[quote]Varqanir wrote:
This is a followup to the running (and persistent) debate over abortion on the Planned Parenthood and Teen Pregnancy thread, and on a few others. I alluded to the question in passing, but I’d like to address it more fully here.
The presumption in the abortion debate is that a human fetus is just as alive and just as human–and therefore as valuable–as an infant, or a child, or an adult.
Let us agree that a fetus is alive. This is self-evident. If it were dead it would not grow. Let us also agree that it is human. It could not be otherwise. Human sperm and human eggs cannot combine to form anything other than a human embryo, which will inevitably become a human infant, unless the process is interrupted by biological, chemical or mechanical means.
So. No arguments so far, correct? A zygote, an embryo, a fetus and an infant are all equivalent in their being alive and human.
[/quote]
Then there’s nothing left to debate. You just outlined how it’s–from zygote to elderly person–the same individual human. The exact same individual human life at every stage you just mentioned. The individual’s life cycle having already begun. There is no debate. Everything else is meant to obscure that the act is one of deliberate, targeted, unjustified homicide.
[quote]Varqanir wrote:
This is a followup to the running (and persistent) debate over abortion on the Planned Parenthood and Teen Pregnancy thread, and on a few others. I alluded to the question in passing, but I’d like to address it more fully here.
The presumption in the abortion debate is that a human fetus is just as alive and just as human–and therefore as valuable–as an infant, or a child, or an adult.
Let us agree that a fetus is alive. This is self-evident. If it were dead it would not grow. Let us also agree that it is human. It could not be otherwise. Human sperm and human eggs cannot combine to form anything other than a human embryo, which will inevitably become a human infant, unless the process is interrupted by biological, chemical or mechanical means.
So. No arguments so far, correct? A zygote, an embryo, a fetus and an infant are all equivalent in their being alive and human.
[/quote]
Then there’s nothing left to debate. You just outlined how it’s–from zygote to elderly person–the same individual human. The exact same individual human life at every stage you just mentioned. The individual’s life cycle having already begun. There is no debate. Everything else is meant to obscure that the act is one of unjustified homicide.
[/quote]
Yes and no.
My intention is to get everyone to agree that it is homocide. Whether or not that homicide is justfiable is where the debate arises. But so far nobody has challenged my basic premise, that a living human embryo is, by definition, a living human. I am merely interested in hearing different people’s opinions on why that human life has value. What’s your opinion?
[quote]Varqanir wrote:
I am merely interested in hearing different people’s opinions on why that human life has value. What’s your opinion?[/quote]
You mean human life, period, don’t you? Since we’re all in agreement that’s an innocent (it’s hardly a murderer) individual human life, we can now back this discussion up to the value of my life, your life…human life.
And since I’m sure nobody will contend that the embryo/fetus is in the middle of a criminal act (it’s exactly where nature dictates), it’s the deliberate taking of an innocent human life (which I’m to understand we all agree it is). Kill me in the womb, or now. You’ve killed the exact same individual organism. The exact same life. The exact same human life/individual.
Right, but you’ve only repeated an oft-repeated tautology: that a human life is valuable because it’s a human life. It would be like bein asked “why is a dollar valuable” and answering “because it’s worth a dollar”.
Right, but you’ve only repeated an oft-repeated tautology: that a human life is valuable because it’s a human life. It would be like bein asked “why is a dollar valuable” and answering “because it’s worth a dollar”.
Tell me why a fetal life, or a child’s life, or my life or yours has objective, intrinsic value, if indeed you believe it does. Or is it, like a dollar, only valuable because everyone generally believes it is?
[quote]Varqanir wrote:
“why is a dollar valuable” and answering “because it’s worth a dollar”.
[/quote]
Not the same. A dollar is worth less today than it was 100 years ago. A human life is still worth more.
[/quote]
A human life today is worth moderately less today than it was than 100 years ago, because there are more humans around now than then. Devaluation and inflation, you know.
My intention is to get everyone to agree that it is homocide. Whether or not that homicide is justfiable is where the debate arises. But so far nobody has challenged my basic premise, that a living human embryo is, by definition, a living human. I am merely interested in hearing different people’s opinions on why that human life has value. What’s your opinion?[/quote]
An observatin for you. People typically have abortions because the child is inconvenient to the parent. Yes, there are exceptions, but the general rationale is “it’s not a good time,” and so aborting the child will improve the circumstance of the parent in some way.
