Just guessing here, but I’d assume it’s because the unborn have potential and the bad guys had their chance. I don’t agree, but that’s what I assume being around some people like that…
You are a bad man and you should feel bad about yourself
Well, I at least thought it was a little funny.
I'm assuming it was sarcasm/a joke too, but hard to know these days, without either knowing someone, or the obvious /s. Some crazy people out there...
I think a lot of us remember that line from Zoidberg, and if you'd used that line people might have understood your reference.
I immediately recognized your username. Maybe take a break from the asshole shtick for sometime... and also from online.
OMG I made myself a celebrity here
As someone recently told me, they don’t worry about saving lives, they worry about saving souls.
You need to abide by the quaint rules of the magical sky daddy for that, even if they don’t make sense.
Except clearly any aborted fetus would immediately go to heaven based on what's written in the bible. In fact, heaven should be absolutely completely full of dead babies based on miscarriages, stillbirths, etc. if you believe that they get a soul at the moment of conception.
So that logic doesn't really make sense either. Which is par for the course.
Actually, nobody goes to heaven when they die (according to the bible). Everyone must wait until judgement day when all the graves, etc, open and we all face judgement at that point. This surprised me when I first learned it because it goes against all the Christian culture I've ever been taught and experienced.
So grandma isn't currently in heaven no matter how good she was.
That's a huge relief that perhaps my grandparents haven't seen my embarrassing moments after all.
and judgement is not "brought back to life just to be sent back immediately"... no, it will be a good span of time to live without evil on the earth...
Uhh no? Non-baptized souls go to limbo according to Christian theology.
That depends on which flavor of Christianity you're looking at, but even the Catholics don't think they go to Limbo, the pope had an entire study done on it, and the result was "we hope they go to heaven but we don't know"
A lot of the other denominations don't subscribe to the original sin shtick, and therefore babies would go to heaven even without being baptized.
I always loved the "do uncontacted remote tribes that haven't heard of God or Jesus go to heaven?" question. So far everyone has answered yes. And then you realize that Christians could save everyone, everywhere, forever, just by destroying all their literature, not teaching religion, and letting it die with them. One sacrificial generation and everyone is saved forever.
But they won't do it because of greed and pride, the core aspects of their belief system.
Lots of them believe it is written on our hearts and uncontacted tribes have rejected Jesus.
Catholics
I was juuuuuuust about to explain how making sense isn't a requirement to them, until I saw your last sentence. Then I knew you already get it.
I dont think it really has anything to do with that. A state recently sued due to abortion and teen pregnancy reduction efforts leading to decreased teenage pregnancy rates arguing something along the lines of our populations are going down and it will cost us in population, political representation, and federal resources.
This is about cheap/free labor, disenfranchising women, and maintaining a permanent disabled and poverty-stricken underclasses that keep everyone on up in line with the hierarchy
Stop being right!
sounds left to me
But the Skyfather himself has given us directions to induce a miscarriage with a tabernacle dust smoothie.
Arguably, an unborn baby cannot be guilty of anything. But an adult sentenced to death is often guilty of some horrible crime. So if you accept killing as a punishment, there is no contradiction.
Until you realize that our court system is FULL of false arrests, and the courts have some stupid high number like 98% conviction rate.
They say "take the deal, or the court will fuck you".
2 years vs 30 years.
And then later they run a second trial for something else that has a death penalty as the outcome. The jury is shown this guy, already in prison, for a semi-related charge. Already convicted of the other charge. So his ability to appear innocent is already swayed. And now suddenly there's no deal. The court goes full hammer. The jury is made to believe he did it 100%.
And he can't say he didn't do it, and wasn't even there, because he ALREADY pleaded guilty to the other charge which would place him there.
So now you got a populace, who wasn't in either court session, not seeing how this escalated, and not willing to believe our court system may be flawed. Just kill the criminal and move on, right?
You are overstating it. all evidence I can find is only a small percentage are not guilty. Of course that small possibility is enough for me to be against the death pentalty. If we had a way to be 100% sure of guilt I'd favor death but since we don't I can't go that far.
It only sounds like a contradiction if you take "pro-life" literally. In fact, I find this hard to understand at all if you simply just listen to pro-lifers.
Let me be clear, I'm about as firm a supporter of a woman's right to choose as they come. I'm also adamantly against the death penalty. Do you find this position to be contradictory?
However, the general position of "pro lifers" does not contradict this at all, pretty obviously. They think that a fetus is a child that hasn't been born yet, and because it hasn't been born, it's completely innocent. So you have no right to take it's life. However, if some person in life has done something in life that removes that innocence, they believe sometimes that rises to such a heinous level that they must be permanently and irrevocably removed from society.
There are other glaring contradictions in their position, like not wanting to provide support to that innocent baby once it has come into the world, but this is clearly not one of them.
I'm pro choice but also anti-death penalty, but only because if someone is horrible enough to deserve it then they don't deserve death, because death is the easy way out of suffering. They deserve to live long, miserable lives in a 3-meter cell.
I think they just see it as very simple: killing innocent babies - no, killing evil criminals - yes.
It sounds perfectly alright if you don't think about it too much.
My understanding is that they consider it ok to kill someone who committed a heinous crime but not ok to kill someone who is completely innocent.
This is exactly how I used to see things when I grew up in a conservative echo chamber.
And now that I recognize a person's right to choose and tend to think capital punishment should probably* not be legal, I'll add that it's not that my underlying beliefs changed, just how I now understand things. Some people do deserve capital punishment. And innocent people should be protected. But personhood doesn't start at conception, a person conceiving has a right to decide what happens to their body, and the state can never be trusted to administer capital punishment.
*I say "probably" because I also think it might be necessary to allow it in extreme cases. My reasoning is that if people don't believe the justice system will adequately punish, they have incentive and no ultimate detergent for taking justice into their own hands.
But should we even punish?
I don't mean to troll, so let me explain. Why do we punish? I think it's two fold, we punish to deter crimes and we punish to exact revenge. But the fear of punishment doesn't deter crime https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/five-things-about-deterrence and that leaves revenge as the only both intended and actual outcome of punishment.
Is the current costs of running a complicated criminal justice system really worth it, if all we get from it is revenge? Does revenge make society better? I don't think so.
I'm not advocating for anarchy either. There should be consequences for criminals. I'm just not sure what the consequences should be, but punishment is ineffective. I get that we have personal responsibility, and free will. And I'm not trying to excuse criminals, I'm just saying that punishment doesn't work.
One aspect of punishment is retribution for the victims when there is nothing else and another is to keep people that are harmful away in order to keep other people safe.
Here in Sweden we have a current massive problem with organized crime that are now systematically abusing our criminal justice system that is built on humanitarian ideals for rehab and protecting suspects and criminals rights to the absurd. So yes, in those cases I think punishment will do. Cynically abusing protection measures of society deserves punishment. It may not change those individuals for the life they have chosen for themselves but it will keep them out of making even more damage to society and violent crime against individuals and I honestly see no problem in harsh consequences for their own decisions.
I'm all about scientific research, especially when it goes against the grain, but the idea of getting caught being a bigger deterrent than the punishment is just, weird?
If there is no punishment, why would you be afraid to be caught?
If there is no punishment, why would you be afraid to be caught?
I think the idea is that the thing that stops you in the moment is "I likely won't get away with it" more than "if they catch me there'll be hell to pay ... but only if".
I mean you're (as in the informal general usage of "you", not as the second person pronoun) not going to pull out your phone while driving, if you're next to a cop. But if there's no one around that even looks like an undercover traffic cop?
Human brains are bad at thinking in long term consequences, but immediate consequences? Those we understand.
I see what you're saying and understand that criminals have poor judgment, especially long term.
I still think that there is a natural idea of consequences, even if latent. If no consequences, the only thing about getting caught is having to do whatever thing you're doing again, ie losing time.
Lots of people never reach more advanced stages of moral reasoning. They don't do bad things to avoid being punished, or maybe because they have a simple understanding of "it's against the rules"
The current justice and prison system is abhorrent, but something needs to happen if someone tries to murder someone else. Most people are alright but there are a lot of anti social people out there, too. And a lot of people who would be alright if they were in more stable circumstances
It doesn't work as a deterrent though. In states that have the death penalty people still do bad things.
Because people receiving the death penalty theoretically did something wrong, and fetuses did not. I'm neither against abortion nor pro death penalty, and I don't really see a contradiction there.
