pro life ; pro choice

[ShroomySatori]

You don't have to understand it. ]

The best I can do is stay out of it. And honestly even in that I find myself questioning if that's morally right. Because if I believe life begins at conception, or again, that at least the protections of sentient life begin then, then how can I justify not taking a stronger stance to try and actually stop people having abortions. I know why I don't, because I know they honestly don't see what they're doing. Because I know that the choice to have an abortion for most is not an easy one. I worry how outlawing it will have side effects that could put the mothers life at risk too. And because it's hard to want to do things that hurt innocent people alive and here now for the sake of someone who can't yet speak for themselves. But then I also think perhaps that's all the more reason I should.

This is how I feel too or at least relate it got me thinking. Pro-choice also involves straight men like myself having the right to choose a future involving no abortions of any type that will affect nobody but their personal life. Want about pro-abortion, does that exist? The idea that all babies should be forced to abort. That is just as bad as forcing all women to have children. I don't really understand how this is becoming such a debate. What I see is not in black and white. I see how everyone has their own opinions, backgrounds, experiences, and ways of expression and I think that is such a beautiful thing. Everyone with a pro choice argument seems to have a different perspective on it (in the global social context, for me I was discussing my personal choice and trying to explain why I feel that way).

I don't see this as a debate at all, but then again I don't really follow politics at all. I am not American so it might be different here. I would never go to a pro-life rally because even though that is my choice, I don't care what others do if that is what they think is right. It's just something that goes against my morals and what I value in life.

So, in terms of a political standpoint that seems to just be another liberal vs. conservation mass argument, I am pro choice. In terms of my own personal and private sex life, I am pro life. Therefore, I never sleep around... only when I am in a relationship with someone.

From the point of view of theoretical physics and buddhism as I see them, I do feel that life begins at conception, because time just doesn't really exist and in the future it would hopefully be born a healthy child.

From my own personal spiritual viewpoint as well. I am allowed to be picky and selective about several important aspects of the love of my life who I will meet one day.

I knew a young lady who would perform illegal abortions on her friends and did that frequently. I was sad to hear that, I feel like they should have gone to a doctor. It's like throwing a heroin addict in prison the worst possible place for them to recover and get support.

 

[spacejunk]

I know you and most people here don't agree that life begins at conception. I know why you think that. And I don't hold any ill will because of it. I understand you feel like you're fighting for the right of women to exercise control over her body, something is normally be passionately in agreement on.

I don't have an opinion on when "life" begins. To me, it's academic and not relevant to how i make the decision.
The thing is though, the "child" whose rights you are "fighting" for is still hypothetical.
In utero, it is not a child - and the majority of embryos are "aborted" by the woman's body or other factors.

The reason i think that men especially need to respect women's rights to choose what they do with their own bodies is that those women do exist. They are living breathing people amongst us who have pressures and aspirations and a life.

I do find it distasteful when men moralise about women's health issues, because i think it is easy to make the sorts of claims about the rights and wrongs of abortion if they never have - and never will - be faced with those issues.
I get why people think abortion is wrong, even though i don't.

The thing i consider truly evil about anti-abortion activists is when they force rape victims to give birth to a child concieved during the rape.
To me, there is no theory or religious belief that can jusify something like that.

I also just wish people would fight to look after the kids that already exist out there; the ones that suffer from poverty or injustice they were born into.
I do see the rights of hypothetical children to be an odd thing to fight for, because it is a fight that also has the effect of taking away women's rights.
To me it's a very difficult belief system to wrap my head around. How many "pro-life" activists are also pro-gun?
I might be able to understand it if "pro-life" also meant "anti-war" and "anti-gun". But typically, it doesn't.

I'd go further than to say i'm pro-choice - i'm pro-abortion.

 

[ShroomySatori]

Man, I am both socially or politically pro-choice, but personally I want my own life to involve no abortions. For spiritual, scientific, philosophical, all sorts of views.

I should be able to choose a lifelong lover with very specific characteristics. For me, I find a woman who would not get an abortion even if she was raped quite admirable. That is not to say I have anything against those who choose to do this. I might personally disagree, but that's having to do with you. Not me.

I had no idea this was a heated conflict, I don't really follow debates and try to think for myself, and I see how people are choosing a left or right point of view, while it is not so black and white, but that's how politics often is I suppose. I didn't even really mean this from a political point of view as I didn't know there were rallies and stuff like that. I am only interested in my own lifestyle.

I want a lady with beauitiful flowing dark hair, with nice eyes and cute facial expressions. Who is intelligent. A lady who knows how to paint is so very sexy to me, it's like the one creative outlet I can't do or haven't tried. Singing, or playing the piano would be nice. I don't want to be with someone selfish, and I don't want to be with someone who would make this decision to abort regardless of the reason if all was going well. I totally fall for women in the arts. I like tall, slender women who are just a couple inches lower in height than myself. Perhaps with dark crimson red hair a subtle shade lighter than my own. Maybe a couple tattoos and some piercings but nothing too much. I'd like a caucasian female and that doesn't make me racist. They are the women I find most attractive and why should I deny myself the pleasure of having the best sex. A lady who can appreciate candlelight, incense, ornamentals, and antique clocks. I couldn't deal with someone too emotionally unstable because I have issues of me own. I could go on and on about the specifics of my high degree of selectivityy... but the is just another thing that i am looking for in someone. I'd also like her to be different and eccentric and sill but responsible too. I am pro-choice in an entirely different context too, how I have the right to choose a lover who will actually work with me.

I find this type of black and white, "us vs. them" way of thinking ridiculous. It is almost like when my BPD characteristics come out. I just love how people are sharing their experiences and personal points of view, as supposed to getting into conflict with a person with a different view who they might disagree with. If anything, each of these responses has opened my eyes in a new way. I am a constantly evolving person and although that desire out of my future wife will remain invaluable to me, I can understand other people's feelings too and don't resent them. After all, I would have liked some 100% lab grade china white when I was a heroin addict instead of sniffing up fuck knows what. Now that is a very real violation of human right to me and it creates environmental destruction and completely fucked up social behaviour that should never have to be so. If they made abortion illegal, it would only make the situation worse. It's not like it would stop anyone, there would just be like "abortion dealers" such as there are presently "drug dealers" and the cost of it would skyrocket most likely, and the health risks would be much worse.

 

[Vastness]

drug_mentor, you make some salient points and I like how you are not tolerating vague cliches and forcing people to clarify their position here, myself included.

Respectfully, I think it dilutes your point a great deal. Before going on to say why, I would again like to point out that nobody is positing that a foetus should have a choice whether it lives or dies - how would we consult a foetus about its wishes? It seems clear that what is at issue here is whether a foetus has a right not to be intentionally killed by another human. (...)

If you accept that what is at issue here is whether a foetus has the right not to be intentionally killed by another human, then it is difficult to see how this point has any force whatsoever. Adult humans have tens, if not hundreds, of rights. How does talk of extending one of these rights to another organism undermine the adult human status as the pre-eminent cognizer on planet Earth? I don't see that it is plausible to suppose that it undermines this status in any way whatsoever, let alone serves as a cause for offense (as you so hyperbolically suggested).

I am curious, do you feel that extending the right not to be intentionally killed by another human to the severely mentally handicapped is an insult to the status of neurotypical adult humans? If not, why not? So far as I can see the situation is analogous with that of extending this right to a foetus.

