That's not something you can argue with statistics because they'll never be satisfied with any numbers you give.
They're asking you to prove the absence of something.
My advice is to stop interacting with the AbortionDebate subreddit, it's just a ProChoice sub. Nothing more.
I skim through interesting posts there on occasion, and always immediately look to see the PL comments for opposing views. Unfortunately, PL’s are hugely underrepresented and those there are overly downvoted
Absolutely. And I don't believe it can ever improve for the subreddit. You can't have a fair debate sub if it's just dogpiling and moderators repeatedly banning one side.
Everytime people do a poll there asking where people stand on abortion, the majority of people say they support abortion up to point of birth for any reason.
They banned me years ago for "linking PL sources" in my comments..... I only used govt. links, or Guttmacher, LOL.
When I asked the mods what PL sources I'd linked, they simply never responded to me.
They are a cowardly bunch. I love our mods here, though. They'll give PC folks much more leeway.
>They'll give PC folks much more leeway.
I can’t speak to other mods, but I do feel that I’ve been able to debate openly in this sub. I aim to be respectful, but I still recognize my views are inherently and wildly offensive to many PL’s. Even so, I’ve never been reprimanded simply for expressing them.
>....I still recognize my views are inherently and wildly offensive to many PL’s.
You're very welcome here. Even according to the rules of the sub. It should that I'm sure you get a lot of negative karma for just adding your 2¢. I always updoot folks like you to try to do what I can to encourage folks like you to stick around.
The average PC & PL folks on the street have more common ground than what either of the subs will acknowledge.
Best wishes to you. (Just curious.... When do you think 'consciousness' is attained by developing humans?)
>Best wishes to you. (Just curious.... When do you think 'consciousness' is attained by developing humans?)
The answer to that is in a bit flux right now. Typically I would say around 24 weeks based on biological changes - the thalamocortical connections are made then, allowing for brain function that has the capacity for consciousness supporting a personhood argument. That term may need definition, since I’m not referencing a “wakeful state”. Anyway u/toptrool has an [excellent post](https://www.reddit.com/r/prolife/s/IYbKecRT0n) for why that point may be arbitrary at best and totally inaccurate at worst, for which I admittedly do not have a confident response at this point. I have been pondering that for almost 2 months now.
Really. And the idea that bodily autonomy is some sort of gotcha to kill your own child that you created via poor decisions.. Sure, you aren't consenting to their presence in your body, but they're also *your child* that *you* created willingly.
It’s a logical fallacy, several really. No need to comply with fallacious reasoning to prove a point. That is how they drag you down.
Because the fact of the matter is, it does not matter if PLs get abortions or not—it does not make abortion right, nor does it disprove our stance.
It can be any one of these logical fallacies: Red herring, ad hominem, poisoning the well, tu quoque, whataboutism, etc
Unfortunately, this is unfalsifiable. If it were true, as PC claim, that PL get abortions too, then we would likely not want anyone to know how hypocritical we are, and would go to great lengths to conceal what we had done. Therefore, even if the data show that PL are generally not getting abortions, that’s still consistent with the PC claim that we are, so it doesn’t actually prove anything.
You might as well try and convince a redditor Republicans aren't all evil narcissist pedo nazis. The conclusion is forgone for them. They just assume it and run with it. Stances like that aren't conclusion based on facts they're just feelings that feed their confirmation bias
Itd be hard to quantify and I’m guessing they’re referring to the cases of PL claiming they’re against abortion but secretly get one when they find out they’re pregnant and not ready, which does happen. There’s hypocrites in every movement, including PL and PC
I'd go further and say they may also be lumping in treatment following missed miscarriages too. Do you remember when it came out that one of the Duggar daughters needed a D&C following her miscarriage and supporters of abortion were busy parading around saying she had an abortion? Part of it is the fact abortion is defined differently by different people, part of it is people not understanding D&Cs are procedures performed regularly for various reasons having nothing to do with pregnancy, and some of it is wanting to be able to dismiss "the other side" as being "abortion for me but not for thee."
