Abortion II

[BeardofPants]

Originally Posted by katya

Ok, no one but the mother (maybe the father one or two other people) I should have said. I know from experience how attached you can get to the baby and how much it hurts... I got over it in a day or two though. No regrets at all.

Thank you for sharing your experience. I've also had an abortion (2 actually - one when I was 16 & a silly git, and one when I was 20 and the birth control failed). I've no regrets. Some women are born to have children. I'm not one of them.

[Lief Erikson]

Originally Posted by Curufin

Why? Why should respect for life apply only to humans?

I responded to this on post 76.

[Lief Erikson]

Originally Posted by sisterandcousinandaunt

Quote:
Originally Posted by Lief Erikson
I haven't changed my mind about anything I said in the Gender Issues Thread, so maybe we should leave your personal story out of this? Unless you'd care to provide evidence to back it up, of course.

I've seen you call yourself so many things, saying in this thread that you "know more about fertility and pregnancy than most people on this board will ever live to," when we were discussing medical issues, saying all your ancestors came to America after enduring persecution when we were debating religious freedom, saying that you'd been a statistics professor back when we were debating statistics, saying you'd been a field associate for "The Gay Rights National Lobby" when we were debating gender, saying you are a high ranking politician who has published many books (but refusing to back this when asked) when we were debating politics . . . It was unfortunate that when you said you were a politician, you were debating with someone who'd taken PS 110 in Community College (a course about the basics), as our argument in the Gender Issues Thread proved.

Maybe your story is all true. I personally don't think so, though, so citing your own experience again won't help you in this discussion, as far as I'm concerned.


. . . Look, I'm sorry that this friction exists between us. I don't want to be struggling with you all the time.

I don't think you're a bad person. I like how you're relating in such a friendly way with a lot of people. I just also don't believe your story. I hope we can improve relations in spite of this.

[. . .] Well sure, I wasn't saying that if my parents started punching me, that would be fine. But I sometimes haven't wanted to look after my younger brothers, and I certainly only "choose" to because I have to. If I didn't look after them, I'd be failing to fulfill my proper function of obedience to parents in the family. It isn't desired, but it is done.




Well, of course I might believe this if you show me a picture of you, and this supposed "brother" and give me your address and password to check your grades on a public forum so that I can check for myself whether you are who you say you are. Until then, anything you say about being a "brother' or a "college student" or a "Catholic" I'll have to take as total exaggeration.

Feel free.

[Lief Erikson]

Originally Posted by katya

I think I anticipated this response from you and replied already. Let me add this though. I wanted a baby more than anything. I didn't care about having to take care of it or how it would mess up my life, in fact I looked forward to it. The thing, the one thing that made me change my mind all at once was that the baby was not wanted at all by the father and that I would not be able to give it everything possible to love it. It had nothing to do with anything else except love for everyone involved.

I sincerely hope you'd never kill me out of love for everyone involved . It's just a scary perspective, to me.

Originally Posted by katya

I guess I'm talking about two different kinds of pain. One kind is everyday suffering like physical pain and various grief and disappointments, "suffering". The other hurt I was talking about is more of a hurt of the soul. Not saying I believe in every person having a nice neat packaged "soul" inside the machine but something somewhat like that. When you act out of self-deception and not out of love, that's harmful to you.

So self-deception is bad, but destroying someone else (an innocent) completely is not?

I really just can't fathom your reasoning. I think it's just too completely foreign to how I think for me to fully grasp your meaning .

[Coffeehouse]

The point is that at such an early stage in the development, the embryo of a human, a chicken, a chimpanzee, etc being so so very similar, there is no consciousness. If we want to speak of what is morally right or wrong, which it seems to boil down to, then ask yourselves this.. Why is it morally wrong to cancel the development of what eventually will become a baby, when in the early stages (during the period where abortion is medically advised), it has no consciousness and no knowledge that it exists. It is a fetus that is being denied the eventual progress into a human being, but it does not know it yet, it does not feel anything yet and it is more appropriate to compare it with a plant than an animal. There is a reason that it takes 9 months from conception to birth.. It begins in simplicity, and ends in complexity. And therefore I think it is entirely up to the woman to decide if she wants to carry through with it or not, stopping it in a point in time where it is just a potential, or carrying it through, letting it become a baby. As far as I know there are no sacred God-given writings scribbled onto every fetus, there is no fundamental right to go from a fetus to a baby. This is a woman's privilege. She must decide. Her body, her giving birth, her pain, her happiness. Simple. It really does not get any more personal than that and I find it disturbing that anyone would object to such an obvious right.

