Abortion

[columbus]

I think you missed the point of my analogy.

Acknowledging a risk is not the same thing as consenting to the possible outcome. Driving on the road does not imply consent to be hit with a car. Having sex does not imply consent to pregnancy or childbirth.

Your analogy made my point quite clear. The child being aborted had no consent to anything. The only consent involved in an abortion is that of the parents.
Your analogy failed in the way that most emotive and untrue assertions fail. It was not relevant to the issue.
Tom

 

[leibowde84]

There sure is. I have been to one such place. They only eat the dead, however; they don't boil up wayward travellers in a large pot (thankfully).

Maybe some cannabalistic societies do. Who knows?

 

[Marisa]

I never said it did.
What I said was consenting to fertile sex is consent to the outcome of that choice. Same goes for the father, freely choose fertile sex and you owe about two decades of child support regardless of how inconvenient that might be. And you owe more during the time the mother of your child is pregnant, because you owe both of them.

Tom

No, I'm sorry. It's simply not consent. Only consent is consent.

ETA: your statements that consent to sex is not consent to parenthood and that a women chooses to place a fetus into a dependent state are, in fact, opposing statements. IF a woman can consent to sex but not to parenthood, then she has the implicit right to terminate an unwanted pregnancy. If she pregnancy is a consented consequence of consensual sex, then you are advocating forced pregnancy. You have just placed the right of a fetus above the rights of it's host. THAT is why you are arguing special pleading for a fetus. It's wrong, very simply so.

 

[JoStories]

Once, the law allowed children to be put to work in coal mines. Black people were 3/5ths of a real person. Women weren't allowed to vote.
Laws can and have been changed.
Tom

Indeed. And it was in the case of Roe V Wade. And the likelihood of that being changed is nil. So please, restrict your opinions to your wife, if she will let you because your voice in the case of any other random woman has no effect whatsoever.

 

[JoStories]

There sure is. I have been to one such place. They only eat the dead, however; they don't boil up wayward travellers in a large pot (thankfully).

Thankfully, I never encountered any but I did hear of it in Africa.

 

[JoStories]

Which explains one of the huge moral differences between abortion and most other issues. The child involved didn't have any choice about anything.
Marisa keeps going on about the child "conscripting" a woman. The scientific truth is that parents conscript children.

Tom

There is no child until it is born. Until then, it is a parasitic organism with no rights of its own.

 

[Marisa]

Once, the law allowed children to be put to work in coal mines. Black people were 3/5ths of a real person. Women weren't allowed to vote.
Laws can and have been changed.
Tom

SCOTUS has repeatedly said it will not hear future abortion cases. It's settled.

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

The same could be said of a zygote, which is actually less animate in its behavior. The problem with trying to draw the line at any particular point in the process is that it's arbitrary. Even scientists who specialize in this sort of thing admit that no strict definition of "conception" is possible. Humans arise as the result of a myriad of causes and conditions.

Incidentally, sperm cells (or semen generally, as they couldn't see the individual cells) in antiquity were thought to contain the entirety of the genetic material for life, which was merely hosted by the female without her contributing anything. Hence ancient prohibitions against spilling seed, as well as ideas about hereditary descent that would seem bizarre to us today. If we still held the ancient view, which Church doctrine used to accept as correct, then male masturbation would be tantamount to abortion, and nocturnal emission to miscarriage.

It's silly, yes, but it goes to show how arbitrary these ideas are. There's no objective scale for determining personhood. Me, I'm tempted to put it at the point where someone learns to speak in complete sentences.

Um, conception occurs when a sperm and an egg unite and a new bring with a unique genetic code begins to form. It's not really that difficult. I think people are being ridiculous deconstructing every little thing. At least ancient people had an excuse since they couldn't see what was going on inside.

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

Sperm cells are unique - they each have their own characteristics.

Do you mean genetic uniqueness? I hope not, since then you would lose any argument for aborting one member of a set of identical twins.

A sperm cell isn't a human being. A zygote is.

 

[Marisa]

Yes.
If somebody brings a human being into the world and is the only possible source of survival....
Fortunately your hypothetical is so beyond the reality we don't need laws about it.
Gestation is different. Everyone needs one.
Tom

No, actually we do have laws about it. It's covered under bodily autonomy.

 

[Marisa]

As far as some people are concerned, being born a woman constitutes consent. One thing that doesn't get enough attention is the strong correlation between the hard-line anti-abortion stance and rape culture. There's a disturbing amount of similarity in the arguments and assumptions.

Quite true. I consider myself a staunch feminist, and the fact that I live in a rape culture is exceedingly disturbing to me.

 

[Marisa]

I'm glad someone made the sacrifice to give you a chance at life.

