CNN- Abortion Rights Protests Pack Mall

1. be careful where you draw the line with mental development issues. that looks pretty ugly when we start drawing arbitrary lines in the sand about who is smart enough to stick around with us. sounds like a george orwell book.

2. i'm still waiting for the 30 year old Rhodes scholar who can mourn HIS OWN passing. but i understand what you mean. so we have to have a sense of consciousness to be alive...ok....so when do we draw that line? and should the burden of drawing that distinction be on the one who wants to save the baby or to terminate its existence? i'm thinking when the stakes are that high, you play it safe.

 

Fine. I'll side with the litle girl who can't defend herself from her own mother's decisions. I can live with that.

 

Bad example since the Olsen twins are fraternal twins rather than identical twins.

 

under the law, twins are absoutely protected as individuals. they each have rights separate and apart from the other.

 

Hmmmm. mrpaige is awfully quick with the Olsen facts.

 

Yeah! What's up with that, mrpaige??

 

I would like someone to address what would be done with all these unwanted children? I don't think that anyone addressed that when I brought it up earlier. If you think a government paid for abortion is exspensive, how about raising a child for 18 years? I will be very conservative and say $20,000 a year considering it costs $40,000 a year for an inmate. twhy77 gave the fiqure of 40,000,000 abortions since 1973. That means the government would of had to spend $6,038,709,677,419 to support all the unwanted fetus' that would have matured to adulthood since 1973. That number is not including the children that are would of been in the system now. Where is that money going to come from?

 

I would like someone to address what would be done with all these unwanted children?

I'm not sure its relevent.

The pro-choice side certainly doesn't care - they are arguing the other side.

The pro-life side argues abortion is similar to murder, and that murder is wrong, whether its saves money or not.

 

is this really an issue? are we seriously going to make policy about protecting or not protecting life on the economics of it?

this is so utilitarian. i'm not saying it isn't an issue. i'm also not saying there isn't already a waiting list at adoption centers around the country for a baby. but this is not the kind of thing we should be structuring constitutional rights on...particularly those that protect life.

 

better question on tetroma, something i'm admittedly ignorant of...

does it have brainwaves?

does it have a beating heart?

these have been the markers of life for quite some time, under the law in this country.

 

Sorry, I should of stated that this would not weigh in my decision wether or not to support a ban on abortion. I think that I have been clear that I'm against a ban on abortion barring the ability to support a fetus from the time of conception outside the womb. But it is valid argument. A ban on abortion is going to bring a price. Let's think next steps. Assume that there is a way that a pregnant woman can go down to the hospital and drop of her unwanted fetus at any stage of deveopment or even every pregnant woman was willing to take every conception full term. Someone is going to have to support that child and everyone hear know that the government is going to have to bring up the slack. Again, going by twhy77's numbers that would be 23,225,806 additional children that would need to be cared for. Even if only half that number were not addopted that would be $232,258,064,516 per year added on to the national budget. So tell me, what would you cut to make this a reality?

 

I read this info a few years ago and it was broken down similar to the following:

Around 6% of abortions were due to health of the mother, potential birth defects, rape, incest.

Around 94% were due to "birth control".

 

your assumption is that:

1. the mothers won't ultimately keep the children...believe me, more times than not they do...even when they sought abortions originally...and

2. that adoptions won't increase.

i don't think every single child that would have been aborted will ultimately be the government's responsiblity to raise.

 

Sadly, I knew that the Olsens were fraternal; I just didn't want it to get in the way of a joke. A better example (as the countdown still has several days to go): the Damm (?) triplets from Playboy from a few years back. Each identical genetically to the other, and, I argue, each absolutely irreplaceable to this Earth. My point with the twin/clone/teratoma/forebrainless baby was that the definition of the living (and thus worthy of protected status) is seriously flawed. I know twins are considered legally individual, but part of the aforementioned definition above of human life was genetic individuality.

Actually, I'm mourning my own (inevitable) death right now, and I'm no Rhodes scholar. It's intrinsic to my human consciousness. This dovetails with what I think is one of Singer's main tenets on vegetarianism ...Actually, I'm not sure if it's Singer, so I'll call it the capacity-for-pain/empathy argument. We legally and morally protect other humans and animals, but not plants, because humans and animals have nervous systems and can feel pain. We feel pain. Pain is bad. Ergo, we shouldn't unnecessarily inflict pain on other living things. Since a carrot cannot feel pain/has no nervous system, snack away.

With regard to abortion, in terms of drawing the line, in terms of consciousness, Singer argues that it's okay to kill small infants before they attain his definition of self-realization/consciousness. I won't go that far. But in terms of drawing the consciousness line, I would argue that a newborn has practically none, so the drawing of that line has quite a bit of leeway.

On the other hand, the capacity to inflict pain is another matter which should be debated. At what point is the fetus capable of registering pain in any way we recognize as human? Certainly not on Day One, most likely on Day 270. But that is a distinction. You ask whether it should be left to the advocate or the executioner to decide the fetus' level of development. It's not that simple; that's a false argument that will always lead to the pro-life decision.

This is my very point about abortion, in a nutshell. That there is a line, that there must be a line. I give the example of the born brainless human to discuss the definition of human life and you warn me not to draw arbitrary lines about mental status. Note, I said no forebrain, brainless, not with an IQ below 70 or an IQ of 20. I agree the mentally r****ded are human. But questioning the humanity of a person with an IQ of 0, born with an IQ of 0, born without the physical capacity to ever begin to form a thought is stepping over the line?

That makes no sense. Similarly, I can see the logic of the argument that a healthy fetus at eight-and-a-half months should not be aborted because it has attained some perceptible levels of self-awareness/consciousness/thought/the ability to feel pain. But when sperm and egg fuse, two cells, less than the sloughing off of my skin cells as I type this, to recognize that they feel nothing, know nothing, is to cross the abortion line? That is hardly arbitrary.

I agree there is a line in the abortion debate. What seems pretty clear to me, however, is that the two extremes, the very beginning and very end of pregnancy, are on opposite sides of that line. Whether that line falls in the second month or the beginning of the third trimester, to me, is logically inconsequential: one must first see that there is a line.

 

the numbers i read...from congressional testimony and from actual reports (because each state has to report on this stuff) had roughly these same numbers...even for abortions performed past the first trimester.

 

Another should be - Does it rely on a woman's internal biological processes as its sole source of life?

If it does, then it is still part of the woman's lifeforce and does not have its own. Once it can survive outside the womb, it is a "life."

 

ok...you say it should be that. we'll put you down in that column. but if we're simply determining whether a being is alive or not, whether it has some support outside of itself or not, the factors of brainwaves and heartbeat have been the markers.

oh..and by the way....the "sole" source of life? the mother isn't that by about the 3rd week of the pregnancy. if it's own heart stops, it dies of its own problems...not of it's mother's support or lack thereof. the mother is not the sole source of it's life. it has it's own organs pumping as well.

 

I particularly like and agree with this point.