Okay this argument is hypocritical AF. First, your two month old niece isn’t about to risk killing you and then die. Second, if she was going to die without you giving her an organ transplant, do you think it’s okay for the government to force you to do that surgery against your will? What about if it wasn’t your niece? What if you’re 10?
You don’t respect the autonomy of a woman if you believe in forcing decisions on them about their body, hard stop. There is no wiggle room for you to argue that the fetus matters, because you wouldn’t apply that to any other situation in life. Stop acting like it’s the moral choice when it’s literally forcing woman to risk their lives against their will. Those women are already alive, why don’t their rights and lives matter to you?
If you think “The fetus is a human life that should be protected” by the government, my reply would be exactly the same. It’s no different. The government protecting a fetus is the government taking away a woman’s right to her own life and body. Whatever grey areas exist in the debates that have gone on over the decades, this is not grey area. It’s black and white.
If I told you I wanted the government to protect homeless people’s right to live by forcing you to donate blood, I’m putting the homeless person’s rights above yours. If you want the government to force women to literally risk their lives for 9 months you’re putting a pile of cells’s rights above a woman’s. There is no fallacy here, there is no “but what about”, it’s plain and simple. Either you see women as humans with equal rights and value as yourself, or you believe a fetus has more rights than a woman. The only other possibility is you are the type who actually does want the government to force people to donate blood and organs. I met one once, quite the lunatic.
One could easily argue that the government letting the woman end the fetus’ life is ruining the fetus’ right to his/her own life and body.
No, not really. Unless you’re going to argue some stranger on the street who needs an organ donated to live is having their rights infringed by the government not forcing you to give them your organs to save them. The only difference is the location of the “human”. Also, regardless, if you are making this argument, then either you’re still saying the fetus has more rights than the woman, or the government shouldn’t intervene because both have equal rights.
Your first sentence says that even if I believe the fetus is a human life that should be protected, your reply would be the same, so why’d you switch your terminology back? You should have said “You’re putting a human life that should be protected above a woman’s” - once again, you try and pull this emotional terminology rather than being consistent.
I don’t believe a fetus is a human. But sure, put the word human there instead, because if your argument is that this unborn human’s life should be protected above a woman’s, you’re still taking away that woman’s rights.
I think all 3 have equal rights, and that none of us should be able to end the life of the others.
The fetus can not live on its own. Saying an abortion is ending the life of the fetus is like saying taking someone off life support is ending their life. While technically true, are you the type of person that would also argue the government should disallow the removal of life support?
But the fact that it’s the mothers intentional actions that brought the life to the world
I’m sorry, but if you honestly think it’s up to a woman whether or not she gets pregnant, you’re incredibly out of touch with reality. Contraceptives aren’t 100% effective. Rape is a thing. Hell, humans make mistakes sometimes. Women don’t just go around getting abortions because they felt like it, it’s not a fun procedure and it’s not without risk. The biggest factor that makes this an irrelevant argument is there is literally no other example of a policy you would support that would infringe on someone’s rights in the same way. There are hundreds, maybe thousands of examples where people put other people’s lives in danger but they still have rights. Why focus on this one specific issue when there are so many others? The only answer is sexism. Not respecting Women’s rights. There are zero implemented policies that would force someone to feed someone else who’s dying, shelter them, donate blood to them, or do anything that would keep them alive. And I doubt you would argue for them if there were.
I wish more republicans will say this - if we want to be pro life - reduce unwanted pregnancies, provide care to pregnant women and fund options for the baby if they want to provide that baby to a more willing family.
This is fine, but what’s not fine is supporting government policies that force the decision on women. Especially blanket ones with no exceptions.
I mean literally. I don’t know how you can sit here and say ‘okay, well someone might believe that it’s a human life in the womb, but absolutely no way in hell could they argue that a woman ending it’s life could be wrong!!’ - if you can’t grasp a basic concept that ending a human life could be considered immoral, we shouldn’t continue this conversation.
