Let the social commentary begin…
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August 20th, 2008 at 7:11 pm
My favorite time relating to this is when pro-birth regulation said that people below a certain income level and certain amount should not be allowed to have kids. She back tracked REAL fast when I said if that was the case, then she just nixed me, both of brothers and my sisters. Of course, this story is somewhat unrelated, for that was about government birth regulation, not abortion. But only here can be put on trial for killing a mother AND an unborn child, yet abortion is still legal.
August 20th, 2008 at 7:13 pm
First! Yay for me! In light of Ron Ron’s point of view about giving “undefined life” (i.e. living embryo) the benefit of the doubt, if I were in that position, I would let the lifeform live. Can someone please comment, why the debate is on whatever if the lifeform is human? Why would a woman have an unborn lifeform that isn’t human? Although the lifeform isn’t “technically” human, the spark or ‘sparks’ in this case that created that life ARE human. *sigh* ‘Let the social commentary begin’ is right El Gato Negro! Take care everyone.
August 20th, 2008 at 7:13 pm
Ooops - not first - my bad
August 20th, 2008 at 7:34 pm
I respect the right to choose since I cant impose my belief on others, but I do believe abortion is murder since you are killing the potential life that could have been. With condoms, and birth control, and simply pulling out (not very efective, I know) we should not have to end up in abortion. Very complicate I admit. I was many years thinking of what is right or at least right with me, untill I reached this belief. And sorry if my english is not very good. Native tongue is spanish.
August 20th, 2008 at 7:40 pm
Your English is good ‘omelas’. And yes no should be forced into doing something that isn’t within their moral judgment. My point of view is this - “Life is life regardless of what it is”.
August 21st, 2008 at 3:44 am
quote: “Life is life regardless of what it is”
unfortunately, this is just wrong. life is not life regardless of what is is. life is a mere existence by definition. life needs to be defined. when does it start, when does a system come to life, when does it live?
this is the actual problem of the whole pro-anti-choice issue, as well as stem cells, and many more. and there is no global truth or answer: some may define life as everything that is able to sustain itself (like a virus or a human), others insist that food is all a lifeform may require from the outside, some may define it as a fertilized egg, and some may only define it when the fertilized egg reached the uterus. and they are all right.
the difficulty lies in the fact how and if you may impose your definition on others, that define it differently. and there is no answer to that, and never will be.
August 21st, 2008 at 4:01 am
quote: “Life is life regardless of what it is”
Sorry, but even that statement wouldn’t get me to carry the life put there by someone who raped me or the life of someone who is severely retarded or ill in my stomach for 9 months.
August 21st, 2008 at 4:18 am
I put that strip to my blog, because I think it describes the abortion debate very well. Bravo, guys. If Obama is prochoice, then he’s already decided when life begins. It means that he believes that life begins at birth. If he truly didn’t know when life began and felt that it was for greater minds to decide, then he should have no official position and err on the side of caution precisely for the reasons that is presented in the strip above.
August 21st, 2008 at 4:21 am
ah I was busy quoting facts, so I forgot my opinion^^
that would be: In my definition, call it belief, ‘unborn life worth protecting’ starts with the development of a nervous system, as this is the undisputable prerequisite for the existance of ‘will’ or ‘personality’, hence everything that makes us ‘human’. I am therefore perfectly fine with killing that thing without a nervous system, which takes a while to develop.
However, I am aware, that other people see that differently, I would never force someone to adapt my definition. But I do expect that they respect my definition, and therefore leave me the freedom of choice in that margin.
August 21st, 2008 at 5:02 am
Also remember. We write what the characters would say. Not necessarily what I or Hapajap believe. Plus this is college where these conversations happen on a daily stirred up by hormones and beer. I love debates because shaking your stick when having conversations often bring out greater truths.
Continue…
August 21st, 2008 at 5:33 am
10/10
If you can’t, “handle the kid” then either have responsible sex (there are so many ways to prevent birth that it would take a rambo sperm cell to get past all of it) or give it up for adoption. There are millions of parents who would love to have a little bundle of dysfunctionality.
August 21st, 2008 at 6:31 am
In my opinion, if we can’t trust a woman to make a choice, how can we trust her to raise a child?
August 21st, 2008 at 6:35 am
“There are millions of parents who would love to have a little bundle of dysfunctionality.”
Hapajap?
August 21st, 2008 at 7:00 am
What, are you saying I’m dysfunctional???
Look, the reality of ‘dysfunctional abortions’ is that they are SUCH an insignificant percentage OF abortions, that it is little more than a red herring to the debate. Same thing for rape and incest. The REALITY is that almost ALL abortions are abortions of convenience. Pro-Choicers don’t want to own up to that fact, so they pull out the ‘rape, incest, imperfect baby’ card.
I’m not an ‘all or none’ kind of guy in this issue, if we can pass laws… ANY laws that would reduce the number of abortions, even if it means keeping ‘emergency’ cases legal, I’d be all for it.
Keep in mind what the strip says, that regardless of what your definition of LIFE is (although let’s keep this 100% on the scientific front: –noun
1. the condition that distinguishes organisms from inorganic objects and dead organisms, being manifested by growth through metabolism, reproduction, and the power of adaptation to environment through changes originating internally.
2. the sum of the distinguishing phenomena of organisms, esp. metabolism, growth, reproduction, and adaptation to environment. Other definitions need not apply, in truth.)
The question is not whether or not it’s LIFE. Of course it’s LIFE. The question isn’t whether or not it’s HUMAN, of course it’s HUMAN. The question is a CIVIL RIGHTS question: Do we grant UNBORN HUMANS the constitutional right to LIFE?
Currently we do not. Currently, these unborn human beings are treated as property. Sound familiar? If we like our slaves and want to treat them well, they get to live, if we don’t like our little slaves, and don’t want to ’sell’ it or give it to someone else, we have the right to KILL it.
We have the right to KILL and unborn HUMAN LIFE.
That is the reality of this argument. It’s not ‘when does life begin’, it’s when do we grant those lives the RIGHT to LIVE.
But I’m sure that won’t sway any opinions, so carry on!
August 21st, 2008 at 7:29 am
Nicely put HapaJap.
For the most part, I agree with you. Abortions shouldn’t get rid of all entirely, but it shouldn’t be so open for people to go like it is. It should be reduced to the point where it excludes “just for convience” reasoning.
August 21st, 2008 at 7:45 am
LOL
Hilarious. Nothing like bringing up key issues to spark poo flinging debate in the comments!
I’m still pushing for post-birth abortions but my senator won’t call me back. I think life doesn’t really start till the toddler years. Before then it’s just an incoherent, barely conscious mass of flesh.
August 21st, 2008 at 8:08 am
I just read your comment, Hapajap. I’m actually for aborting dyfunctioal babies. Their lives would be miserable if let them live anyway. It’s our moral duty to abort babies that are going to be lame their entire lives.
With that in mind we shouldn’t stop there. My fellow Americans, grab your weapons! It’s time to relieve the cripples of their lives that aren’t worth living! It is our moral duty to make choice for cripples and relieve them of their miserable lives! Kill the all! In the name of dignity and righteousness!
August 21st, 2008 at 8:27 am
You finally motivated me to get an account with this discussion. As I see it there are two separate but related problems with the argument presented in the comic.
First, it assumes that there is a “right answer” to the question “Is there a life in there?” The question is essentially a philosophical one. Many Christians believe that life begins at conception. To them the “right” answer is “Yes, there’s a life in the box”. The Old Testament is pretty clear that life begins at the first breath, so for an observant Jew the “right” answer might be “No, there is no life in the box.” To a non-religious person basing their decision on their own internal logic, life may begin when the brain is fully formed, when the heart starts beating, or even when it starts to “look like a baby”. Who is to say which, if any of these is correct? There is no outside authority that can answer that question unless you accept that “God” will make the decision. If you believe that God has an opinion, that’s fine, but should we legislate based on the possible opinion of the divine? (after all, even among those who profess religious feeling there is a significant debate on what God’s opinion actually is.)
The second problem is simple. Pro-choice does not mean Pro-abortion. It means Pro- “Choice”. This relates to the above in a simple manner. If all of us disagree as to when precisely life starts, why not make is a moral choice for the people affected. The woman (or preferably the couple) may decide on her or their own when THEY think life begins and what the moral consequences of THEIR choice will be. Each person can make a choice. Since the only outside authority that may be able to give us a definite answer to “when does life begin” is not making Its views on the matter terribly clear, the only people who can answer the question “when does life begin” are each of of, individually, in our own conscious.
