Redux: Rape, Abortion, and "Personhood"

[Syne]

Are you also applying those misandrist stereotypes to the 57% of women who hold a pro-life view (that abortion should be either illegal altogether or legal only in a few circumstances)?

That sort of sleight of rhetoric is extremely dishonest, and also extremely old and worn-out, and thus extremely stupid.

By your measure, the majority of pro-choice is also pro-life.

But let us take LACP, which means no abortions period; in that case you're talking about twenty percent, and thus the answer to your question—

No, only extremists demand that their opposition must take the position of the other extreme. You are the one being dishonest if you cannot manage to admit that abortion under the strict circumstances of rape or serious health risk has little to do with a pro-choice position. Is there some choice? Sure, but only because the woman is subject to something she had absolutely no initial choice in.

The initial choice, of being sexually active, is the one anti-abortionists believe to be the ethically responsible one.

How exactly is this majority of women "perverts"?

—is a simple, long-understood psychological term: conditioning.

You know, there is a famous book somewhere that says, "Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it."

If you train generations of women to view themselves as subordinate and inferior to men, they will believe it.

Bullshit. I have both read about and personally known women who were pro-choice until they had an abortion themselves, at which point they became stridently pro-life. This would refute your justification for dismissing what these women choose. How can you ethically dismiss 57% of women under the guise of advocating for women?

To the other ... well, okay. Perhaps you can answer the question for me: Why do so many people try to argue political issues taking place within a culture while excluding any consideration of the culture itself?

No, really, it has functional value: Are you actually unaware that there is a strong relationship between cultural immersion and ideology?

Are you aware that you often use this to make a hasty generalization of all women who oppose abortion, only to dismiss those who do so without any significant ideological influence?

Nicole, 19
Kentucky, 2013
It was this past spring. The due date’s coming up—I’m dreading it. I wanted to keep it. My boyfriend always had football practice, so he couldn’t go to the doctor appointments with me. If he’d gone, he would’ve felt differently. But he said, “No way.” I wanted to show him that I loved him enough to do it for him. ...I was hysterical, and he said, “Okay, you don’t have to go back.” I was so happy. Then he said, “We drove all this way. Stop crying, act like a woman.” I was angry, but I was so sleepy and tired of fighting. When I had the ultrasound, I asked for the picture and a nurse said, “Seriously?” A month later, he said he regretted it too. When I cry about it, I cry alone.

Heather, 32
Tennessee, 2011 and 2013
I already had two daughters. ...My husband and I were having financial problems and were considering separating. I just had to shut my conscience down. The doctor was grotesque. He whistled show tunes. I could hear the vacuum sucking out the fetus alongside his whistling. When I hear show tunes now, I shudder. Later, he lost his license. A few months ago, I got pregnant again. My in-laws have been helping us out financially, so we have no choice but to involve them in our decisions. They gave us $500 cash to bring to the clinic. I felt very forced. I felt like I was required to have an abortion to provide for my current family. Money help is a manipulation. I’m crazy in love with my daughters—imagine if I did that to them? It’s almost too much to open the door of guilt and shame because it’ll all overcome me. In the waiting room, there was a dead silence that’s hard to describe. Everyone was holding in her emotions to a heartbreaking degree.

Mayah, 23
Oregon, 2009
The only people who would listen to me say I had any emotions were people who wanted me to fall down on my knees and ask for forgiveness. I saw a counselor at a crisis pregnancy center, but she gave me an icky feeling. There’s no room to talk about being unsure.

Abby, 28
New York and Oklahoma, 2010 and 2011
The first time I was 25, in New York. From the time I was a teenager, the idea of having an abortion if pregnant was a no-brainer. I had this idea you can’t let life get in the way of your plans.

Alex, 24
New York, 2006 and 2012
I’m pro-choice, but for some reason I still hold a stigma for people who’ve had multiple abortions, and yet I’ve had multiple. ... When I was 17, the toughest part was being asked if I wanted to see the ultrasound. That was the first time it was really presented to me, real. I went on birth control right after, but it gave me mood swings, made me feel terrible, so after a couple of years I went off it. ... It does affect you. Sometimes you regret and sometimes you feel good. You think, The baby would be a year old now.

Lynn, 28
Kentucky, 2012
...I drove four hours by myself, thinking about what an idiot I was for stopping birth control.

