A thoughtful and (mostly) nonjudgemental video that gives the protesters a chance to speak. There's a hint of polarization at the end, but for the most part it seems to be done fairly and shows compassion around a difficult matter.
Brilliantly done interviews. The protesters weren't goaded into silly responses, or forced to continue interviews against their will. These folks are out there fighting for their ideals without consideration for the practical effects of the legality of abortion. Just as we can likely find no one that will defend abortion as the best means of birth control, none of these people will put a woman away for the "illegal murder" they fight for. Ideals vs. Reality people!!
It's a tough question, and I respect those who are willing to say "I don't know." I think their best answer would be "The same thing that happens to women who kill their infants." The protester wearing the hat comes closest to this, saying it depends on the woman's state of mind, and you would have to take a lot of things into consideration.
But miscarriages are ok tho rite If abortions are made illegal due to some construance of "infanticide," or "murder," in the eyes of the law, it logically follows not that women should be excused for their miscarriages, but that they be prosecuted, perhaps, under some sort of "manslaughter" or "accidental death" clause. Women who chronically miscarry should be somehow removed from the open reproduction pool, prevented from continuing the genocide their womb so single-mindedly pursues. The sole difference between an abortion and a miscarriage is a person's deliberate intent and/or action. In court, "sorry I didn't mean to" is not an acceptable defense for causing loss of life. If we're going to outlaw abortion, why should "miscarriages" get to skate on through? If we don't close this loophole I swear, the next thing you know, all these murderous mothers will be standing in courtrooms arguing that we can't prove they killed their fetuses on purpose! That if it was an accident, even if there's only a reasonable doubt, they should be let off the hook! Why, that would be just asking for justice to be abused! __ An abortion isn't exactly a fun time or a walk in the park. It's pretty shitty by all accounts. I don't know how I feel about "people should be punished for stupid sex decisions" as an ethos, but I do wonder why the whole "having an abortion" part of the consequences of stupid sex decisions is not being counted towards the "punishment" end of the equation? Like, it is not fun to have an abortion, it is rather the opposite. I think it could be counted quite easily as "punishment" for a stupid sex decision. 1 person out of every 100 might be excited/look forward to their abortion, but I'm going to go out there on a limb and say that the vast majority of women who have an abortion experience a lot of emotional, not to mention physical, stress and pain as a direct result. An abortion isn't fun. It's often simply the least worst option. You aren't going to enjoy walking off the cliff just because your sides and back are surrounded by a raging fire. You just might have a better chance at survival, that's it. __ Hey, you! Angry someone. Don't be too literal here. I'm trying to make a point, not actually lock up the chronically infertile. I just wanna know - what's the difference?
Incentivizes a black market, but this isn't drugs where you can make them in your backyard. At some point the risk of dying due to botched backyard surgery is going to be far more severe than the benefit of an abortion. I'm not anti-abortion at all, I think government has little place in enforcing rules unless it shows direct and countable harm to larger society. Murder destroys a human being, a child is little more than a bundle of flesh we project empathy onto, little more valuable than any of the thousands of animals with just as complex lives that we kill millions of every month. There is some expectation of empathy, of course, for anything that is human. Society is slowly trying to bake that out of us by saying "unborn children aren't babies". Honestly, I think they are human beings, and people are tying themselves in a knot to get around a truth they dislike. On a societal level, they are part of making a cold and calculated decision in allowing abortion to become popular and normalized. They truly do value the woman's health than a human life. Which is fine, but breaks that expectation of empathy that does a lot of work to tie society together, which is not fine to most. Regardless, I do support abortion fully.
You must be very young. In my lifetime, abortions were commonly performed with a clothes hanger on the kitchen table, or in the garage. So "can't do them in your back yard" shows a seriously juvenile and uninformed understanding of what an abortion is, and what it entails. I won't argue the ethics with you, because I believe the opposite of you, and neither of us are going to get the other to climb over that fence. But you need to at least be basically informed about what an abortion is, the process, and how it is performed. Please do that simple research so you can better support your position. And remember, there have always been abortions, and there always will be abortions. These have been going on for far longer than we have had written history. This is not something you can stop. So all you can do is punish those who have just had to make the hardest decision of their life, and will suffer with the consequences for the rest of their life. Now go ahead and tell me what type of state-imposed punishment is appropriate for such a person. Go.
