Abortion....why?

[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?

 

[SenseOfTumour]

What I don't get is the anti abortion folks seem to be the same ones who get so mad about people claiming welfare for their kids.

'What's wrong with people today is they're just having kids so they can get benefit money and free housing' - well give them the option of not having the damn kid then, without piling on even more guilt.

Sure a lot of young people are kinda daft and pregnancies happen that shouldn't, but that's not going to change, doesn't matter how much education is thrown at them, guys are horny and they'll talk girls into bed, and they'll ***** about the terrible effort of having to put a damn condom on.

Let us get the coathangers to work and we can cut welfare bills overnight, but you need to make a choice, guys.

I'm all for it, and I also wish people who want kids would adopt too, we've got enough people thanks, how about taking care of the existing ones instead of making more?

 

[Kennetic]

Anyways, I hate "pro-life" people for the simple fact that they are trying to make other peoples decisions for them, when they have no right to get all meddled in others business. Fuck em, if their lives are so boring that if all they have to do is protest abortion, then they can all just go kill themselves and save us the trouble.

Your life must be so boring that you ***** about how other people's lives are so boring. On the internet I might add.

 

[CaptainKoala]

There is no rational reason to have an abortion, even from a pro-choice view! If you don't want/can't support a kid, keep your legs closed. Don't punish your own child's life because you have no self-control. Put it up for adoption, there are millions of families who want children but aren't capable of having their own.
Abortion is murder, anybody that tells you otherwise is full of shit.

Abortion is not murder, a fetus is not a conscious life. Until it is born its a parasite living off of the mother and it is the mothers life whether to keep it. The mother could have gotten pregnant from failed birth control or in a worst case scenario rape. It is a much simpler and kinder thing to do to end the possibility of a human life then have a child abandoned from its mother in the adoption system when it is fully sentient. In the end though it all comes down to what the mother wants to do, a child is a heavy burden and if you think anyone who doesn't want to live with that is "full of shit" then you sir are an assh*le

What is it about a fetus that makes it not a human life? Honestly, that isn't condescending or rhetorical, I'm serious. How is this [http://www.babycenter.com/fetal-development-images-13-weeks] not a baby. That's only after thirteen weeks. To call it a parasite, or a clump of tissue is asinine. Does a random clump of tissue have arms and legs, eyes that can see, ears that can hear? Can a clump of tissue breathe, swallow, blink, or move its arms and legs? Can a tumor kick you? No.

Here are some of the main events that happen over the course of a baby's development. Note that all of these are characteristics of a person, not a parasite.

*The heart starts beating between 18 and 25 days.
*Electrical brainwaves have been recorded at 43 days on an EEG. If the absence of a brainwave indicates death, why will pro-abortionists not accept that the presence of a brainwave is a confirmation of life?

*The brain and all body systems are present by 8 weeks and functioning a month later.
*At 8 weeks, the baby will wake and sleep, make a fist, suck his thumb, and get hiccups.
*At the end of 9 weeks, the baby has his own unique finger prints.
*At 11-12 weeks, the baby is sensative to heat, touch, light and noise. All body systems are working. He weighs about 28g and is 6-7.5 cm long.

And yes, of course rape is a horrible thing. But don't punish your unborn child because of something horrible that happened to you. Like I said before, millions of people are look
ing to adopt children, there is no such thing as an unwanted child.

EDIT: Please note that after only 43 days the baby has a beating heart and brain waves, meaning it meets the medical requirement for it to be considered a human life for adults. But I love the double standard within the medical community so it somehow doesn't apply to unborn babies.

 

[Olrod]

What's a "pro-abortionist"?

There's only pro-choice, and anti-choice.

 

[cheese_wizington]

Anyways, I hate "pro-life" people for the simple fact that they are trying to make other peoples decisions for them, when they have no right to get all meddled in others business. Fuck em, if their lives are so boring that if all they have to do is protest abortion, then they can all just go kill themselves and save us the trouble.

Your life must be so boring that you ***** about how other people's lives are so boring. On the internet I might add.

