On the same basis that you define it as not-a-human. That’s the whole point. Yet again, there is no humanometer. Science cannot measure humanity. Until you grok that fact, you’re simply claiming that your subjective definition should be elevated to the level of objective fact. Ironically enough, you are complaining that I am accepting someone’s opinion as valid… because I’m not accepting that only your opinion is valid.
You’ve certainly now crossed into autoparody when you claim that saying that fetus = human is the same as loaf of bread = human. As for the idea that nobody has a right to impose their beliefs upon other people with equally valid beliefs, several millenia of human society put paid to that claim. Try to broadcast something that some folks consider ‘obscene’ but you think is just good clean fun, see how the FCC reacts. We deal with this issue all the time without extensive cognitive dissonance.
No, because your argument is the pro-life side needs no criteria beyond their beliefs for what is a human. A human is whatever they feel is a human and valid in your view.
I have laid out criteria that can be used which you have studiously ignored arguing there is no humanometer. You have provided no rationale for why a fertilized egg = human beyond someone feels it is so. Baby popping out of a woman we can all agree = human yet no rationale for why an undifferentiated cell is essentially the same thing.
Given that you cannot even tell me why if they feel a loaf of bread is a human why we shouldn’t accept it. Of course it is absurd but then so is the view a fertilized egg = a human.
All you are going on is beliefs and no explanation why their beliefs should override a woman’s right to control her own body who does not believe as they do.
Wrong. And if you are unable to conceptualize the concept of a spectrum with a fertilized egg on one end and a dying old man on the other, and instead revert to analogies about loaves of bread, then you are obviously not putting yourself into the anti-abortion mindset. That you refuse to understand why a fertilized egg is not fungible with a loaf of bread, or why someone can say that there exists a continuum from fertilization to death, indicates that you are not looking to understand your opponents’ position. While that’s certainly allowable, it’s a rather shoddy method towards achieving any sort of dialog beyond the “Is too!” “Is not!” variety. Especially once you start talking about loaves of bread.
In point of fact, you seem to be aggressively resisting even a basic level of understanding your opposition. Talking in terms of why “beliefs should override a woman’s right to control her own body” is fine when you’re among your camp, but gibberish if you’re trying to engage in anything even remotely resembling dialog. Yet again: to anti-abortion activists, it’s not a matter of controlling a woman’s body, but preventing murder. You trivialize the positions of your opponents to your detriment.
Additionally, you have laid out no actual criteria which can be used to objectively define humanity. I already explained this to you, and yet you are still aggressively confusing your subjective interpretation of data and subjective schema with objective facts. There is no humanometer, science cannot measure humanity, and your gloss is not one jot more valid than one which places humanity’s start as fertilization. Digging your feet in and declaring that your subjective valuations are the only rational ones may work fine if you’re talking to fellow travelers. Of course, we can resume the “Baby murderer!” “Woman oppressor!” discussion whenever it’s convenient.
Might one suggest that there is an element of hyperbole (if not autoparody) in comparing the censorship of the airwaves and compelling someone to continue an unwanted pregnancy?
The day the FCC comes to me and makes me run a copy of Debbie Does Dallas through my abdomen… Um…
One might suggest all sorts of things.
One would be wrong if they suggested that, as an example of a group of people imposing their views through law, it was hyperbolic to mention obscenity laws. It is a perfect example of how the subjective valuation of some is enshrined into law. It’s far from being the only such example, but if you prefer, think of laws against physician assisted suicide too.
Actually, your definition of human seems tailored to permit abortion and uses an argumentum ad populum as well:
I don’t think the Democrats could move to the left on abortion. They could become more authoritarian, but I don’t think that’s on the left-right spectrum. Margaret Sanger, Marie Stopes and Ayn Rand all supported the concept of eugenics. Moving beyond the concept that abortions should be legal (perhaps the Simone de Beauvoir stance?) would be supporting the notion that they should be mandated. There’s little to no chance of Democrats arguing for that. In fact, I’m surprised that there’s no paleolibertarians that’d argue as such - they’re too enamoured with the Christian right to allow their Social Darwinism to show, perhaps.
One could argue that we shouldn’t accept their claims to be “pro-homeless” though.
Care to provide specifics?
Which is only a problem if an undue burden is placed on you by Congress to prevent you from carrying out some religious ritual. As it happens, legislation is essentially (where good) the moral consensus of the majority. I don’t think there’s any better moral underpinning for law than something resembling Utilitarianism. I think Peter Singer’s arguments in favour of abortion (for instance) do not really stand up to scrutiny.
