Abortion and..

[Iowa_Flames_Fan]

Originally Posted by eazyduzzit

a baby is a baby, 8 months or 8 hours.

You may have missed it, but there was an entire thread devoted mostly to this topic, having to do with embryonic stem cell research.


You should know that this is a matter of some debate. 8 hours after fertilization, all you have is a fertilized egg that has begun to divide. You don't have a "person" by any definition that I would recognize. If you do, then fertility clinics are committing mass murder every day. Each time they perform an IVF procedure, by your definition, 7 or 8 "people" are "murdered."

Even after 4 DAYS, let alone hours, all you have is what's called a blastocyst, a collection of undifferentiated cells. It has no nervous system, no heart, no brain, no body, it doesn't eat, it doesn't excrete, it doesn't do anything. It is, in a very real sense, not even alive, let alone not human. I don't want to rehash that whole debate, but I think there is some value in differentiating between a "baby," an "embryo," a "blastocyst" and a fertilized egg, each of which represents a totally different stage of gestation.

[Devils'Advocate]

Originally Posted by eazyduzzit

As for "Pro-Choice", the woman made that choice when she chose to be sexually active, rape and circumstances like that aside.

E-gads. We still haven't evolved past the "she shouldn't have spread her legs" argument?

In any case, there are very few states that allow murder charges on fetuses. California just happens to be one of them. As much as I would like the Petersons of the world to be charged with the crime, you are correct in saying that it doesn't jive. Which is why the Henry Winkler's (SVU, third season) can't be charged unless the baby takes a breath. According to Canadian and most American laws, you can't be murdered unless you were born.

[Red Mile Style]

Abortion is murder, regardless of who does it - the mother or some crazy dude. It is the termination of a living fetus. Seems pretty simple to me. The rationale behind the termination is irrelevant, as far as I am concerned.

With that said, the whole if she was raped situation.. uh, that's tough. The only rationale that perhaps is somewhat valid in my opinion. The only reason why is because if that child grows up in an environment that is not nurturing, the psychological repercussions could be huge. If that child grows up thinking that she/he was conceived in such a irreprehensible way and is consistantly being treated as such, that can lead to disorders that could range anywhere from psychopath serial-killer to schizophrenia. But, it is not guaranteed that these disorders would develop, especially if the child is raised in a loving home, which I admit would be pretty hard considering the circumstances. But, if there would be one situation where I sympathized with someone who had an abortion, it would be that one.

[eazyduzzit]

Originally Posted by Iowa_Flames_Fan

It is, in a very real sense, not even alive, let alone not human.

But it is alive, because it's constantly growing, developing and changing. I would never have developed into a human being or be posting this thread if i where not "alive" after my conception.

Basically all your saying is because it dosen't have a cute face of any distinguishable features, it dosen't matter. But once you can see what it is, weather it's a cute face or some hands/feet, then it's not ok.

Reading your past posts, i've drawn the conclusions you favor science when it comes to the evolution of man (correct me if i'm wrong) so that same science should apply with this issue.

Originally Posted by Red Mile Style

With that said, the whole if she was raped situation.. uh, that's tough. The only rationale that perhaps is somewhat valid in my opinion. The only reason why is because if that child grows up in an environment that is not nurturing, the psychological repercussions could be huge. If that child grows up thinking that she/he was conceived in such a irreprehensible way and is consistantly being treated as such, that can lead to disorders that could range anywhere from psychopath serial-killer to schizophrenia. But, it is not guaranteed that these disorders would develop, especially if the child is raised in a loving home, which I admit would be pretty hard considering the circumstances. But, if there would be one situation where I sympathized with someone who had an abortion, it would be that one.

I agree.

[Iowa_Flames_Fan]

Originally Posted by Red Mile Style

With that said, the whole if she was raped situation.. uh, that's tough. The only rationale that perhaps is somewhat valid in my opinion. The only reason why is because if that child grows up in an environment that is not nurturing, the psychological repercussions could be huge. If that child grows up thinking that she/he was conceived in such a irreprehensible way and is consistantly being treated as such, that can lead to disorders that could range anywhere from psychopath serial-killer to schizophrenia.

Other things can cause an environment that is not nurturing. One of them is if your parents are poor. So by this logic, abortion should only be illegal for rich people. The fact is, as soon as you allow for environmental factors such as this, you have to also include in your thinking the fact that a child that is unwanted will also be raised in an environment that is not nurturing. This is why the rape argument is such a boondoggle for the pro-life side of this debate. You're kind of in a corner--either it's about the life of the embryo or fetus (depending on gestational age) or other moral factors count. And if other moral factors count, then others besides rape or incest are also valid.

