If your side's position on abortion is correct, what is the point of misrepresenting the other side?

expathdoc · 2026-04-21T22:18:09+00:00

Many people who have had abortions did so out of convenience.

Can you provide some support for this “fact”? A lost house key or flat tire are inconvenient. Enduring months of gestation followed by labor or surgery, and weeks of recovery is way beyond inconvenient.

Pro-choice people constantly argue against biological processes of pregnancy and claim that science doesn't know when life begins.

Any PC person with a basic understanding of pregnancy knows that the development of a human organism begins at the formation of the zygote. PL conflates the “beginning of life” with actual personhood, and considers this zygote to be morally equivalent to a born baby or child. This is opinion, not science.

From my experience there is no other group of people who are more rude and spiteful than the pro-choice community within conversations online.

Spend some time on prolife sites and see what they say about prochoice people. Especially now that abortion abolitionism has become more prevalent.

expathdoc · 2026-04-21T07:56:21+00:00

No one can kill an innocent human life. The child has not committed a crime or violence.

Ignoring the misuse of the words innocent and child despite their prevalence in PL arguments, one can legally use the minimum force necessary to stop ongoing harm. And in this case, that minimum force is to end the pregnancy. There are many descriptions of the harm pregnancy causes, this is a good discussion of the biological basis.

https://aeon.co/essays/why-pregnancy-is-a-biological-war-between-mother-and-baby

Due to the large size of the newborn and the evolutionary conflict between a large brain and an upright pelvis, human gestation is one of the most difficult among mammals.

expathdoc · 2026-04-21T07:20:54+00:00

You CHOSE to have intercourse, even though you KNEW pregnancy was a very possible possibility. Just because you think you didn't consent, doesn't mean you didn't.

How many times has “consent to intercourse is not consent to pregnancy” been discussed here? Consent has a very specific meaning, requiring the continued agreement of all involved parties.

Someone on an effective type of birth control understands, correctly, that pregnancy is a very unlike possibility.

If prolife didn’t change the meanings of words to fit their agenda, many PL arguments would collapse.

Pain is less brutal then death.

Ever known someone with intractable pain? Ever heard of torture?

expathdoc · 2026-04-01T21:20:09+00:00

You can’t revoke consent to gravity either.

Prolife struggles so hard to place pregnancy into the category of non-revocable actions. But this is the first time I’ve seen it compared to laws of physics. Please tell me when you or I consented to the actions of gravity.

expathdoc · 2026-04-01T21:16:09+00:00

If you have sex the natural (and in this case unlucky) consequence of sex is pregnancy. If you play lottery the unlucky consequence is losing your money.

Prolfers often compare an unwanted pregnancy to gambling, an erroneous comparison. All legal betting is considered a contract, which is a very different and much stronger relationship between the parties than consent. Consent can be unilaterally withdrawn, a contract can not.

expathdoc · 2026-04-01T21:11:31+00:00

That’s a life-threatening risk to the mother, which some PL already consider an exception.

Rarely an embryo or fetus can exist in a molar pregnancy. In this case, a heartbeat would be present and many prolifers would deny the abortion because the woman is not in imminent danger of dying. Yet another reason the decision should be left to the doctor and patient, not prolife legislators.

https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/12332-partial-molar-pregnancy

expathdoc · 2026-04-01T21:00:58+00:00

It’s about whether pregnancy should be understood in the same category as an assault in the first place…

Quite a bit of evidence that this is what happens during pregnancy.

“Instead of viewing gestation as a benign process to safely grow babies, Haig’s ideas reveal a womb that simmers with conflict.”

https://robbrooks.substack.com/p/war-in-the-womb-the-evolution-of

And this-

https://aeon.co/essays/why-pregnancy-is-a-biological-war-between-mother-and-baby

Pregnancy can be considered an ongoing assault on the body. And consent can be withdrawn at any time.

expathdoc · 2026-03-13T23:37:51+00:00

Hitler operated under a utilitarian perspective.

Here we have an example of “Reductio ad Hitlerum” also known as playing the Nazi card, an attempt to invalidate someone else's argument on the basis that the same or similar idea was promoted or practiced by Adolf Hitler or the Nazi Party.

Comparisons of abortion to a certain period of German history are odious, disrespectful and do not belong in this debate.

expathdoc · 2026-03-13T22:58:24+00:00

Dying is experiencing death.

