Rape and pregnancy: the ignorance of the GOP

[leic7]

You live in a bubble - you think that a person is first and foremost free and you value it highly, but you fail to understand that your freedom ends where somebody else's freedom begins.

I wonder what exactly you think constitutes a "somebody else" in that statement.

A zygote only has the potential to become new life, but potential alone is not life yet - a Morning-After is acceptable by all means. An embryo is life at its earliest stage - it should have the chance to develop, we shouldn't put wrenches into the clockwork of life, however in extreme cases it should be up to the mother - cases such as [censored]. Fetuses are the most "advanced" stage before the child is fully formed - the later in pregnancy the more complete they are, and if they are found concious by a party of doctors, they're human beings with their own rights that we need to respect.

So what kind of rights does an "embryo" have? If you don't want any of your views challenged by anyone, say so, and I'll stop. But I just want to say I really didn't ask questions to make fun of you, I just wanted to base my response on your actual answers instead of my own assumptions.

 

[Foxi4]

So what kind of rights does an "embryo" have? If you don't want any of your views challenged by anyone, say so, and I'll stop. But I just want to say I really didn't ask questions to make fun of you, I just wanted to base my response on your actual answers instead of my own assumptions.

Fair play, perhaps you didn't, but if you want to make a point in a discussion, just make it. As for the embryo, I simply respect the unborn life. Its chance to become concious life shouldn't be taken away from it just because someone took their chances - three days is just about enough time to stop the process. If someone doesn't use that opportunity, there's nobody to blame other than the person in question and what right do we have to intervene? Like I said - pregnancy is not an illness and requires no treatment unless the child develops in an unexpected fashion. The pregnancy could've been prevented but it wasn't.

I know, but the guy's self-awareness is still largely in tact, while the parts of his brain thought to be critical for self-awareness were destroyed.
Actually, they're just saying that self-awareness can't be pin-pointed in the brain, but is a complex of interactions between multiple brain regions.
So yeah, I'm still wrong...

Don't worry - it was still quite an interesting article.

 

[leic7]

So what kind of rights does an "embryo" have? If you don't want any of your views challenged by anyone, say so, and I'll stop. But I just want to say I really didn't ask questions to make fun of you, I just wanted to base my response on your actual answers instead of my own assumptions.

Fair play, perhaps you didn't, but if you want to make a point in a discussion, just make it. As for the embryo, I simply respect the unborn life. Its chance to become concious life shouldn't be taken away from it just because someone took their chances - three days is just about enough time to stop the process. If someone doesn't use that opportunity, there's nobody to blame other than the person in question and what right do we have to intervene? Like I said - pregnancy is not an illness and requires no treatment unless the child develops in an unexpected fashion. The pregnancy could've been prevented but it wasn't.

I know, but the guy's self-awareness is still largely in tact, while the parts of his brain thought to be critical for self-awareness were destroyed.
Actually, they're just saying that self-awareness can't be pin-pointed in the brain, but is a complex of interactions between multiple brain regions.
So yeah, I'm still wrong...

Don't worry - it was still quite an interesting article.

So, the embryo has no legal rights? And there are no legal reasons against early abortions? The only thing to discourage a woman from exercising her legal right is...your disapproval? Who the heck do you think you are? Your personal respect for "the unborn life", and your personal belief that "if she didn't do it within the first 3 days then she suddenly can no longer do it on day 4", are products of your own morality. You're entitled to it, but don't expect that many others share it. If you don't personally "believe" in abortion, just don't get one when/if you're pregnant, and let others make their own choice in accordance with their own morality. In a democratic society, we can't make legislation based on any individual's morality. Abortion is a legal issue that involves a human right and a constitutional right.

 

[Foxi4]

So, the embryo has no legal rights? And there are no legal reasons against early abortions? The only thing to discourage a woman from exercising her legal right is...your disapproval? Who the heck do you think you are?

A citizen.

Your personal respect for "the unborn life", and your personal belief that "if she didn't do it within the first 3 days then she suddenly can no longer do it on day 4", are products of your own morality.

It's a product of reasoning.What gives you the right to prematurely end life? Who do you think you are?

You're entitled to it, but don't expect that many others share it.

You are entitled to your lack of respect to life, but don't expect that many to share it.

If you don't personally "believe" in abortion, just don't get one when/if you're pregnant, and let others make their own choice in accordance with their own morality.

Or you allow a democratic society to voice their opinion via the mouths of their elected representatives in the senate/parliment/whatever applies in your country and let the majority decide what the rules are.

In a democratic society, we can't make legislation based on any individual's morality.

You're right - in a democratic society, the majority creates legislature.

Abortion is a legal issue that involves a human right and a constitutional right.

