Right to Life Ethical Considerations

Significant for what? It may very well be significant for considering an outcome to be connected to an activity. That is there could be criticism for not mentioning that as a possible effect, when they are considering that choice. Then what is a significant number of people? How is that calculated? Why can another person not reasonably believe 1% is significant?I have already given you the Gulf War Syndrome example, but we can discuss other issues as well. If only 1% of the population want to have a gay marriage and will be upset if they do not, yet the vast majority do not want it and will feel better if it does not exist, does that make the gays "pitiable but insignificant"? If not why not?But lets get to one of the MOST CRITICAL POINTS here... The 1% figure is coming from your references that refer to other, generally older, studies. And another study has already been provided to you which seems to come to a very different conclusion. Yet you do not address that study, perhaps it is too small scale?Okay, here is a brand new study, which takes a fresh and larger look at the issue. Offline it may be found at...Fergusson DM, Horwood LJ, Ridder EM. Abortion in young women and subsequent
mental health. Journal of Child Psychology & Psychiatry, 2006; 47(1): 16-24.Following excerpts are of note... Uh-oh... They agree that evidence has been weak, but due to conflicting evidence not absence, and flaws within the methodology... The paper goes on to list that study's limitations, but it certainly can't be good if that is the result of the most comprehensive one made... There goes the neighborhood!Okay, now you have something to firmly sink your teeth into. This is a published study, which not only presents its own data and arguments, but explains the flaws within older studies which your references have refered to... not to mention it introduces other studies which avoid getting mentioned in polite company such as the APA (whose motto is that science must mirror norms).This is something you are going to have to deal with, and the credibility of your claim that trauma is made up by Xian zealots, based on the refusal of APA (et al) to acknowledge a problem is seriously called into question. At least enough that you will need to start showing your own studies to back up your claims.Final Note: I am in favor of legalized abortion. I don't think that the above argues for laws against it. But I have very specific views and arguments about what necessitates legal action to protect people from harm.Your apparent argument (feel free to correct) has been that essentially no evidence of harm exists, and if it did that it is so small that the benefits of others outweigh that risk. Clarification is needed on what numbers you do find significant, as well as what evidence you have to support your claim about the numbers which exist.Edited by holmes, : quote corrections

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holmes {in temp decloak from lurker mode}
"What a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away." (D.Bros)

That sounds like an adjustment to a new situation. It would not suggest any more or less of a symbiotic relationship.I get your point that the nature of the relationship seems "parasitic" in the sense that the fetus is draining the resources of the woman, without bringing something back directly. They are not equally sharing support for each other. And I certainly get that a woman who does not want a child will view it as alien and parasitic.That said, it is not truly parasitic which would be an external organism feeding off another entity to prolong its own individual life. Pregnancy is a natural part of human life and is a product of its own organs. And there is a form of symbiosis going on. While the woman provides nutrients for proper development, the child provides an extension of life for the woman. At the very least the passing on of her dna.Also, for women that have children when they are younger there is an added protection against breast cancer.I want to call your attention to my last post regarding a very recent study on the mental health effects of abortion. Even if you don't want to deal with a post from me, you'll eventually have to face the fact that counterevidence is mounting and it is in favor of 2's assertions. Just because something is NOT recognized as a problem right now does not mean it will always stay that way.Also, your argument on significance of numbers also needs clarification. Ignoring my posts will not make the issue go away.

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holmes {in temp decloak from lurker mode}
"What a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away." (D.Bros)

I'm getting the same feeling, she appears to keep ducking your solid points and sticking to the weak ones.In case you missed it in post 236 I have provided more than sufficient evidence to back up your claim against schraf regarding mental health effects of abortion. It not only provides positive evidence for your position, it seriously calls her own claims into question.If you ever get back to the issue of evidence for mental health, which she claimed was the only "ontopic" discussion anyway, please feel free to pick up my post and use it. It appears she is unwilling to acknowledge my posts, so at least maybe you can get some mileage out of it.

