Hrm, no, although I VASTLY disagree with lantern over there, I cannot agree with what you said either. I have chosen to have three high risk pregnancies with my beloved wife, which have cost hundreds of thousands, and we are working on the last one. We have had four miscarriages, but this is what she wants and I will give her that. You pay my share, not the other way around. I just pay my 180 dollar premium with high deductibles.

Ie., if the new service applies towards women, men pay that share. If it is the magical blue pill for men, then women and functional men pay it. Etc.

I've been watching the conversation (yelling) about this trial and it's verdict. I think there's a simple disconnect that nobody seems to understand.

Black People live in a different America than White People.

I know people might get mad about that, but you haven't actually seen it so you don't really understand. So this might've been a miscarriage of justice or it might not have been. But if you've constantly been getting crap for being in this country then it's just one more thing.

People don't seem to understand that it wasn't long ago that it was illegal to be black and on the streets. They would arrest you just for hanging around while being black. Or you didn't even go to college, because that just didn't happen. The time signatures are all screwed up. Some people think we've put down the cudgel so you have to stop whining about it. That history of repression doesn't matter to people who haven't experienced it, it matters to those who DID experience it.

So most people's opinions of this don't matter, and they need to come at this from a different perspective and try to understand rather than scold.

What's the difference between a pile of dead babies and a porche? I don't have a porche in my garage.

Who was the greatest jewish cook? Hitler.

How do you make a chicken roll? Kick it down a hill.

Why couldn't Helen Keller drive a car? Because she was a woman.

4 jokes, each with a punchline of violence or sexism in some way, shape or form. A Holocaust joke, a sexist joke, a dead baby joke, and an animal cruelty joke. All 4 of those are still things that exist "Now". There's still victims of the Holocaust, miscarriages and murdered children happen all the time, and people still kick chickens, and women driving jokes have been around since, well, women started driving.

It's NOT because of the joke that people do these things, it doesn't perpetuate it, it doesn't do anything to alleviate the levity of the issue, and yet we still consider these okay. However, there's apparently ONE thing that is not okay, only because it could possibly make light of the situation. Everything is okay, or nothing is. Dead Children is bad, Animal Cruelty is bad, Sexism is bad, Rape, just as bad as any of those.

I think to be fair, we have to remember that upwards of 20% of all conceptions (depending on age group) result in spontaneous abortion (aka miscarriage). So we should probably add God to the list of those responsible for the death of all of these fetuses.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

Because miscarriages are part of God's plan.

I would categorize this as a form of child abuse. If adults want to voluntarily submit to this kind of therapy, I have no problem with it, but forcing children into this kind of psychological abuse is just wrong. >> ^VoodooV:

Unfortunately, stuff like this swings both ways. Ban abortion, but people will still have abortions, they'll just go underground or women will resort to injuring themselves in order to miscarriage.
Ban shithole organizations like this, and they just go underground. Isn't that kinda how Marcus Bachmann's clinic does it? They don't directly come out and say their services are for trying to convert homosexuals, but that's what it's for.
Still, its progress, but preferably, I'd prefer not to resort to a law. People can't be forced to accept homosexuality. I want hate like this driven into the open, not hidden underground. Education is what changes people's minds on stuff like this, not laws.

>> ^VoodooV:

Unfortunately, stuff like this swings both ways. Ban abortion, but people will still have abortions, they'll just go underground or women will resort to injuring themselves in order to miscarriage.
Ban shithole organizations like this, and they just go underground. Isn't that kinda how Marcus Bachmann's clinic does it? They don't directly come out and say their services are for trying to convert homosexuals, but that's what it's for.
Still, its progress, but preferably, I'd prefer not to resort to a law. People can't be forced to accept homosexuality. I want hate like this driven into the open, not hidden underground. Education is what changes people's minds on stuff like this, not laws.


Yeah but delegitimizing it does do something. This is a psychological thing and parents can fuck up their gay kid just by talking and being mean to them. Abortion is a physical thing though that can seriously harm or even kill someone if done improperly so it makes sense that a doctor should be the one to perform it.

They can hide but some won't want to test it and this will definitely bring the number down if anything.

