Pro-life hypocrisy

[Fenring]

There were plenty of teen pregnancies in the Victorian era. Sexual repression in society doesn't halt an essential biological drive. Same thing with Islamic societies. Monogamy is also exceedingly unnatural, even more so mating for life with one partner. Doesn't mean it can't work for some, it surely does. But hanging your hope on some idyllic utopia where teens are all respectful monks who conform to your idea of life partner pairing for the purpose of procreation is simply fantasy.

I dunno. Maybe it's because I'm not that versed in Victorian cultural norms and their roots, but it sounds like a nebulous argument to me. It just doesn't sound compelling to say that based on some particular historical example (which in itself may have been fraught with inappropriate cultural artifacts of its own) that it's not realistic. I could just as soon show you modern Japan and argue that the increasing lack of interest in sex is 'proof' of the converse of what you argue. Obviously it would not be proof at all, and to whatever extent it was evidence of something, it's not even easy to parse what that something might be. These things are far too complex to reduce to a simple analogy or example and say yes or no. And maybe every society so far has been inappropriately set up vis a vis bringing up people in a more tasteful way regarding sex. The answer that I'm being utopian might well be warranted if I were to say that; but then again who would have thought that kids could be brought up in a society where adults do not routinely murder each other? 300 years ago you might not have been able to name any society where that was true, and someone saying that, "well, maybe in the future we'll have a more advanced culture where people mostly don't kill each other," would come across as silly and utopian. Who would have known that one day some combination of advanced police techniques, forensic evidence, increase in overall wealth making it too risky to lose everything, and other factors would conspire to make it virtually unthinkable for most people to do a murder. Who'da thunk. So maybe one day it won't be silly re: teenage temptations to sex either. Right now, yeah, it's unrealistic. That doesn't mean it's good.

[TheDrake]

Murdering other people is not a fundamental biological imperative. Do repressive societies reduce the amount of teen sex? Almost certainly. The countries where women can be murdered or mutilated either in response to having sex, appearing like they might have sex, or just plain pre-emptively will certainly curb that natural desire. Whether Beyonce twerks or not has little to no impact. Elvis appearing on screen made parents weep with terror over the influence, but boys were shaking their hips long before he showed up on TV.

[LetterRip]

Arizona just narrowly avoided a law criminalizing nearly all abortions, even if the fetus had severe fetal abnormality - as long as the abnormality was non fatal.

This links describes the bill (illegal 'after fetal heart beat detected').

https://tucson.com/news/arizona_news/senate-committee-oks-bill-that-criminalizes-abortions-done-after-fetal-heartbeat-detected/article_ccec4735-ed63-54a1-bbcd-b04ca0de01b8.html

[LetterRip]

Arizona just passed the same (essentially the same?) bill that I mentioned earlier,

Senate Bill 1457 moved through the Legislature in fits and starts, stalling twice before moving again amid intense pressure by abortion opponents on GOP lawmakers who opposed some of its provisions. It finally passed both chambers last week.

The abortion bill as originally written made it a felony for a doctor to perform the procedure because the fetus has a genetic abnormality such as Down syndrome, and contained a slew of other provisions, including one that confers all civil rights to unborn children. Democrats call that “personhood” provision a backdoor way to allow criminal charges against a woman who has an abortion.

In addition to the ban on abortions for genetic abnormalities and the “personhood” provision, the bill bans mail delivery of abortion-inducing medication, allows the father or maternal grandparents of a fetus aborted because of a genetic issue to sue, and bans the spending of any state money toward organizations that provide abortion care.

The measure also requires fetal remains to be buried or cremated, and it forbids state universities from providing abortion care.

https://www.knau.org/post/arizona-governor-signs-abortion-ban-genetic-issues

[Wayward Son]

The prize for "pro-life" hypocrisy goes to Missouri House Representative Brian Seitz (R) who introduced HB 128, which (among other things) would make it a Class A felony when:

(2) The abortion was performed or induced, or attempted, on a woman who has an ectopic pregnancy.

I can't think of a more stupid, bone-headed, hypocritical and murderous example of "pro-life" hypocrisy, can you?  Making it a felony to try to save a mother in order to allow an embryo to never be born.  Making it a Class A criminal offense to try to prevent an agonizing death of the mother for an unborn embryo that will die anyway.    Charitably, he is at least lazy and criminally stupid for not checking what he put in his own bill.  Uncharitably, he is a heartless monster who knows what he wrote and wants to see mothers suffer and die, just so he can proudly say he is against all abortions.

