Abortion....why?

[Stew Coard]

Eh, it's murder, pro-life views it as murder. pro-choice obviously focuses on personal choice and freedom to make that choice, where as pro-life would view limits on abortion the same as laws against homicide. Conservative Christian philosophy is concerned with personal responsibility, whereas liberals are concerned about personal freedom.

For every right we have a responsibility accompanying it.

 

[Athinira]

OH, allright, I think i understand. my apologies. i wasnt quite sure, so i made an assumption, silly me ^^;
wait, so I am confused. you admit ( from what I gather) that a fetus is life, but that ending said life isnt murder? If the fetus would live and not harm anyone, I cant possibly see how ending it's life isnt murder. Could you explain how ending a life thats only crime is existing is muder? I honestly cant see your viewpoint, and I genuinely would love to understand what makes somebody, who i presume is wonderfully intelligent, hold a view that I cant quite understand.

To me, 'taking a life' isn't the equivalent of murder. For example, while i do oppose the death penalty (but that's mostly because i consider it an act of cowardice, not because i think life is sacred), i don't necessarily consider it murder. I also don't consider shutting down a medical ventilator murder, nor assisted suicide (as long as is it approved as necessary).

Taking a life for the welfare of others (or yourself) isn't a practice that is unknown to humans. We kill animals so we can eat them. If attacked, we sometimes kill people in self defense. Death penalty is a way of getting rid of criminals. Casualties of war is a necessary side effect of settling disputes or solving problems that can't be solved through diplomacy (although the use of the word 'necessary' is one that is debatable in this case. Not all casualties of war are necessary sadly, and it's arguable whether or not wars are necessary in the first place, but lets not get into that).

To me, abortion is just another product of ending life that is born out of necessity. If a women feels like she can't go through a pregnancy or can't care for the child (or the worst case scenarios of rape or some other complication), then i consider abortion a great solution, although you of course shouldn't discard other solutions like adoption just because you have that option. Like i said, society has evolved into a state where women have to stand on their own instead of relying on the man to care for her, and since lone mothers can't always acquire the necessary capital to feed a child and pregnant women can't work, this means that the rest of us either needs to pay for her child (at least that's the case in a welfare state like Denmark where i live), or she needs to have an abortion. In addition, like i argued, i don't consider an abortion cruel to the child, since it's not in a state to understand it, fear it or react to it. It's just another bump on the road of life.

I would disagree, because of a hypothetical situation. Lets say That eventually humanity ccreates a computer capable of perfect reasoning, and it is fully sentient, and could make choices, and function quite well, would it be wrong to destroy it? Because if sentiencce is wha makes something have value as life, then would it be wrong to kill the computer? I know that sounds odd, and if you are confused by my point I could try to phrase it better, however, i dont believe sentience matters in determining weather or not something has a right to live. Which to me shouldnt be the determining factor in deciding life.

In that case i would argue that since we gave the computer sentience, we could also take it away from it, and it wouldn't be "sorry" and miss the good old days where it had feelings. In addition, computers can be backed up, meaning that they aren't reliant on a physical body like ours to sustain. If you for any reason need to dismantle a computer, you can back up it's "personality".

On the other hand, the only foolproof way to take away sentience from a living being that has achieved that state is for it to die.

I point i made earlier was that if you scratch your skin, then skin cells fall off and die. That doesn't necessarily mean it's murder, because they aren't sentient. Sentience DEFINES cruelty, because it's impossible to be cruel to a being that isn't sentient.

allright, as for the mothers ultimte choice, do you believe that your life should be up to anybody if your only detriment is existence?

If I'm inside my mothers womb, then what i believe can basically be summed up as "...", because in that state I'm not capable of believing anything.

If i was aborted as opposed to being born (and sitting here today arguing on the Escapist), then nobody would be the wiser about it besides my parents. All my friends wouldn't miss me because they didn't knew i existed. I wouldn't regret being an abortion because i wouldn't be capable of that, and i wouldn't be capable of being happy or sad about it either.

