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Journal buffer-overflowed's Journal: Changing my position 52

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I will change my position on abortion when those advocating the overturn of Roe v. Wade also advocate that the mothers suffer the same penalties as the doctor(as they are equally culpable). It being murder, that penalty would be death.

Ahh, but there are exceptions, right? But wait, that's still a life, right? So that means ending it, regardless of how it got there, is of course murder. So now we have raped women and victims of incest guilty of murder for ending the pregnancy.

Or does intent factor in? It's only a "life" under the law according to these certain criteria.

Of course the women can't be responsible for the murder! They're just women! You can't blame the "weaker sex" for being manipulated by evil subversives into killing their child. It is, of course the subversives fault.

And we're teaching abstinence only sex ed, because it works, darn it. In contrary to every study, every fact, the lessons learned by observing an entire continent, it works. LALALALALALALALA *plugs ears* Quiet subversives with your reason and logic and empirical evidence!

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Changing my position More

Changing my position

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  • I will change my position on abortion when those advocating the overturn of Roe v. Wade also advocate that the mothers suffer the same penalties as the doctor(as they are equally culpable).

    Ah, a good old-fashioned false dichotomy: either you support Roe v Wade making abortion a fundamental right or you want abortion made a capital crime. No room for any possible middle ground, of course, like that occupied by virtually every country in the civilized world...

    It being murder, that penalty would be death.

    • Two things here:
      If your position is that a fetus is a life, then it's a life. Regardless of source. If the mother was raped, or it's due to incest, it's still a life. It's not the life's fault that it was created under less than ideal circumstances.

      If ending that life is murder, then it's murder. The woman going to the doctor is JUST as responsible as the doctor performing the procedure.

      This is the logical end to every anti-abortion argument I've ever heard. If you want to avoid hypocrasy.

      Plenty of
      • If your position is that a fetus is a life, then it's a life. Regardless of source. If the mother was raped, or it's due to incest, it's still a life. It's not the life's fault that it was created under less than ideal circumstances.

        Of course it's a life - as was the green fur on the food I chucked out yesterday. Claiming "it isn't life" must rank among the most clueless drivel in history, and is also entirely irrelevant as I have already explained.

        If ending that life is murder, then it's murder.

        It

        • Calling it murder is how the pro-life crowd skirts the woman's rights issue(that pesky constitution). You call it a life with full protections and you can remove the constitutional protection established in Roe. You can then instantly go back to banning it if you want on the state level.

          You also get to scream abortion is murder, which is a great sound bite.

          That's the issue required to bring it down to a state level. Does or does not a fetus deserve the protections of being a human life?

          Yes? Then we t

          • Find a legal way to overturn Roe v. Wade w/o establishing that both a fetus is not a life and a woman has no constitutional right to control her own body.

            A woman does not have the right to "control her own body" to smother her infant with a pillow. The fact of the matter is that every single law out there is designed to restrict what people do with their bodies - whether you put certain things in them (drug use), use them to steal things, kill other people, etc. But you are clouding the issue, which

          • Find a legal way to overturn Roe v. Wade w/o establishing that both a fetus is not a life and a woman has no constitutional right to control her own body.

            Roe v. Wade should be overturned simply because it irrationally extended the nonexistent "right to privacy" to "right to terminate your pregnancy." Even if you LIKE abortion and want to preserve it, Roe v. Wade simply made no legal sense, and overturning it would not make abortion illegal, nor even necessarily deny a right to "control her own body" by t

            • Re:Logic... (Score:1, Troll)

              by js7a ( 579872 )
              Do you agree with Rehqnuist that a medical operation is not private? Isn't doctor-patient confidentiality legally priviledged? If a medical services aren't private, then how could publicly-funded party primaries be?

