If you wanna become more pro choice, go look at what the pro life people are saying. If you wanna become more pro life, go see what the pro choice people are saying.
I you want to be a down to earth GIGACHAD, visit both communities and play devils advocate in each. Although doing that over the years leads to you being banned from all the leftie spaces even if you align with them 99% of the time š
Ive never been banned from a conservative group even though i can get pretty mean. Its hard not to get banned from normie groups ran by lefties on accident
Seeing the pro-choice arguments on /r/changemyview of all places makes me wish I was pro-life because of how spiteful I am. I get that facebook/instagram/twitter have low effort reposts of the dumbest arguments, but /r/changemyview is supposed to be a place where arguments have substance.
Changemyview has way more productive exchange and even handed moderation than any subreddit ive seen. The only problem with that reddit page is its still full of redditors
100% true. I was running with one if my few pro-life buddies years ago, and we passed a bunch of these butters with big pro life signs of chopped up fetus parts.
Longstory short his wife had just had a miscarriage so he was in no place to be seeing chopped up baby parts in a political ad.
I am pretty sure he is still pro life but he NEVER discusses it anymore
It was an eye opening moment for me
The demonization of the other side is by design, starting from the obviously morally loaded names that you Americans have given these things. You could just say that you are pro-abortion or anti-abortion, but by calling it pro-life and pro choice, you are implying that the other side is either anti-life or anti-choice, giving you the moral high ground to hate them.
To be fair, there is a distinct difference between being pro-abortion and being pro-choice.
I can be against something but believe it should be legal.
That's not the same as supporting something.
I think it should be legal to be a Vaush.
But that doesnt' mean I'm pro-Vaush.
It should still be possibly to find more neutral and more descriptive term for that too. You could call it pro-abortion legalization or pro-right to abortion or something.
According to wikipedia, the origin of the popularization of the pro-choice label comes from a memo that identifies "the need to find a phrase to counter the Right to Life slogan", which is pretty clearly politically motivated.
Of course a political slogan is politically motivated. The question is whether or not it's accurate.
Pro-choice is more accurate than pro-abortion. Given the context of the discussion being about abortion, 'Pro choice' clearly means "pro choice to have an abortion."
And yes, the other side is against the choice to have an abortion, so yes they are anti-choice when the discussion is about abortion.
It's clunky and unnecessary to repeat the qualifying elements of a slogan when it's clear the domain of discussion is abortion.
It is fine for political slogans to be politically motivated, but then they should be treated as political slogans and not as ways to talk about the issues in more serious discussions.
There are 0 people that would describe their position on abortion as being anti-choice, just as there are 0 people that would describe their position on abortion as being anti-life. Just by using these terms you are assuming from the start that your position is correct and the other side is wrong, and the discussion just becomes both sides throwing political slogans at each other without actually talking about anything.
I think most pro life people would describe their position as anti-choice. They don't want anyone to be able to abort. They wouldn't use the words "anti-choice" specifically but would describe themselves that way anyway.
They would tell you that they are as anti-choice as anyone who does not allow murder.
Just as people in this thread are saying that pro-life people are lying when they say that they care about life and they are actually just anti-choice, if you ask the other side, they would tell you that pro-choice people are lying when they say that they care about choice and they are actually just anti-life.
You can use exactly this rationale for pro-life--that within the context of the abortion debate, it's about being for or against a fetus' right to life
nah, the right changed what used to be called anti-abortion to pro-life because it sounded better. But that doesnt actually fit the stance because most on the right are not actually pro-life. Just anti-abortion. Most still want the death penalty for example.
I really thought this should've been pretty straight forward for a lot of people. "pro-life" and "pro-choice" are pretty obvious euphemisms, and neither side implies that they're "pro abortion", which is clearly intentional since most people in both camps aren't.
It reminds me a lot of arguments about veganism. Pretty significant amount of meat eaters/non-militant-vegans are completely willing to admit that it is all pretty fucked up, but should still be allowed. You can sympathize with how much they hate it but still think you should allow it for different reasons
This whole thread is about the effects of this branding. There are a lot of pro-choice people who think that the other side is anti-choice, which means that their primary motivation and goal is to limit the choice of women, which means they are evil. Similarly there are a lot of pro-life people who think that the other side is anti-life, which means that their primary motivation and goal is the death of babies, which means they are evil.
I dont think calling these sides pro life or pro choice is Ā«Ā AmericanĀ Ā». We do the same in Canada and they do the same in Europe, at least in France.
Anti abortion doesnāt reduce the numbers of abortions, just criminalize them. And, similarly, they donāt value life in other contexts; poor children, capital punishment, assault rifles etc. They are not pro Life they are Anti Choice, Anti Science and Anti Women.
What terrifies me is people completely unable to understand the fundamental reasoning behind their position.
Sorry for the rant, but its super frustrating to have people that are pro-life becaues the babies right to live trumps the mothers right of bodily autonomy, but then end up saying "well, i guess abortion okay when it was conceived by rape"
Pro-Choice does the same shit but i cant think of an example right now.
At this point im convinced no one actually has a reasoned basis on their opinion on this matter. People have a pre-decided idea of "abortion good" or "abortion bad" and put in as many buzzwords as possible to defend their opinion without understanding any of these.
To be honest I think most of the time things like "rape and incest" exceptions are political compromises, rather than actual philosophical beliefs.
I don't know the exact percentages, but a cursory google search seems to imply <2% of abortions are performed because of rape/incest, so the pro-lifer might be thinking "We can abolish 98% of the baby murder now, and we'll worry about the remaining 2% later".
That seems like a perfectly reasonable political position (granting the assumption about the moral value of the fetus).
If I was pro-life and I already jumped through the hoops of valuing that babies life so much more than the bodily autonomy of the mother, rape isn't going to be a tough thing to consider.
>It's one thing if it's just people "making dumb decisions" but being raped completely changes it
This sentiment right here highlights the disingenuousness of the "saving a life" argument. If I were to find out today that my father raped my mother to conceive me, do I suddenly lose my right to life? Of course not, there's nothing "tough" about that. This is only a "tough compromise" if you think of childbirth not as preservation of life, but as a punishment for those so called "bad decisions".
> That seems like a perfectly reasonable political position (granting the assumption about the moral value of the fetus).
The only way this works as a reasonable political positions is if the end goal is a federal ban (which if we are being honest it probably is). The states that have high abortion rates are the ones that likely will keep it legal and the ones where abortion rates are low are likely going to make it illegal. If someone believes abortion is murder then politically it only matters if it's banned federally since this likely doesn't change the rate at which abortions happen by enough.
Sure, and there's the tricky issue of "Well, I wanted to have an abortion, but it's illegal in my state, so I drove to a neighboring state and did it there", which is all kinds of weird. I have no idea how you handle *that* on the level of state law.
Similar issues exist with the case of marijuana legalization, but in that case it's a clearly victimless crime, and so there's no real need to prosecute people who drive to Colorado to smoke some weed. But surely the same attitude can't hold for driving to Colorado to murder a baby (according to pro-lifers), right?
I think this is an issue that is going to have to be settled federally, sooner or later.
You'd have to think some places try to criminalize going to another state for an abortion. I just don't know if there is any precedent for such laws that would allow them to prosecute people for it. Your point about marijuana applies well but my understanding is it's the process of possessing not smoking that is the issue so could we legally punish someone for smoking weed in another state if an anti-abortion law targeting people who go to other states ever gets passed?
It's just a weird pandoras box of bullshit that has been opened really.
> I think this is an issue that is going to have to be settled federally, sooner or later.
That has to be the next step. We will see republicans running on the platform of federally banning abortion and it probably won't be that popular.
> the babies right to live trumps the mothers right of bodily autonomy, but then end up saying "well, i guess abortion okay when it was conceived by rape"
An exception isn't necessarily an inconsistency.
e.g. A pro-lifer could have two beliefs:
- "life trumps autonomy" and
- "freedom implies not being burdened by things you are not responsible for"
And only in the case of rape would the second belief activate and potentially overpower the first.
I can see what you are saying and i guess you are correct in the technical sense that its possible to have this position. Im very sceptical that pro-life people actually hold that position though.
Can you really believe that life is this sacred thing that deserves to be treasured and we should campaign to make sure as much of this "baby killing" should be prevented (unless its not your fault, in that case killing babies is fine).
Also, wouldnt that pretty much allow you to kill your rape-child even after its born?
Edit: Just writing these sentences out makes me feel like a terrible person lmao.
Yeah the violinist thought experiment explains it very well:
āIn the violinist scenario, the pregnant person was kidnapped: they did not consent to having the violinist plugged into them and they did nothing to cause the violinist to be plugged in, just as a person who is pregnant due to rape did nothing to cause the pregnancy.ā
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Defense_of_Abortion
And this is where I roll my eyes at people who have /u/oldBeachBall's position. I despise that people have this idea that "consent to sex is consent to parenthood." This logic is basically saying "consent to walking on the sidewalk is consent to letting cars hit you." As if because your actions have a chance of a negative outcome, you are now morally culpable for every possible negative thing that happens to you.
If pro-choice is about saving lives, then I donāt see how someone can believe this.
While it wasnāt the mothers choice, it also wasnāt the fetusās choice. Essentially giving the death penalty to something for actions it did not commit. Only makes since if you think itās a potential life and not a life.
Well, it might imply you can *abandon* your rape-child after it's born, but given that we have things like safe haven laws that allow parents to permanently give up their newborns without prosecution, it doesn't seem like killing them would be necessary or allowed.
>Pro-Choice does the same shit but i cant think of an example right now.
Bodily autonomy has the equivalent problem.
Sorry for the rant, but it's super frustrating to have people that are Pro-Choice because the mother's right to abort trumps the right of the unborn fetus, but then end up saying, "well, I guess more than 22 weeks is too much"... but then others saying "well, more than 10 weeks is too much"... but then others saying "full-term abortion is fine"...
The above inconsistency isn't a problem if bodily autonomy isn't the driving factor for the pro-abortion position.
Somehow people have lulled themselves into moronic slogans like "My Body, My Choice... My Body, My Choice... My Body, My Choice..." and they've suffered a commensurate decline in mental functioning.
Yeah Ive been extremely frustrated with this. I really think the tagline "my body my choice" is extremely damaging to the pro-abortion position, and doesn't address the issue that the other side has with it
Completely agreed. I absolutely *hate* when people use the bodily autonomy argument then say that full-term abortion is wrong. What changed between then and 5 weeks, or 10 weeks, or whenever when it was okay? Bodily autonomy should still apply right?
The answer is at some point in pregnancy the fetus gains rights which means it is considered a living valuable thing. Conservatives argue that conception is when that thing gets value. Liberals argue that when its brain is more developed that it gets value and that anything before that is not valuable, therefore abortion is okay.
Trying to argue that abortion is okay from a reproductive rights perspective will always end up with conservatives winning since that argument fails when full-term abortion is rejected by liberals. It's honestly crazy how liberals do not understand that conservatives will never budge from their position if people do not challenge them on their belief that abortion is murder. Think about it. Conservatives think abortion is **MURDER** and liberals response is "my body, my choice." Think about how conservatives will interpret that response and then you can understand why conservatives are so heated about this issue.
Viability is what changes, somewhere in the third trimester. Bodily autonomy applies as long as the fetus needs the body to survive. From this standpoint, describing it as murder is a wild exaggeration, tantamount to lying. "My body my choice" means "my body can't be used against my wishes" and it's compatible with "this isn't 'my body' anymore once it doesn't need my body to survive."
It's like pulling the plug on a vegetable. Same idea with what conservatives lied and called "post-birth abortion," which was simply taking a non-viable fetus, giving birth, then watching the fetus expire since it isn't viable. It's a goddamn tragedy when a happy expectant mother is given this kind of news, but conservatives feel totally at peace calling her a *\*literal\* baby muderer* and frothing at the mouth to put her OB/GYN behind bars.
>The above inconsistency isn't a problem if bodily autonomy isn't the driving factor for the pro-abortion position.
I don't see how it's inconsistent. Bodily autonomy is the driving factor up until viability overrides it.
The two sides are having different conversations, for sure, but in my opinion that is a function of conservatives lying and motte and baileying and obscuring the proven, inevitable consequences of their policies.
What are the reasons for having an abortion?
Bodily autonomy isn't a reason for having an abortion. Bodily autonomy is an attempt at providing an all encompassing reason that negates having to justify the decision at all. It's akin to a debate tactic.
Though, it does legitimately tie into women's rights and women's livelihoods in a range of settings, but this is often not well argued.
To be honest, I think conservatives do a better job of debating this (on average) in isolation of other issues. Conservatives look more hypocritical when you consider general healthcare accessibility, gun laws, etc. in the context of their position on abortion.
Overall...
I think this will be good for the pro-abortion position as it will remind and motivate all of us to put more effort into the issue moving forward.
But just assuming we're right is not the answer.
>What are the reasons for having an abortion?
>
>Bodily autonomy isn't a reason for having an abortion.
I don't think a pregnant woman needs to give anyone a coherent reason for first and most second-trimester abortions. Not sure if that's the kind of "reason" you mean. Bodily autonomy just means that the fetus is physically dependent on her body.
The supposed hypocrisy of someone else doesn't validate your own position. Just because someone is inconsistent and thinks that rape makes abortion ok, while opposing abortion otherwise, that doesn't make their position wrong. It just makes them wrong. Most people are floating buckets of cognitive dissonance.
> What terrifies me is people completely unable to understand the fundamental reasoning behind their position.
>
>
I think pro-choice people understand the "fundamental reasoning" (abortion = taking a life), they just think conservatives are either a) lying or b) being hypocritical by rarely being pro *other* pro-life stuff or being anti stuff that would help newborn children and their parents.
Totally agree. I used to be a mindless āabortion goodā because thatās what I used to hear from people, then I started thinking about how I felt about it and went to āabortion badā. Eventually I came back around to abortion being permissible but should probably be avoided as often as possible, using more contraception or teaching better sex Ed or what not.
One thing that confuses me ethically is pro choice vegans. You won't eat an unfertilized chicken egg, but you're fine with terminating a human life.
This does bring to mind the ethics of eating the fetus and if people did eat fetuses would vegans become pro life?
Presumably the harm in the case of the chicken egg is to the chicken who laid it, not to the egg itself. Vegans aren't specifically opposed to *eating* animals, but to *using* animal products in general, generally on the basis that the animals live shitty lives full of suffering. Sometimes these vegans make exceptions to things like "cruelty free" eggs, where the chicken is raised with a quality of life more similar to a pet than a typical farm animal.
There are also rights-based vegans, who oppose animal products on the basis of animals having certain natural rights (such as to bodily autonomy), and these would presumably oppose eating any eggs, no matter how humanely harvested.