*insert obligatory "Your life must be so boring that you ***** about how other people ***** about how other people's lives are so boring, on the internet I might add" retort here*

 

[Athinira]

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.

...except that abortion IS a means of self-preservation. It's a way for a women to keep her life stable (if the baby doesn't fit in).

Like i said earlier: This isn't the old days where a woman could marry a man, and then rely on him to support her for the rest of her life. In this day and age, women have to stand on their own feet a hundred times more than they had to in the past, and a baby can get in the way of that (as far as totally ruining it). Hence, self-preservation.

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.

This is just another way of you paraphrasing the same question: "If you were sentient while being a fetus, how would you feel if you were denied the experience of love and life because your mother decided to have an abortion."
All it does is bring us back to the last part of my post, and the answer is the same: Since I'm not sentient, I'm absolutely 1000% ignorant of what I'm missing out on.

Ignorance is a bliss. You can't be cruel to a non-sentient being.

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.

You realize the flaw in that argument?

Spoiler: If not, click here for a demonstration

as for the fetuses, yes fetuses gets abortions, but you're not wiping humanity out of existence. We have billions of humans on earth. If anything, we are a large population of humans. It wouldn't be murder to wipe out some by having a few abortions, because that's not the whole human race. But if i were to unleash the nuclear holocaust, which would engulf the entire earth, which humanity needs to survive, i would commit genocide by wiping out the whole race which needs the earth.

^ Fixed. The problem with your argument is that i can easily upscale it (like i just did). Same principle, i just changed a few keywords and grammar and suddenly it's pro-abortion

.

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"

That's just reiterating the same point, and the answer is still the same: I wouldn't exist, so i wouldn't feel anything.

You might as well be asking how all those wasted ejaculations from masturbating men feel because they weren't allowed to fertilize an egg.

loking at it retrosepcitvely of course. if your chance at life was taken away, wouldnt it be a bad thing?

Again: If your life hasn't existed in the first place, then you can't look at it retrospectively. That's a time paradox. To not make that a paradox, we would have to move to the assumption that parallel universes exist (one where you were born, one where you were an abortion), and then ask the "you" in the universe where you were born how it feels about the alternate universe.

And even if that was possible (ie. parallel universes exist), the 'you' that was born could simply realize that the other less lucky guy in the other universe isn't the same 'you' and reply "Even if he is another me, whether or not he is born doesn't influence me, so why should i care?"

Sure the thought might horrify you, but at the end of the day, you weren't an abortion, and neither was your siblings, your cousins, your friends or your pets. Appreciate them, and live in the moment instead of worrying about whether or not you could have had more/less siblings, more cousins, more friends or more pets.

 

[AngloDoom]

Spoiler

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.

Fair enough, with this bit. This is very much us just having two different opinions: I do not consider potential life as valuable as life already present and with memories, experiences, regrets, and people to miss it. While I'm also a supporter of capital punishment - simply for financial and preventative reasons - I just don't see the baby's prevention of life the same as murdering it once it's come out of the womb.

@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.

We don't blame doctors or parents because, as far as most are concerned, we are not killing a human being but preventing one. I understand the choices were very far removed from the subject but some people would rather take this route than the foster-care route as a result of shame or just plain cruelty. I'd rather the child never existed than to think of it's only experience of life, and the loss of it's potential if we wish to take that route, being taken by laying around in pain until it fades away slowly.

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.

Phew, glad to see you make an exception for rape there. That would have had be frothing at the mouth.
That other bit, however, strikes me as unreasonable. Are you saying every single time a couple has sex, even while taking precautionary measures, they should be ready to accept responsibility of a child for potentially eighteen years, or at least long enough to give birth to it and give it to someone else? That's not at all practical. Couples often have sex daily if time allows and will almost always use contraception if it occurs this often, but it's still their fault?

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

This point we won't agree with in general, methinks. If I had a dog that was going to die in intense pain shortly, I'd put it down myself if necessary. Similarly if I was going to die of a degenerative disease that would leave me in pain and miserable I'd take my own life if possible. Seems like we've just got too different morals on this point to ever agree.

