Methodical approach to abortion discussion

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One of the reasons that discussions regarding abortion never go anywhere is that both "sides" seem to agree on only one thing: deceive the other guy before he deceives you first. It represents the worst aspects of neurotypical thought processes. For this sort of forum, this is a double-failure on our part: for one thing, we are failing to exercise the redeeming qualities that are found in people who have Asperger Syndrome; for another, we are exercising the most shameful behaviors of so-called NTs (as if there is any such thing).

Asperger Syndrome represents something very important in modern society. The man for which it was named argued that certain individuals, although they suffered from disabilities according to a normal measure, could contribute accomplishments, skills, and ideas that no other human being ever could. The fact that we recieve this diagnosis rather than something less flattering, such as "high functioning autism," clearly articulates that our society believes that, in spite of our painfully obvious faults, we can contribute something special. Wouldn't helping make controversial subjects easier to discuss productively be an excellent contribution, then?

The components of Asperger Syndrome I would like to call on here are as follows:

1. Our affinity for putting things into order. For the purpose of this discussion, we need to approach every element of the discussion one thing at a time. We must not become impatient. This controversy has gone nowhere at all for more than one-third of a century based on the thinking of people who lack patience. People who want to complete a task quickly and effectively take their time, and they shun messy and inherently inefficient approaches. To maintain this, I ask you all to ignore any post that does not honor this attribute of Asperger Syndrome.

2. Our skill in solving puzzles. I want to spend at least ten pages NOT to a push-pull-shove-yank feud. Instead, I would like to start out by taking the subject apart, one piece at a time. Working as individuals, try to bring to light the individual pieces of this controversy. If you can disassemble your father's watch, you can disassemble a decades-old controversy. To honor this, try to keep in mind that you are working with a puzzle, just like any other.

3. Preferring to work on our own. When approaching this discussion, remember one important thing: you are alone. You are alone in your bedroom, at your terminal, in your office, in your very mind. You don't have anybody breathing down your neck. You aren't in a footrace. You can relax. Although you should use the ideas that are presented here by others, ignore the person they came from. To honor this, try to ignore posts in which someone addresses you or him/herself directly. People don't exist. They don't matter. Ideas are either bad or good. If they are bad, they don't matter. They warrent no attention at all unless it could be entertaining to take them apart for examination.

4. Lacking "theory of mind." In this case, we are taking advantage of the difficulty we have at working out the intentions of other people. Worse, many of us are poor at speaking persuasively. Don't even try. Persuading people, one way or the other, is not within the scope of this thread. Don't respond to posts that are designed to be persuasive. Don't under any circumstances attempt to assess what is on another person's mind.

5. Our truthfulness. Do not bear false testimony. Do not claim that you hold beliefs that you do not in fact have. Do not make fabrications regarding human biology. Make no attempt at mendacity whatsoever. In the interest of honoring this, do not respond to posts that appear to have mendacious intentions. Being untruthful, especially on a forum designed for people who have AS, is Epic Fail #1. People who have AS have difficulty constructing fabrications. Not only this, but we have very few safeguards against them. In fact, some of us, like myself, tend to come down with paranoid mental confusion when confronted with situations in which it is uncertain who or what can be believed, and, speaking from my own experience, this can be painful and traumatizing. Let me put this in bold and underline it, just in case some of you didn't get it: any attempt at mendacity at all, on this kind of forum, is like lighting up a cigarette in an unventilated room that is packed with people who suffer from either asthma, nicotine allergy, heart trouble, or pregnancy. It shows you to have the same degree of worth as a human being as someone who gets giggles by flashing a strobe light in the faces of people who suffer from temporal lobe epilepsy. Whether you have AS or not, you deserve to be assassinated. Do you read me? Do you read me loud and clear? Being less than truthful is hardly honorable under any circumstances. Around people who suffer from Asperger Syndrome, it's arguably downright immoral. This is an important thing to note. People who engage in such behavior, then, do not deserve to take part in this discussion at all, and they should be ignored from the moment that they show themselves to have mendacious intentions. If you get the impression that the poster in question is trying to lead you toward a conclusion that he/she came to for completely different reasons and seems to have no concern for whether he/she is being honest with you, nothing he/she has to say is worth a glob of spit. Ignore it. It's only serving to further muddy the waters.

For this forum to have any purpose, rather than being like any other socio-political feuding ground, we must exercise the qualities that make us special, rather than just crippled.

I suggest the following:

The abortion topic seems very muddy on the surface. What muddies the watters so badly, though, is that most people involved in the controversy are attempting to affect an outcome. For example, a very conservative-minded Christian will often present evidence or supposed evidence regarding the onset of brain activity, or he/she may make a case based on the fact that human stem cells are genetically identical to mature members of genus homo. Though a conservative Christian might believe that these arguments are sound, most conservative Christians believe that only one thing morally distinguishes humans from other animals: in their eyes, humans, unlike a dog, cat, otter, whale or beetle, has been blessed with an extraordinary thing which they refer to as a "soul." In the eyes of even the most liberal Christian, this is what distinguishes animals from all other beasts. Conservative Christians, as defined here, believe that humans are given souls when they are conceived. In their case, a more appropriate context under which to discuss the issue would be theology. I haven't come prepared to approach the subject of Christian theology, so I will abstain.

Now, if all Christians believed that human bodies were given souls at the time of conception, then my response to them would be very simple and unequivocal: "you concentrate on saving people's souls, and I will concentrate on keeping their central nervous systems healthy; quit your fumbling efforts to twist around biology. I need that to make my living." Obviously, there would be nothing I could do under the circumstances to prevent them from making abortion illegal, so I would be left to rejoice in the fact that I am a gay male. Fortunately for those who aren't as lucky in that respect as I am, this is not the case.

Christians are actually very diverse in how they determine what does and does not contain a human soul. Therefore, it would be very productive to classify them into a variety of different groups. When broaching a Christian on this subject, it would be very useful to have already retreived this information before beginning to discuss the subject. It would prevent an immensity of confusion.

Please consider the list below, and disregard all the blathering above:

(#1) Christians who believe, for theological reasons, that humans have souls at the moment of conception.

(#2) Christians who believe, for theological reasons, that humans have souls at birth.

(#3) Christians who believe, for theological reasons, that humans have souls at some other point between conception and birth.

(#4) Christians who believe, for theological reasons, that humans have souls at some point in time after birth.

(#5) Christians who believe that there is some point between conception and birth at which the presence of a soul becomes self-evident. Their philosophy of mind might be similar to that of Descartes: they might believe that a soul can be retained without a viable receptacle. Other views may exist.

(#6) Christians who believe that a soul is something that develops and grows from the point of conception, and it does not always have the same value. In their case, its value increases as the fetus approaches birth.

(#7) Christians who believe that a soul is something that develops and grows from some point between conception and birth.

Group #5 would be an interesting subject for further analysis.

You do realize you are contradicting yourself? The intent of this thread is to persuade people to discuss abortion. You are even going so far as to persuade people not to be persuaded or try to persuade others.