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Abortion - Under what circumstances should it be allowed?

master3019

Me gusta Flygon
Yes. It's ultimately the woman's decision, because what if that woman gets raped? When the kid asks what was his father like, she just says, "Oh, your father was a rapist, and I was his victim." You could keep it a secret from the kid, but you'll have to tell them eventually, or you'll have that guilt forever. And if you have another baby from another man, you look at the original kid, knowing he was not a cause of love, but of a sick man.

The main counter to this argument I see is that if you don't want the kid, put him up for adoption. However, the argument is flawed seeing as not a lot of kids are being adopted this days. If it were true, there would be no need for orphanages.
 

bobjr

You ask too many questions
Staff member
Moderator
The main counter to this argument I see is that if you don't want the kid, put him up for adoption. However, the argument is flawed seeing as not a lot of kids are being adopted this days. If it were true, there would be no need for orphanages.

Plus unless you find a couple willing to pay for all the doctors and hospital bills, that puts the mother out 4-5 thousand dollars minimum. That part always gets glossed over, but then again the woman usually gets more blame for this stuff than she should.
 

JDavidC

Well-Known Member
OK, I'm going to try something a bit unconventional in an abortion debate, it will involve a complete reboot of an argument I used in the last one. This is something that both sides are strongly encouraged to participate in. I will handle processing the data and drawing conclusions based on everyone's input.

The first step is for all people to mention milestones in development of an unborn human, along with any potential problems (such as extreme disabilities like anencephaly) that they may feel would negate sentience. I'd like to put together a timeline of these milestones, and I'd like people to mention why they think someone is a person at this point, with reasoning/evidence (I cannot pull numbers out of nowhere in a debate, which is why I ask for an explanation). I want to try to guesstimate a probability of personhood at each milestone. This is something I did not do in the previous abortion debate, which would be a major flaw in the model. I'm hoping people can help me put together an ACCURATE model of 'risk' of assigning personhood at a certain time. I'll do number crunching in the background and put them in spoiler sections so people can skip the mathematics if they want to, but I need to put them there anyway to prove I'm not just pulling numbers out of nowhere.

Basics of risk analysis: You think of a damaging event, and the chance that event may occur, and you put a number on both of them. The higher the number, the greater the damage, or the chance that the event occurs. The 'risk' is determined by taking the two numbers and multiplying them together. I would like people to think of all the pros and cons of assigning personhood at each of the milestones, on both the pro-life and pro-choice sides of the issue, not just one side. Without taking all the information into account from both sides, the model with be worthless and misleading.

Hopefully my arguments will be effectively be far more concise than in the previous debate, as you can skip the mathematical calculations if you want and just look at the conclusions. I would like both sides to use this model to try to figure out who is ultimately right/wrong. The argument by itself is not supposed to be constructed just to be pro-life or pro-choice, but to try to find the best compromise possible.

There is one thing though, should my model focus on the USA? Obviously, the risks will vary based on the country and so on, and it might be impossible to focus on the entire world. What do you think?
 

Nightmareisalive

Well-Known Member
There is one thing though, should my model focus on the USA? Obviously, the risks will vary based on the country and so on, and it might be impossible to focus on the entire world. What do you think?

I think it would be wiser to base your model of the UK since it is where you live right? Focus on that and maybe do a model of the USA at the same time so that you can compare the two apart and see if there is any major changes in views and what each country has in place to help those gain an abortion or to help raise a child if they decide not to have an abortion.
 

JDavidC

Well-Known Member
Hmm, I don't know. The situation in the UK is complicated, abortion laws are different in NI compared to the rest of the UK, for starters. Not only that, but people travel from the Republic of Ireland to England to obtain abortions not available in Ireland. There has only recently been a ruling allowing abortion in the case of the mother's life being at risk, which has unfortunately being extended to medical staff being of the opinion that the mother's life would be at risk of suicide if abortion was not an option, something that is VERY open to abuse.

