"No breathing human has the right to say birth control or abortion is okay" (HS Newspaper Fun)

[McMullen]

snip

Just to play the Devil's advocate here:

Do you consider it wrong to kill someone who has the ability to form memories, think, or feel?

If so why? Once they're dead they won't REMEMBER or FEEL being killed. Is it because they then won't be able to CONTINUE living and feeling, and forming memories? Because by that logic it seems equally wrong to kill a fetus that can be expected to do those things in the future.

For the record I do support the right to abortion, but I would not say it's a topic to take lightly. Nor that there aren't some genuine arguments to be made against it.

Of course most of the people that argue against it are idiots

Sure I think it's wrong. A person's inability to remember being killed doesn't make it okay, in the same way that my inability to remember my accomplishments after I'm dead is not a reason to just sit around the house all day for the rest of my life. The meaning is in having the experience at all and interacting with others, so that some of your experiences are passed onto or benefit others.

The main problem with the pro-lifer's argument is that they are saying that fetuses are people. Well, I don't agree, because a fetus has never been a person. A person has a personality, memories, wants, fears, and everything else that comes with consciousness. If none of those things have come into being yet, then all that has happened are a few steps on the way to personhood, just like my surviving to adulthood is a step on the way to my potential children's personhood. Conception is an important step, but it's no less arbitrary a place to draw the line from the perspective of the fetus, since the fetus can't even have a perspective.

The first part of this whole process that has any indication of being less arbitrary than the others is when the nervous system develops to the point where pain becomes possible, because at that point, there is the first sign of a will: the will to avoid what causes pain. If there's a will, no matter how crude, then I think it's reasonable and humane to honor it. That is personhood, and it happens before birth but, if I remember correctly, after the window for legal abortion closes.

 

[Candidus]

I'm in support of abortion in cases of rape.

Spoiler

Don't give me "it's not the child's fault". You can't take a rape victim and say to them "you aren't in control of what happens to your body for the next nine months because your PEERS think this rape-fetus deserves a chance". That would actually be a prolonging of the rape by society. IF the victim decides to give birth to that fetus, that's their business. If they don't, that's also their business, not yours or anyone elses.

I'm also in support of abortion when contraception has failed; but not abortion as its own brand of contraception.

Naturally, I'm in support of regular contraception.

With human nature compelling people to seek companionship before they're financially situated to raise a child, and with sexually transmitted diseases also a concern, it seems to me that the only-- I won't say argument, an argument has a rationale-- stand that can be taken against contraception is founded on fantasy worship. The belief that a giant invisible man in the sky will be pretty mad if you catch your business in a latex carrier bag.

Well, no need to address that. Addressing it would be crediting it something as a valid point of debate.

 

[Dimitriov]

snip

Just to play the Devil's advocate here:

Do you consider it wrong to kill someone who has the ability to form memories, think, or feel?

If so why? Once they're dead they won't REMEMBER or FEEL being killed. Is it because they then won't be able to CONTINUE living and feeling, and forming memories? Because by that logic it seems equally wrong to kill a fetus that can be expected to do those things in the future.

For the record I do support the right to abortion, but I would not say it's a topic to take lightly. Nor that there aren't some genuine arguments to be made against it.

Of course most of the people that argue against it are idiots

Sure I think it's wrong. A person's inability to remember being killed doesn't make it okay, in the same way that my inability to remember my accomplishments after I'm dead is not a reason to just sit around the house all day for the rest of my life. The meaning is in having the experience at all and interacting with others, so that some of your experiences are passed onto or benefit others.

The main problem with the pro-lifer's argument is that they are saying that fetuses are people. Well, I don't agree, because a fetus has never been a person. A person has a personality, memories, wants, fears, and everything else that comes with consciousness. If none of those things have come into being yet, then all that has happened are a few steps on the way to personhood, just like my surviving to adulthood is a step on the way to my potential children's personhood. Conception is an important step, but it's no less arbitrary a place to draw the line from the perspective of the fetus, since the fetus can't even have a perspective.

The first part of this whole process that has any indication of being less arbitrary than the others is when the nervous system develops to the point where pain becomes possible, because at that point, there is the first sign of a will: the will to avoid what causes pain. If there's a will, no matter how crude, then I think it's reasonable and humane to honor it. That is personhood, and it happens before birth but, if I remember correctly, after the window for legal abortion closes.

I pretty much agree with you... but I think you may have made a misdirection. You very adequately explained a reasonable position for not considering a fetus as a person.

