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for those against abortion

Not_Me

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And so you make decisions, and you live with the consequences. The purpose behind regulating abortion would be to add consequences to effect people's decision making. No free will is taken, you just simply have more incentive to act a certain way.
Why is that desirable? Keep in mind that I don't believe a fertilized egg is a person. If I was the woman, why would I want to restrict my freedom simply because it offends someone else's morals?

Some people believe that eating meat is immoral. Does that mean that everyone must become vegetarians?
 

Usehername

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So you're asserting that having sex obligates the woman to carry an unplanned and unwanted pregnancy to full term? This is a very contentious point.

lol, I didn't assert anything. All I said was that you're executing a fallacious analogy.
Stop and think of an accurate analogy--you genuinely need an example when the individual with agency is not held responsible for the action. And I'll bet that you cannot think of a proper analogy, because I cannot think of one to support your analogy either.

This in no way dismisses the pro-choice stance, I'm only calling out poor argumentation.
 

Not_Me

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Stop and think of an accurate analogy--you genuinely need an example when the individual with agency is not held responsible for the action. And I'll bet that you cannot think of a proper analogy, because I cannot think of one to support your analogy either.

The analogy is sound if you believe, as I do, that having sex does not obligate a women to rent her body out.
 

Risen

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Why is that desirable? Keep in mind that I don't believe a fertilized egg is a person. If I was the woman, why would I want to restrict my freedom simply because it offends someone else's morals?

Some people believe that eating meat is immoral. Does that mean that everyone must become vegetarians?

In CA they regulate where a fast food restaurant can be setup so they can keep people from getting fat. They regulate what can be put in school soda and snack machines to keep kids from getting fat. They want to put extra taxes on sodas and junk food to keep people from getting fat. It is the same logic. The same faulty logic, but that's how things work this day and age. The war against fat people in CA hasn't actually instituted any policies that change behavior. It just makes fat people go elsewhere for their food/drink, and gives the state extra tax revenue. Penalizing abortion would be in the same vain, although one could argue that the penalties could be great enough to make people think twice about getting an abortion for petty selfish reasons, as well as increase the number of secretive self induced abortions, which is a problem.

This is why government involvement is not ideal in ANY micromanagement of behavior. I think abortion is wrong, I don't think it's helpful to society, but I also don't actually believe in using the state to force/influence behavior. Society will have to be left to its own devices if it is to be a "fee" society, for better or worse. Problem is if the society keeps faltering towards "worse", it will likely lose more than it gained in keeping and abusing those freedoms. It is a moral issue.
 

Laurie

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I find this interesting because I'm your age but I'm reluctant to consider adoption as an option due mainly to the horrifying things you so often see in foster care....and even if it doesn't get to the abuse levels, you can't really know how the adoptive parents will treat the child...or even that it'd be adopted at all. And then you have the adopted child later in life wondering why you "threw him away" and didn't want him etc etc. Not to say there aren't amazing foster parents (there are), you just can't know for sure without an open adoption.

Yikes. You don't even know how good of a parent you or the father will be, even if you are married and plan your child. Also, are you saying it's better if people who were subjected to abuse as kids were not ever born? Your child could be abused by a family member without your consent, your kid could be born with a defect, your child could be run over by a car. Everyone has crappy things happen in life.

This really has nothing to do with the abortion discussion, I just couldn't handle seeing that post stand without the other side being mentioned.
 

Usehername

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The analogy is sound if you believe, as I do, that having sex does not obligate a women to rent her body out.

No. It is not a sound analogy--both of them shift the agency from one party to another party.

The stance itself has valid points. However, the analogy is flawed, regardless of one's beliefs.
 

run

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I think the distinction we need to make is that pro-chocies believe in "choice" not that abortion is right or wrong". Given that, consider that you have an abortion and consider this:

You know it's a baby, and it is.
You know it's not a baby, and it isn't
You don't know if its a baby or not, and it is.
You don't know if its a baby or not, and it isn't.

