Jane Roe to ask Supremes to vacate Roe v. Wade

[Boris Godunov]

Re: Re: Re: A PERSPECTIVE

Originally posted by Spiffor
There's also the possibility of adoption, if reproduction isn't an option anymore.

True. If one is so keen on having children, why not adopt? I have to wonder about the motivations for having children if this option is distasteful to them. Do they really want to share their love with a family, or are they just intent on passing on their genes?

In fact, if he was so intent on having children AND he abhors abortion so much...why not seek out a pregnant woman who is considering abortion and offer to adopt her child? Seems to me if one abhors the practice and thinks life is so precious, one should be willing to go this route to "save a child."

There is a crisis in the US wrt adoption. Not enough people are willing to do it (and social conservatives seem intent on barring many people willing to do it out of sheer bigotry). So instead of knocking up women who don't really want to have kids, why not go out and find some kids already here in need of a loving home?

I bet if the country's foster care situation weren't so dire, a few more women who would have had abortions would consider carrying a fetus to term and putting it up for adoption.

[Spiffor]

Re: A PERSPECTIVE

Originally posted by beingofone
would it have been OK if your mother had aborted you?

Yes. (speaking for myself and not Floyd)

If the answer is yes then just simply drop your head below water and take a deep breath.

Why so? I don't remember having had any hopes, plans or values back when I was an embryo (when abortion could have been an issue). What I am today is completely different to what I was a few weeks after conception.

I have absolutely no more willingness to destroy my life than to destroy, say, my uni paper in its current state. Back when my uni paper was a mere project, I'd have no problem with aborting it or postponing it. The difference between then and now is that I created something. Unlike the embryo I once was, I now have values, desires, feelings, and merely conciousness. Unlike the vague project it once was, my paper is now backed with research and actual writing. That's why it is much more worth keeüing it now, than it was in the past.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
Nothing stops you from gaining first hand experience in battles, Irman. However you can't bear a baby, no matter how you try.

So, does that mean that you believe that only men should decide on how to fund prostate cancer research?

[Berzerker]

Accepting a hierarchy of rights is going to leave you with limited individual liberty if you take it to the logical conclusion.

To impose a hierarchy onto the concept of rights is illogical given we are individuals with differing value systems. I may prefer life over liberty and you may prefer liberty over life and commit suicide rather than spend life in a cage or in chains. For some people, religious freedom is more important than their physical existence - the soul, etc - and they would rather die than submit to what they perceive as evil, like early Christians refusing to pay homage to the Roman gods.

But your "logical" conclusion" is flawed, rights cannot conflict so there is no need for a hierarchy. In any given dispute there will be only one person (or side) with the greatest moral authority to act. It is that person who has the "right" to act...

Strawman. Nobody asserted there was "no danger" in abortions.

Oerdin did and I've been quoting him.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
So, does that mean that you believe that only men should decide on how to fund prostate cancer research?

That appears to be an accurate description of the current affairs

[Imran Siddiqui]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
That appears to be an accurate description of the current affairs

Yeah, we'll tell the female Reps and Senators to leave the floor during those debates and votes .

[Tuberski]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui


So, does that mean that you believe that only men should decide on how to fund prostate cancer research?

No, it means only medical professionals, male and female, should have a say in research.

I don't know a lot about prostate cancer except I have to get a finger up my butt once a year.



ACK!

[beingofone]

Re: Re: A PERSPECTIVE

Originally posted by Boris Godunov


Strawman. Nobody asserted there was "no danger" in abortions. Why are you using quotation marks for something nobody said?

Childbirth still CAN be more dangerous to the mother than abortion.

Of course there is danger and potential adverse effects from aborion--there are such risks with ANY medical procedure. There is a danger even from getting an ingrown toenail removed.

I am talking about emotional health. Do you think it is natural for a mother to kill her offspring?

The argument that abortion can be physically or psychologically harmful is a fruitless one, because in the end, so can carrying a fetus to term and delivering it. We have scads of documented effects of adverse health effects from pregnancies, up to death and psychosis. How many women have died in childbirth as opposed to those who have died on abortion clinic tables? Need I mention Andrea Yates to demonstrate how giving birth can lead to psychological trauma?

