[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P78_V1Z9CO4[/youtube]

...and discuss...

Saw the debate about 2 weeks ago, interesting. While I agree abortion should be legal, there were a couple of his arguments given I thought were weak, including some of his responses to Kristine's arguments.

First of all, I think the whole issue is more complex than just personhood vs bodily rights. It is both about personhood and bodily rights, one does not exclude the other. I'll try and write some more about the subject later, I'm so fucking lazy distracted all the time.

She sounded brainwashed, and her arguments sounded religious. When she started talking about ageism, I gave up. She's completely irrational and out of touch with reality.

She sounded annoying and nervous throughout, with a lot of holier than thou attitude. A lot of her crap was just a giant appeal to emotion and revulsion. The vast majority of antiabortion is ultimately fueled by the BUT BABIES ARE SO CUTE-instinct. She also delved into a lot of naturalistic fallacies about what organs and uteri and babies are "supposed" to do or what they're "for".

One of the things I disagreed with Matt about was his response to whether he had a responsibility to care for some helpless child that had ended up in his garage or what it was. That doesn't mean there isn't limits to the degree of care he should be giving, but just flat out stating he's got no responsibility whatsoever I can't agree with. At the very least he has a responsibility to try and get help for the child from proper authorities. And I know there are various laws (I don't remember the details) designed to hold you at least partly accountable for refusing to help people in need when you have means and opportunity. I'm not talking about charity, I'm talking about, for example, just standing by and doing nothing while a guy next to you collapses with a heart attack or something like that. You can be prosecuted for not doing something, and I think you should. Helping a child that happens to end up having to rely on you until proper authorities can take over is analogous to such a situation I think.

And the thing about the baseball. If some shithead breaks a window of mine, and it subsequently rains and ruins my carpet, then he's fucking responsible for the carpet too, whether it was an accident or not. Just like throwing the baseball in the wrong direction or "too hard" is an accident and he's still responsible for breaking my window, so is it an accident that it starts raining and ruins my carpet, and the carpet ruining would not have happened had he not broken my window.

I have to admit that I couldn't make it through much of the debate last time I tried to watch it. Her opening speech was just filled with things that I found illogical and nonsensical - e.g. talking about how sperm and egg are unlike a zygote because they are differentiated cells, and that therefore this marks the point at which a "person" is formed, totally overlooking the glaring point that all the concrete examples of "persons" are made up of differentiated cells, not undifferentiated cells. She points out something that is an absolute difference, then concludes it makes the two not just alike, but the same thing.