I got it too but it wasn’t nearly as funny as my quip about a weirdo amputee from Vermont losing his abortion business to real Doctors and instead getting a job as a government sanctioned professional rapist!
I can’t wait till my Mom gets home so I can tell her this one! She’ll be so fucking proud!
[quote]pushharder wrote:
Same thing with rape. I think we should pull it out of the dingy back alleys, empty stair wells and dark rooms and allow it to be openly practiced…with government oversight and regulation of course.[/quote]
Now we’re equating the two? Rape takes away informed consent, no? I don’t see abortion doing that, especially as we don’t give the ability to give informed consent to anyone under 16/17/18/whatever it is.
Abortion is a touchy subject. Banning it outright will create a black market and probably more problems, letting it continue will piss other people off. Pissing people off is way more appealing to me than creating a new black market or helping an existing one expand.
So nobody picked up my family guy reference?
[quote]1. Can a fetus survive outside of the womb and develop normally without significant impairments?
I think the problem with 1. is the fact that a normally born baby cannot survive outside the womb without someone to take care of it. Neither could a small child.
A normally born baby will be developmentally impaired absent the mother to take care of it therefore I can’t see how, developmentally speaking, the baby’s situation is fundamentally different in utero vs. ex utero.
I also think brain activity begins much earlier than 20 weeks. It’s more like 40 days.
[quote]pushharder wrote:
Makavali wrote:
…Banning it outright will create a black market and probably more problems…
So did banning murder, rape and theft.[/quote]
I’m not really seeing the link. Again, I bring up informed consent. Obviously, as you have kids, my perception of the issue is different to yours, and someone with a uterus will again have a different outlook.
Curses.
I’d like to think that every unwanted child could be adopted into a stable & loving home, but how likely is that?
[quote]The mother has decided she can’t have the baby anymore for whatever reason.
Yet she can’t do it because the baby might feel pain. The damn thing isn’t even conscious, why would it matter if it felt a bit of pain before being fucking eliminated?[/quote]
By this logic, there would be nothing fundamentally different between killing the baby in the womb or killing it after it’s already born, as long as the mother has decided she “can’t have the baby anymore.”
I see no reason for locking up people for infanticide if that is the criteria a mother is allowed to use to determine whether a baby lives or dies.
[quote]pushharder wrote:
PRCalDude wrote:
…I also think brain activity begins much earlier than 20 weeks. It’s more like 40 days.
And the fact that this has been disputed causes a prudent observer to want to err in the right direction.
[/quote]
Yes. In a society where rights to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” are presumably valued, you would expect so.
Please share it with us.
[quote]pushharder wrote:
Christine wrote:
Varqanir wrote:
It was a joke, Rock.
Push sarcastically implied that legalizing rape would be the moral equivalent of legalizing abortion, and I sarcastically said that the government has already legalized rape: we know it as “marriage.”
It wasn’t a very funny joke to begin with, even less so now that I had to explain it.
I got it too!
But I didn’t LOL.
Sorry.
Go away! You know I don’t want you in here![/quote]
But I enjoy reading dissenting opinions.
I think this is one of the most civil discussions I have read on the topic.
[quote]pushharder wrote:
Read Pat’s distillation of this issue. All of what you stated is irrelevant if the life we are talking about is human.[/quote]
If it’s a question of humanity, we’re back to defining what it means to be human. Brain activity?
Now we have to figure out when that starts.
EDIT: Hey, full circle!
[quote]Christine wrote:
But I enjoy reading dissenting opinions.
I think this is one of the most civil discussions I have read on the topic.
[/quote]
Well, then, please contribute to it.
So far, in this thread, we’ve heard only from people on both sides who, by virtue of not actually having a uterus, are not directly affected by the debate on abortion.
“Directly” meaning they will never have to decide whether to carry a child to term and give birth to it, or else to have it incised and suctioned from their bodies.
I would be interested, Christine, in hearing your views.
I can surmise what they might be, so I’m only asking to piss Push off.
(Sorry, Push, old buddy. Hee hee.)
[quote]pushharder wrote:
PRCalDude wrote:
The mother has decided she can’t have the baby anymore for whatever reason.
Yet she can’t do it because the baby might feel pain. The damn thing isn’t even conscious, why would it matter if it felt a bit of pain before being fucking eliminated?
By this logic, there would be nothing fundamentally different between killing the baby in the womb or killing it after it’s already born, as long as the mother has decided she “can’t have the baby anymore.” I see no reason for locking up people for infanticide if that is the criteria a mother is allowed to use to determine whether a baby lives or dies.
Agreed. Take a three month old colicky child who has seriously impeded mom’s way of life, shoot a little morphine in his veins…and let 'im go.[/quote]
No, because the baby is born and has now personhood. It is now a “human”.
Also, can’t have the baby is meant to be taken in the sense of “going through with the pregnancy”.
A fetus is potential life. POTENTIAL.
That is besides the point, you have not answered my question:
" The damn thing isn’t even conscious, why would it matter if it felt a bit of pain before being fucking eliminated?"
Why would neurological activity matter for abortion? The baby is NOT born yet. So it is not infanticide. Do not mince words.
[quote]Varqanir wrote:
Christine wrote:
But I enjoy reading dissenting opinions.
I think this is one of the most civil discussions I have read on the topic.
Well, then, please contribute to it.
So far, in this thread, we’ve heard only from people on both sides who, by virtue of not actually having a uterus, are not directly affected by the debate on abortion. “Directly” meaning they will never have to decide whether to carry a child to term and give birth to it, or else to have it incised and suctioned from their bodies.
I would be interested, Christine, in hearing your views.
I can surmise what they might be, so I’m only asking to piss Push off.
(Sorry, Push, old buddy. Hee hee.)
[/quote]
You don’t need a uterus to have an opinion on the topic.
I don’t think that stopping some cells from fulfilling their potential to becoming a human is the equivalent to murder.
Politically, like many things, I think it should be left to the State.
What is your definition of “personhood”? You mentioned you were going to get one out of your ethics book for us to examine, didn’t you?
A fetus is alive, just in a different stage of development from a fully-grown human. It meets the criteria for life: 1. metabolism, 2. growth, 3. reaction to stimuli, and 4. reproduction.
(There is cell reproduction and twinning, a form of asexual reproduction, which can occur after conception.) It has its own separate genetic code and needs only food, water, shelter, and oxygen in order to grow and develop, just like the rest of us in this discussion.
I’m not clear on why this matters. Do you mean, it’s not yet self-aware? If consciousness is what matters, why wouldn’t it be legal to kill me if I ever became knocked out or was temporarily in a coma? Why base legal definitions on temporary states?