By making the value of life contingent on the quality of life. Euthanasia implies that the lower your quality of life, the less valuable it is. This can lead to all kinds of abuse.

Technically it's not an ad hominem fallacy

It would be an ad hominem fallacy if he claimed that your position is wrong because you're an idiot.

He simply called you an idiot without making any claims about your argument. This means that he did not commit an ad hominem fallacy, he just insulted you.

Probably not.

To say that one is both pro-life and pro-choice results in the following - I believe that all innocent human beings have an inherent right to life which we must protect. The unborn fetuses are innocent human beings. Therefore we need to protect them. However, I also believe that mothers should have the right to kill their unborn children for whatever reason (medical, economics etc). So, while I think that murder is wrong, I understand that other people may want to kill other people for whatever reason.

I do not want to shove my beliefs down others - if a mother wants to kill her children, that's not my business. But nevertheless I think fetuses have a right to life.

That's one example, but these things vary between different nuances in both pro-choice/pro-life views. Contradicting elements may also arise: a fetus has a right to life (pro-life), but doesn't have a right to life (pro-choice). A fetus is a human being (pro-life), but it is not a human being (pro-choice).

What? I agree that a zygote is not a fully sentient being. I just don't think it matters.

What is sentience and why is that the most important criteria for deciding whether someone has a right to life or not?

You don't need to be sentient to be alive.

While we're here, can you define sentience? Can you also justify why sentience in particular determines moral worth?

It was a rhetorical answer to a hopefully rhetorical question.

When pro-choicers admit they're pro killing innocent human beings I guess.

And there are christians, who do meet the goals they've set and I too can point to countless examples. Consequently, there are countless christians who cannot live up the moral duties that are expected of them for one reason or another. Yet in either case, we must distinguish a philosophy from its adherents and judge the philosophy on its own merits.

In the same way, I can't sweepingly condemn feminism simply by pointing at the likes of FEMEN, Chanty Binx and other rabid man-hating women. Why? Because there are respectable feminists with legitimate views as well, not to mention that feminism is a distinct abstract view that needs independent investigation.

Your view of christianity is simplistic and juvenile. Given that you're already developed very clear preconceptions about christianity, there is nothing I can do to change your mind.

Teenage pregnancy and the spread of STD-s is the direct outcome of the liberalisation of sexual norms. The more marital institutions have weakened, the more promiscuity has risen and with it all the ills that come from people having sex everywhere. So while it's commendable that teen pregnancy and the spread of STD-s are lowering in some areas, it can be argued that these problems were caused by the weakening of christianity and of its institutions (such as marriage) in the first place.

Teen drug use - again, depending where you look. What about non-teen drug use?

Obesity - certainly, low-quality food plays a part here. However, there are also no limits in a secular consumerist society, how a person should control their appetite. Especially when you have rabid social justice warriors calling an end to fat shaming in the name of a more diverse and egalitarian society.

All while society becomes more secular (aka less Christian).

The onus is also on you to demonstrate, why these problems are lessening because of secularism, and not because of mere rising living standards.

There is nothing wrong with having sex when you want. There's something called a condom. You might have heard of it. Use it as any sensible person would and pregnancy and STDs are not a concern.

This is factually incorrect, since there are STD-s that a condom does not protect you against. STD-s that spread merely by skin-to-skin contact (such as syphilis, genital herpes, HPV) aren't prevented by condoms. Condoms can also break, so there is no 100% guarantee of safety. You also assume that people actually will consistently use condoms, which is also patently false.

You can't link obesity to secularism as you get fat Christians.

I linked obesity to consumerism, which is certainly more of a secular value than a religious value. Fat christians simply tell us that not everyone is willing or capable to maintain control over their desires - merely being a christian in no way makes you immune to vices. Whether individual christians can actually live a virtuous life has absolutely no bearing on what values christianity actually espouses.

Also Christian ways of disciplining yourself is gouging your eye out to prevent lust. How is that a good idea? Christianity just says to suppress these emotions not tackle them or try and pacify them through a proper method.

It says that there are good, moral ways to quench these desires - if one desires sex, he should seek in the context of marriage. It's not just suppressing them, it's also about finding the right outlet.

