Water usage is probably my biggest. Living in a high desert, my wife and MIL see no problem with filling one side of the sink with hot soapy water to wash a few dishes because “that’s just how I’ve always done it”, to watering the grass and plants for hours. All of this makes me mental.
Pro choice is about choice
Pro life isn’t about life as they’ve never cared about any of that shit. That baby is born? Toss it in a dumpster as far as they care.
Pro life is about control and power, I’m willing to.doe on that hill a hundred times
Case and point.
You don’t actually expect me to believe that you think all Pro-life people believe that children don’t deserve a good home. Sure there might be some people out there like that. But it’s much more likely that the majority of people do actually care.
It is not even that their priorities are wrong or conflicting. I hope you can agree that being murdered is worse than those children having a bad childhood.
Please note that I am not taking either a pro-life or pro-choice position. My position is that until one side can actually understand the other the debate will never go anywhere.
If withholding lifesaving care is murder, everyone who hasn’t donated a kidney is a murderer. Everyone who didn’t donate blood this month is a murderer. Everyone who isn’t an organ donor is a murderer.
No one getting an abortion is a murderer, they’re just not agreeing to share all of their organs with another person for almost a year.
So yeah, I just don’t understand their position. They don’t call withholding medical care by sharing organs murder in any other context.
I posted this to another commenter but feel it also applies here.
Instead of appealing to your own incredulity, perhaps you could just look at the other actions of the people involved. If the people claiming to be Pro Life to prevent child murder, they would take actions to prevent that outcome through comprehensive sex education and contraceptive availability. Most of them don’t. They would also not vote to annihilate social safety nets for children once they are born. Most of them do. Taking those into account suggests that child welfare is not the only or even the dominant goal of the movement.
If your entire argument is that there exists some pro life people who care about these things then sure, you “win” that’s not relevant to the overall situation. The dominant views and actions of the pro life movement in the US stem from a concerted effort to create a political wedge and to create captive single-issue voters. It worked.
The US is not unique here in its diversity of views. All across the world people (even pro-choice people) don’t “like” abortion. There is no preference for it. It is for most people a (very) necessary evil. But most western countries have managed to deal with the the abortion issue in a healthier and effective way that is more aligned with the stated goals of the pro life movement than what the actual pro life movement has managed in the US.
Acting like this is some free, open ethical debate devoid of political manipulation between people trying to save children and people trying to maintain women’s bodily autonomy is hopelessly naive.
I’m not sure what exactly you are saying I am being incredulous about. You’ve brought up a lot of points here let me try to respond to each of them.
But, before I do that, I think you have lost what my original argument was about. I am asserting that the abortion debate will never end due to each side arguing about disparate things.
From what I understand, there are 3 primary ways that a debate can end; each side comes to an agreement about what is correct/what should be done, each side agrees that they will not be able to agree on what is correct, or one side decides they are unable to change the opinion of the other side.
Much of your posts discusses how one side (Pro-life) is incorrect. This does not touch on my central argument. If you proposed a situation in which one of the three outcomes could occur then that would disprove my belief.
You talk about education and how if Pro-life proponents actually cared about reducing abortions then they would fight for “real” education, not abstinence only. But this ignores one of their central beliefs; that abstinence only is the best education to reduce abortions.
Next you talk about dismantling social safety nets. From looking at a few Pro-life groups many of them do not really talk about changing social services for kids at all. The ones that do talk about increasing education, providing counseling, and promoting adoption as an option. I think what the misunderstanding might be is that many people who are Pro-life are also republican who also believe in a reduction of government social services in favor of private services. This assignment of belief is not transferable. What I mean by this is that being Pro-life does not necessarily equate to wanting to dismantle social safety nets.
You are right that child welfare is not the central part of their belief set. The central part is “life begins at conception. And ending a life is murder”. Take for instance a hypothetical attorney general who focuses mode attention on petty shoplifting rather than murderers. I would hope that you would agree that they do not have the people’s best interest at heart. This is how Pro-life proponents see this debate.
Last thing that you mentioned that I want to comment on is about single-issue voters. Of course I would encourage people to be aware about all the issues that affect them. But I do not agree with the demonization of single-issue voters. There is a reason why on a ballot you are not required to fill in every question or there might be an option for obtaining. If we were to legislate against people being single-issue voters then that might quickly devolve into a facsimile of literacy tests. Tests which have already been ruled as unconstitutional.