[Coffeehouse]

Originally Posted by Insidious Rex

But the whole point of its use is that it underlies the fact that a fetus grows within its mother host and feeds off her just as any other parasite. And by not allowing an abortion you in effect force the host to retain an organism that is detrimental to its health within their own body. In many ways its like forcing someone to keep a parasite inside them simply because you think they dont have a right to kill it. Some have even compared the fetus to a tumor which even I think is a little extreme. But hey thats kind of how cancer works right?

Put aside your thoughts about "babies" for a second and consider the following: If someone told you (or your wife) that you had a growth, an independent creature different from yourself, inside your abdominal cavity. And that this thing was continuing to increase in size at a rapid rate and had actually attached itself to your blood system and was feeding off of you. And as it grew it could lead to hormonal fluctuations, weight retention, and massive changes in your physiological make up. And worse yet, it seems that in about 9 months or so it will need to emerge right THROUGH your body to complete its life cycle, you would probably scream bloody murder and insist something be done right away. Wouldnt you? And if someone held up their hand and said no, thou shalt not kill the life inside you, you would probably think them insane or that it was certainly no business of theirs what you do about whats happening inside you.

Now apply that thinking to the notion of forcing a woman to keep their fetus against their will. And maybe perhaps you can get a glimpse of why its really wrong of US to dictate to HER what she should be doing with whats going on INSIDE her body...

If the fetus did not impact her LIKE a parasite none of this reasoning would apply.

Well put!

[Nautipus]

Originally Posted by Coffeehouse

The point

NOW we're talkin.

is that at such an early stage in the development, the embryo of a human, a chicken, a chimpanzee, etc being so so very similar, there is no consciousness.

As I said earlier, neither does a person in a coma, should we just have them destroyed as well?

If we want to speak of what is morally right or wrong, which it seems to boil down to, then ask yourselves this.. Why is it morally wrong to cancel the development of what eventually will become a baby, when in the early stages (during the period where abortion is medically advised), it has no consciousness and no knowledge that it exists. It is a fetus that is being denied the eventual progress into a human being, but it does not know it yet,

No, but YOU do. What has been done, has been done. If a person consents to sex, they know the risks, it is irresponsible and ignorant to say otherwise.

it does not feel anything yet and it is more appropriate to compare it with a plant than an animal.

Not much for biology, are you?

There is a reason that it takes 9 months from conception to birth.. It begins in simplicity, and ends in complexity. And therefore I think it is entirely up to the woman to decide if she wants to carry through with it or not, stopping it in a point in time where it is just a potential, or carrying it through, letting it become a baby. As far as I know there are no sacred God-given writings scribbled onto every fetus, there is no fundamental right to go from a fetus to a baby. This is a woman's privilege. She must decide. Her body, her giving birth, her pain, her happiness.

So....what? A human should just spring into being? A human is made at conception, if you destroy that tissue you have destroyed a human being, period. In sex that was consented to by both parties involved, abortion shouldnt even come up. The mistake is theirs. Rape....I still beleive that it is a person. Abslutely and with no equivcations. But when you cut short a life, you dont allow that life the same chance of happiness that you enjoy.

Simple. It really does not get any more personal than that and I find it disturbing that anyone would object to such an obvious right.

We all seem to want to end our posts with snarky little comments like this. Makes me laugh a little.

[Nerdanel]

Originally Posted by Nautipus

As I said earlier, neither does a person in a coma, should we just have them destroyed as well?

That, I think, is called Euthanasia and has its own thread.

Yeah, I'm sitting in here, listening to your debates.. It sort of makes me happy that I live in this world and not one in some of your minds.

[Nautipus]

HA! I was JUST about to bring that debate in here as well, happened to hit "new posts" and saw this.

BUT, I believe that is a similar, but at its core different, scenario. Your killing person (A) for the benefit of person (A), not person (A) for the benefit of person (B). And, in this kind of euthanasia, the patient still has no say.

