The Gaming Den

violence in the media wrote:A woman should be able to get an abortion for any fucking reason she wants.

So should a woman be allowed to kill her born child for any fucking reason she wants?

FrankTrollman wrote:You cannot simultaneously believe in Free Markets and be against Abortion under any circumstances.

Oh Frank, that’s so priceless. I’m so tempted to sig it, but I won’t. The “free market” issue is a good one. You can probably use it for slavery (colonial and corporate), child prostitution, environmental destruction … the list is endless.

tzor wrote:

violence in the media wrote:A woman should be able to get an abortion for any fucking reason she wants.

So should a woman be allowed to kill her born child for any fucking reason she wants?

At that point, why bother? You might as well just turn it over for adoption. Part of the purpose of an abortion is avoiding the risks and discomfort of a pregnancy, the associated financial costs, and any social stigma or retribution that might be associated with it. If you've already gone through all that, why kill the kid now?

Besides, all the bullshit argumantation over "when life begins" is pointless since we already have a convenient line. Beyond the point where the fetus is physically dependent on the mother is probably where you want to decide that it counts as a separate, independent entity that cannot be legally terminated at the whims of another.

Granted, that line varies, especially with medical technology, but I certainly wouldn't want a situation where a woman went in for an abortion and wound up with an infant because it somehow survived the extraction.

You do realize that while the majority of Planned Parenthood's income comes from fees for procedures, they take donations and charge on a sliding scale.

So while they don't charge more than the cost of a procedure (and often less) there is a good chance that they will exceed their costs for any given year if more people are able to pay and they get donations. What are they supposed to do, give back the donations?

Does tzor know that for all non-profit organizations and tax documents, something over 80% of non-profit income in the US is from sales, not donations?

At what point does tzor think he knows more than a doctor? If there's a 1% chance of death? a 5%? a 90% chance of not being able to carry again? When the fetus is unable to ... Well, important parts are outside its skin? Should this all be legislated?

Or should we just let a woman choose at some point prior to it being adoptable whether she can care for the child, and leave it between her and a doctor?

Or does tzor still not believe women have the same rights as a blob of protoplasm?

-Crissa

PS: While a minority of hospitals in California are named Catholic hospitals, a majority of county (that is, the only hospital in the county) hospitals are owned by Catholics or churches. These hospitals do not supply abortion.

Heck, even the secular medical service I use 'Palo Alto Medical Foundation' does not provide these services. It's not overtly christian, no church owns it - in fact, it's related vaguely to Stanford, being just off campus them having places nearby. But it does not provide any services that christians frown upon because it would have its rich donors cut it off. Ceilingcat wouldn't be allowed to have any of her doctors who were employed at PAMF make decisions to treat her gender dysphoria, even. She would have to get an outside doctor to begin treatment.

That's sick, but that's reality. tzor is arguing a position no anti-abortion person actually takes in their actions: Allowing abortion services for the health of the mother of fetus. Which, by the way, was 100% of late-term abortions.

tzor wrote: the interactive map

This shows a profound ignorance to the population density of California.


Every one of those hospitals in the middle of the state on this map? They are the only ones in those counties. The four on the middle coast between SF and LA? Also the only ones in those counties. In fact, the counties between those don't have hospitals.

Only the LA, SF Bay, Sacramento and San Diego (two red blotches in the north and two in the south) have more than one hospital. Aside from the Catholic West hospitals, there are only a handful more in the rest of the state.

Crissa wrote:At what point does tzor think he knows more than a doctor? If there's a 1% chance of death? a 5%? a 90% chance of not being able to carry again?

According to the "Feminist" page tzor linked us to, the answer is "always."

Apparently any risk of death of the woman or the fetus up to and including an apparent 100% risk should be ignored in favor of trying to save both the woman and the fetus. Because after all, it is entirely possible that a medical breakthrough will happen at the last instant and save the woman's life. And that possibility is worth more than your statistics, man.

Of course, those people are not feminists. "Liking women" doesn't make you a feminist. Hell, I like women. I like hanging out with them. I like talking to them. I like looking at them, I like fondling their breasts and so on. And none of that makes me a feminist. What makes me a feminist is supporting regulations that actually improve the status and outcomes of women.

And people who want to replace the best judgment of a physician with hoping for the best while the lives of actual women are at stake are not working for the best interests of women.

-Username17

Cielingcat wrote:Abortions should be rare and we should make every effort to make people want to have less of them.

