if life = life then chances are you're sitting among the processed corpses of innocent trees you MURDERER

The arguement I tend to side with, at least as an American. Is that as an American citizen, you deserve the right to choose whether you want to be a parent or not. I mean, if you're so ****ing pro life then why don't you adopt all the babies that are born without responsible parents? Until you start doing so, your testimony/ opinions are stictly invalid.

When I said life = life I thought you would know that "human" was implied; human life = human life. Maybe your non humous flails are Freudian slips and you believe an unborn child's life is equal to dead cells, chairs and ants. On the otherhand, I believe an unborn child is human being.

toretorden,

I don't believe in Utilitarianism in justifing abortion.

What I said was a mother has life, you understand the importance of this statement, right? It would wrong to take the life of the mother, right? The unborn baby also has life, so therefore it would be wrong to take the life of the unborn baby. And I never said one was more important then the other, when I was talking about mother and unborn child.

child is a human being
an unborn baby is a human being
taking the life of an innocent child is wrong
human being = human being
If one believes taking a life of an innocent child is wrong, then one must come to the conclusion that taking the life of the unborn human being is wrong.

But then if you say an embryo/ early stage fetus is a human being, you'd also have to say that sperm are human beings, eggs are human beings, and that other human cells are human beings etc... and so the life of the mother does not equal the life of a human cell. I think that's what people coming from a scientific/ medical perspective are trying to say.

Sperm are also cells with life that have the potential to become a child... so do you think it's wrong to dispose of sperm wrongfully? You can't argue that life = life when looking at it from a medical perspective.

Your arguement is your arguement, I would never argued that a gamete of any species is the same as an fully form member of the species itself, so NO, I don't have to say that.

Anyway, "life=life" is taking out of context of the arguement that an unborn child has life that should be equally protected like the mother's life should be protected.

Just because I believe women should be pro-life, and I don't believe in abortion, what I said is called naive and all these nonsensical analogies and unphilosphical arguement are brought up to disprove that an unborn child is a human being that has a right to life.

And if you want to argue the medical perspective agrue this:

Hypcratic Oath

I swear by Apollo, the healer, Asclepius, Hygieia, and Panacea, and I take to witness all the gods, all the goddesses, to keep according to my ability and my judgment, the following Oath and agreement:
To consider dear to me, as my parents, him who taught me this art; to live in common with him and, if necessary, to share my goods with him; To look upon his children as my own brothers, to teach them this art.

I will prescribe regimens for the good of my patients according to my ability and my judgment and never do harm to anyone.

I will not give a lethal drug to anyone if I am asked, nor will I advise such a plan; and similarly I will not give a woman a pessary to cause an abortion.

The Hippocratic Oath originated from about the 4th Century BC and in recent decades most physicians have chosen to abandon it in search of something more relevant to today's society - like the modern version written in the 1960s which doesn't include anything about doctor's and their power when it comes to abortion.

Anyway, it comes down to whether you believe an embryo or a fetus has the same kind of life as a human being. I believe, like Hesher said, that because spinal tissue and brain development doesn't occur until later in pregnancy, that up until then the fetus is not a human being but just has potential to become a human. And if you think its life should be spared just because it has potential to be human, then you must also consider the life of sperms and eggs to be sacred. Until then the mother is the only one capable of suffering and of rational thought, and consciousness, etc, and so her rights should come first. I can definitely understand how many people think otherwise, but this is just my belief.

EXACTLY! I planned on posting here but that sums up the main reason I'm pro choice.. amongst a few other things. I don't wanna debate.. I'm not good at it and I'm not gonna change my mind so I don't see the point.

You're a delicious flavor by the way! :thumb:

Neapolitan, if you value the human life over the ant life, you should make a point about it other than saying "life = life". We're not mind readers here.

