Pointless pro-choice statements

[vz71]

OK, the most chilling and pointless pro-choice slogan I have seen is as follows:
“My body, my baby, my choice”

It sent chills down my back.
The inherent acceptance of the baby, in the same phrase as the accdeptance of killing such life.
Forget the argument of ignorance, the writer of that bumper sticker knows full well what is going on and is actively helping it along.

 

[st_lucy]

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 often wonder if people who carry this view of the unborn child have ever truly seen an unborn child? I have miscarried three babies, and so I have had the opportunity to see my unborn babies. I can guarentee you that they were truly human in every sense of the word. Not one of them looked like a heap of cells (which makes no sense since if we are truly being technical we are all a bunch of cells). I was once a pro-abortion supporter until I miscarried my first baby at 8 weeks and held her in my hands. I was shocked to find that I had been lied to and that I had retold that lie to others. She was most diffently human with ten little fingers and ten little toes, two eyes a nose and a perfect little mouth.

This has nothing to do with religion and everything to do with being a thoughtful human being. How anyone can justify the murder of such a perfect little person is beyond me. How any one could have told me that it would have been my choice to pull one of her perfect limbs apart one by one until I finally killed her is astonishing. Here is a fellow humanbeing who while being murdered will have other fellow humanbeings look away while she is being tortured, and all for what?

Yes my religion says we should not kill, but shouldn’t this be a given. These are children we are talking about and this is murder.

 

[Joe_5859]

If you google “pro-choice bumper stickers”, you’ll find plenty of slogans to raise the blood pressure and boggle the mind.

• “If you can’t trust me with a choice, how can you trust me with a child?”
• “Against abortion? Then don’t have one”
• “Parenting by choice, not chance”
• “Someone you know may need a choice”
• “I hope the fetus you save grows up to be gay”
• “Keep your theology off my biology”
• “6 Billion miracles is enough”
• “Pro child, Pro choice”
• “If you cut off my reproductive choice, can I cut off yours?”
• “Let the unborn live so they can die in Iraq”
• “It is not a child until it is a choice”
• “People like you make me pro-choice”
• “Pro-choice: No more wire hangers!”
• “You’re pro-life? That’s fine…Now get one and stay out of mine”

Seriously, where does one begin to address the sentiments behind such slogans? Some of them are designed with the sole purpose of enraging those who disagree with them.

Of course, we cannot expect thoughtful debate to be conducted via bumper sticker. But it is still quite sad.

 

[ThomasToo]

I often wonder if people who carry this view of the unborn child have ever truly seen an unborn child? I have miscarried three babies, and so I have had the opportunity to see my unborn babies. I can guarentee you that they were truly human in every sense of the word. Not one of them looked like a heap of cells (which makes no sense since if we are truly being technical we are all a bunch of cells). I was once a pro-abortion supporter until I miscarried my first baby at 8 weeks and held her in my hands. I was shocked to find that I had been lied to and that I had retold that lie to others. She was most diffently human with ten little fingers and ten little toes, two eyes a nose and a perfect little mouth.

This has nothing to do with religion and everything to do with being a thoughtful human being. How anyone can justify the murder of such a perfect little person is beyond me. How any one could have told me that it would have been my choice to pull one of her perfect limbs apart one by one until I finally killed her is astonishing. Here is a fellow humanbeing who while being murdered will have other fellow humanbeings look away while she is being tortured, and all for what?

Yes my religion says we should not kill, but shouldn’t this be a given. These are children we are talking about and this is murder.

I don’t mean to make light of your traumatic circumstances so please do not take the following as such; I am sorry you went through that.

10 fingers? 10 toes? 2 eyes? Nose? Mouth? Surely then you’re in support of the Great Apes Project’s endeavor to bring some of the protections we would now call ‘human rights’ to other great apes such as chimpanzees and orangutans. Just because something looks a little bit like us doesn’t make it, ontologically or morally, equivalent or equal to a person. Fingers, toes, face or fingernails aren’t relevant to the discussion; neurological development is–I would argue–and at 8 weeks not the barest forms of any human like (as over and above brain structures found in non-humans) is to be found.

I’ve seen plenty of developing embryos and fetuses but I don’t think photographs are sufficient information for moral analysis. To be as frank as possible, while you can ‘guarentee’ [sic] me they were human ‘in every sense of the word’ you may well be (a) loading the definition of the word in a way I would disagree with and (b) basing it on emotional attachment to a lost pregnancy rather than logic, reason and proper philosophical thought.

