I thought they looked a little too red; I had chalked it up to bad photo editing, but this is interesting. Maybe that’s why they were keeping us so far back from the posters?
I have already laid out why I believe a fetus has a right to life several times.
Once a sperm and egg fuse they form a separate and distinct new creature. This creature will eventually gain consciousness. Meaning that you would have to stop it, somehow get in its way, for it to not gain consciousness. Since it will gain consciousness its status is no different from that of an unconsciousness adult that will eventually “wake up”. Consciousness and being self-aware is what grants us the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Therefore an unborn fetus has a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
They are about as real as the “baby-eating guy”'s photos were. Seriously, go wander through an NICU. See what a 23-weeker looks like. It is nothing like the “babies” in the infamous “trash-can” shot (below) look like. I especially like the fully-grown nails, hair, and eyelashes. :rolleyes: I also dig how none of them have any vernix on them. You’d think they might remember to include such relevant details. Also, the belly-buttons. Um. Yeah. Wow, such clean rubber dolls. You’d think they’d at least fake some blood or placentas or something.
http://www.100abortionpictures.com/Aborted_Baby_Pictures_Abortion_Photos/Enlargement.cfm?ID=101
That is not anything what the pictures looked like (we had trucks driving around campus yesterday). Looked like this with some tomato sauce colored blood. (The first time I saw it from a distance in fact I thought it was a pizza truck!) It had I believe a quarter that was probably 80% the size of the head. Seemed like a pretty real picture to me but I am not a doctor.
Not to mention that a few from that picture set look to be a bit decomposed.
Au contraire. About 1/2 of all fertilized eggs will go on to become full-term neonates. Out of those, some will be born still, some will be born so brain damaged they do not have any form of conciousness, and some will die from serious defects.
The odds are not in Mr. Zygote’s favor, regardless of abortion.
Perhaps you should take that up with god. I mean, it’s not like pregnancy is a very good human reproductive vector.
Could be real, but a real what is the question. Miscarried fetus (unlikely, would be a big clotty thing)? Biology illustration (probably)? Photo from a development web site? Model made of nonhuman things? Who knows?
90% of all abortions in the US are by vacuum aspiration. Think little sucky things like the dentist uses. Only puree comes out the back end.
I’ll pay you $5 to ask the protestors if they are selling them in just “chunk style” or if you could take a can of the “fresh whipped” home for the missus.
I have already said that in cases of extreme birth defects that I would have no problem with abortion. In such cases it realy is just a mass of tissue.
I don’t see how half of all fertilized eggs go on to death hurts my argument. I am talking about a healthy fetus here. Do you somehow doubt that the vast, vast, majority of aborted children would not have naturally gone to full term healthy and alive?
Having sex is not gambling. Having sex for most people is nothing more than healthy physical enjoyment that is often an essential part of a happy marriage. That hardly compares to an action where primary purpose is to go against basic odds and willfully risk losing money. Most of the time you lose money when you gamble. Most sex acts do not result in pregnancy. If birth control fails I have no more consented to pregnancy than I have to any other medical condition.
Oh geez at least be honest here. Anti-abortion laws kill and maim women. They have in the past, currently do so in many places and will do so again in America should the Supreme Court chose to overturn Roe.
It’s one thing to say (as I have heard a number of anti-abortionists admit) that you’re not bothered by this because you believe they are necessary to protect the unborn who are not guilty of “murder.”
It’s quite another to fain innocence and pretend nothing will happen when you pass them. Make no mistake you will sacrifice at least a few women’s lives when you make abortion illegal.
And you condemn millions by making abortion legal.
That may be what people would like it to be and have tried to turn it into but the purpose of sex is to make a baby. Everytime you have sex, especially if it is unprotected, you take a chance that a pregnancy will result.
Ah finally! Honesty. You are not chosing all life. You are chosing between some lives and others.
Do you really think that if woman wants an abortion she won’t get one? Whether or not you approve? The real abortion rate won’t drop if abortion is made illegal. The only thing that will happen is that poor women will visit the back alleys and rich women will visit Canada.
And since you’re being honest what would you do to a woman who has one? Throw her in jail?
Potential baby making is only one of the many purposes of sex. Many people have sex to connect to another human being or simply because it’s enjoyable.
If that is indeed the biological explanation, why do women continue to have sex drives even after menopause? Why do even infertile women have sexual feelings?
The idea that the purpose of sex is to make babies is your opinion.
Would also accept that as a valid argument for a man facing paternity payments after his ex-girlfriend presents him with the baby?
e.g.
“Consenting to sex is not consenting to pregnancy and not consenting to any financial obligations. It is merely consenting to sex. He merely consented to sex not a baby therefore no court should force him to pay anything”
No I am not. If abortion were made illeagal those women would not be forced to die. They will have made a series of bad choices and risks that, although tragic and terrible, led to their deaths or injury. Unlike in the case of abortion were the child is forced to die. THe difference may appear to be slight but it is significant.
Also, say I were just making a choice of some lives over others. We make that choice every day. How many people die or are maimed each year in auto related accidents. I am sure it is many thousand, yet you would not think of outlawing cars. How many people are electricuted to death or injury every year? Yet you would not think of outlawing electricity. How many children are aborted every year?
