Abortions - Why? [W:280, 411, 1768]

Schutzengel said:

Scientific Names are proper nouns... they are names not adjectives

My, that's quite the Homo Sapiens Human you have there ... it is not a description, it is a name... how hard is that to undrstand?

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It's probably inappropriate, but that made me laugh. LOL!

choiceone said:

It's immoral to to try to get a woman to continue a pregnancy. No embryo, including your own, is of equal or greater value than her right to liberty because not even any born person is of equal or greater value than any other person's right to liberty. Liberty is sacred.

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Liberty without responsibility isnt liberty ... it is hedonism.

Abe Lincoln said:

Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves.

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Our disagreement is wheter or not the child is a person, deserving of human rights.

JayDubya said:

It's pretty repugnant.

The Constitution says nothing about abortion. If the Founders favored abortion as she surmises, despite such a thing flying completely in the face of the Declaration of Independence, it could have been placed into the Bill of Rights.

The 10th Amendment does, however, clarify where jurisdictional authority over such things where the Constitution is silent lies.


Roe v. Wade is a disgrace that ignores the 10th and wholesale hallucinates a constitutional right, then incorporates it. The single most malignant and inexcusable bit of activism the court has ever performed, and it was inexcusable.

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The founders did not mention abortion because, at the time of the Revolution and writing of the Constitution, the issue was covered by the common law which the states inherited from their time as colonies and continued after starting their own nation. In English common law, at least from 1551, the homicide and assault laws could apply only to a child "born alive." Abortion before quickening (about 5 months) was not a crime, and after quickening it was apparently a misdemeanor. In 1765, Sir William Blackstone interpreted the latter as a serious misdemeanor. In 1821, partly in imitation of Lord Ellenborough's Act (1803) in England, Connecticut made state legislation criminalizing the sale of poisons for abortion to a pregnant woman and stating abortion was illegal after quickening, but the Connecticut law had a lesser punishment and only in 1860 made pre-quickening abortion illegal. New York made post-quickening abortion a felony and pre-quickening abortion a misdemeanor in 1828.

Every original state followed the common law, and our founding fathers did nothing to protest or stop abortion until Connecticut imitated the English law noted above in 1821.

The Tenth Amendment states that, where the federal government does not have authority under the Constitution, the authority is reserved to the states or the people. However, because women were persons, it was inevitable that the rights of persons would eventually be extended to them to the degree that they were extended to men. Meanwhile, it is clear that the unborn were not persons because, even when state laws were made, abortion was not a capital crime for the woman who was pregnant.

This nation was as it was and is as it is because it was not formed on the basis of extreme Roman Catholic values and fetal worship. If you don't like it, move to a Latin American nation and be ruled by embryo idolatry as much as you like.

nathanjames1791 said:

Yeah regardless of where one stands on the argument of abortion, if they say that roe v wade was constitutional they are either lieing or know knothing of what the constitution says or as you mentioned the declaration.

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The Declaration of Independence is not a legal document. The US Constitution is a legal document. You people insist on caring about merely biological life, but the founding fathers cared about the life and liberty of persons. If women were to be deprived of their right to security of person and by extension their right to privacy, you would be also, and this means that your sex organs and medical treatment could be controlled by the state and your medical treatment could become public knowledge. And that is just the start of what could happen to you . . . .

tryreading said:

He has a point. Couldn't abortion have been made illegal if it were an issue at that time?

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Of course it could have been. The reason it wasn't made illegal, and the reason that legal personhood was not extended legally to fetuses, is because it wasn't an issue and people knew perfectly well that fetuses were not persons.

nathanjames1791 said:

Lol you missed the conversation obviously. choiceone mentioned that our forefathers had not put personhood in the constitution specifically to protect abortion rights which is the single most rediculous claim I have ever heard. That was why I was pointing out it isnt the constitution.

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This is not what I said. The founding fathers never clarified that the unborn were persons, because all of the references to persons in the Constitution clearly refer only to born individuals. Moreover, in the entire of our history, the unborn have not been included in the Census count. Women, however, were recognized as persons, even though married women were under coverture and thus had their rights severely restricted.

nathanjames1791 said:

But woman werent thinking about that as much as we do now. It was a very different time. Woman considered it there duty to have children, as did there husbands. They had babies its what they did, 7, 8, 9. There was no room to have and abortion they were to busy having kids.

