A valid political point - How are liberals pro-abortion but anti-torture?

Thanks to all who have posted in my absence.

I have a new question. I see many people who are pro-choice say that they are not pro-abortion. Many go on to say that they dont believe in abortion but believe others should have the choice to do it. My question is under what grounds do you find it wrong to have an abortion, that makes it wrong for you but justifiable for someone else?

Abortion isnt like drinking where you hurt yourself but usually no anyone else and so its understandable that a person could find drinking a wrong choice for them but right for others. In abortion the potential life of that child is ended so then someone else is harmed.

Anyway, just wanted to understand that reasoning better. Thanks for any help you can give me.

reply to post by justsomeboreddude


We all know that I love my right to choose.

It is not okay to have an abortion if you are having unprotected sex. If you aren't even -attempting- to use birth control, then you kind of brought it onto yourself. Just like if you've already had one abortion and have not changed your lifestyle/methods of control/prescription, you shouldn't get another. If you're not seeing a medical professional about your lifestyle and birth control, such as a primary care physician, midwife, OBGYN, etc, then you should really not be permitted to have an abortion. If you're irresponsible about your body, you should not be able to. You should learn the consequences of being reckless. Birth control pills are inexpensive. You just pop them with your vitamins and it's fine.

But that's just because I'm really responsible and don't understand why other people aren't. However, if you're using protection, or if you were raped, or if you already have a lot of kids, or if you honestly cannot afford or are not ready financially or in a stable family setting to go through with a healthy pregnancy before keeping the child or giving it up for adoption, you should have the choice to abort.

[edit on 5/13/2009 by ravenshadow13]

Originally posted by justsomeboreddude
How is it that liberals are against torture but pro abortion? So its not ok to torture your enemy but it is ok to end your childs life? Can someone please explain?

Well to make it simple.
A woman has the right to choose what happens to her body as she is the host.

I torture victim doesn't have the right to choose what happens to their body.

Originally posted by justsomeboreddude
Abortion isnt like drinking where you hurt yourself but usually no anyone else and so its understandable that a person could find drinking a wrong choice for them but right for others. In abortion the potential life of that child is ended so then someone else is harmed.

Further example of rhetorical arguments appealing to Pathos and Ethos, you are assigning personhood to a cluster of cells, of which a not insignificant portion of the populace deferrs to them being pre-entity.

Your failure at comprehension is rooted in your need to assign an anthropomorphized sense of responsibility towards a thing which cannot survive without sustainment from the host entity (The Mother).

Through assignment of such human qualities to a non-human entity (If you'd like to have the argument, we can try and define what is and is not human as well), you are tipping your hand that your involvement in the topic is an emotional one.

Through defining the cluster of cells, or the pre-viable fetus the rights of a "CHILD" you lend it qualities or assignments which you feel are "Deserved" but which have no logical basis in science.

Thank you for playing.

Originally posted by ravenshadow13
It is not okay to have an abortion if you are having unprotected sex. If you aren't even -attempting- to use birth control, then you kind of brought it onto yourself.

Error. You are appealing to an argument of morality and implicating fornication with the purpose of procreation alone. Fault implicates a responsibility to prevent an action, and puts an onus of negativity upon those who use abortion as a form of birth control. Granted, I do not advocate or support people that do so, but examined from a strictly neutral and un-encumbered standpoint there is zero harm being committed to any but the person receiving the abortion (There are side effects).

Just like if you've already had one abortion and have not changed your lifestyle/methods of control/prescription, you shouldn't get another.

On the hospices of irresponsibility? Via same argument, I would argue that irresponsible people should be given a life-time membership to the abortion clinic, if only to prevent the spawning of wastrel children who will be further damaged by their irresponsible parent's flagrant childishness. Children should not raise children. Irresponsible fornicators shouldn't be forced to squirt out children because your views on Abortion are deeply seated.

If you're not seeing a medical professional about your lifestyle and birth control, such as a primary care physician, midwife, OBGYN, etc, then you should really not be permitted to have an abortion. If you're irresponsible about your body, you should not be able to. You should learn the consequences of being reckless. Birth control pills are inexpensive. You just pop them with your vitamins and it's fine.

No. People who are irresponsible should not be forced into parent hood as a lesson to the parents. This harms the potential individual that is serving as "The Lesson" by thrusting them into a situation where neither parent desires them.

But that's just because I'm really responsible and don't understand why other people aren't. However, if you're using protection, or if you were raped, or if you already have a lot of kids, or if you honestly cannot afford or are not ready financially or in a stable family setting to go through with a healthy pregnancy before keeping the child or giving it up for adoption, you should have the choice to abort.
[edit on 5/13/2009 by ravenshadow13]

This may be the most reasonable portion of your argument. I find that I must confess I feel strange arguing the above, but it seems poignantly apparent.