You have issues with distinguishing human rights and liberal mumbo-jumbo. An unborn child is as much a human as you are from a genetic point of view, you just refuse to acknowledge it. Like I said, it is only fair to give back the rights that a [censored] victim was stripped off and allow her to abort a pregnancy which is early, but it's not fair to allow a woman who didn't protect herself from pregnancy and didn't take a Morning-After to stop the process. It's simple.

We're in a vicious circle now - those arguments are so-called "non-arguments" - move a few words and they can be used by either side, as I've just shown you.

 

[tatripp]

Another reason why conservatives dislike abortion is because of the horrible origins. Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, was a proponent of Eugenics until it became unpopular. Eugenics was a movement that encouraged Darwin's idea of survival of the fittest. She considered the fit to be the white middle class and wealthy and the unfit to be black, poor, immigrants, and the disabled. Hitler was inspired by books and articles from people in her foundation and even referred to one of the books as "my bible." Even today there is blatant racism by planned parenthood clinics located in many minority neighborhoods.

No, just no, I don't even.
Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection has nothing to do with eugenics (another method of artificial selection).
Natural Selection ≠ Artificial Selection.
Heck, humans have been practicing artificial selection ever since they started learning how to breed different plants and livestock.
As for "Survival of the fittest", Darwin only meant it as a metaphor for life forms suited better (adapted) for immediate and local environment, not the common misnomer of in the best physical shape or a specific race.

You are correct. I was unclear and wrong in my description. Let me clarify what I should have and meant to have said. Darwin's survival of the fittest idea is that the organisms that are more suitable to survive will survive and pass on their traits. Francis Galton, Charles Darwin's half cousin, coined the term eugenics. He was also a major supporter of it and wrote many books and papers about it. In Darwin's book The Descent of Man, Darwin supported Galton's work and agreed that the inferior members of society should not marry. Galton also acknowledged that his ideas came from Darwin's. My point that I should have made clearer was that Darwin did agree with Galton's ideas about eugenics and even inspired them to a significant degree.

 

[BlueStar]

In Darwin's book The Descent of Man, Darwin supported Galton's work and agreed that the inferior members of society should not marry.

This idea comes from a section taken out of context, deliberately omitting the next paragraph, by anti-science nutters like Ben Stein.

http://www.expellede...hitler-eugenics

In Expelled, Ben Stein reads a passage (omitting ellipses) that was also read by anti-evolutionist William Jennings Bryan in the Scopes trial:
With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated. We civilized men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination. We build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed and the sick, thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. Hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.” (Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, 1871.)
But Stein does not quote the very next passage in the Descent of Man which makes clear that Darwin was not advocating eugenics. Rather, he remarked, “The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as part of the social instincts, but subsequently rendered, in the manner previously indicated, more tender and more widely diffused. Nor could we check our sympathy, if so urged by hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature.” (emphasis added)
These are hardly the words of someone arguing for the sort of totalitarian eugenics practiced by the Nazi state, as implied by Expelled.

Eugenics is diametrically opposed to Darwin's ideas. You need a wide genepool and as many different combinations as possible for new mutations to be found. If there is genuine 'poor breeding' it would eventually be selected against. Hitler's 'master race' would have ended up with horrible deformities and hereditary diseases because of the lack of genuine natural selection.

Conversely, I've heard people argue against abortion because, while poor people have a lot of babies, successful career men and women are more likely to want to abort an unplanned pregnancy to follow their life goals, so abortion increases the amount of 'undesirables' compared to the intelligent/wealthy. Does that also count as 'eugenics'?

 

[leic7]

So, the embryo has no legal rights? And there are no legal reasons against early abortions? The only thing to discourage a woman from exercising her legal right is...your disapproval? Who the heck do you think you are?

A citizen.

Your personal respect for "the unborn life", and your personal belief that "if she didn't do it within the first 3 days then she suddenly can no longer do it on day 4", are products of your own morality.

It's a product of reasoning.What gives you the right to prematurely end life? Who do you think you are?

You're entitled to it, but don't expect that many others share it.

You are entitled to your lack of respect to life, but don't expect that many to share it.

If you don't personally "believe" in abortion, just don't get one when/if you're pregnant, and let others make their own choice in accordance with their own morality.

Or you allow a democratic society to voice their opinion via the mouths of their elected representatives in the senate/parliment/whatever applies in your country and let the majority decide what the rules are.

In a democratic society, we can't make legislation based on any individual's morality.

You're right - in a democratic society, the majority creates legislature.

Abortion is a legal issue that involves a human right and a constitutional right.

