I do understand your position. I really do. I also want to get on board with womens right to choose, but I cant because I just dont like the fact that nobody is representing the child. GR, it IS a human. I dont see how you can deny that. A 6 week old embryo, or an 8 week old fetus has all the necessary componets to feel physical pain, and an abortion is painful. Just because it doesnt scream and cry during tha process doesnt mean its not happening. I do realize that its really difficult to tell a woman she HAS to bring that child to term if she cant or doesnt want to. but for the love of carl landry, please give me a bwtter alternative than ending the life of a child. I'll get on board and support it. and yes, im anti war, anti death penalty and pro birth control and pro welfare for mothers.
As soon as we have the medical technology to remove a fetus from the woman's uterus and incubate it artificially, there will be an alternative. Until then, the state does not have a compelling interest in getting between a woman and her choice. Until then, you should pour your efforts into increasing education about reproduction and availability of contraceptive options. Those efforts are the only ones that, in our reality, have a chance of reducing the incidence of abortion in our society.
Even at that point, the state or government or anyone else in this thread has any say in the matter. Nor will they ever..... DD
I'm going to avoid the quoting unquoting because it's pretty much the most annoying thing about cf d&d debates. 1) We haven't agreed that the policy debate is primary. a) I think we are talking about different things when we say policy in the context of this argument. I first brought it up in relation to the point finalsbound is always making, that the reduction of abortion will happen only with an increase of contraception. You seem to be equating the personhood argument with a meaning of policy. I think what you mean by policy argument is simply the pragmatic decision of whether abortion is a good thing in a society. I think that's the ancillary question to whether the fetus is a human organism. Which leads me to; b) Determining whether the fetus is a human being and thus deserving of human dignity is paramount to the policy questions because the policy questions (on the pro-choice side) presuppose the fetus is not worthy of human dignity and can thus be killed. So, answering the question of whether something has human dignity is important. Our current abortion jurisprudence, most notably in a recent South Dakota federal case, Planned Parenthood v. Rounds, blurs the lines between the question of what it means to be a human being, and what it means to be a person. The case involved a South Dakota informed consent statute where the doctor performing an abortion had to tell a woman that "the abortion will terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being." Human-being was defined as "an individual living member of the species of Homo sapiens, including the unborn human being during the entire embryonic and fetal ages from fertilization to full gestation." The court ended up having to uphold this statement, because it was technically correct. In the same decision though, the court struck down another portion of the informed consent statute wherein the doctor would have to tell the woman that she "has an existing relationship with that unborn human being and that the relationship enjoys protection under the United States Constitution and under the laws of South Dakota," and "[t]hat by having an abortion, her existing relationship and her existing constitutional rights with regards to that relationship will be terminated.” The court struck down this part of the statute because "The fact that the legislature has included an unborn embryo and fetus within the meaning of the term “human being” does not elevate the status of that unborn embryo or fetus to a “person” within the meaning of the established laws. Consequently, in the legal context, a pregnant mother cannot have a “relationship” with a “human being,” as that word is defined in the statute. As a result, the relationship disclosures are untruthful and misleading and, as such, are unconstitutional." My argument, therefore, is that this dichotomy, that an organism that is a human being in its most nascent form, is not considered a person in the law, or policy as you refer to it, is fundamentally unjust. The case is a good representation of the distinction I'm trying to make, and why I say the question of whether the fetus is a human being and thus imparted with human dignity is primary to the policy questions of whether the fetus is a person. Anyways, I'm tired. I'll try to elucidate more eloquently tomorrow. It's never good to try and write a post while watching TV.
Trying to catch up on this thread but wanted to respond to this If you are speaking of an embryo actually it doesn't always turn out human in the end. In the majority of cases (around 75%) the embryo fails to implant into the uterine wall and is flushed out of the body. Also there are many other things that can happen in the course of development causing the embryo to not develop. Finally even if everything goes right not all those cells in that blob develop into what we would consider human, some end up forming the amniotic sac and some end up forming the placenta.
