Forum Discussion: Abortion Analogy
A forum member offers a different sort of analogy to address the abortion problem:
Abortion is often compared to killing someone who is in a reversible coma. But people don't usually draw out all the parallels. Hopefully this argument does:
A man is in a terrible car accident and slips into a coma. Doctors determine that if he ever wakes up, he will certainly have complete amnesia. He will take over a decade to return to a fully functional state, and will have to relearn everything, including how to talk, how to walk, etc. He will have no memories of his past, and it is impossible for him to retrieve them.
Additionally, doctors soon determine that he will regain consciousness in about a year. Would it be unethical for the doctors to simply pull the plug on his life support, and let him die?
Further, if doctors waited until the first day he had awoken, and then killed him painlessly, would it be unethical?
I would argue that pulling the plug on his life support before he’s awoken carries with it no ethical implications. It is not a wrong moral decision.
However, I would call killing him painlessly after he’d woke up a moral wrong. It might even be considered murder, because he would soon relearn many of the things he had previously known, and become a full-fledged person again. At the very least, killing him is ending his ability to experience the world around him, which, though not personhood, is still valuable.
What do you think?
As I said, every analogy is inadequate in some way and this one misses a very important point: the fact that the "life support" for the fetus is a human body which the person in question may not want to provide as life support. This is important because, regardless of how we respond to and answer the above analogy, the lack of consent from the woman will prevent us from declaring that her body can be used.
On the other hand, other important issues are brought forward by this analogy and they deserve some attention as well. If you believe that "personhood" is supernatural, then you will likely insist that the man in the coma is still the same person as they were before the accident and will be the same person after they awaken, despite the amnesia. This person must therefore be protected and kept alive.
If you have an entirely naturalistic and materialistic view of personhood, the matter is more complicated. If who you are as a person is dependent on the emotions and memories in the physical brain, then the original person is necessary gone because their memories and emotions will not return. The person in the coma is, then, in some sense not any person anymore. They are expected to become a new person in a year, but the old person is gone and the new one doesn't exist yet.
So how you react to the above scenario may say a lot about what you really think about the nature of human personhood and personal identity: do you really regard it as entirely material and natural, or do you assume the presence of some supernatural element that persists beyond what the material brain is capable of?
Add your thoughts to the comments here or join the ongoing discussion in the forum.
Comments
>the fact that the “life support” for the fetus is a human body which the person in question may not want to provide as life support.
That was exactly what I thought as well as I was reading. A better analogy would be something along the lines of saying that the man was in an accident with another person in another vehicle. Hypothetically, the man’s life is in danger, but he can be saved if he is connected through bloodlines to the other victim. So, the paramedics do this. Both are unconscious when this decision is made for them by the paramedics.
The man does not regain consciousness, and he is assessed as the original analogy explains–he’ll be awake in about a year, at which point the tubes can be safely removed from the other accident victim.
The rub is that the other accident victim then wakes up shortly after she is brought to the hospital with the man of our analogy. And she has no desire to spend the next year in the hospital as a blood connection to this other person.
What are her rights?
Austin,
You mention two factors here, 1) believing that personhood has a supernatural aspect and 2) believing that personhood is dependant on memories and emotions in the physical brain.
I think there is a third factor which might be worth talking about here, both in the case of a fetus (or unborn child depending on your point of view) and our man in a coma.
The third factor would be, the potential for personhood at a later time.
Two questions for the folks here:
1) Does the clear potential for personhood in the future carry any weight? If so, how much?
2) What about the severely mentally disabled? As an example, I’m thinking of severe hydrocephalic cases, where there just isn’t much of a brain, but these individuals can live with care for an extended period of time. Would these individuals count as people?
Tracieh and Austin,
I didn’t mean to ignore the rights of the person from whom the life support is coming directly - that seems like a great addition to the analogy to me.
So a better question would be:
How much weight does the potential for personhood carry related to the rights of another individual? Any? Some?
This has always been what has bothered me about the abortion question and I’m not sure I’ve heard a good answer from either side of the debate.
Last night on ABC Nightline they had a feature on buying children as slaves. For relatively little money or sometimes free. There are children available for slaves for whatever purpose you desire, no strings, whatsoever.
The children are usually from parents who are too impoverished to care for them, so they are sold or sent away to whomever asks for them.
These children are abused, treated with contempt, and virtual prisoners of their “owners”. Many, if not most of these parents have been brainwashed into the Christian tenets of anti-choice, anti-birth control and “conversion”.
Are these children better off as abused sex and household slaves? Is it better to produce a child and doom it to a life of misery, hopelessness and despair, knowing nothing but ill treatment? Would you want your child to have this kind of life?
That is the crux of why I am definitely pro choice. Having a child,without any responsibility for that life is criminal. A child is not a disposable commodity. That’s one of my pet peeves about the so-called right to lifers.
Is it better to have a child, just because?
Are you not responsible for that child’s life?
A child is not “whatever god chooses to send”.
An abortion, is not a simple choice, but better that, than having a child doomed to misery or worse.
How many times have you read about newborns being found dead, in a dumpster? Was that better than an abortion? How many mothers have you heard about, killing their own children? Is that better than an abortion? It would seem that as long as the child gets born, nothing else matters. What about after birth? Does that not matter?
Who takes care of all the unwanted children? Certainly not the right to lifers. As long as their born, anything is alright. Living on the street, sex slave, household slave, whatever.
Keep having those kids, even if you wind up selling them or giving them away or just abandoning them. If you happen to kill them, that’s OK. At least you didn’t have an abortion.
Sojourner,
I appreciate the sentiment of not selling children into slavery, or leaving them in dumpsters to die. I am in complete agreement with you that these are bad things - and should not be allowed.
However, until you can document a single group of Christians (fundamentalist or otherwise) who say that slavery, killing children, abandoning them and sexually abusing them is OK - then I’m going to say that you’re putting up a Straw Man here.
No one is making that claim… and if you want 100 links to Christian organizations who are caring for orphans, working for adoption and running orphanages for unwanted children - just type that into google - it will take less than 10 seconds.
If those are really your reasons for being pro-choice, you might want to re-evaluate your position.
We can expand the analogy a bit further by adding that this woman was the driver and the accident was entirely her fault. Granted, pregnancy is never entirely the woman’s fault, but anti-choice activists’ rhetoric tends to treat women as the most blameworthy party who deserves punishment. Some have spoken in favor of “shaming” pregnant teens — but not the boys who got them pregnant.
Laying all the blame for the accident at the feet of the driver and now “life support” helps eliminate extraneous factors, though, when we address your question: What are her rights? Well, she continues to have absolute rights over the disposition of her own body. I don’t think anyone would disagree that continuing to serve as life support would be a really nice thing to do. She’d definitely be praised for it.
However, there is no legal or moral basis for forcing her to remain hooked up to preserve the life of the shell next to her. There wouldn’t be such a basis even if it were an actual person’s life she were preserving, but at most it’s a “potential person” and potential persons have no rights any more than potential adults have a right to vote or potential kings have right to wear the crown.
And, even if a potential person did have rights, those rights couldn’t outweigh the right of an actual person to control their own body because the rights of an actual person don’t outweigh the right of another to control their own body. If an actual person’s actual right to life isn’t sufficient reason to force me to provide my body to preserve that life, then a potential person’s hypothetical right can’t be a sufficient reason to force me to provide my body to bring that life to actuality.
I can understand people not being particularly happy with decisions to abort, just as people would be justified in not being particularly happy with the hypothetical woman disconnecting herself from her passenger and refusing to serve as their life support. When you get right down to it, though, it is a fairly simple legal and moral question. Either the government has the authority and power to force citizens against their will to provide their bodies and organs for the use of others or not. If not, then women must be accorded a legal right to choose abortion. Others don’t have to be happy with that decision, but it’s not their bodies anyway.
Humble:
“methinks you doth protest too much”. You know perfectly well, that I was citing no such thing. I think you have put up your own “Straw Man”. I did not imply that at all.
You cannot deny that the pro-lifers discourage any kind of birth control, including the woman’s right to choose.
This can result in aberrant adult behavior, if they cannot take care of or support those children and are so impoverished they can see no other choices.
As for your Christian charities, until they take care of those children with no hidden conversion agendas, I do not consider them truly charitable.
As for me, I consider The United Way, UNICEF, the March of Dimes and other truly non agenda, and non Religiously based organizations of that type as bona fide charities. They want to save children and adults, not souls. They are not gathering converts.
There are still millions of unwanted, abandoned children with no hope of any kind of life, without trauma and pain. Your Christian charities won’t take care of them all, anyway.
You can’t tell me that preaching against family planning and birth control doesn’t contribute to the millions of unwanted children all over the world. That same attitude is probably part of what caused the horrendous AIDS epidemic in Africa. There are still millions of AIDS orphans in Africa.
By the way, I think the right-to-lifers have done more to harm life than to help it. Just my opinion. Just being born is not the answer, there is much more to life than just being alive.
I fully support a woman’s right to choose. Her body and her womb belong to her, not you, not the church, not any politician.
Austin wrote:[When you get right down to it, though, it is a fairly simple legal and moral question. Either the government has the authority and power to force citizens against their will to provide their bodies and organs for the use of others or not.]
It clearly does.
We see this in the draft. The government has the right to bring non-volunteer citizens into military service where they are asked to provide their bodies and sometimes lives for the use of others.
It is part of the privilege of living in the free society we enjoy.
I’m not saying that we should criminalize abortion.
I am saying that the cost of continuing a pregnancy is a real cost and should be met and considered with a depth of compassion for the female and family involved. Anything else is bogus and wrong. We’ve certainly seen more than our share of that.
I do think that the very real cost of pregnancy should be weighed against the potential for life and personhood. It just seems cold blooded to act like it’s a clump of cells and nothing more - when it will be much more when it’s on the other side of the cervix and it is named Bob or Susan, or whatever. That potential should have meaning and should not be easily dismissed.
How much meaning? I don’t know. A lot. We have a real responsibility to others in our society, and some level of responsibility to the next generation, even when they are still that only in potential.
humble: The potential arguement has a fundimental flaw in it in the fact that potential is not the same as a promise. The common one used is that the aborted fetus could grow up to be the person that cures cancer or solves world hunger or what not. While this is true, the fetus could also grow up to be the next Hitler as well. Everyone has potential but not everyone attempts to live up to it, some don’t even have the interest to do so and other are never given the chance.
Even in tracieh’s analogy, the man has the potential to become the same person he was before. He also has the potential to become someone different, whether that would be a good thing or not. Ultimately, the potential arguement is an equivocation, changing “could be” to “will be”, whether the person realizes it or not.
tracieh and Austin: A problem I see in the analogy, if we add Austin’s expansion, in the case of the hypothetical woman; if she was the driver of the vehicle that caused the accident and decided to disconnect the man from herself, causing him to die, she could face legal consequences such as manslaughter charges and punitive damages. While not all those against legal abortion are like this, there are many who want abortion to not only be illegal but to be on par with first- degree murder as well. The analogy could play to the fanatical anti- abortion side more than the pro- choice.
This is to anyone else- another analogy in this case: the seven- year old child of a single mother is seriously hurt. The child is currently on life support but the doctors simply cannot say whether the child will, after some time, pull through and be fine or if their condition will only deteriorate. It is within the mother’s right to decide to pull the plug and there are no legal reprecussions involved. If, from a legal stand point (and that is what we are ultimately talking about, even if some people want to bring morality into it*), it is admissible for the mother to pull the plug on her child at 7 or 10 or 16 or at any age, then why not while it is still in the womb?
*I know there are moral issues involved in regards to abortion. On a moral level I am personally against it except in certain cases, such as danger to the mother for example. However, the debate is not about our personal morality, but about what should or should not be legal. The law is there to preserve society, not patronize its members or to enforce one person’s or group’s idea of morality.
Sojourner wrote:[“methinks you doth protest too much”. You know perfectly well, that I was citing no such thing. I think you have put up your own “Straw Man”. I did not imply that at all.]
The quote is from Hamlet, and means that someone is denying something too vigorously, when they actually believe the opposite. Like, “No I don’t like that girl!” when you actually do. Since you don’t know me or my motives, and since the quote is a clearly out of context, you might consider being more careful in your usage here. It just makes you look illiterate.
Sojourner wrote:[You cannot deny that the pro-lifers discourage any kind of birth control, including the woman’s right to choose.]
Sure I can. I deny it. There are dozens, if not thousands, of pro-life groups who use birth control of various kinds. None of them believe that a woman is not free to choose her own actions… they believe in free will. They believe that the unborn child is a person already (or at least they claim to believe that) and because of this, the issue for them is the unborn child’s right to life, not fundamentally a woman’s right to choose.
Sojourner wrote:[This can result in aberrant adult behavior, if they cannot take care of or support those children and are so impoverished they can see no other choices.]
Not if taken in context. They are not saying, “have sex with anyone you want, but don’t use birth control.” No one is saying, “don’t get abortions, but dump babies in dumpsters or sell them as slaves.” They ARE saying, sex should be reserved for monogamous marriage… and you should take the possibility and care of children seriously. If poverty is so extreme that the support of children is not viable, the recommendation would be to remain unmarried and celibate or refrain from activity that will result in children that can not be cared for. There isn’t anything aberrant about that. It would be aberrant and irresponsible to do anything else.
And if you want to ignore the perspective on monogamous marriage and the care of children, then feel free to ignore the rhetoric about birth control as well.
It is a side issue, but do you really think that people who make $40 a month can afford condoms and birth control pills? The problem here goes deeper than Catholic rhetoric.
Sojourner wrote:[As for your Christian charities, until they take care of those children with no hidden conversion agendas, I do not consider them truly charitable.]
Many of them have no conversion agendas. The ones who do, are not hidden, but are quite open about their goals and practices. And even for those, they aren’t holding any aid hostage until children convert. They don’t require conversion before they provide food, assistance or medical attention. They just don’t withhold aid on that basis. They are truly charitable, regardless of how you consider them. You may not like their agenda of conversion, but that is no reason to dismiss a hungry child being clothed or fed or operated on - that is a real outcome for the good.
Sojourner wrote:[As for me, I consider The United Way, UNICEF, the March of Dimes and other truly non agenda, and non Religiously based organizations of that type as bona fide charities. They want to save children and adults, not souls. They are not gathering converts.]
Ok.
Sojourner wrote:[There are still millions of unwanted, abandoned children with no hope of any kind of life, without trauma and pain. Your Christian charities won’t take care of them all, anyway.]
