What do you think about abortion

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Before anything, I just want to clarify that the "rights" that I'm saying of the unborn child is its right to be born/exist (irregardless of its current status; ex: if it's already an embryo or not). Now if that's clarified, then...

Yes. The main idea behind the Beethoven fallacy is the causal connection of an X event producing a unique and non repeatable Y event that could have not existed if X event is stopped/hindered. In your case, the idea is that every unborn child has the "potential" to be something, and thus, should be given the chance to exist.



I think this is a wrong analogy. Anyways, why did it come to infants vs elderly dementia patients? Aren't we arguing about unborn children's right to be born? So if we correct your analogy then, it would be unborn child vs dementia patient, which is downright wrong, because dementia patients already existed in the world, while unborn child...well...still doesn't exist.


Sorry but I wasn't arguing whether abortion is moral or immoral, I don't think I;m commiting the appeal to law fallacy here. What I meant to say is that the unborn child (or anything that still hasn;t existed) has no ability to choose for themselves. It is still inside the woman, and is a part of the woman, thus all the choices are to the woman, and all the rights are to the woman. If you're gonna put up again the dementia patient analogy, although they are incapable of deciding, they are independent people that already existed and are known or loved by few people which can provide the choice for them.



Now that is a red herring. My argument was about the potential of a life form on whatever means it can be created. The point whether it is already an embryo or a single sperm cell from a male is irrelevant. The counter-argument you posted tackles an argument saying that "X event is the start of human life, and thus, should be treated like human, while Y event can still develop into more possible outcome where human life is one of its outcome".


Sorry but this is irrelevant. You are assuming that I am arguing based on the premise that the woman already has an embryo on its body. Again the argument I'm attacking is the "right to exist of something that is still non-existential".
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If you want, we can start a debate about your "embryo is the start of human life" argument. Just say it clear and I will post a counter-argument.

You're the one who shifted from my premise (my mother agreeing to support my body with hers for 9 months, and then changing her mind) to rescuers and HCP's. For your statements about HCP's and obligated rescue to be relevant with reference to my hypothetical, then the HCPs in question must be obligated to be with their patient for 9 months. Which is slavery. No law in the US allows an HCP or any other worker to be forced to work for any length of time without the option of quitting, regardless of the impact that their quitting has on anyone else. If the nurses go on strike, then the hospital has to either hire scabs or ship their patients elsewhere and close their doors; they can't force the nurses en masse back to the bedsides at gunpoint.


You absolutely do NOT have a 'right' not to get into an MVA, I agree;
however, you do, I believe, have a right to treatment for any adverse issues which come up as a result of having sex/driving a car, such as broken legs, pregnancy, collapsed lungs, and STDs, It is not medically valid to say, 'well, you chose a risky behavior, so now deal with the consequences by yourself.' As far as whether or not it's a loss to be pregnant, the fact that you consider it 'a new creation' does not make it universally so; for many women, an unwanted pregnancy is *worse* psychologically, socially, and even physically than a moderate car accident. Yes, by definition, abortion is the 'fix' for an unwanted pregnancy regardless of what you call it. Like a thorotomy for a hemothorax, it is not without pain and consequences of its own - but it is, by far, the best of the options available for many women.

This is where I think you and I can never find common ground.

You fundamentally look at the fertilized egg as some kind of "injury" to a woman when I see it as the beginning of a 100% normal, healthy and natural life process.

Absent rape, I see no way to look upon pregnancy as an "inflicted injury" upon any woman. You apparently see it differently.

I can not see a normal, healthy and natural life process as something a person has an inherent right to destroy just because they find it inconvenient or undesired. There are better options for people so inclined that do not require destroying that new life process.

