Bull crap. You don’t have to be religious to see that life begins at conception.
Fertilization of the egg is the very starting point of human life. That’s not religious dogma, it’s biological fact.
Doing just fine, thanks for your concern. Noticing my cervical signs takes five seconds a day, about as long as it would take me to take the Pill every morning.
Whether or not you think it’s a good idea, the RCC is pretty big on self-control- we don’t think that if you abstain for a couple of days because you don’t want to get pregnant, then you’re going to diiiieee and it’s terribly unnatural. It isn’t as easy as just getting it on if you feel like it, but it’s not incredibly burdensome, in general.
Speaking from personal experience, my own and a whole bunch of my NFPing friends.
A fetus isn’t a baby.
Getting an abortion is responsible.
No, but you probably are religiously motivated if you use such a definition because that’s a definition that exists only to justify the war against abortion, and that movement is strongly religious.
No it isn’t. As has been pointed out again and again, sperm and eggs are just as human. There is no “starting point” for human life. Just a blurry evolution of proto-human to human in prehistory.
I try really hard to get past the mudslinging and consider the “pro-life” side of things without being an asshole. Unfortunately, I don’t seem to come across many of you who are interested in explaining them to me. A few of you have touched on my points from my first post in this thread, and of course, there’s been no shortage of flippant comments instead of giving a thought-out answer.
And that sucks, because of all places the SDMB is where I come for intelligent, mostly civilized discourse on things that quickly devolve into flamewars on almost every other site.
I can’t remember who asked, but I got the 100, 000 number of unwanted children from a government statistical website. It was just a few days ago I found it for another discussion. Let me see if I can find it real quick and I’ll be back.
The sperm fertilizing the egg is what starts the whole thing off. Eggs and sperm by themselves do not divide and grow into babies.
And saying that it’s not a human or person while inside the womb isn’t very scientific. What, does coming in contact with outside air magically transform it into a human?
So a seven month old in the womb isn’t human, but if it’s born prematurely then after birth it’s suddenly a human?
I’m sorry. I rarely post in GD and when I do I’m usually very good about not getting emotional, but this time for some reason I decided screw it; If everybody else is going to get emotional, I might as well join in.
But that’s what makes this debate hard. It’s difficult for people of opposing views to have a rational, logical discussion while leaving their emotions behind.
And even if you can do that, agreeing on the facts is another obstacle.
Oh, really? What about embryos that split into identical twins? Or merge together? Or what about cloning, with cloning every cell in you body can potentially divide and grow into babies; are they all “human lives”? And a fertilized cell doesn’t grow on its own any more than the sperm and egg do.
Your definition doesn’t hold up under examination.
Person, not human; I kill human life every time I kill a few cells scratching myself. Biologically, the point you are looking for doesn’t exist; there’s no bright line between person and non-person. And legally, yes, birth is when it qualifies as a person because that’s when it’s biologically independent. “My body, my choice” ceases to be a relevant issue when it’s no longer dependent on the mother’s body.
Ok, here’s a cite for those adoption numbers. In 2006 there were 129,000 children in the U.S. Waiting to be adopted.
http://www.govspot.com/know/adoption.htm
I don’t understand how anyone, regardless of religion or anything else, can talk about what a great alternative adoption is when there are this many unwanted children already here. No way can anyone justify adding to this number.
What about them?
Huh?
A fertilized egg DOES divide and grow. I’m talking about what actually happens, not what could potentially happen.
An egg needs to be fertilized before it will grow. An unfertilized egg or a sperm will never grow.
Yes it does.
Really? You’re going to play semantics? You honestly don’t know that when we pro-lifers talk about taking human life, we’re talking about killing the whole body, not just tiny parts of it? I think you do know.
Is a person on a respirator, using a pacemaker, or in any other way not biologically independent no longer a person then?
If somebody is disabled and needs a care-taker should their care-taker be able to decide to kill them?
Pretend for a moment that you believe that an unborn child’s life is just as valuable as your own. Now also pretend that you know pregnant lady who’s contemplating abortion and you feel that you should try to talk her out of it (again, this all just pretend).
What alternative would you give her if not adoption?
With statistics like this, it doesn’t seem like it would be a good thing to put somebody in a nursing home, but how many people would think that we should kill old people instead (after passing a law to make it legal)?
Absurd, I know, but to a pro-lifer, killing a baby rather than putting it in an over-crowded adoption agency is morally equivalent to killing an old person rather than risking putting them in an abusive and neglectful retirement home.
Quoth Nobody:
True but irrelevant. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve brought this up now: Human life does not bear any special consideration; personhood does. Der Trihs’ questions about identical twins and chimeras address this: If the starting point for whatever it is is conception, does that mean that a pair of identical twins is a single entity? Does it mean that a chimera is two entities? Or for that matter, what about a culture of HeLa cells? Do HeLa cells deserve any special consideration?
No, the logic is unless you, yourself are confident that you would be strong enough to surrender, a child of yours, to adoption, don’t go recommending it to others. You know not of what you speak.
And yet, when the law reflected your view, some how that was okay.
No one is saying Jim Crow laws were right, we evolved, we moved forward. We have also evolved on the issue of abortion. Now the majority are behind choice, because it satisfies the needs of those who don’t want to have abortions (don’t have one), and those who do.
Yeah, it sucks to be on the other side than the majority. Those who believe in a woman’s right to determine her own reproductive future, know this only too well. Come back, in a couple of hundred years, and we’ll talk.
One life becoming two or two becoming one, what does this have to do with abortion.
According to Wikipedia “The line was derived from cervical cancer cells” so I’m going to have to have to say no, they don’t.
Hey, wasn’t this thread supposed to be about pro-lifers and contraception? This is has devolved into yet another abortion thread.
Getting back to the actual thread topic, like I said earlier, I do go against my church when it comes to artificial contraception. With no pregnancy the issue of abortion never comes up, and no babies are added to an over-populated adoption system.
Ah yes, in a couple of hundred years I’ll be as evolved and enlightened as you are.
No wait, I’ll be long dead and thus, long since caring about all this. Kind of like I’m feeling about this thread now.
Um, no actually. Women have had to put up with a couple of hundred years of being on the wrong side of that majority. (I’d bet the house you count yourself a patriotic believer in democracy!) ‘When your side, has had to suck it up, for as long, we’ll talk’, was actually what I was saying.
Less sanctimony, more comprehension might help.
OK, I see. I take that back then. I guess I didn’t understand what you were saying. My mistake.
At any rate I’m bowing out. Like I said earlier this is supposed to be a thread about pro-life and contraception, not about whether abortion is right or wrong.
Also, I’ve said all I have to say about abortion in general. Any future posts will just be me repeating myself, and I always quit GD threads when I start getting repetitive.
If this were so there would not be so many priests etc. committing adultry, or child abuse. Nor would there be so much poverty in Catholic majority countries! It may work fine for a couple with a low sex drive but not for the one’s who have a different drive. One size does not fit all! So all couples should not have to use a method that doesn’t work for them! For you it is fine for others that I know it was not!
There are many RC people in Jail who apparently couldn’t practice self control, and many abused children who are the result of poverty that get into crime.
I know from family members who have had mental break downs trying to follow the RCC teachings one a priest, and two in the convent!
A person can be pro-choice and pro-life, they are also interested in the life of the already born as well. Many people who call them selves pro-life are really just pro-birth, and forget about the women they would force to think or do as they believe. I have yet to hear any so called pro-life person willing to sacrifice their families needs to support a child from birth to adulthood. A few dollars in a collection box once in awhile is not support!
Sorry, can’t. Insufficient self-loathing, I suppose.