| Do you approve of abortion? |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 3 4 5 · «PREV / NEXT» |
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Salamandre
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posted January 10, 2026 04:56 AM |
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JollyJoker said:
Just leave it to THEM, it's none of your business, not the embryo, not the fetus.
Wrong, as long as abortion is subsidized by tax payer, which is me among others. So it IS my business to question anything about.
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JollyJoker
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posted January 10, 2026 09:36 AM |
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You can of course question subsidizing something through the taxpayer - but that is another issue. If it is subsidized via medical insurance (which is what you probably mean), it's not different from the question why the taxpayer should subsidize ANY issues that are self-inflicted. Smokers get lung or throat cancer? Own fault. Obese people getting sick? Own fault. Broke a leg while skiing? Own fault.
What makes abortion so special? And why would the tax payer have to pay for yet another child in a public institution after giving him or her to adoption after birth?
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Salamandre
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posted January 10, 2026 01:07 PM |
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We already had this discussion before, abortion is not special. I am against subsidizing any of the illnesses you mentioned as well.
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JollyJoker
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posted January 10, 2026 01:56 PM |
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So your stance is, everyone can abort whichever way they want, provided they pay for it themselves?
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Salamandre
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posted January 10, 2026 02:57 PM |
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I view the abortion from different perspectives, ethical, moral, sociological and philosophical. So is not a matter of prohibiting, but raising awareness by allowing all those perspectives to be considered and debated. Which the whole issue lacks right now, it is frozen at the simplistic level of "my body my choice".
First, there is the death of an human being. You may do semantic circles around, but at the end of the day, being a fetus is the first step of our development. There are tons of medics which refuse the abortion, for those reasons.
There is a matter of responsibility. You don't get pregnant from thin air, in majority of situations you ignored basic rules of prevention. And here comes the subsidizing problem, if it is free, why would you pay attention, just spend good time because Joe is paying for you. Had it been expensive and on you, then you would have considered the consequences less lightly, so we would have hundreds of abortions and not millions.
There is the demographic problem, we need babies because our elders live much longer than before so the whole retribution system is challenged. This is a very serious issue, of survival. There are thousands of families on the list of adoptions and waiting, they want a baby and can't find one, so can't we find a solution for that ?
Last but not least, there is the mystery of life and of our purpose. So far, we didn't detect life anywhere else, and the universe looks to be infinite. Which suggests that we are the fortunate exception, the 1 in billions of billions, therefore one could say life should be sacred and protected, as an extremely rare phenomenon, from the very beginning to the end, from blossom to death.
There is also the religious aspect, which is already complex and sensible. But I leave that to those concerned. However I don't evacuate it, as there are many things we can't explain or understand. And if they are right - the soul is created at conception, it is just monstrous what we allow to happen.
Even if I'm not religious, I believe soul exists, without this concept I can't explain any of the creations I love and admire.
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JollyJoker
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posted January 10, 2026 06:02 PM |
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You know what I find strange? Firstly, all your points except the taxpayer points are more or less "mythical" in nature. Questionable ethics and religion. Even the "we need more population" point is nonsense, because you don't need more population, you need more PRODUCTIVE population and you won't get productive population from unwanted children born to single moms out of the economical lower class.
Religion is BS anyway, because if the soul comes with conception, a lot of souls die naturally within the first 3-6 weeks after conception which would be a really bad move from "the higher entity". It's also not true that a born baby or a baby so far developed within a womb that they have good survival chances after a premature birth or a necessary Caesarion due to complications is the same as an embryo or fetus. For reasons iterated a thousand times already it's different.
But the worst point is the "sanctity of life" thing (whether we are or might be the only species or not (the main problem with "wheere are the aliens" is the fact that WE are 100 years into a development that would an observer from another planet lead to the conclusion that our planet might be populated with an intelligent alien species. The same is true the other way round: everything we observe or detect at a specific point in space is a foto of a single moment in time. A signal that would reach us from a planet 10.000 lightyears away would mean, 10.000 years ago someone sent something there. Considering that wwe havce no idea HOW LONG a sufficiently developed species even exist (humans could be bombed back to stone age within the next 100 years or so - or a collison with an asteroid), the window might be very small. So if there was an alien species on a planet in 1000 ly distance, 10.000 years ago, that got extinct 9.000 years ago, we wouldn't know of them).) is the fact that there is NO point in human history - NONE WHATSOEVER - that would suggest, for men in general "sanctity of (human) life would be more than lip service. Women see that different in general, especially because of the faact that they become pregnant and bear children (and may actually die from it).
Therefore it's a bad joke when MEN suddenly discover their conscience and respect of (the unborn) life, as soon as it's about WOMEN want full control about what happens within THEIR body.
A really bad joke.
