Pro-lifer argument: "what if your parents decided to abort you?!"

[Eveningforest]

The US is not the only country which has many pro life citizens.

Anti-choice citizens, you mean. You're right. I can name many third world countries where women's rights are pretty much non-existent. I don't want this country to be one of them.

[JohnBrown1917]

Recognizing that pro-abortion people are immoral dickbags is not solely the domain of the religious.

The religious and those who dont understand biology.

[Acidbaron]

Would have been the parents and more specifically the woman her right to do so, as they would have been stuck spending a vast amount of time and money on me.

I find pro-life people fairly dumb, since they randomly add the value of life to something that isn't even human yet. By that logic each time i jerk off, every time i have sex i'm killing a shit ton of babies.

The reality is however the motivation is mostly religious and we know that how poorer you are in life, the more you are kept dumb. The easier is to indoctrinate or simply put brainwash them, rather them actually helping them improve their standard of living. Because suffering now leads to a good afterlife, I think those who wrote it or preached it including Jezus were simply the worlds first sociopaths.

[Thrundi]

You need a lesson on the birds and bees?

Hah, there lies the problem.
You've been misinformed, actually. Birds and bees have nothing to do with human reproduction. Maybe if more people knew how it all works, we'd have less issues with religion and pseudo morals getting in the way

[s_bushido]

Recognizing that pro-abortion people are immoral dickbags is not solely the domain of the religious.

You're correct. Being an ignorant buffoon isn't limited to the religious.

[Aurrora]

What? Nobody is advocating for abortions to be available at any point up til birth. Is that even a thing, in any country? Where do you see this "extreme screaming" it should be available at any point?

That's exactly what people who argue "woman's bodily autonomy" are ultimately arguing for.

If the fetus's right to life is always trumped by the mother's bodily autonomy, a position that Endus has taken, then removing the child from the womb and letting nature take its course should be an option at any time. That second and third trimester abortions aren't allowed without good reason is only a compromise for people that find this morally repugnant.

[Endus]

That's exactly what people who argue "woman's bodily autonomy" are ultimately arguing for.

No. It is not. It's that there shouldn't be artificial and misogynistic legal barriers between a woman and her medical care.

If the fetus's right to life is always trumped by the mother's bodily autonomy, a position that Endus has taken, then removing the child from the womb and letting nature take its course should be an option at any time. That second and third trimester abortions aren't allowed without good reason is only a compromise for people that find this morally repugnant.

Rather than leave the decision up to nosy neighbours with religious motives, I'd rather leave it to doctors and their ethics.

That's it. If you're pretending it's anything else, you're misrepresenting my position.

Edit: Also, the notion of "compromising" over people's basic rights is asinine, in and of itself.

[Has lost its way]

No. It is not. It's that there shouldn't be artificial and misogynistic legal barriers between a woman and her medical care.



Rather than leave the decision up to nosy neighbours with religious motives, I'd rather leave it to doctors and their ethics.

That's it. If you're pretending it's anything else, you're misrepresenting my position.

That is leaving it up to nosy neighbors... barring medical reasons for the abortion.

You keep falling back on religion rather then science. I honestly think this being a philosophical question rather then a hard science one kind of throws you into a loop.

The debate comes down to when you believe a human life starts. Is it during conception? Is it when the fetus becomes aware? There isn't a really clear line in the sand and it isn't a easy subject to debate.

Trying to simplify it into " Religion bad" isn't helping the discussion

[crewskater]

That is leaving it up to nosy neighbors... barring medical reasons for the abortion.

You keep falling back on religion rather then science. I honestly think this being a philosophical question rather then a hard science one kind of throws you into a loop.

The debate comes down to when you believe a human life starts. Is it during conception? Is it when the fetus becomes aware? There isn't a really clear line in the sand and it isn't a easy subject to debate.