But you didn't really address the point I made (as far as I can see anyway).

Your first paragraph here is really all about the future potential, and could equally be applied to anything that has the future potential of "having... experience at all and interacting with others, so that some of [their] experiences are passed onto or benefit others." Which is a potential that a, presumably healthy, fetus has.

Because as far as I can see, if it's not about future potential then it WOULD be fine to kill an adult because they have presumably already done those things... and hey, they're gonna die anyway at some point.

I don't want to be combative or anything, I just like debating sometimes

If you want to respond feel free. I may well be wrong- I do after all think that abortion SHOULD be legal. Just not for the reasons you have given.

 

[NightHawk21]

Blow jobs. The only logical conclusion to how she's in that position.

And that technically isn't sex so you still won't be guilty of premartial sex. Just like if you do it anally /sarcasm.

Dumb article. While I still can't pick a side on the whole abortion issue (except in cases of rape where I'm all for), denying birth control is the stupidest shit I've ever heard. Also it may just be that the only things I've been reading for the past 4-5 weeks have been scientific articles, but I'd really like to see some sources for some of those moral stats she's throwing out.

 

[Mocmocman]

My favorite part:

"... the emotional strain that will haunt teens for the rest of their lives upon having premarital sex."

Oh, I'm sure 90% of Americans wake up screaming every night at the grim vestige of their irreparable past deeds.

She's on the student council. Of course.

Well I for one am kept up at night by my premarital sex.

Spoiler

OT: My school newspaper has an interesting mix of people who can write well and those who can't. I remember the closest we got to that article was an article talking about the 2012 Mayan thing with such certainty that it was Rapture. It was kinda odd reading it. Now the biggest thing is that it is obvious that the person doing the album reviews hasn't listened to any of the albums that she's reviewing... though maybe they aren't reviews... Nothing interesting is in our newspaper.

Probably the thing that is worst for me in your newspaper is how they stretched out the word "and" to fit a whole line.

 

[DudeistBelieve]

Inquiry, why did you block off her name and picture?

Clearly she isn't ashamed of this position.

Because I've seen enough of the Internet to know what can happen to someone when people are

A. Pissed

B. Have their name, school, picture, and other basic information.

I know that that stuff probably wouldn't happen in this community, but I'm not going to chance this girl getting harassed by a bunch of basement dwellers because of some stupid opinion piece she wrote in high school.

Frankly, if she got harassed over it she'd deserve it. It's her backwards thinking that she's proud of.

But I get it, and you're a decent person because of it.

 

[Zeles]

My school actually has TWO news papers. One is run by my ex-boyfriend, so I may be kind of biased, but I don't really like it. I find it boring and the rate of publishing doesn't help much. He manages to get it printed on actual news paper, and that takes time. Not only that, but there's also the fact that the people writing the thing have lives of their own, so it frustrates me whenever I hear him asking one of his staff why they missed a dead line. They don't HAVE to write for this paper.

The second paper is run by a group of middle school students (one of which is actually my ex's younger brother)and is called "The Garlic". It's a parody paper, with most stories made up, that gets put out every week or so. It isn't as fancy as the other one, printed on NORMAL paper, but it does get a few laughs or at least a grin out of me when I read it.

 

[Johnny Impact]

No one who has ever seen a crack baby, a homeless child, or an adopted kid bouncing from one set of abusive foster parents to the next has the right to say all sex must be unprotected or all pregnancies must come to term.

Flawless victory!

 

[Kopikatsu]

If you consider the fetus to be a life, then abortion would actually be infringing on human rights. So there's that part.

If.

I don't. Many others also don't. And so far those who do haven't been able to give a us a reason to think otherwise. At least, no reason better than "because I think it's wrong".

Well, you're welcome to think it's wrong, and moral vegans are welcome to think that eating meat is wrong, and extremist animal rights groups are welcome to think that owning pets is wrong, and my friend is welcome to think that wearing white socks is wrong, but none of that makes any difference to me because none of you have ever made a convincing argument as to why I should think those things are wrong.

If you can persuasively tell me why I should regard an organism with no nervous system as a human being, then I might change my mind. Otherwise, I don't see why aborting a fetus before it has the ability to form memories, think, or feel is an act of evil.

I don't really feel like getting into the whole debate because I've done it far too many times already. So I'll just give a very simple example given to us by Peter Singer.

On how mothers should be permitted to kill their offspring until the age of 28 days: "After research, my colleague Helga Kuhse and I suggest that a period of twenty-eight days after birth might be allowed before an infant is accepted as having the same right to life as others."