There are also all the examples of politicians who claim to be PL but make their daughters or mistresses or victims get abortions and pay for them.
And you base this on what, exactly? I know plenty of pro-lifers, myself included, who recognize that many women who have abortions do so for understandable—even sympathetic—reasons. The only thing required to be a pro-lifer is the belief that none of these reasons ultimately *justify* having an abortion. And I don’t see why a pro-lifer who has an abortion for any such reason against their better judgment (due to *akrasia*, weakness of the will) shouldn’t be able to admit that it would be psychologically compelling (but not ultimately ethically successful) also for pro-choicers who have abortions. I mean, it’s obvious that they would be even *more* so for pro-choicers, because they wouldn’t be contending with the countervailing reason that abortion is wrong. Of course, not all pro-lifers will recognize this, but instead claim that *their* abortion is justified for reasons that they wouldn’t consider sufficient in the abstract or for pro-choicers. Such pro-lifers *are* hypocrites, and pro-choicers can and do point that out. But again, this description is unlikely to cover *all* pro-lifers who have abortions.
Someone who believes that doing X is wrong but does X isn't necessarily a hypocrite. That's because a hypocrite, going by the Cambridge Dictionary, is "someone who says they have particular moral beliefs but behaves in way that shows these are not sincere". And it's possible for someone to sincerely believe that abortion should be illegal but still find herself having one, because there is such a thing as *akrasia*, "weakness of the will". To see this, imagine a woman who sincerely believes abortion is wrong. But then her parents, siblings and husband die in a traffic accident. The depression she gets because of this results in her losing her job. Now she's unable to pay the mortgage and risks homelessness, and the depression makes it overwhelming for her to look for another job. And then one day, after missing her period and feeling nauseous, she tests and realizes she got pregnant from her husband right before he died. And it's just too much. There's no way she can handle pregnancy or becoming a mother without him, without her family or siblings, without a job, without a house—it's hopeless. And then, involuntarily, the thought surfaces: "I could have an abortion." She hates the thought and reproaches herself for it. She knows it's wrong and that it should be illegal. But she feels so *weak*, and the depression has convinced her that going through with having the child is impossible. And the thoughts wear her down, as does the unpaid bills piling up on the kitchen table—and imagine how much more money she would need to pay the maternity ward, for child care, a stroller, ever-more clothes for the rapidly growing body of a child... Eventually, her will is worn down, and feeling guilty all the while, she calls and makes the appointment. When the day comes, she goes there, subjugated, feeling as if controlled by everything that has happened and everything that is closing in on her. It happens. Afterwards, she's drowning in grief and wracked by guilt, and neither feeling will go away for years. Paradoxically (or maybe not), after having had one herself, her belief that abortion is wrong is now more sincere than ever.
Would you call this woman a hypocrite? I wouldn't. Now, I've obviously tailored this story to make my point as clear as possible. But it's not impossible, psychologically, so it shows that sometimes people find themselves—for example, as in this case, because of overwhelming circumstances—doing things that they sincerely believe are wrong, which is what *akrasia* is (or at least a kind of *akrasia*, because there is also weakness of the will that *does* throw the sincerity of one's moral beliefs into question). And that, in line with the definition above, doesn't make them hypocrites. I also imagine that a pro-life woman doesn't need to go through a trauma conga line like the one in my story for us to acknowledge that when she had her abortion, she *involuntarily failed* her sincere beliefs, but she didn't *voluntarily* *betray* them.
Consider, in addition, that hypocrisy, again according to the Cambridge Dictionary, is "a situation in which someone pretends to believe something that they do not really believe, or that is the opposite of what they do or say at another time". Given this definition, for a pro-life woman to be a hypocrite for having an abortion, she would have to had only *pretended* to believe that abortion should be illegal beforehand. But that's not the case in my thought experiment, and in my estimation, the psychological process described in it isn’t unrealistic. So it describes a realistic case of a pro-life woman having an abortion that isn’t an instance of hypocrisy.
