Question for 'pro-lifers'

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It's great that you have embraced these values in your life and it seems to be working for you. But why do you think it is valid to extrapolate from this that everyone should behave in keeping with your beliefs?

I don't see it forcing my beliefs or value system on others, I see it as protecting life. I consider myself a libertarian and consider myself pretty cognizant of not infringing on others but protecting our rights is the legitimate function of the state and the right to life being the most basic fundamental of them.

So am I right to assume that you do support the right to bodily autonomy, but you think the right to life trumps it? Even though there is no way the baby could live outside the womb, it's potential life as a viable human, trumps her bodily autonomy?

I don't oppose the concept of bodily autonomy, the right to life is the most fundamental right tho yes. Dependency doesn't end at birth, as I said in the previous post an newborn infant is for all intents and purposes more dependent than before birth. Most people in general are dependent on others for survival on some level.

I'm uncertain your motivations, you haven't used devolved into the open slut-shaming that usually accompanies the she had sex, she deserves to be punished with an unwanted pregnancy argument. Whether that's because you reject that logic or just are choosing to be careful with your words can't really be determined. Not all anti-choicers adopt the position due to religious views and you haven't mentioned 'God' among your reasons so I never made any assumptions as to your religious views.

Whether or not you believe yourself to hate women you are, in effect, making their interests subservient to those of an unwanted entity occupying their bodies. This can't be described as anything but anti-woman whether or not it's consciously motivated by misogyny. You don't have to be a rabid woman-hater to take a position that dehumanizes women. Allowing the state to overrule their interest in their own body by forcing them to allow another being to use their body against their will can't possibly avoid dehumanizing those effected.

No person under any circumstances would have rights similar to those you propose a fetus has; the right, in effect, to enslave the owner of the body hosting it until the pregnancy reaches term or naturally miscarries.

I believe you're entitled to use lethal force to resist someone attempting to enslave you if required.



People use the animal analogy to try to demonstrate the differences in intellectual ability and self-awareness between a fetus and born humans, but a more reasonable analogy is to the HeLa culture. HeLa is undeniably human tissue. HeLa is undeniably an independent entity from all other living humans. HeLa is undeniably a non-person. An embryo or early stage fetus is much more comparable to HeLa than to a newborn baby.

Unrelated, when I went to elementary school my elementary school was a Catholic school. I was brainwashed into accepting the anti-choice position and understand their arguments and reasoning inside and out. They ignore the question of autonomy by arguing your body belongs to God. Since I've never really believed in the concept of deities this was never a sound argument to me, even when I accepted their conclusions. When I was 16 I had a girlfriend who had become pregnant at the age of 11. Clearly an abortion was required. The girl was tormented mercilessly for the rest of her elementary and high school career until she left the province upon graduation. She'd be tormented by people screaming 'baby killer' or slut-shaming her. They made her life miserable. All of a sudden I saw the end result of anti-choice beliefs, they elevate the value of an unwanted pregnancy over the value of the person carrying it. I've held essentially the same views I hold now since then.

If you sincerely accept the concept of bodily autonomy and believe the woman has at least an equal degree of ownership over her body as the fetus does, there's only one morally sound stance to take on the position of the legality of abortion.



The nature of the dependency changes at birth. Born children occupy no one's body. The two are not directly analogous.

Sure thing

I strongly believe cognitive function is more important than common descent. I think killing a human is wrong because we want to stay alive so very much, we make plans for our future, we have an awareness of our continuing future. But it's the humanity that is important, not the human DNA. The unborn do not have humanity.

I do think basing the value of life on common descent is immoral and irrational, and once you get away from common descent there isn't any reason to value an embryo above bacteria, or a foetus above a chicken. I'm clearly not going to convince you though.

It CAN be amusing AT TIMES to watch human beings pontificate, yes pontificate, their dominance among other animals simply because they have abilities to talk AND WRITE.

Truly complex language and cognitive empathy is all that separates HUMANS from other animals and is the core basis for HUMAN'S complex written languages and cultures, along with religions that say humans have a RIGHT to dominate all other animals and the earth that holds those animals lives.

The truth is all things are connected and when imbalances in the interdependent relationship of all things, aka GOD come, bad things happen.

It's not hard to see that, at least from 'mid-space' traveling back from the moon, seeing how the imbalance of strength in the virus of human cultures, which are NOT virus as human alone, are a cancer on this earth, and this is not by purview of fundamentalist religious folks, this is by purview of scientists and astronauts the same.

Many fundamentalist religious folks find joy in raping and pillaging the earth THAT is our home and lifeblood TOO.

In the big scheme of things, abortion is truly a blessing to GOD, nah, not the made up GOD of man, the TRUE GOD of Mother Nature that only holds balance and survival in 'esteem'. That's just a metaphor by the way, GOD is not man, alone, with anthropomorphic feelings alone, obviously, it would seem, for folks with eyes and ears, that CAN see and hear THAT.

So in reality per the balance of all there is, a bacterium, a fetus, or an Einstein all hold the same value for balance and life.

There are no differences in life, but life.

Killing a cat, a human, a HUMAN FETUS, or an ant tilling the soil for plants, is no different in the big scheme of things of Mother Nature True aka GOD.

But truly humans are out of control, so abortion, is just another one of Mother Nature's true tools to take care of Mother Nature True's 'sense' of balance.

Balance is truth.

Everything, and I do mean everything else, that humans have illusions for are just that:

Illusion and:

Blabbering Pontification, including me of course, as no animal is excluded in True Mother Nature's
"Children's" ignorance of simply how IT ALL works together as ONE.

