I think this emotive term has to be misused in this case. Doesn't this term imply an illegal action, which an abortion is not (currently)?
And also, up until now this thread was staying so polite - think we can keep it that way?
In my experience, there is no such thing as a polite abortion debate. Too many people are too hot about their point of view and unable to see, even in a logical way, the other point of view.
Although in this case I was trying to be polite. In fact, I was offering the most logical argument for the pr-life side of this debate because even though I am pro-choice, I understand that it is a legitimate point of view.
And actually, it's more than that. It's the central issue in abortion debates, though one that is often stepped around. When does life begin? If life begins at conception, then abortion is murder in a moral sense. Murder is not just a legal term.
Posts: 2392 | Registered: Sep 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Qaz: Thank you, Katharina. In my ordinary life I am a mild-mannered reporter, but at night I become -- a random sequence of letters!
More to the point, I sometimes teach a class in which there's a component of critical thinking (it's not my usual topic), and on my own I'm exploring something called Nonviolent Communication, which is the art of talking to people on touchy topics without (you hope) pissing them off. We'll see how well it works.
Oh! I want to learn to do that! I actually try, though I am often unsuccessful. Posts: 2392 | Registered: Sep 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Dagonee: And yet, I'm positive that you don't advocate killing (or allowing the parents to choose to kill) those children who do exist.
quote:We could start by asking them "Would you prefer to not exist or to have gone through the foster care system?"
And many would answer that they would prefer not to exist. This is so common that it is a cliche: "I wish to the lord I'd never been born." The teen suicide rate would also speak to that issue.
Posts: 3735 | Registered: Mar 2002
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posted
I actually openly consider myself a hypocrite in a lot of areas. I think people in general are often hypocritical just by virtue of most things worth doing are easier to tell other people to do that to actually do yourself. Since I consider pretty much everyone hypocritical, I don't see it as terribly insulting. I didn't mean to be that offensive to anyone here.
I do see your point, Dag, but outlawing abortion without also taking measures to deal with the consequences is just poorly thought out. And in this case, the consequences are pretty major and can ONLY be dealt with by large numbers of people willingly adopting children.
Not to mention that if your worldview also leads you believe stem cell research is murder, then there are already more "human lives" in America that any number of adopting families could ever take care of.
quote:And many would answer that they would prefer not to exist. This is so common that it is a cliche: "I wish to the lord I'd never been born." The teen suicide rate would also speak to that issue.
I don't know that this is that great a point either, because I'm sure there's just as many who'd rather be alive.
I think Matt's reasoning was a little more all encompassing. And no, I don't think Dagonee's answer to it was particularly satisfying. Matt wasn't criticizing the idea that abortion is wrong, he was criticizing a bad argument trying to explain why it's wrong, when the fact is it really all comes down to what your gut feelings are.
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quote:We could start by asking them "Would you prefer to not exist or to have gone through the foster care system?"
This *feels* like an argument that could also justify saying that everyone should have as many children as possible based on the implied premises that:
a) Their likely preference, once they are capable of expressing it, would almost always be that they exist in the resulting resource-constrained, overpopulated world rather than not exist at all.
and
b) That their hypothetical preference is a (the?) primary determinator of the correctness of the action.
If I may expand on this post, I'd like to add that one of the reasons that this argument doesn't really gel with me is the difficulty in computing the hypothetical.
It was brought up earlier that one of the main reasons for abortion was not being able to afford a child. In other words, some of the people are using abortion as family planning to put off having children until their personal finances improve.
Thus if you ask the hypothetical children that would have been aborted ... using a potentially aborted child as a proxy. You somehow have to weigh that against the probabilities that after being compelled to avoid an abortion the mother either has the child and gives it up for adoption OR has the child anyways while not being able to afford it, but not wanting to give it up anyways.
Then you also have to weigh the opinion of the hypothetical aborted child with the foster child as proxy against the hypothetical child that the mother would have had if she went through with her family planning and had children when she was able to afford it. At this point my mind starts to hurt. (And if you start throwing global hypotheticals as consequences of the family planning, oy)
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quote:I do see your point, Dag, but outlawing abortion without also taking measures to deal with the consequences is just poorly thought out.
Sure. You've yet to demonstrate that this is what large numbers of pro-lifers want to do. You've simply thrown it out there as an accusation.
And in this case, the consequences are pretty major and can ONLY be dealt with by large numbers of people willingly adopting children. [/quote]
And I've yet to see any evidence that the numbers aren't there for people adopting infants that would otherwise have been aborted.
quote:I think Matt's reasoning was a little more all encompassing. And no, I don't think Dagonee's answer to it was particularly satisfying. Matt wasn't criticizing the idea that abortion is wrong, he was criticizing a bad argument trying to explain why it's wrong, when the fact is it really all comes down to what your gut feelings are.
