Issues other than abortion

[goout]

goout:

Right. The Richard Dawson theory of morality.
“Survey says…!”

Some people are human, and some aren’t. If it were really a game show, this would be a lot fun.

Ok, but that that point, she’s not on the wrong side of history - she’s on the wrong side of your perception of history.

She’s not on the wrong side of morality - she’s on the wrong side of your perception of morality.

Since we can’t agree on a common base - the default solution is that you both must be free to choose. Which has been my argument the whole time.

Any sane human beings can observe the piles of human corpses that have resulted from the moral subjectivism you two are championing.

“your perception”.

Yea I hope I can perceive. Can you?

 

[Vonsalza]

Any sane human beings can observe the piles of human corpses that have resulted from the moral subjectivism you two are championing.

“your perception”.

Yea I hope I can perceive. Can you?

Is there an argument for your case here?

 

[goout]

goout:

Trump card bodily autonomy.

It’s barbaric. It is so sad to see human rights reduced to the minimum standards of convenience you display here.

“where it affects another person”

Geez. You really haven’t thought this through have you.

Sure. The mother is a person in a way the fetus is not.

Listen to this statement, and think of every racist who has said exactly the same thing.

And consider that you are on the wrong side of this.

 

[goout]

goout:

Any sane human beings can observe the piles of human corpses that have resulted from the moral subjectivism you two are championing.

“your perception”.

Yea I hope I can perceive. Can you?

Is there an argument for your case here?

Yes.
Moral subjectivism leads to chaos and oppression and murder, especially when applied to human nature.

What are you not getting?

 

[Vonsalza]

Listen to this statement, and think of every racist who has said exactly the same thing.

And consider that you are on the wrong side of this.

History’s slaves were liberated because their autonomy over themselves and their self determination were both unjustly constrained.

A fetus has neither of these qualities, goout. This is, among other reasons, why abortion is not at all like slavery.

 

[Vonsalza]

Vonsalza:

Is there an argument for your case here?

Yes.
Moral subjectivism leads to chaos and oppression and murder, especially when applied to human nature.

What are you not getting?

I’m not being particularly subjectivist.

I’m saying that a woman’s right to control her own body is an objective truth, after all.

 

[Vonsalza]

Vonsalza:

It’s about 4 days later. Huh…

Isn’t science wonderful?

It can be. It can also be scary sometimes. But the illumination should always be better than not knowing. It might be as close to truth as we can get, at least in an objective way.

On further though, “life” as pro-lifers generally use it, begins about 4 days after conception.

But then again, the sperm and ovum were very arguably alive too. So “life” in general began before that. It came from the parents - whose life came from their parents and so on and on.

Maybe it’s better to say “life begins at abiogenesis” instead of “life begins at conception”.

 

[Erikaspirit16]

On further though, “life” as pro-lifers generally use it, begins about 4 days after conception.

But then again, the sperm and ovum were very arguably alive too. So “life” in general began before that. It came from the parents - whose life came from their parents and so on and on.

Maybe it’s better to say “life begins at abiogenesis” instead of “life begins at conception”.

We should stay away from the word “alive.” We all agree a cell is alive. The question is, is it a human being / person at that point. As I repeated about a million times in another thread, this is a religious / philosophical / legal question, not a scientific one.

 

[Vonsalza]

Vonsalza:

On further though, “life” as pro-lifers generally use it, begins about 4 days after conception.

But then again, the sperm and ovum were very arguably alive too. So “life” in general began before that. It came from the parents - whose life came from their parents and so on and on.

Maybe it’s better to say “life begins at abiogenesis” instead of “life begins at conception”.

We should stay away from the word “alive.” We all agree a cell is alive. The question is, is it a human being / person at that point. As I repeated about a million times in another thread, this is a religious / philosophical / legal question, not a scientific one.

Duly noted.

 

[Erikaspirit16]

To all my worth opponents: Would you all agree this is a futile debate? Are you going to convince me or Vonsalza? Are we going to convince you? No? I agree.

But what can we agree on? That a primary motive for having an abortion is economic? I think so. How about you? (I don’t think pregnant women run around saying, “Great news! I’m going to have an abortion tomorrow!”)

So if economic causes are a (not all, a) primary motive, how about we take away those economic motives for abortion–let’s remove all those barriers (medical costs, loss of job, loss of pay while recovering from childbirth, loss of seniority/chance of promotion, cost of child care, cost of an extra mouth to feed, etc. etc.) to having children. Let’s make having a baby, if not profitable, a non-financial issue.

