Yes,JThunder, the parents’ desires take precedence.
I looked at the unborn site and my opinion remains unchanged. Yes, fetuses can suck their thumb at 9 weeks, but how much brain activity is occuring?
I have children of my own and I love them dearly, but good parenting is a tough, tough gig which lasts for at least 18 years–no woman should have to bear or care for an unwanted child.
I wish that all of the concern that people have about abortion could somehow be transferred to living, breathing children languishing in the upheaval of Rwanda, Africa, kids bereft of parents who wait–and wait–to be adopted, or lower-income children who need a helping hand with school or sports.
I agree with JTthunder that the stem cell is not human. Therefore, no.
It depends on your definition of human being. I have certain criteria an organism has to live up to (so to speak) in order to qualify as ‘human’. [list]
[li]Must have cells containing human DNA.[/li][li]Cellular mitosis must be occurring. Ie. whatever it is must be growing.[/li][li]If certain things were to happen to this organism, this mitosis would stop. It would, for want of a better word, die.[/li]
All of these criteria must be present and correct to qualify the entity as a human being in my opinion and a fetus, even a few short hours (36 to be precise) after contraception fulfills these criteria.
Ok, first off I would like you to justify the opinion that if men got pregnant there would be no controversy. Men around the world force their girlfriends to have abortions. My distaste for the practise is not tempered by this fact. Also, as JThunder pointed out, there are a great deal of women who are pro-life, too.
Also you say “See the donahue/levitt study”. Yes please. Where is it? I tried doing a google search but came up blank. Maybe I wasn’t using the right terms. I’d be grateful if you or anyone else could provide me (poor hapless technophobe that I am 
) with a link to it. It sounds like interesting reading.
You’d be hard pushed to find a pro-lifer (a reasonable pro-lifer that is) who would argue this point effectively. Abortions always have motives same as they always have consequences.
Depends what you mean by brain activity. If you mean sentience then none is needed for the fetus to suck its thumb. However the action requires the development of motor neurones and at least enough brain power to generate the bio-electrical stimulation required for the fetus to perform the action. The answer is a fair bit of brain activity is needed, it’s just extremely primitive brain activity.
JThunder, my point was that no one considers a very early spontaneous abortion to be the loss of a human life - regardless of its potential.
Bob Cos:
erislover:
There are circumstances where I would risk my own life to free another person, although that would be with misgivings as well.
In general:
• there are worse things than dying, among them prolonged torture, prolonged coercion, prolonged incarceration
• you may not wish to die, but once I kill you (assuming I find it necessary to do so in order to save myself from torture, coercion, incarceration, or death), you won’t care any more
• everyone dies eventually anyway
Certainly, if confronted with an immediate threat to my life, I’m going to go into a rather tightly focused mode in which my own survival is of paramount importance. And if the embryo itself were were capable of taking defensive action when faced with the prospect of an impending abortion, I could not fault it for doing so.
But as a PRINCIPLE, I do not see the “right to life” as outweighing all other rights, and I would place the right to general self-determination and the right to be free from deliberately inflicted coercion or pain above the right to life, for myself and for anyone else.
I wish that all the pro-choicers who say this kind of thing would cease to do so. Support of a pro life position (or a pro choice position) does not rule out actively supporting adoption efforts, supporting kids in inner cities…supporting relief efforts in 3rd world countries etc…
Try here for an article about a debunking of this study. Their thesis was the abortion has decreased the rate of crime in the U.S. Their study had some serious flawed methodology.
The abstract of the rebuttal can be found here. Interestingly enough, the Lott & Whitley study raise the possibility that abortion has INCREASED the murder rate by 0.5-7%.
JThunder: you insist on arguing that when a lump of cells becomes a human being is a medical issue. Yes, I am aware that there are Christian MD’s out there who will agree with you and try to support it with some medical evidence… but it is not a medical issue; it is a moral one. Don’t try to make your cause sound more legitimate than it is (which is not very legitimate to begin with) by saying medical evidence has something to do with it. It does not.
If stem cells are not human beings (I’m glad you agree with me on that) then why is there even an ISSUE over whether stem cells can/should be used in scientific research? Based on that one Senator’s comments (stem cells = children in frozen orphanages), there are plenty of people out there who think a lump of stem cells is a human life. I think they are insane, personally.
Abortion has never been an issue (notice the bible says not a single thing about it) until it became a coffee-table religious issue in the early 1900’s in America. Throughout history, the “quickening” or first breath was considered when life began.
The world needs abortion. There are too many people already, and they’re all having sex (and yer not gonna EVER stop that).