The question you are basically asking is "What would a non-sentient being think about something IF it was sentient." That's the equivalent of someone else asking me "If your chair was sentient, what do you think it would think about you sitting on it?" My response to that would be "It would probably think I'm a fat bastard and that i should go to find something else to sit on."

But who cares, it's a chair. It's not sentient. To paraphrase Yahtzee: It's like asking us to feel sorry for a floor lamp because someone knocked it over.

 

[Ieyke]

Most anti-abortion people are idiots.
Until an already BORN child reaches a certain age they're no more a "person" than a squirrel is. Sure, the potential is there while the squirrel can never be a "person".
Aside from biological format and the inherent potential therein, a baby is just another creature.

A fetus? Pfft. A squirrel is a higher life form.

An abortion should be MANDATORY if the pregnant woman in question has no means of providing a child with a decent life. If the woman is in a terrible financial situation, lives in a dangerous situation, has dangerous habits, has major health problems, has no time, has no interest, etc etc etc, then there should NOT be a baby born to her.

"But adoption" some might say. No. There are more than enough kids who already have to put up with the unfortunate situation of being up for adoption, and more than enough of them who the system doesn't really help. It's best to leave that whole system for children who are truly just victims of misfortune. Orphans who've lost their parents and such. There's absolutely no reason in the world to WILLINGLY add to them when an abortion would solve the issue before it ever becomes an issue.

The tragedy of death is the loss of a life filled with memories and experiences that have come to an end. The loss that all the people who knew that person must then feel. Shell of an existence left behind.
A fetus has none of those things. It has no experiences worth noting. In fact, a fetus isn't even self-aware. It has no acquaintances who will meaningfully miss it, aside from perhaps the potential parents.


IF you are against abortion because you see it as murder, then you had best also be against putting down a sick dog/cat, killing a cow/chicken/fish/deer/rabbit/pig/etc for food, testing potentially deadly chemicals on lab rats, etc etc etc etc etc etc, because ALL of those things are mentally more advanced than a fetus, and we humans "murder" them all day every day without stopping to think if it's "wrong".
You pretty much better be a vegan, or be okay with having completely inane double-standards.



Certainly, children should be had and celebrated and loved and cared for, but they shouldn't be had out of some sense of guilt if they are unwanted, or unable to be cared for properly. THAT is what people should feel guilty for - inflicting hardship upon a child from the very start.

 

[Bara_no_Hime]

But I don't think it's always a traumatic and agonizing emotional decision for someone to make. This reminds me of the propaganda you hear from those pro-life pregnancy counseling centers that try to persuade women out of abortions by telling them that the procedure will haunt and depress them for the rest of their lives if they go through with it.

For some people, it's just the best choice for whatever the reasons they may have, and I don't think that only a sociopath wouldn't be traumatized or emotionally conflicted in making that decision. People react to having abortions in many different ways.

You haven't had one. I have. Trust me. I am VERY pro-choice. It was still a very upsetting and unpleasant experience.

And I never said it haunted me. It sucked at the time - a lot - but you heal. You get better. It still makes me a little sad when I think about it, but it certainly doesn't haunt me.

If nothing else, getting an abortion is SCARY. Surgery always is. Even if everything goes fine, it hurts afterwards - for a week or more.

The point is I don't think anyone has a "casual" abortion. It's always a tough decision. It is always a scary decision. And it's always a sad decision.

 

[renegade7]

Well basically, the idea is that God wants a baby to be born, so it's not actually our choice.

 

[otakon17]

Considering that probably more killing has been done in God's name than anything else, the zealots that push that abortion is wrong ARE THE BIGGEST HYPOCRITES EVER! Not allowing abortions is just another form of control the nuttiest of religious buffs use.

Yes because we hold people to what happened 600 years ago
or group 70% of people in the world together with fanatics

I don't know how long ago this was but there was the woman asking questions after a lecture/debate with scars all over her body on the TV talking about abortion. Turns out her mother wanted an abortion. A mistake happened during the procedure and she was deviled but with disfiguring scars. She asked the pro-choice person if its about choice then where was mine. He did not have an answer to it.

