The Constitutional Case for Choice

[TitanTiger 20,499]

8 minutes ago, CoffeeTiger said:

Nothing at all is being demanded of people like you except to not try to legally impose your beliefs and religious morals on every single other person. 

Nobody is imposing anything on pro-lifers. Pro-lifers are the ones wanting to impose their beliefs and decisions on everyone else through laws, fines, and punishment. 

 

Sure, you're just imposing your beliefs on an innocent human being - and they bear the brunt of it with their life.

[CoffeeTiger 5,124]

13 minutes ago, TitanTiger said:

Sure, you're just imposing your beliefs on an innocent human being - and they bear the brunt of it with their life.

Where does "human life" begin? 

Is there an element of humanity in male Ejaculate or in the un-fertilized egg? Is human life formed when the egg is fertilized? Is it when the heartbeat is detectable? Is it when the fetus is viable outside the mothers body? 

Are you against Plan B(morning after pill) that would stop a pregnancy from a fertilized egg? Is that murder of a human life since the egg has been fertilized already and cell reporduction may have already started? 

If a person has no concept of consciousness or brain activity or feelings or emotions or "thoughts", how many "rights" do they have? 

 

Reasonable people disagree on these topics and MANY MANY people across the world including over half of Americans believe that some abortion options should be provided to women. 

Edited December 9, 2021 by CoffeeTiger

[jj3jordan 2,056]

32 minutes ago, CoffeeTiger said:

Nothing at all is being demanded of people like you except to not try to legally impose your beliefs and religious morals on every single other person. 

Nobody is imposing anything on pro-lifers. Pro-lifers are the ones wanting to impose their beliefs and decisions on everyone else through laws, fines, and punishment. 

 

Poor dodge. 
 

Why do those with such a profound moral objection to a woman making the choice for herself not have the same passion and conviction to help care for those children once they are born? 

 

That is your statement. I was asking you what do you want people to do to help care for those children once they are born. Simple question.  No demands were made by me.

[CoffeeTiger 5,124]

4 minutes ago, jj3jordan said:

Poor dodge. 
 

 

Why do those with such a profound moral objection to a woman making the choice for herself not have the same passion and conviction to help care for those children once they are born? 

 

That is your statement. I was asking you what do you want people to do to help care for those children once they are born. Simple question.  No demands were made by me.

It was AU9377 that said that, but I'll give you an answer. 

If pro-choice people had the same convictions to help care for the already born then they should:

1: not have new biological children if there are local children in foster care or up for adoption. It's selfish to create a new human when there are already existing humans who were born instead of aborted and need a loving home with parents that will love and care for them. 

2. Vote for free/no cost daycare...even if it means raising taxes (no, stay at home mothers aren't possible for many people now due to Wages not keeping up with inflation and vastly higher schooling, housing, and other essentials compared to decades ago. 

3. vote to increase funding for public assistance programs and affordable housing for families...even if it increases taxes. Increase the ceiling for services so that having a low paying job doesn't kick people out of services to the point that its more beneficial to be unemployed, and families cant advance or thrive. 

 

Voting for abortion bans and being against abortion is one of the easiest things most pro-lifers can do. It costs them nothing, they don't have to give up anything, they don't have to sacrifice anything. They are all about imposing limits and taking away choices from OTHER PEOPLE with no influence on their lives or situations. 

Want to ban abortion? Fine, then increase taxes and vastly increase the social welfare net so these forced parents and children wont go hungry, can afford livable housing and have decent opportunities to advance in life. If you aren't for that then you aren't as passionate for the already born as you are for the unborn. 

[TitanTiger 20,499]

9 minutes ago, CoffeeTiger said:

Where does "human life" begin? 

Is what's growing inside of a human woman's uterus canine life?  Is it a paramecium?  Equine life?  What else would it be other than human?

 

9 minutes ago, CoffeeTiger said:

Is there an element of humanity in male Ejaculate or in the un-fertilized egg?

No.  There's no human being created until sperm has fertilized the egg.  This is Biology 101.

 

9 minutes ago, CoffeeTiger said:

Is human life formed when the egg is fertilized? Is it when the heartbeat is detectable? Is it when the fetus is viable outside the mothers body? 

A human being is formed when the egg is fertilized.  It is alive from that time forward.  If it's not alive, it will not continue to develop.

A few inches of geography is not the determinant for whether it's a human being or living.

