charles cure: I think this is rooted in somewhat of a misinterpreation of MAD v. abortion/life. Whilst one can -never- tell what is going to happen in life, MAD was "mutually assured destruction" because the results -were- known as overwhelmingly "total annihilation". There was very little chance of getting away with a nuclear attack. Now, in life, one could potentially have a "perfectly great" or "perfectly horrible" life, but since life's quality is subjective, cannot be presciently determined, et cetera, these are only "improbable extremes" and the reality is likely somewhere betwixt the twain. Indeed, we shall have to tackle these issues, but abortion shall always remain what it is. Really, sterilization and selective breeding would be a lot more logical and beneficial course than simply abortion, although I strongly doubt that humanity is very fit for such a course of events, due to the desire to breed being so powerful within us, and those who cannot breed gaining nothing out of this. SnakeLord: A good point.
The oldest argument in the book. "Changing the natural order of things causes retribution by nature/the gods." Same argument was used to resist freeing slaves in the 19th century and some religious sects using medical intervention today. If you insist on this line of reasoning then you probably would argue that we ought not to cure diseases or predict where hurricanes are going to strike. Okay, the legal question. Is a fertilized egg a human being and a citizen? I predict that this is where the crux of the matter will come to rest in the debate. Goes like this - Clearly a newborn baby is a human entitled to all human rights and legal protection. No one (I think) would suggest that an unfertilized egg is a human being. The question becomes - at what point in the development process can you draw a line and write "human" on one side and "not human" on the other? A fertilized egg contains 46 chromosomes of human genetic material. But then, so does every one of your other cells with the exception of the sex cells. The only difference between a fertlized egg and a skin cell is that the fertilized egg has the potential to become a human, which is what other posters have been on about in this thread. Seems a straightforward distinction. But now we have the ability to take any cell and use its genetic material to make a clone. Does that make any cell in your body a potential human being? Okay, you say, a potential human is one where a cell can become a fully actualized human without technological intervention. But what of natural parthenogenesis, where an egg does not get rid of half its genetic material during formation and then begins dividing? Makes a natural clone, which has been documented and can now be induced artificially (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4228992.stm). My point here is that declaring a fertilized egg a human being is a reductionist position that, given the extremely muddy waters of both definitions and technological breakthroughs, is not reasonably defensible. Why is it unreasonable to define a time in the gestation of the zygote that irrefutably demonstrates the arising of strictly human attributes? Like a functioning neurosystem? After looking at the various outlines of embryonic development I would settle for the seventh or eighth week as a point where the embryo begins the first glimmer of what you might be able to call consciousness, and definitively crosses the line to the status of human. Claiming full status for the fertilized egg is a result of the unwillingness or inability to draw functional distinctions. Is there any logical difference between criminalizing the destruction of a fertilized egg due to its potential for humanness and criminalizing vasectomy because it prevents fertilization from occuring in the first place? Same potential... This is a weak assertion - don't confuse zealotry with desperation, okinrus. Zealotry would be a women going out and getting pregnant on purpose just so she could go and get an abortion. Kind of like an extreme political action. THAT would be zealotry. My statement stands - The majority of people who oppose abortion on religious grounds are doing so purely out of selfish motives. My point was this - the debate over abortion is not about the saving of babies but rather about whether women are to be permitted full self-determination. I connected the abortion question to the homosexuality / gay marriage question by asserting that they stem from the same issue of self-determination. If two women can form a relationship and be considered "married" by their community and the state, then it follows that they are entirely equal in all respects. Same for two men. It sets up an example that is to be wondered at by every woman who is in a relationship with a man who considers her inferior by virtue of her gender. This is a powerful metaphor which is to be resisted at all costs. Men and women are different. They look different and their bodies do different things. Does this necessarily imply superiority of one over the other? Does this imply inherent inequality in any given male/female relationship? Because if that is what you are asserting, then we've got a problem. Maybe you can clarify your position for me. This was in response to my final statement "You watch - once abortion gets re-criminalized they'll be after contraception next and then pre-marital sex and so on until the whole christian sharia is in place. " Okay... http://www.prolife.org.ph/page/contraception4 http://www.godsplanforlife.org/Teachings/humanity_rebellion.htm http://www.deoomnisgloria.com/mt/archives/000591.html http://home.att.net/~nathan.wilson/brthcntl.htm Do you still maintain that it's irrelevant?