Want to read something funny? He claimed to teach for thirty years in this post. I'll just put this print-screen in case there would be a sudden case of edititis. I hate to be like that, but it's healthier to ignore him. He once tried to tell me that "having a policeman or a doctor make a PSA in school" is 'propaganda' and that people in high school have all the time in the world to do their own research about everything. Climate change? Read on your own. Epidemics, STD or STI? Go and research it on your own, kids! And when asked him to put some deed behind his words he went back to semantics. Read here if you are interested and have some time to waste.You must be very young.
And it's far less likely someone will do one of these sorts of things than go to a doctor who allows you to pay to have it done. People will always do it, it's that the number will go down by significant amounts. I don't doubt that people will do stupid things, as you describe. I've seen people cut their fingers open and stick magnets in them because they thought it was cool, or people who today eat and get so fat they can't walk intentionally. Using a hanger to perform an abortion isn't that extreme, really. The problem is that it is potentially deadly, and is very dangerous. People can, and will, die trying it, and that will prevent many people from trying it when they would have gotten an abortion. I don't want to stop them. I just said there isn't such a punishment that is appropriate. Where did you read me as making such an argument? The state punishment should be revoking the license of doctors who perform abortions. No more, no less. And I don't even think that should happen, people should be free to do what they damn well want to if they aren't substantially/we can know that they harming society by doing so. I do not think government should enforce law on the basis that being "human" grants you rights to life, liberty, and so on. I think those things should exist because they are beneficial and necessary for a healthy society. Killing babies doesn't really harm much, outside of the point at which you are showing you have no empathy for them, and an "inside" baby isn't such a being. I don't know if you mistook this argument as one "for" abortion, but it isn't one.In my lifetime, abortions were commonly performed with a clothes hanger on the kitchen table, or in the garage
This is not something you can stop.
Now go ahead and tell me what type of state-imposed punishment is appropriate for such a person.
I have never encountered someone with such a lack of rigor in their thought processes. Reading your response is just ... bizarre. How about the very first sentence you wrote on the topic? Seriously, you need to do some research before you form an opinion on abortions. Or do as I have, and be with a woman as she makes the decision, go with her to the clinic, and hold her hand as she goes through the process. There is no part of that process that is easy. There is no time where the potential infant is not in the room, a part of the decision. Having an abortion is not like ordering a McChicken at the drive through. And punishing anyone for having or giving an agreed-upon medical procedure, is unwarranted in every case, regardless of your morals. It is a medical decision, and you do not get to be in the room while the patient and doctor make the decision of the appropriate course of action. For any procedure. Ever. I just said there isn't such a punishment that is appropriate. Where did you read me as making such an argument?
You punish the doctors ...
I think I should clarify myself a bit more here, because I thought about where things may be going wrong. Firstly, when I talk about my judgement of how society makes it's decisions I do not refer to the decisions individuals make. For example, I have stated that the decision to abort a baby is an immoral and calculated one. I do not think this is true on the individual's level. Instead, it is the society, the larger social result of all people talking to one another, that is cold and calculating. If you support abortion because you saw the behaviors on an individual level, then I don't consider you to be making a cold, calculated, or bad decision to support abortion. What I think is that society trending towards the support and legalization of abortion is only doing so because of factors in recent changes, and it is the larger picture, the behaviors of people on a large scale, that allows abortion because of all the benefits it has now compared to how it used to. ___ Secondly, I was arguing for the idea that my moral viewpoint when I so strongly was pushing the idea of babies being people and abortion being the killing of them. This wasn't me stating, at all, that I believe abortion was a bad thing. Instead, that was me trying to express my viewpoint and reasons that I have changed my views on morality and the nature of how we should think about the world. It was stupid to include that in this whole post, and it really wasn't appropriate, sorry about that. ___ And, finally, when I talk about abortion I am referring to it from a very clinical modeled distant perspective. Those variables you talk about how "abortion is not like getting a sandwich" are things I am well aware of, but I wasn't considering those "up close" and personal situations when I was/am talking about decisions we make as a society. I have no need or desire to consider those situations, because I feel that I can't say anything about them. I am not speaking from the scope of any individual's life, but the scope of broad human behavior.