I notice you just choose to ignore what I said. That is why we should do away with childbirth.

So citing the adverse health potential of abortions as an argument against it is a flawed argument, since one can easily show how delivering a baby can be just as potentially harmful.

Oh of course not - it is perfectly OK to kill are unborn children. It is in our best interest.

I'm sorry for your anguish over this. But think about the alternative: you coercing a woman who didn't want to carry the fetuses into doing so against her will. How is that right? Were you going to take full responsibility for the kids when born? If the woman happened to die or be seriously crippled as a result of childbirth, could we have made you accept responsibililty for her death?

You fail to acknowledge the fact that the abortions are what crippled her.
Yes I was going to take full responsibilty for the children.
And me being a father actually having the audacity to think I have a say in the matter.
Like I said we sould do away with childbirth to protect the rights of all women against the tyranny of the fetus and the inherent danger of keeping our species in existence

You could find another woman who was willing to have children and sire much progeny with her.

Do you people actually believe I have not considered this and adoption? I experienced this.

chegitz guevara

If a huge segment of society (including major politicians and your faith) told you that eating meat was a sin, made you a horrible person, was murder, etc. and then you went and ate some meat, and afterwards felt horrible about it, it is the act of eating meat that caused you to have problems, or societal opprobrium.

People like you create a hostile environment, then claim the effects of your actions justify your actions. If people like you didn't call abortion murder, didn't make women feel like murderers for having them, etc., there would be no mental health problem's associated with abortion.


You people are evil incarnate

How about eating your children - the monsters that dare make you feel guilty about that.
I am evil? Maybe I am your heart crying out to you for sanity.

Urban Ranger

Unless you don't eat, you are involved in the destruction of life.
Of course, you may be talking about human life. The only thing that set us apart from other species is our sentience. Foetuses don't have sentience, hence, they aren't human beings.

Are you saying there is no difference between you and say - a head of cabbage?
Are you sentient now? Then maybe you could tell me the exact moment you became sentient so that we can truly know when life begins.

Spiffor

Yes. (speaking for myself and not Floyd)

You cannot see your own circular reasoning.

That's why it is much more worth keeüing it now, than it was in the past.

At what point did your life become valuable? Yesterday or the day before?
And if it has no value then why are you posting here?


Why don`t you "great thinkers" reply to the lions share of what I said, instead of picking out what you think you can pick apart.
Try actually being honest with oneself would be a huge leap in the progress of mankind as a whole.

[Imran Siddiqui]

I wonder when anti-abortion people will realize that abortion will NEVER be illegal again .

[Urban Ranger]

Re: Re: Re: A PERSPECTIVE

Originally posted by beingofone
Are you saying there is no difference between you and say - a head of cabbage?

Sure there are.

For example, I have a greater mass, and a different chemical composition, and I am mobile, but I can't do photosynthesis, etc., etc.

Originally posted by beingofone
Are you sentient now? Then maybe you could tell me the exact moment you became sentient so that we can truly know when life begins.

I didn't say life begins at sentience. I said only with sentience would we become individuals.

[beingofone]

perspective on sanity

Foetuses don't have sentience, hence, they aren't human beings.

OK- at what point did you become a sentient human being. Could you tell us the exact moment in time?

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by beingofone
You cannot see your own circular reasoning.

I don't understand how the following statement "it would have been OK if my mother had aborted me" is circular reasoning. Please explain.

At what point did your life become valuable? Yesterday or the day before?

When I developed a survival instinct, i.e. an active willingness to save my life, that comes along a nervous system. At about 3-4 monthes in the womb.

And if it has no value then why are you posting here?

As I said, I value my life now - In fact I have valued it as soon as I developed a survival instinct along with my nervous system.

Why don`t you "great thinkers" reply to the lions share of what I said, instead of picking out what you think you can pick apart.

Be aware that it is a common debating practice here, for people only to respond to the particular topics that interest them. Boris answered to your anguish at not having children, I responded on the "meaning of life" aspect of your post, etc. Such behavious is something to be expected on this forum, where people came for entertainment and not for work. As far as I know, only Berzerker can sustain a debate where he adresses each and every line of text written by the others. And trust me, it grows tiring very quickly

However, here are my answers to your arguments in your "A Perspective" post.