The taxpayer point is surely worth a discussion, but I don't see why only rich pwople should have the option to abort, especially when the taxpayer pays for so many things (including unwanted and not adopted children).
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Ghost
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posted January 10, 2026 06:40 PM |
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JollyJoker said:
*Questionable ethics and religion. Even the "we need more population" point is nonsense, because you don't need more population*
*It's also not true that a born baby or a baby so far developed within a womb that they have good survival chances after a premature birth or a necessary Caesarion*
A very good, JJ
When you know that I know the Bible.. Yes the God urged to reproduction, procreation or breeding (not researching the term now) in the world.. But in paradise, you can't see skyscrapes, do you understand? Yes very few people in paradise.. Maybe million people.. You find in Psalm 37:29 "The righteous shall inherit the land, and dwell therein for ever", if you think about Jehovah's witnesses, but why the Bible said.. So not religion now.. What then? Discrepancy!
And then Caesarean section is a very good answer.. Do you know men search for large pelvis? A good man also knows pelvis types..
Ok keep going..
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artu
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posted January 11, 2026 10:56 AM |
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@Sal
Well, JJ covered most of it but I must once again emphasize that categorizing an organism with zero sentient and zero brain activity as not human yet (as in “an individual, a person, somebody”), is not “doing semantic circles” no matter how many rounds you insist on it. Unplugging a brain dead patient is not murder. Because they are not a person anymore, just like the other one is not a person yet. Keep in mind that unplugging a brain dead patient also has its psychological burden, nobody does it while eating potato chips. But it’s not murder.
Imagine this, there’s a a plane crash and you have 300 survivors living on an isolated tropical island. No formal law, no political camps, just a small community. Two women get pregnant. One ends pregnancy by drinking special herbs on week four, other gives birth to a baby and then drowns the newborn in the river. The community’s reaction and future manners to each woman will be radically different. This is not because of semantics, this is intuition. Abortion is never the same as murder, it’s not even close.
About “the soul” and not being able to explain creations you love without it even though you’re not religious, although that is entirely subjective and has nothing to do with determining abortion laws, I completely understand the need the express human uniqueness and creativity in non-quantitative terms. I also say things like “well, technically, he’s brilliant but his playing has no soul.” But that is just a metaphor for a level of consciousness that is greater than the sum of all its parts: Imagination, skill, intelligence, emotion, sincerity, contextual memory, ability to think in abstract concepts and symbols, culture, education and so on...
An actual “soul” though, as in a super-natural, immaterial spirit that is your personhood, something that can walk around as a ghost after your body dies (why not, if such a soul was real), is not a plausible probability for basically two reasons.
First of all, we pretty much mapped out the human brain at this point. We know where language skills and symbolic thought is developed, we know where the memory is, we know which hormones cause which emotions… You watch an open brain surgery and they tell the guy to count, he goes 1,2,3,4,5,6… Then they touch an elektrot to a certain area and he goes 6, 8,10,12,14… What happens to “the soul” if you got Alzheimer’s? How does the soul transform when you take antidepressants? Today, we live in a world in which we know the exact kind of head injury that would cause Beethoven to stop being able to compose, to the spot. There are many unexplained things about the brain of course, but we know the basic principles.
The other reason is that we know for a fact that humans evolved as an animal species and their consciousness is also part of that. So thinking of Beethoven as a neurological entity may seem counter-intuitive while listening to Symphony 7, but then take away all the accumulative culture and education and think of a cave man, suddenly the gap between him and a gorilla with 300 word vocabulary is not that drastic. Only one is still capable of abstract reasoning though, he can paint cave walls to bring him luck in the hunt. Because one discovered burnt meat is easier to chew, started to cook and over generations he had a lot of extra energy spared from digestion to brain development. But does that require a super-natural entity? And then how about the difference between a gorilla and a cat? You take care of cats, you know that different cats have different personalities. They have affection. They have memory. Do they have souls? How about the difference between a cat and a lizard, a lizard and an insect, an insect and bacteria and so on… At what point of evolution, a consciousness becomes a soul? If it’s all about abstract reasoning and symbols, AI is capable that, too. If it’s about self-reflection, emotions, all mammals have that gradually.
Human uniqueness is having all of that and being able to accumulate it to astonishing levels. There is a level of difference between such accumulations from culture to culture, some hunter-gatherer tribe in the Amazons forests doesnt have opera or Shakespeare. They dont even have an alphabet. Does this mean they dont have souls or they have degenerate souls? How does that work?
Art, and especially music has the power to hypnotize you. You hear something swinging, you dance, you hear something moody, you are sad. You hear something elevating and inspiring, it is kind of a transandantal feeling while experiencing it. It “feels” out of this world. But it is not.
