Damn, somebody needs his shit pushed-up. Please officer friendly, commit a crime against a minority on patrol tomorrow on camera...You have new friends waiting to meet you!

Looks like it could be a Texas constable-We apologize, though NEWSFLASH!-An inordinate amount of douchebags join law enforcement organizations all over the world- (German cops suck donkjey-balls, too!)

We use these victim-of-child-abuse-type thugs with smaller brain-pans to keep order, y'know...

Child abuse!!!

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.

At the point where it was probably largely exaggerated or embellished by Tom Hanks

>> ^Quboid:

At what point does hitting your child with a frying pan go from child abuse to funny anecdote? After 22.3 years?

>> ^Quboid:

>> ^Hive13:
>> ^Quboid:
At what point does hitting your child with a frying pan go from child abuse to funny anecdote? After 22.3 years?

I'm guessing you don't have kids in a dangerous, ghetto neighborhood. That frying pan to the head is infinitely more valuable to a kid in that situation than ignoring it and burying him with a bullet in his head.

That's not my point. Regardless of whether or not she was right to do this (and there are other ways to get a point across), it strikes me - no pun intended - that we now laugh at what was a really horrible situation that they were in. As it was MCD who originally told the story, evidently he was OK with it being told and no doubt grew to understand why it happened but it's still odd that a funny anecdote can be made out of a child being beaten up by a gang twice and hit by his own mother.
If someone was caught doing today what his mother did then, they'd be charged with child abuse and I very much doubt the reasons given would get them off the hook. I didn't mean to say she was necessarily wrong to do this (although I did rather imply this), just that this wouldn't be acceptable today - were we wrong then, or are we wrong now?


I think your last paragraph is what makes laughing at the shit we used to get from our parents back in the good old days so funny. Anyone over the age of 30 can relate to getting a serious butt whooping. I don't think it is wrong at all, personally, now or then. All parents have their own way of discipline and their own breaking point. I would never hit one of my kids with a frying pan, but then again I have never been confronted with one of them joining a gang either.

>> ^Hive13:

>> ^Quboid:
At what point does hitting your child with a frying pan go from child abuse to funny anecdote? After 22.3 years?

I'm guessing you don't have kids in a dangerous, ghetto neighborhood. That frying pan to the head is infinitely more valuable to a kid in that situation than ignoring it and burying him with a bullet in his head.


That's not my point. Regardless of whether or not she was right to do this (and there are other ways to get a point across), it strikes me - no pun intended - that we now laugh at what was a really horrible situation that they were in. As it was MCD who originally told the story, evidently he was OK with it being told and no doubt grew to understand why it happened but it's still odd that a funny anecdote can be made out of a child being beaten up by a gang twice and hit by his own mother.

If someone was caught doing today what his mother did then, they'd be charged with child abuse and I very much doubt the reasons given would get them off the hook. I didn't mean to say she was necessarily wrong to do this (although I did rather imply this), just that this wouldn't be acceptable today - were we wrong then, or are we wrong now?

>> ^Quboid:

At what point does hitting your child with a frying pan go from child abuse to funny anecdote? After 22.3 years?


I'm guessing you don't have kids in a dangerous, ghetto neighborhood. That frying pan to the head is infinitely more valuable to a kid in that situation than ignoring it and burying him with a bullet in his head.

At what point does hitting your child with a frying pan go from child abuse to funny anecdote? After 22.3 years?

@ReverendTed
You have been a courteous sparring partner so I will try to answer in kind, but I must admit being very exasperated by your last response. Moreover, I do not think I want to pursue a debate with someone who cannot see how adoption-in-place-of-abortion is neither feasible nor even remotely ethical (vis-à-vis the woman, the would-be child and human society in general). So this will probably be my last wall of self-indulgent dross.

Let’s get one thing out of the way: we both agree that we need more education all ‘round, on all subjects. And as you know, those most opposed to it are the same that are against abortion. Abstinence education is redundant when proper sex-ed is given, because it goes without saying that “no sex = no unwanted pregnancies” is a part of basic sex-ed. Of course, it is un-pragmatic to expect teenagers (or anyone for that matter) to forego sex, so why harp on it, other than for misguided religious purposes?