...

On why infants aren't normal human beings with rights to life and liberty: "Characteristics like rationality, autonomy and self-consciousness...make a difference. Infants lack these characteristics. Killing them, therefore, cannot be equated with killing normal human beings."

It's a pro-abortion argument, sure. But in this case, I have to ask if you would agree with him? If so, then there's not much else to discuss. If not, why not? The only way to really reject his logic is to claim that an infant is valuable regardless because of their potential, but a fetus has just as much potential as an infant. If let to it's own devices, it will be born as a human being and nothing else.

That's a moralist argument. Now for the legal argument...

The majority of states in the US have something called the Laci and Connor's law. It says that a fetus is granted the status of personhood, so that the murder of a pregnant woman is inherently considered to be a double homicide. Legally, in those states (some of which allow abortion), they consider a fetus to be a person. If you do not consider a fetus to be a person, then you should agree that killing a pregnant woman should not be a double homicide and should push for those laws to be overturned. If you reject that notion because those pregnant women wanted to keep their child, then you're essentially arguing that it's okay to kill someone simply because they're inconvenient. And that, is a scary stance to take.

 

[Dryk]

You've gotta love the American South

I dont see the problem here. Then again, that may be because my state is already one step ahead of you. [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/528.399958-Kansas-arms-schools#16421375]

As for the other, I dont really care. She is entitled to her opinion and I am inclined agree somewhat (I have seen studies that those who wait until they are married for thier "first time" are happier and have stronger marriages), but I dont want to get caught up in all this.

I read the press release about that study, the idea that they were presenting was that when you have sex it increases your bonding. That lets you fall into the rose-tinted glasses trap easier. The longer you wait the more you learn about the person before that kicks in, and the more accurately you can judge the quality and long-term stability of the relationship.

 

[McMullen]

snip

Your first paragraph here is really all about the future potential, and could equally be applied to anything that has the future potential of "having... experience at all and interacting with others, so that some of [their] experiences are passed onto or benefit others." Which is a potential that a, presumably healthy, fetus has.

True enough, but as I touched on in my last post, I don't place as much importance on potential as on what the actual state of an organism is, which is why I made the comment that conception and fetushood are important steps to personhood, but are not much less arbitrary as a point for life's beginning than when the fetus's father reaches puberty. That too is a necessary step that happens before personhood is attained. It simply happens much earlier than conception.

Because as far as I can see, if it's not about future potential then it WOULD be fine to kill an adult because they have presumably already done those things... and hey, they're gonna die anyway at some point.

This is not a thing I believe, and I'm sorry that that's what came across in what I said before. As far as I'm concerned, what happens before or after you're alive is not important. It's... well, to paraphrase Gandalf, what you do with the time that is given to you. I'm fairly sure that when I die that'll be the end of it, and I won't remember or think anything about my life.

This could be (and has been) used as a justification for all sorts of unproductive, self-serving, or self-pitying philosophies, so I've decided that getting worried about the transience of life is misguided. Your life is meaningful to you while you're experiencing it, and since your time to do so is limited, that time is a precious currency. This is why you should seek to spend it wisely, and why it's a horribly immoral thing to deprive someone else of theirs.

I don't want to be combative or anything, I just like debating sometimes

Hey, if it's what you like to do with your time. Apparently it's what I like to do with mine at 1:00 on a Saturday morning. This would be a bad sign if it were for any other reason than 1:00 am is consistently the only time I'm home, awake, and not trying to get out the door to go to school.

 

[McMullen]

snip

It's a pro-abortion argument, sure. But in this case, I have to ask if you would agree with him? If so, then there's not much else to discuss. If not, why not? The only way to really reject his logic is to claim that an infant is valuable regardless because of their potential, but a fetus has just as much potential as an infant. If let to it's own devices, it will be born as a human being and nothing else.

I don't agree with him, for reasons I've explained elsewhere in this thread. In short, I think that a fetus has the beginnings of a will, and therefore is entitled to the protection of said will by human rights, when its nervous system develops enough to enable the sensation of pain.

That's a moralist argument. Now for the legal argument...

The law, as you know quite well, is a very poor indicator of what is right and wrong. Why argue a moral position based on law? I thought that the debate on abortion is, in the big picture, a discussion on whether the law should be changed to better reflect what is right. You can and should derive law from morality and justice, never the other way around.

