Abortion

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

Explain to me why I should be against it in secular terms in my personal life so I don't have to come off as a monster anymore when I say that I'm personally "pro-abortion" in many circumstances. I don't really want to have this view but I've found no convincing moral argument as to why abortion is immoral. Let's see if you guys can give me one.

[RI]

This will end well...

Ok, let me just ask this for starters: Are you an atheist?

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

This will end well...

Ok, let me just ask this for starters: Are you an atheist?

It might be a bad idea but it's entertaining and gives me food for thought.

Yes. Spirituality is non-existent in my life.

[RI]

This will end well...

Ok, let me just ask this for starters: Are you an atheist?

It might be a bad idea but it's entertaining and gives me food for thought.

Yes. Spirituality is non-existent in my life.

I only ask because I used to be an atheist for a good portion of my life in middle and high school. I still cared a lot about philosophy and ethics and stuff though even though I simply didn't see any reason to believe in a God. For me, my nontheistic philosophy was built on the idea that this is the only life we have, there is no other, and that the meaning of life was found in doing what you love and helping other people through our short journey together.

Most of the time, I was pretty into humanist ideas and embraced most socially liberal positions. But one thing bugged me. If life was this thing that everyone only got one shot at and that it's all we really had, than shouldn't it be the thing most worth protecting and promoting? Obviously things like pacifism, anti-war, anti-death penalty and the like appealed to me for this reason, but when I thought about abortion I had to ask myself: Whether or not a fetus is a person, it certainly will be one at some point, and all of us alive inevitably trace our origins back to being one ourselves. It's a part of life just as any other stage of development is. If life is the most precious thing in existence, then why should we intentionally and forcefully deny anyone the chance to live? Why should we not allow everyone to live, love, and add their own beauty to the world and our short time in it? At least under a religious mindset, an aborted fetus would have some afterlife. But without such, isn't the denial of a life, especially one already growing on its only trip, that much more cruel?

That's how I looked at it anyway. Even now as I'm not an atheist, my pro-life sentiments are still built around this same core.

[Marokai Backbeat]

Do you favor abortion being legal at all stages?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Do you favor abortion being legal at all stages?

This, and 'what are your feelings on sex-selective abortion?', are probably the first two questions that should be asked when attempting to argue that someone should nuance or change their position from this particular direction.

[Antonio the Sixth]

I guess it all comes down to how you define life and how much value you assign to it.

[Gustaf]

Personally, I've always found that the principled arguments weigh heavily against abortion. I find it hard to make a logically and philosophically convincing case for allowing it.

On the other hand, the pragmatic side and to an extent the moral intuition goes heavily in the other direction.

I've always been a bit partial to the virtue ethics approach employed by a female philosopher who's name currently escapes me.

[Grumpier Than Thou]

I'm Pro-Choice, but I believe abortion should be illegal after the 2nd trimester and I also support banning partial-birth abortion.

[k-onmmunist]

Pro-choice is the rational position - you can't say that the POTENTIAL for something is that thing. Abortion should be legal until life is in fact viable, which is up until the third trimester. To all pro-life posters, I ask of you - would you make masturbation illegal? Would you have people taken out of bed in the middle of night and thrown in prison for having a nocturnal emission? After all, sperm is POTENTIAL for life.

[Oakvale]

I'm Pro-Choice, but I believe abortion should be illegal after the 2nd trimester and I also support banning partial-birth abortion.

I may dedicate my life to banning the term "partial-birth abortion".

[Mr. Taft Republican]

Abortion is biologically wrong! It circumvents natural selection by eliminating the possibility of that life form competing for mates and thus, if being superior, reproducing itself!

[I'm JewCon in name only.]

I'm strongly Pro Life. I believe life is G-d's most sacred gift to humans. I believe life starts from conception. There is only one exception in my views, when a mother's life is endangered.

I've thought out the rape, and incest things too, but I decided I can't support those exceptions. I can't tell a daughter who was conceived from rape that her mother had a right to kill her in the womb.

My opposition to Abortion isn't just based off a religious basis. Hell,  that's only about 40% of why I oppose abortion.

