Death Penalty and Abortion, the overlap (or lack thereof) of opinions

[IEatLasers]

You’re saying “oh since you’re going to be poor, it would be selfish to allow you to live” 

 

That honestly doesn’t even make any sense 

[Dark Holy Elf]

Allowing someone who isn't yet living to live isn't really a matter of selfishness/selflessness if you ask me. If it were, then the most selfless thing one could do is to try to have as many children as possible, which personally I strongly reject. (And not just because human overpopulation is currently placing a huge strain on our environment.)

I dunno, if that's how you feel, fair enough, but personally I don't really care about the rights of people who haven't yet developed a consciousness. Whether you do or not tends to affect where you fall on the pro-choice/pro-life scale.

For what it's worth, as much as I'm strongly pro-choice, I do get why someone would feel differently. Much as I consume meat but I absolutely understand why someone wouldn't. (In both cases, you shouldn't try to outlaw the practice regardless of your own personal views IMO, those sorts of ethical calls should be made by individual citizens affected.)

[Sias]

3 hours ago, IEatLasers said:

I already mentioned why aborting based on money is selfish 

but yes most abortions are metropolitan not really Urban. 

So its people who can afford a baby but they don’t like the lifestyle change. 

A majority of the abortions being metropolitan doesn't really mean anything though. Being metropolitan doesn't automatically equate being wealthy.

Also, if you had actually bothered to read the study you yourself referred to, you would have discovered that 73% of women name "Can’t afford a baby now" as reason for their abortion - which obviously directly contradicts your claim.

[Res]

It's selfless because it's virtually impossible for a person to raise a baby by themselves without some kind of assistance, usually monetary assistance. If you're poor and find yourself pregnant there's no winning with the majority of prolife people; the politically prolife tend to despise the financially dependent.

And while poverty in and of itself is nothing to be ashamed of, it is a huge disadvantage in many ways. It is the single biggest determinator - moreso than race, religion or gender - of success. 

[IEatLasers]

Not always, Res. 

 

And i I don’t have much money it’s not like I despise financially dependent people. 

 

I’d have had things easier if my dad was willing to be on welfare when I was young but he never was. 

 

But having disadvantages, needing assistance, etc, still doesn’t justify murder, we can all agree on that right? 

 

So even if you dont value he life of a baby  or fetus or embryo, you just deny its existence entirely? Idk that doesn’t make sens e to me. It’s almost human, it hears, it struggles to survive, and people are saying it’s moral to kill it because when it is born it won’t have much money? 

But lots of people in poverty are loved and happy. 

[Rex Glacies]

In addition, if financial situations are a reason people "abort" their child, then should we be "aborting" homeless people? I mean, they have a minuscule financial situation; almost no money and seemingly no contribution to society. Surely it should be justified to execute a couple of them, right?

[Tryhard]

27 minutes ago, Rex Glacies said:

In addition, if financial situations are a reason people "abort" their child, then should we be "aborting" homeless people? I mean, they have a minuscule financial situation; almost no money and seemingly no contribution to society. Surely it should be justified to execute a couple of them, right?

You say that as if people who are pro-choice want abortion to happen. I don't, I foresee it as a difficult and deliberating personal decision that affects their own lives, and would hope that in society it was kept to the minimum as much as possible. To be honest, the topic of abortion makes me very uncomfortable even if I'm pro-choice.

Perhaps if more support was giving to single parents who would raise children then it might be understandable to have children with the social safety net but the type to argue against abortion is always "you've got to have that baby, and also you get no help doing so when it's born."

Edited October 1, 2017 by Tryhard

[Rex Glacies]

5 minutes ago, Tryhard said:

Perhaps if more support was giving to single parents who would raise children then it might be understandable to have children with the social safety net but the type to argue against abortion is always "you've got to have that baby, and also you get no help doing so when it's born."

I agree with you here. Mayhaps the problem shouldn't just be "Abortion vs. no abortion," but helping and supporting mothers and parents to obtain the materials they need to raise a child.

[Res]

1 hour ago, IEatLasers said:

But having disadvantages, needing assistance, etc, still doesn’t justify murder, we can all agree on that right?

That's a question to aim at the prolife people who also don't want to provide any kind of assistance to single parents.

Because it baffles me, too. The contradictory nature of the majority of prolife (well, they're really just pro-birth) people is something I despise.