The simple scientific fact is that once the sperm and the egg combine, a human is created. Destroying a human life is murder. Abortion is murder. No religeon can deny this any more than you blame the hurricanes on global warming. Was the 1900 Texas hurricane due to global warming. does anyone smell coffee, or smoke?
It's the one thing which I find the majority of American Theists seem to think right. Theirs is merely another unsubstantiated claim based on their faith, which isn't 'right,' nonetheless. Because the people are saying they are suffering. Imagine, however, that everyone in New Orleans were very stoic and exceedingly indifferent to hardship, would "suffering" exist there? But, that isn't the case, is it? We don't need to imagine their suffering to know they are suffering. There are many who are extremely impaired and who live with their suffering. That has nothing to do with the fact that they are suffering and that we can understand they are suffering. Might you explain how the two are the same? It's a matter of not knowing what they'll achieve in their lives, whether good or bad. The same argument you used with Lincoln. Nay. You personally think suffering would be terrible. This is your value. You have no rational foundation for imposing it upon all others. Come now, aren't you being somewhat ridiculous? Are we in need of placing the defintion of suffering before you? I, on the other hand, am arguing simply from what scientifically a human is and why abortion ought not to be legal, considering what murder is defined as. Sorry, but from a scientific point of view, the argument could be justified either way and from a variety of views and scenarios. Yours appears to be an argument from emotion - correct me if I'm wrong here.
I wasn't using it as an argument persay. I was merely pointing out that it's likely that any comprehensive contraceptive will have health problems, much like the documented risks with the pill. Well, no, it's not needed. For the pro-life argument to work, prolifers only need to show the fetus has some chance of being human being. For the prochoice argument to work, however, prochoicers must show the fetus is not a human being beyond any reasonable doubt. Second, physical material won't make someone human, but indicate whether someone is human and has a human soul. (Those who have human souls were created in genreal to have human bodies or bodies human like). Because the fetus' DNA remains the same as that of a newborn baby, and because organs and biological systems only develop further in a baby, they're the same biological entity, just one being more developed than the other. Thus the fetus is a human being if the baby is one. Again, the material only indicates the existence of the human soul(or person). Not being able to observe souls directly, humans must determine who's a human being by material. The cell used is altered substantially and the developing clone is distinct from the mother. When a cell is such suficiently altered, then the cell is a developing human being. But no one has cloned a human being. I don't know what will happend, but just going by our current knowledge, the clone is a human being. No, what you call a potential human, I'd call a human in development. To my knowledge, parthenogenesis has never occurred in humans. (Your link is broken) Nevertheless, I don't see why it would be treated any different from human twins. Zealotry depends on your view. Obviously, a zealot cannot hold his own zealotry as zealotry. To him, it's perfectly natural. Therefore, I'll give you an example. Suppose plastic surgery was banned, and suppose, too, that woman by thousands go to illegal back alley surgens whom they will pay to be cut up using non-sterile tools, risk infection, and risk, too, disfigurement. Wouldn't these woman be zealots? The simple option is for the woman to leave such a relationship. Well, define what you mean by superior? Most men are stronger than most woman. For physical strentgth, most men are superior than most woman. But athletics is a combination of skill and strength. Again, difficult to say what you mean by inequality. Men can't do all the things woman do, and woman can't do all the things men do. Only when the relationship works as one is the relationship together. But each shares a part in the relatinship. Yes I do, contraception and premarital sex are considered wrong by these groups, but forcibly preventing consenting adults is completely different from believing them to be wrong.