His point is in many situations there won't be a doctor to revoke a license of. Desperate woman will get shit done on their own. Another point is that no, the risk of dying from such procedures will absolutely not deter said woman. Abortions have always happened and always will, nothing in history suggests that the number will go down because it's dangerous. Deciding to terminate a pregnancy really isn't the same as putting magnets in your fingers. Like not even remotely. That argument is almost as bad as people who treat carrying a baby to term like it's as simple as carrying a backpack around.
And there would be no punishment in those situations. I don't see how that's a point. Making abortion illegal isn't about finding literally every case and preventing it at all costs, it's about generally discouraging and making the statement that "you should not do this", and making it as feasibly difficult for abortion to happen as you can while still being within reason. Do we even have a comprehensive history of the rates of people getting abortions in the past if it were ever legal/illegal? If not, than what's the backing for this claim? I'm not saying they are similar, I'm using it as an example of "people will do stupid and potentially deadly and life threatening things for petty reasons, so they'll almost certainly give themselves abortions for much more severe reasons". Are you even reading my damn post?His point is in many situations there won't be a doctor to revoke a license of.
nothing in history suggests that the number will go down because it's dangerous.
Deciding to terminate a pregnancy really isn't the same as putting magnets in your fingers. Like not even remotely.
So if something were made illegal their just wouldn't be punishment ? There's always a punishment for doing something illegal... Otherwise it's legal. That punishment may not always be enforced but it's there. The question isn't if performing abortions were illegal, it's if abortions were illegal. So here's the thing about this kind of topic, I know you like data and I know you have difficulty comphrending things without data so I get it. Topics like this though you have to listen to people and their stories if you ever want to understand fully. Goobster already told you he was around at a time when this happened, countless other people will tell you the same. Reports like this one can help illustrate the problem but I'm sure you'll find holes to poke in that report as well. The other thing is, you're trying to say you understand why people would do dangerous things like unsafe abortions because people put magnets under their skin. The reason that doesn't make sense is because the level of how dangerous the prodecure is does not matter. I understand why young girls and woman would take those kind of measures because although I have never been in their position I am able to empathize with it. I understand how they may feel helpless, overwhelmed, and like this is their only option. Maybe they understand that it's dangerous but they do it since they don't see any other option. There is not even a slight relation to the thought process of somebody doing something dangerous for kicks.
Not for individuals who can't be justifiably punished. As you can note from the tone of the people answering the questions, it's not about punishing things as if they are murder, it is about assuming it is akin to murder and declaring it wrong and necessary to discourage as much as is feasible. Putting incredibly desperate people in jail isn't feasible, and honestly I think that if we, as a society, shared the same empathy for these pregnant women as we do everyone else, a lot less people would be in jail for things in general. I have no trouble comprehending, I have trouble believing. People and their stories are not trustworthy, are subject to incredible amounts of bias, and should not be taken into account unless done through a formal system that attempts to minimize or eliminate those biases. And as for your report: Will the numbers be "low", maybe not. Will the numbers mean that nobody dies or gets hurt? No. But it will mean that the number of abortions will be lower with restrictions than without, and that society as a whole will have declared the action of getting an abortion something that is illegal and shouldn't be done. That's what it's about, not declaring no abortions at all. I didn't say there would be no black market, I didn't say nobody would have abortions, I am saying that fewer people will. Right now when you hear black market you think "war on drugs" level of black market where teenagers all over the place are smoking weed. I really doubt abortions would be anywhere near that common, especially combined with modern sexual education. No, I'm saying that as people are willing to do stupid and risky things for little reasons, they will be willing to do stupid and risky things for big reasons, of which you included in your paragraph. I'm not saying the motivations are the same, that people get abortion for a thrill? Why would I ever say that? You need to read and understand my broad point, not the little details.So if something were made illegal their just wouldn't be punishment ?
