I am aware of the pro-choice position and I consider it to be illogical and evil.
You didn't need to say that, just as I don't need to say that I consider the anti-choice position to be illogical and immoral. The fact that I oppose it tells you that.
What does evil mean to you? I'm guessing that it has religious connotations, like demons. It's a word I don't use any more for that reason.
It invokes faint images of disembodied evil as a universal principle doing battle with the forces of good. Too Exorcist-y, or The Omen, or Mark of the Beast kind of thing. That's a religious position, one I don't hold.
Bad things that happen by design are covered by the word malice, and those by accident are bad luck. Those terms don't carry the religious baggage.
It was physicians who were against the practice of abortions because they felt that the practice contradicted the Hippocratic Oath and their belief that human life had intrinsic value.
As has already been noted, this is the revisionist history here.
So what became of these crusader physicians since then? Did they all either give up objecting or become abortion providers? It's not human nature that physicians were at the vanguard of keeping abortion illegal until one day, they stopped representing this cause, and turned the ball over to the church, which now spearheads the anti-abortion movement? Is that what you are claiming?
Do you really wish there were no more abortions? If so, why?
I imagine its a sad day for everybody involved. I find the procedure distasteful, and wouldn't want to have to make that decision myself. Being a man, and never having been the father in an unwanted pregnancy, I don't have experience with real-life abortion issues.
What simplifies the matter for me, someone who was never going to have to make that decision, is that the moral issue is not about whether to get the abortion, which is a separate moral issue for the pregnant woman, but who gets to make that decision - the church using the force of the state to enforce its religious preferences on a secular society, or the pregnant woman?
Perhaps that's why we disagree. We come from different perspectives and frame the issue differently. Last time, you weren't interested in discussing that point. This argument still stands unrebutted. Unless you can convince me that the choice to have an abortion should be taken from the woman and given to the church and state, I still support access to safe and legal abortion, however evil you think I am.
I do consider it worthy to mention that pointing to an extreme outlier to support your case is very unconvincing.
Extreme outlier? When abortion was illegal, medical complications including death were not uncommon. Now, they shouldn't be occurring at all.
Also, I don't expect to convince you of anything. That's not possible and not my purpose.
The separation of Church and State has been a principle advocated since the birth of our nation.
It's always been under attack by the church, which would penetrate the church-state wall wherever it could.
Killing the not-yet-born is no different than killing the already born.
First off, you cannot label pro-life people “anti-choice” because they are the ones advocating for all choices, not just the one that kills a baby, like pro-choice advocates.
Anti-choice people are trying to eliminate a choice, abortion. All other choices remain in play either way. They are attempting to restrict the mother's options.
I and others who understand the situation at the border were not outraged at all.
If you had understood the situation at the border, you would have been outraged.
I understand that we each consider the other's position immoral because it is not his own. We just don't care about the same things. Our values come from different eras. You see those that have moved on as having lost hold of morals and freely drifting without them. You disapprove of free love and what you call promiscuity. You disapprove of abortion. Hopefully, you've never believed that racially mixed marriages were immoral, but some of your ancestors and mine probably did, and would call the modern acceptance of that immoral and against God's plan.
So, we just look at each other and shake our heads.
Everyone has always known that a pregnant woman carried a human child in her womb. Not a stone. Not a fish. But a human child.
As I explained, that's not a factor for me in the abortion debate. If the pregnant woman were somehow carrying a dog instead, the moral issue would be the same - does the procedure cause a sentient creature to suffer the way you or I would undergoing such a life-ending procedure outside of the womb.
Yes, I understand that Christian theology teaches that man is exceptional in the eyes of a good god, and that he was given dominion over the animals to use as he pleases. That's another ethic I've decided is irrational, representative of a less evolved ethical theory, and have removed from my value set.
As a result, I was recently chided by a Christian for making a remark like the one above, and he said I didn't value human life enough. I said that he didn't value dogs enough.
Incidentally, have you looked at biblical scripture on the matter? You're not going to find a lot of support for your position.
Killing a cow for meat and killing a person for no reason other than you feel like it are the same to you.
See if you can keep a check on the hyperbole. Abortion is not killing a person for no reason other than you feel like it. It is a somber event that is done for a specific clinical reason. And yes, I support what others like to call abortion on demand, as if things would be better if one had to get permission from the government or one's priest to get one. Her reasons are her business.
So if the not-yet-born were legally defined as “persons” or as a “human children” you would not consider abortion to be murder, even if abortion were legally defined as murder.
I'm not interested in the semantics here, just the ethics. For me, right and wrong don't depend on words. Calling something evil doesn't make it immoral. Calling a fetus a person doesn't change the moral calculus. An act is either right or wrong whether you call it murder or not, a baby or not, a person or not, etc.. That will always be my response as it was before. If you ever care to address that position, we can discuss it. Until then, my position remains unchanged.
That is amoral and disgusting.
How do you feel about racially mixed marriages?