August 21st, 2008 at 9:23 am
Hey drgndance. My problem with your argumente is that I belive the choice comes before. When a couple get pregnent its because they made choices before (I do not include rape here of course, the woman has no choice their). They choose to have sex without a condom, they choose to have sex without being on the pill, they choose to have sex without checking the menstrual cycle, they choose to have sex with the man “coming” inside the woman. After all those choices, they are pregnant and since it is now inconvinient to have the child, they abort it. Again, I am not including rape, or danger to the mother or some serious defect the baby may have. I am talking of those that choose not to protect themselves and then kill the potential human being because it would be inconvient to have it.
I am married with 3 children and I met and went out with my wife while still in the university. We had sex before marriage but always used protection and where very carefull. Last year of university we thought she might be pregnant. It would have been really bad at that time since we had not graduated yet, had no jobs and lets say we dont exactly live in the most liberal country in the world. Even then, we would have taken responsibility for the child. It was not the potential childs fault that we made wrong choices before. In the end she was not, we got married, and well….3 children…
Again, I do not condem those who have abortions and have at least one friend who has, but I do beleive you are killing a human being, I just understand that others dont have the same view I have on this. Oh, and I dont really believe in God very much so its not religous or anything like that. Just my moral stand on this.
August 21st, 2008 at 11:09 am
Hey Drgndancer, welcome to CSC! Nice to have you aboard.
I think you totally missed the point of the strip. Throw religion, and ‘belief’ and all that out the window. SCIENCE has a definition of LIFE. That little zygote, as soon as it starts replicating, is LIFE by every scientific definition. I don’t care what religion thinks about this issue. It’s not an issue of religion, it’s an issue of rights.
And the point of the strip was that even if you are basing your belief about when that life has the right to LIVE, the logical position for any really thinking person would be to give the benefit of the doubt and err on the side of LIFE, not DEATH.
40,000,000 unborn human beings have been killed in this country since Roe Vs. Wade. Think about that. That’s roughly 1/8th of the population that has been exterminated without prejudice. Without giving any of those 40,000,000 human lives the benefit of the doubt.
Hitler would be proud.
August 21st, 2008 at 11:16 am
How about this, what makes a human life so much greater than that of a cow or a cat? What makes us such hot stuff that the very thought of killing an unborn mass of cells, at the very least, or even a organism that basically looks like everything else so horribly wrong while we eat meat and support slaughterhouses. Before anyone says it, I am a proud ominvore and enjoy a good pork chop or piece of steak when I can. The point I’m trying to make is, we are just a species of animal that found some extra memory space and has some more interesting software.
As for when life begins. Well in concession to you anti-abortionists, if any are actually here, of course a mass of cells is alive. However, are they aware of what they will become? Can they feel anything but the most basic of sensations? Can the phase that resembles the generic form of all vertebrate life distinguish between joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain? Basically, it’s alive, but is it aware? This is a question of sentients. Granted most people take life for granted having only questioned it’s meaning, if any, only once or twice. But the truth is, when is the fetus more aware of ’self’ than a dog or a fly? And in truth, how do we know that the fly isn’t more aware of ’self’ than most humans? So if you want to debate this on the basis of morals, think about this when you’re swatting a fly or eating that nice hotdog.
Why do we have wars and the death penalty then? Any one who supports war or the death penalty and then says they embrace the ‘pro-life’ stance is a hypocrite or an idiot. You’re not pro-life, you’re just anti-abortion or anti-choice. Don’t try to justify your argument with the “sanctity of life” bullshit. Logic or GTFO
There is a statistical fact that 98% of the time condoms fail, I think it’s 93% that spermicides don’t get all the sperm and that all contraceptives are not 100% successful. Some of them actually require a doctor to have them put in place and to use more than two at most makes the whole idea of sex seem not worth it. Not to mention a lot of instances of sexual itercourse are spur of the moment. The guy can remmber to put on the condom and such, but like stated, the odds of it failing can fall on you and your partner. Just something you should think about when saying the woman seeking an abortion might be ‘loose with her morals.’ No, it could’ve been her first time, she just drew the wrong cards and got screwed, no pun intended -_-’
August 21st, 2008 at 11:21 am
Omelas, the point I’m trying to make here is that the morality or lack of morality involved in abortion is immaterial to the argument. I personally agree with you that abortion is wrong. If a woman I was sleeping with became pregnant I would be appalled if she wanted to abort, and I would argue against her doing so.
Having said that, I respect that my personal morals are not relevant to the legal issue. If you have different personal morals, you should be free to follow them. I think, based on your statements, that we more or less agree on this matter. That’s the critical issue in this debate (and seeing as you’re not from the US, you may not realize that this is primarily a legal/political argument that some people are bringing morals into). It’s not a matter of whether or not a person should HAVE an abortion, it’s an issue of whether or not she should have the RIGHT to have an abortion. Millions of women will no doubt continue to NOT have abortions because either they want the baby or they feel it is morally repugnant to do so. That’s fine. Hell, that’s probably even good. It’s also not the point. The point as you say in an earlier post is to “respect the right to choose since I cant impose my belief on others”.
There are a lot of people here in the US who want to restrict that right to choose. They want to say “My personal morals say this process is wrong and I feel that I have to impose those morals on you”. Ironically these people also claim to be champions of personal responsibility and limiting the powers of the government.
August 21st, 2008 at 12:00 pm
For the record, I’m not in favor of tearing puppies apart with high-powered vacuum tubes, or cutting kittens legs off and crushing their skulls to kill them. Or any kind of inhumane treatment of lesser animals that are similar to the procedure of abortion, even first trimester abortion. Face facts here, by the time most women discover they are pregnant, the fetus within them has a fully functioning nervous system. Which means they feel pain.
It’s ironic that you will go to jail for destroying the egg of a bald eagle, but you can kill unborn humans on a whim, isn’t it? You will go to jail or be fined for mistreating a puppy, but you can cut up unborn humans and get paid handsomely to do so…
All other arguments become tangental to the point of the strip. As HUMAN BEINGS ourselves, is it not only HUMAN that we give the benefit of the doubt to other HUMAN’s, no matter what their stage of development?
ERR on the side of LIFE. That’s the point. Again.
August 21st, 2008 at 12:11 pm
Hapajap, OK feel free to substitute “being”, “sentience”, or “human” for “life” in my previous argument. I think you’ll find that it remains valid. You think that 40,000,000 human lives have been extinguished other people feel that 40,000,000 clumps of cells have been extinguished. Your opinion is not inherently any more right than their opinion. There are only two moral authorities that can tell us when “clump of cells” becomes “person”. One of those sources is religion, the other is personal moral code. If my religion is silent on the matter (or I have no religion), I am free to make up my own mind. Even if my religion is not silent on the matter I can still make up my own mind.
The question is what makes your religion or personal moral code better than someone else’s (in a legally binding sense here, obviously you think it’s better for you or you wouldn’t follow it)? As I admit earlier, I personally think abortion is wrong. I wouldn’t do it and would try to talk anyone else out of it. That’s not the point. The point is that it’s not ultimately my responsibility to make the choice. Neither is it the responsibility of a politician or a preacher, it’s the responsibility of the prospective parent.
Let’s leave aside moral argument for a moment. I’m going to assume that like a lot of anti-abortion types you believe that a human life starts at conception. I may be wrong here, but it’s a good starting place to work from. Let’s consider the idea of legal “personhood” from the moment of conception:
It’s impossible to know when conception has occurred. Most people are unaware of their pregnancy for at least a month. Should people be charged with involuntary manslaughter if they do something which causes an inadvertent miscarriage before they realize that they are pregnant? After all, they’ve killed a “person” by their actions.
Should it be illegal for pregnant women to perform actions which may put their babies at risk? Who determines what those actions are? If they miscarry after say, refusing to stop smoking, are they guilty of involuntary manslaughter? Even manslaughter?
Should we begin to issue “conception certificates” instead of birth certificates? After all that legal document that makes us citizens is the birth certificate. If Embryos are people, then aren’t they citizens?
You may say that I am offering ridiculous arguments, and I am, but all of them are reasonable questions given the idea that personhood starts at conception. If an embryo is a full fledged person, it should receive all of the rights and privileges that it would normally be granted at birth, right (since this is where we legally define personhood now)?
