No, it’s just transferring the choice. To the unborn baby, who’s live is literally what’s on the table. It’s just as rational of a position as the other side. I take no position on abortion myself, but the attacks that get made on the pro-life side are outright ridiculous (and yes, the same can be said the other way too).
Dismissing anyone on the opposite side of an issue as being “crazy”, instead of giving it the respect of being a different opinion, is why there is such a stalemate over so many things.
Your response makes no sense. I’m not arguing the semantics or the issue, only that the coin has two sides, and my opinion falls on the opposite side of the resource center supporter’s opinion.
But since you went there – no, it’s not “just as rational” of a position. You might as well say that slavery is just as rational as abolition.
Since you went there, the woman getting an abortion would equate to the slave owner deciding to ‘terminate’ their slave. If one’s acceptible, they’re both acceptible.
All you are doing is validating my point that curtly dismissing the other side as being crazy is what perpetuates the stalemates and deepens the divides.
Yes. People that are pro-life are against choosing abortion, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they support Texas’s heartbeat bill. This is why giving the benefit of the doubt matters. But for some reason, you’d rather give the benefit of the doubt to people that want their women to wear hijabs, which clearly signals they are anti-choice on WAY MORE THINGS than pro-life Christians.
Yeah, that’s as terrible as expecting slave owners to feed their slaves. It’s not their fault they suddenly owned a slave, how dare anyone usurp their choice and force upon them the burdon of keeping it alive. The slave owners are the victims too, dammit!
Or are you saying that an abortion is really just emancipating the baby from the oppression of the womb?
As I said, I’m neutral on the issue, because there are valid arguments made on both sides. But your self-righteous indignation towards anyone who disagrees with you makes it really hard to remain neutral.
You give the benefit of the doubt to Christians. That’s good.
Until you find out they support pregnancy resource centers.* Seems like a weird place to draw the line - I figured it would be refusal to serve a gay wedding, but okay. I’m sure you have a similar line for Jews and Muslims…
You give the benefit of the doubt to Jews. That’s good.
Until they signal to you they are strict adherents to the most conservative orthodoxy via their hasidic dress and style because that likely means they are Zionists that support a strong Israel that defends itself. Okay - seems like a logical place to draw the line if you feel you must draw one. I’m sure you have a similar symbolic line for Muslims.
You give the benefit of the doubt to Muslims. That’s good.
And when they signal they are strict adherents and value women less via the hijab, you… still give them the benefit of the doubt. So where is the line? Do they actually have to stone a woman for adultery in front of you first?
*which you only know anything about from watching pro-abortion-rights leftist documentaries
How was it not their choice to keep feeding the slave? Outside of killing the slave, they had two other options. Manumission was regulated from the late 17th century in the US. In addition, owners could also transfer ownership of slaves to another owner (for free or for profit) to avoid having to keep feeding them.
Equivalent processes to manumission or transfer of ownership are simply not available to women dealing with unwanted pregnancy. You cannot realistically set the fetus free by your own action - not without harm to it and yourself at least -, nor can you transfer the fetus to another woman. So the analogy does not work at all in terms of practical options. The only options for women with unwanted pregnancy are: carrying the baby to term; having a miscarriage or an abortion; or suicide.
If there was a simple analogy, it would be much more likely to have been resolved nicely by now. There’s a reason why public sentiment on this has basically not changed and is still as evenly divided as 50 years ago.
Either way, what the connection of this topic or religion differences with social credit in the US and impact on personal finance?
You have to go through the pregnancy for that though. There’s a litany of costs with the pregnancy itself from a medical standpoint but it can also affect your career, unpaid leave potential, etc. Abortions also cost money but without insurance you’re talking $500-1000. Here are the average costs for a pregnancy by state. Even with insurance, it’s about an order of magnitude more than abortion. Bottom line, all of these things negatively affect your finances (and not getting into how it will impact your health and social life since these are hard to quantify).
In comparison, as slave owner who’d want to get rid of a slave, you have virtually no way of being financially harmed in the process, and usually, you stood to gain if you decided to sell a slave you did not need.
I’d never get an abortion personally but the financials don’t line up, especially not in this country with little to no support for maternity. Health considerations are completely different. Social impacts are not comparable either. It’s just not a good analogy.
Now the question is for supporters of abortion bans, are you ready to have society pay (extra taxes) for the unwanted pregnancies that’d have to be carried to term (I would be) or is it just easier to dismiss the financial concerns and call it not your problem?
I already provided an example earlier. If it looks like the woman is running the place, she’ll likely get a pass. If a man is running the place and barks commands to covered up women in the back, I’m out. I shouldn’t have to enumerate all the possibilities.
So now it’s ok to sacrifice lives for financial gain? And so you can keep going clubbing with your friends every weekend?
