The Glade 4.0

Perhaps you didn't read the post i was replying to, where Elmo said the legality was irrelevant; rights are a moral issue, not a legal one, because you entirely missed the point of my statement. Everyone has their own morality, it's useless to argue based on whether something is "right" or "wrong," -- arguing such is like arguing whether blue or red are better based on which one is your favorite color. I can just as easily argue that religion and pro-lifers are "evil." Why not? I really do consider it to be an "evil" stance in my opinion. But such an argument has no function in a debate...just as elmo's "rights as a moral philosophy" has no place in one either.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Thanks, dictionary. Perhaps an incorrect term due to semantics, but the effect is the same.

That's fine, but you aren't really saying anything. "What people accept" is precisely what we're arguing. Observing that abortion is presently legal (for the most part) in the U.S. is nothing more than argument from status quo. Abortion is presently accepted; QED I win. And, frankly, it's an advocation of either mob rule or oligarchy: whatever the majority (or those in power, as the case may be) want is what the law should be, without question.

If abortion were presently illegal (as it has been in various times and places), would you still rant and rail that the present state of the law is all that matters? I think not. The law currently aligns with your personal ethos, and that's the only reason you defend it. Rather than engage in real, and potentially interesting, challenging, and edifying discussion as to why your standards are a better standard for the law than the standards of others, you've opted to engage in a thoroughly null-content tirade of name-calling and irrelevant screeds about religion.

You asked what I believed to be interesting question -- how can an anti-abortion stance arise within a secular framework with an emphasis on the principle of liberty. I've made every effort to answer that question with a line of reasoning which is both pragmatic and secular, without respect to any particular moral construct. And to what has it availed me where you're concerned? You've completely ignored every actual argument I presented, substituting instead what you'd like for me to have said, so that you can call me misogynist pig and a religious fanatic. I don't really care in the slightest what names you call me, but I am aggravated at what it does to the SNR around here. I realize now what I should have suspected from the beginning -- you aren't interested in rational discussion, and your question was not present in good faith. All you really wanted was to make yourself a soapbox from which you could screech like a howler monkey at your usual targets.

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Sail forth! steer for the deep waters only!
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me;
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

You forgot evil, Stathol. misogynist pig, religious fanatic, and evil.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

What's evil about wanting to defend innocent life? I think there are some people in "the movement"(whatever that is supposed to mean) who miss the point, but that doesn't mean the concept of wanting to defend innocent life is a bad thing.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

You're not making your point very clearly. Because if I've got it wrong, I don't understand it at all. The only logical path I can see between what you're saying involves forcing a woman into what is basically sexual reproductive slavery -- making her body look after a life she doesn't want nor did she agree to have.



It's not about "defending life." It's about freedom. Does a woman have an obligation to sacrifice their time, body, and health to keep another life alive? Even if one accepts that its a "person" or "human life," what you have not logically shown is how merely having sex obligates one to provide shelter for that life in their own body.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

And having sex obligates the man to provide shelter for that life for 18 years.

It's not sexist.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Honestly, i think a man should be able to absolve himself of that responsibility by advocating abortion (in a signed document provided to the mother) --and agreeing to help pay for it-- before a determined age of viability. If they both agree to have the child, they should both be forced to support it. If the mother elects to have it without the father's support, that's her choice. (Of course, if she doesn't inform the father of the pregnancy, the responsibility is also on her.)

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

25 years now ...

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What about the freedom of the child which it cannot have without life?

It'd be great if we could tube pregnancies, but we aren't there yet. So in the meantime we have to get our pleasure and intimacy from something other than reproduction or deal with the life that comes from it.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

A person is not obligated to pay for another person's freedom by sacrificing their own.

(And really, the world doesn't need more people. Fortunately, we're mostly doing our part in this section of the world. If only we could convince the third world to drop below a birthrate of 2 per couple.)

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

In a vacuum, ok. But said person voluntarily engaged in an action with a known consequence, and a person is responsible for the consequences of their action.

