[Politics] Abortion Failure Megathread

sabs · Post by **sabs** » Mon Jul 11, 2011 8:37 pm

Because she made the decision to take the child to term. She /chose/ to have the child. Once born, then the child is a citizen, and a person. You can get an abortion, or induce a miscarriage all you want. But once you choose to have the child and it is born, you don't get to turn around and kill it, or abuse it. You can though, completely give it up for adoption.

Amusing sidebar:
Man wants woman to have an abortion, because he doesn't want to pay child support, or raise a kid.
Woman decides to have child for what ever reason.
Man is now liable for child support cause he didn't use protection that worked. So he is paying his 12 minutes of fun, with 18 years of alimony, even though an abortion was what he wanted, but he didn't get to have a say. Course, flip side is also true. Man finds out he got a girl pregnant, he totally is willing to raise the child by himself. Woman doesn't want to have baby, and gets an abortion. Man is out of luck.

Chamomile · Post by **Chamomile** » Mon Jul 11, 2011 8:42 pm

sabs wrote:Once born, then the child is a citizen, and a person.

Wrong. The premise of our debate is that the fetus is a person from the point of conception on, regardless of how insane that is. Given this, why does the mother get the right to decide to kill an uninvolved, sapient third party, just because it benefits from a process detrimental to her, which the fetus has no control over?

sabs · Post by **sabs** » Mon Jul 11, 2011 8:44 pm

No, that's the premise of your debate. The rest of us think that's idiotic

Chamomile · Post by **Chamomile** » Mon Jul 11, 2011 8:51 pm

Clearly you haven't been reading the thread so far, sabs, let me sum up.

Someone made the argument that even if you assume personhood on the part of the fetus, abortion is still justified. I countered that if you assume personhood on the part of the fetus, the concept of abortion suddenly becomes very obviously appalling. Someone actually mentioned this earlier in the thread, that any pro-lifer who treats abortion as anything other than murder is being hypocritical. Thus, the entire premise of every argument made by or against me is that the fetus is sapient. Whether or not this is true literally does not matter, and if you don't want to debate hypotheticals, don't join this debate at all.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Mon Jul 11, 2011 8:58 pm

Chamomile wrote:Yes. People have the right to use force to prevent other people from stealing their organs.

Then we are fucking done. She has the right to abort too. Because it's exactly the same thing.

Chamomile wrote:The fetus takes no willful action, therefore it is not held accountable for its actions against the mother and retaliation is not justified.

This is where you get retarded. Because using force to protect your organs is not about "retaliation". It's not punishing people for you losing your organs, it's you deciding to keep your fucking organs. It does not matter whether the people who aren't getting your organs deserve to die or not. They probably don't, but that does not matter. Because the important part of the equation is that you don't have to surrender your organs even if that spells the end of another person.

Once you concede that you have the right to fight to keep your organs, the discussion is over. Because that triggers whether or not other people in the scenario "deserve" anything or not. If Fred is going to die if he doesn't get your liver, that really sucks for Fred. He probably does not deserve that, like at all. But the fact that Fred doesn't deserve to die does not enter into the equation of whether you have the right to refuse him your liver or use force if necessary to keep your liver inside your body. Whatever Fred's situation is makes no difference at all to whether you have the right to keep your liver and demand that Fred die.

-Username17

Chamomile · Post by **Chamomile** » Mon Jul 11, 2011 9:05 pm

Then you concede that your own right to live is forfeit. You benefit from processes you have no control over just like everyone else does, and those processes have horrific results. The electronics you use and the clothing you wear are almost certainly made by people whose rights were taken from them for that purpose. So if they get the chance to kill you, they're justified in taking it? If they get the chance to kill everyone who buys these products, to nuke all population centers that receive them and collapse the markets and the civilization that buys them, so that their oppressors no longer have any incentive to keep them around, they're justified in killing hundreds of millions of people and ending modern society for their own benefit? That sounds like a terrorist manifesto more than anything else.

sabs · Post by **sabs** » Mon Jul 11, 2011 9:07 pm

Even if you say that a fetus is a person from the point of conception. It does not have the right to homestead in the mother's womb for 9 months. It's not an uninvolved 3rd party. It's literally using the mother for life support.