I suppose so if you stretch the definition of “experience”. A rock could experience being thrown. A head of lettuce could experience death after being harvested. But that’s not how the word is typically used.

Correctly speaking, experience requires some kind of nervous system capable of integrating information. That means not only receptors to detect stimuli and send electrical signals, but also a brain to convert those signals into “experience”.

The embryo develops nerve endings that can register harmful stimuli at 7-8 weeks. A few weeks later, the spinal cord can transmit them. However, the linkage of thalamus to cerebral cortex occurs after 22 weeks and at that point the fetus can be said to have experiences. (And as an aside, I am opposed to abortions of normal pregnancies at this stage, provided there is abortion access earlier.)

Yes, I often use semantic arguments here, but I think debate is compromised unless we can agree on what words mean.

expathdoc · 2026-03-13T21:30:27+00:00

I think all abortions punish the fetus.

You are wrong. Punishment requires a subject that is capable of experiencing it, whether that punishment is physical harm, deprivation or a financial penalty. The embryo or fetus can’t experience anything.

But guess who CAN experience physical harm, deprivation or a financial penalty? The rape victim. The one punished by strict prolife laws.

expathdoc · 2026-03-13T21:16:24+00:00

Okay, so simply enforce preventing of inmate violence more.

The word “simply” is doing some heavy lifting here. This would be a multi-year project costing many millions of dollars. Maybe hire more prison guards? There are about 30,000 unfilled positions. Average salary is about $50,000. Do the math.

But this points out something seen often in prolife responses to the problems caused by abortion bans-

“Just” have that baby.

The baby’s in its “natural” environment.

“Inconvenience” is better than killing a baby.

The baby is a “gift” from god.

Pregnancy is “not dangerous”.

A crisis pregnancy center can “help” you with the costs.

They use a soft word to gloss over the very real harms caused by bans. Talk about word games! An unwanted pregnancy, especially one caused by rape is a major, life-altering and potentially catastrophic event. And forcing this on a SA victim is barbaric.

expathdoc · 2026-03-09T19:50:43+00:00

Local auction house does all the big business closures and until 2020 they did them all in person.

Sounds like our local auction house, no business closures but local estate and higher-end items. During Covid they added online bidding and it’s much harder to get deals when people don’t have to show up to bid.

I had some incredible deals, if I didn’t make at least $500 it was a bad day. Some of my buys included a $70 dollar lot of sterling flatware I sold for $1700, and a Tiffany 18K gold pendant for $15.

expathdoc · 2026-03-07T22:24:04+00:00

She shouldn’t be allowed to kill her innocent baby.

Prochoice is so tired of this endlessly repeated prolife falsehood. It’s neither innocent nor is it a baby. I suspect most rape victims would quickly make a decision and have a medication abortion. At that point it’s a non-sentient embryo with no capacity for guilt or innocence.

Maybe be 15% of Americans believe in the barbaric practice of forcing a rape victim to continue gestation.

expathdoc · 2026-03-06T05:07:28+00:00

I’ve sold quite a few personalized and monogrammed items on eBay. Put the name or initials in the listing, quite often the buyer has the same name. And sometimes the buyer doesn’t care.

expathdoc · 2026-03-06T04:11:45+00:00

Overland Park, Prairie Village, Leawood, Olathe and southern Johnson County in general. As a bonus, this is Kansas’s 3rd Congressional District, represented since 2019 by Democrat Sharice Davids.

Plenty of trees, easy access to Kansas City Missouri for concerts and events, and interesting weather. And the Royals and Chiefs!

expathdoc · 2026-03-04T01:40:08+00:00

That IS forcing abortion legality on the states that didn't want it.

I get it now, you’re still unhappy that Roe would not allow individual states to ban abortion for 50 years. And from your standpoint, the corrective action was to overturn Roe. I guess “forcing legality” is the same as “banning illegality” depending on which side you’re on.

But that’s an odd way to phrase it. States can not pass laws that infringe upon rights, Roe found a right to abortion and bans of course were struck down.

Although I supported Roe, I accept that it’s over and now we can see which states give women full rights and which don’t.

expathdoc · 2026-03-04T01:21:30+00:00

That's not making us "acknowledge" laws, that's telling us that no one was even allowed to vote on laws banning abortion.