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holmes {in temp decloak from lurker mode}
"What a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away." (D.Bros)

That's a good question. The very short answer is that there was not a definitive answer, which is why more research needs to be done.However, it seems doubtful that "societal pressure" was a main culprit. They did take into account some levels of confounding factors that would relate to that, and in any case this study was NOT within the US. Perhaps someone from NZ can explain how controversial and "pressurized" that topic is there.An important point is that this was not the only study to find such results. There have been a number which have reached the same results from all over the world. It is just that they are swept under the rug by prochoice orgs/supporters. I have yet to post another one from a country where abortion is NOT stigmatized, and the harm they found was of large concern for the woman.One must add to this that the earlier studies which discounted mental health issues (though they even admit 1% had severe trauma) suffered from problematic methodology. It is somewhat duplicitous to question studies finding one direction but not the other (not saying that's what you did, but clearly some proC orgs are).At the very least this completely undercuts an argument that Xians are making up trauma related to abortion and when it does occur solely stems from pre-abortion problems. It also seriously disables current estimates about numbers suffering problems post abortion.It does appear that trauma occurs from having the abortion, and not solely that people were made to feel bad about it afterward. However it is unlikely they could weed out the possibility of other societal preconceptions which could result in trauma.Regarding societal pressure, if this is appealed to, then we go right back to the very first posts I was making in this thread. With regard to other sexual issues, particularly of minors, we do not allow that confounding factor to change how we view the statistics. Harm is harm even if the source is societal pressure rather than any act. To allow that to make a difference for an activity which is itself tied to sexuality, especially for minors, would be holding a double standard.I hope this made sense, I was just popping in and out quickly.

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holmes {in temp decloak from lurker mode}
"What a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away." (D.Bros)

Again, we share much of the same position, with a few notable exceptions. Also, if you do not care about anything else I have to say you should be aware of the Notice at the bottom... Incest can and has been a consensual act which produces children. If you are talking about nonconsensual sex between family members it is still just rape. Actually yes, in some cases people can gain that right. It may seem "unjust" that women face the brunt of having to become responsible for another being at cost to themselves because of a physical process, but that does not argue AGAINST the right of the fetus.AS LONG AS one begins with the view that a fetus is a child or person (which is what they do) then your argument inherently loses all of its punch. Nice, I discuss this and get slammed for being offtopic and creepy... but its okay for you, huh? If there is such a thing as an objective criteria called "age appropriate" you will need to provide it. All evidence we have is that that concept is solely subjective. While you may feel some things are appropriate, others may not. It seems odd to be arguing that 2ice cannot have a different concept of when sex education is appropriate. NOTE (SINCE YOU ASKED TO BE INFORMED): As of your last post you are now clearly engaging in the "creo" tactic of avoiding solid scientific evidence provided by posters, in order to repeat your original claim as if no counterevidence had been provided. Evidence follows... You have been provided more than anecdotal evidence on more than one occasion and by more than one poster. 2ice gave you a perfectly reasonable study which you never addressed. Further in post #236 gave you a recent longterm study which not only provided the same evidence, it undercut the studies you are vaguely referring to (and conveniently never citing yourself). Again, you can ignore ME or MY POSTS all you want, but it only undercuts your actual knowledge and credibility on this issue to dismiss the EVIDENCE you have been provided.That is to say you don't have to respond to me, but repeating statements like the above only makes you look like a liar or at the very least willfully ignorant. 2ice's position on that matter is getting greater support over time in scientific evidence, and you WILL have to deal with it somewhere down the road. Clearly the scientific community is, whether you want to agree with it or not.Edited by holmes, : lil fixes

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holmes {in temp decloak from lurker mode}
"What a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away." (D.Bros)