Also, trying to put this together is going to be a very difficult task (trust me, you probably don't want to see the length of the posts I used in the previous thread on this debate). For starters, I'm trying to find some accurate way of finding milestones in the development of a brain (or pre-brain) of a zef, as that is ultimately what is used to determine personhood. It's turning out to be far more difficult than I thought it would be. At the moment, I'm looking into http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2989000/ to try and find out, but it's really making my head hurt. V_V

Once that is done, people will then have to argue their case for which milestone they believe is correct, and I'll have to adjust the numbers I use based on the arguments I get. I will have to do a lot of behind-the-scenes number crunching that I'll put in spoilers so that people can focus on the key numbers I draw from said number crunching, and limit the 'public' mathematics to a very simple level. The reason I'll still have to do complicated stuff is so that I don't pull numbers out of thin air, and also so that people can verify that I'm not making mistakes or being dishonest, if they don't agree with the figures I come up with.
 
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Sadib

Time Lord Victorious
The main counter to this argument I see is that if you don't want the kid, put him up for adoption. However, the argument is flawed seeing as not a lot of kids are being adopted this days. If it were true, there would be no need for orphanages.

Your argument is also flawed because you want women to carry the rape babies for 9 months for no reason other than "It will become a living creature one day."
 

master3019

Me gusta Flygon
Your argument is also flawed because you want women to carry the rape babies for 9 months for no reason other than "It will become a living creature one day."
What the hell (excuse my language)? I was making fun of those who do believe such things. I believe abortion is okay when a woman is raped. Sorry if that's not clear.
 

Maedar

Banned
Republicans don't care one bit about the "children" they are "saving." They only care about creating more consumers of products so that their corporate masters will keep funneling money into their campaign chests.

Rubbish. Both sides of the abortion debate, be they right or wrong, clearly believe that at heart their opinions are based on ethics and what they believe is the humane choice.

If your "logic" was to hold true, then all Republicans would also be pro-contraception yeah? After all, condoms are a product to be bought and sold by "corporate masters".
 

Sadib

Time Lord Victorious
Rubbish. Both sides of the abortion debate, be they right or wrong, clearly believe that at heart their opinions are based on ethics and what they believe is the humane choice.

If your "logic" was to hold true, then all Republicans would also be pro-contraception yeah? After all, condoms are a product to be bought and sold by "corporate masters".
Actually, by his logic republicans are against contraception.
They only care about creating more consumers of products so that their corporate masters will keep funneling money into their campaign chests.
 

LDSman

Well-Known Member
By that logic, republicans should be anti-gun because guns kill consumers.

By that logic, everything kills consumers and should be banned.
 

LDSman

Well-Known Member
That's why republicans are trying to ban abortions, because it kills consumers. Once that's taken care of, contraception will be next, so there will be even more consumers.

Nope. The vast majority of Republicans are not against contraceptions.
 

Lugia-sama

Sagacity
I realize that abortion is a very touchy subject and I really didn't mean to offend anyone; it's just something that happened to someone I know and I thought I would post my opinion.
Again I didn't mean to be offensive.
 
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Nope. The vast majority of Republicans are not against contraceptions.
Hmm, maybe. But in many states they are becoming more and more anti-contraception.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/29/doug-cox-republicans_n_3355162.html

In a scathing critique of his Republican colleagues in the Oklahoma state Legislature, Rep. Doug Cox (R-Grove) questioned his party's efforts to restrict women's access to birth control.

"All of the new Oklahoma laws aimed at limiting abortion and contraception are great for the Republican family that lives in a gingerbread house with a two-car garage, two planned kids and a dog," Cox wrote in an op-ed published Wednesday in NewsOK. "In the real world, they are less than perfect."
It isn't just Oklahoma, either. It's the entire party that is figting against the Obamacare provision on contraception, necessitating it. Birth control is still a major issue for the party, and bcomes more and more of an issue every day.

The reason for this is probably because Republicans are predominately white and religious, see Gallup:
http://www.gallup.com/poll/142826/republicans-remain-disproportionately-white-religious.aspx

So you really can't blame them for the creep against something like contraception, because their religiousity limits their ability to think in terms of what is good for people right now rather than the time of the founding of their dogma.
 
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LDSman

Well-Known Member
Not against contraception itself! Against people being forced to pay for someone else contraception!
 

Blazekickblaziken

Snarktastic Ditz
So you really can't blame them for the creep against something like contraception, because their religiousity limits their ability to think in terms of what is good for people right now rather than the time of the founding of their dogma.

Yes, yes we can blame them. They are being willfully ignorant and making people make bad decisions which lead to unwanted pregnancies which lead to abortions. So yes, we can blame them.
 
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