Abortion

[Jimmy Higgins]

What about a woman who keeps getting pregnant and can not afford or has no mental capacity to raise kids?

Why did you specify women?
That's a big part of why I find this conversation difficult. People talk about it as though it's strictly a women's issue when it's not.

It is all happening inside the woman, so that would be the source for it being a woman's issue. I mean, as much as you want to make this a male issue, pregnancy, at its basic level, is a female issue.

Axing Roe v Wade will increase suffering, anxiety, depression, and deaths. Where is the moral standing in that?

I know, but the broader question is whether the group has something to say about it considering it is about human life.

There is so much wrong with this statement. Firstly, what group? Right now, abortion rights are favored well above that of eliminating access to abortion. So currently, if we went the "group" way, abortion would be legal. 1000%. But "the group" isn't the people, it consists of partisan politicians elected to office in states with gerrymandered districting. So your statement above, in order to make it accurate with the conditions in the US, "the broader question is whether a bunch of partisans elected to office in gerrymandered states has something to say about considering it..."

Then the moral question is actually, at what point is it moral to tell the woman she no longer has self-autonomy over her body, and instead is at the whim of the majority. And when we say majority, we mean a bunch of Republicans that fixed election borders to gain supermajority control in state legislatures, and not the actual majority of people in the US.

And of course, that then leads us to "is it moral for a bare minority to supersede in the self-autonomy of a woman's body"? If it were the Catholic Church enforcing this type of edict, I bet a whole bunch of people would be upset over that. But make it a bunch of government officials?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Then you have an undefined term: "a life".

I don't see any need to provide a definition, but feel free to provide one that precludes my tonsils from reproducing and raising a family of baby tonsils.

If you can't define the terms you're using you don't have much of a position.

It sounds like the standard definition of pornography.

I just did, but you missed it.

Huh? You said you didn't need to provide one, then you turned around and said you did provide one--but I see no definition here other than my reference to pornography. You know it when you see it is not a definition!

 

[Bronzeage]

Then you have an undefined term: "a life".

I don't see any need to provide a definition, but feel free to provide one that precludes my tonsils from reproducing and raising a family of baby tonsils.

If you can't define the terms you're using you don't have much of a position.

It sounds like the standard definition of pornography.

I just did, but you missed it.

Huh? You said you didn't need to provide one, then you turned around and said you did provide one--but I see no definition here other than my reference to pornography. You know it when you see it is not a definition!

Okay, go back and read the part about baby tonsils. The difference between being alive and being a life is, the life is something that can replicate itself and create a new life. Tonsils, whether in my throat or in a bowl, cannot do that.

If you want your pornography claim to be taken seriously, please provide a few examples of things that are porn and things that are not.

 

[bilby]

The difference between being alive and being a life is, the life is something that can replicate itself and create a new life.

If this were true, vasectomy would invariably be fatal.

There have been many attempts to define ‘life’ and ‘alive’, but they all founder on the fact that they either include stuff we really need to exclude, or (as here) exclude stuff (like sterile people) we really need to include.

 

[Bronzeage]

The difference between being alive and being a life is, the life is something that can replicate itself and create a new life.

If this were true, vasectomy would invariably be fatal.

There have been many attempts to define ‘life’ and ‘alive’, but they all founder on the fact that they either include stuff we really need to exclude, or (as here) exclude stuff (like sterile people) we really need to include.

As Hamlet said, we are undone by equivocation.

There is a distinction between can and must. If my car runs out of gas, very few people would dispute that
it is still a car, whether or not I ever put gas in the tank.

What I find strange is, I make a statement that life begins at conception, but that it is irrelevant to the abortion discussion, everybody wants to debate the timing and not the irrelevancy.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

The difference between being alive and being a life is, the life is something that can replicate itself and create a new life.

If this were true, vasectomy would invariably be fatal.

There have been many attempts to define ‘life’ and ‘alive’, but they all founder on the fact that they either include stuff we really need to exclude, or (as here) exclude stuff (like sterile people) we really need to include.

As Hamlet said, we are undone by equivocation.

There is a distinction between can and must. If my car runs out of gas, very few people would dispute that
it is still a car, whether or not I ever put gas in the tank.

True. But who would claim you have a car at the start of the assembly line? I mean, yeah, you've got the pieces and a design, but you don't have a car. Your fuel analogy would be equivalent to people questioning whether hungry people are living.

What I find strange is, I make a statement that life begins at conception, but that it is irrelevant to the abortion discussion, everybody wants to debate the timing and not the irrelevancy.