That's like saying a Vampire could come and drink a pint from you once a week, and that would be perfectly okay. The mother can say that she doesn't want the fetus inside her. That this act kills the fetus is sad, but doesn't change the fact that the mother is the deciding factor. I don't care that the fetus didn't choose to be there, and can't leave without dying. If she doesn't want the fetus there, it's gone.

Once the child is born, it is not dependent on the mother's body for survival. It's born, and can survive on it's own (baring the problem that mamals suck at this). An agency can take care of the child, other people can adopt the child.

Making a fetus a person at conception has huge HORRIBLE legal ramifications. Forget abortion.
Miscarriage: Is that manslaughter?
Birth defects: Did the mother do something to cause them.

If a woman smokes, drinks, does drugs before she finds out she is pregnant, but after actually being pregnant. Is she legally culpable?

Chamomile · Post by **Chamomile** » Mon Jul 11, 2011 9:20 pm

sabs wrote: That's like saying a Vampire could come and drink a pint from you once a week, and that would be perfectly okay.

Oi, seriously? I posted the difference between this and a fetus about three posts up. And you even address the difference later on in the post. The two are not equivalent. Period.

I don't care that the fetus didn't choose to be there, and can't leave without dying.

And as I just posted above, this means that you believe the child slaves of India would be justified in collapsing western civilization and killing hundreds of millions of people in order to dry up demand for their products so that they can go back to living semi-normal, impoverished lives. This is a breath away from saying 9/11 and the subway bombings were fair retaliation, because those dead civilians benefited from the exploitation of the Middle-East even if they weren't party to it, and collapsing western civilization would end that exploitation.

Making a fetus a person at conception has huge HORRIBLE legal ramifications.

Again, this is irrelevant to the debate at hand. If you want to debate the actual ramifications of illegalizing abortion in the real world, do it with someone else, because I'm not actually arguing that case.

Whatever · Post by **Whatever** » Mon Jul 11, 2011 9:47 pm

Chamomile wrote:The electronics you use and the clothing you wear are almost certainly made by people whose rights were taken from them for that purpose. So if they get the chance to kill you, they're justified in taking it?

Wat.

Look, if someone steals my kidney and puts it into Fred, that doesn't give me the right to kill Fred. I have the right to defend my kidney. If Fred is trying to take my kidney, by force, I can use force to defend myself. But that's not transitive.

mean_liar · Post by **mean_liar** » Mon Jul 11, 2011 10:05 pm

When the magic baby faerie comes along and inflicts the Curse of Pregnancy on you, of course you can kill the baby, since its a foreign invader and you had no role in its presence within you. I mean, sure, in most cases you could've just used contraception, but its not like you knew that intercourse could result in pregnancy. It was the fault of the pregnancy faerie, and you shouldn't be held accountable for the magical whims of the preggers witch.

I mean, if you had to be responsible for your own fertility then the next thing you know the vampires would come for your liver.

Frank's argument is based on a complete abrogation of personal responsibility for pregnancy, which I believe he would agree to as he believes you have no responsibility to what he perceives to be a tumor that might one day become a human. Arguing about vampires and organs and shit totally bypasses those fundamental assumptions and simply assumes them as well.

sabs · Post by **sabs** » Mon Jul 11, 2011 10:10 pm

the child slaves of india would be justified in killing the people keeping them slaves. Yes. Not in killing the people who maybe bought the fruits of their enslavement. Moral justification isn't a inherited trait down the line.

The Mother and the Indian Child Slave are in Position A.
The fetus, and the slaver are in Position B.
People who shop at walmart, and the Carnatians Food Corp are in Position C.
A is completely morally justified in killing B.
A is not morally justified in doing anything to C, even though they would profit from B not dying.

Chamomile · Post by **Chamomile** » Mon Jul 11, 2011 10:11 pm

Here's an experiment for you to try out. Read the following story to as many people as will listen to it:

Once upon a time there was a woman named Ilena. One day she fell under a strange curse known to happen from time to time, which made her tired, and clumsy, and moody. It would last a year and a day, and during this time the strength she lost to her illness would flow into one of the village children. After a few weeks of her illness, Ilena grew tired of it, so she found the child who'd been profiting from her weakness and she killed him, breaking the curse early.

