06-25-2008, 01:09 AM | #121 |
the Shrike
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Thank you for sharing your experience. I've also had an abortion (2 actually - one when I was 16 & a silly git, and one when I was 20 and the birth control failed). I've no regrets. Some women are born to have children. I'm not one of them.
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06-25-2008, 01:31 AM | #122 |
Elf Lord
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I responded to this on post 76.
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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." |
06-25-2008, 01:37 AM | #123 | |
Elf Lord
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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 : 06-25-2008 at 02:00 AM. |
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06-25-2008, 01:47 AM | #124 | ||
Elf Lord
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I really just can't fathom your reasoning. I think it's just too completely foreign to how I think for me to fully grasp your meaning .
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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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06-25-2008, 03:48 AM | #125 |
Entmoot Minister of Foreign Affairs
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The point is that at such an early stage in the development, the embryo of a human, a chicken, a chimpanzee, etc being so so very similar, there is no consciousness. If we want to speak of what is morally right or wrong, which it seems to boil down to, then ask yourselves this.. Why is it morally wrong to cancel the development of what eventually will become a baby, when in the early stages (during the period where abortion is medically advised), it has no consciousness and no knowledge that it exists. It is a fetus that is being denied the eventual progress into a human being, but it does not know it yet, it does not feel anything yet and it is more appropriate to compare it with a plant than an animal. There is a reason that it takes 9 months from conception to birth.. It begins in simplicity, and ends in complexity. And therefore I think it is entirely up to the woman to decide if she wants to carry through with it or not, stopping it in a point in time where it is just a potential, or carrying it through, letting it become a baby. As far as I know there are no sacred God-given writings scribbled onto every fetus, there is no fundamental right to go from a fetus to a baby. This is a woman's privilege. She must decide. Her body, her giving birth, her pain, her happiness. Simple. It really does not get any more personal than that and I find it disturbing that anyone would object to such an obvious right.
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06-25-2008, 04:02 AM | #126 | |
Entmoot Minister of Foreign Affairs
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Quote:
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"Well, thief! I smell you and I feel your air. I hear your breath. Come along! Help yourself again, there is plenty and to spare." |
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06-25-2008, 09:58 AM | #127 | |||||
Kraken King
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NOW we're talkin.
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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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06-25-2008, 10:07 AM | #128 | |
Spammer of the Happy Thread
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Yeah, I'm sitting in here, listening to your debates.. It sort of makes me happy that I live in this world and not one in some of your minds.
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06-25-2008, 10:16 AM | #129 |
Kraken King
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HA! I was JUST about to bring that debate in here as well, happened to hit "new posts" and saw this.
BUT, I believe that is a similar, but at its core different, scenario. Your killing person (A) for the benefit of person (A), not person (A) for the benefit of person (B). And, in this kind of euthanasia, the patient still has no say.
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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 |
06-25-2008, 11:35 AM | #130 |
Elf Lady
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I was wondering: how do the pro-lifers among us think about the use of the 'morning-after' pill. Here it is considered to be a prevention method, prescribed by a doctor, just like the ordinary pill.
Since it is usually taken the morning/day after unsafe sex and without knowing if someone is pregnant or not (can you know after a few hours? Can you consider someone to be pregnant after a few hours?) I was wondering if you might think that that's a different case.
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06-25-2008, 12:01 PM | #131 | |
Kraken King
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I missed this, but its another one of those snarky comments that, I assume, are meant to grate nerves.
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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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06-25-2008, 12:52 PM | #132 | |
Elf Lord
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I'll add that so far, other pro-choice advocates on this thread have either rejected it or kept it at arm's length. Sis rejected it outright on post 34. Curufin, Katya and Mari haven't mentioned it, making other approaches instead. So this hardly seems to be "the point."
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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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06-25-2008, 01:31 PM | #133 | |
Entmoot Minister of Foreign Affairs
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We differ on one important aspect. In my view, it is more important to care for the welfare of those who currently live and breath, alive and kicking, before those who might live, with the potential of life. It is as simple as that. And that is why girls and women alike should be able to choose the paths of their lives, how they want to grow up, when they want to give birth and in the manner they want to do it. It is the welfare of these women, who live now that comes before anyone living in the future. Let people live as best as they want now, and future children will grow up in a more harmonious world. On the contrary, biology interests me a great deal, and it's a pretty obvious point I'm making.
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"Well, thief! I smell you and I feel your air. I hear your breath. Come along! Help yourself again, there is plenty and to spare." |
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06-25-2008, 01:46 PM | #134 | |
Kraken King
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You have just justified the murder of any sleeping person who you dont deem fit to live, that would be too much responsibility. (come on, laugh. you know you want to.)
