It ultimately is religious belief.
Religious people believe the soul enters the body at conception, granting personhood, so abortion is murder. They also believe that people put to death will go before God, where they will be judged as evil and sent to Hell for eternal punishment.
Everything else is just window dressing.
They don’t actually care about life, they just don’t want women to have control over their bodies.
Arguably, an unborn baby cannot be guilty of anything. But an adult sentenced to death is often guilty of some horrible crime. So if you accept killing as a punishment, there is no contradiction.
Until you realize that our court system is FULL of false arrests, and the courts have some stupid high number like 98% conviction rate.
They say “take the deal, or the court will fuck you”.
2 years vs 30 years.
And then later they run a second trial for something else that has a death penalty as the outcome. The jury is shown this guy, already in prison, for a semi-related charge. Already convicted of the other charge. So his ability to appear innocent is already swayed. And now suddenly there’s no deal. The court goes full hammer. The jury is made to believe he did it 100%.
And he can’t say he didn’t do it, and wasn’t even there, because he ALREADY pleaded guilty to the other charge which would place him there.
So now you got a populace, who wasn’t in either court session, not seeing how this escalated, and not willing to believe our court system may be flawed. Just kill the criminal and move on, right?
You are overstating it. all evidence I can find is only a small percentage are not guilty. Of course that small possibility is enough for me to be against the death pentalty. If we had a way to be 100% sure of guilt I’d favor death but since we don’t I can’t go that far.
Punishment fetish.
It is, but they will persist because their motivation has nothing to do with rational thinking.
Because with reactionaries, the cruelty is the point.
They only care until you’re born, then you can go and die in a ditch somewhere.
Even they don’t realize that what they spout is just a safe proxy cover for the real issues they are unable to articulate.
The thing I’ve yet to figure out about the abortion debate, and what likely gets me labeled as a right-wing bigot for even daring to ask, is where ‘pro-choice’ people draw the line. The ‘pro-life’ view is clear: life starts at conception. However, I don’t know where the left draws the line, and in my mind, refusing to do so seems to suggest it would be fine even a day before birth, which seems like an equally extreme position.
If we have reached the day prior to birth the person carrying doesn’t want an abortion. It’s therefore fine to leave the decision to them and their medical team.
For all the left people I know, including myself, The reason we don’t want a line drawn is because sometimes special circumstances arise. There may be medical complications in the third trimester that would result in the mother’s death and it’s not feasible to exhaustively list every scenario that could land her in this situation so it’s better to just not a put a limit on it so she doesn’t have some bullshit hoop to jump through later while she’s dying.
That said, I don’t think there’s anyone genuinely arguing that people should be allowed to get abortions super late into the pregnancy just for funsies. Third trimester is the logical cut off to me, and most of the people I know agree or want it slightly shorter. We just don’t want the law to specify that since it can cause legal complications. It’s better that it be considered a medical standard.
I don’t think that drawing a line means it wouldn’t be allowed under any circumstances after that. Before the line, it would be at the mother’s discretion, and after passing the line, you’d need a statement from one or two doctors and a valid medical reason for it.
Where I live abortion is legal untill 12 weeks and after that you need a medical reason for it and a statement from 2 doctors. What’s wrong with this?
You need to prove you’re going to die to 2 different doctors? Sounds like you need to be lucky which is exactly what we don’t want.
How do you know you’re going to die due to pregnancy without visiting a doctor? You’re not going there to prove anything. You’re going there for a diagnosis. Doctor is the medical expert, not the mother.
That doctor also needs to have it confirmed by another doctor though? Seems odd, and also sounds like the perfect way to deny abortions to women who need them.
I don’t know what hellhole you live in, but where I’m from, doctors don’t arbitrarily deny abortions to someone whose life is in danger. The reason you need a second opinion is because you had three months to decide whether you want to keep it or not. If it’s been more than that, the child is already so far developed that you’ll need a medical reason to abort it, and at that point, ‘I changed my mind’ is no longer a good enough reason to end the life of a living, feeling being. Also, after that point you generally also need surgery to remove the dead fetus.