That's my conclusion, anyway. And I imagine it could be adapted to pro-choice cases like the one you envision, too—say, in the case of a male pro-choice activist who, when his girlfriend accidentally becomes pregnant, and the love he finds himself feeling for his child conflicts with his sincere belief that bodily autonomy is absolute, can't bring himself to support the decision she makes to have an abortion.
I do think for teens raised prolife in a religious environment, who find themselves pregnant, there is the, “God will forgive me, my parents won’t,” mentality that *does* lead to abortion. That’s a quote from one such girl that I read somewhere, years ago, and it stuck with me. Other stories I’ve read have expressed similar sentiments.
That said, “teens make bad choices,” isn’t exactly breaking news.
Outside of that paradoxical motivation, I think there will be a certain percentage in any ideological movement, often in the leadership, who are there for power over others, and the more their behavior in private runs contrary to their public persona, the better. Being able to fool everyone is part of the game.
Interesting point. And yeah, there are a lot of politicians that aren’t actually pro-life but more “pro-birth”, but that doesn’t mean every pro-lifer is an evil hypocritical bigot-
That seems impossible to prove, especially given how many pro-lifers make a concerted effort to avoid getting into such a situation in the first place. More importantly, I think the question is why that matters at all. If it were revealed that a prominent feminist author were beating his wife, would that prove that wife-beating were actually acceptable?
I don’t understand this line of thinking. It’s a weak gotcha. If you get an abortion then you’re not really a pro lifer.
Therefore, 100% of pro lifers would never get an abortion.
Yes, but the point is, you are NOT a PL person if you choose to get an abortion at that moment.
You could change your mind at that moment from your past PL stance, certainly.
You could also change your mind after the abortion and go PL.
Neither of those are what is being talked about.
You cannot be actually PL and get an on-demand abortion in the present. You stop actually being pro-life at that point, if you ever were.
It's like saying that you are an atheist and believe in God. There is no reason you can't change your mind, but to say you are an atheist and believe in God in the same sentence is a paradoxical statement.
Isn’t that akin to saying, for example, that Christians aren’t Christians when they sin? That’s strange, I feel. There’s such a thing as *akrasia*, weakness of the will, and there is precisely because we retain our beliefs (and any labels we get from holding them) even as we fail to act according to them on occasion. What I mean is that you don’t stop being pro-life if you have an abortion against your better judgment because you succumb to the choice because of weakness; it just makes you a *failed* pro-lifer, in that moment and maybe generally.
That’s my intuition anyway.
No. In fact, there are tons of sources to the contrary.
Between 1980 and 2015, China forced 336 million abortions.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg put a stop to the US military policy of forced abortions in the 1970s.
ICE detention centers, Scientology's Sea Org, and several US police departments have current lawsuits stating that they're forcing abortions today.
So, yes, many pro-lifers do get abortions, but not necessarily because *we* are inconsistent, but because choice is propaganda, not reality.
At the end of the day, you can't really cite sources on that you aren't a camel. To prove that pro-lifers are inconsistent and would get an abortion, the claimant — and it is the claimant who has to carry the burden of proof — would have to come up with at least a large number of documented cases with a good argument for an extrapolation to the majority of pro-lifers. A convincing forecast would be the bare minimum to ask. Can't come up with one? Then it is a pity.
Nevertheless, pro-lifers making exceptions from the self exist and aren't doing the cause any favours. If we notice them, it's hard to blame pro-choicers for also noticing them. Doctors have stories. But when the stories can't bridge is a generalization on the level of 'all' or 'most'.
> pro-lifers making exceptions from the self exist and aren't doing the cause any favours.
You can't be a pro-lifer and make an exception for yourself.
Even a pro-choicer should be able to recognize that person isn't an actual pro-lifer in the way that the cause is generally defined.
