Why abortion is legal - why it is not wrong, murder or genocide.

reply to post by Gorman91


Did perfectly fine without, thank you very much. Whether it is abortion or not, men do not have the best track record when it comes to being responsible about their offspring, born or not.



Edited to add: Or how about the guy who convince their partners to go without a condom because they don't like the feel of a latex barrier or that he'll be "careful" and pull out in time? The women is naive for believing it, but isn't the worse fault with the guy? Sexual education in school is a joke.

reply to post by Dendro


Neither do women. What does it matter? Humanity in case you haven't realized, has a horrible track record with... humanity.


Then they are incorrect to have believed in such things. The life is not invalidated because of that. If you prick the wrong friends, you get stabbed in the back. If you pick the wrong religion, assuming it's true, you go to hell. if you pick the wrong belief in a politician, you get betrayed, and if you believe the wrong statements, you get played.

Ergo, always be doubting. Always be secure. Your failure to do so is irrelevant when asking if a life is valid.

reply to post by Gorman91


Yes, some women do abandon their kids, but that is around 16% (the number of single father families) versus the overwhelming 84% of single mother families. So I'm comfortable making the generalization that if more men actually took responsibility for their actions rather than running away like cowards, abortion rates would decrease dramatically.

reply to post by Dendro


True. men suck. Not going to lie. I try to uphold a higher standard. But all humans have the same potential. And the rate of loser fathers has no case for justifying abortions. If you run, hunt them down, take their money, and give it to the woman.

reply to post by MindSpin


I never claimed to be infallible. At the time that I originally joined this thread "biologically self-sufficient" was the term I decided to use. It may not be scientifically accurate but, it does describe the way I define unborn life.

able to supply one's own or its own needs without external assistance

First, you left out the word biologically. When you add that word to self sufficient it describes exactly what I mean. Those that for one reason or another cannot biologically or physiologically sustain their own existence. I am referring to such things as stable heart beat, breathing, blood pressure, ETC. Basically, all of the unconscious actions of a human body that keep that body ticking independently.

There are many humans that don't meet this criteria of yours. Newborns, infants, some elderly, some physically handicapped, and some mentally handicapped. None of those meet this criteria of "self-sufficient"...are all of these people not "human life"??? Is it ok to kill all these people because they are not "self-sufficient"?

This thread is about abortion. The termination of a Zygote, Embryo, or Fetus. This thread is not about "BORN" human life and my biologically self sufficient description does not apply to newborns, infants, disabled, ETC. You are adding these unrelated scenarios to a topic that is not covering them. Yes, they are human life. However, if a person needs a ventilator, dialysis or even something as simple as Insulin, technically that person would not be "biologically self sufficient" - even though that person would most likely live just fine(depending on the seriousness of the situation). You are putting words into my mouth by suggesting that these people are not human life and are taking my argument in regards to the unborn out of context.

Like I said...I think what you mean is "self-sustaining". And when it is used in the biological definition of life, it is in regards to "self-sustaining chemical reactions". A fetus has self-sustainng chemical reactions and processes...as long as it is provided food and a safe environment.

You are right, that example is true. However, your fetus depends on the mother for it's development.

This goes for us as well...as long as we are provided external food and a safe environment, we are self-sustaining. This is all the mother does for the fetus, no different than a mother does for a newborn infant. And like I said before, there are many humans that can't provide food and shelter on their own.

1st sentence: Completely unrelated to the topic of abortion.
2nd sentence: You are right in that regard but the safe environment of the womb is infinitely more complex than a crib. What is your point here?
3rd sentence: Once again, unrelated to abortion.

2) Human women do not lay eggs like chickens. Your "hypotheses" is meaningless. Female chickens and humans do not share the exact same reproductive traits.

I think it is a perfectly valid scenario. The only difference is that the egg is external for the chicken and internal for humans. Biologically, there isn't much difference.

I know next to nothing about chicken mating. Perhaps I spoke to soon in regards to my original reply about the chickens.

This is debatable...because you are mis-using the biological definition of life. It doesn't have to be self-sufficient...a lot of life isn't...it only has to be chemically self-sustaining.

Refer to my explanation at the top.

But you seem to go a step further here...and say that a "fetus" isn't a human until it is born. So are you saying you support abortions up to they day they are born? 8 months into pregnancy? 9 months into pregnancy? That is kind of sick, I think even most pro-choice folks would disagree with that position.

I guess you could say that. One of my main themes in the majority of my replies is the personal choice of the woman. At that late of a term I would much rather see the "fetus" born and given into adoption or raised by the parents. I think it would be reprehensible to abort at such a late term but the decision is not mine to make.

Yeah...I guess so would murder

Frankly....baby killers disgust me.