[Mari]

I was wondering: how do the pro-lifers among us think about the use of the 'morning-after' pill. Here it is considered to be a prevention method, prescribed by a doctor, just like the ordinary pill.
Since it is usually taken the morning/day after unsafe sex and without knowing if someone is pregnant or not (can you know after a few hours? Can you consider someone to be pregnant after a few hours?) I was wondering if you might think that that's a different case.

[Nautipus]

Originally Posted by Nerdanel

Yeah, I'm sitting in here, listening to your debates.. It sort of makes me happy that I live in this world and not one in some of your minds.

I missed this, but its another one of those snarky comments that, I assume, are meant to grate nerves.

[Lief Erikson]

Originally Posted by Coffeehouse

The point is that at such an early stage in the development, the embryo of a human, a chicken, a chimpanzee, etc being so so very similar, there is no consciousness. If we want to speak of what is morally right or wrong, which it seems to boil down to, then ask yourselves this.. Why is it morally wrong to cancel the development of what eventually will become a baby, when in the early stages (during the period where abortion is medically advised), it has no consciousness and no knowledge that it exists. It is a fetus that is being denied the eventual progress into a human being, but it does not know it yet, it does not feel anything yet and it is more appropriate to compare it with a plant than an animal. There is a reason that it takes 9 months from conception to birth.. It begins in simplicity, and ends in complexity. And therefore I think it is entirely up to the woman to decide if she wants to carry through with it or not, stopping it in a point in time where it is just a potential, or carrying it through, letting it become a baby. As far as I know there are no sacred God-given writings scribbled onto every fetus, there is no fundamental right to go from a fetus to a baby. This is a woman's privilege. She must decide. Her body, her giving birth, her pain, her happiness. Simple. It really does not get any more personal than that and I find it disturbing that anyone would object to such an obvious right.

I responded to this argument on post 26 (I think that's on page 2).

I'll add that so far, other pro-choice advocates on this thread have either rejected it or kept it at arm's length. Sis rejected it outright on post 34. Curufin, Katya and Mari haven't mentioned it, making other approaches instead. So this hardly seems to be "the point."

[Coffeehouse]

Originally Posted by Nautipus

NOW we're talkin.



As I said earlier, neither does a person in a coma, should we just have them destroyed as well?



No, but YOU do. What has been done, has been done. If a person consents to sex, they know the risks, it is irresponsible and ignorant to say otherwise.

Not much for biology, are you?



So....what? A human should just spring into being? A human is made at conception, if you destroy that tissue you have destroyed a human being, period. In sex that was consented to by both parties involved, abortion shouldnt even come up. The mistake is theirs. Rape....I still beleive that it is a person. Abslutely and with no equivcations. But when you cut short a life, you dont allow that life the same chance of happiness that you enjoy.


We all seem to want to end our posts with snarky little comments like this. Makes me laugh a little.

Yep kinda like your last comment right now Touche!

We differ on one important aspect. In my view, it is more important to care for the welfare of those who currently live and breath, alive and kicking, before those who might live, with the potential of life. It is as simple as that. And that is why girls and women alike should be able to choose the paths of their lives, how they want to grow up, when they want to give birth and in the manner they want to do it. It is the welfare of these women, who live now that comes before anyone living in the future.
Let people live as best as they want now, and future children will grow up in a more harmonious world.

Originally Posted by Nautipus

Not much for biology, are you?

On the contrary, biology interests me a great deal, and it's a pretty obvious point I'm making.

[Nautipus]

Originally Posted by Coffeehouse

The point is that at such an early stage in the development, the embryo of a human, a chicken, a chimpanzee, etc being so so very similar, there is no consciousness

BTW (as per Tuinor) neither do you when you're asleep.

You have just justified the murder of any sleeping person who you dont deem fit to live, that would be too much responsibility.

(come on, laugh. you know you want to.)

[Insidious Rex]

Originally Posted by Mari

I was wondering: how do the pro-lifers among us think about the use of the 'morning-after' pill. Here it is considered to be a prevention method, prescribed by a doctor, just like the ordinary pill.
Since it is usually taken the morning/day after unsafe sex and without knowing if someone is pregnant or not (can you know after a few hours? Can you consider someone to be pregnant after a few hours?) I was wondering if you might think that that's a different case.