The point is that he was criticizing an argument I didn't make. I therefore didn't attempt to answer his argument, but rather to point out that what he "felt" the argument to be wasn't what it was.
When the existence of 500,000 people in the foster system is posited as a reason to support abortion (or, alternatively, to call those who oppose abortion hypocrites), it becomes relevant to examine what the alternative being examined - abortion instead of adoption of those foster children - actually does.
Any attempt to extract the question I posed from the context of that position (or the related position I mentioned on the previous page) is missing the point I was making. I wasn't saying "the foster children would rather exist, therefore abortion is wrong." I was saying, "the foster children would rather exist, therefore their existence is not an argument in favor of legalized abortion."
quote:And many would answer that they would prefer not to exist. This is so common that it is a cliche: "I wish to the lord I'd never been born." The teen suicide rate would also speak to that issue.
If you're going to take that view, then foster status isn't the distinguishing factor about those children.
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quote:If you're going to take that view, then foster status isn't the distinguishing factor about those children.
It's not a matter of my view. Your statement implies that a person who is capable of speaking for himself would invariably say they would not prefer to have been aborted, but in fact, the opposite sentiment is not uncommon.
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quote:Supporting a position to spend sooo much time and money trying to save a child that hasn't even been born yet, spending so much less time, effort and evangelical clout on the kids who really need a helping hand out there in the world.
You don't know what the hell I spend my time on.
quote:It's like I am in a room full of gods, and my idiot mind can't understand the concept of life as fully as you do I guess,
Wow. He speaks truth despite himself.
****
Thor, how many people could you have helped while you wrote your samurai robot epic? How many meals could your marijuana habit have bought for hungry people? You paint with an ignorant, self-righteous brush.
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Blayne Bradley
unregistered
posted
My stance on the issue is that all women should have the right to control their bodies (BTAOE) and abortion is one of those rights however it shouldn't be casually, it should be done within 1 month of the pregancy being discovered, financial incentives offered to have the baby, or failing that incentives to have it and send it for adoption.
Also abortion wouldn't be the problem it is with proper sex education, if teens and adults had safer sex with contraceptives to prevent pregancy the number of abortions would significantly decrease.
Attack the root problem not the symptom.
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quote: quote:I do see your point, Dag, but outlawing abortion without also taking measures to deal with the consequences is just poorly thought out.
Sure. You've yet to demonstrate that this is what large numbers of pro-lifers want to do. You've simply thrown it out there as an accusation.
The fact that there are many single issue voters who want abortion outlawed at all costs speaks to this.
More telling, however is the history behind the game of catch-up that the Catholic church has been playing since Roe v Wade. It was once considered an unassailable fact that unwed motherhood was immoral. In many cases it was church teaching that made unmarried women feel that they had no choice but to abort, or live with the stigma of unwed motherhood for the rest of their lives. The church has done an about-face on those "fallen women" that deserved to be put in the Magdalena jails for "getting themselves pregnant." Yes, today there are birthright support centers, but only after increased awareness of such hypocrisy made that position untenable.
quote:Um, how does it imply "invariably"?
Your argument seems pretty pointless if you have to make accommodations for exceptions.Posts: 3735 | Registered: Mar 2002
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quote:Your argument seems pretty pointless if you have to make accommodations for exceptions.
I have no idea what your link is supposed to mean.
My argument doesn't rely on their not being exceptions to the general rule that most foster children would prefer to exist than not.
As to your other points, It's not entirely clear what you're getting at, at least as a response to my post.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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Edit -- I am not willing to spend the time editing your posts, and will remove them instead (and have done so now, for those who may end up replying to something no longer there). If things don't change, you will forfeit the chance you have to participate at Hatrack.
quote:Originally posted by Blayne Bradley: wouldn't it be evidence that if someone is willing to abort you then they probably wouldn't make particularily good parents?
No. I have strong, if anecdotal, evidence to the contrary.
Posts: 1810 | Registered: Jan 1999
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posted
Imagine fetal me in 1975. My birthmother was seriously considering aborting me. She was 16 when she got pregnant. Her parents were alcoholics in the process of getting divorced, and the only help or attention she was getting was from her much older boyfriends, like my birthfather, who was 22. She dropped out of high school, got pregnant, and basically didn't get any help or advice, because no one who was around was sober or cared enough to help. Long story short, her boyfriend, not my dad, nearly threw me out of a window because I was crying all the time, and thereby aggravating him tremendously. As a result, she decided she wasn't capable of taking care of me, and gave me up for adoption when I was about 6 months old. After 10 months in foster care, I was adopted by my loving adoptive parents, who could not have children of their own. They love me very much, and I am thankful for how hard they've tried to be good parents.
I would rather that society had had it's act together and helped a 16 year old girl with a baby, rather than basically forcing her to give me up. However, that's not how it went down.
