Abortion

[BorderGirl]

What does this have to do with anything?

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle....
a little respect for what people hold dear is respectable.

 

[80sU2isBest]

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle....
a little respect for what people hold dear is respectable.

Thank you, BorderGirl.

 

[80sU2isBest]

Anyways, I'm not trying to assign a Definitive Interpretation to the Exodus passage or anything; I'm certainly not qualified to do that, and as I've said before, obviously it's not for me to tell a Christian what kind of interpretation of whatever "OT" passage his or her personal understanding and experience of God ought to yield. Just wanted to clarify some aspects of the traditional Jewish view on that passage.

I've found your writings very interesting. It seems like you've been studying this stuff for years. No copy-and-paste for you. Did you study this in school?

 

[INDY500]

Someone had to step up to the plate and call you on it. Someday you'll take full responsibility for your 16th century views.

16th century? Leaving religion completely aside. It's the very state-of-the-art technologies of ultrasound, neonatal surgery and an ever earlier fetal viability that leads more & more "modern" people to the conclusion that abortion is not just another medical procedure.

 

[yolland]

Did you study this in school?

No, I grew up in rural Mississippi where there certainly weren't options like that, and in college I focused on what I teach now which is South Asian politics. But I had a traditional Orthodox upbringing, which means I've been studying the (Jewish) Bible and, later, the Talmud and other major writings in Hebrew since I was 5 years old, primarily with my father which is, in fact, the traditional way to study. Obviously I don't know as much as a rabbi or a Hebrew scholar or anything like that. Today I belong to the Conservative denomination, I won't go into how that's different though because it's irrelevant here and besides that much is easy to look up.

 

[Justin24]

Someone had to step up to the plate and call you on it. Someday you'll take full responsibility for your 16th century views.

When it's your time to meet the maker, who I am sure is 100000000000000000000000000000% against abortion I hope you wont be as rude as you are now to him/her/it. What will your excuse be to him/her/it?

 

[BVS]

This is getting out of hand.

 

[Justin24]

This is getting out of hand.

What I said was not getting out of hand.

 

[BVS]

The "I am right", the personal attacks, bringing the "when you meet your maker", claiming sole interpretation of the Bible...it's all out of hand.

And yes I have taken part in that as well, and I apologize.

 

[Justin24]

The "I am right", the personal attacks, bringing the "when you meet your maker", claiming sole interpretation of the Bible...it's all out of hand.

And yes I have taken part in that as well, and I apologize.

We are all guilty of that, and that cannot be avoided.

 

[BVS]

and that cannot be avoided.

Of course it can.

Start taking responsibilty for your actions.

 

[Justin24]

I do take responsability. I am sorry but she was rude first and I needed to say something.

 

[CTU2fan]

Lots of men think this is a legitimate solution to a disobedient woman. You'll have plenty of company in that jail.

Are you being deliberately obtuse, or do you really, truly, think that that's the basis for every pro-life man's stance? Because it's sure nothing to do with mine, I don't expect women to be "obedient", but thanks for the assumption.

 

[80sU2isBest]

No, I grew up in rural Mississippi where there certainly weren't options like that, and in college I focused on what I teach now which is South Asian politics. But I had a traditional Orthodox upbringing, which means I've been studying the (Jewish) Bible and, later, the Talmud and other major writings in Hebrew since I was 5 years old, primarily with my father which is, in fact, the traditional way to study. Obviously I don't know as much as a rabbi or a Hebrew scholar or anything like that. Today I belong to the Conservative denomination, I won't go into how that's different though because it's irrelevant here and besides that much is easy to look up.

Well keep up the good work.

 

[anitram]

Are you being deliberately obtuse, or do you really, truly, think that that's the basis for every pro-life man's stance? Because it's sure nothing to do with mine, I don't expect women to be "obedient", but thanks for the assumption.

I think she was commenting on your statement that you'd likely kidnap a woman who wanted to abort your progeny.

Which by the way I found so disturbing I didn't even want to comment on it.

 

[Justin24]

Don't you think men should have a choice also? Since the were also part of the creation of that child? If she does not want it and he does, why does she not give it to him?

 

[CTU2fan]

I think she was commenting on your statement that you'd likely kidnap a woman who wanted to abort your progeny.

Which by the way I found so disturbing I didn't even want to comment on it.

People who are pro-choice tend to not get the pro-life stance (not everyone, I'm speaking generally).

Pro-lifers believe that the human fetus is alive; as a man who believes the fetus is alive aborting my unborn child = someone shooting your baby. If your spouse/significant other/whatever was going to kill your child, is there anything you wouldn't do to stop them?