Now that ectopic pregnancies are also on the list, can anyone still argue that abortions not will always be necessary?

[rightleft22]

Pro Life - We care about the start of life but once your breathing your on your own.

[Fenring]

This clause is also baffling:

(3) The abortion was performed and induced, or attempted, on a woman who is a victim of sex trafficking;

They're...raising the penalty if it's done for a victim of sex trafficking? Now I could understand the argument that even sex trafficking victims shouldn't have abortions; that is a typical pro-life position. But to treat this scenario (which most people regard as highly unfortunate even on the pro-life side) as requiring more severe sentencing than even a regular abortion...I don't get it. I don't even understand the internal logic of this clause. It's almost like a typo. WS, the clause you mention is flatly illogical as well, if I understand it correctly, or at least it's illogical so long as it's understood that an ectopic pregnancy already means the fetus will not survive and the mother is in danger. Maybe someone here has an idea of why these clauses would be included, even just as far as the authors of this bill go?

[Crunch]

Pro Life - We care about the start of life but once your breathing your on your own.

Pro abortion - we love killing babies.

Such moronic blanket statements are fun! And also the standard of discourse here it seems.

Let’s also talk about the liberal desire for pedophilia, that’s a good one.

 

[rightleft22]

Such moronic blanket statements are fun - Pro Life...., Pro Choice.... moronic

[Wayward Son]

Pro Life - We care about the start of life but once your breathing your on your own.

Pro abortion - we love killing babies.

Such moronic blanket statements are fun! And also the standard of discourse here it seems.

Let’s also talk about the liberal desire for pedophilia, that’s a good one.

 

You have to admit, Crunch, that some of these radical Republican representatives really don't give a damn about the life of the mother.  They'd happily risk the life of the mother so she might be able to give birth to a child without functioning lungs, as in my earlier example.  And now this brain-dead, who wants to criminalize a procedure that saves the life of a mother for a embryo that has NO CHANCE of being born. 

Did you know that ectopic pregnancies account for at least 10 percent of deaths from pregnancies?  And this is with abortion procedures.  But he wants to make preventing such a death a Class A felony!

The truly scary part is this is not new.  Back in 2019, Ohio had a bill that required doctors to attempt to "reimplant an ectopic pregnancy into the mother's uterus," in spite of the fact that obstetricians and gynecologists tried to tell the Ohio legislators that there is no such procedure and that it is impossible.  But, apparently, making it a law to attempt the impossible or face jail or worse is quite acceptable to some in the name of preventing abortions.  Just because it is a fantasy is no reason not to require it! 

You may be worried about the level of discourse among us here, but perhaps you should be more worried about the acceptance of reality among anti-abortion advocates, especially the ones who are elected to office.  After all, being nasty here won't kill anyone.

[Seriati]

The prize for "pro-life" hypocrisy goes to Missouri House Representative Brian Seitz (R) who introduced HB 128, which (among other things) would make it a Class A felony when:

(2) The abortion was performed or induced, or attempted, on a woman who has an ectopic pregnancy.

I can't think of a more stupid, bone-headed, hypocritical and murderous example of "pro-life" hypocrisy, can you?  Making it a felony to try to save a mother in order to allow an embryo to never be born.

Reading comprehension is important.  The bill you cite to doesn't make it a felony to try and save a mother.  There is a period before the list of things that bump it to a Class A.  The point of the law is that it's illegal to import tools and medicines to facilitate illegal abortions.

This bill establishes the offense of trafficking abortion-inducing devices or drugs if a person or entity knowingly imports, exports, distributes, delivers, manufactures, produces, prescribes, administers, or dispenses, or attempts to do so, any instrument, device, medicine, drug, or other means or substance to be used to
perform or induce an abortion on another person in violation of state or federal law.

Whether or not it's a good idea it's targeted at things like delivering abortion supplies to unlicensed providers, or home delivery of abortion supplies where the abortion itself would be illegal.

The reason for the some of "enhancements" should be obvious.  If you deliver abortion supplies to someone with an ectopic pregnancy you may kill them.  That's a situation that has to be resolved by a real doctor.  There is no safe "at home" treatment of an ectopic pregnancy.

I would suspect the sex trafficking provision is directly correlated to the ongoing abuse of trafficked women, who are forced to have abortions by their pimps.  Taking those abortions offline and removing any exposure or risk to medical or other authorities reduces the margin for saving them even more.

