Did anybody here attend the Rally For Life/repeal the 8th marches in Dublin?

nozz, don't know why I am bothering with someone who lies on threads and won't concede when they're wrong, about even the mundanest of points.......... but I'll give you one more shot in the hope that you don't start rambling with longwinded irrelevant nonsense.... yet.again..... and then lie and scream 'misrepresentation'... when called on it.

Oh and that's longwinded irrelevancy I'm referring to, not merely that your posts are 'long' posts which is what you yawningly claimed on the last thread and which I ignored as I couldn't be arsed playing off-topic tennis with you.... sure I post long posts myself, why would I complain about a user doing that? It's the playing to the gallery bollox I'm referring to, the shoehorning in of reams irrelevant crap that you know, while irrelevant, will most likely get you backslapped for, even when not in the slightest bit pertinent.

If you are willing to dial that kind of waffle back... I'll engage with you. If not... I'll just leave you have the last word, as ever, so maybe decide if you want to debate... or you want to try and impress onto people how many volumes of text you've read, or how many debating teams you have been on etc etc.

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

It is hard to "dismiss" views that are not coherently offered.

Evidently not. Did you read the OP and did you see the photo taken with a deliberate agenda to portray the attendees as old infertile people?

As you see, even if you were right about every single person who attended the rally having incoherent views, it wouldn't matter, as incoherent views or not, there's a clear attempt being made to dismiss them. That you would attempt to argue this point shows that you are willing to defend almost anything prochoicers do. Not that that hasn't been quite clear from other threads of course.

I have not sat down and talked to The Anti Abortion campaigners in a long time but I can only hope that over the years they have improved their approach.

I have told the story before but I took an afternoon out, during the time I wanted to form and inform my final opinions on abortion, to go sit and talk with the Anti Abortion people at those old information tables they used to have outside Central Bank Dublin (do they still do that?)

I could not get a SINGLE coherent argument out of them. They just kept telling me in a stoner like drawl "Look at the pictures maaaaan", referring to the misleading photographs they had blown up and erected for their shock value.

So, because you took an afternoon out to sit down on some road with some prolifers at some point.... and found their views incoherent (lol, by the way, given some of the undeniably intelligent users I have seen you say had posted incoherent views in the Humanities forum down the years) you feel that this is reason enough for you to speak with such surety that the thousands of users who attended this recent rally similarly also had 'incoherent views'

Prochoicers aren't immune from being incoherent you know:





"THAT'S DELIBERATELY EDITED TO MAKE THEM LOOK BAD !!" :mad:

.....is what I suspect you might say. No way a prochoicer could ever be dumb.

And when I come on to forums like this one it is not much better. I get utter nonsense pedaled at me....

Says the chap who is obsessed with a ridiculous sentience argument to a laughable degree... and then tries to reason (ad nauseam) that the fact he cares more for a dog than a wasp is sufficient reasoning for why women should be legally able to kill human beings.

Sunshine (and don't call me Sunshine in return - your reciprocal mimicry is old - find your own style of discourse) you post more bollox on these abortion threads than anyone else in the history of the forum and so you are in no position to refer to the arguments put to you over the years you as such. You're the lad who patronizingly tells us all that it's understandable if we get emotional about fetuses given that they are "baby shaped" and all. As if those of us who are against abortion are down in Smyth's crying in the baby doll aisle every day should one of 'em get broken. You have referred to fetuses at the 20 week + stage of development as "blobs of biological matter" and then topped it all off with the notion that we are "safe" (read: fetuses most likely not sentient) to abort at 24 weeks............. and yet you have the cheek to say that other people post nonsense on abortion threads?! Come on.

...like playing music to the fetus to make it's tongue move.

No, that's YOU that thinks playing music to fetuses made their tongues move as it's you that claimed the movement was autonomic, remember. But then you do claim that ALL fetal movement you are presented with is autonomic (no surprise there of course.) You even accused me of making up a quote from one of the researchers and when I linked you to it, you came back and posted a fcuking thesis attempting to excuse the fact that you had incorrectly accused me of lying........... the fact that you were wrong was irrelevant to you. Still not to late to apologize.

