No rights except that the Creator of the universe loves you and extends you the right to become all that He is excepting only uncreated, and this solely at your free choice.

Zobel said:

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Terrible argument. Children aren't independent for years after birth and require constant attention to stay alive.

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But not from one specific person.

Zobel said:

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No rights except that the Creator of the universe loves you and extends you the right to become all that He is excepting only uncreated, and this solely at your free choice.

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I don't see this as comforting.

one MEEN Ag said:

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Sapper Redux said:

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Zobel said:

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How's that? Do you actually have a say in whether you're born or not? Or the circumstances of your birth? Do you have a say in whether you have to abide by God's rules, no matter how illogical they appear? If you refuse to abide by those rules, are you not punished?

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It's not a set of rules any more than gravity or fire is a set of rules. You jump off of a high structure you will get hurt. You touch something hot you will get burned.

The entire way you've framed it is as if is arbitrary. God's up there with an unwinnable game and a list of gotchas and provisos, then as soon as a person has an oops he gleefully "kills or tortures them without recourse". There's no good faith to describing it as "any deviation can result in eternal torture." It's ridiculous and in no way represents the faith of Christianity.

God doesn't tell Adam "if you do this I will kill you" but "if you do this you will die." There is no way you think that what you said is a reasonable explanation of the Christian faith.

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Except in this case, there's no functional difference between an omnipotent being killing you and allowing you to die. Those are essentially the same. It's also still the case that you have no say in the game. You're part of it regardless of whether you want to be or not. You have essentially no rights.

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Then your version of free will requires immortality and to be above the physical laws of this universe. You demand to not die and not be bound by gravity.

Humanity has always wanted to be God instead of in His image.

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How did you get that? I'm pointing out philosophical issues with God as portrayed by Christianity. For the record, Judaism and Islam have very different notions of the relationship between God and man regarding sin, forgiveness, and death.

Why does that matter? If a mother through nothing other than inaction allows her child to die after it is born she will be criminally liable for neglect.

Zobel said:

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Why does that matter? If a mother through nothing other than inaction allows her child to die after it is born she will be criminally liable for neglect.

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Not if it becomes a ward of the state.

Doesn't happen automatically. That's kind of the point. There's no magic to a kid being out of the womb, or past six months in utero that if they are then dead, it's not a criminal problem for someone. But there's some kind of ***fairy dust*** that allows people to know for sure that one is wrong but the other isn't, because reasons, which are definitely not related to any religious ethic.

Zobel said:

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Why does that matter? If a mother through nothing other than inaction allows her child to die after it is born she will be criminally liable for neglect.

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Same for any other person. It doesn't have to be the mother at that point.

I think the entire frame is different.

You're starting with the point of view that the infant/fetus' life is sacrosanct above all else. The other side is starting with the point of view that the mother's choice to decide what happens to and with her body is sacrosanct above all else. That's obviously not a concern once the child has been removed from the body.

Wait so your objection is not that it's wrong, or that it should be wrong to kill a child, but that it's only wrong if the person who is clearly, objectively, definitely responsible for the existence of that child is not the only one able to keep it alive?

Do you extend this convoluted moral framework to any context? If you, and only you, are able to keep another person alive, do you have the ability to choose not to? Why?

Joe Boudain said:

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There are so many people here trying to explain away their fervent belief in the righteousness of abortion, it can only be explained by demonic oppression.

It wasn't always this way, abortion proponents USED to say it was horrible but sometimes appropriate given circumstance. We've gone from "safe, legal and rare" to "top bidder gets to have me shout out their name during my livestreamed abortion procedure"

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Again, so many on this side being accused of bad faith. This is nothing but a throw up your arms and yell the other side is evil.

This is nonsense.

The mother never lost that choice, and indeed exercised it by becoming pregnant in the first place. Freedom doesn't remove responsibilities. The real argument should be why one person can kill another to preserve their personal bodily freedom, when their personal bodily freedom is the straight line sole cause of the victim "needing" to die.