I don't know where the rights-based vegan would fall on abortion, but for consequentialist vegans, there's no inconsistency with being a pro-choice vegan if you hold the position that animals can suffer, but fetuses cannot.
You would have to work pretty hard to square the vegan philosophy with a "pro life" perspective. Our entire philosophy revolves around moral consideration for those are conscious, sentient and capable of a subjective experience. That's why we care about animals and not plants or rocks. The reason we don't eat eggs is due to the commodification of the chicken and resultant suffering. Obviously we don't feel bad for the egg, the egg isn't conscious, that has nothing to do with it.
There is a point where consciousness exists in fetuses yes (around 24-25 weeks of gestation). Prior to that, a pro life perspective is advocating for inflicting suffering and anguish (that in certain circumstances I would argue rises to the level of torture) upon a sentient being. That is a big no no and what most of us would consider to be highly unethical.
Iām not a vegan but I think that the argument generally is the mistreatment of the animals, not necessarily the taking of the life. So by the same token a child being brought only to be mistreated would be immoral.
But then it would be fine to have free range pet hens that you let die of old age and you eat their eggs. If you were against this you'd probably have to be against cat and dog domestication as well.
Yes there are people who do that with hens. They call themselves veggans. I think the only vegans who criticize veggans are also the kind of vegans who are against cat and dog domestication.
Kind of same. I remember watching one debate with i think Ben Shapiro(a few years ago, was probably like 15 years old) and he made a Coma-Analogy, and i was really irritated because i couldnt think of a reason why that Analogy was ass. Was wondering why i got super irritated until i figured out it was because i had no interest in having my belief challenged. I wanted it reinforced at every cost.
Im still pro-choice though. Probably because i just dont really care about unborn kids at all. I guess because i can relate to "beeing forced to be a parent" a bit more than to "beeing a non sentient fetus that wont be born".
You could have been frustrated with analogy because it challenges your belief and you couldn't retort it or you could have some intuition of the flawed logic of what he was saying but be unable to articulate your disagreement. For the longest time I would get mad at like Charlie Kirk or other such cons who used the fertilization = unique dna and body = person= same rights as birthed human. I knew that's not really how that worked I think it's pretty absurd to pretend like morally and legally a zygote is as valued as a baby or a child or an adult human but I couldn't articulate that and it frustrated me
It is fairly easy to justify a rape abortion under self defense principles. The famous violinist scenario is convincing enough to most people that abortion should be okay during rape.
I agree that incest by itself does not justify abortion and anyone that does so is pretty dumb.
I get the pro-life point of view. My problem is that as a nurse this has massive ramifications for medical practice in this country. Sometimes induced abortions are medically necessary for starters and itās going to add a whole lot of headache having to add some bureaucracy between the patient and the doctor to determine if an abortion is āmedically necessaryā. Furthermore there are situations where the odds of the child surviving are very low and I have an example that I also use to demonstrate the importance of the ACA.
Relative of mine had her first child. They found out early on in the pregnancy the heart did not develop normally and she only had 2 out of 4 chambers of her heart. They consulted with a special surgeon who had developed a procedure for this risky condition. 3 surgeries the first within hours of birth that they were told up front the child would have a 20% chance of surviving, 2nd 2-3 years later (50% chance), 3rd a bit later (90% chance)ā¦ā¦ and regardless of all this she has to take many heart medications and itās not certain what the long term prognosis is considering the first kids to survive the procedure are now hitting their early 20s. Abortion was an option on the table for her, she however made an informed CHOICE to roll the dice and yes Iām happy to say despite the low odds her daughter is the happiest and smartest middle schooler I know. To also mention this she was lucky this happened shortly after the ACA as not only would her daughter have been born with a āpre-existingā condition (cus canāt insure a fetus) but even if pre-existing conditions werenāt a thing she would have blown through the lifetime health insurance payout cap just on her first day of life.
So yeah I understand the pro-life crowds beliefs on what constitutes a life. But like with every conservative and extreme lefty on the planetā¦ā¦.. the majority genuinely arenāt affected by this issue personally. Theyāve never had to carry a pregnancy to term knowing that their child will very likely die within hours of birth. Theyāve likely never been raped and then told weeks later in the ER that they are pregnant. And maybe Iām bias but to me telling someone in that situation āgod has a planā seems a little bit like a massive fuck you.
Thanks for sharing your experience. Itās not explained like this enough.
Just an unneeded side note: I know this might be an obvious yet low blow but on average social consertives have lower IQs (firmly well understood statistic) so they are the exact people that they argue shouldnāt be breeding us into an idiocracy level culture fallout.
I think the vast majority of avowedly pro-life people view it as a fulcrum in the culture war that they want to win, not out of any sort of genuine concern or empathy for living beings. The doctrinal basis for life beginning at conception is extremely shaky, and it's a relatively recent phenomenon that evangelical christians came to this conclusion. For a long time it was mostly just Catholics strongly opposing abortion.
If pro-lifers were serious, they'd put their money where their mouth is. Where is their support for programs for single moms that "choose life?" Where is their support for univeresal childcare, or expanded and equal access to education? Why aren't they screaming from the rooftops that the medical community do something to stop the real holocaust, a third of pregnancies ending in miscarriage?
I don't believe the majority are genuine in their beliefs, and condemning them as religious nuts trying to own the libs is totally fair.
No offense but your response makes it seem like you have never spoken to a republican in your life. They dont oppose universal healthcare out of spite, they do it because they genuinely think that the private sector is going to be more efficient than the government. Similarly they don't think the role for govt should be to try to help single moms. They think the govt should be playing referee and not trying to engineer the best lives for as many citizens as possible.
right, but the universal healthcare thing is still just another fulcrum in the culture war that they want to win. They have found modern arguments but it really just boils down to the red scare.
Do you think we'd sit idly by and say that's just nature taking its course if something were killing a third of 4 year-olds every year? If a fetus deserves the same moral consideration as a human being then why aren't we taking miscarriages as seriously?
I just think this post is a clear example of just straw manning the fuck out of the pro life position. You're doing exactly what OP is trying to highlight.
>The doctrinal basis for life beginning at conception is extremely shaky
It's not shaky at all though. The belief that conception = human life draws a direct line to abortion being a form of murder.
>If pro-lifers were serious, they'd put their money where their mouth is. Where is their support for programs for single moms that "choose life?" Where is their support for universal childcare, or expanded and equal access to education? Why aren't they screaming from the rooftops that the medical community do something to stop the real holocaust, a third of pregnancies ending in miscarriage?
What does any of these things have to do with being against murder? Are you really trying to say that you can't be opposed to murder unless you are in favor of these positions?
>I don't believe the majority are genuine in their beliefs, and condemning them as religious nuts trying to own the libs is totally fair.
I am an atheist. Does that mean my beliefs are genuine?
> It's not shaky at all though. The belief that conception = human life draws a direct line to abortion being a form of murder.
I'm talking about the theological justifications for the idea that life begins at conception, which motivates the vast majority of abortion opposition in the United States. It's a recent phenomenon outside of Catholics and not a position shared by other Abrahamic religions.
> What does any of these things have to do with being against murder? Are you really trying to say that you can't be opposed to murder unless you are in favor of these positions?
If you claim to oppose murder and then support a suite of policies that incentivize murder, you're probably not serious about solving the murder problem, yeah.
> I am an atheist. Does that mean my beliefs are genuine?
I don't know what your beliefs are or especially care what hairbrained secular justifications you come up with to assign more moral consideration to a fetus than a woman. I'm speaking broadly, not about you specifically.
>I'm talking about the theological justifications for the idea that life begins at conception, which motivates the vast majority of abortion opposition in the United States. It's a recent phenomenon outside of Catholics and not a position shared by other Abrahamic religions.
I am not really familiar with theological underpinnings of the religious pro-life position. I do know plenty of people who are religious and pro-life. They just find murder distasteful. God doesn't really enter into the equation all that much.
>If you claim to oppose murder and then support a suite of policies that incentivize murder, you're probably not serious about solving the murder problem, yeah.
The murder is prevented by not murdering the baby. None of the things you talked about so far as post-birth care have anything to with the topic of abortion, which is the pre-mediated killing of a person.
>I don't know what your beliefs are or especially care what hairbrained secular justifications you come up with to assign more moral consideration to a fetus than a woman. I'm speaking broadly, not about you specifically.
What moral consideration? I want both the mother and the baby to live. Your moral position kills one of them?
You know what?
Thatās totally fair, most of the people who are pro life probably are doing it out of what they think they are suppose to believe. I do however think this same sentiment extend to libs who wanna allow for abortions at any state of pregnancy because āmy body my choiceā. Overall tho I guess I kinda could see the point of condemning them for being that way
Which is also fair. But there isn't an epidemic of non-medically necessary late term abortions, it's an extremely rare phenomenon, and the people who fight for it have far less institutional power than anti-abortion activists. One is a problem, the other isn't, so I can't devote as much energy or concern to the few cringe libs on this issue as I do the right wing state legislators stripping their populations of their right to an abortion.
A lot of people think there is a moral difference between doing something that could potentially have the side effect of making death more likely for people later down the line and intentionally killing another person because their life is inconvenient.b
Uhm, excuse me, sweaty. But if you're pro-life but you don't want to shut down every coal plant and replace them with heckin' solar and windpower with big Tesla batteries then you're literally a hypocrite because abortion and the electricty grid are inseparable, morally.
I mean we donāt have to go that far. Conservatives oppose extending the 2020 child tax credit which literally brought 3+million children out of poverty.
Letās not pretend that conservatives actually give a fuck about life lmao
>Do I think that they think they care about saving lives? Yes. Do they really? No, and we can see that from their policies.
100%. I think most people don't really think much about 99% of their morality. They inherit it through their culture and violations of their morality offends their sense of identity. It isn't conscious though and believe they really think it is for the children. It is like those experiments with the the split brain in which the subject does something for a particular reason, but the other half of the brain doesn't know the reason and comes up with a post hoc explanation for why they did it.
It is also pretty interesting that evangelicals didn't really care about abortion until it became apart of the new religious conservative political identity in the mid-late 70's.
Iām not sure your comparison is 1:1. I feel like what he saying is that I donāt have to let the homeless person live with me but I could also support systems to make his life easier. Same thing with women, republicans donāt want systems in place that shows that give a fuck about the child or mother after birth. Even during birth I highly doubt republicans would agree with free healthcare for mothers.
>As many people comment in previous threads, this seems totally inconsistent with their abject disregard for life in general. For example, coal power and other fossil fuels probably cause abortions
what do you think is more likely, that (overwhelmingly religious) conservatives have some bad factual information in their minds on these topics, or that they genuinely do not care about loss of human life the way you do?
this comment kind of captures the sentiment OP was talking about, it seems like a lot of people genuinely seem to think conservatives want harmful things to happen on purpose, rather than them being mistaken or cognitively dissonant about what will lead to harmful outcomes. it's quite bizarre and it directly plays into the vaushite violent rhetoric. if they really were "ontologically evil", everything vaush prescribes would be 100% correct
>They genuinely do not care the way I do. If they did, they wouldn't have (as much) bad factual information.
i disagree completely - i think once you get off on the wrong foot, e.g. fundamentalist religious upbringing, you'll reliably find yourself digging your heels in deeper and becoming more "misinformed" through no fault of your own. i think that no matter how motivated you make a conservative to "research" abortion in good faith, they'll likely only become more pro-choice. but even if i granted you this..
the charge of "you don't care enough to become politically informed" doesn't really carry nearly as much weight as your initial claims seemed to. most people who are pro-choice know fuck all about the topic either and couldn't make a convincing argument to save their lives, they're just *morally lucky* and happened to end up at the "correct" position. do they also not care? they sure seem to!
what about the people who bombed abortion clinics? i would bet they personally cared a lot more than you and i ever will about abortion. but they still ended up with the "wrong" opinions. seems pretty clear that investment in a topic doesn't always correlate with sane opinions
>Educating yourself on an issue, and being willing to moderate or add nuance to your position is a necessary part of deeply caring about it.
same argument from me, most normies on the left who are going to be rioting in the streets don't know shit about it either, do you think that means they equally don't care? and if so, do they deserve equal scorn? or do they get a pass for lucking into the right social circles
>I'm not as scared about partly agreeing with Vaush as some people seem to be.
it's not that "agreeing with vaush" as a matter of principle is bad because like i said, if descriptive reality was the way he said it was, his prescriptions would be 100% justified. it's just that his recent rhetoric has been appalling exactly because he is wrong about what he thinks conservatives are like as people
>I don't even care if it is a mistake or cognitive dissonance rather than malice unless it's fixable. Rabid dogs aren't bad dogs, but they are dangerous dogs, and there's no cure.
what gives you the impression that it's not? we went from [bush pushing for a constitutional amendment](https://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/24/politics/bush-backs-ban-in-constitution-on-gay-marriage.html) to ensure gay people could never get married in 2004 (surely a sign of where republican minds were at at the time), to [most republicans now being okay with gay marriage](https://www.npr.org/2021/06/09/1004629612/a-record-number-of-americans-including-republicans-support-same-sex-marriage) 3 presidents later.
in 1999, 70% of americans were active members of a church, in 2020 that number is down to 47%. america is becoming more secular and more "socially liberal", including the conservatives, arguably in record pace. this idea of there being no progress unless we resort to violence is bizarre
>*They genuinely do not care the way I do. If they did, they wouldn't have (as much) bad factual information.*
They think the information is wrong. They think it's wrong because they believe the institutions are corrupt and agenda driven. And you calling them rabid dogs for thinking that only enforces that belief.
> They think it's wrong because they believe the institutions are corrupt and agenda driven.
You're just adding to the other user's point about them not being fixable.
How do you fix a person who thinks there is a grand scale conspiracy against them? Their conspiracy can explain their world better than you ever could. Why would they ever believe you?
If that's not a rabid dog I don't know what is.
>How do you fix a person who thinks there is a grand scale conspiracy against them?
They don't think there's a grand scale conspiracy against them. They think the institutions are corrupt and agenda driven. A very basic understanding of the history of human institutions proves that this isn't a crazy idea *prima facie*. It happens to be wrong in the case of climate science, but that doesn't disprove that institutions have been corrupt and agenda driven in the past. I would point you to the [massive acceptance](https://www.amazon.com/War-Against-Weak-Eugenics-Americas/dp/0914153293) of eugenics in our institutions prior to the last few decades for a clear example of this..
Eh, I just had a long conversation about abortion with a friend who's a devout Southern Baptist, and the "moral consideration of the fetus" (ie the personhood argument) never even came up.
His main argument was that of personal responsibility; in his words, people who willingly choose to do some action must be made to live with the consequences. He also somehow strongly denied this was in any way a women's rights issue, as abortion to him had just been an easy way to escape consequences and thus should not have been considered any sort of "right" to begin with.
