Abortion....why?

[HalfTangible]

I used 'it' to refer to the fetus/baby, not killing in general, and I don't support assisted suicide. (I support the death penalty because the person has already made choices that (for obvious reasons) show the person is a danger to society and people in general)

So it's okay to kill a person if they murder someone else (but have every opportunity to turn their life around and use more of that old 'human potential') but it's not okay to kill someone who wants to die because they're suffering a painful degeneration which will certainly result in an undignified death?

Right.

Good for you.

I don't have that much faith in humanity.

You speak as if the 'if' is an absolute truth - that it will happen, it's simply a matter of when. Abandoning the baby is no different than aborting it, doesn't make it any less wrong.

A baby laying in a street slowly dying of thirst, hunger, and cold is very much different than wiping off a collection of nerves from a human body which feels no pain. If you were given the two above examples (slowly painful death versus painless deletion) when deciding the fate of a child, I'm sure you'd know which to go for. Not that every case of disallowed abortion would have ended with a painful death, but I just wanted to point out a very loose comparison.

Killing someone and leaving them to die is EXACTLY the same.

You can't justify murder on the basis of 'the species will be better off'. Because that means serial killers should be left out to wander the streets. Heck, probably given medals.

You just did. Above. You said that murder is okay when it is for the good of mankind for such people as serial killers. Also, pro-choice isn't pro-murder, again this is a silly comparison. Serial killers do not kill for the good of society, and they do not kill things which cannot feel pain or comprehend suffering.

That was poor wording which i corrected in a subsequent post (please see post 308)

By your definition, that means it's ok to kill people who can't feel pain (yes, they exist) slowly and the Holocaust's gas chambers were perfectly acceptable, as they killed the people quickly.

By the poster's definition, it's okay to kill people (or potential people) who can't feel pain or understand what it is their losing or the very definition of suffrage itself. Such things that fall into this category are an undeveloped foetus, sperm-cells, and egg-cells. Your definition encapsulates people under anaesthetic and other hysterical examples.

[joke] 1) You now fall under that definition, as suffrage means the right to vote. =P [/joke]

2) I don't care if the thing can't feel pain (though he does say the fetus can) it's innocent and does not need to die.

'Abadonment is worse than abortion' is not a valid point - you can't solve one problem by making another worse.

So why are you for the death-penalty? That is cutting your loses and killing human potential for the sake of saving others from suffering. This is precisely the same as killing a collection of undeveloped cells forming an undeveloped human foetus; except you may possibly be saving the potential infant itself from years of hardship and suffering. Using your logic, you're very much pro-choice.

Because you are not even considered for the death penalty unless there is a good chance you'll do whatever crime landed you there again.

It's better to have a life of suffering than no life at all. Loved and lost, and all that crap.

My argument is based on this: that individual life begins when the egg is fertilized, not when the baby is born, or when it can start feeling pain. Birth control doesn't kill a fertilized egg, it prevents the egg from being fertilized at all.

Are you also against the morning-after pill, in that case?

I dunno. Probably. What's it do?

Also, why once the egg has fertilised? The differences between a living, breathing, thinking baby and the collection of cells forming the first stages of a foetus are far greater than the differences between an fertilised egg and a fertilised egg.

A) That's a dumb point. A dumb, DUMB point. A baby is a fetus after about nine months of development, an unfertilised egg and a fertilised egg exist within a few minutes each other, of COURSE the differences are going to be massive!

B) Because the fertilization of the egg is the first point where a new individual is created. The individual may only be one cell, but before then, the sperm and eggs are technically incomplete cells of someone else's body.

(i should mention that i am a very poor communicator - I could and probably have said something that sounds like something else)

 

[Stublore]

No, the bigot here is you.
Sex is fine, but doing so in order to unintentionally or intentionally have a child and then remove it for some reason is what is wrong. I have a problem with the death penalty, I believe there are some cases worth trying to deal with and others, we need to keep locked away. I'm not a judge and there is no one on earth with the authority to decide whether someone lives or dies.
Bigots stem from little to no intellect, and because of your viewpoints, I'd have to say, you're the bigot here.

