Some questions to those who want abortion to be illegal
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In most countries of the southern hemisphere abortion is legally restricted; in most countries of the northern hemisphere it is allowed*. In countries like Nicaragua and Chile any abortion is illegal. In countries like Brazil, Argentina and Mexico it is legal just in cases of rape or when pregnancy poses a danger for the carrying woman. However, this has brought a big problem to the courts: how do you punish a woman that made an illegal abortion? In almost every case what you have is someone without a criminal story that did something desperate because she had no other choice. Should you send someone in this situation to jail? What punishment should you give? If you don't punish her, then what is the point of making it illegal if there is no punishment? * AFAIK abortion is legal in Canada, US, most of Eastern Europe (except Poland and Spain) and most of former/present communist countries. It is restricted in middle east, most of Africa and most of Latin America (except Cuba). Southern Asia and Oceania are mixed cases.
Of all forms of sexual aberration, the most unnatural is abstinence.
In my experience, people in the US generally seem to espouse one irrational view on this, or the opposite. Or, at least, those are the views being held for public 'debate'. The point of making something illegal is not to punish the woman, but to punish the person providing the abortion, and to cut off supply. Just like a drug dealer is guilty of a greater crime than a drug user, for example. Now, IMO all this does is kill women who have illegal abortions, but, that is the point, and this is why your question makes no sense.
Christian Graus Driven to the arms of OSX by Vista.
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Stan Shannon wrote:
You pick some arbitrary moment and you make a law that codifies that moment as the moment a human life begins.
How about the eighth birthday? Or the 21st? 45th? Do we get to codify when humanity ends, too? Are you on the right side of that age? Am I? :~
Jon Smith & Wesson: The original point and click interface Algoraphobia: An exaggerated fear of the outside world rooted in the belief that one might spontaneously combust due to global warming.
It seems to me that for this discussion to happen at all, we can't decide when life begins, but a point at which it's *arguable* that life begins. You can't say for sure that a mass of cells is not a human at 10 days, but it is at 11, you can only say that at 11 days ( and I picked this number out of thin air ), enough has developed that it's sufficiently arguable that this is a human, to make abortion untenable. The core issue is far more basic. My wife was watching a TV show the other day where married couples come on b/c she has been cheating, or is cheating, and they do live paternity tests to see if he is his babies father. I can't help but feel that issues like abortion, people raising someone elses kid, etc, all come down to questions of fidelity. People have always been unfaithful, but one has to wonder if it's more open now, or if it happens more in a society where everyone is encouraged to do whatever feels right in the moment, and where society values things like marriage less, and less. At a minimum, there should be better access to birth control, and better education. Abstinence only sex education is an abomination and it ironically creates the need for abortions.
Christian Graus Driven to the arms of OSX by Vista.
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Diego Moita wrote:
how do you punish a woman that made an illegal abortion?
you don't, you punish the doctor that facilitated it. fyi - I agree with efforts to reduce abortions that are implied / discussed in this thread, but that doesn't mean that the abortionist shouldn't be punished for murder. The sad fact is that there are families that would adopt babies brought to term. That makes the killing, and it is killing, more abhorent. fyi * 2 - we'll never agree, I suspect.
Mike - typical white guy. The USA does have universal healthcare, but you have to pay for it. D'oh. Thomas Mann - "Tolerance becomes a crime when applied to evil." The NYT - my leftist brochure. Calling an illegal alien an “undocumented immigrant” is like calling a drug dealer an “unlicensed pharmacist”. God doesn't believe in atheists, therefore they don't exist.
Mike Gaskey wrote:
The sad fact is that there are families that would adopt babies brought to term
This is a fantasy. There are far more abortions than there are families who would adopt.
Christian Graus Driven to the arms of OSX by Vista.
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The question is why do people insist on making such a complex issue out of something so simple. You pick some arbitrary moment and you make a law that codifies that moment as the moment a human life begins. As long as it is based upon democratic processes of some kind, that is the best you can hope for. If the majority wants that to be the moment a genetically distinct entity of anykind occurs or if the majority wants it to be the first fart, than that becomes the law. The only problem is when the power to define human life is invested in some kind of oligarchy - the US Supreme court, for example. The definition of human life is an intrinsically moral, religious issue, and should reflect the traditions and beliefs of the people in that regard and not be imposed by some kind of bureaucratic authority.
Chaining ourselves to the moral high ground does not make us good guys. Aside from making us easy targets, it merely makes us idiotic prisoners of our own self loathing.
