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this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2023
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What else would you call women in this scenario? You're literally worth less than a non-sentient proto-fetal clump. Even if that clump is going to kill you. Its like giving cancer the right to live and banning any attempts to remove it.
They're literally forcing women to die. The intended effect isn't to ban abortion, its part of a concentrated effort from far right christian white nationalists to reduce women to an enforced subservient breeding class. Have you ever paid attention to the rest of the shit these people say? They say loud and clear what they want all the time. They want to take away divorce rights, they want gender roles to become legally enforced in particular with regards to clothing and expression, they oppose women in politics and in the work force, they pathologically shame and degrade women based on perceived promiscuity or perceived lack thereof.
This isn't a matter of just having people oppose abortion bans. If it was, we wouldn't be here. If majority public opinion was what mattered, roe v wade would never have been overturned to begin with. Abortion bans are extremely unpopular even with many conservative voters. If you're poor, you're just fucked. You have no recourse whatsoever and a lot of people with complicated pregnancies will just die. If you can't afford the cost of relocating yourself out of a red state then you have nothing. You have no alternative but to try an unsafe method in what is probably going to be a non-clinical setting. And even if you succeed and live you can be tossed in jail for having made a Google search and one family member who calls the police. These are laws meant to kill women. They are meant to cause widespread fear and suffering for women and girls. Legally women and girls are not equal to men, not in bodily autonomy or in health care or in human rights. These laws aren't simply harming women, they're murdering them.
And honest to God if someone is dissuaded from being pro women's rights because they feel that a random person online has made an "exaggeration", and so choose to instead support laws that murder women - then they're a misogynist already in league with the fascists pushing these laws. You're an enemy of women if for absolutely any reason you support a law that's primary aim is to literally end women's lives. Its time to stop dabbling in bullshit, the people who write the laws aren't stupid they are 100% aware of what these laws do. They are aware of how it forces minors who have been r*d to carry pregnancies they are likely to die from. They know, the laws are written specifically so that will happen. There's no ambiguity, there's no exaggeration, these are laws written and created with the specific express intent to cause grievous bodily harm to, and outright murder, women.
Worth an equal amount as another human life, you mean?
You perverting the other sides argument doesn't make you or your argument better, just makes you come off as stupid and lacking any understanding of the issue as a whole.
There is no other human life involved. Or did you forget to read the next thing I said, that it'd be like declaring a tumor a human life and forbidding people from removing them. A proto fetal clump isn't a person. It's not a baby. Its not a human. It's a clump. It has no thoughts, it has no feelings, it is not self aware, it is not an independent organism and is in all senses of the word a parasite. You can screw off if you think that a parasitic tumor has the same worth as a woman, that it has the same worth as a human being. And you're only proving my point by even trying to justify it.
I perverted not a single fucking thing. These laws result directly, not indirectly but literally directly, in the killing of women and girls. Its murder to deny someone life saving medical care. You're a sick misogynist if you defend any part of that. And the people who write these laws are not stupid, they're not unaware, the intention is to result directly in grievous bodily harm and inevitable death of women and girls. Its murder, they know what these laws do. They know these laws don't prevent abortion, and every single one of them will ship their daughter or their wife down to Mexico to get one if they have to. They won't hesitate. There is no moral reason for these laws. These laws relegate women to a subservient breeding class deprived of the most basic fundamental human rights.
You've already shown who you actually are so ill be perfectly honest I don't give a fuck what you have to say. I dont fraternize with misogynists, and defending the murder of women and girls unequivocally makes you a misogynist. Nothing you have to say after that has any validity whatsoever.
I believe there is which is why we're having this debate.
And I believe that what's in their belly is a whole other person to consider their lives.
If someone believes that a fetus is essentially the same as my 2 month old niece, wouldn't there be a moral reason to not want to them?
I understand your argument despite the hostility, I think if you calmly thought about it, you would think that there could be some moral backing, not that you would believe it or anything, simply that you can see how it could be a moral dilemma.
In this case there absolutely was another human life involved- the twin that's life was at risk because doctors couldn't abort the fetus that was going to die within hours of birth anyway. You don't seem to care about that life.
Agreed! There were 3 lives. I wasn't really talking about this case, more in general.
That user said simply because someones pro-life, that I want to enslave women. That's not true at all, and I'm just saying that's strawmanning our argument, that if you understand it, you would think that morally there could be a question.
