emotion-free abortion arguments
The argument [for abortion] is remarkably straightforward and emotion-free. (John Zande on Random Thoughts)
Makagutu links to a very interesting article in his post On Abortion, which has numerous examples of anti-abortion women believing there is a moral argument for their own abortion, but not for any other women. It’s an eye-opening piece that reveals the complexities of individual lives, and the difficult decisions that almost all women have to consider at some point in their lives.
Whether because of rape, error, faulty contraception, poverty, physical complications, or simply sexual excitement over-riding logic, there must be few women in the world who haven’t had to ponder what on earth they will do if their next period doesn’t arrive. And whether they believe it’s generally ‘moral’ or not, termination is, and always has been, a main option on the table.
But imagine my surprise when I scrolled through the comments and found my dearest blogging buddy, John Zande, claiming that the argument for abortion could be either straightforward or emotion-free.
Straightforward? If the argument could ever be straightforward, we wouldn’t see endless discussions from every perspective on every aspect of pregnancy termination. When is it okay to terminate a pregnancy? At what point does the life of the baby become a concern that overrules any decision the mother might want to make? Can the sperm-donor man ever have a say? I personally believe it’s the woman’s decision at all times, but that doesn’t make the argument straight-forward.
Emotion-free? Emotion-free? Pregnancy is an intensely emotional time that could never be emotion-free. The prospect of choosing whether to continue to attempt to grow an already developing mini-human that carries half your genes is unlikely to be free of emotion. And the abortion argument clearly cannot be disconnected from the reality of the procedure.
I think when we confront the often unnecessarily emotive and unscientific arguments from the anti-abortion lobby, arguments that utterly refuse to acknowledge the realities of life for billions of women, we only damage the pro-choice argument by suggesting that abortion is anything less than it is. Every woman should be free to make this choice in the context of their own exceedingly complicated, individual circumstances, and unencumbered by the unrealistic notion that their level of emotion when considering the arguments should be zero.
The argument for abortion is both complex and exceedingly emotional. For most people at least.
“Every woman should be free to make this choice in the context of their own exceedingly complicated, individual circumstances, and unencumbered by the unrealistic notion that their level of emotion when considering the arguments should be zero.”
I probably shouldn’t speak for John, but I didn’t get the memo that he was claiming that a woman choosing whether or not to have an abortion doesn’t involved emotions on her part. What I understood from his comment was that it’s a woman’s choice, period! That is straightforward, and the emotions of outsiders should not be the ones deciding for her.
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Yes, that’s a good point. I thought his comment was funny as I’ve seen his arguments so many times about abortion, and he clearly thinks his simple death/life on/off based on brainwaves is an uncomplicated clincher that makes the whole thing unemotional and easy. I disagree, determining when brain waves could suggest sentience is only part of the argument.
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“…that makes the whole thing unemotional and easy.”
Again, I never got that memo from John, and we’ve had dialoge via email, about this subject.
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I’m pretty sure he thinks the argument is straightforward and unemotional, as he says above. My point is that you can’t separate the ‘argument’ (which is really only a part of the issues to be considered, in any case) from the reality of the situations.
But I’ll welcome clarification from him if he’s interested. And thanks for your terse comments – we’ve come a long way from you loving me. 😀
(I should probably meditate on how I come across on this blog. I can only imagine that the tongue in my cheek is often lost in translation, but it is of interest to me the number of people who were once warm buddies who are now cold acquaintances – the Arch or Roughseas arguments? Who knows … it’s Blogland.)
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Well, I had major surgery leaving in May, due to a misdiagnosis of cancer in early March by 5 specialists, so if I haven’t been kissie, kissie enough with you lately, then please forgive me. I’m only human. 😉
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Not sure why I typed “leaving” in my comment. Disregard. Lol
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You do know I’m talking about quashing the language used by so-called Pro-Lifers, including: “Murder, “Killing,” Genocide.”
Hence the question: How can you kill something that cannot die?
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John,
Even if we call an abortion, a “Lester Hoarwinkle” instead of cold blooded murder, abortion is still what it is.
