Using logic and reason to oppose abortion...

[questioner4]

Okay, even though I've been questioning my faith for over a year, I am still firmly pro-life - although I believe 'traditional' pro-lifers go about it the wrong way. I believe thast abortion is wrong, because I oppose discrimination on all grounds. I believe it is being discriminatory to deny basic human rights to the smallest humans, simply because they are still dependant on the mother. It really would be nice to hear people oppose abortion on grounds other than the Bible.

Anyway, what do you guys think? Are you a 'non-traditional pro-lifer'? If you are Christian and pro-life, can you think of any non-Biblical reasons to oppose abortion?

[Cephus]

The questions were all concerning rights. Your answers contradict each other. Your answers speak for themselves. There is nothing wrong with asking a question in a different way, the intention was to gauge the strength or weakness of your position. My questioning cannot be held responsible for the inconsistency of your answers, only for demonstrating it.

There is nothing inconsistent in the answers, it's your attempt to apply the answers to different questions that is getting you in trouble. If you can't stop being intellectually dishonest and leave the goalposts where they are, then please feel free to stop debating.

[Curious]

The questions were all concerning rights. Your answers contradict each other. Your answers speak for themselves. There is nothing wrong with asking a question in a different way, the intention was to gauge the strength or weakness of your position. My questioning cannot be held responsible for the inconsistency of your answers, only for demonstrating it.

There is nothing inconsistent in the answers, it's your attempt to apply the answers to different questions that is getting you in trouble. If you can't stop being intellectually dishonest and leave the goalposts where they are, then please feel free to stop debating.

Intellectually dishonest? I have been consistent throughout our discourse yet you have given answers that plainly contradict each other. If you have a valid explanation why rights can be both grantable and ungrantable I would like to hear it. You might be completely right but until I hear your explanation I will never know. My posts are not meant to belittle you in any way but only to show the complexity of the issue. The debate stated that logical reasons were required and you stated that I should be logical rather than emotive. You also freely entered into a discussion of rights. I therefore meant only to ascertain whether the issue of rights is consistent. You demonstrate from your answers that this is not the case. If you wish to leave the issue of rights then feel free to do so and we can debate the issue from another angle. I am sorry if I have offended you in any way and assure you that this was not my intention but when an argument is based on logic it must by necessity be consistent.

[Cephus]

Intellectually dishonest? I have been consistent throughout our discourse yet you have given answers that plainly contradict each other. If you have a valid explanation why rights can be both grantable and ungrantable I would like to hear it. You might be completely right but until I hear your explanation I will never know. My posts are not meant to belittle you in any way but only to show the complexity of the issue. The debate stated that logical reasons were required and you stated that I should be logical rather than emotive. You also freely entered into a discussion of rights. I therefore meant only to ascertain whether the issue of rights is consistent. You demonstrate from your answers that this is not the case. If you wish to leave the issue of rights then feel free to do so and we can debate the issue from another angle. I am sorry if I have offended you in any way and assure you that this was not my intention but when an argument is based on logic it must by necessity be consistent.

It is consistent, you keep moving the goalposts. Rights must be granted by someone in order to exist. We're talking about rights granted by society, not what you do in your family, etc. While your family example might be a microcosm of society, it really does little but cloud the issue. You also try to bring up laws as if they are the same as rights, but I doubt anyone would be too concerned with your "right to drive the speed limit" or your "right to cross streets at a crosswalk". A law isn't a right. A law can, and often does proscribe penalties for violating societal rights, but they are not, in and of themselves, rights.

Getting back to the debate at hand, there is no right to life for a fetus whatsoever. Society may arbitrarily set a certain point in fetal development beyond which abortion is not easily obtainable, but society also arbitrarily sets 18 as the dividing line between child and adult. There's nothing magical or mystical that happens on that day, that's just the point that an individual gets added rights and responsibilities. Same goes with 16 for driving a car. Same goes with 21 for drinking alcohol. Is there any particular rational reason behind any of it? Nope. But that's the way it is.

