Abortion

[Kelly of the Phoenix]

If you lived in one of those cultures, would you be this blase' about a parent killing his or her...oh...eight year old?

Probably, 'cause I'd be from that culture?

We still have plenty of people who see nothing unethical for what Abraham almost did to his kid, after all.

Black people weren't considered persons for most of our history.

There's a big difference between being a jerk and calling a slave a non-person (though that didn't stop Massah from sleeping with them!) to be a jerk and not calling an embryo a person because it lacks any necessary anatomy to be a fully realized self/sentient being.

distinguishing human beings from persons. I don't believe in that sort of distinction.

Both a human and a dog can be persons, but only someone made of human DNA can be a member of our species.

I don't consider your opinion, based on age, any more objective or moral.

Age isn't the issue. The presence of anatomy required for certain concepts is the issue. A fetus without a brain is a meat sack that will cease functioning shortly after birth if it even makes it that far.

If we want to talk about "objectivity", then a familiarity with basic biological facts would be nice.

Your slave will have the same anatomy for personhood as their master. Good luck finding that anatomy in a zygote.

Is it OK to kill the winner of a race because he hasn't crossed the finish line 'yet?"

Why would you call out the winner before the race has been completed? Is an acorn an oak tree? A race judge willing to call a race before its completion would be hung out to dry for fixing the outcome.

Is it OK to kill a two year old because she can't pass the California bar exam 'yet?"

I mean, if we take the Word of God into account ....

Have you noticed you tend to ignore biology? You aren't the only one. You keep choosing things completely unrelated to the function of the human body for your analogies.

Is it ok to kill a 2 year old because they'll suffer immensely from a failing biological system? Yes. I'm fine with death with dignity. I've seen far too many people suffer because some people apparently think that wishing someone alive will make things better.

If it did, it would have been moral for people to call slaves 2/3 of a person.

Masters feared educating their slaves. That tells me they knew they were people all along and just wanted to be dicks about it.

Even if you take the racist 19th century science into account, it's still obvious they had to mangle biological fact to come up with their hypocrisy. These are the kinds of people who were measuring bumps on the head and noses and mouths and arms and legs to determine genetic superiority. Innocent non-slave people were institutionalized for the most ludicrous of reasons. You like blue instead of red? Off to the snake pit you go! You can't POSSIBLY be human.

that is, I think that whenever a woman has consensual sex, she is giving permission for that fetus to grow in her body if doing so isn't going to kill her or permanently harm her, because she knew that pregnancy is not only a possible result of sex, it's what sex is FOR

It's not the only reason for sex, though. That's what men told women so they wouldn't have sex with other men so men would have freedom to have sex with other women. And probably sheep.

Everything that makes sex fun is to make sure that people engage in it.

There are animals with barbed penises. There's no way that's comfortable, let alone enjoyable.

No wonder some females eat their mates.

It's the whole point of the exercise, no matter what other benefits sex might have.

We women have a much better shot at reproducing without males than you have without females. People have sex without getting pregnant and people can get pregnant without having sex.

IF, again IMO, they know already that they WILL choose abortion should they become pregnant, then they shouldn't have sex.

Please be kind and spay or neuter your lovers.

[jk]

I find that to be irresponsible selfishness at its highest level, frankly.

As I've noted elsewhere, my only experience with the concept of parenthood is that it is incredibly selfish. Living a life knowing that you were only expected to be someone's free labor or emotional crutch is not a life I wish to promote.

Some people should never reproduce. I don't intend to. I want my family tree to die out with me. I will rip my uterus out of my body with my own bare hands to avoid it. It is cruel to bring life into this world with little thought other than a quickie or with the expressed ... to their faces ... purpose of condemning them to a life of abuse.

To quote my mother: "My happiness is the only thing that matters."
To quote my father before he became my father: "I don't want kids."

I mean, sorry to keep on and on about this, but I've been berated, beaten, creeped out sexually, forced to clean a house I didn't live in on weekend visitation, etc. I only understand there is such a thing as love from an academic perspective. I've never experienced it. The people in foster homes and orphanages don't experience it. They all grow up knowing they've been tossed aside. And that's if the foster parents allow them to grow up and don't bury them in snow after beating them to a pulp for not memorizing bible verses.

