Abortion II

[Lief Erikson]

Originally Posted by The Gaffer

I'm afraid that doesn't fly. How is it OK to kill an innocent person just because they were the result of rape? It wasn't their fault.

That's what I think. I can understand the woman's misery better if the child has been forced on her through rape, and she truly deserves a great deal of sympathy. A lot more than the woman who has sex of her own choice, with the knowledge that a child might be the result. But in neither case is abortion justified. In both, it is killing an innocent.

Originally Posted by The Gaffer

My point being that, judging by their behaviour, most of the anti-choice lobby doesn't really believe that an unborn child and a born child are the same thing, in spite of what they say.

I am extremely disappointed by the fact that pro-life advocates of my acquaintance are willing to accept abortion under certain circumstances. But they do believe that the child in the womb is as much a person as the one outside. They allow their beliefs on what we should therefore do about it to be colored to some extent by the environment that surrounds them.

It's tragic, as far as I'm concerned, and indicates that the pro-choice advocates may well be winning at impacting the psychology of the country.

On the other hand, one of the weird things to me is how many pro-choice advocates that I've met ARE actually aware that the child inside the womb is as much a person on all counts that matter as one outside of it.

1) I've heard abortion advocated on the grounds of moral relativism, by one person. He said that all belief systems about what's right are relative, so who's to say the destruction of a child is wrong? That was his argument.

2) I heard another argue that people don't really know a child inside the womb, so it can be killed because its death won't make anyone grieve.

3) I've heard another argue that it's physically part of the mother and therefore, even though its brain isn't that much different from that of a born child and even though it is clearly a living human, it can be killed because of the physical connection it has to the mother. That physical connection, to her, means that it's not a person in its own right.

Those three pro-choice people all did believe that the same basic things about a child that pro-life people do, but tried to justify killing it anyway by these methods. So while you may be right about pro-life people sometimes failing to advocate the same dignity for children inside the womb as exists for those outside, I've seen pro-choice people also several times whose words show that they hold to the same basic scientific facts that pro-life people hold to, but justify killing anyway.

The argument that the fetus can be killed because it might have a bad future is just as weak as the above numbered arguments, by the way. You wouldn't even advocate killing most adults who are living bad lives such as those you fear fetuses might have. So ultimately, this argument collapses into this one:

That fetuses are sufficiently psychologically different from infants that have been born that they don't deserve the same rights. This, troublesomely, is an arbitrary judgment. There is no break-off point at which a fetus instantly changes from a blob of cells into a full-fledged little 1-week from birth person. The changes are all fluid and gradual, and enormous development of the brain occurs in the first weeks following conception.

Originally Posted by Psychology Today, Janet L. Hopkins

Behaviorally speaking, there's little difference between a newborn baby and a 32-week-old fetus. A new wave of research suggests that the fetus can feel, dream, even enjoy The Cat in the Hat. The abortion debate may never be the same.

The scene never fails to give goose bumps: the baby, just seconds old and still dewy from the womb, is lifted into the arms of its exhausted but blissful parents. They gaze adoringly as their new child stretches and squirms, scrunches its mouth and opens its eyes. To anyone watching this tender vignette, the message is unmistakable. Birth is the beginning of it all, ground zero, the moment from which the clock starts ticking.

Not so, declares Janet DiPietro. Birth may be a grand occasion, says the Johns Hopkins University psychologist, but "it is a trivial event in development. Nothing neurologically interesting happens."

Armed with highly sensitive and sophisticated monitoring gear, DiPietro and other researchers today are discovering that the real action starts weeks earlier. At 32 weeks of gestation - two months before a baby is considered fully prepared for the world, or "at term" - a fetus is behaving almost exactly as a newborn. And it continues to do so for the next 12 weeks.

As if overturning the common conception of infancy weren't enough, scientists are creating a startling new picture of intelligent life in the womb. Among the revelations:

By nine weeks, a developing fetus can hiccup and react to loud noises. By the end of the second trimester it can hear.
Just as adults do, the fetus experiences the rapid eye movement (REM) sleep of dreams.
The fetus savors its mother's meals, first picking up the food tastes of a culture in the womb.
Among other mental feats, the fetus can distinguish between the voice of Mom and that of a stranger, and respond to a familiar story read to it.
Even a premature baby is aware, feels, responds, and adapts to its environment.
Just because the fetus is responsive to certain stimuli doesn't mean that it should be the target of efforts to enhance development. Sensory stimulation of the fetus can in fact lead to bizarre patterns of adaptation later on.
The roots of human behavior, researchers now know, begin to develop early - just weeks after conception, in fact. Well before a woman typically knows she is pregnant, her embryo's brain has already begun to bulge. By five weeks, the organ that looks like a lumpy inchworm has already embarked on the most spectacular feat of human development: the creation of the deeply creased and convoluted cerebral cortex, the part of the brain that will eventually allow the growing person to move, think, speak, plan, and create in a human way.