How many are you taking care of? Until you start an atheist orphanage or support one directly, you have no credibility in this argument.
To say that the hopelessness of life, trauma and pain would be better served by the children not existing is a remarkably stupid thing to say. Why not kill them now? Wouldn’t that be preferable to a life with no hope, with constant trauma and pain? Why are you so focused on the hypothetical “it would have been better if they were aborted” and ignoring of the actual children who are PERSONS that you’re talking about?
Is it the responsibility of Christians only to take care of children who need help? If you see a need, why don’t you do something about it? If the Christian charities with their woeful agendas are a problem - why don’t you do something better? It’s easy to write in a blog. It costs something to build an orphanage in Haiti.
Sojourner wrote:[You can’t tell me that preaching against family planning and birth control doesn’t contribute to the millions of unwanted children all over the world. That same attitude is probably part of what caused the horrendous AIDS epidemic in Africa. There are still millions of AIDS orphans in Africa.]
Ok - that is also remarkably stupid. The attitude that causes the AIDS epidemic in Africa is one that has said you can have unprotected sex with anyone at any time. How is that working for us?
If you followed the horrific (as an example) Catholic suggestion of monogamous married relationships, AIDS would be gone in a single generation - and how much would it cost? Free.
What a ridiculous idea, it will never work.
How many trillions will be spent related to AIDS? How many millions of orphans does it take before we acknowledge that some basic behavior regarding our sexuality needs to change? How many millions of people have to die before we take an alternative seriously? The alternative is marriage. “That’s not reality…” - truly… but how many people have to die before we make it reality?
Look, I’ve been to South Africa. I was very conscious about not sleeping with anyone while I was there. You would be too. There are areas in Johannesburg with 60% AIDS infection rates. Poverty is unbelievable. Are you seriously making the argument that you would be fine hooking up with someone as long as you had a condom? That it is evil to recommend being more careful about sexual expression in that environment? You could have given me 1000 condoms - no pie for me, thank you.
We all make choices and those choices have consequences. We should do the best we can with what we have.
If you want to ignore the bit about monogamy and marriage while you’re in South Africa, that is your right. You can freely ignore the bit about condoms and other methods of birth control as well while you’re there. I wouldn’t recommend it, but you have the right to do whatever you want.
Sojourner said:[By the way, I think the right-to-lifers have done more to harm life than to help it. Just my opinion. Just being born is not the answer, there is much more to life than just being alive.]
You have every right to think that, not seeing any evidence here though.
Sojourner wrote:[I fully support a woman’s right to choose. Her body and her womb belong to her, not you, not the church, not any politician.]
I agree. But they also don’t belong to you either. The responsibility and choices and decisions she faces, along with all of the implications also belong to her.
Jeremy wrote:[humble: The potential arguement has a fundimental flaw in it in the fact that potential is not the same as a promise. The common one used is that the aborted fetus could grow up to be the person that cures cancer or solves world hunger or what not. While this is true, the fetus could also grow up to be the next Hitler as well. Everyone has potential but not everyone attempts to live up to it, some don’t even have the interest to do so and other are never given the chance.]
I’m not using potential as a potential Aristotle or potential Ghandi.
I’m using potential as a potential average person, unremarkable in every measurable way.
I just think even that potential means something and should be considered before someone freely and legally gets an abortion.
humble replied:
The problem with potential, even in terms of average, everyday people (which my earlier post included), is that it is ultimately an extraneous complication in the decision making process. There is simply no way to accurately gauge it.
As I said, they could go on to achieve great things or not. They could be an average person that gets a stable job, gets married, has kids, pay their taxes and so forth or they could be lazy and take advantage of others and the welfare system. They could save someone’s life or they could take someone’s life. They could live a long and happy life or they could live a short and painful life. They could be honest and charitable or they could be duplicitous and greedy. They could be kind or they could be mean. They could be loved or they could be abused.
The list of things a fetus could go on to do is almost endless and for everything they could do there is an opposite that is equally likely. In the end all you do is put a lot of effort and trouble into staying at square one.
humble,
You said, “The government has the right to bring non-volunteer citizens into military service where they are asked to provide their bodies and sometimes lives for the use of others.”
But the question here is one of bodily integrity. The military may be able to draft soldiers, but the Uniform Code of Military Justice provides protection for the bodily integrity of soldiers:
“Any person subject to this chapter who, with intent to injure, disfigure, or disable, inflicts upon the person of another an injury which–
(1) seriously disfigures his person by a mutilation thereof;
(2) destroys or disables any member or organ of his body; or
(3) seriously diminishes his physical vigor by the injury of any member or organ;
is guilty of maiming and shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.”
And if you are going to consider potential, don’t you have to consider the potential of every egg or sperm ever produced? Shouldn’t women who are not pregnant be ordered by the law to become pregnant because of all of the potential people who won’t be born if women do not bear the maximum number of children possible?
Humble:
I know full well what the quote means. It means you can’t handle the truth, or perhaps don’t want to. It does not mean “I don’t like that girl when I really do.”
I am certainly not illiterate. I suppose parroting your religious propaganda somehow makes you feel superior to us poor, stupid atheists. By the way, have you actually read both the OT and NT? I have, thoroughly. That is one of the main reasons, I’m an atheist and proud of it.
I will try to keep this civilized, I still maintain that a woman’s body belongs to her, period. No one has the right to force pregnancy on a woman, for any reason, including religion.
I hate to break this to you, but your religion does not have the right to force their tenets on anyone else. You seem to think you know what’s best for the whole world. Try living in Afghanistan, you may learn to love the Taliban.
I, personally, don’t care what your personal religious belief may be. I do care if you try to force it on others. This is America, we are a secularist nation, not a theocracy. Our secular nature allows freedom of and FROM any religious viewpoint.
That holds true for separation of church and state, pro-choicers, and yes, even gays. If that bothers you, like I said, there’s always Afghanistan.
To be perfectly honest, I am biting my tongue,I could say so much more. As I said before, I am going to be civil.
Your reply to my post is rife with gross exaggerations and hyperboles as to the meanings of my comments. Typically you are performing what is known these days as “spin”.
Convince me that “Missionaries” do not go to different countries to convert the unconverted, and spread Christianity.
I know they have built orphanages, so have many non-religious groups too. How do you know what I have done in my life to help someone who was in need? I know of atheists who have all kinds of charitable foundations for anyone, with no strings. Some of the worlds richest atheists have charitable foundations worth billions.
Where did I say “Kill the children”? I was pointing out that with family planning and reliable birth control(not the rhythm method)there wouldn’t be so many unwanted and abused children.
As for abortion, what about miscarriages? Are they God’s abortions? I still am a prochoicer.
A zygote is not a child, any more than a spermatazoa is.
If a building was on fire and you could only save a living baby or frozen embryos, which would you save? I hope you don’t have to think of the answer.
I meant I hope you don’t have to think ABOUT the answer(not OF)
John K wrote:[
But the question here is one of bodily integrity. The military may be able to draft soldiers, but the Uniform Code of Military Justice provides protection for the bodily integrity of soldiers:
“Any person subject to this chapter who, with intent to injure, disfigure, or disable, inflicts upon the person of another an injury which–
(1) seriously disfigures his person by a mutilation thereof;
(2) destroys or disables any member or organ of his body; or
(3) seriously diminishes his physical vigor by the injury of any member or organ;
is guilty of maiming and shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.”]
I think that’s a fair point, but I’m not sure we’re talking about the same thing here. This is in regards to criminal process related to assault.
If I’m hearing you right, you’re comparing a forced continued pregnancy to a form of assault. That is interesting and definitely worth considering. I think I would disagree with this as the rule for two reasons:
First, members of the military in a combat situation, even if drafted, can be seriously disfigured, members or organs can be destroyed and disabled, maiming can and has occurred and physical vigor can be diminished. That is tragic, without exception… but the government can make this demand and has, of drafted soldiers without facing legal recourse. The other side of this coin is that abortion effectively does all of these things and worse, to a potential person.
Second, if you held this comparison up as our legal standard, the question would become: does requiring a woman to carry a pregnancy to term result in her being, “disfigured… members or organs can be destroyed and disabled… maiming can and has occurred where physical vigor can be diminished.”
Maybe in some cases, but a lot of pregnancies would not qualify with this sort of harm.
John K wrote:[And if you are going to consider potential, don’t you have to consider the potential of every egg or sperm ever produced? Shouldn’t women who are not pregnant be ordered by the law to become pregnant because of all of the potential people who won’t be born if women do not bear the maximum number of children possible?]
Again, I think that is a fair point and the short answer is, I don’t know. I would be fine limiting the potential discussion to viable pregnancy.
Let me try to be clear, I’m not saying that the potential for personhood matters as much as an actual person. It might, but I’m not making that claim. I’m only claiming that the potential for personhood should matter Some, and should not be ignored in the discussion.
Sojourner wrote:[I know full well what the quote means. It means you can’t handle the truth, or perhaps don’t want to. It does not mean “I don’t like that girl when I really do.”]
As someone with a masters degree in English literature, with emphasis in Shakespeare, you’re wrong.
That I can’t handle the truth, is a separate claim and feels like a childish attack, instead of focusing of what I’m actually saying.
Sojourner wrote:[I am certainly not illiterate. I suppose parroting your religious propaganda somehow makes you feel superior to us poor, stupid atheists. By the way, have you actually read both the OT and NT? I have, thoroughly. That is one of the main reasons, I’m an atheist and proud of it.]
I never said you were illiterate. I said misquoting Shakespeare badly makes you look illiterate. It does. Sorry about that, but it just does. I’m not religious. I don’t feel superior to you at all. I have read the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament and have done a fair amount of translation in the original Hebrew and Greek.
Sojourner wrote:[I will try to keep this civilized, I still maintain that a woman’s body belongs to her, period. No one has the right to force pregnancy on a woman, for any reason, including religion.]
Keep trying. There is nothing civilized about your personal rants against me or my motives - and no one is questioning that a woman’s body belongs to her. And I agree, to force a pregnancy on a woman would be rape. That would be bad. It has nothing to do with the discussion.
Sojourner wrote:[I hate to break this to you, but your religion does not have the right to force their tenets on anyone else. You seem to think you know what’s best for the whole world. Try living in Afghanistan, you may learn to love the Taliban.
I, personally, don’t care what your personal religious belief may be. I do care if you try to force it on others. This is America, we are a secularist nation, not a theocracy. Our secular nature allows freedom of and FROM any religious viewpoint.]
I’m not religious. You’re making all kinds of assumptions about me that are simply not correct. I’m not trying to force anything on anyone, I’m just pointing out where I think you’re wrong.
Sojourner wrote:[Your reply to my post is rife with gross exaggerations and hyperboles as to the meanings of my comments. Typically you are performing what is known these days as “spin”.]
Can you give me an example? I’m not trying to misrepresent you.
Sojourner wrote:[Convince me that “Missionaries” do not go to different countries to convert the unconverted, and spread Christianity.]
That would be stupid, they clearly do and they are up front about their Mission.
Sojourner wrote:[I know they have built orphanages, so have many non-religious groups too. How do you know what I have done in my life to help someone who was in need? I know of atheists who have all kinds of charitable foundations for anyone, with no strings. Some of the worlds richest atheists have charitable foundations worth billions.]
I never made the claim they didn’t - I asked what you have done. Still waiting for an answer.
Sojourner wrote: [Where did I say “Kill the children”? I was pointing out that with family planning and reliable birth control(not the rhythm method)there wouldn’t be so many unwanted and abused children.]
I never said you suggested killing the children… but you seem to prefer death or non-existence over suffering. Is that not your position? Better to be aborted than to suffer?
Sojourner wrote:[As for abortion, what about miscarriages? Are they God’s abortions? I still am a prochoicer.
A zygote is not a child, any more than a spermatazoa is.]
I don’t know. I never made the claim that a zygote was a child, only that it will be soon and that should be considered.
Sojourner wrote:[If a building was on fire and you could only save a living baby or frozen embryos, which would you save? I hope you don’t have to think of the answer.
What a ridiculous question. Have you ever been in that situation? Do you know anyone who has? Want me to make up three questions more ridiculous in response?
- What if two babies were in a burning building and you could only save one?
- What if a baby with a blue hat and a baby with a red hat were in a burning building and you could only save one?
- What if you were in a burning building with a duck, a llama, an egg salad sandwich, a container of iron ore and a baby and you could pick two of the things listed to save… which two would you pick?
Look, I’m saying two basic things here. First, a potential person has some level of value that should be considered. Second, if your primary reasons for being pro-choice are that Christians are stupid and that orphans exist in the world, you might want to re-evaluate your position.
humble says: The quote is from Hamlet, and means that someone is denying something too vigorously, when they actually believe the opposite. Like, “No I don’t like that girl!” when you actually do.
The Sojourner says: I know full well what the quote means. It means you can’t handle the truth, or perhaps don’t want to.
According to Michael Marcone cited at enotes.com you’re both wrong: By “protest,” Gertrude doesn’t mean “object” or “deny”—these meanings postdate Hamlet.
humble says: As someone with a masters degree in English literature, with emphasis in Shakespeare, you’re wrong.
Well Michael Marcone says he has a Ph.D. in English, and that trumps your masters. So there!
mobathome:
Thank you for clarifying that. One of my favorite pastimes is etymology, so words and their derivations and roots have always interested me.
Humble:
As for your degrees, I couldn’t care less. I am not impressed. Perhaps your name is a bit of a misnomer. I won’t bore you or anyone else with my academic background. I’m just here to voice my opinions.
My opinion still stands. A zygote is not a child, and a woman’s body belongs to her. When I say forced pregnancy, I don’t only refer to rape. Any time a woman is coerced into having a pregnancy against her will or better judgment, is a forced pregnancy. That is why I am pro-choice.
If a twelve year old was raped, should she not have the right to abort that pregnancy, for instance? Oh, some will say “it’s not the baby’s fault”. Should she then be forced to bear that child? Of course, this is an extreme example, but I fully believe that would happen were it not for Roe v.Wade. Abortions are and should remain a legal option for any woman.
Please do not throw in the old saw of abortion on demand. Abortion is a heart-wrenching decision for most women, not a visit to the beauty parlor. Most of the time there is no other choice.
My question about the burning building was meant as an analogy about a living child v. a fertilized zygote. Your following “examples” were not only specious arguments, but red herrings. They had nothing to do with my original premise. You didn’t answer it either, I noticed.
