Going back to species… I mentioned eggs (may be abandoned) - however outside the human species the only choice other
Viviparous animals, have is to commit infanticide. That is, they wait until the offspring is born and then kill them outright, or abandon them so that they die. This behavior is usually ascribed to stress or limited resources (food, water, space, etc.). Sometimes it happens for no apparent reason.
If you would base your justification for or against abortion based on animal behavior (or the woman’s body as “not hers”) perhaps, then, humans should be forced to bear the child, but after that they should be able to kill it, and maybe even eat it (animals do that too). I’m not sure that looking to the animal kingdom for policy guidance on this subject is meaningful…OR straight out bodily functions provided to us by nature.
Nature’s a bitch and as a species we continue to meet her on “her” terms (but in more “humane” ways).
"You are suggesting a woman’s right to have absolute control over her body while pregnant isn’t right. "
No i am challenging the assertion that it is ‘her body, her choice’ Not one mention of enslavement at all, sad that you went through all that effort to find the definition of enslavement–but did not bother to read it lol.
You have failed, again, to prove even one of your dishonest claims. Put forth some actual effort if you want a future response from me, I will feed you no longer.
Oh, once the child has been born, past the “hiccup” stage, who’s “tit” does it nurse from? Again, we have options as humans to continue to nurture that growth (formula, and before that goats milk)…
If you take away freedom of choice or action, then that is the very definition of enslavement.
Now that’s just silly. And I never said you’d used the word enslavement either, so that’s a straw man. I stated plainly another poster had inferred it as the inevitable result of taking away a woman’s choice, and I agreed with his assertion.
All rights are arbitrary, they don’t really exist, so you seem to be asking everyone to evidence something they probably don’t believe. However since the pro choice side are at least being consistent in bestowing rights equally on men and women I don’t see anything arbitrary in that position. And nothing you’ve arbitrarily asserted suggests otherwise. You seem content to assert a position by use of argumentum ad ignorantiam fallacies. The assertion life starts at conception is as arbitrary as any other I have seen. A foetus can’t experience its own termination, store memories, or feel emotions. So it’s a dubious one as well.
You do as you are minded to, I honestly couldn’t care less. However this churlish sulking is hardly indicative of sound debate. You seem to want to label every assertion you disagree with as sophistry, and label every argument that takes a different perspective as irrelevant. Evidence and argument offered in refutation are dismissed as arbitrary, but your assertions are a given, I’m not sure who you hope to sway.
Just about the only thing you’ve said I absolutely agree with is that is not a 1 issue topic. A lot of those arguing anti choice seem to take a fairly facile stand on abortion.
One more thought. Does this reasoning transit to the other option, of a male insisting on the termination of a fetus when he is unprepared to make “child support payments” and he himself, does not want a “bastard” child? Or is it the “choice” only of the developing fetus (who cannot form thoughts) to be born - and can be abandoned by the parents once the “choice” of the unborn is met? Who are you implying should have this choice if it does not belong to the “host”?
[quote=“Old_man_shouts_at_cl, post:38, topic:172”]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”.[quote=“AlphaLogica157, post:44, topic:172”]
The very definition of authoritarianism.
[/quote]
Asked and answered.
Seems your opinions are only matched by your dishonesty.
Exactly, as I stated above, it’s so vague and arbitrary a claim that it seems dishonest to me, but AlphaLogica157 ignored that, so we must infer for ourselves what this indicates.
You’ll have to explain the difference there, as that seems like dishonest semantics to me, an attempt to reverse the burden of proof. I have stated, as have others why I think a women should have absolute control of her own body, you have yet to offer a cogent reason why women should be “enslaved” to their reproductive systems, which despite your protestations is precisely what taking away that control would would result in.
On a side note… the option before birth for a male human to remove himself from financial and physical support of a child SHOULD be an option (fatherhood should no more be forced on the male as motherhood should be forced on a female) - in effect, legally allowing or recognizing he was “just a sperm donor”.
After birth, different story and responsibilities.