Christianity, amongst others, encourages discipline - we must subjugate our desires to our intellectual control.

The problem with modern consumerist society is exactly that human beings have become slaves to their desires - if you want to eat, you eat; if you want to have sex, you have sex; if you want to drink, you drink etc. Problems like obesity, teenage pregnancies/pregnancies out of wedlock, spread of STD-s, alcoholism, greed, drug addictions are some of the clearer examples of what are are created by the endless pursuit of trying to satisfy every desire you have without any sort of restraint. Trying to control these desires is apparently perceived as prudish.

Lust, gluttony etc and all the vices that follow from them, such as obesity, tell us that without discipline, you only damage yourself.

No, it has been given to you twice

You've given me the paper, but you haven't given me the specific part of the paper that says that. I read it and didn't find it so I was hoping you could tell me on what page that information is?

Oh, cool, a list that doesn't involve the law. You sound pro choice.

Did you miss the part about the capability to enforce laws? Obviously, if a country can't enforce it's own penal code, then people won't be mind breaking those laws given there is no threat of retribution.

People engage in unsafe sex because they aren't taught about the consequences. Abortion only occurs in pregnant women. If you try to prevent pregnant women you can prevent abortion. If on the other hand you ignore the factors that lead to pregnancy and ban something that only happens after an event you didn't try to stop, it won't matter what the law says.

Whether abortion is legal or not has absolutely no bearing on the pregnancy rate or the quality of sex education. Making abortions illegal won't make people get pregnant more, making it illegal also won't necessarily decrease the quality of sex education.

Also, can you link me that part in the African paper that said that the net abortion rate hasn't changed and isn't contingent on laws.

For pro-lifers, there is nothing wrong with making abortions unsafe for the supposed murderer (mother).

The abortion rate is dependent on:

- The amount of hospitals;

- The overal fertility rate;

- The capability to actually enforce the law in a consistent and effective way;

- Poverty level;

- The education and mobility of the population;

- Quality of the abortion services (if there are any);

- Expenses

- Size of the population

I clicked on the Africa stats which said the abortion number was unchanged and the Columbia one that said it went up, so I don't know what you are talking about.

Can you find that part for me?

And Columbia's abortion rate went up after banning it? How the hell does that make sense?

Well, for one thing, these studies examine third world countries, which for obvious reasons cannot be compared to western countries. Mostly because of low enforcement of law, lack of resources and shabby reporting.

Secondly, both cited studies primarily deal with unsafe abortions. What they're saying is that illegalizing abortions causes the number of unsafe abortions to go up, but the net amount of abortions still goes down.

Because I've never said that they completely stop it, rather they decrease the amount of it.

And what countries would those be? What countries are we actually comparing here?

I don't really understand what you're trying to say here.

Rape laws also do not prevent rape - rape still happens. Nobody is talking about fully preventing abortions, only decreasing the number.

And this is where pro-lifers fundamentally disagree with pro-choicers. You consider the fetus to have no rights, because it is not sentient etc, whereas prolifers think sentience is irrelevant to whether human beings have rights. So, the main crux of the issue is whether the fetus has rights or not.

Your original argument won't convince any pro-lifer, because the argument sees the issue purely from a pro-choice perspective and is based on pro-choice assumptions that pro-lifers simply do not agree with. It's these assumptions (that the fetus is not morally equivalent to born human beings) that you'll have to argue for.

Pro-lifers consider abortion to be murder. To them, you're basically saying that ''It's dangerous for murdererrs to kill their victims. We should make it safer for the murderer.''

So what if abortions wouldn't be safe? There is nothing bad about making murder harder and more dangerous for the perpetrator.

I gave you a scenario, where laws can deter people from committing certain actions. As I understand, you don't disagree with the argument, but you don't like the scenario.

Locations like those are ripe in history, especially where people were divided into classes. If an aristocrat murdered or beat a slave or some lowly peasant, nobody bat an eyelid. It was okay. And such cases were not uncommon at the time at all. In many countries, especially third world countries, it's still the case.

You seem to imply that laws in no way affect our behaviour. Are you trying to say that if there were no laws, nothing would change in human behavior?