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abortion terminology

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deathchibi
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20 May 2009, 9:30 am

monty wrote:
Ancalagon wrote:
Let me ask you a question -- what should the punishment be for attempted suicide? Should the person making the attempt be punished? Helped?


That is a crime so heinous it deserves the death penalty.


Probably not supposed to be funny but. :lol:


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ed
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20 May 2009, 9:34 am

deathchibi wrote:
monty wrote:
Ancalagon wrote:
Let me ask you a question -- what should the punishment be for attempted suicide? Should the person making the attempt be punished? Helped?


That is a crime so heinous it deserves the death penalty.


Probably not supposed to be funny but. :lol:


I read that as intentionally funny. Considering that we are aspies, it probably should have had a smilie face :)



deathchibi
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20 May 2009, 9:46 am

ed wrote:
deathchibi wrote:
monty wrote:
Ancalagon wrote:
Let me ask you a question -- what should the punishment be for attempted suicide? Should the person making the attempt be punished? Helped?


That is a crime so heinous it deserves the death penalty.


Probably not supposed to be funny but. :lol:


I read that as intentionally funny. Considering that we are aspies, it probably should have had a smilie face :)


I like smilies they have text when you point at them
:D


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McTell
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20 May 2009, 9:57 am

ed wrote:
...so you don't want to put women in prison, you just want to make abortion illegal. OK, I can go along with that. We will make abortion illegal, but there won't be any penalty for breaking the law.


Why are you so fixated on this? Why do they need to first say what the penalty should be before they can prove it should be illegal?

Do you not think it is okay for someone to say, "I think something should be illegal, but I don't know what the penalty should be yet?"

I said to you earlier in this thread that I believe that bank robbery should be illegal, but that I have no idea what penalty should be applied to bank robbers. Do you think that this means I should not be allowed to believe that bank robbery should be illegal?



ed
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20 May 2009, 10:14 am

McTell wrote:
ed wrote:
...so you don't want to put women in prison, you just want to make abortion illegal. OK, I can go along with that. We will make abortion illegal, but there won't be any penalty for breaking the law.


Why are you so fixated on this? Why do they need to first say what the penalty should be before they can prove it should be illegal?

Do you not think it is okay for someone to say, "I think something should be illegal, but I don't know what the penalty should be yet?"

I said to you earlier in this thread that I believe that bank robbery should be illegal, but that I have no idea what penalty should be applied to bank robbers. Do you think that this means I should not be allowed to believe that bank robbery should be illegal?


You need to consider the direct consequences of making abortion illegal. You are obviously unwilling to do so.

You are proposing a law to make abortion illegal. If you are unwilling to propose a penalty to go along with this law, then your law will be pretty stupid.

You "pro-lifers" are more-than willing to portray yourselves as moral superiors, riding in on your white horses to do battle with evil. I dispute that claim. I say you are all afraid to post a penalty for the "crime" of having an abortion because it will cost you public support. Show some guts. Tell us just how illegal you want to make abortion. Do you think it deserves just a $10 fine? Do you think it deserves the death penalty? This is critical to your argument.



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20 May 2009, 10:24 am

Ed: As I understand, the pro-life position is that abortion is literally murder. So pro-lifers could simply have a goal of legally defining abortion as murder, and then we already have laws dealing with that.


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20 May 2009, 10:32 am

Orwell wrote:
Ed: As I understand, the pro-life position is that abortion is literally murder. So pro-lifers could simply have a goal of legally defining abortion as murder, and then we already have laws dealing with that.


There... that's an answer :)

the penalty for murder in Massachusetts is mandatory life in prison with no chance of parole. So pro-lifers want the mother to be put in prison for life. That's an answer I can live with... just so we pro-choicers know what you're proposing. :)



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20 May 2009, 10:36 am

ed wrote:
There... that's an answer :)

the penalty for murder in Massachusetts is mandatory life in prison with no chance of parole. So pro-lifers want the mother to be put in prison for life. That's an answer I can live with... just so we pro-choicers know what you're proposing. :)

Well, I don't have a very definite stance other than thinking both sides in the debate are acting like moronic children, so I certainly don't speak for the pro-life movement.

Anyways, I believe in most cases it's the doctor who does the actual killing, so (s)he'd be the one facing life imprisonment. I suppose the mother would be an accomplice, or perhaps get charged with conspiracy to commit murder.


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20 May 2009, 10:53 am

Orwell wrote:
ed wrote:
There... that's an answer :)

the penalty for murder in Massachusetts is mandatory life in prison with no chance of parole. So pro-lifers want the mother to be put in prison for life. That's an answer I can live with... just so we pro-choicers know what you're proposing. :)

Well, I don't have a very definite stance other than thinking both sides in the debate are acting like moronic children, so I certainly don't speak for the pro-life movement.

Anyways, I believe in most cases it's the doctor who does the actual killing, so (s)he'd be the one facing life imprisonment. I suppose the mother would be an accomplice, or perhaps get charged with conspiracy to commit murder.


No, she would have to be charged with paying someone else to murder her unborn child... that would carry the same penalty, life in prison with no chance of parole.



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20 May 2009, 11:31 am

I would like to say Ed, that I didn't appreciate the whole, "you pro-lifers," thing you did there when you were answering my question. I don't recall ever indicating that I was a pro-lifer, so I really didn't feel it was a fair thing you did there when you caricatured me as someone taking the moral highground whilst riding a horse.

You seem to have taken a mentality of, "If you're not with me, you are against me," which is understandable considering this is so rilesome a subject, but it caused you to tar me with the wrong brush. I am not a pro-lifer.

Instead, I merely disagree with your belief that if someone feels something is illegal they must be prepared to propose a penalty (or else have their opinion rendered invalid).