 

9 minutes ago, CoffeeTiger said:

Are you against Plan B(morning after pill) that would stop a pregnancy from a fertilized egg? Is that murder of a human life since the egg has been fertilized already and cell reporduction may have already started? 

Yes.  But I'm also of the mind to save as many innocent human beings as we can and the roughly 97% of abortions occur after implantation and for elective reasons.  Not for rape, incest, or life of the mother.
 

9 minutes ago, CoffeeTiger said:

If a person has no concept of consciousness or brain activity or feelings or emotions or "thoughts", how many "rights" do they have? 

Brain activity begins at around 6 weeks after fertilization, before most women even know they are pregnant.

We have never made external evaluations of feelings, emotions or thoughts a determinant for whether someone should live or be killed.  When we make end of life decisions for terminally ill or injured patients, it is because brain activity has ceased altogether.

 

9 minutes ago, CoffeeTiger said:

Reasonable people disagree on these topics and MANY MANY people across the world including over half of Americans believe that some abortion options should be provided to women. 

Sure they do.  But people often try to make this into some impenetrable black box of unknowingness that we can't possibly discern and therefore we should just allow elective abortion right up until full term vaginal delivery and that's just nonsense.  It's refusing to know.  

But we know when human life begins.  Any middle school bio textbook can tell you.  We know when brain activity begins.  We know most all of this stuff.  We're under no illusions that this is some alien, inert biological "thing" inside of a woman, or some other form of life on earth - it's a human being.  Human DNA, its own organs, its own fingerprints.  It's not a wart or an appendage of the mother to be disposed like a skin tag.  There is not magical fairy hovering right outside a woman's vagina to sprinkle magic "You're a Human!" pixie dust on them to bestow humanity upon this amorphous heretofore undiscernable creature coming out.  Let's not make this into a way harder to understand thing than it really is.

[TitanTiger 20,499]

8 minutes ago, CoffeeTiger said:

Want to ban abortion? Fine, then increase taxes and vastly increase the social welfare net so these forced parents and children wont go hungry, can afford livable housing and have decent opportunities to advance in life. If you aren't for that then you aren't as passionate for the already born as you are for the unborn. 

I actually don't have a problem in principle with any of this.  I think there might be some room to consider public/private charity partnerships to accomplish it, but in terms of a general bent, I'm down for it.  I'd start with universal health care coverage.  If not for everyone, at least for children and pregnant women.  I also support paid parental leave of at least three months.  I'd support tax incentives for companies and colleges and such to have on site daycare that is free or affordable.  I think these policies would relieve many of the concerns that drive demand for elective abortions.

[AU9377 4,964]

28 minutes ago, TitanTiger said:

Is what's growing inside of a human woman's uterus canine life?  Is it a paramecium?  Equine life?  What else would it be other than human?

 

No.  There's no human being created until sperm has fertilized the egg.  This is Biology 101.

 

A human being is formed when the egg is fertilized.  It is alive from that time forward.  If it's not alive, it will not continue to develop.

A few inches of geography is not the determinant for whether it's a human being or living.

 

Yes.  But I'm also of the mind to save as many innocent human beings as we can and the roughly 97% of abortions occur after implantation and for elective reasons.  Not for rape, incest, or life of the mother.
 

Brain activity begins at around 6 weeks after fertilization, before most women even know they are pregnant.

We have never made external evaluations of feelings, emotions or thoughts a determinant for whether someone should live or be killed.  When we make end of life decisions for terminally ill or injured patients, it is because brain activity has ceased altogether.

 

Sure they do.  But people often try to make this into some impenetrable black box of unknowingness that we can't possibly discern and therefore we should just allow elective abortion right up until full term vaginal delivery and that's just nonsense.  It's refusing to know.  

But we know when human life begins.  Any middle school bio textbook can tell you.  We know when brain activity begins.  We know most all of this stuff.  We're under no illusions that this is some alien, inert biological "thing" inside of a woman, or some other form of life on earth - it's a human being.  Human DNA, its own organs, its own fingerprints.  It's not a wart or an appendage of the mother to be disposed like a skin tag.  There is not magical fairy hovering right outside a woman's vagina to sprinkle magic "You're a Human!" pixie dust on them to bestow humanity upon this amorphous heretofore undiscernable creature coming out.  Let's not make this into a way harder to understand thing than it really is.