              You have no moral standing to complain about abortion because the slaughter of embryos at the fertility clinics which your party supports is far greater than the number of embryos lost to voluntary abortion. Moreover, your party's leaders have developed and used pyrophoric uranium weaponry,

        • Of course it's a life - as was the green fur on the food I chucked out yesterday.

          Interesting. usually it's the pro-choice side making this comment, to back up the point that aborting a non-viable fetus is not murder any more than scraping the green fur off the bread is.

          • Interesting. usually it's the pro-choice side making this comment,

            Since I'm pro-choice myself - just not an extremist - it's not that surprising. The weird thing is, it was the pro-choice radical assuming that killing any life is always murder which is always a capital crime - a screwed up argument if ever I saw one.

            to back up the point that aborting a non-viable fetus is not murder any more than scraping the green fur off the bread is.

            Hm. I wouldn't quite put a fetus and green fur on the same level

            • The trouble is, a lot of (American) pro-choice extremists are determined to deny that a fetus qualifies as "life" at all

              Bullshit. I can't ever say I've seen anyone advance the argument that the fetus is not alive.

              • Bullshit. I can't ever say I've seen anyone advance the argument that the fetus is not alive.

                You didn't even read the rest of this page? Right on this very page: "If your position is that a fetus is a life...". Elsewhere: "A fetus is a life right? That's why abortion is murder."

                • Mirroring what you believe others' arguments to be really has little bearing on what your actual arguments are. I can easily see that being a statement summarizing all the overblown rhetoric about fetuses having souls and being full blown human beings, etc. It doesn't necessarily presume that a fetus is "not alive", and I'm inclined to give buffer the benefit of the doubt that he wouldn't make such a ridiculous assertion.
                • That's the rhetoric used by a large portion of the pro-life crowd here in the states.

                  Abortion is murder because the fetuses are human life with souls and what not.

                  That's what I meant by life.

  • There's exactly one relevant question to ask an anti-abortion person.

    "How many foster children do you have?"

    I and my two brothers were rasied in a family that made about 50k a year, with only a little gov't assistance from the military.

    If you're a bigwig CEO, Politician, or political activist with an annual income of 100k, 250k, or 1mil, then I expect to see you support 6, 15, or 60 children. You can include your own biological children first, but you sure as heck had better take up these "precious live
    • No, it's not. The right way to approach them is to challenge their rhetoric.

      A fetus is a life right? That's why abortion is murder. That's the assertion. I've decided I'm fine with that, as long as we actually treat it precisely how they claim they want it treated.

      Because if we make exceptions we don't get the lovely rhetorical device of calling it murder, we can't skirt the woman's rights issue and thus bring it to the state level. We can't win the argument.

      But we don't want the logical conclusion
      • The right way to approach them is to challenge their rhetoric.

        Yes, because we all know that the right wing is driven by nothing short of the rhetorical excellence of its leaders and spokesmen.

        I agree that we have to challenge the simpleness of their positions, but we need to do it in a way that leaves us the moral high ground and doesn't make us look like a bunch of wackos.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • There's a lot of ways to frame it.

        We're probably a lot better off as a society with abortion being legal. Everyone wants babies(preferably white children, there are waiting lists miles long for them). No one wants a teenager(especially a minority teenager). And if we don't pay to raise them somewhat properly now, chances are we're going to be paying to house them in prison for most of their natural lives. So legal abortion definately saves us money(and lowers crime) by removing unwanted kids from the s
      • Y'know, starting off an abortion argument with a story about the lawyer for your divorce kind of ceeds the high ground right off the bat.

        But, since you asked:

        Let's take your invalid straw man of "average people having to actually take care of people's unwanted children" argument.

        I didn't say "average people." I said the folk who are against abortion. If you want to make it so the working poor can't pony up the $500 to terminate an unwanted pregnency, then you should be supportive of her other option,
        • Y'know, starting off an abortion argument with a story about the lawyer for your divorce kind of ceeds the high ground right off the bat.

          So you are equating abortion with divorce? On what basis?

