I edited in: And let’s be honest. Our decreasing crime rate hopes are largely based off of killing the next generation of minorities (especially blacks). Sorry folks, I’m not riding in that bus.
Does it decrease crime? Don’t know. If so, don’t know by how much. It’s not a factor. Stopping crime by deliberately killing innocents isn’t something I’m at all interested in. But who knows, maybe we could develop a profile of characteristics to better kill those that need killing?
[quote]orion wrote:
[quote]Sloth wrote:
[quote]orion wrote:
[quote]Sloth wrote:
And why, oh why, do you people try to make the fetus the equivalent of the braindead? Do you not understand the two very different states of being, and their outcomes? Do you have to sign a “play dumb” agreement when you join the pro-abort movement?[/quote]
Because both are not conscious.
[/quote]
And? We ignore the vast difference in developmental capabilities of the two humans? [/quote]
Yes we do.
[/quote]
Didn’t expect you to admit it. Thanks.
[quote]orion wrote:
Au contraire, I do not think that they have any such right.
[/quote]
Of course you don’t. You’re no longer in any danger of being aborted.
[quote]xfactor3236 wrote:
[quote]Brother Chris wrote:
[quote]xfactor3236 wrote:
[quote]pat wrote:
[quote]therajraj wrote:
From what I’ve read, religion hasn’t done a whole lot to bring the abortion rate down:
Who’s having abortions (religion)?
Women identifying themselves as Protestants obtain 37.4% of all abortions in the U.S.; Catholic women account for 31.3%, Jewish women account for 1.3%, and women with no religious affiliation obtain 23.7% of all abortions. 18% of all abortions are performed on women who identify themselves as “Born-again/Evangelical”.
http://www.abortionno.org/Resources/fastfacts.html
[/quote]
Well that’s because abortion isn’t a religion issue, it’s a life or death issue. Far to often people associate the abortion date with religion, I don’t at all. I submit that if you are against the unjustified killing of human beings, you must also be against abortion for that’s what it is.
I have mat some pro-abortionists who agree it’s murder, but they consider ok to kill these humans and they said as much. It may surprise you that I actually don’t have a beef with these people because they are honest about what it is. Well, I don’t have a beef so long as they don’t actually do it.
For the record, there is only one circumstance for which abortion is acceptable and that is when the life of the mother is in jeopardy.
[/quote]
i agree, there are certainly, extreme situations ragarding mothers life, rape,etc., but as im sure you would agree, you can never really argue a side just on extremes
[/quote]
I can. There is absolutely no occasions that abortion is justified.[/quote]
Even if the mother will die?[/quote]
Nope, there are other operations that can be used that don’t directly and intently abort the child.
Then they’ll die, but at least they’ll have a chance of finding someone like an orphanage or adopted parents to take care of them rather just being killed.
[quote]HIV born babies or other deadly diseases?[/quote] As much as it is sad to see them suffer, they have a right to life just as much as a 30 year old homosexual from San Francisco has a right to life.
[quote]kaaleppi wrote:
What happened to pre-vention? What happened to pills, one of the cornerstones of womens liberation. You have public education about gays and what not, but then nothing about contraception? Maybe abortion for non-medical reasons should be a bit more expensive and preventive methods cheaper. [/quote]
Birth control pills are abortifacient. Go to your local pharmacy, ask them if you can read the paper contents they have in the pill boxes, read the fourth function of the pill. Textbook definition of abortifacient.
Plus, the reason is because with the contraception mind-set, abortion is a safety net. So, if the pills don’t work, they just have it aborted. Second, if people have to pay a lot of money to the clinics the clinics can’t do it in such high volume (they get subsidized by the government).
[quote]Sloth wrote:
[quote]orion wrote:
Au contraire, I do not think that they have any such right.
[/quote]
Of course you don’t. You’re no longer in any danger of being aborted.
[/quote]
When I was, I also did not think that they had any such rights.
Hint: They reason why I did not care then is the reason why I do not care now.
