Yes, I am a atheist against abortion, but I believe in freedom of choice of my own personal belief.

Even though I am against it, I don't feel that I have any right to force my opinion on anyone else. I wouldn't want to mentally go thru it again, but I wouldn't stop or try to change anyone elses mind on the subject.

 Me. I find it reprehensible.  I support it legally only because I cannot demonstrate that a fetus deserves the rights of personhood.

But personally, I accept that they do, because as an atheist, I believe that every stage of development of life is a stage in personhood, no matter how meager the stage may be. I believe that holding that a fetus is not a person is an arbitrary freezing of a fetus at the fetal stage - when in fact, all beings are always becoming, and are never truly simply one stage or another.

My position is this:

In order for there to be rights, there must be responsibilities. A right to life can only be instantiated as long as others are responsible to life. There is a necessary balance.

So while a mother has rights, she also has responsibilities.

If a mother purposely and knowingly takes part in a sexual act knowing the ramifications of that act: possible pregnancy, then she has a responsibility to the life she creates, as does the father.

Her rights to choose her path in life are limited by the responsibilities to the lives she creates.

Just to head off the inevitable fallacy of composition that is always lodged at my argument from 'pro choicers': saying that a blastocyst is just 'a sperm and an egg' or that a fetus is 'just a lump of cells'  are both fallacies of composition. By the same logic, you are just a lump of cells, and by your own argument, I have a right to terminate you.

The reality is that even an impregnated egg is something more than just a sperm and an egg on their own... merely inseminating an egg leads to a 1% chance of human life. A sperm and and egg on their own give a 0% chance.

And when you consider that the main reason sperm and egg cells interact is through purposely human behavior, I believe we have a responsibility to those lives that is equal with our own rights to life. Neither supercedes the other.

On the other hand, pro lifers sicken me.... if they really care so damn much , they can stop protesting outside abortion clinics and offer to help one of those young women out.  The secret pro lifers must keep to themselves is that they'd all shit green if the 1 million aborted babies a year that they supposedly cry over all lived.... the last thing the typically middle class pro lifers want is a widening of the welfare rolls....

So both sides can drop dead as far as the debate goes... emotions rule the day, and dishonesty riddles each side's arguments.... but you asked my position, so I gave it.

Before we begin, I want to say that I enjoy your posts. I say this because , from past experience, I expect that we will become blood enemies in this thread.

My response to your comment here, my learned, respected, comrade, is

BULL FUCKING SHIT.

 (Ok, sorry for the rhetoric, don't take is personal)

But the idea that the pro abortion side is 'pro choice' is based on what? A choice between having their baby or aborting it?

Is there someone against having live children?

One might as well say that there isn't any such thing as a rapist... there are merely anti rapists, and 'pro choicers' on the matter of rape, those open to consentual sex or rape.

It's ludicrous.

The sole quesiton here is: Pro abortion or Anti abortion?

Both 'sides' are pro life - Pro abortionists dont' believe aborting fetus's is killing persons in the first place.

Both sides are pro choice - Pro lifers simply don't consider murder a choice in the first place.

The sole matter here is this: is there a moral grounds for purposely aborting a fetus?

Some say yes, and have good arguments.

Some say no, and have good arguments.

But please, please as a fellow free thinker, spare me the rhetoric.

Oh, for those ready to take aim:

Fire away.

I see plenty of republican atheists... in, fact, if you think about it, two of the most influential conservative philosophers were atheists, i.e. Ayn Rand is one....

I don't recall exempting myself from the emotions. In fact, my point was that emotions ruled the day here. I carefully impugned both sides of the debate.

And you should also note how I go out of my way to apologize for my emotions.

So you might want to reconsider your comments. There's no hypocrisy here. This pot called himself black before you even entered the room.

Like most, I have mixed feelings about it. I agree it should be available where the mother's health is at risk, definitely. I'm ambivalent about it otherwise, but believe it's the mother's right to choose. Nobody really likes abortion, that I know of.
If someone says they're anti-choicce, I'd want to know how soon they can sign up for the adoption queue.

I don't see how this follows, an anti abortionist can hold that a person  has a right to choose whether or not they have a child up until the point that they actually procreate one. 

Now, for those who actively protest outside abortion clinics... I quite agree that they should put up or shut up.