          If all you hope to do is show that he is not a perfect moral person, well, I don't think we needed an actual example, since none of us is.

          (You're really not good at this.)

          Abortion is something that's morally reprehensible. But so is adultury, lying, and blasphemy. We don't have the government ban any of the la

          • So my question is simply: do you believe that it is a human life? Do you believe the goverment is obligated to protect the right to life? And if not, then how is abortion a "bad thing"?

            One thing that strikes me is that the little word "a" is really the sticking point. It makes world of difference between an unborn human being "human life" and "a human life". No one disputes that a small cluster of cells is "life" or for that matter "human". But "a human life" can be arraged to "a life that is human",

            • One thing that strikes me is that the little word "a" is really the sticking point

              That word makes no actual denotative difference. You took it to mean one thing, that it is a cluster of cells that is human in origin. But someone else could think the "a" emphasizes that it is an individual instead of merely a cluster of cells.

              The denotative meaning has to come from the context, and as I was referring to the government obligation to protect the right to life, which comes from the Declaration of Independe

              • That word makes no actual denotative difference. You took it to mean one thing, that it is a cluster of cells that is human in origin. But someone else could think the "a" emphasizes that it is an individual instead of merely a cluster of cells.

                I certainly understand what you meant, I was just observing how "human life" can mean completely different things depending on how one feels about abortion. I think both the "a" and the context where enough to clarify it in your statement, but I can imagine that

          • Let's take these in order.

            Y'know, starting off an abortion argument with a story about the lawyer for your divorce kind of ceeds the high ground right off the bat.

            Please read that again. In an argument about abortion, you MUST have the moral high ground--because you're talking about imposing your personal beliefs on those that do not share those beliefs. If the best you can get is "nobody's perfect", then the best thing is to leave judging life from not-life in God's hands and stick to the legal iss
            • Please read that again. In an argument about abortion, you MUST have the moral high ground--because you're talking about imposing your personal beliefs on those that do not share those beliefs. If the best you can get is "nobody's perfect", then the best thing is to leave judging life from not-life in God's hands and stick to the legal issue.

              So no one who is not perfect can ever make a moral argument.

              So you favor bringing slavery back.

              Got it.

              the reason we ban murder, theft, and treason while not banni
              • You can say it is not a life, but you have no evidence of this. It is nothing more than your religious belief that this child is not a human life deserving of those rights. I don't know when it does become a human life, which is why I am logically obligated to presume that it is such a life.

                That's an untenable position. The "I don't know" argument leads to laws against birth control and even ordinary ovation.

                SCOTUS heard arguments, examined history, and drew a line. A few years later, they heard more c
                • That's an untenable position. The "I don't know" argument leads to laws against birth control and even ordinary ovation.

                  No, it could not lead to laws against a raucous applause.

                  Nor to laws against a woman producing eggs. Do you recall the argument I offered? It had to do with the intentional destruction of what we know for a fact is, biologically, a distinct human life, that may, philosophically, be afforded human rights. An unfertilized egg clearly is not a distinct human life, and its lack of fertil
                  • You are question-begging. When it is *intentional killing of a human life that is not dying,* yes, it is *always* seen as unethical.

                    Pudge, I must say you're the one who started this remarkably asinine line of reasoning. But, to be clear, the best refutation I have for this is conjoined twins--doctors can and do kill one twin to save another. This is emminently ethical.

                    And, if you call abortion taking a human life, then it ISN'T unethical -- if it was, doctors would institutionaly ban abortion and the g

                    • Pudge, I must say you're the one who started this remarkably asinine line of reasoning. But, to be clear, the best refutation I have for this is conjoined twins--doctors can and do kill one twin to save another. This is emminently ethical.

                      And, if you call abortion taking a human life, then it ISN'T unethical -- if it was, doctors would institutionaly ban abortion and the government wouldn't even have to get invovled.