"Faith, Hope & Love" are for the privileged.

 

[columbus]

Do you know that many pregnant people only chose sex, not procreation?

What's the difference?
Do competent adults realize that choosing potentially fertile sex is choosing the possibility of pregnancy?

So, no antibiotics for the people who got sick after not washing their hands? They should just suck it up?

Using antibiotics is not morally the same as choosing death for another human being, despite what your feminist friends tell you.
Tom

 

[columbus]

If we want to talk about "objectivity", then a familiarity with basic biological facts would be nice.

You'd be surprised by how many feticide rights people can't understand "life cycle of a primate", since basic science completely trashes their ideological beliefs.
They want to believe that everybody has a right to sex, but also the right to destroy the human beings that result from exercising the right.
So they just can't see science, sometimes. It's like YEC people, who find science inconvenient to their ideology. They just refuse to see anything that interferes with what they have already decided to believe.
Tom

 

[columbus]

only someone made of human DNA can be a member of our species.

Which is why I consider all organisms based on human DNA to be human beings.
Including women and black people and Republicans and fetal children, etc.
You may not, but I do.
Tom

 

[dianaiad]

(snip to here....}


Yeah, but some hospitals are against abortions even if the fetus is DEAD, so there is literally no potential and they STILL won't do it.

I don't know any hospital that does this, and that would be a problem if so, but it's also not any part of the argument I am making.

Given that infant mortality was such that the bible didn't even bother putting a price on a life until at least one month of age post-birth, can it really be said that they all have the potential to be adults?

I'm not arguing from religion.

And yes, it can really be said that they all have the 'potential' to be adults. After all, if the only think that keeps them from being adults is death, what else would they have 'potential' to be....unicorns?

Perhaps the solution isn't to assume that all newborn babies are gonna die so let's wait and see if they don't....but doing what we are already doing: working our tails off to make sure they live. I find it, as I mentioned before, a specious argument to say 'well, it's really difficult and the odds are poor that they will live, so let's kill the survivors."

snip to here....

I would've had another aunt and uncle, but they died mere hours after birth. So, no, it is not an assured thing.

That is a tragedy and sad....not an excuse to kill all the others.

Unless the shooter is aiming for someone's uterus, it's not the same thing, because one isn't a sentient being (and can't be biologically) and one is.


Life yes. Personhood no.

Not arguing 'personhood.' That is a cultural and legal classification. I'm talking about life.

A life that was deliberately begun by two people who had consensual sex in the full knowledge that doing so just might result in the creation of another human life.

There really isn't any way around that one, is there?

Do NOT talk to me about rape, etc., the VAST majority of abortions are sought by women who knew what they were doing when they had sex in the first place, and it is these situations I am addressing.

It's a human life in there. It's not a rabbit, or a virus, or a disease causing bacterium. It is a human life...that, unless it dies first, WIIL become a human adult. Not 'may become,' not 'has the potentials to,' WILL.

It won't become a rhinoceros, or a zebra, or an orangutan. It will become a human adult. It won't become anything else.

My argument here is that it is specious and sophistry in the highest to claim that because it doesn't have certain qualities YET, that it is permissible to kill it BECAUSE it doesn't have those qualities. You are, after all, about to kill it because that's the only way to prevent him/her from getting those qualities. You are killing it for the crime of actually surviving...and the more dangerous and hard the life and surroundings are of that tiny human life, the less valid your argument is....because if we accept that argument, there is no reason not to draw your line anywhere in the life of that human.

Many cultures have taken your argument to its logical conclusion; you mentioned one....a culture that didn't 'count' the life until it was a month old. (actually, it was eight and ten days, respectively...but the reasoning still applies) . Some cultures drew that line at two years, eight years, puberty, some other year/date...and why not?

You can make your argument anywhere along that line. It's purely arbitrary.

My argument isn't from culture, or religion. it's from medical science as to when a specific human life begins.

YOU were once a single celled conceptus, then an embryo, then a fetus, then a newborn. You were always....you and never anything else you never had the 'potential,' after conception, of being anybody or anything BUT you. If you had been aborted, then it is you...not some bacterium or invasive plant or whatever...that would have died.

