The Atheist Obsession with Insulting Christians

[TheRocketSurgeon]

You're right! The mother is a human being, with the absolute right under American law to medical privacy under the First Amendment, and that happens to include the concept of medical privacy, which most Americans find quite dear, and that concept includes the right to control her own body-- including what is allowed to feed off of her uterine wall. Or isn't.

Fetuses, or whatever you wish to call it (in non-medical terms?), are on that list.

We cannot force citizens to unwillingly give up a kidney, at risk to their own life, even if they caused kidney failure in another person and that other person will die without the first individual's kidney. It's unthinkable, under law, because they have bodily integrity. You may think that the person who caused the kidney failure in their friend is a dick for being unwilling to risk his life to save the one who lost both kidneys because of him, but he has that right to refuse, under every concept of law and personal integrity/medical privacy we understand.

Asking a woman to involuntarily risk childbirth or C-section is not one shred different. The risks she takes with her own body, and what she does with it, are entirely hers. There are no ifs, ands, or buts after that sentence.

If we are to say that women are people, then that must necessarily include the bodily integrity concept. You can religiously frown on the practice of birth control, of women being something other than breeders, for that is your right. But knock it off with pushing your religious objection to abortion, in an artificial "we like life!" plea, as an agenda.

The funny thing is, though, your Bible is in no way against abortion. I don't know where y'all get that idea. I really don't. It's all "well if you read it this  way..." but it never says abortion is wrong. In fact, it strongly suggests in some places that God is totally okay with it-- see in Numbers chapter 5, where it appears there is a recipe for inducing a forced miscarriage (read: abortion) in a woman who has been suspected of being unfaithful while her husband was away. (Verses 11-31.)

But again, regardless of whether your Holy Book™ is against the practice, it is irrelevant, because our laws are secular and must remain indifferent to and unbiased toward religious ideologies. Oh, and that whole pesky Bill of Rights which seems to strongly imply that citizens (yes, folks, even women!) have all their rights, all the time.

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What the fuck does this even mean? What problem?

Plagiarizing Deist concepts from the Declaration, transcribing them into the name of Jehovah, does not constitute an argument. Shame!

You don't just get to throw shit out there and pretend it's sage! All PT said is that Christians claim to have Absolute Truth™, and then by and large live just like the rest of us (for good and for bad), so they clearly make their own moral judgments despite all the rhetoric about "Nature and Nature's God" and the imaginary concept of an Ultimate Lawgiver.

Rocket, 

I don't disagree with your take on abortion and a woman's right for her own body.  I don't care for the argument that likens the fetus to a bacterial parasite.  Everyone knows that fetus is/will be a human being.  Also what is often left out of the abortion discussion is the right of the father who helped conceive that child.  This is why abortion is such a tough topic, because there are a lot of variables.  

I want to throw a hypothetical, purely because I'm curious of your opinion, but I know you and your girlfriend are expecting.  What if she decided that she wants an abortion?  You respect her right for her bodily integrity, but what about your right as the father of that child?

I apologize for taking so long to answer you, Kingpin. It has been a busy workday. I'm also fighting with a customer who keeps swearing the check is in the mail. Literally.

The answer to your question is contained in what I already wrote, above. The answer to Chad's question is also in there. I meant every word of that.

But to specifically answer. I would be devastated if she chose to abort that fetus. I very much want that child. However, I absolutely respect her right to determine what happens to her body. Not I, nor any man, nor anyone else but her, has that right. Period. End of sentence. I control no part of her, including her uterus, and any interaction she has with me is 100% voluntary, or else I am unworthy of her. I am just as free to choose to not be with her as she is with me, but I am not free to control her. Feminism 101.

As to Chad's argument, which states that the reason the fetus/child has no rights is "because it is weak and vulnerable", it's entirely beside the point of this entire argument. It has no rights which could possibly supersede the right to bodily integrity of the mother, no matter what status we grant it, even that of full adult, if we so choose. That's why I used the example of the couple of adult people in which one had caused kidney failure (leading to death) in the other, when the first who caused it has the only set of compatible kidneys on earth. Even in that example, where taking the kidney of the first would allow the life of the second to continue, we do not have the legal right to force the person to give up the kidney in order that the other might live, even though person A caused person B to have a life whose continuance is contingent on person A's body part, regardless of how we might feel about it, or about person A.