At nine weeks, the embryo's ballooning brain allows it to bend its body, hiccup, and react to loud sounds. At week ten, it moves its arms, "breathes" amniotic fluid in and out, opens its jaw, and stretches.

http://www.leaderu.com/orgs/tul/psychtoday9809.html

Massive development occurs in the embryo and then fetus at extremely early stages, and the child's development afterward is a continuous, steady process.

Besides, we also know that the child's physical and psychological development continues to progress between infancy and childhood, childhood and adolescence, adolescence and adulthood. Birth is no magical line at which anything happens. All that happens is the child receives heightened awareness of the outside world. As Johns Hopkins University Psychologist Janet DiPietro said, "it is a trivial event in development. Nothing neurologically interesting happens."

Originally Posted by Virginia Tech University

Recent research suggests that teens' brains are not completely developed until late in adolescence.

http://www.ext.vt.edu/pubs/family/350-850/350-850.html
If we're making the cut-off point based on psychological development, really the most obvious point at which the killing of a child should be made illegal is the time when development stops. That's late adolescence.

We only choose birth because that's when we first see the child ourselves, and consequently our personal feeling of moral responsibility for him or her leaps.

Originally Posted by The Gaffer

Either that or they think genocide is a bad thing, to be protested on internet forums, as opposed to setting fire to Parliament.

Many of the people seeking to change the abortion laws are Christians, and we have repeated scriptures in the Epistles and Gospels telling us not to violently rebel against the government. We try to make change through peaceful methods.

[Lief Erikson]

On a related issue, politicians in the Netherlands have legalized and regulated the infanticide of children with terminal medical conditions or disabilities.

Originally Posted by newsmax.com

Infanticide used to be taboo in the Western world. But the government of the Netherlands is currently considering what many consider to be unthinkable – the creation of legal standards for pediatric euthanasia.

According to the London Times, a committee will soon be set up to regulate the practice, which doctors have quietly been performing for years in the Netherlands. Shockingly, Dutch politicians have not faced the wrath of many domestic or foreign critics.

. . . .

According to Colleen Campbell, a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, the Groningen Protocol declared a newborn subject to euthanasia if "his diagnosis and prognosis are ‘certain,’ his suffering is ‘hopeless and unbearable,’ and his qualify of life is ‘very poor,’ according to the child’s parents and ‘at least one independent doctor.’"

http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/...7/115852.shtml

[sisterandcousinandaunt]

Originally Posted by Lief Erikson

A cell cluster is not only potential. It's potential + material. There is what there is, and there is the potential for more. An embryo is more material + potential. A fetus is still more. A 1-week from birth child is still more. An infant is still more. An 8-year old is even more material + potential, and an adolescent is more material + potential, and an adult has reached the point where his brain won't physically develop further, so the "potential" side of him, materially, is ended. At that point, he's just material. Though he still is potential in that he could make things out of life that he presently has not.

There is no fixed point at which someone ceases to be potential, and if you're calculating by the physical development of the human, any set point to say that "here personhood begins" is arbitrary.

I'm not falling for this, Lief. If I'm assigning "personhood' by an achievement score, many people might fall short. But no one is doing that, it's a straw man. No one is saying "people" are those who can play piano sonatas from memory, and everyone else is provisional. The biggest difference between gestation and post gestation is that someone has to gestate. It's just not right to require someone to do that, if she doesn't want to. It's like requiring you to 'donate' a kidney. You have a perfectly swell one, you're hardly using it, and it would save someone's life. The government will be by to pick it up Wednesday. Don't worry, though. Your corneas look pretty good, so NEXT year we'll come and get those. Well, one, at least, we wouldn't want to inconvenience you. But skin...skin grafts are really in demand, we might get that, on a later trip.

The ONLY reason everyone doesn't see this for the monstrous invasion of government into the life of an individual that it is is because people blame women for being pregnant. It's all through this thread, already. "If a woman chooses to have sex, she should know she might have a baby." There might be some lip-service to rape exceptions, or 'life of the mother' but basically the message is, 'She asked for it, let her suffer."

I know more about fertility and pregnancy than most people on this board will ever live to. And I say, "Being pregnant is a big darn deal, but it is NOTHING compared to having a baby." They are both more immense than any male will ever comprehend, and more complicated, and the only reasonable preventative is forbidding heterosexual behavior, at all. Because as long as women and men 'fraternize' the potential for pregnancy exists, and it won't always be welcome.

