Look, I know it's been overdone - but abortion - yay or nay?
POSTED BY: FLF
UPDATED: Wednesday, November 29, 2006 13:13
VIEWED: 24147
PAGE 17 of 26
DT, if you are anti-abortion, anti-death penalty, and "least death" about war then you are at least consistent. However, I often find people who are anti-abortion to be pro-war and pro-death penalty, which indicates factured logic.
They reconcile the inconsistency by using terms like "innocent" and "deliberate murder", but wind up the same same quagmire as parsing "human": How innocent is "innocent"? How deliberate is "deliberate"?
What you and Finn have in common, however, is that you are idealists. And I don't mean in the sense of being starry-eyed do-gooders, I mean that your view of the world is determined by your IDEAS of the world. You KNOW what "human" is. In your mind, you have a notion that human is, well... human. It's not in the genes, appearance, self-awareness, stage of development or brain activity, it's an IDEA that you imbue to the fertilized egg.
Interestingly, I find that people who are idealists tend to really gravitate towards the fetus because, being more "potential" than actual it is the MOST ideal human of all. It has yet to demonstrate all of the limitations and needs and foibles of an actual, living, breathing human being (who is always something of a disappointemnt compared to the IDEA of a human being).
It was Finn, I think, that led me to realize this. In some of our earlier discussions I tried reconcile how someone could be so passionate about defending a fetus and at the same time callous about doing away with walking and talking people. And doing the regression... where does the thinking change? ... it became clear that the less "real" the being, the more it can carry our hopes, dreams, ideas and ideals. Once it's a squalling, pooping, red-faced baby it's on the downhill slide towards being a problem.
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Reality sucks. Especially when it contradicts our cherished ideas.
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Quote:The compassion, ethics and consistency of any of these issues can certainly be questioned, and it is being questioned and debated by me and other people in this discussion. Your welcome to question the compassion, ethics and consistency of any of these issues as well, but you want to turn this into a personal judgment of my character, and that’s not acceptable. At the very least, you're hoping for a red herring to avoid the issue of abortion all together, and instead deflect the argument towards criticism of the Right. Asking a bunch of open-ended questions and demanding answers to them in order to evaluate my “commitment to human life” is not a discussion, it’s a personal attack. You’re trying to contrast what you think is my position on abortion with what you think is my position on war or capital punishment in order to set up a pretext for condemning me as a hypocrite or as condoning murder. What about YOUR commitment to human life or lack of? Is that in question? I come to this board to have friendly discussion with fellow Browncoats, not to be put on trial for your imagined crimes against humanity.
Originally posted by SignyM:
Well, if the compassion, ethics, and consistency of a pro-choice/ anti-capital punishment position can be questioned, then the compassion, ethics, and consistency of anti-abortion/ pro-war/ pro-capital punishment opinion also comes into question.
Of course, yours could just be the dodge of a person who is unwilling to question their own passionately held beliefs for fear that they might learn something.
Nihil est incertius vulgo, nihil obscurius voluntate hominum, nihil fallacius ratione tota comitiorum.
Nothing is more unpredictable than the mob, nothing more obscure than public opinion, nothing more deceptive than the whole political system.
-- Cicero
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Quote:
I often find people who are anti-abortion to be pro-war and pro-death penalty, which indicates factured logic.
Like their liberal counterparts, these kneejerk conservatives are supporting what they are told to support.
pro-death penalty i figure is pro-govt power, and probably anti-black. I see the fiscal discipline argument, but I think it's dumb. You can easily get enough labor out of lifers to pay for their own incarceration by not spending $70K a year incarceration them. I think it really should cost about $5000, because really, these aren't ace living conditions or gourmet food we're talking about, and a handful of rentacops doesn't cost a fortune. At $70K/looney/year some cat is getting very fat.
I figure exile them all to a penal colony would be fair. There are countries out there where millions of criminals run free, and our thieves, killers and drug dealers probably have more education and could benefit the locals. (Afghanistan, Zimbabwe, parts of brazil?)
In fact, we could probably sell our prisoners as skilled labor. All sorts of fiscally more sound plans then death penalty (the average execution takes place after 2 million in legal fees.) Maybe it's a lawyer plot.
Quote:
What you and Finn have in common, however, is that you are idealists.
I think I'm really a realist. I suspect Finn does to.
Sure it's potential.
Here's the crater in the typical argument:
If a train is headed for the station at 7:29, then you blow it up, and someone accuses you of blowing up the 7:29 train, you say you're innocent because it isn't the 7:29 train yet.
A baby isn't going to be a full conscious human until it's about 2 or 3 years old. Yet killing babies is still illegal. It's not because they're 'human' and 'an essential part of society' - it's because of what they will become if you don't kill them.
