The Gaming Den

Mmmm.... chicken fingers and beer....

Kaelik wrote:And Tzor, stop with all this bullshit "Mother's safety" crap. You are complaining that abortions are made of evil bad. If it were conclusively proved that 100% of all abortions resulted in no harm to the mother of any kind, even psychological, and in fact, cured cancer, you'd still be against it right?

Abortion is a moral wrong. It’s my personal belief that major promoters of abortion are made of “evil bad.” That they are so paranoid of loosing total control of their precious institution that they will do anything to keep the funding going and the status quo continuing. Abortions do cause harm and they cause psychological harm as well. It’s the abortion providers that don’t want to acknowledge this because they would be compelled to do something about it.

(If abortions didn’t cause psychological harm you would see all those women at pro-life rallies waving “I regret my abortion” signs. They aren’t fakes, they are the genuine articles.)

But what if were not the case? What if abortions were provided such that all potential operation and post operation harm were minimized to virtually nothing? What if women were given all information on the procedure they were contemplating, including ultrasounds? What if women were also given all available alternatives to surgical pregnancy termination? What if (gasp) they had the real ability to “choose” because they have the proper information necessary to make the decision in the first place?

Then I would continue to encourage women not to have abortions (unless it was absolutely necessary) through moral argument. At a fundamental level you cannot legislate morality into the people; you can only make the moral argument and give people the information and power to actually be able to choose the moral position.

FrankTrollman wrote:Or how every time I eat chicken fingers, a chicken dies. Or how every time I drink a beer, millions upon millions of yeasts die.

Technically speaking the chicken died long before it became a chicken finger. Likewise yeasts kill themselves my making a poison that kills them. Stupid yeasts, we love them and shall ever hold them dear.

tzor wrote:(If abortions didn’t cause psychological harm you would see all those women at pro-life rallies waving “I regret my abortion” signs. They aren’t fakes, they are the genuine articles.)

It's true that people make decisions that they later regret. Some women are made to feel so guilty about having had an abortion (by the anti-abortion crowd, natch) that they're traumatized for the rest of their lives. Some women regret not having had abortions.

That reflects the importance of counseling (and not your kind of 'You were done a terrible injustice and have sinned against God' counseling), not any inherent 'evil' of abortions.

tzor wrote: Abortion is a moral wrong. It’s my personal belief that major promoters of abortion are made of “evil bad.” That they are so paranoid of loosing total control of their precious institution that they will do anything to keep the funding going and the status quo continuing. Abortions do cause harm and they cause psychological harm as well. It’s the abortion providers that don’t want to acknowledge this because they would be compelled to do something about it.

(If abortions didn’t cause psychological harm you would see all those women at pro-life rallies waving “I regret my abortion” signs. They aren’t fakes, they are the genuine articles.)

But what if were not the case? What if abortions were provided such that all potential operation and post operation harm were minimized to virtually nothing? What if women were given all information on the procedure they were contemplating, including ultrasounds? What if women were also given all available alternatives to surgical pregnancy termination? What if (gasp) they had the real ability to “choose” because they have the proper information necessary to make the decision in the first place?

Then I would continue to encourage women not to have abortions (unless it was absolutely necessary) through moral argument. At a fundamental level you cannot legislate morality into the people; you can only make the moral argument and give people the information and power to actually be able to choose the moral position.

I can't quite put my finger on why, but this is so offensive that I can only reply with this:



Sorry tzor, but

• I'm 16 and my parents will kill me
• I don't want to be tied to this asshole for the rest of my life
• I'll have to abandon my career plans
• I'll have to drop out of high school/college
• I don't want a (or another) child
• I can't afford a child/the medical bills
• My baby will have (degenerative disease X)

are all valid reasons for an abortion. Unless you're willing to work to mitigate or eliminate any and all of those reasons, and countless others I didn't list, you can fuck right off with your moral posturing.

tzor wrote:

Kaelik wrote:And Tzor, stop with all this bullshit "Mother's safety" crap. You are complaining that abortions are made of evil bad. If it were conclusively proved that 100% of all abortions resulted in no harm to the mother of any kind, even psychological, and in fact, cured cancer, you'd still be against it right?

Abortion is a moral wrong. It’s my personal belief that major promoters of abortion are made of “evil bad.” That they are so paranoid of loosing total control of their precious institution that they will do anything to keep the funding going and the status quo continuing. Abortions do cause harm and they cause psychological harm as well. It’s the abortion providers that don’t want to acknowledge this because they would be compelled to do something about it.

(If abortions didn’t cause psychological harm you would see all those women at pro-life rallies waving “I regret my abortion” signs. They aren’t fakes, they are the genuine articles.)