I don’t believe a woman aborting a fetus is ending it’s life any more than refusing to feed someone starving on the street. Maybe you could debate that, but it’s so cut and dry to me that it’s just so hard to see the other arguments as compelling.
It actually is. the vast vast vast majority of adults know that if they have sex, there’s a risk of pregnancy. You know this, right? That’s like me walking up at softball and swinging, hitting the ball and getting pissed because I didn’t know that swinging could end in the possibility of me hitting the ball.
Awful analogy. Your intention in softball is to hit the ball. The intention in sex is to follow your human instinct and desire towards pleasure.
99.9% effective for some, and combining contraceptives makes the rates extremely small.
There are 175,000,000+ women in this country. 0.1% of that is 175,000. That’s a lot of women you’re saying intentionally got pregnant.
Did I say that?
You say you believe in having exceptions for specific cases like rape. I’m guessing you would put nonviable pregnancies in there too. The thing is, almost every single abortion performed fits into an exception category. So by arguing in favor of more restrictions, you are indeed saying that.
There’s an argument that abortions don’t respect the babies lives, male or female.
Okay, but that argument isn’t in a vacuum. By forcing the decision, you’re choosing which life you respect more. The baby or the woman carrying. If I truly believed a fetus was a human, I would still say the government doesn’t get to choose who’s rights are more important. Also, as a matter of opinion I would still say the woman who is actually alive and has an actual brain and memories and experience should actually have more rights than the fetus.
If you have 1 year old baby and you don’t feed him and in result they die, do you not think there’s a policy that punishes you for this?
Actually good counterpoint I hadn’t thought of. In my opinion it’s still different and a very special case because you’re the legal guardian in that case. If someone drops a baby off at your doorstep and you don’t feed it and it dies, there aren’t legal protections there.
They didn’t force women to have sex. They didn’t force women to get pregnant. They are simply saying that if a human life is created, that it has inherent value and with such there’s a moral question on whether ending a human life without their consent is wrong.
Then why aren’t republicans fighting to stop people pulling the plug on life support? Every day thousands of people who can’t consent are taken off life support because they’re brain dead or because their insurance won’t pay for it any more. Yes, that moral question is valid to ask. What’s not valid is forcing the choice on others based on your own personal beliefs, especially if you acknowledge that the topic is debatable.
I’ve already mentioned multiple times about exceptions. If you want to keep bringing this up, you can. My answer has stayed consistent.
I thought you had, but I couldn’t find it for some reason so I went under the assumption you thought otherwise. Here’s the thing about this though, we already have term limits and restrictions pretty much everywhere. Banning abortions with exceptions is already a won battle. There are so many other issues, the very fact that people care so much about this one particular issue is sexist on its own. No republican is talking about water supply quality, about domestic terrorism, about the atrocities being committed at our borders, homelessness, police brutality, school shootings, veterans being denied healthcare they were promised, companies extorting people with things like insulin prices or healthcare costs in general, climate change, asbestos, literal slavery in our prisons, actual Nazis rallying, the fact that the people died in the insurrection. They’re focused on ruining the lives of women over clumps of cells that don’t even have brains.
That’s the thing with exceptions. They’re very hard to legislate.
Rape exceptions might as well not exist. Laws I’ve heard on this require the rape to be proven in the court of law. Even putting aside the fact that most rape cases are never processed and prosecuted, there’s a very low likelihood that the case will conclude before the pregnancy does, thus rendering the exception useless.
Exceptions for medical complications are also very hard to legislate because you have to decide when is the woman dying enough to be able to save her life. Is it when we are losing her now? When she’ll die tomorrow? Next week? Dying now means risking that she won’t survive the treatment or if she does, that she’ll lose her fertility in the process. Is that acceptable? The much higher chance of, in your view, losing two lives rather than one? I would argue no. This is exactly what led to these situations: women forced to endure trauma because doctors are terrified of life in jail if someone decides that the woman wasn’t in “enough danger” or “in danger at all”. I don’t see any way around this outcome.
