Teen Pregnancy Drops as Planned Parenthood Vanishes

[Aragorn]

[quote]Varqanir wrote:

[quote]Aragorn wrote:

If we accept the premise of the pro-life argument that an unborn fetus is a person under the law and entitled all the rights and protections other persons under the law are, should we allow murder to be legalized for convenience? Should we allow murder to be legalized because of a logistic problem in enforcement?[/quote]

Your post is a bit difficult to understand, but I’ll try to parse it as best I can.

I can accept the premise that a fetus is alive and human, because this is self-evident. I don’t accept the premise that it is a person under the law, because it is not, and never has been. A natural person attains its personhood by virtue of being born. The unborn are by definition not persons, as the law currently stands.

You cannot “legalize murder”. Murder is by definition unlawful. Just as you cannot legalize theft or extortion. You could, but it would cease being theft or extortion.

What you can do, and what is done, is make some homicide lawful, and other homicide unlawful. Homicide in defense of one’s self or another (or property, in Texas) is legal. Homicide in a military context is legal. And currently, homicide in the context of ending an unwanted pregnancy is legal.

Murder is malicious, unlawful and unjustifiable homicide. The majority of abortions are perhaps unjustifiable, but almost never malicious, and currently almost always legal.

Now, back to prohibition. Has the prohibition of cannabis been an effective or ineffective means of controlling cannabis use?

If the state legalizes cannabis use because of the logistical difficulties in enforcing its prohibition, does this mean that we should allow methamphetamine and PCP to be legalized for the sake of convenience?

Of course not. But surely there are fundamentalist anti-drug advocates who would make this facetious argument.
[/quote]

Ok, let me see if I can clear up my very rambly writing style for ya. Not quite formal premises here, but do it bullet point style

1. Fetus is both human and alive. Undisputed except for the crazies.
2. The question of abortion centers around the personhood of the fetus (as law defines a person for purposes of protecting their rights)
3. Pro life’s position is that a fetus is a person.
4. Persons are protected by law from being killed–If you prefer I could parse this semantically but I believe you know what I am getting at. Obviously there are exceptions for persons in the commission of a violent crime on another person (self defense), or threatening police, or violently trespassing (castle law etc etc).

Now,
5) If you accept–for the sake of argument–pro lifers position that the fetus is a person under law, do you or do you not decide that murder of a fetus, being a person, is still legal due to logistical problems of enforcement? In other words do you decide to violate a person’s inalienable rights?

I do have a point here, if you humor me

[Varqanir]

[quote]Aragorn wrote:

[quote]Varqanir wrote:

[quote]Aragorn wrote:

If we accept the premise of the pro-life argument that an unborn fetus is a person under the law and entitled all the rights and protections other persons under the law are, should we allow murder to be legalized for convenience? Should we allow murder to be legalized because of a logistic problem in enforcement?[/quote]

Your post is a bit difficult to understand, but I’ll try to parse it as best I can.

I can accept the premise that a fetus is alive and human, because this is self-evident. I don’t accept the premise that it is a person under the law, because it is not, and never has been. A natural person attains its personhood by virtue of being born. The unborn are by definition not persons, as the law currently stands.

You cannot “legalize murder”. Murder is by definition unlawful. Just as you cannot legalize theft or extortion. You could, but it would cease being theft or extortion.

What you can do, and what is done, is make some homicide lawful, and other homicide unlawful. Homicide in defense of one’s self or another (or property, in Texas) is legal. Homicide in a military context is legal. And currently, homicide in the context of ending an unwanted pregnancy is legal.

Murder is malicious, unlawful and unjustifiable homicide. The majority of abortions are perhaps unjustifiable, but almost never malicious, and currently almost always legal.

Now, back to prohibition. Has the prohibition of cannabis been an effective or ineffective means of controlling cannabis use?

If the state legalizes cannabis use because of the logistical difficulties in enforcing its prohibition, does this mean that we should allow methamphetamine and PCP to be legalized for the sake of convenience?

