I did not know that either side of the abortion debate particularly concerned itself with homo erectus :dubious:
I totally agree with you that is a weak argument. Hypocricy doesn’t necessarily reflect on whether one side or the other is right, only that the person involved were hypocrites.
My point, however, remains that a lot of people hold an opinion on abortion without due consideration of the real issues affecting someone who is faced with such a decision, or even the slightest regard or interest for that someone. Catsix just provided some famous real-life examples. I myself brought the topic up because of personal experience with the matter - since I talk to girls a lot, I have had numerous conversations with women who had to face such a tough decision. And personally, I have been as close to such a decision as you can get without actually being a woman.
The anti-choice camp aims to take away a woman’s sovereignty over her body based on a single argument - that human life is sacred, and as soon as a sperm lands the DNA of its owner in a woman’s cell, this life deserves protection as much as a human being at any other stage of development.
Some of the anti-choice are willing to make certain exceptions to this rule, for instance for rape, or if at any stage of the development the life and health of a woman is threatened directly by the pregnancy.
These exceptions come from confrontation with ugly reality. They are obvious examples of the harsh effects of a stance that is based on principle, faced with the harsh reality of the consequences held by such a strict position. The reverse happens too - if someone sees a picture of a fetus that has developed into something which on an enlarged picture displays many human characteristics, this may evoke very strong emotions leading to a reconsideration of that person’s principles.
But emotions aren’t the best guides to making such fundamental decisions. What is needed is a method that can be used to answer these fundamental questions:
what are the laws we have in place to protect members of society from harm meant to achieve, why, and for whom? Anyone who willfully ignores the complexity and far reaching effects of anti-choice has no right making decisions that affect the lives of others so rigorously.
I will concede that this goes equally for either side - the anti-choice camp, will, after all, feel that a woman has no right to decide over the life that grows within her, as strongly as the pro-choice side feels that same life has no right over the woman it is growing in.
The difference of opinion boils down to fundamental disagreement over at what stage the life can be considered a person that deserves a legally guaranteed right to life, and at what point that right to life supercedes the right of a person over his or her (obviously in this case and for now still mostly her) own body.
Ugh Make that sapiens … :rolleyes:
(suddenly regrets comments on Edit button)
(goes off wondering if there is any specific cause why I forgot we already evolved from erectus to sapiens)
We were debating unwanted pregnancy. At least I was - is this another example of you using words to mean something other than what the rest of us mean?
If so, perhaps you could flag it when you do that. Something like
[some nonsense or other I pulled out of my ass]blah blah[/some nonsense or other I pulled out of my ass].
Thanks in advance
Not sure what you are talking about here. Are you saying that the pregnancy rates as discussed have not changed at all? If so, please provide a cite.
Soooo - did you have any response besides bluster?
You’ve made an assertion, it’s been shot down. Wanna try again?
Regards,
Shodan
The cite itself did not, by any means, have a pro-life bias. It appeared on a pro-life website, but it originated from a respected medical journal, not from any pro-life author. If anything, one would expect it to have a pro-CHOICE bias, since the author was a internationally renowned abortion advocate.
Additionally, Scott Plaid didn’t just wonder if the “biased” cite was accurate. Rather, he expressed severe doubt that the Calderone uttered anything of the sort – without the tiniest shred of evidence, I might add. That makes it an entirely different animal.
And, as I said, it was a cite from a well-known medical journal, easily subject to verification. Only a complete idiot would willfully fabricate a quote that can be readily disproven. Planned Parenthood, NARAL, NOW abd other pro-choice individuals and organizations have had decades to refute this quote, but nobody stepped forward. Under the circumstances, anyone who still says “I suspect that the quote says nothing of the kind” (or words to that effect) – without any fragment of evidence – is practically humiliating himself.
Unfortunately, we’ve seen that this is the type of forum where unsubstantiated pro-choice claims get a pass – and are often even applauded – whereas pro-choicers demand outrageous burdens of proof when it comes to pro-life evidence. These demands for burdens of proof go far beyond what even a scientific journal would expect, and even defy common sense. This goes to show how far some pro-choicers will go, as they hold on to outrageous claims that are completely unsupported by the evidence at hand.
None of that is relevant to the subject at hand. Conception has nothing to do with meiosis or mitosis. If anything, it occurs well before the zygote starts to divide.
In another thread, beagledave pointed out that a certain pro-choice challenge betrayed a certain ignorance of embryology. Similarly, the “ongoing” nature of meiosis and mitosis has absolutely no bearing on the question of life beginning at conception. This should be obvious to anyone who undrstands the distinctions between these terms.