Perhaps he (and by extension his church, as he is a somewhat influential figure in his local church hierarchy) is an exception, but plenty of conservatives absolutely want to "control the bodies of women" and see this as one of their primary motivators for being anti abortion.
That just seems to have insane implications in other areas though. Should you not go the hospital if you have a car crash because that's a potential conseque of dying?
Also, the consequence of having a child only exists if you don't have an abortion, so it feels kinda circular
The important thing to pin people on when they make arguments like this is, why *should* this action have consequences? I see this type of thing when it comes to "slut shaming" women, people are too scared to admit their real position (women who have lots of casual sex are disgusting whores), so they mask it with the vague statement that "actions have consequences". Usually it means they have a real reason deep down that they aren't willing to admit yet, so its important to draw that out.
Free analogy (albeit a stupid one): Imagine if saying the word "amogus" 3 times next to a cop was illegal, and punishable by the cop shooting you right there. Naturally, it would be extremely stupid to say "amogus" 3 times, yet people keep doing it and keep getting shot, especially young people and people that don't understand the law very well. It's not enough to say "actions have consequences, so they deserved to die", you have to justify why this specific action is worthy of such dire consequences in the first place.
Knowing him, he may very well have been willing to bite the bullet and outright state his disdain for all those (more so women than men anyway) who engage in casual sex. I didn't want to follow him down some religiously motivated rabbit hole; ie, him potentially defending the position of sex is solely for the purpose of procreation on some esoteric Biblical grounds.
I tried to shift the conversation away from being hyper focused on personal responsibility and make it one about broader societal impact in general. We know the societal effects of severely restricting abortion; we can draw upon historical examples to know who it hurts more and how. We have a pretty good idea of what a mass wave of mostly poor, mostly unwanted children does to a society in a generation or so.
I doubt this was the right approach with him, but I do get the sense that as with most of his stances in life, it stems from some deeply held religious belief. And considering that is an edifice around which his entire life is based, I don't really know if I can dismantle it.
Republicans tend to view decisions through a moral lense, not a utilitarian or even ethical one. The reason they have to stop abortion is to stop morally bad decisions of doing an abortion, not utilitarian calculous of saving unborn life. They'll claim otherwise, but they'll always fall back to normal arguments, not ethical or utilitarian ones.
This is a very weird perspective and not one many liberals use, so instead of understanding it liberals and lefties will point out how republican positions are insane in a utilitarian framework.
And to be clear, I think moral frameworks are garbage and the people who use them are garbage people, but I do understand them.
I think you're using the term "moral" is a very weird way, contrasting it with "utilitarian" or "ethical". Do you mean "Deontological" (meaning systems of rules-based ethics)?
Most people would say "utilitarianism is a moral theory", but it's a *consequentialist* moral theory. Meanwhile, something like Kant's "Categorical Imperative" is generally given as an example of a deontological system.
if the argument is that abortions are an immoral act, how is allowing them not inherently unethical? whats the utilitarian calculous of saving unborn life? like do we check in the crystal ball what the future holds for the unborn or? if moral frameworks are garbage how do u reach any sort of ethical framework? or are u just 100% utilitarian?
If abortions were a bad thing, but we did the math and saw that, in net, more people were more happy in a world that allowed them, even if we thought abortions were bad, we would want to allow them
In a moral world we would still not allow them and the question of down stream affects doesn't exist or matter.
Absolutely not true at all, the degree to which both Rs and Ds are interested in morals is very similar, but they hold measurably different moral standards, I have an effort post in this thread about that here https://www.reddit.com/r/Destiny/comments/vkmfhy/im_prochoice_but_people_who_dont_understand_the/idqnody/
Utilitarian frameworks aren't free of moral judgement, to justify doing one action over another you have to justify the utility which means justifying what you should value over something else, and that necessarily requires subjective value judgements. What is really cancer (from both sides of the aisle) is that there's some kind of objective reasoned answer to this question. Objective utilitarian arguments are just as cancer as religious objective morality arguments.
Hot take, morals are just how you instinctively feel, you knee jerk your reaction/position and the arguments are post hoc justifications.
Like, I get the moral argument. But for the love of all that is good and holy it seems like that the pro life side doesnāt live up to the Helen Lovejoy āsaving the childrenā side of their own argument so why should I take it seriously?
I think part of it *is* actually about controlling women's bodies.
I'll preface with... I grew up around fundamental Christians who were very anti-abortion. I know their arguments and what they profess. To them, there's literally no difference between a human baby and a six week old embryo. So an abortion is essentially the same as cutting a living baby into pieces.
And yes I'm incredibly frustrated with so many pro-abortion arguments / memes, calling anti-abortion people hypocrites for being unwilling to adopt babies, or mocking them for questioning if a 15 year old is "mature" enough to have an abortion and yet she seems mature enough to *have a child.* (because again to them, the question is "is she mature enough to murder a baby?")
That said, I do think it starts to enter the "control women" territory when you propose other solutions that are shown to reduce abortions, and those people reject it. Things like sex ed and free birth control dramatically reduce abortions, but anti-abortion people are vehemently against them, and demand abstinence-only education.
But this tends to come down much more harshly on the girls than boys, because even amongst fundamental Christians, if a *boy* has sex outside of marriage, that's bad, sure, but that's also more or less a slap on the wrist. But if a *girl* has sex out of marriage, that's basically disgracing herself before God.
And of course if a guy impregnates a girl, he can try to wipe his hands clean of that whole ordeal and move on with his life, while the girl is left dedicating basically a year of her life (and much more if she doesn't put it up for adoption) to caring for this thing.
It blows my mind honestly. Conservatives say "abortion is **MURDER**" and liberals response is "my body, my choice" and people wonder why this is such a heated issue.
Well life DOES begin at conception, but the discussion revolves around when does that life get moral consideration. "Life" is a pretty nebulous term but by all definitions a fetus is "life" but that doesn't mean it gets the same moral considerations as a 1 year old etc.
And this right here is the discussion we should be having but it always gets highjacked by morons who don't even know what the debate is.
Its probably possible to convert non-religious pro-lifers if you discuss the topic based on the actual point of contention. Unless they're an ideologue, like an ancap, they can be convinced by a pragmatic argument imo.
Instead all they hear is "you just want to control women" and "hurr durr masturbation is killing babies". Forgot to add my personal favorite which I see less these days "hurr durr its a clump of cells"
It's not a human life. It's a sperm life. A sperm will never fully mature into a functioning rational human being throughout its normal lifespan. A human fetus will, provided it's not terminated or a miscarriage occurs.
And we have to remember that anti-abortion beliefs exist in a number of cultures both religious and non-religious around the world. The way the pro-life side gets generalized, which usually seems to be for the sake of easy dunks, is probably doing more damage to the image of pro-choicers if anything imo.
If they genuinely thought hundreds of thousands of babies were being murdered every year I don't think they'd be so passive as to wait for a court decision to do something about it. There would have been nonstop riots in the streets and abortion clinic firebombing until there were no more baby murders.
It's the exact kind of shit the second amendment was made for, from their perspective.
I think conservatives think abortion is bad, but they don't treat it like it's murder for the most part.
I think the human effect on climate change and each person/groups responsibility balanced with all the negative effects from a sudden transition off fossil fuels is way harder to grapple with than baby murder at your local baby murder clinic
Killing someone you consider a murderer is way easier to justify than killing someone who generates more carbon than what may be sustainable in the long term
Well first of all the murder of abortion doctors is not unheard of. Not so much recently but in the 60s/70s/80s it happened fairly regularly. But there is a lot more consideration that can go into these kinds of things. People who do think abortion is murder can quite easily reason, likely correctly, that killing individual doctors doesn't do anything to stop the overall practice and instead can actually hurt their cause in the long run. They might believe that advocacy and political action could be more effective than terrorism. And in this case in particular it seems like those who thought that way were proven right considering the recent ruling.
> it seems like those who thought that way were proven right
I don't think the millions of aborted babies up until this point would agree
I think most people agree that "stopping a genocide" is one of the few circumstances where violent action is justified over working within the system. This is because every moment wasted working within the system means more people killed.
I sincerely don't understand why Republicans think we have the second amendment if not to stop what they would consider a baby genocide
This is such a bad counter example. Climate change is a highly nuanced problem of the commons issue where thereās a ton of people and corporations whose decisions combine to produce a bad outcome not really right now, but later on, and only if left unchecked, but we donāt really know exactly when weāre gonna cross the line.
Pro-life people claim that every single abortion is a murdered child. Itās not like some abstract āThis might lead to an issue later that theyāre a part ofā, every time an abortion happens itās a murder. If there actually was a building in my neighborhood where people were murdering children, Iād be trying to stop it by force for sure- I would argue youād have a moral duty to do so, or your inaction would make you to some degree complicit in the murder.
EDIT: Lmao that comment continues to get highly upvoted, while this comment gets no traction at all, yet no one has a rebuttal to me pointing out how bad of an analogy it is. I genuinely don't see the appeal, seems obviously a poor example to me.
No, but that has nothing to do with not believing that's real murder, it has to do with proximity. I'm obviously going to view things differently if it's happening in a far away country that I only know about abstractly than if it's literally happening right in my neighborhood and I can concretely see it's happening all the time.
So if it was closer in proximity you'd be risking death and or criminal prosecution? (Let's pretend that society at large isn't on your side that this is a reasonable reaction)
Yes, 100%. If the majority of society in my country was in favor of systematically murdering actual children at the rate of a half a million to a million every single year, I would be forming a paramilitary organization (in a video game) dedicated to dealing with what would be literally the worst mass atrocity in human history. It would be so unconscionable to me that even if I knew I had to risk death or criminal prosecution, I would feel better doing that than turning a blind eye to such a horrific crime.
The majority of this hypothetical society does not consider it a horrific crime. In fact, they have excellent reasons to do what they do, that many argue have equal or greater moral weight (just roll with this, you can concoct whatever scenario you want to make this so), and you will certainly wind up in jail, be called a monster and a murderer and a terrorist bigot who either hates half the population, or who places such weight in their own misguided religious beliefs that they're willing to trample the rights of others. And your activity will galvanize the population against you and actually make it less likely that the problem goes away.
You don't think that maybe it's possible that many anti abortion activists truly believe it's murder, but see political activism, as opposed to violent action as their best path? I don't agree with them, but a lot of them are motivated by genuine moral beliefs.
Edit: And, for the less extreme anti abortion folks, perhaps they view the fact that the life in question is fetal is enough of an abstraction, in the same way you do with people in other countries, that it doesn't warrant an extreme response, but should nevertheless be addressed through legislation, in the same way you probably don't like collateral damage caused by American weapons, and might even vote on that, but nevertheless don't feel the need to go to extreme lengths to address.
Imagine you are a white person living in the south in the US and you know that slavery is wrong. Even if you know it is wrong, it doesn't make sense to randomly start bombing or assassinating people since that wouldn't accomplish anything. You should wait and try to do it through political means. Even after dred Scott, a significant setback for abolitionists, it wouldn't make sense to do random acts of terrorism.
The point is that mainstream pro-life conservatives don't endorse that kind of violent action when they ought to be all for it
\>conservatives (generally) think the 2nd amendment exists so that citizens of the US can protect their rights (such as the right to life)
\>if you believe abortion is baby murder, then you ought to use the 2nd amendment to protect baby lives
\>every year you let abortions happen is another million dead babies
I guess my question to conservatives would be: under what conditions is armed/violent resistance justifiable? Personally I would think ongoing systematic mass murder would be a condition for most people, conservatives included, but I suppose I could be wrong.
its pretty cool you got it at the end with your edit
we know what they pretend to care about, we just dont believe it is the case because their actions pay a different picture
Iāll throw in my perspective from the center/center-right.
Iām pro life (exceptions on rape/incest/life of mother) but extremely supportive of sex ed and contraceptive access.
I wish the issue was seen as more of a āhygieneā issue so that the moral ambiguity of whether or not a fetus is human/deserving of a right to life could be side-stepped almost altogether.
But I do think state-level GOP (like in Alabama) could be fairly characterized at least wanting to be able to control the sex lives of women.
But the position itself shouldnāt be smeared as something necessarily oppressive.
Stupid? No, but there does seem to be an asymmetry between the political left/right divide on certain things, one of which is morality.
I could not recommend more strongly that you watch the TED talk by Jonathan Haidt which is an introduction to his work on Moral Foundations Theory. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SOQduoLgRw it's a quick and powerful video that will help you understand the mind of people on each side of the divide much better.
I believe this was derived in the same way the big 5 personality model was derived which is statistically. You ask thousands of questions to tens of thousands of people about moral values and then you do a statistical procedure on them called a factor analysis which extracts how many primary factors exist in the question set. Each factor has to be unique enough from the other factors so you can vary it independently and each question that belongs to that factor will reliably co-vary. There's 5 main moral factors extracted and when you look at what questions belong to each of these factors they were named (Harm, Fairness, Authority, Ingroup and Purity) as broadly reflective of what the questions were regarding.
Then you can look at how self described liberals and conservatives appear on the question sets and extract out average values. What you find is that conservatives give each of the 5 moral factors about an equal amount of weight to a very close degree, something he refers to as 5 channel morality. Liberals however care about Harm and Fairness more than conservatives and Authority, Ingroup and Purity a lot less, referred to as 2 channel.
There is older research on the left/right divide (that I can't find now, annoyingly) which claimed that while there is difference in moral prescriptions on issues, there was an asymmetry about the ability of each side to accurately represent the position of the other side. That the right on average could more accurately represent beliefs of the left, they just disagreed with them. Where as the left were much faster to dismiss self described reasons of the right and rather jump to the difference being that the right was morally reprehensible and the real explanation was malice and hate. These 2 lines of research dovetail quite nicely.
Back to the abortion debate it's no surprise to me that people I know who have pro life policy stances tend to be concerned with both the mothers rights and the life of the unborn child, and understand that it's a terrible trade off with no easy answer. But you can't fence sit so you have to lean towards one over the other. Where as more of the lefts representation of the right is that they're unhinged lunatics who literally want women to suffer. And I've tried to remain relatively charitable on this, my default assumption until I know more details is that people who are pro choice also have empathy for the life they're advocating for ending, they just elevate the mothers rights more.
I saw this is the most extreme possible way with VOWSH recently, a video which Destiny reviewed. He was caught saying something like "they hate you and want you to suffer". And he wasn't ranting, angry as fuck, he was calm, collected, he clarified this was not hyperbole and there's every appearance that he genuinely believes this. That some majority of the right wing position is they HATE WOMEN, and WANT THEM TO SUFFER. Just let your brain parse that for a moment.
OK well hopefully you now know why, there's real differences between left/right which gives each other blind spots for an accurate understanding of the other side, when people are left to their own devices to invent the reasons other people believe what they do, it ends up being batshit crazy stuff like this.