 

[dianaiad]

Probably, 'cause I'd be from that culture?<snip to here>
I mean, sorry to keep on and on about this, but I've been berated, beaten, creeped out sexually, forced to clean a house I didn't live in on weekend visitation, etc. I only understand there is such a thing as love from an academic perspective. I've never experienced it. The people in foster homes and orphanages don't experience it. They all grow up knowing they've been tossed aside. And that's if the foster parents allow them to grow up and don't bury them in snow after beating them to a pulp for not memorizing bible verses.

"Faith, Hope & Love" are for the privileged.

Then call me privileged.

I'm sorry that your life has been so terrible, really. Most of the rest of us, though, haven't been through what you have.

..............and, just as a by the way, I AM female, the mother of five kids, and I do have some experience with parenthood. My parents still live with me; they are in their nineties and still together after seventy years. My kids are happy people, my parents are happy people, and we managed to be parents and kids without the horrors you faced.

..........................................and as bad as your life has been, it's another topic entirely. what I am seeing, sort of, is your argument that since you had it so bad, we should kill off everybody else before they are born just to make sure they don't go through what you did.

That's a little draconian, I think.

Also...please don't argue against positions I don't hold and claims I haven't made. it wastes time. I am NOT arguing from a religious standpoint. I have already stated that my belief system is a little more permissive regarding abortion than I, personally, am. The church would allow abortions in situations where I would not ask for one.

 

[blü 2]

If you are for abortion, do you still recognize that the child has a beating heart and is a human being?

It will have a beating heart by about week 5. It will be a human fetus incapable of independent life till about 23 weeks minimum. It is not sentient yet.

I don't regard women as breeding cows. I don't regard the fetus as having greater rights than the mother. Hence I'm pro-choice.

And regardless of what I think, women have always sought abortions and always will.

Should SCOTUS undo Roe v Wade at some point, the result will be to return jurisdiction regarding abortions back to the individual states. If that happens, then what used to happen will happen again: women seeking abortions in states with anti-abortion laws will (if they can afford it) travel to states where abortions are legal; and for the rest there may be a return to underground abortion practitioners, where most deaths of mothers formerly occurred.

You'll be aware that the bible says nothing against abortion, and in fact invokes abortion and infanticide in God's name at one point, I trust?

Hosea 13:16 Samaria shall bear her guilt, because she has rebelled against her God; they shall fall by the sword, their little ones shall be dashed in pieces, and their pregnant women ripped open.​

 

[Subduction Zone]

It will have a beating heart by about week 5. It will be a human fetus incapable of independent life till about 23 weeks minimum. It is not sentient yet.

I don't regard women as breeding cows. I don't regard the fetus as having greater rights than the mother. Hence I'm pro-choice.

And regardless of what I think, women have always sought abortions and always will.

Should SCOTUS undo Roe v Wade at some point, the result will be to return jurisdiction regarding abortions back to the individual states. If that happens, then what used to happen will happen again: women seeking abortions in states with anti-abortion laws will (if they can afford it) travel to states where abortions are legal; and for the rest there may be a return to underground abortion practitioners, where most deaths of mothers formerly occurred.

You'll be aware that the bible says nothing against abortion, and in fact invokes abortion and infanticide in God's name at one point, I trust?

Hosea 13:16 Samaria shall bear her guilt, because she has rebelled against her God; they shall fall by the sword, their little ones shall be dashed in pieces, and their pregnant women ripped open.​

Not only that, one cannot ignore The Test of an Unfaithful Wife. Where OT Priests would perform chemical abortions of wives that cheated on their husband.

Bible Gateway passage: Numbers 5:11-31 - New International Version

 

[osgart]

Somewhere around 12 to 16 weeks it becomes a full fledged human being in my eyes. That is sufficient time to decide to keep or not keep the child. Being pregnant is a responsibility either way. Why is a pregnant lady needing more than 12 weeks to decide?

If to save the mothers life, if a pregnancy is dangerous, and abortion saves her life, then abort.

Nature can be awful and indifferent to life i must say. Sucks!

When its a human being we should value its life is all i am saying. Adoption, and other alternatives to an unwanted pregnancy should be researched and planned for.

