State your position

[1069]

There are other laws which regulate what we can and can't do with our own bodies and with other people's bodies. Abortion laws are not unique in that regard.

They are unique in attempting to control the reproductive functions of females- and only females.
This is not feasible in a nation such as the one we have created here.

 

[Chuz Life]

They are unique in attempting to control the reproductive functions of females- and only females.
This is not feasible in a nation such as the one we have created here.

I would like to be the first to go on record for opposing the legality of elective abortions for pregnant or likely to be impregnated men.

 

[1069]

I would like to be the first to go on record for opposing the legality of elective abortions for pregnant or likely to be impregnated men.

That in no way addresses my statement.
You know perfectly well it isn't remotely feasible in a society such as ours.
First you'd have to change... everything.
And I don't believe you could at this point, even if you tried.
The Christian Right has been trying, ever since the early 60s, when the Civil Rights movement began.
They've been notably unsuccessful.
There's no direction for a society like ours to go, but forward. We've got too much momentum behind us.

 

[Chuz Life]

That in no way addresses my statement.
You know perfectly well it isn't remotely feasible in a society such as ours.

Are you aware that there is a significant number of women who also oppose abortion on demand?

 

[1069]

Are you aware that there is a significant number of women who also oppose abortion on demand?

Of course.

 

[ricksfolly]

The abortion debate is rife with hyperbole, exaggerations, mischaracterizations, and outright lies from people on both sides of the aisle. After the debate has gone on for awhile, it can be hard to remember just exactly what position it is exactly that your opponent is arguing from. This thread aims to help with that.

Let's just say it's a woman and her doctor's problem and let it go at that.

ricksfolly

 

[Chuz Life]

Let's just say it's a woman and her doctor's problem and let it go at that.

ricksfolly

:lol:

Let's not and let's be honest and truthful about what an elective abortion really is and what the Constitutional ramifications about it are.

You know,... like grownups do.

 

[prometeus]

Let's not and let's be honest and truthful about what an elective abortion really is and what the Constitutional ramifications about it are.

Everyone knows what elective abortion is and no one has disputed any on it, but do tell us what the constitutional ramifications are to best of my knowledge there are none.

 

[Laila]

The abortion debate is rife with hyperbole, exaggerations, mischaracterizations, and outright lies from people on both sides of the aisle. After the debate has gone on for awhile, it can be hard to remember just exactly what position it is exactly that your opponent is arguing from. This thread aims to help with that.

The purpose of this thread is to give people a place to simply and concisely state their positions on the abortion issue. The purpose of this thread is not to provide another place to debate the issue, we already have plenty of threads for that. It is also not intended as a place to state your opinions of the opposite side of the issue, or how you see their position. It is simply a place for you to state your position and hopefully a place others can refer to if they want to know exactly where someone is arguing from.

Abortion up until foetus is viable. I do think UK's Abortion laws needs to be reviewed and possibly lowered, 24 weeks seems a bit high to me.

I find the use of Abortion as a form of contraceptive distasteful but still support taxpayers paying for Abortion as it goes hand in hand with a NHS.

 

[Jimmy Larkins]

It is my opinion that a mother should be able to choose abortion for any reason. I think that there might be better options, but honestly a fetus is not really a human. Otherwise everytime you have sex and she doesn't get pregnant (meaning that the sperm die) is hundreds of abortions. Along with every time a woman goes through her period. This is America, religion is good until it starts to dictate society. Sad to say, abortion is constitutional.

 

[Calabrese]

In my opinion, I believe abortion is wrong. I fetus is not a part of a woman's body, it is a separate organism dependent on a woman's body. It has its own genes, different DNA means a different being, simple as that.
With that said, my view is that people need to have the right to have an abortion. If they were outlawed you would see a spike in parent less children, handicapped children because the mother was abusing drugs during her pregnancy, and worst of all, clothes hanger abortions.