The circumstances of your inception is not your fault. Just have to hope someone is willing to give you that chance.

Spiny's not the only adopted person here. I was adopted at birth, but had I been conceived after Roe v. Wade I would fully support mother biological mother's choice to abort me. Pregnancy undoubtedly changed her life forever, perhaps even worse that it already was.

 

[columbus]

No, I'm sorry. It's simply not consent. Only consent is consent.

You really need to be more clear. I never said anything but consent is consent.

A competent adult might give consent to something inadvertently, which is why I brought up a driver's liability. Legally, the term is "implied consent". Morally, the concept is "if you make a choice you are responsible for the outcome, even if you were wrong about what it would be".
But I do understand what consent means. I once consented to fertile sex that created a child. Realizing that I had consented to creating a child changed my beliefs about abortion drastically.
Tom

 

[Marisa]

You really need to be more clear. I never said anything but consent is consent.

A competent adult might give consent to something inadvertently, which is why I brought up a driver's liability. Legally, the term is "implied consent". Morally, the concept is "if you make a choice you are responsible for the outcome, even if you were wrong about what it would be".
But I do understand what consent means. I once consented to fertile sex that created a child. Realizing that I had consented to creating a child changed my beliefs about abortion drastically.
Tom

I edited that post to be more clear, but I'm guessing you missed it:

ETA: your statements that consent to sex is not consent to parenthood and that a women chooses to place a fetus into a dependent state are, in fact, opposing statements. IF a woman can consent to sex but not to parenthood, then she has the implicit right to terminate an unwanted pregnancy. If pregnancy is a consented consequence of consensual sex, then you are advocating forced pregnancy. You have just placed the right of a fetus above the rights of it's host. THAT is why you are arguing special pleading for a fetus. It's wrong, very simply so.

 

[columbus]

the case of RoeVWade. And the likelihood of that being changed is nil.

I see no reason to believe that is true and I have seen moral improvements made.
How long ago would anyone have predicted that gay people could get married in Indiana in 2015?
Tom

 

[Willamena]

There are a lot of religious arguments (and general political ones) against abortion. But I think that the argument, generally speaking, demonstrates the scientific illiteracy of the everyman.

So you're against abortion for whatever reason, but consider this argument from Neil DeGrasse Tyson:

"Most abortions are spontaneous and happen naturally within the human body. Most women who have such an abortion never know it because it happens within the first month. It is very, very common. So in fact the biggest abortionist, if god is responsible for what goes on in your body, is god."

That's a far cry, though, from choosing to abort.

Now when he says 'very common' what he means is 50-70%. That's 50-70% of all pregnancies end in a spontaneous abortion that you 1) can't control and 2) are never aware of.

So how is the anti-abortionist stance tenable given this dataset?

It opposes abortion.

 

[columbus]

I edited that post to be more clear, but I'm guessing you missed it:

No I didn't miss it.
It takes a while to read, digest, respond, and then post on my wonky old phone. You are not the only one I'm chatting with.

But do let me say this. I have avoided threads about this subject, generally, for some time. Usually the irrational poo-flinging at strawman arguments gets nasty pretty quickly. You have been different. Thank You.
Tom

 

[Marisa]

No I didn't miss it.
It takes a while to read, digest, respond, and then post on my wonky old phone. You are not the only one I'm chatting with.

But do let me say this. I have avoided threads about this subject, generally, for some time. Usually the irrational poo-flinging at strawman arguments gets nasty pretty quickly. You have been different. Thank You.
Tom

I understand. It wasn't an accusation.

Oh, I so appreciate your comment! Sincerely! I've had this conversation more than once as well and you're quite right, it does usually get nasty very quickly.

Let me say as well, though I disagree I honestly do respect your opinion. There are no easy answers in this conversation.

 

[Mycroft]

Maybe some cannabalistic societies do. Who knows?

So far as we know (from the two we've found), cannibalistic tribes only eat their dead, and only after it died of natural causes/animal attack. Even though they eat each other, they still possess rudimentary laws against murder, etc.

 

[columbus]

There are no easy answers in this conversation.

There is something we can agree on.
The way I see it, abortion is a new and different moral issue. Sex and reproduction are about the most powerful instinctive behaviors we humans have and they are fraught with emotions. It is very hard to inject any rational thinking into the discussion. The moral codes of yesteryear just don't cut it any more. The circumstances change faster than we can agree upon new moral codes to deal with the moral issues we've already created.

Frankly, I don't care about abortion all that much. I am more concerned about people popping out babies they don't know how to take care of. But just try to argue that sex isn't a human right in freedom loving Western cultures, because it is such a powerful force it needs to be controlled for everybody's benefit.

Tom