Men are required to raise children who otherwise would be aborted too. — Gregory

That's just lame! How many single fathers are there? I think you'll find the numbers are a bit lop-sided on that one! And no one is required to raise a child, just to support one if married but separated or divorced. I think a paternity suit is possible, but a woman without a lot of money is out of luck, unless suing a rich father with the help of a pro-bono lawyer or a greedy one on spec. The state will step in without fault if the parents don't want the child or can't manage it. In any case, before the third trimester the foetus is not viable. If you insist a mother carry it for the first six months, until viability, just to clock into the era in which you claim obligation ticks in, doesn't your remark above seem disingenuous? As for the DNA argument, we drip the stuff all over the place, it's just not that precious. And if you just gave some thought to how life really develops you would see what a lame argument it is. Life develops most crucially by cell differentiation, and DNA can only regulate replication. And quite frankly I don't care. It's about liberty. not life. Child support is a civil matter, not state coercion. Child care is never mandated, and most single fathers are by accident or choice. And most single mothers are forced into it by the neglect of the state and the influences of bogus ideologues.

You don't care because your not being paternal.

The father and the mother have the duty to defend the child and not decide for themselves when there is a child

As for sex, I don't believe nature forces us to do these things. Freud for one thought our sexual choices were all made before we are 5 so everything is an unfolding from those choices. If you find you have freedom in it, then Freud was wrong about you but then you have responsibility which it brings. If you have no freedom sexually then you were a lustful kid says Freud. This all makes sense to me. The pro-choice stance is just the idea that the world is one big party and they want to party to continue

I think the point moot because there is a necessary distinction between what is deemed morality (mostly erroneously!) and law. For instance, how would you resolve a conflict between individual conscience and religious authority? Does a church have a right to enforce doctrine even upon its church members, let alone non-member employees? If a church member feels oppressed by the church leaders, she or he could leave the church, I suppose, but what if that member feels a moral duty to set the leadership right? On which side is the First Amendment then? And if the law is contradictory, doesn't it require revision?

I'm not for forcing anything belief in anybody. But there has to be some limit when it comes to taking life. Would you say "abortion" two weeks after birth is something relative to the norms of society?

Addendum,

Do I detect a Hobbesean view? That we are savages? That myth was created to rationalize the most atrocious oppression and dispossession. It is a colonization of the mind. The concept of obedience is tyrannical. I hope you realize Freud was a charlatan. The fact is, if given a wholesome context dissent is self-limiting. If not permitted to limit itself it is forced into subterranean rumblings that eventually cannot be limited. It is a bit of rebellion that has a real impact where it is given a chance to stand up to scrutiny of it that actually makes for real tranquillity. Autocrats, and to some extent all religious leaders are autocrats, want to count us, but don't want us to count. And a reasoned desire to count, and an avenue to be effective, makes for a just society. Commandments make us savages.

Murder makes us savages more than anything. I brought up Freud as a possible explanation for sexual freedom. If there is one thing humans are free about, it's the ones sexual choices because this is to the species continued. If people don't want to live with the consequences of sexual freedom, why are they here? Why do they want to live and continue the species? Pro choice philosophy is a strange kind of nihilism

Special pleading; ad hoc fallacy.

I don't believe nature forces us to do these things. — Gregory

Nature doesn't force you to breathe, either. Or eat or drink. What do you mean by "force"? And for that matter, who cares what you - or I - believe? Try some substantive argument. This is The Philosophy Forum, not the opinion forum or the belief forum.

Then name something in philosophy that is certain

The reality is that nothing is definite in philosophy, but if you look with paternal or maternal care to embryos and growing life in a human being, you wouldn't kill it. My argument has been that this is a much healthier attitude to take than the liberty first mentality. What substantial argument do the pro-choice have besides the liberty argument?

I'll say in conclusion, that I thought once I presented full reproductive license as I see it, that is, as ontologically-structurally selfish, people would generally agree that abortion should never happen. I guess I was wrong about that

The father and the mother have the duty to defend the child and not decide for themselves when there is a child — Gregory

So who does the deciding? You? Your invisible friends?

Take care lest someone point out that you are reneging on your moral responsibility.

...if you look with paternal or maternal care to embryos and growing life in a human being, — Gregory

Why do you choose the blastocyst for your "paternal care", over the mother?

The issue of freedom vs natural law is a red-herring. It came up because the Catholic church uses natural law to argue their way from conception to viability, but then switches to moral responsibility to support their proscription against birth-control, repudiating their natural law argument. And making hypocrites of themselves, but that's nothing new for them.

A little history,,, with apologies if these facts have come up already.