Your conception of consciousness is fuzzy at best. Everything we feel, experience, etc. is due to electro-chemical reactions in our body/brain. Magical thinking is saying some non-physical “me” exists attached to it, what religious people call a soul. Consciousness is not subordinate to cognition in terms of value, but in the sense that without the one (cognition) you simply don’t have the other (“subordinate” as in “dependent upon”). I mentioned blind-from-birth people for a good reason; they have no visual aspect to their consciousness, their identity/consciousness is built upon the other sensory input. Now imagine a being that has zero sensory input (or a central system capable of making use/sense of it), and you have a mass of muscles/cells/organs devoid of consciousness. And that is what is aborted before the 25th week. I must make it clear, however, that even if this developed much earlier it would still be the woman’s prerogative to choose what she does with her own body/life. In that respect I think the “viability” argument is a pragmatic (albeit conservative) one, because it draws the line between an excrescence and a (possibly) autonomous being.

After the first two paragraphs, your response goes from bad to worse. What I said about adoption v abortion still stands, but I would add that it is still forcing women to go through a pregnancy they do not want (thus still affecting the quality of their lives), not to mention leaving them with the guilt of abandonment, the kids with issues, etc etc. And all for what? So some third person’s unfounded superstitions be upheld? And then you have the gall to compare criminalising abortion with criminalising incest and crazy people locking up/raping their families. You seriously need to think a bit before making comparisons. In the case of child abuse and/or rape (incest itself is a victimless crime, but that’s for a different discussion), there are actual victims, for one, and secondly, the crazies would lock them up whether it was legal or not, because it is a question of absolute control over the other.

Since you cite Guttmacher statistics, allow me to suggest you read a little more:

• Highly restrictive abortion laws are not associated with lower abortion rates. For example, the abortion rate is 29 per 1,000 women of childbearing age in Africa and 32 per 1,000 in Latin America—regions in which abortion is illegal under most circumstances in the majority of countries. The rate is 12 per 1,000 in Western Europe, where abortion is generally permitted on broad grounds.

• Where abortion is permitted on broad legal grounds, it is generally safe, and where it is highly restricted, it is typically unsafe. In developing countries, relatively liberal abortion laws are associated with fewer negative health consequences from unsafe abortion than are highly restrictive laws.

http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_IAW.html

So basically pushing for the criminalisation of abortion is pushing for there to be more abortions, and more dangerous ones.

You note how a large percentage of abortion-seekers are above the poverty line. Obviously, they can afford it / are aware of the possibility. Ever notice how the poor/uneducated tend to have more kids than the others? Do you really think being poor makes you want to have more mouths to feed? Or perhaps it is because they lack access to contraception/abortion (not to mention the poor/uneducated tend to be more religious; religion thrives on misery). Of the “developed” world the US is a bit of a special case, because it is so backward with regards to healthcare and contraception. Notice how most women in the US pay for their abortion out of pocket, and “Nearly 60% of women who experienced a delay in obtaining an abortion cite the time it took to make arrangements and raise money.” (http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_induced_abortion.html/) As an aside, the religious right here in Switzerland (not as influential but almost as stupid and backward thinking as that of the US) are trying to make abortion be no longer covered by the universal healthcare system.

On the “potential” question, everything has been said. I’d simply point out that your “95%” potential leaves out something absolutely crucial, namely the choice of the woman to terminate the abortion, which can reduce that to “0%”. You say “it’s nearly guaranteed”, but so what? Two people having heterosexual vaginal sex without projection over a long period of time will conceive of a child, it’s “nearly guaranteed”, therefore every possible pairing of male and female should have continuous unprotected sex otherwise they are depriving potential beings from existing. “But what if they don’t want to?” Exactly, what if the woman doesn’t want a child at that moment? See how absurd the “potential” argument is?

I’ll risk making this wall of text even wallyer and propose an analogy, The Analogy of the Film and Camera. When you put a film in a camera, the potential for it becoming a strip of individual, unique photos goes up. But so long as no pictures are taken, so long as nothing is imprinted on the film’s receptive surface, you lose no individual photos by taking the film out, and there’s the same amount of potential if you put in a different film at a different time. It’s wonky, I know, but it illustrates that potential individual (the film) is not the same as existing individual (the photo), nor does destroying the first cause any damage to the second, because the second doesn’t exist yet.

