Not that I recall. So?
Then why are you talking about bull-baiting and such? If you’re NOT trying to suggest that abortion leads to a disregard
(or at least a lowered regard) for human life, then what’s with the slippery slope argument?
On reflection and rereading, I see an escape route for Bricker - HE doesn’t believe the slippery slope but IF he did (and some people do), it would be rational.
Trouble is… it’s not.
Perhaps you should take the time to read your own link, you clown. The debate is whether 20 weeks is the point at which a fetus can feel pain. Your own link and others that discuss this very issue admit that the pain receptors are there at about 24 weeks. From your own link:
So, how’s that cite on your sentient dandelions coming?
So, you agree that it’s factual that a pre 24 week fetus can’t feel pain?
If I Did It by O.J. Simpson.
Sadly that route is not open to him. He did quite clearly state that it was his secular objection and that he believed the problems arising are self evident.
:rolleyes: Here’s my post that you actually copied and responded to:
[QUOTE=magellan01]
If you were referring to the motivations of Knife Carrier A (wanting to kill you) or Knife Carrier B (returning knife to kitchen), those are two completely different and completely separate motivations tied to two completely different actions. The problem you present is only a problem because the person with the gun has to guess the knife-carrier’s motivation. Either way, horrible analogy.
[/QUOTE]
Perhaps you should read more slowly and type less.
You masked it well, then with your rank stupidity and bluster. So, if you agree that people can in fact have purely secular reasons to oppose abortion, why in the world do you keep harping on this issue. Secular reasons exist. Period! Glad you finally might understand a little corner of reality.
And who here has offered a religious rationale? Bricker? He was the one you were arguing with, so perhaps you’d be so good as to show where he did so.
I don’t really know and am happy to accept the medical consensus, which is 24 weeks. And you?
Of course. So you accept that it is factual that a fetus under 24 weeks is as sentient as a dandelion?
You still don’t understand it. I can’t make you think, I can only show how utterly bereft of thought your position is.
The issue is that some motivations are laudable, and some not so much.
Look up the word laudable before you reply.
Bricker’s position is abortion is bad because humans are special. I think this is because he believes in a soul. He claims otherwise, and has of yet, been unwilling to explain further.
Since I know Bricker is both dishonest and super-duper fucking religious, I assume that he, in fact has religious reasons for opposing abortion.
Of course I might be wrong, as I stated before.
But, magellan, old chap, if his position is religious based, it is a shitty thing to advocate American laws to enforce it.
No. I admit that there is a question about it. Before I embrace it as fact, I’d have to get better acquainted with both sides of the question. For now, I’m willing to accept the 24 number.
But let’s get back to you. You claimed that:
[QUOTE=Lobohan]
A fetus is as sentient as a dandelion.
[/QUOTE]
Based on your subsequent claim that you agree with the medical consensus that a fetus at 24 weeks is capable of feeling pain, your quote above seems to be you talking out of your ass. Is that right?
Or do you have a cite for sentient dandelions up your sleeve?
Do you really think this is a gotcha?
Seriously? Is that how fucking weak you are that you take a comment about a fetus in an abortion conversation and need to point out, that eventually fetuses are conscious! EVENTUALLY FETUSES CAN DRIVE CARS!!111onE
Frankly, I have my doubts you’re sentient.
If you want to get pedantic, the “A fetus” I mentioned, is Larry, a 22 week old fetus.
Really?
He’s aware that his remarks are subject to later review, right? I mean, I could picture this kind of argument being used in a verbal discussion, where one could deny something one said five minutes earlier and without a handy way to challenge, an opponent might be flustered, but this is writing and all.
But “laudable” is purely subjective, so it really doesn’t help in the debate. It just begins to beg the question. More important, motivations are completely immaterial. Whether you feed the homeless because of the teachings of Jesus or you just think it’s the right thing to do, the homeless are just as happy to be fed.
The fact is that motivations do NOT matter. The only things that do matter are the policy itself and the arguments for and against it. To parse that example above a bit more, if Joe wants to begin a program to feed the homeless because he thinks that’s the Christian thing to do and his Atheist friend Bob teams up with him because he simply thinks that homeless should be fed, is the program a good one or a bad one? To make it clean, let’s assume that in discussing it that Joe never mentions his religious motivation. Good or bad? Would you contribute to help them feed the homeless?
You are trying to ascribe things to his argument that you needn’t. Stubbornly and, seemingly, desperately so. It doesn’t matter what he believes. That goes to motivation, which I’ve already shown is immaterial. Why not just accept what he says. Think of it this way, forget it’s Bricker’s position. make believe he presenting a hypothetical position from a hypothetical person. If you are so confident in your position and Bricker injects no religious reasoning into the hypothetical, why in the world would you want to be the one to inject it? It makes it appear as if you’re the one that is afraid that his position cannot withstand purely rational scrutiny.
Repeat that last part over 100 times then tattoo it to your forehead. I’ll just add this. He very well may have religious reasons for opposing abortion, but if he doesn’t offer them up as support for his position, then they are immaterial to the debate. PERIOD. See the example about feeding the homeless.
Unless he can offer a purely secular argument. And so far he has not presented a religious justification.
You’re the one who made the asinine comment. Don’t blame the laser pointer for pointing out your bullshit.
“Secular” doesn’t mean “rational”, I feel I should point out, futile though the effort be.
You asked if two court decisions warned of a decreasing regard for human life in their respective countries.
I answered that I didn’t believe they did.
You ask why I’m talking about bull-baiting.
The term “non-sequitur” comes to mind. What does the prescience of judicial opinion writers have to do with the issue? If they never mention the issue, so what? Why is their failure to mention it remotely relevant?
Now you’re trying to nitpick your way out of your original claim, which was:
I asked for some kind of metric by which we might observe this “all-around low regard for human life”, got nothing. You invoked 19th-century barbarism (which is somehow relevant), I invoked modern benchmark court decisions (which are somehow NOT relevant), even though they (the Canadian decision especially) relate directly your objection to “a law permitting that parent to kill a one-day-from-being born infant. And so on, back to conception.”
Well, in Canada, an elective one-day-before-birth abortion is technically legal, but in practice unheard of (I suppose it’s happened somewhere in this country - I would hesitate to say “never” - but I’ve not heard of such a case, let alone a Canadian counterpart to Kermit Gosnell). So, I ask what signs of an “all-around low regard for human life” you were expecting to see, compared to the relatively abortion-restricting United States. For that matter, can you compare the “regard for human life” among the states - would you expect (and can you show) the regard being lower in liberal New York and higher in conservative Utah, or any two states you care to name and compare.
Or is, as I expect, the phrase “all-around low regard for human life” just a nice-sounding but ultimately meaningless phrase that might be useful in a debate that is won by rhetoric and not by evidence?
I suppose it is.
Of course, the purpose of rhetoric is to persuade.
If I say that it’s self-evident that a society that embraces the death penalty for seven-year-olds, bear-baiting, dogfights, and the pillory has less regard for human life than one which abhors those concepts, I suppose you’re entitled to say, “Prove it!” and demand some kind of objective measure for a society’s regard for human life.
But I’m happy enough to know that the majority of readers seeing this statement are persuaded, and not spend hours hunting down research and designing some metric that you can request with the ten seconds necessary to type “Cite?”