Quote:
Originally Posted by GGG
Thanks for answering. My questions were all trying to get at how we as a society view a fetus when the question is whether to kill it or not.
1)Why is a fertilized embryo outside the womb not treated the same as an embryo inside the womb. They are as much a living thing as a newly fertilized thing inside a womb. By your definition life has been created at this point.
2) in this case you are acknowledging that the zygote isn’t the same as a human life. If the parents want to mourn it they can choose to whereas it would be really odd to say that about a two year old. So there is definitely a different value placed on embryonic life as opposed to outside the womb life in terms of the trauma, traditions around mourning, and long term scarring. This was true long before abortion became mainstream. So independent of the abortion questions we certainly treat fetuses differently.
3) If a disease killed 33% of babies after they were born we would be doing everything in our power to prevent this from happening. My point wasn’t trying to equate abortion to miscarriage it was to show that the life of a fetus and the life of a child outside the womb have clearly different values in the way we deploy medical research.
Aside from the ethics of Abortion what is the practicality of legislation if you were to ban it. What do you do with the kids people don’t want? How do you deter and prevent abortion. What punishments do you put in place for people who get them
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1) I originally read your question in such a way as to gauge what should be done with unused embryos that are slated for disposal (since I believe that's usually what happens?). So my original answer reflected that assumption--treat remains with dignity. I suppose I should actually mention that I disagree with IVF, precisely because it results in a large number of unused embryos in the first place, but also for other reasons. But I'll answer the hypothetical. Every effort should be made to find a surrogate for unused embryos.
2) Similarly, I answered this question too literally. Realizing that you meant mourning in general, then yes. I believe that they should be mourned. In what way? I think that's up to the parents depending on their values and belief systems. How one chooses to mourn the loss though, isn't really indicative of the humanity of the lost life. There are psychopaths who have murdered their born kids without a sense of remorse or mourning--the humanity of their kid is still unquestioned.
Thinking about this idea of mourning the life in the womb is interesting though. I believe that it should be mourned, but I can understand how it's easy for people to not feel a need to mourn. After all, it's such an early stage of development that one often hasn't built that deep emotional connection yet. It's easy to just see it as meaningless cells. Which is why it's probably so easy for many people to disregard its humanity. But when it comes down to it, biologically, it's an individual human life with new unique DNA that will grow into a full adult--just very, very, very early on. There's a reason why the Genocide Awareness Project, very controversial I know, uses images. It's not to disgust people, but to show them how remarkably human the embryos appear early on. Google an image of an embryo at 6 weeks, when many pregnancies are realized. It's tiny but oh so beautiful. You can see a head, where spinal cord will develop, where the eyes will be etc. Just amazing. I'm not a parent, but when I first saw my nephew's ultrasound as a little lentil, it was love at first sight. I believe a lot of people are pro-choice because they haven't really thought deeply about what has happened at conception--what's already in place. Being involved with pro-life groups and circles, many hearts have been changed by simply having that conversation.
3) That's the thing though, I believe we should be dedicating resources for such research. However, I think there's very little that can be done in terms of medical intervention. It's hard to prevent the body from rejecting a pregnancy if it's trying to. My sister recently went through a miscarriage at about 5 weeks. It was really tough on her emotionally and physically. She was aware that it was threatened a week before, but the docs said there was basically nothing that could be done. It was all up to God. In the end the baby was lost. She mourned it and still prays to it in heaven this day.
On to the practicals. There's really no easy solution to any of these questions. An overhaul of the adoption process would obviously be necessary--easier said than done. Preventing and deterring abortions ultimately goes beyond legislation. Legislation is one tool. But really, if we're to prevent abortions, it's a massive cultural shift that needs to take place. It saddens me that our culture is so quick to disregard human life. I wouldn't know where to begin. One of the reasons why I post in here despite knowing that most will disagree is that maybe someone who's lurking or something will have a change of heart. That's it. Starts with changing hearts. On a personal note, my Mom was scheduled for an abortion when she was pregnant with me. A nurse took her aside and convinced her not to. Thank God for that lol or maybe not from the perspective of the pro-choice people in here who probably think I hate women
As for punishments, I tend to lean on the side that abortion providers should be criminally liable.
Anyhow, thanks for the questions. It's a topic that I and many others care about deeply and it's great to be able to have this discussion civilly even if it's clear many of us are very far apart on important questions.