Roe on the Chopping Block

[doubtingthomas]

Those who claim to are trying to manipulate you so they can control women. Don’t let them.

Controlling women? No, I think it is just a matter of personal responsibility. If I get a woman pregnant, I'll be obligated to pay child support for 18 years, unless she decides to have an abortion.

And most women in red states want abortion to be illegal. Let the Supreme Court overturn Roe vs Wade, it will be good politics for Democrats.

[K Graham]

Those who claim to are trying to manipulate you so they can control women. Don’t let them.

Controlling women? No, I think it is just a matter of personal responsibility. If I get a woman pregnant, I'll be obligated to pay child support for 18 years, unless she decides to have an abortion.

And most women in red states want abortion to be illegal. Let the Supreme Court overturn Roe vs Wade, it will be good politics for Democrats.

What these people don't get is that abortions have plummeted dramatically during Democrat administrations because they tend to make access to birth control much easier. But the Right is against treating birth control as healthcare benefit, so they're literally opposed to the #1 thing we know to do to reduce abortions.

And the people who keep envisioning some irresponsible slut who gets pregnant and then waits six months before deciding to have an abortion... these are situations that happen close to never.

[K Graham]

Consider this argument

It’s a false equivalence question meant to put the pro-lifer at a disadvantage. For example, if you had to choose between your wife and your child which one would you choose? Or what about your child and five adult strangers? All sorts of unfair inferences can be made depending on your choice. So, this is a bad faith argument based on a bad analogy. It’s a ‘gotcha’ that doesn’t really address the the fundamental issue - do pro-life people look at fertilized eggs as human beings? They say they do, but I don’t believe it. If we’re literally murdering millions of human beings there’d be a civil war. If atheists decided to cull our country’s population by 20% and just started executing men, women, and children there’d be civil war.

Why? Because for most murdering other human beings is so intolerable they’d take up arms to end that kind of evil. Hell, we did it to end slavery, or a state’s right to keep using chattel slavery.

So, why don’t religious people fight, literally fight, to end the wholesale slaughter of innocent human beings? You’ll hear all sorts of apologetics for their cowardice, but at the end of the day the value they place on in utero human beings versus out of utero human beings is fundamental. One is a legitimate human being worth defending with force, and the other is an abstraction worth defending in court. That ought to tell anyone thinking about abortion and its morality, or lack thereof, a fairly clear idea where it falls on the scales of justice. It’s a farce.

- Doc

The false equivalence is that frozen embryos = human beings. I read a rebuttal to this argument over at The Federalist and I was laughing at the way this guy was literally defending their position by making the same exact arguments the pro-choice crowd makes. For instance, he said you cannot compare an embryo to a living breathing child for which someone has an emotional attachment to. Also, the child can feel pain. LOL. No crap, which is why the child and the embryo are very, very different.

"The reasons for saving the child are numerous and obvious. A five-year-old can feel pain, for instance—tremendous amounts of it—and viable embryos, even 1,000 embryos, cannot."

"There is also a great deal of emotional difference between the death of a five-year-old and the death of an embryo: the five-year-old has likely formed many relationships with many people who have come to know, love, cherish and treasure him, and he them in return. There may be many people—even a few thousand!—who feel profound and special attachment to their viable embryos, and would feel great loss at their perishing. But the loss associated with embryos is not emotionally or mentally comparable to the loss of a five-year-old, just as the disappointment one feels in the event of a three-month miscarriage is not comparable to the loss one feels at a nine-month stillborn baby."

"A more complex but still valid reason for saving the five-year-old is that he has a better chance of living out his natural life than many of the embryonic humans do: the rates of successful pregnancy from in vitro fertilization are very low. Moreover, perhaps upwards of 50 percent of pregnancies end in miscarriages. There is a greater likelihood that the child will live than will many if not all of the embryos."

Well that's the whole point isn't it? The scenario wasn't about a choice between two different types of human beings, it was the choice of 1) saving one or 2) saving many. In the mind of the anti-Abortioinist, both are equally human beings only when it becomes a political wedge for them to use, but in reality they know the two are very different which I believe was the entire point of the scenario above.

