I liken it to being forced to rush into a burning building to save the arsonist that literally knows absolutely nothing except how to ruin your life.
Why do you believe this? Do you have scientific cites? Or is it just a ridiculous “feel” you deride libtards for?
Sure. Here’s a couple of them:
- Keith Moore and T.V.N. Persaud, The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology (6th ed.)
- Ronan O’Rahilly and Fabiola Muller, Human Embryology & Teratology, 3rd ed.
A sincere question for you, snfaulkner: When do you think human life begins?
It began millions of years ago. Outside a lab, dead sperm or dead eggs won’t continue life.
Thanks for the cites though. Im glad you have them. I certainly hope they aren’t cut and pasted from some religious talking point memo, because that would just be…disingenuous. I’ll dig into them tomorrow. Expect a response right about the time you get back to me about Timmy McV. (If someone less lazy can kindly link Ditka to my non-pit thread on the subject, thanks)*
My point is, your concerns about “life” seem dubious, at best.
*oh wait, I already responded to your query. Did you respond to my thread? I’ll admit again that I’m lazy and haven’t checked in on mine in quiet a while.
The law says that all unborn children/fetuses (however I describe it, I don’t mean to make an issue out of the term) are natural persons. There is some misunderstandings in the thread, so the law needs to be read.
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Again, ALL unborn children are natural persons, no matter if they have a heartbeat.
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Those natural persons who are unborn children and do not yet have a detectable heartbeat may be aborted based upon a woman’s choice, for rape or incest, or these other things outlined in the code, i.e. to save the life of the mother, if the pregnancy is “medically futile” etc.
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Those natural persons who have a heartbeat, and were conceived as a result of rape or incest, may be aborted up to 20 weeks gestation, all other exceptions apply.
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Those natural persons who are greater than 20 weeks gestation may be aborted for the other exceptions.
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If someone performs an abortion outside of these bounds, it is not murder, but is “criminal abortion” which punishes only the doctor and is punishable by 1 to 10 years in prison.
The law will definitely cause an issue by calling unborn children “persons” and cause confusion in some cases and make a few lawyers’ payday, however, it is not at all unusual to treat “natural persons” differently because of reasonable understanding of status and competing rights.
I am a natural person and have the right not to be killed, but if a homeowner catches me breaking into his house, I may forfeit that right. I am a natural person who has the right to vote, but my daughter, age 15, does not. Unless the classification is based on a racial or other status that we as a society deem to be irrelevant for classification, states can say that these natural persons have X rights, but these natural persons have Y rights.
Likewise, the state of Georgia, even though it says that all (again, read the law, all of them) are natural persons, it does not follow that the competing rights of the mother to control her pregnancy, while concededly very limited under Georgia law, may serve to disallow the unborn child’s right to life. But only those circumstances; not these fanciful stand your ground hypotheticals.
And finally, so it could be put to bed, if a woman who is 25 weeks pregnant agrees with her friend to buy plane tickets from Hartsfield International Airport to LaGuardia and get a legal elective abortion in New York, nobody has shown me a decent legal argument (despite the bullshit from Slate) that either of them has committed a violation of Georgia law.
It is not conspiracy, because they did not agree to violate a law. A 25 week abortion in New York is not a crime, so they did not have an agreement to commit any crime.
No, because the murder of Bob in Florida is a crime under Florida law. Full stop. If you agreed in Georgia to travel to Florida to kill Bob, then Georgia has the power to punish that agreement to break the law. As I said above, if two women agree to travel to New York to get an abortion, that is legal in New York, so there was no agreement to commit a crime.
The State can recognize the unique relationship a child has with its mother in utero. We were all there at one time. The argument can be one of necessity; it would be absurd to say that every person who has ever existed committed a crime worthy of summary execution by the circumstances of the very existence of the human race. So the analogy of a child in its mother’s womb to a home invader is woefully inaccurate.
Further, and I’ll get blasted for this, but a competing argument could be made that the child was invited in. We all know where babies come from. If a woman allows a man to ejaculate inside of her, she also knows that she produces eggs which can cause a child to be formed. If she was raped, Georgia law provides an extended period of time to make the choice to expel the unwanted invader.
And even if you believe it is fully accurate, somewhat accurate, or not at all accurate, that decision is left to the elected representatives selected by the people of Georgia.
It shouldn’t be, any more than the decision about slavery should be left to elected reps. It’s wrong and should not be possible for violating the bodily autonomy rights of an adult of sound mind to be legal.
That’s enough with the vitriol from everyone. If you can’t be civil, don’t interact at all.
I see you like the “unique genetic individual” concept. How do you feel about identical twins or the looming spectre of human cloning?