I'd gladly make an exception for cases of rape and incest. The fact that abortion proponents will not accept this is because they know that's not why 98+% of abortions are performed, and because they don't believe what I wrote.

Zobel said:

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Wait so your objection is not that it's wrong, or that it should be wrong to kill a child, but that it's only wrong if the person who is clearly, objectively, definitely responsible for the existence of that child is not the only one able to keep it alive?

Do you extend this convoluted moral framework to any context? If you, and only you, are able to keep another person alive, do you have the ability to choose not to? Why?

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I'm not going to answer this for him, but I think after 13 or so pages, I think you've hit the nail on the head.

one MEEN Ag said:

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larry culpepper said:

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Joe Boudain said:

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There are so many people here trying to explain away their fervent belief in the righteousness of abortion, it can only be explained by demonic oppression.

It wasn't always this way, abortion proponents USED to say it was horrible but sometimes appropriate given circumstance. We've gone from "safe, legal and rare" to "top bidder gets to have me shout out their name during my livestreamed abortion procedure"

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Yeah, no one is saying that, dude. We do think it should be safe, legal, and rare.

Contrary to the f16 narrative, most pro choicers are not gung ho enthusiastic about abortion. We just think it should be a legally available option because outlawing it causes too many problems and each pregnant woman is going through her own personal situation that the government doesn't need to intervene in.

We also think there are other, more effective ways at reducing abortions, that the American right seems completely uninterested in entertaining.

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You have dodged this three times now. I have explicitly pointed out that abortions are not rare and restrictions do work in reducing overall abortion numbers.

Your own reasoning belies that you don't consider fetuses as human. Hemorrhoids are a 'personal situation.' Abortions are murder.

https://freakonomics.com/podcast/abortion/

I'm going to keep bringing this up until you listen to that podcast, because you enjoy peddling false information on this board about the rate of abortions, and the effectiveness of restricting abortions.

Remember, that podcast is showing a bonafide link that abortion rates show up as a drop in crime. You can see crime drop 14-18 years later in areas that have newfound abortion access. The bedrock of this study is that if you increase availability of abortions-the total number will go up. All of their research is built upon that. I for one, don't care about the increase in crime, I don't believe crime increase should be a death sentence.

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I think early on in the pregnancy pre-viability, the mother's rights trump the fetus's and it is not murder. It is termination of a pregnancy. At this point it's an intimate and private decision of the mother and, I know this sounds harsh, but her rights take priority. And laws that prevent her from making her own decision about her pregnancy this early on, are more about controlling women than they are about "protecting life."

And each woman has different reasons, and they are not always out of convenience. Either way, it's no one else's business. It is absolutely no one else's place to tell a rape victim she is required to carry the baby to term and care for that child on her own dime. These "rare" situations are relevant when we are discussing the extreme Texas law because it forces rape victims to carry their babies to term. This vigilante **** also opens a whole new can of worms when it comes to miscarriages, allowing nosy people to torment families who have gone through a miscarriage on suspicion that they had an abortion.

Outlawing abortion doesn't get rid of it, it just increases the number of illegal and unsafe abortions. It was the case pre-Roe and is the case now. That's another reason we think it should be a legal option. Abortion rates have been consistently declining over the past 20 years, everywhere. Partly because unplanned pregnancies are less common than they used to be.

Zobel said:

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The real argument should be why one person can kill another to preserve their personal bodily freedom, when their personal bodily freedom is the straight line sole cause of the victim "needing" to die.

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This is something I think the other side accepts axiomatically.

And if you, or the government is telling her what she can and cannot do with her body, regardless of what the circumstances are, she absolutely has lost that choice. Let's not mince words here.

Zobel said:

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Wait so your objection is not that it's wrong, or that it should be wrong to kill a child, but that it's only wrong if the person who is clearly, objectively, definitely responsible for the existence of that child is not the only one able to keep it alive?

Do you extend this convoluted moral framework to any context? If you, and only you, are able to keep another person alive, do you have the ability to choose not to? Why?

