VGC Poll: Abortion

[Final-Fan]

mrstickball said:
So you think that the pro-life viewpoint assumes, that at any time, fetuses aren't people? I guess you haven't been reading up on their viewpoint :-p

My whole argument with the German Eugenics concept is that they're one in the same - Germany just didn't include contraception and abortion into the idea, but euthanasia and purging as the logical extension of the process. That's what the pro-lifer fears of the abortion position - that it can easily be related to the further aspects of the Eugenics program (and FYI, American doctors sterilized roughly 50,000 people in the name of Eugenics, so it's not just a Nazi concept. It was founded in America).

Abortion is a slippery slope. We've seen that the aborted babies are sold for research (without the consideration of the mother, AFIAK), which is a frightening concept. What I fear is that, with a disregard for life on the basis of a fetus being unwanted, or infirmed, it will eventually result (and has resulted in Nazi Germany and America at the turn of the 20th century) into systematic sterilizations or targeted euthanasia as a families' right to an individual, or a government's right over it's people.

1.  But you're not preaching to the choir, you're trying to submit a serious argument.  If you assume the conclusion (trying to convince people to be pro-life with an argument that assumes a pro-life belief) then it's pointless. 

2.  You're confusing a bonus side effect (abortion lowers crime rate) with the purpose (allowing abortion as a right of the mother to decide what happens to herself).  More importantly, the entire moral problem of Eugenics (AFAIK, I'm no expert on the subject) is that it was forced on people, which abortion is not.  (Assuming the pro-choice belief that the fetus is not a person -- and since pro-choice people obviously do have that belief, that slippery slope does not exist for them.)   

3.  I would agree that the woman should have initial control over the disposition of the fetus.  I believe your fears are adequately addressed in (2).  The slippery slope would only exist for people who think that fetuses are persons but less important persons that can therefore be killed without regret, which I agree is abhorrent and is NOT the pro-choice position.

[edited in expansions to (2) and (3) at approx. 05:19.]