I always tell myself let people live by their own morals and values though if there is no harm to others in those values and morals. 3 prohibitions exist in my mind, no rape, no murder, no harm to others; other then that, do as pleases, whatever that is, no matter what it is. Time will tell who is right and who is wrong in the scope of their own lives. Everyone must bear their own actions anyway and suffer their own consequences.

I have reverence for all life, humans and other animals. And i do consider the need for abortion a tragic necessity. Research should be done to make it as painless as possible in the circumstances my conscience allows for it.

With abortion to me, its all about brain development.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Somewhere around 12 to 16 weeks it becomes a full fledged human being in my eyes. That is sufficient time to decide to keep or not keep the child. Being pregnant is a responsibility either way. Why is a pregnant lady needing more than 12 weeks to decide?

If to save the mothers life, if a pregnancy is dangerous, and abortion saves her life, then abort.

Nature can be awful and indifferent to life i must say. Sucks!

When its a human being we should value its life is all i am saying. Adoption, and other alternatives to an unwanted pregnancy should be researched and planned for.

I always tell myself let people live by their own morals and values though if there is no harm to others in those values and morals. 3 prohibitions exist in my mind, no rape, no murder, no harm to others; other then that, do as pleases, whatever that is, no matter what it is. Time will tell who is right and who is wrong in the scope of their own lives. Everyone must bear their own actions anyway and suffer their own consequences.

I am not sure that I would say a "full fledged" human being, but I can see reasonable limitations on abortions.

 

[ImmortalFlame]

It isn't. People can have no heartbeat and still be alive. Conversely, cessation of electro-chemical activity in the brain is something no living thing has ever come back from.

 

[Faithofchristian]

If you are for abortion, do you still recognize that the child has a beating heart and is a human being?

Seeing how the child upon being born is a huma being, otherwise the said child wouldn't be human even after being born or in the process of growing up.

If to what people say that an unborn child that's in the mother's womb, is not a human being.
Does this mean that every child that is born is not a human being also, seeing how the child also came from the mothers womb also.
There's no one way street, To call an unborn child not human, but then after the child is born is human.
Whether unborn or born, both are still human beings.

 

[exchemist]

If you are for abortion, do you still recognize that the child has a beating heart and is a human being?

No. It doesn't for a couple of months and even when it does it seems perverse to give it equal rights to those of a baby. Reference to a "beating heart" is no more than an attempt to evoke sympathy, based on cultural and unscientific notions of the "heart" being associated with humanity. Even a fish has a heartbeat. And in fact, given that a foetus effectively climbs its own evolutionary tree during development (it even has gills at one point), it would be more rational to treat it according to the stage on its tree it has reached.

There is another good reason not to insist that a foetus be seen as a baby in the early stages: natural abortion, a.k.a. miscarriage. Nature does this very frequently, for example when something goes wrong with the development. Many women have miscarriages and it is traumatic enough without insisting that each one was the loss of a baby, thus compounding the misery and sometimes irrational guilt that these women feel. Far better to treat it as nature stopping a process that has gone off-track.

All in all, it seems far more reasonable to me to treat a developing foetus as a baby with human rights only later in its development. This "beating heart" stuff is simply emotional rhetoric, used to distract from a more scientific approach to the issue.

 

[viole]

I addressed that in an earlier post. I would not get one. I believe the quote was 'the pregnancy would be the only good thing about the experience,' However, I also would not fault a woman who thought other wise, and certainly my religion doesn't fault the victims of rape for choosing to abort.

However...and remember this one...religions have a little more 'give' here than a position based only upon when a human becomes an individual human (at conception.) Religions mostly teach that the body isn't all in all...that there might be an alternative for the spirit of an aborted baby.

Might.

Anyway, wiggle room.

Not for me, personally, but for someone else, the victim of rape? I'm certainly not going to judge her. That's a whole 'nuther topic, and my arguments are about those who willingly engage in consensual sex.

Wonder why, You now seem somehow to accept that the woman has, in this case, at least an excuse to abort.

So, prima facie, that makes no sense. If a human life is all that matter, what fault has that poor blastocyst to be treated so unfairly? No right to live in this case? Poor thing going to be an ex human soon.

Ergo, deep inside, you guys do not really care about life. You are just making (somewhat punishing and judgemental) statements concerning sexual conduct.