Because the timing matters. When one says life begins at conception, that means the birth control pill helps contribute to "abortions". Also, with an estimate half or more of blastocysts flushing out of the system, the question of whether something is alive at conception is a bit muddled. Especially when conception doesn't provide any sense of awareness, ability to fend for itself, or to live on its own. All it has is a set of chromosomes and DNA.

 

[Bronzeage]

The difference between being alive and being a life is, the life is something that can replicate itself and create a new life.

If this were true, vasectomy would invariably be fatal.

There have been many attempts to define ‘life’ and ‘alive’, but they all founder on the fact that they either include stuff we really need to exclude, or (as here) exclude stuff (like sterile people) we really need to include.

As Hamlet said, we are undone by equivocation.

There is a distinction between can and must. If my car runs out of gas, very few people would dispute that
it is still a car, whether or not I ever put gas in the tank.

True. But who would claim you have a car at the start of the assembly line? I mean, yeah, you've got the pieces and a design, but you don't have a car. Your fuel analogy would be equivalent to people questioning whether hungry people are living.

What I find strange is, I make a statement that life begins at conception, but that it is irrelevant to the abortion discussion, everybody wants to debate the timing and not the irrelevancy.

Because the timing matters. When one says life begins at conception, that means the birth control pill helps contribute to "abortions". Also, with an estimate half or more of blastocysts flushing out of the system, the question of whether something is alive at conception is a bit muddled. Especially when conception doesn't provide any sense of awareness, ability to fend for itself, or to live on its own. All it has is a set of chromosomes and DNA.

Why does any of that matter? You are just moving the until you're on the side where you feel comfortable.

 

[bilby]

There is a distinction between can and must.

Indeed; But your definition is based on ‘can’, and so is my objection. Introducing ’must’ is just muddying the waters.

 

[bilby]

What I find strange is, I make a statement that life begins at conception, but that it is irrelevant to the abortion discussion, everybody wants to debate the timing and not the irrelevancy.

Never mind timing or relevancy; We still have no working definition of ‘a life’.

All we know so far is that it excludes tonsils and men who have had a vasectomy, because things that cannot reproduce may be ‘life’, but are not ‘a life’.

Apparently.

 

[Bronzeage]

What I find strange is, I make a statement that life begins at conception, but that it is irrelevant to the abortion discussion, everybody wants to debate the timing and not the irrelevancy.

Never mind timing or relevancy; We still have no working definition of ‘a life’.

All we know so far is that it excludes tonsils and men who have had a vasectomy, because things that cannot reproduce may be ‘life’, but are not ‘a life’.

Apparently.

The vasectomy thing is just an absurd quibble.

 

[bilby]

What I find strange is, I make a statement that life begins at conception, but that it is irrelevant to the abortion discussion, everybody wants to debate the timing and not the irrelevancy.

Never mind timing or relevancy; We still have no working definition of ‘a life’.

All we know so far is that it excludes tonsils and men who have had a vasectomy, because things that cannot reproduce may be ‘life’, but are not ‘a life’.

Apparently.

The vasectomy thing is just an absurd quibble.

Or an inescapable logical flaw in your definition, that you have no reasonable response to.

It’s OK; I have yet to see any adequate definition of life, and suspect that this is because life is an entirely fictional human construct, and not a characteristic of reality at all.

 

[Jarhyn]

This stupid bickering match over "life" doesn't accomplish anything.

Perhaps we can acknowledge that we don't really care about "a life" or "life" in the first place.

As has been discussed, it should not matter whether it is a bright eyed instantaneous 3 year old bawling, begging "please don't kill me mommy," that is onerously tethered to their gestational parent and necessarily doomed if detached.

It's just not important. What is important is that the person they are tethered to says NO, they do not continue to consent.

There is no acknowledged right to walk up to someone and tether yourself to them for 9 months while using yourself as a hostage.

So why the fuck would we allow this to be done by anyone, to anyone, beyond their consent? Because the person doing it is "innocent"? Of what exactly? Certainly it is not innocent of tethering itself parasitically to someone for 9 months in some kind of fucked up hostage situation.

 

[Bronzeage]

What I find strange is, I make a statement that life begins at conception, but that it is irrelevant to the abortion discussion, everybody wants to debate the timing and not the irrelevancy.

Never mind timing or relevancy; We still have no working definition of ‘a life’.

All we know so far is that it excludes tonsils and men who have had a vasectomy, because things that cannot reproduce may be ‘life’, but are not ‘a life’.

Apparently.

The vasectomy thing is just an absurd quibble.

Or an inescapable logical flaw in your definition, that you have no reasonable response to.

It’s OK; I have yet to see any adequate definition of life, and suspect that this is because life is an entirely fictional human construct, and not a characteristic of reality at all.

No, it's still an absurd false equivalency and now you've gone on to propose that life is something created from corporate memory.

