Abortion

[Coggeh]

I agree with abortion

if it endangers the mothers life

If the child handicapped or is disabled (not because i have quarrl with that but its obviously gonna be an immense strain on the parents)

In the case of Rape

In the case of underage sex

.

Now to the 8-12weeks thing or whatever . if your going to get an abortion your obviously going to decide alot earlier . But its not a big factor personally i just don't agree with someone getting pregnant and suddenly deciding of i dont want a child bam .I know i sound like a complete conservative but its my stand

It doesnt affect my beliefs in socialism ,economically or politcally , and it amazes me that im lobbed in with all this capitalists , bourgeois etc

[TC]

I agree with abortion

if it endangers the mothers life

If the child handicapped or is retarded (not because i have quarrl with that but its obviously gonna be an immense strain on the parents)

In the case of Rape

In the case of underage sex


You just listed all of the reasons that pro-lifers typically say are okay to have abortions for.

Very few of your fellow pro-lifers would dispute that list.


People who are pro-choice agree with abortion for any reason even if trivial or no reason at all, because thats what having free choice means, it means being able to decide things for your own reasons whether or not others agree with you.



Now to the 8-12weeks thing or whatever . if your going to get an abortion your obviously going to decide alot earlier

How is that obvious? A lot of women can't even tell that they're pregnant by 8 weeks.


But its not a big factor personally i just don't agree with someone getting pregnant and suddenly deciding of i dont want a child bam .I know i sound like a complete conservative but its my stand

Has it occured to you that you sound like a conservative because your stand is conservative?

If it talks like a duck and walks like a duck...




It doesnt affect my beliefs in socialism ,economically or politcally ,


Clearly it does since you reject communism fundamental political agenda of human emancipation from oppression and exploitation. Socialism without that is just a perverse form of communitarianism and not leftism at all.


, and it amazes me that im lobbed in with all this capitalists , bourgeois etc

Right, i agree thats wrong. Every capitalist and bourgeois ruling class in the west other than the Irish Republic, Portugal and South Dakota is to the left of you on this issue, so i guess its unfair to them.

[Coggeh]

How is that obvious? A lot of women can't even tell that they're pregnant by 8 weeks.

I wouldnt really dispute that because im not to smart on that issue .



Right, i agree thats wrong. Every capitalist and bourgeois ruling class in the west other than the Irish Republic, Portugal and South Dakota is to the left of you on this issue, so i guess its unfair to them.
I have a damn opinion on something so what ?!!? .Free speech is more of a phrase to you isn't it ?


Clearly it does since you reject communism fundamental political agenda of human emancipation from oppression and exploitation. Socialism without that is just a perverse form of communitarianism and not leftism at all.

So i should take down my red flag .. leave the Socialist party .. quit the movement completely because you say me disagreeing with certain aspects of abortion makes me not a leftist ... :angry:

Your saying this minor difference allows you to throw me in with capitalists ?You have disagreements with people so what ? so what if im not a perfectionist leftist that you think i should be .


Right, i agree thats wrong. Every capitalist and bourgeois ruling class in the west other than the Irish Republic, Portugal and South Dakota is to the left of you on this issue, so i guess its unfair to them.
ya thats why we see new york with a hammer and sickle on their state flag >_> . And england being run by workers councils .

[bezdomni]

I have a damn opinion on something so what ?!!? .Free speech is more of a phrase to you isn't it ?
And what does women's rights mean to you? Telling them they're committing a sin by not wanting to have a child?


So i should take down my red flag .. leave the Socialist party .. quit the movement completely because you say me disagreeing with certain aspects of abortion makes me not a leftist ...

Yes, to encourage the oppression of women is (believe it or not) contrary to the interests of the working class and will in no way ever establish communism.

In fact, the anti-choice poisition is not only reactionary but contrary to materialism. So you are not even a marxist.


ya thats why we see new york with a hammer and sickle on their state flag >_> . And england being run by workers councils .

Uh...what TC was saying is your politics are less progressive than say, Hillary Clinton's.

There is good news though. You can realize that women have the right to do as they please with their bodies and drop the anti-choice bullshit. Think it over for a while, hear the voice of reason and accept self-criticism. Everyone makes mistakes sometimes, just learn from it.

[NorthStarRepublicML]

Coggy, don't let these jackels get you down .... they do not speak for the pro-choice movement any more then they speak for all socialists. If they really cared about argueing their position they would drop all the rhetoric and argue some points with you, although it seems to me like you would rather not argue anyway .....

i think you or anyone else is entitled to their own opinion, wrong or not, or whatever. We all make our own choices and it is foolish to assume that we know everything concering a single issue, to assume that the current view is the way its always going to be is specializing in concensus especially when there are still persons like yourself that wish to continue to contribute to a dialouge.

no one should be 100% convinced of anything, we should always be open to debate, never see objection as stupid, or opposing viewpoints to be below our intellectual palateau. Opposition should be engaged not shunned and the members and moderators here would do better to remember it.

as far as i am concerned there is a lot to be resolved concering abortions as well as a host of other issues.

a person, much like a socialist, is not cut from a mold but is a conglomeration of a lifetime of ideas and experiences. Diversity of ideas and viewpoints promotes strength and homogeneity fosters weakness.

[StartToday]

Was Coggy restricted over his views on abortion?! While I don't completely agree with him, I don't completely disagree, either. I have a problem with late-term abortion. Because the fetus is almost developmentally identical to a newborn. Location being the biggest thing that sets the two apart (so the fetus is denied a right that the newborn has based on location alone). I think late-term abortion is actually pretty sick, but if it came down to all abortions vs no abortions, I'd choose all.

But people, seriously, Coggy is completely against just about all other aspects of society that most of us here are. Namely capitalism and the havoc it wreaks. I think we should all be tolerant of his views. Even if you think he's wrong, I'm sure he's formed his opinion based on what he thinks is best for everyone. Rather than restricting him, why not try to reason with him?

This is exactly what the capitalists would do. Silence the opposition, however small the differences are, by restricting them to an area where nobody pays them any attention. Like for example this site. We'll never see anyone who shares our views on CNN, because as soon as they criticize the smallest, most flawed aspect of capitalism, they'll be banned from the air, never invited to another news show again. So basically, the capitalists have banished lefties to the internet and their own self-produced zines and pamphlets and whatnot. Restricting Coggy is a microcosm of that.

We should avoid becoming what we hate at all costs.

[cubist]

he opposes the free will of women to change there minds about bringing a child into the world,

there fore is opposing free will, therefore he has an opposing ideologie to teh real left cause

its not friggin rocket science.

why should a woman have to bring a child into teh world after a cartain point,

what if she splits up with her fella? loses her job? has an accident and is physically and /or mentally unable to care and love for the child? Why should she be forced into bringing something she cant support and doesn't love into the world?

Bringing an unloved child into teh world isn't pro life its fucking cruel

sure there other options but why should a woman be forced to take the pain of baring a child to give it away.

[Hegemonicretribution]

Originally posted by [email protected] 06, 2007 09:05 am
Rather than restricting him, why not try to reason with him?
The whole point of this board is that we start from some shared assumption and then we discuss more in depth issues....this is not an issue that we feel needs to be discussed outside of OI anymore because there is a board consensus, or near enough.

We can reason with capitalists...but in the real world we do little else but when we talk about politics. You don't like what has happened, that is plain, but it was clearly laid down in the guidelines. This is no more shocking that a capitalist being restricted or a fascist banned.

You want reasoning instead of the usual rhetoric, ok fine: I will cut up bits of posts that I have made in the past on this matter and not received responses to from the anti-choicers: In a very real sense the only necessary difference between men and women is childbirth...say what you want about biology there are lots of other explanations....

So childbirth is key in understanding many discrimination issues: This board does not stop at merely economic approaches, or the political, it is meant for those with a comprehensive understanding of discrimination issues as well.

Discrimination leads to hierarchy...hierarchy negates the possibility of Marxism.

Telling a women she cannot abort is where the problem lies, in the first instance at least; who is it that can have this "authority"? Some leader?....

Also it presupposes a moralistic (often religious) realationship between mother and foetus; one that is not actually there in any material sense.

Bottom line; pregnancy is a risk and can potentially cause harm to the mother in every single case, as well as being less than pleasurable (so I am told). The foetus may have a "right to life," but so does the mother. The mother however is not obligated in anyway to sacrifice her health for that of the baby any more than you are required to donate an organ to a stranger. If she decides to have the baby, great..if not it is none of our fucking business, no more than it would be PETAs if she got rid of a tape worm.

There have been other arguments put foward, and so far I am yet to see a coherent or useful responce from any anti-choicer.

[Hegemonicretribution]

Originally posted by [email protected] 06, 2007 01:59 pm
Why not let the women who is having the child choose whats best for her?
I assume it is because "potential life" is seen to outweigh the well being of the mother...

Or that the foetus is to be considered alive and therefore worth more than the mother's rights not to go through with things....

Or that the mother as a female is deemed inferior, and not able to choose in a fragile state?

It doesn't matter why not, any reason why not should be promptly dealt with so that the claimant can be treated as the sexist that they are, or can see at least how their views lead to discrimination.

[pusher robot]

Originally posted by Hegemonicretribution+June 06, 2007 02:11 pm--> (Hegemonicretribution @ June 06, 2007 02:11 pm)
[email protected] 06, 2007 01:59 pm
Why not let the women who is having the child choose whats best for her?
I assume it is because "potential life" is seen to outweigh the well being of the mother...

Or that the foetus is to be considered alive and therefore worth more than the mother's rights not to go through with things....

Or that the mother as a female is deemed inferior, and not able to choose in a fragile state?

It doesn't matter why not, any reason why not should be promptly dealt with so that the claimant can be treated as the sexist that they are, or can see at least how their views lead to discrimination. [/b]
I argue that it is because (a) the fetus is developed enough to have accrued some human rights and (b) the mother caused the fetus to develop a dependency in the first place, and © has waived her right not to have the fetus dependent on her by her failing to abort it in a timely manner.

[bezdomni]

If he was advocating the oppression of indigenous people or a particular ethnic group...this would probably not even be an issue.

But for some reason, the oppression of women is deemed acceptable?

That's bullshit.

Anybody that doesn't recognize that coggy's line on abortion is deeply reactionary is fooling themselves.

We might as well let racists and nazis run around free on here too, because they are all "entitled to their opinion".

[NorthStarRepublicML]

look, the point is that this member was singled out ..... as i pointed out in the thread titled "unrestrict Coggy" alot of things comparable to the single line that Coggy wrote in the Anti-Choice thread were said by other members, including myself, i'd just like someone to explain the diffrences to me.

here are the highlights AGAIN:


whats birth, when the head enters the outside world, or when the last toe is removed?

refering to abortion:

I think in communism it would be far less frequent and possibly would be stopped altogethre



I'm pro-life as long as that life will be filled with love, freedom, fun, and life lived to its fullest.


Your arguments in favor of abortion almost make me want to abandon my pro-choice position. Your defense of abortion sounds dangerously close to the arguments in favor of private property.



I don't know when the fetus develops a nervous system, but that's where I'd draw the line.

Coggy himself wrote:


I support abortions in cases such as rape and the like , also i think the line should be 8-12weeks while the foetus hasn't really developed at all in that time let alone have the ability to feel .

and i wrote:


I would be willing to wager that adoption programs are MORE beneficial to society then abortion programs

so why was he singled out? what is to prevent the thought police from rounding us all up for restrcitions?

[Redmau5]

the mother caused the fetus to develop a dependency in the first place

So, smokers cause themselves lung cancer. Should they be told 'well it's your fault, you should live with the consequences'?


has waived her right not to have the fetus dependent on her by her failing to abort it in a timely manner.

What if a woman didn't realise she was pregnant until it was too late? There have been cases of women not realising they were pregnant until they've went into labour, and although that's rare, many don't develop a big enough bump to make them realise that they are infact pregnant.

[Coggeh]

Originally posted by [email protected] 06, 2007 05:10 pm
If he was advocating the oppression of indigenous people or a particular ethnic group...this would probably not even be an issue.

But for some reason, the oppression of women is deemed acceptable?

That's bullshit.

Anybody that doesn't recognize that coggy's line on abortion is deeply reactionary is fooling themselves.

We might as well let racists and nazis run around free on here too, because they are all "entitled to their opinion".
Apparently it is, it seems having an opinion is a crime on this forum .

Not fully supporting abortion is oppressive against women ?

In a socialist society would it matter , unless the it were in certain circumstances like i outlined above , why would people want to get an abortion ?

So its reactionary to say abortion is wrong when not necessary , why not just take the proper precautions in the bedroom and not bring it to the stage where 2months before your supposed to give birth you decide , oh no i don't want this bam baby dead.

I think your blowing this way out of proportions , abortion isn't even a big issue with me , it doesn't affect my socialist ideals and it shouldn't.I'm not one of those crazy pro-lifers , i support stem cell research ,embryo research etc . But i personnally don't believe that killing a baby when its alive in the woman only weeks before its born is at all right.

[Coggeh]

Originally posted by [email protected] 06, 2007 05:10 pm
Anybody that doesn't recognize that coggy's line on abortion is deeply reactionary is fooling themselves.


You don't see it reactionary to single out a comrade who fights for socialism because he disagrees with you on a single issue ?

[Hegemonicretribution]

Coggy should not be singled out, breaches of the rules are to be treated the same.

When a topic causes a lot of discussion sometimes the administration hold off to take stock, would you rather that every single comment was followed up now? (This is not necessarily the case here, and I am not sure what exactly is happening, it is a possibility though)

As it stands Coggy is in violation of the rules, some members, but not all those suggested will also be in breach of the rules as they stand. The guidelines contain everything up to this point.

[pusher robot]

So, smokers cause themselves lung cancer. Should they be told 'well it's your fault, you should live with the consequences'?

To a certain extent, yes, of course, if the alternative is killing another person just so that they can continue to live comfortably.

What if a woman didn't realise she was pregnant until it was too late?
It is highly improbable. There are many other indicators of pregnancy besides simply getting bigger. I suppse in cases where it is reasonable no to have known certain exceptions could be made.

Let me throw that question back at you now: suppose the woman truly had no idea, and finds herself in labor. Quite involuntarily, she births the baby. Is she entitled to kill it merely because she didn't want it in the first place?

[bolshevik butcher]

Coggy I think that you're a genuine and active socialist but I'm afaid I think you've widely missed the mark here.

Abortion is an important right that was won by women through a long hard struggle. A fetus is not alive, it cannot survive in its own right, and why should a woman be forced to go through a pregnancy that she does not wish to have to go through, why should be held to randsom.

I can't help but feel this discussion wont get very far and would be far more productive a discussion in real life.

[Janus]

Coggy should not be singled out, breaches of the rules are to be treated the same.
Right, there is such a deluge of posts on this board that it's usually pretty difficult to go through them all and identify everything. I'm sure there are some people who are able to "get away" with it because they either don't post on said subject or one of their posts was ignored. However, when people who hold such reactionary positions are identified, they are either restricted or banned.

[Fawkes]

I agree with abortion

if it endangers the mothers life

If the child handicapped or is disabled (not because i have quarrl with that but its obviously gonna be an immense strain on the parents)

In the case of Rape

In the case of underage sex
So, in other words, you don't actually care about the fetus's "rights", but instead, you just wish to punish women that choose to have sex, correct? I mean, pro-lifers claim to support the "rights of the unborn", yet, they seem to disregard those "rights" when the mother did not voluntarily have sex. So really, you don't care at all about the fetus's "rights", but instead, you wish to punish women that voluntarily have sex and get pregnant, most likely as a result of your own morality. So, stop fooling yourself and pretending as if you are for protecting to fetus, because it is obvious you are not. Also, this "single issue" is a pretty fucking big one. Do you support the restricting of homophobes that happen to hold communist economic and political views? This is no different; you may hold communist economic and political views, but that does not change the fact that you are very obviously against women having free reign over their bodies which obviously entails sexism.

[Tower of Bebel]

Coggy, to make it look clear for me:

Let's say the woman was raped and she wants to have a abortion, yet she's already more than 12 weeks pregnant?

[TC]

Originally posted by Coggy


In a socialist society would it matter , unless the it were in certain circumstances like i outlined above , why would people want to get an abortion ?


Coggy, seriously, just how stupid are you?

People want abortions because they don't want to be pregnant and they don't want to give birth. You would have to be living under a rock not to realize why being pregnant and giving birth are incredibly undesirable damaging experiences which, when someone volunteers for it, are only mitigated by the compensation of having a much wanted child.

Pregnancy usually involves extended periods of sickness and nausea, muscle aches, bowel and urinary tract problems, getting incredibly fat in an incredibly unflattering way (which most will never fully lose), developing huge stretch marks permanently scaring stomach stomach, breasts and thighs. Not to mention when the fetus is developed enough, feeling a foreign organism moving around inside of you, something that might be comforting and emotionally satisfying to someone who wants it there, but profoundly upsetting and alienating to the point of estrangement from ones own body to someone who does not (maybe comparable to the difference between someones emotional reaction to sex with someone they love and rape).

If that wasn't upsetting enough, actually getting a full term fetus out is much worse. Giving birth naturally is extremely painful and doctors avoid most effective forms of pain relief out of fear of harming the baby, instead usually just using nitrous oxide which is not very effective (or with epidural blocks which involve total paralysis and putting a long needle into the spine). Labour contractions are simultaneously painful and exhausting. To actually get an infant head out during vaginal delivery almost always either entails it literally ripping its mother's vagina apart (often all the way to the anus) or a doctor slashing the vaginal opening with surgical scissors to avoid more extensive tearing; (doctors will try to repair it after birth but sexual experience will never be the same again as it leaves extensive scar tissue). And that lasts for an average of thirteen hours,, (probably with a room full of the couple's relatives staring at, or worse video taping, the woman's naked croach, spread in stirrups).

Alternatively, if there are any number of common complications which can quickly become fatal (as giving birth is associated with things like massive bloodloss, hypovolemic shock and death), having a c-section delivery involves major abdominal surgery with a wide cut either across the stomach, or vertically through the whole length of the stomach, through the stomach muscles, which takes weeks to recover from and leaves a huge unsightly scar (and doctors usually discourage elective c-sections for some reason, maybe they're sadists, maybe insurance companies are cheap).


So Coggy, if you can't see why someone would want to avoid that, you know, for purely personal, selfish reasons, unless they really wanted a kid, then you are either a moron or you don't have a shred of empathy.

[TC]

Originally posted by pusher [email protected] 06, 2007 06:49 pm
on just so that they can continue to live comfortably.

What if a woman didn't realise she was pregnant until it was too late?
It is highly improbable. There are many other indicators of pregnancy besides simply getting bigger.


Almost every one of the other symptoms associated with pregnancy wouldn't necessarily be interpreted that way since all of the others are also symptoms of unrelated hormonal and health issuses. Like, if you're nauseated, you *might* think you're pregnant, or you might just think you're nauseated for the million other reasons that cause it. Women who don't have regular periods or who are surpressing them with birth control pills wouldn't necessarily notice a difference, or attribute any difference to being pregnant (especially if they're on the pill and understandably assume that its impossible, since it almost is) so it can take a long time for them to realize they could be pregnant, and a lot of women continue to have menstruation like bleeding during pregnancy and understandably assume that it means they're not pregnant. A lot of women don't figure out that they're pregnant until after 12 weeks from conception, so under Coggy's morality they wouldn't have any chance at all to get an abortion.

And really, if it was so obvious there wouldn't be tests for it!


I suppse in cases where it is reasonable no to have known certain exceptions could be made.

Everyone would just lie about it then since that would be impossible to verify.


Let me throw that question back at you now: suppose the woman truly had no idea, and finds herself in labor. Quite involuntarily, she births the baby. Is she entitled to kill it merely because she didn't want it in the first place?

If such an unlikely scenario happened, she could legitimately have it aborted during labour so that she could avoid having labour and childbirth (which are not fun things, see my above post if you went to the same Catholic school of reality-avoidance as Coggy did).

After its out of her body though, its not her problem and she would have no material privilege over it. The reason why abortions are justified is on the grounds of bodily autonomy, to avoid having the physical experience of pregnancy and childbirth; if someone has already given birth and the baby is no longer compromising their body than their autonomy is no longer at issue. So, your question is totally irrelevant.

[Coggeh]

Originally posted by [email protected] 06, 2007 09:42 pm
Coggy, to make it look clear for me:

Let's say the woman was raped and she wants to have a abortion, yet she's already more than 12 weeks pregnant?
Ya no problem obviously if she was raped like.

[Coggeh]

Whats all this calling me an idiot , you can't sit down and have an intelligent discussion can you ? you just go about restricting and labelling before you even try to debate them on an issue . Love to see how you get on talking to average people on the street .

Why should i get excluded because i don't agree with abortions in certain circumstances , its very clear alot of you take certain things way to seriously and its a shame .

If someone doesn't want a kid in a socialist society . 1) use contraception 2) make sure that sexual education and info about relationships is put into the mind of teens very clearly 3) free childcare sutainable job economically its not a problem 4) if your going to decide to have a baby then go through with it like

[Coggeh]

Look im not pro-choice 100% so f**king what ?!!?

It should not be a restriction , i should not be put in with the bourgeois members in OI . Alot of you are very clearly putting this issue at too high an importance to a point where you would even put it before socialism as you have done in my case.I i have one mesly flaw in my ideology and im gone.Alot of this sites members have lost touch with the real world and the working class to go to a point of excluding someone who doesn't fit the criteria 100% .Good luck getting the revolution started if thats your attitude.

[bloody_capitalist_sham]

Coggy, why cant women just have an abortion outside those things you stipulated?

For what reasons should abortions be not allowed?

[Coggeh]

why does my opinion go against socialism and its ideal ?

I believe that the pointless killing of a baby or a foetus which has the potential for life is wrong unless its necessary . I'm not even very hard on this issue if it were socialism or no abortions then obviously i would pick socialism . its very minor to me but it is a small opinion of mine

[bloody_capitalist_sham]

But, surely you understand that some people will feel that your opinion would deny them the choice to determine what goes on in their own body.

That foetus could not survive outside the womans body, and by denying abortion, you are forcing a woman to carry something inside them against their will.



why does my opinion go against socialism and its ideal ?

I just think that socialism should be an expansion of the choices for individuals. Most developed countries that are not stifled by decrees by un elected, un accountable and reactionary religious leaders, already give women that choice. Socialism really shouldnt take it away.

[Connolly]

Alot of this sites members have lost touch with the real world and the working class to go to a point of excluding someone who doesn't fit the criteria 100% .Good luck getting the revolution started if thats your attitude.

I agree totally here with you comrade.

The point should be to educate and reason with people, and especially those who would consider themselves socialists, or even tending towards socialist ideas.

Restricting members who have not fully come to grasp with the arguments for the various socialist positions is potentially alienating.

Its ridiculous the level of understanding (lack of) of anothers position on revleft.

Youd swear they were born with these ideals and devine understanding - and that they too never made mistakes or had to come to grasp with their beliefs.

Arnt they lucky they were never in a position of rejection before their social views matured. :rolleyes:

[Coggeh]

Originally posted by [email protected] 07, 2007 12:11 am
But, surely you understand that some people will feel that your opinion would deny them the choice to determine what goes on in their own body.

That foetus could not survive outside the womans body, and by denying abortion, you are forcing a woman to carry something inside them against their will.



why does my opinion go against socialism and its ideal ?

I just think that socialism should be an expansion of the choices for individuals. Most developed countries that are not stifled by decrees by un elected, un accountable and reactionary religious leaders, already give women that choice. Socialism really shouldnt take it away.
well pre-mature births are getting earlier and earlier so the foetus can survive after a certain stage .

If your going to decide to have a baby and you get to a stage where the foetus can sustain life in the event of a pre-mature birth doesn't the baby get any right at all ?

Socialism doesn't take it away , esspecially when most socialists support abortion . But it does however make it alot easier to a mother socially and financially in the event of a pregnancy to say im going to keep it .

[Hegemonicretribution]

Coggy this board represents ceratin revolutionary economic and social approaches. You may share the economic side, but whilst your social side is out of touch with the guidelines you may as well be a capitalist in the context of this site; both matter are important.

It was in the guidelines when you joined. If you had specific issues and wanted hear arguments there is a learning forum.

If you want to maintain your opinion then whatever, but just as capitalists are not tollerated neither are anti-choicers, no great injustice, just the way this site is as established by members of this site.

[Coggeh]

I support abortions up until the extent when the foetus is capable of living on its own .

Its not like i carry pictures of dead babies around to abortion clinics now is it ?

Any and all members on this forum who exclude a comrade because of this are too single minded and up-tight to be called leftists .

[Hegemonicretribution]

Originally posted by [email protected] 07, 2007 12:44 am
I support abortions up until the extent when the foetus is capable of living on its own .

Its not like i carry pictures of dead babies around to abortion clinics now is it ?

Any and all members on this forum who exclude a comrade because of this are too single minded and up-tight to be called leftists .
Hey capitalists view the board the same way for restricting them on economic issues, homophobes on discrimination issues again...the line is drawn and goes towards making the guidelines.

That you consider your case to be unfair is not surprising, it is unlikely that you would want to hold an opinion that necessarily excludes, but because of the nature of the abortion debate it does. If this forum isn't for you find another one, if you change your mind come back..whatever, it is up to you.

One of the problems with your approach is that you are viewing it from the view of the foetus (not exactly correct but you know what I mean).

No one should be able to tell you what to do with your body, whether drugs, suicide, mutilation..whatever it is your body. No one has a right to demand anything of your body either; sex, labour, or even life support. It does not matter whether or not this is in the form of organ donation or carrying a pregnancy to birth, no one can claim anything of the woman. If she decides to keep the child then fine, but whilst it is still her body she has complete control over everything.

That things could have been done earlier does not matter, the foetus can at no point can claim the right to life at the expense the mother.

The issue is not how or when, it is simply this: We have not, at any point, the right to deny anyone control of their own body.

If you do not accept this is virtue of 8 weeks or 12 weeks or whatever then fine, but understanding the simple statement above is key to the understanding why this should not be an issue for discussion amongst the accepted members here. The right to have full control over ones body does not end when they are pregnant, to claim it does as you have suggested shows that you do not share a radical view on this matter, and merely make allowances for something you disagree with.

[Mujer Libre]

Originally posted by Coggy
Alot of you are very clearly putting this issue at too high an importance to a point where you would even put it before socialism as you have done in my case.I i have one mesly flaw in my ideology and im gone.
Look, this is not an issue of lesser importance. Because it is an issue about women having control over their own bodies, versus women having that control taken away from them it is inherently tied up with revleftism- which aims to emancipate all people. It's as simple as that. Restricting womens access to abortion, or wanting to do so is to want to restrict women's emancipation by removing their bodily autonomy. This has been the practice of patriarchs for centuries. I see you want to continue their work...

The fact that you (and those supporting you) constantly try to downplay the importance of abortion suggests to me that you don't take women's liberation seriously, which definitely means you're not my comrade.

[Coggeh]

Hey capitalists view the board the same way for restricting them on economic issues, homophobes on discrimination issues again...the line is drawn and goes towards making the guidelines
:mellow: ..... :huh: .... :rolleyes:


No one should be able to tell you what to do with your body, whether drugs, suicide, mutilation..whatever it is your body. No one has a right to demand anything of your body either; sex, labour, or even life support. It does not matter whether or not this is in the form of organ donation or carrying a pregnancy to birth, no one can claim anything of the woman. If she decides to keep the child then fine, but whilst it is still her body she has complete control over everything.
so i can kill myself 2morro because its "my body"(regardless of who it effects around me) i can take cocaine and drink all i like because its "my body" :blink: .

i believe women can do what ever they like in the sense of abortions but when you hit the stage where theirs life then it is too late . 6months is a hell of a long time to be thinking about a baby and whether or not to have it , and if you havent decided by then... well wtf like :huh: .



That things could have been done earlier does not matter, the foetus can at no point can claim the right to life at the expense the mother.
What do you mean at the expense of the mother , if your going to have a baby think about it before you go ahead and if you suddenly decide to kill it when its capable of life then its just wrong .


The issue is not how or when, it is simply this: We have not, at any point, the right to deny anyone control of their own body.
I'm not if you think more clearly about it , when the baby or foetus is capable of having its own body on its own separate to its mother , is that not going against its right to life and control of its own body ?


to claim it does as you have suggested shows that you do not share a radical view on this matter, and merely make allowances for something you disagree with.

what does that mean exactly ?

[Janus]

I support abortions up until the extent when the foetus is capable of living on its own .
You just changed your position from drawing the line at 8-12 weeks to this.

Also, do we really need to discuss this in two separate threads?

[Coggeh]

Originally posted by Mujer [email protected] 07, 2007 01:15 am
Look, this is not an issue of lesser importance. Because it is an issue about women having control over their own bodies, versus women having that control taken away from them it is inherently tied up with revleftism- which aims to emancipate all people. It's as simple as that. Restricting womens access to abortion, or wanting to do so is to want to restrict women's emancipation by removing their bodily autonomy. This has been the practice of patriarchs for centuries. I see you want to continue their work...

The fact that you (and those supporting you) constantly try to downplay the importance of abortion suggests to me that you don't take women's liberation seriously, which definitely means you're not my comrade.
Typical more labelling from up-tight "revolutionaries"

i don't like the idea of abortions when the baby is capable of sustaining its own life , i don't go burning down abortion clinics , you have disagreements within groups,parites etc but the common ideals are the same . I believe in all aspects that women and men should be completely equal .

And why do you think people downplay the importance of issues like this ? 1) because everything someone steps out of line this board throws a damn tantrum . 2) because they know that just because theirs a minor fault in a comrades theory that they both share the common good of over throwing capitalism and setting forth the idea of the progression of socialism ,anarchism etc

[LSD]

so i can kill myself 2morro because its "my body"(regardless of who it effects around me) i can take cocaine and drink all i like because its "my body"

Well ...yeah.

Or are you proposing that suicide be criminalized (somehow) or that drug prohibition is anything but an unconscienable deprivation of our rights?

If someone's elses actions make you feel bad, you have every right to ask them to stop, but what you don't have is legitimate cause to imprison them for doing it.

If you don't like abortion after a certain arbitrary point (six months was it?), that's your right and, were you to get pregnant, feel free to not get an abortion after six months.

But if you want something to be illegal with all the ramifications therein, then you're going to have to present something better than specious appeals to the "sanctity of life".

A foetus is no more imbued with "sanctity" than a cow is. And as long as it is within a woman's body, imposing on her person, sapping her resources, endangering her life, she has more than sufficient right to get rid of it if she so chooses.

***

And by the way, you've revealed your conservatism with your appeals to "responsibility".

If this were really about the "life" of the "baby" then it wouldn't matter whether a woman "should" decide by six months or "should" "think about it before". All that would matter is saving that "life".

But clearly what's galling you here is that a woman would dare to get pregnant and then not choose to keep the results, or might wait a few months deciding.

That displays a degree of "irresponsiblity" that offends you and so you want to punish these "whores" for their "wicked ways".

It's the patriarchal subtext to the entire pro-life movement, treating the entire female sex as if they were disobedient children who must be forced to "face the consequences" of their promiscuity.

I think it goes without saying why we don't tolerate that kind of crap outside of OI.

[Hegemonicretribution]

Originally posted by [email protected] 07, 2007 01:17 am
:mellow: ..... :huh: .... :rolleyes:


That you view your case as different is evident, as it that most here do not. Please do not belittle yourself by stooping so low.


so i can kill myself 2morro because its "my body"(regardless of who it effects around me) i can take cocaine and drink all i like because its "my body" :blink: .

Yes you can. Why do you have puritanical stances on drugs and suicide?


i believe women can do what ever they like in the sense of abortions but when you hit the stage where theirs life then it is too late . 6months is a hell of a long time to be thinking about a baby and whether or not to have it , and if you havent decided by then... well wtf like :huh: .

Have you ever been pregnant? I guess not? Then you do not know what it is like and consequently should not be able to legislate how it should go for those that may have to experience it.

Do you honestly think that most women who want to abort at 6 months have had 6 months of waying up the pros and cons in a stable environment? It is a massive enough issue for you to want to deny them the right to their own body, is it not massive enough to take as much time as they need?