Does it really undermine my point that much? If we accept that the right of a human being not to be killed by another human being is, in some sense, a function of their status as highly sapient entities, with their own internal worlds, hopes and dreams which deserve not to be snuffed out, then a fetus (or, indeed, a baby) has none of these things. Therefore while you are no doubt correct in asking me to clarify my phrasing here, I think that if you substitute what I initially wrote for "the right not to be killed by another human being" then the point still makes sense.

Regarding people who are in a coma, severely brain damaged, or severely mentally handicapped, I think in the case of the first 2, generally at some point they did have these complex internal worlds, and the hope is that the person they were might still be in there, just currently unable to show itself through the damage to the body and/or mind. However I would note that in many cases these people are not considered to have the right not to be killed, if the decision to turn off life support can be considered to be "killing" in a sense.

The same could be said of severely mentally handicapped people I think, that although they do not have the capacity to develop beyond a certain point, they do still, eventually, have a wealth of experience that constitutes a certain internal "richness" that entitles them not to be simply killed... whereas a fetus or a baby is a blank slate, relatively speaking. I concede that I am ad-libbing this point slightly though and that perhaps with respect to my initial argument, some severely mentally handicapped people would be denied their right not to be killed by another human being. To be clear, I'm not saying that I personally would be OK with killing them any more than I would be OK with killing a baby, I'm just not sure at the moment if I can reconcile intellectually the idea that they should not be killed with my obvious emotional aversion to the idea.

As for being offended, I concede, that point was hyperbolic as you say and kind of a passive aggressive dig at those who are offended by the idea of abortion (not aimed specifically at anyone in this thread). I can't actually back it up and I'm not genuinely offended, so I respectfully withdraw that statement.

I think there is a line there [between pre-birth and post-birth abortion], and I actually think it's pretty simple to explain. The moral permissibility of abortion is not due to a foetus having some 'lesser' status than human beings, it is due to women's rights to bodily integrity. What I mean is, by undergoing pregnancy a woman undergoes significant physical changes, and has some risk of potentially life-threatening complications - nobody has the right to compel any woman to go through this, and no foetus has a valid claim to use and occupy its' mothers' body. Therefore, if a woman decides that she does not want to undergo these changes or undertake these risks, she has a right to take steps to avoid them, in this scenario that involves terminating the pregnancy. Now, once the child is born there is no longer any issue about the mother's bodily integrity, so, of course there is no justification for arbitrarily ending a babies life once it has been born.

Is this the only factor in the moral permissibility of abortion? I don't think I agree. At least, I don't think that for many people this is the only factor.

Before I get on to my main point with this I feel it worth mentioning that framing the argument in this way opens up a whole separate debate about the value of the bodily autonomy of the mother and whether or not it supercedes the right of the fetus not to be killed. For those who do not believe this to be the case, it also serves to justify various arguments regarding the "selfishness" of the mother for putting her own bodily autonomy before the right of the unborn baby to live. For this reason alone I think that the bodily autonomy argument does not really stand on it's own merit. Does society have a right to compel the long suffering parents of a severely mentally handicapped child to continue to endure, rather than taking back full control over their lives by deciding to kill the child?

Let's posit a thought experiment to remove the women's bodily autonomy from the equation- say in the future, human beings can remove fetuses from themselves at the moment of conception, and place them in incubators. A woman chooses to do this almost immediately, so the fetus is no longer any drain on the resources of her body. At, say, 9 weeks, the fetus is the size of a grape, and she (or both parents jointly) decide that they are no longer ready for a child, they could let it grow to full term and give it up for adoption, perhaps, but they don't want to deal with the paperwork and decide to "terminate" it.

The women's bodily integrity is not an issue here, and honestly, I find it hard to see that what they are doing is morally wrong and that a grape-size brainless proto-human has ANY rights whatsoever, INCLUDING the right not to be arbitrarily killed, or even boiled up and eaten. On the other hand, if this IS an issue, what about 1 week when the fetus is maybe 1mm or less across? I think that for most people, there IS a line that is separate from bodily autonomy alone, and I propose that if there is a line, it is a sliding scale that it may be possible to rationally push further than most of us would consider permissible on a purely emotional level.



Obviously if we assign a supernatural property (soul-implantation) to every human fetus at the instant of conception then, really, the point is not arguable because this is equivalent to saying "God says this is so!" and is impervious to rational discussion. However I think there are problems even with this idea. Surely as a society we should be devoting more research to figuring out the optimal conditions in a woman's body to avoid spontaneous early-stage abortions, and surely women have a moral duty to put their reproductive health as priority number one, above even their own happiness, and focus on maintaining this militantly good health in the interest of making sure that as many "souls" as possible make it on the long road to birth. ShroomySatori, I would be interested to hear your thoughts on this last point.

 

[JessFR]

I don't have an opinion on when "life" begins. To me, it's academic and not relevant to how i make the decision.
The thing is though, the "child" whose rights you are "fighting" for is still hypothetical.
In utero, it is not a child - and the majority of embryos are "aborted" by the woman's body or other factors.

The reason i think that men especially need to respect women's rights to choose what they do with their own bodies is that those women do exist. They are living breathing people amongst us who have pressures and aspirations and a life.

I do find it distasteful when men moralise about women's health issues, because i think it is easy to make the sorts of claims about the rights and wrongs of abortion if they never have - and never will - be faced with those issues.
I get why people think abortion is wrong, even though i don't.

The thing i consider truly evil about anti-abortion activists is when they force rape victims to give birth to a child concieved during the rape.
To me, there is no theory or religious belief that can jusify something like that.

I also just wish people would fight to look after the kids that already exist out there; the ones that suffer from poverty or injustice they were born into.
I do see the rights of hypothetical children to be an odd thing to fight for, because it is a fight that also has the effect of taking away women's rights.
To me it's a very difficult belief system to wrap my head around. How many "pro-life" activists are also pro-gun?
I might be able to understand it if "pro-life" also meant "anti-war" and "anti-gun". But typically, it doesn't.

I'd go further than to say i'm pro-choice - i'm pro-abortion.

See this is exactly what I'm talking about. It's not just that you hold the opinions you do, you go further willfully refuse to properly comprehend how others see it.

For all your talk of tolerance and understanding it shows how either it's all bullshit, and you're only truly tolerant and understanding of what you agree with, or too stupid to comprehend it. And since I don't think you're stupid I'm going for the former.

You just said you find the idea of someone forcing a woman pregnant by rape to give birth as evil. It being evil or not is a question as to the morality and reason of the person with the belief that she should have that child. What you are doing is willfully ignoring that that person believes that pregnancy involves a real person with real rights. You are insinuating that that belief is actually dishonest.

Because unless you're a complete idiot, which I don't believe, there is no reason you shouldn't be capable of understanding that for such a person, the way we see it. We are protecting yet another victim. To us, you are killing a human being for a crime it is as much a victim in as anyone. They aren't responsible for what their father did. And they don't deserve to die for it. That doesn't mean we don't feel for the mother too, all it means is we don't feel that to the extent that we think it's ok to just kill the child for it.

I mean why not go further? Say she doesn't have an abortion, say she has the child from the rape, then say at age 5 decides to kill it because they see it as a reminder of the rape. I'm sure you'd agree that as a hypothetical, no that would not be ok.

But you know full well our position is that it's no different killing them at 5 than to kill them before they are born. You can disagree and argue that it IS different, that before it's born it's ok but not after because it doesn't count then.

That's fine. But don't you go calling us evil because either you're too stupid to comprehend that to us it's no different, or the rather what I think is the real reason, that you so disrespect and have such intolerance for our point of view that you insinuate we have a secret hidden motive and don't really believe it either.

