Oh, I can see easily enough that reason doesn’t exist in your arguments. It leaves a conspicuous void, like a doughnut center.
Again, your thoughts are in total unison with my own.
What about “birth” arguments that aren’t based on the cell-to-human process?
“Ass, Gas, or Grass”?
Other arguments tend to be based on autonomy - but such arguments run into the problem that they are essentially arguing for the primacy of one human’s requirements over another (if conceding for the moment that the object under analysis is in fact a “person”), which, while arguable, is not on its face an obvious argument winner.
The problem is demonstrating why it would make sense to treat the fetus immediately pre-birth wholly differently from that immediately post-birth. Few argue that a newborn could be tossed into the medical waste bin if the parent does not want it. A theory that would allow the parent to do the same immediately pre-birth would have to have some very convincing logic to it.
Moreover, the problem is of more theoretical interest than real. The actual number of abortions occurring late in the pregnancy are very, very small. Why is the argument necessary, when a far more convincing one exists which demonstrates that, objectively, the act of abortion as it actually occurs in real life is a moral non-issue?
Yabbut, if Hitler’s never born, history itself takes a different path, and it’s possible that your own parents never meet, or make different mating decisions than the ones that led to your own birth.
For Broomstick, that “it’s possible” potentially gains even more weight.
Great. The OP is gone, and here comes another endless debate where no one will change their mind.
Well, that’s why we bring in supporting arguments, i.e. positing a world where women have complete control over when they’ll have children and and a world where they don’t, and compare/contrast. The ramifications do indeed matter, and it’s easy to recognize that conceding a degree of state interference (i.e. no elective abortions in, say, the last trimester, or after “viability” circa 23-24 weeks) won’t stop there, given the energies and determination of those who want complete state interference, i.e. a total ban. The number of women actually affected by the initial restriction is small, since the number of elective post-viability abortions is small, but I have no confidence that would satisfy an ardent pro-lifer.
Through an unusual series of events, Canada has no abortion law and an elective post-viability abortion is legal. This circumstance has not led to any slippery-slope secondary effects that I’m aware of, like it becoming legal to kill infants or toddlers, so I don’t see why introducing a post-viability restriction is necessary. Further, I don’t see why the Americans (or indeed, any society) couldn’t also discard its abortion laws. Women will continue to get pregnant. Some will want a child, some will not. Those who do not will find some way to avoid it, to varying degrees of injury to themselves if safe methods are not available.
This isn’t some idealized stance that relies solely on some axiomatic idea like “my body, my choice.” There are real-world consequences being recognized.
Well, I’d guess that killing a newborn is much more common (possibly by several orders of magnitude; I’ll check for statistics) than a woman seeking a very-late-term elective abortion, though the latter has anecdotal evidence of women doing injuries to themselves in last-minute desperate attempts to not have a baby.
No argument here. Try telling the pro-lifers that.
I’m entirely up to being humored, so humor me with a concrete definition of consciousness that only includes born humans which also fails to exclude a born human who does not meet said definition. Even though it’s quite impossible to do, I’m rather curious as to what you’re going to come up with.
Well, if you say so, then it must be true, right? Because that’s surely how you-- and I use the term loosely-- “debate” 
(I take it I won’t be getting a Christmas present from you, huh?)
Even your attempts at mockery lack substance.
I think in many cases the phrase pro-life just means life before birth I consider many of them just pro-birth. They give the same rights to a fertile egg even more so in some cases.
I wonder if a pro_life person in a situation where there is an Adult in a room with several Embryo’s and another Adult,the adult is unconcience, they can save the many embryo’s or the already born Adult. Which would you choose?
Pro-choice people are pro-life. They are for people after they are born or now can be recognized as a person. Human life began eons ago, and even if you believe in the Genesis story it would have started at least 5,000 years( or more ago). Life is a passed on thing and if one is just saying human life, there is life in a man’s sperm the same life that if met with an egg produces a future human being. To me the woman has the right to determine with her doctor if the life would mean she would die,or weither (if she already has several children) it would mean the already born would not get the proper food, education, or medical help it needs, so the child can live a decent life or not chance starvation or die becasue it can’t get medical treatments if needed This happens in 3d world countries even now.
It would be good if there was a way for a woman of child bearing years had a safe and effective Birth control. And if the so called pro-life people were more willing to support the child once it was born, help the mother care for the children etc.but I hear too many complain about welfare Moms, and do not want to pay taxes to support them once born!
Well, surely it will end some day! I don’t figure we’ll be arguing this in A.D. 9595…
(Er…I’m not betting money on that, you understand…)
I read these debates, because, every once in a rare while, someone actually says something new!