Ciao

- viole

 

[viole]

Well, you would join all those cultures who didn't feel particularly emotional about putting a day old baby girl out on the trash heap, either. That's not intended to be insulting, btw...but a very strongly stated point. This is a specifically cultural and legal definition, not a scientific or medical one. Me? I can't justify the ending of human life because a bunch of other people took a vote. Either it's human, or it isn't. Either it's alive, or it's not...and if, left alone to grow, it WILL end up to be a human adult (if it doesn't die first), then I have no right to end it in order to prevent that, any more than I would have the right to kill the snotty teenager down the street in order to prevent him from getting to voting age.

I mean, really...where DOES one draw that line, anyway? What possible reasoning can be used at one stage...that can't be used at another, far later, one?

What I would LIKE to see happen is one of two things:

People figure out that sex produces babies and begin to deal responsibly with that...and don't engage in sex until they are ready to deal with, y'know, HAVING A BABY.

Science figures out a birth control method (conception prevention) that WORKS consistently and reliably.

Or both. Either one would be great.

One other thing: I think that the rate of abortion would go WAAAAY down if people actually acknowledged that an abortion is indeed the ending of a human life. That serious. That life changing/ending.

I personally wouldn't get one unless the choice was 'end the life of the fetus or we both die," ...but then I'm nearly seventy and the issue isn't going to arise. My name is not Sarah and I don't have an Abraham to help me out, anyway. However, I wasn't ALWAYS 'nearly seventy,' and I did have five kids.

In other words, I lived my beliefs in this area.

Simple, from my point of view, persons are not duplicating primate cells. Persons are mainly being with a functioning brain

I would have far less problems to terminate a one day old human embryo rather than a robot with a sufficiently advanced artificial brain, if it will ever exist.

That is where I, and the society i live in, draw the line.

Ciao

- viole

 

[GoodbyeDave]

Conversely, cessation of electro-chemical activity in the brain is something no living thing has ever come back from.

It's a bit off-topic, but that's actually untrue. There are a number of occasions when this has occurred and the Denver cardiologist Fred Schoonmaker reported that he'd seen it happen several times (no reference, I'm afraid).

 

[dianaiad]

Wonder why, You now seem somehow to accept that the woman has, in this case, at least an excuse to abort.

What "now seem?" I haven't changed my position at all. You need to read my posts a little more carefully. At any rate, my entire argument here is about consensual sex, not rape.

So, prima facie, that makes no sense. If a human life is all that matter, what fault has that poor blastocyst to be treated so unfairly? No right to live in this case? Poor thing going to be an ex human soon.

Sarcasm noted. Also note that I would not, personally, get an abortion in that case. How about addressing my argument instead of a strawman construct designed to deflect from it?

Ergo, deep inside, you guys do not really care about life. You are just making (somewhat punishing and judgemental) statements concerning sexual conduct.

Ciao

- viole

Really? I personally don't care what you do between the sheets....or wherever. I'm just arguing that since this is the one human activity that can, and quite frequently does, result in the creation of a new human life, that those who engage in that activity be more careful about it, and make responsible decisions before they hit the fun buttons.

Y'know, you are arguing like the gambling addict who goes into a casino, bets his entire life savings and everything else he owns....and loses. Now he's whining because the casino won't let him get out of paying his losses.

............but you aren't arguing your right to renege on a bet. You are arguing your right to end a human life because you lost the bet. So yeah, I'm a little judgemental about that sort of thing; exactly the way I would be judgemental about a child murderer. Call it a quirk.

 

[viole]

What "now seem?" I haven't changed my position at all. You need to read my posts a little more carefully. At any rate, my entire argument here is about consensual sex, not rape.



Sarcasm noted. Also note that I would not, personally, get an abortion in that case. How about addressing my argument instead of a strawman construct designed to deflect from it?



Really? I personally don't care what you do between the sheets....or wherever. I'm just arguing that since this is the one human activity that can, and quite frequently does, result in the creation of a new human life, that those who engage in that activity be more careful about it, and make responsible decisions before they hit the fun buttons.

Y'know, you are arguing like the gambling addict who goes into a casino, bets his entire life savings and everything else he owns....and loses. Now he's whining because the casino won't let him get out of paying his losses.