                      Lets, for arguments sake, say that killing one conjoined twin to save another is 'ethi

                    • Pudge, I must say you're the one who started this remarkably asinine line of reasoning. But, to be clear, the best refutation I have for this is conjoined twins--doctors can and do kill one twin to save another. This is emminently ethical.

                      Uh ... so what? This obviously doesn't apply to what I am talking about, because one or both of the twins in your scenario is dying, which is something I specifically excluded from my statement.

                      And, if you call abortion taking a human life, then it ISN'T unethical --
                    • How did you make this 'magical leap' of logic that therefore [abortion] 'ISN'T unethical'?

                      Because it's killing one person in a biological pair for the benefit of the other. And--feel free to prove me wrong if you've got real quotes--no medical ethics board has condemend either practice as unethical.

                      Which nicely gets me to the second point:

                      You also fail to awknowledge that some Doctors refuse to perform abortions because they feel they are unethical.

                      Some doctors refuse to use certain medicines; other
                    • For the record--you've proven every bad thing I've ever heard about you. Congradulations.

                      In the interest of fairness--and because I find feeding trolls to be a hobby--I'll point out one obvious failing in your reading comprehension.

                      It's not unethical because the government wouldn't have to get involved?

                      Read this sentence again.

                      And, if you call abortion taking a human life, then it ISN'T unethical -- if it was, doctors would institutionaly ban abortion and the government wouldn't even have to get inv
                    • For the record--you've proven every bad thing I've ever heard about you.

                      Nice ad hominem. It looks nice next to your several straw men, red herrings, and begged questions.

                      Read this sentence again.

                      I did. Several times. And its meaning was not apparent to me, which is why I asked the question. It's a very confusing and poorly constructed sentence.

                      IF abortion is taking a human life, AND it was unethical, then doctors would refuse to perform abortions.

                      OK, that is not what you said, though. That's
                    • What did you prove?

                      That the line works perfectly well as a counter to "abortion is murder" or similar oversimplifications, by causing anti-abortion advocates to expose the underlying faults with their positions.

                      I should probably end this here, but I think I'll go ahead and give you the right answers to these two questions.

                      Anti-Abortion

                      Q: Abortion is Murder! How can you support it?

                      A: Abortion may be morally wrong, but it's not something the government should be getting involved in.

                      Pro-abortion

                      Q
                    • Abortion may be morally wrong, but it's not something the government should be getting involved in.

                      You never established why it is morally wrong that distinguishes it from destroying a human life, that gets human rights. You asserted it, and then when I asked why it was immoral, you descended into a circular argument.

                      It is considered to be immoral because it is the destruction of a human life, which constitutes a de facto diminution of the right to life, and the government is obligated to protect that r
      • What if there's not enough people to take care of the children after they've been removed from their parent(s)? Who should pay for their care?
    • There's exactly one relevant question to ask an anti-abortion person.

      "How many foster children do you have?"

      That's really stupid. It doesn't make a jot of sense. On so many levels.

      You think you are being clever, I know. But you're not.

      Just because I don't give half my salary to Africa doesn't mean I don't think we should give more aid to Africa. If you had asked those people if they contributed time and money to helping those children find homes, that would be interesting and worthwhile (and most a
      • If you had asked those people if they contributed time and money to helping those children find homes, that would be interesting and worthwhile.

        No, it wouldn't. Because I could go an contribute time and money to helping stop globalism, but if I don't actually make concrete change then it doesn't matter.

        The more interesting arguments are in your other post, but I do want to make one thing especially clear here:

        I know it's a stupid line. It's a gross oversimplification of the entire argument. But it's
        • I know it's a stupid line. It's a gross oversimplification of the entire argument. But it's the exact right answer to an equally stupid "abortion is murder" argument.

          No, the right answer would be showing how it is not murder, either directly, or more indirectly, as buffer-overflowed tried to do.
          • No, the right answer would be showing how it is not murder, either directly, or more indirectly, as buffer-overflowed tried to do.