Offer to sign a contract to help one of the young mothers, offer money, time.

Or offer to adopt the child.

In other words, if you care, offer to help.

Protesters seem to be out for nothing more than themselves... if they care, they can adopt.

With that, I agree. 

I actually left open the strong possibility that you would.

I'd say it was overcompensation for a hidden guilt.

Well, we agree.

I should say that my stance, which involves balancing rights and responsibilties, hold that no mother had a responsibility to bring a child that was forced upon her, to term.

I would also agree that in cases where a person may not be able to achieve personhood, that abortion may make sense. THe problem, as you already know, is that this opens a pandora's box... what exactly makes for personhood?

I had a feeling you had another idea in mind, but choosing to speak in more reserved terms seemed boring...

lol

That's why I take the, admittably extreme view, that conception is the marker point for me. Yes, the likelihood of personhood at that point is probably not even 1%, but I must admit a feeling of reverence for life. This is why my position simply isn't a tenable one for argument.

Problem: Once an egg is impregated, no other actions are required... So Dawkin's argument is a strawman. The pro life argument deals with blastocysts, not with forcing people to have sex!

I am glad you see this point. But then I expected you would.

Yes, but it is often an ad hoc position for most pro lifers (i.e. those arguing for ensoulment, etc.), whereas in my view, based on a balance of rights and responsibilities, it is less problematic...

I am glad we agree on so much after all.... Thank you for not taking the trollish bait in my post.

I'm generally against it.

Absolutley for abortion, up to the point where the fetus has a fully functioning nervous system and could live on its own with minimal extra help from machines (in essence, all abortions should be made before this point, becuase then it is probably a wiser investment in the mother to put it up for adoption.)

 But before that, give parents the free choice. The blastocyst/zygote/fetus is just a part of the mother's body. It's made of her tissue, its feeding on her blood, her oxygen and food, its little more than a reproductive organ, no more human than a kidney.

 Let's talk about this in terms of suffering. A mother suffers immensely from having a child. She endures nine months of abnormal conditions, discomfort, disconcerting changes to her body, and he must suffer for giving up much of her resources to the baby. Having the baby is extremely painful and takes a very long time. And after all that effort, the baby is unwanted anyway and is given to someone else.

The blastocyst/zygote/fetus however suffers very little from abortion. It doesn't have the capacity to suffer (up to a certain point), it doesn't have the will to live or the knowledge to know what life is. The best way to alleviate suffering from an unwanted pregnancy is to terminate it immediatley. This takes the burden off the mother and puts no suffering on the baby. The mother can have a second child when she pleases, for she has thousands of unborn eggs inside her anyway.

 So yes, I am "pro-choice" but I am definatley also "pro-abortion". I don't think its a terrible thing at all, its not even mildly terrible until the child can feel it, and then its only minorly unsettling. I would recommend abortions for any reason, becuase the mother can do whatever she pleases with her body, the egg thats growing inside her included. I would even advocate abortion as an effective form of birth control.

It's not.  I view it as a personal responsibility issue.  I'm all for a woman's right to choose, but what's honestly lost here is that ther are many countless choices made that add up the the end result of an unwanted child.  At any point a choice can be made which virtually eliminates the need for abortion.

However, that's my personal view.  Politically speaking I have no dog in that fight, so it's not my place to tell a woman what she can or cannot do with her body...  

I just think that abortion has become a quick-fix form of birth control, and if that's the case, get on the pill, make the guy wear a rubber, Skeet Fuck (as a hero of mine, Sam Kinison once put it...  "PULL!&quot, or just don't have casual unprotected sex...

This is a well worded fallacy of composition. 

True. But suffering is merely one criteria upon which to make the judgement. I personally believe the sufferign argument relies on arbitrarily freezing the zygote in a category, when a zygote also includes, as a part of its nature, the potentiality of a person.

The typical response is to hold that so does a sperm cell. However, this is only true when a person, through some purposeful act, combines a sperm cell with an egg. So there is a difference here and this difference is due to human intent.

I have a couple questions for the people on the anti abortion side. I hope that someone in this forum can help me understand your position better.

