Abortion is obviously murder.

Autumnleaf said:

Exactly. A convenience is a reason to do something. Some reasons are more palatable than others, but anything that makes us do something is more convenient than to not do it.

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This understanding thing. You're not so good at it.

morningstar2651 said:

Indeed, it was convenient to abort my girlfriend's ectopic pregnancy.

Exploded fallopian tubes are pretty inconvenient...and a tad fatal, too.

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Autumnleaf said:

Exactly. A convenience is a reason to do something. Some reasons are more palatable than others, but anything that makes us do something is more convenient than to not do it.

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So Autumnleaf, your saying that you would rather have the mother die if the pregnancy was life threatening? Because that is what it looks like your saying.

Autumnleaf said:

No, I'm saying anyone who says in this day and age that you have to choose between the mother's life and the babys is arguing for legal abortion because this scenario simple doesn't happen in real life anymore.

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Don't be silly, of course it does. It just doesn't happen as often as it once did. Some women still do, and probably always will, have pregnancies that threaten their lives. Sometimes a woman's blood pressure goes all out of whack when she gets pregnant, sometimes she gets very anemic, sometimes she has some other health problem that makes carrying a pregnancy to term impossible, sometimes a zygote implants in the fallopian tube (ectopic pregnancy) which is not viable and is life-threatening in almost every case, etc. Many things happen in "this day and age" during pregnancy that threaten the lives of mothers-to-be. If something like that happens, a woman has to make the choice - my life or the child's? Sometimes you just can't have both. That said, I'm infinitely glad you're not my doctor.

Autumnleaf said:

No, I'm saying anyone who says in this day and age that you have to choose between the mother's life and the babys is arguing for legal abortion because this scenario simple doesn't happen in real life anymore.

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Are you kidding me? Did you even read up on ectopic pregnancy?

If you did you would clearly know that it still does happen. Take down your reality filter and look up a few things.

Autumnleaf said:

No, I'm saying anyone who says in this day and age that you have to choose between the mother's life and the babys is arguing for legal abortion because this scenario simple doesn't happen in real life anymore.

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You are shockingly ignorant about women, pregnancy and birth, even in your own country. Your lack of knowledge regarding the risks surrounding pregnancy, particularly in third world countries, makes your presuming to argue about women's reproductive rights an outrageous assumption.

Having a baby is a dangerous business.

Arguably it is always life-threatening. There can always be complications with pregnancy or birth; there can always be medical malpractice. And even when death isn't very likely, severe pain is virtually inevitable.

I don't think that when people claim that "abortion is murder" they are looking at it in a legal sense. We all have our own interpretations of concepts and of sins; is using somebody else's post-it note when they're not at their desk theft, or not? By definition, it is, because you are taking something that does not belong to you. However, I think most of us would agree that considering it a crime is going a little too far.

Consider. An abortion may not be the termination of what can legally be considered a life, but it is still preventing a life from being lived. If somebody is blowing up a balloon and you decide you'll come along and pierce it with a needle after a few breaths, it doesn't change the fact that if you hadn't come along, a fully inflated balloon would have been the end result. Cause and effect are different, yes, but that doesn't mean they're not inextricably linked.

I'm not staunchly pro-life. I'm in the process of deciding where I stand, with a leaning towards pro-life for the simple reason that no matter what perspective I look at the situation from, I see conception as the beginning of something, and abortion as its end, and that 'something' just happens to be a human life. This doesn't mean that there aren't serious circumstances where abortion could be seen as the 'lesser of two evils' - it's all about weighing up the morality of allowing something to live in pain (to paraphrase the issues involving consideration of abortion) and not allowing something to live at all.

A friend of mine once gave me this dilemma to think about: you come across a wounded animal. It is so badly hurt that you know it's going to die from its injuries, and it is in extreme pain. Personally, I think I would feel incredibly guilty in walking away and leaving it in misery. Does this mean that the abortion of a severely disabled foetus, too, falls under the umbrella of what I would consider to be moral, ethical action? Apply the situation to your own morals and principles.

There can be serious, devastating complications in pregnancies and births. I don't think I'll ever see abortion for these reasons as immoral. It's not as if we are aborting these babies from a desire to do evil works. God knows our hearts, our morals, our strengths, our weaknesses. Our motives. I think we can probably only truly know where our values lie when we ourselves are presented with a situation like that, and will God see it in simple terms such as 'pro-life' and 'pro-choice'? No. God will see how our hearts respond, and therein our true merit with Him lies.

Sorry, that was rather sprawling, but outlining one's views when undecided can be quite tricky.

I don't think that when people claim that "abortion is murder" they are looking at it in a legal sense.

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Then they shouldn't be using that word, as it has a clear and precise legal meaning.

People call abortion murder because they think it makes more of an emotional impact than alternatives, even though it is inappropriate. All the wierd backpedalling "Well I consider murder to mean......."

I don't CARE what YOU consider "murder" to mean... I care what the Oxford dictionary considers it to mean. If we just go around arbitrarily redefining words because we like the way they sound, then why bother to have a common lingua franca? But heck, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em... I'm going to start refering to abortion as being TURQUOIS then I'm going to get all antsy anytime anyone tries to tell me that it isn't really a relevant term

LightHorseman said:

Then they shouldn't be using that word, as it has a clear and precise legal meaning.

People call abortion murder because they think it makes more of an emotional impact than alternatives, even though it is inappropriate. All the wierd backpedalling "Well I consider murder to mean......."

I don't CARE what YOU consider "murder" to mean... I care what the Oxford dictionary considers it to mean. If we just go around arbitrarily redefining words because we like the way they sound, then why bother to have a common lingua franca? But heck, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em... I'm going to start refering to abortion as being TURQUOIS then I'm going to get all antsy anytime anyone tries to tell me that it isn't really a relevant term

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To be fair, a secondary, non-legal definition of "murder" means "Something that is very uncomfortable, difficult, or hazardous" as in: The traffic is murder out there. Certainly, anyone can consider abortion to be "murder" in that sense. They just need to understand that their opinion on the matter has no bearing on the legal definition of the word.

Autumnleaf said:

I suspect that the people who killed Jews were only concerned about what the Nazi German dictionary meant at the time. Many of them ended up shot or at the end of their rope.

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Well, since this discussion is Godwinning anyways, I may as well clear up this misconception. Check out this video. Of particular interest is the segment on "Ordinary Nazis" at about 3:30.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QX7ehbE1vc0

Most Nazis in Germany were ordinary people. The party used to be called the German Workers Party for a reason. Sure, some of them agreed with the party's ideology...but some were Nazis out of fear, or just because they disagreed more with the opposition than they did with the Nazi party.

Many of the Nazis at the concentration camps were probably "just following orders." Many of them probably had objections to what they were being ordered to do, but it has been shown that most people have difficulty standing up to authority...especially when standing up to authority can result in death.

Additionally, people that are given too much power or told that they are superior to others tend to do horrible things that they wouldn't do otherwise.