Look, I just said that both sides have valid arguments. While scripta is dismissing opposing arguments as just being crazy, others are dismissing his arguments as being equally crazy, too. And it’s just going to keep getting worse and worse until people start respecting the fact that every coin has two sides. No matter how firmly you believe it’ll always come up ‘heads’.
For me the main argument that usually gets lost in the ethical discussion is the reality that the laws are virtually moot for preventing abortions. Makes the holier-than-thou crowd feel good about the illusion of doing their part to save unborn lives - especially if such laws have minimal impact on them. Humans have self-preservation/self-interest motivations the laws cannot overcome.
A 2018 report on worldwide abortions found the rate of occurrence to be nearly identical in countries with the most restrictive laws 37 per 1000 women vs 34 per 1000 women in countries with the least restrictive laws. They just happen underground with less visibility and are less safe. In countries with least restrictive laws, less than 1% are performed in unsafe conditions. In countries with the most restrictive laws, 31% are performed in unsafe conditions.
Not going into the absurd cases like pregnant women diagnosed with cancer in countries with total abortion bans. They cannot receive chemotherapy because the fetus would die. But they cannot be aborted either because that’s illegal. So they basically die of untreated cancer along with their baby usually. Dura lex sed lex.
For women struggling with the dilemma of not wanting to have an abortion but also not having the means to carry their baby to term, the abortion ban would do nothing for them. If they’ve decided to have it, they’ll find a way to get it done. The only proven way to avoid some abortions (not all unfortunately) is to convince the women not to get one along with financial and emotional support. But actually saving babies costs money so it’s much easier to pretend doing something about it by setting up ineffective restrictive laws even if these ultimately don’t work. Just like in preschool… a nice “You Tried!” Star for our politicians along with donations for their re-election campaign of course. All about money indeed.
I’m not dismissing all the opposing arguments. I think both sides (or a good majority anyway) could agree that, say a non-medically-necessary abortion at 30 weeks probably should not be allowed. But you’ll never convince me that banning it after 6 or even 15 weeks is not batshit crazy.
Yes you dismiss anyone against abortion as being crazy. And justify it with nonsensical 'anti-woman" quips. You need to first accept that being against abortion is just as rational as being for it. Then work to reach a compromise that everyone can live with. Which is basically what that Texas law did, yet even that’s being crucified as “batshit crazy” - simply because meeting in the middle is considered caving to the enemy.
This appears to be an opportunity for me to reiterate my view on abortion:
No woman should be forced to bring to term an unwanted child. Period
All women engaging in sexual intercourse, who do not wish to bear children, have a responsibility to know at all times their pregnancy status. This means testing at least weekly.
Of course #1 is offensive to the pro-life crowd, while the pro-death crowd finds #2 unreasonable and far too burdensome.
But the above would facilitate very early abortions, the only kind which can in the least be tolerable.
It’s noteworthy that even the new Texas law, widely misrepresented as prohibiting abortion, would allow for the aforementioned sorts of abortions legally to be performed. And in Mississippi there would be even more weeks of availability.
Would you do the same for a pro-lifer? i.e. A woman is running the place and for all you know, she had an abortion as a teenager and has suffered years of anguish over her decision and doesn’t want anyone to go through what she has gone through, so she supports her local pregnancy resource center which helps pregnant moms before and after their children are born vs. a man running the place who just got off the phone with his congressman asking him to support a heartbeat bill.
And note how the “anti-abortion” crowd objects to things that have been proven to reduce the abortion rate: Providing comprehensive sex-ed and free/low-cost access to long term contraception.
Those two take a big bite out of the abortion rate by reducing the oops rate.
Medical reality: Pregnancy is counted from the last menstrual period as there is generally no way to determine the actual date of conception. A normal cycle is about 4 weeks. There go 4 of the 6 weeks permitted by the Texas law before the woman has a hint she might have conceived. The window closes two weeks after her period is late–and not all women are that regular.
(Not to mention that the Texas measure is a deliberate end-run around the checks and balances built into our system and should be thrown out on that basis regardless of what you think of what it’s trying to do.)
This is an overgeneralized claim that actually has a very specious connection to reality. The reality is, yes, republicans are generally the group that proposes abortion restrictions. But republicans aren’t “against” low cost contraception. They are against forcing all health plans to cover all birth control methods - you want a cheap healthcare plan without contraception coverage, you should have the choice to buy one. You want to offer plans to your employees that don’t cover contraception, you should also have that choice.
Also republicans aren’t 100% across the board against public school sex ed. Generally, they just don’t want it taught to kids too young, don’t want gender identity indoctrination involved, and they don’t want the view that having premarital sex is inevitable and okay to be taught (that’s a morality lesson for parents to decide).