1. obviously wrong
2. nothing wrong
3. irresponsible
4. irresponsible

So the claim that "We don't know if its a baby or not, so let's legislate it anyway" doesn't work.

SO, is it a baby? Life begins at conception. I don't know how clearer I can put it. When you get pregnant, a baby will come out. It will happen every single time.

I would consider a fetus part of someone's body when it's in the womb.

Even then, sure I respect your belief. But I don't respect that people shouldn't have the right to do what they want. If you are against abortion, then don't get one. Don't force your beliefs on others.

Just because its part of the body, then its ok to kill the child?

What if it wasn't part of the body?
- If it would be wrong to kill the baby in this case, then human life would be valuable. In this case, the value of human life would trump the inconvenience of carrying it around for 9 months.
- If it'd be right to kill the baby, well that's fucked up.

The law should allow us to make decisions like this based on what WE consider good or bad. It's our right to exercise what we see as morally good in my opinion (as long as it isn't crazy stuff like ritual killings and sacrifice, you know what I mean).

As I said, what's the issue? If you don't believe it, don't practice it.

According to this, we could say, "allow people to choose whether or not to murder adults innocently, allow people to choose to steal, etc". Obviously that's moral bankruptcy. If that were the case, the constitution would be one line: "Do as you please, as long as it doesn't interfere with other people." Well, I am gonna limit your freedom, and I am gonna step on your toes. Forgive me if I say "It's wrong to steal from the innocent when expedient".

The only thing we can legislate is morality. If you say
The law should allow us to...
That's a morality.

Well we are divided as a society already when it comes to certain beliefs. The abortion issue will NEVER be objectively and unshakeably true, because it's based on opinion.

Is that so? Why is it based on opinion? Because we disagree?

First, why is it necessary that all human life has the same value and the same rights? Couldn't human beings in one stage be accorded different rights than those in another? Does a person have a right to have a limb amputated, or is that wrong because the limb contains "human life" in the form of cells?

Why isn't it necessary that all human life has the same value and the same rights? Life is life. Intrinsically valuable. Not to be used. Plain and simple.

Second, why is the death seen as a "loss"? A loss of what, they haven't lived a life or had any meaningful experiences yet.

When you die, you lose the future, not the past. The past already happened. So, whether or not they have had experiences yet is irrelevant. In fact, it hurts the argument-- If they haven't experienced anything yet, they've lost everything.

Who are you to say that a person is allowed to take one action and accept that set of consequences, but not to choose the other action and accept the consequences? Why should a person not be allowed to take an action that modifies the consequences of a previous action? It's not true that abortion has no consequences... it does. They're just different from the consequences of NOT having one.

Which consequences are we talking about here? The people who have to deal with it, or whether or not an infinitely and intrinsically valuable human exists or not?

A self defense argument could be made also. The woman is acting to prevent a being from invading and using her body for 9 months. Even if the being was a full fledged person, does it have the rights to use her body without her consent?

becuse it just happens to be in her body? That's part of the baby-making process! The girl knew that before she got pregnant. It's not a surprise. You can either say "I killed my baby" or "I have to put up with being a host to this 'parasite' for a few months, which is the only way to have a baby." Which is worse?

I don't think it's accurate to say that most women who got abortions would choose pregnancy if they had to do it again. They might regret it, but they might have regretted pregnancy more.

The whole reason you regret something is because the other option was better. You can't regret two mutually exclusive choices.

Sex can be done for recreation rather than procreation. Just because a woman has sex doesn't mean that she consented to rent her body out for nine months.

Yes it does. Would you say, "hey, I gave my husband consent to impregnante me, and I'm giving the baby consent to use my body as its host." She knows how pregnancy works. No one says, "no its cool, i'll get an abortion, just stick it in"

If you eat at at restaurant, there is the possibility that you will get food poisoning. But does that mean you consented to it?