I define “sacred life” as that which is self-aware; that which knows it exists. If it doesn’t know it exists, then it doesn’t know it will die - it merely reacts to stimuli. In other words, for the same reason you don’t care about killing a cow to make a hamburger, I don’t care about aborting a fetus to make the mother’s life more convenient (and to prevent the fetus from becoming a human without caring or capable parents). How do you know if something is self-aware? The mirror test. When you place a mirror in front of it, does it know it is looking at itself? Humans over a year old, orangutans, and dolphins are the only creatures that can pass the mirror test. They are the only creatures which are self aware.
Another aspect of life is being self sufficient - being able to survive out of the womb in the case of abortion. Roe v. Wade recognized this, but the fact that a fetus is “old enough” to survive outside of the womb is misleading - it can survive only with all sorts of fancy medical devices, incubators, tubes, IV’s, etc (and a lot of the time it doesn’t survive). So once a fetus hits the point of viability, it is no more alive than a brain-dead 40 year old on an iron lung in a coma.
The real reason we have the abortion debate is because a lot of people out there have low self-esteem, and no self confidence. They want to feel good about something, so they try to make human life as sacred as possible - in essense arguing that they themselves are sacred. It makes them feel proud to be human and good about their measly pathetic lives. Yeah, I make $5 an hour at McDonalds, but I am sacred!
No, you are no more sacred than an adult dolphin or adult orangutan.
So, am I saying you should be able to abort a baby 30 seconds before it’s born? You bet. But I can’t imagine when that would actually occur.
Am I arguing that you should be able to “abort” a baby 30 seconds AFTER it has been delivered and up to the point that it can recognize itself in a mirror (i.e. the point it is self-aware)? Naw. That would be messy and cause too many problems, plus it would be much simpler to put it up for adoption; but ultimately the mother has already given birth so it’s not “her body” anymore. She can abandon (via adoption) the baby without forcing her to remain pregnant and give birth, and not ban her from doing as she pleases with her own body.
I know that was rediculously hypothetical…but would you really? I mean, think about what would actually happen if you violently raped the boy. Don’t you think this would either shatter the boy so much that he could never live a life on any terms and would rather be dead, or that he would go on to perpetuate the cycle of violent sex crimes? I’m still out on the issue of ends justifying the means, but in terms of “greater good”, what really is the greater good in this case?
Ugh… Sentience is so completely undefined (currently) that there really is no merit to asserting that a particular entity does or does not exhibit it.
Medical cite please? It seems to me that many of the same group that oppose the abortion of a developed fetus also oppose processes which destroy/expel the fertilized embryo immediately following conception (“morning after pill”/similiar drugs such as mifepristone). Is it somehow an unrelated issue with coincidental overlap in supporters?
the argument about aborting a million fetus to save one child from a bad upbringing hits home. a single picture of some abused baby/child makes me cringe and wish the mother had aborted it. I consider it the lesser of 2 evils. but then why doesn’t the C.P.S. just collect abused children and give them spiked Pepsi to humanely relieve them of their pain? Wouldn’t that be the lesser of two evils. And the foster home/adoption solution only works for white kids. the system is overrun with black/brown babies waiting for a good home.
I am not calling abortions bad or good. I am just trying to understand the reasoning for supporting it. if you changed the PC name to pro-killing instead of pro-choice then would you force the realities of the issue to the front.
We as a society have decided that killing is ok in some situations.ie cops carry guns, armies kill, terrorist will be killed (hopefully), murderers. We all know that this is killing and we justify it. but when we talk about killing fetuses then we change the language. Is it hide or convince ourselves that its just not killing but just removing a mass of cells from a woman’s body?
I would like to rationally discuss this issue with those who can deal with it.
number 1. when is the mass of cells a baby and protected from the whims of the mother?
number 2. when is it ok to kill it after we have decided it is a baby? how do we justify it? rape, incest, inconvenience, low IQ, wrong sex, …
OK, here’s my 2 cents. I am speaking as a mother, and as a person who is so opposed to abortion for myself that I didn’t sleep around in college, for the ultimate in birth control. However…
Please, anti-abortion folks, ask yourselves: why is it that killing a newborn baby is universally condemned, when abortion is not? Surely you’ve heard those stories of teenage girls who leave their newborns in trash cans. Is anybody defending this practice? Of course not! It inspires universal outrage (even though exposing unwanted babies was commonplace centuries ago) because Americans agree that a newborn baby is a Human Life. There is no such agreement about fetuses, especially those who could not yet survive outside the womb. (That’s why very late-term abortions, say 7-9 months, are so questionable.)
Is a Tay-Sachs baby required to suffer for six months before its inevitable crib death? If I were pregnant with one (and I might have been) I would abort it, as I am not opposed to euthanasia. Should Congress make that decision for me? Or should my husband and I make the difficult choice ourselves?