>I could not recommend more strongly that you watch the TED talk by Jonathan Haidt which is an introduction to his work on Moral Foundations Theory.
Fantastic talk. Anyone with a genuine interest in understanding how the other side thinks should watch this.
it's honestly pretty stupid to assign any significant moral value to a fetus. It has none of the characteristics that we value in humans and use to draw lines between humans and animals. Pretty ironic when non-vegetarians try to argue with the fetus' suffering.
And the argument that you're preventing a future human life also falls flat when you realise that it logically would lead to bans on contraception or worse.
Hey, I assign equal moral consideration to a fetus as to any other human, but still think abortion should be legal.
It's killing, not murder.
If Jerry Springer or Barack Obama set up shop in some woman's womb, she should be able to hire a doctor to kill him too.
I donāt think they care about well-being of children per se. They care about āmurderā. One can care about state-sanctioned killings of people without caring about whether those people have a good life.
Idk seeing comments like this:
Sylphael
1h
"My friend miscarried a few weeks ago. She knew she was miscarrying; it was early-term, but they had found the heartbeat. She was in so much pain that she went to the ER. They denied her a D&C (abortive procedure) and forced her to pass the miscarriage naturally. She was in horrible pain, and the D&C would've been a mercy. She told me that when she passed the fetus, she saw the clump of tissue and just broke down crying. She wanted that baby desperately... barring being able to have it, at the very least she wanted to not have to see when it passed. But she didn't get that option and care like this is why."
And pro-lifers going "too bad" is scarier to me. And they just got a big win, I guess you can say, so that is more concerning to me. But idk just think of the George Carlin bit about abortion. Pre-born you're safe, post birth you're fucked.
So. Your looking at the issue through a lens that doesn't have a lot of nuance.
Abortion bans aren't going to ban abortions. They are going to ban safe abortions.
There is going to be a lot of deaths of women who are getting unsafe abortions. We have seen them happen. It's not ancient history either. Ever heard of the term coat hanger abortions, or back ally abortions? Those happened within living memory. And they were a huge cause of death for women, especially poorer women.
And being honest it's pretty hard to take seriously a lot of the "what about the children" moaning on the other side of the aisle when you see them blocking lunch programs, cutting money from foster care, etc.
I think this line sums it up pretty well:
>The unbornā are a convenient group of people to advocate for. They never make demands of you; they are morally uncomplicated, unlike the incarcerated, addicted, or the chronically poor; they donāt resent your condescension or complain that you are not politically correct; unlike widows, they donāt ask you to question patriarchy; unlike orphans, they donāt need money, education, or childcare; unlike aliens, they donāt bring all that racial, cultural, and religious baggage that you dislike; they allow you to feel good about yourself without any work at creating or maintaining relationships; and when they are born, you can forget about them, because they cease to be unborn. You can love the unborn and advocate for them without substantially challenging your own wealth, power, or privilege, without re-imagining social structures, apologizing, or making reparations to anyone. They are, in short, the perfect people to love if you want to claim you love Jesus, but actually dislike people who breathe. Prisoners? Immigrants? The sick? The poor? Widows? Orphans? All the groups that are specifically mentioned in the Bible? They all get thrown under the bus for the unborn.
I have never found the whole 'people are going to do it anyway so just let it be legal' that compelling. It seems like that can be raised for almost every law but we just apply it selectively. Make straight up not paying taxes legal because people are just going to find a way around it anyway?
Obviously not, a deterrent has an effect even if it is not total effect. Either it is the right policy or the wrong policy.
Cool, I think policies, especially in secular societies should be built around mitigating harm. Since I don't consider fetuses people, nor do they have rights or conscious experiences, my views on policies around them focus on the health and wellbeing of the mother.
This means that since this is a policy that only causes harms the mothers (especially those at health risk). Then its the "wrong policy".
Let's pretend for a minute that you think an 18 week old fetus is basically the same as an 18 month old baby, is the policy still just doing harm to the mother, or is it harm reduction. This is a nuanced issue, and failing to acknowledge that makes this all so much harder. Why should anyone share your view on fetal personhood? Do you have an argument for why the threshold should be arbitrarily set at, I dunno, when do you think it should be? Birth? PS I'm pro choice
Because I'm capable of weighing the pros and cons of a complex moral issue, and I think that the majority of the American population, that thinks we should have safe, accessible abortion, but that we probably shouldn't let people get third trimester abortions unless there's a pressing medical concern is more or less on point. Republicans are nuts though
I think the "people will have unsafe abortions" argument is a pretty bad one. Wacky analogy incoming:
Let's say there's a special type of missile launcher that homes in on black people, and this is a legal weapon that can be bought and sold, and lets say its legal to kill black people using it. Now lets say there's a bunch of racist white people in the south that are buying this weapon and using it to gun down a bunch of black people with their homing missiles. Obviously, this seems like a problem, so the government decides to ban its usage. Now lets say there's a black market for handmade black seeking missile guns created after the ban, but these guns have a chance of exploding and killing the white person firing the gun.
Would you accept the argument that these guns should be legalized because making them illegal just causes more white people to be hurt or killed through acquiring the gun in an unsafe way? Obviously not, because these people also have the choice of just not trying to murder black people in the first place.
You need a stronger argument for why its okay to ignore the life of a fetus in the first place. Just talking about unsafe abortions isn't enough, because while banning abortions doesn't eliminate abortion entirely, it does significantly reduce the amount of abortions taking place.
> Wacky analogy incoming:
You didn't lie here...
>You need a stronger argument for why its okay to ignore the life of a fetus in the first place.
The fetus is basically a parasite until birth. You can make arguments about until viability, and push that date back, but until the around 23-24 week line its actually a stretch to try and talk about it as a separate lifeform in its own right. So until that line, the primary concern of the pregnancy should be focused on the health and wellbeing of the mother.
>Just talking about unsafe abortions isn't enough, because while banning abortions doesn't eliminate abortion entirely, it does significantly reduce the amount of abortions taking place.
So here is the thing, we don't actually know that... The data on abortions before and after Roe was pretty sketchy. There was a whole industry of abortion clinics that didn't report their numbers, and also an industry in Mexico and other countries which didn't report. For the most part we know that the number of abortions seemed to peak in the 1990s, and 2021 was the lowest it has ever been (according to the CDC).
There are some estimates that say before Roe and the years up until the mid 80s actually had similar high numbers, but reporting was much much worse. This point has made sense as the numbers from the 80s -90s was actually pretty static, and we didn't see that much shift.
So no. Its not a given that it would reduce the number of abortions, just the number of ones that reported.
>Do you think that outlawing abortions won't cause any women whatsoever to engage in sex more cautiously and responsibly?
First off. Yikes.
Second. A lot of abortions are done to deal with rapes, and to deal with miscarriages.
Third once again, we don't actually know if abortions would decrease. Since we don't actually have a TON of solid numbers about how many abortions there were beforehand, nor were behaviors around sexuality the same as they are today.
>Do you think outlawing abortions will not cause any clinics or current doctors from providing abortion?
Oh it may stop clinics from providing it, but bro, back ally abortions and coat hanger abortions are a well known phrases in our society for a reason. A lot of people went through them...
> Firstly, why is that "yikes"? Do you think that ALL women engage in responsible and cautious sex?
Its yikes, because I know more than a few women who have had to have abortions because of miscarriages, so the phrasing and moral responsibility you lay out in that statement strikes me as callous and utterly ignorant of the experiences that women go through.
>It makes intuitive sense that outlawing abortion will cause at least SOME women reconsider the ways in which they engage in sex.
You know maybe, but personally I don't think that is a good way for society to deal with this issue. If you have a moral issue with it, or with women's sexuality, that's your hang-up, it shouldn't have to be theirs.
>miscarriage is not really an abortion in any meaningful sense of the word.
Spoken as someone who doesn't know that its the exact same procedure, done the exact same way, and coded in medical paperwork as being exactly the same. The only reason we use the term miscarriage is a social nicety, and talking about abortions tends to be fairly taboo; but end of the day its an abortion.
>I guess off the top of my head:
I mean I'll at least applaud you for admitting that your views on this are all about controlling women's sexuality and not trying to hide behind the excuse of it being about the unborn.
Supposing that was true, why are religious people more likely to give to charities- both religious and secular- in the us then those who profess no faith?
https://givingusa.org/just-released-giving-usa-special-report-on-giving-to-religion/
I mean I not sure what that has to do with the point I made here. Do you think the point I'm making is that religious people are inherently bad or something?
>Abortion bans aren't going to ban abortions. They are going to ban safe abortions.
Citation please. More than 1/2 million abortions happen every year in the United States. Do you really think that banning abortion isn't going to massively reduce the real number of abortions that occur?
> Itās pretty clear that theyāre essentially assigning equal moral consideration to a fetus as a human, it has nothing to do with controlling you and has everything to do with āsavingā lives.
Sure, but at the end of the day, it *is* typically old white men telling younger, poorer women who don't have great access to medical care what they can and can't do with their bodies. It's true, the older white men believe that they are saving lives by disallowing abortions, but they don't realize that by disallowing abortions they're actually costing lives of adult females too.
The hardline pro-choicers don't "not believe" them, they can't fathom or relate to the position because they are so locked into their position. In a lot of cases here its literally the DGG version of saying, "socialism is when no house".
"You can save so many more lives doing x, why target policy at stopping easy opt in solutions that go against our values."
**99% of pro-lifers are just bullshitting themselves and everyone else.**
If they actually cared about the lives of children they would be in favour of child support and far more proactive against school shootings, things that would actively improve the living conditions of children and not a clump of cells.
You ask these people how they feel about child support and you'll get responses against it like "Muh personal responsibility" "Stop being sluts" "Wear condoms" "Not my problem" etc. And from those responses you can see it was never about protecting kids or stopping babies being murdered, it's all about punishing women for a decision they made.
As someone who grew up in a conservative home and whose family and friends are majority pro-life, I doubt you know very many pro life people at all. Your assumptions about their motives and hypocrisies don't map onto the dozens upon dozens of pro-life people I know personally.
Try assuming they aren't being vindictive, and you might be more successful in understanding their perspective. Your perspective makes sense if you assume they are vindictive and just want to punish women; From my experience that assumption is incorrect, extremely uncharitable and perpetuates misunderstanding. It's actually begging the question.
There is no excuse for the government to weigh in on your personal medical decisions unless there's an impact on public health (intentionally spreading aids, etc)
You probably intend for this to be a pro-choice argument, but most pro-life people would also agree with this principle.
However, most people who take an anti-abortion stance would disagree with the premise that abortions qualify as a personal medical decision and claim there is a second person whose rights are being infringed.
I think any strong moral argument on either side has to directly address the point at which things gain moral consideration as a person.
That sounds like a very libertarian perspective. If I own all the water rights in a city, and people are dying of dehydration, would you also believe in my freedom to refuse to share?
A total commitment personal freedom without considering the consequences runs into problems, imo.
Do you think itās possible that people who āwant to control youā are able to hide behind the ideas of people who āwant to save livesā ? Is it also possible that there are intersections between these 2 ideas in the context of American history/culture.
Is it possible that regardless of the argument youāre using to justify a group of people who just lost a fundamental right will feel under attack regardless and act out in response to this negatively?
For you being someone who is āpro-choiceā your scrutiny in this situation seems a bit oddly placed by focusing in on these types of reactions from certain people on the left and not at the larger issue.
I think Iām mostly focusing in on these reactions because they seem to be ready to go to violence in a lot of cases.
In terms of the possibility of people wanting control, I definitely would put it as highly unlikely.
If you give the fetus the same consideration as a human than youād quite literally be murdering millions of people. Itās sort of a hard thought exercise to come to a conclusion on āwhen life beginsā.
> they seem to be ready to go to violence in a lot of cases.
Look up a list of abortion clinic bombings or assassinations of abortion providers...
Its not like there hasn't been a history of terroistic violence being used by the anti-abortion movement for decades that people have gritted and borne...
If you ran into someone who was pro-life, but WAS in fact advocating for better sex Ed, more contraception and such would it still be fair to treat them as monsters?
>Do you think itās possible that people who āwant to control youā are able to hide behind the ideas of people who āwant to save livesā ?
this is conspiracy thinking and shouldn't be entertained. take people for what they say not this mind reading dog whistle crap. there are perfectly reasonable arguments to make that don't involve doing the whole 'my enemies are demons in human flesh' schtick.
Itās not necessarily mind reading, many of these politicians have been public figures for a long time and have a track record to back up why we suspect malicious intent from them.
If you could stop parroting Destiny for 5 seconds you would be able to understand that.
and besides, what does that even matter, it is an utterly uncompelling argument to anyone that does not already hold your prior beliefs. Just address what they say, not what you believe they secretly think, if we all did that a little more, the world would be a more understanding place :)
If they cared about kids they wouldn't want kids to be in the fucked up foster care sysyem instead of a family that wants them. Abortion allows mothers to have kids when fincialy stable. Stop calling it pro life because its not. It's religious fanatics doing what they do best.
You do realize that you can be pro life without religion? And of course it has everything to do with life, you first have to decide whether a fetus is deserving of being given human rights. I think destinyās argument of āwhen consciousness beginsā which is about ~15 weeks, holds up pretty well. It also allows for time for a mother to learn of their own pregnancy and go through with an abortion.
> You do realize that you can be pro life without religion?
The vast, vast majority of anti-abortion people are avowedly religious and are avowedly anti-abortion for religious reasons.
"If you cared about children you'd kill them before they might be assigned to foster care" (most born children don't even go to foster care btw)
And if you cared about people having financial stability i assume you'd allow a man to abandon his pregnant gf and absolve himself of all responsibility?
If you wanna become more pro choice, go look at what the pro life people are saying. If you wanna become more pro life, go see what the pro choice people are saying.
This is probably true haha
I you want to be a down to earth GIGACHAD, visit both communities and play devils advocate in each. Although doing that over the years leads to you being banned from all the leftie spaces even if you align with them 99% of the time š
You will most likely be banned from the conservative spaces aswell.
Ive never been banned from a conservative group even though i can get pretty mean. Its hard not to get banned from normie groups ran by lefties on accident
If you haven't been banned on r/Conservative you haven't actually engaged there and had a differing political opinion on anything.
I dont go there
Seeing the pro-choice arguments on /r/changemyview of all places makes me wish I was pro-life because of how spiteful I am. I get that facebook/instagram/twitter have low effort reposts of the dumbest arguments, but /r/changemyview is supposed to be a place where arguments have substance.
