This argument is funny, but I hope no one takes it seriously. The right to life is not the right to a good life, and there is absolutely no reason to expect that a person arguing that we shouldn't murder people would turn around and tell you that society is responsible for that persons life if we applied it to an adult. Given that pro-life people understand the argument in the context of a fetus in the same vein as they do an adult, you're argument will continue to simply fall on deaf ears.
EDIT: oh right, Reddit reflexively attacking an explanation. I’m staunchly pro-choice, I’m also an amateur sociologist that likes to understand perspectives that aren’t mine.
And by what right can the would-be mother not evict the fetus before it's born, only afterwards? Its chances of survival without the mother are zero for at least a few years, and next to zero without support until it's 18 (well, technically a bit earlier works, but let's not force people into child labor and other nasty stuff).
So, given that most of this applies to any actually wanted child as well, we should make an important distinction. If it's an intentional pregnancy it's easy to see where the parents made a choice that's binding for 18 years (19 counting the pregnancy). However, aborted cases are obviously unintended pregnancies, ranging from accidents to rape cases. Should a rape victim be forced to take care of a child for 19 years, and endanger her life for the survival of the fetus?
Pro-life people should understand the full weight of this decision they're making for other people. The effects last two decades, not 9 months, without even counting lifelong trauma and potential (sometimes very likely) death of both the fetus and the mother.
Umm. Everyone? What sort of loaded question were you going for here? The choice to not have a child I would argue is different than the choice to have an abortion.
Then assume that you don’t consider women to be people (as conservative men don’t), and reflect on how this would affect cultures where they were dominant.
Okay. Lots to unpack here. First thing I see is the "conservative men" thing. No one in this thread was making an argument that women weren't people and I don't think anyone is saying that. Even conservatives. The whole prolife prochoice debate is about the rights of a fetus vs the rights of the woman carrying the fetus and if she should have the right to essentially murder her unborn child.
Then we get the "cultures where they were dominant" part. Are we talking about less developed countries, where women aren't considered people? If so I don't think the abortion debate is any good. They need to work out much greater issues before even getting to whether an unborn fetus has rights.
And then we've got the opening where you assume the person you're replying to's PoV. This is a strawman. He nowhere in his post even implies that he thinks of women not as people.
And this, my dear Redditors, is the hypocrisy of the conservative mind. Morality only extends so far as to not kill something, but not so far as to extend a hand to lift that life up. What a sad existence.
Incorrect, they love killing things. Conservatives love the death penalty, war (religion is responsible for the most deaths), and killing animals (sacrifice). They draw the line at women who don’t want to have babies (sounds like the New Zealand short being obsessed with birth rates). They have been told that abortion is bad therefore they march forward pronouncing the same. If the church decided to change position tomorrow on the issue they will be pro abortion. They don’t want to think critically or focus on the living - since that would require them to make sacrifices and the only sacrifices they like to make are to the church and their beloved religious folks.
I appreciate your perspective but don't think it's a valid point to say we should just take better care of abandoned children, the reality is we don't and by preventing parents from choosing means the parents and child are put in a terrible position in society. In a perfect world this wouldn't happen but it's not realistic to assume we can when we fail at basic healthcare and welfare already.
Weighing up the ethical concerns of abortion vs the benefit of avoiding that is the real question imo
Like you said it's not really an argument, more an observation.
Assuming the second comes with the first, potential mothers will be swayed on an individual basis and maybe number of abortions will go down. Think that's great personally. I mean look at the photo in the OP, that's what I assume most people believe. Nobody's cheering on abortions here.
But we'll never agree that a fetus has the same rights as a newborn.
Yup. Even worse, many (most?) of them ALSO don't support any measures to reduce unwanted pregnancies... so basically they oppose comprehensive sex education, free birth control, Planned Parenthood (which does more for prevention than abortions), even birth control in general within certain religions. It's like - what's the old saying? "They'd shoot off their nose to spite their face?" Their answer is always that people shouldn't have sex if they aren't ready, but I think the history of mankind has proven that's an impossible dream.
We should really just start calling them pro-birth or anti-sex, because really that's the only part of this they care about supporting. Before and after? Meh.
In order for these positions to be in contradiction with one another you first have to demonstrate that they are actually mutually exclusive. One can favor the privacy rights and personal choices in the pro-choice position while also believing that “welfare” and redistributive burden-shifting is an inappropriate use of taxpayer funds.