I believe that abortions need to be legal but restricted to before the point that a fetus develops a nervous system (whenever that may be I am not an expert) this way although it is still murder in my opinion, it would be humane and the baby would not feel anything

 

[1069]

I believe that abortions need to be legal but restricted to before the point that a fetus develops a nervous system (whenever that may be I am not an expert) this way although it is still murder in my opinion, it would be humane and the baby would not feel anything

Or they could not restrict late term abortions, and just anesthetize the fetus before removing it.
That way would also be humane and the fetus wouldn't feel anything.

 

[Calabrese]

Or they could not restrict late term abortions, and just anesthetize the fetus before removing it.
That way would also be humane and the fetus wouldn't feel anything.

i guess so, however late stage abortions are killing more than a cluster of cells.
Is it humane to anesthetize and kill a one year old?
When one decides to have sex, certain responsabilities come with that. If one knows that they had un protected sex, they should know to check if they are pregnant because that possibility comes with having unprotected sex. Same goes (as horrible as it is) if one got raped.
If one has to wait untill they need a late term abortion, that is neglecting the fetus, especially when a developing nervous system becomes a brain, then the fetus truley is a concious, feeling, human being

 

[cubbies2ws]

This whole two-party system we have setup here.. I hate it. The way I see it the two sides have been put up to look at the issue like this:

Left: These crazy-religious nut jobs have no sense of reality and want to force women back into functioning as primarily homemakers. They don't realize that people aren't all holy and God-loving and they do have sex which often results in unwanted pregnancies.

Right: These progressives want to kill babies! It's no one's right to take a life.

And whenever there's a poll on this question I can never answer it because I have a view that doesn't fall into either one of these categories. So here it goes...

Personally, I believe abortion is immoral and should only be used as a very last resort. But that's my personal view. Legally, we live in a country based on freedom. I believe it's the woman's choice as to what she wants to do. If the law were to be changed to disallow abortions, what type of country would we be? We would be stripping even more freedoms away from our people. Abortion is a morality issue, and you can't force morals. I think that the pro-lifers should stop fighting abortion on the political battlefield and take pride in an aspect of our lives remaining free from the growing scope of our government. INSTEAD, pro-lifers should unite on moral grounds to explain to people why this is wrong and why it should be avoided. They should treat the women wanting to have abortions as misguided souls. Wouldn't that be the real Godly thing to do? Get people to understand and choose life over abortion because they understand the morality behind it. Enabling choice always seems more moral than brute force. Outlawing abortions wouldn't change anyone's views, it would just create madness.

So when people ask me if I'm pro-life or pro-choice.......welll I'm both.

 

[Graffight]

I am Pro Life and I believe elective abortions should be illegal. I don't believe it's a state issue, and they should be illegal for the same reason the unjustified taking of any other human being's life is illegal.

I do believe Medical abortions should be legal in the event that the mother's life is in danger. Everyone has the right to choose their life over person is going to kill them if such a choice is possible. It is everyone's right to defend their own life if they so choose.

The one and only important question in this debate is if the unborn is human life. If it is not, it can be discarded at will, and there should be no limits placed on elective abortion. However if it is human life, it is unjustified killing of another human being and should under no circumstances be legal.

I argue that biology proves that the unborn is human life. It grows and develops, It responds to stimuli, it metabolizes energy, it gets rid of waste. The unborn can be conserved outside of the mother and implanted into the mother’s womb which proves that it is not a part of the mother. It also has DNA that is separate and distinct from the mother, sometimes the DNA can be of a different Gender, or even a different race from the mother. It can even be from a different mother. Later on it has its own brain, heart, lungs, circulatory system which are separate and distinct from the mother. The blood of the child and the blood of the mother never mix. It can even be argued that the unborn communicates. In my mind it is without question that the unborn from the moment of conception is human life. There is been no evidence to the contrary.

“Wikipedia defines life - In biology, the science of living organisms, life is the condition which distinguishes active organisms from inorganic matter.[4] Living organisms undergo metabolism, maintain homeostasis, possess a capacity to grow, respond to stimuli, reproduce and, through natural selection, adapt to their environment in successive generations. More complex living organisms can communicate through various means.[1][5]”

As for elective abortions I have never seen a valid argument...never, not one, that would make taking the life of another human being ok. In fact, every argument in favor of abortion either fits into one or more of three categories, or is a red herring used to distract the debater from the issues. None of these three categories are sufficient justification for killing another human being, which I have argued that the unborn is.

