Conservative Men and Abortion

[Texas Lynn]

Originally posted by Susan
This was my post made several pages back.

There is no legal right to poison someone, rip open their skull and vacuum out their brain, or to cut someone into pieces slowly while they scream in pain in order to get some sort of "victory for rights."

Abortion is the murder of the most helpless of society.

BTW to those who suggest birth control as an alternative to abortion: it is no better. You are still taking an innocent life and destroying it.

BTDT.  I disagree with you on abortion.  I won't comment on your position on birth control out of kindness.

You are a "true believer" according to Eric Hoffer's definition, so, arguing this with you is pointless.

 

[IslandBreeze]

Susan--I agree with your stance on abortion. I don't, however, agree with you on birth control. I am 21 years old and have 3 more years of college. I want to travel and see the world. I want to have toys and pay off debt. My husband and I don't want children at this point in our lives. Don't chastise me for making a responsible decision.

Birth control and abortion are two different things. One is murder. The other is prevention.

 

[kaotic]

Susan

BTW to those who suggest birth control as an alternative to abortion: it is no better. You are still taking an innocent life and destroying it.

What are you talking about? When someone uses birth control you aren't taking any life and I would love to see someone prove that taking birth control is taking innocent life.

 

[MatthewDiscipleofGod]

"Birth control and abortion are two different things. One is murder. The other is prevention."

Well the morning after pill is not different from abortion and is commonly called birth control. I know people personally that use abortaon as their "brith control".

 

[IslandBreeze]

Originally posted by Project 86
"Birth control and abortion are two different things. One is murder. The other is prevention."

Well the morning after pill is not different from abortion and is commonly called birth control. I know people personally that use abortaon as their "brith control".

Well, I don't believe in the morning after pill. That wasn't what I was referring to. It's sick that people even have the option of using abortion has birth control.

 

[MatthewDiscipleofGod]

"Well, I don't believe in the morning after pill. That wasn't what I was referring to. It's sick that people even have the option of using abortion has birth control. "

I figured you didn't. I just thought it was a good opportunity to educate people on some things that are passed off as birth control when really they are just abortion.

 

[vegan]

Originally posted by seebs
I see. Christianity has nothing to do with believing in Jesus, it's all about being anti-abortion. Anyone who isn't anti-abortion isn't a *TRUE* Christian.

in your book, since I am not yet convinced that my dislike for abortion is sufficient grounds to blow up anyone who's ever even hinted at the possibility of birth control, I'm not a Real Christian. Yeah, it's a straw man; so is what you've said about me.

Hmmmm.  So, you have thus far accused me of admiting I use dishonest words, of being the sole judge of one's Christianity, of harassing women who had abortions rather than having sympathy, and in favor of killing via explosion anyone who has considered birthcontrol.  That is pretty amazing. It is easy to win when you lie.  I guess that is a must for anyone trying to say abortion isnt against Christ.

Because you have been so dishonest, I really do not wish to discuss abortion with you anymore.  I really do not have the time to speak with someone who has no problem putting words in my mouth. 

 

[vegan]

Originally posted by Texas Lynn
Of course he was.  That is why he adopted the slogan "Kinder, Kuche, Kirche".  (slaps forehead)  It's all so evident now!

1. Hitler believed women should have full sexual freedom.  He opposed the double standard that allowed men to have various partners but not women.

2. Since the HItler quote above was from a while back, let me remind you and anyone reading this that this was a reply to your intimation that abortion opponents were nazis because nazis opposed abortion.  from this reasoning, i guess femanists are nazis (femanazis, as rush would say) because hitler was a femanist.  and, since i am a vegetarian as hitler was, i guess i am a double-nazi.  lets se.... i also have brown hair....... triple-nazi?

I guess it is my turn to facetiously slap my forehead ! 

 

 

[seebs]

Originally posted by vegan
Hmmmm.  So, you have thus far accused me of admiting I use dishonest words, of being the sole judge of one's Christianity, of harassing women who had abortions rather than having sympathy, and in favor of killing via explosion anyone who has considered birthcontrol.  That is pretty amazing. It is easy to win when you lie.  I guess that is a must for anyone trying to say abortion isnt against Christ.

I didn't accuse you of all those things - indeed, I specifically called out the hyperbole and exaggeration.

However, your claim that anyone who disagrees isn't qualified to comment on Christianity still stands, and is still wrong.

