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Being pro-life is utterly untenable and stupid

M

micrometers

Diamond Member
1. the concern about abortion is entirely theoretical. In other words, it really is up for debate on when a fetus has feeling.

2. Even if a fetus has feeling, it is no big deal. Seriously. He will not be conscious enough to really feel anything. None of us remember really what it was like being a baby, and at worst it would be a quick momentary flash of pain and then nothing. OTOH, given the extreme poverty in many parts of this world, there will be people who live 30-40 years of grinding poverty and suffering and they definitely are conscious of suffering.

3. most babies aborted would probably lead a life of suffering. And for the mother as well, given the additional responsibility of caring and providing.

4. Human tribes through the centuries practiced infanticide without issue.

5. If you ban abortion then you would make for serious problems in providing medical care for women. Doctors might let a woman die instead of providing procedures that might inadvertently induce abortions, for fear of being prosecuted. You might throw women in jail on account of a miscarriage (since there would likely be false prosecutions of legitimate miscarriages).

So in short, fetal life is no big deal and enforcement of any abortion ban would be a nightmare with real negative effects on (non-theoretical) people.
 
By the OP reasoning, it would be ok to kill any person we deem is suffering, or will be suffering soon. Because hell, there would only be a momentary infinitesimal moment of pain, then it would all be over.
 
I am pro-life but I would never want abortion to be banned outright and I certainly don't want the government telling me whether or not it is allowed.

Abortion is a medical procedure -- that is a decision between the pregnant woman and her doctor, period.

As a culture however, we should be advocating for the preservation of ALL life and discouraging abortion on demand. I am especially talking about discouraging abortion due to 'inconvenience' (i.e. accidental pregnancy due to teen sex carelessness, prioritizing career/materialism over life, etc). But it HAS to be available to incest and rape victims. Bans for even those terrible situations is simply outright cruelty to the victim.

I think the Clintons had it most right when they stated abortion should be 'safe, legal, and rare'.
 
karmypolitics said:
1. the concern about abortion is entirely theoretical. In other words, it really is up for debate on when a fetus has feeling.

2. Even if a fetus has feeling, it is no big deal. Seriously. He will not be conscious enough to really feel anything. None of us remember really what it was like being a baby, and at worst it would be a quick momentary flash of pain and then nothing. OTOH, given the extreme poverty in many parts of this world, there will be people who live 30-40 years of grinding poverty and suffering and they definitely are conscious of suffering.

3. most babies aborted would probably lead a life of suffering. And for the mother as well, given the additional responsibility of caring and providing.

4. Human tribes through the centuries practiced infanticide without issue.

5. If you ban abortion then you would make for serious problems in providing medical care for women. Doctors might let a woman die instead of providing procedures that might inadvertently induce abortions, for fear of being prosecuted. You might throw women in jail on account of a miscarriage (since there would likely be false prosecutions of legitimate miscarriages).

So in short, fetal life is no big deal and enforcement of any abortion ban would be a nightmare with real negative effects on (non-theoretical) people.
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I would venture a guess that not everyone agrees with your assessment.

I am neutral for the most part when it comes to this but I will address your points just for the sake of doing it.

1.) The real question is that of awareness and consciousness, not to much feeling. Some people like to use activity in the circulatory system as an indicator of when life separates from being a part of the mother and being itself.

2.) Much like point number 1, this cannot be measured so really any conclusion drawn by a pro-life or pro-choice person is just an opinion as data doesn't exist to prove awareness or consciousness.

3.) This is not for you to determine or judge. An individual has the right to persue their life to whatever end they are capable of.

4.) Simply doing something out of tradition is not really a basis to continue doing it. I would like to think in modern times we have rational arguments for why we do something.

5.) This point you kind of go off the deep end. For the most part, doctors don't let patients die. Using your argument, every time a doctor performs a surgery today, if the patient dies, the doctor could face prosecution. Realistically, this just doesn't happen that often (as in, almost never). Since dying a natural death is no crime and neither is accidental death (the causes of misscarriage), your miscarriage argument is moot.
 
karmypolitics said:
1. the concern about abortion is entirely theoretical. In other words, it really is up for debate on when a fetus has feeling.

2. Even if a fetus has feeling, it is no big deal. Seriously. He will not be conscious enough to really feel anything. None of us remember really what it was like being a baby, and at worst it would be a quick momentary flash of pain and then nothing. OTOH, given the extreme poverty in many parts of this world, there will be people who live 30-40 years of grinding poverty and suffering and they definitely are conscious of suffering.
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1. and 2.: My opinion on abortion is nothing to do with feeling, therefore these points are irrelevant to me, I'm pro-life.

