A Request Directed to Sciforums' "Atheists"

Discussion in 'Religion' started by Tiassa, Mar 21, 2014.

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  1. Bells Staff Member

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    Ah yes, foetal rights and foetal legal protection in the UK..

    Pray tell, where are the mother's rights in all of this?

    Where were her rights to not be held in a psychiatric facility without her consent, forcibly sedated and forced to have a c-section without her consent and then to top it off, have her baby taken into care and put up for adoption, again without her consent?

    Where were her rights?

    Or do the mother's rights cease to exist once her child obtains legal rights and protection?

    And it's not just in the UK. In the US..

    So, where are the rights of these women?

    How about Martina Greywind?

    Where were her rights when she was imprisoned and felt compelled to get an abortion because it was clearly the only way she would get out of prison? Where are her rights?

    And Alicia Beltran?

    Rights of the child...

    So please, spare me the rights of the child arguments. There are hundreds of cases where women are denied their basic and fundamental human rights based on the State's belief of 'rights of the child'.
     
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  3. Capracus Valued Senior Member

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    Geoff, maybe you could teach our neighbors how to peel an onion. Spot on with your summation.
     
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  5. Enmos Valued Senior Member

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    I thought this thread was supposed to be about atheists...?
     
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  7. Kittamaru Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Adieu, Sciforums. Valued Senior Member

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    This thread lost any sort of "point" when it became a "he said she said" dido situation
     
  8. gmilam Valued Senior Member

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    Is this the politically correct way of saying "arrogant asshole"?
     
  9. GeoffP Caput gerat lupinum Valued Senior Member

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    Who would you like to pretend to fool today? No, really

    It certainly was; and you did.

    Well that's just a political twist of the knife, which is a phrase I think you've heard before. But, really, it's not. You're engaging in apologetics for an unspeakably nasty idea. I apologised for claiming you invented it. That's the job done.

    Ahhh, I knew this was coming. So you don't have the moral stature to apologise to me for slandering me, above. Well, as I say, I can't pretend I didn't know this was coming.

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    Oh, well spotted.

    No no, I think you should resign for holding a reprehensible stance on which there can be no sensible quarter. But in truth, there are all kinds of reasons you ought to take a walk.

    I was going to trash the rest of your post out here, but instead I'm just going to dissect it so you can see the kind of thing you're saying.

    So I am now disregarding - completely - the mother's rights. And you think this is balanced or accurate? If so, you are to debate what Fox News is to reporting.

    Actually, I'm trying to parse down your statements so that they're comprehensible. I think this would be a better way to advance than simply lashing out with whatever emotionally charged language comes to hand.

    Excuse me for a moment here: what does my sex have to do with it? (emphasis above) What do you have to do with a woman's right, or her life, or anything to do with her? Please explain. Do you want to start tossing around arguments from false authority? Sounds fun.

    Excuse me, but why is your opinion then not your own, and nothing more? You're approaching the argument as if somehow you spoke for all women, or all pregnant ones. I don't believe that you do. Why should I take this DF policy you advocate as being some kind of default moral stance? You have said nothing at all to recommend it as a just or reasoned position. This is required if you wish to present it as an alternative to existing law and more.

    Arbitrary? In what way do you now think the 27 week deadline is arbitrary? Surely a perusal of say, thirty seconds in the relevant literature would suggest several biological waypoints of importance to this debate vis-a-vis the DF policy. Should I conclude you are ignorant of these points? But you seem to be assuring me, above, that you are conversant with the issue. Why do you now consider this arbitrary? Or: do you wish me to conclude that this was forgetfulness, or deliberate omission?

    Ooh, ah loves a good bandwagon.

    This is another deliberate misrepresentation on your part: I say 'deliberate' since you have been given ample warning of my position. The only option left is that you are misrepresenting it. I appreciate, as I've said previously, that you and another moderator on here - one of our neighbours - don't mind a little of that, couched as 'a political twist of the knife'. Unfortunately, the functional definition you appear to be using is 'deception'. What you are advocating is that a mother is free to kill the unborn child up to partum. During childbirth really doesn't enter into it, sorry. You'll have to try something else. Oh, and don't now pretend that you're not accusing me of that position: your language above makes it very clear that you misrepresent my understanding on this issue. I have asked you to refrain from this kind of thing, but you are now at the borderline of being a liar, outright. The next choice is yours, of course. Oh, puns.

