Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Women still know that abortion will stop a pregnancy. It isn’t dishonest if that’s what they believe. Many people believe a baby doesn’t truly live until it’s born.
Well, it is a fact that the baby is alive before it comes out of the birth canal.
This is LITERALLY not true. Study after study shows that what you believe by your early 20s is almost always your political belief until you die. Yes some change as they get older, but the vast majority do not.
Well, I was referring to a time in the not so distant past, when we still called mothers, mothers, and used pronouns like her and she to refer to biological females, instead of “birthing persons”, due to the new reality where men can now give birth to children, and there are 100 different genders, instead of 2.
I will concede the possibility that things have changed, and that now, today’s 20 year olds are destined to remain in a state of arrested development, where their opinions will never change with the attainment of additional years of information, experience and wisdom. I hope you, and all of those studies are wrong, because the consequences of that being true should terrify everyone.
Just think of the future humanity faces if all learning comes to a screeching halt at age 21, and that today’s 20 something’s will be no wiser at aged 50, than they were during their skateboard and video game years?
People are allowed to have different opinions doesn’t make them wrong
There is a difference between facts and opinions. It’s a scientific fact that life begins at conception and long before that baby comes out of the birth canal. Anyone who believes that it’s not a human being or a life until it is born is just plain lying to themselves.
This isn't true in the slightest. I was never "indocrinated". I was a kind and empathetic person from birth who cared about others. I was the kid who went out of their way to talk to the kid who had no friends, and defended the fat girl from bullies, and wanted to take home every stray animal. That kind of personality that later becomes liberalism. It's not taught. If it were than there wouldn't be a Right because we all went to the same schools.
Degree of empathy is probably the biggest predictor of who will be liberal and who won't.
Absolutely not true, not even remotely close. That’s just the lie you keep telling yourself, and one of the hallmarks of the liberal mindset which declares such self righteous moral superiority. And that, by the way, leads to the hypocrisy liberals demonstrate with such aplomb, as they claim the right to force their values upon others, while responding with righteous indignation in reaction to any opposing views.
As a child, I was exactly the same way as you describe yourself, and still am that type of person today, and I reject the insinuation that I am lacking those qualities you claim for yourself. The truth is, real empathy has nothing to do with being a modern day liberal. It’s actually the complete opposite. Today’s liberal need to abandon empathy, or at least be extremely selective in it’s application. Where is this empathy you claim to possess in such abundance, for the 60 Million babies whose lives were terminated by abortion since 1973?
Now, let’s start at the beginning … for eons of time, pregnant women were often described as “with child”, even back in medieval times, so we have known for a very long time that the pregnant woman is carrying a child. Your choosing to refer to that child as a “fetus” doesn’t change that reality. The term “fetus” is simply a medical term referring to a particular state of development of an unborn child, just as infant or toddler or adolescent refers to the state of development of a born child. Therefore, the term fetus implies no less value to the child itself, than the term “infant” implies less value compared to that of a “toddler”. Therefore, the value comes from the child being a human being, rather than its relative state of development. I would therefore contend that there is zero difference in value of the child who has just taken its first breath of air outside the womb, than he or she had 24 hours before. So let’s be clear about that.
Now, setting aside for a moment the reasons and arguments one might cite to promote bodily autonomy and the right to choose what happens to one’s own person … a premise that I whole heartedly support, by the way … the concept of empathy and compassion must never become so circumstantial, that it can be ignored in one instance, while fiercely defended in another. But that is what you and all of your liberal friends do, constantly.
The abortion debate highlights this like no other issue that I can think of. It is the great divide between what you believe represents empathy, and my version of it. So, let’s take a closer look at our two opinions on what constitutes “empathy”. It might be helpful to first agree on the basic definition which says “empathy: the capacity to understand or feel what another feels or experiences from within their frame of reference”
Now, let’s set aside the basic arguments for and against abortion as a “right” applicable to the concept of a woman’s bodily autonomy for just a moment, and focus solely on the abortion process itself. Assuming you know what that process entails, you’re going to have a very difficult time convincing me of how empathetic you are to support the forced removal of a baby from it’s mother’s womb, piece by piece, limb by limb, head, arms, legs, and torso. And that’s the basic process when the process goes according to plan. When complications occur, as one can expect from time to time with any medical procedure, we have a baby that is removed relatively intact, who is still alive, yet set aside and allowed to die outside the womb. But it doesn’t stop there … it gets worse. We also have the other processes few really want to talk about regarding live tissue and organ harvesting that routinely occurs, which I will not describe here, but instead provide you a link to educate yourself further on this gruesome and unconscionably inhuman activity:
While the process of abortion itself is by any reasonable definition, an act of violence posing as a medical procedure, it is hardly demonstrative of any form of empathy or compassion I am familiar with. That said, the darker underbelly that exists within this industry relating to the harvesting of live human tissue and body parts for medical research and pharmaceutical product development takes this to another level of evil.
