Poll

The Religious Right believes unborn humans deserve equal treatment under the law. Therefore, should the hostile attack on a mother's body by a fetus be treated as aggravated assault, or attempted murder?

Aggravated assault.
1 (7.7%)
Attempted murder.
1 (7.7%)
Maybe the Religious Right should stop trying to make the law of the land and start making apple pies.
11 (84.6%)

Total Members Voted: 12

Voting closed: April 06, 2006, 02:29:37 am

Author Topic: Perhaps Why Pregnancy Is So Dangerous  (Read 4891 times)

Maelstrom

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« Reply #45 on: April 07, 2006, 02:57:55 am »
Quote from: Lord J esq
And so I exploit this lack of qualification to come up with a ridiculous scenario, at which they (or you on their behalf)--without reconsidering their underlying premise--simply resort to the illogic that the unborn deserve not equal treatment, but superior treatment. It's the same bullshit as before, Malestrom.


It's not the "same bullshit."  Your parody only refutes the idea that the fetus and the woman are complete equals, both in terms of value and actions.  You are going to have to embrace a different device to actually disprove this more aggressive concept.

(It's Mael, by the way)

Quote
Now fetuses are superior to real people under the law?


In your burning building example, compared to a infant that's made no informed decision leading to its life being put in danger?  Hardly.  No two year-old can make a decision with legal responsibility.  If you paid better attention to my clauses, you would recognize that the favorable treatment only applies when one party made a decision to put its life at risk or undergo a hardship.  In fact, even adults wouldn't be given lower priority, unless they were crazy enough to run *into* a burning building in a criminal or deliberately suicidical way (in which case it's their own damn fault if they die).

As for embryos, many religious sorts consider them being stored/frozen as immoral in the first place, so it should be a moot point in their eyes.

----------------------------------------------

Now, I'll save you some trouble, because you probably want to rework your story so that these are properly developing fetuses, and you want to make an anti-abortionist choose between the life of a fetus and the life of an innocent baby.  That's fine; you'll trap the die-hard purists in that camp at last.  However, some others will offer this cohesive pecking order:

1) Born people that haven't chosen to put their lives at risk
2) Fetuses, which obviously have never chosen to put their lives at risk
3) Born people who decide to put their livelihood at risk

So they will "properly" save the lives of born babies and other people before the unborn sorts, as you would hope.  Some of the "religious" sorts actually hesitate to admit this is really how they feel, but this tempered version, compared to the absolutes we hear from them, is actually reassuring.

In other words, there are people that will favor the lives of the born ahead of a fetus, but with not so much separation that they will sacrifice a fetus willy-nilly or for an amount of organ damage to the mother that is fairly typical and non-substantial.  If there are circumstances that are terribly unforseen (rape i.e. the deprivation of choice, major risk to the mother, and optionally an unusual turn of events that leads to economic depravity), then the advantage of being born can supercede, since the scenario violates the spirit of 3) and would invoke the woman as a 1) instead.

I don't know if you intend to fight these people as well, but you can imagine that their logic is quite incompatible with your piece of satire (because of the incongruous notion of responsibility, and the reality that they don't really believe in equality between the fetus and born people in the first place).  While these people aren't making the most noise, I can assure you that they are the ones with the deciding votes at the moment (they may be electing a lot of zealots who want strong anti-abortion policy, but that doesn't mean that's what the voters precisely want).

Lord J Esq

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« Reply #46 on: April 07, 2006, 06:38:53 am »
Quote from: Maelstrom
(It's Mael, by the way)

My mistake. I know the word well enough to be duly chagrined.

Maelstrom

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« Reply #47 on: April 07, 2006, 12:49:26 pm »
Well, you did get the other half of the word right.

Still, I meant it strictly as an aside.  It's not the most important thing going on in my post.  :P

Burning Zeppelin

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« Reply #48 on: April 07, 2006, 10:20:39 pm »
Wow, I haven't been around much lately. New computer, slow internet, and only Internet Explorer to work with makes the Internet your worst enemy. But anyways...

