Metal Reviews

One of the reasons why I am contemplating becoming pro-life...when you look at a living person, how could you ever say that they would be better off dead, even if they are suffering?

Now, ethically, I still think abortion should be legal, but I'm starting to think that I wouldn't advocate it on a moral level.

Also, in response to Carnifex, this is also why I believe that your logic is extremely stupid.

That, and the chance of genetic disorders are roughly the same for cousins as they are for 40 year old mothers. Banning incest IS genetic control. You are arguing against yourself.

Um, because they're suffering? Foetuses are not people. They might well become them one day, but they are not currently living, breathing people, so saying what you said is silly. You're talking about euthanasia.

Anyone posting pictures of cute little late-term abortions to try and convince me that OMG THEYRE BABIES will be told to fuck off.

Same same actually, I do not consider early stage fetuses people. When I was talking about 'inflicting' I was talking about something that is neutral for the mother. People usually have abortions for the mother's sake, and I think they are completely justified in most cases including conception from consensual sex. I don't care if it has fingernails or a tiny beating heart. When I was talking about 'inflicting' I was thinking of an entire life of a human being, not a bunch of tissue that could become one if things go right. I'm not about to give potential life such as the eggs in my ovaries any right to live until I decide to spawn, they are fertilized, sufficiently developed and the genetic test comes back with an OK.

I think making abortion illegal is stupid. Religious pro-life organizations tend to shoot themselves in the foot. They're anti-sex ed (which aims to prevent the need for abortions) and anti-abortion. How does that work? I love Family Planning for example. Those poor women and men (but mostly women) are the ones righting the wrongs of poor sex ed. Occasionally, that involves terminations. However, I'm pretty sure that every person who performs them wishes that there was no need for them. There is only one pro-life secular organization I know of, and they seem more sane.

banning guns also violates privacy, banning heroin also violates privacy.
What I meant by genetic control is a real surveyance where ppl get controlled by the government/an institution - where every little dirty genetic secret is releaved and used to control who are allowed to give birth or make women pregnant. There's huge difference. Banning incest is a precaution that affects all ppl, the other one is real big brother control that effects groups of ppl - something that Hitler really believed in. Ppl who are not allowed to bang their sister or counsin can still have babies, just not with each other. Don't worry, I don't expect you to understand the difference.
Concerning 40 years old women given birth to child vs incest. No they are not roughtly the same - alone babies of cousin relationship are several procentages higher, and babies from brother/sister, mother/son, and father/daughter relationships are thrice as high.

Normal chance for child birth defects are 2-3%, for 40-years-old women you can add 2% procent, for counsin relationships it 6,25% and for parents/offspring it's 25 %. Even with poor mathematical skills you should be able to spot the difference.

My littlest brother was born after my mother was 40. I'd much rather he was alive now that I got to know him.

Truthfully, the non-illegal aspects of this are something that governments shouldn't get involved in. Yes, religious couples may want to have babies with birth defects rather than aborting them, but you can't stop them - it's simply none of our damn business. Things like incest, on the other hand, rarely happen without some element of abuse, which clearly should not be allowed to go ahead. There is a pretty clear difference between a Joseph Fritzl and someone wanting to marry their cousin, after all.

*clap clap clap*

Nah, there is a relevant similarity. You see, controlling who you can have babies with is also genetic control. If I fall in love with my mystery lost cousin and suddenly find out that we're related and can't have babies, well, I think my rights to choose a partner would be violated. Say we're both adults who can give consent with no abuse involved. Genetic discrimination is still genetic. It just happens to occur in special circumstances. You're splitting hairs.

Besides that, your data is off. For cousin marriage you are correct, but not for women over 40. You see, it happens to be roughly 6% for both.

*sigh*
yes, you can perhaps call it genetic control in some ways, but it is still far from the big brother genetic control where everybody is scanned at birth and devided into two groups of ppl; ppl who can and ppl who can't have children - übermenshen und untermenschen. You lack the ability to see how these two types of control effects society and ethics - it's not a simple matter of splitting hairs.
If I fell in love with my mysterious lost sister or daughter and later found out we were related, and thus couldn't have babies, then by your argument my personal right to choose partner would be violated also. Boo-fucking-hoo.
It's also a violation if you ban a woman to marry her little Fido, even though Fido was the first to engange in a relationship.. booo-hooo it's not fair!!!!
I can't wear a diaper around my head either while walking down the street nude - it's a violation of my personal freedom - and i'm not hurting anyone!! booh000


Why you don't just point out that cousin relationships should be legal, rather than arguing about how banning incest is unfair is beyond me. In most countries these are two different discussions. Incest should be illegal, cousin relationships are debatable.

By the logic of saying that abortion is denying a human life, shouldn't every second you spend not having sex also be denying a human life?
A fetus is not even biologically a human being at the latest time of abortion allowed. I don't know the exact figures, but here's something else that's interesting: Stem cells.
Stem cells are taken from 3 day old embryonic blastocysts, which contain on average 150 cells, far, far less than exist in the brain of a fly. They have no neurons, no nerves, no brains. By saying that it's immoral to "kill" a blastocyst, you should be a million times more sorry or more worried about "killing" flies.

I too think incest should be legal. NObody is hurt by it and therefore there is no reason to stop it.

but in both these situations people are doing thigns to others without their consent (animals can't give consent no matter how vigorously they hump your leg, you're exposing yourself to others without their consent by walking around nude). they're not comparable to incest where nobody's rights are being violated.