Third, I’ve only seen one state that allowed an exception for nonviability of a fetus. In all the other states I’ve seen, women have to carry doomed fetuses who will die shortly after birth. I can’t imagine the trauma of that. Isn’t it more merciful to allow those women to abort?
Congratulations, add context and nuance to the list of words you have no comprehension of. Your words have no meaning so I have interpreted them to say that you agree that you stance is inviable.
Someone doesn’t understand the words “non-viable”. You really should start by reading a dictionary before you start redefining words like fetus, life, and enslave.
Funny how you only care about the dead unborn child, not the living one or the mother.
Ok, I’ll engage you on this one, your position at least seems internally consistent.
Let’s play out this example - your 2 year old niece is sick, and so are you. You recently found out that she even exists - you didn’t know you had a sister until CPS told you she’s your responsibility.
An action that risks your life could possibly save her… Let’s say a liver transplant. It has to be you, you’re her only living family member. And because of that, you’ll also be responsible for her - you can put her up for adoption when this is all over, but you’re still on the hook for the medical bills whether this works or not.
She’s guaranteed to die if you don’t give her the transplant, and you would almost certainly recover quickly on your own.
If you go through with the transplant, she has a slim chance to live, and an even slimmer one to have a decent quality of life.
But in your current state, the transplant is very risky - at best you’ll see a lengthy and expensive recovery, after missing months of work you’ll be tens of thousands of dollars in debt. Complications could see you paralyzed or in lifelong pain, and it’s very possible both of you die on the table - maybe even likely.
The doctors are telling you it’s a terrible idea to go through with this, that the risk is unacceptable and it would be a mercy to just let her pass, but they’re obligated to go through with it if you insist.
Now, no one is stopping you from going through with it - if you want to put your life on the line for another, that’s your decision to make. You’re her guardian now, so it’s your decision if she should have to go through the pain for the chance at life, no matter how small.
That’s all well and good - I’ve seen enough to know that death is often a mercy, but if you believe otherwise there’s not much to say
Now, here’s my question - should the government be able to force you to attempt the transplant?
Some of these details might seem weird, but I was trying to stick the metaphor as close as possible to a very real scenario with a dangerous pregnancy. The only difference is - the doctor is performing an action here, but withholding one with the pregnancy.
You’re not though - pregnancy is not a lack of action. It’s an enormous commitment, especially when it’s atypical. It can even be a practically guaranteed death sentence - if the fetus implants in the fallopian tubes, it’s already not viable - at best you’re waiting for the fetus to grow big enough to rupture them, and hoping the bleed that causes doesn’t do too much damage before you can get help.
Not to mention if a fetus dies in the womb after it gets to a certain size, it rots and leads to sepsis - unclear laws and harsh punishments have already led to situations where doctors refused care for both of these life threatening cases, and in both these cases the odds aren’t slim, they’re none. In the second the fetus was already gone… Sometimes when they induce labor the fetus isn’t even in one piece… It’s pretty grisly
I don’t agree with your belief that a potential life is the same as a life, but let’s set that aside - I can respect that as a belief
So… My root question to you is - Should you be able to force someone to risk their own for someone else?
If so, how sure do you have to be that the other person will die no matter what you do before you’re released from the compulsion to put your own health on the line?
There’s always at least some risk of pregnancy turning fatal for the mother. How much danger do you have to be in for the math to check out?
And also, to what point should politicians with little understanding of medicine be able to deny you care?
You saying that you don’t bring your niece into this world sounds a lot like the responsibility argument, aka “you had sex and got pregnancy and this is your consequence or punishment”. You really seemed to side step the entire analogy by saying you aren’t the parent. Neither exceptions nor saying that you believe every fetus is the same as a fully formed human answer the question.
How would you feel and react if the government forced you until a dangerous medical procedure to potentially save the life of someone else? Please, don’t side step again. Please, don’t give me “it’s not my fault they’re here, they had sex, therefore they have to do it”. Please, don’t give me “but I think the fetus has rights too”. How would you feel?
If that child, really fetus, is inside your body, no, I don’t think you have to continue letting the fetus use your body. Because that’s what it is. No one would force a woman to breastfeed. No one would say you legally have to use your boobs no matter what to feed this child. That’s what being pregnant is.
