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.

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?

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

How many threads asking different versions of this question do we really need?

[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.

[RFayette]

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. 

[Kingpoleon]

The baby develops personhood the second he/she is born.

So anything after that would be murder.

So, if the death penalty is legal, regardless of if it should be, you’d be perfectly fine with the state executing a pregnant woman? You wouldn’t say that the baby had to be carried to term?

[Ferguson97]

The baby develops personhood the second he/she is born.

So anything after that would be murder.

So, if the death penalty is legal, regardless of if it should be, you’d be perfectly fine with the state executing a pregnant woman? You wouldn’t say that the baby had to be carried to term?

No, forcing a woman to go through with giving birth is immoral.

[𝕭𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖆 𝕸𝖎𝖓𝖔𝖑𝖆]

No.

Also:

How many threads asking different versions of this question do we really need?

[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.

[parochial boy]

I am firmly convinced that both life and choice are good things

haha, you thought this was going to say something else, didn't you?

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

Who cares? There won't be any consequences for that, because the demographic we're """killing""" has no recourse to resist.

This is an authoritarian NUT framing, Dule. If I were you I'd just stress the principled arguments for the pro-choice position rather than getting sucked into a consequentialist race to the bottom.

[Kingpoleon]

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.

[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.

[Fudotei]

"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!

[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!

[Associate Justice PiT]

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.

     I am in the same boat here. I was basically apathetic to abortion when I was pro-choice, and when I became Christian I started taking it extremely seriously. It didn't make sense to me to be so invested in abortion as an issue before I fully accepted that a fetus is a proper human being.

[MarkD]

If life begins at conception, and if abortion is murder, then a pregnant woman who requests an abortion is just as guilty of murder as the abortion provider to performs abortion. But the pre-Roe laws that banned abortion never treated pregnant women who wanted to get an abortion as if they deserve to be prosecuted, and even these days most pro-lifers only want to prosecute the abortion providers, not the pregnant women who ask to get an abortion. There is something "off" about the motives of pro-lifers.

I am pro-choice because I am afraid of the prospect of women self-aborting with a coat hanger, and because I respect women's self-autonomy.

[Kingpoleon]

If life begins at conception, and if abortion is murder, then a pregnant woman who requests an abortion is just as guilty of murder as the abortion provider to performs abortion. But the pre-Roe laws that banned abortion never treated pregnant women who wanted to get an abortion as if they deserve to be prosecuted, and even these days most pro-lifers only want to prosecute the abortion providers, not the pregnant women who ask to get an abortion. There is something "off" about the motives of pro-lifers.

I am pro-choice because I am afraid of the prospect of women self-aborting with a coat hanger, and because I respect women's self-autonomy.

One of the unique things about abortion is, to the extent that it is murder, it is like contract killing. Anybody can go up and hire these people to get rid of an unwanted pregnancy. Yeah, usually the people who do the killing serve a lesser sentence. But abortion doctors are distinct for both how many abortions they can do, and they provide a place that makes abortion much easier.

I do disagree with people who say the women should never face a day in jail or pay a cent in fines; a reasonable judge will give a reasonable sentence after taking into account all the facts of the case.

[Yellowhammer]

Write-in: pro-life in all cases *except imminent danger to the mother's life

[Yellowhammer]

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.

[fhtagn]

#4 (with exception for life of the mother). 

Pretty much this. Voted option 4 for that reason, as I didn't think option 3 quite fit right.

[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!

[fhtagn]

#4

There’s an alternative to abortion. Adoption is that alternative. Also, the perspective father should have a choice in the matter and most would choose life instead of murder.

Men should not control women's bodies. They're not the ones getting pregnant.

Not sure where you get this false idea that being pro-life is strictly a man's position.

[Dr. MB]

Pretty neutral/conflicted. Don't really care. But this has to be one of the most evenly split polls I've ever seen here damn

[S019]

Option 1, honestly, the woman can make her own decisions about her own healthcare, I don't think the government needs to tell her what to do

[S019]

"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!

Literally no one actually believes this, this is just a useless strawman argument