As much as I disagree with your overall position, I think this post (save perhaps the first paragraph) dead on the money regarding recent posts by both crash and schraf. Summed up wonderfully in this... But now let me take you on regarding the personhood of the fetus. Just as they are arguing from a position that discounts your view, you are equally discounting their initial position, and so both sides talk past each other.I see that you view a fetus, and so value a fetus as a person. It is not just semantics to use the term person. It is an indication, a marker, that a certain value has been obtained.You listed several groups that had been considered less than a person, or at least had less than others. The problem is that there is a real difference between those in the group you listed and a fetus. Now you may argue that there are some criteria by which they all fit into the same class and worthy of protection, but all that argues is that YOU use different criteria.People on the proChoice side of things, or at least I, view life from an organic standpoint. There is cellular life, which then attaches and so becomes gestational life, which then grows to become an independent being. There is nothing inherently wrong or inconsistent with this viewpoint.I think this is why much of the debate has to come down to recognizing it is a debate between radically different concepts about life itself and the world. It is at its heart a religious debate. And that's why I think YOUR side is the one that has to give way. There is, at least not at this time, a sense of proving that gestational beings (much less fertilized eggs) have any quality which denotes they really are living human beings... persons. The only way to argue that is from a religious concept of a soul, which in itself is problematic (though we can deal with that elsewhere).That is wholly unlike the other categories you mentioned, whose only differences are surficial or political differences between full grown and independently functioning life forms.I hope this has been clear.

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holmes {in temp decloak from lurker mode}
"What a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away." (D.Bros)

That is fine, as long as you keep these three points in mind:1) When I present evidence from journal articles, they are unlikely to be distorting your position, and will be of some value to the overall argument anyway. The one I posted here has refs to further articles which are also important and on topic. Thus it might be a good idea to peruse those portions even if you skip the rest.2) Your notice will not prevent me from posting responses to you. Indeed it will have the same effect on me that such statements have had on you in the past. You treat them as attempts to dodge real arguments and so you continue posting facts showing (at least to others) that they are avoiding real evidence. That is in fact how I view your behavior. You seem willfully ignorant on topics you feel you must be right on. Okey doke.3) There are other people on this board. I am writing to you but the information I give out may be of interest to others, in connection to what you said. Yeah, like you tried to do when I first started posting in this thread, only here you are now debating the exact points with 2ice that I addressed in the beginning? Sometimes I feel the problem is that you are not used to professional debate where a person must look several steps ahead and deal with permutations. Whenever I do this you tend to misunderstand what I am doing, make claims that I am distorting your position or wrong about what we are discussing, only to prove me right in the end. Nice.

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holmes {in temp decloak from lurker mode}
"What a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away." (D.Bros)

Clear your mind and calm yourself. There will not be one insulting comment to you or schraf in this entire post. I never meant to imply such a thing about you. The point being made was that you hate the position that the world has thrust upon women. As part, and remember I am only saying part, of your overall argument, you and schraf both included an argument which involved the injustice nature casts on women. It is anything but hating women.2ice correctly identified that background dimension of one of your arguments, which acts much like a hidden premise.It is certainly not wrong to make the argument, but it does not work against a position which assumes that a fetus is a person. The expectations pressed upon women (if expecting them to carry a child) really do happen to others as well... as was noted. Thus there is no arguing how much a woman must go through just to take a fetus to term, as long as one holds the presumption it is a person. This just isn't true and I hope you take a second look. Within this thread I am in pretty close agreement with both of your positions, and much more so than 2ice or jug.What I have done is pointed out flaws in portions of your arguments/positions. That does not mean I am against you and in fact (where I come from) what I have done is a sign of being helpful. It will only help you build stronger arguments.In fact, if you notice what I posted to 2ice I actually turned it around to show that he was in error when addressing your usage of person. What it ultimately boiled down to was that both sides were talking past each other in certain segments of the debate. I think outside of those portions, your case was stronger. You were suspended for language violations, that's all. There's no language issue here so I'm sure you won't be. If you get suspended for the above, I'll complain.