Now to really get persnickety. You say that a zygote is alive, and you are right. So are sperm cells and egg cells. Even worse, those are both fully half a zygote! Once a month a woman’s body simply discards half of possible person, and a man’s body does so thousands if not millions of times a day! Seriously, What makes that zygote any really different than a sperm cell or egg cell? Is it more aware? More thoughtful?
It’s good that you have strong beliefs. It’s good that you live your life according to those beliefs. It’s less good when you try to live MY (or in this a case, some woman’s) life according to your beliefs.
August 21st, 2008 at 12:52 pm
Hey Dancer,
You’re totally obfuscating the point again. A zygote is not just like any other cell in the human body, egg or sperm or skin or other. A zygote lasts only minutes, if that, before it splits. REPLICATES. Which is, again, part of the SCIENTIFIC definition of life. A zygote, and the subsequent ‘mass of cells’ (which we all are in one varying degree or another, aren’t we?) are an individual life form with it’s own unique DNA.
Don’t bring religion into this. Bring science and logic only, and you cannot BUT admit that it is a human life. There isn’t a scientist on the planet that wouldn’t attest to that FACT in court if asked.
So again, all nitty-gritty-red-herring-tangental-arguments aside, is it not only HUMAN to grant the benefit of doubt to the unborn HUMAN LIFE in the womb? I’m not talking about this arbitrary term of ‘personhood’, I’m talking in simple, clear factual terms. HUMAN LIFE.
August 21st, 2008 at 1:20 pm
Barrack Husein Obama already decided it was on his pay grade when he stopped that one bill when served as a senator. He voted against saying a baby who survived an abortion should be saved and declared human. (In the case there was a down-syndrome baby that survived, and was tossed in a soiled linen closet to die, a nurse went and grabbed the baby and held it until it died a half-hour later. He supported a bill or something that made what she did criminal because it infringed on the right of the mother to murder the baby.)
ps. great comic
August 21st, 2008 at 2:13 pm
That’s a good point, Hughes. Obama did try to make it illegal to try to save babies that survived abortions. BORN, BREATHING, HUMAN BABIES. Pretty sick, IMO.
And the nurse held that baby for 45 minutes until it died. It’s heartbreaking hearing her tell the story. Oh yeah, and the hospital she worked in when that happened was associated with Obama’s church. How freaky is that???
August 21st, 2008 at 2:51 pm
In regards to zygotes being composed of sperm and egg: In scientific terms, it’s not a new set of DNA until *after* the sperm and egg join. Prolifers do not dispute this, so why even bring it up?
August 21st, 2008 at 2:58 pm
Dang it, I hit enter before I was done. Anyway, even in the courts of law, the unborn can inherit property. People can - and have - been charged with murder if they intentionally caused a woman to miscarry by beating her or by whatever means they use. That’s a recognition of personhood before birth. And yet, in no other group of people is anyone’s humanity so loosely and so arbitrarily defined as those of the unborn. Suppose a given pregnant woman said her baby is human one day, and then not human the next. Is that the case? How would you like your humanity to be so totally in the hands of someone else? The law, no less than Obama, says it can’t say when life begins, and yet its actions say otherwise. Such a person who can say one thing and do another is a hypocrite, insane, or stupid.
August 21st, 2008 at 5:01 pm
Excuse me again, but I just googled the bare bones of the attack on Obama, partly because I was feeling slightly outgunned in this discussion. If I may, this is a link that should shine light on the “abortion after birth” argument before it gets too far.
P.S. Don’t kill the messenger, I only care about the facts and truth, even if they can incriminate a hopeful I back or support a hopeful I’m against.
http://mediamatters.org/items/200808020004
August 21st, 2008 at 5:36 pm
Forgive me for double posting, just thought of something Hapajap. An awareness of pain does not denote conscious thought or the ability to contribute to society. If you want to talk about morals than I’m forced to ask this, are you in favor of the war in Iraq? or the death penalty? If you’re not then you have greater credibility in the “Life is Life” argument. If you are, then you lost that credibility becasue the only reason you want more “human life” in the world is for more meat in the grinders of war and punishment. My original argument should be, clarified. What makes an unborn human a worthier life than that of say a soldier fighting in Afghanistan or Iraq? than at least five or six people wo can be theoretically saved from its stem cells? (touchy subject I know, but still worth bringing up) And in that case, what about doctor assisted suicide? In that instance the person has made the choice to end their own life. Why can’t they get the dignity of going out while they are still themselves? Talk about the “sanctity of life” well what about the dignity of life? And I approach this from someone who has seen two grandparents lose their battles with vicious cancers. I won’t have someone tell me I can’t chose how I meet my end.
August 21st, 2008 at 8:43 pm
Hey D,
Again, you’re bringing semantic arguments to a gun fight. The argument stands on it’s own merits, regardless of the opinions of those who are for or against it. Life is life, Human is Human. Killing an unborn fetus is killing a Human life.
Any other definitions you attempt to place on that life are arbitrary and obfuscatory. It’s quite black and white that it is alive, and it is human. So that isn’t the question.
The question is, and may only be this: When do we grant the RIGHT to LIVE to that human life?
There is no definite answer anyone will ever get, so the only LOGICAL and GOOD answer, is to grant that life the benefit of the doubt.
Which was the point of the strip.
August 21st, 2008 at 10:30 pm
I think Duragon made a valid point, Hapajap. And for you to keep your credibility in this agurement, you should answer him: What the difference between killing a fully grown man in war or in prison and an unborn?
August 21st, 2008 at 10:54 pm
i had an abortion when i was 21, it was not concieved in a rape or any situation similar, it happend because of a drunk one night stand and crappy condoms. i accept that it was mine and the guys fault for being young, drunk, stupid and not fully prepared. i could have had a healthy child, but instead i had an abortion because i am not ready to go through childbirth, or raise a kid. my financial situation is good, i have a job i like and am at university. having a child now, would be terrible, not just for me but for the child, i would not make a good parent. maybe one day but right now. uh-uh. having a child and giving it up for adoption is another option, but i would never be able to forget that there was a person out there, tide to me by blood and such, and being a child is hard enough without knowing that you were given away, i wouldn’t like to do that to someone, the worlds shitty enough.
August 21st, 2008 at 11:13 pm
I knew that the debate would come up hapajap, but, being a scientist, I am sad to assure you, science does NOT define life the way you posted it. Maybe your biology book 3rd grade does it that way. See viruses as an example: The classical definition states they are NOT alive, however there are viruses out there that just lost their ribosomes, everything else is in place an works. Other examples would be certain types of ribozymes or transposons, or prions. They all are self sustained and multiplying systems, and granting them a ‘life’ status is subject to heavy debate, as biology does not draw borderlines. We have to.
so let me try to apply your definition:
quote: “1. the condition that distinguishes organisms from inorganic objects and dead organisms, being manifested by growth through metabolism, reproduction, and the power of adaptation to environment through changes originating internally.”
the unborn grows, but is neither able to maintain an individual metabolism (in fact no human does), can NOT adapt to a different environment (in fact adaption is another defintion, i’d argue humans are neither as we hardly respond to evolutional pressure, but thats another issue), and is NOT able to reproduce at the stage where it is. So according to your copynpaste this is NOT life. As I said, its a matter of definition. Thats a fact, thats the scientific front, whether you like it or not. A sperm is not more alive than the fertilized egg using your definitions, as it also requires tons of other conditions in order to meet at least the reproductional part. And I bet you won’t grant human status to a sperm.
therefore:
“The question is not whether or not it’s LIFE. Of course it’s LIFE. The question isn’t whether or not it’s HUMAN, of course it’s HUMAN.”
I’d immediately strike the ‘of courses’. Its a matter of definition whether its alive, and its even more of a matter of definition whether it is human. Or, better, and thats the core: when it TURNS from a cell lump into a human.
This leads me also to the main problem of the abortion debate in the US:
a) most people think, like also in this comments, that abortion is a binary 1/0 choice, like the guy above stating “obama decided life begins at birth only”. This is simply bulshit. All he is stating is that life for him does not begin with the fertilization stage, which is perfectly fine to state for many definitions. No one will ever demand the possibility of an abortion in the 8th month. But Apparently half of the population somehow believes that.
b) Many other people, also represented in these comments, think that abortion is used as an alternative to contraception. It is not. Having an abortion is not a nice thing, I can assure all of you, but I am convinced that you have to offer the possibility to women in an safe, affordable and healthy environment.
but you’ll hit concrete walls there. Fortunately in my country this debate is long gone. Abortions are legal in the first 8 weeks, payed by the health insurances, and done by hospitals. Plus, they’re at an all time low at the moment, in case anyone cares.
see you tomorrow as I’m to busy to check the page every hour like other people seem to do^^
August 22nd, 2008 at 1:06 am
Okay, One Guy, I’ll address that particular tangental issue.