If YOU did it it would be evil, because you don't see a real human life in the pregnancy, but we do. Evil is in the intent and the motive, and there is no evil in making a difficult decision for a greater good.

So which is it? Are you really too limited to comprehend that rightly or wrongly we believe what we do, and as a result that greatly impacts the morality? Or are you just so intolerant of it that you intentionally pretend that you don't grasp it?

If you like there is one more option you can pick, that it IS ok for her to kill the child at 5 as much as it is before it's born and we are evil for wanting to stop her, but I have a feeling you won't pick that.

But beyond those three, I'm not seeing another intellectually honest argument to be made.

There are however less honest options to chose in how you respond. I just laid out three choices of arguments you can make, I don't see a fourth option that is coherent and rational and consistent, but there are additional options for how you can reply. And indeed I suspect you will choose one of these rather than any of those three because like I said I don't think you're stupid. And so you will correctly deduce that from a political and debate perspective it would be to your advantage and best interest to dodge the question entirely.

So you could ignore it, and just not reply at all, option 4, you won't do that because it's as good as admitting defeat though.

So if I had to place a bet, I'm going to predict you will choose option 5. The standard politician dodge. You will frame your reply that the options I gave are too limiting and that you would in fact not be honestly answering it to pick any of them. And then you will make another statement of your position. At which point I would point out that you dodged the question, at which point you tell me that no, that the question is too complex to answer so simplistically. Followed by another statement.

Standard political dodge, you ignore the question and frame a statement of your own position as the real answer to the question. Implying that if you'd stuck with the options I gave you wouldn't be giving a full and honest answer. Which is of course untrue. The truth is it's too your advantage not to let me lock you into giving a specific answer to a specific question in such a way that weakens your overall argument and since you tell yourself it's for a greater good it's ok to undertake such a manipulative and underhanded dodge. If indeed you're aware of doing it at all. Many learn to do it without even really knowing that's what they're doing.

Which is of course why I brought this up in the first place, to preempt the dodge. I still think that's what you'll do because it's still tactically the best counter move. Even if I just weakened it by drawing attention to it.

But I'm hoping to be surprised, I'm hoping that by drawing attention to it you'll think about it and see how futile and pointless it all is and just answer in a sincere and honest and up front way that isn't either knowingly or unconsciously a political move.

This is why I hate politics by the way. Cause I've long worked out all the moves and counter moves and how it all works so I can do the entire argument playing out both sides in my head and so save myself lots of time.

Using such political dodges you can stall and not answer forever and most people won't notice. Which is of course what happens in real life.

I suppose there is also another version of option 5, you could entirely change the subject and make it about the fact that I went to the length to point all this out and make it about me. Or you could argue that the act itself is evil regardless of the motives and that it can be evil behavior without evil intent, even though that's not really what you suggested.

I really hate politics.

I'll tell you what I would love, what would go a little towards restoring my faith in people, and honestly this is how I would respond.

Option 2. You admit that deep down you know that it's not about evil and you do know how we feel. But that you don't agree with us and that because of that you are willing to make arguments you know don't really hold up because you ARE intolerant of it. That you're human humans make mistakes and you're only doing what you believe is right. But that yes, you know arguing it is evil doesn't really hold if you honestly believe life begins at conception.

I've done it, I've made arguments I kinda knew I could tear apart knowing that the person I'm talking too likely won't come up with as good a counter argument as I could have. I shouldn't do it. But I have.

You will likely naturally resist taking this option though because it's basically admitting defeat, which people desperately try to avoid. Not to mention it would open an opportunity for me to pounce on it and argue that this totally undermines any moral superiority on your side. And then argue that by extension it shows how your entire wider argument is bullshit. It doesn't, admitting it doesn't make your pro choice beliefs wrong. But if I were you and if I "wanted to win" I'd be concerned that by admitting it I'd be opening myself to my entire argument and ability to argue honestly being torn apart.

That's the thing about politics, at least between highly intelligent people. It's not about the two people arguing, it's about all the people watching.

But anyhow. I'm expecting option 5, hoping for option 2. People so rarely surprise me.

 

[ShroomySatori]

K Vastness I read your entire response before writing this, it's been written from a different life keep in mind. Getting into supernatural properties such as soul implantation (I actually don't believe in souls, and I am an atheist); I am not religious but have my own views on the nature of reality I have developed over years of study and deep thought, and avoid the use of the word God as it is so morally charged people seem to stuck in their point of view which they might not have really even thought about that deeply.

I think your thought experiment would take away the intimacy part of naturing and caring for a pregnant woman, which to me would make the experience more intimate than handing it over to someone else to grow like kali mist x sensi star herb. It's so much better and rewarding when you grow your own organic herb, and I also prefer outdoor herb (ties into my sort of naturalist perspective).

That being said, I definitely think that your thought experiment regarding an incubating fetus is valid and should be legalized and realized. For example, what if the woman has a panic disorder (such as myself). Or is not physically healthy (another thing I look for)? The endurance of pregnancy must be such a challenge that it could lead her to be traumatized, with worse anxiety, and might be far too much of a drain on her personal chemical makeup to handle. There may be no support from the husband either, who could be a runaway leaving a 16 year old girl with this to deal with on her own.

For me, what you are saying about a grape-sized brainless porto-human I have a different vantage point on this. I personally believe that all life is conscious down to the very subatomic particles that make up the atoms that interact through the fundamental forces to become stable molecules that make up the cells that make up the human body. I don't care if it begins with the quantum incomprehensible dance of an electron and a positron. No matter how small, in this sense for myself it is all about the potential for what the bundle of nerves of a grape-sized brain has the potential to turn into, and choosing to extinguish that from ever occurring - especially in relevance to myself to me would be wrong, as I am perfectly capable and desire to raise children within a couple years. It has to do with my present context. I am a very healthy and sane in my own way man just shy of 30 (unless 2C-C has made me infertile or cancerous or worse after 9 days of habitual use... lol), and I have a vegetarian diet (an actual healthy and devoted one... also something I look for I need my lady to have her own way of taking care of herself, wheter a carnivore or a vegan or whatever it means nothing to me... just that she takes her health seriously). I also practice yoga and she would need to be fit and toned too.

What I am meaning to say apart from tripping tangents, is that if me and my future wife or lover are very healthy people and are capable of doing everything we can to nature and support the growth birth, and raising of a human spirit (there is a difference between spirit and soul in my vocabulary system anyway) - then I would like us to have that experience together instead of deny from ourselves what could be a wonderful thing that came into the world from a broken condom and our decision to allow the sperm and egg to potentially rise into a healthy human being, who might bring so much joy into our lives and embolden our romance and intimacy while bringing a third love into our life that we created our very selves through hard work and effort.

I really liked how you said it could be selfish to keep a child that you don't want. People do this for the sake of getting money from the government in my country all the time, and I feel like those types of people should just have abortions unless they are considering adoption because the child would ultimately be neglected.

Hope you got something out of this, it's almost 4am here and I haven't really slept at all in around 48 hours as I have been up tripping, working on my creative outlets, and thinking deeply and having this type of lovely intellectual discourse with a variety of topics and also with my brother and close friends. Anyways, to me it doesn't matter if the thing is 8 months into the process of birth or 1 day. The murder that occurs through war happening daily is already an atrocity, and completely legal and even commended. To me, my view is intertwined in my morals, spiritual stance, my background in theoretical physics especially considering the progression of time, and also, her point of view tells me a lot about who she is as a person if we have a discussion on our perspectives. I'd like to be 100% open and honest with the sexy, smart, artsy, creative lady of my dreams.

