[quote]Headhunter wrote:
Why does dependence make someone a rightless creature?
[/quote]
It does not…If it did then we could declare all the people sucking off the government as rightless…
[quote]rotten wrote:
So, what about this.
Consider a woman who has had a child already. She is a loving and good parent. On the next pregnancy, she ends up miscarrying very early on, roughly 8 weeks in. Do you think she would mourn the miscarriage as she would her existing child? Or would she treat it like a heavier menstrual cycle, and merely mourn the idea of what could have been life, but never actually was.[/quote]
Who the fuck knows? Are you her? How does a “feeling” dictate what something is? If I am not sad because someone croaks does that make them less human?
[quote]pookie wrote:
But having a mind is a good point. If we look at the other end of life, it’s the criteria that’s used all the time to decide whether to keep someone on life support or not. When people are in a persistent vegetative state; when their brains, for whatever reason - disease, trauma - has been heavily damaged, decisions are made to end those lives based mostly on that criteria. They are just as emotional and difficult to make too.
If the fetus, higher brain functions appear between the 20th and 27th week. Aborting a fetus in the first trimester is still a hard decision (at least, it should be) and an emotional one, but there can be no awareness from the fetus, no more than there would be from unplugging a motorcycle crash victim who’s helmet saved his life but not his mind.
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This is a misleading comparison. If we knew with a high degree of certainty that the crash victim would develop higher brain functions within a few months, as we do with a fetus, we wouldn’t unplug him/her.
Just like it would be more honest from the pro-choice side to stop arguing as if all abortions are the result of rape and incest. Those arguments are meant to use emotion to trump logic, same as the pro-choice/life labels, but it’s not a fallacy exclusive to one side or the other.
Many people die in traffic accidents and this is something that we generally accept as a fact. It’s still a tragedy for everyone involved, and it doesn’t give you or me the right to push people in front of cars. Preventable tragedies that are intentional aren’t comparable to unfortunate and uncontrollable facts of nature.
I know car accidents aren’t controllable, I just couldn’t think of a better analogy.
[quote]Anonymous Coward wrote:
This is a misleading comparison. If we knew with a high degree of certainty that the crash victim would develop higher brain functions within a few months, as we do with a fetus, we wouldn’t unplug him/her.[/quote]
That is misleading in turn, since keeping the victim plugged in doesn’t require another person to host it; nor is the person, upon getting back his higher functions, thrust upon people who don’t want him in the first place.
The point was to try and establish what criteria gives meaning and value to a “human life” and to show that in some situations, we do consider death to be a possible solution.
I agree. To try and further inflame an already emotional topic leads to nowhere, no matter which side does it.
Your example is a good one, since the proportion of actual rape/incest case is probably similar in percentage to the ratio of late 3rd trimester abortions to early ones.
[quote]Many people die in traffic accidents and this is something that we generally accept as a fact. It’s still a tragedy for everyone involved, and it doesn’t give you or me the right to push people in front of cars. Preventable tragedies that are intentional aren’t comparable to unfortunate and uncontrollable facts of nature.
I know car accidents aren’t controllable, I just couldn’t think of a better analogy.[/quote]
I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make here. Car accidents involve people with functioning minds, persons who actually have a “personality”. A 1st trimester abortion does not. I consider the abortion to be a preventable and avoidable tragedy (ie, using one of the myriads of birth control methods available), but I view it as a lesser evil than having the equivalent number of unwanted children thrust onto uncaring parents and/or put into the state’s charge.
I’d rather support carrying to term and giving up for adoption, but unfortunately, the numbers of parents waiting for adoptions are very small percentage compared to the number of abortions each year. I’d love to be able to support anything else but free access to abortion; but it has to be a realistic solution.
[quote]Headhunter wrote:
RebornTN wrote:
I hate how my posts never get quoted…
There ya go! :>
Abortion and miscarriage are tough issues to tackle. If you can help resolve them, welcome aboard.
I guess I can see some of Lifty’s position, where if a woman got raped or the woman would die for sure if she carries a baby to term (I can rally relate there). Those are and should be very unusual circumstances, to kill an unborn child.
[/quote]
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So you do think an abortion is ok in the case of an ectopic pregnancy or other similar situation, or if it is a child of rape? If yes, see part 2.
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I assume you have a problem with abortion in general from your earlier post because of an “all life is sacred” point of view (your moment of conception post). What makes the life of either an ectopic child, or a child of rape less sacred? I don’t see how you can make an exception to a sacred being based on circumstance, especially in the case of rape where the mother’s life is not in danger wrt birthing complications.
I am not a person of faith however, so I can’t relate to many positions that those who live religiously take on cultural issues. If you could elaborate on why you feel the child is no longer sacred (assuming you believed it to be in the first place) because of the circumstance, I’d love to read it.
[quote]pookie wrote:
Anonymous Coward wrote:
This is a misleading comparison. If we knew with a high degree of certainty that the crash victim would develop higher brain functions within a few months, as we do with a fetus, we wouldn’t unplug him/her.
That is misleading in turn, since keeping the victim plugged in doesn’t require another person to host it; nor is the person, upon getting back his higher functions, thrust upon people who don’t want him in the first place.
[/quote]
A “plugged” in person is helpless and dependent just like a baby. It requires a place to host the equipment and people to care for them. Take a coma victim a toss them in a field with no care from another human…Death will likely be the find.
The point is just because bad things happen that kill people doesn’t give us the right to kill people too. Just 'cause the tsunami kill a bunch of people, that doesn’t mean we can inadvertently drop a nuclear bomb on another bunch. Just because a miscarriage is naturally occurring event, does not mean abortion is a-ok.
A first trimester fetus has all the properties of a human. Not all the features have been “turn-on”, but that doesn’t mean “it” doesn’t have them. Just because you don’t use the fog lights on your car does not mean it does not have fog lights.
[quote]pat wrote:
A “plugged” in person is helpless and dependent just like a baby. It requires a place to host the equipment and people to care for them. Take a coma victim a toss them in a field with no care from another human…Death will likely be the find.[/quote]
My point, allow me to reiterate again, was to illustrate what is often used as a distinguishing characteristic of what makes a human life “valuable”, ie, having a functional brain. A mind.
Of course not, but it shows that those claiming that “life begins at conception” simultaneously with “all life is sacred” need to take it up with God, who’s the worst abortionist in history. The few added percentage points from human decided abortions are a mere blip on the chart.
Basically, they’re holding two conflicting view points simultaneously. If God creates life, then scraps 60% of it arbitrarily, then maybe we’re mistaken when we consider it sacred. Or, maybe “humanity” does not begin at conception, etc. Their views simply cannot be reconciled with what we observe in nature.
That is also true for an ovum separated from a spermatozoid by a rubber barrier. Everything required for a human is right there in those two cells. If the barrier wasn’t there, fertilization would occur and you’d get your fog lights.
Do you oppose birth control?
Why not push the reasoning even further and contend that if you’re in a room with a fertile woman, and you’re not jumping her bones, you’re preventing a potential sacred life from happening. How dare you!?
[quote]pookie wrote:
A first trimester fetus has all the properties of a human. Not all the features have been “turn-on”, but that doesn’t mean “it” doesn’t have them. Just because you don’t use the fog lights on your car does not mean it does not have fog lights.
That is also true for an ovum separated from a spermatozoid by a rubber barrier. Everything required for a human is right there in those two cells. If the barrier wasn’t there, fertilization would occur and you’d get your fog lights.
Do you oppose birth control?
Why not push the reasoning even further and contend that if you’re in a room with a fertile woman, and you’re not jumping her bones, you’re preventing a potential sacred life from happening. How dare you!?
[/quote]
No it does not. The properties do not exists until the two come together. They are not “added” together. When they come together, they become something else that neither the sperm or egg had previously. The whole is greater than the some of it’s parts.
[quote]pat wrote:
No it does not. The properties do not exists until the two come together. They are not “added” together. When they come together, they become something else that neither the sperm or egg had previously. The whole is greater than the some of it’s parts.[/quote]
Er, no. If you watch the entire process under microscope, you’ll notice that at no time is any law of physics violated.
There’s no creation ex nihilo taking place, no magic involved, just a bunch of run-of-the-mill chemical reactions. A lot of them, in an amazingly complex process, but the whole is exactly the sum of both cells, with time and external nutrients added.
I thought you were against obtuse shit being passed on as truth?
[quote]pookie wrote:
Dance? You thrash about like a maggot being fried in hot grease.
[/quote]
Dancing sometimes comes across that way to people who don’t get it.
[quote]pookie wrote:
My point, allow me to reiterate again, was to illustrate what is often used as a distinguishing characteristic of what makes a human life “valuable”, ie, having a functional brain. A mind.
[/quote]
And the comparison holds, because a person in a coma who is considered to have a chance of recovering is not treated as a write-off, but they’re kept plugged in. What we consider valuable in a human life in that case is the capacity to regain a functional brain, which a fetus has to an even greater degree than most crash victims.
There are too many complications and assumptions in this discussion for it to always be clear. Where we really disagree is at what point a fetus becomes a valid human, and none of the issues that stem from that (i.e. the morality of abortion) can possibly be resolved between people who disagree there, if even then.
[quote]Magnate wrote:
Headhunter wrote:
RebornTN wrote:
I hate how my posts never get quoted…
There ya go! :>
Abortion and miscarriage are tough issues to tackle. If you can help resolve them, welcome aboard.
I guess I can see some of Lifty’s position, where if a woman got raped or the woman would die for sure if she carries a baby to term (I can rally relate there). Those are and should be very unusual circumstances, to kill an unborn child.
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So you do think an abortion is ok in the case of an ectopic pregnancy or other similar situation, or if it is a child of rape? If yes, see part 2.
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I assume you have a problem with abortion in general from your earlier post because of an “all life is sacred” point of view (your moment of conception post). What makes the life of either an ectopic child, or a child of rape less sacred? I don’t see how you can make an exception to a sacred being based on circumstance, especially in the case of rape where the mother’s life is not in danger wrt birthing complications.
I am not a person of faith however, so I can’t relate to many positions that those who live religiously take on cultural issues. If you could elaborate on why you feel the child is no longer sacred (assuming you believed it to be in the first place) because of the circumstance, I’d love to read it.[/quote]
It isn’t possible to make a just law allowing abortion. If you say that any child in the womb can be killed arbitrarily, then you’re pronouncing sentence on yourself, when you were inside your mom.
That being said, we should allow for what I call the ‘Ethics of Emergencies’. A rape victim, a pregnancy that is an objectively defined threat to the mother, all these things are exceptions.
Just as we don’t allow someone to shoot others arbitrarily, we cannot have law based on whim and personal desire. It then ceases to be law and becomes some bastard, like majority rule.
[quote]Headhunter wrote:
Magnate wrote:
Headhunter wrote:
RebornTN wrote:
I hate how my posts never get quoted…
There ya go! :>
Abortion and miscarriage are tough issues to tackle. If you can help resolve them, welcome aboard.
I guess I can see some of Lifty’s position, where if a woman got raped or the woman would die for sure if she carries a baby to term (I can rally relate there). Those are and should be very unusual circumstances, to kill an unborn child.
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So you do think an abortion is ok in the case of an ectopic pregnancy or other similar situation, or if it is a child of rape? If yes, see part 2.
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I assume you have a problem with abortion in general from your earlier post because of an “all life is sacred” point of view (your moment of conception post). What makes the life of either an ectopic child, or a child of rape less sacred? I don’t see how you can make an exception to a sacred being based on circumstance, especially in the case of rape where the mother’s life is not in danger wrt birthing complications.
I am not a person of faith however, so I can’t relate to many positions that those who live religiously take on cultural issues. If you could elaborate on why you feel the child is no longer sacred (assuming you believed it to be in the first place) because of the circumstance, I’d love to read it.
