The American Civil War was not about slavery.
No it was about states right…to have slaves.
Point of conception. :rolleyes:
I will. I believe life begins at conception.
What a simplistic view. But since I don’t want to hijack any further, I’ll drop it.
Point of fact. A fertilized ovum is not a fetus. A fetus is the term for the stage of development that does not begin until eight weeks after uterine implantation. The stages of fetal development are as follows:
[ol]
[li]Zygote[/li][li]Morula[/li][li]Blastocyst[/li][li]Embryo[/li][li]**Fetus ** [/li][/ol]
http://www.umm.edu/ency/article/002398.htm
If you are going to throw around medical terms, you should at least know what they mean.
Heh…open a Great Debates then. I dare you. Better yet do a search of the many others that already occurred.
Let’s have lots of complicated explanations and rationale, for what basically comes down to one simple fact…what’s you take, hmmm? Property Rights, State’s Rights, The Hypocricy of the North? The right of self-determination? The Consitution allowed Slavery? Which is yours?
Make your case.
Thus ends my hijack.
This is technically true, but the words fetus and embryo have been popularized to mean an unborn child at any stage of development.
I have been trying to fairly evaluate your opinion, but until you address the issues raised by the poster you responded to, in full, I have to admit you are losing huge points. You seem to be advocating draconic government regulation of reproductive rights. Anyone who knowingly prevents a fertilized egg from coming to maturity may be a murderer under your paradigm.
Like I said, I gave you alot of leeway here, but if you conitnue to argue without addressing these issues, you lose.
Which is one reason why we have so much problem communicating when we debate this issue; people are using the same terms to refer to two different things. The difference between a zygote and a fetus is vast and unambiguous.
All right. Putting aside the complaints that Child Protective Services is extremely flawed (way too intrusive in some cases, totally negligent in others; that’s all for a different thread) how, exactly, do we enforce these laws? What’s the goal here - prevention of abortion, or punishment for those who commit it?
If it’s prevention, (as ideally a live baby would be better than a dead one, right?) how do you keep a pregnant woman who really wants an abortion from having one, short of a 9-month imprisonment? How does law enforcment find out she’s pregnant in the first place, in order to rule such a detention is necessary?
If you make birth control pills illegal because they MIGHT cause a fertilized egg to fail to implant, how does the government keep women from buying them from Canada? How does it prove a woman caught doing so is actually taking them for birth control purposes? If she’s not currently in a sexual relationship with a man and can therefore have not caused the death of a fertilized egg, there has been no actual crime committed aside from the possession of an illegal drug. How do you separate such innocent users from those who MAY have caused fertilized eggs not to implant, without intruding into their sex lives? For that matter, how do you separate those who MIGHT have caused a fertilized egg to fail to implant, from those who actually DID?
On a similar note, how does the government tell if a woman has had an illegal IUD implanted?
How do you propose to examine women who have recently suffered miscarriages in order to make sure they weren’t abortions? Detailed interviews? Court-ordered physical examinations? Would it be in her best interest to take the “leftovers” home with her in jar, to prove to the court they haven’t been dismembered during a medical procedure?
If a couple who doesn’t want children because of medical reason ends up getting pregnant anyway (ya know, birth control isn’t 100% effective, even when used perfectly, and sterilizations have a certain failure rate) how do they go about getting an abortion to save the woman’s life? I assume since it’s not just a medical but also a legal issue, the court decides, based on medical information. What if some “activist judge” decides her reasons aren’t compelling enough, and denies her request?
I’m just taking the cues from your statements in this thread. If you think these speculations are silly, rest assured a lot of people don’t. The state of Virginia has already tried to stick its nose into people’s reproductive business. Don’t believe for a minute there aren’t people who wouldn’t like to see rules like these enforced. It’s that Cult of Life that is so dangerous.
Muad’Dib, fucking go to hell. You would honestly subject a woman who just had a goddamn miscarriage to a criminal investigation, adding insult to injury, just to prove she didn’t induce an abortion? Go FUCK yourself!
That’s what happened in Roumania, under Ceausceau, if I’m not mistaken. How DARE you. How fucking DARE you!
Keep your filthy paws off of MY UTERUS!!!
I suppose I should pause from ranting and make my position clear.
I am pro choice, and ideally I would like to see an end to abortions.
NOT because they have been made illegal, but because nobody wants one anymore.
If the bloody photo protestors would spend half the time and energy that they spend screaming and waving signs (and BTW, how much did that Truck of Gory Fetus Death cost, anyway?) on (REAL) education, support and social programs, they could make a dent in the actual number of abortions in this country.
I commend you for helping your sister change her mind. But spouting off in here about all the draconian laws you’d pass if you could sure as hell isn’t going to change OUR minds. It’s clear this Cult of Life movement doesn’t WANT to change minds; it just wants to tell everybody else how to live their lives, right down to the last gasp of breath. Why anybody thinks that ever goes over well is beyond me.
Grow up and calm down. How is that any different then a police investigation that parents are subjected to when a child dies suspiciously? Do you think that those are horrendous? Do you think that there should not be such investigations. I am talking about the death of a child, which is serious business. The laws that I have called for are no more draconian then the laws we already have to protect born children. They would only be extended to protect the unborn.
I dare because there is a human life at stake. I don’t care about your uterus. I care about protecting the baby inside of it.
I am not a part of “the cult of life”. I thought that Sciavo should have died. I support suicide for the terminally il, or even those who will not die but are in terrible suffering, part of having a right to life is the right to end it if you want to.
I just believe that life starts at conception, and have then followed that to its logical conclusions.