Trying to simplify it into " Religion bad" isn't helping the discussion

It's almost as if Endus doesn't know there are secular pro-lifers and liberal ones at that. Plus religion is thankfully on the decline so the religious argument is getting weaker by the day.

[Has lost its way]

It's almost as if Endus doesn't know there are secular pro-lifers and liberal ones at that. Plus religion is thankfully on the decline so the religious argument is getting weaker by the day.

I don't really know if it is last I checked atheism was on the way out but I admit to not having my eyes glued to it.

[Endus]

That is leaving it up to nosy neighbors... barring medical reasons for the abortion.

You keep falling back on religion rather then science. I honestly think this being a philosophical question rather then a hard science one kind of throws you into a loop.

I'm clearly not, so you're just bullshitting, here.

The debate comes down to when you believe a human life starts. Is it during conception? Is it when the fetus becomes aware? There isn't a really clear line in the sand and it isn't a easy subject to debate.

1> No, it really isn't about that. There's no other instance where one human being's right to life would overrule another's right to their own body. Same reason we don't allow forced organ harvesting, in a nutshell. Even if we grant that it's a human life, it still doesn't justify a pro-life stance. And that's a big ask, to be frank.

2> Biologically, the same markers we use to determine end-of-life wouldn't qualify a fetus for start-of-life until around Week 21. And if you're not using some such objectively-determinative set of markers, you're making shit up. Which is where this becomes religious, or at least pseudo-religious; you make something up, without any basis in reality, and then demand everyone else agree with your fantasy.

On the last, though; feel free to try and objectively define the beginnings of personhood. Be warned that I will dismiss any qualifiers you use that are either not objective in nature, or which don't determine personhood in other contexts and thus cannot be considered to do so in this one. It has to be objective, because you're trying to convince me, and I'm not going to accept your opinion/preference as an argument. And it has to be a unique description, or you're not describing human personhood in the first place.

I will also point out ridiculous consequences of an argument, as needed, because if it creates ridiculous consequences, it's a bad definition.

It's almost as if Endus doesn't know there are secular pro-lifers and liberal ones at that. Plus religion is thankfully on the decline so the religious argument is getting weaker by the day.

They may profess to be secular, but their position on this particular subject is not rooted in an objective analysis of the facts at hand. Guaranteed.

Also, it's a bit silly to claim that the decline in religiosity is somehow a mark against me, when support for pro-life positions is also declining.

[Asrialol]

Ok I'll bite I'll be the devils advocate.


But are you sure that a fetus up until a certain point isn't alive and a baby?

We put down people in vegetative states all the time. The point where a fetus goes from basically being a vegetable (not able to feel, experience, sense, etc) to not being a vegetable is where I'd say that abortion goes from being no problem at all, to not really a problem still.

I personally don't care at all about abortion laws. I find it pointless to waste time discussing something that doesn't really matter. Imagine if people cared about real issues as much as they do about abortions.

[Aurrora]

No. It is not. It's that there shouldn't be artificial and misogynistic legal barriers between a woman and her medical care.



Rather than leave the decision up to nosy neighbours with religious motives, I'd rather leave it to doctors and their ethics.

That's it. If you're pretending it's anything else, you're misrepresenting my position.

Edit: Also, the notion of "compromising" over people's basic rights is asinine, in and of itself.

I don't see how this is at all misrepresenting your opinion since you've said as much right here:

If you want to be scientific and non-arbitrary, the only sensible argument I've seen would be to use the same measure we use to determine end-of-life; whether there's coherent brain activity. That doesn't emerge in a fetus until around week 24 of development; you can't reasonably push personhood back much further than that.

But again; the argument's irrelevant to the abortion debate. It simply doesn't matter, because the host woman's bodily autonomy rights would still trump any hypothetical right to life of the fetus.

And here:

Nobody's arguing that human life does not matter.

We're pointing out that A> a fetus is not a human being, by definition, and B> even if it were, the pregnant woman's right to control, the use of her body trumps any right to life of the fetus.