 

[harpy.of.the.storm.swift]

how could anyone possibly presume that permitting individuals to make choices about their lives was pushing death? pro-choice means that you support the rights of others to make choices. not that you support or want abortions. i am pro-choice, but i would never choose to have an abortion. i would try to talk friends of mine out of having abortions if they were in that situation. i would also hold their hand and be there for them if they decided to go through with it.

are we to presume that anti-abortion is pro-misery, pro-poverty, pro-rape, pro-incest, since anti-abortionists do not support abortions even in cases of rape, incest and inability of the mother to care for a child? maybe they are pro-death, actually, because some of them have bombed abortion clinics or murdered abortion doctors like david gunn. :o

or perhaps we should take people at their word about what they support and why, without attacking them or belittling their opinions, even when we disagree. making snap judgments about the opinions and motives of others only makes us look foolish and divides people.

birth control is not abortion. the morning after pill is created to prevent fertilization, not to kill a living, starting thing. even if you think that's wrong, other methods of prevention like condoms stop fertilization before it even starts, as if one never had sex. the same as abstinence. would you consider abstinence a sin? those who remain abstinent throughout their life will never give birth but they aren't destroying life.

again, i don't think we are more powerful then god. therefore, what we do is his plan, we aren't going to mess that up or thwart god because we used depo-provera or something. i would guess that he's smart enough to know what we're up to.

 

[seebs]

Originally posted by harpy.of.the.storm.swift
how could anyone possibly presume that permitting individuals to make choices about their lives was pushing death? pro-choice means that you support the rights of others to make choices. not that you support or want abortions. i am pro-choice, but i would never choose to have an abortion. i would try to talk friends of mine out of having abortions if they were in that situation. i would also hold their hand and be there for them if they decided to go through with it.

Me too! (Admittedly, my unwillingness to have an abortion doesn't say much.) Furthermore, if I knew someone who was considering an abortion for financial reasons, I'd probably offer to cover the price difference, so to speak, to encourage them *not* to abort.

or perhaps we should take people at their word about what they support and why, without attacking them or belittling their opinions, even when we disagree. making snap judgments about the opinions and motives of others only makes us look foolish and divides people.

Agreed.

 

[MatthewDiscipleofGod]

"how could anyone possibly presume that permitting individuals to make choices about their lives was pushing death?"

Your not permitting choices. You taking the choices of the child away. Where is that human persons voice? You think it's ok to take theirs away. That's why it's not pro-choice. If you were pro-choice everyone in involved would get a choice.

 

[harpy.of.the.storm.swift]

project 86 - in my opinion humans are those who live independantly and have their own body, not those cocooned in another person. i support the choices and rights of living humans, not undeveloped things that might become human. miscarriage, abortion, absorption of one fetus by another, all takes place before birth.
i guess i shall clarify and say i support the rights and choices of post-birth individuals. if you're pre-birth, then you can only rely on god and not the world. what happens is up to god.

 

[Blackhawk]

Originally posted by harpy.of.the.storm.swift
in my opinion humans are those who live independantly and have their own body, not those cocooned in another person. i support the choices and rights of living humans, not undeveloped things that might become human. miscarriage, abortion, absorption of one fetus by another, all takes place before birth.
i guess i shall clarify and say i support the rights and choices of post-birth individuals. if you're pre-birth, then you can only rely on god and not the world. what happens is up to god.

so basically if your pre birth you are an it.  You are unimportant. You are the thing to be disposed of whenever one feels like it.  Wow!  I do not think project86 could of made a better argument against your beliefs than you just did yourself.

 

[MatthewDiscipleofGod]

"project 86 - in my opinion humans are those who live *independantly* AND have their own body"

Using that logic every parent has a right to kill their kids no matter the age as long as they can't live independantly. Does that really seem logical?

"i guess i shall clarify and say i support the rights and choices of post-birth individuals."

Ok so now it's nothing about being indepentant? It's just if you inside someone? Going to go with this one then instead? (Need to know if i'm going to debate this with you)

"if you're pre-birth, then you can only rely on god and not the world."

No it's up to the mom. She wants to murder her child that's her choice. God gives us free will. That includes free will to kill. Can't blame God for abortion. Only the PERSON making the CHOICE.

"what happens is up to god."

See above.

 

[seebs]

Originally posted by Blackhawk
so basically if your pre birth you are an it.  You are unimportant. You are the thing to be disposed of whenever one feels like it.  Wow!  I do not think project86 could of made a better argument against your beliefs than you just did yourself.

