Do you agree with this reasoning about pro-life?

Great Debates
1

Often pro-choice claim that a fetus is “not alive” so you can’t really “Kill” it.

But I am wondering, what really is “Murder”.

Is it so much ending the bodily function of a person? Or ending the future that person has.

After all, if you kill someone, they have no tomorrow, it reminds me of that Jewish doctor and his daughter killed in the cafe bombing in Israel some months ago.

She was to be married the next week and it said, “Now the procession to be at her wedding will be there instead for a funeral.”

To me THAT is what constitutes Murder.

Ending someone’s future.

Well, a fetus has a future as well. Someday barring natural causes, it will be born, it will grow-up and maybe have a family of its own.

As the Koran says (no I’m not Muslim but every religious book has valid statements), “If you murder one you murder the whole world.”

This makes since, think of how many of us come from just one person 3,000 years ago, if that person were killed, none of us would have been born.

And the Talmud says more elloquently, “If you save one life you save the world entire.”

The movie Schindler’s List showed that so well, from the some 1,000 people that Schindler had saved, there were over 6,000 decendants by the early 1990s.

6,000 many of which were grand children, which is people not born until long after those in danger had come face to face with death.

So you kill a fetus, you’re still killing a future grand child, and a future great great great grand child.

How can we sanction one form of murder, but not another form, on the pretense that at that time in the present, it is not alive?

The present is not the only thing to be considered.

The past, and future are equally important, as we do not exist in the present alone.

So to restate the question, do you agree with the reasoning that abortion should be illegal because killing a fetus, still results in the death of a future life. Not just a future life, but in the death of future thousands through out the endless generations.

It does not seem to me, that Man should hold the power to sanction the ending of any life, except in the phenomena of War.

Killing a defenseless fetus, is about as dishonorable as shooting another person’s dog when it has never done harm to you and is only trying to get a pet from you.

-------End Rationality---------

Personally, under the argument of Abortionists (that a fetus is just a lump of cells), I see no reason why I myself can not just kill whoever I want.

After all, if killing is NOT the ending of someone’s future, but just the ending of a process of cell development, then there is no difference from killing a fetus or a 13 year old kid or a 40 year old adult. All are just cell processes.

Personally, I don’t see how abortionists can justify themselves at all…in fact, it seems impossible.

If a fetus is just cells, well so are we? So what is the difference?

If killing is taking away someone’s future unnaturally, then this still applies both to a born and unborn person.

Just seems to me that Abortionists are no different than the Nazis, whom rather than sanctioned the murder of countless babies, simply sanctioned the murder of countless Jews and Gypsies and Homosexuals and so forth.

Sanctioned killing, is still sanctioned killing, regardless at what stage of development it occurs.

2

Care to extend that to an “Every Sperm is Sacred” assertion? :rolleyes:

And it’s generally held that a thread has pretty much no hope once someone compares the opposing side of the argument to Nazis. Such an assertion in the OP does not bode well.

3

I agree with that.

I can see the point of some 'pro-choice’ers (first time I’ve used that phrase. I usually steer clear of abortion issues) in that having no choice but to keep a baby in a case of rape is cruel.
But I agree that aborting a foetus is ending a life. You are right - we are all just ‘a bunch of cells’ afterall. A foetus is just less cells. Even if it is not yet conscious, it is still potentially a person.

Some might then argue that in that logic - using contraception is murder. Well I believe once conception starts the ‘natural’ decision has been made.

If you fantasise killing your boss you are not conspiring to murder. If you take a knife to work, you are.

4

(My first reply is to the OP)

Once conception has started. If I were an abortion doctor It would feel like I am ending a life If I destroyed the foetus (or whatever it’s called at that stage)

5

There has to be a “someone” before that “someone” can have a future. You are proposing that the “someone” exists as soon as the sperm fertilizes the egg. But why not a few moments before? If a woman were to place, say, some sort of diaphram in the path of the sperm, has that not by your logic denied the possibility of a “someone” from coming into being? Destroyed that “someone’s” future?

We make decisions every day that affect whether we will or will not have a child. It’s not just by aborting a fetus that this happens.

At some point we will have the technology to clone human beings. By your logic, every time I comb my hair and toss out the follicle, I will be destroying a potiential life.

6

Paladud, how about thinking before posting next time?

Your arguments are both horribly false.

  1. Sperm if left to its own nature, will never become a human, it first has to meet up with an egg and thus begin the process. Once that happens, it has a future that if nature or man does not interrupt, will create a human.

  2. Nazis were Sanctioned Murderers, the question is, are Abortionists the same? It has nothing to do with the a-typical Liberal BS of “Right wingers are Nazis”.

7

I find the OP’s “ending someone’s future” argument ridiculously uncompelling, and certainly not a valid reason to mess up someone’s present, i.e. preventing a woman who does not wish to remain pregnant from having an abortion.

8

John Mace, I already answered you as well.

A sperm or egg left to its own nature will never become a Human, but once that process begins, it will if natural or human causes do not interfere.

Aborting a fetus is the willful act to end that process.

Which is a willful act to end someone’s future.

