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Tags abortion issues , abortion laws

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Old 15th May 2019, 10:16 PM   #241
Skeptic Ginger
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Originally Posted by The Nimble Pianist View Post
No. We're saying this human being has as much a right to life as the woman impregnated with her, and unless the mere existence of this human being poses a threat to the life of the woman nourishing her, then you have no plausible right to terminate that person's life.
Pregnancy itself poses a threat to any woman's life.
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Old 15th May 2019, 10:30 PM   #242
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Originally Posted by AnonyMoose View Post
Or has Alabama not thought this all through yet?
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.
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Old 15th May 2019, 10:43 PM   #243
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Originally Posted by Skeptic Ginger View Post
Those votes you are counting as the "vast majority" are the legislators, many no doubt from gerrymandered state districts.

What is your stance on abortion? - Results from Alabama votersI don't call that a "vast" majority.
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.

Originally Posted by Skeptic Ginger View Post
USA Today: 25 men voted to ban abortion in Alabama. Do they reflect the rest of America?

This is not just a play to ban abortions, it is a move to re-elect Trump. The bills won't pass the SCOTUS and the GOP will use it (as planned) to keep Trump in power under the guise of getting one more SCOTUS judge from all those single issue voters.

I hope it backfires.
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.
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Old 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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Old 15th May 2019, 11:21 PM   #245
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Originally Posted by Puppycow View Post
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.
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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Old 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?
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Old 16th May 2019, 12:07 AM   #247
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Originally Posted by The Don View Post
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.
Bipartisan support or not, the "vast majority" of the population is not behind these religious fanatics.
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Old 16th May 2019, 12:13 AM   #248
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Originally Posted by Skeptic Ginger View Post
Bipartisan support or not, the "vast majority" of the population is not behind these religious fanatics.
...and yet the vast majority of people elected support the views of those so-called religious fanatics. Gerrymandering would only be a factor if the parties had differing policies in the state w.r.t. abortion.
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Old 16th May 2019, 02:55 AM   #249
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Originally Posted by phiwum View Post
Thanks. Travis didn't respond. Perhaps he doesn't read my posts, which, of course, is fine. There are many regulars here I don't read.

To be honest, he seems to view this thread as an opportunity to broadcast, not to discuss. I don't recall him responding much here. Instead, he pops in to make another dire prediction. But that may be prejudice on my part.
I missed your post. I apologize. But it seems Zooterkin was on the ball.
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Old 16th May 2019, 03:09 AM   #250
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Originally Posted by BStrong View Post
Because if the state is paying "X" amount before the new law to aide families with dependent children it's reasonable to project that the amount of aide will increase due to the births of children that otherwise would be aborted.

Like everything else, if the state outlaws abortion only folks w/o the financial means to travel out-of-state to seek treatment will be affected by the new law. If someone can't float the cost of a round trip bus ticket it's a pretty good bet they may end up on state assistance.
Of course it isn't just the buss ticket, are the states they can get to ones that impose a waiting period so you need a hotel room and multiple days off work that will cost you your job?
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Old 16th May 2019, 03:10 AM   #251
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Originally Posted by AnonyMoose View Post

Or has Alabama not thought this all through yet?
They thought it through plenty, you just mistake that they actually care about pregnancies or children.
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Old 16th May 2019, 03:20 AM   #252
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Originally Posted by The Nimble Pianist View Post
A woman (or any other person for that matter) does not lose her rights to choose what to do with her own healthcare.

Her right to bodily autonomy does not grant her the right to kill another human being without just cause.
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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Old 16th May 2019, 03:22 AM   #253
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Originally Posted by Minoosh View Post
This. Babies have a right to be wanted.
That is crazy talk, children are a punishment for improper behavior. No one wants them.
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Old 16th May 2019, 04:09 AM   #254
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Originally Posted by Minoosh View Post
I also think it's fairly common practice to implant more than one zygote in the uterus with the understanding that there will be an option to cull some embryos.