I think that is a dubious straw man you have created. I’d be stunned to learn that most women who seek to terminate a pregnancy were doing so because they thought the foetus developing in their womb was not alive. Though of course it is absurdly facile to assert that an insentient blastocyst that is little more than a clump of cells, is a human life in the same sense the woman carrying it is a human life. Rather pregnancy involves stages of development from conception through to childbirth, and it adds nothing to the debate to try and generalise in this arbitrary way, the fact a foetus is alive tells us nothing, sperm are alive, they can remain so in a woman’s uterus for up to 5 days. What about the morning after pill, it prevents a fertilised egg from attaching to the uterus, so by your criteria this is terminating a life, who decides this and why?
What experts, and what do they see, that a foetus is alive? Firstly no one has disputed this, it’s a straw man you seem to have created, and secondly could you cite a few of these experts, and state clearly what it is you claim they know, and what bearing it has on whether a woman seeks to terminate a pregnancy?
It seems to me this is so sloppy and vague it is dishonest. It is far more honest to say that a human life begins to develop at conception. At that point it is absurd to try and claim it is a human life in the same sense fully sentient humans are, it’s a clump of cells, not even a foetus.
They can’t, only you appear to be trying to make this absurd distinction. The gestation from conception to birth involves stages of development.
Well that’s another dogmatic assertion you’re making, try explaining why YOU think this the most humanitarian approach? I am generally uncomfortable with assumptions, so I do hope you have something more tangible than that.
No there isn’t, that’s simply not true. That the debate involves different perspectives is obvious, but the idea pro choice advocates are unwilling to debate the complex issues is nonsense sorry.
Again this is frankly a lie, in my experience the hysteria and rhetoric and refusal to objectively debate the complex issue of abortion comes from those who seek to tell others how they must live.
Well you’re entitled to an opinion, can you support it with any evidence? What is it you’re asking empirical evidence be provided for, that a woman should have the same right over her body as a man? Rights are not real, they are all subjective ideas, as are all morals. That said why would we deny women the same rights as men just because they can become pregnant?
Indeed, but there are reasons both practical and moral why a woman should have control of her own body, and make the decision whether to seek a termination.
If not the woman, then who do you suggest makes this decision?
If someone else decides for a woman then this loss of control, as previously stated and by definition, enslaves the woman in question.
I would argue It is demonstrably immoral to enslave another human.
Lastly it is a fact that there are higher rates of abortions in countries where they are illegal, and of course the welfare of the woman and the developing foetus are not protected where the termination is illegal, so this is morally indefensible as well.
This statement would depend on the stage of development, something you have arbitrarily decided is irrelevant so you can label the developing blastocyst as life.This illustrates clearly the danger of such a dishonest and arbitrary claim in the context of an issue as complex as abortion, and the complexity of identifying the stage of development of the foetus, and the resulting implications of that development for the decision of whether to seek a termination. No one has ever suggested foetus is the same as a liver or pancreas, so this strikes me as another straw man you have created.
So what? This is only relevant to the straw man position you have created that anyone is arguing a termination is dependant on the foetus being part of the mothers body, I see no rational reason why this need be so. That it needs the woman’s body in order to develop from an insentient clump of cells into anything comparable to a sentient human life, a life that can experience it’s own termination in any meaningful way is a fact, and one you seem to be arbitrarily ignoring. A foetus having an involuntary spasm of the diaphragm would be impossible without the mothers body to sustain it for much of its development, so again this a pretty dishonest and meaningless piece of rhetoric.
Well you may speak for yourself of course, but I was born an atheist, and have remained so because theism cannot support it’s claims with any objective evidence, or rational argument, and so my humanism is derived from my atheism I would say, rather than the other way around.
Well most of the arbitrary dogmatic claims seem to have come from you, and been dishonestly mixed with facts so vague they have no practical point in this debate, like your life no life straw man for example. So I fail to see what this has to do with attempting to claim women should not have the same rights as men? Ultimately if you don’t like abortion, then don’t have one, and I personally don’t like abortion and would be happy if none were ever needed, but I still think that rationally legally and morally woman should have the same right to decide what happens to her body as men, and this necessarily includes the right to choose to terminate a pregnancy. It is the woman who will have to carry the foetus through to childbirth and then give birth, it is her body and mind that will be affected, and thus it should be her right to decide if she wants this to happen. Who else can practically or morally decide, and how would it be moral to deny her this right?
