A Pro-Choice Challenge (1 Viewer)

[Ethereal]

It seems every abortion thread follows a similar format; pro-lifers claim that murdering someone is not a valid right and as such abortion is illegal and immoral, then the pro-choicer comes back with the rationale that the unborn are not persons and as such cannot technically be murdered.

It also seems, for whatever reason, that the pro-choice camp takes this logic to be virtually infallable; that once this statement has been uttered nothing else need be said about that particular topic.

I challenge that assertion and would ask that the pro-choicers here attempt defining what constitutes a person. Give me your definition. And mind you, once you have given that definition the more you deviate from it later on in the thread the less credible your position will seem, so try and nail it in one shot and see if you are able to stick to it, but I doubt some of you will be able to.

Happy hunting.

 

[talloulou]

Person is a legal and political construct. The unborn will qualify as persons if and when the law decides to grant them such status.

The obvious way to define "person" would be to consider any living human organism at any developmental stage a person.

However since "personhood" is granted to corporations in order to protect the actual humans who own them it would seem that anything goes in the political and social construct of what it means to be a person.

Throughout history groups of humans have tried to suggest that other groups of humans are less than "persons." These periods are generally looked back on in shame.

The real question isn't whether or not the unborn are persons since this can be changed anytime the courts decide to change it. The question is are the unborn property? Does the mother carrying a living human organism in her womb own that organism much like slave owners owned their slave?

 

[faithful_servant]

Person: Homo sapien.
Ask a paleontologist if the T. rex egg he finds contained a T. rex. They'll tell you that, yes, it did contain a T. rex. People are no different. At conception, the child is a Homo sapien by any measure. The child has all of the genetic information and potential to be a human being and is as such a person and is deserving of all legal, moral and ethical protection society can provide her.

 

[Jerry]

The real question isn't whether or not the unborn are persons since this can be changed anytime the courts decide to change it. The question is are the unborn property? Does the mother carrying a living human organism in her womb own that organism much like slave owners owned their slave?

Hows that for turning the "forced pergnancy = slavory" argument on it's head!

Go tal-lou-lou, it's yo berf-day!
:2party:

 

[Kandahar]

I challenge that assertion and would ask that the pro-choicers here attempt defining what constitutes a person. Give me your definition. And mind you, once you have given that definition the more you deviate from it later on in the thread the less credible your position will seem, so try and nail it in one shot and see if you are able to stick to it, but I doubt some of you will be able to.

OK, I'll give it a shot. It may not be perfect, but it's at least close to what I mean when I talk about a "person."

Person: An entity with intelligence, complexity, self-awareness, and reasoning capabilities, and a brain or other thinking apparatus capable of processing at least 10,000 teraflops. (The normal human brain can process 20,000 teraflops)


Included in this definition: Normal adult humans, mildly retarded humans, children older than approximately 2, advanced artificial intelligence, other undiscovered intelligent species.

Excluded from this definition: Fetuses, comatose people, severely retarded humans, children younger than approximately 2, present-day supercomputers, apes, dolphins, whales.


Note that I'm not saying that it should be legal to wantonly kill everything excluded from personhood; just that it isn't valid to ban such killing based on a "right to life." There are other reasons for protecting some of the things I excluded. I just don't see any reason to afford such protection to fetuses.

 

[talloulou]

Included in this definition: Normal adult humans, mildly retarded humans, children older than approximately 2, advanced artificial intelligence, other undiscovered intelligent species.

Excluded from this definition: Fetuses, comatose people, severely retarded humans, children younger than approximately 2, present-day supercomputers, apes, dolphins, whales.

How lovely for babies and toddlers. Are they then too property that mothers should be able to dismember on a whim? Oh wait but they're all ready protected. So how do you explain why these young children deserve protection that the unborn don't?

Please explain why abortion on demand is fine but I can't kill my 1 year old for crying? Or are you suggesting that a 1 year old doesn't deserve the right to be protected and thus the laws are wrong and I should legally be able to off my kids up until age 2? And what of the gifted chld who achieves your arbitrary level of intelligence earlier?

