GWB hates women

[Deckard]

This is what I'm hearing. Someone tell me if this is incorrect...

Someone considers the right of an unborn foetus to live (even) more important than the rights of the mother. Since the consequences of this lead to a detrimental encroachment on the mother's rights/health, this person therefore hates women.

If that interpretation of the argument is incorrect in some way, please point out which words.

Otherwise, no matter how many times I go through it, I just see a poor argument. I mean, you take out some of the emotive stuff... that it's George BUSH!!! That he's a MAN!!!! ... and it seems to me that's the argument you're left with.

So I guess you'd extrapolate the same thing if it was a woman saying what Bush said? That this woman must obviously hate women?

Listen, after reading the link in the first post, I fully share the view that "Bush is a complete bastard" and that "Bush should be showing much more concern for the the woman than the foetus". But that's an opinion, an opinion that's based on my own premise that believing in the potential of a bunch of cells (even) more strongly than in the health and rights of a living breathing human being (woman) is utterly wrong.

Bush almost certainly does not share that premise. His premise is that those cells are as sacred as any other human life, and that removing/aborting them is equivalent to killing. If that's his premise, then quite obviously his conclusion will be different. I have yet to see a single demonstration of how this proves he hates women.

I will absolutely condemn it (and him), but as I said earlier, it's still only evidence of him prioritising x (not "murdering" a foetus) over y (the welfare of the mother), not evidence of him hating y.

You may think it's evidence of him not considering y enough. Again, that's not the same as hating y if he's saying the consequence to x, the foetus, is worse than the consequence to y, the mother.

If he didn't give any credence to x, if he didn't value the life of a foetus, then I think you'd absolutely have a rock solid case that, yes, GWB hates women.

As I said before, it will be easy for people to dismiss this kind of approach to the discussion as just head-up-arse logic nonsense, and for me to sound like some uncaring academic turning real people's lives into a math(s) equation. I happen to think there is some value to testing these things logically, and stripping bare some of the emotive baggage that can cloud an argument. Reason isn't something you just turn on when it works, but turn off when your argument lacks it, and dismiss as unimportant. And resorting to dismissing it all as pedantic, as waffle (as you're doing dubman), is just a cowardly way out.

Let's go out on a hypothetical here... if by some miracle in 100 years time, men can give birth, and a futuristic George Bush makes the same pronouncement about birth control and abortion, will you insist that this officially proves that GWB hates men and women?

Once again, I really don't see any ethical difference in this thread between people. I just see a difference in logic that, combined with this being an emotive subject, is getting people wound up. Which is why I think it's useful to get beneath it.