I really just hope the girl of my dreams will come along at some point... she may already have for all I know. Another very important thing for me is that in my country there is a problem where young people are just not having enough children. It is really going to impact the future of my country, and it adds a new dimension for my desire to have children and properly raise them.. not for a government cheque.

Also, what if the pregnant woman is a regularly prostituting (for a living) crackhead, speed freak, alcoholic, and heroin addict who is incapable or unwilling to stop using for her pregnancy, which withdrawal would stress out far to much to create a healthy baby anyway either way. At that point, abortion is simply the logical choice. Who wants a junkie for a mother, I mean the baby has to be weaned slowly off cocaine after birth. What a lovely way to start life. Sorry for the grammar I've been on 2C-C for over a week, it's 4:20am and haven't slept in over 2 days now except for a very brief crash earlier yesterday. I've still been taking care of myself and have been extremely active, but I am getting a little worn out. I need to sleep on this and cook up a pasta with garlic, ginger, a lot of mushrooms, some splendid cheese, fettuccini, dried chili peppers I grew and sun-dried in the early autumn, and a lot of black pepper and turmeric. I should probably go for at the very least a 6 minute downward dog as well... in fact I will be doing that momentarily.

Thanks for all the different perspectives it is wonderful for me to hear them.

 

[spacejunk]

You just said you find the idea of someone forcing a woman pregnant by rape to give birth as evil. It being evil or not is a question as to the morality and reason of the person with the belief that she should have that child. What you are doing is willfully ignoring that that person believes that pregnancy involves a real person with real rights. You are insinuating that that belief is actually dishonest.

When i say "forcing a rape victim to give birth to a child conceived when they were raped" that's exactly what i mean.

Are you talking about the decisions of the pregnant rape victim?
Sorry jess, but that's irrelevant to my point.

Whether or not the woman wants the child, if she's not allowed an abortion, she is forced to carry it full term and give birth.
That's why i used the word "forced".

Now, if a rape victim wants to keep a child, that's her business. I'm not talking about forcing them to have an abortion.

But i don't know if im misreading your comment. When you say
"It being evil or not is a question as to the morality and reason of the person with the belief that she should have that child"

If you're saying that the "evil" (a word i hate btw) is in the reason why someone denies rape victims the right to have an abortion, then i disagree with that too.

I don't think reasons for believing something which causes someone suffering are that important; what matters is the suffering it causes.

People can have the best reasons for doing reprehensible things, but i don't think there is belief system that could ever justify forcing rape victims to give birth to their rapist's child.

See this is exactly what I'm talking about. It's not just that you hold the opinions you do, you go further willfully refuse to properly comprehend how others see it.

I don't know how it is possible to "willfully refuse to properly comprehend how others see" things.
Honestly i don't. I'm being honest - i'm not going to pretend to understand something i think is unethical and wrong.

Sorry, but i don't understand "pro-life" beliefs at all. I read the reasons people give - that you give - but honestly, i don't understand them one bit.

For all your talk of tolerance and understanding it shows how either it's all bullshit, and you're only truly tolerant and understanding of what you agree with, or too stupid to comprehend it. And since I don't think you're stupid I'm going for the former

Now this is really quite insulting.
For all my "talk of tolerance and understanding"?
When have i ever spoken of tolerance and understanding?
Tolerance is patronizing bullshit; centre-left american "liberal" nonsense.
I don't talk about tolerance - i talk about acceptance.
"Tolerance" implies that there is something wrong with the person or thing you are "tolerating".

For all your outrage - you're the one pushing your beliefs on other people.
You're pushing your belief systems on me, for being part of an abortion.
Most people don't talk about abortion, because people have, um...really judgmental horrible attitudes about it.
But it's very common, and i don't think anyone should have to deal with other people's moralising about it, on top of the trauma of their situation already.

You make it sound like i'm some monster for saying nobody - under any circumstances - should make a woman give birth to her rapist's kid.

I'm not forcing people to have abortions.
But the way you're talking, i get the feeling that you'd happily force people not to have them.
Correct me if i'm wrong. Isn't that what you mean when you saying you're "fighting for the rights" of an unborn "child"?
I just don't understand why people can't mind their own business.

So no, i don't understand.

You can say you "believe" a foetus has the rights of a child (and chastise me for not presenting "intellectually honest arguments" ) - but you're actually talking about the rights of a foetus.
They're not the same thing.

So yeah, i'll take your complaints about intellectually honest arguments with a grain of salt.

 

[ShroomySatori]

Judge not, lest yee be judged. (I'm not religious I jive with that though)

Just railed some more 2C-C, had to chime in. I am loving the interconnection of all this like how it's not only altering my perspective on something I have only just recently thought about and only had one conversation with a lady friend's perspective on her choice. Not only am I seeing perspectives I never would have thought of before, but I am realizing that this is probably happening to others becoming involved in this discussion as well. To me it is all about sharing perspectives, analytical thought processes, belief systems, and experiences. I am loving it as I didn't need to create this thread... was just trippin out about it and I've never made a thread here before. It's about time... and probably time to come down from all the psychedelics over the past week or longer, but I am only recently clean of oxycodone (heroin is a long ago, but it's the same garbage) and I am protecting myself from that evil bullshit that stole years of my life away. I will have two weeks tomorrow, and I have no cravings or withdrawal symptoms at all on 2C-C, so I plan on tripping on it for at least another week or two. One psychedelic binge in my incarnation shouldn't hurt a trillionth as much as what that shit did to me and I did to myself. I lost my dignity, I was emasculated by my asexuality at the time; married to heroin, I wasted tens of thousands of dollars I legitimately worked really hard for, lost my intelligence, my attention to detail as my pupils were so contricted I couldn't really see the world anymore, lost all my creative drive, I lied to friends and family's faces, and withdrawing from my habit at its worst was the most horrible experience of my life, and I chronically relapsed for a long time too so it was a vicious cycle of pain until by the end of it I was laying in bed for a week too sick to get up to grab a cup of tea, suffering such excruciating agony that I was having perpetual morbid suicidal thoughts and I'd probably have done it if I had the physical capability and awareness to take a short drive and jump off a cliff. And that's the fun part. That seems like years ago for me at this point... I have changed so much.

 

[Vastness]

Thanks for taking the time to respond ShroomySatori, also I appreciate the openness with which you seem to be approaching this topic, it seems you are not closed to hearing alternate points of view which is good to see. I confess I had actually grouped you into the God/soul camp mentally, obviously I didn't read your previous posts properly. Regarding that pregnancy/incubator analogy, without diverging off-topic too much, yeah, no doubt there would be social problems caused by this kind of technology, but as a species we will just need to cross that bridge when we come to it.

Anyway I just wanted to respond to one point specifically which I think is most relevant, and very similar to the "potential for life" arguments often used to support pro-life positions:

I personally believe that all life is conscious down to the very subatomic particles that make up the atoms that interact through the fundamental forces to become stable molecules that make up the cells that make up the human body. I don't care if it begins with the quantum incomprehensible dance of an electron and a positron.

This to me is problematic - while you assert that essentially all existence is alive in some way (which, of course, in some way it is) you still assign a unique, special property to the moment of conception. But what part of this process is it that makes it so special? Is an individual sperm or egg special on it's own? If so, surely condoms and other forms of contraceptive, preventative methods of birth control are in some sense extinguishing a potential life? Perhaps what many religious groups have said about masturbation before is actually correct, that it is wrong because of all those wasted potential egg-fertilisers dying a cruel, meaningless death.

