My schools, both elementary and secondary, gave us a pretty decent sex education. I guess that’s expected as Vancouver seems more liberal than other places. But it wasn’t just school that taught me these things, it was my parents. I think it’s important not only for schools to inform children and teens about sex, but parents have a necessary role in it as well.
I will defer on the nitpick on infer/imply, you are correct, but your statement still implies that the woman has less rights than the fetus. That being: the fetus has the right to exist within the mother’s body and consume the mother’s resources despite the wishes of the mother.
I do, actually. For example, if a woman swings her fist at my face, I am well within my rights to block her fist. One person’s rights end where another’s begin. And the key issue here is whether an unborn baby should be treated as a person with rights.
First of all, of course you have the right to not be harmed, as a independent, developed human being with inherent rights. If a woman were to punch you in the face, that would be covered under “assault and battery”.
It is a stupid comparison though. An assault on your person compared with removing an unwanted pregnancy? Come now.
Despite your furious slew of accusations about what I believe, I actually only (1) gave an accurate depiction of partial-birth abortion, and (2) stated the fact that pigs have certain legal protections that unborn babies do not. Your violent wrath in response to my statement of pure facts suggests that, deep down, you are not as comfortable with those facts as you make out–or at least, you are worried that these facts will be convincing to others.
Thank you for your analysis, but I would remind you as to why we have professionals do the job.
First of all, of course animals have legal protections, as we are a civilized nation (or we like to think, but hey) and consider unwarranted and unnecessary harm or suffering done to another living being to be wrong. Even if they are bred for human consumption. Which is another dumb comparison as they are functioning living beings, not developing clumps of tissue literally leeching off of the mother’s body.
And also, (1) contradicts with this:
At least animal rights laws protect the pig from being cut up by a pair of scissors while still conscious.
If you were to accurately portray “Intact Dilation and Extraction” (which is, to be fair, does not give a snappy soundbite unlike “Partial-Birth Abortion”), also known as IDX, you would explain that the procedure is a bit different and more involved than “hack a baby to bits while concious”.
But then you’d have to look at Wikipedia, and see that it represents 0.17% of all abortions in the US (circa 2000). If it was a poll, it would be regarded as a statistical blip. And that would cut into you waving around “chopped up baby bits!!!”. And that would be wrong.
Please, let me decide what I am implying. In my view, the mother should have more rights than the fetus, not less. I believe a mother whose life is endangered by pregnancy should be able to get an abortion. I also believe abortion should be available where the baby has a genetic defect or where the mother was raped. I don’t yet have a strong opinion on whether pre-viability abortions are okay–up to about the fourth or fifth month. On balance, this means the mother has more rights than the unborn child, who never has the right to say, “Save me, not her,” or, “What about my right to privacy?”
Funnily enough, we’re actually in agreement for the most part, although would this be a good time to point out that even if a fetus had a voice, it does not have the cognitive ability to actually use it. (If you want to be mean, concepts such as “other beings outside of the self” and “privacy” don’t come to well after birth. That, however, is covered by the fact that the child is now an “independant” organism.) As it is a clump of tissue entirely dependant on the mother for its’ continued existance, and does not exhibit the critical thought toward either concept, I can infer (this being the proper use) that it does not care.
Continuing on:
Doesn’t it matter that the baby has different DNA?
No, and it is not completely different as the woman’s immune system would likely kill it.
A different heartbeat?
No, and a heartbeat is separate from cognitive ability. Also, a heartbeat does not define life, nor is it necessary for life, as proven daily by Dick Cheney. (Any joke about him having no heart is justified, but it refers to the fact that he literally has no heart: he uses a pulseless, mechanically-assisted heart usually reserved for those in need of heart transplants).
That, one minute after it is born, it is a full human under law with equal rights to all other citizens?
No, and at that point it not only is not reliant on the mother’s physical being and can be safely, with minimal harm to mother or child, given to someone who can care for it. Also, while a “developed human”, it does not have equal rights to all other citizens, as those rights are not awarded until (usually) the age of majority.
To just reply that it’s part of the woman’s body is not an argument, but a bare assertion of your unjustified belief. No one is obligated to care what you believe, despite how many times you repeat it:
Yes, because the idea that a woman has the absolute right to decide what happens to or within her body is “unjustified belief” in the face of a preshus baybee using the woman’s body as a vehicle for its’ development and production.