I think we need to be careful with our terms. The fetal stage actually isn't until about the 9th week and at start of the fetal stage it isn't like we have something resembling what we can all agree is human, ie a baby. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fetus Since we have been referencing science actually science doesn't support that contention that a 6 to 8 week old embryo can feel pain or even that a 9 week fetus can. From the link above. [rquoter]Fetuses are not capable of feeling pain at the beginning of the fetal stage, and may not be able to feel pain until the third trimester.[12] At this point in development, uncontrolled movements and twitches occur as muscles, the brain and pathways begin to develop.[13] [/rquoter]
I have read through this thread and LScolaDominates has already taken many of my response but to add on his in my own words. And yes I am going to "quote" and "unquote". Some might find it annoying but it helps to organize my thought and provide the direct context for those responses. True "legal fiction" isn't a bad thing but in the context that you are using it you are using it as a negative. "Essence" though is a subject term and in regard to being "distinct" and "unique" I already addressed that earlier that each of your individual cells actually are unique and distinct already. As far as the second part of your statement regarding turning a fetus from nonhuman to human I am not sure what you mean here? By your own definition of the origin of human life at conception something non-human is turned into human unless you are agreeing that individual cells prior to conception are really human already. At that point then it falls back to you are committing abortion when you give blood. If a woman were to clone herself she has egg cells and I have bone marrow cells. Also there is research going into how to create egg cells from other cells. This to me is the basic problem with your argument. You keep on referring to "science" but science says nothing about "personhood" or "human dignity". Those are metaphysical terms which you are conflating with science. Science never really says when a person becomes a person. That is a value judgement of the kind that science tends to avoid. You are again throwing science out there but you are failing to define what you by "scientific". As I said before I am stripping philosophical or moral connotations. Following your own argument in a pregnancy you have a distinct being that is inhabitating another being and compelling it to sustain the former by directly feeding off of the metabolic processes of the latter. That right there is the definition of "parasitizing." You have a host and you have a parasite. While you can point that the end is propagation of the host's genome but the process is one of parasitization. First off most pro-choice advocates will not concede the point that act of abortion is the ending of the life of a human being. That is reading your own belief into someone else's position. Even on this thread the pro-choice people are saying they don't know when life begins and are leaving it up to the mother, or if you want to get scientific, the host, to decide. Second, second you are again substituting your own belief for science. Science doesn't say anything about human life or even exactly what a human being is. There are variety of definitions. You are treating that though as a given that that issue is scientifically resolved when it is far from it. Third you say you are not arguing unjustness or justness or justness when you yourself have brought up the question of unjustness several times. Your whole argument is predicated on justness since even if we were to accept the argument in whole that at conception human life is there in every aspect whether that life should be terminated isn't a scientific argument. It is a legal and moral argument. Again you are conflating science with principles that at their heart are not the domain of science. As I said I contest the argument that an embryo is a "human being" distinct or not. You are asking me to accept your argument as a priori when that isn't the case. More importantly though contrary to your contention you are not arguing policy you are arguing policy when you talk about civil rights and morality. The expression of those in a state is through policy. I will admit I am conflicted in regard to my own philosophical uncertainty about when life begins. As others have noted though that isn't a policy argument as the answer to that is to defer to those most affect by that issue.
I will point out that by citing legal precedents you are putting the policy debate as primary because those precedents shape the policy and not the scientific debate. For that matter while they have some bearing on the philosophical and moral debates there are many other factors that influence those too.
Not at all. As I've said in various forms since I began posting in this thread, the main concern of the pro-choice/pro-life debate is whether abortion should be legal or not. If you can't even comprehend that simple framework argument, I don't see the point in continuing this discussion.