What do you mean at the expense of the mother , if your going to have a baby think about it before you go ahead and if you suddenly decide to kill it when its capable of life then its just wrong .

Go ahead and what? Have sex? You see abortions are required just because of the sexual disadvantage women are placed at as a result of childbirth and pregnancy. There are some biological differences but we can overcome these, and want to. We do not want to focus on them by upholding them as a burden.

Capable of life? This is a very subjective claim. Why just survival and not quality of life? Early births can be very problematic.

Also nothing is just wrong.


I'm not if you think more clearly about it , when the baby or foetus is capable of having its own body on its own separate to its mother , is that not going against its right to life and control of its own body ?

Sure why the fuck not? Makes no difference as I have said: The foetus can have a right to life but the mother is not obliged to provide it. Also yes you are. That is plain to see here, what you have tried to do is deny the rights of the woman in terms of the rights of another. This does not apply because the obligation between foetus and mother does not exist any more than it does between tape worm and host.

I understand your view, and I am not too concerned about disproving it so much as at least illustrating to you why many on this site are as extreme as they are. You have not yet grasped what it is to have control over ones body however, your objections make this clear as you are trying to reconcile claims that do not fit with complete autonomy.


what does that mean exactly ?

It means more as a complete sentence :P

Basically it doesn't matter that you aren't completely anti-choice. The fact that you are at all means that you do not share the radical view pertaining to social issues that this board deems acceptable for the general membership.

[Coggeh]

Or are you proposing that suicide be criminalized (somehow) or that drug prohibition is anything but an unconscienable deprivation of our rights?
How do you criminalize suicide .......

well why would cocaine or any hard drug even be produced in a socialist society :unsure: i dont see you logic .

Granted an acid trip here and there is fun :P


That displays a degree of "irresponsiblity" that offends you and so you want to punish these "whores" for their "wicked ways".

I notice your quote marks over the words , do ya mind providng a source as to where i said that or are you just doing what most do on this board and taking things out of context so you can insult someones opinion ?


It's the patriarchal subtext to the entire pro-life movement, treating the entire female sex as if they were disobedient children who must be forced to "face the consequences" of their promiscuity.

The same as someone who smokes gets cancer ... causes and consequences to all aspects of life , socialism doesn't remove the human laws .You can do whatever you like with your body but when it effects something that is practically alive but just not in the outside world yet its different


But clearly what's galling you here is that a woman would dare to get pregnant and then not choose to keep the results, or might wait a few months deciding.
In fairness , you should decide to have a baby or not before you get pregnant and all loose ends should be tied up very early . and if you still havent decided or are considering not too say 5months in go ahead with the abortion or whatever .

I never knew responsibilities for people (male or female) became a reactionary idea....

[Mujer Libre]

Coggy, you haven't addressed my post at all. You've even resorted to basically saying "Abortion is a minor issue because it's minor."

Respond to my post, by actually engaging with it, and maybe we can talk...

Or maybe you aren't engaging with it, or with anyones, because you know that your position is logically untenable for a leftist?

[Coggeh]

I believe that when alive (or capable of life) ...(ive used that phrase so many times lately) lol ... that the rights of the baby should be taken into account and abortions should be done as early as possible if their going to be done .

[LSD]

well why would cocaine or any hard drug even be produced in a socialist society

Because they're fun.

And I'm still waiting for you to answer the question, do you favour locking up drug "addicts" (or otherwise repressing them) because of their drug use?

After all, you expressed shock (" :blink: ") at the idea that someone has the right to take cocaine only three posts back. Are you now retreating from that position?


The same as someone who smokes gets cancer ... causes and consequences to all aspects of life , socialism doesn't remove the human laws . you can do whatever you like with your body but when it effects something that is practically alive but just not in the outside world yet its different

Lots of things are "practically alive", including many things that we routinely slaughter.

There is no "right" or "sanctity" to life. And a mother's right to personal integrity trump the imagined "rights" of the unwanted foetus taking up space in her womb.

And insofar as "consequences", smoking causes cancer right now, it won't always be such. Or are you proposing that if a cure for cancer were found, it should be witheld from smokers?

Again, this is the social conservatism of which I speak. You don't just want to "save" the "baby", you also want to punish the woman for daring to be "irresponsible".

Pregnancy may be a possible "consequence" of fucking, but luckily there's a fairly simply way to deal with that "consequences".

It's called abortion.


In fairness , you should decide to have a baby or not before you get pregnant

No you "shouldnt", what you "should" do is whatever the fuck you want to.

Women have every right to get pregnant, or not; or to have a baby, or not; or to get an abortion, or not. There's no "should" about it.

The only people who proclame "shoulds" on issues of personal autonomy are social conservatives who's moralistic paradigm drives them to declare universal codes of behaviour and then harass anyone who deviates.

Again, you have every right to think on this subject whatever the fuck you want. What you don't have is the right to use the long arm of the law to imprison (or worse) those who disagree with you.

No one is restricted on this board for not favouring abortion, supporting the criminalization of abortion, however, is an entirely different matter.


I never knew responsibilities for people (male or female) became a reactionary idea....

It is when you try to legislate it.

[Coggeh]

And I'm still waiting for you to answer the question, do you favour locking up drug "addicts" (or otherwise repressing them) because of their drug use?

After all, you expressed shock (" blink.gif ") at the idea that someone has the right to take cocaine only three posts back. Are you now retreating from that position?

Ok anyone who has ever talked to me on msn knows i use that smiley constantly

Drug addicts of course shouldn't be locked up when did i say that ?

Cocaine is fun ? ... since when .

are you saying drugs aren't a problem , are you promoting them in the manner of cocaine or heroin , they are a tool of the oppressors to keep the people in line they were used to destroy civil rights movements . Oh course i have a problem with drugs .

I support the legalization of "soft" drugs such as marijuana and the like .


And insofar as "consequences", smoking causes cancer right now, it won't always be such. Or are you proposing that if a cure for cancer were found, it should be witheld from smokers?

Again, this is the social conservatism of which I speak. You don't just want to "save" the "baby", you also want to punish the woman for daring to be "irresponsible".
How do i want to punish the woman ?

Smokers get cancer , you have a choice to smoke or not .If you get it its only yourself to blame , but of course if a cure was avadible it should be given out to anyone who needs it .


Pregnancy may be a possible "consequence" of fucking, but luckily there's a fairly simply way to deal with that "consequences".

It's called abortion.
No its called save sex. Abortion isn't a simple thing so don't present it as such . Alot of women go through traumatic stress after abortions, wouldnt it be alot easier to take a pill or to use a condom ?


No one is restricted on this board for not favouring abortion, supporting the criminalization of abortion, however, is an entirely different matter.

AND YET IM STILL RESTRICTED!?!?
I don't not like the idea of abortion in the circumstances i have said before but it isnt a big issue to me and very low on the list of my priorities of achieving socialism .

[Fawkes]

Originally posted by [email protected] 06, 2007 06:42 pm
Whats all this calling me an idiot , you can't sit down and have an intelligent discussion can you ? you just go about restricting and labelling before you even try to debate them on an issue . Love to see how you get on talking to average people on the street .

Why should i get excluded because i don't agree with abortions in certain circumstances , its very clear alot of you take certain things way to seriously and its a shame .

If someone doesn't want a kid in a socialist society . 1) use contraception 2) make sure that sexual education and info about relationships is put into the mind of teens very clearly 3) free childcare sutainable job economically its not a problem 4) if your going to decide to have a baby then go through with it like
I am attempting to have an intelligent conversation. Please, respond to my post.

[Hegemonicretribution]

Originally posted by [email protected] 07, 2007 02:38 am
AND YET IM STILL RESTRICTED!?!?
I don't not like the idea of abortion in the circumstances i have said before but it isnt a big issue to me and very low on the list of my priorities of achieving socialism .
I was busy elsewhere and am kinda out of the loop now but I am sure LSD more than has this.

Anyway you don;t like the idea in the circumstances you stated, but what about the others? You think women should be prevented at aborting at 9 months? If so yes you should be restricted.

[LSD]

Drug addicts of course shouldn't be locked up when did i say that ?

I support the legalization of "soft" drugs such as marijuana and the like .

Which means you don't support the legalization of "harder" ones? i.e, you favour locking people up for "posessing" them.

Again, you're displaying a deeply conservative social outlook.

That in and of itself is not grounds for restriction, however. What is grounds is opposing a woman's right to personal autonomy. Your own personal "feelings" with regards to abortion are irrelevent.

So, simple question, do you respect the right to abortion on demand?

Put another way, are you in favour of the criminal prosecution of those who have late-term (however you define that) abortions?


abortion isn't a simple thing so don't present it as such . Alot of women go through traumatic stress after abortions, wouldnt it be alot easier to take a pill or to use a condom ?

Yes, but people still have the right to not without suffering legal consequences for it.

Again, legislating "responsibility" is repressive by its nature. It's also fundamentally anti-leftist and anti-revolutionary.

[Mujer Libre]

Originally posted by [email protected] 07, 2007 02:07 am
I believe that when alive (or capable of life) ...(ive used that phrase so many times lately) lol ... that the rights of the baby should be taken into account and abortions should be done as early as possible if their going to be done .
I see Fawkes is having the same problem as me- you still haven't responded to my post.

By focussing on the "life" (whatever that means) or even worse, "potential life" of the foetus you are doing exactly what conservatives do in drawing attention away from the woman's body and her right to autonomy, which should never, ever be in question.

You also refer to the foetus as a baby! I mean, how much more anti-choice rheoric can you incorporate?

Also:

The fact that you (and those supporting you) constantly try to downplay the importance of abortion suggests to me that you don't take women's liberation seriously, which definitely means you're not my comrade. Thoughts? Opinions?

[Coggeh]

Originally posted by [email protected] 06, 2007 09:37 pm
So, in other words, you don't actually care about the fetus's "rights", but instead, you just wish to punish women that choose to have sex, correct? I mean, pro-lifers claim to support the "rights of the unborn", yet, they seem to disregard those "rights" when the mother did not voluntarily have sex. So really, you don't care at all about the fetus's "rights", but instead, you wish to punish women that voluntarily have sex and get pregnant, most likely as a result of your own morality. So, stop fooling yourself and pretending as if you are for protecting to fetus, because it is obvious you are not. Also, this "single issue" is a pretty fucking big one. Do you support the restricting of homophobes that happen to hold communist economic and political views? This is no different; you may hold communist economic and political views, but that does not change the fact that you are very obviously against women having free reign over their bodies which obviously entails sexism.
I support abortion in most cases , up until the foetus is capable of sustaining its own life (which research has shown can be up to 6months).

I don't see how someone could be openly against gays and be a communist economically and politically . And if that was the cause alot should be done before restriction to say look hating gays isn't cool you know ?

In the same way not one person confronted me on this issue until after i was restricted but thats besides the point

The way people are saying this to me and talking about my position is probably my fault for poor phrasing i don't know, but i don't say abortion is wrong and say we should punish the women and i even doubt that if it were my decision i would even make a law against abortion in any case ,personally i just think that killing something when its basically alive is is wrong and the the most should be done to see it doesn't happen , not by jailing women or any of that crap but by making sure if your going to have a child that you know about the pros and cons before you decide it , that safe sex is encouraged to stop the so abortions become a less often experience .

[Coggeh]

Originally posted by Mujer [email protected] 07, 2007 02:50 am

The fact that you (and those supporting you) constantly try to downplay the importance of abortion suggests to me that you don't take women's liberation seriously, which definitely means you're not my comrade. Thoughts? Opinions?
The fact that you would exclude a comrade because of this issue says alot about how progressive you are in terms of understanding opinions , would you turn away someone who applied to join a movement because he was not 100% pro-choice ?

[Fawkes]

I support abortion in most cases , up until the foetus is capable of sustaining its own life (which research has shown can be up to 6months).
It's not capable of sustaining its own life without outside help until the age of maybe 5 or so. The difference between a fetus and a baby is that the fetus is solely dependent on the mother for survival, thus leaving it at her discretion what happens to the fetus.

[Coggeh]

Which means you don't support the legalization of "harder" ones? i.e, you favour locking people up for "posessing" them.
I don't favour having them paraded around for all to buy now do you ?


Again, you're displaying a deeply conservative social outlook.
Im saying that cocaine and heroin are bad ... ya im the next george bush <_<


Put another way, are you in favour of the criminal prosecution of those who have late-term (however you define that) abortions?
No , but i do believe alot more should be done so that doesn&#39;t happen , your attitude of ah sure you can have an abortion anyway doesn&#39;t help that much .


Yes, but people still have the right to not without suffering legal consequences for it.

Again, legislating "responsibility" is repressive by its nature. It&#39;s also fundamentally anti-leftist and anti-revolutionary.
Attacking a comrade for a position he barely held would be in itself anti-revolutionary.

The way you go about it you&#39;d swear murder was free will right . (i don&#39;t mean that in abortion terms btw :lol: )

[LSD]

I&#39;m sorry, but if there was an answer to my question in there, it&#39;s too well hidden for me to find.

So again, yes or no, are you in favour of the criminalization of abortion at any stage of pregnancy? And just to be clear, that includes any coercive means used to "reduce" or otherwise limit access to abortion.


your attitude of ah sure you can have an abortion anyway doesn&#39;t help that much .

That "attitude" is called respecting human rights and recognizing that my personal moral precepts have no business fuckinhg up somebody else&#39;s life.

[pusher robot]

The [blank] can have a right to [blank] but [blank] is not obliged to provide it.

Would that you adopted this very principle in any other scenario.

That&#39;s what seems so hypocritical to me. You wouldn&#39;t accept:

"The [poor] can have a right to [health care] but [the taxpayer] is not obliged to provide it."

Or how about:

"The [workers] can have a right to [the fair value of their labor] but [the owner] is not obliged to provide it."

Or what about:

"The [common man] can have a right to [the pursuit of happiness] but [society] is not obliged to provide it."

Or the real kicker:

"The [woman] can have a right to [an abortion] but [society] is not obliged to provide it." Would you agree with that?

Yet this ONE ISSUE you completely flip-flop your principles. Why? The good communist mother has a duty to provide from her ability to those with need. The fetus has need, she has ability. Why the deviation from form?

[Kwisatz Haderach]

That a fetus is alive is beyond question and completely misses the point - bacteria are alive too, after all. Any functioning cell is alive. The question is whether a fetus can be considered an independent human life.

Ultimately, all these messy questions surrounding abortion stem from the fact that we are trying to apply a discrete human right (you either have the right to life or you don&#39;t) to a continuous natural process (there is no magical moment when a fetus suddenly becomes a baby - it&#39;s a gradual, continuous process). That is why I try to step away from a rights-based perspective - which will get you nowhere - and look at it from a utilitarian and class-based point of view. What happens when abortion is illegal? Some of the women who wanted abortions will carry their pregnancies to term, going through all the associated suffering and likely ruining both their lives and the lives of their children. Others will seek illegal, unsafe abortions. What is the positive benefit of restricting access to abortion? Some children will be born who would not otherwise have been born. But this cannot be considered good in itself - if it were true that we should take legal measures to increase the number of children who are born, why stop at abortion? Why not ban contraception, or, for that matter, encourage people to have unsafe sex so as to produce as many new human beings as possible?

Obviously such a thing would be inhuman (not to mention suicidal for the human species in the long run). The idea that creating a new human life is always desirable leads to unacceptable conclusions, and must be rejected. So it is not in fact always desirable to maximize the number of new humans being born. So there is nothing inherently bad about the fact that legal abortion will reduce the number of births.

Thus, in fact, laws restricting abortion will provide no benefit and will end up causing numerous social problems - problems that will hit the working class above all. So we should not have laws restricting abortion.

[cubist]

who said it should be paid for by the state&#33; the question is wether or not the woman should be allwoed the CHOICE.

In a communist world obviously it would be paid for by the state but errr we aint in one we aint arguing about what would happen then we are discussing what should happen now, and please bring this up in the right thread.

The Fetus has no rights its a unconscious parasite. how can somethign which doesn&#39;t know what consciousness is be classed as human sure it will be human but a child will be an adult,


do you want children fighting wars?
do you want children driving cars?
surely the child has the right to do so becuase its going to be an adult


if you on about murder being killing all living things i suggest you become a fruitarian, otherwise your principles are floored,

[Hegemonicretribution]

Originally posted by pusher [email protected] 07, 2007 04:10 am

The [blank] can have a right to [blank] but [blank] is not obliged to provide it.




From the outset I appologise for not responding to your points, but I will say you have offered the first real criticism that I have seen. I do of course have a response which you may or may not observed, but you have provided a criticism of a view rather than asserting a merely contradictory one so kudos :)

As it stands there are no such obligations that really exist. Of course, if one were to extend such criticisms we would have many rights and no obligation to provide these rights...perhaps this is the case...I will explain:


"The [poor] can have a right to [health care] but [the taxpayer] is not obliged to provide it."

By using taxpayer this example is not universal, but rather centred around only a certain sort of social make up. If you remember the context of the site then it is evident that the tax from the bourgeoisie (resulting from the surplus value generated by employing workers) is deemed to belong to the proletariat, regardless of institutions that say otherwise. A bourgeois woman, in a broad sense, could afford herself an abortion and would not have to use the money that is really belonging to the proletariat....So rich and poor alike should be free to have them. It is because of the economic makeup of society that everyone cannot, and because this make up is seen as wrong there is no theoretical conflict. Social and economic change is what is desired, and the two cannot be completely separated. I realise this will seem less plausible to you as you are less inclined to accept the economic arguments, but to divorce these from the social issues is to largely misunderstand the issues at hand from a Marxist perspective. I am not here to convert you, I am just clarifying a position and trying to demonstrate that such a position is not in conflict in virtue of what you have said.


Or how about:

"The [workers] can have a right to [the fair value of their labor] but [the owner] is not obliged to provide it."

This is the case at the moment, there is no disputing that. It is such cases that people here wish to change. That is really an inverted examle though, equivalent to "the mother has a right to a standard of life but the baby does not have an obligation to provide it"...what would make more sense (at least from a Marxist view) would be to say "the owner has a right to generate some profit from surplus value, but the workers have no obligation to allow this.

That these views are in conflict with your own may make this appear that I am simply stating one line over the top of yours (something I have criticised others for); if this is the case I would remember first of all the board we are on, and second of all that there is a certain amount of incompatability between most of these views (at least for side by side comparison). Consequently it makes sense to assess views in virtue of their application. As such I would support free abortion on demand, and I see no necessary ethical conflict.


"The [common man] can have a right to [the pursuit of happiness] but [society] is not obliged to provide it."

Damn right&#33; One must take personal responsibility for their own hapiness...it is a basic tennant of liberty; who else can determine ones own happiness but themselves? This is why only the pregnant woman chooses to abort, only the drug user chooses to use etc...no one else should have the say.


"The [woman] can have a right to [an abortion] but [society] is not obliged to provide it." Would you agree with that?

I don&#39;t see this as relevant as we live in a society (even now) with enough sophistication and economic development to cater for this without being a drain on resources. In fact abortion probably (now don&#39;tr cite me on this, it is a thought exercise only) actively reduce the economic burden in some way. I am not trying to be crude, but I would say that having an unwanted child is more of a drain on society than having an abortion.

As a result it is in societies interest, remember though that society as it stands is highly criticised. Essentially I suppose a sttate (of existence not of rules and authority) of interdependency, where selfish desires are best met with co-operation. This is obviously part of a more broad discussion, but suppose for the context of this debate that I have reasons for supporting this view (I am more than willing to discuss it in another thread). If it was deemed in the interest of society to abort, even in an indirect sense, I see no reason why society should not be willing to.

In an underdeveloped society where economic compulsion does not allow for even the most basic provisions (such as healthcare) to be catered for the obligation of that particular society may change. Of course it should be the case that abortion be available, but when it cannot be the debate changes. We are talking about a world where it is possible to abort, and not a crippling strain on the society that allows for it.

The obligation that exists also exists in other cases. Wheelchair ramps as opposed to using stairs; not difficult just courteous. Slightly lower urinals for very short people (crotch height is not that changable...but the shortest people are sometimes centimetres from being comfortable)...the list goes on. If society is not their to help the members of which it is comprised then what is the point?


Yet this ONE ISSUE you completely flip-flop your principles. Why? The good communist mother has a duty to provide from her ability to those with need. The fetus has need, she has ability. Why the deviation from form?

This is not a flip flop; as I have tried to demonstrate, those that are obligated and posess the right can be inverted. The claim alone does not justify or make evident the truth of any such statement, but rather the arguments in its favour and the results of its application.

As for some of the right/obligation examples given, I agree. For others the conflict is economic in nature....some thing that a Marxist perspective accounts for.

[Redmau5]

Originally posted by pusher [email protected] 06, 2007 06:49 pm
Is she entitled to kill it merely because she didn&#39;t want it in the first place?
No. It is no longer a part of the woman&#39;s body.

[Tower of Bebel]

Originally posted by Coggy+June 06, 2007 11:12 pm--> (Coggy @ June 06, 2007 11:12 pm)
[email protected] 06, 2007 09:42 pm
Coggy, to make it look clear for me:

Let&#39;s say the woman was raped and she wants to have a abortion, yet she&#39;s already more than 12 weeks pregnant?
Ya no problem obviously if she was raped like. [/b]
I had, untill recently, the same opinion as you have (or at least what you wrote at the beginning of this thread). I made this opinion before I became a communist and never wondered whether I should change my view on the subject of abortion or not.

Now I&#39;m scared.

[Black Dagger]

Of what?

[Tower of Bebel]

Originally posted by bleeding gums [email protected] 07, 2007 02:29 pm
Of what?
anarchism... :P

no, I mean that I had the same opinion on abortion as Coggy, since I haven&#39;t debated on the subject even after I became sure I&#39;m a communist. I should read more on the subject to make sure if I should form a new opinion or not.

EDIT: actually, I think it&#39;s a bit sexist to oppose abortion if the woman really does not want to give birth to the child. I&#39;m trying to have an opinion on this mather, so excuse me if my posts seem dubious.

[pusher robot]

As a result it is in societies interest, remember though that society as it stands is highly criticised. Essentially I suppose a sttate (of existence not of rules and authority) of interdependency, where selfish desires are best met with co-operation.

Well that is a good point, but I think it more goes to what policy is prudent. I may think it is a good idea to provide free education, but that doesn&#39;t automatically mean I believe that education is a right. It could still be a privilege.

Leftists, however, routinely talk about making practically every human want into a "right," to the extent that if I have to little of something and someone else has too much, I have a "right" to that someone&#39;s surplus. Obviously, every such so-called "positive" right must inevitably result in a cost to someone else, whether in time, labor or materials. This is accepted by leftists as natural and proper. Yet when it comes to a mother who clearly has the ability to provide life to the child, leftists argue that the woman has absolutely no obligations whatsoever, which just seems ridiculous to me. Of course, that all circles back to the question of just when during development a human gains human rights, which, as was pointed out, there is no convincing bright-line answer to, though clearly it must happen somewhere. The standard answer is that it occurs at the exact point it passes through the vagina, though there&#39;s no good scientific reason given for that, and I question how strongly people really believe that.

How about a thought experiment?

Alice is a week or less from giving birth and has already formed a deep emotional attachment to the child inside her, having wanted a child for many years. Bob, however, is the father of the child and doesn&#39;t want to pay child support, so he kicks Alice in the gut, killing the fetus. Under the apparent leftist orthodoxy, the worst crime that Bob can be charged with is a low-grade battery on Alice for giving her a bruise, because killing the fetus does not endanger or cause great bodily harm to Alice. Does that seem right to you?

Another:

Alice is pregnant, and knows she is pregnant. However, she continues to drink, smoke, and do crack cocaine, and never gets around to having an abortion. As a result, she gives birth to a child that is mentally and physically handicapped, as well as addicted to narcotics, a child that will never be anything other than a burden on others. According to apparent leftist orthodoxy, Alice has every right to do that because that fetus is nothing more than a part of her that she can treat as she wishes. Does that seem right to you?

Suppose:

Under a new pharmaceutical program, women can be paid to allow drug and medical research companies to perform extremely painful, sometimes lethal medical tests on unborn babies while still in the womb. If the baby survives after much suffering, it isfinally aborted just as labor begins. Under apparent leftist orthodoxy here, this is totally fine, because that child is just a parasite, a part of the woman&#39;s body that she can do whatever she pleases with. Does this seem right to you?

One more:

Standing around the docks, you aren&#39;t careful about where you are walking and bump into Bob, knocking him into the water. Bob can&#39;t swim and starts to drown as he calls for help. Nobody else is around, but you just pulled your hamstring the other day and know that it would really hurt if you went in the water. So you let Bob die. According to the leftist position on abortion, you are apparently under no obligation whatsoever to undergo even mild discomfort to preserve another person&#39;s life, even if you are the reason that person is dependent on you to live in the first place. Does that seem right to you?

None of these seem right to me, and even if they were legal I would strongly condemn people for making those moral choices. The leftist orthodoxy here, however, is the opposite: not only should abortion be legal up to the very last second of gestation, but entirely without an iota of moral condemnation.

[NorthStarRepublicML]

no, I mean that I had the same opinion on abortion as Coggy, since I haven&#39;t debated on the subject even after I became sure I&#39;m a communist.

i wouldn&#39;t debate it here, might get restricted .... especially if you write a single line of text that someone doesn&#39;t agree with ....


I should read more on the subject to make sure if I should form a new opinion or not.

good idea, some people here would not want you to share the formation of your opinion if it doesn&#39;t match their own ... best to play it safe, if you come back after your study and find that abortion is 100% the answer then GREAT&#33;

but if not .... better to pretend to agree with abortion 100% and just not say anything ....



anyway ..... something about abortion that i hasn&#39;t sat right with me for a while is this scenario (this is from personal experience):

when i was in college back in 2001, in Alaska, my girlfriend at the time missed her period .... i said to her right away

"i am not having a kid" and she said

"well i don&#39;t believe in abortion, you don&#39;t know what it&#39;s like, even when i get my period and there is tissue in my blood i think about what could have been"

so anyway i broke up with her, anway turns out her period was just late and she wasn&#39;t pregnant ..... if it is the womans right to have control over her reproductive functions is it my right to say "fuck you, i&#39;m not having a kid" and then leave with no further responsibility?

or maybe she wanted an abortion and i wanted a kid, do the rights of one supercede the rights of another?

i&#39;m not arguing anything here

merely asking members opinions ....

[Hegemonicretribution]

Originally posted by pusher [email protected] 07, 2007 07:14 pm
Well that is a good point, but I think it more goes to what policy is prudent. I may think it is a good idea to provide free education, but that doesn&#39;t automatically mean I believe that education is a right. It could still be a privilege.





Although many people do not distinguish between natural and secondary (or however you conceive them) rights, it can be useful. The only right we truly have is that to our own bodies; to do with them as we see fit. We have the right to be autonomous, and from this it follows that the only time that there can be a conflict is when the autonomy of two individuals who oppose each other comes into contact. This is where social theory begins, the relation between one free individual and another without the need for conflict or constraint. The key to this is establishing a situation whereby imoposes negatively on one another becomes counter productive, and against a selfish motive.

Returning to education, I would not argue that it is a natural right; such an idea does not make much sense. However it is a good idea, and it is logical to provide it insofar as it increases the standard of living of everybody. The concept of "right" does not need to be invoked here. The only time that I think I would use such a term (and even then reluctantly) is to describe autonomy. Denying autonomy requires physical coercion (or the threat of in application) and generally an authority which deems itself legitimate in doing this.


Leftists, however, routinely talk about making practically every human want into a "right," to the extent that if I have to little of something and someone else has too much, I have a "right" to that someone&#39;s surplus.

If they do then they are not using language properly, or have a strange approach. I don&#39;t attacth myself to everything that claims to be left and neither does any leftists worth listening to.


Obviously, every such so-called "positive" right must inevitably result in a cost to someone else, whether in time, labor or materials. This is accepted by leftists as natural and proper.

No if it makes sense to then why not? Education increases output, so investing makes sense. A couple of generations without education would no doubt proove this...but I don&#39;t think people are so blind as to presuppose this. Perhaps in capitalism this may happen because there is a large mine and yours divide, but without individual (or even any ownership) and with a realisation that maximising output maximises availability I don&#39;t imagine people would forgo education. If it was not provided would you mind allowing provisions for it? How about within a group which you are wholly dependent upon? How about exapanding this network of dependency?


The standard answer is that it occurs at the exact point it passes through the vagina, though there&#39;s no good scientific reason given for that, and I question how strongly people really believe that.

If this point needs to be established then this can be done through discussion and diversity of opinion, but it is agreed upon that until the child is "born" (whatever this is considered to be) it is still invading the private sphere of the mother in a manner that it has no right to do so even for survival (in the same way we haven&#39;t the "right" to steal someones blood for transfer).


Bob, however, is the father of the child and doesn&#39;t want to pay child support, so he kicks Alice in the gut, killing the fetus. Under the apparent leftist orthodoxy, the worst crime that Bob can be charged with is a low-grade battery on Alice for giving her a bruise, because killing the fetus does not endanger or cause great bodily harm to Alice. Does that seem right to you?

It does constitute a great risk to Alice, are you suggesting that miscarriages are minor? Bob is imposing upon Alice again here....this case not for preventing her from stopping something developing inside her, but stopping it against her will.

Suppose Bob did not know she was pregnant, but kicked her for another reason, should he be deemed a murderer? This can go on all day..the invasion of Alices body occurs in both instances, that it enough. The "penalties" etc are a whole other issue.

I will deal with the next two examples together: There is not a complete consensus on these issues, even on abortion in general within the "left." Some would suggest that in the cases whereby the child is knowingly going to be born that it should be heavily suggested to the prospective mother that she alter her ways. Whilst there is consensus on the board (in general) about abortion, not everyone justifies it in terms of autonomy. I do however I suggest that whilst people may suggest alternative lifestyles (as one would to a friend getting a bit carried away on the drink/drugs) they have no right to force this. With proper education how often do you think people would really go out with the intention of giving birth to a fucked up child? How often does it happen now when access to abortion is limitted and education is poor?

That we should like and accept everything is unrealistic, and I accept that a father that has by fluke got somone pregnant (for whatever reason) may plead for their chance at fatherhood, but they can demand or expect nothing. We can beg our friends not to give up a scholarship for heroin, but if they want to it is their choice. We can highlight the issues involving having severely disabled children, but if that is the will of a parent we can not actively deny them of this right.

The real issue arises when transfering from the passive to the active with regards to an individuals autonomy. We can suggest and argue other options as long as they are willing to listen, but we cannot prevent them from their choice.

Freedom.


Standing around the docks, you aren&#39;t careful about where you are walking and bump into Bob, knocking him into the water. Bob can&#39;t swim and starts to drown as he calls for help. Nobody else is around, but you just pulled your hamstring the other day and know that it would really hurt if you went in the water. So you let Bob die. According to the leftist position on abortion, you are apparently under no obligation whatsoever to undergo even mild discomfort to preserve another person&#39;s life, even if you are the reason that person is dependent on you to live in the first place. Does that seem right to you?

There is no necessary obligation there whatsoever. You should know that in reality the suggestion is to stay out of the water lest you become a casuality yourself, but I accept what you are illustrating. Even when there is no discomfort there is no obligation, but would that stop you from saving him? Even if you suggest there is an obligation, some people recognise it and others don&#39;t. There is no need to invoke the idea of obligation here as we can choose our actions without it. I was not obliged to hand in a phone I found yesterday, but I did. This was not a moral act, but it was my choice because given the options available to me it appeared the best. I get pleasure from being helpful, justifies it on its own.


None of these seem right to me, and even if they were legal I would strongly condemn people for making those moral choices. The leftist orthodoxy here, however, is the opposite: not only should abortion be legal up to the very last second of gestation, but entirely without an iota of moral condemnation.

Condemnation should not be "moral" but reasoned.