YES!!! You take a chance in everything that you do. You gotta deal with it. You learn that when you grow up. That's life.
 

Not_Me

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No. It is not a sound analogy--both of them shift the agency from one party to another party.

I don't understand your position. If you are not asserting that having sex obligates the woman to carry the fetus, then what is the relevance of agency?
 

Not_Me

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SO, is it a baby? Life begins at conception. I don't know how clearer I can put it. When you get pregnant, a baby will come out. It will happen every single time.
No one denies that life begins at conception. But it is irrelevant. We kill people all the time. We also fail to save people all the time. You need to prove that the woman is obligated to lend her body out for 9 months to save the fetus.

If you can't prove it, then I stick with my original position, that abortion ought to be a personal choice.
 

Risen

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No one denies that life begins at conception. But it is irrelevant. We kill people all the time. We also fail to save people all the time. You need to prove that the woman is obligated to lend her body out for 9 months to save the fetus.

If you can't prove it, then I stick with my original position, that abortion ought to be a personal choice.

I miss the days when society was beholden to religious values, and we all made decisions for ourselves based on those common values. Now what do we have? A festering turd of a morality standard, constantly teetering on relying on government to make choices for us since we lack anything else to latch onto in the absence of religious faith and family values. It saddens me, even as someone who is not religious. Freedom cannot survive under such conditions.
 

simulatedworld

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I miss the days when society was beholden to religious values, and we all made decisions for ourselves based on those common values. Now what do we have? A festering turd of a morality standard, constantly teetering on relying on government to make choices for us since we lack anything else to latch onto in the absence of religious faith and family values. It saddens me, even as someone who is not religious. Freedom cannot survive under such conditions.

Oh boy, it's my favorite far rightist platitude--"Freedom is doomed if people don't adhere to my personal arbitrary standards of morality!"

:doh:
 

Risen

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Oh boy, it's my favorite far rightist platitude--"Freedom is doomed if people don't adhere to my personal arbitrary standards of morality!"

:doh:

I didn't create the nature of human behavior. Blame... evolution -_- .
 

Venom

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Hmmmn....interesting, I don't recall making any specific religious references there. If anything I was basing my argument on Aristotle and vaguely Kantian ethics as well. One doesn't necessarily have to be religious in order to be against abortion.

im familiar with the Aristotle and Kant references. However, if this is a notion of "ethics" as I think you said, and not biology, then we are invoking metaphysical assumptions (even if they are only implied).

While synthetic a priori's of something like geometry (think of all those "there are no ______ _____s) may be true for everyone, synthetic a priori s of ethics are pretty much only going to be "true for you" (believe it or not, this idea does not excite me).

I get where you are going with the Aristotle thing about making your own life intrinsically valuable:

Appealing to the differences between a fetus and a child is really a red herring, since Personhood is an ethical not a biological category. One's Personhood is not determined by what exact stage of biological development you're in, it's an instrinstic value - based upon the key notion that human life is a good in of itself.

This also ties into issues of "quality" of life; which treats life as merely a means, not an end. As Aristotle put it in Rhetoric: "And life: since, even if no other good were the result of life, it is desirable in itself."

The very fact that you are divorcing "person hood" from biology means "person hood" is taking on "an essence" and is such either a metaphorical (holds no prescriptive weight) or is a metaphysical (holds prescriptive weight for anyone who believes in it).

I too believe that life is obviously intrinsically valuable. Sadly, there isnt any deductive logic to bridge it to something I can definitively say must be true "for everyone". Metaphysics are the elephant in the room for this thread.

I'll leave you with a Nietzsche reference:
Just because I think "slave morality" makes mankind happier on average (in a sort of game theory sense), does not mean that I can prove "slave morality" is prescriptively right for everyone. Further, just because its obvious to me that "slave morality" tends to lead to on avg a happier human race, does not mean I can say that "master morality" is metaphysically wrong or right.

you might wonder how that relates to this thread: there is a difference between something being right for you, and prescriptively right for everyone.
 
