Mississippi voters have a chance to eliminate women's rights

[Outer Chaosmosis]

Better tell most philosophers since the beginning of the written word

And this, for better or worse, is a philosophical argument.

Anyway, there is a difference between a counterfactual claim and a "what if" that points to extant sets of circumstances. The former may well be suspect for reasons that the latter is not.

[Maji Matamu]

Right...and the fetus does not have ownership of HER body, so she retains the right to end her pregnancy at any time and for any reason.

Seriously, it really is that simple, and it's a very pro-life position. Frankly, I find it infinitely more "pro-life" than the position which says that my life stops belonging to me the moment I get pregnant.

Most pro-lifers would make an exemption if your life were at stake. Although to be honest, with the crazy stuff that happens in pregnancy, I wouldn't blame you for worrying about whether it is. But it's, I think, disingenuous to describe a position where someone 'retains the right to end her pregnancy at any time and for any reason' as 'pro-life', given that you are claiming affiliation to a group which believes the exact opposite.

In any case, if you wanted to read the context you were jumping into, my original involvement in this thread supplements a plea that Wiztopia had made for a pro-life argument which did not invoke religion or emotions. I don't think that's what ze meant, even if you really honestly desire to co-opt the terms in order to be dramatically misunderstood.

IDX is most often performed when the fetus is dead or so catastrophically malformed that it will not survive, or in cases where the mother's life is in danger if the pregnancy continues and therefore it is also unlikely the fetus will survive. Not seeing how the fetus' "right to life" really factors in if it's dead or dying already, and the doctors simply want to use the procedure that is least likely to harm the woman as they remove the corpse from her uterus.

Try again.

I don't know what you think, precisely, I am "trying". In any case, while I understand that IDX and its cousin D&E are often performed for miscarriages, we're talking more specifically about their use in abortions, which is a separate matter.

Also it seems bizarre that you would assert that the fetus has no right to its own bodily autonomy if it is dying but not dead, if you believed that it would have had general rights to bodily autonomy anyways. Like, that's at the "there could not possibly be a general ethical rule of that form" level of bad. I hope I don't need to press this point; suffice it to say that you would not accept the excuse "she was dying anyway!" in any other case of bodily violation or killing; why would you accept it here?

Not really murky at all, no.

I'm pro-life and pro-choice, which is why I support a woman's right to end her body's participation in pregnancy at any time and for any reason.

Look, in the normal sense of the term 'pro-life', the argument would indeed be murky, at least for me, to make. Perhaps you feel that you could oppose abortion non-murkily from such foundations, but I do not.

Now, I understand that you happen to use pro-life in an ironic way. I can respect that and accept it, and read your comments in that context. That's fine by me. But it is absolutely silly for you to apply it to the ways in which I use the word, for the simple fact that I am not you, have not internalized your definitions as my own, et cetera. Please try to evaluate the things people say as they would have meant it, rather than as you would have meant it if you had said those identical words.

(Caveat: you have my apologies if you have Asperger's or autism or one of the other mental disorders like sociopathy that makes it almost impossible to do the above. I have a friend who has Asperger's who has real tangible problems understanding how other people see the world and use their words, and I know that it can be a real difficulty. I am assuming above that you are being facetious, so you have my apologies if you aren't actually being facetious and I'm actually asking you to do something you find legitimately impossible.)

[Acadzia]

*sigh*

killing an unborn child isn't a right, you aren't cool for hating conservatives, and no, you don't have to flame me for saying it.

Telling a woman what to do with her own body means a person is against women's rights.

I'm also not down with rape or wife abuse.

GOD DAMN, WHY DO I HATE MEN SO MUCH?!? I AM ONE!

[UCUMAY]

Abortion is murder. If women have a "right" to do whatever they want with their bodies then why not make suicide legal ? It's my body afterall, why can't I do whatever I want with it ? What makes women so special that they have their own set of "rights" ?

And I (who am female) should be able to tell you how to live your life, and what to do with the various organs of your body... Right?

[Bottle]

Abortion is murder. If women have a "right" to do whatever they want with their bodies then why not make suicide legal ? It's my body afterall, why can't I do whatever I want with it ? What makes women so special that they have their own set of "rights" ?

I want your kidney. Now you have to give me it.