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holmes {in temp decloak from lurker mode}
"What a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away." (D.Bros)

1) What did I misrepresent when I posted the link to the abortion article (from 2006) which is a longitudinal study that examines flaws in previous studies, shows that there were revious studies that found harm, and itself found indication of mental harm?Unless you are going to claim that your position was evidence is accumulating abortion may have negative mental health impacts, and that the orgs like the APA are relying on flawed studies, the article I and 2ice provided are BOTH adequate counters you need to deal with.If you could at least explain where that involved a misrep, all of this might make sense.2) If you do not understand that you are currently arguing with 2ice exactly what I started dealing with when I first posted, and both of you are taking the positions I predicted, then I might point out that you were mistaken about what I was saying and NOT the other way around.I still don't understand WHY I am supposed to want to misrepresent your position, much less which positions are being misrepped. But I do know it sure is easy to toss the allegation around to fend off someone in debate. It is a simple trick and one frowned upon as just a waste of time.In the end all it takes when someone misrepresents your position is to state what your position is. It doesn't take several posts as you seem to be asserting. And it doesn't take any animosity.I mean that's the trippy part, you could easily skip over any misreps I might include and deal with the parts which are pertinent... at the very least raw data and reviewed studies.Instead you continually argue about me.Your slip is showing.

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holmes {in temp decloak from lurker mode}
"What a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away." (D.Bros)

It seems to me there is a serious miscommunication going on here. And I apologize for my lack of clarity, especially with regard to this... That should have read "dead on the money regarding a specific argument within recent posts..." I totally see how what I wrote implies something much more than I meant. I thought I had reduced the scope enough using a specific quote which I thought was a very good analysis. But clearly I did not make it specific enough, especially on a reread. I think you are reading more into 2ice's statement than is there. In your first reply to me on this you stated I (and he) claimed you "hated women" which to me is clearly not in the section you quoted. And though perhaps strongly worded, everything up to the last sentence (the one I viewed as a wonderful analysis) appears to me to be anger at a cosmic injustice... hating the situation. Perhaps I am reading too little into what he says but there it is. I thought that sentence was a wonderful analysis by 2ice. I did not at all state or imply that 2ice is wonderful. I really do not understand your criticism of me here as I have repeatedly congratulated opponents against my position when they write something very well. I just happen to like really good writing, and pulling out crisp analysis of a difficult argument. I always mention it and it does not mean to suggest an overall superiority of anyone.The worst writer in the world, and thus getting few if any "congratulations" from me, may still be 100% right and I agree with them totally. How I write in a forum is not exactly how I would write at a job. Not to mention it would get some review by coworkers and managers before being approved. Not to mention I know my writing is not perfect and thankfully much of science work is NOT rhetoric, but organization and analysis. Can you point to where he said that, because that looks like a gross mischaracterization of what he said. If you can get him to admit that is what he meant, and I will state right now if that is what he really meant, then I disagree with everything he said.I think if you look again, you will see he is stressing that you are angry at the injustice (he said "unfairness") of the position women find themselves in. I am not 100% that's for sure, and I apologize for any lack of clarity in that previous post (or any posts for that matter). But I will tell you this seriously, to my mind you and schraf are poor in analyzing the arguments of others, and sometimes your own. And when confronted with evidence and logic which are solid are prone to rage which leads to arguing the man and away from debate. Willfull or not that is a problem.Miscommunications happen everywhere, it is how you smooth them out to GET BACK to the logic and evidence which is what makes someone worthwhile. Concentrating on blunders and offenses is a waste of time... even assuming an opponent (like me) makes tons of them.In all my years of writing and debate you are the first two to make the claims you have against me, and I have received commendation for my work. You can even see others at EvC agreeing with me. Might I venture that you two are not taking time to understand what i am saying, and blowing my statements way out of proportion in anger?Where I come from "arguing the man" and especially claiming that someone "always gets my position wrong so I won't say anything more (namely clarifying their position)" is a dodge. One can always choose not to directly insult a person, and SHOULD always clarify a position when claiming a position has been mischaracterized. Both take up very little time, and put things back on track. PS (complimentary): I really need to point out that I was positive about both of your overall positions and did say so. If you look you will see this is true. The very first sentence of my very first post in this thread was clearly stating that I agreed with schraf for the most part. In the post you are quoting from about you, I said I did not agree with the first sentence of 2ice's post, and in my reply delivered an argument defending your argument, and then extending it to a statement I though 2ice's overall position would fail.