Lol, I'm a bigot
And your argument is that women get pregnant to HAVE abortions!
Thank you!!!
Now if that's not bigoted I'm flabbergasted!

 

[TheFarLeft]

I'm not a woman; I can never have children. I don't have a clue what it's like to have a vagina and go through all the bodily stuff that woman go through. Therefore, it is not my place to tell woman what they can and can't do with their bodies. However, if my girlfriend/wife/whatever was carrying a child that I helped conceive, then I would have some say in it, but only a little because I don't have to give birth to it.

Until a certain point it's just a bundle of cells. I kill cells by scratching myself or hitting my head on something. Yes, an embryo could turn into a person, but that's the keyword: could. There is no way of knowing 100% that it won't die in the womb, from a miscarriage or some other accident. So just because it can be a person, doesn't mean that it will.

And then there's the obvious religion thing... it's just dumb. Religion is so rigid and it's black and white with no exceptions. "This is good, this is bad, you're with us or against us, there is no in-between." The world is more laid back now and issues are becoming more than just black and white, so religion is just pushing people away by being so damn pushy. I'm Christian (I guess), I believe in God, Jesus, Heaven and all that good stuff (not Hell though, because that's contradictory of a loving God), but I also believe that religion is a personal matter and that it shouldn't be shoved into other people's faces. It's a supplement to how you live your life, not a guide to be followed to the letter. It should have absolutely no place in politics or law-making.

Anyways, abortion is not relevant to me in any way. Let the people who it actually affects decide what's best.

 

[Ritter315]

A fetus IS at the very least a fundemental blueprint for human baby, and thus endowed with the right to life. That is the problem pro-choice advocates make. It doesnt matter if the fetus isnt a baby yet, it WILL become one. Seriously, its disgusting the justifications people make for abortion.

 

[Thyunda]

I've not read all nine pages of this thread, but I'm going to weigh in anyway, and if my points have already been argued, feel free to brutally remind me. I suspect you would do anyway.


I'm pro-choice. I'm a pragmatist. There is nothing good that can come of forcing somebody who is financially, biologically or simply emotionally unready to have a child. Denying them that option is ridiculous.

1. Pregnancy is incredibly physically taxing. Some women are biologically unable to handle it.

2. Raising a child is expensive, both financially and mentally. If you can't give the money or attention, then your kid is gonna mess up somewhere along the line. Do you think our chavs in this country come from decent homes and stable families? No, they do not. They come from Council-housed benefit-scroungers of parents, parents who most like justified their pregnancy with 'its my body my choice innit?', a line I have heard so very often. Young girls often want children on a whim, it's a phase that does not last long. However, if it's easy for them to get sex during that phase, then they pretty much will. Then we have underage parents. Though not necessarily a bad thing, the vast majority of underage parents cannot raise a child. There are exceptions, naturally, I can name examples of both sides of the story.

3. I worked with the homeless. I have seen couples literally fighting over their baby. The kid is used as a weapon so very often, it's ridiculous. These are people who had nothing, and yet they still had a kid. And...well...it showed up in the newspapers that the child was horribly mistreated. Same for the girl who wheels her baby around while literally screaming at her Fosters-swigging boyfriend. It's disgusting.

And these are the people that do this by choice. These people did not want a child, they wanted a baby, clearly with no idea what it would entail. Why would you force that on somebody? Why would you force them to bring up a child they either can't or simply don't want to, because you want to push some pro-life agenda? How is it 'wrong'? It's saving two lives at the cost of one potential one. In an overpopulated, fairly shitty country, that's a definite net gain.

 

[Hiroshi Mishima]

Personally, I think that it's the fault of religions (as are a number of outmoded ways of thinking people just can't shake, like having a dozen kids).

The reason I say this is because in today's current world we are literally drowning in a sea of people. There are officially more people being born than there are dying (as of a recent consensus my mother said she saw on the news). We are already having huge economic problems, food is an issue in several parts of the world, and there is no longer an survival-based reasons for having a ton of children.

We don't need to compete with other races to ensure the gene-pool survive. There are plenty of people who go their whole lives without having kids because they realize that there's too many gods-damned people as it is and they don't want that extra responsibility. In fact, one of my best friends and his wife made the decision when they got together there would be no kids, and to the best of my knowledge they take the necessary steps to make sure it doesn't happen. I'm not entirely sure what they'd do if an accident occurred, but I wouldn't be upset if they had an abortion.

