Redux: Rape, Abortion, and "Personhood"

[Bells]

another fine example of your selective intelligence as you fail to draw reasonable conclusions from relevant points

Was that meant to prove that you don't support open rape prevention theory?

fine.
If you don't like being called these things, don't call others a troll.

When you refuse to answer any direct questions and instead blather on and whine about the subject matter of the thread and what did you do in the rape thread? Ah yes, whine about people's length of posts to avoid answering anything and when you deliberately attempt to take things off topic and post things that you know will anger and offend people, that by definition is a troll. As I said, the other rape thread had people baying for your blood and demands you be banned from this site permanently. It isn't every one else that is wrong LG.

Have you ever issued a ban that has later been revoked due to it being obvious you are goading and harassing a member?

Nope. Wrong moderator. I have never banned someone that I am arguing with.

and I explain you are a troll when you openly refuse to take up discussion from the point where I explain your questions are loaded and are not capable of being answered in a yes/no manner in any meaningful manner.

And I say pure bullshit. You can't answer them because you don't want people here to know the extent of your pro-life stance. And as with every single question you are directly asked about a subject, you troll instead of answering it. Just like you couldn't answer any questions in the rape thread when we asked you how your OH&S principles of rape would apply in the majority of cases where women (and men for that matter) are raped by people they usually know and trust.

However if we want to talk about individuals adopting trollish behavior by not answering questions, we could talk about how took a dead ended detour trying to discredit the notion that gianna being actually an abortion survivor when it was brought up how her very existence problematizes your notion of being bereft of rights until one is born.

Nonsense. As I pointed out to you, her case and even that of my cousin's case when she tried to abort her daughter, are exceptionally rare. Late term abortions are rare. Has there ever been anything published as to why her mother decided to abort her at 7 months?

On the contrary, I repeatedly explain that a proper analysis depends of the problem incorporates 2 individuals (and I don't mean just the mother and the person performing the abortion) and that it is done through the medium of triage (ie limited resources brought to a complex problem). As such there is no clear red or green light on the problem and thus your insistence that it be thought of in such a manner is yet another example of you manufacturing diametric opposites for the sake of your political ideology.

The only other choice would have been to force her to remain pregnant against her will and consent. She wanted an abortion after being raped and sexually abused. It is her body. She has rights over her reproductive and sexual organs. What other options would you provide that would ensure her continued control over her own body and her desire to not be pregnant to her rapist and abuser?

At this stage of the discussion, religion has nothing to do with it.
You are just throwing terms around to manufacture schisms for the sake of leverage.
This might work a gem in your atmosphere of work place politics but in discussions like this it just makes you sound hysterical.

And your stance is purely religious LG.

and as explained, this basically boils down to you saying "If you don't agree with me, namely that under no circumstances is life in the womb to be attributed any sort of rights, you are misogynist" ... as opposed to actually entering in to a discussion about the ethics of such a stance.

IOW rather than actually discuss the ethical framework you are trying to move a round in, you find it more convenient just to call people names, generate schisms and throw your weight around in moves of power play.

Nope. There are a lot of people who post here who are pro-life and aren't misogynistic.

As I said, standard arguments warrant standard rebuttals.

If we wanted to talk about pathology however we could talk about you constantly trying to discredit the information that surrounds gianna every time she is brought up as a poignant challenge to the standard arguments you bring up

By asking questions about her circumstances?

feel free to explain how accusing me of masturbating to some chick on the internet is an attack on my argument and not an attack on my person.

I made a comment about it because you seem somewhat obsessed with her. As in you bring her up in every single abortion debate there has ever been on this site since you joined here. And why is masturbation or comments about you possibly wanking off to someone on the internet an attack on your person? Wait.. you don't believe in that either?

Oh, you mean comments like this :

the moment there is a thread discussing women's rights, you're in there, scraping your backside on the ground like you have a rash on your genitals, itching to demand the removal of rights from women and trolling in the worst way possible.

If you are actually sore about using people's bodies as analogies for the weak point s in their arguments, don't bring them to the discussion.

Its as simple and as difficult as that.

You have my sincerest apologies for inferring you have itchy balls and for anything else I said that was an attack on your person.

and i have also noticed you have been threatening to on the basis of behaviour that you are displaying.
Technically its called goading.

And again, have I banned you?

I have also never ever banned anyone that I have argued with.

---

Bravo, LG. Way to rise above the muck.

*Chortle*

Ah man, as I said, you are a riot.

---

Fetus, I'll respond to you later on tonight. Have visitors coming!

 

[lightgigantic]

and part II

I think you are a misogynist because you are one.

a wonderful display of logic ....

Still think it is unrealistic to teach our sons to not rape and that women should just shoulder the burden to simply not be raped? What were the factors of being a rape victim that you linked and then stated that women can just prevent their own rapes if they adhere to such rules? Ah yes...

One of the most common forms of sexual violence around the world is that which is perpetrated by an intimate partner, leading to the conclusion that one of the most important risk factors for people in terms of their vulnerability to sexual assault is being married or cohabiting with a partner. Other factors influencing the risk of sexual violence include:

being young;
being a sex worker;
consuming alcohol or drugs;
having previously been raped or sexually abused;
having many sexual partners;
becoming more educated and economically empowered, at least where sexual violence perpetrated by an intimate partner is concerned;
poverty;
being incarcerated / institutionalised;
being mentally disabled.
​

The irony of your open ended rape prevention theory is that you completely ignored the facts of rape, that rapes are most often perpetrated by men and women the victims know and trust. When I sarcastically presented that in that case, if women were truly to prevent being raped, then they should avoid all contact with men, especially men they know or are intimate with, you found it offensive without offering a solution to what women should do if their husbands rape them aside from blathering about being prepared, citing car insurance terminology... The stupidity of your argument is why we nearly had a stampede of members baying for your blood.

Needless to say, you couldn't make those points/allegations salient in that thread much like you can't do it in this one.

You know, like I brought up how there are community organizations, run by women (some of whom are rape survivors) that bring strategies to the table aside from protocols on what legal channels to pursue after one is raped etc etc.

I remember one humorous incident from that thread where the very links your provided about the "reality of rape" also included the conclusion that this data was important for the formation of rape prevention strategies.

I can't be bothered scrolling through that thread to find it now, but if you continue like this I might, just to put a lid on your trolling.

That aside, if you seriously want to engage in thread necromancy, take it up where you left off, namely here :

Once again, it seems that in your eagerness to argue a point, you are simply imagining people saying stuff for the sake of having a convenient dead horse to flog.

Far from anyone actually saying that its ok to rape a woman, and far from you actually being able to quote anyone saying it, the people you are actually arguing with are consistently and repeatedly saying they precisely don't think that.

And as is typical with your style of blogging, you choose to ignore this point or even seek to clarify it (such as why, far from finding examples of risk assessment equating as an automatic transgression of human rights anywhere, you find it illustrated to the contrary everywhere), and instead engage in a lengthy monologue that actually involves no other players aside from you and your imagination

IOW its yet another case of people making allegations devoid of any concrete point of reference.

I think you are a misogynist because you bent over backwards making excuses for rapists

Until you can actually find a quote other than the beginning of a thread that spends most of its energy pointing out the inaccuracy of the said parties allegations, your comment is meaningless.

your and tried to say that women should act in a certain way to not be raped and then tried to claim certain behaviours lead to being raped, such as a woman's nudity for example and apparently her catching a train in the red light district at 1am.

thanks for offering another opportunity to illustrate your selective intelligence when these subjects come up.
The scenario also involved alcohol ... which you did a fine job of consecutively failing to mention, even when you tried to flog the same dead horse as it appears in that thread.

Of course it would be a sore point for you to try and contest this since you would be hard pressed to find any community group that deals with this problem of rape on a professional level that doesn't work with alcohol as a contributing cause/factor/prop to the problem (IOW they light it up in their protocols of risk assessment)

And worst of all, when you tried your OH&S and risk assessment and applied it to women and rape.

The crux of your whine was that prevention strategies are open ended. I used the language of OH&S (and even car theft) as examples of precisely how prevention strategies are limited. This however lead you on a weird spiral of hysteria of making allegations that I suggested the criminality of a perpetrator of rape is just like car theft and so on and so forth.

To this day, I am certain your total hysteria doesn't even enable you understand what the terms "risk assessment" , "hazard identification" etc encapsulate.

But most of all, your misogyny stems from your inability to recognise women as people worthy of consideration... I mean hell, you even compared women to a car.

groan

actually I compared the prevention strategy associated with car theft as a clear (and hopefully non-contested) example of how risk strategies are closed ... but, yeah, given that such an argument requires a bit of an understanding of the language of OH&S, it's not surprising that that one flew over your head

:shrug:

Or have forgotten that was what you argued earlier on in this thread, which led Tiassa to question your ridiculous idealogy.

which then of course led to the reply and so on and so forth ....

Still waiting for you to answer those questions by the way. Or do you have some more dodging to do?

I've already gave the link earlier to where you abandoned the subject.

Still waiting for you to acknowledge your so-called "accurate representation of the facts" with Gianna Jessen (or precisely, wondering in what way you will derail the obvious implications the scenario places on your notion that human rights beginning at the point of birth).
:shrug:

 

[Tiassa]

Not Quite Speechless ....

Then what beleifs can be imposed by way of law? Wrongness of murder, theft and rape are just beliefs.

I think there is an objective, observable, empirically testable response that might well provide a starting point.

• If you believe in alien abduction and anal probing, so what? To the other, if you pass laws making it illegal to say there are no EBEs, and alien anal probes are just a sex fantasy, you have visited your belief on another person.

• Murder, theft, and rape all visit harm on other people.​

Can you tell the difference?