But what if were not the case? What if abortions were provided such that all potential operation and post operation harm were minimized to virtually nothing? What if women were given all information on the procedure they were contemplating, including ultrasounds? What if women were also given all available alternatives to surgical pregnancy termination? What if (gasp) they had the real ability to “choose” because they have the proper information necessary to make the decision in the first place?

Then I would continue to encourage women not to have abortions (unless it was absolutely necessary) through moral argument. At a fundamental level you cannot legislate morality into the people; you can only make the moral argument and give people the information and power to actually be able to choose the moral position.

So in conclusion:

1) Why not start and end with the moral arguments? Because all you are "proving" with your manipulated statistics with no context is that we should have safer abortions, and yet you are strongly against safer abortions.

2) So just to be clear, your official position is that, as per Heath's Question "You believe that people in the real world are actually advertising abortion, saying "Guys, Abortions are AWESOME!" " but take it even a step further, in that you believe they advertise this for the purpose of killing babies because they are actually evil devil people?

Now how about you answer Heath's question. Why the fuck do you believe something so stupid?

3) No, a bunch of people holding "I regret my abortion" signs does not prove that it causes psychological harm. Ignoring for the moment that many of them are absolutely lying about it, I regret many decisions I have made, that does not mean that I incurred psychological harm from them.

You are demeaning the women on your own side by claiming that only through psychological harm could they change their mind, when in fact, they could find out information that causes them to call into question the humanity of their fetus and change their mind for no reason related to the harm to themselves.

The fact that most information presented by pro lifers happens to be lies doesn't change the fact that people can be convinced by those lies.

4) But yes, we do in fact know that often after an abortion women will receive a version of postpartum depression, and feel very sad for entirely hormonal reasons, but instead associate that with the loss of their potential child. That does in fact happen. And people do regret their abortions for entirely hormonal reasons.

That's why I said "hypothetically" in my question.

tzor wrote:Abortion is a moral wrong.

That's your belief and I'll gladly defend your right to hold that belief. Just like I'll defend the right of people who think it's morally wrong to eat animals. Or people who think it's morally wrong to eat beef. Or people who think it's morally wrong to consume shellfish. Or people who think it's morally wrong to consume stimulants such as caffeine. Or people who think it's morally wrong to hunt for sport.

There's absolutely nothing at all wrong with any of those beliefs on a personal level. The only problem is when you try to impose your morals on somebody else, especially through legislation. That's where I have a problem.

Zherog wrote:

tzor wrote:Abortion is a moral wrong.

That's your belief and I'll gladly defend your right to hold that belief. Just like I'll defend the right of people who think it's morally wrong to eat animals. Or people who think it's morally wrong to eat beef. Or people who think it's morally wrong to consume shellfish. Or people who think it's morally wrong to consume stimulants such as caffeine. Or people who think it's morally wrong to hunt for sport.

There's absolutely nothing at all wrong with any of those beliefs on a personal level. The only problem is when you try to impose your morals on somebody else, especially through legislation. That's where I have a problem.

I'll be honest Zherog, that's bullshit.

It's your belief that murder is wrong, and I'll gladly defend your right to hold that belief. The only problem is when you try to impose your morals on somebody else, especially through legislation. That's where I have a problem.

The fact is that morality must be legislated, and some things we morally legislate based on consensus.

If enough people were vegetarians in 1789 who thought that "animals have rights too." The fifth amendment would have said "no animal may..."

or something else. A majority will never have that view, because it's a self defeating one, but that doesn't change that all our civil rights protections are moral legislation.

We just overrule Tzor because he's crazy and wrong, not because he's legislating morality.

FrankTrollman wrote:Never understood that argument. Life is death. Always has been.

Granted. But don't you feel that all life is sacred, and that it is our obligation as a moral society to protect the innocent, i.e. those who cannot protect themselves? Or, to put it another way:

"I swear by Apollo the Physician and Asclepius and Hygieia and Panaceia and all the gods, and goddesses, making them my witnesses, that I will fulfill according to my ability and judgment this oath and this covenant:
To hold him who has taught me this art as equal to my parents and to live my life in partnership with him, and if he is in need of money to give him a share of mine, and to regard his offspring as equal to my brothers in male lineage and to teach them this art–if they desire to learn it–without fee and covenant; to give a share of precepts and oral instruction and all the other learning to my sons and to the sons of him who has instructed me and to pupils who have signed the covenant and have taken the oath according to medical law, but to no one else.

I will apply dietic measures for the benefit of the sick according to my ability and judgment; I will keep them from harm and injustice.

I will neither give a deadly drug to anybody if asked for it, nor will I make a suggestion to this effect. Similarly I will not give to a woman an abortive remedy. In purity and holiness I will guard my life and my art.

I will not use the knife, not even on sufferers from stone, but will withdraw in favor of such men as are engaged in this work.

Whatever houses I may visit, I will come for the benefit of the sick, remaining free of all intentional injustice, of all mischief and in particular of sexual relations with both female and male persons, be they free or slaves.