What about in a laboratory setting, say we strip the genetic content out of the egg and sperm and combine them in a petri dish, absent the cell walls and some key conditions needed to continue to multiply and grow... They combine, and initially begin to replicate, but quickly the replication process fizzles out because some key elements are missing... this small mass of, potentially, proto-fetal DNA just remains sitting in some kind of stasis, alive but unable to go any further... is it morally wrong to just rinse out this petri dish, consigning this small amount of alive genetic material to certain death?

I could think of countless other examples to demonstrate what I see as the issues with the "potential" argument, but my point is that if we're arguing the potential that something can become a human, then conception is an arbitrary line, and we can trace it back further, to make contraception immoral, or even the general, abstract decision not to put all your efforts into procreating as much as possible and as early as possible in order not to waste any of those sacred life-giving pre-fetus cells. Why is it OK to use contraception and to avoid procreating as early and as often as possible?

No doubt this same line of, in my view, faulty moral reasoning might have been used in the past to justify raping and pillaging just in the aim of creating more "potential" human beings. Obviously, despite the moral problems with this however, there is an evolutionary imperative in some sense which probably lead to the development and perseverance of this kind of mindset to rapidly propagate the species. However (even disregarding the moral aspect entirely) the era in our history where there was any practical use for this kind of viewpoint is now long past, and any arbitrary lines need to be reassessed.

If anyone can convince me that conception is not a completely arbitrary line as far as the "potential" for a human life goes, I would love to hear it.

 

[JessFR]

Really? Option 1? Well it was a surprise I'll give you that.

Ok ok fine. First a couple things, no, you're wrong, I'm not much into forcing people to do shit. What I'm talking about is how you act like you don't understand how pro lifers think. It's one thing not to understand how someone can be pro life it's another to not understand the implications for it.

You said the word evil first. You said it was evil to force a woman to have a baby by rape she doesn't want.

It is willful refusal to comprehend when you know what someone else thinks but pretend that you don't.
In this context, it refers how you say things like that you don't understand why people can't mind their own business, or how people can force a rape victim to have their rapists child. By saying that, if indeed you are being completely and totally honest, what you are saying is not only don't you understand how someone could come to a pro life point of view, by you also don't understand what the implications of having that view are.

This isn't that hard to grasp. IF the fetus has the rights of a person, then saying people shouldn't stop people killing it cause it's not their business is no different than saying people should stop a parent killing their newborn for the same reason. The same is true if the newborn is a newborn from rape. So all that matters is if the fetus has those rights or not. But you and others like you take it further and make arguments that entirely reject that you even comprehend that people who believe the fetus has those rights exist. You make arguments that already assume a fetus has no rights to start with.

You say, it's her body why can't you mind your own business. Like that's a real question. If it's a real question then you reject that you even comprehend that we believe he fetus has those rights, or you reject that you believe we believe it. Because if you did you'd already know the answer, we can't for the same reason we can't if it's a woman killing her newborn.

It means you don't follow the logic that if, rightly or wrongly we consider a fetus to be a child. You still even then don't comprehend how as a result of that it means arguments of minding your own buisness do not apply. Because if they do, then by extension, all morality is relative. And it's not ok for me to stop a parent from killing their 6 year old because thats their choice and I should mind my own buisness.

If the fetus has the same rights as say, a newborn baby, then the only way you can rationally argue that it's not ok to stop someone destroying the fetus because it's not theirs is to also argue that it's not ok to stop someone killing their baby after it is born. In either case, if the fetus is a person, society has a right to prevent its parent ending its right. Just like they can after its born. That YOU don't believe it has the same rights does not prevent you being smart enough to comprehend that other people do and what the implications are. And how it means it becomes ok to take action to prevent a pregnancy being terminated. Your not agreeing or even understanding how someone could believe a fetus has the rights of a baby has nothing to do with your ability to understand that by having that belief arguments about how we should mind our own buisness and respect people's rights hold no weight. From such a standpoint, that argument then invalidates any form of absolute morality whatsoever. The right not to be stolen from, the right not to be murdered for cutting someone off, all morality ceases to have meaning. And so you can argue that it is wrong to feel a fetus has rights, but making arguments to someone who does that already presuppose that those rights don't exist is, well, stupid.

So either you really aren't smart enough to grasp it, or you really don't think we ACTUALLY believe a fetus has rights and that saying we do is a cover for a separate motive.

Or.... You DO grasp it, deep down.... but you don't want to be seen to legitimize a prolife view in any respect by acknowledging that you grasp it. Making out that it is entirely alien and incomprehensible.

I dont know which it is. From talking to you, I think it's the last one, that you do know on some level, but that it's much easier to let yourself believe that you really don't understand it whatsoever. Because it would be a lot harder to hate and fight pro lifers if you let yourself truly comprehend it. Much easier on the conscience to consider pro lifers stupid dishonest alien people.

Get it now? You can say "why can't you mind your own business". But if you HONESTLY down to your very soul fail to comprehend, and it's a real question that you honestly have absolutely NO idea the answer too. Then you are saying you just aren't smart enough to grasp something which is purely a rational and logical question.

The question of if the fetus is a life, has rights, etc. that's an entirely separate thing from being capable of understanding what it would mean if it were true. It is saying that you are well, just too dumb to comprehend something that is logically no more complex than comprehending people can die if you don't personally witness the death. I'm sorry but I can't put it much more simply.

For what it's worth, I just do not believe that you're that stupid. I've seen your posts, you're not dumb. Which means either you refuse to comprehend because you don't WANT to think about it. Because you don't want to understand in the way someone might not want to understand how a serial killer thinks for example. Or, you DO understand deep down, but you pretend you understand it less well than you really do because it makes it easier to dislike and fight the people you disagree with. But even so that is still intellectually dishonest.

 

[Vastness]

^ JessFR, I'm assuming you also subscribe to the "potentials" argument, ie, the life of a fetus has as much worth as an adult human because of everything that it might become, so I would appreciate hearing your thoughts on my previous post also about why it is that conception is the point at which these proto-human cells start actually mattering rather than, for example, pre-conception in the overies or testes, or even earlier.

 

[JessFR]

Well, yes. It's not the entirety of why I believe what I believe, but yes, the potentials argument as you describe it, assuming I understand what you mean, is certainly a big part of it. I would generally describe it more as not thinking of time the way other people usually do.

It's complicated, yes, much of it has to do with how I see a future human as as much a real person before they've reached that point as when they have. But there's more too it. As I said it as a more spiritual aspect to it as well. Involving my feelings of the soul and consciousness and existence. What it is, when it begins. There's also a more practical aspect to it, which is that I feel like all these cut off points, such and such months, after birth, and so on are largely artificial legal constructs that don't have any scientific basis to them.

There are several reasons, the spiritual one being the hardest to explain. The simplest way I can think to put it is that I have a fairly unusual idea about how the mind works, how time works, etc. And that because of that, I don't feel comfortable destroying what will at an indeterminate time be a conscious human life knowingly.

If a fertilized embryo doesn't make it to term that's different, it was beyond our control. And it's VERY different prior to conception. Some of my beliefs still come into play but most of them cease to have meaning before conception. Because after conception it is much more a single, relatively complete individual now in play. On its path to existence, or already existing, however you might want to see it.

Before that, when it's still a sperm and an egg among many others in countless combinations, it takes intentional acts to form a direct path. Like having billions of roads to choose. But after conception, you have narrowed your paths enormously. 99.9% of them are gone. And for the first time we are talking about an individual more than a possibility. It's still more complicated than that of course. There are still many forks in the road left to be taken to result in a true individual person.