The problem I have with this course of discussion is that while you're trying to be helpful and break it down for those who just don't grasp the elements of the issue is that the answers are usually obvious, but the only real answers you'll get are not from the people such oblique methods are intended to enlighten. To wit, those two bullet points above? I already know you don't need the difference explained to you.

A fetus is a more then a fertilized egg. Your a fertilized egg, this is the problem of defining these things everyone be alluding to.

This point is already acknowledged insofar as we have restrictions on abortion at all. The question is whether life begins at conception (wrongly defined by anti-abortion activists as fertilization instead of implantation) explicitly includes zygotes and blastocysts. Thus, to point out what is already acknowledged, i.e., that a fetus is more than a zygote, does not advance the discussion at all or address the fundamental nature of LACP. Rather, the point dodges the issue.

Again, I already know you don't need the difference explained to you.

ah so this is some golden rule standard, well back to the first point: what can we impose on others and why? for we need to impose some morals on others in order to have a functioning civilization. Taxes for example are imposed on us to provide for others, law impose inhibitions on my freedoms to increase the freedoms of others (like my freedom to murder is curtailed so others have freedom not to be murdered), why can't murder cover fetuses?

Thus, as you bring your argument around (and bear in mind the practice of "fisking", which is popular here, and potentially interferes with people's ability to view the entirety of your argument) I can confidently remind what you already know—that the legalities outside of forbidding abortion are just too complicated for the anti-abortionists. You'll find it in this thread, its former version, and many prior discussions of the abortion issue.

Briefly, from earlier in the thread:

Tiassa: And therein we find a practical issue: In the past, some have suggested that investigating menstrual irregularity is far too complicated, and therefore absurd or extreme. But if the child existing outside its mother were to die unexpectedly, society would put some effort into finding out why. The organism living inside another woman? ....

.... You're now looking at investigating nearly one in three women at some point in their lives? And then add to that menstrual irregularity?

This is where the problem arises: Equal Protection means investigating potential homicides cannot be pushed aside for an entire identifiable class of people simply because it is too complicated or expensive.

If a society declares a fertilized ovum a "person", and includes in its laws an assertion of Equal Protection (e.g., Amendment XIV, USC), you must afford every person that protection ....

.... It's not that I don't see the point when someone simply says it's absurdly complicated to enforce the law this way, but that's part of the point: It is also our obligation under LACP.

Well, unless we want to amend the Constitution to strike the Equal Protection Clause from Amendment XIV and the Due Process Clause from Amendment V.​

The response, as usual, was that someone would call the idea "absurd" and a "straw man". That is, the legal obligation to provide equal protection under the law to all persons is apparently irrelevant to life at conception personhood. And you can watch that particular version of the "it's too complicated" argument go on for a couple pages at least. But one of the key protestations:

Billvon: Again, only in your mind. I agree, if we had people who thought like that running things, we'd have problems everywhere.​

In other words, we would have problems everywhere if, in acknowledging the personhood from conception (or fertilization), we also extended to those people their Constitutionally inalienable rights.

And therein lies the difference. The LACP argument isn't actually about the organism inside the mother; it's about women.

That is, we can avoid the problems of equal protection for these "people" if we simply exclude them from those Constitutional guarantees. Thus, a zygote is a person insofar as it can stop a woman from having an abortion, but not insofar as we have to put any other effort into it.

Or, as Billvon described his objection to equal protection of these "people": "Fortunately, most people are more rational."

And that alleged rationality is why murder doesn't cover fetuses in the U.S. at present. To the other, we also have fetal homicide laws, ostensibly passed to protect pregnant women from domestic abuse and other violent crimes, that have largely—in some cases almost exclusively—targeted mentally ill women.

Again, it's not actually about the organism inside the mother; it's about women.

I think this might be because of religious factors, to them a fetus is not yet "born with sin".

That only undermines the religious argument for LACP. All people are born into sin. If the fetus has not yet been born into sin, it is not a person.

One of those logical conundra that rational people apparently never resolve because it's not rational to do so. Or ... something like that.

I don't know, but what you have done is divert the issue away from the fundamental question of why a mother right to choices trumps a fetus's right to life. You trying to avoid answering that question, last you were claiming a mother has the right to choose if a fetuses can live (even though you claim you never would harm a fetus of your own), why does she have that right though?

I would remind the following:

• This thread is a few months old, and over 450 posts long.
• There is a former version of this thread.
• There are at least a few prior, long, acrimonious discussions of the abortion issue.
• Even in this thread, there is already at least an answer to your question; see posts #14 and 16, for a place to start.​

After a while, it's true that we get a bit impatient. Perhaps you might recall our earlier discussion of misogyny and if men could be pregnant.

And what does that come down to, for anti-abortionists?

"So...let me see if I have this straight. Because men cannot get pregnant women should have unimpeded choice regardless of any consideration of personhood?" —Syne​

In some issues, people don't seem to think through what they're saying. Consider Billvon's response to your consideration of personhood:

"That is a good point, one often missed by both sides in the debate."​

It's an interesting way of phrasing it. It's also bullshit. That is, when the point is already on the record from one side of the argument, how can one say it's missed by both sides? See #14 for an early iteration in this thread; the response is generally to pretend that one cannot comprehend the difference between an organism living inside one's body, attached to it in order to feed off it, and one who exists independently, without the umbilical cord attached. There is also the occasional radical suggestion of, "What about a woman who wants to abort the baby outside her body before the cord is cut?" It's a ridiculous proposition, as any doctor who would do that shouldn't have a license. It really is a weird phenomenon: I have a dry-foot policy because in all my time trying to figure that mystical threshold of personhood, I have not found any other solution.

It's not a point that's missed. Rather, it is a point expressed on one side that the other has no response to. There are certainly ways around this problem; if there is no guarantee of equal protection under the law, all of this goes away. You know, if we do what Billvon considers more rational: either ignore or abolish equal protection under the law.

Can the one I don't stop still be charged with murder?

And therein lies the point. One of them could and would be under existing law. The other, well, that's what the abortion argument is about, isn't it?

Again a fetus is not a reproductive organ, a fetus is a person, or at least a potential person. All I'm asking is for you to explain why a mother can murder her fetus but not her baby?

Fallopian tubes, uteruses, and cervixes are all part of a woman's reproductive system. Your question relies on the ill-advised exclusion of how the zygote, blastocyst, or fetus survives. To the other, this is one of those things I know you're already aware of. In the end, fine. Give the woman her right over her reproductive organs, and not the organism leeching off it. She can simply have a procedure done that will secure her reproductive organs against that leeching. Of course, it results in the termination of the leeching organism, which all comes down to the same thing.

And for all these things you already know but keep asking, it's not that I don't see a purpose in encouraging people to make the point pabulum simple. But after all this time, and this many discussions, what positive effect on the discussion do you actually expect? It doesn't matter what people say—

why?

—if they're just going to be greeted with embittered sentimentality.

No, really. Go back through this thread and count the number of times people encounter retorts like Syne's, noted above? When the discussion involves one side making detailed arguments and the other side reducing that argument to an inaccurate slogan, people do weary of such thoughtless, dismissive behavior.

You're trying to grant them a sense of logic:

Again a fetus is not a reproductive organ. Let take a different angle, if a women has a teratoma growing off her that the doctors said will eventually pop off rather painfully and life threateningly as a independent human being, does she have a right to have it removed? Does the growth of said mass on her back verse her uterus change that answer? I don't think it does, nor would the answer change if the women was a man. The question you need to ask is does a person have full legal control over what goes on in their body (not in a specific organ or part) and does this right include the allowance to kill potential people?

As I noted above, all a woman has to do is secure her reproductive organs, then, and the result will be deprivation of the organisms ability to leech. The distinction you draw between the fetus and the reproductive organs is semantic at best; it has no applicable value.

To be brief and definitive: Yes. No. Yes.

To be a bit haughty: At some point, these unreal hypothetical situations are irrelevant to reality.

Well I would first need to see the argument that semen is as valuable as a fetus is as valuable as a person first. Technically masturbation has been considered a sin off and on throughout human history.

The argument would be an article of faith. Human males waste sperm by the hundreds of thousands, if not millions. Women cast off unused eggs on a regular basis. To you and I, this seems self-evident. Setting aside the historical sin of masturbation, which had more to do with gratification than potential life, if enough people buy into the article of faith that every discharge of sperm from a man should be devoted to fertilizing an egg—regardless of urination, and accepting that of the many sperm cells deposited in the woman, only one is normally expected to be put to use—does that suddenly become a viable logical argument?

There is what we can observe. There is what we believe as a result of what we observe. And then there are the pure fantasies that we believe.

There is no logical argument against wasting sperm unless you're trying to restart a devastated human species and prefer masturbation or onanism.

Why stop there, you see a 15 week child and a 15 year old one, either is going to be murdered, which has more right to life and why? One of the weakness of my argument is that the value of a person is an age gradient, therefor a 15 year old is more valuable then a 15 week old, one might argue that a 15 week old has no chance of fighting back unlike the 15 year old so the value needs to be recalculated in favor of the infant, but that would go for the fetus as well.

On this one, I can confidently suggest your response utterly misses the point.

If I was living in her womb, perhaps.

I can't wait to hear the explanation of how you would do that.

No, no, I don't mean just because you probably won't fit in your current state. I would like to see the fetal decision-making process explained according to that context.

Precisely, can you provide any?

There are none, as long as we reject the longstanding presupposition that individual people have any rights at all.

Why, what separates the two?

Independent physical reality.

Yep, so why is that wrong?

You're following a problematic trail here, though I'm sympathetic.

Some consider the obvious answer a straw man, circa the equal protection argument. That is to say, given the number of miscarriages that occur? Consider an earlier example in response to the idea of prosecuting miscarriages: "Yes, women who do so much cocaine that their 36 week old fetus (a date when not only is the fetus viable, it is no longer even a high risk premature birth) is stillborn might see charges."

