What do you read of fetuses?
That fetuses do have beating hearts, and more importantly will be born in the future, which I believe means they’re truly human beings.
Why should we treat things as what they may be, but aren’t yet? I mean, it is a guarantee even more than birth that, some day, those fetuses will be dead (as will we all). There’s a 100% death rate in humans. So should we go around treating everyone as corpses, given that they all will, someday, be corpses?
Then where do you draw the line between human and fetus? We can draw the line between corpses and living humans quite easily by the beating of their hearts.
An arbitrary line. Corpses and living humans have skin, have brains, have hearts, for that matter. The question is not about drawing a line - because we can draw a line practically wherever we wanted, should we choose. The question is drawing a line because it means something important; there is a meaning behind the event that means, in this case, beforehand we have something which can be treated as a thing, and afterwards we have something that must be treated as a person.
Why is a beating heart that line? Animals have beating hearts; should they be treated equally? A person’s heart may stop due to trauma; are they no longer people at that point, and we should make no attempt to resuscitate them? A beating heart is certainly a line, but I don’t see why it should be chosen over any other.
Animals should not be treated equally as they are not sapient nor have a consciousness. While fetuses also do not have a consciousness they will have a consciousness much like a person in a coma does.
Also by the heart stopping I mean once the heart cannot be revived despite all efforts, the person is dead.
Sapience and consciousness aren’t a simple trigger switch - that you either have or don’t. They’re a continuum, a line on which various animals and humans fall at varying points. And within a lifetime a human or animal will fall at different parts of that line. A comatose human, for instance, is technically not sapient. If we are willing to say that a person who is comatose is still a person, then sapience, alone, cannot be our defining line.
All fetuses, at all stages of development? An embyro becomes a fetus and instantly develops that level of consciousness which does not alter until birth? That doesn’t seem correct to me. Do you have evidence showing the similarity in consciousness between fetuses and comatose persons?
Too, i’d be interested to know what you’re using to define consciousness. It’s a rather nebulous term. When you say they’re much alike, much alike in what way?
Why must effort be made? Beyond that, it doesn’t really work as compared to future medical advances. 500 years ago, our efforts in reviving someone would be much worse; 500 years in the future, it seems a fair bet that we’ll be better at it. Relying on a line which will change and has changed in the past due to outside factors doesn’t seem to me to be a good line to judge by.
They neither have absolute sapience but they are oftentimes aware of the surroundings.
Well if in the future we can resurrect humans, so be it, my solutions are for the problems of to-day.
What is “absolute” sapience? To assume that humans, as they are now, have assumed the very height of sapience seems a bit arrogant of us, considering an increase of it has happened over time.
If awareness of surroundings is our metric, then we’d have to conclude that deaf or otherwise sensation-impaired people are less people then others. That can’t alone really work as the line to be drawn, either. Besides, animals have a greater awareness of their surroundings than a comatose person does.
They’re the same problem. We can’t say that personhood depends on medical science, because that changes, whereas we’re assuming that personhood is a standard measure. If we measure who is a person by our ability to resuscitate them, then if in 500 years time we are much more able at it then we, now, have condemned many people to death. Likewise, we couldn’t help anyone much 500 years ago, ergo by that standard personhood stops upon death. It doesn’t make sense to say that whether something has personhood or not depends on an outside source - we need to come up with an measure that’s entirely specific to that thing, not reliant on what we can do with that thing, because that’s going to and has changed.
When we’re attempting to find a standard like this, and we base it on something that’s going to change over time, then we very much need to take into account the past and future.
Even granting that as true (which I cheerfully do because it makes no difference to me), the woman hosting the fetus also has a beating heart, and she was born not in the uncertain future but in the incontrovertible past. If the fetus qualifies as a human being, certainly the woman does as well.
So now you have a situation where the interests of two human beings are in conflict. If the woman was a homeowner confronted with a trespasser, or even an invited guest who has overstayed his welcome, the law is firmly on her side - she has the right to remove the person from her house, even if it puts that person’s life at risk, i.e. the intruder is not allowed to claim sanctuary in her home by claiming others are trying to kill him, and if he resists efforts by police officers to remove him and dies in the process, this does not retroactively undermine her right to have him removed in the first place.
With the current state of technology, removing a fetus in the early stages of pregnancy does indeed kill it, but this also does not (or should not) retroactively undermine her rights, and I fail to see why the individual’s right to determine who gets to stay in one’s house is more sacred than who gets to stay in one’s body.