Of course not. But surely there are fundamentalist anti-drug advocates who would make this facetious argument.
[/quote]

Ok, let me see if I can clear up my very rambly writing style for ya. Not quite formal premises here, but do it bullet point style

1. Fetus is both human and alive. Undisputed except for the crazies.
2. The question of abortion centers around the personhood of the fetus (as law defines a person for purposes of protecting their rights)
3. Pro life’s position is that a fetus is a person.
4. Persons are protected by law from being killed–If you prefer I could parse this semantically but I believe you know what I am getting at. Obviously there are exceptions for persons in the commission of a violent crime on another person (self defense), or threatening police, or violently trespassing (castle law etc etc).

Now,
5) If you accept–for the sake of argument–pro lifers position that the fetus is a person under law, do you or do you not decide that murder of a fetus, being a person, is still legal due to logistical problems of enforcement? In other words do you decide to violate a person’s inalienable rights?

I do have a point here, if you humor me :)[/quote]

Even if the law presumed that the fetus was a natural person (which is without precedent in all of common law, as well as in Hammurabbic and Judaic law, as I understand it), with all rights afforded a natural person, we would still be talking about the issue of homicide, not murder. Murder is always unlawful, homicide is not. The burden is to prove that the homicide of a fetal “person” is unjustifiable, on a case-by case basis. Otherwise we would have to rule that every homicide is unlawful, regardless of extenuating circumstance.

And if you want to start talking about logistical problems of enforcement, one of the rights a natural person has is the right of citizenship. Let us assume that tomorrow a new constitutional amendment were ratified granting all living fetuses equal status with natural born persons. This would mean that every pregnant woman on US soil is carrying an American Citizen in her womb, regardless of her own citizenship or that of the baby’s father. No pregnant illegal alien could be deported, and all a foreign woman would have to do to stay in this country and receive benefits would be to get knocked up. You might try to stipulate that the baby had to be conceived or carried by a US citizen, or conceived on US soil, but how could that possibly be tested or proven? We talk about slippery slopes: this is a slippery sheer cliff that seems to me to be practically insurmountable.

[pittbulll]

[quote]kpsnap wrote:

My whole point in this little exercise is to get people thinking of the consequences of outlawing abortion. [/quote]

Again I wish you luck

[Tiribulus]

[quote]usmccds423 wrote:

[quote]Aragorn wrote:

[quote]Varqanir wrote:
Aragorn:

Did prohibition of alcohol result in a decrease or increase in alcohol consumption in the United States?

Did prohibition of drugs result in a decrease or increase drug use?

Did firearm restriction result in a decrease or increase in gun-related crime?

How would a prohibition on abortion be any different?[/quote]

I do not think the situation is analogous, but I will have to think about my response for a while.[/quote]

We have a prohibition on murder. Has murder increased or decreased?[/quote]
Ya beat me to that one.

[Varqanir]

[quote]Tiribulus wrote:

[quote]usmccds423 wrote:

[quote]Aragorn wrote:

[quote]Varqanir wrote:
Aragorn:

Did prohibition of alcohol result in a decrease or increase in alcohol consumption in the United States?

Did prohibition of drugs result in a decrease or increase drug use?

Did firearm restriction result in a decrease or increase in gun-related crime?

How would a prohibition on abortion be any different?[/quote]

I do not think the situation is analogous, but I will have to think about my response for a while.[/quote]

We have a prohibition on murder. Has murder increased or decreased?[/quote]
Ya beat me to that one.
[/quote]

The rate of homicides per 100,000 in a given population has decreased worldwide, because of the steady increase in population. In other words, comparing a hundred homicides in a community with a population of a million people ten years ago to two hundred homicides in the same community whose population has increased to five million this year will show a dropping homicide rate, even though the total homicides have doubled.

Total homicide has not decreased, and the in fact the number of homicides today is exponentially higher than it was in the days of Hammurabi, when murder was first prohibited by law.

It would also be interesting to compare the decline in the rate of murder convictions to the increase in defense attorneys.