You must be lucky to not live in one of the many American states which have laws actively causing many women to die.
are you a sleeper account? 7mo old acct & in 1h you’ve responded 2x to emotionally charged political topics with sidelining , near-no-commitment comments that take up space & try to dilute the issue
Abortion is a human right. Death penalty is cruel & horrifying.
Death penalty is justice. Abortion is cruel & horrifying.
See? That’s how convincing your reasoning is. Luckily the other people responding are atleast addressing the question.
Revenge is rarely justice. You also entirely avoided there comment.
Well I’m not going to defend death penalty because I’m against it. My point was to illustrate how poor argument that is.
I replied to their accusation on another thread.
To answer your question. They consider the argument of “where do you draw the line” to be a red herring.
Consider the following: if a person is in need for a kidney transplant, or else he would die, would it be ethical to force someone to donate their kidney against their will? I think not.
Same applies to abortions. You are being forced to feed a parasitic being in your body, a being that destroys your body in the process. And not having an option to abort would be to take away your bodily autonomy.
As for the line, I think that the person making that choice is the one that draws that line. It is not for us to decide.
Surely you can get rid of that ‘parasite’ in the first few months instead of waiting for the last minute? I don’t see how drawing the line at, say 12 weeks now somehow takes away a person’s bodily autonomy.
Speaking of a red herring, a comparison to a forced kidney donation is completely irrelevant here.
You are being forced to feed a parasitic being in your body, a being that destroys your body in the process.
Okay, let’s take this reasoning even further then. Why can’t this same logic be used to a 3 year old?
Because a 3 year old is SENTINENT. It can FEEL things, unlike a fetus.
I’m pretty sure an 8-month-old fetus can feel things and is sentient, so that’s a moot point unless you’re going to argue that sentience appears at the moment of birth - which we both know isn’t true.
So… Why can’t we abort 3 year olds?
The same logic does work on a 3 year old. A parent is not forced to feed it and can have someone remove it. They just don’t call it abortion. https://adoption.com/how-to-give-a-child-up-for-adoption/
Maybe some day a fetus can be removed without killing it, but 3 year olds already have that ability.
Then have the child and give it up for adoption? If you don’t want to keep it, you can freely abort it until, say, 12 weeks, after which you’d need a medical reason and a statement from one or two doctors. I don’t see what the issue is here.
I’m not saying this is exactly how it should be, but something along those lines. The idea that someone should be free to abort a 7-month-old fetus if they choose seems quite extreme to me.
deciding what others can or cannot do is a whole other moral discussion.
- Momma’s threat “I brought you into this world and I can take you out of it” hits harder.
Not everyone agrees on an exact time, typically the viability of the fetus outside of the womb is the consideration.
This would mean a baby that would be just premature wouldn’t be aborted. As you move back the viability would end up varying for each pregnancy, which is why after a set point doctors are involved. They then make a medical judgement balancing the viability and safety to the carrier.
So there is no hard date. The insistence on getting one simplifies a complicated issue where nuance is important.
I’ve noticed that a lot of anti-abortion laws target doctors, specifically to make the fuzzy nature of the cuttoff difficult.
For at least pro-choice voters, many are more concerned with the line being drawn by doctors, and not by politicians. So it’s less about where the line is being drawn and more about who, with the proper education, is doing the drawing.
Maybe I should’ve been more specific - I meant the point after which you need to consult a doctor to go ahead with an abortion. I think most people agree that a fetus just a few weeks old is barely a living thing, so aborting it is hardly different from, cumming in a sock. However, there is a point after which we’re no longer talking about a lump of cells but a sentient being, and to me at least, it seems reasonable that after that point, you’d need a medical reason to do it.
Where I’m from, that line is at 12 weeks. Until then, you’re free to do it for whatever reason you want. The unwillingness to draw any line like that means they’d be okay aborting an 8 month old too even for financial reasons and that just sounds fucking insane to me.
Clear and simple makes things easy, but easy is not always better. Also, the “life begins at conception” position only seems clear on the surface, but if you look deep enough things get quite muddled.
For example, is a zygote a single person? What if it later divides and becomes twins or triplets: did the twin’s life begin at conception? Did one life become two? Is a zygote a ball of life that can become one or more people?