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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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06-25-2008, 01:57 PM | #135 | |
Quasi Evil
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This is an important point you raise Mari. I find it interesting when pro-lifers are asked if there is ANY point post fertilization where its ok to consider abortion. Lets take it to its logical extreme and assume the two cell zygote stage, as primitive as you can get. Is this a human like you and me? Does it have the exact same rights? Would we have to adhere to the EXACT same limitations and moral choices when dealing with this 2 celled object as we would when dealing with an adult human? If your answer is NO then at what point do things change as far as the zygote/fetus is concerned and how can you really maintain a true pro-life perspective on abortion if you are arbitrary about the point in time when it matters? If your answer is YES then how in the world can you possibly justify (possibly) risking the life of the mother or bringing a 2 celled zygote into a situation where, as a human, it may suffer greatly? You cant actually believe its developed enough to have sentience or human like thoughts when it doesn’t even have a brain yet. So what is it that drives you to still think it a full human worthy of protection even at the cost of its mothers health or welfare or possibly of its own later?
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06-25-2008, 02:13 PM | #136 | |
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The word consciousness, or lack of, I use in this context to describe the fetus inside a woman as not being conscious of it's own existence. Or perhaps better put, not being self-conscious. A poor choice of word from my part I admit The fetus shares the DNA, but it does not share the fundamental aspects of a human being. It can not think, it can not reason, it can not feel, it can not see, it can not breath and it can not hear. It is by all measures, plant-like, or as Insidious writes, parasitical, feeding off its host. The fetus is only a potential human being, but it is not yet a human being. That happens much later in the process in my view, and a good reason why after a certain number of weeks it is inadvisable to cancel the pregnancy. P.S. But read Insidious' last post. He(?) makes some good points in his answer to Mari.
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"Well, thief! I smell you and I feel your air. I hear your breath. Come along! Help yourself again, there is plenty and to spare." Last edited by Coffeehouse : 06-25-2008 at 02:17 PM. |
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06-25-2008, 02:44 PM | #137 | ||
Elf Lord
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Enormous development occurs in a child in the first weeks after conception, especially in the brain, and by the end of the first trimester, the little human has all his major organs. But you're talking about zygote stage. I'd argue that you can't kill zygotes for the following reason: 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 is the same evil committed by Anti-Semites and Racists. Racists and Anti-Semites didn't have good enough information to make the kinds of judgments they were. Neither do we. Pro-Choice advocates acknowledge that determining when a tiny cellular human life becomes a person (which really is a bigger living mass of cells) is an arbitrary judgment. Birth is, according to scientists, a neurologically trivial event in the development of a child. Humans should not dare to set arbitrary lines in the development of a human, declaring when that human is a person, because of the moral risk that they are legalizing genocide. Any points other than conception (when development starts) and late adolescence (when brain development ends) are arbitrary. The suffering of women is not a good enough reason to start drawing those arbitrary lines, risking the creation of a genocide. Besides, we all consider a child 1 week after birth to be a child, but abortions 1 week before birth are legal. So psychologically speaking, there's no difference between that child in the womb and the one outside, and as the ones inside the womb are no different and yet still can legally be killed, we know that murder is occurring through the laws as they stand now. I can pose this for any arbitrary line you draw. 1-week before "personhood," the child is virtually identical to what it is 1-week after we determine "personhood" to magically begin, so murder is always going to be occurring when abortion of anyone at any stage in development is allowed. That's one of the obvious horrors of the legalization of abortion, and is one of the reasons people tend to rely on non-neurological development arguments.
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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 : 06-25-2008 at 02:55 PM. |
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06-25-2008, 03:05 PM | #138 | |
Entmoot Minister of Foreign Affairs
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It is this same type of language I see in much of the pro-life arguments. An objection to make different choices. Some choose abortion, some don't. It is a right to choose. It is a fundamentalist, an unhealthy position to take, trying to deny this right, on the basis of a potential moral risk of genocide (which I believe to be completely unfounded).
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"Well, thief! I smell you and I feel your air. I hear your breath. Come along! Help yourself again, there is plenty and to spare." Last edited by Coffeehouse : 06-25-2008 at 03:08 PM. Reason: spelling |
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06-25-2008, 03:20 PM | #139 | |||
Elf Lord
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There are actually a very large number of parallels between racist arguments and pro-choice arguments. I've been studying racism in college, and in the last month or two have been pondering occasionally whether or not I should write a short fiction book or a long story about all the argumentative ties that exist between the two. 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 : 06-25-2008 at 03:42 PM. |
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06-25-2008, 03:26 PM | #140 |
Entmoot Minister of Foreign Affairs
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Those are your words Lief, not mine.
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