That said,

The majority of states in the US have something called the Laci and Connor's law. It says that a fetus is granted the status of personhood, so that the murder of a pregnant woman is inherently considered to be a double homicide. Legally, in those states (some of which allow abortion), they consider a fetus to be a person.

Then they weren't paying attention and made contradictory laws. Happens all the time. Politicians have one skill in common: the ability to get elected. Whether they have the skills necessary to make them good or even worthy of their office is seldom considered by voters, if Congress is any indication. This is one of the reasons they say democracy is a profoundly stupid form of government, but it still manages to be better than the alternatives.

If you do not consider a fetus to be a person, then you should agree that killing a pregnant woman should not be a double homicide and should push for those laws to be overturned.

I do not, I do agree, and I would if I had enough time and considered a murderer getting doubly punished to be among the worst features of our legal system, which I don't.

If you reject that notion because those pregnant women wanted to keep their child, then you're essentially arguing that it's okay to kill someone simply because they're inconvenient. And that, is a scary stance to take.

I can't follow the logic of this at all. I don't see how one statement follows from the other. Maybe because it really is an irrational opinion of the sort that only a strawman would hold.

 

[Lieju]

You know a report is well cited when they list the NRA as an official source. Also, "better safe than sorry"? Really?

I dunno, I think armed guards in schools is a great idea if we can supply them with guns that shoot those protecto-bullets.

How do they work? Do you shoot the kids with them to give them some protection?

 

[Tumedus]

The majority of states in the US have something called the Laci and Connor's law. It says that a fetus is granted the status of personhood, so that the murder of a pregnant woman is inherently considered to be a double homicide. Legally, in those states (some of which allow abortion), they consider a fetus to be a person. If you do not consider a fetus to be a person, then you should agree that killing a pregnant woman should not be a double homicide and should push for those laws to be overturned. If you reject that notion because those pregnant women wanted to keep their child, then you're essentially arguing that it's okay to kill someone simply because they're inconvenient. And that, is a scary stance to take.

Context.

First, that law is very new, relatively, (2004) and had a huge amount of opposition precisely because people felt it would be used to undermine Roe v Wade. However, many legal scholars do not think it does because of the language used in the bill. In spite of that, there are people who still believe it was put in place largely as a small part of a concerted effort to change the debate. I tend to agree with them because there were better ways to enact the intent of the law*. It rings especially true when you consider Lindsey Graham as the one who initially proposed the bill and the fact that it is listed amongst his abortion debate pro-life accomplishments.

But let's have to look at the stated purpose. While it has been used that way, it was not specifically done to make it so you could charge for double homicide, which they were able to do in the Laci Peterson case anyway. It was proposed because, since the law doesn't acknowledge a fetus as being a person, if a women was injured but the fetus was lost in a violent crime, nothing more than assault was generally possible. Thus, the bill was put in place to show the extent to which that kind of violence is of greater offense (I don't agree entirely, but I do understand the motivation*).

Oh, and fwiw, while I feel terrible for Laci Peterson and her family, the law has very little to do with her particular situation and it irks me when laws like this get labeled based on a current hot headlines rather than what its purpose truly was.

Now the language:
1) The bill makes it painstakingly clear in one of the sections that this does not apply to abortion in any way.
2) The bill does not state that a fetus is a person. It states states that, for the purposes of violent crimes against a prenant woman where the fetus is lost, that prosecution can take place as if the fetus were a person.

Those are 2 very very important distinctions. The law is much more akin to laws that allow children to be tried as adults for particularly egregious crimes. That doesn't make all teenagers technically adults. It allows a conditional to be changed for the purpose of prosecutions (punishment) but doesn't actually change the legal standing of the subject in question.

So no, I don't think that viewing a fetus as a person for the purpose of punishing someone who committed violence against a pregnant women necessarily has to conflict with the notion that a fetus is not actually a person and thus the host (mother) has a right to decide its ultimate fate based on the potential impact to its or her life.


*The issue at play here has more to do with the impact on the mother (and family), imo. If I assault a woman to the point of aborting the fetus, it is a worse offense than a normal assault on a woman (or man) strictly because of the traumatic effect it has on her. The law has a tough time establishing levels of trauma as a baseline for punishment (because they can be too subjective) and therefore often has to write in special exceptions so that we can prosecute.

But I think this was the wrong way to do it. I think, rather than trying to establish a fetus as a person for the sake of these types of crimes, it would make more sense to simply delineate these types of crimes as being subject to worse punishments, those like homicide.