[smh_23]

[quote]Varqanir wrote:

The rate of homicides per 100,000 in a given population has decreased worldwide, because of the steady increase in population.[/quote]

True, but this also means that fewer of these new additions to our wonderful world are committing murder.

[Varqanir]

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

[quote]Varqanir wrote:

The rate of homicides per 100,000 in a given population has decreased worldwide, because of the steady increase in population.[/quote]

True, but this also means that fewer of these new additions to our wonderful world are committing murder.[/quote]

I’d say it in a different way: that that number of potential victims is increasing at a greater rate than the number of potential predators.

[smh_23]

[quote]Varqanir wrote:

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

[quote]Varqanir wrote:

The rate of homicides per 100,000 in a given population has decreased worldwide, because of the steady increase in population.[/quote]

True, but this also means that fewer of these new additions to our wonderful world are committing murder.[/quote]

I’d say it in a different way: that that number of potential victims is increasing at a greater rate than the number of potential predators. [/quote]

lol. A romantic.

[Aragorn]

Varq:

A well thought out response from you.

My answer is: Does abortion pose the same sort of ethical dilemma–the same class, or “form” if you prefer Plato–cannabis use does, or the same sort of dilemma alcohol use does? I posit that it does not.

In other words, the logistical issue is irrelevant if the central ethical issue is solved–in either direction it ends up solved–because the ethical issue supercedes a problem of convenience or enforcement. My ultimate response is that the statistical reaction to prohibition or not is moot. If ethics dictates that abortion be abolished, then we have NO CHOICE as to whether we follow through…unless we wish to be the worst sort of hypocrite devoid of integrity.

What this may mean in the real world is that the issue may never be solved. However it also means that those who argue against abortion are compelled to do so, not because it’s something they necessarily “want” to do (although there are indeed many that do want to.)

The point is that you cannot allow utilitarianism to invade and/or define a fundamental ethical problem ad hoc. If you are not a utilitarian, you cannot use utilitarian ethics (i.e. the argument from convenience or the argument from lack of enforceability/Prohibition leads to an increase in demand) to solve a dilemma like this. If you are a utilitartian, fine. Have at it and argue from that standpoint, but as many dilemmas as there are I do not hold that pure utilitarianism is a tenable position.

[Aragorn]

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

[quote]Varqanir wrote:

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

[quote]Varqanir wrote:

The rate of homicides per 100,000 in a given population has decreased worldwide, because of the steady increase in population.[/quote]

True, but this also means that fewer of these new additions to our wonderful world are committing murder.[/quote]

I’d say it in a different way: that that number of potential victims is increasing at a greater rate than the number of potential predators. [/quote]

lol. A romantic.[/quote]

Ah, the cold calculus of logic. haha

[Varqanir]

Gentlemen, please.

If the flock of sheep grows faster than the pack of wolves, so that last year five sheep out of a hundred were eaten by ten wolves, but this year seven sheep out of a hundred-fifty were eaten by twelve wolves, clearly the rate of predation is decreasing per population. Are we to conclude that the wolves are becoming less predacious?

[pat]

[quote]countingbeans wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]jjackkrash wrote:

[quote]countingbeans wrote:

[quote]pittbulll wrote:

[quote]countingbeans wrote:

But if you value all life, how can you condone the ending of human life in the certain particular instances you do?]

[/quote]

because it is not the life of the child until viability . It’s life is at the will of the mother and not my decision
[/quote]

Please post a doctor or any sort of scientist paper that backs up this nonsense. So until week 20 is it magic fairy dust that causes the growth of the fetus if not life?

wtf?[/quote]

I’m curious, what makes a “life” valuable to you?
[/quote]
I am going to go out on a limb and say that life that is willing to give him some pussy is valuable to him.
[/quote]

I don’t know that this is some sort of attack or not, but care to explain what you were getting at here?[/quote]

It was just a joke.

[pat]

[quote]kpsnap wrote:
I said nothing about incarcerating men. I said garnish their wages. And I stand by that. Obviously, if there are no wages, there is nothing to garnish. I would not advocate incarcerating someone for not paying child support if they have no job. But if people want to outlaw abortion, I am all in favor of making the man AS responsible as the woman until the child is 18. Men can keep their pants zipped as easily as women.

