Sat 6 Mar 2010
Killing of the Unborn
Posted by Canada / mbart under Balkers
[120] Comments
Each year over 40 million unborn human beings are slaughtered by abortion around the globe. Historically low birth rates are the root cause of declining and aging populations in the vast majority of industrialized nations. Such demographic trends in turn cause strains on various entitlement programs (such as nationalized health care, old-age security, etc) and contribute to economic recessions.
My predictions is that as the population continues to age, stock markets and economies around the globe will continue to slide and perhaps even collapse. 50 years from now, the world will be much different from what it is today, all thanks to this generation’s reluctance to reproduce itself and acceptance of widespread massacres of unborn children.
Welcome to Balkingpoints mbart.
Of course you start with a premise only held by only some, not all – i.e. slaughtered, massacre, etc.
And you don’t mention the requisite enforcement of such policy. Criminalization, arrest, prison for the many thousands who would abort regardless.
Which besides being wholly impractical (see USA, pre-1973…), amounts to the imposition of one subjective view of the matter upon the private lives of those who don’t view it as slaughter, per their god or their science. Those many millions, see it as a personal question which only they should decide – not the state.
Attempts to legislate where the line is drawn for the first moment of life, and exceptions such as medical difficulties to pregnant mother and / or fetus, have never and will never find consensus. My personal wish is that all pregnancies are carried to term, and that adoption be recognized in society as the noble endeavor it is. But that is the abstract, and as a male I will never be pregnant to face the matter within my own body.
Bill Clinton had the right balance: Safe, Legal, Rare.
Your premise that whether or not abortion is the killing of a human person is a subjective matter is a false one. Either the fetus is a person and abortion is an act of violence that kills that person or not, no matter what my or your personal opinions might be.
We went through the same thing with Africans. For decades much of society considered Africans as “non-persons,” or “not fully human.” As we know, it did not matter what anyone’s subjective opinion on the matter was, Africans were and still are persons.
The same is true today with the unborn.
Your argument amount thousands of people in prison does not hold water. There are thousands of people in prison for committing other wrongs as well; robbing banks, rape, etc. Should we legalize those things as well?
Bill Clinton got it wrong, and so have you. Abortion is the murder of an innocent human being and the day will come when this truth wins out. You can take that to the bank.
This pro-life/pro-choice thing has been talked to death; I’m not getting into that, except to state my point of departure – I’m pro-choice.
I want to take issue with Canada/mbart on a different issue. Where on earth (and I mean ‘on earth’) shall we be if we just keep on reproducing at a rate calculated to keep the population young? The prospects are fearsome as it is: resources are running out. And remember that the birth rate keeps climbing all the time because more people are reproducing. Remember also that the ‘replacement rate’ notion (2 babies per couple are all right) is nonsense; several generations live at the same time. My mother had 40 descendants when she died, and most of those families had 2 or at most 3 babies (several had none).
If we bite the bullet now, we shall indeed have an ageing population for a while. I think we can find a way of coping with that. It’s not as if young poplations are problem-free! It would of course help if more people adopted the babies who will keep being born instead of having too many of their own.
Lowering the birthrate is not enough in itself to save this ill-used planet, but it’s something that has to happen. It will also make it possible for social services to catch up with population numbers, which is a pipe dream at present.
Until this issue can be resolved women should withhold their sexual favors from men.
Free themselves and subdue their masters.
Problem is the anti choice masters might revert to the “Rule of Thumb” which gives the master permission to beat their subject so long as the stick or club does not exceed the thickness of a male thumb.
Simpleman, the rule right now is that the master abortionist has permission to kill their subjects without restriction on the length, sharpness or any other quality of the instrument of their choosing.
The forceps they use to crush the skulls of the unborn babies can be as long as required.
The loop-shaped knife they use to dislodge and slice the unborn child from her mother’s womb can be as sharp as can be.
The Cannula uses to violently suck the baby parts from the mother and into a jar for disposal needs to be just wide enough to accommodate the baby parts, but not too wide as to make it difficult to insert deep up inside the women.
All this so you can have your jollies with women without having to be a real man and accept the consequences of your actions.
Madelaine, it is not difficult to know that if each couple has 2 children the population will sustain itself. Today’s low birth rates and aging populations carry economic implications more devastating than you seem to believe.
Do you know that every person on Earth could live in a land mass the size of Texas and you would have one gigantic city with the same density as New York City? The entire rest of the planet would be empty for food production, parks, etc etc.
Did you know the most densely populated nations – Japan, Germany, U.S. – are also the most well off, while some of the least densely populated – Congo, Angora – are the poorest?
The Earth is not overpopulated. That is a myth. And even if it were the solution is not to kill off millions of the most innocent, defenseless among us – unborn children – each year. That is ruthless, barbaric, and uncivilized.
I’m afraid I must point out that you’ve captured the problem in your own comments Bart. Where you say, “Either the fetus is a person and abortion is an act of violence that kills that person or not”.
Unfortunately, nothing close to accord exists on that question. It’s fairly clear that you hold from your scientific or religious understanding, that it is (and presumably from the instant of conception). Whilst others believe nothing of the sort. Majorities or easily hundreds of millions in the modernised world, are comfortable with the “morning after” pill for example. Still others, believe personhood begins at viability outside the womb.
Therein lies the row. You advocate the laws be drawn to your own perception of this matter, and that governments indeed jail accordingly. That my friend is tyranny.
And here I thought tyranny was the extreme domination of an oppressive government over its citizens. Would would’ve thought its actually enacting laws that make it illegal to kill innocent human beings?
You learn something new every day.
Fetuses are not human beings. If they are, parasitic twins and fetus in fetu would have to be considered persons, and killing them would have to be considered murder, by your own logic. Women are indeed human beings.
Fetuses are neither innocent nor guilty. Just like a table they don’t have the capacity to be either. Women are indeed capable of being innocent or guilty.
Fetuses are not citizens. If they were, they would be counted in the census. They’re not…. Women are indeed citizens.
Abortion does not kill fetuses, it merely terminates a pregnancy. A fetus dies simply due to its incompatibility with life upon separation from the uterus. Women are indeed killed by pregnancy.
Just like other organ recipients, fetuses have no according right to live when their body infringes on another’s right to bodily autonomy. Women do indeed have the right to determine who uses their body, when it is used and how it is used, the same right that everyone else has, even if it comes at the expense of another’s life.
Therefore, if one enacts laws to make abortion illegal, women are indeed innocent human beings, and citizens, whom it is legal to kill. Thus, in turn, tyranny is indeed demonstrated in this matter by an extreme domination of an oppressive government.
Oh, one last note. I am Canadian, as well. See, there ARE some of us who know what our Constitutional rights are.
Thanks.
I have read all the posts and I am impressed by the eloquence of, almost, all. I have to say that the “pro-choice” side seems to be more reasonable and forceful. Of course, I was pro-abortion long before having subjected myself to another debate on the subject.
I am a retired Teacher, Counselor and Adminstrator before my retirment fourteen years ago. I could write a book or maybe several books on my experiences working with young people. However, the task of trying to change minds that are embedded in the solid rock of prejudice and misunderstanding have made me realize that breaching that rock is almost always impossible but just to scratch the surface is better than ignoring the need of supporting the correction of the mistakes of Religious, Political, and often Bigoted input prior to any intervention and is mostly frustrating and futile but absolutely necessary.
I will soon write a post in this venue to begin a discussion of the primary causes of the runaway Divorce rate in our Society.
The purpose of attacking that very sticky subject is that no one seems to care or want to take it on.
Look for that post very soon and you can join me if you think I can do some good.
Bless you all for caring.
papadon
One side of this debate that rarely sees light but is crucial to the success of either side is the elimination of judgment and guilt placed upon young expecting mothers. The common ground between both sides, “pro-choice” and “pro-life”, is that neither wants to see a lot of abortions happen. The core of the issue is that having fewer aborted pregnancies would benefit both sides; “pro-choice” advocates would have less reason to defend the privacy rights of women and “pro-life” advoates would have less reason to want to legislatively restrict those rights. One of the major reasons why young unmarried women choose to abort pregnancy is that they face judgement by society. They are looked upon as irresponsible, immoral and possessing any number of other undesirable qualities attributed to young people who choose to have unprotected sex outside a marriage. The best thing any of us can do for these women is to create a society in which pregnancy is celebrated regardless of the age, socioeconomic class or minority status of the mother. (The second logical step is for more people to begin adopting unwanted children. Left to the devices of the state, these children are often led into lives of abuse and neglect and later become criminals. mbart, how many children have you adopted?)
Hello, Mbart, and everyone.
I’m going to eschew arguments about population levels, the loss of future geniuses, and the supply of entitlement revenue as irrelevant, because the issue of the humanhood or personhood of the unborn is far and away more important. It never ceases to puzzle me why thge prolife movement ever taints their platform by bring those others up.
A fetus is human. An embryo is human. So is a gamete, a brain cell, a sloughed-off skin cell. Maybe the question should be, is it a human being? That’s a loaded term, but nonetheless I would be willing to extend that a 1-second old embryo is a human being.
But so what? Let’s get out of legaleseish terms. I only care whether the embryo or fetus is a person or something relevant like that. I care if someone will or will not suffer at the loss or existence of that embryo or fetus.
Mbart, perhaps you and many other prolifers think that it is a strength to be absolutist about the notion that a full-on person flashes into existence at the moment of conception. I’m here to tell you that it is a weakness, and a failure of imagination.
By being absolutist and staying at loggerheads with the prochoice movement for decades, you have only served to inspire more resistance from them, and have procrastinated at the chance to actually legislate something that may save later term fetuses which actually bear an indistinguishable resemblance to full-term natural-birth babies, as I, a prochoice person, think they rightly should.
What I’m saying is, I would support restrictions on the aborting of fetuses in the 2nd 2 trimesters, if I didn’t think it would be abused, at greater peril to humanity, by the prolife movement as it exists now.
The human gestation period is a continuum staring us in the face, while the 2 movements, but especially the prolife, with the black-and-white of religious fundamentalism, argue discretes endlessly. Have you ever noticed how very rarely the photos of developing embryos go back in time to where they look the same as amphibian or fish embryos? The prolife movement doesn’t like to show that. It would tend to invite a debate on the continuality of it. Besides, it might lend fuel to evolution.
It would be refreshing if someone from either side (or folks from both) would start a compromise movement. Many doctors already make a policy of no late-term abortions. And many prolifers don’t promote as loudly about the rights of a clump of 16 cells. BTW I don’t mean merely a “moderate” movement designed simply to appease both. A real success can only come from a factual look at about when personhood might safely be considered to begin. That would be in the first few weeks of pregnancy. Even the Bush admin allowed for “…except in cases of rape or incest”. Must not be murder then.
Prolife movement, when you’re ready to actually save lives, not just pretend to, much of the prochoice movement (if not very nearly all) is ready to as well. Who’s with me so far?
Not Impartial:
I don’t believe pro-abortionists necessarily want fewer abortions. Whey would Obama and his pro-abortion cohorts fight so hard for tax-funded abortion (which will surely increase the numbers)? Why would they rail against any and all legal restriction, any ultrasound bills, even the right for babies born alive after a failed abortion to get medical treatment, if they wanted fewer abortions?
Also, how exactly does my unwillingness or inability to adopt children give someone else a right to kill that child?
Starling;
Ever notice how the tactic of dehumanization has been used repeatedly throughout history? I’ll give you some examples:
Advocates of legalized slavery dehumanized Blacks by calling them “monkeys,” “apes,” “less than fully human,” etc.
German Nazis dehumanized Jews and the disabled by calling them “useless eaters,” “human garbage,” “parasites in the body Europe.”
Native North Americans were dehumanized as “savages,” and “beasts.”
Now it’s the unborn’s turn. They are now referred to as “amphibians,” “clumps of cells,” “fish embryos,” etc.
Also notice how the victims of such injustices were (are) always in the way of or had something the dominant group wanted?
Blacks had free labour to offer. Native Indians were in the way of Western settlement, and they had valuable land. Jews and the disabled were in the way of “racial purity” and economic prosperity for Germany.
Today, the unborn are in the way of a woman’s education, career, life plans. They are also in the way of irresponsible men’s sexual fun.
Apparently, the easiest thing to do is the dehumanize them in order to justify killing them to get them out of our way. Pity we just don’t seem to learn from our past mistakes.
Mbart, you are entitled to your religious beliefs. You are NOT entitled to impose your religious beliefs on others. Others see abortion differently. It is simply none of your business if a woman chooses to end her pregnancy. You do not know the unborn whatever within her. That unborn whatever is not participating in society in any way and will not be missed or mourned by anybody except possibly the mother. Again it is simply none of your business.
Religious belief? Nowhere in any of my posts have I indicated any religious beliefs.
Injustice is everyone’s business. Are you suggesting those not directly involved in the holocaust had no right to intervene? On the contrary, they had a duty to intervene and confront injustice. Same with abortion today.
Your assertion that the death of the unborn will not be missed or mourned is completely false. I have worked with many grandmothers, fathers, brothers, aunts, uncles, etc of aborted babies who are utterly distraught over the death of an unborn. Your assertions ring completely hollow with me and countless others.
Would you say that MLK was entitled to his “religious” beliefs but not to impose them on the rest of society? If he was right and we are right, we have a duty to “impose” our beliefs (which are really recognitions of the truth, not subjective beliefs) onto society.
Injustice is everyone’s business.
1. Of course pro-choice people want fewer abortions. Who benefits from having more abortions? Doctors? They do not have a powerful enough lobby to accomplish anything of the sort and even if they did, who would want to get caught by the media/public lobbying to abort more fetuses?
The medical procedure of aborting a fetus is unpleasant (at best) for the woman and though I know some women who have had abortions, none of them would do it more than absolutely necessary because as I said before, it is unpleasant (apologies for failing to find a better euphemism).
Also, your characterization of the Obama administration as “fight[ing] so hard for tax-funded abortion (which will surely increase the numbers)?” is completely out of context. The United States Supreme Court ruled in 1973 that the right to choose abortion is protected under the Constitution. The United States government (and the President) are sworn to uphold the Constitution. So the choice of the President to not exclude abortion procedures from healthcare legislation is simply a matter of upholding the court’s ruling. This is a simplification of a complex matter but not untrue.
[Also in your comment is the idea that an option for "tax-funded" abortions would increase the overall number of abortions. I would contend that if more women were insured, they would have greater access to free or reduced-cost birth control, which would logically lower the rate of unintended pregnancy. I highly doubt that the cost of an abortion keeps many of them from happening because the cost of giving birth and raising a child is astronomically higher and most people are aware of this...even young people who have careless sex.]
Additionally, the original reason why abortions were excluded from the public option in the healthcare bill was because the Catholic church lobbied heavily to make it so. When this was reported in the media, many Americans (both pro-choice and pro-life) were outraged that a tax-exempt organization (the Catholic church) could be allowed to pour its dollars into the formation of public policy, especially in such a way as to press its own religious agenda onto the general public.
So, no, I do not believe that people who have pro-choice beliefs actually want to see more abortions. They simply want to see that legislation is not passed to restrict the rights of a the female segment of American society.
2. In asking you whether or not you had adopted any children, I was trying to make the point that if a society outlaws the abortion option, there are serious rammifications. Already our public support options for unprepared expecting mothers are shrinking. Many of the people in our government speak from one side of their mouths claiming to be against abortion on a moral basis and from the other side of their mouths consistently voting to whittle welfare benefits down to nothing. How moral is it to expect more children to be born into this country (and any other) with no more public support for them? It is amazing, but in the United States–one of the more developed countries in the world–children still die of hunger and homelessness. So your stance on the abortion issue leads to a paradox: is it better to never have been born than to be born, live a short and painful life and then die of completely preventable causes? Even in less severe circumstances, children born to parents who do not want them and later grow to adulthood rarely integrate into society and instead become criminals–often violent–who become the wards of the prison system.
Is it better to live a life in prison after committing a violent act against others than to never have been born?
These are unanswerable questions but I hope they serve to you, mbart, to illustrate that this issue might not be as black-and-white as you may have previously imagined.
Do you know that every person on Earth could live in a land mass the size of Texas and you would have one gigantic city with the same density as New York City? The entire rest of the planet would be empty for food production, parks, etc etc.
Wait…Mbart, you want to herd all of the people of the earth into metropolises. How are you going to coordinate between religious and cultural factions? How do you provide police protection? How do you prevent the bullies from preying on the weak? Will everybody have the same standard of life? What kind of a government would work best in a high density megalopolis? Will we have to have a government imposed socialism to make things work? Is the stress of living in a high density population healthy? Do you plan to live in a megalopolis, or is this for everybody else, and you are going to live in the ‘burbs? And when people outgrow their living space, fill it with trash, what then? This is not the life I want for my children.
