Abortion; Why?

84 pages spread over 12 years, that is. :P

Have you personally ever assisted anyone?And adoption homes?Seriously?No one benefits from adoption homes.
Do you know how much exactly costs to support a child?Food is not enough.You have to buy some kind of clothes,diapers,crib.What about when you work?Who watches the child?I'm not even thinking about things like allergies which may require medicine or more expensive food.Making ends meet every day - is that the environment for the kid?

Did you just compare financial stability and mental stability?

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"Anything less than immortality is a complete waste of time."

Another good example of poor thinking. What you wrote there makes as much sense as me claiming pro-lifers are misogynists.

Posts like that make me suspect you're a troll looking to be as inflammatory and obnoxious as you can get away with and you don't even care about the issue.

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

Complete this thought, though. They may end up in a harsh environment...so it's better not to live at all? That's where this sort of reasoning falls apart. Poor people don't have less right to live. Unloved people don't have less right to live.

We're not doing them a favor--we don't get to prejudge people's entire lives like that. We don't get to snuff them out for their own good preemptively.

If you want to argue that it isn't a person, that's one thing. But it's insane to me to try to pretend we can justify the act by laying down some purely speculative socioeconomic markers for mercy-killing. That's cruel and capricious, but not only does it get repeated constantly in abortion debates--look, it even gets upvoted.

I can't speak for HK but I'm interested in this aspect myself, because I think it is relevant at least insofar as it applies to how people's value systems affect their views on the topic. I think it could be illuminating to everyone to accept that how we value and how we term our values is significant, instead of arbitrarily excluding an aspect of a view you may not share. It's more likely to give us food for thought rather than rigidly framing the debate as suits you and dismissing distinctions or isomorphisms others employ in their own thinking.

I'm interested in it, too, but I don't think there's anything wrong with assuming humans should be afforded more rights than animals. If someone wants to question that, their position undermines the entire legal system, not just abortion, so the question would be mostly outside of the scope of this thread.

It's not only a matter of arguing for value equality. The clarifications from determining devaluing and terms of devaluing can be useful in itself by providing us insight into how and why we make value judgements about living things. The issue is a legal, moral and philosophical one, so telling me certain devaluations should simply be assumed is restating the same thing I addressed in my last post.

If a fetus is a human being, why isn't there a funeral every time there's a miscarriage? If a fetus is a human being why do people say 'we have 2 children and 1 on the way' instead of saying 'we have 3 children'?

Let's start with the agreement that almost anything can be useful. But time and attention are finite, and we obviously can't question every foundational principle. Which is why I didn't actually say they should be assumed, just that I don't see a problem with assuming it, because it (it = "human rights should exceed animal rights") is a nearly universal sentiment already.

I've done the same thing in this thread repeatedly by making arguments that assume human life is sacred, because that, too, is a nearly universal sentiment. I can and will construct other arguments for people like yourself (and I owe you one right now, I believe), but I don't see a problem with making arguments that apply to almost everyone and not getting into the philosophical weeds on every minority opinion or first premise.

There's also virtually no way to talk about the issue that won't become a discussion unto itself that will only now and then (or at the very end) connect back to abortion, I think. Which makes it a pretty good candidate for a new thread--which I would unhesitatingly participate in.

Actually, some do. And not everyone has a funeral, anyway.

Again, some do, but for those who don't it's simply to convey more information rather than less. And if you want to go this route, why do so many women talk to their "fetuses"? Why do so many name them? Etc.

Arguments based on hazy social conventions or turns of phrase don't really make any point, IMO.

Sorry, I have a certain fascination with social conventions. But as someone who hasn't participated in this debate for a while, when does life start? At conception? At fertilization? Or at birth? Because that seems to be the central question around this abortion debacle. That and "Is a fetus a human being?"

Well, hats off to you for identifying the key question, at least. One of the reasons this thread is so long is because people keep popping in to talk about all the ancillary socioeconomic issues, as if any of them were not completely trumped by the simple question of personhood (for people with normative views on the value of human live, at least, which is nearly all of them).

Life is sacred? Really? If every thing that's lived is dead, and everything that's alive is going to die, where's the sacred part? Also, apologies on kind of keeping this thread alive, I only just realized how ridiculous this is. Sorry, noobness here

Of course, this is why these threads tend to be rather pointless. I would say that life (in terms of a new human child) would begin at birth, because that when it comes into the physical world and therefore begins to have and impact on our lives directly through brain functions ( I say directly as I don't believe a fetus does DIRECTLY have an impact on life apart from it's mother).

I'm not sure why everybody inevitably dying is supposed to contradict the idea that human life should be held up as special. To the contrary, that seems like an argument for it.

But whether or not you believe life is actually sacred, or should simply be treated as special by law, makes little difference in this context. The point is the shared premise that establishing personhood matters, because we already (presumably) agree that people should be protected from being killed.

Well, it already has a direct impact on one person, then, and I can't see why that wouldn't "count" outside of purely arbitrary reasons. Though deciding that people are only people based on direct impact seems pretty arbitrary, too. People don't cease to be people if they live in the wilderness, for example.

As for birth, I should hope the problems there are obvious. The idea that someone is transformed into a human by traveling down the birth canal--and was not one just 30 seconds prior, despite being physiologically identical--doesn't seem defensible.

But when is a fetus defined a human being or a person and therefore defining abortion as murder? I agree that as a human people should be protected from threat or harm, however, I don't define a fetus as a human being. So whether or not abortion should legal depends on this: What is a human being in the eyes of the country? Which, thusfar, you have not answered when life begins.

Well, I've actually answered (and explained it) a dozen times, but as you admitted, you're jumping into a massive thread. I believe it begins at conception, for the simple reason that every other alternative line of demarcation fails to withstand scrutiny.

I'm not going to pretend this standard doesn't pose some pretty tough questions for pro-life people like myself, just that those questions are a lot easier to answer and justify than the ones that apply if someone tries to draw the line at birth, or at something nebulous and fluctuating like "viability."

Anyway, the post you were just replying to explains the relevance of the "sacred" idea. It's only shorthand to establish that we agree that we need to establish a meaningful line of personhood in order to reach a meaningful conclusion about abortion.

Agreed.

This one is relevant to my views on abortion so by dismissing it, you dismiss my side of our discussion and you make it impossible to speak meaningfully on the issue.

I don't think you understood me when I explained why individual rationales for devaluing of living things is pertinent to a discussion centering on the value of a living thing.

Continually repeating that everybody or almost everybody agrees on something has no bearing on what I said.

Actually, we're already talking about it. I've been talking about devaluing and its relevance to the issue for many pages. The problem is you're refusing "to really analyze the issue and confront the implications of their beliefs" so "who's here to pile on the easy stuff? Who's here to feel like they're talking about the issue or taking a stand, but only in a way that doesn't ever challenge them?"

I think we're talking past each other a little here. You're pointing out that I'm not addressing what you said, but I'm not actually trying to. I'm saying nobody should feel obligated to address your view, specifically. You have, I think you'd agree, an atypical view on this topic. Which is fine, but when combined with the fundamental philosophical questions that entails, someone basically has to decide to talk to you exclusively about this issue, possibly at the expense of engaging with everyone else.

That said, I will do that with you, and gladly. I just don't think refusing to do that is avoiding the issue or ducking questions, at least not at all in the sense of people who just want to project opinions and never discuss them. If someone says "look, 99.9% of people agree with this premise, so I'm going to argue from it," I don't think there's anything wrong with that. There are only so many hours in the day.