The tactics are as follows.

First there is an attempt to say that the unborn is not life which I have already argued that it is.

Second there is an attempt to say that it IS life, but somehow that life is not valuable. These attempts to devalue human life fit in to four categories of their own. They argue that the unborn Size, Level of Development, Environment or Degree of Dependency. All of these are arbitrary and as such would not be adequate justification to kill any other human being and are not adequate justification to kill a human being just because it is not yet born.

The third is that the fetus IS life but the right’s of the mother bodily rights outweigh the rights of the child. This article here throughly addresses this argument.

I also believe there are several inconsistancies in the law regarding the humanity of the unborn, and I feel as if there are far too many double standards regarding parents responsibility to the unborn, or a child after it’s born.

 

[ricksfolly]

A pregnate woman who desperately needs answers to real problems in her real world is more important to those who care than your self-serving political diatribe. Get a life...

ricksfolly

 

[Graffight]

It's a little difficult to "ice-pick" a blob of bloody snot to death, which is basically what a first-trimester fetus looks like, but I wouldn't have any problem doing it (except that it would already be dead at the time, seeing as how it's not capable of sustaining itself without being attached to somebody else's body sucking away at their bodily resources).

yeah but you say any time at any stage, so what about durring the 3rd trimester?

 

[Graffight]

A pregnate woman who desperately needs answers to real problems in her real world is more important to those who care than your self-serving political diatribe. Get a life...

ricksfolly

a wonderful argument...i like how you adressed that one point. I will however say that my argument is neither self serving nor political. I am genuinly worried about lives of the unborn. I also care about the issues mother's face, and the things that need to be fixed in our systems, but these issues are secondary. We woudn't legalize any other type of unjustified killing because of the reasons given for abortion, so abortion shoudl be illegal for the same reasons as any other unjustified killing of human beings. But be clear about one thing...I am NOT and cannont be considered self serving on this issue, because this issue does not affect me in any way personally, besides the grief I feel for unborn human life.

 

[mac]

It's a little difficult to "ice-pick" a blob of bloody snot to death, which is basically what a first-trimester fetus looks like, but I wouldn't have any problem doing it (except that it would already be dead at the time, seeing as how it's not capable of sustaining itself without being attached to somebody else's body sucking away at their bodily resources).

video 1 - 53 days embryo

That doesn't look like a blob of snot to me.

 

[molten_dragon]

Please take the debate to another thread guys. I didn't create this one for that purpose.

 

[Henrin]

It seems so trivial to me to say that a stage of development changes any of the factors that makes a human a human. I know people want to claim brain activity, I know this, and I have listened to their arguments, but how does that even begin to change the reality of the situation at hand? When has brain activity been a measurement of what we call human? Is a man on a life support with low brain activity not human? Is a dead person that died yesterday not human? Of course they are, and I wouldn't think anyone would declare any sort of falsity in that statement, but for some reason the shear act of its developing in another human body the organism in which we are talking is no longer what is so clearly is.

I won't say it doesn't sicken me that people honestly believe this is an argument of choice, because it clearly isn't. It is so very obvious to me this argument is born in a lack of willingness to accept the responsibility, an unwillingness to deal with the pain of an experience, or the unwillingness of just a turning of tides in their lives. I don't have any sort of guilt in saying I do not think highly of people that belittle the argument to nothing more than to a development argument, and proclaim the argument of choice has any bearing on the reality of the situation of their argument.

The rape argument in which people put forth is interesting to note, but not interesting in the terms of intelligent discussion, but interesting in terms of exceptions. It is wildly pretended the act of a harmful act on a woman should allow the toleration of the act of abortion, but the fact remains nothing changes in the roots of the argument, just the circumstances that came about in making the woman pregnant. I am and everyone else is to believe that we are to support this action on nothing more than a terrible crime that has unfortunately came about. For once in a moment in the world, in complete opposition of all that is moral in the world, something that is clearly a wrong, is supposed to be allowed to stop the results of another wrong. I will not hide the fact that I see their argument irrelevant to the subject at hand and therefore I will not declare it an exception.

