Abortion sucks

[Octavious]

Answer the question, then. You appear to be a hypocrite. You hold that in the case of abortions, the right to life is paramount. You hold that in the case of organ donation, it is not.

Sorry, I didn't realise it was a genuine question. To me the difference is obvious. For the sake of argument let's assume that the unborn child is a fully fledged human. The action of having an abortion is to take life away from the child. The action of the forced donation is to give life to someone. To give a better feel of the difference consider the following, a doctor that saves a hundred patients but murders her husband is a murderer. In the accountancy of humanity we do not consider them 99% good.

[Octavious]

It's so black and white to you, isn't it? Firstly the situation you describe is unrealistic. The work carried out by organs can be replicated on a temporary basis by machines. The do or die scenario you describe doesn't exist. It would be a case of do or experience unwellness for an extended period, with an increased risk of death. A very different prospect.

You're mistaken about this anyway. It's not a fictional, unrealistic scenario. Over 450 people died in the UK in 2016 while waiting for an organ to become available.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/201 ... ortage-nhs

I'm not mistaken. The scenario of have the donation or die doesn't exist. The scenario of have the donation or have an increased risk of death whilst waiting does exist, but is very different. People are much more willing to risk their lives for principles than to accept certain death.

[Jamiet99uk]

Answer the question, then. You appear to be a hypocrite. You hold that in the case of abortions, the right to life is paramount. You hold that in the case of organ donation, it is not.

Sorry, I didn't realise it was a genuine question. To me the difference is obvious. For the sake of argument let's assume that the unborn child is a fully fledged human. The action of having an abortion is to take life away from the child. The action of the forced donation is to give life to someone. To give a better feel of the difference consider the following, a doctor that saves a hundred patients but murders her husband is a murderer. In the accountancy of humanity we do not consider them 99% good.

I do not see the difference. It is not obvious at all. I don't see your point.

[Jamiet99uk]

The action of having an abortion is to take life away from the child.

- And you are saying the child is a human and has a right to life, and that right trumps other rights.

The action of the forced donation is to give life to someone.

- And you are saying that this "someone", also a human, does not have a right to life.

You can't have it both ways.

[Fluminator]

Whilst you sort of are avoiding explicitly owning this, this "slavery = abortion" has been a common argument since Roe vs. Wade. Reagan made it, Scalia made it and many others have made it too. It has been used as a tool to try and convince conservative black people to vote Republican. I don't think it holds water though. When we are saying slavery is wrong we are saying a black adult is equal to a white adult, a black child is equal to a white child. Essentially the only thing different is their skin colour. But this doesn't mean an adult is equivalent to a fetus! The argument makes no sense. Each stage of life has different sets of rights and responsibilities. A 5 year old doesn't have the right drive a car or drink alcohol. A fetus doesn't have rights separate from the pregnant mother.

The right to life is a pretty important right that in my opinion shouldn't be lost because you're younger and more dependant. It's too arbitrary of a line for such an important right for everyone.
I know people all over the world have different opinions on morality, but it doesn't mean there isn't a correct view. You look at other countries, and women have almost no rights. Are you able to look at that and think "well, I can't impose our views on them?" If a country is committing genocide on a minority group, you're going to want to impose your morality on them.

If anyone takes one thing from this, it's to please stop implying pro-lifers as only in it to enslave and oppress women. It's unbelievable how many pro-abortionists try to phrase the argument as being against 100% evil men who want to keep women on their knees. Have any of you ever met a pro-lifer who actually had this as their motive? Can you name one?
But I appreciated your responses though because you didn't do that, and I feel like I got more out of this abortion convo then any I've ever had before because of it, so thank you.