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Please check this and see I really was backing the both of you, even if I went on to criticize specific facets of your argument, and commend others for good analytical work.Edited by holmes, : emphasize compliment

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holmes {in temp decloak from lurker mode}
"What a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away." (D.Bros)

Though I reserve some exceptions (such as factual claims like recognizing stages of physical development) I can basically agree to this point, especially with regard to abortion.But that is why I am arguing that abortion laws are NOT permissable. It boils down to an enforced religion. In a society where gov't is not supposed to do such things, and people are free to have their own beliefs, a subject that is completely steeped in religious vantage point cannot be enforced.That is wholly different than rights issues of blacks, women, etc. Although religion may play some part, there are clearly factual issues which fall outside of just religious vantage points. First let me say that you have an interesting philosophy. I'm not going to try and nitpick it as such things are purely subjective at their core, and would throw us wildly offtopic.Second, and more important, I think the question of motivation is unfair. There ARE other valid and interesting concepts of life.Some do not view sex as inherently about pregnancy and parenthood, and one must admit there is plenty of sex which is not. And despite being proparenthood some may not view ANY AND ALL pregnancies as necessary. Sometimes it is a WISE choice as a prospective parent NOT to continue a pregnancy.In years past, or even current 3rd world countries, abortion and infanticide were necessary for preserving the wellbeing of others (including the parent) due to poor resources. This can certainly be true for achieving maximum quality of life for onesself and/or the children one does want to raise.And in choosing to control quality of life, it is intelligent to do so in a way that is more healthy for the parent and less of an issue of harming another individual.And here is where we see a very real split. Without a concept of a soul, and viewing pregnancy as a natural process, one really can view stages of development as a nonperson growing into a person. It does not require some ulterior motive to reach this view.A person can hold much of what you say as true, but if they don't view prebirth development as involving a child, just a portion of an activity that one must take seriously, then abortion is a valid option. The values of others may also be rock solid. They can agree with everything in this last paragraph and much of the rest. They just happen to have a different view of the naturalness of life, how it works, and so come to different conclusions regarding what abortion means.The question is how are these to coexist, especially in a pluralistic nation?And as a small counterargument, one might ask if you are not afraid of the emotional pain of choice and loss; feeling what it is to be human and make a conscious decision which destroys potential happiness from a future child for the security and happiness for those that exist here and now... or future children years later when one is better situated? Thus you detach yourself from those issues and even how wonderful sex is outside of just parenting, to focus only on the end of parenting which is perhaps a simpler choice to make because it absolves one of hard choices.

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holmes {in temp decloak from lurker mode}
"What a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away." (D.Bros)

Whoa whoa whoa. Suggesting a topic is relevant, when you don't think that is true, is totally different than my building a false position and claiming it is yours.All you have ever had to do is clarify your position. Even when I think you are actually shifting your argument based on previous statements, I always accept the new position as the one you are holding and so the one I have to deal with. Well that's an outright lie. Clearly you HAVE read the last couple emails of mine, you have even quoted from one. Only instead of choosing to discuss the posts and points which are clearly on topic and addressing your position by referring to real evidence (not just my own words), you select the portions you can use to argue about me.Your slip is STILL showing. Here AGAIN is a recent study (2006) regarding the negative effects of abortion on mental health.

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Make your choice: Deal with the evidence --Or-- Totally dodge the subject by calling me names/pretending ignorance and repeating erroneous claims.Edited by holmes, : fix

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holmes {in temp decloak from lurker mode}
"What a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away." (D.Bros)

I cannot believe anyone enjoys the arguments he and I have been having lately. They seem embarassing, repulsive, and a general waste of time (because they keep leading off topic).I certainly don't and it turns my stomach a bit to hear someone is getting some sort of satisfaction from them. Kind of like hearing people enjoying the car wreck one has just had.

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holmes {in temp decloak from lurker mode}
"What a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away." (D.Bros)