How come conservatives are against abortion?

Great Debates
761

Because it’s not one either, and the word “baby” has the exact same emotional connotations as “child” or “kid”.
“Fetus”, “embryo”, “zygote” are all accurate, objective words to describe the subject of a first trimester abortion (which is 90+% of all abortions performed in the US IIRC), and devoid of any emotional baggage. So why not use them, and why insist on using a word that refers to another thing entirely ?

A baby burps. Coos. Crawls. Makes cutesy noises, or alarming air raid siren noises. Sleeps a hell of a lot. Shits liquid sludge wafting of the olfactive equivalent of Chernobyl. Doesn’t have a tube sticking out of its stomach. Is physically separated and distinct from its mother.
All things that fetuses and embryos do not. So no, an embryo is not a baby, and a fetus is not a baby, and if you google image “baby” you will not find pictures of the human embryo. Why would anyone use the term “baby” ?

No one would object to, much less correct a woman that used the phrase “lost the baby” because she’s just experienced a profound loss and semantics are kind of besides the point at that juncture. That doesn’t mean it’s an accurate term, or make it the choice term to use in an abstract debate.

762

Sure it is. Why don’t you extend the same courtesy to Terr and Hector?

763

Because we are emotional human beings, not Vulcans. Why shouldn’t emotion play into the abortion debate? I have never heard a pregnant woman refer to the thing growing inside of her as a fetus, embryo or “clump of cells” (not your words, I know). Why are they all wrong? Why can’t we all use the term “baby” in what is an emotionally charged debate?

764

Because their argument isn’t about their beliefs, which would be fine if they were. But it’s about compelling those beliefs on all others by force of law. I don’t begrudge anyone their beliefs on matters of faith; the core of the pro-choice argument is the reprehensible intolerance of completely dismissing well-reasoned and science-based ethical arguments of the kind in the article I just linked, as if they are totally worthless, and insisting that one’s own view is the only correct and righteous one and must be enacted in law. It’s not surprising that the civilized world has reformed and liberalized abortion laws in recent decades, while the most restrictive laws tend to be in third-world backwaters like Somalia, the Congo, Iran, Syria, and El Salvador-- maybe you should ask yourself whether these places represent the kinds of social values and civil liberties we should be emulating.

765

Is it murder?

766

[QUOTE=Nars Glinley]
Because we are emotional human beings, not Vulcans. Why shouldn’t emotion play into the abortion debate? I have never heard a pregnant woman refer to the thing growing inside of her as a fetus, embryo or “clump of cells” (not your words, I know). Why are they all wrong? Why can’t we all use the term “baby” in what is an emotionally charged debate?

[/QUOTE]

Because we’re talking about laws, philosophical principles and other abstracts things which *should *be as distanced from emotional outbursts as possible, since emotion is the antithesis of reason. I know American politics and petulant histrionics often go hand in hand, but… yeah :slight_smile:

If you (or Terr, or whoever) need to use words that carry inherent appeals to emotion and similar cheap rethorical tricks to make your point, if your point in fact *relies *in large part on that appeal to emotion then your point is simply not very good to begin with. Or will often automatically be taken as such by your readers if you prefer.

So that, to me, is the downside to using a word like “baby” in an internet debate about abortion. Now you go and explain the downside of using the actually accurate term “fetus” in this context.

(BTW and anecdotically, I have head women talk about the fetuses inside them. So there you go.)

767

How about the word “murder” in the law that assigns that term to to killing what you call the “clump of cells” and punishes the person that does that for murder. Is that “emotional”?

768

Go play outside, dear. The grown-ups are talking.

769

Are you serious? Have you EVER heard a pregnant woman refer to her “fetus” instead of her “baby”? I haven’t. That’s a lot of “anyones”.

770

Are you a pregnant woman ? No ? Then it’s like the whole “nigga” thing, *you *don’t get to use their in-group vernacular :p.

Joke aside, yes, I have. I already said so.
I also heard pregnant women refer to their fetuses as “parasite”, “alien”, “mistake”, “tumor”, “stowaway” and all sorts of other “nasty” words, either affectionately or in earnest. Do you see me insisting that’s what we should call a fetus ?

771

“Wanna feel the fetus kick?”. No, definitely not.

772

No, I see you asking:

And pretty much every pregnant woman does. So, if you’d like to take that back, I would understand. Or, if you’d try and deflect the conversation (like you did there), I’d understand that, too.

But your question is comical and speaks to the futility of trying to win this argument with semantics.

773

sigh I thought it was clear and obvious, from the context that you omitted to quote (I’m sure it was an oversight on your part), that I was asking “Why would anyone use the word baby in the context of this thread and debate”. And more specifically, using it instead of a more accurate and neutral term, like “fetus”.

