michael^3 wrote:

Agrippina wrote:

michael^3 wrote:

Agrippina wrote:I still haven't seen any anti-abortion comments about all the millions of fertilised eggs that self-abort without the woman even realising she was pregnant. I suppose those hadn't been infused with souls yet, so they don't count. God the abortionist.

Every day people are run over by cars, so it's permissible to push people under cars.

That doesn't answer my question. Why isn't God concerned about all the unrecognised self-abortions. Why does he let this happen? You'd think if every sperm is sacred, then every fertilised egg is as well. Why are you concerned about the one a woman consciously aborts, and not the dozens that will abort by her body without her even knowing about it?

Have you never suffered a moment of cognitive dissonance about being angry at God and not believing in God at the same time?

No. I don't get angry at imaginary friends.

NineOneFour wrote:

michael^3 wrote:

Rachel Bronwyn wrote:

NineOneFour wrote:

Can you actually provide evidence that this child even exists? Or is this more Lying for Jesus?

Oh, he does, and his dad's milking the story for everything it's worth.

I'd rather be nice to living persons in need of medical attention and direct resources into them than dead people and non-viable fetuses. But it makes a great story and someone gets to sell a book.

No seriously, if you ever meet that boy you should tell him that in you opinion he should have been killed because you had to pay too much tax money to save him. Because that is exactly what you think. Or maybe you can calculate the precise amount of money you lost on this and demand it back, so you can donate it to a more worthy cause.

I would, but I'm not a conservative.

You can't pay people back who were denied medical treatment and now are suffering permanent complications or died because resources were being poured into a dead body and a non-viable fetus. Money doesn't make that right.

Living people with investment in their lives were denied healthcare because of this.

Paul wrote:

michael^3 wrote:

Agrippina wrote:

michael^3 wrote:

Every day people are run over by cars, so it's permissible to push people under cars.

That doesn't answer my question. Why isn't God concerned about all the unrecognised self-abortions. Why does he let this happen? You'd think if every sperm is sacred, then every fertilised egg is as well. Why are you concerned about the one a woman consciously aborts, and not the dozens that will abort by her body without her even knowing about it?

Have you never suffered a moment of cognitive dissonance about being angry at God and not believing in God at the same time?

Have you never heard of hypothetical questions?

There's the other side of the coin, what about all the millions of sperm that don't make it. Each of those is a potential human so why does God kill them?

Can we cease the god this bullshit please. It's a supposedly secular thread.

Tacticus wrote:

Rumraket wrote:

NineOneFour wrote:We could cut abortions by 90% tomorrow with universal sex ed and access to birth control, but the anti-choicers won't support that because it fails to achieve their primary goal of turning women into public property.

Also a point which is consistently ignored by the wombfetishists.

It's ignored because it's utterly untrue.

No it isn't. This has already been dealt with. If the antichoicers really, really cared about doing the best they could to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies and abortions, they would support universal and comprehensive sex-ed and easy/free access to birth control. But they don't, they simply don't. The verdict is in, they don't give shit about fetuses. It's about women and about sex. It's also pathetic.

Rumraket wrote:

Tacticus wrote:

Rumraket wrote:

NineOneFour wrote:We could cut abortions by 90% tomorrow with universal sex ed and access to birth control, but the anti-choicers won't support that because it fails to achieve their primary goal of turning women into public property.

Also a point which is consistently ignored by the wombfetishists.

It's ignored because it's utterly untrue.

No it isn't. This has already been dealt with. If the antichoicers really, really cared about doing the best they could to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies and abortions, they would support universal and comprehensive sex-ed and easy/free access to birth control. But they don't, they simply don't. The verdict is in, they don't give shit about fetuses. It's about women and about sex. It's also pathetic.

It is indeed. It's also about power. When they control what "their wimmen" are allowed to do with their bodies, they remain the superior beings. They also allow their "wimmen" to support them in this. A marriage wouldn't survive if the wife and daughters didn't support the father who demanded that every embryo is sacred.

NineOneFour wrote:

michael^3 wrote:

Agrippina wrote:I still haven't seen any anti-abortion comments about all the millions of fertilised eggs that self-abort without the woman even realising she was pregnant. I suppose those hadn't been infused with souls yet, so they don't count. God the abortionist.

Every day people are run over by cars, so it's permissible to push people under cars.

You just read a very poor attempt at reductio ad absurdum...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum

Tacticus wrote:

amok wrote:

Tacticus wrote:
As to abortion being "safer" than natural birth, this is preposterous nonsense, and ongoing studies suggest that abortion routinely causes psychological (not to mention physical) harm that dramatically increases suicide and death rates in women who have them.

Which studies, please? Because that was what I opined would be a secular argument against abortion earlier in the thread. If this dramatic increase in fact exists - leaving aside, of course, back alley abortions in places where safe abortions aren't available - this is something people need to know.

I though it was cited earlier. It was a study out of Australia as I recall. I'll do some looking around.

Finalnd, IIRC. When you find it, be sure not to neglect to mention the several flaws in the study that rendered its conclusions invalid, as you neglected to do here....

And even if it weren't the case that the study is horribly flawed and it's results unreliable, it's one study. Every other study on the topic demonstrates the safety of abortion is far more certain than that of pregnancy and childbirth.

michael^3 wrote:

Shrunk wrote:

michael^3 wrote:

NineOneFour wrote:Using women merely as fetus incubators is creepy, fucked up, illegal, sick, twisted, disgusting, invalidating, sexist, misogynistic, rapey, weird, fetishistic, disturbing, moronic, insane, selfish, wrong, immoral, and fucking nuts.

Please explain how this progression escapes you.

Is it OK if the mother gave consent before she died?

