The art of argument.

[sunovermountain]

I was reading another community when it occured to me I haven't had to really think about a response to pro-life arguments in a long time. The arguments about abortion I see always follow down one of a very few paths, and are easy to predict. If you've had one argument about abortion, you've had them all, it seems. I'm willing to bet pro-life

Comments

[darthslacker]

I think I've seen the same double standard and hypocrisy with plenty of pro-choice people-you know the "Its not a life-its a waste product!" or something of that nature-that is, until its a "wanted" baby. Then its like "the precious child growing inside me!" Either its a human life or its not, make up your mind.

[scorpi084]

Probably because the entirety of the abortion debate resides in grey area. It's not really that hard.

Also, I don't get the scare quotes around the word wanted.

[cutout18]

As succinctly as I could possibly put it. The reason the quotes are around 'wanted' is because it's a red-herring word. The thing that changes between "unwanted fetal matter that is not human" and "wanted unborn child that's deserving of life" isn't the 'wanted' part. It's window dressing and obscures the real, discontinuous, inexplicable change of mindset in at least many cases. Though there are people who make consistency out of it, as no doubt many on this thread will, at face and before further consideration it is indeed double-standard and hypocritical.

[scorpi084]

I'm pretty sure that the wantedness of the fetus is the distinction, not whatever it is you're "succinctly" trying to prattle about.

[nemo_wistar]

This won't spur new debate, but perhaps put old ones to rest ... how about having an "Abortion Facts" segment on the profile, going through things like when most abortions are performed, the difference between RU-486 and Plan B, info on the medical training of PP employees vs. crisis pregnancy centers, etc?

[sunovermountain]

I like the idea of having a few legitimate sites linked as recommended reading.

[lavendersparkle]

I think I'd like to see more discussion which is outside of the woman v foetus paradigm and looks more at the role of wider society in leading to women choosing to have abortions. It's not as if any choice is made in a social vacuum and the decision of whether to continue a pregnancy, not to mention whether women become pregnant is hugely dependent upon factors outside of way that abortion choice is usually discussed. This let's everyone else (particularly rich white men) off the hook. It's the classic misogynist trick, you put a rock and a hard place either side of a woman and you call her irresponsible or immoral whichever one she chooses, but you get her to be really thankful that she has a choice between rock and hard place. (For example you have a choice between working in a low paid job with inadequate childcare and doing most of the housework when you get home or staying at home with your kids and being economically vulnerable if things go wrong with your partner and people are going to call you a bad mother and a burden on

[eyelid]

you put a rock and a hard place either side of a woman ...but you get her to be really thankful that she has a choice between rock and hard place

As a woman who has actually had an abortion, I really wish that you, and other pro-lifers, would cease trying to speak for me. Abortion was not particularly difficult or traumatic for me, nor was I forced into it. Please don't try to use me and other women who have had abortions (about whom you know basically nothing) as poster children to take our own rights away.

This let's everyone else (particularly rich white men) off the hook. Abortion was my free choice. I was not exploited by a rich white man, and I think that's a really sexist idea - that women choose abortion only because they are helpless victims of men. :P And that if women didn't have a choice, somehow that would be good for them

[lavendersparkle]

I was not speaking for you or all women who have abortions. I was speaking for myself as a (as far as I know) fertile cis-woman who has had penis in vagina sex with (as far as I know) fertile cis-men at times in my life when becoming a parent would have been detrimental to my education and economic circumstances. I'm speaking for my anger at knowing that if I conceived I would be stuck with a choice between my education and career and my baby and the knowledge that it was that way because I was living in a society designed by and for men. It's lovely that you felt so good about you're abortion but are you claiming that all women's experiences are like yours and no woman has ever chosen to have an abortion due to the effect a baby would have on her economic circumstances

[eyelid]

I was not speaking for you or all women who have abortions.

So you admit that for some women, abortion is actually the desireable choice? The best choice for them, the choice they would pick regardless of whether there is a utopian system of support for mothers?

and do you also admit that you advocate taking that best choice away, and requiring them instead to forcibly gestate against their will?

Given those two facts, i don't know how you can possibly pretend to be an advocate for women with a straight face.

Pregnancy and childbirth are not punishments.

In your rhetoric, they are, though. They're punishments for the "rich white men" involved, who are otherwise "let off the hook." Your words.

I stand by the position rich white men tend to be the beneficiaries of employment discrimination and policies which value low taxes for high earners over benefits for poor families.

And therefore, women shouldn't be allowed to have abortions! Taking away women's rights will show those rich white men!

That wouldn't even be true of

[ebay313]

I get sick of the same old debate over and over. But I don't really expect it to change. I expect that a lot of people will show up with the same thing said a little different and think they have come up with a completely original, new argument. Because when you really get down to it, how many different positions can we take on the issue? When you boil it down, it comes down to a handful of different positions.

[pourcelaine]

Something I am interested in (pardon me if it *has* been discussed!) is this whole idea of responsibility. Now, pro-life or pro-choice I think don't matter here, but I find it bizarre that a woman can get an abortion and relinquish responsibility of parenthood, but if she chooses to carry to birth and keep the child, the father is obligated to hold his end of responsibility (at least in the united states, in the form of child support or otherwise). I understand abortion is often not just about parental responsibility, but if the woman can say "no child for either of us," with an abortion, why can't a man say "no child for me?" on his on?

[sunovermountain]

If a man wants to appeal child support or custody, he can do so as far as I am aware.

[pourcelaine]

Really? Maybe I'm not well enough informed. It seems the media and everything is ridden with men who wish they didn't have to pay. And a good few fathers of friends of friends of mine are constantly fighting to, *lower* child support, but I've never heard of anyone getting out of it completely.

[sunovermountain]

Child support is about the rights of the child and the responsibility of the two people responsible for his/her existence. It isn't about parental rights, it is about parents' obligation to the child once it is born.

Child support arguments are in no way similar to those about abortion, because they are about money, something concrete and measurable. Abortion is about the right to control your body and/or the right to be born, abstract concepts. The two aren't comparable.