Abortion megathread II

[mrmitchell]

Ben I have to go study the rest of the night but I feel out of anything this should be the easiest to get. Yes, there is a fundamental right to own property, and that includes one or many Jags. I thought this was pretty basic. If you disagree please elaborate. A lot.

[Ben Kenobi]

Ben I have to go study the rest of the night but I feel out of anything this should be the easiest to get. Yes, there is a fundamental right to own property, and that includes one or many Jags. I thought this was pretty basic. If you disagree please elaborate. A lot.

Yes, you have the right to buy and hold, to sell and ask for private property of your choosing, whatever you want. Jags if you've got the money. You don't have the fundamental right to a Jag, but you do have the fundamental right to pursue happiness, whether it be through the acquisition of property or whatever.

From the movie:

It was right then that I started thinking about Thomas Jefferson on the Declaration of Independence and the part about our right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And I remember thinking how did he know to put the pursuit part in there? That maybe happiness is something that we can only pursue and maybe we can actually never have it. No matter what. How did he know that?

That is how it works with property. You have the right to shop, to request property to make an offer. You don't have the right to own anything. If the other person agrees, and you get the property, then you have the right to keep it. You can sell it to whomever you choose, at whatever price you want.

I would argue that income taxation is a violation of the fundamental right to pursue happiness, because the money that you earn is being given without your consent. You've earned that money, it's yours. No one, not even the government should be able to take it from you.

Sales taxes, on the other hand are different. You don't pay unless you consent to the price.

[Guynemer]

[Monk]

Ben,

On the privacy thing: Please note that nobody, I repeat: NOBODY argues a crime is any less of a crime because it's commited in somebody's own home and nobody else is present.

The privacy idea, as far as I understand it, is that what goes on inside your body is differently treated than what goes on outside it, since it's still your body.

On the oath thing: You are asking what medical condition abortion cures, and obviously the answer is none, given the fact that pregnancy is not an illness as such (disregarding the fact that it indeed could be for some people). But cosmetic surgery doesn't always treat a medical problem either - do you find improving the looks of a burn victim as going against any oath? If not, you might want to reconsider your rhetorical question...

[ricketyclik]

No, they are NOT. A certain percentage of women may choose to abort anyway, but many might very well be deterred by the illegality of it, thus sparing the life of the child. Unless more than fifty percent of all women who would have aborted legally abort illegally AND die as a consequence, which sounds unlikely to me, the practice is actually less dangerous underground.

This assumes that at least 50% of women who would otherwise have had abortions are deterred by the criminality of it, which I doubt. But I'm attacking the maths here, not the basic premise. You are probably correct in that if you are making a simple total.lives.saved equation then it is probably true that criminalising abortion is the way to go. However, the premise of my argument is that maybe it's better to lose a few lives, where those most directly concerned would rather have them lost.

It's safer for the mother, but if you only consider the mother's life worth saving the whole argument is meaningless from the get-go.

Well, that is an aspect of my argument, if an extreme version of it, so I guess to you my arguement is meaningless, hence your inability to effectively argue against it, chosing instead to make unrelated points disguised as an argument against mine.

And to ignore the whole organized-crime aspect of prohibition is a serious mistake. We didn't repeal prohibition because some people were dying from bootleg liquor. Even today, very few people talk about legalizing commonly-abused drugs out of concern that some hophead will shoot himself up with bad smack and die.

Have you not ever heard the "harm-minimization" argument against prohibition? I suspect you've been spending all of your time with authoritarian paternalists.

In both cases the main arguments for legalization revolve(d) partly around wasted resources on ineffectual enforcement, but of course mostly on the growth in violent crime. While brandishing a wire coat-hanger is a popular pro-choice argument of sorts, that was not really a major factor in prohibition, making comparisons faulty at best. You might as well say, "modern coal power plants, like the furnaces of Hitler's death camps, churn massive amounts of pollution into the atmosphere." Technically it's true, but it sounds monumentally silly to make such a comparison.

I don't know where you've had your head shoved for the last two hundred plus years, but the primary argument against prohibition of abortion has always been that it puts women having illegal abortions at an extremely high health risk.

The anti-organised crime argument against liquor prohibition is a major and valid one, but we are talking about abortion here.