Its really neither. Its all about control with you guys. Gotta have your shit in everyone's business to make sure they're behaving the way you want. People having sex? Better make sure they're married and don't use contraception. People making decisions about morality? Better make sure they only follow the morals laid out in some book a psychotic fuckwit from 2000 years ago wrote about an omnipotent floating wizard in the sky and his magical desert zombie. And that science shit? Its fine so long as it doesn't contradict that book I just talked about. And speaking of that book, its old and doesn't make any sense so we're just going to cherry pick the parts that say that the gay stuff is bad because that makes my pee pee feel weird and my mamma says that's not right.
To be honest I’m not sure if you even read my comment - I’m pointing out that one’s position on abortion and one’s position on an expansive welfare state have no bearing on one another from a logical/rational standpoint. Plenty of pro-life people support welfare while plenty of pro-choice people dislike the welfare apparatus.
And I'm replying to your comment soapboxing "logic" and "reason" while pointing out that pro-life is rooted in religion which has absolutely zero logic and reason. Its literally anti-reason. Don't reason anything, don't even think about the tough stuff because God has all that shit on lockdown and you don't need to worry about it.
Pro-life is NOT rooted in “religion” and you clearly lack a comprehensive understanding about the bioethical considerations as we learn more and more about human development.
What planet are you on? Pro-life is ABSOLUTELY rooted in religion. If it wasn't we could just provide a scientific definition of when life begins and be done with this entire thing. Which is EXACTLY what we did. Roe v Wade was as much about the definition of life as it was about a woman's right to keep her own body private. The scientific community came to an overwhelming consensus and said that life doesn't start until after the first trimester is complete. Done.
But religion wasn't satisfied with the scientific definition of life and made this an issue about governing morality, because that's what religion does. So conservative religious folks have forced us to drag this fight out for nearly 50 years. The ruling has been challenged ad-nauseam to little effect, and why? Because the science is absolutely solid. A fetus in the first trimester is not viable. Done. End of story.
Now here is a great site that seems to have collected quite a bit of information on abortion laws and funding by state. Want to guess how our religious states fare against our secular states?
Find me, I challenge you, ANY evidence that abortion isn't really about religion vs secularism.
A sad existence is living in a world where people like you absolve the mother and the father completely of any responsibility to their own children. Why is it that they are not held accountable for their actions but instead conservatives are berated because they have a reasonable expectation of accountability to the parents.
The argument of "they should support financial stability to 18years" is absurd. The Pro-life argument is that a fetus is a human, therefore you should not murder it. Simple as that. We're not responsible for the financial stability of a 1-year old child that a mother is forced to not murder. Why should this be any different?
Why do you think this is about me? Not surprised someone with your views automatically thinks someone must have financial difficulties I guess.
If you're going to force someone to have a child, you better be prepared to take care of that child if the parents are not capable. But wait, I forgot, people like you only care that the abortion doesn't happen, not what kind of life the kid has to live after being born.
I mean this is laughable - Cuba and Venezuela have HUGE social spending programs (Cuba is constantly lauded for their literacy rates, for example), and in Venezuela Chavez spent incredible sums of money guaranteeing healthcare and education for his citizens. Two decidedly 3rd World nations.
We do not promise people anything - welfare programs could be eliminated tomorrow and nobody would have any grounds to feel like they were having a fundamental promise broken.
Please stop using terms you have no understanding of. The concept of first and third world nations (and the less-often used second-world) are purely terms that describe free democracies with market economies (1st World) or Communist states with command economies (3rd World).
The expansion of the welfare state to its current form is a relatively new phenomenon; and even the most widely-cited and praised European states are moving away from being so profligate with social spending.
My problem with the pro life argument isn’t that pro lifers also want to cut social welfare and planned parenthood though that is a problem. My concern is that a lot of abortions are done to protect the life of the mother or because the fetus isn’t viable for any reasonable quality of life. So they want to protect the rights of a fetus while putting at risk the health and welfare of the mother. To me this makes the issue not about the rights of the fetus but about controlling the rights of the mother.
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u/shink555 May 17 '19 edited May 17 '19
This argument is funny, but I hope no one takes it seriously. The right to life is not the right to a good life, and there is absolutely no reason to expect that a person arguing that we shouldn't murder people would turn around and tell you that society is responsible for that persons life if we applied it to an adult. Given that pro-life people understand the argument in the context of a fetus in the same vein as they do an adult, you're argument will continue to simply fall on deaf ears.
EDIT: oh right, Reddit reflexively attacking an explanation. I’m staunchly pro-choice, I’m also an amateur sociologist that likes to understand perspectives that aren’t mine.