oh, yeah. I'm not saying it should be criminal, and i'm not sure what the damages should amount to.

I don't know if i want legal support for what should be common sense. (in my ideal world) Also I'm assuming that in most cases where there is a decision made to have children the respective partners have more than just implied an agreement. (effectively made a verbal contract by agreeing to something.)

but it might bring us closer to equality and hence be a good for society.

Still picking a poor person to be your mate is your own responcibility; (or your parents if you live in a culture which has arranged marriages) I don't think the courts should be there to support the father who goes crying to them with a 'my girlfriend broke my heart and aborted our child'. When he could instead be more careful about who he impregnates... but in an ideal world we would all suffer and learn from it (as opposed to suffering and becoming bitter and disillusioned with the world)

i mean, "[he] should be more careful about who he impregnates, i may sound like i'm being cruel, but in my ideal world..."

Thycudides:

Here's the difference between me behind a computer screen and a 20 week fetus in the womb.

I can breath on my own .

Totally unrelated: Can some one please 'splain why some names have envelopes under them and some do not?

What if as I typed here I was hooked up to an iron lung? Essentially.. what if I could not breathe on my own? Is ok to kill me now?

Besides you missed my point. I can dehumanize anyone if I want. I will always have sufficient ground to do it. Even if you were sitting right here I can just say over and over... you don't exist you are a part of my imagination. From there, since I don't see you as a real person I could just kill you and feel totally justified. Even though I must myself concede it may be true you don't exist, however, I act on the assumption that you do, and so too do I act on the assumption that all beings I perceive as people, indeed, are. The same goes for every human no matter how young (or old), no matter how dependent.

Every human, define human.

The envelopes, i think, are meant to indicate new messages.

If you can afford an iron lung, then it is on your own that you are staying alive.

If our technology develops to the point where we can grow a fetus outside of the womb then we can simply extract all the fetus's of all the women who don't want to use their bodies for incubation and keep them in storage until some parents who can't have their own child want to pick one out.

That doesn't mean we should. Some things are too important to be allowed to be bought or sold. We already understand this as a morale concept. Your vote in a democracy, sex, and people should not be bought or sold.

oh, and yes, please if you can give a concrete indisputable definition of humans then please do.

otherwise if you want to look over the other thread you can read about the difficulties associated with genetic or intelligence/brain wave definitions, and why i think dependancy is more a useful definition for practical reasons.

Exactly.

There is no concrete indisputable definition of human. Which is why you never know if you are killing a human being. You can err on one side and say it doesn't matter at all, and just kill whatever, whenever. Or you can err on the other side and protect life as much as you can.

@ Thucydides:

Since you never know anything for sure, why don't you worry about the soldiers and sailors who die agonising deaths everytime you play Diplomacy? I know, everbody thinks that it's just a game and they're not real, but maybe every game that we play is acted out in an alternate universe that was perfectly at peace until we that seventh person hit ‘Join’.

I'm not saying that it's likely. But given that you never know anything for sure, how do you personally draw the line?

@toby - knowing that all my diplomacy games are played out for real in an alternate universe is the only reason I play this game.

Thucydides,
I see some either or thinking here, I thought you were past that...

You write: "There is no concrete indisputable definition of human. Which is why you never know if you are killing a human being. You can err on one side and say it doesn't matter at all, and just kill whatever, whenever. Or you can err on the other side and protect life as much as you can."

(Or you can let the mother, and the father should he care to, decide for themselves.)

Not only is this kind of thinking exclusive of all the points in between, you also fail to make a real point -- it's merely an attempt to be emotionally inflammatory. Kill. And on a war games site no less.

There is a concrete definition of "alive" and humans knowingly kill living humans every day, for less considered reasons.

What you seem to ignore is that abortion protects life -- by preventing the human to come into being. Your romantic notions do nothing to change this reality. Agreed, it's not the most desirable way to do it, and I remind you to consider the woman's perspective (even social acceptance does not make this a painless experience nor a simple choice for most women) but it beats wrecking a life through her own incapacity to care for it, through neglect and privation. I would even go so far as to say that it beats sending our young men and women to war with the increased likelihood that they will be, um, killed, More often this is without their choice to be part of that war.

It's not even in human nature to protect all life as much as we can. We kill in war and acts of murder daily. And children die this way as often as not. It is even in human nature to sacrifice human babies, abandoning them to the mountain tops for reasons ranging from birth defect (realizing that the child would not survive and thus use up valuable communal resources), to it's accident of being born a female. It was not so long ago that a woman was shunned from her community for becoming pregnant, even when it was not her choice to have sex. In fact, I expect this still happens even in our western culture, and most others, today.