I loved how Js options weren't so much to get an opinion from people, but just to show how stupid most of our reasonings are and what other sorts of conclusions we can come up with with our ideologies. Of course, I chose the apple pies...but they wouldn't be great at that either. Well, maybe Green Gannon would be, but thats only because he's...ok, no joke there...

 do not believe an unborn child is alive until the Three-Four Month period. Therefore before that, it doesn't matter, but I still believe it to be wrong (but shouldn't be illegal) to kill it. Pretty much, it was your choice that it was born. If you feel remorseful afterwards, well, hah. Of course, like others said, the woman is a 3) Born person who decided to put her livelihood at risk. Except for rape. But I don't agree that if the womans life is seriouslt at risk that she shouldn't be allowed to abort. Thats even allowed in Nigeria for gods sake :roll: (no pun intended).

But thats not the dilema here! Of course the fetus shouldn't be charged with assault or homocide! It is NOT sentient (and I realize that the "fetus-should-be-charged" is not your ideology, J).

But then again, it is quite strange. Could a fetus and a vegetable be compared? If so, then why if America allows you to take the life support of a vegetable by someone caring (such as a newly wed husband  :roll: ) then why can't the mother, who is the most closely connected to the unborn child take the proverbial life support of that child? I'm not saying I support either side, I'm just saying that it is a flaw in its ideology.

And another thing, who is this Religious Right? They can't all have the exact same ideas, can they? Please explain to a ignorant youth.

Lord J Esq

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« Reply #49 on: April 08, 2006, 04:55:45 am »
Quote from: Daniel Krispin
So no, I don't look the other way, I do better: I watch but hold my silence, hoping that I can learn more by observation than actual interaction.

Very good. Silence aloof, let us call it. I am not afraid to say this aloud, as no one save you would possibly understand, but what you have just confided is the secret to power and wisdom alike. (No doubt the latter is more appealing to you, but in the end they are the same thing.)

No, it is not lost on me that hereabouts on our Compendium I may not seem to practice my preaching. This is a worldly incarnation of what I believe Radical Dreamer failed to understand in our debate about being falsely loved versus sincerely hated. In any case, there is hope for you yet. Wayne, right? I can never tell. Nobody likes to be called by their true name around here except me.

Quote from: Daniel Krispin
And, after all, if what you say really causes me that much grief, it only means my faith in my own beliefs is not very strong.

We got off on the wrong foot, didn't we? All religious insanity aside, I will grant you that.

Quote from: Maelstrom
Well, you did get the other half of the word right. Still, I meant it strictly as an aside.  It's not the most important thing going on in my post.  :P

Maelstrom, dear me! You make some fine points, and if I seriously believed that fetuses are criminals, you might even have a case! As it is, I do not, so you do not. This is the end of the line. It cannot be ended further.

Quote from: Burning Zeppelin
But then again, it is quite strange. Could a fetus and a vegetable be compared? If so, then why if America allows you to take the life support of a vegetable by someone caring (such as a newly wed husband  :roll: ) then why can't the mother, who is the most closely connected to the unborn child take the proverbial life support of that child? I'm not saying I support either side, I'm just saying that it is a flaw in its ideology.

A fetus and a vegetable cannot be compared to any benefit. One is a sack of potential, the other is a tragedy which it is our society's policy, rightly or wrongly, to keep alive via profound intervention. Society has the onus of looking out for all its denizens, and if it were not for the rights of women I would be generally anti-abortion. However, women's rights are more important than those of the unborn.

Quote from: Burning Zeppelin
And another thing, who is this Religious Right? They can't all have the exact same ideas, can they? Please explain to a ignorant youth.

The "Religious Right" is a term that represents an informal confederation of evangelical, fundamentalist, ultraconservative Christians and their organizations who, by unifying their efforts and their money, are able to exert considerable influence in United States politics at the national, regional, and local levels. They tirelessly pursue the restortation of the Dark Ages.

