Having it both ways (Chinese abortion policy & Pro-choice/life considerations)

No, we are talking about a fetus, something the pro-abort community as a non-human. Do female pro-lifers despise women too? Quite a few people keep reverting back to the argument that it is wrong for the Chinese authority to force people to get an abortion. We are all in agreement that it is wrong to do. So lets focus on my topic.I an asking if it is morally wrong to abort more female's than male's. If so, why? Being that proponents of abortion believe that a fetus is a non-human-- a collocation of well-formed molecules at most-- what difference does it make if the fetus is male or female?

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"God is like the sun. You can't look at it. But without it you can't look at anything else." -G.K. Chesterton

You are right. that is why its called pro-choice. People should have the opportunity to choose for themselves. That is why contraception should cheap and easy to get. pre-natal care should be cheap or rather free (like it is here in Denmark).Abortions should be cheap(or free) and easy to get, and giving birth should be cheap or free. Follow up care, pediatricians etc should be free.Women and men alike should be offered compensation for lost wages when the child is an infant, and daycare should be cheap.The focus should be on reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies, not on reducing abortions.And if society has standards that say that women are worth less than men, then we should work on getting that changed for the good of all. As a side effect less women would find that a pregnancy with a female fetus would be an unwanted pregnancy.Go to the root of the problems.

I don't think anyone here has made the argument that it is morally wrong to force women to abort more females than males.The point of liberal's opposition to force abortion is that the state is controling the woman's choice here. Notice how it's only you people that call us pro-abortion crowd while we try to describe ourselves as pro-choice?Look, I don't like abortion. I think life begins at the point when the sperm meets the egg. I think the fetus should have every human rights there are. If you want to know why I'm a pro-choicer even though I believe these things, I'll explain again for the millionth time. But for now, rest assured that I am not, and neither is anyone else, trying to argue that it is more wrong to abort baby girls than baby boys. The issue whether the state should have control over its citizens' bodies.

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Disclaimer:

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Occasionally, owing to the deficiency of the English language, I have used he/him/his meaning he or she/him or her/his or her in order to avoid awkwardness of style.

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He, him, and his are not intended as exclusively masculine pronouns. They may refer to either sex or to both sexes!

You are ignoring the fact that the reason people are upset about China's policy is that it interferes with the woman's right to choose. In addition, to the extent that folks are upset that more females are aborted than males, that objection is focused on the fact that the reason for it is that females are undervalued by China's society. The objection would be the same, although perhaps raised by a different group of people, if the society undervalued males.

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Those who would sacrifice an essential liberty for a temporary security will lose both, and deserve neither. -- Benjamin FranklinWe see monsters where science shows us windmills. -- Phat

Then what are we discussing since this question is what I focused my thread on? But that isn't the discussion. We are all in agreement that forcing people down and sticking foreign objects in a woman to destroy the life inside of her is absolutely squalid. That isn't what my thread is about. And I suspect that all the floundering I've seen thus far is because my question presents a conundrum for those taking a pro-abortion stance, which is why I'm having a hard time getting a straight up answer. Because that's what you are. The issue is abortion, not about the oh so unassuming, non-threatening word of "choice." Its about abortion. You are either pro or con. Everybody likes their ability of having a freewill. No one is in favor of becoming robots incapable of making choices. Since everyone is pro-choice in this regard, we should narrow the topic to what we are really talking about-- which is abortion. You are either Pro-abortion or anti-abortion. I think "pro-choice" and "pro-life" are somewhat misleading terms. I only use them at times because that's what every one identifies with. I use it so people know what I'm talking about. But the truth be told, I kind of have a problem with the terminologies. I'm trying to get away from the typical argument that we have here on the subject. I thought that by forcing them to identify with one's sex, they would be more likely to see the humanity, or rather, the inhumanity of the whole procedure. The reason being is that the pro-choice/pro-abortion movement often can identify with women's rights--that women are just as available to the same rights as their male counterparts are. The problem occurs when the sex is identified in a fetus, which is something that most abortion proponents say is a non-human. But this confronts them with the possibility that an abortion is a serious aberration where people are taking the lives of other people, and where those who support it are becoming increasingly calloused to its full reality. Perhaps this will remove the blinders.

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"God is like the sun. You can't look at it. But without it you can't look at anything else." -G.K. Chesterton

How is it interfering with the woman's right to choose? China is not rounding up pregnant women and forcing them to have abortions.They have put into effect a series of penalties and incentives which make it finacially hard to have more than one child. But that's still a choice.People keep saying "China is making people do this or that" but I have yet to hear anything concrete from anyone about exactly what China is doing that's so wrong.China has a problem. And it's not just China's problem, it's the world's problem.If the Chinese continued to have kids at the rate they've been having children over the last 100 years or so, they would become radically over populated. Overpopulation yields starvation, war, disease, polution, etc. None of these things give a damn about lines on a map - problems in China will very quickly become problems in Korea, Russia, etc.