Don’t be silly. We are not talking about individual living human cells here. Rather, we are talking about when a new human individual – a distinct organism – comes into being. This is a criticial distinction. No reasonable person, whether pro-life or pro-choice, would complain about a mere cell being killed. However, people express righteous outrage when an innocent human organism is marked for death, and rightfully so.
I hope that everyone understands the distinction between an ordinary cell and a new living organism. Sadly, this distinction remains lost on a great many pro-choice advocates.
OK, quick biology experiment. Take a fertililzed, dividing egg cell. This cluster of cells has undergone fertilization, and is therefore a human organism.
Now, tease one of the cells of the zygote off. You have twins now. The cell that you’ve removed can grow and develop exactly as your original zygote did.
But, this cell is just a cell and not an innocent human organism, yes?
Because if it is an organism, then what happens when you re-introduce it back into the zygote? If it’s seperate, then it can develop into a person. If it’s not, then it can’t.
In order to get from fertilized egg cell to baby, uncountable numbers of potential human lives are lost. If each of these divided cells has equivalent moral worth to the original, then gestation is murder. If not, then I hope you have a way to distinguish between two identical cells and determine which one is a person and which one isn’t. Also, you’d need to determine which of a set of identical twins was the actual person and which one was the mere collection of cells.
Or, maybe there’s more to it then conception. Your choice.
Ooh, I love this argument! 
Can I borrow it?
Really? How do we end up with a diploid cell once the outer wall has fused?
And what if the organism is a mere cell? You would then be complaining about its potential to become a multicellular individual: a potential which is shared by the separate sperm and egg. It is you who are being silly in assigning different rights to different types of cell.
By all means. I got the original from an old GD argument. Feel free to borrow, modify, upgrade, etc.
For the sake of argument, let us assume that your claim is correct – that twins would definitely result, as opposed to, say, an irreparably ruined blastocyst. There remain other problems with your scenario, as well shall see.
You are ASSUMING that this twinned zygote is indeed “just a cell” rather than a distinct human organism. In other words, your argument ASSUMES the very conclusion that it purports to draw. One could just as easily say that two new organisms result where there used to be just one. (Dr. Francis Beckwith discusses this scenario, and a host of others, in his text, Politically Correct Death.)
So right away, we see that your argument is circular and self-defeating… but let’s proceed anyway, shall we?
Again, have you actually conducted such an experiment? Or do you know anyone who has? It seems to me that you’re assuming certain outcomes would result, which is NOT the way science should be conducted.
Until you can demonstrate what actually happens, your objection remains irrelevant.
And if each of those divided cells were identical to the zygote, then you would have a point – but they’re not. You have yet to demonstrate that these “uncountable numbers” of divided cells are functionally identical to a zygote.
In fact, cell differentiation occurs after just a few days of embryological development – and if it did not occur, then one could not have skin, bones, hands or any bodily organs whatsoever. So much for the claim that these “uncountable numbers” of cells can simply be “teased off” to produce a new human organism.
Irrelevant. You’re saying that cell division occurs after conception. Well, guess what? Nobody contests that. Cell division may be an “ongoing” process, but that doesn’t mean that conception is. They are two entirely different events.
What if pigs could fly? If it’s a human organism, then it’s not a mere cell. It is a cell, but not just any cell.
And so your argument remains irrelevant.
While I admit it was a typo and I could have guessed that (I admit I didn’t), you did actually type **unwed ** pregnancies in that post. Let’s make a deal: you reread the sentence and realise your mistake, and I will ignore the stuff you wrote next.
I am saying that legalised abortion has nothing to do with rising pregnancy rates, and specifically nothing with the problems of teen-pregnancy, since teen-pregnancies wouldn’t be a problem if teens got abortions. But only (just under) 1/3rd of them do in fact get an abortion. From the cite:
Then read the following two quotes from that same page:
Though as I emphasised, both groups are taking the credit, if you can add it up with this quote, you’ll see which one has more reason to do so.
Also, compare the table that I pointed to before, with figures from the U.S. and the Netherlands, the latter being a country where abortion has been legal similarly (although limited to the 13th week I think), but sexual education is obligatory in school for everyone:
Women 15-19 | Age at first intercourse | Live births per 1,000 | Abortion rates per 1,000
United States | 15.8 | 54.4 | 17.0
Netherlands | 17.7 | 6.9 | 5.2
(table probably looks crap, but the original is here: WOA!! World Ovepopulation Awareness )
I will be the first to admit though that education and poverty rates also play an important factor. But all that adds up to the same thing. There are a great number of other issues to be solved before you should even consider making abortion illegal, if ever.