You have issues with distinguishing human rights and liberal mumbo-jumbo. An unborn child is as much a human as you are from a genetic point of view, you just refuse to acknowledge it. Like I said, it is only fair to give back the rights that a [censored] victim was stripped off and allow her to abort a pregnancy which is early, but it's not fair to allow a woman who didn't protect herself from pregnancy and didn't take a Morning-After to stop the process. It's simple.

We're in a vicious circle now - those arguments are so-called "non-arguments" - move a few words and they can be used by either side, as I've just shown you.

You're not just a citizen, but someone who wants to force their own morals on other citizens by reducing the legal rights of other citizens if they don't choose how you want them to choose. There's a reason I specifically asked you what "rights" an embryo should have, ya know.

I fully acknowledge the evidence in biology, I'm also capable of recognizing that the abortion debate and the legal issues are *not* in the realm of biology. The similarity in genetic makeup among different types of cells is a biological question. "Who's considered a 'person'" and "what rights does a 'person' have" are legal questions. Be precise with your terminology. When you use words such as "human", "somebody", "unborn child", etc. do you mean them in the legal sense? The human right I've been referring to is a legal right defendable in court. Which "rights" you mentioned are actual rights?

What gives "me" the right to prematurely end life? Well, let's see: I'm a person; as a person, I have the right to bodily integrity, which is protected under the United Nations' declaration of human rights, and by the constitution in different countries (worded differently in diff. docs). If I were pregnant and I wanted an abortion, the UN's human rights declaration and the constitution both gave me that right.

You wanna strip people of that right? Better think real hard to come up with a substantial legal reason then. I'm just speechless at the fact that you seem genuinely convinced that your "reasoning" seriously makes sense. Don't you wonder why none of the supreme court rulings on abortion has ever considered your "reasoning" as arguments? 'Forgetting' to use contraception is not a crime against humanity, it's actually totally legal to 'forget' contraception, you can't penalize a person by denying their fundamental right for doing something legal, nor can you remove their right because they didn't exercise that right previously.

And I respect life just fine, I just never got indoctrinated enough to think it's sacrosanct, and I never feel the need to force it on another person. I just want to be able to mind my own damn business, and not have my human right and constitutional right violated because someone who can't even construct proper arguments wants to shove their morality down my throat. You could really use your own advice on how "your freedom ends where somebody else's freedom begins." Democracy doesn't simply mean 'majority rule', laws would have to be constitutional (unless you wanna pull some fancy legislative manoeuvres to sidestep the constitution itself).

 

[narutofan777]

abortion should stay legal. not everyone has the money and time for a child anyway. women should not have to raise an unwanted child from [censored]. saying that people should take responsibility and raise the child is wrong. they are unprepared and not suited to raise one.

when I hear about homeless kids living the hard life because of irresponsible parents I feel sad. living in the streets, how ya' gonna stay alive? in some cities the crime rates are scary, what happens to those kids then? the ones in Detroit or St. Louis. Does anyone really think the most of these kids are gonna grow up to be stable functional adults? when you are surrounded by crime and poverty, how do you get past that life? No one is gonna get paid to save these kids, they gotta fend for themselves.

 

[Foxi4]

-Same argument over and over again-

You and your bodily integrity again. We already established several times that a developing child does not share the same genetic code as the mother - it's a separate human being created from composed mother's and father's DNA samples, thus you cannot say that the mother has the right to govern it. The bodily integrity of the mother is not voided by the entity inside her womb either - none of her organs are ever removed from her body. Your point is null and void and yet you keep on using it.

My reasoning makes perfect sense, it's been recognized by the UN as not violating any rights. In fact, this legislature is being actively used in my home country.

You mention forgetting about contraception - fair play, but is forgetting about contraception for nearly four days straight equal to forgetting once? How is going to a pharmacy to get a Morning-After difficult? Answer - it's not. What I want to happen is to make the pills free-of-charge. Condom broke? Been drunk and forgot to use one? Forgot about the pill? Go to a GP, get the pill - bam! Problem solved. It requires zero loss of life and zero morality issues. What you're doing is sweeping the responsibility under the carpet and just give the woman rights to do just about anything - you think it's right but I'm sorry, it's not. She had sufficient time to sort the issue out.

Democracy IS exactly what I said - it works around the Majority Rule ideology with a certain degree of protection for minorities. Constitution is not set in stone - it can change, there are specific organs in the legislature body which may change it or even overthrow it entirely.

 

[tatripp]

In Darwin's book The Descent of Man, Darwin supported Galton's work and agreed that the inferior members of society should not marry.

