So long as the uterus is a part of my body, there will be no compromise in which you or anyone else is allowed any kind of say. My body, my choice. I will not ever allow you to control it. I will not ever tolerate you making my medical decisions. I will not ever allow you to insinuate yourself into my life that way. You, and your idiotic ideology of women, are not worth consideration.
And Muad’Dib sayeth…
Just as an aside, have you ever given thought to changing your user name, Muad’Dib? I think Bene Tleilax would work nicely.
Axolotl tanks, anyone?
See, now remember people like Muad’Dib the next time we have a feminism thread. People like him are the reason feminism exists.
Eh? I am going through, page by page, trying to respond to everyone. I am sorry if I missed a post of yours.
That’s okay. I doubt you have any good answers for my questions, anyway.
And there you go.
Not emotional enough?! I have done everything I can to try to keep this thread civil. I am not trying to push anyone’s buttons and the last thing I want is some raving emotional poster. When someone gets emotional, especially with a subject like this, there is no point in continuing conversation with him or her. They no longer consider what you say. They just make up their minds about you, and then view all of your arguments through a lens of hate, disregarding any points you might make and twisting everything else to fit their pre-conceived notions about you. Any emotional poster is a waste of time and energy that I would rather spend on more sober debaters.
So, lemme get this straight… Post sex I should avoid vigorous exertion on the off-chance I may have fertilized an egg?
What about my child-rearing and cooking duties? :rolleyes:
You are so rigid and extreme as to be a parody of pro-lifers.
I’ll bet you are a real hit with the ladies, too.
$50 says you’ve never had sex in your life. Thankfully.
Eggs in general, or just human?
And why “eggs”? What about Mr. Sperm? Is he not sacred as well as delicious?
What about my son- 2 forms of birth control, but hey, surprise! BC isn’t as safe or as effective as one might hope. Sterilization is restricted to people over a certain age in many cases. If this really bothers you, please lobby the holy hell out of your congress humans to fund more research into safe, effective, and reliable BC.
Muad’Dib, I really hope you show this thread to any women you are planning to have sex with.
We don’t define life that way, we define humanity that way (which is what I think you meant to say). I don’t define human rights as beginning at brain function. I define it at conception, when that first unique cell is created and that individual life begins.
My point is that the cell will gain consciousness and therefore has the same status as a person asleep, under deep anesthesia, or in a coma.
By killing a child.
There is nothing arbitrary about it. In fact, to say that life begins at conception (whether right or wrong) is one of the only non-arbitrary points there is.
That is the point where a new life, a new creature, is created. It is a fact. Now whether you think that that life has human-rights is a separate issue, but it is undeniable that conception is the beginning, it is the point of creation.
My opinions are completely based on reality. As I have explained above and before, at no point does whim or faith enter into it. It is a scientific fact that conception is the point where human life begins. Forget for a moment about whether or not human-rights begin then, there is no way that you can rationally argue that conception is not the beginning of a new organism. Before that point there was only egg and sperm with different genetic codes from different creatures and the potential for a new creature to be formed. After conception potentiality has been rendered and a new life is the result.
I agree that consciousness does not really begin until long after the birth, it is something that needs development and experience to occur… But does this mean that you would claim that the killing of a 1-year-old is fine?!? By your own definition they are not yet human. So is it okay for a mother to kill her 1-year-old?
- I do not see it as a potential.
- There are different shades of meaning to the word potential. Unless something goes wrong, a fertilized egg will attain consciousness. That is its nature. You use possibility in the sense that it would have to statistically go against its nature to achieve consciousness.
3.The mothers life is not more valuable. It is of equal value, as are all human lives when making such decisions. - When the egg and sperm meet a new creature is created. I have described and explained it multiple times and I don’t really know what I can say to make it clearer to you. This is not a controversial point. You will not find a reputable geneticist, biologist, doctor, etc. who will not say that that is the point that a new creature, a new life, is created. Whether or not it has human-rights is a separate debate. But it is a fact that that is when a life begins.
To be logically consistent in how one views the world is a moral commandment. To be otherwise is to be either evil or insane.
Say we were to treat a man in a coma as a slave, he wouldn’t know it, wouldn’t remember it, wouldn’t complain, wouldn’t be hurt, and so on, because he does not have those capabilities. So it would be ok to treat him as such, or to maybe kill him?
Of course he has that right. And in exercising of that right what would have been a mature harvest of grain is destroyed.
- I am sorry, but this paragraph does not make much sense to me. Gang raped?!