Obviously we would save the one (child) over the many (embryos) for the very reasons provided by the pro-choice side.

[Res Ipsa]

Consider this argument

It’s a false equivalence question meant to put the pro-lifer at a disadvantage. For example, if you had to choose between your wife and your child which one would you choose? Or what about your child and five adult strangers? All sorts of unfair inferences can be made depending on your choice. So, this is a bad faith argument based on a bad analogy. It’s a ‘gotcha’ that doesn’t really address the the fundamental issue - do pro-life people look at fertilized eggs as human beings? They say they do, but I don’t believe it. If we’re literally murdering millions of human beings there’d be a civil war. If atheists decided to cull our country’s population by 20% and just started executing men, women, and children there’d be civil war.

Why? Because for most murdering other human beings is so intolerable they’d take up arms to end that kind of evil. Hell, we did it to end slavery, or a state’s right to keep using chattel slavery.

So, why don’t religious people fight, literally fight, to end the wholesale slaughter of innocent human beings? You’ll hear all sorts of apologetics for their cowardice, but at the end of the day the value they place on in utero human beings versus out of utero human beings is fundamental. One is a legitimate human being worth defending with force, and the other is an abstraction worth defending in court. That ought to tell anyone thinking about abortion and its morality, or lack thereof, a fairly clear idea where it falls on the scales of justice. It’s a farce.

- Doc

I'm not following why you think Kevin's example is false equivalence and a bad faith argument. I see it as a pretty classic Trolley car problem. in my opinion, establishing that there are valid reasons to distinguish between an embryo and and child gives folks some common ground to start a discussion. It does exactly the same thing as your argument –– demonstrates that even staunch pro-lifers do not see embryos and babies as the same thing.

Some religious folks do take up arms against that kind of evil.

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

I'm not following why you think Kevin's example is false equivalence

I don’t believe that.

… and a bad faith argument.

And I don’t believe that, either.

I see it as a pretty classic Trolley car problem. in my opinion, establishing that there are valid reasons to distinguish between an embryo and and child gives folks some common ground to start a discussion. It does exactly the same thing as your argument –– demonstrates that even staunch pro-lifers do not see embryos and babies as the same thing.

Some religious folks do take up arms against that kind of evil.

The trolley car dilemma is just a logic problem, but it isn’t an argument meant to establish a moral absolute. First, given the dilemma presented above, it requires my participation and then subordination to the parameters within it. And if I agree to its premise, am I obligated to its forgone conclusion(s)? It’s a lose/lose for the person engaging in the problem:

A) You’re a monster who doesn’t value birthed children by sacrificing them to fertilized eggs or embryos.

B) You’re a hypocrite because you undermine your own ethics by choosing a birthed child over a 1,000 unbirthed children or embryos or babies or future humans (whatever you need to call them to present your ethics in the best possible light).

eta: Arguments or dilemmas like the one above do a remarkably bad job of addressing the moral conditions of in which the subject finds themselves, it’s simply a rubric designed to elicit a desired result which is either to become philosophically aligned with the giver of the scenario, or to shame the receiver if compliance isn’t achieved.

- Doc

[doubtingthomas]

Here is what the Christians believe

Though we don’t find the word abortion mentioned in any biblical text, we can deduce from Scripture, not to mention natural law, reason, Church teaching, and patristic witness that abortion is intrinsically evil....The truth that these verses tell is that life begins at conception

https://www.catholic.com/qa/where-in-th ... n-is-wrong

But God’s Word provides clarity. Scripture says that all human beings are made in God’s image (Genesis 1:27) and that the unborn are fearfully and wonderfully made (Psalm 139:14), known by God from before their conception (Jeremiah 1:5). The Bible makes no distinction between unborn human life and human life that has passed through the birth canal

https://answersingenesis.org/sanctity-o ... ife-begin/

[canpakes]

eta: Arguments or dilemmas like the one above do a remarkably bad job of addressing the moral conditions of in which the subject finds themselves, it’s simply a rubric designed to elicit a desired result which is either to become philosophically aligned with the giver of the scenario, or to shame the receiver if compliance isn’t achieved.

