If abortion was to be made illegal ....

[Elok]

No. Carpool lanes exist to encourage carpooling in order to reduce congestion and pollution. A pregnant woman couldn't occupy two vehicles if she wanted to. Allowing pregnant women to drive in carpool lanes would be counterproductive.

Please don't encourage these brain-meltingly dumb questions by actually answering them. I'm pretty sure he's already asked this one before, to boot.

[MrFun]

Please don't encourage these brain-meltingly dumb questions by actually answering them. I'm pretty sure he's already asked this one before, to boot.

What is stupid about my question?

If an embryo/fetus really is a human life, and thus a person, and if the requirement to be able to drive in carpool lanes is that you need at least two people in the same car, where is the stupid part of the question?

[Felch]

If an embryo/fetus really is a human life

What else could it be?

[MrFun]

So then let's allow pregnant women to use carpool lanes.

Really, do I need to use crayons to explain my point to you?

[DaShi]

****, there may be a point in MrFun's nonsense:

Do children and infants count as passengers?
Yes. All states with HOV facilities count children and infants as passengers.

http://ops.fhwa.dot.gov/freewaymgmt/faq.htm

Thank you Department of Transportation for solving the abortion issue once and for all.

[Elok]

What is stupid about my question?

If an embryo/fetus really is a human life, and thus a person, and if the requirement to be able to drive in carpool lanes is that you need at least two people in the same car, where is the stupid part of the question?

Your gayness is your body's self-sacrificial way of keeping your dumb-question genes from infecting the larger population. True, your hair color, height, and other inoffensive DNA loses out, but it's a small price to pay for a world where nobody has to be asked if a preggo can play tennis against herself, or if she has to buy two tickets when she goes to the movies.

[MrFun]

Your gayness is your body's self-sacrificial way of keeping your dumb-question genes from infecting the larger population. True, your hair color, height, and other inoffensive DNA loses out, but it's a small price to pay for a world where nobody has to be asked if a preggo can play tennis against herself, or if she has to buy two tickets when she goes to the movies.

So then an embryo or a fetus is not a person.

Oh my god! You understand my point now.

[DaShi]

it's a small price to pay for a world where nobody has to be asked if a preggo can play tennis against herself.

She doesn't have to play against herself, she just has to play doubles with her fetus as her partner.

[Elok]

So then an embryo or a fetus is not a person.

Oh my god! You understand my point now.

You are acting dumber than a fetus. It is illegal to kill you. You, sir, are a walking, talking pro-life argument.

[loinburger]

So then let's allow pregnant women to use carpool lanes.

What point can you possibly be trying to make here? If pregnant women using the carpool lane were to somehow cause the collapse of civilization, then you could say "treating unborn children as full-fledged human beings in the context of the use of carpool lanes is a stance that is incompatible with our civilization, therefore we should not treat unborn children as full-fledged human beings in any other context." But, I somehow doubt that pregnant women using the carpool lane would have any sort of impact whatsoever, which means that you're just spouting white noise.

Let's make pregnant women buy two plane tickets! (Or three, if they're carrying twins! Presumably flight attendants would need to use ultrasounds to enforce this provision. Never mind the fact that infants usually fly for free anyway.) Let's let pregnant women claim their unborn children as a tax deduction! Let's bar pregnant women from NC-17 rated movies (they wouldn't be barred from R-rated movies, since their unborn children would be accompanied by a parent)! Let's say that somebody's official birthday is the date of their (probable) conception! And so on. There are a lot of silly (and not-so-silly) laws that you can pass as a result of treating unborn children as full-fledged human beings, but none of them are contradictory or obviously immoral or whatever - at worst, said laws would merely be a nuisance.

[MrFun]

Let's make pregnant women buy two plane tickets! (Or three, if they're carrying twins! Presumably flight attendants would need to use ultrasounds to enforce this provision. Never mind the fact that infants usually fly for free anyway.) Let's let pregnant women claim their unborn children as a tax deduction! Let's bar pregnant women from NC-17 rated movies (they wouldn't be barred from R-rated movies, since their unborn children would be accompanied by a parent)! Let's say that somebody's official birthday is the date of their (probable) conception! And so on. There are a lot of silly (and not-so-silly) laws that you can pass as a result of treating unborn children as full-fledged human beings, but none of them are contradictory or obviously immoral or whatever - at worst, said laws would merely be a nuisance.

So you see the absurdity of anti-choice people's treating embryos and fetuses as persons then, with your above examples.

[loinburger]

What absurdity? I just said that none of the examples I gave are contradictory or obviously immoral or whatever.

If you're saying that the absurdity is that the "anti choice people" (please stop using this term, it makes you look stupid - let's stick with pro-choice and pro-life, none of this anti-choice or anti-life crap) are inconsistently applying their beliefs that an unborn child is morally/legally a full-fledged human, then you're forgetting that were they to attempt to pass a law allowing pregnant women to use the carpool lane then people like you would scream bloody murder. There's really no point to their trying to pass such laws until they've outlawed abortion (and besides, outlawing abortion has a far greater priority than allowing pregnant women to use the carpool lane).

[loinburger]

Your arguments are analogous to somebody who is pro-slavery saying "but if we free the slaves, then the freed slaves might start to vote, and this sounds absurd to me!" The ONLY question that matters is whether an unborn child should be morally/legally treated as a full-fledged human being (or, analogously, whether slavery is immoral) - it doesn't matter one bit that you think that some of the repercussions of an unborn child being morally/legally treated as a full-fledged human are absurd (or, analogously, that you think that some of the repercussions of slavery being immoral are absurd), especially when you're arguments to this effect don't even have the weight of pointing out contradictory or immoral repercussions, but merely consist of your saying "I find these repercussions to be absurd!" Nobody gives a shit that you think that the repercussions are absurd.

And before you bring it up, it also doesn't matter that outlawing abortion will result in some women procuring costly/dangerous illegal abortions - again, all that matters is whether the unborn child is morally/legally equivalent to a full-fledged human being. "Well, granted that it's immoral to murder homosexuals, but if we outlaw the murder of homosexuals then some people might be imprisoned, injured, or even killed as a result of attempting to illegally murder homosexuals! Therefore, in order to make it safer for these people to murder homosexuals, we should not outlaw the murder of homosexuals."

[Elok]

The specific repercussion he cited also depends on everyone involved being as slavishly literal and stupid as it is possible for a human to be. Gribbler already explained this, but he's carrying on anyway. This is why you should not try explaining anymore.

****, there may be a point in MrFun's nonsense:

Weird. I guess the logic is that you could be transporting somebody else's kid(s), thereby minimizing the number of cars on the road?

(MrFun does not, of course, have a point; I don't believe he's capable of such a thing, at least in an abortion thread)

[giblets]

It doesn't make sense, but then again, cops don't have to perform sonograms to make sure a woman really is transporting her five year old kid and isn't lying, so it's not a big deal. People don't take their kids along on their commute to work very often so it doesn't prevent the carpool lane from fulfilling its purpose.