Guys.....isn't this going a bit too far?

[A Theist]

I would like to see the elimination of abortion on demand, severely restricted to only those cases involving rape, incest, and to save the life of the mother. Even in those cases restrictions to charges of rape and incest, measures to interrupt the pregnancy need to be done within the first week of the offense. I also want to see the total federal defunding of Planned Parenthood.

You realize, contrary to the narrative in the conservative echo chamber you like to spend so much time in, Planned Parenthood does a hell of a lot for women's health services aside from abortion, right? STD testing and treatments, cancer screenings, contraceptive services. IIRC, abortion services account for less than 3 percent of their annual spending.

Yes, I do know all of that. Maybe planned parenthood could just eliminate the abortion part and continue with its other services to women's health care. But that still wouldn't set well with you, would it?

[Aegon]

You realize, contrary to the narrative in the conservative echo chamber you like to spend so much time in, Planned Parenthood does a hell of a lot for women's health services aside from abortion, right? STD testing and treatments, cancer screenings, contraceptive services. IIRC, abortion services account for less than 3 percent of their annual spending.

Yes, I do know all of that. Maybe planned parenthood could just eliminate the abortion part and continue with its other services to women's health care. But that still wouldn't set well with you, would it?

No, obviously not. Access to those services are what stops illegal and unsafe abortions, in addition to stopping a significant number of children born to low-income housing who are now prone to rely on the government and commit crimes (something another poster pointed out already.) This would just increase the problem in inner city, low-income areas. It is a cycle of government dependency, and it starts with unwanted and unnecessary pregnancies. I'm oversimplifying, but you see my point.

That being said, if I had to choose between PP's abortion services being cut or the entirety of their funding be cut, I'd have to choose the former.

[Joods]

Newborns and ppl with mental retardation such as Down Syndrome or anything of the like, don't have "minds like ourselves" either.

As a mother of a child with Down syndrome, I find this highly offensive for you to make such a generalized assumption about people with DS. So allow me to educate you on that which you are ignorant of.

Just like ASD, people (and, yes, they are people first) with DS have all different levels of intelligence. Many hold down jobs. Some get married. Some are capable of driving cars. Many can live independently or with minimal assistance. In the US, all have the right to go to school and receive the SAME level of education as any other American.

I know of a married couple, both with DS, who have very supportive families. Both are members of a DS group that I belong to. The husband and wife both work and they live on their own.

Please think about that and the fact that they are intelligent before you decide to generalize all people with DS. They aren't as inferior as people stereotype them and placing a ceiling on their intelligence only places a ceiling on your own.

[brewer]

Yes, I do know all of that. Maybe planned parenthood could just eliminate the abortion part and continue with its other services to women's health care. But that still wouldn't set well with you, would it?

Is this a federal funds/tax dollar argument/position?

If PP removed the abortion part yet other medical facilities were built to replace the medical abortion need that was lost, would you be OK with that?

[Angrboda]

This is getting down to a semantics battle.

That actually doesn't concern me as much as the reasoning behind abortion. A woman should be able to decide when she doesn't want to care for another life in any form at any time. This is why we have adoption for viable children. If that life is still relying entirely on that person's body and another cannot take over, then that does not mean it owns any right to that person's body.

It has to be a semantics battle, because we all understand and agree that killing a person is wrong in most circumstances, and killing an innocent person is wrong is almost all circumstances. So yeah, if we are going to be killing what is undeniably an innocent human life, we better make damn sure that either (a) it's not a person, or (b) we can morally argue that the circumstances surrounding its killing are justified.

I have issues with both (a) and (b).

I don't believe an unborn baby "owns" a right to its mother's body. I do believe that people have a right to do whatever they like with their own bodies. However, I also believe that rights can come into conflict, and conflict resolution is an important part of making moral judgements. The right to life is the most important right, IMO. It trumps all other rights, because without it, all other rights are meaningless. Therefore, when you have a conflict between an unborn child's right to life, and the right of the mother to do what she wants with her own body, I believe that the most justified conflict resolution is to favor the right of the unborn child over that of the mother's.

Two lives are at stake. The mother risks her life more in carrying a fetus to term than she does in aborting it. You're equating the rights of a fetus to those of a fully developed human being. (And yes I heard your arguments about "fully formed", which were little more than an example of the fallacy of the beard. Regardless of whether hard lines can be drawn, it's a fact that there are different stages of development, and these stages correspond to our chosen allocation of rights. As a matter of law, the early fetus has no rights; that was settled in Roe v Wade, and they gave considerable rationale for coming to that position. Historically, the early fetus has not been granted rights. You and pro-lifers want to assign new rights that haven't previously existed.)

The pro-choice response to this is to refuse to acknowledge that unborn children have rights, and whenever they try to argue that unborn children aren't "people" and therefore don't have rights, they come up with all sorts of wishy washy definitions to try and back up that view.

