gays against gay marriage? females against aabortion? etc.

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The problem with this mindset is that if someone close to you came under attack or was otherwise (intentionally or unintentionally) headed for a potentially harmful or even deadly situation, your natural human tendency is to defend that person or get them out of harm's way. And by "you," I mean that people generally tend to feel protective of each other, not just referring to you specifically. For all I know, you may not really feel that way. The idea that we should get involved and intervene at crucial moments or take small steps to head off potential danger is largely behind laws that protect the welfare of the society governed by them. We would hope that police officers wouldn't get hired to look the other way when a crime is committed; or if they do turn a blind eye, we would hope they don't stay on the public payroll.

And laws and cops are supposed to be there IF WE NEED THEM. I believe that individuals are responsible for policing themselves and others at appropriate times so it never becomes a criminal matter.

For example, I'm aware that very often women who become involved in abusive relationships and extreme cruelty from their partners somehow become "addicted" to the abuse they suffer. It's partly due to the kinds of "fight/flight" chemicals released during intense confrontation or feelings of intense fear. But it's also due in part to self-esteem issues and difficulties someone may have in thinking there'd be anyone to run to if they chose to leave--better to stay with someone who abuses you than be alone forever, and it doesn't matter that the feelings are irrational because of how deep the illusion runs. Even if someone like that runs, it's easier to just run right back to it, especially if the abuser refuses to leave her alone. This was the situation my wife found herself in at one point in her life, and it took me and her closest friends surrounding her, stalking her, never letting her out of our sights in order to fill the void left by her domineering ex to FINALLY break the pattern--oddly enough, it took very similar patterns as the abuse itself to get her to a point at which she could begin to heal. When the abusive ex started turning on us, we had to call the cops and get our day in court.

The "mind your own business" mentality doesn't really allow for people to assess that it might be necessary to intervene when people are unable to mend themselves or don't know how to get out of a bad situation. It also doesn't allow for laws to work in any given situation. Society doesn't progress by individuals "minding their own business."

Your position isn't a very realizable one; after all, you aren't "minding your own business" by stating your opinion. You're imposing on others how you feel--which is perfectly ok, that's what we do here. For people who have an anti-abortion stance, it has nothing to do with telling a woman what she can/can't do with her body and with her medical decisions. It's about giving a voice to what we see as human life, particularly human life that is unable to speak for itself but is still human and deserving of protection. Since we don't tolerate murder among ourselves, we'd rather not tolerate the murder of the unborn.

The funny thing is that my wife and I have opposing views on abortion. I believe that abortion COULD be a valid, life-saving procedure in an emergency situation. I don't think that a woman should be forced to, for example, forego life-saving chemotherapy because she's pregnant; I think that's a choice that SHE has to make, whether to take a chance and wait for childbirth or to continue a treatment that would be fatal for the baby. My wife doesn't believe that abortion is EVER acceptable and that there are always medical alternatives that would save both mother and child. I don't pretend to understand her and where she gets her courage from, but I know she'd rather die than cause harm to a baby, whether born or unborn.

In fact, here is news story I have trouble re-reading, but it reminds me of exactly the kind of reaction my wife would have if she were in the same situation:

Jenni Lake

Note that she never intended to become pregnant and genuinely believed that she'd been rendered sterile by cancer treatments when this happened.

It's impressive to me that there are women out there who feel this strongly about it that there'd never be any discussion about making that kind of sacrifice. Something like that is simply beyond my comprehension.

Please don't alter my wording if you're going to quote me.

Point taken about personhood, though. There doesn't seem to be any generally accepted point at which the pro-abortion types think it occurs. (and yes, if another poster gets to talk about retroactive abortions without censure, I think you folks can deal with my choice of wording.) Viability comes up as another issue here, but even that's dependent on the current level of medical technology and not a fixed point.



Define person.



Different value-set, sure. I mentioned conflict of values further on.



I am one. I'm actually fairly left-libertarian on most issues. I believe in consistency and the right to life is a strong value of mine (I'm against capital punishment, for example). If I don't count, though, there's Feminists For Life.

Hmm, interesting responses. The abortion issue really doesn't surprise me much but I guess I was more surprised by gays against gay marriage. It kind of makes sense though. Being non-religious, I don't view marriage as some sacred magical thing, I just view it very practically as a partnership.

As for the abortion issue, the reason I am pro-choice is because it allows for the greatest error in judgment. It leaves it up to the individual to decide what they want to do. In sticky moral situations, I think this is the best course of action.

What you're seeing is straight people posing as homosexuals and then opposing gay marriage.

Yeah, are you sure though? How would a person know? I guess I'm just asking... are some gay people really against gay marriage or are they just trolls? It's just hard for me to fathom that I would be against gay marriage if I happened to be gay.