I don’t expect to change any of your minds, as much as I expect any of you to change mine. This is a black and white issue that permits no compromise. I consider myself very Libertarian and I agree with you completely, if the unborn do not have human rights then anti-abortion laws would be a horrific abomination and I would fight tooth and nail to end such despicable laws. But I do grant the fertilized egg status as a human-being, and as such it would be a horrific abomination for me to night fight tooth and nail to protect it. Again, much like slavery, It will only be ended when one side forces the other to their demands just as we are currently forced to have legal abortion.
I have work to do. I’ll respond to the other posts tomorrow.
Thank you, but I’m already quite grown up and I’m NOT going to “calm down.” I cannot calm down when people are trying to make laws that may affect my own body.
And I would venture that many of my fellow female Dopers would agree with me.
Even though it will probably get me accused of whining, I’ll agree with you there.
Plain and simple, you’re a fundamentalist. You take a position, based on an arbitrary belief not supported by arguments or science, and you then proceed to to empose it on others. The scary thing with fundamentalists is that it’s never sure where they’ll stop justifying the fight for their own cause. For some it’s parading hideous posters that they have no business showing to children and people with bad experiences who can actually suffer and get nightmares from seeing them, for others it’s flying planes into the World Trade Center.
The comparison with the slavery issue is outright ridiculous. The people being enslaved were sentient human beings with memory, no different from the people that enslaved them. It took a great effort on behalf of the slave owners to ignore the scientific fact that skin-color is really only skin-deep and the differences in looks belie a world of similarities, but they were motivated by one of the strongest of motivators - wealth.
Using the sanctity of life argument to forego any proper, scientific understanding of what life is, is a lot more like those who supported slavery than those who were against it. Answer some simple questions about how the value of an olive compares to that of a 35 year old Olive tree? What is consciousness? When does it arise? When is an Olive that grows on an Olive tree, no longer the Olive tree? Should an Olive tree make room for each and every olive that falls down and sprouts? The Olive tree is a lot more valuable than the Olive, to a near infinite degree.
The Olive tree vs Olive is a very simple example, but answering these questions in real life abortion scenarios is what it’s all about. Should a parent risk foregoing a proper education in favor of a few cells that might turn into a human being if all goes well, or should the parent wait until he can provide a safe and stable environment for the child to grow up? The latter, as evolution has shown, is clearly the way to go. The value of a fertilised egg is negligible, compared to the availability of sperm and egg-cells set out against the importance of the investment of 18+ years that go into raising a child. Take an in vitro fertilisation, in which we can fertilise many eggs at once, and then usually choose only a few of those to implant. I bet you’re against ivf too.
In the case of your sister, you are applying one example from personal experience and determining it is the right choice for a world of different circumstances that you know nothing of. Your sister could turn out right, and that’s fine. But it doesn’t mean it was the best choice. Nor does it mean that it will be the best choice for everyone else.
Your stance on sex is quite simply a failure to see that our whole civilisation has made large parts of our natural inclinations superfluous and some of them, like sex, can find better uses in society than for the preservation of our species. Ignoring the way the human works is what leads among others to child abuse in the Catholic Church, for which I hold the Catholic Church’s ridiculous concept of celibacy fully responsible. By far a bigger threat to the preservation of the species is the overpopulation in countries like Africa and India.
In the meantime, any negative effect in terms of causing psychological harm in those that see the posters, even if it is small, is tremendously much more important than preventing a few cells from continuing their long path towards becoming a human being, and is so far a cry from being mass-murder that your suggestion of it alone is a grave insult to all those who have considered or had an abortion, as well as all victims of mass-murder and all their relatives.
Sorry, bub. You would be. Here’s a little chart published by the FDA. Vasectomy has a lowest expected rate of pregnancy of 0.1% a typical use rate of 0.15%. For female sterilization, both are 0.5%, The most effective form of contraception, Norplant, which has a failure rate of 0.09% is no longer on the market.
As I said, we’ve had people on this very message board who’ve become pregnant despite using birth control, sometimes more than one form. I suppose having a hysterectomy would make it completely impossible to carry a baby to term, but it would not prevent ectopic pregnancies. By the way, why don’t I hear the truly hard-core pro-lifers, the ones who would make abortion illegal even when the life of the woman is in danger, protesting the slaughter of innocents during ectopic pregnancies?
The protestors standing outside doctors offices or outside lunch wagons don’t seem to be thinking about subtleties. They have no way of knowing whether the woman walking past them is seeking an abortion or looking for medical care for the aftermath of a miscarriage. They just call her a “baby killer” and worse. One reason I dislike these protestors so much is because to me they practice willful cruelty even to those who’ve committed no offense.
Muad Dib, when you or Lord Ashtar say, “just use birth control” or refer to not wanting to become pregnant because it’s not “convenient”, you look incredibly ignorant to those of us who have thought things through and are aware of how far from simple things are. I take responsibility for my life and actions as does my friend. However, nothing’s 100% effective and nothing’s 100% sure.
CJ
Careful now…you don’t want to be accused of being pedantic 
(Although I suspect pro choice folks might get a pass )
Sorry catsix, I may have parsed this exchange wrongly:
( Muad’Dib
And you condemn millions by making abortion legal.
catsix
It already is legal. Thankfully people like you don’t run my life.
…
You will keep your agenda out of my life whether you like it or not. )
I understood this to mean that you claimed that the present legality of abortion was a valid argument against outlawing it. If that is not what you meant then I was indeed beating the straw man, and I apologise.
I don’t, for what it’s worth, consider that the statistics on the number of pregnancies that self-terminate are valid grounds for acting to increase that number - any more than, say, the knowledge that my 93-year-old great-aunt has a 10% chance of dying before she turns 94 (this statistic completely tracta ex fundamento meo) justifies my turning this into a 100% probability to suit my own ends. But I cannot keep up with the pace of the argument going on here, as is evident from this post and the previous one being three pages apart, and I’d best just butt out, really.