[Snarks]

Actually, if cancer had a 10% chance of killing you, I would still consider this rather major. There are very few ailments that actually have a chance of killing you in the first place with our current medicine.

But as far as cancer goes that would be pretty good odds, right? If a doctor told me that I had cancer, but that I had a 90% chance I would live ten years I would be feeling pretty good. Now if he said I had a 60% chance that wouldn't be so good.

Another way to look at it is if they have a team a 10% chance of an upset, that isn't a major chance by any stretch of the imagination.

Depends on the type of cancer and when treatment begins. Here's a chart with 5 year mortality rate of patients diagnosed with various types of cancer. See the far right column on page 1.

http://seer.cancer.gov/csr/1975_2012/results_merged/topic_survival.pdf

Some survival rates are just awful at less than 10% while some are around 90%. This is only a 5 year chart though and it doesn't seem to suggest the patients are cured/safe from future incidences.

In terms of death, 10% is very high. That's a higher likelihood of dying than being drafted to fight WW2 as an American.

But this is getting off topic. I'll pose a different argument. Abortion in economic lingo has a high (abstract) social/transport cost. Having an abortion isn't as simple as taking a pill or putting on a condom. This means (if properly educated), most people are probably already using contraceptives first. This is the one of the rare places where I would advocate having lengthy and "needless" bureaucracy. If you still believe abortion would be too easy to initiate, then we can add in some extra red tape just to make the cost of getting an abortion even higher. IMO, the cost is already high enough to incentivise taking other measures first.

[WeatherOp]

And Kara, I'm not trying to be obtuse in any shape or fashion. If I misrepresented or misunderstood your original post, I apologize.

[Scotty]

Do you value people who don't exist, or do you value freedom?

I value freedom.

(Obviously this is simplistic, and it's not meant to be all encompassing of every possible position on the pro/anti-choice spectrum, but that's the basic conundrum)

[GhylTarvoke]

A pro-lifer would probably say that the people in question do exist.

[Scotty]

And thereby assume by default that freedom is less valuable - despite the amount of blood we (as a nation and as a global society) shed in order to preserve it.

There is an implicit declaration of priorities in that decision that I emphatically reject.

[zookeeper]

By prioritizing people over freedom, one assumes by default that freedom is less valuable than people? I doubt you'll find many people in either side who have much of a problem with that.

[GhylTarvoke]

@Scotty: Sure. I just disagreed with your framing of the issue.

The abortion debate isn't really about nonexistent people vs. freedom (or women's rights, or bodily autonomy). The crux of the debate is personhood. If everyone agreed on a definition of "person", I think the entire debate would immediately dissolve.

[Scotty]

By prioritizing people over freedom, one assumes by default that freedom is less valuable than people? I doubt you'll find many people in either side who have much of a problem with that.

Funny, I have a few dozen (hundred) wars fought that say literally the exact opposite.

[zookeeper]

By prioritizing people over freedom, one assumes by default that freedom is less valuable than people? I doubt you'll find many people in either side who have much of a problem with that.

Funny, I have a few dozen (hundred) wars fought that say literally the exact opposite.

You should really be less cryptic and maybe just say what you mean. I have no idea what you've meant by "valuing people" if you're saying that 1) you think valuing freedom is more important than valuing people and 2) lots of wars have been fought for freedom in a way which has been at odds with valuing people.

[Ghostavo]

Scotty, I'm going to assume I agree with your position, but that's a really ****ty argument.

Using the same logic, you should be free to do a whole bunch of things to the detriment of everyone because freedom.

[Scotty]

Typically, when assigning priority to a selection of items, it's pretty indicative of relative value.  If you prioritize people over freedom, you assume by default that freedom is less valuable than people.  If you do not, then you aren't really prioritizing people over freedom, are you?

The very act of fighting a war for freedom indicates a value judgment placing it above human life.  This is a pretty consistent trend over human history!  Why, then, does it suddenly reverse when we get to the topic of abortion?  Why does human life suddenly become so much more important in this one instance?

It doesn't.  But it's a pretty convenient excuse for what is in reality a deeply personal disgust or distaste with the methods used.  I'm not one to judge on whether that reaction is appropriate or not, and I'm sure as **** never going to force someone to get an abortion.  That's barbaric and cruel.