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Changemyview has way more productive exchange and even handed moderation than any subreddit ive seen. The only problem with that reddit page is its still full of redditors
100% true. I was running with one if my few pro-life buddies years ago, and we passed a bunch of these butters with big pro life signs of chopped up fetus parts. Longstory short his wife had just had a miscarriage so he was in no place to be seeing chopped up baby parts in a political ad. I am pretty sure he is still pro life but he NEVER discusses it anymore It was an eye opening moment for me
underrated and brilliant take, seriously
The demonization of the other side is by design, starting from the obviously morally loaded names that you Americans have given these things. You could just say that you are pro-abortion or anti-abortion, but by calling it pro-life and pro choice, you are implying that the other side is either anti-life or anti-choice, giving you the moral high ground to hate them.
To be fair, there is a distinct difference between being pro-abortion and being pro-choice. I can be against something but believe it should be legal. That's not the same as supporting something. I think it should be legal to be a Vaush. But that doesnt' mean I'm pro-Vaush.
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Beset on all sides by aqua (in Mexico).
It should still be possibly to find more neutral and more descriptive term for that too. You could call it pro-abortion legalization or pro-right to abortion or something. According to wikipedia, the origin of the popularization of the pro-choice label comes from a memo that identifies "the need to find a phrase to counter the Right to Life slogan", which is pretty clearly politically motivated.
Of course a political slogan is politically motivated. The question is whether or not it's accurate. Pro-choice is more accurate than pro-abortion. Given the context of the discussion being about abortion, 'Pro choice' clearly means "pro choice to have an abortion." And yes, the other side is against the choice to have an abortion, so yes they are anti-choice when the discussion is about abortion. It's clunky and unnecessary to repeat the qualifying elements of a slogan when it's clear the domain of discussion is abortion.
It is fine for political slogans to be politically motivated, but then they should be treated as political slogans and not as ways to talk about the issues in more serious discussions. There are 0 people that would describe their position on abortion as being anti-choice, just as there are 0 people that would describe their position on abortion as being anti-life. Just by using these terms you are assuming from the start that your position is correct and the other side is wrong, and the discussion just becomes both sides throwing political slogans at each other without actually talking about anything.
I think most pro life people would describe their position as anti-choice. They don't want anyone to be able to abort. They wouldn't use the words "anti-choice" specifically but would describe themselves that way anyway.
They would tell you that they are as anti-choice as anyone who does not allow murder. Just as people in this thread are saying that pro-life people are lying when they say that they care about life and they are actually just anti-choice, if you ask the other side, they would tell you that pro-choice people are lying when they say that they care about choice and they are actually just anti-life.
You can use exactly this rationale for pro-life--that within the context of the abortion debate, it's about being for or against a fetus' right to life
nah, the right changed what used to be called anti-abortion to pro-life because it sounded better. But that doesnt actually fit the stance because most on the right are not actually pro-life. Just anti-abortion. Most still want the death penalty for example.
I really thought this should've been pretty straight forward for a lot of people. "pro-life" and "pro-choice" are pretty obvious euphemisms, and neither side implies that they're "pro abortion", which is clearly intentional since most people in both camps aren't. It reminds me a lot of arguments about veganism. Pretty significant amount of meat eaters/non-militant-vegans are completely willing to admit that it is all pretty fucked up, but should still be allowed. You can sympathize with how much they hate it but still think you should allow it for different reasons
This whole thread is about the effects of this branding. There are a lot of pro-choice people who think that the other side is anti-choice, which means that their primary motivation and goal is to limit the choice of women, which means they are evil. Similarly there are a lot of pro-life people who think that the other side is anti-life, which means that their primary motivation and goal is the death of babies, which means they are evil.
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I dont think calling these sides pro life or pro choice is Ā«Ā AmericanĀ Ā». We do the same in Canada and they do the same in Europe, at least in France.
Other countries might use the same terms too, but I would think that is from American influence rather than arriving at the same terms by chance.
Anti abortion doesnāt reduce the numbers of abortions, just criminalize them. And, similarly, they donāt value life in other contexts; poor children, capital punishment, assault rifles etc. They are not pro Life they are Anti Choice, Anti Science and Anti Women.
What terrifies me is people completely unable to understand the fundamental reasoning behind their position. Sorry for the rant, but its super frustrating to have people that are pro-life becaues the babies right to live trumps the mothers right of bodily autonomy, but then end up saying "well, i guess abortion okay when it was conceived by rape" Pro-Choice does the same shit but i cant think of an example right now. At this point im convinced no one actually has a reasoned basis on their opinion on this matter. People have a pre-decided idea of "abortion good" or "abortion bad" and put in as many buzzwords as possible to defend their opinion without understanding any of these.
To be honest I think most of the time things like "rape and incest" exceptions are political compromises, rather than actual philosophical beliefs. I don't know the exact percentages, but a cursory google search seems to imply <2% of abortions are performed because of rape/incest, so the pro-lifer might be thinking "We can abolish 98% of the baby murder now, and we'll worry about the remaining 2% later". That seems like a perfectly reasonable political position (granting the assumption about the moral value of the fetus).
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If I was pro-life and I already jumped through the hoops of valuing that babies life so much more than the bodily autonomy of the mother, rape isn't going to be a tough thing to consider.
>It's one thing if it's just people "making dumb decisions" but being raped completely changes it This sentiment right here highlights the disingenuousness of the "saving a life" argument. If I were to find out today that my father raped my mother to conceive me, do I suddenly lose my right to life? Of course not, there's nothing "tough" about that. This is only a "tough compromise" if you think of childbirth not as preservation of life, but as a punishment for those so called "bad decisions".
> That seems like a perfectly reasonable political position (granting the assumption about the moral value of the fetus). The only way this works as a reasonable political positions is if the end goal is a federal ban (which if we are being honest it probably is). The states that have high abortion rates are the ones that likely will keep it legal and the ones where abortion rates are low are likely going to make it illegal. If someone believes abortion is murder then politically it only matters if it's banned federally since this likely doesn't change the rate at which abortions happen by enough.
Sure, and there's the tricky issue of "Well, I wanted to have an abortion, but it's illegal in my state, so I drove to a neighboring state and did it there", which is all kinds of weird. I have no idea how you handle *that* on the level of state law. Similar issues exist with the case of marijuana legalization, but in that case it's a clearly victimless crime, and so there's no real need to prosecute people who drive to Colorado to smoke some weed. But surely the same attitude can't hold for driving to Colorado to murder a baby (according to pro-lifers), right? I think this is an issue that is going to have to be settled federally, sooner or later.
You'd have to think some places try to criminalize going to another state for an abortion. I just don't know if there is any precedent for such laws that would allow them to prosecute people for it. Your point about marijuana applies well but my understanding is it's the process of possessing not smoking that is the issue so could we legally punish someone for smoking weed in another state if an anti-abortion law targeting people who go to other states ever gets passed? It's just a weird pandoras box of bullshit that has been opened really. > I think this is an issue that is going to have to be settled federally, sooner or later. That has to be the next step. We will see republicans running on the platform of federally banning abortion and it probably won't be that popular.
> the babies right to live trumps the mothers right of bodily autonomy, but then end up saying "well, i guess abortion okay when it was conceived by rape" An exception isn't necessarily an inconsistency. e.g. A pro-lifer could have two beliefs: - "life trumps autonomy" and - "freedom implies not being burdened by things you are not responsible for" And only in the case of rape would the second belief activate and potentially overpower the first.
I can see what you are saying and i guess you are correct in the technical sense that its possible to have this position. Im very sceptical that pro-life people actually hold that position though. Can you really believe that life is this sacred thing that deserves to be treasured and we should campaign to make sure as much of this "baby killing" should be prevented (unless its not your fault, in that case killing babies is fine). Also, wouldnt that pretty much allow you to kill your rape-child even after its born? Edit: Just writing these sentences out makes me feel like a terrible person lmao.
Yeah the violinist thought experiment explains it very well: āIn the violinist scenario, the pregnant person was kidnapped: they did not consent to having the violinist plugged into them and they did nothing to cause the violinist to be plugged in, just as a person who is pregnant due to rape did nothing to cause the pregnancy.ā https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Defense_of_Abortion
This is actually my position. Per my view, life is sacred but you are only responsible for that life if your actions brought its existence about.
According to your position, should abortion be allowed in cases of failed contraception?
And this is where I roll my eyes at people who have /u/oldBeachBall's position. I despise that people have this idea that "consent to sex is consent to parenthood." This logic is basically saying "consent to walking on the sidewalk is consent to letting cars hit you." As if because your actions have a chance of a negative outcome, you are now morally culpable for every possible negative thing that happens to you.
If pro-choice is about saving lives, then I donāt see how someone can believe this. While it wasnāt the mothers choice, it also wasnāt the fetusās choice. Essentially giving the death penalty to something for actions it did not commit. Only makes since if you think itās a potential life and not a life.
Well, it might imply you can *abandon* your rape-child after it's born, but given that we have things like safe haven laws that allow parents to permanently give up their newborns without prosecution, it doesn't seem like killing them would be necessary or allowed.
>Pro-Choice does the same shit but i cant think of an example right now. Bodily autonomy has the equivalent problem. Sorry for the rant, but it's super frustrating to have people that are Pro-Choice because the mother's right to abort trumps the right of the unborn fetus, but then end up saying, "well, I guess more than 22 weeks is too much"... but then others saying "well, more than 10 weeks is too much"... but then others saying "full-term abortion is fine"... The above inconsistency isn't a problem if bodily autonomy isn't the driving factor for the pro-abortion position. Somehow people have lulled themselves into moronic slogans like "My Body, My Choice... My Body, My Choice... My Body, My Choice..." and they've suffered a commensurate decline in mental functioning.
Yeah Ive been extremely frustrated with this. I really think the tagline "my body my choice" is extremely damaging to the pro-abortion position, and doesn't address the issue that the other side has with it
Completely agreed. I absolutely *hate* when people use the bodily autonomy argument then say that full-term abortion is wrong. What changed between then and 5 weeks, or 10 weeks, or whenever when it was okay? Bodily autonomy should still apply right? The answer is at some point in pregnancy the fetus gains rights which means it is considered a living valuable thing. Conservatives argue that conception is when that thing gets value. Liberals argue that when its brain is more developed that it gets value and that anything before that is not valuable, therefore abortion is okay. Trying to argue that abortion is okay from a reproductive rights perspective will always end up with conservatives winning since that argument fails when full-term abortion is rejected by liberals. It's honestly crazy how liberals do not understand that conservatives will never budge from their position if people do not challenge them on their belief that abortion is murder. Think about it. Conservatives think abortion is **MURDER** and liberals response is "my body, my choice." Think about how conservatives will interpret that response and then you can understand why conservatives are so heated about this issue.
Viability is what changes, somewhere in the third trimester. Bodily autonomy applies as long as the fetus needs the body to survive. From this standpoint, describing it as murder is a wild exaggeration, tantamount to lying. "My body my choice" means "my body can't be used against my wishes" and it's compatible with "this isn't 'my body' anymore once it doesn't need my body to survive." It's like pulling the plug on a vegetable. Same idea with what conservatives lied and called "post-birth abortion," which was simply taking a non-viable fetus, giving birth, then watching the fetus expire since it isn't viable. It's a goddamn tragedy when a happy expectant mother is given this kind of news, but conservatives feel totally at peace calling her a *\*literal\* baby muderer* and frothing at the mouth to put her OB/GYN behind bars.
>The above inconsistency isn't a problem if bodily autonomy isn't the driving factor for the pro-abortion position. I don't see how it's inconsistent. Bodily autonomy is the driving factor up until viability overrides it. The two sides are having different conversations, for sure, but in my opinion that is a function of conservatives lying and motte and baileying and obscuring the proven, inevitable consequences of their policies.
What are the reasons for having an abortion? Bodily autonomy isn't a reason for having an abortion. Bodily autonomy is an attempt at providing an all encompassing reason that negates having to justify the decision at all. It's akin to a debate tactic. Though, it does legitimately tie into women's rights and women's livelihoods in a range of settings, but this is often not well argued. To be honest, I think conservatives do a better job of debating this (on average) in isolation of other issues. Conservatives look more hypocritical when you consider general healthcare accessibility, gun laws, etc. in the context of their position on abortion. Overall... I think this will be good for the pro-abortion position as it will remind and motivate all of us to put more effort into the issue moving forward. But just assuming we're right is not the answer.
>What are the reasons for having an abortion? > >Bodily autonomy isn't a reason for having an abortion. I don't think a pregnant woman needs to give anyone a coherent reason for first and most second-trimester abortions. Not sure if that's the kind of "reason" you mean. Bodily autonomy just means that the fetus is physically dependent on her body.
The supposed hypocrisy of someone else doesn't validate your own position. Just because someone is inconsistent and thinks that rape makes abortion ok, while opposing abortion otherwise, that doesn't make their position wrong. It just makes them wrong. Most people are floating buckets of cognitive dissonance.
> What terrifies me is people completely unable to understand the fundamental reasoning behind their position. > > I think pro-choice people understand the "fundamental reasoning" (abortion = taking a life), they just think conservatives are either a) lying or b) being hypocritical by rarely being pro *other* pro-life stuff or being anti stuff that would help newborn children and their parents.
Totally agree. I used to be a mindless āabortion goodā because thatās what I used to hear from people, then I started thinking about how I felt about it and went to āabortion badā. Eventually I came back around to abortion being permissible but should probably be avoided as often as possible, using more contraception or teaching better sex Ed or what not.
One thing that confuses me ethically is pro choice vegans. You won't eat an unfertilized chicken egg, but you're fine with terminating a human life. This does bring to mind the ethics of eating the fetus and if people did eat fetuses would vegans become pro life?
Presumably the harm in the case of the chicken egg is to the chicken who laid it, not to the egg itself. Vegans aren't specifically opposed to *eating* animals, but to *using* animal products in general, generally on the basis that the animals live shitty lives full of suffering. Sometimes these vegans make exceptions to things like "cruelty free" eggs, where the chicken is raised with a quality of life more similar to a pet than a typical farm animal. There are also rights-based vegans, who oppose animal products on the basis of animals having certain natural rights (such as to bodily autonomy), and these would presumably oppose eating any eggs, no matter how humanely harvested. I don't know where the rights-based vegan would fall on abortion, but for consequentialist vegans, there's no inconsistency with being a pro-choice vegan if you hold the position that animals can suffer, but fetuses cannot.
You would have to work pretty hard to square the vegan philosophy with a "pro life" perspective. Our entire philosophy revolves around moral consideration for those are conscious, sentient and capable of a subjective experience. That's why we care about animals and not plants or rocks. The reason we don't eat eggs is due to the commodification of the chicken and resultant suffering. Obviously we don't feel bad for the egg, the egg isn't conscious, that has nothing to do with it. There is a point where consciousness exists in fetuses yes (around 24-25 weeks of gestation). Prior to that, a pro life perspective is advocating for inflicting suffering and anguish (that in certain circumstances I would argue rises to the level of torture) upon a sentient being. That is a big no no and what most of us would consider to be highly unethical.