Fornicators who aren't ready for children should never have them, whatever the cost. It prevents unwanted children, it prevents adopted children who suffer always wondering why they weren't wanted, it prevents child abuse and subsequent criminal behavior in an individual who grows up sensing they were an accident that ruined mommy and daddy's plans.

reply to post by TheColdDragon


Maybe you are right that part of my argument is emotional. Obviously I dont desire to see people choose to kill their own children. To me it is just pathetic that people choose not to live up their responsibility and the consequences of their actions. To me it is kind of the equivalent of driving drunk and killing someone and then getting no consequences for that. You didnt mean to do it, but it happened. You should pay for your mistakes and make the best of it and learn from it. I do see your point about the irresponsible folks. Not sure what we do about that.

reply to post by justsomeboreddude


I was merely trying to illuminate you to the perspective that many people share. What you are doing is projecting a sense of emotion and morality onto a thing. You are making a thing into a child, because you perceive it to be a child... or you want it to be a child.

Your brain, likely, is equating the potential in a fetus or embryo to already living and developed children you have interacted with. You are imparting your own emotional feelings about those children onto an entity which means almost nothing to most people. Even to the pregnant woman having her first child, the reality of what is growing within them is vastly different in respects to the reality of the eventual being that develops well after they are born.

In short, you are imparting qualities that cannot be scientifically proven to exist to something that may or may not even retain such qualities, and certainly does not have a value equivalent on a scale of unborn to already developed human.

THE TAKING OF HUMAN LIFE IS MURDER REGARDLESS OF AGE.

So you're all saying basically that liberal people should have the choice of wheither or not they want to end their child's life, rather than a conservative government dictating that the child should have a chance at life?

THE TAKING OF HUMAN LIFE IS MURDER REGARDLESS OF AGE.

Abortion should only be an option when it is proven that the pregnancy is a product of rape, or if the mother will have health complications as a result.

THE TAKING OF HUMAN LIFE IS MURDER REGARDLESS OF AGE.

Do you accept that?

reply to post by TheColdDragon


Well I disagree with that. I am not projecting anything onto the fetus. I am saying that it is a life because given the chance to become a life it will become one. It certainly wont become anything else if it lives to birth.

reply to post by TheColdDragon


Wow, you are so cold-hearted. Or just really misguided. I pity you.

You are destroying the potential for human life, regardless of how science defends it by warping reason. And that is something a moral person can only do in a sick world.

Assigning emotional value is quite acceptable when dealing with HUMAN LIFE. Shame on you.

Quite simply, it comes down to the issue of autonomy. Once we start stripping people of the basic right of domain over their own person, everything goes downhill from that point forth. It is amazing that some people have no problem willing to strip away a very fundamental right (autonomy) from literally half the population.

I can almost guarantee that if the tables were turned and men were forced to abstain from sex without express government approval stamped in triplicate, this would be a non-issue. Seems silly doesn't it, but I sincerely doubt that men in general would be so willing to give up an ounce of their autonomy.

Remember, it takes two to tango. It's ridiculous to attempt to curb the right of autonomy to women regarding abortion, when men play a fairly significant role in the whole procreation process.

Regarding victims of torture, again the issue of autonomy comes to the forefront. These people have absolutely zero control as to what happens to them, as they are at the mercy of their tormentors.

Also, it's pretty lame that the OP has attempted to paint this as liberal-vs.-conservative issue. Believe it or not, there are women who are pro-choice that are represented in all political parties. It seems the OP is insistent on painting this as a strictly liberal cause for no other reason than to bait and sling mud.

[edit on 5/13/2009 by maria_stardust]

reply to post by maria_stardust


Actually if you read page 2 of this thread I apologize for saying this was a liberal only point of view.

reply to post by mostlyspoons


No, I do believe I was quite clear in pointing out that a fetus and an embryo is not a child, and to correlate the two of them is to do a disservice to children.

You cannot argue that they are the same, as one can self sustain while the other is incapable of surviving hours without life support.

Lending qualities which do not exist scientifically to an entity does not strengthen your argument, it weakens it.

Originally posted by justsomeboreddude
Actually if you read page 2 of this thread I apologize for saying this was a liberal only point of view.