I would still argue that your point of view makes no sense. I guess you know the utilitarian view, but I'll summarize for those who don't. From a utilitarian point of view, the right moral action/decision is the one that causes most happiness / least amount of suffering. By that logic, abortion is sometimes justified. Because none of us can read the future, we have to base moral decisions on the present. A fetus likely does not have the same capability of suffering as the mother, so it gets less moral consideration. It might have the same capability in the future, but we don't know that so that is irrelevant.

It's easy to see there's some kind of logic here - you want to ease suffering and make people happy - get the best results you can quality-of-life-wise. But what's the logic behind your moral stance? Okay, above all you want to preserve human life, but why? What makes it so holy? You say it's the same as killing a human, but abortion is legal in many places in the world where murder is outlawed so it's appearant that a lot don't agree with that "logic" either and there's a good reason. If you look at a fetus and then look at yourself, you'll see you're not the same. The fetus has potential, but having potential doesn't necessarily mean it should be protected like a person is.

I don't think human lives are any more special than those of animals. To me life is life and there's nothing holy about it. The difference is we generally have more emotional ties to people of our species. What matters are consequences. If someone was completely braindead and could only experience pain and the relatives thought it would be best if they were unplugged from the life support, I can see why that could be considered the right moral decision. It seems to me you could not support this because it would be murder.

Just put them up for adoption if you don't want the baby. And stop having promiscuous sex. If you do, use a condom and the pill.

Actually, you did, because abortions kill life forms that are not fully formed members of a species. If an undeveloped fetus has the same value as a human in your mind then yes, you are in fact saying that.

Most abortions do not kill unborn children. I do not agree with aborting children that could survive if delivered - that is murder. In the United States only 1.4% of abortions are carried out after 20 weeks or five months of pregnancy (which is one of the world's highest percentages), and no fetus can survive earlier than the 21st week. By 20 weeks, the bump is visible, you can feel it moving, and you can see the baby (and determine sex) on an ultrasound. If you haven't had an abortion by then, I think it should become illegal; you are so irresponsible to have waited five months before taking action when you had so many options leading up to this point. But the point is, before the 21st week, a fetus is not viable and is not a human. The fetus does not even gain a 50% survival chance until the 24th week. Therefore, it is not equal to another human life and therefore does not have rights as a human being. That is the SCIENCE.

It is naive and incorrect to assert that a pre-human fetus has the same value as a human being. It is a bundle of cells in the eyes of science and the law. Our analogies are not nonsensical, though they may be "unphilosphical" because philosophy, in this case, is irrelevant. There are facts, and then there are beliefs.

The vast majority of pro-life arguments are not based in logic, so trying to contend with them using it will lead you nowhere. As long as Neapolitan is willing to accept that his point of view is not medically or scientifically based, he is perfectly justified in maintaining his opinion, and we are perfectly justified in disagreeing in the strongest manner possible since matters of faith or religion do not and should not affect matters of state or legality.

What point of view is that? That I believe a human fetus is a human being? That the life of a human fetus is just as important as the life of all human being? That a human fetus should not be terminated?

As I said. A point of view not supported by science or medicine or any factual basis. Do you agree that there is no logic behind your claim? Because we will stop lambasting you if you admit to it; there's no point in arguing with that.

To suppose their is no logic behind it devalues your point. It's extremely logical if you didn't know and watched an egg hatch into a chick you'd think there was something alive inside that egg wouldn't you? Seems very logical to me. Cells are living organisms, there are a hundred ways to punch holes in your presumption.

Lets take it to an even simpler and more undeniable level. If you had a shoebox that knew was going to be filled with 1 million dollars in nine months if you did everything your accountant told you to do would you not consider it 1 million dollars?

I don't see what someones else's opinion on what is or isn't living is any of your business.

A shoebox has no fiscal value and won't until the million dollars is physically in there. It's a really terrible comparison to make.

Your point would be valid if we lived without science and, as you said, didn't know before watching the egg hatch into a chick. With science, we know that that there is a particular point in time at which an egg becomes a chick. To maintain your metaphor, we feel comfortable eating unfertilized eggs because even though we can't see into the egg as it's forming, we know that there is no baby chick inside yet. Only the potential for a baby chick. Do you see what I mean?