- I do not view it as a potential, so do not argue from that standpoint to me.
3 Except that that “parasite”, is a human being that the woman does not have the right to destroy willy-nilly.
As I have explained above and before, conception is not at all an arbitrary point. It is the point where that life begins.
Not if it is destroying fertilized eggs it is not.
According to you.
You’re comical.
Muad said, “To be logically consistent in how one views the world is a moral commandment. To be otherwise is to be either evil or insane.”
Hmmmm.
Meet the Thinkings: Mrs. Black and Mr. White…
I am curious about Muad -are you married? Have kids? Dating? Sexually active?
I pity your sister with all my heart–it must have been easier to have the baby rather than listen to this righteous drivel day in and day out. I am glad your nephew is well and thriving. That’s great. How is your sister doing? What of her earning potential/school/future prospects? Is the father (remember him-the psrem “donor”?) in any way contributing to the care of this laughing boy? Are you? Or do you just harangue people with your “truth” and preach (oh, I get that your not religious-not only religious people preach) rigidity of thought?
psst–rigidity of thought is a sign of mental illness. See above quote about “moral commandment”.
I said it is an arbitrary point for deciding a human life with human rights begins. A more logical point would have been to do so at the point at which the baby leaves the mother, as it then becomes an individual capable of sustaining its own life or at least it’s no longer dependent on the mother exclusively for survival.
In our discussion, it is quite obviously not a separate issue, but THE issue.
I think I could find more compelling arguments for this than you would be comfortable with. But certainly a 1 year old is an independent being that can be taken care of without the mother, and the benefit for the mother of killing the child instead of giving it up is a completely different issue than at the beginning of conception.
- I do not see it as a potential.
- There are different shades of meaning to the word potential. Unless something goes wrong, a fertilized egg will attain consciousness. That is its nature. You use possibility in the sense that it would have to statistically go against its nature to achieve consciousness.
A fertile egg has the potential to become fertilised. A fertile sperm has the potential to fertilise an egg. A fertilised egg has the potential to nest itself in the uterus. Etc. It’s a whole circle of life thing anyway. Now I agree with you that biologically, it makes sense to point at this part of the circle as the start of that circle. At the same time every step such as the point where two humans learn how to sustain themselves, become biologically fertile, fall in love and have sex, etc. are all equally important to the progression of that circle. That’s what I wanted to point out for your ‘potential/actual’ denomination - as soon as you are not strictly talking about a biological standpoint but from a moral one, your point where you determine the start of a human life that should have human rights becomes arbitrary.
The mother’s life is most definitely more valuable. The only circumstance where it wouldn’t be would be when this pregnancy was the last chance for humanity to perpetuate itself. That’s the big point here. If you take your cues from biology, then you’ve very arbitrarily taken one point from biology but not another.
It is the point where a new blueprint is formed from mixing two old ones, yes.
Well if that is so, then what I’ve been saying is that I wouldn’t be surprised if there are a fair few out here who would, well, not consider you a moral person at all.
I never brought up the man in the coma into this discussion, because not a comparable issue. A man in a coma is a human being that may or may not be temporarily unconscious. But he was conscious, and he could be conscious again, in which case he could suffer from the consequences of what is done to him while he is in the coma. Also, a man in a coma is a harvest, not a seedling that can be easily replanted, but a harvest of many years, or a large tree full of olives. He has developed many important skills, has friends, relatives, maybe people that depend on him.
Of course he has that right. And in exercising of that right what would have been a mature harvest of grain is destroyed.
That’s what your strawman of a group of hoodlums destroying the farmers field of seedlings translates to if taken as an analogy, yes.
It is a seedling on her turf that she can choose to invest in or consider weed, at her own discretion. Because it is her land, and she has every right to do with it as she will.
The chance of succes of one single egg being fertilised and then being successfully implanted is very small. Hence the procedure is typically done with multiple eggs. The small chance that everything works out typically resulted in quadruples or more. Nowadays, to increase the successrate further and decrease the likelihood of the pregnancy being successful (it should be clear that nature prefers one child at a time) if more than two implants succeed, some of them are sometimes aborted, iirc.
People who use ivf bring a life into the world where they otherwise wouldn’t have. See, may statement is true even if ivf kills fertilized eggs in the process, because those eggs would never have been fertilized without ivf.
Yes. But I’m pointing out that’s how you come across to some people - might we wise to be aware of that. You may think you’re being polite, but to many you’re just being very hurtful.