3. most babies aborted would probably lead a life of suffering. And for the mother as well, given the additional responsibility of caring and providing.
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You're being theoretical now, you have no way of knowing that

4. Human tribes through the centuries practiced infanticide without issue.
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That doesn't make any baring on a moral argument.

5. If you ban abortion then you would make for serious problems in providing medical care for women. Doctors might let a woman die instead of providing procedures that might inadvertently induce abortions, for fear of being prosecuted. You might throw women in jail on account of a miscarriage (since there would likely be false prosecutions of legitimate miscarriages).
Click to expand...

There is a practical issue with banning abortions I'll grant you. But IMO abortions should be illegal except for in situations where the mother is at risk, when it comes to situations where an abortion is inadvertently performed, where the mother is ill and required abortion that would be acceptable, in the same way that sometimes accidents happen in surgery resulting in other death.

So in short, fetal life is no big deal and enforcement of any abortion ban would be a nightmare with real negative effects on (non-theoretical) people.
Click to expand...

Morality is generally theoretical, it is after all called Moral theory.
 
karmypolitics said:
2. Even if a fetus has feeling, it is no big deal. Seriously. He will not be conscious enough to really feel anything.
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Does this mean that we can make it legal to kill people in their sleep or shoot them in the head as long as we're hidden away out of sight when we take the shot?
 
Abortion is nowhere near that simple. It should most certainly be legal as long as it can be done safely and not when the fetus is viable unless there is an extraordinary circumstance. The difficulty with abortion is that attaching person-hood to something that cannot communicate in any currently knowable language and is not legally a person until its actual birth brings all sorts of hairy and complicated moral implications of aborting said life. But the time at which life is aborted is critical, especially since "life" is a broad term that can just as easily ascribed to sperm as it can to a fetus. Of course, I doubt many pro-lifers consider the act of masturbation to be a form of baby killing.

Bottom line; abortion should be rare, safe, and easily accessible.
 
brencat said:
I am pro-life but I would never want abortion to be banned outright and I certainly don't want the government telling me whether or not it is allowed.

Abortion is a medical procedure -- that is a decision between the pregnant woman and her doctor, period.

As a culture however, we should be advocating for the preservation of ALL life and discouraging abortion on demand. I am especially talking about discouraging abortion due to 'inconvenience' (i.e. accidental pregnancy due to teen sex carelessness, prioritizing career/materialism over life, etc). But it HAS to be available to incest and rape victims. Bans for even those terrible situations is simply outright cruelty to the victim.

I think the Clintons had it most right when they stated abortion should be 'safe, legal, and rare'.
Click to expand...

My feelings echo this.

Ideally, I'd like for abortions of convenience to be illegal, however there is absolutely no way to legislate it properly. Because of that, it should remain legal.

However, if one truly wants to prevent abortions, contraceptives should be easily and freely available to anyone. I'd even support the government offering free condoms and basic birth control prescriptions to anyone that wants them.
 
A few points:

1. A 3 year old baby for instance will likely have been met with members of his or her community. So, the death of a person will likely result in a concrete feeling of loss by members of a community. A fetus OTOH cannot be made an attachment to unless you are religiously irrational.

2. People who are privately pro-life in their personal life but are pro-choice for society as a whole tend to get squeezed in this current political climate. The pro-life movement demands that politicians impose blanket abortion restrictions. The pro-choice movement is where people can be anti-abortion in sentiment but against laws that restrict.

3. Even most pro-life pols agree that abortion should be legal in cases of rape or incest, but when it comes down to it, proving rape or incest is often difficult, since many rapes go unreported. So pro-life pols have just gotten more and more extreme as time has gone on, in favor of increasingly restrictive requirements.
 
brencat said:
I am pro-life but I would never want abortion to be banned outright and I certainly don't want the government telling me whether or not it is allowed.

Abortion is a medical procedure -- that is a decision between the pregnant woman and her doctor, period.

As a culture however, we should be advocating for the preservation of ALL life and discouraging abortion on demand. I am especially talking about discouraging abortion due to 'inconvenience' (i.e. accidental pregnancy due to teen sex carelessness, prioritizing career/materialism over life, etc). But it HAS to be available to incest and rape victims. Bans for even those terrible situations is simply outright cruelty to the victim.