Once again, and I'm downvoted to shit because people strawman the argument, I understand your side - do you understand my side?
Okay this argument is hypocritical AF. First, your two month old niece isn't about to risk killing you and then die. Second, if she was going to die without you giving her an organ transplant, do you think it's okay for the government to force you to do that surgery against your will? What about if it wasn't your niece? What if you're 10?
You don't respect the autonomy of a woman if you believe in forcing decisions on them about their body, hard stop. There is no wiggle room for you to argue that the fetus matters, because you wouldn't apply that to any other situation in life. Stop acting like it's the moral choice when it's literally forcing woman to risk their lives against their will. Those women are already alive, why don't their rights and lives matter to you?
I'm not arguing in the case that this post is of.
I was simply saying that no, it's not my goal to enslave women. I just think the fetus is a human life that should be protected.
If you think "The fetus is a human life that should be protected" by the government, my reply would be exactly the same. It's no different. The government protecting a fetus is the government taking away a woman's right to her own life and body. Whatever grey areas exist in the debates that have gone on over the decades, this is not grey area. It's black and white.
If I told you I wanted the government to protect homeless people's right to live by forcing you to donate blood, I'm putting the homeless person's rights above yours. If you want the government to force women to literally risk their lives for 9 months you're putting a pile of cells's rights above a woman's. There is no fallacy here, there is no "but what about", it's plain and simple. Either you see women as humans with equal rights and value as yourself, or you believe a fetus has more rights than a woman. The only other possibility is you are the type who actually does want the government to force people to donate blood and organs. I met one once, quite the lunatic.
One could easily argue that the government letting the woman end the fetus' life is ruining the fetus' right to his/her own life and body.
the likelihood of a life risking event is fairly rare, and I'm for exceptions to that
Your first sentence says that even if I believe the fetus is a human life that should be protected, your reply would be the same, so why'd you switch your terminology back? You should have said "You're putting a human life that should be protected above a woman's" - once again, you try and pull this emotional terminology rather than being consistent.
I think all 3 have equal rights, and that none of us should be able to end the life of the others.
I agree, it's a tough moral dilemma, which makes it hard to have honest conversations about this. That's the biggest argument on the pro-choices corner, in my opinion. But the fact that it's the mothers intentional actions that brought the life to the world makes me lean towards the pro-life side. Contraceptives are easily accessible, I'm for policies that make them available freely to all women. I'm for policies that increase sexual education on pregnancies. I'm for increased funding to the adoptive care system along with foster care systems. I'm for policies ensuring proper healthcare for pregnant women.
I wish more republicans will say this - if we want to be pro life - reduce unwanted pregnancies, provide care to pregnant women and fund options for the baby if they want to provide that baby to a more willing family.
No, not really. Unless you're going to argue some stranger on the street who needs an organ donated to live is having their rights infringed by the government not forcing you to give them your organs to save them. The only difference is the location of the "human". Also, regardless, if you are making this argument, then either you're still saying the fetus has more rights than the woman, or the government shouldn't intervene because both have equal rights.
I don't believe a fetus is a human. But sure, put the word human there instead, because if your argument is that this unborn human's life should be protected above a woman's, you're still taking away that woman's rights.
The fetus can not live on its own. Saying an abortion is ending the life of the fetus is like saying taking someone off life support is ending their life. While technically true, are you the type of person that would also argue the government should disallow the removal of life support?
I'm sorry, but if you honestly think it's up to a woman whether or not she gets pregnant, you're incredibly out of touch with reality. Contraceptives aren't 100% effective. Rape is a thing. Hell, humans make mistakes sometimes. Women don't just go around getting abortions because they felt like it, it's not a fun procedure and it's not without risk. The biggest factor that makes this an irrelevant argument is there is literally no other example of a policy you would support that would infringe on someone's rights in the same way. There are hundreds, maybe thousands of examples where people put other people's lives in danger but they still have rights. Why focus on this one specific issue when there are so many others? The only answer is sexism. Not respecting Women's rights. There are zero implemented policies that would force someone to feed someone else who's dying, shelter them, donate blood to them, or do anything that would keep them alive. And I doubt you would argue for them if there were.
This is fine, but what's not fine is supporting government policies that force the decision on women. Especially blanket ones with no exceptions.