[quote]orion wrote:
Hint: They reason why I did not care then is the reason why I do not care now.[/quote]
Wait, what? You’re a fetus, now? I mean, I’ve long thought your libertarianism infantile. But, fetustile? Is that even a word?
[quote]Brother Chris wrote:
[quote]kaaleppi wrote:
What happened to pre-vention? What happened to pills, one of the cornerstones of womens liberation. You have public education about gays and what not, but then nothing about contraception? Maybe abortion for non-medical reasons should be a bit more expensive and preventive methods cheaper. [/quote]
Birth control pills are abortifacient. Go to your local pharmacy, ask them if you can read the paper contents they have in the pill boxes, read the fourth function of the pill. Textbook definition of abortifacient.
Plus, the reason is because with the contraception mind-set, abortion is a safety net. So, if the pills don’t work, they just have it aborted. Second, if people have to pay a lot of money to the clinics the clinics can’t do it in such high volume (they get subsidized by the government).[/quote]
Precisely, why prolong the inevitable, women should use the pills or abstain from sex if they don’t wan’t to get pregnant, right, pills it is then. If religion forbids them there are still many other options.
[quote]xfactor3236 wrote:
[quote]pat wrote:
[quote]therajraj wrote:
From what I’ve read, religion hasn’t done a whole lot to bring the abortion rate down:
Who’s having abortions (religion)?
Women identifying themselves as Protestants obtain 37.4% of all abortions in the U.S.; Catholic women account for 31.3%, Jewish women account for 1.3%, and women with no religious affiliation obtain 23.7% of all abortions. 18% of all abortions are performed on women who identify themselves as “Born-again/Evangelical”.
http://www.abortionno.org/Resources/fastfacts.html
[/quote]
Well that’s because abortion isn’t a religion issue, it’s a life or death issue. Far to often people associate the abortion date with religion, I don’t at all. I submit that if you are against the unjustified killing of human beings, you must also be against abortion for that’s what it is.
I have mat some pro-abortionists who agree it’s murder, but they consider ok to kill these humans and they said as much. It may surprise you that I actually don’t have a beef with these people because they are honest about what it is. Well, I don’t have a beef so long as they don’t actually do it.
For the record, there is only one circumstance for which abortion is acceptable and that is when the life of the mother is in jeopardy.
[/quote]
i agree, there are certainly, extreme situations ragarding mothers life, rape,etc., but as im sure you would agree, you can never really argue a side just on extremes
[/quote]
Cannot agree with the rape and incest thing thing as horrible as they may be. A life is still a life. I can certainly understand that carrying the child of a rapist is a horrifying thought, but still a life.
The mother’s life being in jeopardy isn’t about abortion being ‘ok’ or green lighting it in anyway shape or form, it’s that mom’s life is no less valuable than child’s life. If it’s a case where one dies or both die, what choice do you really have? Or it’s one or the other, what a terrible choice that would be to make… I have read stories before where mom chooses the child to live…A noble choice. But, then what if she has 4 other kids at home? Again, I hope never have to be in such a position.
[quote]orion wrote:
Unless you believe that human beings have a soul that makes them extra special there really is no reason to equate a fertilized egg with a human being.
So yes, this is a religious issue.
Most Jews for example have a much more relaxed approach when it comes to abortion and embryonic stem cell research but they also have clear instructions in their religious texts that an embryo is not a full person.
[/quote]
It’s a religious issue in as much as the 5th commandment states, ‘Thou shall not kill’. But if you believe killing is wrong, the abortion must also be wrong as you are willfully killing a human being.
“…they also have clear instructions in their religious texts that an embryo is not a full person.” Oh? Please provide a link or some sort of evidence to this being true. Not saying it’s not, just saying I have never heard of such a thing. So I’d like some references.
See below:
“As a general rule, abortion in Judaism is permitted only if there is a direct threat to the life of the mother by carrying the fetus to term or through the act of childbirth.”
Dear Stronghold,
On the topic of Roe v. Wade, my point is still clear. There is no ‘too late’ for abortion in the United States, which allows abortion in all nine months.