I know you like data and I know you have difficulty comphrending things without data so I get it.
you're trying to say you understand why people would do dangerous things like unsafe abortions because people put magnets under their skin
Everything illegal has a punishment. Even if it's not enforced there has to be a punishment. That just literally how it works. What's the point in making something illegal if it's not punishable ? Peoples stories and experiences have value even if you don't choose to see it. You can pretend it's all about remaining logical but that's a complete lie, lets use the example of the last time we spoke. I spoke about my experience and you made one up in your head which you believed more. (That's an important part, because you didn't just say, ya know I'm not sure about that, you made up a story and you did believe it more likely) So let's say there's a third person involved here, who should they believe ? Person A (me): was actually present for the scenario, can provide more details on request. Person B (you): read a small description of events, did not ask clarifying questions, actually forget parts of the story upon reading, just kind of made a story up. You choose to believe the story of person B which isn't logical at all. Now you can say you didn't pick one over the other but you did. You made the choice that I was wrong and you made a story you thought more likely. You're doing the same thing here. You believe fewer people will get abortions... Because reasons ? You actually have no reason to believe that. It's not that you choose to believe data over personal story, you just believe whatever you cook up in your own head over people with actual life experience. Goobster's experience just like the experience of others can offer valuable insight and he's not the one missing out here if you don't want to see that.
Again, and I am going to stress this a billion times over. I believe solidly in the idea that personal experience/accounts of situations is not valid, is not trustworthy, and never will be either of them. If you experience something, and I disregarded it, it is probably for a reason. I'm getting a lot of the same vibes from you as people I've spoken to in the past, and it's always been on this same topic. I'm going to assume the experiences you had were highly subjective and quite possibly explained by things like placebo, or other situations. If we are talking about physical situations, I am going to assume there is some sort of data that contradicted your accounts, and I pointed to that. Now, I have no idea what conversation you were talking about, I don't pay attention to the usernames of the posts I am responding to. If you could give more context I would be grateful because right now I really have no idea what you are talking about when you refer to "our past conversations". Well here you fucking go, have some data. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-a-grimes/the-bad-old-days-abortion_b_6324610.html http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/policy/abortion/graphusabrate.html This was the number of legal abortions in 1981 total. Population increased in the time by about 1.5, so the number estimated up in the other quote of 200,000 to 1.2 million makes it kind of hard to draw a conclusion on the number of abortions going up or down. A study I found is actually very good, here's some of what it says: This is a bit off the topic, but I find this statistic interesting: Back on track: This is a bit disturbing considering the circumstances were most often rape/incest/similar situations: https://www.guttmacher.org/about/journals/psrh/2003/01/did-abortion-legalization-reduce-number-unwanted-children-evidence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guttmacher_Institute I do not believe this would be a very biased study. I found quite a few that talked about abortion going up, but many of them did things like talk about "deaths" rather than "abortions" so I wasn't willing to trust them.You believe fewer people will get abortions... Because reasons ?
Abortion has been widely used in America since its earliest days. In the 1950s, estimates of numbers of illegal, unsafe abortions ranged widely, from 200,000 to 1.2 million per year.
1981 1,577,340
'Furthermore, abortion legalization may have led to an improvement in the average living conditions of children, probably by reducing the numbers of youngsters who would have lived in single-parent families, lived in poverty, received welfare and died as infants.
The number of children adopted in a given year is therefore a rough proxy for the number of newly available "unwanted" children. Legal access to abortion would be expected to reduce the number of unwanted children and thus the supply of children available for adoption and the number of adoptions. Previous research suggests that abortion restrictions less onerous than outright prohibition reduce the number of infants relinquished for adoption in the United States.
Our results indicate that adoptions, particularly of children born to white women and by petitioners unrelated to the child, decreased in the 1960s and early 1970s when states repealed their laws restricting access to abortion. Roe v. Wade also may have lowered rates of adoption of children born to white women. Legal reforms allowing small increases in access to abortion, such as allowing the procedure for women who became pregnant as a result of rape or incest, did not affect adoption rates of children born to white women.
