority not the minimum. From the Mass Effect thread. Not to pick on WaS, cause I know I'm taking this comment completely out of context, but it just made me think of the attitude that I think is a huge problem in American politics; people act like the majority should be catered to at the expense of all others. Tyranny by majority is still tyranny, and the whole reason we have things like the first amendment is to protect the minority from the majority. Just because most people like one thing doesn't mean we should force it down the throats of everyone else. Again, specific comment taken entirely out of context, so don't take this as me attacking you WaS. Carolene Products, Footnote 4. Edit: Oh my. I've missed a lot. First, re: taxes. A consumption tax is an awfully regressive tax. It'll eat into the bottom lines of those least able to afford it. Also, the rich benefit more from the laws than the poor because it is the law that structures the the groundwork for doing business. The law is a creature of government. They benefit disproportionately from a creature of the government, therefore it is fair that, as income rises, one pays in progressively more. Personally, I don't care about fairness. I just think it's more economically efficient for the rich to be taxed more than the poor, but ideologues who worship von Mises's fever dreams of a perfect free market aren't gonna buy it. Second re: Planned Parenthood. PP is always going to be under investigation because conservatives hate it. The rule also ONLY affects Komen's relationship with PP. The rule was made to cut out PP. Fine. They should have been open about it. They should have expected a huge backlash. I support the backlash and will cease supporting Komen (which is also notorious for suing other similar organizations on ridiculous trademark issues, wasting everyone's money) and support a different breast cancer diagnosis support charity. The abortion issue is not resolvable between the two sides because we simply cannot agree upon when life begins; any objective measurement chosen would be arbitrary. On abortion, I am pro-choice but also pro-life. I do not think it is my decision to make for a woman or couple up to a point, but I would, if asked, urge people not to abort. Re: adoption. I have no idea what bureaucratic hurdles you refer to, Yantelope. I'd be interested in hearing about them because it's a complaint I hear often but don't know much about. Edited February 2, 2012 by Mr. GOH! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thursday Next Posted February 2, 2012 Report Share Posted February 2, 2012 Abortion has to be the choice of the person carrying the baby. Also, I'm pretty sure that abortions have to be carried out well before the kicking phase. When exactly does a foetus become a baby? When it's two cells? four cells? four thousand cells? The human body will reject a foetus that can't be carried to full term because of a defect, it can also miscarry if the mother is too frail to carry the infant to full term. As a species we've evolved to be able to use reason, if we reason that carrying the child to full term we would then not be able to support it, or that it would suffer from a low or no quality of life then we should be allowed to induce a miscarriage. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheMightyEthan Posted February 2, 2012 Report Share Posted February 2, 2012 Alright, I wrote this last night but the forum quit working so I didn't get to post it: There's something about feeling the baby kicking in your wife's belly. Something about hearing that heart beating on the monitor. It makes it all very much more real and much less hypothetical. Will it change your philosophical stance? I don't know but it sure hardened my belief that children who aren't born are still children. I can't speak for everyone but I'm certainly not talking about abortions being performed anything later than 3 months, or at least not what you could call "elective" abortions. A couple years ago I actually did a bunch of research on this because I was discussing the issue with a pro-life friend in law school. I'm not going to repeat all my research now, so forgive me if I get some facts wrong: For me the philosophical basis of saying you shouldn't kill something is if it's a conscious being, "consciousness" being defined as "being aware of its own existence". (To expand on that I'd say you shouldn't cause pain to something capable of experiencing pain, but that's a separate topic.) Because I view not killing conscious beings as a very important goal, I say we should err on the side of caution to avoid doing so. The part of the brain believed to be responsible for consciousness as I've defined (ie more than just "not being asleep") is (IIRC, I'm not 100% sure, this was a while ago and I am not a brain expert) the cerebral cortex. So a being, or at least a mammal, cannot be conscious without electrical activity in that part of the brain. The earliest (again, IIRC) point at which electrical activity has been recorded in the cerebral cortex is at about 20 weeks, or just under 5 months, and at that point it's sporadic rather than continuous. That would be the cutoff age for abortion assuming two things: 1) we can detect the activity as soon as it's there, and 2) consciousness begins with the first electrical activity in that part of the brain. I don't think either of those are good assumptions. However, given everything we know saying that the earliest a fetus could conceivably attain consciousness is 5 months, and that I want to err on the side of caution, I decided that 3 months is a good cutoff. Again, I may have gotten some of the facts mixed up in my memory, but I do remember that I decided that 3 months was after building in a significant factor of safety. That's my 0.02. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yantelope V2 Posted February 2, 2012 Report Share Posted February 2, 2012 (edited) Honestly, this may sound like an oversimplification and also pretty harsh, but I think it's the only way to go about it: Don't like abortions? Don't get one, and stop trying to make the same choice for everyone else. Hmmmm... That's about as trite as saying "Don't like murder? Don't kill anyone, and stop trying to make the same choice for everyone else." I know the question of when life begins is what everyone would love to talk about but for me the question that is more important is when life ends. It's a question that has an answer and in our society we let women decide when to end life. Women can make a choice to keep children from inconvenienceing their lives. It's the rhertoric from my president that bothers me so much. Obama recently said “And as we remember this historic anniversary, we must also continue our efforts to ensure that our daughters have the same rights, freedoms, and opportunities as our sons to fulfill their dreams.” It's this idea that our dreams are more important than the life of a child. The idea that a career or a vacation or financial well being is more important to us than bringing another life into this world is repulsive to me. Edited February 2, 2012 by Yantelope V2 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deanb Posted February 2, 2012 Report Share Posted February 2, 2012 Well apart from abortions and murder not being the same. Or we going to start suggesting people stop getting chemo too? Campaign against the removal of all rapidly dividing cellular matter with detrimental health issues! edit: Yante just so we're clear you are aware that if you have an abortion at 18 or whatever, that it doesn't stop you from having kids ever again for the rest of your life. They only remove the fetus, not the womb. There's millions of potential children inside a woman. Every month an egg goes unfertelised that's a potential child gone. There are miscarriages, there are still births, there are genetic deffects*. Yet it's only when this choice is made by free will that people take an issue with it. I'd say it's much better that parents go on to live their life, to advance in a career and to be able to provide and care for a child than getting knocked up when young and stupid and having a detrimental experience to both parents and child**. *one of my "potential" sisters, would have been born with severe brain issues. I can't remember the exact name "d-something syndrome" (not downs). Would have lived a few years. The choice was made to terminate. Since then I have two healthy beautiful and loved siblings. Would you really advocate bringing a child into the world that would spend its short time suffering itself, while also bring pain and anguish to it's family? **Did I ever mention my mum's 42? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post Thorgi Duke of Frisbee Posted February 2, 2012 Author Popular Post Report Share Posted February 2, 2012 Honestly, this may sound like an oversimplification and also pretty harsh, but I think it's the only way to go about it: Don't like abortions? Don't get one, and stop trying to make the same choice for everyone else. Hmmmm... That's about as trite as saying "Don't like murder? Don't kill anyone, and stop trying to make the same choice for everyone else." That's like saying masturbation is murder. After all, why stop when the sperm has merely fertilized? The "potential" (a word anti-abortion people love throwing around) is still there for a child in our sperm cells, after all! Using that kind of logic, it's like we're sending millions of children to death every time we knock one off! Hell, even THINKING about sex and not having it is theoretically denying the chance for hundreds of children to be born (since let's be honest, sex is on the mind rather often)! We've all practically committed genocide now, haven't we? Yes, I'm being extreme with my example, but that's only because calling abortion murder is just as ridiculous and offensive, if not more so. 