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15th May 2019, 10:16 PM | #241 |
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15th May 2019, 10:30 PM | #242 |
Penultimate Amazing
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I presume that the lawmakers think that the despicable hussies who find themselves pregnant out of wedlock should have listened to the "abstinence only" contraception advice in sex education and kept their knees together. Their pregnancy is just (and just) punishment for their wanton sinning.
Those who are victims of rape or incest should also consider what they did to stir such passion in the perpetrator and dress/act more modestly in the future. |
15th May 2019, 10:43 PM | #243 |
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Perhaps the districts were gerrymandered (or not), but the bill had bipartisan support.
Even if the split was just 55%/45% as the poll suggests, that's still a bigger majority than the one that is taking the UK out of the EU and that 45% are not making an impression on the manifesto of either party. Such a tactic wouldn't work if there wasn't a huge number of people who agree with the underlying premise. IMO the error is in thinking that the GOP and religious right are somehow the cause of all of this. IMO they are merely a symptom of a set of belief systems which a majority of people in a large number of states have. Remember there are polls out there which show that a majority of US voters are creationists, no wonder they have other beliefs which may look odd to others. |
15th May 2019, 11:02 PM | #244 |
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From 2004 to 2010 the average cost in the US to have a baby at a hospital was $30,000. $50,000 if a C-section. It has probably increased since then.
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15th May 2019, 11:21 PM | #245 |
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Some more relevant numbers:
Number of adoptions in the US per year: 135,000 Number of abortions in the US per year: over 600,000 although it's been declining since 1990 when it was 1.4 million. Cost of raising a child to age 17: $233,000 (in most cases the costs don't end at age 17, however). So there's at least about 135,000 people each year willing to adopt a child. Would there be another 600,000 every year if abortion were illegal? |
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15th May 2019, 11:39 PM | #246 |
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I'd love to pose this question to those of the 25 white, male Alabamians having daughters and who voted "yes" to this abortion Bill. And get a truly honest answer.
What would you want for your daughter if she were raped and impregnated by a black man? |
16th May 2019, 12:07 AM | #247 |
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16th May 2019, 12:13 AM | #248 |
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16th May 2019, 02:55 AM | #249 |
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16th May 2019, 03:09 AM | #250 |
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Sufficiently advanced Woo is indistinguishable from Parody "There shall be no *poofing* in science" Paul C. Anagnostopoulos Force ***** on reasons back" Ben Franklin |
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16th May 2019, 03:10 AM | #251 |
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Sufficiently advanced Woo is indistinguishable from Parody "There shall be no *poofing* in science" Paul C. Anagnostopoulos Force ***** on reasons back" Ben Franklin |
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16th May 2019, 03:20 AM | #252 |
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Yea of course that is only another being when in a woman no one wants to trying to think life starts at conception for IVF situations that is just silly.
Alabama State Senator Clyde Chambliss: “The egg in the lab doesn't apply. It's not in a woman. She's not pregnant.”. Of course it is about women and the people writing the laws know nothing about medicine, see the made up idea of moving an ectopic pregnancy that is in these proposed laws. Madness and stupidity. |
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Sufficiently advanced Woo is indistinguishable from Parody "There shall be no *poofing* in science" Paul C. Anagnostopoulos Force ***** on reasons back" Ben Franklin |
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16th May 2019, 03:22 AM | #253 |
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16th May 2019, 04:09 AM | #254 |
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There's no option to cull once they are implanted. It is common to fertilize multiple eggs and cull in the petri dish. It is also common to implant multiple blastocysts, but that's just a probability game. Implanting two or three gives a better chance that one will survive, but with some chance that two or three will survive. That's why multiple births are common with IVF. If you see a couple that had no children until after age 35, and then had twins or, especially, triplets, there's a good chance it was IVF. |
16th May 2019, 04:26 AM | #255 |
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Why do you group an unformed clump of cells and mentally retarded people together as though they're even remotely the same? Further why do you exclude animals? In other words what is the criteria you use to determine it's okay to kill this living thing but not this living thing?
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16th May 2019, 04:42 AM | #256 |
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When you speak about the right to life outweighing other rights, this is what I mean when I say the right to life is more significant than the rights of the woman under consideration (excepting the case in which her life is threatened by carrying the fetus to term). I was using "significance" to indicate the value of the right in question, i.e., which one "outweighs" the other.
So it is only a matter of different terminology to mean the same thing. (Pointless comment about my choice of words follows. You can skip this if you're not interested.) I adopted the word "significance" because it was used in a similar (but not the same) way in an article by Goodpaster on moral considerability. He argued that all living things are morally considerable (count, morally speaking), but not equally significant (he was not committed to the claim that moral harms to a blade of grass are as important as moral harms to a normal adult human). I used it in a comparison of rights rather than the beings under consideration, but it's similar enough that it seems an appropriate term. Discussion of which rights outweigh others is commonplace in ethics. I don't know if the use of "significance" is common or if some other term is preferred, since I don't have a broad familiarity with the literature. I just run across it as I teach a course. It's not my speciality. |
16th May 2019, 04:54 AM | #257 |
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The reasoning is not difficult. Some believe that the fact that a being will become a full-fledged person if allowed to develop naturally entails that the being deserves the rights of a person now. In fact, that's an easier position to defend than the pro-choice position, since conception is an obvious point where something big has changed.