To Mbart:
I quote you as talking on ‘….dehumanization…”
I already extended the notion of the embryo as human. I asked about persohood. I sense that you wished to avoid that. Prospective parents know full well that what is growing inside the mother is human. In the early days or weeks of a pregnancy, “human” is an irrelevant characteristic. What is relevant is personhood, and the determination of who suffers / who is benefitted.
What you are doing is, if anything, overhumanization. Why? For the benefit of patriarchy? A lack of faith in the conscience of any prospective mother? You tell me. You can claim this not to be religious on your part, but it is certainly spiritual fascism then. You come on as if this is obviously slaughter or murder, as if this isn’t a legitimate debate, classic of the culture wars, and hasn’t been since time immemorial.
This is absolutely classic as to how you, and much of your movement are completely irrelevant and self-blinded. You won’t address my proposals, and so you set yourself up in a rut to failure. If you really wanted to save lives, rather than fight a proxy war for patriarchy on the backs of rape victims, then you would engage my proposals about restricting late term abortions. But no, you are 1-dimensional, absolute, discrete, and a clone. I wish you luck in a future cause evolved far beyond the state of your current one.
Bytheway, in case this is more of a silly logic game to you, rather than a serious issue of saving lives…
If embryos are so human or deserving, why stop there? What about all the as-yet unconceived? Why not legislate that all those densely packed people in the new Texas are required to constantly reproduce, lest we allow some beautiful human embryo to not be conceived? At over 6 billion population already, the sheer combinations of possible couplings of all humans would require all of us to be engaged in procreation as at least a full time job. And that would be just to ensure 1 child for every possible pairing.
What is your reasoning for throwing away the continuum? What is your reason for choosing that particular discrete moment of conception?
The embryo is merely a potential person, as are the 2 gametes. Why is the human characteristic so much more important than that of personhood?
So, to sum up:
Why is “human” so important instead of “person”?
Who suffers as result of an abortion early in the gestation period?
Will you have the honor to answer my challenges this time rather than try to deflect with emotional sensationalism?
Quoting Starling directly previous; “overhumanization”
That is a wonderful construction I’ve not heard employed, in the context of this nor any other discussion. Bravo!
Starling;
It is you that speak of some imaginary chasm, some fundamental difference between the nature of a “person” and that of a “human being,” not I. I am claiming that the two are one in the same, and I am pointing to the fact that dominant groups have used this tragic facade in past, ie. Blacks were humans but not “persons,” women were humans but not “persons,” Jews were humans but not “persons.” Now the unborn are human, but not “persons.”
I also point out the fact that the human embryo is alive and is a complete, whole, unique being (this is know through the sciences of embryology, fetology, biology, genetics and others). They are no more equivelant to skin cells than you or I (can we not be described as “masses of cells” as well?). They are “human beings” and there is no difference between a “human being” and a “person.”
The ball is in the court of the pro-abortionists to prove there is such a being that is human but not a person even exists. What do you even call this being? What is it that makes it a “human being” but not a “person”?
Who suffers in an early abortion? The same people who suffer in a later abortion. The unborn baby dies, the mother is wounded, the father is now the father of a dead baby, just to name those closest to the killing. Who knows what society has lost? Great musicians, politicians, researchers (and don’t even bother with the “mass murderers could have been aborted too” because while it is logical to not kill someone because they might grow up to do something good, it is illogical to kill someone because they might grow up to do something evil).
I wonder if those arguing for the full “personhood” of Blacks or women were ever accused of “overhumanizing.” Hmmm. I’ll bet they were.
Thank you for returning with answers to my challenges.
Now I have some returns as well.
I see quite clearly your point about dehumanization / the accusation of overhumanization of past marginalized groups.
But this is different. This is not about adults or (for me) late term fetuses, to whom I can easily ascribe personhood.
I am talking about a clump of 16 cells that simply is too new and merely potential to interact with anyone or be interacted with, including itself. Yes, it is human, and yes, it is likely to turn into a person if nurtured with physical, and eventually emotional, needs. It seems to me that it behooves anti-choicists just as much to prove the personhood of that clump of 16 cells, as it might for a pro-choicist to disprove such.
This is why there is an obvious and legitimate debate.
This is why gestation is a continuum.
This is why characterizing ALL abortion as murder is an emotional failure rather than a thoughtful factual accomplishment.
This is why a compromise on permission / prohibition should be struck somewhere (early) in gestation, rather than 2 polarized lobbies going back and forth with the power every few decades, at the cost of late term fetus lives, women’s lives who attempt illegal abortions, and tainted qualities of lives of those who would rather have raised a child not of rape before it became too late.
Noone has yet been able to prove just what a soul is, or when one has fully entered into a body. But it seems a pretty safe risk, based easily on the feelings of women around EARLY abortions, that the embryo, while human, is nowhere near a person yet. So, you have failed to show who suffers from an early abortion, yet I have clearly shown how it can be a remedy. The woman is helped in a time of need, and no PERSON is killed.
I ask again, how is it suddenly so important at conception? Why are gametes not half a person? Why should the government not criminalize the “spilling of seed”? Since sperm are constantly anihilated by the thousands per day, some remedy should surely be put to that, with perhaps something like half the priority of clumps of 16 cells being lost. And what of criminally negligent homicide for early miscarriages?
What is informing you of the personhood, or the unkillable humanity, of a clump of 16 cells? Is it religion, the Bible? Is it emotion? It doesn’t seem to be science, or, more basically, common sense. This is not about me selfishly wanting to kill babies for convenience. Or wanting others to have some evil benefit like that. If you think so, I feel like saying, “Shame on you!” for thinking so. Or perhaps less judgementally, “I hope you heal from your fear.”. Because I want that liberty for all the people around me for actively GOOD reasons. I want that safe liberty so that evil men can’t rape their way into deadbeat fatherhood. I want that safe liberty so that women’s regrettable mistakes can be learned from without costing them vast chunks of their future. The women you claim to want to restrict, and in whose consciences you seem to have no faith in, THEY are definite actual people.
Yes, please do recall civil rights. It is YOU who are on the wrong side of history with this.
I want to, at the risk of creating tangents, but relevant nonetheless, to ask the following… What do you think of the personhood of animals? Many sweet little children love their kitties, or bunnies, or hens. And, not disprovably, they are loved back by these animal people. Yet we can run over them commuting to work essentially with impugnity, we can abuse them horribly in factory farms. As hardened adults we can try to hide this from our children. But this is a lie, a deception, and one of the clear symptoms of our society.
These animals are clearly more wanted, sentient, and feeling than a clump of 16 cells that feels like poison to a too-young woman.
If you care about life, if you care about personhood, you must open your mind to where the struggle really is. Otherwise you are, ironically, fighting on the side of horror and death.
Actually, it behooves he/she who approves of abortion to prove the embryo is not a person. This is so because when we are unsure of whether or not a person exists we must always give the benefit of doubt to life. This concept can even be found in our laws today.
What do I mean? Well, if a hunter shoots into a bush without confirming that the rustling he heard moments before is not a person, he is held responsible if it was a person he ends up killing.
Similarly, if a demolition company wants to bring down a building, they are responsible for ensuring that no person is inside before they bring that building down. If there is a person in there and he/she ends up being killing, the demolition company is held responsible and is negligent in the death of that person.
In exactly the same, it is the abortionist who must ensure (prove) it is not a person in the womb before he/she scrapes it out, possibly resulting in the death of a person.
Thus, it is up to you to prove the embryo/fetus is not a person, not the other way around. Indeed, by refusing to commit an abortion, we are upholding the “do no harm” principle and erring on the side of life.
90% of abortions occur between 8 and 12 weeks (95% of those are done for “socio-economic” reasons – Alan Guttmacher). At 8 weeks after conception, you had fingers, toes, a beating heart (since 3 weeks), could squint, suck your thumb, perform sommersaults, had brain waves (since 6 weeks), and each and every organ in your body had begun to develop.
It is science that tells me human life begins at conception. For example:
“The development of a human begins with fertilization, a process by which the spermatozoon from the male and the oocyte from the female unite to give rise to a new organism, the zygote.”
[Sadler, T.W. Langman's Medical Embryology. 7th edition. Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins 1995, p. 3]
“The development of a human begins with fertilization, a process by which the spermatozoon from the male and the oocyte from the female unite to give rise to a new organism, the zygote.”
[Sadler, T.W. Langman's Medical Embryology. 7th edition. Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins 1995, p. 3]
To cite just 2 of many.
You must define “personhood,” and you must yet explain how it is there is such a thing as a human being that is not a person.
You must also ask yourself, how many cells do we need to have before we are considered a person and why?
You say the “late-term” fetus is a person and abortion is wrong. When does “late term” begin, in your opinion? 24 weeks after gestation? If so, what is so immensely different between a 24 week fetus and a 23 week fetus that makes killing the former murder and killing the latter a simple “choice”?
Conception is important because it is the only marker where we can say before its occurrence there was not a human life and after it there is. Can you identify another marker and explain why it should be used? A heart beat perhaps? Brain waves? A certain number of cells?
It is those who fight for animal “rights” but stand by and do nothing while innocent unborn babies are being sacrificed every single day that are fighting on the side of horror and death. They are standing on incoherent logic. This I know with complete certainty.
Please have a good, long look around http://www.abortionno.org. Then we can have an informed discussion on the topic of abortion.
Behoovement:
You make quite a good point about the precautionary principle, and the model of the hunter and the bush. That is why I am far from an absolutist prochoicist.
It simply behooves anyone about anything to be as sure as possible to be choosing the lesser of competeing harms.
I am inspired to see you discussing this with more openness and less leadership by emotion, but you still say about animal rights over abortion rights, “This I know with complete certainty.”. That is false. I have never seen anything to indicate that anyone knows anything with complete certainty, except for the statement, “There is awareness.”. You are agnostic, whether you like it or not. I choose to admit it, and adhere to the absolute truth.
But now for my acknowledgement of 2 other good points of yours:
1. Fertilization is indeed a tempting not-so-arbitrary marker to use. However, that makes it just as consequential for all the negative reasons as well. And still, why is the gamete so value-less? Or the powerless mammal from another species?
2. I have maintained for myself that I would favor only quite early abortions. You mentioned some development benchmarks at 3,6, and 8 weeks. I have earlier heard faint proposals for 5 weeks as a cutoff.
But no, I do not yet have a firm idea of when the cutoff should be. Brainwaves are a good indicator of being tuned to the new soul. I see 16 cells as clearly permissible, contrasted with babies touching parents’ hands through the uterine wall as clearly demonstrating personhood. You asked about how a human being can be not a person. A brain-dead human exhibits all the hallmarks of a machine, and none of the hallmarks of a person. An embryo (at early enough stage) is a not-yet-brain-alive human. There is simply more fondness and favorability attached to it because of the feelings about youth, of hope and potential.
My main aim is to promote the continuum of gestation, and to debunk the discretes. Look at us. we have been discussing the whether-or-nots of that continuum. Do you see how reaching a compromise will save lives? This is not the depressing compromise of principle for subsidies or soundbites; this is a negotiation directly on the competing harms presented by concerned parties. I envision a better future world where abortion is practically nonexistent. Unfortunately we as a species are too maladapted to be there yet. But absolutes will not heal us. Absolutes only produce standoffs, or cyclic tyrannies.
Relatedly, it seems quite futile to advocate “no more guns” as pure as that principle might seem on its face. Instead we can advocate fewer guns and better training. We can legislate accountability on a continuum. Because people have free will, and will simply not respond to such absolutes when they see a gun more as a life saving implement.
I am accusing absolutism as being on the side of death, not any particular life principle. So, what do you say? Are you willing to save lives through compromise and work in the continuum?
This could be the most civilized abortion argument, ever! :)
Just came across the site, and am equally impressed with the quality of the conversation – hasn’t degenerated as most sites I see tend to do.
My thought on this is that for those tending to the absolutist end of the spectrum, a quick look at the range of intelligent dispassionate debate on this subject should be enough to prove that there cannot be a single/simple solution. The only option is some sort of compromise.
I also think that all sides would agree that in the ideal world there would be no need for any abortions or premature death of any kind – am I wrong?
The reality is the world is a messy place, and we have to work our way through it often with less than perfect solutions.
I didn’t know till I looked it up that Canada removed restrictions on abortion 20 years ago. I see that the Conservative Party opposes it. Pat M & Canadianbalker, how different do you think Canada is from the U.S.? I live 4 hours away from Toronto, across the lake from Long Point on Lake Erie…and was a big fan of the CBC. Is abortion as much of a wedge issue for the Conservative Party as it is for the Republican Party down here?
The reason I’m asking your Canadian input is that I seem to remember hearing about some flack about a letter either to or from the Canadian Conservatives to or from the U.S. Republicans. It was anti – Obama, and it was leaked to the press. This happened before the election. Very curious. I remember being surprised at the thought that Parties talk across borders. Do you remember details?
Starling;
Sorry I was gone for a bit there.
I can certainly understand how you and others have a difficult time accepting that a 16-celled organism can be a person with the same worth and value and you and I, but I guess in order to determine that we need to do what neither you nor I have done thus far: define “person.” So I’ll take a shot at it.
A person is any living, whole, individual being which is human “at its essence” (or possesses human DNA) regardless of race, sex, size, skin colour, location, level of development, mental or physical ability, “viability,” number of body parts, or any other arbitrary characteristic.
If this – or something close to it – is indeed the definition of a person, the unborn child must be included from the moment of conception.
Serious problems arise when people attempt to disqualify the unborn from “personhood” based on one or more their characteristics: size, stage of development, location, dependency, or ability. Here’s why:
Size does not matter when attempting to determine whether someone is a person or not. We do not become more of a person the bigger we get. Andre the Giant is no more a person than Mini-me. Dr. Seuss summed this up quite nicely, “a person’s a person no matter how small.”
Level of development does not disqualify us either. A newborn cannot speak, think rationally, care for itself, reproduce, walk, or perform many other functions we associate with being a person. It is far less developed than an adult, but is no less a person because of it. Likewise, a fetus is less developed than an adolescent, but this does not disqualify her from personhood either.
While the unborn is in a different location than the born, this should not be a disqualifying factor either. Everyone recognizes that the 24 premature baby in an incubator is a person and we rightfully treat her as such. The same 24 week baby residing in her mother’s womb is exactly the same being except for one factor: location. In reality, they are both the same person.
Being dependent on another for survival doesn’t disqualify us from personhood either. Newborns are dependent on others for survival, so are people who are in comas, paralyzed, on kidney dialysis, severely disabled, etc. Our ability to survive on our own is not what makes us a person, the simple fact that we are human does.
A big problem abortionists have is that any stipulation they use to disqualify the unborn from personhood means that other, born people must be disqualified as well.
The fact is each and everyone one of us travelled through the pre-natal stage of live in the same manner and we all possessed, and continue to possess, the thing that make us “people”: our “humanness.”
As far as the “brain dead” thing goes, there is still debate within the scientific community as to whether or not “brain dead” really means “dead.” My suspicion is (and I haven’t educated myself on this topic a whole lot) is that claiming someone is “brain dead” gives the green light to harvest their highly sought after organs. I understand dead organs are of little or no use to anyone. My understanding is they must be harvested while the body is still “alive” in order to be useful.
In addition, I think the brain dead argument you bring is invalid on another front. Consider, do we really have to have a brain to be considered a person? Some people have parts of their brains removed (epilepsy treatment), but they are still persons. If having no brain means we aren’t people, does that mean missing other body parts could make us “non-persons” as well? People have no tonsils, no appendix, no arms, no legs, no kidney, etc, but we would never say they are not people because they are missing this or that body part.
I know I often use Slavery as a comparison to abortion, but that is because the many similarities demand attention. So it is worth considering that when slavery was legal, a vast swath of the population simply could not come to terms with the suggestion that Blacks were their equals. The idea was foreign, offensive, and even repugnant to them. Today, many see the unborn in exactly the same light.
MBart:
Hi, I’m glad you’re back!
In your absence, I had begun to have mixed feelings about suspecting a forfeiture. Mixed because, while I do of course enjoy victory, I have come to enjoy more
the engagement itself. And I have learned not to expect a complete victory at all in these struggles of deepest principle. And I don’t much enjoy victories that
come from mere circumstance, like a schedule conflict or such.
