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Abortion - Under what circumstances should it be allowed?

bobjr

You ask too many questions
Staff member
Moderator

Steampunk

One Truth Prevails
I think you misquoted me and left out a 'not' somewhere in there. I would never say something like that unless I was very, very high (and even then, I probably wouldn't).
If you looked at your own post you would see that you did say it, but from the context it appeared that you were being sarcastic, and I replied as such.

That sounds oddly psychopathic.
1) That was a typo, sorry. I meant to say "I could, but it wouldn't do any good for the debate."
2)....um how is that psychopathic exactly? It seems to me that you are trying to discredit my by declaring insanity or something.



Actually, someone else brought up an excellent point. Forcing a woman to have a baby she doesn't want is akin to slavery. The fact that the fetus is non-sentient is irrelevant in such an argument. Let's look at this hypothetical situation to see why forcing a woman to use her body against her will is so wrong:

Let's say a crazed gunman kidnaps a random person and holds them hostage. Then he calls up a random woman and tells her, "If you don't become a prostitute and use your body for sex against your will, I will murder this person I've kidnapped." Now, as awful as it is for the person who's been kidnapped, here's the question: What does the woman owe them? Why should she have to go out and use her body, against her will, for the sake of someone she has no loyalties to? Would you invent a law that says a woman in that situation would HAVE to go out and use her body in this way, for the sake of a stranger? I know it's a very unlikely situation, but it's pretty much exactly the same scenario you're demanding pregnant women do (use their bodies against their will for the sake of something they have no loyalties to). Except, in the case of the fetuses, it's even worse because the fetus is not sentient.
Granted, she does have no loyalties to the person, but considering the fetus has her own DNA in it, I would say that accounts for something. Second, what are the 2 evils/choices we are contemplating in this situation?
Choice #1 Rape
Choice #2 Murder

In choice #1 the woman keeps living/existing but with (for the most part) temporary pain.
In choice #2 The random person gets wiped from existence.

And about it being akin to slavery. Slaying an innocent sentient(or soon-to-be sentient) to let another person "feel better" isn't? The slain is in a position where its fate is in the hands of someone else, who can chose to better its life to chose to end it. Granted the one in the position of decision making may not have asked to be there, but they still have to chose, and the choice is...life.....or death.

People tell me that all the time. They call me a god-hating faggot who should kill himself. I don't care. It's called having a spine.
Ooookaaaay.....not sure how to respond......who cares, it's off topic anyways, moving along.

Well, if I was the rape victim you were saying that to, I'd say, "Did you know you did the same thing the other night, when you jerked off?"
Will touch on this more later in the post.

I never said such garbled garbage, but okay. Again, you're asking the woman to use her body against her will for the sake of a stranger, and a non-sentient stranger at that. And actually, since you live in the US (I'm assuming?), I have another question: Since you don't have a decent health care system, and since having babies costs a lot of money over there, do you also expect a rape-victim to foot the bill for the baby she's forced to have? Just curious.
No. But then again, I"m not in a position of power so I could fix that now am I?

And yes, I guess I am telling the woman to SAVE A LIFE at a mild inconvenience compared to the years that the human she saved would have.
Re-stating:
3 years of pain (hell, lets make it 5)
5 years of pain = 78 years of life
^now tell me what isn't morally acceptable with that equation.

You said it yourself: My mother CHOSE to have me. She wanted to have me. Your mother wanted to have you as well. The fact that she didn't want to keep you doesn't change the fact that she wanted to have you. If my mother 'chose' to kill me now, when I'm alive and sentient and not being a burden on anyone, she'd be a disgusting human being. (Of course, she wouldn't do that. My mother is awesome. <3) If, however, she'd chosen to 'kill' me while I was a fetus, 'living' inside her body and leeching off her resources, no brain activity whatsoever, I wouldn't give a crap. Couldn't, wouldn't, shouldn't.

No my mother didn't want me, but she understood that it was selfish to simply kill me, so she gave me to someone who wanted me. Now odds are, she didn't get pregnant and later decide "I don't feel like raising a child at this point in my life" (not saying its impossible). The odds are that the pregnancy was an accident. Contraceptives don't work 100% of the time so it was unpredictable. Now a rape is the same way, unpredictable. Now my mother had a choice- Save a life? Doom a life? Thankfully for me she chose the former. Now with the offspring of a rape victim, the person that would develop from said intercourse has an opportunity at freaking LIFE, what right does the woman have to doom a life?


So it's fine to kill things, just not humans. So... why is killing wrong? I argue that killing humans is wrong because humans are sentient and self-aware. But since fetuses aren't that... Oh, wait. *Looks at your second point.*
Yes, I believe that killing a human because it is sentient and self-aware is wrong as well, but i also believe in saving something that will eventually become sentient and self-aware, as is the next logical step.

Aaaaand we've come full circle again. As I've said countless times, a fetus will not become human unless it's inside the mother, no matter how long you wait. Likewise, a sperm will not become human unless it joins with an egg, no matter how long you wait. I fail to see the difference. One is in a later stage of production than the other, but neither is human yet, and each still requires outside help to become human.
A)If a sperm never fuses, it will never live.
B)If a fused sperm-egg never has access to a woman's womb, it will never live.

Now, if a sperm never fuses with the egg it will never live, so technically it can't be considered alive until it meets those conditions (If it never meets those it will never live, simple logic).
Now with the fused egg-sperm. the second it fuses, it already is in the woman's womb and starts growing immediately afterwards.

