Abortion

The only absolutes in my life are rights. You either have absolute rights or you have absolutely no rights.

Your patronizing attitude is wearing my patience thin. I do not ascribe anything magic. I am an Atheist and don't insult me by using the terms "magic" when trying to dismiss my arguments. Talking to you is quickly becoming a waste of my time because you are clearly incapable of understanding the logic of any opposing views that don't fit your own.

If those cells have no intrinsic value then how can you justify your own value? Since we weren't chosen to be aborted that we are somehow "Magically" granted a right to live? You sir are a hypocrite believing that you have the right to live when you proudly proclaim your support for the destruction of other lives.

Any line you draw is really just an arbitrary one that you've drawn for your own convenience to justify why you are inherently more valuable than another. If you do not place any value on cells that if left unimpeded would result in life then you can not justify that any living person has any value whatsoever.



No amount of regulation would stop women from having abortions so there is no point in regulating it. So I would make no move to regulate it beyond denying federal funding to organizations that provide abortions. I don't support abortions but, that doesn't mean I will pass intrusive laws to stop such an action. I am a libertarian, not some Neo-con political hack.

Side note: Discussions like these are turning me into quite the Nihilist despite what my posts indicate.

FPOD, I think you defended Pro-life pretty well, considering that you were being falsely quoted and your arguments were ignored. I believe the proverb "do to others what you would have them do to you", which abortion clearly defies. While there are times that it is medically necessary, I think most of the time it's because of convenience. As FPOD said, we cannot stop abortions (attempting so would cause only unsafe abortions to exist), but we should deny federal funding (which is what I asked in this thread).

As much as I love lowering government control and regulation, one of the poorest arguments to achieve that is the argument that they would still do it so why regulate it. That would essentially be saying murder is illegal but it's still going to happen so it should be legalized.

My stance on abortion is this. I find the best course of action would be to leave it to the states. This would likely mean that some states would keep it legal and some would not. It allows the issue to be controlled by the people more than the government.

you seem obsessed with Ron Paul (not that that's a bad thing)

this seems like a good idea. If one state wants to fund it, then they can, while another state (hopefully mine) will choose not to. If you really want an abortion, just move to a state that funds it. < each time this happens, there will be less pro-abortion people in a pro-life state, while more pro-abortion people in a pro-abortion state.

Ron Paul 2012!

[font=verdana][color=green]I'm just going to skip over the Flaser/FPOD debate, as it's quickly descending into tit-for-tat exchanges, which is not what I'm here for. I will address the OP and the OP alone.

Personally, I'm a moderate pro-choice. As I'm sure many of you will know, this means that I support abortion being available to women, but only under strict conditions. For example, the baby will endanger the mother's life if she tries to give birth to it or that the baby had serious genetic issues, but the latter point is a different topic of discussion.

If abortions were only allowed in these circumstances, I would say that abortions should be paid for by taxes; as they are saving the lives of women. If a women couldn't afford an abortion that would save her life, then the baby would be, literally, a ticking time bomb waiting to go off, which would bring a great deal of stress to the women.

However, the availability of abortions isn't like that. In the UK, a women needs permission from two individual doctors before she can be granted an abortion and there are stringent regulations i.e. state of the woman's mind etc. The abortion reasons stretch far and wide; not being able to finance the child, not wanting the child or being raped - which I'll discuss at length later. Barring the final reason, I believe that abortions of this nature should not be financed by taxes. These reasons are purely of the fancy and caprice of the women who chose to have them. I'm not saying they can't have abortions; but they can forget it if they want our taxes spent on them.

As I said above, I will now move onto the difficult topic of rape. When a women is raped, them not wanting the child can be a very likely reaction. They will forever be daunted by the rapist in the form of an innocent child. However, the law of rape can be a very thick, sloppy swamp to wade through. Proving rape can be very hard, yet many innocent men have been falsely accused of rape and locked up for several months before being found innocent, at which point the damage had been done.