Not quite enough to make me quite go so far as to say that a fertilized human embryo is so much so identical to a future individual human being as for me to say, want to go passing laws outlawing tampering with it without much thought. But enough to make me very uncomfortable taking intentional action to have it destroyed either.

Like I said, even as a pro lifer I'm a relatively mild one. I do think human life begins at conception, I do not feel it's just a bunch of "meaningless cells". So is all life as you further expand the parameters. And I don't think people have the right to destroy it.

But at the same time, I feel for the people who've found themselves with an unwanted pregnancy. It's enough to make me hesitant to want to go trying to stop people getting abortions. But not nearly enough to say I'm pro choice. Cause really I'm not, at heart I believe a conceived human embryo is a person. Or good enough anyway. There are billions upon billions of variables that go into making every living person, but conception is the most important. So to me that makes it the natural line in the sand. Especially when there are enough unknowns to make me uncomfortable drawing another one largely for the sake of legal convenience.

I don't much like getting in to why I believe what I believe. Because I've never been able to explain it to the point that I've felt anyone really grasps what I'm saying. Which makes discussing it impossible. And it's so politicized that even if my reasons were fairly simple they would quickly be made more complicated.

If I follow what you mean by potentials, it's probably true to say that plays a part in why I believe what I believe. But I wouldn't call it potentials. A sperm and an egg is a potential person as much as it is after they are combined. There is more to it than that.

But a lot of it is to do with how after conception I can start to see a real person much more than before that. A real person with a real life that will likely one day exist. Someone who's appearance, beliefs, experiences, all are now narrowed down enormously as a result of conception. And that is a lot of it.

There is so much we don't know about how life and existence works.

Another part of it is that, to me, from a scientific standpoint, if I accepted most of what pro choice people believe, then I wouldn't be able to honestly say I thought human life had real value until long after being born. It wouldn't be much different to kill a 1 year old. And pretty much everyone agrees that's not ok. So I just don't see it as intellectually and scientifically honest to put such an arbitrary whatever number of weeks limit.

There are lots of reasons. But it ultimately results in one conclusion. Which is that I can't just be ok with intentionally terminating a pregnancy.

 

[ShroomySatori]

Vastness, apologies for the confusion. I have been tripping for over a week and that is probably why you thought that. I have been undergoing a transformation of sorts. I have studied science and education academically so I am not a bible humper lol. More like, a sexy lady humper from time to time.

Before I read your thought experiment (they are very nice to read, by the way) - I'll give you my opinion on the second paragraph and maybe it will change my thoughts somehow when I read the rest of what you are saying. Jerking off doesn't mean shit to me, because none of those sperm cells ever fertilize an egg. It's not a waste - in fact, I have heard that for superior sperm cell production it is healthy to do so on a regular basis. I have no qualms with that lol. I feel that gelatinized maca root powder helps as well.

The way I see it, as soon as sperm cells are swimming and racing their way up to an egg (damn, I need to actually study this scientifically in detail it's fascinating) - there is the potential for conception to occur, and if the partners are healthy it more often than doesn't (not sure about this again... I don't think I'd have any trouble knocking a girl up lol).

My point is that, as soon as this process happens, physics can typically predict through the fundamental nature of reality rooted in mathematics and spacetime, uncertainty principles, and thermodynamics - whatever it may be - that eventually if the couple stay healthy together and the mother relieves her stress and is cared for, and eats healthy food and abstains from drugs, that more often than not, a healthy child will be born at a future point in space time further along the Time axis and at some other point in a geometrically altered location is Spacetime, the x y and z axis (I actually could have written axis in plural as ax, axe, or axis and this is the only noun in english that can be written in plural form from three singular nouns - just a fun fact for today, or tonight, or this afternoon, this evening or morning). I went off on a tangent and need to get to the end of my perspective. I believe that humans have the conscious choice to either allow this natural process to happen and see what it manifests as - something or nothing, but certainly a life changing experience - which could be the most loving part of your future existence. Or, humans can extinguish the process before it has a chance to really start. I personally think that I would never want to extinguish a natural process of life that I began myself, mistake or not. I don't really believe in mistakes, anyway, even though I am so very excellent at making them all the time.

This is my choice, you may have yours, as well as everyone else. So many factors come into play and most importantly to me is the condition and the relationship of the parents. If the relationship is not true love, then the woman who chooses to give birth I find to be selfless and admirable (like one of the ladies who first responded here) - so long as they don't stay together which to me I would hope. If there are money or uncontrollable drug addictions or health problems, then it is completely understandable to make that choice to me. However, I can never truly understand another's choices as they are their thought processes, not my own, and I can only really see my own thoughts... unless a cutie chick gives me a special sexy look for the blink of an eye. lol. There are exceptions to this.

I do not think whatsoever at all that your thought experiment with the petri dish is morally wrong at all. We do much worse things to live animals in the name of science, and also in the name of food we don't really need to eat so much of, after all. I am perfectly fine with wearing condoms and always do so I suppose that is contraception too. It is only if one breaks, and an egg is going to be potentially fertilized, that I would bring this into the picture. Otherwise, sex to me is romantic intimacy and a healthy, pleasurable great connection that is really important for relationships to work. I just make sure to check those condoms every time lol. In regards to the past, I think we have more law and order these days. I can see that if a woman was raped, why she would want an abortion. She might be traumatized by her rapists face we she looks at him or her growing up. It might be really unhealthy for her. If she chose to keep the baby, I see that as an act of selfless compassion transcendent of the ways of the ego. I feel like there should be a good reason to terminate, and there really often is not. Not to judge anyone at all who has done this before, it's just one way I judge the character of an attractive woman I sense a connection with.

Legal is illegal, and illegal is legal. My life has been made much harder, and far more dangerous to my life by drug prohibition and the idiotic war on drugs. If some sort of war on abortion started up, a lot of complications would arise. You can't stop people from choosing to do it, and it would be dangerous for the health of the woman choosing to terminate. I find these systems of control vile and repulsive, and they have done me no good at all. If I had got a bad batch of smack sometime over those 5 years (as I know for a fact that I did, I know my horse quite well, especially as a sniffer) - I would not be here to have created this discussion.

 

[ShroomySatori]

Jess, I think you are on the same page in these recent posts, but in your own special way of thinking about it. Written from a different vantage point, and one that I found quite creative. I am going to read your post over again, as I think I missed your train of thought a few times. It is nice to know there are other women out there who have similar feelings regarding this, as I have only ever met one so far in my personal life who does, and she thinks about it in an entirely different way too.

 

[Vastness]

^ I think I am starting to understand your position a little more. Would it be correct to say that it is not actually that important to you whether a fetus eventually becomes a human being or not, only that it is in some sense already alive and therefore worthy of as much compassion and care, in the interest of preserving it's life, as possible?

If so I think I can appreciate that, in the same way I can appreciate the views of people who choose to be vegetarian or vegan for reasons relating to animal welfare.

Although I still maintain that your interpretation of when the important moment is (when the life starts mattering more) is essentially arbitrary, since even after conception there are a whole bunch of ifs that need to happen along the way to turning a sperm and newly fertilised egg into an actual human being, and we can predict scientifically that even at the moment of ejaculation, IF an egg is accessible, and IF the sperm can get to it before any other sperms do, and IF, x, y, and z, then, well, conception happens and we can move on to the whole new list of ifs that you mentioned yourself. I won't say that you're necessarily wrong though since I have no proof either way of any more objective measure of this arbitrary line, just as I wouldn't say a vegan is wrong for not eating cheese in an effort to limit cruelty to cows, even though I still choose to eat cheese myself.