Although, some of your comments add up to ad hominem attacks, such as this comment by you, “you’re a largely hypocritical imbecile who thinks far too highly of his intellectual abilities.” I am not quite entirely sure where you got this since I don’t find myself intelligent. I figure it is projection of yourself onto me, as if anything I have said my intellect is not very strong. Though, the first part of the comment is my actual interest in how I am a hypocritical imbecile.
Your accusations that I do not care about the endangering of women because if I did I “you wouldn’t be against…abortions in situations where the pregnant woman’s life is in jeopardy if she carries the fetus to term” is unfounded. Not only do you not prove your premise, it is entirely false. Probably because you do not have evidence for your premise.
My understanding of the situation is that not only the baby but the mother should be protected, but neither at the expense of the other person. You can’t save one person by killing another. However, if you wish to understand how you go about this, I would research the principle of double-effect. I’ll take cancer for an example, if a woman has a cancerous uterous and she is found to be pregnant. She can have chemotherapy if she wishes, which will certainly kill the baby, but the chemotherapy isn’t used to kill the unborn child it is used to help the mother, the unborn child being killed is a double-effect. So, no I do not put the life of the baby over the mother’s life, I put it at equal dignity.
To that of your accusations that these clinics lied. Do you have some proof that these clinics activily lied? As in they said they performed abortions there, but actually didn’t? I do not have any evidence of this.
What this situation seems to be is that politicians have found it confusing (what a surprise) between the two buildings and are requiring one of them to advertise what they DO NOT DO and requring them to refer clients to abortion clinics. That is equivalent to demanding a dentist advertising he DOES NOT give prostate checks and making him refer an internalist.
Yes to your statement about every ball of cells with human DNA, being human. And, yes to every intentional mistruth being a lie. However, this doesn’t seem to be the case. It looks like someone is upset that someone dare put a pregnancy clinic on their block. There is no evidence that I have seen saying these clinics do anything deceiving except post up on the same block as an abortion clinic, that’s not really deceiving that’s called stealing business. Now if they are advertising they give abortions, I demand they stop.
I have no problem with someone being stopped from advertising something they don’t do, but nothing has been said that is what they are doing. The basic argument that I have seen is this:
Two buildings on the same street that look similiar, that both have the word ‘clinic’ in the name probably, the similiarity of external parts of these two different businesses is confusing who…politicians. And, the politicians want it to stop. I do not see much complaining from anyone except politicians and no actual evidence of deceiving is presented, well except for they are located near each other.
If abortion doesn’t go against pregancy, then what does abortion eliminate? The kidneys? [NB: on your comment about pregnancy being just a biological process, please explain to a pregnant mother or a non-pregnant mother that it was just a biological process and there was nothing special.]
Please don’t derail my thread that is based on Natural Law just because you don’t like that I am Catholic and I know your private interpretations of scripture is fallible. If you wish to start a NEW thread about abortion arguing from the point of my religion, then please go and start one (I will gladly join in the discussion), but keep it out of here. I would like to just argue with Natural moral Law and reason in this thread as I find it interesting.
I am,
Chris IV
[quote]Sloth wrote:
[quote]orion wrote:
… there really is no reason to equate a fertilized egg with a human being.
[/quote]
Why not? It’s the same individual organism. That’s a scientific fact.
[/quote]
It is also a fact that you cannot replicate the organism ever again if destroyed. The fact is that there is no break in the life cycle of a human between conception and death. There are many stages of development, but one is not more or less human depending on which stage in the life cycle you are. All stages are necessary for human development.
The use the clump of cells theory is to say that clump of cells is easily replicatable and that one graduates to unique humanness at a particular stage. This is factually bunk.
A human individual is produced when two haploid(half a set of chromosomes) gametes(one male and one female) merge into one diploid(double/full set) syngamate(zygote). This single cell operates a metabolism that utilizes both analog and digital types of communication to adapt to the surrounding stimuli, to grow, and to replicate.
This is the very same system that human individuals in ANY stage of life utilize to achieve the same ends.
The distinction between “conscious” and “unconscious” individuals is an arbitrary one.
More specifically, there is no falsifiable test for whether an individual is human or not except genetic identity.