Whose to say that this same difficulty can't be applied to the abortion table? Many women, who want to have an abortion but can't, may play to rape card to get a free one. However, this will be too easy an escape clause for them. In this conundrum, I believe that an I.O.U/fine scheme would be best. I would like to have a scheme where, unless a rapist isn't convicted for their rape, they can't get an abortion; but by then the time-limit would have expired. Therefore, the idea will run as so: whenever a women wishes to have an abortion, but isn't in danger of losing her life/child have genetic issues, and they claim that they have been raped, they will be forewarned that, unless a rapist is convicted for their rape/there is no shadow of a doubt that they were raped, they will be committing a crime of fraud - of course the sentence will be hefty to deter people using it as an easy option for abortion.

So, that sums up my opinions on the three scenarios around abortion: Mother in Danger/Genetic issues with Child; Fancy or Caprice of Women; Rape.

Sorry, my inner nihilist was showing with the whole "Who the fuck cares, everything is a societal construct" mentality.

No need to start preaching states rights to me. It's common knowledge I've touted the same thing on fakku since 2007

I was pregnant for a few weeks and ended it in an abortion.

These are my personal feelings and views. I respect any objection and arguments, however, I stand by how my situation played out.

Thanks for sharing, seifuku_nya. It's always a big decision to make, and I hope you feel that you made the right one. *hugs*

Sorry I eliminated your fun font and color. I just automatically erased it with the rest of the text.

It seems like a pretty reasonable setup for your prerequisites but I am curious about one thing.
Under what specific guidelines does the term "genetic issues with child," work out?
As far as I know it is impossible to near impossible to identify any genetic issues that are not blatant (your baby has three hands! And even then it wouldn't be surprising if it was missed) before birth. I assume your guideline for this would be in the situation of incest. However seeing as incest is simply a heightened chance of genetic problems (if I recall, due to the fact that recessive genes are inherently in both parent's genes...I might have messed up my biology there but it's not relevant anyways), you can't actually prove there will be genetic problems.
So basically there's a chance that you eliminate a perfectly healthy baby.
Or alternatively, you might want to define what counts as a genetic mutation that is deemed worthy of abortion.
Additionally, should families that are not incest related but have histories of genetic mutations or say, their first child had genetic mutations therefore their second child has a higher chance, be applied to this as well?
And assuming you're speaking of the line being incest for if there will be genetic mutations or not, are you using the legal definition of incest to define where genetic disorders are likely enough to allow abortion?

Always something to think about, in my opinion.




As for seifuku nya, you deal with the situation as best you can, and that's all anyone can ask for.

[font=verdana][color=green]Font fixed for ya.

In hindsight, I should have perhaps clarified what I meant by "genetic issues". By this, I mean "serious genetic issues"; for example, genetic diseases which will seriously impact upon the ease, comfort and length of the child's life; examples being Down's syndrome or Huntingdon's disease. If the genetic problem can be treated post-birth or is barely an interference in the average person's life, then I would be opposed to allowing them an abortion off the taxes based on that reason; or rather, I'd be very surprised if someone were to want an abortion for a disease of such a nature.

Surprisingly, many serious diseases can be detected relatively early during the baby's development, by examining their body movements and heart-rates. I'm no means a medical expert, so I couldn't explain the whole process behind how they defer what movements means what or how a certain style of heartbeat means what. Moving away from the topic for a moment, it is even amazing that medicine has progressed so far, as you'd have to study many, many foetuses and their heart-rates and body movements, and then look at how they develop after they born. But, that's neither here nor there.

Incest is a difficult subject. Whilst it is against the law, from what I know, whether or not the child came from an incestuous relationship doesn't matter to the allowance/refusal/demanding of an abortion. But yes, the reason why babies who are born from incestuous relationships have a higher chance of having genetic issues is because the two gene pools' who conceived the child are too similar, therefore the child doesn't have gene diversity, which means that recessive genes are more likely to become a negative part of the child's genetic make-up.

