Opinion of women who have abortions and later...

[Alcon]

The single most annoying aspect of politics today is the impression that people cannot, for whatever reason, change their views, or they are hypocrites.

I have no idea where this came from, or if it was a recent development.  I sure do hope it is a fad.

I wouldn't think of them as hypocrites, no, nor would I have an inherently positive view of them.

[Beet]

I find there's nothing hypocritical about these kinds of people - people are allowed to change their minds on things, you know.

So if I come to your house, shoot you dead, and then as the cops are closing in I say "oops, I changed my mind, I've decided murder is wrong" the judge will tell me "of course dearie now that you have killed Dibble you have perspective on what it's like to kill. Instead of putting you in prison we shall simply respect your wise opinion!"

"Oh, and you must be suffering from a terrible depression. How awful!"

And dont you dare judge me. I'm allowed to change my political view on whether killing Dibble is justified. And if I change it to the 'correct' position I don't have to be held culpable at all.

[Inverted Things]

My knee-jerk reaction was to say yes, it's hypocritical. Then I gave the matter some thought.

I am my father's third child and third son. He believed in spanking until I was about 13. So I would get the occasional spanking. Not that I was abused by any stretch of the imagination, it's just that I was occasionally physically disciplined. He had a change of heart with regard to spanking, and now believes that it is a terrible thing to do to a child. Does this make him a hypocrite? I don't think so... he looked back and decided that spanking wasn't the best way to handle the situations. Indeed, he would probably support a law making spanking illegal.

So, to summarize, he engaged in a legal act (spanking his child), later decided that his act was wrong, and would now support illegalizing that act.

Similarly, these women engaged in a legal act (abortion), later decided that their acts were wrong, and would now support illegalizing the act.

Now, my dad is a flaming hypocrite in many ways, but I've never thought him hypocritical on this issue. In fairness then, I must ignore my knee-jerk recation to call these women hypocrites and say that they are not.

[John Dibble]

I find there's nothing hypocritical about these kinds of people - people are allowed to change their minds on things, you know.

So if I come to your house, shoot you dead, and then as the cops are closing in I say "oops, I changed my mind, I've decided murder is wrong" the judge will tell me "of course dearie now that you have killed Dibble you have perspective on what it's like to kill. Instead of putting you in prison we shall simply respect your wise opinion!"

"Oh, and you must be suffering from a terrible depression. How awful!"

And dont you dare judge me. I'm allowed to change my political view on whether killing Dibble is justified. And if I change it to the 'correct' position I don't have to be held culpable at all.

This argument you have here is pure excrement - whether you would have considered killing me justified or not doesn't change the illegality of it. Because it's illegal to murder someone you would be punished whether you honestly changed your mind or not. If you did make an honest change, you would readily accept your punishment for breaking the law - in the abortion scenario presented in this thread, the women don't have any legal consequences but they do have a heavy guilt to burden their thoughts.

Furthermore, your argument here has NOTHING to do with hypocrisy. Hypocrisy is not practicing or practicing against what you preach. A pro-lifer having and abortion is a hypocrite. A pro-choicer who has an abortion, comes to regret it, and changes her mind and becomes pro-life is not so long as she never has an abortion again. In your scenario, you'd only be a hypocrite if your views were false and/or you murdered again.

You should be ashamed of yourself for putting up such a stupid argument - you're too intelligent to do this, and it not only insults me that you'd put up this kind of BS, it degrades you. Do you really think people can't make honest changes in their opinion or something? Have you never changed your mind on any issue, or changed your views on what is right and wrong?

[Beet]

What people seem to be missing here is that the issue at hand is not about whether changing one's mind but taking responsibility for one's actions in accordance with one's beliefs.

My knee-jerk reaction was to say yes, it's hypocritical. Then I gave the matter some thought.

I am my father's third child and third son. He believed in spanking until I was about 13. So I would get the occasional spanking. Not that I was abused by any stretch of the imagination, it's just that I was occasionally physically disciplined. He had a change of heart with regard to spanking, and now believes that it is a terrible thing to do to a child. Does this make him a hypocrite? I don't think so... he looked back and decided that spanking wasn't the best way to handle the situations. Indeed, he would probably support a law making spanking illegal.

So, to summarize, he engaged in a legal act (spanking his child), later decided that his act was wrong, and would now support illegalizing that act.

Similarly, these women engaged in a legal act (abortion), later decided that their acts were wrong, and would now support illegalizing the act.

Now, my dad is a flaming hypocrite in many ways, but I've never thought him hypocritical on this issue. In fairness then, I must ignore my knee-jerk recation to call these women hypocrites and say that they are not.