So lets put it this way:
Sperm (alone will never live alone)
Egg (will never live alone)
Egg-Sperm fusion (will never live without the woman's womb)

Now, unless we are getting into cloning and the like, all Sperm-Egg fusions are already in the woman's womb and start growing the instant they join (because, they already are in the woman's womb).

So, if a sperm and egg fused that were not already in a woman's womb, then yes, they would never live, so letting them die off wouldnt be the same as killing a sperm-egg fusion that had already started growing inside the womb.

...You have now lost what little credibility you had. I'm sorry, but if you think a woman should be forced to put her own life on the line for a non-sentient BABY, you are truly a disgusting excuse for a human being.
...
I suppose the people who love the women - her friends and family - can just suck it, as can the woman. Just look at what you're saying! "Were you raped? Well, that's a shame. You're still gonna have that baby. ...Oh, you might die if you have the baby? Well, if you have the abortion, you're 100% guaranteed to live. But if you don't have the abortion, there's a 65% chance the baby will live, and a 35% chance you will live, so yeah, you can go ahead and have that baby.

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/health/minister-shocked-at-death-of-woman-after-uk-abortion-1.1470902
99% chance, assuming i'm not bothered to look further.

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2223rank.html
According to this, there are 21 pregnancy related deaths per 100,000 children born in the US (most of which could have been avoided if they had a healthier lifestyle, and almost all are unpredictable). You cant predict which pregnant woman will die, be it the one that was raped, or the one that actually wanted a child. But the that a raped woman will actually GET PREGNANT are about 5%.
So combine the 5% of a rape ending up in pregnancy with the fact that under 1% of childbirths end up in death for the mother, the odds for that are extremely slim.
So you pro-choice stance, is based on the rights of under .01% of people in the US, while saying it is acceptable to end lives by abortion. This site states that over a mission abortions take place each year, you are willing to ends missions of lives for the rights of under .01% of the population in the US. And I'm the one who is "a truly a disgusting excuse for a human being."?

Put your life on the line for a non-sentient fetus you have no loyalties to."
I just wanted to add that, most childbirth related deaths take place AT CHILDBIRTH, and we have already established that at that point, the baby is sentient and has rights.http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/14/u...und-guilty-of-murder.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
 
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JDavidC

Well-Known Member
Sogeking said:
Childbirth is more dangerous to a woman than abortion.
It depends on when the abortion occurs actually. If it was something like a zef being stopped from implanting via a morning-after pill (which would technically be an abortion instead of contraception in this case), then yes, it is nowhere near as risky as an abortion. However, the later the abortion, the more risky it becomes. I do not believe that childbirth is always more dangerous than abortion (even under the hypothetical scenario where any abortion is 'safe', and any childbirth is also done in a hospital under 'safe' circumstances), particularly if we are dealing with abortions well into the third trimester.
 

BoxedLunch

Well-Known Member
If you looked at your own post you would see that you did say it, but from the context it appeared that you were being sarcastic, and I replied as such.
Okay, my mistake.

1) That was a typo, sorry. I meant to say "I could, but it wouldn't do any good for the debate."
2)....um how is that psychopathic exactly? It seems to me that you are trying to discredit my by declaring insanity or something.
It sounds psychopathic because you're admitting you'd tell a rape-victim she's being selfish and murderous when she's going through a traumatic situation. People like you make victims feel even worse than they already do.

Granted, she does have no loyalties to the person, but considering the fetus has her own DNA in it, I would say that accounts for something. Second, what are the 2 evils/choices we are contemplating in this situation?
Sharing DNA is a stupid reason to have loyalties to someone, in my opinion. I don't have any bad relatives (or, close ones), but plenty of people do. If you have abusive parents or a sibling who who became a serial killer, would you still show loyalty to them? And what about adoption, which you've been so adamantly defending? Are you saying adoptive parents love their kid less than biological parents love theirs?

Choice #1 Rape
Choice #2 Murder

In choice #1 the woman keeps living/existing but with (for the most part) temporary pain.
In choice #2 The random person gets wiped from existence.
Except I don't think it's murder because the fetus is not alive. Maybe in very late-term abortion, the arguments against which I'm more sympathetic (but still against, especially if the mother's life is in danger), but in early-stage pregnancy, the fetus has no real brain activity. Maybe it can feel pain (it's hard to prove such things with no significant brain activity), but again, so can cows, so that argument cannot hold up. The only argument you have left is that killing is wrong because the fetus will eventually become human, and (for the millionth time), so will a sperm. So stop masturbating if you want your argument to hold any ground at all.

And about it being akin to slavery. Slaying an innocent sentient(or soon-to-be sentient) to let another person "feel better" isn't? The slain is in a position where its fate is in the hands of someone else, who can chose to better its life to chose to end it. Granted the one in the position of decision making may not have asked to be there, but they still have to chose, and the choice is...life.....or death.
So, you're ignoring my analogy, huh? I'd like it if you responded to it, I really would. It's slavery because you're forcing a woman to use her body against her will, threatening legal action if she doesn't obey you. You said it yourself: the 'life' of a fetus is more important than a woman's liberty. It is my humble opinion that that is utter bullshit.