Natch.
I’m going to keep repeating that, because it will still hold true, whether you like it or not:
“I do not have any say in what a woman does with her body.”
Heh, lucky, one thinks. Especially with how proper sexual education is looked upon in much of the US. The fact is, though, that many parents are just not comfortable with discussing sex, particularly development and proper behaviour toward others. Which is why honest and open sexual education should be mandatory in public schools. If one actually cares about reducing abortions, it has to start with good education as well as a favorable policy toward contraception (yeah, none of this bullshit about how condoms never work and how Plan B–or hell, “the Pill”–is just another form of abortion).
It won’t completely eliminate abortion, even the best used contraception fails from time to time, but it would significantly cut into it.
You really need to learn something about debate. When an issue is being debated, in this case whether a woman does have an unfettered right to abort any and all fetuses, you can’t just keep restating one side of it as the end all be all as if it were a universal maxim. It turns you into a Bill O’Reilly-esque screaming head, unwilling to listen and have honest debate.
I know a number of you are not American, and are in fact commie pinko scum. But, and feel free to correct me because what I’m about to say I learned from my middle school history class. But the idea of escaping religious persecution was one of the points of the creation of America. It is SUPPOSED to be the land of tolerance, the land of freedom. That’s the idea anyway. Planned Parenthood does quite a bit. And I’ll list those things right now.
FIGURE A:
Women’s Health: birth control, emergency contraception, checkups for reproductive and sexual health problems, gynecological exams, pregnancy tests and pre-natal care, routine physical examsMen’s Health: checkups for reproductive or sexual health problems, colon cancer screening, jock itch exam and treatment, male infertility screening and referral, routine physical exams, testicular cancer screenings, prostate cancer screenings, urinary tract infections testing and treatment, vasectomy
General Health Care: anemia testing, cholesterol screening, diabetes screening, physical exams, including for employment and sports, flu vaccines, help with quitting smoking, high blood pressure screening, tetanus vaccines, thyroid screening, STD testing, treatment, and vaccines
This seems like a lot of stuff that any normal clinic or hospital would also do right? It also seems like important things that should be fairly readily available if needed. And I’m pretty sure these exams and tests are offered a substantially lower rate than any normal hospital or clinic. Because Planned Parenthood is targets to lower income families and minors. But. BUT. Planned Parenthood supports ABORTION?! (a procedure you can get at quite a number of other medical facilities. But those facilities would be charging the standard rate I assume. A rate that most children and lower income people cannot afford. American tax dollars pay for everything in Figure A. However, not a cent of our taxes are going to pay for abortions. 3% of the funding planned parenthood gets is privately donated.
Religious fanatics say: No sex before marriage! Abstinence is the only way to go! Don’t even bother teaching safe sex because… because ABSTINENCE! CUT ALL FUNDING TO PLANNED PARENTHOOD.
But, the problem there is that. Planned Parenthood is still going to get the money for abortions. If Planned Parenthood completely closes down, the money for abortions will just go to another facility. So eeeeverything I just listed in Figure A is going to go byebye. But the abortions are still going to be paid for. Even good clean christian folk that arent doin so well financially could go to Planned Parenthood to get affordable Gyno or Anus exams. It just seems to me like cutting funding is shooting yourself in the foot. I wonder if christians believe that by getting rid of planned parenthood will people all of a sudden stop having sex irresponsibly? How naive can you get? People are still gonna be fucking all the time, but now they cant afford std screenings they cant afford birth control and they certainly cant afford prenatal care. So they’re still gonna get pregnant but now they’re gonna have std ridden, unhealthy babies. Goood job!
But really my reason for making this thread was to ask what people think about the religious percentile of america telling everyone else how to live their lives IN AMERICA. America is supposed to be all: 9/11?
But nooo. They’re like “YOU DON’T BELIEVE IN MY GOD?! THAT MEANS YOU GAYS CANT GET MARRIED! AND YOU POOR PEOPLE THAT CANT AFFORD A CHILD HAVE TO HAVE A CHILD ANYWAY! LATER FAGS! I’MMA GO PRAY!” So it was more of a question of morality on christians if anythings part. Not morality on the part of a mother that cant support a pregnant lifestyle so she ops for the abortion.
