I am an abortion consequentialist, and if you're smart, you are too

A lot of animals have more cognizance than a 21 week old fetus. Chimps, dolphins, etc. Even monkeys, tigers etc. probably.

 

Going by your logic, it is like saying it's okay to kill a human being in an inert or subdued state. Correct?

That is such a cold and callous response. To be an advocate of a procedure that premeditatively terminates a life and just say "So?" speaks volumes about you.

 

There is no human life to terminate. Only human entities that are actually, or have been and will be again, self-aware/conscious, should have the right to life.

By the way, a 20 week old fetus has a lot less self-awareness/intelligence/consciousness than an adult bottlenose dolphin or chimp or gorilla. That has been well established time and time again to the point of certainty based on observations and neurological evidence. What do you make of that?

 

The context by which I use the word "destiny" refers to existence. Your diverting its context to human alleviation is not exactly relevant.

Ah, there lies the crux of the matter, that of a glaring insensitivity and disrespect towards a human life. Pro-choicers do know abortion is murdering a human being. They just don't care because the life isn't theirs or anyone they care for.

 

There is no human life to terminate? Listen to yourself, you talk like God coming up with a phrase of "should have the right to life". Who do you think you are?

Your logic is ludicrous. You are defining humanity by the different states they naturally go through rather than than their totality. You do this with a tendency to convenience yourself, too, when you now define a human life who has "actually, or have been and will be again". Clearly your logic acknowledges the "future tense", but you conveniently deny that grammatic tense to a fetus that WILL be a fully sentient human being.

Irrelevant.

 

Alleviating diseases that have plagued mankind DOES affect existence. The point is that we interfere all the time with what once would have been considered destiny. The life expectancy of humans one hundred years ago was 47 years, and our interference with destiny has extended that. We are not obligated to allow every zef to mature any more than we are obligated to attempt to fertilize every egg.

The crux of the matter is of a glaring insensitivity and disrepect towards female lives. Pro-lifers know that abortion is NOT murder, and certainly NOT murder of "a human being," but they don't care because they don't care about women and the quality of their lives. Ironically, pro-lifers frequently change their stance on abortion when it affects them personally or someone close to them.

http://mypage.direct.ca/w/writer/anti-tales.html

Abortion is a highly personal decision that many women are sure they'll never have to think about until they're suddenly faced with an unexpected pregnancy. But this can happen to anyone, including women who are strongly anti-choice. So what does an anti-choice woman do when she experiences an unwanted pregnancy herself? Often, she will grin and bear it, so to speak, but frequently, she opts for the solution she would deny to other women -- abortion.

 

Anddddd fetuses can't think or feel emotions or make decisions.

What do you say about that?

No it isn't; do you think dolphins and chimps deserve the same rights as a fetus, since they are more cognizant than a fetus? Or is your argument not based on how conscious/self-aware an entity is, but rather, it's genetic code and technically having human DNA, which would be arbitrary?

 

You're convoluting the discussion. We're talking about abortion, i.e., the premature termination of the life of a human being.

Again, you're convoluting the discussion. You think aborting a baby never has an impact on a father?

Oh, are you speaking for me now? I'm a pro-lifer, and yes, I see abortion as MURDER, and yes, it is a murder of a human being. You can delude yourself that a fetus is not human, but as I originally said -- a fertilized human egg cell will, barring acts of God, inevitably be born human. It was already a human when the egg got fertilized. What else could it be? A duck? A fish?

You pro-choicers insist on using non-responsiveness as a justification to destroy a fetus. That is such unclear thinking.

Your cynicism knows no bounds. Now you're accusing pro-lifers like me that I will change my stance on abortion when it affects me personally? You have a lot of gall presuming that. You wouldn't make a good juror.

 

But you said that the baby and mother were anesthatized. How many hands can you grab anesthatized?

 

The so-called "baby" didn't grab anybody's hand. The surgeon grasped the "baby's" hand. The picture was misleading.

 

It is not I who is convoluting things. Referring to a zef, particularly an early age zef, as "a human being" is a convolution in itself.

It is not even necessary for the father-to-be to know about it. Certainly, he cannot miss what he has never known.

