an abortion thread with no personal attacks

[Ziggy Stardust]

There's one thing that always confused me.

One believes abortion is murder. And 50 million 'persons' have been murdered by abortion. And the action one decides to take against this brutal slaughtering is to complain about it on a message board.

I know that if I believed that this sort of mass murder was going on in my country, I would be a little more pro-active than that. And I believe that every most persons with a moral bone in their body would do more than nag about it on the interwebs. And I do consider those who are pro-life to not be immoral enough to just stand by and allow this to happen.

Therefore I feel it's safe to say that almost no one thinks it's murder. And that's actually a compliment to the pro-life people. Instead of sitting back and allowing the murder of innocent persons, they merely are using a debating tool. Which may be dishonest, but at least it's not as gruesome if they really did believe it to be murder.

So fellers, stick to your guns on the murder charges. And keep fighting the good, but entirely meaningless, fight from behind your keyboard. The silently screaming foetusses will be thankful for your non-intervention into the matter.

 

[Farm Boy]

Would you really rather we bring the pipe bombers back? The doctor slayings? Speaking for pro-lifers, cynically as you are, demeans so much of the what and why of peaceful efforts they do. You don't think our "internet warriors" support lobbying groups or ever go to protests? You don't think they volunteer their time and money to organizations that provide assistance on linked issues? Would you rather quibble with the wording and call it "homicide" instead of "murder?"

Speak for yourself Ziggy.

 

[IdiotsOpposite]

Would you really rather we bring the pipe bombers back? The doctor slayings? Speaking for pro-lifers, cynically as you are, demeans so much of the what and why of peaceful efforts they do. You don't think our "internet warriors" support lobbying groups or ever go to protests? You don't think they volunteer their time and money to organizations that provide assistance on linked issues? Would you rather quibble with the wording and call it "homicide" instead of "murder?"

Speak for yourself Ziggy.

As to the bolded question... I doubt it. They certainly aren't helping adoption, and certainly aren't helping with birth control, the two most reliable methods of reducing abortion.

 

[Farm Boy]

As to the bolded question... I doubt it. They certainly aren't helping adoption, and certainly aren't helping with birth control, the two most reliable methods of reducing abortion.

Then you aren't looking. Not all Christians, for example, who are pro-life are Catholics who oppose birth control. Go find somebody from, say, Lutheran Child and Family Services.

You aren't paying attention to these people because they aren't pissing you off which makes them boring news. There are more of us than you think.

 

[IdiotsOpposite]

Then you aren't looking. Not all Christians, for example, who are pro-life are Catholics who oppose birth control. Go find somebody from, say, Lutheran Child and Family Services.

You aren't paying attention to these people because they aren't pissing you off which makes them boring news. There are more of us than you think.

Fair point. I really only see the types that make the news.

 

[El_Machinae]

Farm Boy is quite correct, better charity efforts will help *more* than all the pipe-bombing and internet-outrage even could.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

Would you really rather we bring the pipe bombers back? The doctor slayings?

Since I don't buy into the nonsense of calling it murder, I do not. But there's the catch. The accusation of murder by the millions is vastly more gruesome than the examples you provided. If you believe these people, abortion is a bigger mass-murder scheme than the holocaust. If I had been alive in Nazi Germany, I would hope I would take the action you described. I would indeed hope that I fought the concentration camps with bombs and nazi (doctor) slaying.

But you did not read my post well. I did compliment them. The fact that the pro-life people shouting murder are not doing those awful things is because they do realise that even in their view abortion is a moral wrong, but not on par with the wrong that murder is. I content that they use that as a debating tool for emotional impact. Which in my view isn't that big of a deal, irritating, but not a big deal. On the other hand, if they truly did believe aborting a foetus is on par with with murder, why aren't they stopping it by slaying doctors and bombing abortion centres? Think of how many lives it would save. Would a resistance fighter think twice to commit a horrible act like killing a Nazi guard to free Jews?

The compliment here is that they are merely trying to obfuscate the debate, instead of standing by while millions are murdered.

Speaking for pro-lifers, cynically as you are, demeans so much of the what and why of peaceful efforts they do. You don't think our "internet warriors" support lobbying groups or ever go to protests? You don't think they volunteer their time and money to organizations that provide assistance on linked issues?

I have very little faith in that yes. I do believe that for the majority they stop at shouting "murder" on an internet forum.

But lets give them the benefit of the doubt. Again, I do not demean their peaceful actions. I applaud it. And I applaud the implication of those peaceful action. The implication being that they are capable of more moral relativity than they give themselves credit for. It's not being cynical, it's having a revelation. And I am glad I did, and I will view them more favourably because of it.

Would you rather quibble with the wording and call it "homicide" instead of "murder?"

Same thing. Millions of people homicided. Blah.

Speak for yourself Ziggy.

I most certainly did. "I know that if I believed that this sort of mass murder was going on in my country, I would be a little more pro-active than that."

 

[Farm Boy]

Same thing. Millions of people homicided. Blah.

No, it isn't.

We execute people for murder in much of this country. We don't do so for vehicular homicide. We don't do so for reckless homicide. The culpability of the actor is materially different. If you have had a revelation I would suspect its truth is limited to the fact that most people really don't know the distinction between the two, thus use the word "murder" when they mean "homicide."

 

[Leoreth]

But the critics do use the word "murder" which makes it reasonable to assume that they wish to see it treated like "murder", no matter what the legal definition of murder really is. If they just use it as a rhetorical tool, then Ziggy's theory is proven right.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

Isn't murder a type of homicide? Not really relevant to the point they make when they say: morally it's murder. So legal implications don't matter. Blah.