Yes.

violence in the media wrote:Hell no. We are not playing this pussyfooting "emergency situations" game. A woman should be able to get an abortion for any fucking reason she wants. Even the irresponsible, objectionable, or morally repugnant ones.

In a conflict of rights/interests like this, someone has to lose. My vote is that the fetus loses. Every time.

No.

Abortions should ONLY be for "emergency reasons" and other fringe cases (incest, rape, what-have-you), whatever the fuck that means.

If someone wants to doctor-shop in order to find someone to sign off on some bullshit reason then they can do that and the doctor might lose their license, but "I get to kill this child inside me" should not be a valid option when they could have used a condom, taken a pill (even the day-after pill), had an IUD, or engaged in anything else responsible.

Mean Liar wrote:If someone wants to doctor-shop in order to find someone to sign off on some bullshit reason then they can do that and the doctor might lose their license, but "I get to kill this child inside me" should not be a valid option when they could have used a condom, taken a pill (even the day-after pill), had an IUD, or engaged in anything else responsible.

Uhhhh... you do realize that those things don't even work all the time, right?

And condoms do break. And people do get drunk and wake up pregnant and don't know why. These things happen, and the last thing we need is a fucking inquisition to find out if some woman is telling "the truth" or not.

If a woman has to say that she was raped in order to not be forced to quit her job or drop out of school to carry a fetus she doesn't want and will give up for adoption (where statistically it will never get adopted and get raised in an orphanage), she'll quite likely do that. Can you not see how incredibly destructive to society that is? Having rape allegations flying around so that a woman can stay in school?

People have to be able to opt out of spending 40 weeks in hard labor hurting themselves for no gain on behalf of someone they've never met and don't even like. They have to be able to walk away if they want to. Because you know what? There are some overly dangerous techniques that women can and do use on themselves no matter what the state thinks about it. Any restrictions you put on abortions, and I seriously mean any restrictions at all are just going to create situations like the Philippines where women routinely get beaten in the stomach until they spontaneously abort (or die).

-Username17

mean_liar wrote:If someone wants to doctor-shop in order to find someone to sign off on some bullshit reason then they can do that and the doctor might lose their license, but "I get to kill this child inside me" should not be a valid option when they could have used a condom, taken a pill (even the day-after pill), had an IUD, or engaged in anything else responsible.

And what about the people who engaged in all of your appropriate responsible behaviors and still got pregnant against their wishes? Tough cookies for them? Do you then make it illegal for a woman to do less than everything in their power to preserve pregnancies they didn't want?

If a woman doesn't want the fetus badly enough, it won't survive. The only thing you're seeking to do is needlessly endanger the woman and remove her control over the direction of her life. Again, fetuses are NOT PEOPLE and have no rights that should supercede those of the woman incubating them.

None of that can excuse killing a child. It's a moral imperative whose hurdle is high because the hurdle to killing someone should be.

Period.

I don't care if they have to drop out of school, I don't care if the kid goes up for adoption - and I recognize that there need to be vastly improved social safety nets for the latter - but you can't just talk your way into killing someone because it's convenient for you. Fuck, with the day-after pill available you end up getting an abortion because you're fucking LAZY.

If a woman wants to get an illegal and dangerous abortion, endangering her life in doing so because she couldn't be assed enough to take a FUCKING PILL, then I suppose that's just what she needs to do to kill the life inside her.

I'd leave it up to individual states and philosophers to define the beginning of life - conception, a week, implantation, the quickening - but at some point the child is alive and at that point you're contemplating murder.

Slowly and simply:

A woman's right to choose trumps a fetus' right to life. Period. Why she chooses what she chooses is nobody else's goddamn business.

You define a fetus as some part of the woman's body. I argue that, much like a siamese twin, you have no right to determine if they live or die. It isn't their physical dependence that gives you a right to their life, its their sentience that gives them autonomy from YOU.

A severe apotemnophiliac has a harder time getting a limb removed than a woman does getting an abortion, and that's a signpost to some seriously fucked up priorities.

Mean Liar, that's insane.

It's a blob of cells, it has no feelings. And they fail to complete their 40 week progression to humanhood all the time. Naturally. Even when women do everything in their power to hold onto their pregnancies, only half of them actually result in children. If women don't want the things to grow to full size, there are ways to ensure that this doesn't happen. Some of them are clean and safe, some of them are neither clean nor safe. And if you aren't a medical professional, you probably don't really know which are which.