I know that abortion is, at this point, a serious moral decision for a lot of people. However, my personal belief is that the fetus doesn't even carry a soul right away. The notion that it happens instantly is kind of ridiculous, anyways. Or did people ever stop and wonder why some babies are born fine, but stillborn, or born dead and then come to life suddenly.

Actually, that's deviating from the topic and making me sound strange, so yeah, moving on. I wholeheartedly believe that we have far more children than are necessary.

Now, do I think couples should experience the joy of having a child? Sure, but for gods-sakes keep it to some sorta minimum. We don't need everyone having 5+ kids, and don't get me started on Octomom.

Also, I'm reminded a few years back where a woman was raped and the doctor refused to give her that pill which would prevent pregnancy because of his religious beliefs. This is officially where, in my mind, some people have given up their right to choose because they then start choosing for others. It's also another reason that I've come to despise so much of Humanity..

Sorry, sorta ended on a rant, I think I've lost sight of my point... I just get rather upset when I hear about or am reminded of certain things..


EDIT: Thyunda pretty much got my more on-topic points across, without all my pent up rage and frustration at the world at large.


EDIT: Oh yeah, another of those outmoded ways of thinking I mentioned. "Sex is only to procreate." This is a myth and a fallacy. It is known that several animal species actually have sex for pleasure and relaxation (dolphins and a certain type of chimpanzee come to mind).

 

[Thyunda]

A fetus IS at the very least a fundemental blueprint for human baby, and thus endowed with the right to life. That is the problem pro-choice advocates make. It doesnt matter if the fetus isnt a baby yet, it WILL become one. Seriously, its disgusting the justifications people make for abortion.

Read my argument, dude. I think I just covered this point exactly.

 

[Ritter315]

"when half of all pregnancies spontaneously abort" - In a general sense. Thats like saying because some babies die premature ALL babies die die that way. "Do you see the absurdity in this statement now?" -Yes, in YOUR statement.

 

[AngloDoom]

I used 'it' to refer to the fetus/baby, not killing in general, and I don't support assisted suicide. (I support the death penalty because the person has already made choices that (for obvious reasons) show the person is a danger to society and people in general)

So it's okay to kill a person if they murder someone else (but have every opportunity to turn their life around and use more of that old 'human potential') but it's not okay to kill someone who wants to die because they're suffering a painful degeneration which will certainly result in an undignified death?

Right.

Good for you.

I don't have that much faith in humanity.

Neither do I, but it's still a life. You seem uncomfortable killing a baby because it's a baby, a fully-grown individual with life, experiences, and people to miss it seems less important to you than an unwanted, unplanned, and possibly unloved life in future.

You speak as if the 'if' is an absolute truth - that it will happen, it's simply a matter of when. Abandoning the baby is no different than aborting it, doesn't make it any less wrong.

A baby laying in a street slowly dying of thirst, hunger, and cold is very much different than wiping off a collection of nerves from a human body which feels no pain. If you were given the two above examples (slowly painful death versus painless deletion) when deciding the fate of a child, I'm sure you'd know which to go for. Not that every case of disallowed abortion would have ended with a painful death, but I just wanted to point out a very loose comparison.

Killing someone and leaving them to die is EXACTLY the same.

That's a statement, not an answer. Again, you're given the two options: so long as you're a half well-adjusted person you do the humane one. Being shot in the head and dying instantly isn't the same as being shot in the leg and dying of infection. One of the people in the above example suffers more than the other.

You can't justify murder on the basis of 'the species will be better off'. Because that means serial killers should be left out to wander the streets. Heck, probably given medals.

You just did. Above. You said that murder is okay when it is for the good of mankind for such people as serial killers. Also, pro-choice isn't pro-murder, again this is a silly comparison. Serial killers do not kill for the good of society, and they do not kill things which cannot feel pain or comprehend suffering.

That was poor wording which i corrected in a subsequent post (please see post 308)

Fair enough, no argument there.

