I think you are absolutely correct. This is issue is far more divisive then I think people realize, which is saying something. It is pretty much an unwinnable argument. There is a fundamental difference in how many pro-choice and pro-life people define life and yet both sides still try to “logic” their way to changing peoples’ mind. I lean left and my dad is incredibly right, after a very long discussion he said he could get behind a lot of leftist ideas with proper implementation. Said he still considers himself a republican and when it comes down to it he is a one issue voter and would never vote for someone who is pro-choice.
I think younger dems (redditors) really vastly under estimate how effectively the GOP has politicized abortion. They have convinced huge portions of their base that abortion is actual child murder. Theres a lot of white noise about religion that goes with it but you can remove religion from it all together if you want.
The bottom line is, millions of these people believe abortion is child murder, and it really seems like there is no way to change their mind.
If you look at it from simply that perspective, it becomes a whole lot less surprising that people are voting for these awful candidates, voting "party over country" ect ect.
Its because to them, anything is better than child murder. I really dont know what we are supposed to do to get around it. The right has done such a good job politicizing this issue and making people believe it that it seems impossible to get around.
I know my own dad is similar to yours. Probably ~8 years or so ago he went full tilt Ron Paul Libertarian for a while, and has undergone a lot of political view changes to the point of voting for Bernie Sanders in the primaries.
However, he still has a HUGE issue with abortion and most of the time it stops him from voting Dem.
I'm very left-learning but grew up in and continue to live in very red areas (or at least, blue cities surrounded by deeply red empty farm land) and I've definitely experienced that politicization my entire life.
While I don't personally like the idea of abortion, I believe it should be an open, legal process that's easy to obtain. I've known two girls in my life who were good enough friends of mine that they confided in me as to whether or not they should get abortions, and economic reasons (dropping out of college in late teens/early 20s to raise a child with the father likely to ghost) were the primary reason for them both to choose an abortion.
However, the best way to prevent abortions is to prevent pregnancies in the first place. And the GOP has fairly consistently opposed birth control, sex education, and access to those services (remember, Planned Parenthood isn't a drive-thru abortion clinic; in fact, abortions are ~1% of their total services if I remember my numbers right). And you can't have an abortion if you don't get pregnant, so why not treat the disease instead of the symptom?
I honestly believe the gop doesn’t help out with birth control because they never want abortion to stop being s huge issue. The best way to keep it a huge issue is to have shit for birth control.
I actually believe this is kind of cyclical problem. I think the GOP attracted the most conservative religious groups and gave them real political power, a place at the table as you will in exchange for their votes, as a result of this decision. However, the church by and large doesn't really have a problem with abortion I don't think - I think they have a problem with sex and sexuality. For some reason sexuality and the idea of nontraditional relationships of any kind seriously bothers a lot of religious people - if you look at what's actually happening there's only one conclusion you can come to: the religious right doesn't actually hate abortion, it hates sex.
If the religious right truly hated abortion, then why are they so unwilling to promote sex education and offer contraceptives? Fathers are literally so confused about human sexuality that they see sex as something men 'take' from women, rather than something that is 'shared' between two people. They are afraid of someone 'taking' sex from their daughters out of wedlock more than they're afraid of abortion itself.
Additionally there's the 'pure virgin' stereotype. That somehow a woman's first sexual experience totally defines her, that her having sex somehow ruins her 'purity', as if such a thing could even meaningfully be quantified or defined. By trying too hard to protect their daughters' virginity, they end up driving them to committing dangerous sex acts such as having unprotected sex.
I can only hope a new generation of men realizes that sex isn't something that's taken, but only something that can be given and shared. Then again it's hard to expect that kind of maturity from a state who nearly elected a man who admitted to having sex with minors when he was in his thirties.
The GOP will never overturn Roe v. Wade because calling themselves "anti-abortion" is the only way they'll continue getting votes from the masses. If it weren't for the abortion(aka "baby murder") issue, they'd only consistently get votes from Bigots and the 1%. And believe it or not, there aren't enough of them in America to win elections.
They have convinced huge portions of their base that abortion is actual child murder
That is literally what abortion is if you believe that a fetus is an unborn child.
voting "party over country" ect ect.
