My gosh, this is basic morality.

No, what I'm doing is basic morality. Deontology isn't tenable, and saying "killing people is bad because killing people is bad" is nothing short of lazy on your part. There's no principle of human life, just expediency; should we actively kill one person to passively save five? How about 600? What about passively letting people die?

Consequences matter, and unless you can demonstrate that abortion is always a net negative then you don't have the right to claim the moral high ground.

Quote from: gats on April 12, 2015, 01:20:21 PM

Quote from: Mmmmm Napalm on April 12, 2015, 01:07:45 PM

Quote from: gats on April 12, 2015, 01:04:29 PM

Quote from: Mmmmm Napalm on April 12, 2015, 12:48:22 PM

Quote from: gats on April 12, 2015, 12:47:24 PM

Quote from: Mmmmm Napalm on April 12, 2015, 12:38:37 PM

You can't just dictate who goes on to live life

The person that carries it can. It's their body, they're one that's going to nurture it for the 9 month period.

Quote

Who's to say a family looking to adopt would suck/be impoverished?

there are plenty of kids already in need of homes, it's not exactly like we're running out.

Yes, because 9 months of someone's life is definitely worth someone else's actual life.

what?

I am saying that 9 months spent carrying a burden is nowhere near equal in worth to the life of a human being.

looooool, don't. you  don't have the ability to carry a child so you have no right to comment on how it feels like.

I'm not saying it isn't tough. But seriously, is a nine-month long inconvenience, however great, worth a human life? No.

don't forget the nearly two decade financial obligation that many lower class people forget to plan for.

Quote from: Mmmmm Napalm on April 12, 2015, 01:28:59 PM

Quote from: gats on April 12, 2015, 01:20:21 PM

Quote from: Mmmmm Napalm on April 12, 2015, 01:07:45 PM

Quote from: gats on April 12, 2015, 01:04:29 PM

Quote from: Mmmmm Napalm on April 12, 2015, 12:48:22 PM

Quote from: gats on April 12, 2015, 12:47:24 PM

Quote from: Mmmmm Napalm on April 12, 2015, 12:38:37 PM

You can't just dictate who goes on to live life

The person that carries it can. It's their body, they're one that's going to nurture it for the 9 month period.

Quote

Who's to say a family looking to adopt would suck/be impoverished?

there are plenty of kids already in need of homes, it's not exactly like we're running out.

Yes, because 9 months of someone's life is definitely worth someone else's actual life.

what?

I am saying that 9 months spent carrying a burden is nowhere near equal in worth to the life of a human being.

looooool, don't. you  don't have the ability to carry a child so you have no right to comment on how it feels like.

I'm not saying it isn't tough. But seriously, is a nine-month long inconvenience, however great, worth a human life? No.

don't forget the nearly two decade financial obligation that many lower class people forget to plan for.

Again, adoption. Furthermore, implying that a financial sum is worth more than a human life. Not in terms of money, but in terms of what is truly important and precious in the world.

An infant or foetus has committed no crime, wronged no one. If the child's existence inconveniences the parent(s), then it is their own fault (again, not covering rape).

Quote from: the boat ECKS two on April 12, 2015, 02:08:41 PM

Quote from: Mmmmm Napalm on April 12, 2015, 01:28:59 PM

Quote from: gats on April 12, 2015, 01:20:21 PM

Quote from: Mmmmm Napalm on April 12, 2015, 01:07:45 PM

Quote from: gats on April 12, 2015, 01:04:29 PM

Quote from: Mmmmm Napalm on April 12, 2015, 12:48:22 PM

Quote from: gats on April 12, 2015, 12:47:24 PM

Quote from: Mmmmm Napalm on April 12, 2015, 12:38:37 PM

You can't just dictate who goes on to live life

The person that carries it can. It's their body, they're one that's going to nurture it for the 9 month period.

Quote

Who's to say a family looking to adopt would suck/be impoverished?

there are plenty of kids already in need of homes, it's not exactly like we're running out.

Yes, because 9 months of someone's life is definitely worth someone else's actual life.

what?

I am saying that 9 months spent carrying a burden is nowhere near equal in worth to the life of a human being.

looooool, don't. you  don't have the ability to carry a child so you have no right to comment on how it feels like.

I'm not saying it isn't tough. But seriously, is a nine-month long inconvenience, however great, worth a human life? No.

don't forget the nearly two decade financial obligation that many lower class people forget to plan for.

Again, adoption. Furthermore, implying that a financial sum is worth more than a human life. Not in terms of money, but in terms of what is truly important and precious in the world.

An infant or foetus has committed no crime, wronged no one. If the child's existence inconveniences the parent(s), then it is their own fault (again, not covering rape).

We're just gonna go in circles on the adoption thing, ain't we?

Quote from: Mmmmm Napalm on April 12, 2015, 02:14:26 PM

But it could, right? So killing someone is justified?

It could in the right circumstance. . . Like, killing a meth-head walking through a playground with a knife.