I mean literally. I don't know how you can sit here and say 'okay, well someone might believe that it's a human life in the womb, but absolutely no way in hell could they argue that a woman ending it's life could be wrong!!' - if you can't grasp a basic concept that ending a human life could be considered immoral, we shouldn't continue this conversation.
Once again - you're the one that said 'even if I believe the fetus is a human life that should be protected' - so I don't care if you actually believe it or not, you set that up to be the basis of your argument.
My argument is they are equals, and ending either life is something that is a moral question, not an objective answer like you portray it to be.
No, but I think that there should be some sort of consent (generally a medical POA would suffice) necessary to have someone make the decision to remove life support. If you can get a medical POA from the fetus, then I would buy into this argument.
It actually is. the vast vast vast majority of adults know that if they have sex, there's a risk of pregnancy. You know this, right? That's like me walking up at softball and swinging, hitting the ball and getting pissed because I didn't know that swinging could end in the possibility of me hitting the ball.
99.9% effective for some, and combining contraceptives makes the rates extremely small.
I'm for exceptions in the case of rape.
Sure, but that doesn't give one the right to end another's life.
Did I say that?
There's an argument that abortions don't respect the babies lives, male or female.
If you have 1 year old baby and you don't feed him and in result they die, do you not think there's a policy that punishes you for this?
They didn't force women to have sex. They didn't force women to get pregnant. They are simply saying that if a human life is created, that it has inherent value and with such there's a moral question on whether ending a human life without their consent is wrong.
I've already mentioned multiple times about exceptions. If you want to keep bringing this up, you can. My answer has stayed consistent.
I don't believe a woman aborting a fetus is ending it's life any more than refusing to feed someone starving on the street. Maybe you could debate that, but it's so cut and dry to me that it's just so hard to see the other arguments as compelling.
Awful analogy. Your intention in softball is to hit the ball. The intention in sex is to follow your human instinct and desire towards pleasure.
There are 175,000,000+ women in this country. 0.1% of that is 175,000. That's a lot of women you're saying intentionally got pregnant.
You say you believe in having exceptions for specific cases like rape. I'm guessing you would put nonviable pregnancies in there too. The thing is, almost every single abortion performed fits into an exception category. So by arguing in favor of more restrictions, you are indeed saying that.
Okay, but that argument isn't in a vacuum. By forcing the decision, you're choosing which life you respect more. The baby or the woman carrying. If I truly believed a fetus was a human, I would still say the government doesn't get to choose who's rights are more important. Also, as a matter of opinion I would still say the woman who is actually alive and has an actual brain and memories and experience should actually have more rights than the fetus.
Then why aren't republicans fighting to stop people pulling the plug on life support? Every day thousands of people who can't consent are taken off life support because they're brain dead or because their insurance won't pay for it any more. Yes, that moral question is valid to ask. What's not valid is forcing the choice on others based on your own personal beliefs, especially if you acknowledge that the topic is debatable.
I thought you had, but I couldn't find it for some reason so I went under the assumption you thought otherwise. Here's the thing about this though, we already have term limits and restrictions pretty much everywhere. Banning abortions with exceptions is already a won battle. There are so many other issues, the very fact that people care so much about this one particular issue is sexist on its own. No republican is talking about water supply quality, about domestic terrorism, about the atrocities being committed at our borders, homelessness, police brutality, school shootings, veterans being denied healthcare they were promised, companies extorting people with things like insulin prices or healthcare costs in general, climate change, asbestos, literal slavery in our prisons, actual Nazis rallying, the fact that the people died in the insurrection. They're focused on ruining the lives of women over clumps of cells that don't even have brains.
Wouldn't it be more akin to feeding your own 2 month old? Do you think parents have an obligation to feed their child?
In my scenario, I clearly didn't.
The way the %'s work with contraceptives is if someone is consistently sexually active and reasonable pregnancy age. Simply taking a % of total women in the united states is a huge misstep in your calculation. Woman past the age of 40 have 1/6 of the chance of pregnancy as a 30 YO, is it fair to represent the 175m woman as prime pregnancy age? only 65m are between age 15-44. 30% of people haven't had sex in the last year. So right off the bat, you drop 175m women to some 40m. It would reduce further if you included women who don't have consistent sexual activity.
If you have a good argument, you don't need to misrepresent facts.
According to some quick sources I googled, only 12% of abortions are because of health complications.
