Fertilization-Assigned Personhood [FAP]

Discussion in 'Ethics, Morality, & Justice' started by Tiassa, May 11, 2014.

  1. GeoffP Caput gerat lupinum Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    22,087
    I have already done so, to Tiassa. There are several outcomes. Most likely is complete legal rights and protections with respect of the protection of the late term fetus. And? Next time you want to just discuss the OP, maybe you shouldn't drag my comments in (post #4). Then again, that was Tiassa, so maybe he just decided to play you for a sucker.

    Then you confirm your actual belief in DF as the sole limiter, despite your claim I misrepresented you; abortion at any time. And that means that all your shrieks about misrepresentation are lies; sadly, your stance was exactly the most cynical possibility on the table. I've given you numerous opportunities to refute this impression. You have not. (Edit: until below, apparently?)

    You have linked articles describing the medical needs for termination, or of obstacles - legal and extralegal - which have impeded abortion. Neither of these categories has a single thing to do with my proposition and as a justification for DF they fall short. It's as though, in picking them, you seem to believe that the present default legal stance is of DF, rather than restrictions on LTA. (I assure you, the latter is correct.) The inference I take away from them is that you think because violations exist, the mother's prerogative must be absolute. That's a ridiculous conclusion, and an unnecessary response. If a law is being violated, only an absolutist response will work to preserve women's rights? Please.

    I've asked this already earlier, and several times earlier still in different form: what do you mean by more restrictions? Compare my proposition to current restrictions by date. You do understand that currently abortion does have some restrictions, subject to medical mitigation? Do you understand this? Because it's as though you don't realise that abortion, as of right this second, all over the world, does have limitations on dates for abortion, mitigated by medical considerations. So how exactly does my proposition introduce more limitations? You realise also that I'm suggesting it as a replacement for current law? Is that the part that's throwing you off?

    You're referring to your selected case studies? Then no, this they do not do. They're simply examples of the necessity of medical intervention for LTA.

    ?? A pea? Weird. Now: where? I get that this question is among the difficult ones I'm posing to you now, but where is this so? And against what circumstances?

    You yourself made the case above, Bells: no slander here. Still, I thought you'd go back on it, and you did. So, once again: at what date do you think abortion rights should end, barring medical necessity? Come on, I've asked this many times already and you keep changing your mind, sometimes in the same post. It's not a hard question.

    ... actually, I think I'll stick to reality, and cite the nearly innumerable logical fallacies you've been wallowing in, besides the general trolling. By "discussed among the staff", I assume you mean your supporter therein again. This is another old thing of yours, where you imply vast support where it doesn't exist.

    So here's the chance for everyone to have their say: if there are any staff members that have a problem with my discussion on this thread other than Bells and Tiassa, I invite them to write me via PM, or simply post on the thread itself if they'd rather keep such an exchange private. I have no wish to disrupt the forum, and while this is almost certainly just another case of weasel language, I'm happy for those staff who disagree to make their views known to me. Admins, mods, superadmins all. Write me; tell me where I've done this thread wrong.

    Excuse me: why would I be required to illustrate that women already are abusing them? Frankly, that list does indicate several areas that don't sound completely ethical to me. But again, specify: what stage of LTA?

    Well, I just did. This is an issue that runs through numerous posts of yours. You have this thing where you accuse the other person of "making it all about themselves". Yet Tiassa himself dragged in my comments in post #4. It's kind of an "You're trying to make this all about you, when all I'm trying to do is use your opinion in an illegitimate way to prop up my straw man! How dare you!" sort of thing. It leads one to ask: is this projection? It keeps coming back.

    Oh, do they? Very well: which ones are these that - and these are your words, mind - "deal directly with the biologically determined limitation to abortion rights"? Again, you realize that implicit in "biological determination" are the words "rational" and "justifiable". So now these links of yours contain some kind of rational biological limit? I would very much like to see them. Please post them. Thanks.

    That means one, and that means Tiassa, yes. I give you also maybe Fraggle: he had a strong opinion on abortion in general, I recall, but said nothing about my proposition. It's actually not offensive in any way - unless you're pushing DF (or in your case, DF/not DF/DF/not DF/DF/not DF).

    Several things here: then you need to stop equivocating my position to PAF. Further, you need to stop pretending that the central issue of this thread hasn't already been addressed - this herring has gone on for 17 pages now, as you correctly point out. And if you're seeking moderation on this, I will seek administration on the moderation, because this is not trolling, and it is certainly not the kind of reprehensible, unethical character assassination that you engage in for lack of something rational to say in support of your bizarre agenda.

    Night night!

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  3. Bells Staff Member

    Messages:
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    Firstly, you have yet to actually answer the question in the OP.

    Secondly, you have yet to support any of the claims you have made in this thread - with the exception of on wiki link that does not actually support your argument.

    Thirdly, your repeated demands that others support their claims while you consistently refuse to support any of yours is trolling.

    A reminder of this site's rules:

    Trolling

    18. Trolling is the posting of inflammatory posts with the primary intent of provoking readers into an emotional (often angry) response. Trolls aim to disrupt normal on-topic discussion, often by raising tangential or irrelevant hot-button issues. Trolling posts are intended to incite controversy or conflict and/or to cause annoyance or offence.

    Trolls are damaging to online communities because they attempt to pass as legitimate participants in discussions while actually seeking to disrupt normal conversation and debate. If permitted to remain, trolls tend to reduce the level of trust among members in an online community. One consequence may be that truly naive posts are rejected by sensitised members as just more examples of trolling.

    Trolls tend to follow certain patterns of behaviour that may include:

    • Posting of similar responses and topics repeatedly.
    • Avoiding giving answers to direct questions put to them.
    • Never attempting to justify their position.
    • Demanding proof or evidence from others while offering none in return.
    • Deliberately derailing discussions onto tangential matters in order to try to control the flow of discussion.



    You have repeatedly attempted to disrupt this thread by trying to change the topic and by obsessing about the supposed DF policy and what you deem to be its evilness and to attack those you believe hold views that apparently women should be allowed to abort up to the point of birth (which is a gross misrepresentation of the DF policy and which has been explained to you repeatedly). You have done so with the specific intent of attempting to not only change the subject, but to also badger anyone who happens to be pro-choice by labeling them as being evil, despicable, monstrous, etc.. This pattern has repeated itself for over 16 pages now in this thread and the other thread in the religion forum. You keep saying the same thing, you avoid answering the direct question in the OP, you have repeatedly avoided all requests for an answer and requests for evidence and keep trying to change the subject, you keep demanding proof and evidence from others even though it has been given repeatedly in this and the other threads, while you have offered nothing in return. You have continuously attempted to derail this thread to try to get us to discuss what you want to discuss, despite repeated requests that you stop, that you start your own thread, all of which you have repeatedly refused to do.