Ooookaaaay.....not sure how to respond......who cares, it's off topic anyways, moving along.
I mentioned it to show that you should have a spine. If a pro-choicer ever made you butthurt by saying that your biological mother had every right to abort you if she so chose, I'm telling you to get over it. Hell, I'll say it right now (if I hadn't already made it clear): Your biological mother should've had the right to abort you if she wanted to. I would be fine if you hadn't been born. Now, you can say the exact same thing to me, and I won't care. That's the point I was making.


No. But then again, I"m not in a position of power so I could fix that now am I?
Okay. So, since you're not in a position of power and the problem isn't going to be fixed any time soon, how about you start paying for every woman who wants to have an abortion's birth costs? That might make you a little less of an insensitive hypocrite. "Look, miss, we know you were raped, we know there's a very high chance of you dying if you have this baby, and we know you'll be forced to pay $20,000 in fees if you have the baby, but... YOU'RE STILL GOING TO HAVE IT."

And yes, I guess I am telling the woman to SAVE A LIFE at a mild inconvenience compared to the years that the human she saved would have.
The trauma of pregancy and childbirth is a minor inconvenience now? That term must've changed definitions since I last heard it.

Re-stating:
3 years of pain (hell, lets make it 5)
5 years of pain = 78 years of life
^now tell me what isn't morally acceptable with that equation.
Restating:
Fetus is not alive. Will be, but isn't yet, and needs outside help to become so (akin to sperm). Fetus can possibly feel pain (akin to cows). Check and mate.

I'd like to know if your 'argument' for forcing women to give up their own lives for a fetus falls along the same lines:
Woman: Has lived for 15-50 years and so only has 63-28 years left. Also has parents, possibly other children, grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins and friends who love her.
Fetus: Has 78 potential years left. Has no one who loves it and will probably be hated (even subconsciously) by all the woman's left-behind loved ones.
Because, I'll just confide something in you right now: If my mother was forced to give birth to a baby that killed her that she didn't want, unless she begged me not to on her death bed, I would probably go after that baby. Just sayin'.

Also, I'd like to know if this 'logic' also applies if the baby will be born with a serious mental condition. If the mother is intelligent, able-bodied and has dozens of loved ones, and the baby she's going to give birth to is going to be blind, deaf, unable to move and seriously mentally challenged, does your 'logic' still apply?

No my mother didn't want me, but she understood that it was selfish to simply kill me, so she gave me to someone who wanted me. Now odds are, she didn't get pregnant and later decide "I don't feel like raising a child at this point in my life" (not saying its impossible). The odds are that the pregnancy was an accident. Contraceptives don't work 100% of the time so it was unpredictable.
Right. So women shouldn't be allowed to have sex at all unless they want to be forced to carry a non-sentient, non-sapient fetus to term. I think they do something similar to that in Ireland, and, for some odd reason, people are getting very tissy about it and forcing the government to change the law. I wonder why that is...

Now a rape is the same way, unpredictable.
NO IT FREAKING ISN'T. The woman did not CHOOSE to have sex if she was raped. That's the DEFINITION of 'rape.'

Now my mother had a choice- Save a life? Doom a life?
You actually said the keyword yourself: Your mother CHOSE to give you life. She wasn't forced into it. I, personally, would be heartbroken if I found out my mother had been FORCED to have me, rather than choosing to do so. I'd still want to be alive, sure, but I wouldn't have had any objections against her if she'd wanted to abort me as a fetus, but couldn't because ignorant bigots stripped her of her liberty.

Thankfully for me she chose the former.
REALLY trying hard not to make a terrible, insensitive, out-of-taste joke here...

Now with the offspring of a rape victim, the person that would develop from said intercourse has an opportunity at freaking LIFE, what right does the woman have to doom a life?
Please don't EVER refer to rape as 'intercourse' again. As for what 'rights' the woman has to not use her own body as a temple for something she doesn't want, I guess, if you don't care about basic human rights, she has none. As I've said countless times, a fetus is pretty much the same thing as a sperm. The woman is under no obligation to use her body in such a way if she doesn't want to, and there should definitely be no moronic laws in place to strip her of her rights. Again, countries that DO do that (like Ireland) are changing because people are sick of it.

Yes, I believe that killing a human because it is sentient and self-aware is wrong as well, but i also believe in saving something that will eventually become sentient and self-aware, as is the next logical step.
So, wouldn't it make more sense to let the woman abort, if it raised her chance to live by even 5%? If she doesn't have the abortion, she dies, 100%. But if she does have the abortion, there's a 5% chance she won't die. Would you REALLY take away the woman's choice to LIVE? Asking her to give up her liberty is one thing, but you said you'd be for a woman giving up her LIFE if the fetus had more of a chance to live than she did. That's disgusting.

A)If a sperm never fuses, it will never live.
B)If a fused sperm-egg never has access to a woman's womb, it will never live.

Now, if a sperm never fuses with the egg it will never live, so technically it can't be considered alive until it meets those conditions (If it never meets those it will never live, simple logic).
Now with the fused egg-sperm. the second it fuses, it already is in the woman's womb and starts growing immediately afterwards.

So lets put it this way:
Sperm (alone will never live alone)
Egg (will never live alone)
Egg-Sperm fusion (will never live without the woman's womb)

Now, unless we are getting into cloning and the like, all Sperm-Egg fusions are already in the woman's womb and start growing the instant they join (because, they already are in the woman's womb).