Unfortunately, stuff like this swings both ways. Ban abortion, but people will still have abortions, they'll just go underground or women will resort to injuring themselves in order to miscarriage.

Ban shithole organizations like this, and they just go underground. Isn't that kinda how Marcus Bachmann's clinic does it? They don't directly come out and say their services are for trying to convert homosexuals, but that's what it's for.

Still, its progress, but preferably, I'd prefer not to resort to a law. People can't be forced to accept homosexuality. I want hate like this driven into the open, not hidden underground. Education is what changes people's minds on stuff like this, not laws.

@hpqp
I am not at all ashamed of my verbose, self-indulgent dross, so here we go!

Something has to be extra-physical, as least based on our current model. I can fully accept that a brain by itself can receive sensory input, process it against memory, and thus act in a completely human way indistinguishable from a conscious human, but on its own can literally be no more "conscious" than a river flowing down a mountain. Our current view of the physical universe does not tolerate any rational physical explanation of consciousness. Any given moment of human experience - the unified sensory experience and stream of consciousness - does not exist in a single place at a single instant. To suggest that the atoms\molecules\proteins\cells of the brain experience themselves in a unified manner based on their proximity to or electrochemical interaction with each other is magical thinking. Atoms don't do that, and that's all that's there, physically.
I disagree that consciousness is subordinate to cognition in terms of value. Cognition is what makes us who we are and behave as we do, but consciousness is what makes us different from the rest of the jiggling matter in the universe.

A couple of posts back, you challenged my statement about abstinence education as demonstrating a lack of pragmatism. I didn't really address it in my reply, but I'd prefaced it with the understanding that it's not a magical incantation. I know people are still going to have sex, but I suggested that has to be a part of education. People have to know that you can still get pregnant even if you're using the contraceptives that are available. They have to at least know the possibility exists. It's one more thing for them to consider. People are still going to drive recklessly even if you tell them they can crash and kill themselves despite their airbags, seatbelts, and crumple zones, but that doesn't mean it's not worth it to educate them about the possibility. I fail to see how that's not pragmatic.

I didn't reply to your comment about adoption vs abortion because I'm not sure there's anything else to add on either side. As I've said, my beliefs on this are such that even a grossly flawed adoption\orphan care system is preferable to the alternative, even if it means that approximately 10 times the number of children would enter the system than have traditionally been adopted each year. (1.4M abortions annually in the US, ~140K adoptions, but there are several assumptions in that math that wouldn't hold up to scrutiny.) Many right and just things have unpleasant consequences that must be managed. (The typical counter here is that Pro-Lifers tend to also be fiscal\social conservatives and won't fund social services to care for these new individuals they've "protected" into existence. That's just another issue of taking responsibility for the consequences of choices. If they get what they want, they need to be held to account, but it's a separate issue. A related issue, but a separate issue.)

Criminalizing\prohibiting almost any activity results in some degree of risky\dangerous\destructive behavior. Acts must be criminalized because there are individuals who would desire to perform those acts which have been determined to be an unnecessary imposition on the rights of another. Criminalization does not eliminate the desire, but it adds a new factor to consideration. Some will decide the criminalization\prohibition of the act is not sufficient deterrent, but in proceeding, are likely to do so in a different manner than otherwise. The broad consideration is whether the benefits of criminalization\prohibition outweigh the risks posed to\by the percentage who will proceed anyway. Prohibition of alcohol failed the test, I expect the prohibition of certain drugs will be shown to have failed the test..eventually. Incest is illegal, and the "unintended" consequence is freaks locking their families in sheds and basements in horrific conditions, but I think most of us would agree the benefits outweigh the detriment there.

Is putting all would-have-been-aborteds up for adoption abhorrent or absurd? The hump we'll never get over is asking "is it more abhorrent than aborting all of them", because we have different viewpoints on the relative values in play. But is it even a valid question? They won't all be put up for adoption. Some percentage (possibly 5-10 percent) will spontaneously miscarry\abort anyway and some percentage would be raised by a birth parent or by the extended family after all. An initially unwanted pregnancy does not necessarily equate to an unwanted child, for a number of reasons. I do not have statistics on what proportion could be expected to be put up for adoption. Would you happen to? It seems like that would be difficult to extrapolate.