- http://nymag.com/news/features/abortion-stories-2013-11/?mid=nymag_press​

Still, though, if you want to complain that excessive concern with other people's sex lives is considered perverted, what word would you use to describe it? If you want to complain that willfully visiting harm on women in general isn't misogyny, what word would you use to describe it?

"Visiting harm"?! In what way?

Expecting others to show a modicum of personal responsibility for their own actions is very far from perverted. Again, you seek to demonize pro-lifers only to avoid any question of personal responsibility in the initial choice. I have already shown that ready access to birth control drastically reduces abortion. If I were a woman I would find it upsetting that my gender would require welfare to make responsible choices.

We hear this complaint over and over again. Black people are evil but that doesn't make the guy who says it racist. Gays should be put in an oven and cooked alive, but that doesn't make the guy who says it a homophobe. Give me a freakin' break. We should endanger women's integration into mainstream society—health, mental health, education, economy—because of an ontological fantasy with no ratioanl suport, but that doesn't make the advocates who want to harm women in pursuit of their own aesthetics misogynist.

Again, what "harm"? You mean the consequences of their choices? You seem to conflate both violence and hate with simply disapproving of an action/choice/behavior. Now there are extremists, but you making hasty generalizations of everyone as such, indiscriminately, is intellectually dishonest. I have people in this thread saying "murder is wrong" not that "all women are evil" (i.e. the definition of a misogynist).

You can be ethically opposed to something without hate or violence. Or do you advocate these toward anyone who disagrees with you?

No, Syne. You do not get to be a misogynist and be spared the word. You do not get to be willfully disrespectful and then demand respect. Again, I find myself wondering, "How does he not know that?"

How is having a differing ethical view to yours disrespectful? Oh right, that is how propaganda works.

Here, I'll give you an example. Earlier in this thread, I was having an odd discussion aside with another member that involved odd digressions about men having babies and so forth. Despite its strangeness, it was not without its utility. And then some anti-abortion genius wandered in, and, I don't know, maybe thinking he was witty, summed up the entire conversation thus: "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?"

The first obvious question is, "What the fuck?" The second obvious question clarifies the first: "What the hell is he on about?"

We who have been taking part in this political discussion are accustomed to this. It doesn't matter what we actually say, some anti-abortion advocate thinks it's somehow intelligent to simply disregard that and restate the argument according to a movement caricature.

First, get over your self-righteous self. Second, how else would you characterize the argument that "f both sexes could have babies, abortion would be legal"? Is that another caricature? Perhaps like the one about that 57% of women being subordinate perverts?

Do you get that you are arguing an impossibility against the reality? That you seek to dismiss the reality, of 57% of women being non-nominally pro-life, while asserting something that can never be tested?

For one, if both sexes could have babies, everyone would be financially responsible for their own, rather than predominately the impregnator. As well as requiring the rapist to be fully responsible, would you agree that consensual sex fathers should not be held responsible for any unwanted child, regardless of the woman's choice?

If not, you are the sexist, demanding double-standards.

No, really, we are approaching eight hundred posts in this thread, and the anti-abortion argument is still scared silly by the proposition. Then again, that is easily enough explained: The problem with the topic proposition might well be that in order to suspend a woman's general human rights she must first have them.

Who has denied that women have human rights? Oh right, more propaganda.

This was the original question, which conceded LACP at the outset. We've covered reiterations of life at conception, the rights of men, the rights of corpses, and now we're onto a whining distraction about why bigots need special accommodation.

Yeah. Point taken.

So let me put this as simply as possible: If you don't like being called a misogynist, stop being one.

Again, not everyone here concedes LACP, and you only seem to assume it to justify your propaganda. I can only assume, at this point, that you are as hysterically misandristic as Bells. You insist on assuming the worst of those who disagree with you, regardless of any clear statement to the contrary.

 

[Syne]

Apparently you call that 57% of women "perverts", so I seriously doubt you can consider yourself as speaking on behalf of most women.

Yep, the greater majority agree that abortion should be legal, with many agreeing that there must be limits put in place, while the minority believe that abortion should be illegal full stop and the greater majority of Americans believing that Roe vs Wade should not be overturned.