I never said cells weren't living organisms. What I said was, they aren't human until certain conditions are met. And abortions, on the vast majority, are done before those conditions are met. So therefore we are aborting life forms, living organisms, that are not human.

And no, I would not consider it to be one million dollars, because until the day that it IS one million dollars, it is slowly growing. It might be $100 or $100,000 but it isn't a million until it is (money and babies don't just appear). Your metaphor would be valid if we didn't have the science to look inside the shoebox, but we do, and since we do, there is one factual understanding of abortion and everything else is an opinion.

No offense, but I don't understand how you think you can debate this.

It's a prefect comparison you're argument makes no sense. Without the shoebox there is no million dollars. Stop arguing you lose this one every time. It's not about pro-life\pro-choice, it's explaining why pro-life feels like they do, you don't get to determine that.

It's still a terrible comparison because it has no value until there's actually a million dollars in there which is more an argument for abortions up until they baby is actually out of the womb (i.e. the money is in the shoe box.)

I guess I could just put you on my ignore list. Do you do this on purpose or do you really only see your own perspective?

the comparison is not about somethings value it's about it's inevitable result. It's completlety imaginary and not at all based on science or the laws of reality, it's a fucking magic shoe box Ethan, Are you thick?

Yeah I'm thick but at least I can argue without resorting to condescension.

You say that, but you yourself do not offer any scientific proof that a human fetus is not a human.

Since it is true that a being fetus is human being, all you can do is to deny it, with nothing to support your position.

Truth is unchangeable, it will not change with time, it will not change with points of views, if you can not comprehend that a human being start life as human zygote and then developes as a human fetus within the womb, then is born as a human newborn baby then it is up to you to learn more about biology, ethics, and philosophy.

So Jay, are you saying that Neapolitan's argument has nothing to do with science or the laws of reality? That's all we're trying to establish here. As I said, there is no point in arguing with a position that is not based in logic.

Pro-life believes that the million dollars is essentially in the shoebox all the way up until you open it.

Pro-choice knows, for a fact, that the million dollars is slowly growing inside the shoebox.

Those are the positions here. One is an opinion and one is a fact. Once people accept that their opinion is not a fact, there will be nothing to argue.

No you can't, you never do with me. You are consistently condescending and inconsiderate. You rarely read any of my posts and think about them, you simply isolate something you can take apart regardless of rather or not it represents what I think or what I was trying to relate.

I tried to explain why it was a bad argument to misrepresent the position of your opposition and you are insulting my metaphor because a hypothetical shoebox has no value according to you. That's not condescending?

I presented the facts, and you ignored them. I demonstrated the proof, and you refused to acknowledge it. I showed you the truth, and you would not see it.

Persist in your delusion, for apparently none may rescue you from it. Woe is the world when science becomes yoked to the ignominy of belief.

I'm not as confident in "science" as you. When I was a child popular science more often suggested the fetus was a living organism. And I'm not so sure the medical\scientific community is as confident as you assert, but I do overall plead ignorance.

I think you're still missing the point. If you don't abort the fetus it will eventually (in the majority of cases) become a human being, that's also a fact. And that is how those who do not think like you draw their conclusions, it's very logic and it's very much based in the laws of reality, if anything your argument is more semantically then anything.

Science has evolved since you were a child, obviously. As I said, the fetus is of course a living organism. But there is a difference between an organism with life and a human being - otherwise, using antibacterial soap would be genocide. The medical/scientific community is exactly as confident as I assert, as much as the fetus being viable by the 20th week. This isn't something that is cast in doubt. Ask a doctor, please.

I'm not missing the point at all, and my argument both utterly logical and anything but semantic. Every sperm being produced in your body, if mated with an egg, will eventually become part of a human being, just as a fetus, if carried to the 20th week, will become part of a human being. But it is not a human being until the 20th week. That is the fact.

