For this, this isn't about changing someone's mind. This is me stating that there is wall between beliefs and the law. Some people have now broken that wall and threaten the very foundation of Ameican democracy
Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade; states can ban abortion
- Thread starter Piscian
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Someone who watches a movie where a dog dies also has a very different reaction than if it was a normal human. And just like with a fetus this has little to do with reality and everything with dramatisation. Hollywood has a long history of sanctifying pregnancy almost as much as conservatives do.
Wrong. The one carrying the pregnancy is right about abortion - whether they wish to have one or not. The people who think abortion is a basic human right are right. There is no both-sizing this.
Yes, it's sad to see the Republican Party turn its back on the few principles it used to espouse.
SNAP was expanded in response to COVID in a bill sponsored in the Senate by Mitch McConnell and signed by Donald Trump.
Are you referring to the SNAP expansion in the Families First Act? Because that was--
1. Sponsored by a Democrat, not McConnell, though he did support it;
2. Opposed by 40 Republicans and zero Democrats;
3. Passed by a Democratic majority.
And that's after Republicans insisted on watering it down in order to win their support. And now, after the expansion has already expired, Republicans are still looking at further SNAP cuts.
No, I was referring to the CARES Act, which among many things aimed $15,810,000,000 at the SNAP program.
Also, I'm pretty sure most or all of the SNAP cuts suggested by Republicans are just work requirements for able-bodied adults.
What's this? More vague, vacuous recieved wisdom devoid of actual substance or specificity. Imagine my shock..
There is an incredible irony in the fact that you are arguing for a clear separation between a fetus and its mother while also believing that actually creating that separation should be illegal..
In reality, the status of a fetus is, again, very obviously liminal. It is not a distinct organism and not an organ, yet it shares qualities of both. Like an organism it possesses the quality of possessing unique DNA, like an organ it is part of a larger entity that regulates its metabolism. Again, there are no clear answers here.
More generally though, the last century and a half of medical technology have not provided the clear answers you seem to think they have. In fact, they've made this whole discussion kind of irrelevant. There is nothing special or distinctive about life to separate it from the rest of the universe. It follows the same physical laws. There is no soul hiding in the DNA strands, it's just meaningless strings of molecules, the same as all the other stuff in the universe.
Again, we arrive at the fundamental contradiction in your beliefs. You want there to be something sacred about life, yet you also want to boil life down to material phenomena that absolutely preclude that kind of sacredness. In historical Christianity, the thing you mock as "millennia old dogma" the person was the soul and the body was a mere vessel. This is, frankly, not as silly as you seem to think it is, it reflects the reality that there is a subjective quality to the state of being conscious that is not (yet) reducible to physics. Whether it's some literal soul or an emergent quality of the whole becoming greater than the sum of its parts, there is something mysterious and numinous about consciousness. Despite your insistence to the contrary, medical science has very little to say about that yet.
Again, if you want to live in a world where a clump of cells is the same as a thinking, feeling person, then fine. But by doing so you have reduced life to meaninglessness. You have openly admitted that what you think and what you believe and what you value means absolutely fucking nothing. You are no more important or sacred or special than any of the bacteria living in your gut.
It is 100% a distinct organism. You're just wrong on the face of it.
On the contrary, I am treating life itself as meaningful. By demanding something meet other requirements than just being alive before it has meaning, you are insisting that life on its own is meaningless.
But beliefs are the reasons laws exist. People believe that bodily autonomy is good and people believe murder is bad. It's not like these laws are like the laws of nature that have always existed. The laws were made into law because we believe them. Just because someone believes something from a religious text doesn't mean they are wrong because it's in a religious text, that's essentially an ad-hominem attack as you're attacking where the argument is from vs the argument itself.
I used a movie as an example vs it happening in real life just so it wasn't as morbid.
That's because you find bodily autonomy to supersede murder in your ethics hierarchy.
No, you tried to apply simplistic movie tropes to real-life situations.
Yeah, see here is why you have nothing of value to add to this discussion. Nice example though of why "centrism" is just conservatism.
Why? What makes it a distinct organism? What actually makes it distinct from the body around it in a way that a tumor, for example, is not?
