Sorry, but you asked for a cite for my belief that most women who seek abortions do not think abortion is an evil act. I responded by saying that I have no such cite, but if you prefer to think otherwise, feel free. If you don’t hold this position, why do you require a cite?
I was supposed to know this was your question when you asked for clarification regarding my use of the word singular? Um, OK. In answer to your question, I believe whoever has the power to make an abortion occur is morally obliged to prevent it. Most often, that doesn’t involve the father.
I dunno. In what sense do you think your finger is alive? Perhaps I can save us a lot of trouble. Are you really asserting some notion of “personhood”?
Did you miss the part where I said I don’t want to punish them?
:dubious: Are you actually claiming that personhood isn’t important ? And if it’s not, then how do you claim that, say you have a right to life but a diseased kidney or a tumor doesn’t ?
I was supposed to know this was your question when you asked for clarification regarding my use of the word singular? Um, OK.
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No. I assumed you would give me enough an answer (eg, somewhat more nuanced than the dictionary) so that I would be able to understand what you meant by “singular”. My bad.
Indeed, I did. But the first point you make seems to contradict the second (or not, so I’m asking now). What does being “morally obliged to prevent” something mean? What limits, if any, are to be placed on the prevention, and couldn’t that prevention, if taken to its logical ends, be a form of punishment (for wanting the abortion, even, not having one)?
Let me ask you when did your biological life begin?
It seemed you based a moral ‘score’ on the ability to feel pain. Also a 2 yr old dog is more mentally complex then a just born baby, does that place the dog higher?
Actually I like this one, but it has to be taken to it’s extreme. The mother has to post a bond to ensure the freezing and implantation costs, and also a limit on the number of frozen children based on her ability to carry them to term.
Inarguable? Except for the fact that this is not a medically valid position accepted by any of the physicians’ groups in the US. Many, many, many conceptions do not go on to become pregnancies. If this were true, an IUD would cause an abortion more ovulatory cycles than not.
The dividing line is usually set at 9 weeks. After that point, it’s a fetus. That is somewhat arbitrary, but after 9 weeks the “major structures” are all present, if only in rudimetary form, and that’s the convention. As a point or reference, the heart (or what will eventually becomes the heart) starts beating at about 6 weeks.
When does the brain appear? Depends on how you define “brain”. There’s a “brain bulge” after just a few weeks, but you’d be really stretching things to call that a brain. BY 9 weeks, there’s probably what most people would call a brain present, at least visually, although I wouldn’t call it a functioning brain. By ~22 weeks, the brain is growing like gangbusters, so I think you’d have to saying a fetus at that stage has a brain. So, somewhere between 9 and 22 weeks is proabably the best answer. You hear all kinds of claims about brain waves being detected before 22 weeks, but those claims seem to come only from pro-life groups.
About 80% of all abortions in the US occur in the first 10 weeks. Less than 5% occur after 16 weeks. So, I don’t think the argument about killing something with a brain is relevant to the abortion debate, except at the margins.