France did it France Moves to Encourage Large Families | Europe| News and current affairs from around the continent | DW | 24.09.2005 among many other articles; Australia does it http://theconversation.com/what-the-baby-bonus-boost-looks-like-across-ten-years-81563 and in fact almost all developed countries have programs to encourage–financially-- mothers to give birth.

Isn’t this something we can all get behind?

 

[blackforest]

Sorry, you’re introducing a totally new thing–I’m taking about historically.

So am I. The American Medical Association recognized in 1847 that current scientific knowledge indicated that a human’s life begins at conception. This science has in no way changed, by the way.

That, I’m afraid, is irrelevant. Whether the suffragists were pro-life or flat earth doesn’t matter. The point is that opponents of the various women’s movement saw making abortion illegal as a counter to making women more independent. Keep them barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen.

It is quite relevant. The suffragists realized, just as pro-life feminists do today, that the only way to keep women authentically liberated was to provide support to them in order to make genuinely free choices with their pregnancies. Leaving them coerced into abortion through financial or socially unsupportive circumstances is reflective of a profoundly misogynistic status quo.

Ah, an unbiased source! The Catholic Social Science Review!

Can you refute the author’s historical evidence?

 

[blackforest]

First of all, greeting to all my old friends from previous threads. So happy to see you haven’t changed your opinions one iota!

Out of curiosity, have you?

Being “pro-choice” in the abortion debate must logically mean you are “pro-choice” in any imaginable hypothetical situation. Robbery? Pro-choice–let the robber decide if it’s a crime. Rape? Let the rapist decide. And so on.

What being "pro-choice" means is that there is an attempt to dismiss an objective moral claim by misrepresenting it as something relative.

“Human trafficking is wrong and should be ended.”
“That’s just your view. Other people see it differently, so there should be a choice.”

“Forcing children to be soldiers is wrong and must be ended.”
“That’s just you view. Other people see it differently, so there should be a choice.”

“Abortion is wrong and must be ended.”
“That’s just you view. Other people see it differently, so there should be a choice.”

And naturally “pro-choice” = “pro-abortion.”

It actually does more often than you might think. “Pro-abortion” means holding a bias toward abortion over the other pregnancy choices. Here’s a fine example: Secular Pro-Life Perspectives: Planned Parenthood is Pro-Abortion, Not Pro-Choice

The question of “personhood” or “human being.” Since the fertilized egg has human DNA, and since it can only develop into a human being and not another species, it is, ipso facto, a “person” or “human being.” There is no distinction between a fertilized egg and a 30-year old accountant or a 2-year-old baby. So the words “person” or “human being” are irrelevant to the subject. There are no such distinctions.

With all due respect, you’re completely misrepresenting the argument. Of course there’s a distinction. They’re in vastly different phases of human development!

The pro-life position holds that there’s no distinction, based on these phases, that makes it OK to discriminate against someone enough to justify killing them.

 

[lagerald24]

If YOU had an abortion, you would be a murderer, because you believe you are killing a human being. If a woman has an abortion at 4 weeks and believes she is just getting rid of some unwanted cells, she is NOT a murderer because she doesn’t see anything wrong. This is Catholic doctrine. Please don’t pick and choose!

Kind of confused about what you mean here. The same thing is happening in both instances, just as if I killed my parents knowing it to be wrong and someone else who didn’t know that killing parents was wrong. The second person has less culpability than me in that case because I knew the truth and rejected it but the same thing happened in both situations. You can apply this situation to basically anything like someone robbing a bank but saying that they don’t recognize it as an immoral choice. You see, people are born closer and farther to the truth that God has revealed. Because of this, they often do not realize (through no fault of their own) that certain choices are immoral and bad. This does not, however, change the fact that there is objective truth, for example, like that rape or murder is wrong.

Also, I don’t quite see how I was picking and choosing Catholic doctrine. This is Catholic doctrine: 2271 “Since the first century the Church has affirmed the moral evil of every procured abortion. This teaching has not changed and remains unchangeable. Direct abortion, that is to say, abortion willed either as an end or a means, is gravely contrary to the moral law.”

 

[blackforest]

And of course my personal favorite, “Science supports the pro-life position.”

No, science cannot answer ethical questions. It can, however, provide that all-important factual foundation for them.

I do hear a lot of scientifically illiterate claims from the pro-choice community, including in this very thread. An embryo, for example, cannot possibly be a “clump of cells” when those cells are, in fact, highly specialized and differentiated for specific anatomic systems and organs. That’s more than a “clump.”

What is a human being? This is not an easy question.