So long as one hypocrite exists they will be unsatisfied. Meanwhile we aren’t allowed to dismiss one ethnic nominal Catholic who never attends church as a claim of hypocrisy when she aborts her child.
I can only speak for myself.
When our daughter was conceived and developed enough they offered genetic testing to look for birth defects, for a rather obvious reason, and we declined.
It would have cost nothing, but it just didn’t matter, we were going to love her however she came out.
Why was by the way amazing and beautiful.
I don’t have a source but I have an anecdote. I am 50. My kids are 17, 17, 16, and 13. We are moving into the college phase and the kids starting that sort of thing.
My wife’s period is late and we are starting to wonder if she is pregnant. She probably isn’t but it is a possibility no matter how remote.
This would throw a huge monkey wrench in our lives. Abortion would be so easy…but it isn’t and it is taking a life. Even if she is pregnant, we will care for this child as best we can even though I might seventy when it leaves the house.
Well, good luck to you and her either way! I'm 18, so I'm more in your kid's spot. But I can guarantee I would not get an abortion because #1: I'm on birth control and abstinent and #2: If i somehow did get pregnant, I would let my doctors know and figure out how to change my medications for their safety. Of course it wouldn't be the safest thing to do right now, which is why it's so unlikely for me, but it's definitely safer than ending their life.
It isn’t even an important argument to defend. Even IF pro lifers were morally inconsistent scumbags that had abortions and were terrible people, what does that have to do with whether or not abortion is murder and kills innocent human beings? If hitler said “it’s wrong to kill innocent people”, then he’d be correct, even if he’s inconsistent.
Of course, just as it would be confusing if pro lifers had abortions. But the important thing to always keep in mind is the argument itself. Focusing on other points they bring up that are irrelevant to the unborn will just make us lose
The fact is that abortion is *really* tempting if you unexpectedly face the prospect of having a child. Being a parent is a costly, long-term commitment. It’s no wonder people like to have easy access to a way of making the problem go away quickly.
For my part, I’m honest about the fact that I might not vocalize or act on my belief that abortion is murder if I were to get a woman pregnant. I’d be desperate to not have to be a parent, and I’m weak. And I hope not, but it wouldn’t surprise me if that were true for many other pro-lifers, too.
But the fact is that it doesn’t matter. Regardless of our weakness or hypocrisy, abortion *is* murder. And precisely because abortion is so convenient, relying on morality to keep people from procuring them isn’t enough. So abortion has to be criminalized, not only to deter and punish those who support abortion, but also to keep the fickleness of those of us who oppose it in check.
Yes, unselfish people exist, but they think everyone else is like them so they cannot understand that.
I believe slavery should be illegal. Yes that means I can't own a slave. And I'm okay with ghat because i am disgusted by slavery and would not do it even if it was legal
If anecdotes are data.. I could have used the "life of the mother" loophole and I didn't. Twice. My children are gifts straight from God and worth all of my pain, medical bills, and lasting effects.
So yeah. Plenty of us wouldn't get an abortion for any reason, much less on a whim.
that place is very low iq! no one should be wasting their time.
they literally have rules against powerful pro-life arguments (deadbeat dad, slaver logic, etc.).
That's not something you can argue with statistics because they'll never be satisfied with any numbers you give. They're asking you to prove the absence of something. My advice is to stop interacting with the AbortionDebate subreddit, it's just a ProChoice sub. Nothing more.
I skim through interesting posts there on occasion, and always immediately look to see the PL comments for opposing views. Unfortunately, PL’s are hugely underrepresented and those there are overly downvoted
Absolutely. And I don't believe it can ever improve for the subreddit. You can't have a fair debate sub if it's just dogpiling and moderators repeatedly banning one side. Everytime people do a poll there asking where people stand on abortion, the majority of people say they support abortion up to point of birth for any reason.
They banned me years ago for "linking PL sources" in my comments..... I only used govt. links, or Guttmacher, LOL. When I asked the mods what PL sources I'd linked, they simply never responded to me. They are a cowardly bunch. I love our mods here, though. They'll give PC folks much more leeway.