Or are you demanding some kind of special right to get to decide who uses your organs? What makes you so special?

[SpectacularSpectacular]

In this world of 'what if,' we develop an artificial enviroment capale of gaseous, hormonal, and biochemical exchanges between it and the embyro? If it came to that I see no need for pregnancy, may as well grow a fetus under a controllable enviroment.

We do already have incubators you know so it's not exactly far-fetched, it's a logical thought experiment.

You are right, we are a social species, which is why those are forms of social dependencies...Not even remotely similar to biomolecular depencies which is what the fetus has in relation to its womb. Its like you are comparing apples and oranges then saying what if they grew on the others tree.

If you're dependent, you're dependent. You need other people to survive or you don't.

If you don't like that for whatever reason (since you mention apples and oranges, it's salutary to note that they're both fruit and you can use either when discussing fruit for whatever reason), what about my intensive care or disabled examples?

Nothing is more lazy than a 'what if' argument.

Better tell most philosophers since the beginning of the written word

No, dependency is not universally similar. Social dependency is social dependency; dependent on people. A biomolecular/biochemical dependency is a dependence on a cellular(and in regards to genetic coding a molecular) level to just one other organism/cell/biochemical enviorment. Not the same.

I am not a philosopher and dont see this as a philosophical debate, that debate regards morality. This one involves you lumping two very differant forms of dependencies into the generalized sense.
Side note: the incubaters you mentioned cannot carry an embryo to term without implentation into a biological womb(an impossible process after the end of the blastocyst stage, at this time). The incubaters we have now are designed to grow and study early stage embryos but at most times to grow tissue using ES cells. Most cases those are cloned.

[Acadzia]

All I can say is: GO MISSISSIPPI!

What pro-abortion people don't realize is that they went through the fetal stage themselves, and could have just as easily been killed like millions of people around the world are killed each year.

To quote pro-life activist, and saline abortion survivor, Gianna Jessen: "If abortion is about women's rights, then were were mine?"

That's the saddest reality of all; that girls are more likely to be aborted.

[Outer Chaosmosis]

I want your kidney. Now you have to give me it.

Or are you demanding some kind of special right to get to decide who uses your organs? What makes you so special?

Strawman.

[Bottle]

Right...and the fetus does not have ownership of HER body, so she retains the right to end her pregnancy at any time and for any reason.

Seriously, it really is that simple, and it's a very pro-life position. Frankly, I find it infinitely more "pro-life" than the position which says that my life stops belonging to me the moment I get pregnant.

Most pro-lifers would make an exemption if your life were at stake. Although to be honest, with the crazy stuff that happens in pregnancy, I wouldn't blame you for worrying about whether it is. But it's, I think, disingenuous to describe a position where someone 'retains the right to end her pregnancy at any time and for any reason' as 'pro-life', given that you are claiming affiliation to a group which believes the exact opposite.

Oh, let's be clear, I don't claim affiliation with the people who currently use the term "pro-life." I'm saying that their claim to that term is what is suspect, since they aren't actually "pro-life" in any especially meaningful sense.

I don't know what you think, precisely, I am "trying". In any case, while I understand that IDX and its cousin D&E are often performed for miscarriages, we're talking more specifically about their use in abortions, which is a separate matter.

See, except it's not. First of all, the cases I was talking about are still abortions; abortion is the termination of a pregnancy, and whether the fetus is alive or not doesn't factor in to the medical classification of "abortion." Furthermore, if you can find me a single recorded case of an elective IDX procedure, please share it with us.

It's very important to be clear on this stuff, because this is one of the areas that the anti-choice propaganda has really seeped into the mainstream. It's falsehoods, and it's important to call out misinformation and lies when we see them, particularly on an issues as important as this one.

Also it seems bizarre that you would assert that the fetus has no right to its own bodily autonomy if it is dying but not dead, if you believed that it would have had general rights to bodily autonomy anyways. Like, that's at the "there could not possibly be a general ethical rule of that form" level of bad. I hope I don't need to press this point; suffice it to say that you would not accept the excuse "she was dying anyway!" in any other case of bodily violation or killing; why would you accept it here?

