Abortion -- Has Anyone Ever Convinced Someone to Change Views?

[WhipperSnapper]

Originally posted by: blackangst1

Amazing what people will do when they get the facts /cheer

...and the facts are...that in your view...a two-day old embryo possesses a personality?

 

[Mursilis]

Originally posted by: WhipperSnapper

Originally posted by: blackangst1

Amazing what people will do when they get the facts /cheer

...and the facts are...that in your view...a two-day old embryo possesses a personality?

Heck, many adults lack anything I'd call a personality! Still, it would be morally wrong to kill them.

I don't know if I've changed any minds, but I did change my own during college.

 

[dmcowen674]

All women should be sterilized

/human race

 

[AAman]

After pro-lifers meet me, they change their minds and suddenly support retroactive abortions, heck that is why they voted for the Terminator for Guvnah around here

 

[GTKeeper]

I think the reason Abortion is such a debatable topic is the fact that no court, lawyer, lawmaker, or any other person in power is willing to give a fetus rights or status as a human being. Notice how this issue is not debated as often as 'the right or wrong' of abortion.

Imagine for a second that the Supreme Court rules that a Fetus, as soon as it is concieved has all the rights every other human has in the U.S. (This is what a lot of pro-life people want).

This opens an almost never ending debate (once again). If a woman is raped, or becomes pregnant due to incest, or is going to die if she has the baby you will then trigger a MASSIVE debate of whether the baby (if developed enough to survive) has the right to live trumping the rights of the mother who is a human being as well in dire straits with her own life.

Who's life do you chose? Who makes that choice? Is a self appointed lawyer going to represent the Baby's interests?

PLEASE keep in mind that I am not saying abortion is right or wrong. All I am saying is that it is a never ending debate and it always will be. I believe the above example clearly demonstrats why this will be a never ending debate.

 

[umbrella39]

Originally posted by: AAman
After pro-lifers meet me, they change their minds and suddenly support retroactive abortions, heck that is why they voted for the Terminator for Guvnah around here

:beer: to retroactive abortions. That is basically the mindset of the Neocons once a child is born to a poor mother with no health care. They giggle with delight in the fact that this new born child has little to no food, shelter, or clothing.

Something very sick and strange about pro-lifers who ALSO advocate the termination of social programs. They need to be retro-aborted themselves IMO. They are the most repugnant freedom, privacy, America haters to ever crawl the face of the earth. We have quite a few RIGHT HERE in P&N.

 

[zephyrprime]

I remember there was an attempt made by two groups of women to try to come to some sort of accord over the abortion issue. One side was a bunch of pro-lifers and the other were a bunch of pro-choicers. After a year of sessions or something, they said that they definitely understood the other side better but none of the participants had changed their minds.

 

[Dissipate]

Originally posted by: Aegeon
What was the justification for this rolling of eyes anyways?

The fact that you have effectively shut down your faculty for individual thought and have turned to a Rabbi who is telling you his own interpretation of a book that is devoid of meaning. In other words, he can tell you anything he wants and justify it with any variety of passages.

Was it surprise or something else? Frankly your justification strikes me as exceptionally weak as currently given to be against abortion, and I suspect it really comes down to being a justification for religious sentiments you still harbor.

Do you have to be religious to enjoy music or art? Do you have to be religious to see inherent beauty in math and science? Do you have to be religious to have appreciation for the fascinating aspects of the universe? I don't think you do. Hence, I certainly do not see why you need to have religious beliefs to see that human life (the most incredible physical thing in this universe) is valuable and shouldn't just be thrown into a garbage can.

Your justification for abortion is nothing more than a passage in the Bible and what your Rabbi told you. That is the weakest argument I have ever heard.

You're simply picking an highly arbitrary point and using it to justify it suddenly being wrong to deny that potentiality, but you're ok with the use of contraceptives. I don't get the feeling you have the same concerns about animal life that you do for this basic potential human life either. (If you did I would be willing to aknowledge that you are at least logically consistant.)

Animal life is not even on the same scale as human life in terms of its value. Although, I am not a big fan of hunting.

 

[Tom]

Originally posted by: sMiLeYz
The problem is both camps see it from entirely different angles, and until they look at it genuinely from another side's perspective, neither camp will agree.

Alchemize for example sees it as moral issue, to me it's a woman's rights issue.

woman's rights is a moral issue too. The lack of acknowledgemnt of that fact is one of the more bothersome aspects of many pro-life arguments, to me.

Most pro-life arguments are so devoid of any rights for the woman, that it is astonishing.

There is also precious little interest in the welfare of babies once they are born.

All of this does happen to fit in to some Christian's views about a women's purpose being having babies and that we are all sinners, even right after we are born. For some reason before we are born we aren't considered sinners, even though the Bible or Jesus doesn't really say anything about abortion, or fetuses, as far as I know.

Of course the bible also says all debts should be erased every 7 years, I guess Pres. Bush forgot this part when he signed the new bankruptcy law.

And death taxes ? The bible says something about redistribution of all property equally every 50 years ? How does that fit the Republican agenda ?

 

[imported_PowerPigg]

Originally posted by: WhipperSnapper

In the entire history of the abortion debate, has anyone on this forum ever, ever changed someone's view on it? Has anyone convinced an advocate of legal abortion to become anti-abortion? Has anyone ever convinced an opponent of abortion to become pro-abortion?