But I take it, judging by the detour, you are a little less taken aback by my reasoning.

 

[Terxpahseyton]

well, how about if your fat guy is swinging on a rope and you can only reach him at some point in the future?....

by eliminating your female helper's choice by threat and putting the fat guy's life above other matters, it would seem that your code of "collective moral obligation" and "greater good" morality could be used not only to justify a pro life stance, but also rape

In deed! But only if you rape without condom, so no risk-free pass for rapers.

Just goes to show that the desires of merely hypothetical beings are way to inconvenient to bother about. And on the other hand: Who is not can not regret to not be. I'll just go ahead and assume that this makes it morally alright to not care.

 

[Farm Boy]

Murder is a type of homicide, not all homicide is murder. It isn't really a detour. Legal implications do matter because, at least in this case, they are modeled after moral implications.

You don't have people waging armed conflict over drunk driving fatalities, which would be classified as a type of homicide.

I'm not really taken aback by your reasoning. I'm just asserting that most people use the wrong word to describe how they feel. This error isn't in how they view the unborn, it is an error in how they are defining their views on the culpability of the actors who perform/undergo/enable abortions. Murder is a common-use term, homicide isn't really.

 

[El_Machinae]

Well, a lot of the debate is on whether abortion is homocide or not.

That said, I greatly welcome the diversions (exemplified usually by Lucy or Farm Boy) that point out that the debate doesn't help reduce the number of abortions very much, even though it's actually a common goal.

 

[Leoreth]

Murder is a type of homicide, not all homicide is murder. It isn't really a detour. Legal implications do matter because, at least in this case, they are modeled after moral implications.

You don't have people waging armed conflict over drunk driving fatalities, which would be classified as a type of homicide.

I'm not really taken aback by your reasoning. I'm just asserting that most people use the wrong word to describe how they feel. This error isn't in how they view the unborn, it is an error in how they are defining their views on the culpability of the actors who perform/undergo/enable abortions. Murder is a common-use term, homicide isn't really.

Well, I'm aware of at least one abortion opponent on this board (you have one guess) who actually said that women who have aborted deserve the death sentence, just like murderers.

Is that representative of all abortion opponents? I don't think so, but that's the mindset that dominates the debates.

 

[Domen]

To Ziggy Stardust:

Your argument, that if they really considered it as homicides, they would do more to stop it than just talking, is erroneus.

There were many mass-murders, genocides and other crimes against life in history when only few people did something to stop it.

For example during WW2, or before that during WW1 (Armenian genocide, etc.). Or after 1945 for example in Africa, in the Balkans, etc., etc.

This happens everyday (various mass crimes against life) and nothing is done.

In China human lifes are not respected - what did the US authorities do about that? They shake hands with Chinese leaders every day. When China occupies Tibet and violates human rights, nothing is done. When Ukraine mistreats Yulia Tymoshenko, everyone boycotts Euro 2012. And nobody has boycotted Sochi 2014 so far, despite much more serious crimes commited by China every day. This reveals deceitfulness of so called "Western democracies" and their leaders.

Abortion cliniques yield considerable profits - just like businesses with strong China (and contrary to businesses with weak Ukraine).

 

[Winston Hughes]

So at the risk of invalidating the pose of empiricism that I adopt above, I'd hazard that "natural rights" isn't simply an idea that is simply wrong, that needs to be abandoned as an error, but rather something that needs to be surpassed, that has functioned as the historically necessary condition of such a paradigm. You could debate when that becomes the case, and in all honesty I'm not entirely sure myself, but I think that it's a point in time that we have either arrived at, or that we will arrive at in the not too distant near future. My rejection of natural rights theory may seem nihilistic, and in a certain sense it is, but it's not an ahistorical nihilism, a claim that "this is objectively bollocks", but an historical one, a claim that the theory is no longer sufficient as the articulation of our emancipatory impulse.

Is the bolded part anything more than wishful thinking? What's your evidence here?

(ps. Sorry I didn't respond sooner. RL's been crazy.)

 

[Terxpahseyton]

That would be the first massive killing program in a free and democratic society and without any attempt to hide it though. So quit different.

 

[bernie14]

Well, a lot of the debate is on whether abortion is homocide or not.

There's one thing that always confused me.

One believes abortion is murder. And 50 million 'persons' have been murdered by abortion. And the action one decides to take against this brutal slaughtering is to complain about it on a message board.

I know that if I believed that this sort of mass murder was going on in my country, I would be a little more pro-active than that. And I believe that every most persons with a moral bone in their body would do more than nag about it on the interwebs. And I do consider those who are pro-life to not be immoral enough to just stand by and allow this to happen.

Therefore I feel it's safe to say that almost no one thinks it's murder. And that's actually a compliment to the pro-life people. Instead of sitting back and allowing the murder of innocent persons, they merely are using a debating tool. Which may be dishonest, but at least it's not as gruesome if they really did believe it to be murder.

So fellers, stick to your guns on the murder charges. And keep fighting the good, but entirely meaningless, fight from behind your keyboard. The silently screaming foetusses will be thankful for your non-intervention into the matter.

sorry, but this is not an "argument"...it is one feller just finding a way to call people he doesnt agree with hypocrites.....

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

If you feel that way, you missed my point

 

[Domen]

One of reasons why in some countries there is strong pro-abortion lobby, is because abortion cliniques yield considerable profits.

For the same reason internal combustion engines have not yet been replaced by better technology - because of strong pro-oil industry lobby.