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Abortion: My personal experience

FarmallMTA said:
Interesting world liberal pro-abortionists live in. Not just one of twisted moral relevance, but one entirely amoral.
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Wait, you think abortion is murder but your avatar is a McGovern/Eagleton campaign badge?

Can you parse that one for me, because it doesn't make any sense to me...
 
FarmallMTA said:
Interesting world liberal pro-abortionists live in. Not just one of twisted moral relevance, but one entirely amoral.
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This is a conclusion. Do you have supporting premises? Believing that a mass of cells without a brain is not a human being and that the human being carrying those cells is entitled to rights over her body isn't amoral just because you declare it so. You need reason. Come on. Dude, this is a skeptics forum. Ad hominem poisoning the well and bald assertions are not going to cut it.
 
Bill Thompson said:
I have other pro-choice friends who tell me stories of their sister or cousin who often wonder what it would be like if they kept their kid and are haunted by what it would be like "she would be 8 years old today" and when they cross the street they wonder what it would be like to hold that hand.
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This isn't an abortion exclusive feeling to have though. When people make major life decisions, it's commonplace to second guess them, even if they were the right choice to make.

I'm childless by choice. But I often wonder what it would like if I had children. Every time one of my cousins or friends have babies, and I hold them, I wonder what it would be like if it were my child instead of theirs. I feel guilt over the fact that I know my parents, particularly my father, is saddened by the fact I haven't given them grandchildren. I'm still young enough now to still have them if I change my mind, and I worry that if I don't have kids now, I'll come to regret it later, when it's too late.

When you make most major decisions, there's a pro and a con list for each decision you can make, and it's expected to have some doubts about the choice you made. You can spend your whole life questioning your career choice, spouse choice, choice to get married or stay single, etc. After I had a pregnancy scare myself last month (I am on birth control, but my husband and I had already decided previously that if I were to become accidentally pregnant, we would keep it), I had more than the usual feelings of doubt regarding not having kids. But I still feel like these negative emotions are preferable to what I would be going through if I had in fact been pregnant, in terms of a pregnancy's effect on my financial security, education, career, standard of living, marriage, community involvement, and overall happiness.

Likewise Bob had previously stated that FHA was giving up a potential chance for happiness with their child, or could be keeping from being born someone who would make great contributions to society. True, that could be the case, but FHA was just as "guilty" of that just by not having kids period, before a pregnancy even occured. The same reasoning could even be applied to parents with children. You only had four kids? How do you know the fifth wouldn't have been the next Einstein or Mozart? Or maybe FHA himself will make some great contribution to society that he would be unable to achieve if he were a parent.
 
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FarmallMTA said:
Interesting world liberal pro-abortionists live in. Not just one of twisted moral relevance, but one entirely amoral.
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First of all, you need to be familiar with the posting history of the person I was responding to in order to understand the term "hate-monger". Let's just say he's not a big fan of the gays.

Secondly, maybe crack a science book and learn the difference between a clump of cells and a human being. It might make your idiotic argument slightly less idiotic.
 
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Bill Thompson said:
I have other pro-choice friends who tell me stories of their sister or cousin who often wonder what it would be like if they kept their kid and are haunted by what it would be like "she would be 8 years old today" and when they cross the street they wonder what it would be like to hold that hand.
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Whenever I hear an anti-abortion argument to this effect (and I know Bill wasn't making that argument here), I like to point out that there are plenty of 8 year-olds in adoption agencies and foster care right now waiting to have a loving parent to hold their hand when they cross the street.
 
psionl0 said:
Are you saying that we can scientifically determine the precise point when a "clump of cells" becomes a human being?
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Viability is one semi-objective criterion. But in general I agree: science can be used to support positions, but I don't see how it could answer the "precise point" question.

Common law used "quickening."
 
psionl0 said:
Are you saying that we can scientifically determine the precise point when a "clump of cells" becomes a human being?
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My emphasis.

There should be a name for this type of fallacy; because there are incremental shades of grey, that there is no such thing as black or white.

The "incremental fallacy?"
 
Paul2 said:
I'm not so sure that's it. I think my fallacy is only a narrow part of Loki's wager. Loki's wager could include many things that are not the fallacy I intend.
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Hmmmm... I thought it was.

I always point out that we cannot determine at one moment day becomes night. That doesn't mean that night never becomes day. On what day does a person stop being a child and become an adult?
 
Paul2 said:
I'm not so sure that's it. I think my fallacy is only a narrow part of Loki's wager. Loki's wager could include many things that are not the fallacy I intend.
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I don't see how that's not the fallacy you are looking for. Not only is it apt, it has an awesome name.
 
Paul2 said:
My emphasis.

There should be a name for this type of fallacy; because there are incremental shades of grey, that there is no such thing as black or white.

The "incremental fallacy?"
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I am well aware of the fallacy you are talking about. Asking whether something is black or white when it is in fact, a shade of grey is not a valid form of argument. (Mind you, the reverse form of this argument is equally invalid. Just because there are infinite shades of grey doesn't mean you can deny the existence of black and white).

That is not the case here. There is no such thing as a "partial" human being. A living thing is either a human being or it is not.

Making use of scientific data to make a legal determination of whether a foetus is a human being (or is that "child"?) does not make such a determination "scientific".
 
Speaking as an only very recently aborted baby, all I can add to this debate is waaAAAAHHHHHHHH!!/________________________.

I imagine the hundreds of millions of other recently aborted babies, at least 2 million of whom are part of my Facebook Group - "Dead Air" - would concur.
 
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psionl0 said:
That is not the case here. There is no such thing as a "partial" human being. A living thing is either a human being or it is not.
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I think it is, indeed, the case. Unless you would argue that a strand of my hair is a human being, and that it is I. It has noone else's DNA
 
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