There are enough humans, more than enough, but humans have empathy, and 'real' humans per the empathic type do not 'NORMALLY' want to see a fetus killed as a fetus is a human, and no other species, and that is just Zoology 101.

Only humans are 'smart' enough to put qualifications on the VALUE of their own species or other species based on intelligence, and characteristics like talking and seeing oneself in the mirror as self.

That part is what leads to the cancer of culture destroying the earth and other species in a slow and tortuous death, not the empathy part, alone, that all social animals share to some degree, as what we describe as humanity as an empathic species, not the other stuff alone.

In much smaller human groups where resources are abundant enough, and sharing not collecting is key for survival, the child is the prize, not the virus. The cooperation of people, not technology, moreover, is what makes survival possible. Nor is culture a virus either, when in balance with Mother Nature True aka GOD. Those are the TRULY SMART HUMANS, the ones who SIMPLY LIVE in BALANCE.

The meek WILL INHERIT the earth, per balance, that part never changes.

Ask a roach OR DRAGONFLY, and IT won't have to give you the answer. ITs mere existence IS the answer:

Survival in balance.

So far roaches AND DRAGONFLIES are truly smarter than humans as far as the most important skill of life, survival goes.

Will humans last as long as roaches OR DRAGONFLIES:

Certainly NOT LIKELY, when viewed from 'mid-space', per the BIG PICTURE VIEW.

But ROACHES and dragonflies are humble enough, to likely still, inherit the earth.

So go-ahead step on them, OR SWAT THEM, they already have a 'plan'.

Meanwhile humans pontificate on whether it is right or wrong to kill their own.

But GOD already knows better, Mother Nature TRUE 'says', go ahead, please do ABORT, you are making problems here and ARE WEARING OUT YOUR WELCOME.

THAT PART IS CLEAR TO SEE FROM 'MID-SPACE' FOR SURE.

ARE HUMANS SMART ENOUGH TO FIGURE THAT PART OUT:

I HOPE they are as an idealist, but as a realist, again, the answer is growing clearer from 'Mid-Space', and once again that's for sure:

OUR SURVIVAL AS ANIMALS/HUMANS, FETUS OR NOT, IS LARGELY UP TO US, AT THIS POINT, AT LEAST.

IT'S as simple as BALANCE, but WE MAKE IT SO DAM HARD TO DO.

All in JUST my opinion, of course, with a BIG TOOTHY GRIN, why not...:)

This is not correcct for two important reasons: first, an infant is breathing on its own, digesting on its own, circulating blood on its own, etc. It does not constantly require the equivalent of a heart/lung machine in order to survive. Second, an infant is transferable, weras a zef is not. The work of caring for an infant can be spread across many people, while a zef can only be cared for by one.


What about adoption?
Wrt. the analogy, what if the two individuals were in fact related by blood? What if it was a father and son?

How do you define 'person,' and why does it matter whether it's alive? As Aghogday points out, lots of living chickens are killed every day and we don't bat an eye, and those chickens probably felt more fear and pain than the 90% or more of embryos that are aborted in the first trimester.

If people want fewer abortions, a better policy would be to educate people, lift them out of povery and make sure everyone has access to contraception. People mostly base their position on abortion along religious lines anyway. The debate gets resolved when the majority of people are no longer religious.

Being pro-life is being against the ACTIVE killing of human life in the form of a fetus (murder).
I'm not murdering anyone by keeping my organs to myself.

Then assume you wake up and find yourself attached to another person. Disconnecting will kill them. Do you have a duty to remain attached, no matter how much you are inconvenienced?

Conservatives believe that the abortion problem can be solved by building more prisons. The real solution is too make abortion obsolete. In the future
If a woman has an unwanted pregnancy she has the fetus transplanted into an artificial womb.

Why stop at mandatory organ donations?

Every orgasm a man has that is not inside a woman fertilising her eggs is arguably preventing a possible life from being born.

From the moment a female is physically able to give birth, every time she chooses not to, she is arguably preventing a possible life from being born.

If I choose to spend $50 on essential groceries for myself, I am arguably killing a human being in a third world country who may have needed that $50 for essential medical supplies to live.

By virtue of every choice we make, we are making other choices. By responding to your question here, I am procrastinating from researching the cure for cancer, potentially indirectly killing millions. You're asking the wrong question, for what purpose?

If you're going to challenge one thing (pro-life) based on another (organ donation), be prepared to have your challenge challenged by the same shaky parameters on which it was raised!

Without accepting what I'm guessing is an underlying premise that this is somehow equivalent to abortion and the mother's choice, yes I think I do.
If you're going to bring up bodily rights, the person I'm attached to in your scenario we've already acknowledged is a 'person', therefore he unarguably has a right to life, and a conflicting right to HIS body.
therefore if he does wish to remain attached, his right to life is what remains.
I would also like to say I believe the right to life takes precedence over one's bodily rights anyway, which is mostly why I am not 'pro-choice'.

However, I'll admit in this case I would probably disregard my 'duty', and detach myself.
And if I couldn't, I'd just kill myself.

"Not every sperm deserves a name" - George Carlin


Er no, because if you choose to stop eating purely because someone somewhere else is starving, then you too will die. Not only will you not save this hypothetical person the net loss to the global population will be two rather than one.

This is rather a nebulous concern, as it assumes that you have the intelligence to discover the cure from cancer when it has so far apparently, eluded the world's brightest minds.

Ok. I will look forward to seeing this challenge of yours.

A foetus has no 'rights' because they have no legal status.

For the same reason foetuses aren't included on census records.