Anyway, not being overconfident, I sense I’ve got you a bit cornered. I’m going to take all of your points sprinkled within my following reminiscent rant…
I do not have “difficulty” with my definition of a person. I am very contented with it, as I have given it a good amount of thought over the years. I’ll tell you my definition of a person by starting with what it is not. It is not a characteristic of size. I can as easily cite Dr. Seuss’ Horton back to you, on the topic of animals. And I have been quite clear throughout about assessing a fetus as a person. It is not about a list of parts, although understanding the parts
can be a great help in determining personhood, and in employing the precautionary principle. It is not dependent on injury or health, although again, the state of someone’s wholeness can be somewhat of a helpful indicator of this personhood. It is very much not at all dependent on “location”. That is not an indicator for me at all. The previous characteristics I have mentioned indicate but do not define the person. What defines the person is, fairly simply, the ability to be aware or to interact emotionally with others or even just with the self, or the slight present chance of that interaction or awareness.
16 cells doesn’t cut it. But a fetus that can stretch and suck its thumb does. Somewhere in there is the transition. I can’t pinpoint exactly where, noone can,
and so I err on the side of caution. But people can have a pretty good idea of the range. Maybe 3, 4, or 5 weeks. And declaring fertilization to be that point
is too much caution. If not, then I challenge you again, a gamete should be half a person. I err on the side of caution about the injured as well of course.
Many people have lost half their brain and lived to be quite happy they are alive. BTW, I want to mention that awareness seems very much located in the brain,
with much of the rest of the body acting as a vehicle, sensory instrument, and production plant for that aware mind in the brain. When the brain seems to have
zero activity, and the rest of the body is being kept “alive” by medical machines, the person seems very much to be dead. This is why people leave insurance for closure for their relatives in their DNR orders – they can be unplugged and their organs harvested. Also, I’m not sure what you meant about dead organs, but
organs don’t necessarily “die” or cease functioning along with the brain or the person, so they can be harvested. That is why I have my driver’s license say to harvest my organs in the event that I as a person have ceased. Some other person can be saved or have a better life because of my now useless-to-me but still functional,
organ instruments.
It seems clear to me that missing an entire brain leaves one completely depersonned. But no other loss, at least theoretically, need do that. So a person is dead when their brain is dead, but the rest of their body may still be “functional”, for a better term.
Interactivity and personhood require some amount of living brain.
BTW, I have indeed been consistent about this throughout my debate and it is a consistent argument for and against personhood, independent of any other characteristics.
Additionally that interactivity means that for all practical purposes, mammals and many other animals are people to me. In the 4th or 5th grade, we had an
exercise in English to locate the nouns in sentences. Is it a person, place, thing, or idea? Somewhere in it was something like, “The donkey pulls the cart.”.
I hesitated, but I finally indicated “person”. Despite my family eating meat, I had been taught to treat animals well, to respect their feelings. I had a
feeling the “person” response would come back to bite me. The teacher called me up to a quiet query next to his desk: “A donkey… is a person?”. I knew that if
I wanted to get 100s on papers of that particular topic, I should lie about my assessment of personhood. But I knew what I knew, and I employ that assessment
today.
A donkey likes to be scratched behind the ears, likes to be treated well, likes interaction and attention, abhors confinement and abuse, as do many other mammals including housecats, humans, dogs, etcetera. People love their animals and consider them to be part of the family. Their is a language and species barrier, but love has the power to overcome that, to a degree. A dog barks and whines when tied to a boring tree for 12 hours with nothing but a dirty water dish for company, not for some kind of mechanical instinct, but because “it” has feelings. At least as much so as the baby at less than a month who the parents are insisting “it” is smiling, not just twitching or burping.
This assessment is why I am vegetarian, why if a woman at mid-pregnancy was considering abortion I would advise against it, and why when my boy was born sleepily of Caesarian section (rather than stimulated by the force of vaginal birth) I wanted to hold his hand and say, “I love you.”, before he went for a half-day’s
observation in the NIC-U.
You insist on comparing embryo assessment to the history of race. I have acknowledged your point about the precautionary principle. But it is a matter of degree, and the differences are obvious. In the race history, there was a barrier of culture and language, plus the greedy temptations of exploiters. Also true of animals, but to a more excusable degree. Different species, no chance of full-on language at all, despite some obvious communication with dogs and parrots.
But in the case of 16 cells, the barrier is an apparent total lack of interactibility of any sort. It exhibits flat-out none of the structures required to contain personhood. You can’t scratch 16 cells behind the ears, or expect any kind of indication that it likes it or not. You get nothing at all. It has no brain.
If 16 cells, or even, as you insist, one small but legitimate single-cell zygote is a whole person, then I ask again why not a gamete, which qualifies then as half a person same as someone who lost half a hemisphere of brain to seizure surgery?
But yes, all this means I think that I think that a donkey is more of a person than 16 cells, humanity notwithstanding. If by some improbable circumstance, a
donkey and a 16 cell human embryo, still medically viable, were both hanging from the edge of a cliff, I would save the donkey. Look, the real value of the 16-
cell embryo is the potentiality of the person, not any actuality. It is not yet emotionally invested in itself, but its parents certainly may be in terms of the future. Or, if its mother is a rape survivor, she may be actively disinvested in this 16-cell not-yet-person. A rape survivor is hanging from the edge of the rest of her life. I assess her as more of a person than her ill-conceived 16-cell embryo. Y’know what, sure, a sexually irresponsible person could use extremely early abortion as a convenient birth control of last resort. But if I thought the embryo was late enough developed to be a person, then it doesn’t matter whether the cause was casual sex, rape, incest, immaculacy, or planned fertility. Because then it would already be a person. I happen to know a family of siblings who are the product of incest. Still people. They weren’t when they were 16 cells, but now they are.
That 16-cell embryo is only the person one imagines its future to be, flirting with the ever-present danger as parents sometimes do of living vicariously through their kids. I know what it feels like. I have found myself tempted to imagine favorably what life might be like if I had waited to have a kid until I had
constructed some sort of a career out of my talents, instead of becoming the less-educated and therefore logical choice of househusband. But I instantly feel
guilty, because it is so difficult and sad to imagine such a time- a time without my son of now 6 years. But that is my emotion. Of course back then, there was a time he himself didn’t exist as a person yet, only his 16 cells, and our wild imagination of what some child might be like. My wife even miscarried once. What would that child have been like? Going further back, we hadn’t even yet conceived. Of course we can’t travel back in time, but even to be tempted to think about wishing momentarily for that, is guilt inducing. But when you still are in that end of the timeline, it is a different story. I ask you, what have you done to think about the competing harm of trying to legally force a woman to carry to term the product of rape? Of course she would grow to love that child, and even to feel guilty about wishing him or her to have been different, from a different man than her rapist. But her life will have been darkened compared to what it could have been had she been allowed to abort 16 cells. It definitely could be darkened, if I can feel a touch of that guilt just from questioning my own free will choice of timing.
No, I am not considering this half-heartedly, or going along with some convention, or selfish desire. I am deliberately and carefully weighing competing harms here, and I am questioning whether you have done the same. Faced with restrictions, some women seek hidden, illegal abortions, some die of it. Some may commit outright suicide, and for all either of us knows, the deciding factor in the haze of misery could be the unavailability of an early enough abortion. So, if you want to support life, don’t just mouth the arbitrary. Support the continuum. And hey- let’s educate people on how an early embryo just might indeed be a person.
But don’t restrict for the wrong reasons. Have faith in the human conscience. Support that conscience, rather than pre-condemning it.
I am indeed considering this deliberately, rationally, and adequately well informed. You could be right, but you are gambling at least as much as am I. I am
willing to fight for my considered assessment, by informing, discussing, and voting. I could be right, and I think I am. You have no more absolute knowledge
than I do (I didn’t hear you insist or prove otherwise) and so I have to go with my very best judgement. The alternative is somehow deciding to believe that I am
inside some kind of elaborate joke matrix, and that I must somehow pick and choose which sincere perceptions to arbitrarily throw away. No, I choose rationality,
love, and life. I support real personhood.
Hi Starling;
Good to be back, but I’m afraid your feelings of impending victory are, alas, nothing more than emotional folly. On the contrary, I believe it is I that have won 95%. I conclude this based on your own admission that “Maybe 3, 4, or 5 weeks” after conception is when a person comes into being.
You may or may not be aware that over 95% of all surgical abortions occur after 7 weeks gestation; thus, you have readily admitted that 95% of all surgical abortions kill a human person.
Now allow me to point where your definition of “person” is seriously flawed. “The ability to be aware or to interact emotionally with others” just doesn’t cut it. Have you ever been under general anesthesia? If so, by your definition you ceased to be a person while you were. People in comas, people who are sleeping, late-stage Alzheimer’s, severely brain-damaged, these and then some are all people at risk of being stripped of their “personhood” status by your definition.
To go a bit deeper, your definition indicates that you are a “functionalist.” That is, you believe that in order to be considered a person one must be able to perform certain functions commonly associated with being a person. This is arbitrary and dangerous. All sorts of people are in danger of being declared “non-persons” by this definition. Why can’t you simply accept that all human beings are persons no matter what they can or cannot do?
Going ahead and killing a 16-celled person is not erring on the side of caution. Refraining from killing her is.
To answer your question, a gamete is no more a 1/2 person that one of your skin cells is a 1/3 billionth person. Left alone gametes will never be anything more than gametes. The will do what gametes do and die. A zygote, however, will grow and develop into an embryo, who will grow and develop into a fetus, who will grow and develop into a newborn, who will grow and develop into an adolescent, who will grow and develop into an adult. All along these stages, we are alive, we are human, and that means we are persons. As you rightfully claim, life is a continuum. A continuum that begins at conception and ends at death.
You don’t need ears to be a person. Ask Van Gogh.
Our personhood is not dependent on what others might imagine for us or what our future might hold. It is dependent on who or what we are at our essence.
What is a “potential person” anyway? The unborn are potentially adults, just like newborns, but they are currently alive and currently human. That makes them people.
I’ve noticed abortionists will often make Freudian slips such as the one who painted the slogan “my BABY is pro choice” beside a picture of a pregnant woman. I noticed one such slip in your last post, I’m afraid: “he himself didn’t exist as a person yet, only his 16 cells.” Who is the word “his” referring to in this phrase? How can “he” have 16 cells if “he” didn’t even exist?
No Starling, your son existed, as a person, from the moment of conception. If he didn’t, then you are not his biological father. The only thing you contributed to his existence was your sperm joining with her oocyte. There is nothing else you did. You could have moved to China for 10 months the day after he was conceived and guess what, you would still be his father. Why? Because your “fatherhood” began at his conception and by definition, in order for one to be a father, there must exist a child. Therefore, if your fatherhood began at conception, then so did your son’s existence.
In sum, if life doesn’t start until sometime after conception, the concept of biological fatherhood is complete farce.
Abortion due to rape is extremely rare. Less than .5% of abortions are for rape (Alan Guttmacher). You’re right about killing a person being wrong even if they are conceived in rape. There is adoption as well. In one study, over 50% of women impregnated through rape did not choose abortion for a variety of reasons, including they believe it to to be the killing of child and they wanted to give life, not destruction. Many who chose abortion report that the trauma of the abortion is more severe and more lasting than the trauma from the rape.
We don’t legalize unjust acts because they might be dangerous to the people who choose to commit them. Robbers get hurt robbing banks, men get hurt raping women, etc, but that is no reason to legalize those acts. Same thing with abortion.
This “alleys will be flowing the blood of illegally aborted women argument” is nothing more than a scare tactic. Look at Poland where it was re-criminalized in 93 after decades of abortion on demand. No rivers of blood in the alleys Poland.
Abortions will still happen, but there will be far fewer and they will still be done as “safely” as they are today (which isn’t very safe).
I won’t even get into the “animals are people” discussion. This is just silly and, quite frankly, dehumanizing and dangerous. You must be a fan of Peter Singer who, by the way, advocates for the parents’ “choice” to kill disabled newborns for a period of 30 days AFTER birth.
Sorry to hear about your unborn child lost to miscarriage. That must have hurt both you and your wife. I know I was devastated when my 11 week old unborn baby was dismembered to death by abortion.
R. Marika; no I don’t remember the letter you’re talking about. But right wing nut jobber Ann Coulter just had her speech at University of Ottawa cancelled, by students protesting her message of cultural hate. I know that :)
I’d say abortion disagreement is as divisive here as the US or anywhere. I agree with Martin’s remarks earlier in the thread for that exact reason. There’s never going to be anything even approaching agreement on personhood. So trying to manadate one view over another by laws and jail time is the wrong way to go about it. Here is a wikipedia excerpt;
Hello, MBart:
Wow, you are allergic to ambivalence. I know industry and its computer medulla model for us a black/white 0/1 reality, but it is reductionist and just not true. The actual world is more complex than that. If you really want to act on the basis of care for the truth, you will have to embrace that natural complexity and ambivalence.
I congratulate you for getting away from the wildly emotional claims, but your tactics show desperation in terms of misrepresenting my consistency. Even if you had not the access to my above material, you would still be being assumptive to lump me in with the ProChoice movement, and so qualitatively false. You are playing a purely defensive game at this point, and in retreat. I am contrastingly leading and initiating in the debate. But don’t feel bad, I have had lots of practice with this. So I see even more cracks in your facade. I am going to take each point chronologically from your post to eliminate wiggle room.
I never had to “admit” that. I maintained it from the start. That is you trying to lump me with the ProChoice movement. False. Additionally, I allowed as how victory need not be a zero-sum game. But as you pursue absolutes, you contribute to a zero-victor result. The continuum provides a 2-victor result.
How much of that is due to the misguided policies of the ProLife movement which causes delay and gratuitous fear, and which dropped the ball on emphasizing education? Also, again- maintained, not “admitted”.
Absolutely false, Snickerdoodle. As I clearly wrote above in my last post, “…or the slight present chance of that interaction or awareness.”. I wrote that automatically in sincerely describing my definition of personhood. I had no idea it would serve as insurance against that kind of blatant obfuscation. This is perhaps the chess equivalent of losing a bishop with nothing to show for the sacrifice.
Because there are clear reasons not to. If you want, we can talk about the dangers you mention, and we will be back on the continuum. I meanwhile can and have shown the dangers of absolutist human=person-no-matter-what type thinking. The 16 cell person means a rape survivor and her child will have adiminished life, if forced into personhood instead of allowed to wait. The brain-dead accident victim prolongs closure for relatives and denies other accident victims absolute life or fuller life. Absolutist personhood produces more and greater dangers, not less.
So you keep insisting. I have shown why I disagree, on the basis of competing harms. This is a values question. Unless you have some new type of evidence, or can prove you are omniscient, we are at a stalemate there. That is why tactically I have been offering compromise all along, in support of life, and why absolutism guarantees its own defeat in tactics.
Oh really? And yet the whole purpose of the gamete cell is to become half a person- that is its potentiality. Whereas the potentiality of the skin cell is nothing more than to be sloughed off and turn into dust mite food. You’ll have to do better than that. That was perhaps the Ninjitsu equivalent of attempting a front flip over to behind the opponent, only to find that I have merely turned around and am still facing you. By your definition the gamete is half a person, and so why do you ascribe it zero personhood? Even the Catholic Church to this day prohibits the “spilling of seed”.
You didn’t say what will happen if the zygote is “left alone”. A woman’s body does not “leave a zygote alone”. It builds a placenta and nurtures the zygote. How come cases of miscarriage should not be investigated as negligent homicide or manslaughter? Or why should not the allowing of the body to anihilate gametes be considered killing half a person? This smacks of your dangers of defining a person based on size or location. You have been falsely accusing me of inconsistency; meanwhile I have quite genuine questions about inconsistency on your part. But okay, if fertilization is of such tantamount importance, tell me why!
As I have said, I disagree. We do indeed become persons early on. But not at conception.
Sure, life, but not personhood. The brain-dead person has most of his/her body still alive, but due to brain death does not contain personhood.
Which is exactly why I define personhood around things that make us people, rather than merely human, rather than a mere collection of organs.
I have already explained that. A human (or mammal, and many other animals) that is as yet too undeveloped to show any of the hallmarks of interactivity and personhood.
According to you, from your absolutist values. Again, stalemate. Support compromise. Victory for 2 whole principles, not 0.
False. This has very likely been that continuum staring you in the face before, if you had been open-minded enough to query it. Even the word “BABY” is in bold, according to your own quote, as opposed to zygote, or embryo of 16 cells. You lost a rook for nothing that time.
Because “he” is in the future, not in the day with the 16 cells, obviously.