But I’m with Zeppelin on the point of abortion: Literally abort every baby.
If you ARE religious. You have to understand that the bible shows that god doesn’t give a poop about children. How many times did he demand the death of every first born? how many kids were in the ark? It doesn’t really make sense. Every human life is precious in the eyes of the religious. My main problem with religion is that they use their beliefs to justify the most horrific events in human history. including most wars, the Crusades, the Inquisition, 9/11, arranged marriages to minors, blowing up girls’ schools, the suppression of women and homosexuals, fatwas, ethnic cleansing, honor rape, human sacrifice, burning witches, suicide bombings, condoning slavery, and the systematic fucking of children.
EDIT: sorry about the format of this post. I left and came back several times and didn’t bother to take my own advice and proof read before posting. I just got sick of writing this and wanted to get it over with. Even though its my own thread.
I mean at what point is it NOT ok to abort a baby? I think the morning after pill is just as abortiony as any other abortion. Look at this pic. You think that symbiotic organism has any idea that it is alive? At what point is it actually alive? It’s just an organism gestating inside the uterus of a human female.
Agreed with 984. And Locke, honestly it seems like all of those things are minor inconviences when compared to a human life. I agree that when the fetus gets right is subjective, but I can’t see how people don’t think it is a human until a certain amount of time has passed.
Yeah, you actually have some good points, but it’s hard to examine them when a liberal Bill-O is yelling at me.
One of ten billion human lives. And you need to lower your expectations of “people”.
Whatever, you’re all just a bunch of liberal joe six-packs. You don’t care about humanity as a whole as long as your fat cat bellies are nice and full of McDonalds hamburgers.
I think its easiest to define whether a baby is “alive” or whatever by using viability. That age for viability is about 24 weeks. At that point the baby can be born and live, and your lazy ass should have aborted it well before this time anyway. The risks to the mother are more significant (unless we’re talking about some sort of emergency abortion for health reasons, but at this point I think that they can just take it out alive, stick it in the NICU and see if it dies or not) and it has developed to a point where it can possibly sustain its own life.
As I’ve said before, abortions are generally limited to before 12 or 14 weeks of pregnancy. They’re barely at the point where a heart beat is detectable. The fetus looks like either a deformed shrimp or a piece of nightmare. It has no chance of living on its own, and it is entirely dependent on the woman to survive.
I have no idea why suddenly women are being attacked so much about pregnancy in particular. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/41889946#41889946
I wanted to comment on the 24 weeks viability earlier in the thread, but held my tongue until now.
24 weeks will not give you a fully funcitonal, well adapted baby. The baby will have very little chance of having anything that resembles a normal life. 24 weeks also doesn’t guarantee the baby will even survive birth. It just means he potentially could.
Even if everything up to 24 weeks is about getting the essentials in, that doesn’t mean that this period of growth that follows is not essential. Everything between 24 weeks and term is a big gray zone. Its not black and white.
Well, one thing is for sure, less accessible healthcare = more disease and mortality. GO US.
Ah and there I thought this thread would fizzle off. I don’t live in the US, but from what I’ve seen, abortion is mainly used as a bludgeon against women under the pretense of ethical behaviour.
Suppose one considers abortion the killing of a human. Supposedly, one is against abortion out of either of these motives: Concern for the child or opposition against killing humans.
Other policies that have the same consequences are military excursions, opposing social security networks, active recruiting of (usually poor, maleducated) youth in the military that may involve killing and being killed, but one doesn’t often see “pro-lifers” oppose them. Concern for the fetuses seems to end as soon as they are born. Even if one considers abortion the death of a human being, considering abstinence is a surefire way to increase or have the same level of abortions, one should be supporting the hell out of sexual education. Not doing that is kind of hypocritical, isn’t it?
Of course, there remains the question of whether a fetus is a human and if not when it becomes one. Note that there is a distinction between embryos and fetuses. Personally speaking, I feel ok with viability as a criterion and would prefer to err on the side of the woman who is fully developed than of 3rd parties who won’t give a damn about that baby as soon as it’s born.
Anyway, if one wants personal responsibility one must provide the means of making informed decisions before asking for responsibility.
