Should An Atheist Be Pro Life?

[Vigile]

You claimed Jaded was not wrong in showing how those who equate abortion with the death penalty are on par if you accept their premise. 

 

I showed you how there is a vast difference between the death penalty and abortion and that the analogy is a poor one.  It appears now you agree with me. 

[SquareOne]

You claimed Jaded was not wrong in showing how those who equate abortion with the death penalty are on par if you accept their premise. 

 

I said that for people who believe that a foetus is human life, there is remains a valid difference between abortion and the death penalty.  The difference being that the abortion is the killing of an innocent, and the execution is the killing of a guilty party.

 

You introduced the role of suffering into the equation, and I have answered your questions about suffering.  However, I do not accept that the degree to which an individual person or foetus, or other people around, is relevant to this question.

 

Let me try and make this as simple as possible.

 

The argument that Jaded was, and I am, defending as being consistent was this:

 

"I believe that no human life, whether adult or foetus, should be killed if they are innocent of any crime.  However, if human life is guilty of e.g. murder; then I believe they should be killed.".

 

The question of whether the executed party suffers is irrelevant to them.  If they suffer, it is a consequence of their crime, and they bear responsibility for it.

 

I WOULD LIKE TO EMPHASISE THAT THE ABOVE STATEMENT IS NOT MY PERSONAL POSITION.

[Vigile]

However, I do not accept that the degree to which an individual person or foetus, or other people around, is relevant to this question.

 

For the person who believes that the foetus is human life, the objection to killing is not an objection to the degree of suffering that a foetus incurs, but the degree of their innocence or guilt.

 

If you don't factor in suffering, you have no way of quantifying the value lost when life is ended.  Your position amounts to how you feel about it and given this is the case, why should your feelings overrule the feelings of the women with regard to her own body? 

 

 

 

 

"Someone who is against abortion should also be against the death penalty because people suffer more form the death penalty than from abortion."

 

Yeah, not even close. 

 

 

To which the reply is: "I don't care if the person being executed suffers, because they committed a heinous crime, whereas the foetus did not".

 

To which I reply, this argument doesn't even consider all of the other people who might care when someone's son, daughter, brother, father, sister, etc... is killed.  Fetus carries none such baggage.  I'm tiring of this. You don't want to discuss this with me any more.  Right?

[SquareOne]

I've defended the position, and I hold that it is consistent.

 

Your replies revert back to the argument from suffering, which has nothing to do with the argument from the question of innocence and guilt.

 

I remind you, that I personally do not believe in the death penalty.

[dB-Paradox]

I see a religious theme so much behind anti-choicers (I don't call them "pro-lifers") which is why I wouldn't understand an anti-choice atheist. It wouldn't make any sense to me why an atheist would care whether or not a woman got an abortion. Surely he/she doesn't believe in any god punishing the woman or caring about the abortion and the fetus doesn't have a soul, so...what's the ramifications?

 

Personally, I think men shouldn't even have a voice in this, because they can't carry children. Let them get pregnant for nine months and THEN they can have a say. Until then...no.

 

But that's a whole different argument for a whole different thread. >

 

Hmmm.  This comment struck a few nerves, and so I'm going to reply by showing how misguided it is.  I'll play the part of a Christian fundy here:

 

"I see a religious theme so much behind devil worshipers (I don't call them "atheists") which is why I don't understand a devil-worshiping religious person.  Why, if the "atheist" believes in the devil, don't they believe in God?"