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.
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Old 16th May 2019, 04:26 AM   #255
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Originally Posted by The Nimble Pianist View Post
No I am not a vegan. Just because I don't believe in a god doesn't mean I believe that all animal species are worthy of moral consideration, or even the same moral consideration as individuals who moralize like me (a human). Call me a speciesist as you want but I firmly believe that H. Sapiens is in a category of moral consideration outside of all other species, and we must include all members of this species including those who are "developmentally challenged", be them fetuses or the mentally retarded.
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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Old 16th May 2019, 04:42 AM   #256
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Originally Posted by The Nimble Pianist View Post
I don't want to speak for all pro-life people, but since this discussion frequently gets dominated by religious people against atheists I feel compelled to. I'm a gay, atheist, pro-life, man (judge me as you will).

It's not even that the "right(s) of the fetus under consideration is more significant than the right of the woman", rather that I'm judging the quality of one right to another. The right to life of one individual will always outweigh the right to convenience of another. The vast majority of abortions in the developed world are those of convenience. Those that aren't can be easily classified into those that involve biological necessity (i.e. woman's compromised health, deformity of birth, etc.), and those that involve psychological necessity ("I was raped!", "Dad is no longer in the picture!", "What will my family think!?", etc.) While I sympathize with those of the latter category, I cannot in good faith support their desire to murder their offspring.
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.
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Old 16th May 2019, 04:54 AM   #257
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Originally Posted by The_Animus View Post
Being atheist your belief isn't religious or soul based.

Are you vegan? If not, can you explain why terminating the previously described clump of unformed cells is murder but terminating a fully formed living thing is okay?
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.)
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Old 16th May 2019, 04:55 AM   #258
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Originally Posted by The Nimble Pianist View Post
No I am not a vegan. Just because I don't believe in a god doesn't mean I believe that all animal species are worthy of moral consideration, or even the same moral consideration as individuals who moralize like me (a human). Call me a speciesist as you want but I firmly believe that H. Sapiens is in a category of moral consideration outside of all other species, and we must include all members of this species including those who are "developmentally challenged", be them fetuses or the mentally retarded.
Wow. You *are* a speciesist. That's a tough position to defend.
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Old 16th May 2019, 05:04 AM   #259
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Originally Posted by Silly Green Monkey View Post
Isn't there also an argument path for ensuring that each human gets the best possible world we can give them? Being born unwanted, unloved and uncared for is better than not being born at all?
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.
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Old 16th May 2019, 05:07 AM   #260
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Originally Posted by Puppycow View Post
You're right though: the hyperbole is a distraction from what we should really be focusing on, which is that this law will severely restrict access to abortion if allowed to stand. Even if it only applies to doctors. The scaremongering could actually be counterproductive here for opponents of the law, of which I count myself one.
Great, no real dispute between the two of us then. I really didn't think we'd reach a common position, to be honest. I guess I'm too used to stubbornness online, a refusal to concede any ground.
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Old 16th May 2019, 05:12 AM   #261
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Originally Posted by Puppycow View Post
And will you pay her hospital bill and the cost of all her doctor's visits? And take responsibility for raising the child once it's born?
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.

Originally Posted by Lurch View Post
What would you want for your daughter if she were raped and impregnated by a black man?
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?
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Old 16th May 2019, 05:15 AM   #262
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Originally Posted by Shalamar View Post
At what point should a woman lose the rights over her own health, and reproduction?
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.
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Old 16th May 2019, 05:17 AM   #263
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Originally Posted by Meadmaker View Post
Most of those legislators are lawyers. They can figure out what the laws actually say.
I was with you up until this point, honestly I was, but when you suggest competence on the part of state legislators, you just go too far.
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Old 16th May 2019, 05:28 AM   #264
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Originally Posted by Travis View Post
I missed your post. I apologize. But it seems Zooterkin was on the ball.
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.
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Old 16th May 2019, 05:30 AM   #265
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Originally Posted by The_Animus View Post
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?
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.