 

[talloulou]

This whole idea that a certain level of development or intelligence is required for "personhood" is absurd. Are corporations intelligent? The law could easily decide tomorrow that any living human organism is a person. The law could also decide that women and blacks are not persons. The day after tomorrow heterosexuals could be considered non-persons. Or the law could just as easily deem that gorillas are people next year. It's a "made-up" concept that means only what the law decides it means. Thus it is easy bent, shaped, and molded to fit the current populace ideology. The term person has no real "meaning" outside of politics and the law.

That's why it's so easy for Kandahar to decide the cutoff for personhood is 2 years old. Someone else might put it at 3. Another might put it at birth. Someone like Uncle might base it on skin color....requiring that only whites be considered persons all the while putting in a non-sensical disqualifier for jews.

 

[ngdawg]

snip Someone like Uncle might base it on skin color....requiring that only whites be considered persons all the while putting in a non-sensical disqualifier for jews.

Good'un:lamo
I stick to the 'breathe independently' train of thought coupled with the approximate age of the ability to do so by obstetrical guidelines-over 20 weeks, I reckon. It's a damned if you do, damned if you don't road. Bottom line is that abortion is a right and those that seek it out are going to justify their choice regardless of data, definition or opposition. We all have to live with our choice. Some people, knowing full well their baby might die at birth or be severely and painfully handicapped go on having them. Others armed with that knowledge, don't. Some don't care what kind of life they're having and go on having them and some, fully aware of their dire predictament, don't.
Would I, knowing 3 previous pregnancies ended in the death of an underdeveloped baby, continue to do that? Would I make myself as well as those ungrown lives suffer? No. But would I tell someone they can't? No, maybe that they shouldn't, should they ask, but it's all......choice. And every choice made is one that has to be lived with only by the one who made it.

 

[Kandahar]

How lovely for babies and toddlers. Are they then too property that mothers should be able to dismember on a whim?

No. As I said, there are other reasons for protecting life besides an inherent "right to life."

Oh wait but they're all ready protected. So how do you explain why these young children deserve protection that the unborn don't?

The most basic legal reason is the 14th amendment. But if you're looking for the philosophical reason: Because no one has any particular feelings about a fetus except the parents. Killing a one-year-old, on the other hand, could harm everyone who knows that one year old.

To head off your next question (what if no one else had ever been in contact with the one-year-old?), the answer is that the courts have better things to do than try to sort out these rare scenarios.

Furthermore, since as you correctly acknowledged, the intelligence line I have drawn is arbitrary, it's better to err on the side of caution. Birth seems like a reasonable enough cutoff point.

Please explain why abortion on demand is fine but I can't kill my 1 year old for crying? Or are you suggesting that a 1 year old doesn't deserve the right to be protected and thus the laws are wrong and I should legally be able to off my kids up until age 2?

That conclusion doesn't follow at all from that premise. Yes, I am suggesting that a one-year-old doesn't deserve the "right" to be protected. No, I am not suggesting the laws are wrong and you should be able to kill your kids.

And what of the gifted chld who achieves your arbitrary level of intelligence earlier?

Which is why I support maintaining birth as the cutoff point.

And don't criticize the arbitrariness of the cutoff, as YOUR definition of right to life is just as arbitrary. Mine is just more clearly defined.

 

[Kandahar]

This whole idea that a certain level of development or intelligence is required for "personhood" is absurd. Are corporations intelligent? The law could easily decide tomorrow that any living human organism is a person. The law could also decide that women and blacks are not persons. The day after tomorrow heterosexuals could be considered non-persons. Or the law could just as easily deem that gorillas are people next year. It's a "made-up" concept that means only what the law decides it means. Thus it is easy bent, shaped, and molded to fit the current populace ideology. The term person has no real "meaning" outside of politics and the law.

That's why it's so easy for Kandahar to decide the cutoff for personhood is 2 years old. Someone else might put it at 3. Another might put it at birth. Someone like Uncle might base it on skin color....requiring that only whites be considered persons all the while putting in a non-sensical disqualifier for jews.

Intelligence (or complexity) is the most sensible criterion for personhood. It's why I'd have much more sympathy for a hyperintelligent extraterrestrial or a hyperintelligent computer than for a microscopic piece of protoplasm that happened to share most of my DNA. Your criteria of human DNA is more absurd...as a two-celled human zygote is nearly identical to a two-celled fish zygote in every other way.