I can't say this bill is a good idea, but the reactions on here just reinforce my impression that people react before they read and analyze. 

Charitably, he is at least lazy and criminally stupid for not checking what he put in his own bill.  Uncharitably, he is a heartless monster who knows what he wrote and wants to see mothers suffer and die, just so he can proudly say he is against all abortions.

And what is the charitable and uncharitable interpretation of not even reading a bill that's less than a page before going off on a rant about someone that doesn't even apply?

Now that ectopic pregnancies are also on the list, can anyone still argue that abortions not will always be necessary?

Now that you've gone on record as calling someone a monster for trying to pass a law banning sending abortion supplies for do it yourself home abortions on ectopic pregnancies - which is going to kill people - can you still argue that you're able to fairly evaluate what kind of reasonable controls may or may not be needed?

[Seriati]

A point was brought up in the Roe vs Wade thread about hypocrisy on the right, and this is a perennial observation by liberals about the one-sidedness of the pro-life position. Arguments of this type appear to range from being pro-life in certain social contexts (abortion) but arguably anti-life in others (military), to the fact of conservatives opposing social safety nets and even at times vilifying young mothers and even the poor in general for being failures.

That's a quite a mess of strawmen tied together.  Are you suggesting that each of those "correllated" ideas is necessary to be pro life?  Would you hold the same for pro-choice for example?  Are they all required to be man-hating lesbians that demonize men and believe that all sex is rape?  Or should we not tar one position with the completely unrelated views of those who's only view in common is the single point? 

So I would like to propose a discussion about what we all think are things that would need to be put in place in a society to make the pro-life position consistent and not hypocritical.

I'm tempted to propose a discussion about what would have to be put in society to make falsely defining a position and then asking for comments on how to resolve the false definitions not hypocritical, but instead I'll just try to answer.

It takes nothing from a society to make a pro-life position "not hypocritical."  Hypocrisy is defined by each person's view point and whether its consistent with their internal justifications.  Disagreeing with their justifications doesn't turn them into a hypocrite, and calling them hypocrites actually comes off as pompous and arrogant.  Now don't get me wrong plenty of people are in fact hypocrites on both sides, on all sides really.

So let's propose an axiomatic premise for the thread:

From the moment of conception the unborn are human beings with the full dignity of humanity, requiring the same protections and duty of care that other humans have.

Putting aside whether you think this is a reasonable proposition, just imagine it's true and go from there. Which steps in society would need to be taken to deal with this?

In society?  None. 

The problem is that your premise has a hidden assumption, that society has an agreed standard for the protection of the "full dignity" of adult humans.  There's no evidence that you live in such a society.  Our society is a cancel society that believes a single "wrong" view is enough to cast a person out to the pits of oblivion, to end long standing relationships, to disenfranchise, to silence, to dis-employ, effectively to cast into unredeemable shame.  We're barely a step from condoning imprisonment or even murder.  What exactly would that level of dignity grant to an unborn child?

Now if you're positing that society has some agreed standard of life what is it?  Is self defense permitted or not?  Cause if self defense is permitted, then based on the exact arguments you've seen me make before, abortion of a child pre-viability could still be the just result.  Certainly abortion where the life of the mother is endangered would be permitted.  Now if you're positing a society where you are not entitled to self defense, what exactly is the complaint regarding elimination of abortion?  You already are obligated to take any punishment or go to jail for defending yourself.

The question is based on a faulty premise, the idea that we can treat a fetus like anyone else and then evaluate the rules against a society that doesn't treat anyone else in the manner you seem to want to find required.  So don't be lazy, define your society if you want to play a game, cause in our society there is nothing required to make a pro-life position non-hypocritical, as there's nothing inherently hypocritical about it.

If, for instance, abortion was banned, what social, political, or even moral changes would need to be undertaken to create what we might call a conscientious and caring society that does not run roughshod on the downtrodden and burden people who need help?

If completely irrelevant condition A is to occur, what steps do we have to take to form a utopia?  What does pro life have to with the beyond a wish list level of speculation you're calling for? 

This lack of focus is exactly what led to a nonsense thread where every horror under the sun got fed back into a hypothetical by people who are completely opposed to even the concept of a pro-life position rather than any kind of good faith analysis and response.

In other words, if we take the above premise seriously, what would need to go along with it so that the pro-life position at minimum makes sense on a human level and doesn't come across as either disingenuous or contradictory?