Considering that we are talking about procedures performed when MEDICALLY NECESSARY, I think the medical conditions are kind of sort of relevant. "Dying" is actually a stretch in these cases, because in these cases the fetus is only "alive" at all due to the life support being provided by the woman's body; a born human person in similar condition would be considered brain dead already, and I absolutely WOULD support taking such a person off life support systems. (My own living will specifically instructs my loved ones to do this if I am in such a state.)

Look, in the normal sense of the term 'pro-life', the argument would indeed be murky, at least for me, to make. Perhaps you feel that you could oppose abortion non-murkily from such foundations, but I do not.

I agree that the people who usually use the term "pro-life" create a lot of moral mess about this issue. I don't see any reason to participate in that, though, since it's really not complicated at all.

Now, I understand that you happen to use pro-life in an ironic way. I can respect that and accept it, and read your comments in that context. That's fine by me. But it is absolutely silly for you to apply it to the ways in which I use the word, for the simple fact that I am not you, have not internalized your definitions as my own, et cetera. Please try to evaluate the things people say as they would have meant it, rather than as you would have meant it if you had said those identical words.

I don't mean it ironically at all. I honestly, truly, and deeply believe that I am infinitely more "pro-life" than the movement which currently has co-opted that name. Dead serious on this one (har!).

[Bottle]

I want your kidney. Now you have to give me it.

Or are you demanding some kind of special right to get to decide who uses your organs? What makes you so special?

Strawman.

Why do people think "strawman" is a catch-all term for whatever argument they don't like? It's like they walked in on the first day of a rhetoric course, listened to the first 10 minutes of lecture, and then walked out, never to return.

[Bottle]

All I can say is: GO MISSISSIPPI!

What pro-abortion people don't realize is that they went through the fetal stage themselves, and could have just as easily been killed like millions of people around the world are killed each year.

To quote pro-life activist, and saline abortion survivor, Gianna Jessen: "If abortion is about women's rights, then were were mine?"

Did you seriously just argue that pro-abortion people don't realize that their mothers were once pregnant with them?

No wonder the anti-choicers want to pass laws forcing women to see ultrasounds and shit...they seriously believe that we're all as ignorant of basic human biology as they are...

[Polruan]

No, dependency is not universally similar. Social dependency is social dependency; dependent on people. A biomolecular/biochemical dependency is a dependence on a cellular(and in regards to genetic coding a molecular) level to just one other organism/cell/biochemical enviorment. Not the same.

I know they're not the same, but for the purposes of this discussion why draw a line between them?

I am not a philosopher and dont see this as a philosophical debate, that debate regards morality. This one involves you lumping two very differant forms of dependencies into the generalized sense.

Because there's no reason I see not to.

Side note: the incubaters you mentioned cannot carry an embryo to term without implentation into a biological womb(an impossible process after the end of the blastocyst stage, at this time). The incubaters we have now are designed to grow and study early stage embryos but at most times to grow tissue using ES cells. Most cases those are cloned.

I meant hospital incubators that can replicate the function of a womb to some extent if the foetus is born early. UK abortion law is based on the foetus being able to survive outside the womb from 24 weeks onwards; it used to be 28 weeks but technology advanced.

So, can a coma patient or someone on life support be terminated legitimately - and if not, why not? Same logic.

[UCUMAY]

We need a poll to see how many pro-choice and pro-life people would've been okay with never having existed... I myself am okay with the thought.

[Mosasauria]

All I can say is: GO MISSISSIPPI!

What pro-abortion people don't realize is that they went through the fetal stage themselves, and could have just as easily been killed like millions of people around the world are killed each year.

To quote pro-life activist, and saline abortion survivor, Gianna Jessen: "If abortion is about women's rights, then were were mine?"

And frankly, I would want to have been aborted and not experience such a world where people are so wrapped up in 'morals' that they forget of other's rights.

[Acadzia]

No, dependency is not universally similar. Social dependency is social dependency; dependent on people. A biomolecular/biochemical dependency is a dependence on a cellular(and in regards to genetic coding a molecular) level to just one other organism/cell/biochemical enviorment. Not the same.

I hate to speak for EVERYONE in this thread... but I don't think there is anyone here who doesn't understand what you're saying.

His question was, I think, not how is it different in form but how it is different when making moral considerations. A 9-year-old is arguably a bigger drain on a woman's (and, should be, a man's) autonomy and wallet than a fetus ever could be (a note to all in the thread; please don't write "foetus"; it's a hypercorrection with no real etymological basis in Latin.)