In regards to your second-to-last point, I think that that shouldn't matter. Looking at it objectively, if two people, who knew of their family's genetic history, decided to have a child anyway, but then thought "Oh no, both of our genetic make-ups mean that this child might grow up with a genetic disorder", then it would be incredibly...cheeky...to ask for an abortion. If they had unprotected sex, it should mean that they accepted that they had genetic disorders and are willing to take responsibility for their actions. If they had protected sex, it means that they tried to not have a baby, so an abortion would fall into the "Fancy or Caprice of Women" section. Either way, they both fall into the same result. Of course, if a serious genetic disease were to be discovered, then the situation would change, but I've already discussed that so I won't repeat myself.

I hope that I managed to cover the whole genetic issue debacle that I should have considered beforehand. It seems an awful oversight in hindsight.

I don't believe it should be a states right on whether it should be legal or not. But whether they should be tax and payed by taxer payer money should be a state right. Personally I think people should be responsible for their actions but I realize it's not a perfect world and these things do happen. I would rather have a women/girl who is getting an abortion doing it right rather than risk badly hurting herself.

Going of topic a little bit, what and how do we decide as a collective group what is worth preserving? Is a embryo really that important(why not stages before that)? Is the bacteria you kill with Purella soap any less important than said aborted "child". Is it simply because it's not human?

Life isn't easy, and these questions will at times bring out the worst or most compassionate sides of us.

Nice naming with the fancy or caprice of women.

I don't really have too much relevant to add since this pretty much wrapped up a somewhat basic overview of the genetic standpoint as far as my knowledge goes (if I was some crazy geneticist maybe I could throw out more points and statistics, but I'm not).

Just to give a minor story related to the genetics issue, I remember there was a local charity for this one family who had two or three (don't quite remember but it was more than one) severely mentally retarded and physically mutated children, and to me it seemed as if, when you have one, it would probably be a good idea to check your family histories...Well, actually it seems like a good idea for any couple with a significant risk of pregnancy eh? I guess it also could've been a crazy coincidence...

On a different note,
That's actually pretty interesting that they can detect those diseases so early on. I am curious if the tests for them are regular things or not, it seems like the kind of thing they would only check for if there was a history, unless the tests were very easy and very precise in terms of accuracy.
From your description is seems like the accuracy may be significantly lower than a definite sign which could still mean "normal" babies (er, fetuses) are being aborted under assumptions...But mistakes happen in anything, and I don't know any real statistics myself.

@Sammy: if the NHS won't pay for the abortions of women who do it only for "capricious" reasons, whatever the fuck those are, wouldn't it have to pay for the pre-natal visits and hospitalization for labor and delivery? And later on, for the medical expenses of the child: vaccines, pediatric checkups, treating common childhood illnesses, etc. How does that make sense from a fiscal standpoint? Abortions are WAAAAAAAY cheaper.

Right. Because we all know women just CAN'T get enough of those super fun time abortions! Not like they hurt or anything, nope. :\

[font=verdana][color=green]Neko, just because something is cheaper, it doesn't mean that they should be opted for over other options.

Of course, the whole turning point is when you classify a growing fetus as a living form of life or not. In my personal opinion, the embryo should be afforded special protection under the law; which is duly is, for a matter of fact. Only after 14 days after fertilisation, the embryo would have already developed it's primitive streak; the earliest forms of the nervous system. Yes, according to many here, this is merely a "collection of cells", but this is no ordinary collection of cells. If left alone, a baby will form, unless something goes wrong but that's neither here nor there.

Due to the special protection the embryo is afforded under the law, I believe that it would be unjust for taxes to be used to completely disregard this special protection. Logically speaking, it makes absolutely no sense for the Government to say "Okay, the embryo has a special protection under the law, but we'll still allow abortions to be conducted under our taxes, which completely override this protection".

Also, the fiscal difference has two underlying trends; the money spent to destroy life and the money spent to nurture life. Now, I know that you believe differently, but I'd rather have the NHS uses it's limited funding to bring a new life into this world, as well as providing jobs to midwives and pediatricians, rather than allow a woman to use an abortion and escape responsibility for their actions. Of course, you already know my thoughts regarding rape, endangerment to the woman's life and serious genetic disorders, and how they don't truly apply to that statement.