    You were repeatedly warned that this type of behaviour could see you moderated. Your response to this is to appeal to authority by asking that people PM you their comments.. Which has made me chuckle.

    Not only have I repeatedly asserted that there should not be any further restrictions in place for abortions, you have continued to misrepresent what you believe the DF policy is, despite repeated explanations that you are wrong, and you have repeatedly asserted that it needs restrictions to prevent abuse.. This claim of abuse has been repeated by you many times and at no time have you even offered a shred of evidence that it is at risk of abuse. Despite evidence that you are wrong, that very few women even have third trimester abortions, despite interviews and studies which clearly show how they are restricted and why, you have repeatedly refused to acknowledge this actual evidence and you have instead kept raising the exact same false assertion that it needs restrictions to prevent abuse while citing the misrepresentation of the "DF policy", despite evidence that there is no abuse in the first place. If you wish to see the links that I posted, they start from here and also from the first page of this thread. I have also repeatedly explained that the decision to abort is for the woman to make and when and how is between herself and her physician. Since doctors will not abort past 33 weeks, you can make of that what you will - this has also been explained to you repeatedly.

    Your repeated demands for evidence will now simply be ignored. Since I have provided pages and pages worth of links, studies, interviews, articles, and anecdotal evidence to support my argument, you have either not read it or simply chosen to ignore it because you are instead intent on demanding evidence while refusing to provide anything yourself. If you wish to see what I linked, you are free to go back and read what I linked and click on the links and read the content - I even provided you with a link from where to start. If you refuse to do so, then that is your problem and not mine. But rest assured, your continued refusal to provide even a shred of evidence for your claims is noted and your repeated attempts to try to drag this thread off topic and change the subject is also noted and noticed. Your persistence in this behaviour will see you moderated.

    There are no if's or buts about this.
     
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  5. GeoffP Caput gerat lupinum Valued Senior Member

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    Definitions

    That's a lie, and here's how it's trolling (thanks for the post):

    Trolling

    18. Trolling is the posting of inflammatory posts with the primary intent of provoking readers into an emotional (often angry) response. Trolls aim to disrupt normal on-topic discussion, often by raising tangential or irrelevant hot-button issues. Trolling posts are intended to incite controversy or conflict and/or to cause annoyance or offence.

    Trolls are damaging to online communities because they attempt to pass as legitimate participants in discussions while actually seeking to disrupt normal conversation and debate. If permitted to remain, trolls tend to reduce the level of trust among members in an online community. One consequence may be that truly naive posts are rejected by sensitised members as just more examples of trolling.

    Trolls tend to follow certain patterns of behaviour that may include:

    • Posting of similar responses and topics repeatedly.
    • Avoiding giving answers to direct questions put to them.
    • Never attempting to justify their position.
    • Demanding proof or evidence from others while offering none in return.
    • Deliberately derailing discussions onto tangential matters in order to try to control the flow of discussion.



    These things are not in question. The 'tangential matters' is your dragging in of libels from other threads; worse still for your case, those matters were clearly understood correctly by you at the time, although it did take some work. The OP has been discussed in the following also, the second containing a list of posts in which the OP has been addressed:

    http://www.sciforums.com/showthread...rsonhood-FAP&p=3195826&viewfull=1#post3195826
    http://www.sciforums.com/showthread...rsonhood-FAP&p=3195562&viewfull=1#post3195562

    Again, I suspect the reason you don't mention these is because acknowledging them would lead your stance down a path it could not recover from.

    Here's another list of definitions from a staff member:

    There's nothing else to be said. You go back and forth on the definitions of your position, ignore my comments on the OP so that you can demand again and again "address the OP", misrepresent the content of your sources (in academic circles, this is falsification of sources and would be enough for a firing), attack the character of your opponents, misrepresent their positions, and so on, ad nauseam.

    I will repost some of the questions I had above, some of which you have repeatedly evaded in different forms. It is trolling to avoid these questions, as defined above. Here they are:

    1) I've asked this already earlier, and several times earlier still in different form: what do you mean by more restrictions [to abortion from my suggestion of a biological endpoint]? Compare my proposition to current restrictions by date. You do understand that currently abortion does have some restrictions, subject to medical mitigation? Do you understand this? Because it's as though you don't realise that abortion, as of right this second, all over the world, does have limitations on dates for abortion, mitigated by medical considerations. So how exactly does my proposition introduce more limitations?

    2) You yourself made the case above, Bells [for the mother's choice being the only determination of abortion]: no slander here. Still, I thought you'd go back on it, and you did. So, once again: at what date do you think abortion rights should end, barring medical necessity? Come on, I've asked this many times already and you keep changing your mind, sometimes in the same post. It's not a hard question.

    3) Which links are these that - and these are your words, mind - "deal directly with the biologically determined limitation to abortion rights"? Again, you realize that implicit in "biological determination" are the words "rational" and "justifiable". So now these links of yours contain some kind of rational biological limit? I would very much like to see them. Please post them. Thanks.

    You have also accused me of excusing or justifying rape and domestic violence. The level to which these absolutely disgusting lies has sunk astounds even me, and I'm familiar with how you behave when you're in a debate you think you're losing. It is the worst kind of insinuation, and does not belong on SF. That's not a troll. That's a statement on how things shouldn't be.
     
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  7. Bells Staff Member

    Messages:
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    Mod Note

    You referred to me as monstrous, evil, virtually likened me to a murderer, while making spurious and unfounded claims that the fetus is "semi-conscious" - without proof mind you - while you then went on a hissy fit rant based solely on the misrepresentation of a pro-choice argument made by another person. To the one, there is no scientific proof or evidence that a fetus is "semi-conscious", so your emotional psychobabble is merely that, psychobabble and completely unfounded on scientific fact.

    So frankly, your whines that I queried the role you wish to play in regards to this topic in conjunction to your attitudes towards women, after your repeated assertions about women in general - you know, the constant comments about women apparently abusing 3rd trimester abortions because yes, women apparently wait that long to abort for fun while continuously misrepresenting why women actually do access abortions in the 3rd trimester and willfully ignoring the cut off point for abortions set by the doctors who perform them, are kind of funny. As I have repeatedly explained to you, the DF policy leaves it up to the mother to decide and also for her doctor to decide. Since doctors will not abort past 33 weeks for safety reasons, your continued and repeated misrepresentation and blatant lies have worn down any bridge you may have had left.

