In other words, getting an abortion can be a nightmare.
I have no doubt. People don't wake up and say "I think I'll have an abortion today! Yay!"
... people are often poor and scared, and they don't want to be on the front page of the newspaper fighting for their rights, nor do they have the resources anyway.
Women's Suffrage, Black Suffrage, Gay Rights, Abortion Rights, Handicapped Rights, and on and on and on...
Rights have to be fought for, sometimes re-fought for, bled for, cried for, begged for..... That's part of what makes them worth having.
Are you arguing that this case is special, more special than the above cases? or that you are tired of fighting for your rights? or just commenting on the wastefulness of having to fight for each.and.every.right.in.the.experience.of.life?
Now in addition to all of this, you want me to slam a ticking clock in front of them, set completely artificially?
Well, first, the connotation of 'slam a ticking clock' is portraying the situation in a false light. 6+ months to figure out a way to get transportation to the next state over. Phew, such a difficult task in this day and age. Not buying it, not by a long shot.
Second, 'set completely artificially' is....wait for it....your opinion. It is set, in actual fact, upon viability of the fetus. It is set AT that point because, at that point it can live outside the mother with minimal lifesupport. That makes it a human being. That means it has rights, including "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness". And that's a great segway into the next part.....
What kind of an argument is this? The "humanity of the issue"? A late term fetus is human,
It's like me asking you if you have stopped beating your wife yet. It's a loaded question. The question presupposes a whole host of information that is not yet in evidence.
Have you? And it's not a loaded question at all (the humanity question) and it presupposed nothing. It's a viable fetus. Therefore it is human and has human rights. It's quite simple.
"The question presupposes a whole host of information that is not yet in evidence" sounds like Afadly trying to refute evolution. You haven't GIVEN the 'presupposed evidence', at least, not any that even remotely justifies removing someone's human rights and terminating their life. The fact of the matter is that you WANT abortion to be legal in ALL cases, on demand, and your desire for this to be true has clouded your judgement and logic.
IF a fetus is human, then it's rights cannot be abridged for anothers convenience. IF it isn't human, we can do anything we want. That should probably be your avenue of attack. However.....
Simply repeating the question ad nauseum does not constitute an argument either, Cyberia.
.... you don't WANT to address this issue, because you know that the "non-human" argument is quite weak (for a viable fetus) and it is about as appealing as Mein Kampf. (reference intentional)
So, you just complain that I'm forcing you to make an uncomfortable comparison. I repeated it 3 times, and bolded/underlined it. It's the crux of the argument. It's important. Rather that address it, you tried to deflect it. Beat it and you've got your case won. I suspect you know that, and that's why it was deflected.
Abortion is an artificially narrow question. It presupposes a whole lot of other important and relevant information, the kind of information I have presented so far in this thread.
You have presented NO information that trumps the "non-human" argument. Your apathy for the fetus, does not an argument make.
As human beings, we are capable of recognizing invalid questions and when you attempt to narrow this issue down to abortion or no abortions, you are making the question invalid.
/ignore
I don't feel any need to address the matter of abortions while consciously avoiding the other parts of the matter.
At least you admit that you are consciously ignoring the (viable) fetus. This is why you deflected the above comment. your answer is "I don't care". Obviously, we as a nation, should base national public policy on what you care about. My answer is "I don't care about what you don't care about".
Or we could try to have a reasonable discussion about the merits of the points and a frank exchange of views, even if we don't agree.
If you kill somebody, we understand that there may be conditions that justify killing. Things like self-defense. Self-defense IS relevant.
Strawman, and irrelevant. It's legal to save the mother's life, even in late term, and should be. If there is some specific case where the hospital refused to perform one, and the mother died, then we would be in agreement that people should be put into prison for it...in which case there is no argument. Self-defense is indeed relevant but not applicable in most pregnancies.
It may possibly have been an attempt to paint me as some ULTRA-conservative wanting to ban abortion in ALL cases. If that's the case, it stupid, because I have declared my position from the get-go and it's decidedly not true. It's like McCain saying "Obama will raise your taxes!" after Obama just said he'd lower them.
The only options are: kill a human, or partially reduce another humans rights for two months. That's it. I didn't create the system, but NOT killing a human is the lesser of the two evils.
Not at all. There are LOTS of other options. Only because you refuse to acknowledge the reality that abortion does not exist in a vacuum do you find yourself trapped.
Oh really? There's LOTS of options beyond "Have the abortion" or "Not"? What? Abort the left arm only? The toes and left leg, but not the rest? The ONLY thing we are debating is weather a late-term viable fetus can be legally or morally aborted. I'm not trappped in the slightest. I'm not even penned in. Not killing a human is usually the lesser of the two evils. There, I explicitly added 'usually'. Given that I have stated my support for Roe vs. Wade, I assumed you would not try to interpret things in a hyper-literal manner as Velkyn does.
