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charlestonjames
Dude, what was wrong with my comment?
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joshbrahm
I don't know what you're talking about. I don't see any history of moderated comments on this page. Is there an issue I should be aware of?
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charlestonjames
I left a comment recently. It was there for a day.
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joshbrahm
Ah, I found it. I was looking in the wrong place in the moderation settings. Apparently your comment got flagged as having spam. Not sure if a person did, or more likely it was an automatic thing from Disqus, but either way, I don't see your comment as spammy and manually approved it. Thanks for letting me know!
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charlestonjames
Thanks!
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charlestonjames
Good points on the idea of autonomy. I look at it from a different perspective: absolute autonomy is a myth. Abortion supporters act as if women have a right that, in fact, no one has. While arguing for a woman’s right to choose, the assumption is that women have the absolute right to control their own body. The problem is there is no such right - and NO ONE believes ANYONE does.
Imagine this scenario: a 14 year old girl driving a car in the United States. This alone violates at least three laws: (1) there is an age requirement for driving the automobile (which she has not attained yet) and therefore she is (2) driving an automobile without a drivers license and (3) without auto insurance. In most places in the US these three laws are in effect, thus the 14 year old girl is violating all of them. But let’s add a few more details to this hypothetical. She is driving the car with an open beer bottle which violates at least two more laws: (4) under age drinking and (5) there is an open container of alcohol in the vehicle. Now imagine she is (6) driving without wearing a seat belt, (7) texting while driving, (8) driving faster than allowed on that particular stretch of road, (9) driving on the wrong side of the road, and (10) driving while nude.
I doubt all these things violate the law in all areas of the US, but in some places this fictional character is violating the law in all ten ways. And here’s the catch: if you’re reading this chances are you approve of at least one law alluded to in the hypothetical scenario. And since you support at least one of those laws, you support restricting what a person can or cannot do with their own body. No one has the absolute right to control their own body, and no one believes in such a thing.
So what’s so wrong with laws like these? It depends. Most people support such laws because of how certain actions affect others. Admittedly, seeing a teenage girl driving naked could very well have a similar effect on other drivers as driving a car while texting or while drunk could have on the girl herself. It’s because of the effect on other people that most of us find ourselves willing to accept laws restricting our freedom. And that’s why abortion opponents oppose killing babies: because it’s KILLING PEOPLE! If any laws can be justified, it's those that directly affect the killing of someone else.
Now, imagine if the girl was on her way to sell one of her kidneys, which is also illegal in the U.S. This is another law many people are willing to impose on society, but not because of the effect is has on other people (after all, wouldn't putting a new kidney on the transplant market actually be helpful?). No, in this case, laws prohibiting the selling of one's own organs are meant to protect all of us because allowing that simple transaction would invite unimaginable abuse and exploitation (what exploitation is imaginable is bad enough). The perceived meta effect of making such a thing legal is disastrous enough to ban the practice.
But what if this girl were on her way to sell her kidney because she couldn't otherwise afford an abortion? Ah, that's the loophole abortion supporters need, and one that exposes the real impetus behind their zeal. Once you can find a means of tying abortion to poverty, they can skip over all the common sense and jump strait to an emotional heart string about why abortion should not only be legal but also paid for by the taxpayers. And yet, all we have to do is point out the fact the abortion defender still opposes the selling of one's own organs for profit, or still supports the idea of age limits on driving, or the requirement of a license, or the rules of the road. No matter how it's sliced, the abortion argument ends up contradicting itself showing that consequence-free recreation is really at the heart of the matter - not health or rights or autonomy.
Abortion is a holy sacrament in the religion of self indulgence. It has nothing to do with women's rights except the mythical right to have a good time without having to confront natural consequences. Critical thinking about such matters is not welcomed by abortion culture. But once an abortion supporter sees the ugly nature of the thing they are supporting, who knows?
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acyutananda
"absolute autonomy is a myth. Abortion supporters act as if women have a right that, in fact, no one has. . . . driving without wearing a seat belt . . ."
I think the principle of bodily autonomy includes the general idea that the deeper the trespass on one's bodily boundaries that is proposed, the more absolute the right. Requiring someone to strap on a seat belt is a shallow trespass, and therefore the permissibility of the requirement does not show that the right protecting against the unwanted use of one's uterus (a deep trespass) is not a strong right.