As someone who has babysitted a lot of kids, and wants to have kids of my own, I cannot support the murder of the unborn. Kids are really the greatest thing about the human race.

Also, I believe the right to life is defined in the Constitution. ("Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness")


Oh, and unlike the candidate who I am supporting for President, I do support the use of contraception. Sex should be for enjoyment too, but it's primary purpose is to reproduce. 

There's so much more I can say, but I don't really have the time right now

[courts]

If life is the most precious thing in existence, then why should we intentionally and forcefully deny anyone the chance to live? Why should we not allow everyone to live, love, and add their own beauty to the world and our short time in it? At least under a religious mindset, an aborted fetus would have some afterlife. But without such, isn't the denial of a life, especially one already growing on its only trip, that much more cruel?

Why would someone being born and growing into a fully conscious, living being only to have that inevitably snuffed out be less cruel than preemptively stopping that from occurring?

[Frodo]

I know this is from last October, but I'm curious to see how this impacts the abortion debate:

Male birth control pill soon a reality

By John Schieszer
msnbc.com contributor

SEATTLE, Oct. 1 —  — Forty-year-old Scott Hardin says he’s glad that men may soon have a new choice when it comes to birth control. But, he adds, he would not even consider taking a male hormonal contraceptive. Hardin is like many men who are pleased to hear they may have a new option but are wary of taking any type of hormones.

“I would rather rely on a solution that doesn’t involving medicating myself and the problems women have had with hormone therapy doesn’t make me anxious to want to sign on to taking a hormone-type therapy,” says Hardin, who is single and a college administrator.

For the first time, a safe, effective and reversible hormonal male contraceptive appears to be within reach. Several formulations are expected to become commercially available within the near future. Men may soon have the options of a daily pill to be taken orally, a patch or gel to be applied to the skin, an injection given every three months or an implant placed under the skin every 12 months, according to Seattle researchers.

“It largely depends on how funding continues. The technology is there. We know how it would work,” says Dr. Andrea Coviello, who is helping to test several male contraceptives at the Population Center for Research in Reproduction at the University of Washington in Seattle.

[courts]

I believe life starts from conception. There is only one exception in my views, when a mother's life is endangered.

I've thought out the rape, and incest things too, but I decided I can't support those exceptions. I can't tell a daughter who was conceived from rape that her mother had a right to kill her in the womb.

My opposition to Abortion isn't just based off a religious basis. Hell,  that's only about 40% of why I oppose abortion.

As someone who has babysitted a lot of kids, and wants to have kids of my own, I cannot support the murder of the unborn. Kids are really the greatest thing about the human race.

Also, I believe the right to life is defined in the Constitution. ("Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness")


Oh, and unlike the candidate who I am supporting for President, I do support the use of contraception. Sex should be for enjoyment too, but it's primary purpose is to reproduce.  

There's so much more I can say, but I don't really have the time right now

This actually isn't that different from my own views, honestly. I mean, I'll concede it's somewhat ambiguous whether you can call someone without a brain, heart, etc. a person but I don't really see how someone could say a fetus isn't "a person" without playing silly semantic games or using logic that leads you to extreme conclusions like say, Peter Singer's position.

[Oakvale]

G-d

Pardon the tangent, but I've seen people do this before - leaving out the 'o' in 'god' - what's the reason?

[courts]

G-d

Pardon the tangent, but I've seen people do this before - leaving out the 'o' in 'god' - what's the reason?

Belief that saying God's name is forbidden. Which is sort of bizarre, since God isn't even his/it's name anyway going by the bible.

[Redalgo]

Explain to me why I should be against it in secular terms in my personal life so I don't have to come off as a monster anymore when I say that I'm personally "pro-abortion" in many circumstances. I don't really want to have this view but I've found no convincing moral argument as to why abortion is immoral. Let's see if you guys can give me one.

I am a virtue ethicist, but to avoid rambling about subjective attributes of character I think one is best off making a habit of and internalizing, I would say from a secular standpoint most abortions are not morally objectionable until sometime early in the third-trimester of a pregnancy - at which point one would do well to take into account that a developing fetus/baby/whatever can begin to feel pain, and perhaps to some extent experience emotions and think. Until a human life is viable, however, it seems dubious to me to regard it as having full personhood for non-spiritual reasons.

