As to some voices being “more equal” than others in a debate:

JUSTICE: Is it not a fact that the woman makes the final decision to keep or remove the fetus (and if to remove, then by whichever means are more readily available to her)? Therefore, in a hypothetical relationship - and bearing in mind that in many relationships the man is simply not around at this stage of the game - isn’t it useless to claim that a woman’s viewpoint should not carry more weight? It already does carry more weight. I think we can agree that the situation “sucks”, but can we also agree that the stakes are different for men and women in this issue? You know, like the stakes are different for men who can’t marry each other, or someone who is in excruciating agony and just wants out of this life? Sometimes the input of an outsider on a touchy issue is not welcome or helpful...particulary if that outsider is not in a position to empathize. Brock, am I close?

To Theocrats’s “rebuttal” of my point that an abortion ban is straight lunacy from a public health perspective:

I WROTE: ...the chief question is one of public policy and whether or not we are to limit or maintain access to legal abortion...I find it telling that I have yet to hear a rebuttal from anyone on my point that banning abortion is a futile and destructive act due to the likely rise (IMO) of an unregulated abortion black market.

To which Theo responded:

The anarchist could use the very same argument to dispense with laws and governance all together.  So whatever argument made for the value of law instead of anarchism would be the counterargument.  rgjp, do you value laws?  If so, why?

And, to which I now respond:

Bullshit. I fail to see how my argument defending pre-existing legislation because it successfully limits unsafe medical practices and “accidents” in the home can be remotely construed as having an anarchist backdoor loophole...or how it calls into question my views on the merit of law.

If it is not obvious to you by now, the answer is, of course, “Yes”...I do value laws...probably because they make me feel safe.

I think there were 1.3 million abortions last year in America. The sky did not fall - and if all you felt was a little pity or remorse, maybe some guilt, then I think we can all agree that you are very fortunate indeed, compared to the women who underwent these procedures. JUSTICE, you are right, the situation just plain sucks.

To sum up: (And this is directed at no one in particular...) If you aren’t in a position to empathize, don’t be offended if your comments aren’t welcomed by those living persons who are most directly affected by an issue. And also don’t be surprised if your comments seem not to be given equal weighting when it comes time to make a decision that is, ultimately outside the scope of your influence. Peace.

Justin: It’s not the fallacy of the beard. It’s a genuine question I’m presenting. Let’s throw out any discussion of endangerment, since I agree with you that that is a grey area. If we were to legislate such that abortion constituted murder, would we or would we not have to prosecute women who intentionally terminated their pregnancies? Would this be a capital offense? Would we not be legally bound to investigate every pregnancy not brought to term for signs of foul play?

I’m not trying to be facetious or sarcastic here. I genuinely would like clarification on the position of those who support the abortion = murder contention.

Justice: I initially took your post to mean something different than it did as well. It wasn’t until I saw that is was written by you and reread it that I realized what you were saying. Something about the phrasing of your comments, as well as the similarity of your name to another on the board, threw me at first. Not your fault of course, just thought you should know.

I’ve lost track of who said what here in this marathon thread but I would like to make a point to whoever it was that just wasn’t getting it. Bear (bare?) (where the hell is my dictionary?) with me now....

A tree is not equal to the latest novel by Stephen King.

(Human DNA does not equal Human Being.)

Before a tree can become the latest novel by Stephen King, it needs to become paper.

(Before Human DNA can become a Human Being it needs to become a fetus.)

Paper is not equal to the latest novel by Stephen King.

(A fetus is not equal to a human being.)

Paper needs to have concepts and ideas and words printed on it before it becomes the latest novel by Stephen King.

(A fetus needs to develop thoughts and feelings before it become a human being.)

These precepts belong to many things, not just Human Beings and novels by Steohen King.

You do not go to the grocery store to buy a dozen baby chickens in the shell. You buy a dozen eggs.

It isn’t the same thing.

Really.

The more important the subject and the closer it cuts to the bone of our hopes and needs, the more we are likely to err in establishing a framework for analysis.
— Stephen Jay Gould

Nowhere does this apply more obviously than in the case of abortion (and euthanasia, its counterpart at the other end).  What cuts to the bone of our hopes and needs, if not human life?  What is valuable, what is worth preserving, if not human life?

But what constitutes human life?  And what constitutes human life worth saving, and denial of life worth punishing?  This is the rub.

Some, especially (but not exclusively) religiously oriented people, believe in absolute right and wrong, and think that there are lines that can be drawn between good and bad, right and wrong, human and nonhuman.

Others believe that the world is more complex than that, and that while we often have to make decisions that split the world in two, that doesn’t mean that the split exists in the world, outside our need to make the decision.  That’s my position (if anyone had any doubts).

To get back to JPG’s original topic in a roundabout way, here’s my fairy tale on the development of this difference in worldviews between moral relativism and moral absolutism:

Grud is running from a sabertooth tiger.  She comes to a boulder and thinks “shall I go to the right or the left?” She goes to the right, and escapes.  Later, she mulls over her experience.  “There were two choices.  One was good, and one was bad.  I chose the good one.  Life is like that- right and wrong.  I must find the rules for what is right and what is wrong, and teach them to my children”.

Thus was born law- some behavior was right, some wrong; misbehaving kids got spanked.  Later, Grood improved upon law, by inventing (or imagining) a Someone who knew everything, and Who thus could ensure good behavior even when Mom and Dad weren’t around, by threatening spanking in the afterlife.  Religion was born.  And since humans, apparently alone of all animals, know they are going to die, and as Thomas Browne put it, “the long habit of living indisposeth us to dying”, the promise of pie in the sky when we die proved to be a powerful hook.