By your definition, that means it's ok to kill people who can't feel pain (yes, they exist) slowly and the Holocaust's gas chambers were perfectly acceptable, as they killed the people quickly.

By the poster's definition, it's okay to kill people (or potential people) who can't feel pain or understand what it is their losing or the very definition of suffrage itself. Such things that fall into this category are an undeveloped foetus, sperm-cells, and egg-cells. Your definition encapsulates people under anaesthetic and other hysterical examples.

[joke] 1) You now fall under that definition, as suffrage means the right to vote. =P [/joke]

2) I don't care if the thing can't feel pain (though he does say the fetus can) it's innocent and does not need to die.

1) Whoopsie-doodle...I thought that word rung the wrong bells.
2) A foetus can't feel pain until the 28th week, apparently. The 'wiring' from the receptors to the brain just isn't there. Sure, the baby doesn't need to die, but then no-one does. Sure, it's innocent, but often so is the mother and father: should their lives be potentially ruined because another person's views? Why should a woman risk her life for something she never wanted? Does she deserve it?

'Abadonment is worse than abortion' is not a valid point - you can't solve one problem by making another worse.

So why are you for the death-penalty? That is cutting your loses and killing human potential for the sake of saving others from suffering. This is precisely the same as killing a collection of undeveloped cells forming an undeveloped human foetus; except you may possibly be saving the potential infant itself from years of hardship and suffering. Using your logic, you're very much pro-choice.

Because you are not even considered for the death penalty unless there is a good chance you'll do whatever crime landed you there again.

It's better to have a life of suffering than no life at all. Loved and lost, and all that crap.

That's easy to say, but what about a life that lasts three days of being in a blanket and left in the cold?

My argument is based on this: that individual life begins when the egg is fertilized, not when the baby is born, or when it can start feeling pain. Birth control doesn't kill a fertilized egg, it prevents the egg from being fertilized at all.

Are you also against the morning-after pill, in that case?

I dunno. Probably. What's it do?

It basically prevents the fertilised egg from implanting and as such developing. It's a form of emergency contraception taken after sex that is used if contraceptive measures were not taken or had taken and failed during the actual sexual act.
Wait, so your view is every single accident in sex should have resulted in a child the parents should be forced to raise?
When I was seventeen a condom I used broke during sex. I noticed after, and my girlfriend and I rushed to the chemist and got the morning-after pill to prevent pregnancy. Are you saying that, if you were in the same situation, you would have forced the girl to quit her education, given up your own education and gone into a job, all for the sake of raising a child you don't want and never intended? Are you seriously suggesting that?
What about people who are raped, or condoms sabotaged? Both of these can occur and do occur, should the women in this scenario once again risk their ACTUAL life for a theoretical one?

Also, why once the egg has fertilised? The differences between a living, breathing, thinking baby and the collection of cells forming the first stages of a foetus are far greater than the differences between an fertilised egg and a fertilised egg.

A) That's a dumb point. A dumb, DUMB point. A baby is a fetus after about nine months of development, an unfertilised egg and a fertilised egg exist within a few minutes each other, of COURSE the differences are going to be massive!

Why is this point dumb? A human embryo is just as similar to a dolphin or a pig when it's first formed, but I'm sure you wouldn't care if a farmer used an abortion method on a pig.

B) Because the fertilization of the egg is the first point where a new individual is created. The individual may only be one cell, but before then, the sperm and eggs are technically incomplete cells of someone else's body.

A human embryo is, by it's definition, an incomplete set of cells too. A fly is more alive than a 1-3 week old embryo. I know this is, in your eyes, killing an innocent: but it's not alive. It doesn't even fit the requirements of being alive until around the 23rd week after conception: while abortion is performed before this stage. It is just as much murder as wearing a condom: the foetus is not alive by scientific definition and so abortion is a preventative measure, not an execution.

(i should mention that i am a very poor communicator - I could and probably have said something that sounds like something else)

I wouldn't be that hard on yourself; I got the message plain and clear with no difficulty.

 

[Ritter315]

"Suddenly the statement lacks the theatrics present in the absolute and inaccurate original statement" - A fetus will become a human being (although most would contend that its ALREADY a human being and its development stage doesnt contest that) if it doesnt die. By that arguement, abortion is still killing a human being.