Originally Posted by Lief Erikson

On a related issue, politicians in the Netherlands have legalized and regulated the infanticide of children with terminal medical conditions or disabilities.
http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/...7/115852.shtml

It's not "a related note." It's outside the scope of this discussion, as any triage issue would be. Pray you'll never have sick relatives, or be sick, yourself.

[D.Sullivan]

Originally Posted by Lief Erikson

It's tragic, as far as I'm concerned, and indicates that the pro-choice advocates may well be winning at impacting the psychology of the country.

I agree. But because it seems to me that people often seem to confuse a pro-choice attitude with a pro-abortion attitude, if you understand what I mean. Because while it's rational to say that government shouldn't have any say in the matter because there's no rational argument to prove that a fetus has a soul, and that it doesn't have any good way of defining when a fetus becomes a child, it's irrational, in my opinion, to think that it's ok to just wing it and do whatever we want with it because we don't know what it is. The fact that we have no data on which to judge the worth(which sounds harsh, but it's what we're doing, isn't it?)of these cells doesn't make me think "oh, it's not a baby", all it does is tell me I don't know squat about it.

That's scary. Who wants to make a decision on a subject they know they know nothing about? I admit, it's totally beyond me what the definition of life is, so I personally wish to avoid making any possibly decisions regarding it, in fear of deeply regretting them afterward.

Originally Posted by Midge

I firmly believe that women just nurture by nature. It severely hurts quite a lot of women psychologically (and sometimes physically) to have an abortion.

Which is why the think Midge's post above expresses such an important point. The unknown aspects of this process leaves room for their to be deep pain in the future of woman who choose to abort. My girlfriend volunteers at a Womans Support Center where we're living. She counsels pregnant woman on the various choices they have before them on how to handle the pregnancy, including adoption and abortion. She's learned a lot about abortion and the various studies on it. One of these suggested that a large proportion of woman who have had an abortion have a crisis about it later in the lives, and many of them wish they'd never done it.

Also, a huge percentage of people who come to her looking for an abortion know near to nothing about abortions. They don't know how it works, how emotionally traumatizing the process itself is, what the risks of depression later in life are, and certainly nothing about what the infant with go through. Because sadly, the pro-choice movement doesn't want them to know. They want it to be clean, and black and white.

It's not. It's a giant gray area, and one that should be more freely discussed outside the context of this bloody culture war. It does more damage than good.

[Curufin]

I firmly believe that women just nurture by nature.

This is opening up a whole new can of worms. I don't necessarily believe this. I believe that society has conditioned women to be this way, but I'm not quite so sure it's natural.

It severely hurts quite a lot of women psychologically (and sometimes physically) to have an abortion.

Of course it does. And I really doubt that you'll find anyone who has abortions for fun, or anyone in the pro-choice movement who thinks that abortion is a good thing. Good and necessary are two entirely different things.

[Lief Erikson]

Originally Posted by D.Sullivan

I agree. But because it seems to me that people often seem to confuse a pro-choice attitude with a pro-abortion attitude, if you understand what I mean. Because while it's rational to say that government shouldn't have any say in the matter because there's no rational argument to prove that a fetus has a soul, and that it doesn't have any good way of defining when a fetus becomes a child, it's irrational, in my opinion, to think that it's ok to just wing it and do whatever we want with it because we don't know what it is. The fact that we have no data on which to judge the worth(which sounds harsh, but it's what we're doing, isn't it?)of these cells doesn't make me think "oh, it's not a baby", all it does is tell me I don't know squat about it.

That's scary. Who wants to make a decision on a subject they know they know nothing about? I admit, it's totally beyond me what the definition of life is, so I personally wish to avoid making any possibly decisions regarding it, in fear of deeply regretting them afterward.

This perspective makes a TON more sense to me than many I've heard. I disagree with you about the government's role, for governments have a duty to protect their citizens, and if no one can say "humans are persons", and we instead argue about when personhood begins for humans, it can become very hard for the government to adequately protect all of those they should be protecting.

But I entirely agree with your position that people should err on the side of caution when deciding the fate of a human life.

Originally Posted by Curufin

I don't see anything wrong with that.

Children, the same as adults, have the right to some level of dignity in their lives, and in their deaths. Do you really think that it is alright to let a child live if it is 'certain' that his life is going to be one of 'hopeless and unbearable' pain? That sounds rather cruel to me.

Hopeless to adults and unbearable to adults. The child certainly doesn't make that decision. Not even the parents make that decision- a doctor does.

Originally Posted by Curufin

Death is not the worst of all possible options. I think this mindset that even being allowed to live in horrible pain is preferable to death comes from a natural human fear of death, but is in many ways cowardly and cruel.