Of course many people in poverty are loved and happy. I never mentioned happiness. I was discussing success and opportunity, the two things that lead to money and financial independence. 

19 minutes ago, Rex Glacies said:

In addition, if financial situations are a reason people "abort" their child, then should we be "aborting" homeless people? I mean, they have a minuscule financial situation; almost no money and seemingly no contribution to society. Surely it should be justified to execute a couple of them, right?

This isn't an argument. People abort fetuses, not children, and homeless people aren't occupying another person's body. 

Obviously people who think abortions = killing children aren't getting abortions for financial reasons.

I'm all for supporting poor parents financially. I'm for a national health system, welfare, food stamps and housing assistance. I know first hand how simply *giving birth* can almost bankrupt you in the U.S. (and it does actually bankrupt people), so I'm definitely irritated by the hypocrisy of the pro-birth, anti-welfare crowd. Right now, all people are doing by making abortions harder to obtain in the U.S. is putting women's lives at risk.

[IEatLasers]

Success if a very open ended thing, not always money, and if you’re going to complain “poor people don’t have opportunities and therefor abortion is justified..” 

 

uhh. Aren’t you the one who complains about not giving oppurtunity? 

[Res]

I think you're misunderstanding everything I'm saying.

I'm merely pointing out the hypocrisy of many pro-life people. All I want is for pro-life people to actually be pro-welfare and prove they give two shits about the actual babies involved. Because once the babies are born many pro-life people do everything in their power to make life difficult for them.

[eclipse]

10 hours ago, Shoblongoo said:

The life-of-the-mother exception makes perfect sense. And I have never seen or heard a single person argue against it.

...but on the matter of rape...

For all the reasons set forth by respondent posters since I yesterday made my inquiry as to why this exception should exist and be observed by otherwise pro-life persons.

We would not allow a rape victim to drown her 1 year old child-conceived-in-rape in a bathtub or say that we do not condemn such actions. We would not allow a rape victim to shoot her 1 year old child-conceived-in-rape in the head with a handgun. And so on and so forth; we would call such acts "murder" and the the mother a murderer. 

The premise of the pro-life position is that abortion is morally equivalent to the aforementioned acts; it is the murder of a small child. That is why its a moral evil and people should not get abortions.

If that is what one believes. But if it is said that you can abort a child-concieved-in-rape.

Then what is really being said is that abortion is NOT morally the same as killing a child. One is permissible in circumstances where the other is not.

And that again just seems to beg the question well then why feel the way you feel about abortion to begin with? Like--you know its morally unconscionable to make a woman carry to term a pregnancy she never wanted and never intended to have. You've worked through that much.

It just seems like such a glaring we know intuitively this doesn't hold up, and we see how problematic this gets if we take it to its logical extreme. But abortion is murder. That's our position and we're sticking to it--don't call us out on this.

I'm going to use myself as an example.

My issue is the following:

1. If I get pregnant, it's going to be a hard one, if I'm lucky.  If I'm not, someone's dying.
2. I see a pregnancy via rape as some shithead's genes being passed on without consent.

So unless I really hate my partner, or I'm worried about my life, I have no issues with carrying through my own pregnancy.  However, I can't speak for every last woman out there.  So even if I'm personally against abortion unless necessary, I think it should be allowed.  But I refuse to put my life on the line to extend the family tree of someone who I despise.

[Lushen]

I was watching a segment from an anti-abortionist and he referenced the following image and asked people to point where specifically the baby has become a separate life and have rights separate from the mother.

I was kind of stumped.  As I said previously I'm fairly open minded on the topic and see both viewpoints.  The only thing I think is unreasonably immoral is the ideology that some have that you can kill a baby "as long as its in the womb".  I think this is unquestionably immoral because I highly doubt there are many situations where it takes 8mo to get an abortion and I know for a fact that a baby that has just come out of the womb is a distinct human life and fail to see how it being inside a woman 5 minutes before changes that.  There's absolutely no reason to wait that long and then get an abortion.  Otherwise, I'm just interested exactly where people think an abortion crosses a line, if ever.

[Time the Crestfallen]

6 minutes ago, Lushen said:

I was kind of stumped.  As I said previously I'm fairly open minded on the topic and see both viewpoints.  The only thing I think is unreasonably immoral is the ideology that some have that you can kill a baby "as long as its in the womb".  I think this is unquestionably immoral because I highly doubt there are many situations where it takes 8mo to get an abortion and I know for a fact that a baby that has just come out of the womb is a distinct human life and fail to see how it being inside a woman 5 minutes before changes that.  There's absolutely no reason to wait that long and then get an abortion.  Otherwise, I'm just interested exactly where people think an abortion crosses a line, if ever.

