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[Arizona] says, you're pregnant for up to two weeks before you're pregnant.
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And what of the civilian casualties, which often include children & infants?
Why? Saying it does not make it so. In my honest opinion, women should have the right to do whatever they want with their bodies without zealots trying to punish them for having sex. Have you ever raised a kid? Do you have any clue what an "inconvenience" it is to have to go through a 9 month pregnancy and then deliver a child, with a risk of dying? I'll tell you: saying "inconvenience" to describe it is so disingenious as to be outright untrue. How about next time you make a bad decision we give you mono for 9 months? That's about the same level of "inconvenience". Get your morals the hell out of anyone else's life.
The reason I am being so harsh is because people like you who argue for abortion with a "but..." are incredibly dangerous to the Choice movement. You are saying that there is something morally wrong with abortion, which there isn't, and you are blaming women for getting pregnant, AKA slut shaming, which you should be ashamed of. That's the bullshit the anti-women movement (I won't dignify it with the term pro-life) spouts, and clearly they have managed to convince you. Get that shit out of your head.
What about them? That's not equivalent to abortion in any way even if being pro life meant you approved of that. Which is highly disputable.
Pretty much this. Abortion should always be available to a woman, but we should make every effort to make sure a woman never has to make that choice. I think that's what pisses me off about most pro-lifers the most is that they are anti-abortion, but also work their hardest to prevent women from having the resources to not get in that situation.
Not in as much as they're both alive. Which, really, that's what Pro-Lifers are in favor of, right? Life?
Unless I'm mistaken and they're actually just a bunch of xenophobic white people who fetishize white fertility like whiteness is somehow going out of style.
How is this hard to understand? He said many pro lifers are fine supporting the wars and you said "unborn people vs terrorists/felons". Implying that the majority, or even a statistically significant portion of the people killed in the war on terror are terrorists and not civilians. I understand you didn't actually mean to imply that, but it's easy to see where that comes from.
If pro lifers really cared about stopping abortion they would be aggressively supporting contraception, but it's not about abortion its about slut shaming.
With apologies to George Carlin for poorly paraphrasing his work.
This is gold/truth.
SODOMISE INTOLERANCE
Tide goes in. Tide goes out.
I really don't understand why we're concerned that it's cutting off a potential human life - the very word 'potential' means that it is not a human life.
SODOMISE INTOLERANCE
Tide goes in. Tide goes out.
snrrrrkkkkkk
Those are my thoughts on this post as well as on the bill in the OP.
During the period when many women get abortions (the oh shit I'm pregnant abort abort! around seven weeks or so) the thing isn't technically a fetus yet (still a zygote) and has a tail. Going on appearance alone, it's more like cutting off a potential salamander.
Chestburster?
Here here.
Thought experiment: suppose I had a special ray gun, such that when I fired it at blocks of inanimate matter it rearranged them into adult human bodies. If this were so, then all inanimate blocks of matter would have the potential to be human and to have human lives. If I had such a gun, would I be obligated to use it? If such a gun existed, would it be wrong to destroy a block of inanimate matter? If, in general, we ought to realize human potential--to make sure that everything which can become human does--then the answer to both should be yes. That seems wrong, however. So perhaps there is no such general obligation to realize human potential, and as such there is no obligation to make sure that fertilized eggs make it all the way either.
What strikes me as damaging to the pro-choice movement is this overblown trite rhetoric.
Do you honestly not understand that pro-life people fundamentally believe that a fetus has some value as a human life? The 'keep your morals out of everyone else's life' therefore does not dismiss their central issue. Because they don't believe that you are making choices just for yourself, you are killing another human being, or at least another possible human life depending on what idea precisely they're subscribing to I suppose. In answer you might bring up the violinist argument, but this isn't nearly the magic bullet it's sometimes suggested to be, and still leaves abortion in the status of being an unideal outcome - just morally defensible as the best worst option.
You bring up the idea that the pro-life movement is 'anti-woman', how do you think this plays with all the liberal, secular, or otherwise well informed women who none the less take a pro-life position? Is it not both tremendously condescending, and likely to lead to them dismissing what you have to say. After all, the most base requirement for debate is accepting that other people believe what they profess to, and honestly, I find it hard to believe that anything but a minuscule minority of pro-life supporters are doing it for some malicious moustache twirling reason to show women their place. The outcome may be such, but it's not the intention.