Human rights were designed to protect people from suffering. They were not designed to protect a few cells that might one day have the capacity to suffer, but of which the forced protection of its so called rights causes a lot more suffering than it prevents.
Of course not. Those are accidental deaths. A crime like manslaughter requires someone with intent.
So would you say that parents are enslaved by their born children?
So what if fit a persons moral barometer to kill the homeless? Would that make it ok? Would I be wrong to try and impose my morals on them by stopping them?
No, I would not. But good luck in finding a company willing to take the risk.
Then I really expect you to jump to my defense when people start calling me a tyranical misogynist.
I say that this is far more controversial than you seem to think. A person needs experience to form desire, some thing that babies, by their nature, are lacking. I still mantain that babies are tabula rasa.
Those are not constitutional rights. The phrase is from the Declaration of Independence, and they are not rights granted by the state, they are rights that we have by our nature of being conscious, rational, self-aware creatures. They are the philosophical underpinnings of our country stated in its most succinct form.
1.You are allowed to pursue happiness, you aren’t guaranteed it.
2.What if my happiness depended on raping random women. Do I have a right to pursue it?
1.Yes it does. I am not trying to take your choice away, I am saying that it never existed. To call me “anti-choice” is just as silly as saying that an abolitionist is anti-property rights.
2.No, they are no more murders then killing in self-defense is.
3.I do not understand your last two sentences, please clarify and expand on them.
1.No, you did not take it to its logical conclusion. I am advocating that people are held responsible for the unborn to the same degree that they are held for the born. If that is so draconian then why don’t we have such concentration camps for parents now?
2.You are right. It is not fair and men are not held as responsible for a pregnancy as a women. Also, no, I would not necessarily be against enforcing a vasectomy on a deadbeat dad. We do close to it now through court rulings baring a person from having any more children (although quite rarely and mostly to deadbeat mothers).
I am saying that the right to have an abortion never existed. It is as during the Civil War, they did not take away the right to own slaves, the right to own slaves never existed in the first place, it was always wrong to do even if it was supported by law.
All I have been doing here is dealing in “theories and ideas”.
- You cannot decide to kill in self-defense “for whatever reason”. You have to be under threat of bodily harm or mortal threat to do so.
2.It is to me that it is still murder because they placed the embryos in the position of danger, it was not by accident that the embryos were in peril.
3.She would be jailed just as a woman who decided one day that “I can’t afford to care for both of my children, I should kill one so that the other will have a better life” would be.
I don’t understand the point you are making here.
Have you not read the whole thread? I have already used the example of people in a coma in the opposite fashion several times already. People in a coma have a right to life because they will wake up, just a fertilized cell will eventually wake up. Just because you are temporarily unconscious your right to life does not disappear.
Yes. Just because I am sure about some things does not mean that I am sure about others. I will be the first to say that I don’t have all the answers.
Again, I do not understand the point you are making.
Just because it is difficult does not mean that we must not try our hardest to do it. How many serious crimes do people get away with everyday? Does this mean that we should give up on trying to enforce the law?
[qutoe]If you don’t see how comparing women to ROADS is misogynistic–I cannot help you. Mentall illness and post partum depression is not the same as a car crash–You cannot equate the two.
[/quote]
I was comparing the women stricken with mental illness to people injured or killed in automobile accidents, not to roads. I am saying that there are aspects of the two situations that are similar. Your insinuation that there is anything misogynistic in trying to compare examples is bizarre, laughable, and insulting.
What sort of examples and comparisons would you approve of?
I think that I did not make the analogy clear enough and that you misunderstood me. What I meant is that by banning abortion there will be some women who are indirectly hurt through mental illness etc., by allowing driving there are also people who are indirectly hurt trough accidents. However, although there are people indirectly hurt by driving we do not outlaw it because the benefits far outweigh the costs. Similarly, outlawing abortion should not be stopped because a small percentage of people will be indirectly harmed is not a good enough reason to do otherwise when so many children will be directly saved.
Believe me, you will get no argument from me on that point.
- No. They are equals in my eyes.
- Again, no, I view the baby as an actual, not a potential and the baby does not trump the mothers life. If it did I would not support abortion to save the mothers life.
- It is not misogynistic because that it is women we are discussing does not matter. If it were men who carried the child the situation would be exactly the same. This is what I meant when I said “I don’t care about your uterus”. That women are the ones who get pregnant and are burdened with this responsibility is entirely incidental.
Murder is as old as man and making it illeagal does not make it go away, but we still must fight it the best we can.