And it's a fine example that actually happens now and again. But it doesn't address women being prosecuted for falling down the stairs, or having mental health problems.

So to go back to examples that have previously been denounced as absurd straw men:

• Woman is pregnant, but cannot afford to sit at home without working. While at work, she trips and falls, resulting in a miscarriage. Under LACP and equal protection for that "person" inside her, she must be prosecuted for negligent homicide.

• Woman is pregnant. Husband is driving home from dinner. A car pulls out in front of them. He slams on the brakes. Her seat belt causes a miscarriage. It is determined that the husband was doing what many people do, driving in excess not of the speed limit, but what is known in states as a "basic speed rule" pertaining to weather, visibility, and road conditions—a little bit of rain, and you're speeding by driving at the speed limit. Under LACP and equal protection for that "person" inside the mother, the husband must be prosecuted for negligent homicide.​

The counterpoint, of course, is eugenics, that some people should similarly be prosecuted for reproducing when they have a genetic propensity toward one or another disease—cancer was the example, but heart disease, diabetes, and other conditions would also apply under that suggestion.

And of course this is absurd. That's part of the point. However, as some would have it, the "more rational" thing to do would be to simply ignore the Supreme Law of the Land: Personhood for the zygote, blastocyst, or fetus in order to stop a woman from having an abortion, but not for anything else. That's not how it works in the U.S. And, like I said, the problem could be cleared up by abolishing equal protection under the law. That is, we can amend the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to fix this problem.

Why is it wrong to prosecute women for miscarriages? See #108 for a couple of examples; as I noted then, these absurd tales exist without LACP as the statutory outlook.

And we can say what we want about fetal homicide laws being passed to protect women, and we can say what we want about pregnant crack whores, but the living reality is that some states prosecuting women for falling down the stairs, having mental health issues, and other such things.

Well I would think a right to live usually trumps others rights, has nothing to do with an outlook on women, women should have all the same rights as men, it just it could be argued that men nor women have the right to kill, and that killing a fetus is killing. The alternative is not to strip women of rights, of personhood, but to strip the rights of the unborn, of their personhood. Its a mean call to say that one person is not a person and that another has the right to kill that non-person, but making that call or not someone is going to get shafted: the mothers or the fetuses.

That personhood is asserted by others, not the "person", without rational merit, and entirely for sentiment. Of course the fetuses get shafted. They exist entirely inside and are wholly dependent on a living, independent person.

And that living, independent personhood is no more or less than what we recognize of any human being. It is already established, defined in its own existential context. The personhood asserted on behalf of fetuses extends that condition to something that exists in a different context.

(Just as a random curiosity that occurred to me, though it's hardly of any useful merit here, if there is no existential difference between a fetus and a person, then why does the folk and literary tradition of vampirism describe a form of evil?)

Perhaps you need to explain why its not genocide. Mind you that not my argument, that common pro-lifer tripe, and you respond to it by merely implying they are ignorant and not disproving them upfront, that is pathetic!

What is the affirmative argument that it is genocide? Proving a negative condition is often problematic, but the obvious starting point is that it would be a new addition to the classification process for what constitutes genocide. Zygotes, blastocysts, and fetuses are not a tribe, nationality, religion, &c. It seems we're bending the rules of genocide to include the unborn, but then again, just how does that affirmative argument of genocide work?

Lastly, I would offer a more general comment about this whole discussion:

Life at conception personhood was conceded at the outset. We are, I'm sorry, how many posts into this, and that's still the argument people would rather have? Why? Goddess fucking grant that someday I will understand why it is that a woman's humanity is so goddamned scary to people that they would rather focus on arguing about what was already conceded ... at the freakin' outset. Holy shit.​

Sorry, just needed to get that one off my chest.

Really, that's not aimed at you, it's just symptomatic of the moment. I mean, I get the whole devil's advocate thing. But personhood was conceded at the outset.

You're asking for logic to accommodate those who have steadfastly refused that logic for years. So perhaps we might look at this from a different angle. Okay, fine. So, personhood at conception. What happens next?

And look whose humanity is absent from that consideration.

The majority of the human species.

I would say I'm speechless, but obviously I'm not.

 

[RussellCrawford]

Lastly, I would offer a more general comment about this whole discussion:

Life at conception personhood was conceded at the outset. We are, I'm sorry, how many posts into this, and that's still the argument people would rather have? Why? Goddess fucking grant that someday I will understand why it is that a woman's humanity is so goddamned scary to people that they would rather focus on arguing about what was already conceded ... at the freakin' outset. Holy shit.​

.

The problem with you "giving up" the life at conception argument is that it destroys the arguments of many other women and men that would support you otherwise. Life at conception is a foolish concept that is disproved simply by the fact that at conception 100 gamete pairs enter alive and only 30 pair leave as human life. Life was not created at conception, life was killed. Life existed before conception and though there is life at conception, it existed prior to fertilization. And the argument that there is human life at conception that is more important than a sperm destroys your argument to anyone that believes it is true. If the fetus is in fact a baby, then many people will believe that it has rights that supersede your right to autonomy. That is just how things have worked out over time. The line of women going before state legislatures making the "autonomy" claim is legendary. In Texas I saw literally thousands speak of their rights vs. the rights of the fetus. In the end they lost and a multitude of anti choice bills were passed. Why give up your strongest argument?
Though I agree that you have rights that exceed the rights of a fetus, many people don't. And you are losing rights. And you are leading women in the wrong direction.
Do you not think it is time to admit the obvious, that life is continuous and does not occur at conception? You have nothing to lose and everything to gain. The truth will win out in the end.

 

[lightgigantic]

Was that meant to prove that you don't support open rape prevention theory?

Its meant to establish on exactly what basis car theft was introduced to the discussion

When you refuse to answer any direct questions

But I don't.

I did answer them ... at least as far as its possible to answer a loaded question.

and instead blather on and whine about the subject matter of the thread and what did you do in the rape thread? Ah yes, whine about people's length of posts to avoid answering anything and when you deliberately attempt to take things off topic and post things that you know will anger and offend people, that by definition is a troll.

I summed up why your questions are loaded in about 2 or 3 sentences.

If I consistently churn up about ten paragraphs, as is the habit of some contributors, perhaps you would have a point.

As I said, the other rape thread had people baying for your blood and demands you be banned from this site permanently. It isn't every one else that is wrong LG.

And they struggled to find actual references for their allegations just like you are now .... and as I recall there were several people making these allegations and there were several people on the other side scratching their head wondering exactly who they were arguing with.

Nope. Wrong moderator. I have never banned someone that I am arguing with.

good for you

But can you say that you have never goaded a member and that resulted in a ban ...... I think not.

And I say pure bullshit.

Say whatever you want (within forum guidelines for ad homing, goading etc) , but the link is right there to take up the discussion where you left it.

And as with every single question you are directly asked about a subject, you troll instead of answering it. Just like you couldn't answer any questions in the rape thread when we asked you how your OH&S principles of rape would apply in the majority of cases where women (and men for that matter) are raped by people they usually know and trust.

feel free to find a reference for these allegations

Nonsense.

No its not nonsense.

You suggested the whole story was a fabrication.
I link evidence to suggest otherwise.
You say you have never heard of this.
I link a previous discussion where we are discussing the exact same scenario and you are up to the same shenanigans of trying to discredit the validity of it (and are again unsuccessful)

Why do you display the same pattern of behavior crops up in earlier threads?:

You :It's legal in some parts of the world.
Maybe you should get out more.

Me: Nothing in those links to suggest that nurses in california during 1977 (you know, the place where Gianna survived her abortion) were legally permitted to carry out third trimester abortions ... although if it took till 1994 for a PA to be legally permitted to perform first trimester abortion, I think we can effectively rule out the possibility of a nurse performing it in 1977?
What now?
Do you wan to make some more stuff up?

As I pointed out to you, her case and even that of my cousin's case when she tried to abort her daughter, are exceptionally rare.

lol
yes surviving an abortion is rare

Late term abortions are rare. Has there ever been anything published as to why her mother decided to abort her at 7 months?

Gianna was looking in the eyes of her birth mom, who had tried to abort her nearly 35 years ago. Only Gianna survived that saline attempt.

The bitterness, however, lived on.

“You are an embarrassment to me,” Gianna recalls those biting words that greeted her from her birth mother.

Fighting back the tears, Gianna regained her composure just long enough to tell her: “I forgive you.”

“I don’t want you to forgive me,” her birth mom responded. “I don’t want you to talk to me.”

She does mention something about her parents in the 8 minute video clip.
Obviously in your hast to assimilate relevant information, you didn't watch it.

The only other choice would have been to force her to remain pregnant against her will and consent

.
as opposed to the only other choice being to kill the child in the womb

She wanted an abortion after being raped and sexually abused. It is her body. She has rights over her reproductive and sexual organs. What other options would you provide that would ensure her continued control over her own body and her desire to not be pregnant to her rapist and abuser?

If you can't even theoretically acknowledge we are talking about another living entity and not someone's reproductive organs, you can't even frame the problem in the correct language, much less discuss the options.
In fact I am pretty sure you don't even understand how bringing triage to this scenario might result in the exact same consequence you have in mind (namely the termination of the child), even though it works out of an intact moral barometer that doesn't require the use of political language or the defense of the indefensible in order to function

And your stance is purely religious LG.

Your stance is purely hysterical

Nope. There are a lot of people who post here who are pro-life and aren't misogynistic.

such as?

By asking questions about her circumstances?

