distended said:
I've always loved this latter opinion. As though there's some magical life-endowing miracle that takes place in the seconds it takes for the baby to move a whopping foot and a half out of the womb...
I actually mentioned [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/18.271761-How-far-should-Its-my-body-I-can-do-what-I-want-go?page=4#10469836] (see under
Biblical Personhood) the very magic that some presume takes place. The flip side is the magical
life-endowing miracle that so many presume happens
at conception (and then promptly fades out most of the time, usually due to implantation failure). This is why I prefer defining personhood as
beginning with higher brain activity. But until people on both sides are willing to debate rationally the advantages of defining personhood at given points, the conversation is not going to progress very far.
Bakuryukun said:
You SHOULD be able to do almost anything you want with your own body. But when you pregnant, it's not just YOUR body now is it?
AndyFromMonday said:
It's no longer her body, is it? That body now houses another human being...
XxRyanxX said:
Exactly. You can do whatever you'd like for your body but since you're carrying a baby, you are endangering its life which can be very devastating.
tzimize said:
Basically this. While I support the womans right to drink herself into an early grave, I do not support slavery. She does not own the child, she is simply its caretaker. And she is not taking care of it.
MrDeckard said:
...if what you are doing to your body is effecting someone else, (like your unborn child) you should either abort it, or take care of it.
MikeOfThunder said:
[Quoting Bakuryukun, above] Word for word. Exactly right.
Eri said:
...willfully drinking is endangering what will be a future human...
The idea that
we are responsible for the consequences of how we use our own property and how that affects others seems to be a common theme here, as is
we are responsible for citizens of the future as well as the present.
So why should industry be allowed to exploit our natural resources, to pollute our air, strip our land and change our climate, knowing this creates immense a problem our future generations will have to resolve to survive? Similarly, how can we burn the credit of our nations knowing our children, and their children will have to pay them back? Here in the US, we were still paying for the cold war when the cost of the Iraq war and the federal bailout were heaped on. I didn't have any part in the cold war.
Vehicles are a statistically frequent cause of death (as well as polluting the environment). Should we not be regulated from using our cars when other forms of transit are equally effective (if less convenient)?
People who have authority over children (parents, teachers, emergency responders, etc.) can not only affect those children profoundly, shaping the outlook of their own futures, but also of
their children and
their futures. Abuse and dysfunction tends to be multi-generational. Should these not, thus, be the number one priority of our nations? Why should parents in abusive households be left to transfer the problem to the next generation? Why do we fail to recognize teachers of our children as one of the most profoundly long-reaching positions in our nations?
While we're at it, neonates, infants and toddlers are often left to the care of young adults who are generally uncertain of their own futures, let alone the best means to care for the next generation. The lives of these adults can be profoundly altered by shifts in the economy, which can cause their employment and incomes to change, and for which these people are unprepared. Should not their children be placed in institutions, in which lifestyle and routine are much more likely to remain consistent, and unaffected by tragedy and circumstance?
Eldarion said:
She felt comfortable having sex didn't she? She made the choice to get pregnant. She has no right to drown her child in alcohol because she is "feeling uncomfortable" about that choice. That child does not deserve to be born damaged because some dumb bimbo cannot use protection like a responsible adult.
That's pretty brutal. We actually
do not know the circumstances of her conception, whether it was coerced, whether she is promiscuous, whether she is intelligent, whether she used protection. As far as we know, she was raped by her priest at confession and lives in a Catholic family. You don't know,
Eldarion, but you presume, because that's what
you imagine young women with unwanted pregnancies look like.
Here in the US, there are countless legal devices to obstruct a woman from having an abortion, not to mention an active and violent activism community who implement propaganda, intimidation, battery, terrorism, arson and assassination to deter procedures.
We don't know what she has tried and was thwarted from doing.
Besides which, the human sex drive
is compelling. If it wasn't, the human race would have died out millennia ago. It's only in our misogynistic, Abrahamic-influenced society that we pretend it is otherwise, and then we only blame the woman because she suffers the natural consequences of a coupling, regardless of who all were consensual participants.
238U.