I don’t know what you’re trying to accomplish with all that. Obviously, I helped set his individuality in motion, and that starts at conception. But “he” still wouldn’t be a person for some time. Of course we as parents were very intentional about it, and had hopes and dreams for a future baby, but we didn’t yet know even the gender. “His” future personhood remained completely within our imagination at that point.
Look, You can go ahead and claim that humanity equals personhood, but you’re not going to convince me or anyone else that “he” had personhood any earlier by finding different combinatorial ways of texting it out. Even you would not be able to find any interactivity with 16 cells. Well, that is not how I define a person. Obfuscatory repetition does nothing to advance a debate or get closer to any kind of a victory, your wishful thinking notwithstanding.
Still complete distraction. Individual life starts; personhood does not. I caused his eventual, but not immediate, personhood.
But to the notion that 16 cells is not a person, then that makes early abortion even as convenience birth control quite uncriminalizeable. Another concern- does the study account for underreporting, and for pressure in the community against abortion? Rape survivors would seem to me to be more vulnerable to this pressure.
True. So what? Keep just acts legal, criminalize unjust acts. Again, the combinatorics of wording doesn’t help your argument, it just wastes time, because…
Says you. Stalemate. Time for compromise.
I never said that, so do yourself and your argument a favor and don’t lump me in. But now that you bring it up, how many is okay with you? A trickle? Say, 10 women a year dying for their principles so that you can have a law that calls 16 cells a person? I say 1 is too many.
But how many? And how many women brought the embryo to term, and how many mothers and children have diminished lives?
Wow. Spoken like a true shaking-in-their-boots person afraid of a good point. What do you call animals’ interactivity? Or “won’t you even get into” the “silliness” of abused kids transfering their abuse by torturing and killing cats? It happens, and it can be a sign of later bullying, rape, domestic violence.
I do not know who that person is. Why would you think I would be a fan of that? Oh, right- more obfuscation.
I wouldn’t expect tons of infanticide. Not very popular. But about babies in dumpsters- I hope you would rather prevent than merely throw the would-have-been mother in prison afterward.
Thank you for your concern. But it hurt not too much, probably because it was in the very early stages, and because we were trying to be prepared for false starts both in the form of miscarriages and as conceptions not taking.
I am sorry for your loss. It sounds like it was against your will, and though I can’t imagine your feelings, I can see how you have drawn from it a positive power behind your goal to preserve life.
In conclusion, I want to introduce a bit of a thought exercise. There is a short list of things I would go back into our burning house for, should it ever catch fire. My son, my wife, our 3 cats, my son’s purple beanbag elephant named Elly, my laptop, in that order. Of course I would have to use my judgement and carefully weigh the risks about how bad the fire already was and how valuable the next item on the list, considering that my son could lose a father if I met with bad luck.
He loves Elly very much, in some ways perhaps more than the cats. But Elly is not a person, even though he invests her with his imagination and feelings. If he loves Elly more, it is because Elly is a visible token of his interaction with himself. He can have control with her, he can use her to guarantee himself emotional healing. Not so with the cats. They have personalities, are independent. They all love him, but they will only take so much of his 6-year-oldness. But if we lost any one of the cats in a fire, he would eventually miss them far more than he would have missed Elly had it been her. Losing Elly would bring on, earlier than natural, a nonetheless inevitable rite of passage. But losing a cat would be the loss of a family member. That is unavoidable in life, but there is no excuse for favoring Elly over it when it comes to prevention.
Bear in mind I am not saying this is equivalent to the value of 16 cells, but I want to draw a similarity (continuum again) between Elly and the 16 cell embryo. Its value lies not in its own actual personhood, but in the emotional investment and / or imagination we put into them.
Additionally, I realize I have not asked you to step up to a key challenge. I accept that your definition of a person coincides with humanness. Now I want to ask you, why? Why is interactivity not a good hallmark of personhood, assuming the slippery slope dangers were completely alleviated? So, aside from the brain-dead or the Van Goghs, why is 16 cells a person? Why do you believe it starts at conception?
I want to reiterate my challenge to you to explain why a gamete is not half a person, since its purpose is to contribute half of a baby’s genes?
And I want to hear what you call the interactivity displayed by animals.
A person is any living, whole, individual being which is human “at its essence” (or possesses human DNA) regardless of race, sex, size, skin colour, location, level of development, mental or physical ability, “viability,” number of body parts, or any other arbitrary characteristic.
I just filed my income tax claiming my gallbladder and 2 placentas dependents under this definition. Thank you, mbart!
And I have just applied to have all parasitic twins and fetus in fetu considered persons. Of course, this makes no difference. No PERSON can use another’s body without ongoing, explicit and informed consent, even if that PERSON will die without the usage.
Good point. There are fetuses conceived in love, and there are fetuses that are conceived in sin. Acts of war, acts of lust, acts of rape. Sinful violation of a woman’s body. The ideal is to create a society that has more of type A and far less of type B. All life is precious, not just the unborn. If there were no wars, not only would the lives of young warriors be spared, but rape would no longer be a weapon. I find it a huge disconnect when a political party calls itself the pro – life party, starts two wars and fights tooth and nail against reforms in the health care industry. Pro – life indeed! Or as the Benedictine nuns say, “Life doesn’t end at conception.”
Victory?!?
Well, of course, never, at least relatively speaking, because for me, debate is a journey, not a destination.
But, in the hopes of flushing out MBart one last time, I now declare victory over him.
This frequently happens on the internet, where an opponent losing ground, and getting desperate, can simply cut their losses and disappear, saving some degree of face over how it would appear in person.
I sensed I had lost him at “silliness”, his reference to my concerns over animal personhood. He was desperate enough to resort to that characterization, whereas I never did so over his concerns about “16 cells”.
I do have a horribly unfair advantage over my opponents. It’s not just my extensive practice. It’s my straightforward, simple rationality. I care ultimately about the absolute truth, and few conservatives do that.
In person, I have always arrived with my opponent at the point where they let on that what guides them is essentially a feeling. For better or for worse, it is an important discovery for them to make, even if they don’t realize it at the time. Even if they had all along been claiming to be participating in rationality. That is the gift that my rationality extends to them: the discovery of their own current limits of rationality.
I guess Starling just can’t get enough. He can claim victory all he wants, but the truth of the matter is that our discussion has simply come to a stand still. We disagree on the definition of what a person is, so there is nowhere else to go.
Although I greatly respect that Starling realizes the unborn are persons at “3, 4, or 5 weeks” after conception (and by extension aborting the lives of these unborn is murder), there is no more I can say to someone who believes that ants are “persons” more so than anesthetized or permanently comatose people (this according to his own definition of “person”).
I also have difficulty with someone who criticizes another for using “emotional” arguments and then proceeds to use emotional (not to mention unfounded) arguments themselves (ie. “transferring their abuse by torturing and killing cats? It happens, and it can be a sign of later bullying, rape, domestic violence.,” or “Otherwise you are, ironically, fighting on the side of horror and death.”
But if it makes Starling feel better to claim “victory,” more power to him. I need to move on now and leave him to his immovable belief in a definition of “person” that is at best shaky and at worst dangerous.
So to move on, I don’t think I have the patience to deal with Marika’s nonsense, but Angels_9’s comment, “No PERSON can use another’s body without ongoing, explicit and informed consent, even if that PERSON will die without the usage,” although rather easily discredited, does accept that an unborn baby is a person and thus moves the discussion to the next level.
Thank you Angels and I will put together a thorough response to your claim very shortly. Stay tuned.
Okay Angels_9;
Thank you again for moving the conversation to a new level. Once again your claim is that “no person can use another’s body without ongoing, explicit and informed consent, even if that person will die without the usage.”
While this suggestion may sound logical at first glance, a deeper look will reveal deadly (pardon the pun) flaws. But before I go into that, I think it is important to reiterate that the claim you make does indeed accept that the feotus, embryo, unborn baby, whatever label you want to apply, is indeed a person.
So, to begin I will admit that the rule you suggest may be applicable in some situations. For example, no one is legally obliged (although some would argue they are morally obliged) to donate their blood, kidney, or any other organ to someone else who is dying and needs it to live. Also, you may legally refuse to jump into shark-infested water to try and save a drowning person. Some may suggest that would be cowardly, but I don’t believe too many judges would hold you responsible for the drowned person’s death.
However, a parent is indeed responsible for providing the basic necessities of life for their children.
As a society, we acknowledge this in our legislation. A parent can be charged with child neglect, child abuse, even murder if they fail to provide the basic necessities of life for their child and that child dies as a result. Since the unborn are indeed their children (as your claim admits), parents, therefore, have a responsibility to provide for them. Intentionally ending their lives by any means, including withholding life-sustaining measures, is morally wrong and punishable by law.
Applying your rule to other situations puts in serious jeopardy. For example, in many countries, breast-feeding is the only source of food for newborns. Should mothers in such places have the right to not only refuse “ongoing, explicit and informed consent” of the use of their bodies, but also to have their children dismembered to death simply because they need their breast milk for survival? I would hope you can plainly see the barbarity of this suggestion.
Your claim, if universally accepted, would also allow for the killing of newborns as long as the umbilical cord is still attached. Are you prepared to take that position?
And let’s be reminded that in 99% of abortion cases, the woman is pregnant because she freely made the choice to perform the act that directly resulted in her pregnancy. She willingly opened the door to the possibility of a new life existing inside of her. She allowed it to happen; her unborn child is not an uninvited guest or “intruder.” He/she is not there by their choice; he/she is there because the woman (and man, of course) chose to participate in the activity that made her existence possible. It’s called taking responsibility for the consequences of your actions.
I suggest that while it may be true we are not responsible for keeping others alive by donating our body or body parts, we are responsible for doing so if we created the situation in which they are dependent on us. Take again the example of the person you come across drowning in the ocean. Even if you have a boat and a life preserver, you may not be under any legal obligation to save them. However, if you were the one who threw them in the ocean in the first place, you certain do have the moral and legal obligation to save their lives.
The same is true with pregnancy and the unborn. You created the situation in which this new life is dependent on you for survival; you therefore have the responsibility to care for them.
Finally, I would claim that an innocent person’s reliance on you does not in any way give you the right to kill them (this rule applies logically even in the case of someone needing your kidney to survive). You may have the right to refuse to donate, but you don’t have the right to intentionally and actively put that person to death, which is what abortion does.
Next.
MBart, it is far more about your self-defeat than my victory, as I have explained. Your defeat is in your tactics. Your tactics have improved over the course of the debate, led by your opponents, but now as your run out of rhetorical room, you betray yourself again.
Walking away from 3 perfectly good questions is nothing but self-defeat, now matter how much you want to believe otherwise.
And meanwhile your tactic of misrepresentation is pathetic, and exists in the domain of the desperate, the failing, and the dishonorable.
That’s right, I can’t get enough of rhetorically improving the infosphere.
And where else can we go? Clearly, as I asked, you can answer my question as to WHY you define a “person” as you do. What is the SOURCE of your definition?
That’s the first you’ve mentioned any acknowledgement at all. BTW – acknowledging the opponent is a sign of strength, not weakness, unless you are playing a game of 2 defeats.
You are very careless. I never called it murder. Murder requires intent, hello. And unless we criminalize all abortion AND it’s preventative (impossible) then the best is education. We can EDUCATE people to the personhood of the fetus. But it is not murder if, out of resistance to the entire Prolife obfuscation, they don’t believe a single thing you say.
You are a liar. There is no better way to put it. You can look up in my posts. I never defined any arthropod as a person, and I deliberately allowed for hidden or temporarily damaged personhood. This is the second time I have had to show you this. If you are not lying, then you are incredibly careless at reading, but this doesn’t make sense to me given your articulation at hearing yourself type. Or perhaps you care very little about the issue. But this seems implausible as well. So my money is on your lying. The saddest is when one lies to themself.
Explain to me how that is using an emotional argument. Or is that just something you say when it is new to you? There are studies after studies. The perpetrator tortures the cat (or other animal) precisely BECAUSE it exhibits the emotion and interactivity that shows the perp he has power. But since you, MBart, were omniscient prior, and this doesn’t exist in your canon, it doesn’t count and is “silliness”. The clasic “because you said so” argument. Your sin of pride.
Quite clinical. You do agree that horror exists in the world, do you not?
In other, more truthful words, “I am now going to twist Starling’s words, cause that’s all I’ve got left. At least, it’s a better option than doing some soul-searching and declaring WHY I define personhood the way I do, or answering his other valid challenges.”
Yep, I guess you’re just not up to the real fight. The fight comes to you in the form of “Then what IS an animal, if not a person?”, also, WHY is a gamete not HALF a person?”,and you just turn away. Poor MBart. The only leading of the debate you can do is in retreat.
P.S.
If your concern about the “source of definition” question is that it is religious, prohibitted as a main topic at this site, then we can certainly ask the moderator for a variance in this case, plus you can debate me by email: chaosorder4ATgmail.com. Also- are you also at newsbusters? (”pending approval”) I can debate you just as hard on conservative turf, that is, unless they like to delete. You have met your match, and then some.
As a NASA scientist has no interest in debating someone who argues the moon revolves around the Earth; as a mathematician has no interest in debating someone who argues 2 + 2 = 5; I have no interest in debating someone who argues that a gorilla, a dolphin, or even an ant (who all have “the ability to be aware or to interact emotionally with others or even just with the self, or the slight present chance of that interaction or awareness”) is more of a person than a woman in a coma or a teenager under anesthesia who do not possess those abilities.
I also deflect from someone who claims the other twists and misrepresents his words and then proceeds to twist and misrepresent the others’ words, someone who claims the other has no right to use emotional arguments, and then uses emotional arguments and claims that his do not qualify as emotional while the other’s do, someone who demands the SOURCE of the other’s definition but fails miserably to offer his own, or someone who accuses the other of not adequately reading his posts and then displays evidence of not adequately reading the other’s.
However in an attempt to satisfy your persistence, I will offer this: My definition is a matter of self-evidence. Sort of like the claim that “the computer I’m typing on was created by an intelligent mind, it did not simply come into being by accident.” There was no need to go through any philosophical meanderings to reach that conclusion. It is self-evident. I know it without considering it. The same is very much true in case of the definition of “person.” I simply have always known that all human beings are persons and all persons are human beings, and that humans are somehow more valuable than the rest of the animals (uh oh, here come the animal rights activist, I can hear the clicking of their keyboards now).
Now, of course I have considered from whence this apparently self-evident knowing originates, but I don’t know that exploring that is necessary to address the question of whether or not the unborn are human and alive. We already know that they are.
The sciences of fetology, embryology, biology, genetics, and others have proven that beyond the shadow of a doubt. No need to challenge the notion that 2 + 2 = 4. It would be an exercise in futility. Further, if someone is a human being, that ought to good enough to consider them a “person” (all people are created equal, but please don’t ask me for the source of this claim). We all know what claiming that some human beings are not “persons” has led us before, right?
Remember when women were considered “non-persons”? How about Jews? Native Americans? Blacks?
I hope that wasn’t too “emotional” for you. You do realize these injustices existed, do you not?
Tireless Balker awards to both Mbart and Starling!
Ha!
“self-evident”…
So, it is as I predicted, it is because you say so. Wonderful.
And this from you who don’t contest my observation that you lied, and continue to do so, in falsely representing my definition, despite its utter obviousness.
You were at the beginning and continue to be, blindly proud and arrogant.
Your credibility is in a shambles. You have guaranteed your own defeat, and by proxy, my victory. But by no means, bother to admit that. Go on, say it…
(and continue to not bother rising to my challenges)
I don’t know what category you are in (conservative, prolife) or not, or if it even matters. But I have debated / argued with a lot of folks similar to you.
And you eventually resort to the debate equivalent of terrorism. Destructive, even to your own argument, because perish the thought that you might have to endure ever being humble. Perish the thought that anything ever get built in common.
So, a cat is less a person than 16 human cells, because you say so. Oh, but that’s not inconsistent with the notion that a gamete is zero persons, also because you say so. Greeeeat.
Starling, I think mbart not only lies, I think he misrepresents himself. Do you notice he never speaks of what is going on in Canada? Abortion has been legal there for 20 years, but it’s U.S. politicians that he rails against:
“Whey would Obama and his pro-abortion cohorts fight so hard for tax-funded abortion”
“Bill Clinton got it wrong, and so have you.”
And finally this comment, of tonight:
“As a NASA scientist has no interest in debating someone who argues the moon revolves around the Earth…”
I think it’s really curious that someone using the Canadian flag as his avatar would be commenting about U.S. politics when he could just as easily vent about Stephen Harper’s comment on the maternal health initiative. And how many Canadians would use an analogy invoking an agency of another country?
(Harper is the Prime Minister of Canada, and the leader of the Conservative Party. The comment on the CBC was he did what he did to play to his base.) Do you know what he did, mbart?
