Abortion Debate?

[PRCalDude]

“If we�??re talking about life in the biological sense, eggs are alive, sperm are alive. Cancer tumors are alive. For me, what matters is this: When does it have the moral status of a human being? When does it have some kind of awareness of its surroundings? When it can feel pain, for example, because that�??s one of the most brute kinds of awareness there could be. And that happens, interestingly enough, just around the time of viability. It certainly doesn�??t happen with an embryo.”"

And this is more of the false dichotomy blazindave described.

Biologically speaking, the sperm and eggs aren’t alive, because they don’t reproduce or grow.

This ethicist is also using a temporary stage of human development as a moral basis for declaring it alive or not, when we wouldn’t do the same for a person who’s temporarily unconscious or in a coma, yet meets the criteria she describes (lack of pain sensation, awareness, etc). She wants it both ways.

The “viability” argument is also bogus, because even the delivered baby is “unviable” without its mother’s care. This is true even up through much of early childhood. There isn’t any moral high ground to be obtained by basing arguments on viability in utero or ex utero.

[pat]

[quote]PRCalDude wrote:
“If we�??re talking about life in the biological sense, eggs are alive, sperm are alive. Cancer tumors are alive. For me, what matters is this: When does it have the moral status of a human being? When does it have some kind of awareness of its surroundings? When it can feel pain, for example, because that�??s one of the most brute kinds of awareness there could be. And that happens, interestingly enough, just around the time of viability. It certainly doesn�??t happen with an embryo.”"

And this is more of the false dichotomy blazindave described.

Biologically speaking, the sperm and eggs aren’t alive, because they don’t reproduce or grow.

This ethicist is also using a temporary stage of human development as a moral basis for declaring it alive or not, when we wouldn’t do the same for a person who’s temporarily unconscious or in a coma, yet meets the criteria she describes (lack of pain sensation, awareness, etc). She wants it both ways.

The “viability” argument is also bogus, because even the delivered baby is “unviable” without its mother’s care. This is true even up through much of early childhood. There isn’t any moral high ground to be obtained by basing arguments on viability in utero or ex utero. [/quote]

Well that stuff is alive in that it is living tissue. But those tissues, cell and otherwise are not a total person, but a part of a person. A person is greater than the sum of it’s parts. You can assemble all the parts of a person together with living tissues but a person you will not make.

[Christine]

[quote]pushharder wrote:
Christine wrote:
pushharder wrote:

That’s fine. Then look at it from a scientific and ethical standpoint. Leave religion out of it and rationally ponder.

Are you implying that because I come to a different conclusion than you I have not rationally pondered the issue? The rights, if any, of an embryo is not equivalent to the rights of a person.

I didn’t imply any such thing. You played the religion card and I said, “Fine, look at it strictly from an ethical and scientific standpoint.”

As far as your last statement above, you can’t just issue a fiat about embryos and their equivalency to persons without backing it up with rational argument. You don’t score points in a debate by being dictatorial.

[/quote]

I’m being dictatorial? I’m unwilling to sacrifice the individual to the State and I’m the one being dictatorial?

If we choose to consider abortion murder, then it would have to be illegal in any and all circumstances, including rape and incest. Miscarriages would have to be investigated as murder. I believe that this would eventually have the effect of all the reproductive rights of woman being turned over to the State.

You want me to make an argument that a fertilized egg does not have the same rights a full term infant? I guess in absence of religion, I don’t understand how anyone could equate the two. The chance that science might someday in the future find conclusive evidence that the fertilized egg is the same in all respects as a newborn infant is not a good enough argument to dissuade me.

[malonetd]

[quote]pat wrote:
You can assemble all the parts of a person together with living tissues but a person you will not make. [/quote]

Tell that to these guys.

[Neuromancer]

[quote]Christine wrote:
pushharder wrote:
Christine wrote:
pushharder wrote:

That’s fine. Then look at it from a scientific and ethical standpoint. Leave religion out of it and rationally ponder.

Are you implying that because I come to a different conclusion than you I have not rationally pondered the issue? The rights, if any, of an embryo is not equivalent to the rights of a person.

