Is Abortion Murder?

[Mark1031]

, no consequences to promiscuity, teen pregnancy increasing, STDs rampant, etc...). ...killing or sterilising a few hundred or a few thousand whores to slaughtering millions of children who are by definition innocent.

This language belies the fact that some of the underlying argument for you is consequences and imposing punishment on people for having sex. You should really consider this as you are attempting to use unwanted children as a tool to punish people. If you're a "whore" (I believe very few abortions are actually prostitution related) you are sentenced to raise a child you do not want and probably can;t afford alone. I find this to be a repugnant abuse of children.

This is, I find, a common strain on the religious right, for eg the veritable glee of some leaders that AIDs was sexually transmitted and at first a primairly gay disease in the US. I also find this repugnant and very unchristian from my understanding of the primary tenants of the faith.

And we are slaughtering millions of fetuses and embryos, not children--please use the correct language.

 

[Pikachu]

There is plenty of evidence that a person is not a mindless clump of cells too.
The fact that we try to save people only until the brain is damaged beyond repair is a good example. The fact that we put someone on life support if he lost any limb, but we don't if he lost his head, is another.

If the brain is destroyed there is no hope that the creature can live independently again. We are not obligated to keep anything artificially alive forever. A creature that only losses a limb has however good chances to live outside the life support in the future, and are therefore worth keeping alive.

Anyway, I'd like to see the argument about how can something can be a person if it has no mind. And I say "IS A PERSON", not "can become in the future", nor "has human DNA" or other.
I want a credible argument about how something without brain can be a person.

I don’t care if it is a person or not. What a person is seems to be an arbitrary definition that is utterly meaningless to discuss. I settle for defining a foetus as a living organism that is fully human, and that gives it the right to not be killed by other human organisms in my opinion.

But even then, I was talking about making a slight cut into your finger, not about cutting it out whole from the rest of the body.

OK, if you don’t cut the whole thing off it will probably heal well and is not that evil, but still you shouldn’t do it on purpose.

 

[Akka]

If the brain is destroyed there is no hope that the creature can live independently again. We are not obligated to keep anything artificially alive forever. A creature that only losses a limb has however good chances to live outside the life support in the future, and are therefore worth keeping alive.

Wrong. We do keep on life support people whose spine has been destroyed, and who are totally paralysed and unable to move more than an eyelid, and have chances between none and zero to be able to live outside life support in the future.

I don’t care if it is a person or not. What a person is seems to be an arbitrary definition that is utterly meaningless to discuss. I settle for defining a foetus as a living organism that is fully human, and that gives it the right to not be killed by other human organisms in my opinion.

Sorry, but no. You're only skipping the determination of what is a person out of convenience. We attach fundamental value to PERSONS, not limbs or tissue culture. Pro-lifers and pro-choicers all say they are defending the rights of PERSONS, even if it's only in a potential form. But even the staunchest pro-lifer don't defend the right to live of a severed limb, despite it being fully human.

OK, if you don’t cut the whole thing off it will probably heal well and is not that evil, but still you shouldn’t do it on purpose.[/QUOTE[]
Why shouldn't I do it ? (I mean, except the point that it's stupid ?)
After all, tatoo, ritual scarifications, piercings and the like are all done on purpose. They may be of bas taste, but evil ?

Even if it heals well, there is millions of cells that have been killed. HUMAN cells. I've killed "healthy living things that are humans" by scratching myself.
So either scratching yourself is morally wrong, either you have to admit that there is something more needed than simply being a "human living thing".

 

[Pikachu]

Wrong. We do keep on life support people whose spine has been destroyed, and who are totally paralysed and unable to move more than an eyelid, and have chances between none and zero to be able to live outside life support in the future.

In those cases there is nothing wrong with turning the machines off. Those people are not kept alive for their own sake, but because their family think it is better to visit a vegetable than a grave.

Sorry, but no. You're only skipping the determination of what is a person out of convenience. We attach fundamental value to PERSONS, not limbs or tissue culture.

I like convinience. I attach values to humans regardless of what the definition of a person might be. A foetus is clearly not the same as any limb, but a separate creature. That is a major difference, I think.

Anyway, I also defend the rights of healthy human limbs.