What I may see or hear in the course of treatment or even outside of the treatment in regard to the life of men, which on no account one must spread abroad, I will keep myself holding such things shameful to be spoken about.

If I fulfill this oath and do not violate it, may it be granted to me to enjoy life and art, being honored with fame among all men for all time to come; if I transgress it and swear falsely, may the opposite of all this be my lot."

CS wrote:But don't you feel that all life is sacred, and that it is our obligation as a moral society to protect the innocent, i.e. those who cannot protect themselves?

No. I think that chickens are delicious. And not sacred. Cats don't have a right to catch mice and mice don't have a right to not be caught. And I have no special moral obligation to interfere in such a chase, nor does anyone else.

If you eat soy beans, defenseless shrews got torn to shreds by the combine harvesters. If you eat lamb then defenseless baby sheep were put to th slaughter. And either way, the result is delicious.

We don't swear the Hippocratic Oath. We don't swear it, because it is outdated and dumb. That stuff about protecting the secrets of the fraternal order of medicine? The line about not committing surgery? That's archaic beyond reason. The job of a doctor is to promote the health and well being of living humans, nothing more. And if mystical practices get in the way of that job, those mystical ideas have to go.

-Username17

Thanks a lot Frank, you just made me hungry.

Fair enough. Don't get me wrong - I am a firm believer in the food chain. When I said "all life" I figured it would be assumed that I meant "all human life". And I just included the oath to be a little facetious - isn't that thing a hoot? The only part that's actually even vaguely pertinent is:
"I will apply dietic measures for the benefit of the sick according to my ability and judgment; I will keep them from harm and injustice." And I think it's fair to take "dietic measures" as merely an example, and extrapolate outward from that.

In simpler terms, my question is this: don't you think human babies have a right to be defended (by humans)? If so, then it comes down to a question of your precise definition of "human baby". I personally believe that you become a person at birth (or possibly, as I said, at external viability). I heard that in China, you aren't considered legally a person until you've been alive for a week, or something like that. And a lot of Christians seem to be of the belief that you become a person at conception. So while I disagree with their conclusions, I understand why they came to them. And if I began with that same initial supposition, that an undifferentiated lump of stem cells should be considered a person just because it has the inevitable potential to become a person, well then I just might come to the same conclusions as them anyway. So i can disagree with it, but I'm having a hard time condemning it.

Ceilingcat wrote:Thanks a lot Frank, you just made me hungry.

Well, babies are very tender.

The argument "life begins at conception, ergo the fetus deserves protection from being killed by humans" ignores womens' bodily sovereignty. It would be a valid argument against abortion if fetuses were carried by nonsapient tanks, but is not for actual pregnant people.

Seriously, "I don't want anyone else to be stealing stuff from, and dumping wastes in, my blood, especially while I'm using it" is a good enough reason to terminate a pregnancy, by any means necessary.

Abortion is not murder.

It should also not be a primary mean of birth control.

There is a bunch of cases where abortion is completely justifiable (including, but not limited to victims of rape, when pregnancy poses a danger to the life/mental health of the mother, when the fetus is damaged) and where arguing against it makes you a shitty human being/dangerous lunatic.

A well-weighted, rational decision by a woman to abort should be supported. It is her choice, one never taken lightly, and persons who do so deserve support, instead of any sort of condemnation, hidden or open.

Any of you bastards who seek to judge or condemn any woman who chose to abort have absolutely no right to do so, because you have never, and will never be in her place, and have no idea what kind of choice she was faced with.

And if all you know about abortion is from women you saw on TV, go shut your mouth with your own filthy penises.

No more needs to be said.

Fin.

I think it's strange that legality of abortion only changes the number of women who die. The number of abortions themselves is more due to the availability of contraception and health care. (Which result in less)

So to call it a holocaust is kinda weird... It'd still be happening, just more people die.

-Crissa

FrankTrollman wrote:We don't swear the Hippocratic Oath. We don't swear it, because it is outdated and dumb. That stuff about protecting the secrets of the fraternal order of medicine? The line about not committing surgery? That's archaic beyond reason. The job of a doctor is to promote the health and well being of living humans, nothing more. And if mystical practices get in the way of that job, those mystical ideas have to go.

-Username17

Wasn't it also common and acceptable practice to leave unwanted children out in the wilderness to die of exposure around the time that the Hippocratic Oath was first cooked up? A hypocritical oath indeed!

CryptoSolipsist wrote:

Ceilingcat wrote:Thanks a lot Frank, you just made me hungry.

Well, babies are very tender.

Baby back ribs... falling off the bone.

CryptoSolipsist wrote:

Ceilingcat wrote:Thanks a lot Frank, you just made me hungry.

Well, babies are very tender.

It bears noting that humanity, as a species, is a race comprised of what amounts to be baby eaters.