That's a load of crap.The debate is not - "I LOVE abortions!" vs "I HATE abortions!"There isn't a "pro abortion" group. However, there most definitely is a "Anti-choice" group.There isn't an "anti-life" group, but it's interesting to note that the "pro-life" group isn't particularly bothered by the idea of aborting innocent fetuses in the case of rape.Why is that? Could it be because a rape victom is not a "filthy slut" like the other women seeking abortions?Can you name ANY other crime in which we are willing to execute the child of the criminal? Why should be behave that way with rape? If abortion is murder, then the fetus brought about by rape is not more deserving of murder than the child of a bank robbery.The deeper you dig, the more you see what the issues are really about.The far right doesn't like sex, they don't like freedom and they especially don't like women.

Who's floundering? I demolished your entire argument back on the first page, on post 8 - and received absolutely no reply. The question is - why are you floundering?Is it because you still can't see the problem from the perspective of a woman and her ability to make choices about who gets to live inside her uterus? That doesn't make any sense. The pro-choice side isn't interested in making women have abortions - they're interested in women being able to choose abortions if that's what's best for them, or not choose abortions, if they don't want to have one. How can that be "pro-abortion"? (It really is impossible for you to imagine women making choices for themselves, isn't it?)Let's try another formulation. Your side is "pro-forced birth", since your side believes that the state can force women with unwanted pregnancies to give birth to them anyway. Our side is "anti-forced birth." Much clearer, no?

Offered FYI.BBC: Riots reported after child fines assessed
BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | China's child fines 'spark riot'

Thousands of villagers have rioted in south-western China over the country's controversial family planning restrictions, reports say.

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The villagers, in Guangxi province, reportedly attacked government offices after officials imposed heavy fines on families who had too many children.

The BBC's consistent use of the word fine to describe the financial penalties is worth noting. Having over-quota children is a criminal offence in China, not a 'tax' measure as some have stated here. The BBC is correct.The article also shows the fines extracted from families to be far in excess of what most citizens can ever pay. The fines are not, like taxes, proportional to income. They are not intended to be.The story does report a recent change. China's regime still limits 'urban dwellers' to one child but allows rural villagers to have two children 'if the first child is a girl.' This latter exception was introduced to ameliorate the widening gap between the number of males and females in China's young adult population._____Edited by Archer Opterix, : brev.Edited by Archer Opterix, : clarity.

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

More accurately, they make it financially devastating to have more than one child.But you're right---that's such a quibbling little thing to go rioting over. What's a little financial devastation here and there when you retain your freedom to choose?You'll be pleased to know that China has freedom of speech, too. You can say anything you want.True, the government has 'penalties and incentives' on certain subjects. If you talk about the Tienanmen Square demonstrations or the invasion of Tibet, you can expect the government to imprison you for years, or execute you and harvest your organs. In the meantime you can expect your family members to be fired from their jobs, denied travel visas, placed under house arrest and have all their conversations monitored until the government feels better about them.But hey--it's not like the government is rounding up people and cutting out their tongues, is it? Everyone still enjoys freedom of choice. You can say anything you want.Just stand in the middle of Tienanmen Square and try it._____Edited by Archer Opterix, : brev.Edited by Archer Opterix, : brev.

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

You make this sound like the options are a) China is a big meanie, or b) everyone lives in Candyland.If Chinese families continued along the path they had been continuing, having many many children, then Chinese population (already beyond it's own food supply - they import food), would reach a point of collapse which would be more than just financially devastating for people. We're talking starvation. We're talking about a famine wiping out billions of people.There are times when, for one reason or another, people's individual behavior is literally a danger to the whole and someone has to step in and stop them.In the case of China, it's the Government. And frankly, they are doing it in a much less invasive way than they could. They could me forcable sterilizing every third person born in the country. They could be do manditory pregnancy testing, then disappearing the positive results.

I made it sound like an answer to your question.You asked how anyone was having their freedom restricted. I showed you.___Edited by Archer Opterix, : quotebox.

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

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No, we are talking about a fetus, something the pro-abort community as a non-human.

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There is no "pro-abort" community except in some paranoid, wingnut fantasy world.There is a "Pro-Legalized Abortion" community, however.There is also a "Pro-Forced Birth" community, as well. That community likes to call itself "Pro-Life", but the other name is more accurate.

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Do female pro-lifers despise women too?

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Yes, absolutely.There is a lot of self-hatred among the female half of a patriarchal and misogynistic society, and right-wing conservative Christianity is nothing if it isn't patriarchal and misogynist.I mean, if I was raised to be submissive to men, to gain my status through my marriage to a man and my children, that I shouldn't want to be a leader, especially not a leader of men, and that even the bible states that I should treat my husband as if he were God, I would certainly think that females are not as important or as valuable as males.

Not to mention - a whole lot of exceptionalist thinking. Like, "all these other women are tramps and sluts, but my abortion is totally fine, because I have very good reasons and I thought about it a long time."But you're right, the fact that women are occasionally complicit or even supportive of patriarchy doesn't mean that there's no such thing as patriarchy at all. In fact it's not at all uncommon for disinfranchinsed people to be openly supportive of the systems that disinfranchise them. Like, you know, non-rich Republican voters.