That’s the pattern for every “conversation” with humble — you invest time and effort into answering questions and explaining your position, but most of your questions won’t even be acknowledged, never mind actually answered. Then, when you insist that your questions be addressed at some point, you’re accused of being rude and getting personal. That’s why I don’t give humble’s comments any more than a cursory glance to see if there are any outrageous errors. As a rule, they aren’t worth bothering with.
Dear Austin:
Thank you for the heads up. Being pretty much a newbie here, i was not aware of the particulars concerning Humble. I will keep them in mind when next I encounter (not so) Humble.
humble : In response to Sojourners quote : “methinks you doth protest too much”.
and his response - exasperation that you missed the point somewhat.
You said : “The quote is from Hamlet, and means that someone is denying something too vigorously” - no it isn’t. The actual quote is “The Lady doth protest too much, methinks” the modern misquote does seem to mean what Sojourner thinks it means. Having a masters degree in English specialising in Shakespeare didnt help you spot the misquote - at all. Methinks your name is a deliberate irony.
And when you said …
> It just makes you look illiterate.
it made you sound arrogant, especially as (1) you have made a mistake with the quote and (2) you may be the only one that thinks Sojourner looked illiterate!
Its fine to start an argument against a differing opinion but the first one to start getting personal does always seem to have the weakest position
mobathome and dreadful scathe,
Allow me to correct what I said about the Hamlet quote from ACT III, scene 2.
1) The quote made by Sojourner, and in common usage today is a reference to Hamlet, not an actual quote from Hamlet. I took this to be understood. My issue with Sojourner was not that he used the common usage today, instead of referring to me as a Lady protesting… my issue was that he was using a quote in a way that fits neither the original Shakespeare, nor the current usage.
2) It means now, and meant then that someone is either asserting or denying something too vigorously, when they actually mean the opposite.
Dr. Marcone agrees with this and says it explicitly in his article.
So unless Sojourner meant that I was being ironic and did not mean what I said, then my point stands.
To Sojourner I would say that I apologize for stating that you looked illiterate. That could have been said differently in way to encourage the conversation instead of shutting it down.
It irritates me when people assume things about me and question my motives and my response was out of line.
To answer your question, I would take the live baby. And I think anyone would make the same choice.
If you had a choice between taking the frozen embryos or a lump of coal - which would you pick? Would you mind telling me why?
Sojourner wrote:[If a twelve year old was raped, should she not have the right to abort that pregnancy, for instance? Oh, some will say “it’s not the baby’s fault”. Should she then be forced to bear that child? Of course, this is an extreme example, but I fully believe that would happen were it not for Roe v.Wade. Abortions are and should remain a legal option for any woman.]
There aren’t very many people saying that abortion should not be allowed in this case, I’m certainly not one of them.
Austin wrote:[That’s the pattern for every “conversation” with humble — you invest time and effort into answering questions and explaining your position, but most of your questions won’t even be acknowledged, never mind actually answered. Then, when you insist that your questions be addressed at some point, you’re accused of being rude and getting personal. That’s why I don’t give humble’s comments any more than a cursory glance to see if there are any outrageous errors. As a rule, they aren’t worth bothering with.]
Austin,
I’ve acknowledged and answered every single one of the questions you’ve asked me. If somehow I’ve missed one, please restate it and I’ll do the best I can.
I’ve never accused you of being rude for asking for a response, I’ve accused you of being rude when you start calling me a bigot when I point out that some people disagree with you.
Somehow, it is OK for you to ignore me, refuse to answer direct questions and say that as a rule I’m not worth responding to or acknowledging.
That is your choice - it is your blog.
But it’s hard to tell the difference between that and the notion that you just don’t want to bother with a persistent dissenting opinion.
I’ve asked direct questions of Sojourner that he has not responded to and that is his choice.
My ask would be that if it is an ethical consideration of posting here that all questions be responded to… that you make that clear, and adhere to it yourself.
But that probably isn’t worth responding to either…
humble says: 2) It means now, and meant then that someone is either asserting or denying something too vigorously, when they actually mean the opposite.
Dr. Marcone agrees with this and says it explicitly in his article.
In fact no: “… the lady objects so much as to lose credibility. … Player Queen affirms so much as to lose credibility.” Here, a person’s credibility is at stake. What they say is so extreme that we cannot reasonably believe they mean it. We are not saying that they “actually mean the opposite.”
Humble:
Kindly tell me what RELEVANT questions you posed, that went unanswered. Remember I said relevant, not concepts I never originally posed in the first place when I wrote them.
You’re very good at trying to twist my statements, into something not implied in the first place. Perhaps you should change your name to “Spinmeister”, though your spin won’t work on me.
I can perceive how you operate. Here’s a simple example, of that. If I were to say, “I like peaches”, you’d question me as to why I hate pears, or exponentially, what do I have against vegetables. A very rudimentary example, I admit. The principle is a correct one, I feel.
Re: frozen embryos or a lump of coal. Apparently, you didn’t grasp my concept at all. And you still didn’t answer the question I posed. Do I need to explain something so obvious to you?
Again, if you have any RELEVANT questions or comments to me, have at it.
mobathome wrote:[In fact no: “… the lady objects so much as to lose credibility. … Player Queen affirms so much as to lose credibility.” Here, a person’s credibility is at stake. What they say is so extreme that we cannot reasonably believe they mean it. We are not saying that they “actually mean the opposite.”]
That’s an extremely subtle point that I’m more than willing to concede. Thanks for the clarification.
The reference to Shakespeare means that someone asserts or denies something emphatically enough that we don’t believe they mean what they are saying.
But not meaning it, isn’t the same as meaning the opposite.
It turns out that in the context of the play, that is exactly the implication, but it isn’t necessarily a positive statement of the opposite in a larger context.
In the context of the thread here, that had exactly nothing to do with my statements and Sojourner’s amazing ability to know if I believe what I’m saying or not.
Sojourner wrote:[Kindly tell me what RELEVANT questions you posed, that went unanswered. Remember I said relevant, not concepts I never originally posed in the first place when I wrote them.]
So I’m only allowed to ask you about concepts you originally posed? I don’t think I have any of those.
Just for grins, here are the questions I’ve asked that have been completely ignored. Feel free to dismiss all of these as IRREVELANT. (love the caps by the way)
In order:
- Does the clear potential for personhood in the future carry any weight? If so, how much?
- What about the severely mentally disabled? As an example, I’m thinking of severe hydrocephalic cases, where there just isn’t much of a brain, but these individuals can live with care for an extended period of time. Would these individuals count as people?
- How much weight does the potential for personhood carry related to the rights of another individual? Any? Some?
You wrote:[Who takes care of all the unwanted children? Certainly not the right to lifers. As long as their born, anything is alright. Living on the street, sex slave, household slave, whatever.]
Please document that right to lifers do not care for unwanted children. I asked you to provide some evidence of a Christian group stating that as long as the child is born, anything is alright, including sexual abuse and slavery.
- Would you please do that for me? Or retract the statement?
- Do you think that poor people in Africa (as an example) have no trouble affording condoms or other forms of birth control? Do you believe that the primary issue here is Christian tenets and not extreme poverty?
Sojourner wrote:[There are still millions of unwanted, abandoned children with no hope of any kind of life, without trauma and pain. Your Christian charities won’t take care of them all, anyway.]
- How many are you currently taking care of? Any?
- Do you believe it would be better to abort a potential child than for the child to suffer? Where would you draw that line? Would you extend that argument to children after they are born? Better for them to die than to suffer in extreme sorts of ways?
- Is it the responsibility of Christians only to take care of children who need help? If you see a need, why don’t you do something about it?
- Related to the AIDs problem and the massive implications of that epidemic - are you not willing to even consider the option of monogamous relationships as a possible solution - or a part of the solution?
- Is the living baby vs. embryos a hypothetical question? Or have you actually been in this situation?
- Would you accept my apology for the implication that you are illiterate? As I mentioned before, that just wasn’t helpful to the discussion and I was out of line.
- If you had a choice between taking the frozen embryos or a lump of coal - which would you pick? Would you mind telling me why? (my point here is not to poke at the burning baby in a building, but to honestly ask the question… does the potential of the embryos mean anything? Or it is just a bunch of cells, like a lump of coal?)
Sojourner wrote:[You’re very good at trying to twist my statements, into something not implied in the first place. Perhaps you should change your name to “Spinmeister”, though your spin won’t work on me.]
Curses, foiled again. If it weren’t for those darned kids, I would have gotten away with it too!
Congratulations on remaining spin free.
Instead of suggesting condescending name changes, perhaps you could keep your eye on the ball and stick to the topic at hand.
Sojourner wrote:[I can perceive how you operate. Here’s a simple example, of that. If I were to say, “I like peaches”, you’d question me as to why I hate pears, or exponentially, what do I have against vegetables. A very rudimentary example, I admit. The principle is a correct one, I feel.]
You can like peaches all you want. My method has been to quote you exactly, then comment.
Eye on the ball please.
Sojourner wrote:[Re: frozen embryos or a lump of coal. Apparently, you didn’t grasp my concept at all. And you still didn’t answer the question I posed. Do I need to explain something so obvious to you?]
Please do and I’m being honest there. I answered the burning baby building question in post #23 and the hypothetical pregnant 12 year old in post #24.
It was posed as a negative and I think I responded the same way - badly phrased on my part.
I think a 12 year old rape victim should be allowed to have an abortion. Even very hard core pro-lifers will often include exceptions for rape and incest.
By the way, have I ever said that I was pro-life? Or anti-choice, or however you want to characterize it? Nope.
Sojourner wrote:[Again, if you have any RELEVANT questions or comments to me, have at it.]
Well, as long as you are king and get to singlehandedly decide what is RELEVANT or not, you can respond to the questions above… or dismiss anything you don’t like as IRRELEVANT.
Thanks and have a good weekend.
humble,
“…I’m not sure we’re talking about the same thing here.”
I don’t know, humble, you were the one who wanted to make an analogy between the military draft and denying a woman the right to choose what to do with her own body. I was just pointing out that even under a military draft, soldiers can be ordered to place themselves in positions of great peril, but they cannot be forced to surrender the use of part of their body to sustain the life of another person. Anyone forcing someone to do so would be guilty of, as you pointed out, criminal assault. Can we assume you are in support of criminal assault charges against anyone who tries to deny a woman her right to choose?
“…to force a pregnancy on a woman would be rape.”
So, if a woman is prevented from terminating an unwanted pregnancy, effectively forcing the pregnancy on her, the person who stops her would be guilty of rape? Now wait a minute, which one is it, criminal assault or rape?
“…I’m not saying that the potential for personhood matters as much as an actual person. It might, but I’m not making that claim. I’m only claiming that the potential for personhood should matter Some, and should not be ignored in the discussion.”
If potential is not to be the deciding factor, how do you make it matter? Okay, I gave it consideration. It didn’t change my mind. Now what?
“I would be fine limiting the potential discussion to viable pregnancy.”
Why? Because the ultimate conclusion of that line of reasoning about “potential”,the elimination of all birth control, is unacceptable to most people?
I think I mistyped my e-mail, I hope thuis fixes it. This is just a test shot.
For anyone who’s interested, Humble’s quotes are bracketed.
[Just for grins, here are the question I’veasked that have been completely ignored. Feel free to dismiss all of these as
IRREVELANT. (love the caps by the way) ]
First of all, the word is IRRELEVANT, I will give you the benefit of the doubt and consider it a typo since you spelled relevant properly!
[- Does the clear potential for personhood in the future carry any weight? If so, how much? ]
How do you define person hood? If it’s a zygote, or embryo, it is not a person, it is not a viable entity. When it can live outside of its mother’s body then it becomes viable. In fact, there is little difference between the very early embryonic formation of most species, including humans.
[- What about the severely mentally disabled? As an example, I’m thinking of severe hydrocephalic cases, where there just isn’t much of a brain, but these individuals can live with care for an extended period of time. Would these individuals count as people?]
Hydrocephalics, with modern day treatment may very often survive to live normal lives. There are sometimes physical and mental deficiencies that can occur, but that doesn’t make them less human. On the other hand, a baby born without any brain, but only with a brainstem will die very quickly because the organs cannot function without any brain matter at all. Those are known as anencephalics. They too, are human. People, is much too generic a word for this question.
[- How much weight does the potential for personhood carry related to the rights of another individual? Any? Some?]
How do you define potential personhood? Did you recently see that article about the little East Indian girl born with four arms and four
legs? This was a result of a parasitic twin, an extreme example of the misnamed “Siamese Twin” syndrome. This happens rarely but it
does happen. If one twin dies and is still connected, the other twin will die. The weaker one can put the stronger, healthier one at risk. If they are separable twins, but share certain body systems and organs, do you separate them even if one or both may die, or do you decide that the risk of having one healthy twin is the greater good? How do you weigh the pros and cons? So I ask you, which is better, a thoroughly considered and reasoned, though difficult decision to have an abortion, or to risk irreparable harm to the child and the mother? In other words, a pregnancy solves nothing, whether because of religious belief, rape or incest.
[ Please document that right to lifers do not care for unwanted children. I asked you to provide some evidence of a Christian group
stating that as long as the child is born, anything is alright, including sexual abuse and slavery.]
You’re spinning again. Where, exactly did I say that? I really shouldn’t even dignify this with an answer. I said they won’t take care of ALL the unwanted children, accent on the all — meaning that it’s impossible for any charities to take care of every child, because there are too many. I repeat myself, but if birth control and family planning were discussed and allowed, there would be a lot fewer unwanted children. The main crux of this is, the right-to-lifers don’t think about the consequences of too many unplanned births at all. If that attitude makes them responsible for the horrors that can happen to some of these children, so be it.
[- Do you think that poor people in Africa (as an example) have no trouble affording condoms or other forms of birth control? Do
you believe that the primary issue here is Christian tenets and not extreme poverty?]
Yes, because there are charitable organizations that give family planning help and birth control means, for no charge. They aren’t screwing with people’s brains to make them feel guilty for being born in sin, or enjoying their sexuality without guilt, and without having to procreate. Of course, there are those who will ignore the usage of protection, etc. anyway, that have no intention of using it for any reason, religious or otherwise. But the ones who will use these methods, etc. will help to lessen the number of those unfortunate children who are the innocent victims.
Sojourner wrote:[There are still millions of unwanted, abandoned children with no hope of any kind of life, without trauma and pain.
