"The Only Moral Abortion is My Abortion"

[Angry Floof]

Weird equivalences can arise when some people ain’t getting any.

Well, when the world is so full of fake news and disinformation, you have no choice but to just go with what you want to be true. There's just no other way to discern truth anymore.

The more I ponder that, the more grateful I am for the truly excellent education I got in grades 1 through 3. I can't recall one single "fact" I learned in school during that time, but I do remember a lot of challenges designed to teach how to think and how to formulate useful questions. Most of the rest of my formal education (grades 4-11½) consisted of attempts to tell me what to think.

Same here, although I lost much of it and as an adult fell into much the same stupid way of processing information because of religious upbringing.

Ironically, it was a religious apologist who first inspired me to critical thinking well into adulthood by saying something like, "To find truth, you have to value truth more than being right and more than being comfortable. You have to make the conscious decision to accept what you find in honest inquiry no matter how painful." I did, and I did, and it was painful in many ways for years.

I suspect that today, the matter of how to think is reserved for university level courses and classes.

Because by then, most people are legally adults who can make their own decisions. Even if still under mental control of parents, if they want to believe things that contradict their indoctrination, they have more freedom and outside support to do so.

By that time, most people's thought processes are so ossified that they do not benefit much from it. Now we are left with a world full of fake news and disinformation, and a general population that is unable to discern the extent to which they have been told what to think.

True.

 

[laughing dog]

Taking away the morality of abortion, abortions are stupid and unnecessary anyway.

Tell that to a pregnant woman whose life is threatened by carrying to term. Tell that to a couple whose baby is born with painful deadly birth defects.

Your dismissive observation is inhumane.

 

[Elixir]

Ironically, it was a religious apologist who first inspired me to critical thinking well into adulthood by saying something like, "To find truth, you have to value truth more than being right and more than being comfortable. You have to make the conscious decision to accept what you find in honest inquiry no matter how painful." I did, and I did, and it was painful in many ways for years.

Right? The tendency to revert to, depend on and fail to question those "truths" that have previously passed our own muster, is universal and relentless.
Like you, AF, creationists (in my case, YECs in particular) have been invaluable in reinforcing those internal reminders that my "truths" are just constructs - maps that are not to be confused with reality, and that might be wildly inaccurate in their details.
There have been a handful of posters that set me back to examining my own thought processes while laying bare the mechanism whereby a relatively intelligent person can be afflicted by something as seemingly so obviously fraudulent as YECism. It is NOT specific to the massively deluded, which makes it a fool's errand to go around trying to set them straight, when each of our own minds is under assault by the same enemy we have identified as theirs.
Maybe oddly (or not), most of those posters have been retired scientists whose lifetimes of rigorous thought processes have refined their word choices to be nearly free of the biases and preferences that seem to pervade my own. They come across as kindly, unassuming, humble and utterly unyielding to opinions - religious or otherwise.
I admire that more than virtually anything, and would aspire to it if I thought it attainable.

 

[Angry Floof]

Ironically, it was a religious apologist who first inspired me to critical thinking well into adulthood by saying something like, "To find truth, you have to value truth more than being right and more than being comfortable. You have to make the conscious decision to accept what you find in honest inquiry no matter how painful." I did, and I did, and it was painful in many ways for years.

Right? The tendency to revert to, depend on and fail to question those "truths" that have previously passed our own muster, is universal and relentless.
Like you, AF, creationists (in my case, YECs in particular) have been invaluable in reinforcing those internal reminders that my "truths" are just constructs - maps that are not to be confused with reality, and that might be wildly inaccurate in their details.
There have been a handful of posters that set me back to examining my own thought processes while laying bare the mechanism whereby a relatively intelligent person can be afflicted by something as seemingly so obviously fraudulent as YECism. It is NOT specific to the massively deluded, which makes it a fool's errand to go around trying to set them straight, when each of our own minds is under assault by the same enemy we have identified as theirs.

Yes, but not a fool's errand to challenge and correct bad ideas on social media or anywhere there's other people witnessing the exchange. Not bloody likely you'll change a YEC's mind, but witnesses who have little or no skin in the game are free to be more objective and discerning.

Maybe oddly (or not), most of those posters have been retired scientists whose lifetimes of rigorous thought processes have refined their word choices to be nearly free of the biases and preferences that seem to pervade my own. They come across as kindly, unassuming, humble and utterly unyielding to opinions - religious or otherwise.
I admire that more than virtually anything, and would aspire to it if I thought it attainable.