Using bodily autonomy as your argument for being pro-choice falls apart because to my knowledge no doctor has ever performed a preterm cesarean section simply on the mother's desire to not carry the child any longer. Therefore: at some point the baby's right to life does trump the mother's right to bodily autonomy.

[crewskater]

They may profess to be secular, but their position on this particular subject is not rooted in an objective analysis of the facts at hand. Guaranteed.

Whatever you say(no true Scotsman).. So is causing a miscarriage murder?

[exochaft]

I find pro-life people fairly dumb, since they randomly add the value of life to something that isn't even human yet. By that logic each time i jerk off, every time i have sex i'm killing a shit ton of babies.

Maybe some extremely misguided religious people would believe that, but what you described is not the case at all. The argument always comes down to when life begins, and I don't know any serious person who believes sperm/eggs are their own person. However, once a sperm fertilizes an egg and genetic code that is different from the mother/father exists, that's a good starting place for when a new life actually begins. This still even allows for wiggle room of a week or two after sex to take measures to not get pregnant, as it takes roughly a week or two before an egg gets fertilized. Some middle ground, if you call it that, is when a heartbeat is detected. However, the pro-life argument is all about protecting a life, and typically pro-abortion people avoid trying to pin down when a life begins because their arguments tend to fall apart if you get honest answers of them. This is how the phrases "it's a choice between the doctor and the mother" came about, as it was a cope-out to actually coming up with a rational argument that people would believe.

Now why is this all suddenly in the forefront again? There was a lot of legislation coming to light and gaining approval about allowing 3rd trimester abortions, and some states have made rebuttals legislation to bring it back more towards Roe vs Wade as we've gone extremely far from its original scope. For those that don't know, Roe vs Wade was primarily about 1st trimester abortions, as even then 2nd/3rd trimester abortions were not a popular idea and looked down upon. There has been polling down with current day people, and roughly half of Americans are okay with 1st trimester abortions... but it drops immensely when you're talking about 2nd/3rd trimester, as they are extremely unpopular. The common rebuttal is that "well 2nd/3rd trimester abortions are so rare, we're not talking about that!", however even NPR put out regulations for their broadcasters to stop referring to 2nd/3rd trimester abortions as rare, as because we don't know how rare they actually are. On top of that, what's the point of passing legislation to allow 2nd/3rd trimester abortions when they're extremely unpopular to the average person and they're supposed to be rare?

All that aside, we're coming to a point where modern medicine where babies can be born around the 20-21 week point and survive. That's the middle of the 2nd trimester, a point where legislation says it's okay to have abortions (and still do occur). This is why the discussion of when a life begins is extremely important, as we're at the point most previous definitions no longer apply that support abortion. We have tons of laws that protect a child from harm/abuse even if they're one day born, but we're somehow completely fine with harming/abusing the same child one day earlier when it comes to some legislation.

Now, many pro-abortion sentiments and arguments I see are rooted in history, yet those espousing them likely don't know where they come from. The movement for abortion (and Planned Parenthood) is actually a white supremacy movement in the early/mid-1900's, as most of it's logic and reasoning (still used today) was the same that the Nazis used to implement abortions. Margaret Sanger is the centerpiece of all this in the US, as she was an avid birth control advocate and eugenicist. She along with other like-minded groups/individuals all spoke highly of the Third Reich, and they aimed to control the human population and weed out all the undesirables, which mostly included "blacks" and "yellows," aka non-white people. She was also very anti-religious, as she despised how Catholic families tended to have many kids, and she thought it increased poverty and advocated population control to boot. With all these goals in mind, she created Planned Parenthood, to implement population control and practice eugenics to remove "undesirables" from the world. While its history has been whitewashed to the point where most people don't know its history, it's goals and practices and rhetoric/language remain pretty much the same as when it's founders actively supported the practices and logic of the Third Reich. Many people in this thread who are defending abortions has even used the same language Sanger and her supporters (and the Nazis) used to promote/defend abortions in the name of eugenics and white supremacy. When it comes to black abortions, they've likely succeed as current estimates are that the black population in the US would be double in size if it weren't for abortions (at least as of the mid-1970's).