However, I have reason to think that the principle has not been formulated well, and that the rights protecting against two equally deep trespasses are not necessarily, in fact, equally strong – so that the right protecting against the prevention of abortion may not be as strong as the right protecting against a compulsory organ donation. I have thought about these things in http://www.noterminationwithoutrepresentation.org/bodily-rights-and-a-better-idea/
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Athena1077
As a supporter of Bodily autonomy i am going to disagree with you. i actually do believe we should be allowed to sell our kidney, it belongs to us, we should be able to sell it and profit from it, why not? we own our organs don't we?. Their are many people that could benefit from such change, especially people on waiting lists for Kidneys.
Abortion is justified because their is no right to life that can obligate another person gestate another being inside their body. If you or I do not have a right to hook ourselves up and suck to another person and use their body, why should a woman be forced or compelled to do so with her body?
This is not about having a good time, this is about bodily rights, at least to me it is about my bodily rights. You cannot compel someone to gestate and be a host against their will even if if somebody dies. To me forcing me to gestate a pregnancy against my will i would consider a gross violation of my body, this has nothing to do with sex or having a good time or responsibility. I own my body and have a right to refuse to have my body used as a host to another person, born or unborn.
I hope i have made my position clear.
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charlestonjames
I think you've made your position clear, gladys. While I don't doubt your sincerity, I should point out the extreme nature of it.
First, the term "bodily autonomy" is vague and note very useful. Everyone believes in bodily autonomy, to a degree. Everyone. The question here is how far does that go? Is it absolute? My guess is even you would say no, and I'll show you why.
If you truly believed in absolute bodily autonomy you would be an anarchist. After all, laws essentially place limits on what we can do - even what we can do with our own bodies. An anarchical society is one where rape and murder are not banned. I seriously doubt you think rape should be legal. After all, wouldn't rape violate someone's bodily autonomy?
But let's look closer at your standard for bodily autonomy. You believe abortion is justified despite the fact the child in the womb is being violated and killed - the harm inflicted to the child is not relevant to your argument, only the woman's choice is. If we applied this standard to rape, it would look something like this: rape is justified no matter if a woman is violated or killed, because the man's right to bodily autonomy is absolute.
If you wanted to find ways around this scenario, and approve of laws banning rape, you would, by definition, be justifying LIMITATIONS on bodily autonomy. Which means even you don't believe in absolute bodily autonomy. This raises some questions.
  • why is it justifiable to kill the child in the womb, but not rape a woman - since you argue for a right to absolute bodily autonomy regardless of the harm inflicted to another?
  • if I were to argue rape/murder is justified because their is no right to life or to autonomy that can obligate another person to _____, what's wrong with this argument? Keep in mind, I don't care what is filled in the blank. I argue the premise preceding the blank (your argument) is the problem.
  • if the harm inflicted to another is justification enough to ban rape (despite the violation of the rapist's bodily autonomy), why shouldn't this standard apply to abortion as well? After all, abortion both harms and violates the autonomy of the child in the womb.
  • if an absolute right to bodily autonomy can be used to justify killing a child in the womb, what's to stop that argument from extending beyond the womb? And if it extends to killing an infant, why not a toddler, or a teenager, or an bed-ridden parent?
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Athena1077
  • if I were to argue ABORTION is justified because their is no right
    to life or to autonomy that can obligate another person to
    GESTATE_____________, what's wrong with this argument? Keep in mind, I
    don't care what is filled in the blank. I argue the premise preceding
    the blank (your argument) is the problem.
    Here i fixed it for you. their is NO RIGHT TO LIFE THAT REQUIRES YOU OR ANYONE HOOK THEMSELVES UP TO ANOTHER PERSON'S BODY or be HOUSED inside a uterus INSIDE another person's body.
    Does not matter if the is a born or unborn person, a cat or a dog or worm. One has the right to stop the gestation process.
    Please stay on topic which is pregnancy/gestation. Thank you very much!
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Athena1077
You completely did not address argument at all. First of all i NEVER said bodily autonomy is absolute (you said that). I said abortion is justified for a woman to reclaim her bodily autonomy. Gestation is a violation of bodily autonomy if such gestation is unwanted. Having an organism inside one's body using our organs (uterus) and feeding off of ones nutrients is what i am referring to. Such gestation process if unwanted can be terminated (does not matter if the organism is human or a parasite).
