Tired of the pro-choice lie

[Honesting]

I keep seeing people bring this up again, especially after Charlie Kirk’s assassination, that he once said if his 10-year-old daughter became pregnant through rape he’d insist she carry the baby. People call it misogynistic and vile. To be clear, that’s not my view and I’m not here to argue the pro-life case.

I actually have mixed feelings about abortion. I'm okay with the MAP and not okay with abortion up to the point of delivery. Where to draw the line is something I haven't decided yet.

What I do want to say is that it’s dishonest to pretend CK's position comes from hatred of women. The pro-life stance is very consistent and, internally, very coherent. If you genuinely believe an unborn child is a human being with rights, then ending its life is always wrong, no matter how it was conceived. We’d never allow a raped woman to kill her newborn, even if it was the product of rape. So if you see the foetus as having equal rights, then by that same logic, it shouldn’t matter whether conception was through rape.

I know the other side, and I understand it. I’m not dismissing the complexities. But the idea that the pro life argument is born of misogyny is simply false. It comes from a clear and reasonable moral framework: once human life begins, it carries human rights.

Please tell me how I’m evil for being raped. I’m all fucking ears.

The idea of foetal personhood is an ultra-modern conceit, and should be viewed as such: something novel.

My paternal grandmother carried 11 pregnancies to term and only 5 children survived early childhood; this was not remotely unusual for her generation. Obviously no record is left of any miscarriages, and whether any of those 11 were stillbirths. Probably some of them were. The idea that every pregnancy is, but for the mother’s intervention, likely to be carried to term, is a conceit available only to those who have the support of modern medicine. Whenever you think “personhood” begins, nobody should think that any time prior to recent times that point was any earlier than birth.

That was just an absolute monster of a poster indulging in cruelty (while pretending to occupy a moral high ground). Someone like that might call themselves pro-life, but they lack any capacity for intellectual thought, reason, empathy, curiosity or understanding. I understand how people wrestle with the question of abortion limits, but that was just someone sidestepping anything difficult and challenging and settling on a dogmatic and empty viewpoint - and aptly demonstrating the misogyny which fuels the anti-abortion stance.

The whole 'submit to your husband, Taylor. You're not in charge' - was that a joke? W these edgelord/trolls types it's so hard to tell..

I think in other places he seriously advocated wifely submission though. 🤢 His wife certainly does.

It's weird the effect Taylor has on these types. (Musk too, for one)

I hate most of her songs, but this almost makes me like her in defiance!

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/celebrity/articles/charlie-kirk-reaction-taylor-swift-143436452.html

A lot of pro lifers argue they just think systems other than universal healthcare work better but I really don't think this is borne out by the evidence.

They probs genuinely believe it - I just don't think it's true

When someone with a large platform who has deliberately cultivated their influence and uses it to the kind of effect he did, it doesn't matter either way whether he truly believed what he was saying or intended it as a joke. He said what he said intending it to be heard by thousands of people. He made it his life's work to spread his messages far and wide. He made a great deal of money and gained power from doing so. The views he expressed about a woman's role in life were undeniably misogynistic. How he felt about that privately - whether he was a true believer or not - isn't important. Most people who heard it probably shrugged it off or laughed at him, but when you have a big platform even if your message only lands with a tiny percentage of those listening, the numbers add up. Putting those views out into the world with the rest of the toxic messaging coming from the manosphere just makes the environment for women that bit more hostile. It emboldens the sexists, the incels and the misogynists that bit more every time. It desensitises people and normalises talking about women as inferior to men. Drip by drip, the poison sets in.

And it isn't weird at all that a successful, powerful, wealthy woman like Taylor Swift has this effect on men like Kirk and Musk. They really can't stand to see a woman do so well on her own terms.

I didnt respond to that poster because I desperately hoped they were being sarcastic.

FFS we're going around in circles. The woman's right to do what, murder her unborn human child? Of course you don't have a right to murder someone. So it comes back to whether the foetus is a person with human rights.

The woman's right to be protected from cruel and degrading treatment, her right to life and her right to freedom.

Unless it’s self defence or a legal punishment, right?

I don't think it's inconsistent. You and I both have the same rights. But if one of us was a threat to the other, the threatened party would be able to exercise self defense. It's the same with a foetus which threatens its mother's life.

@FourIsNewSix
When I disagree is - if you decide that a foetus should have some human rights at some moment, that's the moment when the conflict of rights of two humans starts. And the pro-life position is utterly failing to even acknowledge that even if the foetus should have some rights, there is still a woman with her human rights there, and that it might be impossible to fulfill both sets in the same time.

That depends on which rights you're talking about. If it's the right to life, than yes, pregnant women do still have that right, and in case of the foetus threatening their lives, they can abort.

However if it's just a matter of convenience, it's a lot harder to argue that the mother's convenience trumps the unborn child's actual life. It's far more coherent to argue from the standpoint that the foetus isn't yet a person and doesn't have human rights.

But that isn't the pro-life stance, because many anti-abortionists are arguing for - and in some places successfully implementing - total abortion bans, even when the mother cannot survive without an abortion.

Some people who call themselves pro life kindly make an exception so that women don't have to die, but that is by no means the general anti-abortion position and it is not what is happening in some US states right now, with many anti-abortionists eager to extend the total ban across the entire country.

And of course, you're still ignoring all the other human rights a woman has which are denied to her if you force her to continue an unwanted pregnancy.

So if her life isn't in immediate danger, an abortion is purely for her convenience?

Im tired to the right wing pretending to give a shit about women, and dressing it up as debate.

Seriously, what are you on about? WTAF are you spouting?

I'm giving you some examples of human rights. Ones to which we're all entitled. Such as the right not to be subjected to cruel or degrading treatment.

You can grant the foetus a right to life, but if means subjecting the mother to the cruelty of a forced pregnancy, you're denying her one of her human rights. Posters on this thread have given examples of complicated hyperemesis and of pregnancy making them suicidal. There are many situations in between 'woman will die as a result of an ectopic pregnancy or sepsis' and 'mother finds pregnancy an inconvenience'. You appear to be ignoring all of them.

Oh no can you keep the right wing nonsense in America.

the foetus cannot survive without the womans body. Therefore its her choice to grow it into a baby or not.

this is about controlling womens bodies, choices, definition.

how about we chemically castrate all men unless they have an enthusiastic female partner who wants to risk pregnancy with them. No partner, no boner. (Other relationship combos are available, im keeping this about pregnancy/conception risk.

if we really care and are pro life, we dont want to take any risks that a man might spill a sperm that might end in conception. Chemical castration is the most pro life choice you can make. So why not make it and protect
all those women and babies from abortions?

No I'm not. I clearly stated that abortion is justified when the mother's life is in danger. That Is also the law in almost or all states that have abortion bans (take note @CantCallItLove). It was certainly CK's opinion, and it's shared by other famous right wing pundits, ie Ben Shapiro, Matt Walsh, Michael Knowles etc.

What cruel or degrading treatment are you talking about? Who the heck said anything about that? I certainly didn't.

Forcing a woman to stay pregnant when she doesn't want to is pretty cruel isn't it?

When the foetus can survive without the involvement of the woman who doesn't want it, then it has a right to life. Until then. Nope.

Subjecting women to forced pregnancies is cruel and degrading treatment.

You keep on ignoring the point that all child birth carries a threat of death or serious injury to a woman - every single birth.

And support a president/country that is paying another country to bomb thousands of babies, children, pregnant women and women as well as every age of men.

Especially a ten year old child -physically and psychologically.

Imagine having the incubus of a rapist inside you.