No
By asserting the so-called truth of those circumstances and then suddenly dropping the discussion when it gets revealed for the crock it is

I made a comment about it because you seem somewhat obsessed with her. As in you bring her up in every single abortion debate there has ever been on this site since you joined here.

and as I mentioned, standard arguments warrant standard rebuttals.
The irony is that despite continually bringing the same example to the same flavour of argument you establish, you say stuff like "I have never heard of that before".
Obviously you are in need of repetitive examples

And why is masturbation or comments about you possibly wanking off to someone on the internet an attack on your person? Wait.. you don't believe in that either?

Err ..... because it has nothing to do with the discussion, its against forum rules to insult and goad and so on and so forth.
But that aside, if you want to again open the threshold of acceptable behavior to new lows, suspend forum rules and declare open season on making jibes about people's sexual behaviour, marital relationship's, etc , please proceed ... although I suggest you get permission from some sort of higher forum authority and make sure you are up on your prescription medication before you do so.

You have my sincerest apologies for inferring you have itchy balls and for anything else I said that was an attack on your person.

Now you just have to apologize for using your position as a moderator to establish a double standard of behavior on the forums and I will be satisfied ... needless to say, I won't hold my breath waiting

And again, have I banned you?

No, but you were, and still are, definitely trying to goad me

I have also never ever banned anyone that I have argued with.

that, unfortunately, doesn't establish your goading in any positive light

 

[RussellCrawford]

If you can't even theoretically acknowledge we are talking about another living entity and not someone's reproductive organs, you can't even frame the problem in the correct language, much less discuss the options.
In fact I am pretty sure you don't even understand how bringing triage to this scenario might result in the exact same consequence you have in mind (namely the termination of the child), even though it works out of an intact moral barometer that doesn't require the use of political language or the defense of the indefensible in order to function

The argument you are making with regard to Gianna will lead to the death of living babies, not to saving life. Gianna, though a lack of insight is also guilty of causing death, not saving life.

Gianna has a choice right now, she can save innocent born life or she can ignore that life, let it die and instead make big bucks selling the pro life aberration that is her unique story.

You also have a choice, you may save innocent born babies or you can let them die and attempt to continue your self aggrandizement. The deaths that occur following your choice and Gianna's choice will show your actual commitment to "saving life."
------

I have seen the evidence that Gianna is a fraud and it is compelling. It is not proof she is a fraud, but it is compelling.

 

[lightgigantic]

The argument you are making with regard to Gianna will lead to the death of living babies, not to saving life. Gianna, though a lack of insight is also guilty of causing death, not saving life.

Gianna has a choice right now, she can save innocent born life or she can ignore that life, let it die and instead make big bucks selling the pro life aberration that is her unique story.

You also have a choice, you may save innocent born babies or you can let them die and attempt to continue your self aggrandizement. The deaths that occur following your choice and Gianna's choice will show your actual commitment to "saving life."

to illustrate this you require more than statistical numerology

I have seen the evidence that Gianna is a fraud and it is compelling. It is not proof she is a fraud, but it is compelling.

does it involve space aliens ?

 

[RussellCrawford]

to illustrate this you require more than statistical numerology

There is no statistical numerology involved.

If you are honest to any extent you will answer my question. There are 7 billion people on earth, all are dying. You cannot save all born people and all fetuses. You have a choice to save a baby or to let the baby die and save a fetus. Which do you save?

I am saying that you choose to let babies die. Am I right?

does it involve space aliens ?

I saw her report of birth and the notes of a nurse that she used to post on her site. Those documents did not indicate that she was the product of a saline abortion and did not mention the claims she has made in public. If she had a saline abortion, she was not burned by the solution, or it was not reported. There are no obvious scars from a saline burn and there is no record of such actions. As far as I could tell reading the account of what happened, the attempted abortion was never carried out. It could be that she was scheduled for an abortion that did not occur or that Gianna is telling the truth and that there is simply no record to support her story. The fact that she cannot produce records to prove her claims makes it doubtful to me that she is doing anything other than telling a story for cash.

end

 

[Syne]

If you are honest to any extent you will answer my question. There are 7 billion people on earth, all are dying. You cannot save all born people and all fetuses. You have a choice to save a baby or to let the baby die and save a fetus. Which do you save?

You have not demonstrated this as anything but a false dilemma. Why must there be a choice of who to save? You do know how to make a coherent argument, right?

And for Christ's sake, google quoting on a forum, they are all the same.

 

[RussellCrawford]

You have not demonstrated this as anything but a false dilemma. Why must there be a choice of who to save? You do know how to make a coherent argument, right?

And for Christ's sake, google quoting on a forum, they are all the same.

I have demonstrated that it is not a false dilemma. There is nothing false in the dilemma. I have stated the problem in terms that make it clear that there cannot be a choice of "both" and that any choice to save a fetus is a choice to let a born baby die. I have given the best data that supports the law and theory and have had no discussion from you or anyone else in the last two years that successfully challenges the numbers.

Simply claiming something is a false dilemma is not evidence that it is a false dilemma. The fact is that you have not disputed successfully any of the data or premises that I have used -- and that would indicate that your statements are fallacies.

For Christ's sake, why didn't you tell me earlier that the process for quoting on other sites applies here.

 

[RussellCrawford]

The impact of the issues that I present here will become obvious to every pro lifer or pro choice person once they answer this simple question: There are 7 billion people born and dying right now. One has a choice, one may save those born people or they may let them die and save a fetus instead. Which do you choose to save?

Please answer my question.

 

[Bells]

and part II

Joy.

Needless to say, you couldn't make those points/allegations salient in that thread much like you can't do it in this one.

You know, like I brought up how there are community organizations, run by women (some of whom are rape survivors) that bring strategies to the table aside from protocols on what legal channels to pursue after one is raped etc etc.

I remember one [snip]

Well yes, it's everyone else and not you, is it?

That you still ascribe to a theory that it is up to women to prevent themselves from being raped again just proves what you are. You were incapable of answering questions about women being raped by their spouses or intimate partners, simply because you knew your rape prevention theory fell apart. One of the reasons is because if you were to be taken seriously, then it would mean women would have to live in a state of heightened awareness all of their lives. You couldn't even take that into account.

Until you can actually find a quote other than the beginning of a thread that spends most of its energy pointing out the inaccuracy of the said parties allegations, your comment is meaningless.

People merely have to read that whole thread. As I have said to you repeatedly LG, it's not everyone else who is wrong.

thanks for offering another opportunity to illustrate your selective intelligence when these subjects come up.
The scenario also involved alcohol ... which you did a fine job of consecutively failing to mention, even when you tried to flog the same dead horse as it appears in that thread.

Of course it would be a sore point for you to try and contest this since you would be hard pressed to find any community group that deals with this problem of rape on a professional level that doesn't work with alcohol as a contributing cause/factor/prop to the problem (IOW they light it up in their protocols of risk assessment)

Ah yes. Alcohol. One of the rape prevention theories was to be careful about alcohol consumption and to watch who you drink with. I believe that several of us tried to ask you about say, a woman getting drunk in the presence of her spouse and he rapes her. In short, you have this expectation that women must maintain a certain level of awareness at all times and thus, must not ever get drunk or even drink, must dress carefully (at one point, you even commented on women being naked and the risk involved with that) and as we commented to you, what about women who are raped by their intimate partners and who and when could women ever expect to not be raped, you trolled instead of responding.

The crux of your whine was that prevention strategies are open ended. I used the language of OH&S (and even car theft) as examples of precisely how prevention strategies are limited. This however lead you on a weird spiral of hysteria of making allegations that I suggested the criminality of a perpetrator of rape is just like car theft and so on and so forth.

To this day, I am certain your total hysteria doesn't even enable you understand what the terms "risk assessment" , "hazard identification" etc encapsulate.

Spare us. Save it for your daughter. Tell her that she should never fully trust any man because any man could be her potential rapist.

actually I compared the prevention strategy associated with car theft as a clear (and hopefully non-contested) example of how risk strategies are closed ... but, yeah, given that such an argument requires a bit of an understanding of the language of OH&S, it's not surprising that that one flew over your head

Again LG, no one could understand how and why you were making such comparisons.

've already gave the link earlier to where you abandoned the subject.

Still waiting for you to acknowledge your so-called "accurate representation of the facts" with Gianna Jessen (or precisely, wondering in what way you will derail the obvious implications the scenario places on your notion that human rights beginning at the point of birth).

Firstly, I asked first.

Secondly, what do you want me to say about Ms Jessen? She survived an abortion. Her mother chose, for reasons unknown, to abort her at 7 months of age. As I have commented to you repeatedly, I don't know of any woman who would wait that long to simply decide to have an abortion for reasons that were not for medical reasons, for example. So I am curious about her mother. The first link on google stated that her adopted mother had told her that her birth mother felt she was without hope. It is unfortunate that no one has sought to ask her mother what led her to decide to abort a healthy foetus at 7.5 months.

But I don't.

I did answer them ... at least as far as its possible to answer a loaded question.

Do you think a woman should be made to remain pregnant against her will and her consent?

Yes or no?

And they struggled to find actual references for their allegations just like you are now .... and as I recall there were several people making these allegations and there were several people on the other side scratching their head wondering exactly who they were arguing with.

Not really. As I said LG, it's not everyone else.

good for you

But can you say that you have never goaded a member and that resulted in a ban ...... I think not.

I have actually advocated against the banning of people I was arguing with, because it isn't a good look. Funny that, huh?

Say whatever you want (within forum guidelines for ad homing, goading etc) , but the link is right there to take up the discussion where you left it.

Yep, and as was commented on in that thread.. Everyone else noticed what you were doing. Again, it's not everyone else who is wrong dear.

feel free to find a reference for these allegations

The original thread is what? 20 or so pages of a perfect example?