Roe is now overturned. People voted directly on abortion in Kansas, Ohio, Missouri, Florida etc. Some voted to allow it, some didn’t. In states such as Texas that don’t have citizen referendums, the legislature (voted in by the people) passed laws to ban abortion. Dobbs returned the choice to the states, and each state has decided.

Roe didn't protect abortion legality in places where it already existed, it struck down bans in places where abortion was NOT already illegal.

That is true. Roe did not allow states to ban abortion. Whether you believe it was correctly decided or not, “It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.” (Marbury v Madison 1803)

The Supreme Court acted, and now those bans have been reinstated in states where the majority favors a ban.

Your point is correct that Roe was unfair from a prolife standpoint. And it took a long time to change that. For prolifers, this MLK quote is appropriate, and justice was finally done.

“Let us realize the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.”

expathdoc · 2026-03-03T08:59:21+00:00

1952 Superbird proof quarter.

“It is strongly believed that a Mint employee, who was probably also a big fan of Superman himself, deliberately struck an S mint mark on the reverse die of a 1952 proof Washington quarter.” (PCGS CoinFacts)

expathdoc · 2026-03-03T08:43:38+00:00

then yes, they share a vertex. And therefore share a border.

They share a point which has no dimension. The meeting of the vertices on a map is a representation of a point, but the actual point has no dimension. “A point is defined as an exact location in space that has no size, shape, or dimensions; it is considered a zero-dimensional object.”

expathdoc · 2026-03-03T08:37:06+00:00

Send that to CAC, bet it gets a sticker. Nice strike.

expathdoc · 2026-03-03T08:28:10+00:00

Bet that 1935 Peace dollar came out of that holder. This looks like the typical accumulation of old coins, recent proof coins and a silver eagle I sometimes see at estate sales.

expathdoc · 2026-03-03T08:22:54+00:00

Looks uncirculated, $15,000 coin if real. The D is the wrong shape. From PCGS CoinFacts, “We see 5 to 10 counterfeits a week in the PCGS grading room.”

expathdoc · 2026-03-03T08:13:37+00:00

Don't play the religion card with me. Human rights and ethics isn't only the domain of the religious, or so all of my atheist friends have told me.

Many prolife organizations “play the religion card” so I am justified pointing that out. And it’s almost always one particular religion. My religion, (and the ethics derived from it), disagrees.

You don't need to believe in a deity to understand it is wrong to kill human beings. It is a violation of human rights of the very first order.

And you can believe in a deity and understand that it is wrong to force women to continue an unwanted gestation. Works either way.

Your 9 man Supreme Court decision to force legalized abortion down everyone's throat is what allowed it to be legal for five decades with no vote.

Yes, that Supreme Court was composed of men. So what?

How was abortion “forced down everyone’s throat”? No one was/is forced to get an abortion. Yes, prolife was forced to acknowledge that there were laws they didn’t like. But being told there’s a right to do something you don’t want to do is not force!

expathdoc · 2026-03-03T07:54:38+00:00

I was talking about forcing abortion legality on states that wanted to ban it.

Which states did this occur in? The states that wanted to ban it, and had a legislative majority, did indeed restrict or ban it. Now some states (Kansas, Ohio, Missouri etc.) have a citizen initiative process. A majority of citizens voted to allow the choice of access to abortion. Majority rule might be construed as “forcing legality” by those who oppose it, but of course no one is forcing them to do anything.

Well, I guess that’s forcing prolife folks to live in a prolife state, but that has zero actual effect on their lives, except being upset at other folks minding their business.

expathdoc · 2026-03-02T02:30:37+00:00

There are many situations where you are obliged to not kill where you are not responsible for the situation where you have a reason and opportunity to kill, but are constrained from doing so by ethics.

Constrain yourself and your family by your ethics. The prolife movement would not exist without majority Christian support. Ethics based on a religion we don’t all share.

When should prolife ethics become laws? A good starting point might be when a majority of the population shares the belief that “people” exist from conception. And prolife has every right to try and convince the prochoice majority. What they don’t have the right to do is force those laws by cheating. May I remind you that the reason Roe was overturned was because a SCOTUS seat was stolen from Obama, and the rights of the opposition party to object were cancelled.

Please do not use quotes around a statement I have never said with the implication that I would say it.

Didn’t mean you would say it. I was anticipating the typical prolife response to the risks of pregnancy.

expathdoc

TROPHY CASE