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Huh? My point is that a fetus at 3 months is not capable of any level of survival independent of the mother. It is not viable. Past the point of viability, when it is capable of survival beyond the body of the mother, we're discussing a different thing. The fetus at 3 months is not the same as the fetus at 6 months.

The government exists to tell us what we cannot do with our bodies. That is also axiomatic. It's like seventh grade level debate to argue otherwise.

Right. Here's the two scenarios you outlined.

Scenario 1.
Only one unique person can keep the child alive. This person has the choice to abdicate this responsibility, which without question results in the termination of a human being.

Scenario 2.
Many people can keep the child alive. A person can abdicate this responsibility, but only to another person. If the child dies, someone is criminally liable for negligence at best.

The only difference between the two situations is the ability to pass responsibility. So again I ask, if there is another situation where only one person can keep another alive... say, a rescue situation, or any form of isolation. Does the person who is the one and only possibility for survival for the other have the moral right to say - no? It seems this is what you're arguing.

Does it? Government can order you to die, and to kill others. It can take away your life, and your property, force you to be physically removed from your home with no crime, no hearing.

In this case, the expectation is that one person who engaged in an action with a clearly predictable outcome not be permitted to murder when that clearly predictable outcome occurs.

If someone dies during an armed robbery you're committing, even if you don't pull the trigger you're liable for murder. Here the case is so much simpler.

You don't want to carry a child to term? Don't get pregnant. Again, I'll happily accept case of the health of the mother and rape and incest. People like larry over here won't, because "every circumstance is different" and it's "intimate and private". That's disgusting.

Zobel said:

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Does it? Government can order you to die, and to kill others. It can take away your life, and your property, force you to be physically removed from your home with no crime, no hearing.

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I think the discussion is revolving around ought instead of can. It has the power to do all of those things, of course. Whether it ought to have that power is a different question.

Degree of invasiveness is obviously going to matter to a lot of people. To what degree can it mess with my insides? It can have it all once it's killed me.

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In this case, the expectation is that one person who engaged in an action with a clearly predictable outcome not be permitted to murder when that clearly predictable outcome occurs.

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Let's say you injure me because of something dumb thing you did. It was predictable, though you did take some precautions. My kidneys are ****ed, transplant is out of the question for the time being. I'm dying. Out of the goodness of your heart, you offer to let the doctors hook me up to your own until I wait on the transplant list. Do you have the right to disconnect me at will after that?

My belief is that you should. You are hosting my body, and while I think it would be immoral for you to disconnect me and let me die, it should be a decision between you and the doctor, not some bureaucracy in some state or federal capitol.

dargscisyhp said:

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larry culpepper said:

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I'd say all the Bible/God stuff is coming up because religion is the direct reason why our state government is passing these new laws, and many of us nonreligious people have some serious problems with people imposing their religious views on others. I obviously have no issue with people personally being against abortion. I do have problems with said people thinking their views should be the law. Not everyone thinks that terminating a pregnancy in the early stages of pregnancy is tantamount to murder, and a lot of people take issue with the vigilante system that this new law allows.

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I'm always curious when I hear this argument, what are religious people supposed to do when it comes to politics? If they didn't allow their religion to play a part they would essentially have two choices: don't participate or violate their conscience.

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There's a fine line between advocating what you believe in and actively trying to impose religious beliefs on the country. It's why I had such a problem with people who were anti-gay marriage prior to 2015. That was people trying to impose their beliefs on others (the belief that SSM was wrong) by keeping it illegal. When all these people wanted was the legal right to marry. That's an instance where people should keep their beliefs private.

The question as to when life begins is a philosophical question. The notion that it begins at conception is religious, not scientific. When it's so early on, with no chance of viability, I think laws that don't allow abortion are religious in nature. That's where I take issue.

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I think the discussion is revolving around ought instead of can. It has the power to do all of those things, of course. Whether it ought to have that power is a different question.