    As for your rape comment.. You openly came out and defended one of the biggest rape apologists on this site, a guy who in that very thread commented that rape is just men having sex with sexy women they normally would not be able to 'fuck', while openly ignoring the years of literature which clearly explain how and why rape is about power and not just the need to blow one's load whenever the urge arises. You defended him and claimed he was right that rape is really men just wanting to have sex.. And then you went on this little spiel about whether the right term is rape or whether it is something else... Because apparently "rape" is too legalistic and too political for your liking. In regards to your defending domestic violence. You ignored the links I had provided which linked to the topic, while defending a comment that was, by every single definition under the rising sun, would constitute as the advocating of domestic violence. You then kept trolling and demanding I provide links I had already provided and then tried to lie. You failed.

    Your entrance in this thread was obscene as it was ridiculous. While ignoring what the thread was about, you tried to make it about you and then refused to discuss the thread topic as per the OP, and instead, kept on making more misrepresentations, more accusations and more spurious claims, all of which were unfounded and unproven. Despite repeated requests that you remain on topic, that you stop trying to change the subject and that you support your claims with evidence, you refused and did so openly, all the while repeatedly demanding others provide evidence which you refused to read. That sir, by any and every definition, makes you a troll.

    You are still to support your many and varied claims with any evidence, you are still to deal with this thread as per the OP and you are still to remain on topic.

    This will be my last response to you in this thread until such a time as you can actually discuss the topic as per the OP. If you persist in going off-topic, I will be requesting a review of your continued refusal to deal with the subject of the OP, your continued refusal to provide any evidence for your claims, your continued attempts to troll by demanding evidence of others which you refuse to read or acknowledge. As it stands, you are looking at a possible ban. You have been repeatedly warned about this GeoffP. I would suggest you reconsider the role you wish to play here and either participate in the thread and remain on topic or face moderation.
     
  8. Trooper Secular Sanity Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    1,784
    He’s not the only one who feels this way.


    The state has legitimate interests in protecting both the pregnant woman's health and the potentiality of human life, each of which interests grows and reaches a "compelling" point at various stages of the woman's approach to term. Like I said earlier, more time, more human, more wrong.

    "Even if we decided that a fetus isn't a person, that doesn't necessarily answer the question of whether abortion should be illegal. Many non-persons, like animals, are protected. The state could theoretically assert an interest in protecting potential human life, even if it isn't a person.

    This doesn't mean that the status of the fetus is completely irrelevant or that debates about whether the fetus is a "person" are uninteresting. Whether we think of the fetus as a person or not will have a significant influence on whether we think of abortion is ethical (even if we think it should remain legal) and what sorts of restrictions we think should be placed on those choosing to have an abortion. If the fetus is a person, then abortion may still be justified and outlawing abortion may be unjustified, but the fetus could still deserve protections and respect of some sort.

    Respect, perhaps, is the issue which deserves much more attention than it currently receives. Many of those opposed to choice have been drawn in that direction because they believe that legalized abortion cheapens human life. Much of the rhetoric of the "culture of life" has force because there is something disturbing about the idea of treating the fetus as unworthy of respect and consideration. If the two sides could come closer together on this matter, perhaps the disagreements remaining would be less rancorous."—Austin Cline
     
  9. Bells Staff Member

    Messages:
    24,270
    See GeoffP, this is how you argue a point. Capracus also backs up his claims. Please take a page out of their notebook and support your claims in a likewise fashion.. Please, I beg of you.

    Well of course he is not.

    However I find that the language used is not helpful. Fearmongering and gross misrepresentations and distorting reality does not help at all.

    Personally, I do not agree with partial birth abortions. I find it morbid and frankly a horrific experience for all involved.

    Regarding fetal consciousness.. While the neural pathways are there, there is no evidence that it is conscious or able to even feel pain. I notice a lot of people comment on how it smiles, reacts to touch in utero - yanks its limbs away for example.. This is not evidence of actual consciousness or even semi-consciousness. Scientific evidence suggests these are simply reflexive and not conscious.

    A simple definition of consciousness is sensory awareness of the body, the self, and the world. The fetus may be aware of the body, for example by perceiving pain. It reacts to touch, smell, and sound, and shows facial expressions responding to external stimuli. However, these reactions are probably preprogrammed and have a subcortical nonconscious origin. Furthermore, the fetus is almost continuously asleep and unconscious partially due to endogenous sedation. Conversely, the newborn infant can be awake, exhibit sensory awareness, and process memorized mental representations. It is also able to differentiate between self and nonself touch, express emotions, and show signs of shared feelings. Yet, it is unreflective, present oriented, and makes little reference to concept of him/herself. Newborn infants display features characteristic of what may be referred to as basic consciousness and they still have to undergo considerable maturation to reach the level of adult consciousness. The preterm infant, ex utero, may open its eyes and establish minimal eye contact with its mother. It also shows avoidance reactions to harmful stimuli. However, the thalamocortical connections are not yet fully established, which is why it can only reach a minimal level of consciousness.

    I don't disagree with you. However the issue arises when the State creates a competing interest in the mother's body. As we have seen, the State, doctors and hospitals do deny women their bodily integrity, their legal rights and sometimes even their lives in protecting the interests of the unborn. In many instances, the court appoints a legal representative for the fetus while denying the mother the right to legal representation, so that the rights of the fetus against the rights of the mother's very existence can be argued in court. This is the very real danger of protecting the rights of the fetus. As we have seen time and again, it has been used to curtail all of the mother's rights and even her very freedoms and in some cases, her life.

    To wit, if you have two person's existing in one body, there can be no equal rights and equal protection. It is, by the very biology involved, impossible. And it is one of the biggest issues with personhood and it is why personhood measures continues to fail in courts and on ballot papers. Simply because people recognise that while supporters of personhood measures try to claim that there would be exemptions, the simple fact of the matter is that declaring it to be a person automatically removes any exemptions. For example, there are no exemptions to your rights as a person. This is enshrined in your Constitution and various human rights laws that your country has ratified. It is also for this reason that human rights laws make sure in their wording that it applies to persons who are born.