 

So, as you can see from the above sarcasm, the pro-choice people are just as religious as the pro-life, if not MORE so.  And yes, I do hate labels, but for the purposes of definitions, I'm using them.  I'm pro-life,but not anti-choice, so there goes your first assumption of labeling (at least some of us) anti-choice.  There are a host of reasons I believe where a woman should NEVER be questioned when she wants to abort her pregnancy.  There are only a couple, and maybe even only ONE circumstance, where I *personally* feel it's utterly selfish for a woman to want an abortion.  And that's when she's raped.  I"M JUST FUCKING KIDDING, YOU GODDAMN CUNTS!    But seriously, when a couple willingly engages in sex, they are selfish when the woman becomes pregnant, and they want to abort.  It's a "have all the fun without any responsibility" mentality.  Not only that, but your parents gave you the gift of life, so what the hell is wrong with passing that gift on?  And as an atheist, I believe this is the ONLY life we get to live.  This is the ONLY heaven we're going to experience.  Conversely, it's the only hell we'll experience as well, but it all depends on where you focus your attention.

 

And I don't want to hear about how sex is a right, or a human need, because it's not.  If it were a human need, there are literally thousands of people defying natural law.  Walking on fucking water, if you will.  Eating/drinking, sleeping, and staying warm/cool are human needs.  Sex is just for keeping the species going as a whole, and for fun.  As for men not having a choice in the matter...if our mothers had us aborted, we wouldn't even be here to defend our positions, so it's fallacious to say it doesn't affect men.  It affects both men and women.  And FURTHERMORE (and possibly one of my BIGGEST pet peeves) my wife would use the whole "I carried the baby for nine months" line, so that she could get out of a host of responsibilities for the next FIVE YEARS???  I was the primary diaper changer for both my girls, I got up in the middle of the night until they sleep through the night, letting my wife sleep as much as possible, and I did a host of other minor jobs that my wife didn't want to do, such as bathe the girls, sleep on the floor with them when they were scared (which I actually loved doing) and get up EVERY FUCKING morning when they woke up early.  So basically, 18 months of her life ended up being equal to the next 5 years of mine.  Nice!  And I did a whole bunch of nice things for her while she was pregnant, like go out at all hours of the night to get her things she wanted, let her sleep in, helped her to get up from bed or from the couch...basically, I wasn't a neglectful husband.  But now I am!  I haven't stuck my dick in that bitch's vagina this year yet, and only twice last year.  She ain't gettin' any from me, and that's MY choice!  And that's why women harping on "I carried for nine months" get no sympathy from me.  Pregnancy affects men indirectly, and sometimes for even longer than nine months.  Selfish fucking people (men AND women) who don't want to: 1) share the gift of life, and 2) get out of responsibility.  No sympathy from me.  And after all of this is said and done, I'm STILL not anti-choice!  Suck on that, bitches!

[Vigile]

Your replies revert back to the argument from suffering, which has nothing to do with the argument from the question of innocence and guilt.

 

Mathew 23:24

[SquareOne]

Mathew 23:24

 

Matthew 21:17.

[dB-Paradox]

Judges 16:5

[Vigile]

 

Mathew 23:24

 

Matthew 21:17.

 

And what did he do in Bethany?  Knock up some chick?  Don't get it. 

[SquareOne]

John 11:35

[dB-Paradox]

And what did he do in Bethany?  Knock up some chick?  Don't get it. 

 

You quoted the bible, which is Christian fallacy #1, so he quoted the bible, which is utterly useless.

[Guest Babylonian Dream]

Vigile, it'd be dishonest to say that I'm not distinguishing an unborn child from a 16 year old child. My point would be valid even now, as a full grown adult if I was suicidal. That helping people to obtain a better quality of life if possible was better than my committing suicide. Someone else made that decision because I wasn't able to make such a decision, that my caring didn't matter. That was my point. The comparison is valid.

 

That being said, I'm not against abortions. I just don't like them and would like for things to be done to avoid them. Like addressing women's and men's selfesteem issues, combatting abusive relationships, and other social issues we face today. Also, teaching people to be assertive. If someone doesn't want to wear and use protective measures, but wants to have sex, and you say no, and that's not okay to them, then that's their loss. Better sexual education can also help. Though definitely not doing things the way they are done today here nor in the middle east, neither are the answer. I know alot of people think its a glorious answer but its not.