Former Christian here.
This is it. Criminals have (theoretically) been proven guilty. Some crimes are worthy of death.
A fetus (ahem unborn baby) has cast no sin and does not deserve death.
Christians would also say that they would never get out to death because they would never do anything wrong but when you bring up the fact that Jesus himself said you should be willing to suffer even to the point of suffering on a cross, they start changing the subject.
That wasn't so hard, was it? People tripping over themselves to find a gotcha and forgetting to use a little common sense.
They're obsessed with punishment. A lot of them see unwanted pregnancy as a just punishment for recreational sex.
Because it's never been about anything other than control. The right to choose anything is abhorrent to them. The only rights they want you to have are the right to be dictated to and the right to be like them.
The death penalty doesn't control women.
Because it's not about saving lives, it never has been. It's about control.
Because they don't care about "life".
They care about punishing people.
An unwanted unplanned baby is punishment for having sex outside of marriage.
Death penalty is punishment for being convicted of murder.
It's perfectly consistent when you look at it all about punishment.
The cruelty is indeed the point
It's not all the same people: Roman Catholics, for example, tend to oppose both.
Roman Catholic doctrine opposes both, but the bishops don't go around threatening to withhold religious services for politicians who allow the death penalty like they do with pro-choice politicians....
I could have sworn that there was a news story of Peloci being denied the sacrament due to her supporting an abortion bill.
There's no logical contradiction between believing that some people should be killed and believing that other people shouldn't be killed. You might as well ask why a soldier would shoot at his enemies but not his allies
(I'm not picking a side in the "Are fetuses people?" debate here. They are from the point of view of the people against abortion.)
They would argue that the "baby" is innocent.
So was the guy they executed the other day right? So innocence might not be it either
Kind of seems like a contradiction
They don't care. There's no point in calling conservatives out on hypocrisy. Only a very small number of them will give a shit, and those will be the ones who were already having doubts.
Precisely this. From a philosophical-logical POV, it doesn't make sense. From the POV of establishing and maintaining power/ dominance/ oppression/ hegemony, however, it's the only thing that makes sense.
In the end, it's because they're told that that's the way it is.
Abortion makes a an easy political point. Vote for the children.
Being hard on crime and executing people, That's another easy political point. Vote for the law abiding citizens.
They don't care that those two things are at odds They don't care about life or death. They care about their own exact situation, and don't really give a rat's ass about anyone else. They believe that the team they're backing gives them the best advantage, and that's absolutely all they care about. Beyond that, it's simply consuming and regurgitating the propaganda, self-perpetuating.
I'm pro-choice, but mostly anti-death penalty, isn't that a contradiction?
I don't really think so. A person's bodily autonomy and the state's power to execute citizens should not overlap.
I think it's not necessarily a contradiction to hold your pro-choice and anti-death penalty stance, but it's still a contradiction to hold the pro-life and pro-death penalty stance if your reasoning behind the pro-life stance is that all life is sacred.
I agree that a person's body autonomy and the state's power to execute citizens should not overlap, but I still think that giving the "all life is sacred" line to justify pro-life and then being pro-death penalty "because some people deserve to die" amounts to hypocrisy.
They don't actually care about life, they just don't want women to have control over their bodies.
Because with reactionaries, the cruelty is the point.
Forced birthers don't actually care about "life". They care about violently controlling anybody who isn't a pale bro.
contradiction
You’ve discovered conservative politics. Party of freedom that wants to restrict women’s access to healthcare, books in schools, reproductive rights, healthcare for children, etc.
Ain't Taliban follows the same method of eradicating women empowerment!
It's not about ethics, it never was.
It's about CONTROL.
Liberals in favor of reproductive rights also tend to be against the death penalty. Is that a contradiction? Conservatives love twisting this into “they want to kill babies, not criminals.”
Do you think they’re right about that? Or is it more nuanced of an issue? If it’s more nuanced of an issue, then it’s more nuanced in both directions.
Liberals prioritize the woman’s ability to decide what happens with her body. They don’t like abortions, but they think they must be allowed if that’s what the woman chooses. They also recognize that it’s a medical procedure that’s absolutely necessary sometimes and other times might prevent an unwanted child from being born into bad circumstances. Meanwhile, liberals tend to be against the death penalty because our justice system is very flawed and innocent people have been put to death in the past. Perhaps a woman is allowed to decide what happens to a congregation of cells inside her body, but people shouldn’t decide the life or death of other people when imprisonment is always there as an option.
Conservatives think in terms of essentials and things are very black and white. It’s either a baby or it isn’t. They think life comes from god so it’s his affair and not our place to countermand a new life that he’s just brought into being. Meanwhile if a grown person with a mind chooses to commit crimes, that’s on them. God makes some pretty hard judgments in the Bible so they think great we can too and that will make us like god. Conservatives also tend to believe that some people are essentially good, and others are essentially bad. And in that framework, once a person has shown themselves to be a criminal, you know they are bad so what’s the point of letting them live. Meanwhile you have no idea if a fetus in the womb will be good or bad yet.
Please don’t downvote me for understanding both positions :)
IS it a contradiction? I don't agree with the death penalty or anti-abortion position, but I don't see some essential link between either position. You can hold two different beliefs about two different things is how come.
They literally call themselves pro-life and then express support for the death penalty.
Sure, but OP didn't ask, 'How can people call themselves pro-life but are be for the death penalty?' I'm not one to hang onto whatever catch phrases or name a movement lands with. Should* I expect the land back movement to, say, lay down on the ground as a for of protest? 'BUT LAND BACK IS IN THE NAAAAAAAME'. Do we think defund the police want there to be nobody to apprehend, say, right-wing terrorists?
Edit; accidentally a word
Most people aren't all that well informed and don't do a lot of crtical thinking about their political positions on things. Many people are only guided by their emotions.
If your Church says that life begins at conception, then abortion is killing babies. So you'd be angry about abortions happening.
If you hear a horrible crime, you're angry about that and might want the person that did that crime to be executed. If you never hear about or think about innocent people being execute, never consider the ethical problems with a government killing people, never consider the costs of it, and all the other arguments against the death penalty, then you can go through life thinking there's no problem with it.
And even if you hear the rational arguments, they get overpowered by emotion the next time someone says "abortion is murder" or you hear about a horrible crime happening that might qualify for the death penalty.
This. People are not that complicated
They’re both cruel to anyone “below” them (this is a simplistic argument.) They’re easy to cry wolf about in order to draw people over to your side, people who vote and act emotionally
They only care until you’re born, then you can go and die in a ditch somewhere.
Even they don't realize that what they spout is just a safe proxy cover for the real issues they are unable to articulate.
welcome to high school debate class, where we think about issues with more nuance than most politicians.
Because they are hypocrites, once that baby leaves the womb they give zero fucks.
Don't get an abortion, also we aren't paying for that kids lunch
It is, but they will persist because their motivation has nothing to do with rational thinking.
To be fair to those people (which I'm really not inclined to be), I'm pro-choice but strongly against the death penalty. So I guess it swings both ways.
it doesn't swing both ways. They are claiming the position of being "pro life" which is clearly hypocritical. No one on the other side is claiming to be "pro death" or "anti life".
That's a good point, actually. I hadn't thought it through enough.
I blame religion.
I'm pro abortion and against the death penalty! Someone ask me! I promise I'm not a troll. I am honestly pro abortion not just pro choice.
What do you mean by that? You’re an anti-natalist?
Nope. I actually think life is sacred. The reason I'm pro-abortion is because I think anything that can be done to further impede children being born when we have hundreds of thousands of children in America alone who are orphans. That is a travesty.
My challenge to anyone who is anti-abortion would be are they adopting? Because their shit position is perpetuating a stream of children being born without someone to care for them either physically or emotionally.
In a perfect world, abortion would not exist outside of medical necessity. Unfortunately we do not live in a perfect world and as such many women are having children to be born into a cold and loveless world.
It's sad. I could not imagine how cruel someone would have to be to be anti-abortion and yet so willing to effectively let a child's life be aborted once they're born.
I think they're pro-edgelord
Definitely not see my other post.
I mean, I think that's a reasonably common position on the left. Not particularly unusual.
Pro-choice yes. Haven't heard many actually pro-abortion.
What does that mean to you?