Of course not killing people is a given but the question here which rather than answering my argument you just asserted again and again “no it’s a child, this is so terrible” is that a fetus–at least for a fair amount of gestation–is not a person for moral purposes. A person here–and in most philosophical discussions–is an entity with rights due to being (in the words of Boethius) an individual substance in a rational nature. The problem here is that your religion is saying more than just ‘don’t kill’ but is making declarative metaphysical judgments on the status of a developing embryo/fetus and attempting to make them binding on everyone, whether of your number or decidedly and vocally not.

 

[st_lucy]

I don’t mean to make light of your traumatic circumstances so please do not take the following as such; I am sorry you went through that.
Well I think you need to learn some thing on empathy because your comments where more than just rude. Would ever walk up to a new mother and tell that her child was a bambo? I am always amazed by the kinds the left shows.

10 fingers? 10 toes? 2 eyes? Nose? Mouth? Surely then you’re in support of the Great Apes Project’s endeavor to bring some of the protections we would now call ‘human rights’ to other great apes such as chimpanzees and orangutans. Just because something looks a little bit like us doesn’t make it, ontologically or morally, equivalent or equal to a person. Fingers, toes, face or fingernails aren’t relevant to the discussion; neurological development is–I would argue–and at 8 weeks not the barest forms of any human like (as over and above brain structures found in non-humans) is to be found.

Are you insinuating that I gave birth to monkeys, apes? I am sorry but you are way off here, their dna was purly human not any other animal. On a side note I also have given birth to two living children. I got the oppurtuity to see my children at early stages in their life. They where both quite human and had their own personality in utro that has carried on now 13 and 9 years.

I’ve seen plenty of developing embryos and fetuses but I don’t think photographs are sufficient information for moral analysis. To be as frank as possible, while you can ‘guarentee’ [sic] me they were human ‘in every sense of the word’ you may well be (a) loading the definition of the word in a way I would disagree with and (b) basing it on emotional attachment to a lost pregnancy rather than logic, reason and proper philosophical thought.
again my children who lived past utro where very much the same as their siblings who died early on.

Of course not killing people is a given but the question here which rather than answering my argument you just asserted again and again “no it’s a child, this is so terrible” is that a fetus–at least for a fair amount of gestation–is not a person for moral purposes. A person here–and in most philosophical discussions–is an entity with rights due to being (in the words of Boethius) an individual substance in a rational nature. The problem here is that your religion is saying more than just ‘don’t kill’ but is making declarative metaphysical judgments on the status of a developing embryo/fetus and attempting to make them binding on everyone, whether of your number or decidedly and vocally not.

So tell me when does a fetus becomes a person? give me a time a physical apperence, since at 9 weeks when they have all the features of a person and yet you deny them the right of being a person.

I read some books on the genocide in Rwanda and those who were doing the killing called the Tusti snakes and cockroaches, so that it made it easier to kill their fellow human. i find it amazing that we always fail to learn from the past.

 

[ThomasToo]

If you google “pro-choice bumper stickers”, you’ll find plenty of slogans to raise the blood pressure and boggle the mind.

• “If you can’t trust me with a choice, how can you trust me with a child?”
• “Against abortion? Then don’t have one”
• “Parenting by choice, not chance”
• “Someone you know may need a choice”
• “I hope the fetus you save grows up to be gay”
• “Keep your theology off my biology”
• “6 Billion miracles is enough”
• “Pro child, Pro choice”
• “If you cut off my reproductive choice, can I cut off yours?”
• “Let the unborn live so they can die in Iraq”
• “It is not a child until it is a choice”
• “People like you make me pro-choice”
• “Pro-choice: No more wire hangers!”
• “You’re pro-life? That’s fine…Now get one and stay out of mine”

Seriously, where does one begin to address the sentiments behind such slogans? Some of them are designed with the sole purpose of enraging those who disagree with them.

Of course, we cannot expect thoughtful debate to be conducted via bumper sticker. But it is still quite sad.

