page one, but I’ll just copy it down for you:
Alloran, as was mentioned earlier, if you feel that abortion is murder, then who do you propose should be criminally
liable? The mother? If so, do you propose criminal investigation of all miscarriages, regardless of situation, to make sure that none were self induced?
What do you recommend as an option to abortion for people?
I would like to reccomend TO ALL an EXCELLENT site that seems to provide a balanced and detailed view of both sides without screaming and scratching:
http://www.religioustolerance.org/abortion.htm
You may note that, in the section on abortion methods, even the late-term part, the words used are “fetus” and “embryo.” “Baby” is used only when quoting a Baptist site.
Major, et. al., Psychological Responses of Women After First-Trimester Abortion. Arch Gen Psychiatry. 2000;57:777-784. From the abstract:
Soderberg H, Janzon L, Sjoberg NO, Emotional distress following induced abortion: a study of its incidence and determinants among abortees in Malmo, Sweden. Eur J Obstet Gynecol Reprod Biol (Ireland), Aug 1998, 79(2) p173-8. From the abstract:
The risk factors for post-abortion distress were: living alone, poor emotional support from family and friends, adverse postabortion change in relations with partner, underlying ambivalence or adverse attitude to abortion, and being actively religious. I thought the inclusion criteria for “emotional distress” for this one were fairly liberal (it’s hard to say–it’s a very poorly written abstract).
Most articles that I’ve read on the subject find that most women look back at an elective abortion as the right decision at the time. Those who have emotional difficulties afterward are often those who had major reservations in the first place or who lacked support for their decision from loved ones. You also can’t argue that emotional sequelae are a reason to outlaw abortion unless you compare the emotional response of mothers who wanted to abort but couldn’t for some reason, and those would be some seriously tainted numbers–who is going to admit that their child has caused long-term emotional distress that aborting him would have averted?
Dr. J
Very nice cites – but what do they have to do with the questions people have been asking you? Nothing, that’s what.
As for your statement about cloning, you said:
This doesn’t at all address what I said. Are you claiming that anything that doesn’t occur in an animal’s body is unnatural? Surely not.
If a bird makes a nest, is that natural? Most people would say it is. Yet the bird is using other items to reshape the terrain.
Man is using technology to reshape the world as well. How can you say that certain parts of that are unnatural?
Suppose you have two cells. One of them–Cell # 1–is a cell from my body, which you are about to prepare for cloning. The other–Cell # 2–is an egg cell taken from a woman and fertilized in a dish with sperm taken from a man. Both are living organisms; both are genetically human; both are capable, under the right circumstances, of developing into fully formed human beings. Both will be implanted in the womb of a surrogate mother in order to complete their development, and both will then be born from the body of that surrogate mother, either naturally or by C-section as events warrant.
Would you make any moral distinction between Cells # 1 and 2? Would it make any moral difference to you that Cell # 1 is genetically identical with the cells of an existing human being, whereas Cell # 2 is genetically different from all other humans who have ever lived? Would it make any difference to you whether or not Cell # 1 was still just a regular liver cell from my body, or if it had already been treated so that it had begun the process of cell division and development into a fully formed human organism?
Just to clarify my above message: It looks like I’m commenting on DoctorJ’s message, but I’m not. I mistakenly thought I was posting directly after alloran’s message at the end of page 2 (which I didn’t realize was the end of page 2 at the time). Whoops! Sorry for any confusion.
Okay… Just to recap.
“Test Tube aka non-artifical method done with equipment not available in the body”
Egg is taken from freezer. Sperm is taken from freezer. Sperm inserted into egg while in a glass dish. Mitosis begins. Embryo inserted into woman via syringe. Baby is born.
“Cloning aka artificial method done with equipment not available in the body”
A cell is taken from sheep. Egg is taken from second sheep and has genetic material removed. Egg and cell combined. Mitosis begins. Embryo inserted into sheep via syringe. Dolly is born.
Can cloning happen naturally? No
Can “test tube babies” happen naturally? No
Why is one more natural than the other?
You don’t see a moral difference between killing 100% of the cells in your body versus killing 100% of the cells in a zygote?