See my other comment. Coles notes is until we solve the problem with unwanted children being born I will be pro-abortion.
Punishment. They aren't against abortion, they're pro punishment. They don't think any laws should be about mitigation or helping, only as a means of punishing.
It's in how they talk: "she should have kept her legs closed"; "that's what you get for being a slut"; "if you don't want to have a baby, don't have sex". The pregnancy is a punishment for anyone who wants to have sex, but doesn't want to have children. And jail or death is the punishment for avoiding that previous punishment.
When talking about gun control, too: "why should I - a law abiding citizen - be punished for the actions of a few criminals?"; "ShAlL noT bE INfrInGeD". They don't want laws to do anything but punish. Mitigation? Expansion of freedoms of "them"? No.
Look at voter ID laws: they're restrictive to our freedom, but proposed as punishment for "fraud".
And it often stems from an individualistic and Evangelical ideal. Everyone is "responsible" for their actions. There are no systemic issues in the mind of an evangelical. God is punishing the individual. The laws are punishing the individual. We don't need to change, because we includes I, and I don't need to change, because "I'm a good Christian warrior in the fight against evil".
And evangelicals definitely think there is a spiritual war going on, so punishment of the "wicked" is always an option. Because being wicked is an individual issue.
(Also why they think drug addiction is a moral failing of the individual, not a societal one, and therefore they should be punished).
Right now, evangelicalism and their Christofascist views are moving into political positions of power. They have tons of money coming in, and even if Fuckface 45 (their evangelical God-king warrior) doesn't get into office, they'll still continue to influence policy and grab seats of power.
We need to be aware of them, and stop them at every pass.
I'll just say that able minded people, usually adults, are usually responsible of their actions.
Ok, and?
It's not exclusive of a religious outlook, I thought it was obvious
These same people also solve seem to give af about the suffering of children outside of the border of the country.
I've yet to hear any evangelical cry about dead Palestinian children or the suffering of children on the other side of the American Mexican border.
If you smoke weed you're more likely to wear converse. It's aesthetics. When someone says they're anti abortion I usually see it as aesthetics. They want others to see them as being anti abortion. That's what they get out of it.
It isn't a literal belief. Democrats reduce abortions, much better than cons. Being anti abortion should mean voting for Democrats... IF you were still taking things literally. It's not misinformation or lack of education, it's misaligned priorities.
They're just trying to be a tribe and signal allegiance. To have literal beliefs that you live by regardless of "your side" is a completely different game to what they're playing.
Because it's not about saving the lives of unborn babies and it never has been.
It's about curtailing choice.
I think that can be explained, but tell me how someone can be in favor of the death penalty but be against assisted suicide.
but be against assisted suicide
No free hand outs! You gotta work for your death!
/s
I'm trying to be the devil's advocate here: one could say that one is an innocent "life" while the other is not.
I obviously don't agree with them, but my assumption is that it has to do with maturity/innocence. An unborn child hasn't done anything wrong. They're full of opportunity and have a whole life ahead of them. A criminal sentenced for death has I some way done something very wrong. They've had their chance and failed.
Because the inmates deserve it. The babies don’t.
The common thread is harm and punishment. They wish harm to those they would punish for the transgressions they make up in their heads
Makes more sense when you realise it isn't about life, but about punishing women for having sex.
They want men to choose who lives or dies. They absolutely do not want women to be in charge of anything. That's why no exceptions in the case of rape and incest. A man made a decision, they don't want a woman to have the power to reverse it.
It ultimately is religious belief.
Religious people believe the soul enters the body at conception, granting personhood, so abortion is murder. They also believe that people put to death will go before God, where they will be judged as evil and sent to Hell for eternal punishment.
Everything else is just window dressing.
Underlying their shallow morals is a undiagnosed mental condition. More often than not from my perspective its usually a cluster B personality disorder. NPD/BPD or one of the others variants. They simply lack the ability to see their hypocrisy. They lack the basic empathy necessary to realize it. Due to this they a mortally afraid of therapy and are not likely to ever get better. What we have to do is improve identifying them and preventing their illness from destroying those around them. Not likely to happen when so many of them are elected to office. If you haven't noticed mental health systems in this country are In a shambles. This is not a accident.
I have the same question for the opposite as well. Or for being for abortion and also vegan.
A (human) mother that carries a growing fetus is a living being. A pig, dog or a cow as well. They feel physically and emotionally and can be hurt.
A fetus is, up to a certain point, just a slab of meat.
As a vegan I don't care about slabs of meat, I care about living beings and I think we shouldn't hurt them.
Foetus can also feel pain and hurt, though
At which stage in development, since you seem to know this for a fact.
so you're anti pain. that's awesome, there's a ton of socialist policies I'm sure you support wholeheartedly.
Like what?
free healthcare and medical procedures for everyone including prisoners, covering all prescription drugs, free school lunches, decommodifying housing and abolishing landlords, severely limiting the police in favor of various civil servants for most cases, strict gun control and red flag laws, reducing cars in favor of alternative transportation methods and public transit, redesigning cities into 15 minute cities to facilitate that, and I can go on for a long time but you get the gist
free healthcare and medical procedures for everyone including prisoners,
Yes. This policy is also endorsed by the politician that I voted for.
covering all prescription drugs,
Yes. This policy is also endorsed by the politician that I voted for.
free school lunches,
Yes. This policy is also endorsed by the politician that I voted for.
decommodifying housing
Yes. This policy is also endorsed by the politician that I voted for.
abolishing landlords,
I believe landlords should exist but in limited circumstances. I.E., your nice old man using a house for his retirement fund who treats his tenants well and gives them a fair price for it. I am completely against corporate and/or foreign landlords who are exploiting people for profit.
severely limiting the police in favor of various civil servants for most cases,
Depends on circumstances. A good well trained police force is good, but police shouldn't be used as therapists. If a problem can be fixed more effectively by not throwing more police at it, then I'm for not throwing police at it.
strict gun control
Yes
red flag laws,
No idea what this means, apologies
reducing cars in favor of alternative transportation methods and public transit,
Yes, and one of my main Christian influences in my life was a civil servant who advocated and worked for this
redesigning cities into 15 minute cities to facilitate that,
Yes. That's a great idea.
cool. I think you're wrong about abortion on grounds of personal freedom, but at least you're not a hypocrite.
I'm a non vegan dude but this is gonna be my easiest argument... here goes:
consent.
The foetus can't consent
the fetus is not a person. even if it were it doesn't matter. what matters is that it lives in the mother's body and the mother has to consent to what happens to her body. you can't (or shouldn't be able to) compel people to do anything with their body, including to keep others alive.
Well, one difference is that the prisoner is not housed inside an unwilling woman's womb. That's not where steaks and pork chops come from either. Hope that helps.
Because they’re goddamned thoughtless morons.
Punishment fetish.
The suffering is the point. It's got nothing to do with morals or human rights or the death penalty or abortion or "Christian values". It's all about making "those people" suffer.
It's a jeebus said so thing. Babies need to be baptized and sinners need to be sent to hell.
How come *some people who are against abortion are *also in favor of the death penalty? (Ftfy) Kind of seems like a contradicition/
What contradiction do you speak of? Save a life, take a life. Seems logical doesn't it?
The thing I’ve yet to figure out about the abortion debate, and what likely gets me labeled as a right-wing bigot for even daring to ask, is where 'pro-choice' people draw the line. The 'pro-life' view is clear: life starts at conception. However, I don’t know where the left draws the line, and in my mind, refusing to do so seems to suggest it would be fine even a day before birth, which seems like an equally extreme position.
For all the left people I know, including myself, The reason we don't want a line drawn is because sometimes special circumstances arise. There may be medical complications in the third trimester that would result in the mother's death and it's not feasible to exhaustively list every scenario that could land her in this situation so it's better to just not a put a limit on it so she doesn't have some bullshit hoop to jump through later while she's dying.
That said, I don't think there's anyone genuinely arguing that people should be allowed to get abortions super late into the pregnancy just for funsies. Third trimester is the logical cut off to me, and most of the people I know agree or want it slightly shorter. We just don't want the law to specify that since it can cause legal complications. It's better that it be considered a medical standard.
I don’t think that drawing a line means it wouldn’t be allowed under any circumstances after that. Before the line, it would be at the mother’s discretion, and after passing the line, you’d need a statement from one or two doctors and a valid medical reason for it.
