Yes, getting back to the OP, I’d say the proposed Tennessee legislation is ludicrous.
If some legislators are truly “pro-life”, how about lobbying for a bill that a warrant be issued charging Dubya Bush with manslaughter or murder whenever a US soldier dies in Iraq?
Yeah, I’m pro-choice for those who may not know.
No, it’s part of it, just a tactic, intended to establish in law the notion that a fetus is a human being with legal standing and legal rights. That’s what the abortion debate is.
Yeah, I gathered. Is anyone claiming that issuing death certificates to fetuses serves any useful purpose in and of itself? Aside from “respect for life” or something similarly vague, that is.
If it’s a stepping stone to try to ban abortion, why not take into account that other attempts fail because not enough people want it banned?
Right, you don’t understand my point. OK, I’ll play along. You asserted that someone who had flat-lined their brain functions was a non-person, just like a fetus. You now allow an exception for such a person, identical in every way to your non-person except for the fact that he will regain his consciousness.
So, we’re really on the same page. We both grant human beings rights even in instances where they have no brain functions, so long as they will have those functions in the future. You say that the absence of all brain activity is not an issue so long as the “brain structures” that made him a person are still there. Even though this is inconsistent for you–the exact same “structures” exist for the permanently brain-dead patient, and you don’t grant him the honor of “personhood”–it’s not far off from my own position.
I hold that the blueprint for future brain activity already exists in the fetus’s DNA–another definition of structure, just as physically real–and the inexorable progression to consciousness is already underway, just as it is for our hypothermic patient. I knew we’d find some common ground.
I’m glad you do not subscribe to the extreme position embodied in South Dakota’s sweeping anti-abortion law that got tossed out by the voters. I suggest though that you and abortion rights supporters are not in major disagreement - just on what constitutes a “necessary evil”.
Here’s one recent review on the subject.
“Women due to have an abortion are more anxious and distressed than other pregnant women or women whose pregnancy is threatened by miscarriage, but in the long term they do no worse psychologically than women who give birth. Self-esteem appears unaffected by the process.”
This site discusses the issue and provides additional literature references.
I can accept that anti-abortion rights activists* want to limit abortion by making women feel guilty about having them, but to then turn around and claim to be concerned about women’s emotional trauma and guilt feelings seems two-faced to me.
*I am not including you in this group.
Yes, I do deny it. There is nothing that I can do right now that would advance that cause. Me donating money? I don’t have enough to make a difference, though I do donate to a charity over here related to children’s health. Lobbying for redirection? I vote for candidates based on their platform, part of which is their opinion of things like the exploitation of children in other countries. So, looking at it overall, I do roughly the same for kids in Thailand as I do for any subject related to the health of children. And that’s the point, which you seem to be missing; it isn’t claimed that pro-lifers should spend all their money, their time and their lives supporting research into spontaneous abortion; just that as under their view fetuses are human lives worth protecting, so they should do some work in this area comparable to their work on elective abortion.
I think pro-lifers do care about the lives of fetuses. I don’t believe the big argument that most pro-lifers are actually trying to control women; some, sure, but not most. I think the reason why it seems there’s more focus on one area than another is just that abortion has always been a big issue, whereas the idea that we might be able to medically help fetuses is a newer one. Possibly it’s just a case of cognitive dissonance. I don’t think it’s a “tell” that shows us what pro-lifers really think.
Just as an aside, obviously your point about not being able to generalise about all pro-lifers is accurate. We can’t say what they’re all like, or say what’s in all their heads. Bear in mind, though, that you can’t either.
Genetic humanness and “being” are insufficient to make something a human being, otherwise my body is made up of millions of tiny human beings.
Stratocaster, you’re just weaseling here. Brain-dead != comatose. Brain-death != hypothermia. Just like a Sunday afternoon nap != a coma.
From Wikipedia, I give you:
I know you’re trying to sneak in the thin end of a wedge, but you’re just wrong. The brain-dead are not “identical in every way” to the temporarily flatlined, & presumably don’t have “the exact same structures”–because they don’t come back when they warm up.
Human cells are not biologically the same as a human zygote.
Well, a human zygote eventually becomes a collection of human cells, so where’s the transition point?
There is no transition point…a zygote IS a collection of human cells. That’s how it’s different. One human cell will never divide into more cells and develop into a person.
So it’s okay to terminate a clump of cells but not a zygote?
Sure, because a zygote isn’t just a “clump of cells.” I am not going to ever concede that a zygote is the same thing as, say, a little bit of endometrial lining from the uterus. Terminating a zygote is the same thing as terminating ALL the cells in my body, not just a few random cells, which are created and die all the time.
That is not a logically consistent position.
Well, then, do you feel that extraordinary measures should be employed to recover the bodies of these humans who die due to miscarriages? Many such events pass unnoticed, because the woman doesn’t know she is pregnant. Should women of child bearing age take daily pregnancy tests? Should the menstrual products of all women of child bearing age be checked for human remains? If not, why not? What is it about these humans that is different?
They were not artificially terminated. Suggesting that recovery of remains is more important than preventing future deaths is ludicrous, applied to adult humans or to fetuses.
I have said nothing about preventing future deaths, so I really have no idea what you are talking about. Perhaps you are thinking of another post?
Why not?
I said human DNA and existence are not sufficient to make one a human being. You agreed, but added that a Zygote has an additional property: it is a collection of human cells. Apparently realizing that this property is also insufficient to make something a human being, you then simply assert that terminating a zygote is the equivalent of killing every cell in your body.
I understand your intuition that a zygote is different from a clump of cells. I think it comes from the fact that a zygote can become a human being. But that suggests that it is not now a human being.
What I think is funny about questions like these is that they are clearly designed to be a “gotcha,” because of course it would be completely unreasonable to say yes to any of it. And now that I have said that, you can say “See! You are logically inconsistent! You really don’t care about embryos at all!” But that isn’t true. I personally have lost 2 babies to miscarriage, and it was not possible for me to collect the embryo and give it a burial or whatever. Does that mean I didn’t feel a loss and sadness over the miscarriages? Does it mean that I hadn’t been anticipating that those embryos would develop into a baby that I would hold in my arms? No. It is just a fact of life that I had no control over, and I had to accept it and move on. When I had to have a D&C to remove the remnants of the embryo from my womb, I sure felt a lot sadder about losing the embryo than I was about losing the rest of the stuff they took with it. I would have liked to be able to physically treat the embryo itself differently from the rest, but I simply couldn’t, and I can’t say that I’m prepared to spend much time beating myself up over that.
Basically, what nature does that we have no control of is one thing. The things we cause through our own hands are another.