So the question remains, what is my view on all of this when it pertains to why it is human. Well, the answer is simple and short, it has the full DNA of a human, which is all it needs to be declared human. The only difference between between the woman and the baby is in development. The woman at its age was in the same position, and don't she forget it. I have and always will ask this, will you dare switch places with the baby or do not not think your life is irrelevant? This isn't a question accepting the response of awareness at that time, this is a question of value of your own life as it is now.

 

[majora$$hole]

The abortion debate is rife with hyperbole, exaggerations, mischaracterizations, and outright lies from people on both sides of the aisle. After the debate has gone on for awhile, it can be hard to remember just exactly what position it is exactly that your opponent is arguing from. This thread aims to help with that.

The purpose of this thread is to give people a place to simply and concisely state their positions on the abortion issue. The purpose of this thread is not to provide another place to debate the issue, we already have plenty of threads for that. It is also not intended as a place to state your opinions of the opposite side of the issue, or how you see their position. It is simply a place for you to state your position and hopefully a place others can refer to if they want to know exactly where someone is arguing from.

I'll start.

I support the legality of elective abortion until the fetus reaches the point of viability (somewhere between the 22nd and 26th week of pregnancy, I've not yet decided exactly where I feel the cutoff should be). After the point of viability I do not support elective abortion, but I believe a woman should have the right to deliver the child early without being responsible for its death should it die outside the womb. I believe that abortion should only be legal after the point of viability if the mother's health or life are in serious danger. There are two main reasons for this.

1. I believe it is our minds and their ability for abstract thought, emotions, and reasoning that is what makes us human (or persons if you prefer). I believe that before the point of viability, a fetus's brain is not physically developed to the point where it is capable of abstract though, emotion, or reasoning, and therefore is not human. Since the mother IS human, and has a right to bodily sovereignty, she has the right to kill it in order to remove it from her body.

2. When the fetus reaches the point of viability it has reached a point in its development where it has a chance of surviving outside the mother's body. At this point, there is a possibility that the fetus which is infringing upon her bodily sovereignty can be removed without causing its death, a possibility which did not exist up to this point.

So there you have it, my beliefs on abortion and the reasoning behind them. What're yours?

i pretty much agree with what you say here with the exception on "the point of viability" which i say is "brain life" or the point which brain function starts or has the ability to start for that is the opposite point at which we have determined someone to be dead ie: "brain death". these two points would then corrispond MORE to one another legally imo and not have religion or emotional responses attached to the debate just science.

 

[majora$$hole]

It seems so trivial to me to say that a stage of development changes any of the factors that makes a human a human. I know people want to claim brain activity, I know this, and I have listened to their arguments, but how does that even begin to change the reality of the situation at hand? When has brain activity been a measurement of what we call human? Is a man on a life support with low brain activity not human? Is a dead person that died yesterday not human? Of course they are, and I wouldn't think anyone would declare any sort of falsity in that statement, but for some reason the shear act of its developing in another human body the organism in which we are talking is no longer what is so clearly is.

I won't say it doesn't sicken me that people honestly believe this is an argument of choice, because it clearly isn't. It is so very obvious to me this argument is born in a lack of willingness to accept the responsibility, an unwillingness to deal with the pain of an experience, or the unwillingness of just a turning of tides in their lives. I don't have any sort of guilt in saying I do not think highly of people that belittle the argument to nothing more than to a development argument, and proclaim the argument of choice has any bearing on the reality of the situation of their argument.

The rape argument in which people put forth is interesting to note, but not interesting in the terms of intelligent discussion, but interesting in terms of exceptions. It is wildly pretended the act of a harmful act on a woman should allow the toleration of the act of abortion, but the fact remains nothing changes in the roots of the argument, just the circumstances that came about in making the woman pregnant. I am and everyone else is to believe that we are to support this action on nothing more than a terrible crime that has unfortunately came about. For once in a moment in the world, in complete opposition of all that is moral in the world, something that is clearly a wrong, is supposed to be allowed to stop the results of another wrong. I will not hide the fact that I see their argument irrelevant to the subject at hand and therefore I will not declare it an exception.

