Abortion is immoral. Period.

I want to make this point very clear. You and Neptune and EhBeth seem to be pushing a narrative that doesn't match reality. People don't fit into these convenient ideological boxes. There are people who are pro-life and pro-same sex marriage. There are people who are pro-choice and support the NRA.

Neptune's rants about conservative anti-abortionists are irrelevant to the issue. Go to any women's march, any pride march, any anti-war march, any immigrant rights march... you will find people there who oppose abortion. Just because people disagree with you on this one issue doesn't make them right wing extremists.

People from all walks of life oppose abortion because they believe that it ends a life. You can disagree with them if you want. But for you to paint them as cruel, fascist, conservative misogynists is unfair.

I have never painted them as "cruel, fascist, conservative misogynists". That is a leap you make to fit your apparent world view. I don't care what you believe and you are welcome to live your life according to your beliefs. I ask for the same respect.


So whose morals get imposed on the entire population? I don't want to impose my morals on you. I sure as hell do not want you to impose yours upon me. When you insist on doing that is when you get pushback. Your narrative that I'm dictating to poor, innocent conservatives has it backwards. They are working really hard to dictate to me. Based on your strongly stated views about one community imposing their beliefs on another, I would expect your support, not your condemnation.

I have answered this issue over and over. You don't seem to want to accept the answer.

We have a democratic system where we elect representatives who pass laws, along with a judicial branch and an executive branch. Our democracy is designed to decide which morals are "imposed" (your word, not mine... but it works) on society. There are hundreds of laws that impose morals on people including issues you agree with.

Democracy is the way we decide which morals are imposed on society. Do you have a better system than democracy?

Yes (one that I've given you over and over), a system where rights are guaranteed in the Constitution and where the so called morals of the majority cannot trump the rights of the individual. Just because the majority thinks slavery is legal doesn't make it right. Just because the majority thinks you can lock up Americans of Japanese ancestry because of irrational fear doesn't mean it is just. Just because the majority says you need to sit in the back of the bus doesn't mean you do. The majority can't say who you can love, who you can marry, who you can associate with, what you can say. That is a better system to me.

You are making a very one sided argument that doesn't work in general.

There are communities (particularly indigenous cultures from African and the Middle East) that place cultural importance on female circumcision. We have passed laws that say that this practice is immoral and will not be tolerated under any circumstances. You agree with these laws, so do I. They are one of many examples where our laws impose morals on people (there are people who don't see anything wrong with the practice).

If you believed that abortion ends a human life, you wouldn't ban the practice because you wanted to "impose your morals" on other people. You would ban the practice because you want to protect lives of what you consider to be human beings.

We as a society pass laws to ban practices that we believe are immoral. For you to claim that you don't impose your morals on other people is simply wrong. As a society we need to decide which practices are moral and which practices are morally unacceptable, and we have a democratic system to do just that.

Would anyone seriously argue that we should get rid of any law that prohibits an immoral practice?

So (again) whose morals get imposed on the entire population? If your answer is "the majority in a given area" we disagree. By that standard, some parts of the country will be locking up homosexuals, Muslims and people in mixed race marriages and people who work or sell alcohol on Sundays.

So again.... we have a democratic process. People elect representatives who write laws based on their constituents. This is balanced by a judicial branch that rules whether the laws are constitutional.

What is your problem with this system? Do you have an alternative?

Yes, one where the judicial branch rules based on a least intrusive to personal rights standard, not one based on the opinion of the majority and one where the constitution is considered a living document instead something carved in stone back when slavery was legal and women weren't allowed to vote.

1. You are still avoiding the core moral question; is an unborn baby a human life?

2. The "least intrusive to personal rights" standard you invented breaks down if you accept that the unborn baby is a human being.

3. Your historical narrative only works for people who share your ideological bias. It is just as easy to see a ban on abortion as the next logical step in our national progress; each step involved granting human rights to a greater number of people, we granted human rights to slaves, to Native Americans and to women and to children (with labor and family law)... we can now grant them to the unborn.

4. I still don't see any realistic alternative to our democratic process. At least not one that would ensure that your moral beliefs take precedence over the moral beliefs of people who disagree with you.

There is a need for us as a society to decide which practices are morally acceptable. The democratic process is the best we have.

You clearly are not reading my posts if you think I am avoiding the core moral question. IMO, no, life starts and is recognized as starting at birth. I get it, you disagree and do not respect my position, but you really can't say I haven't stated it clearly and repeatedly. Your morality is that an unborn baby is a human being. Great. Live your life that way. No problem. I see your argument and disagree. Why you desire to take such an interest in other people's lives is beyond me. I am not dictating to other people or other cultures or even to the majority my position. You repeatedly leap up to protect those with different opinions and castigate those darn liberals who presume to dictate to them, but completely fold when it's the minority conservatives dictating.


I want to make this point very clear. I don't care about your morality. Live how you want to live. I don't want you pushing that morality on me. I can find a complete spectrum of moral views out there (not the little boxes you envision) and I'm completely content with that until you start telling me my morality is wrong. Everyone is a sinner in someone else's book.

You aren't making logical sense Engineer. The problem is this question

Should we, as a society, pass laws banning practices that we judge to be immoral?

