341–350 of 388 posts
Morality and law both work like mathematics. This means that my beliefs are constructed, and once I have a construction, the only in bounds way to convince me to change my mind about them is to show me that my beliefs are inconsistent. Moreover, understanding someone who has already demonstrated an inconsistent belief system is easy. They believe X because they believe something and its negation, and at least one of…
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Well see that's the thing. What makes killing a human murder? I'm of the opinion that the human mind is what makes a human more valuable than a lower animal. Killing a cloned body with no cerebrum wouldn't be murder. I'm forced to concede, however, that that belief doesn't give me a reason that newborns should be more protected than fetuses as it takes months for infants to begin demonstrating consciousness and memor…
I think "What makes killing a human murder" is the wrong path to go down when it comes to arguments for/against abortion. It's so politically charged and yet impossible to clearly discuss in any significant detail, thus the situation we find ourselves in. I think it's better to just accept that abortion is prematurely terminating a life and thus the primary consideration should be the cost the parents and/or society…
I guess since this is your opinion I can't say it's wrong, but I can strongly suggest that this opinion is wrong. Is abortion the killing of a child? If it is not then why does a state like California have laws written about double homicide that say:
> defines murder as the unlawful killing of a human being or a fetus with malice aforethought. [0]
If we already have laws like this in a state as liberal as California, then clearly the argument that an abortion is murder is reasonable.
Put another way, would you tell a mother grieving for her miscarriage that she didn't actually lose a child? She just lost a fetus after all, so it's not like there's much to grieve about.
Or would you say that a woman that had her unborn baby killed while having some sort of altercation or accident isn't entitled to prosecute the perpetrator? If she has the right to pursue legal action against somebody, then there is clearly some sort of "precedent" about an unborn child having rights. This is an argument that can and should be explored further instead of dismissed since it's a "touchy subject". The law is full of hard truths, and it's our responsibility to explore these to make sure we're not carrying out injustice.
[0]: https://www.ncsl.org/research/health/fetal-homicide-state-la...
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Not ignoring it. Just refusing to accept that the rights of the pregnancy supersede the rights of the human carrying it.
Perhaps "ignoring" means refusing to entertain it even for the sake of argument. Bodily autonomy is probably a weak argument, because it assumes that the fetus isn't a living human being deserving of the same protections against slaughter that you and I enjoy. If it is, bodily autonomy doesn't justify murder. If it's not, then protecting it from abortion is absurd. In neither case though, is bodily autonomy a compell…
You seem to be saying that "personhood" should be the deciding factor of abortion rights, but "personhood" is never going to be resolved to everyone's satisfaction. Bodily autonomy can and should be.
As a person with close friends and family members on opposite sides of the culture war, this is the explanation that resonates most to me.
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> So, I'm an anti-abortion pro-choicer? Kinda weird I suppose. Falling between two camps isn't popular these days. That’s what “pro-choice” means. They’re not “pro-abortion”, at least officially. US liberals are good at avoiding abortions ahead of time because they have less premarital sex. The conservative no-sex messaging doesn’t work as well because it relies on telling teens that abstinence is the cool minority t…
> because they have less premarital sex. I think you make fair points, but I would guess here that the reality is not less pre-marital sex. It's probably more, it's just sex with birth control.
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Your hypothetical doesn't make much sense to me because it assumes Obama had more power than he did- Obama wasn't elected king of America. You need 60 votes in the senate to pass anything unless you eliminate the filibuster (the so called nuclear option). Obama had 60 Democrats exactly which means if even a single Democrat was willing to vote against a federal right to abortion law Obama couldn't have done it.
Democrats controlled the House and Senate from 2009 to 2011. They could have passed it then without even needing to eliminate the filibuster. But they didn’t even try.
First, they only had 59% of the House, not enough to overcome filibuster.
Second, they did have 60% in the Senate, but only for a few months in 2009, and it's not obvious that it was an "overcome filibuster on federal abortion laws" 60%. 2009 was the year Al Franken won a Senate seat in Minnesota after a recount and a Minnesota Supreme Court case, so he wasn't seated until late April. A couple of months later, Ted Kennedy died and was replaced by an interim appointee; Scott Brown, a Republican, won the special election to replace him that winter. They also had Arlen Specter - a Republican - caucusing with them to make that 60. He was a "pro-choice but personally opposed" legislator and may not have voted with the Democrats on this issue.
So yeah, they didn't try. But I think it's very likely they didn't try because they felt strongly that they would not be successful.