Viability is the point at which the Supreme Court decided life begins.  The point is not to say that you are wrong.  The point is that you cannot impose your beliefs arbitrarily upon a woman and thereby control her body until the point that there is a viable life.

[CoffeeTiger 5,124]

55 minutes ago, TitanTiger said:

Is what's growing inside of a human woman's uterus canine life?  Is it a paramecium?  Equine life?  What else would it be other than human?

It's a live clump of cells that if everything goes right, will eventually develope into a human being. Most likely it will fail 

No.  There's no human being created until sperm has fertilized the egg.  This is Biology 101.

 

A human being is formed when the egg is fertilized.  It is alive from that time forward.  If it's not alive, it will not continue to develop.
A few inches of geography is not the determinant for whether it's a human being or living.

Yes.  But I'm also of the mind to save as many innocent human beings as we can and the roughly 97% of abortions occur after implantation and for elective reasons.  Not for rape, incest, or life of the mother.
Brain activity begins at around 6 weeks after fertilization, before most women even know they are pregnant.

 

Okay, but you know what I'm trying to say. A clump of cells, a zygote , an embryo is not the same as a thinking, feeling, socially attached person that can consciously know it's alive and have a will of its own. I know you disagree with that and to you they are all close to the same in value, but as i said, many, many people disagree with this assessment, and this is more of a moral argument than a biological one. 

Statistically almost 50% of fertilized eggs die or fail to develop. Even if they do...early miscarriages are not uncommon. That's literally hundreds of millions of "humans" who are killed right at the start due to natural Biological factors. Do we feel grief for them? When a woman has a period after the fertilization process doesn't proceed, do we dig it out of the toilet and have a funeral and grieving process as if it is actually a human being with the same rights and importance as you or me. (not meaning to offend or say something "shocking" here, I'm trying to make a point)

Naturally, most fertilized human eggs never make it to birth. Is this a national tragedy, or is this just natural biologicals life that we don't really concern ourselves with because we know these fertilized eggs aren't truly human beings in the sense or personhood, but are really only living cells with the capability to grow and develop into true conscious personhood months down the line?  

 

Yes...me and you are in the same place in that we acknowledge that a fertilized human egg is a living group of cells and that it CAN eventually lead to the birth of a human. The difference here is that you believe that those cells deserve conscious human rights and protections from day one of fertilization, while I don't personally believe that is realistic or morally necessary.  

Quote

We have never made external evaluations of feelings, emotions or thoughts a determinant for whether someone should live or be killed.  When we make end of life decisions for terminally ill or injured patients, it is because brain activity has ceased altogether.

 

It CAN be because brain function has completely stopped, but many people everyday are taken off life support and allowed to die while they still have living brain function. That's why sometimes it takes hours, days, or even weeks for someone to die after being taken off life support systems. Their brains still function and are acting to keep the body alive, but its usually other body parts that are dieing/not functioning and the doctors have made the decision that the person can't recover to a point where they could live a capable, conscious life. 

 

 

 

Edited December 9, 2021 by CoffeeTiger

[TitanTiger 20,499]

3 minutes ago, AU9377 said:

Viability is the point at which the Supreme Court decided life begins.  The point is not to say that you are wrong.  The point is that you cannot impose your beliefs arbitrarily upon a woman and thereby control her body until the point that there is a viable life.

Actually, the SCOTUS didn't make a determination on "life," they simply marked that as the point where certain abortion restrictions could, to them, be allowed.  And the entire thing is "arbitrary."  It's not like there's this default or objective position out there occupied by pro-choice people and the pro-lifers are the ones coming in with some arbitrary standard.

And viability is a moving target because of advances in Neo-natal science and medicine.  Even within the last 100-120 years, a child born prematurely by even a few weeks had extremely high rates of death because we didn't have the knowledge, or advances in equipment and treatment to allow them to be viable outside the womb.  But with every advance in this area, viability shifts earlier and earlier to where now a child who was born at 20 weeks and only weighed 11.9 ounces at birth just celebrated his first birthday.  His birth and survival shattered the previous record of 21 weeks from just a few years before.  