“Quashing the language” is what liars do.
This indicates that the pro-abortion position is nothing but a lie and language like “a woman’s right to choose” is simply words used to sell the lie.
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Mmm. Abortion is a bad thing.
So, how do you prevent it happening?
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Clare,
There are always people who engage in immoral acts so 100% total prevention is impossible.
But 73,000,000 unborn human beings have been ruthlessly murdered in the USA since 1973.
That kind horrific number has genocide written all over it.
So you tell me:
How does a nation prevent genocide?
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There are three main paths.
Better religious education, and “True love waits”.
Better sex education, and access to contraception.
Legal restriction: eg a Personhood amendment, and strict constructivists in the Supreme Court reversing Roe v Wade.
One can choose more than one of these. Which is your preferred path?
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I advocate better religious education. I have blogged about it.
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Clare,
The problem isn’t religious people since religious people tend to be pro-life.
The problem is people who don’t think religion is relevant.
And in public education, religious education is illegal.
So we may as well wish that if pigs could fly maybe the prenatal genocide would end.
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You still have not answered. How would you reduce the number of abortions? I showed how religious education- in the churches, not the schools- would reduce the number.
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Clare,
You did not show how to reduce the number of abortions since religious people are religious precisely because they receive a religious education.
Yet the prenatal genocide continues unabated.
When you come up with a sensible answer of your own, I’ll tell you the sure-fire way to not only reduce, but stop the prenatal genocide in its tracks.
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Who gets to decide if my answer is sensible? I want Evangelicals to follow Christ. Is that too much to ask?
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As I was part of the discussion I just wanted to say a few words. I can’t speak for John either, but I just wanted to say that I didn’t take his argument to be referring to the choice at all, but rather related to the legality, which is usually why arguments erupt. For the right of a woman to have control over her own body is unquestionable and it is a straightforward argument as to why she should. And as we all value life, to me the answer in terms of how you value life, is by considering both the fetus AND the mother. When you do that, it also becomes a straightforward argument is how to value life. You support women. Give them free access to birth control, health care, pre-natal, post-natal, guaranteed maternity leave, quality sex education. The killing of one’s young is practiced by numerous species across the animal world and there is a physiological basis for why it happens. If we wish to mitigate that practice, banning it is not the way to do it. I in no way intended to imply that the act of making that decision is easy at all, even if one is adamant about their right to do so.
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Thanks for your comment. I’m still not convinced that it can ever be classed ‘straightforward’ given everyone has a different view of how we assign value to life in such complex circumstances. I agree with your perspective on this, but it’s clear that other people value potential life with higher value, or even believe that the needs of the mother are more likely to be met if she continues with any given pregnancy, rather than terminates it. It feels straightforward to us that this nonsense, but then isn’t that the case with anything we believe? Our argument always feels straightforward to us. The argument from the anti-abortion camp can be ‘straightforward’ too – a potential, fully programmed human being is being denied the opportunity to develop into an independent, sentient being. It’s all about where we see the balance, and how much the reality of the picture without access to safe and legal abortion facilities sways us. That’s a complex mix, not John’s ‘on-off’ switch.
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I see what you are saying violet and I don’t disagree that this issue isn’t one that is filled with emotion. But there are a number of countries for which abortion is not nearly as contentious, in which the argument is straightforward on both sides of the aisle. That regardless of where one stands on when a fertilized egg becomes a person, making it illegal has no bearing on whether abortion happens. That punishing women or punishing doctors does not make abortion go away. There is no data to support that stopping the practice of abortions comes from making it illegal. If there was, I might be for making it illegal, or at least be willing to consider that as a reasonable possibility. But when you look at every bit of information we have, if I was a person who was absolutely against abortions, I would still, as a reasoning human being want to go along a path that made sure that happened. Because if I just made it illegal, it’s clear that what I was really about is punishing the doctors and mothers, and not supporting the unborn.