Regardless of whether pro-choice advocates are able to elucidate the underpinnings of their views to your satisfaction or not is not a justification.

Regardless of when an unborn child becomes "viable", my main issue with the whole "only people have rights" argument is that it only seems to be used in regard to abortion; you never see it anywhere else. Elsewhere, we call them "human rights", and even animals are granted some rights. An unborn child is a human, something that is undeniable to anyone who has studied the science of DNA. When does it become human? From the moment of conception. That's a new human life, independent from its parents. That's when human rights should kick in.

What exactly are "human rights," and why should they kick in at conception? You're just bare asserting that a new right be assigned to a class to which it has never before been applied. The reasons are largely due to the unviability of the fetus, but that doesn't justify assigning new rights to the fetus even if viability were not an issue. Equating the fetus to the life of marginal cases is yet another example of conflation, equating dissimilar classes as if they were similar. Marginal cases do not justify assigning new rights to a whole new class of things. Your justification for assigning these rights is purely ipse dixit; because you say so. "Human rights" as you so blithely refer to them, cover a spectrum. They aren't simply a fixed set of rights, we assign different rights to human beings at different stages of development. You want to collapse all gradations of difference into one, using the fallacy of the beard to do it. Nonsense. Different stages of development are assigned different rights, and your claiming that marginal cases deserve the same rights as this stage of development is just confusing the issue. So far, the early fetus has not been granted the right to life at the expense of the mother carrying it. You want to expand the fetus' rights. You need more than conflating the status of the fetus with that of marginal cases and the mere fact that it's "human" to justify doing so.

It perhaps is not generally appreciated that the restrictive criminal abortion laws in effect in a majority of States today are of relatively recent vintage. Those laws, generally proscribing abortion or its attempt at any time during pregnancy except when necessary to preserve the pregnant woman's life, are not of ancient or even of common law origin. Instead, they derive from statutory changes effected, for the most part, in the latter half of the 19th century.

~ Roe v. Wade, s. VI

[LastPoet]

It was a lot of poo

Also the fact that we have feet is a cool feature.

[Amarok]

It has to be a semantics battle, because we all understand and agree that killing a person is wrong in most circumstances, and killing an innocent person is wrong is almost all circumstances. So yeah, if we are going to be killing what is undeniably an innocent human life, we better make damn sure that either (a) it's not a person, or (b) we can morally argue that the circumstances surrounding its killing are justified.

I have issues with both (a) and (b).

I don't believe an unborn baby "owns" a right to its mother's body. I do believe that people have a right to do whatever they like with their own bodies. However, I also believe that rights can come into conflict, and conflict resolution is an important part of making moral judgements. The right to life is the most important right, IMO. It trumps all other rights, because without it, all other rights are meaningless. Therefore, when you have a conflict between an unborn child's right to life, and the right of the mother to do what she wants with her own body, I believe that the most justified conflict resolution is to favor the right of the unborn child over that of the mother's.

Two lives are at stake.  The mother risks her life more in carrying a fetus to term than she does in aborting it.  You're equating the rights of a fetus to those of a fully developed human being.  (And yes I heard your arguments about "fully formed", which were little more than an example of the fallacy of the beard.  Regardless of whether hard lines can be drawn, it's a fact that there are different stages of development, and these stages correspond to our chosen allocation of rights.  As a matter of law, the early fetus has no rights; that was settled in Roe v Wade, and they gave considerable rationale for coming to that position.  Historically, the early fetus has not been granted rights.  You and pro-lifers want to assign new rights that haven't previously existed.)

The pro-choice response to this is to refuse to acknowledge that unborn children have rights, and whenever they try to argue that unborn children aren't "people" and therefore don't have rights, they come up with all sorts of wishy washy definitions to try and back up that view.

Regardless of whether pro-choice advocates are able to elucidate the underpinnings of their views to your satisfaction or not is not a justification.

Regardless of when an unborn child becomes "viable", my main issue with the whole "only people have rights" argument is that it only seems to be used in regard to abortion; you never see it anywhere else. Elsewhere, we call them "human rights", and even animals are granted some rights. An unborn child is a human, something that is undeniable to anyone who has studied the science of DNA. When does it become human? From the moment of conception. That's a new human life, independent from its parents. That's when human rights should kick in.

What exactly are "human rights," and why should they kick in at conception?  You're just bare asserting that a new right be assigned to a class to which it has never before been applied.  The reasons are largely due to the unviability of the fetus, but that doesn't justify assigning new rights to the fetus even if viability were not an issue.   Equating the fetus to the life of marginal cases is yet another example of conflation, equating dissimilar classes as if they were similar.  Marginal cases do not justify assigning new rights to a whole new class of things.  Your justification for assigning these rights is purely ipse dixit; because you say so.  "Human rights" as you so blithely refer to them, cover a spectrum.  They aren't simply a fixed set of rights, we assign different rights to human beings at different stages of development.  You want to collapse all gradations of difference into one, using the fallacy of the beard to do it.  Nonsense.  Different stages of development are assigned different rights, and your claiming that marginal cases deserve the same rights as this stage of development is just confusing the issue.  So far, the early fetus has not been granted the right to life at the expense of the mother carrying it.  You want to expand the fetus' rights.  You need more than conflating the status of the fetus with that of marginal cases and the mere fact that it's "human" to justify doing so.