Degree of invasiveness is obviously going to matter to a lot of people. To what degree can it mess with my insides? It can have it all once it's killed me.

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If a government can kill you, deprive you of liberty and property, everything else is irrelevant. No one saying government shouldn't be able to do those things. They're just saying in this case they can't, because reasons that we're going to call rights.

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Let's say you injure me because of something dumb I did. It was predictable, though you did take some precautions. My kidneys are ****ed, transplant is out of the question for the time being. I'm dying. Out of the goodness of your heart, you offer to let the doctors hook me up to your own until I wait on the transplant list. Do you have the right to disconnect me at will after that?

My belief is that you should. You are hosting my body, and while I think it would be immoral for you to disconnect me and let me die, it should be a decision between you and the doctor, not some bureaucracy in some state or federal capitol.

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That situation falls somewhere between negligence, manslaughter, and murder. There's no version of that where I'm not directly liable for your death, which is the point. And that degree of liability is not up to my opinion, which is also the point. There is no other legal situation I know of where the right to life of one party is based solely on the opinion of another, and can change back and forth based on the whim of that second person.

Our laws in this regard are inconsistent.

larry culpepper said:

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dargscisyhp said:

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larry culpepper said:

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I'd say all the Bible/God stuff is coming up because religion is the direct reason why our state government is passing these new laws, and many of us nonreligious people have some serious problems with people imposing their religious views on others. I obviously have no issue with people personally being against abortion. I do have problems with said people thinking their views should be the law. Not everyone thinks that terminating a pregnancy in the early stages of pregnancy is tantamount to murder, and a lot of people take issue with the vigilante system that this new law allows.

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I'm always curious when I hear this argument, what are religious people supposed to do when it comes to politics? If they didn't allow their religion to play a part they would essentially have two choices: don't participate or violate their conscience.

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There's a fine line between advocating what you believe in and actively trying to impose religious beliefs on the country. It's why I had such a problem with people who were anti-gay marriage prior to 2015. That was people trying to impose their beliefs on others (the belief that SSM was wrong) by keeping it illegal. When all these people wanted was the legal right to marry. That's an instance where people should keep their beliefs private.

The question as to when life begins is a philosophical question. The notion that it begins at conception is religious, not scientific. When it's so early on, with no chance of viability, I think laws that don't allow abortion are religious in nature. That's where I take issue.

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Doesn't everyone essentially advocate for what they believe in? Do you think your morality is grounded in anything more objective than that of the religious?

Zobel said:

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If a government can kill you, deprive you of liberty and property, everything else is irrelevant. No one saying government shouldn't be able to do those things. They're just saying in this case they can't, because reasons that we're going to call rights.

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I assume it's not your view that the government should have unlimited power because it can kill you and deprive you of liberty and property, but that seems to be what you are arguing. Yes, the government can do those things. But that doesn't mean we've granted it unlimited authority. I simply disagree that everything else is irrelevant.

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That situation falls somewhere between negligence, manslaughter, and murder. There's no version of that where I'm not directly liable for your death, which is the point. And that degree of liability is not up to my opinion, which is also the point. There is no other legal situation I know of where the right to life of one party is based solely on the opinion of another, and can change back and forth based on the whim of that second person.

Our laws in this regard are inconsistent.

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What situation is there where another individual needs to exist within you, needs the nutrients from your body, needs your energy, changes your body drastically, etc. etc.? It's a unique situation, and should be dealt with as such.

The question was should you have the right to unhook me. Forget the connection to abortion for a second, I'm curious: let's say that the accident was someone else's, but you, out of the goodness of your heart, allowed me to be hooked up to your body. Should you have the right to disconnect me then?

Sapper Redux said:

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one MEEN Ag said:

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Sapper Redux said:

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Zobel said:

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How's that? Do you actually have a say in whether you're born or not? Or the circumstances of your birth? Do you have a say in whether you have to abide by God's rules, no matter how illogical they appear? If you refuse to abide by those rules, are you not punished?