My guess is--no. Why? Because it's primarily a religious issue and the only way to really do it is to either convince someone that a God exists and that it wants abortion to be illegal or to convince someone who believes in God to be an atheist.

I'm sure that someone, somewhere, had a change of heart one way or the other, but I've never personally seen it. Has anyone ever seen it happen with an adult?

I know of people who were raised in relgious families who ended up becoming atheists, but that was more a part of their growing up and developing their own philosophy that they wholeheartedly believed in rather than a case of someone who strongly believed in something abandonning that belief for a completely different philosophy.

Three times I've convinced pro-choicers people to admit they were pro-abortion, and each time the person ended up rejecting abortion as a "right". None of the times did these people admit that they changed their stance, though, and success only came over the course of several conversations.

Each time it was a supporter of abortion who operated on the basis that a fetus is not a person, therefore a woman should not limit her choices based on whether it lives or dies.

I've never convinced a pro-abortionist (not a "pro-choice" person) who was a true-believer of the cause and tied some of their self worth to the argument itself. These people are as devout to their beliefs as any religious fanatic, and just as impossible to convince.

Similarly, I have never convinced a person who believes in life at conception that safe, effective contraception responsibly applied is the best way to limit abortion. Almost always, this belief is rooted to religious underpinnings, and is an equally futile endeavor to try to change it.

 

[imported_PowerPigg]

Originally posted by: Meuge

Originally posted by: blackangst1

Originally posted by: sMiLeYz
The problem is both camps see it from entirely different angles, and until they look at it genuinely from another side's perspective, neither camp will agree.

Alchemize for example sees it as moral issue, to me it's a woman's rights issue.

So, if either side disagrees with the other, it's because they havent genuinely looked at the issue from the other side? If I understand that correctly, I completely disagree. Two sides of an issue can respectively agree to disagree IMHO. One side may "investigate" the opinions and evidence of the other sdie, and it may just bolster their own opinion. But in that case they have indeed made an informed choice, no?

That's not the case with abortion... because the opinion of one side, is that the other side must be deprived of their choice.

That's the case with any polar disagreement, which is what we have chosen to make of the abortion debate. There's plenty of room between the all-or-nothing silliness that passes for debate here. Too many extreme assumptions taken as fact by too many poeple: that eliminating freedom to abort regardless of the reason deprives women of a choice in having a child; that humanity begins at conception; that fetuses are not people or human before they are born and disconnected from the placenta.

Abortion is a simple case of "it's wrong except when it isn't". All abortions are not the same, and we must be honest in seeing that before we can have any constructive agreement on the subject.

 

[shortylickens]

I've never convinced anyone to change their view on anything.
Guns, Abortion, Religion, weed, The Military, Homosexuality.

I dont even try to do it in an online forum.
Pointless.

 

[Tab]

Originally posted by: shortylickens
I've never convinced anyone to change their view on anything.
Guns, Abortion, Religion, weed, The Military, Homosexuality.

I dont even try to do it in an online forum.
Pointless.

I've been reading this forum and many others and I've changed my opinions quite abit, if not I've enforced them a lot more.

 

[Aegeon]

Originally posted by: Dissipate
The fact that you have effectively shut down your faculty for individual thought and have turned to a Rabbi who is telling you his own interpretation of a book that is devoid of meaning. In other words, he can tell you anything he wants and justify it with any variety of passages.

Do you have to be religious to enjoy music or art? Do you have to be religious to see inherent beauty in math and science? Do you have to be religious to have appreciation for the fascinating aspects of the universe? I don't think you do. Hence, I certainly do not see why you need to have religious beliefs to see that human life (the most incredible physical thing in this universe) is valuable and shouldn't just be thrown into a garbage can.

Your justification for abortion is nothing more than a passage in the Bible and what your Rabbi told you. That is the weakest argument I have ever heard.

Animal life is not even on the same scale as human life in terms of its value. Although, I am not a big fan of hunting.

You're not actually paying attention to my argument. My point is I am absolutely confident of my position on abortion in all respects including religiously. I done a large amount of research on this issue on my own, and I disagree with the Rabbi in question on plenty of issues. I was just saying I have a strong religious basis for feeling that there is nothing wrong with abortion on top of everything else.

As far as weak arguments go, that's what I feel your position is. If you don't believe in human souls, I'm still not certain on your position on this issue, I don't see any reason at all that a fetus should be given more rights than animals for most of its development. In fact, they should be given less rights than many advanced animals since the animals clearly have a more advanced state of cognitive reasoning and brain development given all the scientific evidence we have at hand. Under those circumstances, I feel arbitrarily giving the fetus more rights simply is an arbitrary and silly position that lacks real logical backing behind it. Talking about the potential of a fetus while not caring about losing the potential that sperm and eggs have to create human life simply strikes me as grasping for logic to support a position you know you want to take.

 

[Tom]

As far as changing opinions, I haven't changed my opinion that a woman has the right to get unpregnant, but the thread in off-topic about men's rights has made me think of something.

I'm not sure I think a woman should have a right to have an abortion because she doesn't want a baby. I do think she should have the right if she doesn't want to be pregnant. For me, that's the only justification for abortion, that a woman has the right to control what happens to her own body, but that doesn't have anything to do with not wanting to have a baby, after it would be born.

It's probably a fine distinction I'm making, but for me it's something I hadn't really thought about before.