In response to Zad, sasheron, FrigidSymphony:

I'm not against abortion on the premise that the embryos are humans and it's murder to kill them; rather, just because when is it ever better for a person to be dead than alive? In a worst case scenario, let's say the mom can't support the baby, he goes into foster care and becomes a criminal living on the streets. Do you look at that guy and say "Man, his mom should've gotten an abortion"? I certainly don't. Do you think anyone that suffers honestly wishes that they had never been born? Absolutely not.

But, on the other hand, I don't think that abortion should be illegal. In fact, my opinion is far from definitive...I go back and forth on it. When I consider a girl who was raped or who might have her plans to go to college screwed up by having a baby, I'm more of the mind that it's okay for them to get an abortion.

Do you really think that pro-choice people (whom you seem to be, so why we're arguing I have no idea) want to kill people who are actually grown up? Your case scenario is by no means worst-case: what if the baby was born with some kind of horrific defect, that could have been noted beforehand, and that would mean it would be impossible to live for very long? This is the sort of case that people want the choice to abort in.

As for people suffering through illness, as I said, that's euthanasia, nothing to do with abortion. We basically agree on abortion, as far as I can tell. You just have a harder time with the 'OMG killing babies' angle.

Eh, actually, those two are very bad analogies. Did you read anything I said? Dogs are not human adults who can give consent. Cousins are. I stressed this several times. You are going down the same slippery slope as the anti-gay marriage advocates. If you can remember, I shot down that slippery slope in the first post I made in this thread.

You cannot walk down the street naked while wearing a diaper on your head because actually, it is considered hurting people by law. I think you should be able to do it, but prissy miss lawmakers don't.

You are definitely splitting hair as far as genetic control goes. You forget one important factor - genes from the mother work together with the genes from the father. Two perfectly normal people can create monster children even if they are not related. You are thinking of old-fashioned single-person focused control. I'm thinking anything that has to do anything with prohibiting anyone from breeding on the basis of genes, combinations of genes, phenotypes (the phenotype-genotype relationship is not always regular y'know). It's still genetic control, just not the kind that was practiced in Hitler's Germany. You seem to oppose one kind of genetic control and side with another. I do not see a relevant difference between the two in terms of violations of rights to self-determination.

You see, there is a roughly 2% chance of passing on genetic disorders when the parents of a child are not related (as in, 4th cousins removed or further). This is an average. Say, a couple goes in to seek genetic counseling. They are unrelated. It just happens that through an accident of genetics they have a 7% chance of passing on genetic disorders to their child. This is higher than it would be in the first incident of first cousin marriage. Would you ban them from having a child together? Should they just break up then and find other partners?

Incest is banned for two reasons. One is social stigma to children, which is a circular argument along the lines of 'this causes social stigma, let's stigmatise it further!' and the other is the genetic argument. There is no fair reason to ban incest. It is a formalization of a taboo. However, it is a practical law. You do not need to provide people with genetic counseling to find out that they are related most of the time and the masses (you included) love it. It's the kind of eugenics the public loves and accepts and doesn't really think much about.

heatseeker - think of early abortion as late contraception. A baby does not exist yet, it just happens to be a little further along the way to becoming one. Afterall, I am a potential PhD, but that doesn't mean I should have the rights of a PhD and killing me wouldn't be the same as killing a PhD.

I'm not saying that abortion people actually want to kill full humans, I'm just kind of refuting the argument that abortions are okay because the baby and the mother would suffer if it was born. I don't think that that's a humane argument.

Yet earlier you said:



So going to college is a better reason to have an abortion than potential suffering?

Since I live in the Netherlands, the country which first made gay mariage possible, I can see the results. It is indeed so that in school, people are still bullied for being gay. Still, in classes with more intelligent kids, it here is more of a trend than a taboo to be gay or even better: bisexual. Although we have a long way to go here, regarding the accepting of gays, we see here that after it's been a trend, it becomes something that no-one cares about. This is when I think there is no longer a taboo. It will take a while before all classes will see it as a normal thing if someone rather picks the backdoor, but I'm sure that the state openly supporting it makes a huge impact on how fast it is generally recognized.

What I'm trying to get accross is: If you don't want a gay marriage and gays to be able to adopt children, just because they will be bullied in school, you are never going to solve the issue. You're only going to make it worse.

That's great news. And you are absolutely right, gay marriage should become legal as soon as possible for it to become generally accepted.

When I said "inflicting" I meant genetic medical conditions that impact one's quality of life. Without going into my entire medical history, yes, I did inherit some stuff that has a tangible impact on my life, and considering the family history, the chances that my offspring would have these conditions is extremely high. Do I personally want to die? Not particularly, but then I believe that had I not been born into this body, my soul would have gone someplace else, and perhaps better. Regardless of spiritual/religious beliefs, the things I suffer from are serious enough that I wouldn't want to have children to keep them from suffering as I have.

Also, just to forestall any abortion questions in my case...if I'd had a really debilitating condition like Down's, I would have been aborted. This is according to my mother, and I support that sort of decision fully. It's intolerably cruel to force that kind of suffering on an individual if you can spare them. (Interestingly enough, this is not the first time I've brought out that tidbit of information in a debate on the internet. The last time was much less civil, though, and consisted of an individual telling my pro-choice self that I "should of been aborted.")

Well, I also said that my opinion fluctuates...if I think of it in the suffering scenario, then abortion seems absolutely wrong, but if I think of it in the college scenario, abortion seems acceptable. Mostly, I'm just putting that out there as a type of reasoning when it comes to anti-abortion people, rather than saying that's my absolute opinion.