The fact that some issues are charged with emotion doesn’t necessarily preclude the fact that the answer to the issue isn’t a straightfoward one. For me, as an atmospheric scientist, the evidence is clear to me that we are impacting the global climate. The fact that this is controversial and that people get very emotional about it when you suggest that it’s happening in no way changes the facts. Feelings just don’t equal facts. I can be sorry that they feel a certain way, and I can be sorry that they’ve been mislead about the issue, and I can even understand how someone can misunderstand the science, but for me it’s still a straightforward argument. Both genders should have equal rights. The reasons why that is, is also straightforward, and yet we find ourselves still living in a patriarchal world. Many men get quite emotional when you suggest that they might be privileged. I can understand psychologically why the loss of privilege is upsetting, but that doesn’t change the fact that the argument for equality is straightforward, that it’s demonstrably better, and that it is more moral. People who are anti-abortion, I have no doubt are people with a lot of love in their hearts for children. It doesn’t change the fact that making it illegal will actually not achieve those aims. That’s a straightforward fact. And I know there are other countries that accept this and accept the straightforwardness of it. The fact that we don’t in some places to me is largely a function of religious indoctrination that wants to control a woman’s body sexually. And there is lots of evidence to support this also. Find a society where abortion is this contentious and you’ll find a place where the patriarchy is alive and well.
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many doctors maintain that the continuance of a pregnancy is always more dangerous to the physical welfare of a woman than having an abortion, a state of affairs which is said to allow a situation of de facto abortion on demand to prevail– Lord Justice Laws
It isn’t so polarizing in Great Britain. Few people vote because of the issue, or picket, and we can get abortions fairly easily before 24 weeks. I hear the rabid anti-choice in the US, and am perplexed, but it does not seem much more monstrous than the debates about guns, or BLM.
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France too. Then move south to Spain and the crazy Catholics are always planning their next move…
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We must have something over here that people in the USA look at at shudder. Our communist healthcare system? The Queen?
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I have to side with John. Emotion injected into this is totally fabricated. Consider this: crazy christianists oppose the morning after pill. They call it *murder*, or as you say in Scotland, mrdr 🙂 That just cannot be real emotion.
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Well, it would be interesting to do a poll on those who think emotion in an abortion debate is fabricated. I suspect that most parents, especially most mothers who have given birth, no matter how supportive of access to abortion they are, find it quite an emotional discussion.
Even from the point of view of women having something they don’t want growing inside of them, something that if left to develop will ache for them once born, it’s horrendously emotional. That’s not to give the anti-abortion camp licence to play on that, but to encourage the argument to be rooted in the reality of the situation.
Leaving emotion in an argument about people’s lives doesn’t automatically make it illogical, but taking it out automatically makes it sociopathic.
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Oops- I didn’t mean fabricated in that way. I meant fabricated in the sense that the emotional effects of a morning after pill can’t possibly be compared to the emotional effects of a late term abortion. And yet abortion is spoken of as a generality. As if abortion is the same thing no matter the stage. In doing that a good many emotions are fabricated and attached to the debate.
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Ah, I see, yes that aspect is laughable, too ridiculous to even indulge with a response.
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But I’m sure you’ve noticed there’s not a single mention here of the importance of the stage of development?
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I agree with you violetwisp. I have had this discussion a few times with men, who insist not only that they comprehend the experience but are very sure about how women ought to feel about it. It’s astonishingly arrogant and presumptuous. When called on it, they are not bothered by this characterization.
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I do hope you’re not implying me, here, Madblog. If so, I would only ask you to demonstrate exactly where and when (with a link) I’ve ever even vaguely discussed the emotions of a pregnant woman.
Of course, I never have, my interest in debating the subject rest solely with confronting the ludicrous lies and deliberately inflammatory, wilfully ignorant language used by Pro-Forced-Birther’s, like yourself. You know, Madblog, you’re particularly fond of lying, using words like Murder, and Killing, and your favourite, Genocide.
That being so, we can only assume you’re referring to other “men”… a pleasantly vague sword-swipe there.
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john zande
May 27, 2016 at 12:51 pm
No, you do not grieve a person. You grieve the idea that you created in your head of that person. Period.
Just one snippet from a conversation here:
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Yes, and…?
Am I, or am I not saying there is grief?