When it comes to elective abortion (in other words, for purposes of birth control, not rape, incest, life of the mother, etc) a woman can control her body.  She can control whether or not to have sex in the first place for instance.  And she can control whether to use multiple different forms of birth control to make the chances of becoming pregnant extremely unlikely if she chooses to forgo the first option.  But while the only purpose for having sex isn't to get pregnant, it is part and parcel to the act.  It is a natural and normal result that can happen.  So if you choose to engage in sexual activity, then that has to be considered as a consequence.  And at that point, you're no longer dealing with just decisions that affect only one human being anymore.  That's a reality that needs to be recovered here.  Now that should entail equal responsibilities on the part of the mother and the father for sure.  And we should do all we can do in terms of social safety nets and healthcare and working with private charities and such to support women and help them keep their careers, keep them on track to get a degree, make it viable for them to keep their child if they want to (or facilitate adoption if they don't).  But what we need to get away from as a culture is this mental smoke and mirror routine where we act like we don't know what a human being is and that this distinct, unique, and separate entity is ours to discard like yesterday's garbage if we feel like it.

[Grumps 3,704]

Saying that pro-choice people want to control women's bodies is really narrow-minded, in my opinion. The primary question is when does human life/fetus/baby acquire legal rights. Our constitution says that I can exercise my rights as I see fit as long as I don't infringe on the rights of others. Women are free do exercise their rights as long as they don't infringe on the rights of others. So, when does the human life acquire legal rights?

[DKW 86 7,426]

At some level, this is nothing more than stupid human tricks. Dont want kids? Get Contraception. Cant afford Contraception? You have free forms available these days. Free condoms etc.

Condoms
IUDs
Tubes Tied
Vasectomies
Going Gay, etc
Birth Control Pill 
Rhythm
Hand Jobs
Oral Sex
Anal Sex
Etc, etc, etc

There are so many options BEFORE getting pregnant that getting pregnant these days kind of implies that you are failing at adulting. 

Edited December 10, 2021 by DKW 86

[homersapien 11,386]

19 hours ago, I_M4_AU said:

I totally respect women and believe they are necessary for mankind to survive.  I’m not sure where you get I don’t respect women.

It's quite simple.  You would deny women to make their own decisions about their own body.  This is absolutely the same as treating them as chattel slavery.

 

19 hours ago, I_M4_AU said:

No, the pressure by certain people/political stances/states can incentivize people to do something that may not be in their best interest.

That still makes no sense.  Perhaps you need to provide an example or expound on how offering a women a service she is being denied in her own state incentivizes her to do something she doesn't want to do in the first place.

Again, you are treating women as if they don't have the intelligence or autonomy to make decisions for themselves.

[homersapien 11,386]

18 hours ago, TitanTiger said:

I'm entirely in favor of women having the personal autonomy to make decisions about their own bodies.

 

It's when people want to extend that autonomy to another human being's body that I begin to have problems.

Here's an editorial by Michael Gerson which addresses this issue:

For legal and ethical guidance on abortion, let’s look to Europe

By Michael Gerson

Dozens of European countries limit elective abortion to 15 weeks. Several of them set that period at 14 weeks. A majority limit elective abortion to 12 weeks, including Denmark, Germany, Norway and France.

These countries generally allow for abortions at later stages if the physical or mental health of the mother is threatened, or in the case of serious fetal defect. But almost all these laws are more restrictive, on paper, than the regimen set out in Roe v. Wade.

Little of this can be attributed to activist religious groups “imposing” a moral vision. These are some of the most secular countries in the world. European abortion law engages in legal and ethical balancing because there are contending liberal values that require balancing — a public responsibility to value human dignity and a public duty to respect the autonomy of those who become pregnant.

This remains the issue that will not go away because it not only divides advocacy groups; it divides individual minds. Few people have an immediate sense of moral identification with a blastocyst. But it’s difficult to deny that a fetus at 21 weeks is one of our own kind — not a potential human, but a human at an early stage of development.

The problem comes in the drawing of legal and moral lines, because such distinctions seem so disturbingly arbitrary. One traditional Christian instance of line-drawing, for example, was at quickening — when a mother could feel a child inside her. But this seems absurd when generalized as a moral principle. Do humans really attain rights only when they can alert us to their existence? How does a perception in some other mind magically generate worth in a fetus?

Others have proposed the presence of fetal brain activity to be determinative. Yet the human distinctive is not found in the random firing of neurons; it is found in self-conscious rationality, and this does not develop until well after birth.