I didn’t imply any such thing. You played the religion card and I said, “Fine, look at it strictly from an ethical and scientific standpoint.”

As far as your last statement above, you can’t just issue a fiat about embryos and their equivalency to persons without backing it up with rational argument. You don’t score points in a debate by being dictatorial.

I’m being dictatorial? I’m unwilling to sacrifice the individual to the State and I’m the one being dictatorial?

If we choose to consider abortion murder, then it would have to be illegal in any and all circumstances, including rape and incest. Miscarriages would have to be investigated as murder. I believe that this would eventually have the effect of all the reproductive rights of woman being turned over to the State.

You want me to make an argument that a fertilized egg does not have the same rights a full term infant? I guess in absence of religion, I don’t understand how anyone could equate the two. The chance that science might someday in the future find conclusive evidence that the fertilized egg is the same in all respects as a newborn infant is not a good enough argument to dissuade me.

[/quote]

I agree.How does an in vitro fertilized embryo,while it is in a petri dish awaiting transfer rank?

Is it a human?If the petri dish is dropped,does it then warrant some kind of criminal liability?

Personally ,I don’t think the in vitro embryo can in any way,shape or form be considered a person.

[Christine]

[quote]pat wrote:
A person is greater than the sum of it’s parts. You can assemble all the parts of a person together with living tissues but a person you will not make. [/quote]

I completely agree.

[PRCalDude]

[quote]pat wrote:
PRCalDude wrote:
“If we�??re talking about life in the biological sense, eggs are alive, sperm are alive. Cancer tumors are alive. For me, what matters is this: When does it have the moral status of a human being? When does it have some kind of awareness of its surroundings? When it can feel pain, for example, because that�??s one of the most brute kinds of awareness there could be. And that happens, interestingly enough, just around the time of viability. It certainly doesn�??t happen with an embryo.”"

And this is more of the false dichotomy blazindave described.

Biologically speaking, the sperm and eggs aren’t alive, because they don’t reproduce or grow.

This ethicist is also using a temporary stage of human development as a moral basis for declaring it alive or not, when we wouldn’t do the same for a person who’s temporarily unconscious or in a coma, yet meets the criteria she describes (lack of pain sensation, awareness, etc). She wants it both ways.

The “viability” argument is also bogus, because even the delivered baby is “unviable” without its mother’s care. This is true even up through much of early childhood. There isn’t any moral high ground to be obtained by basing arguments on viability in utero or ex utero.

Well that stuff is alive in that it is living tissue. But those tissues, cell and otherwise are not a total person, but a part of a person. A person is greater than the sum of it’s parts. You can assemble all the parts of a person together with living tissues but a person you will not make. [/quote]

If provided with food, water, oxygen and shelter, it will grow into a human at a later stage of development, just as you will grow into an old man if provided with the same. It already contains everything it needs, biologically speaking, to grow into a baby, adult, and an old person, aside from the basic needs everyone else requires (food, water, shelter and oxygen). You’re creating a dichotomy between the person and the organism. The person IS the organism and vice versa.

[Varqanir]

[quote]pushharder wrote:
Varq, the argument was never sublime and never ridiculous. (Only the animal comparisons drifted towards ridiculous)[/quote]

Ha! Entirely intentional on my part.

I do appreciate your response. However, my intent was not to be clever and trap you as you suggested but simply to illustrate my point. Accusing me of being clever misses the point.

It wasn’t an accusation. It was an accolade for a well-played move.[quote]

You spent a lot of time and eloquent verbiage in your reply but I don’t think you adequately addressed my analogy.
[/quote]

Causing me now to wonder if any response that disagreed with your position could ever adequately address your analogy.

That’s OK, when you stop in Whitefish to visit me we’ll just have to arm wrestle over it. Deal?

Deal! If you win, I will concede that one fetus equals one black slave. If I win, you have to admit that it does not.

After that, we can settle the equally burning and pertinent question of “Biel vs. Alba” with a game of Scrabble or Trivial Pursuit, your choice.

[Christine]

[quote]Varqanir wrote:
After that, we can settle the equally burning and pertinent question of “Biel vs. Alba” with a game of Scrabble or Trivial Pursuit, your choice.
[/quote]

You guys make it naked Twister and I am so there!

[EmilyQ]

[quote]pat wrote:
EmilyQ wrote:
Having said that, I will admit that I have some concern that my tentative support of abortion will one day seem morally repugnant, if not to myself because I am dead, then perhaps to others.

Nevertheless, it is the best I can do at this moment. I’ve worked with teen parents in the past, who stared at me blankly over the simplest, most basic bits of parenting advice. They’re rearing kids who’ll be societal headaches before too long. I know this because I currently work with the 7 & up set. My caseload consists mostly of young teens. They’re big now, and getting into trouble.

I read T-Nation, and the game I see being played by way too many of the teen boys makes me glad the girls aren’t going to be trapped if they become pregnant. After young David D’Angelo scores with her, raw dog, she can still have a life.

Unless our society undergoes a radical change, abortion is a necessary evil. You are mostly on the side, I suspect, of policies that create this necessity.

Bullshit. I thought we we leaving “feelings” out of the debate. The way a baby is brought into being does not change the fact that they are people who should not be killed simply because somebody fucked up and decided they didn’t want them there.
Abortion is an unnecessary evil who has no place in any society anywhere ever. It is one of the purest forms of evil in fact for the person having the abortion is doing it out of pure selfishness and the victim is as purely innocent as can be. [/quote]

Pat, my point wasn’t that I sympathize with parents not wanting children, but rather that we currently have more unnecessary evils in our society than we can adequately address. Evil is an abused nine-month-old. Evil prostitutes itself for crack money and then watches its toddler go hungry. Evil is poverty and greed and drug abuse. Evil is as subtle as boys who want to get laid badly enough that they’ll put on beer goggles to fuck fat, ugly chicks whose calls they’ll never take, much less whose child they’ll raise.

Evil, too, are unwanted fetuses and the elimination of same. But that’s the world we live in. Maybe it’s all happy and safe in the neonatal nursery in your town, but where children die of neglect because they need more than just WIC-funded formula, things are a little strained.

A lot of things are unnecessary evils. Shall we outlaw them?

[EmilyQ]

[quote]pushharder wrote:
EmilyQ wrote:
…You are mostly on the side, I suspect, of policies that create this necessity.

Never had you pegged as a cheap shot artist before now. To do so reveals that you are as emotionally invested in this debate as any so called right wing crazy.

You go use the search function and find any posts I’ve made advocating teen age sex. You’d better have plenty of caffeine in you.[/quote]

Of course I’m emotionally invested. But I try not to argue badly because of it. I don’t think I took a cheap shot. I’ve seen you counsel kids against early sex. I’m not suggesting otherwise. It’s my understanding that you are socially liberal while at the same time being fiscally conservative. Am I wrong?

My point is that unless we return to policies that either bring a return of sexual repression to stop unwanted (unmarried) pregnancy or that take us closer to socialism (a repeal of the two year welfare cap, for instance), ending abortion isn’t practical.

It wasn’t an attack on you.

[skor]

[quote]EmilyQ wrote:
My point is that unless we return to policies that either bring a return of sexual repression to stop unwanted (unmarried) pregnancy or that take us closer to socialism (a repeal of the two year welfare cap, for instance), ending abortion isn’t practical.

It wasn’t an attack on you.[/quote]

Or we can move forward and give excellent sex education to teenagers. That will make abortion much less needed.

You are correct about the fact that those who are against abortion should be ok with welfare for state’s monetary support of all children in need.

[EmilyQ]

This is a policy thread, isn’t it? I mean, when men gather to talk about issues, it’s more than just throwing emotionally charged jabs at one another, right? ('Cause that’s how the women do it. All emotion, all the time!)

So sarcasm and attacks aside, Push, what, if any, policy change/s would you support if abortion were to be outlawed? Or do you think that the legality of abortion is the only issue on the table with regard to these potential humans?