You bring up rape, yes the rapist is violating the woman's body by forcing sexual intercourse, just like an embryo that is unwanted inside the uterus .
The embryo/fetus has its own body, but it DOES NOT OWN the uterus it needs to be housed in to be gestated. Uterus owner can refuse to gestate and house it for 9 months.
you cannot obligate a woman/ man to gestate an human being or parasite or dog or a cat inside her body. Talking about gestation ONLY, i don't know why you bring up teenagers and toddlers, they do NOT need to be gestated inside another person's body.
If you are going to respond please stay on topic which is pregnancy/gestation.
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charlestonjames
You are avoiding the question of how far it goes. If abortion can be justified along the lines you propose, others will inevitably push it further. They already have. "Post birth abortion" is a thing, justified on the grounds of bodily autonomy. Some have pushed this even beyond infancy. You can pretend the extent to which you condone killing a child is the only circumstance in which a society will practice such killing, but real life has a tendency to surprise us. People like to push the boundaries. The real world version of this discussion is not limited to pregnancy/gestation. People are being killed, excused with arguments based on the justification you provided.
Your argument implicitly invokes absolute autonomy - at least within the context of gestation. You can argue against fictitious experimentation of implanting animals into a womb against a woman's wishes, but there is also the matter of natural consequences of one's own choices.
In the vast majority of cases (over 99.0%) pregnancy is a result of a mutually consensual act. The notion of natural consequences has been all but forgotten by the bodily autonomy argument. The fact a particular activity has a realistically high chance of a predictable and natural consequence has been obscured from the discussion. The idea banning abortion would be same as “forcing” women to gestate or give birth completely ignores the fact the overwhelming majority of pregnancies result from a mutually consensual choice. Actions have consequences.
In this case there are obvious consequences, as attested by the multi-billion dollar birth control industry. Why would there be so much money in birth control if this cause-and-effect sequence were a mystery? Whether one approves or disapproves of birth control has nothing to do with the fact the cause-and-effect sequence that results in pregnancy is not a mystery. If you use birth control, you prove you understand that sequence. If the gestation is unwanted there are ways around that which don't involve killing someone. Yet, you treat killing someone else in this situation as callously as other great evils in history which need not be named here.
The child is not responsible for being conceived, yet that is who is punished (by the death penalty) in the act of abortion. The normal, natural process of reproduction necessarily and by definition involves creating new people. In Western society, people have rights. Bodily autonomy is one, but the right to life is another. You argue the right to bodily autonomy should supersede the right to live in one of the most natural of all human situations at the expense of the most innocent and vulnerable of all human kind - a child in the womb.
The selfish pragmatic line of reasoning you've used to justify abortion is being used by others to justify all sorts of nefarious things, including infanticide and senicide. Since this is actually happening in the world, I'm justified in asking how far does it go and when do we start to recognize pro-abortion arguments set the stage for other horrible things? The topic of your choice is not the only context in which the matter of autonomy plays out.
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Ann Morgan
The child is not responsible for being conceived, yet that is who is punished (by the death penalty) in the act of abortion.
Sorry, taking away free goodies to which you are not entitled is NOT 'punishment'. It is not 'punishment' to deny an embryo a uterus, any more than it is 'punishment' to deny a dialysis patient one of your kidneys. It IS however, punishment, to force people to donate their organs, when they have not caused the neediness of the other person by DOING HARM.
** The normal, natural process of reproduction necessarily and by definition involves creating new people.**
Naturalistic fallacy.
** In Western society, people have rights. Bodily autonomy is one, but the right to life is another.**
You are misunderstanding what the 'right to life' is. The 'right to life' is NOT, as you are trying to pretend, the 'right to live as a predetermined outcome at all costs'.
Rather, it is the 'right not to have your own organs or property on which your life depends, stolen or damaged.'.
IF, for whatever reason, your own organs or property are incapable of sustaining your life, it does NOT give you a right to the organs or property of others, even if you will die without them.
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Athena1077
YOU SAID:
The child is not responsible for being conceived, yet that is who is
punished (by the death penalty) in the act of abortion. The normal,
natural process of reproduction necessarily and by definition involves
creating new people. In Western society, people have rights. Bodily
autonomy is one, but the right to life is another. You argue the right
to bodily autonomy should supersede the right to live in one of the most
natural of all human situations at the expense of the most innocent and
vulnerable of all human kind - a child in the womb.