right but there was still potential to get away with the attack because of a number of variables that effected the outcome. so in relation to your little theory, why not try it JUST IN CASE it works. because you know, theres unlimited potential. actually i think you have it mixed up. the one who is in no position and has no ability to judge what their quality of life will be like is the unborn child. if i, as an unborn child had the ability to understand anything, and somone told me while i was in the womb, hey look, youre going to be born to a single mom in the middle of the poorest region of Liberia, where you are likely to be killed before the age of 5 in a long and pointless civil war, and if you make it to beyond 10 or 12 you are likely to be given an AK-47 and made to fight in that war, and then if you continue to live, by the time you are old enough to be sexually active, you have a 1 in 4 chance of getting AIDS and dying, i would say you know what, pull the plug. but the fetus cant judge what its quality of life may be because it is not intelligent enough to do so, however, an intelligent adult does have the necessary mental faculties to make an informed decision about what a child will have to face growing up and whether or not it is fair and right to bring them into the world that way, for either the child or the parent, because the child is dependent on the parent and so they are forever altering not only the life of a potential child, but their own as well, so it would be unfair to force a person to keep a child knowing that it will negatively affect them in serious ways if it is born. you cant just throw it into a dumpster once its born and forget about it, so dont give me that bullshit about nobody being in a position to judge effectively what the possible outcome of bringing a child into the world is, the parents are the ones in the position to make that decision and they have to, abortion allows them to have the choice, does not mandate that they make the choice. and yeah i know that if you have a child that you dont want you can put it up for adoption, but imagine adding an extra 1,293,000 (thats the estimate of how many abortions there were in the US in 2004) to the adoption pool every year. there would be no one to take them and they would wind up abandoned as wards of the state. why dont you do some research on that quality of life. and by the way, you dont think a world where the human population both grows exponentially from decade to decade and depends on finite, expendable resources and limited space wont result in a similar scenario to "total aanihilation"? delusional.
i think you misunderstand me here. i agree with proposed "right to die" legislation that allows people to make a decision to die before their quality of life turns to garbage. and i have no love for violent criminals. i was making an arguement for why abortion should be a legally sanctioned choice, because i support freedom of action as it pertains to decisions that people make about their own bodies. and coupled with that you and i seem to have a disparity of views on what constitutes complete innocence. i would argue that innocence or guilt, and good or evil intent is decided based on the evidence of someones actions as a person. an unborn child has no ability to act and therefore cant be considered guilty or innocent. one is not innocent by default because they have not had the chance to do anything at all. that aside, i also dont think that a blastocyst, zygote, gamete, or fetus constitutes an independently viable and survivable person. if you would like to test this theory, think of what would happen if a mother were to give birth to a child in the middle of a field and then walk away from it. how long would it live?
why is that? who has defined the rules of the abortion debate? this is not a criminal trial where the prochoicers have to prove that a fetus cant become a human beyond any reasonable doubt. this at best is a potential US supreme court case which deals with whether an action or group of actions is supported or prohibited by US law as defined in the Constitution, not whether one specific person did something right or wrong. the burden of proof is a preponderance of evidence by the justices themselves. and on top of it, i would love to see the prolife movement's version of proof that a fetus has independent survivability (that is to say it could survive unaided by machinery or other human intervention). show it to me.