Murder is illegal. Abortion is not. You are bringing your personal set of moral and ethical beliefs into this debate and I can only assume that you are attempting to force those beliefs on everyone else. Deride abortionists as baby killers all you like. This does not change the fact that it is your personal belief. Others do not see the issue in the same light as you.

I was too harsh when I said anti-abortionists disgust me. I simply disagree with them completely. As I have stated many times during this thread: Personal choice is the deciding factor in a situation where an abortion is considered. Anything else - including your personal beliefs and my personal beliefs - are next to irrelevant when a woman chooses to abort her pregnancy. It is her choice. It is as simple as that.

I believe your argument is perfectly sound and logical. I can't see how anyone could logically, or legally, counter your position.
If you don't mind, I'd like to say that my position is that of the soul.
Those who truly have the gift can tell when the soul enters the body. Its usually in the seventh month, but not always. I kept my soul out until after my body was born, for example.
I believe a body is not a person until he/she has a soul. Gifted people could decide whether the soul is present, or not, and the decision to abort could be based on that.

Originally posted by Dendro
reply to post by Gorman91

 

Yes, some women do abandon their kids, but that is around 16% (the number of single father families) versus the overwhelming 84% of single mother families. So I'm comfortable making the generalization that if more men actually took responsibility for their actions rather than running away like cowards, abortion rates would decrease dramatically.

Single father families are not always caused by the woman abandoning her children.

I know of one where the woman left.
I know of two where the men won custody from women who wanted to keep the children.
In one of those cases the child , at 15, was seduced by her father's promises of presents and no rules and demanded the right to live with him. She regretted it soon after but was too proud to go back. Although she lives with her father her mother still loves and supports her.
And I know three widowed men who have bravely supported their children after the death of their mothers.

You must be careful with statistics. Things are not always as they seem.


I wholeheartedly agree that there would be far fewer abortions if men were prepared to father the babies they make. Often the women is prepared to, if she can raise the child with its father, but does not feel able to raise it on her own. There are many single women who would love to be settling down with a good man and raising a family, but are unable to find a man willing to make a commitment.

So the men make babies and refuse to become fathers, and then the women get all the blame for refusing to become single parents.

Originally posted by Gorman91
reply to post by Dendro

 

True. men suck. Not going to lie. I try to uphold a higher standard. But all humans have the same potential. And the rate of loser fathers has no case for justifying abortions. If you run, hunt them down, take their money, and give it to the woman.

It's not just the money. Poverty makes things worse, but -

Bringing up a family on my own with no emotional support has not only been excruciatingly lonely at times, but it's made it almost impossible, at times, to keep reacting in a sane manner and to not do terrible things. There are times when I've had to lock myself in the bathroom to get away from the children and calm down when my temper was getting out of control, leaving my kids having to cope on their own.

It takes emotional support to be a good parent, and money does not provide that.

Plus your utopian idea of giving the man's money to the woman if he runs is rarely going to happen.
In Australia the government tries to enforce that, but the mother still only gets a pittance here unless the guy is filthy rich, and many guys just move interstate, go on the dole or work for cash in order to avoid the payments.

So a woman, when choosing whether or not to have an abortion, cannot assume she will have any financial help from the father.

Not going to use inflammatory language on ATS.

But is abortion truly a form of systematic extermination of a specific populace?

Regarding souls, again, abortion is a sad thing that in a perfect place would not happen.

We know the world is not a perfect place.

Abortion is like War , IS Legalized murder which Society accepts ,condones, goes along with, as ''Okay'',they are still killing a living thing, whether they use the cop out ''its only a Foetus'' .Its basically a selfish ,self serving copout .not taking responsibility for your own irresponsible actions .If it sets a Precedent that,'' i can do what ever i like with my body''. Then i can then rape ,murder ,cheat, steal,do anything i want as an Anarchist and you have NO RIGHT to stop me .But if someone kills a ''Holy Animal '' like a Polar Bear ,Whale ,Elephant ,hippo etc its like a Crime against the Universe, even though as we are told, they are only products of evolution and as being the FITTEST SPECIES we have a RIGHT to Kill all of them !!!! so dont bitch to me about them,being Sacred, if i decide to shoot one or more ...... ,as I CAN DO WHATEVER I LIKE WITH MY OWN BODY

reply to post by Gorman91

And no. No benefit comes about for humanity from killing.

en.wikipedia.org...

reply to post by Kailassa


Well to be frank, then you shouldn't have kids. Not that they should be killed because you're unfit, but that they should be given to people who are fit. I've never needed emotional anything in my life. And yes, I thing that's because I never connected with my parents and so had to make up my own parents from historic figures and characters in books. I've never been able to understand the need to become dependent on emotions. Much more, it seems emotions should be a tool used to measure a situation, not to let them get in the way of functionality. And this certainly is not a gender issue. Dear sister is the same way. Granted she's an emotional wreck because of school instead of parents, it's no different really. Through different means we've come to the same conclusion. Emotions are useless for telling you hot to respond to a situation. Much rather, they are good deductions of a situation, to then be responded to logically and with thought.