The right to refuse gestation INSIDE OR THE USE of another person's body applies in the case of pregnancy, organ donation , blood donation. The right to be gestates is a GIFT, and should NOT be complelled by law because it would be a violation of our bodies.
I know you might think me callous, but you know what it is what it is, just because the organism is cute or innocent or helpless does not mean it has a right to USE another person's body?
A need for a uterus does not create a RIGHT to it unless the uterus owner consents to the use of the uterus, just like a dead person HAS RIGHT TO not have his/her organs used EVEN AFTER DEATH.
I think you fail to realize to see where your argument really means for bodily autonomy, it is no small thing to compel someone to gestate for 9 months.
I don't think you really understand the gravity of taking people's rights to thier bodies and how important that is.
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Athena1077
So your argument against me is the slippery slope, because people might commit infanticide or other types of killings, we should outlaw abortion and compel women to gestate. By your reasoning we should ban guns because they are used to commit crimes?
As far as bodily autonomy of course it trumps the right to life. Do you know that you CANNOT even harvest organs from a dead person without their consent? Yes bodily autonomy in the United states may NOT absolute, but it is VERY HIGH UP there when it comes to rights, otherwise why protect the bodily autonomy of a dead person? Why not compel blood donation if it saves a lives and "right to life" is absolute, then their is no reason for why we cannot force blood donation, bone marrow, kidney from perfectly healthy people to save the life of another?
Right to life is NOT absolute either, in that you cannot take whatever you need to live. That is why i said someone allowing you or me to be gestated inside another person's body is a GIFT, donating a kidney is a GIFT
Having sex does not mean that a woman loses the rights to her body, whether she becomes pregnant or not. She still owns her uterus and as the right to refuse to gestate a pregnancy.
The issue of selfishness is irrelevent, to the issue, i am NOT arguing motives, i am arguing about rights.
Bodily autonomy trumps the right to life when it involves the USE OF OUR BODIES, and you know that i am right, take that to any court of law and you will see.
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charlestonjames
Clever slight of hand there. The slippery slope is not my argument as I'm not arguing about something that might happen. I mentioned things that ARE happening. The bodily autonomy argument is already used to justify infanticide and senicide. In some places the law has changed to allow these sorts of things and there are already proposals in the legal wheel works to push the envelop even further. And that mentality is spreading. That is not a slippery slope argument if it's already happening.
Motives and rights cannot be legitimately separated in matters of law. Since we're talking about what the law should be in relation to rights, motive will be a factor, especially on the matter of killing people.
Killing people is the result of your vision of the right to bodily autonomy. This is not killing people for what have been traditionally held as valid reasons: self defense is the least controversial reason. Self convenience is much more controversial, and rightly so.
When guns are used to stop a murderer on a rampage or an intruder in a home, that's widely regarded as justified because killing innocent people was already in progress or has a high likelihood of happening. One party is killing, another party stops the offender. That's a far more imminent situation than abortion. In such cases, a gun is used to protect. How is killing a baby conceived a consensual act "protecting" someone? Legally, the difference is preventing the death of innocent persons, whereas you defend the killing of innocent persons who committed no crime.
You're right that the right to life is not absolute, as evidenced by the fact that one can revoke one's own right to life. How? By killing someone else when one's own life is NOT in danger. When killing qualifies as murder the law treats that very differently. And how does the law usually differentiate between permissible and impermissible killing? Self preservation in the midst of imminent threat, not self preservation in absence of imminent threat and certainly not self convenience. "He needed killin'" and "I didn't want him" are not valid arguments.
On the matter of life, the preference of other people has long been ignored as a factor for whether a person is "allowed" to live. I support the use of lethal force to defend life in a life/death situation, you are defending the use of lethal force to defend convenience at the expense of innocent life.
Our laws are inconsistent on some other examples you brought up. While I agree no one should be compelled to supply blood or body organs (even post mortem), I also don't think compulsory vaccinations should be legal - for the same reasons such as the right to bodily autonomy. But compulsory vaccinations are legal, which raises questions as to why not compulsory blood or organ donation as well? People have taken the matter of compulsory vaccination to a court of law, and lost. There's a slippery slope worth discussing.