It isn’t possible to make a just law allowing abortion. If you say that any child in the womb can be killed arbitrarily, then you’re pronouncing sentence on yourself, when you were inside your mom.
That being said, we should allow for what I call the ‘Ethics of Emergencies’. A rape victim, a pregnancy that is an objectively defined threat to the mother, all these things are exceptions.
[/quote]
I wrote a big reply that when I reread it sounded like I didn’t care that a woman was raped, so I won’t be posting that as I apparently lack the tact to ask the question in a non-douchebag way. Also, what you wrote is something I agree with in large part, I just don’t understand the defining of a rape baby as an emergency if it is not a risky birth.
[quote]Anonymous Coward wrote:
And the comparison holds, because a person in a coma who is considered to have a chance of recovering is not treated as a write-off, but they’re kept plugged in.[/quote]
Well, again I have to disagree. No where did I intend to equate a fetus with an adult in a vegetative state in every way conceivable. The point was to illustrate that life, without mind, is not valued in the same way.
A fetus does not “regain” a functional brain. It has never had one. That’s the point.
At what point do you consider the fetus to be “a valid human?”
[quote]Magnate wrote:
I apparently lack the tact to ask the question in a non-douchebag way.[/quote]
You must be new here.
[quote]pookie wrote:
pat wrote:
No it does not. The properties do not exists until the two come together. They are not “added” together. When they come together, they become something else that neither the sperm or egg had previously. The whole is greater than the some of it’s parts.
Er, no. If you watch the entire process under microscope, you’ll notice that at no time is any law of physics violated.
There’s no creation ex nihilo taking place, no magic involved, just a bunch of run-of-the-mill chemical reactions. A lot of them, in an amazingly complex process, but the whole is exactly the sum of both cells, with time and external nutrients added.
I thought you were against obtuse shit being passed on as truth?
[/quote]
If you have sodium in a glass and chlorine gas in a balloon next to it you do not have salt. Even if you were to pour the sodium in to the balloon you still don’t have salt even though all of salts properties are present. It is the biochemical reaction that makes it what it is. Since most of the sperm is discarded save for the guts, you don’t simply add a sperm to an egg and viola a person! The sperm has to penetrate and the resultant reactions have to take place. If the sperm penetrates the egg and just hangs out and nothing else happens, the two aren’t compatible for some reason, no human life resulted. You all you have is a egg with a tail.
Just 'cause I got a bunch of parts doesn’t mean I have a car.
[quote]pat wrote:
Just 'cause I got a bunch of parts doesn’t mean I have a car.[/quote]
Just because you’ve got a 150 cell embryo, doesn’t mean you’ve got a person.
[quote]pookie wrote:
pat wrote:
Just 'cause I got a bunch of parts doesn’t mean I have a car.
Just because you’ve got a 150 cell embryo, doesn’t mean you’ve got a person.
[/quote]
Yeah it does, it is complete and autonomous. It doesn’t have to look something to be something.
[quote]pat wrote:
pookie wrote:
pat wrote:
Just 'cause I got a bunch of parts doesn’t mean I have a car.
Just because you’ve got a 150 cell embryo, doesn’t mean you’ve got a person.
Yeah it does, it is complete and autonomous. It doesn’t have to look something to be something. [/quote]
It’s not autonomous. If it was, taking it out of the womb wouldn’t kill it.
It certainly isn’t a complete person either. No mind = no personality = no person.
[quote]pookie wrote:
pat wrote:
pookie wrote:
pat wrote:
Just 'cause I got a bunch of parts doesn’t mean I have a car.
Just because you’ve got a 150 cell embryo, doesn’t mean you’ve got a person.
Yeah it does, it is complete and autonomous. It doesn’t have to look something to be something.
It’s not autonomous. If it was, taking it out of the womb wouldn’t kill it.
It certainly isn’t a complete person either. No mind = no personality = no person.
[/quote]
Having a mind doesn’t make you a person. Neither is personality. Those are traits of a person, parts if you will.
It is autonomous in that it is a separate entity. We are autonomous of the earth even though we depend on it…If I dropped your ass on venus, you gonna die, fast.