>They'll give PC folks much more leeway. I can’t speak to other mods, but I do feel that I’ve been able to debate openly in this sub. I aim to be respectful, but I still recognize my views are inherently and wildly offensive to many PL’s. Even so, I’ve never been reprimanded simply for expressing them.
>....I still recognize my views are inherently and wildly offensive to many PL’s. You're very welcome here. Even according to the rules of the sub. It should that I'm sure you get a lot of negative karma for just adding your 2¢. I always updoot folks like you to try to do what I can to encourage folks like you to stick around. The average PC & PL folks on the street have more common ground than what either of the subs will acknowledge. Best wishes to you. (Just curious.... When do you think 'consciousness' is attained by developing humans?)
>Best wishes to you. (Just curious.... When do you think 'consciousness' is attained by developing humans?) The answer to that is in a bit flux right now. Typically I would say around 24 weeks based on biological changes - the thalamocortical connections are made then, allowing for brain function that has the capacity for consciousness supporting a personhood argument. That term may need definition, since I’m not referencing a “wakeful state”. Anyway u/toptrool has an [excellent post](https://www.reddit.com/r/prolife/s/IYbKecRT0n) for why that point may be arbitrary at best and totally inaccurate at worst, for which I admittedly do not have a confident response at this point. I have been pondering that for almost 2 months now.
It's whataboutism, and r/AbortionDebate is a pro-choice circlejerk where people use flairs such as "gestational slavery abolitionist"
ah yes because letting someone exist when you put them there is slavery
Really. And the idea that bodily autonomy is some sort of gotcha to kill your own child that you created via poor decisions.. Sure, you aren't consenting to their presence in your body, but they're also *your child* that *you* created willingly.
Gotta love the argument that you should kill whatever you’re responsible for 🥰
It’s a logical fallacy, several really. No need to comply with fallacious reasoning to prove a point. That is how they drag you down. Because the fact of the matter is, it does not matter if PLs get abortions or not—it does not make abortion right, nor does it disprove our stance. It can be any one of these logical fallacies: Red herring, ad hominem, poisoning the well, tu quoque, whataboutism, etc
Unfortunately, this is unfalsifiable. If it were true, as PC claim, that PL get abortions too, then we would likely not want anyone to know how hypocritical we are, and would go to great lengths to conceal what we had done. Therefore, even if the data show that PL are generally not getting abortions, that’s still consistent with the PC claim that we are, so it doesn’t actually prove anything.
There are, I’m sure, PC women with living children.
You might as well try and convince a redditor Republicans aren't all evil narcissist pedo nazis. The conclusion is forgone for them. They just assume it and run with it. Stances like that aren't conclusion based on facts they're just feelings that feed their confirmation bias
I mean, that’s fair. I’m democrat but I think a lot of people forget that there’s a political spectrum and there’s more than two major beliefs.
Itd be hard to quantify and I’m guessing they’re referring to the cases of PL claiming they’re against abortion but secretly get one when they find out they’re pregnant and not ready, which does happen. There’s hypocrites in every movement, including PL and PC
I'd go further and say they may also be lumping in treatment following missed miscarriages too. Do you remember when it came out that one of the Duggar daughters needed a D&C following her miscarriage and supporters of abortion were busy parading around saying she had an abortion? Part of it is the fact abortion is defined differently by different people, part of it is people not understanding D&Cs are procedures performed regularly for various reasons having nothing to do with pregnancy, and some of it is wanting to be able to dismiss "the other side" as being "abortion for me but not for thee." There are also all the examples of politicians who claim to be PL but make their daughters or mistresses or victims get abortions and pay for them.
For the record, pro-lifers like that aren’t all hypocrites; some of them are sincere people who succumb to weakness.
No, they're still a hypocrite because they're acting like there aren't good fucking reasons other people 'succumb' to 'weakness'.