The difference is circumstance. War is war. One side is usually right, the other side wrong, or both sides are wrong. It’s the nature of humanity that we will always find something to kill each other over. Be it territory, resources, religious extremism… you name it, people will kill each other for it.
Totally has nothing to do with abortion, unless there is a civil war in this country over abortion… Could happen, never know.
Execution, here you’re talking about killing someone for the heinous act he perpetrated on another human being. Usually that is killing some other innocent person.
ABORTION kills a human life that has never caused harm to anyone or anything. The ultimate expression of innocence.
If you don’t see a difference in there, I can’t help you find it.
OneOneOne, I’ve been through the same experience with a girlfriend. It torments me whenever I think about the 14 year old kid I could have right now, whose life we extinguished in such a brutal way. Limbs cut from her un-anesthetized body, her skull crushed to be made easier to remove… To do that to an innocent baby… It sickens me now more than ever, after having had 4 children born. I’ll never forget it, and I pray not for just the unborn who find themselves in heaven because their parents were too selfish to be inconvenienced by a living child, just like I was… but I pray for the parents who have to live with that decision for the rest of their lives. Just like I do.
Onkelsheik, According to your re-definition of life, the one scientists are supposedly re-examining (likely because of this very debate), according to your ‘ruling out’ of ‘life’ because of the ability to reproduce, then children aren’t alive until they reach puberty.
Again, an arbitrary guesstimation that tries to obfuscate the reality of the situation.
The fact that as soon as a zygote splits, it IS reproducing on a cellular level, as soon as it implants, it is metabolizing… There are your only places for ‘wiggle room’ as to viability, if you want to bring that issue to the fore. A zygote is never aborted, because there’s no way to know you’re pregnant within seconds of sperm meeting egg. Thus that measuring stick is out of the issue (at least for abortion, the stem cell argument might use that issue), so your next stage of development between conception and birth is implantation. Prior to implantation, many embryos self-abort. So you can make an argument that there is no viability prior to implantation, but AGAIN, this is not an argument for or against abortion. It could be an issue with birth control which cause the embryo to NOT implant… but that’s not our issue here either.
So we’re back to the basic point of the strip. You, I, NO ONE can say that it is not human life with 100% certainty. Therefore, logically the only good and right thing to do is grant that growing, metabolizing, ‘evolving’ embryo the benefit of the doubt. Anything less… is inhumane.
BTW, on your two points, if you’re pro-choice, you’ve already made the decision that the life of an unborn child does not deserve the right to live. Otherwise, you’d be pro-life. It’s the RIGHT that defines whether it’s a child or a choice. Not to sound to bumper-stickery.
Also, abortion is used as contraception. Late, late, late contraception. It was in my case. It was in OneOneOne’s case, it is in 99.9% of the cases of the 40,000,000 abortions in the last 3 decades. Choosing you don’t want to have a child after you’ve already made the decision to have sex, whether you ‘did it right’ or not… is a contraceptive measure post facto.
And yes, it sucks. And yes, it’s painful. My girlfriend was writhing in pain for HOURS after her abortion. Worse pain than she’d ever known. But it was still done out of our selfish convenience, no matter how we tried to paint it as ‘we’re not ready’, or ‘we’re too young’. That was all B.S. We were just too freaking self-centered. And that’s the truth in almost every case, whether folks own up to it or not.
August 22nd, 2008 at 1:29 am
You know, one more thing before I drag my ass to bed…
For those who want to keep bringing up semantic arguments:
If God came down, and held a .45 caliber Smith and Wesson to your head and said ‘I know the answer to this, get it right, you go to Heaven, get it wrong, I blow you to Hell. ‘Capitol H’ Hell.’
When does life begin, birth or conception?’
Would you REALLY say ‘birth’?
Oh, and for the orthodox Jew who says life begins at ‘first breath’, in the OT:
Jer 1:5 “Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, [and] I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations.” Hard to know someone if he’s not a SOMEONE and just a mass of cells.
August 22nd, 2008 at 11:16 am
Hapajap,
You have some very compelling arguments. I would like to add my point of view as a woman. Not that it lends me anymore credence then you. First and foremost I’m not pro-choice I’m pro-abortion. I know, semantics again. But I try not to sugar coat anything. Your either for abortion or against abortion.
A pregnant woman should have the right to make decisions about what happens to the fetus in her body because that fetus is, in a sense, a parasite. Obviously (or hopefully) it’s not another species but you get my drift. It could not live on it’s own without the mothers blood, breath, womb, and life. Therefore it is not it’s own entity until it leaves the womb. Sure it is has elements of a lifeform, like replicating cells etc. but it would not be able to live outside the womb. It is part of the mother. There aren’t any laws against removing parts of ourselves last time I checked (vasectomy, nose jobs, breast reductions). With the medical technologies of today we can save very small fetuses outside of the womb. But often they have many, many physical and developmental problems. So perhaps the time that abortions are disallowed could be when fetuses can be viably taken from the womb without having major developmental disabilities. Just my thought.
To your comment regarding how “the truth in almost every case” is that people have abortions out of “selfish convenience.” Well this is very obviously your truth. Certainly the women that I know who have had abortions, this seems to have been the case. But then I look at the class status that I come from and have to rethink. I’m a white middle class individual who really doesn’t have much to worry about other then my own selfish concerns. My friends are also mostly of that ilk. So from my own anecdotal experience that may be true. But I don’t think that’s true for the MAJORITY of women having abortions. Obviously I don’t have any hard facts. I’m just going from my guts and I know you don’t have hard facts for your 99.9% of the 40,000,000 comment. So I’m going to assume that there are many reasons why women have abortions some of which are selfish and some that are not. But I DO think that if we take away abortions because of misperceived notions of the middle class then we are taking it away from everyone. Even those who have been raped or low class women who just can’t take care of a 7th child. Ok moving on.
So you make a woman give birth to a child because she had the misfortune to have sex and get pregnant. The options for an unwanted child are 1) adoption or 2) a 16-60 year old (depending on the age of the abortion candidate) taking care of a baby they do not want.
Adoption and Unwanted babies: Every single person that stands out and pickets abortion clinics should have to adopt an unwanted baby. If you want a woman to have a baby she knows she can’t care for then take the responsibility onto your own shoulders. Or if our country wants to make abortion illegal then we better get ready to take ECONOMIC RESPONSIBILITY. Social services people. You think you complain about welfare now. If abortion is made illegal every single person is going to have to pay the price for it in taxes. I’m not even saying that every person who would have otherwise had an abortion will be on welfare. I’m just saying they will be accessing a lot more of societies resources.
The unfortunate thing is that America pressures women who aren’t ready to have babies to give birth and then expects them to be able to provide a healthy and economically stable household for them. Which is impossible in most cases. But then they are blamed as bad mothers etc. for not being able to do so. Why is it a surprising or more abhorrent when a woman abuses or kills a child but not when a man does? Because we have different standards for women and nurturing then men.
Women have seen many gains in this last century. We can now have sex outside of marriage without getting stoned to death (in America) or ostracized from society. We have REPRODUCTIVE FREEDOM, through contraception and abortion. We can now choose when we will have, and if we will have, a family. I think that is an amazing step. I guess it just comes down to that…taking away a womans right to reproductive freedom or saying that a blob of living tissue that can’t survive on it’s own outside the womb has a right to grow into a baby that will have a mediocre life at best.
Finally, if God cam down and held a gun to my head he would probably have to shoot me because I’d want to put him in a mental institution. Atheists don’t believe in that Hell bullshit.
August 22nd, 2008 at 11:30 am
By the way, I love the comic!
August 22nd, 2008 at 12:15 pm
Hey Blue,
First of all, thank you for your honesty about how you view this issue. Obviously I couldn’t sway someone as firm in your beliefs about the subject, but I respect your conviction on the matter.
In the days of slavery, a master had the right to kill his slave, because it was his property, lived on his property, at his food, and used his belongings. It didn’t have the right to life that free men had, not only in this country, but around the world. In ancient Rome, a man had the right to kill his own children at any point in their life. Because he owned them, they were of his body, he gave them life, and had the right to take it away.