I believe the words are there in black and white.
The comment concerned WHAT the woman is grieving.
Nice try, Madblog, but fail.
Care to try again?
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“I would only ask you to demonstrate exactly where and when (with a link) I’ve ever even vaguely discussed the emotions of a pregnant woman.”
You carried on a sizable discussion wherein you declared with 100% certainty exactly what a woman who has lost a baby experiences. PERIOD.
All attempts to persuade you that you might be presumptuous to know that, and that there might be more to the grief experience than a cut-and-dried intellectual assent were doomed to failure.
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Madblog, I believe that particular conversation (had mostly between you and Allalt, not me) concerned miscarriages, not even abortion. Yes, concerning a once pregnant woman, but once again, confirming there is grief, but contesting what, actually, is being “grieved.”
Rather deceptive and deceitful of you, don’t you think, to try and slip that in, veiled as something else?
To be expected, though.
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I blew up your gravatar pic and it looks like you’ve aborted a tooth or two. How do you excuse that?
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Thank the Lords of Geography, Pink, that there are 1,599 kms separating you from V tonight. One kilometer less, and I’b be fearing for my life tomorrow morning 😉
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tildeb,
Medical concern, like any other concern is moral.
Therefore, prenatal genocide is immoral because genocide is immoral.
It cannot at once be immoral as a medical concern and moral because it is a woman’s right to choose.
You prove once again that the atheist-left has not moral compass.
That is because you can justify genocide when women engage in it, but it is immoral when a doctor engages in it.
Maybe that’s the reason abortion chop shops don’t require doctors or the standards required of hospitals.
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Ah yes, the morality of wearing corrective lenses. Who knew? Why, the priests of course!
And so this gem: Medical concern, like any other concern is moral.
Therefore, prenatal genocide is immoral because genocide is immoral.
I actually laughed out loud at this one, SoM. It’s a keeper!
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Every action has a moral concern because it has some good as its objective.
That is common sense (simple reasoning).
The atheist must forsake common sense to make genocide a moral good.
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Hey, that’s good, too. The morality of tooth decay! A whole new field to tell dentists what they should and shouldn’t do with tooth decay, which kinds to treat, which instruments are pleasing to some god, which kinds of decay to sacrifice chickens for, which kinds of meat for burnt offerings,determine when decay reaches the age of response… why the permutations are an economic boon to the pious to shoulder out those damn atheist dentists! It’s all about morality, donchaknow
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tildeb,
I don’t know how to connect your hallucination about tooth decay with the reality of prenatal genocide.
What I do know (a teaching of Aristotle) is that all actions have some good end as their objective.
That means every action is a moral action.
Every law has a moral implication.
Therefore it is easy to reason out that a woman’s right to choose prenatal genocide is immoral because it is evil.
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But that’s not reflective of reality, SoM. That’s what your piety’s effect on you produces.
There are lots of medical reasons that nullify what you just said. That your thinking cannot encompass them is not the fault of atheists but a suppression of human compassion and human understanding and human knowledge on your part.
Yet you assume you have the right to override the rights of others because of your piety, even override the medical concerns of someone else. That’s stark. Your hubris is only as towering as your belief in your own self-inflated piety. Your attitudes are totalitarian, your modeling of reality black and white, and your moral compass spinning out of control because it has no human implantation. From your perspective, however, it’s everyone and everything else that’s spinning out of control because you cannot even conceive (excuse the pun) that your brutal impregnated piety – and all the anti-human tyrannical positions it gives birth to – aren’t just absolutely wrong in fact but a result of aborting reason in the name of your god.
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…people have a tendency to take religious objections at face value when often they have very little (if anything) to do with the actual objection.
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Morality is not a matter of gender.
That men have no idea what it is like to murder their own unborn child and then have their butchered body parts sold for coin, is irrelevant.
Murder is immoral because all people possess the inalienable right to life regardless of Mom’s feelings or choices.
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I hate to agree with you on any aspect of an abortion discussion madblog, but I think I do. Like anything else in life, women will have a range of emotional responses to this. But I think it’s odd for anyone who’s not experienced a baby growing inside them, or anyone who’s not had to panic about being pregnant, to expect they can fully understand what any of that feels like.