You suggested the whole story was a fabrication.
I link evidence to suggest otherwise.
You say you have never heard of this.
I link a previous discussion where we are discussing the exact same scenario and you are up to the same shenanigans of trying to discredit the validity of it (and are again unsuccessful)

Yep. I doubted her story because saline abortions are never done after 24 weeks and certainly not so close to term.

lol
yes surviving an abortion is rare

Yes, it is.

In Britain, for example, out of 180,000 terminations a year, around 50 survive.

But again, at the core of this debate, one question remains the same. Would you force a woman or a girl to carry a child to term against her will and against her consent? To tie in with this thread, would you force a rape victim to carry her rapist's child to term against her will and against her consent?

Gianna was looking in the eyes of her birth mom, who had tried to abort her nearly 35 years ago. Only Gianna survived that saline attempt.

The bitterness, however, lived on.

“You are an embarrassment to me,” Gianna recalls those biting words that greeted her from her birth mother.

Fighting back the tears, Gianna regained her composure just long enough to tell her: “I forgive you.”

“I don’t want you to forgive me,” her birth mom responded. “I don’t want you to talk to me.”

She does mention something about her parents in the 8 minute video clip.
Obviously in your hast to assimilate relevant information, you didn't watch it.

Ah yes, the deeply pro-life movie..

Does she ever blame her mother for leaving her with this condition? "I've never been angry with her because she's a stranger," Miss Jessen says. "She hasn't said she's sorry and I know that she had another abortion after me. But I don't feel sad or bitter because we can choose to overcome and be sweet or we can overcome and be angry. I want to be the former."

Her biological mother has remarried and now lives in Southern California, and although she has seen her daughter on television, Miss Jessen has never contacted her.​

Has anyone ever spoken to the mother? Has anyone tried to find out why?

as opposed to the only other choice being to kill the child in the womb

Should she be forced to remain pregnant against her will and against her consent?

If you can't even theoretically acknowledge we are talking about another living entity and not someone's reproductive organs, you can't even frame the problem in the correct language, much less discuss the options.
In fact I am pretty sure you don't even understand how bringing triage to this scenario might result in the exact same consequence you have in mind (namely the termination of the child), even though it works out of an intact moral barometer that doesn't require the use of political language or the defense of the indefensible in order to function

Oh god no, not the triage spiel. Please, spare us the hilarity!

You can try and counsel and encourage her to not abort. You can drill it into her head that abortion is wrong, etc. But tell a rape victim who is pregnant as a result of her rape that for 9 months, the man who raped her will have domination over her womb as she carries his child to term and then has to go through labour (which is not pleasant by any stretch of the imagination) to give birth to her rapist's child and tell her that she has no say in the matter. Should she be forced to endure the pregnancy to her rapist against her consent?

Now tell this to a 14 year old rape victim?

What about a 9 year old rape victim, who was raped by a trusted relative and fell pregnant to her rapist, with twins, which resulted in a threat to her life?

Your stance is purely hysterical

Actually no it's not. My stance is one that respects a woman's rights over her own body.

such as?

Quite a few of our members actually.

No
By asserting the so-called truth of those circumstances and then suddenly dropping the discussion when it gets revealed for the crock it is

Again, asking questions about her circumstances? As I explained, repeatedly now, her case is exceptionally rare, because saline abortions at that stage of pregnancy is virtually non-existent.

and as I mentioned, standard arguments warrant standard rebuttals.
The irony is that despite continually bringing the same example to the same flavour of argument you establish, you say stuff like "I have never heard of that before".
Obviously you are in need of repetitive examples

No, it's just ironic that she is all you have to rely on because you are incapable of honestly answering a simple question.

Err ..... because it has nothing to do with the discussion, its against forum rules to insult and goad and so on and so forth.
But that aside, if you want to again open the threshold of acceptable behavior to new lows, suspend forum rules and declare open season on making jibes about people's sexual behaviour, marital relationship's, etc , please proceed ... although I suggest you get permission from some sort of higher forum authority and make sure you are up on your prescription medication before you do so.

It's okay, everyone does it. It's very normal.

Now you just have to apologize for using your position as a moderator to establish a double standard of behavior on the forums and I will be satisfied ... needless to say, I won't hold my breath waiting

You're still posting here, aren't you?

And I apologise in good faith and you throw it back in my face.:shrug:

 

[ElectricFetus]

Tiassa,

You lost me at life and personhood, they aren't the same thing, one can be alive but not a person, like a brain dead comatose vegetable is no really a person, but is alive. If a fetus is claimed to be a person, and it is morally wrong for one person to kill another, the humanity of women is irrelevant: the gender of the killer does not change the wrongness of the killing. Now if say a fetus is not a person and yet its host can't legally kill it then that would be sign of misogyny, but the pro-life argument is fundamentally based on establishing the personhood of the fetus, calling that misogyny in order to disregard the pro-life stance is a bit of a red haring. There nothing gender unequal in demanding women not have a right to kill people (we don't grant men such a right!), the only problem is in establishing that a fetus is a person. The personhood of a fetus is the only point that matters, all this talk of rape, of misogyny, etc, miss the point. If we establish that a fetus is not a person it does not matter if it was conceived in rape or not, it does not even matter if the host is a women or not (if that was possible) the rights of a fetus's host is supreme over its rights, as it would have none being a non-person. If on the other hand a fetus is a person then it does not matter if it was conceived in rape or not, etc, it would be as morally wrong to kill it as murder. So where exactly does rape fit in the issue of abortion, of personhood? Where do the rights of women come into play? The only way is to give a fetus an ad hoc status between a non-person and a person and make up binary ethics for it, but doing so makes no sense to me what so ever. And why stop there, why not give use a fluid ethics and make killing a fetus somewhere between murder and not-murder, but that makes it even more confusing and senseless for how murder-ish is it per situation needs to be explained.

 

[lightgigantic]

Joy.



Well yes, it's everyone else and not you, is it?

not really since even you had difficulty providing links about the "reality of rape" that didn't endorse ideas of rape prevention strategies ...

That you still ascribe to a theory that it is up to women to prevent themselves from being raped again just proves what you are.

you talk as if there is a viable alternative ... needless to say women are obviously voting with their feet since the idea of waiting until you get raped before you have a viable course of action is certainly unattractive

You were incapable of answering questions about women being raped by their spouses or intimate partners,

I did answer it. Find where you reference the question and I can guarantee you will find my response.

People merely have to read that whole thread.

And you merely have to find an *actual* quote to back up these claims

As I have said to you repeatedly LG, it's not everyone else who is wrong.

as I have said repeatedly, please find a reference for these ideas of yours instead of just reheating your imagination.
Vaguely pointing in the direction of a 20 page thread doesn't cut the mustard.

Ah yes. Alcohol. One of the rape prevention theories was to be careful about alcohol consumption and to watch who you drink with. I believe that several of us tried to ask you about say, a woman getting drunk in the presence of her spouse and he rapes her. In short, you have this expectation that women must maintain a certain level of awareness at all times and thus, must not ever get drunk or even drink, must dress carefully (at one point, you even commented on women being naked and the risk involved with that) and as we commented to you, what about women who are raped by their intimate partners and who and when could women ever expect to not be raped, you trolled instead of responding.

Once again, find the quote and you will find the response.

Spare us. Save it for your daughter. Tell her that she should never fully trust any man because any man could be her potential rapist.

I guess that will be her default position if she, like you, also hasn't the foggiest about risk assessment

Again LG, no one could understand how and why you were making such comparisons.

I just did .... but yeah, roll on with that hysteria
:shrug:

Firstly, I asked first.

asking loaded questions first doesn't somehow magically render them less loaded

Secondly, what do you want me to say about Ms Jessen?

I brought it up since you said rights begin at the point of birth.
I pressed the example to problematize that proposal since she goes at length to explain the various difficulties she faced as a consequence that can be attributed to culpable persons

Do you think a woman should be made to remain pregnant against her will and her consent?

Not really, since the current degraded social climate dictates a host of unsavory alternatives ... but that said, will and consent are certainly malleable in accordance with their associated moral barometers (IOW people can change their minds, for better or worse) ..... so, thus enters the model of triage, of bringing limited resources to a complex problem (or at the very least, the stage of public argument between the pro-life/pro-abortion schism ... such as we have here) ... but that all that said, I have my reservations whether you actually have the intelligence/attitude to understand this answer.

IOW your whole mood of asking questions on this subject is perverted by your hysterical desire to sacrifice strawman at the holy altar of your preferred ideological attitude.
IOW you seem to ask questions and only listen to the degree that it fulfills your preconceived notions on the subject.

Not really. As I said LG, it's not everyone else.

yes really.
I mean you do realize that you have failed to offer a single reference that wasn't from a thread with a response?

I have actually advocated against the banning of people I was arguing with, because it isn't a good look. Funny that, huh?

And as I said, I am not sure how that places your goading in a positive light

Yep, and as was commented on in that thread.. Everyone else noticed what you were doing. Again, it's not everyone else who is wrong dear.

As I said it wasn't everyone.
There were two distinct parties, namely one side launching into hysterical arguments and the other side scratching their heads wondering exactly who they were arguing with

The original thread is what? 20 or so pages of a perfect example?

Then I guess the next question is why you are struggling to find a single quote

Yep. I doubted her story because saline abortions are never done after 24 weeks and certainly not so close to term.

That might explain your ignorance in the first instance, but not the second ... especially since you say I pathologically bring it up all the time


Yes, it is.

In Britain, for example, out of 180,000 terminations a year, around 50 survive.

But again, at the core of this debate, one question remains the same. Would you force a woman or a girl to carry a child to term against her will and against her consent? To tie in with this thread, would you force a rape victim to carry her rapist's child to term against her will and against her consent?