So no offense to you and your kin, but you're simply going about it the wrong way. You don't need emotions to be a parent. Kids like them, but ultimately you're a good parent by teaching the little tots how not to be dumb. You can laugh together, and have fun together, but then you have to smack them one for being dumb. You're not a friend. You're a parent. But you can be a friend when it's time to be one.


And if the dude gets away with it, we have financial aid. I fail to see still how it's a problem. And if it is, you really should just give up the kid. How that affects you emotionally is purely you free choice to respond to or not. Me and my sister probably would just know what is right and not honestly care if emotions say it's sad.


reply to post by Maslo


Oh that argument. it's flawed, you know?


The death toll from abortion is something between 35-50 million. That's the population of a small European nation. One would think that if abortion actually helped people in bad areas not have kids, thus preventing criminals, that the criminal population would be decreasing. Instead, it is increasing. That's why crime rates have gone down. Abortion is quite frankly null to your argument.

Abortion rates have been on a steady decline. Also, Crime rates were decreasing before abortion were legalized. What has happened is that more people go to jail these days. Increased prison population = less criminals on the street.

Crimes were on a steady decline irregardless of abortions. This is because of increased government presence in your lives.

You cannot honestly expect to make a case that abortion lowered the crime rate when the incarceration rate has exploded since the same period in time. In addition, people who mostly do those crimes, blacks in poor neighborhoods, have been increasing in social standing since the civil rights movement. Thus decreasing their crime rate, and the overall crime rate as well.


In ergo, you really have no proof. Thanks for trying though.

Critical Thinking continues:

If YOU are in a hospital, and YOUR heart is beating and YOUR brain is showing activity, YOU have been deemed, by a court of law as being ALIVE, just on those two criteria alone; therefore, from a STRICTLY LOGICAL point of view, a fetus (unborn baby if you prefer) IS ALIVE once the heart starts beating and the brain shows activity.

I am not saying that a fetus is not "alive" before then. I am simply saying that the court's own rulings of what constitutes "life" outside of the womb should naturally be used for application to "life" inside the womb.

Additionally, if a farmer can go to jail for animal cruelty simply because he aborts a sow's future offspring (it happened), how can we justify that same action on humans? Are pigs more valuable than humans?

Critical thinking only has value if it is based in factuality and not personal hopes or preferences in behavior.

reply to post by RealAmericanPatriot


They are showing activity. The cells to those activities simply have not yet been differentiated.

You cannot go by organs,as organs can be replaced but the person still preserved. You cannot change genes and preserve the person.

reply to post by Gorman91


I consider this post ON TOPIC although it is directed at your continued responses touting supreme logic. It is the basis for your argument therefore germane. You seem to think that logic alone provides all the answers and that emotion must be removed from the equation and I take exception to that. The world IS NOT black and white despite your perfunctory attitude.

Thankfully, humans are inherently emotional and many human events simply defy logic. If logic ruled our thinking, there would likely be no Beethoven symphonies, no Picasso artful masterpieces or climbing Mt. Everest, all defy logic. We are epicurians and sentient beings. I'm generally guided by instinct and intuition as well as logic.

But since you continue to dismiss all opposing views simply by applying your criteria of pass / fail it reminds me of HAL 9000.....Daisy, Daisy. What a sad and sterile world this would be if logic ruled. No joy nor sadness, no triumph nor tragedy but rather a utterly boring and dull existence.

Logic alone without context yields a false sense of superiority. If I asked you to define wind, would you explain a clock mechanism or cool breeze? It would require an educated guess, a leap of fath, an assumption all which are counter intuitive to logic alone. (I could cite countless examples.)

So please continue to peddle your wares but I ain't buying. Pass or fail, I prefer to employ my full spectrum of human traits rarely fraught with emotion alone in order to make an informed decision on this or any other topic. Now I know why some animals eat their young. Good day!

reply to post by kinda kurious


Logic allows you to remove all things so you can enjoy those emotions clear of subjective BS in the way of it. It allows you to have an objective source for your subjectives. It allows for simple answers.

I am not saying emotions are wrong and unneeded. I am saying that it should not come first.

reply to post by Gorman91

They are showing activity. The cells to those activities simply have not yet been differentiated.

I think he meant electrical activity.

You cannot go by organs,as organs can be replaced but the person still preserved. You cannot change genes and preserve the person.

