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Pro-life or anti-choice?

Blue Donkey said:
A human "being" has various specialized tissues and organs. Before this stage, human stem cells are just that - human stem cells.

I am opposed to aborting fetuses for non-medical reasons. Women should not be allowed to wait until their second sonogram so they can use gender preference as an excuse. If a baby's sex is that important, they can go the IVF route. But some women do not know they are pregnant by the ninth week. So for elective abortions, I would draw the line at 12 weeks. After that, I only support medical reasons to have abortions.
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Okay. A 12 week ban would be a massive leap back in the direction of civilization and away from the butchery. But it would require the overturning of Roe v. Wade and PP v. Casey before it could ever be implemented. You'd be okay with that?
 
Blue Donkey said:
A human "being" has various specialized tissues and organs. Before this stage, human stem cells are just that - human stem cells.

I am opposed to aborting fetuses for non-medical reasons. Women should not be allowed to wait until their second sonogram so they can use gender preference as an excuse. If a baby's sex is that important, they can go the IVF route. But some women do not know they are pregnant by the ninth week. So for elective abortions, I would draw the line at 12 weeks. After that, I only support medical reasons to have abortions.
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I'm inclined to give women much more leeway and much more tolerance. Circumstances in their lives can change dramatically. They can lose a husband, lose a family support structure, become impoverished, discover they're in an abusive relationship (men often change after confronting their future fatherhood - and not necessarily for the better). There can be many good, valid reasons that a woman might look forward to bearing a child in the third month, and quite rightfully dreading it in the sixth month. In the end, that's why they must have autonomy over their own bodies. Only they are fit to judge how their lives must play out. When it comes to something as important as carrying a fetus to term, I'm inclined to trust a woman's decision as being the best for all concerned.
 
Atreus21 said:
I know. Slaves had no legal rights either. As I said, legality is irrelevant.



I'm saying nothing justifies the deliberate killing of an innocent human being.



The regime of slavery and jim crow laws, I'm sure, were also similarly difficult to dislodge.



You apparently missed the point. A 33-week premature child and a 33-week old fetus in utero are exactly the same organism and developmentally identical. Yet you say one is a human being and the other isn't. I'd like you to explain how on earth you come to that conclusion, preferably with some scientific evidence.



That is factually untrue. Guttmacher's own study indicated that women get late term abortions for the same reason they get earlier term ones, and not for reasons of fetal anomaly or life endangerment.



You might just as easily say you're not a human being, you're a human toddler. You're a human teenager. You're a human newborn. Fetus is a developmental marker, not a distinction between two species.



You keep bringing religion into this debate. Why? Furthermore, science is unambiguous on the subject. A new member of the species is created at conception. All contentions to the contrary have no scientific foundation, whether stated by the educated or not.



Then you might tell these folks that they're wasting their time.


90.8%, right. And how many comprise the remaining 10.2%? About 60,000 a year. Quoting percentages doesn't get you much mileage when there are over 600,000 abortions per year. We could go further. 1.3% of abortions are done after 21 weeks, when the baby looks like this:

View attachment 67285403

So we kill about 8,000 of those every year. And do you know how such abortions are performed? By tearing the child into individual pieces, and reassembling those pieces on a table like a puzzle. Or are you going to say that's not a human being too?



I've noticed that people on the losing end of an argument commonly resort to insults.
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For some reason the pro-life movement seems to think that what you posted is their most compelling argument since it is used over and over.

First comes the image of a 33 week old preemie then the enhanced drawing of a 33 week fetus in utero. Then the accusations start. “These babies are identical. Why are you, (insert detailed and gory description of abortion here)killing one but letting the other live. Next comes a lecture about (choose one or several) genetics, science, law, morals, slavery, embryology. Most of it warped out of recognition but sprinkled with enough correct terminology to make it sound reasonable to the uninformed.

Then come the statistical lies about late term abortions. The study most often quoted is the Foster/Kimport study you quoted. It’s a 5 year longitudinal study to determine who gets late term abortions and why. The study reasonably eliminated all therapeutic abortions due to fetal anomaly and life endangerment since they knew the reason for abortion in this cohort .

