Pastor Barnhart explains right-wing anti-abortion politics.

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The Government is already too involved.

Perhaps but is anyone else besides the government willing to explore technology like that, or even perform abortions?

Sure.  Universities, commercial research, private research . . . just keep the Government out of women's wombs.

But if people want the government out of women's wombs, doesn't abortion count as the government going in?

Let's not forget that even if a woman survives the pregnancy and childbirth and gives the baby away for adoption, she could still have painful complications from them, ones that could last the rest of her life and could cost a lot to treat. Do the anti-choice people ever discuss funding the treatment of the women who get permanent complications because of something they were forced to do by the law?

Fair. I did say that I thought it could be the case, not that it was. What you say makes sense too, especially in places that have very limited resources and are hard to get in to so you don't need a large army to keep people away.

Yeah.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dehumanization

From which back pocket did you pull that little falsehood?

Are you willing to let an organism feed off of you and grow inside of you? There is no way around that is what a growing fetus does, and that is literally what a parasite is. This is just scientific language, I still acknowledge the parasite in this case is human but that still doesn't give it the right to live off of someone else's body if that person doesn't want it to.

Like kudos to mothers who are willing to take the risk and carry a baby to term and give birth...but not all women want to do that and we shouldn't have to. Also a lot of mothers have abortions to prevent more children than they already have....they already had babies and don't want anymore. Or maybe they would like more children but had a difficult child-birth that caused problems that might make an additional pregnancy more dangerous.

My sisters friend could have died in childbirth, there were no complications till she was in labor. And my sister said her partner for sure on no uncertain terms said if it came to it he wanted her more than the baby as he hadn't even met the baby. It turned out ok and the baby was fine but for sure if it came down to the baby or her he was clearly more concerned about her. But point is during labor things started to go wrong so a late term abortion may have been needed to save her life...it didn't come to that but it could have. Would you call her a murderer if that late term abortion had ended up needing to be preformed? Or would you acknowledge she was just saving her own life?

Well you can't get pregnant, you never have to consider the risks of pregnancy because you cannot get pregnant. The truth is humans are kind of crappy at giving birth so unfortunately it is still possible to die in childbirth which is a big reason I don't think anyone should be forced to go through with it.

Other than that though it takes 9 months, almost a year...not every women can just take time off work to have a baby. Like me and my boyfriend live kind of pay check to pay check though we have a little savings. Like even if I could give up the baby after giving birth and not have to provide for them I can't even afford the 9 months it would take to grow a baby and give birth to it. Plus I just really don't want to risk the potential health risks including death when I don't even want a child to begin with and even pregnancies that go well aren't easy.

The destruction of human life is a concern for all human beings, and that has nothing to do with which side of the womb the baby is on.

How about this: You're not black, you never have to consider the rights of black people because you aren't black.

Or...

You're not straight, you never have to consider the impact of baking cakes because you aren't straight.

ANYBODY can play the role of victim. I prefer to focus on actual victims, those people whose lives are genuinely at risk. When you start talking about putting lives in danger or actions that affect more than one person, suddenly it becomes everyone's business.

I would NEVER say that killing a baby isn't justified when it comes down to a choice of saving the mother or saving the baby. Thing is, though, that's an increasingly rare thing. When my oldest daughter was born, both she and her mother nearly died. Had we lived in a 3rd world country, at best my wife would have survived, and we won't talk about the barbaric emergency procedure that would have been used to save my wife. But in our case, the doctors saved both and everything is fine.

Over the years I've gained a new respect for the welfare system. I still believe it is largely abused. But even for us having a baby got us a sizable tax refund, student loan relief, child tax credit, and other breaks. No insurance? No problem. For low income or no income mothers, you can file for Medicaid as soon as you know you're pregnant. It's amazing how much support the government gives families. You just have to know where to look.

If you don't want children, that's your business. All I'm saying it's not as difficult or as dangerous as you might think.

I don't think people view genocide as worse than mass murder because they're concerned about loss of genetic diversity. I think our dislike of genocide is basically borne out of the horrors of the Holocaust. We also have a revulsion towards the hatred that inspires people to kill based on race, although again this largely comes out of the Holocaust and to a lesser extent the Armenian genocide. Same reason why terrorism became a much more salient issue after 9/11.


Humans have hunted a large number of species to extinction, and conservation laws are relatively modern inventions. As someone with a background in conversation biology, arguments about genetic diversity appeal to biologists and not much more than that. People will donate money to preserve charismatic animals like pandas and elephants, not so much to preserve newts or sparrows. Some people might agree that given the choice between letting some randomly selected people die and letting elephants go extinct, they would choose to save the elephants, but I don't think this is because we believe individual elephants should have more rights than people, we simply don't want a world with no elephants in it.


I don't think being sad about your children growing up without a parent is particular evidence that we view genetics as more worthy of preservation than people. For one thing, I'm sure many people feel that way towards people who they aren't closely related to - adopted children, step children, godchildren, even children who are legally theirs but actually had a different father, or are the result of an IVF mix-up.

Similarly, being sad about experiences you won't get to have isn't limited to children, but also to travel, hobbies, professional success, you name it.

Yes, people will sacrifice themselves for others and there are evolutionary mechanisms that explain it. I don't think that leads to "and so we should force people to carry embryos they don't want to".


Bit of an assumption. To be honest I don't place a huge amount of weight on gut feelings, although on a metaethical level I'm not sure there's a huge amount of difference between gut feelings and reasoned beliefs (we tend to come up with reasoning that supports our beliefs). But on a simple cognitive level, our feelings are often unhelpful because they're born out of an evolutionary context that doesn't really apply. The fight or flight response is an obvious example. If I feel something, I think it's healthier to examine that feeling and consider whether it is rational, rather than accepting that it is a deep moral truth.

It's a hidden agenda for their religion to take control of the USA and dictate THEIR policy to everyone.

Next it will be forced/coerced/mandatory Christian prayer in public schools.

"One nation under God" will become "We do EVERYTHING PUBLIC in JESUS'S name, Amen."

So basically, what it comes down to is an attack on the same Constitution that "conservatives" claim to defend.

Either banning religion or having anarchy are our only hope.

Well it seems to me that maybe people are perhaps making too big a deal about this abortion thing because with condoms and birth control pills, the chances of getting pregant are quite small, especially if the guy chooses not to ejaculate inside the woman, and still wearing the condom?

Bad example.

I think ironpony means, that if abortions were legalised, action to implement these laws would mean government involvement. (Assuming they haven't been already)