But here's the thing: if you are a medical professional, then you have a thing called "Patient Confidentiality." Which means that you, and by that I mean I, swore a fucking oath not to give away any personal information about any of our patients. Ever. So it really doesn't matter what you think is an acceptable excuse to get an abortion, because I'm never going to fucking tell you what a woman's excuse was. And honestly, she doesn't have to tell me her excuse either. She can make something up or simply decline to say.

ML wrote:If a woman wants to get an illegal and dangerous abortion, endangering her life in doing so because she couldn't be assed enough to take a FUCKING PILL, then I suppose that's just what she needs to do to kill the life inside her.

And what about the people who took the regular pills and got pregnant anyway? Those things are only 98% effective. Real women go to all the trouble of suppressing their ovulations and then ovulate anyway because of random hormone spikes. Are they so "lazy" that they should be subjected to ridicule and unsanitary procedures? What the fuck dude?

Do you have any idea how the human reproductive system works? It appears from even a cursory reading of your statements on the subject that the answer is "no."

-Username17

And anytime you put restrictions on a woman's ability to get an abortion you set a dangerous precedent where you can introduce other regulations that impact the availability of both this medical procedure and conteceptive measures that we now take for granted. Don't kid yourself - if the Fundemental Christians had their way, not only would abortion be illegal, but so would birth control pills and condoms. Sanctity of unborn life and all that.

But Capital Punishment? Totally cool.

mean_liar wrote:None of that can excuse killing a child. It's a moral imperative whose hurdle is high because the hurdle to killing someone should be.

Period.

You're seriously arguing that fucking dead people should have more rights than women here. Seriously, dead people are allowed to refuse to have their organs used to save others' lives, even if only their organs will do. There's nobody with any real power in government even questioning this.

Women, as human beings, have a right to determine how their organs are going to be used. If they decide that they won't be used to carry a pregnancy, they have a right to end it, in whatever way they and their doctor deem most suitable (abortion, preterm birth if safe and feasible, I don't really care).

I'd leave it up to individual states and philosophers to define the beginning of life - conception, a week, implantation, the quickening - but at some point the child is alive and at that point you're contemplating murder.

"Murder" is unjustified killing. When they're actively stealing someone's blood that's totally justifiable.

Mean Liar wrote:A severe apotemnophiliac has a harder time getting a limb removed than a woman does getting an abortion, and that's a signpost to some seriously fucked up priorities.

How is that indicative of fucked up priorities? Hell, how is that indicative of priorities at all?

An abortion can be done as an outpatient service with an ultrasound machine and some med students. It's not even hard. But removing a non-standard limb? Holy crap, do you have any idea how much imaging I'd want before I even made a plan to perform such a procedure?

No. Of course you don't. You have no idea that people have arteries that travel in pretty uniform patterns and that surgeons base their plans of attack on where those arteries normally travel. Nor do you have any idea that anyone with an extra arm sticking out from an unusual place by definition has a different arterial and neural layout. Any surgery of that sort would be incredibly dangerous, because major nerves and arteries could be pretty much anywhere. Not to mention that we aren't taking about draining a fluid filled sac here - it's solid flesh all the way through and a huge plastic surgery problem after removal.

Right. In keeping with the title of this thread, I just learned something. I learned that Mean Liar has not the first faintest clue about how the human body's internal workings function. And nonetheless he is willing to accuse people of murder and seriously suggest that modern medical procedures be replaced with "pushing young women down stairs" based on entirely random and unjustifiable preconceptions he can't even explain.

-Username17

It's also a lot easier to get pregnant after having an abortion than to have an arm after having it removed.

This thread contains some of the best pro-choice arguments I can recall reading. I can't think of much to add, but perhaps the fact that Earth already has more human population than is quite healthy is worth bringing up.

We can't support more than a certain number of people, and ridiculous numbers of thinking, functioning human beings die horribly painfully every day. I consider it better if an unthinking blob of cells dies than if a person dies. If the child has developed to the point that it is thinking, but still dependent on the host, the death is regrettable, but still acceptable. People have considerably more to appreciate, considerably more to lose, and they represent a more valuable piece of society.