That is not the same as voting party over country. This is single issue voting. Party over country is "I hate this candidate, and don't agree with anything he says, but I'll be damned before I vote for someone in the other party."
I think the big problem is the framing of the argument that pro-life often spout. Pro-choice!=pro-abortion. Alot of us pro-choice folks are very much decidedly anti-abortion. However, it is not my place to make that decision for other people
No it's not a framing issue. People are generally smart enough to see past the framing that is TO THEM, "oh no, I don't think murder is good, but I think it should be the choice of the mother. OR I think murder should be allowed as long as the mom was raped, in an incestuous relationship, or might die herself if we don't murder her child. Replace abortion with murder in any sentence and you've got my Christian Republican voting parents pov.
Which is why it's important we stop referring to it as "pro life" and call it what it really is, which is "anti choice". Republican leaders want to strip women of their autonomy, and are leveraging uneducated and uninformed voters who don't realize the near impossibility that is outlawing it. It's a stupid litmus test, since the best they can do is frustrate, not remove.
This, this right here, is exactly what the above poster is talking about.
Your analysis only works if you begin with the viewpoint (shared among the pro-choice) that a fetus is not equivalent to a child and abortion is not equivalent to murder.
Republican voters know abortions are going to happen, but arguing against criminalization of abortion on that basis is (to them) like arguing that because we can’t prevent all murders we should legalize murder.
Maybe it’s an intractable disagreement, but we should really consider trying to diminish the importance of that issue rather than accusing Republican voters of being stupid, uninformed, or actively lying about their intent.
Even if we believe that, who do you win over? Whose turnout are you increasing by taking a hugely important and entirely subjective moral question and answering it with “if you’re pro-life it means you’re either ignorant or lying because you just hate women”?
A fetus is not a child, or it would be called "A child". Are you implying the pro-choice side should concede the definition? Just because they believe a collection of cells that cannot be self sufficient constitutes a living human being doesn't mean we should humor their ignorance.
Republican voters know abortions are going to happen, but arguing against criminalization of abortion on that basis is (to them) like arguing that because we can’t prevent all murders we should legalize murder.
Agree to disagree. Republican voters who choose abortion as their single issue very much believe they will someday keep abortions from happening. Coincidentally, these same voters are opposed to birth control and sex education. I don't think they get to make the argument that this is a fetus' rights issue and not an attempt to control women's bodies, considering education and contraceptives are the most effective ways to prevent unwanted pregnancy.
It's important to understand their motivation and figure out how to combat their efforts. Not everything is about changing hearts and minds, especially when it's the hearts and minds of grown adults that tend to be the least educated and choose religion as their driving decision-making force. I've never heard of a single voter that feels strongly about women's choice one way or the other changing their minds without going through a personal experience. Pro-choice priority should be on protecting those rights, not coddling people who would elect a pedophile to protect unborn children.
A fetus is not a child, or it would be called "A child".
That’s an asinine statement, and I even agree with the first part. First because the entire argument is over whether it should be called a child (NB: pro-life people do refer to fetuses as children). It would be like saying that because we have a different word to specify “toddler” as a stage of development it is somehow more distinguishable from a “child” and has less protection against being killed.
The entire disagreement is based on us seeing a fetus as “not a child” and them seeing it as “a child.” Who do you think is going to be persuaded by simple repetition that “it’s not a child”? Much less a purely semantic argument that the two can’t be ethically equivalent because there are different descriptors?
Are you implying the pro-choice side should concede the definition?
No, I’m outright stating that we gain nothing by trying to make the fight into “given that we are right and a fetus is not a child, here is the conclusion, and anyone who disagrees is either too ignorant to know that a fetus isn’t a child, or lying about it because they hate women.”
We’ve been trying that for about a decade, it hasn’t worked. Because it can’t work, no one will be persuaded by “you’re either dumb, ignorant, or lying.”
Just because they believe a collection of cells that cannot be self sufficient constitutes a living human being doesn't mean we should humor their ignorance.
Holy fuck, man. I’m on the same side as you, and this makes me want to hide under the couch and deny being pro-choice.
This isn’t about ignorance or knowledge, or fact, or science. This is about how we define the beginning of “being a living human being” for ourselves. There is no objective definition.