Haha, I noticed the moon thing too, but I didn’t say anything, imagining what a torrent of tangents it might set him off to.
Inconsistency like MBart’s is summed up by what I charitably call the “lively invokation schedule”. What that means is, principles are to be held up as valuable right up until they conflict with some other principle. He doesn’t actually have the hierarchy of principle he thinks he has, but rather a round robin of trumping claims that can be shown as circular logic by the likes of me.
I can get folks like him spiraling faster and faster at the changing invokation until they look increasingly wrongful, and/or retreat, and/or (rarely) admit to something. On the internet what usually happens is just the first 2 (as demonstrated in above posts) because the third requires humility, and there is simply less incentive for that over the wire than face-to-face.
But in terms of face time, I have gotten a Jehova’s Witness to defend his assertions with, “…it just HAS to be this way. I couldn’t stand it if there was no afterlife. What would be the point?”. And a guy just turning college age who had been taught in a fundamentalist school, “…well, I FEEL certain of it, but of course I can’t prove it.”. Simply put, they thought they were rational, but ultimately they were very much not.
It is a hobby of mine to point this out, as a public service to my varied opponents. Converting their assertions into a spiral spin is much like an Aikido move. I use their own energy against them. It helps that my stance is balanced, stable, unassailable.
Of course they deny it at the time, but I bet I inspire valuable doubt, 1 person at a time.
I’ve been wanting to make this point for some time. Permitted, voluntary abortion should be restricted to the first three months. My pro-choice stance includes that. In my own country, that is the law: abortion is legal for the first three months of pregnancy, thereafter it is illegal except in cases of medical emergency. As for the young and careless, there is the morning-after pill.
And so the question is begged: why is it wrong to kill a 3 month old fetus but okay to kill one that is 2 months, 3 weeks old?
Obviously, MBart, because here is a country that is at least trying to do something with the continuum of gestation, as we have been showing your royal ignorantness for a whole thread now.
MBart:
Additionally, I am going to summarize a few of your obvious points of dishonor.
If anyone is a murderer, it is you, because you know full well there is more to defend about your stance. But you are lazy or cowardly- you hide behind “self evident”. Well, it backfires on you, because “self-evident” works qualitatively in favor of our definition of personhood, involving interactivity, not yours. If yours had any reasoning, you could then defend the definition of a gamete, or say something about the definition of an animal.
But no, you are proud and afraid. So you shy away from the debate, and continue to contribute to the polarized and senseless politics like what dominates here in the US, thereby preventing ANY progress at abortion reduction, by prohibition or otherwise. And you do this premeditatedly and by lying to yourself and others. That is why you are easily far more a murderer than a woman taking the morning after pill, for no other reason than last-resort birth control, and killing a few cells.
Noone you would want to convince is fooled by you. You lied about my definition of personhood, and did so in plain sight. But I bet you don’t even really fool yourself. You know what you are. A liar. A coward.
Because you say so?
You don’t say!
No, you really don’t.
Starling should really learn to quit while he’s not too far behind. It’s getting to be that every time he opens his mouth, something more ridiculous comes out.
First I directly quote (hence those little things called “quotation marks”) his definition of person and then he accuses me of misrepresenting his definition of person. Then he accuses me of murder all the while defending the right to kill nascent human beings.
Lest we forget his insistence that emotional arguments are off limits, followed by his extensive use of emotional arguments. Just for kickers, he goes on to accuse me of not sufficiently explaining how I arrive at my definition of person without ever once one attempting to explain where he gets his from.
Finally a resort to a flurry of ad hominem attacks. Of course, such personal attacks are always a sign that sound arguments are sorely lacking.
It’s going from bad to worse you for you my megalomaniacal friend. My suggestion for you is to silently slink away to some other forum. You might always want to consider refraining from answering questions I pose to other posters. I think they can probably answer them for themselves, no?
Oh, MBart, MBart, MBart…
Poor guy. I count 3 total falsehoods, a couple of partials, one actual truth, a non starter, and no new points ahead…
False. You said I thought an ant was a person. You completely fabricated that. I don’t know how your mind works; unless perhaps I am hit by a bus or some other traumatic event befalls me I will likely never experience and therefore fully relate to that kind of bold irrationality. But I offer this as an intro session of talk therapy, on the chance it may help: You’re not fooling anyone, with the possible exception of you yourself.
You actually almost got that right. I didn’t accuse you of it; I said, “IF anyone is a murderer…” It’s called a conditional. It seems automatic for me to insure my own intent, accuracy, and consistency. By contrast, it seems automatic for you to do the opposite for yourself. What’s that about? Really, what is all that about for you?
False. I pointed out that you did it and that it is a waste, but I never attempted to make or even suggest to make some sort of law. That’s what YOU try to do. Projection, anyone?
False. Clearly I and you both are debating about emotional topics. But you are led by your emotions, and let them inform you, which is of course impossible objectively. That is why you call killing without intent “murder”. That is exactly as crackpottish as radical animal rights activists shouting, “Meat is Murder!”. It doesn’t surprise me about you at this point, though, that you can’t distinguish between observing and accusing, or between debating about versus debating from, emotion.
Finally you got lucky! Yes I did that! Because you never say why to you “human” is the same as “person” despite your definition being based on their synonymousness, and yet they are indeed 2 different words. You said it was “self evident”. Well, actually, it is far more “self evident” that once present interactivity makes a person. At least, that is my opinion. And, hey, wow- I can defend it and explain it! Yay! But you just insist it. Pathetic. It’s like you picked it out of a hat, or you’re a hired lawyer for it or something. It’s like you have no reason to care. Oh, and now you’re probably going to say I “accused” you of not caring, when in fact I am saying it sounds like that. (Wait for it.)
Well, you never asked! The reason is, that I use rational evidence, I appreciate scientific assessments of things. Rational assessments. I think tangible decisions are best made from tangible evidence. To me, using genetics mixed with time travel to declare 8 cells a person is a fantasy. I agree it is a human; it is not yet a person. Just to be completely clear and disclosive with all of MY explanations. But feel free to ask for additional specific details if you think I have left something out.
I had to Google “ad hominem”. Wikipedia: “argument toward the person” or “argument against the person”. True. (Hey, you got lucky again!) You wrote your own ticket, lying about my statements, and in plain sight. What ever happened to personal responsibility. What, I’m going to let you have all the fun? But if you want to get back to purely honest dignified debate about the issue at hand, be my guest. I’m there.
Always? More absolutism. Lacking on your part? That much would be true.
Copycat. That’s how I referred to you for your supposed omniscience about persons, and your argument that we should accept it because your highness said so. Bad to worse? I’m enjoying this. But hey, enjoy fantasy. It’s great. Make up laws, be omniscient, imagine consistency just by mere insistency.
You mean like you do when you don’t like the question?
Maaan, thanks for the suggestion. Is that a bill now before the MBart senate, soon to be law of the cyberland? I hope not. I prefer the free country thing.
Uh huh. And I’m pretty sure (checking, … checking…) yup- that I did not prevent that.
Oh wait!!! I just got it! I read your hints! You want me to shut up!
Yeah, that’s not going to happen unless the Admin wants it to happen. So, try your darndest to enjoy my challenging banter. Sorry it’s hard. I know you’d rather be (sigh) just free to be all self righteous, and declare all sorts of stuff murder, and hear yourself type, unobstructed with dissent, but…
I actually care about the issues more than my own specific agendas, so I think I will keep on talking principle.
To all:
I found this website that maps out abortion law around the world. It is by PregnantPause.org, apparently a ProLife organization, as the term is generally used.
http://www.pregnantpause.org/lex/world02map.htm
One click further in is a chart with some additional details involving reason for abortion and trimester restrictions. South Africa, as Madeleine mentioned, allows abortion on demand only through the first trimester. But it allows abortion through the second trimester for reasons of increasing “hard”ness. There are quite a few restriction patterns to the red-colored countries, those that allow for “soft”er reasons to some degree. South Africa is not alone in its particular pattern: Sharing it are Armenia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikstan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan. I imagine all those former Russian republics may have inherited that pattern from Russia from when it was all Soviet Union.
As for the biggest players by world population share-
China (and the US): completely legal.
India: legal for life and health of the mother, legal through 2nd trimester for “soft”er reasons, not legal just on demand.
Indonesia, legal for protecting the life of the mother, not legal for any other reason.
Brazil, legal for life or rape, but not legal for any other reason.
Nigeria, legal to preserve life, physical, and mental health of the mother, but not for any other reason.
With most of those countries I mentioned, if a continuum of restriction plays out in policy, it does so in the reasons for abortion more often than in the timing of fetal development.
At a quick glance, Spain seems to have the most variety in restriction level: Completely legal for protecting life and physical and mental health, legal through 1st trimester for rape, legal through 2nd trimester for fetal defect, and not legal at all for any “soft”er reasons.
That is a telling kind of map. almost all of the restricted countries are from Africa or South America, and shows what kind of a battle the pro-life or anti-choice crusaders would be facing to get the world they want!
Maybe it shows that the views always contain differences. Have to say that while Mbart got challenged mightly on his view and some of his facts, he kept more composure than I ever would have thought from that side of the debate.
Here’s a very different twist on abortion: In the 1960s, the Philippines was the second most advanced country in Asia – behind only Japan. Economically, it was more advanced than many countries that are now far ahead of it – South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Malaysia, etc. It was predicted by almost everyone that the Philippines would have a very bright future.
The family planning program (government, NGO, and private) was developing nicely. If I remember correctly, abortion was technically illegal, but was, nevertheless, done fairly frequently, by qualified personnel, even in government hospitals.
In the 1970s, the Catholic Church entered the picture – opposed to contraception and abortion. Unlike Catholic countries in Europe, where the people ignore the Church, in the Philippines it has become extremely influential. As a result, the Philippines remains one of the poorest countries in Asia. Thanks to the Chuch’ influence, there is only a very weak government family planning program (stressing the rhythm method) and absolutely no legal abortion.
The lack of effective family planning and abortion in the Philippines is the single major reason why this country has fallen so far behind its neighbors.
Any discussion of abortion needs to consider carefully the impact on the society as well as the impact on the foetus. The Philippines is one example where forbidding it caused – and continues to cause – much misery.
dchauls;
Any researcher will tell you that concluding causation where there is correlation is a very difficult thing to do. Extraneous variables could always be the actual cause of the effect you are observing.
I can show you studies that indicate higher rates of child abuse in areas where abortion is more common (the theme being that as we devalue the unborn, we begin to devalue the born). While permitting the killing of the unborn could very well lead to a mentality that permits abusing the born, it could also be that some other factor is contributing to the higher rates of child abuse in that particular population.
So to prove that certain countries do poorly because they don’t permit the legal killing of unborn children, while may or may not be true, would be a substantial undertaking for you. It is very likely there are other contributing factors.
Moreover, even if you were able to prove causation it, it still doesn’t justify legalized abortion. Here’s why:
One of the most commonly used arguments to justify slavery was that outlawing the slave trade would cripple the American economy. On top of that, letting all those slaves go free would mean they would live lives of poverty. No one would hire them, there would be little work and they would suffer.
Now, I think we all recognize that even though abolishing slavery could indeed have negative economic implications, it was nonetheless the right thing to do. Doing the right thing and respecting the fundamental right to liberty of the Africans trumped any concern for negative economic impact and even the fact that slaves would live poverty-stricken lives after being set free.
The same is true with abortion. Doing the right thing and respecting the fundamental right to life of the unborn (by abolishing abortion) trumps any concern for negative economic implications, and even the fact that some of those unaborted babies could live poverty-stricken lives after being allowed to live.
Next.
Actually, MBart, your concerns mean that the right thing to do is reexamine personhood.
Gandhi pointed out that a good acid test of a society is how it treats its animals. Taking away the rights of female persons to control their fertility when it doesn’t involve the life of another person (16 cells) would be a step in the wrong direction, not the right one.
Earlier you made big hay about civil rights and “self evident”. Well, one of the justifications for slavery was that the black skin was a “self evident” difference justifying different treatment.
So your arguments that humanity = personhood or that animal rights concerns are “silly” are just as dead rhetorically.
You still going to repeat yourself, having given up on actual debate? Got any new answers to my challenges?
Why is evidence like present or former interactivity less relevant than clinical labels?
If the clinical label of “human” is so important, and a zygote is a full person, and size doesn’t matter, then why not a gamete, whose whole purpose is to become half a baby, as half a person?
And if animals should not be considered people, then what should they be labeled as?
And how’s your journey into truthfulness (hopefully) going?
If to dispose of something, you must kill it,then of course this “something” is alive. It is unable to sustain it’s life apart from the mother, but nor is a newborn able to survive and feed itself apart from human intervention. A newborn looks and acts different than an adult. It is not yet fully formed. Does that mean it is any less a person? So it is with an embryo. How a civilized society can justify any argument about abortion is mind-boggling. When a human kills another human it’s called murder.
To Running Bear…
Greeeat… semantics all over again. I’ll be wondering about your definition of personhood, but setting aside definitions and legalese to get to the nitty gritty, who exactly does it hurt to kill a 16-cell embryo? And who does it help?
Semantics:
Cats, dogs, steers are “alive”.
So are sea anemones.
So is my arm.
An adult is “human”.
So is a baby, so is a 16-cell embryo, so is my arm, so are a sperm or egg cell.
All this “criminalization” is feel-good fake moralization for the sinfully proud. You think you can just declare that something is a crime all the way back to fertilization, and ignore the facts of the debate, and ignore the facts IN the debate. Well, morally you are wrong for drawing false parallels. Politically you are wrong for expecting to effectively save lives in this absolutist falsehood.
The only true, simple moral question to ask is, “Who does it hurt?”. If there is no past or present personhood demonstrable, then the answer is “noone”.
Support not the futile absolutism, but rather admit to the continuum of gestation.
Before we go any further with this discussion, I object to the use of the moniker “running bear”. It is an insult to the culture of the Native American. Bears are capable of short bursts of speed, but they cannot maintain it. Therefore, bears are not commonly known for their running, as much as a horse or a deer.
Please be aware that your audience may consist of Native Americans who view the use of that phrase as a derogatory term, quite akin to the racial slur, “nigger”.
My opinion; Running Bear should find a place to Hibernate and refrain from intelligent debate.
this blogging site is rather remarkable. Only my first entry but I fail to see the offence of running bear. Couldn’t one use “dancing snake” or “flying fish”?
Bears don’t run as much as they charge. American Indian names had meanings. They were rooting in nature, or they marked significant events. Names are sacred.
“Running Bear” is a demeaning slur. “Bear” is a heterograph for “Bare” .. which infers that the so – named individual is an unclothed savage. American Indians are not savages. This is the same dehumanization that mbart rails against. Now, isn’t that curious?
Perhaps we can ask how the poster picked the “avatar” (pun intended) when (s)he gets back.
As for myself, I had no inkling that such a term would be offensive, until you informed me.
It could be that I live in a part of the country where that term is not as prevalent; I live near the Haudenosaunee.
Or it could likely be that I am wildly ignorant of a great many things, due to my being busy, not reading as much as I might, being narrowly focused, plus not being college educated.
The internet community and Wiki pages are a great help. On that note, a googling turned up a song, a campsite in Vermont, an open-source operating system, another campsite in Idaho, and a resort in Michigan, all with that name. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least that a term in common use is also a racist epithet; That is the willful ignorance of Western Civilization.
Gandhi was once asked what he thought of Western Civilizaton. He said he thought “it would be a good idea.”. (LOL)
A search of Wikipedia turned up no mention of the term as a racist insult. Perhaps you could write an article for it?
It is enjoyable to contribute to Wikipedia, and to know that what I read or see there has been contributed by millions of others. So far all I have contributed is 2 pictures:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PolyphemusFlashingJune6th2009.png
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ColorCube-Equatorial-Cross-section.png
Thanks Running Bear;
How societies have come to permit such injustices as Slavery, Abortion, and the Jewish Holocaust is of course a matter of ongoing philosophical debate and psychiatric research. Certainly a common denominator in many crimes against humanity is the idea of dehumanization. In all of the above examples, the stronger segment of society has something to gain from the victimized group (free labour or land, for example), or the victimized group is in the way of something the stronger group wants (land, an education, personal freedom, a trip to Hawaii, etc).
They know they can’t just kill or enslave the weaker group because that would be a violation of their rights as persons. So what to do, what to do? Simple, disqualify and dehumanize (mostly with the use of language or meandering philosophical justifications) the weaker group as “non-persons” or “less than fully human.” Viola! now killing or enslaving them is not a crime against humanity anymore. It’s now a “right” to be defended, fought for, even cherished.
