Larian Studios Forums General Chat Chat (Anything) The Argumentative Git thread

LOL, western culture dictates that rape taints a women and the child, ergo aborting a rape child is ok. What an odd carryover from the concept of women as property, and rape as a violation of that property plus a violation of "purity".

There are a number of questions and issues that invariably fail to be discussed during abortion discussions, which is why the topic can never be resolved intelligently. Half of the issues, indeed, the real issues, are largely or totally ignored.

With respect to the above quote - let's simplify the text a little.

1. Abortion is allowed in cases of rape, because the woman doesn't want the child, and it was forced upon her.

A) in the case of not wanting the child, how is the reason relevant to whether abortion should be allowed by society? Regardless of the reason for society allowing or disallowing, the fetus is still being destroyed for what is an arbitrary reason as described, regardless of whether it's imposed from the outside, socially tolerated or supported, or simply selected by the individual.

B) In the case of being forced, rape is no different from society dictating to a wife that she must bear children, or should and communicating this message so strongly that women don't feel as though they have a choice, or risk being ostracized. There are lots of ways to force a woman to have a child that have nothing to do with physical rape. From the perspective of arguing the fetus has a right to life, it's origin is not relevant at all (in the case of incest included, unless you intend to argue that physical health of the fetus and genetic health should determine whether the fetus should live - a profoundly caring, intelligent, and rational response and unlikely to be heard anywhere).

C) In the case of being forced in the sense of not being ready, age is not relevant at all, no more so than money or any other reason. If the woman or girl isn't ready to have and rear a child, only she can determine that. Now society may be willing to bear the burdens of having a child, however, it's still a physical imposition on the woman and in effect, society is physically raping women that want to have an abortion but cannot.

D) Issues of the mother's health - if arguing a fetus has a right to life, then any risk on the mother's part cannot possibly justify an abortion, since it's a risk versus taking the life of the fetus. Such a position is completely irrational. Even if it was a death sentence to the mother, the longer life of the fetus, assuming it could be carried to term, would necessarily take precedence.

In general however -

I don't even understand the topic. Are we supposed to argue about medical practices that seem to support abortion re: Indian social practice? Are we supposed to argue that an unborn child has a right to life but we how could we justify abortion?

I think your all over the map here, seems like 4-5 different topics.

So I'll address the issue in general.

2. Indian social practice is influencing abortion statistics and population balance.

a) Er, so? When this practice results in woman being so scarce that men start paying to have them as wives, the situation will normalize. This is certainly not intelligent behavior, however, the economics of the situation will necessarily resolve itself.

b) We could argue a similar side to the same issue re: gender balance by addressing all male armies. There are lots of ways to have a gender imbalance, indeed arguably the Indians are correcting the natural imbalance which is problematic in modern societies where women are not dying in childbirth as they previously had, so the population levels are soaring plus the number of women who cannot obtain stable mates/families can be seen as problematic from both a social and psychological view, not to mention the difficulties in child rearing in a single mother household (as a practical matter, not even discussing the early research on psychological impact to children who are monosocialized by a primary caregiver)

c) re: gender favoritism issues. How is this relevant to anything unless you arbitrarily decide a gender balance produces more viable/important/relevant people? Reproduction issues set aside, what difference does it make if all human beings or most are women or men, strictly talking about their individual value? Trying to say we should value a balance of some kind suggests that men or women have different values, not the same one. Personally I don't care whether every human in existence is male or female, not until I see some research indicating that a mix of genders necessarily produces some value to individuals (though current reality of procreation and child rearing make a gender mix necessary, this may not always be the case).
Indeed by arguing against female foeticide you are in fact saying that filling available population slots (people who can be fed, educated, etc.) with men preferrentially that women have some special value over men. (okay, probably true <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/winkwink.gif" alt="" /> )
Actually the Indian situation may be correcting a gender imbalance introduced by war, the fact that male children are slightly less healthy, plus the natural ratios disturbed by medical technology where women aren't dying as much proportionally as they had in the past plus living longer!

3. Abortion as choice vs right to life of the fetus.

A) Fundamentally this is two different issues and they must be addressed separately prior to being weighted and compared. Ergo the issue is never resolved, because it's never really discussed.

1. First, Abortion as female choice versus society's choice. Arguing that a women should not be allowed to choose but society should means that, regardless of contraceptives or intent issues, that at some point society has the right to force a woman to/stay impregnated and, currently, then be responsible for the child.

Let's all keep in mind that the pace of medical technology is such that within our children's lifetimes we can expect men to be capable of carrying a fetus to term inside their abdomen.

So do both sexes not have the right to not be used as social breeding factories for one or more children? Does society have the right to propagate itself?

Clearly the answer is no...why you ask? Because put simply, society does not exist. It's a virtual entity, a fiction. Your neighbors do not have a "right" to force you to bear children for their peace of mind because they want their traditions carried on. Should they do so? Of course not - you are a part of society, forcing others to carry on artificial traditions for their own sake twists the concept of society into a virtual living entity that really does dehumanize us all. Abortion as a choice, by contrast, illuminates our humanity and elevates it above those creatures who do not have intelligent choice.

2. Second, fetus having a "right to life". LOL LOL LOL LOL ROFL. Delicious irony that organized religion, responsible for more human deaths than any other force on earth, is considered "pro life" and their irrational positions are driving these arguments while obscuring them at the same time.

Does a fetus have a right to life? Effectively what you're asking is whether a potential human life is the same as a human life. Ignoring the impact to the woman under our current technology restraints (later, for instance, does every egg and sperm that can be combined and incubated in a machine have a right to life?), this is an absurd question. A potential life is clearly not the same as an existing life, and if you try to argue that a potential life has a "right to live", then you are in fact saying that every possible egg should be fertilized by every possible sperm at every possible time. The end result would be a world packed full of pregnant 12 years old girls who would always be pregnant, be forced to have twins or quadruplets or more, until the ecology collapsed and every living thing was dead.

But who cares, right? God will take care of it. But if Zeus is busy that week I guess we're all in deep doodoo.

<img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/puppyeyes.gif" alt="" />

To keep this short, I won't discuss the issues re: morality of raising unwanted children and the devastating psychological consequences it can have, amounting to a lifetime of torture...