 

[Paradoxrifts]

I received a copy of my high school's newspaper today, and started reading the opinion page. What I saw was perhaps some of the dumbest things I have ever read on a sheet of paper.

Oh boy.

I'm actually not for abortion (I am in support of birth control, though), but that was just 10 different levels of stupid.

If that wasn't enough, a different writer decided to give her totally educated, knowledgeable, and non-partisan take on gun control:

You've gotta love the American South

You know a report is well cited when they list the NRA as an official source. Also, "better safe than sorry"? Really?

So, I would ask about the topics presented, but these are obviously misinformed, indoctrinated, and naively ignorant writers, so let's just talk about our present/former high school newspapers. Was yours as stupid as mine? Did you enjoy it? Did you even read it?

I require some clarification. So how does this connection between human rights and breathing work in practice?

If someone suffers from the lung disease emphysema, do they have more of a right than normal people to weigh into the issue of access to contraception and abortion? What if someone, lets say a marathon runner, is asked about these issues in the middle of a race. Do they have a right, and do they lose that right when they start breathing normally again?

Lets say I can find an ex-marathon runner, who suffers from chronic emphysema and is hooked up to an iron lung 24/7. Technically after all, he's not breathing. So can we just ask that sole person to give the go ahead to all abortion procedures in the entire world, not to mention the production of all forms and manner of human contraception?

Would it help if we made him wear a dress and a funny-shaped hat?

 

[Varrdy]

Then no dead person has the right to tell me how to live.
So that's the Bible AND the Second Amendment out.

Oh, SNAP! I just love it when the truly stupid (the writer of the articles) is utterly deflated by those with brains and an education (you). Keep up the good work!

That said, I kinda hope that people are still allowed to keep on posting such backward drivel because it will lead more people to pay attention and crack-on in the hope that they don't get likened to the poor, naive buggers!

 

[The Unworthy Gentleman]

Opinions aside, doesn't this newspaper have an editor? The formatting and grammar is terrible.

I was thinking that myself, the first three paragraphs in the abortion article are entirely unnecessary. The writing style is also terrible for someone that aspires to write in a newspaper. It's essentially the internet in paper form.

OT: Their opinions are shite but then again that seems to be a large problem for America in general. I pity you folks having to live with people like this as well as in a place where religious politics are printed and distributed as news.

 

[likalaruku]

We had armed guards at our school after 2 fake bomb threats that turned out to be a total waste of time. & then that Columbine thing happened shortly after & they put up metal detectors at the doors.

It resulted in an astounding amount of transfers, dropouts, & absentees. After a month the guards & detectors were removed & general stress levels dropped down to normal.

 

[CriticalMiss]

You know, if there were more homosexuals then pregnancy wouldn't be such a problem. Has your resident genius had any thoughts about this with her secret cache of uncited statistics? Hopefully she won't be running for President in the future. As for having armed guards in schools... If you want to think of ways to stop 'easily preventable' things from occurring why not lobotomise all humans and put explosive obedience collars on them as a back-up? Better safe than sorry!

And one more point, if people who breathe aren't allowed to give birth control advice (please not the 'advice'part) then how come Catholics are more than happy to obey birth control demands from a man who claims he is celibate, wears pyjamas all day and has an imaginary friend despite being over 60?

My high school didn't have a newspaper that was written by students, just a weekly bulletin that was read out sometimes by form tutors. At University there was a student-run newspaper thing but I only ever read it once, for one article, then never touched it again. People were up in arms about a Starbucks being opened in one of the libraries, because corportations are evil etc. It was mostly a sensationalist article saying that if the coffee shop opened then all of campus would turn in to some kind of giant shopping centre sprinkled with discarded coffee cups. Turns out there wasn't a Starbucks opening at all, the coffee shop just started serving Starbucks coffee instead of another brand. Someone just wanted to use the paper as a platform to rant about Starbucks and large corporations in general.

 

[UniversalRonin]

My Highschool didn't have a news paper, but my university did. And by FSM was it one of the most badly written piles of drivel you ever saw. They had a whole month to put it together per edition, and they were making stories even unworthy of Channel 5. As in Channel 5 news had more substance than their stories, and I haven't heard seen anything of it in years. (I think it used to pop up between CSI and NCIS for about 2 mins) They really made the tabloids seem high brow. And the typos. The typos. www.riveronline.co.uk

One time I managed to get them all bitching me out on facebook for telling them what they were and how well they wrote for people at a university. *memories*