Everyone agrees (almost everyone) that killing an infant is bad. Most agree that it is just as bad as killing a normal adult human. Almost everyone agrees that preventing a fetus from forming is not morally the same as murder (even the Catholic church, which regards contraception as wrong, does not view contraception as murder). So, at some point at or after fertilization and before birth, this lump of cells must become a thing with rights. The question is when. Conception itself is a natural choice. Other times can be selected, but it's a more difficult task to explain why it's that moment when the fetus starts to matter. (Having a heartbeat, for instance, is a pretty obviously stupid point to claim is the origin of moral considerability.) There is the related problem that any other time is harder to pinpoint. Singer, for instance, ties moral considerability to the ability to feel pain (I'm not saying he thinks abortion is wrong once this occurs -- his position is nuanced and it's not clear to me what his views on abortion are). But it's not clear when the ability to feel pain occurs. What change occurs so that, the day before, the fetus couldn't feel pain and the day after, it can? I'm not even talking about the problem of measuring which fetuses can feel pain, since they develop at different rates, but whether there's really some specifiable time when feeling pain is suddenly a capacity or, if it develops gradually, the time at which the capacity has developed enough to matter. So, while I don't agree with the pro-life position, I understand it fairly well and don't think it's a stupid position to take nor that pro-lifers are motivated by misogynism. (I'm sure some are, but some people are just bad people.) |
16th May 2019, 04:55 AM | #258 |
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16th May 2019, 05:04 AM | #259 |
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Surely, every parent fails to give their child the best possible world that can be given. I am sure you overstated that point.
But those who argue that abortion is wrong would also argue that the parents have an obligation to ensure that the baby is cared for and loved, by someone else if not them. The fact that I am unwilling or incapable of fulfilling a later moral duty doesn't excuse me from avoiding that later duty by killing the fetus now. Obviously, the devil is in the details of the moral reasoning and I'm sure that many people would allow for exceptions when the fetus has congenital defects that promise a life of pain and suffering that is unavoidable by any means. But many abortions do not involve the threat of a life unwanted. My wife became pregnant while still in school. Suppose she had believed that she could not dedicate herself to her studies to the extent she desired and also raise a child. Most of those who regard abortion as permissible would think that an abortion would be okay in this case. But this is not a case of choosing between abortion or life as an unloved urchin. Even if she thought a baby would present serious hardships in her studies, she has the wherewithal to know the baby is blameless and would love and care for him. Surely, you aren't wanting to argue that abortion is permissible only in those cases where the alternative is life as an unloved child. If not, then this consideration must not be the heart of your reasoning. |
16th May 2019, 05:07 AM | #260 |
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16th May 2019, 05:12 AM | #261 |
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I could probably accept a law that banned abortions but did this, while funding an extensive overhaul and build-up of the foster care system to make it suck less. I mean, if society really thinks that zygote is a human being, it should be willing to make arrangements for its care, regardless of the inconvenience of the situation.
Five bucks says every answer will boil down to "I'd raise my daughter better than that." Surely the leopards will eat the other people's faces first, right? |
16th May 2019, 05:15 AM | #262 |
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Nimble isn't arguing that she ought to lose her rights, but that her rights are outweighed by other competing rights in this case.
It is common when one's right to X conflicts with another's right to Y. One way to analyze these situations is to ask which right is more important. If the right to Y is more significant than the right to X, then I still have the right to X, but this right does not determine what ought to be done. I don't lose the right to X, but it is not a right to deprive someone else of the more significant right to Y. |
16th May 2019, 05:17 AM | #263 |
Penultimate Amazing
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16th May 2019, 05:28 AM | #264 |
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No apology necessary. You aren't required to respond to my posts, but I'm glad Zooterkin did so.
That said, your characterization of the Alabama law (bill?) regarding penalties for false reports of rape was hyperbolic. One can regard rape as a dreadfully serious problem and false reports of rape as also a serious problem in its effects if not its pervasiveness. In fact, this is my position. Rape charges ought to be taken very seriously and because this is so and because being charged with rape ought to be a life-changing circumstance, false charges ought also face serious consequences. I am not arguing in favor of the Alabama legislation, however, because I don't know why existing laws against false charges are insufficient. The severity of the charge ought to matter, but one would hope that's already in the law. A rape charge may be special since the harm done by alleging rape goes beyond the consequences of the trial, but I don't see why this requires an additional law. A false murder allegation is pretty devastating to one's social standing too. Perhaps (likely) the Alabama legislators are grossly exaggerating the number of false rape allegations. In that case they should be condemned, but not for claiming rape isn't important, but for denying how often it happens and exaggerating how often a charge is false. |
16th May 2019, 05:30 AM | #265 |
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This is obviously a question that everyone with an opinion on abortion must answer, not just the pro-life camp. Why, indeed, is the living thing before viability or birth or the second trimester or whatever okay to kill but the living thing after that not okay?
Nimble's going to have a hard time defending his admittedly speciesist position and even that doesn't really entail his position on abortion, but others need to realize that the onus isn't on him. We all share it, so long as we have an opinion. I find the abortion question a tough nut. I tend to think that abortion is acceptable in most circumstances, but I also recognize that I don't have an argument that I find anywhere near satisfactory. |
16th May 2019, 05:31 AM | #266 |
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16th May 2019, 05:32 AM | #267 |
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It's probably a bad sign when Pat Robertson says the Alabama law goes too far.
Quote:
Of course, he seems to be saying that the problem is that it will be struck down by the Supreme Court, and they need to be more subtle if they want to overturn Roe v. Wade.
Quote:
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16th May 2019, 06:08 AM | #268 |
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I can’t recall the source, but the idea was that the “pro-life” movement was actually at heart an “anti-sex” movement.
That recreational sex was sinful, and that pregnancy was the “the wages of sin”.... The costs of bearing the child and raising it a form of punishment. The whole notion of the fetus as a “person” is of course religiously informed... The notion that the fertilized egg is given it’s “soul” and is thus a person is completely informed by religion... And IMO has no place in any sort of legislation. |
16th May 2019, 06:12 AM | #269 |
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16th May 2019, 06:16 AM | #270 |
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That and that they found they had political power and they realized that keeping blacks out of their schools was not a long term issue. When Roe v Wage was ruled of course protestants even evangelicals didn't take a serious stand against abortion.
"But the abortion myth quickly collapses under historical scrutiny. In fact, it wasn’t until 1979—a full six years after Roe—that evangelical leaders, at the behest of conservative activist Paul Weyrich, seized on abortion not for moral reasons, but as a rallying-cry to deny President Jimmy Carter a second term. Why? Because the anti-abortion crusade was more palatable than the religious right’s real motive: protecting segregated schools. So much for the new abolitionism." https://www.politico.com/magazine/st...origins-107133 |
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16th May 2019, 06:26 AM | #271 |
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16th May 2019, 06:27 AM | #272 |
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16th May 2019, 06:33 AM | #273 |
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16th May 2019, 06:39 AM | #274 |
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Why do you USAians insist on regressing when the rest of the world is progressing?
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Before you say something stupid about climate change, check this list. "If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. " Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies Vol. 1 |
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16th May 2019, 07:02 AM | #275 |
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16th May 2019, 07:08 AM | #276 |
Penultimate Amazing
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I don't regard it as essentially a religious view, though many are motivated by religion.
It is a question about morality, specifically, who counts, morally speaking. One might come to conclude that the fetus counts because of a religious authority, but one might also conclude that the fetus counts for other reasons. I don't regard a pro-life position as stupid, depending on the reasons for taking that position. I don't think that it is at all obvious that a fetus isn't the sort of thing that has a right to life. In order to determine that it doesn't, we need to ask a deep and hard question: what sorts of beings have such a right? ETA: Just to be clear, a religious belief is not a good reason to make abortion illegal. We don't restrict the right to free speech so that one can't draw pictures of Mohammed. We shouldn't make abortion illegal because a majority of Alabama have the religious belief that abortion is wrong. That doesn't preclude other reasons for making it illegal, though the current interpretation of the Constitution precludes it. Personally, I never thought the actual reasoning in Roe v. Wade was persuasive, since I don't see how a right to privacy matters unless one determines that a fetus hasn't a right to life (legally, not morally, speaking). That's not to say that I disagree with the consequence, but the reasoning was bumfuzzling to me. It has, admittedly, been years since I read the opinion. It's no good just saying this thing doesn't because it's just a bunch of cells. It's a bunch of cells that will develop into a thing that has a right to life. How and when does this thing get such a right, if not at conception? Without a decent answer to that question, dismissing abortion as obviously not like murder is unpersuasive. Saying that it's okay for the first two trimesters but not the third except in certain cases requires some argument why the first two trimesters are different than the third and why the third is different than immediately after birth. |
16th May 2019, 07:11 AM | #277 |
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16th May 2019, 07:19 AM | #278 |
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Such as the fact that we all agree the newborn has a right to life. Prior to conception, surely there is no such right. At the point of conception or some time shortly thereafter, there's an obvious change. We now have a thing that will naturally develop into a human. Some argue that a potential human has the same rights as a human.
There are good arguments against such a position. But such arguments fail to settle the question unless they are accompanied by a positive account of when a right to life is reasonably granted. I haven't seen any argument which I can say totally satisfies the question to my addled thinking. It is fundamentally a moral, not religious, question, no matter how many folk defend their decision on religious grounds. We may disregard such appeals to (religious) authority since we reject the authority. Then we are left to ask how we ought to settle the question. Since I've not seen any obviously correct and undeniable solution, I won't say that a pro-life position is stupid, depending on the reasons for that position. |
16th May 2019, 07:37 AM | #279 |
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16th May 2019, 07:40 AM | #280 |
Orthogonal Vector
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I don't know the fundamentalists didn't care about abortion when Roe V Wade happened, so why would you think that they would have serious issues with abortion then? It was years later when they realized that fighting for segregation was a poor choice that they picked it. They just rewrote history like with the civil war.
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