You define it as involving being “self-sufficient”. I’d phrase it more like “could exist independently.” But neither of those definitions are any more empirical than defining it as “an entity which will, if no action is taken by any human volition, continue to develop as a human being throughout its existence.”
We need to wean ourselves off the notion that our ethical definitions are unambiguously and incontrovertibly correct. Maybe it won’t work, but it’s worth a shot of maybe making abortion into less of a singular culture war issues by acknowledging that there is a legitimate disagreement, not just “we’re right and you’re ignorant.”
Because there is a legitimate disagreement. No amount of knowledge defines when human life begins.
Agree to disagree. Republican voters who choose abortion as their single issue very much believe they will someday keep abortions from happening
Given your attitude I have a hard time believing that you’ve had a sincere conversation with many pro-life people about what they actually believe. I could be wrong, but given your “they’re ignorant or just trying to control women” viewpoint, this comes across as a lot more “speculation about what other people believe” rather than asking them.
Pro-life people (at least based on what they say, but you seem to believe that they’re unreliable about their own beliefs) acknowledge that abortion can’t be eliminated, but that’s a different issue from whether it should be sanctioned.
I don't think they get to make the argument that this is a fetus' rights issue and not an attempt to control women's bodies, considering education and contraceptives are the most effective ways to prevent unwanted pregnancy.
Wow, throw in the “violinist thought experiment” and you’ll have hit the “pro-choice arguments that only work if you begin with the pro-choice presumptions” trifecta.
Opposition to “bad thing A” does not require support for “bad thing B” on the basis that thing B will reduce thing A.
As an extreme example: let’s say I show you research that indicates a large number of murders are done as a way of covering up a rape that has been committed. From this we could infer that some number of murders are done out of fear of prosecution for committing rape. Which would mean we could reduce the murder rate by legalizing rape.
You would never, ever, ever, support that. And neither would I. And the fact that we wouldn’t try to reduce bad thing A by doing bad thing B doesn’t in any way cut against our opposition to bad thing A.
Someone who thinks abortion is murder can also think it’s wrong for the government to either directly pay for birth control (which forces everyone to pay for birth control) or force employers to. They can also think abortion is murder while thinking it’s wrong to give tacit encouragement to kids to have sex.
The fact that they view those things as also bad doesn’t affect the sincerity of them thinking abortion is murder.
Your logic works if, and only if, you begin with the premise that birth control and sex education are either ethically good, or ethically neutral.
I've never heard of a single voter that feels strongly about women's choice one way or the other changing their minds without going through a personal experience
That’s the point. We’ve tried to just tell them they’re stupid and ignorant and misogynistic. So far, it isn’t getting us much. Maybe, just maybe, if we can acknowledge that this is a fundamental moral quandary, we can get the issue out of the area of “I have to vote against the people who insult me.”
It might not work, but all it’d take is changing our rhetoric.
Pro-choice priority should be on protecting those rights,
I’m not asking for a change in policy or platform.
But our rhetoric isn’t helping us. We can’t win through demonization, it just galvanizes even moderate opposition. And our entire argument is that there aren’t demons to begin with. We tried to adopt the Republican “if you disagree with me you’re bad” rhetoric, it hasn’t been a galloping success.
not coddling people who would elect a pedophile to protect unborn children.
Look at the swing in the vote from 2016 to now. Maybe it’s lightning in a bottle because Roy Moore was singularly awful.
But maybe we could try, for at least a little bit, to tell moderate pro-life people that we understand their view. We don’t agree with it, and we’re going to keep advocating for our view, but we don’t think they’re malicious or stupid. That they’re decent people who are doing exactly what we would do if we believed that fetuses were children.
Maybe that get us an additional 1% of the vote in Missouri next time. Maybe it bumps up the turnout among Baptist black and Catholic Latino voters by 0.5%. Perhaps they’re more interested in coming out to support a party that doesn’t actively shit on them.
Maybe it doesn’t, but what the hell are we gaining by rhetoric that can only be described as “my beliefs are right, your beliefs are stupid, so either you’re stupid or you’re lying and don’t really believe that”?