I think both of you are confused as to your proper avenue of attack. You aren't used to debating an atheist who opposes late-term abortion on human-rights grounds. It confuses you and so your shots go astray.
I also love the appeal to protecting life. At 6 billion people on the face of the earth, I defy you to present anything other than emotional appeal for why human life should be considered valuable. Basic economics indicates that as supply goes up, value goes down.
See? You are actually trying to use economics to define the value of a human life? Well, lets see. If that's the case, then wealthy people actually ARE more valuable than poor people due to the fact that they control more resources. In which case, your argument addressing the economic difficulty of obtaining abortions fails. Rich people will get their abortions, poor people won't. But poor people SHOULDN'T (or at least there is a huge apathy factor) because they aren't as valuable human beings.
Don't use economics to define the value of human life. The rich always win. Unless, you ARE rich, in which case you'd be arguing for your own interest. If that's the case, just say so.
It also makes you look like Stalin.
You don't care to even look at the larger issues. You insist that I educate you. Are you a grownup? Educate yourself. Why wait? Oh, that's right, because you don't really care.
Sigh. Roe vs Wade is set. If you want to change it, present your evidence (of which you presented some). I asked that you educate me. I am comfortable with the current situation, excluding some unreasonable restrictions in some states.
The larger issue is that RvW declared viable fetuses to be human, and thus have human rights, including the right to life. That's the basis of the ban on late-term abortions. Oh wait, you don't really care.
Ethnic? What the hell are you talking about? Okay, tell the truth. Are you getting your arguments from a pamphlet? Ethnic cleansing? Good gravy. I feel like I'm talking to Polly the Parrot. That's why I said earlier that your view was absurdly one-dimensional. You can't extricate your arguments from the meaningless buzzwords that other people have whispered into your ear.
Maybe 'ethnic' was the wrong word, but it's functionally equivalent. Targeting and killing one group of people to satisfy another. It's not ethnically based, but that doesn't make it ok. If it's a viable human, you can't kill it, except in self-defense.
Are you from Mars? Parents ARE legally responsible for their children until the age of 18. Period. Parents are sent to prison for child-abuse, incest and, yes, neglect. Where are you getting the idea that they have NO legal obligations to their children? The only possible escape you have here is in the enforcement of these laws, which is a complete travesty, as is DCFS in practically every state. No argument there, but that needs to be tackled where it's broken. Call to bear whatever force is necessary, but don't break the rest of the system because another part is grossly malfunctioning. Fix what's broken.
I was referencing the obligation of the minor's parents to their grandchild.
Utterly irrelevant. WTF? Arguing that the legally responsible parents of a girl should NOT be notified about a serious medical procedure being performed on their daughter because.....the (grand)parents have no legal obligation to the (grand)child???
Are you stoned??
They have to be notified because the procedure is being performed ON THEIR DAUGHTER, for whom they ARE legally responsible. This is another "We want it to be the case so bad that we cannot present a good argument". I'll borrow a phrase from you book. "I don't care"
You're right that parents shouldn't be able to override the girls decision, but they should know.
Why? Why should they know? Why do they need to know beforehand?
Because parents are in the best position to guide and counsel her. To prevent the "I'm too embarrassed to tell mommy and daddy" scenario. They are going to find out anyway, you might as well tell them and get it over with face to face. Maybe she doesn't actually want the abortion, but can't imagine how she would support the baby. It's scarry, and a child doesn't really understand the options available. That's why minors can't vote, buy a gun, get married, etc...
I agree with that goal, and support it entirely.
No, you don't. You support it conditionally. You support it when it doesn't conflict with other goals you support more, goals that often DO conflict with it.
Shrugs. Ok. I'm ok with that. The cornerstone being that you don't kill other human-beings. So yea, that's fine.
Given that there are a zillion-and-one methods of preventative birth-control, including free condoms, free birth-control pills and even legal early-term abortion, I reject the concept of late-term abortion as birth-control.
This is fantasy and it proves that I was right to consider your previous statement a lie.
Really? Those methods DON'T exist in reality? I was always told they do, I though I've even used some of them. Thank you for revealing the truth.
You don't reject infanticide either. I hope you realize what a slippery-slope you are on. Next you'll be advocating killing the handicapped, because they place a "burden" on society.
It doesn't bother me. I think there are better things for the justice system to be doing. I think there are other things more critically in the interest of the state that are not being done. I think that medical resources could be better spent. This isn't fantasy baseball, Cyberia. You cannot simply judge a problem in a vacuum. It must be compared to other problems, and in light of available resources. I think criminal prosecution of infanticide scores below the place where I personally would like to see my tax rate, and I think that it falls below what my fellow citizens are willing to pay as their tax rate.
Say hi to
der Führer. The position you advocate leads directly to Hitler's policies. Exterminate the unwanted. I advocate that all human life has rights and should be protected. It does cause resource and other problems. However those problems are dealt with, never break rule #1.
