Abortion; Why?

Also yes, to respond to that paragraph of assumption and non-thought, no one can afford children today, and that cannot mean people must abstain from sex if they love each other.

Abstain from sex? geez who in their rigght mind would advocate that?

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"The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it." - Michelangelo.

Supplementary reading to the statistics provided earlier: Five myths about the world's population.

Didn't you get the memo? Women who have sex are whores who deserve to be punished.

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#31 on SC's Top 100 Mofos list!!

Abortion isn't murder because even most people who are against abortion are willing to make exceptions for rape. Even in conservative Louisiana voter rejected an initiative to ban all abortions and it wasn't even close. Why would rape justify killing an unborn baby? Unless it is because they recognize it isn't really a life as precious as one that has come out of the womb. And if it is a lesser life, it has less rights.

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It reminds me of a toilet paper on the trees
- Paula

There's a world of difference between saying women just shouldn't have sex, or is wrong to do so, and saying that sex clearly leads to pregnancy, and therefore people need to exhibit responsibility about how and when they have it. The latter is what is typically referred to as common sense. I'm not sure how anyone could really argue with it with a straight face, which is presumably why it is turned into a grotesque caricature before it is made fun of.

This goes for men and women alike--we have all sorts of laws about deadbeat dads, for example, which carry with it the exact same level of "don't have sex if you can't deal with the consequences" implication, yet I don't hear anyone sarcastically mocking them.

This doesn't mean abortion isn't murder, or that a fetus isn't a person. It means either a) a lot of people are squeamish about seeing their beliefs through or b) a lot of people are realistic about what they can accomplish politically on this issue. Or both.

That said, though I think the conclusion above is misstated, the underlying point is quite true: the source of the pregnancy is not the issue and cannot possibly be the thing on which the issue hinges. Personhood is the entire argument, as I've been repeating ad nauseum.

Yeah, and it's also common sense that a zygote is not a person.

As for "responsibility", it's still the same implication: It's all her fault she got in that mess. Well, guess what? In the real world, ***** happens, and people don't always act responsibly, both men and women. Even the ones who usually are responsible can make the wrong choice, and sometimes there was no choice, just life.

Like when the condom breaks. It's easy to sit on a high horse and frown down at us mere mortals for not being chaste, but I wonder what these self-righteous men would do if they were really in her shoes.

Perhaps the great Yoda can teach us the Jedi way of remaining pure at all times and never getting in broke-condom situations.

We can rehash this if you want, but I'll just end up linking to my last post on the matter. The essence of which was: yeah, it's easy to make "life begins at conception" look silly. And it's just as easy to make "life begins at birth" look silly. If only one were able to be made to look silly, it wouldn't be a controversial issue. Nobody's going to win this debate by saying their side of it is "common sense." Which is why I used the phrase only to refer to a subset of the issue: whether or not people who get pregnant (both sides of the pregnancy, of course) are responsible for their actions.

How is that the implication? I see no implication beyond suggesting that most people who find themselves in this situation generally bear some responsibility for it. Everything else has been exaggerated or extrapolated from that fairly benign claim.

A fair thing to wonder, but ultimately immaterial. The fact that some people might bail on their principles in times of panic isn't really an argument for or against those principles. It's more an argument about those people and the seriousness of their convictions. And I'm not sure it's clear whether that helps people to see the issue more or less clearly, anyway. In all sorts of other contexts, fear and personal involvement are considered detriments to clear thinking, not a prerequisite for it.

Nope, I sure can't. And that's why any position on abortion that consists primarily of scolding is stupid (and counterproductive, to boot).

I like Chesterton's position on sex, in a sentence: "The first two facts which a healthy boy or girl feels about sex are these: first that it is beautiful and then that it is dangerous."

Saying you should be responsible and shouldn't have an abortion is one thing.

Passing laws that prevents you from having one is another.

No reasonable person believes a baby's life has no value seconds before it exits the vagina. But your stance is just as unreasonable. I doubt any rational person would trade their life to save a zygote. Would you?

Which is why there is a middle ground, Yoda.

You say no reasonable person believes it, but a) the existence of partial-birth abortion suggests otherwise, and b) that is precisely the direct legal implication of setting the delineating line at birth.

The fact that there's a "middle ground" is probably just a reflection of how tricky this issue is and, frankly, of both sides' unwillingness to their beliefs through to their respective logical conclusions. But the middle ground (which, let's face it, is nowhere near the actual "middle" of this issue) ultimately satisfies neither position in a rational sense. It is almost literally splitting the baby, Solomon-style.

No, Yoda. I'm not talking legalese with you here. I want you to talk straight.

Would you give your life for a zygote?

It's not splitting the baby if you don't recognize it is a baby to begin with.

Show me an agnostic or atheist who thinks an abortion performed at three months is murder. It is all religious people and not even a majority of them.

It's not "legalese," it's the direct implication of the position you're articulating.

But to your question: yeah, I think so. I'm not going to pretend I know what it would be like to be actually presented with such a bizarre hypothetical, but insofar as I can guess, yes. Though the question itself is kind of useless: nobody disputes that random person X is a person, but it'd still be kind of impossible to ask someone if they would give their life for them, without knowing anything at all about them. I don't even know what kind of moral imperative would apply for something so random, even in instances in which the being's humanity were beyond reproach.

I don't suppose you've posed the alternative to yourself? Would you kill a 9-month-old fetus to save your own life?

I don't set the line at birth, myself personally. But I do believe there is a line, unlike you, apparently.

This reply makes no sense. I was responding to Deadite's claim that every reasonable person apparently recognizes the fetus' human value (or some level of it) before birth.

Through sheer numbers, I'm positive agnostics exist who believe this. And I'd wager, without even looking, that there's at least one "Atheists for Life" group. And it's not as if you would even care if I produced such a thing. This is irrelevant.

Are you saying if a mother's life is at stake, a doctor should let the mother die and save the baby? Why is the mother's life less important?

No, I didn't say that, and the mother's life is no less important. Read the post again: I answered the specific question asked of me.

So what are you doing to stop the murder of these zygotes who are just as valuable as you and I? Besides rhetoric?