Once again, the vast majority of abortions are 'choosing between the life of the mother and kid' - it's simply that the baby is 'undesirable' to the mother. I don't think killing my twin brother simply because I don't desire him is a morally acceptable situation.
Because of medical POA's, or other legally recognizable authority given by the person on life support, to another individual. I've given my parents the right to decide what happens to me in such an event. A baby doesn't given that consent, to my knowledge.
It's clearly not. In some states, women can get abortions freely until birth. To some that matters, to me I see it as a states rights issue and they can have that if they'd like.
I agree. there are a billion issues we can talk about and I think they're too stuck on stuff like abortion and would like them to focus on other problems too. That doesn't change the fact that me being pro-life doesn't mean i simply want to enslave women.
Damn it Lemmy deleted my reply.
I had a whole lot to say, but I'll just reply to the last point, at this point we're disagreeing on the same things on repeat anyway.
I wouldn't go as far as saying slavery, especially since we do have forced prison labor protected by the constitution. But it is stripping women of many of their rights. I don't think holding pro-life beliefs is a bad thing, or makes you a bad person. I do think holding the belief that the government should enforce your religious beliefs on others is pretty awful though. I'm making the assumption that it's religious, because I have never heard of someone thinking a fetus is a human before it has a brain who wasn't also religious. Apologies if I'm wrong on that. But I firmly, strongly, without a doubt believe that a woman should have the right to make the choice for herself, and that your beliefs shouldn't prevent her from having her own beliefs, or her doctors from having their own beliefs.
I realized something recently, too. Conservatives aren't anti-government like they claim they are. They're anti "not-their-government". Conservatives don't care if state governments stomp all over the constitution, they only care if the Federal government does. As a leftist, I don't want any government stepping on anyone's rights, state or Federal, and I believe the rights guaranteed by the constitution are above state law.
That's the thing with exceptions. They're very hard to legislate.
Rape exceptions might as well not exist. Laws I've heard on this require the rape to be proven in the court of law. Even putting aside the fact that most rape cases are never processed and prosecuted, there's a very low likelihood that the case will conclude before the pregnancy does, thus rendering the exception useless.
Exceptions for medical complications are also very hard to legislate because you have to decide when is the woman dying enough to be able to save her life. Is it when we are losing her now? When she'll die tomorrow? Next week? Dying now means risking that she won't survive the treatment or if she does, that she'll lose her fertility in the process. Is that acceptable? The much higher chance of, in your view, losing two lives rather than one? I would argue no. This is exactly what led to these situations: women forced to endure trauma because doctors are terrified of life in jail if someone decides that the woman wasn't in "enough danger" or "in danger at all". I don't see any way around this outcome.
Third, I've only seen one state that allowed an exception for nonviability of a fetus. In all the other states I've seen, women have to carry doomed fetuses who will die shortly after birth. I can't imagine the trauma of that. Isn't it more merciful to allow those women to abort?
To have individual rights, one must first be individual. If you don't know the definition of individual, pick up a dictionary.
Someone doesn't understand the words "non-viable". You really should start by reading a dictionary before you start redefining words like fetus, life, and enslave.
Funny how you only care about the dead unborn child, not the living one or the mother.
Ok, I'll engage you on this one, your position at least seems internally consistent.
Let's play out this example - your 2 year old niece is sick, and so are you. You recently found out that she even exists - you didn't know you had a sister until CPS told you she's your responsibility.
An action that risks your life could possibly save her... Let's say a liver transplant. It has to be you, you're her only living family member. And because of that, you'll also be responsible for her - you can put her up for adoption when this is all over, but you're still on the hook for the medical bills whether this works or not.
She's guaranteed to die if you don't give her the transplant, and you would almost certainly recover quickly on your own.
If you go through with the transplant, she has a slim chance to live, and an even slimmer one to have a decent quality of life.
But in your current state, the transplant is very risky - at best you'll see a lengthy and expensive recovery, after missing months of work you'll be tens of thousands of dollars in debt. Complications could see you paralyzed or in lifelong pain, and it's very possible both of you die on the table - maybe even likely.
The doctors are telling you it's a terrible idea to go through with this, that the risk is unacceptable and it would be a mercy to just let her pass, but they're obligated to go through with it if you insist.
Now, no one is stopping you from going through with it - if you want to put your life on the line for another, that's your decision to make. You're her guardian now, so it's your decision if she should have to go through the pain for the chance at life, no matter how small.