For many, viability seems an easy stopping point. And it might eventually be a useful landing place for political compromise. But this seems to be particularly weak and dangerous as an ethical principle. Do we really want to argue that dependent human beings are proportionately less valuable? Should this also apply to human beings with profound intellectual or physical disabilities?

On abortion, there is often a massive gap between the stakes of the debate and the confidence of our moral intuitions. For some, the arbitrariness of lines leads them to elevate autonomy over all other claims. Because pregnant people face a unique burden, they should have the sole decision. But establishing the moment of birth as morally dispositive has problems of its own.

No one should dismiss the human reality of trauma and devastation experienced by those aborting a child late in pregnancy. But as a legal reality, an exclusive emphasis on autonomy would allow elective abortion until birth — a truly extreme position in the context of most abortion law. Nascent life would be accorded no inherent value at all.

In the U.S. debate, religion does play a broader role in abortion controversy. And it can come out in cruel and judgmental ways. Some people are pro-birth rather than pro-life. But it is neither just nor democratic to declare that all opinions informed by religion are fundamentally personal and thus democratically illegitimate. It rigs the debate to argue that John Stuart Mill’s philosophy can be the basis for convictions about human worth, but not centuries of Jewish and Christian philosophic reflection on the demands of human dignity.

Principled pro-life reasoning makes claims about physical and ethical reality. As the philosopher Paul Ramsey pointed out, the genetic uniqueness of an individual is established from the earliest moments. “In all essential respects,” he argued, “the individual is whoever he is going to become from the moment of impregnation. … Thereafter, his subsequent development cannot be described as his becoming something he is not now.”

These maximal convictions are not conducive to compromise. Yet our society has little other choice but to balance the incompatible. The history of Roe v. Wade demonstrates the unsustainability of a few people on a single court declaring that one side can never prevail. The same would have been true if the Supreme Court had decided in 1973 that the 14th Amendment applied to everyone after conception. Such a verdict would also not have been imposable on a culturally diverse, deeply divided nation.

The explicit or effective ending of Roe comes at a low point in America’s political capacity for deliberation. But there is no more fundamental task of a political community than to define the human community. And what sounds impossible will soon be unavoidable.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/12/09/abortion-roe-europe-america-restrictions/https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/12/09/abortion-roe-europe-america-restrictions/

 

And here are some responses that make good points:

Europe? Why not emulate Canada? They are right next door, and are certainly as free and civilized as the USA, right? Canada's abortion rate is also LOWER than the USA. Abortion in Canada is legal at all stages of pregnancy (regardless of the reason) and is publicly funded as a medical procedure under the combined effects of the federal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_Health_Act and provincial health-care systems.

-------------------------

Gerson makes some good arguments, but fails in others.  the US is not wedded to centuries of Jewish and Christian philosophic reflection on the demands of human dignity; one could argue that if "longevity" is the marker, than Native American religious traditions have been here much longer.  Many of us believe that the founders did indeed intend to separate the religious from the secular when it comes to governance, and that atheist, agnostic, buddhist, muslim, and other Constitutionally legal  ethical/moral frameworks individuals wish to follow can be practiced by them without restraints imposed by the government.   Basing it purely on Jewish and Christian cultural traditions may impose restrictions that the Constitution does not recognize.

 

Secondly:  

The U.S. is the only industrialized nation in the world where maternal mortality is rising. And, the U.S. has nearly the highest infant mortality rate among high-income countries. 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/joshuacohen/2021/08/01/us-maternal-and-infant-mortality-more-signs-of-public-health-neglect/?sh=d6271ea3a508

 

Why are politicians and citizens fixated on abortion but unwilling to provide the health care and subsequent support to women and "babies" at the fetal stage and after birth that ensure the best outcomes for survival?

 

Finally, Gerson throws in this quoteL  “In all essential respects....the individual is whoever he is going to become from the moment of impregnation."  Genetically that may be true.  But it is that kind of thinking that results in the stereotyping by "genetic" attributes,  such as black people are inherently inferior and lazy and women are the weaker sex.  It strips away that great American belief that we are what we make of ourselves after birth.     

------------------------------------

 

Why not look just to the north of you? We have no laws restricting abortion at all. We also have the lowest abortion-related complications and maternal deaths in the world. Further, late term abortions never happen unless dire circumstances make ending the pregnancy a medical emergency. And finally, our abortion rate is much lower than most countries in the world including yours.