............but you aren't arguing your right to renege on a bet. You are arguing your right to end a human life because you lost the bet. So yeah, I'm a little judgemental about that sort of thing; exactly the way I would be judgemental about a child murderer. Call it a quirk.

Well, your analogy is ridicolus since I do not live in Uganda and such. With all respect for Uganda. So, no need to gamble.

And your possible exceptions for raped girls is really strange. It seems to subordinate the importance of a human life, to the circumstances that caused its conception. A bit confusing. I am happy I dont have that confusion. However, that is your belief, so it is ok.

Again, i live in a place that does not think that embryos enjoy the same ontology of human individuals. And that is also why we are also ahead all other europeans for what concern editing genetic material of healthy embryos.

I am sure you disapprove. But we don’t care, basically. We are used to be disapproved.. Especially by people representing ancient superstitions.

Ciao

- viole

 

[dianaiad]

Simple, from my point of view, persons are not duplicating primate cells. Persons are mainly being with a functioning brain

I would have far less problems to terminate a one day old human embryo rather than a robot with a sufficiently advanced artificial brain, if it will ever exist.

That is where I, and the society i live in, draw the line.

Ciao

- viole

As I wrote, many societies have drawn that line at very different times in the life of a human. there is no scientific or medical reason to draw that line at one point over another...except at the moment of conception.

So that's what I go by. After all, if one goes with cultural and legal ideas, there is nothing stopping the culture around you to draw the line at 12, or 18, or 2, or any other arbitrary point that has nothing at all to do with the 'humanness' of the human involved.

...........and those lines get redrawn frequently.

Do NOT confuse legality with morality, or cultural ideas with science. Your opinion is not based upon anything but your preferences and what makes you feel good about yourself and your position.

I couldn't care less how active your sex life is. Go. Be happy. What I WANT to see is...like the gambler who enters the casino and bets a whole bunch--and eventually loses, a willingness to acknowledge the results of the gamble, and a willingness to be responsible about the outcome.

and being willing to end a human life that you created is NOT 'responsible." it is ending a human life. A real one. One that you are responsible for creating. One that you are responsible for, period.

If that possible result isn't something you want to take on, then....do what is required to make SURE you don't get pregnant. Hysterectomy. Oophorectomy. Vasectomy. Triple decker condoms. Whatever works.

Or...you could decide that a human life is a wee bit more important than your own need for a few minutes of physical pleasure, and put the whole thing off until you figured that, as inconvenient as it might be, you wouldn't kill the human if you started one.

Sometimes I think that our current society isn't worth the digital print to spell the word.

 

[dianaiad]

Well, your analogy is ridicolus since I do not live in Uganda and such. With all respect for Uganda. So, no need to gamble.

Uganda? I was thinking more along the lines of Vegas, but OK....

And your possible exceptions for raped girls is really strange. It seems to subordinate the importance of a human life, to the circumstances that caused its conception. A bit confusing. I am happy I dont have that confusion. However, that is your belief, so it is ok.

Why? It's no different from getting an abortion if the pregnancy threatens the life of the mother; triage. If a rape victim cannot handle the idea of a pregnancy that resulted from rape, I'd call that right up there with 'life and health.' It's not as if the pregnancy was the result of her freely chosen actions.

Personally....I I ruled the world, a pregnant rape victim could chose to end the pregnancy, and the charge of murder would be added to the indictment against the rapist. If she chooses to have the baby, then the rapist would have to work for the state, probably breaking big rocks into little ones, until the child was of legal age to support it...and he would never, ever be allowed any contact with mother or child. But I don't rule the world.

Again, i live in a place that does not think that embryos enjoy the same ontology of human individuals. And that is also why we are also ahead all other europeans for what concern editing genetic material of healthy embryos.

So do I live in such a place. All that does is beg the question of whether such an attitude is morally right.

I am sure you disapprove. But we don’t care, basically. We are used to be disapproved.. Especially by people representing ancient superstitions.

Ciao

- viole

You really don't read the posts to which you respond, do you? If you actually did, you would know that I am NOT arguing from any religious, or 'ancient superstitious,' point of view.

I am so tired of people assuming what my position on this issue is, and attacking me as if they know what I 'really' think better than I do. Do, please, read my posts before you respond to them? Thanks.