A six week old child has nothing in its head at all, far less than a mouse. even at a year, a baby has less going on than an average monkey. On a general scale, these early humans are no more human than a fetus. The brain, physically, isn't fully grown yet, and won't be until the child is two. Mentally it may take the child another year to be fully aware. Sure, some kids show awareness before that, but so do animals. Some even talk. Is a parrot human?
It's about the flow of natural forces.
But the part where some people view humans as less valuable than babies is a very judeo-christian view.
In the judeo-christian world view, people are perfect until they screw it up, and then their value is a collection of sins until they are old and worthless, which is pretty much how our society is run, as witness the legal system.
Kaneman was an aborted fetus of a black tunisian goat herder spaceship pilot woman with one giant eye who lacked credibility.
Finn,
I'm not sure either, but I have my suspicions. My gut feeling is that the liberal pro-big-govt establishment has a vested interest in lowering the birth rate among the lower classes which it sees as a high welfare burder and lower tax base. It easily fits within the UN definition of genocide, which is not surprising, since many of the other connected PC ideas also do, and help it along.
This sort of theme recurs in the social engineering set, the sort of 'republic of virtue' enlightenment idea. If we could only have the 'right people' in our society and punish all the 'bad people' then it would work. If you stop the poor from having children, you reduce their numbers, and then maybe the welfare state works.
Right now, the main democrats running in New York, Elliot Spitzer (gov) Mike Arcuri (house) Hillary Clinton (senate...duh) are all hard corps hand-of-justice "punish the bad people" sorts. They're pretty much the anti-joss. More police, arm the govt., disarm the people, stricter laws, enforcement everywhere, and, of course, "Stick it to the indians." I was stunned when they ran on this platform back in march, but as election day approached, they shut up about it.
I noticed tensions were very high
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Quote:I think for some people the notion stems from a legitimate interest in personal freedom and alleviating poverty. For single women and poor people, childbirth can often be a hardship, and in their eyes, they believe abortion provides increased opportunity to help ‘level the playing field,’ as they say. I don’t buy this argument because I think encouraging responsibility across the board would help matters much more. But responsibility is difficult and abortion is often the quicker solution. So I can how this becomes the underlying motivation for the pro-choice argument.
Originally posted by dreamtrove:
Finn,
I'm not sure either, but I have my suspicions. My gut feeling is that the liberal pro-big-govt establishment has a vested interest in lowering the birth rate among the lower classes which it sees as a high welfare burder and lower tax base. It easily fits within the UN definition of genocide, which is not surprising, since many of the other connected PC ideas also do, and help it along.
But that doesn’t explain everyone. It may explain the pro-choice position in some cases, but doesn’t explain the pro-abortion argument. It doesn’t explain why some people want to dehumanize the fetus and portray abortion as tantamount to something like an appendectomy. And even many people on the pro-choice side don’t really understand this. I don’t understand this argument. It seems so irrational. It occurs to me that what many on the pro-abortion side are actually defending is Roe v. Wade, not really the practice of abortion. Roe v. Wade exemplifies the Post-Modern Liberalist interest in judicial legislation to by-pass the democratic process, and therefore by-pass the majority of American voters, who are on average more likely to vote Conservative then they are the Pro-Abortion Ultra-left. This actually seems to explain why some people would want to actually promote abortion: they don’t want abortion looked upon as an unfavorable option because they don’t want Roe v. Wade, and by extension judicial legislation, look upon unfavorably. Of course that’s just speculation, I don’t really know for sure.
Nihil est incertius vulgo, nihil obscurius voluntate hominum, nihil fallacius ratione tota comitiorum.
Nothing is more unpredictable than the mob, nothing more obscure than public opinion, nothing more deceptive than the whole political system.
-- Cicero
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Finn, let me rephrase my point. I'm not so much interested in the "depth and consistency of your commitment to human life" as I am in the depth and consistency of your DEFINITION of human life. Because you said "human is human" and I'm trying to map out the boundaries of that statement. That was very poor phrasing on my part, and I apologize bc that's not what I meant. Everybody here is committed to human life.
But that still leaves the question of war and capital punishment, and how it fits into your definition of human life.
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Reality sucks. Especially when it contradicts our cherished ideas.
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Quote:Of course you do.
I think I'm really a realist. I suspect Finn does to.
Quote:But if the train is being built, and there's only a 60% chance of the workers finishing it right - or even finishing it al all- within in a year, and it gets blown up somewhere in the first two months of construction you can hardly be said to have blown up the 7:29 train. That's the idealism. You imagine that human development is on some sort of track with an inevitable timetable and outcome and you've already decided that it WILL reach the station before it's even a train. EDITED TO ADD: Even more, you're looking at a pile of parts and saying "That IS the 7:29".