You see it as an option for the woman.
They see it as denying the fundamental right of that child to live.

Okay, I'll admit I went hyperbole on my initial statement. I still believe women should have free access to abortions in the sound reasons I posted in my EDIT and someone else earlier stated. I'll let you in on a little thing too, my mother was nearly aborted and I STILL feel women should have that choice be free for them. My mother does too by the way.

 

[AnarchistFish]

Quite depressing that most of the pro-choice arguments here are just jabs at religion. There are non-religious people against abortion you know.

 

[Ieyke]

Well basically, the idea is that God wants a baby to be born, so it's not actually our choice.

Which is pretty much automatically invalid due to the belief that God gave people free will.

 

[Athinira]

An abortion should be MANDATORY if the pregnant woman in question has no means of providing a child with a decent life. If the woman is in a terrible financial situation, lives in a dangerous situation, has dangerous habits, has major health problems, has no time, has no interest, etc etc etc, then there should NOT be a baby born to her.

Claiming that anti-abortion people are idiots, then coming with such a statement yourself really sparks some irony.

A big part of this debate isn't just about whether or not abortion is okay, it's also about the ability to govern our own body, and forced adoptions is the very last thing i want to see implemented.

One dangerous aspect of that proposal is that you are basically condemning a childs life to be 'terrible' before it has even started. There are many people who had a rough start on life that ended up eventually living a good life (while he unfortunately died too early, Steve Jobs is an example of someone who was adopted), and it also varies a lot by country. I live in Denmark, which have some of the highest (if the THE highest) living standards in the world, in here adopted children are doing more than fine. And even those who don't do that fine at least often appreciate that they had the chance.

On the other end of the spectrum, a lot of children who were born into families that could take good care of them ended up unhappy. In fact, by your logic, forced abortion should also be applied to parents if their careers deem them too busy to spend enough time with their child (say, if their average work hours per week exceeds X hours).

Most of your last paragraph, however, i fully agree with.

 

[Guardian of Nekops]

"Its unfair to have someones life ruined because a condom ripped"

Is that more unfair than never having been born at all because your mother decided not to have you.

If that's your argument, that every potential human has a right to be born, has the right to a shot at life, shouldn't we be required to pop out babies every nine months from puberty to death? Which means constantly trying, so that we don't miss a day that we don't have to?

Using a condom, the pill, or even just choosing not to have sex, is a CHOICE not to have a kid. While you wait, all the respective parts that would have made up that individual die, never to be recovered again. Any given room in mixed company holds millions of potential people, so many that we could never possibly give birth to all the permutations.

I mean, sure, sperm never touched egg, so that permutation of human life never got started. But that is just as much your choice as abortion is... the question is, when is it a life? When does it ascend from the level of being a mere industrial accident, as it were, to being the kid who could be President one day?

And really, it's not clear. When you look at the number of children we are given the building blocks to create in our lifetimes... well... it's pretty clear that we have spares. That's where these questions pop up... is it okay for a married couple to have sex more often than they want to have kids? If it isn't, then you either wind up with a lot of kids or a lot of cold, unsatisfying marriages where you wait your whole lives for sex, make love a couple of times, and then sit there, lonely, and wonder what the big deal was. If it IS, well then. Why just married people? Half of marriages end in divorce anyway, nowadays, some quite quickly... what exactly makes that the only right place to explore this large part of who you are?

And at the end of the day, you get these questions: if it's okay to let two halves of a new person wave to each other across a thin sheet of latex, and then both die, then why is it not okay to catch the little sperm that makes its way through with an acidic gel? Why is it not okay to alter the egg so that the sperm can't fertilize it? Why is it not okay to deny that newly combined start of a person a hold on the uterin wall (it's not like it was guaranteed to latch on anyway)?

And yeah, the slope gets slippery fast, I'll grant you. But in all honesty? It was never all that solid to begin with. Every day we live our lives, we make these kinds of decisions, just at an earlier stage. Every girl out there, of a certain age, who is not currently pregnant is denying a new life the chance to start, but do you know what else she's doing? She's living hers. No matter how she got there, I think that's a decision we have to respect.