You do raise an interesting point about the fact that the woman gets to solely decide whether to keep the pregnancy or not. I’ll have to think further on that.[/quote]

I do think the father should be held accountable, against his will if necessary. You can’t hit and run if you are leaving a human life behind.

[pat]

[quote]zecarlo wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]pittbulll wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

No you don’t. You cannot be pro-abortion and at the same time ‘value all life’.[/quote]

says you [/quote]

No actually, says you. Even though you know that a pre-born baby is alive and it is a human being, yet you are still willing to allow it to be killed for petty reasons.[/quote]
Do you value all life? [/quote]

Human life, yes. That doesn’t mean I like all human life. It does not mean there aren’t asshole humans, but it doesn’t mean they deserve to die.
The only case where it’s permissible to take a human life is when that person is behaving in a profoundly evil way and in that they are a threat to other human life. For the sake of other human life, that may need to be killed. It that case, it doesn’t speak to their value, it speaks to their behavior.
I hope that covers all the potential challenges to my position, in terms of trying to find an inconsistency in it.

[pat]

[quote]kpsnap wrote:

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

[quote]kpsnap wrote:
I’ll throw out some radical ideas for discussion:

If abortion is outlawed, men should have to register when they impregnate a woman such that their wages are garnished until the child is 18. Single mothers should not have to pay attorneys to track men down to get their child support. And hard times should not absolve a man of his financial responsibility to his offspring. Single mothers don’t have the option of not feeding and clothing their child because times are tight.

Also, if abortion becomes illegal, people need to get used to the idea of increased members of society being on food stamps and other government support. The true economic ramifications of such a decision have to be considered. You can’t be ethically consistent if you fight to protect the fetus and then jump to the other side of the fence regarding government support once the child is born.

Obviously, the best case scenario is to teach our sons and daughters to keep their pants zipped and use birth control. But there will always be stupid people and honest mistakes/technical failures that occur.[/quote]

Good post. The “practical” side, as opposed to the philosophical one.
[/quote]

I think it would an egregious oversight to not consider the consequences of any action. So everyone can wax philosophical about the issue of abortion, but the practical side can’t be ignored. If abortion were outlawed, women of education and financial means would still find a way to get one. But women rooted in poverty would not. Who is going to provide for all these unwanted children from backgrounds such as smh_23 showed in his horrific example? Why are people more concerned about a fetus than the myriad of children who currently live in environments of poverty and abuse and get cycled through the foster care system? There are thousands of children in this country alone who are unwanted and whose needs are not met. Do we add to that number?

One other hypothetical: a group of 8-year old boys is playing in the woods. They find a nest of eggs and decide to use them for target practice by throwing them against trees. Is this any different than the boys finding baby chickens and throwing them against the trees?
[/quote]

This goes back to the already presented logic, that if people do it anyway, then it should be legalized or allowed. Murder is illegal, people still do it, robbery is illegal people still do it, domestic violence is illegal, people still do it. Should we legalize these things and provide ‘safe’ avenues in which people can murder, steal and beat their wives and children since people do it anyway? Of course not.

[pat]

[quote]Varqanir wrote:
Aragorn:

Did prohibition of alcohol result in a decrease or increase in alcohol consumption in the United States?

Did prohibition of drugs result in a decrease or increase drug use?

Did firearm restriction result in a decrease or increase in gun-related crime?

How would a prohibition on abortion be any different?[/quote]

Unlike those superficial things, abortion is the taking of a human life. These are non-sequiturs when it comes to the larger moral issues. Slavery was prohibited and it did work.

[pat]

[quote]Varqanir wrote:

[quote]Tiribulus wrote:

[quote]usmccds423 wrote:

[quote]Aragorn wrote:

[quote]Varqanir wrote:
Aragorn:

Did prohibition of alcohol result in a decrease or increase in alcohol consumption in the United States?

