This seems to be the point where we’re missing each other. I would counter by saying, if I deny point #1 based on a belief that there is a supreme right that supersedes it, then point #2 by definition remains irrelevant. I won’t have considered it or taken it into account because it’s not relevant. We may need to concede that we’re not going to get the other guy to understand the opposing point.
I make no such assertion. I merely point it out when people make the contrary assertion without any support.
Oh, I understand your point; I just think it’s a short-sighted one. You can disregard whatever you like, but that won’t cause it to cease to exist.
I’d still like to hear your proposed assessment of a post-Roe U.S. and how it would be better than the current form. A comparison of South Dakota to other, more liberal states might be an interesting start.
Of course, it’s possibly any outcome, good or bad, might be irrelevant if the “supreme right” in question is valued highly enough. I guess that’s fine for purely hypothetical discussions about morality, but I gotta say it makes a lousy basis for forming law.
:shrug: I don’t know how else to state it. If the consequence is what’s important, then please address the comments I offered regarding toddlers living below the poverty line. I’m not trying to bait you. But your line of reasoning applies there as well.
There would be less dead babies.
Why in the world would that be the case?
BTW, I’ll be away for a few days on business, so I won’t be able to respond until I’m back.
I have seen some of those pictures of ultra sound, and it was very hard (if not impossible to see a baby), Some one pointed out a heart,but the baby was not yet formed,just in the process of being formed.
I had 2 miscarriages in the first 3 months and what the doctor showed me looked more like a blood clot. I never thought I lost a baby. Just a pregnancy that didn’t fully take. And I had stayed in the hospital for 10 days because the tests were still positive. No baby either time.
A fertile egg if it be human,bird, or reptile cannot be called such, until it is truly formed to be recognized as a person or animal. It may contain life but life was in the sperm before hand . Life is a passed on thing even if you believe in the Genisis story it came from one’s anscestors,back through time,life began eons ago. so it is a matter of personhood and when that was complete.
You can’t Murder a group of cells anymore than cracking a fertile chicken egg is killing a chicken.
The point is the cells are not human ‘beings’, it is true they contain human life but so does a man’s sperm.
I hope you are doing all you can for the already born human beings even though it may mean a great sacrfice to you and your family!
There are a lot of dead Babies in the third world where contraception is banned or not practiced,so does that imply that having a baby and then seeing it starve to death is a good thing, as long as the woman is willing to bear more children?
I think Stratocaster’s point is that it doesn’t matter what the long-term results would be. The world MIGHT be a better place if we killed some people who are “alive” by your definition & walking around…does this mean we just kill them?
I want to ask a question, in all honesty, I am wondering this. When pro-choicers compare an embryo to a sperm or an egg cell, or when they compare it to a tumor that is growing where it isn’t supposed to (Bryan Ekers did this earlier in the thread)…do you really not see the difference? Or do you see the difference, but it doesn’t matter to you?
First of all, the overwhelming majority of abortions occur months into pregnancy–lwhen the unborn is more than just a single cell. Have you ever seen ultrasound footage of a seven-week fetus, monavis? What you see is a tiny human being kicking around, not just a single cell.
Second, medical science consistently affirms that a unique human organism begins its existence at conception. So while a sperm cell does not constitute a human being, the zygote most certainly does. As Dr. Jerome LeJeune (the “father of modern genetics”) testified before the Louisiana Legislature’s House Committee on the Administration of Criminal Justice on June 7, 1990,
“At no time,” Dr. Lejeune said, “is the human being a blob of protoplasm. As far as your nature is concerned, I see no difference between the early person that you were at conception and the late person which you are now. You were, and are, a human being.”
But for the sake of argument, let us pretend that your statement is accurate. If the unborn are truly not living human beings, then all this talk about economic hardships and “unwanted” children is irrelevant. The OP is therefore correct in asserting,
Thanks, JThunder, for the cite. This is why I ask the question I do above. Are there pro-choicers out there who really do not see any fundamental difference between a sperm cell and a zygote? Or is this some kind of rhetorical hyperbole?
I’m pro-choice, and I partially agree with the OP here.
If aborting a fetus is morally equivalent to killing a baby, then you can’t justify aborting a fetus to spare a woman an unwanted pregnancy. If abortion involved actually killing a baby (i.e., not a fetus but an infant who’s already been born), then hardly anyone would say it was justified to spare a woman an unwanted pregnancy. If we accept that, then the first sentence of this paragraph is practically a tautology.
That said, I don’t think aborting a fetus is equivalent to killing a baby. But the question is obviously relevant. Anyone who says that it’s just about a woman’s right to choose is presupposing that abortion isn’t equivalent to baby killing.
However, that doesn’t mean discussions of a woman’s right to control her own body are irrelevant. If a fetus’s “life” is of some value, but not as much as the life of a baby, then the question is “How much value does the existence of a fetus have, relative to the value of enabling a woman to control her own body?”
It is interesting that both sides seem to often be having only half the debate. Some prochoice advocates presuppose that a fetus is worth less than a baby, and focus on the argument that a woman’s right to choose is worth more than the fetus’s existence. But pro-life advocates also have a tendency to presuppose that a fetus is equivalent to a baby, and consider the woman’s right to choose irrelevant, since it obviously can’t justify baby-killing. It’s little wonder the subject is so contentious, given that many in the debate seem not to care about finding a common ground for discussion, preferring to demonize their opponents and distort their views.
It’s also worth noting that there’s a prochoice argument that has nothing to do with whether abortion is morally justified. Namely: People will get abortions whether it’s legal or not, but if it’s legal at least it’s easier to insure that they are preformed safely by qualified medical professionals.
True, of course. On the other hand, if abortion is illegal and justifiably so, then we’re not obliged to make sure that it’s performed safely for those who insist on violating the just law. No more are we obliged to see that those who are banned from owning handguns don’t blow themselves up with cheap, illegal Saturday Night Specials. I do not rejoice when the punk criminal sticking me up with one of these blows his own hand off - every man’s death diminishes me - but it wasn’t my responsibility to see him commit his crime in safety.
I wouldn’t say someone who believes that abortion should always be available up to the second trimester, and after that available when necessary to preserve the health of the mother, “anti-choice”, even though they don’t think the choice should always be present - they believe the choice should be available in many commonly occurring circumstances. I wouldn’t say someone who is against all elective abortions except when the pregnancy is due to rape to be “pro-choice” even though he believes a woman can choose to have an abortion if she was raped - the only circumstances where he would allow the choice is in a non-typical pregnancy.
Yes, there is gray area, but I think Pro-Choice/Anti-Choice is the closest we can come to accurate definitions of the sides.
Here’s how I define it:
Pro-choice - believes that abortion should be available as a choice during at least part of the pregnancy without requiring special circumstances that are beyond the mother’s control.
Pro-choice - “Abortion should only be available in the first trimester and if the woman has already had one child, unless it is due to medical reasons or the pregnancy was due to a rape.” - though I don’t agree with this position, I would consider it pro-choice because it does allow a woman to choose to have an abortion in a common situation - a mother who doesn’t want to have more children and has just found out she is pregnant.
Anti-Choice - “A woman can have an abortion at any point in the pregnancy if the pregnancy was due to rape or incest, if it would injure the health of the mother, or if the father of the child has abandoned her and cannot be contacted.” - though this does allow abortions in a fairly common situation (abandonment by father), that is a situation that is beyond the woman’s control.
That’s exactly my point - are we so desperate for babies that we need to force women to have them even when they clearly don’t want them, ignoring all the misery that will result?
I didn’t even offer a definition of “alive” in this thread. My first post in this thread, in fact, specifically said these definitions were irrelevant. Generically, your statement is in play anywhere the death penalty is used (it isn’t where I live and I’m against its return except possibly under extremely strict regulations that would never be approved and that’s a whole other thread, anyway). In any case, the distinction between a fetus and an infant is still not difficult to make and your argument that supporting abortion rights = supporting arbitrary murder doesn’t fly. It’s never been my position that we need abortion access to help society, rather we need abortion access to help individual women. The societal benefits are an afterthought, but at least I’m making that afterthought. Arguing for a ban on abortion with no regard for the long-term effects is a poor approach.
As for the “tumor” example, the point is that if something (be it a fetus, a tumor, a bullet, a diseased and painful tooth etc.) is in an individual’s body and he/she wants it not to be there and can find a doctor willing to perform the removal, I can’t find a good reason why that individual’s choice should be denied. That’s not the same as saying a fetus, tumor, bullet and diseased tooth are all identical and anyone who says I am saying this is clearly missing the point.
No, but on the whole I don’t believe the argument is founded on the desperation for babies but on the desperation not to deprive the defenceless foetus of its right to life. There’s a slight false dilemma going on there too - presupposing that misery will result as a result of abortions being denied. There are other alternatives.
But unfortunately, if you want to treat a foetus the same as a tumour, bullet or diseased tooth, you at least have to make the point that it has no more rights than one. That is sort of the whole point of the anti-abortion case - you need not consider the rights of the other objects you want to remove. You would have to be demented to argue that a bullet, a tumour or a diseased tooth has any rights to be taken into consideration. You may not agree that a foetus has any rights, but you surely need not regard as demented anyone who says that it has. At this point, comparisons between these various objects start to look strained.
What about a woman who has decided that zero children is enough and she does not want to have any more, ever?
To me it doesn’t matter whether you call it fetus, baby, embryo, Xenu, whatever. The point of the abortion is not killing the fetus, it’s to remove it from the uterus. I support the right of anyone to have a fetus removed from her uterus at any time she chooses, whether or not the death of the fetus is a side-effect. In early term abortions, this side-effect always exists. In later term, I suppose she could have it removed by caesarian if she so chose and that would also provide the desired result - to no longer be pregnant.
Well, I happen to feel the same “desperation” to protect the individual rights of women. And it’s not really a presupposition to point out cycles of poverty and teen pregnancy in areas where abortion is unavailable. When the U.S. (for example) has a sufficiently large social net that cycles of poverty are broken and/or a sufficiently streamlined adoption process that can absorb a million or so babies every year, then you can say alternatives exist. Currently, they don’t.
In any case, I’d still like to see some evidence that South Dakota’s anti-abortion policies have had a positive effect.
Give the fetus huge rights, if you want. Give it drinking and voting rights, if that helps. I won’t argue against it. But no matter how many rights you give it, none of them should trump those of the mother. That is the crux of the pro-choice argument, regardless of the “alive or not, person or not, human or not” definitional sideshow suggested by the OP, which in my opinion only hurts the pro-choice cause.
Who said I regarded anyone as “demented”? Example, please. I think the worst I’ve said is “short-sighted” (post #382) and I stand by it. Please support your claim or withdraw it.