    Florida recently passed legislation that restricts 3rd trimester abortions - in short, it is attempting to impose a viability test (some are trying to push viability down to 20 weeks). While such restrictions were in place in the past, with exemptions, they have decided restrict the exemptions further and to redefine 'health of the mother'. In short, the State has effectively stepped in where the woman's physician should be and removed the treating physician from the equation. So even in the event where he feels she should terminate for her health and safety, the State has restricted it the health of the mother further and removing the doctor's recommendations for the treatment of the patient. As a result, the treating physician will have to fill in a paperwork and put in writing for the state to decide whether she can get an abortion or not. This is exceptionally dangerous. A woman who presents as suicidal, for example, who may suffer from other extreme forms of mental illness who may wish to terminate will now no longer be allowed to terminate in the third trimester, even if the pregnancy imposes a risk to her life, safety and physical and mental wellbeing.. I don't need to explain how and why this is dangerous. For example a rape or incest victim who denied her pregnancy or just found out she was pregnant would not be able to access one even if the pregnancy resulting from rape posed a risk to her mental and psychological wellbeing.

    When you couple such restrictions with States making harder and harder for women to access an abortion earlier (admitting privileges laws and hospitals refusing to provide doctors who perform even first trimester abortions with admitting privileges), what are these women going to do? Not only do restrictions to earlier abortions mean that most end up having to wait longer, but now imposing restrictions on health of the mother exemptions creates a dangerous atmosphere for women who are ill.


    Yes it could. However this is not what Governments are doing. They are going for full personhood because protecting the interests of potential human life does not grant it the legal protections the mother naturally has as a person. Non-persons, like animals, do have protections. However if they need to be put down for whatever reason, then it needs to be done humanely. In other words, pet owners can request that their healthy pets be put down. So the rights of the owner remains supreme.

    If only that could be done without impeding or infringing on the basic human rights of the mother.

    This subject is a bitch.

    No, really, it is a bitch of a subject. Because you will inevitably have people going off their nut declaring others to be murderers, etc.

    To put the madness into some perspective..

    Earlier this month, attorneys for the State of North Dakota filed their appeal of a federal court ruling that permanently blocked the state’s “heartbeat” ban, a measure that bans abortion as soon as a fetal heartbeat can be detected, which can be as early as six weeks into a pregnancy. News that the state’s attorney general’s office had appealed the decision was not a surprise, especially since lawmakers acknowledged that the ban, which is considered the strictest in the nation, was passed specifically to challenge Roe v. Wade.

    [HR][/HR]

    In the state’s notice of appeal, attorneys set forth the issues they want the federal appeals court to consider. Normally issues of appeal identify points of law the lower court got wrong, such as claiming the court came to the wrong conclusion when weighing the evidence or that it admitted evidence it should have otherwise excluded. But in North Dakota’s statement of the issues, the first assignment of error attorneys for the state assign is to the Supreme Court, stating that the “underpinnings” of the holdings in Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey are no longer valid and that those decisions should be overturned.

    What exactly are the underpinnings attorneys for North Dakota believe are no longer valid? Pretty much all of them.

    When the lower court was considering the constitutionality of North Dakota’s heartbeat ban, attorneys for the state argued that fetal viability occurs at the point of conception. In support of this claim, the attorneys submitted the affidavit of Jerry M. Obritsch, a Bismark OB-GYN who argued that because newly created embryos can survive in a test tube for two to six days as part of in vitro fertilization, some in the medical community now believe viability occurs at the point of conception. It’s a radical argument that collapses entirely the legal standards of viability as the cutoff point at which states can ban abortion with the concept of fetal “personhood” by effectively declaring that life begins at conception.

    Thankfully, the North Dakota federal court disagreed. But the lower court didn’t reject Obritsch’s claims regarding fetal viability outright, instead ruling that his opinion was not enough to counter the evidence submitted by reproductive rights advocates on how the mainstream medical community measures fetal viability. Despite the state’s claim, the lower court ruled, the evidence just didn’t suggest that the issue of fetal viability was genuinely a matter of dispute.

    In their appeal, attorneys for the state argue that the lower court weighed that evidence wrong. Instead of blocking the law, the lower court should have ruled that Obritsch’s affidavit was enough to show a genuine factual dispute and allowed the state to go to trial and defend the law.



    Who needs personhood? Since they will keep failing, States are looking at viability. And North Dakota has determined that viability starts at the point of conception.. Because the fertilised egg can exist outside of the mother in a test tube.. While you try and figure that one out, keep in mind that the lower courts did not argue that this was factually incorrect, that it is not viability as per the law..
     
  10. Trooper Secular Sanity Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    1,784
    Pot meet kettle.


    A Defense of Abortion

    What is a fetus? If wanted, we call it a 'baby'. I remember my first sonogram. I was able to show everyone the sex, the movements, the heartbeat, etc. It allowed me to present my son as a potential social being, 'the baby'. I do agree with Thomson that treating women as fetal containers is a kind of objectification as bad or worse than treating them as mere sex object, but at the same time, we are objectifying the fetus.

    Man does not now and will not ever—live by the bread of the scientific method alone. He must deal with life and death, with love and cruelty and despair, and so must make conjectures of great importance, which may or may not be true, and which do not lend themselves to experimentation. We must deal with such propositions, must decide whether they are true, whether to believe them, whether to act on them—and the scientific method is no help for by their nature these matters lie forever beyond the realm of science.”—Allen Wheelis

    The hardliners—you.

    "The hardliners in the public debate on the conflict of abortion, be they proponents or opponents, may not be aware of the fact that neither view is sustainable for most people."

    Public Policy and Abortion

    But, of course, the problem of abortion has to be “solved,” at least, with regard to practical matters. This means that a good policy does not rest on extreme views but tries to cover as many points of views, although being aware of the fact that one is not able to please every person in society. This would be an impossible task. It seems that one should adopt a moderate view rather than the proposed extreme views. This is not because the moderate view is “correct” but because one needs a broad consensus for a sound policy. The hardliners in the public debate on the conflict of abortion, be they proponents or opponents, may not be aware of the fact that neither view is sustainable for most people.