Anticipating arguments in favour of alternative systems of governance, basing laws explicitly on evolutionary stable strategies is no more objective than Utilitarianism (naturalistic fallacy). There are evolutionary stable societies that are worse for each constituent member and are stable (in other words, cannot be usurped) until the point of collapse.
Anticipating arguments in favour of the sanctity of an individual’s body: in a thought experiment, if a woman sequesters a blade in her vagina and injures a man through intercourse, she’d probably still be punished. There was an injured party despite the damage occurring within the woman’s body.
Well I agree. Ever try making that argument IRL though? To a non-fundi crowd? IME, most (not all) tend to treat that approach with some hesitance.
Ok, decent point. But the generosity of their welfare state is also well known, c. 1980s. (I’m a little uncertain about after that point, though I’d bet it wasn’t anywhere near as miserly as the US.)
Furthermore, in terms of the gender gap, Ireland is the fifth best in the world. (Iceland is #1, the US and Canada are #17 and #18). Which is unsurprising given their generally leftish policies.
Oh, there is one Utilitarian argument I can think of in favour of keeping abortion legal, namely that there are fewer abortions in countries where it is legal. That’s a post hoc line of argument and one obvious confounding variable is the prevalence of contraception in society (along with the development of the welfare system in the country, which’d contribute to low infant mortality rates among other things integral to raising a healthy child). For some, it’d be a dilemma analogous to permitting assassinations in order to reduce them though.
I understand the difference between bread and human.
I asked you to tell me how a belief that a fertilized egg = human is different than a belief that a loaf of bread = human. You make no allowance that there are factual differences worth noting here. Belief is enough. You have no humanometer to determine the bread is not a human.
If all it takes is a belief for someone to override a another person’s control over their own body and what happens to it then there is no limit really.
Your question has been answered multiple times: a fertilized egg can fit in on the continuum of human life from fertilization to death. A loaf of bread cannot. I doubt that you truly don’t understand that we can’t define humanity or personal scientifically while we can still give a biological species concept… while still excluding toast. That you persist in using that analogy and casting the debate in terms of controlling other people’s bodies indicates, shall we say, less than perfect empathy with your opponents.
It’s interesting that you snipped the part of my post where I linked the beliefs of actual pro-lifers. In contradiction with which you assert that, since pro-lifers tend to be conservative and anti-welfare, they don’t care about the welfare of the children they insist should be born. As a liberal and stongly pro-choice advocate, I agree there’s a disconnect here. But, it doesn’t follow that pro-lifers don’t care about children. Rather, they think it’s a responsibility of the parents, And it certainly doesn’t follow that thinking it’s a responsibility of the parents means the sole (or main) purpose of opposing abortion is to oppress women. As the links you snipped demonstrate, their motivation is plain, viz, to protect what they consider unborn children.
I take a stand on this for two reaons. First, it’s only fair to take the opposition on their own ground. Second, it’s good tactics. Asserting anti-abortion is about oppressing women may feel good, but if the proponents of that point of view doesn’t see it, you’ve wasted a bullet.
As I’ve already made clear, I consider them to be liars so I don’t care what they say. I care what they do.
Garbage. They force those children on women who don’t want them, and they work to make the women and the children less healthy, or even kill them. Everything they do screams “malice”.
Bending over backwards to pretend the right is well meaning has led the left and middle of America to disaster after disaster. “Good tactics” is realizing that these people are fanatics & bigots, that they are the enemy not just the loyal opposition, and to stop trying to play by the rules of chess when your opponent is waging war. We are not going to persuade them, and they are not going to compromise.
So are you distorting what I actually said, or did you not understand it?
I ask this because you sailed right past me pointing out that your “unanswered question” had been answered, repeatedly, and then you misinterpreted a fairly clear statement of mine in a manner that is not only absurd, but tailored to fit your poorly argued claims that your subjective interpretations are “science”.
Just in case you weren’t reading for comprehension and just skimmed what I actually wrote, I’ll emphasize: we can’t define humanity or personal scientifically while we can still give a biological species concept.