A guy by the name of George Whitefield came over from England to preach Luther/Calvin fire-and-brimstone to the colonies before the Revolution. At the time each colony had its own established church, and they did not cotton to mendicant preachers. So, he traveled the frontier just outside their reach, and in the process founded the Lutheran church, and promoted the idea of protecting the right of such preacher to challenge established churches. Jefferson became governor of Virginia in part with their support, newly called Lutheran or Baptist. And so he demanded the religion clause in the First Amendment, despite its glaring contradiction between individual faith and institutional authority. Which makes it very odd that it is the Baptists, or one branch of them, that is now demanding Christianity be established as the national faith.

Abortion was legal at the time of the nation's founding, but was outlawed later only because procedures were so primitive. Now, of course, it is one of the safest procedures in medicine.

In the early seventies a gathering of "evangelicals" (which I take to mean church leaders dedicated to the indoctrination of as many as possible--Catholics call it "spreading the faith") including, as I recall, the likes of Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, to plan a strategy to support Nixon's "southern strategy". They had planned to make the issue divorce, but realized that that that horse had flown. So they latched onto abortion, which had never been an issue to then.

More hypocrisy.

Severing the connection between the unborn and its host is not murder. No more than disconnecting life-support from an otherwise non-viable adult. When the unborn becomes viable (something to be determined by science, not religious doctrine) the state can step in, if it chooses, but only once its equally fundamental obligation to the liberty of the mother is addressed.

Another thing, we do not revert from nature to morality because religious law tells us what is moral, we suppress our natural impulses because we are equally motivated to be kind. As I said earlier, the moment of orgasm is the most intensely selfish thing we can engage in, but it is the opportunity for equally intense expressions of kindness that most motivates the act. And even where that kindness is just refraining from that act. It is religious coercion or commandment that makes us bullies and savages. And any moral system in which males become sexually incontinent without its support is morally immature.

Then name something in philosophy that is certain — Gregory

You use words like belief and certain without knowing either their meanings or their significances. A belief is neither claim, grounds, or warrant, not an argument. It is just a belief, and as such you're welcome to yours. And certainty is with respect to the context, and certain therein. Confusion about these things is destructive of sense.

It seems obvious to me that women have the right to have sex but when the act is done abortion is a renaging on this act and putting it in the dumpster. It seems like a philosophy that eats itself, saying you have the right to kill your rights, but someone else can have the last word if they wish

Just my view - I believe at the first sign of life, the life form is viable - unfortunately whether it is wanted is another story, just my own thoughts :)

It seems obvious to me that women have the right to have sex but when the act is done abortion is a renaging on this act and putting it in the dumpster. It seems like a philosophy that eats itself, saying you have the right to kill your rights, but someone else can have the last word if they wish — Gregory

I find this connection weird. It has the acrid smell of puritanism to me. An abortion is a medical procedure that aborts a pregnancy. It's not some kind of reneging on sex. This attempt to lump sex, pregnancy and child support all together as some big whole seems to be designed to somehow give men equal access to something that happens to a woman's body.

A lot of people apparently feel it's very unfair that women have the sole "control" over a pregnancy, and I can see where this feeling is coming from. But without fault, the suggestions to address this perceived issue seem worse than the problem itself.

It's very tempting to try to bring the reality of abortion in line with some clear principle, like the sanctity of life or the right to bodily autonomy. But at the end of the day it's an issue that's so intensely personal and has such significant personal consequences that any such attempt will just lead you to ignore reality in favor of theoretical purity. It seems much better to just draw a line somewhere and then spend our energy trying to help mothers, fathers and children instead of judging them.

ou use words like belief and certain without knowing either their meanings or their significances. A belief is neither claim, grounds, or warrant, not an argument. It is just a belief, and as such you're welcome to yours. And certainty is with respect to the context, and certain therein. Confusion about these things is destructive of sense. — tim wood

A belief is much more than a personal opinion if there is convention backing it up. Convention can never prevail so broadly it is beyond question. And a factional convention cannot plea personal preference when those otherwise partisan to it are quite prepared to bully any who question it. That is, factional bullying scores no points singling out an opponent as just one opinion.

A belief is much more than a personal opinion if there is convention backing it up. — Gary M Washburn

How does that work? If your friends decide that 2+2=5, does that mean 2+2=5? And how can you have a belief if it is not personal? I go so far to say that all beliefs must be essentially personal, having nothing in fact against which to reconcile the belief.

