That's dishonest framing lol. No one knows that they are even pregnant when it's just a zygote. Hell, I'm willing to bet that most zygotes don't even make it to implantation. Why not use the correct terminology for when people actually get abortions? It would either be an embryo if it's really early on and you abort quickly or a fetus. I agree that people calling a fetus a child is wrong and it's an attempt to humanize the fetus.

Pro-lifers argue that the choice of the mother shall take a backseat to the life of the "child" in her womb, yet when it comes to gun legislation, they argue that their own freedom of choice shall take precedence over minimizing the body count of killing sprees. So within their own value system, they are hypocrites.

Pro-choice people are not as glaring hypocrites, but most of them argue in a self-serving fashion too. Most of them brush aside any notion that a fetus could have an innate value, that it could be a form of life that's worth protecting, even if it is not a fully developed human being yet. They do this so that they don't have to engage with difficult moral tradeoffs which would lead to a compromise solution which does infringe on the mother's autonomy in some cases. Radical pro-choicers see the freedom of the mother as an absolute value while they grant no value to the fetus. When it comes to gun legislation, however, they ascribe no value to the freedom of gun owners and set the protection of the victims absolute.


And please spare me the phony argument that this is a false equivalence, that no one actually wants to take people's guns away, that all the anti-gun activists want are "sensible gun safety laws ". We all know that the proponents of gun safety laws will not be satisfied with a couple of background checks, we know that they strive for a situation like in the UK/Australia/Europe, where private gun ownership is all but impossible - just like we all know that the anti-abortion activists will not be satisfied until all abortion is illegal.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on May 27 2022 04:22pm

that's just not true. you're simplistically accepting part of the anti-choice narrative as proven truth in order to justify your lazy bothsidesism. the overwhelming majority of pro-choicers is well aware of how difficult and morally taxing such a decision can be - clearly based on the understanding that a fetus obviously has the potential to become a child, a person. there is absolutely NO hypocrisy in saying a woman's choice, her right to determine over her own body is more important than having the government interfere in such matters (particularly a government that doesn't give a shit about children, but even without that), and at the same time supporting policies to protect actual children.

the fact that you have to paint those extreme and simplistic pictures, dealing exclusively in absolutes, to even remotely make your false equivalence work, just illustrates how bad of a take it really is...

Here's a poll with a nice breakdown by party affiliation and type of restriction/relaxation of abortion rules:
https://www.npr.org/2019/06/07/730183531/poll-majority-want-to-keep-abortion-legal-but-they-also-want-restrictions


According to this poll, 31% of Democrats (and 20% of independents) want the "right to abortion in any circumstance", a total of 49% of Democrats (and 38% of independents) want to expand abortion access from the 2019 status quo. I never claimed that radical pro-choicers make up a majority of the population, but on the flip side, they are FAR from being the tiny, fringe minority you seem to think. If this poll is to be believed, "abortion access without any restrictions" is the position of around 1/5 to 1/4 of Americans.

Note that this is not a debate about whether deciding for or against an abortion is a difficult and morally taxing decision for the mother - this is a debate about whether there exist circumstances in which an abortion should be considered unethical (e.g. third or late second trimester, both mother and child healthy).

your inability or unwillingness to realise that the argument "it should always be up to the woman", does NOT imply "because i simply reject the notion that a fetus can become a child / person" or "because i personally simply don't care about fetuses" is very detrimental to this discussion.

there is absolutely no contradiction in acknowledging it can be a morally tough decision, personally even wishing that abortions were completely unnecessary (that healthcare was so brilliant, rape and incest simply didn't exist, the foster care and adoption system being perfect, poor families adequately supported by the state...) and STILL land on the conclusion that this is simply NOT the government's decision to make, NEVER, but the individual's.

so no, i strongly reject your suggestion that people who support a woman's right to choose are hypocritical when they want children protected from mass shootings. it's a fundamentally flawed and dishonest "argument" which attributes malice where none is necessary to come to that conclusion. it's an assumption for which there simply is no evidence.

that poll and your interpretation of it is the perfect example: you're needlessly - and wrongly - introducing value judgments. the poll question is not at all about people's personal opinion about the ethicality of third trimester abortions of healthy fetuses by healthy mothers (a ridiculously small percentage of all abortions btw), but what the supreme court should decide. as a ruling for ALL cases, not some ridiculous outliers that serve your chosen narrative. those are fundamentally different questions.

I think there's a major issue with how people understand abortion though. For instance, I imagine that the VAST majority of Americans are against abortion in the 2nd and 3rd trimester. However, I'm of the opinion that these are the most important types of abortions to have available because the people who need them typically found out something horrible about the fetus. Also, I imagine that Democrats in red states view Roe from a different lens than a Republican in a blue state. There's a lot of nuance to this that isn't properly captured.

Pro-choice people are overwhelmingly not in favor of total gun bans, and also not in favor of an absolute right to abortion. Whereas the typical pro-lifer is in favor of total or near total bans on abortion (we often have to fight to even get people to admit to an exception for rape and incest FFS).

You're saying "typical pro lifers are X, typical pro choice are Y, BUT HAVE YOU SEEN THIS RADICALLY PRO-CHOICE ANTI-GUN GROUP Z. THEY WON'T COMPROMISE AT ALL."

This is not a case where both sides are equaly radical. The radical pro-life pro-gun group is firmly entrenched in mainstream conservatism, and the same just can't be said for the other side. Democrats won't even nominate a pro-abortion justice when offered, whereas Republicans have made that a litmus test for decades now. They flat out refused to adding abortion as any form of a federal right legislatively. These groups are not the same.

This post was edited by NetflixAdaptationWidow on May 27 2022 07:43pm

good one