Yaks, I'd say there's a (subtle but signifcant) difference between what your father did and what these women are doing. In your father's case, if he spanked you yesterday, felt that spanking should be illegal today, yet was unwilling to accept whatever punishment that he would support for other spankers himself, then yes, your father would be a hypocrite.

However, I think most readers of this thread assume that the spanking took place decades ago, and that if spanking is made illegal it would have a statute of limitations of the type that are applied to crimes of a lesser degree of seriousness-- that is, because of the statute of limitations your father would not be punished. That is not hypocritical, because it applies the same standards for both your father and others. The pro-life position on abortion however, is that abortion is the killing of a person. This generally does not carry with it a statute of limitations. If a pro-life woman who had an abortion is willing to submit to whichever punishment she deems necessary for others, she is not a hypocrite. But if she is now "living the good life" and eschews any punishment, she is hiding behind the constitution proscription of ex post facto laws. Morally, she is not applying the same standards to herself as she would to others under her preferred laws. That is hypocritical.

Dibble:

This argument you have here is pure excrement - whether you would have considered killing me justified or not doesn't change the illegality of it. Because it's illegal to murder someone you would be punished whether you honestly changed your mind or not. If you did make an honest change, you would readily accept your punishment for breaking the law - in the abortion scenario presented in this thread, the women don't have any legal consequences but they do have a heavy guilt to burden their thoughts.

You're mixing up the standard of comparison vs. the policy up for debate. Legality vs. illegality is the latter, not the former. The pro-life position is not that abortion is wrong because it's illegal-- that would be silly since it's not illegal. It's that abortion should be illegal because it's the killing of a person and that women should be punished for it. Thus if there was a law that said "the killing of John Dibble is legal", and I went out and killed you, then claimed to have changed my mind about whether my actions was right, yet refused to accept punishment, I would rightfully be called a hypocrite.

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The issue is not about changing one's mind but taking responsibility for one's actions in accordence with one's own currently professed beliefs (Anyway, you seem to be discounting the possibility of changing one's mind more than once).

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I was only joking about the shooting you, Dibble. I seem to be an abrasive debater at times but it's never personal. You're a great debater and we've had some great discussions- that's why I replied to your post. Seriously though, your making a mistake if you think the issue is about changing one's mind. The thread title is not "Opinion of people who change their minds from pro-choice to pro-life". Unfortunately most of the replies here seem to be unable to tell the difference.

[John Dibble]

You're mixing up the standard of comparison vs. the policy up for debate. Legality vs. illegality is the latter, not the former. The pro-life position is not that abortion is wrong because it's illegal-- that would be silly since it's not illegal. It's that abortion should be illegal because it's the killing of a person and that women should be punished for it. Thus if there was a law that said "the killing of John Dibble is legal", and I went out and killed you, then claimed to have changed my mind about whether my actions was right, yet refused to accept punishment, I would rightfully be called a hypocrite.

No, I'm not. In your little scenario the judge let you get away with an illegal act because you changed your mind. NOBODY here seems to be arguing that someone do something illegal, change their mind, and not be held accountable. You brought this into play with the scenario you chose.

If killing me WAS legal in the scenario, you couldn't be lawfully punished even if you wanted to be because the action performed was legal. Same goes for abortion - you can't punish someone for performing an act when it is legal. Hell, the constitution even prohibits it. Nor do I see most pro-lifers advocating punishment for people who had an abortion when legal. They just want to illegalize it and punish anyone who performs it after that point for the most part. If someone had it while illegal and changed their mind then they should accept that punishment to avoid hypocrisy - but those who perform it while legal can only punish themselves by feeling a deep burden of guilt and living a life of repentence.

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Exactly where did I mention pro-lifers of any stripe supporting retroactive punishment for abortions performed while legal and then refusing to accept that punishment if the one while legal? If you can point it out, your argument might have merit. Until then it's excrement.

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The issue wasn't about killing me - it could have been an anonymous random person for all I care. I still assert that the form of argument you chose was pure excrement and did not consider any of the context of my argument. Why you even decided to launch this argument against me I can't even fathom, because I made NO MENTION about punishment issues, nor did the original quote from me, so why the hell would you even bother with that completely out of context argument?

As far as the topic, I am talking about what the topic is - opinion of women who have abortions and later become pro-life. In other words, a type of person who is pro-choice, changes their mind, and becomes pro-life.

[Beet]

No, I'm not. In your little scenario the judge let you get away with an illegal act because you changed your mind. NOBODY here seems to be arguing that someone do something illegal, change their mind, and not be held accountable. You brought this into play with the scenario you chose.