Me, too. And doing the conscious work and examination required to refine your words to be free of biases and preferences is exactly how to deal with biases and preferences. In other words, removing bias in the articulation process removes it from the thinking process. I think it's popular opinion that bias is something to be eradicated, but that's impossible. So either you recognize that the work is in keeping your biases from interfering with your thinking or you pretend to have no biases, which is ridiculous and a trap, really, but appeals to the need to be right and save face.

 

[KeepTalking]

It is like the home building contractor who already knows the city won't allow a house on a parcel of land, yet builds it anyway just so he can tear it all down again right away. Would you call that an intelligent process?

holy shit, you can connect on an existential level with another human being and experience arguably the most intensely pleasurable physical sensation possible to the human body (while also fulfilling a deeply rooted and extremely powerful evolutionary instinct in the process) from building a house?

construction methods have progressed quite a bit since i was aware of the tenets of carpentry.

I think we may have stumbled upon why Jesus became a carpenter.

I bet many of the passages lost from the gospels have Jesus going on at length about the pleasure of nailing boards.

 

[Keith&Co.]

If women have 100% of all the biological and legal authority to bear children,

Oh, one of those.
I served with so many men that get upset with the idea a woman could get pregnant, chose to keep the baby, and make them a father against their wishes, BUT are adamant that they have a say in making the woman a mother against her wishes.

And dump all responsibility for birth control on the woman, though men also have alternatives, such as not sticking your dick in it, lopping your balls off, or using a condom.

If women had 100% of the legal authority neither of us would be in the argument.
If they had 100% of the biological authority paternity tests would not exist. They'd be parthenogenic tests.

 

[LoAmmo]

I think we may have stumbled upon why Jesus became a carpenter.

I bet many of the passages lost from the gospels have Jesus going on at length about the pleasure of nailing boards.

Measure twice; resurrect once.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Again, what changed the minds of so many women who previously supported the right of other women to have control over their bodies?

Perhaps the realization that women are competent adults capable of making their own choices before choosing sex that results in pregnancy?

Maybe that's it? Women are competent adults, capable of both making their own choices and dealing with the results of their own choices? They're not victims of their progeny or the men who help create the progeny?

How about that? Women are free to choose their own sex lives. But also responsible for the choices that they make.
Tom

The problem with this approach is that you are making the hidden assumption that abortion is an irresponsible means of dealing with an unwanted pregnancy.

Yes, women should be responsible for the choices they make--abort unwanted pregnancies!

 

[atrib]

You mean improve our society by forcing women to endure unwanted pregnancies?

No. I mean improve our society by forcing women to be accountable for their own actions. If they really want authority then they must also be responsible too.

Or if they do not want to be responsible than maybe they should again be treated like minors and children in all matters, like they were in the past.

And pregnant women who decide that they don't want to bring an unwanted baby into the world take responsibility for their actions by having an abortion. Why is this solution unsatisfactory to you?

 

[atrib]

Certainly, there are more accidental pregnancies than there should be. Some people don't make the best choices sometimes. Of course, other people have been using contraception and they have that one time it doesn't work.

And really, your post is being disingenuous, as there is likely no viable 'accidental' pregnancy threshold you'd allow an abortion. You are just using the accidental pregnancy thing to blame women for getting pregnant and want to make having to have a child their punishment. A lot easier to force people to do something when you make them the heel.

The only punishment I'm advocating is that they be responsible for their own actions including their sexual relations.

Having sex with consenting partners is not illegal. Why should women be punished for doing something that is not illegal?

And if it comes to an abortion that means answering the hard questions of why it takes place so often.

How is this relevant?

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Having sex with consenting partners is not illegal. Why should women be punished for doing something that is not illegal?

And if it comes to an abortion that means answering the hard questions of why it takes place so often.

How is this relevant?

Okay Mary. We will schedule the procedure for this Friday, but before we can perform the procedure, this random person has a few "hard questions" they'd like to ask.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The point is that if a woman really does not want to get pregnant in the first place she WON'T get pregnant. And no, it does not matter what you think the guy does or does not do, she already has control over her body not to get it pregnant in the first place. That is what I call acting responsibility. Doing the right thing in the first place.

Go back and look at your list. Note how none of the methods are 100% effective? Not even sterilization.

