"Abortion is murder"...the rhetoric vs the reality

Hypothetical.....for our "pro-life" friends who constantly scream "Abortion is MURDERING a baby".....


A woman you know is in your house or apartment, when she announces to you that she is going to take a gun....go down to the daycare center (which you can't contact)...and shoot a baby. She even pulls out the gun, shows it to you, and begins walking to the door....what do you do? Just "try to talk her out of it"? Or will you actually use force against her to stop her from leaving (physically, holding her until the cops arrive, etc.)?


Now...suppose abortion is illegal in your state....and a woman you know is in your house or apartment, when she announces to you she is 6 weeks pregnant and is going out of state to an abortion services clinic where abortion is legal...and have an abortion....what do you?


Is there perhaps SOME distinction you make in the first and second hypotheticals and the actions you take???? If so...then you don't REALLY consider abortion "murder"...do you?

 

Miketto just hours ago referred to abortion as "the murder of babies". I've seen NUMEROUS "pro-lifers" on this forum make similar statements.

Are they the "exception"...or the rule?

 

Notice a lot of "Views" of this post....but none of the "abortion is murder" "pro-lifers" forthcoming with any answers.

Interesting, huh?

 

They always do...as with my hypotheticals above.

They LOVE to scream "Abortion is murder"...but when you start asking analogous questions on that....l.e. "Would you physically restrain a woman who was about to get an abortion...as you would a woman who was about to kill a child?".....they suddenly clam up.

Or with most (not all...there are the REALLY radical "pro-lifers")....ask "If capital punishment were legal in a state...and abortion was illegal....would you want a woman who took RU-486 to be executed for murder?".....suddenly for them (again, most, but not all) it's not "murder" but "some lesser form of homicide" and they'd only want "maybe 10 years in prison".

Long story short....most of them don't believe their own hyperbole.

 

There is no distinction, she has no right to make that arbitrary decision. Not on the guise of her "body" or her "health". If she wants to make that decision, I want my divorce papers. I cannot of course force her to stay within the home, but damned to hell if I allow my child to be thrown away on the whims of a selfish, egotistical woman.

It absolutely is murder. Just because the fetus isn't aware it's being massacred, doesn't mean it's not being massacred. Let's take a mentally retarded child and execute that child, it only "feels" pain. It has no concept of why it feels that pain or why people are killing it. In fact, I find it much more reasonable and moral to kill a mentally retarded child then to let it live.

After all, it'll live in supervision for the rest of its life, deficient in all areas and forever dependent on some kind of caretaker. That's not life.

So in a sense, I support eugenics in that eugenics can be morally finetuned. However, I think you'll oppose my eugenic viewpoint on the mentally retarded.

 

First I don't think that the OP was talking about your wife.
Second, I don't think you understand what the word massacred means.
Third, I don't think you know many people with retardation if you think they should be killed.

If being mentally retarded should line you up for death this board would become a wasteland.

 

In my experience it is only so they can then scream "women kill babies at nine months"!!!

 

It was a philosophical answer regarding abortion and how I didn't view it any differently. The only thing is, abortion is legalized so I cannot physically hold a woman against her will, that's a crime in of itself.

Secondly, I think you should refrain in the future from quoting or speaking to people unless you understand what it is your quoting. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/massacre

The second definition, it does not have to be a group of people.

Third: For the last time, don't quote people if you don't understand them least of all don't try to make assumptions. I've attended a private school for behavioral children up to ages 6-13 and in H.S I was in a "special ed" class. While I was and am an elite intellectual, I'm the exception and not the rule. I noticed these kids on wheel chairs, who couldn't speak, etc.

And I asked myself "Would I want to live that kind of pathetic life?" The answer is no. That if I could talk, the very first words would be "Just kill me".

Nothing could be more miserable than a life without meaning or living without understanding why your alive. My personal and up in close evaluation is what made me evaluate the unfortunately mentally retarded from a eugenics perspective.

It's not their fault, nor is it superiority per say. It's mercy killing. We do it for sick dogs.

 

I think KM is right - lots of ignorance within this post

and yet it has not answered the hypothetical question - would you physically restrain a woman from having an abortion??

I gather though, you would condone abortion, even late term, if it were for foetal abnormality incompatible with life

 

murder is defined by statutes and vary from place to place; how one exercises their discretion toward another proves nothing; and abortion is mostly done for wrong reasons.

 

As wrong as I think the actions of those who kill abortion doctors are, their actions are actually consistent with the rhetoric. If the State legalized the execution of two year olds there would be cells all over the country taking up arms against those doing the killing. I would be among them.

The vast majority of those who call abortion murder don't truly believe it, or else they would be doing more than whining about it on the internet.

 

Again you changed what the OP was saying so you could feel better.....good boy.

You understand a wanton murder is murder (which is the point of the thread) and murder is illegal by definition. So wrong again.