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VW, you say, we only damage the pro-choice argument by suggesting that abortion is anything less than it is.
Well, there’s the rub, what IS abortion?
First and foremost, it’s a straightforward medical procedure between a woman and her doctor and should be treated by others as such, without the burden of all the emotional baggage people assume it must have.
Abortion as a medical concern is one thing; abortion as a moral issue is quite another, abortion as a method of birth control another, abortion as a genocide another, and so on.
By framing abortion as a medical issue first and foremost between a doctor and a woman that is none of our business any more than cancer treatment is, I think John’s point is that it has absolutely nothing to do with whatever personal meandering and emotion-fraught framing about ending some human potential some people bring to it and then impose on another as if .this is what abortion really is all about.
I could be wrong, however.
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tildeb,
Cutting someone’s throat is also a straightforward medical procedure.
So is cutting someone’s guts out or blowing their brains out with a .45 caliber pistol.
But somehow you hallucinate that when a woman choses to murder her child via medical procedure, it’s a moral act of freedom.
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Are you saying you disagree with St. Augustine’s theories on fetus animatus/inanimatus and so you oppose what was the Catholic church’s position on abortion for most of its history?
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Mr. Merveilleux,
Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas Aquinas where well educated in the natural law theory of the ancient Greeks.
America’s Founding Fathers used natural law theory in the Declaration of Independence and to construct the Constitution of the American Republic.
The prenatal genocide problem is a matter of human rights, in this case the right to life.
The very definition of a human right is that when one person exercises that right, it does no harm to others.
Therefore, the “woman’s right to choose,” is not a right at all because it necessarily legalizes the murder of the unborn child.
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You sidestepped my question. Are you saying St. Augustine’s theory was wrong?
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Mr. Merveilleux,
I answered your question without being rude.
To be rude I would have to tell you that like your buddy, JZ, you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.
Natural law theory was incorporated into Catholic religious doctrine by Augustine and Aquinas.
That means that abortion violates the commandment:
“Thou shalt not murder.”
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So you go against the theory of St. Augustine and ordinances of many Popes. You weren’t answering the question; you were trying to pretend your position wasn’t in total opposition to what was church doctrine for a very long time.
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Mr. Merveilleux,
I studied the Catechism of the Catholic Church and the History of the Catholic Church in grad school.
There was never an indication of what you are saying.
Can you direct me to your sources of information?
Thank you.
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Yes, Som. I can obviously direct you to my sources. Not just Augustine but also Jerome wrote of the formed or “ensouled” fetus. Different for male and female fetuses. This became Locus Classicus and was later made law in the Decretum of Gratian. Confirmed by Gregory IX and supported by Aquinas in the 13th century. If you like I can post much more detailed historical information than what’s being discussed here. Unfortunately this discussion is completely ignoring the very interesting philosophical angle which was already being discussed a very long time ago.
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Pink,
We know from the Psalms, which predate Augustine and Jerome that God knew us and named us before we were born and that he formed us in the womb.
Further, the divinity of Jesus, formed in the womb of woman, sanctified the womb and the unborn child.
As a result, I think you are not interpreting your information sources correctly.
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Only if you don’t want to be honest and take into regard the discussions of the early church fathers? We know from them what they thought and wrote. Do you think dismissing all that is the way to go?
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Mr. Merveilleux,
Catholic intellectuals have discussed everything under the sun.
Catholic Christianity seeks to reconcile divine Revelation with the world around us.
I learned most about Aristotle by reading Aristotle.
The same with Plato, Augustine and Aquinas and Martin Luther.
What specific work are you referring to?
I would like to read it for myself.
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I referring to their writings on ensoulment. That played a major role in the perspective of abortion. The prohibition with automatic excommunication (as we know it today) is relatively modern. I believe it dates from 1869. The period when Pius IX was held prisoner at the Vatican.