I just wanted to comment on the bodily autonomy issue for you as best as I can with the time I have. I think your Dad sounds like a responsible and reasonable person who might listen to his child even if all the educated elites are considered to be fake news. I would be really interested to hear whether or not you already related this argument to him and how he responded. I know that you might already have tried this, but just wanted to share in case others reading have not considered this approach, as it is much less dependent on arguing about what a life is and when it begins. I honestly cannot find a flaw myself and do consider human life to be something truly worthy of saving at great cost. Anyway, here is the whole spiel as best as I can manage in a reasonable amount of time.
Did you know that the original decision in Roe v. Wade was handed down by a majority Republican appointed Supreme Court? Does that mean that they did not believe that human life had intrinsic value? No, but they did realize that the effort to preserve life has limitations like any other noble pursuit.
Mandatory vaccination, mandatory blood "donations" and mandatory organ "donations" upon death would preserve countless existing human lives that also have intrinsic value. Why don't we enact these ideas with the force of law?
It's because giving the government control of a private citizens body and blood is universally understood to be inherently wrong and, frankly, ghoulish. Even something as costless and easy as a free vaccination cannot be given by force.
Suppose that you are out at the target range shooting when suddenly a bullet you fired takes a one in a million bounce and severely wounds a young man. In order to survive he needs more life support than can be accomplished through currently available medical technology. What if he could be given support by another human body though? That is a much more realistic goal given our actual current limitations. It is both a near future possibility and an obvious, though admittedly imperfect, analogue to the condition a pregnant woman finds herself in.
Should you be forced to support him until he recovers and can survive on his own again? The accident isn't really your fault and isn't what you wanted, but why did you need to be out shooting in the first place? Did you responsibly decide to take every single possible safety precaution available to you? Is it really the fault of the shooting range? Isn't an accident still possible even if the range was built exactly to code? You knew that your gun could take a life and that the risk of something that was truly an accident existed. Your support would directly save a life that you inadvertently put in danger. Isn't that a blessing in disguise? Yes, providing this support will put you at much higher risk of certain cancers and serious medical issues. Yes, you will become more dependent on others in turn, as you will not be able to provide for yourself as well while you care for the young man with your own body's life support systems.
You can firmly believe that there is a right and wrong decision here while still understanding that it should never be something that the government forces you to do. Especially not when you understand that our current laws respect even the posthumous bodily autonomy of corpses. Corpses that could save currently existing lives simply by not taking viable organs into the ground along with them. Under current possibilities and laws, you could not be forced to even give up your blood to save a person that you intentionally injured.
It is my belief that that the top conservative legal experts understand why Roe v. Wade will never be overturned. It is because the right to bodily autonomy is too important and frightening to infringe upon, even in the direct pursuit of preserving anothers life. That' why they currently focus on restricting the availability and accessibility of abortion, rather than fight a legal battle that they know they cannot win in a nation that promises equal protection under the law in its Constitution. It could be seen as a pragmatic approach to the noble goal of preserving life, but it is clearly ultimately morally wrong. Once we come to the conclusion that abortion will remain legal, attempting to restrict it based on class, race, religion, or state of residence within the greater union is unethical and a pyrrhic victory at best.
In short, abortion is a black and white legal issue that both parties currently use as a whip to drive their constituents into a mindless frenzy. I firmly believe that the people who really hold a lot of control over both parties know very well that this is true. This is without even elaborating on how illogical the entire idea of a single issue voter is in the first place.
This argument has been relayed during some conversations, but again, the point is moot. It doesn't matter if I don't rely on defining what life is because that is the root of their argument. The shooting range analogy is a false equivalency. The shooting accident isn't conception, the friend is the fetus To better match the thinking of pro-lifers it would be like being at a shooting range, taking a risk and accidentally creating a person knowing that there was a risk of this happening, and then deciding you don't feel like taking care of your creation so you kill it. Again, to them it is about whether or not a person has the right to kill another person. That is why these types of efforts to logic out of it don't work. The argument absolutely hinges on what life is and when it begins which is largely subjective. While I personally think it is a black and white legal issue, there are plenty of people don't. To get a better idea of what their view point is, anytime you hear or see the word abortion, replace it with murder. In their eyes it is murder plain and simple. Now try to logic to them that murdering children should be legal, because that is essentially what you are trying to do.