 

[Baby Tea]

And as for:

TL;DR: Because it's easier to judge or disapprove than to help or show compassion.

That's a pretty uneducated position.
There are tons of pregnancy support centers, all run by Christian groups, that help women going through unplanned pregnancies, or who are coping with the regret of abortions. I know of about 4 just in my area. These places offer a place to stay, food, diapers, everything to help these women. They are certainly doing what Christ taught, and they are all over the place.

Yeah, there are judgmental Christians. It shames and infuriates me all at once.
But we aren't all that way. Not by a long shot.

It's not an uneducated position, and I wasn't limiting that observation to Christians. The sort of reactionary and venomous sentiments about abortion that the OP referred to are hardly limited to any one group, but IMHO they tend to spring from the same well (i.e. a lack of compassion and empathy). Christ was big on "love thy neighbour", and plenty of people - Christian and otherwise - do not heed that central principle in commenting on abortion. The very existence of the support groups you mentioned shows this delineation, potentially because of the very factors mentioned in my comment and their ability to take the harder path.

I share your indignation with the graceless characterisation of Christians as all being like the fundamentalists. I agree that the support centres you refer to are a better reflection of the Christian ethos and principles than the dogmatists or the political zealots. I'm just as furious about the inaccurate prostitution of a faith for political purposes. Our agreement in regard to the pro-life/pro-capital punishment inconsistency seems to support that. My abbreviated point was about the reason why some people rail so vehemently against the "evils" of abortion - not that having a given faith predetermines this outcome.

Well spoken!
I stand corrected.

 

[Saxnot]

"Suddenly the statement lacks the theatrics present in the absolute and inaccurate original statement" - A fetus will become a human being (although most would contend that its ALREADY a human being and its development stage doesnt contest that) if it doesnt die. By that arguement, abortion is still killing a human being.

may i ask if you feel every human being has a right to be alive? including mass - murderers and dictators?

the problem with the potential for being human - argument is that it is entirely possible that this child will at some point kill another human being, thereby robbing their victim of HIS right to live.

what i mean to illustrate by the above is the point that no argument based on what the child MIGHT become is valid. we can't see into the future, nor can we communicate with the child. we don't even know if it really desires life, and if it does, if it will turn out to do good things of evil things with it.

what if the unborn child you want to save becomes an abortion doctor?

 

[Meg Galuardi]

Although I am Christian, not everyone affected by the government is so I always try to view politics from as objective a perspective as possible.

I have several views on abortion, the first being that I don't think men should have a vote about it. It is not a choice they will ever have to make.
Second, a fetus is not legally a person, so abortion is not legally murder and should be legal in secular countries.
I do have one problem with abortion however; stem cell research. While it is extremely beneficial to the medical field, it became a way for women in need to get cash quick. And I do personally believe that attempting to get pregnant only to have the fetus aborted for cash is morally wrong (not to mention unhealthy).

 

[HalfTangible]

I used 'it' to refer to the fetus/baby, not killing in general, and I don't support assisted suicide. (I support the death penalty because the person has already made choices that (for obvious reasons) show the person is a danger to society and people in general)

So it's okay to kill a person if they murder someone else (but have every opportunity to turn their life around and use more of that old 'human potential') but it's not okay to kill someone who wants to die because they're suffering a painful degeneration which will certainly result in an undignified death?

Right.

Good for you.

I don't have that much faith in humanity.

Neither do I, but it's still a life. You seem uncomfortable killing a baby because it's a baby, a fully-grown individual with life, experiences, and people to miss it seems less important to you than an unwanted, unplanned, and possibly unloved life in future.

You speak as if the 'if' is an absolute truth - that it will happen, it's simply a matter of when. Abandoning the baby is no different than aborting it, doesn't make it any less wrong.

A baby laying in a street slowly dying of thirst, hunger, and cold is very much different than wiping off a collection of nerves from a human body which feels no pain. If you were given the two above examples (slowly painful death versus painless deletion) when deciding the fate of a child, I'm sure you'd know which to go for. Not that every case of disallowed abortion would have ended with a painful death, but I just wanted to point out a very loose comparison.

