|
|
Post by remedios on Apr 20, 2004 18:43:35 GMT -5
No, women have only two choices: be a nun or run the very real risk of forfeiting our futures to the state's so-called interest in life, which, by the way, I argue exists only when it's in the interest of the state. If "life" is inconvenient or presents a conflict of interest to the state, then the state has little or no compunction with killing.
No, we knowingly kill innocent human life, ALL THE TIME, for mere ideas, like liberty and democracy, and do so as though there is no question about the morality of it.
|
|
|
|
Post by remedios on Apr 20, 2004 19:19:18 GMT -5
Oh, and incidentally, it is without question the case that 8 week old fetuses have no more sentience than any other animal which has neither long-term memory, the ability to feel pain, or language. There is evidence that fetuses can feel pain after 18 weeks. Before 18 weeks (when >90% of abortions are performed), one's position on abortion simply comes down to whether one thinks human life is more valuable (in any form) than the autonomy of the woman who's carrying it, simply because it is a member of the species H.sapiens and has 46 chromosomes.
It is my opinion that if human life is THAT important, such that an 2 day/1 week/8 week old unborn human is more important than the liberty and autonomy of the woman carrying it, then A LOT of things about the way this world works need to change . . . before abortion is criminalized, or at least at the same time. After all, it's all about fairness and justice, right? And fairness requires that the same rule/standard apply to everyone.
|
|
|
|
Post by PYFAFYKI on Apr 22, 2004 19:53:08 GMT -5
No, women have only two choices: be a nun or run the very real risk of forfeiting our futures to the state's so-called interest in life How much easier things were back before such simple abortions and other birth controls were possible. The couple could either have sex and have children, or not have sex and not have children. (And those who decided not to have children were rarely nuns  ) With these new choices and options, women as well as men, are more empowered. We have power over life. No, we knowingly kill innocent human life, ALL THE TIME, for mere ideas, like liberty and democracy, and do so as though there is no question about the morality of it. Yes, our society does, but do you? Are you part of the problem or part of the solution? An example I am sure you are trying to make is the war in Iraq. Are we fighting for oil? Are we fighting for another free democratic nation in the Middle East? Maybe. Do I agree with fighting for those things alone? No. How many people have been slaughtered under Saddam Hussein's rule? Look up some numbers you may be shocked. A LOT of things about the way this world works need to change . . . before abortion is criminalized, or at least at the same time. Watch out, that first step is a doosy. The first step may be hard, but who is going to make it? If not you, then who? I'll step up to the plate, will you follow then? |
|
|
|
Post by remedios on Apr 23, 2004 19:40:29 GMT -5
Once someone develops a method of birth-control that is 100% effective, then everyone will be both empowered, AND able to enjoy sex separate from its child producing function. Why be nostalgic for a time that is lost when one can look forward to a better future? Unless, of course, you think sex unhinged from its child producing function a bad thing. I've made my argument EXACTLY how it should be read. I personally, as an atheist, have no problem with aborting a baby. That is personal, with a capital "P," as in, when I apply all of my heart and all of my mind to seeking an ethic with regard to the practice of abortion, I conclude that one can either value life as pro-lifers insist they do, or not. That's where it ends for me: in a choice. My argument is not for one perspective of life over another, but for a fair application of the rule. It is my opinion that most pro-lifers have ZERO interest in a fair application of the rule, and that their so-called "respect for life," is nothing but a hatred of the fact that women CAN chose not to be mothers, or that women would want to do so in the first place. The only response I can reasonably have to such hatred is to hold those who promulgate it to the standard which they intend to force on everyone else: that human beings have an inviolate "right to life," from conception to natural death, the deprivation of which shall be called "MURDER." So we're no longer talking about an inviolate right to life, then. We're talking about justifications for taking innocent human life . . . the justification being?? The only death we had a justification for causing was that of Saddam and his henchmen. If we could not eliminate him without killing innocent human beings, we should have exhausted ALL other measures and then sat on it. INVIOLATE has a meaning, you know. Let's make it simple by doing it simultaneously.  |
|
|
|
Post by remedios on Apr 24, 2004 18:27:29 GMT -5
Incidentally, I was not thinking along partisan lines when indicting our culture of death. The Clinton administration decided not to intervene in Uganda, despite admitting that we could have saved half of the 800,000 people who were killed in the conflict, including plenty of indisputably innocent children. Iraq and Uganda are merely two examples in an endless list.
While my intent when arguing for a fair application of the "right to life' standard is to expose the hypocrisy and deceit of many pro-lifers, it does not escape my notice that the world would be a far better place if everyone were, in fact, sincerely interested in protecting ALL innocent life. How wonderous a place this world would be if pro-lifers were universally and unequivocally pro-life in the way pro-lifers claim to be.