The poll on Roe v. Wade was worded as "completely overturn", which would obviously make your appeal to it trivially foolish. The "greater majority" agrees that abortion should either be very restricted or illegal altogether. That you attempt to assume "legal only in a few circumstances" under your largely unfettered pro-choice is transparently dishonest.

Now, ask any woman if she would want to remain in the state of Marlise Munoz whether she wants to or not because politicians want a stake in her womb, to grow a child that is probably not going to survive and is probably in excruciating pain.

That is just it, at brain-death everything we call "the woman" (as far as awareness and any traits of personhood) does not remain in any state at all. She is gone. And any rational woman, unswayed by overly-emotional rhetoric, should have no problem with that.

On the other hand, most women would have a problem with being called perverts, which even misandrists usually have the good sense to apply only to men.

See, I view anyone, be they male or female, who obsesses over the sexual and reproductive organs of complete strangers, be they male or female, and others so much that they are willing to impose their will on those sexual and reproductive organs without consent to be perverts. See you could only find that offensive if you feel it somehow represents you.

No, it is you who makes it about sexual organs. For many pro-lifers it is about being responsible for the initial choice, which has been shown to reduce unwanted pregnancy and thus abortions.

OTOH, it is you who keeps avoiding ethical issues because you seem to think that sexual organs take precedence. That would make you the pervert. The one who does not seem to advocate being responsible for sexual activity but would rather advocate for the freedom to make that irresponsibility more acceptable and less consequential.

 

[Bells]

The poll on Roe v. Wade was worded as "completely overturn", which would obviously make your appeal to it trivially foolish. The "greater majority" agrees that abortion should either be very restricted or illegal altogether. That you attempt to assume "legal only in a few circumstances" under your largely unfettered pro-choice is transparently dishonest.



That is just it, at brain-death everything we call "the woman" (as far as awareness and any traits of personhood) does not remain in any state at all. She is gone. And any rational woman, unswayed by overly-emotional rhetoric, should have no problem with that.

On the other hand, most women would have a problem with being called perverts, which even misandrists usually have the good sense to apply only to men.



No, it is you who makes it about sexual organs. For many pro-lifers it is about being responsible for the initial choice, which has been shown to reduce unwanted pregnancy and thus abortions.

OTOH, it is you who keeps avoiding ethical issues because you seem to think that sexual organs take precedence. That would make you the pervert. The one who does not seem to advocate being responsible for sexual activity but would rather advocate for the freedom to make that irresponsibility more acceptable and less consequential.

Your argument is a fallacy to begin with and you are deliberately misrepresenting the 57% figure, which makes you inherently dishonest. You argue that 57% are pro-life. The reality is that of that 57%, only 20% are pro-life and the 37% are pro choice. Because that 37% want abortion to remain legal and available but restricted.

Pro-lifer's want to overturn Roe vs. Wade.

As for the brain dead person you have difficulty referring to as a "woman" was once a woman who made a decision about her body and her life. A decision she made sure her husband and her parents knew and understood. Your statement that she is not a woman any longer because she is dead only further enhances the argument people who advocate for legal reproductive health care for women have been making. You deliberately choose to disregard her as a woman because it makes your belief that using her corpse as an incubator more palatable.

If the State of Texas cannot legally force women to remain pregnant against their will, then they sure as hell will demand that they can make them remain pregnant when they are dead. So much so that they are allowing hospitals to keep a dead woman on life support without her consent and without the consent of her husband and her parents to grow a deformed baby with swelling on its brain. Here is the reality of "at brain-death everything we call "the woman" does not remain in any state at all":

Medical records indicate “her dead body is deteriorating,” attorney Jessica Janicek told the judge.

The body has contracted several infections, and when Erick Muñoz moves her in the bed, “she cracks,” Janicek said.

When he leans down to kiss her forehead, she smells “like death,” Janicek said.

When her breathing tube didn’t function fully, Erick Muñoz refused a tracheotomy “and they went ahead and did it right in front of him,” the lawyer said.

In an affidavit filed with the court, Muñoz described how he has had to “endure the pain of watching my wife’s dead body be treated as if she were still alive.”

“As a married man,” he said in the affidavit, “I became very familiar with the way Marlise’s body felt, the way her hair smelled and the way her eyes appeared when we looked at each, other among other things.

“Over these past two months, nothing about my wife indicates she is alive. When I bend down to kiss her forehead, her usual scent is gone.