This is an important point you raise Mari. I find it interesting when pro-lifers are asked if there is ANY point post fertilization where its ok to consider abortion. Lets take it to its logical extreme and assume the two cell zygote stage, as primitive as you can get. Is this a human like you and me? Does it have the exact same rights? Would we have to adhere to the EXACT same limitations and moral choices when dealing with this 2 celled object as we would when dealing with an adult human?

If your answer is NO then at what point do things change as far as the zygote/fetus is concerned and how can you really maintain a true pro-life perspective on abortion if you are arbitrary about the point in time when it matters?

If your answer is YES then how in the world can you possibly justify (possibly) risking the life of the mother or bringing a 2 celled zygote into a situation where, as a human, it may suffer greatly? You cant actually believe its developed enough to have sentience or human like thoughts when it doesn’t even have a brain yet. So what is it that drives you to still think it a full human worthy of protection even at the cost of its mothers health or welfare or possibly of its own later?

[Coffeehouse]

Originally Posted by Nautipus

BTW (as per Tuinor) neither do you when you're asleep.

You have just justified the murder of any sleeping person who you dont deem fit to live, that would be too much responsibility.

(come on, laugh. you know you want to.)

Asleep?

The word consciousness, or lack of, I use in this context to describe the fetus inside a woman as not being conscious of it's own existence. Or perhaps better put, not being self-conscious. A poor choice of word from my part I admit

The fetus shares the DNA, but it does not share the fundamental aspects of a human being. It can not think, it can not reason, it can not feel, it can not see, it can not breath and it can not hear. It is by all measures, plant-like, or as Insidious writes, parasitical, feeding off its host. The fetus is only a potential human being, but it is not yet a human being. That happens much later in the process in my view, and a good reason why after a certain number of weeks it is inadvisable to cancel the pregnancy.

P.S. But read Insidious' last post. He(?) makes some good points in his answer to Mari.

[Lief Erikson]

Originally Posted by Insidious Rex

This is an important point you raise Mari. I find it interesting when pro-lifers are asked if there is ANY point post fertilization where its ok to consider abortion. Lets take it to its logical extreme and assume the two cell zygote stage, as primitive as you can get. Is this a human like you and me? Does it have the exact same rights? Would we have to adhere to the EXACT same limitations and moral choices when dealing with this 2 celled object as we would when dealing with an adult human?

[. . .] If your answer is YES then how in the world can you possibly justify (possibly) risking the life of the mother or bringing a 2 celled zygote into a situation where, as a human, it may suffer greatly? You cant actually believe its developed enough to have sentience or human like thoughts when it doesn’t even have a brain yet. So what is it that drives you to still think it a full human worthy of protection even at the cost of its mothers health or welfare or possibly of its own later?

Technically, no one is a "full human," by your arbitrary interpretation of that term, until late adolescence when brain development ends. There is no logical reason to stop killing children at birth rather than at late adolescence, if we're going by the brain development, "full human" argument. One has to start pulling out other reasons, such as the mother, when justifying ceasing to kill children at birth.

Enormous development occurs in a child in the first weeks after conception, especially in the brain, and by the end of the first trimester, the little human has all his major organs.

But you're talking about zygote stage. I'd argue that you can't kill zygotes for the following reason:

Originally Posted by Insidious Rex

If your answer is NO then at what point do things change as far as the zygote/fetus is concerned and how can you really maintain a true pro-life perspective on abortion if you are arbitrary about the point in time when it matters?

We can't defend human beings, people, effectively if the point at which we decide when personhood begins is arbitrary. If personhood is based on psychological development, logically it should begin in late adolescence when psychological development ends. All life before that should be killable material.

YES, a zygote should have the same rights as we do. To treat it otherwise is to determine the beginning of personhood arbitrarily, denying people rights based on our view of their biological development rather than on whether or not they've done anything wrong. That is the same evil committed by Anti-Semites and Racists. Racists and Anti-Semites didn't have good enough information to make the kinds of judgments they were. Neither do we. Pro-Choice advocates acknowledge that determining when a tiny cellular human life becomes a person (which really is a bigger living mass of cells) is an arbitrary judgment. Birth is, according to scientists, a neurologically trivial event in the development of a child.

