Abortion.

[Lief Erikson]

Originally Posted by Insidious Rex

Good grief people… It was just a simple statement. The fact is a fetus ACTS just like a parasite as I said. Is anyone here going to deny this? We know that’s clearly true. I never said a fetus is a parasite therefore we need to destroy them all… Geesh…

What I interpreted you as saying is this: Since a foetus acts like a parasite, the mother is justified in treating it like like a parasite if she wants to. Was that an incorrect interpretation or no?

Originally Posted by Insidious Rex

A lot of people here act like pregnancy is the best thing that could happen to you. In fact its not. Its extremely dangerous. Up until relatively recently (late 18th century?) getting pregnant meant you had a good chance of dieing from complications somewhere between inception and birth (usually around birth). So my statement about the fetus being like a parasite was in response to Liefs ridiculous notion of the mother being only a “biological life support mechanism�

You forget that I said that from the baby's perspective, the mother is merely a biological life support mechanism. I have never said being pregnant is the best thing that can happen to anyone, nor do I believe that. I am fully aware that it is extremely dangerous in many parts of the world still. To me, this involves the ethical question: Is it ethical to kill an innocent person to save yourself?

To me, the answer to that also is clearly no.

And here, I know, you'll probably respond with the issues of the development of the foetus, which I'd respond to again with both pointing out how the reasoning justifies mysoginists, Nazis and racists, and also pointing out the arbitrariness of drawing any line that involves exterminating innocent human life.

Originally Posted by Insidious Rex

which is just as absurd a notion as the fetus actually BEING a parasite and im quite delighted there was so much anguish over the parasite comment since that shows quite clearly there is a double standard involved here: Its morally unacceptable to harm a fetus even up to the point of being a ball of cells… but its perfectly ok to treat the mother as a birthing machine with no rights to determine what is best for HER and HER health and situation no matter how she got pregnant, how perilous her particular situation is and no matter how undeveloped the fetus is. Utterly ridiculous…

As regards your "ball of cells" point, I'd like to mention that in the first trimester, drawing any line is highly arbitrary. We can't tell when a human life should be considered a person in there and when not. It's a constantly and rapidly changing creature.

As regards your point about the mother, I'd like to point out that again you're essentially saying it's ethical to kill someone to preserve someone else's financial or social condition. Except that sometimes the mother might die. But in these much more rare situations (in developed countries), the situation is this: Is it ethical to kill one innocent person to save another?

The answer is that it is not, and I daresay you'd certainly agree with me if we were talking about adults rather than foetuses.

Originally Posted by Insidious Rex

If you believe that we as humans can never decide when termination of life is ok then you better drop your gung ho support for Rumsfeld and the war in Iraq Lief. Not to mention any kind of armed conflict or situation that can result in the death of another human. And you better quickly become a hard core vegan and never contribute to the death of any other organism on this planet or elsewhere or else you are in violation of your own logic here which is that we have no right to draw the lines. So better draw no lines just to be safe.

There is a very, very big difference between war and abortion. With abortion, you are intentionally killing innocent life. With war, we try our utmost to avoid that. We know that some innocent people will die, just as we know our doctors will accidentally kill some people in their profession and our justice system will accidentally condemn some people who are innocent. Yet these systems are necessary, and by developing them we seek to keep innocent people from suffering or dying. That is their entire purpose. The purpose of war is the same, to keep innocent people (us) from suffering and dying, even though, just as with the other forementioned institutions, we know that accidents will occur. But the key words here are "accident" and "innocent." With war, we seek to prevent the innocent from being destroyed, knowing all the same that we will accidentally kill some in the course of our endeavors. With abortion, we seek to kill the innocent rather than accidentally killing them, and this is a completely different thing.

Originally Posted by Insidious Rex

Or does your point of view stem directly from a certain religious philosophy which says oh its ok to do this but you cant do that? If that’s the case then lose the line drawing argument.