Why shouldn't I do it ? (I mean, except the point that it's stupid ?)

Isn’t the point that it is stupid a good enough reason?

I've killed "healthy living things that are humans" by scratching myself.

The outer layer of your skin is mostly dead already. You can’t kill something that is already dead. And since it heals it isn’t a big deal anyway, so you can go on scratching with a clean conscience.

 

[FearlessLeader2]

This language belies the fact that some of the underlying argument for you is consequences and imposing punishment on people for having sex.

Not at all true, the way you have worded it. Before I bother continuing this post, I need to ask you an important yes-or-no question:

Do you believe that actions taken by an individual that have negative consequences for society or others should have negative consequences for them as well?

(I'm going to assume that your answer is yes, otherwise there is no point in you being involved in a debate about moral issues.)

Wanton, unrestricted, non-monagamous sex is bad for the individual, bad for society, and bad for the children it produces. It causes unwanted pregnancies, spreads STDs, leaves broken hearts and lives in its wake, erodes the family structure, and levies huge costs on society for medical and indigent care. It is not a good thing, and people who claim they want to indulge in it are doing so at the expense of society, not just themselves. It is NOT their own private business if they spread an STD, create an unwanted child, or break up a marriage. Sex HAS consequences, the most obvious of which is pregnancy. By taking that consequence away with unfettered access to abortion for social reasons, the other problems (STDs, broken marriages, etc...) all increase in frequency.

Pregnancy is not 'punishment for having sex'. Niether is AIDS. Both are possible natural consequences of indulging in sex, and 'ameliorating' the consequence of pregnancy with abortion reduces the natural tendency to protect onesself from that consequence of sex, thereby increasing the risk of the others.

As a parallel, consider this: if there was a cure to lung cancer, but it didn't do anything about emphysema, throat cancer, or mouth cancer, would you continue to discourage smoking, or would you rationalize that since there is an easy cure for the biggest consequence, people should light up? Well, that's exactly what allowing healthy women to abort healthy fetuses is, it's telling them and everyone else that since there is an easy fix for pregnancy, bang away.

That is why I want to keep the consequence of pregnancy in sex, so that people will remember the other ones.

You should really consider this as you are attempting to use unwanted children as a tool to punish people. If you're a "whore" (I believe very few abortions are actually prostitution related) you are sentenced to raise a child you do not want and probably can;t afford alone. I find this to be a repugnant abuse of children.

*chuckle* So killing them is better? Hold up, they're CHILDREN now? I thought they were just potential children? You're, you're not trying to have your cake and eat it too, are you? Naaah, you wouldn't do that.

In times past, the unwed mother of a pregnant child usually found herself in an arranged marriage, a convent, or her grandmother's house (to secretly bear and give up for adoption) pretty quickly. Single mothers took a pretty strong hit to ther reputations back in the day, and sex was a lot less rampant as a result.

This is, I find, a common strain on the religious right, for eg the veritable glee of some leaders that AIDs was sexually transmitted and at first a primairly gay disease in the US. I also find this repugnant and very unchristian from my understanding of the primary tenants of the faith.

Sadly, this may well be the motivation of others. Nothing I can do about that.

And we are slaughtering millions of fetuses and embryos, not children--please use the correct language.

Yeah, but we still don't know for a fact when life begins, and I'd still prefer we chose to err on the side of caution, rather than on the side of hedonistic instant self-gratification of our basest desires.

But that's just me I guess.

 

[Birdjaguar]

The pro-life movement is not about control. It is about respect for life (IE God's Creation). It is because of respect for and appreciation of the gift of our lives, that we Christians seek to protect the lives of others, especially those who are unable to protect themselves.

Imposing one's moral values on others is all about control. "I believe X, and that means Y behaviors should be curtailed. To curtail them consequences should be imposed on those who refuse to follow my view of the world." There are alot of things that the world would be better without; the items on your list among them. I could add many more of my own (and "chiggers" would be included ).

But, if ,as you say, we have free will to choose our actions, and that god will judge us by those actions, who are you to control how a woman uses or abuses her body? How would you punish a woman who gets pregnant while addicted to drugs or carries a disease? Or is that OK because it supports "life"? And what if a woman drinks during the first trimester and then bears a fetal alcohol syndrome child? Do you believe that diminishing the future life of your unborn child is OK?