Already explained how this is covered by the model of triage, or IOW the problem can be addressed without necessarily subscribing to your questionable view that the problem need only be viewed as incorporating the needs, interests and concerns of one person

Ah yes, the deeply pro-life movie..

as I said, there was also the 8 minute youtube clip, which I think we can safely say by now you haven't, can't and won't watch

Does she ever blame her mother for leaving her with this condition? "I've never been angry with her because she's a stranger," Miss Jessen says. "She hasn't said she's sorry and I know that she had another abortion after me. But I don't feel sad or bitter because we can choose to overcome and be sweet or we can overcome and be angry. I want to be the former."

Her biological mother has remarried and now lives in Southern California, and although she has seen her daughter on television, Miss Jessen has never contacted her.​

Has anyone ever spoken to the mother? Has anyone tried to find out why?

It doesn't seem like her mother is really interested for whatever reasons

Oh god no, not the triage spiel. Please, spare us the hilarity!

OMG!!
Just let me adjust to the shock of Bells poking fun at primary words, words integral to arguments and questions she persists with.

1
2
3

Okay I think I have regained my senses due to encountering that totally unexpected and never before seen phenomena.

You can try and counsel and encourage her to not abort. You can drill it into her head that abortion is wrong, etc. But tell a rape victim who is pregnant as a result of her rape that for 9 months, the man who raped her will have domination over her womb as she carries his child to term and then has to go through labour (which is not pleasant by any stretch of the imagination) to give birth to her rapist's child and tell her that she has no say in the matter. Should she be forced to endure the pregnancy to her rapist against her consent?

lol - men dominating the wombs of women via pregnancy.

Just try floating that shit at a meeting of single mothers .....

Now tell this to a 14 year old rape victim?

I think if you tell a 14 year old rape victim that her act of being pregnant is sustaining the domination of her attacker, you never really left the part where you talk of drilling ideas into her head.

What about a 9 year old rape victim, who was raped by a trusted relative and fell pregnant to her rapist, with twins, which resulted in a threat to her life?

triage of course ..... which would probably default to abortion due to the medical issues faced by the mother being so young ... as opposed to the suggestion that being conceived out of rape automatically renders one an inferior status in life

Actually no it's not. My stance is one that respects a woman's rights over her own body.

And the problem with this of course is that you default to treading on the rights of the child in the womb.
When people press this problem upon you, you get hysterical.
:shrug:

Quite a few of our members actually.

w-w-w-w-w ... that was nearly one

Again, asking questions about her circumstances?

You didn't ask questions.

You asserted an "accurate perspective" - your words - of the situation.
You can't even admit this.

As I explained, repeatedly now, her case is exceptionally rare, because saline abortions at that stage of pregnancy is virtually non-existent.

And as already explained, last time the topic of her experiences came up, you were again trying to discredit the authenticity of the case... and I am not talking about just one or two posts, but literally pages of you explaining why the information surrounding the incident was not true (in your obviously ill-informed opinion).

And to top it all off, you never actually get around to explaining how to explain Gianna's case if we are to accept your proposal that rights begin at the point of birth

No, it's just ironic that she is all you have to rely on because you are incapable of honestly answering a simple question.

If you always jump in with the same standard argument (an argument that gianna problematizes and that you can never respond to in an honest manner, I might add), what is the need to introduce something new?

It's okay, everyone does it. It's very normal.

If it was, we wouldn't have you throwing your weight around as a mod in attempt to curb behavior that you exacerbate.

You're still posting here, aren't you?

and you were still goading, as of your last post anyway.

And I apologise in good faith and you throw it back in my face.

Apologizing in good faith while simultaneously goading tend to be incompatible ... especially if its coming from a moderator in the midst of threatening to hand out infractions

 

[Tiassa]

Something About a Grape

Now if say a fetus is not a person and yet its host can't legally kill it then that would be sign of misogyny, but the pro-life argument is fundamentally based on establishing the personhood of the fetus, calling that misogyny in order to disregard the pro-life stance is a bit of a red haring.

As I have stated before, there is a living effect. In the early pages of the thread you'll find the following:

Legalized abortion on demand is not without societal benefits. Women's physical health has improved, as has their educational and economic standing in society, and as a result their mental health as well. Some might find the access advocates' arguments about putting women back in their places somewhat hyperbolic, but it is also a logical outcome of granting our Puritan streak free rein.​

Or, more recently:

Okay, fine. So, personhood at conception. What happens next?​

As often as we go through this, the people who push back against the misogyny accusation can't seem to answer this question. That was the whole point of conceding LACP at the outset: What happens next?

And then there's the point that the personhood of the fetus is a purely sentimental assertion.

The personhood of a fetus is the only point that matters, all this talk of rape, of misogyny, etc, miss the point.

Well, it misses their point, as the personhood of the woman is completely absent from their view. That is, in and of itself, misogyny. Think of it this way: Under LACP, there would be "people" (men), "people" (fetuses), and "women".

That's a pretty rude outcome for the sake of sentiment.

If we establish that a fetus is not a person it does not matter if it was conceived in rape or not, it does not even matter if the host is a women or not (if that was possible) the rights of a fetus's host is supreme over its rights, as it would have none being a non-person.

The burden is on the extension of this condition called personhood. It is attempting to assign an ontological attribute to a different existential condition.

So where exactly does rape fit in the issue of abortion, of personhood?

The first eight paragraphs of the topic post explain the reasons for the proposition. And #5 includes the following:

Last year, we at Sciforums explored the notion that, "It's a child not a choice ... but not if you were raped", which examined the anti-abortion rape exceptions. It's a thirty page thread, all of five hundred eighty-two posts. I will say that I'm impressed, to some degree, that the question has moved into the American political arena; as I wrote last year:

It's a matter of appearances being more important than principles.

"Abortion is murder!" they cry. But they also don't like to be seen as misogynistic. They don't want to be seen as hostile to rape survivors.

And that's all it is.​

What we've seen during this election cycle is that some anti-abortion advocates are trying to move past the "child, not a choice" question as it pertains to rape. To the one, I might suggest that took a certain amount of political courage. To the other, the next thing they need to do, ethically speaking, and in order to establish our society's legal outlook and definition of justice in this sector of jurisprudence, is to reconcile the implications. In that discussion last year, I also explained, "I can envision a world that completely outlaws abortion, but the reality is that nobody would go along with it."

And every time I raise the implications of "personhood", someone will point out the extremism and absurdity. What this suggests to me is that life at conception really is just about abortion and putting women back in their place. After all, the practical juristic implications of "personhood" include Equal Protection. Thus, if a blastocyst is a "person", what are the implications of the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment?:

No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

(Boldface and bold-italic accents added)​

What are we going to do about that?​

It also includes the point that, if we intend to establish "personhood", this is the next phase of the discussion.

Where do the rights of women come into play?

Depends on who you ask.

The only way is to give a fetus an ad hoc status between a non-person and a person and make up binary ethics for it, but doing so makes no sense to me what so ever. And why stop there, why not give use a fluid ethics and make killing a fetus somewhere between murder and not-murder, but that makes it even more confusing and senseless for how murder-ish is it per situation needs to be explained.

It's my opinion that life at conception is one of those things that sounds nice to the anti-abortion argument, but isn't actually genuine. As we see in this thread, LACP isn't really about the organism inside the woman; it's about the woman.

Otherwise, the rest of equal protection wouldn't freak people out the way it does.

• • •​

The problem with you "giving up" the life at conception argument is that it destroys the arguments of many other women and men that would support you otherwise.

And the point, as I have noted, is simple enough. They want LACP? Okay, what happens next? That they cannot and will not explain that is instructive.

LACP isn't really about the "person" inside the woman. It's about women. And this is evident in the anti-abortion argument being unable to address what happens to a woman's human status when we remove her ability to govern her own body.

It's not a matter of giving up the strongest argument. It's a matter of whether or not the anti-abortion argument includes any thought about its consequences for women.

And, apparently, the answer is no, it doesn't.

I mean, look at it. Hand them what they want for the sake of argument and they'll argue over what is already conceded in order to avoid the implications.

In most arguments, that is problematic. Is there any reason this argument is exempt?

They'll talk about anything but the living implications of their policies in women's lives. Behaviorally, the woman is a non-person in the LACP argument; they have demonstrated this about as clearly as they can without coming right out and saying it.

If the truth will win out, it needs to be put in front of people. The more people see the anti-abortion argument continue to disdain women, the more people will understand that LACP isn't really about the "person" inside her.

 

[Bells]

Praise Jeebus!

Not really, since the current degraded social climate dictates a host of unsavory alternatives ... but that said, will and consent are certainly malleable in accordance with their associated moral barometers (IOW people can change their minds, for better or worse) ..... so, thus enters the model of triage, of bringing limited resources to a complex problem (or at the very least, the stage of public argument between the pro-life/pro-abortion schism ... such as we have here) ... but that all that said, I have my reservations whether you actually have the intelligence/attitude to understand this answer.

IOW your whole mood of asking questions on this subject is perverted by your hysterical desire to sacrifice strawman at the holy altar of your preferred ideological attitude.
IOW you seem to ask questions and only listen to the degree that it fulfills your preconceived notions on the subject.

We must savour this moment.

It is the first time you have actually answered a question directly.

Still savouring..

Wait..

Saaaavvvooouuurrriiinnngggg it..

Okay..

You actually bring up a very interesting point and one that often gets lost in the fray.

As much as some would and do force women to remain pregnant against their consent, regardless of the circumstances, there are no alternatives. Short of forcing a woman to remain pregnant against her consent, there are no alternatives for the child. So what can be done?

My biggest gripe with pro-life groups is that the push and maintain a lack of education, primarily sex education. There is also a lack of resources and awareness. When you have some pharmacies, for example, refusing to sell birth control pills and some doctors who refuse to provide prescriptions for birth control pills or even condoms for that matter, for religious reasons, it reduces women's options. Certainly, they can simply not have sex, but that is also quite unrealistic.