Intelligence/complexity is why we consider it a tragedy when a person dies, and is why most people find the murder of another person to be repugnant. It's why most of us don't have any moral qualms about killing and eating pigs or cows, but we'd have a big problem with killing and eating a human.

Now it is true that you can raise or lower my arbitrary choice of 10,000 teraflops as the cutoff for personhood...but the lower you set the bar (for the purpose of protecting more fetuses), the more animals you're going to find that also meet the criteria.

 

[talloulou]

Intelligence/complexity is why we consider it a tragedy when a person dies, and is why most people find the murder of another person to be repugnant.

I don't entirely agree with that as I think many would mourn the loss a baby or 1 year old and it has nothing to do with intelligence.

It's why most of us don't have any moral qualms about killing and eating pigs or cows, but we'd have a big problem with killing and eating a human.

I don't agree with this either. Intelligence has nothing to do with why we eat pigs vs other humans. First off pigs are highly intelligent. Perhaps more so than dogs and in our culture we don't eat dogs. We eat what we are use to eating. My kids don't eat anything that had a face. Some cultures eat cats and monkeys. Some have been known to eat other humans. Many eat dogs. What we eat has way more to do with our culture, geography, and economic status as well as conditioning and what is available in our local food chain. It has nothing to do with intelligence or bacon wouldn't be such a popular side to eggs.

That aside my problem with "intelligence" as a deciding factor for dictating when human life should be valued is that it is arbitrarty and the limits on when a human is "intelligent enough" to be valued may slide all over the wide scale of varying levels of human intelligence. We could decide that the world is overpopulated and thus it is in our best interested to rid the world of those with an IQ less than 130.

The other problem is that "intelligence" is often hard to measure and there are different types of intelligence. And like you said lowering the bar for intellgence will allow for non human animals to be included. Also "intelligence" not being easily defined could mean many things. If a computer beats me at a game then isn't the computer more intelligent? What about idiot savants? Also do you really believe that no non-human animals are more intelligent than 2 year old humans? What about the studies that show various species of whales may actually be more intelligent than humans? How do you justify excluding them from personhood if being a person is more about intelligence and less about being human?

Also with intelligence how could potential not be a factor? Often children have IQ's within a similar range to that of their parents. I have even seen studies that suggest most humans marry humans with similar IQ's. So if an unborn is going to develop a high level of intelligence at a later developmental stage how can you possibly put it in the same catagory as less intelligent animals that will never have the same achievement potential? I know "potential" is often ignored but I don't see why that is justified.

 

[Kandahar]

I don't entirely agree with that as I think many would mourn the loss a baby or 1 year old and it has nothing to do with intelligence.

Many would mourn the loss if they believed it to be a "person" as you do, or because society tells them to mourn the loss.

Most probably would not mourn the loss of a fetus in a miscarriage, or the loss of a zygote in an early, involuntary abortion. At least not to the same degree that they'd mourn the loss of a child.

What most people would mourn the loss of, is not really that relevant. Murder isn't illegal for its own sake, although the cultural taboo surrounding murder is so strong that we often forget this fact. It's illegal because you're ending the intelligence of another entity.

I don't agree with this either. Intelligence has nothing to do with why we eat pigs vs other humans. First off pigs are highly intelligent. Perhaps more so than dogs and in our culture we don't eat dogs. We eat what we are use to eating.

That's true to the extent that we don't eat ALL other animals. But intelligence is the main reason we don't eat humans. While many Americans would be disgusted by eating a dog, they probably don't regard the Koreans or Vietnamese as murderers for doing so.

And while pigs are certainly smarter than dogs, neither pigs nor dogs come anywhere close to the intelligence of a human.

That aside my problem with "intelligence" as a deciding factor for dictating when human life should be valued is that it is arbitrarty and the limits on when a human is "intelligent enough" to be valued may slide all over the wide scale of varying levels of human intelligence. We could decide that the world is overpopulated and thus it is in our best interested to rid the world of those with an IQ less than 130.

How does that have anything to do with the merits of setting a reasonable intelligence cutoff? Under your system of defining personhood by human DNA, we could decide the world is overpopulated and thus it is in our best interest to kill anyone with artificial limbs or prosthetic organs.