Careful there, michael^3. You're dangerously close to saying the woman in whom the fetus resides should have the say over whether it "lives" or "dies."

If the woman did not abort before she "died" we have to assume she wanted to carry the pregnancy to terms. To respect her wishes the doctors should make a reasonable attempt to save the baby.

And if she has a car accident on the way to the clinic for her procedure?

Or what if she in on the way to make the appointment for the procedure?

Or she's just had a consult with her GP, and is resolved to abort the pregnancy but hasn't told anyone else yet?

Fucking ludicrous. "Baby" is not a rigorous term. It's an emotional one.

Goldenmane wrote:
Fucking ludicrous. "Baby" is not a rigorous term. It's an emotional one.

The whole pro-life argument is a ludicrous appeal to emotion. "It's a baby!" "It's potentially a human" "It's the same as murdering someone."

Evocative language designed to disguise the lack of rational, secular, argument.
It's all woo, slut shaming and misogyny with only one intended purpose, control.

Her wishes re: healthcare don't matter. Healthcare is for people who possess health. She's dead. She's gone. All that's left is a body. It doesn't have wishes. She doesn't exist anymore. Wishes re: how her body is disposed of should be respected, obvs, but she's not entitled to healthcare anymore because she doesn't exist anymore. We don't pour enormous resources into dead people when living people need them and we don't pour resources into non-viable fetuses when living people need them.

You aren't entitled to receive the healthcare after you've died that you would have opted for when you were alive or before you're born, particularly not when you're utilising resources others require for quality of life and survival.

The fact that a dead body took up space and time and energy within a hospital for so long when living people really could have used that bed and those doctors and nurses and didn't have all night to wait in the ER before complications arose should enrage all of us. That this was done for the emotional sake of the husband, that a dead body was utilised to benefit a non-viable fetus for the sake of the husband, should disturb all of us.

Rachel Bronwyn wrote:
The fact that a dead body took up space and time and energy within a hospital for so long when living people really could have used that bed and those doctors and nurses and didn't have all night to wait in the ER before complications arose should enrage all of us. That this was done for the emotional sake of the husband, that a dead body was utilised to benefit a non-viable fetus for the sake of the husband, should disturb all of us.

It bloody disturbs me. But, then this goes to further emphasise how little the pro-life brigade care about acutal living people vs little blobs of cells.

Why waste money helping actual people, when the money can be spent on satisfying their desire to dictate what other people can or cannot do with their bodies.

What next - pro-lifers linking arms and blocking cemetaries?

Only 1 month old and already on page 165. Wow.

Thomas Eshuis wrote:Only 1 month old and already on page 165. Wow.

It isn't a viable discussion though. I'd rather we aborted it, but the pro-life brigade want it to continue for 9months and then ignore it.

The precedent this case sets is terrifying. Enormous resources were poured into saving a non-viable fetus, a non-person. That's one step WAY too close to giving fetuses personhood and human rights, entitlement to healthcare, and, for that reason alone (not that there aren't a shitload of other very disturbing aspects to this case,) we should be alarmed. Personhood for fetuses is an assault on reproductive rights. This case is pushing us towards that.

Rachel Bronwyn wrote:The precedent this case sets is terrifying. Enormous resources were poured into saving a non-viable fetus, a non-person. That's one step WAY too close to giving fetuses personhood and human rights, entitlement to healthcare, and, for that reason alone (not that there aren't a shitload of other very disturbing aspects to this case,) we should be alarmed. Personhood for fetuses is an assault on reproductive rights. This case is pushing us towards that.

I conur it is terrifying, although I am surprised it hasn't happened before now when you consider cases like Teri Schivao and the lengths her family went to keep her body alive despite all medical evidence showing she was never ever going to recover. Her family were happy to override Teri's wishes and her partner's attempts to exercise them. I feel sick at the thought of how much more horrendous that matter might have been with a fetus added into the mix.

This case sets some very very disturbing precedents in terms of woman's reproductive rights vs the whims of her surviving relatives/husband, whatever.

All that semantic wibbling about what a person is is disturbing anyway. A person has thoughts, feeling and a life. A fetus possesses none of these. It's just a lump of cells that may one day delevop to become the container for a person to arise within but that is all. Putting the (non-existant) "rights" of such a container above an actual person is just sick.
A sperm, likewise, could probably become a person one day (after combining with an egg), yet we do not call fapping murder - order menstruation for that matter.

Religious apologists trying to pretend them fighting abortion for any other reason than their own bigotry need to shut the fuck up.

Rachel Bronwyn wrote:Her wishes re: healthcare don't matter. Healthcare is for people who possess health. She's dead. She's gone. All that's left is a body. It doesn't have wishes. She doesn't exist anymore. Wishes re: how her body is disposed of should be respected, obvs, but she's not entitled to healthcare anymore because she doesn't exist anymore. We don't pour enormous resources into dead people when living people need them and we don't pour resources into non-viable fetuses when living people need them.

You aren't entitled to receive the healthcare after you've died that you would have opted for when you were alive or before you're born, particularly not when you're utilising resources others require for quality of life and survival.

The fact that a dead body took up space and time and energy within a hospital for so long when living people really could have used that bed and those doctors and nurses and didn't have all night to wait in the ER before complications arose should enrage all of us. That this was done for the emotional sake of the husband, that a dead body was utilised to benefit a non-viable fetus for the sake of the husband, should disturb all of us.

It's a complex situation, albeit one that touches only tangentially on that of abortion. The definition of "life" is in part one that varies with personal values, belief and culture, and a recent Canadian court decision suggests that this should take precedence over what might be most sensible in medical terms:

http://www.rationalskepticism.org/post1832764.html