Lastly, there is always a completely other option available to the woman; adoption. Many husbands and wives may not be able to conceive, and adoption will be their only option. Why doesn't the woman decide to put their unborn baby up for adoption and allow the baby to be brought up in an environment where it will be truly cherished? If this were the case, the money spent on pre-natal visits, hospitalisation, medical expenses etc won't be a hit to the budget; as that exact same amount of money would have been spent if the spouses could have conceived themselves.




[font=verdana][color=green]Sure, they are not fun at all. But they are still being increasingly used on perfectly healthy babies. I'm not against them, I think I should clarify, but I'm against them being done through the NHS for free.

It's already been stated, but it's worth stating again - you do not control how your tax dollars are spent. Demanding that the government not spend your taxes on abortions is like saying that you don't want your money spent to build a road that you're never going to use. It's asinine to even suggest it.

But more importantly, Planned Parenthood and organizations like it do a lot more than just give abortions. Hasn't it been shown time and time again that abortions make up only a very small percent of what they do? Hasn't it been shown over and over that their other programs do a lot of good and that depriving them of funding would hurt a lot of women that have never had and will never have an abortion? Why does the idea still exist that Planned Parenthood is an evil entity that does nothing but kill babies?

Now, on the topic of abortion itself, I'll be frank - human life doesn't matter that much. I love my life, I love my family, but we're all pretty much insignificant specks, and I don't mean only when you think about our place in the grand universe. Among just the human race, we are insignificant. During the time I've spent writing this post, dozens of people have died across the globe. Hundreds of people die and are born each day. Human life is not a special thing that deserves to be protected at all costs.

At the end of every episode of The Price is Right, Drew Carey (formerly Bob Barker) says to spay and neuter your pets. It is important to get your dog or cat fixed because there are already a lot of stray dogs and cats that do nothing but live on the street and die on the street. But isn't life precious? Isn't spaying your dog or cat depriving the world of possible lives? Yes, it is, but it doesn't fucking matter. There are plenty of dogs and cats as it is, and fixing one or two or a dozen of them will not affect the dog or cat population.

In a similar way, aborting a fetus will not affect the human race. Nothing really changes when one less person is brought into this world, just like nothing really changes when one more person is taken from this world.

Sure, we can play the guessing game - "Maybe the aborted fetus would have ended world hunger!" - but you can do that if living people, too. "Maybe if the kid from the poverty-stricken family had gone to college, he would have ended world hunger!" Positing the hypothetical situation doesn't actually change anything. Furthermore, you can be negative about it - "Maybe the aborted fetus would have launched a genocidal war!" "Maybe if that guy had been fired from his job for ineptitude, he would have brought in a gun and killed dozens of people!" When we do that, we end up with a lot of possibilities and nothing else. Hell, my life might have been completely different if I had kissed a certain girl at a certain time, but I'm not going to say that it is always good or always bad for people to kiss girls they like.

Abortions happen; they've happened for hundreds of years, and they're going to keep happening hundreds of years into the future. They're not evil incarnate, any more than it is evil incarnate to eat a lavish meal while others starve. We might as well try to make them safe instead of letting women throw themselves down the stairs or stick coat-hangers up their cooches.

You're misinterpreting people's arguments generally speaking. People aren't saying "well I don't want tax dollars to be spent on abortions because I'm not going to have one," they're saying they don't want the irresponsibility of another person, or an immoral act, or a number of other arguments, to be paid for by the government. It's not like the government is supposed to spend money on whatever they want. People vote for things...usually?
A better comparison would be, you don't want government to spend their money on rehabilitation programs for drug addicts (and rather have the drug addicts pay for their own mistakes), or in the case of morale opposition, you don't want the government to pay for killing babies.



I have no idea how people look at planned parenthood but I don't think anyone has even mentioned them yet in this topic for the most part. I'm curious as to if they can't just outline that the money will not go to supporting abortion related pursuits.



