Originally posted by: Tabb
It IS propaganda. They show the most bloodiest abortion pictures possible to accomplish their own personal agenda. They DO NOT logically arguee the points.
In your personal opinion what should that laws be? How would they be enforced? How would America support another 1.33 million people are unwanted? Show me a system that WORKS.
Prove to me that I should care about all of these abortions that take place and that they are some how hurting society and myself. Why should I care about what someone does in their own personal life?
ANY abortion picture will be gruesome. If you can find one that is not, please share with the group. Otherwise, you're just blowing smoke.
If abortion is made illegal, then logic dictates that society has given fetus the status of 'person'. Thus, abortion has been equated with murder and should be treated as such in a legal sense, both in terms of sentencing and enforcement.
Society doesn't need to support 1.33 million more unwanted people - they support themselves in the same way that people do now. Note well that abortions are NOT typically performed by poor mothers who feel that they are not economically prepared for another child. They are typically acquired by relatively well-to-do women who don't want their lives interrupted by bearing another child (I have references for this, but I'm a little busy... apparently it's tax day or something ).
As for how you and I are affected by abortion, the simplest example is social security. Social security is predicated on a certain ratio of those paying into the system versus those who pay out. If population increased normally (as an exponential function), then social security would flourish forever. Tax revenues would be insanely high. Consider the addition of 40 million people paying taxes into the system for the last 35+ years. I am of the opinion that it is our own selfishness, vis a vis lowered birth rate, that is the cause of our economic downfall over the past decade. Lowered birth rates mean a decrease in manpower, which decreases the ability of new industries to flourish. It decreases tax revenues, while spending will always grow inexorably. These problems, in retrospect, were inevitable, regardless of who the regime in charge was at the time. I predict that this trend will continue for the foreseeable future - indeed, it will worsen rapidly in the coming years as the necessary ratios of populace age are not available to sustain our society.
Originally posted by: MadCowDisease
You're STILL conflating morality and legality, no matter how many times I say it. It stands that for the bulk of things, they ARE different. I'm not so much concerned with legality as morality. If you are a proponent of legal moralism and paternalistic laws, so be it - that is a separate issue entirely. I'm just curious to know...what exactly would this law look like? Would you care to take a stab at the actual wording of the law? My guess is it will be far more difficult than you think. But...are we discussing the ethical or the legal? I'm discussing them separately, it seems you are combining them and therefore we're both arguing separate things.
You're right, I am conflating the two, and it is certainly intentional. I'm simply attempting to convey my opinion that law, to be just, MUST have a sound basis in ethical principle. If law stands in contradiction to reason, you have no reasonable expectation of me following said law. If law stands in contradiction to ethics, I WILL NOT follow it: this is actually my civic duty. I belive the problem you're having is confusing what I would call morals (typically, something with a religious overtone or peculiar to one person or group) with what I call ethics (universal principles to set standards of behavior). I concur that we should not legislate morals, but I insist that we legislate ethics. Hopefully this clears up some things.
First of all, pregnancy IS traumatic. Talk to anybody who's been through a pregnancy and they will tell you it's nine months of physical hell. While this may not constitute the crux of someone's argument (and it probably shouldn't) it IS a legitimate objection and you shouldn't discount it. An appeal to emotion is more along the lines of "won't someone please think of the children!?"
Again, the reason I discount the troubles of pregnancy and birth is that the woman CHOSE this condition for herself. If I choose to play in traffic, then get hit by a car, I hardly have recourse to whine about how bad it hurts when my legs are broken.
With respect to your argument about sex: the problem remains that this assumes that the role of sex is purely reproductive. As most of us know, sex's function in a relationship is far more than reproductive, and in today's day and age reproduction is probably not even be its primary function...and about women "controlling" themselves - the last time I checked, sex was a two-person act, not a singular act. It involves the actions of two people, and asserting that women should "control themselves" with no such prescription for men is a sexist, misogynistic statement at that. Finally...accountability is also a pretty tricky problem. Is someone still accountable for a pregnancy if they take appropriate contraceptive measures and a pregnancy results regardless, due to some chance? There is a vast body of literature on this aspect of the abortion topic alone. As you've undoubtedly realized abortion is a far more complex topic than most people realize...
I don't honestly care what the role of sex is in a relationship. You simply cannot separate the procreative possibility from the sex act. Engaging in sexual activities implies understanding that you may very well become pregnant. Ignorance is no defense, nor is the use of contraceptives. As far as sex being a two-way street, you're right. However, that does not, in any way, mitigate the responsibility of the woman. If the woman has the child, the man will be forced to pay child support - note that he CANNOT order an abortion to mitigate his own responsibility, so he is actually more bound by the act than the woman at this stage in a legal sense (obviously not physically).
I already mentioned the fact that failure of contraception cannot mitigate responsibility inherent in the perpetration of the sex act. The reason I say this is simple: contraception is not infallible. Use of contraception implies knowledge of the possibility of failure. Ignorance is no defense. This is exactly why I said before anyone who believes it to be coincidence that contraceptive suppliers are also abortion suppliers is a fool. The industries are inherently intertwined, as both appeal to the individual's wont for freedom from responsibility. Sexual activity for pleasure amounts to hedonism, not something that anyone since the ancient Greeks and Romans have used as a guide for ethics (they even had a god of debauchery - Bacchus or Dionysius, whom some people worshipped as first among all the gods, living lives as Hedons... I can't recall exactly where the term Hedon comes from at the moment, but it's one of these myth stories ). If you want to have sex for pleasure, you do so at your own risk. If you are not ready for the implied responsibilities of your actions, then you'd better not carry out said actions.
This discussion is great. Thanks.
Likewise. :beer: