[quote]EmilyQ wrote:
Pat, I’m going to ask you to refrain from posting photos, please. In return I will do you the courtesy of not posting photographs of brutalized infants and infested, malnourished two-year-olds.
Would that be fair, do you think?
Editing to add that I would like you to edit the photo out of your post. [/quote]
I’ll post what I want and you post what you want. That is also fair.
[quote]Christine wrote:
katzenjammer wrote:
Christine wrote:
pushharder wrote:
OctoberGirl wrote:
…I don’t think anyone has said life isn’t valuable…
The implications by many that all innocent life is not valuable is rife in a debate like this one.
Do you want me to cut and paste?
And I find the lack of compassion to be abhorrent.
^^Are you trying to sound ironic?
It is all perspective.
^^ postmodern escape valve.
Life may be valuable,
You meant to say that life IS valuable, right? Just because that “may” not be true the world over, doesn’t mean that we should abandon this value, does it?
not every life in this world, or in this country even, is given the same value. These inequalities start well before birth. You choose to ignore these inherent inequalities. I do not. All men are not created equal in the world I live in.
So, we should allow mothers to kill the less fortunate off?
Less fortunate are killed off all the time. I just choose reserve my anger and compassion for those who happen to have already been born.
[/quote]
Why the “either/or” approach? Why not “both/and” - anger and compassion towards the entire community of human beings - the unborn, the dead, and the living?
[quote]pat wrote:
EmilyQ wrote:
Pat, I’m going to ask you to refrain from posting photos, please. In return I will do you the courtesy of not posting photographs of brutalized infants and infested, malnourished two-year-olds.
Would that be fair, do you think?
Editing to add that I would like you to edit the photo out of your post.
I’ll post what I want and you post what you want. That is also fair.[/quote]
Winning hearts and minds, do you figure? Or confirming for me that the world isn’t a safe enough place to bring vulnerable, unwanted children into?
[quote]pat wrote:
EmilyQ wrote:
Pat, I’m going to ask you to refrain from posting photos, please. In return I will do you the courtesy of not posting photographs of brutalized infants and infested, malnourished two-year-olds.
Would that be fair, do you think?
Editing to add that I would like you to edit the photo out of your post.
I’ll post what I want and you post what you want. That is also fair.[/quote]
The moderators have deleted your recent picture.
In the future, please refrain from posting such graphic images.
Certainly the conversation can continue productively without including images which may (intentionally or not) offend other members.
[quote]EmilyQ wrote:
Pat, I’m going to ask you to refrain from posting photos, please. In return I will do you the courtesy of not posting photographs of brutalized infants and infested, malnourished two-year-olds.
Would that be fair, do you think?
Editing to add that I would like you to edit the photo out of your post.
Editing again: Thank you.[/quote]
No. The picture, though nasty, illustrates the point…This is what it is. This is what we are talking about…Not a theory, but a person. And this person was killed for no reason.
[quote]EmilyQ wrote:
pat wrote:
EmilyQ wrote:
Pat, I’m going to ask you to refrain from posting photos, please. In return I will do you the courtesy of not posting photographs of brutalized infants and infested, malnourished two-year-olds.
Would that be fair, do you think?
Editing to add that I would like you to edit the photo out of your post.
I’ll post what I want and you post what you want. That is also fair.
Winning hearts and minds, do you figure? Or confirming for me that the world isn’t a safe enough place to bring vulnerable, unwanted children into?[/quote]
No confirming that what you are killing is a child wanted or not.
[quote]EmilyQ wrote:
Pat, I’m going to ask you to refrain from posting photos, please. In return I will do you the courtesy of not posting photographs of brutalized infants and infested, malnourished two-year-olds.
[/quote]
This wouldn’t be offensive, at least to me, for the simple reason that I can honestly say that I feel compassion for those children. And I think something should be done about it.
[quote]EmilyQ wrote:
Pat, I’m going to ask you to refrain from posting photos, please. In return I will do you the courtesy of not posting photographs of brutalized infants and infested, malnourished two-year-olds.
Would that be fair, do you think?
Editing to add that I would like you to edit the photo out of your post.
Editing again: Thank you.[/quote]
Why did it bother you so much?
[quote]Mod Jump’N Jack wrote:
pat wrote:
EmilyQ wrote:
Pat, I’m going to ask you to refrain from posting photos, please. In return I will do you the courtesy of not posting photographs of brutalized infants and infested, malnourished two-year-olds.
Would that be fair, do you think?
Editing to add that I would like you to edit the photo out of your post.
I’ll post what I want and you post what you want. That is also fair.
The moderators have deleted your recent picture.
In the future, please refrain from posting such graphic images.
Certainly the conversation can continue productively without including images which may (intentionally or not) offend other members.[/quote]
Well, it’s kind of hard to find an ungraphic picture of abortion, but perhaps if we dress it up in a tux?
[quote]pat wrote:
EmilyQ wrote:
Pat, I’m going to ask you to refrain from posting photos, please. In return I will do you the courtesy of not posting photographs of brutalized infants and infested, malnourished two-year-olds.
Would that be fair, do you think?
Editing to add that I would like you to edit the photo out of your post.
Editing again: Thank you.
No. The picture, though nasty, illustrates the point…This is what it is. This is what we are talking about…Not a theory, but a person. And this person was killed for no reason. [/quote]
Yes, I mistakenly credited you with having the decency to recognize that you’d escalated past civil discourse and into nastiness. My bad. (Thanks mods!)
To be honest with you, I am not interested in seeing surgically removed matter of any sort. Bloody tissue is not my thing. But yes, the early fetus is more disturbing than the matter removed during liposuction. No one denies that. Or at least, not me.
A Child Protective worker came in to talk to one of my classes in college, a Child Abuse class. She told us about having been the first respondent in an abuse case involving a boiled infant. Personally, I’m not up to looking at that.
Are you, Pat? That was one seriously unwanted kid.
[quote]katzenjammer wrote:
Christine wrote:
katzenjammer wrote:
Christine wrote:
pushharder wrote:
OctoberGirl wrote:
…I don’t think anyone has said life isn’t valuable…
The implications by many that all innocent life is not valuable is rife in a debate like this one.
Do you want me to cut and paste?
And I find the lack of compassion to be abhorrent.
^^Are you trying to sound ironic?
It is all perspective.
^^ postmodern escape valve.
Life may be valuable,
You meant to say that life IS valuable, right? Just because that “may” not be true the world over, doesn’t mean that we should abandon this value, does it?
not every life in this world, or in this country even, is given the same value. These inequalities start well before birth. You choose to ignore these inherent inequalities. I do not. All men are not created equal in the world I live in.
So, we should allow mothers to kill the less fortunate off?
Less fortunate are killed off all the time. I just choose reserve my anger and compassion for those who happen to have already been born.
Why the “either/or” approach? Why not “both/and” - anger and compassion towards the entire community of human beings - the unborn, the dead, and the living? [/quote]
Good question. I just can’t bring myself to the righteous indignation that so many of the pro-lifers exhibit. Maybe I could if there wasn’t so much suffering in the world. Currently, I am just unable to equate the suffering of a fetus to that of a child or person.
The more I read the pro-life posts in this thread, the firmer my conclusion that abortion should remain legal becomes.
[quote]EmilyQ wrote:
pat wrote:
EmilyQ wrote:
Pat, I’m going to ask you to refrain from posting photos, please. In return I will do you the courtesy of not posting photographs of brutalized infants and infested, malnourished two-year-olds.
Would that be fair, do you think?
Editing to add that I would like you to edit the photo out of your post.
Editing again: Thank you.
No. The picture, though nasty, illustrates the point…This is what it is. This is what we are talking about…Not a theory, but a person. And this person was killed for no reason.
Yes, I mistakenly credited you with having the decency to recognize that you’d escalated past civil discourse and into nastiness. My bad. (Thanks mods!)
To be honest with you, I am not interested in seeing surgically removed matter of any sort. Bloody tissue is not my thing. But yes, the early fetus is more disturbing than the matter removed during liposuction. No one denies that. Or at least, not me.
A Child Protective worker came in to talk to one of my classes in college, a Child Abuse class. She told us about having been the first respondent in an abuse case involving a boiled infant. Personally, I’m not up to looking at that.
Are you, Pat? That was one seriously unwanted kid.
[/quote]
What does it matter if it is killed outside the womb or not?
[quote]pat wrote:
What does it matter if it is killed outside the womb or not?
[/quote]
I’ve already addressed that. A number of times.
[quote]EmilyQ wrote:
pat wrote:
What does it matter if it is killed outside the womb or not?
I’ve already addressed that. A number of times.[/quote]
So your conclusion is that it’s ok to kill babies that are unwanted? Sweet!
[quote]Christine wrote:
Good question. I just can’t bring myself to the righteous indignation that so many of the pro-lifers exhibit. Maybe I could if there wasn’t so much suffering in the world. Currently, I am just unable to equate the suffering of a fetus to that of a child or person.
The more I read the pro-life posts in this thread, the firmer my conclusion that abortion should remain legal becomes.
[/quote]
Why, you like being wrong? Is this the only suitable argument you can come up with? Rather than stating that a fetus is not a human because…
There is no righteous indignation as you suggest. It is merly a simple argument. The unborn child is or is not a person. That’s it…All the evidence that I can muster is that the unborn child is a person…If you have good evidence to the contrary then bring it…Accusations of righteous indignation do not lend weight to your argument.
[quote]pat wrote:
Christine wrote:
Good question. I just can’t bring myself to the righteous indignation that so many of the pro-lifers exhibit. Maybe I could if there wasn’t so much suffering in the world. Currently, I am just unable to equate the suffering of a fetus to that of a child or person.
The more I read the pro-life posts in this thread, the firmer my conclusion that abortion should remain legal becomes.
Why, you like being wrong? Is this the only suitable argument you can come up with? Rather than stating that a fetus is not a human because…
There is no righteous indignation as you suggest. It is merly a simple argument. The unborn child is or is not a person. That’s it…All the evidence that I can muster is that the unborn child is a person…If you have good evidence to the contrary then bring it…Accusations of righteous indignation do not lend weight to your argument.[/quote]
Plenty of reason why I don’t equate a the rights of a fetus to that of the born have already been gone through.
Your insistence that yours is the only moral conclusion to be had is what I consider to be righteous indignation.
[quote]pushharder wrote:
pat wrote:
…The unborn child is or is not a person. That’s it…All the evidence that I can muster is that the unborn child is a person…If you have good evidence to the contrary then bring it…
That is the thin ice that the pro abortion bunch must inevitably skate around. It HAS to be avoided at all costs.[/quote]
If pro-abortionists are not prepared to identify the exact moment when the fetus becomes a person, they should probably not be supporting ANY killing of the fetus because it could result in a murder. But then again, they’ve never explained the false dichotomy between the personhood of the fetus and the fact that it already fulfills the requirements for being a biologically-alive human in a certain stage of development.
Would the pro-abortionists kindly identify when the metaphysical shift to personhood takes place? Dave was going to do it, but never got around to it.
Skate around it? Avoid at all costs? WTF? Is this a joke? We’ve tromped right up to it again and again. The answer is NO, the early fetus is not a person.
The picture you posted, Pat? Was not a person. TROMP TROMP TROMP.
I agree with Christine that this only serves to reinforce the despair that leaves me helplessly supporting legal abortion.
[quote]tedro wrote:
Aragorn wrote:
a human life begins at conception. So far as I am aware, there is no alternate scientific explanation. So yes, a fertilized embryo is a human being. Is it a person?
I think we all agree that murder of a person is wrong. The question is how do you define person?
The question of personhood is extremely problematic. It does nothing to develop the debate and at best simply asks questions that are unanswerable.
We can examine Mary Ann Warren’s personhood argument, but even she admits that a being need not possess all five conditions to be determined a person (consciousness, reason, motives, communication, self-awareness), and that it lends itself well to infanticide.
The most obvious problem with this argument is that there is insufficient reason to distinguish between the personhood of a newborn and that of a fetus. The list also seems to exclude the comatose from personhood, as most of these arguments do.
Many abortionists choose to then throw in the brain activity variable, which also does little to further this argument. The biggest limiting factor to measuring neural activity is our own current technology. Furthermore, this argument suggests that it is morally permissible to murder the brain dead.
The other major problem with the personhood argument is that there are many other mammals that meet all the criteria. In many cases these animals fit her definition of personhood better than young children, not just infants. Chimpanzees and dolphins are the best examples.
The personhood argument should then logically conclude that killing a dolphin is as morally wrong as killing a six-year old. Our own intuition tells us that while killing a dolphin is probably not morally permissible, it is surely not equal to killing a six-year old.
This is why the DNA argument is arbitrary. If a dolphin possesses every quality that we consider valuable in a person, sometimes moreso than a person, how can we logically deprive it of the same right to life that we give people?
Thankfully, this whole argument can be avoided. Since by definition killing results in death, we simply must ask ourselves why death is undesireable. The most logical answer is because it deprives us of all future experiences.
A future of value is our most valuable asset. No other loss would be as great as the loss of that future. Killing clearly deprives a being of this future. Therefore, killing is prima facie wrong because it deprives a being of a future like ours.
This argument need not distinguish between the future of an animal or a human. It does raise the question as to whether or not some other beings have a future of value, but it is clear that a chimpanzee or a dolphin does not have a future like ours, whereas a fetus obviously does.
Since we all agree that a fetus or embryo has all of the potential to become a full-fledged human, it can easily be concluded that the future of an embryo is a future sufficiently close to a future like ours. Since the embryo then has a future like ours, killing of the embryo must also be prima facie wrong.
[/quote]
Great post until the last part. The fetus IS a full-fledged human, just in an earlier stage of development. I guess I keep having to repeat this, but if the fetus is provided with food, water, shelter and oxygen, it will develop into a later stage, just as everyone in this discussion will. We will grow to be senior citizens if provided with the same.