WND: Gays will abort Straight Babies!

Can we just get the thread back on track? I'd hate to see the relevant segues into sex become heavy-handedly thumped by a mod.

This is supposed to be about 1) Whether or not fetuses can be gay 2) Abortion in general.

edited 5th Feb '11 6:27:50 PM by KingZeal

The relevance was there, because the notion was of "codemning them for being attracted to the same sex" vs. "comdemning them for being in a relationship with the same sex."

Your point was being applied to the distinction between the two.

This makes me wonder "Does this mean gay men will abort baby girls and lesbians abort baby boys?" Why gay men would find themselves in the need of an abortion I'll leave up to the reader's imagination.

What I want to know is, how the hell would someone tell that their baby is gay when it's still in the womb? Would it be doing the YMCA when they were looking at the ultrasounds or whatever?

Maybe they had twins

edited 5th Feb '11 7:56:08 PM by joeyjojo

That's exactly the question. Is there something genetic that can be traced to homosexuality?

"What I want to know is, how the hell would someone tell that their baby is gay when it's still in the womb?" - MVL

By analyzing its DNA. As far as I'm aware, scientists tend to agree that homosexuality is genetic; they're just trying to narrow down exactly what the genes involved are.

Frankly, I wish they'd focus more on narrowing down exactly what the genes involved in type 1 diabetes are, but I guess that's inevitable in a world so obsessed with sexuality that it neglects the health of people like me. -.-

Or perhaps it's because people don't have to emphasize the fact that having diabetes isn't a choice.

I have trouble imagining why the F would it matter whether being gay is genetically determined, caused by some clear environmental factors or a "personal choice"? Considering scenarios where homosexuality (and hopefully everything else safe sane and consensual) is explicitly tolerated versus one where it is restricted in some ways it's extremely hard to see why the latter would be preferable. That should be the determining factor in considering whether something is acceptable or not, not the origin of that something.

As for the abortion of babies with unwanted characteristics, I don't have a problem with it. If you honestly would abort a fetus because it'd grow to be autistic, neurotypal, intelligent, stupid, ugly, beautiful, female, male, or anything else then it's better to allow it. The chance that you'd change your mind and accept your child once it is born is not worth the risk of ruining your child's life if it doesn't happen. Forcing people to have unwanted children and especially forcing children to be unwanted is quite cruel. And if you wouldn't go through with the abortion then the possibility of it shouldn't matter. Of course this has the effect of homogenizing the subcultures that are in the most desperate need of heterogenization (puns unintended) but having people seriously thinking that they should've been allowed to abort their child seems too high of a cost for that.

I don't see any basis for claiming that this would be defying the moral worth of some subgroup of people. Disliking a characteristic, tolerating others' disliking of a characteristic and considering people with that characteristic inferior are three vastly different things.

If you honestly would abort a fetus because it'd grow to be autistic, neurotypal, intelligent, stupid, ugly, beautiful, female, male, or anything else then it's better to allow it.

That's... very disturbing. That would essentually be a parent saying "Ugly/autistic/gay/female/ginger people do not deserve to live," and society saying "Yep, OK!"

edited 6th Feb '11 11:30:48 PM by LoniJay

That's exactly the question. Is there something genetic that can be traced to homosexuality?

Nothing whatsoever. And people have been looking really hard. That's what I was saying earlier in the thread.

I can't be bothered repeating myself, it's all still there and it's not a long thread.

Did you read the third paragraph? I consider it to be 1. allowing people to think 2. their children should not be born that way, instead of them not worth living. The parents would think that way anyway and if they are allowed to do selection on arbitary criteria the results are:

If the characteristic is undesirable, then we have less births with the undesirable characteristic.

If the characteristic is not undesirable, then we have lousy parents and children should not be forced to suffer lousy parents.

For example, I personally probably could not handle the stress from a disabled child and it's better for both of us that one has business as usual and one never existed compared to one being slowly driven insane and one suffering a lousy childhood. I don't see why this would be in any way equal to disabled people not deserving to live, which as far as I'm aware means they might as well die. The condition may be bad but they're still persons which means that once they're born (and for a time before that) they have all the rights persons should have.

edited 6th Feb '11 11:51:03 PM by ChurchillSalmon

You seem to be contradicting yourself. You believe that disabled people have just as much right to life as everyone else... and yet, you think it would be better for a disabled child to be aborted than to have a lousy childhood? You don't see the contradiction in that?

edited 6th Feb '11 11:57:42 PM by LoniJay

I don't see a contradiction because I don't consider "never having existed as a person in the first place" and "having existed as a person, but died" equal. Abortion before [insert ethically acceptable limit here] is the first case, not having a right to live is the second.

Actually, I think the distinction is something like "right to a life" vs. "right to live"; I don't think anyone has the right to be born, as in: begin to exist, while I do consider everyone who exists entitled to their continued existence and minimization of suffering. Wherever "right to a life" conflicts with "right to live without undue suffering" it seems obvious that the first one yields.

Well, I believe that 'living' starts at conception. This strikes me as the only thing that all prochoice/prolife debates come down to really, when life starts.

OK, in that case I get where you're coming from. The abortion debate certainly has two bright lines, conception and birth, but I don't agree that it's the start of life that matters. A life undeniably starts at conception but obviously not everything alive deserves rights so in my opinion it's the start of personhood, where one has enough capacity in the brain department to be morally discrete and have a right to continue living irrespective from the mother's desires. Since I don't hold humans in a special category this limit should be at the same area where other animals begin to be worth considering as "individuals" instead of just beings capable of feeling pain.

Well, yeah... the trouble is that human developement from that point on is a gradual thing that is really hard to put cutoff points on. Personally I don't think humans start to be 'people' until they're about 5 or 6.

edited 7th Feb '11 1:51:52 AM by LoniJay

That's what bright lines are for, unfortunately in abortion neither is very workable. I'm using third party sources now but the border of the second and third trimester seems to be an ok one for a limit.

Personhood might've not been the ideal word but the limit should essentially be around where you would do the same to an animal of equal ability; I would push a button killing a frog or a fish if it slightly inconvenienced me to let it live but I'd need to avoid much more disutility to do the same to a dog, a crow or an octopus.