The "'potential' shtick" carries weight in my view because of the uniqueness of the situation. There is no consensus on the "best" way to define when elective abortion is "acceptable". Sagan puts weight on cognition as indicative of personhood. As he states, the Supreme Court set its date based on independent "viability". (More specifically, I feel it should be noted, "potential" viability.) These milestones coincide only by coincidence.
Why is it so easy for us, as you say, to retroproject? And why is this any different from assigning personhood to each of a million individual sperm? For me, it's because of those statistics on miscarriage linked above. The retroprojected "potential" is represented by "percentages". At 3-6 weeks, without deliberate intervention 90% of those masses of cells will go on to become a human being. At 6-12 it's 95%. This is more than strictly "potential", it's nearly guaranteed.

I expect your response will be uncomfortable for both of us, but I wish you would expound on why my "It Gets Better" comparison struck you as inappropriate. Crude, certainly - I'll admit to phrasing it indelicately, even insensitively. I do not think it poorly considered, however. The point of "It Gets Better" is to let LGBT youth know that life does not remain oppressive, negative, and confusing, and that happiness and fulfillment lie ahead if they will only persevere.
It's necessary because as humans, we aren't very good at imagining we'll ever be happy again when surrounded by uncertainty and despair, or especially recognizing the good already around us. We can only see torment, and may not see the point in perpetuating a seemingly-unending chain of suffering when release is so close at hand, though violence against self (or others).
This directly parallels the "quality of life" arguments posed from the pro-choice perspective. They take an isolated slice of life from a theoretical unplanned child and their mother and suggest that this is their lot and that we've increased suffering in the universe, as if no abused child will ever know a greater love, or no poor child will ever laugh and play, and that no mother of an unwanted pregnancy will ever enjoy life again, burdened and poverty-stricken as she is.
As you said, we're expecting a woman to reflect "on what would her and the eventual child’s quality of life be like", but we're so bad at that.
And all that quality-of-life discussion is assuming we've even nailed the demographic on who is seeking abortions in the U.S.
Getting statistics from the Guttmacher Institute, we find that 77% were at or above the federal poverty level and 60% already had at least one child.

On a moral level, absolutely, eugenics is very different debate.
On a practical level, the eugenics angle is relevant because it's indistinguishable from any other elective abortion. Someone who is terminating a pregnancy because their child would be a girl, or gay, or developmentally disabled can very easily say "I'm just not ready for motherhood." And who's to say that's not the mother's prerogative as much as any other elective abortion, if she's considering the future quality of life for herself and the child? "It sucks for girls\gays\downs in today's society and I don't think I can personally handle putting them through that," or more likely "My family and I could never love a child like that, so they would be unloved and I would be miserable for it. This is better for both of us."
Can we write that off as hopefully being yet another edge case? (Keep in mind possibly 65% of individuals seeking abortion declare as Protestant or Catholic, though other statistics show how unreliable "reported religious affiliation" is with regard to actual belief and practice.)

_{"Argumentation"? I have learned a new word today, thanks to hpqp. High five!}

>> ^MarineGunrock:

I don't think you quite understand the mechanics of conception... Just because there's semen in a woman doesn't mean she's conceived. Emergency contraceptives are no different than birth control. They prevent conception from happening.

It also does not mean conception or the beginnings of it has not begun. I searched for a bit, and I'll admit that I couldn't find much information on it because anything mentioning abortion has like a bazillion articles. But I did find one where high levels of estrogen can cause miscarriages, but no supporting articles since it's not really that important to me. Abortion is up to the individuals involved in said pregnancy.

My point I was making is that Ron Paul states that there is no medical/legal/chemical evidence of conception at that point, so he is saying that it has not taken place because of this. And is justifying estrogen injections as a preventative. I am saying that if you are going to be a staunch "conception is life" advocate, you should not be doing things that may end early stage conceptions...which high doses of estrogen probably would.

It's like saying lack of light coming from a single bulb proves that there is no electricity on in the house, instead of your testing method being inadequate. If conception is life and something you are administering as a preventative can end conceptions, you are risking ending conceptions. And this is why it is chicken shit justifications to me, if you want to make a 100% statement like "Conception is life" then risking terminating early conceptions that can't be legally/medically/chemically proven at that stage is making your argument lip service.