This idea comes from a section taken out of context, deliberately omitting the next paragraph, by anti-science nutters like Ben Stein.

http://www.expellede...hitler-eugenics

In Expelled, Ben Stein reads a passage (omitting ellipses) that was also read by anti-evolutionist William Jennings Bryan in the Scopes trial:
With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated. We civilized men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination. We build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed and the sick, thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. Hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.” (Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, 1871.)
But Stein does not quote the very next passage in the Descent of Man which makes clear that Darwin was not advocating eugenics. Rather, he remarked, “The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as part of the social instincts, but subsequently rendered, in the manner previously indicated, more tender and more widely diffused. Nor could we check our sympathy, if so urged by hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature.” (emphasis added)
These are hardly the words of someone arguing for the sort of totalitarian eugenics practiced by the Nazi state, as implied by Expelled.

Eugenics is diametrically opposed to Darwin's ideas. You need a wide genepool and as many different combinations as possible for new mutations to be found. If there is genuine 'poor breeding' it would eventually be selected against. Hitler's 'master race' would have ended up with horrible deformities and hereditary diseases because of the lack of genuine natural selection.

Conversely, I've heard people argue against abortion because, while poor people have a lot of babies, successful career men and women are more likely to want to abort an unplanned pregnancy to follow their life goals, so abortion increases the amount of 'undesirables' compared to the intelligent/wealthy. Does that also count as 'eugenics'?

Ben Stein apparently misquoted him and took it out of context, but that website also takes it out of context. If you look at the whole paragraph (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Notable_Charles_Darwin_misquotes) about midway down, you will see that Darwin did support Eugenics to some degree. He does say "we must bear without complaining the undoubtedly bad effects of the weak surviving and propagating their kind...which I understand to mean a necessary evil. He also explains how it is good that it is a good thing that the inferior members of society cannot marry as freely as the superior. Here is the quote "Hence we must bear without complaining the undoubtedly bad effects of the weak surviving and propagating their kind; but there appears to be at least one check in steady action, namely the weaker and inferior members of society not marrying so freely as the sound; and this check might be indefinitely increased, though this is more to be hoped for than expected, by the weak in body or mind refraining from marriage."
I don't think that Eugenics is opposed to Darwin's ideas but I'm not trying to say that Darwin created or agreed with a Hitler like philosophy. Hitler was inspired by his ideas and even Eugenics. The whole point of eugenics is reproduction for the fit and not for the unfit, and that was Hitler's goal. Darwin did not cause WW2 or create the man who caused WW2.
Eugenics tries to control the population by stopping the unfit from passing on their genes, so I don't think the example of successful people aborting a baby is actually eugenics. Actually I the example you explained is called planned parenthood now despite not being planned and definitely not resulting in parenthood.

 

[leic7]

-Same argument over and over again-

You and your bodily integrity again. We already established several times that a developing child does not share the same genetic code as the mother - it's a separate human being created from composed mother's and father's DNA samples, thus you cannot say that the mother has the right to govern it. The bodily integrity of the mother is not voided by the entity inside her womb either - none of her organs are ever removed from her body. Your point is null and void and yet you keep on using it.

My reasoning makes perfect sense, it's been recognized by the UN as not violating any rights. In fact, this legislature is being actively used in my home country.

You mention forgetting about contraception - fair play, but is forgetting about contraception for nearly four days straight equal to forgetting once? How is going to a pharmacy to get a Morning-After difficult? Answer - it's not. What I want to happen is to make the pills free-of-charge. Condom broke? Been drunk and forgot to use one? Forgot about the pill? Go to a GP, get the pill - bam! Problem solved. It requires zero loss of life and zero morality issues. What you're doing is sweeping the responsibility under the carpet and just give the woman rights to do just about anything - you think it's right but I'm sorry, it's not. She had sufficient time to sort the issue out.

Democracy IS exactly what I said - it works around the Majority Rule ideology with a certain degree of protection for minorities. Constitution is not set in stone - it can change, there are specific organs in the legislature body which may change it or even overthrow it entirely.

When did I ever say the mother has the right to govern the _fetus_? Strawman much? I even at one point called the fetus a "foreign entity", and compared its physiological existence to that of a "parasite". What I actually said, is that the mother 100% owns her uterus, and all of the nutrients produced by her body.

What exactly do you think constitutes a violation of a right (justified or not)? Like, what are the central elements to be considered to determine whether a violation has occurred?

If you're interested, I suggest you read up on the ruling on the Roe v. Wade case, or other similar cases, to educate yourself on how these types of arguments are made in North American courts. Regardless of how the eventual judgment went, just look at the arguments and rationale. I challenge you to find a single court example that would use your "reasoning" as actual arguments. Sorry I can't comment on how things work in your home country because I have no clue.

Is anyone actually proposing a constitutional change in the US because of the abortion issue?

 

[smile72]

What's wrong with this statement? Sounds like typical American Male Republican Politician to me.