abortion terminology

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Most religious conservatives are only concerned with "life" when it's a fetus or a brain-dead person.

Most religious conservatives are only concerned with "life" when it's a fetus or a brain-dead person. My theory is they only care about those with similar intelligence to themselves.

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

Probably not supposed to be funny but.

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

...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: 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.

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.

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.

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:



~

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.