For example, if we all adopted the new standard of a "right to life," for every innocent human being, we'd all be more than willing to contribute to helping the starving people and war-torn nations of the world. In fact, the world community would be ultimately responsible for the life of every child conceived. There would be no rationalizing for why we can't help others to live. All people of good conscience would denounce war for the barbaric practice that it is. All ideologies that engender or encourage self-interest would fall into disrepute . . .
Another effect of a universally accepted "right to life," for innocent people would be that capital punishment would become exceptionally rare. After all, with our new standard, whether the life you're killing is "innocent" or not becomes of paramount importance, so much so that, with all but those most certainly guilty, we would deem it better to put someone in jail rather than risk killing an innocent person.
Need I continue?
|
|
|
|
Post by MO on Apr 25, 2004 12:17:45 GMT -5
Your perfect little world will never exist. It would be better with better women and better morthers. Ones that don't use war in the world as an excuse to kill their own children. blackgenocide.org/photos.html |
|
|
|
Post by remedios on Apr 26, 2004 20:31:52 GMT -5
Moderator edit- Try again without personal insults. |
|
|
|
Post by remedios on Apr 27, 2004 8:13:36 GMT -5
LOL No personal name calling on the board! |
|
|
|
Post by remedios on Apr 28, 2004 5:26:54 GMT -5
Censored for content up for debate,
Here it is again:
Are you saying that we should just give up on protecting innocent human life? That protecting innocent human life is something that is best left to the naive and idealistic? Gee, didn't see that coming. Called your bluff, just as I knew I would.
That's right, the perfect world I described will never exist, and I'll be damned if someone else is going to tell me I have to bring children into this one unless I'm damned good and ready to do so. After all, apparently, I'm going to be one of a only a handful of people looking out for them. Not enough, in my opinion, not with people like you advocating that we should all just forget about trying to preserve ALL innocent human life, and instead adopt an us v. them tribal mentality, or that the innocent human life that you so vigorously claim to value while it's in the womb necessarily has to be fodder for war games once it's outside my body.
Pro-life? PUH-LEEZ. Not quite.
And you actually think the best way to accomplish this is to force women to have children when they don't want to? Because as soon as that baby comes, they'd soften and get all warm and fuzzy, right?
Did it ever occur to you that not all women go goo-goo over babies, that some of us would find the first 6 or so years of our children's lives the most stultifying experience possible, that what you'd end up with, in fact, would be a bunch of anxious, depressed mothers who resent their children?
How do you think the pro-choice movement got started in the first place?
And if you refuse to post this version of my reply, both you and I will know that you have crossed over the line from forum moderator to fascist authoritarian.
Have it your way. Stifle debate if you'd like. It's your website.
|
|
|
|
Post by MO on Apr 28, 2004 8:10:21 GMT -5
Now that's better. Name calling is not part "debate."
Yes, it is abundantly clear that some women have no maternal instinct. I still don't think they should get a free pass on murder, no matter how much they try to justify it with other people's bloody deeds. There is adoption.
|
|
|
|
Post by scummybear on Apr 28, 2004 8:10:59 GMT -5
Wow. If you dislike kids that much, then don't facilitate the possibility of having one.
|
|
|
|
Post by remedios on Apr 28, 2004 8:27:43 GMT -5
Care to respond to the substance of my argument? If you believe in the inviolate right to life for innocent human beings, there is always diplomacy, coerced philanthropy, and socialism.
After, and only after you've done that, why don't you explain exactly what maternal instinct is? I have plenty of maternal qualities, I simply don't want to have to "mother" a child. I mother my friends, my coworkers, etc., i.e. people who are perfectly capable of taking care of themselves and so actually have the means of perception to appreciate my efforts.
I like kids just fine. I just don't intend to spend the next five years stuck at home with someone who doesn't speak English very well, much less comprehend any ideas that are of interest to me, then spend the next ten years after that taking care of what will ultimately grow up to be an obnoxious, sullen, uncommunicative teenager who will then proceed to move out. Mission accomplished? Reproduction. I'm not so egotistical as to believe that my particular influence as a parent is extra special, or that any children I could raise would be any better than anyone else. What's rewarding about accomplishing something that monkeys routinely do, i.e. replace their number?