Incidentally, one might also have moral reservations about abortion for reasons concerning why a particular abortion is being performed. Depending on ones political convictions, there may come a point at which a woman's privilege to choose conflicts with foundational principles of society. There is not necessarily a good or bad direction to err in when it comes to such conflicts of conscience, but it is worth bearing in mind that some of the concerns that come into play are secular in nature.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

G-d

Pardon the tangent, but I've seen people do this before - leaving out the 'o' in 'god' - what's the reason?

Imitation of Hebrew Bibles.  The Jews developed a custom of leaving out the vowel points in YHWH or replacing them with the vowel points associated with Adonai (meaning My Lord) which they would say instead when reading the Bible aloud. The substitute vowel points are the origin of Jehovah, tho the evidence indicates the name was most likely originally pronounced Yahweh.

[Rooney]

I guess it all comes down to how you define life and how much value you assign to it.

That may possibly be the most sensible thing I have heard in a long time in regards to this issue. I applaud you.

[Oakvale]

G-d

Pardon the tangent, but I've seen people do this before - leaving out the 'o' in 'god' - what's the reason?

Imitation of Hebrew Bibles.  The Jews developed a custom of leaving out the vowel points in YHWH or replacing them with the vowel points associated with Adonai (meaning My Lord) which they would say instead when reading the Bible aloud. The substitute vowel points are the origin of Jehovah, tho the evidence indicates the name was most likely originally pronounced Yahweh.

Ah, I thought it might be something like that. I've heard of the Jewish custom of not saying God's name out loud, but I didn't know it's done by some Christians, too (assuming Santorum 2012 is such).

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Pro-choice is the rational position - you can't say that the POTENTIAL for something is that thing. Abortion should be legal until life is in fact viable, which is up until the third trimester. To all pro-life posters, I ask of you - would you make masturbation illegal? Would you have people taken out of bed in the middle of night and thrown in prison for having a nocturnal emission? After all, sperm is POTENTIAL for life.

Sperm is potential for life in a different way, in that it's entirely unclear what a sperm might meet with, what other gametes might be involved. With a fetus the potentiality has already been realized in the first case and it's more or less clear what's what, since the gametes have already fused and the new person is already under construction.

Nobody is arguing that people should be punished for allowing individual gametes to do something other than fuse, and considering how biology works that is an absolutely ridiculous straw man.

[k-onmmunist]

Pro-choice is the rational position - you can't say that the POTENTIAL for something is that thing. Abortion should be legal until life is in fact viable, which is up until the third trimester. To all pro-life posters, I ask of you - would you make masturbation illegal? Would you have people taken out of bed in the middle of night and thrown in prison for having a nocturnal emission? After all, sperm is POTENTIAL for life.

Sperm is potential for life in a different way, in that it's entirely unclear what a sperm might meet with, what other gametes might be involved. With a fetus the potentiality has already been realized in the first case and it's more or less clear what's what, since the gametes have already fused and the new person is already under construction.

Nobody is arguing that people should be punished for allowing individual gametes to do something other than fuse, and considering how biology works that is an absolutely ridiculous straw man.

You can't draw a boundary like that though. Both are the potential for life, but a sperm isn't viable life and neither is a foetus until around 22-24 weeks.

[I'm JewCon in name only.]

G-d

Pardon the tangent, but I've seen people do this before - leaving out the 'o' in 'god' - what's the reason?

Imitation of Hebrew Bibles.  The Jews developed a custom of leaving out the vowel points in YHWH or replacing them with the vowel points associated with Adonai (meaning My Lord) which they would say instead when reading the Bible aloud. The substitute vowel points are the origin of Jehovah, tho the evidence indicates the name was most likely originally pronounced Yahweh.

Ah, I thought it might be something like that. I've heard of the Jewish custom of not saying God's name out loud, but I didn't know it's done by some Christians, too (assuming Santorum 2012 is such).

I am Jewish, I believe i said that on the forum chat thing before. But my belief in G-d is stronger than my belief in Judaism.