I think you're going a bit far with that. I think lots of things are important, but aren't "people".

Basically, I am uncomfortable with asserting that there is no change in the qualities or moral rights of an entity between fertilization and birth; this contradicts my emotional sense, and Biblical examples of "valuation". I am not sure what the changes should be, but...

I also think your interpretation of harpy's stated position flatly contradicts several of her statements on the issue - that she would not get an abortion, and would encourage others not to get abortions.

If your understanding of something someone said contradicts something else they said, it's generally best to guess that you misunderstood.

 

[Blackhawk]

Originally posted by seebs
In my mind, the defining characteristic of a gray area is that people can study the issue together for years and not come to an agreement.

 

Not necessarily because sometimes one group could be very wrong.  For instance Christianity is the true religion right?  I know you support that.  But how can it mot be just a gray area using your definition?   

In other cases... Yes, we have to guess. A lot of medical science involves trying to decide which of two substantial chances of killing someone you'd rather take. I don't think that means we can't choose; in general, "not choosing" means "taking the path where we don't do anything", and that's often *more* dangerous. [/B]

 

Okay I am not advocating not choosing between one life or another.  What I am arguing against is most of all abortions. Again if you said we could limt all abortions to ones where the life of the mother is really in concern then I would be very happy.  I could live with that.

As to other cases... In other cases, I think abortion is probably wrong, but I recognize that people often disagree with me on moral issues, and I am not comfortable asserting any authority over them in this issue. [/B]

Butmy point from before is that I am because I believe that it is a human person.  Thus I can't jsut let women or men have the right to kill the person for an unjust reason.   

God speaks through people, not governments; the only way I see to put God in control is to leave the question up to individual conscience, which is the one level at which He interacts with us regularly. [/B]

God institued a government for the Isrealites.  God did not want us to interact only in the way you suggest.  He wants us to govern ourselves using His principles.  

I don't; I've seen people say that terminating an ectopic pregnancy is every bit as bad as terminating a healthy pregnancy with some chance of survival. I've seen them say this to the faces of women whose only other option was to die a truly horrifying death - resulting in the death of the fetus, too, and this when the fetus is perhaps almost as big as a pencil eraser. [/B]

Well I am not saying it is the same.  I might leave it up to God buit it is not the same. 

Gradual acquisition of rights is nothing new.

Consider the progression of my legal rights:
Birth: "No one has the right to kill me".
Age 5 or so: Legal right to "own property", but only through inheritance, and it must be administered for me.
Age 14: Marriage, but only with parental consent.
Age 15: Driving, but only with a guardian near me.
Age 16: Driving, marriage without parental consent. Leave school with parental consent.
Age 18: Have sex with an adult other than my spouse (if I happen to have gotten married earlier). Vote. Go to war. Own a gun. Own property normally. Nominally a "full adult".
Age 21: Drink alcohol.
Age 35: Become president.

(I believe we still have that last law.)

So... I don't have any problem with someone saying that "personhood comes with the ability to speak in sentences", but that it shall be unlawful to kill a human which is not a person. [/B]

Well I do because even an infant has certain basic rights.  Special rights are the ones that are gradually given.  not the right to life for instance. 

See above; I think "potential person" may have some weight. Personally, I have no problem at all with birth control, and only a very small problem with day-after pills in cases where someone made a reasonable effort to avoid pregnancy... I'm not sure why I draw the line there; that's just how I feel. By three months or so, I'm starting to think that the fetus is enough like "people" that the window of opportunity to kill it for convenience is *definitely* past. [/B]

I am fine with birth control but you are right that Idraw the line at conception. 

Well, it doesn't really *say*. It just says "before I formed you in the womb"; we don't know how *much* before. I'm assuming that omniscience implies a fair amount of look-ahead. I do not personally believe that, in the womb, we are aware enough to interact with or perceive Him. [/B]

I believe all of these verses show a pattern of God treating the one in the womb as a person.


