Do people have a right to sex-selective abortion?

Post Reply New Topic

I think it best for me to disengage from this conversation. There are just too many ideologues in the discussion for anything like rationality to prevail. It is ok to discuss positives and negatives LKL but you can't seriously expect me to deal with an argument that treats the issue like there is nothing that can be done by restricting abortion. I think that you are making a fetish of choice when the real world is in dominated and run by people who engage in compromise. By digging in the result will be that your position will lose more ground when the argument fails due to the reality of logical exceptions.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre ... right-life

91, that article presents a straw-man version of both the woman making the choice (as if it were always, and only, fear of physical violence from the father) and of the concept of choice itself. I've tried to explain it to you several times here, but unusually for you, you just aren't understanding where I'm coming from. Usually we end up at an 'I understand, but still disagree,' situation, but it looks like that isn't going to happen here. I'll try to think of another way to say it, but I can't imagine how right now.

edited for spelling.

Last edited by LKL on 23 Oct 2013, 10:08 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Perhaps but for myself I see the issue of choice not providing anything like a sufficient answer to the problem. The idea that things will right themselves over time is just hopelessly optimistic and not at all comforting. We allow a framework through which we exercise rights on almost every issue. People have the right to own property but not people. States have the right to enact laws but not enslave. When someone tells me they have a right, I ask them what exactly it is they have a right to do? People could theoretically have a right to chose but it does not follow that they have a right to exercise that right regardless of all other considerations. Its an area that calls for compromise and I feel, much like a libertarian trying to end discrimination, your ideology just does not furnish an answer to the question. Sometimes the big government has to say we're integrating the schools and your opinion about that person is not kosher. Sometimes we just have to say, sorry, you might have a right to chose when you want to have a child but you don't have a right to chose what gender or race you want your child to be. As a result, I feel we are talking past one another and so its not really going anywhere.

See it from my point of view, the right to chose, to me, has already proceeded too far already. On its best day I would not affirm it all that heavily. Proponents turned a grave decision into something that happens, in some cases regularly and with as little oversight as possible. Now are really going to accept its extension to the genetic makeup of a child free from any disability at all? When did the right to say when became the right to say what? I just cannot see that claim holding up going forward as technology becomes more capable, especially given the compromise the pro-choice camp has had to make on late-term abortions already.

I think it comes down to being in favor of abortion or against it. If you're in favor, most pro-choice people (I am in this group myself) don't ask for a reason why but simply state that the right of abortion should exist for whatever reason the parents wish to do it. Children get aborted for being handicapped too ... Also a sort of discrimination. But if you're pro abortion, I think you simply consider any reason to be valid or, better said, I would simply not ask the reason. I'm pro-choice, but I don't need to know the reason behind that choice. I think it's a private thing between the parents, the reason to abort should not be asked.

That seems quite simplistic to me. As an employer you would have the right to fire someone but that particular right does not extend to being free to fire someone because they were of a certain race or gender. People in this thread have stated that people would abort for other reasons to avoid oversight but the fact that people can be fired for another reason is no good argument against anti-descrimination laws.

These "females" are zefs. Why care?

It nonetheless has created a huge gender imbalance where there are a lot more males than females in those countries. That mean's it's kind of hard for men to find wives and relationship partners to have children with because they outnumber the women. Nonetheless, I still think that the only real way to solve that demographic problem is to change the culture, so that women are valued more, not to restrict abortions.

I dont get, how that gets into an discussion about the general legality of abortion?

Do you think, that being illegal aborted, instead of legally aborted, do a significant change? O_o

Sounds almost like a threat. "Keep abortion legal and we'll abort all the girls".

If you think abortion is permissible, you have no say in how it is used.

Gender selection.

Birth defects (or the possibility thereof).

Inconvenience of the mother.

Etc.

To say that it's an acceptable practice but only in certain cases you approve of is the very definition of hypocrisy.

"If you say rights to own guns are acceptable, then you have no say in how they are used

Stealing cars.

Starting a black revolution

To say that it's an acceptable practice but only in certain cases you approve of is the very definition of hypocrisy.
".

Done making your apples to elephants comparison?

With respect, I think that is an unsustainable analogy. In the employer-employee case, it is the subject of the decision whose rights are being protected, whereas in the case of abortion, it is the right of the decision maker that is being protected. Two very different circumstances.

As for your earlier comment,



Why should we be taking any comfort here? I think I have been quite consistent in saying that while I personally dislike abortion, I will fully and unreservedly support the right of any woman to terminate her pregnancy for any reason, provided that the fetus has not passed the threshold of viability.

I don't take comfort in this. But I recognize it as the necessary and unavoidable result of a legal recognition of a right to life, liberty and security of the person.

I don't support other people exercising their rights because it accomplishes something I desire. I support other people exercising their rights because this is inherently good, in and of itself. I don't have to like it. I don't have to agree with it. I just have to recognize that this is a facet of the compromise that we all make to live in a pluralistic society that respects the Rule of Law.

Never did anything of that. Done making stupid arguments?

Not really because you missed the division in the questions. Abortion is a right to chose when you have a child, it does not follow that this right extends to a supreme monopoly to determine what sort of child you will have. The analogy to firing someone is apt because it illustrates how rights can be logically by looking at what they extend to cover. A right to fire is not a right to discriminate. Further, they would not be different circumstances if the analogy holds and we were to accept that a right to fire someone extends carte blanche through everything. The fact that you can recognise quite easily how it does not do so shows that you can place cognitive limitations on a right. A woman could still have a right to say when she is having a child and not be free to say that only blonde haired blue eyed babies will be born and they will all be men. The right need not necessarily extend to everything as it can still accomplish its primary function without the additional claim.



Of course you don't like it, it leads to you accepting a rather brutal and unpopular position... What I am trying to do, is reason, within your own worldview to show you that you need not accept such a fatalistic scenario.

91, do you support the right of a woman to terminate the pregnancy if the fetus is anencephalic? What if the fetus has Down's syndrome? What if the fetus is going to be born blind, or deaf, or paralyzed, or missing arms or legs? Do the parents get to discriminate to that degree, based on the misery of the life that the child would lead, and the amount of extra care it will require, and the financial costs of raising it?