[jcrawford]

A fetus has never been granted rights by society. It may, at some point, be granted rights, but it does not now have them. Therefore, arguing about a fetus' rights is like arguing about a square circle. No such thing.

It's neither necessary nor desirable to give a foetus rights in order to protect unborn children since married partners already have foetal rights.

A fetus has no "right to live". It hasn't been granted by society.

The fetus of married Christian, Jewish or Muslim parents has the right to live if those parents claim it does. Medical doctors don't have the right to kill the fetus of married Christian, Jewish and Muslim men without their knowledge and consent.

A fetus will gain the "right to life", when, and only when society determines that it should have it.

A fetus already has the "right to life" if it belongs to married Christian, Jewish or Muslim men. No form or branch of American government has the right to authorize killing the unborn children of Christian, Jewish and Islamic marriages without the parent's knowledge and permission.

[jcrawford]

(Post 183) Getting back to the debate at hand, there is no right to life for a fetus whatsoever.

That's not true. (Must be a lie) A fetus has the right to life which it's parent's give it. Neither a society nor the SCOTUS has the right to authorize the killing of a Christian, Jewish or Muslim marriage's unborn children.

[McCulloch]

(Post 183) Getting back to the debate at hand, there is no right to life for a fetus whatsoever.

That's not true. (Must be a lie) A fetus has the right to life which it's parent's give it. Neither a society nor the SCOTUS has the right to authorize the killing of a Christian, Jewish or Muslim marriage's unborn children.

Yes, but neither a society nor the SCOTUS has the right to authorize the destruction of a Christian, Jewish or Muslim marriage's dirty socks. That does not prove that dirty socks have any rights does it?

[jcrawford]

(Post 177) One thing you cannot do, however, is take away the rights given by society as a whole, or grant contradictory rights. So, in fact, you couldn't grant your wife the right to run around in public nude, no matter how strongly you think she might deserve it.

On the other hand, neither society nor the SCOTUS have the right to grant abortion rights to women alone, (sex, gender and marital discrimination) or to license medical doctors to kill the wanted children of married Christian, Jewish and Islamic Fathers. As a matter of fact, neither your "society" nor the SCOTUS can grant any religious people 'rights' which their God has already given them. All the SCOTUS can do is unconstitutionally strike down and deny rights which the original states and their citizens religiously claimed for themselves.

... debate is a healthy activity, but until you do manage to convince society as a whole that their views are wrong and that they should adopt other views, those rights will continue to exist.

It's not necessary to convince your "society" as a "whole" that their views are wrong. All one has to do is to state their religious rights in a court of law. Secular US judges will decide if you are right or wrong. Of course, if you have no religious rights, the court may grant you some. Religious rights supercede secular rights, you know.

And yes, firebombing clinics and shooting doctors is certainly unproductive, but those things are usually done by Christians who want to impose their views on a society that wants no part of them. That's not debate, that's terrorism.

Speaking of terrorism, the wholesale slaughter and butchering of Christian, Jewish and Muslim babies by secular medical doctors during the past 33 years, (over 40 million dead American babies, and still counting in this American Holocaust) amounts to nothing more than state-sanctioned domestic violence and political terrorism on the part of secular medical quacks and judges.
I've no problem with secular or atheistic medical doctors performing abortions on their wives and daughters - as long as they keep their blood-stained and contaminated hands off Christian, Jewish and Muslim babies.

[jcrawford]

(Post 183) Getting back to the debate at hand, there is no right to life for a fetus whatsoever.

That's not true. (Must be a lie) A fetus has the right to life which it's parent's give it. Neither a society nor the SCOTUS has the right to authorize the killing of a Christian, Jewish or Muslim marriage's unborn children.

Yes, but neither a society nor the SCOTUS has the right to authorize the destruction of a Christian, Jewish or Muslim marriage's dirty socks. That does not prove that dirty socks have any rights does it?

Even though dirty Christian, Jewish or Muslim socks are private property, unless one is incarcerated in some state institution of course, the state can wash our dirty Christian, Jewish and Islamic socks for us any time it likes as long as it doesn't send us the bill and they do as good a job as our Christian, Jewish and Muslim wives.