I think the Clintons had it most right when they stated abortion should be 'safe, legal, and rare'.
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then you are effectively pro-choice. The pro-choicers would welcome you but the pro-lifers wouldn't accept you.
 
highland145 said:
Let's start with aborting the murders, rapists, and pedophiles. Yeah, baby.
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In the book Freakonomics, it has been argued that the legalization of abortion correlated with a decrease in crime in the USA. Since so many aborted would likely have lived a life of deprivation and turned to crime as a result. No, there is no 100% proof of this, but on a whole, most people can make their own decisions on their ability to be parents IMO, and thus most abortions go to people who are not ready.
 
karmypolitics said:
In the book Freakonomics, it has been argued that the legalization of abortion correlated with a decrease in crime in the USA. Since so many aborted would likely have lived a life of deprivation and turned to crime as a result. No, there is no 100% proof of this, but on a whole, most people can make their own decisions on their ability to be parents IMO, and thus most abortions go to people who are not ready.
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One could argue that more abortions per capita in particular segments of society have led to the decrease in crime.
 
karmypolitics said:
then you are effectively pro-choice. The pro-choicers would welcome you but the pro-lifers wouldn't accept you.
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The problem is that in the US abortion was legalized through the courts, so we have this "right" to abortion. Most Americans are pragmatic on the issue and could probably agree on "safe, legal, and rare" but the courts have taken away the ability to make reasonable policy in this area. You end up with pro abortion groups that won't give an inch because they are worried it will harm the legal precedents they have established.

The polling on abortion is also pretty interesting. When there is a Republican president Americans skew pro choice but when there is a Democrat they skew pro life. I think it reflects the fact at Americans believe abortion is morally wrong in theory but are hesitant to take the decision out of the mothers hands.

I hope that eventually we can reach some stable compromise so it becomes less of a political issue.
 
karmypolitics said:
1. the concern about abortion is entirely theoretical. In other words, it really is up for debate on when a fetus has feeling.

2. Even if a fetus has feeling, it is no big deal. Seriously. He will not be conscious enough to really feel anything. None of us remember really what it was like being a baby, and at worst it would be a quick momentary flash of pain and then nothing. OTOH, given the extreme poverty in many parts of this world, there will be people who live 30-40 years of grinding poverty and suffering and they definitely are conscious of suffering.

3. most babies aborted would probably lead a life of suffering. And for the mother as well, given the additional responsibility of caring and providing.

4. Human tribes through the centuries practiced infanticide without issue.

5. If you ban abortion then you would make for serious problems in providing medical care for women. Doctors might let a woman die instead of providing procedures that might inadvertently induce abortions, for fear of being prosecuted. You might throw women in jail on account of a miscarriage (since there would likely be false prosecutions of legitimate miscarriages).

So in short, fetal life is no big deal and enforcement of any abortion ban would be a nightmare with real negative effects on (non-theoretical) people.
Click to expand...

1) Concern over the death penalty is entirely theoretical. In other words, it really is up for debate whether career criminals are worth housing, or just getting rid of.

2) So if you were drunk and on some painkillers it's be morally sound to use a vacuum and suck out your brains. None of us remember that night after a bottle of tequila and a bottle of oxy, at worst it would be a quick flash of pain, and then nothing. OTOH, given the extremely embarrassing effects a night of pilled out, drunken debauchery, people live 30-40 years suffering the embarrassment of their stupidity while high and drunk.

3) Wouldn't want to be responsible for our actions, if they are going to like, you know, suck and stuff.

4) Even better, let's use medical practices from people living in caves, and the woods, brilliant. Got leeches?

5) Banning abortions of convenience, wouldn't effect life or death situations for the mother.

So in short, you are the leftist version of Anarchist420, half-cocked and retarded.
 
soundforbjt said:
If your Pro-Life, shouldn't you be against the death penalty?
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Some people are.

Some are Pro life in that everyone deserves the chance at life. Now if you take that chance and decide to deprive others of their lives, ie murders, rapists, child molesters, etc, then a lot of us believe you should be deprived of your life as punishment for crimes committed.

But good try on trying to trollllloolllllllll.
 
karmypolitics said:
A few points:

1. A 3 year old baby for instance will likely have been met with members of his or her community. So, the death of a person will likely result in a concrete feeling of loss by members of a community. A fetus OTOH cannot be made an attachment to unless you are religiously irrational.
Click to expand...

That is completely wrong. Have you never been around a woman who's happy to be pregnant, or even someone who knows a woman who's happy to be pregnant?
 
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