I for one would not argue against people having the right to make decisions concerning their own bodies. I, for instance, have a couple of tattoos - and nobody else has the right to tell me that I can't 'deface' my body in such manner. But we're not talking "their own bodies", are we? We're not talking nipple piercings or sex changes, we're not talking drug abusing or the choice to amputate one of your limbs for the sake of it. No, we are talking the extermination of an individual being - not 'owned' by anyone - that has as much right to life and existence as you do. I was adopted. It is quite probable to state that I wasn't wanted. I get this notion from the fact that I was adopted. Sure, there are other possibilities, but for the sake of this debate, this explanation shall suffice. I was born In september, (It's actually my birthday on Monday Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! ), which means my parents were doing the business at christmas. You'll find that the most common birth month is actually September, (because everyone's at it during christmas). So after the christmas you find lots of unwanted pregnancies. Now, before I was born people just like you most likely sat down and argued that I was just a zygote, or no different to skin cells, or wouldn't survive long with an ak47, or would die straight away if left in a field - but these arguments are meaningless. I am the proof, as are you, that what you are saying can be happily killed without a say in the matter - will most likely debate against his own demise when he has the ability to. An inability to say "please don't kill me", is not an instant right for you to do so. You, my mother, the man up the road, some idiot in government etc have no right to kill me. I couldn't have argued about the issue with you back then, but that doesn't mean anything - and nor does it stop my right to life. My 'body' does not belong to my mother, and it never has. I borrowed space inside of her for less than a year.. that does not give her the right to kill me. She can kill herself if she wishes, but why think she can speak for me? But as I argued, why not then just kill paedophiles, rapists, murderers and old people? This is not an argument to anything. A 6 month old child can't really do anything considered guilty or innocent but still you have no right to slaughter him. He can't stop you from doing so, he cannot in any way defend his right to life, and he cannot be measured as guilty or innocent - but innocent until proven guilty is default. His right to life cannot be argued, and until such time where it was shown that this person was indeed not worthy of life, he is considered completely innocent. The exact same thing goes for the smaller version of him hitching a ride in someone's womb. Once again, you seemingly prefer the death of the innocent over the death of paedophiles, rapists and murderers. Might I ask if you even agree with capital punishment? You're probably out there defending the right to life of people that do not deserve it, while sitting here arguing against the right to life of those that cannot defend it. You should.. you were one. Imagine that.. from such small beginnings to something that can type on the internet. So you were a lot smaller and couldn't talk - I bet it would piss you off right now if someone decided to kill you. It might not be independently survivable, but then neither is my grandmother. She requires round the clock assistance.. I don't just kill the old dear because I don't want the hassle, because she is 'unwanted'. What does this argument aid? Yes, the child would die.. So would my grandmother - and most likely if I dumped you in the middle of the jungle so would you. But what are you saying? That because a child's limbs are weak, that it's brain is still developing in a world that they have no clue about, and that it would die without being looked after that it has no right to life? Once more I point at my grandmother. No wait.. forget my grandmother, she's just old, what about cripples and retards? Shall we kill them too? Do we have that right? What a child can or cannot do if plopped out in the middle of a field is not an argument for abortion being justified. It's not an argument for anything.
(Q): Touche. I ought to have said "they hold opinion which happens to be in accords with fact as I have discerned it". It is akin to being right that there is milk in the refridgerator, but having no basis for this belief. Nay, it isn't the case, but I guarantee you that different people in New Orleans view their suffering in different ways, and most, if not all, are quite glad to be alive. We can, however, only -assume- that they are suffering until we are told by them that they are. It would be the "normal cause of events", but of course there is no agreement on this. Only if they display outward signs of it. Yes, but can one decide to murder someone based on ignorance? Not to mention that there exists potentiality in life, a certainty of gaining nothing, popsitive or negative, in death? Tell me, do not we all deal with suffering differently? Do we not have different thresholds of pain and of discomfort? Of misery? We can say that it is "likely that they suffer", but we cannot determine to what extent, whether they are willing to give their life up because the suffering is so horrible, and other such things. A case in point: Myself. I am, as they say, very "stoic" as it comes to suffering. Not many things bother me. Many others may rsepond differently. You are quite wrong. Emotion is besides the point. The definition of humanity is rooted in genetics. This is what determines what human "is". If a human zygote is genetically distinct from both mother and father, we must assert that its humanity is evident. charles cure: There is no "unlimited potential" here. One is overwhelmingly likely to be destroyed in the process. One cannot make any such decision about human being's quality of life as subjectively determined by them. Your subjective decision. I'd prefer life and a chance to no life and none, my subjective decision. One has no inherent right to murder another based on presumed impact of one's own life. Also, once again, no one, even an "informed adult", can decide what is better for someone else when the standards are subjective, specifically when such a decision involves the death of someone. What the -possible-, not the -necessary- outcome. Unless you claim to be the God-Emperor Leto II, I doubt you have one hundred percent prescience, not to mention that murdering one's child is not the choice of the child, nor rooted in its subjective desires for life despite suffering or death because of suffering, but the parent's desires. Of course a parent can choose to do whatever they want, they are free to at any time murder their child, but this does not mean that isn't murder. Many people have been "wards of the state" or adopted and been just fine. Total annihilation? No. Since limited resources are there, people will die off when we reach the maximum sustainable at that current time, but never will we "die off completely" because of it. Moreover, with modern techniques, technological advancements, et cetera, it is quite possible to sustain our population much higher then it presently is. Hell, we could end up with a "Coruscant-scenario" and house trillions upon trillions of beings.