Now with a little more time at my disposal I have addressed your arguments methodically with counter arguments.
All I want to know is who died and left AL in charge of determining what a woman can/can’t do with her own body? Seems there should have been a vote or something.
Sadly these days I cannot keep up on threads and read all the I am sure excellent replies, so forgive me if I repeat what others have said in this thread.
First the atheist discussion has little to do with abortion, except for those that are not atheist; quite often (erroneously) point to their particular god idea as why there should be no abortion.
From here on out, everything I write has nothing to do with the fact that I consider my self "atheist."
Scanning your post its funny I agree with parts of what you wrote, but come to a very different conclusion then you.
Life is a cycle, with no real beginning or end. An individual’s memories has a beginning and an end, but not “life.” We grow, we reproduce, we die, and our offspring repeats.
What this means is: when a clump of unique dna cells growing in a woman’s body = human with full rights to live that supersedes another human beings rights to her own body is strictly a matter of OPINION.
There is no hard data point where you can say without opinion: that this here is a human being with rights that supersedes a woman’s right to her own body, this here is not. There is no such line. All we can do is form our own opinions.
My personal opinion is that that unique dna clump of cells is very special and we should strive to protect it and nourish it if at all possible.
But! I would never be so arrogant to tell a woman you must have this baby in your body whether you want to or not. I would never force my opinion on a woman’s body. Just like I would not want anyone forcing their opinion on my body. Especially since it may have deadly consequences.
Now if a woman has access to say a high end modern NICU, then at one point we can remove the stumbling block of a woman’s right to her own body versus a fetus’s right to live. That can be as little as 22 weeks with decent chance of survival for the premature baby.
But until that point, people are forcing their opinion on woman’s bodies, and I find that very wrong.
Plus ofcourse inequality and general unequal status from males to females in the world also rear their ugly head in this argument and really make a mess of things.
Like the fact if the woman is rich or has access to money, getting abortion is never a problem, but that single mom working 2 jobs simply does not have that option which also very cruelly unfair.
Telling a woman she can or cannot have an abortion is forcing your opinion on that woman’s body, It really is that simple.
You completely missed the point. Are you being purposefully obtuse? My last post said “irrelevant of risk”, for a reason…because risk of the fetus is not an issue to the woman. Because she has an inherent need to survive, as you do, she has the right to act on her fear or trepidation’s of pregnancy. If she thinks she may die or be injured, irrelevant whether those fears are real or unfounded, that is enough to validate abortion. If you agree that you have the right to survive and act on threats, percieved or real, then so does the pregnant woman.
White mentioned ‘potential’. This term is often used in arguments about abortion. (This is not a criticism of White)
My question is, how does on measure human potential?
This term was also commonly used in early management theories and was included in employee assessments for employment and promotion. In 1954, Peter Drucker wrote a seminal work in human relations,‘Management By Objectives’. He argues that human potential cannot be measured…
I realise Drucker wrote his book over 60 years ago. Things change a lot in 60 years. Perhaps some one has worked out a way to measure the potential of a potential employee and by extension, a fetus, at any stage of gestation. If so, I’d love to learn about it.
My term of “potential” was more in reference to an inability to be an independent life - like an egg- has the “potential” if regularly sat on by the hen or duck or whatever (well, not like an elephant whatever) as in contrast to the woman who is an independent (living) agent. I understand the “life” is there, that’s one reason a definition of “life” was asked of the OP.
In my experience, within the context of debates about abortion, it is usually in an arbitrary way to claim conception is immediately comparable with a fully sentient human being. As of course the thread author has done in this case.
I tend to agree that the potential of an individual human is almost impossible to measure, and of course changes throughout their life, but to talk of a foetus’s potential from the moment of conception, is even more absurd.
You did not even provide a single example, just doubled down on your initial accusation. You have only demonstrated that you have missed the point completely, and your failure to actually back up your claims just proves how disingenuous you are. In no way did I advocate anything like that.
It is apparent that you are interested in only sharing how virtuous you are, which id funny because you only prove the opposite.
If you want to actually prove you accusation I am still waiting.
as in contrast to the woman who is an independent (living) agent. I understand the “life” is there, that’s one reason a definition of “life” was asked of the OP.