What about miscarriages? It’s thought as many as half of all pregnancies end in miscarriage, but most happen so early that the carrier is not even aware they’re pregnant. If you come across a family with four kids, do you assume they likely had another 3-4 lost lives via miscarriage and hold a funeral for them?
Should people start getting child tax benefits as soon as they have a positive pregnancy test? Or is “life starts at conception” only relevant when we’re talking about abortion, but conveniently ignored everywhere else?
And what if there is a complication with pregnancy, where if an abortion is not performed both the carrier and developing human will likely die, but if an abortion is performed only the developing human will likely die? Is it now permissible? What if the carrier is a 14 year old who was raped, is suicidal, and has a high chance of stabbing themselves in the abdomen to try to self-abort if they’re not able to get an abortion: should they be restrained in a padded room until the baby is born, forced to serve as an incubator for a baby that the state will then take?
Even when your cutoff is strict, it is not always “clear” because this is a complex issue without a clear answer.
But to answer your question specifically:
Pro-choice people generally recognize that abortion is not desirable, but disagree exactly what the rules should be. Abortion does the least harm when the pregnancy is a single cell (zygote,) and in the embryo stage where most abortions occur the developing human is essentially a collection of multiple cell lines becoming differentiated into tissue but not yet developing functional organs (you’ll often hear this called “a clump of cells.”)
As the embryo develops into a fetus, the heart and brain develop and start functioning, which is where some pro-choice people start to draw a line. Others point toward viability: at about 22 weeks, a few fetuses have been known to survive with extraordinary health measures. By 36 weeks, fetuses can be live born without any extra health issues from being born early. So starting about 20 weeks, we start to recognize that pregnancies become more and more viable: that’s where a lot of people draw the line.
A very small percentage of abortions are done late in pregnancy, typically for health reasons. Not all pro-choice people are in favor of legalizing this, but many feel that in these situations, abortion is a tough decision that is best made by a patient in a careful discussion with their doctor, not by a politician they will never meet. So while these pro-choice people may not wish to see an abortion performed within a week or two of natural birth, they do not want to outlaw it so that the option is there for people who truly need it.
I mean the pro-life stance is clear in the sense that they generally don’t accept abortion unless the mother’s life is in danger. So when someone is ‘pro-life,’ I know what that means. However, when someone says they’re ‘pro-choice,’ I don’t always know what they mean. I’ve assumed most people draw the line somewhere around three months, after which you’d need a medical reason and a doctor’s statement to proceed. But based on the replies I’ve gotten here, that doesn’t seem to be the case. Many seem to suggest that no such lines should be drawn at all and even go as far as calling the baby a parasite, which seems a bit crazy to me to put it lightly.
I know such lines are arbitrary and there’s no practical difference between one day and another but what seems obvious to me is that a total ban and allowing it at 8 months for any other that a serious medical reason are both equally extreme stances and the ‘truth’ is there somewhere in between.
I’m trying to be the devil’s advocate here: one could say that one is an innocent “life” while the other is not.
It only sounds like a contradiction if you take “pro-life” literally. In fact, I find this hard to understand at all if you simply just listen to pro-lifers.
Let me be clear, I’m about as firm a supporter of a woman’s right to choose as they come. I’m also adamantly against the death penalty. Do you find this position to be contradictory?
However, the general position of “pro lifers” does not contradict this at all, pretty obviously. They think that a fetus is a child that hasn’t been born yet, and because it hasn’t been born, it’s completely innocent. So you have no right to take it’s life. However, if some person in life has done something in life that removes that innocence, they believe sometimes that rises to such a heinous level that they must be permanently and irrevocably removed from society.
There are other glaring contradictions in their position, like not wanting to provide support to that innocent baby once it has come into the world, but this is clearly not one of them.
I’m pro choice but also anti-death penalty, but only because if someone is horrible enough to deserve it then they don’t deserve death, because death is the easy way out of suffering. They deserve to live long, miserable lives in a 3-meter cell.
Liberals in favor of reproductive rights also tend to be against the death penalty. Is that a contradiction? Conservatives love twisting this into “they want to kill babies, not criminals.”