Further, I don’t see how countries that ban or heavily restrict abortion are better places than countries that don’t, though I’m prepared to listen to any evidence anyone has. To go by some of the overheated rhetoric on the issue, abortion should be destroying every society it touches. Instead, nations with liberal abortion laws are among the most stable and prosperous.
Both illegal. No one has a right to take a life.
What about self-defense?
As I’ve said let’s worry ourselves with the problems of the present, let the Lord and our children handle the future.
Well my standard of life is this: after we’ve gone to the limits of our current technology to revive or save a life that’s the limit of life.
Let us compare the two rights: the right of the fetus to live and the right of the woman of convenience; I think the right to life is the most important right of all.
Well, as with “human”, “baby”, “person” and “murder”, this just invites an argument over what “convenience” means. I don’t think you’ve thought about the significant physical and financial hardship of an unwanted child if you think you sore points by dismissing it as a matter of “convenience”, but so be it.
So, do you have any inclination to think about America after an abortion ban? So far you assume some women won’t abort simply because the ban exists, but I’ve seen nothing on what you’d do to women who choose to ignore it.
And as I’VE said, we do NOT base our laws on religious beliefs! Hello, Establishment Clause? As my religious beliefs are different from yours, then why should yours be given precedence over mine?
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Let us compare the two rights: the right of the fetus to live and the right of the woman of convenience; I think the right to life is the most important right of all.
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It’s not about “convenience.” The sooner you understand that, the better.
(BTW, you never answered my question about rape, or incest? And let me point out – you’d see an increase in claims of such if abortion were to be outlawed)
If you are financially unable to keep a child you can give them up according to the safe surrender laws.
Arrest them and put them in prison; harsher punishments for abortionists.
Where did I say that? In my mention of God, it was just a figure of speech.
Let us compare the two rights: the right of the fetus to live and the right of the woman of convenience; I think the right to life is the most important right of all.
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It’s not about “convenience.” The sooner you understand that, the better.
(BTW, you never answered my question about rape, or incest? And let me point out – you’d see an increase in claims of such if abortion were to be outlawed)
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As for rape and incest why kill the child not the rapist? If the fetus shall die so should the rapist or neither.
So, if a thirteen-year-old girl is made pregnant by her father, she should have to bear his child?
That’s very generous of you, but there are months of discomfort leading up to that point first. I don’t see why she has to suffer those if she doesn’t want to. I don’t see why a homeowner has to suffer trespassers, either.
All one million of them, per year? And what purpose will it serve? A law of this nature turns many of your citizens into criminals but as far as I can tell, won’t make your society any better. I envision fewer doctors going into the OB/GYN specialty and as a result, many women don’t get health care even if they had no intent of getting an abortion. I envision unwanted babies abandoned in dumpsters and alleys. I envision wealthy women being unaffected because they travel to Canada, while poorer women remain poor, stuck with more children than they can handle because the “safe surrender” resources get quickly overwhelmed. I envision an increase in crime fifteen years after a ban, matching the decrease that happened fifteen years after Roe v. Wade.
I’m not seeing a whole lot of a positives here. What did you have in mind? For that matter, what do you think would happen to a society if all abortion laws were dropped?
Fine, then it’s capital punishment and abortion, which is what the thread was originally about.
Which is obviously why this thread was a con from the beginning – the OP really doesn’t care to discuss the death penalty, it’s just a way for him to preach – yet AGAIN – about abortion.
But we cannot. The problems of the present could be solved much more easily if we had no care for the future. If your problem were a lack of money, without regard for the future you could simply steal it; that would however cause more problems. Without regard for the future, I could lie to you in order to convince you of my arguments being right; but because you’re likely to discover that in the future, it is not a good solution.
But “life” is not the correct line, either. Plants are alive, yet we give them even less respect or rights than we do animals.
Too, that brings up the problems of access. In the UK, I have considerable access to life-saving procedures. I could move to parts of the world where my access is less, or more. Would that mean that by moving to, say, the USA my worth as a person has increased, and that by moving to North Korea my worth is decreased? That the worth of life is dependent, not just on medical technology, but location?
No, you don’t. You step on grass, i’d guess. Likely you eat meat, or wear leather, or use animal and plant products. You are willing to suspend the right to life of numerous animals and plants to further your own convenience.
Now, perhaps what you mean to say is that, in certain cases, the right to life is most important. That certain forms of life are worth more than others. And that’s a fine position to take; the question is, what makes that life different? What is it about an adult human, or a human fetus, or an acorn, or a dog, that makes them different, and that means their right to life must be treated as coming above all other rights? What is the factor that makes it so? That’s the question to ask.