Those in favour of abortion rights would draw a line between human being and fetus. A meat eater may choose to draw a line between human and animal. A pro lifer thinks a fetus is a human being so abortion = murder. A rabid vegetarian thinks murdering is murdering, animal or man.
The point I’m trying to make (not very well, it seems) is that both hinge on the same thing; my perceptions shaping your behaviour. I’m a vegetarian and view all meat as murder, so no one should be allowed access to meat. I am a pro lifer and view all abortions as murder, so no one should be allowed access to one. Same, same, from where I’m sitting.
If you feel that meat is murder you have the right to not eat any. If you feel abortion is murder you have the right not to have one. In neither case should your ‘perception’ impinge on my right to eat meat or access abortion. Those are my choices to make, as I have to live with the consequences, not you.
For me it will always boil down to some trying to impose their beliefs on others. As for the argument, ‘it’s the law, suck it up’, being unfeeling, or cliche in some way, I would point out for centuries women have been forced to suck it up, I have no problem telling pro lifers to ‘suck it up’ it’s the law! Then I tell them to come see me in a few hundred years, and we’ll talk!
Some do. Let me introduce you to Peter Singer, the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University and Laureate Professor at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at the University of Melbourne.
He doesn’t think it’s a good lifestyle option, he just says it isn’t as wrong as killing a fully grown person. It’s a pretty inflammatory statement on it’s own; you don’t have to tart it up for drama’s sake.
Biologically a fertile Chicken egg is not a chicken, An animal’s (such as a horse)fetus is not a horse, a pollinated apple Blossom is not an apple, it is the same with Humans, until it can be recognized as a person, it is just going to be a person. A frozen Embryo is not a person. The so called pro-life stand is just religious thinking. If a person told them they would sell them a foal of a prize race horse, and they gave him/her a fetus, they would not accept it as a race horse, nor would they expect to pay the price for 36 fertile chicken eggs when they ordered 36 chickens for a chicken dinner.
Welcome to the forum, lockmat. Unfortunately, I’m one of the posters you may not like.
This is a very interesting discussion on LOTS of issues. Thing is, since your source is the *flawed Ray Comfort, I’m assuming that the reasons for this thread are mainly religious ones.
To this day, I still can not understand how a believer can not be FOR abortion, since your god has performed the most abortions-- more than the US-- and continues to allow war, rape and murder, and these things beleivers call “tests of faith”. :rolleyes: You worship a murderer, to be more like him, why not support abortion? Oh, that’s right. Rights for women, who rank just above beasts in the bible.,
As far as shooting Hitler, sure, why not? It WOULD NOT have stopped the Nazis in the first place. I don’t think Hitler personally invented anti-semitism. Himmler (a worse guy IMO) would have killed just as many Jews, if not more.
-
- by “flawed”, I mean the man who receives over 100 thousand emails in one day to tell him about bananas, point him to Google, remind him to remember third-grade science, he still makes videos as ridiculous as that and keeps both vids up and running on his website.
Excuse me, but I feel like going out for an abortion tomorrow – anyone want too come with me?
Can I at least get you pregnant, first?
A fetus is a person. I’d say the pictures from the Duggar’s recent baby that died is undeniable evidence. I think the term fetus can be misused as an excuse to not call it a person. Is a “toddler” or an “infant” not a “person?”
pictures (warning, the link displays the hand of the dead baby): http://www.theblaze.com/stories/duggars-take-heartbreaking-pictures-with-stillborn-baby-girl/
I like this quote:
Something nonhuman does not become human by getting older and bigger; whatever is human must be human from the beginning.
I’m not sure I understand what you’re getting at.
I am not advocating life in prison or the death penalty for abortions, it’s not in our laws. Right now my main concern is not what the proper punishment for abortion should be. My main concern is saving the baby and also helping a mother through an unwanted pregnancy. My desire for your Jewish mother is that she believe in her Messiah, Jesus Christ for her salvation. He has all the requirements for being the Messiah, starting with the proper geneology of the seed promise by God in the first chapter of Matthew. God will forgive her of her sins if she confesses her sins, repents, and believes in Jesus.
The idea that “your theology is not mine” does not really hold in the real world. Murder is wrong regardless of religion or personal convictions. I cannot say my “my religious belief is that murder is ok. Why should anyone elses religious beliefs overrule mine?” That is not my beliefs, I’m just using that as an example.
And sorry to everyone for going MIA. I did not have internet access or the time to respond at the moment.