As for the study itself: It did not claim that music made tongues move and to refer to the study the way you are again showing what you are about in this regard. The study found that playing music intravaginally activated brain circuits that stimulate language and communication, which then manifested as vocalization movements. Just because you dismiss this as autonomic movement doesn't make it so. Don't you think these researchers are smart enough to allow for the possibility that autonomic movement might affect their reasoning and hypothesizing? Do you think they just played music for an hour and then put any movement observed within that hour down to the music?

In any event, as I have pointed out to you many times, even if someone doesn't have scientific research to back up their abortion views, that doesn't make their views inherently incoherent. As said: science once couldn't prove that babies up until two and three years old could feel pain. Morons that needed scientific evidence continued to plow on operating on kids without anesthesia as a result.........

Babies Don't Feel Pain: A Century of Denial in Medicine

During the 20th Century, when medicine rose to dominate childbirth in developed countries, it brought with it a denial of infant pain based on ancient prejudices and 'scientific' dogmas that can no longer be supported.

Babies have had a difficult time getting us to accept them as real people with real feelings having real experiences. Deep prejudices have shadowed them for centuries: babies were sub-human, prehuman, or as Luis de Granada, a 16th- century authority put it, "a lower animal in human form."

In the Age of Science, babies have not necessarily fared better. It may shock you to consider how many ways they have fared worse. In the last hundred years, scientific authorities robbed babies of their cries by calling them "random sound;" robbed them of their smiles by calling them "muscle spasms" or "gas;" robbed them of their memories by calling them "fantasies" and robbed them of their pain by calling it a "reflex."

Against a back of general (scientific) ignorance of infant behavior, experiments were undertaken as early as 1917 at Johns Hopkins University to observe newborn tears, smiles, reactions to having blood drawn, infections lanced, and to a series of pin-pricks on the wrist during sleep. In these experiments (the first of many), infants reacted defensively. When blood was taken from the big toe, the opposite foot would go up at once with a pushing motion against the other ankle. Lancing produced exaggerated crying, and pin-pricks during sleep roused half the babies to move the hand and forearm.

This line of investigation continued in a series of experiments at Northwestern University and Chicago's Lying-In Hospital in which newborns were stuck with needles on the cheeks, thighs, and calves. Virtually all infants reacted during the first hours and first day after birth, but the trend, the researchers noted, was toward more reaction to less stimulation from day one through day twelve. As a physiologic finding, this suggested that, at birth, newborns were not very sensitive, but became so gradually. However, they failed to tell us (and apparently overlooked the possible consequences) that all the mothers had received anesthetic drugs during labor and delivery!

The Shermans discovered infants would cry in reaction to hunger, to being dropped two to three feet (and caught), to having their heads restrained with firm pressure, or to someone pressing on their chins for 30 seconds. Babies tried to escape and made defensive movements of the arms and legs, including striking at the object to push it away. Today, we would see these behaviors as "self-management," an example of "kinesthetic intelligence," but in those days, experts were arguing about whether the head or tail end of a human baby was more sensitive.

To physicians, McGraw's work seemed thoroughly scientific and justified the continuation of painful encounters between physicians and newborns. In retrospect, the conclusion that infants were somehow not yet sensitive to pain was a prejudiced interpretation, which fit comfortably into the traditional view expressed in medical journals reaching back into the 19th Century. It seems perfectly obvious now, but for a long time, experts were informing the public that infants cries were only "random" sounds, not genuine communications. It took a quarter century of cry research to prove otherwise.

.......and no doubt one day when it's in incontrovertible that 12-24 week old fetuses are experiencing life and have some level of awareness (which we currently can't prove) people like you will just use the same 'lack of science at the time' excuse for advocating the killing of millions upon millions of human beings.

Followed by silent fish impressions when you ask what the point actually is.

Again, this shows what you're about.... referring to fetal movement (at 12 to 20 weeks ) that is observed each and everyday on ultrasounds as "silent fish impressions".... all of it indeed..... and yet you claim that your opinions are science based.

In the end my pro-choice position was informed not just by the arguments I heard and learned, and the biology and science I studied and learned, but by the complete and utter lack of arguments and points being made to me by the wavers of cherry picked photographs.

I can not dismiss, what simply is not there.

Nonsense, many people base their abortion views on the mere fact that a heartbeat is present. Obviously there is science to back that up so suggesting that people who are against abortion (or at least some abortions) don't back up their views with science is absurd..... and that's just with regards to heartbeats.... lots of people you disagree with on these threads have used scientific research as a reasoning for their views with regards to other areas of fetal development.