Burning Zeppelin

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« Reply #50 on: April 08, 2006, 06:08:54 am »
Um, tea anyone?
But we can kill the vegetable, so we aren't technically totally protecting it.

Maelstrom

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« Reply #51 on: April 08, 2006, 03:15:01 pm »
Quote from: Lord J esq
Maelstrom, dear me! You make some fine points, and if I seriously believed that fetuses are criminals, you might even have a case! As it is, I do not, so you do not. This is the end of the line. It cannot be ended further.


My (at least early) argument was never about whether fetuses were criminals, but that your "satire" was an unfair analogy in the first place.  There is a responsibility/accountability of the would-be mother that makes your turning-of-the-tables unfair, because the fetus is acting strictly involuntary, whereas the would-be mother typically voluntarily "started the war."

Your burning building example, on the other hand, *is* cohesive (when adapted properly), because it removes that accountability element that complicates your initial example (seeing as these are third parties to the fetuses, and these fetuses aren't the force hurting the born people, it's the fire in the building that's the problem).

Is this making sense?  If you concede this point, then we are done.

Lord J Esq

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« Reply #52 on: April 08, 2006, 11:02:04 pm »
This is the sound of an idea:  :idea:

This is the sound of an idea flying:   :arrow:  :arrow:  :idea:  :!:

Flying over your head:  :shock:

Just to recap what I am not conceding before we are "done" here: Some anti-abortion religious types want the unborn to have equal treatment under the law, on grounds that it would protect their lives above the sanctity of their mothers' "choice" to carry them to term or not. The flaw in their logic is that equal treatment makes the unborn culpable for attacking their mother's bodies. My poll was situated to point out this absurdity. Thus, to correct this absurdity the anti-abortion miscreants are forced to conclude that the unborn must actually receive preferential treatment under the law--an even more absurd proposition, because it ranks the unborn above their mothers.

Burning Zeppelin

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« Reply #53 on: April 09, 2006, 02:35:23 am »
Um, but what about a 2 yr old over their mother?

 :arrow:  :arrow:  :idea:  :!:

Leebot

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« Reply #54 on: April 09, 2006, 02:03:51 pm »
Actually, Josh, if you interpret it as equal treatment to an infant or toddler, you don't need to give them preferential treatment. As has been said before, if a young child accidentally harms or kills a parent, the law wouldn't hold them legally responsible as they aren't capable of analyzing the situation. The same is true for people with certain severe mental handicaps.

No one is asking to treat a fetus the same as an adult, they're asking to treat a fetus the same as a newborn or toddler--which few would argue have a right to life.

Now, as to whether those have preferential treatment under the law, remember that in addition to lack of culpability, they also lack a lot of rights. It's different, but not necessarily preferential.

Maelstrom

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« Reply #55 on: April 09, 2006, 05:11:18 pm »
Leebot covered a lot of the same things (and probably better), but I figure a reply is still in order.

Quote from: Lord J esq
The flaw in their logic is that equal treatment makes the unborn culpable for attacking their mother's bodies.


See, this is where you are wrong (again).  They may hold the fetus and the woman to be the same *value*, but they don't hold them to the same level of *responsibility* (because again, the woman can "decide" to kill the fetus through abortion or possibly other means, but the fetus never "decides" to harm the mother's organs; still, it doesn't rule out the possibility of aborting the fetus if the fetus is going to end up dying naturally anyway).  And to boot, the woman is the one deciding to engage in this conflict for resources (by getting pregnant), whereas the fetus has no say in it.  But I've said this at least twice already.

Frankly, it's not like the religious right believed there is equality between the fetus and mother (not unlike how there is not equality between a child and a parent), and it's rude to assume they do in that "satire."  That point never had to be argued.  To say these people generally do is an unnecessary (an incorrect/unfair) demonization of those that disagree with you (it's only funny when it's accurate, when it fits).

Quote
My poll was situated to point out this absurdity. Thus, to correct this absurdity the anti-abortion miscreants are forced to conclude that the unborn must actually receive preferential treatment under the law--an even more absurd proposition, because it ranks the unborn above their mothers.