I’m saying that cell division is conception - the cells in question being the sperm and egg. Could you tell me the exact point at which conception occurs without reference to an utterly arbitrary threshold in an ongoing process? If you can’t, then my arbitrary point of 18 weeks or whatever is just as arbitrary as yours.
And the basis on which you are distinguishing them is one of potentiality. A separate sperm and egg are every bit as much a potential human as that cell is. And so I do not understand the complaint about the destruction of that one which does not apply to the other two.
What was a typo? “Unwed” is a subset of “unwanted”. “Teen age unwed” is a subset of “particularly unwanted”.
Ah, the light dawns. You were retracting your earlier claim, since it had been disproven. Thanks for the clarification.
Regards,
Shodan
You may well. On the other hand, an un-meddled-with embryo can and often does spontaneously abort. We’re dealing with what can and might happen, not with what always happens.
If you assume that there are two organisms, then conception obviously can’t be the clear and shining line of personhood, because only one conception happened. Did a twin who has not yet divided from the main conceptus also begin life at conception? How can you tell? And if this hypothetical twin becomes an actual twin but then promptly is reabsorbed by his sibling, producing a chimera, what then?
Not personally. Is there any reason you think that twins can’t be induced in this manner?
Let’s take these in reverse order. First, you can get a twinning very late in the pregnancy. However, this vastly increases the odds of cojoined twins and other complications. Let’s err on the side of caution. After a few divisions, you have a morula, or a ball of completely undifferentiated cells. This structure hasn’t even started to form into a blastocyst yet. This is a cluster of undifferentiated cells.
We agree on this, yes?
Because we can pull off one of these cells, and get two morulas.
Until the cell line dies, we can repeat this process. (Look into stem cell and cancer research to see how long cell lines can live like this.) This is what I meant by an uncountable number of cells. Of course, even the two cells after the first division of the zygote have the same problem.
And finally, if there is even one cell identical to the original fertilized egg, then I do have a point, albeit a less dramatic one.
A couple of points, if I may.
The rhetorical ammunition spent on whether or not certain “leaders” of the pro-choice faction exaggerated the gravity of the situation obscures one question and begs the other. Even if we accept the notion that such a wide spectrum of opinions as “pro-choice” may can be “led” in any meaningful sense, it is specious to represent that the hypocrisy of individual persons has any bearing on the validity of their case. Senator Frist may argue against vivisection of cute, fuzzy kittens and be entirely correct, regardless of his own personal history.
As to how many septic abortions resulted in deaths in the dark years, and how exaggerated a given figure may be, one is moved to ask precisely what number of such deaths is acceptable? 100? 1,000? Personally, I incline towards zero.
And yet you had one pro-choicer here repeatedly insisting that the hypocrisy of a few isolated pro-lifers invalidates the entire pro-life stance. Strangely enough, I don’t see you denouncing his statements.
The thing is, I’m sure that NONE of the pro-lifers here would disagree with what you said. We’re not the ones who claimed that the hypocrisy of certain individuals invalidates the entire movement. That claim came entirely from the pro-choice camp.
You’re jumping from one point to another. We’re not talkign about spontaneous abortions (a.k.a. miscarriages) or other such rot. We were talking about a very specific scenario that you painted. If you want to be taken seriously, then please don’t change the subject.
[QUOTE]
If you assume that there are two organisms, then conception obviously can’t be the clear and shining line of personhood, because only one conception happened. Did a twin who has not yet divided from the main conceptus also begin life at conception? How can you tell?]QUOTE]
Irrelevant. Those would, at best, be exceptions to the rule. To accommodate your exception, one could just as easily claim that life ordinarily begins at conception, but can also begin at the twinning stage. This is consistent with everyday language, wherein statements are often taken to describe a normative state (e.g. “Dogs have four legs”) while allowing for exceptional ones (e.g. “In rare instances, some dogs may have three or five”).
Beckwith discusses that as well. One could just as easily content that one of the organisms ceases to exist. No big mystery there.
roberliguori, NOTHING that you’ve said disproves the notion that life begins at conception. At best, you’ve merely illustrated that in certain exceptional cases, life may begin at other stages as well, e.g. zygote twinning. This does not disprove the statements provided by numerous experts in genetics and embryology, who testified that conception marks the beginning of a new and distinct human individual.
You remind me of the fellow who was asked if motorists need to observe traffic laws. He retorted, “Of course not! What if there’s a medical emergency? This proves that drivers don’t have to obey the law!” This fellow failed to distinguish between normative circumstances and exceptional ones – and your example fails to do that as well.
Then you’re using the term incorrectly. Conception is the fusion of the sperm and the egg cell. It has nothing to do with cell division.
And this is why your objection is irrelevant.