All that said, the Supreme Court has ruled that the government cannot tell me whether or not I can have sex. Period. Until they make sterilization widely available to those who want it, your argument is moot. I have a fundamental right to control my person. While I can understand your moral position on abortion, you have to concede that making abortion illegal and refusing to sterilize those who do not want children is obtuse.
|
|
|
|
Post by MO on Apr 29, 2004 0:54:10 GMT -5
I never claimed that killing is always wrong. I do think murder is always wrong. There is a huge difference.
Your scenario is akin to saying that if it is wrong to kill your six year old than it is wrong to kill a twenty six year old breaking in your home and trying to rape/kill you.
You have the right to sterilization. You do not have the right to demand that other people pay for it. With adult activity should come adult responsibility for one's own actions.
|
|
|
|
Post by remedios on Apr 30, 2004 9:22:19 GMT -5
The only thing that distinguishes murder from other forms of homicide (killing) is justification or excuse. We've already been over this. If innocents have an inviolate right to life, then there is no excuse or justification for killing them. Unless you want to argue a justification for non self-defensive war, which the vast majority of the world's conflicts have been. Except that Iraqi kid I saw with his head blasted all to hell didn't do anything to us. Saddam did. No, apparently, I do not. I have money in hand and have asked around. I keep getting responses that indicate the physicians giving them think my brain impaired - despite the fact that I've never, not even when I was 7 (before I became a feminist) imagined my future with children in it. The refusal to allow young women of childbearing age to undergo voluntary sterilization is a result of people believing that all people should reproduce, which is about the stupidest thing I've ever heard. I'd be paying for my sterilization with my own money, thanks. Sexual activity between two adults who love each other should not be used as a justification to punish the woman with a child she does not want and is not prepared for. Your puritan streak is showing through. |
|
xana
Beagle
Posts: 6
|
Post by xana on May 6, 2004 14:22:44 GMT -5
No, women have only two choices: be a nun or run the very real risk of forfeiting our futures to the state's so-called interest in life, which, by the way, I argue exists only when it's in the interest of the state. If "life" is inconvenient or presents a conflict of interest to the state, then the state has little or no compunction with killing. Remedios, I hope you know we're on the same page and that my questions were rhetorical. I guess my only qualm with your line of argument is that I personally feel it is questionable to consider abortion an amoral action. I don't believe that it presents no challenge to our moral senses. But I do believe that it is not a crime and that as a moral decision it does rightly belong to the woman as opposed to the state or the unborn child. To me this is a special category of human choice and action where morality, though intensely present, does not provide the perfect hierarchy to determine the "right thing to do." (As opposed to the death penalty for which I think we can rely on the golden rule period.) How much easier things were back before such simple abortions and other birth controls were possible. The couple could either have sex and have children, or not have sex and not have children. (And those who decided not to have children were rarely nuns ) With these new choices and options, women as well as men, are more empowered. We have power over life. As much crap as Remedios gets about envisioning a perfect future, that is much less harmful than reenvisioning the past. Our historical senses must be highly tuned in such a debate. Babies have always died. I have said it. This is my main stance on abortion. Whether it has always been wrong or always been permissable or has been a right of the state, of a woman, or only of God, I am not here to say. But babies have died throughout history. From neglect, from killings, from accident, from environmental harshness. We have not yet entered the world where things are at their simplest, where birth control is 100% reliable etc, but in fact the abortion might be a far "simpler" thing than what has happened in the past. It used to be considered unearthly and demonic for twins to be born and infanticide was prevalent in such cases. Now we know twins are not abnormal in any way. In some ways we have been refining infanticide, I think in the direction of eventually eliminating it, but we certainly won't get there if we can't visualize the big picture. I think we're just in a very strange place right now, caught in between. Once someone develops a method of birth-control that is 100% effective, then everyone will be both empowered, AND able to enjoy sex separate from its child producing function. Why be nostalgic for a time that is lost when one can look forward to a better future? Besides, this simplicity:morality ratio is whack. Our progression as a species, will always be opening new moral cans of worms, and we won't be able to rely on the same set of rules. This debate we have going here is almost obsolete already, don't you have a sense of that too? Can't you imagine a time when this is all so antiquated? I think we can all, on both sides of this issue, try to stretch ourselves more. Refine what it is that makes up morality to us. Consider what ifs like Remedios more than what is. What I mean for example is, can you relate to the human being who would have killed twins? I can. The idea of no twins existing and then such a thing appears, it could seem very frightening. I think that abortion should be legal but can easily relate to the idea that it is wrong. I bring this up not to reinforce my stance on abortion but to suggest a way to stretch your mind. What is morality if it can change? And is there an end to this argument, guys, that is anywhere in the middle of our opposing sides or isn't there? |
|
) With these new choices and options, women as well as men, are more empowered. We have power over life.
