Pointless pro-choice statements

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Pretty much all of the popular pro-choice arguments are straw men and/or are filled with logical fallacies. Most of them appeal to emotion and/or attempt to make thier point via “clever” one-liners.

In college, I took a philosophy course on the morality of aboirtion. My professor was an atheist who believed that abortion was morally permissible. And yet, the first three weeks of class, all he did was look at all the common pro-choice arguments and knocked them down one-by-one for the straw men that they are. (Of course, he spent the remainder of the semester builiding his case for the moral permissibility of aboriton based on his dismissal of the human soul, which he “proved” did not exist simply because he [rightfully] disproved Descartes flawed notion of the soul.)

Randy Alcorn’s book Pro-Life Answers to Pro-Choice Arguments is a good book for this as well. It was uncanny how my atheist professor said many of the same things that appear in this book. I guess that’s because logic does not play favorites. 🙂
 
Hi All,
An interesting thread.
Last year I took part in a pro-life rally in Dublin, Ireland. Along the way, our merry marchers were met by the expected horde of screaming “pro-choicers”. One young woman tried to push a condom into my face. I looked at her and just stated plainly: aren’t you glad your dad didn’t use one?
I went on my way and she continued to scream…🙂
 
colmcille1 said:
Hi All,
An interesting thread.
Last year I took part in a pro-life rally in Dublin, Ireland. Along the way, our merry marchers were met by the expected horde of screaming “pro-choicers”. One young woman tried to push a condom into my face. I looked at her and just stated plainly: aren’t you glad your dad didn’t use one?
I went on my way and she continued to scream…🙂
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That’s pretty funny. I would have blown it up and wrote some clever pro-life statement on it. Turn it into a pro-life baloon.
 
Keep your rosaries off my ovaries!

This one also stupidly assumes that only Catholics are pro-life. They Obviously haven’t heard of the many pro-life atheists out there (no examples at the moment).

I always scoff at the so-called “right to choose”. That comes when deciding whether to have sex.

77% of pro-life leaders are men? I am one of those men. We recognize that a woman is not a sex object but a human who deserves to be loved. We are the kind of men who have self-control. Hypothetically, if I get a girl pregnant, I’m gonna be a man and raise the child. But I’m waiting till marriage for sex, so I don’t need to worry about that.
 
JackVk said:
Keep your rosaries off my ovaries!

This one also stupidly assumes that only Catholics are pro-life. They Obviously haven’t heard of the many pro-life atheists out there (no examples at the moment).
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I think it’s more generally keep your religion out of my sex life and it sounds cutesy.
JackVk said:
I always scoff at the so-called “right to choose”. That comes when deciding whether to have sex.
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So then abortions are acceptable when there was no such choice as in cases of rape and incest?
 
st_lucy said:
but isn’t it sooo true
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No, it really isn’t…saying ‘Feminists: Strong, smart, and independent… Until things get a little bit rough…’ is like saying ‘Catholic priests don’t rape little boys… at least most of them.’ Some women who try to be strong and independent fail–in no small part I would argue because of sexist norms Western society has set up but those aren’t germane here–but I know feminists in the truest sense of the word, women who have stood on their own two feet through situations that would break most anyone. They are inspirations and to say something like that, and for a cheap laugh none the less, is–to be frank–an insult to women everywhere.
 
JackVk said:
Keep your rosaries off my ovaries!

This one also stupidly assumes that only Catholics are pro-life.
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This does bring to mind an occasion in which I had a co-worker trying to explain their position concerning abortion.

The exact quote…“Well, I am pro-life, but I’m NOT Catholic.”

It was at that point that I realized that the general perception is the strongest part of the pro-life movement is Catholic.
 
ThomasToo said:
…saying ‘Feminists: Strong, smart, and independent… Until things get a little bit rough…’ is …–to be frank–an insult to women everywhere.
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Not quite.
It simply requires an understanding of what exactly ‘rough’ is.
Just because your definition is not included do not make the mistake of believing the phrase an insult.
 