JessFR, thank you for responding, and without touching on ideas of spirituality and souls (which really can't be proven or disproven either way), I would say that the same point about the arbitrary line of conception as the important point in the commencement of human life applies to what you suggest as well. Especially as far as your definitions of an "individual" and when we are talking about an individual rather than a possibility, as well as when exactly we have enough control over the outcome to say that preventing a "potential" human life from coming into existence, is wrong. I think the very fact that you mention the arbitrariness of legal definitions of when life begins, as well as the idea that the amount of control we have over the outcome plays a part, at least suggests the possibility that the idea of when life begins may not be so binary as for conception to be as important an event as you think it is.

I would just kindly suggest on this point also...

I don't much like getting in to why I believe what I believe. Because I've never been able to explain it to the point that I've felt anyone really grasps what I'm saying. Which makes discussing it impossible. And it's so politicized that even if my reasons were fairly simple they would quickly be made more complicated.

...I think if it's difficult to explain or justify why you feel a certain way, it may be that those feelings are based on ideas which are not founded in reason. Not saying that this is definitely the case with yourself, but everything should be open to discussion and challenge, this is how we learn and grow both individually and collectively, and how we sometimes discover that old ideas which persist from simpler times, but today have no benefit, should actually be discarded.

 

[ShroomySatori]

Just one more thing, thanks to you two by the way as you have brought me back down to earth a little bit. This is important as I am chilling with my brother today. I have been pretty far out lately, and it is merging with my natural state of being which I am comfortable with as I am more in touch with myself than ever before through a psychedelic other than DMT I finally discovered that I actually enjoy.

This is not a thought experiment, it is a part of my real life I will share. I have a younger brother, about ten years his elder. He is the most important person in my life, and probably always will be. We have opposite signs of the zodiac that complement each other perfectly. We have opened each other up to new experiences in so many ways, although his opinions are much more stubborn than mine (the little scorpio... lol) so I have learned new ways of getting him to think differently about stuff; mainly through shared experiences. It is like we can see into each other's minds and know everything about each other subconsciously. It doesn't need to be expressed, we just know. I always give him big hugs and he is my best friend in life. He is absolutely comical and hilarious, an incredible musician like he myself, we both jam guitar, and he has showed me new ways of expressing myself creatively: through film, debate, and art primarily. As well as creative expressions that don't fit into any category really, he is such a rad dude. I have journal writing, astrology, and poetry. I am trying to get him into these things too. We both suck at painting and like girls who can do that, or sketching. We like all the same films and trade books, music we are listening to... we just know what the other will appreciate and it's almost always right.

There is no better brotherhood I could ever ask for. My question is, what if my parents had decided that they had enough children already and decided to terminate? I never would have known the best friend of my life, and we truly need each other to mutually help each other break down and analyze the barriers of our parents authoritarian parenting style that has been extremely harsh on the both of us. Even abusive, I would go as far to say. 100%. Our other sibling just doesn't really communicate with either of us, We are always sharing secrets that our family would kill us over, and it is just the most wonderful part of my life. We need each other; I need him as much as he needs me. If anyone laid a finger on him, they would be lucky to live.

What if my parents terminated? This never would have been, and it is the most beautiful connection of my life, and his as well. We are such different people, but so very much the same and look a lot alike. It's just amazingly awesome and abortion would have never let that manifest. I'd be lost without him, he really encouraged me through my acute heroin withdrawal that nobody had a clue about, there was family around at times, and he was the only one who kept faith in me (as well as a friend I met on here). And the proceeding countless oxycodone relapses that put me back to square one (that my family would MURDER me over if they actually knew what I have been up to). He helped me through them all. I could trust him to never tell another, and that is a very special thing as I was putting my life at risk.

 

[ShroomySatori]

Vastness, your first paragraph is spot on; jives with my perspective completely.

People become vegetarians or vegans for many different reasons too. For myself, I personally do not require meat to be healthy. I have found a way around it and I am a very healthy weight for my body type and height, and have enough muscle mass to hold ten minute downward dogs three times a day. I feel more pure this way, and I don't judge anyone who eats meat. I will on special occasion eat a raw sushi grade tuna steak like a viscous animal, or go fishing at my cottage and bash the things brains out, slice the flesh out of it while it lays there twitching and I have to hold it down, take its organs out and salt and clean the dead thing, and fry up some delicious darn smallmouth bass. In this sense, I am not 100% vegetarian... more like 99.5% or something. It's just a label anyway, I don't really care if I do that once every couple months. I don't need to fit into some sort of category, I am my own person.

About your ifs, they bear no meaning to me. It is all about potential energy, of course it might remain potential and dampen over time into nothingness, but it often does manifest as kinetic energy full of even more potential in the form of a child who now gets to fulfill his or her destiny. So for myself, it is all about the potential for life to occur. I can't go out gambling for something so significant.

I think that Jess is possibly highly creative and open-minded, and complicated to understand but I can see that she has her way of going about it. There is intuition as well as reason, you know. I am going to read her posts over again for sure, as I am sure they will give me a new perspective too, and I like people who think differently and abstractly, non-linearly like that and are not so logical that it makes it a fun little puzzle to understand.

 

[spacejunk]

Jess, i'm not going to keep discussing this with you because i feel like any response i make will piss you off.
I've never come across an expectation before that i should understand a perspective that i totally disagree with, but i guess that's just another point at which we differ.
I sincerely care about people's rights to do what they want with their own body, which is why i don't have any appreciate for anti-abortion activism.
To me it seems to have a strong religious aspect to it, which isn't something i can really grasp. I read the arguments, but it seems like double-speak a lot of the time, to me.
I'm not trying to convert you or anyone, but putting forward a viewpoint that to me is pretty straightforward.

 

[Vastness]

from a scientific standpoint, if I accepted most of what pro choice people believe, then I wouldn't be able to honestly say I thought human life had real value until long after being born. It wouldn't be much different to kill a 1 year old. And pretty much everyone agrees that's not ok. So I just don't see it as intellectually and scientifically honest to put such an arbitrary whatever number of weeks limit.

I somehow missed this paragraph before but actually I do partly agree with you on this, although I reached different a conclusion. This is why I proposed earlier that perhaps even post-birth abortion was not entirely morally wrong. As much as I believe conception to be an arbitrary line, I don't entirely discount the possibility that birth is an arbitrary line as well. Obviously I think that killing a one year old, or even a 2 month old is, quite probably, wrong, I'm just undecided exactly why yet.

Just to be clear also, I don't mean to belittle your viewpoint in any way with my previous comment about the importance of reason and of actively challenging beliefs, just in case it came across that way. For what it's worth I do understand, I think, your general point even if I disagree with your conclusions.

 

[ShroomySatori]

Well, yes. It's not the entirety of why I believe what I believe, but yes, the potentials argument as you describe it, assuming I understand what you mean, is certainly a big part of it. I would generally describe it more as not thinking of time the way other people usually do.

It's complicated, yes, much of it has to do with how I see a future human as as much a real person before they've reached that point as when they have. But there's more too it. As I said it as a more spiritual aspect to it as well. Involving my feelings of the soul and consciousness and existence. What it is, when it begins. There's also a more practical aspect to it, which is that I feel like all these cut off points, such and such months, after birth, and so on are largely artificial legal constructs that don't have any scientific basis to them.

There are several reasons, the spiritual one being the hardest to explain. The simplest way I can think to put it is that I have a fairly unusual idea about how the mind works, how time works, etc. And that because of that, I don't feel comfortable destroying what will at an indeterminate time be a conscious human life knowingly.