Marika;
If you don’t mind, neither the p.c. nor the thought police are particularly welcome on my thread.
Here in Canada, society has become far more saturated with political correctness than in the U.S. and Canadians can now, in a long and expensive process, be hauled before a “human rights tribunal” for something said in a letter to the editor or on a blog.
Sorry if you are offended, but I value the right to freedom of expression too much to cower to the likes of you.
MBart:
Your silence on the matter implies to me that you admit to having lied in your previous posts.
Additionally, your silence in answering my few challenges implies to all that you are forfeiting any real argument in favor of mindless repetition. But just in case you want to stop cowering, here they are again:
Caution: Intense sarcasm may not be suitable for those with impaired logic, causing symptoms of confusion-
I guess since you are king, and what you say ought to be considered “self-evident”, we have to enslave rape survivors to your fun laws, guaranteeing rights to 16 cell embryos, because it is “self-evident” they deserve it, just as it was “self-evident” that blacks were different because they were black.
/sarcasm. Return to normal mode.
Your whole argument stands in support of slavery, not at opposition to it. But, I understand. You’re not really serious about this.
What does it say about your POV that to support it you must lie, retreat, and resort to empty repetition? You have inspired noone, yet I have instilled doubt in you.
Thank you Starling.
You have just verified that I can add “self-delusional” to your list of qualities.
More classic MBart projection. Really, classic red voter projection.
BTW, what projection means is, those qualities that are most undesired in yourself; those are the first you claim to notice in others.
Thank you for defining a simple term for me. I never would have known what it means without the benevolent sharing of your all-encompassing, higher-level knowledge.
Thank you, oh great megalomaniacical one. I’m not worthy.
I must admit you have shown me one thing through all of this: You can lead a starling to water, but you can’t make him drink.
Oh and that bit about animals being more deserving of “personhood” than an embryo sticks with me too. There’s a lesson we can all benefit from, no?
Save the whales and the starlings, but destroy the unborn babies.
Still nothing in terms of response to my questions, huh.
>>>Sigh<<<
MBart never met a challenge he couldn't shrink from.
A word of friendly advice- you can't manufacture reality by renaming it. Oh! you may need the dots connected. This means that you can't automatically turn 16 cells into an "unborn baby" by your amazing semantic resolve, 8 years of Bush doing that kind of thing notwithstanding.
Let me try this one. Very on-topic, political, the very basis of your post, assuming you are sincere in the title.
You say "Governments should criminalize abortion". I assume you actually want to reduce abortions.
My question is this:
What political success do you think your absolutist stance will provide?
Say a dark horse lefty came up as a candidate with a platform of the usual stuff for a lefty EXCEPT prolife absolutism. Say the competing candidate was a righty except for supporting an ammendment to prohibit abortions after 2 trimesters while still fully allowing them before the first month is up.
Who would you vote for?
I don’t feel like playing hypotheticals.
If a politician is anti-child killing, he/she is likely alright with me.
Is there any question you will actually answer?
Would you ever vote for restrictions after fertilization?
What difference does it make whether I answer or not? You’re not about to change your mind about anything.
Why are you at this forum at all then?
I ask because I’m curious.
Maybe we are at a complete standstill on principle, but that is why I asked about your political strategy.
Why are you?
Starling: You ask for a citation. I know that “Running Bear” is an insult. My source is an American Indian. So you are not going to find it on the web. The closest I could find for documentation is the following:
http://buffalopost.net/?cat=2195
Mbart: This is from your post of 31 March:
Remember when women were considered “non-persons”? How about Jews? Native Americans? …
Yet when I point out that the use of a nickname is offensive to one of the members of the group you listed, now all of the sudden, you scream political correctness. Your thinking is inconsistent.
Good grief.
Why am I what?
Follow along now Starling. You asked me “why are you at this forum at all then?” (note the quotation marks, they mean that I am repeating exactly what you wrote), and I responded with “Why are you?”
Good grief man.
Have you noticed Marika that you are the only one who finds the name “Running Bear” offensive? Keep up your hyper-pc antennae and you just might qualify for a position on one of our human rights tribunal panels one day.
p.s. running bear, running bears, bear running, bears running, the bear ran, run to the bear, see the bear run.
Funny how you are so sensitive to words but don’t seem to have much of a problem with dismembering a child in the womb to death.
My suggestion to you is to retreat back into the pc shadows, give your priorities a good once over and come back when you have something of value to add to this thread.
Marika Markle:
I didn’t ask for a citation. I mentioned that I could totally believe that the dominant western culture could use a term with no concern for its offensiveness.
Recall the “Braves” MLB team; locally in Syracuse the team was called the “Chiefs”, and now is called the “SkyChiefs”.
I suggested that you might write a Wikipedia article about it. That way the internet community at large would be more likely to be educated about the term, in the course of similar web searches.
MBart:
About the reason I’m here. I like to communicate about the deepest principles about how we determine right and wrong, and then about how we try to bring that about.
I have thought and conversed a lot about these things over the years. I used to be atheist in high school. My believer friends and acquaintances challenged me, on matters of proof, hoping to convert me to their POV. Instead, they inspired my agnosticism. The absolute objective truth isn’t what people expect, but it is just a breath away for anyone. All they have to do is follow through on thinking completely honestly.
With that experience, my foundation is solid, and as a result I am quite comfortable in literally any debate. One of the things I have to work on now is managing what I expect from others (like your steadfast refusal to answer any question, as if it is an infinite trap).
You and I have certain aspects in common: we both wish to promote the acceptance of inviolable life in areas where it is not yet popular. I do so in later majority of gestation plus higher animals; you do so for the entire gestation period.
Separate from debating principle, I also debate conduct and strategy. That is why I switched to a political question. I often find it a shame how much energy is wasted on perfectionism, or absolutism, or insular POVs, where if people came together they would find much more common ground, and make more progress. That is why I proposed early on to you the notion of an abortion compromise.
I observe that you have a hard time ultimately defending your principle, as well as perhaps having a strategy that won’t serve your principles as well as could be. When I challenge you, you shut down / avoid / return to repetition. I’m here to tell you, as an opponent that could also be an ally, that I don’t see how it can be working for you. This is what I should hope you would want a friend to tell you as well: honest critique, not flattery.
And I submit to you that there simply is no “common ground” on abortion any more than there was common ground on the issue of slavery. We don’t say that it is okay to own slaves in some circumstances; in the same way, it is not okay to kill some unborn human beings for some reasons.
You were either for or against slavery, and you are either for or against abortion.
I don’t debate the issue of granting human rights to some animals because, quite frankly, I find it a waste of time and effort. To me, it is like debating whether or not the Earth is round to someone who believes it is flat. I simply have no interest in going there. It is a complete waste of time for me so please cease your persistent attempts to drag me over there.
I gave you my reasons for believing that each human life is a continuum beginning at the moment of conception and ending at death. I also explained in detail why I find your definition of “person” (which you have failed provide an adequate basis for, btw) weak, flawed, and even dangerous.
If you don’t want to accept my explanations, then don’t. I don’t really care. In the end, it is you that must rationalize your support for the legalized killing of the most helpless and defenseless among use.
By the way, what did you think of this:
http://www.abortionno.org
and http://www.abortionno.org/index.php/abortion_pictures/image_full/238/
I am curious to know.
I gave you my reasons for personhood:
Who is hurt / who is not hurt. If the human being has no brain yet, then it does not exist as a person, and noone will miss that personhood, because it didn’t exist yet. What could be clearer? I think you willfully ignore what I say. If you had some basis, religious or otherwise, for explaining to me who is hurt by killing 16 cells, I’m listening. But you don’t. No, I have explained myself; it is you who often repeat old non sequiturs and avoid the challenge.
I engaged in “persistent attempts” because to me personhood is what is relevant; the species in question far less so. That is, if you want to find out what is actually right, not just what is convenient, or politically feasible, or conventional. After all, you keep bringing up slavery, at your own peril. “Self-evident” didn’t help back then. The color of the skin wasn’t morally relevant. It was, “Who is hurt?”. That is how I determine right and wrong.
It is also you who must rationalize taking away the rights of women. It is you who must rationalize your purchases of meat. And it is you who must rationalize your strategy which will continually fail to inspire life-attentive policy.
For you, is it “I really don’t care.” or “I’m curious”?
I’ve seen those pictures before. I’m curious- What did you think of the pictures of 4, 8, 16 cells? That was the one redeeming thing about the site – they don’t try to hide that. I’m curious- have you ever seen video of factory farms? I’m curious- do you think that animals can suffer? I’m still curious- what is your political strategy?
I’ve had open questions for you for a long time. You still keep repeating.
I know you claim the animal thing is irrelevant.
Why?
I know you think the human being is sacred, not the person.
Why?
I know you want the law to prohibit all abortion. You must somehow think that will be effective.
Why?
I know you avoid the notion of a gamete as half a human (no matter how small!)
Why?
Further notes of interest:
“To me, it is like debating whether or not the Earth is round to someone who believes it is flat.”
To ancient land dwellers, “self evident” heavily implied that the earth is flat. It was only through observing ships in the distance at sea, especially with telescopes, that the notion of a round earth rises to equal practical plausibility.
Perhaps one of us is wrong; if your argument is worth anything, then it should be able to stand up mightily against mine. So go ahead, prove to me that animals have no feelings.
You as king again:
(Who’s the megalomaniac again)
“…and you are either for or against abortion. ”
False. I am against late abortion, I am for early abortion. You are never going to be able to dictate what I am for or against, try as you might. Just thought I’d let you know, friendly-like.
More slavery relevance: Slavery ended, but there was segregation. It was still wrong, but perhaps it meant that the civil war wouldn’t drag on until every last American citizen was dead. To at least end slavery was what they could do at the time.
Are you prepared to remain absolutist and perfectionist, and hold out for some total ban on abortion, at the risk of not supporting a late-term ban that would protect those with far more definite personhood?
One can only imagine what wrongs will be righted, even in our lifetimes. Are you sure you are on the side of progress? Are you sure you’re not helping to hold it back? How do you determine what is right and wrong, or what you are certain of?
BTW – You may be “curious” all of a sudden, but I’ve been asking 3 and now 4 questions for a veeery looooong time.
Quid pro quo, Clarisse, quid pro quo.
The 16-celled person is hurt, that’s who. They’re dead. The mother and/or father may be hurt as well. Ultimately, makes no difference if anyone is hurt or not. Our value as persons does not lie in what others feel for us, whether we are loved or not, or whether anyone mourns our passing. It lies in the simple fact that we are human people and nothing more. Is the quick and painless death of unwanted newborn no one cares for, not even the parents, insignificant and justifiable?
The gamete is identical to the skin cell, the tonsil, the arm, etc. in terms of status. They are all parts of a person’s body, not a complete person in themselves.
A zygote, on the other hand, is a complete human organism (person). It needs no more parts added to it. Give it the proper nutrients and environment and will continue to grow and develop just as a newborn will continue to grow and develop when given the proper environment and nutrients.
Why do you think the human being is not sacred? If we aren’t, then there can be no moral distinction between killing a starling, cat, or even killing a mosquito and killing you.
Given only enough time to save the drowning 2 year old child 50 yards to my left or the drowning cat 50 yards to my right, there would be absolutely zero hesitation in choosing which one I ought to save, even if the child had 1/2 her brain missing. For someone who has convinced themselves that some animals are persons and some persons are animals, however, I guess there might be some dissonance in that circumstance (note to Starling: those are the dangerous ones).
Tell me something Starling, you’re so hung up on this “16 cells” thing so how many cells must a human being have before they can be considered a person and why? 32? 1000? 1,000,000? How many?
And if only some animals are persons, which ones would you disqualify from personhood and why? You wouldn’t want to engage in “speciesism” now, would you?
Today’s Deep Thought: If a dolphin is a person, should we charge sharks with murder every time they kill a dolphin?
I would support a ban on killing older, larger children in the womb, and then I would continue my effort to protect the younger, smaller ones as well.
If 100 people are drowning, you don’t refuse to save the 5 you can because you can’t save them all. You save those 5 and then try to save the rest, in my humble opinion.
I never said animals don’t have feelings, I just said having feelings isn’t what determins whether or not we are people.
I’ve seen the pictures of factory farms. They’re gross, but not gross in the way pictures of holocaust victims are. I can detect the difference, can you?
When I see the pics of 2, 4, 8 cells I am in amazment of what I used to look like. Reminds me to respect human life at all stages.
So again I explain to you the difference between a body part and a whole person – a relatively simple concept to grasp for most, I had presumed. I guess for someone who must rationalize the killing of children, it might get a little foggy.
I also explain to you the notion that some animals are persons is ridiculous. It is simply absurd and dangerous, anti-human and a debate I know is a dead end waste of my time.
No doubt, my answers to your questions will fall on deaf ears and will in the long, run have wasted my time and effort.
No doubt you will continue to accuse me of failing to substantiate my definition of person, without even ever attempting to substantiate yours. Its as if everyone should just accept that your definitions are self-evident and clear, when it fact they are fatally flawed and incoherent.
One allows for people being denied personhood status and animals being awared it, which is evidently your agenda all along, while the other, while may be appealing to the simple thinker, is ultimately arbitrary and has no basis in logic.
You claim you are against late, but for early, abortion without defining the terms. You fail to offer a cutoff point and explain why it is relevant. You seem to have no realization that the embryo has a brain very early in gestation, far before any of the “early” abortions you so cherish, but we wouldn’t want that little fact getting in the way.
Now, I have a big juicy steak cooking on the stove that beckons me, bear steak I think. Perhaps you have a PETA membership to renew or something like that?
I have listened and listened and listened to you, MBart.
You are still repeating that you discard evidence of personhood, and care only about the status of human.
I have been asking you why, and you still won’t answer.
To me, the clear obvious distinction is personhood.
To me, the holocaust images and factory farm images have an obvious difference:
The former contains abused humans, the latter contains abused animals.
To me, the images have the following similarity:
They both contain abject suffering.
How are you not the murderer for ignoring this suffering, even participating in it?
You ask me about engaging in species-ism; that’s exactly what you do, in your sole support of humans.
In earlier posts, I have obviously offered cutoff points for the personhood of the embryo.
That was you blatantly lying again, BTW, to say that I did not.
I am of course not sure exactly where; that is why to err on the side of caution. That is why I keep using the 16-cell analogy. Tell me, where is the brain in a 16 cell embryo? Where is the brain in a single cell zygote?
If anything is dangerous and anti-human about either of our arguments, it is just as likely to be yours, declaring all humanity as blanket personhood, and taking away the rights of definite persons in the process. You do so on shakier evidence than me. You would take away the choice of a woman to end an unwanted pregnancy that she was raped into, and apparently, you would support a law to prohibit unplugging the brain-dead, thereby denying closure to my wife if I was hopelessly injured in an accident, as well as denying my life-saving organs to others who could still use them.
And I sense that you do indeed have doubts, because of your unconfident behavior you start to exhibit when cornered. The lying, the joking, the repetition, the fear of questions and hypotheticals.
Here is my strength:
Humility. I could be wrong. Which is why I have considered this as well as possible. I have arrived at my decisions on what to support, based on the available evidence. I will always remain open-minded.
And here is your weakness:
Pride. You are unwilling to question your own absolutism, even though you could be wrong. So, to the degree that you are wrong, you barrel forward as a soldier for evil. Your net good and net harm cancel each other out at best.
You still have work to do. You still have to explain WHY personhood is equivalent to humanity. “Obviousness” is false, and has failed many times in the past. Clearly, even you use arguments beyond obviousness to support life. So how do you justify the arbitrary end of that argument?
That’s your weakness and my strength: your pride and my humility. You think I should just accept your POV, as if that’s somehow realistic to expect. Then you admit you think I’m not about to change my mind.
I think ultimately you go find your radical moral foundations led by feeling. You want personhood to come simply from humanity, so you declare it thus. That is the dangerous POV if I’ve ever heard one. Slave owners felt and wanted black skin to be not human, so they declared it thus. A search of their knowledge would have revealed otherwise, so they avoided that. I find my radical foundations through knowledge. Knowledge is never complete. We may one day find out more closely when a person begins. But meanwhile we can use knowledge to do our best to find out who is hurt or not by different options, and to err on the side of great caution.
In the absence of your answer as to why humanity supposedly equals personhood, I can only surmise that it is your feeling that you want it to be that way. But if you want to explain yourself with an actual answer, something other than yet more repetition, then be my guest!
It’s really quite simple Starling. All human beings are people and all people are human beings. The two terms are interchangeable. They mean the same thing.
