Men's Abortion Rights.

psionl0 said:
Given that the DNA of a zygote is different to that of all the other cells in your body, your argument is specious.
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False. By that logic a virus is a father if it infects a woman. After all, it is introducing new genetic material.

psionl0 said:
If a woman wishes to terminate her pregnancy then I guess that it is usually best to allow her to do so but don't provide her with silly rationalizations for it.
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I am not doing so. It appears you can't read.
 
Arcade22 said:
We live in this thing called a "society" and as such what people are allowed to do, including with their own bodies in private, is something that we as members of society may seek to regulate, within the limits of permissible interference in personal autonomy and freedom.
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I have snipped the last part as it goes into topics I'd rather not divert the thread to, especially since it's already well off track for the most part.

So.. I'm mostly just going to point out that being part of a society doesn't actually create a right for members of that Society to tell others in the Society how they are to use and what they can and can't do with their own bodies. You are merely making the assumption that it does without explaining why it should be that way. The fact is that we are getting away from the position that Society has that right in many things that involve our personal use of out bodies because it's seen as wrong.
 
PhantomWolf said:
So a relatively simple question with what is probably a nor so simple answer.

If you are a man and disagree with Abortion, can you express what you think gives you the right to dictate how a woman who is unrelated to you, and not in a relationship with you, should have to deal with her own body?

And so as not to be totally sexist, if any of our woman posters disagree with abortion, free feel to come to the table and express why you think you have the right to dictate other women's action with their own bodies too.
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Haha! Anyone who thinks husbands should have any rights over their unborn child would probably be savaged.
 
RecoveringYuppy said:
I too am having trouble what you are trying to say here.
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Who else is having that trouble?

RecoveringYuppy said:
You and psionl0 seemed to have jumped the track.
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Not really. The question is whether men have a right to deny women the right to an abortion, not if the unborn child is human or not. (But I can't resist when a specious argument is presented).
 
abaddon said:
A cell. The religious argument is that a cell has a soul. Given that we all kill millions of our cells every day as a matter of course, that argument is specious.
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I'm not asking what kind of tissue it is. I'm not even asking you if it's A human. I'm asking if it's human life. It's not horse, is it? It's a human cell. One that grows into an actual human. So while I'm in favour of abortion I find the claim that it's not human life rather disingenous.

The bottom line here is that there is no easy way around the issue of defining "personhood".
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Of course not. But I didn't ask whether the Zygote was a person. I asked whether it was human life.

As a man, and a father, I have absolutely no right to dictate anything to any woman. Period.
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And yet we dictate things to one another all the time.
 
psionl0 said:
Who else is having that trouble?
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Never mind what I said about this, just let other people identify themselves if they care.

psionl0 said:
Not really. The question is whether men have a right to deny women the right to an abortion, not if the unborn child is human or not. (But I can't resist when a specious argument is presented).
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I don't get the part in parentheses but that's OK.
 
Belz... said:
Actually, I'm not entirely sure what either of you is saying to the other. Would you mind clarifying your side of it?
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What's not to understand? An unborn child is nurtured and incubated inside of a woman. However, it is not a part of her body. It is a separate and distinct human life.

And only an idiot would call it a disease or a virus.
 
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PhantomWolf said:
I'm mostly just going to point out that being part of a society doesn't actually create a right for members of that Society to tell others in the Society how they are to use and what they can and can't do with their own bodies.
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It does in the one I live in. Also the one you live in too.

You apparently don't think it should.
 
Has been mentioned, but we have a bill going through parliament that will move abortion from being a criminal issue (no one has been charged and the women can't be. It is the abortionist, if procedure isn't followed properly), to a health issue.

Personally find it laughable to call it a health issue. It is about as much a health issue as not required for reconstruction plastic surgery.

It is purely an ethical issue.

One of the parties are refusing to vote for it (It's a concious vote) without a public referendum and there are people saying only women should allowed to vote in it, which I thought was pretty funny.
 
Francesca R said:
It does in the one I live in. Also the one you live in too.

You apparently don't think it should.
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Just because it does, doesn't make it right. Pre-the 1980's most Societies considered Homosexuality wrong enough for it to be illegal, a lot of societies still do.

The question is not one of does society do so, but should it? What is the reasoned and rational argument behind it. For the most part I only see a religious one, and personally, despite being a Christian, I personally believe that no Law should be made on the basis of any Religious belief, and in the US such practice would be a violation of the 1st Amendment.
 
PhantomWolf said:
Just because it does, doesn't make it right. Pre-the 1980's most Societies considered Homosexuality wrong enough for it to be illegal, a lot of societies still do.