Last edited by phiwum; 16th May 2019 at 05:32 AM.
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Old 16th May 2019, 05:31 AM   #266
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Originally Posted by phiwum View Post
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?
Wow! Glad I don't have a position on this.
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Old 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:
Televangelist Pat Robertson said he thinks Alabama went "too far" with a controversial abortion bill that could punish doctors who perform abortions with life in prison.

"I think Alabama has gone too far," he said Wednesday during an episode of "The 700 Club." "There's no exception for rape or incest. It's an extreme law and they want to challenge Roe v. Wade."

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:
He continued: "But my humble view is that this is not the case we want to bring to the Supreme Court because I think this one will lose."
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Old 16th May 2019, 06:08 AM   #268
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Originally Posted by The Don View Post
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.
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.
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Old 16th May 2019, 06:12 AM   #269
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Originally Posted by Travis View Post
Alabama passes total abortion ban. No exceptions.


Here. We. Go.
It's really amazing how backwards things are getting in the US as a whole. I though most Americans supported abortions, but I suppose the fear of 'white genocide' trumps all.
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Old 16th May 2019, 06:16 AM   #270
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Originally Posted by Bikewer View Post
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.
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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Old 16th May 2019, 06:26 AM   #271
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Originally Posted by The Nimble Pianist View Post
It strips her of her "right" to kill the human being gestating inside her.
Sorry, the mass of human tissue. It becomes a "being" once you can take it out and it can breathe and live on its own, without its life support system.
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Old 16th May 2019, 06:27 AM   #272
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Originally Posted by The Nimble Pianist View Post
Allow me to put the 'E' in the (former) JREF:
While you're busy with that, look up the word "essentially".
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Old 16th May 2019, 06:33 AM   #273
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Originally Posted by Belz... View Post
It's really amazing how backwards things are getting in the US as a whole. I though most Americans supported abortions, but I suppose the fear of 'white genocide' trumps all.
An uncharitable interpretation. The Bible Belt has never, I think, been in favor of abortion rights and you don't have to attribute this to racist beliefs. (There is a correlation, but I don't regard it as racism causing pro-life beliefs.)
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Old 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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Old 16th May 2019, 07:02 AM   #275
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Originally Posted by phiwum View Post
An uncharitable interpretation. The Bible Belt has never, I think, been in favor of abortion rights and you don't have to attribute this to racist beliefs. (There is a correlation, but I don't regard it as racism causing pro-life beliefs.)
Oh, I don't attribute it to racist beliefs. I attribute it to supernatural beliefs, but the racist bit sure helps connect the dots.
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Old 16th May 2019, 07:08 AM   #276
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Originally Posted by Belz... View Post
Oh, I don't attribute it to racist beliefs. I attribute it to supernatural beliefs, but the racist bit sure helps connect the dots.
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.

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Old 16th May 2019, 07:11 AM   #277
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Originally Posted by phiwum View Post
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.
Such as? The overwhelming majority of the pro-life argument stems from the belief that a Zygote has a soul. The rest is attempts to rationalise that.
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Old 16th May 2019, 07:19 AM   #278
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Originally Posted by Belz... View Post
Such as? The overwhelming majority of the pro-life argument stems from the belief that a Zygote has a soul. The rest is attempts to rationalise that.
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.

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Old 16th May 2019, 07:37 AM   #279
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Originally Posted by phiwum View Post
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.
But what you're describing is the range of possible answers, not a list of answers not based on religious beliefs.
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Old 16th May 2019, 07:40 AM   #280
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Originally Posted by phiwum View Post
An uncharitable interpretation. The Bible Belt has never, I think, been in favor of abortion rights and you don't have to attribute this to racist beliefs. (There is a correlation, but I don't regard it as racism causing pro-life beliefs.)
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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