Nik
Lifer
- Jun 5, 2006
- 16,101
- 3
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Ah, I see. Did you think Clinton's defense of the definition of "is" was a valid argument? :roll:
A human being not having the right to occupy the body of another... :laugh: Where the fuck else are babies supposed to come from? A sterile test tube?
What an unconsciously cold and twisted way to view new life.
Cerpin Taxt
Lifer
- Feb 23, 2005
- 11,940
- 542
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Nothing I have said is false. You don't have to like the facts, but they are the facts.
Babies come from the consensual gestation in a mother's uterus. Again, none of this is false.
You don't seem able to mount any serious counter-arguments. Perhaps you should simply stop posting in this thread.
Nik
Lifer
- Jun 5, 2006
- 16,101
- 3
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Your "facts" are talking about persons versus non persons. We're talking about children here, which you either recognize as living human beings being murdered in an abortion or a cancerous growth to be discarded before birth.
Consensual gestation? I didn't realize the child is required to sign a rental agreement :roll:
Oh, my arguments are fine. You're just as close-minded as I am, we're just at opposite ends of the spectrum. I have every right to post here just like you do.
Bet you're glad your parents cared enough about you in the womb not to viciously siphon you from the womb, aren't ya
It's mind-boggling to see that anyone actually believes that victims of rape and incest should be obligated to carry the fetus to term.
ViviTheMage
Lifer
Cerpin Taxt
Lifer
- Feb 23, 2005
- 11,940
- 542
- 126
Wrong. We're talking about fetuses, not children. Furthermore, abortion is not now, and has never been "murder" in the positive law of the United States. Furthermore still, nobody has asserted that fetuses are cancerous. I have to wonder whose posts you have been reading.
They are not so required, and I have never asserted that they are. Do you even take 5 seconds to consider the arguments before you?
Then please present them.
I did not suggest you do not have the right to post. I simply suggested that you stop because you haven't posted anything significant or challenging in this thread at all. That trend seems to continue.
Actually, I'm glad my mother aborted her pregnancy before me, else she would likely not have tried to get pregnant with me.Bet you're glad your parents cared enough about you in the womb not to viciously siphon you from the womb, aren't ya
polarmystery
Diamond Member
- Aug 21, 2005
- 3,888
- 8
- 81
hmmm, we deliberately raise about 1000X more cows than would exist if we didn't use them for food and you use the argument that cows that exist cause global warming so we should eat them as an argument? does anyone else see the ridiculousness of that line of logic?
you missed the "EXPLICIT CONSENT" part. the point is, sure, my wife and i can choose to have a child together. the minute i force her to have a child against her will, then yes, there is an issue here, the fetus does not have the write to occupy her body without her EXPLICIT consent.
Nik
Lifer
- Jun 5, 2006
- 16,101
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So you DO draw a line between fetus and baby? When does a fetus turn into a baby? What's the difference between fetus and baby?
However, I'm talking beyond law. Law does not dictate whether you exist or not. Just because the law states that an abortion won't have legal ramifications doesn't mean you're not killing a human being.
Some people refer to the "fetus" as a cancer that the woman's body actively tries to kill. Since you say you've debated this subject ad nauseum, one would think you'd have heard this argument. Guess not.
"If you deliberately kill a human being, it's called murder. If you deliberately kill a chimpanzee--biologically, our closest relative, sharing 99.6 percent of our active genes--whatever else it is, it's not murder. To date, murder uniquely applies to killing human beings. Therefore, the question of when personhood (or, if we like, ensoulment) arises is key to the abortion debate. When does the fetus become human? When do distinct and characteristic human qualities emerge?
We recognize that specifying a precise moment will overlook individual differences. Therefore, if we must draw a line, it ought to be drawn conservatively--that is, on the early side. There are people who object to having to set some numerical limit, and we share their disquiet; but if there is to be a law on this matter, and it is to effect some useful compromise between the two absolutist positions, it must specify, at least roughly, a time of transition to personhood.
Every one of us began from a dot. A fertilized egg is roughly the size of the period at the end of this sentence. The momentous meeting of sperm and egg generally occurs in one of the two fallopian tubes. One cell becomes two, two become four, and so on?an exponentiation of base-2 arithmetic. By the tenth day the fertilized egg has become a kind of hollow sphere wandering off to another realm: the womb. It destroys tissue in its path. It sucks blood from capillaries. It bathes itself in maternal blood, from which it extracts oxygen and nutrients. It establishes itself as a kind of parasite on the walls of the uterus.
By the third week, around the time of the first missed menstrual period, the forming embryo is about 2 millimeters long and is developing various body parts. Only at this stage does it begin to be dependent on a rudimentary placenta. It looks a little like a segmented worm.
By the end of the fourth week, it's about 5 millimeters (about 1/5 inch) long. It's recognizable now as a vertebrate, its tube-shaped heart is beginning to beat, something like the gill arches of a fish or an amphibian become conspicuous, and there is a pronounced tail. It looks rather like a newt or a tadpole. This is the end of the first month after conception.
By the fifth week, the gross divisions of the brain can be distinguished. What will later develop into eyes are apparent, and little buds appear?on their way to becoming arms and legs.
By the sixth week, the embryo is 13 millimeteres (about ½ inch) long. The eyes are still on the side of the head, as in most animals, and the reptilian face has connected slits where the mouth and nose eventually will be.
By the end of the seventh week, the tail is almost gone, and sexual characteristics can be discerned (although both sexes look female). The face is mammalian but somewhat piglike.
By the end of the eighth week, the face resembles that of a primate but is still not quite human. Most of the human body parts are present in their essentials. Some lower brain anatomy is well-developed. The fetus shows some reflex response to delicate stimulation.