    A sound way for governments with regard to a reasonable policy could be the acceptance of a more or less neutral stance that may function as a proper guide for law. But, in fact, the decisive claim of a “neutral stance” is, in turn, questionable. All ethical theories try to present a proper account of a so-called neutral stance but there is hardly any theory that could claim to be sustainable with regard to other approaches. However, the key seems to be, again, to accept a middle way to cover most points of views. In the end, a formation of a policy seeks a sound compromise people could live with. But this is not the end of the story. One should always try to find better ways to cope with hard ethical problems. The conflict of abortion is of that kind and there is no evidence to assume otherwise.

    http://www.iep.utm.edu/abortion/
     
  11. cluelusshusbund + Public Dilemma + Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    7,985
    --------------------> :wave:

    Perty simple realy... the "problem" of abortion to be the choice of the pregnant woman... ie... none of anybody elses bidness.!!!
     
  12. Balerion Banned Banned

    Messages:
    8,596
    What a crock of shit. An absolute crock of shit. Threatening another member with moderation because you lack the integrity to concede a point? Disgusting. What a farce.
     
  13. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    37,884
    Shooting the Corpse

    And ... this ... is ... a ... choice.

    When my partner decided to carry to term, she didn't ask my opinion. That is how it should be.

    I was then offered an out, a chance to flee all paternal responsibility, which I turned down.

    After that, the question of adoption was settled (rejected) instantly.

    Whereupon we started doing all the little things, practical, silly, or otherwise, that a couple does when expecting a baby, including the irrational stuff like singing silly songs to an embryo that has no coherent sensory capacities.

    But this was all a choice, a sentimental decision. It's not something that really applies in the context of a legal discussion; it's not valid evidence in support of legislation. All it is, in the end, is how we decided to feel.

    Because neither did Tig choose to clean up every potentially detrimental behavior. It wasn't a rational decision to treat this fetus like a baby, else that decision would have applied to other questions. She was at the time, and generally remains still, a very selfish person. Luck itself is that her behavior didn't seem to inflict any observable developmental damage.

    I will never regret this unplanned pregnancy, nor the woman who carried it.

    But as an object lesson, I might suggest that rare are the days when her pregnancy would not, technically, have been jailable under FAP. And these years later, if people wish to prescribe a suggestion of harm, the litany of failures, rejections, and other fuckups since is probably more relevant, especially as I will not permit anyone to describe this intelligent, kindly disposed child of remarkably subtle insight as the produce of mistake or crime. The outcome speaks for itself, both literally and figuratively.

    Yes and no.

    In order to objectify the fetus, we must engage the political propositions. That is to say, the FAP proposition virtually requires objectification by dint of its implications under Equal Protection.

    It is easy enough to recognize that there is a stock and standard abortion debate in my society.

    FAP is intended to redefine the standing presuppositions.

    Objectification of the fetus is a specific result of the FAP proposal.

    The day that "her body, her choice" actually includes the practical implications described by various odd fantasies of last-minute abortion, those odd fantasies become objectively practical enough to consider. Meanwhile, all they do is distract the discussion with perverse sentimentality, which is actually one of the argumentative bases of the anti-abortion movement.

    It is, I admit, difficult to explain the function of the dry-foot proposition to those determined to misrepresent it.

    If you told me you were going to vacation in the sulfur mines at Kahwah Ijen, I might say that sounds fascinating even if a bit dangerous. You might ask, then, why it's dangerous, and I might reply that, well, first off the place is so hot it burns blue, and secondly, yeah, there are deadly clouds of toxic gas blowing around there.

    Which is all well and fine. Lots of people like dangerous adventures. But would you accuse me of trying to poison or burn you to death?

    Dry-foot remains an abstraction, symptomatic in my case of the observable fact that I will never be pregnant; it's not my rights, obligations, and governance on the line. Under Roe, the question will never come up.

    But under FAP? The Equal Protection question arises, and in the context of that question, dry-foot is a bright-line because the question ceases to exist at that point. It is the sulfur vent, the blue lava, the okay, if that's really where people [FAP advocates] want to go danger. This is the standoff they invoke.

    How do we resolve this question? Remember, Trooper, the thread you reacted to when crying about the poor reception given the Turducken proposition actually opened with a proposition intended to explore the implications of giving FAP (LACP) advocates their way.

    Strangely, the whole thing really does seem to be about abortion. Those who would advocate the whole life-at-conception argument don't seem to want to discuss the issue; your outrage, regardless of what you intended, is on behalf of a contribution to a fifteen-month effort to avoid the topic by reiterating zygotal personhood, complaining about men's rights, trying to figure the rights of corpses. We did have an attempt early in that discussion to dismiss the concerns as extraneous and too complicated, but that argument required at the time the rejection of Constitutional observance, and in the current discussion we even find that such an argument is based on a presupposition FAP intends to erase. Thus it comes out something akin to, under extant law that will be nullified by the new law, the new law can't do what the new law says because it will violate the currently extant law that it will override. It's one thing to stand one's ground; quite another to shoot the corpse in self-defense.

    FAP objectifies the fetus specifically by setting up this argument. The facts of the mother and the legally-declared "person" inside her under FAP will require resolution. Appeals to protect the most vulnerable people in our society will be circular, demanding presupposition in favor of the proposition, and thereby demanding presupposition of the outcome.

    As it is, FAP demands that Justice objectively weigh the equally protected rights of two people when one exists inside and and demands precedent over the other. Objective examination demands a certain context of objectification or quantification. There's no way around it.

    Functionally speaking, dry-foot is only on the table at all because it is an intrinsic consideration of FAP under Equal Protection. There is no evidence to suggest it will become a realistic consideration under Roe, and a forty-one year history persuasively arguing it won't.

    So, yes, it's true that constant willful attempts to distort the issue are a bit annoying in the context that anyone is expected to take such arguments seriously. And it's been going on long enough that I am perfectly willing to hold accountable those who would give cover to FAP by encouraging people to look away from this fundamental problem in the policy.

    So keep giving that cover. Keep describing women's human rights as the province of hardliners; I am perfectly willing to continue to describe such hateful, egocentric excrement by its name.
     
  14. Write4U Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    20,069
    All this reminds me of the moral quandary presented in "I Robot"
     
  15. Trooper Secular Sanity Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    1,784
    It's hard to maintain that a transformation to full personhood happens abruptly at the moment of birth.

    Why, then, should it be murder to kill an infant the day after it was born but not the day before?

    Many intelligent people have asked themselves this question. And that is what Capracus was trying to get at, smart one.

    "Abortion: Is it Possible to be both 'Pro-life' and 'Pro-Choice'?" by Carl Sagan and Ann Duran

    "We recognize that specifying a precise moment will overlook individual differences. Therefore, if we must draw a line, it ought to be drawn conservatively--that is, on the early side. There are people, who object to having to set some numerical limit, and we share their disquiet; but if there is to be a law on this matter, and it is to affect some useful compromise between the two absolutist positions, it must specify, at least roughly, a time of transition to personhood.