Honestly, it's less a matter of "treatment" and more of a matter of "accountability."  Granted, the mother faces a unique disadvantage here (strictly because the fetus is dependant on the pregnant mother, which affects her range of behaviors for a time), but there still remains a lot of advantages (and responsibilities) that remain with a mother regardless of whether it's compared to a fetus or a born baby.  And while the pregnant mother suffers compared to other mothers, it's also worth noting that the fetus suffers compared to born babies, too (since certain anti-abortionists will allow for a mother's health exception of some kind, whereas born babies face no such danger).

And besides, some people will argue that's it's just as absurd (or moreso) to believe a fetus (which is considered a baby in some circles, whether you like it or not) should be at a disadvantage, that they should be completely at mercy to things going on around them and unable to protect themselves (whereas the woman, again, typically could control whether she gets pregnant in the first place).

If you expect anti-abortionists to believe that a born human has more value than a fetus, you must give an example that holds "responsibility" constant.  Again, that's why your burning building example works.  You don't need to cover any example that doesn't control for responsibility, because doing will just waste attention (before people lose their focus and devolve into a piss-fest).  K.I.S.S.

And seriously, "anti-abortion miscreants?"  There are plenty of zealots and genuine people (and others in between) on both sides of the argument.  While it's *possible* for one side to have a significant "advantage" in the concentration of "good" people, you can't deny humanity of many (most?) people on both sides, nor can you hide the fact that many on your side are motivated by the wrong reasons (such as self-interest).  Granted, the concentrations can get pretty lopsided if we were talking about nazism or racial/ethnic/religious violence, and strongly-charged rhetoric can be approprioate then, but that's not the kind of issue we are dealing with here.

Lord J Esq

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« Reply #56 on: April 09, 2006, 07:49:18 pm »
Quote from: Leebot
Actually, Josh, if you interpret it as equal treatment to an infant or toddler, you don't need to give them preferential treatment. As has been said before, if a young child accidentally harms or kills a parent, the law wouldn't hold them legally responsible as they aren't capable of analyzing the situation. The same is true for people with certain severe mental handicaps.

No one is asking to treat a fetus the same as an adult, they're asking to treat a fetus the same as a newborn or toddler--which few would argue have a right to life.

Now, as to whether those have preferential treatment under the law, remember that in addition to lack of culpability, they also lack a lot of rights. It's different, but not necessarily preferential.

The law is objective, and justice is blind. Forgive me for lacking the legal jargon, but different status under the law amouts to preferentialism. Minors, as you point out, enjoy a different status, explicitly, with regards to their standing under the law. Sometimes they are preferred, such as the assignment of further rights and protections (and exemptions) than adults enjoy, whereas in other cases it is adults who are preferred, mostly in the arena of "adult" behaviors such as voting and alcohol consumption, from which minors are restricted.

Likewise--and perhaps this is a delicate point, since Maelstrom and others can't seem to wrap their heads around it--if the unborn were given no special treatment under the law, they would liable for their aggressions against their mothers. This is precisely as absurd as you say, which is what my poll exploits--surely you of all people could not have failed to see this basic and obvious satire. No one in this thread, myself least of all, is actually proposing that the unborn should be treated as adults. My argument has nothing to do with how the unborn should be treated; it has to do with the idiocy of those who claim that fetuses and such should be entitled to full legal rights, without qualification. This sort of claim opens up a big can of worms, which is what I was highlighting with my poll.

The anti-abortion Gestapo puts very little thought into the logical grounding of its arguments. In these people's minds, a fetus is a person--a human being with standing under the law, like you or I. They do not perturb their intellects with the nuances of what particular legal status an unborn human should enjoy in keeping with their moral beliefs; to them these details are not a part of their mindset until somebody like me makes a poll pointing out that giving fetuses equal standing makes them equally criminally culpable, at which point the Gestapo is of course forced to "clarify" (i.e., sidepedal) that by "equal treatment" they really mean "special treatment." Then I would make another poll pointing out that the unborn are thereby favored over their mothers in legal rights, at which their little Death Star explodes in defeat and I get a medal.