So, if a sperm and egg fused that were not already in a woman's womb, then yes, they would never live, so letting them die off wouldnt be the same as killing a sperm-egg fusion that had already started growing inside the womb.
We're not going to agree here, but I still say you're wrong. Your argument against 'killing' a fetus is that it will eventually become human and it's growing. So what? It still can't grow without outside help, just like a sperm. If it's taken out of the mother's womb, it will die. It is NOT an independent life-form.

...

Okay, so you're saying you'd be for forcing the woman to swap a 99% chance to live (I doubt it's even that low, especially in early-term abortion, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt) for a 35% chance (or lower) to live, for the sake of a fetus? Are you REALLY saying that?

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2223rank.html
According to this, there are 21 pregnancy related deaths per 100,000 children born in the US (most of which could have been avoided if they had a healthier lifestyle, and almost all are unpredictable). You cant predict which pregnant woman will die, be it the one that was raped, or the one that actually wanted a child. But the that a raped woman will actually GET PREGNANT are about 5%.
So combine the 5% of a rape ending up in pregnancy with the fact that under 1% of childbirths end up in death for the mother, the odds for that are extremely slim.[/URL]
Statistics like this wouldn't bother me so much if you pro-life people actually gave women a choice in matters of rape and if their lives were in danger. I'm still for letting the woman choose in any situation, but I can kind of respect the opinion of someone who says a woman who chooses to have sex should accept the consequences of childbirth, even if I don't agree with it. What I CANNOT respect is someone telling a woman to give up her liberty, or even her LIFE, when she was raped. I can also never accept forcing ANY woman to put their life on the line and risk childbirth when it has a higher chance of killing them than abortion. That is just sick.

So you pro-choice stance, is based on the rights of under .01% of people in the US, while saying it is acceptable to end lives by abortion. This site states that over a mission abortions take place each year, you are willing to ends missions of lives for the rights of under .01% of the population in the US.
No babies die every year from abortions, because fetuses are not babies, but okay. 'Missions for lives?' What a joke. People who protest outside an abortion clinic, calling women who are going through emotional trauma and exercising their basic liberties as human beings 'sluts' and 'whores' are not people on a mission. People trying to pass laws (that will never be passed, BTW, as long as people are willing to fight for their freedom), trying to take away a woman's choice, or in some cases (if you have your way) her LIFE, are assholes, plain and simple. If you don't like abortion, fine. No one's forcing you to have one. But if a woman wants to get an abortion, suck out a non-sentient, non-sapient, un-self-aware fetus - whether it's because she was raped, if she might die if she keeps it, if she was having responsible sex and got pregnant accidentally, or even if she was a careless idiot and is using abortion to get out of going through the pain and traumas (and EXPENSE, if she's in America) of childbirth - that's none of your damn business.

And I'm the one who is "a truly a disgusting excuse for a human being."?
You are telling women to GIVE UP THEIR LIVES for something that is not self-aware, so YES.

I just wanted to add that, most childbirth related deaths take place AT CHILDBIRTH, and we have already established that at that point, the baby is sentient and has rights.http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/14/u...und-guilty-of-murder.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
It may be sentient, but it's not sapient, self-aware or intelligent. Do you know how many young babies die because they literally roll onto their faces and can't right themselves again, thus suffocating? Even cats and dogs are more intelligent than that. The only reason I'm against killing babies but not fetuses is because the babies, as I said, are not draining resources from a womb. If they are causing someone distress, they can be passed to someone else quite easily. You cannot do that with a fetus. If you could, this wouldn't even be an issue (except for religious extremists, but no one ever listens to them anyway).

Also, this isn't directed at ansem the wise, but to everyone who keeps saying abortion should be illegal because it's dangerous for the woman's health: Stop lying. We know you're only against abortion because you care about the fetus (or 'baby,' as some of you inaccurately insist upon calling it). Stop trying to pretend you're pro-life because you care about the woman's life; you're pro-life because you care about the fetus. That's fine (it's what we're here to debate, after all), but be HONEST about it, instead of trying to pretend you're suddenly all concerned for the mother. Seriously, it's almost as bad as this disgusting woman trying to get abortion in the case of rape banned because she claims the babies, if they're born, can be used to find the rapist. I don't know what science class that moron went to, incidentally. It certainly wasn't one set in 'reality.'
 

mew801

Well-Known Member
I don't believe any woman makes the decision to have an abortion lightly. There are several long term side effects that can occur such as a increased chance of developing Cervical, Ovarian or Liver cancer due to the unnatural and sudden changes in hormone levels as well as potential problems with later pregnancies such as pre-term delivery, handicapped children, ectopic pregnancies as well as issues even conceiving. All of these risk factors are also increased for teenagers who decide to have abortions. My point is that a lot of people have been stating that having an abortion is the 'easy way out', essentially the woman has dodged a bullet. Abortions are never an easy decision to make. If a woman doesn't believe that she can take care of the child and give it the best possible care then abortion seems like the solution. And I know people are going to say 'what about adoption' etc, however in these cases you never know who the child is going to. What if they never get adopted? What if they end up being bounced around from foster home to foster home being abused and neglected? And yes, sometimes children who are adopted grow up in lovely homes with a family who loves them, but there are so many others who don't get this level of care and often end up living a life of substance abuse and crime, not to mention all the emotional issues.

