Pro-choice or Pro-life?

[John Dule]

I still have a hard time believing that anyone genuinely cares about this issue. It's the definition of virtue signaling.

[John Dule]

I still have a hard time believing that anyone genuinely cares about this issue. It's the definition of virtue signaling.

You generally make good arguments, but this is a really dumb statement.

You can't imagine why a woman would care about having control over her own body?

I'm referring to the pro-lifers. Their position on this issue was the original performative wokeness.

[John Dule]

I still have a hard time believing that anyone genuinely cares about this issue. It's the definition of virtue signaling.

You generally make good arguments, but this is a really dumb statement.

You can't imagine why a woman would care about having control over her own body?

I have a hard time understanding why the pro-choice side cares about it so much.  If I wasn't convinced that life begins at conception, I would remain neutral because the consequences of being wrong on this issue are so severe.

What consequences?

[John Dule]

I still have a hard time believing that anyone genuinely cares about this issue. It's the definition of virtue signaling.

You generally make good arguments, but this is a really dumb statement.

You can't imagine why a woman would care about having control over her own body?

I have a hard time understanding why the pro-choice side cares about it so much.  If I wasn't convinced that life begins at conception, I would remain neutral because the consequences of being wrong on this issue are so severe.

What consequences?

If you believe in an objective morality of any sort, it's fairly obvious that murder (which is what abortion is if personhood indeed begins at conception) is deeply wrong and one of the most immoral acts it is possible to commit.  In the aggregate, another thing entailed by the pro-life view is that the US and the rest of the Western world is involved on a killing of a massive scale that exceeds even the Holocaust and the Holodomor.   Hence, one pro-life argument is that it is better to assume the unborn is a person if you are unsure because the consequences of being wrong as a pro-choice person are too severe.

But those are logical implications, not consequences.

[John Dule]

But those are logical implications, not consequences.

Ok, that is a bit more precise, but Celtic’s point remains that unless one is certain that the unborn are not people, the severe implications of being wrong as a pro-choicer should be a good argument in favor of the pro-life view. 

Who cares if we're wrong? There are no serious consequences for erring on the side of pro-choice. Erring on the side of being pro-life, however, results in thousands of unintended consequences, namely forcing millions of women to give birth to children that will be unwanted, unloved, and neglected, resulting in a population boom driven by the offspring of angry and resentful parents. If you don't understand the terrible social consequences of such a policy, you've got your head in the sand.

On the other hand, butchering these stupid fetuses en masse will, at worst, mean that we're killing a bunch of """living""" things that can't speak, think, feel pain, survive independently, or fight back. Who cares? There won't be any consequences for that, because the demographic we're """killing""" has no recourse to resist. If avoiding negative consequences was really what you people cared about, you'd be staunchly pro-choice.

[John Dule]

On the other hand, butchering these stupid fetuses en masse will, at worst, mean that we're killing a bunch of """living""" things that can't speak, think, feel pain, survive independently, or fight back. Who cares? There won't be any consequences for that, because the demographic we're """killing""" has no recourse to resist. If avoiding negative consequences was really what you people cared about, you'd be staunchly pro-choice.

If some friend of yours accidentally left a puppy inside your house somehow, you’d call them. But they’ve gone on vacation, to an isolated place in the Himalayas, and won’t be back for almost a year. If you don’t feed and water the puppy and it dies as a result of that, you’ve committed a pretty nasty crime. Yeah, it was in your house. You did not purposely bring it there. But virtually everyone agrees that you have a responsibility, to this blind puppy, to nurture it until such time as someone can reasonably take it off your hands. Why? It’s not capable of high level thought; it can’t survive independently; it can’t fight back. You could just snap its neck in its sleep - it probably wouldn’t feel a thing.

Why is that wrong? Why would nobody treat a puppy like that? To kill an animal, and even more so, a human, at a young age is a uniquely evil crime. To refuse whatever minimal requirements are necessary for it to live? That’s a pretty bad thing to do. And to justify it by saying, “They can’t resist”? By that logic, it’s perfectly reasonable to kill people sleeping.

I was talking about the "consequences" of abortion while ignoring the moral arguments, because that was the way the initial comment in that exchange framed it. You're making moral claims that simply aren't relevant to what I was proving with my comment.

[John Dule]

"killing fetuses isn't wrong because they can't fight back" is an all-time argument, honestly.

Really exposes the devil in the details that is utilitarianism. Very sick people!

I didn't say it wasn't wrong. I said there were no consequences.

Really exposes the devil in the details in reading comprehension. Very difficult for some people!

[John Dule]

I still have a hard time believing that anyone genuinely cares about this issue. It's the definition of virtue signaling.

Just because you dgaf about human life doesn't mean everyone else doesn't.

Hey guys, gather 'round! Yellowhammer is going to give us a lecture on empathy. Take it away, YH!

[John Dule]

Option 1 is horrific and if you voted for it you can't condemn Republicans for lacking compassion.

Option 1 is the default unless you're a Jesus freak and/or misogynist.

See, I can do it too!

[John Dule]

Pro-choice to the point of favoring taxing the hell out of churches that get mouthy on abortion or LGBT. Or just confiscating a bunch of their assets then saying they'll be taxed from here on out.

Republicans with avatars of long-extinct European political entities are the most unpredictable people on this site.