What Does Abortion Have To Do With Pro-Choice?

Originally posted by Benevolent Heretic

Originally posted by ModernAcademia
Cynicism, in it's most illogical manifestation, is not anywhere close to being an explanation.

You have judged Maslo's post to be cynicism. I see it as an attempt to explain the apparent hypocrisy in a particular position - that abortion is wrong and violates the right to life - except in the case of rape or incest, as if babies made of rape or incest somehow deserve to die...

This requires an explanation. If you can't give it, that's fine. But just because you don't have an answer, doesn't mean various attempts at explanation are simply cynicism.

I'll answer this in the best way that I can, although I'm sure it still won't be good enough. Before I do that, I'd like to point out some hypocrisy, you say:

except in the case of rape or incest, as if babies made of rape or incest somehow deserve to die... This requires an explanation.

That's fair and all, but YOU have quite clearly taken the position that ALL cases of aborted babies "somehow deserved to die". How is it fair of you to talk down to those who take the position that abortion should be a last resort only for extreme cases?? You aren't in the position to be asking that in the first place IMO.

Anyway, nobody has stated that any babies DESERVE to die, please don't twist things to try and make others who have different views from you look bad. The rape case is the only case in which I personally, would say the woman should have the right to *choose* primarily because she had no control over the situation at any point. This is not the choice *I* would agree with but the woman has been victimized by a rapist in this case and not by her BF one night in a romantic sexual exchange. Yes it IS murder, there's no way around that. It's no better than any other abortion, but this was FORCED upon by a rapist and the one who should be charged with murder IMO (if the woman chooses to abort) is the rapist because he forced the situation.This is not a means in which we say other cases are "punishment for being irresponsible", this is a case of protecting rape victims, period.

If the outlook that rape is the only exception bothers those who support abortion (like that even makes sense) so much I don't think anyone would have a real issue with making it illegal across the board in all cases. Ultimately, I do believe the law would make rape cases exempt because there would be a huge outcry from rape victims. Then again I really don't know why you even care, since you think ALL cases are justified.

reply to post by Sunlionspirit

do you prefer women taking risks with their lifes ??? what woman wants woman does !!!

hmm.. You seem to imply that every back room abortion has been decided by the woman alone.. many of these have been forced unto the woman.. and sadly ..many women don't feel they have a choice in the matter.

There is a little too much pounding on the women in this thread ..which I think is unfair.. what about the men?

Are they not responsible for using contraception as well ?

reply to post by Benevolent Heretic

Originally posted by Benevolent Heretic
TO ME, it's a person. ...To another woman, it may not be. It's her choice to make and none of my business.

Does science play any role in any of your analysis? Even without medical help, many fetuses in the third trimester are capable of surviving outside the womb with little or no medial assistance.

Why is where one is 'housed' determinative of another person's right to subjectively decide whether you are a person or not?

I can think of another context where the issue of 'control of body' arises between two people-- conjoined twins.







The physical dependencies can range across the spectrum from little to great-- precisely in the same manner as any fetus and mother.

Would one twin have the right to decide unilaterally the fate of the other?

Originally posted by Benevolent Heretic
But in the eyes of the law, it is not a person. It is a fetus.

Citing the law as 'evidence' of the objective nature of something is pretty weak, imo. Blacks were chattel under the law at one time, but it didn't make it true, did it?

Originally posted by Benevolent Heretic
When I say only persons have rights, I'm speaking legally. The 14th Amendment says that all PERSONS BORN or naturalized in the US have certain rights. There is no protection for a 'life' that may reside within a PERSON'S body.

Seems pretty arbitrary doesn't it? If the seminal moment of passing thru a uterus is all that is required to graduate into person-hood, then that's really not too different from the dozens of other silly religious "rights of passage" beliefs about when a person becomes something.

Originally posted by Benevolent Heretic
You have judged Maslo's post to be cynicism. I see it as an attempt to explain the apparent hypocrisy in a particular position - that abortion is wrong and violates the right to life - except in the case of rape or incest, as if babies made of rape or incest somehow deserve to die...

This requires an explanation. If you can't give it, that's fine. But just because you don't have an answer, doesn't mean various attempts at explanation are simply cynicism.

I see it as the same type of cynical "explanations" that some(not all) leftits give
such as

People who are not pro-homosexuality secretly want to be gay

nothing more than a sorry attempt at an ad hominem

In an intelligent debate you discuss the issues, you don't attack or demonize your opponent.
Do you disagree with this?