Personally I think abortion with upper limits are fine, 4 maybe 5 months. Certainly not 7, since babies are born prematurely and survive at that point. And I have no problem with him using estrogen to end early conceptions. I do have a problem with someone making a statement and then arguing that he can go ahead and do it anyway because there's no proof it's actually ending a conception.

And I return back to my murder argument that I think is a good example of the argument he's trying to make here.

>> ^Porksandwich:

I never took the person's pulse before I stabbed them, so you can't prove they were alive. So it's not murder.

Maybe alter the wording to say "I couldn't find the person's pulse before I stabbed them......"

>> ^shuac:

Half of all pregnancies abort naturally (miscarriage, ectopic, etc.) so it would seem god is the most prolific abortionist of all time.


YES! I always say this too! It is hilarious! HAHA god loves abortion!

Half of all pregnancies abort naturally (miscarriage, ectopic, etc.) so it would seem god is the most prolific abortionist of all time.

@spoco2

Let me get this straight... A young kid gets vaccinated, suffers an adverse reaction to it which leads to "autism like" symptoms. And the vaccine did NOT cause autism? The kid was going to get autism anyway? Bullshit. You have no evidence to back up that position.

BTW, they can make mercury-free vaccines. So why do you statist idiots want to mandate everyone get blasted with neurotoxins?

And typical deflecting argument... you can't argue a position without blurring the debate with ad hominem static. What happened to your false analogy? Did you fart again? You must have if you thought HPV vaccines lower cervical cancer rates. And you're ignoring the unintended consequences of trying to vaccinate a relatively common STD that's usually harmless and goes away without treatment. How's that happen you say? Our body has it's own defense system that eliminates the virus. Maybe we should start vaccinating people for colds, you think? Then no one will have colds anymore!

Neil Miller: "Research has shown that when vaccines only target a small number of strains capable of causing disease, less prevalent strains can replace the targeted vaccine strains. These less prevalent strains graduate from minor factors to major influences and may even become more dangerous. Scientists are now concerned that Gardasil -- which only targets two of at least 15 different cancer-causing HPV strains -- might be allowing HPV strains previously considered minor to flourish and become major influences."

More from the article:
By February 2011, more than 20,500 adverse reaction reports pertaining to Gardasil were filed with the U.S. government -- an average of 12 reports per day [VAERS]. Nearly half of all reports required a doctor or emergency room visit, with hundreds of teenage girls and young women needing extended hospitalization.

In the case reports submitted to the FDA, 89 deaths were described due to blood clots, heart disease and other causes. In addition, many of the vaccine recipients -- young women -- were stricken with serious and life-threatening disabilities, including Guillain-Barre syndrome (paralysis), seizures, convulsions, swollen limbs, chest pain, heart irregularities, kidney failure, visual disturbances, arthritis, difficulty breathing, severe rashes, persistent vomiting, miscarriages, menstrual irregularities, reproductive complications, genital warts, vaginal lesions and HPV infection -- the main reason to vaccinate.

According to Dr. Diane Harper, director of the Gynecologic Cancer Prevention Research Group at the University of Missouri, 'The rate of serious adverse events [from Gardasil] is greater than the incidence rate of cervical cancer.' [ABC News (August 19, 2009).]

Gardasil is being promoted as 100 percent effective. However, this is a deceptive assessment of its true ability to protect against cervical cancer. Gardasil is effective against just two strains of cancer-causing HPV -- the ones included in the vaccine -- but researchers have identified at least 15 cancer-causing HPV strains!

Gardasil will not prevent infection with HPV types not contained in the vaccine. In fact, during clinical trials of the vaccine, hundreds of women who received Gardasil contracted HPV disease. Furthermore, the drug maker warns women (in its product insert) that 'vaccination does not substitute for routine cervical cancer screening.'
/source
In other words, your propaganda quote from the NCI is horseshit.

@Lawdeedaw I mostly stopped by this thread to respond to the admonition to vote Republican/Ron Paul, so I'm really not terribly excited about how you're turning this into some sort of debate about abortion, and worse, are trying to conflate the pro-choice position on abortion with being callous about miscarriages.

