What do you think about abortion

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I am prolife and it breaks my heart to hear about abortion because somebody never got the chance to live.

And this is exactly why I'd say pro-life has a stronger logical position overall than pro-choice.

Pro-Life's typical answer to this is conception. It's a quick and easy answer, but a fairly strong point to defend a logical argument from.
Pro-choice's typical answer seems to vaguely mention something about "viability" that doesn't usually actually end up meaning much of anything in the end.

Even if the conception answer may not necessarily be a rock-solid instant-win button, it at least tends to stand a lot sturdier than the viability answer does when put under pressure...

Indeed. And yet we assign them a certain value.

How profound that is...we value the dead more than living, growing, developing babies.

This is what people understand by logic now.

There is nothing magical about human DNA. Just because a cell has it, it doesn't mean it has a soul or person hood. Conception is the absolute worst place to draw the line.

If you want solid lines, go for birth. At least I can say with certainty that once birth happens, we have a person there. In the case of conception. I can say with absolute certainty that the cell is not a person and does not deserve any rights. Let alone the "super rights" that would involve forcing another person to donate her body to make it work.




LOL!

Understatement of the week. "Personhood begins at conception" is the absolute least solid, most stupid idea ever.


A lot of the organic molecules in the food that you eat might never become a human life either. Poor molecules, were never given a chance.

With 7 billion people on the planet, this is hardly a tragedy.

I think that in theory a woman should have the right to abort up until the beginning of labor. In practice it should be until the fetus can survive being removed. There is no point in aborting if it's big enough to live if you take it out. Then it can be given away, plus from what I know about late term abortion techniques they seem as awful as giving birth.

What about ceasarian section?

I'm not sure what you mean but aren't those usually done after labor starts? Sometimes they aren't but that wouldn't matter because they wouldn't do them unless the fetus was viable. The until birth part was only in theory. If it's big enough to live you may as well take it out and give it away instead of aborting it.

You're splitting hairs in order to get out of the argument. You caused that child to be in the situation where it was dependent on you for its survival; it was entirely your choice to put him or her into the car, and your choice to drive. Even if, say, you ran a red light and caused the accident - you can't be compelled to donate the blood. Even if you're found criminally liable for the accident (most people who run red lights are not charged with murder, even if their child dies as a result), your body will remain your own even if your freedom is taken for a few years of prison time.

What amuses me most about these types of discussions is when people continuously attempt to present equivalent situations to being pregnant.

In truth, there's no other scenario wherein another person is directly hooked into your body's biological resources for their continuing survival.

At no point will I ever be required to sacrifice my body for the well-being of another person, regardless of whether or not I'm "responsible" for the current condition of said other person. I may be compelled by law to provide money, or I might forfeit my freedom, but my body's biological processes will forever remain my own. Period.

I will never have to surrender control of my blood, organs, ect. Never. Hence, if it's dependent on my body to live, it lives or dies at my discretion. I find the entire concept of "fetal rights" utterly ridiculous.

^ some of those situations are not meant to be equivalent to abortion, they just serve to clear up specific issues surrounding it. The one with the child is a good one to illustrate someone's beliefs on personal responsibility.

I have my own one too. If I was drunk-driving at very high speeds and ran over someone else and that person required an immediate heart transplant and I was the only one available, would there be a moral imperative to accept and give my life to save his? (Whether the state has the right to enforce this is a completely different matter, I just wish to know about the ethics of the situation)
I'd say I do, as it is simply not fair for someone else to pay the ultimate price because of my very obvious and stupid mistakes. I am pro-choice so I don't have any anti-abortion agenda, but I'd like to know where the others stand on the personal responsibility issue.

Actually, XFilesGeek is getting my point exactly. I've been trying to make that point, exactly, for pages, and the anti-abortion crowd keeps on trying to thrash themselves off the hook by contorting this way and that, throwing out nearly meaningless claims about the supposed requirements of rescuers, health care providers, etc. and trying to claim that consenting to sex is the same as consenting to be pregnant for nine months.

I get that, but I feel that the "personal responsibility" involved in pregnancy has no real equivalent.