I wonder how different this becomes if the argument isn’t presented as a choice to another, but as a foregone conclusion of what the other would do. e.g.:

“I’d wager that if you were in a burning building, and had only enough time to bust the lock on one of two doors to save either a child, or a tube of viable embryos, that you’d chose the child, because you’d recognize that there’s a critical difference between the two.”

It’s perhaps rudely assumptive of the presenter, but does it assign shame to the presentee in quite the same way, if at all?

[Father Francis]

Here is what the Christians believe

Though we don’t find the word abortion mentioned in any biblical text, we can deduce from Scripture, not to mention natural law, reason, Church teaching, and patristic witness that abortion is intrinsically evil....The truth that these verses tell is that life begins at conception

https://www.catholic.com/qa/where-in-th ... n-is-wrong

But God’s Word provides clarity. Scripture says that all human beings are made in God’s image (Genesis 1:27) and that the unborn are fearfully and wonderfully made (Psalm 139:14), known by God from before their conception (Jeremiah 1:5). The Bible makes no distinction between unborn human life and human life that has passed through the birth canal

https://answersingenesis.org/sanctity-o ... ife-begin/

You left out Numbers 5:19-22 (KJV version)

"And the priest shall charge her by an oath, and say unto the woman, If no man have lain with thee, and if thou hast not gone aside to uncleanness with another instead of thy husband, be thou free from this bitter water that causeth the curse. But if thou hast gone aside to another instead of thy husband, and if thou be defiled, and some man have lain with thee beside thine husband. Then the priest shall charge the woman with an oath of cursing, and the priest shall say unto the woman, The LORD make thee a curse and an oath among thy people, when the LORD doth make thy thigh to rot, and thy belly to swell. And this water that causeth the curse shall go into thy bowels, to make thy belly to swell, and thy thigh to rot: And the woman shall say, Amen, amen...."

God demands that impure women get abortions and that his priests should administer it.

Not to mention the times God orders the death of infants and even cutting pregnant women open to kill their babies...

[Atlanticmike]

Controlling women? No, I think it is just a matter of personal responsibility. If I get a woman pregnant, I'll be obligated to pay child support for 18 years, unless she decides to have an abortion.

And most women in red states want abortion to be illegal. Let the Supreme Court overturn Roe vs Wade, it will be good politics for Democrats.

What these people don't get is that abortions have plummeted dramatically during Democrat administrations because they tend to make access to birth control much easier. But the Right is against treating birth control as healthcare benefit, so they're literally opposed to the #1 thing we know to do to reduce abortions.

And the people who keep envisioning some irresponsible slut who gets pregnant and then waits six months before deciding to have an abortion... these are situations that happen close to never.

Do you live in an alternate universe most the time, K Graham? Do you actually believe condums are pulled from the shelves during a Republican Administration? Were men not allowed to "pull out" during sex when Trump was in the White House? Can abstinence not be practiced during a republican Administration? Are you tellin me doctors aren't prescribing birth control pills during a republican Administration?

[Atlanticmike]

If this happens, the political backlash will be fierce. This is the one thing I could see upending GOP chances of taking control of anything in the midterms. People will go nuts.

To all new readers. Throughout this thread you're going to be reading post written by mostly white men. White men who support aborting babies of color. Which means they agree with Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood who said this about black people ,""we do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.""

Here's a video https://youtu.be/gGd_lrj06kM of a lady who's mom had an appointment with an abortion clinic already set up and thankfully was talked out of having an abortion by the Janitor, not the DOCTOR, the janitor.

New readers, as you read the post by mostly white men in this thread, remember, black babies are aborted five times that of white babies and 80% of Planned Parenthood facilities are within walking distance for people of color and 60% are in minority zip codes.