I think it’s actually interesting to think about these and look at the philosophy behind them. For my self and many (if not all) pro-choicers the situation is one of person ideology/religion/thought/opinion hence sentiments such as ‘Against abortion? Then don’t have one’ (I’ve seen a similar one regarding gay marriage). On the other hand for many Catholic who oppose abortion rights it’s about protecting those who they feel are most marginalized by society and in such a view the above list is at best nonsense and offensive at worst. Having (very) Catholic parents I know that what–at least the vast majority of–you do is based on love and concern though sometimes it’s hard to keep a hold of that idea when I see abortionists getting shot (and lets not take the discussion into that direction, you don’t support it but I think Scott Roeder was trying to be loving to the unborn tho I may be giving a delusional man too much credit).

I think there some about which we could agree are good sentiments such as ‘no more wire hangars.’ You want more than to make abortion illegal; you want them to stop. One of many reasons I’m pro-choice is because I don’t think we can (or should) go back to the days of back alley abortions. I would argue, however, that wanting to stop abortions is about a heck of a lot more than overturning Roe. It includes education about birth control in schools, distribution of the same, increased welfare/WIC spending (to remove the idea of ‘I can’t afford to have this baby’) &c&c&c down a solid half of the liberal platform. I’m not trying to tie my political and social ideas onto one that’s close to your heart but I think we can agree on the following (1) bumper sticker slogans can tell a lot about an ideology, (2) we have middle ground and (3) ending abortion isn’t [just] about courts or legal rights.

 

[st_lucy]

I think it’s actually interesting to think about these and look at the philosophy behind them. For my self and many (if not all) pro-choicers the situation is one of person ideology/religion/thought/opinion hence sentiments such as ‘Against abortion? Then don’t have one’ (I’ve seen a similar one regarding gay marriage). On the other hand for many Catholic who oppose abortion rights it’s about protecting those who they feel are most marginalized by society and in such a view the above list is at best nonsense and offensive at worst. Having (very) Catholic parents I know that what–at least the vast majority of–you do is based on love and concern though sometimes it’s hard to keep a hold of that idea when I see abortionists getting shot (and lets not take the discussion into that direction, you don’t support it but I think Scott Roeder was trying to be loving to the unborn tho I may be giving a delusional man too much credit).

I think there some about which we could agree are good sentiments such as ‘no more wire hangars.’ You want more than to make abortion illegal; you want them to stop. One of many reasons I’m pro-choice is because I don’t think we can (or should) go back to the days of back alley abortions. I would argue, however, that wanting to stop abortions is about a heck of a lot more than overturning Roe. It includes education about birth control in schools, distribution of the same, increased welfare/WIC spending (to remove the idea of ‘I can’t afford to have this baby’) &c&c&c down a solid half of the liberal platform. I’m not trying to tie my political and social ideas onto one that’s close to your heart but I think we can agree on the following (1) bumper sticker slogans can tell a lot about an ideology, (2) we have middle ground and (3) ending abortion isn’t [just] about courts or legal rights.

you do know that the whole wire hanger thing was a ploy to open abortion rights and not based on any facts.:

Dr. Bernard Nathanson, co-founder of the National Abortion Rights Action League, admits his group lied about the number of women who died from illegal abortions when testifying before the Supreme Court in 1972. “We spoke of 5,000 - 10,000 deaths a year… I confess that I knew the figures were totally false … it was a useful figure, widely accepted, so why go out of our way to correct it with honest statistics?”

That claim of thousands of maternal deaths due to illegal abortion doesn’t measure up when compared with other statistics. About 50,000 women of child-bearing age die each year – from all causes combined. To suggest that 10,000 of these deaths were from illegal abortion would make that the cause of one out of every five deaths, or twenty percent. This would have made illegal abortion the leading cause of death among women in that age group.

You can read the rest for yourself here Educate yourself on what it is your pro-choice stance is saying. I would hate to have to answer for why I didn’t help stop the 1.4 million murders of my fellow humans.

 

[st_lucy]

ThomasToo you really need to view this video.

 

[ThomasToo]

you do know that the whole wire hanger thing was a ploy to open abortion rights and not based on any facts.

I never said there were 10,000 deaths due to back alley abortions in 1972 and you know that. If you are prepared to deny that any death or injury was caused by illegal abortions then we are in a different place but if you stipulate some death and serious injury then I’m not sure exactly why scale is all that relevant.

I would hate to have to answer for why I didn’t help stop the 1.4 million murders of my fellow humans.

You’ve ignored my point entirely and you know that. I’m arguing that a developing fetus is at least for the majority of gestation not a person in the moral sense and as such the claim of ‘murder’ does not adhere.