Your Christian charities won’t take care of them all, anyway.]
[- How many are you currently taking care of? Any?]
Are you? Do you contribute to any charities? Are you running an orphanage? Are’nt you repeating yourself?
[- Do you believe it would be better to abort a potential child than for the child to suffer? Where would you draw that line? Would you extend that argument to children after they are born? Better for them to die than to suffer in extreme sorts of ways?]
Again, for the umpteenth time, a fertilized ovum is not a child anymore than an egg is a chicken, neither is viable. Should we require
a woman to have a baby, no matter what? What of the child? Are miscarriages God’s abortions, then? A child that is outside the
womb and viable, is already here, through no fault of its own. That doesn’t mean that it should be killed, though some cultures kill
babies for not being the right gender (usually females), or for certain birth defects. Yes, it is better to prevent a pregnancy in the first place then to have one born into an abusive, loveless existence, or killed because it is the wrong gender. As I said previously a child is not a disposable commodity.
[- Is it the responsibility of Christians only to take care of children who need help? If you see a need, why don’t you do something
about it?]
Who said that? I certainly did not. How do you know I don’t? What are you doing about it? You’re repeating again.
[- Related to the AIDs problem and the massive implications of that epidemic - are you not willing to even consider the option of
monogamous relationships as a possible solution - or a part of the solution?]
Monogamy still can result in unwanted children, without proper protection or birth control. Any male-female union can result in
pregnancy. I am not advocating promiscuity, though it’s none of my business how others conduct their sex life. That brings me back to my original premise, protection, to help prevent unwanted pregnancies and to help the control of STD’s such as AIDS.
[- Is the living baby vs. embryos a hypothetical question? Or have you actually been in this situation?]
If a question is hypothetical that precludes an actuality.
[- Would you accept my apology for the implication that you are illiterate? As I mentioned before, that just wasn’t helpful to the discussion and I was out of line.]
Apology accepted.
[ - If you had a choice between taking the frozen embryos or a lump of coal - which would you pick? Would you mind telling me why?
(my point here is not to poke at the burning baby in a building, but to honestly ask the question… does the potential of the embryos
mean anything? Or it is just a bunch of cells, like a lump of coal?)] If it cannot survive outside a womb, an embryo isn’t viable.
However comparing that to a lump of coal (a mineral), is apples and oranges. (See my answer on potential person hood above
Sojourner wrote:[Re: frozen embryos or a lump of coal. Apparently, you didn’t grasp my concept at all. And you still didn’t answer the question I posed. Do I need to explain something so obvious to you?]
[Please do and I’m being honest there. I answered the burning baby building question in post #23 and the hypothetical pregnant 12
year old in post #24.]
I stand corrected, I didn’t see them.
[It was posed as a negative and I think I responded the same way - badly phrased on my part.]
[I think a 12 year old rape victim should be allowed to have an abortion. Even very hard core pro-lifers will often include exceptions
for rape and incest.]
Humble: I think I have satisfactorily replied to you. There will be no more commentary on these particular subjects on this post, to you, from me. If you are dissatisfied with my answers, “quel dommage!”. I don’t owe you any justification for any of my answers to your
questions, frankly, but I decided to be as intellectually honest as I could. As far as I’m concerned, my lips and keyboard are now
officially sealed as far as you and your questions on these subjects are concerned.
Sojourner wrote:[First of all, the word is IRRELEVANT, I will give you the benefit of the doubt and consider it a typo since you spelled relevant properly!]
Yes, typo, thanks.
Sojourner wrote:[How do you define person hood? If it’s a zygote, or embryo, it is not a person, it is not a viable entity. When it can live outside of its mother’s body then it becomes viable. In fact, there is little difference between the very early embryonic formation of most species, including humans.]
You didn’t answer the question. And that is OK. I’m not sure how I would define personhood. I mean, the problem for me is twofold. First, an embryo “can” survive outside of the mother’s body (with extreme medical care) several weeks before a normal birth would occur. Second, a newborn is completely dependant on other people to survive. It can’t live without help.
On one side of the cervix, we have no responsibility at all and can do whatever we want. On the other, suddenly we’re responsible and accountable and it is immoral to not care for the child. In neither case is the child or embryo able to survive on it’s own.
I’m not convinced the distinction is this easy or clean.
Either an embryo has no value at all, or it has some value, or it has as much value as a functioning adult. You’re saying the last part of that sentence is wrong, I’m saying the first part is. What I’m not clear about is the “some value” option. It was a real question, and certainly not one that I have an answer to. It is troubling, because if an embryo has “some value”, then depending on how much, it impacts the ethical and moral decision of whether to get an abortion or not.
To this point, no one is even willing to admit that an embryo has “some” value. We all know why. That stinks, because in my mind, this is the fundamental question that both groups are not thinking clearly about.
Leave Christianity out of it, I never brought that or the pro-life position or anything else up until people started talking about them unfairly.
Sojourner wrote:[Hydrocephalics, with modern day treatment may very often survive to live normal lives. There are sometimes physical and mental deficiencies that can occur, but that doesn’t make them less human. On the other hand, a baby born without any brain, but only with a brainstem will die very quickly because the organs cannot function without any brain matter at all. Those are known as anencephalics. They too, are human. People, is much too generic a word for this question.]
It isn’t a binary condition and there are levels of complexity here and you probably know that better than I do. I have a friend who runs a children’s hospital to care for these extreme cases. Most of these individuals need a respirator to live, they will never speak, I’m not sure most of them are “conscious” in a meaningful way and they will never be able to function with any sort of a normal life. I was struck by how much they seemed to have aspects of personality – some seemed more grumpy, others were smiling, etc… but that might have been just me reading into the situation. My opinion is that they were people. But they couldn’t survive on their own – without medical care that is constant and extreme.
Almost all of the arguments people use against embryos as people, could be made against these individuals as well.
Sojourner wrote:[How do you define potential personhood? Did you recently see that article about the little East Indian girl born with four arms and four legs? This was a result of a parasitic twin, an extreme example of the misnamed “Siamese Twin” syndrome. This happens rarely but it does happen. If one twin dies and is still connected, the other twin will die. The weaker one can put the stronger, healthier one at risk. If they are separable twins, but share certain body systems and organs, do you separate them even if one or both may die, or do you decide that the risk of having one healthy twin is the greater good? How do you weigh the pros and cons? So I ask you, which is better, a thoroughly considered and reasoned, though difficult decision to have an abortion, or to risk irreparable harm to the child and the mother? In other words, a pregnancy solves nothing, whether because of religious belief, rape or incest.]
You didn’t answer the question, again… and again, that is fine. But your example here is exactly what I’m trying to get people to think about.
If you have a potential life, in the case of a conjoined / parasitic twin, there is a level of ethical consideration before you simply do away with one twin or the other. I would argue that a healthy embryo, five minutes, or two weeks or three months before birth should be given a similar consideration before abortion is chosen.
Sojourner wrote: [You’re spinning again. Where, exactly did I say that? I really shouldn’t even dignify this with an answer. I said they won’t take care of ALL the unwanted children, accent on the all — meaning that it’s impossible for any charities to take care of every child, because there are too many. I repeat myself, but if birth control and family planning were discussed and allowed, there would be a lot fewer unwanted children. The main crux of this is, the right-to-lifers don’t think about the consequences of too many unplanned births at all. If that attitude makes them responsible for the horrors that can happen to some of these children, so be it.]
All can mean “all” as in every single one without exception. Or “all” can mean a general reference to “mostly”. If you said, “all the folks here seem to hate humble” that might be true, and I’m not sure you would mean every single one without exception.
But I accept that when you say “all”, you actually mean every single case without exception.
It would be easy to document beyond a reasonable doubt that a hugely prolific source of orphanages and charity work for children is Christian based. If you accept that, then it seems unfair to say that they, as a group, don’t think about or care about the consequences to children or unplanned births AT ALL, meaning – as you have clearly pointed out – to mean with every single case without exception.
So would you like to retract this statement? Or the other one?
Thousands of Christian people alive right now have given their entire life’s work to caring for children, orphans and children in poverty and adopting those children. Until you can acknowledge the good work they are doing, I’m not sure it is fair to critize them.
You’re taking a little slice of Christian rhetoric that you don’t like and saying that it is the whole picture. What Christianity says is that sex (and children) are sacred. They claim that the context of marriage and monogamy provides a safe and stable environment for the raising of children; that the parents have a moral and ethical responsibility to care for children. If there are abnormal conditions (such as extreme poverty, etc…) that should be considered before having children. Using them as sex objects, selling them as slaves, not feeding them, or mistreating them in any way is completely out of bounds for a Christian context.
Rather than being responsible for the horrors that happen to these children, they are working to address or prevent these things harder than any other group you can name.
Sojourner wrote:[Are you? Do you contribute to any charities? Are you running an orphanage? Are’nt you repeating yourself?]
Didn’t answer the question, and again, this is fine. Yes, I am supporting a fair number of children in poverty through multiple organizations. Along with three other families I completely support an orphanage in the Ukraine, and have helped build orphanages in Haiti and South Africa with my own hands.
That certainly doesn’t make me right, or better than anyone, I just have friends doing some cool stuff and I was able to help in practical ways. I’m certainly no Mother Teresa, and I could certainly give more than I do with time and money. If you would like to give, I can send you a link.
I’m not trying to indict you or make you feel guilty, or anything else. But you’re talking a lot about the plight of the children, and you seemed passionate about it. I was wondering what you’ve actually done.
Since I’ve asked three times and you’ve not responded, I have to assume that you haven’t really done anything, or you would have simply said you directly support some charities that don’t proselytize or some such thing.
Again, that is fine and what you do or don’t do is up to you. But having worked with these people directly… I just have to tell you that you’re off base here. The Christians running the orphanage in Haiti are good folks.
Sojourner wrote:[Yes, it is better to prevent a pregnancy in the first place then to have one born into an abusive, loveless existence, or killed because it is the wrong gender. As I said previously a child is not a disposable commodity.]
I didn’t say anything about preventing pregnancy. The question is abortion here. And it terms of suffering, how much is too much? And how do you look into the future clearly enough to tell whether or not you should abort? It isn’t a given, even in areas with poverty, that a child is doomed to an abusive, loveless existence. Not all poor children in Africa are sold off as sex slaves.
Sojourner wrote:[Who said that? I certainly did not. How do you know I don’t? What are you doing about it? You’re repeating again.]
Well, Christians are the only group that you’re complaining about. But you’re not asking anyone else to step up. That indicates an anti-Christian bias and bigotry.
That seems ironic to me, when it is clear that the Christians are doing a lot and maybe more than anyone to help with the issues you’re talking about.
I don’t know that you don’t, I’ve never said that you don’t, I’ve only asked the question and I’ve been ignored.
Sojourner wrote:[Apology accepted.]
Thank you.
Sojourner wrote:[If it cannot survive outside a womb, an embryo isn’t viable.
However comparing that to a lump of coal (a mineral), is apples and oranges. (See my answer on potential person hood above]
Did not answer the question. I didn’t ask if an embryo can survive outside the womb, I didn’t say anything about viability. The question was related to value. More valuable than a lump or coal or not?
It is EXACTLY the same question as the baby vs. embryo question. Which has more value?
Sojourner wrote:[Humble: I think I have satisfactorily replied to you. There will be no more commentary on these particular subjects on this post, to you, from me. If you are dissatisfied with my answers, “quel dommage!”. I don’t owe you any justification for any of my answers to your questions, frankly, but I decided to be as intellectually honest as I could. As far as I’m concerned, my lips and keyboard are now officially sealed as far as you and your questions on these subjects are concerned.]
Ok. I would agree that you certainly don’t owe me anything and I would even agree that at some point, it isn’t worth talking anymore. That is, as you have stated, a shame, but ok.
For my part, I have a real question – if an embryo has some value – how much and what does that mean as we consider the implications of pregnancy, or terminating a pregnancy? I don’t have a set answer, or an agenda, or anything else. It is a real and honest question and I posed it hoping for a discussion that could be meaningful and could move forward in a fruitful way.
You can’t do that here. What you can do here, is send up snappy one liners and little straw men to bash Christians while people who already agree with you applaud to reinforce your own, already established, point of view. There is nothing to be learned when you already know everything. Questions are threatening and anyone who says they disagree (or are thinking about possibly disagreeing) is a bigot, a religious zealot, a “spinmeister” and all about brainwashing and propaganda, hater of children, etc…
humble,
Have we been rough on you? Of course, the preference is to be ruthless with the facts while still being gracious with people, but sometimes enthusiasm gets the better of us (well, I can only speak for myself).
I believe a person’s right to control their own body is usually sacrosanct, but I admit there are problems with that argument. Should a person be able to sell a kidney on e-bay? Should they have that right to choose?
Your point that a fetus can sometimes survive when removed from the womb, given enough medical care, is also a challenging one. It seems to me if someone wants to “rescue” an aborted fetus and take full responsibility for its care and life, including all related medical expenses, I would not object to them doing so. I have been told some pro-choice advocates oppose this, because knowing the fetus lived would be traumatic for the mother, but I don’t think that is sufficient to prohibit it.
What I do think is that “rescuing” aborted fetuses would require an enormous allocation of resources by anyone who undertakes such an endeavor. Resources that could be put to better use. The U.S. is currently 28th in the world in infant mortality. That’s mortality of infants whose mothers are choosing for them to be born. It seems to me if anti-choice groups were really concerned with the lives of children, they would devote their time and energies to bringing universal health care to reduce infant mortality among the babies of mothers who are choosing to bring their pregnancies to term, but who lack the resources to prevent the deaths of their babies.
Would I rescue a lump of coal or a batch of frozen embryos? I’ve never found a lump of coal that had any significant value. So, let’s up the ante a little. Which would you save, a batch of easily replaced fertilized human eggs, or something irreplaceable, like the Mona Lisa? (I’m not requiring an answer, it’s just something for you to think about.)
Humble:
As I said, no more on these points. If you are dissatisfied, tough cookies. I did not dash my answers off in a second. I thought long and hard on each one giving them careful consideration. All of your nit-picking is getting tiresome. End of story! Find another playmate.
Sojourner,
No one is asking you to respond, least of all me, I was explicit about that. I’m completely satisfied that you are pro-choice, spin free and unwilling to answer some direct questions. Thanks for being willing to respond as much as you did.
It isn’t nitpicking to point that out.