Killing someone and leaving them to die is EXACTLY the same.

That's a statement, not an answer. Again, you're given the two options: so long as you're a half well-adjusted person you do the humane one. Being shot in the head and dying instantly isn't the same as being shot in the leg and dying of infection. One of the people in the above example suffers more than the other.

You can't justify murder on the basis of 'the species will be better off'. Because that means serial killers should be left out to wander the streets. Heck, probably given medals.

You just did. Above. You said that murder is okay when it is for the good of mankind for such people as serial killers. Also, pro-choice isn't pro-murder, again this is a silly comparison. Serial killers do not kill for the good of society, and they do not kill things which cannot feel pain or comprehend suffering.

That was poor wording which i corrected in a subsequent post (please see post 308)

Fair enough, no argument there.

By your definition, that means it's ok to kill people who can't feel pain (yes, they exist) slowly and the Holocaust's gas chambers were perfectly acceptable, as they killed the people quickly.

By the poster's definition, it's okay to kill people (or potential people) who can't feel pain or understand what it is their losing or the very definition of suffrage itself. Such things that fall into this category are an undeveloped foetus, sperm-cells, and egg-cells. Your definition encapsulates people under anaesthetic and other hysterical examples.

[joke] 1) You now fall under that definition, as suffrage means the right to vote. =P [/joke]

2) I don't care if the thing can't feel pain (though he does say the fetus can) it's innocent and does not need to die.

1) Whoopsie-doodle...I thought that word rung the wrong bells.
2) A foetus can't feel pain until the 28th week, apparently. The 'wiring' from the receptors to the brain just isn't there. Sure, the baby doesn't need to die, but then no-one does. Sure, it's innocent, but often so is the mother and father: should their lives be potentially ruined because another person's views? Why should a woman risk her life for something she never wanted? Does she deserve it?

'Abadonment is worse than abortion' is not a valid point - you can't solve one problem by making another worse.

So why are you for the death-penalty? That is cutting your loses and killing human potential for the sake of saving others from suffering. This is precisely the same as killing a collection of undeveloped cells forming an undeveloped human foetus; except you may possibly be saving the potential infant itself from years of hardship and suffering. Using your logic, you're very much pro-choice.

Because you are not even considered for the death penalty unless there is a good chance you'll do whatever crime landed you there again.

It's better to have a life of suffering than no life at all. Loved and lost, and all that crap.

That's easy to say, but what about a life that lasts three days of being in a blanket and left in the cold?

My argument is based on this: that individual life begins when the egg is fertilized, not when the baby is born, or when it can start feeling pain. Birth control doesn't kill a fertilized egg, it prevents the egg from being fertilized at all.

Are you also against the morning-after pill, in that case?

I dunno. Probably. What's it do?

It basically prevents the fertilised egg from implanting and as such developing. It's a form of emergency contraception taken after sex that is used if contraceptive measures were not taken or had taken and failed during the actual sexual act.
Wait, so your view is every single accident in sex should have resulted in a child the parents should be forced to raise?
When I was seventeen a condom I used broke during sex. I noticed after, and my girlfriend and I rushed to the chemist and got the morning-after pill to prevent pregnancy. Are you saying that, if you were in the same situation, you would have forced the girl to quit her education, given up your own education and gone into a job, all for the sake of raising a child you don't want and never intended? Are you seriously suggesting that?
What about people who are raped, or condoms sabotaged? Both of these can occur and do occur, should the women in this scenario once again risk their ACTUAL life for a theoretical one?

Also, why once the egg has fertilised? The differences between a living, breathing, thinking baby and the collection of cells forming the first stages of a foetus are far greater than the differences between an fertilised egg and a fertilised egg.

A) That's a dumb point. A dumb, DUMB point. A baby is a fetus after about nine months of development, an unfertilised egg and a fertilised egg exist within a few minutes each other, of COURSE the differences are going to be massive!

Why is this point dumb? A human embryo is just as similar to a dolphin or a pig when it's first formed, but I'm sure you wouldn't care if a farmer used an abortion method on a pig.

B) Because the fertilization of the egg is the first point where a new individual is created. The individual may only be one cell, but before then, the sperm and eggs are technically incomplete cells of someone else's body.