92% of abortions occur within the first 13 weeks. Only 1.2% of abortions occur during or after 21 weeks, and those are going to be the cases where the parent wants the child but complications occur that would potentially put the mother's life in danger.

[Lushen]

11 minutes ago, Magus of Flowers said:

92% of abortions occur within the first 13 weeks. Only 1.2% of abortions occur during or after 21 weeks, and those are going to be the cases where the parent wants the child but complications occur that would potentially put the mother's life in danger.

Right.  I wasn't saying that a large group of people do this.  I was just curious when people think a fetus should be considered a human life that would be protected by law just as much as you or I.  Because I have heard of instances where people have abortions right before the baby is supposed to come out and there's no legal ramifications for doing so.  There are some images of said babies that I'm going to not post because they are extremely difficult to look at but they look like a regular dead baby.   Many pro-life activists, whether this happens regularly or not, still support abortion up to the point of conception, regardless of how common it is.

Edited October 1, 2017 by Lushen

[eclipse]

36 minutes ago, Lushen said:

Right.  I wasn't saying that a large group of people do this.  I was just curious when people think a fetus should be considered a human life that would be protected by law just as much as you or I.  Because I have heard of instances where people have abortions right before the baby is supposed to come out and there's no legal ramifications for doing so.  There are some images of said babies that I'm going to not post because they are extremely difficult to look at but they look like a regular dead baby.   Many pro-life activists, whether this happens regularly or not, still support abortion up to the point of conception, regardless of how common it is.

For the sake of both argument and sanity, don't post those pictures.  First off, posting dead almost-baby pictures doesn't argue anything, other than "look at this almost-dead baby" (and I doubt any pro-choice person would argue that something like 38 weeks is acceptable for an abortion).  Second, I don't know who/where people are reading this thread.

[Dark Holy Elf]

1 hour ago, Lushen said:

Many pro-life activists, whether this happens regularly or not, still support abortion up to the point of conception, regardless of how common it is.

It's not so much that we support it (in fact I think very few people are comfortable with that, and I highly doubt anyone who has one makes the decision lightly). It's that we trust the pregnant woman to make the call. You and I, as outsiders, we don't know all the circumstances that make someone choose to get an abortion. Trying to legislate such occurences, which are both vanishingly rare and often have a very unique set of circumstances, is ill-headed. I trust the pregnant woman and her doctor(s) to make the right decision a hell of a lot more than some ideologue sitting in a legislature.

[Lushen]

8 hours ago, eclipse said:

For the sake of both argument and sanity, don't post those pictures.  First off, posting dead almost-baby pictures doesn't argue anything, other than "look at this almost-dead baby" (and I doubt any pro-choice person would argue that something like 38 weeks is acceptable for an abortion).  Second, I don't know who/where people are reading this thread.

Yea....I wasn't going to.  I said I wasn't going to?  I didn't say I was about to.

I'm really not trying to get in an argument with anyone, I didn't intend to respond to anyone.  I sincerely want to know when pro-abortion people think it should become illegal because in today's society you can do it 'as long as its in the womb' which I think a lot of pro-abortion people would disagree with.  You've specifically stated that 38 weeks old is not acceptable but that is entirely legal.  Even if almost no one does it after 38 weeks, it can still be done legally.  

For example I found Dark Holy Elf's comments interesting.

Edited October 1, 2017 by Lushen

[Shoblongoo]

15 hours ago, eclipse said:

For the sake of both argument and sanity, don't post those pictures.  First off, posting dead almost-baby pictures doesn't argue anything, other than "look at this almost-dead baby" (and I doubt any pro-choice person would argue that something like 38 weeks is acceptable for an abortion).  Second, I don't know who/where people are reading this thread.

Fun little anecdotal story about just how ineffective those images are at doing what pro-lifers want them to do.

So back in my college days, I was on the leader-board for my local Chapter of College Republicans (yes--I use to be a Republican). I was the "Director of Campus Outreach." My job was basically to go around campus convincing the liberal student body that Republicans are cool too--we're not the crazy bible-thumping bigots you think we are--you should join our club and party up with us. 

