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Listening to you.
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Okay, I think this debate has run its course. I never made this a first amendment issue, that’s completely on you. You’re either deliberately misrepresenting my position or you’re not picking up the context, either way this is no longer generating useful discussion. Also you’re editing your posts after I’ve replied, which is a real pet peeve of mine.
Maybe it’s my fault for not articulating my views well enough, either way I thank you for the (mostly) civil tone. Good day.
You implicitly made it a free-speech issue when you asked who makes the rules about who does and doesn’t get a fair hearing or debate. That’s on you.
And actually, by allowing for the anti-choice position in the political debate in the U.S., you did in fact make it a First Amendment issue (specifically in regard to the Establishment Clause).
No. I do a lot of edits on my posts, but once someone replies any further substantive non-grammatical edits are noted explicitly with an “ETA”. In most cases I just reply in a new comment.
You articulated them more clearly than you knew. Which is why I agree that this discussion has run its course.
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It may be a topic that some find worthwhile discussing, but it is surprisingly irrelevant to the topic of abortion rights.
Imagine that you suddenly wake up and find that you’ve been surgically attached to another human being who has no liver of their own. If they are detached from you they WILL die. In the nine months that this attachment is scheduled for, the chances of you dying because of the situation are not small. Should you have the right to retroactively refuse this set up?
This is the situation that people considering abortions are in. When people debate only the right of the fetus to life, they are ignoring the rights and even the existence of the actual living person that is hosting the fetus.
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You seem to be making an assumption that we are starting with this as a premise as opposed to coming to it as a conclusion, based on experience and paying attention to the asshole’s actions and words, that these people are not worth debating. We have people commenting here whose lives have been and currently are under threat by these people and ideologies.
Edited to make the “rather than” part flow better.
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Yeah, it’s funny cause he won’t debate even a liberal like Sam Seder. He was barely functional when he was interviewed by David Pakman many years ago. I don’t get how he’s a Harvard graduate. I gotta think that these fancy colleges are just rich people daycare or something. 
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Shapiro’s body language is so strange, the head slightly bowed down, and of course the ridiculously fast talking.
I also note the use of the phrase “this thing called science” is condescending, he’s implying Neil has never heard of science.
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No it isn’t. We had that debate already. It was called WW2. That view point lost.
We are not having that one again. Their ‘ideas’ include me not existing as a human being that is all that is needed to end the argument.
And it costs me my stress levels, blood pressure, time, sanity, etc. and they like Ben Sharpiro are not actually interested in ‘debate’ but just getting a platform to spout their hate. Fuck that.
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Well, there’s a certain museum that I would like to take you to that explains in great detail why you cannot debate them. And the great thing is that admission is free up to the European elections on the 26th of this month!
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That’s not how pregnancy works. You were culpable in the act of conception, unless you were raped. Or you’re the virgin Mary.
Which many were, of course. And even in the rest of the cases the men were at least as culpable as the women, yet no one is talking about putting legal restrictions on men’s bodies.
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Not being a person of colour or a woman definitely makes it easier to blithely suggest we hear out white nationalists and anti-choicers or lend them credibility by debating them or offering them platforms.
“If men got pregnant you could get an abortion at an ATM” – Selina Meyer on “Veep”.
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I’m not sure about ‘many’, I’d have to investigate those statistics, but I don’t think it’s germane. I agree that men are just as culpable for a pregnancy resulting from consensual sex, but that would also seem to give them rights in deciding whether or not to terminate a pregnancy. For sure the woman has to bear the brunt of the burden, which is why I’m pro-choice. That, and because in a pro-choice society you can still choose to be pro-life, but not the other way around.
What legal restrictions do you believe could be placed on men to correct the imbalance of the burden?
I see you haven’t met the great state of Georgia.
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Can you elaborate?
Debate is a ruse that pretends to be about finding out what is right but is really about winning. Like you say in your own posts, almost no one ever listens to someone else’s argument in a debate and says, “Oh, wow, they are right!” If debate was about finding out the truth then we all would have done that many times.*
I’m not interested in debating things with people who are trying to win. People like Shapiro use a bunch of tricks you could learn in philosophy 101 to make their arguments sound more reasonable than opposing arguments. But it has nothing to do with what’s true and it has nothing to do with convincing anyone. Shapiro is just pandering to make a living on the internet. Like a twitch streamer but with bad public policy instead of Dark Souls.
People can have personal opinions about whether abortion is right or moral. But there is also a world of facts. You can think alcohol is immoral but if you are arguing for prohibition backed up by criminal penalties then we’ve left the realm of opinion and entered the realm of stupidity. When you argue for criminal laws preventing abortion you leave the realm of opinion and enter the realm of cruelty. Cruelty as a result of ignorance, maybe. But in Shaprio’s case the ignorance would have to be willful.
*ETA: Either that or debate is about finding the truth but it’s just garbage at doing so.
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Only if they agree to carry the fetus to term.
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The problem here is that many pro-lifers (especially American ones) aren’t willing to conceive why their position is mean spirited or have a response to such perceptions. Shapiro and company on this front have no answer. They just assume they’re always right and anyone that’s contrary on this matter must be ignorant or evil. I say this as a former pro-lifer and fundie Christian myself that if you don’t come prepared to defend some of your most controversial beliefs then expect to look like a fool.
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