We are arguing that the potential to be a human is the same as being a human, which, if true, would mean that the human body aborts millions of "human babies" every time it reabsorbs sperm or flushes out an egg with a through menstruation. A fetus is farther along in development than those things, but it is not a human yet. It has the potential to be a human. Those are not the same, no matter how much you think the potential to have a million dollars is the same as having a million dollars. If that were true we'd all be millionaires because we have the potential to be millionaires (illustrating how your metaphor is further flawed).

Holy Shit.

We are not arguing and it's not what I think.

I am TELLING you how other people with opinions DIFFERENT then you see it.

I don't find any flaw with your arguments, they are as you say logical and to my knowledge (very little) accurate, your error comes in assuming they in anyway devalue the oppositions stance. My shoebox analogy is just that it's not meant to be taken literally.

When a woman has a miscarriage three weeks into pregnancy should she not feel sad because it simply had the potential to be a human being?

Listen, I understand and respect your argument, I happen to come out on your side (por-choice) as it were but for completely different reasons. I don't think it's any of my business to tell other people what to think.

I apologize. Your argument seemed presented as if you believed it. You can assume I mean "you" in general from now on.

I think I understand the arguments of people like Neapolitan very well. It's as you (Jay) said; they believe that since the shoebox has the potential to hold a million dollars, it is worth a million dollars up until the point that it is confirmed. Which is silly.

I don't think it's erroneous to say that they devalue the opponent's stance. One stance is fact, the other is an opinion that ignores the fact. The idea that the potential for a human is the same as a human effectively throws a blanket over what medical science has shown us occurs and takes us back to the time when we didn't have that information.

The psychological value people ascribe to the potential for a human is a different matter than the factual value of a pre-20th week fetus. I feel perfectly comfortable aborting a fetus that I know is not human yet. I ascribe no more value to it than I would a sperm or an egg or any other cluster of human cells. The law should say the same.

The other examples people were using are valid examples of the "life = life" problem. A pre-human fetus has no more value than any other bundle of cells. Even in religious terms it does not have a soul yet. It cannot think, speak, or do any other uniquely human action. It is not a person, no matter how much psychological value you ascribe to it. The opposing stance is simply illogical.

http://www.animalliberationfront.com...te_286x215.jpg

JJJ's metaphor was illustrating the value of potential. If, after nine months a shoe box can produce a million dollars, without any further actions taken by you, then it is a fucking valuable shoe box.

Your egg/sperm argument is semantics. You said yourself, there are degrees of potential and a fetus has an incredibly larger potential to become a human being than an egg or sperm, the process is already underway. So if people choose to value the potential of a fetus, your facts don't actually devalue that. It's just an ethical choice.

To be clear, I'm pro choice.

There is value in potential but it is not the same as the result. A shoebox that is technically capable of holding a million dollars in bills (a very large shoebox to be sure) is still a shoebox until it contains a million dollars.

I see what you're saying, and you're the first person to phrase in a way that is clear to me. I guess I am comfortable with the knowledge that any value someone ascribes to a fetus before viability is an "ethical decision" of theirs and not a reflection of the technical value of a cluster of cells. Either way, the law does not prohibit killing most animals, no matter how attached you may be to them, and from a purely technical perspective, a pre-viability fetus is roughly analogous to any other non-human organism. So from the point of view of the law, there is no obstacle to pre-20th week abortion.

:rolleyes:

That's all you could respond to? What you're asking for is actually answered in the post I wrote. There's some critique in there against what I think you believe. Maybe you should read it again :

You'll see some points here that I think make more sense than what you're pushing. Such as :

• The right moral decision on wether or not abortion is right should be based on the consequences the decision will have, you should maximize happiness/minimize suffering
• A fetus should not have the same moral protection as a grown human because as far as we know, it doesn't have the same capabilities for happines, suffering, rational thought etc.
• Humans are animals and what makes their lives special is only that we generally have more family/emotional-ties to them. Human lives don't have to be preserved at all costs.