 

[aei_haruko]

OH, allright, I think i understand. my apologies. i wasnt quite sure, so i made an assumption, silly me ^^;
wait, so I am confused. you admit ( from what I gather) that a fetus is life, but that ending said life isnt murder? If the fetus would live and not harm anyone, I cant possibly see how ending it's life isnt murder. Could you explain how ending a life thats only crime is existing is muder? I honestly cant see your viewpoint, and I genuinely would love to understand what makes somebody, who i presume is wonderfully intelligent, hold a view that I cant quite understand.

To me, 'taking a life' isn't the equivalent of murder. For example, while i do oppose the death penalty (but that's mostly because i consider it an act of cowardice, not because i think life is sacred), i don't necessarily consider it murder. I also don't consider shutting down a medical ventilator murder, nor assisted suicide (as long as is it approved as necessary).

Taking a life for the welfare of others (or yourself) isn't a practice that is unknown to humans. We kill animals so we can eat them. If attacked, we sometimes kill people in self defense. Death penalty is a way of getting rid of criminals. Casualties of war is a necessary side effect of settling disputes or solving problems that can't be solved through diplomacy (although the use of the word 'necessary' is one that is debatable in this case. Not all casualties of war are necessary sadly, and it's arguable whether or not wars are necessary in the first place, but lets not get into that).

To me, abortion is just another product of ending life that is born out of necessity. If a women feels like she can't go through a pregnancy or can't care for the child (or the worst case scenarios of rape or some other complication), then i consider abortion a great solution, although you of course shouldn't discard other solutions like adoption just because you have that option. Like i said, society has evolved into a state where women have to stand on their own instead of relying on the man to care for her, and since lone mothers can't always acquire the necessary capital to feed a child and pregnant women can't work, this means that the rest of us either needs to pay for her child (at least that's the case in a welfare state like Denmark where i live), or she needs to have an abortion. In addition, like i argued, i don't consider an abortion cruel to the child, since it's not in a state to understand it, fear it or react to it. It's just another bump on the road of life.

I would disagree, because of a hypothetical situation. Lets say That eventually humanity ccreates a computer capable of perfect reasoning, and it is fully sentient, and could make choices, and function quite well, would it be wrong to destroy it? Because if sentiencce is wha makes something have value as life, then would it be wrong to kill the computer? I know that sounds odd, and if you are confused by my point I could try to phrase it better, however, i dont believe sentience matters in determining weather or not something has a right to live. Which to me shouldnt be the determining factor in deciding life.

In that case i would argue that since we gave the computer sentience, we could also take it away from it, and it wouldn't be "sorry" and miss the good old days where it had feelings. In addition, computers can be backed up, meaning that they aren't reliant on a physical body like ours to sustain. If you for any reason need to dismantle a computer, you can back up it's "personality".

On the other hand, the only foolproof way to take away sentience from a living being that has achieved that state is for it to die.

I point i made earlier was that if you scratch your skin, then skin cells fall off and die. That doesn't necessarily mean it's murder, because they aren't sentient. Sentience DEFINES cruelty, because it's impossible to be cruel to a being that isn't sentient.

allright, as for the mothers ultimte choice, do you believe that your life should be up to anybody if your only detriment is existence?

If I'm inside my mothers womb, then what i believe can basically be summed up as "...", because in that state I'm not capable of believing anything.

If i was aborted as opposed to being born (and sitting here today arguing on the Escapist), then nobody would be the wiser about it besides my parents. All my friends wouldn't miss me because they didn't knew i existed. I wouldn't regret being an abortion because i wouldn't be capable of that, and i wouldn't be capable of being happy or sad about it either.

The question you are basically asking is "What would a non-sentient being think about something IF it was sentient." That's the equivalent of someone else asking me "If your chair was sentient, what do you think it would think about you sitting on it?" My response to that would be "It would probably think I'm a fat bastard and that i should go to find something else to sit on."