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Salamandre
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posted January 11, 2026 11:37 AM |
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You guys keep pulling wrong comparisons to secure your position, and there is where we can't go further.
No, it is not like "unplugging a brain dead patient". First, after 45 days there is sign of brain activity, but even if it wasn't, the closest comparison would be "the patient is in a coma, but we know for sure he will wake up a few months later and he will be fine".
IS unplugging him a murder, then ? Definitely yes, because there is a context, a timeline to look at.
If we don't agree on such obvious thing, then let it go, there is nothing to add.
artu said:
It “feels” out of this world. But it is not.
You don't know. Cioran once said "Bach's music is the only argument proving the creation of the Universe cannot be regarded as a complete failure. Without Bach, God would be a complete second-rate figure.”
When you try to rationalize everything to fit within your own limits, you risk missing the fundamentals, those outside your comprehension. It took humanity an eternity to discover atoms, we can't see them, yet we are made of.
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JollyJoker
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posted January 11, 2026 12:29 PM |
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He said "brain-dead", not "in a coma". Brain-dead means, no brain activity. No brain activity means, no consciousness.
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artu
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posted January 11, 2026 12:53 PM |
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1- That analogy is specifically about being brainless, not the timeline. Legal abortion timeline is 7-17 week in most countries and fetuses are not considered sentient before week 24.
You simply bypass almost everything that has been said, cherrypick an analogy, misrepresent it and then accuse me of securing my position? I dont think you realize your own position, since you dont exactly support banning abortions either, if abortion is murder, why dont you defend making it illegal then, is it an acceptable kind of murder? Of course not, because, once again, on an intuitive level, you know it’s not.
2- As I explained, it is about your paradigm, not about “knowing everything.” It is certainly not about souls being invisible. That’s like kindergarden level reasoning, do you not believe in ghosts only because you can not see them? Do you compare ghosts to atoms? Sigh…
Your quote is just a poetic way of praising Bach, it’s not even actual mysticism. Just because the oceans are full of unknowns, doesnt mean not believing in mermaids is rationalizing the unknown. Rationalizing is the opposite behavior, it is making up reasons to believe in improbable things that have no rational basis to be believed in. It’s a psychological defense mechanism, people rationalize faith in immortality, not the cold fact of mortality.
There is nothing incomprihensible about this. Unless you wishfully insert souls to the evolutionary development of consciousness at some arbitrary point, they dont exist. Then, I ask you, at which point consciousness requires to be called a soul? Did Homo Erectus had souls, did Neanderthals? Is it okey to abort a baby with down syndrome or is it only Bach level geniuses that have a soul? That is one mystical hula-hoop for anti-abortion apologism.
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Salamandre
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posted January 11, 2026 01:27 PM |
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You keep trying to match the fetus condition to other existing conditions, and if it doesn't fit at 100% then it doesn't matter.
It is an unique condition, the first development step of an human being, it is that way. If you don't pull it out with forceps, it will become a person in perfect health, most of the time, within a few months. You intervene, that potential person will cease to exist. It has a heart, that heart stops beating. It dies. Without your intervention, it would have lived. You killed it.
You keep talking about lack of consciousness. Let me put it this way. Memories and impact on other people could be good criteria for determining value of human life, but there is another. A nice way of thinking about this is associating memories with the past, human relations with the present and, you can probably sense it coming, the future. An infant, as much as a baby, has about 80 years of meaningful life ahead.
Of course I don't want to prohibit it. If people want to kill each other, kill their babies, kill their elders, gamble with the future, that's their business. Is when they say it is for the good, for human rights, for progress or whatever, that I smirk. No, they play with god's rules (or nature, call it as you want), for narcissistic purposes, and sooner or later that will payback. I call it degeneracy.
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artu
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posted January 11, 2026 01:58 PM |
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Edited by artu at 14:01, 11 Jan 2026.
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There was a time your life would be called degenerate or “ungodly” by the majority also. And not so long ago, you dont have to go medieval for it.
It’s you who’s playing semantics now, killing each other or the elderly is against the law whether you care or not and there is no debate about this. And who says “I had an abortion in the name of human progress?” Or are you talking about having the constitutional right to do so? That is about progress, of course, because it is an indicator of individual rights versus state authority or religious authority.
The kind of “futuristic” thinking you suggest would mean that having a morning after pill is also killing somebody. Would you honestly compare a woman who swallowes a pill after having sex to a child killer? I mean, I’m sure all of your real life actions suggest that you dont and maybe even some of your own girlfriends themselves took a morning after pill before you had breakfast together smiling but go ahead, keep backing up the notion that aborting is murder because that is the position of the political camp you symphatize with.
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JollyJoker
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posted January 11, 2026 03:13 PM |
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Salamandre said:
No, they play with god's rules (or nature, call it as you want)
You got me really curious now. What ARE god's (or nature's) rules? You seem to know them, so please, enlighten us.