I'm a little alarmed that you think rape is the "only" time you sympathize with abortion. What if carrying a baby to term is a grave threat to the health of the mother?!?

Personally, I think you should have to get a license to be allowed to carry a child to term. The social consequences of being a bad parent are far more dire than the social consequences of terminating a pregnancy.

But.... schizophrenia isn't caused by environmental factors, just FYI. It, like most mental illnesses, is due to a biological problem with the brain.

[Table 5]

Originally Posted by Red Mile Style

The rationale behind the termination is irrelevant, as far as I am concerned.

But that's exactly it, you are NOT concerned in the matter. It's not your decision to make what someone does with their body.

[Table 5]

Originally Posted by eazyduzzit

But it is alive, because it's constantly growing, developing and changing.

Basically all your saying is because it dosen't have a cute face of any distinguishable features, it dosen't matter. But once you can see what it is, weather it's a cute face or some hands/feet, then it's not ok.

Reading your past posts, i've drawn the conclusions you favor science when it comes to the evolution of man (correct me if i'm wrong) so that same science should apply with this issue.

You kill millions of bacteria and minute-life on your body and in your environment every day. Are you equally concerned about their existence? After all, it's living...so it shouldnt matter right?

[Iowa_Flames_Fan]

Originally Posted by eazyduzzit

But it is alive, because it's constantly growing, developing and changing.

Basically all your saying is because it dosen't have a cute face of any distinguishable features, it dosen't matter. But once you can see what it is, weather it's a cute face or some hands/feet, then it's not ok.

Reading your past posts, i've drawn the conclusions you favor science when it comes to the evolution of man (correct me if i'm wrong) so that same science should apply with this issue.

It's fair to conclude that I'm pro-science. And science is what leads me to the conclusion that a blastocyst is not a human being. Why? Because I define a person as a self-conscious being--a being with a brain that allows it to have a subjective experience of the world. A blastocyst has no brain. It cannot experience the world. In fact, it cannot experience anything. It's not yet a person. If you eat an apple, are you killing an apple tree?

If you ask a biologist to define a "life form," they'll probably say something like this: "a discrete organism that eats, excretes and reproduces." Well, a blastocyst does none of these things. It is, in a biological sense, not yet alive. The cells have not yet organized themselves into anything that science could recognize as an organism.

[eazyduzzit]

Originally Posted by Table 5

You kill millions of bacteria and minute-life on your body and in your environment every day. Are you equally concerned about their existence? After all, it's living...so it shouldnt matter right?

Do bacteria grow into human beings, post on calgarypuck, go to school, drive cars, launch themselfs into space and all other achievements of man?

Time for a real example.

Originally Posted by Iowa_Flames_Fan

It's fair to conclude that I'm pro-science. And science is what leads me to the conclusion that a blastocyst is not a human being. Why? Because I define a person as a self-conscious being--a being with a brain that allows it to have a subjective experience of the world. A blastocyst has no brain. It cannot experience the world. In fact, it cannot experience anything. It's not yet a person. If you eat an apple, are you killing an apple tree?

If you ask a biologist to define a "life form," they'll probably say something like this: "a discrete organism that eats, excretes and reproduces." Well, a blastocyst does none of these things. It is, in a biological sense, not yet alive. The cells have not yet organized themselves into anything that science could recognize as an organism.

I see where your coming from, you have your ideas i have mine and neither of us are going to budge.

You believe that cell(s) is only to be considered human once it's distinguishable or has a brain etc. I believe it to be alive from the moment of conception.

I would not be here if that cell was no alive around conception, reguardless if i had hands and legs. Everything has to start somewhere.

[Iowa_Flames_Fan]

Originally Posted by Table 5

But that's exactly it, you are NOT concerned in the matter. It's not your decision to make what someone does with their body.

This is exactly why the "is it a life/is it not a life" debate is kind of a canard. Why does one life take priority over another?

Take a hypothetical situation. You're walking through a hospital ward, and suddenly a doctor comes up behind you. They tell you that in the next room, there is a person who will die unless you give them a blood transfusion every 10 minutes for the next 9 months. No other person can do it; it has to be you, because of your unique blood type. Now there can be no argument that this is indeed a person. Or that this person will die if you don't agree that they have a right to the contents of your body.

If you decide that actually, you don't want to sacrifice your body for this purpose, are you then guilty of murder?

Being pregnant is of course different, because at the end of it, you have a baby. But sometimes women don't want a baby. And moreover, they don't want to be pregnant for 9 months, either because it will have career repercussions for them, or because oh, I don't know, they're 14 years old and will have to be taken out of their school. Or because they have an illness that makes pregnancy dangerous. Or because they're mentally ill, and need teratogenic medications in order to function. There's a whole host of possible reasons.

