an abortion thread with no personal attacks

[GhostWriter16]

Humanity= being a biologically independent (Which counts out cancer cells) human life.

A fetus, while connected to its mother, is biologically separate life.

 

[Leoreth]

A fetus is precisely not biologically independent! It receives nutrients from its mother after all. That's exactly what separates a fetus from a baby.

So even your totally made up definition that you just created for the sake of your argument without explaining why this is humanity and why it is the deciding factor, fails.

 

[GhostWriter16]

It receives nutrients from the mother, but is independently alive, with its own organs, brain, exc. I'm aware not all of these things are present from concepttion, but certainly long before birth. In any case, the baby does have its own DNA from conception, which does make it independent life.

 

[Traitorfish]

It makes it distinct, not independent, so I think we should proceed using that term. It amounts to the same thing from your perspective, and it makes discussion clearer.

So,

Humanity= being a biologically independent (Which counts out cancer cells) human life.

A fetus, while connected to its mother, is biologically separate life.

"Humanity", for you, is the state of being a biologically distinct (better term than "independent") specimen of Homo sapiens, yes? But that only answers the first part of my question- its still necessary to explain why "humanity" is ethically significant.

 

[GhostWriter16]

It makes it distinct, not independent, so I think we should proceed using that term. It amounts to the same thing from your perspective, and it makes discussion clearer.

So,

That would be fine.

"Humanity", for you, is the state of being a biologically distinct (better term than "independent") specimen of Homo sapiens, yes? But that only answers the first part of my question- its still necessary to explain why "humanity" is ethically significant, and sentience is not.

Well, my best answer is because they have eternal souls, while animals do not. In addition, they are the children of a species intelligent enough to actually realize the morality of what they do. They will eventually grow up to be their own unique moral individual who can do the same. They have distinct DNA that will grow into an adult person. And they have functioning organs. They are very much human beings. And killing human beings is wrong. For the same reasons its wrong to kill the mentally ********, its wrong to kill a fetus.

I wouldn't argue that sentience is completely out of the picture, I think animal cruelty is wrong, but I don't think killing becomes murder because of sentience.

 

[bernie14]

Imagine a fat guy is about to accidentally fall off a bridge. You need help to pull him back up, or he will fall and die. People are around. You could approach them. Or you could just argue that you couldn't force them and walk away. Which is morally sound?

personally, I don’t think your hypothetical hits the mark regarding a collective moral obligation, in that the decision to request the help of others/another in itself, does not require any assistance....

However, here is a twist, if you had a gun or another sure fire way to force others to assist you, would you morally justify this use of force to save the fat man?



by extension of this thought process, i would ask to those more religious on the forum, isn't God pro-choice?....i mean, free will and all that? isn't the decision to be "pro-choice" or pro-life" a personal one, between you and your god to judge you when the time comes? sure, you can express your opinion, you can educate others on your opinion, you can warn others about how god will punish them, but to force "god's law" on man sounds like taliban stuff to me.....

 

[GhostWriter16]

The question is then "Why shouldn't murder be allowed" from our side.

 

[El_Machinae]

Humanity= being a biologically independent (Which counts out cancer cells) human life.

There're quite a few cancers that are biologically independent, actually. The HeLa cell line (the classic cancer cell line) was derived from Henrietta Lacks, and she died decades ago. Meanwhile, her cancer have reproduced thousands of times and has become thousands of separate (independent) organisms.

Really, biology is fuzzy. This is why the black & white stance of hard-core pro-lifers just doesn't work logically (or practically). The stance is based off of an instinctive heuristic.

 

[strijder20]

Well, my best answer is because they have eternal souls, while animals do not.

If you are religious, yes*. If you aren't, then humans having eternal souls isn't a fact.

In addition, they are the children of a species intelligent enough to actually realize the morality of what they do. They will eventually grow up to be their own unique moral individual who can do the same. They have distinct DNA that will grow into an adult person. And they have functioning organs. They are very much human beings. And killing human beings is wrong. For the same reasons its wrong to kill the mentally ********, its wrong to kill a fetus.

By not allowing women who will die when they give birth abortion, you are also killing human beings.

*I think most major religions believe human souls are eternal, correct me if I'm wrong.