    What 'appeal to reality'? What are you talking about now?

    So apparently I protest... because it doesn't fit a hypothetical scenario that was brought up to challenge the essential illogic of your DF policy. You are developing new uses of language well outside the reality you're giving lip service to. Have you considered a career in politics? I was also amused at the contrast: so if I don't adhere unthinkingly to your ridiculous scenario, I now consider a woman just an incubator. Really?

    All right, please explain - in detail, with references - how the above criminalises pregnant women. I'm a little sick of this political nonsense - which appears to be the place in which your philosophy truly lives - and so ultimate definitions are required.

    And I am arguing arbitrary limits here? Please, enlighten me as to their arbitrariness. I suspect rather that you consider any challenge to DF as 'arbitrary', without recognising the absurdity of that very stance. Let's stick to the nonsense of the case itself, without bringing in fantasy, shall we?

    Please illustrate where I continued to attribute it to you when you'd finally gotten around to explaining that you were merely an apologist for the monstrous stance. If I have used such loose language in this discussion, then I do apologise. Hate to bring up old matters but: how's that apology for slandering me coming? Are you ready to post a first draft?

    Oh, gee, what to say here. So you think he was offering this up as a procedure or circumvention, do you? And you really, legitimately believe that? I've answered your question. Let's see if you can answer mine.
     
  10. GeoffP Caput gerat lupinum Valued Senior Member

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    Well, if you're suddenly enamoured of numbers, there are even more cases where, by the statue, foetuses are denied their basic and fundamental human rights (to clarify, because I think your attention is wandering: those aborted past the usual deadline). I don't wonder as to whose you feel should invariably triumph, but why you believe this. Or: spare us all the hyperbolic nonsense, please. Try reading the issue as it reads, just once, without trying to expand the case to anything you can think of which it does not represent.
     
  11. GeoffP Caput gerat lupinum Valued Senior Member

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    Thanks. Look, I'm sorry my summation didn't support your stance as explicitly as I now think it should: I hadn't delved into that thread and was operating under the illusion that Bells was being partly honest in her characterisation. Mea culpa: still without reading it, I can't believe I let myself get taken in by this sort of thing again. I do this kind of thing all the time on SF; this forgetting for a moment, or even a long moment, who I'm dealing with here. I guess it's partially reinforced by the fact that I know I will now be tarred with that same ignorant brush; and that fear, too, was dishonourable.

    Why am I so credulous of these kind of people? I just enter into all these goddamned things under the assumption that the other guy is going to be just as forthright and explicit and honest as me. Every. Fucking. Time. Or, even if I do realise what I'm talking to, I still give credulity on their individual statements. It's so engrained it's ridiculous; and you would think, you would really think, that this was a good thing, wouldn't you? You really would. 'Hey, he thinks people are honest... that's a positive and constructive social value... good for him!'

    No, no, NO, NO. It is by all accumulated reckoning, NOT a good thing in dealing with people. Take their fucking word - what am I, insane? Why in the hell would I take anyone's statements at face value any more? What possible observations would lead me to conclude that's a reasonable stance? People are bastards. They lie, not quite constantly, but about half the time so far as I can tell. This is the sociality thing, isn't it? That web of connections and bullshit and calculation and warped misrepresentation that every other primate on the planet seems to have grasped, but not me. Why can't I stop believing people? What the hell do I not get about the fact that a plurality of them are lying assholes? Jesus, this bothers the hell out of me.

    So again, I'm sorry. I hereby edit the above now to read:

     
  12. Kittamaru Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Adieu, Sciforums. Valued Senior Member

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    Pretty sure she would gladly spare the "hyperbolic nonsense" if only the rest of the people in the thread *cough*Capracus*cough* would/could do the same.
     
  13. PhysBang Valued Senior Member

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    Any other position is reprehensible.

    Either women are human beings or they are not. Male-dominated societies do not have the right to force them to give up their bodies, the only thing that exists of a person that a society can verify exists.
    Humans do not have the right to use the bodies of other humans without their consent.
     
  14. GeoffP Caput gerat lupinum Valued Senior Member

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    It's not even hyperbole. It's misrepresentation. I say: past the 27th week and Bells says all women all the time. I finish off a point - about the non-relevance of my sex in this discussion, say - and Bells just comes right back with it as if she never read it. And rinse, and repeat. And it's enough.