What part of saying

Did I misunderstand.

Good for you. But there are many people who live full lives who can't talk, who are not quick thinkers, and are still living people. Someone else had that idea and made it policy. His name was Adolph and his idea was to call people like that "life unworthy of life". I have a different take, I think my friends like that bring a great deal and enjoy their life, you don't get to make that choice for them.

Wow....so where is the line? Maybe not understand definitions in Websters?

Wow that is almost a direct quote from Hitler....wow. So now viable human beings are sick dogs to you.
You are either trolling or you are a horrible human being.

 

No I didn't change anything, I gave an Answer Do you not understand what an answer is? The OP asked if I found a difference between an adult woman proceeding to murder a pre-K child and having an abortion.

I answered that no, there's no difference as it pertains to the result. However on the account of abortion's legality, I cannot stop her. So I'd rather leave or I wouldn't even put myself in that kind of relationship to begin with.

Do....you....comprehend...it now?

Good.

No, I'm not wrong philosophically because the State takes a different position. An Abortion is masscre, especially in the second trimester onwards. Some of those methods are unspeakably cruel and horrific to watch. It is however, legal under state/federal law so I'll give it that much. I think you're really struggling to get some of these concepts here, so maybe it's better if you discussed something more at your political level.

You had the gall to make the assumption that I had no experience with those mentally retarded or ill, but you had absolutely NO way of knowing that. Hence, you don't know that my position is morally and intellectually based.

I don't think a direct comparison is merited. For I find there to be a distinct difference in the level of "disability". A blind person can still be an excellent pianist, a deaf person can still see. ETC, ETC.

What I'm talking about, specifically is the mentally brain dead. There was the famous Schiavo case that brought this discussion very temporarily to the forefront.
These people might as well be dead, those born that way are very tragically so. It's truly a mercy killing. I could not, in full consciousness imagine living life in that fashion. And if I had enough IQ to see the difference between "me" and the rest of the world, I'd get a knife and stab myself in the heart and get it over with.

This isn't necessarily about ensuring the "health" of the gene pool. This is recognizing that forcing them to "live" their lives is truly tantamount to torture. They're living a life in which they don't even know why they're alive. Can you comprehend that? I can't. At the least, I'd think of it as a world of chaos.

Ironically your last quote downward has expressed where the line is drawn. Vitality, life. Let's put it this way, an old man is lying on a hospital bed and expresses a wish that he wouldn't want to be put on life support. Or that the hospital decides that life support is no longer sustainable, etc.

A mentally brain dead person is simply a conscious/subconscious being that's breathing air but might as well not be. This person is the same as the old man, if the old man were muted. And the mentally brain dead person, if he/she could would probably express the same wish. It lived in this chaotic world for long enough.

I lived it, breathed it and saw it. And for a time, I saw my CP as something similar. If my life were to be devalued or non existent in anyway shape or fashion, I'd end it. Nothing could be more merciful than taking them away from the chaotic, unknown environments of their day to day "lives".

No, sick human beings are the same as sick dogs. If a person has stage 4 cancer, are we really going to put him through more chemotherapy or are we going to do the moral thing and give him a calm and peaceful death after months or even years of his cells violently ripping his body apart?

This is the other side of morality. Fatalistic mercy, it sucks but it's a part of life.

 

But you spoke of divorce. That was not part of the OP. It would be illegal for you to stop a woman from getting an abortion and since you clearly agreed and you wouldn't physically stop her there is a difference.

Yes, your goal posts are on rollerskates.

.

No you are wrong by the definition you chose. Murder is a legal term. When you use the word murder in your definition then that action you are defining must be a murder. Abortion isn't.

I made no such assumption, I did assume you didn't understand what retardation was. I still don't think you do.





I don't think

Actually you goalposts keep moving. So now retarded people who can't speak are okay as long as they can see? Help me out here.

Schiavo and people like her are not mentally retarded.

Schiavo wasn't born that way. Being mentally retarded is not being brain dead. Those are two very very very different things.

And that means nothing to me or anyone else. What you choose to do from a position of ability should not morally define it for others. The Schiavo issue was about KEEPING HER ALIVE. Mentally retarded people offer a great deal to the world and the vast majority have IQa tht allow them to understand themselves. Just because you wouldn't want to live doesn't make it moral to kill them.

This is why I think you are ignorant of people with mental retardation. Explain to me what you mean by not even knowing why they are alive. Are you once again talking about about brain dead people or people with mental retardation? Help me out because you constant change of description of these people you want to kill doesn't make it clear.

That is quite different from actively killing people because YOU wouldn't want to live like that. I wouldn't want to live in a slum, should we bomb slums?

But that is not mental retardation. Again you scream about understanding what mental retardation is but every example is not mental retardation.

I have no idea what you are talking about. You have CP? You understand that your first post suggested you should kill people with CP.