But I’m with you, our exchange certainly had no value for me… not because I disagree or think you’re wrong, but because you refused to address my central question, at all. I’m sure that you got nothing from reading my posts except for frustration and the loss of time, sorry about that.
I understood you the first time when you said you weren’t going to respond anymore. You don’t have to keep saying it in condescending fashion. You just asked a LOT of questions in your last post to me, so I was trying to respond in good faith - not asking or expecting anything in return.
John K.,
It seems to me that you’ve been much more focused on what I’m saying, even if you disagree, and less focused on me personally, which I appreciate.
To focus more on infant mortality and less on whining about the current state of law is a good point… and it might be fair to say that a lot of energy on both sides of the debate could be better spent.
As to the Mona Lisa - that is a fantastic question. Maybe the fertilized embryos have some value, and maybe that isn’t very much.
To continue our hypothetical slicing… if the fire had killed a pregnant woman very close to term… and you could save the baby, even though it hadn’t been born yet, would the Mona Lisa be left to burn?
Maybe the value of a fetus is something of a sliding scale, with value increasing to something like unborn child the closer to term the pregnancy is.
The choice to birth or abort is a decision best left up to the pregnant woman - her doctor - her partner if she chooses to include him and her god if she has one.
We murder people at a distance all the time. We know we set them up to die in terrible factories, slums, wars, and useless hospitals and nursing homes. We go “tut tut” and then get on with our miserable amoral lives. So, why do we object to killing a worm in the womb? Because it my alleviate some of the general suffering, that’s why. If people don’t suffer so much, they develop some smarts.
humble,
If the woman was at a clinic to have an abortion, I would not save the fetus. A woman’s right to choose should not be abrogated, even if she is burned to death in a fire.
I don’t know about the value of a fetus, but abortion rights do seem to be on a sliding scale, or on several sliding scales. Some places allow induced abortions later in the term while some areas are more restrictive. And the scales do not slide just for the age of the fetus and the locale, they also slide based on the nature of the pregnancy. The fetus of a successful married couple is considered precious, the fetus of an incestuous relationship or a rape is considered an abomination. Termination of a fetus with severe medical problems or a pregnancy that threatens the health of the mother is considered more acceptable by most people, but I don’t know what any of these things have to do with the value of the fetus.
Humble,
I’ve noticed you cycling around the same point a lot of times, much as you generally seem to do.
However I’d have to say your most flagrant (and incidentally annoying) error is accusing others of not answering questions, which is what you yourself do. Maybe I’m getting a bit ‘personal’ here, that’s not my intention however, my intention is to point out some of the numerous fallacies that you commit everytime you post here, in the hope that either you will change (though that’s pretty unlikely) or at the least people will be able to save themselves some time by knowing your tactics of evasion.
‘But I’m with you, our exchange certainly had no value for me… not because I disagree or think you’re wrong, but because you refused to address my central question, at all. I’m sure that you got nothing from reading my posts except for frustration and the loss of time, sorry about that.’
Here’s a typical example of humble nonsense, claiming that a question he’s asked hasn’t been answered, even though it has, many times. Then when somebody refuses to continue telling him the answer, and realises that conversing with him is of zero value, he insists they’ve given up becuase they can’t answer his question.
‘However, until you can document a single group of Christians (fundamentalist or otherwise) who say that slavery, killing children, abandoning them and sexually abusing them is OK - then I’m going to say that you’re putting up a Straw Man here.’
Here’s a quote of humble’s that neatly sums up two common flaws of his is one. Firstly, his claim that Sojourner’s argument was a straw man, even though whether or not christian groups commit such acts is clearly irrelevant, as such acts are allowed to occur because of their prohibition of abortion forcing children to be born into families that cannot support them. Secondly he displays his lack of general knowledge by the quite frankly laughable claim that no christian organisations are responsible for such child abuse. The child abuse of orphanages belonging to The Archdiocese of Birmingham in England and abuse in many Irish catholic children’s homes are alone two undeniable examples of this.
At first I thought humble was perhaps a more reasonable poster than most christians who post here, but now that’s evidently not true. He takes up pages and pages of talk about how its ‘OK’ that people don’t answer his questions and how he ‘thanks’ them for their time. This is done merely in an effort to cover up his own utter lack of reasoning or knowledge, and is nothing but insidious in nature, not reasonable.
I imagine claims of me being rude will follow this post, assuming anything does. However though there’s a chance this may be true, it’ll be a lot more worthwhile if he gave some good reasons to try and show how my accusations are incorrect, that however, is a lot less likely.
K.:
I’m delighted to find that my answers satisfied someone besides myself. I don’t want to belabor these points.
This is a complicated subject. However it is thought that perhaps as many as 40% of pregnancies may become miscarriages. Nature’s or God’s abortions? How do the pro-lifers deal with that, I wonder? A fertilized ovum does not automatically equal a birth. An unfertilized ovum disintegrates every month,in a normal menstrual cycle.
I contend that an ovum fertilized or not is no more a person than is a skin cell. I further contend that an embryo unless it is capable of independent life without it’s mother’s system supporting it, is not a viable entity.
This, of course would preclude a preemie, in need of specialized medical support temporarily, or in case of a child born with severe disabilities requiring specialized care. These are still supportable, outside the womb, even if the mother had died.
I guess my gripe with the pro-lifers boils down to this. An ovum or an embryonic collection of cells is not a baby. A living breathing, outside the womb entity, is a baby.
There should be much more concern with what happens to children after they’re born. Any creeping, crawling creature or animal on the earth can have progeny. Humans aren’t special in that regard.
What does make a human child special, hopefully, is that it gets the support, care and love of its parent(s). Having the child is just the beginning. Even a chimp makes a better parent than some people. That is why I think pro-choice is so important.
K Anonymous wrote:[However I’d have to say your most flagrant (and incidentally annoying) error is accusing others of not answering questions, which is what you yourself do.]
Assume that I’m a poster, who enjoys a real conversation, even if people disagree, and who somehow is a chronic question misser. Then, please point out a question that I haven’t answered. I’m willing to respond.
If you can’t do that, or are not willing to, kindly stop making the accusation.
K Anonymous wrote:[Here’s a typical example of humble nonsense, claiming that a question he’s asked hasn’t been answered, even though it has, many times. Then when somebody refuses to continue telling him the answer, and realises that conversing with him is of zero value, he insists they’ve given up becuase they can’t answer his question.]
Well, in the case of the back and forth with Sojourner, there were many questions I asked that he didn’t answer. If you read the thread that seems clear enough. The larger question here is how much of an answer can I reasonably expect? Posting here and responding or not, is completely voluntarily. If folks want to respond, fine. If not, that’s ok too.
If they don’t that shuts down the discussion, but no one, not Austin, or Sojourner or myself is owed anything here. I’ve tried to respond, but time is limited and it is certainly possible that I missed something.
I don’t think Sojourner exited stage left because he can’t answer my burning questions. I think he left because he was frustrated and felt like the conversation was not really progressing. I’d probably agree with that assessment. I don’t think he really “got” my central point or question, he certainly never acknowledged or responded to it, but I’m willing to own that one. By allowing the conversation to degrade into some sniping, it became enough of a distraction to lose the point of the topic. Maybe I wasn’t concise or clear enough to keep things on track. That was my fault.
K Anonymous wrote:[quoting Humble, ‘However, until you can document a single group of Christians (fundamentalist or otherwise) who say that slavery, killing children, abandoning them and sexually abusing them is OK - then I’m going to say that you’re putting up a Straw Man here.’
Here’s a quote of humble’s that neatly sums up two common flaws of his is one. Firstly, his claim that Sojourner’s argument was a straw man, even though whether or not christian groups commit such acts is clearly irrelevant, as such acts are allowed to occur because of their prohibition of abortion forcing children to be born into families that cannot support them. Secondly he displays his lack of general knowledge by the quite frankly laughable claim that no christian organisations are responsible for such child abuse. The child abuse of orphanages belonging to The Archdiocese of Birmingham in England and abuse in many Irish catholic children’s homes are alone two undeniable examples of this.]
Let’s look at the original quote from Sojourner:
Sojourner wrote:[Who takes care of all the unwanted children? Certainly not the right to lifers. As long as their born, anything is alright. Living on the street, sex slave, household slave, whatever.]
The implication is that right to life folks believe that anything is “alright” as long as the unborn child isn’t aborted. The implication is that right to lifers do not care for children who are born into poverty and that these groups do not do anything to meets the needs of children who suffer. The implication is that their only concern is about bringing the pregnancy to term, with no regard to what happens to the child after birth. The implication is that even if a couple can not support a child, then the pro-life position is that they should not use birth control and go ahead and have as many children as they want, regardless of consequences.
None of those things are true.
If you examine the evidence of what pro-lifers actually say, and if you look at the evidence of what they actually do, you’ll find thousands of people and maybe millions who don’t fit this characterization.
It is an unfair criticism and a serious misunderstanding of what the pro-life movement is saying. They are saying that abortion AND slavery AND sexual abuse AND child hunger are all bad things that we have a direct and inescapable responsibility to address.
The definition of a Straw Man is, “to describe a position that superficially resembles an opponent’s actual view but is easier to refute, then attribute that position to the opponent.”
Sojourner is making an assumption that less abortion and family planning means more slaves and sexual abuse of children and is arguing against the supposedly implied right to life position that suffering is OK, as long as the child is not aborted.
But pro-life groups would not agree with this and they do not believe that doing nothing about children suffering is OK. Therefore, he is arguing against a false position fabricated to be weaker than the actual one. This is the classic definition of a Straw Man.
If you want to say I’m wrong on this point, please document a right to life group that says child suffering and sexual abuse is completely fine, as long as the child isn’t aborted. It seems clear that this is the point Sojourner was making.
To your second point. I never made the claim that children are never abused. I’ve never made the claim that children are never abused by people who claim to be Christians. I’ve never made the claim that no child has ever been abused in the context of a “Christian” orphanage or organization.
At that point, I just have no idea what you’re talking about. You’re pointing out fallacies that don’t exist from things I never said? Please stop that. It just isn’t helpful.
I will make the claim (along with the Catholic church, right to life groups, Sojourner and others) that child abuse is criminal activity and should be stopped.
There is a difference between an individual who commits a criminal act at an orphanage, and this act being sanctioned by the orphanage itself, or the right to life lobby as a larger body.
Children are abused at school. That does not mean that schools, teachers, teacher’s unions or school boards believe that at long as children go to school, child abuse is OK.
K Anonymous wrote:[At first I thought humble was perhaps a more reasonable poster than most christians who post here, but now that’s evidently not true. He takes up pages and pages of talk about how its ‘OK’ that people don’t answer his questions and how he ‘thanks’ them for their time. This is done merely in an effort to cover up his own utter lack of reasoning or knowledge, and is nothing but insidious in nature, not reasonable.]
No, I meant what I said. Your bright light shining onto the motives of my heart is broken. The only claim that I’ll make here is that I’m more of an expert of my own insidious intentions than you are.
K Anonymous wrote:[I imagine claims of me being rude will follow this post, assuming anything does. However though there’s a chance this may be true, it’ll be a lot more worthwhile if he gave some good reasons to try and show how my accusations are incorrect, that however, is a lot less likely.]
Nah, I’ll let folks decide for themselves if your insults and condescension towards me are rude and hindering the conversation or are somehow deserved and helping people think more clearly about this issue.
As to your accusations being incorrect, you made two basic points. 1) Sojourner’s argument was not a Straw Man and 2) that somehow I made the claim that no Christian organizations are responsible for child abuse.
For 1, I think you need to demonstrate that Sojourner’s argument was not a Straw Man. For 2, I never made that ridiculous claim so you’re clearly wrong on that one.
If you want to dispute that, please quote where I said anything that resembles the, “quite frankly laughable claim that no christian organisations are responsible for such child abuse.”
It seems clear that you’re wrong on both points. It is not clear that the time to fashion this response is worthwhile for you, me or anyone else.
Humble said,
‘Well, in the case of the back and forth with Sojourner, there were many questions I asked that he didn’t answer. If you read the thread that seems clear enough.’
I did read the thread, and noticed no such unanswered questions, perhaps you can tell me what they are?
‘I don’t think he really “got” my central point or question, he certainly never acknowledged or responded to it, but I’m willing to own that one.’
What is your central point? Or central question if that’s more applicable.
‘The implication is that right to life folks believe that anything is “alright” as long as the unborn child isn’t aborted. The implication is that right to lifers do not care for children who are born into poverty and that these groups do not do anything to meets the needs of children who suffer.’
Right, and I was addressing your claim that this isn’t so. As many pro-life organisations aren’t bothered about such things. First of all we can see this by experimentation, shown in the vast number of people in the third world who keep having children that they can’t support becuase their religion proclaims that they should (by their denouncement of contraception). Secondly its somewhat of an inevitable consequence of what many pro-life groups support, such as no use of contraception. If studies have shown us anything, its that people will have sex whether they can afford to have kids or not, especially this is relevant to studies done in schools. So if they can’t use contraception, chances are you’ll have a kid you can’t support. So, obviously the suffering of this child and indeed the parents is not as important to them as their pro-life stance. Now I accept that not all pro-life groups are anti-contraception, but the vast majority are.
‘But pro-life groups would not agree with this and they do not believe that doing nothing about children suffering is OK. Therefore, he is arguing against a false position fabricated to be weaker than the actual one. This is the classic definition of a Straw Man.’
Whether they say they agree with it or not isn’t relevent. The point is that their actions do cause some amounts of suffering so clearly they’re ok with this. So, I’d still contend that you were wrong, and Sojourner’s argument was in no way a strawman.
‘To your second point. I never made the claim that children are never abused. I’ve never made the claim that children are never abused by people who claim to be Christians. I’ve never made the claim that no child has ever been abused in the context of a “Christian” orphanage or organization.’
No, you claimed that pro-life organisations are all anti-suffering, which I felt my examples disproved.
‘At that point, I just have no idea what you’re talking about. You’re pointing out fallacies that don’t exist from things I never said? Please stop that. It just isn’t helpful.’
I’ll address this point to what I’ve written directly above.
‘As to your accusations being incorrect, you made two basic points. 1) Sojourner’s argument was not a Straw Man and 2) that somehow I made the claim that no Christian organizations are responsible for child abuse.
For 1, I think you need to demonstrate that Sojourner’s argument was not a Straw Man.’
Done above.
‘2) that somehow I made the claim that no Christian organizations are responsible for child abuse.’