But who cares, it's a chair. It's not sentient. To paraphrase Yahtzee: It's like asking us to feel sorry for a floor lamp because someone knocked it over.

Hmmm, Interesting, all of these are interesting. Allright, so as for the 1st part of murder, yes, some cases of killing arent murder. Although I personally am against the death penalty ( not for and weird ' jesus wants us to" reasons, just because quite frankly I dont want the state with the authority to end the life of it's citizens)
dont see the baby as having done anything to merit the forfeiting of it's life other than existing. I dont believe that anybody should be killed for their existence. It's wrong to kill a life out of " conviniance". Sometimes we kill out of mercy, or out of self preservation, but killing because somebody exists is quite frankly absurd to me.
i can see it being justified if somebody will due unless they get an abortion, because to me, if somebody is going to die anyway, then there needs to be some form of choice involved, because nobody should order another person to die in my book. And i think it's not cruel i a " we want you to feel paaaaain" way, but rather in a " you will never know what it is like to feel love, or to breathe air on your own, or to see anything" That to me is one of the utmost cruel things to do to somebody, not make them feel pain, but have them never feel a thing.
as for the skin cell thing, yes, skin cells do die, but you're not wiping a whole being out of existence. We have millions of cells in our bodys. If anything we are a large walking colony of cells. It wouldnt be murder to wipe out a few by scratching your skin, because thats not the wholo colony. But if I were to shoot you in the skull, which has the brain, which is needed for the whole colony to survive, i would comit murder by wiping out the whole colony of cells which need the brain. If i wipe out the whole entirety of a being, i have killed, and if the killing was not morally justified by need to survive, or protect others, or end suffering, then i comitted murder.
and i disagree, i think that the question shouldnt be framed as " how would a non sentient being feel about something if it were alive" but " how would you feel if you werent allowed to exist" loking at it retrosepcitvely of course. if your chance at life was taken away, wouldnt it be a bad thing?
Like To be honest, if i were simply looked at as a burden, for having done nothing more than existing, i would be furious. It's just looking callously at a person and turning them into a bothersome object, the general though of somebody being a berden, that must be destroyed because their existence isnt convinient, just... it horrifys me

 

[Ieyke]

An abortion should be MANDATORY if the pregnant woman in question has no means of providing a child with a decent life. If the woman is in a terrible financial situation, lives in a dangerous situation, has dangerous habits, has major health problems, has no time, has no interest, etc etc etc, then there should NOT be a baby born to her.

Claiming that anti-abortion people are idiots, then coming with such a statement yourself really sparks some irony.

A big part of this debate isn't just about whether or not abortion is okay, it's also about the ability to govern our own body, and forced adoptions is the very last thing i want to see implemented.

One dangerous aspect of that proposal is that you are basically condemning a childs life to be 'terrible' before it has even started. There are many people who had a rough start on life that ended up eventually living a good life (while he unfortunately died too early, Steve Jobs is an example of someone who was adopted), and it also varies a lot by country. I live in Denmark, which have some of the highest (if the THE highest) living standards in the world, in here adopted children are doing more than fine. And even those who don't do that fine at least often appreciate that they had the chance.

On the other end of the spectrum, a lot of children who were born into families that could take good care of them ended up unhappy. In fact, by your logic, forced abortion should also be applied to parents if their careers deem them too busy to spend enough time with their child (say, if their average work hours per week exceeds X hours).

Most of your last paragraph, however, i fully agree with.

You've missed the single most important part of what I said:

if the pregnant woman in question has no means of providing a child with a decent life.

IF she has some way of doing it (whether she's actually involved or not), regardless of what other terrible circumstances surround the situation, then fine, whatever. But if this is just a situation where the kid is doomed to basically guaranteed misery right from the start, there should never be a kid in the first place.

 

[NicolasMarinus]

I am for abortion, but only if it is for good reasons (e.g. rape). Not because of irresponsible sexual behaviour.