Another thing is most kids didnt make it very long. Misscarriages and dead babies within the first couple years where beyond common. Its one of the biggest reasons why woman tended to have so many kids. Losing a kid was such a big deal back then abortion would have seemed rediculous to MOST woman. Im not saying it didnt happen but it certainly didnt happen anywhere near like it does now.

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Yes. Children were not valued as much until people could choose to have only one or two. It made sense not to value them much because they so often died before even becoming adolescents, but also, if you have a lot of kids, you have to spread your care and your resources among them, and if that is difficult, you can't actually love them the way we do today. Many women became invalids after producing too many children, so no one would have been happy to have lots of them, as you seem to think: the woman would become either useless or dead, and unless the man had significant property, how could he take care of all the kids she left behind.

If you are really studying history, it might be useful for you to do some reading in US women's history, and even the US history of abortion. You would be surprised how different that history looked to you if you understood these subjects.

JayDubya said:

I am being civil. What she has said directly self-contradicts and makes no sense. It is positively aneurysm-inducing.

It's such an extreme case of self-contradiction that I can't even think of an analogy to make for comparison.

Her sentiment can be summed up thus: "I said my mom should have aborted me, but don't say that I said she should have killed me, because I wouldn't have died, I would have reincarnated."

But no. That's not an out - even if reincarnation were a legitimate thing, to reincarnate, you still have to die. And in this case, you wouldn't be experiencing a natural death - you would have been killed. So yes, saying that your mother should have killed you is the same thing as saying that your mother should have killed you. That warrants either acknowledgment or abandonment of the deliberate falsehood.

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You do not understand what she was saying. For her, having the capacity for awareness is having life. Having a particular body is not having life. She values the capacity for awareness and believes that it does not depend on having a particular body and perhaps believes that it does not depend on having this sort of physico-chemical, biological body at all. The fact that you only value having a body and not having the capacity for awareness is the reason you think an embryo without the capacity for awareness is as valuable as a born person. It is probably also the reason that you have flawed logic - your body may be ruling your awareness, and if it is, be aware that all bodies are subject to death, so they would be likely to give rise to such flawed logic. You need to value awareness and mind more if you want to produce thoughts not inherently worthy of death.

Removable Mind said:

So now you are resorting to stalking and harassing a lady that has asked you many times to STOP! What part of STOP don't you understand?

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It's okay. I reported him, and if I have to I'll do it again. If you want to do it, too, just click on the triangle in the lower left corner and send a note.

JayDubya said:

Drop whatever off wherever you want... you seem to do so anyway.

When and if you ever self-contradict to the degree that she has, I will challenge you to the same degree, and you will have the same options to try and explain why there is no contradiction, retract your statement, or continue to make the statement and continue to be called out on it.

Calling someone out for their lies is not "harassment," especially when they use those lies to forward a political goal. There's a simple enough solution - stop lying.

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She was not lying, and every time you referred to what she had written, you paraphrased it in a way that twisted its meaning. Then, you called her self-contradictory and lying. You are harassing her, because you are self-contradictory in your very position on abortion: you claim that abortion is killing and then allow it for the sake of protecting the woman's health and in cases of rape. That is self-contradictory, and it is the reason why so many pro-lifers have given up those exceptions. At the same time, their giving up those exceptions makes their case even less credible, of course. The point is that pro-lifers either have to favor a self-contradictory position or one that so devalues the woman's well-being and justice that more people begin to understand why being pro-choice is the logically and morally superior position.

JayDubya said:

Lady, you're the one lying. Again, you have options:

1) explain how words that plainly mean what you say they don't mean don't mean what they plainly mean
2) retract the statement because you realize your error
3) continue to lie by saying things you do not actually believe and be called out on it every time you do it.

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You are the one who is lying and making errors. You have said that, in science, a zygote is a human and a member of Homo s. sapiens, but there are scientists who do not agree on that and who explain that this sort of classificatory statement is not something scientifically testable. You have said that the embryo is alive and have implied, at least, that its life belongs to it and not the woman, even though you cannot prove that. You have misinterpreted and twisted the poster's words and then said they were lies, even though she never said the things you claimed. And now you are bullying her because you cannot defend your own position.

JayDubya said:

@ Smoke: You know, there are places on the board where you don't have to merely snidely imply I'm a dumb rapist merely because I hate lying, you can just come out and say it.




@ choiceone: Disagreed with the following: "To consent to sexual intercourse is not to consent to pregnancy."

When you choose to have hetero vaginal intercourse, you choose to risk creating offspring. That is the moment for "choice."

A human being is not an infectious agent. Pregnancy is not comparable to pneumonia. Viruses and bacteria never have rights, not in anyone's moral philosophy let alone mine.