Its more that you claimed this of pro-life organisations. Which is equally incorrect.
‘If you want to dispute that, please quote where I said anything that resembles the, “quite frankly laughable claim that no christian organisations are responsible for such child abuse.”’
Ok, I’ll admit you weren’t making that claim about christians on the whole, just pro-lifers. That’s not what I meant but it is me who incorrectly phrased it so the error is mine, and I apologise for that.
Just one more point I should have addressed,
‘There is a difference between an individual who commits a criminal act at an orphanage, and this act being sanctioned by the orphanage itself, or the right to life lobby as a larger body.’
If you look into the examples I referenced, you’ll soon discover it wasn’t one individual commiting a criminal act, such cases were numerous and covered up by the entirety of the staff at such orphanages, not to mention surroundings members of the clergy and the church as a whole.
K Anonymous wrote:[I did read the thread, and noticed no such unanswered questions, perhaps you can tell me what they are?]
Post 33.
K Anonymous wrote:[What is your central point? Or central question if that’s more applicable.]
I referenced it in every single response, but post 33 near the end.
K Anonymous wrote:[Right, and I was addressing your claim that this isn’t so. As many pro-life organisations aren’t bothered about such things. First of all we can see this by experimentation, shown in the vast number of people in the third world who keep having children that they can’t support becuase their religion proclaims that they should (by their denouncement of contraception).]
I think you mean observation, but whatever.
Please document how many children are being born that can not be supported. Also, please document how many are a direct result of religious belief. If you can’t get actual numbers, please show me in the Catholic catechism (which is pretty comprehensive) where it says that it is OK for families to have children when they know they can not support them. Failing that, find the top ten relief organizations helping poor children in the third world. If none of them are Christian or pro-life, I’ll agree that Sojourner is right and I was incorrect to claim a problem here.
If you can’t do any of those things, you’re claim is out to lunch.
K Anonymous wrote:[Secondly its somewhat of an inevitable consequence of what many pro-life groups support, such as no use of contraception. If studies have shown us anything, its that people will have sex whether they can afford to have kids or not, especially this is relevant to studies done in schools.]
The relevance of a sex study done in suburban American schools as it relates to human trafficking and unwanted children in Africa is a bit of a stretch.
Catholics have very specific thinking about contraception. They also have very specific thinking about sex outside of marriage. They also have very specific thinking about the moral / ethical responsibility related to care for children. If school kids, or African folks in poverty, or whoever are ignoring one piece of Catholic thinking (to not have sex outside of marriage), then they could ignore the piece about contraception too, don’t you think? They could also ignore the thinking related to abortion.
If people are taking one piece, but not the whole picture, that isn’t the fault of Christianity. If families in Africa followed all of the Catholic teaching about sex and marriage and family, not only would all of the children be cared for, but AIDS would die out pretty quickly.
You’re saying that the answer is to increase the availability of contraception and to change the religious views of people.
But an equally viable answer, just on the level of logic, would be for the religious people to follow their religion more closely and for non-religious people (and religious people who are fine with birth control) to use contraceptives. Why is no one suggesting that people take personal responsibility for their actions and the consequences of those actions? Are the poor Africans, as a whole, helpless children in the face of this line of thinking?
To take a single piece of Catholic rhetoric, as Sojourner (and now you) have done and to ignore all the rest… is to set up a Straw Man. No one, not Catholics, not me, nor anybody else is making the argument that we should not use contraceptives – and we should have sex whenever we want – and we shouldn’t take thought about consequences of those actions. The thinking about contraception makes no sense, until taken in conjunction with views about marriage, about children, about monogamy and life itself as being sacred. Taken together it is a remarkably solid and consistent view – that many people don’t like and don’t agree with.
You can disagree with the position all you want, but stop acting like one little piece is the entire position when it isn’t.
K Anonymous wrote:[Whether they say they agree with it or not isn’t relevent. The point is that their actions do cause some amounts of suffering so clearly they’re ok with this. So, I’d still contend that you were wrong, and Sojourner’s argument was in no way a strawman.]
“Some amounts of suffering” is a problem. Everyone suffers some amount. I’m completely ok with not dying today and suffering some amount. How much is “some”? How much is too much? Who are you to decide? Are you REALLY making the argument that “some” non-specific amount of suffering must not be allowed before a child should be born?
And remember, when the decision is made to abort, the suffering is still hypothetical even if it is extremely likely. Things could change for the better. So now, we’re not even talking about real suffering, but the possibility of suffering. That gets slippery very quickly.
K Anonymous wrote:[Ok, I’ll admit you weren’t making that claim about christians on the whole, just pro-lifers. That’s not what I meant but it is me who incorrectly phrased it so the error is mine, and I apologise for that.]
Apology accepted. But I didn’t make that claim about pro-lifers either. Now what?
K Anonymous wrote:[If you look into the examples I referenced, you’ll soon discover it wasn’t one individual commiting a criminal act, such cases were numerous and covered up by the entirety of the staff at such orphanages, not to mention surroundings members of the clergy and the church as a whole.]
Ok, well please document that the entirety of the staff were not criminals, but were only following the stated policy of the orphanage and the church. Please document where the church as a whole says that abusing orphans is right and proper. If they, in fact, don’t say this or say the opposite, then this has nothing to do with the discussion.
You could always try to discredit a group by taking members of that group and pointing out that some of them are idiots, or criminals, or part of the lunatic fringe. That’s true of Congress, of school teachers, of atheists and any group with significant numbers you care to name.
That doesn’t mean that legislators don’t care about America, or that teachers don’t care about school children.
You’re saying that some bad things happened at an orphanage. I’m not sure that means anything other than, “some bad things happened at an orphanage and this should be stopped immediately and handled appropriately.”
It certainly is not a valid criticism of Compassion (as one example) or the billions of dollars in time and money in excellent charity work being handled by Christians and churches right now.
Humble said,
‘K Anonymous wrote:[I did read the thread, and noticed no such unanswered questions, perhaps you can tell me what they are?]
Post 33.
K Anonymous wrote:[What is your central point? Or central question if that’s more applicable.]
I referenced it in every single response, but post 33 near the end. ‘
Ok I see what I was missing here. I’ll quote the piece I think you’re referring to for better referencing,
‘Sojourner wrote:[First of all, the word is IRRELEVANT, I will give you the benefit of the doubt and consider it a typo since you spelled relevant properly!]
Yes, typo, thanks.
Sojourner wrote:[How do you define person hood? If it’s a zygote, or embryo, it is not a person, it is not a viable entity. When it can live outside of its mother’s body then it becomes viable. In fact, there is little difference between the very early embryonic formation of most species, including humans.]
You didn’t answer the question. And that is OK.’
He did answer the question as much as he needed to. He defined personhood to not include zygotes and embryo’s.
‘Please document how many children are being born that can not be supported. Also, please document how many are a direct result of religious belief.’
Both of those are far to obscure to come up with specific numbers for (the first one because the point at which you ‘can support’ a child is sketchy, and the second one because cultural values other than religion are often also partly responsible), of course this in no way means that religious beliefs aren’t responsible for the birth of unsupportable children. Their religion says no contraception, and lets face it, people will have sex, so, inevitably, you get kids you can’t support.
‘If you can’t get actual numbers, please show me in the Catholic catechism (which is pretty comprehensive) where it says that it is OK for families to have children when they know they can not support them.’
You know, sometimes people do bad things and don’t admit to them. I don’t care what they say they’re doing, I care what the evidence shows. 60% of catholics live in the third world, that’s a lot of people having a lot of children they can’t support.
‘Failing that, find the top ten relief organizations helping poor children in the third world. If none of them are Christian or pro-life, I’ll agree that Sojourner is right and I was incorrect to claim a problem here.’
Why is that neccesary? The fact that some pro-life organisations do something to help such situations doesn’t autmatically negate all the bad they do, especially seeing as more often than not they’re the cause of the problem in the first place.
‘The relevance of a sex study done in suburban American schools as it relates to human trafficking and unwanted children in Africa is a bit of a stretch.’
Why? Its the same principle of pro-life ideology causing people to have children they can’t support.
‘Catholics have very specific thinking about contraception. They also have very specific thinking about sex outside of marriage. They also have very specific thinking about the moral / ethical responsibility related to care for children. If school kids, or African folks in poverty, or whoever are ignoring one piece of Catholic thinking (to not have sex outside of marriage),’
Who says that you can support kids just because you’re married? Are you claiming the only poor people in Africa and the third-world as a whole are the unmarried ones?
‘If people are taking one piece, but not the whole picture, that isn’t the fault of Christianity. If families in Africa followed all of the Catholic teaching about sex and marriage and family, not only would all of the children be cared for, but AIDS would die out pretty quickly.’
That’s a pretty big and borderline dangerous claim that needs backing up, its hasn’t gotten that in your post.
‘You’re saying that the answer is to increase the availability of contraception and to change the religious views of people.
But an equally viable answer, just on the level of logic, would be for the religious people to follow their religion more closely and for non-religious people (and religious people who are fine with birth control) to use contraceptives. Why is no one suggesting that people take personal responsibility for their actions and the consequences of those actions? Are the poor Africans, as a whole, helpless children in the face of this line of thinking?’
I’m not saying people aren’t responsible for their own actions, but undeniably if you remove a negative belief system, a lot of the negative consequences of it will also be removed.
‘“Some amounts of suffering” is a problem. Everyone suffers some amount. I’m completely ok with not dying today and suffering some amount. How much is “some”? How much is too much? Who are you to decide?’
I’m sorry, but this statement doesn’t have any discernable meaning.
‘Are you REALLY making the argument that “some” non-specific amount of suffering must not be allowed before a child should be born?’
Well firstly you’re confusing zygote’s and embryo’s with children, got any reasons for that?
‘And remember, when the decision is made to abort, the suffering is still hypothetical even if it is extremely likely. Things could change for the better. So now, we’re not even talking about real suffering, but the possibility of suffering. That gets slippery very quickly.’
By that line of reasoning its ok to try to shoot someone in the leg, because you might miss so there’s only possible suffering, not actual suffering.
‘Apology accepted. But I didn’t make that claim about pro-lifers either.’
Actually you did. You exact words were,
‘However, until you can document a single group of Christians (fundamentalist or otherwise) who say that slavery, killing children, abandoning them and sexually abusing them is OK - then I’m going to say that you’re putting up a Straw Man here.’
Which don’t say that exact thing, but in the context they were given either they meant that or they were of zero relevence. Perhaps I was wrong and you were just going of at an unjustified tangent.
‘Ok, well please document that the entirety of the staff were not criminals, but were only following the stated policy of the orphanage and the church.’
Well I would if it weren’t for the fact that at many an orphanage this wasn’t so.
‘Please document where the church as a whole says that abusing orphans is right and proper.’
As I’ve said before, what a group says they do or think is ok and what they actually do and/or think is ok are not one and the same.
‘You could always try to discredit a group by taking members of that group and pointing out that some of them are idiots, or criminals, or part of the lunatic fringe. That’s true of Congress, of school teachers, of atheists and any group with significant numbers you care to name.
That doesn’t mean that legislators don’t care about America, or that teachers don’t care about school children.’
Right, except that this isn’t just a few individuals, as I said. Said abuse was widespread and endorsed up to frighteningly high up members of the estabalishments and their respective churches.
‘You’re saying that some bad things happened at an orphanage. ‘
True, but I’m also making the specific claim that pro-life organisations despite your claims of their anti-suffering stance have often commited heinous acts of child-abuse that were not just the act of an individual.
‘It certainly is not a valid criticism of Compassion (as one example) or the billions of dollars in time and money in excellent charity work being handled by Christians and churches right now. ‘
At what point did I claim it was?
It is the Spirit that makes alive, the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are spirit and are life.
(John 6:63)
Do our spirits have a size?
No spirit - no life!
‘No spirit - no life! ‘
Got any evidence for that? (Please note quoting the Bible is not evidence, as it is a fictional book compiled by people, not any god.)
K wrote:[He did answer the question as much as he needed to. He defined personhood to not include zygotes and embryo’s.]
No. He said that an entity is viable after birth. That isn’t the same thing as claiming a newborn is a person. Entities are “viable” up to several weeks before a normal birth, and some time before that, with medical care.
K wrote:[Both of those are far to obscure to come up with specific numbers for (the first one because the point at which you ‘can support’ a child is sketchy, and the second one because cultural values other than religion are often also partly responsible), of course this in no way means that religious beliefs aren’t responsible for the birth of unsupportable children. Their religion says no contraception, and lets face it, people will have sex, so, inevitably, you get kids you can’t support.]
So, your point is that you can’t support this with any actual evidence, you can’t define what level of support is OK and other factors contribute and you can’t tell me how much.
I’d say you fairly handily refuted your own case that religion is to blame. From your own points above, it is either partly to blame or we just can’t really tell.
K wrote:[You know, sometimes people do bad things and don’t admit to them. I don’t care what they say they’re doing, I care what the evidence shows. 60% of catholics live in the third world, that’s a lot of people having a lot of children they can’t support.]
Yes, there are poor people on earth. Some of them are Catholics. So what? Should we force sterilize them? Prevent them from living their lives in the way that they freely choose to? Mourn that they can’t make decisions for themselves, but are helpless in the face of unstoppable religious rhetoric?
K wrote:[Why is that neccesary? The fact that some pro-life organisations do something to help such situations doesn’t autmatically negate all the bad they do, especially seeing as more often than not they’re the cause of the problem in the first place.]
It is necessary because Sojourner is claiming that pro-life groups don’t think about children AT ALL. The evidence doesn’t support this. When you claim that “more often than not” they cause the problem of slavery, sexual abuse, human trafficking and child hunger… I’ll again ask you to document in a quantifiable way that 50% or more of the evil listed above is directly caused by pro-life groups.
Still can’t do that? Then support that they are partially responsible, but take their full argument into account, not just the part you don’t like. Still can’t support this at all? Then stop making stupid, unsupportable claims.
K wrote:[Why? Its the same principle of pro-life ideology causing people to have children they can’t support.]
Ideologies don’t cause people to have children. And the principle you talk about here, is incomplete and an inaccurate picture of the pro-life position. Straw Man.
K wrote:[Who says that you can support kids just because you’re married? Are you claiming the only poor people in Africa and the third-world as a whole are the unmarried ones?]
No one is saying this. Straw Man.
K wrote:[That’s a pretty big and borderline dangerous claim that needs backing up, its hasn’t gotten that in your post.]