Humans should not dare to set arbitrary lines in the development of a human, declaring when that human is a person, because of the moral risk that they are legalizing genocide. Any points other than conception (when development starts) and late adolescence (when brain development ends) are arbitrary.

The suffering of women is not a good enough reason to start drawing those arbitrary lines, risking the creation of a genocide.

Besides, we all consider a child 1 week after birth to be a child, but abortions 1 week before birth are legal. So psychologically speaking, there's no difference between that child in the womb and the one outside, and as the ones inside the womb are no different and yet still can legally be killed, we know that murder is occurring through the laws as they stand now.

I can pose this for any arbitrary line you draw. 1-week before "personhood," the child is virtually identical to what it is 1-week after we determine "personhood" to magically begin, so murder is always going to be occurring when abortion of anyone at any stage in development is allowed. That's one of the obvious horrors of the legalization of abortion, and is one of the reasons people tend to rely on non-neurological development arguments.

[Coffeehouse]

Originally Posted by Lief Erikson

Humans should not dare to set arbitrary lines in the development of a human, declaring when that human is a person, because of the moral risk that they are legalizing genocide.

A society can not live in such a state Lief. A state where potential risks reign the air and suffocate the possibilities of well-being. This is an unhealthy state. It is also language which tastes of fundamentalism. In that respect you are correct when you speak of anti-semitism, and racism. They are intolerant views, and they see risk in all that is foreign, all that they find somehow objectionable or hard to understand.

It is this same type of language I see in much of the pro-life arguments. An objection to make different choices. Some choose abortion, some don't. It is a right to choose. It is a fundamentalist, an unhealthy position to take, trying to deny this right, on the basis of a potential moral risk of genocide (which I believe to be completely unfounded).

[Lief Erikson]

Originally Posted by Coffeehouse

Quote:
Originally Posted by Lief Erikson
Humans should not dare to set arbitrary lines in the development of a human, declaring when that human is a person, because of the moral risk that they are legalizing genocide.


A society can not live in such a state Lief. A state where potential risks reign the air and suffocate the possibilities of well-being.

Anti-Semites and Racists could have argued the same thing. A number would have said that while it's possible they were wrong about blacks or Jews, they shouldn't let that risk that they were wrong stifle the possibilities of their well-being. Never mind the well-being of the blacks or Jews. Similarly, pro-choice folks can say that potential risks of genocide shouldn't suffocate the well-being of mothers, but never mind the well-being of the child. Or, just as racists sometimes tried to argue that slavery is better for blacks than their own barbaric state of nature, some proponents of choice say that the child is better off dead than possibly a criminal or a psychologically deteriorated person.

There are actually a very large number of parallels between racist arguments and pro-choice arguments. I've been studying racism in college, and in the last month or two have been pondering occasionally whether or not I should write a short fiction book or a long story about all the argumentative ties that exist between the two.

Originally Posted by Coffeehouse

This is an unhealthy state. It is also language which tastes of fundamentalism.

Name-call all you want. I greatly admire the efforts many Fundamentalists have been taking against abortion. It is not unhealthy to try to prevent mass murder. It is unhealthy to gamble with hundreds of millions of lives. And that's what happens when people support the Pro-Choice cause with the full awareness that their defining line for personhood is arbitrary and someone killed a day before the "Person now!" date is no different from someone spared a day after it.

Originally Posted by Coffeehouse

In that respect you are correct when you speak of anti-semitism, and racism. They are intolerant views, and they see risk in all that is foreign, all that they find somehow objectionable or hard to understand.

It is this same type of language I see in much of the pro-life arguments. An objection to make different choices. Some choose abortion, some don't. It is a right to choose. It is a fundamentalist, an unhealthy position to take, trying to deny this right, on the basis of a potential moral risk of genocide (which I believe to be completely unfounded).

All you're doing here is caricaturing those who disagree with you as idiots. That serves no useful purpose.

[Coffeehouse]

Originally Posted by Lief Erikson

All you're doing here is caricaturing those who disagree with you as idiots.

Those are your words Lief, not mine.