Is this a matter of “choice”? Well, yes indeed it absolutely is a choice. Let’s just all be very clear about what is actually being chosen, before claiming it to be based on empathy or compassion. It is my opinion there isn't microscope powerful enough to find a single molecule of compassion or empathy in this process, regardless of the arguments and excuses used to defend it. Those are all just rationalizations, and nothing more.
ocnj wrote:
This isn't true in the slightest. I was never "indocrinated". I was a kind and empathetic person from birth who cared about others. I was the kid who went out of their way to talk to the kid who had no friends, and defended the fat girl from bullies, and wanted to take home every stray animal. That kind of personality that later becomes liberalism. It's not taught. If it were than there wouldn't be a Right because we all went to the same schools.
Degree of empathy is probably the biggest predictor of who will be liberal and who won't.
Quote:
Originally Posted by GuyNTexas
Absolutely not true, not even remotely close. That’s just the lie you keep telling yourself, and one of the hallmarks of the liberal mindset which declares such self righteous moral superiority. And that, by the way, leads to the hypocrisy liberals demonstrate with such aplomb, as they claim the right to force their values upon others, while responding with righteous indignation in reaction to any opposing views.
As a child, I was exactly the same way as you describe yourself, and still am that type of person today, and I reject the insinuation that I am lacking those qualities you claim for yourself... .
GuyNTexas, from your previous posts you believe that liberals have been indoctrinated due to their naivete. Conservatives, on the other hand, have gained wisdom with age and are impervious to such indoctrination. So does that not imply that you HAD empathy, but have jettisoned that useless emotion in favor of cool rationality? That's what conservatives always say: that liberals are bleeding hearts, they depend too much on their emotions, whereas conservatives use their brains. So you can't make that claim and at the same time claim to be an empathetic person.
Personally, I think ocnj is right; I also have always been an empathetic sort, concerned about the feelings and welfare of others. It sometimes causes problems for me as a manager. I know other people who have no qualms about firing someone, for example. I think it's just a personality trait, one that someone is born with and not likely to change during your lifetime.
Liberals typically display empathy toward the underdog - women, the poor, people of color, immigrants, people of different sexual preferences or religions than the majority. Abortion is such a difficult issue because it pits two potential underdogs: women, who only want to have control of their own body without dictatorship by men or government, versus the fetus, which is of course unable to defend itself.
However, even I have difficulty feeling empathy for a clump of cells or an undeveloped fetus. I also doubt that most anti-abortion folks are motivated not out of empathy for the fetus, but rather disdain for the mother.
ocnj wrote:
This isn't true in the slightest. I was never "indocrinated". I was a kind and empathetic person from birth who cared about others. I was the kid who went out of their way to talk to the kid who had no friends, and defended the fat girl from bullies, and wanted to take home every stray animal. That kind of personality that later becomes liberalism. It's not taught. If it were than there wouldn't be a Right because we all went to the same schools.
Degree of empathy is probably the biggest predictor of who will be liberal and who won't.
GuyNTexas, from your previous posts you believe that liberals have been indoctrinated due to their naivete. Conservatives, on the other hand, have gained wisdom with age and are impervious to such indoctrination. So does that not imply that you HAD empathy, but have jettisoned that useless emotion in favor of cool rationality? That's what conservatives always say: that liberals are bleeding hearts, they depend too much on their emotions, whereas conservatives use their brains. So you can't make that claim and at the same time claim to be an empathetic person.
No, this is obviously just your flawed opinion of what empathy actually is, evident in implying that rationality and empathy are mutually exclusive. I totally reject that idea outright as totally absurd. To imply that one must necessarily abandon empathy in order to be rational, also implies the inverse, that one must abandon rationality to be empathetic. Are you suggesting that the left have abandoned rationality in favor of empathy? That would mean that the empathetic left are just totally irrational!
Of course, you’ll get no argument from me on that last point, but the left’s abandonment of rationality is a consequence of delusional thinking, not their natural abundance of empathy.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Leo58
Personally, I think ocnj is right; I also have always been an empathetic sort, concerned about the feelings and welfare of others. It sometimes causes problems for me as a manager. I know other people who have no qualms about firing someone, for example. I think it's just a personality trait, one that someone is born with and not likely to change during your lifetime.
Well, it’s America, so you have the right to be wrong. But it’s funny you brought up this particular matter, because for several years I served as a type of “fire fighter” who was an implementation/program management specialist, who would be sent in to problem accounts to figure out and correct whatever was causing these important government contracts to fail. And my arrival was hardly viewed as cause for celebration among the managers responsible for these various accounts. I was viewed as the corporate executioner, looking for blood. Over an 8 year period, I dealt with dozens of medium and large programs, and hundreds if not thousands of individuals just to put some perspective to it. And my job was to fix the problems, not be empathetic. But I didn’t find it difficult at all to do both. What I discovered was that the overwhelming majority of people wanted to do a good job, and that whatever shortcomings and failures I found tended to be either caused by a lack of training or a lack of proper direction. These people either didn’t know what to do, or didn’t know how to do it. It was a very rare instance to find someone who was just a screw up, who did not give a crap. But in those very rare instances, I had no problem firing such a person … out of empathy for all those who were busting their butts to do a great job, while their lazy and careless colleague was dragging them down. But recommendations for firing people was the very last resort, and someone had to go to great lengths to warrant that outcome for themselves. Empathy can be expressed in many ways, and done so in a very rational manner.