Oh sure, fine. Then we just use your taxes to pay for the child birth, welfare, and education of the child. Cause you know, all those are usually paid by tax payers and cost in the millions for one child.
Personally, when I think of abortion, my thoughts naturally come to my daughter that I have and the daughter I will have in July (wife is pregnant with our second kid, yay! Seriously!). And I could never imagine myself not wanting them.
But I'm also pretty real on that not everyone is financially or emotionally ready for kids. I would prefer it if everyone had access to the proper sexual education and birth control as well as the morning after pill and use abortion as a last resort, but it's not a perfect world and every unwanted child just leads to more issues.
Let's Play Mass Effect - Set 6 Updated 9/8/2012
Edit: my spelling is terrible
Yes, but it has the potential to be something more. That giant scab on your arm you got because "You can totally grind like Tony Hawk" can never and will be nothing more than it is now. Those collections of cells or blastocyst may get totally fucked at random... or it could one day be the guy who cures HIV. You don't know and you cannot know, so there is a world of difference between a piece of skin that can only ever be a piece of skin and a collection of cells that could one day be a fully-functioning, intelligent sapient life.
My personal thoughts are this: abortion is OK if the child was conceived by rape, or stands an almost certain chance of having some horrifying disease or defect that would prevent it from having a life free from permanent suffering or incapability... and I suppose if the child's birth would insure the death of the mother, then she should have that choice. However, I cannot see the logic behind "I don't want to have a kid for the sake of not having a kid, so I'm gonna have an abortion." That's selfish, and there's other solutions. If you don't want the kid, you can give it up for adoption. There's many, many loving would-be parents out there who cannot have kids of their own who will give the child a great life and loads of love in the event you're incapable or unwilling to provide that child with those things.
And for the record, I took biology too... had the best grade in the class to boot, which was really annoying when my lab partners would constantly put it on me to figure everything out, further complicated by one female partner never actually helping and instead just writing in her notes nonstop, and the other showing off her, ahem, "interestingly placed" elephant tattoo. At least the ex-Army guy helped out.
Still, when it came to identifying the organs in a snake, it was on me.... and I rocked when it came to snakes. It was the grasshopper that gave me issues.
Your cells could potentially become "life" itself too.
The counter argument I've usually heard, and indeed the argument used by the aforementioned Robert M. Price (no great authority, just topical) is effectively "unmolested the foetus will become a human life, a block of matter/sperm cell/ovum will not" and use imagery to the effect of "the fuse is already lit."
To which my only response is "So?". The relevance, I do not see it.
SODOMISE INTOLERANCE
Tide goes in. Tide goes out.
You show me a pro-life group that isn't against contraception, sex education, or planned parenthood (who prevent more abortions than they give) and I'll show you a pro-lifer who isn't anti women. Unfortunately for your position, "the pro life movement" doesn't fit into that category, and yes it's completely possible for a woman to be anti women. I'm not sure why you think it wouldn't be.
I had to dust that off
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And I argue it's potentially small-minded and selfish because someone wanted to get their freak on without taking proper precautions, and their solution is simply to kill what's growing inside them. Yes, complications CAN arise, but modern medicine has already cut the odds of maternal death in the good ol' USA and is significantly lower in many other developed countries to incredibly low levels. You literally have a greater chance of dying in a car accident than from giving birth. Maybe the child grows up to be a welfare abuser, maybe it grows up to be a doctor. But if you kill it before it's born, you'll never know.
Point is, abortion for the sake of "Well, what if 1 in 10000...." is crappy, and I find "well, it hasn't been born yet" an incredibly callous mindset. And again, selfish. Knowingly denying a life because there's a 1:10000 chance of losing yours at worst is irrational. You might as well not drive your father to the hospital if he's having a heart attack because you might die on the freeway.
Here's a thought: maybe instead of condoning abortions for everyone who wants them, regardless of their reasoning, we reinforce the usage of birth control and make the morning after pill readily available in the event a condom breaks or afterwards the young lady realizes "holy crap, I took antibiotics yesterday!".