At the time of these practices, I’m sure the free men and fathers of these slaves and children were as firm in their conviction as you are in yours.
But in the ultimate reality, they were wrong, weren’t they?
So it falls back to the point of the strip. It is human, it is alive. Offspring are never parasites. In order to say they are, you have to re-define what a parasite is just to enforce your opinion, and I think you’re too intellectually honest to really do that.
So again, it’s human, it’s alive, and like the slaves and like the children in ancient Rome, it just doesn’t have the right to life that you and I enjoy. Hence, it is legal to kill, just like the slaves and children of Rome. Legal doesn’t make it right.
BTW, I agree that anyone who can adopt, should. My wife and I are planning to adopt a girl as soon as we can afford it.
As to your ‘quality of life’ issue, I would suggest you read the biography of Abraham Lincoln. He started his life with the lowest possible quality of life, and became the President of the United States, the man who saved the Union, and the man who freed the slaves.
Where one’s life begins does not necessarily define where it will end.
Glad you love the comic!
And welcome!
August 22nd, 2008 at 12:17 pm
Welcome Blue.
August 25th, 2008 at 8:32 am
Thank you for the welcome Hapajap and El Gato Negro!
Hapajap (this is going to be another long one, sorry),
Again I think you have some pretty interesting things to say. Even if we can’t convince each other of our different points of view that doesn’t mean the conversation isn’t stimulating. I wondered to myself why it is that people who talk about this issue can generally not convince each other. And I realized that those who are against abortion always return to the same argument. Which is that none of the consequences of women having unwanted babies matter because life is life whether it is a cell, fetus, or partially grown child. It has a right to exist. People who are for abortion always come back to the numerous negative consequences of the birth of unwanted babies. At least this is how I see it. I’m going to go through your response later and talk about each of your arguments but first I think it’s important to talk about why we will never agree.
I think people tend to forget that like it or not humanity puts value on everything especially life. Whether it be an adult human, a child, a woman, a black person, a white person, an insect, a tree, an animal, all of these living things are assigned a value. Those values can change based on what culture you come from. For example, we often choose to assign certain people’s lives less value during wartime. It’s acceptable to kill them because they are our enemies or we need the resources that they have. Its fine to kill plants because they are not self aware. Insects are not as complex a living creature so their value is also less than a human life. Vegetarians choose to see more value in the life of the animals we eat, so they only eat plants. You choose to place more value on a cell and fetus than I do. I see first trimester babies as non complex organisms and so they do not have as much value as a baby that is born. You may see that differently than I but that doesn’t make your value choice anymore valid then mine.
So this leads me to bring in a situational example that you have probably heard before. But it is similar to the example that you used in the comic above. If your wife was pregnant but had a complication in the pregnancy and the only way to keep her from dying was to have an abortion, would you do it? Answers are usually not required for these types of questions because the answers are obvious. If someone did choose the option to not save their wife then what does that mean? They were willing to compromise their wife’s life because they valued the idea that every life, complex or not, should live? Nothing is ever black and white. This also brings up my next point. For centuries, male dominated societies have valued unborn offspring higher than the women that give birth to them. I should particularly say male offspring not female. So not only did women have the knowledge that they were not valued by society but that any daughter they had would also not be valued. So how is a woman supposed to escape this kind of domination? For a start she can take control of procreation. The way to do that is by using contraception and abortion. A little off topic: What is your opinion on the morning after pill?
The slavery analogy does not work for me on several levels, one of which I described above. The American slaves were self aware, complex beings, and so it was inhumane to treat them as if they were not. Roman children and babies were self aware, complex lifeforms and so it would be inhumane to treat them otherwise. Also when a man says that a child is part of him he is being figurative. But when a woman says it while she is pregnant it is the literal, physical truth. It’s called an umbilical cord and a placenta. Your description of the slave owners’ justification for killing slaves doesn’t really compare. The slave wouldn’t have been dead if he suddenly was no longer a slave. A fetus however could not survive without a placenta and umbilical cord. Which is again a physical part of the woman. Perhaps this is the weakest of my arguments but I don’t think it is invalid. Why not just take the baby out of the woman when it’s a cell or a small fetus? Because it can’t survive outside the womb. So there again I am putting a lesser value on a fetus because it is not complex enough to survive in the outside environment. You may value it differently, if so then don’t let your wife have an abortion. But do not try to force others to live by your value system. On another note slavery and the Roman ideas you describe were both socially sanctioned ideas that have now been reversed. Abortion however, has only recently become legal, maybe about 35 years ago. It has never been sanctioned by male dominated societies. Women who had abortions or people who performed abortions were subject to terrible negative sanctions. Watch the movie “Vera Drake.” So why do you think that abortions suddenly became legal if society had never before allowed it to be so? Because women were finally starting to gain equal voice in our society. They wanted to finally take control over something that had been keeping them subordinate and devalued in their society. Societies views on the role of wife/mother and a woman’s inability to determine when they had children were finally changing.
Here is another situational example for you. If a fertility clinic was burning down and you had the choice to save a crying infant baby or several vials of fertilized eggs which would you save?
It is commendable that you and your wife are thinking of adopting. It’s interesting that you say, “Anyone who CAN adopt should.” So people can choose whether or not they want to adopt unwanted babies if it’s not economically feasible for them? They can decide whether or not they think their house hold is ready for a child? By your own argument, that would be unacceptable. Every single person who is against abortion should have to adopt an unwanted baby, even if it’s not feasible for them to do so. If women can’t have abortions then the people who prevent them should take economic responsibility for the burden that comes afterwards.
If you think I should read “The Biography of Abraham Lincoln” then I think you should read “Nickel and Dimed” and “Freakonomics.” There are two sides to every coin. Just because Abraham Lincoln came from humble beginnings and was able to become the man who freed the slaves doesn’t actually prove anything. There were thousands of other individuals who were just average and didn’t really contribute anything extraordinary to society. If Abraham Lincoln wasn’t born, then who’s to say someone else wouldn’t have stepped in and took his place. It is incredibly difficult for people to change the class that they were born into. If it was easy there would be millions of billionaires. It takes an amazing amount of tenacity and intelligence to be a success in this world. The American dream is a fallacy, sometimes no matter how hard you work and strive towards something you still can’t succeed at it. That is why as a society we have to decide what our priorities are. Are we going to continue to be capitalist, shrinking the middle class into the lower class. Or do we want to accept that sometimes the poor can’t pull themselves up by their bootstraps and begin to become a more socially aware society. I’m digressing here a bit but the point is “quality of life” has to do with every situation. It determines a lot about a person’s life, not everything, but a lot.
I’ll leave you with a last hypothetical example in regards to abortion. Say a woman decided that she wanted to have an abortion so that she could pursue a career in the sciences. But she doesn’t because it’s illegal. She has the baby and decides to keep it but spends most of her life in dead end jobs just trying to earn enough money to keep herself and the child afloat. Nothing extraordinary about there lives. Whoops you just kept the woman who was going to cure cancer from saving millions of lives.
I think it’s great that your comic continues to bring up issues that spur people to discuss real issues like this one. Even better that it can be done in a humorous way.
August 25th, 2008 at 9:20 am
My boyfriend just recently introduced me to this site, and I had to register for a discussion such as this. He’ll probably kill me later but I’m sure he expected it to happen
I have an issue with Blue’s argument about an unborn child not being able to survive without the mother, making it a lesser life form or expendable. So what does that say about humans that ARE in this world that cannot survive on their own, does that make them a lesser human being?
I have always been extremely pro-life, my father is a pediatrician and with all of his knowledge he firmly holds that according to what he was taught in his medical classes, that life began at conception.
I also RESENT the idea that people claim a baby will RUIN a woman’s life. I have SEVERAL friends from high school where a baby coming into their life changed them for the better. They are honestly some of the happiest people I know.
I’d also like to tell a legend of a Roman Catholic priest, Padre Pio. He was hearing the confession of a young woman and when she claimed he was finished he pushed her further, saying there was something left on her heart. She denied this again and again, finally Padre Pio told her to close her eyes. She closed them and saw a vision of a man with his hands over people united, every race and nationality together in peace. She opened her eyes and gasped “Who was that?”. Padre Pio replied “That was the baby you aborted.”
So while your hypothetical situation exists, so does another, a woman could be aborting the man/woman who was destined to cure AIDs.