When I was ill, my doctor went on holidays and was replaced by someone I had never heard of. At the time, I was prescribed or was taking birth control pills to regulate the hormone levels due to the types of cancer I had. And I needed a new prescription, so I went to the doctor. Where I was then booked to see my doctors replacement. And he refused to give me the prescription as he advised me, his strict Catholic beliefs went against the very notion of birth control pills. At the time, I explained to him that I could not have a child and he knew why and why the pills were needed, but he still refused to prescribe them. So I went out to the receptionist, explained what was going on and I was immediately booked to see another doctor in the medical center I go to. But I was surprised as this is not something you see in Australia.

Looking back on that episode, what would have happened if a woman went to him for birth control pills to try to prevent getting pregnant? He would have removed and denied her something so basic. And then what? If she does not want the child, then she could find herself having an abortion. But when you have some Governments and societies pushing for unrealistic abstinence only programs and denying sex education and refusing to provide birth control.. What will be the end result?

I think looking at abortion rates and why women have abortions provides a vital clue.

A study in New Zealand which looked into abortion rates and how it is falling there is a real eye opener:

The drop in New Zealand's abortion rate has been attributed to the wider use of contraceptives, better sex education and lessons from real-life experiences on reality TV. In 2012, the number of abortions was 14,745 compared to 18,382 in 2007.

According to a report from the Abortion Supervisory Committee, the current number of abortions in New Zealand has gone down since 1995. The committee works for the improvement of abortion services in the country. Kiwi women in their 20s were most likely to choose an abortion followed by teenagers with ages 15 to 19. The lowest number of abortions came from women over 45 years of age.

---

Ms Roke remarked that people who choose to have an abortion want to have control over an unwanted pregnancy. She mentioned several factors affecting the huge drop in the number of abortions. One worth noting was an increase in the number of women using intrauterine devices (IUDs) and implants.

According to Ms Roke, it has become widely accepted in New Zealand for women who had not yet given birth to use IUD. The emergency contraceptive pill has also become more accessible since women can get them from pharmacists and nurses.
​

While abortion there is still legal, women have options that many do not have, such as better education and ability to access birth control and the morning after pill, which prevents pregnancy from 'taking'.

But if these things fail or they fall pregnant, then they do have a recourse if they need it.

Because at the end of the day, few could imagine forcing a woman to endure a pregnancy against her will or her consent. While there is a lot of misinformation about abortion and why women have them and the women who have them, the reality is very far from the stereotype.

You say pro-abortion. I don't know anyone who is pro-abortion. It isn't about encouraging abortions. It is about providing women with a choice and a right over their bodies.

Sadly, many women are pressured by their spouses or partners or by their family to have abortions because an unwed mother would bring shame onto the family. No one, not a single pro-choice person would find that acceptable. No woman should be forced to have an abortion, just as no woman should be forced to remain pregnant against her consent.

 

[RussellCrawford]

You lost me at life and personhood, they aren't the same thing, one can be alive but not a person, like a brain dead comatose vegetable is no really a person, but is alive.

Actually a brain dead person was a human life, a fetus cannot be said to ever have been a human life until the correct phenotype is proved at birth.

If a fetus is claimed to be a person,

A claim of the fetus being a person is invalid. There must be proof of personhood and that proof depends on a "reasonable equality" between born life and unborn life. And that equality does not exist. The scientific fact is that until the DNA of the genotype expresses the correct phenotype one cannot prove the product of conception is alive or human. And the point at which proof is possible is at birth. Why is this important? Because, in order to force the birth of a fetus, one must kill a born person.

and it is morally wrong for one person to kill another,

No it is not immoral to kill another person. The "Law of Charity" makes it clear that any choice to save one person is a choice to intentionally let die another person. Pro lifers intentionally kill born babies every time they choose to save a fetus.

the humanity of women is irrelevant: the gender of the killer does not change the wrongness of the killing.

That is simply a play on words that is false. The gender of the killer is the most important aspect when abortion is involved. The woman has a right to bodily autonomy that supersedes the rights of the fetus, simply because the fetus cannot be proved to be human or alive. There is a 100 percent chance the woman is human and alive. Even at birth a fetus is only a potential human life whereas the woman is 100 percent human and alive. And to complicate the situation one must kill a born baby to force the birth of the fetus.

Now if say a fetus is not a person and yet its host can't legally kill it then that would be sign of misogyny, but the pro-life argument is fundamentally based on establishing the personhood of the fetus, calling that misogyny in order to disregard the pro-life stance is a bit of a red haring.

Regardless of whether or not the fetus is a person, all that the pro life movement does is kill one person to save another. And by committing the murder of an innocent born baby, the pro life movement must take away the choice of the fetus (that may or may not want to be born) and the choice of the woman.--- Assuming a fetus would want to hold its life above the life of another human and its mother is a stretch.

There nothing gender unequal in demanding women not have a right to kill people (we don't grant men such a right!), the only problem is in establishing that a fetus is a person. The personhood of a fetus is the only point that matters, all this talk of rape, of misogyny, etc, miss the point.

That is a play on words and is an invalid argument. The fact is that the man is not threatened by the fetus whereas the woman's life is actually at stake. The woman in a forced pregnancy will die in 14 out of 100k births. As a man I can tell you that if my life is at risk for something you force me to do without my consent, then I will make certain your life is at risk as well. You don't force men to risk their lives without their consent, why force women? That is misogyny at the highest level.

If we establish that a fetus is not a person it does not matter if it was conceived in rape or not, it does not even matter if the host is a women or not (if that was possible) the rights of a fetus's host is supreme over its rights, as it would have none being a non-person.

The scientific proof is that the fetus is not a person and in fact is not human enough to live as a human in most cases. The zygote/embryo/fetus dies in the first trimester most of the time. The fact is that until birth the fetus cannot be proved to be human or alive. That is a scientific fact.

If on the other hand a fetus is a person then it does not matter if it was conceived in rape or not, etc, it would be as morally wrong to kill it as murder. So where exactly does rape fit in the issue of abortion, of personhood?

Of course it matters if the fetus is conceived in rape. In order to force the birth of the fetus one must kill a born person. And the fact is that not only is a born person killed, according the "Law of Preclusion" a wanted child is denied life. So in the end a born person is killed and a wanted child is denied life. But that is not all, the misogynistic act of forcing a woman to carry a fetus that could kill her is also involved. The woman may very well die as a result of the forced pregnancy. 14 out of 100k women will in fact be murdered by forced birth.

Where do the rights of women come into play?

A woman lives under the "Scientific Abortion Laws" that prove her autonomy and outline the impact that abortion has on society. Those laws make it clear that the instant impact of forced birth is the murder of an innocent born baby, child or adult and that the long term effect is the death of women and the weakening of human rights.

The only way is to give a fetus an ad hoc status between a non-person and a person and make up binary ethics for it, but doing so makes no sense to me what so ever.

No, the fact is that a fetus has no more rights than a sperm. It has in effect the honor and respect due a gamete. It has no other rights.

And why stop there, why not give use a fluid ethics and make killing a fetus somewhere between murder and not-murder, but that makes it even more confusing and senseless for how murder-ish is it per situation needs to be explained.

The forced birth issue is resolved by the "Scientific Abortion Laws". The laws are immutable and control the impact regardless of whether or not you follow what their theories outline or not. If you force birth, you kill babies. If you deny autonomy you take away rights and kill babies, children and adults as well as killing women in child birth. There is no "upside" to forced birth. In the process of forced birth you cause a fetus' rights to be denied by enforcing the idea that all fetuses want to be born regardless of the impact their life would have on society. All in all the entire pro life movement can be summed up as a legion of self aggrandizing men and women with very little insight into the damage they are causing.

 

[Bells]

LACP isn't really about the "person" inside the woman. It's about women. And this is evident in the anti-abortion argument being unable to address what happens to a woman's human status when we remove her ability to govern her own body.

It's not a matter of giving up the strongest argument. It's a matter of whether or not the anti-abortion argument includes any thought about its consequences for women.

This point is made clearer in a story, reported here in Australia, about a woman in Texas, who when 14 weeks pregnant, collapsed and died. Prior to this happening, she, a paramedic, had informed her family and her partner that at no time did she ever want to remain on a ventilator if she was ever brain dead. In short, she did not wish to be made to remain alive by artificial means and instead, wanted the machine to be turned off. This is not unusual.

Her husband wants to turn off her life support, as per her wishes. Understandable. However, under Texas law, he is not allowed to.

Marlise Munoz, 33, has been unconscious since November 26, when her husband Erick Munoz found her collapsed on the living room floor.

Now ABC News reports Erick wants to turn off her ventilator. He said that years ago, Marlise had specifically told him she would never want to be kept alive by machines.

But under Texas law, Munoz's family are not allowed to switch off life support because she is 19 weeks pregnant.

The state does not allow for life-prolonging procedures to be withdrawn from a pregnant woman even if she has a living will that states she does not want to remain on life support.

Ms Munoz, who was 14 weeks pregnant when she lost consciousness, will be forced to stay on life support until mid-May.

Her family say it is emotionally distressing to prolong their goodbye, and they are worried about the health of the baby.​

And worry they should. Marlise Munoz's heart stopped so they injected her with all the drugs necessary to restart her heart and shocked her. She was then given and continues to be given a variety of drugs to maintain her in her brain dead state.

"This isn't about pro-life or pro-choice," Ms Munoz's father, Ernest Machado, told Dallas News. "We want to say goodbye. We want to let them rest."