[freakazoid]

It seems that I too was restricted for a supposed "pro-life" view, that I wish to make abortion illegal. This is not true&#33;&#33;&#33;&#33;&#33;&#33;&#33;&#33;&#33;&#33;&#33;&#33;&#33;&#33;&#33;&#33; I too was restricted without anybody messaging me to find out what I really believe, they just restriced me without even teling me that I was being restricted. All because of a question that I was asked that had nothing to do with the threads topic, which apears to me now to be some sort of intrappment to get me to say something that goes against party line so that I would be restricted. <_<


By focussing on the "life" (whatever that means) or even worse, "potential life" of the foetus you are doing exactly what conservatives do in drawing attention away from the woman&#39;s body and her right to autonomy, which should never, ever be in question.

By focusing on the rights of the woman&#39;s body you draw attention away from the fetus being a human being.

And that sems to be what it comes down to, is the fetus at a certain point, a human being with its own rights to autonomy? What counts as a human being? Is it being able to survive outside of the womb? If so then even while still inside the womb it could live outside.


i wouldn&#39;t debate it here, might get restricted .... especially if you write a single line of text that someone doesn&#39;t agree with ....

So true, you have to follow party line or else.


The fact that you would exclude a comrade because of this issue says alot about how progressive you are in terms of understanding opinions , would you turn away someone who applied to join a movement because he was not 100% pro-choice ?

This, sadly, appears to be so true. Some would even side with the bourgeoisie over someone helping the proletariat if it meant that the person killed for helping the proletariat was a Christian. Which I can only come to the conclusion that they would also side with Hitler since he killed many Jews. &#33;&#33;&#33; <_< &#33;&#33;&#33; :angry: :angry: :angry:

[Qwerty Dvorak]

pusher robot

Alice is a week or less from giving birth and has already formed a deep emotional attachment to the child inside her, having wanted a child for many years. Bob, however, is the father of the child and doesn&#39;t want to pay child support, so he kicks Alice in the gut, killing the fetus. Under the apparent leftist orthodoxy, the worst crime that Bob can be charged with is a low-grade battery on Alice for giving her a bruise, because killing the fetus does not endanger or cause great bodily harm to Alice. Does that seem right to you?
No, of course not, that would be stupid. First of all, if a man kicks in a willingly pregnant woman&#39;s stomach and kills her baby, well then it&#39;s clearly an anti-choice action isn&#39;t it? He is denying her the right to give birth, to raise a child, a right to which no woman (within reason) should be denied. Why would leftists think this to be okay?


Alice is pregnant, and knows she is pregnant. However, she continues to drink, smoke, and do crack cocaine, and never gets around to having an abortion. As a result, she gives birth to a child that is mentally and physically handicapped, as well as addicted to narcotics, a child that will never be anything other than a burden on others. According to apparent leftist orthodoxy, Alice has every right to do that because that fetus is nothing more than a part of her that she can treat as she wishes. Does that seem right to you?
Again, of course not. By smoking crack, drinking etc. and then having the baby, the woman is dooming the child, when it is born, to immense physical and emotional distress. She is committing an act that will some day, in the not so distant future, cause harm to another being. Aborting a foetus, you must understand, will never hurt anybody, ever. That&#39;s the difference.


Under a new pharmaceutical program, women can be paid to allow drug and medical research companies to perform extremely painful, sometimes lethal medical tests on unborn babies while still in the womb. If the baby survives after much suffering, it isfinally aborted just as labor begins. Under apparent leftist orthodoxy here, this is totally fine, because that child is just a parasite, a part of the woman&#39;s body that she can do whatever she pleases with. Does this seem right to you?
That&#39;s a tricky question (congratulations), and I don&#39;t know how most leftists would answer. My response, however, would be that by applying external stimuli, you are giving the baby consciousness by my definition (that consciousness is determined by cognition). Thus, while I believe it acceptable to abort a body that has not yet had a chance to to become conscious by cognition, one should not be allowed to apply negative external stimuli to the body.


Standing around the docks, you aren&#39;t careful about where you are walking and bump into Bob, knocking him into the water. Bob can&#39;t swim and starts to drown as he calls for help. Nobody else is around, but you just pulled your hamstring the other day and know that it would really hurt if you went in the water. So you let Bob die. According to the leftist position on abortion, you are apparently under no obligation whatsoever to undergo even mild discomfort to preserve another person&#39;s life, even if you are the reason that person is dependent on you to live in the first place. Does that seem right to you?
Again, this argument against abortion is based upon the premise that the unborn baby is an independent, cognitive being, a premise that is in the opinion of most leftists patently false.







Not that I am pro-abortion, per se. I believe that, as a male, I am not entitled to an opinion either way on this issue. I just like to debate is all.

[pusher robot]

Alice is a week or less from giving birth and has already formed a deep emotional attachment to the child inside her, having wanted a child for many years. Bob, however, is the father of the child and doesn&#39;t want to pay child support, so he kicks Alice in the gut, killing the fetus. Under the apparent leftist orthodoxy, the worst crime that Bob can be charged with is a low-grade battery on Alice for giving her a bruise, because killing the fetus does not endanger or cause great bodily harm to Alice. Does that seem right to you?
No, of course not, that would be stupid. First of all, if a man kicks in a willingly pregnant woman&#39;s stomach and kills her baby, well then it&#39;s clearly an anti-choice action isn&#39;t it? He is denying her the right to give birth, to raise a child, a right to which no woman (within reason) should be denied. Why would leftists think this to be okay?

Not okay, but not a crime beyond battery against the woman. Deprivation of rights is a civil violation. Perhaps I&#39;m being overly legalistic with this argument.


Not that I am pro-abortion, per se. I believe that, as a male, I am not entitled to an opinion either way on this issue. I just like to debate is all.

I agree. It&#39;s a good debate topic because there are no easy answers.

[Qwerty Dvorak]

Not okay, but not a crime beyond battery against the woman. Deprivation of rights is a civil violation. Perhaps I&#39;m being overly legalistic with this argument.
I think the problem with being so legalistic as regards abortion is that, due to a number of factors, abortion has been brought to the forefront of judicial debate. While there are still issues and aspects of abortion law yet to be raised, by and large the legal parameters for abortions have already been defined in most countries which have a common law judicial system. Thus, I feel that to treat abortion strictly in terms of what laws have already been passed is restrictive and counter-productive; the aim of the pro-choice lobby is, in many countries, to change these laws.

[Kwisatz Haderach]

Originally posted by pusher [email protected] 07, 2007 09:14 pm
Suppose:

Under a new pharmaceutical program, women can be paid to allow drug and medical research companies to perform extremely painful, sometimes lethal medical tests on unborn babies while still in the womb. If the baby survives after much suffering, it isfinally aborted just as labor begins. Under apparent leftist orthodoxy here, this is totally fine, because that child is just a parasite, a part of the woman&#39;s body that she can do whatever she pleases with. Does this seem right to you?
That actually has a very easy answer. Notice you began with "women can be paid..." Stop right there. Under no circumstances would a socialist accept the idea of paying people to perform medical experiments on any part of their bodies. If wage labour is exploitative, just imagine how much more exploitative it must be to employ people as human guinea pigs.

Now, this still leaves open the possibility of a moral dilemma if the mother volunteers to be a guinea pig for no compensation. That, however, sounds like a case of mental illness to me.

[StartToday]

Originally posted by [email protected] 06, 2007 03:05 am
I think late-term abortion is actually pretty sick, but if it came down to all abortions vs no abortions, I&#39;d choose all.
I&#39;d just like to point out that what I meant by this is that I personally find late term abortion sick. That doesn&#39;t mean I think it should be illegal or even that I&#39;m against it. It just means that I personally would never have a late term abortion. But I think somebody should go ahead and abort their kid if they can&#39;t or won&#39;t take care of it.

Furthermore, I don&#39;t see why my opinion got me restricted, seeing as I&#39;m not against abortion.

It&#39;s kind of like the free speech thing. I think free speech means that racists can say whatever they want about other races, but I also think it&#39;s an awful thing to do. Doesn&#39;t mean I&#39;m out to outlaw it. I&#39;d still demand those racists be granted the right to free speech. See where I&#39;m goin&#39; with this...?

I&#39;m not against abortion, I think it should be a right

[Tower of Bebel]

Doctors must feel bad when they abort a &#39;parasite&#39; that looks like a baby because it&#39;s already several months old.

[Mujer Libre]

Originally posted by [email protected] 08, 2007 07:58 am
Doctors must feel bad when they abort a &#39;parasite&#39; that looks like a baby because it&#39;s already several months old.
What. The. Fuck?

Care to explain that comment?

I think the doctor might actually be satisfied that s/he has just made a woman&#39;s life better by performing a procedure she requested, rather than experiencing some bullshit melodramatic overreaction.

[Tower of Bebel]

Originally posted by Mujer Libre+June 08, 2007 08:33 am--> (Mujer Libre @ June 08, 2007 08:33 am)
[email protected] 08, 2007 07:58 am
Doctors must feel bad when they abort a &#39;parasite&#39; that looks like a baby because it&#39;s already several months old.
What. The. Fuck?

Care to explain that comment?

I think the doctor might actually be satisfied that s/he has just made a woman&#39;s life better by performing a procedure she requested, rather than experiencing some bullshit melodramatic overreaction. [/b]
No, it&#39;s just that here in Belgium you cannot abort a baby when after a certain time because of two things if I remember correctly:

1. After a certain periode the foetus can live on it&#39;s on with some assistance in hospital
2. Many doctors who have helped women to get rid of their unwanted child in the days when it was still illegal, said it was hard to kill a foetus that was more like a baby then a parasite. Some doctors even quit their jobs after doing it several times.

[Black Dagger]

Originally posted by whitten
I support the womans right to have an abortion, up until a certain time limit (I&#39;m not a doctor, I cant say what it should be for sure, something in the 20+ weeks range though).

Why should women lose the right to control their bodies after 20 weeks?

You&#39;re basically saying that after a certain time (say 20 weeks) women are or should be obligated to give birth, regardless of their opinion on the matter or personal situation.

How is that justified?

[cormacobear]

Oh don&#39;t bother printing the rest of the sentence it couldn&#39;t be relevant. <_<

Why execute a near full term pregnancy when that child can just as easily be removed, placed in pre natal care and adoptedby the lenghty list of waiting perants. Do you support infanticide?

[Whitten]

Originally posted by bleeding gums malatesta+June 08, 2007 11:56 am--> (bleeding gums malatesta @ June 08, 2007 11:56 am)
whitten
I support the womans right to have an abortion, up until a certain time limit (I&#39;m not a doctor, I cant say what it should be for sure, something in the 20+ weeks range though).

Why should women lose the right to control their bodies after 20 weeks?

You&#39;re basically saying that after a certain time (say 20 weeks) women are or should be obligated to give birth, regardless of their opinion on the matter or personal situation.

How is that justified? [/b]
A woman has complete freedom to abort the pregnancy before the third trimester. And I never claimed that personal circumstances shouldn&#39;t be taken into account. But why is there a significant difference between a fetus 1 day before birth and a child 1 day after? Both are fully developed, and neither can exist independently.

[Forward Union]

Originally posted by [email protected] 08, 2007 12:13 pm
Why execute a near full term pregnancy when that child can just as easily be removed, placed in pre natal care and adoptedby the lenghty list of waiting perants. Do you support infanticide?
That isn&#39;t a bad idea. But it&#39;s neither mine, nor is it your decission to make. That&#39;s the fundemental point.

[cormacobear]

If he&#39;d not pulled a CC and printed the whole thread or even the whole sentence it would be apperant that I abstained from an absolute position on last trimester abortion but felt there was likely a better solution. I never said a woman lacked that right.

I unlike many don&#39;t presume to know the best answer to hummanities most difficult issues. and on this I&#39;m undecided and in a sketchy area, like many others.

[Dr. Rosenpenis]

Originally posted by Whitten+June 08, 2007 09:20 am--> (Whitten &#064; June 08, 2007 09:20 am)
Originally posted by bleeding gums [email protected] 08, 2007 11:56 am

whitten
I support the womans right to have an abortion, up until a certain time limit (I&#39;m not a doctor, I cant say what it should be for sure, something in the 20+ weeks range though).

Why should women lose the right to control their bodies after 20 weeks?

You&#39;re basically saying that after a certain time (say 20 weeks) women are or should be obligated to give birth, regardless of their opinion on the matter or personal situation.

How is that justified?
A woman has complete freedom to abort the pregnancy before the third trimester. And I never claimed that personal circumstances shouldn&#39;t be taken into account. But why is there a significant difference between a fetus 1 day before birth and a child 1 day after? Both are fully developed, and neither can exist independently. [/b]
Actually both can exist independently of the mother, in most cases. I assume most obstetricians would try to preserve the life of an aborted fetus when possible.

If you want developed fetuses to live, then you should support legal abortion so that such procedures are done by specialized doctors who have the means to maintain the little thing alive outside the womb.

[Whitten]

Originally posted by Dr. Rosenpenis+June 08, 2007 01:02 pm--> (Dr. Rosenpenis @ June 08, 2007 01:02 pm)
Originally posted by Whitten+June 08, 2007 09:20 am--> (Whitten &#064; June 08, 2007 09:20 am)
bleeding gums [email protected] 08, 2007 11:56 am

whitten
I support the womans right to have an abortion, up until a certain time limit (I&#39;m not a doctor, I cant say what it should be for sure, something in the 20+ weeks range though).

Why should women lose the right to control their bodies after 20 weeks?

You&#39;re basically saying that after a certain time (say 20 weeks) women are or should be obligated to give birth, regardless of their opinion on the matter or personal situation.

How is that justified?
A woman has complete freedom to abort the pregnancy before the third trimester. And I never claimed that personal circumstances shouldn&#39;t be taken into account. But why is there a significant difference between a fetus 1 day before birth and a child 1 day after? Both are fully developed, and neither can exist independently. [/b]
Actually both can exist independently of the mother, in most cases. I assume most obstetricians would try to preserve the life of an aborted fetus when possible.

If you want developed fetuses to live, then you should support legal abortion so that such procedures are done by specialized doctors who have the means to maintain the little thing alive outside the womb. [/b]
If the fetus would survive, I have nothing against the procedure. But I fear the mods here will come up with something involving woman&#39;s rights to claim that she should be able to terminate the pregnancy in a way which would destroy the fetus, even when alternatives are available. I&#39;m sorry I cannot support that particular "right" anmore than I do the "right" to private property.

[cormacobear]

A seventh month abortion is no more an invasive a procedure than a c-section (I presume I have only a little medical training) at least I presume.

I never claimed a position but said, as a full quote would show, that a child carried to full term and removeable and raisable is a difficult and grey area.

[Mujer Libre]

Originally posted by [email protected] 08, 2007 01:11 pm
A seventh month abortion is no more an invasive a procedure than a c-section (I presume I have only a little medical training) at least I presume.

I never claimed a position but said, as a full quote would show, that a child carried to full term and removeable and raisable is a difficult and grey area.
That&#39;s untrue considering that most abortions that occur later than the first trimester are by the dilation and evacuation method, which involves removing the foetus via a dilated cervix. This is clearly much less invasive than the surgical incisions involved in a caesarian section.

Besides, how invasive it is shouldn&#39;t matter, what should matter is the woman&#39;s decision- although that clearly doesn&#39;t count for some people.

[pusher robot]

Now, this still leaves open the possibility of a moral dilemma if the mother volunteers to be a guinea pig for no compensation. That, however, sounds like a case of mental illness to me.

You&#39;re just avoiding the dilemma I was posing by picking some other nit. But your objection is strange in itself. Am I to presume, based on your response, that no medical research will be conducted in a communist society, except on people who you would qualify as "mentally ill?" If volunteering without compensation is evidence of mental illness, and it is forbidden to compensate people, then that covers 100% of the population.

[Whitten]

Originally posted by Mujer [email protected] 08, 2007 01:33 pm
Besides, how invasive it is shouldn&#39;t matter, what should matter is the woman&#39;s decision- although that clearly doesn&#39;t count for some people.
The question is why does it suddenly become not the woman&#39;s decision the day after birth? Is it significantly less developed or independent than the day before birth?

[Mujer Libre]

Originally posted by Whitten+June 08, 2007 01:42 pm--> (Whitten @ June 08, 2007 01:42 pm)
Mujer [email protected] 08, 2007 01:33 pm
Besides, how invasive it is shouldn&#39;t matter, what should matter is the woman&#39;s decision- although that clearly doesn&#39;t count for some people.
The question is why does it suddenly become not the woman&#39;s decision the day after birth? Is it significantly less developed or independent than the day before birth? [/b]
Because it&#39;s not in/a part of her body anymore&#33;

[Whitten]

Originally posted by Mujer Libre+June 08, 2007 01:44 pm--> (Mujer Libre @ June 08, 2007 01:44 pm)
Originally posted by [email protected] 08, 2007 01:42 pm

Mujer [email protected] 08, 2007 01:33 pm
Besides, how invasive it is shouldn&#39;t matter, what should matter is the woman&#39;s decision- although that clearly doesn&#39;t count for some people.
The question is why does it suddenly become not the woman&#39;s decision the day after birth? Is it significantly less developed or independent than the day before birth?
Because it&#39;s not in/a part of her body anymore&#33; [/b]
What about siamese twins? they share parts of their body, does one belong to the other, the dominant one??? No, you say, because in that case both are human not fetuses, and that would be slavery. But then what makes the fetus of a day before birth (note I&#39;m not talking about a cluster of cells) not human? Their in another, dominant, human&#39;s body... so? they&#39;re not doing much... neither is someone who&#39;s asleep/in a coma.

[cormacobear]

How IS a 7 month old pregnancy terminated? What is the procedure? I&#39;d very much like to know.

[Mujer Libre]

Originally posted by Whitten+June 08, 2007 01:52 pm--> (Whitten &#064; June 08, 2007 01:52 pm)
Originally posted by Mujer [email protected] 08, 2007 01:44 pm

Originally posted by [email protected] 08, 2007 01:42 pm

Mujer [email protected] 08, 2007 01:33 pm
Besides, how invasive it is shouldn&#39;t matter, what should matter is the woman&#39;s decision- although that clearly doesn&#39;t count for some people.
The question is why does it suddenly become not the woman&#39;s decision the day after birth? Is it significantly less developed or independent than the day before birth?
Because it&#39;s not in/a part of her body anymore&#33;
What about siamese twins? they share parts of their body, does one belong to the other, the dominant one??? No, you say, because in that case both are human not fetuses, and that would be slavery. But then what makes the fetus of a day before birth (note I&#39;m not talking about a cluster of cells) not human? Their in another, dominant, human&#39;s body... so? they&#39;re not doing much... neither is someone who&#39;s asleep/in a coma. [/b]
Yeah but with conjoined twins, one does not live inside the other, nor is one dependent on the other for nourishment. So it&#39;s a false analogy.

And Cormacobear- dilation and extraction or some variant of that, as I already said. You can look it up on wikipedia.

[Whitten]

Originally posted by Mujer Libre+June 08, 2007 01:58 pm--> (Mujer Libre @ June 08, 2007 01:58 pm)
Originally posted by [email protected] 08, 2007 01:52 pm

Originally posted by Mujer [email protected] 08, 2007 01:44 pm

Originally posted by [email protected] 08, 2007 01:42 pm

Mujer [email protected] 08, 2007 01:33 pm
Besides, how invasive it is shouldn&#39;t matter, what should matter is the woman&#39;s decision- although that clearly doesn&#39;t count for some people.
The question is why does it suddenly become not the woman&#39;s decision the day after birth? Is it significantly less developed or independent than the day before birth?
Because it&#39;s not in/a part of her body anymore&#33;
What about siamese twins? they share parts of their body, does one belong to the other, the dominant one??? No, you say, because in that case both are human not fetuses, and that would be slavery. But then what makes the fetus of a day before birth (note I&#39;m not talking about a cluster of cells) not human? Their in another, dominant, human&#39;s body... so? they&#39;re not doing much... neither is someone who&#39;s asleep/in a coma.
Yeah but with conjoined twins, one does not live inside the other, nor is one dependent on the other for nourishment. So it&#39;s a false analogy. [/b]
Siamese twins have been known to share any number of different organs including digestive ones, so one may well be dependent on the other for nourishment.

[Mujer Libre]

Originally posted by Whitten+June 08, 2007 02:02 pm--> (Whitten @ June 08, 2007 02:02 pm)
Originally posted by Mujer [email protected] 08, 2007 01:58 pm

Originally posted by [email protected] 08, 2007 01:52 pm

Originally posted by Mujer [email protected] 08, 2007 01:44 pm

Originally posted by [email protected] 08, 2007 01:42 pm

Mujer [email protected] 08, 2007 01:33 pm
Besides, how invasive it is shouldn&#39;t matter, what should matter is the woman&#39;s decision- although that clearly doesn&#39;t count for some people.
The question is why does it suddenly become not the woman&#39;s decision the day after birth? Is it significantly less developed or independent than the day before birth?
Because it&#39;s not in/a part of her body anymore&#33;
What about siamese twins? they share parts of their body, does one belong to the other, the dominant one??? No, you say, because in that case both are human not fetuses, and that would be slavery. But then what makes the fetus of a day before birth (note I&#39;m not talking about a cluster of cells) not human? Their in another, dominant, human&#39;s body... so? they&#39;re not doing much... neither is someone who&#39;s asleep/in a coma.
Yeah but with conjoined twins, one does not live inside the other, nor is one dependent on the other for nourishment. So it&#39;s a false analogy.
Siamese twins have been known to share any number of different organs including digestive ones, so one may well be dependent on the other for nourishment. [/b]
In most cases they "share" organs in that one is not totally dependent on the other. They also came into existence at the same time, which clearly places them in a different relationship to one another than a woman and a foetus.

What&#39;s the point of continuing this analogy any further? It will just move further and further away from the issue in question and become less and less applicable.

[Whitten]

Originally posted by Mujer Libre+June 08, 2007 02:07 pm--> (Mujer Libre @ June 08, 2007 02:07 pm)
Originally posted by [email protected] 08, 2007 02:02 pm

Originally posted by Mujer [email protected] 08, 2007 01:58 pm

Originally posted by [email protected] 08, 2007 01:52 pm

Originally posted by Mujer [email protected] 08, 2007 01:44 pm

Originally posted by [email protected] 08, 2007 01:42 pm

Mujer [email protected] 08, 2007 01:33 pm
Besides, how invasive it is shouldn&#39;t matter, what should matter is the woman&#39;s decision- although that clearly doesn&#39;t count for some people.
The question is why does it suddenly become not the woman&#39;s decision the day after birth? Is it significantly less developed or independent than the day before birth?
Because it&#39;s not in/a part of her body anymore&#33;
What about siamese twins? they share parts of their body, does one belong to the other, the dominant one??? No, you say, because in that case both are human not fetuses, and that would be slavery. But then what makes the fetus of a day before birth (note I&#39;m not talking about a cluster of cells) not human? Their in another, dominant, human&#39;s body... so? they&#39;re not doing much... neither is someone who&#39;s asleep/in a coma.
Yeah but with conjoined twins, one does not live inside the other, nor is one dependent on the other for nourishment. So it&#39;s a false analogy.
Siamese twins have been known to share any number of different organs including digestive ones, so one may well be dependent on the other for nourishment.
In most cases they "share" organs in that one is not totally dependent on the other. They also came into existence at the same time, which clearly places them in a different relationship to one another than a woman and a foetus.

What&#39;s the point of continuing this analogy any further? It will just move further and further away from the issue in question and become less and less applicable. [/b]
A parent was born before a child and we know where that argument could go.

A child is dependant upon a parent for nourishment as well as in other capacities, yet we would agree that child could not simply be killed on similar justifications.

[Mujer Libre]

Whitten, you&#39;re not going to win this argument by using false, inapplicable analogies&#33; A child is not biologically dependent on their parent nor does it exist inside either of their bodies...

So just drop the false analogies&#33;

[Whitten]

Originally posted by Mujer [email protected] 08, 2007 02:18 pm
Whitten, you&#39;re not going to win this argument by using false, inapplicable analogies&#33; A child is not biologically dependent on their parent nor does it exist inside either of their bodies...

So just drop the false analogies&#33;
Stop missing the point. The child is dependent on a parent, why does it have to be biological dependency to matter?

[cormacobear]

A 7th or even 5th month fetus removed from it&#39;s mother isn&#39;t dependand and will as seen develop fine.

Your right to have removed was never ever contested by me, but the means I query and I&#39;ve only studied history and theology oviously medicine and anthropology play a role. so i&#39;ll continue to leave it to the better informed, of which I don&#39;t include wikipedia.

[Jazzratt]

Pusher Robots example: The being paid thing is my only objection. If it was entirely voluntary, with express consent given by the woman and the option of her withdrawing that consent at any point during the trials then I see no earthly reason not to carry out the tests - especially if they are medical in nature as in your example.


Am I to presume, based on your response, that no medical research will be conducted in a communist society...?

I&#39;d point out that medical research can be conducted on animals. As distasteful as a lot of leftists find this idea (for whatever kooky reason).

[pusher robot]

Because it&#39;s not in/a part of her body anymore&#33;

If that&#39;s the criteria then it seems that the logical threshold would be the cutting of the umbilical. Would you support the killing of an infant that had been fully birthed but whose umbilical had not yet been cut? Until it is cut loose, it is still drawing nourishment from the mother.

[Jazzratt]

Originally posted by Whitten+June 08, 2007 02:24 pm--> (Whitten @ June 08, 2007 02:24 pm)
Mujer [email protected] 08, 2007 02:18 pm
Whitten, you&#39;re not going to win this argument by using false, inapplicable analogies&#33; A child is not biologically dependent on their parent nor does it exist inside either of their bodies...

So just drop the false analogies&#33;
Stop missing the point. The child is dependent on a parent, why does it have to be biological dependency to matter? [/b]
Because a the mother isn&#39;t the only one that can provide everything the non-biologically dependant child needs.

[Mujer Libre]

Originally posted by [email protected] 08, 2007 02:30 pm
A 7th or even 5th month fetus removed from it&#39;s mother isn&#39;t dependand and will as seen develop fine.

Your right to have removed was never ever contested by me, but the means I query and I&#39;ve only studied history and theology oviously medicine and anthropology play a role. so i&#39;ll continue to leave it to the better informed, of which I don&#39;t include wikipedia.
Um, I had a look at the wiki article about dilation and extraction, and it is well-referenced, factual and accurate. There&#39;s no point just dismissing the source, you just have to view it critically...

[Jazzratt]

Originally posted by pusher [email protected] 08, 2007 02:31 pm

Because it&#39;s not in/a part of her body anymore&#33;

If that&#39;s the criteria then it seems that the logical threshold would be the cutting of the umbilical. Would you support the killing of an infant that had been fully birthed but whose umbilical had not yet been cut? Until it is cut loose, it is still drawing nourishment from the mother.
As blindingly intelligent you belief this post to be it&#39;s a waste of everybody&#39;s time. In what situation would the mother choose to have a fully birthed foetus killed?

[Whitten]

Originally posted by Jazzratt+June 08, 2007 02:33 pm--> (Jazzratt @ June 08, 2007 02:33 pm)
Originally posted by [email protected] 08, 2007 02:24 pm

Mujer [email protected] 08, 2007 02:18 pm
Whitten, you&#39;re not going to win this argument by using false, inapplicable analogies&#33; A child is not biologically dependent on their parent nor does it exist inside either of their bodies...

So just drop the false analogies&#33;
Stop missing the point. The child is dependent on a parent, why does it have to be biological dependency to matter?
Because a the mother isn&#39;t the only one that can provide everything the non-biologically dependant child needs. [/b]
Neither is she the only one who can provide what the 8/9 month old fetus needs.

[Fawkes]

Originally posted by Whitten+June 08, 2007 09:38 am--> (Whitten @ June 08, 2007 09:38 am)
Originally posted by [email protected] 08, 2007 02:33 pm

Originally posted by [email protected] 08, 2007 02:24 pm

Mujer [email protected] 08, 2007 02:18 pm
Whitten, you&#39;re not going to win this argument by using false, inapplicable analogies&#33; A child is not biologically dependent on their parent nor does it exist inside either of their bodies...

So just drop the false analogies&#33;
Stop missing the point. The child is dependent on a parent, why does it have to be biological dependency to matter?
Because a the mother isn&#39;t the only one that can provide everything the non-biologically dependant child needs.
Neither is she the only one who can provide what the 8/9 month old fetus needs. [/b]
Yes, she is, seeing as how it is inside her body.

[Mujer Libre]

Originally posted by Whitten+June 08, 2007 02:38 pm--> (Whitten &#064; June 08, 2007 02:38 pm)
Originally posted by [email protected] 08, 2007 02:33 pm

Originally posted by [email protected] 08, 2007 02:24 pm

Mujer [email protected] 08, 2007 02:18 pm
Whitten, you&#39;re not going to win this argument by using false, inapplicable analogies&#33; A child is not biologically dependent on their parent nor does it exist inside either of their bodies...

So just drop the false analogies&#33;
Stop missing the point. The child is dependent on a parent, why does it have to be biological dependency to matter?
Because a the mother isn&#39;t the only one that can provide everything the non-biologically dependant child needs.
Neither is she the only one who can provide what the 8/9 month old fetus needs. [/b]
While it&#39;s in her body she is... And to force her to deliver the baby is clearly a violation of her rights... So your point is invalid.

[freakazoid]

Said in the other thread,

If you genuinely thought abortion was murder, and it was actually killing a human being, you would not support it being legal. It&#39;s evident to me, and probably anyone else gifted with having temporal lobes, that you are - and not for the first time - talking utter shit.

Are you not reading what I said? I said, "I did not state myself clearly enough when I said that it is "murder"."

[Dr. Rosenpenis]

Originally posted by Whitten+June 08, 2007 11:38 am--> (Whitten @ June 08, 2007 11:38 am)
Originally posted by [email protected] 08, 2007 02:33 pm

Originally posted by [email protected] 08, 2007 02:24 pm

Mujer [email protected] 08, 2007 02:18 pm
Whitten, you&#39;re not going to win this argument by using false, inapplicable analogies&#33; A child is not biologically dependent on their parent nor does it exist inside either of their bodies...

So just drop the false analogies&#33;
Stop missing the point. The child is dependent on a parent, why does it have to be biological dependency to matter?
Because a the mother isn&#39;t the only one that can provide everything the non-biologically dependant child needs.
Neither is she the only one who can provide what the 8/9 month old fetus needs. [/b]
So you&#39;re suggesting that women in their eighth month of gestation be forced to birth the fetus and prohibited from opting for an abortion, a procedure we&#39;ve already established is different and less intrusive?

[Kwisatz Haderach]

Originally posted by pusher [email protected] 08, 2007 03:37 pm

Now, this still leaves open the possibility of a moral dilemma if the mother volunteers to be a guinea pig for no compensation. That, however, sounds like a case of mental illness to me.

You&#39;re just avoiding the dilemma I was posing by picking some other nit. But your objection is strange in itself. Am I to presume, based on your response, that no medical research will be conducted in a communist society, except on people who you would qualify as "mentally ill?" If volunteering without compensation is evidence of mental illness, and it is forbidden to compensate people, then that covers 100% of the population.
The "mentally ill" comment came as a response to your scenario in which there would be highly painful medical experiments performed on the woman. Yes, socialism would not tolerate any medical research on human subjects that either causes them serious pain or leaves them permanently damaged. What is so unusual about that?

[freakazoid]

In what situation would the mother choose to have a fully birthed foetus killed?

Does it really matter? This is a what if question, it doesn&#39;t matter the reasoning for the mother doing it.

[TC]

It should be pointed out that Coggy’s b.s. defense is actually typical among pro-lifers. Pro-lifers rarely argue for criminal penalties to women who have abortions and instead argue for criminal, professional, or civil penalties to doctors, hospitals and clinics which provide them, thereby systematically denying women access to abortion with equal effectiveness but less offense. In fact in most jurisdictions where abortion is illegal or restricted the restrictions are placed on the abortion provider not the patient.

Which, really, makes sense if your pro-life for purely practical reasons: taking away a doctors license will prevent many more women from being able to get abortions than locking up one kid for having one will.


Originally posted by Edric O+--> (Edric O) The question is whether a fetus can be considered an independent human life. The question is whether a fetus can be considered an independent human life.[/b]


No, its not. As has been established many times before in many threads, even if a fetus were an independent human life as a baby is, or even a full person as a toddler is, it would still have no rights to it’s hosts body. It would have no right to harm its host (which is what pregnancy and labour and childbirth entail) even if failing to results in its death, and its carrier would still have the right to defend herself, including with lethal force, just as she would if she was at physical risk from another independent human in normal circumstances.