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tildeb:
“41 Quotes From Medical Textbooks Prove Human Life Begins at Conception”
http://www.lifenews.com/2015/01/08/41-quotes-from-medical-textbooks-prove-human-life-begins-at-conception/
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And here is the so-called ”Father of the Anti-Abortion Movement”, Jack Willke, disagreeeing:
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John,
God is Father of the anti-abortion movement.
And He, like modern science, says that live begins at conception.
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No, life does not begin at conception.
Life began on earth 3.8 billion years ago and hasn’t been interrupted since. A foetus was never inorganic and suddenly becomes organic.
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John,
That life began on Earth 3.8 billion years ago has nothing whatsoever to do with the natural life cycle of living creatures.
For that argument to make sense, good JZ would be 3.8 billion years old just like all living things would need to be 3.8 billion years old.
Alas, John, your life began scant decades go.
Breaking that down for the atheist, that means you are not 3.8 billion years old.
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John,
To swallow a steaming load like the one you are caring around in your atheist wheel barrow a person would have to believe that being dead is the same as being alive.
You are demanding that we accept the same standard for death as for life.
That is a severe breach of common sense (simple reasoning).
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“By framing abortion as a medical issue first and foremost between a doctor and a woman that is none of our business any more than cancer treatment is, I think John’s point is that it has absolutely nothing to do with whatever personal meandering and emotion-fraught framing about ending some human potential some people bring to it and then impose on another as if .this is what abortion really is all about.”
Yes, great point Tildeb. Except I’m quite sure this isn’t what John meant in his comment (although I’m sure he’ll agree with you too).
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Modern science has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that human life begins at conception.
All arguments in favor of prenatal genocide are arbitrary because they reject modern science in favor of morality by appetite and desire.
That is, something is moral because simply because someone desires it to be so.
True morality is based on the objective, laws of nature which are know by reason, not appetite or desire.
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Oh right, so a sperm’s not alive until it meets an egg? I hope you haven’t been wasting any.
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violet,
Neither the sperm nor the egg are human life.
You are an ignorant, uneducated barbarian.
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Oh dear Violet, you’ve gone and done it now. You mean a woman might have some feelings around terminating the life within her? Men love to claim everything is straight forward and emotional free. Than they are free to declare that a totally male defined version of “rational and reasonable” is far superior to anything a woman might think or feel. Really fun when they do it with an extra side of patronizing, always for your own good of course.
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I like a logical argument, but you can’t take emotion out of arguments about people’s lives, and the two aren’t mutually exclusive.
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violet,
Anyone who believes a human life is not a human life because it is not a sperm or an egg cannot possibly detect a logical argument.
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The decision to have an abortion is emotive and I don’t think anyone is arguing against that. The argument here is that the choice to have an abortion or not should and must rest with the one who is pregnant.
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maka,
Then why can’t the decision to murder someone who is inconvenient for me, also rest with me?
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Just go ahead and kill them
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maka,
Exactly!
Civil society punishes murderers.
So when a mother contracts for the murder of her unborn child, why is she allowed to get away with it?
Don’t you see that your fascist way of thinking makes it possible for people like you to designate anyone as worthy of being snuffed out?
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Kill them, when you are tired killing them, kill yourself.
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Maka,
No need to be a homicidal turd.
All I asked is that you think just a little.
Why do you response to such a request with such psychotic malevolence?
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Kill them Som. And if you are not satisfied, kill more until you are satiated
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Maka,
You should definitely go out and join ISIS.
You make a great cheerleader for Jihad.
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Kill them SoM. Even ISIS, especially ISIS
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I think I’m trying to have a conversation with a parrot…
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Kill them all. Even parrots
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Especially the parrots. The maritaca’s down here drive me nuts.
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Though they should spare any African grey parrots. Last I heard, they were facing extinction
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I don’t know if this helps but I try to explain that laws against abortion don’t have the intended effect — desperate girls and women just try to do it themselves, or go to illegal abortionists, and too often end up dying.
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Broad,
So then why not make all cold blooded murder legal since when desperate people try to do it themselves, it doesn’t have the intended effect?