If we take the premise of utopia seriously what has to happen to make pro life make sense?  Well literally nothing, because in Utopia there would be no unwanted pregnancies and every baby would be loved and welcome from the start.  I mean maybe take a look at Star Trek, they didn't seem to have major abortion issues, presumably because they had completely effective birth control and wanted the children they had.

We still have an awful lot of unwanted pregnancies for a society where birth control is so readily available.  Maybe ask yourself what a people that have unplanned pregnancies at a rate that far far exceeds the failure rate of commonly available birth control are really wiling to do.

What is the best-case scenario we can come up with for a society where abortion is understood to be the killing of people? Note that this does not have to include a banning of abortion, but that any instantiation of abortion would have to come with the understanding that all involved recognize that a person is being killed.

I think there's a quote on this point, something about them being rare, safe and tragic.

[TheDrake]

The problem is that pro-life is unnecessarily vague because that side wanted to be pro-something and not anti-abortion. They don't even specify human life, so I guess to avoid hypocrisy they would have to become vegetarians or even Jains.

Pro-choice is just as bad because that side didn't want to be pro-abortion. So to avoid hypocrisy, they'd have to be extreme libertarians, including school choice, mask choice, and seatbelt choice.

The whole argument is kind of silly, but that's the fault of the respective movements of not owning exactly what they stand for.

[Wayward Son]

Reading comprehension is important.  The bill you cite to doesn't make it a felony to try and save a mother.  There is a period before the list of things that bump it to a Class A.  The point of the law is that it's illegal to import tools and medicines to facilitate illegal abortions.

You're right, Seriati.  The way the bill reads, it only penalizes illegal abortions.  I missed that, although from doing a quick internet search, there are quite a few others that missed that, too.  (Of course, they might have simply ignored it, hoping others wouldn't notice. )

The bill is still confusing.  If the procedures are already illegal, why make procurement illegal, too?  How do you prove the material was meant for "illegal abortions?"  Or is it in anticipation of abortions that are currently legal and are expected to be illegal soon?

And just how big is the problem of illegal ectopic abortions that it warrants special mention in the bill?    I would think they would be extremely rare.

And why does the bill specify unborn children after 10 weeks of gestation, when abortions currently are legal up to 22 weeks after gestation?  Why 10 weeks?  Is he expecting a change in the law, or trying to induce one?

Still, it is good to know that there are not representatives who believe that ectopic pregnancies shouldn't be aborted.  It would have been totally crazy if those were outlawed.  I should be more careful when it is so obviously outrageous.

[Fenring]

Thanks for the correction on the bill itself, Seriati. I didn't read it closely enough to see why it seemed so weird (unfortunately I'm sometimes tabbing in quickly to Ornery and try to reply as I can).

Regarding your point by point response to my OP, I must say I'm a little puzzled about why you're compartmentalizing each clause and trying to take it apart. Step back for a moment and notice the overall picture I was proposing: how a society could be in general concordance with its own supposed moral precepts. That is not a complicated proposition, broadly speaking. In the particular case of abortion, I didn't in fact draw this scenario from whole cloth but was riffing off a very common and even prototypical pro-choice objection to the pro-life position: why do you seem to be 'pro-life' only in the one instance where it seems to harm women and families, but not in the many other instances where it would actually cost you something to be supportive of life? Now that is a multi-faceted objection which carries with it certain pre-suppositions (among which are the idea that societies need to be concordant in the first place, and the idea that moral precepts should be far-reaching rather than self-serving on a case by case basis). It doesn't seem, from your replies, that you're familiar with this objection, but it's not a strange one, nor did I concoct the scenario to actually discuss utopia as you are suggesting. It means that if people would actually put money where their mouths are, what steps would they have to take?

Now I am not actually hip-deep in either the pro-life or pro-choice causes (although I know people who are, on both sides), but I do have some schooling in the issues and your objection seems to sweep away an entire realm of discourse that has meat to it. A simple example within this pro-choice objection, and one oft mentioned in the debate, is that one can find people who are ardently 'pro-life' in the sense of being anti-abortion (as Drake put it), but also pro-war and super into the military. Many people find these positions discordant to the extreme. Just for example, a typical Catholic position would be to be anti-abortion, but also anti-war (as Pope Francis is demonstrating right in regard to the Ukraine situation). So at mimimum these two positions are in accord with each other, whether or not you agree with them: upholding the sactity of all human life. Another typical example found within this objection is the observation that many communities that are ardently anti-abortion (under the auspices of being 'pro-life') will nevertheless shame a young, single mother (for sexual sin, failure in life, etc), making life difficult for them even though they are seemingly forcing them to proceed with the birth. This is less clearly a direct logical contradiction, but still appears to be a dick position to take. Certainly doesn't make people who are like this appear to be decent people, which in turn undermines the validity of their arguments.