The fact you don't see doesn't mean it's not there. I used to think similarly, I wondered whether a process that has been around for a hundred million years and through all of human evolution could be so bad; yes, it can.
A realization I came with recently was the huge difference between a wanted and an unwanted pregnancy. If it is wanted then it's alright, the mother wishes to go through it and the discomforts will be mostly physical, or even if there is pain she will go through it willingly because she wants that baby. But unwanted pregnancies seem like a total nightmare to me. The woman has all of the reasons to not want the baby inside her, but the hormonal changes and her physical changes will work as a constant reminder of what she's going though. There is nothing to look forward to but an unwanted baby. When they suggest abortion they will be treated as monsters, and will find almost no support from their loved ones. They will feel as if society is forcing them to go against their own will, and well, society IS forcing them. Some of them will just kill themselves. Others will go to the back of a van knowing the risks because they are just that desperate. Even if it's done legally with the full power of medicine ensuring the mother is fine after it, I had it from a source close to that kind of events that no woman she knows feels happy about having had an abortion, they feel like sh*t, which shows how much worse they must have been feeling of they decided to go through it anyway.
All in all, if a woman says she is going through psychological distress, there is no other option but to believe her. Even if you "can't see how it could be", you cannot accommodate or dismiss the facts to fit your worldviews, you must adapt your worldviews to the facts. As beautiful as pregnancy could look like, it can also go terribly awry.

But this begs the question, if you were not raped, and you didn't want to be pregnant, why CHOOSE to do things that expose you to that risk then demand to be able to do something about if after you get an outcome you knew could happen when you first CHOSE to do what resulted in pregnancy?

Let's look at this a different way.

A woman gets pregnant. The father doesn't want the kid. The woman wants to have the kid. By law, she can bring the kid to term, birth it, and then legally force the father to financially support the kid (and perhaps her as well) for the next 18 years and use the mechanisms of the legal system to punish the father if he doesn't do as the court orders.

A woman gets pregnant. She doesn't want the kid. The father wants it, offers to take full custody and not seek a penny in child support from the mother. All she has to do is bring it to term and birth it and her role is done...forever. She retains the right to terminate the pregnancy and the father (who is genetically 50% "owner" of the fetus) gets no say or legal protection.

How is the woman being "inconvenienced" by doing something for 9 months but a man isn't similarly burdened by being compelled against his will for the next 18 years? I've not met anyone who can make a logical argument for how this is equality under the law.

People do a lot of things with potential bad outcomes that they just hope won't happen.

It's not really realistic to expect everyone that never wants kids to be celibate for their entire lives.

First, and I said it before, contraception can fail, and expecting people to be completely celibate or sterilize themselves before they can have sex is simply unreasonable. And even if protection was not used, I believe the psychological impact on a living woman of going through an unwanted pregnancy is very undesirable; I agree she was irresponsible but it doesn't warrant making her pay and feel awful, for the sake of an embryo.



Inconvenience, you keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means.
First, the injustice of the family court system is not directly related to the topic of abortion. If there is an injustice then it must certainly be taken care of, but even if men get screwed there that is no reason to screw women as well by denying them their right of self-determination. All in all, I think there are laws that allow a woman to give her child up in adoption, there should be a similar option for men. But really, I do not think this is directly related.

Abortion is ok IMO.
What if a woman is raped, she gets pregnant, and she is poor and couldn't take care of the baby (let's suppose she's in an underdeveloped country where nobody cares for adoptions)? If she gave birth to the baby, that baby could die of hunger, and that would be an agonizing death.

I don't think I'll ever need an abortion, because if I ever engaged in sex without wanting a baby I'd use protections; unless I'd be raped, of couse. In that case, I would either abort or give the baby to a family to be adopted.
I neither know if I'll ever have sex in first place. I'm not really interested in it.

Well, if you do some research into ALL of the medical risks/consequences of having an abortion including the psychological/emotional issues many women experience years later (regretting having the procedure), I would propose that celibacy is both more desirable and easier than choosing to risk getting pregnant and using abortion as a means to avoid having to go through with that pregnancy.