So, what? Children are parasites on both parents until they can feed themselves, which they can not do until at least age 5. Just because it is a direct and untransferable blood connection as opposed to a child you have to mouth feed and which you can give away doesn’t make a vast difference.
If someone dropped a baby on my doorstep, I’d have a moral obligation to take care of it. People have a moral obligation to feed others when they are able.
Hey, I could go down to my local high school tomorrow with an uzi, kill a dozen people, and never feel a moments regret either. Just because you don’t feel bad about something doesn’t justify it.
(which, of course, is the flaw in Alloran’s argument – his assuming some level of empathy in his fellow man which doesn’t in fact exist)
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by jmullaney *
**
Provided that other people’s moral values are consistent with your own.
jmullaney:
Correct. On the same note, just because a person feels regret doesn’t mean he/she has done something that is morally wrong. Emotions don’t decide the morality of an issue. Each person responds emotionally to each event in a unique way. It’s purely subjective.
Since alloran seemed to be pointing to the negative emotions women feel after having abortions (and indeed stated that most, if not all women experience such negative emotions) as “evidence” that abortion is wrong, I felt compelled to present an opposing viewpoint. The best “evidence” I can contribute to that particular argument is my own personal experience, which directly contradicts alloran’s allegation.
Oh, it’s OK, David–we all know you can’t trust those “respectable” medical journals. They’re just a branch of the liberal, pro-abortion media. Next time I’ll post info from a more impartial source, like godhatesbabykillers.com.
Dr. J
Well, were I hungry and unable to feed myself, I’d want others to feed me. It seems a reasonable morality to proactively reciprocate.
Exactly. I don’t feel regret is particularly healthy. As an adult, I don’t choose to do things which I would regret.
I agree with much of what Billy Rubin said. Basically, the question of whether the fetus is a human being or not comes down to a matter of belief…i.e., what a human being is to you. (Although medical science can certain help us in forming that belief by providing some understanding of what the nature of the fetus is at various points in its development.)
The important facts of the case are:
(1) There is no general agreement in our society that a human life begins at conception and therefore that abortion is murder.
(2) A pregnancy involves considerable costs to the mother and therefore not giving a woman the right to have control over her own body is a considerable invasion of her rights and is not to be taken lightly.
(3) Women have always had abortions and will continue to do so whether it is legal or not. Like prohibition, a law outlawing abortion, even if it could be passed, is not likely to accomplish its objectives unless the primary objectives are causing injury and death to a number of women who try to violate it.
As Planned Parenthood has pointed out, there are many good ways to reduce the number of abortions (by reducing the numbers of unwanted pregnancies). Other countries (such as the Scandinavian ones) which are very liberal in regards to sexuality and abortion have much lower rates of unwanted pregnancies, I believe.
Unfortunately, most of those who oppose abortion also oppose most of these methods because what they really want to do is impose their entire fucking moral code on us. [As a friend of mine once said, he could respect someone who opposed abortion because they truly felt it was murder, but only if they had the consistency in their beliefs that they were willing to tolerate lots of other things—like real enlightened sex education programs—in order to help prevent this serious moral wrong. Otherwise, as I said, it is all just window dressing for someone who really just wants you to live by their entire moral code.]
Actually, I do see a moral difference between killing 100% of the cells in my body–which would entail killing a person–versus killing 100% of the cells in a zygote–which would entail taking life but not the killing of a person. I take life all the time–[Mr. Spock]“In a sense, Captain, we all feed on death”[/Mr. Spock]–but I don’t kill people. (Unless PETA is right and cows and chickens are people, too.)
You claim it isn’t a person. I prefer to patiently wait nine months and find out whether it is a person or not. Want to place a bet?
Well, in nine months, it will be a person. No one is disagreeing now.
What makes it a person now?
After nine months, a zygote will be a person. But as a zygote, it is not.
A zygote still has much more potential for long-term division than any other cell.
:l
Nope…they all have the same potential. All it takes is a little tweaking. How this tweaking is accomplished, we don’t really know.
But I’ll have you know that a fairly large number of my family members have been killed by “long term division” of cells, and I’d bet that some of YOUR family has been too.