[Fluminator]

<rant>
But if you are going to go down this path of crude generalization, the large difference between the religious and atheists on societal issues is that religious people are told what to think and told not to question, non-theists think for themselves. So it is difficult to have a discussion because how can you have rational debates with those that are told what to think instead of how to think? At least Christians are told to be moral, not because being a good person is a reward in itself (which I believe), but because of a fear of punishment in the afterlife (which may or may not exist and even if the afterlife does exist the afterlife you believe in may be the wrong one) which makes no sense to me. Religious moral codes, which may have made sense in the time they were created (e.g. no women priests, kosher rules, rules on sex, Islamic dress rules etc.) but because people are supposed to "obey without question" they can become hopelessly outdated.
</rant>

Kind of off topic but I wanted to respond to this too. While a lot of religion has become this, religion in the purest form is just trying to figure out the transcendent part that humans never will which is a noble task.
There's a lot of things we struggle to comprehend in the world, and religion uses great things like mythology, stories, art, etc. to help us grasp concepts that science doesn't give a satisfying answer for yet. (And before science, it was practically the only tool we had)
Every major religion that I'm aware of has constantly had debate throughout history and the religions are always evolving to get a better picture on truths in the world.
There are a lot of people who never question science either who just believe whatever they're told to believe by the top scientists. (Disregarding the fact they're usually right) So I don't think it's fair to say religion by nature causes non-thinkers.

[Octavious]

The action of having an abortion is to take life away from the child.

- And you are saying the child is a human and has a right to life, and that right trumps other rights.

The action of the forced donation is to give life to someone.

- And you are saying that this "someone", also a human, does not have a right to life.

You can't have it both ways.

I am saying it is not the same thing. The child is alive and you are actively taking away its life. The patient is dying and you are actively trying to remedy them. The actions of taking away a life and trying to save a life are very different. If you don't see the argument you don't see it, but for me it is clear.


But going back to the forced donation idea, if the idea of losing the bond of goodwill between donator and reciever and the aid to post operation recovery this provides does not convince you, if the suffering caused to the family of the person whose organs are forcibly removed doesn't convince you, then perhaps you might be swayed by the conflict of doctors you are obliging to act in direct contadiction to the wishes of their patient in a procedure that will provide no benefit to their patient and visably distress their patients family and friends. That's a significant change to their ways of working, and violates the oath.

[flash2015]

There is so much to respond to here, I am going to have to take it apart in parts because the post will get way, way, way too long (hopefully I have time to complete it all). Anyway, here is part one.

Unless I'm mistaken the only one discussing the idea of hordes of women deciding to abort at 20+ weeks is yourself. I'm not aware of anyone who believes this myth.

With regard to the decision being made by the doctor and the patient, clearly the idea is that they come to some agreement. If they do not, who do you propose has the final call? The sexism comment was relating to the line of argument you get from people like Ora who go on and on about prolifers being a bunch or rabid woman haters.

With all due respect, if you don't know of anyone that believes that hordes of women are deciding to abort at 20+ weeks then you are grossly ignorant about the abortion debate in the US in the last two decades. I can understand that you are likely much younger than me and you weren't around to follow the partial-birth abortion discussion of the early 2000s...but did you not even follow some of the hyperventilation over the recent changes in NY abortion law? Given what you say here, I just can't believe you did. We can go through links and articles if you like...but I encourage you to go and do some research yourself too.

And again, let me explain my position here through an analogy. Say your local member proposes a law that makes it a crime punishable by jail time to let alpaccas run along the freeway on Tuesday. I think we can all agree that alpaccas running along the freeway on Tuesday is a bad idea...but considering that this either doesn't happen or is very rare I am saying it is a bad idea to put it on the books. And in this case whilst you may not hold this opinion, I know the real reason the local member is proposing this law is because ultimately he wants to ban people from owning alpaccas...and by creating the law alpaccas running along the freeway they are trying to make people believe that alpaccas are a problem so that he can eventually achieve his goal of banning alpacca ownership outright.

There is so much misinformation out there about late-term abortions. In response to the recent hyperventilation about the NY law changes, A gynaecologist that has dealt in late term abortions wrote up an article to try and clear up some of the misconceptions about it:

https://drjengunter.wordpress.com/2019/ ... -is-wrong/

If you are interested in having a read of an alternate opinion, I would encourage you to do so (she has been an OB/GYN for almost 30 years and performed abortion for 16 years of that). There are so many details to cover so I won't try to summarize here and I will only concentrate on one specific example.

