I know that abortion is a sensitive topic, but hear me out, okay?

I never said that it would stop the therapy. I'm only saying that it's just one more "problem" to be addressed and taken care of just like how you seem to think that the fetus is just one more clump of cells in a trash bin.

And you know what? I'm done with this thread. I've been thinking about it, and it's no use to argue pro-life. It's just like what happened in the late 1800s with evolution and the 70s(?) with heart transplants. Eventually it's going to be fully legalized and even encouraged gratuitously. Arguing against it won't help, despite how horrible it is. So I'm done. It may seem like I'm just walking off with my tail between my legs because I lost. That's because I am. I've lost this debate and as a result have realized that it's no use to debate it any further. Thank you Miss Drummond.

 

Wait a second. What's wrong with heart transplants?

 

Nothing in my opinion. People were protesting it because they thought it was immoral to take a living heart, put it on ice, and then stick in into a person. I honestly don't know.

 

again i will repeat this a FETUS is very much so EASILY REPLACED there are approx. an equal number of males and females on our planet. in nine months we could nearly double our population(note i said nearly since some people cannot have children for some reasons.) so a fetus is easily made and if it dies it is replacable in less than a year. anyone that has been born and has made any form of mark on the world is not as easily replaced. a 30 year old person to make another one would take about 31 years correct well thats slightly over a third of the average human lifetime harder to replace. and of course abortion should be taken seriously i mean if you are going to have an abortion more than 5 times in your life just get sterilised. simple no? and that should be a law abortion is completly ok up to five times at 6 sterilisation is mandatory. and to keep track of it the doctors simply look at the recorded number of times very simple and should appease the majority of the crowd. seeing as it is a 100% proven physical impossibility of pleasing everyone.

 

This thread sure has become a bumpy ride. All I see is that you can't please both sides since they perceive an unborn baby in different ways, either alive or not. Until we get a picture on the stage of the fetus we can only presume it to be underdeveloped and therefore expendable. As horrid as the experience may be, for now only the mother can truly say what they want done since they are the ones holding the baggage.
I'm not sure which side I am. I'm likely lying on the wooden fence between these two fields of arguement, and till I hear more on the subject that's where i'll be staying. Or more likely i'll be sitting under a tree a long way away from this topic.

 

Not sure about this one, but it's much farther along.

 

Sorry, I didn't mean that part to be taken so literal. By picture, I actually meant idea. In that, until we can get a proper idea of the point of when life begins (which is a whole topic itself) the fetus of a human will not be seen as such. We need studies to find the age of life beginning, like the beginning of brain activity or the development of the fetus' own DNA, before we can say it is wrong to 'kill'.
I wouldn't wan to kill it if it wa salive but I perosnally don't know the true age of a fetus into a baby.

 

The fetus's DNA forms as soon as the sperm meets the egg and they start dividing.

Brain activity starts as soon as involuntary muscles and their corresponding parts of the brain form. That's why Muslims (as a whole, not individually) believe that abortion is okay until the heart starts beating.

 

A fetus in the womb is not technically "alive." It is developing, but still requires nutrition from the mother, therefore it is "parasitic" at best. Take it from the mother and it will die.

It's like saying an eight year old is a teenager. A complete lie.

 

Parasites are living things. The ability to exist independently of a source of nutrition is something that no creature has; just because a fetus is wired to its source of nutrients doesn't mean it is any less living than a fully-developed human being who requires regular ingestion of food and water, regular sleep, etc. to live. Besides, you damn yourself with the statement I highlighted; if something can die, it is alive.

Regardless, as I stated before, the fact that something is alive is not what determines its rights. That is far too ambiguous, especially at the precise moment of conception. Again, personhood is the determinant; were this not the case, we could easily submit that plants and animals are entitled to rights identical to those of humans.

 

I agree with this. However, we cannot presume that a fetus is the same as you and I. Particularly in its early stages of development.

We deeply restrict our personal freedom to handle pregnancy if we bind ourselves to such a train of thought that a fetus is similar to a fully developed human being.