Which brings me to my next question. Suppose 50 years from now, it's possible to replace any organ, tissue, or cell with an artificial organ, tissue, or cell that works as well or better. Suppose that even the brain's pattern could be copied and gradually converted from carbon to silicon. Suppose that an individual existed who had completely gone from "natural" to "artificial", but still looked and acted exactly the same as any other human being. Would you have any problem with his execution?

See, we can slippery slope on your DNA-based definition of personhood too.

The other problem is that "intelligence" is often hard to measure and there are different types of intelligence.

There aren't that many different quantifiable standards. An IQ test would certainly be inadequate; I'm talking about a standard that actually measures brain processing speed.

And like you said lowering the bar for intellgence will allow for non human animals to be included.

There's an easy solution to that: Don't lower the bar.

Also "intelligence" not being easily defined could mean many things. If a computer beats me at a game then isn't the computer more intelligent?

If that computer can do everything else that you can do AND beat you in a game, then yes.

What about idiot savants?

Generally they are less intelligent than normal humans, but not so much that they still aren't beyond animals.

Also do you really believe that no non-human animals are more intelligent than 2 year old humans?

I find it unlikely that any non-human animals on Earth are more intelligent than a 2-year-old. But they could certainly exist elsewhere.

What about the studies that show various species of whales may actually be more intelligent than humans?

The evidence for that is muddled at best, and I would suspect the opposite conclusion is true.

How do you justify excluding them from personhood if being a person is more about intelligence and less about being human?

If it can be conclusively shown that whales truly are more intelligent than humans, I would certainly support including them in personhood.

Also with intelligence how could potential not be a factor? Often children have IQ's within a similar range to that of their parents. I have even seen studies that suggest most humans marry humans with similar IQ's. So if an unborn is going to develop a high level of intelligence at a later developmental stage how can you possibly put it in the same catagory as less intelligent animals that will never have the same achievement potential? I know "potential" is often ignored but I don't see why that is justified.

Potential is an even MORE slippery slope.

Suppose a substance were invented that caused neurons to zip around the brain at a greater speed. Suddenly, a dog would have great "potential" for intelligence...even if he hadn't been given the substance.

Masturbation would be mass murder, in that millions of potential humans were dying. For that matter, so would sex.

A goldfish has the potential for being the great-great-great-...-grandparent of the most intelligent being on Earth in 500 million years.

 

[Alex]

I think that we can all agree that life starts by at least birth. Whether life begins before that is an individual's opinion.

I personally believe that life begins at birth because it then has a degree of independence. A fetus cannot survive without a mother, but a baby after birth can.

 

[talloulou]

It's illegal because you're ending the intelligence of another entity.

Based on what? Is there a law that says that? I thought homicide only required one person to kill another. I certainly don't remember ever seeing any homicide or murder laws that discussed intelligence. Certainly in a debate you can't just make stuff like that up and present it as a fact so where is the evidence of this claim?

That's true to the extent that we don't eat ALL other animals. But intelligence is the main reason we don't eat humans.

I think the main reason is that cannibalism is taboo and many species have an inherent adversion to eating their own kind. Also there are health risks involved with cannibalism.

How does that have anything to do with the merits of setting a reasonable intelligence cutoff? Under your system of defining personhood by human DNA, we could decide the world is overpopulated and thus it is in our best interest to kill anyone with artificial limbs or prosthetic organs.

My requirement for personhood would be any living human organism. Certainly a human with an artificial leg is a living human organism.

Which brings me to my next question. Suppose 50 years from now, it's possible to replace any organ, tissue, or cell with an artificial organ, tissue, or cell that works as well or better. Suppose that even the brain's pattern could be copied and gradually converted from carbon to silicon. Suppose that an individual existed who had completely gone from "natural" to "artificial", but still looked and acted exactly the same as any other human being. Would you have any problem with his execution?

I certainly feel the concept of personhood could be open to include artificial intelligence in the future and likewise possible alien beings from another planet. However personally I'd prefer there be different catagories for such beings but it's really impossible at this point to wonder how something I've never experienced should be handled.

There's an easy solution to that: Don't lower the bar.

But you suggest raising the bar and thus those under 2 have been excluded yet you haven't said whether or not you feel mothers should be allowed to kill those under 2.