A serious and/or immediate threat to the life of the potential child and it's mother? Yay for abortions. There's no reason to think either will face anything worse than a normal pregnancy? Nay.
I'm not sure whether I think they remain anti-women or not.
SODOMISE INTOLERANCE
Tide goes in. Tide goes out.
Edit: and the morning after pill is essentially a form of abortion. Where do we draw the line and why? How do we do this lawfully and not morally/religiously so that it's fair and just to everyone.
I don't stick you with 20 years of debt just because you got the short end of the stick and you vehemently tried everything in your power to not get it.
Of course, the inherent problem with this is it would be next to impossible to prove and in states that only have abstinence only education (and by virtue a ton of needless, avoidable pregnancies) I feel bad punishing someone cause their parents/state government are fucktards.
Steam Profile | Signature art by Alexandra 'Lexxy' Douglass
I think that's a good mindset, actually. People should have the option, I just happen to think it's wrong and selfish to do it for self-serving reasons.
Steam Profile | Signature art by Alexandra 'Lexxy' Douglass
I didn't miss that: it still has the potential to become a fully functioning human being, the fact it is currently reliant on the mother for survival is completely irrelevant, and I obvious saw your point about complications because that's what the MMR is (Maternal Mortality Ratio). That's your chances of dying due to complications from pregnancy/childbirth, which is like 12.something out of 100000 in the USA right now, which is actually worse than many other countries. You even called it a "parasite" earlier, which implies that at the moment it exists it is it's own separate entity, only reliant on another for survival. Thus the potential for anything a human has potential for then exists.
And as for the morning after pill, the argument swings both ways. The primary mechanism of most ECPs is the prevent fertilization, not to kill/remove an already fertilized embryo, though they do typically have the effect of also preventing a newly fertilized egg from attaching in the uterus. I draw the line there, because the intent is to prevent fertilization, not the abortion of an already forming embryo.
You've said a lot, and a lot of different issues come up so rather than go point by point in a post, I'd like to discuss the specific parts one by one until they are resolved. With this in mind, the bolded part of your post above (reproduced below for clarity)
"And I argue it's potentially small-minded and selfish because someone wanted to get their freak on without taking proper precautions, and their solution is simply to kill what's growing inside them."
There are two initial points which stand out to me from first principles: your use of the word "selfish" and "small-minded".
I don't understand how either applies. "Selfish" denotes that the agent in question is ignoring the interests of others in what we consider a socially unacceptable fashion. Whose interests are being ignored in the case of abortion? Likewise, "small-minded" usually refers to an inability to accept a fact or principle due to ideology, (willful) ignorance or mental defect*. What does the actor refuse to understand in this case?
* Alternatively, you might mean prone to judgement, petty or otherwise mean. But I don't see how that applies any better.
SODOMISE INTOLERANCE
Tide goes in. Tide goes out.
Steam Profile | Signature art by Alexandra 'Lexxy' Douglass
I am partially in jest there.
...
Seriously?
Selfish, because they are putting their own interests ahead of that of another human being. A person who would deny life to another primarily so they can avoid an inconvenience in their's is selfish. It's just too big of a "what if" for me to claim it's for the greater good if their only rational is they don't want to be pregnant or have a baby simply for the sake of not being pregnant and having a baby.
It's small-minded because a theoretical person in this theoretical situation isn't looking at the big picture. Even if you do not believe the embryo is truly a human being yet with the potential to be a functioning, productive members of society then it doesn't change the fact that the embryo has the potential to becoming a true human being which has the potential to become a functioning, productive member of society. You're, at best, trading one life for another.
And on a personal note, please don't quote definitions to me: it's incredibly condescending.
The argument also presupposes a robust understanding of (and confidence in the moral significance of) what counts as 'molested' versus 'unmolested' development. After all, a fetus needs a womb to develop into a person. How different is that from a sperm, which needs a womb and an egg? Why is it molestation to deprive the fetus of the womb, but not molestation to deprive the sperm of the womb and egg? I am of the persuasion that these questions lack good answers.