The question is not one of does society do so, but should it? What is the reasoned and rational argument behind it. For the most part I only see a religious one, and personally, despite being a Christian, I personally believe that no Law should be made on the basis of any Religious belief, and in the US such practice would be a violation of the 1st Amendment.
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I have meet quite a few pro life people who are in no way religious.

Think that is an easy label to put on those who disagree with it.
 
Belz... said:
I'm not asking what kind of tissue it is. I'm not even asking you if it's A human. I'm asking if it's human life. It's not horse, is it? It's a human cell. One that grows into an actual human. So while I'm in favour of abortion I find the claim that it's not human life rather disingenous.
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With respect Belz this is all just playing around with words: "a human", "human life", "human cell", "an actual human", albeit with the word "human" omnipresent. That doesn't validate the concept of "human life" though as you see it. And even if it did, what's the significance of a living cell, for example, that happens to be "human", over and above any other living cell? What does the fact that it's a "human" living cell somehow confer on it compared to a "non-human" living cell?

psionl0 said:
What's not to understand? An unborn child is nurtured and incubated inside of a woman. However, it is not a part of her body. It is a separate and distinct human life.
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Only when it's born, or at least capable of supporting itself (I'm sure there's a medical term!). If the prospect of a particular pregnant woman dying means that her unborn foetus/baby would inevitably also die, that can hardly be construed as a separate and distinct human life. Only when it is capable of self-sustainment can it be deemed a separate and distinct human life. Maybe that should be the threshold for termination, at least for convenience?!?
 
PhantomWolf said:
Just because it does, doesn't make it right. Pre-the 1980's most Societies considered Homosexuality wrong enough for it to be illegal, a lot of societies still do.
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Agreed. Works both ways too until about the 1980s it was legal to smoke tobacco on public transport including planes and in many public spaces and now it isn't.

The question is not one of does society do so, but should it? What is the reasoned and rational argument behind it. For the most part I only see a religious one, and personally, despite being a Christian, I personally believe that no Law should be made on the basis of any Religious belief
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I think it is human rights which is ethics and morality but not simply religion (IE arising from unproven belief in a deity--which becomes the mechanism by which those who argue it is religiously inspired then argue to dismantle it)

For example, I am not religious but I would have a very hard time with the conclusion that someone unrelated to me should have the freedom to terminate/kill/whatever-you-call-it a foetus/baby/whatever at any point up until it draws breath one or whatever. So some time before that it is not OK and I don't really know when. Absolutist arguments do not seem any less silly whether they are pro or anti.

But this is beside the point you asked by what means should unrelated members of society express and enact restrictions and this seems rather uncomplicated to me.

Aside from that and where abortion is fully legal and so on, I think I can agree with the view that the views of biological putative fathers should have no legal force in the matter
 
Francesca R said:
Agreed. Works both ways too until about the 1980s it was legal to smoke tobacco on public transport including planes and in many public spaces and now it isn't.

I think it is human rights which is ethics and morality but not simply religion (IE arising from unproven belief in a deity--which becomes the mechanism by which those who argue it is religiously inspired then argue to dismantle it)

For example, I am not religious but I would have a very hard time with the conclusion that someone unrelated to me should have the freedom to terminate/kill/whatever-you-call-it a foetus/baby/whatever at any point up until it draws breath one or whatever. So some time before that it is not OK and I don't really know when. Absolutist arguments do not seem any less silly whether they are pro or anti.
But this is beside the point you asked by what means should unrelated members of society express and enact restrictions and this seems rather uncomplicated to me.

Aside from that and where abortion is fully legal and so on, I think I can agree with the view that the views of biological putative fathers should have no legal force in the matter
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I fall into this category

Atheist. No problem with pro-choice, but when you start over 20-25 weeks I definitely start to get some mixed feelings over it, unless there is a genuine medical need, like danger to the mother or the baby is found to be obviously going to be born in a freakily abnormal in a bad way, with no quality of life
 
Southwind17 said:
Only when it's born, or at least capable of supporting itself (I'm sure there's a medical term!). If the prospect of a particular pregnant woman dying means that her unborn foetus/baby would inevitably also die, that can hardly be construed as a separate and distinct human life. Only when it is capable of self-sustainment can it be deemed a separate and distinct human life. Maybe that should be the threshold for termination, at least for convenience?!?
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I can see the cutting of the umbilical cord as a logical (as distinct from moral) threshold for the right to life. But depending on how you define "self-sustainment", you could be arguing that a child would have to be several years old before it can be deemed a separate and distinct human life.
 
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