Damn myself for stating medical fact?

Whether or not human's have similar value to animals or plants is unimportant. Personhood does not give them value; people give themselves value. It is an inherent self-bias that has no importance in this thread except for the individual opinion. It's almost meaningless to bring up, essentially.

 

You're preaching to the choir. In fact, that's the point I was making by comparing human life to other forms.

Damn your argument, yes. Saying that something can die implies it is alive; I mean, there's not much of an alternative. Not really sure where you're going with this... Fact or no fact, it goes against what you said.

It most certainly does hold importance, because it's the basis of an entire argument against abortion. My intent was merely to suppose a rational grounds on which to base the claim to basic human rights; one which draws a fine divide between human life and other life, as is necessary to continue this debate in its current form. The beginning of human life is a cluster of cells which structurally resembles that of the beginnings of many other forms of life, so trying to argue that our particular cluster of cells is more worthy of protection solely based on the exact beginning of life is a shoddy foundation, at best. What is unique about us as humans is the only logical basis for giving us rights that are above and beyond, or at least of higher priority than, the rights of other living things.

I hope you realize we're arguing the same point, as far as abortion is concerned. I'm just trying to refine it.

 

I will try to stay away from Biblical arguments in this post.

First: I love how you're pro-choice and still try to disprove invalid pro-choice arguments.

Second: Think of it this way. According to John Locke, who by the way is the key my argument here, I have the rights to life, liberty, and property as long as I am human and alive. According to the Constitution, I only have that first one until I turn 18, by which point I all but lose it to the state's unjust right to execute me. Why don't I have the rights to liberty and property yet? Because according to the law, my parents all but own me. I can run away, but then I'll be "owned" by whatever person over 18 takes me in. As long as my parents "own" me, they also own all of my property. My body is not legally my body until I am 18, so the rights to liberty and property are invalid for me. Anyway, according to the one who came up with many of the ideas behind the Constitution of the United States of America, a fetus, being both human and alive, has the right to life as does anyone else under 18.

On your argument that a fetus is only a human in the early stages of development, so is an infant, as well as a toddler and an 8 year old. Teenagers too. So if what you are saying is supposed to make abortion morally sound, it also makes infanticide and the murder of those under...let's say thirty, morally sound as well. This is not really meant to argue against abortion, but rather

On your argument that if the fetus is given all the rights of a fully developed human then all life should have those rights too, that actually coincides with one of my personal beliefs which stems from something that a member here told me about Satanist morals. It is wrong to kill any kind of life except for food or self defense. So if the fetus is plotting to kill you or if you're going to eat it, then fine, abortion is okay. However, I'm very sure that a fetus does not have a knife in there and is planning to kill you once it is able to use it. I'm also not entirely sure of who would want to eat the human equivalent of caviar, save for cannibals, but those are likely extinct by now.

 

You can make the argument that babies should be killable, but only up to the moment where they become self-aware. Even then, once a baby has been born, it is able to live without the mother. Admittedly it needs to be fed, but it can be sustained by others. For a foetus, it cannot survive without a mother. Furthermore, a baby is shown to be able to feel pain, while foetuses cannot.

You're taking the argument "It's okay to kill undeveloped humans" to its fullest extent, ruductio ad absurdum. This only proves that taking the argument to its fullest extent is a bad idea, and doesn't prove that using it reasonably is morally corrupt.

Even so, there's an adequate counter. Life support. We consider it valid to remove someone from life-support on their family's wishes, when there is no registered brain activity. Likewise, the foetus does not have registered brain activity when it is killed. Yes, it may develop into brain activity, but the life-support person may recover too. At that point in time, no activity is registered, so it is morally acceptable to kill them.

On the Satanist morals: The child is unwanted, and it is living like a parasite without consent. It will inevitably attempt to force its way out, hurting the mother in the process. Therefore on Satanist morals, it is acceptable to kill the foetus.