Where I live abortion is legal untill 12 weeks and after that you need a medical reason for it and a statement from 2 doctors. What's wrong with this?
You need to prove you're going to die to 2 different doctors? Sounds like you need to be lucky which is exactly what we don't want.
How do you know you're going to die due to pregnancy without visiting a doctor? You're not going there to prove anything. You're going there for a diagnosis. Doctor is the medical expert, not the mother.
That doctor also needs to have it confirmed by another doctor though? Seems odd, and also sounds like the perfect way to deny abortions to women who need them.
I don’t know what hellhole you live in, but where I’m from, doctors don’t arbitrarily deny abortions to someone whose life is in danger. The reason you need a second opinion is because you had three months to decide whether you want to keep it or not. If it’s been more than that, the child is already so far developed that you’ll need a medical reason to abort it, and at that point, 'I changed my mind' is no longer a good enough reason to end the life of a living, feeling being. Also, after that point you generally also need surgery to remove the dead fetus.
You must be lucky to not live in one of the many American states which have laws actively causing many women to die.
Lucky? I thought the 12 week limit and need for 2 doctor statements after that was outrageous.
To answer your question. They consider the argument of “where do you draw the line” to be a red herring.
Consider the following: if a person is in need for a kidney transplant, or else he would die, would it be ethical to force someone to donate their kidney against their will? I think not.
Same applies to abortions. You are being forced to feed a parasitic being in your body, a being that destroys your body in the process. And not having an option to abort would be to take away your bodily autonomy.
As for the line, I think that the person making that choice is the one that draws that line. It is not for us to decide.
Surely you can get rid of that 'parasite' in the first few months instead of waiting for the last minute? I don't see how drawing the line at, say 12 weeks now somehow takes away a person's bodily autonomy.
Speaking of a red herring, a comparison to a forced kidney donation is completely irrelevant here.
Yup in practice it is probably less risky and less invasive to do it early for the host. But that is a separate question. I thought you meant to question the classic “when would it be considered murder” so that is what I responded to.
You are being forced to feed a parasitic being in your body, a being that destroys your body in the process.
Okay, let's take this reasoning even further then. Why can't this same logic be used to a 3 year old?
Maybe some day a fetus can be removed without killing it, but 3 year olds already have that ability.
Then have the child and give it up for adoption? If you don’t want to keep it, you can freely abort it until, say, 12 weeks, after which you’d need a medical reason and a statement from one or two doctors. I don’t see what the issue is here.
I’m not saying this is exactly how it should be, but something along those lines. The idea that someone should be free to abort a 7-month-old fetus if they choose seems quite extreme to me.
deciding what others can or cannot do is a whole other moral discussion.
Cause then it is no longer connected to your body? Why would the same logic apply here? I am confused what argument you are trying to make
Because a 3 year old is SENTINENT. It can FEEL things, unlike a fetus.
I’m pretty sure an 8-month-old fetus can feel things and is sentient, so that’s a moot point unless you’re going to argue that sentience appears at the moment of birth - which we both know isn’t true.
So.. Why can't we abort 3 year olds?
Oh, you're just a stupid reactionary. Get blocked idiot.
are you a sleeper account? 7mo old acct & in 1h you’ve responded 2x to emotionally charged political topics with sidelining , near-no-commitment comments that take up space & try to dilute the issue
Abortion is a human right. Death penalty is cruel & horrifying.
Death penalty is justice. Abortion is cruel & horrifying.
See? That's how convincing your reasoning is. Luckily the other people responding are atleast addressing the question.
Revenge is rarely justice. You also entirely avoided there comment.
Well I'm not going to defend death penalty because I'm against it. My point was to illustrate how poor argument that is.
I replied to their accusation on another thread.
Not everyone agrees on an exact time, typically the viability of the fetus outside of the womb is the consideration.
This would mean a baby that would be just premature wouldn't be aborted. As you move back the viability would end up varying for each pregnancy, which is why after a set point doctors are involved. They then make a medical judgement balancing the viability and safety to the carrier.
So there is no hard date. The insistence on getting one simplifies a complicated issue where nuance is important.
I've noticed that a lot of anti-abortion laws target doctors, specifically to make the fuzzy nature of the cuttoff difficult.
For at least pro-choice voters, many are more concerned with the line being drawn by doctors, and not by politicians. So it's less about where the line is being drawn and more about who, with the proper education, is doing the drawing.
Maybe I should’ve been more specific - I meant the point after which you need to consult a doctor to go ahead with an abortion. I think most people agree that a fetus just a few weeks old is barely a living thing, so aborting it is hardly different from, cumming in a sock. However, there is a point after which we’re no longer talking about a lump of cells but a sentient being, and to me at least, it seems reasonable that after that point, you’d need a medical reason to do it.
Where I’m from, that line is at 12 weeks. Until then, you’re free to do it for whatever reason you want. The unwillingness to draw any line like that means they'd be okay aborting an 8 month old too even for financial reasons and that just sounds fucking insane to me.
Clear and simple makes things easy, but easy is not always better. Also, the “life begins at conception” position only seems clear on the surface, but if you look deep enough things get quite muddled.
For example, is a zygote a single person? What if it later divides and becomes twins or triplets: did the twin’s life begin at conception? Did one life become two? Is a zygote a ball of life that can become one or more people?
What about miscarriages? It’s thought as many as half of all pregnancies end in miscarriage, but most happen so early that the carrier is not even aware they’re pregnant. If you come across a family with four kids, do you assume they likely had another 3-4 lost lives via miscarriage and hold a funeral for them?
Should people start getting child tax benefits as soon as they have a positive pregnancy test? Or is “life starts at conception” only relevant when we’re talking about abortion, but conveniently ignored everywhere else?
And what if there is a complication with pregnancy, where if an abortion is not performed both the carrier and developing human will likely die, but if an abortion is performed only the developing human will likely die? Is it now permissible? What if the carrier is a 14 year old who was raped, is suicidal, and has a high chance of stabbing themselves in the abdomen to try to self-abort if they’re not able to get an abortion: should they be restrained in a padded room until the baby is born, forced to serve as an incubator for a baby that the state will then take?
Even when your cutoff is strict, it is not always “clear” because this is a complex issue without a clear answer.
But to answer your question specifically:
Pro-choice people generally recognize that abortion is not desirable, but disagree exactly what the rules should be. Abortion does the least harm when the pregnancy is a single cell (zygote,) and in the embryo stage where most abortions occur the developing human is essentially a collection of multiple cell lines becoming differentiated into tissue but not yet developing functional organs (you’ll often hear this called “a clump of cells.”)
As the embryo develops into a fetus, the heart and brain develop and start functioning, which is where some pro-choice people start to draw a line. Others point toward viability: at about 22 weeks, a few fetuses have been known to survive with extraordinary health measures. By 36 weeks, fetuses can be live born without any extra health issues from being born early. So starting about 20 weeks, we start to recognize that pregnancies become more and more viable: that’s where a lot of people draw the line.
A very small percentage of abortions are done late in pregnancy, typically for health reasons. Not all pro-choice people are in favor of legalizing this, but many feel that in these situations, abortion is a tough decision that is best made by a patient in a careful discussion with their doctor, not by a politician they will never meet. So while these pro-choice people may not wish to see an abortion performed within a week or two of natural birth, they do not want to outlaw it so that the option is there for people who truly need it.
I mean the pro-life stance is clear in the sense that they generally don’t accept abortion unless the mother’s life is in danger. So when someone is 'pro-life,' I know what that means. However, when someone says they’re 'pro-choice,' I don’t always know what they mean. I’ve assumed most people draw the line somewhere around three months, after which you’d need a medical reason and a doctor’s statement to proceed. But based on the replies I’ve gotten here, that doesn’t seem to be the case. Many seem to suggest that no such lines should be drawn at all and even go as far as calling the baby a parasite, which seems a bit crazy to me to put it lightly.
I know such lines are arbitrary and there's no practical difference between one day and another but what seems obvious to me is that a total ban and allowing it at 8 months for any other that a serious medical reason are both equally extreme stances and the 'truth' is there somewhere in between.
Is it universal that pro-lifers only make exception if the life of the person carrying the pregnancy is in danger? I’ve seen pro-lifers who make exception for rape and incest, and others who would advocate banning it in all instances, even when the life of both is at risk.