Maybe I just need to have some coffee and I'll understand your post a little more clearly but right now it looks like you misunderstood me which may very well be due to a failure in my attempt to convey my thoughts to words; however it also seems like you are either having difficulty with your message as well or your thoughts are somewhat arbitrary, your post seems very convoluted to me. Especially the part where you describe yourself as an abuser and then, as abusers often do, claimed your abusive behavior was in fact a good thing for your wife as it enabled her to begin healing. I'll assume "healing" is how you are choosing to describe her eventual compliance.

In any case, I too failed to clearly state my views, I am pro minding my own business in that I do not feel I have the medical background to determine what is and isn't an appropriate option for a woman seeing a medical abortion. I also don't presume to know what is morally right for such a tricky subject, she is the only expert on her life. If the law permits it and the patient is of sound mind and making the decision of her own free will, I don't feel I have any business trying to interfere, but moreover I understand she is protected under the law from any such attempt on my part or that of anyone else.

For the record, I am incredibly anti-abortion, but that's how I feel in regards to myself. I feel a great deal of empathy for women who have sought out and obstained an abortion, because I personally feel that an abortion is a hard choice and there is nothing pleasant about it. I would wish it on no woman. I find that the courage required to go through the entire experience is immense and rarely acknowledged by anyone who hasn't gone through it, and I rarely hear anyone mention the sacrafice one makes when one chooses to seek out and obtain a medical abortion. I do constantly encounter "mommies are so selfless!" Though and I find it mindboggling at times.

There is no reward in it for a person when they get an abortion, no happy ending to look forward to, although I don't see it as noble or selfless, I see it as being a very personal experience that shouldn't be subject to the moral opinions of arbitrary citizens claiming they are entitled to speak on behalf of anything or anyone but themselves.  Making pregnancy sound like some heroic feat is hardly accurate either, there is an immense reward for any woman who chooses to go through with a pregnancy, and both she and the baby survive.  While I imagine it is a terrifying ordeal, putting your life at risk without hesitation to become a mother is a risked sacrafice that makes seeing your child for the first time even sweeter. I don't deny that this requires courage but choosing motherhood is far from selfless, no matter how brave an expectant mother may be. I don't wish to invalidate anyone's pride in choosing motherhood, it is a happy experience for many women, but I don't believe it's an invalidation of women who choose to terminate their pregnancy.

As for your wife and her past with an abusive partner, I'm confused as to how that has anything to do with the topic we're discussing. While I hate to see people suffering abuse from their partners, if they are adults who are not deemed legally incompetent to make decisions for themselves, and they are in that situation for whatever reason, as long as the abused partner is making that choice, I respect that I have no authority to force my will on that person and I find it unsettling that you feel you are above the law and used coercion to become some kind of replacement of the abusive man you seem to think you rescued her from. I also wish to imagine your wife is no longer a victim but from your description it sounds like she was apparently forcibly removed from one abusive situation and controlled through coercion from not only you but her "friend" for some unspecified duration until she began to comply. You say your abusive behavior enabled her to heal, but in the years I volunteered at a battered women's shelter I never met a victim who benefitted from having a different man abuse her in place of a previous partner abusing her.

When someone is victimized by an abusive partner they often stay because they powerless and they begin to believe they have no control. When attempting to support and empower someone in such a fragile, vulnerable state, it is extremely important to reinforce the idea that they can choose to leave and they are strong enough to make their own decisions and always respect their right to make their own decisions. I'm not sure where you were taught that it's an addiction... but I guess I've never heard of that sort of victim blaming.

I don't see your wife as being similar to the contents of any woman's uterus and I'm not sure if you believe you also are entitled to speak for your wife, but from what you've described it is clear you don't behave in a way that suggests you think your wife has a right to control her own life, but in fact you actively abuse her and you think you're doing her a solid by controlling her in this way.

It's no stretch for me to see how you can also so easily assert that women aren't entitled to autonomy in regards to their bodies.

I don't know where you got that I said I ever abused her. Chronic abusers have a tendency to isolate their victims from friends and family in order to force compliance. And it wasn't a "friend" in the singular sense that intervened with me. It was a group of us, including her college roommate and three other close friends. What had happened was he was sequestering her in his college dorm room and later on at his apartment after he got kicked out of school where he repeatedly forcibly raped her. She had to call in her every move, report in immediately when her classes where over, and so on. All we did was offer a way out that relationship, and then we stood by her and made sure he couldn't get close to her again. It continued to the point we had to call the police, and there were so many of us detailing all the subsequent harassing behavior that the judge didn't even bother hearing all of the witnesses against him. All we could actually PROVE, of course, was that he'd been harassing her out in public and threatening her. But at least in this case a misdemeanor harassment citation was enough to send the intended message. Many women who are long-term victims of abuse and try to get away from their abusers are not so lucky.