 

[st_lucy]

I never said there were 10,000 deaths due to back alley abortions in 1972 and you know that. If you are prepared to deny that any death or injury was caused by illegal abortions then we are in a different place but if you stipulate some death and serious injury then I’m not sure exactly why scale is all that relevant.

You’ve ignored my point entirely and you know that. I’m arguing that a developing fetus is at least for the majority of gestation not a person in the moral sense and as such the claim of ‘murder’ does not adhere.

And you have ignored my question, when in your mind does a fetus become a person, that has a right to not have his limbs pulled apart, or a hole drilled behind his head so that a “dr.” can suck out his brain?

I would like to have an age of some sort and your explanation as to why you believe this.

 

[The_Reginator]

And you have ignored my question, when in your mind does a fetus become a person, that has a right to not have his limbs pulled apart, or a hole drilled behind his head so that a “dr.” can suck out his brain?

I would like to have an age of some sort and your explanation as to why you believe this.

Yes Thomas, me too.

As I said in my long post, my earliest problem with abortion was that I cannot see any logical point in the development in the womb where one can say that this entity has now become a human person. The entity in the womb never changes, it only develops. The same cells that began the process belong to the same being that dies, perhaps, 80-odd years later. How and when can that entity turn from non-human to human?
People can cite differences and the lack of cranial activity, but where is there any real LOGICAL change??

 

[ThomasToo]

Yes Thomas, me too.

As I said in my long post, my earliest problem with abortion was that I cannot see any logical point in the development in the womb where one can say that this entity has now become a human person. The entity in the womb never changes, it only develops. The same cells that began the process belong to the same being that dies, perhaps, 80-odd years later. How and when can that entity turn from non-human to human?
People can cite differences and the lack of cranial activity, but where is there any real LOGICAL change??

I did. My answer is reproduced below:

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.

And you have ignored my question, when in your mind does a fetus become a person… I would like to have an age of some sort and your explanation as to why you believe this.

If pressed I would say that a fetus becomes a person in the moral sense with the emergence of human like brainwaves as well as uniquely human neurological structures. Decry me as a crass materialist if you wish but it’s not our fingers, our faces or our gonads that make us unique as a species but our brains. Brainwaves with patterns typical of (healthy) adult human brains appear some time around the fifth or sixth month of pregnancy. I don’t think it is meaningful–or for that matter intelligible–to attempt to class a zygote (pic: raven.zoology.washington.edu/embryos/auximages/dendraster_zygote4.jpg) as a moral person. Your argument above, aside from intended pathos in unnecessary descriptions of abortive procedures, is telling. It seems very important to you that the entity in question look human (or maybe you think it is or should be to me) so then I put the question to you, does that one single cell truly bear the weight of the full portion of freedom (and this isn’t an attempt to trap you into some nonsense like votes for zygotes)?

 

[JimG]

Too often we speak as if the facts of embryology were entirely unknown. They are not. Does not every individual of the human species have a beginning? Of course it does. At conception the sperm and ovum unite to form a new and distinct individual of the human species, complete in its genetics, and continuing to develop in a process which will extend past birth. The new and distinct human individual is not the mother nor the father, but a new member of the species.

The new human individual is not completely developed even at birth, or even at adolescence. That does not make it less a human individual, or less a member of the species homo sapiens.

The only question is, at what point are we allowed or not allowed to kill it?
Regardless of the answer to that, what we kill is a member of the human species.
They do have a beginning. And an ending.

 

[The_Reginator]

Too often we speak as if the facts of embryology were entirely unknown. They are not. Does not every individual of the human species have a beginning? Of course it does. At conception the sperm and ovum unite to form a new and distinct individual of the human species, complete in its genetics, and continuing to develop in a process which will extend past birth. The new and distinct human individual is not the mother nor the father, but a new member of the species.

The new human individual is not completely developed even at birth, or even at adolescence. That does not make it less a human individual, or less a member of the species homo sapiens.

The only question is, at what point are we allowed or not allowed to kill it?
Regardless of the answer to that, what we kill is a member of the human species.
They do have a beginning. And an ending.

That was well explained Jim. Thanks for your (name removed by moderator)ut.

 

[ThomasToo]

Too often we speak as if the facts of embryology were entirely unknown. They are not. Does not every individual of the human species have a beginning? Of course it does. At conception the sperm and ovum unite to form a new and distinct individual of the human species, complete in its genetics, and continuing to develop in a process which will extend past birth. The new and distinct human individual is not the mother nor the father, but a new member of the species.