A human embryo is, by it's definition, an incomplete set of cells too. A fly is more alive than a 1-3 week old embryo. I know this is, in your eyes, killing an innocent: but it's not alive. It doesn't even fit the requirements of being alive until around the 23rd week after conception: while abortion is performed before this stage. It is just as much murder as wearing a condom: the foetus is not alive by scientific definition and so abortion is a preventative measure, not an execution.

(i should mention that i am a very poor communicator - I could and probably have said something that sounds like something else)

I wouldn't be that hard on yourself; I got the message plain and clear with no difficulty.

The person in question is a criminal, and a terrible one if he/she is being considered for death row. The baby has done nothing wrong except existing, which frankly is the parent's fault. Moreover, a baby is more valuable than a living person, as it has nearly limitless potential (assuming nurture over nature, but that's a different argument) and while i can see scenarios where the person is more valuable than a baby, none of them are likely and few of them would require the baby to be directly killed.

@Quick vs Infection: In either of those scenarios, the killer is to blame for murder, period, yet you don't blame doctors or parents for murder when performing abortion. In answer to your original question though... Your two choices are absurdly crappy and not at all representative of the actual choice in that scenario. We have foster care for a reason.

Thanks.

1)Nothing to respond with there
2)Yes. (except in cases of rape, which is why I wish that would result in as slow a death as possible for the offender) It's callous, I'll admit, but she spread her legs and he dropped his pants. It sucks, but they did, they gotta live with the consequences.

Sucky life. But still a life. And therefore far more of value than no life period.

For most of those: You shouldn't have been having sex in the first place >.> So yeah, it WAS your fault. If you didn't want to keep it, fine, put it in foster care. Callous, I know, and the foster care system sucks, I know, but it's better than never living at all.
For rape: It's not her fault but that's why the penalty for rape should be much, much higher, as mentioned above. And possibly include complete financial transfer from perpetrator to victim.

A) Because you can't compare two states of something nine months apart to two states of something nine seconds apart.

B) The cells THEMSELVES are complete, though. That was the point.

I spent over three weeks arguing with a guy once over what a song was about and it wasn't until days after he stormed off in disgust that i realized he'd been talking about what the writers intended for it and I was talking about alternate interpretations. And two or three times in this conversation i've worded my argument so poorly that it contradicted itself partway through. so yeah, i'm gonna be hard on myself ;P

 

[Nooh]

Although I am Christian, not everyone affected by the government is so I always try to view politics from as objective a perspective as possible.

I have several views on abortion, the first being that I don't think men should have a vote about it. It is not a choice they will ever have to make.
Second, a fetus is not legally a person, so abortion is not legally murder and should be legal in secular countries.
I do have one problem with abortion however; stem cell research. While it is extremely beneficial to the medical field, it became a way for women in need to get cash quick. And I do personally believe that attempting to get pregnant only to have the fetus aborted for cash is morally wrong (not to mention unhealthy).

I disagree with you there, men should at least have a say in it because it is as much their children too. I'm not saying they should have the final decision or a right to veto, but they should at least be able to voice their concern.

And I was not aware that any country's medical system PAYS a person for the stem cells they get from an aborted foetus. If you want to fix that, just remove the payment. Stem cell research in itself is incredibly valuable and can give a lot of people another chance at life, I'd say it is almost required to keep researching in that field.

 

[Ritter315]

"including mass - murderers and dictators?" - Mass-murderers break their social contracts by using their free will to harm or kill other human beings. People who do that break the contract they are bound to when they enter this earth and their lives, while human all the same, are being used for evil and their rights are mute.
"we don't even know if it really desires life, and if it does, if it will turn out to do good things of evil things with it." - That sort of arguement is extremely frightening. What it essentially states is that humans SHOULD be looked at with suspicion when they're born. This isnt a good way to look at other human beings. Why is this any different with born human beings? If you say that its ok to take away a life because we dont know what that life will come to, than why is age a factor in that?

 

[Truehare]

ll I said in my other post

I am generally greatful that I am alive. Saying that, however, I also THANK GOD quite frequently I was not born into the desperate and destitute conditions prevalent in Africa or other 3rd world areas full of crime, poverty, disease and famine. I could easily and without resevervation say that I would KILL MYSELF if I found myself in conditions that bad.