It is only those who justify the killing of certain human beings who attempt to distort and confuse the two.
Ever heard of “all men are created equal”? (for the pc police out there, I’m quoting the Declaration of Independence and “men” means “people” in this instance).
I sense you have picked up on the simple concept of body part vs whole person, so I do believe you have the capacity to pick up on this one as well (hence my willingness to post one more time).
Crimes against humanity have occurred when we become confused about this. We saw a human with black skin for the first time and we rationalized that they were not our equals. We looked upon women with their smaller size and rationalized they were not full persons under the law. Nazis looked at Jews with their differences and convinced themselves they were sub-human. Now, we look at the child in the womb with all their differences and declare them to be less than fully human.
I’m afraid Starling, you exhibit many of the characteristic you accuse me of having. You fail to answer WHY being human does not equal being a person. You offer a couple different, loosely connected definitions of “person” and just expect your audience to accept them as the absolute truth.
You fail to provide any explanation of an all-important cutoff point. You offered this: “What I’m saying is, I would support restrictions on the aborting of fetuses in the 2nd 2 trimesters…” and this: “But no, I do not yet have a firm idea of when the cutoff should be. Brainwaves are a good indicator of being tuned to the new soul” (note the quotation marks again. That means YOU said these things). For the record, if “brainwaves” is your final answer, they are detectable at 6 weeks – about 1/2 way through the 1st trimester – with the technology we have today (electroencephalograph), but may very well be present earlier. However, you still must adequately answer my position that having a certain body part (in this case the brain) is not what makes us people. You have not.
Your above statements contradict each other and fail to adequately answer the vital question I have repeatedly asked: when is the cutoff point for you and why?
Whenever you notice repetition in my posts, it means my answer is the same as the last time you asked that particular question. Your refusal to accept my answer as is indicates to me that either you don’t listen or you can’t grasp the concept. Hence my attempt to re-word the same answer.
In the absence of your answer as to why humanity does not equal personhood, I can only surmise that it is your feeling that you want it to be that way.
If respecting the lives of human beings more than animals is speciesism, then I hereby declare myself a speciesist. But what about you? You have indicated clearly that only some animals qualify as persons in your world. I spy speciesism! Defend yourself, answer the question, dastardly speciecist!
And watch you step! You wouldn’t want to step on an ant and have that on your conscience would you?
You say we may one day know when a person begins. I say that day is already here. Biology, fetology, embryology, they all tell us that conception is the beginning of a new human life, but I really don’t want to continue repeating myself to someone who simply refuses to acknowledge basic facts and simple concepts.
Again, the reason I essentially gave up responding to you is not because you have someone “won” this thing – although I know you like to declare it as such – it is because I know you will not give an inch and you will continue steadfast in your misguided ways all the while using Clintonian quips such as “depends what the meaning if is, is” in an attempt to stall the proceedings.
Your last post confirmed it….again.
If the 2 terms “person” and “human being” are “interchangeable” and “mean the same thing”, then why are there 2 terms? The reason is that they mean 2 different things, especially in their connotations. Even you can tell that much, but you have shown a long habit of trying to change reality through semantics. You’re the one who goes all Clintonny.
You know what? I don’t really care what they are called, except for the sake of policy, where they have to declare definitions as a matter of course, so that the executive and judiciary branches can proceed.
But morally, I care about the qualities represented by the terms. I care about the presence of consciousness, and the evidence of that including interaction, or safer still, measurable brainwaves. I like 1 month as a cutoff. Specifically, 30 days, or 4 weeks and 2 days. That’s based on what I have found out so far. Even if that was shown later to possibly be not safe enough, those abortions at or before 30 days would have been performed on a barely assembled human machine, with very little chance for any type of suffering.
What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. I would want to be unplugged according to the best estimate that science can now give as to what is brain dead and what is still recoverable.
Another semantic trick you try to pull is to declare all abortion as murder. Well, that requires intent. Prochoice people do not believe that they are killing a person, or a child, or a baby, etcetera. If they did think that, then they wouldn’t abort. You can’t manufacture criminals by redefining words. More clearly, and without those oh-so-tricky words that confuse you, Prochoice people do not believe it to be wrong, so there is no intent to kill a person, so it is not murder. The best you could do is try to show if they have doubts, and try to show it as another form of homicide. Manslaughter? Negligent homicide? But I guess that is too nuanced and not sexy enough for your emotion-addled wavy brain. The only way you could know someone is guilty of murder from abortion is if you were God. Are you?
You also asked about where my speciesism cutoff is. Fairly simply, it is vertebrates. I refuse to kill or participate in the killing of any conscious,or formerly conscious vertebrate. But I remain open minded- there are invertebrates that have evolved capacities that rival vertebrates, specifically the cephalopods (especially cuttlefish). They have been shown in labs to exhibit high problem solving, and to play with researchers much as a dog would. There is a Nova episode about them. But I slap mosquitoes, kill ticks. I don’t bother to avoid ants or worms. The last animal tissue I ate was fried clam strips about 2 years ago. But to err to caution, and for simplicity, I generally eat only plant tissue.
I have answered your specific questions, even though you continue to evade. You have given me no answer as to WHY humanness is more important to you than interactivity. I submit the following:
If we discussed our favorite colors, and you said yours was bluish green, and I said mine was yellowish orange, neither one of us could successfully disparage the other’s choice of a favorite color. How would eiother of us know why our particular color is preferred? I could say mine is like the warm sunlight, you could say yours is like grassy fields. Both good reasons.
But with this, you are trying to say that warm sunlight is a worthless, ridiculous reason, even dangerous reason to have a favorite color, while it is self-evident that the best reason to have a favorite color is clearly grassy fields.
I’d be happy to discuss the values that bring each of us respectively to humanity versus interactivity, but you shrink from it. You provoke by calling mine “murder” but you can’t defend yours as not being murder. It is just as true or more so for a rabid PETA member to accuse you of murder for your steak as it is for you to accuse a prochoice person of that for aborting 16 cells.
Further note:
Your precious declaration of independence, HELLO, still didn’t define blacks as “men” apparently, plus women could be beaten with impugnity. Plus women couldn’t vote. No, patriarchy was alive and well at the founding, and you are keeping it that way by standing behind the teenager’s rapist and saying his sperm is worth more as half a human than she is. Prolifers. They love you for 9 months, then PHHHHT. You’re worthless.
One further request for clarification…
You said you would vote for a restriction on late term abortions and then continue work to push for earlier restrictions. Okay, here’s the horrible scary hypothetical, that you so deftly and Clintonly tried to avoid before…
If
a politician proposed a constitutional ammendment that would RESTRICT abortions completely for the 2nd and 3rd trimesters, but in the same stroke GUARANTEE a woman’s right to abort for any reason in the first 30 days, would you vote for it? Let’s also say, because it is a likely scenario, that the interim period of 31 to 90 days was permissible only for hard reasons- rape, incest, life of the mother. Let’s say the ammendment makes it very unlikely that restrictions could be placed in the 1st 30 days, for possibly ever, based on the record of such policies elsewhere. Let’s say it was lauded as a huge bipartisan success after weeks of national dialogue involving thinktanks, religious leaders, activists on both sides, and moderates. But let’s say it is up for national referendum, and is polled as dead even countrywide. Its passage could go either way. So every citizen’s vote counts. Would you support it, or would you hold out for perfection that may never come?
Careful, now- because if you hold out for perfection, the ammendment may fail, and far more 8 month babies could be aborted. How would you vote? I know it’s a terrible scary hypothetical, but I answered yours. Just center yourself, do some tai chi, maybe light some incense. Throw a bear steak on the grill, whatever it takes. You can do this.
How would you vote?
Well, isn’t this just typical.
MBart is AWOL in the middle of battle again. I would have thought he would respond to some new questions if only to hear himself talk some more.
If the rhetoric of this thread can be matched metaphorically to battlefield tactics, MBart would be the worst soldier ever. Trigger happy, he falsely accuses vast swaths of people of “slaughter”. Shoot first, ask questions later. Then, when it is time to defend his actual fortifications, he is nowhere to be found. Just like a cave-hiding terrorist.
I could never hold a candle to your self-delusionality, MBart, if you think your tactics add up to any kind of a convincing argument. From the misquoting, the lying, the retreats, the mindless repetition, the non-answer challenge evasion, the insults, and the nonsequiturs, you are downright damaging to your own argument if anything. I would say “By all means, carry on!”, except I prefer an honorable exchange. It’s really nice when 2 people can just debate principles on the actual merits of the principle. But you are one of these folks who use the internet as a refuge from common sense and basic self-respect.
And BTW, where is the guy with the insulting avatar name? Tumbleweeds whistle by. Maybe they prefer forums with a tilted playing field where the leftists are regularly deleted.
Starling,
Your increasing lack of objectivity in this thread is not doing your argument any favors. You did a great job sticking to the facts in the beginning and you may have actually changed my mind about when an abortion is acceptable and when it is not, but the longer this conversation with mbart drags out, the more you have lost your composure.
It’s obvious that there are just some things that mbart will not discuss with you. This choice on his part may have been made for a variety of reasons, but whatever the reason the outcome is the same. To use his silence to conclude that you are the ‘winner’ or that you have otherwise argued him into submission is a failure of imagination.
If you’re looking for intellectual intercourse, check out my original posts on this topic (#11 and 17) and see if there’s anything in there to interest you in further discussion.
[Note: apologies for picking on you and not on mbart's lack of composure. It's just a shame to see an argument start out from a platform of reason and evidence and degenerate into something less. Mbart's claims simply lacked evidence (and reason, in my opinion) from the very beginning and are therefore largely unsalvageable.]
To Not Impartial:
Point taken.
Sometimes I feel that dogged pursuit can yield subtle dividends, but in exposing a larger online audience to it, I can be exhibiting a related form of internet insensitivity.
On your post 11, points about placement of guilt on expectant mothers…
I agree. One of the hallmarks of patriarchy (parallel to any *-archy that favors a group) is the lack of faith or trust in a mother’s instinctive, innate, inherent ability to make a moral judgement about the right and wrong of the continuum of gestation. Taken to extremes, we have the Taliban, where a woman is likely to be shunned or killed for it somehow being her own fault if she is raped, and is now damaged goods.
But we have legal arguments presented in the defense of rape like that all the time in this country.
Before agriculture, there was an extended family ever-present to raise children of deadbeat dads. And to console the brokenhearted, and to offer multiple viewpoints of maternal advice to young prospective mothers.
Now, in support of agriculture and all its subsequent changes, nature is shunned, the roles of women have been impinged upon, and the evolutionary altruism of female fertility is denied. It is a huge maladaptivity that we have been recovering from for about 10k years. The original awkward male geeks in power were not an anti-trust prone microsoft. It was folks who discovered you could “control” (really merely influence) when wheat grew, or where cattle ran, and thereby eschew nature’s dominion.
On your post #17, on the desirability of abortion by anyone:
I think there may indeed be some abortion for convenience, but that it is early in the gestation, and drops with increasing swiftness as pregnancy progresses. Again, because of the mother’s instincts. That wiggling fetus is going to be evolutionarily plugged into the mother’s mind in a way that just can’t be matched by the male. But with our modern human cerebrum, the male can have his fears of his own temptations, or guilt over his own desires, occasionally, to be free of his child. He can project this onto the woman, more easily so, given the other circumstantial elements of lack of extended family.
Away from the personal and over to the professional, doctors are one of those professions where the practicants would hope to work themselves out of a job one day. At least, if they are any good. And there is competition, as well as tests and the hippocratic oath to ensure that. It’s not perfect, but the exceptions suggest the rule. Many doctors will not perform abortions late in pregnancy, because the more highly developed fetus also represents a person whose health he is sworn to protect.
I have long maintained the existence of a continuum, about which of course, we must make arbitrary decisions. But another continuum is, as you allude to, the quality or length of life of those preserved versus the reprehensibility of having aborted them. It can be tempting for those who prefer discretes, to resist all abortion, despite evidence of other deaths caused by abortion restriction, deaths to very definite persons.
Discretes are failed logic due to their denial of the complexity of the world, especially when it is about the same harm competing with itself in two different forms.
I personally wonder what chance we could have at a home-run abortion policy, if a ban on late terms was proposed as a constitutional amendment, coupled with a guarantee on freedom to abort in the first month, plus perhaps even gov funding for the morning after pill.
I suspect that there are millions of sleeper “continuumists” out there, perhaps a silent moderate majority, all the extreme discrete lobbying notwithstanding. After all, its job is to divide and conquer us, and it never seems like lobbyists want to work themselves out of a job.
To Not Impartial:
I re – read your posts & of course you nailed just about everything there was to say about the subject. It could have been a good, spirited discussion.
In my hometown a college sophomore gave birth and then suffocated the infant. Throughout her pregnancy she denied, denied, denied she was pregnant. What she did was very wrong. Judging by her actions, she desperately refused to acknowledge that she was bringing new life into the world. What could have been a joyous celebration became a tragedy. Yes, she is serving time. But I believe the whole thing could have been averted if she had the chance to open up and talk to somebody. This was a Catholic girl going to a Catholic college. As you said in an earlier post, the stigma of an unplanned pregnancy must be removed. Then we move forward in a positive manner to prevent unplanned pregnancies. Thank you for your reasoned postings.
Another aspect I dearly wanted to explore is the courage of people who truly believe that all life is sacred & to the end, object to unjust wars (wars of aggression), the death penalty, and denial of social programs that benefit the old and infirm. These gentle people are to be validated.
With all due respect this thread should have ended about five thousand words ago IMHO.
Oh I’m sorry Starling, was it my turn to post? I was still waiting for your answer as to how many cells we need to have before we can be considered persons and why, among my other questions.
I was also up in the cold north (with its increased ice cap coverage) hunting polar bear (those things can run incredibly fast!), but don’t worry, I had my new seal-skin boots on to keep me nice and toasty warm.
No, not really, I’s a just kiddin with ya a bit, don’t get yer knickers in a knot.
In reality, the questions I pose are really for you to mull over on your own. It’s not like I actually learn anything from your answers, although I will admit you did force me from time to time to back up my positions more thoroughly.
I must conclude that I am generally satisfied with your position on abortion, (but believe you are out to lunch on the “some animals are persons and some humans are non-persons” thing). After all, you do recognize that abortions after 3,4, or 5 weeks are in fact the killing of people, and since virtually all surgical abortions take place after 7 weeks gestation, it would appear we have some major common ground on the issue.
Of course, we have different beliefs about whether or not an embryo is a person between conception and 6 weeks. One of us is right about that and the other is wrong. I believe I am right and that wont ever change. I believe life is a continuum beginning at conception, you believe something else magical happens somewhere along the way to a make a “person” come into existence at some point other than conception.
I will leave it with you to grapple over when human life begins and when “personhood” begins on your own. I have stated the case for conception with the backing of much scientific evidence and philosophical logic, so I feel there is not much else I can do.
Overall, I believe you have good debating skills, but you do accuse your opponent of tactics and faults you yourself engage in. I think some deeper thinking before you make accusations is in order.
I would also suggest you drop the “meat-eaters are murderers” stance. That really costs you much credibility.
Again, overall you do a good job and I think you are way ahead of most abortionists who can’t seem to go any deeper than “women have a right to control their own body,” or “if you don’t adopt all the unwanted children you have no right to oppose abortion,” and other such shallow, deeply flawed arguments and slogans.
Thank you for the debate, twas a slice.
Nebraska Outlaws Abortion After 20 Weeks:
It is now illegal to kill an unborn baby who is 20 weeks old or older. The impetus for the legislation is the pain these children feel while being dismembered to death. And now to move forward and fight for the protection of the younger babies as well.
North Dakota Looks to Ban “Skull-Crushing and Decapitation” during Abortion.
A group is looking to include a measure on the upcoming November 2010 ballot to ban any use of instruments intended to crush the skulls or decapitate unborn babies in order to abort their lives. They need nearly 13000 signatures to have the initiative placed on the ballot.
(I’d hate to be the pro-abort who stands up to oppose that measure!)
Starling,
One statement in your post struck me funny, “But we have legal arguments presented in the defense of rape like that all the time in this country.”
Rape is an anomalous crime, in my mind. Can anyone here think of a justification for any kind of rape? One cannot rape in self defense or rape to feed his family, or even to get high (though this may be debatable). It is purely a crime motivated by the impulse to control, subjugate and harm another.
Though there are surely cases where women feel guilt after having sex and accuse their partners of rape, there are other cases where rape can be proven beyond reasonable doubt by physical evidence. In these cases, especially in the case of serial rapists, I believe that in addition to incarceration rapists should be removed of their weapons. Removed entirely.