Before the availability of legal abortion became widespread, relinquishing children for adoption was one of few options open to women with unwanted or mistimed births. The number of adoptions rose from 91,000 in 1957 to 175,000 in 1970, then fell to 130,000 by 1975; the decline of the early 1970s coincided with the legalization of abortion.10 During this period, the population of women of childbearing age (15-49) grew steadily, birthrates among unmarried women rose and total birthrates fell
Adoptions by petitioners unrelated to the child accounted for the bulk of the decline: These adoptions fell 63% between 1970 and 1975, whereas adoptions by relatives per 1,000 white women declined by 19%.
We also controlled for several variables that reflect women's opportunity costs of children and that measure economic conditions: the employment-to-population ratio in the state (i.e., the number of people employed divided by the number aged 16 and older), unemployment rate, real per capita personal income, real manufacturing wage and real average Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) benefit per recipient family (included as a measure of welfare generosity). The wage, income and welfare variables were deflated using the consumer price index for urban consumers and were measured in natural logs in the regressions.
Relative to other states, states that repealed their abortion restrictions before Roe v. Wade saw significant declines in adoption rates for children born to white women; these declines were 34-37%, depending on whether adoptions are measured per 1,000 births or 1,000 population. The effect of repeal was not significant for adoptions of children born to nonwhite women. Reforms that legalized abortion in certain circumstances lowered adoption rates of children born to nonwhite women by 15-18% but did not have a significant effect among whites. Adoption rates did not change significantly after Roe v. Wade for states that had not repealed restrictive laws, but the estimates for whites suggest a negative effect similar in magnitude to the effects of repeal prior to Roe.
Reforms that legalized abortion in certain circumstances lowered adoption rates of children born to nonwhite women by 15-18% but did not have a significant effect among whites.
The Institute defines SRHR to encompass the rights of all individuals to make decisions concerning their sexual activity and reproduction, free from discrimination, coercion and violence.
Dude, so you don't trust experience yet you use your experiences of "people like me" which are likely riddled with bias to not believe me and instead believe in a story you cooked up yourself ? You said making abortion illegal would lower the amount and the provided a stat which you followed with: This wouldn't really matter but you yourself said you base your opinion on facts and data yet you summarize that you can't draw the conclusion you made ? This is pointless. it kind of hard to draw a conclusion on the number of abortions going up or down.
I didn't intend to use that as support to say you were wrong. I just meant to say that the patterns of what you are saying match other conversations so I am assuming things about the conversation you refer to. Using the data I provided, of which I immediately followed by a reasonable amount of other information that proceeded to make more definite conclusions using statistics that are more reliable than abortion reporting, which is a very unreliable measure. ___ Listen, if you have some personal vendetta. If you have some anger at something I said, if I offended you, fucking say so and quit with the passive aggressive crap.yet you use your experiences of "people like me" which are likely riddled with bias to not believe me and instead believe in a story you cooked up yourself ?
You said making abortion illegal would lower the amount and the provided a stat which you followed with:
No personal vendetta, you just write things and then contradict them almost right away. Adoption rates going down don't mean anything. In places where abortion isn't restricted you will also see better sex Ed, better access to birth control, and many factors that contribute to a lower teen pregnancy rate in general which would all contribute to a lower rate of adoption. What's irritating is you constantly tell people their experiences are wrong but you're not smart enough to make that call. What makes it even more irritating is that you actually think you base your assumptions on logic as opposed to your own experiences and biases. The thing is though this is pointless because you will never realize that. I could link you to the thread were you chose to believe somebody who couldn't even remember the basic details over an eye witness but what's the point ? You'll never get it.