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Thank you for sharing this. I used to be pro-choice. I think a lot of women (and men) are because of the fear they might be in a position of needing an abortion themselves, or other abstract/potential concerns. Framed as a right to body autonomy, pro-choice seemed the obvious position of any feminist, and how could you possibly believe otherwise? Then I was in the position of having to make the decision myself. Now,…
I understand you have strong feelings about whether you wanted an abortion, and that's totally understandable and I'm glad you are happy with the choice you made. But that's not at odds whatsoever with referring to yourself as "pro-choice". (Most folks that get abortions already have kids, so it's not like everyone has to pick "abortion" or "no abortion" for life.) I had an abortion back in the aughts, and never once…
Note that I am not saying that abortion should be illegal or unavailable. We still put serial killers to death, pull the plug with advance directives, allow for self defense, and we ought too allow abortions when the fetus hasn’t cross the threshold into being a human being (which is when?!?) or in carved out exemptions like rape, incest, life of the mother, etc. As far as I’m aware this is a rather centrist position.
The point of my story of my lived experience is that it made me realize the mainstream “pro-life” position is not trying to attack the autonomy of the woman (which is a straw man caricature of their view) but to be the defender of the baby, of which they feel needs but is lacking equal protection under the law.
That didn’t make me pro-life, and I don’t think I said I was. I said it is complicated and nuanced, and I can see the arguments made in good faith on both sides. It is easy to attack a straw man. It is much harder to reconcile with the steel-manned belief of the other side and not walk away without some certainty shaken. I still feel women deserve to have a right to an abortion when needed, but it is also not an unconditional right: society is allowed some say in determining rules and guidelines, just like other medical practices which affect the life of another are regulated. This isn’t a defiance of your bodily autonomy as a woman; it’s recognition that the child growing inside you is (after some point) a distinct human being with its own right to bodily autonomy. “Your right to swing your fist ends at my face” and all that.
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Your hypothetical doesn't make much sense to me because it assumes Obama had more power than he did- Obama wasn't elected king of America. You need 60 votes in the senate to pass anything unless you eliminate the filibuster (the so called nuclear option). Obama had 60 Democrats exactly which means if even a single Democrat was willing to vote against a federal right to abortion law Obama couldn't have done it.
Democrats controlled the House and Senate from 2009 to 2011. They could have passed it then without even needing to eliminate the filibuster. But they didn’t even try.
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First of all: What a terribly-made PDF... It's so compressed I can't even read the text at the top. Secondly, it's just from an awful source: The Family Research Council (FRC) is designated as a hate group (for good reason!) by the Southern Poverty Law Center: https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/grou... Even after all that it has yet another problem : It uses loaded terms like, "unborn children" t…
> Is it really that impossible for the anti-choice movement to make a reasoned argument?
Well what is a reasoned argument? Google says that reason is "a cause, explanation, or justification for an action or event.". So it seems to me that if somebody offers any explanation, that fulfills a reasoned argument. But perhaps you mean well-reasoned. And that is a subjective argument contingent on what you mean by well.
> To cite legitimate science?
Yes you can argue pro life and cite legitimate science [1]. But like this article says, you'll probably pull out your prejudice and immediately dismiss any scientific evidence that supports pro life. In addition to that, science is funded by people with agendas. Like the article also says:
>> As often as not, scientists dive into the debate, taking funding from pro-life or pro-choice organizations or openly advancing an ideological position. This, too, has consequences: It casts doubt on the validity and integrity of any researcher in bioethics-related fields. “Anybody with money can get a scientist to say what they want them to say,” Largent says. “That’s not because scientists are whores. It’s because the world is a really complex place, and there are ways that you can craft a scientific investigation to lend credence to one side or another.”
So claiming illegitimate science is just a No True Scotsman's fallacy. A true scientist would never come to a pro life conclusion, therefore you must be a false scientist.
> that doesn't involve religion or tradition?
An atheist's point of view seems like it would not involve either religion or tradition [0].
[0]: https://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2017/10/19/...
[1]: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/01/pro-lif...
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> our particular system of government is a bit shit, and keeps getting worse the better everyone gets at gaming it. I agree that a "Union of States," being profoundly anti-federalist, is a pretty shit way of running a homogeneous world power with a shared language, shared culture, and (for the most part) shared ideals. The US fundamentally changed after the Civil War (which was probably the breaking point of anti-fed…
The US is more akin to the EU than it is to a normal country. I don't think that is necessarily good or bad, it just is. But I don't know if I understand your bit about shared culture, language, and ideas... Would that imply that we should share a govt with the UK and Australia? Or if oceans are the breaking point, at least Canada?