If that computer can do everything else that you can do AND beat you in a game, then yes.

Why would it have to do everything I can do. Most humans can't do everything every other human can do. We all have our unique talents and abilities.

I find it unlikely that any non-human animals on Earth are more intelligent than a 2-year-old. But they could certainly exist elsewhere.

I disagree. But again I guess it depends on how you view intelligence and what your criteria for judging intelligence is. Many scientists rely on the number of pathways or connections in the brain. That's the criteria that actually puts whales above humans.

Masturbation would be mass murder, in that millions of potential humans were dying. For that matter, so would sex.

Yeah but that's getting in to different degrees of potential. Anotherwards not every sperm will develop into a human organism. Most in fact won't.

I also understand many many embryos are naturally aborted before the woman ever realized she was pregnant so even for embryos the potential isn't that high. However when you discuss the potential for surgically aborted unborn humans to have eventually developed into "intelligent" humans if they weren't terminated that potential is a much higher number and deserves to be recognized as such and not compared to the potential for a goldfish to produce the most intelligent being in 500 years or whatever. :rofl

 

[talloulou]

I think that we can all agree that life starts by at least birth. Whether life begins before that is an individual's opinion.

I personally believe that life begins at birth because it then has a degree of independence. A fetus cannot survive without a mother, but a baby after birth can.

I would agree that independence makes more sense than intelligence. It also fits the law better in that woman have "property rights" I guess when it comes to their womb. So while the newborn isn't "independent" it can be independent of it's biological mother in a way that it just can't in utero.

 

[tecoyah]

This...By far one of my favorite explanations of this issue:

"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. "

http://www.2think.org/abortion.shtml



Seems to me a logical argument

 

[Kandahar]

Based on what? Is there a law that says that? I thought homicide only required one person to kill another. I certainly don't remember ever seeing any homicide or murder laws that discussed intelligence. Certainly in a debate you can't just make stuff like that up and present it as a fact so where is the evidence of this claim?

You won't find it in the laws themselves but in the reasoning behind them. Why else would homicide be illegal, but killing animals not?

I think the main reason is that cannibalism is taboo and many species have an inherent adversion to eating their own kind. Also there are health risks involved with cannibalism.

This is true. But there are also health risks involved with eating McNuggets, yet most of us aren't clamoring for a law banning that.

My requirement for personhood would be any living human organism. Certainly a human with an artificial leg is a living human organism.

This definition is OK for now, but I strongly suspect that you'll need a more precise definition in the next couple decades as the line becomes more blurry regarding what a "human" organism is.

I certainly feel the concept of personhood could be open to include artificial intelligence in the future and likewise possible alien beings from another planet. However personally I'd prefer there be different catagories for such beings but it's really impossible at this point to wonder how something I've never experienced should be handled.

Fair enough. But like it or not, we'll have to define artificial intelligence in some terms or another, so we may as well be consistent in the meantime.

But you suggest raising the bar and thus those under 2 have been excluded yet you haven't said whether or not you feel mothers should be allowed to kill those under 2.

No, I don't think they should be allowed to kill those under 2. Not because they have any inherent right to life, but because OTHER people are harmed by the death of humans that they know (regardless of whether they're actually sentient). It's the same reason you can't buy a dog in this country for the sole purpose of torturing it to death, albeit to a more extreme degree.

Why would it have to do everything I can do. Most humans can't do everything every other human can do. We all have our unique talents and abilities.

Well, it wouldn't have to do literally EVERYTHING you can do. But if it can at least pass itself off as human in all other aspects of life AND beat someone in chess, then it's more intelligent than that person.

I disagree. But again I guess it depends on how you view intelligence and what your criteria for judging intelligence is. Many scientists rely on the number of pathways or connections in the brain. That's the criteria that actually puts whales above humans.

That is a fair quantifiable method of measurement, and if it's true that whales are above humans then I'm all for affording them the right to life.

Yeah but that's getting in to different degrees of potential. Anotherwards not every sperm will develop into a human organism. Most in fact won't.