S

Sniffles

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im familiar with the Aristotle and Kant references. However, if this is a notion of "ethics" as I think you said, and not biology, then we are invoking metaphysical assumptions (even if they are only implied).

While synthetic a priori's of something like geometry (think of all those "there are no ______ _____s) may be true for everyone, a priori's of ethics are pretty much only going to be "true for you" (believe it or not, this idea does not excite me).

I get where you are going with the Aristotle thing about making your own life intrinsically valuable:



The very fact that you are divorcing "person hood" from biology means "person hood" is taking on "an essence" and is such either a metaphorical (holds no prescriptive weight) or is a metaphysical (holds prescriptive weight for anyone who believes in it).

I too believe that life is obviously intrinsically valuable. Sadly, there isnt any deductive logic to bridge it to something I can definitively say must be true "for everyone". Metaphysics are the elephant in the room for this thread.

I'll leave you with a Nietzsche reference:
Just because I think "slave morality" makes mankind happier on average (in a sort of game theory sense), does not mean that I can prove "slave morality" is prescriptively right for everyone. Further, just because its obvious to me that "slave morality" tends to lead to on avg a happier human race, does not mean I can say that "master morality" is metaphysically wrong or right.

So what's your point here?
 

AOA

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22 pages? See, here's the problem with y'all posting on this topic - you are all full of sh*t.

... I'm guessing you are (really) basing your arguments out of your own personal 'vendettas' - and looking for the vast majority of people, here... they aren't particularly good ones.

This topic is fucked up, and that's about that. Although, what I can agree on, which I thought about (myself) is - it would have been fairer given we lived in the early days where our lives were not made (forcibly) easier. But then, even that wouldn't answer to how much abortion deprives the life pre-birth...
 

Venom

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So what's your point here?

you might wonder how that relates to this thread: there is a difference between something being right for you, and prescriptively right for everyone.

(i added that after you quoted me :D)

I just cant possible see how you can divorce metaphysics from this debate. Its been logically proven over and over again, that metaphysical beliefs regarding ethics can only ever be 100% right "for you". How are we going to legislate based on "right for you"?
 
S

Sniffles

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I just cant possible see how you can divorce metaphysics from this debate.
Well you can't, but that doesn't mean one has to resort to "religious" arguments though per se.

Its been logically proven over and over again, that metaphysical beliefs regarding ethics can only ever be right "for you". How are we going to legislate based on "right for you"?

Well I guess I can offer the Personalist perspective that defines reason as the self's capacity to synthesize objectivity(primarily) with subjectivity(secondary). Objectivity involves our capacity to act, feel, think in terms of our relationship with others. Subjectivity involves our capacity to act, feel, think for itself in the sense of absolute freedom.

So essentially the issue of what's right for me is balanced off with what's right for others, in a sense of mutuality involved.
 

Usehername

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I don't understand your position. If you are not asserting that having sex obligates the woman to carry the fetus, then what is the relevance of agency?

The relevance of agency is that you cannot find an appropriate metaphor to support your position, because though I haven't analyzed every possibility out there, I'm pretty sure there is no comparable analogy.

It's a pretty unique situation, if you think about it.

Humans, above all else, value human life (if not others' lives, at least their own human life).

The whole idea of a man and woman conceiving and then a woman carrying a child is just a huge concept, as mundane as it is in practice.

I think if humans were ever totally in agreement regarding how to go about valuing human life (because there is an antagonistic relationship sometimes between what is best for the mother and what is best for her baby) then humanity would have lost its humanness. :)

The point, btw, is that your analogy is inherently flawed--the point was that you had no ground to stand on with your argument, which is important to note. Sometimes we get caught up knowing that our stance has merit and forget how to attend to and properly defend our position. :)
 

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I'm against abortion, but I don't argue about it much anymore, it's just too depressing/frustrating.
 
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