Do you think they’re right about that? Or is it more nuanced of an issue? If it’s more nuanced of an issue, then it’s more nuanced in both directions.
Liberals prioritize the woman’s ability to decide what happens with her body. They don’t like abortions, but they think they must be allowed if that’s what the woman chooses. They also recognize that it’s a medical procedure that’s absolutely necessary sometimes and other times might prevent an unwanted child from being born into bad circumstances. Meanwhile, liberals tend to be against the death penalty because our justice system is very flawed and innocent people have been put to death in the past. Perhaps a woman is allowed to decide what happens to a congregation of cells inside her body, but people shouldn’t decide the life or death of other people when imprisonment is always there as an option.
Conservatives think in terms of essentials and things are very black and white. It’s either a baby or it isn’t. They think life comes from god so it’s his affair and not our place to countermand a new life that he’s just brought into being. Meanwhile if a grown person with a mind chooses to commit crimes, that’s on them. God makes some pretty hard judgments in the Bible so they think great we can too and that will make us like god. Conservatives also tend to believe that some people are essentially good, and others are essentially bad. And in that framework, once a person has shown themselves to be a criminal, you know they are bad so what’s the point of letting them live. Meanwhile you have no idea if a fetus in the womb will be good or bad yet.
Please don’t downvote me for understanding both positions :)
IS it a contradiction? I don’t agree with the death penalty or anti-abortion position, but I don’t see some essential link between either position. You can hold two different beliefs about two different things is how come.
They literally call themselves pro-life and then express support for the death penalty.
Sure, but OP didn’t ask, ‘How can people call themselves pro-life but are be for the death penalty?’ I’m not one to hang onto whatever catch phrases or name a movement lands with. Should* I expect the land back movement to, say, lay down on the ground as a for of protest? ‘BUT LAND BACK IS IN THE NAAAAAAAME’. Do we think defund the police want there to be nobody to apprehend, say, right-wing terrorists?
Edit; accidentally a word
My understanding is that they consider it ok to kill someone who committed a heinous crime but not ok to kill someone who is completely innocent.
This is exactly how I used to see things when I grew up in a conservative echo chamber.
And now that I recognize a person’s right to choose and tend to think capital punishment should probably* not be legal, I’ll add that it’s not that my underlying beliefs changed, just how I now understand things. Some people do deserve capital punishment. And innocent people should be protected. But personhood doesn’t start at conception, a person conceiving has a right to decide what happens to their body, and the state can never be trusted to administer capital punishment.
*I say “probably” because I also think it might be necessary to allow it in extreme cases. My reasoning is that if people don’t believe the justice system will adequately punish, they have incentive and no ultimate detergent for taking justice into their own hands.
But should we even punish?
I don’t mean to troll, so let me explain. Why do we punish? I think it’s two fold, we punish to deter crimes and we punish to exact revenge. But the fear of punishment doesn’t deter crime https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/five-things-about-deterrence and that leaves revenge as the only both intended and actual outcome of punishment.
Is the current costs of running a complicated criminal justice system really worth it, if all we get from it is revenge? Does revenge make society better? I don’t think so.
I’m not advocating for anarchy either. There should be consequences for criminals. I’m just not sure what the consequences should be, but punishment is ineffective. I get that we have personal responsibility, and free will. And I’m not trying to excuse criminals, I’m just saying that punishment doesn’t work.
I’m all about scientific research, especially when it goes against the grain, but the idea of getting caught being a bigger deterrent than the punishment is just, weird?
If there is no punishment, why would you be afraid to be caught?
If there is no punishment, why would you be afraid to be caught?
I think the idea is that the thing that stops you in the moment is “I likely won’t get away with it” more than “if they catch me there’ll be hell to pay … but only if”.
I mean you’re (as in the informal general usage of “you”, not as the second person pronoun) not going to pull out your phone while driving, if you’re next to a cop. But if there’s no one around that even looks like an undercover traffic cop?
Human brains are bad at thinking in long term consequences, but immediate consequences? Those we understand.