Stan Shannon wrote:
The only problem is when the power to define human life is invested in some kind of oligarchy - the US Supreme court, for example
So, a bunch of uninformed people can hold a vote and thus define life, but the court cannot ? I see the difference, in terms of what your bugbear is, but in terms of an acceptable means of defining law, of defining *life*, how is this acceptable ?
Stan Shannon wrote:
The definition of human life is an intrinsically moral, religious issue, and should reflect the traditions and beliefs of the people in that regard and not be imposed by some kind of bureaucratic authority.
Any definition of when life starts (which itself is only necessary because we choose not to educate people on birth control and then let them use the worst possible method instead), should surely be based on science and not popular opinion.
Christian Graus Driven to the arms of OSX by Vista.
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In my experience, people in the US generally seem to espouse one irrational view on this, or the opposite. Or, at least, those are the views being held for public 'debate'. The point of making something illegal is not to punish the woman, but to punish the person providing the abortion, and to cut off supply. Just like a drug dealer is guilty of a greater crime than a drug user, for example. Now, IMO all this does is kill women who have illegal abortions, but, that is the point, and this is why your question makes no sense.
Christian Graus Driven to the arms of OSX by Vista.
Christian Graus wrote:
The point of making something illegal is not to punish the woman, but to punish the person providing the abortion, and to cut off supply. Just like a drug dealer is guilty of a greater crime than a drug user, for example. Now, IMO all this does is kill women who have illegal abortions, but, that is the point, and this is why your question makes no sense.
Yes, it does. As I said, abortion is mostly illegal in Latin America. But that does very little to stop it around here. In my country more than 1 million happen per year. The reason is that today farmaceutical technology provides many ways of making an abortion without little or no help from doctors. If you want to stop through the law, you need to face this fact.
Of all forms of sexual aberration, the most unnatural is abstinence.
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BoneSoft wrote:
the point is to stop killing babies
The embryo becomes a foetus 8 weeks after fertilisation. In the embryonic stage it hasn't become a person yet, so an abortion at that stage can't really be counted as killing babies. If you count "potential to become a person", then you will have to extend the same courtesy to spermatozoa as well. If you carry these laws to extremes you will have to outlaw acts which deny spermatozoa a fighting chance to reach an ovum i.e. wanking and those which cause them to end up in the digestive tract. I am particularly saddened by the latter, so I wrote a short poem to honour all spermatozoa who perished in the battlefield :
he starts, he moves, he seems to feel
the thrill of life along his keel,
then the digestive juices begin to bite,
like the lonely samurai, on his last fight,
swinging his sword, death poem filling his heart,
he flagellates and flagellates,
then tiring; he slows, and feels
the slow march, of death and defeat.modified on Friday, February 6, 2009 4:10 PM
Sahir Shah wrote:
then the digestive juices begin to bite,
At least he died in the stomach and not in daylight.
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Christian Graus wrote:
The point of making something illegal is not to punish the woman, but to punish the person providing the abortion, and to cut off supply. Just like a drug dealer is guilty of a greater crime than a drug user, for example. Now, IMO all this does is kill women who have illegal abortions, but, that is the point, and this is why your question makes no sense.
Yes, it does. As I said, abortion is mostly illegal in Latin America. But that does very little to stop it around here. In my country more than 1 million happen per year. The reason is that today farmaceutical technology provides many ways of making an abortion without little or no help from doctors. If you want to stop through the law, you need to face this fact.
Of all forms of sexual aberration, the most unnatural is abstinence.
Which is why the thing that's needed most, is education, especially wrt birth control.
Christian Graus Driven to the arms of OSX by Vista.
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Mike Gaskey wrote:
The sad fact is that there are families that would adopt babies brought to term
This is a fantasy. There are far more abortions than there are families who would adopt.
Christian Graus Driven to the arms of OSX by Vista.
Christian Graus wrote:
This is a fantasy
prove it.
Mike - typical white guy. The USA does have universal healthcare, but you have to pay for it. D'oh. Thomas Mann - "Tolerance becomes a crime when applied to evil." The NYT - my leftist brochure. Calling an illegal alien an “undocumented immigrant” is like calling a drug dealer an “unlicensed pharmacist”. God doesn't believe in atheists, therefore they don't exist.