There are many other examples I could summon up of apparent hypocrisy, which stretch from the individual to the societal level. It's not really a complicated issue to note; in fact it's one of those things which hits people immediately, as opposed to being an abstract philosophical objection. Far be it for me to suggest that a reasonable person must come to only the same conclusions as me on this topic, but I don't think there's any reasonable way to discuss the whole topic and pretend that it's just utopian fantasizing. That's not the topic at hand at all. It's about holding people to their own self-claimed standards rather than allowing morality to be a caferia where you order whatever you like each day based on what is convenient for you.

[Fenring]

Here, Seriati, by total coincidence just came across a Reddit thread where something on this topic comes up. Here are a couple of posts on a sub-thread:

I went to a small Bible college where we had to sign a contract promising not to drink or have premarital sex while enrolled there. At one point a couple was caught having sex, the guy was put on some sort of light probation (of course he was still able to play on the school’s basketball team) and the girl was immediately expelled.

I went to a Christian school in high school. They would immediately expel any girl who became pregnant.

Several years back (way way since I graduated HS), a prominent Christian college rescinded their policy to expel pregnant women, because they realized it may have the inadvertent affect of causing these women to get abortions. I shared their post on Facebook and said my old high school should consider this. I then get this huge tirade message from one of the office workers telling me how wrong it was of me to post that and how I was a terrible person for it and all this stuff.

So we have two issues, one of double-standards, and another involving "pro-life" meaning punishing women for being pregnant. I am sure these are not very unusual stories from religious communities. Not that only religious people are pro-life, but it's an example anyhow. My OP was about what steps people/society should take in order to behave in a way that a neutral observer would say at minimum is consistent and reasonable.

[cherrypoptart]

Pro-life, pro-military, pro-death penalty, and not wanting to financial support the children of other people are not hypocritical at all. They all have the same underlying consistency which is you are pro-responsibility.

People need to take responsibility for their own actions and if they don't want to then they need to be held responsible for them anyway. When you look at it that way then it all starts to make sense.

Pro-military means you have the ability to hold other countries responsible for their actions, for instance when Iraq invaded Kuwait, Germany invaded Poland, and North Korean communists tried to make the vibrant hub of capitalist democracy and the male makeup capital of the world, South Korea, look as drab and dreary and depressing as North Korea does now. Our military stopped them. And our military was the only way they could be stopped.

Pro-death penalty makes perfect sense because you are holding people responsible for their crimes. Hopefully they are the ones who actually committed them.

Pro-life means you hold the person responsible for the baby to account and that means they have to take care of the child, not kill it. Most of these fetuses are completely innocent. None that I know of have ever been convicted of a crime in court by a jury of their peers. They shouldn't be the ones punished. I mean yeah I guess some of the older ones kicked a pregnant woman in the stomach over and over but it's generally the left saying that young'uns shouldn't be punished so harshly when they don't know what they're doing. Not wanting to pay for the child also means holding them responsible. Sure if they can't, then they can't, and there should be a safety net but the general principle is the same as it is for men. If it's their child then it's their financial responsibility.

[Fenring]

Pro-life, pro-military, pro-death penalty, and not wanting to financial support the children of other people are not hypocritical at all. They all have the same underlying consistency which is you are pro-responsibility.

I don't think that's a typical pro-life position, or at least not a common one I've encountered. I could be wrong - maybe it's a strain of the argument but not one I'm in contact with. I don't think most pro-lifers I've read are saying that you need to own up to your choices, including the choice to have sex, and just 'man up' and have the baby. Anyhow, even if this is an argument many make it doesn't in fact explain why forcing women to have babies is the required way to take responsibility. Many people who do have abortions no doubt believe they are in fact taking responsibility for the situation and dealing with it. So you can't just say be responsible; at minimum you have to say be responsible, and it's baby-killing. And then explicating why the baby-killing is wrong becomes its own sub-argument, which must get into sanctity of life issues, which then (although it merely backs up the 'take responsibility' argument as it appears high-up in your argument) actually ends up being the thing in conflict with the others. Sanctity of life doesn't seem congruent with loving large weapons of war and troop deployments. I don't mean grudgingly admit that these things are necessary, but actually being gung-ho about them. The tone matters.