 

Occasionally, the blacksmith must take a hammer to his own armor to work out the kinks. There is no sense entertaining an argument that falls flat, opposing or no.

You got my argument entirely wrong. A human is a human whether it is a seconds-old fetus or a fully-grown adult; what I'm arguing is that, at the beginning of its life, it is a cluster of cells nearly identical to other animal and plant life and which we can only distinguish by where it comes from and what it is to become. In fact, even the second factor is spotty, as we have proven through embryonic stem cell research that the cells composing human life can very easily be repurposed. Therefore, I submit that judging the allotment of basic rights solely on the physical identification of a being is too ambiguous, because it permits us to conceitedly give our brother cell-clusters rights that near-identical cell clusters never receive. It is for the third time that I say we must establish another criterion, and the one that, in truth, was the subconscious basis for our belief that we are at all deserving of rights: personhood. Were we not persons, were we not capable of metacognition and emotional expression, were the miracle of the human consciousness not so vast and far-reaching that we were able to hold ourselves above other forms of life which we perceive as thinking on a much baser level, there would be absolutely no talk of rights. When we consider who and what has rights, we must take into consideration the origin of right; in that light, if you are quoting John Locke correctly, I would strongly disagree with his method.

Firstly, please note that I was speaking hypothetically when I made the highlighted point. Secondly, one can kill someone in self defense who was not deliberately attempting to kill anyone. If bearing a child would be mortally threatening to the woman, I would say on all accounts that an abortion is called for. The only exception is if the woman would choose to die to bear her child.

This is only one situation; there are others in which I'd disapprove of abortion. But the final word belongs only to the pregnant woman, and we must not allow ourselves to lose sight of that.

 

All I was trying to do was prove that that particular argument was invalid and needs to be more precise to support pro-choice.

On life support: I disagree. It should be your choice whether or not you get put on life support. If it's your time to die, then you should die. Would you want your family to put you on life support without your consent? That's why I hate when hospitals have policies to keep their patients alive unless they have paperwork stating otherwise. A nurse once broke a 90 year old man's ribs giving him CPR because of that rule. There's a difference between killing a person and letting a person die. Let's take the 90 year old man. He knew it was his time to die. He was about to let himself go. But when he flatlined, that idiotic rule kicked in and he was subjected to three broken ribs. Even worse is that he couldn't sign that paperwork to give consent to let nature take its course. He had to live in unimaginable pain for over a month longer than he should have. Life support is no different.

I do agree that abortion is necessary when it threatens the life of the mother. However, that is the only exception. Unless you're going to eat it, any other reason is unacceptable. And for the record, it is the mother's body that decides when the baby is fully developed, not the baby. If that were the case, then premature births at 27 weeks would force pro-choice-ists to say that the baby has active brain function and is self aware at the typical point of abortion.

 

I wish emotionally charged statements weren't so common with this topic; gets in the way of the factual realities imo.

What is the typical point of abortion?

I stand corrected, I suppose I said the wrong thing.

I agree with you entirely, and I see we're really on the same grounds here. I suppose I was arguing with myself. lol

 

On a side note, I think it's funny that there's so much debate about a babies life being saved, but when it comes to the death penalty, they're all happy to shove them into a chair/firing squad/Stretcher for lethal injection.

Please don't quote that or I will go hunt down an admin to close this thread.

Anyway, this is going to be an argument for centuries. No one's going to change someone's Point of View on it. Nor is it going to be something that (hopefully) will become a decision in someone's life. If it does, no matter what side you're on, it's probably one of the hardest ones you'll make.

 

I actually hate capital punishment. It wastes money and is way too merciful. Condemn the criminal to a living death in which he is forced to sit in darkness, doing and affecting nothing but food supply.
/twocents

Anyway, it's probably true. But I'm still convinced that people will eventually become desensitized to the horror of abortion. It's just what happens. I'll never forget reading about a man who was hit by a car head on while people just stared. Eventually the dismemberment of a human fetus (or foetus as some say >_>) will likely become the same thing.