And that's really the crux of my pro-choice standing.  It's a choice, go ahead and see the pregnancy to term!  Have children, don't get any abortions ever.  It's your choice.  Being pro-choice does not inherently mean being pro-abortion.  It means being pro-choice.  If it's ever up to me (and likely it will not be, for various reason), and it was my spouse dealing with this issue, I would probably want to keep the baby!  But having that choice is vitally important, for societal, economic, and psychological reasons.

Being pro-life is being anti-freedom.

I think in many cases, your morality is deeply lacking if all you want is a child born, not a child educated, not a child housed.  That's not pro-life, that's pro-birth.

Hope that's clear enough for you, zookeeper.

Scotty, I'm going to assume I agree with your position, but that's a really ****ty argument.

Using the same logic, you should be free to do a whole bunch of things to the detriment of everyone because freedom.

See: my arguments regarding bodily integrity in the other thread.  I sort of jumped ahead past the half dozen people not understanding what any of that meant and instead started at the core issue.

Liberty of one comes to an end where liberty of another begins.

My position on the matter is that bodily integrity is sacrosanct.  No person may be forced to provide a part of their body to another in order to continue that other's existence.  This is the most basic nugget at the center of the issue, and is the driving force behind my declaration of freedom > human life.  Unless you're going to start demanding that people be forced to donate blood, and people with perfect matches for organ donors be forced to donate non-essential organs, you cannot then also demand that women be forced to carry a fetus to term without being a massive hypocrite.  It's saying "I value your freedom, except when the results of it offend me."

EDIT: that "you" is non-specific.

[karajorma]

But even at ten percent, that is not a "major" reason for abortions. Personally I was thinking between three and five percent on my last post. If we say a cancer had a ten percent chance of killing you, major wouldn't be the word 99% of people would use. No doubt ten percent is a lot of abortions, but contraception failure is not a major cause even by your number.

If you think something that causes 30,000 to 50,000 abortions a year in America alone using your figures isn't a major cause of abortions, if you think that number is minor, you should stop talking about the subject as if you're pro-life.

I did warn you to look up the statistics.

[Ghostavo]

Scotty, you are stating two very different things as being equivalent.

You are stating that bodily integrity is the same things as uncategorized freedom, which I'm going to assume that is simply an error with your previous statements.

As it is, you are also inadvertently justifying things like breaking and entering.

[Scotty]

I'm discussing a specific case here (abortion), and using the concept of bodily integrity to state my position.  Since nobody could actually figure out what bodily integrity meant last time, I took a short cut and used that quote to help define it.

We're not discussing breaking and entering, nor are we discussing concepts that must inherently be discussed when discussing the morality and legality of those things (most notably and visibly the social contract).

[Ghostavo]

I must have missed all those wars we had because of abortions then.

[Phantom Hoover]

Important elaboration on Scotty's position from IRC: Scotty believes that a woman has a total, uninterferable right to bodily autonomy over the life of the foetus, except he also thinks this is superseded by the time the foetus can feel pain and by then she had plenty of time to make her mind up anyway.

[Scotty]

In large part yes: I think it's inhumane to conduct an abortion if the fetus is developed enough to feel pain (while I don't think I ever strictly stated it should be illegal, before that gets brought by some stickler, I think it's a pretty good line to define the moral acceptability of the decision).

[Phantom Hoover]

And this is, of course, a profoundly anti-freedom position by your own admission.

[Ghostavo]

So then why bring the nebulous concept of freedom instead of the (admittedly possibly equally nebulous) concept of personhood, sentience or some other form of categorization of living beings, which has been the whole point of the entire discussion?

[Scotty]

I said inhumane, I didn't say illegal.  If inhumane meant illegal none of us would ever eat another hamburger.  I think there should be measures put in place to minimize the occurrence of late-term abortions by way of education and a societal allowance of discussion of the process (and alternatives) before it ever becomes an issue.

Abortion should be available on principle.  That doesn't mean it's always morally right.  The alternative is unsanctioned abortions that put everyone involved at risk, not just the fetus.

So then why bring the nebulous concept of freedom instead of the (admittedly possibly equally nebulous) concept of personhood, sentience or some other form of categorization of living beings, which has been the whole point of the entire discussion?

There's no possibly about it: the concept of personhood is and will be significantly more nebulous than the concept of freedom is.  It serves to illustrate my position and the reasons for it.  The reason why I believe something is just as important to me as what I believe.