It doesn't matter how much a person is "valued"; what matters is his or her legal standing--in this case, their "responsibility" under the law, as Malestrom puts it. These religious nuts think that because they want to value a clump of cells on par with a human being, their moral evaluation should translate into the law of the land. Rubbish! They can sit in church and foam at the mouth all they like, but damned if they want to make laws inhibiting the freedoms of decent people. In the arena of logical thought, their moral valuations can be torn to shreds--as this poll accomplishes--because this morality game is extraneous and irrelevant. Biologically speaking, pregnancy is a war that must be fought, with no crimes committed. There doesn't need to be a law punishing the unborn, because from this secular perspective the process of pregnancy is simply a risk that willing women will have to take, no good or bad about it. But morally speaking, the notion that an unborn human deserves special legal standing creates all sorts of legal indigestion. Even so, it might still be possible to morally evaluate a pregnancy and the character of an unborn child in a logically consistent manner, but staking a virulent anti-abortion position precludes this possibility outright. Anti-abortionism is flagrantly sexist, and is therefore as far away from "morality" as can be, accepting the Devil's morals. (This nonsensical forced digression is, if anything, an indication of the inherent flaw of morality itself.)

There is nothing left to argue; what you are saying barely even sounds like an argument against what I have said, except you bothered to style it as such. Maelstrom's bone to pick is that:

Quote from: Maelstrom
[The Religious Right] may hold the fetus and the woman to be the same *value*, but they don't hold them to the same level of *responsibility*...

I think you can see what he is trying to say, but hopefully you can also see that it misses the point of this entire exercise. Only if my poll were seriously indicative of my feelings toward the culpability of the unborn would he have a case. If that were so, then he could rightly say "But Josh, it's ridiculous to hold the unborn to the same legal standard as we hold adults." And I would agree, and hold my head in shame for ever making such an idiotic proposal. But that isn't what this poll is about; it is only what Malestrom thinks it is about. This poll is about the lack of critical thought of the anti-abortion nutjobs, the idiocy of their moral proclamations, and the difficulties of integrating their illogical and cruel morals with any legal system that claims to uphold justice.

Quote from: Maelstrom
And seriously, "anti-abortion miscreants?" There are plenty of zealots and genuine people (and others in between) on both sides of the argument. While it's *possible* for one side to have a significant "advantage" in the concentration of "good" people, you can't deny humanity of many (most?) people on both sides, nor can you hide the fact that many on your side are motivated by the wrong reasons (such as self-interest).

My language is not rhetorical. Well, yes it is a bit, but only as a side effect of the allusions I draw. Anyone who opposes abortion also implicitly holds that pregnant women are the property of the state and deserve marginal or zero standing above an unborn clump of cells inside their belly, and therefore is close enough in ideology to the atrocities of the Gestapo that a comparison is legitimate. "Miscreants," "nutjobs," "ignorant fools"; I would stand by every one of those phrases not rhetorically but literally.

Let me explain a few things.

Racists, sexists, xenophobes...most bigots are as decent as the rest of us when you see them outside of their bigotry. How many of those Southern gentlefolk of old were as sweet as strawberry pie except for the "inconvenient" fact that they took part in the hideous practice of slavery? I do not dispute that many anti-abortionists are perfectly sweet people when they are not busy advocating that women are less than human. Your point has no merit at all; the Devil must be a very charming fellow too.

Moving on, there are plenty of people on the pro-abortion side who support abortion for the wrong reasons, such as for reasons of privacy or convenience. There are plenty more whose logic is inferior to the virtue of their stance on the issue. But none of their ineptitudes nullify that inherent virtue of bestowing upon women the same liberties enjoyed by men.

