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It's not so much killing as denying a chance at life. The argument isn't "is it ok to kill a newborn". Abortion involves fetuses and all the "if it has nails it can feel pain" hold little sway over the reality of the current world we find ouselves in. Grown people are digging into their own arms between heroin injections.
The argument "we live in a flower child world of fairytale births that all babies should have an equal chance" only makes sense when you extract it from reality and explore the idea hypothetically.
- The number of pro-life females would dwindle drastically if they were all raped and impregnated.
- Pro-life arguments ALL rely on the unspoken belief that reincarnation doesnt exist and that the spirit doesn't exist as a world-bound entity, for if the issue was brought up, their arguments would consist of little more than "a fetus mid-developement shouldn't have to feel pain".
- Therefore, since the argument consists of little more than pain, consider logically the ramifications of an unwanted child's development, consider poverty stricken children and the realities they endure, but it's all ok right? They didn't have to feel pain before they were born.
Put into the context of our reality, we can't sustain the people we already have, most parents are RETARDED, and children are raising children. That is the reality that pro-lifers are gunning for. There are thousands of children ready to be adopted, there are homeless children that are seduced with food to satisfy pedophile populations, but that's all ok because unborn children shouldn't feel an ounce of pain.
I disagree with many things that pro-choicers spout are arguments since they consist of little more than dilapidated memes stemming from the same faulty logic pro-lifers employ. Yes it's your body but you made a decision to have unprotected sex and since men are required to inseminate, they have a say too. The only logical way a female has the right to deny the male a say is if she upfront told him he has no say in the matters concerning the potential child. But they never say that, why?, because they would die alone. The way I see this debate, one side is blinly screaming "somebody please think of the children" and the other side is blindly screaming "it's my party and I'll cry if I want to".
Before you devote your lives to ridding the world of fetal pain, deal with the torture that is being carried out uncontested (even though it's often pulbicized=general knowledge), deal with the female genital mutilation, deal with the starving children, deal with the raped children, deal with the unwanted, beaten, emotionally damaged, forgotten, slave children that are a result of poor parental planning you backwards thinking, self-proclaimed advanced specie intellectuals who have nothing better to do than trivialize the pain that exists in this world.
Abortion is invariably the decision of the woman because it is her body whether if the sex was consensual or rape. The government nor the Church has any right telling what a woman should do with her body. Abortion is acceptable because a fetus is not a baby.
No, it's alöso the body of the unborn baby and the unborn baby didn't consent to be killed. A fetus is a living human being because it consists of living human cells which are genetically different from the mother.
So then, it's better to wait for the child to age and become intelligent enough to convince it that it should be killed before killing it? It's more "moral" to kill a consenting 4 year old than a fetus that isn't even capable of caring either way?
Gave you a point because the same thing happened to me. Keep in mind that they can take points away but can't argue, anyone reading this knows we have the superior standpoint if they don't retort, let the points fall where they may ;)
I believe that abortion is completely acceptable because if you get one it is just like a man masturbating and a woman going through her menstrual period except for the fact that the egg and sperm have come together.
In certain cases, I can see it as a necessity and a viable option. These cases are incest, rape, and endangerment to the mother's life. In almost all other cases, I don't see abortion as a responsible or a moral way to handle pregnancy. If a mother doesn't want a baby, her first step should be to use birth protection, whether it's a pill, surgery, or condom. If she doesn't use any precaution, then it's her fault for being irresponsible and she should carry the baby to term. Adoption is very successful and if she doesn't want to go through that, then she could always raise the baby anyway. Now if she uses protection in some form, but it fails, then she could always take a morning after pill, like Plan B. Pills like that safely "miscarry", for lack of better term, before the egg and sperm become fertilized. Other than that, she has no right to end a life. Sex is a wonderful thing, but people need to realize that it comes with consequences and responsibilities. Teenage girls can't just have sex with whomever and expect abortion to be there every time.
