GMTA, even those with different political stripes. 
A “future” life is another word for an imaginary life. It does not acquire any substantive reality because you can imagine it.
No. Potential exists in time. A fetus is extremely likely to become a person.
By your reasoning a nuclear bomb falling from a plane (only ‘potentially’ being a big explosion) is nothing to worry about.
Ok, first off, that was not an argument. It was a reference to Monty Python.
I meant Godwin’s Law The term just didn’t come to mind then. Frankly, you are no better than the folks you mention as far as the use of the reference.
‘Imaginary’ and ‘potential’ are two very very different concepts. One is a remote posibility, the other is an almost-certainty.
I’m not quite sure what the point of this MB is. Are we debating the legality of abortion? If so:
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Get over it. The people who work in Abortion Clinics (as they’re so inaccurately called) do their best to DISSUADE the girls who want to get an abortion. They tell the potential mothers what their other options are, and the probable effects of having an abortion. Also, many Abortion Clinics are also women’s shelters, homes for abused women and runaways, or provide therapy; they do so much more than just giving abortions.
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Another Get over it. Wether or not abortions are legal, they are still going to happen. They actually were illegal for a short period of time, and this resulted in almost as many MOTHERS dying as fetuses(sp?). Back-alley abortions are unsafe, unclean, and anything else you care to name them. But they are still a fact of life, if you take away the Abortion Clinics.
If you’re debating morality of abortions, what’s the point? Ultimately, wether or not a woman has an abortion should be the choice of the WOMAN, no? Who are you, T_B_C , to attempt to tell women what they are and aren’t allowed to do with their bodies? Your opinion is your opinion, and I respect it, but don’t try to tell ME what I shouldn’t do.
“Extremely likely”? Then it’s all about probability.
Now consider that there must exist a number of times (X) that a couple can have sex that will result in the same probability of a future person as you have with one live fetus. Thus, probabilistically speaking, using contraception X times is equivalent to abortion, since you have prevented a future person with the exact same probability as aborting a fetus.
It’s quite a slippery slope.
And why is the system of sperm-and-egg-in-womb not a person? Hells, why is fertile-woman-and-horny-guy not a person?
You can’t say that which might become a person is a person. Inductive logic is not your friend in cases like these.
Also, it is fantastically likely that any person will eventually be a corpse. 100%, in fact. Does the fact that they will be dead eventually mean we can treat them as if they were dead now?
If I think about it - If I were the one to choose weither a raped pregnant child gets to have an abortion. Knowing that neither the child, nor her baby would have anything close to a decent quality of life, I would allow the abortion. But I would still feel like I am ending a life.
I am not saying a horny guy and fertil woman is a likely new person. I am only saying that without human intervention a fetus is extremely likely to become a person, and therefore is a potential person.
No. Because they have the potential to live until life is no longer possible. A fetus also has the potential to live a full life.
Why? You know how GD works; you’ve been here longer than I. If A makes B true, and C is identical to B with respect to A, than C should be true.
A: Without human intervention (with regards to a womb and certain horomonal conditions), fetuses just lie there, and eventually decompose.
In fact, depending on how early the abortion was, you’d be ending a great deal of potential lives. You see, if you tease apart a fertilized egg, you get two potential lives. Stick them back together, and you get one again. Are you beginning to see why some of us don’t see why a fertilized egg should be automatically considered human?
Incidentally, if you try to claim that teasing apart eggs isn’t usual or natural or some silliness, I will direct your attention to twins as a feint, and then claim with similar justifications that women who desire abortions getting them isn’t natural or usual, and thusly beat the unholy hell out of your argument.
Your move.
As pro-choice as I am, I must say that I am really tired of this argument. When you are arguing with someone that believes that a fetus is a human life and that it should be illegal to end a human life, they also believe that the fetus’s body is the main body in question, so it ends up being a useless argument.
