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[T'Zariah]

I'm pro-choice and that 95% statistic is complete bullshit. You can't just say it's your body, because it's not. It's your body and someone else's. It's still your choice, but to completely put a halt to one of the most amazing biological miracles known to the universe, after it's already set in motion, is traumatic. No regrets? Ha sure.

Please tell me more about your scientific and statstical background and qualifications.

 

[Aselith]

am i the only one who didn't understand this statment?

I believe it means that women who do not do the abortion regret the decision at a rate a lot lower than 95%.

I mean that really doesn't mean anything even when stated like that so I'm still not sure what that's supposed to mean but I believe that is the correct interpretation of the words themselves.

 

[GreatestHits]

Please tell me more about your scientific and statstical background and qualifications.

No thanks, however me saying it was complete bullshit was off

I think it's a little obvious, but if it takes you a degree to figure out that there's two beings in one body, then OK. To be oblivious to it as a miracle (juxtaposed and in comparison to everything else in life) and to require some sort of qualifications to acknowledge that it is sad to end it at a fundamental life-level is sad to me. What do you think pisses off the repubs so much

 

[Wilsongt]

No thanks, however me saying it was complete bullshit was off

I think it's a little obvious, but if it takes you a degree to figure out that there's two beings in one body, then OK. To be oblivious to it as a miracle (juxtaposed and in comparison to everything else in life) and to require some sort of qualifications to acknowledge that it is sad to end it at a fundamental life-level is sad to me. What do you think pisses off the repubs so much

Well, for some Republicans, you're damned if you do damned if you don't if you happen to be a poor woman on welfare. Your stigmatized for wanting an abortion and then almost punished for having a child by the way the GOP insist on cutting social support programs for the poor and them insist on calling those women leeches.

That's an entirely different discussion, though.

 

[Pau]

Well, for some Republicans, you're damned if you do damned if you don't if you happen to be a poor woman on welfare. Your stigmatized for wanting an abortion and then almost punished for having a child by the way the GOP insist on cutting social support programs for the poor and them insist on calling those women leeches.

That's an entirely different discussion, though.

Also stigmatized for using birth control or asking it to be covered by insurance and such.

 

[Guileless]

So you're not going to make your own argument you're just going to copy and paste the pope. You literally just pasted the same thing twice on the same page practically back to back.


Like I said abortion debates are useless when the opposition is like this folks.

I prefer quoting others who are professionals who spend their lives thinking and writing on these complex subjects, because say it better than me. They also have more room than is available here to write on complex subjects. I posted it twice because nobody before Gotchaye addressed the points.

So uh, I don't see anything about the negative implications of a person's right to their body and more of a statement on that being self-centered goes with selfishness.

"Right to their body" is political sloganeering. What Francis is talking about is the logic of self interest, and what happens when society elevates the logic of self interest to a cultural reflex that we always fall back on.

I feel pretty confident that early fetuses aren't very valuable.

That takes us back to where we started -- a society where something has no value if it does not serve our interests. Most people who identify on the left side of the political spectrum (and Pope Francis in Laudato Si) would argue that consumer capitalism encourages that thinking. So if we are saying that people have an absolute right to follow the logic of autonomous self-interest to the point where anyone who questions autonomous decisions to intentionally destroy early (and late) forms of human life is viewed as a theocrat unworthy of debate, can society realistically limit the logic of self-interest in other spheres? What about our society in 2015 makes you think we can?

 

[excelsiorlef]

Read again what I typed. My personal view is that I don't always agree with abortion, and the excuse that "We didn't have birth control" is bs. But I don't agree with the government dictating what people do with their bodies. That would make me pro choice.

Cool. You weren't clear though as you said you stopped being pro choice soooo. Anyway each to their own as long as it's not stopping others.

I prefer quoting others who are professionals who spend their lives thinking and writing on these complex subjects, because say it better than me. They also have more room than is available here to write on complex subjects. I posted it twice because nobody before Gotchaye addressed the points.



"Right to their body" is political sloganeering. What Francis is talking about is the logic of self interest, and what happens when society elevates the logic of self interest to a cultural reflex that we always fall back on.



That takes us back to where we started -- a society where something has no value if it does not serve our interests. Most people who identify on the left side of the political spectrum (and Pope Francis in Laudato Si) would argue that consumer capitalism encourages that thinking. So if we are saying that people have an absolute right to follow the logic of autonomous self-interest to the point where anyone who questions autonomous decisions to intentionally destroy early (and late) forms of human life is viewed as a theocrat unworthy of debate, can society realistically limit the logic of self-interest in other spheres? What about our society in 2015 makes you think we can?