The 'fact' that human life doesn't matter is generally when you put things into different perspectives.
But anyways, it's not like if abortions aren't allowed to certain categories of pregnant woman, the world will explode. It's hardly all costs, and besides, considering the 'insignificance' of anything that exists, virtually any cost that humanity can put up also doesn't really matter.
Either way this unfortunately is more of a philosophical point than an argument, as I doubt this point could be used to persuade either side of anything.

On a similar note, I think it would be very interesting if the law went ahead and classified any fetus or whatever to be life but also allowed abortion (perhaps under a self-defense like manner).



Very few non-catholic (hohoho) people are arguing that not having babies constantly is destruction of life. It's really a mutation of their argument by attempting to confuse and redefine their perspective on life and its worth.
In the first place, most people place human life and animal life on vastly different scales, and that's partially because we can't do anything about animal life. There was a particular phrase that I do not recall that has to do with humanity cannot walk without stepping on life...
There are also other points about the reasons for animal life to be different and also why woman not constantly erupting babies is not desecration of life, but my post is getting a bit big.



Why is it necessary for the fetus to do something great for you to even want to save it? People can just be people and that's awesome. Good things and bad things will happen.
If everything always has to be significant then the only people worth saving are people who save everyone (ending world hunger), but the people they're saving aren't even worth anything anyways.
There are plenty of points for and against abortion and plenty of valid debates. There are things in this stance that can be interesting but these metaphysical bounds you're putting on it tend to be more towards the morality of it and not actually making a logic-based argument on why it should or shouldn't be allowed.



Plenty of things have happened for hundreds of years and will keep happening. It's not an argument for whether they're right or not.

Dear FPOD!

I'm sorry that you've taken offense at a clearly sarcastic, offhand post that quoted a well known comedian who frequently used harsh language to ridicule hypocrisy.

I'm genuinely sorry, that I came off as arrogant and ignorant of your arguments. I was trying to argue from a Socratic position of "naive" ignorance that questions anything, but apparently this came off as being lordly and all knowing. This wasn't my intention.

However there are two things I can't do:
-I still have to claim that your arguments have an element of magical thinking to them. You ascribe significance or meaning to an event without rational basis. That is magical thinking. One could also call it bias. Unfortunately even rational arguments can be laden with bias, but accepting one's own biases is a necessity to properly place arguments in context. Instead trying to do so, you've taken offense.
-I also won't apologize in any form or fashion to having hurt either your feelings or ideas. You've failed to provide the same courtesy when you started to call me names and ascribe derogatory terms to my ideas. All I did was make a satirical, clearly off-hand remark in my initial post. I've never specifically ridiculed either your ideas or your person. Demanding respect when you've done just that is juvenile and offensive in turn.

Finally to the gist of my post:
You've failed to outline why natural conception necessitates certain moral obligation from the participants, while artificial allows the destruction of fetuses. You've failed to point out why preventive measures are moral, while reactive measure that lead to the the very same result are immoral. I even pointed out that conception - the fusion of sperm and egg - does take place when certain preventive measures are employed, it's just that the fetus can't embed in the womb due the chemical environment.

I'm *not* saying that your arguments have no merit. In fact I've never said so. The fact that people may use abortions frivolously is a fact one can't argue with.

In my initial post - quoting George Carlin - I pointed out the various burdens that are forced on the person being denied an abortion and how little support traditional conservatives are willing to provide in turn.

This has apparently been entirely lost on you in your indignation of having been called "stupid", whereas you might as well have simply pointed out that you have different reasons for being pro-life.

So here is my bottom line:

I can't accept your argument for the total rejection of abortions of convenience under moral grounds, as you've failed to provide a rational basis for them.

You've argued that rejection of a person's right at any point would unravel civil liberties and that there can't be point when said rights begin as the very idea of limitations leads to a slippery slope.

I provided a counter argument and listed several scenarios - both natural and man-made - where the same event (the killing / death of a fetus) takes place and asked for a rational explanation why those are acceptable while abortion is not. If your argument - that life is sacred from conception - is valid without *any* perquisites, those occasions too should be immoral. I've also asked whether the act of per-mediation vs. reaction was what made one action moral and another immoral.