No it isn’t. AIDS is primarily a sexually transmitted disease. If no one had sex outside of marriage and those relationships are monogamous, AIDS doesn’t have a good way to spread. The pandemic is pretty much done in a single generation. It doesn’t cost trillions of dollars. It is free and available to anyone who wants to pursue that course of action.
You might disagree that this is the best solution, but give me a better one in terms of cost of medical care, loss of human life and I’m certainly willing to listen.
K wrote:[I’m not saying people aren’t responsible for their own actions, but undeniably if you remove a negative belief system, a lot of the negative consequences of it will also be removed.]
Too bad Catholicism isn’t a negative belief system. If you want to make that case, I would suggest starting with all the good that they do, and weigh that against all of the bad. Please start with a list of all Catholic charities, wordwide, with specific impact that they have. Until you do, your undeniable claim is pretty easily denied.
K wrote:[I’m sorry, but this statement doesn’t have any discernable meaning.]
I quote you directly. Beyond that, if you didn’t understand the words, please try http://www.dictionary.com.
K wrote:[Well firstly you’re confusing zygote’s and embryo’s with children, got any reasons for that?]
No I’m not. Children are born. Even Sojourner would agree with that.
K wrote:[By that line of reasoning its ok to try to shoot someone in the leg, because you might miss so there’s only possible suffering, not actual suffering.]
That might be the worst analogy I’ve ever seen. Spectacularly bad… I’m actually very impressed.
It would be much better to cut off both of your legs, if you think someone might try to shoot you later. That makes a LOT more sense.
K wrote:[quoting humble, ‘Apology accepted. But I didn’t make that claim about pro-lifers either.’
Actually you did. You exact words were,
‘However, until you can document a single group of Christians (fundamentalist or otherwise) who say that slavery, killing children, abandoning them and sexually abusing them is OK - then I’m going to say that you’re putting up a Straw Man here.’
Which don’t say that exact thing, but in the context they were given either they meant that or they were of zero relevence. Perhaps I was wrong and you were just going of at an unjustified tangent.]
Um, pro-lifers are not mentioned at all in my quote. I said, “that’s stupid, I never said that… if you think I did say that… please quote where I said it”
And you quote something that doesn’t say what I claim to not have said.
Quite an incoherent way to make my point for me, but ok.
K wrote:[Well I would if it weren’t for the fact that at many an orphanage this wasn’t so.]
You just refuted your own claim. Nicely done.
K wrote:[As I’ve said before, what a group says they do or think is ok and what they actually do and/or think is ok are not one and the same.]
Ok, so please document that at an organizational level, pro-life groups unequivocally support slavery, sexual abuse, human trafficking through things that they ACTUALLY do or ACTUALLY think. It’s a stupid position to take, but have at it.
K wrote:[Right, except that this isn’t just a few individuals, as I said. Said abuse was widespread and endorsed up to frighteningly high up members of the estabalishments and their respective churches.]
The pro-life position, as I understand it, would say that children are precious and sacred, before they are born – and they are also precious and sacred after they are born. Child abuse and human trafficking are criminal activities and should be dealt with appropriately.
K wrote:[True, but I’m also making the specific claim that pro-life organisations despite your claims of their anti-suffering stance have often commited heinous acts of child-abuse that were not just the act of an individual.]
Often? Really? Name three, and please document some level of conspiracy that went beyond individual criminal action. This is very close to the Converse Fallacy of Accident. All the white swans I’ve seen are white, therefore all swans are white. But it isn’t quite there, because even you admit that some orphanages are good.
K wrote: [At what point did I claim it was?]
At this point:
K wrote:[The fact that some pro-life organisations do something to help such situations doesn’t autmatically negate all the bad they do, especially seeing as more often than not they’re the cause of the problem in the first place.]
I would agree that if some individuals in an organization do very good things and other individuals in an organization do very bad things, the good deeds do not somehow justify or negate the impact of the bad deeds.
I would even go so far as to say that if a day care, or a pro-life organization has members that molest children through contact with the organization, then the organization bears some responsibility there.
But the converse is true as well. The bad things that happen - particularly if they are notable exceptions (which is true in every child molestation case I can think of)do not invalidate the good work of an organization and make their position invalid.
Again, because some teachers have molested students, does not mean that schools aren’t worthwhile, or that all teachers should be characterized as contributing to the problem of child molestation because they believe adults and children should interact.
To Humble,
wrote:[Both of those are far to obscure to come up with specific numbers for (the first one because the point at which you ‘can support’ a child is sketchy, and the second one because cultural values other than religion are often also partly responsible), of course this in no way means that religious beliefs aren’t responsible for the birth of unsupportable children. Their religion says no contraception, and lets face it, people will have sex, so, inevitably, you get kids you can’t support.]
So, your point is that you can’t support this with any actual evidence, you can’t define what level of support is OK and other factors contribute and you can’t tell me how much.
I’d say you fairly handily refuted your own case that religion is to blame. From your own points above, it is either partly to blame or we just can’t really tell.
I’d say I didn’t refute my own claim at all. I gave reasons as to why such numbers are unattainable and largely irrelevant, and you didn’t respond to those reasons. Still, I’ll illustrate further with an example.
In Nazi Germany many of the racist policies promoted were already in place as long-standing cultural attitudes, so its arguable that even if the Nazis hadn’t seized power, some of the attacks carried out in their name would still probably have taken place. So an exact value for the number of attacks committed because of Nazism is difficult to give, but undeniably there would have been a lot less if it hadn’t come to power.
Now as anyone who has the slightest understand of arguments will know (I’m not saying you don’t, I just want to be clear) I’m not comparing the Nazi’s to pro-life groups or Catholics or whoever, I’m using the above example to show that not having an exact value for the negative effects of one ideology doesn’t mean there aren’t any.
K wrote:[You know, sometimes people do bad things and don’t admit to them. I don’t care what they say they’re doing, I care what the evidence shows. 60% of Catholics live in the third world, that’s a lot of people having a lot of children they can’t support.]
Yes, there are poor people on earth. Some of them are Catholics. So what? Should we force sterilize them? Prevent them from living their lives in the way that they freely choose to?
Its interesting you suggest sterilizing, I certainly hope you aren’t using this as some kind of scare tactic against what I’m saying, as nothing I’ve said supports such a course of action.
Mourn that they can’t make decisions for themselves, but are helpless in the face of unstoppable religious rhetoric?
As I’ve said before, the fact that the parents themselves are of course responsible doesn’t then absolve any belief system of its blame for supporting such actions. Is that what you’re saying? That you can promote whatever you like as long as you don’t do it yourself? Because if anyone does it due to what you’ve encouraged them to do, its their responsibility, not yours. That’s what you think?
K wrote:[Why is that necessary? The fact that some pro-life organisations do something to help such situations doesn’t automatically negate all the bad they do, especially seeing as more often than not they’re the cause of the problem in the first place.]
It is necessary because Sojourner is claiming that pro-life groups don’t think about children AT ALL.
Well the problem with that is, as far as his posts show, he’s not. He’s saying, as far as I can tell (and I agree with him on this), that pro-life organisations care more about their own religious doctrines than they do about the welfare of children and indeed people on the whole.
The evidence doesn’t support this. When you claim that “more often than not” they cause the problem of slavery, sexual abuse, human trafficking and child hunger… I’ll again ask you to document in a quantifiable way that 50% or more of the evil listed above is directly caused by pro-life groups.
Directly? I’ve never claimed that these organisations indulge in slavery and the like themselves, what I have said however that things such as slavery and child hunger are all but inevitable consequences of unsupportable children being born. Something which pro-life groups cause.
K wrote:[Why? Its the same principle of pro-life ideology causing people to have children they can’t support.]
Ideologies don’t cause people to have children. And the principle you talk about here, is incomplete and an inaccurate picture of the pro-life position. Straw Man.
Uh, yes they do. That’s kind of the whole point I’ve been making. What ideologies don’t cause (well not in this case) is people having sex, but the ideologies in question do say that contraception and abortion are wrong, so more children are born than would be without them. As of yet you’ve still not offered a single piece of evidence to refute this.
K wrote:[Who says that you can support kids just because you’re married? Are you claiming the only poor people in Africa and the third-world as a whole are the unmarried ones?]
No one is saying this. Straw Man.
Someone, namely you, is saying this. I notice here that your choice of what to quote starts to get a little selective. So I’ll quote what you originally said on this matter,
Catholics have very specific thinking about contraception. They also have very specific thinking about sex outside of marriage. They also have very specific thinking about the moral / ethical responsibility related to care for children. If school kids, or African folks in poverty, or whoever are ignoring one piece of Catholic thinking (to not have sex outside of marriage), then they could ignore the piece about contraception too, don’t you think? They could also ignore the thinking related to abortion.
See that? You’re saying if they followed no sex outside of marriage, there wouldn’t be a problem. I really don’t see how you could miss this. So contrary to me making a straw man, I’ve pointed out something that not only did you undeniably say, but indeed your argument is reliant upon. For all of your thinking diverges towards the idea that if all pro-life principles were followed, we wouldn’t have a problem. Well they often are and we do still have a problem.
K wrote:[That’s a pretty big and borderline dangerous claim that needs backing up, its hasn’t gotten that in your post.]
No it isn’t. AIDS is primarily a sexually transmitted disease. If no one had sex outside of marriage and those relationships are monogamous, AIDS doesn’t have a good way to spread. The pandemic is pretty much done in a single generation. It doesn’t cost trillions of dollars. It is free and available to anyone who wants to pursue that course of action.
You do realize that then the children of such monogamous couples would (almost definitely) have AIDS? And then they in turn would be encouraged to have more children (in wedlock) that would also have AIDS, so how exactly does it die out? To be honest this claim is not just borderline dangerous, its really quite sick. AIDS is a very serious condition that troubles the very best scientific minds of our time. That you should claim it can be solved simply by following a religious doctrine (pro-life stance) that has as of yet done nothing good for the world with no support whatsoever is suspicious to say the least.
You might disagree that this is the best solution, but give me a better one in terms of cost of medical care, loss of human life and I’m certainly willing to listen.
I disagree that its a solution at all, for the reason given above.
K wrote:[I’m not saying people aren’t responsible for their own actions, but undeniably if you remove a negative belief system, a lot of the negative consequences of it will also be removed.]
Too bad Catholicism isn’t a negative belief system. If you want to make that case, I would suggest starting with all the good that they do, and weigh that against all of the bad. Please start with a list of all Catholic charities, worldwide, with specific impact that they have. Until you do, your undeniable claim is pretty easily denied.
The pro-life stance of it sure is. As for reasons as to why, I’ve given plenty.
K wrote:[I’m sorry, but this statement doesn’t have any discernible meaning.]
I quote you directly. Beyond that, if you didn’t understand the words, please try http://www.dictionary.com.
I’m saying what you said had no discernible meaning, you haven’t quoted it though, again seems somewhat selective as you’re usually quite thorough. I’ll quote it here to further elaborate,
‘“Some amounts of suffering” is a problem. Everyone suffers some amount. I’m completely ok with not dying today and suffering some amount. How much is “some”? How much is too much? Who are you to decide?’
This statement isn’t saying anything, you start talking about me saying who am I too decide and related irrelevant statements. Basically either this boils down to nothing at all or it boils down to suffering is ok because ‘who am I to say how much suffering is too much?’
K wrote:[Well firstly you’re confusing zygote’s and embryo’s with children, got any reasons for that?]
No I’m not. Children are born. Even Sojourner would agree with that.
Here’s that selective quoting again. Ok lets quote what you wrote
Are you REALLY making the argument that “some” non-specific amount of suffering must not be allowed before a child should be born?’
You’re stating that its a child before its been born. Otherwise you aren’t saying anything at all.
K wrote:[By that line of reasoning its ok to try to shoot someone in the leg, because you might miss so there’s only possible suffering, not actual suffering.]
That might be the worst analogy I’ve ever seen. Spectacularly bad… I’m actually very impressed.
It would be much better to cut off both of your legs, if you think someone might try to shoot you later. That makes a LOT more sense.
Interesting how you don’t actually say why its bad, just that it is. Again you don’t quote what you originally wrote, so I shall to once again show how my analogy is actually perfectly valid,
And remember, when the decision is made to abort, the suffering is still hypothetical even if it is extremely likely. Things could change for the better. So now, we’re not even talking about real suffering, but the possibility of suffering. That gets slippery very quickly.’
You’re saying that because the suffering is only possible, not definite, its somehow ok, or more ok. There is no other correct interpretation of this statement. So, you honestly think its ok to do things that might (often almost definitely) cause suffering because they only might cause it?
K wrote:[quoting humble, ‘Apology accepted. But I didn’t make that claim about pro-lifers either.’
Actually you did. You exact words were,
‘However, until you can document a single group of Christians (fundamentalist or otherwise) who say that slavery, killing children, abandoning them and sexually abusing them is OK - then I’m going to say that you’re putting up a Straw Man here.’
Which don’t say that exact thing, but in the context they were given either they meant that or they were of zero relevance. Perhaps I was wrong and you were just going of at an unjustified tangent.]
Um, pro-lifers are not mentioned at all in my quote. I said, “that’s stupid, I never said that… if you think I did say that… please quote where I said it”
And you quote something that doesn’t say what I claim to not have said.
Quite an incoherent way to make my point for me, but ok.
As I said before, with the comment made by Sojourner that you were responding to, either you were talking about pro-lifers or you were saying something of no relevance. Which is it? If you have a third option showing why this statement is relevant please say.
K wrote:[Well I would if it weren’t for the fact that at many an orphanage this wasn’t so.]
You just refuted your own claim. Nicely done.
How on Earth did I refute my own claim? Once more there’s a lack of quoting which looks selective. Here’s what you wrote,
‘Ok, well please document that the entirety of the staff were not criminals, but were only following the stated policy of the orphanage and the church.’
You wanted me to write that not all of the staff at said orphanages were criminals, I know they were, so I didn’t write that. Care to show how I refuted my own claim?
K wrote:[As I’ve said before, what a group says they do or think is ok and what they actually do and/or think is ok are not one and the same.]
Ok, so please document that at an organizational level, pro-life groups unequivocally support slavery, sexual abuse, human trafficking through things that they ACTUALLY do or ACTUALLY think. It’s a stupid position to take, but have at it.
