Abortion

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Comparing abortion to drug use is stupid.

How so?

It was you who posited a similarity. Justify this.

i'm all about legalizing drugs.

Ditto, but it's still stupid to compare it to abortion rights. They are two different things.

Sighold, if you can't take an honest approach to this subject, shut up. I see what you're trying to do here. NTs do it all the time. You're conflating two unrelated issues for the sake of mischaracterizing the ethical concerns of the one being scrutinized. If you're just going to try to fool with and distort the issue, go away.

No, I'm just asking if it the mere fact that legalising things makes crime drop, means that it's necessarily morallly okay. It's hard to find another way of putting it. Let me put it another way: Something being legal, doesn't necessarily make it morally acceptable.

Personally, I can't really say I'm "pro-life" or "pro-choice".

Though, if I was forced to choose one or the other, I would opt for "pro-choice" since as far as I'm concerned, choices are good, the more the merrier. However, a lot of the mentalities of the pro-choice argument seem to filled with people trying to nullify the responsibility of what they're doing.

Like for example, the expressions "Put the dog down", "She passed away", etc. are pretty ridiculous since one would be shunning any attempt at accepting the reality that one is murdering the dog, or that the woman is dead, it seems kind of pathetic to me that one has to use these soft words. At least admit what you are doing and try not to rationalise it as something less, this kind of behaviour is in tune with the kind of people that would rationalise destructive, violent behaviour as something casual. While I'm taking a shower, I'm killing all sorts of organisms. =P

As far as pro-life, I can't think of any of their arguments that stand up since I don't really consider humans, animals, plants, and bacteria all that different from one another. You don't hear about all of the dead people or extinct lifeforms preaching about the sacredness of life, do you? Why? Because they're dead. n_n;

From each side we have:

Pro-choice
1) My body and I can do what I want with it
2) It's not a human just a bunch of cells
3) It can't survive without the mother
4) A fetus doesn't feel pain
5) It doesn't effect anyone
6) Harvesting of stem cells

Counter argument
1) Hmm, true but doesn't that basically say that the law doesn't apply to you as well? The law tells you what you can and cannot do with your body, doesn't it? Basically the argument is of free will but this can not be used to justify an abortion since it would justify drugs, crime, and just about anything.

2) Then are you willing to say that at a time you weren't human? You were a bunch of cells once, weren't you? You disvalue your own existence by saying such. By agreeing, you agree that you were NOT always human.

3) Thus you don't consider parasites living organisms then. Most cannot survive without a host. Whether or not a parasite causes harm is not a factor what matters is that it needs a host to survive much like a fetus needs a mother for nutrients. Also can a baby survive on its own without the care of someone else? It's the same point dependence on another. On a side note adoption would be kind of like brood parasites considering the parents don't raise the young.

4) That's saying if I dope you up on pain killers to the point where you don't feel anything I can kill you. You don't feel it thus it isn't inhumane. The end of a life isn't a factor just the fact that you don't feel yourself die. Thanks for trying to legalise a type of murder.

5) That is a variable on who it effects since friends and family may disagree with it causing emotional harm. Maybe to the woman who has it if she doesn't fully agree a.k.a guilt. Whether they care is the factor. Of course this argument doesn't holds up if the woman doesn't care and doesn't tell anyone about her abortion

6) The ending of a life to save an existing life. I personally have no argument against stem cell research but to state the opposing is that you end one life to help an existing one. Of course most don't consider a fetus a living thing thus it's not murder to them.

Now for the other side of the argument

Pro-Life
1) Those group of cell are a living being
2) It has potential to become something
3) If they didn't want the kid they shouldn't have had sex
4) Religion
5) You don't give the fetus a chance

Counter argument
1) So is bacteria but you don't have a problem killing them. If you believe killing cells is murder then you are guilty of mass genocide on a microscopic level. If you believe it's murder because it's human however then that means you disvalue anything that isn't human. By doing so you must agree that abortion is okay on anything that isn't human which still doesn't change the fact you're still condoning abortion.

2) Potential isn't always good. You have the potential to be anything. To help and to hurt. That argument is a double-edged sword which destroys itself. You can't preach about the potential to be a doctor if you don't preach about the potential to become a drug dealer.

3) They have many ways to prevent pregnancy such as condoms and the morning after pill but what if a case of rape? They didn't want to have sex yet they still ended up pregnant then what? This argument doesn't hold up against when one is forced. You argue about personal responsibility yet you forget accidents happen. If they're responsibly used condoms, birth control pills, ect. and still end up pregnant then how are they irresponsible. They responsibly tried not to get pregnant but failed, then what?

4) Don't push your belief on other people. I don't believe in your god thus so why should I have to listen to your religious dogma? People have the freedom to think what they want and to have their own personal opinion on everything whether you are or not.

5) Neither do the animals or plants we kill for food. How about veil or the aborted fruits we eat? They don't get a say, we do as we please to them. They are living creatures and it is murder by all standards as it's an end of another life in every way. The food chain says we must kill to live... unless you're a plant then you can make you own food from sunlight. If you don't agree on killing an animal that has no say in its death then your argument is invalid.

These are the basic arguments on both sides of the debate. I personally don't care about a fetus getting aborted even though I consider it murder. I'm self-centered and it doesn't affect me thus I ignore it. Humans, animals, plants, fungi, protists, and monerans die everyday. Life isn't sacred. Get used to it.

Something that interests me much more than whether or not abortion should be legal (I'm leaning toward it being legal since the less humans I have to deal with in the future, the better), would be the subject of parents who want to have a baby, but decide to kill the fetus because it isn't up to their standards. We're already doing it with Downs Syndrome babies, it'll only be a matter of time before people start aborting babies because they have a high likelihood to be homosexual or some other genetic divergence. Also, if it's all right to kill a fetus, would it then not be criminal to somehow construct something that kills all fetuses without the parent's knowledge or consent? '~'

No, and being illegal doesn't make them immoral. You could make it illegal to object to the actions of the government and have millions of dissatisfied people carted off to prison, but this still wouldn't affect its moral status. Being a fa***t wasn't immoral during the Fifties, but we were still carted off to prison for it. This is all beside the point, though.

That wasn't the point, though. It wasn't a moralistic argument. It was a practical one. Besides, my main reason for supporting abortion rights is that there are plenty of women out there who'd have my head if I didn't.

Exactly, griffin. Things can be legal and moral, illegal and moral, legal and immoral or illegal and immoral.

And you were the one who posted that it was a ridicolous comparison. Please justify that assertion.

They have nothing to do with each other, and they are in no way alike.

Yes, but I can't see a single moral problem with abortion. In fact, it's despicable to deprive women of this right, which is why they'd have my head on a platter if I didn't support them. It's a little obscene to in any way coerce a woman to continue with a pregnancy. Lewd.

the obvious solution to this issue is for someone to invent a mechanical human embryo/fetus incubator...and then all the excess babies could be sent to vatican city or something...they want 'em they got 'em

Pro-choice, but uneasy with late term abortions that aren't for medical reasons. The reason is that I'm not happy with the idea that a foetus can be aborted at an age where it could also be delivered prematurely and have a decent chance of surviving. For me, the cut-off point is that where survival outside the womb becomes possible.

However, I'm not a woman, and I've never had to deal with abortion personally. So both of these things make my opinion less valuable.

Actually...that's pretty much the best articulation of my own opinions that I've ever seen. For me, though, it's because the "fetus" can perceive things similarly to ourselves by about halfway through the third trimester. I'm wholeheartedly with you on the opinion of a male not counting for much.

I think anything someone wants to do to an unborn child they ought to try on themselves first, just to make sure no harm is done.