All restrictions on abortion arise out of the fear that women are silly flighty creatures who cannot be trusted to make sensible, rational decisions about their pregnancies. 

Laws restricting access to abortion are one more example of misogyny at work.

-------------------------------------

On the contrary. Viability is, in fact, the obvious point, because at that stage you would have to deliberately kill a separate individual capable of survival outside the mother's body. It doesn't exist only as part of the mother.

 

Prior to viability, a fetus is developing as a life form but is completely dependent on the systems of one distinct human being for nutrients, oxygen, elimination, etc. -- all the markers biology uses to define a living organism. And when one life form must use another's body to survive, that "host" body must have the right to decline. Anything less is a form of slavery. ------------------------------------------

Once again, Europe provides thought, moral & ethical leadership….on the abortion issue, data privacy, security, gun safety, pollution, anti-trust etc…

 

While here in the USA, thanks primarily to an uncompromising, anti-democratic, fanatic and dogmatic Republican Party of budding fascists…we can’t compromise and reach consensus to serve all of us.  

 

Once one party in a two party system decides “nope, not compromising, not negotiating” then the democracy starts to become dysfunctional and is doomed to implosion. Zealotry, dogma, fanatic, radical extremism are all anti-democracy…just like the extremist ayatollahs.

--------------------------

Laws and policies regarding abortion are always embedded within cultures and societies, and can only be understood in that context. What may appear to us to be rather restrictive abortion limits -- 15 or even 12 weeks -- are typically found in countries in which contraception is readily available and widely used -- while Americans had to go to the Supreme Court to get even married couples the freedom to use contraception -- prenatal care is free and widely used, and the choice to have a child or not is supported socially. The U.S. has few of those supports for family planning, and continues to struggle with religious conservatives who block contraception, Republicans who regard universal access to health care as horrifying socialism, and income disparities that have profound consequences for health. When U.S. society looks more like Denmark or Germany, we can adopt their abortion policies without harming pregnant women, but until then those policies are not as relevant as the editorial would like them to be.

------------------------------------

To put it simply, Mr. Gerson, as long as we have a death penalty there is no sanctity of life. As long as we don't have equal access to healthcare and birth control we don't have sanctity of life. As long as we do not assure that after birth children are well fed and cared for we don't have sanctity of life.

 

By forcing women to bring an unintended pregnancy to term we are not only punishing the women but the children they give birth to. Women are not chattel, and have the right to not be treated as such. Please explain what overwhelming interest our federal and state governments have in forcing women to bear children that they do not want or they can't take care of if those governments are not willing to provide care and support for the resulting children. They don't want to pay for that, yet they will condemn women to pay and pay and pay yet again because they can't afford birth control, their birth control failed, they were the victim of incest or the victim of rape.

 

We have ignorant people who insist they should not be forced to be vaccinated for the public good because they should control their own bodies, yet we deny women to have control of their bodies by denying access to abortion for an inadvertent pregnancy. What is in the public interest of forcing another unwanted child into the world? In Europe access to healthcare and birth control are much more universal than here in the US, and usually at low or no cost. We don't want to pay for the same here, so it is easier to put an undue burden on women who have an inadvertent pregnancy. You are comparing apples to watermelons.

[homersapien 11,386]

20 hours ago, I_M4_AU said:

You don’t have a high opinion of poor women do you?

What a stupid thing to say. 

Recognizing that a person lacks resources and means hardly constitutes a low opinion of their humanity - just the opposite.

[homersapien 11,386]

19 hours ago, TitanTiger said:

I'm entirely in favor of women having the personal autonomy to make decisions about their own bodies.

 

It's when people want to extend that autonomy to another human being's body that I begin to have problems.

At what point exactly does a blastosphere become a human being's body?

One can argue that a fertilized egg is a potential human body but one cannot reasonably argue that it is.  To do so reflects either a religious perspective.  In this country one should not be able to force their religious beliefs on others via the law.

 

[I_M4_AU 7,856]

4 minutes ago, homersapien said:

It's quite simple.  You would deny women to make their own decisions about their own body.  This is absolutely the same as treating them as chattel slavery.

Here you go again, assuming only one side of the story and trying to pigeonhole people into a box that you create.  Short story; my wife was pregnant with our third child and it was a surprise.  On one of her prenatal visits the doctors ran some tests and said there was too much protein in her amniotic fluid which indicates spina bifida. The doctor recommended an abortion, my wife would have nothing to do with it, I literally had no say as she was as passionate as I have ever seen her.