What you are trying to do is entirely outside the realm of this whole thread: By alleging that there are so many good people on the anti-abortion side, and so many "wrong" people on the pro-abortion, you are implying that, at best, the abortion debate is not important and, at worst, that anti-abortionism is the correct posture. This brings your motives into question. You came to the Compendium pretending to be a liberal. You have since revealed yourself to be one hell of a committed devil's advocate. Well, that's another phrase we can take literally here. You ought to be aware of who and what you are defending.

Leebot

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« Reply #57 on: April 09, 2006, 10:12:02 pm »
First of all, I completely understand your position, Josh, and I find myself agreeing with you on most issues. But in this, I think you may be committing the "Straw Man" fallacy: Constructing an argument for your opponent and then arguing against that argument rather than their actual stance. In this case, you're saying that these people in the religious right want the fetus to have full adult rights.

Personally, I don't believe any of them are saying this. By saying the fetus should have the rights of a human, they mean the rights a human would get at between birth and two years old. I think, depending on the way you interpret the law, if you confer "human rights" on the fetus, it automatically gets infant rights rather than adult rights.

Now, personally I don't believe the fetus does qualify for human rights at all, at least until the brain starts to develop. At that point, it becomes more and more human up until about age three, which is (I believe) where scientists say the brain fully awakens. Before that point, it's merely the potential of a human, and eliminating it is on exactly the same moral level as cautioning two teens not to have unprotected sex that would result in a pregnancy (well, okay, the latter has a few more benefits as well, but you get the point).

Lord J Esq

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« Reply #58 on: April 10, 2006, 05:15:08 am »
Quote from: Leebot
But in this, I think you may be committing the "Straw Man" fallacy: Constructing an argument for your opponent and then arguing against that argument rather than their actual stance. In this case, you're saying that these people in the religious right want the fetus to have full adult rights.

Personally, I don't believe any of them are saying this. By saying the fetus should have the rights of a human, they mean the rights a human would get at between birth and two years old. I think, depending on the way you interpret the law, if you confer "human rights" on the fetus, it automatically gets infant rights rather than adult rights.

I am not implying that the Religious Right makes the argument that the unborn should have adult legal standing. Think of what I would have to do to stake such a position: I would have to believe that these people want the unborn to be charged as criminals. This is patently contrary to the obvious reality.

My point, again, is that their lack of critical thought leads to policy positions that, with a little clever exploitation, reveal glaring absurdities. Remember the context in which I created this thread: To my chagrin, no one at all has commented on the wonderful news article I referenced in my first post. This article details pregnancy from an evolutionary perspective, characterizing it as a competition between two beings for limited resources, which in more colorful terms amouts to a war. The mother plays an entirely defensive role as her body is ravaged for nutrients by the unborn child; each side has evolved powerful tricks for keeping the balance mutually beneficial, yet the competition is still dangerous. From a biological perspective, this is the price of bearing children. From a moral perspective, the unborn creature is an aggressor. This is the inevitable, inexorable, ineluctable fusion of illogical conservative religious dogma with the contents of the news article, and this is where my poll stood in all its feathered glory. Translating these morals into the legal code, anti-abortionists must therefore conclude that the rights of the unborn are actually superior to those of the mother, in order to maintain the spirit of their position.

I am not saying that anybody consciously believes the unborn to be criminals. I was saying earlier that the logic lines of the fundamentalist calls for fetal rights unfortunately leads to a destination antithetical to these people's intent. And I am saying now that, in light of Dr. Haig's findings, anti-abortionist logic forces this conclusion unavoidably, unless preferred status is conferred upon the unborn--which would have disastrous consequences for the rights of women.

A quick analogy: Believing the Earth is flat, yet embracing evidence that (unbeknownst to you) supports that actually the Earth is round. If somebody calls you on your contrary embrace, but you want to go on believing in a flat Earth, you've got to do something about that embrace--like perhaps killing the scientists who published the evidence.

Burning Zeppelin

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« Reply #59 on: April 10, 2006, 07:01:44 am »
Maybe the woman should be allowed to call for abortion after the birth, like Ms Cartman did  :D Or wanted to, before she realized that Cartman was already in his 40th Trimester...