06-20-2008, 01:14 AM | #61 | |
Elf Lord
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Now doctors can help the survival rate earlier and earlier. But nothing has happened to push it to the first gamete meet and greet. If a woman miscarries (and "miscarriage rates' are estimated to be between 20 and 70% of pregnancies) nothing can yet be done. To even DISCUSS those as 'infant death' is to trivialize life itself in a way I find appalling. It's abhorrent.
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That would be the swirling vortex to another world. Cool. I want one. TMNT No, I'm not emo. I just have a really poor sense of direction. (Thanks to katya for this quote) This is the best news story EVER! http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26087293/ “Often my haste is a mistake, but I live with the consequences without complaint.”...John McCain "I shall go back. And I shall find that therapist. And I shall whack her upside her head with my blanket full of rocks." ...Louisa May |
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06-20-2008, 01:42 AM | #62 |
Elf Lord
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btw, this is the end section of the article Lief posted above about pre-natal fetal behavior.
"WHAT'S THE IMPACT ON ABORTION? Though research in fetal psychology focuses on the last trimester, when most abortions are illegal, the thought of a fetus dreaming, listening and responding to its mother's voice is sure to add new complexity to the debate. The new findings undoubtedly will strengthen the convictions of right-to-lifers--and they may shake the certainty of pro-choice proponents who believe that mental life begins at birth. Many of the scientists engaged in studying the fetus, however, remain detached from the abortion controversy, insisting that their work is completely irrelevant to the debate. "I don't think that fetal research informs the issue at all," contends psychologist Janet DiPietro of Johns Hopkins University. "The essence of the abortion debate is: When does life begin? Some people believe it begins at conception, the other extreme believes that it begins after the baby is born, and there's a group in the middle that believes it begins at around 24 or 25 weeks, when a fetus can live outside of the womb, though it needs a lot of help to do so. "Up to about 25 weeks, whether or not it's sucking its thumb or has personality or all that, the fetus cannot survive outside of its mother. So is that life, or not? That is a moral, ethical, and religious question, not one for science. Things can behave and not be alive. Right-to-lifers may say that this research proves that a fetus is alive, but it does not. It cannot." "Fetal research only changes the abortion debate for people who think that life starts at some magical point," maintains Heidelise AIs, a psychologist at Harvard University. "If you believe that life begins at conception, then you don't need the proof of fetal behavior." For others, however, abortion is a very complex issue and involves far more than whether research shows that a fetus is alive. "Your circumstances and personal beliefs have much more impact on the decision," she observes. Like DiPietro, AIs realizes that "people may use this research as an emotional way to draw people to the pro-life side, but it should not be used by belligerent activists." Instead, she believes, it should be applied to helping mothers have the healthiest pregnancy possible and preparing them to best parent their child. Columbia University psychologist William Fifer agrees. "The research is much more relevant for issues regarding viable fetuses--preemies." Simply put, say the three, their work is intended to help the babies that live--not to decide whether fetuses should." Gee. And they work with this information every day.
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That would be the swirling vortex to another world. Cool. I want one. TMNT No, I'm not emo. I just have a really poor sense of direction. (Thanks to katya for this quote) This is the best news story EVER! http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26087293/ “Often my haste is a mistake, but I live with the consequences without complaint.”...John McCain "I shall go back. And I shall find that therapist. And I shall whack her upside her head with my blanket full of rocks." ...Louisa May |
06-20-2008, 02:08 AM | #63 | |||||||
Elf Lord
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Thanks for the depth of your reply. Quote:
I agree that sex will occur. How many people will do it can vary depending on the methods with which prevention is taught and, more importantly, the culture the highschoolers grow up in. I think the sex education programs may well be partly a cause for the increasing rates of teen pregnancies. The modern culture of increasingly liberal values encourages this also, to the extent that it's influenced a vast number of Christian households. No, but it may diminish it. The number of abortions taking place skyrocketed after Roe v. Wade. At the time of Roe v. Wade, only a tiny percentage of citizens felt abortion could be ethical, while now an enormous number think so. That's the effect of a law being removed. When people know that what they are doing is against the law and may get them punished, they are less likely to break the law than they might otherwise be. If the law was changed, plenty of people would go to the back alleys for the abortions. A lot of people would also stop. Gradually, the practice might shrink down to where it used to be, before Roe v. Wade opened the floodgates. I'm hopeful its decline might follow the decline of imperialism and racist slavery. Quote:
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There can be no question that abortion is murder of an innocent human. The only question is whether the justifications offered to defend that act are enough. Those justifications are what we've been debating all this time. For me, social or economic hardship and even the physical pain of childbirth cannot make murder legitimate. We know the mothers. They are all around us. It is easy to feel compassion for them, and much of it is warranted. It is good to feel love for everyone, whatever they've done in their lives. Not to love all of their acts, but to love the people. Justice is a necessary expression of love for society as well, for all of its members. When justice is met rather than abused or corrupted, it offers its defense to everyone, but those who defy it will face punishment. It is WRONG to allow our love for the murderers to strip away the just penalties for their crimes, because doing so allows their slaughter to proceed unimpeded. It legitimates, legalizes and regulates crime rather than defending society against it. Quote:
Your concentration on the rights of the mother over her body are causing you to completely ignore or reject the natural rights of the child she bears over its body. Your good and valid love for unprepared mothers in pain is causing you to accept the butchery of innocent children. While we should work to prevent both through good education techniques, the latter is also murder and should therefore be illegal. The murder of innocents cannot validly be legal. Quote:
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Some pro-life activists do that. Others are very mild. It varies. You can't stereotype.