            Politically speaking, that's a fool's response. One cannot logically rebut "I like Ike", for example. One can at best counter it with an equally effective slogan, even if only in the hope of spuring the other side to a reasoned discussion.

            Trying to start a reasoned discussion when the other guy is just throwing cheap lines only makes you seem incompetent -- intelligence is i
  • I do not advocate ANY penalties for abortion. That's premature. You don't start talking about penalties for something that is legal, when you can't even agree that it should be against the law.

    Penalties are tailored to prevent crimes from happening, and to punish offenders. When we can't even yet define the crime, how can we come up with penalties?
    • The point of this was mainly to troll. But anyway, I got to talking with my grandfather on this topic and we came to the conclusion that there are only 2 extreme positions we can reconcile with our opinions on what rights people have. This was spawned after reading a bunch of pro-life literature and treating it as if it were gospel truth.

      One is the way things are, the other is just a flat ban. Anything else works inconsitancies in for the sake of political viability.

      They both presume that you have a ri
      • There are far more interesting differences in policy between platforms and candidates that these types of issues don't rank too high on my priority list. I wish more people did that. It's just not as easy to put into those small slogans and chants.

        Oh, I dunno, you can put anything on a bumper sticker, if you try hard enough. ;-)
      • They both presume that you have a right to control the workings of your own body. The pro-life position can make the your right to swing your fist ends at my nose argument. The pro-choice position is that there are no rights being infringed by these procedure, distasteful as it is, just ones being exercised.

        buffer-overflowed: too bad so many other people on your side of the issue don't have your intellectual understanding of it. Yes, I mean to point fingers at a particular person here. :-) You do have i
        • The problem is that we're better off with abortion then we are without it. There are all kinds of messy realities that come into play here, and not just the ones that occur at conception.

          Life, as it matters to me anyway, begins at birth. It's how we've always measured it. My age is not (Current Date - DoB) + 9(+/- 3) months. The process of conception and gestation is less interesting to us than the actual birth. Probably because up until that point, well, shit happens. Miscarriages, car accidents, too
          • The problem is that we're better off with abortion then we are without it.

            Says you, of course. I couldn't disagree more.

            Life, as it matters to me anyway, begins at birth.

            As it matters to you, yes.

            Life, as it matters to me anyway, begins at birth. It's how we've always measured it. My age is not (Current Date - DoB) + 9(+/- 3) months.

            So now the value of life depends on human conventions of measurement? Sorry, but that is a dreadfully weak argument.

            The process of conception and gestation is less
            • I'm going to ignore the rest because about the only thing I can say on it is "I'm right ye sod! Quiet you!"(Translation: "My personal experiences, while anecdotal have evidentally led me to other conclusions." :-P) which isn't conducive to discussion or argument, and just address the Roe v. Wade Hypothetical.

              A number of states still have anti-abortion laws on the books that would instantly go back into effect if Roe was overturned. IIRC it's somewhere between 30 and 40. Including a few states you wouldn
              • A number of states still have anti-abortion laws on the books that would instantly go back into effect if Roe was overturned. IIRC it's somewhere between 30 and 40. Including a few states you wouldn't think still had them.

                But those states would mostly move to make abortion legal, at least in the first trimester.

                Now, as to making the whole abortion question entirely moot. That would be great. Honestly. I don't see it happening though, we're way to uptight about sex in this country.

                I said "mostly moot,"

          • Life, as it matters to me anyway, begins at birth. It's how we've always measured it. My age is not (Current Date - DoB) + 9(+/- 3) months. The process of conception and gestation is less interesting to us than the actual birth. Probably because up until that point, well, shit happens. Miscarriages, car accidents, too much booze or whatever. Marking life at birth gives us a definate easy answer. Something we can see, something we can witness, something ancient and primal that's not going to get mussed up b

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