Thank you Rune.
Even under the law, by consenting to sex you consent to the responsibility for any child that may result.
This whole ‘abortion = killing a child’ is so dull and predictable. I’d like to throw out a new concept.
If a bunch of cells which may *eventually * attain consciousness equates to a ‘conscious being’, then by the same token a child which suffers nothing untoward will *eventually * become elderly.
So why don’t we just make a new rallying cry and declare: **Abortion is the same as killing the elderly! **
It’s all the same, IN POTENTIAL.
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Not may attain consciousness. They will.
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That is true, but a bit silly. You may as well say that abortion cuts down on drunk drivers because some of the thousands of babies would have driven drunk. The point is that you are not just killing the elderly, you are destroying an entire life. The elderly, at least, had a chance to live. To say a child is more true because it conveys the complete innocence of the fetus and its lack of the chance to actually live.
3.Good Lord, it’s 1 am. I’ve got classes and work tomorrow. Good night.
Force?!!! Force?!!!
Muad’Dib, I’m going to shock the hell out of you. I’m over 40 years old, female, and I have sex. No form of birth control is 100% effective, not even essure as Choti? can tell you in a thread which was active here in the Pit last week. Other women on this board and elsewhere have become pregnant while using 2 or more forms of birth control. By the way, I’m including abstinence in the category of birth control which fails because there have been times when a person who has decided to use abstinence as birth control has sex for whatever reason. I’m also of an age where the risk of a pregnancy producing a child with birth defects and/or the pregnancy endangering my life are high enough to make me uncomfortable. My best friend is married to a wonderful man but they decided not to have children because of various health problems which run in both families, including one which could endanger her life. According to some of the arguments here, my best friend and her husband should never, ever have sex with each other.
How fucking dare you? Muad’Dib, you’ve compared abortion to slavery. If I become pregnant, even if things go perfectly, which is not a sure bet at my age, from what I’ve read, I’d have to take at least a month off of work to allow for delivering the child and recovery. My company gives me 2 sick days which were eaten by a nasty case of the flu earlier this year. This means I’d have to put in for FMLA, which is unpaid leave. A few years ago when I was laid off, it could have been worse. I doubt many employers would be willing to hire a woman who was going to give birth within a few months and, frankly, I don’t blame them. I’d tell her, “Come back to me after you’ve given birth.” The word “force” scares me, as you may have gathered ;), ruefully. You see, my diet stinks and I’ve got a history of severe clinical depression. I’ve recently been trying to change my diet and I’ve been running into some rather massive psychological barriers. How much of my liberty are you willing to deprive me of? If I become suicidal because I’m carrying a child I cannot afford to carry to term, let alone care for, what would you do to me? If I become nauseous when I eat lettuce because of some bizarre psychological warp (don’t laugh – it’s happened), will you force feed me?
Right now, I’m using the most reliable birth control I can find. It’s actually a bit more reliable than sterilization. I do not consider abortion a good thing; frankly, I’d be glad to see a day when it never happens. Until that day, I want it to be safe and legal because sometimes there is no good alternative. You tell me abortion is killing babies. In my mind, making abortion illegal is killing women or, at best, enslaving us. Force. Would you come to my apartment, tie me to the wall and imprison me until I gave birth? That’s the alarm bell that rings in my head when I hear the more extreme members of the right-to-life movement. I consider abortion morally wrong. I also consider bringing a child one is unable to support immoral unless one gives the child up for abortion and I am against one becoming a single parent. If a woman finds herself with an unwanted pregnancy I firmly and loudly agree that placing the child up for adoption is the best choice. I also know that children who are handicapped are much harder to find homes for, as are interracial children. I don’t have what it takes to raise a handicapped child. I also don’t like the idea of such a child lingering in foster care. If I ever have to face that awful choice, that of delivering a child I cannot look after or having an abortion, unless the father of the child can come up with some very convincing arguments, then I will choose abortion. You are now welcome to call me every foul name in the book. I doubt you’ll be able to come up with anything I haven’t heard before. When I was in my 20’s and even my 30’s, because of things which happened to me in my youth, I thought odds were pretty good I’d be an abusive parent. That’s why I decided not to have children. Is abortion genuinely worse than abusing a child? Abortion, at least, is quick and usually happens before brain activity occurs. The aftereffects of abuse go on for years after the abuse has stopped.
When I see abortion protestors, when I read the words of Muad Dib, it tells me one thing. Since, even if I succeed in being abstinent, which I have done for years (for me, it’s not that difficult), I can be raped, it tells me that to them my life is worthless. The choice is already made. I must sacrifice my life to their agenda. No. I’m a woman. Whether I become pregnant because I chose to make love to a wonderful, loving man and a 99.7% effective method of birth control failed or because I was raped by someone I didn’t know or by someone I did know but who wouldn’t take “No” for an answer, my life, my choices are out of my hands, but the consequences are still in my hands. I’m an adult. I accept the consequences of my actions. Sometimes, those consequences means there’s no good choice available. I still want those choices available.
So, let the calumny begin. :rolleyes:
CJ