abortion

[MRT144]

Well i had a spirited debate with a friend about abortion and i said that i believed that abortion was wrong only after 6 months, or until the fetus could become viable outside of the womb.

Now he asked me why i follow such an arbitrary month for that, and i stated that was because what medical science has helped us learn. he then asked me would i still believe that if medical science said that up until birth was alright.

i stood my ground but he said i was a sheep for that. i believe that abortion is medical issue and not a moral one.

[Dis]

sounds good to me

[Kuciwalker]

There are two problems with this thread:

1) while it takes a certain position on a controversial issue, it does not do so angrily, or in such a manner as to be a troll. Thus we cannot feed the troll and have an argument.

2) while it takes a certain positon on a controversial issue, it takes a relatively reasonable middle ground, and is somewhat flame-retardent. Again, not good for starting a big argument.

[Jaguar]

MRT the guy's an idiot.

[Dis]

though maybe your response to if medical science said it was alright up until birth could have been better.

But the way that is worded, I'm unsure how to respond to that. alright for what? I'm not sure. In any case it doesn't warrant responding to, because the fact babies can be removed from the womb of dead mothers and still survive shows that there can be (human) life before birth. You can't change fact.

[Urban Ranger]

Re: abortion

Originally posted by MRT144
i believe that abortion is medical issue and not a moral one.

It's both.

While it's unethical to kill a person, it's up to medicine to decide whether the fetus becomes a person.

[Berzerker]

The "fetus" is a person, the fact a newborn had a few more months to grow doesn't mean the 3 month old fetus is something other than a person. One could argue the fetus is not a person until it has certain vital organs, but that still ignores that given a few months, those organs will develop...

[Spiffor]

You cannot settle through science alone whether a fetus is a human being that has a right to live or not. Basically, with science, one could argue that the very first cell is human, or that a 9 months old fetus isn't human: i.e, it leads nowhere.

That's why the anti-abortion crowd always destabilizes its opponents by talking about the moral reasons ofd the legal aborting age.
It allows them to shift the attention from the real issue (why abortion is needed in the first place: to avoid people ruining their life and the life of their kid by forcing them an untimely and huge responsibility) to this unimportant issue they make out to be the most important on Earth.

I personally completely ignore the debate on the good age to abort a fetus, because I know it is the rhetorical terrain the anti-abortionninst have created for themselves. For some reason, you'll notice the anti-abortionnists will never discuss the suffering of the family and of the unwanted kid should he be born anyway

(Well, actually Ben Kenobi is the most compassionate of the anti-abortion crowd: he mentions the suffering of women, even if he only mentions those that go along with his agenda)

[Q Classic]

i don't like abortions, but it's not our place to legislate something that is still so hotly debated.

i'm happy we got the partial birth abortions banned. seriously, if you're going to have an abortion, you should have made up your friggin' mind before the third trimester.

[Elok]

Why do you say that medicine isn't moral? Isn't the business of preserving human life an intrinsically moral enterprise?

Anyway, I'd say that identifying "morality" as a separate facet of human experience from any other portion of our lives is dangerous at best. That POV would identify the decent thing to as something unrelated to actual real-world decisions, as opposed to a pervading element of them. Unapplied morals are meaningless, sort of like the tree falling in the woods.

Now for Spiffor. It is true that abortion is often desired by those who choose it because of larger societal problems. However, you seem to be implying that the *only* answer to the problem is abortion, and that outlawing abortion necessarily means condemning thousands to life in hell. Er, adoption? Crisis Pregnancy Centers? Contraceptives and sex education? Tougher rape laws? Working to lower the broad social stigmatization and shame associated with unwed pregnancy? I would say that abortion itself is an attempt to ignore the big problem with a quick fix.

[Zkribbler]

Originally posted by Berzerker
The "fetus" is a person, the fact a newborn had a few more months to grow doesn't mean the 3 month old fetus is something other than a person. One could argue the fetus is not a person until it has certain vital organs, but that still ignores that given a few months, those organs will develop...

Who knows if the fetus is a person? A more accurate determinng factor than the development of vital organs is the presence of a soul--and only God knows when in human development that happens.

Someone [Jon Miller?] suggested using the existence of brainwaves. I think his suggestion is a more accurate determinating factor than anything we're doing today. After all, isn't "homo sapient" latin for "wise & thinking man"?

[SlowwHand]

Re: abortion

Originally posted by MRT144
i believe that abortion is medical issue and not a moral one.

Color yourself wrong then.

[Arrian]

Originally posted by skywalker
There are two problems with this thread:

1) while it takes a certain position on a controversial issue, it does not do so angrily, or in such a manner as to be a troll. Thus we cannot feed the troll and have an argument.

2) while it takes a certain positon on a controversial issue, it takes a relatively reasonable middle ground, and is somewhat flame-retardent. Again, not good for starting a big argument.

Given the topic, neither #1 nor #2 are really problems. You could probably have just typed "Abortion" and left, and by the end of the week the thread would either be up around 500 posts or closed by the mods.

-Arrian

[Spiffor]

Elok:
What you say is completely true (save for the "quick fix" part). Abortion is not the best tool, nor a sufficient tool to deal with all the societal problems that come from unwanted pregnancy. Actually, my girlfriend and I don't want kids for now, and we are trying hard to avoid abortion (contraceptive pills + condoms seem to do the trick). I agree with all the possible ways you mentioned.

Now, abortion, despite being the worst solution to unwanted pregnancy, is sometimes a sad necessity, when other ways have failed. I am no fan of abortion in itself -actually I know it scars women strongly- but I am fan of the right to abort, when the circumstances dictate it. And that's why I am completely at odds with the anti-abortionists.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Berzerker
The "fetus" is a person, the fact a newborn had a few more months to grow doesn't mean the 3 month old fetus is something other than a person.

It's a person? That's surprising, since surely it doesn't have any personality, at all.