You ask a chicken or the egg question, then claim it's not a chicken and there never was an egg.

 

[TomC]

It's just not important. What is important is that the person they are tethered to says NO, they do not continue to consent.

There is no acknowledged right to walk up to someone and tether yourself to them for 9 months while using yourself as a hostage.

So why the fuck would we allow this to be done by anyone, to anyone, beyond their consent? Because the person doing it is "innocent"? Of what exactly? Certainly it is not innocent of tethering itself parasitically to someone for 9 months in some kind of fucked up hostage situation.

This is probably the most appallingly ignorant and unethical argument for feticide rights ever.

Do you even understand where babies come from? That they don't "walk up to someone and tether themselves"? Fetal children aren't parasites who drift around looking for a host to invade. Parents make the choices that involve human beings who don't even exist when they Choose. Choices that are very well understood by competent adults.

When it isn't both parent's decision, that's a whole different crime. It's called rape.

Your premise that parents are the victims of a zygote would be laughable if it weren't so evil.
Tom

 

[Elixir]

Do you even understand where babies come from?

Here's where babies come from:



Now you can explain why this little blob of protoplasm, invisible to the naked eye, now has more rights in some places than an actual living breathing human being with memories, preferences, pleasures, pains, friends, family and loved ones.
What a silly idea.

 

[Jarhyn]

It's just not important. What is important is that the person they are tethered to says NO, they do not continue to consent.

There is no acknowledged right to walk up to someone and tether yourself to them for 9 months while using yourself as a hostage.

So why the fuck would we allow this to be done by anyone, to anyone, beyond their consent? Because the person doing it is "innocent"? Of what exactly? Certainly it is not innocent of tethering itself parasitically to someone for 9 months in some kind of fucked up hostage situation.

This is probably the most appallingly ignorant and unethical argument for feticide rights ever.

Do you even understand where babies come from? That they don't "walk up to someone and tether themselves"? Fetal children aren't parasites who drift around looking for a host to invade. Parents make the choices that involve human beings who don't even exist when they Choose. Choices that are very well understood by competent adults.

When it isn't both parent's decision, that's a whole different crime. It's called rape.

Your premise that parents are the victims of a zygote would be laughable if it weren't so evil.
Tom

So you've asserted that I am wrong three times without actually invalidating anything I've said.

The decision to have an orgasm is not a decision to open your genitals to a squatter.

It is the decision to have an orgasm, nothing more, nothing less.

You are exactly the victim of such a thing when you do not consent to it.

That we have the power to assert our rights over some prerogative driven by the selfish gene is a fantastic development.

So yes, I will rebel against aspects of my biology as I may, to prevent it from emitting sperms, or to prevent it from becoming pregnant even in the presence of a squatter upon the threshold my genitals, as the case may be. It is a squatter only so far I decide to continue to have mercy upon it, until I have laid so much mercy upon it that to stop would be to maim it rather than to kill it.

At any rate, do you really want the genetic spawn of those who care so little about human life that they dispose of the life they themselves produce as if it were trash?

I mean, if we're talking about the most inhuman stereotype, I am NOT going to be all tabula rasa on this! I would rather they get an abortion than force that into reproduction. And I maintain that this is still within their rights, and ought be.

 

[TomC]

There is no acknowledged right to walk up to someone and tether yourself to them for 9 months while using yourself as a hostage.

you've asserted that I am wrong three times without actually invalidating anything I've said.

Fetal children do not walk up to anyone and tether themselves.

So, yeah, I'm totally invalidating your post.

To me, you sound like a 19th century slaver whining about their property rights.
Tom

 

[Jarhyn]

There is no acknowledged right to walk up to someone and tether yourself to them for 9 months while using yourself as a hostage.

you've asserted that I am wrong three times without actually invalidating anything I've said.

Fetal children do not walk up to anyone and tether themselves.

So, yeah, I'm totally invalidating your post.

To me, you sound like a 19th century slaver whining about their property rights.
Tom

Yes, they do. They implant themselves and then tether umbilically to the implanted cyst wall.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

There is no acknowledged right to walk up to someone and tether yourself to them for 9 months while using yourself as a hostage.

you've asserted that I am wrong three times without actually invalidating anything I've said.

Fetal children do not walk up to anyone and tether themselves.

So, yeah, I'm totally invalidating your post.

To me, you sound like a 19th century slaver whining about their property rights.
Tom

Technically you'd be the one sounding like a slaver because you are going on about your rights to inhibit the rights of another living / breathing human being.

 

[TomC]

Yes, they do. They implant themselves and then tether umbilically to the implanted cyst wall.

And those Africans did sail across the Atlantic headed for South Carolina.
Tom