Well I’ve done so many times, but I shall once more. What they ACTUALLY think is that contraception and abortion are wrong in all cases, so whether children can be supported or not (quite possibly the children of married parents) they will insist that they are born. So these children will quite likely end up being trafficked or sold into slavery or any number of other horrible things. If you respond could you please address this point, I’ve made it at least twice.
K wrote:[Right, except that this isn’t just a few individuals, as I said. Said abuse was widespread and endorsed up to frighteningly high up members of the establishments and their respective churches.]
The pro-life position, as I understand it, would say that children are precious and sacred, before they are born – and they are also precious and sacred after they are born. Child abuse and human trafficking are criminal activities and should be dealt with appropriately.
The pro-life position? I guess you do honestly think that as long as I group says they don’t support bad things, they don’t. Of course there are lots of reasons to think otherwise, namely the fact that they clearly don’t care about these children as they insist (by their denunciation of contraception) that children be produced whether they will have good lives or not.
K wrote:[True, but I’m also making the specific claim that pro-life organisations despite your claims of their anti-suffering stance have often committed heinous acts of child-abuse that were not just the act of an individual.]
Often? Really? Name three, and please document some level of conspiracy that went beyond individual criminal action. This is very close to the Converse Fallacy of Accident. All the white swans I’ve seen are white, therefore all swans are white. But it isn’t quite there, because even you admit that some orphanages are good.
Well I’ve already named the terrible abuse that went on under the supervision of the Archdiocese of Birmingham, and of course the terrible abuse in many Irish Catholic children’s homes, and seeing as both of these involved more than one orphanage/children’s home, I’d say there’s at least three examples. But please don’t take my word for it, see for yourself,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/feb/01/1
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/450088.stm
http://www.abneys.co.uk/IrishSurvivors/News.htm
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article833730.ece
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Catholic_sex_abuse_cases
To be honest this conversation is starting to look increasingly pointless. So I think I’ll leave it be here. Don’t get me wrong I’m not exiting with any claims that I’ve ‘won’ or anything of the like, that would be silly. I am however going to say that particularly in your last post you’ve shown that when you can’t answer a question (or don’t want to), you’ll just repeat the same argument (my examples of this are listed every time I’ve directly mentioned it in this post). Not to mention that with your latest onslaught of insufficient quoting and spurious claims of me exhibiting straw men where there clearly are none that this is turning more into a mudslinging competition. I hope that if you do respond you’ll at least look at the links I’ve listed, especially the first one as it shows (unless you want to claim that the reporters at the BBC are just plain lying) that very-high up members of the organisation in question were involved, and that its not just individuals as you’ve claimed.
So to quote you, (You, however, can do, or not do, whatever you want. Have fun with your slide rule writ large and exploding space shuttles… I’m taking my T.S. Eliot and moving on. ), I’m moving on.
K Anonymous,
My selective quoting is not intended to be cagey or leaving critical things out, only done in the interest of space. If I am missing something or ignoring a direct quote, please call me on it.
K wrote:[Now as anyone who has the slightest understand of arguments will know (I’m not saying you don’t, I just want to be clear) I’m not comparing the Nazi’s to pro-life groups or Catholics or whoever, I’m using the above example to show that not having an exact value for the negative effects of one ideology doesn’t mean there aren’t any.]
I’d agree with that. My point here is that you can’t take the prohibition against contraception in isolation. If that were the ONLY thing Catholics were saying about sex and children you’d be exactly right.
As it is, they talk quite a bit about the responsibilities of parent’s to children and to communities as a whole to caring for each other when an individual family can not for whatever reason.
The Catholic view on contraception doesn’t make ANY sense, until you take if in context of the larger vision.
I don’t see you or Sojourner acknowledging the other balancing pieces at all. To attack a position, you have to attack the position, not just a little piece of the position.
K wrote:[Its interesting you suggest
sterilizing, I certainly hope you aren’t using this as some kind of scare tactic against what I’m saying, as nothing I’ve said supports such a course of action.]
Not my intent – what alternative would you propose? I can’t think of any as this behavior is currently freely chosen.
K wrote:[As I’ve said before, the fact that the parents themselves are of course responsible doesn’t then absolve any belief system of its blame for supporting such actions. Is that what you’re saying? That you can promote whatever you like as long as you don’t do it yourself? Because if anyone does it due to what you’ve encouraged them to do, its their responsibility, not yours. That’s what you think?]
But you’re talking about “some” actions and not others. You have to take the whole thing, or it falls apart. If a belief system is stupid, or harmful and demonstrably so, then it falls on the individual to reject it. Who else can that decision fall to?
K wrote:[Why is that necessary? The fact that some pro-life organisations do something to help such situations doesn’t automatically negate all the bad they do, especially seeing as more often than not they’re the cause of the problem in the first place.]
It is necessary because Sojourner is claiming that pro-life groups don’t think about children AT ALL.
Well the problem with that is, as far as his posts show, he’s not. He’s saying, as far as I can tell (and I agree with him on this), that pro-life organisations care more about their own religious doctrines than they do about the welfare of children and indeed people on the whole.]
Allow me to quote Sojourner directly. He says, “The main crux of this is, the right-to-lifers don’t think about the consequences of too many unplanned births at all.”
The “main crux”, “don’t think about… unplanned births at all.” He says it pretty directly.
How do you explain Compassion International? That is a lot of work and support for people who don’t think about the consequences of children in poverty AT ALL.
K wrote:[Directly? I’ve never claimed that these organisations indulge in slavery and the like themselves, what I have said however that things such as slavery and child hunger are all but inevitable consequences of unsupportable children being born. Something which pro-life groups cause.]
Again, you’re focused on birth control (or the lack of it), but not all pro-life groups support the prohibition on contraception. Also, Catholics would never, ever support having children you could not support. They just don’t believe that.
I agree that a large number of unwanted children makes it easier for human trafficking to occur. I disagree that pro-life rhetoric as a larger group and Catholic rhetoric as a smaller group is responsible for this directly or indirectly.
K wrote:[Uh, yes they do. That’s kind of the whole point I’ve been making. What ideologies don’t cause (well not in this case) is people having sex, but the ideologies in question do say that contraception and abortion are wrong, so more children are born than would be without them. As of yet you’ve still not offered a single piece of evidence to refute this.]
But the issue isn’t just the number of children being born. The issue is the number of children being born who are ALSO difficult or impossible to support AND the problem of this making human trafficking, poverty and other forms of abuse worse due to more available victims.
If you’re right and magically contraception and abortion were allowed and OK tomorrow, I don’t think you can make the case that slavery would stop, prostitution would cease and famine would have no effect on people.
The focus here should be on shutting down the trafficking, slavery, forced prostitution and other similar organizations, not on eliminating more of the victims before they are victimized.
You have a related point just below, more on this in a moment.
K wrote:[See that? You’re saying if they followed no sex outside of marriage, there wouldn’t be a problem. I really don’t see how you could miss this. So contrary to me making a straw man, I’ve pointed out something that not only did you undeniably say, but indeed your argument is reliant upon. For all of your thinking diverges towards the idea that if all pro-life principles were followed, we wouldn’t have a problem. Well they often are and we do still have a problem.]
I can’t say with a straight face that we’d have no problems, we’re still people and prone to all kinds of things. But I think I could claim that if all the principles were followed, we’d have a lot less of a problem than we do now. It isn’t just “no sex outside of marriage”. It is that, plus monogamy, plus moral / ethical responsibility to care for children (even if they aren’t your own), plus the view that life is sacred and individuals should not be sold as slaves and so on.
K wrote:[You do realize that then the children of such monogamous couples would (almost definitely) have AIDS? And then they in turn would be encouraged to have more children (in wedlock) that would also have AIDS, so how exactly does it die out? To be honest this claim is not just borderline dangerous, its really quite sick. AIDS is a very serious condition that troubles the very best scientific minds of our time. That you should claim it can be solved simply by following a religious doctrine (pro-life stance) that has as of yet done nothing good for the world with no support whatsoever is suspicious to say the least.]
Actually the treatment for a child to be born without HIV, from HIV positive parents is pretty good and getting better. If that is not available, existing people with AIDS could choose to not have children. It is a horrible line of thinking, but the ones born with AIDS probably won’t live to reproduce. But that is true regardless of changes in behavior or not.
If two people have never had sex, and wait until they are married, and then only have sex with each other – the chances that they will be infected with HIV / AIDS go way down. It just isn’t a bad way to go.
K wrote:[I disagree that its a solution at all, for the reason given above.]
Understood – but if an infectious disease is dependant on certain behavior to spread – we have a responsibility to consider not doing the behavior that facilitates further infection, both on the individual and community level.
How can we think about this any other way? I think science and medicine should do all it can – and hopefully it will find either a cure or a way to make the disease chronic and innocuous. But until it does, and maybe even afterwards, we should take all options seriously. Condoms, abstinence, monogamy, standing on our heads – whatever can work should be looked at. I’m not willing to throw away logically consistent options because of anti-Christian bias or bigotry.
K wrote:[The pro-life stance of it sure is. As for reasons as to why, I’ve given plenty.]
Again, I understand your position here. But the same impetus from seeing life as sacred to resist contraception and abortion ALSO contributes to care of children, more adoptions, and a LOT of charity work. You can’t support one position without supporting the other and remain consistent.
K wrote:[This statement isn’t saying anything, you start talking about me saying who am I too decide and related irrelevant statements. Basically either this boils down to nothing at all or it boils down to suffering is ok because ‘who am I to say how much suffering is too much?’]
The argument from Sojourner was that family planning should occur to ensure more children could be cared for, basically by preventing pregnancy resulting in children that could not be cared for. Failing this, in extreme cases, children should be aborted to prevent suffering.
But everyone suffers. Since neither he nor you is making the case that all children should be aborted, it follows that some level of suffering is acceptable. And that a higher level of suffering, at some point, is too much and should be prevented through contraception and abortion.
I’m sure that I don’t want Sojourner making that decision for me or my family.
I don’t want HUMBLE to make the decision for anyone else either. Who is he to decide what suffering is, anyway? No one is forcing abortion on the unwilling. However, no one has the right to force unwanted pregnancy on anyone either. For any reason, INCLUDING religion.
It’s an individual decision. People should stay out if other people’s uteri. That goes double for preaching against birth control.
I just heard in the news recently that there are pro-choice Catholics that are trying to get the church to allow birth control. Times are indeed changing.
By the way, Humble - please don’t bother to respond directly to me. I will not get involved with you.
Sojourner wrote:[I don’t want HUMBLE to make the decision for anyone else either.]
I never have. I have no plans to. You’re ranting against things that don’t exist, and never will.
Sojourner wrote:[Who is he to decide what suffering is, anyway?]
YOU are the one making that claim. That because of suffering, pregnancy should be prevented or a fetus should be aborted.
Again, you’re ranting - but against yourself -it is amazing that you’re too thick to realize it. I’ve never made the claim that I should be the one to decide what suffering is too much, or not enough to terminate a fetus - that was all you.
Sojourner wrote:[No one is forcing abortion on the unwilling.]
Three for three. No one is suggesting this. Do you understand that you are literally making things up out of your own head - and then getting upset about them?
Sojourner wrote:[However, no one has the right to force unwanted pregnancy on anyone either. For any reason, INCLUDING religion.]
I think you mean that no one has the right to force someone to CONTINUE a pregnancy that is unwanted.
Pregnancy is a binary condition, either you are, or you aren’t. So to force a pregnancy onto someone when that isn’t wanted would involve rape.
This was apparently too subtle a point the first time I made it, so there you go.
To force someone to CONTINUE a pregnancy when this is unwanted is a different issue.
And, again, I’ve never suggested that we should do this. But you’re all about the rant for no purpose, so please go ahead.
Sojourner wrote:[It’s an individual decision. People should stay out if other people’s uteri. That goes double for preaching against birth control.]
I understand that you’re passionate about this. I understand your position. But what you seem to not get is that railing against these people in the way that you do, does more harm than good.
From their point of view, they believe that the “unborn child” has the same moral standing as a child that has been born.
Think about how you would feel if someone suggested taking a newborn and dismembering them in their crib with sharp instruments because they weren’t wanted.
You wouldn’t give a crap about anyone’s right to “choose” at that point.
That is EXACTLY how pro-lifers view abortion procedures.
If they REALLY believe that, and they do… then, from their point of view, you’re talking about advocating murder.
They can’t go there, they aren’t going to go there… stop expecting them to go there. Stop being angry at them for not going there.
Please don’t misunderstand what I’m saying. I’m not claiming they are right or correct.
I fully understand that you think a fetus has no value at all. I know why you think pro-lifers are wrong and causers of suffering, etc… I know why, at least in part, you are irritated by me.
I AM saying that when you say something like, “people should stay out of other people’s uteri”, that you shouldn’t be blind to how a pro-life person hears that.
They are hearing, “people should stay out of other people’s cribs, and babies should be dismembered if we choose to dismember them.”
They believe the fetus in the uterus is a person. And it is a person in a Particularly vulnerable situation, with no advocate… with no voice… with no way to survive without help… just like the threatened baby in the crib.
From that point of view, they have a moral and ethical responsibility to say something, so often they do. Of course they do! How could they honestly believe that and be silent?
Even if they are dead dead dead dead wrong, the majority of these people have good motives and are feeling geniune compassion for both the unborn child (from their point of view) and the situation of the mother. Not murdering the little baby will just trump the mother’s situation in almost every case…
At that point, you can rant if you want to, but it’s not doing anyone any good and it certainly isn’t getting any pro-life advocate to consider their position more carefully.
Sojourner wrote:[I just heard in the news recently that there are pro-choice Catholics that are trying to get the church to allow birth control. Times are indeed changing.]
Yeah, I read that too, it will be interesting to see if that gets any traction or not.
Sojourner wrote:[By the way, Humble - please don’t bother to respond directly to me. I will not get involved with you.]
By the way Sojourner, you don’t own me and you don’t get to tell me what to do. If you call me by name and question my motives that necessarily involves me. I’ll respond if I want to.
If you don’t like it, one option would be to close your eyes. I’m sure you could think of others if you put your mind to it.
Humble wrote,
‘Sojourner wrote:[I don’t want HUMBLE to make the decision for anyone else either.]
I never have. I have no plans to. You’re ranting against things that don’t exist, and never will.’
If you don’t think that you and pro-lifers should make than decision then what are you saying? That’s your whole argument. By definition pro-life in this context is ant-choice. Regardless, even if you wouldn’t make that decision on Sojourner’s half there are plenty of pro-lifers who think that they should. I really don’t know how you could not be aware of this.