YES! finally. Thanks. Not a particularly satisfying answer, but it is an answer to the right question. I’m intrigued that you consider being physically distinct so important and you do not seem to consider sentience quite so important, but perhaps I’ll just sit in this corner and be silently intrigued.
Ummmm, you’re welcome? 
I’m sorry - that was ungracious of me; thanks for letting me probe you like that without hauling me off to the pit
I just didn’t understand your question sufficiently to get angry about it. I’m not hiding anything, here. If you want a direct response, a direct question is your best bet.
When uterine tranfer tech is available, I see no reason that a woman couldn’t pass the fetus to a willing person - again that person has the choice, and once that choice is made there is responsibility. And why would I take a fetus into my body from another person? That fetus is not my responsibility, I did not chose the actions that lead to his creation.
The issue is responsibility to the life you create by actions you willing engage in that you know may very well create that life.
OK then next time I get into a traffic accident, instead of being responsible, and paying for the damage I created, I just kill the person in the other car, it looks like the perfect solution. THis way I don’t have to take responsibility for my actions.
From a pro-life poinit of view, there is not just a single human, but two humans. Killing one for the convienence of the other is just not acceptable.
As for the vase issue - no lives are at stake, remember the pro life point of view is that the fetus is a human life. Using your logic I would suggest killing the shop keeper - this way you are in the clear and have taken full responsibility for your actions.
and this is where your argument fails - one can not consent to be pregnant, only consent to the actions that may lead to pregnancy.
Well I think it’s pretty close to the world soul that Plato came up with also.
Again you can’t agree to become pregnant, only agree to engage in activities that may result in pregancy.
As pointed out above, as far as biology goes, it’s as pretty close to it’s purpose as one can get - yes it feels good, that’s just to suck you in to create little ones (hate to spill that).
Again this thread is to show the misunderstandings between pro-life/pro-choice people. The issue on the pro life side is that there is a second person here, and killing it is not a viable option.
Not more consideration but perhaps equal consideration. Abortion as medical care? I think a procedue that on average means 2 people in and one out - where if left alone we would have 2 people, can not be defined as a medical care, more like convienence killing.
You chose 1 life over 2 and used the reason that the 2 were dead already. If I chose the 1 baby over the 50,000 blastocyte(s), I could just as easially say that thoses 50,000 were dead already, as they don’t have the enviroment to develop and would eventually be destroyed.
Kanicbird, by picking the actual baby, you are essentially stating that there is a fundamental difference between it and a petri dish full of cells. I never said the cells were going to die. Assume they were waiting to be implanted.
You’re stuck on believing an embryo is a person. Fine. That’s the pro-life stance, and I can accept that even though I will never understand it. But your analogies to murdering other people just don’t equate. You’ve been given example after example of how, by your logic, we should never be able to react to situations with chance outcomes, as if the result of a toss of the dice is the word of god.
I think I’ll use your logic. A woman having an abortion is just choosing to engage in a medical procedure. If, by chance, it ends a pregnency, well, that’s just the risk you have to take.
It’s interesting how rapidly the “preserving human life” argument can evaporate when the person making the argument faces to inconvenience of a pregnancy. It must be the heat.
Hey, if it’s a legal option (as abortion is), I say go for it. Since it isn’t, you’ll just have to pay the deductable.
No-fault insurance muddies the water of your analogy, though, depending on your venue.
I gathered, and we’ll obviously continue to disagree on this point. Fortunately, the law’s closer to my position than yours.
Clearly I need to buy a better padlock and keep “my” logic secured, out of the hands of those who would take it on a drunken bender through strawman city.
By way of clarification, I’m referring to the prevailing laws in Canada and the U.S. I don’t know where kanicbird lives or the laws in that venue.
Don’t they? Assuming you can grab the liquid nitrogen tank or whatnot to keep the blastocysts out of immediate danger, there is always the possibility of them being used for 50,000 pregnancies. You’d save one baby at the expense of a small city? How do you reconcile that with blastocyst=person if that is indeed your position?
This is where I run into problems. The law right now says that after a certain point in a pregnancy abortion isn’t allowed unless there are medical reasons that the mother’s life is in jeapardy. Why is it okay before that time for an abortion, but not afterwards?
(just so people know, I am pro choice. But, I find some of the pro-choice arguments weak. One of which is the dividing line between born and not born. That line is changed arbitrarily everytime there is a cesarean(sp?).)