I said in the beginning that the pro-life argument is often used against women because it doesn’t allow them to make choices about themselves and is often entwined with the weird obsession of the US with sex. It is everywhere, but heaven forfend a nipple shows on prime time, then AMERICA IS DOOMED.
Isn’t abortion as a main means of birth control a bit of a strawman? Sexual education is the best way to prevent that.
You bring up a very good point, Rig. Education is the best method of prevention. But since you’re talking about the US where the Moral Majority is making a comeback, who, by the way, pushed that whole “Teach Abstinence Only, or No Funding for your School” thing, I think we’re pretty much so screwed (without a condom.)
The problem with Abstinence Only is that it’s like Communism. It’s all fine and dandy in theory, but when put into practice, it doesn’t work out too well. And heaven forbid that we teach children about SEX, because as soon as they hear about it, they surely will want to do it. Problem with that is, they’re going to want to have sex eventually anyway, so all we’re doing in our falsely Puritanical mode of thinking is creating the exact problem we seek to destroy, which is keeping idiotic teenagers from getting pregnant or contracting hideous diseases.
This accusation of pretense is divorced from reality. Pro-life advocates are the most forthright and morally confident group in American politics. They hold up posters showing dessicated babies and scream that abortion doctors are going to hell. They are not subtle, scheming types like Wall Street bankers, deviously rolling back women’s rights. They really do think abortion is evil.
You suggest that by endorsing “military excursions” and recruitment, while opposing “social security networks,” pro-lifers show their true colors. They don’t care about life, just about subjugating women.
By reaching this conclusion, you fail to comprehend how most pro-lifers’ minds work. They separate the world into good people and bad people. Innocents like unborn babies deserve absolute protection. Guilty people like terrorists deserve punishment. Most pro-lifers treat soldiers with utmost respect, because they believe the moral order can only be preserved if brave people risk their lives for it. It’s all part of a simple, good-versus-evil worldview that Westerners shared for most of history, though quite foreign to the results-oriented thinking that has become more prevalent.
Likewise, most pro-lifers believe that a free market system with public education and equal protection under law gives individuals all the tools they need to provide for themselves. They’re individualists, and they believe failure to work hard enough is behind most group inequalities. Material inequality is just not a wrong that needs to be righted. After all, they reason, material wealth is hardly the be-all-end-all, when there is life after death to worry about.
That you disagree with these views or take issue with their lack of nuance does not bother me, so much as your inability to imagine people who honestly hold them. I assure you, I was surrounded by them growing up. It’s not pretense.
The pretense is that all their beliefs are supported by Jesus and the bible.
Yeesh. I think I would call myself pro-life right now but I hope I’m not that.
It’s not a pretense if you actually believe in it.
On the other hand, all the faith in the world won’t make something untrue become true.
Also, X-Wing, you failed to note that there are Pro-Lifers that base their beliefs in something other than religion. I believe that humans are special and that we should have equal rights to live not because some supreme being demands it but out of fairness- why should an unborn baby’s life be worth less than its mother’s? It isn’t like he chose to be born in the first place.
To me, the real point of contention is: at what point does a fetus become human? It’s a very tricky question. It depends on the development of the brain, I believe; after all it’s our capacity for self-awareness that separates us from every other known living organism. We can’t track souls, if such things exist, but we can track physical development. Note how even apes, who have something like 99% of the same genes as humans (someone correct me there if wrong) are not considered people. So, how much must the baby’s brain be developed before it can be considered a person with a right to exist? There HAS to be a cutoff point somewhere between inseminated ova and full-term baby. It’s by this standard that I believe abortion rights should be determined.
Also: while this is going to sound like science fiction, the fact is that research into artificial wombs is being done and is possible in the near future. Snigger if you wish but think about the stuff we have today we could barely conceive of decades ago, like brain surgery. I do expect that at some point, transplanting a fetus into a womb might be possible, eliminating the need for abortions at all.
There is no cut off point. It is as I described: a big gray zone.
And no, fetus transplants aren’t and will never be possible.
The problem with the whole choice/life argument is that no matter how you look at it, even if a fetus isn’t viable yet, it is only a matter of time until it is, provided it doesn’t have some kind of horrible malformation / genetic abnormality.