GOP: Female body has natural defense against pregnancy in case of legitimate rape

Not even that long

6 weeks.

It was the checkup at 8 weeks when we heard my son's heartbeat for the first time. I cried. It is truly amazing.

 

Though this is based upon accepting the premise that life begins at conception which as even you state isn't proven. If that isn't proven then the child isn't a child. It is a potential child but not one that actually has rights.

Just to quote the US Constitution. 14th Amendment.
[rquoter]All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.[/rquoter]
At the moment the Constitution doesn't consider personhood, and thus the rights, to someone unless they are born. So in this since there is no conflict of rights since one party isn't legally considered a person.

People assert it all the time. In fact as noted above in the Constitution personhood isn't considered until birth.

Also pregnancy isn't so much different than blood transfusion. In both cases one organism's resources are being used to sustain another's. That is not a situation that we force people into.

So you would then extend the punishment to the woman also by forcing her to carry to term a pregnancy she had no part of?

So you are fine with keeping a forced pregnancy on a woman because that is what denying abortion in the case of rape is.

That makes no sense at all by the definition of the term "miscarriage" unless you believe a corpse is the same as a human.

urther your own statement that you cannot prove that life begins at conception shows that at some point the embryo fetus isn't proven to be a human life. You are arguing that an end product is the same every step of the way. That would be like me saying that a bag of flour is the same as a cake because eventually I will bake a cake.

Sure doctors are working on that, BTW I hope you realize that work is based on experimentation involving in-vitro fertilization where many embryos are created and destroyed, but again that still ignores the problem that under your reasoning mass murder happens just due to basic biology. You have bigger problems trying to save lives than just ending abortion.

Except you are reading it backwards to see the argument for life not beginning at conception as a rationalization for Abortion, in other words abortion is the sole justification for the view. If anything it is the opposite. That points to a fundamental problem in your argument is that you frame it as a logical construct that is inherently flawed because it requires the other side to actually accept your view that life begins at conception since according to you they only say they don't believe it is to have abortion. That makes no sense since that would mean that people only have abortions just for the sake of having abortions and everything else is just a rationalizing.

 

I am going to add a bit more to Sweet Lou's post. In regard to fertilization leading automatically to a fully developed human being that isn't always the case. For one once an egg starts dividing their is no guarantee that any particular cell will end up being actually part of the final product, baby. Many of the cells form the amniotic sac and placenta. Also as noted earlier most fertilized eggs don't end up developing beyond the blastula stage but further than that even if they come to term there are a range of birth defects such anencephaly where a brain isn't formed. Now genetically that might be human but I wouldn't consider someone without a brain to be actually a human.

 

To follow on BJ's great post on this matter. While I myself don't know when life begins and consider my position as pro-choice (it's not my decision to make since I can't get pregnant and practice safe sex) but not pro-abortion. I have no hidden agenda regarding wanting more abortions because whether it takes a life or not I know first hand from an ex who had an abortion (just prior to meeting me) that it is traumatic.

Whether we believe life begins at conception or not I think most of us can agree that we should be working to make sure that every pregnancy is wanted. We should be working on addressing root causes instead of demonizing and legislating.

That doesn't mean we shouldn't have a healthy debate on the subject and I am happy to engage in that debate but that there are solutions to reducing abortions without having to change any laws.

 

Sorry for the rapid fire post but some very compelling posts to respond to.

I would consider the cutoff point to be when the brain function starts, not exactly thinking as in cognitive reasoning but in biological higher brain development.
To me that would indicate consciousness.

I've never liked the standard of a beating heart as determining when someone is alive. It isn't that rare anymore for someone's heart to stop and them still living through it and with artificial hearts we can remove a heart altogether and still live. We can't do that with a brain and what makes us truly human is our brains.

Cogito ergo sum..

 

Life begins with consciousness. Period. Until one is aware, one isn't one. You are a machine. A baby has awareness, it can react to stimuli, it recognizes itself. When does consciousness begin? We aren't sure.

But I would say it happens sometime after the first tri-mester. My position is thus.

1st trimester - totally up to the woman. It's not a human life. It has the potential. But not a human being.

3rd trimester - only in cases where the baby endangers the mothers health. Clearly it is a baby and has the ability to exist outside the womb - with a developed nervous system and brain.

2nd trimester - i honestly don't know.

 

That excerpt defines who are citizens, not who are persons. That amendment guarantees a lot of rights to citizens, but it does guarantee the right to life of all persons, not just citizens.

 

That is a good point but to the point that citizenship is conferred at the time of birth and not conception shows that the Constitution doesn't recognize conception as a start for personhood, unless of course we are going to consider fetuses as being able to be naturalized.

 

So 2-3 years old?

 

That isn't at all what he said. I suppose you think your comment is amusing. Not really.

 

Interesting. Considering his post ended with Cogito ergo sum and specifically mentioned higher brain functioning, 2-3 years old is my best estimate of what he is talking about. Please insert when you believe a human is self aware, or what you think he was talking about.

 

Judo was talking about development of the fetus within the womb. If I have that wrong, he's free to correct me.

 

Note I said "not exactly thinking as in cognitive reasoning but in biological higher brain development" To put it more specifically when the brain has developed a cerebrum cortex. I think that is sometime around the second trimester.

 

So 12 weeks?

 

Surely you are not going to take the word of a constitution regarding apportionment of rights which was written so long ago and by people who had little to no knowledge of these things. Didn't some of those people abolish slave ownership while owning slaves at the same time?

Seems oddly similar to the idea of taking the word of a book written thousands of years ago by people who probably knew very little about conception.

 

this topic comes up ad nauseum. there is no answer, there will never be agreement. as has been said, focus on preventing unwanted pregnancies. that is the most pragmatic and ethical thing we can do, period.

 

Pretty much. I have no problem with being against abortion but when you take that position and then refuse to support programs like sex education and easy access to contraception to reduce unwanted pregnancies then I really lose a lot of respect for the position.

 

Cortical plate is identified at 7 weeks but isn't capable of much. Massive development of higher thinking is in the first 2 years after birth.

Spoiler

What significant event happens at 12 weeks (or did you mean 24 weeks?)

 

Actually I was comparing your thinking to the Nazis; they thought the Jews were sub-human.

 

WOuld have been better to say easier than easy. Why else would someone choose to kill a child in utero rather than birth it and raise it or give it up for adoption.

You say that you would never choose abortion for yourself... why? Why are you so willing not to offer the innocent child protection from a mother or parents who would be so willing to kill them.

That's what makes no sense. I don't like messing in other folks business but if comes to doing that in order to save a child, well... talk about an easy Choice.