• Welcome to OGBoards 10.0, keep in mind that we will be making LOTS of changes to smooth out the experience here and make it as close as possible functionally to the old software, but feel free to drop suggestions or requests in the Tech Support subforum!

Pro Life / Pro Choice Debate

WakeandBake said:
Seems someone so passionate about these babies would be willing to sacrifice pretty much anything to save them. Can’t even stop stigmatizing women who have the babies, sends the wrong message to the other women, ya know.
Click to expand...

This is where I always go back to -- if a person actually thinks abortion is state-sanctioned murder of millions of humans, I'm not sure how they can continue to live in a country where it occurs. Every fiber of their being should be devoted to changing the law, no matter what, or GTFO-ing. It should be all the GOP talks about all day every day -- how can Warngor live in a country his entire life knowing that the government sanctions murder? What does it tell you about Wrangor, who at least tries to give the impression that he is passionate about the issue. And, more imprtantly, what does it tell you about the rest of the Republicans? It's all talk, just like the rest of their pretend Christianity.

There are lots of countries where abortion is not legal, so move to one of those countries (love or it leave it). If the US said tomorrow that we are actually doing "the Purge" and murder is cool for one night, I would get the fuck out of dodge so quickly Ethan Hawke's head would spin.
 
Well said, Shoo. Yet another reason you know it’s not sincere. Wrangor has only lived in a time where abortion is legal in the US.
 
All concerns about abortion are not religion based. Yes, any concerns are about ethics or morality and I trust religion isn't a requirement for these.

Again, it's clear to me that elective abortion is the intentional ending of a human life. Simply from a standpoint of biology.

But that doesn't necessarily constitute "murder" since that's a legal term defined however we do so as a society. And generally to be a victim of murder you must be a natural person with attached standing and rights. We don't generally confer such to embryos and fetuses, although that's not so absolutely.

The argument, to me, is about what rights and when are reasonable to apply to developing human life?

Not a simple thing to consider, IMO.
 
Shooshmoo said:
This is where I always go back to -- if a person actually thinks abortion is state-sanctioned murder of millions of humans, I'm not sure how they can continue to live in a country where it occurs. Every fiber of their being should be devoted to changing the law, no matter what, or GTFO-ing. It should be all the GOP talks about all day every day -- how can Warngor live in a country his entire life knowing that the government sanctions murder? What does it tell you about Wrangor, who at least tries to give the impression that he is passionate about the issue. And, more imprtantly, what does it tell you about the rest of the Republicans? It's all talk, just like the rest of their pretend Christianity.

There are lots of countries where abortion is not legal, so move to one of those countries (love or it leave it). If the US said tomorrow that we are actually doing "the Purge" and murder is cool for one night, I would get the fuck out of dodge so quickly Ethan Hawke's head would spin.
Click to expand...

One can imagine Wrangor and the others living on a farm in Bavaria in the 1930s, sadly bemoaning to anyone who would listen at the local ratskellar, of the problems with the way Germany was treating Jewish people, then paying his tab and going home for the night. "Its a holocaust" he would say. He would then commit not to voting for anyone in the nazi party ever again. He might even make a donation to a local religious organization that promises to lobby the Nazi's to try and put an end to concentration camps.

The next evening, he would go back to the ratskellar and do it again.
 
As soon as you ask a conservative to make a sacrifice, they freak the fuck out. See: environment, guns, healthcare, poverty, abortion, immigration, finance. Reasonable, workable, mutually-sacrificial solutions to make progress on the primary goals of all of those issues are met with derision for the sacrifices that they would require.

In other words, a bunch of fucking spoiled babies
 
77057243_2468199706757453_811096731239317504_n.jpg
 
Junebug said:
There is a subtext in several posts on the last few pages suggesting that it is impermissible for legislators to base their votes (and the population to base their positions on matters of policy) on religious views. I disagree with this suggestion.
Click to expand...

which religious views are permissible?
 
Keep your religion out of laws that affect me. Believe it. Make choices about your own life. Don't force me to live by the rules your religion teaches you. Way too many pastors are liars and cheats.

Also, no one will ever convince me jesus would not have loved science. He would say "my dad created the world so stop tearing it up with your selfishness. Protect it."
 