Of course I don't disagree that the killing of other human beings is almost invariably immoral, and I'm probably more pro-life than you'd expect, but my point is that you should actually make a proper argument relevant to the well-being of society instead of just "abortion is killing, and killing is wrong".

Nothing is wrong; there is not a single action which is inherently immoral. The morality of an action is a function of its circumstances.

I agree with the methhead thing. But we're talking about an unborn child.

But we're talking about an unborn child.

You're still not making an argument. Funnily enough, by virtue of not yet being born, the net result to aggregate well-being will be marginal.

You've still not yet justified how abortion is, on balance, a net drag on a society's well-being compared to a counter-factual of--say--no abortion at all.

Quote from: Mmmmm Napalm on April 12, 2015, 02:19:19 PM

Quote from: the boat ECKS two on April 12, 2015, 02:16:27 PM

Quote from: Mmmmm Napalm on April 12, 2015, 02:12:43 PM

Quote from: the boat ECKS two on April 12, 2015, 02:08:41 PM

Quote from: Mmmmm Napalm on April 12, 2015, 01:28:59 PM

Quote from: gats on April 12, 2015, 01:20:21 PM

Quote from: Mmmmm Napalm on April 12, 2015, 01:07:45 PM

Quote from: gats on April 12, 2015, 01:04:29 PM

Quote from: Mmmmm Napalm on April 12, 2015, 12:48:22 PM

Quote from: gats on April 12, 2015, 12:47:24 PM

Quote from: Mmmmm Napalm on April 12, 2015, 12:38:37 PM

You can't just dictate who goes on to live life

The person that carries it can. It's their body, they're one that's going to nurture it for the 9 month period.

Quote

Who's to say a family looking to adopt would suck/be impoverished?

there are plenty of kids already in need of homes, it's not exactly like we're running out.

Yes, because 9 months of someone's life is definitely worth someone else's actual life.

what?

I am saying that 9 months spent carrying a burden is nowhere near equal in worth to the life of a human being.

looooool, don't. you  don't have the ability to carry a child so you have no right to comment on how it feels like.

I'm not saying it isn't tough. But seriously, is a nine-month long inconvenience, however great, worth a human life? No.

don't forget the nearly two decade financial obligation that many lower class people forget to plan for.

Again, adoption. Furthermore, implying that a financial sum is worth more than a human life. Not in terms of money, but in terms of what is truly important and precious in the world.

An infant or foetus has committed no crime, wronged no one. If the child's existence inconveniences the parent(s), then it is their own fault (again, not covering rape).

We're just gonna go in circles on the adoption thing, ain't we?

Yeah. Because awaiting adoption is better than being dead.

A fetus will never know it's dying.
A fifteen year old still at a shelter knows he'll never call someone "dad"

Which outcome contains less suffering?

Better to have lived than not at all. To be simply gone? A spark put out? What, because of some BS nihilistic whining about it being better to not have lived than to have lived without a father?

You never know when a mother can miscarry.

I have to admit I don't find this a very compelling argument.

Anybody could drop dead at any point, pretty much. Foetus or not.

I've had safe sex with my girlfriend dozens of times. It is very likely that if we hadn't used protection, she would be pregnant at this point. Did I deny someone a chance at life then too?

Not sure why this argument is still used. The overwhelming majority of ant-abortionists have no problem with contraception, Plan B, or even very early abortions. There's a significant differences between preventing the formation of an embryo and actually removing an embryo, which is a living, developing, human organism.

I politely disagree and don't think that removing an embryo or fetus in the first few weeks of its life is in any way a moral outrage or murder of a (future) human being.

Moral outrage or not, aborting a fetus at any point after conception is, without debate, ending a human life. Whether that can ethically be considered murder is the issue. Yeah, you are ostensibly denying a human the chance to live. If you need to sanitize the language in order to justify it, I suggest reevaluating your position.

But I am doing the same thing right now by not having unprotected sex with as many women as I could. Every sperm cell I have has the potential of becoming a person, and by not putting them to constant use I am effectively denying potentially dozens of people to come into existence.

We're not talking about potential lives, since that's a silly, intangible notion. We're talking about existing, living humans. To justify abortion by equating it to abstinence is to make the same logical fallacy made by many abortion opponents.

During the first few weeks of pregnancy, it is nothing but a non-sentient parasite with the mere potential of becoming a human being.

Another case of sanitizing your language. A fetus is demonstrably not a parasite, and sentience can hardly be a justifiable criteria for personhood as infants aren't even sentient themselves. Personhood itself is a flimsy, subjective notion that holds very little water in objectivity.

And at that point, the rights of the parents trump the embryo's or fetus', something I don't think is immoral in the slightest.

You have to compare apples to apples. It's all well and good to say the right of the parent to life trumps that of the fetus, but for all intents and purposes you're comparing the right of life of the fetus to the right of, what? Comfort? Financial indepence? Are these things rights? Do parents somehow lose rights upon birthing a child?

Besides, none of this will have much of an effect on me. Abortion has been legal here for 25 years

This is literally the laziest excuse of an argument in the entire discussion. Lest I get shit on for the comparison, this is the same argument used for millenia to subvert the personhood of any oppressed class.