Your response has been nothing, but to ridicule me and point out that you're an Atheist and therefore your arguments should be rational by default, ie. "not magical"... which doesn't hold water if one is has any familiarity with the various biases that come with the human condition. Being completely rational is *very* hard, as our biases by default are hidden from us.

My belief is that your bias is ascribing a significant meaning to natural conception and later ascribing a special relevance to fetuses resulting from this act.

Feel free to argue me. Feel free to point out my various failing or logical missteps (in fact, I'd be glad if you did so, as those would be beneficial to me). However if you're unwilling to do so, then either stick to your guns and admit your bias or lay off your in-discretionary remarks as they're unbecoming you.

I'm quoting only this part for the sake of space and because it ties into my main point, that being that I don't really care about abortion. I'm not strongly in favor of it nor am I strongly against it. Trying to figure out if it is moral or immoral is, quite honestly, too hard a job, sort of like trying to rationalize the existence or non-existence of a God-like entity. Anytime you present an argument, someone else can blow a hole in it, and even if you fix that hole, that leaves the argument open for yet another hole. There are definitions that we cannot agree on, such as the definition of "human" and whether life starts at conception or the formation of certain things, and unless there is a consensus about the simplest things, no leeway will be made.

The point of my post was to pick apart some arguments against abortion that I feel are wrong, not in a moral sense but a more factual one. It is often said that abortions are wrong because life is sacred, but saying that life is sacred is like saying that childbirth is a miracle. It's not. It's a gruesome world we live in, and we should all accept that. Sugarcoating existence does nothing but blind us. I feel that abortions should not be banned because "life is sacred," because if life was sacred, then we would never send men to die in wars or execute criminals or let anybody die of hunger. I could, and probably should, say more on the subject to better illustrate my point, but I feel that I am starting to ramble and alienating people, so I will end that train of thought with a simple sentence - I love life, and it is a shame when it ends, but the death of an individual is not an earth-shaking event, and we all accept that on some level and live our lives understanding it.

The original reason I posted was to talk about whether taxes should be used to fund abortions. I only posted two paragraphs about it, so I will elaborate on that subject now.

This discussion isn't new or unique to Fakku; it's been raging for some time, due to certain politicians stating that they wish to cut the funding of Planned Parenthood and similar organizations which give abortions. In these politicians' eyes, because Planned Parenthood gets funding from the government and gives abortions, funding the organizations is tantamount to funding abortions. As I have already said, this grossly overlooks the many other things that Planned Parenthood does, such as teaching about safe sex and informing women about health concerns such as breast cancer. The abortions are but a small part of what these organizations do, and cutting their funding would only hurt the women that depend upon the health care they receive at these organizations and wouldn't stop abortion.

On the subject of taxes, no one really has a say as to how their taxes are spent. Some things may be voted upon, but in the end, the government collects taxes from people and decides how to spend the money, and that is how it works. If the government decides to spend 10% on social services, then citizens do not get to say, "I only want healthcare agencies to get money, fuck those people that get food stamps." Even if funding to places like Planned Parenthood does get cut due to their doing abortions (even if they do not use government funds to perform them), politicians are the ones that decide to do it, not regular citizens.

In the end, abortion is legal. As long as that is the case, doesn't the government have a right to allocate funds to places even if they perform abortions? Even if a person doesn't like the welfare system, the government has every right to use money to keep the welfare system alive. If a person doesn't like abortion, he/she should try to get it made illegal, but I suppose since that's already been attempted, people are now trying to get rid of places that perform abortions, as if that will magically make abortions disappear.

If I think that condoms are evil, can I demand that the government not give any funding to organizations that promote condom use? If I think fighting pointless wars is evil, can I demand that the government not spend any money doing so? Yes and yes. But what will I accomplish in either situation?

Does that mean that we shouldn't bother talking about the government, since we can't affect anything?