[cherrypoptart]

"So you can't just say be responsible; at minimum you have to say be responsible, and it's baby-killing."

Well you nailed it there. It's wrong because that's a baby and it's not my responsibility because that's your baby, not mine.

And by the way that's where the exception for rape and incest come in and still make sense. In that case, it wasn't the pregnant person's responsibility. That's why I'm not against abortion in cases of rape and incest. And also why I don't think abortion should be illegal because put together that just means you'll get a bunch of women falsely claiming they were raped just to get an abortion.

But as a general principle, from a position of being in favor of personal responsibility, I'm anti-abortion except in cases of rape, incest, health of the mother, and serious health issues of the fetus. I'll admit to not being a purist, and atypical, but I feel like I have the underlying principle well girded.

Some of the purists don't articulate their reasoning the same way I do across the various issues, all the while the pro-responsibility angle permeates their subconscious reasoning anyway.

[TheDrake]

You do know that birth control is not 100% effective, right? Or is your sense of responsibility that no-one should have intercourse unless they are prepared to raise a baby, regardless of contraceptives?

Pro-responsibility is a very intriguing concept. A standard argument for pro-lifers is adoption. But that would still completely violate the responsibility angle, wouldn't it? You get drunk at a party and don't use protection, or use it ineffectively, or it fails, and now you've got an 18 years sentence and a million dollar fine. No get out of jail free card, whether its abortion or adoption. And you better not be coming around here for any healthcare or nutritional assistance from the government, because that poop is on you too. You should have thought about your lack of healthcare when you decided to exercise your biological imperative.

[Fenring]

Yeah, personally the 'responsibility' argument doesn't hold much water with me. Assigning responsibility sounds to me like trying to demonstrate moral culpability, which I do not see how one can do with assurance. There's a reason why in religion it's often said that only God can judge you; how can you know the mind (and the past mind) of someone who did something, and make that legally binding? But that's a question of law. Perhaps as you unintentionally pointed out, cherry, it seems impractical to create a legal loophole which depends on the statement of the mother regarding how voluntary the sex was.

But maybe more to the point, I can't really see anything "pro-life" about the pro-responsibility argument. It doesn't actually say anything at all about the life in question; not about its status, its rights, or what it deserves. The argument rests entirely on the actions and statements of the parents. From that standpoint I think it might be more accurate to call it a "no take-backs" argument, not a pro-life argument. Pretty typically, pro-life means you are arguing for the life itself. Imagine an action film where a hero is saving some people in a burning building, and then imagine he interviews them as he gets them to safety on his shoulders, one by one; and now imagine he learns one of them was born as a result of rape, and throws them back into the fire. "Sorry buddy, but you were born under most inauspicious circumstances." It sounds ludicrous when spoken about a grown adult, but the pro-life position (at least in majority of cases) asserts that a life is a life, so it would almost be the equivalent of saying that in cases of rape the mother gets to decide that a life can arbitrarily be put to an end. This is all, of course, so long as we re-assert the opening premise in my OP, that it is definitely a 'real person'.

[rightleft22]

Pro-life, pro-military, pro-death penalty, and not wanting to financial support the children of other people are not hypocritical at all. They all have the same underlying consistency which is you are pro-responsibility.

I

don't think that's a typical pro-life position, or at least not a common one I've encountered

Its a common argument within the religious circles I grew up in. Having sex is a choice and a person (woman) is responsible and accountable for whatever the choice leads. They argued Pro Choice hypocrisy is in how and when a Choice is defined/made - which choices count and which don't, and when they count. At the same time those making that argument compartmentalized the argument about social safety net and didn't see any hypocrisy in separating those issues.


Hypocrisy is inevitable when we define a complex issues with simple slogans like 'Pro Life' - 'Pro Choice'. 

[yossarian22c]

...Hypocrisy is inevitable when we define a complex issues with simple slogans like 'Pro Life' - 'Pro Choice'.

This. Particularly when you don't define what "life" or "choice" you are pro.

[Fenring]

Its a common argument within the religious circles I grew up in. Having sex is a choice and a person (woman) is responsible and accountable for whatever the choice leads. They argued Pro Choice hypocrisy is in how and when a Choice is defined/made - which choices count and which don't, and when they count. At the same time those making that argument compartmentalized the argument about social safety net and didn't see any hypocrisy in separating those issues.