Lots of people never reach more advanced stages of moral reasoning. They don’t do bad things to avoid being punished, or maybe because they have a simple understanding of “it’s against the rules”
The current justice and prison system is abhorrent, but something needs to happen if someone tries to murder someone else. Most people are alright but there are a lot of anti social people out there, too. And a lot of people who would be alright if they were in more stable circumstances
One aspect of punishment is retribution for the victims when there is nothing else and another is to keep people that are harmful away in order to keep other people safe.
Here in Sweden we have a current massive problem with organized crime that are now systematically abusing our criminal justice system that is built on humanitarian ideals for rehab and protecting suspects and criminals rights to the absurd. So yes, in those cases I think punishment will do. Cynically abusing protection measures of society deserves punishment. It may not change those individuals for the life they have chosen for themselves but it will keep them out of making even more damage to society and violent crime against individuals and I honestly see no problem in harsh consequences for their own decisions.
It doesn’t work as a deterrent though. In states that have the death penalty people still do bad things.
I’m pro-choice, but mostly anti-death penalty, isn’t that a contradiction?
I don’t really think so. A person’s bodily autonomy and the state’s power to execute citizens should not overlap.
I think it’s not necessarily a contradiction to hold your pro-choice and anti-death penalty stance, but it’s still a contradiction to hold the pro-life and pro-death penalty stance if your reasoning behind the pro-life stance is that all life is sacred.
I agree that a person’s body autonomy and the state’s power to execute citizens should not overlap, but I still think that giving the “all life is sacred” line to justify pro-life and then being pro-death penalty “because some people deserve to die” amounts to hypocrisy.
I have the same question for the opposite as well. Or for being for abortion and also vegan.
Well, one difference is that the prisoner is not housed inside an unwilling woman’s womb. That’s not where steaks and pork chops come from either. Hope that helps.
I’m a non vegan dude but this is gonna be my easiest argument… here goes:
consent.
The foetus can’t consent
the fetus is not a person. even if it were it doesn’t matter. what matters is that it lives in the mother’s body and the mother has to consent to what happens to her body. you can’t (or shouldn’t be able to) compel people to do anything with their body, including to keep others alive.
A (human) mother that carries a growing fetus is a living being. A pig, dog or a cow as well. They feel physically and emotionally and can be hurt.
A fetus is, up to a certain point, just a slab of meat.
As a vegan I don’t care about slabs of meat, I care about living beings and I think we shouldn’t hurt them.
Foetus can also feel pain and hurt, though
At which stage in development, since you seem to know this for a fact.
so you’re anti pain. that’s awesome, there’s a ton of socialist policies I’m sure you support wholeheartedly.
Like what?
free healthcare and medical procedures for everyone including prisoners, covering all prescription drugs, free school lunches, decommodifying housing and abolishing landlords, severely limiting the police in favor of various civil servants for most cases, strict gun control and red flag laws, reducing cars in favor of alternative transportation methods and public transit, redesigning cities into 15 minute cities to facilitate that, and I can go on for a long time but you get the gist
free healthcare and medical procedures for everyone including prisoners,
Yes. This policy is also endorsed by the politician that I voted for.
covering all prescription drugs,
Yes. This policy is also endorsed by the politician that I voted for.
free school lunches,
Yes. This policy is also endorsed by the politician that I voted for.
decommodifying housing
Yes. This policy is also endorsed by the politician that I voted for.
abolishing landlords,
I believe landlords should exist but in limited circumstances. I.E., your nice old man using a house for his retirement fund who treats his tenants well and gives them a fair price for it. I am completely against corporate and/or foreign landlords who are exploiting people for profit.
severely limiting the police in favor of various civil servants for most cases,
Depends on circumstances. A good well trained police force is good, but police shouldn’t be used as therapists. If a problem can be fixed more effectively by not throwing more police at it, then I’m for not throwing police at it.
strict gun control
Yes
red flag laws,
No idea what this means, apologies
reducing cars in favor of alternative transportation methods and public transit,
Yes, and one of my main Christian influences in my life was a civil servant who advocated and worked for this
redesigning cities into 15 minute cities to facilitate that,
Yes. That’s a great idea.
cool. I think you’re wrong about abortion on grounds of personal freedom, but at least you’re not a hypocrite.