Clearly god created a world where murder and death are rampant players. They are part of god's plan. God himself wiped the slate clean on at least one occasion thinking it would make a difference. Apparently it didn't. While jesus was on earth he did nothing to stop or even slow down the killiing of people by other people. He did not feel it was of importance or significance then. What has changed to make it such an important issue now? Killing is one of the things we do best. We are at our most creative when we look for ways to control others and then get to punish those who don't see things our way.

we've gone from killing or sterilising a few hundred or a few thousand whores to slaughtering millions of children who are by definition innocent.

But don't those unborn who are aborted get a free pass to heaven?

All I am hoping for is to establish a balanced situation, one in which potential human life is respected enough that a woman who terminates a healthy fetus for non-medical reasons who was not sexually mistreated is rightly scorned, but a woman in an unfortunate situation not of her own making can still get an abortion without being an outcast. There's plenty of room on the middle ground for all of us you know.

I can't disagree with looking for compromises.

 

[FearlessLeader2]

"I can't disagree with looking for compromises.", he said, trolling rampantly just before that.

Thank God for the rolleyes smiley!

 

[Birdjaguar]

"I can't disagree with looking for compromises.", he said, trolling rampantly just before that.

Thank God for the rolleyes smiley!

That means I agree with what you are trying to do, I even agree that there is lots of middle ground and a balanced scenario should be worked out, but have procedural difficulties with the underpinings of your arguments that I brought up in the first part of my post.

Trolling might be described as trying entice the inexperienced into irrational posts and then blindside them. You don't fit into that category of poster. Think of my post as "chumming". I am casting tasty tidbits into water to see if you or anyone else is willing to discuss them. I like to ask hard questions that don't have simple answers. Since people rarely even attempt to answer them anymore, the challenge for me is to work through the questions and make them interesting. C'est la vie.

 

[Mark1031]

Not at all true, the way you have worded it. Before I bother continuing this post, I need to ask you an important yes-or-no question:

Do you believe that actions taken by an individual that have negative consequences for society or others should have negative consequences for them as well?

(I'm going to assume that your answer is yes, otherwise there is no point in you being involved in a debate about moral issues.)

Wanton, unrestricted, non-monagamous sex is bad for the individual, bad for society, and bad for the children it produces. It causes unwanted pregnancies, spreads STDs, leaves broken hearts and lives in its wake, erodes the family structure, and levies huge costs on society for medical and indigent care. It is not a good thing, and people who claim they want to indulge in it are doing so at the expense of society, not just themselves. It is NOT their own private business if they spread an STD, create an unwanted child, or break up a marriage. Sex HAS consequences, the most obvious of which is pregnancy. By taking that consequence away with unfettered access to abortion for social reasons, the other problems (STDs, broken marriages, etc...) all increase in frequency.

Pregnancy is not 'punishment for having sex'. Niether is AIDS. Both are possible natural consequences of indulging in sex, and 'ameliorating' the consequence of pregnancy with abortion reduces the natural tendency to protect onesself from that consequence of sex, thereby increasing the risk of the others.

As a parallel, consider this: if there was a cure to lung cancer, but it didn't do anything about emphysema, throat cancer, or mouth cancer, would you continue to discourage smoking, or would you rationalize that since there is an easy cure for the biggest consequence, people should light up? Well, that's exactly what allowing healthy women to abort healthy fetuses is, it's telling them and everyone else that since there is an easy fix for pregnancy, bang away.

That is why I want to keep the consequence of pregnancy in sex, so that people will remember the other ones.
*chuckle* So killing them is better? Hold up, they're CHILDREN now? I thought they were just potential children? You're, you're not trying to have your cake and eat it too, are you? Naaah, you wouldn't do that.

In times past, the unwed mother of a pregnant child usually found herself in an arranged marriage, a convent, or her grandmother's house (to secretly bear and give up for adoption) pretty quickly. Single mothers took a pretty strong hit to ther reputations back in the day, and sex was a lot less rampant as a result.

Sadly, this may well be the motivation of others. Nothing I can do about that.