You are asking difficult questions. Who should provide the answers? Congress? The president? You personally? Ultimately, it is up to each family to decide WHEN LIFE BEGINS. Quickening? First breath? Conception?
The reason that sane people could possibly consider abortion to not be murder is because it is possible to consider a fetus to not be a person yet. You know, IUD’s and the pill cause fertilized embryos to be discarded by making the uterine wall unsuitable for implantation. Isn’t that a really early abortion? Do you object to the pill because it kills viable embryos? Some people do. I don’t.
Finally, in the words of Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who says it better than I do:
“at the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.”
That’s why I support choice. (Since you asked.)
Well said!
:rolleyes:
This is nothing but a cute hypothesis. Just because it’s neat doesn’t make it scientifically sound.
And as for abortion, it’s important to point out that nobody likes abortion. It’s not fun; nobody does it for kicks. Everybody would be happy if abortions only had to be performed when it was a matter of deciding between aborting the fetus or letting the mom and the fetus die. But 12-year old girls are still going to be raped by their mom’s boyfriends, 16-year old girls are going to become sexually active without being taught about contraception, and condoms are still going to break.
As gross as it is, abortion is still necessary. And if you think life begins at conception, don’t worry about all those lost little souls; I’m sure God’s looking out for them.
Kalt wrote:
I think one things that’s lost in these arguments is that many pregnancies naturally and spontaneously abort. At any stage, from conception up to (but not quite) birth, there is a potential for the pregnancy to end on its own.
I don’t have a ‘proper’ cite, but my wife’s OB/GYN told us that something like 35% of pregnancies spontaneously abort. He told us many women who become pregnant never even know it (they’re just “late” one month). He told us this because, when we went for my wife’s very first ultrasound, there was no heartbeat when there should have been one. There was a growing mass of tissue, but it had lost all potential for becoming a human being. And, because there was no way to predict when this blob of cells would get flushed in a ‘natural’ way, my wife had, in no uncertain terms, an abortion. We terminated her pregnancy.
What’s interesting is that from an intellectual point of view, unfertilized eggs are also “potential” human beings (sperm, too). Is it because this view is so incredibly extreme that pro-choice folks don’t use it against the anti-abortionists? As in, “Shouldn’t you be pregnant? Don’t you know that every time you have a period, you’ve effectively killed a potential human being?”
I’m also surprised that anti-abortionists aren’t (to my knowledge) picketing fertility clinics that create “test tube” babies, since the odds of an egg fertilized outside the body becoming an actual breathing human being are much lower than the odds the “natural” way. Lots of fertilized eggs get destroyed. Same thing for surrogate pregnancies.
Are these just instances where anti-abortionist morality is suspended since the people involved are trying to have a baby instead of trying to ‘kill’ one? If so, these are just more examples of why there’s no such thing as an ‘absolute’ moral, since these attempts generally lead to more ‘killing’ than if the couples in question remained childless.
I gotta say, I think this argument sucks. If men were the ones who got pregnant, then men would be the ones who cared for the children the most, we’d be the ones who were weak and vulnerable for months at a stretch (during pregnancy), we’d be the ones having periods, etc., etc… In other words, if men were the ones who got pregnant, then men would be women and women would be men. The idea that hypothetical women who lack the ability to become pregnant would remain otherwise the same as they are today is, to put it bluntly, ludicrous. As is the idea that if men were the ones who got pregnant they’d historically still be the ones who’ve been “in charge” and “making all the rules” (which is, really, what the argument boils down to - a lamentation that matriarchal societies aren’t the norm).
Of course, if things were different, they’d be different. And so, basing an argument (even just a part of one) on a pure hypothetical like “if men were the ones who got pregnant…” is just begging for someone to say, “cite?”
JThunder wrote:
As I just wrote last night in a post in another thread, morals are nothing without context. To answer your questions:[ul][li]If someone says to me, “rape this child or I’ll detonate a nuclear weapon which will kill millions,” I’d rape the child without hesitation.[]It is not wrong to execute “abortionists” who perform abortions against the wishes of pregnant women. (I would also find it acceptable to execute abortionists who rape children, unless they had to do so save millions of lives - see above.)[]I’d be willing to bet that plenty of teachers were fired for simply being Jewish in Hitler’s Germany, and those doing the firing felt it was morally correct (not just ‘justified’, but obligatory) to do so.[/ul]I just presented these questions to my wife, who, smart lady that she is, pointed out that while it is possible to construct some sort of hypothetical justification for any act that, in a different context, would be seen as heinous, the odds of encountering, for example, a nuclear-weapon-bearing-child-rapist-by-proxy, are very slim.[/li]
However, the fact remains that it could happen, and so the burden of disproving an absolute morality is met. The fact that my imagination isn’t up to the task of finding a more-likely scenario cannot be used as a refutation of my argument, because, after all, you “can not imagine ANY situation in which, say, child rape by a mentally competent individual can be morally justified.”
justinh wrote:
If you find it acceptable to replace the word “choice” with “killing,” while at the same time claiming that you’re not making any value judgements (whether it’s “bad or good”), then I think that you are asking for an irrational discussion from the start. A rational person, after all, would avoid using emotional hot-words to “force the realities of the issue to the front,” since, by your own examples in response to reprise, they aren’t necessarily ‘realities’ to everyone involved.