Ahhh, now I see it. Sometimes things get overlooked in a long thread. Glad that bit is cleared up.

reply to post by maria_stardust


No problem. Sorry for being controversial. Sometimes I should think before I type.

reply to post by TheColdDragon

You cannot argue that they are the same, as one can self sustain while the other is incapable of surviving hours without life support.

Really? Well, then you have never heard of live birth abortions. Obama voted in support of even them. Those children aborted late that survived the abortion initially, are then murdered, even though they would survive. That seems pretty evident to be murder, regardless of whether you accept the unborn as children.

Originally posted by justsomeboreddude
reply to post by TheColdDragon

 

Well I disagree with that. I am not projecting anything onto the fetus. I am saying that it is a life because given the chance to become a life it will become one. It certainly wont become anything else if it lives to birth.

Qualifiers: If it lives to birth. It is not life if it cannot sustain itself, definitionally, it is a parasite. I am speaking, of course, from an aloof standpoint to the conversation as I have no emotion invested one way or another.

You are giving it the quality that other entities you validate and recognize as sentient via premonitional possibility.

Probability would dictate that without its support structure, the fetus or embryo will die. There are esoteric qualities being juxtaposed atop the literal existance of the cluster of cells, the blastocyst, or the partially formed entity.

Women have a tendency to bleed even after impregnation, and in many cases they will spontaneously miscarry without ever having known they are pregnant. To quantify that the act of inducement of such a process is murder, whereas the accidental menstruation is not is to lend an intangible variable into the mix.

Essentially, you defiantly state that an unborn... something is a life. You believe this, I have no doubt. Others do not and you will not convince them otherwise, because your arguments are based and rooted in supernaturalism; the assumptive presumption that a germinating egg or blastocyst is "Life" and "A Child".

reply to post by TheColdDragon


I disagree. It does not weaken it. I know that a zygote cant live without support. What I am saying is that if you give a human zygote support it will become a human being, barring any complications. So therefore it is a human life. You are entitled to whatever view you want. To me, it just seems that pro-abortionists must take that view, because if you didnt then it would impossible to see abortion as anything less than a mother having her own child murdered.

Originally posted by mostlyspoons
reply to post by TheColdDragon

 

Wow, you are so cold-hearted. Or just really misguided. I pity you.

It is due to note that my title and the subsequent texts which proceed it are all chosen for reason and purpose, and are not subsequently fluff or indicative of "Cool". I am as I describe myself.

You are destroying the potential for human life, regardless of how science defends it by warping reason. And that is something a moral person can only do in a sick world.

I am reasoning with logos alone, devoid of Pathos or Ethos. In my reality, there are no moral absolutes... and so morality becomes nothing but a convenient social game played by the general populace; resulting in either nuisance behavior or bemusement.

Aside, I would note that I am destroying no such thing. I state, and reason, but I have no more murdered the gametes and gonads of the world than I have eaten of human flesh. Not that I would be adverse or inclined to either, dependent upon infinite degree of variability.

The world is a perceptual thing, and as previously stated, by quantifying a germinating egg or blastocyst with "LIFE", you may technically be correct, but it has more in common with parasitism (Reliant and draining upon the host) than the eventual outcome of development and training.

Assigning emotional value is quite acceptable when dealing with HUMAN LIFE. Shame on you.

In my experience, Pathos and Ethos are the prime contributors in animalistic behaviorism... and subsequently the woes and ills of mankind stem directly from either (A) Emotions clouding judgment. (B) The avid belief that you have uncovered the moral mechanisms which govern all men.

The first biases every human being as they defer to emotion and are controlled by its sway, rather than recognize its presence, acknowledge the feeling and let Logos discern and override the unnecessarily harmful impulses.

The Second deceives mankind into the assumption that they know what is best, and the truth bears out that nobody can agree on THAT.

Originally posted by ProfEmeritus
reply to post by TheColdDragon
Really? Well, then you have never heard of live birth abortions. Obama voted in support of even them. Those children aborted late that survived the abortion initially, are then murdered, even though they would survive. That seems pretty evident to be murder, regardless of whether you accept the unborn as children.

If one were discerning, one would surmise that I do not infer the above not to be murder. As was stated in a prior conjunct of reason, Paglia would state all abortion is murder.

One should not assume my coldnness in reason to be indicative of a truth of intent.

In rebuttal, however, to note is that in circumstances which should not have to be elucidated upon, there are events when it may be more merciful and benefiscent to commit murder than allow the damaged to live.

The prior statement shall likely illicit ingrained responses of "Who are you to decide who is too damaged to live?", with the unspoken sentiment that playing god is a nefarious and vile thing.

In rebuttal to this sentiment, I state; "In Logos, god is irrelevant and a non-argument."