The matter of gestation is a red herring. In the overwhelming majority of cases, the pregnancy is a natural consequence of a consensual act. We don't have the right to disregard natural consequences of our own choices when those choices cost an innocent party their life. That's nothing like compelling an innocent bystander to donate blood. This is nothing like someone abducting you and installing a foreign life form in your body (many pro-lifers are willing to make a legal exception for abortion in cases of rape - because the woman didn't have a choice in the matter). But when your own choices lead to a new life, responsibility is part of the equation. That changes everything. When the reasoning goes something like "I can kill you because I don't want you" something is very wrong.
If another, innocent person's life (created by the interested party's own actions) weren't part of the equation this wouldn't be nearly the controversy it is. As I said, I agree with you on matters of compulsory donation. But you are defending the killing of someone based on convenience and aversion to taking responsibility for one's own actions. I have a hard enough time believing humanity is worth saving. You aren't helping.
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Ann Morgan
*If another, innocent person's life (created by the interested party's own
actions) weren't part of the equation this wouldn't be nearly the
controversy it is. *
Except, of course, the sob about 'an innocent person's life' fails to explain:
  1. Forced birther's frantic insistence that women carry a doomed fetus (ei, no lungs) full term, so as to make sure that a hole is ripped in her before the baby dies. No way to save, the baby, so the sob about 'an innocent life' fails.
  2. The insistence of Catholic hospitals in pointless mutilating women with an ectopic pregnancy. No way to save the fetus, so the sob about 'an innocent life' fails.
  3. Forced birther's insistence that a DEAD fetus not be removed from the woman, so as to make sure she gets an infection and dies. The fetus is already dead, so the sob about 'an innocent life' fails.
  4. The rape exception. Aren't rape fetuses as 'innocent' as other fetuses? So the sob about 'an innocent life' fails.
  5. That forced birthers also often oppose birth control. No fetus involved, so the sob about 'an innocent life' fails.
  6. The frantic evasion of the burning fertility clinic question. If you really believed that this was a 'real baby for sure' it would be easy to answer. So the sob about 'an innocent life' fails.
  7. No concern and constant demonstrations over all the embryos destroyed by fertility clinics. Or rushing to save them by volunteering to gestate. So the sob about 'an innocent life' fails.
  8. No advocating forced blood and organ donations, even though failure to do so results in people dying. So the sob about 'an innocent life' fails.
    Let's face facts. Nobody cares about the mindless zef. They just pretend to, as window dressing for the real agenda.
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sharondiehl
Damn. You're good.
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Ann Morgan
To which I might add, that the same people who insist it's ONLY about 'the innocent life' ALSO oppose gay sex and pre-marital sex. No 'innocent lives' again, especially in gay sex, there is not even the remotest possibility of pregnancy. So the sob fails, yet again.
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Athena1077
you said:
If another, innocent person's life (created by the interested party's own
actions) weren't part of the equation this wouldn't be nearly the
controversy it is. As I said, I agree with you on matters of compulsory
donation. But you are defending the killing of someone based on
convenience and aversion to taking responsibility for one's own actions.
I have a hard enough time believing humanity is worth saving. You
aren't helping.
You are missing the point completely, this is not about responsibility either, does not matter how the woman got pregnant, (rape, consentual), it is IRRELEVENT, we still have the right to refuse to have our bodies used by another. What part of REFUSE TO HAVE OUR BODIES USED do you not understand?
I am defending a woman's right TO REFUSE GESTATION, TO REMOVE AN UNWANTED PREGNANCY. If you cause an accident and because of that another person loses an eye, they cannot make you give up YOUR EYE to that person. If one gets pregnant, by accident or whatever reason, you cannot be compelled to gestate. By the way abortion can be a form of self-defense if gestation is causing adverse problems to ones health or body and or because of rape. Pregnancy is a life threatening condition, so abortion counts as self preservation depending on the situation.
Stop using the word convenience, thier is NOTHING CONVENIENT ABOUT 9 months of gestation. Just so you know this is not about sex or convenience or recreation, it is about bodily rights PERIOD! Just so you know married women have abortions too for various reasons, are they being irresponsible with sex?
stop with the slippery slope , infanticide is not the reason for infanticide, women that commit infanticide are either not well mentally, on drugs, suffering from severe post-partum depression.
Forcing gestation is similar to forcing donating your organ or blood, your body is being used against one's will.