Then it was a mere technicality. Suppose it's that killing some person is legal. Suppose I kill that person. Then the next day, I say I think people who do what I did ought to serve 10 years in prison, because I think that's the just punishment for committing the act. Now... given that I think it's the just punishment, why don't I agree to the punishment for myself?

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The reason pro-lifers don't support that is because there is a constitutional prohibition on ex post facto laws. However, the pro-life position makes no moral distinction between abortions performed while legal and those performed while illegal. In fact they're always clamoring about how so many 'unborn babies' have supposed been 'killed' in the past 30 years. What I'm saying is that taking such a moral position while refusing to accept the consequences for oneself is hypocritical.

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Because your reply seemed to suggest that this was only about changing one's mind rather than taking responsibility for your actions. The rest of your post was just following off of that one error.

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Yes, and apples and oranges are both a type of fruit...

[John Dibble]

Then it was a mere technicality. Suppose it's that killing some person is legal. Suppose I kill that person. Then the next day, I say I think people who do what I did ought to serve 10 years in prison, because I think that's the just punishment for committing the act. Now... given that I think it's the just punishment, why don't I agree to the punishment for myself?

You could agree to it all you want - the government will still not punish you in that case. So arguing that you should be imprisoned for 10 years would be kind of pointless, don't you think? All you could do is argue that it should be illegal and that there should be a punishment for it, and that if you did it again after that you should be given the punishment. I don't know what other options you would have.

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No, there isn't a moral distinction. But there is a legal distinction. I've never seen a pro-lifer who if they had an abortion while it was illegal wouldn't accept the punishment - have you?

And exactly what would you suggest a person who is in the situation this thread describes do when they can't be punished for the action since it was legal at the time?

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How exactly would one take responsibility for one's legally performed actions? Accept a punishment? What punishment could be accepted when the government couldn't perform one?

And I said what they do to take responsibility - they bear their burden of guilt and live a life of repentence, taking up the cause of trying to end abortion. That's their means of accepting responsibility given that they can not be punished by the government, so don't act like they don't at all take any responsibility.

[Beet]

You could agree to it all you want - the government will still not punish you in that case. So arguing that you should be imprisoned for 10 years would be kind of pointless, don't you think? All you could do is argue that it should be illegal and that there should be a punishment for it, and that if you did it again after that you should be given the punishment. I don't know what other options you would have.

...there isn't a moral distinction. But there is a legal distinction...

And exactly what would you suggest a person who is in the situation this thread describes do when they can't be punished for the action since it was legal at the time?

I'm not saying the government should punish them (though theoretically they could choose to confine themselves voluntarily as mental punishment), I'm just saying it's hypocritical. I agree that there's an instrumental problem in actually laying out a punishment. Of course, the hypocrisy has real consequences, because if they get their way, other women would not be able to follow the path they did. Let's face it, even if these people are 100% genuine, which there is never a guarantee of, feeling guilty for something and being locked up for something are completely different things. Maybe these 'pro-life' women would change their mind if they were actually faced with a felony charge that would take them away from their boyfriends/families, children, jobs, homes, for years? These women want to lock up other women for doing exactly what they did, yet they only accept 'feelings of guilt' for themselves. These are NOT the same standards, and if abortion ever was banned, it would be extremely unfair for later generations of women.

[John Dibble]

It's only hypocritical if they want to retroactively punish other people if they managed to make it illegal, but not themselves. Far as I can tell, they just want to change the rules. You seem to be making no distinction between a legal but immoral act and an illegal immoral act. You can't punish the former, but you can the latter - and all you are able to do is change the law so that it becomes the latter. Any punishment for the former is between the person who did the deed and their god.

If you littered on a road where it wasn't illegal, but then decided that people who litter there should pay a fine of $500, stopped the littering, and then managed to make it illegal, would you go and pay the $500 fine for your actions that were legal at the time? I highly doubt it. You're advocating a punishment for BREAKING A LAW, which is exactly what the people we're talking about are doing. When an action, whether or not it is considered immoral, becomes law the rules of punishment change.

Would it change things for the next generation? Yes, but that doesn't change whether or not things should be changed. When abortion became legal everywhere, was it 'fair' to the previous generation of women who never had that opportunity? Why should the new generation have received these opportunities and freedoms that their ancestors never got?

Again, exactly what would you propose the women in the position described in this thread do? Should they advocate retroactive punishement so that people will be punished for deeds they had no reasonable expectation to be punished for? No? What else could they do to avoid being hypocrites by your logic? If you can't come up with something, then maybe you should just drop it.

[Beet]

It's only hypocritical if they want to retroactively punish other people if they managed to make it illegal, but not themselves.