And no, you are continually side stepping and not telling me how you’d feel. How would you feel?
Not one of your sentences began with “I would feel”, contained the word “feeling”, or mentioned any emotion. I asked how would you feel.
Yes, you do have a responsibility to feed and care for a child. Do you have a responsibility to use your body to do so? No. Do we have laws requiring women to breastfeed? No. Are people arguing for such laws? No. That’s the equivalency of pregnancy. Not are you required to keep your kid alive. But are you required to use your body to do so. Everyone would think it’s a violation of bodily autonomy to require breastfeeding. Requiring continuation of pregnancy is no difference.
In this case there absolutely was another human life involved- the twin that’s life was at risk because doctors couldn’t abort the fetus that was going to die within hours of birth anyway. You don’t seem to care about that life.
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Okay this argument is hypocritical AF. First, your two month old niece isn’t about to risk killing you and then die. Second, if she was going to die without you giving her an organ transplant, do you think it’s okay for the government to force you to do that surgery against your will? What about if it wasn’t your niece? What if you’re 10?
You don’t respect the autonomy of a woman if you believe in forcing decisions on them about their body, hard stop. There is no wiggle room for you to argue that the fetus matters, because you wouldn’t apply that to any other situation in life. Stop acting like it’s the moral choice when it’s literally forcing woman to risk their lives against their will. Those women are already alive, why don’t their rights and lives matter to you?
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If you think “The fetus is a human life that should be protected” by the government, my reply would be exactly the same. It’s no different. The government protecting a fetus is the government taking away a woman’s right to her own life and body. Whatever grey areas exist in the debates that have gone on over the decades, this is not grey area. It’s black and white.
If I told you I wanted the government to protect homeless people’s right to live by forcing you to donate blood, I’m putting the homeless person’s rights above yours. If you want the government to force women to literally risk their lives for 9 months you’re putting a pile of cells’s rights above a woman’s. There is no fallacy here, there is no “but what about”, it’s plain and simple. Either you see women as humans with equal rights and value as yourself, or you believe a fetus has more rights than a woman. The only other possibility is you are the type who actually does want the government to force people to donate blood and organs. I met one once, quite the lunatic.
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No, not really. Unless you’re going to argue some stranger on the street who needs an organ donated to live is having their rights infringed by the government not forcing you to give them your organs to save them. The only difference is the location of the “human”. Also, regardless, if you are making this argument, then either you’re still saying the fetus has more rights than the woman, or the government shouldn’t intervene because both have equal rights.
I don’t believe a fetus is a human. But sure, put the word human there instead, because if your argument is that this unborn human’s life should be protected above a woman’s, you’re still taking away that woman’s rights.
The fetus can not live on its own. Saying an abortion is ending the life of the fetus is like saying taking someone off life support is ending their life. While technically true, are you the type of person that would also argue the government should disallow the removal of life support?
I’m sorry, but if you honestly think it’s up to a woman whether or not she gets pregnant, you’re incredibly out of touch with reality. Contraceptives aren’t 100% effective. Rape is a thing. Hell, humans make mistakes sometimes. Women don’t just go around getting abortions because they felt like it, it’s not a fun procedure and it’s not without risk. The biggest factor that makes this an irrelevant argument is there is literally no other example of a policy you would support that would infringe on someone’s rights in the same way. There are hundreds, maybe thousands of examples where people put other people’s lives in danger but they still have rights. Why focus on this one specific issue when there are so many others? The only answer is sexism. Not respecting Women’s rights. There are zero implemented policies that would force someone to feed someone else who’s dying, shelter them, donate blood to them, or do anything that would keep them alive. And I doubt you would argue for them if there were.
This is fine, but what’s not fine is supporting government policies that force the decision on women. Especially blanket ones with no exceptions.
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I don’t believe a woman aborting a fetus is ending it’s life any more than refusing to feed someone starving on the street. Maybe you could debate that, but it’s so cut and dry to me that it’s just so hard to see the other arguments as compelling.