In the article she mentions that there was only one case in all her years of experience where the abortion was very late where there potentially could have been an issue. One 12-year old girl had an abortion at 29 weeks. The only reason why she was pregnant was because she was raped by her 17-year old brother. And the only reason why it was done so late was because she was held up for months by the legal process and eventually had to travel to another state to get it done:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/12-year-ol ... -abortion/

It is a tough case to think about, but in my opinion given my beliefs about rights of mother and fetus, it was the right call to make. But whatever call was made here, I don't think it should be decided by some arbitrary rule by the state. This should only be a decision between doctor and patient.

On the sexism thing, I will touch on this again, but I think you may not be understanding where orathaic is coming from because he has a different experience to yours. If I understand correctly (again, orathaic or Octavious
correctly if I am wrong), orathaic lives in Ireland where the Church has had an oversized political influence, and given that I was an active Catholic for the first 25 years, I can understand where he is coming from even though he may potentially be pushing it a bit hard.

[flash2015]

<double post>

[orathaic]

Hang on, Octavious…

Why does the right to live trump other rights in the case of abortion, but not in the case of organ donation?

Isn't that rather hypocritical?

Yes it is. Because the 'right to life' only seems to be applied in the sense Octavious is using when it is about controlling women's bodies.

For God's bloody sake. Do you know why the abortion argument is still going strong in the States? Is because of people parroting on bloody ridiculous arguments like this put people's backs up rather than trying to win them over. Whilst you're basking in the warm glow of the self-righteous consider the real damage to real lives caused by the abandonment of argument in favour of hurling insults from your ivory tower.

What do you think calling the other side woman haters achieves? The ones who actually are misogynists won't give a damn. The ones who aren't will think you're a nasty little prat and stop listening. You're supposed to be a bloody diplomacy player and yet don't seem to have picked up the most basic rules of diplomacy. You don't get anywhere by insulting anyone.

I actually believe it is because people never got a say on the matter. The Supreme Court made the rule for them.

Though I do like your terrible attempt at tone policing. 'maybe if you asked more nicely, we would accept your position...' - when historically it has never been by asking nicely that things have changed.

Slavery, universal suffrage, and a hundred independence movements, didn't gain rights by asking nicely. So I'll be highly surprised if you can show me an example of what you suggest.

[Octavious]

With all due respect, if you don't know of anyone that believes that hordes of women are deciding to abort at 20+ weeks then you are grossly ignorant about the abortion debate in the US in the last two decades. I can understand that you are likely much younger than me and you weren't around to follow the partial-birth abortion discussion of the early 2000s...but did you not even follow some of the hyperventilation over the recent changes in NY abortion law? Given what you say here, I just can't believe you did.

I assure you that I am ignorant of a great many things that happen in America, and probably a lot happier for it . The abortion debate doesn't exist in any meaningful way in England, and I'd say 90% of my experience of it is of the American and Irish debates seem through the prism of this website. I have no awareness of any recent events in New York, nor any particular interest in the history of the debate. If you say that these people exist I won't contradict you, but will repeat that it is not an argument I have ever heard from anyone I have met, or indeed spoken to here.

let me explain my position here through an analogy. Say your local member proposes a law that makes it a crime punishable by jail time to let alpaccas run along the freeway on Tuesday. I think we can all agree that alpaccas running along the freeway on Tuesday is a bad idea...but considering that this either doesn't happen or is very rare I am saying it is a bad idea to put it on the books. And in this case whilst you may not hold this opinion, I know the real reason the local member is proposing this law is because ultimately he wants to ban people from owning alpaccas...and by creating the law alpaccas running along the freeway they are trying to make people believe that alpaccas are a problem so that he can eventually achieve his goal of banning alpacca ownership outright.

An interesting analogy, let down slightly perhaps by the fact that there is indeed legislation to prevent someone letting their alpacas run along the freeway on a Tuesday. The "Animals Act 1971, Section 8: Duty to take care to prevent damage from animals straying on to the highway", is pretty clear on the subject.

On the broader issue of whether the law is necessary, I would argue that if it happens then it is. Sure, it is rare, but all the most serious crimes are rare, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't be illegal. It is also worth nothing that every country in the world, without any exception that I'm aware of, restricts abortion based on the length of the pregnacy. To favour a system without these restrictions would be very much an outlier. Even if I was in favour of it, I would not consider it a battle that was winnable or worth fighting.