Momma’s threat “I brought you into this world and I can take you out of it” hits harder.
If we have reached the day prior to birth the person carrying doesn't want an abortion. It's therefore fine to leave the decision to them and their medical team.
Just guessing here, but I’d assume it’s because the unborn have potential and the bad guys had their chance. I don’t agree, but that’s what I assume being around some people like that…
You are a bad man and you should feel bad about yourself
Well, I at least thought it was a little funny.
I'm assuming it was sarcasm/a joke too, but hard to know these days, without either knowing someone, or the obvious /s. Some crazy people out there...
https://youtu.be/jG2KMkQLZmI
Nobody remembers poor Dr Zoidberg
I think a lot of us remember that line from Zoidberg, and if you'd used that line people might have understood your reference.
I immediately recognized your username. Maybe take a break from the asshole shtick for sometime... and also from online.
OMG I made myself a celebrity here
As someone recently told me, they don’t worry about saving lives, they worry about saving souls.
You need to abide by the quaint rules of the magical sky daddy for that, even if they don’t make sense.
Except clearly any aborted fetus would immediately go to heaven based on what's written in the bible. In fact, heaven should be absolutely completely full of dead babies based on miscarriages, stillbirths, etc. if you believe that they get a soul at the moment of conception.
So that logic doesn't really make sense either. Which is par for the course.
Actually, nobody goes to heaven when they die (according to the bible). Everyone must wait until judgement day when all the graves, etc, open and we all face judgement at that point. This surprised me when I first learned it because it goes against all the Christian culture I've ever been taught and experienced.
So grandma isn't currently in heaven no matter how good she was.
That's a huge relief that perhaps my grandparents haven't seen my embarrassing moments after all.
and judgement is not "brought back to life just to be sent back immediately"... no, it will be a good span of time to live without evil on the earth...
Uhh no? Non-baptized souls go to limbo according to Christian theology.
That depends on which flavor of Christianity you're looking at, but even the Catholics don't think they go to Limbo, the pope had an entire study done on it, and the result was "we hope they go to heaven but we don't know"
A lot of the other denominations don't subscribe to the original sin shtick, and therefore babies would go to heaven even without being baptized.
I always loved the "do uncontacted remote tribes that haven't heard of God or Jesus go to heaven?" question. So far everyone has answered yes. And then you realize that Christians could save everyone, everywhere, forever, just by destroying all their literature, not teaching religion, and letting it die with them. One sacrificial generation and everyone is saved forever.
But they won't do it because of greed and pride, the core aspects of their belief system.
Lots of them believe it is written on our hearts and uncontacted tribes have rejected Jesus.
Catholics
I was juuuuuuust about to explain how making sense isn't a requirement to them, until I saw your last sentence. Then I knew you already get it.
I dont think it really has anything to do with that. A state recently sued due to abortion and teen pregnancy reduction efforts leading to decreased teenage pregnancy rates arguing something along the lines of our populations are going down and it will cost us in population, political representation, and federal resources.
This is about cheap/free labor, disenfranchising women, and maintaining a permanent disabled and poverty-stricken underclasses that keep everyone on up in line with the hierarchy
Stop being right!
sounds left to me
But the Skyfather himself has given us directions to induce a miscarriage with a tabernacle dust smoothie.
Arguably, an unborn baby cannot be guilty of anything. But an adult sentenced to death is often guilty of some horrible crime. So if you accept killing as a punishment, there is no contradiction.
Until you realize that our court system is FULL of false arrests, and the courts have some stupid high number like 98% conviction rate.
They say "take the deal, or the court will fuck you".
2 years vs 30 years.
And then later they run a second trial for something else that has a death penalty as the outcome. The jury is shown this guy, already in prison, for a semi-related charge. Already convicted of the other charge. So his ability to appear innocent is already swayed. And now suddenly there's no deal. The court goes full hammer. The jury is made to believe he did it 100%.
And he can't say he didn't do it, and wasn't even there, because he ALREADY pleaded guilty to the other charge which would place him there.
So now you got a populace, who wasn't in either court session, not seeing how this escalated, and not willing to believe our court system may be flawed. Just kill the criminal and move on, right?
You are overstating it. all evidence I can find is only a small percentage are not guilty. Of course that small possibility is enough for me to be against the death pentalty. If we had a way to be 100% sure of guilt I'd favor death but since we don't I can't go that far.
It only sounds like a contradiction if you take "pro-life" literally. In fact, I find this hard to understand at all if you simply just listen to pro-lifers.
Let me be clear, I'm about as firm a supporter of a woman's right to choose as they come. I'm also adamantly against the death penalty. Do you find this position to be contradictory?
However, the general position of "pro lifers" does not contradict this at all, pretty obviously. They think that a fetus is a child that hasn't been born yet, and because it hasn't been born, it's completely innocent. So you have no right to take it's life. However, if some person in life has done something in life that removes that innocence, they believe sometimes that rises to such a heinous level that they must be permanently and irrevocably removed from society.
There are other glaring contradictions in their position, like not wanting to provide support to that innocent baby once it has come into the world, but this is clearly not one of them.
I'm pro choice but also anti-death penalty, but only because if someone is horrible enough to deserve it then they don't deserve death, because death is the easy way out of suffering. They deserve to live long, miserable lives in a 3-meter cell.
I think they just see it as very simple: killing innocent babies - no, killing evil criminals - yes. It sounds perfectly alright if you don't think about it too much.
My understanding is that they consider it ok to kill someone who committed a heinous crime but not ok to kill someone who is completely innocent.
This is exactly how I used to see things when I grew up in a conservative echo chamber.
And now that I recognize a person's right to choose and tend to think capital punishment should probably* not be legal, I'll add that it's not that my underlying beliefs changed, just how I now understand things. Some people do deserve capital punishment. And innocent people should be protected. But personhood doesn't start at conception, a person conceiving has a right to decide what happens to their body, and the state can never be trusted to administer capital punishment.
*I say "probably" because I also think it might be necessary to allow it in extreme cases. My reasoning is that if people don't believe the justice system will adequately punish, they have incentive and no ultimate detergent for taking justice into their own hands.
But should we even punish?
I don't mean to troll, so let me explain. Why do we punish? I think it's two fold, we punish to deter crimes and we punish to exact revenge. But the fear of punishment doesn't deter crime https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/five-things-about-deterrence and that leaves revenge as the only both intended and actual outcome of punishment.
Is the current costs of running a complicated criminal justice system really worth it, if all we get from it is revenge? Does revenge make society better? I don't think so.
I'm not advocating for anarchy either. There should be consequences for criminals. I'm just not sure what the consequences should be, but punishment is ineffective. I get that we have personal responsibility, and free will. And I'm not trying to excuse criminals, I'm just saying that punishment doesn't work.
One aspect of punishment is retribution for the victims when there is nothing else and another is to keep people that are harmful away in order to keep other people safe.
Here in Sweden we have a current massive problem with organized crime that are now systematically abusing our criminal justice system that is built on humanitarian ideals for rehab and protecting suspects and criminals rights to the absurd. So yes, in those cases I think punishment will do. Cynically abusing protection measures of society deserves punishment. It may not change those individuals for the life they have chosen for themselves but it will keep them out of making even more damage to society and violent crime against individuals and I honestly see no problem in harsh consequences for their own decisions.
I'm all about scientific research, especially when it goes against the grain, but the idea of getting caught being a bigger deterrent than the punishment is just, weird?
If there is no punishment, why would you be afraid to be caught?
I think the idea is that the thing that stops you in the moment is "I likely won't get away with it" more than "if they catch me there'll be hell to pay ... but only if".
I mean you're (as in the informal general usage of "you", not as the second person pronoun) not going to pull out your phone while driving, if you're next to a cop. But if there's no one around that even looks like an undercover traffic cop?
Human brains are bad at thinking in long term consequences, but immediate consequences? Those we understand.
I see what you're saying and understand that criminals have poor judgment, especially long term.
I still think that there is a natural idea of consequences, even if latent. If no consequences, the only thing about getting caught is having to do whatever thing you're doing again, ie losing time.
Lots of people never reach more advanced stages of moral reasoning. They don't do bad things to avoid being punished, or maybe because they have a simple understanding of "it's against the rules"
The current justice and prison system is abhorrent, but something needs to happen if someone tries to murder someone else. Most people are alright but there are a lot of anti social people out there, too. And a lot of people who would be alright if they were in more stable circumstances
It doesn't work as a deterrent though. In states that have the death penalty people still do bad things.