When my girlfriend was pregnant from our first child, we went to the gynaecologist for our first echography. The embryo was only 2 months old, but boy, it was already a real human being. It had arms and legs and was moving about.

It could never ask anyone to have an abortion after that.

 

[Kuroneko97]

Ah, I remember when I went to a pro-life, er, I mean, Catholic school. I was sitting at lunch and heard some girls talking about why they hated Obama. One girl said "And he's for abortion!" I didn't know what abortion was at that time, so I asked. The definition? "When you get pregnant and you take the baby out of you." I told them I didn't think it was that wrong, since it was a choice and it depended on your reasons. Needless to say, shit hit the fan. The 3-4 girls berated me, telling me why it was wrong and why nobody should ever abort a baby. One girl even asked me in a nasty tone "What if your mom aborted you?"

At this point in life, I've come to a simple conclusion, which is supported by those wonderful George Carlin videos people post on topic like these.

Logic+Religion=???

 

[Chemical Alia]

But I don't think it's always a traumatic and agonizing emotional decision for someone to make. This reminds me of the propaganda you hear from those pro-life pregnancy counseling centers that try to persuade women out of abortions by telling them that the procedure will haunt and depress them for the rest of their lives if they go through with it.

For some people, it's just the best choice for whatever the reasons they may have, and I don't think that only a sociopath wouldn't be traumatized or emotionally conflicted in making that decision. People react to having abortions in many different ways.

You haven't had one. I have. Trust me. I am VERY pro-choice. It was still a very upsetting and unpleasant experience.

And I never said it haunted me. It sucked at the time - a lot - but you heal. You get better. It still makes me a little sad when I think about it, but it certainly doesn't haunt me.

If nothing else, getting an abortion is SCARY. Surgery always is. Even if everything goes fine, it hurts afterwards - for a week or more.

The point is I don't think anyone has a "casual" abortion. It's always a tough decision. It is always a scary decision. And it's always a sad decision.

Whoa, wait up. To assume I haven't like that is massively jumping to conclusions. And to say it's always a tough, scary, or sad decision based on yours alone is not right at all. Everyone is different.

 

[ckam]

I never understood the correlation with abortion and Christians either. It's just something that went way over my head. Oh, well. Everyone sucks, anyways.

 

[Ieyke]

It's wrong to kill a life out of " conviniance". Sometimes we kill out of mercy, or out of self preservation, but killing because somebody exists is quite frankly absurd to me.

What makes you think it ISN'T mercy?

And i think it's not cruel i a " we want you to feel paaaaain" way, but rather in a " you will never know what it is like to feel love, or to breathe air on your own, or to see anything" That to me is one of the utmost cruel things to do to somebody, not make them feel pain, but have them never feel a thing.

Logical nonsense. You can't deprive someone of something they can't experience. This is basically like not turning on a light so a blind guy can find his way through a cluttered room. They can't see it anyways, so it makes not a single bit of difference to them. You might for some reason find it unpleasant, but calling it "cruel" is simply invalid. "Cruel" implies the blind man/fetus would have a negative experience because of it, which simply isn't the case.

" how would you feel if you werent allowed to exist" loking at it retrosepcitvely of course. if your chance at life was taken away, wouldnt it be a bad thing?

No. I wouldn't exist, and therefore couldn't care.

Like To be honest, if i were simply looked at as a burden, for having done nothing more than existing, i would be furious. It's just looking callously at a person and turning them into a bothersome object, the general though of somebody being a berden, that must be destroyed because their existence isnt convinient, just... it horrifys me

And if at such a time where you don't even realize you so much as exist, and you don't know anyone, and you're not fond of anything, and you don't know happiness, or love, or home, or family....it was judged that all of your experiences of life would be an excruciating burden TO YOU, and your life was therefore ended before you even have the ability to feel loss, sadness, anger, etc...is that not mercy?
You've literally lost nothing, and avoided gaining nothing but misery.

 

[michiehoward]

I'm against abortion because it has now become just another form of birth control, I am pro-choice for girls/women who had no choice in the matter of getting pregnant.