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If the world has indeed, as I have said, been built of sorrow, it has been built by the hands of love, because in no other way could the soul of man, for whom the world was made, reach the full stature of its perfection. ~Oscar Wilde, written from prison Oscar Wilde's last words: "Either the wallpaper goes, or I do." |
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06-20-2008, 02:38 AM | #64 | |||||||
Elf Lord
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Seeing as we lack foreknowledge and sufficient wisdom, we're not in a position to make that call.
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If the world has indeed, as I have said, been built of sorrow, it has been built by the hands of love, because in no other way could the soul of man, for whom the world was made, reach the full stature of its perfection. ~Oscar Wilde, written from prison Oscar Wilde's last words: "Either the wallpaper goes, or I do." Last edited by Lief Erikson : 06-20-2008 at 03:30 AM. |
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06-20-2008, 03:02 AM | #65 |
Elf Lord
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It's not surprising that these people want to disassociate themselves from the debate. They just want to go about their research, not get sucked into political controversy.
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If the world has indeed, as I have said, been built of sorrow, it has been built by the hands of love, because in no other way could the soul of man, for whom the world was made, reach the full stature of its perfection. ~Oscar Wilde, written from prison Oscar Wilde's last words: "Either the wallpaper goes, or I do." |
06-20-2008, 09:58 AM | #66 |
Elf Lord
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Lief, you complain that my POV is opinion. But you haven't established any scientific way to make your "opinion" true. You say 'It's a baby from conception" I say "That's a religious, not a scientific nor a legal, statement"
You say, "There can be no question that abortion is murder." Dude, look around. There IS question on that point. In fact, there is a wide societal consensus that abortion is NOT murder. If there is 'no question' for you, your basis for it comes from something other than science, and other than law. It comes, I suspect, from a very particular and narrow piece of the religious spectrum (and a few poorly interpreted Bible verses, along with a lot of Fundamentalist urban legend type stuff.) I have plenty of responsibility, and I chose it all. I will have more, and more complicated, direct responsibility today than you will have for the next 10 years. Even if you CHOSE to watch your brother (and I'm glad you did) you actually had a legal choice. If you had said, "I'm not my brother's keeper" and your parents had hurt you, or called the police to enforce their will on you, you would have had the full support of the legal system. I am sorry you aren't familier with people who are responsible by choice. I find that truly saddening. I can say, from personal experience, that I would not give up ONE stinky diaper of the thousands I've changed. And I've felt that way the whole time. You could, in fact, ask a random sample of any 100 people in this county (if you were here) and the one thing everyone would agree on is that I have mad skills as a parent. I'm freaking notorious. But it was my choice. Always. And that's a really critical issue that you will NOT be successful in changing for my children, or for THEIR children.
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That would be the swirling vortex to another world. Cool. I want one. TMNT No, I'm not emo. I just have a really poor sense of direction. (Thanks to katya for this quote) This is the best news story EVER! http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26087293/ “Often my haste is a mistake, but I live with the consequences without complaint.”...John McCain "I shall go back. And I shall find that therapist. And I shall whack her upside her head with my blanket full of rocks." ...Louisa May |
06-20-2008, 10:23 AM | #67 |
Elf Lord
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Good discussion though. Congrats to all for staying civil, and issue-focused throughout.