[Vigile]

 

And what did he do in Bethany?  Knock up some chick?  Don't get it. 

 

You quoted the bible, which is Christian fallacy #1, so he quoted the bible, which is utterly useless.

 

Like all literature, sometimes it can be useful and relevant. 

 

Anyway, talk amongst yourselves.  It seems no one wants a serious conversation here. 

[Kurari]

 But seriously, when a couple willingly engages in sex, they are selfish when the woman becomes pregnant, and they want to abort.  It's a "have all the fun without any responsibility" mentality.  Not only that, but your parents gave you the gift of life, so what the hell is wrong with passing that gift on? 

 

This is still the "punishment for sex" mentality. Children are not here to prove to you or anyone else in this world how responsible of a person you are because your condom broke. They are human beings. It's not up to them to make you take responsibility for your life simply because they exist in your womb. That's too much to ask of anyone, let alone an embryo that's still nigh microscopic.

 

You can't give life as a gift if you attach conditions like that to it. 

 

You sound like a wonderful father, DB. There are a lot of people out there who do not care to look after their children. By the sounds of it, your wife was one of them. Having a baby changes nothing in their ability to be responsible. Your girls are lucky for you. You could have just said "Fuck this" and left. That's a much more typical story. 

 

Where then, does that leave those children? Fucked up a creek without a paddle in the worst imaginable way. 

 

It's a pet peeve of mine as someone who has an abortion that I just wanted to "have all the fun and none of the responsibility." It doesn't sound like you're especially happy to be living with sex once a year, DB. I'm pretty sure my marriage relationship wouldn't survive on no sex. 

 

My husband and I are both surgically sterilized. It would take the proverbial miracle for me to get pregnant through that, but I sure as hell would abort without question if that nightmare actually happened. It requires a GREAT DEAL of thought and care to have an abortion, and I will tell you, our embryos and doing what's best for THEM is our top priority. 

 

THAT is taking responsibility. THAT is being selfless. You're opposition to abortion is a perfectly logical way to feel, so I'm not trying to change your mind. I'm just throwing out another viewpoint. 

 

Best of luck to you and your children, DB. I got a huge grin on my face when you wrote about sleeping on the floor with them because they were scared. That is SO sweet. My father would never have done that for me. 

[dB-Paradox]

Thanks for your response, Kurari.  It was very well thought out, and rational, and you articulated your words well.  The no sex deal in my marriage is, as I said, my choice.  It has put a lot of strain on my marriage.  And I am also surgically sterile (so that's not why I play keep-away).  The reason I refuse her sex is because I am bitter toward her for her lack of engagement in our family.  So I suppose I have adopted a "have fun with no responsibility" attitude toward sex because I know there are other wives out there who are good, and indeed I have become bitter.  But in the process, I have also understood that sex is highly over-rated.  PornHub.com and a strong right hand do the job just as well!  lol

 

Anyway, thanks again for your response.  There will ultimately be things we disagree on, but we are not judging each other for them, and we are not trying to get the other to see our point.  As I've said from entering this conversation, my convictions are my own *personal* feelings toward the subject, and in no way reflect what I think is ultimately right or wrong.  And I get that you are saying the same.  :-)

[ClaraOlive]

 Not only that, but your parents gave you the gift of life, so what the hell is wrong with passing that gift on?

 

Actually, that consideration increases my pro-choice beliefs. Life is not a gift from a parent if it is not accompanied by love and nurturing. After giving me life, my parents abandoned me and let it be known that they were abandoning me because I was unwanted. I cannot say that I "regret" being alive, but my stance is more that since I am alive, it would be best at this point to remain alive and do as much with that as possible. I can certainly say that if I had been aborted, I would not regret it. It has caused me great grief and guilt and just kind of a miserable empty feeling, knowing the circumstances. That's not a fucking gift.