Are you, perhaps, unaware of the biological species concept and therefore misinterpreted what I actually wrote? Do you not understand that organisms which fit as ‘human’ under the BSC would include humans too young to reproduce, as well? Do you not understand that this still does not change the fact that there will exist a continuum from fertilization to death? Are you, perhaps, unaware that even classification systems like the BSC are limited and there exists real controversy over their descriptive capabilities, especially in asexual species and separated population groups? I’m rather curious to see you actually try to explain how the BSC proves that your subjective interpretation of the human developmental cycle is somehow objective or that the BSC somehow allows us to define humanity in a manner that just happens to match up with your subjective beliefs.
The fact remains, even if you steadfastly refuse to admit it, that there is no objective scientific metric to claim that a fertilized egg is ‘non-human’ but a viable fetus is ‘human’. We can, with great accuracy and precision, describe the characteristics of all the phases of human development, but the point at which you impart personhood/humanity to them is an aesthetic decision. There is no humanometer, even if you would really like there to be. “Personhood” is not a scientific concept. Wrong. Bad. Nope. You can not measure to see if you have 6.5 grams of humanity in you, or only 3.7. Until you are able to understand this concept, nothing else will make sense to you and you’ll continue to compare the stages of human development to toast and to claim that your subjective, aesthetic interpretations of objective phenomena are ‘science’.
If I understand your argument right, then ,you are saying that war and selfdefense can also be called murder! Many unborn and already innocent peole are killed in a war. A woman can have the right to self defense as well as any other, No one can say they know her state of mind or the cost to her family or self!
Are you saying one can look at a fertilized egg and say ,“Oh what a cute little baby”. Or a pollenated apple blossom and say,"Oh what a delicious looking Apple? Is a fertile egg a Chicken, or will it become one if it is incubated? Is a sperm a human,or half human? If you are using something to mean it has human life, then yes it does,but how can you call it a human being? If the sperm doesn’t have life there will be no conception,isn’t that true?
This is a horribly unconvincing argument to anyone other than folks who already believe exactly as you believe.
Reasonable people can come to the conclusion that abortion is bad without being driven by religious beliefs. But sometimes all I hear is “keep your God out of my uterus” Its really no better than pretending that people want abortions to be available so that they can have Roman style orgies without consequences.
For the record, I am very pro-choice through the first trimester and fairly pro-choice through the second trimester and fairly anti-abortion in the third trimester.
This is my point. We do in fact legislate morality. We do in fact impose our beliefs on others. Our moral beliefs.
There are people out there that think that having sex with consenting 14 year old boys is OK but the vast majority of society imposes its belief that says that they may not.
There are people out there that think that its OK to purchase or sell sexual services, we have imposed our belief and told them that they may not.
There are people that believe that polygamy is good and natural. Yet we will stand in their way.
When both sides are so convinced they are right that neither side will listen to the other, soemtimes volume is all you have left tio determine the winner.
To illustrated the concept of life as a sepctrum.
You have a gun to your family’s head and you must either kill a newborn baby or destroy a refrigerator with fertilized eggs. How many eggs would have to be in that refrigerator for me to choose to kill the newborn child?
You have a gun to your family’s head and you must either kill a newborn baby or inject an abrtifacient into women who are 1 month pregnant. How many women would I have to force you to inject before you would choose to kill the child?
Rinse and repeat at the end of every month of pregnancy.
Now replace the unborn children with a terminally ill person who just reached their 100th birthday that you must euthanize.
So do I, this is a more accurate description.
And what sort of costs justify murder?
I do agree that there was an astounding amount of support for invading Iraq and causing the death of millions of innocent civilians by the same people who were condemning first trimester abortions, stem cell research and marching for Terry Schiavo due to the sanctity of life.
I did not say that. What I have said that is it is not at all logically inconsistent to believe that there exists a continuum of humanity on which ‘old person dying of old age’ is at one end and ‘fertilized ovum’ is on the other. It’s no different from believing that the larval stage of an insect is still an exemplar of that species during a certain life phase, and that doesn’t at all imply that you’d look at a caterpillar and remark upon what a beautiful buttefly it is. Just like you wouldn’t look at a baby and refer to what a handsome older gentleman he was.
I will note that the “it’s not a [del]human[/del] chicken because you wouldn’t accept an egg if you ordered chicken” is an absolutely awful argument. I also wouldn’t accept a baby chick if I ordered a chicken breast. That doesn’t mean that a chick isn’t, in fact, possessed of ‘chickenhood’. I also wouldn’t accept a toddler if I asked HR for a person to sub for my classes. That doesn’t mean that toddlers aren’t possessed of personhood.