So, by this token if you start to dig a up some ground with the intent to build a new house and I come and fill in the hole you dug over night have I destroyed your house?
I mean, your hole, while similar to many others, was unique and the house you were going to build would have been unique too. Should I go to jail for wrecking your home?
UltraVires, since you have read the law, can you explain why they define fetuses to be natural persons then? Is it just for census and tax deduction purposes? This is a genuine question – usually, if you kill a natural person (barring self-defense, war, or other rare exceptions), it’s murder. This law apparently states it’s not murder to kill a fetus. Further, if you conspire to kill a natural person, it’s conspiracy to commit, but that’s also lined out. Obviously, the fetus is too young to drink, vote, or drive.
What are the implications, aside from a tax deduction and the rare pregnancy that happens during the 10-year census, of the natural persons definition? Can you be guilty of abuse if you drink, smoke, or take drugs during your pregnancy? What about if your drinking too much coffee causes a miscarriage – could that be a crime?
(bolding mine)
It is not as far from the point as you might think:
I recall an abortion discussion on these boards many years ago where the conservatives then poo-pooed the notion as fear mongering that a woman might be prosecuted for a miscarriage yet here we are.
This time we, sadly, did not have to wait so long to see your “far from the point” issue is not so far from the point.
So, in your view, should that 11 year-old girl be forced to carry her rapist’s baby?
Perhaps, but still not there yet (and probably several years away, at least). From your cite:
Anyways, as I’ve said already, I don’t have a firm position on the issue yet. Perhaps some sort of sliding scale is appropriate, not unlike what Georgia has, where the woman is given the more time (22 weeks instead of 6 weeks) to decide whether to abort or not. I’m open to hearing other plans that try to balance the competing interests of the innocent baby’s right to life and the victimized woman’s right to avoid further trauma.
Wait, are you still claiming that women in Georgia are going to be prosecuted for miscarriages? I thought we dispensed with that nonsense already.
Oh, so you’re willing to “hearing other plans” on restrictions of “victimized women’s rights”? “A sliding scale” then – like an inquiry into whether it was it ‘rape rape’ or merely ‘rape’?. How generous of you. I know I’ll sleep better at night just knowing that you feel there is room for genuine compromise.
Hell, the Catholic Church thinks performing an abortion on a nine year old pregnant with twins is WRONG. The mother and the doctor were automatically excommunicated. But who was not excommunicated? The stepfather who raped her and got her pregnant.
When I discussed this case with a Catholic anti-abort (who hands out flyers saying abortion might make men go gay), and said "Carrying the twins would have killed her, she replied “You don’t know that. God could have let her carrying them to term to save three lives.”
Don’t fall into this dumb trap.
Yes, life begins at conception, whether it’s a human zygote, or the tick that I burned out of my armpit with a match head yesterday (don’t @ me, that’s just how I do it).
Like an embryo, the tick has no consciousness, and some sort of heart activity. It’s on us, as the humans who will have to support that life, to decide when it becomes a thing worth valuing. Primarily the human person who will have to carry that pregnancy and who will be saddled with primary legal responsibility by default, which we typically call “the woman”.
For purposes of deciding when a fetus becomes a human life worth protecting, I feel like a pretty good bright line is when (A) it’s medically possible to transfer custody to someone who wants to raise it, and (B) some person or entity is willing or able to accept custody.
Funny thing about all these abortion bills is that there’s never any mention of the state banking the embryo to help the infertile, or allowing someone to contest custody of the fetus to assume caregiving duties. That’s because this is always and only punishing women for being pregnant, when all pregnancies are 100% caused by men mismanaging their semen. (Edited: or managing it. I managed mine very carefully to have the number of kids I hoped for).
I don’t think pro-choicers or pro-lifers should be drawing the lines of the abortion debate at whether life begins at conception or not. Even if it does, the argument could still be made that the mother’s body is the mother’s body. I highly doubt pro-choicers are going to be change their stance on abortion based off of some philosophical definition of when life begins.
Well, it is nice hearing one of them admit that “life starts at conception” doesn’t automatically preclude ending that life under circumstances of our choice. Too bad they want men to own most of that choice and none of the consequences.
In the conservative mind it is okay for someone to shoot a thief who is robbing them but it is not okay to kill a baby. What part are you having trouble with? The shooting of the thief or the not killing a baby?
I have trouble with the idea that tying a woman to her rapist for the rest of her life is not wrong. A rapist could demand visitation and even custody as the baby’s father.
Before abortion was legal I knew a woman who finally left her extremely abusive husband. He broke into her apartment, beat the hell out of her and raped her (all legal at the time). She got pregnant
Rather than being tied to this man for the rest of her life as her baby’s legal “father” she had an illegal abortion.