Yes, most failures are user error. Each method has a perfect-use failure rate, though. For all of the non-permanent means of contraception this leaves a reasonable chance a woman will conceive by accident at some point in her life even with perfect use.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Hi. I really hate to crush your deeply held fantasy that you were conceived in an act of love that was shared as only an act of love in a deliberate attempt to conceive just you but there's a really really good chance that you, along with most of the rest of us posting on this board, came into existence because of a birth control failure.

I think your odds are a bit off here.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

explain how an abortion is not a reasonable and responsible way of dealing with an unwanted pregnancy.


an abortion IS the right thing in the first place - you're stopping an unwanted child.

there's literally zero difference.

I don't have a problem with abortion when its needed as long as the mother and father are consenting to it.

I do have a problem with abortion being used as birth control because of irresponsible adults.

You're saying two contradictory things here.

Abortion is needed when there's an unwanted pregnancy.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

A lot of women who have abortions develop depressions and other serious psychiatric disorders. A lot of women who have spontaneous abortions develop that. A lot of women who give birth to children have that as well. The hormones involved in pregnancy are extremely powerful. Which trumps any philosophical hair splitting.

I've since long ago learned not to get involved in discussions about abortions. As far as I'm concerned this is a women's only discussion topic and men shouldn't be allowed to have an opinion.

This. The hormone swings of pregnancy do nasty things no matter how the pregnancy ends.

However, there are two actual effects from abortion:

1) It provides a point of attack for the fundies to fuck up a woman's mind.

2) Their often-repeated point about breast cancer has a grain of truth to it--what's actually going on is childbirth has something of a protective effect against breast cancer. A woman who has an abortion is more likely to get breast cancer than a woman who carries the pregnancy to term. However, she has the same risk as a woman who never conceived in the first place.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

100% of pregnancies are caused by ejaculation.

Within the limits of the precision of your answer, yes. However, the number of pregnancies that are not caused by ejaculation is non-zero.

 

[Elixir]

How is it a non-sequitor. Your post reads, women get preggers, they make with the birthin', theiz be responsibilz. The only way to avoid it with certainty is no more penetrating sex.

I hear a self-described gay male holding forth on a subject that has no bearing on his own sex life, so real life implications of deeming the termination of pregnancies "feticide" are lost on him.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

How is it a non-sequitor. Your post reads, women get preggers, they make with the birthin', theiz be responsibilz. The only way to avoid it with certainty is no more penetrating sex.

I hear a self-described gay male holding forth on a subject that has no bearing on his own sex life, so real life implications of deeming the termination of pregnancies "feticide" are lost on him.

He don't playa the game, he don't make-a the rules.

 

[Toni]

Hi. I really hate to crush your deeply held fantasy that you were conceived in an act of love that was shared as only an act of love in a deliberate attempt to conceive just you but there's a really really good chance that you, along with most of the rest of us posting on this board, came into existence because of a birth control failure.

I think your odds are a bit off here.

I doubt it, to be very honest.

Most of the posters are over 40, as far as I can tell. Those who are mostly of my generation, who had access to the pill and IUDs and diaphragms, all with failure rates greater than zero. My friends and I had unplanned babies as well as planned babies. Some of us had abortions for a variety of reasons. But we had babies, albeit fewer than our mothers' generation and we created a mini-boom. For the posters my age and older: our mothers had...condoms. Maybe a diaphragm. Maybe the rhythm method if they were Catholic. They don't call us boomers for no reason.

 

[Toni]

A lot of women who have abortions develop depressions and other serious psychiatric disorders. A lot of women who have spontaneous abortions develop that. A lot of women who give birth to children have that as well. The hormones involved in pregnancy are extremely powerful. Which trumps any philosophical hair splitting.

I've since long ago learned not to get involved in discussions about abortions. As far as I'm concerned this is a women's only discussion topic and men shouldn't be allowed to have an opinion.

This. The hormone swings of pregnancy do nasty things no matter how the pregnancy ends.

However, there are two actual effects from abortion:

1) It provides a point of attack for the fundies to fuck up a woman's mind.

2) Their often-repeated point about breast cancer has a grain of truth to it--what's actually going on is childbirth has something of a protective effect against breast cancer. A woman who has an abortion is more likely to get breast cancer than a woman who carries the pregnancy to term. However, she has the same risk as a woman who never conceived in the first place.

Not really, and a lot has to do with the age at which a woman first became pregnant, how many pregnancies, etc. The biggest risks are genetic which has nothing to do with whether or not a woman has ever been pregnant as well as diet/weight.