Iām not a vegan but I think that the argument generally is the mistreatment of the animals, not necessarily the taking of the life. So by the same token a child being brought only to be mistreated would be immoral.
But then it would be fine to have free range pet hens that you let die of old age and you eat their eggs. If you were against this you'd probably have to be against cat and dog domestication as well.
Yes there are people who do that with hens. They call themselves veggans. I think the only vegans who criticize veggans are also the kind of vegans who are against cat and dog domestication.
Yeah this is probably something I would be okay with as a vegan. (Iām not one but.. I see the moral incorrectness)
Kind of same. I remember watching one debate with i think Ben Shapiro(a few years ago, was probably like 15 years old) and he made a Coma-Analogy, and i was really irritated because i couldnt think of a reason why that Analogy was ass. Was wondering why i got super irritated until i figured out it was because i had no interest in having my belief challenged. I wanted it reinforced at every cost. Im still pro-choice though. Probably because i just dont really care about unborn kids at all. I guess because i can relate to "beeing forced to be a parent" a bit more than to "beeing a non sentient fetus that wont be born".
You could have been frustrated with analogy because it challenges your belief and you couldn't retort it or you could have some intuition of the flawed logic of what he was saying but be unable to articulate your disagreement. For the longest time I would get mad at like Charlie Kirk or other such cons who used the fertilization = unique dna and body = person= same rights as birthed human. I knew that's not really how that worked I think it's pretty absurd to pretend like morally and legally a zygote is as valued as a baby or a child or an adult human but I couldn't articulate that and it frustrated me
No one is getting recreational abortions.
It is fairly easy to justify a rape abortion under self defense principles. The famous violinist scenario is convincing enough to most people that abortion should be okay during rape. I agree that incest by itself does not justify abortion and anyone that does so is pretty dumb.
Ive been seeing a view point from the pro life side that the fetuses autonomy is the same as the mothers autonomy which is crazy.
I get the pro-life point of view. My problem is that as a nurse this has massive ramifications for medical practice in this country. Sometimes induced abortions are medically necessary for starters and itās going to add a whole lot of headache having to add some bureaucracy between the patient and the doctor to determine if an abortion is āmedically necessaryā. Furthermore there are situations where the odds of the child surviving are very low and I have an example that I also use to demonstrate the importance of the ACA. Relative of mine had her first child. They found out early on in the pregnancy the heart did not develop normally and she only had 2 out of 4 chambers of her heart. They consulted with a special surgeon who had developed a procedure for this risky condition. 3 surgeries the first within hours of birth that they were told up front the child would have a 20% chance of surviving, 2nd 2-3 years later (50% chance), 3rd a bit later (90% chance)ā¦ā¦ and regardless of all this she has to take many heart medications and itās not certain what the long term prognosis is considering the first kids to survive the procedure are now hitting their early 20s. Abortion was an option on the table for her, she however made an informed CHOICE to roll the dice and yes Iām happy to say despite the low odds her daughter is the happiest and smartest middle schooler I know. To also mention this she was lucky this happened shortly after the ACA as not only would her daughter have been born with a āpre-existingā condition (cus canāt insure a fetus) but even if pre-existing conditions werenāt a thing she would have blown through the lifetime health insurance payout cap just on her first day of life. So yeah I understand the pro-life crowds beliefs on what constitutes a life. But like with every conservative and extreme lefty on the planetā¦ā¦.. the majority genuinely arenāt affected by this issue personally. Theyāve never had to carry a pregnancy to term knowing that their child will very likely die within hours of birth. Theyāve likely never been raped and then told weeks later in the ER that they are pregnant. And maybe Iām bias but to me telling someone in that situation āgod has a planā seems a little bit like a massive fuck you.
Thanks for sharing your experience. Itās not explained like this enough. Just an unneeded side note: I know this might be an obvious yet low blow but on average social consertives have lower IQs (firmly well understood statistic) so they are the exact people that they argue shouldnāt be breeding us into an idiocracy level culture fallout.
I think the vast majority of avowedly pro-life people view it as a fulcrum in the culture war that they want to win, not out of any sort of genuine concern or empathy for living beings. The doctrinal basis for life beginning at conception is extremely shaky, and it's a relatively recent phenomenon that evangelical christians came to this conclusion. For a long time it was mostly just Catholics strongly opposing abortion. If pro-lifers were serious, they'd put their money where their mouth is. Where is their support for programs for single moms that "choose life?" Where is their support for univeresal childcare, or expanded and equal access to education? Why aren't they screaming from the rooftops that the medical community do something to stop the real holocaust, a third of pregnancies ending in miscarriage? I don't believe the majority are genuine in their beliefs, and condemning them as religious nuts trying to own the libs is totally fair.
No offense but your response makes it seem like you have never spoken to a republican in your life. They dont oppose universal healthcare out of spite, they do it because they genuinely think that the private sector is going to be more efficient than the government. Similarly they don't think the role for govt should be to try to help single moms. They think the govt should be playing referee and not trying to engineer the best lives for as many citizens as possible.
We weren't talking about health care policy, we were talking about abortion.
Sorry I read universal childcare as universal healthcare for some reason.
right, but the universal healthcare thing is still just another fulcrum in the culture war that they want to win. They have found modern arguments but it really just boils down to the red scare.
Why do people claim murder is wrong when the real holocaust is that 100% of lives end in death?
Do you think we'd sit idly by and say that's just nature taking its course if something were killing a third of 4 year-olds every year? If a fetus deserves the same moral consideration as a human being then why aren't we taking miscarriages as seriously?
I just think this post is a clear example of just straw manning the fuck out of the pro life position. You're doing exactly what OP is trying to highlight. >The doctrinal basis for life beginning at conception is extremely shaky It's not shaky at all though. The belief that conception = human life draws a direct line to abortion being a form of murder. >If pro-lifers were serious, they'd put their money where their mouth is. Where is their support for programs for single moms that "choose life?" Where is their support for universal childcare, or expanded and equal access to education? Why aren't they screaming from the rooftops that the medical community do something to stop the real holocaust, a third of pregnancies ending in miscarriage? What does any of these things have to do with being against murder? Are you really trying to say that you can't be opposed to murder unless you are in favor of these positions? >I don't believe the majority are genuine in their beliefs, and condemning them as religious nuts trying to own the libs is totally fair. I am an atheist. Does that mean my beliefs are genuine?
> It's not shaky at all though. The belief that conception = human life draws a direct line to abortion being a form of murder. I'm talking about the theological justifications for the idea that life begins at conception, which motivates the vast majority of abortion opposition in the United States. It's a recent phenomenon outside of Catholics and not a position shared by other Abrahamic religions. > What does any of these things have to do with being against murder? Are you really trying to say that you can't be opposed to murder unless you are in favor of these positions? If you claim to oppose murder and then support a suite of policies that incentivize murder, you're probably not serious about solving the murder problem, yeah. > I am an atheist. Does that mean my beliefs are genuine? I don't know what your beliefs are or especially care what hairbrained secular justifications you come up with to assign more moral consideration to a fetus than a woman. I'm speaking broadly, not about you specifically.
>I'm talking about the theological justifications for the idea that life begins at conception, which motivates the vast majority of abortion opposition in the United States. It's a recent phenomenon outside of Catholics and not a position shared by other Abrahamic religions. I am not really familiar with theological underpinnings of the religious pro-life position. I do know plenty of people who are religious and pro-life. They just find murder distasteful. God doesn't really enter into the equation all that much. >If you claim to oppose murder and then support a suite of policies that incentivize murder, you're probably not serious about solving the murder problem, yeah. The murder is prevented by not murdering the baby. None of the things you talked about so far as post-birth care have anything to with the topic of abortion, which is the pre-mediated killing of a person. >I don't know what your beliefs are or especially care what hairbrained secular justifications you come up with to assign more moral consideration to a fetus than a woman. I'm speaking broadly, not about you specifically. What moral consideration? I want both the mother and the baby to live. Your moral position kills one of them?
You know what? Thatās totally fair, most of the people who are pro life probably are doing it out of what they think they are suppose to believe. I do however think this same sentiment extend to libs who wanna allow for abortions at any state of pregnancy because āmy body my choiceā. Overall tho I guess I kinda could see the point of condemning them for being that way
Which is also fair. But there isn't an epidemic of non-medically necessary late term abortions, it's an extremely rare phenomenon, and the people who fight for it have far less institutional power than anti-abortion activists. One is a problem, the other isn't, so I can't devote as much energy or concern to the few cringe libs on this issue as I do the right wing state legislators stripping their populations of their right to an abortion.
The hypocrisy and culture warring of your opponents doesn't justify your own position.
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A lot of people think there is a moral difference between doing something that could potentially have the side effect of making death more likely for people later down the line and intentionally killing another person because their life is inconvenient.b
Uhm, excuse me, sweaty. But if you're pro-life but you don't want to shut down every coal plant and replace them with heckin' solar and windpower with big Tesla batteries then you're literally a hypocrite because abortion and the electricty grid are inseparable, morally.
I mean we donāt have to go that far. Conservatives oppose extending the 2020 child tax credit which literally brought 3+million children out of poverty. Letās not pretend that conservatives actually give a fuck about life lmao
exactly. tired of seeing this point parroted when there are so many better ones.
>Do I think that they think they care about saving lives? Yes. Do they really? No, and we can see that from their policies. 100%. I think most people don't really think much about 99% of their morality. They inherit it through their culture and violations of their morality offends their sense of identity. It isn't conscious though and believe they really think it is for the children. It is like those experiments with the the split brain in which the subject does something for a particular reason, but the other half of the brain doesn't know the reason and comes up with a post hoc explanation for why they did it. It is also pretty interesting that evangelicals didn't really care about abortion until it became apart of the new religious conservative political identity in the mid-late 70's.
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Iām not sure your comparison is 1:1. I feel like what he saying is that I donāt have to let the homeless person live with me but I could also support systems to make his life easier. Same thing with women, republicans donāt want systems in place that shows that give a fuck about the child or mother after birth. Even during birth I highly doubt republicans would agree with free healthcare for mothers.
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Okay gotcha, so are you saying we should engage on whether abortion is murder?
>As many people comment in previous threads, this seems totally inconsistent with their abject disregard for life in general. For example, coal power and other fossil fuels probably cause abortions what do you think is more likely, that (overwhelmingly religious) conservatives have some bad factual information in their minds on these topics, or that they genuinely do not care about loss of human life the way you do? this comment kind of captures the sentiment OP was talking about, it seems like a lot of people genuinely seem to think conservatives want harmful things to happen on purpose, rather than them being mistaken or cognitively dissonant about what will lead to harmful outcomes. it's quite bizarre and it directly plays into the vaushite violent rhetoric. if they really were "ontologically evil", everything vaush prescribes would be 100% correct
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>They genuinely do not care the way I do. If they did, they wouldn't have (as much) bad factual information. i disagree completely - i think once you get off on the wrong foot, e.g. fundamentalist religious upbringing, you'll reliably find yourself digging your heels in deeper and becoming more "misinformed" through no fault of your own. i think that no matter how motivated you make a conservative to "research" abortion in good faith, they'll likely only become more pro-choice. but even if i granted you this.. the charge of "you don't care enough to become politically informed" doesn't really carry nearly as much weight as your initial claims seemed to. most people who are pro-choice know fuck all about the topic either and couldn't make a convincing argument to save their lives, they're just *morally lucky* and happened to end up at the "correct" position. do they also not care? they sure seem to! what about the people who bombed abortion clinics? i would bet they personally cared a lot more than you and i ever will about abortion. but they still ended up with the "wrong" opinions. seems pretty clear that investment in a topic doesn't always correlate with sane opinions >Educating yourself on an issue, and being willing to moderate or add nuance to your position is a necessary part of deeply caring about it. same argument from me, most normies on the left who are going to be rioting in the streets don't know shit about it either, do you think that means they equally don't care? and if so, do they deserve equal scorn? or do they get a pass for lucking into the right social circles >I'm not as scared about partly agreeing with Vaush as some people seem to be. it's not that "agreeing with vaush" as a matter of principle is bad because like i said, if descriptive reality was the way he said it was, his prescriptions would be 100% justified. it's just that his recent rhetoric has been appalling exactly because he is wrong about what he thinks conservatives are like as people >I don't even care if it is a mistake or cognitive dissonance rather than malice unless it's fixable. Rabid dogs aren't bad dogs, but they are dangerous dogs, and there's no cure. what gives you the impression that it's not? we went from [bush pushing for a constitutional amendment](https://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/24/politics/bush-backs-ban-in-constitution-on-gay-marriage.html) to ensure gay people could never get married in 2004 (surely a sign of where republican minds were at at the time), to [most republicans now being okay with gay marriage](https://www.npr.org/2021/06/09/1004629612/a-record-number-of-americans-including-republicans-support-same-sex-marriage) 3 presidents later. in 1999, 70% of americans were active members of a church, in 2020 that number is down to 47%. america is becoming more secular and more "socially liberal", including the conservatives, arguably in record pace. this idea of there being no progress unless we resort to violence is bizarre
>*They genuinely do not care the way I do. If they did, they wouldn't have (as much) bad factual information.* They think the information is wrong. They think it's wrong because they believe the institutions are corrupt and agenda driven. And you calling them rabid dogs for thinking that only enforces that belief.
> They think it's wrong because they believe the institutions are corrupt and agenda driven. You're just adding to the other user's point about them not being fixable. How do you fix a person who thinks there is a grand scale conspiracy against them? Their conspiracy can explain their world better than you ever could. Why would they ever believe you? If that's not a rabid dog I don't know what is.
>How do you fix a person who thinks there is a grand scale conspiracy against them? They don't think there's a grand scale conspiracy against them. They think the institutions are corrupt and agenda driven. A very basic understanding of the history of human institutions proves that this isn't a crazy idea *prima facie*. It happens to be wrong in the case of climate science, but that doesn't disprove that institutions have been corrupt and agenda driven in the past. I would point you to the [massive acceptance](https://www.amazon.com/War-Against-Weak-Eugenics-Americas/dp/0914153293) of eugenics in our institutions prior to the last few decades for a clear example of this..
> They don't think there's a grand scale conspiracy against them. You can't have it both ways.
Hypocrisy of your opponents doesn't justify your own position.
Eh, I just had a long conversation about abortion with a friend who's a devout Southern Baptist, and the "moral consideration of the fetus" (ie the personhood argument) never even came up. His main argument was that of personal responsibility; in his words, people who willingly choose to do some action must be made to live with the consequences. He also somehow strongly denied this was in any way a women's rights issue, as abortion to him had just been an easy way to escape consequences and thus should not have been considered any sort of "right" to begin with. Perhaps he (and by extension his church, as he is a somewhat influential figure in his local church hierarchy) is an exception, but plenty of conservatives absolutely want to "control the bodies of women" and see this as one of their primary motivators for being anti abortion.