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BoneSoft wrote:
the point is to stop killing babies
The embryo becomes a foetus 8 weeks after fertilisation. In the embryonic stage it hasn't become a person yet, so an abortion at that stage can't really be counted as killing babies. If you count "potential to become a person", then you will have to extend the same courtesy to spermatozoa as well. If you carry these laws to extremes you will have to outlaw acts which deny spermatozoa a fighting chance to reach an ovum i.e. wanking and those which cause them to end up in the digestive tract. I am particularly saddened by the latter, so I wrote a short poem to honour all spermatozoa who perished in the battlefield :
he starts, he moves, he seems to feel
the thrill of life along his keel,
then the digestive juices begin to bite,
like the lonely samurai, on his last fight,
swinging his sword, death poem filling his heart,
he flagellates and flagellates,
then tiring; he slows, and feels
the slow march, of death and defeat.modified on Friday, February 6, 2009 4:10 PM
Sahir Shah wrote:
In the embryonic stage it hasn't become a person yet, so an abortion at that stage can't really be counted as killing babies.
Did God tell you this?
Sahir Shah wrote:
If you count "potential to become a person", then you will have to extend the same courtesy to spermatozoa
That's false logic.
Jon Smith & Wesson: The original point and click interface Algoraphobia: An exaggerated fear of the outside world rooted in the belief that one might spontaneously combust due to global warming.
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Christian Graus wrote:
This is a fantasy
prove it.
Mike - typical white guy. The USA does have universal healthcare, but you have to pay for it. D'oh. Thomas Mann - "Tolerance becomes a crime when applied to evil." The NYT - my leftist brochure. Calling an illegal alien an “undocumented immigrant” is like calling a drug dealer an “unlicensed pharmacist”. God doesn't believe in atheists, therefore they don't exist.
The US abortion rate is falling. It's still 2% of women of an age that would be reasonable for both giving birth or adoption. Assuming that there would be no couples who would be blocked from adopting for financial or other reasons, in other words, assuming a free for all where anyone who wants a baby can pick one up without any sort of requirements, that would mean you need for 2% of couples to have fertility issues ( this is probably true ) AND to be happy to raise someone else's child. In practice, if this worked at all, it would be mostly gay couples adopting, I would expect, because the majority of people who have the right parts, want to raise their own child more so than someone elses. That's not 2% of women need to adopt, it's 2% PER year. So, to keep the figure at 2%, you need for each woman to adopt a child, annually. If you assume that the number of women entering this age bracket to recycle every 10 years, that would require 20% of women to adopt a child, or 10% of women to adopt 2 children. You really think that will happen ? On top of the adoption that is already occuring from other sources ?
Christian Graus Driven to the arms of OSX by Vista.
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In my experience, people in the US generally seem to espouse one irrational view on this, or the opposite. Or, at least, those are the views being held for public 'debate'. The point of making something illegal is not to punish the woman, but to punish the person providing the abortion, and to cut off supply. Just like a drug dealer is guilty of a greater crime than a drug user, for example. Now, IMO all this does is kill women who have illegal abortions, but, that is the point, and this is why your question makes no sense.
Christian Graus Driven to the arms of OSX by Vista.
Christian Graus wrote:
Just like a drug dealer is guilty of a greater crime than a drug user, for example.
It is at least arguable that doing/selling drugs are victimless crimes. Comparing them to performing/having an abortion presupposes that the foetus cannot be a victim. Is that why you think the question makes no sense?
Jon Smith & Wesson: The original point and click interface Algoraphobia: An exaggerated fear of the outside world rooted in the belief that one might spontaneously combust due to global warming.
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BoneSoft wrote:
Ultimately, I'd say whoever is most cost effective and less risky to fix (which probably means males).
But fixing all females but one means only one illegal baby factory is ready to go to work. Fixing all males but one means that all illegal baby factories are ready.
Jon Smith & Wesson: The original point and click interface Algoraphobia: An exaggerated fear of the outside world rooted in the belief that one might spontaneously combust due to global warming.
Ooo... Good point. Chicks it is.
Visit BoneSoft.com for code generation tools (XML & XSD -> C#, VB, etc...) and some free developer tools as well.
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Mike Gaskey wrote:
I would argue that once we have a zygote instantiated in the womb or petri dish then we have an object called a human.
I think you are right. A lot of the properties are set to 0 or null, but that's not the same thing as them not being there. So another way of phrasing the question would be, what - if any - properties have to be set to a value higher than 0 before the object should not set to null by the parent object? Implicitly, if the answer is anything but "none," the above formulation is saying that it is okay to murder a human. Which is pretty much what Stan said, he just wanted it put to a vote. (The problem with having the right to exist put to a vote is that, next time, it could be Jews, or Poles, or Web Designers that are facing the possibility of extinction.) It is, of course, true that the government already has the power to say that it's okay to kill someone - and uses it all the time. It's just that most abortion-rights people don't want to think of themselves as killing another human.