Stop equating fetuses with fully formed adults. Don't equate then with children either. There's no logical extrapolation between abortion and mistreatment of disenfranchised folks. Hell if anything it's more likely that those who are openly and passionately pro choice are the ones in favour of laws and programs that help those in need. The GOP not only wants ti ban abortion but they want to hack and slash social programs.

Your slippery slope is ridiculous, there's no slope, there's no connection between fetus and any of the disenfranchised groups, other than of your own and the Pope's invention.

Abortion is not the gateway to Capitalist hell. You have consistently failed to prove it and insteasd have just repeated it as if it were fact.

 

[Metra]

Accepting this sort of quasi-formal way of framing the issue for the moment, it seems like you understand that the actual best outcome as far as many people are concerned is "woman doesn't have a child". That is, if I'm understanding you right when you say that it's "often wise to invest [in] prevention", you mean taking measures to avoid becoming pregnant in the first place, right? Note that (obviously) this doesn't get you to your "not a problem". So is there a problem with preventing an unwanted pregnancy from happening in the first place? Of course not! But then abortion looks an awful lot like a way of achieving exactly the same outcome as prevention. So it sure seems like a solution, in the everyday sense of the word. Ideally I should avoid getting my pants dirty. But if my pants get dirty I can wash them, and that solves my problem - it gets me back to where I would have been if I'd prevented the problem in the first place. I mean, sure, you can say that another way to make this not a problem would be for me to decide that I really like having dirty pants, but in that case it's weird to have first said that I should try to avoid getting my pants dirty to begin with - surely that's something I should have been aiming for, if me loving my dirty pants is the right place to try to end up.

Obviously that's silly. But what makes it silly is present in your analysis of abortion too. If the destruction of a fetus isn't much of a tragedy, the situations are pretty similar. This feels like you're trying to lawyer your way to establishing that abortion isn't a "solution", for a very specific sense of "solution" and a very specific understanding of exactly what the problem is, while obscuring where the actual disagreement is. I'm not sure how useful this is.

It's not my intention to obscure anything, Gotchaye; it's quite the opposite, actually. I presented my opinion on the subject, and tried to organize my arguments in a way that facilitates comprehension. As I said, I don't feel comfortable to endorse or object abortion. I think it's a complex issue and, as a general rule - when dealing with such kind of problem - it's wise to invest in prevention (in my opinion).

Also, you said that prevention of an unwanted pregnancy leads to a very similar outcome of an abortion. In my experience, at least, the outcome is vastly different:

• From a medical perspective: prevention poses no risk to the woman's life/health. Abortion, on the other hand...
• From a social perspective: abortion may have a significant impact on the mother, family and society, especially if you consider some particular cases, such as unwanted pregnancy due to rape. Investing in prevention, in this scenario, is fundamental, wouldn't you agree?
• And also from a moral perspective, as you'd need to justify the feticide.

If I may ask, in what perspective does an abortion lead to the same outcome as the prevention of an unwanted pregnancy?

 

[DonasaurusRex]

I'm not surprised at all like this. The assertions of emotional trauma have always seemed like pseudo-scientific mumbo jumbo to me.

isnt there like a whole group of women who had abortions that make the claim that they regret it, who else would it be? I know i've seen them women who had abortions.

 

[charlequin]

And if it is "murder" and they are a true person in the womb... then why couldn't I claim my unborn kids on my taxes while they were inutero?

The "murder" thing is a misdirect. Almost nobody actually believes abortion is murder; at most they think of it as a thing that's akin to murder, but significantly less serious.

I still believe effective and accessible birth control (for both sexes. Its coming MEN!) is the real answer to end the debate.

Even in a world with perfect access to birth control (and cultural acceptance thereof) there will be accidents and poor choices and medical complications and so on, but it would certainly reduce the number of abortions performed by an enormous amount.

But the way this study is being explained it almost seems as if the mother's are fine with abortion, and perhaps that's the shock. But I don't think most mothers are OK with going through it, however have accepted it as the best decision for them at the time

That isn't what it says at all. In fact, it specifically notes that over 50% of respondents said it was very difficult emotionally. I think the fact that it's a difficult choice and can have a big emotional impact is definitely represented.

When we're talking about regret, it's important to separate two distinct concepts. There's one where people think wistfully back to their history in passing and imagine other ways things could have gone -- "man, maybe it'd have been great if I'd taken up swimming" or something. And there's another where someone seriously and consistently believes that they made a mistake, and is suffering in the present with the knowledge of an error they can't take back or reverse. This study doesn't really speak to the former (it's certainly possible that some of these women think back and wonder what could have been), but it's on the latter that there's this significant consensus -- these women, once they've made the decision, don't turn around to believe that they were fundamentally wrong to do so or wish they could turn back time to reverse their decision.

isnt there like a whole group of women who had abortions that make the claim that they regret it, who else would it be? I know i've seen them women who had abortions.

