Atheism or agnosticism?Follow

1) Whether your rationale is sound is irrelevant to the question of whether you're in favour of forcing women to carry children to term. You are in favour of the government forcing women to carry children to term. To say you are not arguing for this is unspeakably dishonest.

2) You cannot use bodily autonomy as a seperate ground of attack if this is what you believe. You think it is fine to violate bodily autonomy in circumstances where you believe the foetus is suffciently developed. Therefore, your only ground of attack on Almalieque is his estmation of whether a foetus is sufficiently developed.

3) Let's examine your rationale, though, while we're here. No, no one forced the woman not to have the abortion before then. Who says that's blameful? Maybe before then she didn't want the abortion. Maybe her financial or emotional situation changed drastically. Maybe she was fine with the idea of being pregnant didn't bother her before, but now, in all its writhing, kicking actuality, it does. I think this part of your argument is poisonous; any suggestion that the woman deserves to be robbed of this freedom, or that is is less bad to do this to her because you dissapprove of her decision making, should not be countenanced.

'Partial birth' abortions are not pleasant, and I doubt many people would take them lightly (I don't think this matters, but I'm sure some find it persuasive). What you're doing is taking the power of making that choice away from the person who's body it is and putting it with the medical profession - and maybe the psychiatric too, if we're giving you the doubtless undeserved credit of assuming you consider mental as well as physical health. You're demanding justification from someone on what they can and can't do with their own body.

For once, I pretty much agree with Kavekk entirely here. Restricting access to abortion based on an arbitrary feeling of "now it's wrong," is just an emotional appeal.

The only counter I have is wondering how partial-birth bans are enacted now through the law. If the courts make a distinction between viable/inviable, for example, or if somehow when a fetus can feel pain it becomes a baby. If there is a difference with the fetus (or child, if you prefer) at a certain stage, then you have somewhat more wiggle room for Belkira's argument. Of course, then religious groups will say "Heartbeat starts at 18 days!" and we're back to square one. I don't personally think that a heart beat makes one human. But I also don't think the ability to feel pain does. Perhaps viability is a decent metric, but if the age of viability keeps getting pushed back, then soon no abortion will be available because fetuses will always be viable.

Edited, May 4th 2011 3:11pm by LockeColeMA

Nah I'll just stick to saying you're not very good at using words.


Or, y'know, keep things the way they are? You've not actually said why we should pick one of your brilliant scenarios.




Well you don't know what "Theory" and "Proof" mean for starters there sparky.

I said your argument was stupid, because it was. I think it's important that be recognised.



OK, but you said:



Which uh kinda sounds like you're saying no abortions, carry it to term.

Also, 'Partial birth' is a propoganda term used by those against abortion, it is important to bear this in mind. It is not used with any rigour. It's extremely unclear what this, or even 'viable outside the womb' means. I mean, what leevl of risk of death is the threshold we have to cross to be considered viable?

These details aren't important to my stance.

Well, show me what words that I used wrong.. You still haven't provided any evidence that I used any words wrong.







So, you're saying that the sources that I provided to you were incorrect? Well, crap, if you don't even trust dictionary.com, there's no way to convince you otherwise...

When have I contradicted myself and not admitted to it?



They have two different jobs. In my scenario, both parents have the same overall responsibility, raising the child.



You're not understanding that I'm arguing concept here. A father and a mother will probably never do exactly the same amount of work in raising a child, but I'm sure any reasonable couple will admit that have equal responsibility when in comes to raising the child.



Like I pointed out with Nilatai, what other reason would you get an abortion unless those cells are turning into a child? That's your whole reason in the abortion, to prevent potentially having a child.



That's about as fair as it's going to get. In scenario 1, each person can completely detach themselves from the situation if they so choose. In scenario 2, each person has to go through with the pregnancy unless it's a special situation.

4735 times by my count :P :P (i gave two tongue outs for the ultra level of this burn)

Sheesh. Lot of replies since I last checked this. I'm going to respond to this before reading the rest though:



You're taking that statement out of context. The point I was making there wasn't about abortion. It was an observation that taking responsibility for a predicament after arriving there via an act of irresponsibility doesn't show that someone was "responsible" (in the first place). As I've said repeatedly, it would be even more responsible for her not to have gotten herself into that state in the first place. I just think that praising women for making the responsible choice of having an abortion is ridiculous. It's like praising someone for turning themselves in after committing a crime. Sure. There's a degree of responsibility after the fact there, but shouldn't we as as society encourage people not to get to the point of needing to do that in the first place?



How the hell can you manage to ignore what I've written repeatedly? The solution is for women to be more selective with regards to their sexual activity. By far am I not advocating abstinence here, but I am suggesting that women (and men in case you are wondering) should try to limit their sexual activities to partners with whom they at least *might* marry if a pregnancy should result. It's not like men and women haven't screwed around for all of history. The difference is that for the most part they knew that a pregnancy could result and kept their activities to someone they could or would marry if it came to that.

There's a feedback effect that goes on there. We often look back and assume that they were all forced to marry if they got pregnant, but at the same time, they knew that this was the likely result so they would seek out sexual partners that they liked enough to marry if that condition arose. Today, we assume that our birth control will always work, so we don't think about that. Then when it fails, the odds of marriage resulting are low, so in most cases the woman is forced into a choice between aborting, giving up for adoption, or raising the child on her own. I'm just saying that I'm not sure that this is a "better" result for women, yet we praise the arrival of the pill and the legalization of abortion as though they were the biggest advancements for women in history.

The statistical results would seem to suggest that this might not be the case. More women than ever are being stuck in states of poverty raising children alone even while the workforce is eliminating barriers to their advancement. If it wasn't so sad, I'd point out the amazing irony of this.




You're still completely missing my point. You're so obsessed with your assumptions about my position on abortion that you seem to refuse to actually read what I'm writing, preferring your own version instead. The problem is that despite all the opportunity and choice to abort given to them, most women are not doing so. And before you go there, I'm not advocating forced abortion or forced non-abortion. It's not about that, so please stop thinking it is. I'm looking at the results of choices being made and concluding that those results aren't so great.



The original statement I responded to which started this whole conversation was praising abortion because it gave women the choice to be responsible and avoid having to have children they could not support. Where have you been? Do you read what I write, or just assume I'm making some stock argument and not bother?


Edited, May 4th 2011 4:22pm by gbaji

If it's "her body", then it's "her child". It doesn't just magically change from "her body" to "our baby". As you just said, she didn't have to have sex with him. It might suck for her, but tough **** in all honesty.



Wow, slap me silly.. Whodathunk it.. The dictionary's definition of "science" is different from science's definition of "science". I guess you overlooked the fact where a poster showed how my definition was a "mathematical definition"? This is where the conversation ended when I said that doesn't disprove my statement, only approves it in mathematical/comp sci.

So, either way, you're wrong..



Concept, Bel, Concept... It's the same responsibility, different tasks.



That makes your original statement in question contradictory.


It can, you just don't want it to be. Proof of that is even if you believed the two scenarios aren't equal or fair, they are just as close of the two that you can get, yet you are against them. Why is that?

I cut my toenails last night. Can you noodle out how that's relevant?

It's called abortion if you don't believe in bortions.

I wasn't aware that anyone but you was confused about that though. Honest!