Life does not begin at conception. Potential life begins at conception. Life only begins when the foetus is born. Miscarriage is the most common form of termination in pregnancies and they are something that the woman can never predict or control and although there are contributing factors most of the time they are random and unexplainable. So there are other more common ways that the foetus can be terminated rather than abortion and the only difference is that one is a choice and one is not. That's the only difference.

Abortion is the woman's choice. She is the one who is going to have to live with her decision so it is up to her to decide if she will be fit to take care of the child or not. There are so many factors to consider. I am a professional ballet dancer and for me personally getting pregnant now (at age 20) would be the most disastrous thing that could happen to me. The changes that my body would go through would force me to stop dancing and then when the child is born I would most likely not be able to get a job due to the time I would've had off as well as the hours of being a professional dancer do not exactly coincide with the requirements of being a parent to an infant. Aside from all of that I am no where near ready to have a child and would not be able to take care of it to the best of my ability. In this case, should it ever occur, I would choose to have an abortion. I know many people will say this is a selfish decision but I couldn't agree more. Yes, it is selfish, but knowing myself at this stage in my life if I chose to have the child I would never be able to live with myself because I would've ruined my career.

So I believe that abortion should be legal, however only up until a certain stage of pregnancy. Around the 24 week mark is where the foetus is able to survive on it's own - up until this stage it is exceptionally rare to have a foetus that survives. This proves that the foetus is not developed enough to function and therefore I believe it would still be humane to abort up until that stage. After that point is where brain pathways such as feeling and responses to pain are beginning to form, so I believe it would be inhumane to abort after this point. The only exception to this would be in cases where the foetus had a high chance of being severely physically or mentally handicapped, and then it should be an option to the parents to make the decision whether to have the child or not.

The main issue though behind all of this is education. Many schools are still teaching kids to abstain from sex. Well that's about as useful as asking a monkey to sing happy birthday. Teenagers are hormonal and horny and especially in today's society where exposure to that sort of material is so high from a young age it means they're going to have sex. Parents and teachers need to take a new approach of being informative about sex. What it entails and what the real risks and outcomes can be. Teach them about contraception and safe sex rather than not having sex at all because as soon as you tell teenagers to not do something they're going to turn right around and do it out of rebellion as well as curiosity. I think we're at a crisis point with teen pregnancies and something in the education system needs to change in order for kids to truly understand what sex is and what pregnancy and abortions entail.
 
Simply put, abortion should be allowed under any set of circumstances. There is no situation in which bodily domain ceases to exist for women, and no legal precedent to make an exception for abortion.

Abortions are legal at any point during the pregnancy in Canada, and yet nobody is going around getting elective late-term abortions. Fancy that, it's almost as if women can be trusted.

I don't know what science class that moron went to, incidentally. It certainly wasn't one set in 'reality.'

If there's one thing I've learned in my 8 years debating this issue, it's that reality is the number one public enemy of the anti-abortion movement.
 
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I've noticed that everybody that is for abortion has already been born. - Ronald Reagan
 

The Admiral

the star of the masquerade
I've noticed that everybody that is for abortion has already been born. - Ronald Reagan

False. I've been dead for twenty-seven years. Who knew? Then again, Reagan was wrong about a lot of other things.

Also, the term "for abortion" or "pro-abortion" or what-have-you are the biggest pieces of ******** to come out of the anti-abortion movement, other than those ones that are specifically meant to confuse people into believing them. I'm pretty sure the number of people who want dead babies are fairly few, yet the terms "pro-abortion," etc. suggest that, yes, those people who support a woman's right to have a parasitic could-be-life-or-could-just-be-a-damn-parasite organ from their bodies simply because they did not want to procreate, they want to kill babies.
 
False. I've been dead for twenty-seven years. Who knew? Then again, Reagan was wrong about a lot of other things.

Also, the term "for abortion" or "pro-abortion" or what-have-you are the biggest pieces of ******** to come out of the anti-abortion movement, other than those ones that are specifically meant to confuse people into believing them. I'm pretty sure the number of people who want dead babies are fairly few, yet the terms "pro-abortion," etc. suggest that, yes, those people who support a woman's right to have a parasitic could-be-life-or-could-just-be-a-damn-parasite organ from their bodies simply because they did not want to procreate, they want to kill babies.
I'm not entirely against the concept of being "pro-abortion", I just think it's silly that there's even a word to describe people who aren't against a morally neutral medical procedure.
 

JDavidC

Well-Known Member
There is a reason I mentioned using 'pro-life' and 'pro-choice', because people get bent out of shape if stuff like 'anti-choice' and 'pro-abortion/murder' gets used instead. I personally reserve 'pro-abortion' for those that would actually WANT abortion (e.g. Chinese government going for population control, people interested only in making money off abortions etc).

Simply put, abortion should be allowed under any set of circumstances. There is no situation in which bodily domain ceases to exist for women, and no legal precedent to make an exception for abortion.
Prove it. Bear in mind that I will challenge you with the arguments I put to BJPalmer85, and you will need to go after those arguments if you challenge my claims/arguments.

Abortions are legal at any point during the pregnancy in Canada, and yet nobody is going around getting elective late-term abortions. Fancy that, it's almost as if women can be trusted.
It's like to see proof that nobody in Canada is 'going around getting elective late-term abortions'.
 
