Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[MrRoboto75]

And honestly, I think we should just use public schools for this purpose. They are already glorified daycare centers, providing no practical education in real-world skills

Is being prepared for a life of soul-crushing, pointless busy work for their capitalist overlords not a real-world skill?

Worry not, the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell.

[Bumber]

To think we could begin the process of creating expendable worker drones earlier and with less parental distractions. It truly warms the cockles of my heart.

[Naturegirl1999]

To think we could begin the process of creating expendable worker drones earlier and with less parental distractions. It truly warms the cockles of my heart.

You mean literal drones programmed to care for the children? That would actually be interesting, I had a few dreams Where I pitched an idea to GLdDOs about raising human children in Aperture Labs, as a new type of experiment rather than the same repetitive cycle

[Bumber]

No, no, the children are the expendable drones. Gotta keep that economy growing at all costs. Economic prosperity and whatnot. For the children, et cetera.

(This is a joke, BTW.)

[Rolan7]

On an unrelated point, I agree with Arx. I don't know when calling religous people 'cat-lickers' and zealots became the cool thing to do in this thread, but frankly I'm not into it.

I have to agree with this, sadly.  While I don't think offense was meant, humor often fails to land when it's a majority opinion making fun of the minority. 

It's also both wrong and unproductive to call all pro-lifers stupid.  Very many very intelligent people believe in that cause.  I know it's supposed to be a shorthand for attacking the position, but there is a very important difference between attacking positions and attacking people.  They often take offense when their positions are attacked.  We shouldn't make the same conflation.

Arrogant tone-policing aside, this is a very emotional topic.  I am horrified and disgusted at the idea of preventing any abortions, and would love to speak from emotion about how... wrong it is, and even speculate as to how anyone could possibly justify it to themselves.  But as Caesar seemed to say when discussing the Catiline Conspiracy, anger isn't the basis for good decisions.

Also, while bants are fun and all, they really make me uncomfortable when the sides are so lopsided.  It's one thing to jeer at abortion-protesters in person, it's different to group up on people here.  (Fascists and others who argue in bad faith are fair game.  That's not what I see here.)

All I'm going to add is this question:  Why is it orders of magnitude more difficult to get an adoption than it is to get an abortion?

I think this is an excellent question, particularly when you look at how difficult it is for LGBTQ couples especially.  I don't agree that all pro-lifers are stupid, but as a political demographic they're literally zealots and do not extend the same human rights they indignantly demand.  Where's our "right to a family"?

Spoiler: Ok there's more (click to show/hide)

As I've said before, I do think that making abortion illegal is a non-starter, because people will find a way to get an abortion regardless.  Aside: I'm going to bet that, throughout history, you have a significant fraction of abortions performed because the family of the girl forced her to to save face, rather than the girl choosing it freely. If you extend this out, I would bet that a vast majority of abortions are because of "stigma" associated with having a child out of wedlock. I would hypothesize that is the number one reason, even above "how can I afford it". Because I tell you what, my grandparents couldn't "afford" to have their 10 kids, and my parents couldn't "afford" to have their mere 3 kids.

Anyway I digress...  the way you fix "abortion" is to remove the stigma associated with having children (consider: "It will destroy your career" is a social statement that basically says that having a child will hold you back, somehow make you "less than" women who don't have children because look at them they have a higher paying career, and you chose to be a "mom" haha.  Yes I have heard people look at my wife strangely because she chose to stop working when our kids were young, and now that they're in school she's started working again.)

For women / couples that really don't think they are capable of raising a child, society should make adoption much much easier. We should be subsidizing that as much or more than we do abortions.

This is an interesting and nuanced take.  I agree completely that adoption should be easier all-around, including for cishet couples.  I think getting orphans into good homes is a goal that almost everybody is behind, except for certain religious groups that are quietly obstructionist for purely bigoted reasons.  They disgrace the pro-life movement by harming orphans.  *They* only deserve to be called pro-birth, in my opinion.

As for the practical argument that mothers will get abortions one way or another:  While I agree (as does the data), it doesn't make abortion a right.  Abortion IS a right, but not because people will always do it.
But I think it's worth pointing out that pro-birthers (sic) are aware of how many extra miscarriages happen when abortion is outlawed.  Their response in the states has been to legislate, on a state level, subjecting people who just suffered *miscarriages* to criminal investigations.