    Is another definition of hyperbole sheared of all relevant facts?
     
  15. Kittamaru Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Adieu, Sciforums. Valued Senior Member

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    My statement was in regard to the almost humorously bad hypothetical situations that have been put forth by Capracus (and picked up by a few others).

    Regarding the idea of the 27th week being the cutoff - I dunno... as I said, I am against abortion for the sake of abortion, but I recognize a need for it because of extenuating circumstances. I do not think Abortion should be treated as a form of "birth control" though... but the problem there is it requires a sense of responsibility, something a lot of young adults, especially in lower income areas or who come from single, zero, or abusive parent families, tend to be lacking.
     
  16. cluelusshusbund + Public Dilemma + Valued Senior Member

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    http://www.sciforums.com/showthread...theists-quot&p=3189188&viewfull=1#post3189188

    Seems a simple enuff hypothetical to answr to me:::

    I thank killin a reinserted kid woud be murder... ie... if its murder then... why woudnt it be murder if the kid was killed befor it had exited the woman.???
     
  17. Captain Kremmen All aboard, me Hearties! Valued Senior Member

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    Rights legally given to the foetus are not arbitrary.
    They are set at approximately the same length of gestation at which a premature baby might be expected to survive.
    That's in the UK. 24 weeks at present.
    This avoids the ethical dilemma of having two healthy foetuses delivered on the same day, in the same hospital,
    one of which is aborted, and the other carefully placed in an incubator.
    I'm talking about separate births, not twins.
     
  18. GeoffP Caput gerat lupinum Valued Senior Member

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    I regret to say that I do not believe this is so. Women certainly are human beings, but the special condition of pregnancy - in conjunction with legal representation of this moral position - means that they also carry an additional human being. Society has, through its legalities and challenges thereto, indeed settled on a definition of this personhood that prevents extreme late-term abortion. Or are the limits not predicated on the actual concept of 'personhood'? Is this a taboo word in the debate? Either way, I think there are other ethical challenges to this that can exist - the 'sleeping man', perhaps? I'm sifting through other analogies but haven't settled on one that would act as a metaphor for other law yet, to illustrate my stance. I do have one but I don't know that it's representative.

    It should also be understood that at no point are women "giving up their bodies" for this, unless we really are all packed into bioelectric chambers and fed a nauseating overlay of false virtual reality, like The Matrix or maybe The Housewives of Orange County or Duck Dynasty or something even worse, like Flip This House.

    And how strange that these are all on Bravo....
     
  19. GeoffP Caput gerat lupinum Valued Senior Member

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    Well, here we certainly agree. There's no reason to think some extenuating circumstances should not apply.
     
  20. GeoffP Caput gerat lupinum Valued Senior Member

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    That's a more concise and explicit summation than I ever could have produced, if I use my own posts as a guide. Thanks Kremmen.
     
  21. Kittamaru Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Adieu, Sciforums. Valued Senior Member

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    *nods* The problem as I see it though... yes, the foetus has rights as a living thing... but the woman carrying it does as well. The question is, whose rights should win out... and that's where the hangup is coming from.

    My personal belief is, if you were irresponsible, got pregnant, and didn't do anything about it for over 6 months... well, that's on you. Killing the child at that point is NOT a way out.

    HOWEVER

    There are some issues with this. Rape, for one. For another, it is possible to get pregnant even while on birth control. Add to that the fact that it is possible (though uncommon) for a woman to not KNOW she is pregnant until later in the pregnancy (and there are articles about women not knowing until they actually go into labor... which admittedly confuses the hell out of me)...

    In an ideal world, abortion would be unnecessary. People would be responsible for their actions, rape wouldn't exist, women wouldn't be coerced into having kids out of some twisted sense of "duty", etc. Unfortunately... that world just isn't the world we live in.
     
  22. GeoffP Caput gerat lupinum Valued Senior Member

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    Well, within the area of the "deadline", I suppose I don't have a good counter to this argument. Why would it not be?
     
  23. Kittamaru Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Adieu, Sciforums. Valued Senior Member

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    That's the rub, isn't it. When, by law and science, does the foetus cease to be simply a parasite and become a human life? Some people think it is upon birth. Others think it is after a certain amount of development. Myself, I feel it is a "person" after the point at which the brain, body, and nervous system have developed to the point at which it is "aware"... not knowledgeable of its surroundings obviously, but capable of awareness, consciousness, et al.
     
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