Your pro-abortion rhetoric falls apart if you can't apply it consistently. If you allow a woman to terminate the life of her child in utero on the basis of dependency, then you must be consistent and allow her to terminate her child after it has been born. The reasoning behind and form of the dependency might be different, but it is felt more acutely at this stage.

[Bottle]

We need a poll to see how many pro-choice and pro-life people would've been okay with never having existed... I myself am okay with the thought.

Nah, that has the potential to get really depressing. A lot of people have shitty relationships with their mothers and secretly suspect that their mother wishes they'd never been born, so those questions can go really dark really fast.

[Mosasauria]

We need a poll to see how many pro-choice and pro-life people would've been okay with never having existed... I myself am okay with the thought.

I'm somewhat okay with it...
I have my reservations though.

[Ifreann]

Isn't is foetuses/fetuses?

It's UNBORN BAY-BEEZ!

I suppose you've got me there.

[Outer Chaosmosis]

Why do people think "strawman" is a catch-all term for whatever argument they don't like? It's like they walked in on the first day of a rhetoric course, listened to the first 10 minutes of lecture, and then walked out, never to return.

You mischaracterized the post to which you were responding such as to make it appear weaker than it actually is and then "refuted" the caricature that you produced. Such is the very definition of a strawman.

[UCUMAY]

We need a poll to see how many pro-choice and pro-life people would've been okay with never having existed... I myself am okay with the thought.

Nah, that has the potential to get really depressing. A lot of people have shitty relationships with their mothers and secretly suspect that their mother wishes they'd never been born, so those questions can go really dark really fast.

I'm not scared of the dark.

[UCUMAY]

Why do people think "strawman" is a catch-all term for whatever argument they don't like? It's like they walked in on the first day of a rhetoric course, listened to the first 10 minutes of lecture, and then walked out, never to return.

You mischaracterized the post to which you were responding such as to make it appear weaker than it actually is and then "refuted" the caricature that you produced. Such is the very definition of a strawman.

Mine, however was not.

[Polruan]

(a note to all in the thread; please don't write "foetus"; it's a hypercorrection with no real etymological basis in Latin.)

It's Latin-derived English. I spell it that way because I'm English and that's how we spell it.

Nah, that has the potential to get really depressing. A lot of people have shitty relationships with their mothers and secretly suspect that their mother wishes they'd never been born, so those questions can go really dark really fast.

The whole "What if you didn't exist" argument is nonsense anyway. What if your parents had sex at 9pm instead of 10pm and a completely different "you" was conceived? It's a metaphysical nightmare.

[Outer Chaosmosis]

Did you seriously just argue that pro-abortion people don't realize that their mothers were once pregnant with them?

No wonder the anti-choicers want to pass laws forcing women to see ultrasounds and shit...they seriously believe that we're all as ignorant of basic human biology as they are...

And yet another strawman. Your attempts at obfuscation are getting more and more transparent.

The issue is not an ignorance of biology but the tendency of arguments regarding abortion to become abstract. Seeing an actual ultrasound, or actually contemplating your own possible pre-birth termination (if such a thing even makes sense) makes the issue of abortion concrete. (Or so the argument goes, anyway.)

[UCUMAY]

Did you seriously just argue that pro-abortion people don't realize that their mothers were once pregnant with them?

No wonder the anti-choicers want to pass laws forcing women to see ultrasounds and shit...they seriously believe that we're all as ignorant of basic human biology as they are...

And yet another strawman. Your attempts at obfuscation are getting more and more transparent.

The issue is not an ignorance of biology but the tendency of arguments regarding abortion to become abstract. Seeing an actual ultrasound, or actually contemplating your own possible pre-birth termination (if such a thing even makes sense) makes the issue of abortion concrete.

I have. I've nearly died several times. I'm not scared of death, and I'm perfectly okay with the thought of having been aborted.

[Acadzia]

It's Latin-derived English. I spell it that way because I'm English and that's how we spell it.

Some English dude just plopped an o in there in the 1500s. It is fetus in the original Latin, AFAIK, making it one (perhaps the only?) time where the Yanks are better spellers than the Poms. But a minor nitpick, is all.