ThomasToo said:
No, it really isn’t…saying ‘Feminists: Strong, smart, and independent… Until things get a little bit rough…’ is like saying ‘Catholic priests don’t rape little boys… at least most of them.’ Some women who try to be strong and independent fail–in no small part I would argue because of sexist norms Western society has set up but those aren’t germane here–but I know feminists in the truest sense of the word, women who have stood on their own two feet through situations that would break most anyone. They are inspirations and to say something like that, and for a cheap laugh none the less, is–to be frank–an insult to women everywhere.
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I agree a TRUE feminist is strong in all ways, but the Feminist that go around with slogons such as abortion is a choice, are not true feminist. These feminist live the lie that they are deserving of everything, but all they do is bully eveyone who does not think like them. They claim to be able to anything and strong enough to do it all on their own. As humans we are not made this way. And I as a female am completely sick of these feminist. They are not strong in any sense of the word, they are only bullies plain and simple.

My mom a single mom of five was a true feminist, when all the other feminist contiusely told that she does not need all of those children, because of womans rights. She was TRULY a strong woman because she weathered the storm of her extremely hard life and didn’t have to kill any of her children to do it. She now can stand upright because she embraced her feminism that God gave her and now she has five children and thirteen grandchildren.

A true feminist understands that being female doesn’t mean you must look at the world and she men as our enemy. We don’t have to beat everyone over the head to make them say we are strong. We don’t need to bully anyone when the going gets rough. All I have ever seen from the feminist of today are bullies who claim to be strong, independent women are bullies whose only choice is get rid of anyone who gets in their way.
 
ThomasToo said:
So then abortions are acceptable when there was no such choice as in cases of rape and incest?
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No, not at all. An abortion doesn’t “de-rape” the woman. It just gets rid of the evidence that she was raped. PP doesn’t inform the police about these cases. The woman is cast back out into the environment where she was raped. There’s a chance she will be raped again. 43% of abortions are repeats. Therefore, an abortion safeguards a rapist.
 
I think it is important to note that bumper sticker slogans are not intended to be coherent logical arguments. They’re simply meant to be colorful and memorable.

Of course, the sad part is that many people do rely on such slogans in forming their opinions (or at least in supporting their opinions). We’re always looking to take intellectual shortcuts, so if we can sum up our opinion in 140 characters or less, all the better.
 
JackVk said:
No, not at all. An abortion doesn’t “de-rape” the woman. It just gets rid of the evidence that she was raped. PP doesn’t inform the police about these cases. The woman is cast back out into the environment where she was raped. There’s a chance she will be raped again. 43% of abortions are repeats. Therefore, an abortion safeguards a rapist.
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My only point is that your argument was that freedom of choice comes before one has sex but that’s simply not always the case. By the way, a pregnant woman or a woman who has her rape experience extended by nine months of pregnancy isn’t magically excluded from another rape during or after pregnancy. To use the words you did, your situation casts the woman back into the same environment burdened with a child to support.

I don’t know that it’s the place of a doctor to breach confidentiality against a patient’s wishes–assuming they even know. I’m not a doctor so I don’t know the relevant laws to that case. Further, abortion is not panacea and changing social conditions that lead to rape (and I would go so far as to add those that necessitate abortion) is a truly necessary and good thing. The problem is that aside from a wholesale adoption of your (i.e. the Church’s) anthropology and idea of sexuality–which to be frank, is not going to happen–this solution does include increased availability of effective contraception and that’s something many on these boards would oppose as well. It can’t be had both ways…

In closing, making abortion illegal isn’t going to cut down on rape and isn’t going to keep women from having them; it will just make it substantially more likely that a woman who does have an abortion will end up dead or permanently damaged from it. There was a fascinating and for my part moving article in the New York Times a while back about an abortionist explaining why she chose the career path she did and it was because she wanted to be able to provide sanitary and safe abortions for women whom she routinely saw in the ER with all manner of injuries related to back alley abortions, I would link to it but for fear of the moderator’s discontent and to be blunt the fact that no one here would read it but to find fault.
 
ThomasToo said:
In closing, making abortion illegal isn’t going to cut down on rape and isn’t going to keep women from having them; it will just make it substantially more likely that** a woman who does have an abortion will end up dead or permanently damaged from it.**
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And that, my friend, is the crux of the matter.
You do not want a woman to end up dead or permanently damaged. We all want that.

But you have no problem killing an innocent child.
That is the problem.
Why take an innocent life? Abortions often require the dismemberment of a live human in the womb. Why is the mother’s life more precious than any other life?

Many cases are not easy. When an abortion is performed simply as a matter of convenience there is no chance of debate. However, in all cases we must consider that there are two lives at stake.