So, let's see, your arguments in general are:

1. How can we decide what is human and what is not?
2. The argument that the mother should decide, because the fetus is a parasite of her body, is moot.
3. The meaing of an individual's life
4. Men should have a choice too.
5. The danger of abortion to the mother.
6. "This world has made the most precious of all gifts, LIFE cheap and disposable."

Please tell me if I missed anything.

Wrt 1: The only way we can decide precisely what is human and what is not, is to have a collective agreement of what humanity entails. Science offers such an agreeable measure, with the barrier of species: a human can reproduce with another human to make a reproducible individual. Law offers another definition: a human has rights once it's born. Tradition offers yet another definition: in many traditional socieities, a human had no rights until well after birth, and infanticide was common.

The law's job is to offer rules that improve society while caring for individual rights. The law should thus have in mind the social implications of abortion, and not some sense of morals or another.
To put it simply, an abortion ban favors the appearance of back-alley abortionists whose practices are very dangerous to the health of the mother, it also favors the emergence of a population of unwanted children who won't have a caring or stable environment to grow up in. It'll wreck their lives, as much as their environment's. The law shouldn't favor such an obvious cause of criminal or deviant behaviours, as well as utter misery. It would be against individual rights to forbid people to have children, or to force them to have abortions. However, it is completely consistent with individual rights to offer the choice to do it.

The law differs from country to country when it comes to abortion. The US allows abortion on-demand until birth. Most European countries allow abortion on-demand until the third or fourth month. Many countries ban abortion outright. These different definitions come in part from the delicate balance between thhuman rights of the unborn child, and the social implications of unwanted birth.

2. I agree the argument is bunk.

3. This is the point I adressed

4. I agree men should have a choice. I consider that both should be able to decide whether there will be an abortion. If one adamantly wants the child, however, there should be a legal arrangement for the child to be born and to be taken care of exclusively by the willing parent. If the willing parent is the father, he should compensate all ill side effects that come with the pregnancy (delayed studies, missed career opportunities, plus of course the stress of undergoing an unwanted and painful period of life)

5. Abortions can be dangerous to the woman's mental health, and repeated abortions can have ill side-effects on a woman's reproducive ability. True. But these side effects are dwarfed by the ills that can happen with an unwanted pregnancy. Your argument is bunk, as it is akin to banning all medicine because of its occasional side effects.

6. Life has always been cheap and disposable. Even if you focus on human life, it has always known mass slaughters during wars, and it has always known infanticide. Not to mention death penalty, making labourers work to death, etc.
Abortion brings absolutely nothing new in that regard.

[Urban Ranger]

Re: perspective on sanity

Originally posted by beingofone
OK- at what point did you become a sentient human being. Could you tell us the exact moment in time?

No system in nature has a single point of mode change. Even electronic systems have delays and margins of error. What makes you think that biological systems behave differently?

[Ned]

Originally posted by Spiffor
The law differs from country to country when it comes to abortion. The US allows abortion on-demand until birth. Most European countries allow abortion on-demand until the third or fourth month. Many countries ban abortion outright. These different definitions come in part from the delicate balance between thhuman rights of the unborn child, and the social implications of unwanted birth.

This is interesting in that the original Roe v. Wade implied that the US system ought to be like that outlined here by Spiffor as now prevailing in Europe. Because of later court decisions, abortion in the US has gone way beyond Roe v. Wade and the European laws. This "extremism" is causing a reaction. There is a growing abhorance of late term abortions across the board in the US. The Supremes, I predict, will soon "amend" their prior opinions to put at least some limits on late term abortions. Otherwise, I think even the Democrats may support some form of constitutional amendment to bring abortion practice back to Roe v. Wade and consistent with European practice.

[Mrs. Tuberski]

As soon as the great drs of our time find a way to remove a fetus and implant it into the man I still say he has no choice in the matter. Lets get real if population of the earth depended on men giving birth our species would die off real quick.