To be against late term abortion isn’t to be for the standard “human rights” of a fetus, its to be for giving fetuses more rights than normally extended to people, or to give pregnant women fewer rights than normally extended to people, depending on how you choose to look at it.

Either way, whether a late term fetus is human or not is irrelevant. Stop playing the pro-life tactic of debating the status of the fetus rather than the status of the woman carrying it.



Originally posted by Cubist+--> (Cubist) who said it should be paid for by the state&#33; the question is wether or not the woman should be allwoed the CHOICE.

In a communist world obviously it would be paid for by the state but errr we aint in one we aint arguing about what would happen then we are discussing what should happen now, and please bring this up in the right thread.[/b]

In capitalist societies the question is not whether a procedure is going to be legal or illegal but whether its going to accessible or not, meaning covered by insurance and/or public health care (like the NHS) or not.

The rich can always fly to jurisdictions where a medical procedure is legal and pay out of pocket. The Irish ban on abortion for instance, never stopped Irish women from having abortions, its stopped poor and/or young Irish women from having abortions.

Similarly making abortion hypothetically legal but not having insurance companies and/or national health services pay for it means that its defacto inaccessible to poor and/or young women. Having a hypothetical “right” to abortion is pointless if in reality you can’t get one.


Originally posted by Cubist
The Fetus has no rights its a unconscious parasite. how can somethign which doesn&#39;t know what consciousness is be classed as human sure it will be human but a child will be an adult,

I agree naturally, but I think you’re somewhat missing the point. If a fetus were a conscious parasite rather than an unconscious parasite, would it have a right to live off its host’s body at her physical and emotional expense? Of course not.

Whether or not a fetus is conscious is a scientific question. Although I don’t really care, I strongly suspect that its not, but if it were, that would not have any barring on the rights of other people.



Originally posted by pusher robot

Alice is a week or less from giving birth and has already formed a deep emotional attachment to the child inside her, having wanted a child for many years. Bob, however, is the father of the child and doesn&#39;t want to pay child support, so he kicks Alice in the gut, killing the fetus. Under the apparent leftist orthodoxy, the worst crime that Bob can be charged with is a low-grade battery on Alice for giving her a bruise, because killing the fetus does not endanger or cause great bodily harm to Alice. Does that seem right to you?


No that doesn&#39;t seem right, but not for any reasons that have to do with the fetus. It would be worse low-grade battery because of the emotional damage; the same reason that rape is worse than low-grade battery.


Originally posted by Pusher Robot

Alice is pregnant, and knows she is pregnant. However, she continues to drink, smoke, and do crack cocaine, and never gets around to having an abortion. As a result, she gives birth to a child that is mentally and physically handicapped, as well as addicted to narcotics, a child that will never be anything other than a burden on others. According to apparent leftist orthodoxy, Alice has every right to do that because that fetus is nothing more than a part of her that she can treat as she wishes. Does that seem right to you?

Yes that seems right to me. Would you demand that women who carry genes for mental and physical handicaps not reproduce? Should someone who knowingly carries such genes be forced to abort or be sterilized or something? If not then how is this scenario any different from that one? Because you don&#39;t like women "behaving irresponsibly?"

However just because its not wrong doesn&#39;t mean it would be a smart thing to do. (although, lol that could be said of most people who have children)


Originally posted by Pusher Robot

Under a new pharmaceutical program, women can be paid to allow drug and medical research companies to perform extremely painful, sometimes lethal medical tests on unborn babies while still in the womb. If the baby survives after much suffering, it isfinally aborted just as labor begins. Under apparent leftist orthodoxy here, this is totally fine, because that child is just a parasite, a part of the woman&#39;s body that she can do whatever she pleases with. Does this seem right to you?


That seems fine to me (apart from the normal capitalist exploitation aspect of it), provided that these are volunteers who believe in the value of the medical research.

In fact, thats pretty much the scenario of embryotic stem cell research except that its done post-abortion.



Originally posted by Pusher Robot
Standing around the docks, you aren&#39;t careful about where you are walking and bump into Bob, knocking him into the water. Bob can&#39;t swim and starts to drown as he calls for help. Nobody else is around, but you just pulled your hamstring the other day and know that it would really hurt if you went in the water. So you let Bob die. According to the leftist position on abortion, you are apparently under no obligation whatsoever to undergo even mild discomfort to preserve another person&#39;s life, even if you are the reason that person is dependent on you to live in the first place. Does that seem right to you?

If it wasn&#39;t preventable and you can&#39;t save bob without risking your own life or causing extreme physical pain to yourself, then yah sure. Saving bob would be heroic not obligatory.

Do you take homeless people you see on the street into your house and put them up on your couch? Probably not.

How about your kidney&#39;s, do you have two of them? If so, you&#39;ve effectively killed someone else who you could have saved through only "mild discomfort" to yourself (you know, major surgery, but thats what apparently passes as "mild discomfort" to you).


Originally posted by NorthStarRepublicML

so anyway i broke up with her, anway turns out her period was just late and she wasn&#39;t pregnant ..... if it is the womans right to have control over her reproductive functions is it my right to say "fuck you, i&#39;m not having a kid" and then leave with no further responsibility?

I think so. Women can legally abandon newborns without their partners permission but men can&#39;t, thats an asymmetry in the law intended to discourage abortions and its sexist. I do not think that in a capitalist society an individual man should be compelled to subsidize a girlfriend&#39;s bad choices, it is arbitrary; child support should come from the state not individuals.


Originally posted by NorthStarRepublicML

or maybe she wanted an abortion and i wanted a kid, do the rights of one supercede the rights of another?


In that scenario, which is totally different, the guy has no rights. Its not his body thats at issue.

But then, by the time someone actually has a kid, its not the mother&#39;s body thats at issue either, so she shouldn&#39;t have more rights as is currently the case in most capitalist countries.


Originally posted by Cormacobear

Why execute a near full term pregnancy when that child can just as easily be removed, placed in pre natal care and adoptedby the lenghty list of waiting perants.

Because thats not how it works in reality. In reality a full term fetus can&#39;t be "just as easily removed" intact as it can in pieces. Compared to a late term abortion, having a c-section is a vastly more complicated, invasive surgery with a relatively high mortality rate, leaving serious scaring and weeks of recovery time, making subsequent pregnancies dangerous. Inducing labour is extraordinarily painful for hours or days on end and leaves serious scaring in an even more embarrasing location. Late term abortions are quick, easy, far less risky and far less painful with virtually no recovery time.

The patriarchal cult of motherhood is so strong that even abortion supporters tend to gloss over just how bad childbirth is.


[email protected]
Do you support infanticide?

I believe that there are circumstances where its acceptable to kill another human being.

Do you believe that there aren&#39;t any? Are infants somehow an exception?


Rosenpenis

Actually both can exist independently of the mother, in most cases. I assume most obstetricians would try to preserve the life of an aborted fetus when possible.

If you want developed fetuses to live, then you should support legal abortion so that such procedures are done by specialized doctors who have the means to maintain the little thing alive outside the womb.


LOL thats really not at all how it works.

In jurisdictions where late term abortion is legal, performing a late term abortion involves killing the fetus before it&#39;s removed (thereby making it easier to remove).

Elective c-sections are only really performed at full term. When people have pre-term babies its because they went into labour early or because there was some complication that would have resulted in its death if it wasn&#39;t removed early.

[Fawkes]

Still, nobody has adequately answered my point that I made about how you pro-lifers that support abortion in some circumstances obviously don&#39;t care jack shit about the fetus, but only about punishing women whom willingly had sex and got pregnant.

[StartToday]

Originally posted by [email protected] 08, 2007 02:38 am
Many doctors who have helped women to get rid of their unwanted child in the days when it was still illegal, said it was hard to kill a foetus that was more like a baby then a parasite. Some doctors even quit their jobs after doing it several times.
I can see how that would fuck with their heads, what with the fetus looking just like a baby.

But just having the kid anyways wouldn&#39;t fix anything. Ever seen the documentary Children Underground? The leader of Romania (I forget his name) outlawed contraception and abortion, to increase the workforce, so people put their unwanted kids in orphanages. Really terrible ones, at that; no doubt thousands were abused and neglected. But then when communism fell, they ended up on the streets. 20,000 of them.

That&#39;s 20,000 hungry, cold, sick, unwanted, unloved children. I think that&#39;s worse than abortion by far. Those children get to spend their entire lives in misery. And that&#39;s only one example of many.

The pro-choicers should change their name to pro-humanity.

[StartToday]

Originally posted by [email protected] 08, 2007 01:30 pm
Still, nobody has adequately answered my point that I made about how you pro-lifers that support abortion in some circumstances obviously don&#39;t care jack shit about the fetus, but only about punishing women whom willingly had sex and got pregnant.
Good point. Why should a baby conceived through rape (not its fault in any way) have no "right to life", but a baby conceived through consensual sex does?

The rape-only thing is really favoring the mother&#39;s psychological well-being over the baby. And pro-lifers are all about recognizing the baby&#39;s right to be born, not the mother&#39;s right to not be burdened.

The only possible explanation I can think of is that pro-lifers, who are generally on the right, just apply the same mental gymnastics to the abortion issue as they do to everything else.

[cubist]

OK this is interesting

i was looking for good article about the Prolife campaigners planting bombs,

Pro lifers support murder of humans but not fetuses Ironic ey,

anyway i couldn&#39;t find a good one,

but i came across this on capitalism.org

the artcile is titled
~
Abortion is pro-life; anti-abortion is anti-life



What is abortion?

Abortion is the removal of a fetus from the body of its host (a pregnant woman) which typically results in the death of the fetus.

What is the essential issue concerning abortion?

The essential question concerning abortion is: does the fetus have an inalienable right to be in the body of its&#39; host against the host&#39;s will?

Doesn&#39;t a fetus have a right to be in the womb of its host?

A fetus does not have a right to be in the womb of any woman, but is only in there by her permission. This permission may be revoked by the woman at any time. Rights are not permissions; permissions are not rights. This permission is given by the woman, because it is her body -- and not the fetus&#39;s body, and certainly not the government&#39;s body.

To give a fetus "rights" superior to a pregnant woman is to eradicate the woman&#39;s right to her body. The principle here is: any right that contradicts the right of another cannot be a right, as rights form an integrated whole. Contrary to the opinion of anti-lifers (falsely called "pro-lifers" as they are against the life of the actual human being involved) a woman is not a breeding pig.
Why is abortion not murder?

Murder is the taking of the life of another human being through the initiation of physical force. Abortion is not murder, because a fetus is not a human being -- it is a potential human being, i.e. it is part of the woman. The concept murder only applies to the initiation of physical force used to destroy an actual human being, i.e., such as when "pro-life" terrorists bomb abortion clinics.
Isn&#39;t the fetus "life", and therefore has a right to life?

You are equivocating on the term "life" which is a concept that includes everything that is living. Dogs are "life" but they do not have rights. What about ants? So are trees "life", yet they do not have rights (contrary to the mouthing of man-hating environmentalists). Rights only apply to human beings, and not to human tissue.

Rights apply to human beings, because only human beings survive by the use of reason (unlike dogs, trees, ants -- and fetuses). Rights only apply to human beings, because only human beings -- and not parts of beings -- survive by reason. Please keep in mind what a right is: a right is a moral sanction for freedom of action in a social context. A fetus has no rights, as it does not need freedom to take any actions, but survives on the sustenance of its host. The only action it must take is nothing, i.e., wait for itself to develop using the sustenance provided by its host.
What is the capitalist view on abortion?

Given the above, under capitalism abortion is an inalienable right. Any one who advocates the outlawing of abortion -- like Steve Forbes -- is an enemy of individual rights, and thus of capitalism.
Do children have no rights?

Children, unlike fetuses, do have rights. A new born child, unlike a fetus, is a physically separate entity. A child is an actual human being, with a capability to reason, and thus a child has the same right to life as any adult. However, the application of this right differs in practice from that of an adult, as a child&#39;s conceptual faculty is not fully developed. That is why a six year old does not have the right to choose to enter into a sexual relationship -- and an adult does.

[Comrade J]

Originally posted by [email protected] 08, 2007 03:59 pm
Said in the other thread,

If you genuinely thought abortion was murder, and it was actually killing a human being, you would not support it being legal. It&#39;s evident to me, and probably anyone else gifted with having temporal lobes, that you are - and not for the first time - talking utter shit.

Are you not reading what I said? I said, "I did not state myself clearly enough when I said that it is "murder"."
Hahaha oh right, of course.

WHITE POWER&#33;

Oh, by that, I of course mean I support equal rights for people of all skin colours, as the concept of &#39;race&#39; is nothing more than a social construct, and I abhore anyone who believes they are superior simply due to their skin colour.
I guess "white power" was just one of those things I didn&#39;t make quite clear, that just slipped out... like &#39;murder&#39;.

You&#39;re just backpeddling to get unrestricted freakazoid. It&#39;s hardly an equivocal statement, is it?

[freakazoid]

Hahaha oh right, of course.

WHITE POWER&#33;

Oh, by that, I of course mean I support equal rights for people of all skin colours, as the concept of &#39;race&#39; is nothing more than a social construct, and I abhore anyone who believes they are superior simply due to their skin colour.
I guess "white power" was just one of those things I didn&#39;t make quite clear, that just slipped out... like &#39;murder&#39;.

You&#39;re just backpeddling to get unrestricted freakazoid. It&#39;s hardly an equivocal statement, is it?

No I am not, in the thread, Could religion be positive http://www.revleft.com/index.php?showtopic=66729 , I was asked

Do you support abortion on demand?

And I responded,


I view the fetus as a human being, which would make an abortion murder.

First of all what I was asked had nothing to do with the thread at hand, so I didn&#39;t put much thought into my response. If I had been asked to clarify my statement you would of found that out, but I wasn&#39;t&#33;

[Kwisatz Haderach]

Originally posted by [email protected] 08, 2007 09:14 pm
As has been established many times before in many threads, even if a fetus were an independent human life as a baby is, or even a full person as a toddler is, it would still have no rights to it’s hosts body. It would have no right to harm its host (which is what pregnancy and labour and childbirth entail) even if failing to results in its death, and its carrier would still have the right to defend herself, including with lethal force, just as she would if she was at physical risk from another independent human in normal circumstances.
If we have two human beings, A and B, and we have a choice between killing A or causing great pain and suffering to B, we should always choose to cause great pain and suffering to B, because that is the lesser evil. It is better to cause pain and suffering to one human being than to kill another human being.

The relationship between the two human beings in question is utterly and completely irrelevant. You do have the right to harm someone else if that is the only way for you to stay alive.

Thus, if it were true that a fetus was a human being, abortion would have to be outlawed. That is why the status of the fetus is important in pro-choice arguments.

Furthermore, I am very curious to know how you reconcile your dogmatic insistence on "rights" with opposition to capitalism. The idea that individuals have certain rights which should never be infringed - even if it means exploitation, suffering and death for other individuals - is precisely what lies at the core of libertarian capitalist ideology.

[pusher robot]

The "mentally ill" comment came as a response to your scenario in which there would be highly painful medical experiments performed on the woman.

I mean painful for the fetus, not the mother.

[Kwisatz Haderach]

Originally posted by pusher [email protected] 08, 2007 11:32 pm
I mean painful for the fetus, not the mother.
In that case, it should be handled by the same standards as research on animals.

[TC]

Originally posted by Edric [email protected] 08, 2007 09:20 pm

If we have two human beings, A and B, and we have a choice between killing A or causing great pain and suffering to B, we should always choose to cause great pain and suffering to B, because that is the lesser evil. It is better to cause pain and suffering to one human being than to kill another human being.

The relationship between the two human beings in question is utterly and completely irrelevant. You do have the right to harm someone else if that is the only way for you to stay alive.

Thus, if it were true that a fetus was a human being, abortion would have to be outlawed. That is why the status of the fetus is important in pro-choice arguments.
Uh, no, sorry but we aren&#39;t Benthamite utilitarians like you, we&#39;re Marxists.

Your ideology would justify arbitrary torture if it meant more benefit to a greater number to such an extent that it would outweigh that.

We on the left are not interested in maximizing an average lack-of-suffering, except as a side effect, but of liberating people from oppression. Sometimes that involves killing one person instead of allowing them to cause suffering to others. We would advocate killing capitalists and their soldiers when they merely cause great pain and suffering rather than outright death.

So your argument isn&#39;t leftist at all, its benthamite liberal utilitarianism.






Furthermore, I am very curious to know how you reconcile your dogmatic insistence on "rights" with opposition to capitalism. The idea that individuals have certain rights which should never be infringed - even if it means exploitation, suffering and death for other individuals - is precisely what lies at the core of libertarian capitalist ideology.

No, exploitation is an infringement of the natural right to fair compensation, surplus value is the difference in what a worker makes and what s/he is allowed to keep, in other words, surplus value and therefore capitalist profit is theft. Socialism respects human rights, capitalism entails violating them.

You&#39;re showing yourself to be less and less a leftist in your core ideology.

[Coggeh]

Originally posted by [email protected] 09, 2007 12:49 am


The relationship between the two human beings in question is utterly and completely irrelevant. You do have the right to harm someone else if that is the only way for you to stay alive.

Thus, if it were true that a fetus was a human being, abortion would have to be outlawed. That is why the status of the fetus is important in pro-choice arguments.
Uh, no, sorry but we aren&#39;t Benthamite utilitarians like you, we&#39;re Marxists.

Your ideology would justify arbitrary torture if it meant more benefit to a greater number to such an extent that it would outweigh that.

We on the left are not interested in maximizing an average lack-of-suffering, except as a side effect, but of liberating people from oppression. Sometimes that involves killing one person instead of allowing them to cause suffering to others. We would advocate killing capitalists and their soldiers when they merely cause great pain and suffering rather than outright death.

So your argument isn&#39;t leftist at all, its benthamite liberal utilitarianism.


No, exploitation is an infringement of the natural right to fair compensation, surplus value is the difference in what a worker makes and what s/he is allowed to keep, in other words, surplus value and therefore capitalist profit is theft. Socialism respects human rights, capitalism entails violating them.

You&#39;re showing yourself to be less and less a leftist in your core ideology.
I agree with abortions and womens rights ,also the right to controls ones own body .

But TC you just taking things alot too far where you just completely take someones positive ideals for granted .

The grounds that killing a capitalist and killing an almost complete socialist are the same are just completely ignorant on your part .

Less and less in the leftist ideology ? your showing yourself to be a lack-clustered illminded fool when dealing with people who don&#39;t fit the curriculum 100% and i seriously question your ability to address flaws in some comrades theory .

[TC]

The grounds that killing a capitalist and killing an almost complete socialist are the same are just completely ignorant on your part .


uh...what are you talking about?

I merely brought up the issue of killing capitalists as an example to demonstrate that to be a leftist entails believing that there are certain instances where it is acceptable to kill someone to prevent them from merely harming (but not killing) another (as opposed to Edric O&#39;s hedonic utilitarianism which holds that its always better for someone to be harmed than another to be killed).


While i don&#39;t think Edric O is an "almost complete socialist" but rather a communitarian Benthemite, the analogy was never with killing him but with killing a fetus.


Less and less in the leftist ideology ? your showing yourself to be a lack-clustered illminded fool when dealing with people who don&#39;t fit the curriculum 100% and i seriously question your ability to address flaws in some comrades theory .



Yah petty insults are really gonna get you far Coggy.

[freakazoid]

Yah petty insults are really gonna get you far Coggy.

Can ya really blame him though? Some people have been restricted for a belief that they do not actually believe, or a belief that even though they think something is wrong find it even more wrong to impose it on others. While I am not much on using cuss words and such on people, I can feel where he is coming from, :(

[Kwisatz Haderach]

Originally posted by [email protected] 09, 2007 02:49 am
Uh, no, sorry but we aren&#39;t Benthamite utilitarians like you, we&#39;re Marxists.
On the contrary, I am the Marxist here and you are the one desperately trying to combine Marxist views with bourgeois rights-based theories that Marx explicitly rejected. I&#39;d also like to point out that your attempt to use an argument from authority by employing the plural "we" is not going to impress anyone. You speak for yourself, and no one else.


Your ideology would justify arbitrary torture if it meant more benefit to a greater number to such an extent that it would outweigh that.
By definition, utilitarianism seeks to maximize happiness and minimize suffering. It is the only philosophy that consistently sides with happiness and opposes suffering, in all circumstances. If you oppose utilitarianism, then, by definition, you are saying that there are cases in which you would prefer suffering instead of happiness, and death instead of life.


We on the left are not interested in maximizing an average lack-of-suffering, except as a side effect, but of liberating people from oppression.
You do not speak for the left. You speak for the Lockean philosophical tradition which genuinely believes that suffering and death is sometimes preferrable to happiness and life. You cannot be a humanist and a progressive without holding at least basic utilitarian positions.

The purpose of liberating people from oppression is precisely to maximize happiness and minimize suffering (since oppression and exploitation are the leading sources of human-made suffering in the world).


Sometimes that involves killing one person instead of allowing them to cause suffering to others. We would advocate killing capitalists and their soldiers when they merely cause great pain and suffering rather than outright death.
There you go, taking an unconscious utilitarian position. If a person truly has a natural right to life, then you should never kill them, under any circumstances. The fact that you are willing to kill some for the benefit of the many shows that you have utilitarian intuitions, and directly contradicts your rights-based philosophy.

By the way, it is possible for great pain and suffering to outweigh death - the suffering of the many outweighs the death of the few. So, if killing a few capitalists will save many more people from suffering, the utilitarian would say "go for it".


No, exploitation is an infringement of the natural right to fair compensation...
On what grounds can you claim that any such "natural right" exists? As far as I&#39;m concerned, exploitation is bad because it causes suffering to many workers for the purpose of increasing the happiness of one capitalist.


...surplus value is the difference in what a worker makes and what s/he is allowed to keep, in other words, surplus value and therefore capitalist profit is theft.
Yes, and like I said above, extracting surplus value from workers causes them to suffer, and increases the happiness of a much smaller number of capitalists. Under capitalism, the vast majority of the population suffers for the benefit of a small minority. I don&#39;t think I need to explain what is wrong with this picture from a utilitarian point of view.


You&#39;re showing yourself to be less and less a leftist in your core ideology.
I was not aware that leftist ideology is based on Lockean "natural rights" theory. I would throw your accusation right back at you: No one who believes in the mystical nonsense of "natural rights" can be a consistent leftist. Do I really have to spell out for you how "natural rights" have been used to justify private property?

In fact, there is nothing more liberal than "natural rights" theory. I may share some aspects of my utilitarianism with Bentham, but you share your core ideology with the likes of Locke, Von Mises and Ayn Rand. I hope you enjoy the company.

[Kwisatz Haderach]

Originally posted by [email protected] 09, 2007 03:26 am
I merely brought up the issue of killing capitalists as an example to demonstrate that to be a leftist entails believing that there are certain instances where it is acceptable to kill someone to prevent them from merely harming (but not killing) another (as opposed to Edric O&#39;s hedonic utilitarianism which holds that its always better for someone to be harmed than another to be killed).
You clearly misunderstand utilitarianism. Yes, it is always better for one person to be harmed than for one person to be killed. However, it may be better for one person to be killed than for many people to be harmed.

And really, your insistence on ideological purity is quite worrying. As is your tendency to judge someone&#39;s views as non-socialist after the briefest of contacts with that person. You are possibly the first person I&#39;ve encountered who has suggested that someone who supports virtually every Marxist political position may be a "communitarian Benthemite" if his support is based on the wrong reasons (or what you consider to be the wrong reasons).

I maintain my position that "natural rights" theory is incompatible with socialism, and I therefore believe that you are a socialist for the completely wrong reasons. But I do not question the fact that you are indeed a socialist.

[cubist]

nothing wrong with healthy Debate.

just a shame you people cant grasp the concept

Abortion should be allowed end of,

The fetus only has a right to life with the concent of the owner of the body from which it feeds.

I dont get why you guys suffer a complete mind block in comprehending that there are no righs for a parasite.

but what ever i wont post in here again you seem to want to come back round to restriction BS and hole picking in eachothers ideals,

anyway enjoy oi guys the longer you go on the bigger hole you will dig

[Invader Zim]

Originally posted by [email protected] 06, 2007 01:08 am

How is that obvious? A lot of women can&#39;t even tell that they&#39;re pregnant by 8 weeks.

I wouldnt really dispute that because im not to smart on that issue .



Right, i agree thats wrong. Every capitalist and bourgeois ruling class in the west other than the Irish Republic, Portugal and South Dakota is to the left of you on this issue, so i guess its unfair to them.
I have a damn opinion on something so what ?&#33;&#33;? .Free speech is more of a phrase to you isn&#39;t it ?


Clearly it does since you reject communism fundamental political agenda of human emancipation from oppression and exploitation. Socialism without that is just a perverse form of communitarianism and not leftism at all.

So i should take down my red flag .. leave the Socialist party .. quit the movement completely because you say me disagreeing with certain aspects of abortion makes me not a leftist ... :angry:

Your saying this minor difference allows you to throw me in with capitalists ?You have disagreements with people so what ? so what if im not a perfectionist leftist that you think i should be .


Right, i agree thats wrong. Every capitalist and bourgeois ruling class in the west other than the Irish Republic, Portugal and South Dakota is to the left of you on this issue, so i guess its unfair to them.
ya thats why we see new york with a hammer and sickle on their state flag >_> . And england being run by workers councils .
You ignore women rights, but you are right; TC makes this issue into a mountain when in reality it is molehill.




Yah petty insults are really gonna get you far Coggy.

But somewhat amusingly, he has you bang on. You place an ethical issue over the material issue of class conflict. Whether you like it or not, class conflict is fundermentally central to radical leftwing politics. Everything else, including abortion, is a very distant second.

[freakazoid]

^^ So true, so sad. :( ^^


nothing wrong with healthy Debate.

just a shame you people cant grasp the concept

Abortion should be allowed end of,

The fetus only has a right to life with the concent of the owner of the body from which it feeds.

I dont get why you guys suffer a complete mind block in comprehending that there are no righs for a parasite.

but what ever i wont post in here again you seem to want to come back round to restriction BS and hole picking in eachothers ideals,

anyway enjoy oi guys the longer you go on the bigger hole you will dig

It&#39;s a shame that you can&#39;t grasp the concept that we keep on saying that we do not actually think that abortion should be banned&#33;

[bezdomni]

Look, you say abortion after a certain point is murder. So this leads us to two possible conclusions.

1) Abortion is murder, murder is undesirible and should be banned; therefore, abortion should be banned. (The first premise of this syllogism is false).

2) Abortion is murder, abotion should not be banned, therefore; murder should not be banned. (Still, the first premise is false).

There is no logical way you can have socialism and claim that abortion is murder because you are either going to be BANNING ABORTION or LEGALIZING MURDER. Take your pick.

[cubist]

You wish to restrict aspects of abortion thats equally as bad, once again rather than just admitting your statements are reactionary your pick holes in something

What part of ABORTION SHOULD BE UNRESTRICTED and LEGAL in cAPITALIST countries as well as socialist one. Do you fail to comprehend



ook, you say abortion after a certain point is murder. So this leads us to two possible conclusions.

1) Abortion is murder, murder is undesirible and should be banned; therefore, abortion should be banned. (The first premise of this syllogism is false).

2) Abortion is murder, abotion should not be banned, therefore; murder should not be banned. (Still, the first premise is false).

There is no logical way you can have socialism and claim that abortion is murder because you are either going to be BANNING ABORTION or LEGALIZING MURDER. Take your pick.

yup this is a very good way of looking at teh statement

[freakazoid]

Did neither of you not read any of my posts in the Unfair Restriction thread? Here, I&#39;ll look them up for you and post them,


QUOTE
You think that a woman&#39;s choice to abort a fetus is murder.


As I told LSD, and I also stated in the abortion thread, I do not think that abortion should be criminalized&#33; I did not state myself clearly enough when I said that it is "murder".


QUOTE
Yet that was the only practical interpretation of your post in which you identified abortion as murder. One would assume that you certainly don&#39;t support murder.


True, that is the only conclusion that someone could come to. But it would of been nice to of been PMed to clarify. And like I said, in the abortion thread I think, I posted that in haste without really thinking about what words I was using.

QUOTE
So do you support the right of women to abort or not without a time limit?


You mean if it is ok for a late term abortion? I do not think it should be banned. For reasons that I stated in the abortion thread, I think.


QUOTE
Ok, so you&#39;re saying that you don&#39;t see it as murder?


Yes

QUOTE
You haven&#39;t answered the question: would you support a women&#39;s right to have one then?


I haven&#39;t? I thought that I made myself clear already. How is saying that it shouldn&#39;t be banned not clear enough?


QUOTE
As far as the anti-choice members go, their statements were pretty clear. What more clarity do you want?


While mine might of seemed clear when I stated that it is "murder", that is not what I meant and I still should of been messaged asking me to clarify&#33;

[Coggeh]

I really don&#39;t think they listen anymore freakizoid ...

I also now agree with abortions 100% and stated several times why and that i did . But im still restricted .... :&#092;

[freakazoid]

I was told that in order for someone to become unrestricted a member of CC has to bring it up for vote. So it could take a while, :(

[Janus]

I also now agree with abortions 100% and stated several times why and that i did . But im still restricted
You haven&#39;t considered that people would view your sudden change of views as somewhat suspicious?


It&#39;s a shame that you can&#39;t grasp the concept that we keep on saying that we do not actually think that abortion should be banned&#33;
Well, we&#39;ve seen you and Coggy change your positions relatively quickly after your restrictions. What we&#39;re not sure of is if you actually believe what you&#39;re posting on here.

[freakazoid]

Well, we&#39;ve seen you and Coggy change your positions relatively quickly after your restrictions.

I haven&#39;t "changed" my position on it, they have always been this. Remember, I didn&#39;t state myself clearly when I said that it was "murder".


What we&#39;re not sure of is if you actually believe what you&#39;re posting on here.

That can be... understandable. And I can only give you my word that it is true.

[Kwisatz Haderach]

Come to think of it, it may not really matter what they believe.

The purpose of restriction is to ensure that debate in the main forums remains within the spectrum of revolutionary leftism, correct? So as long as someone talks like a revolutionary leftist, it shouldn&#39;t matter what they may or may not truly believe in their own minds. We can only know a person by their postings, anyway, so the only thing that matters is what they say, not what they believe.

[Janus]

I really don&#39;t think they listen anymore freakizoid ...
No, we are. We have heard that both you and freakazoid have now claimed to be pro-choice. Whether we believe that or not is a whole different matter.


So as long as someone talks like a revolutionary leftist, it shouldn&#39;t matter what they may or may not truly believe in their own minds. We can only know a person by their postings, anyway, so the only thing that matters is what they say, not what they believe.
That may be ok with the board software but most people want some type of guarantee that someone has actually changed their views.

[freakazoid]

No, we are. We have heard that both you and freakazoid have now claimed to be pro-choice.

And before you thought that I was "claiming" to be a "pro-lifer".


That may be ok with the board software but most people want some type of guarantee that someone has actually changed their views.

And how do you propose we do that? After all, you only have our word.

[TC]

Originally posted by Invader Zim

You ignore women rights, but you are right; TC makes this issue into a mountain when in reality it is molehill.


LOL the issue of women&#39;s rights is a molehill. Great.



You place an ethical issue over the material issue of class conflict.

Uh, no. Abortion is a material issue, we&#39;re talking about a material thing here not something abstract or ideological.


whether you like it or not, class conflict is fundermentally central to radical leftwing politics. Everything else, including abortion, is a very distant second.


The perpetuation of patriarchal social relations by controlling reproduction is one of the key pillars of feudal and capitalist social organization; it maintains a growing work force and a divided working class.

Half of the working class is female, women&#39;s rights are workers issues. Every major communist theorist, Marx, Engel&#39;s, Lenin, Mao, and so on, addressed the double exploitation of female workers both by capitalism and by patriarchal family relations as real material issues based on class dynamics.