Jon Smith & Wesson: The original point and click interface Algoraphobia: An exaggerated fear of the outside world rooted in the belief that one might spontaneously combust due to global warming.
Oakman wrote:
It's just that most abortion-rights people don't want to think of themselves as killing another human.
Of course not. Facing that truth would destroy their world view. And how many people are willing to face that?
Visit BoneSoft.com for code generation tools (XML & XSD -> C#, VB, etc...) and some free developer tools as well.
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The US abortion rate is falling. It's still 2% of women of an age that would be reasonable for both giving birth or adoption. Assuming that there would be no couples who would be blocked from adopting for financial or other reasons, in other words, assuming a free for all where anyone who wants a baby can pick one up without any sort of requirements, that would mean you need for 2% of couples to have fertility issues ( this is probably true ) AND to be happy to raise someone else's child. In practice, if this worked at all, it would be mostly gay couples adopting, I would expect, because the majority of people who have the right parts, want to raise their own child more so than someone elses. That's not 2% of women need to adopt, it's 2% PER year. So, to keep the figure at 2%, you need for each woman to adopt a child, annually. If you assume that the number of women entering this age bracket to recycle every 10 years, that would require 20% of women to adopt a child, or 10% of women to adopt 2 children. You really think that will happen ? On top of the adoption that is already occuring from other sources ?
Christian Graus Driven to the arms of OSX by Vista.
Christian Graus wrote:
The US abortion rate is falling.
But the present rate is based on abortion being readily available, inexpensive, and pretty much unstimatized. We have no way of knowing how many people would begin to practice birth control if they couldn't count on planned parenthood to take care of any little "problems" associated with take showers without raincoats. Regardless of what has been said about no-one wants an abortion, it is my understanding that a number of women have learned to regard it as simply another form of birth control. One that Uncle Sam will pay for if your poor.
Jon Smith & Wesson: The original point and click interface Algoraphobia: An exaggerated fear of the outside world rooted in the belief that one might spontaneously combust due to global warming.
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Christian Graus wrote:
The US abortion rate is falling.
But the present rate is based on abortion being readily available, inexpensive, and pretty much unstimatized. We have no way of knowing how many people would begin to practice birth control if they couldn't count on planned parenthood to take care of any little "problems" associated with take showers without raincoats. Regardless of what has been said about no-one wants an abortion, it is my understanding that a number of women have learned to regard it as simply another form of birth control. One that Uncle Sam will pay for if your poor.
Jon Smith & Wesson: The original point and click interface Algoraphobia: An exaggerated fear of the outside world rooted in the belief that one might spontaneously combust due to global warming.
Oakman wrote:
it is my understanding that a number of women have learned to regard it as simply another form of birth contro
Yes, and this is the core issue. As I keep saying, every time this comes up, the core issue is one of education, and personal responsibility.
Christian Graus Driven to the arms of OSX by Vista.
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Christian Graus wrote:
Just like a drug dealer is guilty of a greater crime than a drug user, for example.
It is at least arguable that doing/selling drugs are victimless crimes. Comparing them to performing/having an abortion presupposes that the foetus cannot be a victim. Is that why you think the question makes no sense?
Jon Smith & Wesson: The original point and click interface Algoraphobia: An exaggerated fear of the outside world rooted in the belief that one might spontaneously combust due to global warming.
Oakman wrote:
Comparing them to performing/having an abortion presupposes that the foetus cannot be a victim.
Yes, no analogy is perfect. But, the OP was suggesting that the only reason to make abortion illegal, is to punish the mother. The point is to cut off supply. This holds true for drug use also, even though, as I said, the analogy is not perfect.
Oakman wrote:
Is that why you think the question makes no sense?
No, because the question was 'if you want to make it illegal, you need to work out how to punish the woman', and punishing women is not the goal of banning abortion. I don't think it should be banned, but only b/c it creates a larger social problem. I do think it should not be freely available as a form of birth control ( I see the contradiction here, but I guess I am more saying what you said above, that it should not be presented as a 'womans right' and a reasonable option for birth control ), and that education and availability of more acceptable forms of birth control should be where the government spends it's money.
Christian Graus Driven to the arms of OSX by Vista.
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Oakman wrote:
Comparing them to performing/having an abortion presupposes that the foetus cannot be a victim.