If we do not consider the baby to be a human person we would have to be 100% certain that we are not committing killing a human being. If there is a chance of any doubt, how can we excuse killing an innocent human???
 
The_Reginator said:
And that, my friend, is the crux of the matter.
You do not want a woman to end up dead or permanently damaged. We all want that.

But you have no problem killing an innocent child.
That is the problem.
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The problem is that we have (radically) differing anthropologies and metaphysics. I don’t think that it is meaningful to call a bundle of–for example–128 cells is a child in any meaningful sense nor a person in the moral or ontological sense. This is the crux of the matter and to be frank is not open to debate on either side. You are set in your religious anthropology and I am set in my areligious one. To set up a law, however, predicated upon your (Christian) philosophy that is binding upon everyone is–to be somewhat blunt–an attempt to force religion on everyone including the areligions and non-Christian in violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment not to mention obvious privacy issues (see Roe v. Wade and Griswold v. Conn.).
 
ThomasToo said:
The problem is that we have (radically) differing anthropologies and metaphysics. I don’t think that it is meaningful to call a bundle of–for example–128 cells is a child in any meaningful sense nor a person in the moral or ontological sense. This is the crux of the matter and to be frank is not open to debate on either side. You are set in your religious anthropology and I am set in my areligious one. To set up a law, however, predicated upon your (Christian) philosophy that is binding upon everyone is–to be somewhat blunt–an attempt to force religion on everyone including the areligions and non-Christian in violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment not to mention obvious privacy issues (see Roe v. Wade and Griswold v. Conn.).
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My views are separate from any religion.
My Catholicism merely has strengthened the view I formed as a teenager back in the 70s. It has nothing to do with my faith.

Either a life is human or it is not.
When can we decide at what point the 128 cells become a human person?
I’ve always seen it this way, the only way that makes any logical sense to me:
  • There are very few events in a person’s lifetime when there is an actual change in our being.
  • The last change is death.
  • There is a minor change at puberty, but we are still the exact same person.
  • There is a change at birth, but that is merely a change in location. There is no physical difference between one minute before and one minute after birth.
  • In the womb the changes are gradual. There is no change in our essence.
  • The only real change we go through other than death is conception. Between conception and death we do not change. We grow and develop, but there is no change in our actual being.
**
This is merely logic. It has nothing to do with religion.**
 
The_Reginator said:
My views are separate from any religion.
My Catholicism merely has strengthened the view I formed as a teenager back in the 70s. It has nothing to do with my faith.

Either a life is human or it is not.
When can we decide at what point the 128 cells become a human person?
I’ve always seen it this way, the only way that makes any logical sense to me:
  • There are very few events in a person’s lifetime when there is an actual change in our being.
  • The last change is death.
  • There is a minor change at puberty, but we are still the exact same person.
  • There is a change at birth, but that is merely a change in location. There is no physical difference between one minute before and one minute after birth.
  • In the womb the changes are gradual. There is no change in our essence.
  • The only real change we go through other than death is conception. Between conception and death we do not change. We grow and develop, but there is no change in our actual being.
**
This is merely logic. It has nothing to do with religion.**
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What you’ve cited is, more or less, the paradox of the heap. A pile of a billion grains of sand is a heap–clearly–and a heap less a single grain is–also clearly–a heap. The paradoxical conclusion here is that a single grain of sand, or for that matter zero grains of sand, is a heap. Just because we cannot easily say ‘the dividing line between a heap and not a heap is here’ does not mean we cannot delineate that, for example, less than 100 grains of sand (or a thousand) is not a heap. So too here, while we cannot point at the moment personhood adheres to a developing embryo I can more than confidently say that a single cell is not a person–in my less than humble opinion yada yada–but that the precise dividing line is somewhat less obvious. Where exactly it lies is another question which, frankly, is not worth trying to hash out here if the principle is understandable.

Edit: Sorry, I forgot to mention this above. ‘Religion’, in the context of constitutional jurisprudence, means far more than we typically think of the word outside of that context. It intends the right of an individual to choose an under-girding of the philosophy (weltanschauung) of his or her life whether it includes deities or not.
 
I’ve heard what I consider a “colder” argument that I don’t totally disagree with.

Life does begin at conception. Abortion does end a human life. The question is actually when do we as society place value on that life. It’s a decision that is made all the time in a number of ways: wars, suicide, capital punishment, “pulling the plug,” refusing medical treatment
 
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