Yeah, but we still don't know for a fact when life begins, and I'd still prefer we chose to err on the side of caution, rather than on the side of hedonistic instant self-gratification of our basest desires.

But that's just me I guess.

Sorry but this post proves my last point which was that you are using the consequence of unwanted children to try to punish people for having sex (again I say reprehensible). I really don’t know what you would call forcing people to do something against their will as a consequence for behavior you don’t approve of other than a punishment.

As far as your view of sex it is to me way off the make and focuses on the negative to a ridiculous level as I find is also common in religious right arguments.

The only negative of sex is STDs and unwanted BIRTHS. As far as STDs go let me inform you that almost all human activity has negative effects on society. Eating food spreads disease dude. We don’t ban food or say you should live with the consequences of eating we get the USDA and try to reduce the disease risk as a society. Crapping has huge disease risk, we build sewage treatment plants. Making plastics has huge negative effects on society, we create NJ and try to isolate the problem (No offense I used to live in Jersey, nice state in most parts).

For the negative consequences of sex we develop drugs and give access to birth control and abortion. No different than giving people lipotor to reduce the consequences of a bad diet.

People have sex because it is a natural drive in the same way as the drive to eat high fat diets and crap. We evolved to have this drive as do all other animals obviously, get used to it. People have more premarital sex because people get married later. People get married later because we are no longer all farmers and it takes a much longer time after puberty to be ready to raise children in modern society. Nothing more. Some people are promiscuious but most people I know who have had abortions are far from it. The general profile is a college student who was in a monogamous boy friend relationship, not a whore. I think having more partners and waiting longer to marry is good for society in that it allows people to explore more possible life partners and make a better choice for a long term stable relationship in which to raise healthy children. Trying to punish premarital sex is a negative for society, it should be encouraged IMO and the few negative consequences minimized as much as possible.

I said children because that is what you are proposing, ban abortion so all the unwanted embryos become children to punish people for having sex.

 

[Pikachu]

I really don’t know what you would call forcing people to do something against their will as a consequence for behavior you don’t approve of other than a punishment.

I wouldn’t think punishment is the motivation whenever someone tries to force drug addicts into treatment against their will. The motivation would more likely be to help the addict.

Of course abortion is very different, but still, having a child is more like a blessing than a punishment. Banning abortion could be looked upon as an attempt to help misguided people to overcome their fears and have the beautiful loving child that they don’t know they want yet.

 

[FearlessLeader2]

It's interesting to see that the minute I stop using the hard-core rhetoric of the religious right, and start taking a moderate tack on this issue, the left immediately falls to rabid snarling and repetition of things I've already shot down.

Pro-life is not about telling other people who they can have sex with, it's about not letting them use killing to eliminate the primary consequence of having sex with anyone that offers, and thereby exacerbating all of the other negative consequences of sex. This is a very simple concept:

1) Statisically speaking, sex will lead to: pregnancy, STDs, social conflict (adultery / statutory rape / incest), objectification of women/men, breakdown of marriage on a societal level, etc... If you want to deny any of these things are true, go ahead, but don't expect me or anyone else to take you seriously.

2) While the chances for each event above are individually small, over multiple occurrences, all probabilities eventually approach 100%. This is one of the most basic laws of probability, and is even used in evolutionary theory.

3) Removing the most likely possibility (pregnancy) with unfettered abortion-as-contraception, will lead to an increase in occurrences (history offers plenty of proof of this), and therefore speed the rate at which the other consequences reach 100%.

Again, I am not proposing that all abortions be banned, only the use of abortion as after the fact contraception. I understand that the pro-choice side has a strongly vested interest in painting me as some sort of right-wing nut, but I am not going to cooperate with their effort to do so.

 

[Mark1031]

How is denying abortion to people to aleviate a negative consequence of sex any difference than denying people lipotor to aleviate a negative consequence of a bad diet (which has other bad consequences for the indibvidual and society that are not aleviated by lipotor)??

 

[Mathilda]

So are you suggesting that making abortion unavailable in most cases would reduce rape / statutory rape and incest?
How's that?
You believe the rapist or child abuser cares about the consequences to the victim?