Awful analogy. Your intention in softball is to hit the ball. The intention in sex is to follow your human instinct and desire towards pleasure.
There are 175,000,000+ women in this country. 0.1% of that is 175,000. That’s a lot of women you’re saying intentionally got pregnant.
You say you believe in having exceptions for specific cases like rape. I’m guessing you would put nonviable pregnancies in there too. The thing is, almost every single abortion performed fits into an exception category. So by arguing in favor of more restrictions, you are indeed saying that.
Okay, but that argument isn’t in a vacuum. By forcing the decision, you’re choosing which life you respect more. The baby or the woman carrying. If I truly believed a fetus was a human, I would still say the government doesn’t get to choose who’s rights are more important. Also, as a matter of opinion I would still say the woman who is actually alive and has an actual brain and memories and experience should actually have more rights than the fetus.
Then why aren’t republicans fighting to stop people pulling the plug on life support? Every day thousands of people who can’t consent are taken off life support because they’re brain dead or because their insurance won’t pay for it any more. Yes, that moral question is valid to ask. What’s not valid is forcing the choice on others based on your own personal beliefs, especially if you acknowledge that the topic is debatable.
I thought you had, but I couldn’t find it for some reason so I went under the assumption you thought otherwise. Here’s the thing about this though, we already have term limits and restrictions pretty much everywhere. Banning abortions with exceptions is already a won battle. There are so many other issues, the very fact that people care so much about this one particular issue is sexist on its own. No republican is talking about water supply quality, about domestic terrorism, about the atrocities being committed at our borders, homelessness, police brutality, school shootings, veterans being denied healthcare they were promised, companies extorting people with things like insulin prices or healthcare costs in general, climate change, asbestos, literal slavery in our prisons, actual Nazis rallying, the fact that the people died in the insurrection. They’re focused on ruining the lives of women over clumps of cells that don’t even have brains.
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That’s the thing with exceptions. They’re very hard to legislate.
Rape exceptions might as well not exist. Laws I’ve heard on this require the rape to be proven in the court of law. Even putting aside the fact that most rape cases are never processed and prosecuted, there’s a very low likelihood that the case will conclude before the pregnancy does, thus rendering the exception useless.
Exceptions for medical complications are also very hard to legislate because you have to decide when is the woman dying enough to be able to save her life. Is it when we are losing her now? When she’ll die tomorrow? Next week? Dying now means risking that she won’t survive the treatment or if she does, that she’ll lose her fertility in the process. Is that acceptable? The much higher chance of, in your view, losing two lives rather than one? I would argue no. This is exactly what led to these situations: women forced to endure trauma because doctors are terrified of life in jail if someone decides that the woman wasn’t in “enough danger” or “in danger at all”. I don’t see any way around this outcome.
Third, I’ve only seen one state that allowed an exception for nonviability of a fetus. In all the other states I’ve seen, women have to carry doomed fetuses who will die shortly after birth. I can’t imagine the trauma of that. Isn’t it more merciful to allow those women to abort?
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To have individual rights, one must first be individual. If you don’t know the definition of individual, pick up a dictionary.
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Congratulations, add context and nuance to the list of words you have no comprehension of. Your words have no meaning so I have interpreted them to say that you agree that you stance is inviable.
Someone doesn’t understand the words “non-viable”. You really should start by reading a dictionary before you start redefining words like fetus, life, and enslave.
Funny how you only care about the dead unborn child, not the living one or the mother.
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No you can’t because your position is inherently dickish.
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It’s been explained to you but you lack the understanding of the definition of words so your comprehension has failed utterly.
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Ok, I’ll engage you on this one, your position at least seems internally consistent.
Let’s play out this example - your 2 year old niece is sick, and so are you. You recently found out that she even exists - you didn’t know you had a sister until CPS told you she’s your responsibility.
An action that risks your life could possibly save her… Let’s say a liver transplant. It has to be you, you’re her only living family member. And because of that, you’ll also be responsible for her - you can put her up for adoption when this is all over, but you’re still on the hook for the medical bills whether this works or not.