The "personal responsibility" of having someone physically hooked into your biological processes and dependent on them for life is a unique situation unto itself. I find that attempting to compare it to other situations that are "sort of similar" isn't telling the whole story.

There's no situation, legal, moral, or otherwise where I'm compelled to enter into what amounts to a parasitic relationship with another human for the continued existence of the other human. Some people seem to think that being required to pay sums of cash for restitution, or serving jail time is equal to the aforementioned scenario.

I respectively disagree.

I believe that people are entitled to full rights over their own bodies. Other people's "needs" do not affect my ownership of my own body - it is still mine to do with as I wish.

Applying this to abortion, I believe it is a woman's right to have a fetus removed from her body when she no longer wishes to carry it. It is not her right to kill it, as such, but if that kills it then so be it.

The more difficult question is: what should be done with the fetus after it's removed from the mother's body? If there is a reasonable chance of it surviving then reasonable efforts should be made to allow it to live and, if it does live, it would be treated the same as a baby abandoned at birth. If there is no reasonable chance of survival it should be euthanised to spare it any unnecessary pain. Obviously "reasonable chance" and "reasonable efforts" are difficult, subjective decisions, but doctors already have to make such decisions all the time.

I think this way of looking at it conveniently avoids the whole question of "where do we draw the line between 'not a person' and 'person'?" - it makes no difference here.

But isn't the mother (partly) responsible for conceiving? Of course, in many cases she is. That matters morally, but not legally. Yes, she is causing suffering if she intentionally conceives and then leaves the abortion until a time when the fetus is capable of feeling pain - that is immoral. However, any penalty imposed for doing this would be counter-productive, as it would only discourage her from having a safe abortion, not from having one at all. I think it goes without saying that even greater harm would be done by forcing her to raise a child she does not want.

Indeed. Also note the difference between parent-child relationships and host-parasite relationships. The expectation of parent-child is that the child is only temporarily dependent on the parent. Parasites have no intention of independence. They aren't even concerned with moving to a different host if the one they inhabit dies. They like where they are and have no desire to move.

A mother's body will normally expel the baby in due time, on the other hand, and each stage of human development engenders a new level of independence. Humans are a little unique in that full independence is a choice we can make with our adult children--I honestly wouldn't mind if every one of my children wanted to stay at home after school or college. They'll just have to work for me and contribute to the household maintenance and finances, as will their own children if and when that time comes. It's the old "you live under my roof, you live by my rules" kind of thing. But, again, that's a choice that can possibly be made between parents/children/grandchildren in a SYMBIOTIC relationship. Parent-child relationships CAN be parasitic--college graduate bounces back home, can't(read "won't") get a job, and is perfectly content to sit on the couch all day eating chips and playing video games while mom is perfectly content with the situation and dad keeps getting headaches wondering where all the money is going.

Where it becomes a problem is where we have circumstances we have no control over. No baby ever chose to be conceived. I think if you compel a baby to be conceived, the least you could do is allow it to be born. The point of something being a parasite is to never realize its independence and in so doing potentially harm the host (which will never benefit from its presence). Human babies are not parasites for two reasons: 1) The temporary nature of its developmental stages within the parent's body, and 2) It is a HUMAN BEING rather than a foreign species. If it is a human being and poses no harm to another human being, it is worthy of the same rights to life as any of us.

The sad thing: According to the reality of our society, children are seen as parasites. Parasites, that costs companies the working craft and availability of their workers. Parasites that costs men the full focus of their potential new girlfriend. I dont think that there will be many woman aborting out of fun. There are woman aborting because people could blame them for having a kid without father. Woman aborting because of them knowing that companies wont give them jobs anymore, if they cant give them their full availability. Woman aborting because of not being able to pay the medical costs for a pregnancy. Woman aborting because not being able to pay the flat anymore, that there already existing kids need to not sleep on the street. Woman because of us blaming women, that are giving their kids to adoption. I think its pretty lame, to point on certain subjects, for something that we as society are responsible for. If we want more kids to be given a chance, we simply should turn into a society, where kids are no misadvanting parasites, but what we claim them to be: Advantages to us all.

And maybe increasing the knowledge about possibilities and risks different kind of contraceptions, wouldnt be that bad as well, and prevent many needless abortions.