All that said, I should have known the reaction I'd get by making the comment and not written it. I honestly don't know what I'd do, thankfully it's never come up. Somehow I doubt that many women would feel the need to abort if the child's father was supportive - people that I know who've aborted did so because they really would have been raising the baby by themselves. I can't fathom a woman aborting a child just to spite her ex.

I should have just avoided this thread. I find myself vehemently disagreeing with good posters who I agree with 90% of the time, and honestly it makes me uncomfortable. Now I went & posted that & 3/4 of this place will think I'm an idiot, or worse.

 

[martha]

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle....
a little respect for what people hold dear is respectable.

A little respect for my own body is even dearer.



A hard battle isn't the issue; it's others' desire to make women's "battles" their business.

 

[martha]

I think she was commenting on your statement that you'd likely kidnap a woman who wanted to abort your progeny.

Which by the way I found so disturbing I didn't even want to comment on it.

This would be it.

 

[martha]

Don't you think men should have a choice also?

No.

Since the were also part of the creation of that child? If she does not want it and he does, why does she not give it to him?

When he can carry it to term, risk his life during pregnancy, put up with outsiders thinking it's their business, and have his life turned upside down raising a child alone, with no support, then he can have all the kids he wants and all the say in my reproductive choices he wants.

 

[martha]

If your spouse/significant other/whatever was going to kill your child, is there anything you wouldn't do to stop them?

 

[Justin24]

No.

Well then I hope this world turns into that Children of Men theme and dies off.

 

[yolland]

I can understand the frustrations experienced by some of the pro-choice people in this thread. Too often discussions on abortion, whether online or "real"-world, are dominated by men even if women are nominally present, and that can be very alienating to women--particuarly when the entire thrust of the rhetoric is baby, baby, baby, as if the person it inhabits and lives off of were an inanimate husk or machine with no moral autonomy or right to control one's destiny of her own, and it's a bit too easy to overlook or dismiss the possible range of physical, psychological, social and economic consequences of forcing her to carry a child against her will. The religious issue is neither here nor there, I think; on the one hand the reality is that religious perspectives do influence how people vote whether anyone likes it or not, on the other hand scripture isn't an acceptable source for legislation in a secular country. Anyhow, above and beyond my religious reasons for not seeing abortion as murder, I also simply believe it is wrong for anyone to force women to bear children. With the capacity to carry and nurture a uniquely dependent form of life comes the moral authority to decide how to manage it, in my view.

I don't personally find that women's reasoning on this topic, from whatever side, usually differs much from that of men; however, many women can appeal to personal experience with pregnancy (whether completed or not), or even just the situation of being able to be made pregnant, and in that sense there certainly is a "different stake" in it. Like some others in here, I have known several women (both religious and not) who've had abortions, and while one of them does regret having had it (she remains pro-'choice', though), none of them are "haunted" by it or anything like that--although it's of course an experience they would rather not have to have had; if nothing else, the procedure is expensive, invasive, often painful and due to the social and political climate, usually has to be done in near-total secrecy...no friends or relatives a woman can talk to about it for fear of being reviled or rejected. (Note that talking about it before some politically sympathetic audience years after the fact is something totally different.)



Still, BVS is right, this isn't worth getting nasty or arrogant over--the reality is we're all going to vote how we're going to vote in the end. The best any discussion in here could do is perhaps give someone cause to rethink some elements of their perspective, and it kinda goes without saying that's not likely to happen if they're feeling ridiculed or preached at.

 

[80sU2isBest]

I can understand the frustrations experienced by some of the pro-choice people in this thread. Too often discussions on abortion, whether online or "real"-world, are dominated by men even if women are nominally present, and that can be very alienating to women--particuarly when the entire thrust of the rhetoric is baby, baby, baby, as if the person it inhabits and lives off of were an inanimate husk or machine with no moral autonomy or right to control one's destiny of her own,

Frankly, this is how prolifers feel when prochoicers treat the fetus as if it's just a "tissue blob" or "growth" with no rights of its own.

and it's a bit too easy to overlook or dismiss the possible range of physical, psychological, social and economic consequences of forcing her to carry a child against her will.,

Frankly, we prolifers see prochoicers overlooking or ignoring things, such as fetal development timelines and photos that clearly demonstrate that a human being is growing inside the woman.

 

[A_Wanderer]

When it's your time to meet the maker, who I am sure is 100000000000000000000000000000% against abortion I hope you wont be as rude as you are now to him/her/it. What will your excuse be to him/her/it?