Being neither private nor public property, nor "dirty socks," the unborn children of Christian, Jewish and Islamic marriages have the same right to be born as Christians, Jews and Muslims have to be married. What are you secularists anyway - total control freaks?

Where you from? Canada? I was born there. Before any filthy abortion terrorists could get their hands on me, thanks be to the grace of our Christian, Jewish and Islamic God.

Burn secular newspapers instead of wood or oil in your home. Save on fuel costs and conserve scarce energy resources like trees and oil.

[jcrawford]

The only thing that makes a right exist is that society, as a whole, says it does. That's it. I think you're expecting too much.

I think you are underestimating the right of Christian, Jewish and Islamic Holy men like myself and a few others in the world to make their own laws for themselves and their people. I'm a Christian Father and no other man on earth may lawfully kill my unborn children without my consent. The same goes for any other Christian, Jewish or Islamic Father. No one has the right to kill the unborn children of religious marriages. Who do you think you are, anyway - God? You probably don't even have any authority over your own wife - so who are you to tell Christian, Jewish and Muslim men what rights they have?

Rights are societal constructs, individuals or groups don't have any ability to grant or take them away.

Rights are religious constructs. They don't exist in a natural vacuum.
No religion = no rights. (Other than those a religious society grants you, by the grace of God)

Secularism is dead. So is suicidal nihilism.

An idea is not a right. Until a right is granted by society, it is not a right, hence arguing about "ungranted rights" makes no sense.

Since the concept of legal rights is nothing but an idea, and all ideas are metaphysical, religious or philosophical in nature, the basic concept and idea of 'law' is fundamentally religious, metaphysical or philosophical in nature. Physicist don't observe the laws of physics. They only observe physical molecules and atoms, and 'discover' the intelligently designed metaphysical and spiritual laws which govern matter.

Sorry, but the whole point of rights *IS* the consensus. It's purely majority rule, like it or not.

In that case, Christians being in the majority, will decide what is right, and atheists will have no more rights than Christian "society' gives them.

Society isn't perfect, it isn't even rational sometimes,

That's for sure, and that's why Christians, Jews and Muslims don't pay any attention to your so-called "society" and it's so-called 'social' rights.

but it is society and it does grant rights.

Neither your "society" nor secular socialists have any power to grant 'rights' to Christians, Jews and Muslims. We already have our rights engraved, enshrined and guaranteed in our Holy Books and in the US Con. It is secularists who don't have any rights other than the few created for them in our Holy Books and the USC.

[jcrawford]

(Post 169) I've said that since the beginning. *ALL* rights, without any exceptions, are granted by the society under which one lives.

That is an obvious lie though, thoroughly disproved historically by the actions of the original American revolutionaries as well as all other social movements in American history led by Christian abolitionists and civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King. Secular society doesn't rule over America. Traditional Judeo-Christian freedoms and Islamic family values do. Secular abortionism by medical doctors is as anathema to American religious tradition and values as Nazi genodcide was.

That means that, if society as a whole decided tomorrow that a fetus had rights, then the fetus would have rights.

That's a lot of secular hooey, baloney and propaganda. Your notion of, and belief in, 'society' is as archaic, antiquated and mythological as Greek mythology and the French enlightenment of Jean Jacque Rousseau itself. There is no more a social contract than there ever was an age of European enlightenment. Obviously, you have been brainwashed by so-called enlightened philosophers who crawled out of the medieval woodwork of the European dark ages.

If it decided a woman had no rights, then a woman would have no rights. But at the moment, society has determined that a woman has rights and a fetus does not.

Premised and justified on that archaic system of Aristotelian and secular logic, the day may soon arrive when it will shall be fully justified and rationalized to deny that Christian, Jewish and Muslim doctors or females have any right to abort the progeny of Christian, Jewish and Muslim men.

That will leave secular medical experts and judges in the unenviable position of deciding whether it is in their best interests to continue killing Christian, Jewish and Muslim children before they are born.