You are right to point out that there are often concerns of not black and white, but more gray areas. What you must also realize is that a few things are actually pretty either or. There is little gray in these situations.

"(Or you can let the mother, and the father should he care to, decide for themselves.)"

Society will either be against an activity, or it will endorse it by allowing it to occur. If we let them decide for themselves, we endorse the activity. This is erring on the side of assuming that their lives, whatever they may be, are not worth protecting. You may be right, but you must acknowledge that this is the side you are on if your choice is to "let people decide for themselves." Something else I should point out, that people have not addressed, is that I can "decide" to murder a person. How dare society tell me that is wrong? Should you not allow me to decide for myself?

Let me make the argument even stronger. I have a conjoined twin. He is part of my body. Is it then okay for me to kill him? It's my body... who are you to question me?

If you look at what giapeep said, it is possible for society to err on the side of caution and abort all children, unless the parents have definite grounds to prove that they will be good at that task, proof by helping raise other people's children, by their means - maybe even having a group of adults(say 4-6) who together agree to share custody of the children and hence have the means and time to make sure the (1 or 2) children are always taken care of, and entertained, and not neglected, emotionally, mentally, or physically.

Having a larger group of adults with different talents would mean that each one would be able to teach something different, and share different interests (like one might be great with electronics, and radio building, while another might be a great baseball player... while another still might be a fantastic diplomacy player...)

Now I don't think you can have any evidence that my hypothetical situation is any worse than a 'normal' two parent family, because i don't think you can find me an example of it being tested, but i'm just drawing the picture as an example.

So in my example we err on the other side of caution, and automatically abort any fetus belonging to a girl under the age of 18. (even though females are most physically fit for breeding at ~16-20)

This seems like a repulsive idea to us because it involves taking away a choice which we naturally have, that of raising a child. Why should society get to decide?

>Society will either be against an activity, or it will endorse it by allowing it to occur.

For the record, whenever *I* allow something to occur, I do *not* necessarily endorse it. This is because what I endorse most of all is FREEDOM.

I am well aware of the side I am on when I think people should have a right to choose in important matters such as giving birth and parenting. I think choice is paramount don't you? Would you rather wake up tomorrow being told that you must give up your testicles because some men choose to rape?

Do you actually equate the right to choose with the idea all women will abort their pregnancies?

I find it's time to end this conversation, as you dismiss all the points I made except the ones you want to argue, again with an emotionally charged words, that may sound good but add no meaningful insight to the conversation . .

Look, you choose not to have an abortion, and you can even choose not to masturbate so that all your potential life givers don't get washed with your socks, and women will continue to shed potential life monthly, again not without pain and without choice.

You can either accept that in reality, you, wombless one, will never have to make this risky decision --and therefore have no right to deny it to a woman-- a choice that includes considerations safety of your body and your life, and as importantly the life you must have the choice to give birth to, and which requires all of your strength either way you decide.

Men have been legislating women's choices since recorded history, at least. That there are cultures that allow women to decide for themselves is a step forward in our human understanding and acceptance of the individual.

In the end society is made up of individuals and I think that by giving each the responsibility and freedom to choose creates a better social tomorrow. Not all will make the same choices, not all will agree, and that's fine, but unless you enjoy the idea of living under dictatorship, you might want to consider all the choices you have the freedom to make both as a man and a human being.

Abortion is not a black and white issue, it's not even a black and white choice.

"Let me make the argument even stronger. I have a conjoined twin. He is part of my body. Is it then okay for me to kill him? It's my body... who are you to question me?"

You have a conjoined twin!? Does he play webdiplomacy? What's his name?
... wait a minute. You'd better not be meta-gaming Thucydides!

spy, you are one of a good kind :)

I think abortion should be illegal until your child is 18. "Sorry Rick. You dropped out of school. You're on drugs. We're going to have to abort you."

Just kidding...

I apologize for not responding to everthing I've had several exams in these past few days. What I want is for any of you to respond to the "choice" and "freedom" that is removed from me when I want to murder someone, but can't. How do you respond to this, if freedom of choice is so paramount to you? You may argue that if I choose to end someone else's life, then it is his business as much as mine... but that is my argument in its essence. You may then argue that it is different when the person/being/life whatever you wan to call it is part of my body. Then how would you respond to a conjoined twin who wanted to kill his twin. It's part of his body, so what would you say? Does freedom of choice trump the right to life or not?

This is all I would like to hear as yet. Until you actually respond to it directly, I have to assume you're just avoiding the question because you don't like the answer.