As for the suicide comment made before in reference to my father - he has been suicidally depressed for fifteen years, and there have been times we have been unable to leave him alone. If not for the pain it would cause my mother, my brother and myself, I am quite certain that my father would not still be with us.

Normally, we'd say that he should receive psychiatric care, then.

Originally Posted by sisterandcousinandaunt

I'm not falling for this, Lief. If I'm assigning "personhood' by an achievement score, many people might fall short.

I'm very glad you recognize that. I've debated with some people here who feel differently. Gaffer, for instance (the one I was responding to), said that he wouldn't support abortion after 22 weeks because of the possibility a person is being killed, which suggests he's making a psychological evaluation.

I'll respond to the rest of your post shortly.

[katya]

Mari, I think you make a lot of good points. I certainly wouldn't have cared if I'd have died before I had any attachment to anything in the world, and no one's really gonna miss the kid either. As for how things turn out for the mother, well, that's her deal.

Also I read once or twice that maybe the fetus feels pain, well, like I care. Life is full of pain.

Originally Posted by Lief Erikson

We only choose birth because that's when we first see the child ourselves, and consequently our personal feeling of moral responsibility for him or her leaps.

Don't underestimate maternal instincts. I think a lot of pregnant women, by choice or not, feel a tremendous amount of attachment to the unborn child. And I did see an ultrasound. With head and arms and legs and cute and all.

[Lief Erikson]

Originally Posted by katya

Don't underestimate maternal instincts. I think a lot of pregnant women, by choice or not, feel a tremendous amount of attachment to the unborn child.

I agree. And often, showing a woman the ultrasound of her baby is enough to convince her not to abort. But having a child physically visible without any machinery or belly between you brings the experience to an entirely different level for many people. It makes it so much more personal.

Originally Posted by katya

I certainly wouldn't have cared if I'd have died before I had any attachment to anything in the world

That, you certainly don't know. I watched ultrasound footage of an 11-week old child struggling to get away from the instrument being inserted into the womb to kill it, and saw its mouth open into a panicked scream. The fact that its world is different from yours doesn't mean it has no feelings about it.

Originally Posted by katya

and no one's really gonna miss the kid either

Who cares????? Does all self-worth depend on what other people think of you? Should the Constitution be interpreted to guarantee, "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," only to popular people?

Originally Posted by katya

As for how things turn out for the mother, well, that's her deal.

Often teenage moms are ignorant of the health risks abortions pose.

Originally Posted by Gwaimir Windgem

[Aristotle]Silly Lief, potential and material are the same thing![/Aristotle]

Originally Posted by Curufin

He does get psychiatric care. It doesn't always work, you know.

I am very, very sorry about his condition. I'll pray for him . . . I just think it's extremely wrong to assume that the lives of unborn children will turn out like his and use that as a justification for killing them.

Originally Posted by sisterandcousinandaunt

The biggest difference between gestation and post gestation is that someone has to gestate. It's just not right to require someone to do that, if she doesn't want to. It's like requiring you to 'donate' a kidney. You have a perfectly swell one, you're hardly using it, and it would save someone's life. The government will be by to pick it up Wednesday. Don't worry, though. Your corneas look pretty good, so NEXT year we'll come and get those. Well, one, at least, we wouldn't want to inconvenience you. But skin...skin grafts are really in demand, we might get that, on a later trip.

There are a couple big differences. One is that it's you killing the person in abortion, not standing by and letting someone die when you could save him at great personal cost.

A woman committing abortion (especially in cases of rape, where it's not the woman's fault that she's pregnant at all) is like a woman who is put in jail for a crime she didn't commit, and shoots an innocent guard in order to escape, rather than serving the time.

The other reason why your analogies fall short is summed up in two words: Parental responsibility. Whereas individual families don't each have a responsibility to give up every dime they have for starving people in Africa, everyone has a responsibility to look after their own children. That's parenthood. You do it through hard times and good. You don't kill the kids in hard times.

Originally Posted by sisterandcousinandaunt

The ONLY reason everyone doesn't see this for the monstrous invasion of government into the life of an individual that it is is because people blame women for being pregnant. It's all through this thread, already. "If a woman chooses to have sex, she should know she might have a baby." There might be some lip-service to rape exceptions, or 'life of the mother' but basically the message is, 'She asked for it, let her suffer."

You're purposefully ignoring the repeated statements of pro-life folk that they care about the children. We also care about the mothers. Your statement is entirely untrue of my own feelings, and, I expect, is untrue of the views of all pro-life people here.

It's true that the woman, by willingly having sex with the knowledge that a child could result, bears some responsibility. That's called parenthood. Some people here have expressed the belief that parental responsibility begins at conception rather than at birth. This does not mean they want women to suffer or care nothing for their suffering. It just means that they don't see that suffering as a valid justification for murder.

Originally Posted by sisterandcousinandaunt

It's not "a related note." It's outside the scope of this discussion,

What is this, the third time in two days you've tried to get the mods after me? Or has it been three days?

as any triage issue would be. Pray you'll never have sick relatives, or be sick, yourself.

It's not outside the scope. Pro-lifers see abortion as a form of infanticide, and pro-lifers argue that legal abortion will likely lead to legal infanticide (as it has done in the Netherlands). They are tied together.

As for my relatives, I have no idea what they have to do with the discussion .

[D.Sullivan]

Originally Posted by katya

Also I read once or twice that maybe the fetus feels pain, well, like I care. Life is full of pain.

Why aren't we expecting the same Stoic attitude from the Mother, then?

Because that doesn't work. Both the mother and the child need compassion.

Originally Posted by Lief Erikson

This perspective makes a TON more sense to me than many I've heard. I disagree with you about the government's role, for governments have a duty to protect their citizens, and if no one can say "humans are persons", and we instead argue about when personhood begins for humans, it can become very hard for the government to adequately protect all of those they should be protecting.

But I entirely agree with your position that people should err on the side of caution when deciding the fate of a human life.

Thank you.

I hear what you're saying about the governments role. I just think you won't get anywhere with it. Clearly if someone is leaning pro-choice on the issue, they're doing it because they feel very strongly that it's unconstitutional, and/or, in some cases, have a strong emotional attachment to the issue because they feel victimized as woman and are expressing they're concerns on one of the most dramatic fronts in the battle for Womans Rights. I know a few feminists who are like this, sadly. So much so that it's hard to make them see any validity in the Pro-life argument at all.

Both of these groups will and are reacting very aggressively to the legal approach to solving this problem. They're so sure that it's unconstitutional, which I believe it is, that they'll never give in. Which is why I firmly believe that if you want to stop abortions, you first need to give them the right to do it. From there you can have an honest discussion with them about the realities of abortion. If they think you want to take their rights from them they'll never listen to a word you say.

Woman looking for an abortion need to be treated with love and respect. They need to know no one's out to get them, and their shouldn't be. If you want to stop abortions, you need to first help the mother. And you can't give them true loving care if you want something out of them. These woman need support, and the last thing that will help them make the best choice for them is to walk into a support center full of woman trying to convince her to keep the baby. Much less trying to take away her right to abort in the first place.

That's how I feel anyway. Now I'll stop blabbing!

[Thain Peregrin Took I]

The fetus is a person at conception. If this isn't true, then when does he or she become a person? After 9 months? Are premies not people because they're less developed? Are mentally disabled people not people?

When a person kills a pregnant woman, they're charged with two murders. So the law obviously agrees that a baby is alive enough to be murdered. And yet abortion doesn't count as murder. Does it depend on the circumstance? Is the baby only alive when someone decides that he or she is?

I would also like to add that when I was in the womb the doctor did a test on my mom, and it was determined that I would be mentally disabled. However, I'm not mentally disabled. You don't always know how things will turn out. You don't know that the baby is better off dead rather than being put up for adoption. If you're worried about the baby finding a good home, there's always the option to find adoptive parents, having interviews with them, etc., insted of dropping the baby off at the fire station etc. The baby could end up with a great life, and you shouldn't take it away from him or her.

Originally Posted by katya

Mari, I think you make a lot of good points. I certainly wouldn't have cared if I'd have died before I had any attachment to anything in the world, and no one's really gonna miss the kid either.

Well, then you could say that miscarriages shouldn't hurt, because no one knows the baby. But miscarriages do hurt. I know 4 or 5 families that have had miscarriages, and they were all hurt by it. You don't necessarily need to meet the baby to get attached to it.

Originally Posted by sisterandcousinandaunt

You have a notion about the nature of pregnancy, and I have direct experience.

I would just like to say that I haven't had direct experience (I'm 14, so I think that I shouldn't have direct experience yet), but I can still have my own opinion about the subject.

[The Gaffer]

Originally Posted by Lief Erikson

That's what I think. I can understand the woman's misery better if the child has been forced on her through rape, and she truly deserves a great deal of sympathy. A lot more than the woman who has sex of her own choice, with the knowledge that a child might be the result. But in neither case is abortion justified. In both, it is killing an innocent.

I am extremely disappointed by the fact that pro-life advocates of my acquaintance are willing to accept abortion under certain circumstances.

I can understand how that would disappoint you.

