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Abortion absolutism

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by Dick Whitman, Dec 2, 2011.

  1. Baron Scicluna

    Baron Scicluna Well-Known Member

    See, something like this, I can somewhat agree with. I understand there are pro-lifers out there who genuinely believe they are saving babies.

    Problem is, the way they go about doing it is designed to punish and demonize women. They should stress a more positive approach, such as birth control, teaching young girls how hard it is to be a parent before actually becoming one. Their good intentions get buried by their finger-wagging.
     
  2. Baron Scicluna

    Baron Scicluna Well-Known Member

    Which is what?
     
  3. Baron Scicluna

    Baron Scicluna Well-Known Member

    Another brilliant response from JC, ladies and gentlemen!
     
  4. YankeeFan

    YankeeFan Well-Known Member

    The pro-life cause has nothing to do with finger wagging.
     
  5. Dick Whitman

    Dick Whitman Well-Known Member

    I can't disagree with you here, in keeping with my often stated principles that the most efficient way to correct something in society like crime or, here, unwanted pregnancy, is education on the front end, i.e. preventative approach, rather than throwing good money after bad on the back end.
     
  6. JC

    JC Well-Known Member

    If only I was as brilliant as you Baron, I would be so successful in life.
     
  7. 1. If that's hypocritical, then the meaning of hypocritical is (a) different from what it has long meant, and (b) confers almost no sting -- because then any person who has thought about running a red light and yet supports tickets for those who run red lights is a hypocrite.

    2. Everyone (and the Constitution) is "pro-choice" to that extent. Of course you always have the ability to want to change the laws or think that you should do something else. That's why you need to prove an overt act before someone can become guilty of an attempt crime. But being pro-life, at any substantial level, is about *acting* on those understandable thoughts. And it's about what the law should say regarding those *actions.*

    Baron, your arguments have been really, really bad in this forum. I know a lot of incredibly smart pro-choice people. People who have clerked for Supreme Court justices. People who are absolutely committed to the pro-choice cause. And they'd say you're being obtuse. There are much, much better arguments than the ones you are making here.
     
  8. Smash Williams

    Smash Williams Well-Known Member

    Not all do, but there is certainly a small but vocal group out there (mostly the "sex should only be used to create a child and is evil and immoral if used in any other fashion") that finger wag at pregnant women who even consider abortion that "well you shouldn't have had sex then."

    It's so much more complicated than that. Heck, IIRC, most women who have an abortion are older and have other children. Sometimes birth control fails. Sometimes people aren't educated about birth control (thanks abstinence only movement). Sometimes there are issues such as a fetus with a significant medical issue and a family without the means to pay for needed treatment

    I can follow and understand the pro-life logic when it's the infanticide argument, though I disagree with that view because I don't believe a fetus becomes a person until viability, so the 24th week or so.

    And I think that to consider an embryo a person from the moment of conception becomes problematic when it comes to what's a woman's responsibility for that person then. Does she have to act as if she is pregnant (no fish, no contact sports, no alcohol) every time she has sex just in case? What about amnio, which carries a low but distinct risk to a fetus - if that's a person, can we not do that procedure since it's considered a human life? Heck, can you force a pregnant woman be penalized for doing something that's knowingly high risk, such as drink excessively. If a woman is at the gym and drops a weight on her stomach and miscarries (highly unlikely, I know), is she guilty of involuntary manslaughter?

    I just think legally it's ridiculously problematic beyond the fact I don't agree that "human life" begins at conception.
     
  9. HC

    HC Well-Known Member

    As the first woman to actually weigh in on this thread, I have only this to say. I'm lucky that when this decision weighed on me, nature made the decision for me. But it was MY decision to make. This is not an abstract ... this is MY body.
     
  10. Smash Williams

    Smash Williams Well-Known Member

    Despite my tribute to Friday Night Lights as a name, I'm also a woman.
     
  11. Dick Whitman

    Dick Whitman Well-Known Member

    But to reach that conclusion, you have to proceed from a starting point at which that isn't another life inside of you. And if you think the other way - that it is - then you can't compare it to getting an organ removed (not trying to put words in your mouth, but trying to find a parallel where "my body" would be very clear.
     
  12. Smash Williams

    Smash Williams Well-Known Member

    DW - do you think unused embryos that would have been used for IVF or IUI but weren't needed are human beings and have rights? If so, who the heck will you get to carry them all to term? Most are destined to be frozen for eternity and eventually tossed out.

    After all, if the collection of cells is a human life with rights, isn't it a human life regardless of whether it's in a potential mother or not?
     
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