The fact that you choose to ignore this Invader Zim really smacks of chauvinism.

[Janus]

And how do you propose we do that? After all, you only have our word.
Discuss/debate your "new beliefs" in here.

[Kwisatz Haderach]

Originally posted by [email protected] 12, 2007 01:03 am
LOL the issue of women&#39;s rights is a molehill. Great.
As I said before, the right to an abortion is not the only right women have&#33; It is absurd to say that women&#39;s rights amount to no more than the right to have an abortion.

It is possible - it may not be philosophically consistent, but it is possible - to oppose abortion while supporting all other women&#39;s rights.


The perpetuation of patriarchal social relations by controlling reproduction is one of the key pillars of feudal and capitalist social organization; it maintains a growing work force and a divided working class.
Again, patriarchal social relations cannot be reduced to mere opposition to abortion. This is why I say that you exaggerate the abortion issue out of all proportion: Because you speak as if abortion = women&#39;s rights, when in fact abortion is only one part or women&#39;s rights. You speak as if abortion was the only thing separating socialism from feudal patriarchy.

[Jude]

I haven&#39;t been here for the entirety of this conversation, nor do I have the mental stamina at this point to read through more than 6 pages of debate but what I have to say about abortion is this: If a woman gets pregnant, wasn&#39;t it her choice to get pregnant in the first place? I am not a sexist, nor a chauvinist, but I think that a restriction based on abortion opinions is complete bullshit. I understand that my aforementioned opinion may sound harsh according to a left-wing standpoint, as looking back on it I feel that maybe I should change what I typed, but I will not.

Think about this: What if Lenin, Marx, Trotsky, Engels, or Che had been aborted?

Now, I am not saying that abortion should be illegal by any means. my solid opinion is that abortion should not be used under normal circumstances. If it was likely that the child was going to be born with an incurable disease, syndrome or illness, was going to be mentally or physically retarded, or was going to be deformed, and the mother would rather have an abortion than to bring a troubled life into the world, or if the birth would pose harm to the mother, that is a perfectly noble and understandable reason to have an abortion, as long as it was humane.

But having an abortion just because you don&#39;t want to have a child... is absolutely ludicrous. There IS such a thing as adoption... and I know for a fact that there are plenty of people out there who would love to adopt a child.

[Qwerty Dvorak]

If a woman gets pregnant, wasn&#39;t it her choice to get pregnant in the first place?
Not necessarily.

[Redmau5]

Originally posted by [email protected] 12, 2007 01:32 pm
But having an abortion just because you don&#39;t want to have a child... is absolutely ludicrous.
No it&#39;s not. It&#39;s completely fine.

[/QUOTE]There IS such a thing as adoption... and I know for a fact that there are plenty of people out there who would love to adopt a child.[QUOTE]

Yes, and some women would prefer not to carry something around for 9 months which will make them feel continuously ill, and then have to push that thing out in an extremely painful labour process.

[Jazzratt]

Originally posted by [email protected] 12, 2007 01:32 pm
If a woman gets pregnant, wasn&#39;t it her choice to get pregnant in the first place?
There are many circumstances where it is not.


I am not a sexist, nor a chauvinist,

Yes you are, you&#39;re trying to tell women what to do with their bodies.


Think about this: What if Lenin, Marx, Trotsky, Engels, or Che had been aborted?

What if they had?

What if their parents had access to, and used, contraceptives that prevented them being born? Should we do away with contraceptives?


Now, I am not saying that abortion should be illegal by any means. my solid opinion is that abortion should not be used under normal circumstances.

"Normal circumstances"?


If it was likely that the child was going to be born with an incurable disease, syndrome or illness, was going to be mentally or physically retarded, or was going to be deformed, and the mother would rather have an abortion than to bring a troubled life into the world, or if the birth would pose harm to the mother, that is a perfectly noble and understandable reason to have an abortion, as long as it was humane.

How patronising&#33; "Noble" my arse. As TC pointed out in another thread what you&#39;re essentially doing is forcing a woman to live abnormally (pregnancy does affect aspects of life, and often makes women ill) and then to suffer one of the most excruciating experiences a human can suffer through just because you don&#39;t think it&#39;s "noble" that they don&#39;t. Well fuck you.


But having an abortion just because you don&#39;t want to have a child... is absolutely ludicrous.

I&#39;d say it&#39;s a fairly good reason. If one doesn&#39;t want a fucking child then it should be possible to not have the child.


There IS such a thing as adoption... and I know for a fact that there are plenty of people out there who would love to adopt a child.

Makaveli covered this like a motherfucker.

[pusher robot]

Yes you are, you&#39;re trying to tell women what to do with their bodies.

What if the women are traders? Do they have the right not to have bullets enter their skulls? It seems patently absurd to me that members of a board that openly advocate violence against others suddenly evinces an unshakeable belief in the absolute inviolability of bodily integrity. How can you possibly resolve that contradiction?

[Jazzratt]

Originally posted by pusher [email protected] 12, 2007 02:44 pm

Yes you are, you&#39;re trying to tell women what to do with their bodies.

What if the women are traders? Do they have the right not to have bullets enter their skulls? It seems patently absurd to me that members of a board that openly advocate violence against others suddenly evinces an unshakeable belief in the absolute inviolability of bodily integrity. How can you possibly resolve that contradiction?
The bourgeoisie are aggressors in the class war, revolution is self defence.

[pusher robot]

Originally posted by Jazzratt+June 12, 2007 08:30 pm--> (Jazzratt @ June 12, 2007 08:30 pm)
pusher [email protected] 12, 2007 02:44 pm

Yes you are, you&#39;re trying to tell women what to do with their bodies.

What if the women are traders? Do they have the right not to have bullets enter their skulls? It seems patently absurd to me that members of a board that openly advocate violence against others suddenly evinces an unshakeable belief in the absolute inviolability of bodily integrity. How can you possibly resolve that contradiction?
The bourgeoisie are aggressors in the class war, revolution is self defence. [/b]
That expands the concept of "self defense" so greatly that I could just as plausibly argue that anti-abortionists are acting in the self-defense interest of the unborn child against the aggressor mothers. One could also justify the atomic bombing of Japan on the same "self-defense" grounds. Or the gassing of the Jews.

Ordinarily, "self-defense" applies only when life and limb are in imminent jeopardy. What you are talking about is more along the lines of "just war."

[bezdomni]

Think about this: What if Lenin, Marx, Trotsky, Engels, or Che had been aborted?

What if Hitler, Mussolini and Franco had been aborted?

Fortunately, this purely speculative and utterly meaningless argument holds no actual ground.


Now, I am not saying that abortion should be illegal by any means. my solid opinion is that abortion should not be used under normal circumstances.

Your "solid opinion" just happens to be an anti-choice opinion.


If it was likely that the child was going to be born with an incurable disease, syndrome or illness, was going to be mentally or physically retarded, or was going to be deformed, and the mother would rather have an abortion than to bring a troubled life into the world, or if the birth would pose harm to the mother, that is a perfectly noble and understandable reason to have an abortion, as long as it was humane.


Why are you so hot to protect something that isn&#39;t even alive and completely disregard the rights of something that is alive.

Are women just baby-making factories to you, and the only time it is okay for them to not carry a fetus to term is when the fetus would just die anyway? And even still you think there should be restrictions to fit into your definition of "humane".

I&#39;m sorry, but if you think women are either morally obliged or should be legally forced to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term...I have serious doubts about your ability to discern what is "humane".


But having an abortion just because you don&#39;t want to have a child... is absolutely ludicrous.

If by absolutely ludicrous you mean perfectly sensible, then I agree.

Would you like to carry around something for 9 months that immobilized you, made it difficult for you to go to work, caused you to eat more, forced you to quit smoking and drinking, made you sick in the mornings and probably at other times too and then forced its way out of your penis causing massive blood loss and excruciating pain? Now you are legally obliged to care for it for the next 18 years of your miserable life...and your misery would likely be mirrored in your newborn (unwanted) child.

I&#39;m not saying childbirth is bad, I am just saying it is bad when it is unwanted and unwelcome.


There IS such a thing as adoption... and I know for a fact that there are plenty of people out there who would love to adopt a child.
Oh&#33; So that&#39;s why there are so many orphans who never get adopted&#33;

I thought it was because there was a severe lack of people who wanted to adopt...but how in the hell would that make sense?

Again, if a woman chooses to have her baby and put it up for adoption, that&#39;s great. But it is fundamentally her choice if she wants to terminate the pregnancy or carry it to term.

[Invader Zim]

LOL the issue of women&#39;s rights is a molehill. Great.

Well that is not what I said. Maybe you should try addressing what I say, not whatever you make up as an easy alternative.



Uh, no. Abortion is a material issue, we&#39;re talking about a material thing here not something abstract or ideological.

The entire debate centres round an idea, that idea being that a woman has a greater right to choice than a foetus has a right to life; it is an utterly subjective ethical question. It is not a decision based on material concerns but ethical ones, not that I expect you to be able to grasp that difference; after all you haven&#39;t done thus far despite some very patient discourse on the matter.



The perpetuation of patriarchal social relations by controlling reproduction is one of the key pillars of feudal and capitalist social organization; it maintains a growing work force and a divided working class.

Oh please do elaborate; this should be amusing. Please do explain, I would love to know, how the issue of restricting abortion, (when abortion has been legalised in numerous capitalist countries and has been for decades), is a key pillar of capitalist social organisation and maintains a divided working class? Also you can consider that capitalist authorities are deeply concerned by population growth and maintaining population stability, which is why they implement such stringent immigration controls.



women&#39;s rights are workers issues.

Indeed, but this isn&#39;t an important question with a &#39;correct&#39; answer. It is an unanswerable ethical dilemma, and as such I fail to see the point in annoyed when someone comes down on the opposite side of the fence and I also fail to see the point in building up the issue beyond the level it disserves.




The fact that you choose to ignore this Invader Zim really smacks of chauvinism.

Is that a sly prelude to an argumentum ad baculum? You seem to be engaging in all kinds of fallacies, thus I suppose it would be unsurprising that you would indulge in logical fallacies as well.

[Media Tragedy]

Originally posted by [email protected] 05, 2007 11:36 pm
I agree with abortion

if it endangers the mothers life

If the child handicapped or is disabled (not because i have quarrl with that but its obviously gonna be an immense strain on the parents)

In the case of Rape

In the case of underage sex


I completely agree with you. As I say alot, "If you&#39;re against abortion...don&#39;t fuckin&#39; get one."

[The New Left]

I believe in abortion in any case, however, believe their name should be kept on file to make sure they do not abuse the system. Preventing a birth through condoms, the pill is fine, but abortion is obviously more serious because your killing a life that could have been.

[Mujer Libre]

Originally posted by The New [email protected] 24, 2007 04:37 pm
I believe in abortion in any case, however, believe their name should be kept on file to make sure they do not abuse the system. Preventing a birth through condoms, the pill is fine, but abortion is obviously more serious because your killing a life that could have been.
How would you define "abuse" of the system? Also, what would you have done if woman was seen to be "abusing" the system?

[TC]

Originally posted by The New [email protected] 24, 2007 04:37 pm

I believe in abortion in any case, however, believe their name should be kept on file to make sure they do not abuse the system

Then you&#39;re a reactionary sicko.

Why should anyone have to account for their personal medical choices?

Abortion needs to be available secretly or anonymously and without any consequences otherwise there would be inherent coercion against people who need it. In anycase if you actually believe in abortion rights you can&#39;t also believe that is possible to &#39;abuse the system.&#39;


Preventing a birth through condoms, the pill is fine, but abortion is obviously more serious because your killing a life that could have been.

Condoms and birth control pills kill sperm and egg cells respectively, thereby killing lives that could have been :-p. In fact...every time you jerk off, you&#39;re killing millions and millions of lives that could have been...what a monster you are&#33;

And in any case, although the primary mechanism that birth control pills work by is in preventing ovulation, they also actually have a secondary abortifacient effect that accounts for part of their effectiveness because they prevent implantation of fertilized embryos. Thats also how IUDs work.

[BreadBros]

I disagree with Coggy, support abortion rights for all, but still some of the arguments people are making in here seem very disconnected from reality.


But if you want something to be illegal with all the ramifications therein, then you&#39;re going to have to present something better than specious appeals to the "sanctity of life".


Originally posted by LSD+--> (LSD)That displays a degree of "irresponsiblity" that offends you and so you want to punish these "whores" for their "wicked ways".[/b]

While I disagree with Coggy, these are both horrible examples of strawmen. I don&#39;t think Coggy ever used the terms "sanctity of life", "whores" or "wicked ways". More importantly though, it&#39;s very clear that was an attempt to portray his opinion as being religiously moralistic in nature. While I do think Coggy holds reactionary viewpoints, I&#39;ve seen no indication that his opinions originate in religion. For example, if I saw an innocent person shot and killed, I (and I suspect most people) would be pretty horrified and would feel a sense of wrong. The Bible also says "Thou shall not kill" though, so does that make me a raging bible-thumper? The logic you&#39;re employing would seem to indicate so.

Along the same lines...


Originally posted by LSD+--> (LSD)It&#39;s the patriarchal subtext to the entire pro-life movement, treating the entire female sex as if they were disobedient children who must be forced to "face the consequences" of their promiscuity.[/b]


Originally posted by Fawkes
So, in other words, you don&#39;t actually care about the fetus&#39;s "rights", but instead, you just wish to punish women that choose to have sex, correct?

Except Coggy has said that he supports increased distribution of contraceptives and doesn&#39;t have a problem with people having sex. Again, its easy to say "You&#39;re anti-sexual freedom" or "You&#39;re patriarchal" and dismiss his views automatically. Except that doesn&#39;t seem to be the case with him. I would suspect thats true in wider society as well, I would bet that more people, even those who don&#39;t consider themselves right-wing or are religious in any manner, would be more disturbed by someone who has had multiple late-term abortions than by someone who has had a large number of sexual partners but never had an abortion. Before someone jumps the gun, I myself do not hold that opinion, that just seems to me to be the reality based on my experiences. This is similar to how most people won&#39;t bat an eye at the prospect of killing an insect but most would hesitate to kill a larger animal (let alone a human foetus that closely resembles an infant). So if you&#39;re really interested in convincing Coggy, superficial name-calling seems to completely miss the point, the reason this issue is so contentious is because it draws on deeper human sentiments such as empathy.


Originally posted by TC

[email protected]

Alice is pregnant, and knows she is pregnant. However, she continues to drink, smoke, and do crack cocaine, and never gets around to having an abortion. As a result, she gives birth to a child that is mentally and physically handicapped, as well as addicted to narcotics, a child that will never be anything other than a burden on others. According to apparent leftist orthodoxy, Alice has every right to do that because that fetus is nothing more than a part of her that she can treat as she wishes. Does that seem right to you?Yes that seems right to me. Would you demand that women who carry genes for mental and physical handicaps not reproduce? Should someone who knowingly carries such genes be forced to abort or be sterilized or something? If not then how is this scenario any different from that one? Because you don&#39;t like women "behaving irresponsibly?"

And people seriously wonder why others might be reticent to accept the leftist argument on this issue? Did it occur to anyone that people might be opposed to it based on the fact that they find it wrong that a human being has to potentially live a life of misery being handicapped simply because their mother didn&#39;t want to go without alcohol or drugs for 9 months and not because they don&#39;t like women behaving irresponsibly? Genetic handicaps are something that is out of the hands of the parents, excessive drinking or use of certain drugs is almost guaranteed to create birth defects. Thats like saying its the same thing if I accidentally injure you by spilling hot water on you or if I willingly throw it in your face for my own sadistic pleasure. I live a life that is often rather irresponsible as do many of the females I associated with, I have no problem with that, but I would personally be very sickened if someone I knew was pregnant and planning to give birth and still knowingly endangered the foetus by excessively drinking or doing drugs that may be harmful to it.


HegemonicRetribution
Telling a women she cannot abort is where the problem lies, in the first instance at least; who is it that can have this "authority"? Some leader?....

:rolleyes: Who says I can&#39;t have slaves? What if in a communist society I purposefully want to fuck everything up and hire wage labor? Who is going to stop me? You? Some "authority"? Won&#39;t that endanger our "Marxism" which is predicated on non-hierarchies? Your viewpoint is useless because you are attempting to construct a society completely based on abstract reasoning on rights. It seems to me a bit of a conundrum to try to establish a non-hierarchical society when the non-presence of authority allows for the possible return to hierarchy. Instead it seems as if you need some collective cooperation and social cohesion (and occasionally coercion) in order to maintain such a society. So simply saying that we can&#39;t have rules because there is no authority is an attempt at a major cop-out, completely side-stepping the question and seems to me to be inconsistent with communism. The issue must be dealt with directly. I think that communism does not mean being locked into any set abstract logic on rights. Communism should mean the overthrow of the class system and the creation of a classless society that is oriented towards satisfying the human desire/vision of the best possible society considering the material circumstances. Because of this, so far I have seen NO reasonably argument for why abortion should be illegal. At the same time I have to wonder about people who visualize such a society as consisting of legalistic demarcations of rights between individuals. It seems to me that in the material world we have to interact with other individuals and often make sacrifices, such as inconveniencing yourself to help out someone in need, etc. I can only imagine those would increase in a society where cooperation plays an even greater part and some forms of property are communal. Instead the society being described by HegemonicRetribution et. al. seems to be more like what the abstract logical culmination of bourgeois society would be like: a hyper-emphasis on the individual&#39;s seperation from society (the drowning Bob example illustrates this) with no mention of classlessness.

[TC]

Originally posted by Edric [email protected] 07, 2007 05:45 am
That is why I try to step away from a rights-based perspective - which will get you nowhere - and look at it from a utilitarian and class-based point of view. What happens when abortion is illegal? ...
Thus, in fact, laws restricting abortion will provide no benefit and will end up causing numerous social problems - problems that will hit the working class above all. So we should not have laws restricting abortion.
A "rights based perspective", or rather the perspective of emancipating people from oppression, is the leftist perspective.

Your perspective, a utilitarian one, is the reactionary perspective, just because you claim it to be &#39;class based&#39; doesn&#39;t make it so.

I would like to direct you to this thread on how utilitarianism is incompatible with communism and is a liberal, bourgeois ideology:

http://www.revleft.com/index.php?showtopic=68273

[freakazoid]

the drowning Bob example illustrates this)

What is the drowning Bob example?


The Bible also says "Thou shall not kill" though

Well actually its "thou shall not murder", :P

[Never Give In]

Yeah I also agree with Abortion. Any Anarchist would, I think. If you don&#39;t support abortion, just don&#39;t get one, eh? Pro-Choice should equal Pro-Abortion as well.

[Never Give In]

Originally posted by [email protected] 25, 2007 02:42 am

I believe in abortion in any case, however, believe their name should be kept on file to make sure they do not abuse the system. Preventing a birth through condoms, the pill is fine, but abortion is obviously more serious because your killing a life that could have been.


COULD have been is the key word there. It&#39;s not murder &#39;till the baby&#39;s born. Once the baby&#39;s life actually starts, then they gain the right not to be killed along with every other living human, along with many animals.

[jasmine]

Yeah I also agree with Abortion. Any Anarchist would, I think. If you don&#39;t support abortion, just don&#39;t get one, eh? Pro-Choice should equal Pro-Abortion as well.

What exactly is the connection between Anarchism and abortion?

An abortion, believe it or not, is not an act of liberation. It&#39;s an act of desperation, particularly when carried out late into the preganancy. The sophist arguments about contraception etc. killing a life that may have been are bullshit. Try carrying &#39;a life that may have been&#39; in your body for six months and then have it killed and see just how liberating that feels.

I am not in favour of banning abortion because that just drives it into the back streets and often means the death of both mother and baby. But in any humane society abortion would not be a necessity or even an option.

Abortion is the result of a lack of choice, it&#39;s about the inability to cope financially or emotionally with a child, and the non-existence of support and help for (normally but not always) young, pregnant women.

Shouldn&#39;t anarchism or socialism be about removing the conditions where abortion is necessary?

[Never Give In]

Originally posted by [email protected] 08, 2007 03:51 pm

Yeah I also agree with Abortion. Any Anarchist would, I think. If you don&#39;t support abortion, just don&#39;t get one, eh? Pro-Choice should equal Pro-Abortion as well.

What exactly is the connection between Anarchism and abortion?

I would think Anarchism is pretty Pro-Choice. It should be the pregnant women&#39;s choice and nobody elses.

[jasmine]

I would think Anarchism is pretty Pro-Choice. It should be the pregnant women&#39;s choice and nobody elses.

I asked what the connection is between Anarchism and abortion. Do you really want to live in a society where desperate girls and young women are aborting their babies? Abortion is not a "choice" like whether or not to use a condom. The most common cause of abortion is poverty - it has nothing whatsoever to do with the bullshit "right to choose." And contrary to the financially-secure, middle-class feminist myth it is normally an emotionally bruising experience for the woman.


As I said before, the baby gains the human right to not have it&#39;s life ended upon it&#39;s birth, not when the lifeform begins the pregnancy process. For the purposes of this conversation, it is not yet a human, therefore it&#39;s mother should be able to decide if she wants this baby aborted or not. After birth, the child is entitled to life and all it&#39;s accomadations.

What sort of society do you want to live in? "The lifeform" is a part of the woman. From very early on she and "the lifeform" form a bond. If she chooses to "terminate the lifeform" she does so not out of free choice but because her oppressive living conditions seem to give her no other option.

In a civilised society abortion would not be banned because nobody would need to consider it as an option.

[Coggeh]

Well their are more reasons rather than social implications why a woman would get an abortion , i.e Life in danger , just don&#39;t want a kid , don&#39;t want to go through pregnancy , if a bf breaks up with them . Hence why it is a choice , womans body at the end of the day .

If you want to keep the kid/fetus/lifeform its your choice as its your body its also your choice not too .

[TC]

Originally posted by jasmine+--> (jasmine)
An abortion, believe it or not, is not an act of liberation.[/b]

Yes, it is. Unwanted pregnancy is an oppressive, alienating burden, eliminating oppressive burdens is liberation.


Originally posted by jasmine+--> (jasmine)Try carrying &#39;a life that may have been&#39; in your body for six months and then have it killed and see just how liberating that feels.[/b]

If you didn&#39;t want it, probably pretty liberating. If you did want it, it would probably be pretty upsetting. Stop conflating the experience of women who want to be mothers who feel emotionally bonded to their fetuses and babies to women who don&#39;t want to be pregnant and find it deeply alienating and upsetting.




Abortion is the result of a lack of choice, it&#39;s about the inability to cope financially or emotionally with a child, and the non-existence of support and help for (normally but not always) young, pregnant women.

You are absurdly patronizing. If a young woman gets an abortion despite the pressure from conservative psychos like you, its because she preferred that to giving birth. Thats exercising a choice and for many its the natural and obvious choice.

And what about the &#39;inability to cope...emotionally with a child&#39;? Why should someone be automatically expected to cope with a child emotionally? People should have children if it would be emotionally fulfilling to them, not because its something they have to do and just need to be able to &#39;emotionally&#39; &#39;cope&#39; with.

The perfect solution to not being able to emotionally cope with a child is to not have one, by using contraceptives when possible and abortion when they don&#39;t work.


[email protected]
Do you really want to live in a society where desperate girls and young women are aborting their babies?

err, yah. Do you really want to live in a society, like Ireland, where the state will attempt to force teenage girls to give birth against their will?


jasimine
Abortion is not a "choice" like whether or not to use a condom.

sure it is. or at least it should be, RU-486 should be available over the counter in drug stores and dispensed for free at schools.


The most common cause of abortion is poverty

Uh, no, i&#39;m pretty sure the most common cause of abortion is not wanting to be pregnant or give birth. The most common cause of putting a baby up for adoption is poverty; thats what we should be looking to reduce numbers in.


And contrary to the financially-secure, middle-class feminist myth it is normally an emotionally bruising experience for the woman.

No, its really not. You might want it to be out of a perverted desire to punish women emotionally for having abortions or to guilt them into taking it oh so very seriously, but its not.

There is absolutely nothing &#39;normal&#39; about that kind of experience, every systematic study has shown that unlike unwanted pregnancies, abortions do not cause emotional damage, they prevent it.


If she chooses to "terminate the lifeform" she does so not out of free choice but because her oppressive living conditions seem to give her no other option.


You&#39;re clearly out of touch with reality. The vast majority of women who have abortions have them because they don&#39;t want a child or they don&#39;t want a child at that time.


Anyone, no matter how poor has the option of having a baby and putting it up for adoption, poverty doesn&#39;t cause abortion. Poor women have more children and fewer abortions than middle class or wealthy women so you&#39;re obviously wrong.



In a civilised society abortion would not be banned because nobody would need to consider it as an option.

what a profoundly stupid claim. do you imagine that everyone wants children or that all women are just so intoxicated by babies that everyone would want to let their lives revolve around them at any given point?



Shouldn&#39;t anarchism or socialism be about removing the conditions where abortion is necessary?

Unless by that you&#39;d suggest sterilizing everyone or killing everyone (in which case the answer would be, no) abortion will always be necessary

[bezdomni]

And contrary to the financially-secure, middle-class feminist myth it is normally an emotionally bruising experience for the woman.

As opposed to being forced to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term, which I hear is actually quite nice and relaxing.

[jasmine]

Yes, it is. Unwanted pregnancy is an oppressive, alienating burden, eliminating oppressive burdens is liberation.

Well, I suppose you are a socialist or an anarchist or at least consider yourself socially progressive. Does it not occur to you to ask the question why a woman might find pregnancy an "alienating burden?" Could it have something to do with family structure, the lack of assistance (financial and emotional) for single parents or abused wives, possible career problems etc. etc.

It&#39;s true that bringing a child into the world could cause significant problems for a woman but the fact that abortion is seen as a solution simply reflects the backward society we live in.

Could pregnancy and childbirth be viewed differently under different social conditions?


If you didn&#39;t want it, probably pretty liberating. If you did want it, it would probably be pretty upsetting. Stop conflating the experience of women who want to be mothers who feel emotionally bonded to their fetuses and babies to women who don&#39;t want to be pregnant and find it deeply alienating and upsetting.

"probably" is the key word here - in other words you have no idea and no experience with someone who has gone through this. Everything is easy to resolve in theory. Real life is much more complicated.


You are absurdly patronizing. If a young woman gets an abortion despite the pressure from conservative psychos like you, its because she preferred that to giving birth. Thats exercising a choice and for many its the natural and obvious choice.

And what about the &#39;inability to cope...emotionally with a child&#39;? Why should someone be automatically expected to cope with a child emotionally? People should have children if it would be emotionally fulfilling to them, not because its something they have to do and just need to be able to &#39;emotionally&#39; &#39;cope&#39; with.

The perfect solution to not being able to emotionally cope with a child is to not have one, by using contraceptives when possible and abortion when they don&#39;t work.

I don&#39;t pressurise anyone one way or another. I am actually in favour of legal abortion under present social conditions because abortion is a barbarous fact of life. We know that making it illegal just drives women to the back street butchers.

Again, do you not see that many of our emotional problems are a result of society, capitalism? Abortion is no more a solution to womens oppression than anti-depressants are a cure for depression - although the depressed person often has no choice other than to allow the drug companies to experiment on him or her.


err, yah. Do you really want to live in a society, like Ireland, where the state will attempt to force teenage girls to give birth against their will?

Repeat - I am not in favour of banning abortion. This is not a reply to my point.


Uh, no, i&#39;m pretty sure the most common cause of abortion is not wanting to be pregnant or give birth. The most common cause of putting a baby up for adoption is poverty; thats what we should be looking to reduce numbers in.

Idiotic - a major reason in not wanting to give birth is financial. Are you really a socialist? You argue like a Thatcherite.


Anyone, no matter how poor has the option of having a baby and putting it up for adoption, poverty doesn&#39;t cause abortion. Poor women have more children and fewer abortions than middle class or wealthy women so you&#39;re obviously wrong.

Again you argue like a Thatcherite. Give me a reference for these figures.


There is absolutely nothing &#39;normal&#39; about that kind of experience, every systematic study has shown that unlike unwanted pregnancies, abortions do not cause emotional damage, they prevent it.

Actually the studies are, as ever on this sort of issue, quite contradictory. Perhaps you could give me a reference to the studies you have read.


what a profoundly stupid claim. do you imagine that everyone wants children or that all women are just so intoxicated by babies that everyone would want to let their lives revolve around them at any given point?

No - I just assume that if society were different childcare may not revolve exclusively around the nuclear family making it a quite different experience.


Unless by that you&#39;d suggest sterilizing everyone or killing everyone (in which case the answer would be, no) abortion will always be necessary

Were you getting tired by this point? Why exactly in a socialist, communist or anarchist society will abortion be necessary?


As opposed to being forced to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term, which I hear is actually quite nice and relaxing.

As I have made clear I am not in favour of forcing anyone to do anything.

[bezdomni]

As I have made clear I am not in favour of forcing anyone to do anything.

Except for carry unwanted pregnancies to term.


Does it not occur to you to ask the question why a woman might find pregnancy an "alienating burden?" Could it have something to do with family structure, the lack of assistance (financial and emotional) for single parents or abused wives, possible career problems etc. etc.

Does it occur to you that some women get pregnant and don&#39;t want to have a baby?


It&#39;s true that bringing a child into the world could cause significant problems for a woman but the fact that abortion is seen as a solution simply reflects the backward society we live in.

No it doesn&#39;t. The fact that abortions are accessible to many women in the world show progression from an age when women were forced to have babies they didn&#39;t want.


I am actually in favour of legal abortion under present social conditions because abortion is a barbarous fact of life. We know that making it illegal just drives women to the back street butchers.

Abortion isn&#39;t a "necessary evil". To hold such a position is, in truth, an anti-choice position. Abortion is a necessary medical procedure to terminate unwanted pregnancies. Stop trying to turn this into something that it is not.

Also, you are incorrect about "backstreet butchers". Illegal abortions are usually performed illegally by doctors, not in alleys with coathangers. That was a completely different century before medical abortions were really even the norm anywhere.

If the U.S. made abortion illegal, you&#39;d still go to the doctor to get them. They would just be doing it illegally and probably charging more.



Abortion is no more a solution to womens oppression than anti-depressants are a cure for depression - although the depressed person often has no choice other than to allow the drug companies to experiment on him or her.


Having access to abortion is necessary for both women&#39;s liberation and human. You cannot have a liberated society when half of humanity is not allowed to control what occurs inside their body.


Why exactly in a socialist, communist or anarchist society will abortion be necessary?

Because women will still get pregnant and not want to have a baby. How thick can you get?

[Coggeh]

Originally posted by [email protected] 10, 2007 08:08 pm

Why exactly in a socialist, communist or anarchist society will abortion be necessary?

Because women will still get pregnant and not want to have a baby. How thick can you get?
Well it won&#39;t be more necessary but mostly because childcare and stuff will be free . But there&#39;ll obviously be a need for abortions and the state will and should provide them free to any woman who wants one .Theirs alot more reasons than financial terms why someone would want an abortion you know .

[Never Give In]

Originally posted by Coggy+July 11, 2007 05:09 pm--> (Coggy @ July 11, 2007 05:09 pm)
[email protected] 10, 2007 08:08 pm

Why exactly in a socialist, communist or anarchist society will abortion be necessary?

Because women will still get pregnant and not want to have a baby. How thick can you get?
Well it won&#39;t be more necessary but mostly because childcare and stuff will be free . But there&#39;ll obviously be a need for abortions and the state will and should provide them free to any woman who wants one .Theirs alot more reasons than financial terms why someone would want an abortion you know . [/b]
The necessity of Abortion will not be eliminated, only decreased. Nobody said we&#39;re aiming to destroy all hardships and everything will be completely perfect. Leftism is not Utopianism. The necessity of certain Liberations from hardship will still exist.

[Coggeh]

Originally posted by Never Give In+July 11, 2007 09:50 pm--> (Never Give In @ July 11, 2007 09:50 pm)
Originally posted by [email protected] 11, 2007 05:09 pm

[email protected] 10, 2007 08:08 pm

Why exactly in a socialist, communist or anarchist society will abortion be necessary?