OldGoldBeard said:
Chris, I generally appreciate your posts on this forum, and think that you take unwarranted abuse from the left (which may be a dubious compliment given my own political leanings), but this response does little to nothing to answer my question. The vast majority of your second paragraph constitutes perfectly valid reasons in favor of abortion; I'm not Wrangor, and am not arguing that there aren't legitimate reasons to be pro-choice. I don't agree, but recognize that it's a difficult issue with rational viewpoints on both sides. However, those reasons have no relevance whatsoever in determining whether the unborn child is human or not.

Again, Christopher Hitchens is hardly known for his religious predilections, and he spells out the case clearly.

***

But it’s only an evasion if we have some firm grounds for suspecting that the fetus is a human being.

True. But I think that by now we know where babies come from. And dialectics will tell you that you can’t be meaningfully inhuman unless you are actually or potentially human as well. Pointless to describe a rat or a snake, say, as behaving in an inhuman fashion. I put the question like this. You see a woman kicked in the stomach. Your instinct is properly one of revulsion. You learn that the woman is pregnant. Who will reply that this discovery does not multiply their revulsion? And who will say that this is only because it makes it worse for the woman? I don’t think this is just an instinctive or an emotional reaction (not that we should always distrust our instincts and emotions either). We are stuck with a basic reverence for life.

But aren’t all these notions of the sanctity of human life and so on alien to your otherwise Marxist view of the world?

On the contrary. As a materialist I hold that we don’t have bodies, we are bodies. And as an atheist I believe that we do not have the consolation of the afterlife. We have only one life to live, so it had better be good. All the nonsense we hear about mediate and immediate animation, the point where a soul enters the unborn and so on, is at best beside the point. It has in common with the sectarian feminist view a complete contempt for science and the theory of evolution—which establishes beyond reasonable doubt that life is a continuum that begins at conception because it can’t begin anywhere else.

***

So even if the belief may have ultimately stemmed from a supernatural belief system, which assertion seems questionable at best, the same conclusion seems inescapable under physicalism.

The only thing you posted that, as far as I can see, even attempt to answer the question of what differentiates humans is "there is no heartbeat that is stopped or switching off a developing brain." As best as I can tell online, fetal heartbeats start at approximately 22 days. Fetal brain development begins around 16 days. Does that make a fetus human at that point?
Click to expand...


A conceptualized egg is the same thing that will turn into a human. There is a continuum of development from that point until the point when you are born and consciousness and sentience begins. Personally if somebody has a miscarriage I don't consider that as being a human that died. It's an awful thing and terrible for the parents and potential and hope that was wasted but I don't consider it the same thing as the death of a person. If I ever had to a personally experience that maybe I would feel differently.


The question becomes at what point in the development should the fetus have rights that override the right of the mother. Of course, I feel bad about any terminated pregnancy and in your example the revulsion would be greater if it was a pregnant mother even in the earliest term. The pregnancy at any stage certainly has value. But should that value override that of the mother's when that life is completely physiologically dependent on that mother.

To me, before the development of any brain and heartbeat, I think that the morality here is pretty black and white that the mother's values should override in that case. Once a heart and brain start to form, then there starts a movement the enters into gray area for me where I grow more uncomfortable with it the longer the pregnancy continues. I would still err on the side of protecting the rights of the mother at early brain and heartbeat development but certainly once you get to 3rd trimester abortions then personally, I would be fine with restricting abortions to a limited set of circumstances.
 
Last edited:
You may need to just start a new thread.
 
Lots of liberals were opposed to Soviet Communism. Harry Truman helped create the containment policy, for pete's sake. Adlai Stevenson upheld the containment policy, so did JFK and RFK, Hubert Humphrey, LBJ, and Jimmy Carter. Carter pulled the USA out of the 1980 Moscow Olympics after the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, and put in place boycotts on Soviet Russia. Yes, there was a fringe of radicals who opposed Cold War policies, but they never controlled the Democratic Party. In the late 1940s liberals like Hubert Humphrey formed the Americans for Democratic Action (ADA), which not only pushed for progressive economic and social policies, but also was a vocal opponent of Soviet Communism and supported the containment policy. The POTUS who did the most to cozy up to Soviet leaders was Republican Richard Nixon.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top