    Since, on average, fetal thinking occurs even later than fetal lung development, we find Roe v. Wade to be a good and prudent decision addressing a complex and difficult issue. With prohibitions on abortion in the last trimester--except in cases of grave medical necessity--it strikes a fair balance between the conflicting claims of freedom and life."


    Let's consider these two absolutist positions in turn. A newborn baby is surely the same being it was just before birth. There’s good evidence that a late-term fetus responds to sound--including music, but especially its mother's voice. It can suck its thumb or do a somersault. Occasionally, it generates adult brain-wave patterns. Some people claim to remember being born, or even the uterine environment. Perhaps there is thought in the womb. It's hard to maintain that a transformation to full personhood happens abruptly at the moment of birth. Why, then, should it be murder to kill an infant the day after it was born but not the day before?

    We believe that many supporters of reproductive freedom are troubled at least occasionally by this question. But they are reluctant to raise it because it is the beginning of a slippery slope. If it is impermissible to abort a pregnancy in the ninth month, what about the eighth, seventh, sixth ... ? Once we acknowledge that the state can interfere at any time in the pregnancy, doesn't it follow that the state can interfere at all times?

    This conjures up the specter of predominantly male, predominantly affluent legislators telling poor women they must bear and raise alone children they cannot afford to bring up; forcing teenagers to bear children they are not emotionally prepared to deal with; saying to women who wish for a career that they must give up their dreams, stay home, and bring up babies; and, worst of all, condemning victims of rape and incest to carry and nurture the offspring of their assailants. Legislative prohibitions on abortion arouse the suspicion that their real intent is to control the independence and sexuality of women…

    And yet, by consensus, all of us think it proper that there be prohibitions against, and penalties exacted for, murder. It would be a flimsy defense if the murderer pleads that this is just between him and his victim and none of the government's business. If killing a fetus is truly killing a human being, is it not the duty of the state to prevent it? Indeed, one of the chief functions of government is to protect the weak from the strong.

    If we do not oppose abortion at some stage of pregnancy, is there not a danger of dismissing an entire category of human beings as unworthy of our protection and respect? And isn't that dismissal the hallmark of sexism, racism, nationalism, and religious fanaticism? Shouldn't those dedicated to fighting such injustices be scrupulously careful not to embrace another?

    If you deliberately kill a human being, it's called murder. If you deliberately kill a chimpanzee--biologically, our closest relative, sharing 99.6 percent of our active genes--whatever else it is, it's not murder. To date, murder uniquely applies to killing human beings. Therefore, the question of when personhood (or, if we like, ensoulment) arises is key to the abortion debate. When does the fetus become human? When do distinct and characteristic human qualities emerge?

    There is no right to life in any society on Earth today, nor has there been at any former time… : We raise farm animals for slaughter; destroy forests; pollute rivers and lakes until no fish can live there; kill deer and elk for sport, leopards for the pelts, and whales for fertilizer; entrap dolphins, gasping and writhing, in great tuna nets; club seal pups to death; and render a species extinct every day. All these beasts and vegetables are as alive as we. What is (allegedly) protected is not life, but human life.

    Despite many claims to the contrary, life does not begin at conception: It is an unbroken chain that stretches back nearly to the origin of the Earth, 4.6 billion years ago. Nor does human life begin at conception: It is an unbroken chain dating back to the origin of our species, hundreds of thousands of years ago. Every human sperm and egg is, beyond the shadow of a doubt, alive. They are not human beings, of course. However, it could be argued that neither is a fertilized egg.

    Acquiescing in the killing of any living creature, especially one that might later become a baby, is troublesome and painful. But we've rejected the extremes of "always" and "never," and this puts us--like it or not--on the slippery slope. If we are forced to choose a developmental criterion, then this is where we draw the line: when the beginning of characteristically human thinking becomes barely possible.

    It is, in fact, a very conservative definition: Regular brain waves are rarely found in fetuses. More research would help… If we wanted to make the criterion still more stringent, to allow for occasional precocious fetal brain development, we might draw the line at six months. This, it so happens, is where the Supreme Court drew it in 1973--although for completely different reasons.

    Its decision in the case of Roe v. Wade changed American law on abortion. It permits abortion at the request of the woman without restriction in the first trimester and, with some restrictions intended to protect her health, in the second trimester. It allows states to forbid abortion in the third trimester, except when there's a serious threat to the life or health of the woman. In the 1989 Webster decision, the Supreme Court declined explicitly to overturn Roe v. Wade but in effect invited the 50 state legislatures to decide for themselves.

    What was the reasoning in Roe v. Wade? There was no legal weight given to what happens to the children once they are born, or to the family. Instead, a woman's right to reproductive freedom is protected, the court ruled, by constitutional guarantees of privacy. But that right is not unqualified. The woman's guarantee of privacy and the fetus's right to life must be weighed--and when the court did the weighing' priority was given to privacy in the first trimester and to life in the third. The transition was decided not from any of the considerations we have been dealing with so far…--not when "ensoulment" occurs, not when the fetus takes on sufficient human characteristics to be protected by laws against murder. Instead, the criterion adopted was whether the fetus could live outside the mother. This is called "viability" and depends in part on the ability to breathe. The lungs are simply not developed, and the fetus cannot breathe--no matter how advanced an artificial lung it might be placed in—until about the 24th week, near the start of the sixth month. This is why Roe v. Wade permits the states to prohibit abortions in the last trimester. It's a very pragmatic criterion.

    We recognize that specifying a precise moment will overlook individual differences. Therefore, if we must draw a line, it ought to be drawn conservatively--that is, on the early side. There are people, who object to having to set some numerical limit, and we share their disquiet; but if there is to be a law on this matter, and it is to affect some useful compromise between the two absolutist positions, it must specify, at least roughly, a time of transition to personhood.

    Since, on average, fetal thinking occurs even later than fetal lung development, we find Roe v. Wade to be a good and prudent decision addressing a complex and difficult issue. With prohibitions on abortion in the last trimester--except in cases of grave medical necessity--it strikes a fair balance between the conflicting claims of freedom and life.

    http://www.2think.org/abortion.shtml

    Zero Restrictions: No

    Pro-choice with prohibitions: Yes
     
  16. cluelusshusbund + Public Dilemma + Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    7,985
    Thats a fine queston... an i have no prollem wit those who want to label LTA as murder as long as the choice is still up to the pregnant woman.!!!