The last point I illustrated by the relatively braindead person on life support who could only experience pain and so you could argue ending his or her life would be the right moral decision, but you by your logic would have to think of that as murder.

I think you make much less sense because as far as I can tell :

• You see everything in black and white, there's only ever one answer (abortion is always wrong, no matter the circumstance)
• You sometimes think the right moral decision is the one that causes the most pain and suffering
• You think something that is not capable of emotions, sentience, pain or happiness should have more moral protection than a grown human being (mother)

I'd like to see the logic behind this, yes. I'm not asking why you think a fetus is human - thanks for the petty attempt at trying to make me look silly, but that's not what we're discussing. I want to know what it is about fetuses that they should be protected so to the point where you always take away the mother's freedom, even if she got pregnant by rape and gets beaten every day of her pregnancy. That makes no sense to me and I want to know what it is about it that makes sense to you.

I'm very noncommittal on this issue, but a lot of the arguing comes down to this simple topic - Is the entity in the womb a living child or merely a fetus. Why don't pro-choicers ever say this, "Look, what does a living person need to breathe?" Oxygen, right. So, theoretically if a grown man was to stick his head up into a woman's vagina, or even the uterus, how long would he survive? My guess is not even until he got really thirsty, let alone several months.

The fetus gets oxygen from it's mother. The mother breathes, the oxygen goes into her blood and her blood goes into the fetus.

You know this, right?

I think the difference between a fetus and a person is really in what they can experience. That's the first thing I'd mention at least.

never done me any harm.

OK, well an adult has oxygen in his blood, so by that rationale, they would be able to breathe with their head inside a woman's vagina, simply because they have oxygen in their blood?

This argument is irrelevant because it has nothing to do with the fetus achieving consciousness or sentience and does not act as a serious medical sign that the fetus has become human. Some bacteria take in oxygen as well, for example, although they do it by osmosis. It isn't a sign of humanity to be able to breathe underwater or to only be able to breathe in air, and the fact that a fetus/baby is able to breathe oxygen while suspended in fluid has nothing to do with it either.

I understand that you are examining this discussion from a philosophical/ethical perspective rather than a medical one, but using that gauge, a fetus cannot "experience" anything human until a while before birth, by which time it is a viable baby and essentially a small human. By this time, the vast majority of people do not have abortions. We agree but I'm just saying. Most abortions happen before the fetus has even developed enough spinal and brain tissue to control it's own body rhythms, much less think or take in information.

I very much agree with you which is part why I'm pro-choice (maybe you should read my longer post up there). The average adult human can experience a range of sensory input and emotions which I don't think the typcal aborted fetus can. That's why when you have a mother carrying a fetus and she wants an abortion, you should extend more moralistic concern for the mother than the fetus.

That would follow, yes. In fact, I believe that most of the ethical issues people have with abortion are more empathetic reactions to the psychological toll that any kind of miscarriage has on a potential mother.

I did actually read your above post and appreciated/agreed with it.

I think religion imay also be a big stick in the wheels when it comes to abortions. Although I can't remember anyone bringing it up, but I think the commandment "you shall not murder" (f.ex) must be a reason for some pro-lifers.

Killing a non-sentient organism isn't murder anymore than using antibiotic hand soap is genocide, but then again, logic doesn't really enter into the plane of religion.

[QUOTE=Hesher;687306]
a fetus cannot "experience" anything human until a while before birth, by which time it is a viable baby and essentially a small human. By this time, the vast majority of people do not have abortions. [QUOTE]
Do you have any science to back up what you are saying? I know a fetus develops a heartbeat after only about 3 months, and I'm not too sure about the brain activity, but I'm just amazed that you have this kind of information. I've just learned from the basis of your argument that indisputably 1st term abortions are OK, and late terms may/may not be. I know I'm being a little sarcastic, but seriously, could you explain what you mean by 'experience anything human'? because this might be a big bolster to the religious/scientific communities

edit: also please elaborate 'a while before birth'. A while could mean a few seconds or 9 months depending on who you talk to