See the problem is that you have decided that YOUR unscientific definition of sentience (with regards to fetal development) is all that matters.... and so if people can't prove that a fetus meets YOUR criteria in that regard, in your mind that means they're wrong and incoherent. You have quite a narcissistic approach to debating abortion to that extent.

Is it safe to ask that question and answer it for them though? They MIGHT believe that. There have been three or four people on this forum who seem to genuinely believe that abortion should be allowed at ANY stage for ANY reason at all.

You'll always get nuts. Seen one feminist on YouTube say infanticide should be legal. However, nobody who is not mentally ill and / or deranged, believes a seven, eight month pregnant woman should legally be able take an abortion pills or visit an abortion clinic and have their baby killed.

Though the coherence of their reasoning on that is pretty poor. One user, for example, when I queried him on the basis of that position merely claimed that Hillary Clinton agrees with him. Not only do I doubt that is entirely true or representative of her position......... an enormous "so what?" jumped into my mind at the time.

Like many slogans, if you take it at face value and entirely literally it is not going to make much sense. You have, however, had it explained to you MULTIPLE times what lies behind the slogan, and what people generally mean by it. Like most slogans you need to engage with it, and the people using it, to unpack the meaning and intention of it. But if you contrive to refuse to do that, then I do not think conversation will ever move past the slogans.

None of the caveats you (or anybody else for that matter) have presented thus far mitigates the essence of what these people say. That is what you don't take on board. 'Her Body, Her Choice' (and all similar slogans) deliberately refer to a pregnancy as if it is only affecting a woman and that her life is all that is at stake. It's a selfish, wrongheaded, hollow and highly inaccurate thing to say. If I say to someone that a woman shouldn't be able to legally abort her baby after 12 weeks and they say 'Her Body, Her Choice' they are thereby implying that what I have said is wrong on the basis that we are discussing something which only affects that woman and so why should I even been speaking about it when it's therefore none of my business. All the caveats in the world don't change that. You can say that they are saying it in the context of viability (etc) as much as you like, but it ain't so. They mean it literally, which is why they often spit it which such venom. Sure wasn't Sarah Catt defended on one of the last abortion threads on AH and that says it all right there.

I have met some people who's ENTIRE argument against abortion is that they believe some god inserts a "soul" into the zygote at the moment of conception and that abortion is wrong because it is against their god's plan and intentions.

But sure you argue that consciousness begins at some magical point yourself... more or less. So what makes you so different to those you are sneering at? Your radio analogy is equally as wrongheaded as those who believe that God inserts a soul into a zygote. Most logical people understand that prenatal development is a continuum and my call would be that religious folk are a hell of a lot closer to truth of just where it is that a human life begins than you are.

bubblypop wrote: »

Do you mind me asking what instances do you find it permissible, & what circumstances are not permissible, to you?

Rape and dead fetus where the woman can survive but the baby cannot. If the womans life was in danger I would leave the decision of her babies life and that of her own life to her and her partner.

Syphonax wrote: »

those that break the law in Ireland by going abroad to have one

Weed is illegal in Ireland. Am I breaking the law by going to Amsterdam to smoke some?

Once you start talking about extending legal jurisdiction to citizens of your country who are not resident or present in that country at the time of the offense, you're into an exceptionally dystopian philosophy, regardless of what law you're talking about. You're basically suggesting, at that point, that no matter what happens, your home state has some kind of universal authority over you. Just.... No.

Guy:Incognito wrote: »

As an aside, do the pro life folk count their age from their birthday or 9 months previous to that?

The vast majority of prochoicers are against abortion after 24 weeks.

Do they count their birth age from their birthday or from that gestational period?

I think for the majority of woman they don't rush into abortion but they consider how having a baby will effect their lives, partners or the other children they may already have. Not every one going for an abortion is young or unmarried but for some woman having a child or another child can be life changing and not in a good way.

It is better to have an abortion as early as possible. I don't think the majority of woman would chose to have a late abortion unless their was something wrong with the baby. It is not better to bring a baby into the world where they are wanted and your in a position to give them a good start in life.

One person I know said why not bring abortion into Ireland and for those who are religious/pro-life don't have to have one.
The days of exporting the woman of Ireland to have abortions in the Uk have to come to an end.