So if you think I deny women to make their own decisions about their body, you would be wrong.  She knew the child might have to have medical care for the rest of his life, but it was more important to her to deliver this baby.  That God *the science* was wrong as they miss calculated the conception date and the boy was perfect.  We found out with subsequent ultra sounds he had an intact spine.

19 minutes ago, homersapien said:

That still makes no sense.

So you don’t think people can be coerced into doing something they might not want to do by peer pressure?  It happens every day.  I would be willing to bet peer pressure has been responsible for half of the vaccines doled out to people under 40 years of age.

[homersapien 11,386]

20 hours ago, I_M4_AU said:

I totally respect women and believe they are necessary for mankind to survive.  I’m not sure where you get I don’t respect women.

 

No, the pressure by certain people/political stances/states can incentivize people to do something that may not be in their best interest.

In other words, women aren't capable enough - and/or should not have the autonomy - to determine what's in their own best interests. 

Yet another example of your disrespect for women.

Edited December 10, 2021 by homersapien

[I_M4_AU 7,856]

9 minutes ago, homersapien said:

What a stupid thing to say. 

Recognizing that a person lacks resources and means hardly constitutes a low opinion of their humanity - just the opposite.

Again, if coffee believes poor women do not have the capability to make decision about travel then I would think he is not giving poor women credit for being able to think for themselves.

[homersapien 11,386]

20 hours ago, I_M4_AU said:

 

Life is full of decisions to be made and one will have to prioritizes what is more important to them, the *right* to have an abortion or family, friends and jobs. If it were up to Biden, we would have to make these type of decisions about the vaccine.

 

First, it sounds like you agree it should be the woman's choice, not the state's.

(If not, do you really not see the irony of your position?)

 

[homersapien 11,386]

21 hours ago, AU9377 said:

Should the government be allowed to prohibit men from having a vasectomy?  Does that not prevent the creation of a baby?  Therefore, does that not go against the will of God?  Do people only have sex in order to create children?  Why do those with such a profound moral objection to a woman making the choice for herself not have the same passion and conviction to help care for those children once they are born?  Does the bible not demand as much?

The point is that many people are pro choice and yet not personally in favor of having an abortion if they were faced with an unwanted pregnancy.  That is the essence of choice, being able to decide.

The Communist government in China thinks so:

In need of a baby boom, China clamps down on vasectomies

Zhao Zihuan, a first-time mother in the Chinese city of Jinan, had two miscarriages before giving birth to a son last year. The seven-hour labor ended in an emergency Caesarean section.

Exhausted by child care, the 32-year-old and her husband decided one kid was enough — so in April they began to inquire about a vasectomy. Yet they were turned down by two hospitals. One doctor told Zhao’s husband that the surgery was no longer allowed under the country’s new family-planning rules...............

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/china-birth-control-vasectomy/2021/12/09/c89cc902-50b8-11ec-83d2-d9dab0e23b7e_story.html

Edited December 10, 2021 by homersapien

[homersapien 11,386]

19 hours ago, TitanTiger said:

Sure, you're just imposing your beliefs on an innocent human being - and they bear the brunt of it with their life.

Likewise, you are just imposing your beliefs on women who may not share them.  (And this is a real live thinking woman, not a potential woman resulting from a fertilized egg.)

Would you allow an exception for a woman who's life is threatened by a pregnancy?

 

[CoffeeTiger 5,124]

 

18 minutes ago, I_M4_AU said:

Again, if coffee believes poor women do not have the capability to make decision about travel then I would think he is not giving poor women credit for being able to think for themselves.

I already responded to this. 

not having knowledge of programs or opportunities does not = stupidity or incapability. One documented reason social programs and government benefits don't always have the intended effect is because of people who need them not knowing about them and not knowing how to apply to get them. 

Stop taking one word out a whole argument and then trying to twist it into me saying something I didn't say. 

 

[CoffeeTiger 5,124]

44 minutes ago, I_M4_AU said:

Here you go again, assuming only one side of the story and trying to pigeonhole people into a box that you create.  Short story; my wife was pregnant with our third child and it was a surprise.  On one of her prenatal visits the doctors ran some tests and said there was too much protein in her amniotic fluid which indicates spina bifida. The doctor recommended an abortion, my wife would have nothing to do with it, I literally had no say as she was as passionate as I have ever seen her.