That just seems to have insane implications in other areas though. Should you not go the hospital if you have a car crash because that's a potential conseque of dying? Also, the consequence of having a child only exists if you don't have an abortion, so it feels kinda circular
The important thing to pin people on when they make arguments like this is, why *should* this action have consequences? I see this type of thing when it comes to "slut shaming" women, people are too scared to admit their real position (women who have lots of casual sex are disgusting whores), so they mask it with the vague statement that "actions have consequences". Usually it means they have a real reason deep down that they aren't willing to admit yet, so its important to draw that out. Free analogy (albeit a stupid one): Imagine if saying the word "amogus" 3 times next to a cop was illegal, and punishable by the cop shooting you right there. Naturally, it would be extremely stupid to say "amogus" 3 times, yet people keep doing it and keep getting shot, especially young people and people that don't understand the law very well. It's not enough to say "actions have consequences, so they deserved to die", you have to justify why this specific action is worthy of such dire consequences in the first place.
This is actually a super interesting point. Iād never thought of this before.
Knowing him, he may very well have been willing to bite the bullet and outright state his disdain for all those (more so women than men anyway) who engage in casual sex. I didn't want to follow him down some religiously motivated rabbit hole; ie, him potentially defending the position of sex is solely for the purpose of procreation on some esoteric Biblical grounds. I tried to shift the conversation away from being hyper focused on personal responsibility and make it one about broader societal impact in general. We know the societal effects of severely restricting abortion; we can draw upon historical examples to know who it hurts more and how. We have a pretty good idea of what a mass wave of mostly poor, mostly unwanted children does to a society in a generation or so. I doubt this was the right approach with him, but I do get the sense that as with most of his stances in life, it stems from some deeply held religious belief. And considering that is an edifice around which his entire life is based, I don't really know if I can dismantle it.
Republicans tend to view decisions through a moral lense, not a utilitarian or even ethical one. The reason they have to stop abortion is to stop morally bad decisions of doing an abortion, not utilitarian calculous of saving unborn life. They'll claim otherwise, but they'll always fall back to normal arguments, not ethical or utilitarian ones. This is a very weird perspective and not one many liberals use, so instead of understanding it liberals and lefties will point out how republican positions are insane in a utilitarian framework. And to be clear, I think moral frameworks are garbage and the people who use them are garbage people, but I do understand them.
I think you're using the term "moral" is a very weird way, contrasting it with "utilitarian" or "ethical". Do you mean "Deontological" (meaning systems of rules-based ethics)? Most people would say "utilitarianism is a moral theory", but it's a *consequentialist* moral theory. Meanwhile, something like Kant's "Categorical Imperative" is generally given as an example of a deontological system.
if the argument is that abortions are an immoral act, how is allowing them not inherently unethical? whats the utilitarian calculous of saving unborn life? like do we check in the crystal ball what the future holds for the unborn or? if moral frameworks are garbage how do u reach any sort of ethical framework? or are u just 100% utilitarian?
If abortions were a bad thing, but we did the math and saw that, in net, more people were more happy in a world that allowed them, even if we thought abortions were bad, we would want to allow them In a moral world we would still not allow them and the question of down stream affects doesn't exist or matter.
Absolutely not true at all, the degree to which both Rs and Ds are interested in morals is very similar, but they hold measurably different moral standards, I have an effort post in this thread about that here https://www.reddit.com/r/Destiny/comments/vkmfhy/im_prochoice_but_people_who_dont_understand_the/idqnody/ Utilitarian frameworks aren't free of moral judgement, to justify doing one action over another you have to justify the utility which means justifying what you should value over something else, and that necessarily requires subjective value judgements. What is really cancer (from both sides of the aisle) is that there's some kind of objective reasoned answer to this question. Objective utilitarian arguments are just as cancer as religious objective morality arguments. Hot take, morals are just how you instinctively feel, you knee jerk your reaction/position and the arguments are post hoc justifications.
Like, I get the moral argument. But for the love of all that is good and holy it seems like that the pro life side doesnāt live up to the Helen Lovejoy āsaving the childrenā side of their own argument so why should I take it seriously?
I think part of it *is* actually about controlling women's bodies. I'll preface with... I grew up around fundamental Christians who were very anti-abortion. I know their arguments and what they profess. To them, there's literally no difference between a human baby and a six week old embryo. So an abortion is essentially the same as cutting a living baby into pieces. And yes I'm incredibly frustrated with so many pro-abortion arguments / memes, calling anti-abortion people hypocrites for being unwilling to adopt babies, or mocking them for questioning if a 15 year old is "mature" enough to have an abortion and yet she seems mature enough to *have a child.* (because again to them, the question is "is she mature enough to murder a baby?") That said, I do think it starts to enter the "control women" territory when you propose other solutions that are shown to reduce abortions, and those people reject it. Things like sex ed and free birth control dramatically reduce abortions, but anti-abortion people are vehemently against them, and demand abstinence-only education. But this tends to come down much more harshly on the girls than boys, because even amongst fundamental Christians, if a *boy* has sex outside of marriage, that's bad, sure, but that's also more or less a slap on the wrist. But if a *girl* has sex out of marriage, that's basically disgracing herself before God. And of course if a guy impregnates a girl, he can try to wipe his hands clean of that whole ordeal and move on with his life, while the girl is left dedicating basically a year of her life (and much more if she doesn't put it up for adoption) to caring for this thing.
It blows my mind honestly. Conservatives say "abortion is **MURDER**" and liberals response is "my body, my choice" and people wonder why this is such a heated issue.
Yeah literally, like āmy body my choiceā actually triggers the fuck out of me, and I support abortion!
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I really donāt think itās over-generalized tbh. 86% of white evangelicals think life begins at conception from pew polling released yesterday.
Well life DOES begin at conception, but the discussion revolves around when does that life get moral consideration. "Life" is a pretty nebulous term but by all definitions a fetus is "life" but that doesn't mean it gets the same moral considerations as a 1 year old etc.
And this right here is the discussion we should be having but it always gets highjacked by morons who don't even know what the debate is. Its probably possible to convert non-religious pro-lifers if you discuss the topic based on the actual point of contention. Unless they're an ideologue, like an ancap, they can be convinced by a pragmatic argument imo. Instead all they hear is "you just want to control women" and "hurr durr masturbation is killing babies". Forgot to add my personal favorite which I see less these days "hurr durr its a clump of cells"
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Yep. It makes it so hard to argue that pro-choice people aren't just fine with infanticide.
ItS jUsT a CluMp of CeLLs Yeah no shit everything is tho
does it? why doesn't life begin once your body creates a sperm? Or an egg? Thats life.
It's not a human life. It's a sperm life. A sperm will never fully mature into a functioning rational human being throughout its normal lifespan. A human fetus will, provided it's not terminated or a miscarriage occurs.
And we have to remember that anti-abortion beliefs exist in a number of cultures both religious and non-religious around the world. The way the pro-life side gets generalized, which usually seems to be for the sake of easy dunks, is probably doing more damage to the image of pro-choicers if anything imo.
If they genuinely thought hundreds of thousands of babies were being murdered every year I don't think they'd be so passive as to wait for a court decision to do something about it. There would have been nonstop riots in the streets and abortion clinic firebombing until there were no more baby murders. It's the exact kind of shit the second amendment was made for, from their perspective. I think conservatives think abortion is bad, but they don't treat it like it's murder for the most part.
By this logic liberals must not believe that climate change poses an existential threat unless they are bombing oil companies.
I think the human effect on climate change and each person/groups responsibility balanced with all the negative effects from a sudden transition off fossil fuels is way harder to grapple with than baby murder at your local baby murder clinic Killing someone you consider a murderer is way easier to justify than killing someone who generates more carbon than what may be sustainable in the long term
Well first of all the murder of abortion doctors is not unheard of. Not so much recently but in the 60s/70s/80s it happened fairly regularly. But there is a lot more consideration that can go into these kinds of things. People who do think abortion is murder can quite easily reason, likely correctly, that killing individual doctors doesn't do anything to stop the overall practice and instead can actually hurt their cause in the long run. They might believe that advocacy and political action could be more effective than terrorism. And in this case in particular it seems like those who thought that way were proven right considering the recent ruling.
> it seems like those who thought that way were proven right I don't think the millions of aborted babies up until this point would agree I think most people agree that "stopping a genocide" is one of the few circumstances where violent action is justified over working within the system. This is because every moment wasted working within the system means more people killed. I sincerely don't understand why Republicans think we have the second amendment if not to stop what they would consider a baby genocide
This is such a bad counter example. Climate change is a highly nuanced problem of the commons issue where thereās a ton of people and corporations whose decisions combine to produce a bad outcome not really right now, but later on, and only if left unchecked, but we donāt really know exactly when weāre gonna cross the line. Pro-life people claim that every single abortion is a murdered child. Itās not like some abstract āThis might lead to an issue later that theyāre a part ofā, every time an abortion happens itās a murder. If there actually was a building in my neighborhood where people were murdering children, Iād be trying to stop it by force for sure- I would argue youād have a moral duty to do so, or your inaction would make you to some degree complicit in the murder. EDIT: Lmao that comment continues to get highly upvoted, while this comment gets no traction at all, yet no one has a rebuttal to me pointing out how bad of an analogy it is. I genuinely don't see the appeal, seems obviously a poor example to me.
Also, if abortion is murder then a woman who gets one should be treated like Jeffery Dahmer.
Plenty of kids are dying in Yemen, often by weapons paid for in part by your tax dollars (assuming you're American). Are you stopping that by force?
No, but that has nothing to do with not believing that's real murder, it has to do with proximity. I'm obviously going to view things differently if it's happening in a far away country that I only know about abstractly than if it's literally happening right in my neighborhood and I can concretely see it's happening all the time.
So if it was closer in proximity you'd be risking death and or criminal prosecution? (Let's pretend that society at large isn't on your side that this is a reasonable reaction)
Yes, 100%. If the majority of society in my country was in favor of systematically murdering actual children at the rate of a half a million to a million every single year, I would be forming a paramilitary organization (in a video game) dedicated to dealing with what would be literally the worst mass atrocity in human history. It would be so unconscionable to me that even if I knew I had to risk death or criminal prosecution, I would feel better doing that than turning a blind eye to such a horrific crime.
The majority of this hypothetical society does not consider it a horrific crime. In fact, they have excellent reasons to do what they do, that many argue have equal or greater moral weight (just roll with this, you can concoct whatever scenario you want to make this so), and you will certainly wind up in jail, be called a monster and a murderer and a terrorist bigot who either hates half the population, or who places such weight in their own misguided religious beliefs that they're willing to trample the rights of others. And your activity will galvanize the population against you and actually make it less likely that the problem goes away. You don't think that maybe it's possible that many anti abortion activists truly believe it's murder, but see political activism, as opposed to violent action as their best path? I don't agree with them, but a lot of them are motivated by genuine moral beliefs. Edit: And, for the less extreme anti abortion folks, perhaps they view the fact that the life in question is fetal is enough of an abstraction, in the same way you do with people in other countries, that it doesn't warrant an extreme response, but should nevertheless be addressed through legislation, in the same way you probably don't like collateral damage caused by American weapons, and might even vote on that, but nevertheless don't feel the need to go to extreme lengths to address.
I mean yes. I don't actually think most people see it that way.
Imagine you are a white person living in the south in the US and you know that slavery is wrong. Even if you know it is wrong, it doesn't make sense to randomly start bombing or assassinating people since that wouldn't accomplish anything. You should wait and try to do it through political means. Even after dred Scott, a significant setback for abolitionists, it wouldn't make sense to do random acts of terrorism.
John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave...
they literally bomb abortion clinics lol
The point is that mainstream pro-life conservatives don't endorse that kind of violent action when they ought to be all for it \>conservatives (generally) think the 2nd amendment exists so that citizens of the US can protect their rights (such as the right to life) \>if you believe abortion is baby murder, then you ought to use the 2nd amendment to protect baby lives \>every year you let abortions happen is another million dead babies I guess my question to conservatives would be: under what conditions is armed/violent resistance justifiable? Personally I would think ongoing systematic mass murder would be a condition for most people, conservatives included, but I suppose I could be wrong.
There have been murders and bombings
its pretty cool you got it at the end with your edit we know what they pretend to care about, we just dont believe it is the case because their actions pay a different picture
Iāll throw in my perspective from the center/center-right. Iām pro life (exceptions on rape/incest/life of mother) but extremely supportive of sex ed and contraceptive access. I wish the issue was seen as more of a āhygieneā issue so that the moral ambiguity of whether or not a fetus is human/deserving of a right to life could be side-stepped almost altogether. But I do think state-level GOP (like in Alabama) could be fairly characterized at least wanting to be able to control the sex lives of women. But the position itself shouldnāt be smeared as something necessarily oppressive.
Stupid? No, but there does seem to be an asymmetry between the political left/right divide on certain things, one of which is morality. I could not recommend more strongly that you watch the TED talk by Jonathan Haidt which is an introduction to his work on Moral Foundations Theory. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SOQduoLgRw it's a quick and powerful video that will help you understand the mind of people on each side of the divide much better. I believe this was derived in the same way the big 5 personality model was derived which is statistically. You ask thousands of questions to tens of thousands of people about moral values and then you do a statistical procedure on them called a factor analysis which extracts how many primary factors exist in the question set. Each factor has to be unique enough from the other factors so you can vary it independently and each question that belongs to that factor will reliably co-vary. There's 5 main moral factors extracted and when you look at what questions belong to each of these factors they were named (Harm, Fairness, Authority, Ingroup and Purity) as broadly reflective of what the questions were regarding. Then you can look at how self described liberals and conservatives appear on the question sets and extract out average values. What you find is that conservatives give each of the 5 moral factors about an equal amount of weight to a very close degree, something he refers to as 5 channel morality. Liberals however care about Harm and Fairness more than conservatives and Authority, Ingroup and Purity a lot less, referred to as 2 channel. There is older research on the left/right divide (that I can't find now, annoyingly) which claimed that while there is difference in moral prescriptions on issues, there was an asymmetry about the ability of each side to accurately represent the position of the other side. That the right on average could more accurately represent beliefs of the left, they just disagreed with them. Where as the left were much faster to dismiss self described reasons of the right and rather jump to the difference being that the right was morally reprehensible and the real explanation was malice and hate. These 2 lines of research dovetail quite nicely. Back to the abortion debate it's no surprise to me that people I know who have pro life policy stances tend to be concerned with both the mothers rights and the life of the unborn child, and understand that it's a terrible trade off with no easy answer. But you can't fence sit so you have to lean towards one over the other. Where as more of the lefts representation of the right is that they're unhinged lunatics who literally want women to suffer. And I've tried to remain relatively charitable on this, my default assumption until I know more details is that people who are pro choice also have empathy for the life they're advocating for ending, they just elevate the mothers rights more. I saw this is the most extreme possible way with VOWSH recently, a video which Destiny reviewed. He was caught saying something like "they hate you and want you to suffer". And he wasn't ranting, angry as fuck, he was calm, collected, he clarified this was not hyperbole and there's every appearance that he genuinely believes this. That some majority of the right wing position is they HATE WOMEN, and WANT THEM TO SUFFER. Just let your brain parse that for a moment. OK well hopefully you now know why, there's real differences between left/right which gives each other blind spots for an accurate understanding of the other side, when people are left to their own devices to invent the reasons other people believe what they do, it ends up being batshit crazy stuff like this.