If a fertilized embryo doesn't make it to term that's different, it was beyond our control. And it's VERY different prior to conception. Some of my beliefs still come into play but most of them cease to have meaning before conception. Because after conception it is much more a single, relatively complete individual now in play. On its path to existence, or already existing, however you might want to see it.

Before that, when it's still a sperm and an egg among many others in countless combinations, it takes intentional acts to form a direct path. Like having billions of roads to choose. But after conception, you have narrowed your paths enormously. 99.9% of them are gone. And for the first time we are talking about an individual more than a possibility. It's still more complicated than that of course. There are still many forks in the road left to be taken to result in a true individual person.

Not quite enough to make me quite go so far as to say that a fertilized human embryo is so much so identical to a future individual human being as for me to say, want to go passing laws outlawing tampering with it without much thought. But enough to make me very uncomfortable taking intentional action to have it destroyed either.

Like I said, even as a pro lifer I'm a relatively mild one. I do think human life begins at conception, I do not feel it's just a bunch of "meaningless cells". So is all life as you further expand the parameters. And I don't think people have the right to destroy it.

But at the same time, I feel for the people who've found themselves with an unwanted pregnancy. It's enough to make me hesitant to want to go trying to stop people getting abortions. But not nearly enough to say I'm pro choice. Cause really I'm not, at heart I believe a conceived human embryo is a person. Or good enough anyway. There are billions upon billions of variables that go into making every living person, but conception is the most important. So to me that makes it the natural line in the sand. Especially when there are enough unknowns to make me uncomfortable drawing another one largely for the sake of legal convenience.

I don't much like getting in to why I believe what I believe. Because I've never been able to explain it to the point that I've felt anyone really grasps what I'm saying. Which makes discussing it impossible. And it's so politicized that even if my reasons were fairly simple they would quickly be made more complicated.

If I follow what you mean by potentials, it's probably true to say that plays a part in why I believe what I believe. But I wouldn't call it potentials. A sperm and an egg is a potential person as much as it is after they are combined. There is more to it than that.

But a lot of it is to do with how after conception I can start to see a real person much more than before that. A real person with a real life that will likely one day exist. Someone who's appearance, beliefs, experiences, all are now narrowed down enormously as a result of conception. And that is a lot of it.

There is so much we don't know about how life and existence works.

Another part of it is that, to me, from a scientific standpoint, if I accepted most of what pro choice people believe, then I wouldn't be able to honestly say I thought human life had real value until long after being born. It wouldn't be much different to kill a 1 year old. And pretty much everyone agrees that's not ok. So I just don't see it as intellectually and scientifically honest to put such an arbitrary whatever number of weeks limit.

There are lots of reasons. But it ultimately results in one conclusion. Which is that I can't just be ok with intentionally terminating a pregnancy.

Hello Jess, I am reading your post again but I had to prepare first. Your writing is excellent, but it can't be taken word for word. You make a lot of allusions to things and there is a lot of passion and feeling and expression.

So, I cooked up a yummy pasta with garlic, ginger, red and yellow peppers, 50 twists of black peppers, a variety of 4 types of dried hot peppers that I sundried for the winter, around ten large mushrooms, and a little cheddar cheese with some fettuccini. Then I re-upped on the 2C-C to open up my mind a little more and did a nice big rail of my Sacred Key. Have to have breakfast, right? Okay time to read... I will ask you questions as I go along when I don't understand.

Okay, I think you have the part about time understood. It just might be hard to catch the linguistics if you chose a path other than science. I think that you think differently in general than most people, and that is cool.

"And if my life was to end today, it wouldn't change the world in any way" haha sorry I'm off on a metalcore tangent, my favourite band distracted me that I'm blasting right now. Oh no it's about to happen again. So damn badass music omg ahaha. K I'm taking this serious I really am I just got far out again, I'm not so in touch with my physical body as my ethereal spirit, identifying more with my surroundings than myself and having multiple trains of attention going on at once.

Would you be able to describe what you mean by the world "soul"? That is what confused me. To me, it means that when you die, there is a part of you that continues on into a new reincarnation that is based on your past actions and karma, and the way you swim through the intermediate states of reality between the shores of death and rebirth. However, I believe that you shed your skin and leave everything behind, and start afresh as something completely different and new. I believe there is a connection as it is impossible to extinguish the root of all conscious existence, but the reincarnate would no longer have anything to do with "you" as you are now. I'm sure you find completely different meaning in the world, I don't go by definitions, that is just the way I think about it while trippin out at the moment and how I always do in fact.

I agree with your point on artificial social constructs with no real basis. Systems of control. Does there need to be a basis in science, what about morals and virtues and creative expression and what life actually means to people? This is why I said at one point, legal is illegal, and illegal is legal. All of that is manifested by man and an illusion... it is all maya, a veil that hides the true nature of reality.

I think I got your spiritual point which was what you said was hardest to explain... let me think. Do you believe that time exists in terms of a ticking clock, or things created by people such as a "year" which is really just a rough approximation of the "time" it takes our planet to rotate around the sun and get back to the same spot. Time, to me, is the consciously evolving creative expression of conscious phenomena. I don't even really believe that it exists in the traditional sense. Sorry I can't relate this too much to the actual topic, I am trying to understand the way that you think. I'm trying to stay on topic, but at your level.

Your next paragraph is exactly how I feel. It is meaningless until the potential for conception has occurred. Alright... you are officially blowing my mind. The way you think is so fucking cool!!! I could only understand after I started tripping to the point that I am seeing pastel hues of pink and... and... just pink for now, a lovely shade of light pink combining with the blue of bluelight. I don't mind to sound silly... I am reading this very seriously. It is actually taking me like 20 - 30 min to read through it to at least try and figure you out.

So it seems to be a personal choice for you too, not quite sure if you could rally for the restriction of further human rights that will only create more and more destruction like the war on drugs has done to us addicts who needed help and support. Not to be thrown in a cage for a personal choice. I would describe myself as a mild pro-lifer too in this sense. I am not radical about it, trying to change the world. I want the bright future I envision for myself to manifest just as I would like, as far as I can see into the future which is about the length of a ruler compared to the distance from the Earth to the Sun.

You are very stubborn and true to your morals and values and virtues. You know in your heart what is the right choice for you, enough to be repulsed by others who choose to do it themselves. The natural line in the sand... that is beautiful way of wording it. The act of conception is what is most important for me too, until the time of birth.

The part about a sperm and an egg being potentials themselves really set me off on a tangent. I agree with you, but I don't think it's anywhere near as important until they combine forces together and meet. What is the more to it than that part?

That is a lot of it for me as well... ohhhhhhh I think you are talking about the actual sperm that meets the actual egg. Then, the person's appearance, beliefs, experiences, all are narrowed down enormously like you say. I never thought of that before, I think it's really interesting. And it is really important too, I totally missed that part. It is of vital importance to the way that you feel! And honestly, the way that I feel too, but I didn't realize it until I saw that part you wrote.

Life is a mystery, science can't even begin to explain everything and never will. It's a lost cause to me... when I stopped thinking so much up engineering and physics and mathematics so much, I feel like I set myself free from belief systems that were holding me back as much as my Christian upbringing. Me and my bro stopped going to church at like 10, and our parents gave us a lot of shit about it.

So you came to your conclusion and it is the right choice for you. I find that admirable. The way you thought it through was really different and unique. I don't know if anyone would think about it just the same way as you... there are some many factors that you have brought into your choice. It seems that it has been all your own personal thought process as opposed reading up on it, or anything like that. This is the result of your creative expression, and it is almost like a work of art to me right now.

Did that make any sense to you at all? Just curious.