Count how many people think what Ilena did was justified.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Mon Jul 11, 2011 10:13 pm

Mean Liar, don't be an idiot. People get pregnant while using contraception, that's why every single contraception methods states that it is X% effective, where X is not 100.

Chamomile · Post by **Chamomile** » Mon Jul 11, 2011 10:17 pm

Kaelik wrote:Mean Liar, don't be an idiot. People get pregnant while using contraception, that's why every single contraception methods states that it is X% effective, where X is not 100.

But is sometimes greater than 100.

sabs · Post by **sabs** » Mon Jul 11, 2011 10:18 pm

You forgot to mention that because of the curse:

Her parents threw her out of the house.
She was mocked and ridiculed by other people.
She would have to give up her plans for the future, to take care of said Child in the Village for the next 18 years.
She would have to drop out of school.
People would ostracize her for being 'Cursed' and having brought shame to her family.

sabs · Post by **sabs** » Mon Jul 11, 2011 10:19 pm

Chamomile wrote:
Kaelik wrote:Mean Liar, don't be an idiot. People get pregnant while using contraception, that's why every single contraception methods states that it is X% effective, where X is not 100.
But is sometimes greater than 100.

You're an idiot. Nothing can be more than a 100% effective, and no form of contraception is guaranteed to work everytime.

Quantumboost · Post by **Quantumboost** » Mon Jul 11, 2011 10:25 pm

@Chamomile: The fact that you can phrase the problem to take advantage of people's emotional gut reactions and reinforce it using a storytelling framework isn't interesting and it isn't surprising. That is in fact a known bug in the human mind, and if you were to use that as an actual survey the survey would be dishonest for exactly that reason.

CatharzGodfoot · Post by **CatharzGodfoot** » Mon Jul 11, 2011 10:27 pm

Chamomile wrote:Here's an experiment for you to try out. Read the following story to as many people as will listen to it:

Once upon a time there was a woman named Ilena. One day she fell under a strange curse known to happen from time to time, which made her tired, and clumsy, and moody. It would last a year and a day, and during this time the strength she lost to her illness would flow into one of the village children. After a few weeks of her illness, Ilena grew tired of it, so she found the child who'd been profiting from her weakness and she killed him, breaking the curse early.

Count how many people think what Ilena did was justified.

What if Ilena just breaks the curse and lets the child go on doing whatever it would otherwise do?

Chamomile · Post by **Chamomile** » Mon Jul 11, 2011 10:41 pm

sabs wrote:
Chamomile wrote:
Kaelik wrote:Mean Liar, don't be an idiot. People get pregnant while using contraception, that's why every single contraception methods states that it is X% effective, where X is not 100.
But is sometimes greater than 100.
You're an idiot. Nothing can be more than a 100% effective, and no form of contraception is guaranteed to work everytime.

This is called a joke, sabs.

Her parents threw her out of the house.
She was mocked and ridiculed by other people.
She would have to give up her plans for the future, to take care of said Child in the Village for the next 18 years.
She would have to drop out of school.
People would ostracize her for being 'Cursed' and having brought shame to her family.

You could add all that in and people would still likely not be willing to say she was justified in killing a random child.

@Chamomile: The fact that you can phrase the problem to take advantage of people's emotional gut reactions and reinforce it using a storytelling framework isn't interesting and it isn't surprising. That is in fact a known bug in the human mind, and if you were to use that as an actual survey the survey would be dishonest for exactly that reason.

What else do you base morality in, if not emotion? The ultimate goals of all humans are dictated by emotion. Logic cannot be the ends, it is always only a means.

What if Ilena just breaks the curse and lets the child go on doing whatever it would otherwise do?

Everyone wins. How is this possible in the context of abortion?

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Mon Jul 11, 2011 11:04 pm

Chamomile wrote:So if they get the chance to kill you, they're justified in taking it?

Depends on the chain of events that leads to your death. If the sole least industralized country that exports the chemicals you need for life-saving medication gets fed up with its exploitative economy and undergoes a communist revolution such that it cuts off your supply, then sucks to be you. Yet if someone comes up with a new miracle cure that lets you survive without said chemical, they're not suddenly justified in putting a bullet in your brain once you're unable to indirectly exploit the.