I say that there is an obvious ethical difference between accidentally killing someone who's innocent and purposely doing it. Don't you agree?

Originally Posted by Insidious Rex

So then are you saying its ok before then? Nevermind your argument here doesn’t hold water because development of “organs� says nothing about the state of the organism in question.

Uh . . . yes it does. It shows that we are talking about a physically and mentally developed human, and that is part of the "state of the organism in question."

Originally Posted by Insidious Rex

But if this is the argument you are going to make then you are saying somewhere between inception and that point its ok to abort. And I know you believe its not ok even one moment after inception (correct me if im wrong but Im pretty sure Ive heard you say that more then once). So really much of our argument is disingenuous. Because you believe its morally wrong to abort ANY human life form no matter how developed (or non developed) it is. So why even enter into the developmental line of arguing in regards to abortion exactly?

We cannot know when someone should be considered a person, and any lines we draw are arbitrary. A person in the womb is in a constant and fluid state of development. My point about development is that by the time all its organs are developed, the foetus obviously is developed, but up to that point, we don't know at what point it is underdeveloped enough to be killed. And the whole thing of saying that a human can be underdeveloped enough to be killed has some very, very alarming implications.

Originally Posted by Insidious Rex

Again this is just a ridiculous argument to me. You do realize that there were jews IN the SS itself and certainly in all levels of the nazi regime. Why? Because some jews don’t look jewish. And if you have blonde hair and blue eyes well Hitler’s “scientific� measurements couldn’t detect you. Instead you fit right in and didn’t stick out like say a 3 week old fetus would… The very idea of trying to compare these things…

Hitler wasn't going to be able to perform tests on every person in Germany.

But this relates to what I said before again. You are simply disagreeing with Hitler's evidence, but you agree with him that you can kill people based on your perception of their biology (based on your evidence) rather than based on their actions.

Originally Posted by Insidious Rex

You cannot determine religion based on scientific measurements quite clearly. But you can certainly look at development of the mind and body

So Hitler, the mysoginists and the racists believed.

Originally Posted by Insidious Rex

AND weigh the fact that there is a HOST involved when deciding on something as serious as an abortion…

Hitler, mysoginists and racists look on society as the host.

But there also is the ethical issue of whether we're justified in killing one innocent person to save another.

Originally Posted by Insidious Rex

That’s a laugh. We kill as we see fit and as we can get away with it (both externally and internally). It’s the nature of our species.

I know that this is the way that many wars are started and engaged in. These are not ethical wars, and we should oppose them. Just as we should oppose abortion.

Originally Posted by Insidious Rex

Which is irrelevant to the argument regarding abortions of course. Its like saying just because some people use guns to kill others that we shouldn’t allow guns to exist at all…

This is the kind of people that have judged people based on their biology rather than their actions. Without fail, people who do this become responsible for crimes against humanity. And by accepting their fundamental principle as valid as you now do, you're justifying them. For if they also are allowed to judge people based on their biology rather than their actions, and they (like you) should use the best evidence available to them and can kill based on their best perception of others' biology, then they are justified. Only from our current position, we think their "evidence" was critically flawed. Thus they were wrong because their evidence was wrong, but not because their fundamental principle was wrong, that we can kill based on people's biology rather than only their actions.

Originally Posted by Insidious Rex

Happens every day in MUCH worse ways Lief.

I'll repeat my question, since you've just ignored it. Do you think you are justified in killing someone off in order to avoid poverty?

Originally Posted by Insidious Rex

Why aren’t you out there shouting about that?

I do. Uganda and Darfur, for instance. I set up the thread here on that subject, and the one on Christianity's past atrocities.

Originally Posted by Insidious Rex

And by the way, do you think you are justified in having a woman die to avoid abortion?

Let's replace the word "having" with the word "letting". In that case, my answer is yes. I don't believe that we are justified in killing one innocent person to save another. Do you?