Did prohibition of drugs result in a decrease or increase drug use?

Did firearm restriction result in a decrease or increase in gun-related crime?

How would a prohibition on abortion be any different?[/quote]

I do not think the situation is analogous, but I will have to think about my response for a while.[/quote]

We have a prohibition on murder. Has murder increased or decreased?[/quote]
Ya beat me to that one.
[/quote]

The rate of homicides per 100,000 in a given population has decreased worldwide, because of the steady increase in population. In other words, comparing a hundred homicides in a community with a population of a million people ten years ago to two hundred homicides in the same community whose population has increased to five million this year will show a dropping homicide rate, even though the total homicides have doubled.

Total homicide has not decreased, and the in fact the number of homicides today is exponentially higher than it was in the days of Hammurabi, when murder was first prohibited by law.

It would also be interesting to compare the decline in the rate of murder convictions to the increase in defense attorneys. [/quote]

Should we legalize it then?

[pat]

[quote]kpsnap wrote:

[quote]angry chicken wrote:

[quote]kpsnap wrote:
I said nothing about incarcerating men. I said garnish their wages. And I stand by that. Obviously, if there are no wages, there is nothing to garnish. I would not advocate incarcerating someone for not paying child support if they have no job. But if people want to outlaw abortion, I am all in favor of making the man AS responsible as the woman until the child is 18. Men can keep their pants zipped as easily as women.

You do raise an interesting point about the fact that the woman gets to solely decide whether to keep the pregnancy or not. I’ll have to think further on that.[/quote]

Here’s what you wrote:

“If abortion is outlawed, men should have to register when they impregnate a woman such that their wages are garnished until the child is 18. Single mothers should not have to pay attorneys to track men down to get their child support. And hard times should not absolve a man of his financial responsibility to his offspring. Single mothers don’t have the option of not feeding and clothing their child because times are tight.”

What do you THINK happens when men don’t pay their child support because there are no wages to garnish? THEY ARE INCARCERATED. It’s absolutely ridiculous.

[/quote]
My whole point in this little exercise is to get people thinking of the consequences of outlawing abortion. And in many ways you helped prove my point (rather abrasively, I might add). Many men don’t want to be financially responsible for 18 years for the child that results from a drunken one-night-stand. Although that begs the question of how that child is somehow less “valuable” than one created in a loving, committed relationship. Different thread.

For the record, I wouldn’t advocate incarcerating a man OR WOMAN who legitimately couldn’t pay child support. However, I would advocate garnishing wages because I know of situations where men just stop making payments or decrease their payments. Again, the burden falls on the woman to hire an attorney to get the child support back on track. And that costs . . . money!

Personally, I have no desire to change the law. I am still pondering the question smh posed about equality in the decisionmaking regarding abortion. How exactly would that work? [/quote]

All of this is simply a way to skirt to core problem of the issue. It’s the verifiable taking of a human life. And you either believe that all human life has a right to live, or you believe that external circumstances should be the decider on whether a person lives or dies. But if you believe the latter, you cannot then limit it to killing the unborn human. Many born humans are put into unfortunate circumstances and a decision as to whether they should live or die should also be considered if you are to be consistent with your logic.

[pat]

[quote]Varqanir wrote:

[quote]Aragorn wrote:

[quote]Varqanir wrote:

[quote]Aragorn wrote:

If we accept the premise of the pro-life argument that an unborn fetus is a person under the law and entitled all the rights and protections other persons under the law are, should we allow murder to be legalized for convenience? Should we allow murder to be legalized because of a logistic problem in enforcement?[/quote]

Your post is a bit difficult to understand, but I’ll try to parse it as best I can.

I can accept the premise that a fetus is alive and human, because this is self-evident. I don’t accept the premise that it is a person under the law, because it is not, and never has been. A natural person attains its personhood by virtue of being born. The unborn are by definition not persons, as the law currently stands.

You cannot “legalize murder”. Murder is by definition unlawful. Just as you cannot legalize theft or extortion. You could, but it would cease being theft or extortion.