Judg 13:5
5 "For behold, you shall conceive and give birth to a son, and no razor shall come upon his head, for the boy shall be a Nazirite to God from the womb; and he shall begin to deliver Israel from the hands of the Philistines."
(NAU)

Judg 13:7
7 "But he said to me, "Behold, you shall conceive and give birth to a son, and now you shall not drink wine or strong drink nor eat any unclean thing, for the boy shall be a Nazirite to God from the womb to the day of his death."'
(NAU)

Judg 16:17
17 So he told her all {that was} in his heart and said to her, "A razor has never come on my head, for I have been a Nazirite to God from my mother's womb. If I am shaved, then my strength will leave me and I will become weak and be like any {other} man."
(NAU)

Ps 22:9
9 Yet you are He who brought me forth from the womb; you made me trust {when} upon my mother's breasts.
(NAU)

Ps 22:10
10 Upon you I was cast from birth; you have been my God from my mother's womb.
(NAU)

Isa 49:1
1 Listen to me, O islands, and pay attention, you peoples from afar. The LORD called me from the womb; from the body of My mother He named me.
(NAU)

Isa 49:5
5 And now says the LORD, who formed me from the womb to be His Servant, to bring Jacob back to Him, so that Israel might be gathered to Him (for I am honored in the sight of the LORD, and My God is My strength),
(NAU)

Isa 44:2
2 Thus says the LORD who made you and formed you from the womb, who will help you, "Do not fear, O Jacob My servant; and you Jeshurun whom I have chosen.
(NAU)

Isa 44:24
24 Thus says the LORD, your Redeemer, and the one who formed you from the womb, "I, the LORD, am the maker of all things, stretching out the heavens by myself and spreading out the earth all alone,
(NAU)

Hosea 12:3
3 In the womb he took his brother by the heel, and in his maturity he contended with God.
(NAU)

Gal 1:15
15 But when God, who had set me apart {even} from my mother's womb and called me through His grace, was pleased
(NAU)

 

I think it's enough to show that the idea of "gradual personhood" is present. In other words, at conception, you are not yet as "valuable" as you will be later; this suggests that *something* changes that matters. [/B]

I do not know if I would ever say that one is not as "valuable" as another.  However my point of disagreement would be that certain bassic rights one always has.   

 

That said... "inconvenience" is a relative term. Texas Lynn gave a great example; if your parents have made it clear they would disown you and possibly beat you senseless if you got pregnant, that might be seen as a bit beyond "inconvenient". [/B]

But would it be just to kill someone  because of that?  I would say not.  That is it is unjust to kill one who had no part in beating you.  That type of inconvience does not give another the right to kill an innocent third party. 

Well, where do we draw the line on that? I think lying is wrong; should we ban lying? How would we enforce it? What we've done, instead, is define "fraud", and say "when you're damaged by a lie, you are entitled to compensation". The reason this is a tough case is that it's not clear who has been harmed in an abortion, so who would be entitled to the compensation? No legal person...[/B]

No the person is killed so you would just punish.  I do not see abortion as anything close to lying.   

Basically, I'd rather be responsible for allowing someone to make an informed moral choice, than for making it *hard* to make an adequately informed moral choice. Part of this is simply because, empirically, many women will do unsafe things to try to get rid of an unwanted pregnancy... This is much harder for society to cope with, and is a problem for my sense that I should be compassionate towards people, even when I think they're wrong. [/B]

Do you have such compassion on robbers whohappen to hurt themselves in a burglarly?  in many ways I do not see how this is different.  Both would be breaking a law and hurting themselves in the process.  Why should I have such compassion on one so I will change a law and not have the much of the smae compassion for the other?  I do have compassion for these women that do abort their children but not so much compassion that I feel that killing another is just. 

 

[Blackhawk]

Originally posted by seebs
I think you're going a bit far with that. I think lots of things are important, but aren't "people".

Basically, I am uncomfortable with asserting that there is no change in the qualities or moral rights of an entity between fertilization and birth; this contradicts my emotional sense, and Biblical examples of "valuation". I am not sure what the changes should be, but...

I also think your interpretation of harpy's stated position flatly contradicts several of her statements on the issue - that she would not get an abortion, and would encourage others not to get abortions.

If your understanding of something someone said contradicts something else they said, it's generally best to guess that you misunderstood.

You are probably right I based my reply on the one post only.  Sorry harpy.of.the.storm.swift if I misrepresented your position.  jsut know that if people just look at that one post it looks really bad. 

 

[IslandBreeze]

Again, I'd just like to go back to the prom girl. She threw her baby away, but had she gone to an abortion clinic the day before, many people wouldn't have had a problem...

 

[Laura]

Originally posted by Cammie
Again, I'd just like to go back to the prom girl. She threw her baby away, but had she gone to an abortion clinic the day before, many people wouldn't have had a problem...

An abortion wouldn't have been performed on a woman who was that pregnant.