 

While I would not be able to treat a child that I didn't want so badly, and if I'd been in a situation where I'd been forced to have a child (because I didn't believe in abortion or otherwise), I'd have tried to make sure the child never knew that I didn't want him. But having been in the reverse situation, I can honestly say that I think that my mother should have aborted, and I would consider not bringing an unwanted, unloved child into the world as a mercy.

[mymistake]

Life is not a gift from a parent if it is not accompanied by love and nurturing.

 

*hug*

 

I'm glad you are with us.

[Kurari]

Thanks for your response, Kurari.  It was very well thought out, and rational, and you articulated your words well.  The no sex deal in my marriage is, as I said, my choice.  It has put a lot of strain on my marriage.  And I am also surgically sterile (so that's not why I play keep-away).  The reason I refuse her sex is because I am bitter toward her for her lack of engagement in our family.  So I suppose I have adopted a "have fun with no responsibility" attitude toward sex because I know there are other wives out there who are good, and indeed I have become bitter.  But in the process, I have also understood that sex is highly over-rated.  PornHub.com and a strong right hand do the job just as well!  lol

 

Anyway, thanks again for your response.  There will ultimately be things we disagree on, but we are not judging each other for them, and we are not trying to get the other to see our point.  As I've said from entering this conversation, my convictions are my own *personal* feelings toward the subject, and in no way reflect what I think is ultimately right or wrong.  And I get that you are saying the same.  :-)

 

Thank you for your kind words!

 

I certainly don't blame you one bit for how you feel. You can't just put your kids back if you suddenly realize parenting is really difficult and mostly not fun. 

[Akheia]

Hell, as Clara's pointed out, the cult of motherhood dictates that women aren't even allowed to voice anything but fervent happiness about their children or else they'll mar the myth that all women "love it once it gets there." Can't have that, now can we? If any consumer products came with such restrictive contracts, nobody would ever sign up no matter how sexy the gadget was!

 

Consent is not etched in stone. I'm allowed to withdraw my consent mid-coitus, and I don't view the use of my uterus as magically different from the use of my vagina. If someone else has some subjective idea that ZOMG BABIES are in there, that's not my problem. I have not ever seen any objective evidence that would lead me to believe that a fertilized egg is a person, and don't see why the religious-infused dogma another person subscribes to should force me to endure the use of my body when I don't want it used. Just as with rape, it doesn't matter how long it lasts, it's still devastating to have your body used against your wishes and to know that some asshole's unfounded opinion controls your actions and indeed the flesh of your very body. (Saw this essay yesterday and while people really triggery about rape should click with caution, jesus fuck it encapsulates how I feel about a forced pregnancy.)

 

It's always weird to see non-Christians harp about "consent" like it's some magic bullet that should override my own concerns about my health, financial security, relationship cohesion, and future. Like my life is the football Lucy is holding away from me when I try to kick it, like she's saying "Nope! You agreed to the sex, you slut! Live with the consequences!" We don't treat consent that way for anything else in life, so I don't see why so many people do so for abortion. I've just about had fucking enough of it. I'm a person, and I have the right not to be enslaved or raped even for a moment against my will. I won't tolerate the invalidation and erasure of my right to consent to my own body's use.

[Yrth]

We are questioning this claim: "even if a fetus was a person, a woman who initially consented to the use of her body should still be able to withdraw her consent to the use of her body."

 

I don't think that this is true. As I wrote to Kurari, it would be similar to a pilot of a two-man airplane suddenly refusing to fly the plane in midair. The passenger who relied on the pilot to safely land the plane will now die. And I suppose, to bring the metaphor more in line with abortion, the pilot safely ejects herself and deploys a parachute. 

 

If I were the passenger in that plane and I knew what the pilot was planning to do to me, I wouldn't have a problem with forcing the pilot to land the plane. I would see the pilot as the party who is responsible for the situation. And I would see the force as necessary to save someone else's life and justified under the circumstances.