If 5% of women wind up in serious, full-blown regret of their decision, that's something like 2 million women in America today. It's certainly very possible for there to be many, many women who regret their choice and yet for them to simultaneously be a tiny proportion of women overall.

"Right to their body" is political sloganeering.

Are you for real? It's one thing to form an argument that puts bodily self-determination against some other set of factors, but to suggest that women who ask for it are guilty of some sort of duplicitous political manipulation is abhorrent.

 

[Gotchaye]

That takes us back to where we started -- a society where something has no value if it does not serve our interests. Most people who identify on the left side of the political spectrum (and Pope Francis in Laudato Si) would argue that consumer capitalism encourages that thinking. So if we are saying that people have an absolute right to follow the logic of autonomous self-interest to the point where anyone who questions autonomous decisions to intentionally destroy early (and late) forms of human life is viewed as a theocrat unworthy of debate, can society realistically limit the logic of self-interest in other spheres? What about our society in 2015 makes you think we can?

I mean, that's not a principle I endorse. I spent some time talking about how the pro-choice movement does not actually look like a collection of people arguing for unbridled self-interest. I specifically addressed the concern that a desire to have abortion be available because it makes people's lives more comfortable is blinding pro-choicers to the moral value of fetuses. I don't think I ruled anyone a "theocrat unworthy of debate". Of course, it should be pretty unsurprising that the (often technical and quite complex) theological arguments the Catholic Church endorses which produce its whole outlook on human sexuality aren't very persuasive to people who aren't devout Catholics (and I'd note that they aren't even persuasive to lots of devout Catholics!). But nobody else is really even trying - it's a weird quirk of modern American social conservatism that it pretty much only looks to Catholics for intellectualizing. So aside from a minority of Catholics you've got a bunch of people who think abortion is murder but who can't give a coherent explanation for why fertilization makes such a huge difference for the moral value of an egg that isn't 100% a matter of faith ("that's when God puts the soul in") and who simultaneously don't seem all that bothered by all the unintentional fetus destruction that goes on such that it seems unlikely that they really believe what they claim to believe. This doesn't look like a group of people that you can argue with because they don't appear to have an argument.

This thread provides some decent examples. You've got people expressing discomfort with abortion but whose reason for thinking abortion should be to some extent discouraged is explicitly just that it's what they feel in their hearts. If we're concerned about sloppy moral thinking that just imposes our biases on the world, I'm not sure that the pro-choice side is the obvious place to start looking.

Anyway, like I was saying in my last post this challenge you're setting appears to be way too strong. "Can society realistically limit the logic of self-interest in other spheres" if we place a lot of importance on the logic of autonomous self-interest in this case? Again, you don't think I'm risking the postmodern apocalypse when I go jogging because I'm placing my selfish desire to go exercise above the value of all the oxygen I use up doing it. I'm first and foremost denying that an early fetus has significant value at all, so from my perspective this sort of challenge is only challenging if I'm also supposed to be afraid of doing anything because I want to. You've got to convince me that I should be afraid that fetuses have significant value before you can get me to worry that I'm inappropriately valuing my (well, other people's, mostly) convenience over the fetus' life. I can still argue for limiting the logic of self-interest in other spheres by virtue of the harm done by allowing it. I agree that it's often difficult to get people to agree to policy that's not in their immediate self-interest, but this seems like an orthogonal issue to me. We don't make it easier to make policy or achieve social change that's against the interests of people with power by suffering gratuitously over an unrelated disagreement.

But fine, suppose the early fetus is somewhat valuable in itself. Surely your position is not that we can never put our own interests above those of others'. Like, it's not wrong of me to apply for a job even knowing that other people want that job. Even Jesus only demands that we give shirts to the shirtless if we already have at least two shirts. And pregnancy and childbirth are, I understand, not very fun for lots of women. A right to not be pregnant seems like a pretty important right, as these things go. Fetuses are going to need to be really valuable before abortion-because-pregnancy-sucks starts being plausibly too-selfish. But again, nobody seems to have much of an argument for why we should think early fetuses approach adult humans in value and even people who claim to believe this don't seem to act like they do.