You're continuing to confuse adjectives and nouns. "Human" can be either, but be careful how you use it.

The only justification a woman needs for abortion is that she wants it. That's pretty clear, even for you.

Many pro-lifers do change their minds, did you read the link? No reason to think you are different or special.

 

I don't think you read my original post very carefully. I said that a human egg cell, once fertilized, is destined to become a human being. To paraphrase, upon fertilization, that human being is, barring acts of God, officially on its way to this world. Being a fetus is the natural order of things. You and I passed that route before. Look at us today, we're having a very healthy exchange of ideas marked by intellectual depth. If your fetus was terminated, I wouldn't be talking to you right now.

What's the point of comparing a human fetus to that of a dolphin or chimp? To date, more than 53 million babies have been killed through abortion in the U.S. since abortion was legalized. Think about that. We have killed more babies than there are people in some nations. You and I know that just ONE person can make a difference in the world, and we killed more than 53 million who had that potential. How many Einsteins did we kill? How many people destined for high productivity and greatness did we kill? Can you think this way about a dolphin or a chimp?

 

Most of them would probably be failure breeders.

 

You pro-choicers constantly say abortion defends the right of a woman to her own body. I see it as defending a woman's right to irresponsibility.

You seem to have blinders that seriously narrows your perspective. Just because a woman wants to kill her baby is not justification to allow it. And you insist on viewing the fetus as an "end-all", as if it will remain that way forever. You seem unable to grasp the simple logic I have presented to you -- that a fertilized egg will, if left alone and barring acts of God, inevitably become a human.

You want to comfort yourself that you're not an advocate of murder by convincing yourself that this fact is not so. You're in denial.

 

With the advent of effective conception control Mother nature doesn't have enough arrows, in the form of sexual and pair bonding instinces, in her quiver to encourge humans to procreate even to replacement level. This even with the significant rise from 65% to 98% infant survival rate.
So culture will likely, almost certainly, adjust to encourge more family raising.
Cultural ideas, like valuing children, are subject to natural selection just as the sexual, fight, and flee instincts were subject to natural selection at the genetic level.
This is possible because humans, particularly todlers, instinctively immitate their elders and peers. (That immitation instinct is a geneticly based trait like sex, anger and fear)
The reason todlers immitate their parents is mother nature knows that by definition the tolders parents have the correct culture responses/behavior to succesfully court, mate, pair bond and raise and infant at least to todler stage.
So by definition the todler, in learing the cultural behaviors of his parents, is learning from succesfull survivors.
Like is a reality survival show.
Later on the young teen will begin to pick up on the cultural behaviors of the majority in his tribe. There is by that stage of life a "It's safest to follow the herd" instinct.
The more people in the tribe exhibit an certain behavior the stronger is the urge of the young teen to adopt the same behavior.
That urge to follow the herd is also genetically programed.
If an instinct is really a behavior that is suicidal, such as the old game of "chicken" young men used to engage in with their jalopies, the fewer people will surivie who adopt that behavior, it will become less prevelant, and then fewer young people wil see it as "popukart" and the suicidal behavior will be culled by "natural cultural selection."

 

Are you saying people should not have a right to be irresponsible, if it does not harm any other person (which early fetus surely is not)? How totalitarian of you.

And you are unable to grasp that there is no reason to treat mere future potential as if it was an actuality. Will is the keyword here.

Besides, are you implying god is responsible for all miscarriages?

 

I do believe humanist, contrary to the Founders, belive rights are granted by the group, or state.
A culture of abortion has a long term negative survival value for the people, and thus for the state. The long term survival prospects for abortion rights would seem to be in doubt.
I read about 15 years back that Russian dotors, even though they still had a cultural hang over from the Soviet years, were begining to have second thoughts about the established Russian habit of using abortion as first line birth control rather than back up.
It could be they were emotionally responding to the huge amount of blood and gore they were forced to wade through providing womens Soviet established rights or also partly that they were witnessing the catostrophic drop in the Russian birth rate following the Soviet collapse.
Of course the Soviets collapsed because the system was based on mis reading human nature. Similarly the abortion component of Soviet ideology was a cultural crime against the nation.
Long term it seems abortion is doomed.
My experience is, the most ardent "abortion is a natural right/fetuses aren't human" advocates are psychologically covering themselves for something in their or their daughters past.
Once this first generation of non-grandparents passes away, there will likely be more progress on the pro-life front.