Lief, I'll respond to your response to my post (for which, thanks) when I get the time. |
06-20-2008, 01:02 PM | #68 | ||||
Elf Lord
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Okay, Gaffer .
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However, I have shown that neurologically, a child in the womb shortly before birth has no significant difference from one outside. The article I linked showed the child underwent enormous development in the first 10 weeks of its existence. I argued (and you agreed) that any attempt to say that at this point it's psychologically too much less than we are to count is worthless, as development is a mostly steady process from conception to late adolescence (and I cited that too). I argue that based upon the scientific evidence of the child's high state of development from an extremely early point in its life, and based on the fact that choosing any point in its development process to kill it is arbitrary (as we're developing mentally all the way up to late adolescence, and parents can endure forms of hardship in dealing with these kids just as parents prior to their births can), the child itself can no more legitimately be killed than one outside the womb. Hence abortion is murder. I'd add that (very importantly) almost all the arguments I've seen in this thread, except Gaffer's psychological test argument, are justifications for the killing for the sake of the mothers involved. The only one that attempts to say it's thinking of the child's welfare is the argument that they'd lead a life that's not worth living and therefore it's a mercy killing. Every other argument is a justification for the killing for the sake of the mother. The child's life is always seen as of secondary importance to the well being of the mother. That same thing occurs when people try to commit murder. They often justify it in many ways, explaining how the person they killed was harming them personally, economically or socially, how the person was antagonizing them or other such reasons. The person the murderer killed is almost always seen as a hardship in some way to the murderer. So they justify killing on those grounds. Quote:
None of the posts I've seen so far has made any attempt to present an argument for killing the fetus not being murder- purposefully killing an innocent human. They've instead tried to justify the murder. That's what this debate has been about up to this point, the justification of the perpetrator. The debate has been over, "are such and such reasons good enough to kill an innocent human being?" Not, "is it an innocent human being being killed?" No one has been challenging the fact that murder takes place, therefore. It's instead a debate over whether or not murder is justified in this case. Quote:
I've seen you call yourself so many things, saying in this thread that you "know more about fertility and pregnancy than most people on this board will ever live to," when we were discussing medical issues, saying all your ancestors came to America after enduring persecution when we were debating religious freedom, saying that you'd been a statistics professor back when we were debating statistics, saying you'd been a field associate for "The Gay Rights National Lobby" when we were debating gender, saying you are a high ranking politician who has published many books (but refusing to back this when asked) when we were debating politics . . . It was unfortunate that when you said you were a politician, you were debating with someone who'd taken PS 110 in Community College (a course about the basics), as our argument in the Gender Issues Thread proved. Maybe your story is all true. I personally don't think so, though, so citing your own experience again won't help you in this discussion, as far as I'm concerned. . . . Look, I'm sorry that this friction exists between us. I don't want to be struggling with you all the time. I don't think you're a bad person. I like how you're relating in such a friendly way with a lot of people. I just also don't believe your story. I hope we can improve relations in spite of this. Quote:
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If the world has indeed, as I have said, been built of sorrow, it has been built by the hands of love, because in no other way could the soul of man, for whom the world was made, reach the full stature of its perfection. ~Oscar Wilde, written from prison Oscar Wilde's last words: "Either the wallpaper goes, or I do." Last edited by Lief Erikson : 06-20-2008 at 01:25 PM. |
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06-20-2008, 02:17 PM | #69 |
Quasi Evil
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Lief, I know weve been through this before in this thread but its certainly not an opinion that a fetus is essentially a parasitic growth. It fits every aspect of the definition. You admitted so yourself in this thread: http://www.entmoot.com/showpost.php?...&postcount=636. It may be disturbing to you (and a little tacky to put in that way) but it is by any measure most certainly a parasitic relationship.
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"People's political beliefs don't stem from the factual information they've acquired. Far more the facts people choose to believe are the product of their political beliefs." "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." |
06-20-2008, 02:28 PM | #70 | ||
Elf Lord
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And here's what I said three posts before, number 633.
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Infants after birth (and children right up through adolescence, most of the time) very nearly fit this "parasite" definition too. They are organisms that grow, feed and are sheltered through the labors of another organism without contributing anything to the other organism's survival. The only difference is that they're not on or in the host, but are being supported through the labors of the mother's body in other ways.