Back in Canan, the Cananites and Amorites liked to throw their children into the belly of a statute that had an oven in the belly, shaped like a horned man/demon on the belief that they would curry favor from the demon and thus improve their circumstance in some way. The name varied of this “god,” but it was usually Moloch or Baal.
Now, are the people who abort children in the hopes that it will improve their circumstance any differnt than those who threw their newborn child into the firey belly of a “god”?
Seems to me, all that has changed is medical science making an earlier sacrifice easier and less messy.
My intention is to get everyone to agree that it is homocide. Whether or not that homicide is justfiable is where the debate arises. But so far nobody has challenged my basic premise, that a living human embryo is, by definition, a living human. I am merely interested in hearing different people’s opinions on why that human life has value. What’s your opinion?[/quote]
An observatin for you. People typically have abortions because the child is inconvenient to the parent. Yes, there are exceptions, but the general rationale is “it’s not a good time,” and so aborting the child will improve the circumstance of the parent in some way.
Back in Canan, the Cananites and Amorites liked to throw their children into the belly of a statute that had an oven in the belly, shaped like a horned man/demon on the belief that they would curry favor from the demon and thus improve their circumstance in some way. The name varied of this “god,” but it was usually Moloch or Baal.
Now, are the people who abort children in the hopes that it will improve their circumstance any differnt than those who threw their newborn child into the firey belly of a “god”?
Seems to me, all that has changed is medical science making an earlier sacrifice easier and less messy.[/quote]
My intention is to get everyone to agree that it is homocide. Whether or not that homicide is justfiable is where the debate arises. But so far nobody has challenged my basic premise, that a living human embryo is, by definition, a living human. I am merely interested in hearing different people’s opinions on why that human life has value. What’s your opinion?[/quote]
An observatin for you. People typically have abortions because the child is inconvenient to the parent. Yes, there are exceptions, but the general rationale is “it’s not a good time,” and so aborting the child will improve the circumstance of the parent in some way.
Back in Canan, the Cananites and Amorites liked to throw their children into the belly of a statute that had an oven in the belly, shaped like a horned man/demon on the belief that they would curry favor from the demon and thus improve their circumstance in some way. The name varied of this “god,” but it was usually Moloch or Baal.
Now, are the people who abort children in the hopes that it will improve their circumstance any differnt than those who threw their newborn child into the firey belly of a “god”?
Seems to me, all that has changed is medical science making an earlier sacrifice easier and less messy.[/quote]
Well, sure. Infanticide has been practiced by all people of all times. The Canaanites just ritualized it, and western science has just technologized it. But the reasons haven’t changed much in the last ten or twenty millennia.
On the subject on the value of life. We constantly accept it to be relative, it has never been absolute. We accept that people die in traffic, still we deem the value of traffic to be too high to be compromised. We provide the infrastructure and the roads so several people can commit suicide in the traffic and some of them prefer to take someone with them.
Almost everyone is allowed to command a couple of tonnes deadly mass at breathtaking speeds. If you drive you have probably noticed, that actually a good deal of people should never be allowed to drive simply because their nervous system is not up for the task. Private motoring should actually be seriously regulated. Still we allow it. All of this is deliberate, it’s not a byproduct. We simply consider the value of high speed traffic to be too high to be questioned.
Not to mention guns, drones, vaccinations and alcohol. We accept collateral damage for a lot of things. We don’t ban them, but try to minimize the losses. And yes, abortions have direct value for the society. They can prevent future problems. The situation in many countries in the world would be very different if their demographic pyramids were more balanced. It’s not nice, but that’s how it is.
Driving, guns, drones, vaccinations and alcohol are not homicides. They may in some if not many cases lead to homicides, sure, but abortion doesn’t sometimes lead to homicide – it always is homicide. From start to finish.[/quote]
How are drone attacks not homicide? If you administer a vaccine to the population knowing that some people are actually going to get killed or seriously disabled because of the vaccine, what is the difference? I do something that facilitates death and I know for certain that it is going to happen and that’s not homicide? Some people are going to take abortion, some take pills, condoms, vasectomies and whatever. Most are happy of the new life.
As I pointed out in the last paragraph, society wants abortions. Society want also about 6-7 percent of people to be unemployed. Lower levels of unemployment cause inflation. Or so goes the theory, it’s not my forte.
Anyhow, my analogies are disturbingly close.
You are not following my line of thought. You are supposed to take the gist and not ponder if I know the difference between abortion and vasectomy. I had an abortion done some 15 years ago, by the way. After that I expect to hear why abortions should be banned, and above all the most important, why that will give the best societal solution.