The reason religion is so powerful

[The Grand Nudger]

We could grant all of the rights of a fullgrown human being to an embryo, preemptively so, such that to say that you are pregnant is to say that there is a legal person within you, at any stage, even the very first moment, with rights. We could rescind some when the child is born and until it reaches majority...

....and none of this, absolutely none of it, will solve the problem. We're just negotiating which group of people we're going to be fucking over. Unborn Babby People, or women. It is impossible for me to take a lecture about human rights of the unborn seriously when it's coming from a position of denying human rights to the born. You have already offered an example of when or at what stage -you- think that human rights should be rescinded. In the event of preganancy.

[John 6IX Breezy]

....and none of this, absolutely none of it, will solve the problem. 

You can't solve the problem without understanding all the variables. And the recognition that we are, indeed, negotiating between a child and its mother is an important step in that direction. You can't make it this far while members are comparing embryos to parasites and rabbits.

[The Grand Nudger]

Sure you can, I compare children to parasites and rabbits all day every day, to their face. They don't stop being either thing when they're bornd-ed. Just as the deviant whore doesn't cease to be human when she conceives.

So, are we done concern trolling about human rights, finally, or no? You don't have a problem violating human rights, you believe that humans rights should be violated, tell me which ones..and how, and who you're going to get to do it?

[Pat Mustard]

You raise an important point. I do wonder why should I care so much for something that Nature seems to care so little for. So many attempt at life and so few survive. On its face you are saying, that yeah, life is cheap so why care about inconvenient and vulnerable ones. It's not wrong. Life is cruel. Does that mean I have to be cruel?

Now maybe there is a certain developmental milestone, somewhere between conception and delivery, where both personhood and 'quickening'* proceeds. I would love to end this abortion debate with some compelling compromise that truly satisfies the extremists on both sides - from every sperm is precious to grab a fork it's done for. Because, yeah, life is cheap. Many are conceived then still-born...expelled by the body as naturally as if it were on birth control. Buuuuttttt....only a sick mind could pull babies out of the womb leaving, only their tiny little heads inside, and jabbing a pair of scissors in their spines.


* quickening was the only semi-thelogical word I could find. Like the point at which one's distinctiveness, or soul/formal cause, becomes manifest in an otherise generic material cause...to just spout some Scholastic gibberish.

Would you agree that there's a certain amount of cruelty involved in forcing a woman to bear a child against her will?

---

I'm not an extremist, just a realist. I've never encountered a soul in nature. I've not stated that life is cheap or inconvenient. Reproduction attempts have successes and failures, some of the failures (and successes) even threatening the mother or other conceptions. Those are just the facts.

I don't believe I've taken a pro or con position on abortion in this thread. My position is against all unborn have humans rights from conception and gave biologic/medical reasons and examples in support of  that position.

But just to be clear, I'm pro choice. However that debate is for another time/thread. The water in this thread has been to muddied. The last sentence of your first paragraph is a perfect example.

Right, even children don't have all the rights of adults, why should embryos have all the rights of children?

Remember Breezy is from one of those sects where embryos are supposed to have more rights than children.

[The Grand Nudger]

They appear to have rights their mothers don't, as well. If I didn;t know better, I'd think that being an embryo pretty much had to be the most rightful thing a person could do.

You might even call them sacred, inviolable in ways that born children and grown mothers and, lets face it, anything else, are not.

[Mister Agenda]

Right, even children don't have all the rights of adults, why should embryos have all the rights of children?

Presumably, different governments give different rights to different age groups. Most of my rights disappear if I step in North Korea. So perhaps you should specify which rights would bother you if they were given to embryos, and why embryos should be disqualified. (e.g. Children shouldn't vote because they haven't developed the cognitive capacity to make such choices.)

I'm not a relativist when it comes to rights, I have the same rights in N. Korea as I do in the USA, that N. Korea oppresses the rights of its citizens doesn't mean they don't have them. If they don't have them, how are they being oppressed?  

Since you mention it, embryos don't have the capacity to make any choices at all so I'm not sure how they can meaningfully have rights at all.

But we have to consider the consequences of not giving embryos rights. Imagine the horror of a world where there were no laws at all concerning abortion and it was completely a matter between a pregnant woman and her physician. It would be like, gasp, Canada which has about the same abortion rate as the USA.

Funny how anti-abortionists in the USA don't prioritize the millions of embryos sacrificed on the altar of helping wealthy people have babies with In vitro fertilization. It's like they think embryos don't have any rights unless they're inside of a woman.

[John 6IX Breezy]

I'm not a relativist when it comes to rights, I have the same rights in N. Korea as I do in the USA, that N. Korea oppresses the rights of its citizens doesn't mean they don't have them. If they don't have them, how are they being oppressed?  

Okay so clarify which rights you are talking about and what disqualifies a person from having them.

[The Grand Nudger]

You're likely to find an expansive view of human rights at the heart of that, not entirely unlike the sentiment expressed in our ninth amendment. MA has all the rights. Whatever they are, listed or otherwise, with room to grow. People who indicate support for realist rights tend to believe we have a whole hell of alot of them, regardless of how much respect for them a person might enjoy at any given time or place.

But, ofc, only he can answer specifically for himself. It's an interesting quirk of religiosity (or of contemporary american religiosity, at least) that those who would describe their view as a right to life fail to hold life preserving or life creating or life affirming views elsewhere. Consistently.... inexplicably, even. Asserting a vast collection of non rights and ignoring plain and existing rights almost as if the debate was over some other thing. Some concept of things sacred and set apart and forbidden entriely divorced from human rights, and derived instead from declarative statements about the nature of the divine and it's relationship to man.

I'm sure a very religious person will be along shortly to tell me I'm wrong.

[Mister Agenda]

I'm not a relativist when it comes to rights, I have the same rights in N. Korea as I do in the USA, that N. Korea oppresses the rights of its citizens doesn't mean they don't have them. If they don't have them, how are they being oppressed?  

Okay so clarify which rights you are talking about and what disqualifies a person from having them.

How about you respond to my queries about why is it okay to force a pregnant woman to give birth against her will?

[John 6IX Breezy]

How about you respond to my queries about why is it okay to force a pregnant woman to give birth against her will?

I don't respond because I reject the premise of your question; and because I've stated several times that I disagree with such absolute terms.