“Finally, one of the most painful parts of watching my wife’s deceased body lie trapped in a hospital bed each day is the soulless look in her eyes. Her eyes, once full of the ‘glimmer of life,’ are empty and dead.

“My wife is nothing more than an empty shell.”​

If she is no longer a woman, then she is a mere incubator, an object to be used without her prior consent or the consent of her next of kin who get to endure watching a pro-life hospital, that does not even offer emergency contraception to rape victims, perform a horrific experiment on her body.

You see the use her fucking uterus as an incubator to be acceptable but you and your kind cannot even confer her the status of a woman.

And that is the gist of your misogyny. She is just an incubator and not a woman. Never really was a woman. However now that she is dead, you can get away with denying her rights as a woman and reminding everyone else of her purpose. That of an incubator.

And just so you know? Pro-lifer's are also against the use of contraception and have tried their hardest to restrict access to contraception. Even emergency contraception.

Because it is about sex, about women having sex. How dare she! The whore and the slut. I'm not the one pining for restricting women's access to safe and legal health care. You are. I'm not the one obsessing about women having sex and whining that they dare demand equal rights and access to reproductive health care and all that entails. You are. And anyone who obsesses this much about what a woman does with her sexual and reproductive organs, so much so that they wish to impose their will on said organs without the consent of the woman, is a pervert. Because it is perverted.

You are so busy conferring rights to the foetus that you have openly ignored and disregarded the rights of the actual person in whom the foetus resides. So much so that people like you and LG complain that women are demanding safe and legal reproductive health care. And that makes you a misogynist. Don't like it? Tough luck.

Because I am sick and tired of whelps who go out of their way to lie through their teeth and then get insulted when they are treated in accordance to their beliefs and behaviour. If demanding that women have access to safe and legal reproductive health care makes you whine and accuse me of being a man hater and a shrew as you described me? Knock yourself out. You are only making my point that you are a misogynist for me. And it is just more rope for you.

 

[Syne]

Your argument is a fallacy to begin with and you are deliberately misrepresenting the 57% figure, which makes you inherently dishonest. You argue that 57% are pro-life. The reality is that of that 57%, only 20% are pro-life and the 37% are pro choice. Because that 37% want abortion to remain legal and available but restricted.

Pro-lifer's want to overturn Roe vs. Wade.
...
Pro-lifer's are also against the use of contraception and have tried their hardest to restrict access to contraception. Even emergency contraception.

You seem to assume that pro-life must be an all or nothing proposition. Why else would that 37% want abortion restricted other than to protect life? Obviously that 37% may not want to completely overturn R v. W, but would avocate more restrictions than R v. W requires. If that 37% is pro-choice, why are you not advocating abortion only in a few circumstances?

Only extremists must demand that any opposition is equally extreme.

 

[billvon]

As for the brain dead person you have difficulty referring to as a "woman" . . .

You are the one who continually refers to her as a non-person, a corpse with no commonality with a person whatsoever. A more consistent story might make you a bit more credible.

And just so you know? Pro-lifer's are also against the use of contraception and have tried their hardest to restrict access to contraception. Even emergency contraception.

Just so you know? You are once again wrong. From The National Association of Evangelicals, a pro-life group:

"A significant majority of evangelicals support a wide range of methods for decreasing the abortion rate, including parental consent, waiting periods before abortions, efforts at making adoption, pre & post natal care more available, and easier access to contraceptive information and services."

 

[Bells]

You are the one who continually refers to her as a non-person, a corpse with no commonality with a person whatsoever. A more consistent story might make you a bit more credible.

That is how she is being treated. Have you failed to notice how the pro-lifer's in this thread have claimed she is not even a person or a human while arguing for the utility of keeping her alive to service the foetus? No, I guess you did not. When I commented on the hospital's use of her body as being something abhorrent and went to the core of a woman having no rights over her body, pro-lifer's in this thread were the first to jump in and declare she was not a woman or human and that her consent meant nothing. Posts 628 and 629 are prime examples of this. As I pointed out when I first linked the story much earlier on in the thread, while she is brain dead, her wishes and her choice over her body and the fact her husband and her parents were in agreement should have meant more than a hospital hell bent on experimenting on her dead body to grow a baby in her womb.

