Sick? Sicker? Sickest?

Posted by deleted 6 years, 2 months ago to Culture
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Hey, y'all! Why don't we celebrate abortions? Like with baby showers! Have a party! Sing and dance! Wheee!


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  • Posted by $ jbrenner 6 years, 2 months ago in reply to this comment.
    The point I have been making is essentially independent of your point. The right of a woman to have an abortion is not what I have argued here.

    What I have said, and stand by, is that a significant number of abortions happen because obstetricians use genetic testing results to encourage people who otherwise would not want to have an abortion into having one. My wife had three OB/GYN's during her childbearing years. All three started the discussion with "You're in your thirties. There is an x% chance of Down's syndrome...." Given that all three had this discussion, I can only conclude that this must be part of the standard protocol so that they protect themselves from malpractice lawsuits.

    My wife was honestly scared, especially after having had two miscarriages.

    This argument is about the encouragement of sacrifice of what you and Rand call a potential human for a certain finality of that potential.
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  • Posted by PeterSmith 6 years, 2 months ago in reply to this comment.
    There is no complication around the definition of birth.
    You've run out of word game runway.
    What now?
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  • Posted by ewv 6 years, 2 months ago in reply to this comment.
    That is a matter of the required precision to be set in law in way that is practicable, not the principle itself. You know what "birth" is.

    This was just discussed here here https://www.galtsgulchonline.com/post... with a another link in that to more from a few weeks ago.
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  • Posted by ewv 6 years, 2 months ago in reply to this comment.
    But they do and have. Some ideological pressure group is always lobbying. It is important to understand the basic principles in order to fend them off.
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  • Posted by ewv 6 years, 2 months ago in reply to this comment.
    That is a matter of the precision, not the principle. Almost every concept is susceptible to "border line cases" -- see Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology for how they are properly dealt with. Remember that concepts and principles are objective, not discoveries of the intrinsic or subjective. A legal definition must be objectively specified with a criterion that can be used in practice. You can't say wait until such and such happens, then go back one minute. This was recently discussed here: https://www.galtsgulchonline.com/post...
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  • Posted by ewv 6 years, 2 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Everyone has the capacity; not everyone fully exercises it. Over the millennia it has been exercised at least enough to survive, with some thriving. The best show how much more is possible.
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  • Posted by ewv 6 years, 2 months ago in reply to this comment.
    The position, which is Ayn Rand's, is could by right, not "would". (And it doesn't just "pop out".)
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  • Posted by term2 6 years, 2 months ago in reply to this comment.
    It’s Not something that should be decided by some “government” Churches can say what they want, but they shouldn’t use government to enforce their edict
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  • Posted by ewv 6 years, 2 months ago in reply to this comment.
    "Would choose" is not "could choose" by right. Also, a demeaning 'things popping out' is not a proper way to describe birth. But yes, the choice is entirely the woman's up until birth, with rational choices not waiting anywhere near that long unless there is some health threat.
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  • Posted by term2 6 years, 2 months ago in reply to this comment.
    If one looks at the history if humans, I am not so sure about how effective the “rational capacity” really is. Humans on the average don’t act rationally very often over the millennia.
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  • Posted by term2 6 years, 2 months ago
    I thought I was simply summarizing “the choice remains a right before birth, available if necessary”
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  • Posted by ewv 6 years, 2 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Militant emotionalism does not allow for acknowledging rational explanation.
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  • Posted by ewv 6 years, 2 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Quoting facts contradicting the "narrative" is unpopular with the militant anti-abortionists.
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  • Posted by ewv 6 years, 2 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Calling people "idiots" while misrepresenting what they say is not rational discussion.
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  • Posted by ewv 6 years, 2 months ago in reply to this comment.
    "Tell that to a fetus", imagining it to be a person, is your own argument.
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  • Posted by ewv 6 years, 2 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Why? Because you think it's too complicated to figure out? Meanwhile, those with less scruples want it banned by brute force in the name of "rights" of the unborn. They aren't waiting for you; regarding agnosticism as helping them.

    "Politics depends on morality and false morality leads to bad politics. Anti-abortionists argue from false morality and insist on imposing it in their politics. That is how it wound up in government. The Catholic church was historically the main lobbyist for it. Now the religious right evangelicals are in on it."
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  • Posted by ewv 6 years, 2 months ago in reply to this comment.
    A "beating heart" does not make anything a human person. You hold the "developmental stage" of the unborn potential as "more valuable and far more precious" than the women you sacrifice.

    As Ayn Rand put it, "To sentence a woman to bear a child against her will is an unspeakable violation of her rights: her right to liberty (to the functions of her body), her right to the pursuit of happiness, and, sometimes, her right to life itself, even as a serf. Such a sentence represents the sacrifice of the actual to the potential, of a real human being to a piece of protoplasm, which has no life in the human sense of the term. It is sheer perversion of language for people who demand this sacrifice to call themselves 'right-to-lifers'."

    And, "To equate a potential with an actual, is vicious; to advocate the sacrifice of the latter to the former, is unspeakable"
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  • Posted by PeterSmith 6 years, 2 months ago in reply to this comment.
    The ability to abort ends after birth. That's it.
    There's no "killing" of any kind.
    It's as "complicated" as that.
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