What needs to be decided is at what point does a fetus become independant life and not part of the mother. Afterall a fetus is attached to the mother, the same blood and nutrients flow through the two. For a time they are essentially the same being. So why should a woman not have this choice to affect her own body? Maybe the only other influencing factor should be the father who has also contributed a part of himself to the new growth.
To decide wether the abortion of a child should be the choice of a mother or not requires defining independent life which is a highly philosophical issue and this website is testement to conflicting philosophies and the freedom to act on them.
I believe that humans like all other organisms are purposed through instinct to survive and prosper as a species. From this standpoint it's understandable how to some the abortion of a fetus is an unthinkable thing to do as it goes against some of our most basic instincts. But choice gives us the ability to fight our instinct and act on our own beliefs, without this we would be restricted to what other people think is best for us and that could be far more dangerous.

no more responses since the siamese twin pics were posted

Interesting......

Originally posted by ModernAcademia
no more responses since the siamese twin pics were posted

Interesting......

To be honest I think the debate pretty much just fizzled out. Though I must say the Siamese twin argument does destroy one element of the debate. However it is far from finalising the argument- I wouldn't get too smug just yet!

Originally posted by Fretless
What needs to be decided is at what point does a fetus become independant life and not part of the mother.

Why limit your inquiry? Why should the potential of life be devalued? An act proceeded the inception of life, that is where intervention may made without termination; that is where an informed choice may be made between both parties.

reply to post by yes4141


Sure, I'll take it right out of I think Dawkins' mouth. Nature has provided, through no willfulness of its own, but just through natural selection, that we have come into existence, and established all that we have. In that act, nature, a think whose very existence promotes decay, destruction, and the ultimate death of all things, has generated a species that can not only stop decay, but reverse it. The "blind watchmaker" has provided its own devices for self preservation through the ability for mankind to not only Stewart nature, but promote its continued existence, despite nature's own destructive inevitability. For the first time in known history, nature has made a contradiction to everything it is, and that contradiction has not only defeated nature's nature, but taken control of it for the purposes of a whole new kind of evolution that we represent. Nature has no conscious, but we do. And we can make the choices nature cannot.

I am no beacon of objectivity. But I can identify, through my own experiences in life, when emotion creeps into decision making, and eliminate it. Not entirely, but enough. So much so that my mind always provides multiple paths to go down. Some with emotion, some without, and some with a mix. I rarely choose those paths without emotion, because I am human. I know those paths, however, lead to a logical existence. I suppose it's just the cruelty of human nature. Alas, mankind can envision an ideal, even if he chooses not to go down it.

Perhaps I am just trolling my own life to gain more experience and through means of going down those minimum emotional paths, discover where the emotion is and further remove it.

reply to post by ModernAcademia

Originally posted by ModernAcademia
no more responses since the siamese twin pics were posted

Interesting......

I was once a part of the original TKA crowd.

Seriously, though, the "my body" argument has long bothered me. Conjoined twins simply serve as a good example to explain why.

reply to post by Gorman91

I apologise I got a little lost reading through that. Your point is that unlike 'natural' deaths humans have an obligation to make the 'right'/ self- preserving decisions because they can willfully choose them?

I'm afraid that I still just cannot get past this idea of objective human value. Especially this hierarchy of importance where we are placed above the rest. We are certainly not the species which gives the greatest benefits to the rest- I expect trees would be far, far above us on that league table.

(more) On topic, I think the 'dependancy' argument is entirely defunct- firstly, as was mentioned earlier the Siamese example wonderfully illustrates the issue and secondly, a child remainsl hugely dependent on the mother after birth.

However the 'potential for life' argument I feel is a slightly narrow approach to this. Is any object which COULD potential turn into life then contraception should be similiarly branded 'murder'. This could be taken even further to say that any woman who is not having sex from the time when it is possible to carry a child then that could also be labelled 'stopping the potential for life'. Should a man who dies without having a child/ sex at all (a priest?) be labelled the same? Every test tube not used for creating a child? Every opportunity to clone a person not used?

Obviously these are extreme examples but I still think they are relevant to this argument. If 'potential for life' is the big case then surely all aspects and avenues need to be explored. They also presume that all addition of life is a 'good' thing. And that's without considering the impact of those ~80 years upon the billions upon billions of years and stars in the universe.

reply to post by yes4141


Alone we perhaps are not that important. But the fact is that a well ordered machine society of humans can practically do or stop anything in existence. given enough time and knowledge.

nature cannot do that.

It's all a matter of free will verse chance. We could argue if free will exists, but for the context of this discussion it clearly does.


Potential can some times get caught up in all sorts of hectic insanity. After all, you technically can grow a whole human from but a collection of skin cells under your nail.