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First, I do not think people choose to risk creating offspring by choosing to have heterosexual vaginal intercourse. I think men who choose to have that kind of intercourse but use contraception are choosing to protect against the risk of creating offspring, but I admit they are taking a risk. However, that is because, in that kind of intercourse, men allow their sperm to leave their own bodies and, therefore, their sovereignty. If the sperm enter the woman, there is a risk that they will fertilize a woman's ovum. The fertilized ovum is then the man's offspring. But in that kind of intercourse, women do not allow their ova to leave their bodies and their sovereignty over their bodies. The only way a woman can have offspring is by giving birth, because that is the point at which something "springs off" of her body and exists independently of that body. Since a woman's part in creating offspring requires months of pregnancy, women can choose during the pregnancy to stop the process of creation of the offspring, because the construction process is not finished.

I don't think a man's zygote inside some woman is important. I think a woman's born child is important. And I do not think a man's zygote has rights and never will.

Schutzengel said:

So, let's see I will take these one at a time...

1) playing russian roulette and getting the chamber with the bullet is about the same... odds are you arent going to get shot ... and it's about equal odds too... doesnt mean that they meant to get shot, but they willingly took the chance, knowing that it was possible... you act as if sex and procreation are two seperate things. Lots of people choose to eat sweets, does that mean they choose to get fat? it is an involuntary biological mechanism that makes it happen...

2) Yeah, there are plenty of us who think a father should be responsible for the care and welfare of the mother of his child(ren)...

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I think my above post to JayDubya clarifies my position for you as well. If you want your zygotes to have rights, then gestate them yourself.

Schutzengel said:

Liberty without responsibility isnt liberty ... it is hedonism.



Our disagreement is wheter or not the child is a person, deserving of human rights.

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No, it isn't, because I do not consider a zygote a child. I consider born children to be persons and do not even really consider late term fetuses to be children. I acknowledge that a zygote inside some woman may be a man's offspring, since his sperm sprang off of him. But I consider a fertilized ovum to be something that has not sprung off of the woman as long as it is in her body, and during the entire term of pregnancy, it has not sprung off of her body, so she does not have offspring until she gives birth. At birth, you have a person. That is a being with natural rights.

And PS, I haven't had sex for decades, my personal choice. Sexual intercourse is highly overrated from the viewpoint of hedonism, and when women finally discover this, maybe they'll leave you to your own devices because your constant harping on responsibility over this issue is, frankly, too boring to be involved with pleasure of any kind.

choiceone said:

She was not lying, and every time you referred to what she had written, you paraphrased it in a way that twisted its meaning. Then, you called her self-contradictory and lying. You are harassing her, because you are self-contradictory in your very position on abortion: you claim that abortion is killing and then allow it for the sake of protecting the woman's health and in cases of rape. That is self-contradictory, and it is the reason why so many pro-lifers have given up those exceptions. At the same time, their giving up those exceptions makes their case even less credible, of course. The point is that pro-lifers either have to favor a self-contradictory position or one that so devalues the woman's well-being and justice that more people begin to understand why being pro-choice is the logically and morally superior position.

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I have stopped responding to him on this, but I want to make it very clear that that does NOT in any way, shape or form mean he's right. It's just that someone has to stop responding to put an end to it, so I chose to.

Did you guys somehow not get the memo where the mod wanted us to stop talking about that nonsense? I've had my frustration / confusion induced aneurysm and I've moved on.

nathanjames1791 said:

Lol there is a huge difference between the 18th centure and the 1960's!!! By then abortion had become a problem, but in the 18th century abortion was creepy up in numbers (probobly its hard to actually put any numbers to it) but it wasnt a real problem yet.

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Man, you just talk, talk, talk, but have no facts or research, no links at all. Others here have posted links that would inform you if you'd read them.

You have a romanticized idea of what times were like then. Women had abortions then.

Abortion was legal here for a few decades after the Constitution was ratified. Some U.S. states began to illegalize abortion in the 1820s. I think Connecticut was first, if memory serves. Other states followed. This went on until the 1960s, when some states began to legalize abortion again. Then, of course, Roe V Wade in 1973.

For a period of time abortion was illegal here. But abortions were performed before, during, and after that period.

JayDubya said:

Did you guys somehow not get the memo where the mod wanted us to stop talking about that nonsense? I've had my frustration / confusion induced aneurysm and I've moved on.

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Some people may not have read the mod's admonition before posting. Yeesh.