I actually have little interest in indulging this delusion so let's just break it. There is no self-evident or obvious definition of what makes something a distinct organism, just as there is no self-evident or obvious definition of life. Biological and medical science has not provided those definitions, in fact it has very much done the opposite. The universe does not seem to recognize or care about any of the binary distinctions you find important, and why would it? Facts don't care about your feelings.
Life is meaningless. No amount of fairy tales and imagination will change that.
I mean this very literally. Life does not actually exist in any objective sense. It is a concept humans came up with to describe a category of things that possess similar qualities. Scientifically, life is what we call it when matter begins to behave in ways we consider indicative of life. That definition is, of course, circular, but that's okay. It's just a heuristic tool for making sense of a complex universe. But do not mistake that artificial simplicity for reality. That universe is utterly indifferent to the concept of life.
What is not meaningless, what can still give value to life, is the act of living it.
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No, I didn't. I just preferred to use something fictional vs something real. People in real life would have the same reaction but even worse since it's not a movie.
How is the abortion debate not about people prioritizing morals differently? There is literally no logical proof you can do to prove abortion is right nor is there any logical proof anyone can do to prove abortion is wrong. How is this conservatism? Because that would lean into being that abortion should be allowed because everyone pays taxes and thus it's everyone's country and since no one is "right" and no one is "wrong" either, thus abortion should be allowed because it's not "wrong". I didn't realize the conservative position on abortion was that they are pro-choice, that's news to me.
Which says more about those people. It's no more tragic when someone whose pregnant dies than when someone who isn't. It's only seen as more tragic because pregnancy is viewed by default as beautiful and sacred.
Equating abortion to murder is you being conservative, and the rest of what you wrote here is just meaningless waffle, as usual. Anyone who wants to have an abortion should be able to get an abortion, that's the only right position to take on this.
I don't view pregnancy as beautiful or sacred, just a natural process of the body.
A person just doesn't magically become a person after they left the womb. What happens within the very short time it takes to pull a baby out of the womb that makes them a person vs when they are still in the womb? Sure, there's a massive difference between an 8-month fetus and 8-week but trying to determine when they actually become a person will be as arbitrary as when we determine someone to be an adult. It's philosophically unknowable but legally we do have to specific definitions for such things and that's why we have them. Also, it is a double homicide in most states for killing a pregnant woman so it is technically murder by the law vs just philosophical.
Do you just not understand how government works?
If you bring a bill/policy to the floor (or to the electorate to get voted on during an election), you are expected to provide facts. Those facts could be wrong, but if you don't provide any facts, that's just a belief.
For example, after Roe was abandoned, Texas put in some anti-abortion laws. There has been an increase in maternity deaths of over 1,000 deaths in two years. Similarly, stillbirths have dramatically increased. That is what you call a fact. Alabama, without any evidence, decided that fertilized eggs have the same rights as birthed people. CONTRARY to what even the bible says. That's a belief
I believe we have thoroughly reached the heart of the matter, and there's nothing I could say to elevate my position better than allowing your words to speak for themselves.
1) Ethics/morals aren't about facts. It's not like you're bringing a bill to the floor about improving homelessness to where everyone already agrees that's a good thing and then you present to everyone why your strategy will work.
2) Also, what is the right thing do to doesn't always give the best results. Consequentialism is a very flawed ethical theory because it attempts to predict the outcomes and there's tremendous flaws with that system.
3) Do you seriously not understand the other side at all? You've provided your facts (I'm assuming they aren't playing with numbers and true) for you side but totally ignored the facts that the other side would bring forth. The other side would then say there's been X amount more babies born because of it. How are the facts proving your case when you ignore all the facts of the other side? Then, you're right essentially every time.
You have not put forth any proof as to why you're right and you really don't have any way to proving it either. Most things are deemed ethically bad because of the sheer fact that you wouldn't want it done to you. Even something like murder is essentially infringing on somebody's freedom because we find life is more important to preserve than allowing such freedoms. Also, the fact that no one wants to be killed themselves, thus everyone agrees murder is bad. Do you not understand how much of a moral conundrum the abortion issue really is?
Hey guys wouldn't it be weird if a person previously claimed that deontology and consequentialism are basically the same thing while claiming to be a deontologist but it was pointed out that their stance was actually a consequentialist one but they couldn't admit they were wrong? Wouldn't it then also be strange for that person to later argue that consequentialism is bad actually? Just hypothetically speaking, that would be weird right?