 

I do not see the rescinding- consent situation as similar to sex because sex does not place anyone's life on the line. I mean, imagine if stopping mid-coitus would mean that the man died right there in bed. If that were the case, I'm sure our views on the role of consent and sex would see considerable shifts.

 

So what does this mean. The way I see it, it means that in order to defeat the consent argument, a pro-life advocate would need to show that abortions are always the withdrawal of consent. If they could show that, then the issue would be refocused on whether or not a fetus is a person. I would think, then, that a pro-choice advocate who is interested in skipping over the fetal-personhood issue via the consent argument would be extremely keen on arguing that abortions are not always the withdrawal of consent. Each pro-life argument for why abortions are always the withdrawal of consent would probably need to be refuted separately.

 

That's my analysis at the moment. Thoughts anyone? Please keep in mind that I'm just trying to frame the argument -- diatribes lobbed my way would be very much misdirected.

[SquareOne]

I agree with you Yrth, but only if we accept the premise that a human foetus has the same moral worth as a post-birth human.

 

For me, we are still left with the much greater problem of whether a foetus should attract legal personhood, which I have discussed at length in this post.

[Guest Babylonian Dream]

Yrth, you make an excellent point. He has the right to withdraw his consent of being a pilot at any point, but he must land the plane first so that people can get off. It does hammer in the consent objections. Though I know that others will reject your comparison outright, because you're comparing fetuses to passengers, it can be a hard to catch analogy.

 

Though one must still ask, say you could have a fetus be ejected like passengers with parachutes, and kept alive on life support machines. Let's say they were able to survive until they could be children in an orphanage, is that the life you'd want to give them? Having nobody around who is emotionally attached like a parent? That can forge irreversible mental issues. That's actually the recipe for cluster B personality disorders, and they're very hard to cope with/learn to cope with. And in turn, that creates a cycle of problems of which those now adults end up possibly creating for the world.

[mymistake]

How can human life have value in itself if this planet is so over populated with humans that they have to be violent to each other to survive in the competition for limited resources?

[dB-Paradox]

I might even further the analogy one more, and say the passengers are getting on a plane not realizing that the pilot hasn't actually got plans to land the plane in the first place. 

 

But I do understand the idea put forth that the unwanted child might have a bleak life.  But this, in my opinion, is a matter of how we see the glass.  I tend to look at things in as positive a light as possible.  Jumping to the worst case scenarios and using them as justifications for a position on the subject are just as extreme as jumping to the best case scenarios and using them as justifications.  After all, it's possible that a soon-to-be parent might not want the child yet, but instantly bonds and grows to love that child more than anything after birth.  Likewise, a parent who is excited to become a parent, might end up being the worst parents on the planet, and we don't use that as justification for abortion.

 

"Well, I realize you're excited now, but you might not be once the child is born, so I suggest you consider getting an abortion before you do any potential damage to this unborn child."  This is a statement seeing things from the positive, then negative.  And it's silly.  The only difference between this and a woman who does not want to become a mother yet, is that we will always look for the worst possible outcomes when the attitude is already negative.  I know I'm going to get killed for this, but I only speak the truth.  Some rape victims have become pregnant and have kept the child, only to become very attached, and to have found therapy in getting over the trauma.  That's at least a negative scenario turned positive.  I know there was one very outspoken woman who talks about her decision to keep her child after being raped.  In NO WAY am I advocating this, I am simply pointing out that negative outlooks can have positive outcomes.

 

My biological father was a rapist, and for all I know, raped my mother.  She never indicates this, but he was imprisoned for raping other women and eventually killed himself.  Did I have a bleak life?  The first three years of my life were probably not very positive (physical abuse), and even most of my childhood was probably not the greatest (neglect and some sexual abuse), but nonetheless, I love life.  But that's just my makeup.  I tend to look at the glass as half full.  That's just me *personally*. 

[SilentLoner]

I Wish My Mother Had Aborted Me

http://everydayfeminism.com/2012/08/wish-mother-had-aborted/