So the question remains, what is my view on all of this when it pertains to why it is human. Well, the answer is simple and short, it has the full DNA of a human, which is all it needs to be declared human. The only difference between between the woman and the baby is in development. The woman at its age was in the same position, and don't she forget it. I have and always will ask this, will you dare switch places with the baby or do not not think your life is irrelevant? This isn't a question accepting the response of awareness at that time, this is a question of value of your own life as it is now.

you confuse being human with being alive. my arguement of when we determine when a human is alive is BASED on when we as a society have ALREADY determined when a human is dead which is "brain death" so following that logic "brain life" for the definition of when someone is alive. you asked "when has brain activity been a measurement of what we call human?" answer: it isn't, human life is. when you say it is DNA of a human i say so are the cells of a dead human even though the cells still live. is that human still alive? my definition of when a human is considered alive is not based on religion or emotion but on science which is what the law should be based on imo. the question i have for you is why do you expect a rape victim to "accept responsibility" for something she didn't ask for?

 

[Henrin]

you confuse being human with being alive. my arguement of when we determine when a human is alive is BASED on when we as a society have ALREADY determined when a human is dead which is "brain death" so following that logic "brain life" for the definition of when someone is alive. you asked "when has brain activity been a measurement of what we call human?" answer: it isn't, human life is. when you say it is DNA of a human i say so are the cells of a dead human even though the cells still live. is that human still alive? my definition of when a human is considered alive is not based on religion or emotion but on science which is what the law should be based on imo. the question i have for you is why do you expect a rape victim to "accept responsibility" for something she didn't ask for?

I do not confuse being human with being alive, I simply do not accept the argument that being alive matters. You see my argument is not based on factors of development, but the factors of genetics. The truth is I simply pay no mind to the argument that we must argue if the organism is alive or not. If I were to put my foot in the door, I simply must point out, it appears to be growing and developing, something a dead thing simply can't do.

the question i have for you is why do you expect a rape victim to "accept responsibility" for something she didn't ask for?

You have to accept the responsibility of whatever happens to you regardless. Responsibility isn't a game where you can pick and choose what you wish to accept as you playfully believe. Not everything in life that you must deal with is going to be enjoyable, nor is it going to be favorable, but that doesn't excuse you from having to deal with it. I know you wish for me to PC with my answer to you, but life isn't a jolly ride, its a harsh reality of cruel results, endless misery and tiny bits of enjoyment mixed in. You wish to erase two parts of it, tell me, do you not think that those two parts have have lessons in them? Dealing with your responsibilities allows you to learn from lessons. Not all responsibilities have lessons but all responsibilities must be followed or what is to say what is what? Are you proposing we choose the responsibilities we wish to follow on what society decides meaningful? Do you think that is wise?

 

[majora$$hole]

I do not confuse being human with being alive, I simply do not accept the argument that being alive matters. You see my argument is not based on factors of development, but the factors of genetics. The truth is I simply pay no mind to the argument that we must argue if the organism is alive or not. If I were to put my foot in the door, I simply must point out, it appears to be growing and developing, something a dead thing simply can't do.



You have to accept the responsibility of whatever happens to you regardless. Responsibility isn't a game where you can pick and choose what you wish to accept as you playfully believe. Not everything in life that you must deal with is going to be enjoyable, nor is it going to be favorable, but that doesn't excuse you from having to deal with it. I know you wish for me to PC with my answer to you, but life isn't a jolly ride, its a harsh reality of cruel results, endless misery and tiny bits of enjoyment mixed in. You wish to erase two parts of it, tell me, do you not think that those two parts have have lessons in them? Dealing with your responsibilities allows you to learn from lessons. Not all responsibilities have lessons but all responsibilities must be followed or what is to say what is what? Are you proposing we choose the responsibilities we wish to follow on what society decides meaningful? Do you think that is wise?

let me guess you are male so that responsibility (a life long one) will not happen to you. i say you should offer your services to all the products of rape victims and take on that responsibility. oh and you do not accept the "life" arguement because the one you have isn't based on anything that could be used in court. the point at which life starts (conception, or elsewhere) IS the abortion arguement where have you been?