Originally Posted by Lief Erikson

It's tragic, as far as I'm concerned, and indicates that the pro-choice advocates may well be winning at impacting the psychology of the country.

..or just reflecting the consensus view on the point of basic principle (which is "is a foetus the same as a baby?"), which is my point. People are capable of holding contradictory views. Hardly any anti-abortion campaigners argue that it should be banned in ALL cases, including incest, rape, medical risk and severe disability.

Originally Posted by Lief Erikson

On the other hand, one of the weird things to me is how many pro-choice advocates that I've met ARE actually aware that the child inside the womb is as much a person on all counts that matter as one outside of it.

That would be weird to me too.

Originally Posted by Lief Erikson

1) I've heard abortion advocated on the grounds of moral relativism, by one person. He said that all belief systems about what's right are relative, so who's to say the destruction of a child is wrong? That was his argument.

Hard to believe. Are you sure this person wasn't just an idiot?

Originally Posted by Lief Erikson

2) I heard another argue that people don't really know a child inside the womb, so it can be killed because its death won't make anyone grieve.

Also daft, though slightly less barking than the previous argument. But it's getting warmer in terms of where people's de facto conceptions of personhood derive.

Originally Posted by Lief Erikson

3) I've heard another argue that it's physically part of the mother and therefore, even though its brain isn't that much different from that of a born child and even though it is clearly a living human, it can be killed because of the physical connection it has to the mother. That physical connection, to her, means that it's not a person in its own right.

That would more or less be my view I guess. Though there's a logical flaw in your description of it: if it were physically part of the mother, then it's not "clearly a living human" because it is, er, physically part of the mother.

Originally Posted by Lief Erikson

I've seen pro-choice people also several times whose words show that they hold to the same basic scientific facts that pro-life people hold to, but justify killing anyway.

Me too, and FWIW, it nips my head as well.

Originally Posted by Lief Erikson

The argument that the fetus can be killed because it might have a bad future is just as weak as the above numbered arguments, by the way. You wouldn't even advocate killing most adults who are living bad lives such as those you fear fetuses might have.

Agreed, much as I'm tempted to advocate retrospective abortion for certain members of our species. More later... thanks.

[Nurvingiel]

Let's make sure we're keeping things friendly by remembering to be sensitive towards other people's views.

Please don't call anyone (groups or individuals) names. Also, please remember that not all pro-choice or all pro-life people agree with each other; let's avoid statements that are too generalized.

Please remember it is not helpful to mention arguments you have heard outside this thread. Unless you're linking to an article where that person's opinion can be read by everyone, hearsay is just going to confuse matters.

Very few boards could have a thread like this, so you should all be commended for your respectful debating. Let's just keep it friendly.

[Lief Erikson]

Gaffer, I'm just going to skip by all the parts of your post that I agree with, focusing on the few parts where we seem to differ.

Originally Posted by The Gaffer

..or just reflecting the consensus view on the point of basic principle (which is "is a foetus the same as a baby?"), which is my point. People are capable of holding contradictory views. Hardly any anti-abortion campaigners argue that it should be banned in ALL cases, including incest, rape, medical risk and severe disability.

My point in bringing up the various arguments by which pro-choice people have tried to argue abortion's validity is to show that often their views accept the child as a human life in the same way pro-life people do. So while the influence of the pro-choice movement may be causing pro-life people to compromise the logic of their position in various ways, reverse influence does the same among many pro-choice people. It's mainly a result of two different ideological groups meeting, I guess. Whenever that happens, a certain amount of blending often occurs.

Originally Posted by The Gaffer

That would more or less be my view I guess. Though there's a logical flaw in your description of it: if it were physically part of the mother, then it's not "clearly a living human" because it is, er, physically part of the mother.

Why wouldn't it be just as valid to say the mother is physically part of it? They're distinct minds. The mother can't use her mind to control her little baby's limbs, and the baby can't use its mind to control its mother's limbs. They each have their own bodily control and their own separate intelligences. They are linked, physically, and are parts of different worlds, while simultaneously they fused with one another. The baby is part of the mother but the mother is also part of the baby. These are just two different ways of looking at it. Neither legitimizes the purposeful destruction of the other part of the unity.

Originally Posted by The Gaffer

Agreed, much as I'm tempted to advocate retrospective abortion for certain members of our species. More later... thanks.

I'm in favor of capital punishment, for some crimes. So there's some commonality there .

I look forward to the rest of your post, and your response to this one.

Originally Posted by Insidious Rex

Quote:
Originally Posted by Lief Erikson
There is no logical reason to stop killing children at birth rather than at late adolescence, if we're going by the brain development


Are you saying that the “brain” of a two celled zygote is at the same developmental stage as an adolescent’s?

