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>> the people advocating for outlawing abortion are also convinced it's a rights issue: the rights of the unborn child. > This is a nice fiction but it doesn't

>> the people advocating for outlawing abortion are also convinced it's a rights issue: the rights of the unborn child. > This is a nice fiction but it doesn't hold up to any level of scrutiny most of the time. Largely the "pro-life" people also believe in things like self-defense laws and the castle doctrine, which require that you not believe anyone has a real right to life. Huh? I know people are really tempted to construct straw-men to make their opponents look like hypocrites, but this one is especially weak. > You don't need to give the benefit of the doubt here. Eh, no. You do, otherwise you end up with nonsense like what you wrote next. > Dig a little deeper and understand what they really believe: women with unwanted pregnancies deserve to have it carried out against their will because they think they've sinned. You may be able to find an example of that, but I really doubt that's the motivating idea for the vast majority of the pro-life movement. I would bet money what most of them "really believe" is that a fetus is a baby and that baby should be protected from harm.

kaba0 4y ago
And we have a women in the picture who is much more of a human being and she should also be protected from harm caused by a technically parasite entity that leeches on her resources potentially causing life-altering changes and could even prove fatal.
- tablespoon 4y ago
  > parasite entity that leeches on her resources potentially causing life-altering changes and could even prove fatal Yet when my friend lost a child to a miscarriage, they grieved. It's interesting to note when people latch on to starkly dehumanizing rhetoric such as you've displayed. It's not just in the abortion debate. A lot of people really want this question to be black and white, and struggle to make it so, but it really isn't and never will be.
  - kaba0 4y ago
    Your friend had a personal choice over her body to get a child. And it is a beautiful thing to do so, and I’m very sorry it happened - hopefully she will recover both mentally and physically and will have a sought-after child she wants. Why do you want other women who did not choose this way to go over the potentially even more terrible thing of birthing a child at significant health risks she half-loves (as hormones are powerful things), half-hates? That just kills 2 people mentally.
- Banana699 4y ago
  >compares a baby to parasite Parasites are organisms that reduce the host's fitness while giving nothing in return. Babies are the exact polar opposite of parasites. They are literally the entire reason you're alive as far as evolution is concerned.
  - stormbrew 4y ago
    Evolution doesn't have opinions and even if it did, not all pro-social behaviors are directly reproductive.
    - Banana699 4y ago
      >Evolution doesn't have opinions I'm sure any reasonably intelligent and good faith person would parse "Evolution is concerned" as a metaphor, just like they parse "The computer looks up the ip address in the DNS server" or "The atom shares some of its outer electrons". >not all pro-social behaviors are directly reproductive How is this relevant ?
      - stormbrew 4y ago
        if you assert from that metaphor that the computer's "entire reason for existing" is to look up ip addresses, you've gone beyond metaphor. People don't have an "evolutionary purpose," evolution is just a thing that happens when ecological pressures are present. People do this all the time and it's really annoying. We don't need a secular version of intelligent design. And it's relevant because even if you assume that there's some magical driving force to persist a species, there are ways individuals contribute to it other than having offspring. Thus, it is not their sole purpose.
        Banana699 4y ago
        >the computer's "entire reason for existing" is to look up ip addresses, This is trivially true, a computer's entire reason for existence is to be used by a user, and looking up DNS servers is a crucial part of what makes that happens. Similarly, a living organism entire reason for existence is to manufacture copies of itself, and, for female mammals, that means carrying babies. >People don't have an "evolutionary purpose," This is just semantic hair-splitting. Planets don't have a 'purpose' either, but every single one of them finds a star and goes around it, and the ones that don't just can't find a star close enough. It's fair to say that, in a very real sense, planets only exist to revolve around stars, their very being necessitates it. This doesn't mean they are "aware" of it. People are similarly machines made and remade by evolution to do a single thing : spread copies of themselves. It doesn't matter that evolution "didn't mean" to make them that way, they are that way anyhow. And they will behave that way. >there's some magical driving force to persist a species It's not magical, it's all the hormones and electricity flowing inside every part of you. You can see it on a screen and measure its concentration. >Thus, it is not their sole purpose. Yes it is, Evolution doesn't care that you founded a startup or worked for SpaceX, unless those things increase your genetic copies somehow. You can write something like "if we look at it from a lens other than biology" before your statement to make it more correct, but I was replying to a person who compared pregnancy to a parasitic relationship, therefore they were invoking biology. Biology, in no uncertain terms, makes it quite clear that this is bullshit. Every living organism, in biology's book, is a self replicating machine made for nothing but spreading copies of itself.
stormbrew 4y ago
> I would bet money what most of them "really believe" is that a fetus is a baby and that baby should be protected from harm. This is a shallow read. Why do they believe the baby should be protected from harm and not the mother who wants to or needs to end the pregnancy? Or the person who broke into your home? I've literally never had or seen a conversation about abortion with a pro-lifer that when it went down this rabbit hole didn't eventually get to the idea that the innocence of the child matters more than the life of the child (and thus the lack of innocence of the mother).
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

