Atheism and Abortion

@AlphaLogica157 Re: “So only a woman has the right to hold an opinion on a matter of human reproduction?”

Yes. Exactly. Wow… You catch on quick. Cool. :sunglasses: For a minute there I thought you were being a complete misogynic asshole.

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" unlike you and your seething misogynist fester of wishful authoritarian control,"

Try again, it’s like you not even reading what i am typing…please show me ONE example from what i have typed that reflects your gross and dishonest characterization. I’ll wait.

Show me ONE example that rings of ‘authoritarian control’ LOL.

You are not even straw-manning my argument, as you would have to at least get the point to do so. You are arguing against something I never even said.

@AlphaLogica157

You do realize both sides of this discussion are opinion? Disagreement will ensue.

Of who? The mother, or child.? Evolution is a numbers game…the more offspring, the higher percentage of survival as a species…that’s why abortion overall is not morally repugnant…because our moral evolution has dictated our innate moral precepts…Hence why we have laws, that are defined by our innate morality, guiding individual rights…which in turn is a validation for abortion.

Something else to consider:

If we accept the postulate that life begins during fertilization, and that this life needs to be protected: then it seems that forms of birth control that don’t prevent fertilization are actually secret abortions (and presumably would be illegal).

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“Woman’s body, woman’s decision. Period. I do not understand what is so difficult to understand about that.”

The bit about how you just assert it as true and it is?..that is called Dogma my friend.

(psst…that is a bad thing)

"How do you think the entire male population would react if a large group of women and/or religious nuts tried passing a law that made it illegal for men to get a vasectomy? "

"Or, to take it a step further, maybe they want to try to make it illegal for men to masturbate? "

False-equivalence, we are not taking about removing the reproductive organs of woman, but the justification for the ‘pro-choice’ position. Masturbation also, has nothing to do with it. Please stay on topic.

“Again, this would be under the premise of treating all the sperm as individual potential lives.”

No, I am not saying that at all, an unfertilized egg is no different than a single sperm, its what happens when they combine that is the question.

"and what the hell does this have to do with atheism??? "

Atheists as a rule reject the after life, thus this life is the only one we have. How can you hold that this is the only life, the justify taking away that life based NOT on reason or evidence but arguments equivalent to dogmatic assertions from the pulpit. Seems to me that an Atheist, would lean towards the position that life begins at conception, since that is the only empirical position we have available to us.

Again, what you are talking about are the rare cases where the life of the mother is a risk. let us just grant the point that in those cases abortion is fine.

But what about all the others? That extreme case does not apply.

“because our moral evolution has dictated our innate moral precepts”

You are forgetting the role that culture plays in cultural evolution, it not purely a biological process that creates our morality. it is the accumulative experiences from our past and desire for the future and biology is running in the background.

@AlphaLogica157

Do you believe you have the right to survive?

" life begins during fertilization"
I disagree as you are preventing the insemination of an egg, not aborting an already fertilized one. And we are not talking about the legality of it, it could be legal and morally wrong, or illegal and morally right.

The point is that the pro-choice position is built on a very hallow foundation. Look no farther than the repeated assertions of ‘her body her choice.’

No justification, no reason offered, just repeated ad nauseam. Like a mantra.

@dogalmighty

Yes, and if i could assume for a moment, so does the unborn child. But again my survival or the mothers survival is not the question. The child is.

Many forms of birth control work by preventing fertilized eggs from “growing” (for lack of a better word) inside the woman. Do you consider the use of those kinds of birth control an abortion?

@AlphaLogica157

What?

That was not what was said. What about the man who uses condoms or has a vasectomy?

I didn’t give my opinion on abortion before because it’s irrelevant to my atheism. I give it here as a male human being.

The so called "pro life "** brigade base their claim to a right to interfere in the lives of others on an unfounded religious belief. IE that a fetus is a human being from conception because it is at that moment it gains a soul. My response to that; I don’t believe you,please prove it or get the fuck out of my face.

My position is that a fetus becomes a human being from the time at which it is becomes viable ex utero . This is usually taken as being at the end of the second trimester. It is my understanding that abortions [in my country at least] are not normally carried out after that time for that reason.

Further, that the decision to have an abortion is a medical one, between the woman and her doctor, AND NOBODY ELSE.
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**those sanctimonious hypocrites do not extend their pro-life stance to explaining what becomes of an unwanted child after its birth, nor indeed on capital punishment, ***nor to the logical conclusion of war.