I am not trying to indirectly be a pedantic jerk to your father, but an analogy is not even an attempt at equivalence. It only needs to be comparable in certain aspects. The purpose is to illustrate the ways that the two examples are similar, not to prove that they are exactly the same thing. I don't think this is a pedantic complaint because the fact that this isn't a direct equivalence is being used to ignore the similarities between the two situations that do exist. Blood and organ donations are analogies that match even less directly to pregnancy, but I still feel that they have certain similarities that make them valid and valuable analogies for this logical decision.
On the other hand, the argument you relayed from your fathers point of view directly and unapologetically equates "taking care of someone" with being pregnant. That is the much larger and more important inaccuracy here, so that is where we should start.
It isn't as simple as not feeling like taking care of someone, which is an impressively vague term for the very specific and costly action he actually has in mind. Taking care of someone could conceivably range anywhere from simply fixing a person's meals to monetary support to acting as a literal human life support system with many associated personal health risks. Only some of these actions are acceptable consequences according to the law and pregnancy is not currently one of them, nor will it ever be. Life is to be preserved, but anyone can understand that sometimes the cost and consequences of preserving that life are simply too high. Think about how people feel about the concept of triage versus the politically charged term of "death panels".
However, I think it is probably fair to note that simply not feeling like it is a perfectly acceptable excuse for other current issues of bodily autonomy, which should provide you some proof of how sacred the right is considered to be. Does your father consider those who do not donate blood or organs to be killing other people? I didn't see anything in your reply addressing any of those issues and I think that is a very important thing for you to discuss with him. Press him about what he considers to be the relevant differences between those acts.
Their donations would save lives, the cost to them is sometimes much lower than the cost for a pregnant woman. No, they are not directly responsible for the other person's situation, but importantly, the law does not seem to care. As I said before, a criminal could intentionally and directly be responsible for another person needing blood or a certain organ to survive. There is simply no legal precedent for violating the criminals bodily autonomy in order to make the injured party whole again, even if the consequence is the death of the injured party.
There is no logical way to simultaneously hold the belief that one is killing a baby because they took a legal and natural action, yet refuse to act as a human life support system; while the other is simply not doing something they don't want to do by exercising their right to bodily autonomy even though they are responsible for a criminal action that caused the other person to be in need. Hit that point as many times as it takes to break through to their actual motivation for believing as they do. Take note of all the ways they try to direct you away from that simple hard point that they cannot deny.
I sympathize with your complaints about how they view abortion, but try your very best to be patient and understand them. I know that it is difficult and clearly have my own issues with understanding their illogical and emotional approach to the issue. Explain that there are many situations where the law very clearly does forgive killing another person. Try not to let that transition into a discussion on police brutality or war for obvious reasons. Explain that there is also a clear legal and moral difference between intentional killing and causing death by withholding support that comes at too great a cost. Refer back to the unavoidable fact that even direct and intentional killing is not seen as an excuse for the violation of bodily autonomy. Restate the fact that sex without the intention of procreation is not a crime and that all actions are risks in their own way. Just because an action is not implicitly necessary for life doesn't make it a crime or even an immoral choice. Hopefully they will think about it on their own and can understand in their own way.
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You are absolutely right, they are similar but not the same. That is my point. You provide those arguments and say things like
There is no logical way to simultaneously hold the belief that one is killing a baby because they took a legal and natural action, yet refuse to act as a human life support system; while the other is simply not doing something they don't want to do by exercising their right to bodily autonomy even though they are responsible for a criminal action that caused the other person to be in need.
when what I have been saying is that logic will not work. You can dress it up all you want, in end they will look at your analogies and say, "that isn't the same," and they will be right because they aren't and that is all they need to cling to their beliefs. The analogies are weak. The problem you are running into is that you are trying to use logic to change their minds but they don't agree that your premises are correct. It doesn't matter how many times I "hit that point," it isn't going to work.
Refer back to the unavoidable fact that even direct and intentional killing is not seen as an excuse for the violation of bodily autonomy.
Prove to me this is a fact. Prove to anyone this is a fact. You can use all the logic in the world but if someone feels your premises are false, it invalidates the argument to them.
I sympathize with your complaints about how they view abortion, but try your very best to be patient and understand them.