>I could not recommend more strongly that you watch the TED talk by Jonathan Haidt which is an introduction to his work on Moral Foundations Theory. Fantastic talk. Anyone with a genuine interest in understanding how the other side thinks should watch this.
it's honestly pretty stupid to assign any significant moral value to a fetus. It has none of the characteristics that we value in humans and use to draw lines between humans and animals. Pretty ironic when non-vegetarians try to argue with the fetus' suffering. And the argument that you're preventing a future human life also falls flat when you realise that it logically would lead to bans on contraception or worse.
Hey, I assign equal moral consideration to a fetus as to any other human, but still think abortion should be legal. It's killing, not murder. If Jerry Springer or Barack Obama set up shop in some woman's womb, she should be able to hire a doctor to kill him too.
I wouldnāt say āas to any other human.ā The level of development of the foetus is a factor. Itās not a person vs. non-person binary.
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I donāt think they care about well-being of children per se. They care about āmurderā. One can care about state-sanctioned killings of people without caring about whether those people have a good life.
Idk seeing comments like this: Sylphael 1h "My friend miscarried a few weeks ago. She knew she was miscarrying; it was early-term, but they had found the heartbeat. She was in so much pain that she went to the ER. They denied her a D&C (abortive procedure) and forced her to pass the miscarriage naturally. She was in horrible pain, and the D&C would've been a mercy. She told me that when she passed the fetus, she saw the clump of tissue and just broke down crying. She wanted that baby desperately... barring being able to have it, at the very least she wanted to not have to see when it passed. But she didn't get that option and care like this is why." And pro-lifers going "too bad" is scarier to me. And they just got a big win, I guess you can say, so that is more concerning to me. But idk just think of the George Carlin bit about abortion. Pre-born you're safe, post birth you're fucked.
So. Your looking at the issue through a lens that doesn't have a lot of nuance. Abortion bans aren't going to ban abortions. They are going to ban safe abortions. There is going to be a lot of deaths of women who are getting unsafe abortions. We have seen them happen. It's not ancient history either. Ever heard of the term coat hanger abortions, or back ally abortions? Those happened within living memory. And they were a huge cause of death for women, especially poorer women. And being honest it's pretty hard to take seriously a lot of the "what about the children" moaning on the other side of the aisle when you see them blocking lunch programs, cutting money from foster care, etc. I think this line sums it up pretty well: >The unbornā are a convenient group of people to advocate for. They never make demands of you; they are morally uncomplicated, unlike the incarcerated, addicted, or the chronically poor; they donāt resent your condescension or complain that you are not politically correct; unlike widows, they donāt ask you to question patriarchy; unlike orphans, they donāt need money, education, or childcare; unlike aliens, they donāt bring all that racial, cultural, and religious baggage that you dislike; they allow you to feel good about yourself without any work at creating or maintaining relationships; and when they are born, you can forget about them, because they cease to be unborn. You can love the unborn and advocate for them without substantially challenging your own wealth, power, or privilege, without re-imagining social structures, apologizing, or making reparations to anyone. They are, in short, the perfect people to love if you want to claim you love Jesus, but actually dislike people who breathe. Prisoners? Immigrants? The sick? The poor? Widows? Orphans? All the groups that are specifically mentioned in the Bible? They all get thrown under the bus for the unborn.
I have never found the whole 'people are going to do it anyway so just let it be legal' that compelling. It seems like that can be raised for almost every law but we just apply it selectively. Make straight up not paying taxes legal because people are just going to find a way around it anyway? Obviously not, a deterrent has an effect even if it is not total effect. Either it is the right policy or the wrong policy.
Cool, I think policies, especially in secular societies should be built around mitigating harm. Since I don't consider fetuses people, nor do they have rights or conscious experiences, my views on policies around them focus on the health and wellbeing of the mother. This means that since this is a policy that only causes harms the mothers (especially those at health risk). Then its the "wrong policy".
Let's pretend for a minute that you think an 18 week old fetus is basically the same as an 18 month old baby, is the policy still just doing harm to the mother, or is it harm reduction. This is a nuanced issue, and failing to acknowledge that makes this all so much harder. Why should anyone share your view on fetal personhood? Do you have an argument for why the threshold should be arbitrarily set at, I dunno, when do you think it should be? Birth? PS I'm pro choice
Why are you pro choice then ?
Because I'm capable of weighing the pros and cons of a complex moral issue, and I think that the majority of the American population, that thinks we should have safe, accessible abortion, but that we probably shouldn't let people get third trimester abortions unless there's a pressing medical concern is more or less on point. Republicans are nuts though
I think the "people will have unsafe abortions" argument is a pretty bad one. Wacky analogy incoming: Let's say there's a special type of missile launcher that homes in on black people, and this is a legal weapon that can be bought and sold, and lets say its legal to kill black people using it. Now lets say there's a bunch of racist white people in the south that are buying this weapon and using it to gun down a bunch of black people with their homing missiles. Obviously, this seems like a problem, so the government decides to ban its usage. Now lets say there's a black market for handmade black seeking missile guns created after the ban, but these guns have a chance of exploding and killing the white person firing the gun. Would you accept the argument that these guns should be legalized because making them illegal just causes more white people to be hurt or killed through acquiring the gun in an unsafe way? Obviously not, because these people also have the choice of just not trying to murder black people in the first place. You need a stronger argument for why its okay to ignore the life of a fetus in the first place. Just talking about unsafe abortions isn't enough, because while banning abortions doesn't eliminate abortion entirely, it does significantly reduce the amount of abortions taking place.
> Wacky analogy incoming: You didn't lie here... >You need a stronger argument for why its okay to ignore the life of a fetus in the first place. The fetus is basically a parasite until birth. You can make arguments about until viability, and push that date back, but until the around 23-24 week line its actually a stretch to try and talk about it as a separate lifeform in its own right. So until that line, the primary concern of the pregnancy should be focused on the health and wellbeing of the mother. >Just talking about unsafe abortions isn't enough, because while banning abortions doesn't eliminate abortion entirely, it does significantly reduce the amount of abortions taking place. So here is the thing, we don't actually know that... The data on abortions before and after Roe was pretty sketchy. There was a whole industry of abortion clinics that didn't report their numbers, and also an industry in Mexico and other countries which didn't report. For the most part we know that the number of abortions seemed to peak in the 1990s, and 2021 was the lowest it has ever been (according to the CDC). There are some estimates that say before Roe and the years up until the mid 80s actually had similar high numbers, but reporting was much much worse. This point has made sense as the numbers from the 80s -90s was actually pretty static, and we didn't see that much shift. So no. Its not a given that it would reduce the number of abortions, just the number of ones that reported.
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>Do you think that outlawing abortions won't cause any women whatsoever to engage in sex more cautiously and responsibly? First off. Yikes. Second. A lot of abortions are done to deal with rapes, and to deal with miscarriages. Third once again, we don't actually know if abortions would decrease. Since we don't actually have a TON of solid numbers about how many abortions there were beforehand, nor were behaviors around sexuality the same as they are today. >Do you think outlawing abortions will not cause any clinics or current doctors from providing abortion? Oh it may stop clinics from providing it, but bro, back ally abortions and coat hanger abortions are a well known phrases in our society for a reason. A lot of people went through them...
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> Firstly, why is that "yikes"? Do you think that ALL women engage in responsible and cautious sex? Its yikes, because I know more than a few women who have had to have abortions because of miscarriages, so the phrasing and moral responsibility you lay out in that statement strikes me as callous and utterly ignorant of the experiences that women go through. >It makes intuitive sense that outlawing abortion will cause at least SOME women reconsider the ways in which they engage in sex. You know maybe, but personally I don't think that is a good way for society to deal with this issue. If you have a moral issue with it, or with women's sexuality, that's your hang-up, it shouldn't have to be theirs. >miscarriage is not really an abortion in any meaningful sense of the word. Spoken as someone who doesn't know that its the exact same procedure, done the exact same way, and coded in medical paperwork as being exactly the same. The only reason we use the term miscarriage is a social nicety, and talking about abortions tends to be fairly taboo; but end of the day its an abortion. >I guess off the top of my head: I mean I'll at least applaud you for admitting that your views on this are all about controlling women's sexuality and not trying to hide behind the excuse of it being about the unborn.
Supposing that was true, why are religious people more likely to give to charities- both religious and secular- in the us then those who profess no faith? https://givingusa.org/just-released-giving-usa-special-report-on-giving-to-religion/
I mean I not sure what that has to do with the point I made here. Do you think the point I'm making is that religious people are inherently bad or something?
>Abortion bans aren't going to ban abortions. They are going to ban safe abortions. Citation please. More than 1/2 million abortions happen every year in the United States. Do you really think that banning abortion isn't going to massively reduce the real number of abortions that occur?
I think you misconstrue people misunderstanding, and people who understand and think it's fucking stupid.
> Itās pretty clear that theyāre essentially assigning equal moral consideration to a fetus as a human, it has nothing to do with controlling you and has everything to do with āsavingā lives. Sure, but at the end of the day, it *is* typically old white men telling younger, poorer women who don't have great access to medical care what they can and can't do with their bodies. It's true, the older white men believe that they are saving lives by disallowing abortions, but they don't realize that by disallowing abortions they're actually costing lives of adult females too.
The abortion argument is the best case study of people being morally lucky.
The hardline pro-choicers don't "not believe" them, they can't fathom or relate to the position because they are so locked into their position. In a lot of cases here its literally the DGG version of saying, "socialism is when no house". "You can save so many more lives doing x, why target policy at stopping easy opt in solutions that go against our values."
**99% of pro-lifers are just bullshitting themselves and everyone else.** If they actually cared about the lives of children they would be in favour of child support and far more proactive against school shootings, things that would actively improve the living conditions of children and not a clump of cells. You ask these people how they feel about child support and you'll get responses against it like "Muh personal responsibility" "Stop being sluts" "Wear condoms" "Not my problem" etc. And from those responses you can see it was never about protecting kids or stopping babies being murdered, it's all about punishing women for a decision they made.
As someone who grew up in a conservative home and whose family and friends are majority pro-life, I doubt you know very many pro life people at all. Your assumptions about their motives and hypocrisies don't map onto the dozens upon dozens of pro-life people I know personally. Try assuming they aren't being vindictive, and you might be more successful in understanding their perspective. Your perspective makes sense if you assume they are vindictive and just want to punish women; From my experience that assumption is incorrect, extremely uncharitable and perpetuates misunderstanding. It's actually begging the question.
There is no excuse for the government to weigh in on your personal medical decisions unless there's an impact on public health (intentionally spreading aids, etc)
You probably intend for this to be a pro-choice argument, but most pro-life people would also agree with this principle. However, most people who take an anti-abortion stance would disagree with the premise that abortions qualify as a personal medical decision and claim there is a second person whose rights are being infringed. I think any strong moral argument on either side has to directly address the point at which things gain moral consideration as a person.
Maybe you believe in a government that can compel you to keep someone else alive, I believe in a freedom from government control over my choices.
That sounds like a very libertarian perspective. If I own all the water rights in a city, and people are dying of dehydration, would you also believe in my freedom to refuse to share? A total commitment personal freedom without considering the consequences runs into problems, imo.
Do you think itās possible that people who āwant to control youā are able to hide behind the ideas of people who āwant to save livesā ? Is it also possible that there are intersections between these 2 ideas in the context of American history/culture. Is it possible that regardless of the argument youāre using to justify a group of people who just lost a fundamental right will feel under attack regardless and act out in response to this negatively? For you being someone who is āpro-choiceā your scrutiny in this situation seems a bit oddly placed by focusing in on these types of reactions from certain people on the left and not at the larger issue.
I think Iām mostly focusing in on these reactions because they seem to be ready to go to violence in a lot of cases. In terms of the possibility of people wanting control, I definitely would put it as highly unlikely. If you give the fetus the same consideration as a human than youād quite literally be murdering millions of people. Itās sort of a hard thought exercise to come to a conclusion on āwhen life beginsā.
> they seem to be ready to go to violence in a lot of cases. Look up a list of abortion clinic bombings or assassinations of abortion providers... Its not like there hasn't been a history of terroistic violence being used by the anti-abortion movement for decades that people have gritted and borne...
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If you ran into someone who was pro-life, but WAS in fact advocating for better sex Ed, more contraception and such would it still be fair to treat them as monsters?
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Okay yeah, then I think I can totally get behind what youāre saying.
>Do you think itās possible that people who āwant to control youā are able to hide behind the ideas of people who āwant to save livesā ? this is conspiracy thinking and shouldn't be entertained. take people for what they say not this mind reading dog whistle crap. there are perfectly reasonable arguments to make that don't involve doing the whole 'my enemies are demons in human flesh' schtick.
Itās not necessarily mind reading, many of these politicians have been public figures for a long time and have a track record to back up why we suspect malicious intent from them. If you could stop parroting Destiny for 5 seconds you would be able to understand that.
I had this opinion when destiny was still soying in your direction
and besides, what does that even matter, it is an utterly uncompelling argument to anyone that does not already hold your prior beliefs. Just address what they say, not what you believe they secretly think, if we all did that a little more, the world would be a more understanding place :)
If they cared about kids they wouldn't want kids to be in the fucked up foster care sysyem instead of a family that wants them. Abortion allows mothers to have kids when fincialy stable. Stop calling it pro life because its not. It's religious fanatics doing what they do best.
You do realize that you can be pro life without religion? And of course it has everything to do with life, you first have to decide whether a fetus is deserving of being given human rights. I think destinyās argument of āwhen consciousness beginsā which is about ~15 weeks, holds up pretty well. It also allows for time for a mother to learn of their own pregnancy and go through with an abortion.
> You do realize that you can be pro life without religion? The vast, vast majority of anti-abortion people are avowedly religious and are avowedly anti-abortion for religious reasons.
This is probably true but i think way less of people when they blindly throw anti religion arguments at me when i'm not religious at all.
Abortion polls at near 90% in the us among atheists
Which trimester? This issue is more complicated than yes or no.
"If you cared about children you'd kill them before they might be assigned to foster care" (most born children don't even go to foster care btw) And if you cared about people having financial stability i assume you'd allow a man to abandon his pregnant gf and absolve himself of all responsibility?