6 days! (and I spend very little time in GD. As is evident I am not cut out for debating)
This is natural human ‘intervention’. I am talking about humans doing what other animals cannot do - easily terminate a fetus.
I am not saying it should be considered a person. I never did (not in this thread anyway) I am saying that in theory (or under ‘natural’ circumstances - or in a world where humans let nature take it’s course) a fetus is inevitably a person. And by that I don’t mean currently a person. I don’t go quite that far into the pro-life camp.
I am not sure what you mean there. Twins are a natural occurence. Abortion is not.
The_Broken_Column,
As is so common in these debates, you forget entirely about the potential life of the mother and that’s effectively the only issue with respect to the morality or legality of abortion. Two problems occur in your OP when you consider the mother:
1.) If she has the potential to die as a result of pregnancy then you’re left deciding between the potential life of the embryo or the potential life of the mother. Who’s potential life is more relevant? Put another way, allowing a 12 year old to abort the unwated foetus (possibly caused by being raped by her uncle) might allow her to recover enough to have two wanted children later in life.
2.) If the mother decided BEFORE sex that she did not want to have a child, then that child’s potential does not exist. In terms of your crazy hypothetical future, that woman decided she does not want to have children, so the children she will not have will not have grandchildren. By aborting her foetus nothing changed. If it helps, consider an abortion a correction in the space time continuum. That child wasn’t supposed to have a future and give way to thousands of offspring.
It is tempting to jump into the argument from the temporal perspective, but really the futures argument is an emotional appeal. Why is it OK to willfully stop cell function in a fetus but not in an infant? Even if in both cases everybody involved finds it acceptable is there something wrong about the action? If you allow for infant killing doesn’t that quickly propigate up to toddler killing and teen killing and just killing of anybody regardless of age?
Nobody worth mentioning in these debates likes killing, nor do they like abortion. It is a tough choice and I’m glad I’ve never had to be involved in the choice nor will I ever have to be the one in the hot seat. Dragging the abortion argument into esoteric places of unfolding futures cut short and elaborations of ancient supersticion takes away from the simple truth: you are here now and this is not a game. Would the world be better with less abortions? I’d say yes, if the reason for less abortions was that less situations arose in which abortion was considered an option. Instead of hiding from the issue and the visceral reaction by constructing endless abstract arguments try and make a world where abortion doesn’t feel like the best of many bad options. Moral theory is fun to bullshit about with buddies but people live and die by emotion, gut reaction and occasionally rational weighing of situational factors, including ability to live with certain decisions.
I’m not saying that thinking about what courses of actions are better than others is an empty game but this thread isn’t even that. It is an argument based on fuzzy popular notions of time that removes all context and reality from an issue and leaves people to squabble over imaginary lives vs potential lives. What does that have to do with what is the best way to live a life? Nothing.
Lots of animals do this. Kangaroos for example have the ability to toss out the roo from their pouch if conditions get bad. That saves the mother from starving to death. Animals that are not smart enough to do that overpopulate and die, like rabbits.
Also, sexual intercourse is the most basic of animal traits. Everything we do in society seems geared to prevent it (ie clothes and rape laws). By your reasoning I should be allowed to impregnate any woman I want since not allowing me to (aka human intervention) would end that potential human life…
This “potential” argument is so ridiculously stupid I wish it would just stop. Every month a woman has the potential to create human life. If she does not engage in sexual intercourse that egg is lost forever and with it the potential for thousands of offspring. Human women have the un-natural ability to choose if they want to be pregnant or not, unlike rabbits who regularly get f*cked by every other rabbit in the den. If a woman decides that she does not want to be pregnant, she should not be pregnant, that’s all there is to it.
Check out this thread started by yours’ truly.
No one here in support of Abortion seem to have a clue of Sanctioned Murder.
Nazis justified killing Jews because they believed them to be Subhuman as well.
Liberal hell hole…dumb barbarians.
Careful. I happen to value your view point(s). Just don`t get yourself all flustered, this stuff takes time you know. 