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Galaad
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posted January 11, 2026 08:41 PM |
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A lot of this debate mixes emotion, ideology, and biology in ways that blur rather than clarify the issue. A few points are worth stating plainly.
Supporting the right to abortion is not about denying the value of life. It is about recognizing a real distinction between an early-stage pregnancy and a born, autonomous person. Before a certain stage of development, there is no consciousness, no functioning nervous system, and no capacity for pain. This is not a slogan; it is the medical basis behind abortion time limits in modern legal systems.
Dependence matters. A fetus exists entirely within and through a woman’s body, with real physical, psychological, and social consequences for her. In no other context is someone legally forced to use their body to sustain another life. Not even to save one. Treating pregnancy as a special exception undermines bodily equality rather than protecting life.
Comparisons with newborns are misleading. A newborn can be cared for by others, adopted, and protected independently. A fetus cannot. This is why abortion and infanticide are never treated as the same thing, legally or socially, even by societies that restrict abortion.
Biology itself is not absolutist. A large number of fertilized eggs never implant or are naturally lost without anyone knowing. This does not trivialize pregnancy, but it does show that conception alone is not treated by nature as a finished individual.
Demographic arguments also fail. Societies do not benefit from forced births. Children thrive when they are wanted and supported, not when pregnancy is imposed under pressure, fear, or lack of options.
Finally, abortion is not a casual decision. The absence of punishment does not mean the absence of gravity. For most people, it is a difficult choice made in difficult circumstances.
In short, abortion rights do not force anyone to abort. They prevent forcing someone to remain pregnant against their will, health, or future. That distinction is essential.
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JollyJoker
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posted January 11, 2026 08:50 PM |
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Hey, cool, that's summarizing most of what I said over a plethora of pages (again and again). Thanks for that. 
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artu
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posted January 11, 2026 10:09 PM |
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Edited by artu at 22:10, 11 Jan 2026.
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Lol, Galaad, how does “the debate” mix emotion, ideology and biology when practically what you did there was to summerize the arguments from me and JJ? Your critic seems like targeting a certain someone to me, someone playing a certain instrument maybe? 
Btw, the only thing I disagree with both you and JJ on this is, you cant use naturally dying fetuses to justify human actions for any side. I mean, by that logic, in nature, infant death rates and especially baby death rates are also very high, does that mean in nature babies arent treated as “finished individuals” also? What does that even mean, the only parameter in nature is survival. Finished or not, younglings die a lot more because the strategy in nature is that you produce as many offsprings as you can, increasing the chance of survivors in a hostile envorinment. “Finished individuals” also die a lot more often and regularly compared to protective circumstances under civilization. So I dont understand how you guys draw a parallel between the two.
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Galaad
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Li mort as morz, li vif as vis
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posted January 11, 2026 10:25 PM |
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No targeting intended. The point wasn’t who said what, but that the debate keeps sliding between biology, moral intuition, and ideology as if they were the same thing.
On the second point, I actually agree with you: natural death does not justify human action. That wasn’t the argument. The reference to natural embryo loss is meant to challenge the idea that conception alone automatically equals full moral personhood, not to excuse abortion by analogy.
The infant comparison highlights the distinction rather than negating it. Once born, an infant is biologically independent: it breathes, metabolizes, and can in principle be cared for by others. A fetus cannot. Its survival depends entirely on the involuntary use of a specific person’s body, and that dependency is what changes the moral and legal framework.
Nature doesn’t care about categories, only survival. Law and ethics do, because they regulate responsibility and coercion. That’s why societies rely on functional thresholds (development, sentience, dependence), not metaphysical absolutes.
That’s the point being made.
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artu
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posted January 11, 2026 10:33 PM |
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Yes but how does dying fetuses support that point? If it was morally or legally wrong to kill early stage fetuses, we’d be obligated to try to save the ones nature kills also, just like we did with high baby death rates.
And how do their death indicate nature doesnt treat them as finished individuals when nature makes no distinction between anybody finished or not, when it comes to taking life by the dozen?
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Galaad
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Li mort as morz, li vif as vis
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posted January 11, 2026 10:40 PM |
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Natural fetal death doesn’t justify human action; it helps show where practical moral responsibility can begin. We don’t attempt to "save" early embryos because there is no separate patient to treat and no intervention that doesn’t already require commandeering one specific person’s body.
The point isn’t that nature makes moral distinctions, it doesn’t. The point is that biology itself doesn’t present conception as a clear functional boundary for assigning rights and obligations. Independence is. That’s why infants trigger direct duties of care, while early embryos do not.
So the argument isn’t about survival rates or what nature "allows", but about whether society can coherently impose enforceable obligations. Before biological independence, it cannot.
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