You haven't been willing to say clearly that we shouldn't pass laws banning immoral practices. If you are willing to say this as a general principal than you win the argument; but that means that laws against female circumcision, and child marriage, and prostitution are invalid. But I don't think that this is what you are saying.

We have a democratic system to work out the moral values we have as a society. Elected representatives pass laws, tested by a judicial branch that is appointed in our system of checks and balances. The alternative is either there are no laws banning immoral acts, or that these laws are set by some non-democratic manner.

The core premise of your argument seems to be that society can't pass laws banning immoral practices. I don't believe that this is true.

This is not even an ideological argument, there is a basic logical flaw in your reasoning. Either society can pass laws to ban practices it judges to be immoral, or it can't. You can't have it both ways. Which is it?

This illustrates the logical contradiction in your argument.

Child pornography is immoral. I am not willing to say to someone involved with child pornography "I don't care about your morality, live how you want to live" because I don't want to "force my moral values" on them. Hell no! I want laws against child pornography and I want them enforced.

I am pretty sure you feel the same way. If I believe something is immoral, I want laws to prevent it from happening.

Your assertion that people should accept things that are immoral does not work as a general principle... it is an ideologically convenient special case.

It is you who doesn't match reality. Abortion is LEGAL. For all of your posturing, you are negating the simple fact that at one one in our history it was moral enough to institute a law to make it legal.

Morality may or may not change the legality going into the future.

Neptune, you might want to read up on the history of that. Not an argument... just a suggestion.

Since you don't know history here:

Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973),[1] is a landmark decision issued in 1973 by the United States Supreme Court on the issue of the constitutionality of laws that criminalized or restricted access to abortions. The Court ruled 7–2 that a right to privacy under the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment extended to a woman's decision to have an abortion, but that this right must be balanced against the state's interests in regulating abortions: protecting women's health and protecting the potentiality of human life.[2] Arguing that these state interests became stronger over the course of a pregnancy, the Court resolved this balancing test by tying state regulation of abortion to the third trimester of pregnancy.

Later, in Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992),[3] the Court rejected Roe's trimester framework while affirming its central holding that a woman has a right to abortion until fetal viability.[4] The Roe decision defined "viable" as "potentially able to live outside the mother's womb, albeit with artificial aid."[5] Justices in Casey acknowledged that viability may occur at 23 or 24 weeks, or sometimes even earlier, in light of medical advances.[6]

In disallowing many state and federal restrictions on abortion in the United States,[7][8] Roe v. Wade prompted a national debate that continues today about issues including whether, and to what extent, abortion should be legal, who should decide the legality of abortion, what methods the Supreme Court should use in constitutional adjudication, and what the role should be of religious and moral views in the political sphere. Roe v. Wade reshaped national politics, dividing much of the United States into pro-life and pro-choice camps, while activating grassroots movements on both sides.

Only if you make no attempt to understand it. I believe laws should protect individual rights and that means protecting individuals from each other.

You like to focus on children. I do believe that below the age of consent, the government has a caretaker role to protect children from abuse by adults. Do I care about adults engaging in pornography? No, of course not.

There are tons of examples where we ask people to accept things that they believe are immoral. Pre marital sex/sex outside of marriage, divorce, pornography, alcohol use, gay marriage, I can find a significant portion of the US who would say these things are immoral. I could find a smaller portion who would find all sorts of things immoral. Are these ideologically convenient?

Concerning ideologically convenient, you have stated that you support abortion rights and also that you are of the life starts at conception belief. Those two are completely in conflict. If you really believe that life starts at conception, then the completely natural extension is that abortion should be completely illegal under all circumstances (rape, incest, health of the mother included). I can see no logical route to abortion is murder but it is ok sometimes. How can you reconcile that?

1. I am proposing that democracy is the way to decide which practices should be made illegal. I don't exactly understand how you think laws against immoral practices should be decided. Democracy (i.e. our system of government as a whole) is what we have. I would like to understand your opinion on this process.

2. You agree with me that some things should be illegal because they are immoral. We agree that child pornography is one of those things. (I am curious about your position on laws against prostitution, or narcotics, issues that don't directly involve children, but that is a tangent that isn't really relevant to my position).

3. I accept your point that there is a second category; things that are immoral but should not be illegal. Whether abortion should be illegal (like child pornography) or tolerated (like extramarital sex) is an open question. If Roe v. Wade is overturned, then this will be decided by legislatures.

4. I think you are searching for some trick to turn your ideological beliefs into a moral absolute. I don't think you will find one. Your moral values are as subjective as anyone else's.

The "caretaker" standard certainly doesn't fit the bill as it is ambiguous enough to be used by either side. Laws against abortion put the government in a caretaker role to protect a child against an action taken by adults. I see what you are trying to do here to make this distinction. It doesn't work.

5. I see what you are trying to do in that last point. I criticized your position as logically inconsistent and you are trying to retaliate. But you are attacking a position that I do not hold and that I have never taken. You are missing the mark.

Pro-Choice Women Speak Out About Abortion

There are women on both sides. If you only listen to women who agree with you, you are ignoring woman's voices.

And yet you think a moral majority will overturn abortion rights. It all comes down to a majority of moral votes. On one side, those who think it should be a law to those voting not have the right.

Democracy at its finest, and you oppose the vote. So what happens when the population that supports abortion out votes the "moral" under population?

Status quo.