Sure it's potential.Here's the crater in the typical argument: If a train is headed for the station at 7:29, then you blow it up, and someone accuses you of blowing up the 7:29 train, you say you're innocent because it isn't the 7:29 train yet.
Quote:But just because development is on a spectrum doesn't mean that one end of the spectrum is the same as the other. Red is not green and yellow is not blue. A line is drawn here or there differentiating this from that. Infanticide was- and still is- a widely practiced method of "birth control". Killing babies in this society IS illegal BECAUSE a legal definition of "human" was created... a definition which harkens back to English common law.
A baby isn't going to be a full conscious human until it's about 2 or 3 years old. Yet killing babies is still illegal. It's not because they're 'human' and 'an essential part of society' - it's because of what they will become if you don't kill them. A six week old child has nothing in its head at all, far less than a mouse. even at a year, a baby has less going on than an average monkey. On a general scale, these early humans are no more human than a fetus. The brain, physically, isn't fully grown yet, and won't be until the child is two. Mentally it may take the child another year to be fully aware. Sure, some kids show awareness before that, but so do animals. Some even talk. Is a parrot human?
Quote:This is an idealist statement.
It's about the flow of natural forces.
---------------------------------
Reality sucks. Especially when it contradicts our cherished ideas.
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dbl
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Finn,
I noticed you've avoided SignyM's questions. The one I particularly am interested in is: how would you feel about flushing a placenta down the toilet?
Other than that, there is so much wrong with your post it's hard to find a place to begin.
"the notion ..."
Let's start at the beginning. You call the idea a 'notion'. Good wordsmithing on your part. Because liberals can't have thought-out positions, only notions. 
"... stems from a legitimate interest in personal freedom alleviating poverty. ... For single women and poor people, childbirth can often be a hardship ..."
Ready for the big BUT ...
"I think encouraging responsibility across the board would help matters much more."
Responsibility. Like a father has for producing a child? Somehow you never got around to mentioning that. To you it's the woman's fault, the womans' responsibility, and the woman's burden.
"But responsibility is difficult and abortion is ... quicker ..."
You got it. Abotion is a picnic. There's nothing difficult about it at all.
"... the pro-abortion argument"
I personally don't know anyone who is pro-abortion. And labelling people as pro-abortion when it's NOT their position is a neat propaganda tactic, but a lie. (Like saying international Jews are the nefariously causing all suffering on earth.)
"... dehumanize the fetus and portray abortion as tantamount to ... an appendectomy"
Now this is where you dodge and weave. This is where you need to step up and answer the question "how would you feel about flushing a placenta down the toilet?" How WOULD you feel about it? Would you feel that you were throwing out the baby with the toilet water? Or would you recognize that though it came from a fertilized egg, it's not a child?
"... Post-Modern Liberalist interest in judicial legislation to by-pass the democratic process ..."
You have no idea what Roe v Wade said, do you?
"... and therefore by-pass the majority of American voters ..."
http://www.pollingreport.com/abortion.htm
53% of ALL adults are pro-choice, only 39% are anti-choice.
"... who are on average more likely to vote Conservative then they are the Pro-Abortion Ultra-left."
Now we know where you hang out, and who you count as 'people'. You are speaking about the majority of republicans, actually.
"This actually seems to explain why some people would want to actually promote abortion ..."
Only in your weird world, not out here, where the rest of us live.
:... because they don’t want ... by extension judicial legislation, look(ed) upon unfavorably."
Now THIS is off the deep end. You really need to read the decision. That way you won't be saying things that make you look : stoopid :
"Of course that’s just speculation ..."
More like libel.
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Quote:I’m still not sure what it is you’re getting at. I’ve been pretty clear without actually stating it, I think, that I believe human life begins at conception. At the most basic level, human life is a living organism with human chromosomes.
Originally posted by SignyM:
Finn, let me rephrase my point. I'm not so much interested in the "depth and consistency of your commitment to human life" as I am in the depth and consistency of your DEFINITION of human life. Because you said "human is human" and I'm trying to map out the boundaries of that statement. That was very poor phrasing on my part, and I apologize bc that's not what I meant. Everybody here is committed to human life.
But that still leaves the question of war and capital punishment, and how it fits into your definition of human life.
Now I have no clue what war and capital punishment have to do with this. These two things would seem to be quite independent of any definition of human life.
Nihil est incertius vulgo, nihil obscurius voluntate hominum, nihil fallacius ratione tota comitiorum.
Nothing is more unpredictable than the mob, nothing more obscure than public opinion, nothing more deceptive than the whole political system.
-- Cicero
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Quote:
Originally posted by Finn mac Cumhal:
I’m still not sure what it is you’re getting at. I’ve been pretty clear without actually stating it, I think, that I believe human life begins at conception. At the most basic level, human life is a living organism with human chromosomes.
"Human life" MAY begin at conception. But it needs to be viable outside the womb.
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