This argument has been used before, in this thread, but it's non-sequitur. It does not follow that just because sex can result in pregnancy, that a person who voluntarily engages in sex should have to follow through with that pregnancy. There's a missing connector.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

I think if you risk having unprotected sex, you should have to live with the consequences of that act. One of the consequences is children. You can't just end a life(or potential life) just because it inconveniences you. There are a lot of lives I would like to end because they are a bother. But I can't because it's illegal. Unless my life is threatened, I can't do jack **** about it and will have to deal with it. It should be the same for abortion. And it's not like you even have to raise the little piece of **** anyway. You can put the child up for adoption as soon as it is born and never have to worry about it again.

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Los Angeles Kings 2014 Stanley Cup Champions

"I love this **** team right here."
-Jonathan Quick

There's also a misconception that most abortions are generally performed by killing the fetus, these days, anyway. Abortions are often performed by evicting the baby. The fetus dies because it's not ready to be evicted.

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

And I think that excuse is bullshit.

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Los Angeles Kings 2014 Stanley Cup Champions

"I love this **** team right here."
-Jonathan Quick

That's retarded. You're advocating personal responsibility for a fetus, but no responsibility for the mother. If I perform an act that makes an individual reliant on assistance for survival, then I am responsible for that assistance. It doesn't matter if that act was performed with a sledgehammer or my penis.

It's my responsibility. I can't walk away from that individual and tell them too bad, you can't live off of others.

Yeah, there is. That missing connector is taking responsibility for one's actions.

I'm not advocating any responsibility at all for the fetus. The fetus is utterly irrelevant, except that it's the problem in question.



No, that doesn't fill the missing connector. If you smash up your car, is it avoiding responsibility to get your car fixed so you can keep driving? Nor is it avoiding responsibility to terminate a pregnancy. Abortion is just a method of dealing with the responsibility, not avoiding it. You are trying to create a responsibility to bring this new life into the world, where no such responsibility exists.

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

The missing connector is that you're responsible for that action, knowing that it can result in children, and people are, and should be, responsible for their children.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

As for the "Think of the children!" fallacy above, regardless of whether or not it is a "person" it is neither a child, nor your own until it is born and you take guardianship of it (the latter is something you can also choose to forgo after birth.)

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

There seems to be some kind of understanding among pro-lifers that a zygote is somehow more sacred than individual sperms and eggs. It's not. They're as much a "human life" as the zygote/fetus are. They're equally sentient and valuable, with equal potential to grow into a human. The zygote is just further along in the process.

Unless you're going to start suggesting that a person has an obligation to GET pregnant, I don't see where this responsibility to allow the zygote to mature and be born is from.

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

1) She did agree to have it by having sex. The fact that pregnancy is not certain and that it's likelyhood can be greatly reduced with certain technologies does not in any way mean that you didn't agree to bear the possible consequences if you do have sex. Whether you want it or not is irrelevant.

2) It isn't "basically sexual reproductive slavery" at all. No one is forcing women to have sex in the first place; when that does happen it's called "rape".

3) You're not addressing what Stathol was addressing. He said he was trying to point out how one could make a secular argument in favor of a pro-life position. The fact that you personally feel that position is the same as sexual slavery does not, in any way, make it any less a secular position.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

No, she didn't. You need to prove she agreed to it by having sex. Really, you'd need to prove that the intent of her having sex was to have a child. It doesn't matter what you've determined sex is for, what matters is what she was having it for, nothing else.



Irrelevant because of 1, but yes. Forcing a pregnant woman to have a child against her wishes when easy ways exist to stop the pregnancy is reproductive slavery. It is every bit as much of a personal violation of her body as rape.



You're saying what i was missing was that Stathol's position was theoretical and he was playing devil's advocate? Perhaps I was mistaken and he didn't vote against abortion on the short political issues poll.

Anyway, Stathol's "Theoretical" position still lacks a logical secular basis that I can follow.

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Wrong. If you smash up someone else's car, and cripple them, it is avoiding responsibility to leave them there. It is now your responsibility to pay for their care. Your action, your consequence, your responsiblity to care for another. Same with pregnancy.