I believe a person has a right to end their own life when things get that bad, and I dont really care what goverment or religeous institutions have to say about that.

"What about the baby? It isnt being given a chance to even make that decision." You are exactly right. More importantly until that fetus is born, grows, learns, it will not be able to make or articulate a decision, so guess what? decisions are made for him.

In America (and most other countries as I understand it) you do no get the full rights of an adult until you are an adult. Parents, schools, and the goverment consistantly deny rights to minors that adults easily take for granted. Even after adulthood certain types of age discrimination exist that people dont seem to be too worked up about. Drinking ages and car rentals are 2 that come to mind...

A fetus prior to 5-6 months of developement is not an independant lifeform. It cannot survive, eat, drink, change locations, talk, or think on it's own. I am pro-choice because I do feel that it is the right and responsibility of the woman providing life support to this fetus to ultimatelly decide it's fate for it.

People are born and die everyday. Some people enjoy their lives, others are so miserable I dont see how anying but consentual euthanasia is the only ethical option for them. Television is full of ads about how we could keep people from dying for just a few cents a day, yet they continue to die horrible, agonizing deaths by the millions. I believe we in the developed world easily have the resources to save most of them, and yet we dont.

Despite all of this, you feel entitled to tell women that they cant choose to give up supporting a half-formed human still completely dependant on HER BODY for survival because you had 1 son and his life didnt/doesnt suck...

I don't feel entitled to tell women what to do with their bodies, I said that is MY opinion; I won't ever go to the front of an abortion clinic carrying a pro-life sign, rest assured. Besides, my opinion is based on everything I said BEFORE mentioning my son, that was just to show how personal this feels to me (and by personal, I mean that I understand how people can see things differently). If you are going to dispute my opinion -- which you should do if you think differently, no problem with that at all -- please understand it completely, don't use just a part of it as if that part were the whole.

That said, you have some good points there. I can certainly see how more people being born could become a problem in certain areas. Overpopulation is a very real issue that must be fought as soon as possible. But I think we should analyze the matter a little more, because we seek to protect life in all its forms everywhere but where that life is most fragile, i.e., before the baby is even born.

I agree it's a matter of choice. Mainly, we can choose to see the unborn as a group of cells with no intelligence or feelings (which is correct) or we can choose to see it as a group of cells with a complete genetic code, with the defining characteristics for the future baby already in place (which is also true). I just choose to see it as I do, influenced by, among other things, that story I told about my son. All in all, at the end of the day (again, the way *I* see it), telling me that an unborn fetus is defenseless and completely dependant on the mother's body only strenghtens my opinion that it should be protected, not killed.

But not all your points are that good, I'm afraid. Saying that decisions are made for minors by other people doesn't have anything to do with this discussion; unless where you live some of those decisions involve killing the ones who don't have the power to decide for themselves, which I'm sure is not the case. If it is, remind me to never set foot in the United States...

(By the way: seeing how everything is taken so seriously on the internet, that last bit was an attempt at humor to lighten the mood. Don't take it as anything other than that.)

 

[Erttheking]

Here is why I think that it is wrong, I think that it is ducking responsibility, if you don't want to have a kid, use a condom or take the pill. Some might argue that that is no different than abortion, and I disagree. If you leave an egg alone eventually it will die of natural causes, if you leave an unborn baby alone, it will grow and grow until birth occurs, I see no reason to rob it of life once it begins to grow, because once it is conceived, it has a chance at life, and you snuff it out if you abort it.

P.S. to be fair, I do believe that abortion can be appropriate in some situations, such as if the child was conceived by rape or it's one of those situations where you have to choose between the mother's life and the child's life, but those are far and few in-between.

 

[Olrod]

How many anti-choicers take an interest in a baby's welfare AFTER it's been born?

Or is birth the cut-off point for caring?

 

[Haagrum]

Here is why I think that it is wrong, I think that it is ducking responsibility, if you don't want to have a kid, use a condom or take the pill.

And what if the condom breaks (low chance, but always possible), or you're one of the statistical minority of women for whom the pill is not 100% effective?