Again you seem to not even know what you are talking about. Not treating is different from actively killing.

So back to abortion. How is forcing a woman to carry a baby to term moral in your world.

 

Naturally...another part of their dishonesty. They find it difficult to talk about the early stages of gestation, so somehow "every abortion" becomes a late-term abortion at six months. Even when the discussion is on RU-486.

- - - Updated - - -

In my hypothetical, abortion would be illegal in your state.....if so, would you physically restrain a woman who told you she was going to go across state liens to have an abortion? Yes or No?

- - - Updated - - -

Why can you not address my OP and the hypotheicals directly?

If "abortion is murder"...and you were in a State where it had been made illegal...would you physically restrain a woman who told you she was going to cross state lines to have an abortion? Yes or No?

 

Exactly....it's a DISHONEST exercise in self-righteousness and hyperbole for effect.

Try something even more basic...ask a "pro-lifer" who supports capital punishment if they would want a woman who takes RU-486 and terminates a three week old pregnancy...executed?

You'll find some radicals who'll say "Yes" (mostly men, you'll note)...but even a lot of the ardant "Abortion is murder" "pro-lifers" will say "Well....no...of course not...that's different" and contradict themselves.

 

Neither. I'd prefer to universally revoke the licences of abortion doctors. Abortion is an affront to medicine, an insult. The only "medical procedure" which kills a life(Whether you agree with that life's stage of development or not, it's a life).

As for women, it depends. There are certain stages where abortion's morally acceptable, most stages where it's not IMO. If a woman is using abortion as a form of birth control, close her tubes. It's pretty much the same thing, and at least that way the potential life isn't being killed.

That might seem like grasping at straws to you, but I'd rather prevent pregnancy then have someone be in the pregnancy process and then decide "Okay, your life's not worth it to me anymore."

That's....sick.

 

Not what you said a while ago.

 

When life's morally in danger, we have right to self-defensive laws. I've never once denied that right. What I've constantly said from day one is that Abortion is, if nothing else a systematic robbery of a child's life at it's most vulnerable point. The moral justification for it is flimsy at best, with some serious considerations that are worth justifying.

It's like eating a big mac. Yeah, the stuff's filled with all kinds of chemicals but if you like it, who am I to stop you?

The difference is that when you eat a big mac, you yourself are the only one affected. An Abortion takes away from a potential life, what could possibly be for that child.

We don't have that fundamental right, with varying exceptions.(Such as you noted, if a child were to be born with such mental deficiencies as to be rendered without a life. It would be better off if it were dead).

In short, I guess it's not absolutist and there are reasons for enabling abortion. But those should be made clear. 50 million babies aborted is far too many, and it suggests that abortion utterly fails at birth control in the truest sense of those two words.

 

Wait...so abortion is ok sometimes but you still want to remove abortion entirely? That makes no sense at all, it seems like you are contradicting yourself here.

First of all abortion is a form of birth control as it controls (in fact prevents) birth.

Second of all you cannot force sterilization on people due to our basic human right to bodily integrity which most progressive societies agree we all have.

Do we normally give that which has potential to become something rights just because the potential is there? To be honest I just don't believe that the potential to become something else is a good enough reason to strip someone of their medical authority over their own bodies.

Most people just want to prevent pregnancy too, but unfortunately we live in a not-so-idealistic world.

Believe it or not, from our point of view we find it extremely sick for other people to be so controlling and to have such authoritarian views over women's bodily autonomy.

When you trample on a woman's right to choose you not only stamp out her option to have an abortion but you start infringing on her rights on how to carry to term. Giving personhood to the fetus affects ALL pregnant women, including those who want to give birth.

Let me show you how:

Amber Marlowe

http://advocatesforpregnantwomen.or.../could_you_be_forced_to_have_a_csection_1.php

Angela Carter

http://www.ascensionhealth.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=233&Itemid=173

These are the kinds of things that happen when you start deciding that a fetus has more rights than the person carrying it.

 

What if a pregnant woman chooses to eat a Big Mac? Everything she consumes the fetus might as well be consuming too since it directly affects it.

What if a pregnant women wanted to eat something that might cause her pregnancy to miscarry, perhaps she chooses to eat abortifacient fruits; pineapple, papaya and pomegranate, if enough is consumed at once, can cause a woman to miscarry. Would you ban all women of child-bearing years from eating these fruits lest they ingest too much and end a possible pregnancy?

 

No, I'd leave that up to the courts(and specifically the father) as to whether or not he wants to pursue a case against the mother for child neglect. If it were me in such a hypothetical case however, I admittedly wouldn't do it. Studies have shown how traumatic a miscarriage can be and I as a theoretical husband should be supportive during that time.

Life teaches lessons, when "we" as humans try to teach lessons it comes off as nothing more than hypocritical.