On the adoption issue, right now people are going overseas to adopt children because it is so hard to find a child in the U.S. I find it extremely disturbing to think that people believe that the only way a child can be raised in a happy home is if that home has money. What ever happened to love? or time? When did money become such a major factor? There is a woman driving around in a red corvette who has had a dozen abortions just because of money (true story). Let’s put tax dollars towards allowing a thirteen year old to have an abortion without telling her mom, then not only will she have to deal with the abortion alone, but with all the negatives that come with having an abortion.
I’m sick of hearing that abortion is what is best for the WOMAN, let’s look at what comes along with abortion . . .
(1) You will be more likely to bleed in the first three months of future pregnancies.
(2) You will be less likely to have a normal delivery in future pregnancies.
(3) You will need more manual removal of placenta more often and there will be more complications with expelling the baby and its placenta.
(4) Your next baby will be twice as likely to die in the first few months of life.
(5) Your next baby will be three to four times as likely to die in the last months of his first year of life.
(6) Your next baby may have a low birth weight.
(7) Your next baby is more likely to be born prematurely with all the dangerous and costly problems that entails.
Then there is the potential laceration of the cervix and what is known as post-abortion syndrome where they may have dreams over and over about the abortion, avoidance of emotional attachment, relationship problems, sleep disturbance, guilt over having SURVIVED while their child died, depression, substance abuse, etc. Suicidal tendencies are also increased up to 248%.
I also find it ironic that a woman cannot sell her body, sell parts of her body, or kill herself. However! She can have an abortion . . .
Sorry if the post seems a bit scattered =/
August 25th, 2008 at 9:50 am
I’ll try to address more of this later, but another horrible side-effect of abortions is that you’re more likely to miscarry future unwanted babies.
Which is what happened to my then-girlfriend.
When, God forbid, it happens to you, Blue, trust me, you won’t be saying ‘it’s just a fetus’. When you want that life growing inside you, you KNOW it’s a baby. And it hurts like hell on earth when it dies in your scarred womb.
Welcome to the discussion, FairlyObvious.
BTW, another note, as to how abortion became legal in this country. One of the founders of NARAL, Dr. Bernard Nathanson, admitted that they simply LIED to congress about how many women were dying from botched back-alley abortions. They said it was ‘thousands’ of women, when the fact of the matter was it was less than a dozen a year. They made it seem epidemic, so that they could change the law.
Later on, after this man had performed over 10,000 legal abortions, including abortions on his wife, and I believe his daughter… the sonogram was invented. He had one of his ‘doctors’ record a sonogram of a baby being aborted. When he saw the infant SCREAMING silently in the womb as his body was being torn limb-from-limb, he shut down his clinic and never performed another abortion. That sonogram became part of the film ‘Silent Scream’. I doubt anyone who watches that will think about abortion the same way again.
I’ll be back later.
August 25th, 2008 at 10:53 am
I’d also like to point out that the woman involved in the case of Roe v Wade is now against abortion 100%. She now speaks for pro-life conventions and such . . .
Abortion clinics deny sonograms, although I think there is a demand for them to provide them now . . . at least among the pro-life crowd. I know someone who installed a sonogram machine into his RV and he provides them for women who are considering abortions (as in he parks outside clinics and offers his services). He’s never had a woman who agreed to a sonogram end up having an abortion.
I actually had a friend who went into an abortion clinic just to get some pamphlets because we were having a meeting to kind of debate the issue. She is pro-life. When she went into the clinic they immediately took her back in a room (they assumed she was there for an abortion) and proceeded to bash every other option she had besides the abortion. She was 16, and they were informing her that her parents didn’t have to know, it was quick, there weren’t any consequences. She pretty much left the clinic very shaken because they had lied to her about an organization she had worked with 2B that provides services to take care of single young mothers, including housing, medical needs, etc.
So much for choice . . . it doesn’t work very well when someone makes you feel you don’t have one.
August 25th, 2008 at 12:41 pm
FO, you have to keep in mind that the abortion industry is like a $10,000,000,000.00 a year money machine. They stop killing unborn humans, they stop making money. Adoption doesn’t make them a dime. Neither does convincing young girls to keep their babies.
I think that they should make it a federal law that women MUST look at a 4-D sonogram of their unborn before they are allowed to make the decision to abort. I also think they should be informed of EXACTLY how that unborn human is going to be dissected (as in ripped into pieces) before it is removed from the womb. Any sane pro-choice person couldn’t disagree with that, if they are fair minded and want women to make INFORMED choices, rather than choices out of ignorance or propaganda.
If you can look at your own baby’s face, and still order someone to rip it’s arms and legs off and crush it’s skull… well, at least you know exactly what you’re choosing to do.
August 25th, 2008 at 4:02 pm
FairlyObvious,
It might take me awhile to respond to your posts throughly and I might not get it out in one go. One of the things that I think your forgetting is that I never said that it wasn’t life. Just that it wasn’t complex. A cell or 1st trimester fetus has no self awareness, it isn’t even completely formed. So yes I give it less value then I would a fully developed baby. A baby can’t take care of it’s self but it is self aware and is fully developed and knows it needs certain things to survive. We as humans make choices to kill things all the time. Just because it is life doesn’t mean it is precious. I don’t think that the ant I accidentally stepped on is precious and it’s farther along in it’s development then a human fetus. We as a country made a choice to kill thousands of adult people in Iraq with life experiences, families, consciousness. Who knows how many innocent babies and children we have deformed and “ripped limb from limb.” That was a choice we made. I don’t have to agree with it but it was a choice we made all the same. I also think that once a baby is born society then has a commitment to it.
I don’t think I ever said having a baby can ruins a woman’s life. I have many friends who got married right out of highschool, had babies, and are happy as clams. They also made the choice to lead that kind of lifestyle. I think what I’m trying to say is that it often limits a woman’s potential to be anything other then a wife or mother. Especially if they are single mothers.
Many of your stories are anecdotal. I could counter them with anecdotal stories of my own where women I know who had abortions didn’t suffer any of the complex issues that you describe above. That are, in fact, content with their decision. But it wouldn’t really go anywhere. As far as your statistics, I really don’t know where you got them and if they are valid. I can neither confirm or deny them. It also assumes that the woman who has an abortion would like to have children later on in life. If the statistics are true then I guess the woman who has an abortion will just have to weigh those pros and cons.
In regards to your Pedro story, I’m glad you said that. Because hypotheticals are ridiculous. The world would never know either way so it makes no difference. But sometimes it’s a good way to get people thinking.
Adoption. I really don’t think that there aren’t enough children to adopt in America. I think that it’s cheaper and quicker to adopt from a foreign country because they don’t have the same types of standards. Plus people often want to raise young infants. You can be sure there are plenty of children waiting for good homes in foster care. But again I don’t have the facts to prove any of this. I never said that money was a major factor in a childs happiness. I, in fact, agree with you. But if most women who have abortions are young, don’t want the baby, and will never make more then 20,000$ a year, unless they are really industrious, this leads me to think that the home life won’t be very happy. Or society will then have to monetarily pick up the slack with more social services. If abortion becomes illegal then you and your pro-life friends better get ready to start adopting babies. You bet it comes down to money, they even have calculators on the web to tell you how much money your baby is going to cost you. Many things in life are about money whether we like it or not.
Who’s says a woman can’t commit suicide? It’s not illegal and I’ve never heard of anyone going to jail after a failed attempt. How does selling your body parts compare to having an abortion? No one said I couldn’t chop my finger off if I wanted. People give away body parts all the time, organ donors. Actually there is a whole sect of people that are really into body mutilation. So I don’t think that really applies here.
Suicidal tendencies up 248%, that’s enormous. What age were the women polled? How big was the population that was used in this statistic? I really have a hard time believing that this statistic is valid. I would dare to say that most statistics from both pro-life and pro-choice are inflated. We all choose to use the statistics that will validate our points of view and ignore the others. It’s human nature.
Ok, I’ve got to get back to work but I will continue this debate with you later I’m sure.
Hapajapa: I’ll get back to you too.
August 25th, 2008 at 4:25 pm
I’ve seen that silent scream video, and it’s seriously one of the sickest things I’ve seen in my life. People make a ruckus over a video of a Marine throwing a dog off a cliff? Nice priorities, idiots.