If it was possible for fetuses to survive outside the womb on their 90th day of pregnancy AND you (for some reason) gave them personhood then yes it would be immoral to kill them after the fact, because you've cut them off from infringing on anyone's rights and they're just sitting there not doing anything. Of course then you can start making the argument of whether the state or not the state has a vested interest to collect the tiny collection of cells and raise it in an artificial womb; but that's another story.

Quantumboost · Post by **Quantumboost** » Mon Jul 11, 2011 11:12 pm

Chamomile wrote:What else do you base morality in, if not emotion? The ultimate goals of all humans are dictated by emotion. Logic cannot be the ends, it is always only a means.

People's emotional reactions to an event described in words are dependent on the words themselves. You can literally make their good/bad assessment different by phrasing it differently. Those emotions are worthless for making a self-consistent moral system. And you have clearly contrived your story to specifically arouse those emotions that favor your interpretation and discarded every piece of information from your model that could count against it (the only reason the village child is even alive is because of the curse, and it is currently in a vegetative state).

You can base a moral system off of examined emotions that last for a while. But that's not what you're taking advantage of with your story.

What if Ilena just breaks the curse and lets the child go on doing whatever it would otherwise do?
Everyone wins. How is this possible in the context of abortion?

What do you suppose a fetus would otherwise do if disconnected from its mother's bloodstream?

Psychic Robot · Post by **Psychic Robot** » Mon Jul 11, 2011 11:32 pm

Well, 8 months is a wacky point. The fetus is almost certainly a viable baby that can be saved. Though there will be lung complcatiions.

But yes, she fucking can. I might personally think she's a horrible person, I might divorce her/not talk to her ever, if she was someone I knew or was married to. But she totally can. People are allowed to make selfish asshole decisions about their lives and bodies. If the fetus cannot survive outside the womb, then that's sad and tragic, but the woman doesn't have to continue the pregnancy if she doesn't want to.

Does it make her a terrible person? Maybe, depends on why. Would I hope she would finish the pregnancy and try something else, I would. But no law should force her to do any of those things.

See, you seem to think that engaging in Sex is the ultimate giving up of your rights. It's not, and you're an asshole misogynistic pig for thinking it does.

and people are calling me a terrible person

That's at least an argument, even if it is a terrible one. You on the other hand, either refuse to, or are incapable of, presenting any reason whatsoever why an abortion should be banned. The mere fact that it is a procedure that negates harmful consequences of an action is not sufficient to ban it.

you are seriously dumb if you think my argument doesn't involve personhood

also this thread is a stark reminder of the effects of moral complacency

mean_liar · Post by **mean_liar** » Mon Jul 11, 2011 11:51 pm

Kaelik wrote:Mean Liar, don't be an idiot. People get pregnant while using contraception, that's why every single contraception methods states that it is X% effective, where X is not 100.

True, and society should be built to accept that failure rate as best it can. Considering that most medical issues might as well be the outcome of an unknowable random chance and society is beholden to care for those unfortunates, so should society be built to accept and care for the random happenstance of pregnancy.

Compassion should be the guiding principle, not expediency. The woman who is pregnant against her best preparations (and I believe that is the case in the majority of abortions) needs care and attention as much as the child she's bearing. While it is easier to say that the woman should just abort the child and save herself the hassle, I do not believe doing so is the most compassionate response.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Tue Jul 12, 2011 12:05 am

mean_liar wrote:Compassion should be the guiding principle, not expediency. The woman who is pregnant against her best preparations (and I believe that is the case in the majority of abortions) needs care and attention as much as the child she's bearing. While it is easier to say that the woman should just abort the child and save herself the hassle, I do not believe doing so is the most compassionate response.

I do not believe that non persons have any claim to our compassion, and sure as shit, it's more compassionate to the woman to let her do whatever she damn well wants, including kill the parasite.

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Tue Jul 12, 2011 12:12 am

It's more like, if a *child* got cursed and fell into a coma from which it would never wake up unless it stole life force from a village woman for a year and a day, and that woman chose to break the link.