From spinach to veal, there is almost no one innocent of eating some sort of young living thing.

In fact, the best tasting things, tend to be the youngest, or the least overgrown.

The best tasting fruit is not some jumbo "whatever"; it's always wild, and young, and tiny.

From lamb, to corn, to strawberries. The best tasting will always be young.

Of course, some things are fine to eat when fully mature, wheat or rice.

While others need the food to be past its normal safe consumption point. Things require the product to rot, say grapes for wine need to be nearly bursting on the vine, or milk needs to curdle, bread requires yeast to eat flour, and beer needs grains to ferment/rot.

---

on topic. I believe that each person contemplating this should be given the facts on what will happen, be explained the side effects, including the hormonal ones, and given the choice themselves.

The whole business fills me with dread and makes me feel upset, but hiding it and repressing it is going result in one thing.

Dead women.

As much as the idea of abortion is squicky for me, the idea that people are going to get killed by some quack or midwife's procedure is even more disgusting.

Abortions are as old as the fucking mountains. We're never going to get rid of them.

People will fuck without thinking, or will get pregnant without wanting to be pregnant. People are going to keep being assaulted.

This shit will keep happening, and some people will want an abortion.

Denying them a safe way to do so means that you are seriously alright with people dying to receive a procedure that could have been monitored and regulated.

A quack isn't going to counsel the woman, and find out if abortion is the right solution for them, they'll just want to do their job, and get their fee.

De-regulation of stuff like this is a crime; talking about wanting to de-regulate this is like basically saying "we want you to go kill yourselves, because we don't approve of what you want to do, also, we don't care about giving you options".

tzor, seriously, you should be for having more, and better staffed clinics, ones that are able to present lots of options to people. From contraceptives to discussing abortion in an honest manner, with all of its downsides and drawbacks, as well as being accepting of the reasons for why the woman wants to have the procedure done.

If people know more about preventing pregnancies, and more about what all of the options for abortions are, then you would probably see a lot less abortions overall.

Two questions:

Where do chicken fingers comes from really, what part of the bird is that?

Those thinking of good methods of birth control, have you ever thought of masturbation instead of sex? Just think how rich you will become if you get your own hand pregnant! You would be more famous than the Octomom, or Jon&Kate+8.

tzor wrote:That they are so paranoid of loosing total control of their precious institution that they will do anything to keep the funding going and the status quo continuing.

I'm pretty sure you're thinking of the church there, not the League of Extraordinary Abortionists.

And again I remind people that unless the pro-lifers are willing to adopt and take care of every single abandoned child and raise them so happy that they won't regret being adopted (putting the well-being of these kids above their own, like the women who give birth to them), they can seriously shut the fuck up and let there be a lower population of unloved, abandoned kids. If you want to legislate "no abortions" then legislate that as well, and failure/refusal to comply nets you 10-20 years in the electric chair.

Watch as suddenly they all shut up/find excuses/point out that they don't give a shit about babies after they're born. For that matter, given their views on war and the death penalty it's obvious the only lives they care about are the ones that aren't even fucking real sentient lives in the first place.

Zherog wrote:There's absolutely nothing at all wrong with any of those beliefs on a personal level. The only problem is when you try to impose your morals on somebody else, especially through legislation. That's where I have a problem.

The law is a system of morality by definition. Your position makes no sense whatsoever.

Law should be written from a position of demonstrable harm. Anything which can't be shown to cause harm should be legal.

Harm to who? Oneself or another? Since even drinking water can cause harm do you make a law stating it is harmful to oneself, therefore illegal to drink water?

Would it be legal or not to commit suicide? Would it be illegal for a pregnant woman to commit suicide before coming to term and delivering?

Should pregnant women all be locked up and closely watched/guarded to prevent them from causing ANY harm to the unborn child?

Does becoming pregnant remove all rights from the women since she is now in control of not only herself, but able to harm another?

Being illegal to commit suicide leads to dumb things like people being in jail for attempting or talking about it (intent).

Being illegal to harm a pregnancy leads to stupid things like women being charged for engaging in normal behavior when they were unaware of being pregnant or charging them or a doctor with murder for choosing their life or well-being over that of a glob of cells.

-Crissa

shadzar wrote: Does becoming pregnant remove all rights from the women since she is now in control of not only herself, but able to harm another?

That's impossible, since a person becomes subject of law upon birth.

Crissa wrote:Being illegal to commit suicide leads to dumb things like people being in jail for attempting or talking about it (intent).

Yeah, someone already not wanting to live, and not only are you now going to force them to remain alive in what they already consider inhumane conditions; but you are going to charge taxpayers for it, or their living family for it?

How stupid.

Also to the question as it pertains to abortion, how long can a women be dead before the child can no longer be saved? As bad as that sounds, I am sure someone needs to know for emergency purposes.