that has no relation to if a woman decides to abort a pregnancy, friend.

And think for a moment if you will about the lengths to which a woman has to go in order to have 'obligatory child support' from the father of a child - court, genetic testing, often shame and humiliation about her sex life or sexual history... can you come up with a similar set of circumstances and outcomes for men? I can't.

does their friends making fun of them for "bangin' a fatty" count?

well, if you're bangin' a fatty, you pretty much deserve whatever you get, pal.

Its not equivalent by any means, but repercussions are rather likely for the man. 18 years of coerced payments, while not carrying the same weight as rearing a child single handedly, is certainly an imposition. Its probably the best sort of scheme society can work out if both individuals don't have a shared stake in child rearing, but the man's part isn't necessarily complete after that minute of pleasure.

The brain stem is developed pretty early on (around 8 weeks though not all fetuses develop at the same rate), my guess is that not every woman knows they are pregnant at that point. The earliest I can find a documented instance of the ability to measure of brain-stem activity is 20 weeks, well into the second trimester. I guess what I am saying how would you know when the fetus has reached that threshold and at what level is that threshold to be set at? Some studies have shown that even after birth an infants behavior is almost entirely driven by the brain stem. I guess my point is that it shouldn't matter. We should just accept that it is killing, but its the mothers business until it's out the womb so we as a society need to let her make the choice about what to do. As for the OP, I don't care about logical flaws, once it's born, it's got rights.

Now, IIRC in the story the point of the algebra thing is not "algebra" in the typical sense, but the ability to comprehend the use of a variable to represent something that it is not. This is an ability that (as far as we know) is unique to humans and the idea was that so long as child was unable to do something that was uniquely human, it was not one, and thus could be aborted, otherwise it was no different than putting down a well trained dog. The author's idea was to mock society's attempt at making some type of determination about life and death states, basically the discussion we are having now, as a vehicle for opposing abortion. Parts of the story was significantly anti-feminist though, implying that abortion was really for the convenience of the modern woman's materialistic life style and that she shouldn't be burned with a child if she doesn't want to deal with one (and that choice would be available up to about age seven in case she takes a little longer making up her mind about it and wants to take the child for test drive). In the story the father attempts to protect the child as the mother attempts to kill it, trying to take on the burden of raising the child on his own, thus unburdening the mother, but out of concern that that may cause the mother to feel guilt, the father's wishes are discarded and the child is picked up by the abortion van. Eerily similar to the scenario Malice is describing above (screw daddy, it's mommy that matters), which I why figured the story would get under her skin. And yes, this was written after PKD had his mental breakdown and it shows it.

so all you get from what I wrote is that I hold the opinion of screw daddy, it's mommy that matters?

Thanks for boiling that down to its empirical form because that really is the thrust of every argument i try to make about this type of discussion and I'll be sure to use that phrase from now on when asked for an opinion on what I should and should not be legally 'allowed' to do or not do.
It's so much easier for me to just type screw daddy, it's mommy that matters, instead of trying to put forth a rational argument for why society holds this debate - oh and uh:

and also

The point of that was that we don't fully understand the role of the brain-stem yet and we cannot yet measure it's activity in a given fetus (prior to at least 20 weeks), so it may not be as useful in the abortion debate as it is in the euthanasia / terminally ill or injured debate.




Your argument, as I interpreted it, is that since the woman carries the physical, psychological, and social burden of pregnancy and child birth, the termination decision should be solely with her and not with anyone else. I do apologize if that is incorrect. It's an opinion I can agree with, but I do think it boils down to the discarding of the father's desires in favor of the mother because she suffers (more) from the choice. So yes, it's basically screw daddy.

Because this is the world we live in, I tell my kid and his friends if they would feel bad at getting a girl pregnant who then had an abortuion that they damn well better not get a girl pregnant. Because society doesn't give a fuck about them as men and preganancy. So accept that fact and treat every girl as too stupid to take one pill oncre a day and is lieing about being on birth control and wrap it and cap it every time.

Pretty much agree with Malice in this thread team. I've had one or two instances in my own life where I gladly shelled out the money for a plan B pill, not only for my own piece of mind, but because it's not my life that would really be drastically affected. Women shoulder a burden that we can't really understand.

Why is it that every forum this story goes on, the thread gets derailed into a thread about abortion?

um, something something the title of this thread something something.

I'd like to hear her opinion on the logic/thought process in the original post, but I fear that since we fell into that same old pattern, she's quit this thread.

The best part about this is that I've been suggesting this to abortion supporters for years. It wouldn't shock me if this was common place in twenty to twenty-five years. It wouldn't shock me if failing European nations with universal healthcare start implementing policies based on "social costs" of poor people as well.

You really think we are going to start murdering children? I think most people just do not equate a fetus with a child out of the womb.

guys i know some pretty great dead baby jokes

If you can work Paul Krugman into a dead baby joke, I'll kill my first-born before the tenth-birthday deadline.

How do we not have a thread for these?

frank had been assigned to start it.