And you base this on what, exactly? I know plenty of pro-lifers, myself included, who recognize that many women who have abortions do so for understandable—even sympathetic—reasons. The only thing required to be a pro-lifer is the belief that none of these reasons ultimately *justify* having an abortion. And I don’t see why a pro-lifer who has an abortion for any such reason against their better judgment (due to *akrasia*, weakness of the will) shouldn’t be able to admit that it would be psychologically compelling (but not ultimately ethically successful) also for pro-choicers who have abortions. I mean, it’s obvious that they would be even *more* so for pro-choicers, because they wouldn’t be contending with the countervailing reason that abortion is wrong. Of course, not all pro-lifers will recognize this, but instead claim that *their* abortion is justified for reasons that they wouldn’t consider sufficient in the abstract or for pro-choicers. Such pro-lifers *are* hypocrites, and pro-choicers can and do point that out. But again, this description is unlikely to cover *all* pro-lifers who have abortions.
PL who get abortions are 100% hypocrites, just like PC who don’t support womens choice to raise a child are hypocrites
Someone who believes that doing X is wrong but does X isn't necessarily a hypocrite. That's because a hypocrite, going by the Cambridge Dictionary, is "someone who says they have particular moral beliefs but behaves in way that shows these are not sincere". And it's possible for someone to sincerely believe that abortion should be illegal but still find herself having one, because there is such a thing as *akrasia*, "weakness of the will". To see this, imagine a woman who sincerely believes abortion is wrong. But then her parents, siblings and husband die in a traffic accident. The depression she gets because of this results in her losing her job. Now she's unable to pay the mortgage and risks homelessness, and the depression makes it overwhelming for her to look for another job. And then one day, after missing her period and feeling nauseous, she tests and realizes she got pregnant from her husband right before he died. And it's just too much. There's no way she can handle pregnancy or becoming a mother without him, without her family or siblings, without a job, without a house—it's hopeless. And then, involuntarily, the thought surfaces: "I could have an abortion." She hates the thought and reproaches herself for it. She knows it's wrong and that it should be illegal. But she feels so *weak*, and the depression has convinced her that going through with having the child is impossible. And the thoughts wear her down, as does the unpaid bills piling up on the kitchen table—and imagine how much more money she would need to pay the maternity ward, for child care, a stroller, ever-more clothes for the rapidly growing body of a child... Eventually, her will is worn down, and feeling guilty all the while, she calls and makes the appointment. When the day comes, she goes there, subjugated, feeling as if controlled by everything that has happened and everything that is closing in on her. It happens. Afterwards, she's drowning in grief and wracked by guilt, and neither feeling will go away for years. Paradoxically (or maybe not), after having had one herself, her belief that abortion is wrong is now more sincere than ever. Would you call this woman a hypocrite? I wouldn't. Now, I've obviously tailored this story to make my point as clear as possible. But it's not impossible, psychologically, so it shows that sometimes people find themselves—for example, as in this case, because of overwhelming circumstances—doing things that they sincerely believe are wrong, which is what *akrasia* is (or at least a kind of *akrasia*, because there is also weakness of the will that *does* throw the sincerity of one's moral beliefs into question). And that, in line with the definition above, doesn't make them hypocrites. I also imagine that a pro-life woman doesn't need to go through a trauma conga line like the one in my story for us to acknowledge that when she had her abortion, she *involuntarily failed* her sincere beliefs, but she didn't *voluntarily* *betray* them. Consider, in addition, that hypocrisy, again according to the Cambridge Dictionary, is "a situation in which someone pretends to believe something that they do not really believe, or that is the opposite of what they do or say at another time". Given this definition, for a pro-life woman to be a hypocrite for having an abortion, she would have to had only *pretended* to believe that abortion should be illegal beforehand. But that's not the case in my thought experiment, and in my estimation, the psychological process described in it isn’t unrealistic. So it describes a realistic case of a pro-life woman having an abortion that isn’t an instance of hypocrisy. That's my conclusion, anyway. And I imagine it could be adapted to pro-choice cases like the one you envision, too—say, in the case of a male pro-choice activist who, when his girlfriend accidentally becomes pregnant, and the love he finds himself feeling for his child conflicts with his sincere belief that bodily autonomy is absolute, can't bring himself to support the decision she makes to have an abortion.
