servant222 #fundie

servant222 #fundie foru.ms

One of the biggest problems with pro-abortionists is that they are in denial about the fact that life begins at conception. To try and counter this misconception, ask pro-choicers the following question:

Should parents have the right to abort a foetus based purely on its sex?

Most, especially strong feminists, will indignently say "of course not; that's outrageous!"

But, hey, pro-choice is pro-choice- you either support it or you don't- so if a mother decides to abort purely on the basis of gender, then what business is that of anyone else?

Another question to ask is:

Should parents have the right to discard their foetus a day before it is due to be born?

Again, the answer is usually an outrageous "Of course not!!".

And my answer is similar: abortion is not murder ONLY if you believe that life begins at birth (that is, not at conception). So whether a foetus is one second old or 9 months minus a day old isn't relevant if you believe in pro-choice.

The Chinese have it right: the birthday of a person is measured by when they were conceived, not by when they were born.

53 comments

old comment by Not_You

False dichotomy.

What is horrfying in the first scenario is the implied attitude that an impending baby is worth less based on gender. If you don't want a baby, you don't want a baby, and it shouldn't matter if its a girl or a boy. Then again, you don't need a good reason to decide whether to complete a pregnancy or not, so a crappy reason can't be outlawed.

I'm personally only pro-choice until viability; if you're too stupid to figure it out before then, and there aren't any medical problems (which would include being an addict), finding adoptive parents before the baby is born is actually easy-ish. Especially if you aren't afraid of teh ghey!

Anyway, servant, you've just highlighted the huge difference between fundy prolifers and pro-choice people. We don't want to outlaw everything we don't agree with. You do.

old comment by Mister Spak

One of the biggest problems with pro-stupidityists is that they are in denial about the fact that their mythology regarding life beginning at conception. To try and counter this misconception, ask pro-stupidityers the following question:

When a post-fertilisation cell separates into two masses of cells and develops into identical twins, which twin has the soul and which is just an animal. Or does each twin have half a soul?
If you abort one of a pair of twins is it really an abortion? Because you start with one fertilised egg and end with one full term fetus so no babies were murdered, right?
When two fertilised eggs merge into one, then develop into one full term chimeric infant, which fertilised egg is that person? Or does this person have two souls? Would killing this person count for two murders? Because you started with two fertilised eggs and finished with one full term infant, so somewhere a baby died, right?
Before you try to think about this please wrap a roll of duct tape around your head to keep it from exploding as 21st century knowledge collides with 12 century superstition inside your skull.
And don't use heathen chinese customs as the basis for the laws of your theocratic christian dictatorship.

old comment by HeathenAngel

The sex of the baby cannot be known on the day of conception.. or.. anywhere close to it.

That being said.. you are calling people who are Pro-CHOICE by a name that is designed to elicit an emotional response--Pro-Abortion.

I'm not "Pro-Abortion". I would certainly hope that a friend or family member would seek other options.. but I also realize that in the end it is NOT my choice to make and I would not pressure them to make any other. Why? Because it is THEIR CHOICE. And that's what it is about. You have a choice NOT to have an abortion just as everyone should have the choice TO HAVE an abortion, if that is their decision. My ovaries are none of your business and my uterus is NOT up for decisions made by YOU. It is MY choice and it is the choice of the owner of each of these pieces of anatomy.. NOT YOURS.

This is a world that is FULL of options.. and abortion has to be one of those options.

old comment by Deep Search

A woman shouldn't be forced to go through a pregnancy, regardless. If they want to end a pregnancy because they don't want that embryo to develop, for whatever reason, that's their own beeswax.

Really it's reasonable for someone to abort an embryo if they don't like the gender than, say, have three boy children they don't want while they're hoping for a girl or whatever.

And seriously who has an abortion at eight-something months unless there is something seriously wrong with the fetus? I don't think there's anyone (or, well, few people) who would be at that point who wouldn't just birth it if it's viable and give it up for adoption. But, hey, make up all the crazy 'what if' scenarios you want. Not that they're helping you any.

old comment by Wozza

Sigh. Difficult topics make for poor arguments.

Basically, both side's arguments are essentially valid. You have two entities (for want of a better word) each with their own rights to consider. Like so many other things in life, those rights overlap and conflict in such a way that they are unreconsilable. The baby's right to life conflicts with the woman's freedom of choice and right to control her own body. The exercise of these two rights CANNOT be reconciled

All laws are basically about deciding how to resolve that sort of conflict. The decision as to who's rights give way to the others is based on a complex web of considerations, including our conception of human rights, our medical knowledge, and on moral considerations, including religeon.

In most modern societies, the balance generally applied (ignoring medical emergencies etc) is that the mother's right to control her body is paramount until the baby reaches an age at which it has a complete and fully functioniung brain, or would be conceptually viable outside the womb, or something similar - generally about 20-28 weeks. Once that point is reached, the baby's right to life is paramount.

think that's wrong? Good for you - everyone has a view and frankly, its just one of those balancing exercises between compeating rights that make society work - you win some, you lose some, but to have it any other way means the collapse of society.

old comment by Canaduck

The way to deal with sex selective abortions is not to hijack the woman's body, forcing her to give birth to a baby she doesn't want and which will end up abandoned on a hillside or in an orphanage (or, perhaps, worst of all, with parents who hate her and consider her a burden.) That barely solves the problem and it certainly doesn't address the root issue.

No, the way to deal with sex selective abortions is to attack the cultural attitudes that cause them. Obviously, the only fetuses aborted en masse are female ones, so human rights education--and ideally, a restructuring of the cultural practices that lead to dowries and a lack of property rights and a ban on schooling or employment for women--is necessary. Not all of these things are remotely easy to achieve, but they're certainly better than exacerbating the problem by further cementing the idea that women and girls are so worthless as human beings that they don't even have the right to decide whether to continue a pregnancy.

There are some groups that work on this--the one that comes to mind is The Invisible Girl Project, but I know there are at least a couple of others.