If you think that personhood starts at conception as some here do (including myself but I’m still in favor of abortion) are you against the birth control pill? The pill works by preventing the sperm from joining with the egg or by preventing the fertilized egg from attaching to the wall of the uterus. In effect that’s an abortion. So do you think it’s immoral to take the pill?

Second, do you think it’s wrong because it’s irresponsible, or because it’s a form of victimization, or both? Do you think there can be other mitigating factors that make it allowable? If it’s a question of responsibility then what if the person thought they were being responsible? What if they used contraception and it didn’t work? Or if it’s a question of victimization then why should it be permissible in cases of rape? Is it because the woman has been victimized herself, and why should that give the woman the right to victimize the fetus? Also at a certain stage of development a fetus has no brain. Does it really make sense to consider someone a victim who doesn’t have a brain to suffer with?

Days AFTER conception, it is possible for an embryo to split into two...  So that means a 'soul' has split into two?  Or there were two souls in there the whole time?  Its also possible for two embyros to fuse and then grow into one person.  That means that person has 2 souls?   (source: Sam Harris)

This kind of messes up your statement that 'personhood' starts at conception... 

I am not anti-abortion. I do not consider it wrong in anyway. For me, rights come from interests, the right to life, particularly from a conscious interest in life. I do not regard the life of a foetus (pre-six months) to be of any more worth than that of a mouse. However perhaps intuitively the ability to have an abortion when one feels like it seems like a waste, there are good adoption services available. However in the case of many mothers, instinct takes over once the baby is born and to give it away can be extremely harmful to the mother emotionally, mentally and physically, the balance is tricky, there would be less harm done if the foetus was ejected early on however some mothers react differently from others.

There are negative consequences of willy-nilly abortion, socially, physically etc and these must be taken into account. The responsibility argument is compelling, not necessarily responsibility to the foetus, but responsibility for actions. If people don't learn responsibility society cannot function as well. It is ok, some of the time, perhaps a limit on how many abortions without good reason a woman should be entitled to, perhaps 2 or 3 is a good number. However this should not affect how many abortions with good reason a woman should be entitled to (i.e. if she had used up her quota and then was raped, it would be unjust to deny her an abortion).

I have an essay on the Philosophy and Psychology forum to look at (although my views have changed a little since I wrote that).

I'm glad to see that atleast some atheists share my opinion on this subject. I was begining to suspect that I was the only non-believer against abortion.

My opinion is that this life is all we get so to deny someone their opportunity for life is to deny them everything. I get very offended when I see people shouting that it's the woman's body and the woman's choice. Some discomfort and inconvenience is hugely outweighed by someones whole existence.

Actually, yes.  The childfree movement isn't against other people procreating, but they choose not to have children themselves.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Childfree

Reasons range from personal preference to concerns about overpopulation of the planet.

Several posters had the same sentiment--I just picked yours, Magilum because it was the first one I saw looking back over the thread.

The research of Joshua Greene (was at Princeton awhile ago, not sure where he is now) and people working along the same lines has some info that informs this paradox.  Greene used MRI scans to locate what was happening in ppls brains when they were faced with moral dilemmas and found some interesting results. 

Apparently people are hard-wired to resist (feel emotionally conflicted about) any action that actively harms another human, even if other humans would be saved as a result.  But when the same outcome stems from an indirect harming of someone, ppl usually aren't bothered by that.  For example, most ppl would flip a switch to save five railroad track workers, even though the train would then kill one person who had been on the other track.  But most ppl would not directly push a heavyset man onto the tracks to stop a train and save five people. 

So it carries through--most people don't object to an IUD or Plan B, even though it kills the fertilized egg the same way that an abortion does. One is direct destruction, the other indirect.  It's not logical--it's emotionally hard-wired.  Understanding where it comes from makes it easier to account for.

One of the things we object to in religious thinking is moral absolutism--saying that certain things are always unequivocally right or wrong.  Moral consequentialism--looking at the outcomes of actions and policies--is more important, at least according to Dawkins, for long term prosperity of the human race.

First, I don't believe the two are even related. Pro-Choice and Pro-Life are not opposites, one is a choice of many possibilities, the other is a philosiphy.

Pro-Choice is basically saying, that no matter what I believe, the decision falls back to the individual. Even if your against abortion, and think it is the evilest thing on the planet, it's a choice. As adult we have to make choices all the time, pull life support off Aunt Gertrude? put Fluffy to sleep, and eat a steak. These are all decisions we might have to make involving life and death.