I do understand them. I grew up in this culture. I am trying to explain them to you and you remain obtuse. I am patient, I'm not trying to force them to change their minds. I speak anecdotally when I say that when I made the change in view it had nothing to do with people telling me the logic in it. I have been there for a lot of people as they had this shift in view as well. I can tell you that being told we were illogical and emotional isn't what did it, it was our own personal experiences, it was the work we put in ourselves. These type of verbose and condescending attempts to explain why pro-choice is right and pro-life is wrong do more damage than good. It turns me off and I am on your side. Again, I assure you, all of your points have been conveyed to my father over the years that we have had this type of discussion. IT DOES NOT MATTER. I understand your passion on this, I really do, but you should really check your tone. I disagree with my father on a lot, but one of the wisest things I have learned I learned from him, "It doesn't matter if you are right, if you are an asshole about it no one will care you are right and everyone is just going to think your asshole."
edit:grammar
edit 2: It should also be noted that they don't just view this as murder, this is killing something innocent to them.
You're not putting yourself in his shoes enough. If you firmly believe it's tantamount to murder, not doing it yourself is not sufficient.
I'm vehemently anti war. It's not good enough that I don't personally drone the shit out of brown kids in Yemen. I can't morally stand by while others do it as well.
This couldn't be more true. Every time I heard someone say something about how their argument is so logical, or why can't the other side understand logic (and you can switch out "logic" for "common sense" any time) it immediately throws a flag for me because it instantly tells me that it's no the calculation that's different, it's the base formula.
If I believe the government serves as a net-positive influence on our society and you believe that we need to abolish all government and all the free market to take over everything, then we're simply going to disagree on a huge range of things. Not because either of us can't-even when it comes to facts, can't process information in a rational way, or we don't understand how things work; rather it come down to we expect different inputs and outputs into that system.
Also, any time a Youtube video appears with "1*-year-old destroys * with logic" you can save your time and just not watch it.
I think Christians should be more accepting of abortion. Using logic, I think they could view it as almost a good thing. You just need the Christian to believe a couple of things that I think most would agree on.
Does an aborted baby go to heaven?
I believe most would answer "yes" to this question.
What's more important in Christianity? Living a decent life or finding your way to God and heaven?
I would think it's the latter.
Do you want more or fewer people going to hell?
I would think fewer.
Would every aborted baby have gone on to be saved and accepted Jesus as their lord and savior?
Of course not. Those who wouldn't would go on to hell.
So logically, by aborting babies, you're ensuring they make it to heaven. And that's what's important in the end, right? Fewer people will go to hell because of it. Even those who had an abortion or carried it out can be forgiven and go to heaven still.
This is exactly what I was talking about in my post. You can’t logic past them believing it is murder. To them this argument reads, “wouldn’t it make sense to murder people to send them to heaven?” No because murder is wrong.
Since God "said" it, all these logical arguments go out the window. I wonder if the issue would be better addressed by mandating 1. Sex education, 2. Free birth control, and just allowing it (this next part is awful) to be a states' rights issue, decided by referendum. If someone wants an abortion, they can drive to a state where it's legal. Access would be difficult for poor people, but there would be non-profits that would spring up and shuttle people to other states.
Who knows, maybe not a single state would be able to pass anti-abortion laws by referendum. It may be a "moral" majority thing. Stop letting Washington DC use the issue as a chew toy.
There is a way to win. We need to refrain the argument to pro free choice vs pro government choice. Anytime someone says pro life, correct them to pro government choice. And then take a page from Republicans play book and claim they want to create sex lists of who is fucking so they can make sure no one has an abortion. Doesn’t matter they never said it, claim this is part of the plan.
Then remind them pro free choice results in fewer abortions.
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u/iamexplodinggod Dec 13 '17
I think you are absolutely correct. This is issue is far more divisive then I think people realize, which is saying something. It is pretty much an unwinnable argument. There is a fundamental difference in how many pro-choice and pro-life people define life and yet both sides still try to “logic” their way to changing peoples’ mind. I lean left and my dad is incredibly right, after a very long discussion he said he could get behind a lot of leftist ideas with proper implementation. Said he still considers himself a republican and when it comes down to it he is a one issue voter and would never vote for someone who is pro-choice.