There is a reason I mentioned using 'pro-life' and 'pro-choice', because people get bent out of shape if stuff like 'anti-choice' and 'pro-abortion/murder' gets used instead. I personally reserve 'pro-abortion' for those that would actually WANT abortion (e.g. Chinese government going for population control, people interested only in making money off abortions etc).

Prove it. Bear in mind that I will challenge you with the arguments I put to BJPalmer85, and you will need to go after those arguments if you challenge my claims/arguments.

It's like to see proof that nobody in Canada is 'going around getting elective late-term abortions'.
I'm not going through your posting history. Reply to my actual post, or follow John Madden's user title.
 

JDavidC

Well-Known Member
I'm not going through your posting history. Reply to my actual post, or follow John Madden's user title.
First off, in your post, you made claims without evidence, I am dismissing those claims off the bat for that reason. I don't have to argue against you to win. Why?

https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/burden-of-proof

You make the claim, you prove it. I don't have to disprove it at all. None of your other posts in this thread (I checked your post history here btw) have any evidence for the claims there either. I am also dismissing your claim that abortion is 'morally neutral' as it also has no evidence to back it up, and I believe it is false. If you disagree, then prove you are right, or I win.

BTW, when I wanted you to look at the arguments I put to BJPalmer85, this link is what you need, one where I trawled through my own posting history.
http://www.serebiiforums.com/showth...-should-it-be-allowed&p=16252992#post16252992

Your move.
 

The Admiral

the star of the masquerade
I'm not entirely against the concept of being "pro-abortion", I just think it's silly that there's even a word to describe people who aren't against a morally neutral medical procedure.

Personally, I think it's incredibly nasty language coming from the side that opposes the right, since I don't suspect a lot of people who think a woman should have the right to abort her fetus really want it to happen with much regularity.

Granted, a large part of that nastiness comes from their rhetoric, too.

There is a reason I mentioned using 'pro-life' and 'pro-choice', because people get bent out of shape if stuff like 'anti-choice' and 'pro-abortion/murder' gets used instead. I personally reserve 'pro-abortion' for those that would actually WANT abortion (e.g. Chinese government going for population control, people interested only in making money off abortions etc).

The terms "pro-life" and "pro-choice" also imply that the other side is either "anti-life" (which borders on slander) and "anti-choice" (which is probably also overkill). It's kind of a vicious, loaded rhetoric more than just "for/against the right to abortion" would be.
 
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First off, in your post, you made claims without evidence, I am dismissing those claims off the bat for that reason. I don't have to argue against you to win. Why?

https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/burden-of-proof

You make the claim, you prove it. I don't have to disprove it at all. None of your other posts in this thread (I checked your post history here btw) have any evidence for the claims there either. I am also dismissing your claim that abortion is 'morally neutral' as it also has no evidence to back it up, and I believe it is false. If you disagree, then prove you are right, or I win.

BTW, when I wanted you to look at the arguments I put to BJPalmer85, this link is what you need, one where I trawled through my own posting history.
http://www.serebiiforums.com/showth...-should-it-be-allowed&p=16252992#post16252992

Your move.

Sure.

Author unknown (2004, September 11). Canadian women may be given option for late-term abortions. The Guardian, pp. A12. - “Canadian women currently travel to Colorado, Kansas and Washington each year to have late-term abortions because no Canadian doctor will perform them. [...] Last year in Quebec, 30 women travelled to the United States for abortions after they were 22 weeks pregnant. About 31,000 abortions are performed in Quebec each year [emphasis mine: that’s less than 0.1% of abortions]. Morgentaler said about 15 women make the trip from Ontario each year.”

http://www.cihi.ca/cihi-ext-portal/pdf/internet/ta_11_alldatatables20130221_en - 2.1% of abortions performed in hospitals in Canada were at 21+ weeks. CIHI as of a few years ago only collects data on in-hospital abortions and excludes clinics. However, in 2003, when clinic data was collected, 21+ week abortions were at 0.8% in hospitals and 0.2% in clinics. http://www.arcc-cdac.ca/StatsCan-gestation-times-1995-2003.xls

http://sogc.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/gui184E0611.pdf - The Society of Obstetricians and Gynecologists of Canada issues guidelines for first and second trimester abortions, but not third-trimester ones. Why does that matter, you ask? Maybe because this supports claims that other sources make stating that late-term abortions in Canada aren't performed.

http://www.canadiansforchoice.ca/hottopic01.html - “In Canada, a woman cannot have an elective abortion past 24 weeks gestation. There are simply no doctors and no facilities that will allow for an elective termination at that point. In fact, there are only a few doctors in the entire country who are willing to perform abortions past 20 weeks.”

http://www.choiceinhealth.ca/Page.asp?IdPage=8920&WebAddress=choiceinhealth – “In Ontario, providers are available to provide service up to 24 weeks from your last menstrual period, after which, referrals can be made to the United States, where service can sometimes be provided at later gestational ages.”

(The last two are pro-choice sites, and before anyone dismisses them out of bias, keep in mind that their statements are wholly supported by neutral sources and the state of medical affairs in Canada, as well as a demonstrable lack of demand for the procedure. Why is the procedure in such low demand? Probably because, as I said, women can be trusted.)