Any test of brain function or consciousness in a born human individual that disqualifies all other species also disqualifies many other born human individuals. Any test of brain function or consciousness in a born human individual that does not disqualify any born humans doesn’t disqualify any unborn human individuals.
An argument that proposes that a living human individual doesn’t gain the right to life until it passes a test of criterion for brain function is as absurd as an argument that proposes a human individual loses its right to life when it fails such a test.
@Orion: As someone who associates themselves as a libertarian, you make arguments inconsistent with the principal that your right to life comes from your humanity. By definition, two humans can’t conceive anything else except another unique human organism. At that moment it gains the right to life.
I’d also like to say that I personally don’t qualify human rights on the basis of the canon of religion or faith in origin. I found my arguments on the origin of human rights on the model of species and human identity that is currently supported the most by evidence that can be observed, tested, recreated, and falsified.
This is also why I have no contention with people who claim these same rights are god-given.
I only have a contention with people who claim that rights that come from a person’s humanity(god-given or otherwise) should/can be circumvented because of the GROUP(religious, cultural, political, ideological, etc…) they are associated with.
[quote]kaaleppi wrote:
[quote]Brother Chris wrote:
[quote]kaaleppi wrote:
What happened to pre-vention? What happened to pills, one of the cornerstones of womens liberation. You have public education about gays and what not, but then nothing about contraception? Maybe abortion for non-medical reasons should be a bit more expensive and preventive methods cheaper. [/quote]
Birth control pills are abortifacient. Go to your local pharmacy, ask them if you can read the paper contents they have in the pill boxes, read the fourth function of the pill. Textbook definition of abortifacient.
Plus, the reason is because with the contraception mind-set, abortion is a safety net. So, if the pills don’t work, they just have it aborted. Second, if people have to pay a lot of money to the clinics the clinics can’t do it in such high volume (they get subsidized by the government).[/quote]
Precisely, why prolong the inevitable, women should use the pills or abstain from sex if they don’t wan’t to get pregnant, right, pills it is then. If religion forbids them there are still many other options.[/quote]
I think you read passed my statement, ‘pills are abortifacient’ meaning pills cause abortions.
I need to share a story pat :o ] A friend at school from Brazil has an interesting tale I would like to write.
My fiend Adriano, his mother was told she would die is she carried her pregnancy to full term. She was horrified and went to another Dr to get his opinion. She was devastated when he told her the exact same thing. However she respected the life of the child, given as a gift to all women who are pregnant. She refused to have an abortion, supposedly it would have saved her life. Fast forward thirty two years and guess what? Adriano is an amazing man married and living happily today. He is bilingual while working two jobs all while attending school full time. Should we abort everyone a Dr says is a ‘risk to the mother or even society’? How many people do you know who contribute to society after being aborted?
[quote]pat wrote:
Cannot agree with the rape and incest thing thing as horrible as they may be. A life is still a life. I can certainly understand that carrying the child of a rapist is a horrifying thought, but still a life.
The mother’s life being in jeopardy isn’t about abortion being ‘ok’ or green lighting it in anyway shape or form, it’s that mom’s life is no less valuable than child’s life. If it’s a case where one dies or both die, what choice do you really have? Or it’s one or the other, what a terrible choice that would be to make… I have read stories before where mom chooses the child to live…A noble choice. But, then what if she has 4 other kids at home? Again, I hope never have to be in such a position.[/quote]
[quote]orion wrote:
Maybe, but so is a braindead person.
In the end a human being is more than a mere lump of cells with human DNA.[/quote]
No, that’s all a person is, a clump of cells with human DNA. A brain dead person is as dead as a heart dead person or when any other vital organ ceases working.
[quote]therajraj wrote:
I think I know what you guys are going to say but I’ll ask anyway.
What are your thoughts on Economist Stephen Levitt linking the legalization of abortion to the decrease in crime rates over the years?
^ It’s long but skip to the conclusion at the end.[/quote]
Why stop there? The more people you kill the fewer crimes will be committed. So like, why don’t we nuke most of the world? That should drop the crime rates…
May be the dumbest pro-abortion argument I have ever heard.