Of course not. I'm saying that they are both developing, and any point chosen within the time of development to say the person is now a person is arbitrary. So there's no rational reason to pick the two celled zygote for destruction and not the adolescent. Human development is a pretty fluid process, though I grant that there are gigantic developments in the first weeks after conception.

Originally Posted by Insidious Rex

Quote:
If personhood is based on psychological development, logically it should begin in late adolescence when psychological development ends. All life before that should be killable material.


This is a basic error of logic lief. Just because adolescents are different from adults does NOT mean that adolescents are the same as infants or two celled zygotes. Its patently ridiculous to suggest otherwise. You aren’t dealing directly with the question. You have to give a good reason why its NOT ok to abort 2 celled zygotes independent of any definition of “personhood”. If you argument, as it seems to be, boils down to knowing what a person is then you aren’t dealing with the question.

Why in the world should I have to argue that it's okay without any definition of personhood? If we don't use any definition of personhood, I don't have any reason not to kill you if I want to (beyond self-preservation), as you're just another animal. Personhood is at the crux of the issue.

I agree that adolescents are more developed than zygotes, obviously. So are fetuses more developed than zygotes, and 1-year old infants more developed than fetuses, and 8-year old children more developed than infants, and 15 year-old adolescents more than 8-year olds. Any point in the development process is simply a fluid part of the development process. Conception and late adolescence are the beginning and ending points of the development process, so they are the only points for person-now that we could pick that would not be not arbitrary.

The fact that a zygote and an adolescent aren't the same does not mean they don't have equal right to live. Same could be said for a zygote and a fetus and a fetus and an infant and so on.

Out of curiosity, do you think that a 2-year old baby, based on its psychological development state, should have less right to live than an adolescent?

Originally Posted by Insidious Rex

Quote:
YES, a zygote should have the same rights as we do. To treat it otherwise is to determine the beginning of personhood arbitrarily, denying people rights based on our view of their biological development rather than on whether or not they've done anything wrong.


That’s a normal part of how we do things Lief. The right to vote. The right to drive. To drink. To join the army. The right to start getting discounts at the movie theater because yer an old geezer, these are all things we, as a society, have decided essentially arbitrarily. Its usually based in part on developmental concepts but as these may be different from person to person it, by its very nature, HAS to be arbitrary. So to use this argument against abortion alone is disingenuous and a red herring really (which I already dealt with the last time we debated about this by the way). Otherwise you need to be in support of giving EVERYONE of any age the right to drive a car. EVERYONE of any age the right to smoke or drink etc. And by the way before you attempt to side step that point by saying well abortion is about ending life and those things aren’t I would counter some of those things certainly COULD end a life if someone developmentally incapable of handling them is given that right. Not to mention theres an age restriction for the death penalty. Why aren’t you arguing against that?

Most of these laws are about what's best for the person, how to make their life better, in view of their biological development. The smoking and drinking ones excluded- and I'd say that smoking probably shouldn't be legal, at least not in public places, and drinking to excess shouldn't be legal either. Abortion laws do the opposite from what most of the laws you described do. Rather than trying to make someone's life better, based on our idea of the person's biological development, it's about making that life worse and then trying to justifying that.

Restrictions preventing children from being allowed to endure the death penalty because of their biological development is likewise an attempt to be kind to them in view of their condition, to make allowances for them, to be better to them. Those laws are intended to benefit them, not to destroy them. That's the key difference between all the other valid laws I know of, which relate to biological development, and the abortion law.

Voting, driving, drinking and joining the army restrictions all exist for the benefit of the child too. As well as for the benefit of the rest of society. They're mutually beneficial, intended to help and to protect, not to destroy.

Originally Posted by Insidious Rex

But we aren’t talking about birth. We are talking about TWO CELLS. It’s a real reach to attempt to use a slippery slope argument banning everything when you are talking about TWO CELLS. Ill need rational justification why it is we shouldn’t be allowed to abort TWO CELLS. Not because it sets a bad precedent according to you.

Bad precedent is a rational justification. If you can kill two cells, why not three? If three, why not four? Etc.

It's all part of the development process. Any part on the development process is arbitrary, as our Western countries are finding out. The Netherlands, as I pointed out earlier, have already legalized killing mentally handicapped infants. It's a slippery slope that our countries are slithering along.

Another legitimate reason for not aborting the zygote is the human inability to discern on its own judgment when exactly a person comes to exist. Or if there is such a starting point. D. Sullivan mentioned this point earlier. The two-celled zygote could be a person for all you know.