It’s easier than you think. An embryo is an organism, and each organism belongs to a species - human being/homo sapien in this case. This stands true regardless of what somebody looks like. There are living accident victims who don’t look like “normal” human beings but still are.

For example:

• free medical care during pregnancy, delivery, and until the child is 18.

• guaranteed leave for 6 months after having a baby. Your job is guaranteed.

• free pre-school day care

• subsidy for each child paid each month (Canada, for example, pays $6,500 a year—in monthly installments—until age 6; then it’s $5,500 until age 18)

I agree with all of this. I feel like we can breathe easy again.

 

[VanitasVanitatum]

While abortion would probably go illegal in Utah and a few states in the southeastern US, it certainly wouldn’t in most states.

I call that progress and that’s better than nothing.

 

[VanitasVanitatum]

It’s about 4 days later. Huh…

People don’t have abortions 4 days later so please. Maybe that could be used to justify contraceptives that kill, but that’s different matter entirely.

 

[VanitasVanitatum]

It has no will of it’s own.

Do infants?

It’s a solution with tremendous costs physically and financially.

And abortion isn’t?

 

[blackforest]

Do infants?

I’m finding that pro-choicers use one or more of the following justifications for killing.

1. Someone is dependent on another for survival.
2. Someone lacks autonomy and agency.
3. Someone is unwanted.
4. Someone doesn’t look like the rest of us.
5. Someone isn’t as physiologically or otherwise developed as the rest of us.

It’s been summarized more concisely as the SLED Test: https://www.sledtest.org/

You probably already caught that I’m pro-life, so I’m not defending these positions. It’s just what I’m hearing.

 

[Erikaspirit16]

The American Medical Association recognized in 1847 that current scientific knowledge indicated that a human’s life begins at conception. This science has in no way changed, by the way.

The AMA was not (and is not) impartial. As I said in my initial post, as doctors began to see themselves as a “profession” they banded together to eliminate competition from non-doctors. These included women who provided abortions. So doctors began anti-abortion as a means to further their own careers. Impartial? No. But of course “human life” (depending on what you mean by that) begins at conception. But again, the crucial point is what do you mean by “human life”?

the only way to keep women authentically liberated was to provide support to them in order to make genuinely free choices with their pregnancies. Leaving them coerced into abortion through financial or socially unsupportive circumstances is reflective of a profoundly misogynistic status quo.

OK, I’ll buy that. Free choice! Pro-choice! Go team!

Can you refute the author’s historical evidence?

No need to. As I said above, the AMA had a dog in the fight. The AMA was biased.

 

[Erikaspirit16]

Right. The Richard Dawson theory of morality.
“Survey says…!”

Wait a minute…did I hallucinate your post where you said you were on the right side of history, etc. etc.? What do you care if history is with or against you? Truth is truth, right?

My point is simply to counter your comment about history being on your side. Objective evidence shows history moving away from your position, not towards it. I’m not saying it’s right or wrong, just that it’s moving away from you.

Some people are human, and some aren’t.

That’s the same as the people who say “Why do you like to kill babies?” All people are human. But not necessarily one-celled organisms. The question of their humanity is debatable–which is exactly what we’re doing.

piles of human corpses

But that’s YOUR opinion. Others DON’T believe they are “human corpses.” Is this moral subjectivism? You are free to believe with absolute certainty that they ARE “human corpses.” But when you try to impose your belief on those who believe differently, we have a problem. That’s an objective fact.

The mother is a person in a way the fetus is not. (Vonsalza)

Here we go again. False equivalency. When pro-choice advocates talk about what is a “person” or a “human” being, we’re talking about a human fetus in the early stages of development (almost always in the 1st and 2nd trimesters). We are NOT talking about anything else. To pretend that it’s logical to insert a totally different situation is simply silly.

“Human trafficking is wrong and should be ended.”
“That’s just your view. Other people see it differently, so there should be a choice.”

“Forcing children to be soldiers is wrong and must be ended.”
“That’s just you view. Other people see it differently, so there should be a choice.”

You are doing exactly what goout was doing. Want me to do the same thing? Sure, I can do it too:

I believe in a ‘moral objective claim’ that abortion is evil and should be illegal. OK, that’s your position.
But then what if someone said “I believe that monogamy is evil and should be illegal.”
What if someone said “I believe that wearing a dress is evil and should be illegal.”
And so on. Silly, right? And irrelevant to boot.

Once again, there is a difference between something being moral and being legal. An activity could be both moral and legal or both immoral and illegal. But it could also be moral and illegal or immoral and legal. All combinations are possible, and all exist in the real world.