OK, but this is a blatant straw man attack here when you call it "victim blaming." It's well known that violent confrontations produce drug-like reactions in the human body. It's a natural response to any kind of physical violence or psychological manipulation. I don't doubt that abusive relationships reinforce feelings of powerlessness/lack of control. But it can also be similar to "deprogramming" someone involved in a destructive cult. Sometimes what someone needs is careful isolation in order to figure out where the brainwashing ends and their own thoughts begin. My wife suffered from a lot of PTSD-like symptoms, frequently suffered severe panic attacks, and was near-suicidal at times. Even when we first became romantically involved, I counted myself lucky if she wanted to hold hands, whereas most days she didn't want to be touched in any way at all. All we did was give her space to breath while keeping her away from someone who would have just continued to hurt her.


Again, this is a straw man attack. I'm not sure you're willing to have an open mind about the exact situation, but it's clear you prefer open hostility to somehow try to discredit me.


Actually, it's a pretty wide stretch with a wide open straw man bombardment.

The point is that you said yourself you are "pro minding my own business." The problem is that just looking the other way or burying your head in the sand when it comes to certain issues often leads people to greater harm, sometimes even more harm than they deserve (as if they even deserved it in the first place). The issue with abortion is that while women DO have a voice in what they do with their own bodies, the unborn are unable to speak for themselves. It would be ethically and morally wrong, I'd think, for someone (or even a large number of people) to remain silent when they strongly feel that abortion results in murdered infants.

The issue that I always fail to get my head around is why some people believe that the state ought properly to have the authority to inflict a singular morality upon all citizens.

If a woman believes that life begins at conception and that nothing short of a threat to the life of the mother justifies abortion, so be it. Such a woman is free, if she finds herself pregnant, to carry her child to term notwithstanding any other factors. And society cannot force her to abort her pregnancy. Even where society faces a significant responsbility (if, for example, her child will be subject to a profound congenital disability) her freedom to carry her pregnancy to term prevails.

Well that liberty runs in two directions. If a woman who believes that her right to life, liberty and security of the person prevails over any right that has not yet crystalised in her unborn child, that belief is equally valid to the belief that nothing short of a threat to the life of the mother justifies abortion. There is no means by which these two beliefs can be tested against each other, and so both must be respected as the moral choice of the individual concerned.

And the argument is little different with respect to same sex marriage. If you oppose same sex marriage, then don't marry someone of the same sex. Does the marriage of the mixed-race couple down the block threaten your marriage? Does the marriage of the Jew and the Roman Catholic nextdoor threaten your marriage? So how is it remotely possible that the marriage of two women that you don't even know can threaten your marriage?

Now that's not to say that I don't believe that people are perfectly entitled to the opinion that same-sex marriage is wrong. They are. But what they are not entitled to--in my view--is the imposition of that view on others.

I completely agree with your statement on gay marriage. However, I don't feel that the same logic applies quite so well to the abortion issue. The thing about gay marriage is that it doesn't harm anyone (except, according to the fundamentalists, the participants--but that's still the choice of those getting married). By the logic of the pro-life group, abortion does harm the unborn child. Someone is inflicting harm on another person who has not agreed to said harm. To make an analogy, in the West we do not allow honour killings. But by other moralities those honour killings are quite appropriate. If you would agree to allow the legalization of honour killings then I can't fault your logic. But I rather doubt that you would. That is the situation that pro-life people are in.

DISCLAIMER: I am pro-choice myself. I just don't think that visagrunt's logic extends to the abortion issue. It's quite a coincidence that he should bring it up actually, since a friend said something very similar to me the other day.

I don't disagree, AstroGeek.

I can certainly understand the rational basis for the anti-abortion view. But where I lose the connection is when this rational basis becomes an uncritical exercise. To my mind it is not enough to maintain that the foetus is a human being. I have always acknowledged that a foetus is living--and it cannot be anything but human. So it follows that a foetus is a living human being. But to my mind that is not yet enough to determine the question of the conflicting interests of mother and foetus. Yet there are some (I won't say many) who seem to feel that nothing more need be said on the subject.

My own view most certainly subordinates the interests of the foetus to the rights of the mother. And I certainly acknowledge that my view is not uniquely correct. But I do believe that unrestricted access to abortion prior to the threshhold of viability provides the best balance between competing interests. From that perspective, I like to believe that it is, at least, the result of critical thought, which individual women are free to accept or refuse during their pregnancies.

You're preaching to the converted. But that wasn't quite the point that you were making above.

Yeah you can't really compare females being against abortion to gays being against gay marriage imo.

Yes, you are right.

It was a little silly of me to put the two ideas in the same post. They are loosely related but not really. Sometimes I connect things that don't really connect that well.