So we can see that late term abortion in Canada is legal, but is largely unavailable and rarely performed. We can assume that late-term abortions performed in hospitals are medically necessary (unless anti-abortionists are willing to believe that Canadian hospitals will fall over themselves to perform medically unnecessary late-term abortions, a belief which anyone who knows the first thing about the Canadian health care system would laugh out of any debate). That’s 2.1% of all abortions in Canada, a very tiny number on its own. If any of these abortions WERE elective, how do we know which ones they are? Common sense says zero, however one could interpret Dr. Morgentaler’s vague comments about turning late-term abortions away as meaning ALL of those abortion-seekers wanted elective ones. That’s 0.1% of abortions at best, and we have no reason or evidence to believe that these abortions are positively elective. Though I guess we could outright ban late-term abortions to prevent a tiny minority that may not even exist from getting them, at the expense of the majority of late-term abortion-seekers who need those procedures to live – though I thought pro-lifers were against that sort of thinking, given how they dismiss rape pregnancies for not being common enough to their liking? Or do statistics only matter when they’re in your favour?

We could just go with the common sense option of “elective late-term pregnancies in Canada are not in demand”, though common sense isn’t exactly a virtue of the anti-abortion movement.


I'm not replying to any of your posts which were not made to me, so you might want to pull relevant excerpts out of your old ones that relate to anything I said.


By the way, they probably didn't teach you this in high school debate club, but you just asked me to prove a negative, which can't be done. I decided to humour you, and proved the contrariety of the positive. While I didn't prove that literally no woman ever has wanted an elective abortion in Canada, I did prove that there is no reason to believe this procedure is in demand, much less something we need to worry about.

We done here?
 
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JDavidC

Well-Known Member
Alrighty, let's go through the evidence you presented first:

Author unknown (2004, September 11). Canadian women may be given option for late-term abortions. The Guardian, pp. A12. - “Canadian women currently travel to Colorado, Kansas and Washington each year to have late-term abortions because no Canadian doctor will perform them. [...] Last year in Quebec, 30 women travelled to the United States for abortions after they were 22 weeks pregnant. About 31,000 abortions are performed in Quebec each year [emphasis mine: that’s less than 0.1% of abortions]. Morgentaler said about 15 women make the trip from Ontario each year.”
I can't find the paper online, but I'm not going to believe that you made this up. ~0.1% is close enough to zero to justify your claim 'Nobody goes for elective abortions', even if it isn't 100% accurate. 'Very few people are known to go for elective abortions' would be accurate. Asking you to go as far as LITERALLY proving that there are NO abortions like these is going into impossible prove-a-negative territory, as you say later, so I can't set the bar that high. One thing is bothering me though, I don't know how many unreported abortions go on in Canada. As it's a big country, it may not be easy for everyone who wants an abortion legal only in the USA to visit there to get an abortion, and they may resort to desperate measures like illegal, unsafe abortion instead, which are obviously not reported. When I say illegal here though, I'm talking about stuff like incompetent doctors or doctors operating in unsafe conditions, not the usual kind of illegal abortion.

On a tangent, I will say there are certain cases where a negative CAN be proven. 'Proof by contradiction' can pull this off quite nicely. If you google a proof that sqrt[2] is not rational, that method is employed to successfully prove a negative. I'm not going to post it here as it's completely off-topic.

http://www.cihi.ca/cihi-ext-portal/p...les20130221_en - 2.1% of abortions performed in hospitals in Canada were at 21+ weeks. CIHI as of a few years ago only collects data on in-hospital abortions and excludes clinics.
I had a look at the statistics where you got the 2.1% figure from. I noticed there were 17.2% unknowns, so I recalculated the percentage, using the known population as a representative sample of the whole population, and got 2.50% abortion rate at >=21 weeks, assuming the unknown abortions follow the same patterns as the known abortions. 2.50% is still pretty low, about 1 out of 40 people having abortions do so at >=21 weeks if this data is correct. That's pretty darn low.

http://sogc.org/wp-content/uploads/2...ui184E0611.pdf - The Society of Obstetricians and Gynecologists of Canada issues guidelines for first and second trimester abortions, but not third-trimester ones. Why does that matter, you ask? Maybe because this supports claims that other sources make stating that late-term abortions in Canada aren't performed.
You might be right, that paper only goes as far as the 2nd trimester.

http://www.canadiansforchoice.ca/hottopic01.html - “In Canada, a woman cannot have an elective abortion past 24 weeks gestation. There are simply no doctors and no facilities that will allow for an elective termination at that point. In fact, there are only a few doctors in the entire country who are willing to perform abortions past 20 weeks.”
Their use of "anti-choice" does irk me a bit, but the actual argument seems reasonable enough with the other evidence you've presented me, although not knowing about any illegal abortions that may happen >20 weeks is bugging me.

http://www.choiceinhealth.ca/Page.as...choiceinhealth – “In Ontario, providers are available to provide service up to 24 weeks from your last menstrual period, after which, referrals can be made to the United States, where service can sometimes be provided at later gestational ages.”
Hmmm, ok.

There are only two problems I have here:
1. How recent these sources are. Is the CURRENT situation in Canada the same as it was at the time the evidence you linked made (few, if any doctors, that can/will go for late-term abortions)?
2. Not knowing about any desperate measures those who cannot make it to the USA may take to abort or otherwise get rid of an unwanted zef. There could still be illegal abortions that are illegal because they are performed in unsafe circumstances, possibly the same sort of thing as the dreaded 'back alley abortions'.