The comparison with the IGB campaign is terribly inappropriate and simply false. In one case it is question of keeping living individuals from ending their lives, whereas abortion is about preventing eventual individuals from coming into existence because it would harm the quality of life of an already existing individual (as well as the one to be). IGB is about giving people options/hope, whereas criminalising abortion is about taking that away (from women, to give it to the mind projections of superstitious third parties). The only connection between the two is that in both cases the unsubstantiated beliefs of third persons impinge on an individual’s quality of life and liberty. I already addressed your “good from bad” argument, which you draw out again in an emotionally manipulative way (which frankly made me sick).

On eugenics, oh boy. What you’re saying is akin to saying “self-defence should be outlawed because otherwise some (like Zimmerman) might commit crimes and say it was self-defence”. Or, a little closer to home perhaps: “we shouldn’t have universal healthcare because some might fraud”. Yes, some people fraud the insurance, and yes, some people are aggressive and try to pass it as self-defence. That’s why we have a judicial system. Bringing in eugenics is seriously grasping at straws and you know it.

I’ll end my last contribution to this exchange with the following: having a child should never be an inevitability. Bringing a human life into existence is way too big a responsibility to be an obligation. A women’s body is her own, to deal with as she chooses, uterus and co. included.

Cheers

@hpqp
Good points, all.
However, the "cognition is sacred" (as opposed to "human life is sacred") viewpoint has a hole in it about the size of human consciousness. (Oh man, tangent time!) Some loudly proclaim the presence of a divine soul or spirit, but there is certainly something else there, aside from the physical form.
Obviously, human (and for that matter animal) experience and behavior is influenced by the physical brain and its processes. Damage to it predictably and reproducibly changes behavior and perception. As much as some of us would like to think otherwise, the physical structure and function of the brain influences who we are and what we do as individuals. I would honestly have no problem accepting that the physical universe as we've modeled it functions precisely as it has, autonomously. (Right down to fruitless debates between individuals on the Internet.) Evolution is a real thing. The brain has developed as yet another beneficial mutation that promotes the propagation of its host organism. Input in, behavior out, feedback loop. Click click click, ding.
But the problem is that we experience this. Somehow this mass of individual cells (and below that individual molecules, atoms, quarks) experiences itself in a unified manner, or rather something experiences this mass of matter in a unified manner. No matter how far down you track it, there's no physical accommodation for consciousness. To give a specific example, the cells in the eye detect light (intensity and wavelength) by electrochemical stimulation. The binary "yes\no" of stimulation is routed through the thalamus in individual axons, physically separated in space, to the visual cortex, where it's propagated and multiplied through a matrix of connections, but all individual cells, and all just ticking on and off based on chemical and electrical thresholds. The visual field is essentially painted as a physical map across a region of the brain, but somehow, the entire image is experienced at once. Cognition is necessarily distinct from consciousness.

What this means, practically, is that we must attribute value to cognition and consciousness separately.
Cognition may not be completely understood, but we can explain it in increasingly specific terms, and it seems that we'll be able to unravel how the brain works within the current model. It absolutely has a value. We consider a person who is "a vegetable" to have little to no current or expected quality of life, and generally are comfortable making the decision to "pull the plug".
Consciousness, however, is what we believe makes us special in the universe, despite being completely empty from a theoretical standpoint. If sensory input, memory, and behavioral responses are strictly a function of the material, then stripped of those our "unified experience" is completely undetectable\untestable. We have no way of knowing if our neighbor is a meaty automaton or a conscious being, but we assume. Which is precisely why it's special. It's obviously extra-physical. Perhaps @gorillaman's tomatobaby (that is, the newborn which he says is without Mind) has a consciousness, but it isn't obvious because the physical structure is insufficient for meaningful manifestation. I have difficulty accepting that consciousness, empty though it is on its own, is without value. "So what," though, right? If you can't detect it in anyone but yourself, what use is it in this discussion? Clearly, there IS something about the structure or function of the brain that's conducive to consciousness. We are only conscious of what the brain is conscious of and what it has conceived of within its bounds. So the brain at least is important, but it's not the whole point.
Anyway, there's that tangent.