And this brings me to the main point for sharing this particular story … the erroneous and misguided expression of empathy would be to offer it to the screw up employee, at the expense of all the others working hard to do a good job. But is that really the empathetic thing to do? If you have a group of 25 people working on a contract in which the client is threatening to terminate for failure to perform, it’s the other 24 that deserve empathy, not the 1 person causing the problems by their careless attitude which threaten the livelihoods of the others.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Leo58
Liberals typically display empathy toward the underdog - women, the poor, people of color, immigrants, people of different sexual preferences or religions than the majority. Abortion is such a difficult issue because it pits two potential underdogs: women, who only want to have control of their own body without dictatorship by men or government, versus the fetus, which is of course unable to defend itself.
There is much to unpack here in this little paragraph, including certain false assumptions. The first is the insinuation that this is a “Men dictating what a woman can do with her body” issue. That’s not the issue at all. There are very large numbers of women who are pro-life. So trying to paint this issue as men oppressing the rights of women is total fraud. It’s a tactical appeal to emotions, and a lie. The truth is, it’s hard to frame the issue as women oppressing a woman’s right to control their own bodies, so the tactical approach is to ignore that part and focus on making it a men versus women issue. Typical liberal dishonesty and distraction.
Furthermore, this difficult catch 22 you speak of facing the pro-choice liberals and their relentless pursuit of defending the underdog is altogether laughable. There is no sign of this consternation or hand wringing going on, as they dress up in their giant vagina costumes and faux blood soaked white pants carrying effigies of aborted babies, in pro-choice parades and demonstrations, or their threats of violence against those who present obstacles in their desire to kill babies without restrictions.
These “empathetic” liberals couldn’t care less about the “fetuses”, proven by their dehumanizing use of the term fetus in place of child or baby. So, all of this nonsense about empathy is pure BS, and you know it is.
What’s even more clear is the lie that this is all focused on protecting the rights of women. That’s a lie too! A flat out, unadulterated lie. Liberals don’t give a crap about the rights of women when y’all insist on allowing men pretending to be women to compete in and annihilate real women in women’s sports leagues and events, and this includes even young girls who don’t stand a chance against the stronger biological males. It seems your devotion to protecting the rights of women always takes an empathetic backseat when defending the gender confused male, at the expense of those women. The same thing happens when y’all insist on allowing these males to use women’s restrooms. Do you care about those women who are uncomfortable with, and don’t want a man in the restroom with them? Hell no. You couldn’t care less about those women either. And it really shouldn’t take too much empathy to put yourself in their shoes (that’s what empathy means, btw) as to how that might be extremely uncomfortable and perhaps emotionally stressful to some women who may have been victims of a past sexual assault, who would obviously prefer not having strange men in the bathrooms with them in various states of undress. But you don’t care one squat about those women, so stop pretending you do. You’re fooling nobody with that nonsense.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Leo58
However, even I have difficulty feeling empathy for a clump of cells or an undeveloped fetus. I also doubt that most anti-abortion folks are motivated not out of empathy for the fetus, but rather disdain for the mother.
And right on cue, I knew I could count on this! Y’all are so freaking predictable. You just framed the entire issue in this last statement. And you seem to be totally clueless in how that one statement exposes the rest of your entire post as nothing more than just a bowl of word salad, of which the only purpose was to deceive.
This is the issue … it’s not a man versus woman thing … it’s not even about women at all, and it certainly has nothing to do with empathy. This is all about advancing an agenda to normalize all forms of sexual and moral perversion and debauchery, in every conceivable manifestation, from sexualizing and mutilating children that are alive, to killing them before they are born. From transgender story time, to live tissue harvesting of “fetuses”.
Just a clump of cells, aye? That’s really boiling it down to the real argument, without all of those distracting lies and distortions which try to paint it as something else. We don’t look at this as a clump of cells. We see a baby. And we consider those who don’t see a baby, but only a worthless clump of cells that can be tossed into a trash dumpster as suffering from either mental illness or demonic possession. That’s the entire argument right here, and one you can’t possibly win. You lost the argument the moment you label this baby “clump of cells”.
Last edited by GuyNTexas; 07-14-2022 at 04:53 PM..
GuyNTexas, you are very empathetic. So empathetic that I wouldn’t want to meet you alone in a dark alley.
LOL. You’d be quite safe with me in a dark alley, unless you were up to no good, in which case, maybe not so safe.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