Re: adultery and break up of marriage.
Do you really believe that the fact that abortion wouldn't be be available would be a such a big factor in lives of people that it would radically change their behaviour?
I believe that someone having an extra marital affair doesn't plan on getting pregnant, relies on same method of contraception as with spouse and believes in it's effectiveness and gets carried away with feelings. Getting caught is going to be a far more likely worry than getting pregnant.

Overall I don't believe that making abortion illegal without medical reason changes people's sexual behaviour.
Futhermore, making them illgal doesn't stop abortions, only makes them less safe.

 

[Mathilda]

Sorry - double post...

 

[Morfos]

Is early (first 2 trimesters) abortion murder?



This is standard rhetoric in the “right to life” community. If you think it is murder there are several corollaries to this position.

1. My wife is a murderer.

2. Millions of murderers walk the streets of the US.

3. For the past 32 years the US been carrying out one of the largest genocides (or at least mass murders) in history.

4. Many countries are carrying out similar mass murder.

What are the implications of this language? Abortion opponents: should it be toned down? Can the use of this language incite people to violence?

It makes no sense; do we really want to execute millions of women for murder? What I like to point out to right-wingers is that if they were to outlaw abortion there would be more liberals.

 

[FearlessLeader2]

How is denying abortion to people to aleviate a negative consequence of sex any difference than denying people lipotor to aleviate a negative consequence of a bad diet (which has other bad consequences for the indibvidual and society that are not aleviated by lipotor)??

After Roe vs. Wade, the social stigma against pre-marital sex rapidly evaporated.

Show a similar correlation between Lipitor and eating greasy foods.

 

[Mark1031]

After Roe vs. Wade, the social stigma against pre-marital sex rapidly evaporated.

Show a similar correlation between Lipitor and eating greasy foods.

Well I don;t think any such study has been done but obesity is clearly on the rise since these drugs were introduced in the 80s. And Roe was in '73. The "sexual revolution" was in the 60s so I don;t see your correlation with the stigma and I doubt overturning Roe will bring back that stigma.

 

[FearlessLeader2]

Overall I don't believe that making abortion illegal without medical reason changes people's sexual behaviour.

The reverse did in America. Seems reasonable to expect that changing it back would reverse the lowering of social stigmata as well.

Futhermore, making them illgal doesn't stop abortions, only makes them less safe.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=94283 And this fails to act as a deterrent to promiscuity how exactly?

 

[Birdjaguar]

After Roe vs. Wade, the social stigma against pre-marital sex rapidly evaporated.

The social stigma against pre marital sex began to fall apart in 1960 when the first birth control pills were introduced. The process sped up considerably from 1966-1970 as the counter culture of sex, drugs and rock & Roll took over the youth of America. The summer of love (1967) and woodstock (1969) put pre marital sex on the map for everyone to see. The women's movement of the early 70s added fuel to the fire and when Roe v Wade was decided in 1973, the genie was already out of the bottle. It cannot be put back. Roe v Wade was not the cause of the sexual revolution.
Edit: Kinsey's studies on sexuality laid the ground work for the changes of the 60s. The pill made out of wedlock sex feasible by minimizing the risk. The Beatles, Rolling Stones and the vietnam war fed the rebelliousness and the hippies provided the mantra "make love not war". Trying to pin the sexual revolution on the supreme court is just incorrect.

1) Statisically speaking, sex will lead to: pregnancy, STDs, social conflict (adultery / statutory rape / incest), objectification of women/men, breakdown of marriage on a societal level, etc... If you want to deny any of these things are true, go ahead, but don't expect me or anyone else to take you seriously.

Sex will also lead to love and friendship and even marriage.

 

[Squonk]

Is early (first 2 trimesters) abortion murder?



This is standard rhetoric in the “right to life” community. If you think it is murder there are several corollaries to this position.

1. My wife is a murderer.

2. Millions of murderers walk the streets of the US.

3. For the past 32 years the US been carrying out one of the largest genocides (or at least mass murders) in history.

4. Many countries are carrying out similar mass murder.

What are the implications of this language? Abortion opponents: should it be toned down? Can the use of this language incite people to violence?

So, we should not call a murder a murder, because someone may want to stop the murdering in a violent way?