*** I have no problem with the notion that there are some people society can do without ,and that such people should be killed. EG people who commit murder for money,and those who pay them and anyone who rapes and/or murders a child. I support such actions 100% (as long as a safe conviction can be 100%guaranteed)

On war; a heinous crime,wherein cynical old men con our gormless young men into going to a foreign country to kill their gormless young
men.

Wars are always fomented for one or both of two reasons; to take something the other chap has or to stop the other chap from taking something you have.

The poor dumb bastards who do the actual dying will often sign up out of patriotism or from a sense of moral superiority. From the couple of hundred veterans I’ve met over my life, that changes as soon as the shooting starts.Then a soldier fights only to preserve his own life and the lives of his mates. Imo there is nothing noble about dying for a moral or political ideal.

@Nyarlathotep

" preventing fertilized eggs from “growing”"

Yes, i would consider that abortion for lack of a better term, it could be considered a miscarriage of course, but considering the active role one must take to get the pregnancy to ‘fail’ I would consider it an abortion.

So, you believe you have the right to survive, which means you will act if you believe your life may be affected.

Well, the pregnant woman has the same right to protect herself as you do…irrelevant of risk, if she is worried, she can act on it.

Is not that moral proclivity for survival that you have and act on, actually validation for abortion in a pregnant woman?

@boomer47

“How do you get to there from the idea that a woman is the only one who has right to decide if she will continue a pregnancy to term?”

From here: Old_man_shouts_at_cl

“Too fucking right. If she wishes my involvement she will ask. Otherwise nothing to do with me at all.”

So take it up with him.

"The so called "pro life “*** brigade base their claim to a right to interfere in the lives of others on an unfounded religious belief.”

I have made not one religious argument or even referenced a single line of scripture, as i am an Atheist that would be rather pointless, so please keep your responses to what i have actually said.

Because far to often the discussion gets centered on the extremely rare cases and those are discussed into the ground. I am talking about the other 90% of abortions…(and i am being generous in granting 10% fall under the rare cases of rape/incest/Risk of life.)

So ill tell you what, i will grant you the extreme cases, no can we talk about the others?

That isn’t the question I asked. What I’d like to know is (given: life begins during fertilization, blah blah blah): should it be illegal to abort an egg that was fertilized due to rape?

Maybe I’m wrong, but your postulates seem to demand this.

What about a young college student, documented to use multiple forms of birth control who became pregnant anyway (it happens). Should it be illegal for them to get an abortion?

I know you keep arguing against discussing extreme cases. Well these cases happen, and I think we’d like to know what your argument has to say about them.

The first time you insisted that anything I expressed was “woke dogma” (whatever the fuck that is) and your insistence on discussing the subject of abortion. I made it very plain that in my opinion it is fuck all to do with me or you in a general sense.

You want to legislate against a woman’s choice of use of her body because of your belief that “life starts at the moment of conception”.

Examine that statement: *you want to legislate about the sovereignty of a human’s body" , You want to legislate for 50% of the human race whether or not they share your simplistic, misogynistic beliefs or not. Because of your “opinion”.

The very definition of authoritarianism.

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@AlphaLogica157

I can’t speak for others, but my atheism has absolutely nothing to do with me being pro choice. I am pro choice because the idea of granting rights to an insentient foetus or blastocyst, that we would not grant to a fully sentient human being is preposterous and pernicious. A woman must have the right to determine what happens to her own body, just as a man does. Otherwise laws that stop this enslave a woman, and are therefore immoral. This isn’t dogma, it’s an objective fact.

I’ll illustrate my point with a question…

In this scenario an adult of 18 is dying of kidney failure. The only viable donor is the biological father. The father doesn’t want to donate a kidney.

Now, would you pass a law that forced the father’s body to be used against his wishes, in order to preserve the LIFE of the 18 year old son?

If the answer is no, then you have contradicted your own argument for taking away a woman’s choice to not have her body used to continue the LIFE developing in her body. Why would we grant rights to an insentient foetus that we’d deny a fully sentient adult?

Incidentally I don’t care if the foetus is in there writing poetry, just to be clear.

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Anyone else getting an irony overload? You simply assert this is a dogmatic position, whilst ignoring the arguments presented to the contrary. Why shouldn’t a woman have absolute control over her body and reproductive cycle the same as a man? While ranting that pro choice argument are arbitrary and subjective, you use arbitrary and subjective claims to justify your attempt to enslave women and dictate to them how their bodies should be used. Irony overload…

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