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.

Woah, why shouldn't I have been having sex in the first place? I was using contraception, I was of the age of consent, I loved the girl I was with at the time, she loved me. What more qualifications do you need for me to be 'ready' for sex? Does every single act of sex have to be for reproductive purposes in your mind?
Wait, you'd advocate me forcing her to have the child and potentially die over what is essentially a torn condom? I genuinely can't believe anyone would ever bring that on someone they love and I think in the same situation. I understand you're saying "we had sex, deal with it" but why should I potentially take someone I love off of this planet, potentially ruin their remaining life, and potentially traumatise her and put her off of raising children she could love and care for in the future because condoms aren't indestructible? All for the sake of a blip of a person who has even less chance of surviving the process than the one I love. Again, would you seriously force a loved one to go through all of that for something no-one would miss?

For rape: Wait, what? You do think the raped should birth the child? At least, the "complete financial transfer" part indicates you do. There is no way I can answer this civilly, so I'm sorry but I'm going to have to ignore this section.

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

But we're doing that now. You're looking at an embryo as potential after it is born; nine months later. I'm looking at it as what it is at this point in time; a ball of cells with nothing to lose. I genuinely do not see the difference between killing these cells and killing a fruit-fly besides one can ruin your day and one can ruin your life. This ball of cells can be made cheaply, easily, manufactured if you so wish.
For me: a person is not a collection of cells but their experiences, passions, likes, dislikes, memories, regrets, hobbies, and habits. Destroy something containing those listed and destroying something without any of these cannot be put in the same box simply because one is as killing a fly while one is ending an ongoing struggle, story, and pursuit for happiness. I suppose, once more, we'll have to agree to disagree on this point.

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

Again, we have differing views. I don't think being human is having the right genes in the right order and that is where our value comes from. Until that child starts paving it's road in life - or at least around 20 weeks in - it can be viewed as a parasitic, unfeeling, unthinking creature inside of a woman from my perspective.

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

Fair enough, my friend. You'll have to forgive me for any slip-ups I make too, I tend to write knowing what I intend to say so sometimes I don't see how it comes across as well.

That said we may have reached a point where all that can be said has been expressed: I've noticed we just have fundamentally different views that just are not compatible. Feel free to reply, of course, I just wonder how long we can keep this afloat.

 

[Caliostro]

But there is a "reason" for things, even if it is not a logical one.

Of course EVERYTHING has a reason in the sense that everything has a cause. Nothing is truly "random". That said, they are not following "logic" of any kind, and the true logic of their actions, regardless of how dysfunctional, is hidden even to them. So no, they do not act logically. Their premises are demonstrably wrong, and they refuse to even question them.

So yes, they have a "reason", in the same sense that the crazy guy running around the street with his underwear on his head shouting "THE END IS NIGH! THE ANT OVERLORDS ARE HERE!!" has a reason. But they're both just as valid.

 

[Charli]

And yet people moan about the world being overpopulated. It is pretty funny isn't it.

I really have no desire for kids at this point at my life, it boggles me when people nearly 4-5 years younger than me are getting excited for their bouncing baby ball of stress, work and tears.

(Seriously, spend your teenaged years helping out with young kids, that'll keep your legs together)

As for abortion, I believe it should be legal within certain month thresholds, any further than say 3 months along and I think you've gone past the brink and aren't sure enough why you don't want this baby to begin with, bringing up a baby in an unstable and unwanted environment is equally as cruel as just ending the process while it is incapable of coherent thought.

[Religious reasoning not welcomed on this quotation]

 

[Handbag1992]

or find ways of defending yourselves from rapists

So it's the victims fault for not protecting themselves? For living in countries where guns are illegal? Or for being attacked by too many people to fight off?

Perhaps it's the fault of the little girl when her uncle does things to her that she doesn't understand.

Either you stated your point of view without thinking, or you agree with what I've just said. I would very much like to know which.