The "stream of potential life" argument has its limits. Any given sperm or egg is exceedingly unlikely to develop into a human. For a single fertilized egg, the odds shift dramatically. That's why people seek abortions, because if they don't do something, they're probably going to have a baby. The probability of "brewin' a human" is pretty good once you're actually pregnant. The "potential for human life" is very high, which is why you can even make the quality of life argument.

Obviously, you realize how those on the anti-abortion side of the debate react when someone who is...let's say abortion-tolerant ("pro-abortion" overstates it for just about anyone, I suspect) says that they're considering the "quality of life" of the prospective child in their calculus. They get this mental image: "Your mother and I think you'll both be better off this way, trust me. *sound of a meatball in a blender*"
I appreciate that we're trying to minimize suffering in the world and promote goodness, but I think it's over-reaching to paint every potential abortion (or even most) as a tragic tale of suffering simply because the parent wasn't expecting parenthood. Quality of life is much more nuanced. Many wonderful humans have risen from squalor and suffering and will tell you earnestly they believe that background made them stronger\wiser\more empathetic\special. Many parents who were devastated to learn they were pregnant love their unexpected children. And holy crap, kids with Downs, man. What's the quality of life for them and their parents? Terribly challenging and terribly rewarding.
No, I'm not trying to paint rainbows over economic hardship and child abuse and say that "everything's going to be finnnnneeee", but quality of life is a personal decision and it's unpredictable. Isn't that what "It Gets Better" is all about? "Things may seem grim and terrible now, but don't kill yourself just yet, you're going to miss out on some awesome stuff."

Hrm. Thus far we've really been framing abortion as being about "unready" parents, probably because the discussion started on the "mother can choose to have sex" angle.
You've got to wonder how confused this issue would get if we could detect genetically if a fetus might be homosexual. Would Christians loosen their intolerance for abortion if it meant not having a "gay baby"? (Even if it would fly in the face of their belief that homosexuality is a choice.) Would pro-choicer's take a second look at the availability of abortion? Would it still be "one of those terrible things that happens in a free society"?

On western aid, you're spot on. It's so easy to throw money at a problem and pretend we're helping. Humanitarian aid does nothing if we're not promoting and facilitating self-sufficiency. Some people just need a little help getting by until they're back on their feet, but some communities need a jump-start. As you say, they need practical education. I've only been on handful of humanitarian missions myself, so I give more financially than I do of my sweat, but I'm careful to evaluate HOW the organizations I give to use the funds. Are they just shipping food or are they teaching people how to live for themselves and providing the resources to get started? Sure, some giving is necessary. It's impossible for someone to think about sustainable farming and simple industry if they're dying from cholera or starving to death.

>> ^PostalBlowfish:

And that's stupid.
We're getting dumber, which is only going to make us dumber still. We now have lots of very passionate people living in propaganda bubbles. They're indoctrinating their children. I want to call it child abuse, but it's more like taking a steaming dump on America in 2050.


The only thing that educated people can do is try to limit our power outside of our borders. The moral thing to do if we're going to collapse, is to collapse back into ourselves and not take a lot of innocent countries with us.

This is why I wanted to vote in Trump! It would at least speed up the process and possibly mean we can start rebuilding much faster.

And that's stupid.

We're getting dumber, which is only going to make us dumber still. We now have lots of very passionate people living in propaganda bubbles. They're indoctrinating their children. I want to call it child abuse, but it's more like taking a steaming dump on America in 2050.

I dig that sentiment, too!

>> ^vaire2ube:

see if you can eradicate Fear and Greed, too, while we are aiming for the sky. Misguided to think picking the lowest fruit to DDoS/etc (internet distribution) will ever do anything to curb mentally ill people who live in "reality" and actually make this stuff.
Far better to go after the corporations that rape us all, and keep people poor so that they have no resources to prevent or report child abuse.
But, yea.