Because women will still get pregnant and not want to have a baby. How thick can you get?
Well it won&#39;t be more necessary but mostly because childcare and stuff will be free . But there&#39;ll obviously be a need for abortions and the state will and should provide them free to any woman who wants one .Theirs alot more reasons than financial terms why someone would want an abortion you know .
The necessity of Abortion will not be eliminated, only decreased. Nobody said we&#39;re aiming to destroy all hardships and everything will be completely perfect. Leftism is not Utopianism. The necessity of certain Liberations from hardship will still exist. [/b]
Yes thats what i said ... It will make it easier to have kids in a financial retrospect but their&#39;ll still be a need for abortions of course .

[bezdomni]

No, what you have said is under socialism there will be no need for abortions since women will have time and money to take care of children...as if that is the only reason a person wouldn&#39;t want to have a baby.

As far as I am concerned, people can get pregnant simply for the sake of having an abortion. You can&#39;t question why they are getting an abortion...there are no "good" or "bad" reasons to have an abortion anymore than there are good and bad reasons to go to the dentist.

Motive is not and never should be an issue.

Now, as to the question of will the be more or less abortions under socialism - I say it doesn&#39;t matter. I suspect it would be less, simply because I&#39;d imagine contraceptives would be more available...but if the amount of abortions don&#39;t decrease from the transition, it really doesn&#39;t matter. It doesn&#39;t mean anything is being done wrong - it just means the same amount of unwanted pregnancies exist.

In fact, if there was an increase it could actually be a good thing. It would mean more women have access to abortion clinics than previously.

Either way, it REALLY DOESN&#39;T FUCKING MATTER if more people abort under socialism than capitalism.


Also, it is interesting to note that the only people who praise a decrease in abortions are reactionary wierdos like Rudy Guiliani.


I ultimately do believe in a woman&#39;s right of choice, but I think that there are ways in which we can reduce abortions. Abortions went down 16% & adoptions went up 133% when I was mayor. We can work together and achieve results that we all want
-Rudy Guiliani

[Coggeh]

Originally posted by [email protected] 12, 2007 03:13 am
No, what you have said is under socialism there will be no need for abortions since women will have time and money to take care of children...as if that is the only reason a person wouldn&#39;t want to have a baby.

As far as I am concerned, people can get pregnant simply for the sake of having an abortion. You can&#39;t question why they are getting an abortion...there are no "good" or "bad" reasons to have an abortion anymore than there are good and bad reasons to go to the dentist.

Motive is not and never should be an issue.

Now, as to the question of will the be more or less abortions under socialism - I say it doesn&#39;t matter. I suspect it would be less, simply because I&#39;d imagine contraceptives would be more available...but if the amount of abortions don&#39;t decrease from the transition, it really doesn&#39;t matter. It doesn&#39;t mean anything is being done wrong - it just means the same amount of unwanted pregnancies exist.

In fact, if there was an increase it could actually be a good thing. It would mean more women have access to abortion clinics than previously.

Either way, it REALLY DOESN&#39;T FUCKING MATTER if more people abort under socialism than capitalism.

:blink: My post :
Well their are more reasons rather than social implications why a woman would get an abortion , i.e Life in danger , just don&#39;t want a kid , don&#39;t want to go through pregnancy , if a bf breaks up with them . Hence why it is a choice , womans body at the end of the day .

If you want to keep the kid/fetus/lifeform its your choice as its your body its also your choice not too . "

......

I was just pointing out a simple fact that wiht childcare free and other things it would be alot eaiser financially to raise a kid .I wasn&#39;t saying that thats the only reason someone would want an abortion so stop saying i did .

[bezdomni]

Why would you bring up how much easier it would be to raise a child under socialism in an abortion thread if you thought it was irrelevent to the question of abortion?

Finance is not the reason most people have abortions.

[Red Tung]

Finance is not the reason most people have abortions.

Of course not. It&#39;s just another form of birth control. It&#39;s kind of arbitrary given that exit out of the birth canal is the dividing line between person and non-person so why stop there?

Premature babies in incubators could just as well be considered fetuses and most of these came out of the birth canal before their time. Unfortunately for them then it stands to reason that because they came out before the third trimester of pregnancy is over then the mother should have every right to pull the plug on the incubator.

But, then its kind of contradictory that people would get so outraged from one the propaganda lie for justifying the first gulf war of Iraqi soldiers pulling out babies (er, fetuses) from incubators in an Kuwaiti hospital and throwing them on the floor. Why the moral outrage? It&#39;s just a late term abortion. :lol:

[Coggeh]

Originally posted by [email protected] 14, 2007 06:20 pm
Why would you bring up how much easier it would be to raise a child under socialism in an abortion thread if you thought it was irrelevent to the question of abortion?

Finance is not the reason most people have abortions.
Because someone brought it up earlier saying abortions aren&#39;t necessary in socialism or something and i was stating why it is , but i was also stating that it could be easier to raise a kid in socialism , I guess thats way beside the point though .. my bad :unsure:

[NorthStarRepublicML]

Finance is not the reason most people have abortions.

i know its pretty common for some people around here to throw out information as though they know all the answers, and most of the time it happens the person conviently forgets to post a source or citation for their supposed knowledge .....

anyway i took the liberty of looking up a study on the reasons given for having abortions in the USA, this study was conducted in 2006 and involves data from seven states health authorities

http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/policy/abo.../abreasons.html (http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/policy/abortion/abreasons.html)

the study states that 21% of women reason that they cannot afford a baby (financial) and 21% of women reason that they are unready for the responsibility (which could be financial)

these are the two top reasons given for having an abortion in the USA .....

other notable reasons are "concern about how a baby would affect their lives" (16%), has "relationship problems" (12%), and "too young" (11%)

now based upon this data would people here believe that these numbers would be different under socialism? or would these stats stay the same?


As far as I am concerned, people can get pregnant simply for the sake of having an abortion.

that&#39;s stupid, what a waste of energy and resources .... consider how many calories it takes to generate a fetus to term, consider how much energy is wasted when said fetus is aborted ..... now obviously we need to have abortions but not simply for the sake of having them, promoting an abortion as casual means promoting waste .... the focus should be on birth control before it ever gets to that point ..... if we were properly promoting and educating persons concerning birth control a large percentage of abortions would not be necessary and thus waste would not be taking place .....


Premature babies in incubators could just as well be considered fetuses and most of these came out of the birth canal before their time.

yes, you have pointed out the flaw in abortion arguments that center around "natural rights", either the right of the fetus to life or the right of the mother to control reproduction .... both are flawed because of the logic you point out with your premature baby analogy ...

because rights are subjective they vary from person to person, state to state, and culture to culture ..... thus in these varying environments the rights of one supercede the rights of the other .....

thus any abortion argument framed in terms of "rights" is flawed .... no matter how desperately some persons wish ....

Bottom Line: abortion should be legal and available because making it illegal causes more problems then it solves .... not because of any inherient or "natural right" of either fetus or mother .....

[bezdomni]

anyway i took the liberty of looking up a study on the reasons given for having abortions in the USA, this study was conducted in 2006 and involves data from seven states health authorities

You also took the liberty of proving my statement that "most women do not have abortions for financial reasons." 21% is not "most people", therefore, most people have abortions for reasons that are not related to finance.

Being "unready for the responsibility" is much more than not being ready for the financial aspect, don&#39;t be stupid. Do you realize what a huge responsibiity a child is? I don&#39;t think you do.



now based upon this data would people here believe that these numbers would be different under socialism? or would these stats stay the same?

Well...given that only 21% of women responded citing financial problems, then I&#39;d suspect abortion would carry on pretty much as normal.

What you are disregarding is the lack of access to abortions under capitalism. Women are socially oppressed and discouraged from having abortions, many places in the U.S. have no easily accessible abortion clinics - not to mention the rest of the world outside of the U.S. where many women can&#39;t even consider abortion as an option due to its legal status or lack of availability.

Women would have more access to abortion under socialism, and I suspect that would result in a net gain in abortions as opposed to the net loss from financial reasons. I&#39;d also imagine that many women who have an abortion for financial reasons have other reasons as well (ie; no father, too young, wouldn&#39;t be able to care for the child, simply doesn&#39;t want a child...).

Regardless, it does not fucking matter&#33;



that&#39;s stupid, what a waste of energy and resources .... consider how many calories it takes to generate a fetus to term, consider how much energy is wasted when said fetus is aborted ..... now obviously we need to have abortions but not simply for the sake of having them, promoting an abortion as casual means promoting waste .... the focus should be on birth control before it ever gets to that point ..... if we were properly promoting and educating persons concerning birth control a large percentage of abortions would not be necessary and thus waste would not be taking place .....


Oh well.

Better waste than oppression.


Bottom Line: abortion should be legal and available because making it illegal causes more problems then it solves .... not because of any inherient or "natural right" of either fetus or mother .....

No. Abortion is an issue of civil rights, not pragmatism.

[NorthStarRepublicML]

21% is not "most people", therefore, most people have abortions for reasons that are not related to finance.

read the source dum-dum, 21% was the top reason .... because you obviously did not look at the source i will now post the whole list so it will be impossible to deny that when you said "most women do not have abortions for financial reasons." you were talking out of your ass.

rape or incest 1%
mother has health problems 3%
possible fetal health problems 3%
unready for responsibility 21%
is too immature or young to have child 11%
woman&#39;s parents want her to have abortion <.5%
has problems with relationship or wants to avoid single parenthood 12%
husband or partner wants her to have abortion 1%
has all the children she wanted or all children are grown 8%
can&#39;t afford baby now 21%
concerned about how having baby would change her life 16%
doesn&#39;t want others to know she had relations or is pregnant 1%
other 3%

ok.. got it now? .... yes, the most common reasons for having an abortion in the USA are financial and being unready for responsibility


Do you realize what a huge responsibiity a child is?

i do actually, what is your point?

do you?



Well...given that only 21% of women responded citing financial problems, then I&#39;d suspect abortion would carry on pretty much as normal.

this statement is based on the false assumption that 21% citing financial reasons is not the top reason given, which along with being "unready for responsibility (which again could include financial or employment concerns)" actually is the most common reason given for abortion in the USA.


What you are disregarding is the lack of access to abortions under capitalism.

how so?



I&#39;d also imagine that many women who have an abortion for financial reasons have other reasons as well (ie; no father, too young, wouldn&#39;t be able to care for the child, simply doesn&#39;t want a child...).

i know how you like to imagine all sorts of things, but it would not have been necessary if you would have bothered to look at the information provided in my source, most of those reasons are listed and quanitified .....


Women would have more access to abortion under socialism, and I suspect that would result in a net gain in abortions as opposed to the net loss from financial reasons.


well i also assume that under socialism that access and education concerning birth control would be vastly increased and thus less abortions would be necessary as most people would have taken precautions against unwanted pregnency ... disagree?


Regardless, it does not fucking matter&#33;

why? because you were wrong about the reasons why women have abortions it doesn&#39;t matter anymore?


Better waste than oppression.

i was refering to birth control as was rather plainly stated, i assume you are trying to imply that i approve of forcing women to have children against their will if they get pregnant ..... poor form on your part and completely wrong

unless you are refering to birth control as oppression ....


No. Abortion is an issue of civil rights, not pragmatism.

yeah it just so happens that the civil rights of a child outweigh the civil rights of the mother in many places such as south dakota and portugal ....

i suppose you will sidestep the question but let me ask you something ...

who provides for these so called "natural" rights and where do they come from?

[apathy maybe]

Two things:

One, no one mentioned "natural rights" except you. Natural rights don&#39;t exist, and I doubt that most people on this board would say that they do exist. Civil rights, rights given by society, are something different. They most certainly do exist, and they are a better way of deciding things then "mere" pragmatism (assuming that I agree with the rights that is...). This is because pragmatism can change depending on the circumstances. Theoretically, rights do just up and disappear.


Secondly, less then 50% is not "most". 21% is no where near "most".

Saying that "most" women have abortions for financial reasons and then quoting 21%, well, it just doesn&#39;t work. Yes, the two most common reasons for abortion (assuming your stats are correct) in the USA are financial and feeling of responsibility. But that doesn&#39;t mean that most abortions are because of these things. (I think it must be something to do with the pluralistic electoral/political system you have in the USA that means that people sometimes confuse "most" with "most common". Umm...)

[pusher robot]

Natural rights don&#39;t exist, and I doubt that most people on this board would say that they do exist. Civil rights, rights given by society, are something different. They most certainly do exist, and they are a better way of deciding things then "mere" pragmatism (assuming that I agree with the rights that is...).

You&#39;re missing his point, I think. If there are no natural rights, only civil rights, and the question is "should abortion be a civil right?" then it is circular logic to argue that it should be a civil right because it&#39;s a civil right&#33; If there are no natural rights, then civil rights are created for pragmatic issues and whether or not there is a civil right is irrelevant to whether or not there should be a civil right.

[apathy maybe]

Ah, if I did miss the point, that is too bad.

My point is that we have civil rights, because we think that they are "good", not because they are "pragmatic". Rights are subjective of course.

So, we argue that abortion should be a civil right because it is "good", it is promoting liberty, something that we have decided to be good.

Meh, I think I understand your point, I understand my point, but I&#39;m not sure if anyone else will be able to understand my point...

[bezdomni]

who provides for these so called "natural" rights and where do they come from?

I didn&#39;t say anything about natural rights. I said civil rights. Consider getting your eyes checked.


read the source dum-dum, 21% was the top reason .... because you obviously did not look at the source i will now post the whole list so it will be impossible to deny that when you said "most women do not have abortions for financial reasons." you were talking out of your ass. &#39;

Learn basic math, dum-dum. 21%<50% and therefore does not constitute "most".


i know how you like to imagine all sorts of things, but it would not have been necessary if you would have bothered to look at the information provided in my source, most of those reasons are listed and quanitified .....

Sorry, but it isn&#39;t as cut and dry as how you&#39;d like it to be. It&#39;s not like a women has an abortion SOLELY because she cannot afford a child. There would be several motivating factors, with one probably outweighing all of the others.

Plus, many of the reasons in that "study" are somewhat redundant. What if a woman who was raped also had health problems? What if her parents want her to have an abortion because she feels like she is too young? What if she doesn&#39;t want a baby because she is afraid of people knowing she had a relationship and is not sure about how that would change her life?


well i also assume that under socialism that access and education concerning birth control would be vastly increased and thus less abortions would be necessary as most people would have taken precautions against unwanted pregnency ... disagree?

No, because there is no way to know. This entire argument about "would there be mroe abortions under socialism" is absolutely pointless. There&#39;s no purpose to be arguing about it because it doesn&#39;t matter if there are more abortions, and there are perfectly good reasons that it could both increase or decrease.

We should all be able to agree that women under socialism would have complete and unfettered access to abortion throughout the entire peroid of gestation and should be able to terminate a pregnancy without guilt or apology.


why? because you were wrong about the reasons why women have abortions it doesn&#39;t matter anymore?

You wish. I&#39;ve been saying it doesn&#39;t matter the whole time.

[NorthStarRepublicML]

pragmatism can change depending on the circumstances.

pragmatism is dependent on material conditions not the moral whims of a specific culture or region, thus they more accurately reflect the needs of society.


My point is that we have civil rights, because we think that they are "good", not because they are "pragmatic".

good implies morality, where do these morals come from?

or did you mean "good for the whole" which suggests prgamatism, if that is what you are suggesting ... then what is the difference? what is your point?


Rights are subjective of course.

so what makes the right of a mother to abort greater then the fetus to life?

in many places in the world one of these rights exceeds the rights of the other, so why argue on the basis of rights at all?

does it not make more sense to say that abortions should be legal and available because it is pragmatic, because having them illegal causes more problems then it solves?


I&#39;m not sure if anyone else will be able to understand my point...

correct, i do not understand your logic .... please clarify


I didn&#39;t say anything about natural rights. I said civil rights.

see Pusher Robots previous post where he states:


If there are no natural rights, only civil rights, and the question is "should abortion be a civil right?" then it is circular logic to argue that it should be a civil right because it&#39;s a civil right&#33; If there are no natural rights, then civil rights are created for pragmatic issues and whether or not there is a civil right is irrelevant to whether or not there should be a civil right.

this pretty clearly lays it out ....


This entire argument about "would there be mroe abortions under socialism" is absolutely pointless.

it was you that was arguing that there would be more abortions under socialism, just like previously when your argument fails you dismiss it .... good luck with that tactic



We should all be able to agree that women under socialism would have complete and unfettered access to abortion throughout the entire peroid of gestation and should be able to terminate a pregnancy without guilt or apology.

yes, but not because of subjective rights we should agree on these points because it makes sense and solves more problems then it creates not vice versa


Plus, many of the reasons in that "study" are somewhat redundant.

i see no source from you that challenges this study only more unverifiable claims and dubious opinions

[bezdomni]

i see no source from you that challenges this study only more unverifiable claims and dubious opinions

Fuck you. Your study sucked. I don&#39;t need another source to prove that.



If there are no natural rights, only civil rights, and the question is "should abortion be a civil right?" then it is circular logic to argue that it should be a civil right because it&#39;s a civil right&#33; If there are no natural rights, then civil rights are created for pragmatic issues and whether or not there is a civil right is irrelevant to whether or not there should be a civil right.

No, the "civil rights" stem from personal autonomy. Women have the right to control what goes on inside of their own body. That is what makes abortion a "right".



it was you that was arguing that there would be more abortions under socialism, just like previously when your argument fails you dismiss it .... good luck with that tactic


I was arguing nothing, I was merely speculating that abortions could easily increase under socialism due to social destigmatizing of abortion and women having more access to abortion.

Both sides are purely speculative. This is why I have been saying that it&#39;s a really pointless debate.



yes, but not because of subjective rights we should agree on these points because it makes sense and solves more problems then it creates not vice versa

And who determines what is solving problems and creating problems? Is abortion itself a problem? If so, then clearly illegalizing it will solve the "problem" of women&#39;s liberation.

It is your position that is subjective, not mine.

[Invader Zim]

Fuck you. Your study sucked. I don&#39;t need another source to prove that.

Having been reading the tiff between you and NorthStarRepublicML, I was somehow expecting a better come back than that...



No, the "civil rights" stem from personal autonomy.

Sinse when? Rights stem from the exact opposite, they stem from a collective desire of a group to protect the group, which is why rights are usually granted universally within the group they are designed to protect. If that group chooses to include the unborn within its ranks then the rights will apply to the unborn as well; thus invalidating your whole heartedly inaccurate claim that rights stem from personal autonomy. If they were based on such logical grounds then the concept of rights across the world wouldn&#39;t be so very different.

How you would like to consider rights is not how rights actually are. I am sure in your ideal society the unborn would be without rights, however that cannot claimed to be univerally the case at the moment.


omen have the right to control what goes on inside of their own body. That is what makes abortion a "right".

Again sinse when? There are a lot of coutries and states which do not see aborting the unborn as a "right".

[NorthStarRepublicML]

Fuck you. Your study sucked. I don&#39;t need another source to prove that.

actually you do .... thats how a debate works, not that i would expect much after you deliver brilliant counterpoints like this one ....


No, the "civil rights" stem from personal autonomy. Women have the right to control what goes on inside of their own body. That is what makes abortion a "right".

where does this right come from? what guarantees said right?

i would say more but Zim sorta put you in your place already with this effective use of logic:


If that group chooses to include the unborn within its ranks then the rights will apply to the unborn as well; thus invalidating your whole heartedly inaccurate claim that rights stem from personal autonomy.

anyway its pretty obvious you have no concept of how rights actually work or how they are derived.


And who determines what is solving problems and creating problems? Is abortion itself a problem? If so, then clearly illegalizing it will solve the "problem" of women&#39;s liberation.

well this is actually somewhat worth responding to .....

ok here is how it works .... abortion should be legal and available on demand because if it is illegal it will create a black market for abortions, cause women to engage in unsafe and unsanitary back alley abortions (possibly resulting in death), create generations of unwanted children who will most often be abandoned or homeless, or at least living in poverty condtions ..... i could go on and on with the problems that would be created with making abortion illegal ......

now all of the above are material concerns, that is actual physical problems that would arise .....

now what problems are created by making abortion legal ..... the only thing that comes to mind is that it creates opposition and ill will from religious organizations, sometimes empowers radicals and abortion clinic bombers ....

if you weigh out the pros and cons of legal and illegal abortion from a materialist standpoint the pragmatic choice is clear ....

abortion should be legal and available because it solves more problems then it creates ....

the subjective problems to which you are referring are problems in ideology and politics and do not accurately reflect the material conditions related to the issue.

[bezdomni]

Having been reading the tiff between you and NorthStarRepublicML, I was somehow expecting a better come back than that...

Sorry. I am just getting fed up with his phony Marxism.


actually you do .... thats how a debate works, not that i would expect much after you deliver brilliant counterpoints like this one ....

No, I don&#39;t. I refuted the merits of the study (by showing how it is intrinsically subjective and can&#39;t account for the multiple reasons an individual would have an abortion) and have already asserted that it doesn&#39;t matter why or how frequently women get abortions. You have not disagreed with this, therefore, I assume you conceed the point.

Thus, I see no reason to continue arguing about this nonsense.


Sinse when? Rights stem from the exact opposite, they stem from a collective desire of a group to protect the group, which is why rights are usually granted universally within the group they are designed to protect. If that group chooses to include the unborn within its ranks then the rights will apply to the unborn as well; thus invalidating your whole heartedly inaccurate claim that rights stem from personal autonomy. If they were based on such logical grounds then the concept of rights across the world wouldn&#39;t be so very different.

How you would like to consider rights is not how rights actually are. I am sure in your ideal society the unborn would be without rights, however that cannot claimed to be univerally the case at the moment.

Just get finished reading Rousseau or something? Get to the 21st century.

Abortion is an issue of civil rights, namely, the right of the woman to control what goes on inside her body. This includes, but is not limited to, the gestation of a fetus. If the fetus is unwanted, the woman has the right to terminate the pregnancy because she alone has the right to control what goes on inside of her.

This is a right that is advocated by all socialists. It doesn&#39;t come from nature or god, but it also doesn&#39;t come from some obscure rights-giving group. It comes from material conditions.

You cannot have a liberated society without abortion rights. This isn&#39;t because of pragmatic reasons, but because the struggle for communism is the struggle for the liberation of humanity and this includes the liberation of women from being treated as incubators.

So, I reiterate, abortion must be treated as an issue of civil rights and not one of pragmatism...because if you treat it as being pragmatic you are just an "authoritarian" quasi-fascist weirdo that would just as soon take away abortion rights the minute you decide the birth rate is too low or that too many women are "Taking advantage of the system" or something.

Keeping abortion legal just because you don&#39;t want them to be done illegally makes no sense. As a "Marxist", you should struggle for women&#39;s liberation not some weird notion of pragmatism.


abortion should be legal and available because it solves more problems then it creates ....
No, it should be legal and available because women have the right to terminate a pregnancy if they so choose.

[Invader Zim]

Just get finished reading Rousseau or something? Get to the 21st century.

I would advice forgetting trying to use arrogance and condesention and leaving it to those who can pull it off....


Abortion is an issue of civil rights, namely, the right of the woman to control what goes on inside her body. This includes, but is not limited to, the gestation of a fetus. If the fetus is unwanted, the woman has the right to terminate the pregnancy because she alone has the right to control what goes on inside of her.

To be honest I couldn&#39;t care less where you stand on the issue of abortion (which I could of course ridicule were I so inclined, no matter which side of the debate you stand on), my point revolves entirely around your myopic view of what constitutes a &#39;right&#39;

Civil rights are just rights which are given to citizens by law, the civil rights movement (which you are obviously confusing with civil rights as a concept) sought to extend civil rights to marginalised ethnic groups. Different communities have different laws, thus civil rights vary from country to country, thus civil rights are not static and many communities do not consider the right to abort to be a civil right, because as of yet it is not.

[NorthStarRepublicML]

I am just getting fed up with his phony Marxism.

well i see that you have done a through and scientific marxist analysis of "rights" yourself, karl himself would be proud of you&#33;

yeah i&#39;m pretty fed up of people trying to bullshit their way through an argument with no justifications and insults .... which by the way ... show the bankruptcy of your reasoning ....

i think i am just about done responding to your blatantly idiotic interpretation of rights be they civil or otherwise, your argument on this topic has just about totally collapsed .....


You have not disagreed with this, therefore, I assume you conceed the point.


see my previous post when i said:


now obviously we need to have abortions but not simply for the sake of having them, promoting an abortion as casual means promoting waste the focus should be on birth control before it ever gets to that point ..... if we were properly promoting and educating persons concerning birth control a large percentage of abortions would not be necessary and thus waste would not be taking place

we&#39;ve been over this already, you seem to prefer abortions to birth control and give no reasons that other then:


Better waste than oppression.

still not sure if you are calling birth control oppression or not?



Abortion is an issue of civil rights, namely, the right of the woman to control what goes on inside her body.

are you even remotely listening to what we are trying to tell you?

ok .... because you are not able to retain knowledge i will a few previously asked questions and comments that you consistantly have ignored concerning your definition of rights:



where does this right come from? what guarantees said right?


If that group chooses to include the unborn within its ranks then the rights will apply to the unborn as well; thus invalidating your whole heartedly inaccurate claim that rights stem from personal autonomy.


so what makes the right of a mother to abort greater then the fetus to life?


If there are no natural rights, only civil rights, and the question is "should abortion be a civil right?" then it is circular logic to argue that it should be a civil right because it&#39;s a civil right&#33;

now because you have ignored these very basic and fundamental questions concerning rights, i happen to regard your line of argument as invalid and juvenile .... thus until you acknowledge this point which several of us have made in the course of this discussion and discontinue to use rebuttals in the style of "I&#39;m right you&#39;re wrong" you will receive little respect or even civility from me .....



Keeping abortion legal just because you don&#39;t want them to be done illegally makes no sense.

here is another "i&#39;m right because i said so" arguements again .... you are like a broken record ....

not going to respond to this until you cite some reasons why it makes no sense, i gave a couple of reasons why making abortions illegal causes plenty of problems, deaths, unwanted children .... so i await your counterpoints .... forgive me if i don&#39;t just take your work for it ....


abortion must be treated as an issue of civil rights and not one of pragmatism.

invalid point, please do not use the term "rights" as you obviously have no idea what it means .....

oh wait ..... is this your reasoning:


you are just an "authoritarian" quasi-fascist weirdo

well you have sucessfully managed to demonize an opponent, i guess thats a step up from just ignoring questions and arguments .... good luck with this tactic ....

too bad its bullshit

[Marko]

Abortion was legalized in Western societies to reduce the fertility of poor and non-White people. Although there are perfectly valid reasons to support the right to an abortion this was the motivation of the capitalists.

The reform provided the results capitalists desired in America: the fertility of black women dropped drastically compared to white women. A racist capitalist academician has even said that abortion lowers crime for this reason.

The impact on the Left has been negative. Because of abortion there are now less poor and oppressed people and thus a revolution is now more difficult to achieve.

And remember, abortion was banned in the USSR for some time because demographic growth was necessary to the defense of the socialist system against imperialist aggressors (like Nazi Germany). This was also the case in Ceausescu&#39;s Romania in the 1980s.

[NorthStarRepublicML]

Abortion was legalized in Western societies to reduce the fertility of poor and non-White people. Although there are perfectly valid reasons to support the right to an abortion this was the motivation of the capitalists.

whoa ...

i was unaware that this was a point of contention ... some people even say that abortion has caused a "black genocide" here: http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewSpecialReports....E20050207a.html (http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewSpecialReports.asp?Page=%5CSpecialReports%5Car chive%5C200502%5CSPE20050207a.html)

and here: http://www.blackgenocide.org/

[RGacky3]

Heres a little mind twister for people that are for abortion.

Seeing as its the woman&#39;s body, is it ok for the woman to drink a lot, take drugs, do other things that are harmful to the unborn, on purpose so that the baby comes out disabled and/or braindamaged, and if your answer is yes then thats fine you have to live with that.

If your answer is no the question comes up, is someone better off dead or disabled, if the unborn was&#39;nt aborted it would have come out alive and presumable healthy, likewise if the unborn was&#39;nt abused while it was growing it would&#39;nt have come out brandamaged or disabled, so if its not OK to cripple, maim and brain damage an unborn, how can it be OK to kill it?

[TC]

Originally posted by Jasmine+--> (Jasmine)
Well, I suppose you are a socialist or an anarchist or at least consider yourself socially progressive. Does it not occur to you to ask the question why a woman might find pregnancy an "alienating burden?" Could it have something to do with family structure, the lack of assistance (financial and emotional) for single parents or abused wives, possible career problems etc. etc.[/b]

No, actually, it seems that it doesn’t occur to you to ask why a woman might find pregnancy and childbirth an alienating burden, because the implied ‘answers’ you’re providing only point to why a woman might find childcare an alienating burden. These are two entirely separate issues: you can be pregnant and give birth without participating in childcare and you can participate in childcare without being pregnant or giving birth, one neither leads to nor requires the other.

So, why don’t you ask why a woman might find pregnancy and childbirth an alienating burden instead? I think its pretty fucking obvious: pregnancy involves grotesque full body distortion from rapid weight gain (accompanied by constant illness and discomfort followed by rapid weight loss and abnormal hormonal levels throughout, permanently mutilating the individuals stomach, breasts, skin and fatty tissue; childbirth requires literally ripping a woman’s body apart, either shredding her vagina through her own muscle spasms in what would likely be the most agonizing experience of her life, or surgically slicing open her abdominal skin and muscles, probably without general anesthesia, incapacitating her for weeks or months and leaving a massive scar and muscle weakness.. A lot of people, especially anti-choice weirdos, get squeamish about the disgusting reality of pregnancy and childbirth while delightfully showcasing with morbid glory the icky details of abortion, complete with dismembered “baby” pictures.

(Maybe pro-choice campaigners should counter their itty-bitty-baby-bits photo placards with photos women’s crotches after full term vaginal delivery, possibly before and after with the caption “Not a difficult choice”; its hardly like the anti-choice camp could accuse them of being too graphic :P).



It&#39;s true that bringing a child into the world could cause significant problems for a woman but the fact that abortion is seen as a solution simply reflects the backward society we live in.

Could pregnancy and childbirth be viewed differently under different social conditions?

Not unless post-revolutionary babies can be born safely at say, eight weeks, with tiny heads, and somehow not affect their host’s hormonal system, then no.

Childcare could be viewed differently, as it is say in, Cuba where the state provides for full childcare needs for people who want children (funnily enough the total lack of financial disincentives to have children in Cuba hasn’t decreased the rate of abortion or increased the rate of birth, they have more abortions and fewer children than capitalist countries...rather undermines your thesis).

But the real difference that social changes make in how people view pregnancy and childbirth is that more advanced societies with more gender equality view these things as strictly optional and not social obligations or necessarily positive “contributions” to societies, attitudes that misogynistic capitalist and feudalist societies promote in order to enslave women and reproduce a labour force to stave off the falling rate of profit.



"probably" is the key word here - in other words you have no idea and no experience with someone who has gone through this. Everything is easy to resolve in theory. Real life is much more complicated.

Of course I do, virtually everyone has first hand experience either with themselves or a friend or a partner because it’s just that common, and if you think you don’t you must either be socially isolated or living in Saudi Arabia. And among relatively educated people with a liberated perspective, it’s not that complicated.


Abortion is no more a solution to womens oppression than anti-depressants are a cure for depression - although the depressed person often has no choice other than to allow the drug companies to experiment on him or her.

Abortion is a necessary part of women’s liberation but it is not sufficient for women’s liberation, no one claimed that it was. As long as women are compelled to have or care for children though they are being oppressed and exploited by definition.

As to your bizarre assertion that a depressed person has no choice in whether or not they take anti-depressants, provided that they’re not in-patients under a court order they can always just decline to take the pills; they take them because they want to, which is understandable if they make them feel better as they often do. What bothers you so much about people exercising choices over their bodies?



Idiotic - a major reason in not wanting to give birth is financial.

No, a major reason for not wanting to have a child is financial, that’s a distinct and separate issue (all fathers and many mothers have children without giving birth, many women give birth without having financial commitments to their offspring). There is no financial incentive for abortion; abortion is cheaper than pre-natal care and childbirth costs.