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It's not a set of rules any more than gravity or fire is a set of rules. You jump off of a high structure you will get hurt. You touch something hot you will get burned.

The entire way you've framed it is as if is arbitrary. God's up there with an unwinnable game and a list of gotchas and provisos, then as soon as a person has an oops he gleefully "kills or tortures them without recourse". There's no good faith to describing it as "any deviation can result in eternal torture." It's ridiculous and in no way represents the faith of Christianity.

God doesn't tell Adam "if you do this I will kill you" but "if you do this you will die." There is no way you think that what you said is a reasonable explanation of the Christian faith.

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Except in this case, there's no functional difference between an omnipotent being killing you and allowing you to die. Those are essentially the same. It's also still the case that you have no say in the game. You're part of it regardless of whether you want to be or not. You have essentially no rights.

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Then your version of free will requires immortality and to be above the physical laws of this universe. You demand to not die and not be bound by gravity.

Humanity has always wanted to be God instead of in His image.

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How did you get that? I'm pointing out philosophical issues with God as portrayed by Christianity. For the record, Judaism and Islam have very different notions of the relationship between God and man regarding sin, forgiveness, and death.

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Because your critique states it doesn't matter how you die by the hands of a god, your dead regardless and there's nothing you can do about it. So the only way to resolve your objection is to grant you immortality and also the ability to move across spacetime unencumbered by the laws of nature.

The fact of the matter is that the government has the authority to regulate what is done in, to, and by your body. The areas we broadly accept government actively intervening are providing for the common defense and regulating the interaction between humans. The latter specifically is exemplified by providing protection of rights, including most especially the right to life and property.

If protecting the right to life of the unborn isn't an example where the government has clear authority to intervene there is no possible case where the government can do so.

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The question was should you have the right to unhook me. Forget the connection to abortion for a second, I'm curious: let's say that the accident was someone else's, but you, out of the goodness of your heart, allowed me to be hooked up to your body. Should you have the right to disconnect me then?

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I don't think so. If you donate a kidney to someone, I don't think you have the right to ask for it back. Some choices are irreversible - especially ones with irreversible consequences.

But you're right - this situation is unique. And the unique thing is that the person has entered into this unique situation voluntarily, of their own free will.

Don't you see the radical inconsistency in saying that at some magical dividing line, it's suddenly not ok for a mother to kill the child, but before that it is? The fetus is no less dependent on the mother on one side of that line. There's no drastic step change in the development at one point to the next. The line is wholly arbitrary. All of the arguments are. The whole thing is a problem of people with borrowed morality.

There's no moral difference in a being that can survive dependently or independently. The right to life isn't predicated on individual survival ability. It's a monstrous approach. Again, taken to its logical conclusion ideas like this put you squarely in pre-Christian morality. They're advocating for it, but they're not self-aware enough or honest enough to commit to it.

Zobel said:

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The fact of the matter is that the government has the authority to regulate what is done in, to, and by your body. The areas we broadly accept government actively intervening are providing for the common defense and regulating the interaction between humans. The latter specifically is exemplified by providing protection of rights, including most especially the right to life and property.

If protecting the right to life of the unborn isn't an example where the government has clear authority to intervene there is no possible case where the government can do so.

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And I think we're back to the original question: which is more sacrosanct, the infant's life, or the woman's right to control her own body. If it's the former, fine, don't allow abortions. If it's the latter, the federal government should tell the states to **** right off when the state tries to stick it's icky hands into a woman's uterus. I tend to think the woman's right to control her uterus takes precedence. You don't. I agree with a lot of what you've written. You're right, it's the death of a life. Of a human life. It's sad. Tragic even. But we still disagree on axioms.

Probably worth adding that even if I agreed with you, that the infants life takes precedence, this would probably be close to, if not the most invasive thing the state did without due process. I still think it would be worth asking the question, are we okay with the state being this *******ed invasive even if it is to save a life.

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I don't think so. If you donate a kidney to someone, I don't think you have the right to ask for it back. Some choices are irreversible - especially ones with irreversible consequences.