Posts: 3354 | Registered: May 2005
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quote:Imagine fetal me in 1975. My birthmother was seriously considering aborting me. She was 16 when she got pregnant. Her parents were alcoholics in the process of getting divorced, and the only help or attention she was getting was from her much older boyfriends, like my birthfather, who was 22. She dropped out of high school, got pregnant, and basically didn't get any help or advice, because no one who was around was sober or cared enough to help. Long story short, her boyfriend, not my dad, nearly threw me out of a window because I was crying all the time, and thereby aggravating him tremendously. As a result, she decided she wasn't capable of taking care of me, and gave me up for adoption when I was about 6 months old. After 10 months in foster care, I was adopted by my loving adoptive parents, who could not have children of their own. They love me very much, and I am thankful for how hard they've tried to be good parents.
I would rather that society had had it's act together and helped a 16 year old girl with a baby, rather than basically forcing her to give me up. However, that's not how it went down.
I know that for people who actually were adopted, this is a much less hypothetical question, since it would have effected them directly. And I seriously (no sarcasm here) am effected emotionally by Steven's story. But the thing is... that story could simply be replaced with "My mother and father were deciding whether or not they were ready to have a baby... if they had decided to use birth control and or/abstinence, I wouldn't have been born." While I can't cite any specific examples I'm pretty positive there ARE people for whom that is the case. You get the exact same moral issue. Yet would anyone argue that simply not having a child is wrong?
I really do understand the "human life is human life and killing it is murder" argument and I won't argue against it. But while a story like Steven's is touching, the issue it presents is not unique to abortion and doesn't make a good argument.
Posts: 4136 | Registered: Aug 2008
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posted
"I'm so glad that my mom gut drunk at that frat party and had unprotected sex with a random guy she'd never met. If they had been behaving responsibly I might never have been born."
Posts: 3275 | Registered: May 2007
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quote: I was saying, "the foster children would rather exist, therefore their existence is not an argument in favor of legalized abortion."
My point regarding the foster children is not that they prove abortion should be legalized. The point was claiming "abortion is wrong, adoption will solve everything" is poor reasoning and hypocritical. I also specifically stated I was referring only to my own experience. I was never arguing against abortion opponents in general, only against a specific group of people with bad arguments that I happen to have run into a lot.
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quote:The point was claiming "abortion is wrong, adoption will solve everything" is poor reasoning and hypocritical.
Fine. Then "the foster children would rather exist, therefore their existence is not something to be 'solved' by abortion and is not the problem that would be 'solved' by a substitution of adoption for abortion."
quote:While I can't cite any specific examples I'm pretty positive there ARE people for whom that is the case. You get the exact same moral issue.
It's not the same exact moral issue, because you made a charge of hypocrisy against people who did not adopt foster children but oppose abortion and think adoption could solve everything.
Hypocrisy is the espousing of beliefs one does not hold. It is also used informally to refer to acting in a manner inconsistent with one's beliefs. You have leveled this charge against people who believe babies that would otherwise be aborted should be instead be placed for adoption. The problem is that you have failed to account for the entire set of beliefs held by such people and you have applied one stated belief to a similar but different situation.
The adoption advocated by abortion proponents is infant adoption at birth. Their is no shortage of adopters in that situation.
To inject the foster care situation is to change their premise in order to accuse them of hypocrisy.
BTW, a large number of the children in foster care are not eligible for adoption. 2/3 are reunited with their parents. Others, while not reunited, still have parents whose parental rights have not been revoked - prohibiting adoption. There are many stories of people seeking to adopt or permanently foster a child but are not allowed to do so because of the parents' situation. So many of the 500,000 children you posted of to support you charge of hypocrisy could not be 'solved' by an abortion opponent deciding to adopt a child in foster care.
Your attacks on the "bad arguments" rely on incomplete analysis of the arguments and of the actual facts on the ground.
quote:Attack the root problem not the symptom.
I think that applying the basic principles of government as a protector of rights - especially in those unable to protect their own rights - is an attack on the root of the problem. That is, the root of the problem, from my perspective, is the failure to recognize that the fact one exists in a womb is not sufficient reason, in and of itself, to deny one the protection of law.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
Unicorn, I'm gonna have to agree with Dagonee. Your posts aren't making a whole lot of sense and seem more geared towards sensationalism than rational argument.
Dagonee: I'm conceding the argument on my use of the word hypocritical. You're right about that. However, I'd note that you're also reading into my posts to find things I didn't actually say. I haven't actually made any arguments in favor of legalizing abortion because there's really no argument to be made.
You also quoted a line from my response to Steve as if it had something to do with the adoption/foster care argument, when that was specifically responding to Steve's situation, which (while similar) is not the same thing.