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yantelope V2 Posted February 2, 2012 Report Share Posted February 2, 2012 (edited) Johnny's comment is trite because it makes the assumption that I should not care about another person's actions. If I think another person is doing something wrong, for example: murder, then I have a responsibility to try to stop that person. Edited February 2, 2012 by Yantelope V2 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deanb Posted February 2, 2012 Report Share Posted February 2, 2012 But you're just making it into a broad spectrum, as exampled by Duke. Do you stand outside tattoo parlours campaigning that people shouldn't get tattoos? It's peoples own body and they're free to do with it as they will. It's why I hate current anti-euthanasia laws. If people want to die that should be entirely their own choice. At most the laws should provide guidelines on how, not just stop it outright. Same with abortion; provide a legal and defined way of doing it, so there's no back street "doctors" doing it with a coat hanger or whatever, but don't stop it completely. Which is what will happen, you can't stop abortion. If there's no easy and cheap/free legal means of doing it, young women will end up going to some doctors they found on craiglist and get some shitty hack job done, downing whatever cocktail of pills are suggested or what not. People should be free to do as they will to their own bodies. Murder is killing someone else. It's my same opposition to needless circumcision of baby boys. But if people want a tattoo, abortion, death, then it's their body and their choice and consequences. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post TheMightyEthan Posted February 2, 2012 Popular Post Report Share Posted February 2, 2012 I know the question of when life begins is what everyone would love to talk about but for me the question that is more important is when life ends. It's a question that has an answer and in our society we let women decide when to end life. But by saying an abortion is "ending life" you're presupposing that "life" has already begun. You can't end something that hasn't started yet, and the answer to whether or not you're ending a life requires that you first answer what constitutes a life, so the answer is not as simple as you make it out to be. 6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Battra92 Posted February 2, 2012 Report Share Posted February 2, 2012 Johnny's comment is trite because it makes the assumption that I should not care about another person's actions. If I think another person is doing something wrong, for example: murder, then I have a responsibility to try to stop that person. Exactly! It's the exact same reason I am opposed to assisted suicide. Perhaps this comes more from being a Christian and believing in the divine spark that all of us created in His image possess. Life is precious and whether you live 10 years or 100 years, you must never, ever squander it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheMightyEthan Posted February 2, 2012 Report Share Posted February 2, 2012 @Dean: I've read that the most effective way to prevent abortions is to provide cheap/free access to contraception, especially for teens (based on actual studies, but no I'm not going to track it down right now). Sadly many of the same groups who are opposed to abortion are also opposed to giving people contraceptives, especially teens. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yantelope V2 Posted February 2, 2012 Report Share Posted February 2, 2012 Talking about when life begins becomes a matter of opinion and even belief at some point. I'm not going to go so far as to say masturbation is murder but I also don't want to go specifically down this road of deciding at exactly what point life begins so I can make sure I terminate it 1 second before it becomes conscious. Whether early term abortion is better than late term is neither here nor there to me personally. Is it a question worth discussing? Yes. If you want my honest opinion I'd say that life begins at conception but I'm not going to try to argue that right now. A simpler question, the one that people really should focus more attention on is the choice that a woman makes. Isn't that the whole argument anyway? The freedom of choice? What is the choice the woman is making? The choice many times boils down to "Do I want to be inconvenienced by this child?" 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thursday Next Posted February 2, 2012 Report Share Posted February 2, 2012 Totally agree with Ethan. You can't end a life that hasn't begun and all the evidence we have suggests that you have to be well into the second trimester before anything like what I would call Life begins. Arguing that preventing the potential survival of an offspring is tantamount to killing them is a dangerous path. It's the same rhetoric that the church has been preaching in Africa to discourage the use of condoms and has resulted in a huge number of easily preventable deaths due to AIDS and other STIs. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheMightyEthan Posted February 2, 2012 Report Share Posted February 2, 2012 A simpler question, the one that people really should focus more attention on is the choice that a woman makes. Isn't that the whole argument anyway? The freedom of choice? What is the choice the woman is making? The choice many times boils down to "Do I want to be inconvenienced by this child?" If I were being pedantic I'd change that to "a child" since "this child" carries the connotations that there is already a child, but otherwise I'd agree that that's the choice they're making. Then the philosophical question is whether or not they have the right to answer "no" and get an abortion. Many people on both sides of the issue (myself included) say that the answer to that question turns on whether the child/fetus/whatever in question has a right to live, and that question turns on whether it's a person yet or not, or at least whether it's "alive" yet or not. That's how we wind up with discussing when life starts, because that's what controls whether you're destroying a person or with rights or whether you're destroying a non-living thing with no rights. If it's a person with rights then it's well established that society can step in and prevent you from making that choice (see: murder), but if it's a non-living thing with no rights then at least in free societies the basic agreement is that it's none of society's business what you do (see: getting a mole removed, or any of the myriad forms of elective body modification). 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yantelope V2 Posted February 2, 2012 Report Share Posted February 2, 2012 (edited) @TN By Ethan's own admisison you're not discussing "life" you're discussing "consciousness" which is a far more dangerous path to discuss IMO. Edited February 2, 2012 by Yantelope V2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheMightyEthan Posted February 2, 2012 Report Share Posted February 2, 2012 (edited) The reason I chose consciousness is because that's what defines whether or not our society considers it wrong to kill/hurt something (and I happen to agree with that approach). That's why you don't get charged with a crime for burning your fields but it would be a crime to set a dog on fire. Edited February 2, 2012 by TheMightyEthan altered analogy to make more sense 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deanb Posted February 2, 2012 Report Share Posted February 2, 2012 Johnny's comment is trite because it makes the assumption that I should not care about another person's actions. If I think another person is doing something wrong, for example: murder, then I have a responsibility to try to stop that person. Exactly! It's the exact same reason I am opposed to assisted suicide. Perhaps this comes more from being a Christian and believing in the divine spark that all of us created in His image possess. Life is precious and whether you live 10 years or 100 years, you must never, ever squander it. Well that's fine and dandy, but if the person is not a Christian then they're not restricted by these religious ideologies. You are free as your religion dictates to not have an abortion, and to live until death forcefully takes you from your feeble body. Just as someone else who does not follow these beliefs is free to have an abortion or assisted suicide or wear a condom or whatever. I'm with you guys on the whole "murder is wrong" thing. Same as I'm dead set against smoking. You are causing harm to someone else. But if someone wants to drink themselves under the table, as long as they don't get in a car after, I'm fine with them doing it. They're only trashing their own body. I don't like fake tits, if someone wants to get them, it's their body. Your body is the one thing that is truly your own and I find it absurd this idea that you can have laws imposing upon you what you can do it. This idea that we would impose years of suffering upon people because you shouldn't squander human life. Yet we call it "humane" to put down an animal in the same position. retarded is what it is. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yantelope V2 Posted February 2, 2012 Report Share Posted February 2, 2012 Re: adoption. I have no idea what bureaucratic hurdles you refer to, Yantelope. I'd be interested in hearing about them because it's a complaint I hear often but don't know much about. Oh yeah, forgot to respond to this too. Apparently from people I've talked to it costs in excess of $10,000 usually in all the fees and legal costs just to adopt a child. That's one problem. Additionally, I know a couple who is married, they already have a child and they are in their mid 30's and have been trying to adopt for year unsuccessfully. Truly I don't know why they were so unsuccessful but eventually they finally went to Geuatamala and adopted a small boy from there. That also was not easy. Anway, I find it extremely frustrating that there are apparently tons of kids who need homes and many familys with homes and our government is unable to pair them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thursday Next Posted February 2, 2012 Report Share Posted February 2, 2012 I don't really want to argue semantics so I'll just say that in my opinion conciousness defines life. If something should happen to me and I were to be rendered "brain-dead" I would want my organs harvested for transplants and what remains to go to science. By the same token, if a bundle of cells has yet to achieve life / conciousness / sentience / whatever, then I don't think it should qualify as a person and as such it should be the woman's choice whether she wants to continue with the pregnancy or not. How do you stand on "morning after pills"? Are they ok because it's potentially a potential child? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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