[Octavious]

Though I do like your terrible attempt at tone policing. 'maybe if you asked more nicely, we would accept your position...' - when historically it has never been by asking nicely that things have changed.

The vast majority of political change in the UK is achieved via Parliamentary consensus. Pretty much every major international treaty of recent times has been built on the back of mutually respectful language. Rabid ravings at the opposition is associated only with the politics of failure.

[flash2015]

Part deux:

I don't know about you but I think there is something seriously wrong that one of the richest countries in the world have so many citizens that are so poor that they have to rely on this to survive.

I agree. But I believe the abortion debate should be kept separate from America's inability to run even the most basic welfare systems.

Of course the other major thing which would reduce abortions is better access to contraception...but so many in the "right to life" movement are such absolutists about sex we can't be as effective as we could be about providing easy access to it. Abstinence education is a fantasy. Rightly or wrongly, people are always going to have sex. We need to create policies that reflect reality, not fantasy.

Some right to life people are, some aren't. It is a different issue and people will argue different ways on it. I am in full agreement with you on access to contraception.

I think our difference of opinion here is because we are looking at the issue differently. I believe that most people (apart from the most radical fringe) including me would agree that reducing abortion would be a good thing. This is why I don't believe we should be fixated on one means to that end, which at least to my understanding of your argument, you seem to be (whether abortion or some types of abortion should be legal or not).

There are plenty of ways we can reduce abortion incidents. If we are honest about really trying to reduce the incidents of abortion, we should be looking into all of them. If I understand correctly the US is now experiencing the lowest incidence of abortion since Roe vs. Wade. It would be wonderful if we could find out why this is happening so that we can perhaps find better ways to reduce abortion even further.

This is not an issue unique to abortion. We make this sort of judgement with drugs, gambling, alcohol, guns etc. We are having the same argument about the wall now! Again, in that debate we are getting so lost in wall/no wall discussions that we are losing the forest (fixing the US immigration system) for the trees.

[Octavious]

I think our difference of opinion here is because we are looking at the issue differently. I believe that most people (apart from the most radical fringe) including me would agree that reducing abortion would be a good thing. This is why I don't believe we should be fixated on one means to that end, which at least to my understanding of your argument, you seem to be (whether abortion or some types of abortion should be legal or not).

No, I don't think so. I'd say that the difference is that I consider the status of the unborn child to be a spectrum, ranging from little more than a collection of cells at the start to fully fledged human at the end. You take a more digital view, human at birth, less than human before. A very similar way of thinking to many pro lifers, except with a different boundary.

I think we both go into the debate seeking a compromise, but compromise is based on our way of seeing the unborn child. Compromise to you seems to be giving a higher value to the unborn child. Never fully human, but you seem to value it considerably higher than a lot of pro-choice proponents. Compromise to me is moving the time limit in which abortions are allowed. The amusing result of which is that we can both make what we consider to be huge compromises and find ourselves disagreeing.

[flash2015]

Part troix

I only ask that the minority don't try and impose their values on everyone else by the force of law.

The trouble is that "wanting people to not impose values on others" is in itself a value you hold which you want to impose on others . "If only people would just behave like what I think they should, the world would be a much better place", said everyone ever

I guess this part is partially tongue in cheek...but I am impressed by your what I call "Verizon logic" (in opposing Net Neutrality, Verizon famously claimed that network neutrality was against the first amendment because it impeded their ability to censor the internet in any way they liked). It is an ambitious argument, but it doesn't really hold water.

Again, at some point you do get down to some fundamental principles on how a democratic society should function. If Christians are allowed to impose their morals on society, why not the Muslims as well? Why don't we bring back sodomy laws and start stoning adulterers?

On this last part, I fell for your over-generalization debate and responded with generalizations of my own. It was probably not the right response (we are delving into "ad hominem" land) and it detracts from the discussion. But I am not pulling these generalization out of my behind as I believe you may have been. I will go through your responses one by one.

the large difference between the religious and atheists on societal issues is that religious people are told what to think and told not to question, non-theists think for themselves.