So we would do shit like take our members to the local gun range. Go sign-blitzing across the state and make corny campaign videos for local candidates (somewhere on youtube is a cringeworthy old video of me wandering around the Quakerbridge Mall in a Where's Waldo costume, because its a metaphor for Frank Lautenberg's record as Senator or something stupid). All go down Washington D.C. for CPAC, watch the speakers live, then bar-hop and throw crazy hotel parties afterwards because bullshit only liberals know how to have a good time. 

We had a good time. And we had several dozen active members. 

My junior year the club comes under new management. The old president graduates. The new one is a hardcore born-again Christian who decides he wants to take the club in a different direction. For his first event as president, he wants to bring these guys to campus:


^The guy behind the barricade in the black T-Shirt to the right of the "Insanity of Choice" banner is...me...

I was the Director of Campus Outreach. My job was to sell the merits of the event to the student body. I got stuck defending this shit-show. (not my finest hour)

I went on record as saying beforehand that I thought this was a really bad idea. That this wasn't going to change any minds or start any productive conversations. And that this was just going to piss everyone off and kill off our membership base.

The event went forward over my objections.

The headlines coming out of the event were about what you would expect.

Anddddddd the following year we had six (6) active members.
 

Edited October 1, 2017 by eclipse
I was serious when I said no dead almost-baby pictures.

[Res]

8 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

It's not so much that we support it (in fact I think very few people are comfortable with that, and I highly doubt anyone who has one makes the decision lightly). It's that we trust the pregnant woman to make the call. You and I, as outsiders, we don't know all the circumstances that make someone choose to get an abortion. Trying to legislate such occurences, which are both vanishingly rare and often have a very unique set of circumstances, is ill-headed. I trust the pregnant woman and her doctor(s) to make the right decision a hell of a lot more than some ideologue sitting in a legislature.

Yes; there are just four doctors performing late term abortions in the U.S. and they describe the decision-making process as agonizing (also, I haven't seen the documentary in question, but this link makes a note that the only people seeking abortions for non-medical reasons were either raped or were teenagers from highly religious families). 

I try not to comment on what I think abortion legislation *should* be for the reasons you stated. Every person I personally know who's had an abortion has not made the choice lightly. Many of them were people who said 'I'd never have an abortion!' before they needed one. Even a first trimester abortion is not pain-free and usually has to be paid for (it's actually pretty difficult to get a free abortion in the U.S., and in many states there are so few clinics performing abortions that a person has to factor in travel costs, too), so no one is going around getting them willynilly.

[eclipse]

6 hours ago, Lushen said:

Yea....I wasn't going to.  I said I wasn't going to?  I didn't say I was about to.

I'm really not trying to get in an argument with anyone, I didn't intend to respond to anyone.  I sincerely want to know when pro-abortion people think it should become illegal because in today's society you can do it 'as long as its in the womb' which I think a lot of pro-abortion people would disagree with.  You've specifically stated that 38 weeks old is not acceptable but that is entirely legal.  Even if almost no one does it after 38 weeks, it can still be done legally.  

For example I found Dark Holy Elf's comments interesting.

If it's late enough, it becomes a matter of whether or not the baby can survive outside of the womb.  38 weeks is plenty viable.  I know 36 is doable, and there have been babies delivered even earlier who have survived, albeit with lots of medical intervention.  Cost becomes a factor, though. . .

[SullyMcGully]

This thread got big again.

Could somebody please clarify this whole "potential human" concept? What makes a creature human is not its level of development but its DNA. Saying otherwise would be like saying that my niece is only a "potential" human because she still has all of her baby teeth. Am I over simplifying this? It seems like the logical scientific conclusion.

I think before we can end abortion (a worthy cause in my opinion), we need to alter other aspects of society first. For one, adoption could be much easier. Also, if extramarital sex was not so heavily encouraged by society then unplanned, unsustainable pregnancies would be a little rarer. I know that we love the whole "it's your body do what you want with it" thing, but we also need to clarify that one's personal freedom does not grant them immunity to the consequences of their actions.

[Sias]

1 hour ago, SullyMcGully said:

This thread got big again.

Could somebody please clarify this whole "potential human" concept? What makes a creature human is not its level of development but its DNA. Saying otherwise would be like saying that my niece is only a "potential" human because she still has all of her baby teeth. Am I over simplifying this? It seems like the logical scientific conclusion.