It's not so much punishment as it is a lesson in responsibility. What makes a woman responsible enough to have sex, but not responsible to give birth. If she got an STD from the unprotected sex, she'd have to live with that for the rest of her life and depending on the disease, it could kill her. If she gets pregnant, she can give the baby up for adoption or she could be a responsible woman and raise it on her own or with the help of others.
Engaging in unsafe sex is irresponsible. Therefore a woman who engages in it should be forced to go through pregnancy in order to get a lesson in responsibility.
Hmm, interesting argument.
There were 123,000 children awaiting adoption as of 2008. (source) So really, you're advocating putting unwanted children into foster care, where they will be supported by the American taxpayer.
If abortion were illegal, than the number of children in foster homes would balloon. How much additional funding would we need to divert from other programs to support that many kids? What would the living conditions be like for the children under those circumstances?
And I still think you're advocating pregnancy as punishment. Calling it "a lesson in responsibility" is just sugar-coating it to make sound better. And I don't think the punishment fits the crime. Nine months of pregnancy can cause a major disruption in a woman's life. I agree that unsafe sex is irresponsible, but people can be taught responsibility in other ways. We should handle this problem the same way we handle other acts of irresponsibility. Give the offender a fine, for example. Force them to attend safe sex classes. Maybe even have a prison sentence for repeat offenders.
Early term abortion can solve the problem of unwanted children without violating any ethical principles. We should not discard a useful tool.
"I agree that unsafe sex is irresponsible, but people can be taught responsibility in other ways. We should handle this problem the same way we handle other acts of irresponsibility. Give the offender a fine, for example. Force them to attend safe sex classes. Maybe even have a prison sentence for repeat offenders."
I kind of like that idea. It's creative and could be efficient. However, the main reason I have always disagreed with you is the because we have different answers for "When does life begin?" You believe a human fetus is human at some later point in pregnancy. I believe that it is human life at conception. And that's the main reason we disagree.
I don't think we disagree over the question of when life begins. What we disagree over is whether it's wrong to kill non-intelligent life. I guess you could argue that a fertilized egg is technically human, if you're willing to stretch the definition of the word, but it is certainly not intelligent. You never have given me a good answer for why it's wrong to destroy non-intelligent life.
Because it's wrong to destroy innocent human life regardless of intelligence. If you're saying it's perfectly fine to kill non-intelligent human life, then where is the cut off? Comatose patients? The mentally handicapped? I'm going to guess you'd cut the line just after the comatose (making euthanasia moral), but even then, it's human life, which I believe is worth saving, not losing.
Yes, but why? In your post on my "Why is killing wrong?" debate, you said killing is wrong because it damages the group and because it causes pain. Neither of those apply when killing non-intelligent life.
As for where we draw the line, for the purposes of this debate, let's draw it at any non-zero intelligence. That is, if there's any intellectual capacity at all, killing the person is wrong. So killing a week-old clump of cells is ok, killing somebody who is completely brain-dead is ok, killing anybody else is not ok.
You do make a valid point there, but I feel like the "pain" involved could be considered spiritual pain or even emotional pain to the mother. I believe we all have souls, completely independent of religion. And at conception, that little tiny zygote has a soul. Our souls define who we are and I think it's immoral to destroy a life with an innocent soul. In the other debate I only really mention the adverse effects of killing in a physical sense. That;s because when I think of the word kill, I immediately think of murdering an adult and I suppose those reasons are the reasons why many animals do not kill their own species.
Besides, aborting a baby at any stage is not acceptable, by my standards, because the mother (or whomever decided to abort) is not giving that baby a chance at life. Who knows whether or not that baby could have become the next Albert Einstein or the next Adolf Hitler.
All I know is that it does cause pain. I've heard stories of many women stating how they felt terrible about themselves after aborting. Is that not pain? And if you think about it, it does damage the population. With the populations we have, each abortion does not have a huge impact, but each one takes away a genetically unique individual. This decreases genetic variation in the gene pool.
"I believe we all have souls, completely independent of religion."