Lol! If you truly thought for yourself it wouldn't take you long to convince yourself of the utter nonsense of that statement

If you had said my generalization was overbroad and said not all religious people are like that, that would have been a reasonable response. But to claim you have special knowledge in this area which allows you to dismiss my claim without any evidence I think makes you not credible here.

I think I may have mentioned that I was a Catholic in my younger years...or did you skip that part? I went through 12 years of Catholic schooling. I have either had these discussions personally or I know of people have tried to have discussions on many topics you are not supposed to question.

And the Catholic Church in Australia is far more liberal than the Church here which is even more strict. Many, many times Catholic politicians have been either threatened with excommunication or denied communion because they espouse a position which may be in conflict with the Church (I think this most famously hit John Kerry in 2004):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excommuni ... t_abortion

The Church recently was chastising nuns for daring to even slightly disagree with Church teachings (one of many articles on this spanning many years):

https://www.pri.org/stories/2012-12-18/ ... ts-us-nuns

And I am just scratching the surface. There is A LOT of history with the Church shutting down debate on a whole range of sensitive topics.

And let's not get started on other religions too (e.g. Islam).

Of course there are many Christian churches that are not like this, but if you are not realizing a large percentage are like this then you are denying reality. The whole point of Christianity is that morals are laid down by God, not humans. How are you supposed to disagree with God? You could say choose a different Church, but that is an acknowledgement that what at least a lot of Churches believe about morality DOES NOT come directly from God as people have been told. At least in my experience any Catholics have to go through an uncomfortable version of "Don't ask, Don't tell" to not always obey the Churches teachings but they know not to question the orthodoxy on it.

No, what you are doing here is abandoning reason and instead looking for excuses not to listen to the other side :)

Here again you are just making stuff up without **any** knowledge at all about me to brush away my assertion. If you actually knew me, you would know I actively seek out opinions I disagree with, not to as Ben Shapiro says "destroy them with my superior reasoning" but because I actually see these sort of discussions to learn something and I freely admit I often get things wrong. My views are subject to change without notice :).

I even sat through Ben Shapiro's speech at the right to life march on youtube and I probably spend way more time than I should reading/watching all this stuff. Again if you are really wanting to challenge my assertion here, you need to do better than "back at you, na na na na na".

because people are supposed to "obey without question" they can become hopelessly outdated

Yes, we're well and truly away with the fairies here. Obey without question? Gosh. Do you know many religious people? Deary me.
[/quote]

You really haven't thought this through, have you? We have Christian people in 2018 saying that evolution is wrong and that the world was created in 6 days because their pastor said so. Again, this isn't all Christians, but you can't give me the "No True Scotsman" argument here either.

Again, this is all just a distraction from the real argument at hand here. And there are lots of wonderful religious people and wonderful non-religious people in the world and I don't think either side has a monopoly on the moral high ground. It was a mistake for me to respond to your over-generalization bait. I shouldn't have done it.

[flash2015]

<duplicate>

[Octavious]

I sometimes forget how fortunate I am to be a Brit. I know quite a lot of religious Brits, and none of them believe that the Earth was created in six days. Even the vicars will tell you it's a metaphor. I know plenty of people who will question evolution, but they are largely scientists and I am one of them. Evolution has a number of issues with it. Hell, we don't even have a definition of species we can rely on. But debates between evolution and intelligent design don't happen. Here religion is, and has been for a considerable number of years, a bastion of left wing ideology.

Fire and brimstone old testament style preachers exist only in history books, or the occasional loon on a street corner. It is difficult to imagine them existing in large numbers in a western nation. Not impossible to imagine... it's more believable than discovering Trump is Banksy, say... but it is still very alien.

[leon1122]

Abortion is about the only part of the progressive movement I agree with. I support the abolition of the welfare state, and that would be ideologically incompatible with opposition to abortion.

[Tom Bombadil]

Abortion is about the only part of the progressive movement I agree with. I support the abolition of the welfare state, and that would be ideologically incompatible with opposition to abortion.

Edgy

[orathaic]

https://twitter.com/JillFilipovic/stat ... 84843?s=19