I remember hearing about someone who pushed the idea that a child should be able to be ‘aborted’ past birth, until they had the intelligence to say ‘no,’ to show that they chose life. To me, that sounds just as logical a conclusion saying abortion should be legal, though as far as I’m concerned, that argument falls apart when you watch the video and can clearly see the fetus going ‘OH SH– OH SH– WHAT THE HELL IS THAT’ before being ripped into bite-sized pieces.
I love this video of Ron Paul discussing fetal stem cell tissue (and nowadays, what can’t we make stem cells out of, seriously?) and abortion, definitely worth a look, I believe: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66jpPCIzza8
Hapajap: Mmm, lobbyists! Don’tcha just want to rip their cold, long abandoned little hearts out?
As always, education would be a pretty good answer. Any business in which education about any use of a service or product (as opposed to excessive use, like too much tobacco, alcohol, or McDonald’s) causes a steep decline in sales probably has no right being a business in the first place.
Just to stop this one before it starts: A procedure that saves a mother’s life by removing a fetus is considered to be a procedure done to save a woman’s life, and not ‘an abortion.’
August 25th, 2008 at 4:57 pm
Blue: Attempting suicide will most likely get you committed: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide#Medical “In the United States, individuals who express the intent to harm themselves are automatically determined to lack the present mental capacity to refuse treatment, and can be transported to the emergency department against their will.” Looks like if you try it to kill yourself, someone will try and stop you. Sounds like they treat it as ‘not an option.’
I was trying to look up something I remember hearing about a doctor’s code that they couldn’t just go taking off limbs and such for the fun of it, but I think after many other people have described the concept that most abortion patients aren’t fully aware of what they’re doing, the I’ll have to settle for the concept of informed consent: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_ethics#Informed_consent
Of course you think that hypotheticals are ridiculous, because that’s the only way you could possibly be comfortable with personally extinguishing a life (or call it a non-life, doesn’t change the concept here) that ‘could have been,’ that is nothing but pure potential and innocence.
August 25th, 2008 at 5:19 pm
Human beings are not “constructed” in the womb, they develop within the womb.
How do you know that an unborn child in the womb isn’t self-aware?
Is there a point in the womb where the developing human is considered an actual human? Where do you draw that line? When he/she develops ears? a mouth? when it begins to move? Where is this magical moment Blue?
Science says that a life begins at conception. A developing being’s life has begun.
The Developing Human:”Zygote: this cell results from the union of an oocyte and a sperm. A zygote is the beginning of a new human being (i.e., an embryo). Human development begins at fertilization, the process during which a male gamete or sperm … unites with a female gamete or oocyte … to form a single cell called a zygote. This highly specialized, totipotent cell marks the beginning of each of us as a unique individual.”
No one limits their own potential but themselves, that is a fact you cannot deny. It doesn’t matter what hurdles you have to leap or where you go along the way, you find a way to become what you want to become. A child does not hold a person back, so many single mothers have proven this myth wrong.
The breast cancer statistics were actually discovered by Dr. Janet Daling, a pro-abortion advocate which includes this information:
The study showed that induced abortions increased the risk of breast cancer by an average of 50 percent.
If a woman had obtained her first abortion after age 30, her risk jumped by 110 percent.
If she had her first abortion before she turned 18, it increased by 150 percent.
Worse yet, if she has a family history (mother, sister, aunt) of breast cancer and had a first abortion after age 30, her risk went up by 270 percent.
As for the suicide statistic, here: http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=47705
The rest are just medical facts so I guess you don’t need any type of proof of those.
And you’re back to the $$ again, seriously, when did everything have to do with $$. If people had abortions purely to save money we would be missing a lot of influential people in history. It’s the trust fund babies that scare me the most, not the men and women who work their butts off to get where they are.
August 25th, 2008 at 7:27 pm
FairlyObvious,
Did I say that human beings are “constructed” in the womb? I think I already stated where my line was in my very first post. But I will repeat it here. When a fetus can be taken out of the womb and not have major physical and mental disabilities. Like I said numerous times I’m not debating the fact that it is living tissue, I am debating the value of that tissue. To me being self aware is being able to respond to your environment and communicate a need to survive.
Lots of peoples potential are limited by their circumstances. We wouldn’t have equal opportunity offices, social security, food stamps, or any other social service if people weren’t limited. Why would a single mother have to prove anything, if the majority of single mothers were doing well?
Great, thank you for giving me some basis to go off of your statistics. So the study you linked me too was actually for suicide, homicide, and accidents. My first thought for the suicide is that there are so many other reasons why a woman would commit suicide. That one correlation does not necessarily mean it is the only major reason why deaths in women who are from that age group would take place. I agree that there could be a higher risk for certain things when having an abortion. Just like there is in any operation. The woman has to choose if those risks are worth it.
In general women who do not have children are at a higher risk for breast cancer. So if you have babies or take birth control pills you decrease your risk of breast cancer. I’m wondering if not having babies influences those numbers more then the fact that women have abortions.
Like I said in my first post. Women have abortions for many different reasons. Not just because they can’t afford it. Obviously we disagree completely on this. Lots of things in life revolve around resources (aka money). But the consequence of women having babies, especially unwanted babies, is that everyone in society has to pay for them. The earth has to pay for it due to over population. I’m certainly not bashing people who work hard to take care of and feed their families who are low income. I’m actually fighting for them. I’m saying that with the increase in more people less and less people have a chance at a good job and a good life. Like I said it is incredibly difficult for people to overcome their circumstances. I never said it was impossible. Why would trust fund babies scare you? They are people just like the men and women who work their butts off. If you can’t see that wars, death, and the basic survival of any species is based on their access to resources then I guess I’m at a loss to say anything else on the subject.
I’ll respond to Hapajap later and then I think I’m done. As this conversation is going just like any other. It has become a round robin of repeating oneself.
August 25th, 2008 at 8:31 pm
The first statement I made was actually just a general statement, not directed at anyone special.
I say trust fund babies scare me because they never work for anything. Trust fund babies have worked for nothing, and while I don’t want to generalize and say they don’t have a work ethic, most of them do. Daddy and mommy provide everything for them, they get in trouble and mommy and daddy make it go away, thats why trust fund babies scare me.
I only addressed the money issue because that seemed to be what I was hearing over and over again. I know women have abortions for different reasons, some women are FORCED to have abortions because they feel they have no way out or they have an outside force driving them to do it. I don’t agree with abortion being used like its some sort of condom. Only 75 out of 85 rape victims choose to have an abortion. Most rape victims actually believe that by keeping the baby they are bringing something good into the world out of bad, or they believe it is their own way of taking power back from their rapist.
Health reasons, technically they don’t call that an abortion. Medically its referred to in a different way. I can’t remember the name off the top of my head but if you want to know what I’m referring to I will look it up.
The earth is NOT overpopulated, that is a myth. There are particular cities that are crowded yes, but the earth is by no means overpopulated.
http://www.fee.org/publications/the-freeman/article.asp?aid=2025
What resources are you referring to exactly?
August 25th, 2008 at 8:32 pm
Sorry, typo I meant to say trust fund babies tend to not have much of a work ethic, so instead of “do” its supposed to be “don’t”.
August 25th, 2008 at 9:05 pm
Hey Blue,
It’s seems to me this argument always ends up in circle. But it also seems that ultimately it all still boils down to the point of the strip, doesn’t it?
It’s human, it’s alive. It’s not for you to quantify the ‘value’ of that life, or to move the ‘definition’ back and forth as to what you ‘consider’ valuable as a life.
The facts remain and always will, that it’s human, and it’s alive.
And with those facts, the question ever looms, in a good and right world, when do we bring ourselves, as a people, to grant those living humans the right to life that us ‘born’ humans enjoy?
You can’t answer it without subjectifying an objective set of facts. You can try, but every argument you put forth does the same thing. It doesn’t move the facts, it just tries to obfuscate them with subjective determinations like ‘value’ judgments.
Gotta go feed the baby.
August 26th, 2008 at 9:19 am
Hapajap,
In regards to the two examples that were provided for the history of abortion. Just because someone changes their standpoint that doesn’t mean their original stand point wasn’t right. Also if Dr. Bernard Nathanson lied then what makes him a credible witness for any side of this debate, pro-life or pro-choice? He could have been lying about lying.
I’m going to ignore most of your personal comments about my womb. You can’t really make assumptions about what I would or would not do if I was faced with an abortion. Because you aren’t me. If I was to make assumptions about you based on these conversations I would say that you would never let someone you care about have an abortion. But, by your very own admission, we all know that’s not true.