There is really only one reason for wanting an abortion: not wanting the humiliation, pain, and damage caused by pregnancy and childbirth. The only rational reason that someone would not want an abortion is if they had compelling compensating motives that outweighed this: primarily that they wanted a child. (of course people also fail to abort pregnancies for irrational reasons, like they were convinced that they’d go to hell otherwise or that fetuses have emotions like normal people or they believe the weird breast cancer myth or something like that)

Now whether or not someone wants a child is something that might be negated or positively influenced by their financial, relationship and social status, but this is a distinct motive that may or may not be present.


Originally posted by Jasmine+--> (Jasmine)
Originally posted by Tragic

Anyone, no matter how poor has the option of having a baby and putting it up for adoption, poverty doesn&#39;t cause abortion. Poor women have more children and fewer abortions than middle class or wealthy women so you&#39;re obviously wrong.

Again you argue like a Thatcherite. Give me a reference for these figures.[/b]

Uh, no Thatcher believed in ‘family values’ just like you&#33;
As for references, these are easy to find because no one on either side of the abortion debate disputes the fact that women with low income levels and low educational levels have more children and a lower rate of childlessness than women with high income and high educational levels. Similarly black and minority women have more children than white women. Google it; theres absolutely no dispute on this fact and you can find it in any country.


Originally posted by National Center for Health Statistics
A women&#39;s educational level is the best predictor of how many children she will have, according to a new study from the National Center for Health Statistics, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The study, based on an analysis of 1994 birth certificates, found a direct relationship between years of education and birth rates, with the highest birth rates among women with the lowest educational attainment...women with 1 or more years of college have sharply lower lifetime fertility than less educated women, regardless of race or Hispanic origin. Women with college degrees can be expected to complete their childbearing with 1.6-2.0 children each; 1.7 for non-Hispanic white, 1.6 for non-Hispanic black, and 2.0 for Hispanic women. For women with less education the total expected number of children are: 3.2 children for those with 0-8 years of education; 2.3 children for those with 9-11 years of education and 2.7 for high school graduates.

the birth rate (live births per one thousand population in a specified group) was highest among Hispanics (22.9), followed by Asians and Pacific Islanders (16.8), African-Americans (15.1), and Native Americans (14); it was lowest for non-Hispanic whites, at 11.7. (See Table 6.6.)
http://www.libraryindex.com/pages/2922/Hea...ANCY-BIRTH.html (http://www.libraryindex.com/pages/2922/Health-PREGNANCY-BIRTH.html)

Originally posted by Australian Demographic Statistics+ Sep 1999--> ( Australian Demographic Statistics &#064; Sep 1999)
Educational attainment - Women attaining an undergraduate degree or higher level qualification were most likely to be childless (20%). For women who had no tertiary qualifications the proportion was 9%.[/b] http://www.abs.gov.au/Ausstats/[email protected]/Lo...A2569DE002139C1 (http://www.abs.gov.au/Ausstats/[email protected]/Lookup/1DECC52B47FC8E26CA2569DE002139C1)]



The better educated and financed women are, the fewer children they have and the more likely they are not to want children at all. People with decent lives who are treated with respect, as human beings not as baby-factories, have better things to do with their lives than have children and they are more likely to be able to find fulfillment as free human beings and not vicariously as breeders. Women who due to their poor financial and educational status are more acutely oppressed by patriarchal social relations are much more likely to end up having lots of kids to serve capitalist production, either because they don’t know they have any other option or because their lives are so degrading to begin with.

Poverty doesn’t cause abortion, poverty causes childbirth, affluence and education help prevent it. These statistics prove just how wrong you are with your silly argument.


Jasmine


Actually the studies are, as ever on this sort of issue, quite contradictory. Perhaps you could give me a reference to the studies you have read.

Sure:


Summary by Ann [email protected] chief executive of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service

Women who had experienced an abortion in fact had a statistically significant higher global self-esteem rating than women who had never had an abortion. This difference was even greater when comparing aborting women with women delivering unwanted pregnancies (who had the lowest self-esteem). Women who had experienced repeat abortions did not differ in self-esteem from women who had never had an abortion. In all, the evidence confirmed earlier findings that factors other than the abortion experience itself determine postabortion emotional status. Some women continually reconstruct and reinterpret past events in the light of subsequent experience and can be pressured into feeling guilt and shame long afterwards (Russo, N. F. and Zierk, K. L. 1992. &#39;Abortion, childbearing and women&#39;s well-being. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice 23: 269-80.).


Summary by Ann Furedi
Key findings reported were that in women with no past psychiatric histories there was no significant difference between comparison groups in rates of psychiatric illness; that women with a previous history of psychosis were more likely to experience a psychotic illness than those with no such history; and that termination of pregnancy did not appear to increase the risk
Gilchrist et al. 1995. &#39;Termination of Pregnancy and Psychiatric Morbidity&#39;. British Journal of Psychiatry 167: 243-8.

http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/printable/2047/
http://www.spiked-online.com/Printable/0000000054E4.htm

So, not only does abortion cause no emotional/mental health problems in people who don’t have preexisting disturbances, but its actually a sign (or alternatively, a cause, although that seems less likely) of good mental health, whereas carrying an unwanted pregnancy to term indicates poor self esteem. Women only keep unwanted pregnancies if they have low self esteem, whereas women with healthier attitudes about themselves get abortions. Possibly women with low self esteem don’t realize that they don’t need to be living incubators and their more easily influenced by oppressive anti-choicers whereas women with high self esteem know that they’re better than that and therefore choose to abort, or alternatively maybe giving birth to an unwanted child causes poor self esteem whereas being able to exercise freedom over your body reinforces high self esteem.




No - I just assume that if society were different childcare may not revolve exclusively around the nuclear family making it a quite different experience.

Yes it would make the experience much better for women who want to have children badly enough that they’re willing to go through what it takes to get one. But for pregnant women who don’t want children, or who don’t want to have a particular child (due to timing, paternity, birth defect, for instance, or because they already have as many as they want), it would make absolutely no difference whatsoever.


Why exactly in a socialist, communist or anarchist society will abortion be necessary?

How dumb can you be? Because there will still be accidental pregnancy by women who don’t want a child (or that particular fetus) and those women will still have an interest in avoiding the humiliation of pregnancy and the agony of childbirth. This should be pretty freakishly obvious so I’m not sure why it occurs to you to even ask the question.

No change in socio-economic conditions will make someone who simply has no desire for children want one, and no such change will affect their desire to avoid the physical harm it would cause.

[TC]

Originally posted by NorthStarFascistSS+--> (NorthStarFascistSS)
anyway i took the liberty of looking up a study on the reasons given for having abortions in the USA, this study was conducted in 2006 and involves data from seven states health authorities
[/b]

Actually all of the reasons you highlighted are, as i&#39;ve demonstrated, reasons for not wanting a child, not reasons for wanting an abortion rather than giving a child up for adoption.


Originally posted by TragicClown+--> (TragicClown)a major reason for not wanting to have a child is financial, that’s a distinct and separate issue (all fathers and many mothers have children without giving birth, many women give birth without having financial commitments to their offspring). There is no financial incentive for abortion; abortion is cheaper than pre-natal care and childbirth costs.

There is really only one reason for wanting an abortion: not wanting the humiliation, pain, and damage caused by pregnancy and childbirth. The only rational reason that someone would not want an abortion is if they had compelling compensating motives that outweighed this: primarily that they wanted a child. (of course people also fail to abort pregnancies for irrational reasons, like they were convinced that they’d go to hell otherwise or that fetuses have emotions like normal people or they believe the weird breast cancer myth or something like that)

Now whether or not someone wants a child is something that might be negated or positively influenced by their financial, relationship and social status, but this is a distinct motive that may or may not be present.
[/b]

Now, women seeking abortions may give, when asked, their reasons for not wanting a child rather than their reasons for wanting an abortion, either because they think the person asking would find their reasons for wanting an abortion rather than adoption (principally pain avoidance) distasteful or too obvious, but that doesn&#39;t change the fact that they have in effect answered a different question.

Moreover, in the


[email protected]
yes, you have pointed out the flaw in abortion arguments that center around "natural rights", either the right of the fetus to life or the right of the mother to control reproduction .... both are flawed because of the logic you point out with your premature baby analogy ...

Uh, no. Rights in society are limits on how you can be legitimately interfered with not entitlements, because the marxist concept of political and human emancipation (as explained in the thread i linked to which you&#39;ve ignored) is based on freedom from oppression and exploitation.

There is no &#39;right to life&#39;, not for babies, not for anyone; in fact the natural lack of a right to life is obvious due to the fact that we will all die. Death is not a human rights violation, life is not a natural entitlement the way freedom is.

We do however have an obvious right to be free from exploitation and oppression, to be used as objects whether factory machinery, incubators or sex dolls, and thats the basis on which slavery, forced pregnancy and rape violate human rights.

The fact that the recognition of soveignty over ones own body is a requirement for human emancipation does not imply that there is an additional "right to life", something that would imply that immortality is a requirement for human emancipation.



Bottom Line: abortion should be legal and available because making it illegal causes more problems then it solves .... not because of any inherient or "natural right" of either fetus or mother .....

No, you&#39;re just a rightwing misogynist if you think that way, Marxists have no regard for any utilitarian argument. Read my post on the Marxist rejection of utilitarianism in favour of a human emancipation motivated ideology, here:

http://www.revleft.com/index.php?showtopic=68273


NorthStarFascistSS

read the source dum-dum, 21% was the top reason .... because you obviously did not look at the source i will now post the whole list so it will be impossible to deny that when you said "most women do not have abortions for financial reasons." you were talking out of your ass.



Did you even read the link you posted???

In the source data state level statistics, the dominate reasons are almost always "personal choice" or "mental health", showing that the percentages you quoted make very little sense. For instance if 45% of women who get abortions in Louisiana have them for "mental health" reasons, unless Louisiana women are just really emotionally fussy compared to the rest of the country, then the AGI survey you cited must be inaccurate or it must have asked leading questions. In Minnesota "does not want children" with 65% and "other elective" with 31% were much bigger reasons than "economic reasons" at 28%. (also, the fact that these figures do not add up to 100% shows that respondents gave multiple answers meaning that a lot of people who answered &#39;economic&#39; would have had it as a secondary issue where they would have had an abortion anyways even if it were not an issue).

Women in Nebraska apparently think its so obvious that someone with an unwanted pregnancy would want an abortion that when asked, 43% of them answered either "contraceptive failure" or "no contraception used"

In South Dakota, while 38% answered "can&#39;t afford a child", 67% answered "doesn&#39;t want a child" and 10% answered "emotional health".



Clearly, the data does not support your claims. For some reactionary reason, you badly wish that women who had abortions were somehow compelled by their financial situations. The reality however, as proved by the report you sited is that most women who have abortions do it simply because they don&#39;t want to go through with a pregnancy, not for any financial reason.

[TC]

Originally posted by SovietPants+--> (SovietPants)
No, because there is no way to know. This entire argument about "would there be mroe abortions under socialism" is absolutely pointless. There&#39;s no purpose to be arguing about it because it doesn&#39;t matter if there are more abortions, and there are perfectly good reasons that it could both increase or decrease.[/b]

Lol also, as i&#39;ve shown early, this is an empirical question and the data shows that abortion rates increase and fertility rates decline under advanced socialism (socialist states consistently have some of the highest abortion rates and lowest birth rates, former socialist states usually trend towards gradual decrease in abortion rates as capitalism is restored), so the reactionary phoney leftist arguments about this are pointless. If you want to know how people look at abortion when finances are not an issue, look at Cuba where each couple produces an average of 1.5 children and abortion rates are near the highest in the world.


Originally posted by SovietPants+--> (SovietPants)We should all be able to agree that women under socialism would have complete and unfettered access to abortion throughout the entire peroid of gestation and should be able to terminate a pregnancy without guilt or apology.
[/b]

Right, and people can&#39;t have it both ways: the reality is that this does increase the abortion rate and decrease the fertility rate, there is no way around this reality; greater restrictions on abortion mean less abortion, fewer restrictions mean more abortion, and while banning abortion doesn&#39;t eliminate it it clearly does increase the number of unwanted pregnancies carried to term dramatically. You can&#39;t be pro-choice and not pro-abortion.


Originally posted by NorthTsarFascistSS

pragmatism is dependent on material conditions not the moral whims of a specific culture or region, thus they more accurately reflect the needs of society.

Uh, no i&#39;m sorry Mr. Spock but you can never be abstractly "pragmatic" or "logical" you can only apply pragmatism in service of an externally defined goal. The pragmatic thing for someone looking to enhance bourgeois interests or male workers but not female workers (as you do) would be very different than the pragmatic thing for someone looking to enhance proletarian interests or general human interests.


Originally posted by NorthTsarFascistSS
so what makes the right of a mother to abort greater then the fetus to life?


There is no right to life, there is a right to freedom from oppression.


Originally posted by NorthTsarFascistSS

i see no source from you that challenges this study only more unverifiable claims and dubious opinions


Actually if you read the state level statistics they supported SovietPant&#39;s view, not your view, you have been selectively reading the study to show what you want it to show not what it actually shows. This demonstrates that your reactionary agenda drives your understanding of the data not the other way around.


[email protected]

Fuck you. Your study sucked. I don&#39;t need another source to prove that.

Well, if you want another source to prove that, lol all you need to do is read further down on the website that NorthTsar linked to.


InvaderZim
Rights stem from the exact opposite, they stem from a collective desire of a group to protect the group, which is why rights are usually granted universally within the group they are designed to protect.

LOL no one has ever argued that groups have rights, apart from nationalists and bourgeois who justify certain property "rights" in terms of corporate persons.

Civil and human rights are fundamentally concepts that can only be applied to individuals.


There are a lot of coutries and states which do not see aborting the unborn as a "right".



No, there are simply countries and states where women&#39;s human rights are not protected, that doesn&#39;t mean that they don&#39;t have them, simply that they&#39;re being violated.

The fact that a right can be violated doesn&#39;t mean that it doesn&#39;t exist, otherwise there would be no concept of human rights abuses.

[TC]

Originally posted by [email protected] 30, 2007 05:28 am
Abortion was legalized in Western societies to reduce the fertility of poor and non-White people. Although there are perfectly valid reasons to support the right to an abortion this was the motivation of the capitalists.

Abortion was only systematically illegalized in the 19th century, when all surgery was dangerous and because they didn&#39;t have the same hospital system it was impossible to enforce anyways. It was legalized in the west in the 70s after the cultural and social advances of the 60s and early 70s and the new reality that women could already effectively control their fertility through contraceptives. Reducing the fertility of poor and non-white people had absolutely nothing to do with it; in the United States for instance it was the courts not the legislature that did it and in the United Kingdom it didn&#39;t even apply to their poorest population (who live in Northern Ireland and still can&#39;t get abortions without traveling to England).




The reform provided the results capitalists desired in America: the fertility of black women dropped drastically compared to white women. A racist capitalist academician has even said that abortion lowers crime for this reason.


:lol: :lol: :lol:

Uh, no, you&#39;re utterly wrong. The fertility of black women is considerably higher than the fertility of white women, both before and after abortion was legalized. This is because fertility rates inversely correlate to income and educational level and these correlate to race.

Birth rate:
1969 (before legal abortion)
White: 16.9 per 1000
Black: 24.4 per 1000


1980 (after legal abortion)
White: 14.9 per 1000
Back: 22.1 per 1000
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/statab/t991x01.pdf

So, the relative affect from abortion was that the white birth rate went down 22%, and the black birth rate went down only 10%.

So you&#39;re obviously wrong.



The impact on the Left has been negative. Because of abortion there are now less poor and oppressed people and thus a revolution is now more difficult to achieve.


:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

This has GOT to be the single strangest argument i&#39;ve ever heard on this forum.

Yes, i agree, because of abortion there are now fewer poor and oppressed people...

...but as a leftist i think this is a GOOD THING.

We don&#39;t want people to be poor and oppressed, thats kind of the point. Having more people made poor and oppressed doesn&#39;t help the left it helps the capitalists who earn money off their poverty and oppression.


And remember, abortion was banned in the USSR for some time because demographic growth was necessary to the defense of the socialist system against imperialist aggressors (like Nazi Germany).

Yes, Stalin ended Soviet human rights in lots of areas, rights of political dissent and speech and due process and workers democracy were also banned, that was a symptom of an extra-governmental state apparatus run amok as the result of a state of emergency it was not a healthy workers state. These things along with abortion rights were restored when Khrushchev defeated the Anti-Party Group.


This was also the case in Ceausescu&#39;s Romania in the 1980s.

Ceausescu was about as much of a socialist as Pol Pot or Saddam was, there was no socialism in Romania thats why there was no respect for women&#39;s rights. The Romanian "socialists" were internationally isolated enemies of both the Soviet Union and Peoples Republic of China with no recognition from any of the main branches of international Communism.

Raising this point really makes utterly no sense given that abortion was always practiced free and on demand throughout the socialist world with only two exceptions while it was illegal in the imperialist world until the 70s and remains illegal in many of the imperialist&#39;s neo-colonies.

[TC]

Originally posted by [email protected] 31, 2007 01:40 am
Heres a little mind twister for people that are for abortion.

Seeing as its the woman&#39;s body, is it ok for the woman to drink a lot, take drugs, do other things that are harmful to the unborn, on purpose so that the baby comes out disabled and/or braindamaged, and if your answer is yes then thats fine you have to live with that.

absolutely, and the disgusting thing is that American women have been convicted of murder and child endangerment simply for taking recreational drugs while pregnant even when no link between that and negative fetal outcome could be established.

But whats worse is that people try to convince pregnant women to stop doing things like consuming alcohol which doesn&#39;t even normally lead to adverse affects on fetuses. Clearly you&#39;re right though, anyone who thinks that pregnant women should be prohibited from doing things that might damage their fetuses but not from aborting them is being moronically inconsistent.



At last, an honest explanation of why women shouldn’t drink during pregnancy&#33; It’s not because alcohol will harm the baby – it’s because the government thinks that drinking makes you an irresponsible mother...

Just look at the drinking thing. The Big Reason behind not drinking in pregnancy is that this could result in your having a child with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS) – a condition discovered in 1973, and recognised as meaning that a baby has some types of facial deformity, growth retardation, developmental impairment, and a mother who drank during pregnancy. But as the US sociologist Elizabeth Armstrong points out in her excellent book Conceiving Risk, Bearing Responsibility: Fetal Alcohol Syndrome and the Diagnosis of Moral Disorder, FAS is both very rare and not obviously caused simply by drinking (5). For example, ‘only about 5 per cent of children born to alcoholic women have FAS’. So even if you are an alcoholic, your baby has a 95 per cent chance of not getting Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. As Armstrong argues, ‘How can we reconcile this fact with claims that all pregnant women must avoid alcohol?’ We cannot, at least at the level of the science. http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/3422

[pusher robot]

We do however have an obvious right to be free from exploitation and oppression, to be used as objects whether factory machinery, incubators or sex dolls, and thats the basis on which slavery, forced pregnancy and rape violate human rights.

Not that I necessarily disagree but you have not given any logical justification for this statement. That is the crux of the disagreement.

At a minimum, I reject that this is "obvious." Imprisonment is oppression. Should no criminal be imprisoned? Taxes are exploitative. Ought there be no taxation? Above all, WHERE does this right come from?

[NorthStarRepublicML]

We do however have an obvious right to be free from exploitation and oppression, to be used as objects whether factory machinery, incubators or sex dolls, and thats the basis on which slavery, forced pregnancy and rape violate human rights.

where does this natural right come from?

if you can answer that i will be impressed, btw i&#39;m not impressed by your ability to come up with clever ways of calling me a fascist or whatever ...

why don&#39;t you just keep it in your pants and defend your bankrupt "natural rights" argument?

insults are not necessary, if you want me to shut up just prove that natural rights exist and identify where they come from .....

[TC]

I take it NorthTsar that you&#39;ve conceded all of your other arguments and have been reduced to whining "but why" like an idiot who thinks that infinite epistemic regress is a counter-argument because he can&#39;t think of a real one, since you haven&#39;t disputed my refutation of all of your arguments. Thanks for admitting that you&#39;re wrong, its very mature of you.

No one claimed that freedom from oppression and exploitation is a "natural right" rather it is a right that we Communists assert just as we assert that oppression and exploitation are necessarily undesirable, this is our central contention with the liberals and conservatives and the point of difference between us and our political enemies. This doesn&#39;t come from dispassionate logic but from social conscious and political will. We don&#39;t need any argument that exploitation and oppression are bad things, they are evidently undesirable to the oppressed and the exploited and we choose to identify with them in all conflicts, and that is a political choice not one that can be logically deduced. The Communist position is in fact so appealing that the proponents of exploitation and oppression never attempt to persuade people that these are acceptable things but rather that they don&#39;t exist, something you have apparently given up on in the case of denying people abortion rights since you&#39;re so obviously wrong.


I suggest you read Bukharin&#39;s chapter: Theory of Proletarian Dictatorship and Scientific Communism, found here:

http://www.marxists.org/archive/bukharin/w.../teaching/4.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/bukharin/works/1933/teaching/4.htm)

[Marko]

Abortion was only systematically illegalized in the 19th century, when all surgery was dangerous and because they didn&#39;t have the same hospital system it was impossible to enforce anyways. It was legalized in the west in the 70s after the cultural and social advances of the 60s and early 70s and the new reality that women could already effectively control their fertility through contraceptives. Reducing the fertility of poor and non-white people had absolutely nothing to do with it; in the United States for instance it was the courts not the legislature that did it and in the United Kingdom it didn&#39;t even apply to their poorest population (who live in Northern Ireland and still can&#39;t get abortions without traveling to England).
Abortion was forbidden by the church in the Middle Ages. The legalisation of abortion had little to do with contraception which provided an alternative way to birth control.

Margaret Sanger and other people in the Planned Parenthood used eugenical and racist arguments to defend abortion.

http://www.citizenreviewonline.org/special...gro_project.htm (http://www.citizenreviewonline.org/special_issues/population/the_negro_project.htm)

And in Europe Hitler legalized abortion in 1933 in Germany although it had been previously banned. Hitler had clearly racist/eugenicist motivations.

The famous bourgeois philosopher Bertrand Russell defended birth control with the following argument:
"This policy may last some time, but in the end under it we shall have to give way--we are only putting off the evil day; the one real remedy is birth control, that is getting the people of the world to limit themselves to those numbers which they can keep upon their own soil... I do not see how we can hope permanently to be strong enough to keep the coloured races out; sooner or later they are bound to overflow, so the best we can do is to hope that those nations will see the wisdom of Birth Control.... We need a strong international authority."


:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

This has GOT to be the single strangest argument i&#39;ve ever heard on this forum.

Yes, i agree, because of abortion there are now fewer poor and oppressed people...

...but as a leftist i think this is a GOOD THING.

We don&#39;t want people to be poor and oppressed, thats kind of the point. Having more people made poor and oppressed doesn&#39;t help the left it helps the capitalists who earn money off their poverty and oppression.
So I suppose that you regard all capitalist efforts to bribe the workers to abandon socialism as "good things"? They do so both with welfare benefits and social reforms like the legalization of abortion.

Do you also oppose liberal immigration policies which have brought millions of people from the Third World to the West because they increase the amount of poor people here?



Yes, Stalin ended Soviet human rights in lots of areas, rights of political dissent and speech and due process and workers democracy were also banned, that was a symptom of an extra-governmental state apparatus run amok as the result of a state of emergency it was not a healthy workers state. These things along with abortion rights were restored when Khrushchev defeated the Anti-Party Group.
Stalin was a rational person. (The history of the Great Patriotic War proves that). Why do you think Stalin banned abortion?

Also, why do you think the socialist state has no right to ban abortion?


Ceausescu was about as much of a socialist as Pol Pot or Saddam was, there was no socialism in Romania thats why there was no respect for women&#39;s rights. The Romanian "socialists" were internationally isolated enemies of both the Soviet Union and Peoples Republic of China with no recognition from any of the main branches of international Communism.

Raising this point really makes utterly no sense given that abortion was always practiced free and on demand throughout the socialist world with only two exceptions while it was illegal in the imperialist world until the 70s and remains illegal in many of the imperialist&#39;s neo-colonies.
All statistical evidence shows that the fertility rates are below the replacement level in advanced socialist countries. The Romanian experience shows that if abortion is banned they will skyrocket. Thus, it could be rational to ban abortion to avoid economic problems caused by low birth rates. In the long term fertility rates must be above the replacement levels to avoid the extinction of the human species.

[RGacky3]

I would&#39;nt mind hearing some pro-choice responces to my previous post

[NorthStarRepublicML]

I take it NorthTsar that you&#39;ve conceded all of your other arguments

there was never an argument on abortions being illegal, the other arguments that you seem to have with me deal less with my political stance on the issue and more my assertion that rights cannot be used to justify things like abortion or anti-abortion ....

the argument is this:

you believe that rights are naturally guaranteed to women but not to fetuses ... you believe that the rights of one surpass the rights of the other .... yet you have no understanding of rights ...

i believe that abortions should be legal not because people are entitled to them because of a subjective "right" but because having abortions legal and available solves more problems then it creates .. meaning that the social cost (material conditions such as health care costs, unwanted children, deaths, abuse) is less disruptive to the society in question ....

thus i support abortion because it is good for society not because of a subjective right that could change on a whim and differ from culture to culture and state to sate ...


No one claimed that freedom from oppression and exploitation is a "natural right" rather it is a right that we Communists assert just as we assert that oppression and exploitation are necessarily undesirable, this is our central contention with the liberals and conservatives and the point of difference between us and our political enemies.

no it is not a "right" ... where does this "right" come from TC?

we make revolution because it is based on material conditions, because it is positive for society not because people have a natural right to it, natural rights are not material they are immaterial ideology


you can never be abstractly "pragmatic" or "logical" you can only apply pragmatism in service of an externally defined goal.

no but it does involve an analysis of the situation unlike a natural rights argument, the goal in this case (abortion), as i have said many times before, is about making positive improvements on the way a society works, one more time:

Abortions= positive for society

Illegal Abortions= negative for society


Civil and human rights are fundamentally concepts that can only be applied to individuals.

so you are arguing that abortion should be a civil right? last time i checked it was a civil right .....

who decides which "rights" individuals get?

what is the difference between a civil "right" and a human "right"?

honestly you are just going in circles, just admit that you can&#39;t answer the question ...


We do however have an obvious right to be free from exploitation and oppression, to be used as objects whether factory machinery, incubators or sex dolls, and thats the basis on which slavery, forced pregnancy and rape violate human rights.

how? because you say so .... you aren&#39;t even making arguments

what is your definition of a "human right"?



something you have apparently given up on in the case of denying people abortion rights since you&#39;re so obviously wrong.

you really need to stop making accusations that i am anti-choice, because i clearly am not as more then a dozen posts in this very thread have shown ....

i have made clear my position now unless you are totally avoiding explaining your own "natural rights" argument please explain where these natural rights come from, also please review the topic, especially this part:


the flaw in abortion arguments that center around "natural rights", either the right of the fetus to life or the right of the mother to control reproduction .... both are flawed because of the logic you point out with your premature baby analogy ...

because rights are subjective they vary from person to person, state to state, and culture to culture ..... thus in these varying environments the rights of one supercede the rights of the other .....

thus any abortion argument framed in terms of "rights" is flawed .... no matter how desperately some persons wish ....

Bottom Line: abortion should be legal and available because making it illegal causes more problems then it solves .... not because of any inherient or "natural right" of either fetus or mother .....


you&#39;re just a rightwing misogynist

you&#39;re an idiot who doesn&#39;t know what you&#39;re talking about

[NorthStarRepublicML]

Seeing as its the woman&#39;s body, is it ok for the woman to drink a lot, take drugs, do other things that are harmful to the unborn, on purpose so that the baby comes out disabled and/or braindamaged, and if your answer is yes then thats fine you have to live with that.

yes it&#39;s ok ...

yes i can live with it ....


I would&#39;nt mind hearing some pro-choice responces to my previous post

sure .... my response is that it doesn&#39;t matter what a mother does to her own body, she can drink draino for all i care as long as she isn&#39;t causing trouble ....

i can&#39;t imagine this being widespread enough to be a social problem and if it was a problem due to widespread alcohol and drug abuse then that is where we should focus .... not on mandatory abortions for deformed or retarded children ... that would cause problems ....

a home abortion kit or a pill would also be a reasonable alternative

[Invader Zim]

LOL no one has ever argued that groups have rights, apart from nationalists and bourgeois who justify certain property "rights" in terms of corporate persons.

Civil and human rights are fundamentally concepts that can only be applied to individuals.


There are a lot of coutries and states which do not see aborting the unborn as a "right".

No, there are simply countries and states where women&#39;s human rights are not protected, that doesn&#39;t mean that they don&#39;t have them, simply that they&#39;re being violated.

The fact that a right can be violated doesn&#39;t mean that it doesn&#39;t exist, otherwise there would be no concept of human rights abuses.



LOL no one has ever argued that groups have rights, apart from nationalists and bourgeois who justify certain property "rights" in terms of corporate persons.

Clown, that is not what I am talking about; do try and keep up.



Civil and human rights are fundamentally concepts that can only be applied to individuals.

See above.


No, there are simply countries and states where women&#39;s human rights are not protected, that doesn&#39;t mean that they don&#39;t have them, simply that they&#39;re being violated.

Well that is obviously bullshit because different countries and societies have different ideas of rights on all sorts of matters, not just the abortion issue. And unless you can formulate some kind of objective reasoning why your subjective views on a subjective questions, across the board, are inherently superior you are obviously so arrogant that your pretentions have got the better of you. After all, if you think that rights are objective then obviously that idea of rights must conform to your own. What extreme narcism to think that everyone should abide by exactly what you think.

But of course this is the nub of the issue and why your entire argument is flawed; you think your ethical opinions have greater validity than anyone elses and thus you have deluded your self into believing that your opinions have some materal basis.

[RGacky3]

sure .... my response is that it doesn&#39;t matter what a mother does to her own body, she can drink draino for all i care as long as she isn&#39;t causing trouble ....

i can&#39;t imagine this being widespread enough to be a social problem and if it was a problem due to widespread alcohol and drug abuse then that is where we should focus .... not on mandatory abortions for deformed or retarded children ... that would cause problems ....

Abortion is a Moral Philisophical question so it must be answered in a Moral Philisophical way, so its not about if its a widespread social problem at all.

So you have no problem with a Woman intentionally Harming the Fetus in her womb so that it comes out deformed or retarded? If thats your moral stance them you have to think, what about intentionaly harming a newborn so that it becomes deformed or retarded, the outcome is exactly the same, the only difference is at what stage it is done.

[NorthStarRepublicML]

Abortion is a Moral Philisophical question

HA&#33;

how are these morals determined? who decides what is moral and what is immoral?

if you can answer that i will answer all your other points ....

[Marko]

Originally posted by [email protected] 02, 2007 06:55 am
Abortion is a Moral Philisophical question so it must be answered in a Moral Philisophical way, so its not about if its a widespread social problem at all.

So you have no problem with a Woman intentionally Harming the Fetus in her womb so that it comes out deformed or retarded? If thats your moral stance them you have to think, what about intentionaly harming a newborn so that it becomes deformed or retarded, the outcome is exactly the same, the only difference is at what stage it is done.
No, abortion is only a social phenomenon and the relevant question is whether it benefits or harms the national economy. Both alternatives are possible and depend on the development of the society.

Your question was about the waiting mothers who harm their children using ethanol etc.. Obviously, that kind of behavior is unacceptable and possibly even criminal because it can only cause harm.

[Black Dagger]

Originally posted by Marko
No, abortion is only a social phenomenon and the relevant question is whether it benefits or harms the national economy.

So the autonomy of women is irrelevant?

[Marko]

Originally posted by bleeding gums malatesta+August 02, 2007 09:02 am--> (bleeding gums malatesta @ August 02, 2007 09:02 am)
Marko
No, abortion is only a social phenomenon and the relevant question is whether it benefits or harms the national economy.