What you can do, and what is done, is make some homicide lawful, and other homicide unlawful. Homicide in defense of one’s self or another (or property, in Texas) is legal. Homicide in a military context is legal. And currently, homicide in the context of ending an unwanted pregnancy is legal.

Murder is malicious, unlawful and unjustifiable homicide. The majority of abortions are perhaps unjustifiable, but almost never malicious, and currently almost always legal.

Now, back to prohibition. Has the prohibition of cannabis been an effective or ineffective means of controlling cannabis use?

If the state legalizes cannabis use because of the logistical difficulties in enforcing its prohibition, does this mean that we should allow methamphetamine and PCP to be legalized for the sake of convenience?

Of course not. But surely there are fundamentalist anti-drug advocates who would make this facetious argument.
[/quote]

Ok, let me see if I can clear up my very rambly writing style for ya. Not quite formal premises here, but do it bullet point style

1. Fetus is both human and alive. Undisputed except for the crazies.
2. The question of abortion centers around the personhood of the fetus (as law defines a person for purposes of protecting their rights)
3. Pro life’s position is that a fetus is a person.
4. Persons are protected by law from being killed–If you prefer I could parse this semantically but I believe you know what I am getting at. Obviously there are exceptions for persons in the commission of a violent crime on another person (self defense), or threatening police, or violently trespassing (castle law etc etc).

Now,
5) If you accept–for the sake of argument–pro lifers position that the fetus is a person under law, do you or do you not decide that murder of a fetus, being a person, is still legal due to logistical problems of enforcement? In other words do you decide to violate a person’s inalienable rights?

I do have a point here, if you humor me :)[/quote]

Even if the law presumed that the fetus was a natural person (which is without precedent in all of common law, as well as in Hammurabbic and Judaic law, as I understand it), with all rights afforded a natural person, we would still be talking about the issue of homicide, not murder. Murder is always unlawful, homicide is not. The burden is to prove that the homicide of a fetal “person” is unjustifiable, on a case-by case basis. Otherwise we would have to rule that every homicide is unlawful, regardless of extenuating circumstance.

And if you want to start talking about logistical problems of enforcement, one of the rights a natural person has is the right of citizenship. Let us assume that tomorrow a new constitutional amendment were ratified granting all living fetuses equal status with natural born persons. This would mean that every pregnant woman on US soil is carrying an American Citizen in her womb, regardless of her own citizenship or that of the baby’s father. No pregnant illegal alien could be deported, and all a foreign woman would have to do to stay in this country and receive benefits would be to get knocked up. You might try to stipulate that the baby had to be conceived or carried by a US citizen, or conceived on US soil, but how could that possibly be tested or proven? We talk about slippery slopes: this is a slippery sheer cliff that seems to me to be practically insurmountable. [/quote]

We’re simply talking about giving the right of the unborn human to live, nothing more. There are no logistical problems with that. Allowing the killing of human lives simply because it may cause logistical problems is valuing logistics over that of a human life. So you clearly believe that logistics are superior to a human life, if you believe that life should be taken because not taking it would cause logistical problems.

[pat]

[quote]pittbulll wrote:

[quote]kaaleppi wrote:

Then there is the issue if a total ban is really the most effective way to diminish the amount of abortions.

finally a breath of reason[/quote]

It should be illegal because it’s the willful taking of a human life. The willful taking of a human life should be illegal regardless of the fact that people do it anyway.
You will not totally eradicate foolish or illegal behavior, but this is as basic as it gets.
The issue is about what it is, not what people do anyway. It will take more than a law to diminish it to a large enough extent, but a law would help. And there is the ethical ramifications of the so called civilized society that supports the mass killing of a lot of human life.
To be of any moral standing you must consider yourself as valuable or invaluable as any other human life. If you allow other circumstances to be the deciding circumstances of whether you allow a human to live, then you must also apply the same criteria to whether you deserve to live or die.
If by your life, you are cause logistical problems in society at large, then you must consider that you may benefit society as a whole if you were not living.