I think before we can end abortion (a worthy cause in my opinion), we need to alter other aspects of society first. For one, adoption could be much easier. Also, if extramarital sex was not so heavily encouraged by society then unplanned, unsustainable pregnancies would be a little rarer. I know that we love the whole "it's your body do what you want with it" thing, but we also need to clarify that one's personal freedom does not grant them immunity to the consequences of their actions.

I dunno, but calling any form of zygote a human is really quite a stretch imo. Sure, it possesses the respective DNA, but so does every single dead hair falling out of my body. Similarly my hands, which are actually living tissue but nevertheless won't be described as a human.

Also, being deserving of compassion is related to more than just being genetically Homo Sapiens. There's a whole lot of discussion regarding the humane treatment of animals, for example, even though those clearly do not have human DNA.
Really, if you wanted to somehow classify how much consideration and care a living being deserves, I would likely rather look at some function of...

• its ability to think
• its ability to feel, especially things like fear or pain
• its ability to live
• its will to live
• its impact on the environment

I'm also curious about how you want to reduce extramarital sex so much? Any way you'd try to avoid this would probably have a whole lot of negative consequences: Either (young) people would have far less sex in general, which isn't necessarily all that healthy, or they would marry a lot more quickly, which would increase the rate of failing marriages and divorces by quite significant amounts.

[Res]

The idea that making premarital sex frowned upon would reduce abortions is laughable.

- premarital sex was frowned upon/forbidden for centuries and had no effect upon the abortion rate. In the 1860s, in the middle of the puritanical Victorian era, where abortion was available in U.S. cities it was estimated that there was one abortion for every 4 live births. 

- the majority of women having abortions throughout much of history has been married women, especially as they were likely to be having sex and as contraceptives were not as effective. "Still, for the most part, it was not single women who were having abortions, but married mothers wishing to limit the size of their families. "I am 30 years old and have 11 children... kidney and heart disease, wrote one mother to Margaret Sanger. "Can you please help me. I have miss a few weeks and don't know how to bring myself around. I have cryed my self sick..." Although family planning is a lot easier and better these days, a little more than half of the women who obtain abortions in the U.S. are either married or cohabiting, and more than half are already mothers.

- premarital sex being frowned upon did nothing to prevent an awful lot of premarital sex happening. All it did was make abuse more rampant and vilify women (rarely ever men, of course). There were more brothels than schools in Victorian England. 

- even if you want to argue that making premarital sex frowned upon *now* would reduce abortion rates; where's the evidence? Actually, abortion rates in the U.S. have never been lower! The abortion rate has been steadily decreasing as marriage rates also decrease (and as sex education has vastly improved). You could argue that there's a lot less pressure on people to find a partner and start a family and people are getting smarter about sex as a result. The age at which people first have sex has been steadily rising, as has the number of teens saying the sex they have had was voluntary.

- abortion rates and teen pregnancy rates are higher in the more religious (thus, where extramarital sex is more likely to be frowned upon) countries and regions of the world. 

[Lushen]

On 10/1/2017 at 8:02 PM, SullyMcGully said:

This thread got big again.

Could somebody please clarify this whole "potential human" concept? What makes a creature human is not its level of development but its DNA. Saying otherwise would be like saying that my niece is only a "potential" human because she still has all of her baby teeth. Am I over simplifying this? It seems like the logical scientific conclusion.

I think before we can end abortion (a worthy cause in my opinion), we need to alter other aspects of society first. For one, adoption could be much easier. Also, if extramarital sex was not so heavily encouraged by society then unplanned, unsustainable pregnancies would be a little rarer. I know that we love the whole "it's your body do what you want with it" thing, but we also need to clarify that one's personal freedom does not grant them immunity to the consequences of their actions.

Yea, this seems to be the main argument - how exactly do you draw a line and say "that's when it became human".  Pro-choice advocates tend to say that a baby becomes human when it is sentient.  A counter to this would be, what if I go into a medically induced coma?  I am not sentient during the coma, but I have the potential to become sentient again so murdering me is not moral.  Likewise, babies can become sentient even if they are not currently - so the murder could be seen the same as killing someone in a coma. 

 

Also, related to my comments about abortion after 12 weeks, it seems the house has voted on an after 20 week ban.  I believe if it is deemed harmful to the mother after 20 weeks, a baby can still be aborted but otherwise it will be illegal on a federal level.  Personally I don't see any reason pro-life and pro-choice advocates can't get behind this legislature.

Edited October 4, 2017 by Lushen