If God was able to be that certain then God would not exist.

People should take their moral opposition and live by it; but to pursue criminalisation would make a thoroughly illiberal nation.

 

[Justin24]

I will leave it at this and I said before when we(believers) meet the maker we will answer for all the things and thoughts we have done.

 

[80sU2isBest]

People should take their moral opposition and live by it; but to pursue criminalisation would make a thoroughly illiberal nation.

A, you know and I know that most of our laws are based on moral judgments somewhere down the line.

 

[yolland]

Frankly, this is how prolifers feel when prochoicers treat the fetus as if it's just a "tissue blob" or "growth" with no rights of its own.

Frankly, we prolifers see prochoicers overlooking or ignoring things, such as fetal development timelines and photos that clearly demonstrate that a human being is growing inside the woman.

Well, I'm not personally down with the "tissue blob" kind of talk, and find it not very credible as a reflection of how pregnant women actually experience that condition. And at least in my *personal* experience, most pro-choice people who talk that way in fact *tend to be* men themselves. Certainly none of the women I've known who had an abortion used that kind of rhetoric. The enormity of being pregnant and of contemplating an abortion is immediate and palpable for most women, and I think that, too, may be something it's difficult for many men to grasp. Most women at the very least strongly suspect they're pregnant long before any test is taken--the physical signs, water retention and heaviness, breast swelling, easy exhaustion, inexplicable moodiness, nausea and so on begin very early, and announce loud and clear that this is indeed a Big Thing. It isn't like discovering to your surprise that you've got a new mole on your back or something. As for the developmental timelines and all that, everyone's already studied that stuff in school anyhow and it doesn't show them anything they don't already know; it's really a question of what the viewer perceives them to show. Of course a fetus is a life form, of course it's Homo sapiens; that could hardly be otherwise, and yes it is within the 'magisterium' of science to quantify things like that. But concepts like personhood are not akin to numbers or genome maps; they represent things much vaster and much more abstract than that and entail all kinds of moral, legal and philosophical assumptions that are not within the purview of science. Think of something as basic as the difficulties in accurately capturing the sense of the Hebrew words translated as 'child' I mentioned earlier--yeah, there's enough common ground there that one can deduce easily enough what general kind of thing is being referred to, but there's such a difference in the conceptual grounding for the words; one set is vested in notions of begetting and ensuring personal legacy and the social status that accrues to the parent because of it, while the other entails notions of discrete individual persons in whom inhere inalienable rights before the law, and that is a very Western, post-Enlightenment, social-contract-theory driven way to think. (And even that, of course, is a very recent take on the word; 'child' and 'woman' both have long pedigees in English as terms, but until quite recently neither category of being was seen as anything more than the property of a man where 'rights' before the law were concerned.) No matter how much any of us might wish it were otherwise, the fact is it isn't a cut-and-dried matter to resolve what these concepts absolutely and irreducibly stand for, the way it is with calculating pi or the molecular mass of isotopes. Their meanings and legal implications have to be arrived at through building moral and philosophical consensus, and that's not something that can be achieved by scientific method.

 

[A_Wanderer]

A, you know and I know that most of our laws are based on moral judgments somewhere down the line.

Morality and reason can end with the same results; I don't want murder to be punished because it feels morally wrong, I want it to be punished because it deprives another individual of their liberties and inflicts harm. If I strongly believed a foetus to be an individual human being then I would argue just as strongly against abortion but as it stands a foetus is more like a brain dead body than a sentient human being.

As for the role of science it's role is to achieve the closest approximation of objective fact not answer the ethical considerations, science should be amoral, apolitical and unbiased, what it actually ends up as in the real world is a bit more nuanced.

 

[yolland]

I should have just avoided this thread. I find myself vehemently disagreeing with good posters who I agree with 90% of the time, and honestly it makes me uncomfortable. Now I went & posted that & 3/4 of this place will think I'm an idiot, or worse.

No one's going to think that, and most everyone in the thread is likely feeling some amount of the same thing. It's so hard to come to terms with the reality that people just do approach and perceive this issue incredibly differently, and that the reasons for that are way more complex and intractable than anyone's 'stupidity' or 'blindness' or whatever word seems to fit the emotional shoe at the time. But you do have to come terms with it nonetheless, and part of that is recognizing that it's unreasonable to make whoever you're debating with at the moment bear the full brunt of your frustrations with things society in general is deeply divided over, for very complicated reasons. It sounds like you understand that very well.