She’s guaranteed to die if you don’t give her the transplant, and you would almost certainly recover quickly on your own.
If you go through with the transplant, she has a slim chance to live, and an even slimmer one to have a decent quality of life.
But in your current state, the transplant is very risky - at best you’ll see a lengthy and expensive recovery, after missing months of work you’ll be tens of thousands of dollars in debt. Complications could see you paralyzed or in lifelong pain, and it’s very possible both of you die on the table - maybe even likely.
The doctors are telling you it’s a terrible idea to go through with this, that the risk is unacceptable and it would be a mercy to just let her pass, but they’re obligated to go through with it if you insist.
Now, no one is stopping you from going through with it - if you want to put your life on the line for another, that’s your decision to make. You’re her guardian now, so it’s your decision if she should have to go through the pain for the chance at life, no matter how small.
That’s all well and good - I’ve seen enough to know that death is often a mercy, but if you believe otherwise there’s not much to say
Now, here’s my question - should the government be able to force you to attempt the transplant?
Some of these details might seem weird, but I was trying to stick the metaphor as close as possible to a very real scenario with a dangerous pregnancy. The only difference is - the doctor is performing an action here, but withholding one with the pregnancy.
You’re not though - pregnancy is not a lack of action. It’s an enormous commitment, especially when it’s atypical. It can even be a practically guaranteed death sentence - if the fetus implants in the fallopian tubes, it’s already not viable - at best you’re waiting for the fetus to grow big enough to rupture them, and hoping the bleed that causes doesn’t do too much damage before you can get help.
Not to mention if a fetus dies in the womb after it gets to a certain size, it rots and leads to sepsis - unclear laws and harsh punishments have already led to situations where doctors refused care for both of these life threatening cases, and in both these cases the odds aren’t slim, they’re none. In the second the fetus was already gone… Sometimes when they induce labor the fetus isn’t even in one piece… It’s pretty grisly
I don’t agree with your belief that a potential life is the same as a life, but let’s set that aside - I can respect that as a belief
So… My root question to you is - Should you be able to force someone to risk their own for someone else?
If so, how sure do you have to be that the other person will die no matter what you do before you’re released from the compulsion to put your own health on the line?
There’s always at least some risk of pregnancy turning fatal for the mother. How much danger do you have to be in for the math to check out?
And also, to what point should politicians with little understanding of medicine be able to deny you care?
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You saying that you don’t bring your niece into this world sounds a lot like the responsibility argument, aka “you had sex and got pregnancy and this is your consequence or punishment”. You really seemed to side step the entire analogy by saying you aren’t the parent. Neither exceptions nor saying that you believe every fetus is the same as a fully formed human answer the question.
How would you feel and react if the government forced you until a dangerous medical procedure to potentially save the life of someone else? Please, don’t side step again. Please, don’t give me “it’s not my fault they’re here, they had sex, therefore they have to do it”. Please, don’t give me “but I think the fetus has rights too”. How would you feel?
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If that child, really fetus, is inside your body, no, I don’t think you have to continue letting the fetus use your body. Because that’s what it is. No one would force a woman to breastfeed. No one would say you legally have to use your boobs no matter what to feed this child. That’s what being pregnant is.
And no, you are continually side stepping and not telling me how you’d feel. How would you feel?
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Not one of your sentences began with “I would feel”, contained the word “feeling”, or mentioned any emotion. I asked how would you feel.
Yes, you do have a responsibility to feed and care for a child. Do you have a responsibility to use your body to do so? No. Do we have laws requiring women to breastfeed? No. Are people arguing for such laws? No. That’s the equivalency of pregnancy. Not are you required to keep your kid alive. But are you required to use your body to do so. Everyone would think it’s a violation of bodily autonomy to require breastfeeding. Requiring continuation of pregnancy is no difference.
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In this case there absolutely was another human life involved- the twin that’s life was at risk because doctors couldn’t abort the fetus that was going to die within hours of birth anyway. You don’t seem to care about that life.
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