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SoM, your own reasoning condemns your god to be the greatest ‘genocidal’ mass murderer of them all, with spontaneous abortion rates somewhere between 30-50% of all fertilized human eggs/children. So why don’t you, as a worshiper of this child murdering Maniac, advocate to make all cold blooded murder legal?
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tildeb,
Quit hallucinating and get back to your own argument.
You said that because prenatal genocide is a medical procedure, it’s okay.
I know it’s hard for you to understand the obvious especially when it is explained to you, but designating cold blooded murder as a medical procedure does not make cold blooded murder morally right.
In fact, what was the name of that German death camp doctor who did all those morally righteous medical procedures on all those Jewish women and children?
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about 75%, actually.
From the U.S. National Library of Medicine:
“Around half of all fertilized eggs die and are lost (aborted) spontaneously, usually before the woman knows she is pregnant. Among women who know they are pregnant, the miscarriage rate is about 15-20%.”
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John,
Isn’t Momma Nature a bitch?
Maybe you and your fellow genociders are bitches, but the rest of us have a higher calling.
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Indeed, and yet that is one of the most emotional pro-abortion arguments there is – look at the horror denying women access creates!
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BroadBlogs, I think you’ll find that your very good points won’t resonate at all with the forced birthers commenting on this thread – they don’t give a shit about real women in terrible circumstances. It’s all about them and their superior morality, you see.
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Carmen,
Truly, I “don’t give a shit” about real women having the right to murder their unborn children.
After all, what could possibly go wrong in a society where innocent, voiceless human beings are ruthlessly snuffed out in name of freedom?
2500 years ago, in ancient Greece, the famous philosopher Plato defined that kind of justice as “the advantage of the strong.”
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On the contrary, I am here to agree with VW that abortion must be a difficult and often horrific experience, and that there is much more involved than some men will allow.
Many women go there because they believe that is the only option they have. My view is that that is to our society’s shame, and that better options ought to be offered. Many of us “forced birthers” have nothing but sympathy for women who are compelled to have abortions, and it is the pro-life community which recognizes that there is often trauma at the end of that experience. It sure ain’t the pro-abort; they tell women in the US to shout and be proud. There’s no room in their agenda for feeling something negative about your abortion.
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madblog,
Gender has nothing to do justifying the cold blooded murder of the unborn.
Our right to life is based on our humanity, not our gender.
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“Many women go there because they believe that is the only option they have. My view is that that is to our society’s shame, and that better options ought to be offered.”
I totally agree here. But you’ll have difficulty finding other options in the USA if you don’t go more left-wing – offer support for single parents, offer decent and affordable childcare, something resembling humane maternity leave conditions.
“It sure ain’t the pro-abort; they tell women in the US to shout and be proud. There’s no room in their agenda for feeling something negative about your abortion.”
I’m quite sure that’s just a reaction to the vocal anti-abortion movement, who are making significant dents in the provision of abortion facilities in the USA. It must be frightening. I think it’s important to move away from the shame culture around abortion, but I think this can be done without denying that it can be a difficult decision. People like you (not necessarily you, but from your general viewpoint) make it a traumatic experience for women by likening abortion to murder, and framing the procedure in such a negative light.
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Emotion and reason are not necessarily opposed. A person in a highly emotive state can still make a rational and moral choice, a cold-blooded “rational” person can and often does make horrible choices.
The reason why abortion arguments tend to get emotional is because the people arguing are using different points of departure and will use the same words with different definitions. Each one thinks his argument is perfectly rational and that the other makes no sense. They can’t have a rational discourse so they just yell at each other.
What you are advocating is a form of solipsism which I doubt you would apply to anything else.
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“A person in a highly emotive state can still make a rational and moral choice, a cold-blooded “rational” person can and often does make horrible choices.”
Yes, perfect. That’s it exactly.
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I agree with your first paragraph. Maybe the second too. No idea what your last sentence is trying to say. I’m just saying that John is wrong, what’s solipsistic about that?
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Your presentation of abortion as so personal that no one is in a position to judge it is asserting a solipsistic morality.
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Reblogged this on Water Conserving Lawn and Its Maintenance.
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