So why are you bringing the soul into the discussion? Souls are not observable and so therefore are irrelevant. Regarding "material", Prince James says: Humanity is far, far more than genetic code. Rooted, possibly; a certain sequence of base pairs does indeed indicate the POTENTIAL for a human being, but I vehemently assert that a zygote can not be considered human because NONE of the additional attributes that mean humanity are present. You have backed yourselves into a rhetorical corner by arguing that potentiality equals actuality. And don't try to worm out of it by declaring that potentiality only arises at the moment of conception. You must acknowledge that sperm and egg separately have the same potential to make a human being as the just-created zygote. If you deny this than your argument collapses. If you accept this, then you must be implying that it is every woman's moral duty to see that she bears children from the earliest possible moment until the inset of menopause, so that none of the potential humans in her ovaries suffers negligent homicide.
"Sex must be had! Sex is a must! People must have sex, or they are not normal!" Anyone ever wondered whether the above assertions are true?
actually, we are talking their own bodies, and im not sure why you dont understand this because its really basic. if a child isnt a part of a womans body while its in the womb, then what is it? where the hell did it come from, she didnt put it in her body, it grew there out of her already preexisting body. the only thing that was added to it in order to create the fetus was the partners sperm, so in fact it really is a part of her body in the same way that tumor is a part of your body when you have cancer. the only difference here is that sperm needed to be added to the equation to make it grow, so at the most a fetus is parts of two peoples bodies, fully entitling, as far as im concerned, the two of them to decide what to do with it. now seriously, in detail, describe to me how a fetus is NOT a part of a womans body while its in the womb because id love to hear it. thats a pointless argument. you didnt borrow space from your mother, you ARE your mother to a certain extent. did you not take biology class in high school? you are your mother and father. you were created by them from matter contained in their bodies and for better or worse, like it or not, while you were in the womb you were a part of your mother's body. its not like renting an apartment. what you should be saying is that your body NO LONGER belongs to your mother after birth at which point you became two distinct, seperate physical beings. she doesnt have the right to kill you now, but at some time she had the right to choose to remove something growing in her body that she didnt want there. something that was produced by her body in her body. my argument wasnt meaningless, you just missed the point of it. i was discussing viability as it relates to how we define a living being. i was making the point that a fetus isnt a viable life unless it is given help and nurtured for a relatively long period of time. i was making a point about how bringing a child into the world is a far more complex undertaking than you have laid it out to be. it doesnt just involve some selfish little fetus with a right to live no matter what, it involves a life altering decision on the part of the parents to actually raise the child once it is born and provide it with a quality of life. if they are unfit to do so, then they should, in all fairness not bring it into the world that way. i understand that you were adopted, but once again, if you add another 1 and 1/4 million kids every year to the adoption pool, what do you think your chances would have been of having a family then? and consider then, that if you were to have that child and leave it unadopted in a state facility somewhere, the public is forced to pay to support its life, and none of us had a say in that decision, but it becomes our burden as well. theres not just the desire of one being in question when you debate whether abortion is moral or not, it involves judging the fairness of a large network of decisions compelling many individuals to act in life altering ways. because the laws that govern us do not allow us to. you are discussing killing already existing people. you are suggesting publicly sanctioned murder of the elderly and prisoners (a large percentage of the ones you have described here probably being metally ill) because you would rather not have an unwanted pregnancy terminated before its ever become a person? that has far worse implications for the moral fabric of society than a legal right to abortion does. when i was describing the scenario of growing population depleting finite resources i was postulating that part of the solution is learning to control our population over the long term