Oh, come on. How could you possibly say that without bringing religion into the debate?
"I've heard stories of many women stating how they felt terrible about themselves after aborting."
We've been over this. The regret could come from not having a kid when she had the chance. But that's no reason to ban abortion. The regret could come from going against the Christian values she was raised with. But again, that's no reason to ban abortion. There are many women who get abortions and feel no regret whatsoever.
"With the populations we have, each abortion does not have a huge impact, but each one takes away a genetically unique individual."
Heh. By that logic, women should be required to pump out as many kids as possible.
I do not see it as acceptable except in extreme health cases. The reason for this is that a fetus is a human life form, and abortion is either murder or stopping a human life from becoming fully developed into a person. I'm not saying it's not a difficult issue, or that other viewpoints are invalid, of course. It's just the way I see it, and it makes sense to me logically. Is even the case of rape a reason to kill a human life? Perhaps, if it is before the fetus gains a consciousness. But if you are killing a conscious human being, I can't see even the case of rape justifying that.
Now, I do not know at what point during pregnancy, or after, a child/fetus has consciousness. If anyone knows this(and can back it up with a reliable source), by all means, tell me. I'm not saying that the knowledge(even if it says the fetus does not have consciousness) would definitely change my viewpoint, but it could.
At any rate, I don't think that abortion without good reason would be okay, because whether or not a fetus is a person, it is a developing human life.
So...go on. Tear me apart. But be nice, 'cause tomorrow's my birthday. x)
I realized a while back that the last bit saying "tear me apart" may have come off like, "I KNOW YOU PRO-CHOICE PPL R EVIL && VICIOUS!" I did not mean it that way at all. I am just really afraid of being criticized by people whose opinion I value to some extent, and there are several people on this site who fall into that category and are pro-choice. So, I was just trying to lighten things a bit. Hope it didn't come off wrong.
If you believe in heaven, would you not think that the being who created heaven would have planned for the number of people who will be there? Don't you think that the being would have made in large enough for all the people that will be there?
Well, I guess that if I don't make it to heaven (due to all the liberals I've tormented over the years) I'll be so busy shaking hands with all of my friends that I wont have time to worry ;)
You really think that God would care about you tormenting liberals? Some conservatives hold to the basics of biblical philosophy - liberals sometimes to the opposite. You could be viewed as defending the Bible against the liberals.
So you are 48? I was right? You can't keep that part out!?! For your birthday, I'll get you an upvote. Perhaps we should stop this discussion on the abortion debate, we are cluttering it with stuff useless to the topic.
For the abortion argument:
Are they humans? Would you kill a newborn baby? What is the difference?
I really don't need anything. If only there was some way for me to give you 10 years of my life so that I could become 10 years younger and you would become 10 years older. Sounds like a good deal to me ;)
how could abortion be acceptable think about the nature of it itself not yet born and a child is kill rather crucial when you think about it.but i must ask those who say yes to this argument lets put it this ways you are in the comfort of your moms womb and then you were killed you hadn't not born never seen or taste or touch and for every day of your life you wonder to your self why did my mom abort me and to think again maybe i would have been a great politician or even the future Martin Luther King but then again you would never know cause you were never born
Abortion invleves killing a living human being, so it is definitely wrong. But I don't think the penal law is the most efficient way to keep the number of abortions down. We should do more to help young and/or poor women and girls whon get pregnant instead. Welfare queens are a lesser evil than killing innocent human beings.
Abortion is much cheaper than welfare queens. I hope your wallet is open wide because welfare queens are abundant from unprotected sex and lack of sex education and even lack of birth control pills, which would prevent most abortions from even occurring.
How can we differ ourselves from murderer if we ourselves are cold-hearted enough to kill an innocent child...one who has not even get the chance to see the world? Mothers should have the love for children...and when you had a child whether born or not, it is your responsibility to raise them up, to guide them to their future. These should be the characteristic of a mom...to raise the kids up and not to give up on them.