[Ben Kenobi]

On the oath thing: You are asking what medical condition abortion cures, and obviously the answer is none, given the fact that pregnancy is not an illness as such (disregarding the fact that it indeed could be for some people). But cosmetic surgery doesn't always treat a medical problem either - do you find improving the looks of a burn victim as going against any oath? If not, you might want to reconsider your rhetorical question...

That's a good question. I'd regard restoring the original appearance as healing wrt to cosmetic surgery for burn victims.

[Elok]

:facepalm: Yes, I just said that "women are going to get mangled in back-alleys" is a common pro-choice argument. Reread the bloody post, FFS.

[Felch]

Things can be wrong but still legal. What I'm saying is I don't see how abortion can be made illegal without a constitutional amendment.

Simple. It's a matter for the states to resolve. The Constitution doesn't prohibit the states from regulating abortion, so the tenth amendment already reserves it to them.

However, you're right if you mean that the federal government can't prohibit abortion. Congress does not have that authority.

[Felch]

It's liberty and self-determination.

Would you wish a raped woman to carry the result of that crime to birth?

There is no arguement on this as to argue with a pro-lifer is just the same as arguing with a creationist or flat-worlder.

Given a choice, I'd rather kill the rapist than the fetus. But hey, I'm weird like that.

[Provost Harrison]

mrmitchell, you're free to ignore PH, he's an idiot.

Beats being an utter tw@t like you

[flash9286]

However, you're right if you mean that the federal government can't prohibit abortion. Congress does not have that authority.

Congress probably has the power to ban abortion under the commerce clause, if the right to abortion did not exist.

[Monk]

That's a good question. I'd regard restoring the original appearance as healing wrt to cosmetic surgery for burn victims.

I'm not letting you get away that easily. Sure, burn victims 'acquired' their injuries eventually, so you can call that healing if you want. But suppose somebody was born with something absolutely hideous in their face that didn't happen to be outright harmful in the very physical sense. Taking that out wouldn't be restoring anything, it would be improving.

And as I was bordering on before, pregnancies are indeed severe medical problems to some, even in this day and age. So the Oath argument is still looking fairly week.

[Ben Kenobi]

I'm not letting you get away that easily. Sure, burn victims 'acquired' their injuries eventually, so you can call that healing if you want.

Eventually? Wow. Burn victims acquired their injuries to their skin very quickly after the fire. It's totally within the realm of medicine to repair the damage done to their faces through skin from elsewhere to try to restore their previous appearance.

But suppose somebody was born with something absolutely hideous in their face that didn't happen to be outright harmful in the very physical sense. Taking that out wouldn't be restoring anything, it would be improving.

Are you really arguing that doctors should not treat obvious deformities? What about cleft lip and palate?

And as I was bordering on before, pregnancies are indeed severe medical problems to some, even in this day and age.

Are you arguing that most pregnancies are severe medical problems? Fact is for the majority of women, they are healthier during pregnancy then other times. There are certain medical conditions that make it more likely to experience complications, but it's not pregnancy that causes problems but the condition which is otherwise treated.

So the Oath argument is still looking fairly week.

You've given nothing to argue why abortion abides by the principle of first do no harm. You don't operate unless there's a damn good reason for doing so. Honestly, physical deformities are a good reason to operate and try to correct. Abortion cannot be justified, because it violates the principle outright.

[Monk]

Eventually? Wow. Burn victims acquired their injuries to their skin very quickly after the fire.

I meant 'eventually' in the sense that they weren't born with burn damages. I wanted to stress that because I was going to move on to a scenario where 'restoration' was not applicable.

Are you arguing that most pregnancies are severe medical problems?

Obviously not. I'm merely taking your rhetorical question 'what medical problem does abortion solve' seriously and saying that sometimes it does solve a medical problem, and not only in the 'mother's life in severe danger' situation.

You've given nothing to argue why abortion abides by the principle of first do no harm.

I'm tempted to say abortion doesn't really do all that much harm to the patient, but that would sound trollish even if it wasn't... instead I'll just say it's a hierarchy we're talking about here.

[Ben Kenobi]

I'm tempted to say abortion doesn't really do all that much harm to the patient, but that would sound trollish even if it wasn't... instead I'll just say it's a hierarchy we're talking about here.

You are taking the risk of engaging in a surgery with a significant chance compared with most surgeries of resulting in death.

What's your justification for perfoming one?