However anti-abortion advocates never tell you that all high risk therapeutical abortions have been eliminated from the study and they use the study to imply that all late term abortions are almost always non-risk abortions. They also imply that the study finds the the reasons for late abortions just like 1st trimester abortions were frivolous and unnecessary . The study says no such thing. Anti-abortion statistical experts know this is dishonest.

This study deals primarily with the reasons women delay abortion into the 2nd trimester; past 13 weeks but before the 21st week . They state quite clearly that the 1% of abortions done late term, after the 22nd week are all therapeutic abortions. Using the information from a study of 2nd trimester abortions in conjunction with images of a 33 week old fetus and implying that women are regularly aborting third trimester fetuses for frivolous reasons is a lie and I'm willing to bet most of the anti-abortion people that post that lie know it's a lie.


I’m willing to discuss abortion regulation because there are rational, intelligent and sensible reasons to do so but not with jerks that use a study dishonestly to show me that thousands and thousands of women are aborting a 33 week old fetus. That argument is stupid, unhelpful, divisive, crap. And that’s not an insult. That’s just a fact.
 
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Scrabaholic said:
Prove it.

Lower fertility rates might be a good thing, though.
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it is only a good thing if you prove it to be a good thing- the cause of fertily is waitin to have children and expenses, not becasue of development-thats the difference
 
MamboDervish said:
Promiscuity isn't "happening to them". Promiscuity is what they're now free to choose if they like.
Rape, familial rape, spousal rape, and deception by their partners, are all things that contribute to unwanted pregnancies, and are all things that are "happening to them".
Those are things you should definitely hate.
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it is a terrible thing and so is rape but I hate this culture and how its men and women
 
Scrabaholic said:
So, you can't prove it. I understand.
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fertility rates going down is good only when the cause of it is becuase of development, whats no good is the rate going down due to women having children at later ages
 
weaver2 said:
For some reason the pro-life movement seems to think that what you posted is their most compelling argument since it is used over and over.

First comes the image of a 33 week old preemie then the enhanced drawing of a 33 week fetus in utero. Then the accusations start. “These babies are identical. Why are you, (insert detailed and gory description of abortion here)killing one but letting the other live.
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It's not an accusation. It's a challenge that you still haven't answered. Restating my question doesn't address it. Why is it okay to kill one but not the other?

Then come the statistical lies about late term abortions. The study most often quoted is the Foster/Kimport study you quoted. It’s a 5 year longitudinal study to determine who gets late term abortions and why. The study reasonably eliminated all therapeutic abortions due to fetal anomaly and life endangerment since they knew the reason for abortion in this cohort .

However anti-abortion advocates never tell you that all high risk therapeutical abortions have been eliminated from the study and they use the study to imply that all late term abortions are almost always non-risk abortions. They also imply that the study finds the the reasons for late abortions just like 1st trimester abortions were frivolous and unnecessary . The study says no such thing. Anti-abortion statistical experts know this is dishonest.
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The author of the study says this: "But data suggest that most women seeking later terminations are not doing so for reasons of fetal anomaly or life endangerment."

You might go tell her to stop lying since you appear to know her study better than she does.

This study deals primarily with the reasons women delay abortion into the 2nd trimester; past 13 weeks but before the 21st week . They state quite clearly that the 1% of abortions done late term, after the 22nd week are all therapeutic abortions. Using the information from a study of 2nd trimester abortions in conjunction with images of a 33 week old fetus and implying that women are regularly aborting third trimester fetuses for frivolous reasons is a lie and I'm willing to bet most of the anti-abortion people that post that lie know it's a lie.
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You have said that to be a human being, you must be born. So, if you really believe that, you must believe that the 33-week old premature infant is a human being but the 33-week old infant still in utero is not, despite their being the exact same organism. Is that true or not?

I’m willing to discuss abortion regulation because there are rational, intelligent and sensible reasons to do so but not with jerks that use a study dishonestly to show me that thousands and thousands of women are aborting a 33 week old fetus. That argument is stupid, unhelpful, divisive, crap. And that’s not an insult. That’s just a fact.
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If I stated that only 1.3% of black Americans are enslaved, would that satisfy you that slavery has been sufficiently stamped out? Thousands of such children are aborted every single year. It doesn't matter that they represent a small percentage. We can't kill people just because they're sick or have a disability, any more than we can for their being inconvenient or untimely.
 
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