[Table 5]

Originally Posted by eazyduzzit

Do bacteria grow into human beings, post on calgarypuck, go to school, drive cars, launch themselfs into space and all other achievements of man?

they can if you give em enough time. that's the beauty of evolution!

[eazyduzzit]

Originally Posted by Table 5

they can if you give em enough time. that's the beauty of evolution!

lol

[Iowa_Flames_Fan]

Originally Posted by eazyduzzit

You believe that cell(s) is only to be considered human once it's distinguishable or has a brain etc. I believe it to be alive from the moment of conception.

I would not be here if that cell was no alive around conception, reguardless if i had hands and legs. Everything has to start somewhere.

Life is not an ex nihilo proposition. What this means is that it doesn't emerge from nothing. It's simply not the case that one moment you're not even alive, and the next--boom!--you're a human being. That would be absurd. Life has to come from something--it has to have a substrate. Logically, that substrate has to exist first. Do you believe that you would exist without your body? If so, did that "self" pre-exist your physical body, before you were born? If that's the case, how do you know life didn't begin long BEFORE the moment of conception?

If a fertilized egg is alive, this means a non-fertilized egg must be alive also. It has to mean this--because the only detectable difference is in the cell membrane. For that matter, a sperm must be alive also, since it is the thing that brought "life" into the egg.

For me, I believe that I exist in my body. My self is the sum of the experiences of my senses, processed by my brain. Before I had a brain, "I" did not exist. The substrate had to exist first, before I could be considered a person.

You seem to suggest that I'm wrong in how I'm defining life. I'm curious--maybe you could define life for me, so that we can at least try to work with the same definition. By what definition is a fertilized egg or blastocyst to be considered a life form?

[Table 5]

Very nicely put, Iowa_Flames_Fan.

[Winsor_Pilates]

Originally Posted by eazyduzzit

Are you kidding me? I'm quite aware of that.

If you are aware, then why would you say "murder is murder".
Clearly you needed a demonstration of how that is not true under the law.

My point is how can killing a baby be deemed legal in 1 instance, and murder in another?

The same way killing an adult can be deemed legal in 1 instance, and murder in another.

Our legal system opperates on circumstances. "Murder is not murder", as you put it. That statement is FALSE!

[Fozzie_DeBear]

Originally Posted by eazyduzzit

Since in science - which seems to be the weapon of choice in a lot of right vs left debates - a baby is a baby, 8 months or 8 hours.

Since this seems to be a pillar of your argument can you please show me where 'Science' has defined a cluster of cells=a zygoma=baby etc.?

Not to be a prick, but I think you will have a really difficult time with that...if you meant to say they are all comprised of living cells then that is something else...

And, IMO, science is hardly a weapon, it is a method of making educated guesses about the world and collecting evidence to confirm or deny those guesses. And a true scientist will never claim anything as an irrefutable fact, everything that they claim to know is just the best fit for the evidence that we have.

And for the record, I think abortions are unfortunate and tragic but hardly are murder...and you do have an interesting point about the Peterson trial...I guess the law can be a litte ****ed up sometimes

[Red Mile Style]

Originally Posted by Iowa_Flames_Fan

Other things can cause an environment that is not nurturing. One of them is if your parents are poor. So by this logic, abortion should only be illegal for rich people. The fact is, as soon as you allow for environmental factors such as this, you have to also include in your thinking the fact that a child that is unwanted will also be raised in an environment that is not nurturing. This is why the rape argument is such a boondoggle for the pro-life side of this debate. You're kind of in a corner--either it's about the life of the embryo or fetus (depending on gestational age) or other moral factors count. And if other moral factors count, then others besides rape or incest are also valid.

I'm a little alarmed that you think rape is the "only" time you sympathize with abortion. What if carrying a baby to term is a grave threat to the health of the mother?!?

Personally, I think you should have to get a license to be allowed to carry a child to term. The social consequences of being a bad parent are far more dire than the social consequences of terminating a pregnancy.

But.... schizophrenia isn't caused by environmental factors, just FYI. It, like most mental illnesses, is due to a biological problem with the brain.

That's a HUGE leap to make, all lower class babies should be aborted? Ridiculous. I do not recall any studies that showed a correlation between a nurturing environment and family income. What perhaps you are eluding to is a quality of life corelation, not nurture. I bet there are just as many, if not more, high-income less-nurturing families as lower-income families.

I don't think you can generalize the whole situation as being painted into a corner where it's "other moral factors" versus the life of the unborn child and then apply that logic to every situation. It's not an issue of cancelling out morals, it's an issue of which morals you hold in priority. Some pro-lifers don't even think a rape victim's abortion is justified, I personally do. I don't think you can play this off as illogical any more so than a pro-choicer who is against murder... except when it's in a womb.