The new human individual is not completely developed even at birth, or even at adolescence. That does not make it less a human individual, or less a member of the species homo sapiens.

The only question is, at what point are we allowed or not allowed to kill it?
Regardless of the answer to that, what we kill is a member of the human species.
They do have a beginning. And an ending.

That’s not actually quite true. A zygote does not poses a one way ticket to individual personhood; for a solid bit after fertilization (up to 15 days) that one cell can split (i.e. twin) into two unique individuals.

The question is not nearly that simple and slips in an unacknowledged bit of important philosophical baggage: the conflation of the biological concept of ‘human’ and the moral and ontological notion of ‘person’. I don’t agree with this import as it assumes what it seeks to prove (or rather what it ought to seek to prove).

 

[vera_dicere]

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.

Ireland. Has one of the lowest, sometimes the LOWEST, maternal mortality rate, yet, abortion is illegal.

The deaths from Pre-Roe abortions were low, and the vaste majority of illegal abortions were done by doctors, who continued to do them after Roe.

realchoice.0catch.com/library/weekly/aa082901a.htm

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,

While I don’t discount her experiences, I do have to point out that when doing something like medicine or nursing you tend to see a lot of something that is not actually common. For example, I worked as a nurse in a unit that specalised in breast reconstruction for cancer patients, we’d have at least three, four a week sometimes, from my vantage, it looked like breast cancer in women under 40 was very common.

it’d be the same with that abortionist, she saw a lot of something because she was in the situation where she’d see a lot of it, but in reality it wasnt’ all that common.

People seem to give very little credit to the back alley abortionist, if the guy keeps killing and maiming his clients he’s going to get the attention of the cops or worse, earn himself a bad wrap and loose business.

For the women who self-abort or attempt to, it should be an indication for mental health intervention as what she’s doing is a form of self harm, and obviously, evidence of a defective intellect as what woman would sit in her bathroom, unravel a wire coat hanger and attempt to insert it through a very tight cervix to try and dislodge something for years was beleived to be the size of a blood clot?

 

[vz71]

Decry me as a crass materialist if you wish but it’s not our fingers, our faces or our gonads that make us unique as a species but our brains. Brainwaves with patterns typical of (healthy) adult human brains appear some time around the fifth or sixth month of pregnancy.

I am certain that brainwave patterns discerned from prenatal human beings are not adult patterns.
I would hazard that patterns discerned from adolescent human bengs as well as teenager as well are not adult patterns.

I hazard this because I have not studied directly.
I simply know that a child is not an adult.

Also, concerning “it’s not our fingers, our faces or our gonads that make us unique as a species…”
Yes, it is. Every cell in our bodies is unique to our species.
They are all human, and that is the defining difference.

 

[Prophesy]

That’s not actually quite true. A zygote does not poses a one way ticket to individual personhood; for a solid bit after fertilization (up to 15 days) that one cell can split (i.e. twin) into two unique individuals.

This doesn’t need to happen at the zygote phase either. And with the potential of human cloning may eventually be possible at all stages of development. Tangentially the information is interesting, but irrelevant to JimG’s point.

-Prophecy

 

[Prophesy]

-Prophecy

 

[Prophesy]

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.

Now I feel the need to explain something. The ‘paradox of the heap’ is drawn from a quasi slippery slope fallacy (as we remove one piece of sand from a heap it remains a heap until we get to the last grain of sand or no grains at all). The same thing goes for crowds of people, but not necessarily for humans. So what’s the difference? Heaps of sand and crowds of people are words which presuppose the presence of multiples. For example, a crowd of people is a large number of people, but the question is what constitutes a large enough number for a crowd?

The ‘paradox of the heap’ isn’t necessarily valid here because the definition of a human doesn’t ontologically rely on the presence of a large number.

However one could say that there is a flavor of intelligibility fallacy to permitting abortion based on this ‘paradox of the heaps’. Basically the fallacy is that an object can be determined despite relying on a non-intelligible factor or one from which information has not yet been drawn. For example, a hunter is in the woods and has his trusty shotgun drawn. He hears a rustle in a nearby bush. Now if he can pull the trigger and blindly shoot into the bush, but he’s not really sure what’s there. It could be his quarry, or even another hunter. He has to determine if the rustle in the bush is fair game or not before he can fire a shot.

-Prophecy