That would also be hypocritical.

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No, they stake a claim to a moral position by which some action is said to deserve a specific punishment. Changing the rules is just a corollary to that.

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I agree, but it is you who are making no distinction between whether the government should punish someone and whether that person deserves punishment. According to the pro-life argument, all women who have abortions deserve punishment, whether the government administers it or not.

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You're clinging to legalism, which is not what this is about. The pro-life argument is not an argument about enforcing the law. Nor is it primarily a utilitarian argument whose goal is primarily to incentivize people not to do something, like littering fines are. It is a moral argument. And these people who live full lives after doing some action that their moral stance says deserves punishment for, are being hypocritical.

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Well the ancestors should have also gotten them, of course. And in this case, the 'ancestors' should also get the punishment.

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They can do whatever the heck they want to do. They could confine themselves to one room and make themselves miserable for a fixed number of years, but I'm pro-choice so I think that's absurd. But if they don't do that, they should realize that every moment of their lives, they are living in a way that, according to their professed philosophy, is unjust.

[John Dibble]

Ok, I'm just going to leave it at this - have you ever performed a legal action you didn't consider immoral, then later decided that it was immoral and should be made illegal and that a punishment should be given to anyone who performs the action? If yes, did you punish yourself for it?

[Beet]

Ok, I'm just going to leave it at this - have you ever performed a legal action you didn't consider immoral, then later decided that it was immoral and should be made illegal and that a punishment should be given to anyone who performs the action? If yes, did you punish yourself for it?

Not that I know of, but if you have any specific examples, you should bring them up, like Yaks did. I have probably done something I've thought immoral in the past and didn't punish myself for (though I consider things like speeding, littering, etc to be laws of incentive and utility, not laws of morality), but in those cases I would admit to my hypocrisy.

[John Dibble]

Ok, I'm just going to leave it at this - have you ever performed a legal action you didn't consider immoral, then later decided that it was immoral and should be made illegal and that a punishment should be given to anyone who performs the action? If yes, did you punish yourself for it?

Not that I know of, but if you have any specific examples, you should bring them up, like Yaks did. I have probably done something I've thought immoral in the past and didn't punish myself for (though I consider things like speeding, littering, etc to be laws of incentive and utility, not laws of morality), but in those cases I would admit to my hypocrisy.

You and I seem to have entirely different views on this. I'm seeing the pro-lifers mainly as people who want to change the law, yes for moral reasons, and see people punished when that law is broken. The law is made for moral reasons, but the punishment is based on the fact that the action is illegal. For these the moral punishment and the legal punishment are seperate. They want a legal punishment once the action is made illegal, and not to legally punish anyone who did it before that point. The moral punishment, seeing as most of the pro-lifers are religious, is judged and administered by whatever god they worship, and that they have no place administering a moral punishment as mortals. These types aren't hypocrites by your logic because they are willing to submit themselves to any punishment their god decides to give them.

You on the other hand seem to be seeing them as mainly people who want them punished entirely for moral reasons in both Heaven and Earth, so people should be punished regardless of the law. The Earthly punishment they advocate is almost entirely for legal reasons. However, I would assert that these people are in the minority - that is, they probably already are administering punishment regardless of the fact that the action is legal. These types are the abortion clinic bombers.

[Beet]

You and I seem to have entirely different views on this. I'm seeing the pro-lifers mainly as people who want to change the law, yes for moral reasons, and see people punished when that law is broken. The law is made for moral reasons, but the punishment is based on the fact that the action is illegal. For these the moral punishment and the legal punishment are seperate. They want a legal punishment once the action is made illegal, and not to legally punish anyone who did it before that point. The moral punishment, seeing as most of the pro-lifers are religious, is judged and administered by whatever god they worship, and that they have no place administering a moral punishment as mortals. These types aren't hypocrites by your logic because they are willing to submit themselves to any punishment their god decides to give them.

Well that's a stretch. I wouldn't say most pro-lifers do not believe in secular, earthly justice.

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Interesting interpretation. Therein lies a fundamental contradiction in between what pro-lifers say and what they do, more broadly than the topic at hand. If I was living in WW2 Germany, the only reason that you would not find me planting bombs at concentration camps is 1) I probably would fail 2) I probably would get myself killed. If someone were to succeed, I'd support them, even if they killed a few innocent furnace operators along the way. If I knew I had 40% of the population supporting me, I'd join riots every day until the regime either collapsed or launched a bloody crackdown. Most pro-lifers put up arguments with very extreme interpretations (look at the "Genocide" Awareness Project) for example, but they generally tend to treat it as just another hot-button issue. Interesting thing about human psychology and our society, I'd say.