Just so you know? You are once again wrong. From The National Association of Evangelicals, a pro-life group:

"A significant majority of evangelicals support a wide range of methods for decreasing the abortion rate, including parental consent, waiting periods before abortions, efforts at making adoption, pre & post natal care more available, and easier access to contraceptive information and services."

Is this why they are going to court to make contraception harder to get?

From the National Association of Evangelical's website:

The National Association of Evangelicals has joined with several other organizations in asking the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the Hobby Lobby and Conestoga cases involving the Health and Human Services mandate in the Affordable Care Act that requires employers to provide contraception coverage to their employees even if it violates the moral beliefs of the owners. These two employers are for-profit closely held corporations operated in accord with the biblical beliefs of the family that owns the businesses.

Over widespread objections to the mandate, the administration finalized rules that exempt only churches, provide other religious nonprofits with unsatisfactory accommodations, and offer no protection to business owners who seek to apply their faith to their businesses.
​

If they were for easier access to contraception, then it would stand to reason that they would not be filing to make it harder for women to afford contraception.

Here..

Keep clutching.

 

[Capracus]

If that 37% is pro-choice, why are you not advocating abortion only in a few circumstances?

How about just one, the current definition of non-viability.

 

[wynn]

Its the nature of diametric opposites to employ practically the same techniques (often resulting in the same ends) when wielded by fanatic extremists.

IOW it becomes an irony that (any!) two diametrically opposed ideologies become practically identical when brought to the fore by idiots.

Indeed. And anyone else who happens to be anywhere inbetween or anywhere else around, the extremists will try to push into one or the other extreme.

 

[wynn]

Texas court orders brain-dead pregnant woman Marlise Muñoz off life support


A court in the US state of Texas has ordered a hospital to remove a pregnant but brain-dead woman from a life support system.

The judge ruled that Marlise Muñoz, who fell unconscious in November, it’s thought after suffering a blood clot, is dead. It is believed she was around 14 weeks pregnant at the time.

Her husband Erick Muñoz says he and his wife, both trained paramedics, had been clear about not wanting life support in this type of situation. He and her parents have been fighting to have her body released for burial.

“This was a sad situation all around. We are relieved that Erick Munoz can now move forward with the process of burying his wife,” said Heather King, Muñoz’s lawyer.

The family say medical records show the foetus, believed to be at 22 weeks gestation, is “distinctly abnormal”.

But the John Peter Smith hospital in Fort Worth had argued it was applying state law making it illegal to withdraw life-saving treatment from pregnant patients.

“We believe that there has been no-one on the other side, who is representing the interests of the child. We represent that interest. There are families who are standing by right now, who are willing to take the child, no matter what condition the child is in,” said pro-life activist Stephen Broden.

The stand-off has brought protests in support of the family, amid a fierce debate over the rights of unborn children and those of the families of patients declared brain-dead.

The court’s decision gives the hospital until Monday afternoon to withdraw life support.

http://www.euronews.com/2014/01/25/...regnant-woman-marlise-munoz-off-life-support/



Now, let's see how this gets interpreted ...

 

[Capracus]

Texas court orders brain-dead pregnant woman Marlise Muñoz off life support

Paper boy miss some deliveries?

 

[wynn]

Paper boy miss some deliveries?

Oh, I'd expect her to make a greater show of it.

 

[wynn]

The issue with pro-lifer's is that they are obsessed with the sexual and reproductive organs of women. From contraception, to women having sex, to pregnancy, to abortion. It is, by far, an unhealthy and perverse obsession. If a complete stranger covets your sexual organs and demands to have a say in how you use it and for what, what would you call them?

You do that. You set yourself up as the total authority on everything. Including on other people's mental health.

You demand that everyone be the same, the same robots, unquestioningly following your dictate.

According to you, people are allowed no privacy, no free will when it comes to sex. It has to be the way you say - or they are psychopaths.

Brilliant, really. You've taken tyranny to new levels.

 

[Bells]

That awkward moment when you realise someone really has lost their minds....

You do that. You set yourself up as the total authority on everything. Including on other people's mental health.

You demand that everyone be the same, the same robots, unquestioningly following your dictate.

According to you, people are allowed no privacy, no free will when it comes to sex. It has to be the way you say - or they are psychopaths.