So, not “why would anyone use the word baby” in general, or “why do we use the word “baby” and what is its etymology ?”, or whatever other inane way you could read, or choose to pretend to have read my words.

Obviously, not so obvious. Can we go back to the question I was *actually *asking ? Or would you rather duke it out with the straw by yourself ? Either way’s fine with me.

774

People use it because they don’t see a difference. You do, and I do, but not everyone does. It’s entirely subjective, and trying to win the argument semantically is… not going to work. Becoming a person is a process, not an event. “Birth” and “conception” are equally subjective. So is “viability” or “trimester”.

775

I most certainly agree that the debate can never be settled semantically.

But…I would have said that viability and trimester, and birth and conception, are at least close to objectively measureable terms. Birth, certainly, is a pretty sharp dividing line; a baby’s first breath is hard to miss. Conception (and implantation) are also fairly crisp moments in time, fairly clearly defined. They’re hidden, of course, and so difficult to observe, but as events go, they’re relatively concrete.

Viability is the hardest of the four to pin down, but even there, the overall span of opinions is limited. Almost no one would peg it at earlier than 21 weeks of gestation, and mighty, mighty few people would argue that it is any later than 30 weeks, excepting only very abnormal pregnancies.

(I was all about to say that I don’t know of any real debate over the definition of “birth,” until I remembered the “partial birth abortion” issue. So…maybe there are no terms, whatever, that are not open to debate…)

776

IAN John Mace and I can’t speak for him, but the impression I got from his statement was that it’s inherently subjective to use arbitrary events such as conception, birth, viability, or a trimester boundary as the official transition point when “becoming a person” happens. Not that the occurrence of birth or conception or viability, etc., is subjective in and of itself.

And if that’s what he meant, I agree with him.

777

Well, yeah. But they’re wrong, so. :slight_smile:

It’s not, though. A baby is a baby, and a fetus is a fetus, and an embryo is an embryo. They’re different things, much like an apple seed and an apple tree are two different items and nobody would confuse one for the other. I suppose the *exact *point at which one becomes the other can be debated and is fuzzy and is a process, as you say.

But then again at the point in time and gestation where the overwhelming majority of women, American or otherwise, undergo an abortion procedure - and certainly those that do so by choice to remain child free rather than because of medical complications emerging later in their pregnancies - we’re well before the point where it even *threatens *to become fuzzy. Since this particular timepoint and the morality/legality of electives are the crux of the debate (because even in God-fearing America only a vanishingly small minority of loonies are of the opinion that “fuck the mother, let her die if you have to so long as babby come out !”), this seems fairly relevant.

**Terr **mentioned kicking. That starts to happen around the tail end of month *four *at the earliest. Abortion’s pretty damn strictly controlled at that point, across the globe, and electives are well into the “are you fucking kidding, lady ?” legal range, both in the US and in my own country. I happen to be very OK with that.

Within the legal abortion-by-choice period, embryos don’t kick because they don’t have legs. Or a nervous system that would send the electrical impulse necessary for a muscle contraction, really. And even if they did kick, their mother wouldn’t feel the kick because they’re about half a centimetre long from head to* tail*. If you ever saw one and didn’t already know what it was you’d think it was some weird, alien larva and feel a pressing urge to kill it with fire. Which is not a typical reaction associated with babies.
So, no, sorry, that’s not “a baby”, and it’s not the mental picture that flickers on when people hear the word “baby”.

It might be a person, which honestly is neither here nor there; it might have a soul though as a staunch materialist I personally doubt that very much; it might be alive, viable, born, have legal rights, whatever you want. But one thing it’s definitely not… is a fucking baby. Words have bloody meanings.

I’m not trying to “win” any argument. I could care less what the abortion laws are in the US.
I was merely trying to explain to **Nars **why the use of the term “baby”, with its positive/emotional connotations, would be problematic rhetorically speaking on top of being inaccurate both medically and semantically speaking.

778

I damn sure would!

This baby, which no one seems to want to talk about, was born at 20 week’s gestation. As you can plainly see, apart from her size and the fact that she needs help breathing, she’s virtually indistinguishable from a full term baby.

Needless to say she didn’t arrive at that point overnight. The more that technology improves the more we learn about how rapidly babies develop. And the more we learn about how rapidly babies develop, the more the tide will turn against abortion except in the very, very early stages.

779

Ah! Yes, that makes sense. It’s like eighteen years of age to vote: only a social artifact. My apologies for misunderstanding.

780

Maybe in your own country. But not in the US or other countries.

Late termination of pregnancy - Wikipedia - see “Incidence”. In US, according to this. 5%+ abortions are done after 16 weeks. That is, after the “kicking” stage, according to you. That’s 50,000+ “kicking” babies killed. Every year.