You are wrong, just because someone acts irresponsible does not mean they lose the rights to their body, if that were the case then prisoners could be forced to donate blood and organs during their incarceration yet EVEN THEY RETAIN THEIR BODILY AUTONOMY, so why do women lose thiers because of pregnancy?
By outlawing abortion outright you are saying women lose their rights to their bodies as soon as a sperm fertilizes an egg, they basically become incubators, with less rights than prisoners on death row and dead people, THINK ABOUT THAT FOR A MINUTE.
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charlestonjames
Your selfish notion if rights misses the most essential distinction, one which you intentionally disregard. I see you don't WANT responsibility to apply, but it does anyway. The matter of responsibility changes everything, especially where the law is concerned.
The innocent bystander and the person in need of blood provides the clearest example of this. While the potential donor could help the person in need, the donor still has the legal right to refuse. Tragic? I say yes. Despicable? I say yes. Does that person have a moral obligation to help? Again, I say yes. But, the law doesn't hold this. And why not? Because that person has no legal obligation to a stranger. This would be passive killing in the absence of responsibility. And, thankfully, the donor who refused to help would likely suffer painful social consequences.
On the other hand, if a mother has a child in need of blood, and the mother could help but refuses, and the child dies, that's a entirely different scenario because of only one thing: personal responsibility. Now what many would consider a moral responsibility is also a legal one. This would be passive killing in the presence of responsibility. The mother could be charged, at the very least, with child neglect, possibly manslaughter. These are crimes. And a growing number of people see no reason to act as if the mother's obligation to her child begins only after the child is born.
Once a new life begins, someone has responsibility, and therefore obligation. Like I said before, many pro-lifers are wiling to make an exception in some cases, such as rape. But incompetence (such as the married couple who fail to adequately avoid conception) does not morally relieve them of their obligation.
In years past, your version of the bodily autonomy held much more sway than it does today. The abortion debate in general in swaying toward the right-to-life side because pro-abortion arguments are being seen less as caring and more as callous. And rightly so. In discussions I've witnessed, it is the matter of personal responsibility that seems the most effective in swaying people from your side to mine. Thankfully, many others are not persuaded by your extreme notion of autonomy. A growing number of people see your argument as about defending convenience. No one is saying bringing a pregnancy to full term in convenient (you misconstrue my point there). We are saying killing the child to avoid bringing the pregnancy to full term where (in the vast majority of cases) rape and the mother's health are not a factor looks like a matter of avoiding inconvenience. You are arguing for a right to not be inconvenienced - by killing babies.
Still accusing me of making a slippery slope argument is another example of you intentionally misunderstanding. I am not talking about the possibility of infanticide or senicide, I'm talking about its reality. Infants and the elderly have been killed expressly because of the bodily autonomy argument of the family member who wanted them dead. "I didn't want this, they are a burden to me, so I shouldn't be forced to care for them, I have rights".
You intentionally misrepresent the issue of banning abortion. No, women would not lose the rights to their bodies if KILLING CHILDREN were banned. That is a slippery slope argument, one that thankfully is no longer as persuasive as it used to be. And you lie that women without abortion would have fewer rights than dead people. Last I checked, dead people don't have the right to vote, as one of many, many examples. Absurdities like this are also helping push people away from supporting abortion. So please continue.
You are promoting killing children under the guise of a right to avoid personal inconvenience. You think about it for a minute.
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sharondiehl
You, like other anti-choicers, are poorly educated in reproductive biology. No matter how many times developmental biologists, or embryologists, or other scientists may inform you that embryos are NOT CHILDREN, you persist in your fantasy that every embryo is an adult with three kids of its own already.
“What I’m concerned with is how you develop. I know that you all think about it perpetually that you come from one single cell of a fertilized egg. I don’t want to get involved in religion but that is not a human being. I’ve spoken to these eggs many times and they make it quite clear … they are not a human being.”--Dr. Lewis Wolpert, developmental and evolutionary biologist, author of "Principles of Development" and “Triumph of the Embryo”
“I’m also confident that the freshly fertilized zygote is not human, either. There’s more to being human than bearing a cell with the right collection of genes.”--Dr. Paul Myers, developmental biologist
The claim that the embryo is the moral equivalent of a human person is implicitly rejected by everyone. One important fact about embryonic development that is often overlooked is that between two-thirds and four-fifths of all embryos that are generated through standard sexual reproduction are spontaneously aborted. If embryos have the same status as human persons, this is a horrible tragedy and public health crisis that requires immediate and sustained attention."--Ronald A. Lindsay, Center for Inquiry
When are anti-choicers going to get the fact that there is no difference between an embryo that is naturally shed, or an embryo that a woman chooses to shed.