@judo Thanks for the response. I wasn't trying to condemn the quoting/unquoting function in general, just pointing out how much I hate to do it. For me it's very hard to have these discussions on the internet because in every discussion I've ever taken part in in real life, there are concessions and agreements, and clarifications of terms. I feel that if we are trying to truly to discuss a topic as important as this, maybe an internet forum just isn't the right place. But we do our best. Let me see if I can clarify the point I'm trying to make, my use of case law etc., my separation of policy from the first part of the debate. I'll try to flesh out the definitions I'm using etc. Just as I would in a real life debate, because at this point in the discussion we all seem to be using terminology in a specific way and we should get the terms straight so that we better understand what the other is trying to say. Maybe it will make better sense to walk you through my reasoning process. I'm attempting to show that the embryo/fetus/etc. is human from the very start. In a certain sense I use the word human in the philosophically loaded sense of the term, a human being endowed with dignity. I'm only applying those philosophically loaded terms to the embryo because of my reasoning process that what exists within the mother is in fact something other than the mother. This other something, in this instance, is a human organism. I'll stop here and see if we agree on that first point, that the fusion of a sperm and egg manifests a human organism that is separate, distinct, self-ordered, i.e. If you transplant a zebra embryo into a horse and it comes to term, you will end up with a zebra and not a horse or zebra-horse hybrid. Do we agree on that first point?
And I'm saying that we'll get there in the discussion, but first we have to determine what is being aborted. See my post to Judo above. I really am interested in having a thoughtful debate on the topic.
Really? Because you seem to fall flatly on the Giddyup side of the fence in any and all discussions about this topic. And your entire argument seems to be about when life begins......which you have eloquantly said at conception, numerous times. Which a good number of us do not agree with.......so, what else is there to talk about? DD
I disagree. The first thing we need to establish is whether the majority of invisible unicorns are pink or purple. Now, the argument that most invisible unicorns are pink (pro-life side) is clearly false because, science-wise, anything that is pink is necessarily gay, and invisible unicorns are obviously not gay. Additionally, an invisible unicorn embryo never develops into anything except a purple invisible unicorn. This clearly means that unicorn embryos, from the point of conception, are imbued with purplehood. Thus, twhy77 is a legal fiction.
I think we all know the conclusions we are going to have on this. What the discussion helps elucidate is the reasoning behind those conclusions. If you don't feel that is fruitful, then why do you even come in here?
Fair enough and agree that we need to be careful with out terms. With all due respect I am afraid we cannot because for many that is the crux of the debate, when does an embryo / fetus actually become a human being? Your view is that this is an apriori basis to the discussion when my view is that this isn't aprior and there is an inherent ontological question regarding the nature of what constitutes a human. Following your zebra example while that will produce a zebra that is a zebra in the genetic sense. Leaving aside the area of exactly how the in womb environment influences development something with huge consequences, there are still questions about what defines "zebraness" a zebra raised in utero and weaned by a horse will probably not act exactly like a zebra. So the ontological question of what makes something that particular something is actually a very complex question than what you are presenting. Another problem though with this line of argument, which you may not have considered it, is that taken on face value it actually debases the nature of humanity. I will concede that fertilization results in a new genome that is unique from mother and father but do you really want to reduce being human down to genome? This is where I think you are conflating scientific principles with metaphysical. You use terms such as "human dignity" and "essence" in regard to the act of fertilization but that is applying a philosophical meaning to a material action. For the sake of moving the debate along I will be willing to accept your argument and say that at the moment of fertilization a human is created but that also presents a host of other issues that I will get to later.
For you lefties here in this forum, you do know that your Barry Soetoro voted 3 times against the " Born Alive Infant Protection Act"! As a good Catholic who prays regularly, the Lord told me he has a very special place for Barry after Barry takes his last breath!
I don't want you to agree with the premise if you don't agree with it. I think reason dictates that you must agree with it though, that a separate, distinct, organism exists from the moment of conception. We are already starting to separate on terms though by you calling the embryo a genome, which is meant to be a reduction of what is there. Its more than just a genetic sequence at that point. It is a integrated whole. It it the beginning of what it is, is it not? Before conception there are simply gametes. After, there is something other. Do you agree with that?
To point out folks like yourself masquerading your set agenda. It is clear that you believe life begins at conception, and since that is a BASE of your discussion and it is something a lot of us do not agree on....it is pointless to discuss. Because if we can't agree at the base, there will be no consensus at any further point. Ultimately I don't believe it is yours or anyone elses business if a lady wants to have an abortion, it is between her, the impregnator, and their god.....no one else has a say. DD