One (relatively) small policy change I would like to see implemented that I think would help support the change would be to end compulsory high school and bring back apprenticeships. Many teenagers are moldering in high schools, bored and resentful, treated like truculent children and ultimately acting like them. Give them a trade and let them be purposeful and thrive. Irresponsible sex and drugs lose appeal to people who are busy and engaged. Life becomes more meaningful in every way. At age 18, instead of emerging with a D+ average and no clearer goal than “Christ, no more school,” the apprentice would have a valuable trade to ply. Welcome to adulthood.

Another change would be to address the fringe economy. This one is more complicated. Poor people pay more for everything. They pay $25 to cash their paychecks at the corner store, they pay 50% interest on small loans at the pawn shop, they pay 20% interest on used cars that are falling apart and then remain eternally upside-down in their loans because the cars don’t last as long as the debt. Pay-by-the-week hotels and apartments, inhabited by people who can’t cobble together downpayments, are exorbitantly priced. For the same monthly rent people could be living in one of the gated communities single professionals enjoy. But of course, they don’t have first-and-last month’s rent and wouldn’t know where to go with it if they did because they’re entirely local in their orientation.

The complication comes because what legitimate business wants to operate in the barrio/ghetto/trailer park? So the free market births “The House of Usury” and it can charge whatever it wants. Which, okay, I’m a free market girl married to an industrialist guy, but it keeps people perpetually poor and that has ramifications for everyone, one of which is governmental support for abortion.

Sex ed would doubtless help, but I’m not sure how much. Other countries have success with it, but there are other differences. Sweden and the Netherlands, with their low teen pregnancy rates, are sexually permissive and strongly pro-sexual education, but they’re also socialistic societies with very little cultural diversity.

[pat]

[quote]EmilyQ wrote:

Pat, my point wasn’t that I sympathize with parents not wanting children, but rather that we currently have more unnecessary evils in our society than we can adequately address. Evil is an abused nine-month-old.

Evil prostitutes itself for crack money and then watches its toddler go hungry. Evil is poverty and greed and drug abuse. Evil is as subtle as boys who want to get laid badly enough that they’ll put on beer goggles to fuck fat, ugly chicks whose calls they’ll never take, much less whose child they’ll raise.

Evil, too, are unwanted fetuses and the elimination of same. But that’s the world we live in. Maybe it’s all happy and safe in the neonatal nursery in your town, but where children die of neglect because they need more than just WIC-funded formula, things are a little strained.

A lot of things are unnecessary evils. Shall we outlaw them?[/quote]

A lot of that stuff you mentioned is already illegal, but none of them as bad as murder. But I do give weight to numbers and perhaps if there were fewer abortions then I would give the matter less weight.

But 1.2 million is a number I cannot ignore. If a disease killed 1.2 million people in a year in a single country it would be pandemic, if a flood killed 1.2 million people in a year it would be a tragedy of unmatched proprtions, but killing 1.2 million a year babies is simply called a choice and a right. I think that is just plain sick.

[pat]

[quote]pushharder wrote:
EmilyQ wrote:
pushharder wrote:
EmilyQ wrote:
…You are mostly on the side, I suspect, of policies that create this necessity.

Never had you pegged as a cheap shot artist before now. To do so reveals that you are as emotionally invested in this debate as any so called right wing crazy.

You go use the search function and find any posts I’ve made advocating teen age sex. You’d better have plenty of caffeine in you.

Of course I’m emotionally invested. But I try not to argue badly because of it. I don’t think I took a cheap shot. I’ve seen you counsel kids against early sex. I’m not suggesting otherwise. It’s my understanding that you are socially liberal while at the same time being fiscally conservative. Am I wrong?

My point is that unless we return to policies that either bring a return of sexual repression to stop unwanted (unmarried) pregnancy or that take us closer to socialism (a repeal of the two year welfare cap, for instance), ending abortion isn’t practical.

It wasn’t an attack on you.

It appears I might have misunderstood you. If so, I’m sorry.

If you are wishing to classify my political leanings I would advise you to put me in the box labeled, “Purty much conservative across the board both socially and fiscally with a strong libertarian bent otherwise known as a strict constitutional constructionist.”

[/quote]

And I am a Jeffersonian, off the charts libertarian whacko.