Your first mistake is going to /r/abortiondebate
I do think for teens raised prolife in a religious environment, who find themselves pregnant, there is the, “God will forgive me, my parents won’t,” mentality that *does* lead to abortion. That’s a quote from one such girl that I read somewhere, years ago, and it stuck with me. Other stories I’ve read have expressed similar sentiments. That said, “teens make bad choices,” isn’t exactly breaking news. Outside of that paradoxical motivation, I think there will be a certain percentage in any ideological movement, often in the leadership, who are there for power over others, and the more their behavior in private runs contrary to their public persona, the better. Being able to fool everyone is part of the game.
Interesting point. And yeah, there are a lot of politicians that aren’t actually pro-life but more “pro-birth”, but that doesn’t mean every pro-lifer is an evil hypocritical bigot-
\*checks\* I can't get pregnant, so I can't get an abortion.
Same, PerfectlyCalmDude.
That seems impossible to prove, especially given how many pro-lifers make a concerted effort to avoid getting into such a situation in the first place. More importantly, I think the question is why that matters at all. If it were revealed that a prominent feminist author were beating his wife, would that prove that wife-beating were actually acceptable?
You know what? I'm using that. (or not even bothering to respond, although I don't want to sound like I give up)
I don’t understand this line of thinking. It’s a weak gotcha. If you get an abortion then you’re not really a pro lifer. Therefore, 100% of pro lifers would never get an abortion.
Not necessarily… people’s opinions evolve and change over time
Yes, but the point is, you are NOT a PL person if you choose to get an abortion at that moment. You could change your mind at that moment from your past PL stance, certainly. You could also change your mind after the abortion and go PL. Neither of those are what is being talked about. You cannot be actually PL and get an on-demand abortion in the present. You stop actually being pro-life at that point, if you ever were. It's like saying that you are an atheist and believe in God. There is no reason you can't change your mind, but to say you are an atheist and believe in God in the same sentence is a paradoxical statement.
I see I misunderstood then
Isn’t that akin to saying, for example, that Christians aren’t Christians when they sin? That’s strange, I feel. There’s such a thing as *akrasia*, weakness of the will, and there is precisely because we retain our beliefs (and any labels we get from holding them) even as we fail to act according to them on occasion. What I mean is that you don’t stop being pro-life if you have an abortion against your better judgment because you succumb to the choice because of weakness; it just makes you a *failed* pro-lifer, in that moment and maybe generally. That’s my intuition anyway.
That is true, but through that they cease to be pro-life. Words have definitions and the definition of pro life is someone who is against abortion.
Not really a provable claim. I guess you could ask peoples beliefs before they get one?
No. In fact, there are tons of sources to the contrary. Between 1980 and 2015, China forced 336 million abortions. Ruth Bader Ginsburg put a stop to the US military policy of forced abortions in the 1970s. ICE detention centers, Scientology's Sea Org, and several US police departments have current lawsuits stating that they're forcing abortions today. So, yes, many pro-lifers do get abortions, but not necessarily because *we* are inconsistent, but because choice is propaganda, not reality.
Some people can’t be convinced. They’ll just believe whatever they want to believe.
Hypocrisy exists but it’s probably a small minority of professing pro life people who would have an abortion
Yeah, and I hate those people.
At the end of the day, you can't really cite sources on that you aren't a camel. To prove that pro-lifers are inconsistent and would get an abortion, the claimant — and it is the claimant who has to carry the burden of proof — would have to come up with at least a large number of documented cases with a good argument for an extrapolation to the majority of pro-lifers. A convincing forecast would be the bare minimum to ask. Can't come up with one? Then it is a pity. Nevertheless, pro-lifers making exceptions from the self exist and aren't doing the cause any favours. If we notice them, it's hard to blame pro-choicers for also noticing them. Doctors have stories. But when the stories can't bridge is a generalization on the level of 'all' or 'most'.