The point where I think your arguments degenerate is when you end with saying, “Any sane pro-choice person (enter your opinion here).” Isn’t that convenient, so any one who doesn’t agree with a statement of yours is insane? Well then why even argue about the subject? Just say we’re all insane and move on with your life.
Also, I have seen numerous pro-life videos and pictures. I’ve been seeing them since I was a little girl at the pro-life booth in our State Fair, every year. After seeing these images I am still content in my knowledge of all of the above things I have stated. I will list the images, videos, and stories that do affect me in a very emotional way. Those of our Iraq veterans who have lost limbs and come away shattered from war. Images of men, women, and children (civilians) that are suffering from disfigurement due to civil wars and strife. The millions of Africans that are dying due to AIDS. Women who are enduring forced genital mutilation. Gang rapes, sex/slave prostitution rings. I can list many more. These are things happening to people that are on this planet right now. Maybe we should look at making their lives better.
Lastly, actually it’s up to everybody in society to put value on life. We do it all the time. As I stated before in my many examples. Again your definition of life is different from mine. So, the question becomes do you think you are trying to mask or otherwise obfuscate your belief that the soul magically infuses a lump of carbon molecules and becomes a human being at the magical moment of conception? It sure sounds like you are. If that’s the case then I really can’t help you. Because that would bring up so many other questions like: What happens when a cell splits into what is commonly known as “twins”? Do the twins share a soul? Or even better, what if two fraternal clusters of cells merge? Are they now one soul again? What happened to the other soul? Are they now possessed of two souls? I could go on and on.
Thanks again for the stimulating conversation but this will be my last comment on the subject.
August 26th, 2008 at 9:36 am
Hey Blue,
Sorry you’ll be leaving the topic, I rather enjoy your presence here. I agree that there are many horrible things that happen in the world on a daily basis. I don’t see how that is relevant to the topic though. The AIDS epidemic in Africa doesn’t change when life begins. Neither does the war in Iraq. Nothing you’ve mentioned affects the fact that human life, by scientific standards, not religious standards, begins at conception.
You’re the atheist, right? So you should adhere to the scientific standard first and foremost, shouldn’t you? Ditto the issue of the soul. Why would an atheist be using the ‘when does the soul ‘appear” argument? How can we have a soul if there is no God? The soul is not a materialist belief.
Lastly to me, I can only give you a testimonial reality, if you haven’t faced these difficult life decisions please take it from someone who has. It’s all fun and theory until the pain of reality slaps you in the face. Having been slapped, I just hope you can learn before having to face it yourself.
As to the ‘any sane person’ argument, please explain how anyone who is pro-CHOICE would NOT want the person making the choice to have all the pertinent information necessary to make in informed decision. If you DON’T want someone to have the info they need to make an informed decision, then you’re not really pro-CHOICE, are you? You’d just be pro-abortion. Damn the mother and what she’ll have to face as consequence. That, to me, is not sane.
September 5th, 2008 at 5:38 pm
[...] this for example. (Its just a comic, it’ll take you all of two minutes to read and I’ll be [...]
September 25th, 2008 at 7:59 am
Before I even start I’d like to say that I’ve seen some of the best arguments for and against abortion on this forum that I’ve ever seen with the absolute LEAST s*&# flinging I’ve ever seen. Kudos all around. Now on to the main event.
Whether a fetus will survive in the first place negates the quotation of 40,000,0000 abortions having been the termination of the same number of lives. Miscarriages and other complications are entirely to common for such a number to be asserted in such a way. It’s a case of schroedinger’s cat: is the cat alive or not? Well you just hit the box with a sledge hammer, so the point is moot. It may have been alive, it may not have been. That being said- Hap has the right of it. Given the chance that the cat may still be alive, you shouldn’t squish the box.
However, it is unfair to make the assumption that 99.9 percent of abortions are done out of convenience. According to statistics one out of four women has been raped. Coincidentally one out of four women was also sexually molested. Given this alarmingly high number it is impossible to assert that 99.9 percent of abortions were a matter of convenience. As of july 2007the population of the united states was 301,139,947. Statistically slightly more women are born than men, but we’ll go with 50 percent for convenience. This means as of the year 2007 37,642,493 women in the us had been raped at some point. I won’t even try to guess the success rate of insemination, but one cannot say in honesty that out of 40,000,000 abortions with a rape rate of 37,642,493 only .1 percent of the abortions were NOT done out of convenience. I realize these numbers don’t take into account several factors, but I believe they illustrate my point.
Also there is one inarguable fact: abortions will be performed with or without consent of the governing body. They alway have been and always will be. Outlawing abortion entirely will inherently lead to higher rates of illegal abortions, which will result in raised mortality rates for the women involved.
Abortion is in fact a moral issue. Science may help us in making the decision, but when the last argument has been made it is solely a moral issue and morals change. Slavery may have been wrong by today’s standards
but there were cases of slaves voluntarily returnin to slavery after escaping. If a person chooses slavery is it still immoral? They were warped by their lives until they could live no other way without supreme personal effort, but nothing is beyond the bounds of a human’s will. If they had truly wanted to be free of slavery they could have been, instead choosing to return to it. No broad moral issue can ever be black and white. Specific instances can be. Is it wrong to kill an innocent? Yes. Should you kill a person that takes an innocent life with no mitigating circumstances? Personally my answer is yes. They will not
be redeemed nor will they become useful to society so what is to become of them? Place them in jail where they will live a miserable existance for the rest of their days among the other irredeemable elements of society or quickly end their life and let them be judged by whatever God they believe in? I believe lifelong incarceration a much more intolerable cruelty than a quick death. But
across a broader spectrum should abortion or capitol punishment be Outlawed?
If life is sacred then the child of rape should be allowed
to live because it is life. A mother’s weakness of spirit should not be allowed to prevent the creation of something sacred- a human life. Should one person’s weakness be allowed to prevent another’s birth? As Obama said: these questions are above my pay grade.
I personally was a visit to the doctor away from being an abortion. My mother fell into the young and dumb category and as a freshman in high school did not make the right choices concerning sex and as a result of it was forced to truncate her growth as a person. She was a single teenage mother. She never attended college despite being at the top of her class. She never was able to attain a job that paid more than 14,000 a year because she needed the time to tend to her child and because in white america a white woman with a brown child is frowned upon. She still has not moved up in the financial world according to our capitolist views because she made the choice to have a child despite these impending handicaps. Despite the trouble it caused and all the difficulty of growing up with this I have always had the knowledge that she did
indeed have the choice of whether I would come into the world. What would my life have been like had she been forced to have me against her will? What would hers have been like with all these handicaps imposed upon her because of someone else’s moral convictions?
Do I think women should be allowed to choose an abortion or a birth?
I certainly do.
September 25th, 2008 at 8:09 am
To quote Ronald Reagan:
I’ve noticed that everybody that is for abortion has already been born.
September 25th, 2008 at 8:10 am
Don’t have a lot of time, but I’d like to make one point… 1 out of 4 women has not been raped. That’s ridiculous. I’ve known a lot of women in my lifetime, and only one of them has been raped. I don’t know where you got these statistics, but they are a lousy foundation upon which to lay your argument.
September 25th, 2008 at 5:02 pm
Wasn’t aware I needed citation. I got the statistic from an college text, but upon further investigation (gotta love google) found that the book referred to a study performed in 1982 and referred only to college campuses. A fact which my “official” text book failed to mention. However, acording to the department of health and human services:
“• Among high school students surveyed nationwide,
about 8% reported having been forced to have sex.
Females (11%) were more likely to report having
been forced to have sex than males (4%).1
• An estimated 20% to 25% of college women in the
United States experience attempted or complete rape
during their college career.2
• In the United States, 1 in 6 women and 1 in 33 men
reported experiencing an attempted or completed
rape at some time in their lives.3
These numbers underestimate the problem.”
As quoted from http://www.cdc.gov/ncipc/pub-res/images/SV%20Factsheet.pdf on page 1. Assuming that men don’t need to worry about becoming impregnated the recalculation comes out to 25,094,995 rapes that could potentially have resulted in an abortion. Even with this number reduced the assertion that only 40,000 abortions have been performed out of 40,000,000 that were not a matter of convenience is still unfair to the women inolved.
Also I particularly to lay any argument upon them except that the numbers involved here shouldn’t be taken at face value. No amount of number mongering will change the fact that I believe you are right; given the chance to allow a life to come into this world a person should do just that. However, I don’t believe in forcing a person̵