Why do I suddenly have a craving for fava beans and chianti? :eek:
Okay, enough with the thieves and liver debate.
Beyond the standard abortion problems, I’m really curious to know what would happen if the US or Canada granted the not-yet-born the same rights and entitlements that the newly-born has. And a slightly more twisted question might be, “what would happen if Canada did say fetus=baby, and an pregnant American visited?”
I’m asking because as a single guy without kids I really have no idea what sort of things change post-birth, legally speaking. But I’m pretty sure that the ideal is ridiculous.
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Well, the matter is actually related. After all, the baby, in a sort of way, can be considered as the liver-thief (the distinction being that the baby didn’t commit a “wrong” by stealing resources from the mother) in our hypothetical scenario.
Zev Steinhardt
Would I support it? No. Would I prevent it? No.
Julie
Well, that’s really what Zev and I are talking about, with the understanding that no analogy is perfect (and there are a couple of very important points to the liver-thief analogy that make it unworkable for pregnancy).
(On preview, I see that I’m just echoing his point!)
Julie
See, I would say the “distinction” is that the liver thief only does it once while the fetus is a constant drain. I guess we do come at this from different angles!
Julie
Better to say, perhaps, that the liver thief doesn’t take a peice of your liver, but rather hooks up a few tubes between your liver and his to make use of it for 9 months or so. You’re a walking dialysis machine ( or is that just kindeys?).
The tubes are already there, so is it okay to pull them out and tell him to stop following you around, even if he needs to be hooked up to your liver to live? Or do you have to let the tubes stay and re-arrange your life around the liver user following you at tube-length?
I think women should be forced to give birth, so that their children can be properly punished for stealing their livers. Every baby should go straight to jail upon being born.
Sorry to revive this thread, but have people who believe that life begins at conception ever out and out said that birth control methods that affect the relevant cells also be banned? What proportion of birth control methods do that?
I seem to remember that there IS that option on the table somewhere, but I don’t remember where, or how seriously it was actually being discussed.
I do remember, though, that on the issue of stem cell research, some Republicans, especially those directly impacted somehow by that research (or at least their family members) have expressed support for it. That issue would further complicate things, I’d guess…
Someone at a different messageboard who was staunchly anti-abortion said that she thought birth control methods which prevent fertilized eggs from implanting should also be illegal. If it’s who I think it was, she posts here sometimes; perhaps she’ll be back. IUD’s prevent eggs from implanting. I’m told some hormonal methods such as Norplant and Depo Provera do as well, although I thought they worked by preventing fertile eggs from being released. I’ll see if I can get back to you with some research.
CJ
You’re mixing your metaphor jsgoddess
Woman = person eating hamburger
Fetus = e. coli
Man who had sex with woman = Hamburger? No. Person making hamburger. Yes.
The person who got e.coli got it because the shlum who made the hamburger didn’t wash his hands or left the meat out too long or something. He’s at fault. But the man who had sex did not do something wrong to the woman. He did exactly what she wanted. He had sex with her. This metaphor is flawed. In fact, there is no metaphor (that I can think of) that accurately explains the miracle of conception because there is NOTHING like conception. A baby is NOT syphillis. Syphillis kills. The baby is an extra life, not minus one.
My 2¢. The Woman got pregnant? Good! She should have thought about that when she had sex. If she got pregnant from a rape? GREAT! At least SOMETHING positive happened out of that awful traumatic experience. She should treat the child of her rapist as a blessing, not a curse. Children are miracles not inconveniances.
Something I’ve never seen in the abortion argument: the difficulty of pregnancy and birth is God’s punishment for Eve’s original sin. Sorry but that’s the fact of life. God is punishing all Women for Eve’s sin. Of course if you don’t believe the Bible then this argument doesn’t hold water. But if you do then you have to live with it. You had sex? Got pregnant? Live with it. It’s Gods will.
You’ve never seen it in an abortion argument because it’s lame.
Tell you what. If God starts smiting abortion practitioners, I’ll start believing that it’s his will. Until then, I’ll just believe that you’re a person who is shoving religious beliefs upon me in a most unwelcome way.
Julie
But… What if Festus = baby!
All the infinks and toddlers of our land would have chin stubble and get ornery instead of cranky. Jeebus, imagine the changes - spittoons in daycare centers, a chaw section at BabysRUs, a few dozen banjo players in every school band… and of course, instead of the “first bike” right of passage, little children would look forward to their first donkey.
Fer the youngin’s: http://www.tvland.com/shows/gunsmoke/actor3.jhtml
Okay, so if we push this fetus equal baby argument a little further, if someone breaks into a home and kills a husband and wife, you can get that someone for mass murder because, after all, he ended the life of many eggs and sperm who might have, one day, ended up being a person. Blalron don’t you dare kill another red blood cel. Stop picking scabs and, if you cut yourself, do not wash that blood down the sink! A persons a person no matter how theoretical.
Don’t mind me - I’m gonna be up all night, sentient as a mo-fo dawn to dusk.
Give me some time to figure out exactly what part of God’s will requires that some women who have sex, get pregnant, and then have a barely-survivable miscarriage which leaves them unable to become pregnant again… I know they don’t like, but perhaps they would like it and deal with if they understood it was God’s will.
This is a specious argument that has been dispensed with on numerous occasions on this board. Try using search. If I shoot my death ray at you (please, don’t provoke me ;)), I am not guilty of destroying the potential humans you might create at some point in the future. I am guilty of destroying you.
If you want to craft an argument, positing that a fetus is the equivalent of blood cells doesn’t do the trick. A fetus is an undeniable, distinct human individual. Not a potential individual, or a component of an individual. Your belief that the status of this entity may assign it different rights than those who have been born does not change this fact. Discuss “personhood” if you’d like, or describe why a mother’s rights subjugate the fetus’s, or explain why the fetus is an entity with no meaningful rights–anything but this chestnut, please.