It perhaps is not generally appreciated that the restrictive criminal abortion laws in effect in a majority of States today are of relatively recent vintage. Those laws, generally proscribing abortion or its attempt at any time during pregnancy except when necessary to preserve the pregnant woman's life, are not of ancient or even of common law origin. Instead, they derive from statutory changes effected, for the most part, in the latter half of the 19th century.

~ Roe v. Wade, s. VI

Some brilliant insights  

[PETE_ROSE]

.....

[Whateverist]

And just her responsibility?  I suppose you think it is incumbent on women to take more precautions against abortion.  Both sexes have a sex drive but women alone bare the blame when a sperm makes it to an egg?

I literally said, "The moment a woman becomes pregnant she is also responsible for another human being". I didn't say, "The moment a woman becomes pregnant she is solely responsible for the pregnancy". I have no idea what you're talking about.

If I'm correct in remembering that you identify as gay your stance here seems rather facile.

Ah yes, the identity politics. Well listen here then, I also identify as a 20 time Olympic gold medalist sex god, my pronouns are "Oh yeah daddy" and "Just like that daddy".

No problem with any of that except so far as joining in the chorus of male voices opining what a woman should do with her body.  At that I don't think you've been as strident as some.  Would just love to hear you say it is and should be every woman's call.

---

True, but that they exist at all is evidence that they matter to someone, someone like us who supports and loves them.  Therefore we have to extend to them the same consideration we do to others like ourselves, just as we expect them to do toward our loved ones.

You're saying the only reason babies and the mentally handicapped deserve the same considerations as ourselves (the right to life) is if they "matter" to someone more worthy. Shouldn't the fact that they are innocent human beings be enough?

That sounds incredibly cruel. And I don't mean that in a personally insulting way to you, as I know you're not a cruel person. But that just sounded really really bad. You're basically saying they are inherently lesser than us.

I'm just trying to make an ethics argument.  I see ethics as revolving around enlightened self interest, not objective values or inalienable rights.  So I think a good case can be made along these lines for the good treatment of the helpless among us.  

Realistically one would have to be cruel and unreflective to wish to hurt anything on account of its being helpless.  But a woman who wants an abortion doesn't desire to hurt the fetus.  I'm sure in the great majority of cases it is the least bad (though still bad) choice available under unfortunate circumstances.  In such cases I think the mother is the only one in a rightful position to speak for the helpless fetus inside her.  If in her estimation the fetus must go I think (as you know) that is her call and no abstract argument regarding the ethics of human interactions can trump it.

---

I would like to see the elimination of abortion on demand, severely restricted to only those cases involving rape, incest, and to save the life of the mother. Even in those cases restrictions to charges of rape and incest, measures to interrupt the pregnancy need to be done within the first week of the offense. I also want to see the total federal defunding of Planned Parenthood.

You realize, contrary to the narrative in the conservative echo chamber you like to spend so much time in, Planned Parenthood does a hell of a lot for women's health services aside from abortion, right? STD testing and treatments, cancer screenings, contraceptive services. IIRC, abortion services account for less than 3 percent of their annual spending.

Right in addition to seeing to the health of the procreative facilities of the species.  These just happen to be centered in just the female.  Perhaps we as a whole do owe some concern for that.  I wonder if A_T thinks women who get aboritions for personal reasons which he is unable to respect should be punished.  If so, should it be corporal, financial or perhaps involve incarceration?

---

I would like to see the elimination of abortion on demand, severely restricted to only those cases involving rape, incest, and to save the life of the mother. Even in those cases restrictions to charges of rape and incest, measures to interrupt the pregnancy need to be done within the first week of the offense. I also want to see the total federal defunding of Planned Parenthood.

Defunding planned parenthood?  Fuck you.  And, gross.

Also:

The first week?  What exactly are you talking about?  As in, two weeks prior to ovulation, before the woman even conceives?  Or, as in one week after conception when it's impossible to get a positive pregnancy test because implantation hasn't even occurred yet?  Lol.  Zip up your fly; you're ignorance regarding human reproductive biology is showing.  Me thinks you need to sit in on a few women's health courses before weighing in on this matter.

I think, like Trump, he basically sees you and every other woman of breeding age as community owned farm land.  How dare you question the rightness of bringing to bear the fruit of the seed some man has seen fit to plant in you?

[Amarok]

But a woman who wants an abortion doesn't desire to hurt the fetus

This really stood out to me.Yeah the mother want it dead she wants it out of her body. The fact that it results in death isn't the result of her desire it just happens as a consequence