Factional support does not have to be standing immediately behind you, ask anyone ever subjected to sexism or racism. By the way, women are much more likely than men to be sexually assaulted, But men are more likely to have their sexuality assaulted. They say stand up to the bully, do they back down? Maybe so, but, I think, more likely to welcome you into the fold of sexists, than from fear. Intimidation does not require overt action. Just the knowledge of potentially assault or being ganged up on will do it, and does.

If your friends decide that 2+2=5, does that mean 2+2=5? — tim wood

You know how many beans make five, do you? Maybe, like with Baldric, it's a very small casserole? Why is it we expend so much effort to convince each other that our opinions are personal but our terms are universal? And why is arithmetic the standard of this? Are we each just one arguing what all should believe? Does that resolve this strange division between one and all? What do you do when convention is made itself your enemy? By claiming this partition between opinion and terms? You see, it has always been the preferred recourse of ideologues to stand in front of a presumed universal to isolate a targeted victim, pretending it's just one on one. How many Christian ideologues have declared to proselytes there is no satisfying attachment between individuals, you are alone before god! Even Christ himself says as much, demanding his followers abandon their kin and think only of their fellow believers as family. I seem to remember a preacher at a fundamentalist 'service' dragging a young woman onto his stage and browbeating her, in front of the congregation, until she 'accepted Christ', and then, of course, suddenly and with great fanfare, embraced into the fold. Point is, you don't have to have that congregation there behind you to put them to use in isolating your victim from the terms of victimization.

My question to you was, "How does that work?" Go back and read, and answer if you can. You affirm that a belief "can be much more than a personal opinion." How?

Do you really suppose I didn't catch your meaning? You think you've got me up a stump. But it's what numbers don't count that engenders truth among us. The world is only in its numbers. It's a vague 'public' that is only everyone, and no actual person. It's why there can be sexism and racism. You can't identify it, any more than you can identify 'who says' 1+1=2. And that's the factor you're relying on to accuse women of murder who separate sex from procreation. But time is the intimation of its incalculable, unendurable worth each of us is. How does that work? The dispossession of terms only intimacy can be, because the complementary contrariety we share as much between us as to convention or consensus is cannot be reproduced in the public domain, the 'only in its numbers', convention and consensus is. And if intimacy cannot repeat, it can only recur as growth in a greater intimacy, or complementary contrariety to that consensus. Public consensus or convention is limit, limit to what terms can be and mean, whereas the community in contrariety between us contrary to that limit cannot itself be limited in its contrariety to that limit. And so, we must ultimately share more contrariety to our world than to each other. And in every case as emancipated from each other as from the limiting terms of the only in its numbers the world is. The language of that emancipation, the intimation of the worth of time, is that unlimited contrariety we are together to the consensus of the world limited to the most infinitesimal terms of contrariety to each other, unlimited in its growing contrariety to our world. How many beans make five? Every time that question is raised its meaning changes, even though you suppose its terms cannot. Maybe some day you will join in the joke, or, if not, the world will laugh at you. But just remember, all jokes turn stale if repeated too often. Forget how to laugh and you're up a stump. Alone.

PS, the full explanation took me about three thousand pages to get on paper. Up for a read?

It's really very simple. Consensus does not equal fact. Belief yields to fact. Facts are known, beliefs are believed. The question is how a belief can be "much more than a personal opinion?" As there is no fact under the belief, there is nothing by which one belief can be reconciled with another. That is, in a fundamental sense, beliefs are always and only personal opinions.

Can we share a belief? If you think so, please make clear how. Almost certainly - and usually - that will be by reference to something. But that something will be a fact of some kind, a something, and thus not itself a belief. And it's likeness or relevance to the belief will be by resemblance or metaphor, of some kind, but not the thing itself.

And this also safeguards belief. Insofar as they're idiosyncratic they're not candidates for proof or reason. A child believes there is a monster under the bed. Whether there is a monster under the bed is a matter of fact to be determined - which has nothing to do with the belief.

My question to you pending, notwithstanding what or how much you shovel onto it.

The context of what you regard as certain fact, however justifiably, is a lexicon of terms, including formal terms, that are not factually understood. They are a cultural consensus, and subject to personal apprehension that must be habituated to the freedoms interpersonal subjectivity always require, otherwise consensus and convention is just slavery. Unless that freedom reigns amongst us there is no fact we share. Subjectivity is the context of fact, not the other way 'round. The dynamic of that freedom, and its superseding fact, is an issue far too extensive for this venue. I can begin the arduous work of explaining it, but not in the context of a simple debate on reproductive rights.


Here's a good summary of reasons why even a "Right to lifer" should support reproductive rights:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/9548/abortion-other-forms-of-life-and-taking-life

Guess you're not up for a read.