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Originally Posted by thebigmole
I completely understand what you are saying. However there are some people out there who don't believe in surgery, yet their taxes help fund that. There are also people out there that don't believe in birth control, but there are instances where tax dollars go to that as well. Unfortunately not everyone agrees with everything their taxes pay for but we still give the choice.
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Neither of them are framed in terms of "choice" to the same extent as the abortion argument, though - the arguments for or against surgery are framed in terms of risk vs reward or life now vs potential afterlife (the latter one being that posed by Jehovah's Witnesses among others), while birth control (barring those methods which could be viewed as abortifacients) is more often objected to on moral grounds related to sexualisation of society etc. Abortion is thus far the only area in which the "pro-choice" argument has been applied so forcefully, despite the fact that framing it in terms of "choice" is inherently open to contradiction, as I argued in my previous post. Hence why I would quite happily ditch both "pro-choice" and "pro-life" as positions in the debate.
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Originally Posted by thebigmole
To explain why I called Dani pro-choice: Pro-life to me is not agreeing with abortion, AT ALL and thinking that it should be made illegal. If you are against abortion then you are against it, while you may not be out pushing to make abortion illegal you would vote for it to be so if given the chance. If you don't think it should be illegal, if you are personally completely against abortion but recognize that other women are going to and should be able to do what THEY think is right then you are pro-choice.
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Again, this is why I find the labels completely and utterly meaningless - depending on how the person utilising them phrases their particular definition, they could end up
co-opting the entire audience into their camp 1) without their consent (oh irony) and 2) irrespective of the fact that they may actually disagree on some fairly fundamental points. Examples: late-term abortions, legal limits on abortions, methods which should be allowed and exemptions in cases of rape or incest. People could adopt wildly opposing views on all of those topics, yet under your definition all would be classed as "pro-choice" - even if, to give one example, they would accept abortion being used only for ectopic pregnancies, rape or incest and in no other circumstances, which to my mind severely curtails the "choice" level. Hence, to me, that doesn't make a lot of sense.
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Originally Posted by ~Mr. Self Destruct~
Impressive response time. :P
Yes, but that sperm and that egg COULD have been born into this world.
The question here isn't if an unborn child isn't displaying signs of life, it's whether it is alive as a human being.
If you wanted to impose sanctions on the potential of things occurring, you'd end up with situations like Missionary Report; actually being charged with something that has not happened yet. And before Dave jumps in, let me elaborate. :P
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I love the fact my responses are now being pre-empted.
Much as I admire the ingenuity of the argument, it is stretching the application of "potential life" to breaking point in my opinion. The sperm and egg cells, on their own, will not become anything more than sperm and egg cells until they eventually pass out of the body. Their "potential" is therefore conditional on external factors - in this case, the conscious choice by both persons to have sex - to even come close to being realised, and even then it's not guaranteed. To illustrate, a lump of aluminium oxide has the "potential" to become, amongst other things, part of a car engine, the components of a computer or a humble Coke can. (Other brands are available...) Without the intervention of several external processes, however - not least extracting the aluminium itself - it's going to remain a lump of aluminium oxide. It won't suddenly go "Tada! I'm a Coke can!". In contrast, the embryo is like a lump of aluminium which has gone through the early processes and is now being formed into the end product - barring further external intervention or latent defects, it will become that part of an engine, components of a computer or the Coke can. That end result is predetermined, and therein lies the difference.
It just dawned on me that I've compared a developing unborn child to a Coke can in production - that can't be a good thing.