So the only practical amendment is active vs inactive. If, given the course of living an inactive life, making the same choices of food and water, etc etc, that life will in fact become a full grown adult, then it clearly has potential. If that life needs an entire lab and 15 years worth of research to grow that human from a few discarded skin cells under your nails, then it clearly does not have the same potential. A great deal of energy has to be made to do physical and mental work to make it so. But, if in doing so you do manage to successfully begin, and key word being begin, to grow a human from those discarded cells, then the potential has been reached, and once you make the choice to give it that potential, it should have every right to reach it.

In this very simple scientific view of potential (that being if the testable elements give repeated results that are the same), then contraceptive is not murder, because you made the choice to nullify that potential of that sperm cell. And to go further into this fact, a sperm cell by its own regard, has no potential. Energy must be pot into work for that sperm cell to make it to the egg and produce that potential ability.

You are right that these are extreme examples, but hey, if I'm right, it ought to be able to stand up to these extreme examples, right?

reply to post by Gorman91


But I thought the issue was with potential life, there either is potential for it or not- in this context surely you cannot relativise it and the method/ difficulty/ time frame is irrelevant.

Again, I simply cannot understand or even relate to this idea of being 'right' about something like this. I suppose it comes to the near inevitable debate on metaphysics to actually discuss this point. But I simply cannot endorse this view of overall arbitration on this topic.

This may seem a little disjointed, but if an embryo is aborted does that potential for life effectively become void/ irrelevant? I realise this is a potentially volatile statement and am not entirely decided on it myself yet but I suppose it is simply an injection of nihilism into the debate.

(In another slight prod of the conversation as a slight devil's advocate)
There can be no doubt that both before and after birth a newborn child is absolutely dependent on it's mother/ carer and this individual is entirely responsible for everything about this child. Because of this complete responsibility does the mother not also have control over it's life? Think of a person who is only being kept alive by a respirator machine, those relatives/ friends nearby must make the decision whether to turn off the machine or not so there is an awful lot of power invested in them. I understand that this still would not qualify against your "active/ passive" point but it is simply to illustrate the wealth of power and responsibility that the mother has and the role of 'decision maker' which they must accept.

reply to post by yes4141


It's a technicality. Technically a rock has potential for becoming a human adult. Thus the need for this active/passive clause. Otherwise everything has the potential to be anything. If you make your limits infinite, then all matter with theoretically one day be used to produce a human adult. Thus we need to set the limits of what a life is. From the scientific perspective, it begins when the hardware that supports the human begins, and ends when that hardware ends. This broad terminology allows us to cover all in between things in the future, such as a brain supported by a machine.

This may seem a little disjointed, but if an embryo is aborted does that potential for life effectively become void/ irrelevant? I realise this is a potentially volatile statement and am not entirely decided on it myself yet but I suppose it is simply an injection of nihilism into the debate.

If an embryo is aborted, then it was actively killed. Many will claim "but so many embryos die anyway"

Again, passive vs active.

You cannot bring nature to court when a tree falls in a storm and kills someone. You can bring a person to court if that person was purposely and intently desiring that tree to kill that person.

Likewise, what nature decides to be fit is not the will of man.

...illustrate the wealth of power and responsibility that the mother has and the role of 'decision maker' which they must accept.

Simply put, a human being either has the potential to make decisions as an adult or does not. As such, when a person is seriously inured and their potential to ever regain that ability to make a decision is more or less loss, they cannot be expected to have that decision. For a fetus, it will defiantly one day have that ability.

reply to post by Gorman91

For a fetus, it will defiantly one day have that ability.

Yet at the most crucial time- the present- it does not, therefore making that potential an irrelevance. My point was: if something never reaches what was thought to be it's potential, how can we be sure that potential ever existed?

Originally posted by ModernAcademia
no more responses since the siamese twin pics were posted

Interesting......

Its a problem for those who base abortion right on external conditions (independent viability, birth). Its not a problem for those who base abortion right on fundamental internal properties of the fetus (presence of mind - brain waves).

Originally posted by yes4141
reply to post by Gorman91

 

For a fetus, it will defiantly one day have that ability.

Yet at the most crucial time- the present- it does not, therefore making that potential an irrelevance. My point was: if something never reaches what was thought to be it's potential, how can we be sure that potential ever existed?

Yes.
What is potential? The fact that given conditions x, event y will happen in the future with reasonable probability. If we want to protect mere potential of a child appearing in the future, we have multiple conditions that must be met, such as not having an abortion, and having sex before that. Not having sex leads to the same failed potential like having an abortion, only sooner. Will we also ban refusing sex, since its effect on potential is the same? Will we mandate procreation, so any potential children which could appear in the future would appear?

How is refusing sex different from having an abortion from the potential POV? One is more passive, one is more active (well, depending on the circumstances ). Of course their effect on the potential is exactly the same, and its only effects (consequences) which determine morality of a choice, not whether its active or passive (killing someone and causing death by refusing help while able to are morally equivalent).

reply to post by yes4141


Well you didn't say why it's irrelevant. You simply said it was. This is not a reason for it to be irrelevant.