So if you think I deny women to make their own decisions about their body, you would be wrong.  She knew the child might have to have medical care for the rest of his life, but it was more important to her to deliver this baby.  That God *the science* was wrong as they miss calculated the conception date and the boy was perfect.  We found out with subsequent ultra sounds he had an intact spine.

 

 I'm happy for your family and the child that everything turned out well. 

This story only really applies to the argument if you are suggesting that you may would have wanted your wife to have an abortion and that it was a possibility of you pushing her in that direction.

You already make it clear on here that you are heavily against abortion; and so saying that you didn't argue against your wife's decision not to have one, doesn't indicate that you would not deny women the right or ability to make their own decisions; because in the frame of the argument we're having here, your wife made what you assumedly felt was the "correct" decision from the start. 

Are you saying that if she had decided she wanted an abortion that you would have had a similar reaction and let her make the decision without argument or pushing her towards another direction, and would have supported her fully? 

 

 

[homersapien 11,386]

19 hours ago, TitanTiger said:

Is what's growing inside of a human woman's uterus canine life?  Is it a paramecium?  Equine life?  What else would it be other than human?

Potential human life is indistinguishable from canine or equine life at the early stages.  (Paramecia, not so much.)

 

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No.  There's no human being created until sperm has fertilized the egg.  This is Biology 101.

Biology informs us about when a potential "life" is created, not the sort of human life we are discussing here. 

We routinely disconnect humans from "life" support equipment - often with beating hearts - because their brains are dead. To be consistent, you wouldn't recognize brain death as actual death.

 

 

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A human being is formed when the egg is fertilized.  It is alive from that time forward.  If it's not alive, it will not continue to develop.

A few inches of geography is not the determinant for whether it's a human being or living.

A fertilized egg is not a human being, by definition.  Removing it's location by a "few inches" only proves that.  (Or preventing it

 

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Yes.  But I'm also of the mind to save as many innocent human beings as we can and the roughly 97% of abortions occur after implantation and for elective reasons.  Not for rape, incest, or life of the mother.

And about 20% of all pregnancies are terminated naturally by miscarriage.  And most countries who allow legal abortions have a much lower abortion rate than we do.  If we really want to "save innocent lives" maybe we should put more emphasis on what they do regarding supporting pregnant women.

Brain activity begins at around 6 weeks after fertilization, before most women even know they are pregnant.  Have a source for this?  There is no brain as such, just as their is no heart when those electrical impulses are first detected.  I expect that at the end of life, this amount of activity would qualify as brain death.

 

But we know when human life begins.  Any middle school bio textbook can tell you.  We know when brain activity begins.  We know most all of this stuff.  We're under no illusions that this is some alien, inert biological "thing" inside of a woman, or some other form of life on earth - it's a human being.  Human DNA, its own organs, its own fingerprints.  It's not a wart or an appendage of the mother to be disposed like a skin tag.  There is not magical fairy hovering right outside a woman's vagina to sprinkle magic "You're a Human!" pixie dust on them to bestow humanity upon this amorphous heretofore undiscernable creature coming out.  Let's not make this into a way harder to understand thing than it really is.

All of which might make good arguments for convincing a receptive woman to adapt what are essentially your religious views, and you have a right to try persuading her if she is receptive.  But as I am hopefully illustrating, just because you have specific views or beliefs on the matter, doesn't mean everyone else shares them.

What you shouldn't have the right to do - as either an individual or through the state - is to force your values upon a woman against her will.  That is a matter of HER personal sanctity. 

 

Edited December 10, 2021 by homersapien

[homersapien 11,386]

1 hour ago, I_M4_AU said:

Again, if coffee believes poor women do not have the capability to make decision about travel then I would think he is not giving poor women credit for being able to think for themselves.

Many poor women are probably not even aware that other states offer them such an opportunity or any idea of how they could manage to travel there. Many would undoubtedly lose their jobs if they took leave to do so.

Having the mental capability of making or even desiring such a trip is is no way related to having the means to do so. 

You are really stretching your logic - or lack thereof -  trying to make a "gotcha" point about disrespecting poor people .  (Whereas your lack of respect for women borders on the misogynistic.)

You need to up your game and at least stop insulting our intelligence.

Edited December 10, 2021 by homersapien