Brilliant, really. You've taken tyranny to new levels.

Ermm Wynn..

You do realise that it is the pro-lifer's who deny people privacy and free will when it comes to sex and their own bodies, right?

 

[lightgigantic]

Your reality check is in the mail

It's a question that responds to your characterization of the issue:

"Or alternatively, Bell's la la land, where she demands others not "perversely" interfere with the 'reproductive organs of women' yet simultaneously demand a host of public infrastructure measures to facilitate solutions to problems associated with the 'reproductive organs of women'."​

The part I boldfaced has argumentative merit if we exclude reproductive health from health care.

That's the whole point of the question: Is reproductive health part of health care or not?

perhaps that would make sense if I didn't use the word "yet" ... which tends to be an important joining term used when making comparisons

Then share your illustrations with the rest of us. Rubber and glue do not an illustration make.

Do you require links to where Bells insults people or links to where you say this is ok?

Oh, right. No doctor. Sorry, I forgot that little detail. In that case, no, there's no malpractice claim to be had.

I have asserted repeatedly that I have a dryfoot policy, and I have explained repeatedly why that is—existentially, ontologically, historically, and scientifically. Jessen has a legitimate complaint about the damage she suffers in life, but her rights in utero? Why would you even ask me that? It is already well-established what my answer is, and why I would answer that way.

The abortion was legitimate.
The medical professionals who performed it had legitimate credentials.
The mother consented to the procedure and followed all directives correctly.

What exactly went wrong?
And who do you attribute as responsible for this?
Why?

You are making the extraordinary assertion. I have reviewed my position regarding the historical, ontological, existential, and scientific considerations of why a fertilized egg isn't a person. This is the standing paradigm.

On the contrary, you have failed to address it an issue outside arbitrary terms and political language.

Life at fertilization is a very recent innovation compared to the history of willfully terminating pregnancies. Even the theological justifications I have encountered explaining why this is a religious issue don't quite work; it's an ad hoc artile of faith that is only true because the believer says it is true.

On the contrary, its when you have to artificially designate something as "life" sometime after life appears that you run into trouble.
We see this in your attempts to declare them as "not people" while simultaneously refusing to answer to criticism for employing arbitrary political language.

It would be one thing if you would address the points already on the record, explain why they are insufficient, and then making your demand that the standing paradigm be viewed as what you say it is. Functionally, historically, statistically, and in any scientific way you can describe reality, the assertion of fertilization personhood has not been the working paradigm.

So far all you have offered is that a child in the womb is not a person because they exist in a relationship of contingency.
This is a very poor standard for personhood.

See, the thing is that you're doing both at once. That is, you're refusing to affirmatively support your assertion of personhood at fertilization, and you're also refusing to consider the issues that are already on the table anyway, despite your fallacious appeals to the other.

If you asserted personhood in a meaningful manner, I guess I must have missed it.

Funny, coming from the guy who rushed to change the subject.

change what subject?

Well, you know, given that the alternative is to simply exclude you from the discussion for the fact of your excessive deliberate effort to troll the threads.

You are rude. You argue from a position of ignorance. If you insist on your right to be a troll, then take the lumps.

Perhaps that would be valid if I was an isolated example.
Take a long hard look at Bells assertions of various contributors on this thread being perverts, masturbating to women on the internet, declaring other people who are pro-choice to be closet pro-life (simply for the grievous sin of disagreeing with her approach of hateful rhetoric) ... and also look at her heated mod bearing indignation at people reciprocating with her in such a manner at a ratio of about 50% ... and ask yourself why you are endorsing this behavior.

From the outside it simply appears like one mod sticking up for their mod buddies at the expense of forum guidelines.

We await the explanation that justifies your invention of a second person. You assert that there is a second person; certainly you must have some idea of why you believe that. How difficult is that?

we wait for your adequate definition of "a person" to understand how it can be relevant to the issue.

You need to support that first sentence. When you are proposing a fundamental change to the existing paradigm, you are making the extraordinary assertion.

But you have just bent the rules by constructing a so-called "paradigm" (namely that of "personhood") that has no substantial foundation outside of the arbitrary wranglings of political language.

At present, the fertilized ovum is a child in the womb because you say so. That's it. That's all you've got.

And at the present, you say it is not a person, and in fact cannot say exactly when it magically becomes "a person", within an ethically sound framework.