I also understand many many embryos are naturally aborted before the woman ever realized she was pregnant so even for embryos the potential isn't that high. However when you discuss the potential for surgically aborted unborn humans to have eventually developed into "intelligent" humans if they weren't terminated that potential is a much higher number and deserves to be recognized as such and not compared to the potential for a goldfish to produce the most intelligent being in 500 years or whatever. :rofl

I don't see why the "degree" of potential matters. If it's not already intelligent and never has been, it won't care if you abort it.

 

[jennyb]

a human is a human is a human. i dont believe a featus is a featus and then when it pops out of mommy it is a human being. just as a female dog is having puppies,baby dogs, a female human is having a baby human. renaming it something else does not make the difference. it may serve to make some feel better by calling it a featus (am i spelling this right?) anyway...what i believe is this, and this is only my belief. when a baby is delivered from the umbilicle cord,which has been sustaining it for however long it exists in utero, it is a living breathing human being...i think , rto me, what makes the difference is that at that point it is breathing. once the baby is breathing on its own it can be murdered,,,,i just dont believe you can murder someone if they are not breathing in the first place... someone who is hooked up to a breathing machine, to me, might as well be dead,,,even if they have brain activity, if they are not sitting up,,,take christopher reeves for example, he was alive....had he been flat on his back,and only been able to breath by machine,and could not be nurished, or needed a tube for nurishment, this to me is not life.......it is keeping a dead person alive..false life is not life to me..and this, i believe is how a fetus is kept alive..if the umbilical cord was not there for the baby, it would be dead......does this make sense??? it is why i believe abortion is a proper thing, and not a sin, or muder or immoral.

 

[faithful_servant]

No. As I said, there are other reasons for protecting life besides an inherent "right to life."



The most basic legal reason is the 14th amendment. But if you're looking for the philosophical reason: Because no one has any particular feelings about a fetus except the parents. Killing a one-year-old, on the other hand, could harm everyone who knows that one year old.

You don't have any grandchildren, brothers, sisters, cousins, aunt, uncles, neighbors, friends, co-workers, grandparents, etc. do you? Because if you did, you would understand the emotional attachment that people have with children, bith born and unborn.

To head off your next question (what if no one else had ever been in contact with the one-year-old?), the answer is that the courts have better things to do than try to sort out these rare scenarios.

Furthermore, since as you correctly acknowledged, the intelligence line I have drawn is arbitrary, it's better to err on the side of caution. Birth seems like a reasonable enough cutoff point.

Since we're erring on the side of caution why not err on the side of caution with regards tot he childs well being and not kill her at all?

That conclusion doesn't follow at all from that premise. Yes, I am suggesting that a one-year-old doesn't deserve the "right" to be protected. No, I am not suggesting the laws are wrong and you should be able to kill your kids.

Yes, you are. You set a standard that placed a 1 year-old child in the saem category as an unborn child at 28 weeks gestation. If you can kill the unborn child, then by the standard you set, you can kill the one was born as well.

Which is why I support maintaining birth as the cutoff point.

And don't criticize the arbitrariness of the cutoff, as YOUR definition of right to life is just as arbitrary. Mine is just more clearly defined.

Your's is far from being clearly defined. On one hand you set a standard and then turn right around and start saying that the standard doesn't apply. My standard is VERY clearly defined and protects the lives of children at ALL stages of development. Your's is vague and allows for children to be killed at the whim of the mother.

 

[ngdawg]

a human is a human is a human. i dont believe a featus is a featus and then when it pops out of mommy it is a human being. just as a female dog is having puppies,baby dogs, a female human is having a baby human. renaming it something else does not make the difference. it may serve to make some feel better by calling it a featus (am i spelling this right?) anyway...what i believe is this, and this is only my belief. when a baby is delivered from the umbilicle cord,which has been sustaining it for however long it exists in utero, it is a living breathing human being...i think , rto me, what makes the difference is that at that point it is breathing. once the baby is breathing on its own it can be murdered,,,,i just dont believe you can murder someone if they are not breathing in the first place... someone who is hooked up to a breathing machine, to me, might as well be dead,,,even if they have brain activity, if they are not sitting up,,,take christopher reeves for example, he was alive....had he been flat on his back,and only been able to breath by machine,and could not be nurished, or needed a tube for nurishment, this to me is not life.......it is keeping a dead person alive..false life is not life to me..and this, i believe is how a fetus is kept alive..if the umbilical cord was not there for the baby, it would be dead......does this make sense??? it is why i believe abortion is a proper thing, and not a sin, or muder or immoral.

