I’m addressing **kanicbird ** specifically.
Um why is it or and not and. You created a dependant life by activities you knew could create that life, why should you not be responsible for that life to the point that that life no longer needs your support? And why should the state not protect the rights of this new human against undue harm and murder - they same protection the state gives you.
So either you will pass the buck or you will commit murder.
Now I have no problem with making a deal, hey if I get pregnant I will carry the baby to term then hand off the baby to you - this is being responsible for your actions.
Murder is NOT taking responsibility. Remember this is the pro-life POV, that fetus IS a human.
They had sex that created a co-joined twin agreed.
They did make this decision. It is not parasitic however, both are dependent on eachother as long as they are co-joined. I accept that you could set up a cojoined situation where one is parisitic.
Sorry I don’t accept this statement. They are not in the same situation. The mother is providing a enviroment where the fetus can develop further to a point where the baby can survive in our ‘earth’ enviroment. The co-joined twins will never develope to this point where they can each survive on their own.
I disallowed adoption to see if you would take responsibility for your actions that created that (fully born) baby.
OK, I don’t get this argument then. If you want to make a case that abortion is irresponsible, then you have to allow for bearing the child and giving it up for adoption as being at least as responsible (in some cases, perhaps more so) as raising it yourself. And, in fact, you also said in the same post…
Which is it? This seems to be contradicting itself in the same post. Not to give you a hard time, but dang this is confusing.
It’s not confusing. **kanicbird ** doesn’t care about the fetus. He throws around words like “murder”, but he doesn’t *really * believe that. If he did, then he’d be willing to make some compromises in order to prevent it.
**kanicbird’s ** sole interest is in punishing women for having consensual sex.
Seems that way. I’m all for personal responsibility too, but give me a break. This argument is ridiculous.
You keep saying it’s murder and this is the pro-life POV…but in fact, only your point of view is pro-life. Mine is pro-choice and my opinion is that it is not murder. You can argue YOUR point of view, but please don’t refer to it as THE point of view because it’s not the only one. Same situation, different points of view.
(bolding mine) Not true. In the scenario I laid out, one baby is parasitic on the other. It happens all the time.
Actually, they *are * surviving and can continue to survive for an indeterminate length of time. Just not optimally. Both will be sickly, both will be crippled in some way. And for purposes of this argument, both cannot live a normal life span. Either both will die or one can live. One baby is enabling the other to live. Do you kill one to save the other?
I assume you mean this question:
I dunno…I’m pro-choice.
Bingo. In the absence of empirical medical evidence, we might as well leave it up to the mother to choose (before the 3rd trimester).
Don’t be disingenuous, Kanicbird. From my original post:
So, obviously we all knew we were discussing cells past the point of conception. You answered as such until it became inconvenient.
If your primary duty is to your own safety, why isn’t a woman’s?
And, no, I still don’t think that the petri dish is the obvious choice.
Repeatedly referring to something as “murder” isn’t actually an argument, kanicbird. To begin with, murder is a legal definition. In the United States, having an abortion (within certain specified guidelines) does not meet the definition. Therefore it is impossible for an abortion performed under those guidelines to be murder. It can be other things, but not murder.
Secondly, you yourself have pointed out that you are arguing from “pro-life perspective”. One perspective on a situation does not a definitive answer make. There are other perspectives with at least agruably equal validity. In my own view, the reason the abortion debate remains such a hotly contested one is because people on the opposing sides are unwilling to admit the opposing view has any validity. One need not agree with a certain viewpoint to admit that it has validity.
So why’d you reply the first time, then?
Repeat of the question:
Is there anyone here in this thread who’s pro-life but not for religious reasons?
We’ve already established kanicbird doesn’t count.
No, it is not the obvious choice, and I hope you don’t associate me too much with **kanicbird’s ** argument, here, but I will try to give this scenario a whirl.
I don’t think that this example of the 10,000 blastocysts and 1 baby is comparing 2 things that are equivilant. Chances are, those blastocysts are not part of a plan to implant them into 10,000 uteruses and gestate 10,000 babies from them. So, you have to consider the outcome of your actions in this case. If you save the baby, you will give that baby a chance to grow up, become and adult, grow old, and die. If you save the blastocysts, you give them a chance to later be destroyed in some kind of scientific experiment, and never become what they should have been destined to be. To me, this is kind of like a scenario where you can save a baby or a 95-year-old person (not an exact analogy, but it’s generally the same idea). You save the baby because of its potential to live a life. If the blastocysts have no such potential, then IMO, it would be sad not to be able to save them, but not a tragedy.
Obviously, there is much less of an emotional attachment to the blastocysts than a baby. In a certain sense, this makes it more imperative for us to consider carefully how we approach the creation and the destruction of them. It is easy and obvious for us to say that babies should never be harmed for any purpose. Much less easy and obvious for us to say the same about blastocysts. This is where we are truly tested to do the right thing.
I can answer. I am somewhat religious, and strongly pro-life. My pro-life stance does not stem from my religion, but stems from my inability to create in my own mind a logical reason for why a pre-born baby would not be considered a human life. Therefore, I oppose it for the same reasons I oppose any murder.
You really can’t think of a logical reason why a zygote is not the same as a human life? You must not have tried very hard.
How would you answer Salt Seller’s question about the beaker of zygotes. Would you rather save a jar full of embryos or one born baby?
OK, I’ll rewrite the question.
You can save either one baby, or the blastocyte of a couple who have been trying to get pregnant for a long time. It was going to be implanted this afternoon, in fact.
I’m still choosing the baby. Hell, let’s say it was my SO into whom the bloastocyte was going to be implanted. I’m still choosing the baby. No, there’s no guarantee the blastocyte would take, but there’s no guarantee the baby wouldn’t catch some disease and die, either.
In fact, let’s get really ridiculous. I can save either a blastocyte about to be implanted, or a very sick or terminally ill baby. I’m still picking the baby. A pile of cells is a pile of cells. I can’t think of any circumstance where it would merit equal consideration with an actual person. Shit, I’ll save a cat before I reach for the petri dish.
See, I don’t think it’s possible to “harm” a blastocyte.
For purposes of this discussion, they ARE slated to be implanted. And for purposes of this discussion, make the numbers easier to handle. Say there are 20 blastocysts that have been slated for implantation. Say there are two for each of ten women, which will raise the odds of both of them taking and going full term, with no waste product.
By making that choice, you’ve basically made the elderly person’s life worthless. Not exactly a pro-life stance, in the pure sense of the term.
I have posted my POV on this several times in several different threads and I think already in this one! So, I won’t go into a long description here. Basically, it boils down to this. I could never find an point in the embryonic developmental process that I believed I could point to and say “ok, there wasn’t a baby before, but now there is one.” OTHER than conception. The moment of birth doesn’t work for me, the third trimester doesn’t work for me, viability doesn’t work for me, etc. etc. None of these seemed like any kind of a logical demarcation. So, to me, conception is it. I fully understand that not everyone agrees with me, but I tried to use logic, and the purpose of the logic was not to convince myself to be pro-life, but to decide whether or not I SHOULD be pro-life. You may not agree with my conclusion, but I tried to be intellectually honest with myself.
You should try reading more than one post at a time before you respond.
To construct a hypothetical response, in case a real world respondent didn’t happen to walk by. But I see Sarahfeena has made the same case as I did.
I’ve read your posts in a lot of different threads, and you always maintain a calm, civil demeanor, even though (bing in the minority) it’s easy to get into a pile-on. I appreciate being able to discuss these things with you (even though I think you’re completely wrong 
)
My question, then, is, is this even a matter of “life”? Can a pile of cells with no personality, no self-awareness, no consciousness, no sensation really be equated with a baby? (I’ll ignore the question of later trimesters for now).
So you reserve your own safety above all? Why are you unwilling to recognize that others feel the same? From that statement, also, I figure you wouldn’t take a bullet for a baby, nor would you adopt an unwanted baby and raise it as your own. What sacrifices are you willing to make? Would you join a special police force that arrests pregnant women? Would you personally strap a pregnant woman down for nine months to keep her from terminating her pregnancy? Just how much of a personal effort is this issue worth to you? For that matter, are specifically voting for pro-life candidates and signing pro-life petitions and donating to pro-life causes? Those are perfectly reasonable actions for someone living in a democracy (which I assume you do). Just how serious are you?
You threw yourself in (or, rather, you want to throw law enforcement in on your behalf). I’m just curious if you’re willing to take the responsibility for your choice.
Oh, please. YOU are the one who tried to strawman my position and threw out the examples of killing other drivers and pottery shopkeepers. And then you accuse me of advocating murder? I can make up all kinds of wildly exaggerated (to the point of gross inaccuracy) versions of your position as well. Is it then reasonable to accuse you of supporting these versions?
I’m willing to bet that you know what sarcasm is (i.e. someone says “I bet you love the idea of being gang-probed by aliens” and you recognize the irony in the reply: “yeah, yeah, I love the idea of being gang-probed by aliens”) but you’re willing to ignore it, as you do facts, when convenient. You make a ridiculous suggestion, I facetiously support it, and then you accuse me of believing it? Get real.
As above, I suggest that banning abortion would lead to special police forces to detain pregnant women and strap them down for the duration of their pregnancies. Do you think this is an exaggeration of the pro-life position? I can only assume you won’t sarcastically reply for or against (because apparently sarcasm is not part of this discussion) so I’ll take any reply (assuming there is one) literally and proceed from there.
I can understand this attitude fully. Not sure, given such a drastic situation, I wouldn’t react in the same way, because it would come down to instinct, and certainly we are biologically wired to rescue a baby before anyone else. Even if it wasn’t a drastic situation, I wouldn’t blame anyone for taking the same action. We have deep emotional reactions to babies…an evolutionary imperative, I would say. (Not sure about the cat part…not that I don’t love cats! 
)
I think you’re slicing & dicing the meaning of the world “harm” a little bit too much. Anything that is alive can be made dead, even if it just one cell. I think that fits in the definition of “harm.”