Posts: 4136 | Registered: Aug 2008
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quote:However, I'd note that you're also reading into my posts to find things I didn't actually say. I haven't actually made any arguments in favor of legalizing abortion because there's really no argument to be made.
Thank you for clarifying. For the record, this is what I was basing my interpretation of your remarks on:
quote:But it seems absurd to me to treat the two issues as unrelated. The world has finite resources and we can't even properly take care of the children that exist.
I interpreted that to mean that banning abortion would lead to increased strain on our resources. This can be the premise for (1) therefore it should not be banned, or (2) banning abortion creations additional strain on our resources that those wishing to ban it should account for.
My argument was aimed at the idea that banning abortion creates or worsens this problem in a way that creates a moral obligation on those who would oppose it with respect to foster care and adoption.
Other than the mistaken summary I included in trying to explain why the context mattered to the relevance of my initial question, none of my posts rely on an interpretation of your posts as advocating the legalization of abortion.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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quote:Originally posted by King of Men: Gentlemen, may I suggest that "Don't Feed The Trolls" applies?
If the troll wasn't treated with joyous cries of welcome every time he hauled himself out from under his bridge, I might not bother.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
Obviously, I am in favor of keeping abortion legal. And a lot of that does have to do with keeping extra options open for population management. But I realize this isn't a great argument because the people opposing abortion see that as the same thing as going around killing children/adults simply because they're inconvenient. (By contrast, I see a huge difference between the two actions, but nothing I say can change other people's perspective on that).
So yes, you're right to assume certain beliefs on my part, but I try to distinguish between my beliefs and actual arguments I'm willing to stand by. I've made several disclaimers on the past page or so attempting to clarify that.
Posts: 4136 | Registered: Aug 2008
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posted
I may get flamed for admitting this, but I am both Pro-Choice and LDS.
It may seem like the two just couldn't possibly go together. I believe in free will. I believe God gave all of us the gift to make our own choices and to accept the consequences.
If someone wants to have an abortion that is their choice. The person is using their free will. That doesn't mean I think it is right or that I agree with them. I feel bad that the child will not have a chance at life. But the mother (and hopefully father) have the free will to make that decision. God will judge them for their decisions, not me.
Now what I take offense to is having to pay for an abortion because a mother was not being careful or sleeps around. I do not mind one bit helping out in cases of rape or incest. But for a person who got caught up in the moment instead of being responsible has no excuse. If they make a mistake fine, I shouldn't have to pay for it. It should not be covered by government assistance or by health insurance.
Sorry if I sounded preachy. It was the only way to convey my point the way I wanted.
Posts: 45 | Registered: Oct 2008
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quote:Originally posted by blindsay: If someone wants to have an abortion that is their choice. The person is using their free will. That doesn't mean I think it is right or that I agree with them. I feel bad that the child will not have a chance at life. But the mother (and hopefully father) have the free will to make that decision. God will judge them for their decisions, not me.
How far do you want to extend the principle of allowing people to use their free will?
Posts: 1327 | Registered: Aug 2007
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The official church positions is that it discourages abortion for its members. There is no stance on it as a legal issue, and it isn't like the church is afraid to take a stance on legal issues, so I think you're fine.
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
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quote:Originally posted by blindsay: I may get flamed for admitting this, but I am both Pro-Choice and LDS.
So am I. Like kat says, the Church has never taken a position on the legal status of abortion. It seems the Church believes that this is an issue that is best dealt with by changing peoples hearts rather than changing the laws.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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quote: It seems the Church believes that this is an issue that is best dealt with by changing peoples hearts rather than changing the laws.
That's quite a leap to make that conclusion about what the church believes, based on the lack of any position on the matter.
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quote: It seems the Church believes that this is an issue that is best dealt with by changing peoples hearts rather than changing the laws.
That's quite a leap to make that conclusion about what the church believes, based on the lack of any position on the matter.
First, I think you are stretching this beyond my intent. I meant only to imply that the Church believes that it (the Church) can better address the issue by changing peoples hearts rather than pushing for political reform. I did not mean to imply that this was a more far reaching position suggesting the Church held that all organizations and individuals would be more effective taking that approach. I don't think this is much of a leap since the church has in fact chosen moral persuasion rather than political involvement on this issue. At least I hope the Church makes such decisions based on how it believes Church resources will make the most difference.
Also, I wasn't making the leap based solely on the Church silence on the political issue. I wish I could find the reference but there was a general conference talk on this a few years back. It wasn't on abortion specifically, but the question was on why the church didn't take a more active role on a variety of political issues and the answer was given that in most cases the church views its primary mission as changing peoples hearts rather than changing laws.
And I will agree that when the Church feels its mission is to change peoples hearts rather than changing laws, it should not be concluded that the Church opposes changing the laws. It simply implies that the Church thinks its efforts are better invested in other avenues to address social problems.
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