Had you actually bothered to attempt to address the historical, existential, ontological, and scientific issues, maybe you could try that line and maintain a shred of integrity. I mean, you understand, do you not, you are making a complaint about the absence of arguments that are on the record and you simply have chosen to not engage?

You mean like this?

No, really, do you actually understand the mechanics of your own arguments? They are specifically designed that you might pedal the velocipede as long an hard as you want, and still go nowhere.

You just introduce a rusted piece of crap with seized bearings (namely, your version of "personhood") and chastise others for not being able to travel on it

Try something more than bland, general slogans.

try thinking about why you can't offer *a single example* of a scenario that only establishes one form of extremism

You're not dealing with Kermit Gosnell, here. We are, however, dealing with an anti-abortion ideology that inspires terrorism.

Only in your hysterical imagination.
If you disagree, find the posts in this thread where individuals endorse terrorism.

So how about you try getting specific, if you're going to keep hiding behind such bland generalizations?

If you aren't prepared to discuss how an issue is *never* affronted *by just one branch of extremism*, you can take it on good faith that you're a fanatic.
:shrug:

Maybe if that's your only sustenance. You'll eventually starve to death.

Hardly likley, since I am pretty sure that if I revealed my position on a phrenological analysis of Julio Iglesias, you would disagree with it.

 

[Bells]

You seem to assume that pro-life must be an all or nothing proposition. Why else would that 37% want abortion restricted other than to protect life? Obviously that 37% may not want to completely overturn R v. W, but would avocate more restrictions than R v. W requires. If that 37% is pro-choice, why are you not advocating abortion only in a few circumstances?

Only extremists must demand that any opposition is equally extreme.

And only extremists feel they should have a say in a matter that exists solely in the body of another, so much so, that they feel they should be allowed to restrict and control that person's body.

---

On the contrary, its when you have to artificially designate something as "life" sometime after life appears that you run into trouble.
We see this in your attempts to declare them as "not people" while simultaneously refusing to answer to criticism for employing arbitrary political language.

Are you still attached to your mother's uterus, by an umbilical cord that travels down through her vagina and attached to your belly? Is your mother still the source of your sustenance and oxygen? Does your waste matter still travel from your umbilical cord, back up through her vagina and into her womb?

Because if you are going to confer "life" and "personhood", then it would mean you are indistinguishable from a zygote still attached to its mother's womb.

The irony of pro-lifer's is that "life" only matters when in the womb. Once it's out, well it's every man for himself. You do not care if the mother lives or dies. Which is what will happen if abortion is made illegal. But that's fine. And that is the ultimate hypocrisy of the whole debate. Life and personhood only matters when it's still in the mother's womb. She ceases to be a person if she is pregnant.

So instead you and Wynn come out with your triage model and then you are offended when you are provided with a current triage model in action.

 

[wynn]

Ermm Wynn..

You do realise that it is the pro-lifer's who deny people privacy and free will when it comes to sex and their own bodies, right?

No, you are. All the time. You want people to be robots. To think, feel, speak and act precisely the way you want them to.

 

[ElectricFetus]

What value is "life"? Does life have value simply for being, intrinsic value? Or are their properties of life that give life value?

The later would seem to be the case. It is why most of us are inclined to grant a person with a painful fatal disease that is begging for "voluntary euthanasia" the sweet release of death. Or how we think more of a person then a dog, or an insect or a plant, etc. For the pro-life verse pro-choice argument the points of value are generally pain, happiness and freedom verse intrinsic value of life. Different metrics between these generates different stances on the pro-life/pro-choice debate, and produces most but not all pro-life/pro-choice stances.

A pro-choicer values happiness, lack of pain and freedom more then a "supposed" intrinsic value of life. Outlawing abortion inhibits freedom, degrading the quality of life of the "hostess" who is forced to grow a fetus to term that she does not want, it degrades her happiness in life and the happiness of the child, by forcing her to raise a child she does not want, and forcing a child to be birthed and raised by a mother that loath her and/or lacks the resources to support her as best as the mother could. As some pro-choicers have pointed out already (in rather crankish fashion) abortion can allow a women to have a child when she wants to and feels most ready to support said child, with better income, education, a loving willing spouse, etc such children are statistically better off, thus abortion takes a life from potential/eer "developing" people to give it over to more abstract potential people that are fewer but better off.