This is fantasy, of course.  Decisionmaking long precedes humans.  But only humans have culture codified in law and religion, our way of binding individuals into societies.

If we want societies, we must make more or less arbitrary decisions.  But regarding these decisions, laws, morals, as absolute, or beyond human needs, is backwards: humans evolved first, then morality.  And morality does not describe the human condition- it is always an oversimplification.  Morality, and laws, and religions, necessarily draw lines, as we necessarily decide which way to go around the boulder.  But that doesn’t mean that they have any absolute value.  That’s putting the eohippus before the equus.

And what does this excursis have to do with abortion?  Just this:  the lines we draw between right and wrong are necessary to make decisions.  But they do not exist outside of our minds and needs.  To say that abortion is “right” under some conditions and “wrong” under others is an oversimplification of a complex situation.

I’m a female/gay/aborted fetus.  Can I now please get some special consideration here?

Ulfrekr: Whatever it was, it became an interesting display.

Brock,

All my life I’ve heard well meaning people who aren’t gay say “...But by the way, I’m not gay”

The likelihood of that being your experience did occur to me after I submitted my comment. I can imagine.

Sorry I pissed you off for no general good.

I emphasized what I took as a clause I found particularly amusing. It’s okay; I adore your crazy ass even when it is showing.

rgjp,

Of course the woman ultimately makes the decision, and of course in the hypothetical relationship now absent a sperm donor, the potential father has no voice because he is obviously not speaking. But this started (for me) when someone was quoted making a proposal that comments on abortion beyond that point should be made by women only. (I didn’t catch who originally posted that comment.) In a general discussion, I think it is silly to dismiss an opinion on abortion simply because it was offered by a male. I agree the stakes are different for men and women in the abortion issue. But “different” is the key. The difference should leave the choice up to women, but men do have a stake. In the examples provided so far, we have only worthless men. Although there is great debate over when life actually begins, reality has it that a lot of people develop an emotional attachment to the potential the blob could become as soon as it is known said blob was created. While women are dealing with the issue, “my body, my life,” men deal with the issue, “my child, my life, my complete lack of control.”

Example: Man and woman have sex but do not intend to conceive. She gets pregnant anyway. She wants an abortion. He wants to have the baby. She gets abortion. Man loses potential child. However, we give her an opt-out which we absolutely will not give to men. If she wants the baby and he does not, she’ll have the baby and he will be expected to at least pay child support.

I am not attaching right or wrong to any part of that example. You said: ”women’s viewpoints on abortion should be given more weight than men,” so you and I are not discussing the ultimate choice, but whether or not men should have an equal voice in the issue. Considering the above, and so many other related issues not mentioned, I say men absolutely have a stake high enough to be worthy of equal consideration in the discussion on abortion.

rgjp: You know, like the stakes are different for men who can’t marry each other, or someone who is in excruciating agony and just wants out of this life? Sometimes the input of an outsider on a touchy issue is not welcome or helpful...particulary if that outsider is not in a position to empathize. Brock, am I close?

Yup, and let me just add that if men got pregnant instead of women there would be no such thing as labor. There’d be “Miller Time” then sweet unconsciousness ‘til the damn parasite was forced by the doctor to vacate the premises.

And the only one deserving say over the question to keep it or get an abortion would be him.

And human cloning would already be another option.

By the way, nice sound with Servo, rgjp.

Thanks Brock. I think you’re right about the Miller Time thing, though personally I’d be looking for something a lot stronger than watery American beer.

Justice, I think we are on the same page:

Example: Man and woman have sex but do not intend to conceive. She gets pregnant anyway. She wants an abortion. He wants to have the baby. She gets abortion. Man loses potential child. However, we give her an opt-out which we absolutely will not give to men. If she wants the baby and he does not, she’ll have the baby and he will be expected to at least pay child support.

Couldn’t agree more.

I am not attaching right or wrong to any part of that example. You said: “women’s viewpoints on abortion should be given more weight than men,� so you and I are not discussing the ultimate choice, but whether or not men should have an equal voice in the issue. Considering the above, and so many other related issues not mentioned, I say men absolutely have a stake high enough to be worthy of equal consideration in the discussion on abortion.

Equal in the discussion, but obviously not in the final choice. Agreed. Thanks for giving us exactly the kind of post I was hoping to see long ago on this thread. To be clear: the only thing IMO that should give ‘weight’ to a specific argument or statement from anyone should be the quality of the statement and the meaning contained within...As anyone (should) know, it’s pretty hard to make anyone do anything by force of argument, especially when applied to matters currently held by most citizens to be their own choice...that is unless the balance of power is so f*cked up that power of decision in these matters has been given over to another.

Which is why these guys won’t respond to questions like Ulfrekr‘s about the possibility of future conviction for past abortions and the possible need to track all pregnancies from start to finish. Methinks there’s a little too much government in all that for them to admit. But it would be necessary - if only to maintain such an outlandish balance of power over the control a woman presently has over her own body, and by extension, her fetus.

For the record, this all goes back to an older entry in which I grew tired of only hearing men respond in the negative to the question. I announced my *preference* that the next entry (not *all* further entries) be from a woman or no one at all. This was then somehow both ignored and misquoted - how do they do that? - which required a blunt (and admittedly hastily written) clarification for the Hoopleheads.

After spending a good part of last night and today reading through old SEB threads, I see that the tedium I experienced in this thread is not uncommon for those dialoging with certain of our faith-based contributors on any other. At least now I know who three more of them are...assuming their nicks don’t change anytime soon.