I'll go back to the original claim that you provided the evidence for:
Abortions are legal at any point during the pregnancy in Canada, and yet nobody is going around getting elective late-term abortions. Fancy that, it's almost as if women can be trusted.
Based on your evidence, there seems to be about 0.1% of people known to be going to the USA for late-term abortions (as few/no doctors exist that are even willing to go for 3rd trimester abortions), which is close enough to 0%. However, I don't know about those who cannot get to the USA going for unsafe abortions by doctors willing to take more risks than necessary, which is frustrating. If your claims are the truth, I imagine it would be because many people believe that a zef IS human by the time the 3rd trimester is reached, and hence pro-choice doctors switch to pro-life doctors once their definition of personhood is reached.

There are two things remaining for you to deal with though: You claim that there is no reason for not being 100% pro-choice and allowing abortions under any set of circumstances. This is a very bold and puzzling claim. What evidence do you have to prove this? Also, you claim that abortion is a 'morally neutral' procedure. Why?

BTW, the reason I linked you to a previous post of mine is because it *IS* the evidence I am presenting. I don't see why I can't use arguments that I have used before. Just because I'm the source of the evidence doesn't mean it is invalid or something that you can dismiss (unless you want to commit an ad-hominem fallacy). If you're not replying to posts just because they were not made to you, then they are now directed at you specifically as well as the original audience. Most of the links in the previous post I linked to are links to VERY short posts, it won't take much time to go through them at all. The common theme is the problem with abortions being allowed. BTW, I should add that most of my posts regarding my position on abortion in this thread were directed at everyone reading the thread, including you. Only a few got directed specifically at BJPalmer85 at first.

The last one is a link to a *VERY* long post, and it is my primary rebuttal against the pro-choice position. The thing is, the majority of that long post *IS* the risk analysis argument, not just some of it (the part where I go off on a tangent near the end is where you can stop reading). I can't give you selective excerpts without cutting out parts of the argument. I take the time to go through entire research papers presented as evidence if necessary to analyse it (I actually did this in the previous debate involving a paper linking abortion to a reduction in crime rate), I don't just spend a lot of time actually typing my arguments into my computer. I would appreciate it if others do the same if necessary when I present evidence.

Before you go and read the risk analysis, the argument in a nutshell is this: The overall risk (where risk is defined as probability of event * severity of event) is minimised by assigning personhood at conception (regardless of people's opinions), therefore abortion should be restricted to only being allowed if the mother's life is in danger. Denying abortion even in those cases will actually increase the risk with stuff like double-deaths getting involved. Given that the risk rises dramatically for assigning personhood too late, compared to too early, the burden of proof for what gestational age should be allowed for abortion beyond conception must fall on those who argue against it, i.e. pro-choice. IMO, the risk is so high that proof beyond a shadow of a doubt is the standard required for pro-choice people to reach if they want to shift personhood assignment to later than conception. Why do I have that opinion? It is because of the risk assessment argument, and because the thought of making a wrong decisions that results in the death of millions of unborn, defenceless, human babies that are actually legitimate people equal to adult humans is really, really, terrifying. There is also the angle of abortions for other reasons, but I mention those in the post I linked to as evidence (Chaos Theory vs Quality of Life Judgments).

I may have to dig through that previous thread for later arguments I have made, if necessary. If I find later arguments that I need, I will post them, but there is a chance that the entirety of long posts may form the whole argument, not just excerpts from those posts.

By the way, they probably didn't teach you this in high school debate club, but you just asked me to prove a negative, which can't be done. I decided to humour you, and proved the contrariety of the positive. While I didn't prove that literally no woman ever has wanted an elective abortion in Canada, I did prove that there is no reason to believe this procedure is in demand, much less something we need to worry about.
I've already dealt with this above, which is why I didn't go for proof beyond a shadow of a doubt (required to prove a negative, and impossible too pull off in most cases). However, for those who try to prove that a human zygote, let alone a zef at any stage, is not a person, I must insist on that perfect standard as the location for my goalposts, because of how screwed up things may get if even the slightest hole in a proof exists.

We done here?
Oh no, we're just getting started, if you see the average length and frequency of my posts in the previous abortion debate, you will know exactly what I mean.
 
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BJPalmer85

Well-Known Member
Simply put, abortion should be allowed under any set of circumstances. There is no situation in which bodily domain ceases to exist for women, and no legal precedent to make an exception for abortion.

Abortions are legal at any point during the pregnancy in Canada, and yet nobody is going around getting elective late-term abortions. Fancy that, it's almost as if women can be trusted.



If there's one thing I've learned in my 8 years debating this issue, it's that reality is the number one public enemy of the anti-abortion movement.

I agree with this. I can not look past the idea that government wants to control what people do with their bodies.

B

P.S. - Do frozen embryos come into play with this topic?
 
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JDavidC

Well-Known Member
P.S. - Do frozen embryos come into play with this topic?
This may make me sound extremely cold-hearted, but this is complicated, and possible benefits that leads to risk/damage reduction later on IS a factor. Whether it is morally acceptable is another matter entirely, but that sort of thing is what a debate like this is for. If you mean using aborted zefs for stuff like medical research, then yes, it DEFINITELY comes into play.
 

BJPalmer85

Well-Known Member
Hmm, if you mean using aborted zefs for stuff like medical research, then yes, it DEFINITELY comes into play.

I am talking about people who have frozen embryos in storage and have no plans to use them.

B
 
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