Originally Posted by Insidious Rex

How about this Lief, if all abortions were limited to two celled zygotes ONLY, if you had a full guarantee that not one abortion would occur any time after that first cell division took place, would you support them? You can no longer use the arbitrary line issue as an argument in that scenario. Would you allow abortion of two celled zygotes?

Leaving out the arbitrary line issue, we still have the point I raised before, which is that from human reason alone, we can't know when personhood begins. It's still gambling with a human life for the sake of the mother's social, economic or physical conditions.

[Mari]

Though it is true that you don't know what future a few cells might have had if you had decided to let it grow to its full potential, you cannot automatically assume it's a good one or that everything is better then death.
Also, if giving children up for adoption is such a good thing, then why are there so many children in orphanages who can't get adopted?
We have the possibilities for abortion in a safe manner, not like in the old days when women would drink poisonous herbal drinks or beat the belly as long as it took for a miscarriage to happen (yes, that is how they "performed" abortion back then and yes, abortion was not that uncommon).
Abortion has always been there. And people have always condemned the woman for doing it. Don't you think that is something between her and her Maker?
Let's look at it from a religious point of view (like we haven't done that before ): God gives life and He takes it. Let's assume that indeed those few cells do have a soul from the moment of conception. Would God punish the soul for being aborted? Or would He send it back to receive the gift of Life? Would there be any 'negative' consequences for the soul? I don't see why.
Then there is the woman who had the abortion. God may decide to punish her for it. But then again He may not. It's up to Him. He knows what's best and fitting, right?
So why are all these people protesting against women having an abortion? The soul of the future child doesn't need to be saved and the soul of the woman is not for us to judge.
Honestly, I don't see why people want to try and make the decision for others or in some cases why they would try and take over Judgment from God.
Rather, help this woman who is in a difficult enough position as it is. Do not judge and be there for her after she had the abortion when she needs it the most. The decision is hers, but living with it, that is where you can help her. And if helping this "fallen person" "tarnishes your soul", who cares? At least you'll have done what you thought was right.

[Gwaimir Windgem]

Originally Posted by Mari

Though it is true that you don't know what future a few cells might have had if you had decided to let it grow to its full potential, you cannot automatically assume it's a good one or that everything is better then death.

But, of course, as we have all seen infallibly demonstrated on the last page, you CAN automatically assume that its future will be something worse than death.

[Mari]

Well no of course not. It guess without saying that something good may come of it. However in abortion-debates some people tend to glorify being born no matter what the circumstances and completely ignore the fact that there is a whole period to come after being born and that a child might not get a very good start if it's a) unwanted and b) often in difficult circumstances (teenage mothers, that sort of thing)
I just wanted to point out that though we don't know what will happen with the child in the future, it is not right to assume that all will be well, just because it was born.

[Lief Erikson]

Originally Posted by Mari

Well no of course not. It guess without saying that something good may come of it. However in abortion-debates some people tend to glorify being born no matter what the circumstances and completely ignore the fact that there is a whole period to come after being born and that a child might not get a very good start if it's a) unwanted and b) often in difficult circumstances (teenage mothers, that sort of thing)

In neither the case Curufin brought up nor the case BeardofPants brought up did the abused person commit suicide. They preferred a miserable life to death. If we decide to make the decision for them and kill them, that's murder.

Originally Posted by Mari

I just wanted to point out that though we don't know what will happen with the child in the future, it is not right to assume that all will be well, just because it was born.

While it's not right to assume things will be well for the child, abortion performed on this justification assumes the child will have a life that the child would feel is worse than death (for if the parent feels that way and the child disagrees, the parent's view is automatically trumped). The assumptions made in justifying abortion this way are GIGANTIC.

[sisterandcousinandaunt]

I agree. But the woman is a person, and the cell cluster is only the potential for a person.

[Lief Erikson]

Originally Posted by sisterandcousinandaunt

I agree. But the woman is a person, and the cell cluster is only the potential for a person.

A cell cluster is not only potential. It's potential + material. There is what there is, and there is the potential for more. An embryo is more material + potential. A fetus is still more. A 1-week from birth child is still more. An infant is still more. An 8-year old is even more material + potential, and an adolescent is more material + potential, and an adult has reached the point where his brain won't physically develop further, so the "potential" side of him, materially, is ended. At that point, he's just material. Though he still is potential in that he could make things out of life that he presently has not.

There is no fixed point at which someone ceases to be potential, and if you're calculating by the physical development of the human, any set point to say that "here personhood begins" is arbitrary.

[Gwaimir Windgem]

Originally Posted by Lief Erikson

A cell cluster is not only potential. It's potential + material.

[Aristotle]Silly Lief, potential and material are the same thing![/Aristotle]