In order to prevent you confusing me for a pro-lifer again, I will say that I am in the same camp as Orwell. I agree with him when he said:

Orwell wrote:
Well, I don't have a very definite stance other than thinking both sides in the debate are acting like moronic children, so I certainly don't speak for the pro-life movement.


~

Now, I shall put forward the reason I think that it is not necessary for all pro-lifers to propose a penalty for the crime.

Pro-lifers believe that abortion should be illegal on moral grounds. Their belief that abortion is immoral is what provokes them to wish to ban it. Thus, to dispute over whether it should be illegal is, I feel, to dispute over the wrong thing.

Instead, I think the dispute actually centres over the morality of the subject.

Now, the question, "What should be the penalty?" is an irrelevant one in a moral dispute. This is why I think you're attacking the idea in the wrong way. It is not up to the average pro-lifer to decide what the penalty should be, that is a matter for the authorities of law.



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20 May 2009, 11:50 am

McTell wrote:
I would like to say Ed, that I didn't appreciate the whole, "you pro-lifers," thing you did there when you were answering my question. I don't recall ever indicating that I was a pro-lifer, so I really didn't feel it was a fair thing you did there when you caricatured me as someone taking the moral highground whilst riding a horse.

You seem to have taken a mentality of, "If you're not with me, you are against me," which is understandable considering this is so rilesome a subject, but it caused you to tar me with the wrong brush. I am not a pro-lifer.

Instead, I merely disagree with your belief that if someone feels something is illegal they must be prepared to propose a penalty (or else have their opinion rendered invalid).

In order to prevent you confusing me for a pro-lifer again, I will say that I am in the same camp as Orwell. I agree with him when he said:

Orwell wrote:
Well, I don't have a very definite stance other than thinking both sides in the debate are acting like moronic children, so I certainly don't speak for the pro-life movement.


~

Now, I shall put forward the reason I think that it is not necessary for all pro-lifers to propose a penalty for the crime.

Pro-lifers believe that abortion should be illegal on moral grounds. Their belief that abortion is immoral is what provokes them to wish to ban it. Thus, to dispute over whether it should be illegal is, I feel, to dispute over the wrong thing.

Instead, I think the dispute actually centres over the morality of the subject.

Now, the question, "What should be the penalty?" is an irrelevant one in a moral dispute. This is why I think you're attacking the idea in the wrong way. It is not up to the average pro-lifer to decide what the penalty should be, that is a matter for the authorities of law.


Sorry if I mistook you for a pro-lifer.

Pro-lifers want to make abortion illegal. That makes it a legal argument, not a moral one.

If they said "we want to make abortion reprehensible" then I would agree with you, that would be a moral argument.



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20 May 2009, 12:11 pm

ed wrote:
Pro-lifers want to make abortion illegal. That makes it a legal argument, not a moral one.

If they said "we want to make abortion reprehensible" then I would agree with you, that would be a moral argument.

They want to make abortion illegal because they regard it as immoral. You're just playing semantic games here, ed, and it's getting old.


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20 May 2009, 12:16 pm

ed wrote:
Pro-lifers want to make abortion illegal. That makes it a legal argument, not a moral one.


I think that the pro-life argument could be (if we're being broad) put like this:

    Pro-Life Argument
  • Abortion is murder
  • Murder is immoral
  • Immorality is abhorrent
  • If immorality is abhorrent, then we want immorality punished by law
  • We want immorality to be punished by law
  • If we want immorality to be punished by law, then we want murder to be punished by law
  • We want murder to be punished by law
  • If we want murder to be punished by law, then we want abortion to be punished by law
  • We want abortion to be punished by law

(There are some implicit premises, such as "making an action illegal discourages this action," but I felt they weren't significant enough to be posted)

You are attacking the conclusion, "We want abortion to be punished by law." I'm suggesting that this seems a profitless place to attack. I think you'd be far better suited attacking the premise, "Abortion is murder," because, if you can defeat this premise, you will collapse the entire argument.

ed wrote:
If they said "we want to make abortion reprehensible" then I would agree with you, that would be a moral argument.


Well, the thing is they do say this (well, they say it in stronger terms than "I want this to be reprehensible."). So I suppose this is a moral argument after all.



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20 May 2009, 12:40 pm

McTell wrote:
You are attacking the conclusion, "We want abortion to be punished by law." I'm suggesting that this seems a profitless place to attack. I think you'd be far better suited attacking the premise, "Abortion is murder," because, if you can defeat this premise, you will collapse the entire argument.


I'm not attacking the conclusion. They want to pass the buck on to the politicians. Well, they work for us ( :lol: ), so I say to them if you want to make it illegal, you write out the outline of such a bill and let them vote on it. Of course any bill outlawing something must also set the penalty for it, that's only common sense, so that would obviously have to be part of their bill.

As for attacking the premise "abortion is murder," that is like this: :wall:

Their religion (or their own sensibilities) says that life begins at conception, and destroying that life is murder. Nothing you or I or anybody else can say can change their minds on that point. I think it is a waste of time to continue to butt heads on that.

This new approach I've discovered would force them to put all their cards on the table, which I believe would cause their newfound public support to collapse. The fact that they all left the table so suddenly tells me that I'm right :lol:



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20 May 2009, 12:50 pm

...though I think the place to attack them is from the side, using their own argument that abortion is murder. If they want us to accept this premise, then we should point out that both the doctor and the patient would have to go to prison for life, because that's what we do to murderers.

Then we can attack them on the basis of the immense harm their law would cause, and thus the absurdity of their proposed solution.



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20 May 2009, 12:58 pm

Unfortunately religion will always play a part in our legal system.


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