Well, I wanted to get into the condition of many former Planned Parenthood employees and how they suffer from PTSD and other psychological disorders after working there for extended periods of time, but I think my post is long enough for now. Simple point is this: I can guarantee most pro-abortion people think they're informed and know where there stance is coming from, but they likely don't realize how deeply rooted it is in Nazism and white supremacy.

[Endus]

I don't see how this is at all misrepresenting your opinion since you've said as much right here:

And here:

Because they were asking about legal conflicts between rights, rather than about practical ethics of medical care.

Like I said; you're misrepresenting my opinion, because (as you've made clear, here) you're ignoring context.

Using bodily autonomy as your argument for being pro-choice falls apart because to my knowledge no doctor has ever performed a preterm cesarean section simply on the mother's desire to not carry the child any longer. Therefore: at some point the baby's right to life does trump the mother's right to bodily autonomy.

You're confusing medical ethics with legal questions, again. They're two separate things, y'know. Doctors may be legally entitled to do such a procedure, if the circumstances warrant it, but said procedure is medically unethical in almost all circumstances because those that would justify it are incredibly rare.

[Thirza]

typically pro-abortion people avoid trying to pin down when a life begins because their arguments tend to fall apart if you get honest answers of them

This is a bald faced lie.

Pro choice advocates all over the thread, all over the world have cited the components of the developed brain that makes the self.

The rest of your word(lie) salad is not worth reading ebcause you strawman.

[Endus]

Whatever you say(no true Scotsman)..

I did not make a "no true Scotsman" argument.

I pointed out that if your argument is based on premises that are fundamentally faith-based, then you can't claim that your argument is secular and thus rational.

I'll grant that there's a narrow window where they may be making up non-religious imaginary things, but I really don't see the point in distinguishing between that and religious things, when from an outside perspective, they're essentially the same.

So is causing a miscarriage murder?

I feel like you're baiting me into saying "no", so you can link a fetal homicide law and proclaim victory.

When all doing so would do is demonstrate that you didn't read said law, which doesn't grant personhood to a fetus in the first place, doesn't apply to abortions, and so on.

- - - Updated - - -

and typically pro-abortion people avoid trying to pin down when a life begins because their arguments tend to fall apart if you get honest answers of them. This is how the phrases "it's a choice between the doctor and the mother" came about, as it was a cope-out to actually coming up with a rational argument that people would believe.

This is, frankly, bullshit.

We're pretty open that there can be objectively determinative markers for when personhood could exist; the usual metric I've cited time and again is the emergence of coherent brain activity, typically around Week 21. It's the same marker we use to medically define the end of a life, so I feel it works fine to establish the beginning.

It's just irrelevant, since if you pushed as hard as you possibly could, this would push for late-term abortions to rely primarily on inducing birth, but late-term abortions are vanishingly rare to begin with and almost exclusively occur due to risks to the mother or malformations in the fetus, both of which would overrule that concern in those circumstances to begin with.

It's a silly question that doesn't really help argue for change, basically.

[GrinningMan]

If only the CDC tracked abortion statistics as well as reasons given for abortion.

If only adoption rates were tracked, as well as temporary foster care statistics.

If only manslaughter charges were even across the board. A man can be charged for feeding his SO a cocktail designed to force an abortion and be charged, a woman can walk into a clinic and have it done as a procedure. Its a life when its convenient.

[Hilhen7]

Conservatives can't give a solid definition of what defines a person. They say a fetus will develop into a human being if left alone, thus a fetus is a human being with full rights.

So does that mean a chicken egg is the same as a chicken? (So basically we all eat baby chickens?)

Is a caterpillar the same thing as a butterfly?

They should be able to be consistent with their logic right?