Mbart,
Your mention of the North Dakota ban on “Skull-Crushing and Decapitation” is an excellent opportunity to illustrate a couple of Starling’s points. The crushing of the skull of a human being is automatically deemed taboo by our culture, which makes it a difficult subject to discuss, especially with ideologues who cannot or will not put aside their personal disgust with the act to discuss the facts of the situation.
It has already been established here that the unborn are definitely human. The question then becomes, at what point would crushing the skull (or decapitation) of an unborn human cause suffering to that human? Up to a certain point (and please do not ask me when because I am not an expert in this field), the unborn human cannot feel pain because it does not have the mental faculties to do so.
At this point, crushing the head in the process of aborting the unborn human causes no more suffering to it than when I smashed a giant wasp in my bathroom last night. Beyond this point, however, once the unborn human has the ability to feel pain it could be considered a reprehensible act to cause it to suffer. (Though the argument could be made that if the movement is made swiftly that crushing the skull would not cause suffering, just as if your skull or mine were crushed quickly.)
[Also, if the methods of decapitation or skull crushing in abortion are the most humane options, wouldn't illegalizing them force doctors to choose less humane methods of performing abortions, thereby increasing the suffering (when/if there is any) of the unborn humans would be aborted after the legislation passed?]
This is likely to (again) raise the issue of humans who have been born but live in a persistent vegetative state. These humans sometimes have the ability to feel pain and sometimes do not. Our society often extinguishes the life of these people by removing them from life support systems. Again, this could be considered a reprehensible act if one is knowingly causing suffering.
To draw a parallel with another of Starling’s points, many people choose not to eat animals because they consider it reprehensible to willingly cause the suffering of animals who are capable of feeling pain and misery. I would argue that it is possible to humanely raise animals for food and then humanely slaughter them. (And in fact a lot of money and effort has been put into finding ways to slaughter animals humanely because flushing the meat with adrenaline before death ruins it.) It can be more expensive and requires a lot more land than factory farms, which means that most everyone would have to eat less meat, but it is not impossible.
To conclue, I think that to oppose the methods of aborting unborn humans (whatever methods they may be) is simply a ploy to erode the practice of abortion by playing on the emotional and intellectual weakness of the signatories of the petition. Anyone who signs the petition on the basis of, ’smashing the skulls of babies is just plain wrong’, has clearly not examined the issue. Perhaps a more rational reason for signing this petition might be, ‘I oppose abortion on a moral/religious basis and this petition is the first step toward eventual abolishment of the practice.’
Similarly, to paint people who might oppose this measure as northing more than “pro-baby-skull-crushers” is as ignorant and prejudicial as referring to them using a racial slur.
NI;
When it comes right down to it, killing an unborn human being is not wrong because the baby feels pain, nor is it right if the baby does not. It is wrong because killing an innocent human being is wrong, period.
As you suggest, if the presence of pain is the determining factor, then it should be legal to kill newborns if it is done in such a manner that they do not feel pain.
The North Dakota bill is designed to bring attention to the horrific barbarism of abortion so that ultimately the practice will be banned altogether. It is not deceptive. Those who claim it is are simply attempting to deflect attention from the reality of abortion and/or justify their support of it.
Further, I must disagree with your final claim (complete with the race card). Anyone who opposes it is indeed “pro-baby-skull-crushers.” They may not realize it, they may take that position in ignorance and even with good intentions, but in the end, that is the truth.
Don’t forget, many people with good intentions supported slavery. They were ignorant of the fact they were supporting a crime against humanity. Their thought pattern was that Slavery was good for the economy and it was even good for the slaves. Setting slaves free would sentence them to lives of poverty and misery. On the plantation, they were given food, water, shelter, medical care, etc. Could we not now accurately say that they were “pro-black-enslaving & lynching”? Or is that being ignorant and prejudicial, perhaps even racist?
You can take this to the bank: future generations will look back on legalized abortion with the same disdain, disgust, and horror we now look back on slavery with.
Thanks for your comments.
R. Marika Markle,
On the subject of unplanned pregnancy, sexual education is seriously lacking in this country. Although it is one of the most innately human acts we ever commit, expressions of sexuality in this country are met with simultaneous voyeuristic interest and righteous indignation.
Somehow, many people in this country believe that the best method to keep young people from having pre-marital sex is to leave them in the dark about sexuality altogether. I disagree with this but do not have time now to go into all the reasons why.
Finally, to exemplify all pacifists is as dangerous as to condemn all aggressivists. There is a spectrum of motivation within each group that must be accounted for when evaluating the merit of each individual’s stance. This is true of over-generalization of any group.
It is not the presence of pain that I am arguing makes a person. It is the ability to feel pain. This goes along with other higher brain functions such awareness and the ability to interact with others and our environments. This is what distinguishes us from jellyfish and wasps. Without these things, we are not people; nothing more than bags of human flesh with motility.
Your characterization of abortion as “horrific barbarism” proves my last point better than any argument I could make.
So this is not a person?:
Your definition of person is arbitrary and contains the same fatal flaw as all abortionists’ definitions. It disqualifies some people from being persons and allows some non-persons personhood.
I think ants have the ability to feel pain, no? By your definition, ants are persons and the “thing” in the above link is not.
You don’t think this nor this is barbaric?
I am unaffected by your emotional appeals. I see those same images on billboards and city buses and feel pity for people who let blind emotion guide their actions rather than reason and intellect.
The funny thing about my definition of a person is that it is hotly debated. [Incidentally, I cannot claim that definition, I learned it in the course of many college biology classes.] Lots of people have lots of different takes on the situation and they are willing to debate and research and I support that whether I agree with them or not. Your definition of a person leaves no room for discussion, it implores us to accept it at face value and move on. People who think critically are trained to never accept anything at face value.
And no, ants do not feel pain. They are also not self-aware. The lowest life forms to have been proven to have the ability to feel pain are fish. I believe lowest life forms to have been proven to have self awareness are starlings.
Ha, I like the starling dig. A little humour always helps cope with a discussion on mass murder.
Ya, you’re right in that we have had an ongoing debate on what it means to be a person. Abortionists such as yourself invariably talk about the need to possess one ability or the other. The ability to relate to others, to have a “sense of self,” to feel pain, to survive “on their own,” etc. Or they talk about needed to be a certain size, or have a certain number of cells, or some other characteristic.
Unfortunately, it was precisely this sort of philosophical meandering that resulted in blacks, women and Jews (remember those “useless eaters”) being denied personhood. Now it’s the unborn.
I notice you employ the tactic of linguistic dehumanization to defend your position. You compare the unborn to wasps and bags of flesh. Please bear (and I don’t mean the running kind) in mind that this has been done before. Remember the “useless eaters,” “parasites on the body of Europe” routine?
So the simple definition of person, that being “any whole, individual, living human being no matter their stage of life, age, size, location, physical or mental ability, sex, colour, race, national origin, or any other arbitrary characteristic” ensures that all human beings are included in the human family and none are left out vulnerable to victimization (such as the aforementioned groups).
To not accept the above definition is to indicate some alterior motive. It suggests one has something to gain by excluding a certain group of human beings from personhood. In the case of abortion, women and men gain the ability to dissolve themselves of the responsibilities of parenthood. It also grants us the opportunity to engage in responsible free sex.
In the end it is selfishness that drives the desire to exlude another (almost always a smaller and weaker other) from personhood status.
Someone once said, “love says, I sacrifice myself for the good of the other person. Abortion says, I sacrifice the other person for the good of myself.”
How right he is.
“I am unaffected by your emotional appeals. I see those same images on billboards and city buses and feel pity for people who let blind emotion guide their actions rather than reason and intellect.”
Do you have the same response for those who oppose the Holocaust based on the pictures they saw in high school texts or at the Holocaust Museum?
I’m fairly certain that those who subjugated and oppressed blacks, women, jews, etc. did not have a doubt in their minds about the personhood of the ones they were oppressing. Can you picture two slave-owning South Carolinians (sorry South Carolina, no offense intended) sipping mint juleps and watching their slaves working in the fields and wondering aloud, “So, do you think those workers are people?” No. There could be no moral ambiguity because that could lead to the abolishment of their way of life. Instead, they picked a moral stance with no factual basis and rode it until the wheels fell off.
I also intentionally refrained from the use of linguistic dehumanization in my posts. I referred only to “unborn humans” to specifically avoid doing that. Drawing a comparison based upon relative cognitive function not a form of value judgment, it is simply a means of determining factual similitude.
One cannot “oppose” the Holocaust. It is a historical event. It would have to actively be under debate in order to be “opposed” or “supported”.
However, if someone sees a picture of civilians who are currently suffering in the war in Afghanistan and used that picture as the basis for determining that that war is wrong, I would have serious doubts about that person’s ability to think critically and make decisions based on facts.
I reject your definition of a person, it excludes amputees as they are not conventionally “whole”. It also excludes Siamese twins and dead people. Is a person a person no matter how alive?
I have no qualms with admitting that I believe that the rights of born human beings trump the rights of gestation and birth to unborn human beings. I do believe that I have something to gain by supporting the right of born human beings to legally terminate a pregnancy and am willing to argue (as demonstrated) and vote according to my beliefs.
Your pontification on “selfishness” and “love” have no bearing here. Those are moral judgments and morality cannot (and should not) be legislated.
Finally, there is no such thing as responsibility-free sex. In addition to the possibility of pregnancy, there are physical and psychological pitfalls to engaging in sexual intercourse. And as I stated before, though abortion is an effective means of terminating a pregnancy, it is not something women want to do because it is uncomfortable and can be psychologically detrimental. Birth control (including the morning-after pill) and physical prophylactics are vastly preferable for women to undergoing an abortion.
Morality cant be legislated? Isn’t that what all laws do? Society agrees it is wrong to rape, steal, murder so we enact legislation against raping, stealing and murdering.
You better believe we can ‘legislate morality.’ We do it all the time!
I meant sex free from the responsibility of being a parent. Sorry for not being more precise.
” I’m fairly certain that those who subjugated and oppressed blacks, women, jews, etc. did not have a doubt in their minds about the personhood of the ones they were oppressing….No. There could be no moral ambiguity because that could lead to the abolishment of their way of life. Instead, they picked a moral stance with no factual basis and rode it until the wheels fell off.” – I agree. This is very similar to what most abortionists do today.
Those things might be preferred by women, but you what you obviously don’t realize is birth control and the morning after pill are actually designed (as 1 of 3 mechanisms) to cause very early abortions. They do so by depleting the lining of the uterus of the nutrients needed for the newly created embryo (human person) to implant, grow, and survive.
You did use dehumanization when you compared the unborn to wasps (crushing the head in the process of aborting the unborn human causes no more suffering to it than when I smashed a giant wasp in my bathroom last night) and those without the ability to relate to others or have ’self-awareness’ (such as people in comas) as bags of flesh. That is dehumanizing.
There is a large amount of debris cluttering up this thread, not to mention bales and bales of straw.I have repeatedly read the phrase pro-abortion,as if there were actually people who are pro-abortion. those are fantasy people, they don’t exist.And anyone who uses this phrase destroys their cred. Those of us who live in the real world and have to deal with it’s consequences, know on the basis of experience that it is always better from the standpoint of minimum human suffering, to allow the pregnant woman to decide, along with whatever counsel she chooses, wether to bring the zygote to full term. Always. As a pontificating outsider you have zero standing to have input on that decision.
I can see that I am making no more progress with you than Starling did. I will now go back to my life with a strengthened revolve to ensure there are more people out there who share my values than share yours.
MBart:
I begged you to state your strategy, so that you could put it in your own words.
But, absent that, I’ll tell you what I think you are accomplishing. (And don’t take my word for it. Look at what everyone else thinks.)
You are alienating potential allies. You are manufacturing opponents unnecessarily. It is just not practical to think that you will magically convince prochoice people that they are committing “slaughter” by simply accusing them of it. After all, did it work on you when I demonstrated it back to you about animals?
When you alienate (accuse, misrepresent, avoid), you pass up that chance to achieve common ground. You will, if anything, inspire prochoice people to be even more prochoice. Look where that has gotten the country. The federal laws are, and have been for a long time, completely prochoice. I doubt it will change from that until some absolutist prolifers either die off or change stance and join a compromise movement.
Until then, more 8 month fetuses are freely killed, so that you can say that 8 cells is murder.
They say that you can attract more flies with honey than with the other stuff.
Just something to think about.
Starling;
I realize there are some pro lifers who are ‘absolutists,’ as you describe them. For these people, only a law forbidding abortion in all circumstances is morally deserving of their support. I believe they are correct in that this law is the ideal goal, but where I think they err is in their belief that any other law (late-term restrictions, parental consent, parental notification, ‘right-to-know,’ fetal pain laws, etc) is unworthy of support and even harmful to our cause.
As I have previously stated, I support late-term restrictions because, to use the same analogy as before, I don’t believe it is right to refuse to save 5 drowning people because you can’t save all 100 who have fallen overboard. I believe we have an obligation to save as many victims as we can, even if we cant save them all.
I also see the other aforementioned restrictions as putting up blockades in order to try and slow down a powerful oncoming event.
To use another analogy, if a raging beast is stampeding toward a kindergarten class and the only thing you can do to try and stop it is put a wooden fence in it’s path, you do it even though the fence will most likely fail to stop the beast. It is our duty to do all we can to save those children, even if those things ultimately do not end up saving them.
I really question your Obamian claim that there is “common ground” in this debate. Again, there is the same amount of common ground in the abortion issue than there was in the slavery issue. It is not okay to enslave some blacks sometimes for some reasons, and is not okay to kill some babies sometimes for some reasons.
I use the word “slaughter” and the like to describe abortion because I believe in calling a spade a spade. Linguistic cover up is largely how the abortionist movement has succeeded, and I will not play their game to their advantage. Terms like “terminating a pregnancy,” “family planning,” “procedure,” and even “abortion” are really just euphemisms for what is really happening: the violent dismemberment of a baby. These terms are meant to deflect from the reality of abortion. I mean to direct toward it.
p.s. I notice you have moved from 16 cells to 8 cells. Interesting.
MBart:
“8 cells” alliterated nicely with “8 months”. I didn’t “move” there. I gave you your arbitrary answer: 30 days. It just doesn’t do any good to misrepresent me or anyone else. It wastes time; reality can be, at best, described. It cannot be manufactured through semantics.
I spoke of “common ground” because that is your quote in post # 100, at your maximum level of reconciliation. So, sometimes you allow as how there is common ground, sometimes you do not. I’m trying to figure out which you think it is.
To extend your raging bull analogy…
It’s true a wooden fence wouldn’t do much. But it’s also true one should do all one can. Agreed.
But I think the scenario is like this: There is a raging bull charging down the street. To the left and straight ahead is a maternity ward full of premies. To the right is a stem-cell lab. All I have is a red cape. I am going to attract the bull over to the stem cell lab, and away from the ward of premies. Why? because the personhood of the premies is in far less question than that of the stem cell embryos.
By contrast it wouldn’t do any good to try and twirl the cape around at both of the buildings,or neither of them. And if I see a wooden fence I won’t bother with it, so lacking is its effectiveness. Because even if I didn’t have a red cape, I myself could run around attracting the bull toward the lab.
On the language- “procedure”,”terminate”, etcetera…
That’s great that you want to call it what you think is true and all. But it doesn’t help establish common ground, to the degree there is any. I don’t think the prochoice community has any hope of deliberately “covering up” what is going on. They mainly tried to find neutral, accurate, clinical words. It really doesn’t sound too wonderful to “terminate” something if it is indeed deserving of life. This goes back to your assumption of their guilt, whether you do it through semantics or accusations. They do not believe they are guilty, and so calling it “slaughter” isn’t going to draw them in.
Even if you are somehow omniscient and can know intimately of all prochoicers’ guilt, it still apparently has not been effective to call it that.
I still say, if you actually want to change the political landscape, then it is wiser to participate in the common language, and educate the opponent on the technicals. Again, do you think I will save animals by calling their deaths by some loaded subjective words? Animal rights progress has been made, and it has been made on clinical, objective arguments. There isn’t even a lexicon at all for the suffering that animals experience.
You had also alluded to the Declaration of Independence. It said all “men” were created equal, but women didn’t eventually get rights because liberals insisted they were men. Women got rights because of reasoned argument and incremental political steps.
“Calling a spade a spade” is a luxury that your own issue can’t afford.
What speaks louder, intentions or results?
Another thousand pointless words adding up to” I know you are, but who am I?”
What about the woman? Person, not person?
“If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.” — Erica Jong