I too value freedom highly. When someone states something I find stupid or misleading or offensive, I allow it, since it is their freedom to say it. It doesn't infringe on anyone else's right to the same thing. However, rights sometimes conflict.

There are a few important human rights, what we would like to think of as inalienable and given to every human being:

-Life
-Freedom (or choice)
-A subset would be physical autonomy, that is, no one can, for example, tell me what to do with my own body, or coerce me into doing something like that.
-Right to property
-Right to equality in the eyes of the justice system
-And a right to basic necessities (Like food, or education)

Now, when rights conflict, you have to develop a pecking order there. If my right to choose will interrupt Joe Smoe's right to choose, then you have a serious problem. You have to look at the situation and decide whose choice is more grave, perhaps, or better yet take it to court and exercise your right to equal representation before the law. However, if my right to a less-important right, for instance, the right to freedom of expression, infringes directly on someone's life... well then by golly I just lost the freedom of expression in that instance.

I guess an example I can think of there is if I know where my friend is, but I know that if I tell this gangster who's asking me, he'll just kill him, so I keep my mouth shut. I don't have freedom of expression there. A similar case is a journalist who knows the location of some soldiers, but doesn't publish their location since he knows that if he does they will be attacked.

So I think it is usually fairly accepted that freedom of expression is secondary to the right to life. Not everyone thinks that of course... but they are in a small minority as far as I can tell. In general, in fact, the right to life is the most basic right, because if one loses that right, all other rights become unimportant. If I'm dead... it doesn't really matter if I have the freedom of choice or not... I'm dead.

Therefore, the freedom of choice does override the importance of the right to life. So if I shoot my brother, I have violated his most basic right. If I turn a blind eye when I see someone being murdered, I have violated that person's most basic right. If I do not give someone medicine when I know it could save them, only because the medicine in "mine," I have violated his right to live.

The implications are enormous.. and I think you know where I'm going with them. It doesn't matter if I think my brother is a person or not. It doesn't even matter if I value his life or not. This doesn't give me leave to violate his right to life. To prevent people from violating these rights, we usually write laws that carry punishment for disobeying. This would be the basis of an anti-abortion law. I am in favor of the right to choose and the right to physical autonomy, but they will always be subservient to the right to life.

The nomenclature of the movements in the abortion debate is very stupid, but it can be informative. You have pro-life, and pro-choice. Obviously neither side wants to be painted as anti-choice or anti-life. So in order to decide between them, you have to choose which is more important to you: life, or choice?

Abortion is a spiritual issue. Government has shifted to seperating law from church. It shouldn't be this way. We, as a church, can only impact the people, not the government.

And seriously please stop trying to make it a gender equality issue. This has nothing to do with gender for me.

My personal view as I may have mentioned is that any father who impregnates a woman should be forced to raise the child. I hold myself to that standard anyway. So it's not as if there is some double standard. This is not about men legislating what women can and can't do. It applies as much to the doctor who performs the abortion as it does to the woman, and doctors can be female OR male. And if the woman could prove in court, where by the way she receives EQUAL treatment before the law, that she was somehow forced or coerced into getting the abortion by someone else, she might be able to get off.

I don't care who it is that's pregnant. There was a pregnant male (more of a hermaphrodite but still)... I would not have allowed him to get an abortion either.

Look, if choice were the only issue here, then you would have to get consent for the abortion not just from the aborter (the mother) but also from the aborted (the fetus). That's impossible so you must allow it to live.

How is abortion a spiritual issue I don't see that at all.

It's a matter between heaven or hell. I see no problem in abortion if I didn't believe in such things.

From a non-relgious perspective: The world is already overpopulated. Why not abort millions of fetuses to prevent a world full of famine?

@ Thucydides

>What I want is for any of you to respond to the "choice" and "freedom" that is removed from me when I want to murder someone, but can't.

I think that I already responded to this in the other thread (keeping freedom paramount too), so I didn't here. But I will here if you want me to.

I'm trying to figure out Thycidides, you're level of ingorance. Certainly you have ignored the reality of gender differences, the reality of women's subjegation throughout history, the life ending facts of war and that a fetus under 24 gestation CANNOT LIVE INDEPENDANTLY ON IT OWN,

In the mean time, one section at a time so that it is simple for you...

Didn't mean for that go to go quite yet, computer caflooey

To continue my list of your ignornaces...

And since women are smart enough, generally, to figure out a) if they can safely give birth 2) if the person who impregnated her will/can be a potential father to her child or not, it is her choice. You would rather the mother risk the life inside her to a fate worse than death? Yes, oddly I think you would.

Like I said I'm going to tackle your meaningless argument one stage at a time, as my time allows...