A Newbie on the Abortion Issue.

Posted: Sat Dec 13, 2008 10:04 am

Welcome Nate! Very Happy

Posted: Fri Dec 19, 2008 1:48 am

Quote:

Maybe 6-9 months? If someone says "no time", "It's totally up to her", that's total B.S. To abort a 9 month old person is heartless.

I don't think that there are many people saying that, and I would agree with you. It is hard to draw the line here, but as with most governmental decisions, a line must be drawn without a good place to draw it. I would say abortion should be legal within the first trimester, but I shan't go any further.

Posted: Fri Dec 19, 2008 4:45 am

Abortion is, in the strictest sense of definition, murder. It is the purposeful taking of a human life. However, I cannot fathom how killing a being that is normally the size of an index finger tantamount to killing a newborn baby or a full-grown human being.

If there were a bill trying to be passed that would end abortions/continue abortions I could not bring myself to vote for either side. (That is, until some hard, scientific evidence is shored up to sway me) But for the whole argument of privacy being the reason to allow abortions I do not agree with.

Posted: Fri Dec 19, 2008 5:16 am

Under Jewish Biblical law, abortion is no different than killing an animal. It isn't human until it draws its first breath. Wish Xians understood that their own book says so.

Posted: Fri Dec 19, 2008 1:39 pm

Raskolnikov wrote:

until some hard, scientific evidence is shored up to sway me

I share your uncertainty regarding the point at which abortion should be no longer legal. However, I'm curious what sort of hard, scientific evidence could sway you either way?

Posted: Fri Dec 19, 2008 9:30 pm

NateV wrote:

Maybe 6-9 months? If someone says "no time", "It's totally up to her", that's total B.S. To abort a 9 month old person is heartless.

It's heartless from the typical, emotionally driven, natural propensity for the human animal to be protective of their young, I agree. However, I don't think a nine-month-old fetus would experience any more, perhaps even less, distress over its death then say a pig that was up for slaughter. Aborting at this late date would certainly distress the parents (especially if they wanted the child), but I seriously doubt there would be any emotional distress caused to the fetus. It almost certainly can't understand the concept of death or its implications and self-awareness at this point in human development is minimal or more likely non-existant.

Posted: Sat Dec 20, 2008 1:44 pm

Quote:

However, I don't think a nine-month-old fetus would experience any more, perhaps even less, distress over its death then say a pig that was up for slaughter.

They say pigs are actually as smart as 3 year olds, so that's not saying much.

Quote:

Aborting at this late date would certainly distress the parents (especially if they wanted the child), but I seriously doubt there would be any emotional distress caused to the fetus.

Full grown people can be drugged and killed without causing any emotional distress to them, but we don't view that as acceptable.

Posted: Sat Dec 20, 2008 8:07 pm

Cygnus wrote:

Full grown people can be drugged and killed without causing any emotional distress to them, but we don't view that as acceptable.

... and they would be self-aware and have an understanding of death; something that defines it as a "people" (person). The fact is, the only way I find the taking of another human life to be "acceptable" would be if they were unaware of their coming demise (reasons for killing intentionally undefined). Many people find capital punishment to be acceptable, and yet this killing is extremely stressful to the individual.

Note: I'm not arguing that we should willy-nilly kill unborn humans, only that they should not be given the same status as self-aware humans. Most humans imagine the death of a highly developed fetus or even a new-born to be more heinous then the death of a developed, self-aware human, I do not. I accord more importance to the developed life then the potential one.

Posted: Mon Dec 22, 2008 5:05 pm

Oh well, its probably not important. If we're going to have legal abortion, then late term abortions should probably be left out. It would make the bill easier to pass, as Christians would shudder at the thought of legal abortions at 9 months. Besides, who's going to get an abortion that late, anyway?

Posted: Mon Dec 22, 2008 7:53 pm

Cygnus wrote:

Oh well, its probably not important. If we're going to have legal abortion, then late term abortions should probably be left out. It would make the bill easier to pass, as Christians would shudder at the thought of legal abortions at 9 months.

It's only important from a perspective standpoint. You're correct that arguing in this manner only adds fuel to the "pro-lifers".