---------

I am now reminded of the thread where I mentioned that I had a stronger negative emotional response to the prospect of harm to a not-normally-for slaughter domesticated animal than to a human soldier if both were trying to kill me. Emotions should have some role in decision-making, but in my opinion, it should be a very minor one compared to conscious, rational thought. The abortion argument seems like yet another example of a situation where careful consideration of the repercussions of various stances on the subject is important.

mean_liar wrote:You define a fetus as some part of the woman's body. I argue that, much like a siamese twin, you have no right to determine if they live or die. It isn't their physical dependence that gives you a right to their life, its their sentience that gives them autonomy from YOU.

Sure, ok, you have no right to determine if it lives or dies. Their sentience gives them autonomy from you, fine. None of that gives them a right to your continued blood and nutritional support though. The right to kill something is a totally separate issue from the right to cut off your bodily fluids and blood based nutrition from something, be it an embryo or more standard parasite. If it dies as a result of being cut off before it's viable, so be it, but you can argue that you have no right to secure the death of a viable fetus and probably should have no rights at all to one that you cut off before it reached full term. There we go, no more killing, just deprivation.

Now if you want to say that you don't have the right to cut off your blood and nutrition to something that would die from it's lack, then we can talk about that instead. But when you say that abortions are bad and should be illegal you're literally telling people that they don't have a say in what they do with their own blood. It'd be like telling people not to take walks through (since this is a gaming board...) Transylvania at night, because if you engage in that kind of behavior you might attract a vampire that you couldn't be rid of for 6-9 months since it would die if it wasn't able to feed on you during that time. And we can't let sentient beings die, their sentience entitles them to what they need so that they can continue living... at least until a point moderately in the future where we largely stop caring about their continued ability to thrive.

Take a look at the laws on births in China, and if you don't want to look over that, watch the movie Fortress (not the one from Australia with kids held hostage in a school, though it IS a good movie) and Fortress 2 with the guy from Highlander...Lambert.

It goes into what will happen as over population occurs, and why limits/licenses are given out for people to have children, and who are allowed to.

The planet already exceeds the number of people it can support.

Personally, I am anti-abortion, and feel the way to solve it is to stop trying to fuck everything and getting pregnant. The Octomom needs to be in prison for life without parole.

MY solution would be seen as crazy, but stop births for a period of 4~6 years. This will give a chance to train teachers better for those kids when they are ready for school, have the lower grades schools cleaned and updated/upgraded for the times, and keep moving along as the schools empty to further fix the schools as they become empty. Might even lower the amount of homeless, starving, etc.

But that is just one idea.

That is pretty crazy, shad.

I must have missed it in all the abortion craziness... But did tzor realize that his entire rant about student loans was fiscally irresponsible, and that there was indeed no 'private capital' involved?

-Crissa

Crissa wrote: I must have missed it in all the abortion craziness... But did tzor realize that his entire rant about student loans was fiscally irresponsible, and that there was indeed no 'private capital' involved?

-Crissa

No. Apparently private banks are "friendlier" than the government. And that totally justifies them borrowing money from the state at 0.5% interest and loaning that money back to you at 7.0%. They need to take that 6.5% off the top as a processing fee so that you can get the warm fuzzy feeling of knowing that your student loan is making private bankers lots of money.

-Username17

FrankTrollman wrote:Giving birth is called "Labor" for a reason. If someone does not wish to do it, then they do not have to do it unless they are a slave.

This very point is why men should not be enslaved after a woman makes a choice to keep the baby.

BTW, I am all for abortions without reservation, though I wish we could find better and certain ways to prevent pregnancy in the first place, ones that were safe and effective for both partners. Until such a time comes, abortions are a necessity.

Lich-Loved wrote:

FrankTrollman wrote:Giving birth is called "Labor" for a reason. If someone does not wish to do it, then they do not have to do it unless they are a slave.

This very point is why men should not be enslaved after a woman makes a choice to keep the baby.

BTW, I am all for abortions without reservation, though I wish we could find better and certain ways to prevent pregnancy in the first place, ones that were safe and effective for both partners. Until such a time comes, abortions are a necessity.

I think some of the people over the age of 40 need to be aborted personally.

I'm curious to know if opinions on abortion here are related to whether or not the poster has had a child?

Maj wrote:I'm curious to know if opinions on abortion here are related to whether or not the poster has had a child?

Depends. What are the people with kids saying?

Maj wrote:I'm curious to know if opinions on abortion here are related to whether or not the poster has had a child?

I don't because not being married, had no say in whether the abortion was carried out or not.

Also men cannot have children, so were you only asking women?