[quote]orion wrote:
[quote]Sloth wrote:
[quote]orion wrote:
That completely ignores the existence of emerging patterns like consciousness.
[/quote]
Consciousness is also the result of a lump of cells. That is all human beings are. An individual organism, a lump of cells, with human DNA. The Orion fetus is the SAME INDIVIDUAL organism as the libertarian Orion adult poking away at his keyboard today. There is no switch-a-roo at some point in the pregnancy, swapping out some placeholder organism for the Orion organism. Pro-aborts and their silly superstitions…[/quote]
Maybe so, but just because a lump of cells might develop consciousness it does not change that it has not done so yet.[/quote]
So if a rock has consciousness, is it human?
Consciousness is one element of humanness, it’s not all of it. If someone goes in to a coma, or passes out drunk, they are not temporarily not human.
[quote]Brother Chris wrote:
Dear Stronghold,
On the topic of Roe v. Wade, my point is still clear. There is no ‘too late’ for abortion in the United States, which allows abortion in all nine months.
[/quote]
Taken from Wikipedia where citations exist on the text:
“The United States Supreme Court decisions on abortion, including Roe v. Wade, allow states to impose more restrictions on post-viability abortions than during the earlier stages of pregnancy.
As of April 2007, 36 states had bans on late-term abortions that were not facially unconstitutional (i.e. banning all abortions) or enjoined by court order.[15] In addition, the Supreme Court in the case of Gonzales v. Carhart ruled that Congress may ban certain late-term abortion techniques, “both previability and postviability”.
All[16] of the 36 state bans are believed by pro-choice organizations to be unconstitutional.[17][18] The Supreme Court has held that bans must include exceptions for threats to the woman’s life, physical health, and mental health, but four states allow late-term abortions only when the woman’s life is at risk; four allow them when the woman’s life or physical health is at risk, but use a definition of health that pro-choice organizations believe is impermissibly narrow.[15] Assuming that one of these state bans is constitutionally flawed, then that does not necessarily mean that the entire ban would be struck down: “invalidating the statute entirely is not always necessary or justified, for lower courts may be able to render narrower declaratory and injunctive relief.”[19]
Also, 13 states prohibit abortion after a certain number of weeks’ gestation (usually 24 weeks).[15] The U.S. Supreme Court held in Webster v. Reproductive Health Services that a statute may create “a presumption of viability” after a certain number of weeks, in which case the physician must be given an opportunity to rebut the presumption by performing tests.[20] Therefore, those 13 states must provide that opportunity. Because this provision is not explicitly written into these 13 laws, as it was in the Missouri law examined in Webster, pro-choice organizations believe that such a state law is unconstitutional, but only “to the extent that it prohibits pre-viability abortions”.[17]
Ten states require a second physician to approve.[15] The U.S. Supreme Court struck down a requirement of “confirmation by two other physicians” (rather than one other physician) because “acquiescence by co-practitioners has no rational connection with a patient’s needs and unduly infringes on the physician’s right to practice”.[21] Pro-choice organizations such as the Guttmacher Institute therefore interpret some of these state laws to be unconstitutional, based on these and other Supreme Court rulings, at least to the extent that these state laws require approval of a second or third physician.[15]
Nine states have laws that require a second physician to be present during late-term abortion procedures in order to treat a fetus if born alive.[15] The Court has held that a doctor’s right to practice is not infringed by requiring a second physician to be present at abortions performed after viability in order to assist in saving the life of the fetus.[22]”
[quote]pat wrote:
[quote]therajraj wrote:
I think I know what you guys are going to say but I’ll ask anyway.
What are your thoughts on Economist Stephen Levitt linking the legalization of abortion to the decrease in crime rates over the years?
^ It’s long but skip to the conclusion at the end.[/quote]
Why stop there? The more people you kill the fewer crimes will be committed. So like, why don’t we nuke most of the world? That should drop the crime rates…
May be the dumbest pro-abortion argument I have ever heard.[/quote]
Reductio ad absurdum - look it up