That's all well and good - I've seen enough to know that death is often a mercy, but if you believe otherwise there's not much to say
Now, here's my question - should the government be able to force you to attempt the transplant?
Some of these details might seem weird, but I was trying to stick the metaphor as close as possible to a very real scenario with a dangerous pregnancy. The only difference is - the doctor is performing an action here, but withholding one with the pregnancy.
You're not though - pregnancy is not a lack of action. It's an enormous commitment, especially when it's atypical. It can even be a practically guaranteed death sentence - if the fetus implants in the fallopian tubes, it's already not viable - at best you're waiting for the fetus to grow big enough to rupture them, and hoping the bleed that causes doesn't do too much damage before you can get help.
Not to mention if a fetus dies in the womb after it gets to a certain size, it rots and leads to sepsis - unclear laws and harsh punishments have already led to situations where doctors refused care for both of these life threatening cases, and in both these cases the odds aren't slim, they're none. In the second the fetus was already gone... Sometimes when they induce labor the fetus isn't even in one piece... It's pretty grisly
I don't agree with your belief that a potential life is the same as a life, but let's set that aside - I can respect that as a belief
So... My root question to you is - Should you be able to force someone to risk their own for someone else?
If so, how sure do you have to be that the other person will die no matter what you do before you're released from the compulsion to put your own health on the line?
There's always at least some risk of pregnancy turning fatal for the mother. How much danger do you have to be in for the math to check out?
And also, to what point should politicians with little understanding of medicine be able to deny you care?
My actions didn't bring her into this world. That's a huge difference.
I agree there should always be exceptions for cases like these.
You see it as a potential life, I see it as a whole life. I thank you for understanding that it's reasonable one might have this believe.
See my response above.
In law there's a lot of 'reasonable' language - would a reasonable person think this is a likely event. In general, pregnancies aren't life risking to mothers.
If I brought in my twin brother to a doctors office and said 'hey, this guy is really making me sick, can you kill him for me?' I think a reasonable law maker can determine whether that's right or wrong. To some people, there's no difference between the life of you and I, and a fetus.
You saying that you don't bring your niece into this world sounds a lot like the responsibility argument, aka "you had sex and got pregnancy and this is your consequence or punishment". You really seemed to side step the entire analogy by saying you aren't the parent. Neither exceptions nor saying that you believe every fetus is the same as a fully formed human answer the question.
How would you feel and react if the government forced you until a dangerous medical procedure to potentially save the life of someone else? Please, don't side step again. Please, don't give me "it's not my fault they're here, they had sex, therefore they have to do it". Please, don't give me "but I think the fetus has rights too". How would you feel?
If an individual does the only action that would cause a human life to be created, I don't think they get to kill that being just because it's inconvenient. It's about preserving a human life, not about punishment.
I showed how your hypothetical and where it doesn't apply. If you'd like to use a different hypothetical, I'm fine with that. Why not use my child? If I have a 1 day old child, is it my responsibility to make sure my baby is fed and doesn't die of starvation?
If that's the only information about the situation that I have, I wouldn't like it.
If you instead word the same exact situation like 'do you have a responsibility to your child to keep them alive' I would say yes.
If that child, really fetus, is inside your body, no, I don't think you have to continue letting the fetus use your body. Because that's what it is. No one would force a woman to breastfeed. No one would say you legally have to use your boobs no matter what to feed this child. That's what being pregnant is.
And no, you are continually side stepping and not telling me how you'd feel. How would you feel?
Don't tell me what to do.
This is the actual Republican platform. The guy you're arguing with doesn't actually believe that protofetuses are worth trying to keep them alive. He just wants to be able to tell you what to do, and guess what? If he can force you to die over a nonviable protofetus, that means he has power over you, which is the entire point. He doesn't care about you, save that he doesn't want you to be able to keep him from killing you over a nonviable protofetus. In the pursuit of the 'right' people telling the 'wrong' people what to do, and in the pursuit of keeping the 'wrong' people from telling the 'right' people what to do, anything goes. Hypocrisy, lies, crime, election fraud, subverting courts, coups, false patriotism, false piety, terrorism, even outright murder... anything goes.
Know the enemy, spread the word to your friends and family (and maybe further).
Women in the U.S. now have fewer rights to their bodies than do corpses. So, unfortunately no, we aren't worth the same as another human life or even a human death for that matter.