There are other pro-choice arguments. The viability argument is useful: A fetus is not a independent life form (yet) therefor is property of the hostess to do with how ever she likes. This argument alone can't deal with "viable" fetuses or worse the potential of technology to make younger and younger fetuses, viable. This is also an argument for freedom, but like the more blatant argument that criminalized abortion inhibits a women's freedom it is open to asking "what about the fetuses freedom?"

The pragmatic argument is also useful but can't separate what is right from what can be done: we can't declare something morally right simply because it is the more practical option, although laws can be made around pragmatism and realpolitiks and is probably a big reason why abortion has become legal, it does not change the moral consideration.

Rather for pro-choicers to generate a sound ethical frameworks to back their stance a combination of the above arguments and more is needed. For example the happiness and freedom of the mother is of more value then the life of a fetus, another fetus can be conceived and born at the mother's discretion. Even if we give gradients to potential people, and grant a fetus higher status then zygote, fertilize embryo, sperm, ova, abstract future people, the combine value of the freedom of the full person, the hostess, and that full person's happiness is greater. The fetus can be granted more value if it is viable though and thus could be separate from the mother as a living entity but would have to be done so as to optimize quality of life, that would mean pragmatically the state would need to pay for growing the fetus to term in an incubator or artificial womb and raising the child in an orphanage if the mother does not want it.

I argue there is no intrinsic value to life and thus the properties of life that give it value, happiness, freedom of choice, favor abortion morally, not just legally.

 

[wynn]

So instead you and Wynn come out with your triage model and then you are offended when you are provided with a current triage model in action.

Will the raping never end?

I guess you can't back down now from the abuse, you've gone too far.

 

[Tiassa]

Notes Around

You want people to be robots. To think, feel, speak and act precisely the way you want them to.

Is there any intrinsic connection between the sentences you post and reality?

No, seriously, I want you to document that one. Go for it.

Will the raping never end?

I guess you can't back down now from the abuse, you've gone too far.

It would help if your trolling could actually hide behind the pretense of merit that comes with not being incomprehensible. As with Wynn, I want you to document that one, although in this case there is the additional need to explain what the hell you actually mean.

I would think that after forty years, the anti-abortion movement could come up with better arguments than rhetorical sleights and open silliness. I mean, it's one thing that yes, you have the right to say such stupid things. But, to the other, you are emblematic of the problem.

• • •​

A Note to ElectricFetus

Per the provocateur role you have chosen to play, I would point out the delightful challenge you would face should you undertake the opportunity to try to justify this performance.

Go for it, dude. I mean, you can already demand proof of a negative assertion with a straight face, and have held extraordinary assertions devoid of any need for support as long as they are anti-abortion. I look forward to the explanation of how proper discourse includes assertions that don't even make sense.

In other words, what ass-kissing do you think we owe this troll?

You're on.

 

[lightgigantic]

Are you still attached to your mother's uterus, by an umbilical cord that travels down through her vagina and attached to your belly? Is your mother still the source of your sustenance and oxygen? Does your waste matter still travel from your umbilical cord, back up through her vagina and into her womb?

As I mentioned earlier, contingency is a poor model for establishing personhood ... since its kind of intrinsic to what we value in civilization.
Hell, even you frown on abortions performed after 25 weeks, which involve the same model of contingency.

Because if you are going to confer "life" and "personhood", then it would mean you are indistinguishable from a zygote still attached to its mother's womb.

So, in what way does it move outside of this model of contingency in 20 or so weeks?

The irony of pro-lifer's is that "life" only matters when in the womb. Once it's out, well it's every man for himself. You do not care if the mother lives or dies. Which is what will happen if abortion is made illegal. But that's fine. And that is the ultimate hypocrisy of the whole debate. Life and personhood only matters when it's still in the mother's womb. She ceases to be a person if she is pregnant.

well, I don't go around demanding resources be used to fully legitimize the extermination (in a practically unregulated manner) of people who are not capable of independent existence (including pregnant women) , if that's what you mean

:shrug:

So instead you and Wynn come out with your triage model and then you are offended when you are provided with a current triage model in action.

Exclusively factoring in only the whim of the person wielding the upper hand of power hardly sounds like effective triage managament