Genes are not important, it is just a string of chemicals, and could in principle be replaced by something different. It is the structure of brain that makes us worth to protect, and without this structure, there is no person. I dont know about you, but I am not my genes, genes cannot even talk. I am my brain.

reply to post by Gorman91

You cannot go by organs,as organs can be replaced but the person still preserved. You cannot change genes and preserve the person.

But you are making progress, the person is indeed what is important. All other is just unimportant and potentialy replaceable hardware. Now you just need to realize that the person (mind, sentience..) begins to exist some months after conception, not at conception. Just like the person is often destroyed before the organism itself is biologically dead (brain death), it also begins to exist some time after the organism is alive.

reply to post by Gorman91


Touting logic as supreme to all manner of human existence is full of traps, both interpretive and biased. Your stance, regrettably, avoids neither kind. Considering that a woman is driven by logic as she exercises her capacity to choose freely between two or more alternatives, you seek to deprive her that right should her decision not meet your own brand of logic in her decision.

Given that we are all inherently shaped by our experiences or perhaps more aptly in your terminology, empirical knowledge a woman faces an infinite number of considerations which only she herself is uniquely aware. Perhaps her decision doesn’t pass muster under the scrutiny of your biased clinical microscope but it is hers to make nonetheless.

I suspect there is a veiled religious variant of the placebo effect at play in your rigid stance masquerading as logic. (It’s simply the right thing to do. – oh look, a pun.) I fired my honesty seeking missile at your post and it failed to lock on any target and veered of course. Hmmmm. Quite illogical.

Originally posted by Gorman91
reply to post by Kailassa

 

Well to be frank, then you shouldn't have kids. Not that they should be killed because you're unfit, but that they should be given to people who are fit. I've never needed emotional anything in my life. And yes, I thing that's because I never connected with my parents and so had to make up my own parents from historic figures and characters in books. I've never been able to understand the need to become dependent on emotions. Much more, it seems emotions should be a tool used to measure a situation, not to let them get in the way of functionality. And this certainly is not a gender issue. Dear sister is the same way. Granted she's an emotional wreck because of school instead of parents, it's no different really. Through different means we've come to the same conclusion. Emotions are useless for telling you hot to respond to a situation. Much rather, they are good deductions of a situation, to then be responded to logically and with thought.

So no offense to you and your kin, but you're simply going about it the wrong way. You don't need emotions to be a parent. Kids like them, but ultimately you're a good parent by teaching the little tots how not to be dumb. You can laugh together, and have fun together, but then you have to smack them one for being dumb. You're not a friend. You're a parent. But you can be a friend when it's time to be one.


And if the dude gets away with it, we have financial aid. I fail to see still how it's a problem. And if it is, you really should just give up the kid. How that affects you emotionally is purely you free choice to respond to or not. Me and my sister probably would just know what is right and not honestly care if emotions say it's sad.

I posted in reply to you to teach you something about an experience which you have not had. You will never be a single mother, with no support, with three children to bring up. Yet instead of listening and learning, you arrogantly lecture me and tell me I shouldn't be a mother!

Your judgemental attitude is typical of people who are strongly anti-choice. They are always the first to turn on the women who do choose to not have abortions and to raise their children on their own. You tell me to not take offence, and then say I'm an unfit mother and my children should be taken away. And all this with no experience whatsoever of life as a single mother. I guarantee that no-one else, having to cope as I have, would have done much better.

One thing I had not mentioned was that my children each had different, completely unrelated, congenital handicaps. However a daughter with both numeric and spelling dyslexia and slight Down Syndrome is now an executive in a prestigious company, an autistic son is doing well at uni and performing, singing and playing guitar,and my very handicapped son, with an IQ of 60, can shop and cook, play many computer games, and is quality control officer at a nursery. Not only that, but they are all happy, though I guess you think happiness a waste of energy.

And btw, smacking a kid for being "dumb"?

My children are now in their thirties. They have turned out well, I'm proud of them all, and they are all glad to have me as their mother. I have also been part time mother to a niece and nephew who have parents with no emotions. The kids have stayed here when they've wanted some warmth, wanted to feel cared for, or needed a shoulder to cry on. And I've fostered a baby with "fail to thrive" until she was healthy enough to adopt out.

Even giving away Theresa, my little foster baby, half broke my heart. I could never have parted with my own children.


I suggest, Gorman, instead of judging mothers, you and your sister go and get treatment for Alexithymia .
(The alexithymic person, generally, is rigid, constricted, anxious, and withdrawn. He or she has difficulties experiencing and expressing emotion, lacks imagination, and is literal, socially conforming, and pragmatic. The patient is humourless, and lacks insight.)