The Thread On Abortion

Seeing as its been requested and nobody has actually made the thread yet, here it is (man we've been generating threads like crazy today.)

Have at it folks.

All I can say you guys are walking on thin ice and its going to get ugly.And for the record I am anti-abortion,that is all.

There are or were at least two existing threads on it.

Indeed, I don't see the outcome as being any different.

edited 25th Jul '11 9:52:35 AM by blueharp

These abortions of threads usually just devolve into pro-choice versus pro-life bickering over how the other side is sick and evil.

Yeah, they do. (That's why I don't want it anywhere near my thread on a completely different topic.) But there's some mileage to be had before they degenerate.

Re: "potential health issues": nobody I know of wants to forbid abortion if carrying the baby to term will likely kill the mother. It's the same principle: it's about saving lives.

Like others have said, this thread is going to end in a Flame War and then get locked.

Eh, well, it's better to just say so instead of making references to popcorn. But it'll generate before it degenerates, if we let it.

I am pro-death.

Pro-choice.

You know. a baby killer.

Nobody you know, perhaps, but that doesn't mean nobody in the anti-abortion crowd.

Not to mention the rather common tendency among the same crowd to oppose any number of ways to actually decrease the number of abortions.

Perhaps you may think they are not representative of the movement, but I think they are, and that your representation is the inaccurate one.

edited 25th Jul '11 10:23:11 AM by blueharp

I think It's a complex issue, but one that can only be decided by the individual...

states.

edited 25th Jul '11 10:18:56 AM by joeyjojo

Oh, yeah, religion is the bugbear in the room. If it's contraception you're referring to.

Yeah, Joey, it's not a federal issue. Or at least it really shouldn't be.

edited 25th Jul '11 10:19:42 AM by DomaDoma

I have to wonder why nobody actually considers methods of reducing abortion that don't rely on brute force? Functional sex ed, widely-available contraceptives...

Oh yeah, the people who are anti-abortion also tend to be anti-sex-ed and anti-contraceptive.

So...the way to reduce the number of abortions is to silence the people who speak against abortion?

edited 25th Jul '11 10:24:42 AM by Ramidel

My stance hasn't changed. One guess what that stance is. Aside from providing a steady source of fuel for a flame-war, I don't think we need to revisit this topic yet again.

It might well work nicely to reduce the number to ignore the pro-life movement. It'd certainly reduce the number of illicit abortions. But I'd respect them more if they put twice as much effort into helping children than they do into hamstringing the clinics.

And no, I don't agree that states should have sovereignty over this issue, that's lead to too many abuses in the past. And in the right now.

edited 25th Jul '11 10:26:24 AM by blueharp

Sex ed doesn't do jack for preventing unsafe sex. Abstinence-only has essentially no effect, and comprehensive actually increases it. No, seriously. Check out the charts at the bottom.

It's the Catholic pro-lifers who oppose contraception. Most other denominations are less stupid. Anyway, just because the Catholics are idiots about contraception doesn't mean I have to agree with them or abandon my stance on abortion entirely.

Other research has come to a different conclusion, that sex education does help. Read some of the articles in what you linked.

edited 25th Jul '11 10:30:43 AM by blueharp

@Doma: Politically speaking, you do; part of the problem with reducing abortions through contraception is that, in terms of lawmaking and governance, the party that opposes abortion is also anti-contraception. Democrats can't treat abortion as a social ill, because they'll get smeared with the "pro-life" label by their own base even if they do oppose abortion bans.

Well, that's what primaries are for. :)

Honestly, I'd run myself, but I'd make a terrible politician. Blunt as fuck and way too easily flustered.

At any rate, the policy AFAIK isn't to ban condoms entirely; just things like stopping high schools from distributing them. I can back down on a minor point like that.

Please, not another one. They've been done to death and get really ugly really fast.

Says the person with the trollface in his avatar. Seriously, pagad has a point, though.

edited 25th Jul '11 10:42:43 AM by RedViking

My stance:

• No good purpose is served in forcing women to continue pregnancies they don't want.
• Preventing unwanted pregnancy makes everyone happy, as does enabling women to access the resources they need to make motherhood a viable option. Or would, if the issue hadn't been thoroughly infected by the "culture war" bullshit.
• It is possible to make a moral argument against abortion, at least late-term. But it should never be outlawed. Outlawing abortion causes more problems than it solves.
• The official "pro-life" movement is not so much pro-life as anti-sex. People whose concern genuinely revolves around the moral status of the unborn would do well to distance themselves from the official movement.
• Early abortion is better than late abortion, for all sorts of reasons. (And contraception is better still.)
• Women, as a rule, are not so stupid and capricious that they would have late-term abortions for no reason if nobody stopped them. Most women have already decided what they would do in case of an unplanned pregnancy. They might change their mind if it actually happened...but they wouldn't spontaneously change it from "Have the baby" to "Get an abortion" in the eighth month.
• What makes a human being valuable to the rest of us and worth protecting is not its human DNA. It's not even really its human brain. It is its interactions with other humans.
• The person most qualified to determine the best course of action for dealing with an unplanned pregnancy is the person who actually has it. Her doctor can advise her as to the medical ramifications, and her partner (if she has one) will have plenty of input in other areas, but you know who definitely has no business butting in? Lawmakers.

I suspect that if I continue, I will end up making lots of lovely rhetorical loop-de-loops, so I will stop there. I am happy to answer any questions or challenges you might come up with.

I disagree with some of your views (and I agree with others), but you wrote them out in a clear and concise manner, which is what we need more of. I don't think I could be as clear, though.

That second-to-last point seems also to support the deaths of people who "don't contribute". Just saying.

I'm only alive because my mother refused one. And I'm Christian. So I'm definitely categorically against abortion.

HOWEVER.....I am anti-Abortionbashing. Calling some confused 16-year-old girl who wants an abortion a whore and a killer isn't very helpful not to mention it is in direct contravention to the teachings of Christ.