So many argue as if we are incapable of resisting our sexual urges.

It makes me think of a line from How I Met Your Mother when Ted learned a woman he was dating hadn't had sex in 3 years. Her answer was that men regret the things they didn't do. Women regret the things they do, and for the last 3 years, she has had no regrets.

I have urges. I have needs. Granted, I'm over 40 and not quite as horny as I was as 18, but I'm still alive. I've not been with another for over a decade. There are other ways to get release. If you don't want the consequence, you can choose to avoid the cause of the consequence. It's not all that hard. It just takes some discipline.

People in general have sex. Teachig abstinence does not work; it is known that abstinence-only sex education fails hard, and results in a higher amount of teen pregnancies than other kinds of education. Perhaps you'd think it would be better if people could just abstain; and perhaps you're right, but we should not base out decisions on how we wish the world was; we should base then on how the world actually is. Preaching abstinence to everyone just won't work.
Also, I think LKL posed this one before: every time you cross the street you run the risk of getting ran over and dying or being seriously hurt. Does it mean you should never cross any street ever? Perhaps you take care and look to both sides, as people use contraception, but what if there is some reckless driver around, or you slip up and fall? Or even if you cross recklessly and something happens, do you deserve being left there without receiving any help?

Maybe it is but most people aren't going to be willing to go most of their life never having sex unless they are taking some kind of extreme religious vow or just hate sex.

Well, maybe then we should also be "preaching" responsibility for choices. If you choose to have sex, you run the risk of getting pregnant. Are you prepared for that possibility? Should you be having sex if you don't want to deal with it?

When I was in school, there were women who insisted that a man should always have condoms because it was "his job" to be prepared.

I'm thinking, "WTF?" If YOU don't want to get pregnant and you don't want to have an issue over whether your chosen partner is prepared or not, why not make it YOUR responsibility to be equally prepared so there is no issue? The idea of a woman saying she doesn't want to get pregnant but not pack protection so she's prepared no matter what seems like a choice to not take any responsibility for her own choices.

I was not aware preaching was a loaded word. And yes, people must be responsible for their actions. But going through one abortion is punishment enough, as Kjas said in a previous post, she knows no woman who has undergone an abortion without feeling bad about it. Imagine how worse an unwanted pregnancy is, if abortion seems like the better choice. I think the best education is to teach people to be mindful of the people they have sex with and always use contraception, there is a correlation between the knowledge a woman has of contraceptive methods and her chances of an unplanned pregnancy.

And no, it's both people's job. No condoms, no sex, and it's as much the woman's loss as the man. Some women I know have relied on the day after pill after having unprotected sex with their partners, I always let them know how much I disapprove of that. But that doesn't mean I'd force them or pressure them to "take responsibility" and carry an unwanted baby to term, a woman in that situation needs support, not scorn.

I would like to address this point.

Some men, in some places, even *most* men, go full steam ahead actually hoping that the woman will not stop them and not make them wear a condom. I know far too many who actively try to avoid it. Some refuse to wear them at all, even when asked. Solely for the fact that they cannot feel, or it does not feel as good.

No matter what you say, it's not solely the woman's responsibility. I have had guys who are really good about that, every time. And there are others who take every damn opportunity to get out of it. It's their responsibility as much as it is ours. But that attitude I have spoken of is incredibly harmful to the whole issue, and it's not as uncommon as people would like to think.

Blah blah blah.

You can CHOOSE not to stay pregnant, thanks to abortion.

The decision to have a children is not made until you decide "So now that I know I am pregnant, I won't abort".

That's the point where you decide to have children. Not when you have sex.

Also, what happens if you have consensual sex, intending to have children and a week later you are fired? It would be better to abort in that case. That's real life for you, sometimes plans change. And you would have to be anti-women and anti-poor not to celebrate that this woman can make that decision in that case.

So do you think that father's right kicks in after birth?

I'm not judging just curious. It is a very tricky question.