Yes, I did understand this. But, again, I will ask you what value your right to self-determination has if someone else has the right to blow your brains out before you can exercise it? That was my point, and it has not been answered. Your point that “once someone’s dead, what’ll they care anyway?” is one that can be used to justify killing you as well. If you are OK with that application, then at least you’re consistent.
All men are created equal. Remember, folks, you heard it here first.
Seriously, it needn’t even be an issue of who is more important than who. I simply believe that if I hold that I have the right to live, I can’t deny that right to another; to deny you your right to live is ultimately to deny my own. Now, there are indeed instances where someone else’s actions (or mine) could jeopardize this right, legitimately. I believe I mentioned that rights could be in conflict.
I’ll clarify my first post by adding that I believe anyone who does not deliberately intrude on another’s rights has the right to be left unmolested. That does not mean the converse: not EVERY instance where someone deliberately intrudes on another’s rights provides justification for extreme retaliation.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by DaveW *
**
JThunder wrote:
As I just wrote last night in a post in another thread, morals are nothing without context. To answer your questions:[list][li]If someone says to me, “rape this child or I’ll detonate a nuclear weapon which will kill millions,” I’d rape the child without hesitation.**[/li][/QUOTE]
In which case, let’s refine that context. Is it objectively wrong to rape a child purely for sexual pleasure? Is is objectively wrong to rape a child in the absence of external duress?
[QUOTE]
[li]It is not wrong to execute “abortionists” who perform abortions against the wishes of pregnant women.[/li][/QUOTE]
Once again, let’s refine that context. Is it morally permissible to kill someone simply because that person is an abortionist (i.e. without regard for whether that person is coercing women into abortion)?
[QUOTE]
[li]I’d be willing to bet that plenty of teachers were fired for simply being Jewish in Hitler’s Germany, and those doing the firing felt it was morally correct (not just ‘justified’, but obligatory) to do so.[/li][/QUOTE]
Perhaps, but that doesn’t really answer the question, does it? Sure, these people FELT justified in firing those people, but was it morally justified?
And since you mentioned Hitler’s Germany, let’s raise another question. Is it every morally defensible to kill millions of Jews, simply because they are Jews (i.e. with no regard to their individual crimes, circumstances or position in life)?
Okay, so you’re pro-choice. Are you pro-informed choice? If so, then what’s so horrible about showing these women what their unborn children really look like?
(Also, FTR, she didn’t GO to the women who had abortions. She invited them to come to her.)
First of all, that’s not true. There are many people who DO consider these to be the loss of a human life. The loss was not deliberately induced, but it is a loss nonetheless.
And second, even if you’re talking about “very early spontaneous abortion,” the overwhelming majority of abortions occur long after that stage. LONG AFTER THAT STAGE. Hence, even if your objection were valid, it would by no means justify abortion in general.
That’s a curious position to take. After all, the right to life is THE MOST FUNDAMENTAL right we have.
Someone who is deprived of life can not vote, can not engage in free speech, can not bear arms, and can not pursue liberty or happiness. Life is an essential prerequisite to ALL other rights, and so it must automatically take precedence.
Why can’t it be both? The end of life is both a medical question and a moral issue. To say that it must be one or the other is a patently false distinction.
Biology is all about living beings, and medical science is all about life. To say that medicine has no bearing on when human life begins is a ludicruous assertion, at best.
Gladly. Check out the statistics produced by the Alan Guttmacher Institute, the research arm of Planned Parenthood. (Please note that this is a pro-choice source that I’m citing.)
According to their own statistics, only 18% of all pregnancies occur within the first six weeks of pregnancy. Note that by this time, the unborn already has a detectable heartbeat (occuring at 21 days into the pregnancy). Its backbone, muscles, eyes, limbs and ears are already discernable (28th day). Distinct fingers can already be detected (35th day) as can its brain waves (40th day).
http://www.agi-usa.org/pubs/fb_induced_abort.html
By the sixth week, the liver has now taken over the production of blood cells, and the brain has begun to control movements of the muscles and organs.
No, it’s not entirely unrelated. However, the point is that you can’t justify abortion in general by saying, “Life doesn’t begin at conception!” Even if we grant that claim (for the sake of argument), that would have no bearing on the overwhelming majority of induced abortions.