Yes, no analogy is perfect. But, the OP was suggesting that the only reason to make abortion illegal, is to punish the mother. The point is to cut off supply. This holds true for drug use also, even though, as I said, the analogy is not perfect.
Oakman wrote:
Is that why you think the question makes no sense?
No, because the question was 'if you want to make it illegal, you need to work out how to punish the woman', and punishing women is not the goal of banning abortion. I don't think it should be banned, but only b/c it creates a larger social problem. I do think it should not be freely available as a form of birth control ( I see the contradiction here, but I guess I am more saying what you said above, that it should not be presented as a 'womans right' and a reasonable option for birth control ), and that education and availability of more acceptable forms of birth control should be where the government spends it's money.
Christian Graus Driven to the arms of OSX by Vista.
I see. I misunderstood which question you were referring to. Thanks for bearing with me.
Christian Graus wrote:
and that education and availability of more acceptable forms of birth control should be where the government spends it's money.
Absolutely. Especially since unprotected sex is a death-defying act. And death does not like being defied.
Jon Smith & Wesson: The original point and click interface Algoraphobia: An exaggerated fear of the outside world rooted in the belief that one might spontaneously combust due to global warming.
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BoneSoft wrote:
the point is to stop killing babies
The embryo becomes a foetus 8 weeks after fertilisation. In the embryonic stage it hasn't become a person yet, so an abortion at that stage can't really be counted as killing babies. If you count "potential to become a person", then you will have to extend the same courtesy to spermatozoa as well. If you carry these laws to extremes you will have to outlaw acts which deny spermatozoa a fighting chance to reach an ovum i.e. wanking and those which cause them to end up in the digestive tract. I am particularly saddened by the latter, so I wrote a short poem to honour all spermatozoa who perished in the battlefield :
he starts, he moves, he seems to feel
the thrill of life along his keel,
then the digestive juices begin to bite,
like the lonely samurai, on his last fight,
swinging his sword, death poem filling his heart,
he flagellates and flagellates,
then tiring; he slows, and feels
the slow march, of death and defeat.modified on Friday, February 6, 2009 4:10 PM
Sahir Shah wrote:
If you count "potential to become a person", then you will have to extend the same courtesy to spermatozoa as well.
A sperm does not have the potential to become a person, it merely has a certain probability of initiating the process of concieving one. That is completely different. The fertilized egg is a done deal, it isn't a potential, it is the first step of a continuum which each and every one of us is currently on.
Chaining ourselves to the moral high ground does not make us good guys. Aside from making us easy targets, it merely makes us idiotic prisoners of our own self loathing.
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Stan Shannon wrote:
The only problem is when the power to define human life is invested in some kind of oligarchy - the US Supreme court, for example
So, a bunch of uninformed people can hold a vote and thus define life, but the court cannot ? I see the difference, in terms of what your bugbear is, but in terms of an acceptable means of defining law, of defining *life*, how is this acceptable ?
Stan Shannon wrote:
The definition of human life is an intrinsically moral, religious issue, and should reflect the traditions and beliefs of the people in that regard and not be imposed by some kind of bureaucratic authority.
Any definition of when life starts (which itself is only necessary because we choose not to educate people on birth control and then let them use the worst possible method instead), should surely be based on science and not popular opinion.
Christian Graus Driven to the arms of OSX by Vista.
If that logic is valid, than why do we even perpetuate the farce of democracy at all? We should simply allow the courts and the research institutes and universities to govern our society for us on all issues.
Chaining ourselves to the moral high ground does not make us good guys. Aside from making us easy targets, it merely makes us idiotic prisoners of our own self loathing.
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If that logic is valid, than why do we even perpetuate the farce of democracy at all? We should simply allow the courts and the research institutes and universities to govern our society for us on all issues.
Chaining ourselves to the moral high ground does not make us good guys. Aside from making us easy targets, it merely makes us idiotic prisoners of our own self loathing.
Because if a fetus is a human life, is not something that can be decided by emotion or convenience. What you suggest is the tyranny of the majority. That's fine if we're deciding things like, should we have socialised medicine, or should the government spend more money on public transport or on highways. But, if you're talking about taking a life, then surely the question of if you have killed a human or not should not be decided in ignorance ? Would you prefer people take a vote to decide if prayer is a better option than open heart surgery ( and thus to deny you access to the latter ) ? Or is it acceptable for there to still be experts in some fields of human endeavour ?
Christian Graus Driven to the arms of OSX by Vista.