There has been no absolute causation of schizophrenia, most Psychologists, regardless of what perspective they follow (except maybe the biological perspective), believe it is both a nature and nurture issue. Obviously, a large portion of society might possess the schizophrenia gene, but unless coupled by environmental factors will never develop.

Hypothetically speaking, a rape-victim is the only situation where I would sympathize with someone who had an abortion. But, I mean, if I knew about every single situation, perhaps that would change. I don't know, I have never known anyone that had to kill their baby to survive. It would obviously take a lot for someone to abort their fetus, especially if they didn't want to in the first place, but if we're talking about someone who thinks that having a baby will make them fat or something stupid like that and they have an abortion because it would be harmful to her health... well, that's a different story. Personally, I am against suicide as well, so that again is an issue of where your morals are in relation to other morals. So, what's worse? Potentially killing yourself, or killing your unborn child? I hope I never have to make that decision...

I had a roomate, that was a practising Psychologist, that believed the same thing as you, only she was more extreme and thought that at birth, every female should get her tubes tied, take a parenting class, and when they pass the class have the surgery reversed. I think that kind of thinking is dangerous, and reminds me of selective sterilization... creepy. So, perhaps we should just stop allowing mentally handicapped people from having children too? That's just crazy talk!

[NuclearFart]

Originally Posted by eazyduzzit

Nevertheless, i've heard of plenty of abortions around the 5-6 month range. Seems a little strange for politicians to draw the line on when it becomes a living thing and when it's just a useless piece of garbage.

Not to mention, lots of people who are "Pro-Choice" tend to favour science over religion. Well in science, a fetus is a living thing whether it's 1 hour old or 8 months.

Hypocrisy 101

You are making things up when you say you have heard of plenty of abortions between 5-6 months. The cut off for medical abortions is at 20 weeks. Between 20 - 25 weeks, medical abortions are extremely rare, and only under very special medical circumstances.

The sheer ignorance of your last paragraph there has already been addressed nicely by other posters.

For the record, Canadian medical professionals define a fetus as obtaining the rights of a human being once the umbilical cord has been cut.

Comments of a fetus being a living entity at the moment of conception by virtue of its ability to become a human being are also false, as any fetus removed from the womb before 20 weeks is incompatible with life. It cannot exist independantly, let alone persist and become a human being. It is as dependant upon the human body as all the other cells in your body that divide and grow everyday.

And finally, removing the ability of a medical professional to perform legal abortions will merely drive abortions underground, or even worse, encourage women to undertake extreme measures upon their own body to terminate unwanted pregnancies.
________
Digital Vaporizer

[Red Mile Style]

Originally Posted by Table 5

But that's exactly it, you are NOT concerned in the matter. It's not your decision to make what someone does with their body.

OBVIOUSLY it isn't my decision what someone else does with their body... duh. This does not mean I have to like the idea of abortion, support abortions, or have an abortion because someone else does it.

[Textcritic]

Interesting.
Perhaps it is the biblical scholar in me, but this little nugget rather captured my attention:

Originally Posted by eazyduzzit

"...in this day and age, it seems more people are refusing religion, turning to atheism and putting there money behind science and not whats said in the Quran, Bible etc. Since in science - which seems to be the weapon of choice in a lot of right vs left debates - a baby is a baby, 8 months or 8 hours."

IFF and a host of others have already quite masterfully demonstrated the problems with the second statement, mine, however, remains with the first. What is the definitive biblical teaching about abortion? Is there even such a thing?

The Bible describes man as a "living being" (Heb. nephes), however, this same terminology is used to describe any living creature that breathes. It is interesting to note that in the Genesis myth of Creation, in the second chapter we read that God "breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being (Gen 2:7, my translation)." The qualification for life throughout the Hebrew Scriptures at least seems to be limited to whatever has the capacity to breathe.

Furthermore, it is interesting to note how this relationship between breath and life factors into the Mosaic covenant teachings regarding murder and manslaughter. In Exodus 21:22 we read: "And when men struggle and strike a pregnant woman so that she gives birth prematurely (lit. "her children come out"), if none is harmed he shall surely be fined according to what the woman's husband has set against him. And he shall pay what the judges determine. If, however, harm follows, then you shall give a life (nephes) for a life (nephes)." If one were to translate the last clause quite literally and according to the root of the word nephes, it would read "he shall pay what breathes for what breathes." It will be noticed that the prescription cited only makes allowance for children who have been born alive, or breathing.

If someone seeks to make a case for the "life" of a fetus from a biblical perspective, it becomes exceedingly complicated in light of how the Bible understands life. If it does not breathe, it does not live.