My views on abortion

Come over to the western side of the state. If you stay away from the Twin Cities area and Eau Claire there is nothing but forests, farmaland and small towns. I love it here. I have two dogs that are great mousers. They catch and kill mice and squirrels. They don't seem to be intent on killing them, they play them to death. Rarely will they eat anything they catch. Just sort of gnaw on it.

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Facts don't lie or have an agenda. Facts are just facts

I've been over to the west side a number of times, and as the saying goes, it's a great place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there. I like the "big city" amenities, I just wish Appleton and the other cities in the area would stop spreading out, like mold on an old piece of bread. We have a bridge called the "Skyline Bridge" but with the exception of a couple buildings, the "skyline" is mostly trees. If business would build up instead of out, we could increase the population density, increase the services, and still protect the nature that is so great in the entire state.

But it is arbitrary. Why protect that bundle of cells, and not this one? Why is that a "baby," but this is just a fertilized egg that was expelled during menstruation? Why do you draw the line here rather than there?Arbitrary doesn't mean that people don't have reasons. Arbitrary simply means that those reasons are not objective. In the case of abortion, we're talking about completely arbitrary value judgements based on personal, subjective beliefs. I understand that. But this is the arbitrary value assessment. There is absolutely no objective reason to value a fertilized egg over an unfertilized egg. Both are potential human beings. The only difference is some genetics and active growth...but by that standard cancer can be considered an individual human being worthy of rights.Bear in mind, the entire notion of rights itself is arbitrary. Americans in particular have a very strong notion of who has what rights, and we regard these as coming inherantly from birth. But we know that's not true. Rights are a human construct, a social contract. I agree to give everyone else the right to live, to speak freely, etc in exchange for the right to participate in society and reap the benefits of doing so, which includes having those same rights extended to me. We provide rights to human beings and not to cows because...well, because we're human beings, cows aren't, they can't speak up for themselves, and they're damned tasty. There's no objective reason to value a human life over the life of any other organism, but we do because of our emotional connection with other human beings. It's arbitrary and subjective. Conscience, not conscious. But yes, I understand.It's very true that we can desensitize ourselves to the plight of others. In this case, I refer to an unborn child as a fetus, while you sometimes use the term baby. The different emotional connotations simply provided by those words is astounding. Human beings have a tendency to dehumanize in order to rationalize injustice. The Nazis treated Jews as less than human; before slavery was abolished (and for an unfortunate amount of time afterwards) in America, blacks were treated as less valuable than whites.But it goes the other way, too. I value my cat above a stray cat, and even above human beings that I've never met (not intellectually, but emotionally - my gut reaction is to take my cat to the vet, for example, rather than helping some 3rd world citizen eat and get medicine). We anthropomorphize and add value to things that objectively do not deserve it based on our emotional connections.What objective reason is there to value a collection of cells in a uterus? Chances are, it's going to die on its own, flushed out with the rest of the menstrual discharge. You won't cry for it; you won't consider it murder even if it failed to remain implanted only because of the woman's poor diet or strenuous exercise; you won't even realize it was there. Why then the emotional reaction when someone suggests actively removing it? Is there some great difference between the menstrual cycle and an abortion, morally? How, and why? That's not necessarily true. I don't beleive in any supernatural anything. No god, no soul. We have this life, and then we die - our consciousness stops, and our bodies decompose, that's it. I view life as a complicated set of chemical reactions, an interesting combination of chemistry with emergent properties. I see humanity as a single endpoint of one branch of the massive tree of life on Earth. We're nothing mroe than a complex series of self-perpetuating chemical reacions.And yet I still see value in human life. I'm just honest about my reason: I arbitrarily value human life more than other similar collections of matter because I'm human, and I can easily empathise with other human beings. I feel compassion because I know that other human beings have the same range of feelings that I do, and so I can emotionally relate to the plight or potential plight of otehr people.Considering life to be nothing more than the sum of its parts does not preclude valuing that particular combination of parts. It's not about responsibility. It never was. Childbirth has not been a necessary consequence of pregnancy for decades. Why does a woman have a responsibility to carry her pregnancy to term? Becasue you say so? Why? Because there is another human being with rights inside of her? Why should I think that? Becasue you say so?Do you see where I'm going here? The notion of "responsibility" is just another arbitrary emotional rationalization; it lets you ignore the plight of the mother by dismissing her as "irresponsible" so that you can focus instead on what you value - the fetus.I would argue that it is more responsible to abort an unwanted pregnancy than raise a child you may not be ready for. What social benefit do you see when an 18-year-old girl gets pregnant and is forced to give up college to take care of her new baby, dooming them both to lower economic expectations, and likely ruining ever her new child's hope for college because Mommy won't be able to afford it? What social benefic do you see from giving a child up for adoption, where yet another child will more likely than not grow up parentless as a ward of the overburdened state? Aborting an unwanted pregnancy allows a woman to make her own choice about when or if she will have children, allowing her to wait until she is both emotionally and finiancially ready for the massive burden of a child. They call it Planned Parenthood for a reason, you know. Not all pregnancies are intended. And virtually no intended pregnancies are aborted. What you mean to say is "if you don't want to get pregnant, just don't have sex," which is an unreasonable denial of basic human nature. I could agree with you regarding unprotected sex without any other contraceptives, but then, I already addressed that when i suggested that anyone who truly wants to reduce the number of abortions performed should shift their energy to strongly supporting education and easy availability of contraceptives.But even with contraceptives pregnancy still happens. Broken condoms, a forgotten pill, or just really bad luck can all result in pregnancy for a couple who was otherwise "responsible."You can't stop people from having sex. You can easily terminate a pregnancy. I compeltely understand. But then, to me, religious people sound liek they're saying "look, if you dont want to brainwash your kids with a bunch of frequently immoral nonsense, that's cool. But I want to brainwash mine goddammit! So leave me alone."The issue is personal beliefs vs. objective fact. When a murder is committed, we can objectively and factually say that a human being's life was ended by another human being. To classify a fetus as a human being whose death would be classified as murder requires a specific set of beliefs that are not objective.Once again, I'll bring up my female circumcision example. Say a large group of people believed that not performing female circumcision dooms a woman to eternal torment. They place neglecting to perform this "necessary" procedude on the level of manslaughter.Should their sincere belief that your failure to circumcise your daughter has doomed her to eternal torture carry the weight of law?Even if we considered a fetus to have full rights from conception, does the fetus' right to live outweigh the mother's right of self-determiantion? Why, or why not? You don't have to wonder, you know. It was illegal in the US until jsut a few decades ago. I posted links to information about the unsafe abortions that were performed in liew of legal ones.10,000 women die in Nigeria alone each year from unsafe abortions. Obviously the fetus dies with the mother. That's what it's like where abortion is illegal. What if she falls down the stairs? How do the police determine if she was illegally attempting to abort her baby, or if she simply tripped? But that's a consideration for a different thread. I think a doctor should be forced to either perform the procedure or direct you to someone who can (obviously not all doctors are equipped for the task - a podiatrist will not be able to perform an abortion, and his facilities will not be equipped for such a procedure - but a recommendation to a doctor who can perform the abortion should be reasonable). I think that pharmacists should be forced to carry contraceptives, including the so-called "morning after pill." You sacrifice the ability to make certain choices when you take that oath.