Quote:

Besides, who's going to get an abortion that late, anyway?

Probably when a women's health was in jeopardy or perhaps in rare cases of extreme birth defects (which are generally caught much earlier).

Posted: Tue Dec 23, 2008 3:25 am

Quote:

Probably when a women's health was in jeopardy or perhaps in rare cases of extreme birth defects (which are generally caught much earlier).

Not saying that those people shouldn't get abortions; I meant healthy women with healthy babies. Even hardliners don't go that far.

Posted: Sun Dec 28, 2008 2:34 am

pk_boomer wrote:

Eon wrote:

One thing I've always found interesting is the fact that the biggest "pro-lifers" tend to also be the biggest supporters of war and capital punishment. In fact I think I've only ever known one person who was "pro-life" as well as being opposed to war and capital punishment. I've never understood how you can argue with the one hand that life is sacred and must be protected, while on the other hand arguing that war is not only necessary, but morally justified and that murderers (or even rapists) deserve to die.

Abortion is one issue that I don't have a firm stance on, it is a difficult one for me to decide one way or the other. I would say I am pro-choice, and the guideline that I usually use is that a human's rights begin when the fetus is likely to survive without the mother (so around 28 weeks (?) - and this is always changing with the advancement of modern medicine). However I have no objective reason for this deliniation apart from it "feeling" right to me. I am the type of person who needs to rationalize my stances empirically, so having a "gut" rationalization for this issue is uncomfortable for me. I agree with you, eon, about the cognitive dissonance with many of the pro-lifers. A particular example of this that stands out in my mind is George W. Bush's veto of the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act. He argued that using harvested human embryos for stem cell research crossed a "moral boundary", regardless of the fact that unused human embryos are normally destroyed and disposed of anyway. His irrational (in my opinion) protection of these "lives" contrasted starkly with his attitude towards another issue also making the news about that time, the civilian casualties of the Iraq war. Only a few months earlier, when asked how many had died as a direct result of the US invasion, he casually remarked, "I would say about 30,000". His dismissive attitude about these tragic deaths resulting from his own actions, while at the same time fighting to protect embryos that will not even become humans is bewildering.

I am new to these forums and have been reading through some of the material. This topic is the one topic that I find myself having the most trouble with. It seems to be purely an emotional thing for me. I was glad to read this post as it really spells out how I feel. I just always have a hard time not thinking about it from the 'kid's' perspective. And that person not getting a chance at life. I realize this is purely an emotional response...but I can't really do much about that.

That being said, I also don't think it is something that should be 'legislated'. I guess I'm a closet pro-choicer, who just really hopes that most people in that position make the 'right' choice. Whatever that may be.

Posted: Sun Dec 28, 2008 3:30 am

Welcome Rambling! Very Happy

Posted: Sun Dec 28, 2008 10:46 pm

Cygnus wrote:

Quote:

Probably when a women's health was in jeopardy or perhaps in rare cases of extreme birth defects (which are generally caught much earlier).

Not saying that those people shouldn't get abortions; I meant healthy women with healthy babies. Even hardliners don't go that far.

As "heartless" as this sounds, I find it less ethical to continue upon our course of gross overpopulation then to abort even healthy fetuses. I would of course promote not getting pregnant in the first place over aborting after the fact.

Resident Joined: Jul 12, 2004 Posts: 378

I like what Peter Singer has to say regarding killing. In "Rethinking Life and Death" he covers the subject well. Unborn Homo-sapiens and infants have less in the way of interests than many of the animals we kill for food. If we consider what interests we may violate by killing, we have a relatively objective way of looking at the matter.

Of course, parents usually have a very large interest in their newly born offspring and varying interests in their unborn offspring. I doubt that society should have any interest in the lives of infants younger than a day or so.

It doesn't currently bother me that society doesn't protect the interest of a pig to the extent that we defend the lesser interests of an infant. I can't resort to the common claim that humanness makes all the difference. Irrationally, perhaps, I don't see specieism as the special scourge. (But then I probably let my stomach think for me and as with Ben Franklin, the nose that picks up on the smell of pan fried fish will speak convincingly to this stomach.)


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