Anti-choicers have this strange disconnect--you tolerate or ignore that embryo loss in sexual reproduction is immense--you are totally fine with healthy embryos being created and destroyed in attempts to procreate--yet swoon with the vapors that a woman herself can control her destiny and actually choose whether to gestate an embryo or not.
What I see is that anti-choicers demand exalted status for an embryo that a woman does not want, and a ho-hum status to all other embryos. The unscientific claim is that there is a "moral" distinction between those embryos created and lost when a woman wishes to reproduce, and those embryos purposefully discarded because the woman does not wish to reproduce.
This is lunacy.
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Athena1077
Your exception for rape is beyond ludicrous, the rights to our bodies is NOT based on the circumstances of the pregnancy, the rights to our bodies are just that a right to not have our bodies used for the benefit of another without our consent.
You trying to use the responsibility card is just a way to try to enforce pregnancy as a result of sex because deep down pro-lifers have a problem with women enjoying sex without consequences, i see right through the movement. I actually went from being pro-life to pro-choice years ago, because the pro-life movement is all about enforcing pregnancy and childbirth.
Hey where are the pro-lifers demonstrating at fertility clinics where thousands of frozen embryos are being housed, some even get discarded?. The truth is you pro-lifers don't care about embryos, only the ones in women's uteruses, but not because you care about the life, you only care about women being forced to gestate unwanted pregnancies.
I see right through the BS of the pro-life movement, you don't fool me.
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Ann Morgan
. I actually went from being pro-life to pro-choice years ago, because the pro-life movement is all about enforcing pregnancy and childbirth.
Here is some more BS of the pro-life movement. I am against male circumcision. Under no stretch of the imagination is this - which is the removal of normal, healthy body tissue - any sort of valid medical treatment. The usual excuse given for it, is that it 'prevents' certain possible medical conditions. Which is also absurd, on those grounds, you could argue in favor of amputating a child's arms and legs, in order to prevent possible future gangrene.
The way I see it, once a baby is born, a parent has no right to amputate normal, health body tissue, due to religious hangups, or 'preventing future problems'. Once the child turns 18, if they want to amputate their own foreskin, or even their entire penis, well, then more power to them.
Anyway, where the BS comes in, is that the same pro-lifers who insist that the mother can't do what she wants to the fetus when it's INSIDE her, once it pops out and fulfills the real purpose of ripping a hole in her, suddenly take the opposite position and insist that it's the mother's right to amputate normal, healthy tissue off the male infant. But I guess since it's not an all-sacred fetus anymore, and has morphed into a dog turd like all born people, harming and causing the baby pain is actually a plus with them.
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Athena1077
No i am arguing against being legally obligated by the state to GESTATE FOR 9 MONTHS. How many times do i have to repeat that to you? Having an abortion is the ONLY WAY TO TERMINATE A UNWANTED PREGNANCY. Currently there is NO technology to transfer an embryo to another womb , you do understand that right?
Your argument on personal responsibility does not persuade me because it is IRRELEVENT to the discussion of refusing to have our bodies used against our will. You do not understand the concept of individual rights to our bodies, and you go on a tangent about other things unrelated to pregnancy and gestation.
Again their is no right to life that requires somebody else provide it to you via their body (gestation, using your organs, blood), NOT for the born person or the unborn.
You say women have the right to vote, and the dead do not, but the dead have a right to NOT have their bodies desacrated and used, YOU ARE advocating women lose THEIR rights to their bodies by trying to outlaw abortion which is the ONLY WAY that a a woman can terminate an unwanted pregnancy and stop the gestation process, by that you are lowering women's right to that LOWER than a dead person.
Your pleads about morality and responsibility are moot, the United States laws are based on individual rights and bodily autonomy is HIGHER than right to life. If women can lose the rights to their bodies because of pregnancy, than EVERYONE should also be subjected to compulsery blood donation, and organ donation, prisoner's being tortured etc..
The burden is on YOU to make the case WHY women should lose their rights to their bodies because of pregnancy, the law is on my side when it comes to bodily autonomy and you know that.