Pro-Life is a philosphy, don't pull the plug on Aunt Gertrude, she still alive, even if it is by machines. You place your choice in preserving life on all accounts, be it abortion, or the death penality.

 Life is life, be it an animal, murder, or fetus. Drawling a line at one and not the other, and then have the atrocity to try and push your opinion on to someone else is a moral fallacy.

I am pro-abortion, or at least pro- the right to abort. I do not feel that we have any innate rights, so my position is an emotional one. I do not feel any strong emotional revulsion at the thought of a baby being aborted, so do not neccesarily have a problem with it happening.

How do those of you who claim that your opposition of abortion is a rational desicion rather than an emotional one justify that?

ugzog

Life is life, be it an animal, murder, or fetus. Drawling a line at one and not the other, and then have the atrocity to try and push your opinion on to someone else is a moral fallacy.

Ok, maybe I'm too tired to get what your point is but are you really suggesting that an animal's life is equal to a human's. That those of us who eat meat have no right to say that murder is wrong?

Did you read my post? I'm totally pro-Choice - against any restrictions on abortion at all.

I did read your post and I apologize. Forgive me. I may have been too eager to add my two cents. It's nice to see people just as pro-choice as I am. 

I'm not nearly as eloquent or concise as some of the other posters in this thread, but I do have a uterus, so I wanted to contribute.

Instead of just throwing out some strawman posistion, I want to explain what I think.

I believe that abortion is a terrible neccessity. As previously discussed, there can be instances when a womans life is in danger, and aborting is the only real option. Then there are other cases where the woman knows that she cannot care for this shild, and believes that the kindess things to do would be to abort it. Whatever the case, I believe that it should be the right of a woman to do whatever she pleases(up to a certain point in the pregnancy) with the fetus in question.

This is not because I like abortions, or I feel they should be a form of birth control, or I'm 'proud' of people who have had them or whatever, it simply means that I support the freedom to have them. I truly believe that if stricter criteria were implimented, or abortion was outlawed, that women would still find ways to have them, and some of those ways would undoubtedly kill both mother and zygote.

I know that very few people will argue the idea that sometimes abortions are medically needed, nor will many argue that a rape conception may be aborted, but I know some of you will have objections to simply terminating an 'unwanted' pregnancy. However, I believe that if a couple was using every method of birth control available to them, and they still ended up concieving, that they shouldn't be punished for a statistical improbnability.

Here's the thing; I hear all the time 'well you should just carry it to term and then give it up for adoption'. And to be frank, it's just not that simple. Carrying something inside of you like that is uncomfortable to say the least, and can have huge negative implications on your life. First of all, there are major physical reprocussions to carrying and giving birth to a child. The last several months are painful, and you can't do any of the things you would normally do, most women have to take months off of work, your body is stretced and bloated. And this is assuming that the pregnancy is uncomplicated. The birth of course is painful, messy and may involve a C-section or episiotomy, and even after the child is out, your body requires months to recuperate and return to its former state, if you're lucky and it does so at all.

Then there are the social, economic and emotional implications of being forced to carry the baby to term. Women could be ridiculed, ostracised, miss job oppourtunities or lose work due to pregnancy. No one wants to hire a woman who's six months pregnant; she's just going to go on maternity leave. And during pregnancy, there's all kinds of hormonal changes that can lead to emotional prblems, not to mention post-partum depression.

Essentially, I am againt the idea that someone can tell me that I have to do those things. I'm not sure what I would do if all of my contraception failed and I ended up pregnant, but what I do know is that I want the choice. I want to be able to choose what would be best for my fiancee(who is still in University) and for myself. And if that makes me a terrible and selfish person, then I accept that.

In addition to the physical and social difficulties Maragon outlines, psych studies are showing that it's also incredibly emotionally traumatic to give up a child for adoption.  It's partly brain hard-wiring and partly hormonal, but it's the reason why so few mothers actually do give up the children--and why so many change their minds (I can find the numbers if anybody wants to know).

Last time I checked the numbers there were about half a million children in the U.S. waiting for adoption.  What would it be like if we added another million unwanted children a year to that number?