 

[GhostWriter16]

There're quite a few cancers that are biologically independent, actually. The HeLa cell line (the classic cancer cell line) was derived from Henrietta Lacks, and she died decades ago. Meanwhile, her cancer have reproduced thousands of times and has become thousands of separate (independent) organisms.

Really, biology is fuzzy. This is why the black & white stance of hard-core pro-lifers just doesn't work logically (or practically). The stance is based off of an instinctive heuristic.

The cancer is a direct threat to a person's life though. The infant (Usually) isn't, and when it is its a special case.

If you are religious, yes*. If you aren't, then humans having eternal souls isn't a fact.



By not allowing women who will die when they give birth abortion, you are also killing human beings.

*I think most major religions believe human souls are eternal, correct me if I'm wrong.

The above is a unique case.

 

[History_Buff]

Humanity= being a biologically independent (Which counts out cancer cells) human life.

Aside from the point that cancer can be independent, if I take mouse stem cells, put them in a petri dish, and grow it into some mouse tissue, does that make it a mouse? It would surely depend on it's environment for nutrients, but so do I.

The cancer is a direct threat to a person's life though. The infant (Usually) isn't, and when it is its a special case.

There are tons of benign cancers. Thus, when they threaten a life, they are a special case. Also, that is completely irrelevant to the point El Mac was making.

 

[El_Machinae]

We often remove cancers and then choose to kill them when we clearly don't need to. There're many, many, many cancer cell lines that were surgically removed and then nurtured.

 

[timtofly]

personally, I don’t think your hypothetical hits the mark regarding a collective moral obligation, in that the decision to request the help of others/another in itself, does not require any assistance....

However, here is a twist, if you had a gun or another sure fire way to force others to assist you, would you morally justify this use of force to save the fat man?



by extension of this thought process, i would ask to those more religious on the forum, isn't God pro-choice?....i mean, free will and all that? isn't the decision to be "pro-choice" or pro-life" a personal one, between you and your god to judge you when the time comes? sure, you can express your opinion, you can educate others on your opinion, you can warn others about how god will punish them, but to force "god's law" on man sounds like taliban stuff to me.....

I think that God prefers life, but there are a lot of still births and that would seem to imply that even God does not allow every fetus "life". I do not think that any living human can say for sure what goes on from sentience in the womb and even to a certain degree of what happens after birth. That part of memory or "inteligence" gathering is an unknown and there is no ability for one to communicate on one's personal behalf. Saying that a fetus would not survive without nutrients does not go away after birth, the only thing that changes is there is a wider set of cartakers now. A baby is still just as helpless.

I am sure there are those who would prefer to give up offspring to the nearest god if there was no one to stand up for their rights. At what age would a "child" be able to save oneself from such abuse? I would say that as soon as one can start walking would be as good of time as any to just walk away.

When it comes to God's Law though, the last one given was to love others more than yourself. That really was not enforced though. It seems that if you loved your offspring more than your own comfort, 9 months, can be a really long time.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

Humanity= being a biologically independent human life.

A fetus, while connected to its mother, is biologically separate life.

But it's not independent, so by your own definition ....

 

[warpus]

Well, my best answer is because they have eternal souls, while animals do not.

Citation required

 

[LucyDuke]

Abortion threads are always going to be nasty. We can try to minimize it, but I think its a mistake to say that just because we can beat around the bush means that we should. Abortion is murder, its barbaric, and I have absolutely no fear of pointing this out.

Granted, we should always strive to be nice to individuals, but I don't feel any need to give any concessions to the pro-choice side.

When I first saw the thread, I agreed with you, that "an abortion thread with no personal attacks" would be impossible, but it's certainly not.

You are wasting time shrieking about murder. I am wasting time shrieking about misogyny. We're just going to piss each other off, we're not going to convince each other or anyone else of anything by being jerks. The only thing we need to concede is that we very fundamentally disagree and that we can set aside differences to have a productive conversation.

I agree with that. While my personal opinion is sex outside of marriage is a sin, its just that, a sin. Being pregnant is NOT a sin.

See! We don't have to be nasty.

What are some things you think could be done other than outlawing it that would discourage abortion?

It was absolutely convenient to have sex before you were ready (And that goes for the male as well as the female) and it is absolutely wrong.

That doesn't make sense and doesn't appear to have anything to do with what I said.

 

[Farm Boy]

When it comes to God's Law though, the last one given was to love others more than yourself. That really was not enforced though. It seems that if you loved your offspring more than your own comfort, 9 months, can be a really long time.