Read the paper, they go over controls they use pretty well. It goes over all sorts of different explanations and factors and explain the reason behind their conclusions. The paper is talking about a specific time-frame, not location. Unless there was a surge in sexual education in the areas the paper talks about where change happened, this isn't a likely explanation for a change in abortion rates. http://www.newsweek.com/brief-history-sex-ed-america-81001 And it seems the opposite was true. I'm not making that call, years of knowledge about the nature of human experience in science and study have made that call. This is, without a doubt, true. My own biases probably do reflect in what I say. However, I always seek to avoid using my experiences directly when I can use knowledge or research. If someone wants proof of something, I'm not going to state "I saw this therefore it is true" I am going to find research that backs it (barring direct things like "I saw that big airplane explode" which are general and severe enough that you can trust personal experiences). If someone's personal experiences are on a broad topic that occurs on a far larger scope than any individual than I'm not going to ever trust any one person's viewpoint on that system. They are useful to use to go and find information, but beyond that do not prove anything.Adoption rates going down don't mean anything. In places where abortion isn't restricted you will also see better sex Ed, better access to birth control, and many factors that contribute to a lower teen pregnancy rate
In places where abortion isn't restricted you will also see better sex Ed, better access to birth control, and many factors that contribute to a lower teen pregnancy rate in general which would all contribute to a lower rate of adoption.
Oddly enough, some of the greatest resistance to sex ed arose during the sexual revolution of the late '60s and early '70s. Sex ed became a political issue during this time, as religious conservatives built a movement based, in part, on their opposition to sex instruction in the public schools. Groups like the Christian Crusade and the John Birch Society attacked SIECUS and sex education overall for promoting promiscuity and moral depravity. In the widely distributed 1968 pamphlet entitled "Is the School House the Proper Place to Teach Raw Sex?" Gordon Drake and James Hargis framed sex ed as communist indoctrination: "[If] the new morality is affirmed, our children will become easy targets for Marxism and other amoral, nihilistic philosophies—as well as V.D.!" Rumors spread that sex instructors were encouraging students to be homosexuals or even stripping and having sex in front of their classes. "Religious conservatives began using sex ed to their political advantage," says Janice M. Irvine, author of Talk About Sex: The Battles Over Sex Education in the United States. "They had this really scary rhetoric." In school districts across the country, groups of parents started protesting sex-ed programs.
What's irritating is you constantly tell people their experiences are wrong but you're not smart enough to make that call
you base your assumptions on logic as opposed to your own experiences and biases.
Let's first rephrase: There are countless varied reasons a woman may feel the need for an abortion. The situation could be literal life-or-death for her, in which case my rephrase would be literally true. Even if not, it's foolish to suggest that the only thing at stake for said woman is her health. Child-bearing and rearing fundamentally and permanently alter a person's life. They certainly don't only impact a woman's physical health. So, I say, a life for a life - not health for a life. Are all lives equal? If you have a body but you can't live in it - you can only survive if you tack your body onto a healthy, self-sufficient person's and feed through them, regulate through them, etc - then are you really a person? I do not particularly believe in souls. I think our consciousness is made by the firing of our synapses. If you have a body but can't live in it, it sounds to me like you can't really be counted as alive. A body that can't sustain life - is it even a body? Don't bodies have to be alive, have to be able to breathe, drink, swallow, send impulses through your brain, make your organs do all that shit they do without your conscious thought, etc, in order to be bodies, even? If your body can't keep you alive then you aren't alive. Maybe you could be some day. Or maybe you won't ever be again. But it's false to claim something's alive when it lacks the structure and biological ability to sustain its own supposed life.They truly do value the woman's health than a human life.
They truly do value the woman's life over a human life.