Because people receiving the death penalty theoretically did something wrong, and fetuses did not. I'm neither against abortion nor pro death penalty, and I don't really see a contradiction there.
Former Christian here.
This is it. Criminals have (theoretically) been proven guilty. Some crimes are worthy of death.
A fetus (ahem unborn baby) has cast no sin and does not deserve death.
Christians would also say that they would never get out to death because they would never do anything wrong but when you bring up the fact that Jesus himself said you should be willing to suffer even to the point of suffering on a cross, they start changing the subject.
That wasn't so hard, was it? People tripping over themselves to find a gotcha and forgetting to use a little common sense.
They're obsessed with punishment. A lot of them see unwanted pregnancy as a just punishment for recreational sex.
Because it's never been about anything other than control. The right to choose anything is abhorrent to them. The only rights they want you to have are the right to be dictated to and the right to be like them.
The death penalty doesn't control women.
Because it's not about saving lives, it never has been. It's about control.
Because they don't care about "life".
They care about punishing people.
An unwanted unplanned baby is punishment for having sex outside of marriage.
Death penalty is punishment for being convicted of murder.
It's perfectly consistent when you look at it all about punishment.
The cruelty is indeed the point
It's not all the same people: Roman Catholics, for example, tend to oppose both.
Roman Catholic doctrine opposes both, but the bishops don't go around threatening to withhold religious services for politicians who allow the death penalty like they do with pro-choice politicians....
I could have sworn that there was a news story of Peloci being denied the sacrament due to her supporting an abortion bill.
There's no logical contradiction between believing that some people should be killed and believing that other people shouldn't be killed. You might as well ask why a soldier would shoot at his enemies but not his allies
(I'm not picking a side in the "Are fetuses people?" debate here. They are from the point of view of the people against abortion.)
They would argue that the "baby" is innocent.
So was the guy they executed the other day right? So innocence might not be it either
They don't care. There's no point in calling conservatives out on hypocrisy. Only a very small number of them will give a shit, and those will be the ones who were already having doubts.
Precisely this. From a philosophical-logical POV, it doesn't make sense. From the POV of establishing and maintaining power/ dominance/ oppression/ hegemony, however, it's the only thing that makes sense.
In the end, it's because they're told that that's the way it is.
Abortion makes a an easy political point. Vote for the children.
Being hard on crime and executing people, That's another easy political point. Vote for the law abiding citizens.
They don't care that those two things are at odds They don't care about life or death. They care about their own exact situation, and don't really give a rat's ass about anyone else. They believe that the team they're backing gives them the best advantage, and that's absolutely all they care about. Beyond that, it's simply consuming and regurgitating the propaganda, self-perpetuating.
I'm pro-choice, but mostly anti-death penalty, isn't that a contradiction?
I don't really think so. A person's bodily autonomy and the state's power to execute citizens should not overlap.
I think it's not necessarily a contradiction to hold your pro-choice and anti-death penalty stance, but it's still a contradiction to hold the pro-life and pro-death penalty stance if your reasoning behind the pro-life stance is that all life is sacred.
I agree that a person's body autonomy and the state's power to execute citizens should not overlap, but I still think that giving the "all life is sacred" line to justify pro-life and then being pro-death penalty "because some people deserve to die" amounts to hypocrisy.
They don't actually care about life, they just don't want women to have control over their bodies.
Because with reactionaries, the cruelty is the point.
Forced birthers don't actually care about "life". They care about violently controlling anybody who isn't a pale bro.
You’ve discovered conservative politics. Party of freedom that wants to restrict women’s access to healthcare, books in schools, reproductive rights, healthcare for children, etc.
Ain't Taliban follows the same method of eradicating women empowerment!
It's not about ethics, it never was. It's about CONTROL.
Liberals in favor of reproductive rights also tend to be against the death penalty. Is that a contradiction? Conservatives love twisting this into “they want to kill babies, not criminals.”
Do you think they’re right about that? Or is it more nuanced of an issue? If it’s more nuanced of an issue, then it’s more nuanced in both directions.
Liberals prioritize the woman’s ability to decide what happens with her body. They don’t like abortions, but they think they must be allowed if that’s what the woman chooses. They also recognize that it’s a medical procedure that’s absolutely necessary sometimes and other times might prevent an unwanted child from being born into bad circumstances. Meanwhile, liberals tend to be against the death penalty because our justice system is very flawed and innocent people have been put to death in the past. Perhaps a woman is allowed to decide what happens to a congregation of cells inside her body, but people shouldn’t decide the life or death of other people when imprisonment is always there as an option.
Conservatives think in terms of essentials and things are very black and white. It’s either a baby or it isn’t. They think life comes from god so it’s his affair and not our place to countermand a new life that he’s just brought into being. Meanwhile if a grown person with a mind chooses to commit crimes, that’s on them. God makes some pretty hard judgments in the Bible so they think great we can too and that will make us like god. Conservatives also tend to believe that some people are essentially good, and others are essentially bad. And in that framework, once a person has shown themselves to be a criminal, you know they are bad so what’s the point of letting them live. Meanwhile you have no idea if a fetus in the womb will be good or bad yet.
Please don’t downvote me for understanding both positions :)
IS it a contradiction? I don't agree with the death penalty or anti-abortion position, but I don't see some essential link between either position. You can hold two different beliefs about two different things is how come.
They literally call themselves pro-life and then express support for the death penalty.
Sure, but OP didn't ask, 'How can people call themselves pro-life but are be for the death penalty?' I'm not one to hang onto whatever catch phrases or name a movement lands with. Should* I expect the land back movement to, say, lay down on the ground as a for of protest? 'BUT LAND BACK IS IN THE NAAAAAAAME'. Do we think defund the police want there to be nobody to apprehend, say, right-wing terrorists?
Edit; accidentally a word
Most people aren't all that well informed and don't do a lot of crtical thinking about their political positions on things. Many people are only guided by their emotions.
If your Church says that life begins at conception, then abortion is killing babies. So you'd be angry about abortions happening.
If you hear a horrible crime, you're angry about that and might want the person that did that crime to be executed. If you never hear about or think about innocent people being execute, never consider the ethical problems with a government killing people, never consider the costs of it, and all the other arguments against the death penalty, then you can go through life thinking there's no problem with it.
And even if you hear the rational arguments, they get overpowered by emotion the next time someone says "abortion is murder" or you hear about a horrible crime happening that might qualify for the death penalty.
This. People are not that complicated
They’re both cruel to anyone “below” them (this is a simplistic argument.) They’re easy to cry wolf about in order to draw people over to your side, people who vote and act emotionally
They only care until you’re born, then you can go and die in a ditch somewhere.
Even they don't realize that what they spout is just a safe proxy cover for the real issues they are unable to articulate.
welcome to high school debate class, where we think about issues with more nuance than most politicians.
Because they are hypocrites, once that baby leaves the womb they give zero fucks.
Don't get an abortion, also we aren't paying for that kids lunch
It is, but they will persist because their motivation has nothing to do with rational thinking.
To be fair to those people (which I'm really not inclined to be), I'm pro-choice but strongly against the death penalty. So I guess it swings both ways.
it doesn't swing both ways. They are claiming the position of being "pro life" which is clearly hypocritical. No one on the other side is claiming to be "pro death" or "anti life".
That's a good point, actually. I hadn't thought it through enough.
I blame religion.
I'm pro abortion and against the death penalty! Someone ask me! I promise I'm not a troll. I am honestly pro abortion not just pro choice.
What do you mean by that? You’re an anti-natalist?
Nope. I actually think life is sacred. The reason I'm pro-abortion is because I think anything that can be done to further impede children being born when we have hundreds of thousands of children in America alone who are orphans. That is a travesty.
My challenge to anyone who is anti-abortion would be are they adopting? Because their shit position is perpetuating a stream of children being born without someone to care for them either physically or emotionally.
In a perfect world, abortion would not exist outside of medical necessity. Unfortunately we do not live in a perfect world and as such many women are having children to be born into a cold and loveless world.
It's sad. I could not imagine how cruel someone would have to be to be anti-abortion and yet so willing to effectively let a child's life be aborted once they're born.
I think they're pro-edgelord
Definitely not see my other post.