What could justify doing that to someone who just had a miscarriage?  It's heinous.  Our system (supposedly) doesn't allow traumatizing so many innocent people even to catch a "killer".
I wonder when they'll criminalize hysterectomies.  This cannot be tolerated.  But there's a difference between being wrong, doing wrong, and doubling down on wrong.

Worry not, the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell.

This will literally never get old.  I love Japan just for that game.

[Naturegirl1999]

What game? I thought the meme. Started on a video?

[MrRoboto75]

What game? I thought the meme. Started on a video?

Rolan is talking about the "Parasite Eve" series, a modern/sci-fi RPG made by the people behind final fantasy.  It took the vague science behind the mitochondria being non-native to cells with nucluses, and that mitochondria are passed down from the mother, and just really runs with it.  Apparently (in game) mitochondria can mutate creatures, animate dinosaur skeletons, and give people psychic powers.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Specifically, it says that mitochondria are the slaves of eukaryotic life, and are now fighting to liberate themselves. It's...when I first saw the dialogue from Parasite Eve I just about choked on my own laughter.

[Naturegirl1999]

Parasite Eve sounds like it’d be fun to play

[thompson]

There’s a reason just about every developed country has moved away from institutionalised care for orphans. It was a horrible, horrible system which almost no one had anything good to say about it. The government run institutions for foster care still routinely grapple with pretty nasty issues such as sexual abuse and neglect. No one wants to have to deal with that.

I think the difficulty of getting adoptions is probably due to past abuses of the system leading regulators to ratchet up the controls to the point it makes everything much more difficult. I think public opinion is shifting back the other way, but there are still plenty of horror stories out there of adoption “victims” who lobby ardently to keep the checks and balances in place.

[Dunamisdeos]

I don't think it's unfair to distinguish between pro-life and pro-birth. I consider myself pro-life because I support the idea that human life begins prior to it scooting out from the vagina. I also support any and all social/governmental programs that enable people to give birth without worrying about whether or not their child can survive financially or medically in our society.
 
I've had plenty of infuriating conversations with other Christians whose position is that no abortion should ever happen and if a baby should be born without the infrastructure in place for it to survive then it's not their job to think about that. That's pro-birth. That is wrong. It's a product of a person who has been told that their personal responsibilities begin and end with what technically meets the letter of the specifications laid out on Sundays, and no further. I find it far worse than the opposite position from mine that life doesn't begin until birth is completed (sorry, I know that's sort of an attack on some folks views here). People who believe in that have a clear guideline to their beliefs, even if I disagree.
 
I find it insidious. My experience is that pro-birther Christians are trading what they openly consider to be a human life for some social/moral credits, and they support the institutions that allow them to do so.
 
That said, I don't really have the expertise to suggest a system that reliably cares for children post-birth. Obviously just creating some sort of government crèche is a terrible idea. The best way forward to my thinking is simply a far higher level of government-sponsored healthcare.

[nenjin]

It's a defense of the right to spread your seed but take no responsibility for it. It's straight up biblical logic in the modern age, just cast under protective veil of "VALUES."

[McTraveller]

Because people have no oversight, and no transparency.

Wait what? It's a whole lot easier to have oversight over "people" than it is to have oversight over the government, methinks.

[thompson]

You raise some good points Dunamisdeos. Unfortunately the abortion “debate” has devolved to little more than two straw men locked into eternal battle. There are some fascinating discussions to be had within the grey-zone between the extremes, but many people are afraid to go there. I suspect the pro-birth crowd don’t like it because they know they don’t have satisfactory answers to the question of what happens after your child is born and want to distance themselves from any responsibility. The pro-choice crowd seem to prefer to keep the discussion centred around women’s rights and seem uncomfortable about the issue of the foetus’ rights. So, the polarisation is convenient for both sides.

After delving into the grey area myself I’ve come to the view that abortion should be legal, but support should be available for those who choose not to go that way. Bearing the child is of course the moral high ground (in the quixotic sense), but not necessarily the best outcome once all things are considered. There is morality in pragmatism, as it requires sacrificing one’s ideological purity for real-world betterment (or less-worserment, as the case may be).

[Folly]

Because people have no oversight, and no transparency.

Wait what? It's a whole lot easier to have oversight over "people" than it is to have oversight over the government, methinks.

So you think it would be easier to monitor children behind the closed doors of many widely distributed private homes, as opposed to a single open facility with staff who are obligated to be responsive to public inquiries?