    Life is not always a bowl of cherries... sometimes the choices we have suck... an not even Carl Sagans intelligent noise shoud over rule the womans choice to abort or not.!!!
     
    Last edited: Jun 2, 2014
  17. billvon Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    21,635
    Good summary and it reflects my thinking on the issue. The right to abortion is not unlimited, nor is the right to life. The two must be balanced against each other as the fetus slowly changes from an insensate clump of cells to a life that can live outside the womb.
     
  18. Bells Staff Member

    Messages:
    24,270
    Fetal thinking now?

    So we have moved beyond unfounded and unproven scientific claims of 'semi-conscious' and moved onto unfounded and unproven scientific claims (it's not even conscious or aware in the uterus by the way) of fetal thinking?

    Will wonders never cease... What's going to be next? Are people going to claim that it has the ability to speak as well?

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!



    Ermm....

    Which is a choice you make for yourself.

    And I remember my first sonograms.. It was after hemorrhaging severely and being rushed to hospital at around 7 weeks and that was a weekly, sometimes thrice weekly occurrence. Experiences differ and opinions differ.

    Now imagine if those sonogram images were used to remove your say and your rights completely, to the point where you were denied the right to have a say in any medical treatment, what you consume (keep in mind, that many herbs and foods count as abortificants), how you drive, where you live, how you even give birth and where, etc?

    Recognising the legal rights of the fetus turns the woman into the fetal container.

    No one has been able to explain what happens to the woman's rights once the fetus is given the legal rights of a person. We have seen more than enough examples of what happens when hospitals, doctors and politicians decide to impose personhood on a fetus, and it is always to the detriment and sometimes, even death, of the woman. Even after the point of viability.

    If you wish to use those words for my opinion that the decision is ultimately the mother's, then fine, knock yourself out.

    You don't even know what my personal views happen to be. However, since you seem intent on forming such opinions based on a continued misrepresentation, then really, you go girl!

    The so called neutral stance has resulted in wide spread closures, prevention to access and other laws and murders of abortion clinic staff. I'm not even going to touch on the bombings and threats of terrorism to clinics and staff and the patients who attend reproductive health clinics (for a variety of reasons, not just for abortions).

    There are around 724 clinics that provide abortions in the US.

    To understand more fully the complex state of access to abortion services in America, The Daily Beast identified and confirmed the location of the country’s remaining 724 clinics and calculated the distance from every part of the country to its closest clinic. We compiled our list using data available from abortion advocacy groups and anti-abortion-rights sources, and then we called each clinic to verify their information to create as comprehensive a list as possible. We also took care to obscure exact address data. Here is some of what we found:

    The Panhandle-Dakotas Divide

    The clearest trend on the map is the dearth of clinics through the center of the country—from northern Texas through Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, Wyoming, and North Dakota. Roughly 400,000 women of reproductive age (between 15 and 44) live more than 150 miles from the closest clinic in this region. The county farthest away from an abortion clinic is Divide, N.D. All of these states except Wyoming require 24-hour waiting periods between the time a woman schedules an abortion and the procedure.

    Often, the states with the fewest clinics also have more restrictions. These are six of the many states that recently curtailed access to medical abortion—also known as the abortion pill—by banning telemedicine, a method doctors use to prescribe medication to terminate a pregnancy over a video chat, a convenience to people who live in rural areas.

    Expanded medical-abortion restrictions are a next battleground for anti-abortion-rights politicians, abortion advocates say.

    Wait Times and In-Person Counseling

    Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, Wisconsin, and Arizona, among other states, also require in-person counseling, often 24 hours in advance of the procedure, which requires women to make two trips or to stay overnight, increasing the endeavor’s cost and time commitment.

    Residents of Flagstaff, Ariz., for instance, would have to travel more than 100 miles to Phoenix and spend two days in the city to receive medical abortion pills. Arizona bans telemedicine and requires in-person counseling.

    Wichita, Without a Clinic and Between Provisions

    Since the 2009 murder of abortion provider George Tiller, Wichita, Kans., has been without an abortion clinic of any kind and is roughly three hours' travel from the nearest ones in Kansas City and in Tulsa and Norman, Okla. Women who visit the Oklahoma clinics will face a ban on telemedicine, while those who travel to Kansas City will be required to get an ultrasound.

    Insurance Coverage

    Some states ban private insurance policies from covering abortion except in cases of danger to life, rape, and incest. Idaho, Kentucky, and Nebraska, among others, will extend the limitation to plans purchased under the new health-insurance exchanges starting in 2014. Other states, including Alabama, Tennessee, and South Carolina, don’t limit private plans now but will start in 2014 under their health-insurance exchanges. Again, the states with the most restrictions are often in areas farthest from the closest clinics.



    Yay for neutrality!
     
  19. Trooper Secular Sanity Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    1,784
    No. Fetal brain activity.

    Adult Brain Activity Stirs before Birth

    As an atheist, you should know that even your personhood is merely an illusion.

    Why would such a misleading system for person representation have evolved?
    Why would such a misleading system for person representation have evolved? The answer most likely concerns the intensely social nature of our species and also perhaps the rarity of ambiguous cases of personhood in our evolutionary history. Like other social species, our individual survival depends on relating successfully to our conspecifics. More for us than other species, this requires understanding the immensely complex behaviors that result from their beliefs, motivations, and personalities. As the anthropologist Guthrie has observed, in discussing religious belief systems, the cost of attributing intentionality to some non-intentional systems may be less that the cost of failing to adopt the intentional stance toward some systems that are intentional. In other words, it may have been adaptive to err on the side of activating the personhood network too often.

    Furthermore, the personhood network is an adaptation to an earlier world, which contained fewer ambiguous cases of personhood. Sonograms did not show us our fetuses; people did not live long enough to develop Alzheimer’s disease, and vegetative states were fatal. It is interesting that infants and young children may be the one class of ambiguous cases that our ancestors did encounter on a regular basis, and for these cases it would adaptive to attribute personhood even in the absence of intelligence and self-awareness. Protohumans who accurately judged their offspring to be lacking in various traits associated with personhood and accordingly treated them as non-persons would not have many surviving descendants!