 

[Meus Renaissance]

46.6% of the women in this study had a prior abortion. This distorts the numbers significantly

 

[Gotchaye]

46.6% of the women in this study had a prior abortion. This distorts the numbers significantly

No I think that's actually pretty much what you expect when you take a random group of women who have an abortion in a given month or whatever. That's about the percentage of abortions which are repeats.

I guess then the headline shouldn't be "95% of women who've had an abortion don't regret it" but "95% of women who have an abortion in a given year don't regret it", but that's a pretty subtle difference. Even assuming that all regret is from first-timers we've still got at least 90% of women who've had an abortion not regretting it. But if I'm reading the study right it seems like women having their first abortion were only a little less likely to report that it was the right decision.

 

[Zeus Molecules]

46.6% of the women in this study had a prior abortion. This distorts the numbers significantly

Actually no when I read that I had to give them credit because that was what you would want in this type of study. About half the respondents to have had prior abortions and another half to have never had a prior abortion because it would cancel out the possibility of it there being a bias in the results due to either too many of the respondents having had had multiple abortions or too many respondents having never had an abortion prior to the one being reported.

Usually when a research project gets a large result one way or the other on a sociological method I question the research but the research methods holds up as far as I can see and the results are valid.

 

[Guileless]

Your slippery slope is ridiculous, there's no slope, there's no connection between fetus and any of the disenfranchised groups, other than of your own and the Pope's invention.

Abortion is not the gateway to Capitalist hell. You have consistently failed to prove it and insteasd have just repeated it as if it were fact.

I never said 'abortion is the gateway to Capitalist hell' or tried to 'prove' it. I said that the logic of self interest and individual autonomy is a cultural reflex through which we view everything in our society, including abortion, and we should understand the consequences of that. Have you read the "I got a girl pregnant" thread?

Are you for real? It's one thing to form an argument that puts bodily self-determination against some other set of factors, but to suggest that women who ask for it are guilty of some sort of duplicitous political manipulation is abhorrent.

I am for real that "it's my body" is a political slogan designed to be put on a sign or button. It's not duplicitous, it's just an easy way to sell an argument (not unlike a commercial pitch). What does "it's my body" mean? It means that I have autonomy to make the decision based on the logic of self interest as I understand it and express it through preference satisfaction. And the logic of self-interest is so inviolable and sacred that I can exercise the logic of self interest to intentionally end another form of human life under certain circumstances (or "crush" as they say at Planned Parenthood), and to even suggest otherwise is to "disgusting" and/or "abhorrent" (both of which my arguments have been called in this thread).

Treating individual autonomy with such deference (and understanding it primarily as preference satisfaction) is a radical departure that sets late capitalist consumer societies apart from every other culture in human history, and it is naive to think that it does not have wide implications across all spheres of life.

Surely your position is not that we can never put our own interests above those of others.

The position is that human nature is naturally self-centered, and elevating the logic of self interest and individual autonomy into its own unquestioned system of morality will have inevitable consequences to the weak and vulnerable who are unable to realize their own will to power. I'm not disputing that it's possible to list out differences between an adult person and a zygote; I'm asking why do we need to find the differences, and why are we offended when anyone raises any questions about our justifications about the differences.

 

[excelsiorlef]

The position is that human nature is naturally self-centered, and elevating the logic of self interest and individual autonomy into its own unquestioned system of morality will have inevitable consequences to the weak and vulnerable who are unable to realize their own will to power. I'm not disputing that it's possible to list out differences between an adult person and a zygote; I'm asking why do we need to find the differences, and why are we offended when anyone raises any questions about our justifications about the differences.

Why do we need to find the differences?

What do you mean find?

The differences are adults are full sentient conscious beings capable of living without being attached to another human being. Zygotes are not even fetuses.

Also excellent you deny you're making a slippery slope argument and then make it again right here by basically saying "if we say her body her choice we're now elevating that to an unassailable level of thought that can only lead to the oppression of poor people, sick people and other disempowered people."

You're literally making arguments that sound like you're equating abortion with the oppression of the sick and poor, and are doing so by saying let's just completely throw out all the differences between an adult and a zygote. Come on.

 

[Gotchaye]

The position is that human nature is naturally self-centered, and elevating the logic of self interest and individual autonomy into its own unquestioned system of morality will have inevitable consequences to the weak and vulnerable who are unable to realize their own will to power. I'm not disputing that it's possible to list out differences between an adult person and a zygote; I'm asking why do we need to find the differences, and why are we offended when anyone raises any questions about our justifications about the differences.

I'm going to aim for a shorter reply this time.