I mean, I think that's a reasonably common position on the left. Not particularly unusual.
Pro-choice yes. Haven't heard many actually pro-abortion.
What does that mean to you?
See my other comment. Coles notes is until we solve the problem with unwanted children being born I will be pro-abortion.
Punishment. They aren't against abortion, they're pro punishment. They don't think any laws should be about mitigation or helping, only as a means of punishing.
It's in how they talk: "she should have kept her legs closed"; "that's what you get for being a slut"; "if you don't want to have a baby, don't have sex". The pregnancy is a punishment for anyone who wants to have sex, but doesn't want to have children. And jail or death is the punishment for avoiding that previous punishment.
When talking about gun control, too: "why should I - a law abiding citizen - be punished for the actions of a few criminals?"; "ShAlL noT bE INfrInGeD". They don't want laws to do anything but punish. Mitigation? Expansion of freedoms of "them"? No.
Look at voter ID laws: they're restrictive to our freedom, but proposed as punishment for "fraud".
And it often stems from an individualistic and Evangelical ideal. Everyone is "responsible" for their actions. There are no systemic issues in the mind of an evangelical. God is punishing the individual. The laws are punishing the individual. We don't need to change, because we includes I, and I don't need to change, because "I'm a good Christian warrior in the fight against evil".
And evangelicals definitely think there is a spiritual war going on, so punishment of the "wicked" is always an option. Because being wicked is an individual issue.
(Also why they think drug addiction is a moral failing of the individual, not a societal one, and therefore they should be punished).
Right now, evangelicalism and their Christofascist views are moving into political positions of power. They have tons of money coming in, and even if Fuckface 45 (their evangelical God-king warrior) doesn't get into office, they'll still continue to influence policy and grab seats of power.
We need to be aware of them, and stop them at every pass.
I'll just say that able minded people, usually adults, are usually responsible of their actions.
Ok, and?
It's not exclusive of a religious outlook, I thought it was obvious
These same people also solve seem to give af about the suffering of children outside of the border of the country.
I've yet to hear any evangelical cry about dead Palestinian children or the suffering of children on the other side of the American Mexican border.
If you smoke weed you're more likely to wear converse. It's aesthetics. When someone says they're anti abortion I usually see it as aesthetics. They want others to see them as being anti abortion. That's what they get out of it.
It isn't a literal belief. Democrats reduce abortions, much better than cons. Being anti abortion should mean voting for Democrats... IF you were still taking things literally. It's not misinformation or lack of education, it's misaligned priorities.
They're just trying to be a tribe and signal allegiance. To have literal beliefs that you live by regardless of "your side" is a completely different game to what they're playing.
Because it's not about saving the lives of unborn babies and it never has been.
It's about curtailing choice.
I think that can be explained, but tell me how someone can be in favor of the death penalty but be against assisted suicide.
No free hand outs! You gotta work for your death!
/s
I'm trying to be the devil's advocate here: one could say that one is an innocent "life" while the other is not.
I obviously don't agree with them, but my assumption is that it has to do with maturity/innocence. An unborn child hasn't done anything wrong. They're full of opportunity and have a whole life ahead of them. A criminal sentenced for death has I some way done something very wrong. They've had their chance and failed.
Because the inmates deserve it. The babies don’t.
The common thread is harm and punishment. They wish harm to those they would punish for the transgressions they make up in their heads
Makes more sense when you realise it isn't about life, but about punishing women for having sex.
They want men to choose who lives or dies. They absolutely do not want women to be in charge of anything. That's why no exceptions in the case of rape and incest. A man made a decision, they don't want a woman to have the power to reverse it.
It ultimately is religious belief.
Religious people believe the soul enters the body at conception, granting personhood, so abortion is murder. They also believe that people put to death will go before God, where they will be judged as evil and sent to Hell for eternal punishment.
Everything else is just window dressing.
Underlying their shallow morals is a undiagnosed mental condition. More often than not from my perspective its usually a cluster B personality disorder. NPD/BPD or one of the others variants. They simply lack the ability to see their hypocrisy. They lack the basic empathy necessary to realize it. Due to this they a mortally afraid of therapy and are not likely to ever get better. What we have to do is improve identifying them and preventing their illness from destroying those around them. Not likely to happen when so many of them are elected to office. If you haven't noticed mental health systems in this country are In a shambles. This is not a accident.
I have the same question for the opposite as well. Or for being for abortion and also vegan.
A (human) mother that carries a growing fetus is a living being. A pig, dog or a cow as well. They feel physically and emotionally and can be hurt.
A fetus is, up to a certain point, just a slab of meat.
As a vegan I don't care about slabs of meat, I care about living beings and I think we shouldn't hurt them.
Foetus can also feel pain and hurt, though
At which stage in development, since you seem to know this for a fact.
so you're anti pain. that's awesome, there's a ton of socialist policies I'm sure you support wholeheartedly.
Like what?
free healthcare and medical procedures for everyone including prisoners, covering all prescription drugs, free school lunches, decommodifying housing and abolishing landlords, severely limiting the police in favor of various civil servants for most cases, strict gun control and red flag laws, reducing cars in favor of alternative transportation methods and public transit, redesigning cities into 15 minute cities to facilitate that, and I can go on for a long time but you get the gist
Yes. This policy is also endorsed by the politician that I voted for.
Yes. This policy is also endorsed by the politician that I voted for.
Yes. This policy is also endorsed by the politician that I voted for.
Yes. This policy is also endorsed by the politician that I voted for.
I believe landlords should exist but in limited circumstances. I.E., your nice old man using a house for his retirement fund who treats his tenants well and gives them a fair price for it. I am completely against corporate and/or foreign landlords who are exploiting people for profit.
Depends on circumstances. A good well trained police force is good, but police shouldn't be used as therapists. If a problem can be fixed more effectively by not throwing more police at it, then I'm for not throwing police at it.
Yes
No idea what this means, apologies
Yes, and one of my main Christian influences in my life was a civil servant who advocated and worked for this
Yes. That's a great idea.
cool. I think you're wrong about abortion on grounds of personal freedom, but at least you're not a hypocrite.
I'm a non vegan dude but this is gonna be my easiest argument... here goes:
consent.
The foetus can't consent
the fetus is not a person. even if it were it doesn't matter. what matters is that it lives in the mother's body and the mother has to consent to what happens to her body. you can't (or shouldn't be able to) compel people to do anything with their body, including to keep others alive.
Well, one difference is that the prisoner is not housed inside an unwilling woman's womb. That's not where steaks and pork chops come from either. Hope that helps.
Because they’re goddamned thoughtless morons.
Punishment fetish.
The suffering is the point. It's got nothing to do with morals or human rights or the death penalty or abortion or "Christian values". It's all about making "those people" suffer.
It's a jeebus said so thing. Babies need to be baptized and sinners need to be sent to hell.
What contradiction do you speak of? Save a life, take a life. Seems logical doesn't it?
The thing I’ve yet to figure out about the abortion debate, and what likely gets me labeled as a right-wing bigot for even daring to ask, is where 'pro-choice' people draw the line. The 'pro-life' view is clear: life starts at conception. However, I don’t know where the left draws the line, and in my mind, refusing to do so seems to suggest it would be fine even a day before birth, which seems like an equally extreme position.
For all the left people I know, including myself, The reason we don't want a line drawn is because sometimes special circumstances arise. There may be medical complications in the third trimester that would result in the mother's death and it's not feasible to exhaustively list every scenario that could land her in this situation so it's better to just not a put a limit on it so she doesn't have some bullshit hoop to jump through later while she's dying.
That said, I don't think there's anyone genuinely arguing that people should be allowed to get abortions super late into the pregnancy just for funsies. Third trimester is the logical cut off to me, and most of the people I know agree or want it slightly shorter. We just don't want the law to specify that since it can cause legal complications. It's better that it be considered a medical standard.
I don’t think that drawing a line means it wouldn’t be allowed under any circumstances after that. Before the line, it would be at the mother’s discretion, and after passing the line, you’d need a statement from one or two doctors and a valid medical reason for it.
Where I live abortion is legal untill 12 weeks and after that you need a medical reason for it and a statement from 2 doctors. What's wrong with this?
You need to prove you're going to die to 2 different doctors? Sounds like you need to be lucky which is exactly what we don't want.
How do you know you're going to die due to pregnancy without visiting a doctor? You're not going there to prove anything. You're going there for a diagnosis. Doctor is the medical expert, not the mother.