This is one of the first things you have to consider in adoptive cases. The initial temptation is to think that women who give up their children are unprepared/unable/unwilling to be mothers. It's how I initially thought of things. The thing that is easy to overlook is that being pregnant and giving birth is being a mother. These women have chosen to take what is usually an unwelcome pregnancy and to complete it with near a year of their life. Knowing that these women bear the physical pain and social hardship of pregnancy without the subsequent "reward" of raising the child is as near to a selfless act as we generally come.

I think changing the conversation around adoption is going to be one of the best things the pro-life community can do. I think we have hidden allies in the LGBT community here that it's really a shame we do not leverage.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

GhostWriter, right from the bat to avoid confusion, this will not be an analogy directed towards the validity of the pro-life argument.

Imagine someone reasoning to ban masturbation because that someone is convinced that sperm is just as much human as an embryo for whatever reason, not important, not the point. The point is that someone sees the unnecessary death of sperm as dreadful and on par with murder.

The point here is that you and I probably have the same mentality towards this position. We'd both agree that banning masturbation because someone sees this as mass murder is just out of the question.

And that guy, in an masturbation debate, will shout mass murder at you. Would that change your opinion? Would the severity of the claim make you stop and rethink your position on masturbation as a more gruesome slaughterhouse scenario with silently screaming sperm cells?

My guess is no.

So. You think abortion is murder. Therefore you think it unacceptable. Completely crystal clear. I get it. Everyone does.

Now. If some response like: "Ha! Nazis didn't believe killing Jews was murder!" to you seems to be a good argument (I hope not), remember that the exact same argument could be used by the pro-sperm person, and he'll use "mass-murder". And he won't make an impact on you, you might even get a little mad for his implication you support mass-murder. Because you don't. You don't consider it mass-murder.

You, as I, would consider it 15 minutes well spent.


edit:

I don't think killing becomes murder because of sentience.

Neither do I. This is a perfect illustration of you lugging the term "murder" around and it interfering with you having a debate where you understand the other person's argument.

 

[Arakhor]

The thing is, you know the truth in your heart (That abortion is evil and is murder) and you want to see it cease, but you are more than happy to have a government who simply sits by and allows these deaths to happen. That doesn't make sense. Something's got to give.

Well, I know in my heart that you are a sensible, mature, almost-adult reflecting God's divine love in everything that you think and do. I'm just finding difficult to see that now, especially with these wild sweeping statements of FACT that you keep making about other people.

 

[GhostWriter16]

Imagine someone reasoning to ban masturbation because that someone is convinced that sperm is just as much human as an embryo for whatever reason, not important, not the point. The point is that someone sees the unnecessary death of sperm as dreadful and on par with murder.

The point here is that you and I probably have the same mentality towards this position. We'd both agree that banning masturbation because someone sees this as mass murder is just out of the question.

Yes, we agree here. I have different issues with masturbation, but not that it's murder

And that guy, in an masturbation debate, will shout mass murder at you. Would that change your opinion? Would the severity of the claim make you stop and rethink your position on masturbation as a more gruesome slaughterhouse scenario with silently screaming sperm cells?

My guess is no.

You guessed correctly.

So. You think abortion is murder. Therefore you think it unacceptable. Completely crystal clear. I get it. Everyone does.

Now. If some response like: "Ha! Nazis didn't believe killing Jews was murder!" to you seems to be a good argument (I hope not), remember that the exact same argument could be used by the pro-sperm person, and he'll use "mass-murder". And he won't make an impact on you, you might even get a little mad for his implication you support mass-murder. Because you don't. You don't consider it mass-murder.

I think it would be a valid argument to a point. However, I'm well aware that pro-choice people THINK that its not mass murder. In any case, sperm just has the same DNA as the male. When combined with the woman's egg, the fetus has its own DNA. That's the difference.

When I first saw the thread, I agreed with you, that "an abortion thread with no personal attacks" would be impossible, but it's certainly not.

Theoretically anything is possible, but it won't necessarily be practical, depending on who participates.

What are some things you think could be done other than outlawing it that would discourage abortion?

Definitely reducing the stigma of giving birth. I think sex outside marriage is immoral, but after its done, at the end of the day, the woman should be applauded for actually making the right decision to carry the woman to term. I wish everyone in the conservative religious community felt the same way about that.