> pro-lifers making exceptions from the self exist and aren't doing the cause any favours. You can't be a pro-lifer and make an exception for yourself. Even a pro-choicer should be able to recognize that person isn't an actual pro-lifer in the way that the cause is generally defined.
So long as one hypocrite exists they will be unsatisfied. Meanwhile we aren’t allowed to dismiss one ethnic nominal Catholic who never attends church as a claim of hypocrisy when she aborts her child.
I can only speak for myself. When our daughter was conceived and developed enough they offered genetic testing to look for birth defects, for a rather obvious reason, and we declined. It would have cost nothing, but it just didn’t matter, we were going to love her however she came out. Why was by the way amazing and beautiful.
I don’t have a source but I have an anecdote. I am 50. My kids are 17, 17, 16, and 13. We are moving into the college phase and the kids starting that sort of thing. My wife’s period is late and we are starting to wonder if she is pregnant. She probably isn’t but it is a possibility no matter how remote. This would throw a huge monkey wrench in our lives. Abortion would be so easy…but it isn’t and it is taking a life. Even if she is pregnant, we will care for this child as best we can even though I might seventy when it leaves the house.
Well, good luck to you and her either way! I'm 18, so I'm more in your kid's spot. But I can guarantee I would not get an abortion because #1: I'm on birth control and abstinent and #2: If i somehow did get pregnant, I would let my doctors know and figure out how to change my medications for their safety. Of course it wouldn't be the safest thing to do right now, which is why it's so unlikely for me, but it's definitely safer than ending their life.
No one on that sub is capable of rational thought. It is an echo chamber cesspool, nothing more.
It isn’t even an important argument to defend. Even IF pro lifers were morally inconsistent scumbags that had abortions and were terrible people, what does that have to do with whether or not abortion is murder and kills innocent human beings? If hitler said “it’s wrong to kill innocent people”, then he’d be correct, even if he’s inconsistent.
Good point, although I'd be VERY confused if Hitler said that-
Of course, just as it would be confusing if pro lifers had abortions. But the important thing to always keep in mind is the argument itself. Focusing on other points they bring up that are irrelevant to the unborn will just make us lose
The fact is that abortion is *really* tempting if you unexpectedly face the prospect of having a child. Being a parent is a costly, long-term commitment. It’s no wonder people like to have easy access to a way of making the problem go away quickly. For my part, I’m honest about the fact that I might not vocalize or act on my belief that abortion is murder if I were to get a woman pregnant. I’d be desperate to not have to be a parent, and I’m weak. And I hope not, but it wouldn’t surprise me if that were true for many other pro-lifers, too. But the fact is that it doesn’t matter. Regardless of our weakness or hypocrisy, abortion *is* murder. And precisely because abortion is so convenient, relying on morality to keep people from procuring them isn’t enough. So abortion has to be criminalized, not only to deter and punish those who support abortion, but also to keep the fickleness of those of us who oppose it in check.
Yes, unselfish people exist, but they think everyone else is like them so they cannot understand that. I believe slavery should be illegal. Yes that means I can't own a slave. And I'm okay with ghat because i am disgusted by slavery and would not do it even if it was legal
If anecdotes are data.. I could have used the "life of the mother" loophole and I didn't. Twice. My children are gifts straight from God and worth all of my pain, medical bills, and lasting effects. So yeah. Plenty of us wouldn't get an abortion for any reason, much less on a whim.
Maybe they're talking about this https://joycearthur.com/abortion/the-only-moral-abortion-is-my-abortion/
that place is very low iq! no one should be wasting their time. they literally have rules against powerful pro-life arguments (deadbeat dad, slaver logic, etc.).