    If our analysis is correct, it suggests that personhood is a kind of illusion. Like visual illusions, it is the result of brain mechanisms that represent the world nonveridically under certain circumstances. Also like visual illusions, it is stubborn. Take the Hermann grid illusion, for example, in which a grid of white lines on a black background seems to have ghostly grey spots at the lines’ intersections.
    (see http://www.yorku.ca/eye/hermann.htm). We know that these spots are illusory, and that they result from interactions between the antagonistic center and surround compartments s of the receptive fields of visual neurons; however, this knowledge does not make the spots go away. Similarly, knowing about the person network does not eliminate the sense that moving Heider and Simmel shapes have intention.

    The result of this analysis could be considered nihilistic. It does undercut ethical systems based on personhood, and in particular suggests that difficult ethical issues should not be approached with the strategy of determining whether or not the parties involved are persons. If personhood is not really in the world, then there is no fact of the matter concerning the status of a given being as a person or not, and there is no point to the philosophical or bioethical program of seeking objective criteria for personhood more generally because there are none.

    Where does this leave us? The answer is different for ethics, as a discipline, and for the everyday moral behavior of individuals. For ethics, the only alternative we can see is a shift to a more utilitarian approach. Rather than ask whether someone or something is a person, we should ask how much capacity exists for enjoying the kinds of psychological traits previously discussed (e.g., intelligence and self-awareness) and what are the consequent interests of that being. Of course, this view requires deciding how these traits should be defined and ranked in importance and whether to consider a being’s potential or only actual, status. In other words, many similar problems arise as in discussions of criteria for personhood. However, having understood the need to set aside intuitions about personhood and having avoided the distraction of seeking criteria for personhood, we can work more productively on assessing and protecting the interests of all.

    http://www.psych.upenn.edu/~mfarah/Neuroethics-Personhood.pdf
     
  20. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    37,884
    FAPpy unFAPpy

    In the question of statute, the answer is statutory.

    In the question of the ontological? What dry-foot notes in the spectrum of FAP is that the question of how to enforce equally protected rights when one (statutorily, constitutionally declared) "person" is asserting rights within and thereby authority over another (extant, existentially recognized) person's body.

    Do you understand that what I would do "if I was pregnant" is so unspeakably irrelevant to the question of what I say as a voter, or in my analysis of what is happening?

    What bothers me most about FAP is not that it will become the law of the land anytime soon; that course is a long, brutal and, yes, downright bloody arc.

    But win or lose, the entire time that effort goes on, it alienates, denigrates, and outright assails women.

    The key to putting an end to FAP isn't in pointing out that a personhood law failed at the ballot box in Mississippi for heaven's sake. A personhood measure failed in Oklahoma court before it even got to the ballot, but the legislature is going to give it a go; and Colorado advocates have a measure up this year declaring personhood generally for all unborn children.

    Rather, the key to putting an end to FAP is actually discussing what it will do. Notice how the actual advocates of the principle of life—and therefore personhoodat conception (meaning fertilization) never really could offer much of an explanation. One of the things about Billvon's attempt to explain why the prior consideration wasn't even necessary was, well, I'm quite certain he didn't intend it this way, but he really did make a passionate argument on behalf of the idea that this really is just about stopping abortion. After all, the idea that a man might be held accountable for his contribution to the unnatural termination of a pregnancy—negligent homicide—because of the kind of driving we all do every day is apparently irrational. Because that person doesn't deserve the equal protection of the law when miscarried because of someone else's actions? What other such homicide would society knowingly let go without investigation? Yet that's not the rational thing to do for the equally protected person formerly existing inside another person?

    Regardless of whether any of us at Sciforums believe in FAP, it is coming soon to a federal courthouse. If it's not there by 2016, you might actually see the Republican presidential candidate have a chance. But the hardliners don't care about that sort of thing, else they wouldn't be doing this at all.

    How many people are going to drag this argument out by telling us to look away! look away!

    Think of all the time and money and self-denigration invested in what is more and more becoming a terror movement in the United States. I mean, if the fact that even legislatures will fight to drag out a debate in which one side of an argument is that a woman's human rights are negotiable because she is human, and the other side of the argument is, say huh? and then a third side of the argument says, it's not that we think that a woman's rights are negotiable, but the rational thing is to negotiate, an argument that they are going to lose, an argument that is nothing more than a big, If we can't fuck you, then fuck off! to women, is without some significance, then I can go ahead and rest my general case for shock and horror at the cover my ostensibly unFAPpy neighbors are giving to FAP.

    And as to Capracus? Give me a fucking break. He forgets a thing or three about how rights work under the constitution. As I have said, committing medical malpractice in the form of assault and battery against a newborn infant and a postnatal mother, possibly killing one or both in the process, does not reverse or undo that infant's rights. It's a moronic presupposition.

    Which brings us back to the question, and in the question of statute, the answer is statutory.

    Right now, as it is, under Roe, when it's inside, it's covered by fetal homicide laws. When it's outside, it's covered by the regular homicide laws. Why the statutory difference? Perhaps because whatever other abstractions one might argue, the difference between inside and outside is objectively and empirically observable?
     
  21. GeoffP Caput gerat lupinum Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    22,087
    Specious horseshit, nearly in its entirety. I appreciate you running away, however, as it saves me the bother of bothering with you. I supported my position throughout, and your response was to, literally, write in the word "chortle". That is not an argument. That is crap.

    You refused, several times, to provide links of a statement you then misrepresented in intent to all appearances. You have attempted to drive this discussion away from a rational and responsible discussion with your links that demonstrate nothing of the point you wish to present. You ask for a demonstration that a proposition untested in the world could not be abused. That is absurd.

    When pressed, your newest outrages were accusations that I defended rape and domestic abuse. There are not enough words to express the puerile disingenuousness and outright intellectual disjunction of this.

    There were numerous other offenses against forum rules. I assure you, you would not be able to get away with this nonsense except by your position. The end message here is: don't argue against Bells, because she has moderator powers. If I am indeed banned for daring to counter you, then by God, there would be no clearer condemnation of the forum.

    You are a child that plays with fire, and I pity those who must know you.

    Here endeth the lesson. Good day.
     
  22. Balerion Banned Banned

    Messages:
    8,596
    We're well beyond needing such reminders that this vile person has no scruples or shame, but this is a particularly nasty one.

    The sad bit is that there's reason to pity her, but I can't manage it because she's so rotten.
     
  23. billvon Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    21,635
    Most states (41) have LTA restrictions, and in most cases (26 of them) it hews precisely to the Roe v Wade decision. The "line" for viability varies from 20 to 26 weeks.
     

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