Uh, yeah. Historical evidence.
Would you mind providing some? I don’t think there has ever, in America anyway, been any significant number of people that believed black people are not human beings.
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Health of the mother is a no-brainer. Of course, if the pregnancy for whatever reason is endangering the life of the mother than the mother must be protected.
As a matter of pragmatism, in exchange for getting rid of voluntary abortions of convenience, right now I would allow an exception for rape\ incest.
On sociological matters I tend towards a utilitarian view. Let’s get rid of the majority of the abortions and then we will worry about the minority of them.
I do not yet have a good, compassionate solution for the rape\ incest cases. But hopefully, in the future we can come up with a way to preserve the life and relieve the woman of the trauma she sustained.
Why are you trolling me?
Definitely not trolling. I’d just like to see some evidence that black people weren’t considered human beings until after any war in American history.
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Asking pat to provide evidence for his factual assertions is trolling.
No it isn’t and you misuse science in your arguments. No one denies a zygote is human life (human in this case is an adjective); it’s a question of when human life becomes a person. And science does not define personhood.
When Thomas Jefferson was impregnating his (by our standards) underage slave, who was also his sister in law, he thought it was no different than having sex with a goat.
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Well, you beat me to the Thomas Jefferson issue.
I at least will concede to you that it is killing a living organism, but not that it is equal to killing a fully autonomous person.
Maybe the difference is human vs person. I view a person as someone who is conscious, and is having thoughts on their own. Human, in the case of the unborn does not have those traits, so it is different.
If someone killed me in the womb, would I care? I really think I would not. That is the difference in an abortion and a murder (which I sure do care if I am going to be murdered).
You are conflating the legal definition of “person” under the law with “individual biological life”.
Yes, we base our legal definitions on the stage of development that a human life is in. We do not, however, consider them “separate organisms”, or “different biological lives”.
The way these phrases are defined is important, and it’s not semantics. People using one term when they mean another is useless. That’s why I bowed out of the thread months ago.
Technically speaking you are not even “the exact same” as you were yesterday, last hour, or last minute. Some cells have died, others have divided, etc. So talking about “the exact same” is worthless and leads down the road to a philosophical argument as I said before.
That’s fine if you want to have that discussion, but then use the term “person” and not “biological life” or “individual life”. Biologically we accept that we are the same life as we were last month, yesterday, last hour, or last minute.
There were also free blacks at the time.
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Actually, I’m not the one doing that. I’m saying that a (form of) human life is not the same thing as a human being and/or person.
We also don’t consider them the “exact same” biologically because they are not. And it is these differences upon which we define the organism as a human being at one stage and human life in another.
I wasn’t the one who said the exact same and it is a philosophical argument. Also, a zygote won’t always be a zygote but a human being will die a human being.
Again, I’m the one who has been making that point. You have to understand that people like sloth, who watch too many Ben Shapiro videos, purposely use terms like human life and individual human life in order to have their gotcha moment. I have pointed it out to him several times, to pat as well, that they are using human as an adjective. This is why sloth won’t answer the question: is a zygote a human being? He will just keep repeating it’s human life, something no one disputes.
That is exactly the question for me at least. It’s why I said at the start of this whole train wreck that the question of “personhood” is extremely important.
“Human” is biological. Hence “human life” or “killing a human life” has only one definition to me. “Person” is a legal and philosophical construction and that’s where the debate is.
I’m not interested in gotcha stuff around the science. I just want clear terms so that people on all sides understand what is being said.
I am pro life but I understand completely where H Factor is coming from and agree in large part. I also accept the value of pragmatism as well.
That’s all fine and well. However when you use phrases like
You are playing the same gotcha game as Sloth is, only from the other side. Unless you said that in sarcasm or something and I failed to read it in. Biologically we are NEVER the exact same as any past moment. However we are the same organism, the same life, and to say otherwise and use it as a gotcha trick is just pointless.
I already fully accept that we don’t define the legal person the same as the biological organism. As do most, including (I think) Sloth. What I really don’t like is having gotcha games like this played on either end. I just want accurate terminology so that everyone can fight about the real question lol.
Sloth wants the legal definition of person to be the same as the biological definition of individual human life. Ok done, let’s argue about something else.
No. Since I am clearly stating that a human being and human life are not the same thing. This is not a gotcha argument but the response to that argument.
OK. Has anyone denied this?
Not everyone does, hence sloth not answering the question: is a zygote a human being?
That’s the problem. He wants that but won’t construct an argument beyond, it’s human life so obviously you heathens it is a human being.
No gotcha on my end. I simply demanded we all start from an honest view of abortion. It is the premeditated killing of an already existing human life. That’s it. I have flat out pointed out that my position is to change the legal status and view of the unborn human life. I have repeatedly said that if someone acknowledges that it’s the killing of human lives, yet is still comfortable supporting abortion, then there isn’t much else to say that is evidence based. The entire argument against me has been over a very specific position…Abortion is the premeditated killing of an individual human life already existing and traversing its own life cycle. That killing me now or then kills that individual life (organism).
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Personally I feel this is most important. Again I will say that the vast majority of pro-choice people want to see the number of abortions go down. No one thinks it’s an easy thing to go through physically or mentally. People aren’t getting pregnant on purpose so they can experience the thrill of abortion.That’s why the pro-life people I’ve quoted are against punishment for a woman who makes that choice.
Because most people see shooting someone in the head as different than an abortion. The vast majority of people. The vast majority want exceptions for rape and incest. The vast majority want exceptions for the health of the mother. They don’t view her as a murderer. If one wants to argue they are the same it’s fine but again it’s a fringe position.
And pragmatically the discussions and the gotcha type stuff doesn’t really get us anywhere in the real world. In the real world we know the type of things that will decrease the number of abortions regardless of the legality. If both sides would come together and realize that common ground exists on reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies a definite dent would be made on the number of abortions performed. Which we all know are going to take place regardless of the legality. Everyone here understands that making things illegal doesn’t stop them.
The zygotes vs human vs person vs organism or whatever other words we want to trap people with don’t matter like doing things that attack the root of the issue. And that’s unwanted pregnancies. IMO those are best solved through comprehensive sex education, access and knowledge about contraceptives, and not making people feel like piles of shit for using them or telling them they may burn for eternity.
Again I think both sides want the rate of abortions to continue the decline they have shown for decades now. And maybe the decline of this thread!
You do know no one has denied it’s the killing of human life?
You used the terms human life and human lives. You should try to not be inconsistent with the terms you choose.
This is why I prefer to stick with the scientifical type terms and using one term to describe one thing because it eliminates confusion.
The introduction of personhood is to introduce an abstract of which nobody seems to have a quite full definition of. Further that it includes other abstract ideas such as ‘consciousness’. Meaning we have some idea of what these things mean, but we don’t have a complete, consistent definition.
It can be so murky as to whether we can consider human beings, long out of the womb, as persons.
It is why ‘human being’ is a more appropriate term. It has a solid definition not relying on abstract ideas to understand what it is you are talking about.
So, in the case of abortion, the host (mama) and the organism in side her are both autonomous human beings. You can do a DNA test on both host and hostee and get the results of two distinct autonomous human beings.
Whether either are a person, or whether there is consciousness in either are arguable. The fact that there are two human beings present is not.
I dunno about that. There are some crazy people out there. It was a topic I actually discussed with Norma McCorvey (Jane Roe) herself. She told me about a story how she was invited and attended a party (partly in her honor) of pro-choice advocates who were hooting and hollering and proudly shouting about how many abortions they had, complete with T-shirts and signs. It was one of the last events she attended before she ‘switched sides’ and became pro-life. She said that event profoundly negatively affected her and that she was disgusted by some of the behavior she saw by people who revered her as a guest of honor.
Then you have morons like Lena Dunham, who did say she wished she could get pregnant just to have an abortion…
One thing I think is worth reflecting on is that ‘Jane Roe’ spent the rest of her life pro-life and working vigorously to bring abortion to an end. I don’t think people spend enough time reflecting on the profundity of that. That was a big deal…