Whilst you sort of are avoiding explicitly owning this, this "slavery = abortion" has been a common argument since Roe vs. Wade. Reagan made it, Scalia made it and many others have made it too. It has been used as a tool to try and convince conservative black people to vote Republican. I don't think it holds water though. When we are saying slavery is wrong we are saying a black adult is equal to a white adult, a black child is equal to a white child. Essentially the only thing different is their skin colour. But this doesn't mean an adult is equivalent to a fetus! The argument makes no sense. Each stage of life has different sets of rights and responsibilities. A 5 year old doesn't have the right drive a car or drink alcohol. A fetus doesn't have rights separate from the pregnant mother.Fluminator wrote: ↑Tue Jan 29, 2019 11:31 pmI also believe killing is wrong. If someone told you “just don’t kill people, and let others do if they want” that’s…. not okay for that person.
I think the majority is often wrong on things. For the longest time slavery was accepted by the majority of the population, justified under the guise that the slaves weren’t fully human. I won’t be surprised if in the future, people will look back at how we justified the killing of many developing humans under the guise of “they aren’t fully human” in a similar way. (Not necessarily comparing abortions to slavery. Just that the majority opinion is often wrong)
I don’t think women who have abortions are terrible people deserving of being arrested because of the amount of misinformation out there, and how the debate is always framed. Perfectly good people will get abortions right now.
I wouldn’t consider myself an atheist, but I’m certainly not a catholic and don’t agree with most of what you say catholics believe. Contraception is a good since it stops it from happening in the first place.
However, I do have respect for the normally religious tradition to wait to have sex until after marriage partly to protect babies from being formed in tricky situations.
Not having sex isn’t really that hard if you believe it might cause the death of human life.
So your opinion is the fetus can start having rights once it can breathe on its own? Not judging, just want to clarify your position.
Slavery has also been around for thousands of years. Improvements in society made it no longer viable (it was actually a drag on economic development). Women's rights came about largely because of societal changes too (reduction in infant mortality, birth control, changes in nature of work, improvements in governmental support for children and the elderly - this is one of the reasons why conservatives are against welfare, general improvements in medical technology etc.) which also lead to the availability of abortion. Not to be rude, but I think you are living in a fantasy to believe that an increasingly wealthy society will go backwards here. Of course there may potentially be technological improvements which may allow babies to develop outside the body...or transferred from one woman to another which may reduce the actual incidents of abortion. Perhaps if there is a major disaster (e.g. precipitous decline in fertility, major disaster killing a large percentage of the population, race/religious war meaning we need to outbreed the heathens - Stephan Molyneux plays this up), everything changes but I hope you wouldn't be wishing for that.
People across the globe have different ideas about morality. e.g. Hindus think it is wrong to eat meat and especially wrong to kill cows, Muslims believe it is wrong to drink alcohol, Westerners believe it is morally wrong to eat whale or to eat dogs/cats. Some other vegans also believe that eating **any** meat is morally wrong. Everyone here, just like the anti-abortion activists believe their specific morals are the right ones. But just because each of these people believe that their morals are the right ones, it doesn't mean they have the right to impose these morals on other people.
Again, this is to not to say I don't have respect for other people's moral choices. I absolutely do. Deciding not to have sex before marriage is a fine moral position to have. But again, it doesn't mean those people should be able to impose those morals on everyone else.
As for my explicit position on abortion, I am not really keen on the legal system being involved at all in this. It is primarily a medical decision between doctor and patient. Limitations on the procedure should be guided by medical associations rather than the criminal legal system.
Of course, if there is a viable compromise which could satisfy most of the population I think that would be great (e.g. freely available abortion up until X weeks along with better access to healthcare for expectant mothers). I wish the USA could actually have that discussion...as this is what democracy is all about (messy compromises between competing interests - there is a reason why we say "democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others"). But it seems like everyone is an absolutist here - either abortion is always wrong in any circumstance or abortion should be available in all circumstances. I actually think "Roe vs. Wade" was a mistake as it solidified these absolutist positions. If it hadn't happened we may have got to this compromise by now.