At the present, anyone between conception to their late 20s is still ongoing the process of reaching their full potential. So under such guise, nobody under age 30 or so deserves rights. Which clearly is flawed thinking.

Humans begin to degrade around then.

One of the mysteries of humanity is that we don't know what its potential is yet. Hence, it deserves all the same protections for its right to get there. If for no other reason, than to truly know what that potential is.


Simple fact is you don't know what anyone's potential is, and there is no scientific means to measure it until after the fact they have reached it. Ergo, do not assume.

I also still dont understand why potential should be of ANY importance. For me, the actuality is important. You cannot kill or harm something that never existed and never will. That is not morally wrong at all, even if we know that it will be next Einstein.

It's easy to abstract this topic, but it's really about people we know. Our friends, coworkers, loved ones. Many of you are parents. You wanted to be. Think now about your beautiful young daughter. Being young, falling in love. Getting carried away, drunk, or a little bit pressured, making a mistake with a boy or getting raped, not telling you.

Now imagine abortion is illegal, like so many of you want. Bear with me, because this is the consequence of what you are advocating so you can face it right?

Your beautiful daughter with her whole life ahead of her, makes this mistake or is abused. She is afraid. Terrified of what will happen to her future and what you and others will say. All her plans gone. All her respect gone. She will have no choice to bear this child, her womb is her master now and in her mind her life is ruined - she is ruined. She tries some teas she heard about, they do nothing. She tries running into walls to force a miscarriage, it fails. Beside herself, young and desperate, and wanting her future back, she hears about a man who will take care of it. Suddenly the possibility of still having the life she wanted comes back to her, all this could go away.... no one would have to know, it could all just disappear and life would go back to normal. In secret, she goes..... and a few hours later bleeds to death in an emergency room from a man who used a coat hanger and punctured her uterine wall. The baby (fetus) dies. The mother dies. They both never get to have a future.

THIS HAPPENED. A lot. It happened to my aunt. In many families such deaths are silenced. Never spoken of but the pain is unbearable.... such tremendous loss. She didn't have to die this way.

I'm not saying either side is right or wrong, in fact, the sides are really an illusion. It comes down to our daughters and what you want for them. Don't think you are above it or it can't happen, even in 'the best' families there are charlatan doctors who do these things 'on the side'. In fact, it will happen, it will happen to hundreds, thousands of girls and young women, if abortion is ever banned again, we know this from previous experience -- it's no exaggeration to say it. Many many daughters will die by these bloody hands, or have their reproductive futures destroyed, or commit suicide. You may not like it or want to face it but it will happen, if not to your daughter, then to somebody's.

Think about what you've said about women's bodies. How they have to PAY and take responsibility, is this what you mean? Do you want young girls to die this way? Because this is the consequence and there is nothing that you can do to prevent this from happening. Even if all your thought is for the unborn child that you profess so much to care for and worry about, to be unwanted, mangled and stabbed and bled to death inside the womb of a dying girl, is that what you want?

So make the choice you would deny those girls, your daughters and sisters. How do you want them to die? Old and grey, having had a life and perhaps bearing children when they were ready... or this way. What about all the other children she could have had, what about those unborn? For those of you who would accuse me of emotionality, well it is, it should be, because we care. We care about these lives, both the babies and the mothers, both of them.

Now, one last thought, and I think about this a lot. What it must have been like to be my aunt and forced with this choice. The choice to risk her life trying to get her life back, or risk her life in child birth -- in her mind a kind of end of her life. One choice offers a hope, the other life-long ruin and shame (again, in her mind and situation). To feel the despair of being forced to carry inside her body, her womb, a child she didn't want, that she hated and resented for taking away her future. It surely must have felt like being a prisoner or a slave in her own body. Do any of you have any compassion for my aunt? Can you feel at all what it must have been like? The horror of it? Many of you have cast names around at 'these women', practically calling them sl*ts and such, but if it was YOUR daughter, your family how would you have treated her? Do you think you might not have instilled some of the same feelings in her that were in my aunt?

If you truly advocate for children then you must know that how the mother feels about her child is conveyed to the child in the womb. Wouldn't it be so much nicer if the child could just be taken from that womb and put into a loving surrogate? Well, I don't think it's possible. Would you support and love the mothers so this could be translated down the umbilical to the child? Doubtful you personally would or could. Do you really care for the children or is it more about the idea of "murder" "killing" etc. Then think about the story above and my aunt, and who was really the murderer. She didn't kill herself, so was it ... the doctor or the people who made and advocated for these draconian laws? if you ask me, my aunt would probably have just wanted to live her life in peace.