It’s the same reason most people who want stricter abortion laws allow a rape exception - it’s a compromise to get your agenda across without making too many people uneasy. I figure it’s like a bell curve with the extreme ends (no abortions under any circumstances and abortion on demand up to the instant of birth) representing small minorities. Each wants their position written into law, but knows (unless they’re insane or in denial) that it won’t pass, so they allow a bit of creeping toward the middle (exceptions for rape/incest/mother’s life and no elective abortions in third trimester).
I wrote earlier (post #125) that I objected to introducing legislation using a vague condition like “advanced brain functions”. I can tolerate, though, a purely symbolic standard like “third trimester” restriction to mollify those who are more ambivalent on the issue (the key being that virtually no elective abortions happen after that, anyway), the alternative being losing the entire issue.
There has to BE a line, though and that line has to be somewhat arbitrary. The alternative is no line at all and most people find the third trimester line (with medically necessary exceptions) to be the least objectionable choice.
Earlier in this thread I raised the point about the legal lines between “adulthood” and “childhood.” That’s an arbitrary line too and there’s obviously no material difference between a person who is one second short of his 18th birthday and a person who is one second past it, but what alternative is there? We agree there has to be some kind of artificial but pragmatic bright line somewhere.
The question of when a fetus becomes a “person” is so subjective and phiolosophical that it can’t ever be objectively resolved. My own position on the matter is that we should do whatever reduces the most suffering and I think that a woman with an unwanted pregnancy clearly CAN suffer while an embryo certainly cannot. Second tri fetuses may have some kind of low level sentience but so does a chicken. I don’t believe their capacity for suffering is the same as for an adult woman or for a full term baby.
But as incubator technology improves, the argument of the anti-abortion people gets better to decrease the window that abortions are allowed. I can see it getting to the point that the procedure to remove a ‘baby’ that could be raised in an incubator is as easy as an abortion. I think at that point the argument of a woman’s body vs. the parasite becomes invalid.
That’s true, but we’re not there yet so we need something that works right now. If that kind of technology ever becomes possible, then I think most pro-choice people would be fine with a standard that the woman has a right to have the fetus removed but that the state has a right to keep it intact and incubate to term if it wants to. I wouldn’t necessarily try to argue that the state has an obligation to do that, though, just that there’s no Constutional reason why it can’t.
Ah, but this takes us back to the argument right now that a women gets to decide to keep the baby and the man must pay whether he wants to or not. Why would it then be all right for her to give up her responsibility and the man not? Would that change in the future for him, too?
When you’re talking about abortion I think it’s a distortion to say that a woman is giving up responsibility for a “baby.” If she terminates the pregnancy, there never WAS a baby.
If your asking whether or not in your futuristic scenario, the man would still be on the hook for an intact fetus once separated from the mother, I don’t know what the states would decide but my personal opinion would be that the state is assuming responsibility for it and so the guy should NOT be on the hook (unless he wants to assume guardianship himself, of course).
It certainly became your responsibility when you started dictating who should and shouldn’t be pregant.
No one has responded to the conjoined twin question. Are you against separating conjoined twins, even though one may be compromising the quality of life of the other and even though the chances of both surviving the surgery are low?
If you postulate far enough ahead to the use of Star Trek-like transporters, sure, removing the fetus intact might become easier and safer for the woman than whatever futuristicky procedure replaces the current D&C. Until that occurs, though, I’d have to side with whatever procedure ends the pregnancy with minimal risk to the woman. C-sections (or induced labour of some kind) to deliver a 24-week preemie is definitely not safer than performing a D&C three months earlier and even if the magic incubator exists, I think it would shockingly irresponsible and unethical for any doctor to advise his patient to wait and put herself at risk just for the sake of the fetus.
Anyway, as with the example of 50,000 blastocysts, we don’t really need these potential people so badly that we need to hassle pregnant women or choose to save the blastocysts instead of a baby. If we’re that desperate for new citizens (and it might come to that in the next 100 years in the westernized democracies), wouldn’t it be better to create positive incentives with economic aid, tax breaks, and better post-natal care so the financially stable married women who have had two children might be encouraged to have a third and possibly a fourth, since the state is being so helpful? And if you’re concerned about the stereotypical irresponsible welfare queens popping out kids by the dozen, why not address whatever social problems she has and educate her kids so they won’t end up like her and maybe, just maybe, they’ll be responsible adults having just as many children as they can handle with some (rather than extensive) state assistance?
Frankly, as long as I see pro-lifers unwilling to face the consequences of their desires (example: kanicbird, post #225) and refusing to take on the burden of gestating the embryos and caring for the resulting children, I don’t see the value in trying to accommodate them. They want the pregnant woman to bear all responsibility (i.e. all the work) while they keep a firm grip on authority (i.e. all the power). Sounds creepily in the direction of slavery to me.