kaba0 4y ago

And we have a women in the picture who is much more of a human being and she should also be protected from harm caused by a technically parasite entity that leeches on her resources potentially causing life-altering changes and could even prove fatal.

tablespoon 4y ago
> parasite entity that leeches on her resources potentially causing life-altering changes and could even prove fatal Yet when my friend lost a child to a miscarriage, they grieved. It's interesting to note when people latch on to starkly dehumanizing rhetoric such as you've displayed. It's not just in the abortion debate. A lot of people really want this question to be black and white, and struggle to make it so, but it really isn't and never will be.
- kaba0 4y ago
  Your friend had a personal choice over her body to get a child. And it is a beautiful thing to do so, and I’m very sorry it happened - hopefully she will recover both mentally and physically and will have a sought-after child she wants. Why do you want other women who did not choose this way to go over the potentially even more terrible thing of birthing a child at significant health risks she half-loves (as hormones are powerful things), half-hates? That just kills 2 people mentally.
Banana699 4y ago
>compares a baby to parasite Parasites are organisms that reduce the host's fitness while giving nothing in return. Babies are the exact polar opposite of parasites. They are literally the entire reason you're alive as far as evolution is concerned.
- stormbrew 4y ago
  Evolution doesn't have opinions and even if it did, not all pro-social behaviors are directly reproductive.
  - Banana699 4y ago
    >Evolution doesn't have opinions I'm sure any reasonably intelligent and good faith person would parse "Evolution is concerned" as a metaphor, just like they parse "The computer looks up the ip address in the DNS server" or "The atom shares some of its outer electrons". >not all pro-social behaviors are directly reproductive How is this relevant ?
    - stormbrew 4y ago
      if you assert from that metaphor that the computer's "entire reason for existing" is to look up ip addresses, you've gone beyond metaphor. People don't have an "evolutionary purpose," evolution is just a thing that happens when ecological pressures are present. People do this all the time and it's really annoying. We don't need a secular version of intelligent design. And it's relevant because even if you assume that there's some magical driving force to persist a species, there are ways individuals contribute to it other than having offspring. Thus, it is not their sole purpose.
      - Banana699 4y ago
        >the computer's "entire reason for existing" is to look up ip addresses, This is trivially true, a computer's entire reason for existence is to be used by a user, and looking up DNS servers is a crucial part of what makes that happens. Similarly, a living organism entire reason for existence is to manufacture copies of itself, and, for female mammals, that means carrying babies. >People don't have an "evolutionary purpose," This is just semantic hair-splitting. Planets don't have a 'purpose' either, but every single one of them finds a star and goes around it, and the ones that don't just can't find a star close enough. It's fair to say that, in a very real sense, planets only exist to revolve around stars, their very being necessitates it. This doesn't mean they are "aware" of it. People are similarly machines made and remade by evolution to do a single thing : spread copies of themselves. It doesn't matter that evolution "didn't mean" to make them that way, they are that way anyhow. And they will behave that way. >there's some magical driving force to persist a species It's not magical, it's all the hormones and electricity flowing inside every part of you. You can see it on a screen and measure its concentration. >Thus, it is not their sole purpose. Yes it is, Evolution doesn't care that you founded a startup or worked for SpaceX, unless those things increase your genetic copies somehow. You can write something like "if we look at it from a lens other than biology" before your statement to make it more correct, but I was replying to a person who compared pregnancy to a parasitic relationship, therefore they were invoking biology. Biology, in no uncertain terms, makes it quite clear that this is bullshit. Every living organism, in biology's book, is a self replicating machine made for nothing but spreading copies of itself.

stormbrew 4y ago

> I would bet money what most of them "really believe" is that a fetus is a baby and that baby should be protected from harm. This is a shallow read. Why do they believe the baby should be protected from harm and not the mother who wants to or needs to end the pregnancy? Or the person who broke into your home? I've literally never had or seen a conversation about abortion with a pro-lifer that when it went down this rabbit hole didn't eventually get to the idea that the innocence of the child matters more than the life of the child (and thus the lack of innocence of the mother).

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]