That doctor also needs to have it confirmed by another doctor though? Seems odd, and also sounds like the perfect way to deny abortions to women who need them.
I don’t know what hellhole you live in, but where I’m from, doctors don’t arbitrarily deny abortions to someone whose life is in danger. The reason you need a second opinion is because you had three months to decide whether you want to keep it or not. If it’s been more than that, the child is already so far developed that you’ll need a medical reason to abort it, and at that point, 'I changed my mind' is no longer a good enough reason to end the life of a living, feeling being. Also, after that point you generally also need surgery to remove the dead fetus.
You must be lucky to not live in one of the many American states which have laws actively causing many women to die.
Lucky? I thought the 12 week limit and need for 2 doctor statements after that was outrageous.
To answer your question. They consider the argument of “where do you draw the line” to be a red herring.
Consider the following: if a person is in need for a kidney transplant, or else he would die, would it be ethical to force someone to donate their kidney against their will? I think not.
Same applies to abortions. You are being forced to feed a parasitic being in your body, a being that destroys your body in the process. And not having an option to abort would be to take away your bodily autonomy.
As for the line, I think that the person making that choice is the one that draws that line. It is not for us to decide.
Surely you can get rid of that 'parasite' in the first few months instead of waiting for the last minute? I don't see how drawing the line at, say 12 weeks now somehow takes away a person's bodily autonomy.
Speaking of a red herring, a comparison to a forced kidney donation is completely irrelevant here.
I disagree on that. It is a example of the emergency room variation of the trolley problem, as can be read further on here: https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem?wprov=sfti1#Variations
Yup in practice it is probably less risky and less invasive to do it early for the host. But that is a separate question. I thought you meant to question the classic “when would it be considered murder” so that is what I responded to.
Okay, let's take this reasoning even further then. Why can't this same logic be used to a 3 year old?
The same logic does work on a 3 year old. A parent is not forced to feed it and can have someone remove it. They just don't call it abortion. https://adoption.com/how-to-give-a-child-up-for-adoption/
Maybe some day a fetus can be removed without killing it, but 3 year olds already have that ability.
Then have the child and give it up for adoption? If you don’t want to keep it, you can freely abort it until, say, 12 weeks, after which you’d need a medical reason and a statement from one or two doctors. I don’t see what the issue is here.
I’m not saying this is exactly how it should be, but something along those lines. The idea that someone should be free to abort a 7-month-old fetus if they choose seems quite extreme to me.
deciding what others can or cannot do is a whole other moral discussion.
Cause then it is no longer connected to your body? Why would the same logic apply here? I am confused what argument you are trying to make
Because a 3 year old is SENTINENT. It can FEEL things, unlike a fetus.
I’m pretty sure an 8-month-old fetus can feel things and is sentient, so that’s a moot point unless you’re going to argue that sentience appears at the moment of birth - which we both know isn’t true.
So.. Why can't we abort 3 year olds?
Oh, you're just a stupid reactionary. Get blocked idiot.
are you a sleeper account? 7mo old acct & in 1h you’ve responded 2x to emotionally charged political topics with sidelining , near-no-commitment comments that take up space & try to dilute the issue
Abortion is a human right. Death penalty is cruel & horrifying.
Death penalty is justice. Abortion is cruel & horrifying.
See? That's how convincing your reasoning is. Luckily the other people responding are atleast addressing the question.
Revenge is rarely justice. You also entirely avoided there comment.
Well I'm not going to defend death penalty because I'm against it. My point was to illustrate how poor argument that is.
I replied to their accusation on another thread.
Not everyone agrees on an exact time, typically the viability of the fetus outside of the womb is the consideration.
This would mean a baby that would be just premature wouldn't be aborted. As you move back the viability would end up varying for each pregnancy, which is why after a set point doctors are involved. They then make a medical judgement balancing the viability and safety to the carrier.
So there is no hard date. The insistence on getting one simplifies a complicated issue where nuance is important.
I've noticed that a lot of anti-abortion laws target doctors, specifically to make the fuzzy nature of the cuttoff difficult.
For at least pro-choice voters, many are more concerned with the line being drawn by doctors, and not by politicians. So it's less about where the line is being drawn and more about who, with the proper education, is doing the drawing.
Maybe I should’ve been more specific - I meant the point after which you need to consult a doctor to go ahead with an abortion. I think most people agree that a fetus just a few weeks old is barely a living thing, so aborting it is hardly different from, cumming in a sock. However, there is a point after which we’re no longer talking about a lump of cells but a sentient being, and to me at least, it seems reasonable that after that point, you’d need a medical reason to do it.
Where I’m from, that line is at 12 weeks. Until then, you’re free to do it for whatever reason you want. The unwillingness to draw any line like that means they'd be okay aborting an 8 month old too even for financial reasons and that just sounds fucking insane to me.
Clear and simple makes things easy, but easy is not always better. Also, the “life begins at conception” position only seems clear on the surface, but if you look deep enough things get quite muddled.
For example, is a zygote a single person? What if it later divides and becomes twins or triplets: did the twin’s life begin at conception? Did one life become two? Is a zygote a ball of life that can become one or more people?
What about miscarriages? It’s thought as many as half of all pregnancies end in miscarriage, but most happen so early that the carrier is not even aware they’re pregnant. If you come across a family with four kids, do you assume they likely had another 3-4 lost lives via miscarriage and hold a funeral for them?
Should people start getting child tax benefits as soon as they have a positive pregnancy test? Or is “life starts at conception” only relevant when we’re talking about abortion, but conveniently ignored everywhere else?
And what if there is a complication with pregnancy, where if an abortion is not performed both the carrier and developing human will likely die, but if an abortion is performed only the developing human will likely die? Is it now permissible? What if the carrier is a 14 year old who was raped, is suicidal, and has a high chance of stabbing themselves in the abdomen to try to self-abort if they’re not able to get an abortion: should they be restrained in a padded room until the baby is born, forced to serve as an incubator for a baby that the state will then take?
Even when your cutoff is strict, it is not always “clear” because this is a complex issue without a clear answer.
But to answer your question specifically:
Pro-choice people generally recognize that abortion is not desirable, but disagree exactly what the rules should be. Abortion does the least harm when the pregnancy is a single cell (zygote,) and in the embryo stage where most abortions occur the developing human is essentially a collection of multiple cell lines becoming differentiated into tissue but not yet developing functional organs (you’ll often hear this called “a clump of cells.”)
As the embryo develops into a fetus, the heart and brain develop and start functioning, which is where some pro-choice people start to draw a line. Others point toward viability: at about 22 weeks, a few fetuses have been known to survive with extraordinary health measures. By 36 weeks, fetuses can be live born without any extra health issues from being born early. So starting about 20 weeks, we start to recognize that pregnancies become more and more viable: that’s where a lot of people draw the line.
A very small percentage of abortions are done late in pregnancy, typically for health reasons. Not all pro-choice people are in favor of legalizing this, but many feel that in these situations, abortion is a tough decision that is best made by a patient in a careful discussion with their doctor, not by a politician they will never meet. So while these pro-choice people may not wish to see an abortion performed within a week or two of natural birth, they do not want to outlaw it so that the option is there for people who truly need it.
I mean the pro-life stance is clear in the sense that they generally don’t accept abortion unless the mother’s life is in danger. So when someone is 'pro-life,' I know what that means. However, when someone says they’re 'pro-choice,' I don’t always know what they mean. I’ve assumed most people draw the line somewhere around three months, after which you’d need a medical reason and a doctor’s statement to proceed. But based on the replies I’ve gotten here, that doesn’t seem to be the case. Many seem to suggest that no such lines should be drawn at all and even go as far as calling the baby a parasite, which seems a bit crazy to me to put it lightly.
I know such lines are arbitrary and there's no practical difference between one day and another but what seems obvious to me is that a total ban and allowing it at 8 months for any other that a serious medical reason are both equally extreme stances and the 'truth' is there somewhere in between.
Is it universal that pro-lifers only make exception if the life of the person carrying the pregnancy is in danger? I’ve seen pro-lifers who make exception for rape and incest, and others who would advocate banning it in all instances, even when the life of both is at risk.
If we have reached the day prior to birth the person carrying doesn't want an abortion. It's therefore fine to leave the decision to them and their medical team.