A "straw man attack" is just the snooty way of saying "you're putting words in my mouth." Being pro choice myself, I can definitely say there's nothing about the belief that means you should be rude to people with miscarriages and call them morons if they get upset. Maybe amazing atheist is an asshole like that, but it's not something he said, and if he did believe that, it's something he believes, not everyone who's pro-choice.

The pro-choice position is that foetuses are at some point just a smear of cells and not people. We don't know when the transition occurs, but we know it's not instantly. We also think that the mother should get the final say on what's happening inside her body, not the government.

We aren't callous uncaring people. We don't want abortions to happen. We just think the best way to reduce them is to avoid the unwanted pregnancies that lead to them. On the question of abortion itself, we think we should leave the option of abortion safe and legal for the women who still do decide to go that route, because illegality won't stop them if they're determined to go through with it, and because it's not our right to intercede in such a personal matter.

As atheist's overall point concludes, we're the ones who're in favor of "liberty" here, not Ron Paul.

You know it's funny--when I argue with highly intellectual individuals I always use "straw-man attacks" or am "wrong." In fact, as of today, I have never once noted something worthwhile that contrasted an intellectual's opinion. From now on when I hear the term straw-man I am just going to just assume there is no response and that the straw-man argument is itself a straw-man argument/attack.,

You're the one who chose to focus on the throwaway line about that video, and then focus in on just the part of my response where I said it was a straw man attack, while ignoring almost everything else I said in my last two responses.

You're also the person who made the straw man attack...

Here's the easy fix. Instead of saying some form of "he's saying that women are stupid for getting upset about miscarriages", try saying "if they're just a lump of cells, doesn't that mean it'd be stupid for women who have miscarriages to get upset?"

The answer would still be "No, there's every reason to be upset about a miscarriage because of the loss of the potential that they had every intention of fulfilling, and there's even plenty of reason to be upset about that loss of potential when they have an abortion done, it's just that there's no particular reason why state authorities should be intervening as if a person died or was killed." But at least that way you aren't accusing him of saying something he didn't say, you're just raising a possible problem with what he did say.

I can't speak for other intellectuals you've spoken with, but in our conversations you've contrasted with what I said the overwhelming majority of the time. I only call it a straw man argument when the argument someone's leveling at me centers on saying I believe X, when I vehemently disagree with X.

@NetRunner

You said,
"And with the miscarriage thing, honestly, now you really are just making straw man attacks. He's not saying mothers can't be upset if they lose unborn children, he's saying it's none of anyone else's business if she decides she wants to lose it..."

NO! I won't let you intellectualize what he said into something different. I won't let it be justified with words that don't apply. How can a bunch of cells, as he classifies the not-yet born, be a child??? That is saying that the unborn "child" is not a child at all! You add the term "child" but he distinctly says it's not a child. To him it is simply cells that have the ability to one day be a child. That's fine, but accept what that means.


And that brings up my point; either a woman is batshit crazy when she loses her cells (Like a woman crying every time she uses hand soap,) or it is a child she lost... And see Net, the problem is it now becomes an issue that you cannot defend, it is now a sexuality issue, an equality issue, and that's where you are not able to intellectualize.

You know why he won't say they're children? Because then he has to admit that the right have some sense in what they say. Instead, he now get's to have his cake and eat it too. "It's not a child except when the body itself aborts it...then women can be upset...even if I only called it a group of cells."

At least you have the balls to call it a child...

And speaking of cults--what about his own cult? If I called a woman a cunt, any woman, his supporters would be foaming at the mouth against me. But he waves his magical amazing-wand around and the supporters say its fine to use the word CUNT in certain occasions. But not for anyone else besides him...

(For the record, a lot of people didn't like his use of the word CUNT. Also for the record, his cultists didn't mind.)

You know it's funny--when I argue with highly intellectual individuals I always use "straw-man attacks" or am "wrong." In fact, as of today, I have never once noted something worthwhile that contrasted an intellectual's opinion. From now on when I hear the term straw-man I am just going to just assume there is no response and that the straw-man argument is itself a straw-man argument/attack.