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This is of course different than donating a kidney, though. I'm hooked up to your body. You're sharing resources with me. Maybe you're confined to a bed because of me.

How long would it not be okay to disconnect me while I wait for a suitable donor? 9 months? 9 years? 90 years?

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Don't you see the radical inconsistency in saying that at some magical dividing line, it's suddenly not ok for a mother to kill the child, but before that it is? The fetus is no less dependent on the mother on one side of that line. There's no drastic step change in the development at one point to the next. The line is wholly arbitrary. All of the arguments are. The whole thing is a problem of people with borrowed morality.

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No, I agree with this. With the admission that I don't really understand much about embryology, naively there seem to be two "phase changes" if you will, conception and birth. To me it seems weird to put the line somewhere in between (hence my earlier question about heartbeat).

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which is more sacrosanct, the infant's life, or the woman's right to control her own body

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At its face, the answer is simple - life is the highest right. But I don't agree with this phrasing. The question is not about control, the control was exercised. The question of bodily autonomy would be of forced hysterectomies or castrations. Here, the state is placing no limits on bodily autonomy than those it ever places. You are free to do precisely whatever you like, provided it does not infringe upon the rights of another. It is quite clear in that regard that this is no special situation at all, despite the loud cries to the contrary.

And in that regard it is not invasive. They're not forcing the woman to get pregnant. They're precluding the procedure to terminate the pregnancy, because doing so denies the right to life of an innocent third party. It's the trolley problem, except on one side of the track no one dies, and on the side the lever turns it to someone does. The state is saying, you are not permitted to pull the lever, because choosing an action which ends the life of another is murder. It's not complicated, again, despite the loud cries to the contrary.

The trolley problem is interesting because it pits loss against loss, and forces the participant to choose between lives. Here? Why is it even a question?

I don't think you're going to understand this unless you're willing to, at least intellectually, buy into the frame. You keep asserting that the right to life is the highest there is. This is your starting point. It is not mine.

I'm not sure I understand a moral system where life is not at the top of any hierarchy of rights. Can you elaborate? It seems unworkable.

We buy into that frame all the time.

We fight wars, where land and resources are intrinsically valued higher than the lives of soldiers.

We execute people, where the perception of safety and retribution are valued higher than the lives of the criminals.

We risk our lives and the lives of others when we drive, because the economic, social, and overall societal benefits of the automobile outweigh the threat to life.

We go on spring break during a pandemic.

I can think of more examples if you'd like, but I think in each of these cases life is not at the top of the values hierarchy.

Zobel said:

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which is more sacrosanct, the infant's life, or the woman's right to control her own body

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At its face, the answer is simple - life is the highest right. But I don't agree with this phrasing. The question is not about control, the control was exercised. The question of bodily autonomy would be of forced hysterectomies or castrations. Here, the state is placing no limits on bodily autonomy than those it ever places. You are free to do precisely whatever you like, provided it does not infringe upon the rights of another. It is quite clear in that regard that this is no special situation at all, despite the loud cries to the contrary.

And in that regard it is not invasive. They're not forcing the woman to get pregnant. They're precluding the procedure to terminate the pregnancy, because doing so denies the right to life of an innocent third party. It's the trolley problem, except on one side of the track no one dies, and on the side the lever turns it to someone does. The state is saying, you are not permitted to pull the lever, because choosing an action which ends the life of another is murder. It's not complicated, again, despite the loud cries to the contrary.

The trolley problem is interesting because it pits loss against loss, and forces the participant to choose between lives. Here? Why is it even a question?

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This is simply a bridge that we can't mend. The bodily autonomy of the woman has to take precedent over the fetus that is not life at 6 weeks. That's the insane thing about this bill. At 6 weeks, that 'heartbeat' is simply a flutter of what will become a heart...there is no circulatory system.

And you keep putting life up on this high pedestal, and it's been made pretty clear that God doesn't have nearly the high opinion of life that you do.