We need to think about the differences between an adult person and a zygote because, again, this worry you've got seems to apply just as well to a whole bunch of things that you certainly don't think we should be concerned about destroying or using up. Why do you need to find differences between a fetus and all the bacteria I kill when I clap my hands? They're pretty weak and vulnerable too. How do you answer questions raised about the justifications given for why those differences matter? And like I was saying in my last post, I'm quite happy to talk about justifying the differences - I made a long post earlier in this thread about personhood. I don't think I get offended when people raise questions about my understanding of personhood, but I think I'm owed an effort to provide a positive view of why some things have rights and other things don't. It's easy to sit back and lob bombs at philosophical arguments - "how do you know this?", "you can't prove this!", "what if you're wrong?". It's hard to have an alternative theory which is more plausible than the one you're criticizing.

 

[charlequin]

I am for real that "it's my body" is a political slogan designed to be put on a sign or button.

We're not having a late-night dormroom argument about advertising here. Most political issues wind up with people staking out sloganized versions of the various positions; that fact has very little to say about the contents of the arguments. The underlying meaning of the "right to one's own body" concept is more nuanced than the single-sentence version and certainly not worthy of automatic dismissal.

Treating individual autonomy with such deference (and understanding it primarily as preference satisfaction) is a radical departure that sets late capitalist consumer societies apart from every other culture in human history

Any conception of freedom or autonomy that's relevant in a discussion like this one dates back to well before the late capitalist period; you can look back to Rousseau if you want to find people wringing their hands about philosophically preserving self-determination.

Even putting that aside, we're not talking about "self-determination" in the sense of "getting to pick what outfit to wear" (and trying to analogize it to such is, again, pretty ghastly); it's the ability to choose not to let someone or something else literally subsist off you as a parasite. Who we as a society consider human enough to have that right has varied significantly over time, but the idea of exercising it is hardly new.

 

[BamfMeat]

I'm pro-choice and that 95% statistic is very curious. You can't just say it's your body, because it's not. It's your body and someone else's. It's still your choice, but to completely put a halt to one of the most amazing biological miracles known to the universe, after it's already set in motion, is traumatic. No regrets?

Can someone explain something to me? Why is "the miracle of birth" any more or less of a miracle than the rest of the various shit that happens throughout the universe.

sperm, meet egg. cells replicate and boom, person. How is that any more or less of a "miracle" than say, bee, grab the pollen there and take it over to that other flower. Now procreation happens.

Like, seriously, sex and children and birth aren't some fucking miracle. It's just another process that was put into motion the same way every other process in the universe was put into motion - by chance. I mean shit, it isn't like it's even that hard to create this said "miracle". men shoot out a fuckton of sperm at a time. We know roughly when a woman is ovulating. It's not hard to set even that specific cycle in motion.

 

[Poop!]

Can someone explain something to me? Why is "the miracle of birth" any more or less of a miracle than the rest of the various shit that happens throughout the universe.

sperm, meet egg. cells replicate and boom, person. How is that any more or less of a "miracle" than say, bee, grab the pollen there and take it over to that other flower. Now procreation happens.

Like, seriously, sex and children and birth aren't some fucking miracle. It's just another process that was put into motion the same way every other process in the universe was put into motion - by chance. I mean shit, it isn't like it's even that hard to create this said "miracle". men shoot out a fuckton of sperm at a time. We know roughly when a woman is ovulating. It's not hard to set even that specific cycle in motion.

Here's a video that explains what he's talking about:

http://youtu.be/_-agl0pOQfs

 

[-duskdoll-]

The most shocking part of this thread is the way people completely disregard the consequences of giving birth. This isn't the sims, you're not going to spin a couple of times and have a baby in your hands. Pregnancy and child birth fuck up women's bodies because our brains have become bigger and babies can't get out of the womb as easily, we can't just shit children like we did millions of years ago. So the "but just put it up for adoption!" argument is completely stupid, because you're essentially saying that women should put their lives and bodies at risk to give birth to a child they don't even want, and then sent that child to an orphanage, because our orphanages aren't full yet.

There are a million ways to get pregnant (lack of sex education, drinking, rape, not using condoms for religious reasons), and neither condoms and birth control are 100% effective. So really the best way to make sure you never get pregnant is abstinence or vasectomy/tying your tubes. And there are a million reasons why women would want an abortion, (financial reasons, religious reason, health reasons, teen pregnancies etc). So can we stop pretending that women who have abortions are these murderous monsters? Because you literally have no idea what's going on in their lives and why they made their decision. When YOU get pregnant you can make any decision you want, but stop dictating what others should do based on what makes comfortable.

You know for people who are supposedly pro-life, you sure don't give a shit what happens to that life after it leaves the womb.