By the tenth week, the face has an unmistakably human cast. It is beginning to be possible to distinguish males from females. Nails and major bone structures are not apparent until the third month.
By the fourth month, you can tell the face of one fetus from that of another. Quickening is most commonly felt in the fifth month. The bronchioles of the lungs do not begin developing until approximately the sixth month, the alveoli still later.
So, if only a person can be murdered, when does the fetus attain personhood? When its face becomes distinctly human, near the end of the first trimester? When the fetus becomes responsive to stimuli--again, at the end of the first trimester? When it becomes active enough to be felt as quickening, typically in the middle of the second trimester? When the lungs have reached a stage of development sufficient that the fetus might, just conceivably, be able to breathe on its own in the outside air?
The trouble with these particular developmental milestones is not just that they're arbitrary. More troubling is the fact that none of them involves uniquely human characteristics--apart from the superficial matter of facial appearance. All animals respond to stimuli and move of their own volition. Large numbers are able to breathe. But that doesn't stop us from slaughtering them by the billions. Reflexes and motion are not what make us human.
Other animals have advantages over us--in speed, strength, endurance, climbing or burrowing skills, camouflage, sight or smell or hearing, mastery of the air or water. Our one great advantage, the secret of our success, is thought--characteristically human thought. We are able to think things through, imagine events yet to occur, figure things out. That's how we invented agriculture and civilization. Thought is our blessing and our curse, and it makes us who we are.
Thinking occurs, of course, in the brain--principally in the top layers of the convoluted "gray matter" called the cerebral cortex. The roughly 100 billion neurons in the brain constitute the material basis of thought. The neurons are connected to each other, and their linkups play a major role in what we experience as thinking. But large-scale linking up of neurons doesn't begin until the 24th to 27th week of pregnancy--the sixth month.
By placing harmless electrodes on a subject's head, scientists can measure the electrical activity produced by the network of neurons inside the skull. Different kinds of mental activity show different kinds of brain waves. But brain waves with regular patterns typical of adult human brains do not appear in the fetus until about the 30th week of pregnancy--near the beginning of the third trimester. Fetuses younger than this--however alive and active they may be--lack the necessary brain architecture. They cannot yet think.
Acquiescing in the killing of any living creature, especially one that might later become a baby, is troublesome and painful. But we've rejected the extremes of "always" and "never," and this puts us--like it or not--on the slippery slope. If we are forced to choose a developmental criterion, then this is where we draw the line: when the beginning of characteristically human thinking becomes barely possible.
It is, in fact, a very conservative definition: Regular brain waves are rarely found in fetuses. More research would help? If we wanted to make the criterion still more stringent, to allow for occasional precocious fetal brain development, we might draw the line at six months. This, it so happens, is where the Supreme Court drew it in 1973--although for completely different reasons.
"
Cerpin Taxt
Lifer
- Feb 23, 2005
- 11,940
- 542
- 126
Live birth.
You can believe whatever tickles your fancy. I'm only concerned with the content of the positive law of my country.
For that matter, depending on the broadness of your definitions of "human" and "being" one could likewise argue that excising a mole or removing an appendix kills a "human being." That is the primary reason why the the objects of rights and duties in the positive law of the United States are persons.
Those people, whoever they are, are as wrong as you are.
I've not, in fact. I've only heard pro-lifers claiming that pro-choicers argue that way. You're obviously no exception.
Originally posted by: Nik
Who said it does? Just nitpicking. Christ :roll: Way to ignore my point though!
and you missed the major point of the argument of explicit consent. you cannot deny that embroyos are parasitic in nature.
frankly, i am personally against abortion. we have 3 beautiful children. we had a boy, then we had a girl. we were set then an accident, our 2nd child was only 3 months old when my wife got pregnant again. my wife was distraught. she wanted an abortion, we discussed it, an my wife agreed, that keeping the child was the right thing to do.
yes, i am against abortion, i'm just not for making it illegal. if anyone asks me on a personal level, yes, i am against abortion, almost 100% of the time. but i also realize it's not a black and white issue and i understand that it isn't so simple for everyone in all walks of life to make the same choices my wife and i did.
i am against abortion but i am against the government making it illegal.
Cerpin Taxt
Lifer
- Feb 23, 2005
- 11,940
- 542
- 126
That's great, but it seems you are under the mistaken impression that I believe that law can "solve/answer everything." If that is your belief, I am dumbfounded where you acquired it since I have never asserted anything of the sort.
But of course, arguing with figments of your imagination would be consistent with your previous posts.
Nik
Lifer
- Jun 5, 2006
- 16,101
- 3
- 56
If you do indeed understand that the law cannot "solve/answer everything" I don't understand why you say your whole argument is based on the law. If all you care about is law, you must believe that law is infallible.
If you concede that law is fallible, why are you using it as the crux of your argument? Fuck the law. We're talking about human lives.
Again, how does live birth change an infant's right to life?
Cerpin Taxt
Lifer
- Feb 23, 2005
- 11,940
- 542
- 126
Because it is the law that protects our freedoms.
Law is not all I care about, but it is all I care to argue about with regard to abortion. I'm not trying to tell anyone how to feel. I'm just telling you that you cannot take away someone else's freedom. If that makes you angry or sad, that is your problem.
Objects featuring the qualities of "human" and "alive" are not automatically equivalent to persons.
Nobody has the unconditional right to live at the unconsensual expense of someone else's body. Nobody has the right to subvert another person's defenses so that he may occupy that person's body, forcibly extract the entirety of his nourishment from that person's blood, and return the favor with injections of foreign hormones and waste. You don't have a right to live like that, nor do I, nor do fetuses.
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