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If the world has indeed, as I have said, been built of sorrow, it has been built by the hands of love, because in no other way could the soul of man, for whom the world was made, reach the full stature of its perfection. ~Oscar Wilde, written from prison Oscar Wilde's last words: "Either the wallpaper goes, or I do." Last edited by Lief Erikson : 06-20-2008 at 02:35 PM. |
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06-20-2008, 02:36 PM | #71 |
Elven Warrior
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lol deleted by myself due to stupidity!
Lief covers it. Last edited by Tuinor : 06-20-2008 at 02:39 PM. Reason: stupidity, lol |
06-20-2008, 03:26 PM | #72 | ||
Quasi Evil
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A TRUE parasite HAS to depend on its host for survival and relies on its host COMPLETELY for sustenance and protection and most importantly, except in the cases of social parasitism, there is a PHYSICAL connection between the host and the parasite through which the parasite gains its sustenance. Just like, say, an umbilical chord…
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"People's political beliefs don't stem from the factual information they've acquired. Far more the facts people choose to believe are the product of their political beliefs." "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." |
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06-20-2008, 03:34 PM | #73 | ||
Elven Maiden
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06-20-2008, 03:46 PM | #74 | |||||
Elf Lord
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In fact, after birth I'd say the mom is usually substantially more consumed with the task of taking care of her baby than she was while pregnant. Quote:
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If the world has indeed, as I have said, been built of sorrow, it has been built by the hands of love, because in no other way could the soul of man, for whom the world was made, reach the full stature of its perfection. ~Oscar Wilde, written from prison Oscar Wilde's last words: "Either the wallpaper goes, or I do." Last edited by Lief Erikson : 06-20-2008 at 03:52 PM. |
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06-20-2008, 03:57 PM | #75 | |
The Ñoldóran
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Let me rephrase. Do you eat meat? Cows and chickens are tortured horribly before they are killed - and can most definitely feel pain. Why is it okay to kill them but not babies, who are nearly genetically identical? And if you can, please answer this question without quoting the bible, because sorry, but that means absolutely nothing to me.
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Then Celegorm no more would stay, And Curufin smiled and turned away... ~The Lay of Leithian |
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06-20-2008, 04:17 PM | #76 | |
Elf Lord
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Regarding your comment about animals, I'd like to also add that if we don't see humans as in some way categorically different from the animals, the kinds of inhuman monstrosities against our race that could be justified are tremendous. If we take that path, the potential consequences of what could be legalized by our governments and how people might deal with other members of their species are terrifying. That should be reason enough not to draw the connection. Feel free to lobby in favor of animal protection. That is entirely valid, in my view. I'll support you part of the way but not all the way, for personal religious reasons. I'll still slap the mosquito . It's a gracious endeavor, I think, for you to say, "let's afford other species the same protection we offer our own." But if we were to turn that the other way around and say, "let's offer our species the same (lack of) protection we offer the animal species," that creates a really, really terrifying myriad of possible national scenarios.
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If the world has indeed, as I have said, been built of sorrow, it has been built by the hands of love, because in no other way could the soul of man, for whom the world was made, reach the full stature of its perfection. ~Oscar Wilde, written from prison Oscar Wilde's last words: "Either the wallpaper goes, or I do." Last edited by Lief Erikson : 06-20-2008 at 04:23 PM. |
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06-20-2008, 04:30 PM | #77 | ||
Elf Lord
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If the world has indeed, as I have said, been built of sorrow, it has been built by the hands of love, because in no other way could the soul of man, for whom the world was made, reach the full stature of its perfection. ~Oscar Wilde, written from prison Oscar Wilde's last words: "Either the wallpaper goes, or I do." |
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06-20-2008, 05:18 PM | #78 | ||
Quasi Evil
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Face it Lief, we all start our lives as parasites. Its just some of us take 30 or 40 years to finally break the habit.
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"People's political beliefs don't stem from the factual information they've acquired. Far more the facts people choose to believe are the product of their political beliefs." "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." |
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06-20-2008, 05:41 PM | #79 | ||
Kraken King
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One of my top ten favorite movies. "You ever try to flick a fly? "No." "It's a waste of time." "Can you see it?" "No." "It's right there!" "Where? "There!" "What is it?" "A crab." "A crab? I dont see any crab." "How?! It's right there!!" "Where?" "There!!!!" "Oh." -Excerpts from A Tale of Two Morons |
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06-20-2008, 06:05 PM | #80 | |
Dread Mothy Lord and Halfwitted Apprentice Loremaster
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