This is actually pretty damned close to the best explanation of the difference between 'murder' and abortion I've seen yet. I would only change it to the ' inherent ability to breathe unaided'. While Reeve needed a machine, he could, for up to a couple hours at a time, breathe on his own, in addition to his being fully conscious and aware. Once those attributes no longer exist, a patient is usually considered either in an irreversible comatose state or braindead. Then next of kin are given the choice to end whatever life remains by being sustained artificially.

 

[Napoleon's Nightingale]

The one and only infallible criteria to be human is sentience. Sentience requires a functioning brain and a fetus does not have a functioning brain until it reaches 27-31 weeks of age. Someone mentioned that appearence is what makes something a homo sapien/human but that is a myth as proven by fetus in fetu. It begins with the formation of twins. The zygote splits unevenly causing one part to be shapped like a flat disk and the other to be somewhat round. The flat disk then expands into a cylinder and completely envelops the other half. The fetus then begins to grow inside the other fetus by developing an ambilical cord which connects to the other fetus. It grows as fetus having such qualities as fully developed limbs, hair, digits, nails, eyes, teeth, a skeletal structure, and even genetalia. A fetus in fetu even exhibits movement. What it lacks are internal organs of it's own, most noteably a brain, and a defineable head. Internal organs never develop in a fetus in fetu but it does continue to grow as long as it's host survives. In fact, a fetus in fetu was removed from a Kazakhstani boy's abdomen in 2003. It had been growing inside of him for 7 years. So you see, although something may share physical characteristics with a human it is not always a human.

 

[Saboteur]

It seems every abortion thread follows a similar format; pro-lifers claim that murdering someone is not a valid right and as such abortion is illegal and immoral, then the pro-choicer comes back with the rationale that the unborn are not persons and as such cannot technically be murdered.

If you truely have faith then you believe that no one dies. Since no one really dies then the true victims of murder are the people who loved the murdered. So even if abortion is killing a person there is no victim who loved the murdered left behind, therefore it's not murder since there is no victim.

It also seems, for whatever reason, that the pro-choice camp takes this logic to be virtually infallable; that once this statement has been uttered nothing else need be said about that particular topic.

I challenge that assertion and would ask that the pro-choicers here attempt defining what constitutes a person. Give me your definition. And mind you, once you have given that definition the more you deviate from it later on in the thread the less credible your position will seem, so try and nail it in one shot and see if you are able to stick to it, but I doubt some of you will be able to.

Happy hunting.

I believe that all animals are people.

 

[talloulou]

If you truely have faith then you believe that no one dies. Since no one really dies then the true victims of murder are the people who loved the murdered. So even if abortion is killing a person there is no victim who loved the murdered left behind, therefore it's not murder since there is no victim.

That's absured. What if you're a hermit or recluse? Or what if you are just plain unlovable? By your logic it's perfectly okay to kill someone that noone loves. What utter BS. What if you love yourself?

 

[talloulou]

The one and only infallible criteria to be human is sentience.

No the only infallible criteria to be a human is to be a member of the species homosapiens.

 

[tecoyah]

So...we come to the obvious, the end game of every freakin' abortion thread ever created:


A difference of opinion

Some feel adamant that a murder is taking place...while others feel this is far from the case. There is only one possible middle ground in such a situation, as the two sides are unlikely to compromise.Obviously no one side will be satisfied until the other is defeated, and the opinions that form the belief subjected to a legislative power. At this point legislation allows for abortion , though limited, and this is not acceptable to the opponents thereof. Thus those in opposition to existing law, need to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that they are correct in opinion, and others are not.
Once this criteria is met, its a relatively simple process to guide the judiciary though a Lobby backed by the data. At this point there is not enough information availible to make a legitimate case, thus the lobby is forced to use Christianity as its primary tool (which may very well work in the long run), rather than convincing scientific Data that would solidify a case beyond doubt.
In short....no one can say unconditionally that A person is created at conception...or that they are not. But those who oppose abortion have far more responsibility to prove they are right, than those who do not wish to change a law. This is the reality.....make me believe.