Pregnancy can cause death or other issues. There are certainly times that pregnancy should be ended when it is the choice between a mother and death, and I think everyone would agree with that without a doubt. It stops being "abortion" when it is a question of life vs life, especially when it's a choice between 1 death or 2. Your reprhasing is exactly what I'm talking about. People are uncomfortable with this idea that they are supporting a very cold, calculating, or ideological idea of the world. I personally think it's fine, and (ego much?) I think I know the truth of the matter where so many try to deny it. Abortion isn't happy emotional roses, it's a dead potential child and a moderately better off non-mother. I figured I already answered this question. Humanity kills one another for very stupid things. Some lives, like the homeless, the poor, those groups that only take from society without giving to it, and so on are objectively less valuable than other human beings, and are treated as objectively less valuable by the society we live in. We understand we can make them more valuable, that human beings represent potential that can change by a good environment. That doesn't mean the person is more valuable, only that they can become as such. If they don't change, they remain worthless. I know it sounds monstrous, but I really want to stress that I truly believe in the idea that all our "feel good" morals come from a solid basis in the fact that those morals reflect onto the real world. We should help people because it is good to do so in all ways you might measure, not because we feel it is good. We should be kind because it helps us all to be strong and healthy people in a stable environment where everyone benefits. I believe that these things aren't just feelings I have, things I want to do because of empathy, but that they can be followed by/after abandoning emotion and empathy. I find the way I talk about people in such ways because I seek for a way to align my view of the physical world as a meaningless/morality as a subjective thing that doesn't really exist. Wanting to care and help and be part of something meaningful and important is difficult when you accept that as true. I, by no means, want to support what I believe exists in the physical world, but I cannot find a way to see any reality but that one, so I must transform it into what I want it to be. Babies are no longer as valuable as they used to be, so we must stop calling them human as you are doing here. In the past, it was useful to consider all babies as human, as their soul began to exist the moment of conception. Today it is not, so the definitions change as we see fit. We did the same with other races when we needed slaves, we do the same to animals as we need meat. "They aren't people they don't matter. I can cut their throat for food. I can enslave them. I can kill them. It's fine! They aren't people! I'm still a good person! Please!" I agree with the view, I agree with abortion of babies, but I do so through the rejection of the notion that human life, or any life, is valuable. What I believe you, and others are doing is trying to justify abortion through a view in which life is valuable, and it is never going to work as seamlessly as with my viewpoint. The same goes for eating meat. No matter what, you cause pain and suffering for little more than a meal when you eat meat. To justify that without rejecting the ideal that life is inherently valuable requires fallacy after fallacy, requires you twist yourself into a knot and just not think about what you do when you eat that chicken, when you get that abortion. I value honesty above more than I should, probably, but that is the smug and edgy way I see things. Babies are less valuable than the "feelings" or the long-term lack of physical change in the mother. Literally, it is better for society to have a mother not weighted down by a pregnancy she didn't want than to have yet another baby to suck down resources for 21 years, who will put the mother into poverty and likely not develop emotionally and physically as well as they would with a mother who chose to have a child. We are in an era where strong humans are better than many humans, and abortion, the push for it, is a change to fit that world. Society is learning to better use its human resources. Babies, just as the poor and homeless, have(had) potential. They may not be much today, but give it time and they become great and powerful parts of our society that help people, save lives, and provide benefit to us all. Babies, not so much as the poor and homeless, lost that potential as society progressed. Where we still give the homeless a chance because it is valuable to do so. Babies no longer are in that situation, because they are no longer valuable unless they are born to the correct situations. In the past, even the poor, abused, and unhealthy could contribute. Today, with wealth inequality rising, with more and more labor requiring a sharp mind and years of investment? You need a solid platform to build on. There will come a day, for the poor, where we can learn the mind so well that we can predict within reason if a human being will become valuable/useful or not. There will come a day that someone says "I am going to only dedicated resources to those in poverty we know will recover from it". I am moderately sure society will get pretty ugly as that happens. Imagine the world when we can find the psychopaths in society without error, and ensure they won't be hurting anyone. When we can tell if a child will be gifted or not before they even take their first tests, and the predictions are accurate. Hitler was "before his time" so to speak. Even today, with genetic screening and abortions we are beginning to kill off the disabled or handicapped before they are even born, and letting it happen has tons of societal moral support behind it. Individually we may be empathetic, but the systems we make out of ourselves are not. They are cold and calculating, and they can always convince us we fight for the right thing, the moral and warm thing, even when we aren't.They truly do value the woman's life over a human life.
Are all lives equal?
If you have a body but you can't live in it - you can only survive if you tack your body onto a healthy, self-sufficient person's and feed through them, regulate through them, etc - then are you really a person?
Don't bodies have to be alive, have to be able to breathe, drink, swallow, send impulses through your brain, make your organs do all that shit they do without your conscious thought, etc, in order to be bodies, even?