Well that's the point of this thread, really - for you to suggest how those people you are talking about right now could behave such that it would not longer be compartmentalized. I could add to what I just mentioned to cherry, which is that I've never seen a "pro-responsibility" argument as the only assertion in the abortion debate. It just doesn't mean much on its own without a separate statement about the unborn. So when I said I've not really encounted the pro-responsibility argument, I don't mean I've never heard anyone say people should own up to their choices (like having sex), but I mean that I've never heard this argument asserted alone and without other assertions as an answer to the abortion question.

Hypocrisy is inevitable when we define a complex issues with simple slogans like 'Pro Life' - 'Pro Choice'.

There are plenty of non-hypocrites on both sides of the abortion issue, just as there are plenty of hypocrites. It is flatly incorrect to suggest that no one has ever defined the complex issues. I do see a lot of bad faith, on both sides to an extent, where instead of defining their opponents' positions properly they strawman the issue into being an 'obvious' answer favoring their side.

For the purposes of this thread I defined quite clearly what the premise was and why that was called a "pro-life" position. So it's not like there's nothing to work with in the immediate instance.

[rightleft22]

It is flatly incorrect to suggest that no one has ever defined the complex issues

I would never suggest that although its been a while since I have observe such a debate other then on this site.

Growing up in a very religiously pro live community the pro responsibility arguments cherrypoptart pointed out were the ones, are the ones, I encounter most of the time as well as the compartmentation tendency of the Pro-Life.   

I was surprised that, that wasn't your experience. Not in a bad way as it suggest better dialog about the issue is taking place. Because of my past experience I avoid any debates other then here. 

Earlier on I made a mean comment - 'Pro Life until you take your first breath, then your on your own'.  That came from a conversation with a very Pro Life very anti government (anti social assistance) relative.  His argument as it concern support after the woman gives birth was that the Church should be the social safety net, not the government. Though the money would come from the government? He had for more faith then I in how Churches handle money and cooperated with each other.

[Fenring]

Growing up in a very religiously pro live community the pro responsibility arguments cherrypoptart pointed out were the ones, are the ones, I encounter most of the time as well as the compartmentation tendency of the Pro-Life.

Right, and this is the sort of thing I was addressing when asking what fixes could eliminate this kind of attitude which essentially reads as "I do what I want, and also you do what I want." But when I mention that there are cogent pro-life arguments, I'm obviously discussing among intellectuals or people making serious arguments in the debate. You can get 'street comments' about any topic that lack any nuance, but there are also lots of people out there delving into the real issues.

I was surprised that, that wasn't your experience. Not in a bad way as it suggest better dialog about the issue is taking place. Because of my past experience I avoid any debates other then here. 

Actually my geographical background has had a vast majority of people around me pro-choice. For pro-life positions I have to read people who blog or write articles, online publications, and of course now podcasts and such. So I guess I can also qualify my comments about 'serious' thinkers to mean people engaged in the intellectual side of it. Regular folk who don't need to justify their opinions do tend to have simplistic rationalizations for what they believe, yes.

[TheDrake]

Maybe more accurate to say that one group is pro-fetus and the other is pro-baby (or pick other words if you like). That is the crux of the matter. Nobody on the pro-choice side is saying a mother has the right to terminate an unwanted toddler. Thus the language unborn child. There's no resolving that part, and it makes clear that the rape/incest exception is there more to remove that argument about the unfairness of carrying your rapists baby to term. Nobody would let that same rape victim smother a baby in a crib.

[rightleft22]

Right, and this is the sort of thing I was addressing when asking what fixes could eliminate this kind of attitude

I remember attempting to have that dialog with my brother in-law and failed. It wasn't a yelling match or anything like that. He don't see his view on the social safety net and abortions as connected. I did.
It wasn't that he didn't want to help the mother and child argued the church would do that, to a point, and that the government should stay out of that part of things.  (after the government uses the law to insure the mother gave birth... which wasn't forcing his values on another because its not forcing when its morally right its freedom... A expression of his freedom)

Its been a eye opener how my past experience with such debates has become a trigger (hate using that word) My reaction to Pro-Life arguments and some Pro Choose ones have become pavlovian instead of a response. 

To eliminate that kind of attitude I guess the first step is to acknowledge I have one. I'll try to do better.