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Comment by hoelle | Hacker News Reader

You lack diversity of perspective. Abortion is definitely harmful to a human life. (Some) religious conservatives believe gay marriage is harmful to society.

Before reducing everything to partisan politics, try some empathy.

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Abortion rights are predicated on not seeing a fetus as a “human life”. You may not agree with that, but if fetsuses were seen as a human life, then abortions would by definition be homicides.

If it was the only consideration that differentiates between a medical procedure and a homicide, euthanasia or the death penalty wouldn't be legal in some places.

Homicide is legal in certain circumstances -- justifiable homicide (self-defense) or police-involved fatalities. Death penalty is usually defined as the execution of a human offender.

That's my point. If the only legal difference was "a fetus is a human life" that wouldn't be sufficient to consider it homicide. At least that's my impression.

I'm not a legal scholar but the argument seems to be that actions taken by the justice system or the police (death penalty, imprisonment) are legally different than actions done by individual citizens. A woman can go to a doctor and get an abortion without government intervention. A woman cannot execute another human being without government intervention.

I think I understand what you are saying, but it seems to me that's not the point.

I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but what I was responding to is your statement which I read as "the difference between an abortion and homicide is that we don't consider a fetus as an alive human". To which I responded by saying that if it was the only difference, capital punishment, euthanasia and other stuff would be considered homicide too, as the fact that the subject of these procedures is an "alive human" seems insufficient to consider these cases as homicides.

I'm afraid I'm not understanding whether you're telling me I'm right, I'm wrong or arguing another point entirely. Can you please help me understand?

(I hope I don't come across as belligerant or condescending because neither of those is my intention, I'm genuinely trying to understand your point of view and what you're saying. Also, as you may have understood, English is not my native language, so I may be missing something in my reading of your comments)

I believe we're encountering a real-life example of how "naming things is one of the hard problems" :), and for a non-native English speaker, your English is impeccable.

All I'm saying is that the previous commenter [0] was making a tautological error:

> Abortion is definitely harmful to a human life.

When a woman and her doctor commit a legal abortion, they are ostensibly not doing so thinking that the fetus/embryo is a human being. Roe v. Wade argued that "the word 'person,' as used in the 14th Amendment, does not include the unborn" [1].

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16757245

[1] https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/learning/general...

Fetuses are seen as a human life by those who oppose abortion. That's a nuance the parent poster seems not to get.

If you don't understand why POLITICAL_LABEL_X opposes POLITICAL_TOPIC_Y, it's unproductive to assume they're just being hypocrites.

Their values may differ from yours. Maybe try asking them why.

No, I don't think you can conclude that the parent poster doesn't get that nuance. The Supreme Court has ruled on the freedoms for gun rights, as well as abortion and gay marriage. The parent poster could be interpreted as criticizing the hypocrisy for conservatives who believe in Constitutional authority of the court to rule on Constitutional freedoms.

Reading comprehension, friend. They OP stated they don't understand the conservative argument about abortion "since it doesn't hurt others like guns".

They can only hold that view by dismissing the point of view that it does hurt others. By ending a human life. Nothing hypocritical (aka "convenient") about it.

What on earth does constitutional authority have to do with it? Hold the word salad and stick to the meat.

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