It is no different then if I shot you in the head today, your tomorrow is not going to come. If you are for killing a fetus, why not a baby as soon as it is born? There is not a person alive on this earth who remembers the day they were born, so you might as well not consider that “living” right?

Abortionists arguments are the ones that are illogical…come up with something better please.

9

What’s wrong with ending a life? Killing a chicken is ending a lfe. Chking the chicken ends millions of lives. A fertilized egg is not a person. That’s the point, not whether it’s alive or not (and I’ve never heard a single pro-choicer ever say that a fetus isn’t alive, so that’s kind of a BS premise in the first place).

Potential means nothing. Potential is purely imaginary. It has no substance and a “potential” person cannot be a victim. A potential person is purely a fantasy.

No sentience = no suffering = no victim.

Women who have been raped are real people who really suffer. it is indefensible to force them to suffer more simply to gratify a sanctimonious fantasy.

10

Imagine if we didn’t have the ability to abort foetuses. Those foetuses would almost certainly become people. i.e. almost certainly have a future.

Once something becomes almost certain to become a life (if not already being a life) then destroying it IMO is murder.

Sperm is by no means certain to become a being. A fertilized egg IS.

11

So you would agree then that it is ok to kill whoever you want?

Your argument has to be one of the stupidest ones I have ever heard, and you’re the same person who argued with me about “What the rain represeneted” in an analogy.

I hope the people of this board don’t take you very seriously.

What in your great reasoning then, is the reason to illegalize murder? The concept of suffering?

It is not suffering to be instantaneously killed from behind by a vengeful person, the person killed doesn’t even know what hit him. Your argument is horribly ignorant. :rolleyes:

12

Wrong. there is no “someone.” Abortion terminates a pregnancy before a “someone” is produced. You cannot retroject a hypothetical future status of “personhood” back on to the fetus or embryo. As a matter of fact, aborting the fetus proves that no such future “person” can exist and that there is no victim.

13

There is no “someone”. You have to demonstrate that a person exists before you can claim that that person has a future.

I understand that you are firm in your belief that a fetus is a person. And while religion might inform us that that is the case, science does not. There is no scientific argument that can be made that a fetus is a person. And as DtC stated, a potential person is not a person.

You are free to hold your religious beliefs. But you cannot expect others to be swayed by a religious argument.

14

A fetus is highly likely to become a person. That is demonstrative of a person’s potential existence isn’t it? Surely aborting a fetus is very definately ending a future.

15

Wow, DtC. I did not see you post #12 before I posted #13. :slight_smile:

16

BTW. I am an atheist, and I believe in this case The_Broken_Column is right. It is not a religious belief that a fetus is a future person. And that ending it is murder.

17

You realize that every morsel of food you eat effectively prevents other people, some of whom are starving, from eating it? Your very existence is ending the future of millions of famine victims.

So cut it out!

18

When did I say that? I’m saying that “ending a life” is not necessarily wrong, and, in fact, no animal can exist without killing. What is wrong is killing a person. Abortion does not do that.

You may have noticed that nobody bought your analogy in that thread. If you don’t want to be busted on bogus analogies, don’t post here.

Also, ipersonal insults are not permitted in this forum. If you want to call me names, start a pit thread. You won’t be the first.

Yep. That’s good enough for me. along with social instability. “Illegalize” isn’t a word, btw.

A zygote has never had any awareness at all. It can’t suffer. Your analogy is once again bogus.

Anyway, I didn’t say the suffereing has to be limited to the victim of the murder. the suffering it causes to those around the victim is also more than sufficient to prohibit murder.

Abortion causes no suffering to the zygote or to anyone else. There is no victim.
Lobsang, like I said, I don’t see how you can project hyothetical “potential” properties onto a couple of cells and then argue that the cells are any kind of substantive equivalent to the potential.

An acorn is not an oak tree.

An egg is not a chicken.

A zygote is not a person.

Potential exists only in the mind.

19

Or maybe it’ll grow up to be the world’s most notorious serial killer ever, and by aborting it you have saved hundreds of lives.

The point is, you can’t always play the “what might have been” game, or else everything you do has the potential of being murder (or the potential of saving hundreds of lives).

This is exactly what I’m talking about. By posting this message, it is possible that your action has led to the death of a person who wouldn’t’ve died in that car accident if they hadn’t’ve taken the time to read your message, and thus weren’t running late. That person might have eventually had children, and then grandchildren, and then great-grandchildren. One of those great-grandchildren might have developed a cure for the Great Plague of 2110, which might wipe out the entire human race. So you have now murdered humanity with your post.

Or not.

See, that’s why it doesn’t make sense to play the “what might have been” game.

Because murder is about actual murder, not potential murder. It can’t be murder if you simply prevent a life from happening. No more than using contraception can be considered murder.

No.

Why is war okay?

No, killing a fetus is about as dishonorable as having your dog spayed or neutered. It prevents potential people (or dogs, in this case); it doesn’t kill actual people.

You and I have a mind. The fetus does not.

As an aside, is it even possible to invoke Godwin’s Law in the OP?

20

I am just trying to argue that IMO abortion is the ending of a future person. I am on the fence about the WHOLE issue of abortion, but I am agreeing that it is true that aborting a fetus is preventing a future life. And might even be technically murder.