 

That's an interesting idea. I also believe that from the evolutionary point of view abortion and contraception are dead end. These two appeared relatively recently and look what they've already caused: the fertility rates in many Western countries, Russia and Japan are deep below the natural replacement level, this just can't go on. The populations which don't adapt will die out, that's the basic rule of evolution. They will simply be outbred by other cultures willing to have more children and refusing contraception and abortion. I predict that in the course of the next 50 years abortion and hormonal contraception will be banned in Japan, Russia and some other countries as a result of the population drop.

So I'm opposed to abortion not from the ideological, but rather from the pratical point of view.

 

Often abortion IS a responsible choice. If a young woman is not prepared for parenthood, simply becoming pregnant doesn't make her prepared.

You seem to be under the misunderstanding that society can "disallow" a woman to have an abortion. Women have been having abortions for thousands of years, with the permission of society and without it, abortion still prevails. There is a very simple logic that you are not grasping: a fertilized egg if LEFT ALONE will DIE. It requires the woman's body to provide sustenance for it, and if she chooses not to do so, that's her business. What it might become in the future if circumstances are just right is not for us to ponder, it is what it is RIGHT NOW that is the question. Even so, WHAT it is is of little significance; it is WHERE it is that matters.

 

Should the culture adjust to encourage more child rearing, and so the services that women provide in bearing and rearing children become more valued, and more women therefore CHOOSE to do that, HURRAH! At the present, bearing and rearing children is not considered by society as valuable as say, playing football, being a rock star, being a CEO, etc. It is little wonder that women want to do some other things with their lives.

 

Abortion has been banned before, and is currently banned in some countries, to little avail. The abortion rate where it is banned is often higher than countries where it is legal. I suspect that banning contraception would be about as effective. It would just add to the list of illegal drugs commonly available on the black market. Besides both women and children are healthier now that women have reliable ways to space their children further apart, so a higher percentage of children survive to adulthood now. The world will not stop turning if there are fewer people upon it.

 

I suspect one problem is the state has replaced the father in many cases as the means of support.
Also the agressiveness of the state in enforcing child support on fathers who have been divorced my be encouaging young women to divorce, possibly when only having one child.
This also may be discouraging young men from marriage when they see what happened to their older friends.
I also was shocked recently to look at the list of about 50 divorce filings in my county recently and saw that better than 3/4 were filed by women.
I'm coming to the conclusion that the current generation of young women have been spoiled beyond rotten.
The young men aren't that swift either, us old coggers always know the younin's are goin to H e double l in a hand cart, but this generation that may act actually be the case.
The future belongs to the Druggers.

 

The state pursues fathers for child support to the best of its ability. Divorced fathers should pay for all their children, but I doubt that is encouraging women to divorce. Women have always been the ones to file for divorce, there's nothing new about that and it doesn't mean the women are to blame for it. It just means the women have had enough.

 

I suppose, although every place in the world that's decided to outlaw legal abortion finds a sharp uptick in the numbers of dead women found behind nightclubs. Pregnant women.

Surely the best we can hope, because I don't think anybody is actually pro-abortion, is to make it as easy as possible not to need one. So we fund comprehensive sex education in schools and we don't listen to what the parents think about it. We teach the nuts and bolts and we make sure contraception is easily available. We ensure that if kids or others are going to have sex that abortion isn't going to be a risk because pregnancy won't be either.

There. Problem solved. Although not to many's liking here, I imagine. it seems like a little look at reality would help: people are always going to have sex when they're not supposed to. And women are always going to get abortions if they feel they really need them. Better she didn't get pregnant in the first place. But barring that better she get a safe abortion and not one from the dishwasher at Arby's. This solution is the only one which limits unwanted pregnancies, number of abortions, and complcations from unsafe illegal abortions.

Sold, right?

 

No, but many countries will stop functioning without people.