before it gets out of hand through processes like abortion and giving the elderly the right to die in a dignified way when they decide their quality of life is no longer desirable. i wasnt putting forth the idea that things have gotten so bad that now we have to murder people. not only was i not doing that, but i cant believe that you are. as someone who is making an argument opposing abortion because the fetus has potential and no one can judge what its quality of life will be and it cant stick up for itself, doesnt it seem completely antithetical for you to then turn around and argue that we should murder people who can express a desire to live? once again you miss my point. what is instructive about my statment is the disparity in views on guilt or innocence. guilt or innocence in the legal sense is easy to establish, however that doesnt make a person guilty or innocent in whole. i was showing you that not everyone thinks the same way and so its not quite as black and white an issue as you would like it to be. i already answered the rest of your question as it relates to killing criminals and old people, i dont really have any point of view on the death penalty. it doesnt disturb me, but i wouldnt like to be the one throwing the switch because i guess in the back of my mind i still think it is murder. what youre saying is hey, its not murder of an innocent, so who cares? how ridiculous is that, look for example at Alexander the Great, he undoubtedly murdered a lot of people, would you have just wanted to kill him because he wasnt innocent, he advanced society in ways that no one else had done before. while he was not innocent, his life while he lived it was still of value. i wouldnt have wanted to kill him after seeing what potential he had. however i am confident that had Alexander the Great been aborted, someone would have eventually been born to take his place in history. funny huh. so i am completely mistaken then when i read that you were advocating killing the elderly to thin out our population because according to this statement here, you wouldnt want to kill your grandmother would you? even despite the fact that shes just apprently societal dead weight in your view. none of your arguments make sense. you are confusing the issue here a lot. i do not advocate murder. that being said, i also have made it clear that i dont consider abortion murder and why i dont think it is. what more is there to say here. if someone decided to kill me now it would be murder. if someone killed your grandmother its murder. if you give a murderer the death penalty, all it is is legal murder. thats how simple it is. well thats good because it wasnt an argument to justify abortion, that statement was part of an argument to define viability. i was saying that a human that cant survive on its own is in a different category than one that can. our society is full of these little dividing lines, i dont know why one doesnt extend to the unborn. look, before i reach the age of 18 i have certain rights, but they are not the same rights i have after i reach the age of 18, and the they change again when i reach the age of 21 and have all the rights that i will have for the rest of my life. society makes these distinctions that there are certain things people are entitled to at certain ages and other things that they are not entitled to. now, when you are 5, your parents are bound to you in the way that they have to provide for you, and it is their right to decide many things for you, what to do with your money, whether or not to punish you when you do something wrong...etc. when you reach 18, this is no longer the case, society has decided that you are now of the age where you can and should provide for yourself and make your own decisions. well, wheres the difference between this and the right for your would be parents to decide not to bring you into the world before you are born. it is their right to choose this for you because they are the only ones who can make the choice, and not only can you not comprehend the choice at that point in time, but you have not even developed the apparatus necessary to decide whether or not that choice impacts you negatively. lets not get confused here what im talking about is why i think abortion should be a legal choice and why i think the legality of that choice is a crucial way in which humanity can learn to control its population. im not saying that there arent other preffered methods of birth control, im not saying that there arent other ways of controlling populations outside of birth control. im saying it is one choice among many that people should be able to make for themselves.
are you trying to make the argument that this is an assertion made by wider society and so universally accepted that no one has ever questioned it? because i dont think any part of that would be true.