So the autonomy of women is irrelevant? [/b]
That kind of bourgeous conception of "rights" is irrelevant. Women have abortions in capitalist countries because of social problems created by capitalism. The USSR inherited them from Czarist Russia and consequently Lenin legalized the abortions as a "necessary evil" until those social problems would be solved.

After they had been solved in Stalin&#39;s view he made abortions illegal. It was the patriotic duty of Soviet women to give birth to a new group of heroes if they became pregnant. But in the late 1960s it was thought again that the social problems of the Czarist era were still inherent in the Russian society and abortions were legalized.

However, it is certain that the need to have abortions will wither away under socialism.

[NorthStarRepublicML]

However, it is certain that the need to have abortions will wither away under socialism.

this has already been discussed in this thread, i know it&#39;s a long thread but you should read the whole thing before commenting

[RGacky3]

That kind of bourgeous conception of "rights" is irrelevant. Women have abortions in capitalist countries because of social problems created by capitalism. The USSR inherited them from Czarist Russia and consequently Lenin legalized the abortions as a "necessary evil" until those social problems would be solved.


If your saying &#39;rights are irrelevant, then whos to say that the right to have an abortion is irrelivent, if abortions are not wrong, then they are never wrong, if they are wrong they are always wrong, it goes the same way with Capitalism, Imperialism, Murder, Rape and so on and so forth.


No, abortion is only a social phenomenon and the relevant question is whether it benefits or harms the national economy. Both alternatives are possible and depend on the development of the society.

Your question was about the waiting mothers who harm their children using ethanol etc.. Obviously, that kind of behavior is unacceptable and possibly even criminal because it can only cause harm.

So the question of a persons life is a question of National economy? In that case that justifies killing people who are crippled and do not contribute much to the national economy, it justifies killing old people.

Why is mothers harming their children unacceptable, but mothers killing their children is acceptable?

[/QUOTE]HA&#33;

how are these morals determined? who decides what is moral and what is immoral?

if you can answer that i will answer all your other points .... [QUOTE]

I think Kants idea of Morality is a good secular one to go by, in other words if you say something is OK to do you must accept all implications of it. For example if you say killing someone who is a threat to society is justified, then its ok for any society to kill anyone that is a threat to that society, because you have to hold everyone and everything to the same standard.

[EwokUtopia]

I have my own opinion on personhood rights to the unborn that I have yet to see anyone else sharing, so Id like to know what you all think.

The way I look at it, Human Rights, and rights of personhood are all abstract notions granted to a being by society. Without society, a person has no rights, like if you had a person trapped alone on an Island with a tiger next to them, they have no Human rights to speak of.

Foetus&#39;s are not members of society, but members of the woman who carries them, so I believe that their personhood rights are absolutely up to the woman, not society. This works both ways. On one hand, an unwilling "mother" has the right to say that the thing inside her is not a person, therefore is not subject to any rights associated with the term "person", and she can freely choose to have an abortion should she so desire.

However, I also believe that pregnant women should have the option of granting their unborn such rights should they opt for it. In essence, someone punches a willing and eager mother-to-be in the stomach, and kills the foetus against her will, she has the ability to grant or deny personhood, so should she grant personhood to the foetus, the person who killed her child (she calls terms like child or parasite according to her will of what it is to be looked at) should be considered a murderer.

Its all about choice, and I believe choice works both ways. A woman has every right to call the thing inside her a parasite and deny it of any rights associated with personhood. She also has the choice to call it a child, and grant it those rights. The granting or denying of the rights of personhood for foetus&#39;s belongs solely to the woman who carries it, or chooses not to carry it.

[NorthStarRepublicML]

Without society, a person has no rights

correct, rights are legal terms that a society extends to its members, because there are many different societies these rights are variable and can extend to both women and fetuses depending on that particular society


Foetus&#39;s are not members of society, but members of the woman who carries them,


in some societies fetuses are included (such as Portugal) and are protected under their laws .....


so I believe that their personhood rights are absolutely up to the woman, not society.

unless a society decides their definition of human rights does not provide for womens choice ....

by the way .... what are "personhood rights"?



The granting or denying of the rights of personhood for foetus&#39;s belongs solely to the woman who carries it, or chooses not to carry it.

no, rights are not granted by individuals they are granted by a society .. it doesn&#39;t work this way ....


I think Kants idea of Morality is a good secular one to go by, in other words if you say something is OK to do you must accept all implications of it. For example if you say killing someone who is a threat to society is justified, then its ok for any society to kill anyone that is a threat to that society, because you have to hold everyone and everything to the same standard.

so you derive what is moral based on a concept of fairness developed by a singular person (kant) .... ok first off .... while that may be your interpretation and the source of your morals it is not the uniform standard for all morality .... obviously not everyone that has morals has read Kant or understands his analysis thus your argument is invalid as it assumes that everyone shares a uniform morality ....

there is no uniform morality, thus how can you attempt to claim a superior moral understanding or use your own moral understanding to claim someone else is incorrect when they don&#39;t share the same morals .... ?

you can&#39;t

morals, much like rights, are created based upon philosophers, literature, religion, culture, and any number of other sources ... no two persons have the same morals so attempting to use Kant to define morals is unworkable ...

we must not look to morals that can change like the winds but to an analysis of material conditions, the positive factors and the negative factors and how they affect our society.

thus we reduce your argument to mean: based on Kant women should not be allowed to drink or use drug while pregnant and if they do other women should be allowed to murder their children at a later point

that argument makes no sense to me ....

here are my views

1) you equate a fetus to a child, i do not

2) a society that allows mothers to murder their children without penalty is not a stable one, it would create a host of problems as well create mainstream and acceptable violence

3) while women abusing substances to abort their children might occur it would never occur in large numbers because of the availability of abortion clinics

4) women engaging in substance abuse to avoid childbirth or to intentionally deform the fetus or child shows substance abuse problems and mental health issues ... obviously these persons should be cared for and declared unfit parents ...

5) this is a hypothetical argument and has no bearing on the issue of abortion

6) you do not have an understanding of morals, only Kants understanding which is not objective

7) there is no such thing as objective morals or objective rights

[Black Dagger]

Originally posted by Marko+August 02, 2007 07:38 pm--> (Marko &#064; August 02, 2007 07:38 pm)
Originally posted by bleeding gums malatesta+August 02, 2007 09:02 am--> (bleeding gums malatesta &#064; August 02, 2007 09:02 am)
Originally posted by Marko
No, abortion is only a social phenomenon and the relevant question is whether it benefits or harms the national economy.

So the autonomy of women is irrelevant? [/b]
That kind of bourgeous conception of "rights" is irrelevant. Women have abortions in capitalist countries because of social problems created by capitalism. The USSR inherited them from Czarist Russia and consequently Lenin legalized the abortions as a "necessary evil" until those social problems would be solved.

After they had been solved in Stalin&#39;s view he made abortions illegal. It was the patriotic duty of Soviet women to give birth to a new group of heroes if they became pregnant. But in the late 1960s it was thought again that the social problems of the Czarist era were still inherent in the Russian society and abortions were legalized.

However, it is certain that the need to have abortions will wither away under socialism. [/b]

Originally posted by marko
That kind of bourgeous conception of "rights" is irrelevant.

Right, so dont think that each woman (or people generally) should have the ultimate say in what happens to their body?

That is not a &#39;bourgeois&#39; conception of rights, but rather a revolutionary conception of human liberation - the idea that people are in control of their own lives, not a state.


Originally posted by marko

Women have abortions in capitalist countries because of social problems created by capitalism.

No.

Women have abortions for a variety of reasons, some of which are linked to capitalist social conditions some of which are not; many women (particularly revolutionaries) dont want to have kids, others are not against the idea but want to have strict control over when this occurs - neither of these mindsets are caused by capitalism, both will continue in perpetuity.

Your claim is made even more ridiculous given the historic popularity of abortions in socialist countries.


[email protected]

The USSR inherited them from Czarist Russia and consequently Lenin legalized the abortions as a "necessary evil" until those social problems would be solved.

Which problems are these?



marko

It was the patriotic duty of Soviet women to give birth to a new group of heroes if they became pregnant.

Do you agree with this? IE, that in future socialist countries, it will be the patriotic duty of women to give birth if they become pregnant?



However, it is certain that the need to have abortions will wither away under socialism.

Why?

&#39;Under socialism&#39; all women will be magically imbued with the desire to be pregnant at ANY time, regardless of context? How ludicrous.

[RHIZOMES]

I&#39;m religious and pro-choice. Doesn&#39;t say anywhere in the Qur&#39;an or the Bible that a baby in the womb is a living thing as far as I know. Some historians even think women had abortions under Muhammad&#39;s rule.

I hate pro-lifers. They&#39;re putting the rights of an unborn baby over a born mother.

[RGacky3]

The way I look at it, Human Rights, and rights of personhood are all abstract notions granted to a being by society. Without society, a person has no rights, like if you had a person trapped alone on an Island with a tiger next to them, they have no Human rights to speak of.


If thats the way it is, then People who are outside of Society can throw rights and morality out the window, i.e. I can kill someone who is not considered part of Society, some people would consider bums not part of Society, Morality and Rights are a Human concept, not a tigers concept. If you consider a Fetus to not Have societal rights, that means that they do not have any rights and can be treated anyway the mother likes, which means she can, with no moral issues, drink, take drugs, beat her unborn, so that it comes out retarted and deformed on purpose, and she can be compleatly not responsible for its outcome because that fetus has no Human rights. The problem is that the Fetus is going to become part of Society, and should be delt with as such, that is unless you take Stalins creed "Death solves all problems, no man, no problem,"


It seams as if you guys have been thrown of by my using the name Kant, let me put it this way, if you make a Moral desicion it must not be pragmatic, it must not be simply because its convenient it must be across the board. For example not killing because you&#39;ll get caught is not a Moral desicion, not killing because you believe that it is wrong to kill IS a moral desicion, and if that is your Moral position, it would be wrong for you to kill no matter what the consecuences would or would not be.

[EwokUtopia]

All I was really saying is that this is an arguement on personhood status. Yes a foetus is alive, yes it has human DNA, but does that automatically make it a person? I believe that this is a question not to be solved with an absolute yes or an absolute no, but by the choice of the woman who bears it.

That really what the Abortion argument is about, the status of a foetus by way of personhood. It really annoys me when some pro-choice people get carried away and say it "isnt alive", because 1) thats not the point, cows are alive, yet we kill them for tasty burgers, and 2) of course its alive. It can die, therefore its alive. It is personhood that is the focal issue on this debate.

By the way, just out of curiosity, has anybody ever heard of a pro-lifer who isnt a crazy religious nut? I think this whole immortal soul bit plays into their fanatical devotion to fetuses, and I was wondering if anybody has ever met, or even heard of a pro-lifer who actually dares to use logic. That could be an interesting debate.

[NorthStarRepublicML]

It seams as if you guys have been thrown of by my using the name Kant, let me put it this way, if you make a Moral desicion it must not be pragmatic, it must not be simply because its convenient it must be across the board.

actually i&#39;m thrown off because you don&#39;t seem to know what you are talking about, there are no objective morals so it is impossible to argue from a moral position on issues such as abortion or even murder, both murder and abortion should be judged by its utility and its effects on society ....

no morals can be "across the board", if you can give me an example of that i will be very impressed ...

abortion is good because it solves more problems then it creates, murder (much like it is now) has many circumstances such as self defense, passion, or premeditation and should be judged individually by the society itself through courts ...

murders and abortion are not the same

you are equating abortion to murder and by doing so are adopting a pro-life position


For example not killing because you&#39;ll get caught is not a Moral desicion, not killing because you believe that it is wrong to kill IS a moral desicion, and if that is your Moral position, it would be wrong for you to kill no matter what the consecuences would or would not be.

in my experience the vast majority of people don&#39;t need laws telling them not to kill each other .... obviously people who engage in murder have different morals then most so arguing for increased moral awareness is not going to solve murders .... most societies punishes unjust murders whatever their morals ....

you also seem to argue that its is always wrong to kill, i would also disagree with you there.


Yes a foetus is alive, yes it has human DNA, but does that automatically make it a person?

some societies think so and they extend the rights of their society to fetuses, some other societies do not ...


I believe that this is a question not to be solved with an absolute yes or an absolute no, but by the choice of the woman who bears it.

that is not the way it works, a society makes decisions as a collective (more or less) and not individuals .... but perhaps you would elaborate on this process ...



By the way, just out of curiosity, has anybody ever heard of a pro-lifer who isnt a crazy religious nut?

RGacky3 might be one ....

seriously the reason why many people who are religious have an increased sensitivity to abortions is that the majority of people derive strong moral convictions from religious teachings, RGacky3 seems to be approaching the same level but instead of taking his morals from religious teachings he takes them from Kant ... both are pretty much useless if you ask me ...

the problem is often that morals do not take into account material conditions and the specifics of the situation being considered ....

RGacky3, if you can describe objective morality for me then i will continue to address your points otherwise please discontinue your confused line of argument, also i would suggest that you discontinue to equate abortion with murder before TC gets on your ass about it ....

[Invader Zim]

some societies think so and they extend the rights of their society to fetuses, some other societies do not ...

And it is impossible to come up with an objective reason why they should not. The entire debate boils down to personal moral preference, which rather makes the entire debate a fruitless one because no side has an upper ground.

Of course some arrogant people on both sides proclaim the other to be wrong, as if a subjective opinion can be wrong. Indeed we see it in this very thread with the Clown (as usual living up to her name). She is under the impression that countries which deny abortion rights are restricting a human right. Of course the most widely respected and utilised interpretation of Human rights the Universal Declaration of Human Rights makes no mention of abortion and certainly does not list it as a human right. So the Clown rather proves the point that interpretation of human rights are not universal as her ideas are very different from most other peoples.

Of course if we accept her view that the right to an abortion should be a human right, unless she can convince the majority, or an empowered minority, that this is a reasonable thing to ask it will never become a universally accepted human right. If she can’t its just her worthless opinion.

It is interesting but the other side use the same misguided logic and ignorant view on rights. To elaborate, the clause and typically held accepted human right, the right to life, is used by the pro-life lobby as a major platform in their cause.

So who is right? Are the likes of TC correct and the pro-lifers wrong? The answer of course is neither are correct. This is because &#39;rights&#39; are a made up idea and when it comes down to it, meaningless unless they are enforced and they will only be enforced where the majority, or at least those who are in power, agree with them.

So unless it is enforced there is no such thing as a right to an abortion and no right for a foetus not to be aborted. In short rights only exist if you happen to live in a place where they are granted.

So, claiming rights as a magical trump card, as if they are some kind of universally accepted and unarguable source of objective truth, which proves the validity of the pro-choice (or life) lobby is a load of tosh.

Personally I am glad to live in country where women do have the right to an abortion, but anyone who thinks that there is some kind of objective moral reason why this should be the case everywhere, and that anyone who disagrees is just dim, are fools who don&#39;t understand what they are talking about.

[black magick hustla]

Originally posted by Invader [email protected] 03, 2007 08:37 pm


invader zim blah

Yes, and we as communists, are willing to impose our own subjectivity. Liberation is not something we objectively deserve, but we are willing to fight for it. Slavery wasn&#39;t objectively wrong, but we as communists see it subjectively wrong, for our objective is the emancipation of humanity.

The right to abort is part of this project, for autonomy over one&#39;s own body is central to emancipation.

[Invader Zim]

Originally posted by Marmot+August 03, 2007 09:54 pm--> (Marmot &#064; August 03, 2007 09:54 pm)
Invader [email protected] 03, 2007 08:37 pm


invader zim blah

Yes, and we as communists, are willing to impose our own subjectivity. Liberation is not something we objectively deserve, but we are willing to fight for it. Slavery wasn&#39;t objectively wrong, but we as communists see it subjectively wrong, for our objective is the emancipation of humanity.

The right to abort is part of this project, for autonomy over one&#39;s own body is central to emancipation. [/b]

Well done, you have grasped the obvious, maybe with work we will have you on the simple&#33; Just as long as you do accept that it is a subjective opinion and don&#39;t try and pretend there are undesputable objective reasons behind the view.


Oh and Marmot, do try and learn to use the quote function properly when you are trying to be condescending.

[EwokUtopia]

Originally posted by [email protected] 03, 2007 07:50 pm
that is not the way it works, a society makes decisions as a collective (more or less) and not individuals .... but perhaps you would elaborate on this process ...
The only scenario I can think of that would put a womans choice to grant personhood to a foetus is an outside force harming/killing it against her will. If this happens, she should have the option to charge him with murder, as she has granted the thing inside her personhood.


If she denies it personhood, murder is completely inapplicable, and she has the full right to terminate the pregnancy on demand.


Thats all I am really advocating, willingly pregnant women being able to charge a mallicious (undoubtably mysogynistic) bastard who kills their feotus against her will with murder. Call it an extension of pro-choice, taking the choice as something that goes both ways.

[NorthStarRepublicML]

If this happens, she should have the option to charge him with murder, as she has granted the thing inside her personhood.

well if someone attacked me and i had the option of charing them with murder i would do it, i think most people would, even persons that planned on getting an abortion .....

even if the fetus you intend to abort is killed by an attacker wouldn&#39;t you want that person punished in the worst way possible? even though they did something you would have done (although in a less violent way) they still attacked you intending to harm you....

this seems less about choice and more about giving a certain section of the population (women) the ability to act as judicial advocates .... which in my opinion is not good ....

what if men could charge people with murder for getting kicked in the nuts?

this is a weird scenario to say the least ....

[EwokUtopia]

Originally posted by [email protected] 04, 2007 04:14 am
this is a weird scenario to say the least ....
Its a weird scenario, but one that does pop up from time to time.


The question is how it is to be dealt with, and it has caused contorversy in the debate which we are engaged in.

[Tommy-K]

Originally posted by pusher robot+June 06, 2007 05:01 pm--> (pusher robot @ June 06, 2007 05:01 pm)
Originally posted by [email protected] 06, 2007 02:11 pm

[email protected] 06, 2007 01:59 pm
Why not let the women who is having the child choose whats best for her?
I assume it is because "potential life" is seen to outweigh the well being of the mother...

Or that the foetus is to be considered alive and therefore worth more than the mother&#39;s rights not to go through with things....

Or that the mother as a female is deemed inferior, and not able to choose in a fragile state?

It doesn&#39;t matter why not, any reason why not should be promptly dealt with so that the claimant can be treated as the sexist that they are, or can see at least how their views lead to discrimination.
I argue that it is because (a) the fetus is developed enough to have accrued some human rights and (b) the mother caused the fetus to develop a dependency in the first place, and © has waived her right not to have the fetus dependent on her by her failing to abort it in a timely manner. [/b]
Technically a foetus is not a living being, it is a parasite as it is dependent on the mother for survival, it cannot survive on it&#39;s own. Life starts at birth.

By this definition, aborting a foetus is not a breach of it&#39;s human rights, as it is not a human, and does not have rights.

[NorthStarRepublicML]

Technically a foetus is not a living being, it is a parasite as it is dependent on the mother for survival, it cannot survive on it&#39;s own. Life starts at birth

subjective, please read the thread this has already been addressed


By this definition, aborting a foetus is not a breach of it&#39;s human rights, as it is not a human, and does not have rights.

damn man, read the thread before posting, i know its long but don&#39;t be lazy about it ... a fetus has rights some places and doesn&#39;t other places, rights are subjective period.

this has all been addressed on this very page so instead of telling you how incorrect your argument is i suggest that you actually read the thread

[Invader Zim]

Technically a foetus is not a living being, it is a parasite as it is dependent on the mother for survival, it cannot survive on it&#39;s own. Life starts at birth.

And what objective scientific basis do you have to proclaim that life begins at birth and not before? Not to mention that after birth, while not being biologically dependant a new born baby is still equally dependant upon adult support in order to sustain its self.

Not to mention that in many cases 25 week old fetus&#39;s have be removed from the womb and survived, again with help from adults.

Thus it becomes obvious that &#39;life&#39; does not magically begin at birth, that is just an arbitary - and completely unscientific - point chosen so we can all feal better.


Thus in my opinion, in this context, life is the point at which a clump of cells becomes sentient. Not that i have any problem with abortions after that point, because a woman who chooses a termination after five months of pregnanacy most have some pretty pressing reasons to do so, but lets not kid our selves; there is no scientific basis to claim that life begins at birth. You can argue that biological dependence ends at birth; but that is not life.

[Dean]

Originally posted by Invader [email protected] 04, 2007 11:32 am
Thus in my opinion, in this context, life is the point at which a clump of cells becomes sentient. Not that i have any problem with abortions after that point, because a woman who chooses a termination after five months of pregnanacy most have some pretty pressing reasons to do so...
I would say relevant life begins at the time of sentience... and I have a problem with abortion at that time, because I don&#39;t think any sentient creature should die if they don&#39;t have to. But I am still fully pro-choice; I support everything up to partial birth abortions. The reason is that, barring the obvious reproductive logic, the fetus acts as a parasite on the mother&#39;s body, and she still maintains the right to control over her body, reproductive forces, etc... In short, my respect for the sentience of a tapeworm (if it has such senses) is a lot less relevant than my respect for the mammal it may be in, even if it didn&#39;t prove a health threat to him/her.

[Invader Zim]

Dean, when you say "I support everything up to partial birth abortions", does that mean you also support partial birth abortions or not? If not, then how does a slightly later stage of preganacy invalidate the logic you employed when you said: -

"The reason is that, barring the obvious reproductive logic, the fetus acts as a parasite on the mother&#39;s body, and she still maintains the right to control over her body, reproductive forces, etc... In short, my respect for the sentience of a tapeworm (if it has such senses) is a lot less relevant than my respect for the mammal it may be in, even if it didn&#39;t prove a health threat to him/her."

?

[Dean]

Originally posted by Invader [email protected] 04, 2007 03:04 pm
Dean, when you say "I support everything up to partial birth abortions", does that mean you also support partial birth abortions or not? If not, then how does a slightly later stage of preganacy invalidate the logic you employed when you said: -

"The reason is that, barring the obvious reproductive logic, the fetus acts as a parasite on the mother&#39;s body, and she still maintains the right to control over her body, reproductive forces, etc... In short, my respect for the sentience of a tapeworm (if it has such senses) is a lot less relevant than my respect for the mammal it may be in, even if it didn&#39;t prove a health threat to him/her."

?
Yeah, I think partial birth abortions are acceptable. To comment on the section you quoted, I was saying that a fetus affects a woman&#39;s body as if it were a different entity, feeding off of her and potentially being a danger. Since it is more or less inexorably a part of her, she has every right to control its existance... This is true even in the partial birt abortion situation, which I find it sick that people show pictures of that as arguments against abortion, because it is always or at least almost always used to insure the mother&#39;s health.

A note on the term "mother" for the pro-choice: mother simply means creator, regardless of the seperate life concept. One is still a mother of something even if it is not yet born, it&#39;s just not fully the same meaning as in common culture.

[pusher robot]

Technically a foetus is not a living being, it is a parasite as it is dependent on the mother for survival, it cannot survive on it&#39;s own.

Wrong. Fetuses past the point of viability do not require the mother for survival and can survive on their own (at least, on a physiological level). The parasitic behavior could be terminated without killing the fetus, something which is not true for ordinary parasites.

[RGacky3]

BTW, Most &#39;Parasites&#39; are also living beings.

So how many of you pro-lifers out there are perfectly ok with a preagnant woman taking drugs, smoking, boxing, drinking a bunch of alcahol, and messing up her baby for life, while she is preagnant? Is that cool with you guys?

[NorthStarRepublicML]

So how many of you pro-lifers out there are perfectly ok with a preagnant woman taking drugs, smoking, boxing, drinking a bunch of alcahol, and messing up her baby for life, while she is preagnant? Is that cool with you guys?

i&#39;m pretty sure that no one in here is a pro-lifer .....

besides that this has already been addressed:


while women abusing substances to abort their children might occur it would never occur in large numbers because of the availability of abortion clinics


women engaging in substance abuse to avoid childbirth or to intentionally deform the fetus or child shows substance abuse problems and mental health issues ... obviously these persons should be cared for and declared unfit parents ...

[bcbm]

Originally posted by [email protected] 06, 2007 11:49 am
i&#39;m pretty sure that no one in here is a pro-lifer .....

They&#39;re anti-choice, not pro-life.

[Idola Mentis]

Food for thought...

http://youtube.com/watch?v=Uk6t_tdOkwo

[Invader Zim]

Originally posted by black coffee black metal+August 06, 2007 07:23 pm--> (black coffee black metal @ August 06, 2007 07:23 pm)
[email protected] 06, 2007 11:49 am
i&#39;m pretty sure that no one in here is a pro-lifer .....

They&#39;re anti-choice, not pro-life. [/b]
How confusing is anyone anti-life, not pro-choice?

[Idola Mentis]

Originally posted by Invader Zim+August 06, 2007 08:03 pm--> (Invader Zim @ August 06, 2007 08:03 pm)
black coffee black [email protected] 06, 2007 07:23 pm

They&#39;re anti-choice, not pro-life.
How confusing is anyone anti-life, not pro-choice? [/b]
Different axis. Anti-choice, pro-choice. Life doesn&#39;t enter into it, except in the imaginations of the world&#39;s political lepers.

[Invader Zim]

except in the imaginations of the world&#39;s political lepers.

Really? Would that be the majority then?

[Idola Mentis]

Originally posted by Invader [email protected] 06, 2007 08:08 pm

except in the imaginations of the world&#39;s political lepers.
Really? Would that be the majority then?
No, in the minority which thinks that having an abortion is the same as taking a life. By using terminology which implies their argument, you promote the argument even while arguing against it.

I admit to some confusion - were you trying to imply that the majority of the world is anti-choice ("pro-life")? Without having a census to hand, I think it safe to assume, by deeds if not words, that when the wheels hit the road, the majority turns out to be pro-choice. I think that people who see no problem with forcibly taking such a basic right away from another have no place in a political context; the idea implies a strategy for dealing with other human beings which undermines any possibility of peaceful cooperation. In short: political lepers.

[Invader Zim]

I was being facetious.

But on a serious note, even if people do in the majority come down as being pro-choice, I very much doubt they think of the discussion in such terms. I suspect they do think of the debate in terms of &#39;life&#39;.

[NorthStarRepublicML]

They&#39;re anti-choice, not pro-life.

who here is anti-choice?

[bcbm]

Originally posted by [email protected] 07, 2007 10:38 am

They&#39;re anti-choice, not pro-life.

who here is anti-choice?
I don&#39;t know, but I was correcting the terminology. "Pro-life" is a term invented by anti-choice dicknoses to make them look like the good guys and to frame the debate wrongly around the issue of "life," which is completely irrelevant to the abortion debate.

[NorthStarRepublicML]

I think that people who see no problem with forcibly taking such a basic right away from another have no place in a political context

please read earlier in the thread for a discussion on so called "rights"

[Idola Mentis]

Originally posted by [email protected] 07, 2007 07:29 pm
please read earlier in the thread for a discussion on so called "rights"
I think I spotted it, though I haven&#39;t read it in depth - there were other parts of the conversation which interested me more. I see that you refuse the luxury of arguing from "natural rights", which I find sensible. But unlike you, I see no reason to give up the idea of rights; in my view, it&#39;s the idea that rights are "natural" that needs flushing.

[NorthStarRepublicML]

But unlike you, I see no reason to give up the idea of rights; in my view, it&#39;s the idea that rights are "natural" that needs flushing.

agreed that natural rights are stupid, but so is believing that your own conception of rights is the superior one .... is that what you are saying here?

if you recognize that there are no such thing as natural rights then you must recognize all existing rights as subjective .... disagree?

[Idola Mentis]

Originally posted by [email protected] 08, 2007 06:17 pm
if you recognize that there are no such thing as natural rights then you must recognize all existing rights as subjective .... disagree?
I&#39;m not sure how my conception of rights are supposed to be superior or inferior to anything... I guess on one level we can consider a set of rights superior to another, as long as we stay within the same system of justification and enforcement of rights. After all, the conception of rights in use tends to dictate which rights are a priority.

But some conceptions of rights could be considered superior to other conceptions in the sense that they better describe what is going on when we base our actions on the notion that we have "rights", and thus help us weed out self-contradictive and counterproductive claims more effectively than other conceptions of right do. Concieving rights as "natural" is a confusing and badly founded explanation of rights, and therefore likely to be "inferior" to others who do not take such an easy way out.

I think it&#39;s plain for anyone to see that rights are not essential, natural nor contractual. They&#39;re frequently not even internally consistent. "Rights" are a convenient label for sets of social conventions which we are conditioned to expect and rely on. I don&#39;t think rights by themselves are subjective, but I do think all systems which establish rights are subjective. As long as you think within, for example, a contractual rationale (or any other apparently consistent justificiation), rights are objective. But if you do not accept the premise of the contract (or of nature, or of essence), the whole thing is revealed as a steaming pile.

So what rights come down to is what we expect of each other. That can change, but it changes slowly, and with lots of noise along the way. For example, no one expects to be forced to give birth to their father&#39;s baby, so it&#39;s safe to assume that&#39;s a "right" in this time and place. There might be a time and place where it&#39;s not, but I hope I won&#39;t live to see it, and I can&#39;t imagine the community in which such a thing could become normal. And rights rely on each other. If you pull away one, the whole house of cards can come tumbling down.

[ichneumon]

just out of curiosity, has this been going on since i got restricted for not supporting late term (post viable fetus) abortions? there seem to be some prominent people now arguing things that are just as controversial.

[PigmerikanMao]

I think the issue is a moral question and thus should not be decided upon by the state. If people think having the child is the right thing to do, then let them do it, and if a mom is willing to terminate a pregnancy at risk she fears hell, let her make that choice. It&#39;s not my decision.

[Le People]

Originally posted by [email protected] 10, 2007 12:56 am
I think the issue is a moral question and thus should not be decided upon by the state. If people think having the child is the right thing to do, then let them do it, and if a mom is willing to terminate a pregnancy at risk she fears hell, let her make that choice. It&#39;s not my decision.
I can agree to that it is a moral question but in a socialist state, it would be inevitabel that state would support it. Because it is a health service and the socialist state would provide health care. Therfore, it would provide abortions. I&#39;m for the right to choose, so I don&#39;t see this as a problem. Say, why do you write in italics?

[RGacky3]

Originally posted by [email protected] 10, 2007 04:56 am
I think the issue is a moral question and thus should not be decided upon by the state. If people think having the child is the right thing to do, then let them do it, and if a mom is willing to terminate a pregnancy at risk she fears hell, let her make that choice. It&#39;s not my decision.
Well, is murder a moral questoin too?

[NorthStarRepublicML]

I think the issue is a moral question and thus should not be decided upon by the state.

the state should have abortions legal because it solves more problems then it creates, morals should not enter into the equation because there is no uniform or objective morality ....

a society or state that legislates by morals is unstable as morals are often influenced by factors that run counter to logical arguments, thus if a state decides that morality dictates that abortion is equal to murder it will make abortion illegal despite the host of social problems that come with it ....

because there are no perfect morals you cannot argue for abortion being a moral question to be decided by the state and then argue against states that make abortion illegal by claiming they are acting immoral.... to argue from a moral position is impossible


Well, is murder a moral questoin too?

yes it is, but the state does not make murder illegal because it is a moral issue ... it makes murder illegal because murder largely creates social problems ....



just out of curiosity, has this been going on since i got restricted for not supporting late term (post viable fetus) abortions? there seem to be some prominent people now arguing things that are just as controversial.

lately this thread has been used to address the way in which people justify legal abortions, my argument is that concepts such as "rights" and "morals" are subjective and thus variable between different states, cultures, societies, and locations. because of these variables there can never be an objective morality or natural right thus to argue for abortions based on ether rights or morality is not a legitimate argument ....

i believe that abortions should be legal simply for the sake of utility, having abortions illegal causes a host of social problems such as child abuse, homelessness, unsafe "back-alley" abortions, overpopulation, etc.

simply put legal and available abortion solves more problems then it creates ....

the point of my argument is to demystify abortion in terms of morals and rights, to thus ensure that persons like yourself are not restricted because of personal subjective opinions concerning abortions ..... as i have attempted to show that most persons here were restricted due to reasons dealing with abortions as either moral or rights based issues .... both of which are invalid ....

what did you find controversial?