"That poor fetus had the same lack of oxygen, the same electric shocks, the same chemicals that got her heart going again. For all we know, it's in the same condition that Marlise is in."​

Mrs Munoz, who was a paramedic, along with her husband, never had a chance to sign or complete a living will. However, as the article states, even if she had, Texas law would still require that she be maintained alive on machines because she is pregnant.

So her poor family have to wait, from a point of 14 weeks pregnancy, when anything and everything can affect the development of the foetus, including the various drugs she has been given to the shocks she would have received to restart her heart, when they do not even know if the foetus is being kept alive and may be brain dead like its mother, and they are forced to wait until the doctors will be able to cut the baby out of her, so that they can finally say goodbye to her and lay her to rest.

Even if she had signed a DNR, and had been less than 10 weeks pregnant, Texas law would disregard her DNR order:

Texas law states this on pregnant patients: "A person may not withdraw or withhold life-sustaining treatment under this subchapter from a pregnant patient."

And on DNR forms, under the Health and Safety Code, it reads, "I understand under Texas law this directive has no effect if I have been diagnosed as pregnant."

Hospital officials would not speak directly about the Munoz case, but told ABC News: "We have families every day that face really difficult decisions when it comes to the care of their loved ones and we would have the same response. We follow the law."​

I get it. It's Texas. But really? Really?

Let this sink in for a moment.

She is being kept alive against her express wishes and that of her parents, family and her husband, simply to deliver a child in a few months. She was 14 weeks pregnant when she initially died. However, because she is pregnant, she is virtually and literally not allowed to die with any dignity whatsoever and instead, she is being forced against everyone's wishes and even her own, to remain hooked up to a ventilator and maintained alive to provide the necessary incubation for her foetus.

 

[lightgigantic]

We must savour this moment.

It is the first time you have actually answered a question directly.

on the contrary, if you read through those threads you will see I give the same answer.

I have mentioned several times that given the current state of things, outright prohibition of abortion is not practical. I even compared it the failure of prohibition of alcohol in the states.
This of course doesn't mean it should be available on every street corner.

Even on this thread I say the same thing practically every time I mention triage.
Its just taken this long for it to sink through your hysteria and back down from hot headed arguments against imaginary people.

You actually bring up a very interesting point and one that often gets lost in the fray.

As much as some would and do force women to remain pregnant against their consent, regardless of the circumstances, there are no alternatives. Short of forcing a woman to remain pregnant against her consent, there are no alternatives for the child. So what can be done?

regulate it, as opposed to wholesaling it as a procedure available anytime for any woman at any stage of her pregnancy,

IOW much like any other morally questionable norm with dire consequences that contemporary society has become heavily socialized around, it requires heavy restrictions and sanctioning.

My biggest gripe with pro-life groups is that the push and maintain a lack of education, primarily sex education. There is also a lack of resources and awareness. When you have some pharmacies, for example, refusing to sell birth control pills and some doctors who refuse to provide prescriptions for birth control pills or even condoms for that matter, for religious reasons, it reduces women's options. Certainly, they can simply not have sex, but that is also quite unrealistic.

Given that the model of triage doesn't lower itself to the defense of the indefensible (IOW it doesn't apply retrograde definitions to life to make the notion of killing in the womb more palatable), its their prerogative not to provide such services or to participate in disseminating an "awareness" that abortion is not tantamount to killing life in the womb and so on.
Infact its a crucial requirement if society is to elevate itself off teh slippery slope of the degraded standard becoming the new standard.

When I was ill, my doctor went on holidays and was replaced by someone I had never heard of. At the time, I was prescribed or was taking birth control pills to regulate the hormone levels due to the types of cancer I had. And I needed a new prescription, so I went to the doctor. Where I was then booked to see my doctors replacement. And he refused to give me the prescription as he advised me, his strict Catholic beliefs went against the very notion of birth control pills. At the time, I explained to him that I could not have a child and he knew why and why the pills were needed, but he still refused to prescribe them. So I went out to the receptionist, explained what was going on and I was immediately booked to see another doctor in the medical center I go to. But I was surprised as this is not something you see in Australia.

hence consent and will remain malleable on the front of morals for all parties involved... so its natural that service provision reflects the moral barometer of wherever a society may be situated, for better or worse.

Looking back on that episode, what would have happened if a woman went to him for birth control pills to try to prevent getting pregnant? He would have removed and denied her something so basic. And then what? If she does not want the child, then she could find herself having an abortion. But when you have some Governments and societies pushing for unrealistic abstinence only programs and denying sex education and refusing to provide birth control.. What will be the end result?

As far as guiding its citizenry, you tend to see that society's have one prong aimed at getting people to act by their highest qualities and another prong by having contingency plans for when things go awry. One prong operates by dictating a social standard of acceptable behaviour (IOW people are pressured to refrain from certain acts and engage in others ) and another prong operates through the avenues of rehabilitation, administrative endorsement or criminal justice for when things go off the rails.
To say that abstinence is unrealistic not only defaults everyone to an inferior grade of existence (ie robs people of the opportunity to be encouraged to perform at a higher grade ... I mean sooner or later if one wants to make the transition into adulthood one has to learn self control, which incorporates abstinence ... or alternatively work in several jobs to pay the fees at the family courts) but increases the demands of rehabilitation, criminal justice etc.
Or to say it another way, if the state is forced to facilitate the role that is commonly served by the family/extended society, it will not only be a poor substitute but produce a citizenry of welfare clients that will ultimately sink the system.

IOW the end result of what you advocate will be a more degraded society that creates more demand than it can provide.
This is of course taking the subject of abortion beyond its immediate borders to a broader spectrum of long term vision for a civilization. Needless to say, I don't expect you to agree with this, but I think its sufficient to say that your deriding of abstinence because it is not as effective as short term solutions is typical of the sort of problem solving that sustains an illness while treating the symptoms.
IOW whatever benefits we may see in society having a liberal attitude to sex life, its certainly not present in the form of cohesion of the family unit.... and with the dissolution of the family unit comes an environment that generates less effective people

You say pro-abortion. I don't know anyone who is pro-abortion.

I use that term to identify you as defaulting to weighing in favour of the rights and support of the mother to abort in any situation she chooses over the right of the child to live in all and any circumstances.
In fact its more than that, you don't even register the child as having any rights.
As such the direction you can actually move in accordance with models of triage is severely limited.

IOW triage is about making the best use of a bad bargain ... as opposed to standardizing the bad bargain as the new standard

It isn't about encouraging abortions. It is about providing women with a choice and a right over their bodies.

IOW the rights of the child in the womb never appears on the radar of your moral barometer

Sadly, many women are pressured by their spouses or partners or by their family to have abortions because an unwed mother would bring shame onto the family. No one, not a single pro-choice person would find that acceptable. No woman should be forced to have an abortion, just as no woman should be forced to remain pregnant against her consent.

and how far back are you prepared to follow the chain of cause and effect?
At what point does the factors that actually cause pregnancy and produce a need for abortion in the first case become an unmanageable variable?

 

[RussellCrawford]

This of course doesn't mean it should be available on every street corner.
Even on this thread I say the same thing practically every time I mention triage.

Perhaps you can explain why life saving medical procedures should not be available on every street corner.

regulate it, as opposed to wholesaling it as a procedure available anytime for any woman at any stage of her pregnancy,
IOW much like any other morally questionable norm with dire consequences that contemporary society has become heavily socialized around, it requires heavy restrictions and sanctioning.

The regulation of abortion should not exist to any greater extent than what is necessary to save the lives of woman. The free market should control abortion.

Given that the model of triage doesn't lower itself to the defense of the indefensible (IOW it doesn't apply retrograde definitions to life to make the notion of killing in the womb more palatable), its their prerogative not to provide such services or to participate in disseminating an "awareness" that abortion is not tantamount to killing life in the womb and so on.

Triage demands that the most life be saved with the available resources. That would indicate that the fetus, which is not a human life equal to a born life and does not have a high chance of survival should be considered under the same rules as any other non human life that is unlikely to live.

As far as guiding its citizenry, you tend to see that society's have one prong aimed at getting people to act by their highest qualities and another prong by having contingency plans for when things go awry.

But the qualities that are under consideration should not be based on unscientific belief, when a scientific answer will resolve the issue.

IOW whatever benefits we may see in society having a liberal attitude to sex life, its certainly not present in the form of cohesion of the family unit.... and with the dissolution of the family unit comes an environment that generates less effective people

Scientific resolutions to problems are not liberal or conservative, they are just the way things are. And Scientific laws show that a liberal tact whereby women control their own bodies and where autonomy is king is the best for society.

I use that term to identify you as defaulting to weighing in favour of the rights and support of the mother to abort in any situation she chooses over the right of the child to live in all and any circumstances.
In fact its more than that, you don't even register the child as having any rights.
As such the direction you can actually move in accordance with models of triage is severely limited.

The problem with your interpretation is found in the fact that until the DNA of the genotype expresses a "baby" there is no baby. And that cannot occur until birth. Your quaint idea that women must protect a fetus will lead to people violating the "Law of Charity", thereby killing born life to save fetuses that are not human or capable of life.

IOW triage is about making the best use of a bad bargain ... as opposed to standardizing the bad bargain as the new standard

Triage will lead to society being in sync with the "Scientific Abortion Laws" and will lead to the end of the pro life movement, that is not "pro life."

IOW the rights of the child in the womb never appears on the radar of your moral barometer

There is no child in the womb.

and how far back are you prepared to follow the chain of cause and effect?
At what point does the factors that actually cause pregnancy and produce a need for abortion in the first case become an unmanageable variable?

A woman is born with a limited supply of eggs and a limited timespan to produce the best family she can. Any attempt to force an end to her autonomy will not only violate scientific law, it will be tragic for society. The events of cause and effect should be taught along with the scientific laws that control abortion and the laws of society, but they should not be enforced by statute law.